Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, December 26, 2024

Of course Houthi attacks from Yemen can be deterred. You just need to understand the psychology.

As Israel struck back against Houthi infrastructure today, YNet's Smadar Perry writes:

You can't make the Houthis back down, they are not afraid
Iran will continue to supply its Yemeni proxy with arms and directives to attack Israel until a cease-fire is reached in Gaza

So far, Israeli strikes on Houthi military bases and targets in Yemen have not inflicted significant defeats on their leadership. Abdul-Malik al-Houthi and Houthi spokesperson Yahya Saree, in their bizarre, pompous appearances, continue to issue direct threats against the U.S., the UK and especially Israel.

Until a full cease-fire is achieved in Gaza, Iran is expected to keep supplying the Houthis not only with weapons and military equipment but also with directives to persist in their attacks on Israel.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week vowed that the Houthis would pay a heavy price for their attacks. Katz went even further with his threats. Yet Al-Houthi doesn’t seem fazed.

The Houthis, as their statements imply, are preparing, recruiting and stay undeterred. Elizabeth Kendall, a leading American expert on Yemen, summed up the situation succinctly: "The biggest dilemma is that it looks impossible to influence the Houthis without military pressure, but it’s hard to see how military pressure can work.”

It is true that long distance Israeli strikes is unlikely to deter the Houthis. They are dedicated jihadists, dedicated antisemites and don't care about their own people but would happily use their suffering to get the world to condemn Israel for any attacks that kill civilians. After all, the Hamas playbook was fond to work quite well.

Worse, they know that they have relatively inexpensive weapons that can reach Israel and defending Israel from them is very expensive.

There are only two ways to deter the Houthis, and they follow the same playbook that worked against Hamas and Hezbollah: Attack their leaders and stop the supply of weapons from Iran.

Attacking the leaders from a distance is a Herculean task. Israel had years of intelligence to lean on when they chose that strategy against Hamas and Hezbollah; it would take time to build the same capacity in Yemen, although you can bet that Israel is working on it. Israel doesn't have years to build that intelligence infrastructure.

Which is why the deterrence must be not against the Houthis but against Iran itself.

Unlike their proxies, Iran has a lot to lose. The reason Iran has been distancing themselves from their proxies is because they don't want to be held responsible for their actions against Israel - in short, they are frightened of an Israeli attack that would cripple Iran's oil exports, the keystone to their economy.

The Houthis can shoot rockets and drones all day as long as Iran supplies them for free. Which is why Iran's economy must be attacked, not Yemen (except for specific strategic targets.)

Anyone could have foreseen that the Houthis would increase their attacks when Israel struck them. Honor/shame demands that. In fact, in some ways Israel's attacks on the Houthis increase their prestige because there is only so much Israel can do; it makes the Houthis look stronger.

But if Iran would tell them to stop attacking, and if Israel (possibly together with the US and European allies) blocks off the path of weapons exports from Iran to Yemen with either threats or with military action against their ports and airports, the Houthi calculus would change. They can act as belligerent as they want but they don't want to run out of arms.

As I've said before, Israel needs to make it publicly clear that it holds Iran responsible for every Houthi rocket and drone attacking Israel, and Iran will pay the price. And Israel must follow through.

That is how to deter the Houthi threat.

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The Maccabees’ Sister (Forest Rain)

By Forest Rain

The Maccabees’ Sister

Centuries of living in strange lands led Jews to change the focus of the Chanukah story – emphasizing the miracle of light and by default, minimizing the war fought and won against abusive occupiers who stole Jewish freedom.

The oil that should have lasted one day and lasted eight is not the point of the Chanukah story – it’s a symbol of what faith and effort can achieve, even against impossible odds. The real story is that of the war the Maccabees fought, against the greatest empire at the time, which did everything possible to stamp out their Judaism, to make the Jews forget their uniqueness and become “citizens of the world”. There were Jews who were willing to put aside their identity in hopes of being embraced by the “enlightened” ones, in hopes that submitting would put a stop to their abuse.

Sound familiar?

The story of Chanukah is that of the Maccabees who refused to submit, who clung to their faith and the dignity of their people, our people, and against impossible odds – won.

That is what the oil is – a symbol of the light of our people that should have died out but thanks to those who clung to their faith and fought against all odds, didn’t.

The Maccabees were the warriors who led the revolt but there is a story that is not often told of the Maccabee who insisted that fighting was necessary. Because why fight against impossible odds? It’s easier to turn a blind eye and pretend that you don’t see abuse and oppression.

But doing so facilitates even greater evils.

Did you know that the Maccabees went to war to protect their sister and the other women of Israel from RAPE by their oppressor?

It was Hannah, the Maccabees’ sister who demanded Jewish dignity. Hannah the Maccabee SPOKE when all others remained silent.

She forced her brothers to look at the ugly reality of what was happening to the women of Israel and once they saw, they had to act.

According to the midrash, the Jews, then living under Greek Seleucid rule, had remained silent for three years; three years in which every woman who married would first be raped by the local Greek governor before she could enter her husband’s house. This is how the midrash describes it: “When the Greeks saw that Israel was not affected by their decrees, they stood and decreed upon them a bitter and ugly decree, that a bride would not go in [to her husband] on her wedding night, but rather to the local commander” [all quotes from Midrash Ma’aseh Chanukah “alef,” A Tale of the People’s Resistance to the Seleucid Greek Occupation].

It is awful to imagine how many women underwent this violation and humiliation. The midrash tells us that the men of the Hasmonean family did nothing. And the women of Israel fell victim again and again to the abuse.

Then came the wedding day of Matityahu the Hasmonean’s own daughter Hannah. This time, Hannah decided to put an end to the ongoing atrocity. In the middle of the wedding banquet, while all the distinguished and important guests were eating and enjoying themselves, she stood up and ripped off her wedding dress, leaving herself naked in front of her family and friends.

“And when everyone was sitting down to eat, Ḥannah, the daughter of Matityahu, stood up from her palanquin and clapped her hands one on the other and tore off her royal garment and stood before all of Israel, revealed before her father and her mother and her groom!”

At first, her brothers reacted with anger and shock. They wanted to kill her for having disgraced them and for shaming the family and herself.

But she, in turn, scolded them for turning a blind eye, all the while knowing what awaited her that night at the governor’s palace. Not one of them had raised a finger, not one had stood up to protect her dignity. She reprimanded her brothers for being angry at her nakedness in front of them, even as they remained calm at the thought of her having to go later that night to the governor who would sexually assault her.

“She said ‘Listen, my brothers and uncles! So what—I stand naked before you righteous men with no sexual transgression and you get all incensed?! And you do not become incensed about sending me into the hands of an uncircumcised man who will abuse me?!’”

She forced them to face up to the bitter truth. According to the midrash, this was the moment her Maccabee brothers first raised the flag of rebellion.

The stories of Israel repeat themselves. Then, like now, once the horror is SEEN, the People of Israel understand that it cannot be unseen. We must act to change the reality and ensure safety for all of Israel.

On October 7th the People of Israel were forced to see that we cannot live with monsters on our borders. That it is deadly to pretend that the monsters don’t exist or want things other than what they openly declare about themselves. That it doesn’t matter how mighty our enemies are, or even if the Superpowers of the world tell us we must not defend ourselves. It is up to us to be Maccabees..

And with strength of spirit, and our warriors, and by the grace of God, we will win. We have no other choice.

And as we light the Chanukah candles, we thank God for the miracles granted to our ancestors in those days and in our days.

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The New York Times breathlessly reports:

At exactly 1 p.m. on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel’s military leadership issued an order that unleashed one of the most intense bombing campaigns in contemporary warfare.

Effective immediately, the order granted mid-ranking Israeli officers the authority to strike thousands of militants and military sites that had never been a priority in previous wars in Gaza. Officers could now pursue not only the senior Hamas commanders, arms depots and rocket launchers that were the focus of earlier campaigns, but also the lowest-ranking fighters.

In each strike, the order said, officers had the authority to risk killing up to 20 civilians.

The order, which has not previously been reported, had no precedent in Israeli military history. Mid-ranking officers had never been given so much leeway to attack so many targets, many of which had lower military significance, at such a high potential civilian cost.

It meant, for example, that the military could target rank-and-file militants as they were at home surrounded by relatives and neighbors, instead of only when they were alone outside.

Observers of the Gaza war might not have known the specific formula of "20 civilians per terrorist," but it was clear that the initial bombing campaign in Gaza was far more devastating than any previous Israeli campaign

The NYT broadly implies that this change in IDF reflects a clear violation of international law. But it doesn't. It reflects that Israel has always gone way beyond international law in the past to preserve civilian lives and in this case it loosened up the rules to be more in line with actual international law.

The article buries a partial quote of the IDF response to the reporters starting in paragraph 20:

Provided a summary of The Times’s findings, the Israeli military acknowledged that its rules of engagement had changed after Oct. 7 but said in a 700-word statement that its forces have “consistently been employing means and methods that adhere to the rules of law.”

The changes were made in the context of a conflict that is “unprecedented and hardly comparable to other theaters of hostilities worldwide,” the statement added, citing the scale of Hamas’s attack; efforts by militants to hide among civilians in Gaza; and Hamas’s extensive tunnel network.

“Such key factors,” the statement said, “bear implications on the application of the rules, such as the choice of military objectives and the operational constraints that dictate the conduct of hostilities, including the ability to take feasible precautions in strikes.”

I wish I could see the entire 700 word statement instead of the 60 or so words the Times quotes, but it emphasizes the key points that the NYT glides over.

According to the Rome Statute, to violate the principle of proportionality, an attack must be known that it "would cause incidental death or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects ...and that such death, injury or damage would be of such an extent as to be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated." This means that the value of the damage would be excessive compared to the military value of the target. Both of those values are difficult to calculate, but existing rulings give us some guidance.

There are three court rulings I am aware of that attempt to quantify proportionality in war. Two of them I have discussed previously.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia ruled that a 1999 NATO attack on the Radio Television of Serbia headquarters that the deaths of 16 employees were "unfortunately high but do not appear to be clearly disproportionate." There was no specific warning of the airstrike ahead of time. The station was only off the air for a day and NATO knew that the effects of the strike would be temporary.

In 2009, Taliban fighters hijacked a fuel truck that NATO feared would be used for attacks. It bombed the truck but some 90 civilians who were unexpectedly nearby were killed. A German court ruled that "Even if the killing of several dozen civilians would have had to be anticipated, from a tactical-military perspective this would not have been out of proportion to the anticipated military advantages.." Moreover, it gave a definition of what would and would not be proportionate: "[C]onsidering the particular pressure at the moment when the decision had to be taken, an infringement is only to be assumed in cases of obvious excess where the commander ignored any considerations of proportionality and refrained from acting “honestly”, “reasonably” and “competently” … This would apply to the destruction of an entire village with hundreds of civilian inhabitants in order to hit a single enemy fighter, but not if the objective was to destroy artillery positions in the village …

The German court ruled an entire village could be wiped out if artillery positions were in the village.

A 2012 ruling appears to be more restrictive. In Prosecutor v. Gotovina, a general was accused of using disproportionate means in bombarding an urban area with artillery. The ICTY made up a fairly arbitrary definition of what would be considered a valid artillery attack and what would not be: “artillery projectiles which impacted within a distance of 200 meters of an identified artillery target were deliberately fired at that artillery target.” In short, if there is evidence that there was a valid target within the targeted area - which obviously includes Hamas terrorists, tunnels, rockets - the attack could not be considered illegal; the prosecution charged that using this 200 meter rule, 5.5% of the attacks approved by General Gotovina were outside the 200 meter radius, ignoring that the 94.5% that landed within the radius that were proved he was not arbitrarily shooting at the town.

The ICTY accepted that bizarre argument that doesn't account for normal operational error.

Gotovina appealed the ruling, and it was overturned, although the court didn't rule specifically on the proportionality issue so we do not have a clear definition from this ruling.

At the same time, the ICTY ruled that an artillery barrage aimed at President Martić's apartment - in the middle of a residential apartment building - that was fired from 25 kilometers away was disproportionate since even the person responsible for the attack recognized that "the chance of hitting or injuring Martić by firing artillery at his building was very slight." Apparently the proportionality calculation must also include the likelihood of success of the attack. The IDF never attacks when the chances of hitting the target are "slight."

Israel's bombing of a similar urban area would not be considered illegal unless there was no valid military target in the area of the bombings and little chance that the target would be hit, and even the New York Times doesn't make that claim.

It certainly sounds crass to weigh the value of human life, which is infinite, against military necessity. But if anything, Israel continues to err on the side of human life even given the context of legal rulings allowing far more leeway.

October 7 did change the calculus. Israel's goal now is to destroy Hamas, not to dissuade it as in past wars, and destroying Hamas is a perfectly valid military goal that includes targeting mid-level terrorists who are using their families as human shields - knowing that Israel had avoided them (but not the higher level terrorists) in the past under those circumstances.

The New York Times, as usual, doesn't address the legality of the attacks, which is the key consideration.

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Was the Golan Heights in Biblical Israel?

L'Orient Today interviews Michael Mason, director of the Middle East Center at the London School of Economics. He says:

Israel’s messianic claims to the Golan Heights are a very recent historical invention. During the 1967 war, the Golan Heights were regarded by key Israeli politicians and the Zionist right as outside the boundaries of the “Greater Land of Israel” — a point acknowledged by Yigal Kipnis, one of Israel’s leading historians on the Golan region.

After 1967, significant efforts were made to establish archaeological evidence of a Jewish presence in the area during antiquity. Much of this ‘evidence’ was later dismissed by Israeli archaeologists, including Zvi Ma’oz (who wrote Jews and Christians in the Golan Heights).

It was only from the mid-1970s onward that the Orthodox Jewish settlement movement, followed by far-right politicians, began claiming the Golan as part of ‘Greater Israel.’

Is this true?

Well, yes and no.

Most maps of the Twelve Tribes during the Biblical period do not include the Golan, even though it was meant to be part of the Promised Land in Deuteronomy - for most of the Biblical period it was not conquered.

However, the Golan Heights came under Jewish rule in the first century BCE.

Claudine Dauphin wrote in Palestine Exploration Quarterly in 1982:

The name 'Golan' is first mentioned in Deuteronomy 4.43 as a settlement in the region of the Bashan, that fell in the territory allocated to the tribe of Manasseh. It is referred to as a free city in Joshua 20. 8, and appears again as a Levitical city in IChronicles 6.7 I. The settlement in question is thought to be Sahem ed-Qjolan, beyond the eastern border formed by the river Rukkad. The name of the entire area is believed to be derived from this, according to FlaviusJosephus (Ant. IV, 5, 3: VIII, 2, 3; XIII, 15,4; BJ, 11,20,6; III, 3, 1-5; III, 10, 10; IV, I, I). His works allow one to retrace in detail the history of the province of Gaulanitis from Hellenistic times. The Golan fortresses of Gamala, Seleucia and Hippos, held by the Hellenistic Empires, were captured by Alexander J anneus in 83-8I B.C.E. and the area was annexed to the Hasmonean Kingdom (Ant. XIII, 15,3). This opened the way for increased Jewish settlement of the hitherto predominantly pagan area. It then seems to have become the scene of disturbances and violence, created by bands of robbers and political rebels who sought refuge on the wild rocky terrain of the Golan Heights (Ant. XVI, 9, 2). The Roman Emperor Augustus sought to contain this source of unrest by annexing the neighbouring districts of Batanea, Trachonitis and Auranitis. These he placed under Herod's administration in 23 B.C.E., and in 20 B.C.E. he added the area of Gaulanitis itself, the city of Pane as and the Ulatha Valley, all of which had until then been ruled by the kingdom of Iturea. To implement this new rule and maintain the peace, Herod initiated an extensive programme of paramilitary settlement. He transferred 3,000 Idumeans to the area of Trachonitis and 500 families of Jewish soldiers to Batanea, rewarding them by exemption from taxation (Ant. XVII, 2, 1-3). The intensity and extent of Jewish settlement in the Golan and surrounding districts, which reached in the north as far as Damascus and in the east to Naveh, is reflected in the baraita discussing the boundaries of 'Eretz- Yisrael', defined as the 'territory occupied by those who came back from Babylon' (Tosephta, Sheviiit IV; Jerusalem Talmud, Shevieit VI and Demai 11).

Clearly the idea that the Golan is part of halachic Israel has been around far longer than 1967.

Dauphin's paper shows some of the artifacts found as of 1982 that were clearly Jewish in al-Farj in the eastern Golan.

However, they probably came after the destruction of the Temple.

Far more synagogues and other evidence of Jewish settlement has been found since then, especially in Tel Dan, which shows Biblical-era finds, including an Israelite-style four horned altar.

In the end, Israel's claim to the Golan is not Biblical but practical. It must hold the high ground for security reasons in the absence of a trustworthy government in Syria. That was the entire reason Israel allowed the buffer zone of land it conquered after suffering major losses in 1973 to be controlled by the UN for 50 years.

But to say that Jews have no historic claim on the land is simply false.

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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!

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

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"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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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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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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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.