Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, December 30, 2024

12/30 Links Pt1: Gaza, Land of Make-Believe; NYTs’ Muddled View of Law of Armed Conflict; Hamas gathered intel for 7 years before Oct. 7; Jimmy Carter: A Jewish tragedy

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Gaza, Land of Make-Believe

In September, the Emmys awarded a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine activist for her “coverage” of the war, despite her work with the designated terrorist organization being well-known by then. The media have already mourned as fallen journalists a Hamas tank operative, a deputy Hamas commander in its Khan Younis Battalion, a Hamas drone operator, a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket specialist, an engineer in Hamas’s Gaza City Brigade and the like, as noted here.

As for Kamal Adwan itself, when Hamas operatives returned to the area in the fall, they did their best to draw the IDF to buildings around the hospital itself, hoping to protect the higher-level Hamas officials stationed in the hospital (along with weapons). When it finally cleared the way to the hospital complex, the IDF evacuated the premises, moving hundreds of patients and actual medical personnel to other facilities. Two Hamas cells tried to escape and were eliminated via drone. Medical equipment was then transferred to the nearest hospital, as were the patients. There is so far no evidence of civilian deaths at the complex.

That leaves a very different impression from the one pushed by media. But it’s easy to see through the mainstream press’s smokescreen if you try: The medical staff and patients who aren’t medical staff or patients trying to flee the hospital that isn’t a hospital; the journalists who aren’t journalists getting caught in the field of battle rather than at a newsroom working the phones; the teachers who aren’t teachers gathering at schools that aren’t schools.

And the aid workers that aren’t aid workers—who are these folks even trying to fool? When Israel’s Channel 12 was finally given access to the Palestinian side of one of the crossings, their cameras surveyed a staggering amount of aid just sitting there, expiring by the day. This is all aid that Israel has approved to be distributed, so it’s waiting for these humanitarian relief organizations to live up to their names. Instead, they mostly complain.

So on top of everything we can add humanitarian organizations that aren’t humanitarian organizations.

In Gaza, under the umbrella of Hamas, nothing it what it seems. It’s always much more sinister.

How the West could actually help prevent the next Gaza war

History’s most successful nation-rebuilding projects occurred in Germany and Japan after World War II. Both were transformed from aggressive nations bent on domination to thriving democracies.

For that to happen, the people of Germany and Japan needed to internalise that they and their supremacist ideologies were totally defeated. There could be no fantasy of a resurrected German Reich or Imperial Japan.

Similarly, the international community must declare the state of Palestine concept dead. The October 7 massacre buried that idea. Israel will never risk the creation of a state dedicated to its destruction on its border.

The Palestinian Arabs have wasted the past century trying to destroy the Jewish homeland while Israel has gone from strength to strength. To prevent the next 100 years of war, they must understand the Jewish state is not going anywhere. They must internalise that terrorism and massacres will not be rewarded.

The West must stop infantilising the Palestinian Arabs and shielding them from the consequences of their actions. There should be no rebuilding of Gaza until the society there commits to peaceful coexistence.

The Palestinian Arabs are the globe’s largest per capita aid recipients. The West has turned them into the world’s perpetual welfare junkies. Western aid often has served as a money-making scheme, filling Swiss bank accounts for decades.

Many have grown incredibly wealthy, including in Europe the widow of former Palestine Liberation Organisation leader Yasser Arafat and the surviving Hamas leadership in Qatar. Lucrative aid contracts have created a culture of nepotism, not innovation.

A chief contributor to prolonging the conflict is the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. No other people have a dedicated UN refugee agency and no UN agency has failed as badly in its mission. Every other refugee crisis from the 1940s has long been resolved. UNRWA textbooks have educated generations of Arab children to hate and imbued them with a false promise that they will return to Israel, a place most have never set foot in.

UNRWA should be disbanded. There are moves in Israel and the US to make sure it is. After revelations that numerous UNRWA employees took part in atrocities on October 7, 2023, Australia suspended funding.

Foolishly the Albanese government resumed funding, pledging tens of millions in taxpayer funds. Just last week Foreign Minister Penny Wong promised increased aid for Gaza.

The greatest contribution Australia could make to resolving the Middle East conflict would be to make it clear that we won’t keep rebuilding Gaza after every failed war they launch.

Such a stance would save lives in Gaza and Israel. It also would save money in the budget, freeing funds to help alleviate the cost-of-living crisis for Australians.

Israel Shouldn’t Wait to Attack Iran

While Israel has already done significant damage to the Houthis’ military assets, and the civilian infrastructure that undergirds their power, it is not clear that continued attacks of this kind will deter these Iran-backed jihadists from firing missiles at Israeli cities or at ships passing through the Red Sea. The only option that remains, then, would be to take the fight directly to Iran. Something similar can be said about Hizballah’s attempts to rebuild in Lebanon. Now that Syria has fallen, Seth Cropsey argues that Jerusalem shouldn’t wait to strike the Islamic Republic:

The Assad regime was crucial to Iran’s strategy. Transit of Syrian territory enabled Iran to sustain Hizballah in Lebanon, threaten Israel from two axes in the north, pressure Jordan through cross-border drug smuggling, and transfer arms to Iran’s partners in the West Bank. Critically, Iran could also forward-deploy several air-defense and early-warning radars in Syria. . . . Without Syrian-provided early warning, a strike against targets in Iran becomes much more practical.

If Israel could pull off a strike on the Iranian nuclear program in the coming weeks—or against other critical targets in Iran from arms factories to intelligence and security institutions—then the Iranian state may well face a broader domestic and regional backlash, with each actor it has contained sensing weakness.

Israel may be tempted to wait until Trump’s inauguration to move against Iran. This is a mistake. . . . [T]he U.S. needs a new strategy to apply pressure on Tehran, one that incorporates sanctions, threats and action against proxies, and intelligence operations to degrade what remains of Iran’s Axis of Resistance.

Creating this strategy will take time. An Israeli attack on Iran directly, whether against the nuclear program or other critical targets in the country, will help set the parameters for U.S. policy towards Iran, and open other possibilities for American action to end the radical clerics’ rule.

Ex-UK defense chief: 'We've all gained from Israel's experience

The British government's decision last September to suspend 30 of 350 arms export licenses to Israel raised a troubling question: had we lost British support? Did Israel, in the current climate, let relations with a vital ally slip through its fingers?

But feelings are one thing. Numbers are another: according to a report by the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) organization, defense exports to Israel approved by the UK government in 2023 totaled £17 million ($23 million).

The basis of cooperation between the two countries is not the arms trade but the coordination between their militaries in training exercises and in moments of truth. Such a moment came when the Iranians carried out their threat and attacked Israel directly in April and October. British forces assisted Israel in intercepting the missiles. The cooperation proved itself once more.

A highly important figure in the strengthening of this military relationship is the former Chief of the Defence Staff, General (Retd.) Sir Nicholas Patrick Carter, who, in December 2020, just months before completing 43 years of service in the British Armed Forces, signed an agreement with then-IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. (Res.) Aviv Kochavi to strengthen defense ties between the countries.

The other week, Carter returned to Israel to participate in the DefenseTech Summit, hosted by the Yuval Ne'eman Workshop for Science, Technology, and Security at Tel Aviv University in collaboration with the Ministry of Defense's Directorate of Defense Research & Development (DDR&D-MAFAT).

In an exclusive interview with "Globes," Carter addresses the looming alliance between Russia, Iran, and North Korea ("A coalition of hostile powers"), views dialogue with Tehran as a solution to the nuclear threat ("All conflicts end in dialogue"); and states that, for the time being, "the world is at war, but not yet in World War III."

"The change in dynamics in Syria might possibly be beneficial."

Iran's nuclear program is at its most advanced stage ever in uranium enrichment. Data from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) indicate that, since August, Iran has accumulated 17.6 km of 60% enriched uranium, for a total of 182.3 kg. This is the equivalent of four nuclear bombs, with nuclear weapons requiring uranium enriched to about 85% or higher.

Chanukah music video night 6: The Chanukah Song (Stephen Schwartz) - Mississauga Festival Choir

Written by the composer of Wicked (notice a theme this year?)

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Here's how little Israelis care about Haaretz's reporting

Every day I browse through Haaretz's headlines. Its obsessive hate of Netanyahu and most Israelis still surprise me after all these years.

It occurs to me that Haaretz headlines are pretty much clickbait. They are designed to outrage and get you to read the vapid analysis and obsessive hate.

Haaretz's newspaper circulation is tiny in Israel. In 2009, it was at 7.1%, in 2022 it was down to 4.7% exposure rate.

But what about online? Most people get their news from online sources, not physical newspapers - maybe Haaretz has an outsized influence there?

I found an April report on online media usage in Israel from the Israel Democracy Institute. It asked people which Internet site was their primary source of news.

It divided up the results by people who identify as left, center or right:

Nobody on the Right uses Haaretz as their news source. Only about 1% of the center do, and a mere 8% of the Left use Haaretz as their news source.

In recent years, however, the number of Israelis who identify as Left has dwindled as well. It is now only 16%. So according to this poll, only about 1% of Israelis use Haaretz online as their news source.

That is practically nothing.

Haaretz says it has over 100,000 digital subscribers. I would love to know a breakdown of how many are in Hebrew and how many are in English, how many are in Israel and how many outside. My guess is that the bulk of their readership is not even Israeli.

Haaretz is the number one primary source of anti-Israel propaganda. It represents a minuscule number of Israelis.

Haaretz's very existence proves how free the Israeli press is. Its numbers prove how irrelevant it is to the average Israeli.

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Palestinian Media Watch reports:

The Palestinian Authority itself has revealed that Hamas turns hospitals into military interrogation facilities. As proof, on Facebook, the PA posted a summons issued by Hamas to a Gazan to report to Nasser Hospital to be interrogated by Hamas' military intelligence.

The post was made by the former official spokesman of the PA Security Forces, Adnan Al-Damiri. Moreover, Al-Damiri criticized Hamas for continuing to use hospitals for "summonses, interrogations, and extortions":

The summons itself says:

State of Palestine
Ministry of Interior and National Security
Internal Security Force
Summons
To Citizen: Shadi Subhi Al-Suweiti, aka: Abu Subhi
Address: Khan Yunis/Al-Mawasi
Under the law of the State of Palestine and in accordance with our vested authority, you are to report to:
Premises: Nasser Medical Center
Office: Public Relations
On: Wednesday
Date: 16 October 2024
At: 11:30 AM
Attendance is mandatory and legally binding.
Bring your ID card or passport.

This isn't news - unless you get your news from the New York Times or Washington Post, in which case you would have no idea that Hamas still uses hospitals as military offices.

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The Washington Post headline: "Israel built an ‘AI factory’ for war. It unleashed it in Gaza."

The phrase "AI factory" implies that the IDF is blindly relying on AI for decisions that then recklessly kill innocents in Gaza that would have been safe if Israel relied only on humans.

When you separate the facts from the bias in the article, you see the opposite: AI is a tool that helps save lives and more accurately target terrorists.

Here's an example of how AI helps identify the terrorists who murdered 1.200 Israelis on October 7 and how the Post spins this as a bad thing:

People familiar with the IDF’s practices, including soldiers who have served in the war, say Israel’s military has significantly expanded the number of acceptable civilian casualties from historic norms. Some argue this shift is enabled by automation, which has made it easier to speedily generate large quantities of targets, including of low-level militants who participated in the Oct. 7 attacks.

The implication is that murderers, kidnappers and rapists shouldn't be targeted because they are merely "low-level."

The WaPo is defending rapists as not being worthy of being targeted in war.

It says what the New York Times said a few days ago, that Israel loosened up the rules for proportionality calculations in the wake of October 7. As I and others have written, this is entirely appropriate - and legal - since the nature of this war is different from the previous limited wars in Gaza that were meant only to dissuade but not destroy Hamas.

And a careful reading of the article shows that Israel uses AI as a tool, not as a replacement of human decision-making. There are checks and balances in the system. Even the people they interviewed anonymously agree:

“The more ability you have to compile pieces of information effectively, the more accurate the process is,” the IDF said in a statement to The Post. “If anything, these tools have minimized collateral damage and raised the accuracy of the human-led process.”

The IDF requires an officer to sign off on any recommendations from its “big data processing” systems, according to an intelligence official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because Israel does not release division leaders’ names. The Gospel and other AI tools do not make decisions autonomously, the person added.

Reviewing reams of data from intercepted communications, satellite footage, and social networks, the algorithms spit out the coordinates of tunnels, rockets, and other military targets. Recommendations that survive vetting by an intelligence analyst are placed in the target bank by a senior officer.

Using the software’s image recognition, soldiers could unearth subtle patterns, including minuscule changes in years of satellite footage of Gaza suggesting that Hamas had buried a rocket launcher or dug a new tunnel on agricultural land, compressing a week’s worth of work into 30 minutes, a former military leader who worked on the systems said.

Contrary to the impression that the WaPo tries to give, its own details show that the AI systems are far more effective and accurate than humans alone. There is no indication that the AI is doing anything that human analysts wouldn't do if they had infinite processing speed and could hold billions of pieces of information in their heads at once. AI is doing exactly what humans would do given enough resources, and humans check on its work.

Even the specific criticisms of AI that may be valid are minor in comparison with the benefits, and there is no indication that people were mistakenly targeted because of them.

An internal audit found some AI systems for processing the Arabic language had inaccuracies, failing to understand key slang words and phrases, according to the two former senior military leaders.

...For example, Hamas operatives often used the word “batikh,” or watermelon, as code for a bomb, one of the people familiar with the efforts said. But the system wasn’t smart enough to understand the difference between a conversation about an actual watermelon and a coded conversation among terrorists.

“If you pick up a thousand conversations a day, do I really want to hear about every watermelon in Gaza?” the person said.

And wouldn't you want a system that picks up and doers an initial analysis analyzes every mention of "watermelon" to check out which of those may be a plan to murder Israelis?

I had looked at a similar article by +972 in April. It added a detail that the Washington Post chose not to mention: before the IDF increased its reliance on AI to determine targets, it manually checked its results against human analysts and only signed off on the AI system when it achieved 90% reliability. What it didn't mention is whether humans reach that 90% reliability threshold.

In that same vein, the WaPo parrots criticism of AI without comparing how humans would do the job better. An anonymous soldier - not an intelligence analyst - offers his own criticism, someone almost certainly found by the WaPo reaching out to +972 to find disgruntled soldiers for the article:

At one point, the soldier’s unit was ordered to use a software program to estimate civilian casualties for a bombing campaign targeting about 50 buildings in northern Gaza. The unit’s analysts were given a simple formula: divide the number of people in a district by the number of people estimated to live there — deriving the former figure by counting the cellphones connecting to a nearby cell tower.

Using a red-yellow-green traffic light, the system would flash green if a building had an occupancy rate of 25 percent or less — a threshold considered sufficient to pass to a commander to make the call about whether to bomb.

The soldier said he was stunned by what he considered an overly simplified analysis. It took no account of whether a cellphone might be turned off or had run out of power or of children who wouldn’t have a cellphone. Without AI, the military may have called people to see if they were home, the soldier said, a manual effort that would have been more accurate but taken far longer.

And if they called people whose cellphones were off, how exactly would that help the analysis? And does he really think the Ai system assumes all children have cellphones?

The most substantive criticism of how the IDF relies too much on AI comes not from AI being too aggressive but not aggressive enough, missing what humans could find.

The phrase "AI factory" in the headline comes from a quote of someone who says that a culture that relies too much on technological factors is what ended up with dead Jews, not dead Arabs:

Two former senior commanders said they believe the intense focus on AI was a significant reason Israel was caught off-guard that day. The department overemphasized technological findings and made it difficult for analysts to raise warnings to senior commanders.

“This was an AI factory,” said one former military leader, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe national security topics. “The man was replaced by the machine.”

If that is true, it is clearly a huge mistake by the intelligence community. Obviously, October 7 was an unprecedented intelligence blunder and it will be investigated. But it isn't a mistake made by AI, but a mistake of imagination combined with ignoring internal warnings. If AI had been trained properly to look for evidence of an invasion by Hamas, October 7 could have been avoided. It was humans who didn't think that this was in the realm of possibility and humans who relied on non-AI technology, like cameras and fences, to defend Israel properly.

Again, AI is a tool. It is a tool that makes it possible for humans to make faster, better, more accurate decisions. From the very start, before the world even considered AI as anything but science fiction, Israel has been ensuring that people are the ones who make the ultimate life and death decisions. In the cases that humans themselves treat AI as authoritative and don't bother to do their own checking that is the fault of the person, not AI.

Despite the tone of the article, it says nothing that indicates that Israel is using this tool inappropriately. As with any other tool, over time people learn its limitations and then adjust for them, and the IDF updates its procedures in real time as it gets more information.

Finally, the article shows that the charge of "genocide" is a lie. If Israel is using AI and humans to target terrorists as accurately as possible and minimize collateral damage - which is the entire point of using it - then that proves that Israel is not targeting civilians, it is not firing indiscriminately, and it is adhering to international law.

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On January 18-19, the fourth Palestine International Forum for Media and Communications, "Tawasol 4", will be held in Istanbul.

Hundreds of journalists from over 75 countries and representing hundreds of organizations are expected to attend.

The purpose of the conference is to enhance coordination between the international media organizations to promote the "Palestinian narrative."

The organization behind it, the Palestine Media Forum, has a number of publications instructing journalists on how to cover Israel and the territories.

They will sound familiar to anyone who reads anti-Israel media..

Their policies include (my emphasis and my comments in italics)

Israel should be defined as an illegal entity in the region, and not a civil or democratic entity. It should be referred to as the "Israeli occupation," "occupation entity," "apartheid state," "racist state" or in similar terms.

Terminology serving the Palestinian cause should be used, while terminology promoting the occupation's propaganda and its agenda should be avoided. For instance:

"Security wall" should not be used in the place of "the racial separation wall" or "occupation expansion wall."

"Acts of sabotage" or "terrorist attacks" should not be used instead of "acts of resistance".

"Israeli Arabs" should not be used instead of "the Palestinians of the 1948 lands," or "the Palestinians in the lands occupied in 1948."

The status of the Palestinian issue should be reinforced as an Arab, Islamic, human, just and universal cause, and should not be reduced to a means of reason for political polarization and discord. [i.e., don't report on Hamas/Fatah disagreements and infighting.]

The rights of the Palestinian people to defend themselves and resist occupation should be emphasized. The difference between resistance and "terrorism" should be made distinct and clear, as "terrorism" is both offensive, and a grave misrepresentation. Attention should be paid to the issues that achieve the interests of the Palestinian people, such as their rights to Resist and Return.

The Israeli occupation does not have officially demarcated sovereign borders, nor a constitution that restrains its expansive ambitions. When it is necessary to refer to geography or de facto borders, it is advisable to use the term "1948 Occupied Palestine" or "the Palestinian territories occupied in 1948."

It's important to make clear that settlers are not civilians. They are heavily armed, serve in the occupation army, and reside in settlement outposts in purely Palestinian areas and among the Palestinian population.

It's advised not to host any official and non-official figures from the occupation community or Zionist figures, officials, or speakers possessing the occupying state's citizenship and who support the occupation. It's also advised that direct live broadcasting of press conferences held with the occupation's leaders be avoided. [Do not let your audience hear what Jews have to say directly!]

Pay special attention to the content, terminology and expressions published or disseminated by the occupation's media. It is important to address them and edit them in order to avoid the influence of propaganda and bias in favour of the occupation.

Coverage should be provided for global campaigns boycotting the occupation state, with clarifications on the nature of these campaigns. People should know how to participate in the boycott, and the results achieved by it. [The purpose of the media is indoctrination, not information.]

Benefit from prevailing global humanitarian values and pay attention to their discourse and expressions in a manner that considers the priorities of current media engagement throughout the world. Strive to integrate interest in the Palestinian cause by means of engaging with major events, such as international sports leagues and large art festivals, for example. [Hijack every possible cause to make it about Palestinians.]

You will notice that anti-Israel journalists follow these dictates slavishly, unless their media organizations do not allow calling Israel the "apartheid state." But even the New York Times will emphasize human interest stories of Palestinians above those of Israeli Jews; news organizations will treat Palestinian statements and Hamas statements with more deference than anything the government of Israel or IDF says, and Jews wo live in the disputed territories are not simply citizens or Jews but "settlers," a new category of person with fewer human rights than everyone else.

One is reminded of how BDS and Hamas work: they issue policies of how people may speak and act, and anyone violating these policies are ostracized, insulted and canceled.

The entire concept of journalism as a noble profession that approaches topics objectively and ethically is simply nonexistent in the Arab world which the Palestine Media Forum inhabits. To them, the media is a tool to promote propaganda; any truly objective media is the enemy. Yet Western journalists are reluctant to point out how their anti-Israel colleagues regularly flout their ethical obligations an journalists, which makes them complicit with the antisemites who run these conferences.

A real journalist would attend and publicize every single media organization that sends representatives, to expose which media outlets publicly rip up journalistic standards.

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12/29 Links: Israel to submit report to UN adviser about Hamas torture of hostages; Nasrallah underestimated Israel’s willingness to assassinate him

From Ian:

Herzog: UN ‘morally obliged’ to help free Hamas hostages

The United Nations is “morally obliged” to help secure the release of the 100 hostages being held by Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said on Sunday.

“Torture. Physical and psychological torture. Starvation. Sexual abuse. Beatings. Branding. Just some of the horrific words that jump off the pages of the Ministry of Health’s submission to the U.N. on the horrific ordeal endured by the hostages at the hands of Hamas terrorist murderers and rapists in Gaza,” said Herzog.

The Israeli Health Ministry will submit a report this week detailing the “torture and atrocities experienced by Israeli hostages since Oct. 7, [2023],” including “abhorrent instances of sexual violence,” to Alice Jill Edwards, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, the Israeli mission to the world body told JNS on Saturday.

The report will include “many testimonies of the hostages who returned from Hamas captivity” and “descriptions of the horrors Hamas terrorists inflicted on the hostages, including sexual abuse, starvation, neglect and humiliation,” the Israeli delegation said.

“These are the testimonies of those who have been released and rescued. But still, for 450 days 100 innocent men, women and children, babies and the elderly, have been held hostage in Gaza. With the winter upon us, their lives are in imminent danger,” said Herzog.

“The U.N. has the facts. It is morally obliged to do everything in its power to bring the hostages home now,” he added.

The report has two parts, the Israeli Health Ministry said.

“The first section details the neglect, abuse, torture and humiliation suffered by the hostages who were released or rescued from captivity in Gaza, as well as the impact of these experiences on their physical and physical and mental condition,” the ministry said.

“The second section of the report discusses rehabilitation models that have been deemed appropriate for the returnees, drawing on data collected from primary care nurses, physicians and mental health professionals who have been providing ongoing care, including through specialized clinics for returnees,” it added.

Uriel Buso, the Israeli health minister, said that the report “is a harrowing testimony to the brutal experiences suffered by the hostages in Hamas captivity—cruel violence, psychological abuse, physical torment and acts that defy comprehension.”

David Collier: BBC News bias – the tale of the three religious leaders

Anti-Israel bias at BBC News runs so deep that most people don’t see more than the tip of the iceberg. And while the Jews (the victims of BBC anti-Jewish racism) have grown tired of making complaints that are always ignored, the racist perpetrators (the elitist British supremacists and their Islamist ex-Al Jazeera buddies at BBC News) have grown so confident in their untouchability – they no longer bother to hide the bias. Anti-Jewish racists inside the BBC are now so embedded, they are trying to hound their Jewish colleagues out of their jobs.

December 23rd provided a perfect example of inexcusable anti-Jewish discrimination. I picked up on it because of a Facebook post by a Jewish Rabbi based in Jerusalem. He had been interviewed by BBC News and was annoyed at how he was treated. I went digging to see if he had cause. And this shocking exclusive is the result – the story of when the Jew, the Muslim and the Christian, were interviewed by BBC News.

A Jew, a Muslim and a Christian walk into a studio…
The starting point was this FB post by Rabbi Gideon Sylvester from Jerusalem. The post stated he had been invited to talk about celebrating Chanukah during wartime but instead had faced hostile political questions.

Rabbi Gideon Sylvester handled himself very well but given the invitation asked him to appear to talk about Chanukah – the tone and questioning of BBC’s Ben Brown seemed seriously out of place (more on this later).

In the opening Ben Brown said that they had already heard ‘from leaders of different faiths including a Christian Reverend, and a Muslim faith leader at the Al Aqsa Mosque.’ This meant that the Rabbi was the third of a set. And this presented a rare opportunity. If I tracked down the other two interviews – then I could compare the manner in which all three interviews were handled. Unlike a standalone article, a direct comparison could be made – and all things being equal – the three interviews should have been handled in a similar fashion.

It took some time because the interviews were spread out over more than three hours of BBC News reports (12:20-15:30 on the 23rd) – but what I found should be enough even for the most sceptical of audiences (uploaded in full to YouTube).

The BBC News bias hidden in plain sight

Before I break down the three interviews, there was bias hidden in plain sight that needs to be addressed. It is true that one leader from each of the three main Abrahamic religions were given a platform. But the interviews were really all about the conflict – not communities. So it wasn’t a Muslim, Christian and Jew being interviewed – it was two Palestinians, and an Israeli.

Palestinian Christian: Reverend Dr Munther Isaac
Palestinian Muslim: Dr. Imam Mustafa Abu Sway
Israeli Jew: Rabbi Gideon Sylvester

Both Munther Isaac and Mustafa Abu Sway are well known activists for the Palestinian cause. Which means the Palestinian voice was given twice as much airtime as the Israeli one. There are Christians who are far more balanced than Munther Isaac. And given there are about 4x as many Christians in Israel, as there are Christians left in the PA areas – it must have been a deliberate choice to run with a Palestinian. You may try to excuse the BBC, arguing that picking a Christian from Bethlehem is a no-brainer – but why is it never a Christian from Nazareth? Is Nazareth not part of the Jesus story?

Make no mistake about it – Israeli Christians in Nazareth have endured a terrible year – not that the BBC would ever tell you about it.

It isn’t difficult to understand. If far more Christians live in Israel – but every single time the BBC speak to a Christian they speak to one from the Palestinian Authority – it cannot be perpetually excused. Israeli Christians are being no platformed by the BBC. These things have become so normalised nobody even notices.

Blame Hamas and Hezbollah for Civilian Deaths, Not Israel

Whether it is using schools, hospitals and other public buildings that are supposed to be afforded immunity in conflict under international law, or simply using Palestinian civilians as human shields, Hamas terrorists have consistently jeopardised the well-being of those they purport to defend.

Another area where Hamas deliberately intensifies the suffering of Palestinian civilians as a means of pressuring Israel to end its military offensive is by denying Palestinian families access to much-needed aid supplies.

When the Gazans, for whom the aid is intended, try to approach it, there have been reports of Hamas operatives shooting them.

If the Biden administration and its allies in the media, the United Nations and the European Union really want to see a peaceful resolution of the conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon, then they should direct their criticism of the wilful mistreatment of civilians towards Hamas and Hezbollah, and their backers, not Israel.

Ending the malign operations of terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah is the best means of ending the conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon respectively, and providing ordinary Palestinians and Lebanese with a genuine opportunity to make a better life for themselves.

A map that proves, yet again, how antisemitic the UN is

Out of all the nations in the Middle East and North Africa, Israel is the only one that has never been elected to a rotation on the UN Security Council.

Must be because of human rights or something.

(h/t Irene)

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)

Here are the most popular EoZ posts for 2024:

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

9. Jews are being bullied out of professions. The days of routine antisemitism are returning to the US.

8. Biden buys a book by contemptible lying Palestinian BDS propagandist Rashid Khalidi, who falsely asserts that Jews and Arabs had no conflict before Zionism

7. Hamas is executing hostages. "Human rights" groups are silent. Because, to them, Jews are less than human.

6. Evidence mounts that the @NYTimes published faked X-ray pictures of bullets in Gaza children (update)

5. It took Hamas 22 months to admit Israel was right in how many terrorists were killed in Operation Cast Lead

4. Lebanon shows us how the world betrayed Gaza by insisting no Palestinians could flee to safety

3. Based on its track record, the US has no business chastising Israel about accidentally killing civilians

2. The evidence to the "massacre" that the @NYTimes believes

1. 88% of the Arab world supports the 10/7 massacre as "a legitimate operation"

The top post by a columnist was:

Dr. Elana Heideman: Our fight against Jew-hatred begins with respect for the Jew (Judean Rose)

The top guest post was:

Calling All Jewish Democrats: It's An Emergency (Guest post)

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Over the weekend, we saw more proof that the only time the world cares about Palestinian civilians are killed is when there is a way to blame Israel.

The New Arab reports:

A Palestinian journalist was shot and killed outside her family's home in the northern West Bank town of Jenin late Saturday, where Palestinian Authority (PA) security officers, backed by the Israeli military, continued their crackdown on Palestinian resistance fighters.

Shatha al-Sabbagh, 22, was killed by a sniper with the Palestinian security forces while she was with her mother and two small children, her family told The New Arab's Arabic language edition Al-Araby Al-Jadeed.

She added that there were no fighters in the area at the time.

Sabbagh's brother-in-law, Suhaib al-Mura'i, said a sniper stationed inside a nearby house - which was seized by the PA forces and turned into a military post - had fired at her as she left his home with her two small children, her mother and sister.

The Palestinian Authority has been attacking terrorists in Jenin over the past several weeks. They vehemently deny that they had anything to do with her death, instead condemning "outlaws" - meaning Jenin's armed groups - for killing her:

The official spokesman for the Palestinian security forces, Brigadier General Anwar Rajab, condemned in the strongest terms the heinous crime committed by outlaws on Saturday evening in Mahyoub Street inside Jenin camp, which resulted in the killing of journalist Shaza Sabbagh after she was shot in the head, and inflicting severe material damage to a house that was burned and randomly shot at .

Rajab said in a statement issued tonight that according to initial investigations and eyewitness testimonies, security forces were not present at the scene .

Nearly nobody in the Arabic media is believing the PA's claims. However, al-Sabbagh's family is not exactly impartial.

Her brother, Moatasem al-Sabbagh, was a Hamas Qassam Brigades terrorist who was killed by Israel last year as he was holed up in a house protecting Abdul Fattah Kharousha, the Hamas terrorist who murdered brothers Hallel and Yagel Yaniv in Huwara. The mother of the siblings expressed joy at the death of her son Moatasem, saying how proud she was of him and how he is going to Paradise while the Jews go to hell.

This is a big story in Palestinian media, with each news site following their own politics in how they report it and who they blame for her death.

But the international media has shown little interest in the story of an attractive, young journalist and student being executed with a gunshot to her head.

As always, it isn't that they care about innocent Palestinians being killed. They clearly don't. The world's media are only looking for reasons to condemn Israel.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The EoZ Chanukah Music Video: Al Hanissim

Music generated by AI but I had to massage it a bit.

Lyrics are a shortened version of this prayer addition during the holiday: It is thanking God for the miracles He does for us, and the video I made for the song is in appreciation for the miraculous events during the current conflicts.

I hope you enjoy it!

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

12/28 Links: Palestinianism is violence against Jewish indigenousness in Israel; Why Israel’s Self-Defense Infuriates Europe; Why Benjamin Netanyahu Must Go to Poland

From Ian:

Palestinianism is violence against Jewish indigenousness in Israel

Over the past 15 years, and especially since the atrocities of October 7, annihilationist Palestinianism has become the rave in some “progressive” circles, especially among hard-left rioters on Western campuses.

This means dismissal of Jewish/Zionist rootedness in the Land of Israel and adoption of the Palestinian campaign to delegitimize and destroy Israel.

“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

Palestinianism is an ideology and an identity invented by the KGB and advanced by Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas ever since he rejected John Kerry’s 2014 peace initiative. It makes conflict in the Land of Israel a zero-sum game.

It fabricates Palestinian inhabitance of Israel going back to the Canaanites and Philistines of the Bible; it inverts Arab rejection and invasion of young Israel in 1948 and the expulsion of Jews from Arab lands by claiming a Palestinian “Nakba”; it turns the Temple Mount into al-Haram al-Sharif (The Noble Sanctuary), denying any Jewish history in Jerusalem and the Land of Israel; and it converts genocidal assaults on the People of Israel, like Hamas’s Simchat Torah attack, into heroic acts that must be celebrated by all freedom seekers.

Palestinianism leads to antisemitism
In short, Palestinianism is violence against Israeli/Jewish indigenousness in Israel. It savages the core identity of Jews and Israelis. It is offensive to deny the most basic building blocks of Jewish connection to Jerusalem and Israel.

It seeks to strip justice and authenticity from Israel’s very existence and to upend its alliance with the human-rights-supporting, democratic world.

And as we have seen over the past year, it directly leads to violent antisemitic battering of Jews and Jewish institutions worldwide.

We got a whiff of what was coming back in 2018 when UNESCO passed – davka on Hanukkah – a series of nonsensical resolutions (proposed by Abbas), declaring Jerusalem an exclusively Muslim heritage city and criminalizing Israel’s custodianship of the holy city.

Most European nations, those great paragons of “peace” and “love” for Jews, went along with that affront, either voting for or abstaining on the denialist resolutions. Then, they doubled down on such perfidy by adopting a similar resolution in the UN General Assembly in 2021.

Then-US ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, responded to the UN disgrace by tweeting that “More than 2,000 years ago, Jewish patriots (Maccabees) captured Jerusalem, purified the Holy Temple, and rededicated it as a house of Jewish worship. The UN can’t vote away the facts: Jerusalem is the ancient and modern capital of Israel. Happy Hanukkah from this blessed city!”

Alas, the gangs rampaging today against Jews and Israelis in the streets of Berlin, London, Montreal, and Sydney have swallowed every bit of Abbas’s bile about exclusive Arab rights to Israel.

They ignore the fact that Abbas’s gangs have destroyed Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus, sought to destroy Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem, have run Christians out of Bethlehem, and have wantonly dug up and destroyed thousands of years of Jewish archeological treasures on the Temple Mount.

Why Israel’s Self-Defense Infuriates Europe

Drawing on the ideas of the French philosopher Pierre Manent, Richard Reinsch II examines why the Jewish state’s battle for survival has provoked such extreme, even unhinged, opposition in the West—from the polite, moralistic condemnations of heads of state to the fury of street protesters.

The proud nation-state [of] Israel represents the opposite lesson of what European humanitarians have drawn from the history of Jews in modern times. Israel has been built by struggle, sacrifice, and pride. The near destruction of the Jewish people by Hitler’s Germany is frequently invoked as the founding impetus for the unifying goals of the European Union. The villain in the EU’s political narrative of unity is the nation, the so-called springboard of naked aggression and warmongering on behalf of the superiority of a people. Brussels promises to bring this to an end with the promise of endless union and unification of peoples.

Israel’s defense of its collective existence could portend not only the defeat of its enemies but also remind a deeply confused and morally troubled West that it cannot hide behind humanity and escape from itself. In a recent lecture in Paris, Manent poignantly offered that a Europe that turns its back on Israel forfeits its soul.

Why Benjamin Netanyahu Must Go to Poland

Every enemy of the West has tried to bring Israel down, but Israel has done what others were too afraid to do. Hamas is crippled. Hezbollah is reeling. Assad’s Syria has collapsed into irrelevance. And the Houthis, along with their Iranian backers, are next. Israel is fighting the battles the West refuses to fight, defending not just itself but the values and security of the free world.

The United States has long opposed the ICC’s outrageous overreach and its obsession with targeting Israel. That opposition must not waver now. This is not just an attack on Israel — it is an attack on the moral foundations of America’s closest ally and, by extension, on America itself.

To allow Benjamin Netanyahu — the elected leader of the Jewish state — to be barred from a Holocaust memorial is to embolden those who seek to delegitimize Israel and the West. Now is the time to act. Diplomatic channels must be mobilized immediately to ensure Netanyahu can attend this memorial unimpeded and unmolested. To do anything less is to send a message that antisemitic agendas dressed up as international law can go unchallenged — and that message must never be sent.

If Netanyahu does not attend, history will record a disgraceful spectacle — the leader of the Jewish state, the only Jewish country in the world, absent from Auschwitz while nations that turned their backs on the Jews, or worse, actively aided their murder, take center stage with sanctimonious speeches and hollow gestures. The optics are not just nauseating — they are a betrayal of memory and truth.

Prime Minister Netanyahu, ignore the threats. Defy the antisemitism masquerading as justice. Show the world that Jews will never again be humiliated — not by violence, not by persecution, and certainly not by the hypocrisy of international institutions hiding behind the veil of legality. Let your presence at Auschwitz declare that the Jewish people have endured, they have survived, they have rebuilt — and they will never be erased.

Light the menorah. Be Judah Maccabee — bold, unyielding, and fearless. The Jewish people — and history — demand nothing less.

Chanukah music video night 4: Di Chanukah Licht - Motty Ilowitz & Shir V’shevach plus Hila Ben David - "Arise, wake up!"

This year the Yiddish speaking community has created a number of videos.

And for something completely different than that....

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

12/27 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: The real message of Chanukah; Europe’s blindspot over antisemitism; Mila Kunis reflects on her USSR-repressed Judaism

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The real message of Chanukah

Of course, divisions weaken a community and undermine its defences. But the real issue is the reason for such division. Under both Greek and Roman rule, it was that too many Jews had forgotten what they were.

And just like today, under both the Greeks and the Romans it was universalism that weakened the Jews. Scorned and vilified for their particularism and drawn into the embrace of a less demanding culture, they became vulnerable as a result to threats of both assimilation and external attack.

Most of today’s diaspora Jews who live in western societies that disdain or even hate them choose not to fight back. Instead, they keep their heads below the parapet, pretend that the threats aren’t as bad as they actually are or choose to suck up to the governing classes who merely flick them aside. Far worse, some of these Jews actively support the ideologies that have the Jewish people in their sights.

This way lies assimilation and thus destruction. To avoid that fate, Jews have to fight for who they are and what they stand for.

Liberals will respond that, since the opposing side thinks precisely the same, who is to say who is correct? From that they conclude that fighting to defeat the other side is always wrong.

This is the trap of moral relativism, which is based on the belief that objective truth doesn’t exist and that everything is instead a matter of subjective opinion.

But that’s a lethal error. There is indeed such a thing as objective reality.

There really are abuses of power. There really is a difference between aggressors and victims. Iran really does pose a demonstrable threat to Jewish life and the survival of Israel. Assimilation really has caused huge swathes of Jews to disappear as Jews.

Not all division between Jews is “baseless hatred”. Sometimes, if one side wins over the other the Jewish people will be demonstrably harmed. Such situations require not consensus but victory for the side that would best prevent such harm.

Of course, agreement is desirable. But if Jews were to agree to a course of action that would result in their wipeout, maybe that kind of agreement wouldn’t be such a good idea.

Conflict is undesirable, division is dangerous, and war is hell. But the alternative may be far worse.

Aviva Klompas: Jew hatred is not just a Jewish problem. It's a Canadian problem

So far, it has been divine intervention — or perhaps the random mercy of circumstance — that has prevented these attacks from ending in the kind of horrific tragedy witnessed by Jewish communities elsewhere, such as the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018 where eleven were killed and six were wounded, some of whom were Holocaust survivors. This fragile luck, however, is not a substitute for government policy or action. Each new act of hate brings us closer to an unthinkable outcome, one that words of outrage and condolence will never undo.

Instead, antisemitism has been allowed to fester and grow. Canada is failing to learn from history. In 1930s Europe, antisemitism didn’t stop at destroying Jewish lives; it undermined the very fabric of society, paving the way for totalitarian regimes and eroding the democratic values we now hold dear until Canada and the other Allied powers went to war to destroy that threat.

Hate is a pollution that doesn’t remain confined to one group or one place. It spreads, infecting everything it touches.

That poison is already visible on Canada’s streets. Masked mobs draped in keffiyehs march through major cities, burning Canadian flags, vandalizing monuments, and intimidating anyone who dares to disagree with their ideology. What begins as targeted hatred against Jews inevitably grows into a broader assault on the freedoms and values that define our society.

These attacks do not occur in a vacuum. Each unpunished act of violence and each ignored plea for protection sends a dangerous message: that hatred and bigotry are permissible.

This global surge in Jew-hatred is inexcusable everywhere, but its prevalence in Canada is particularly shameful. Canada was the first nation to adopt multiculturalism as an official policy in 1971, later enshrining it in law through the Canadian Multiculturalism Act of 1988. Canadians pride themselves on being champions of diversity and tolerance, yet today, what they are tolerating is violence and bigotry.

For over two decades, Kehillat Shaarei Torah was a second home for me. To see it attacked again and again is heartbreaking and terrifying. Jewish Canadians are resilient, but resilience alone is not enough. We cannot fight this battle alone.

Canada’s leaders have failed Jewish Canadians. They have failed to protect synagogues and schools from attack. They have failed to hold perpetrators accountable. They have failed to take meaningful steps to deter further violence.

Most damningly, they have failed to recognize that Jew-hatred is not just a Jewish problem — it is a Canadian problem.

If our leaders do not act — if they do not prioritize the safety and dignity of Jewish Canadians — it won’t just be the Jewish community that suffers. Canada, as a whole, will pay the price. Hate, when left unchecked, corrodes the foundation of any society.

History is watching. The Jewish community is waiting. The time for action is now.

Centenarian Jewish D-Day veteran ‘doubts’ sacrifice was worth it

Mervyn Kersh, a Jewish Londoner and D-Day veteran who turned 100 on Dec. 20, has lived through some of modern history’s most tumultuous chapters.

But the events of recent months have stirred fears in Kersh unlike anything that he has felt since he stormed the Normandy beaches 80 years ago, Kersh told JNS in several interviews in the last few months.

Fears for the destruction of Israel—a place this British patriot also calls home—and about antisemitism on display in his native England.

Kersh, who fought with the British Army during the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France, now fears both for the safety of the Jewish state and for that of Jews in the United Kingdom. (He celebrated his 100th birthday with family in London.)

Looking back on his role in helping liberate Western Europe, Kersh has mixed feelings, not about the bravery of his comrades or the necessity of the war but about whether the sacrifices he and others made still hold the value they intended.

“I thought what we did was worth it,” he told JNS. “I have my doubts now.”

The Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which Kersh calls his “first home” even though he has never lived there, and the resurgence of Jew-hatred in Europe and beyond have left him questioning whether his generation’s hard-fought victories have been eroded.

“Our politicians are repeating the same cowardly lack of military action as those politicians did in the mid-1930s,” Kersh said about the British position on Israel’s fight against its enemies. “All words but no action while the enemy was still relatively weak.”