Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, January 13, 2025

01/13 Links Pt2: CBS 60 Minutes Platforms Anti-Israel Voices in Skewed Segment; Uproar as Antisemitic Irish president announced as guest of honour at Holocaust event

From Ian:

Meir Soloveichik: Don Pacifico Trump

Considering the inadequate U.S. efforts to free its citizens being held by Hamas, Meir Soloveichik looks to the example of the great Victorian statesman Lord Palmerston:

In 1848, a series of anti-Semitic riots took place in Athens, and a Sephardi Jew by the name of Don Pacifico issued claims for damages to his property. Pacifico had never set foot in England, but he had been born in Gibraltar, and therefore submitted his case as a British subject to the government of Lord John Russell, in which Palmerston was serving as foreign secretary. Palmerston seized upon these claims, as he had already been angered by other purported grievances by the Greek government, and he ordered the British fleet to blockade Greek ports until Pacifico’s grievances were addressed.

This response, Soloveichik writes, reflected a general view of Britain’s role in the world that can “serve as a worthy polestar for the United States.”

The Don Pacifico affair is not the only aspect of Palmerston’s career worth rediscovering; his own approach to freedom and foreign policy has much to teach us today. Palmerston did not believe that free societies could be created overnight, but he did believe that British power ought to be used in celebration, and at times in the defense, of societies that sought to be free.

Biased Science: The Lancet Claims Gaza Casualty Count Underreported

The Lancet has a history of publishing agenda-driven and politicized anti-Israel content that goes way beyond the field of healthcare and medicine.

In July 2024, the medical journal was called out for outrageously claiming that as many as 186,000 Gazans had been killed in the current war. Many media rushed to print dramatic headlines under the imprimatur of The Lancet — a significant error given that the casualty claims came not from a peer-reviewed study but from a letter sent to The Lancet, whose writers included at least one with a history of defending Palestinian terrorism.

Now, The Lancet has published a study claiming the Gaza death toll may have been underreported by 41%. While this time claims concerning Gaza casualty figures appear in The Lancet in the form of an actual scientific study, it still has numerous similarities with the previous claims, namely a reliance on faulty Hamas sources and a disturbing lack of impartiality on the part of its authors, including one who justified Hamas’ October 7 massacre.

The Media Coverage
Throughout the conflict, the media have unquestioningly republished Gazan casualty figures whose ultimate source is Hamas. This, despite adding caveats whenever Israel has offered its own estimates, particularly concerning the number of dead terrorists.

So it’s hardly surprising that numerous outlets saw fit to cover The Lancet’s study.

Disappointingly, given its previous in-depth coverage of the Henry Jackson Society’s study on inflated Gaza casualty figures, The Telegraph‘s report on The Lancet study failed even to mention that the Palestinian Ministry of Health’s data was courtesy of the Hamas-run ministry in Gaza.

The BBC and The Guardian, meanwhile, took the opportunity to blame Israel for not letting foreign journalists into Gaza as the reason why casualty figures could not be independently verified by the media.

These outlets and Reuters did at least include some Israeli reaction (albeit relatively generic), as well as the fact that the study’s figures don’t differentiate between combatants and civilians.

Outlets like CNN and Politico, however, simply parroted the study without any caveat.

But the fact remains that all these outlets should have been more critical of The Lancet’s study, which was thoroughly debunked on social media. Because, unlike those who did the debunking, journalists still have no issue with relying on sources like the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in their everyday reporting, and nor did they do any due diligence on the study’s authors.

Thanks to The Lancet’s professional (albeit undeserved) reputation and the media’s penchant for reporting a source that it treats as beyond criticism, this latest anti-Israel claim has the potential to become part of a narrative that has already accepted disputed casualty figures as fact.

01/13 Links Pt1: Hostage deal may be ‘days or hours’ away, Israeli official says; America should declare UNRWA a terrorist organization; How many more attacks before Australia defends its Jewish community?

From Ian:

Hostage deal may be ‘days or hours’ away, Israeli official says

Negotiations for Hamas to release Israeli hostages in Gaza in exchange for a cease-fire and Palestinian terrorists freed from prison have reached advanced stages, but the deal is not yet finalized, two Israeli diplomatic sources confirmed on Monday.

“There are advances in all components of the agreement,” said one source. “We are certainly in advanced stages … Reaching an agreement could be a matter of hours or of days.”

While the agreement was still not final, the sources said Hamas was showing greater seriousness than it had in the past year, during which “Hamas was not part of the negotiations” that were taking place between the Israeli team, the U.S. and Qatari mediators.

“We are now in a different reality, very similar to November 2023 [when the previous hostage release took place], when there were effective negotiations towards a deal about the details of implementation. This is a very significant change,” a source said.

Both Israeli sources attributed the change in Hamas’ approach to a combination of Israeli military achievements and President-elect Donald Trump’s threats that “all hell will break out” if the hostages are not released by the time of his inauguration next week.

“Why are there cracks now in Hamas’ [resolve]?” one source said. “There was the ground incursion in Lebanon, the assassination of [Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah, the assassination of [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar, crazy [IDF] military pressure on the north of Gaza. This isolated Hamas. We struck the Shiite Iranian axis and Hamas is alone. They don’t have Hezbollah or Iran, they only have the Houthis.”

In addition, the source said, Trump began to involve himself in the negotiations, making it clear that he is serious about pushing for the hostages to be released.

Israel, Hamas close to deal with 33 hostages released in phase one

Israel and Hamas are close to a Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal that will likely be announced by the end of the day – though it is not fully guaranteed and is subject to change – in which 33 hostages will be released during the first phase, with a staged withdrawal of military forces from Gaza, notwithstanding the maintenance of an undefined security perimeter, diplomatic sources said on Monday.

Israel’s senior delegation in Doha, which includes Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) head Ronen Bar and Mossad Director David Barnea, will remain in Qatar “for the time being,” potentially until a deal is signed.

A Hamas delegation said Gaza ceasefire talks were progressing well, with the group dealing with developments in a positive manner, it said in a statement following a meeting with Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani in Doha.

Once 15 days of the ceasefire have passed, on the 16th, negotiations would start regarding the next stages of the deal – with the goal of releasing all the hostages – and IDF withdrawals. The diplomatic sources did not provide a definite time frame, but some expect the first phase will last 42 days.

The source added that, as of Monday, none of the 33 hostages expected to be released in the first phase of a possible deal are confirmed dead. Sources said they believe that most – though not all – of the 33 hostages are alive and that the body of Youssef Ziyadne, whose body was recovered by the IDF last week, was initially on the list.

There is no certainty as to when the deal will be signed. Sources reiterated that the IDF would not fully withdraw from Gaza until every single hostage was released.

Sources said that a cabinet vote and an expected High Court of Justice ruling on petitions to block the deal would also be necessary for the deal to come through.

Should this happen, the first hostages could be released fairly quickly, the source estimated.

The security perimeter is something Israel would retain independent of the withdrawal of troops. It appeared that some soldiers would remain there during Phase 1 but not at some later phases when forces would only be at a security perimeter, which sources emphasized would include the full length of the enclave, not just northern Gaza.

All indications were that the IDF would, broadly speaking, withdraw from the Netzarim corridor, which splits northern and southern Gaza. There would be unspecified “security arrangements” to review those who would be allowed to return to the north.

Israel will not release Nukhba terrorists in possible Gaza hostage deal

Israel will not release any Hamas terrorist belonging to the Nukhba forces, which took part in the October 7 massacre of southern Israel, as part of a possible hostage deal, diplomatic sources told The Jerusalem Post on Monday evening.

The list of terrorists expected to be released from Israeli prisons as part of the deal's first phase does include some sentenced to life, the source added. However, none are part of the Nukhba forces that carried out the October 7 attacks.

In addition, none of the 33 hostages expected to be released in the first phase of a possible deal are confirmed to be dead as of Monday, as per the diplomatic source.

Israel is expected to retain "territorial assets," which could include the Philadelphi Corridor and an undefined security perimeter, as reported by the Post's Yonah Jeremy Bob.

This is the Southern Sydney Synagogue, a modern Orthodox congregation in Allawah, Australia.

You can see that unlike synagogues in western Europe and major North American cities, there is no fence, no planters to block suicide car bombs. It looks like it is in a nice, safe neighborhood.

The synagogue was vandalized with graffiti on Friday morning. Here I stitched two photos together so you can see the entire message given by the vandals to the Jewish community.

Hitler on top

Allah hu Akbar

Free Palestine

[SWASTIKA]

In one scene you can see a pro-Nazi, pro-Islamic terror, pro-Palestinian and antisemitic message.

They are one and the same.

A "progressive" Jewish anti-Zionist group condemned the Nazi graffiti, but didn't mention the "Free Palestine" part, which they heartily agree with. Nor did they mention the Allah Hu Akbar, not wanting to upset their Islamist political allies. They keep pretending that there is a difference between the antisemitism that would write "Free Palestine" on a synagogue and one who would draw a swastika. They are a joke.

Amazingly, this is not the first major wave of attacks on synagogues in Australia, including this one. In 1991, five synagogues in Sydney were firebombed, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage and the closure of one of the synagogues (which merged with this one.)

The government pledged to increase security and to take these incidents seriously.

The arsonists were never found.

But whether they were Left, Right or Center, they were on the same side as today's anti-Zionist, antisemitic, pro-terror crowd.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Al Jazeera today has an article about how evil Chabad is and how it performs its "Talmudic rituals" in Gaza, the West Bank and now Syria. It starts off:

Just three days after the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria was announced, a number of rabbis from a Jewish movement calling itself Chabad performed prayers and Talmudic rituals in the village of Hadar, located in the buffer zone in the Golan Heights between Israel and Syria.

The official website of this extremist Jewish movement confirmed, on December 12, that a group of its followers performed their prayers with their children in the Syrian territories that were recently controlled by Israeli forces.

This is then a springboard into attacking Chabad and all religious Jews as expansionist fanatics.

This is not the first time Al Jazeera showed its disgust at Jews supposedly "performing Talmudic rituals" in Syria. It published the same story in December when the videos started circulating.

However, the videos were jokes. The Jerusalem Post headline was "Faux 'Chabad house in Syria' causes uproar on social media" and reported that it was a lighthearted video that Al Jazeera and other outlets condemned. Times of Israel confirmed that no Chabad members were given permission to enter Syria (let alone bring children!) and the video was taken in Israel. even the video itself doesn't seem to say that the were physically in Syria, only at the (Israeli) foot of Mount Hermon, to emphasize the Chabad teaching that its seminal work the Tanya must be read everywhere on Earth.

After a month, during which Al Jazeera reads all Israeli media, there is no way that the Qatari media outlet doesn't know that the story was false.

The story itself is unimportant. But it proves, yet again, that no one should trust the reporting at Al Jazeera.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party issued a strong anti-Hamas statement on Saturday. It is worth reading in full and analyzing.

The Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah) said that Hamas, which mortgaged itself to Iran and other regional axes, and provided free pretexts for the occupation to carry out the largest war of extermination against our people in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023, which led to the destruction of the Gaza Strip, and the martyrdom, loss, injury and capture of more than two hundred thousand children, women and men, whom Hamas took refuge in [hid under] instead of protecting them and their homes, and also caused the catastrophic conditions in the Gaza Strip to spread, from hunger and poverty and deprivation of the most basic human needs, and the collapse of the basic services system of education, health and others, has no right to reproduce its adventures in the West Bank.

Fatah added that Hamas' insistence on the rhetoric of outbidding and treason based on slander and fabrications that are not related to reality and facts, in open alignment with the occupation's plans, through attempts to fuel security chaos and anarchy in the West Bank, through explicit support for groups of outlaws, confirms that Hamas is still pursuing its policy that has brought nothing but disasters, death and destruction to the Palestinian people .
Fatah stressed that the contradictions and fabrications contained in Hamas’s latest statement, through which it sought to divert attention from its practices in Gaza since its bloody coup in 2007, until today, whether field executions, kidnappings, or the policy of breaking bones and intimidation in the name of religion and resistance, all the way to stealing humanitarian aid, legitimizing organized crime, etc., will not fool our people with their awareness, and these misleading speeches meet in their goals with the goals of the occupation to implement its plans against our people .

Fatah explained that the Palestinian security services, as the natural and historical extension of the contemporary Palestinian revolution, offer the best of their sons as martyrs to preserve the Palestinian national project from tampering or confiscation in favor of regional parties that only want to achieve their interests and use the just Palestinian cause for their own ends, and in particular; the expansionist Iranian aims aimed at turning Palestine into a zone of influence for them even at the expense of the blood of the last Palestinian child, adding that our people, who have offered thousands of martyrs in defense of their independent national decision, will not allow any attempts to usurp this decision from any party and no matter the price.

This statement tells us a lot about the Palestinian leadership.

First of all, notice that there is no condemnation of Hamas' attacks on Jews. On the contrary, those are considered sacred by Fatah.

The problem they have with Hamas is that they are losing the war.

For 15 months, Fatah didn't say anything as Hamas stole aid, used human shields and hid under and within Gaza schools, mosques and hospitals. Only now is Fatah emboldened enough to criticize Hamas for endangering the lives of it citizens. The only thing that has changed is their perception of Hamas, from brave freedom fighters to cowards who use civilians as cannon fodder and endanger thousands of lives for their own survival.

The reason is that the Palestinian public, even in the West Bank, is starting to look at Hamas as the loser in this war.

Not only that, but its patron Iran is also seen as being weak, between Israel's decimating Hezbollah, the fall of Syria and Hamas' own disintegration. as a unified fighting force.

Like most Arabs, Fatah does not want the shame of being associated with losers.

Of course, Fatah's own antisemitism is clear: their biggest insult for Hamas is that they are helping Israel. For decades, the biggest insult Arabs could hurl at other Arabs was to call them Zionists, and Fatah never changed.

The other impetus for this change in public rhetoric is that Donald Trump is entering office, and Fatah doesn't want to be on his bad side any more than they have to. Also, if a hostage deal and ceasefire really does happen, Fatah wants to be in an advantageous position.

Only when Hamas is seen as weak, and the Palestinian Authority sees an opportunity to take over Gaza, has Fatah chosen to publicly criticize Hamas. The PA cannot even be considered a serious player in the "day after" of governing Gaza if it cannot control its own areas. It has let Jenin become a terror hub for years, with its own police and security forces forced out. The PA preferred to pretend there was no problem and allow Israel to kill the terrorists than to act as the leader of the West Bank. Only now that it sees Hamas weakening is it asserting authority.

But notice the cowardice here: This isn't a statement from the PA, but from Fatah. The official PA position is not that Hamas is endangering Gazans. By making this statement in the name of only Fatah, if things go south they can claim this is not the official Palestinian position.

And there is more cowardice, in that the Palestinian Authority news agency only published this in Arabic, not English. They are afraid of the backlash from Hamas groupies worldwide calling them Zionists for being harsh on the "resistance."

Even with this obvious hypocrisy and opportunism, seeing Fatah publicly call out Hamas for being responsible for the deaths in Gaza - even indirectly - puts these cowardly, lying antisemites on a higher moral plane than any Western "progressive" organization. One cannot even imagine Code Pink or JVP or SJP or The Intercept or The Nation publicly criticizing Hamas for its endangering Gazans - to them, anything that takes away from portraying Israel as the ultimate evil must be avoided. Fatah still considers Israel the greater evil, but they at least acknowledge that Hamas has responsibility for the people it governed, a pretty basic fact that the "progressives" cannot bring themselves to say because of their own antisemitism.

The bottom line is that even the Arab world sees Israel is winning and they are adjusting their attitudes to reflect that reality. We've seen that the Lebanese are now willing to criticize Hezbollah publicly, something which was rare as recently as September, and Palestinians are starting to do the same to Hamas.

If it wasn't for Israel winning, none of this would be happening. Pretending to be upset at Hamas for its actions in the eleventh hour of the war is not a sudden assertion of morality; it is a reaction to wanting to avoid the stigma of appearing to support the losers in a war.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Palestinian propagandists know that novels, movies and videogames are great mediums for them to brainwash unsuspecting people enjoying the entertainment. Since the story itself is obviously fiction, players and viewers believe that the are based on real events, and the background descriptions of history are assumed to be accurate.

In this way, lies about history can be presented without the worries that newspapers and academics have about being exposed as liars. After all, it is a work of fiction!

The latest example of blood libels against Jews being presented as entertainment is an upcoming videogame called "Dreams on a Pillow."

According to the crowdsourcing site that is funding it, it is based on a true story - but it isn't. It is based on a folktale:

Like all oral folktales, the story of Omm has numerous variations, however, all stories share the same fundamental elements: a young mother living in Palestine had her husband murdered by the Zionist invaders, and she ran to her home to retrieve her newborn child from the bed. She fled out of town in a panic, only to realize later that she had carried along a pillow instead of her child. The ending of the folktale differs wildly based on the audience - in most stories, the mother loses her mind - in others, she is murdered, or successfully avoids the roaming Zionist gangs and military groups to make it out of her homeland - not to return in her lifetime.

Each detail is more lurid and more antisemitic than the last.

Throughout the game, Omm, Pillow, and the player will experience often untold stories of Palestinian history. As Omm travels from the massacre of al-Tantura to the concentration camps of Atlit, she will later encounter the campaign of terror that led to the fall of Haifa, the bioweapon poisoning of Acre, and the Zionist attacks on refugees towards the Lebanese border.

The game developer, Rasheed Abueideh, tells a personal story that appears to be as filled with propaganda lies his game.

Rasheed struggled to carve out a sustainable career in the games industry, facing a decade of rejection and avoidance from funding partners and publishers who deemed supporting a Palestinian “too risky” or “controversial”. While he continued to tinker on small games projects, he opened a nut roastery near his hometown of Nablus to support his family.
Today, the building sits empty as Israeli colonists terrorize the roads of the West Bank, making travel to his roastery unsafe. With Israel’s assaults on Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon intensifying daily, Rasheed -unsure of his continued safety in the face of relentless colonist attacks on the West Bank- has set his sights on continuing to following the path he was forced to abandon a decade ago: using games to not just tell the story of the 1948 Nakba, but to let people experience it through a game. To share the catastrophe that has haunted generations of Palestinians with displacement, apartheid, occupation, and violence.

It appears that Rasheed is very good at spinning Palestinian folktales.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

01/12 Links: Today’s Palestinian advocates should be ashamed of themselves; British Islamic org. calls for boycott of Holocaust Memorial Day

From Ian:

Alan M. Dershowitz: Who Really Denied Statehood to the Palestinian People?

One of the most pervasive myths of the Palestinian protest movement is that Israel has denied statehood to the Palestinian people.

To the contrary, Israel agreed to Palestinian statehood in 1937-1938, 1947-1948, 1967, 2000-2001, and 2007.

In each case, it was the Palestinian leadership that refused to agree to the two-state solution that would have created a Palestinian state alongside a state for Jewish inhabitants.

Other stateless groups such as the Tibetans, the Kurds, and the Chechens have never even been offered statehood, let alone repeatedly turned it down.

It was the Palestinians themselves, through their anti-Jewish leadership, that has made the Palestinian people stateless.

The current anti-Israel protesters in the West are not calling for a Palestinian state living in peace alongside Israel. They just want to end Israel's existence.

It is not going to happen. Until the Palestinians recognize this reality, they will be denying themselves any possibility of statehood.

Today’s Palestinian advocates should be ashamed of themselves

Palestinians and their advocates should be embarrassed by their conduct, not rationalizing it to the world. The Palestinian Authority (PA) is one of the most corrupt governing bodies in the world. It is ripe with graft and nepotism. Unlike the freedom-loving countries that support it, the PA and its president, Mahmoud Abbas, haven’t held an election in 20 years.

The PA hasn’t abandoned its terrorist past. Its “pay-to-slay” program costs $400 million a year and incentivizes its people to commit terrorist acts. The program is so dastardly, the United State Congress passed the Taylor Force Act that made it illegal for the US to provide any aid to the PA as long as it kept up its pay to slay program.

Israel’s Defense and Security Forum wrote, “Fatah’s own terror group, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, has also claimed that its fighters participated in October 7. Its spokesperson has released videos of terrorists abducting and taunting victims from Israel, wearing clearly recognizable yellow scarves associated with Fatah (as opposed to the green color associated with Hamas). The video says: First we “liberate the Gaza Strip,” then the rest of “Palestine” and “tomorrow [we will be] at the gates of Jerusalem.”

Instead of disavowing the attacks and demanding that Palestinians holding Israeli hostages release them, Hamas members and other Palestinian non-combatants have used Israeli hostages as pawns and bargaining chips to shame Israel and try to gain the release of other Palestinian terrorists from Israeli prisons.

Kidnapping is one of the most despicable acts, together with rape and murder. All three acts have been utilized, justified, and praised by Palestinians as policy since October 7. What kind of a people justify raping young women and holding a baby hostage?

Palestinian society has a problem today. Unlike Arab Israelis, their people are corrupt, anti-freedom, and antisemitic. They never call for peace alongside the Jewish State of Israel. They call for an independent Palestinian state to replace it. They maintain that they are justified in all acts of resistance against Israel’s Jews, including, and especially, violence and terrorism.

Palestinian leadership today falls into one of two camps, Hamas, a terror organization conducting regular terrorism, or the PA, a corrupt repressive institution that promotes terrorism. Anyone siding with Palestinians today, instead of calling for Palestinian reform, joins a culture of corruption, antisemitism, and violence and should be ashamed of themselves.

Anyone promoting a two-state solution that omits the transformative changes which must take place in Palestinian society should be ashamed.

It is time for the world to stop emboldening the Palestinians and further entrenching them in their self-destructive behavior and policies that have impeded their success for over a century.

Change the Map of Gaza to Signal that Terrorism Doesn't Pay

Hamas sees the suffering of the Gazan people as a benefit, not a cost. Terrorists who locate their headquarters in hospitals, schools and kindergartens do so not only to protect themselves from possible attacks but also to exploit the inevitable killing of civilians for propaganda: More killing equals more world empathy.

In the Middle East, nothing hurts more than loss of territory. The worst outcome of a war meant to conquer Israel would be Israel's ending with more territory than when it began. The world demands that Israel withdraw to its original borders after every conflict it wins. Is it surprising that aggressors repeatedly try to destroy the Jewish state, knowing that they face little to no threat of loss of territory? This status quo must change.

There is nothing sacred about Gaza's borders, which were created in 1949 to mark the line of separation between Egypt and Israel. There is a clear security justification for shrinking Gaza's borders: Annexing a 1-mile perimeter around Gaza would create a buffer zone between Hamas-governed territory and the Israeli communities that Hamas brutally attacked on Oct. 7. The zone should also include a 3-mile stretch along the northern border of Gaza, an area Hamas converted into terrorist bases. Changing the map of Gaza would signal that terrorism doesn't pay, and could represent a significant advancement toward peace in the Middle East.

Displaying the truth about Hamas at bus shelters

For a couple of years, anti-Israel activists have been using bus shelters as a preferred venue to display anti-Israel messages.

This is hugely ironic, since bus stops and bus stations have been the site of numerous Palestinian terror attacks against Jews.

I quickly created an incomplete list of such attacks as a demonstration of what an honest bus shelter advertisement would look like.

The tweet has been seen over 16,000 times and "liked" 1,300 times.

I also made up a mock advertisement for buses themselves.

Some people have suggested that this be done for real.

Another suggestion was to simply print up stickers for people to place themselves at bus shelters where they live.

An ad at a bus shelter in a major city would cost about $2,000 a month. One an be certain that the ad would be defaced within a day in most cities, just as the "kidnapped" posters were.

Is this a worthwhile thing to do? I think it should be done by an organization that can properly publicize it, and I'd be happy to work with any that is interested. Let me know.

As far as stickers are concerned, I like the idea. The problem is that it is officially illegal to place stickers on bus shelters or public spaces like light poles. On the other hand, everyone ignores that law, and it should be fairly easy for me to create an online store to sell stickers. (I'd have to decide whether to print stickers that are easy to remove, which means the haters can get rid of them fast, or hard to remove, which means that the city workers have to hassle to remove them.)

The other advantage of stickers is that I can make lots of other designs, and in fact already have plenty of them in the memes I've created. (Here are a bunch from before 2014, most of which would still be fine.) It would be an easy way to counter the haters on campus.

So...what do you think?

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

I will donate $500 to @CAIRNational if they condemn this desecration of a mosque in Jenin

Every day, the Council of American-Islamic relations issues press releases condemning Israel for whatever made up crimes they read on Arab media.

Yet even though they claim to oppose terrorism, CAIR has not condemned Hamas or other Palestinian terror groups once through decades of horrific attacks on civilians.

Their press releases after October 7 were attempts to blame Israel for Israelis getting shot, stabbed, raped, burned and kidnapped.

This weekend, the IDF released a video from November of a mosque in Jenin that was used as a center for military activity. It has not been covered in mainstream media - as of this writing, the YouTube video has been viewed only a few dozen times.

The video shows clearly that the upper floor of the mosque was used as a lookout and firing position.

Terrorists set up areas of the mosque for shooting practice against their supposedly sacred walls.

Numerous bullet casings were on the floor. Slits were opened in the walls to shoot from. The soldiers found a cable to trigger an explosive device. By any definition, the mosque was a miliary position.

The IDF released information about two other mosques in Jenin that had been sources of gunfire and explosives by terror groups.

Today, the same Jenin terrorists are shooting not at the IDF but at the Palestinian Authority as it tries to re-assert control on the city that has been taken over by Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Will CAIR condemn the terrorists for using a mosque for shooting?

I'm willing to bet $500 they will never mention it.

If CAIR condemns Palestinian terror groups turning mosques in Jenin into military bases, I will donate $500 to the terror supporting American organization.

My money has never been safer.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The Telegram channel of the Gaza health ministry says, "499 martyrs were added to the cumulative statistics of martyrs, whose data was completed and approved by the judicial committee following up on the file of reports and missing persons....The death toll from the Israeli aggression has risen to 46,537 martyrs and 109,571 injuries since October 7, 2023."

Andrew Fox noted that the "judicial committee" is supposed to verify the people whose names were entered in the online form with incomplete data.

But as we've noted before, the health ministry keeps two sets of records. One is the ones whose names they have, and the other is the numbers seemingly made up by Hamas which, the health ministry now says, includes the deceased with incomplete records.

If the judiciary committee approved 499 names on the incomplete list, the number of total "martyrs" should not increase - only the number of the verified ones.

Yet the health ministry added the 499 to the higher number that already included the unverified victims, not the lower one. Which sure makes it look like they are double-counting them.

Maybe there is a valid explanation. But given what we've seen from the health ministry, which has consistently done everything they can to exaggerate the death count, this seems unlikely.

And no one knows anything about this "judicial committee" - is it part of the health ministry? Part of Hamas' judiciary? Who is on it? What is their methodology?

No one knows. And too few people care.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

01/11 Links: Sharansky: Why Can’t Israel’s Leader Visit Auschwitz?; Inside Columbia University’s ‘Museum of Terror’; Remembering Frank Sinatra's concert in Jerusalem

From Ian:

Natan Sharansky: Why Can’t Israel’s Leader Visit Auschwitz?

What Israel is facing now is a contemporary version of the blood libel raised against Jews for centuries. The original libel accused Jews of using Christian blood at Passover as a reminder of Judas’s betrayal of Jesus at the Last Supper, which took place during the seder. Though Jewish moral law made murder a universal crime, and Jewish dietary law abominates the use of blood, the sinister inverting logic of antisemitism persuaded generations that Jews were guilty of a cannibalistic ritual.

The same Orwellian principle is behind the charge of genocide and crimes against humanity, which takes core Jewish values embedded in Western civilization, like the sanctity of human life, and accuses the Jewish state of collectively violating them. The story is then repeated so many times that it penetrates popular consciousness and legitimizes our persecution, even among the most highly educated segments of the population.

The original libel led to the prosecution, torture, and murder of tens of thousands of Jews over the centuries. For example, one of the most extensive trials for these alleged crimes, the Velizh affair, which took place over 12 years in nineteenth-century Russia, involved the arrests of over 40 people, four of whom died in prison. By the end, all of the accused had been exonerated. Yet when it came time to ratify a court judgment releasing them, Czar Nicholas I said that he regretted having to do so, since the fact that the same accusation had been made for hundreds of years meant that it must be true.

It is this assumption that has kept the libel alive. (As late as 1913, Mendel Beilis was put on trial for ritual murder in Kyiv.) I was shocked, for instance, when the man who would become my closest friend in the Soviet Gulag asked me, out of genuine curiosity to learn about the Pesach seder, what the ceremony was like when Jews used actual blood. He sincerely believed the allegation, despite being an educated man who was imprisoned for his enlightened Christian views.

While today’s version of the blood libel has not been repeated over the course of a millennium, it has been repeated countless times since the tragedy of October 7, 2023, when our enemies tried to launch an actual genocide against Israel. But just as in the Christian world every Jew knew that the original accusation was false, no matter what sanction it received from kings or clergy, today every Israeli on the street knows that the charges against us are untrue.

The current war is the longest and the most difficult that Israel has ever faced, and nearly everyone in the country has served on the front lines or has a family member, neighbor, or close friend who did. As a result, while we disagree deeply on many issues, including our attitudes toward the current government, we all know that there has not been an order to intentionally kill or starve innocent Palestinians. To be sure, there have been many civilian casualties, and every one of them is a tragedy. But these lives were taken not because the IDF targeted them; they were taken because Hamas used them as human shields.

Certainly there are experts and government officials, especially in the United States, who know and document the truth. But Israelis cannot afford to wait until the record is corrected, the fever breaks, and the historians catch up. Neither can countries who will themselves become targets of international courts that cover for dictators and illiberal regimes, not to mention those suffering in China, Iran, and myriad other countries whose crimes are ignored. Even in the Middle Ages, there were popes like Gregory X who did denounce the falsehood of the blood libel, though this was no guarantee of Jewish safety.

Knowing that the original blood libel was a lie, Jews historically had no choice but to continue their lives, preserving their values and spreading the light of justice to all the nations. This did not guarantee safety for the Jew. In the same way, Israelis today have no choice but to continue on our path, fighting for our right to exist as a Jewish democratic state and protecting the world against terrorism as we do.

But the rest of the free world does have a choice. While international law and institutions were intended to promote peace, they have been co-opted by those who seek the destruction of the Jewish state. If the words “never again” are to mean anything, then, they must mean rejecting this state of affairs. Anything less will return us to the same condition that the post-World War II international order was designed to prevent.

Biden Program Meant To 'Protect Jewish Institutions' Pays Out Six-Figure Grants to Mosques That Preach Anti-Semitic Hate

The Biden White House and Senate Democrats have touted their funding for an anti-terrorism initiative they say "has been critical to the security of Jewish institutions." But the program has given hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent months to mosques whose clerics have preached anti-Semitic hate, cheered Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on Israel, and been accused of raising money for terrorist groups.

The Department of Homeland Security has awarded $150,000 in grants since November to Masjid Jamaat al Mumineen, the Islamic Society of Akron and Kent, and the Islamic Center of Bothell as part of its "Nonprofit Security Grant Program," according to federal records. The program gives taxpayer funds to nonprofits and religious groups deemed "at high risk of terrorist attack" to help enhance security.

President Joe Biden touted the program last year as an example of the administration’s "aggressive" actions to counter anti-Semitism and "protect Jewish institutions."

But the mosques have condoned the kinds of violence the grant program aims to prevent. In a sermon last month, Nader Taha, the imam of the Islamic Society of Akron & Kent, called the Oct. 7 attacks a "miracle" that "planted the seed of freedom in the heart of not just only the Muslim world, but the whole world."

"The faces of the children of Israel will be so humiliated," he said in the sermon reported by the Middle East Media Research Institute. Kent State University, where Taha works as a math lecturer, condemned Taha’s remarks as "anti-Semitic," saying that "references to the October 2023 massacre are abhorrent and stand in stark contrast to our institutional commitment to peaceful dialogue, as well as our core values of kindness and respect."

Masjid Jamaat al Mumineen, a South Florida mosque led by Imam Izhar Khan, promotes numerous books on its website that preach violence against Jews and Christians. In 2011, Khan was indicted alongside his father and several brothers on charges that they funded the Pakistani Taliban, a terrorist group aligned with al Qaeda. According to prosecutors, the Khan family funneled money back to the terrorist group to "further acts of murder, kidnapping and maiming" of Americans. A judge dismissed charges against Khan in 2013 after he served 20 months in prison, citing a lack of evidence. His father was sentenced to 25 years in prison, but he was released in 2019, shortly before his death.

The Islamic Center of Bothell, located outside Seattle, employs multiple preachers linked to violent rhetoric. Moosa Salie, the current imam of the mosque, served until last year as an official at South Africa’s Council of Muslim Theologians, which declared in September that "We are all Hamas."

Inside Columbia University’s ‘Museum of Terror’

Even before she first stepped foot on Columbia’s quads this past fall, Shoshana Aufzien was aware of antisemitism on campus. But she didn’t truly witness it until November 10, two months after she started studying at Barnard, Columbia’s sister school.

Aufzien was scrolling through Instagram when she spotted a post from Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) and two other pro-Palestinian groups, promoting an event at a Columbia literary society, Alpha Delta Phi (ADP). The two-day event, on November 9 and 10, was entitled “Hind’s House,” in tribute to a 5-year-old Gazan girl, Hind Rijab, who died during Israel’s war against Hamas. A strict schedule was listed for the second day:

2:00 COMMUNITY COOKING BEGINS
2:30 PALESTINE 101 w/ @cujafra
4:00 PROTEST SKILLS TRAINING w/ @cuapartheiddivest
5:00 KNOW YOUR RIGHTS TRAINING w/ C*LUMBIA LEGAL
5:30 DEFENSE TRAINING
6:00 ON TECHNOGENOCIDE
6:30 DIRECT ACTION TRAINING

As a concerned Jewish student, Aufzien decided to go to the event to see what her peers were up to. What she saw, she said, shocked her. “The only way I can describe it,” she told me, “is a museum of terror.”

Aufzien said she usually wears a black skirt, a Star of David, or a hostage tag at campus protests to make clear she’s Jewish. But because Alpha Delta Phi is technically off campus and no campus police were present, she concealed her identity by wearing a Covid mask. As she walked into the foyer of the two-story ADP building, she noticed that the entire place had been converted into an exhibition, with more than 100 students and visitors staring at the displays.

On the first floor, she spotted posters pertaining to five members of Columbia’s Board of Trustees tacked to the wall, listing their various “crimes against the Palestinian people.” Their crimes included “sitting on the board of the NYPD Foundation” and “speaking at AIPAC,” a prominent pro-Israel political action committee.

Inside Columbia University’s ‘Museum of Terror’
Then Aufzien moved to the focal point of the room: a pool table covered with tools, such as wrenches, hammers, ropes, and wire cutters—all of which were used by anti-Israel protesters to break in to and occupy Columbia’s Hamilton Hall last April. Pinned next to the hardware was a note that ordered visitors: “DO NOT GET YOUR FINGERPRINTS ON THESE!!”

The Hamilton Hall break-in was the culmination of one of the largest Columbia protests in history, which began on April 17 and mushroomed into a weeks-long encampment on the school’s main lawn. During the occupation of Hamilton Hall, protesters bashed in windows and doors and held multiple custodians hostage, leading to the arrests of 109 people in and around the building. Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg has since dropped the charges against the majority of students who took part; now just 15 of the original 46 charged still face criminal charges, including second-degree assault and criminal possession of a weapon.

Inside Columbia University’s ‘Museum of Terror’
Next to the pliers and hammers, Aufzien observed another artifact from the occupation: red headbands stamped with the logo for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)—a group that the State Department designated as a terrorist organization in 1997.

“I usually associate Columbia frats with binge-drinking and hazing—not the PFLP,” Aufzien told me.

Across the room, another table was lined with posters; one depicted a hang glider used by members of Hamas to drop into Israel and murder innocent civilians on October 7, 2023. Underneath, the message read: So on that day, the people of Gaza drifted into the sky like a host of colorful dragonflies.

01/10 Links Pt2: What the Auschwitz Controversy Revealed About the Enemies of America and Israel; A reminder to J Street’s Jeremy Ben Ami

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: What the Auschwitz Controversy Revealed About the Enemies of America and Israel

Arresting Netanyahu at Auschwitz would bring irrevocable humiliation on every Western democratic member state of the ICC. And perhaps that’s exactly what the ICC deserves, for it would be quickly and not-so-quietly swept into the dustbin of history, from which it emerged in the first place.

Which is not to say the ICC will get away scot-free. Because the ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel’s conflict with Hamas, it is essentially interfering on behalf of enemy states and against the effort to save American hostages. So the Republican House has voted, appropriately, to sanction the court. “The bill instructs the president to freeze property assets and deny visas to any foreigners who materially or financially contributed to the court’s efforts to ‘investigate, arrest, detain or prosecute a protected person,’” reports the New York Times. “Protected persons are defined as all current and former military and government officials of the United States and allies that have not consented to the court’s jurisdiction, such as Israel.”

As the Times mentions, the effort to sanction the ICC died in the Democratic Senate. With Republicans back in the majority, the bill will likely pass the Senate and be signed into law by President-elect Trump after he takes office.

“This bill sends an incredibly important message across the globe,” Florida Republican Rep. Brian Mast said on the House floor. “Do not get in the way of America or our allies trying to bring our people home. You will be given no quarter, and again, you will certainly not be welcome on American soil.”

In an encouraging sign, 45 Democrats joined with Republicans to pass the bill. Meanwhile, the arguments from Democrats against the bill were more likely to help its passage than to hurt it. “Republicans want to sanction the ICC simply because they don’t want the rules to apply to everyone,” said Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern. “There is no international right to vengeance, and what we are seeing in Gaza is vengeance.”

This is pure gobbledygook. The “rules” of the ICC do not, in fact, apply to the United States, though McGovern is free to argue that the U.S. should join the ICC. The rules of international law and order do apply to the U.S. and our allies, and the ICC is in fact the party here ripping those rules to shreds. Additionally, even if McGovern sees the efforts to rescue American and Israeli hostages as “vengeance,” that is neither a crime nor, to be honest, an argument against the bill.

As for those who wanted Poland to arrest Netanyahu at Auschwitz, who wanted to have a grotesque spectacle with which to advance their own Holocaust inversion, they have revealed themselves to be nostalgic for a time when Auschwitz was more than a symbol.

Phyllis Chesler: The big lies on Israel lend legitimacy to ignoring Israel women’s rights

In its “Monthly Action Points (MAP) for the Security Council” on Jan. 6, the NGO spent 609 words discussing the situation in Haiti and 889 words on Israel/Palestine. They refer to the “Occupied Palestinian Territory,” Israel’s “unlawful occupation of the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem” and insist that “international experts” (have credibly) described Israel’s actions as “genocide.” They mindlessly repeat Hamas’s completely misleading figures about the number of Gazans killed, wounded and displaced. They accuse Israel of having committed “constant violations of international humanitarian law.”

These women of peace offer nothing but anti-Israel propaganda. They do not include a single mention or word on the Oct. 7 pogrom or the 99 hostages Hamas continues to hold in Gaza, including several young women. There is nothing in the Working Group on Women, Peace and Security’s monthly report about the perennial attacks on Israeli civilians by Iran’s terrorist proxies, not a word about the displacement of Israelis from their homes or the number of Israelis killed or wounded in a war of self-defense. Not one word is included about the impact the attacks by Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and the Houthis have had on women in Israel may they be Muslim, Christian, Druze, Bahai or Jewish, and, of course, there’s no mention of the need for services for traumatized Israelis, especially women and children.

Based upon their big lies, they call upon the U.N. Security Council, of which Algeria has the presidency, to “demand an immediate, full, and complete ceasefire … ensure immediate, safe, and unhindered humanitarian access into Gaza.” They want the Security Council to “prevent the implementation of legislation restricting the operations” of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).

So who is behind this lovely group concerned about the fate of women in Haiti and Gaza that views itself as a “peacebuilder?” It is perhaps no surprise that the Working Group on Women, Peace and Security includes Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Global Network of Women Peacebuilders, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Center for Reproductive Rights and the Consortium on Gender Security and Human Rights, among others.

Funders of these groups include the left-leaning Tides Foundation, Compton Foundation and ministries within the governments of Norway, Sweden and Lichtenstein. They have all wasted their money. The United Nations has never prevented or prosecuted a single real genocide. They did nothing for the women in Rwanda, Bosnia, Sudan, Congo, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan, etc. The only thing that the United Nations has ever done successfully was to legitimize Jew-hatred. This little group both reflects and extends that particular agenda.

Jewish leaders warn of rising hate as France remembers supermarket victims

The ceremony took place outside the Hypercacher store at Porte de Vincennes where Yohan Cohen, Philippe Braham, Yoav Hattab and François-Michel Saada died on 9 January 2015.

The attacker, Amedy Coulibaly, was killed when police stormed the building to free hostages. Coulibaly was linked to the Kouachi brothers who killed 12 people at Charlie Hebdo magazine two days earlier.

Relatives and politicians lit 10 candles on a specially constructed altar to remember the victims, including teachers Samuel Paty and Dominique Bernard, killed by extremists in 2020 and 2023.

Additional candles honoured victims of anti-Semitism in France, global terrorism and the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023.

Michel Gugenheim, the chief rabbi of Paris, read The Kaddish – the Jewish prayer for the dead. Rabbi Haïm Korsia and Christophe Le Sourt, of the conference of French bishops, followed with a prayer for the republic.

The 30-minute service was organised by the Crif, an umbrella group representing French Jewish institutions, and will be followed on Thursday night by a debate staged in tandem with Charlie Hebdo on freedom of expression, Islamism and anti-Semitism.

Ongoing cycle of anti-Semitism
Thursday's commemoration ceremony was marred after Stars of David and the word "Jew" were found tagged on buildings near the store and at a local synagogue.

“We’re commemorating Islamist terror attacks of extreme gravity,” said Elie Korchia, head of the Consistoire Central des Israelites de France – the religious organisation of French Jewry.

“But we see that through these tags, insults, through the daily anti-Semitic acts … that the cycle of anti-Semitism has not ended,” he told RFI.

Anti-Semitic acts rose by 192 percent in early 2023 compared to 2022. Crif documented just over 1,670 incidents throughout 2023. The French ministry fighting discrimination reported 1,500 attacks in November 2024 alone.

On this day in 2015, a tragic terrorist attack unfolded at the Hypercacher kosher supermarket in Paris, France. Armed with a submachine gun, an assault rifle and two pistols, Amedy Coulibaly, a jihadist affiliated with the Islamic State, stormed the supermarket in the Porte de… pic.twitter.com/S5NJRSLdhy
— Campaign Against Antisemitism (@antisemitism) January 9, 2025

01/10 Links Pt1: Peace in Israel isn't possible until Palestinians stop paying terrorists to kill; UNRWA is not the firefighter. UNRWA is the arsonist.

From Ian:

2024: The Biden Administration’s wasted year

If Israel had listened to Biden and Harris, Hamas’ battalions would have survived and been rebuilt. Most of the hostages who have been rescued would not have been rescued. Yahya Sinwar and other October 7 masterminds would still be alive. Hezbollah would be just as powerful now as it was a year ago. Bashar al-Assad would still rule Syria. And the Ayatollahs would not be in decline in Iran. The world would be a worse and far more dangerous place.

President-Elect Donald Trump has warned Hamas that if the hostages are not released by the time of his inauguration in less than two weeks, there will be “hell to pay.” Those statements have created more hope that the end of the hostage crisis and the war itself may be close than everything that came out of the mouths of the Biden Administration in the entirety of 2024.

The idea that “daylight” between the US and Israel would magically lead to peace was always a fantasy that ignored reality. When Barack Obama came into office with that idea guiding his Middle East policies, he pretended that the 2005 Disengagement, which happened thanks to the good relationship between Ariel Sharon and George W. Bush, never existed. The result was that the Palestinian Authority refused to even pretend to negotiate and hardened its positions and no progress was made until Obama and his fantasies left the White House.

Blinken’s acknowledgement that this daylight between the US and Israel caused Hamas to refuse deals to release the hostages is too little, far too late. This was a lesson that should have been learned at least 15 years ago. Had the lesson been internalized even a year ago, the war might have ended and all the hostages might have been freed months ago.

Had the Biden Administration done the right thing and made the hostage and the defeat of Hamas its priority, had it stood up to the antisemites in America and the Democratic Party, had it demonstrated courage instead of cowardice, it could have had a foreign policy success to present to the American people in November. An administration that stood by its ally through thick and thin and played a constructive role in ending the conflict and bringing home the hostages might have gotten a few more thousand votes in many of the swing states, especially Michigan.

And even if Biden and Harris still would have lost in November, their legacies would be very different and much better if they had done the right thing and not wasted the entirety of 2024 prolonging the war and the suffering of the hostages.

John Spencer: Peace in Israel isn't possible until Palestinians stop paying terrorists to kill

An 83-year-old Holocaust survivor, Ludmila Lipovsky, was brutally murdered last month in Israel while waiting for her daughter to take her to a doctor’s appointment. A 28-year-old Palestinian man from the West Bank is accused of stabbing her to death.

This horrific act is yet another example of the violence incentivized by a multimillion dollar program known as “pay to slay," which is written into Palestinian law and governed by the Palestinian Authority.

Some view it as simply a system that rewards Palestinians for committing acts of terrorism against Jewish Israelis. In reality, it is a deeply ingrained economic structure and societal program in the West Bank and Gaza that incentivizes violence, thus undermining any chance of a sustainable peace deal.

The program provides monthly payments to Palestinians convicted of violent acts against Israelis and imprisoned for their crimes. Crucially, these payments are not extended to those convicted of non-terror-related crimes. The payments increase with the length of the prison sentence, which perversely rewards perpetrators of the worse crimes.

For example, as of 2017, a prisoner sentenced to up to three years receives $400 monthly, while someone sentenced to 10 to 15 years earns more than $1,500 monthly. During incarceration, the Palestinian Authority also pays the individual’s social security and pension fees. The payments to prisoners are adjusted to account for increases in the cost of living.

Upon release, the benefits continue. Released prisoners receive a lump-sum grant ranging from $1,500 to $25,000, depending on the duration of their imprisonment. Employment in government institutions is guaranteed, with job placements prioritized based on years spent in prison. Those who cannot secure jobs receive unemployment stipends − provided they served at least five years for men or two years for women.

Moreover, released prisoners enjoy free college education and lifelong health care. A male prisoner who has spent at least one year in an Israeli prison is exempt from tuition fees at Palestinian universities and professional training programs, as well as from health insurance payments.

If a terrorist is killed during an attack or by Israeli forces, their family is supported through the “martyrs” fund. Families receive monthly payments − spouses for life and children until they reach adulthood − ranging from $100 to $1,200.

Arsen Ostrovsky and John Spencer: Don’t blame Israel — it’s Hamas that has put every Gaza hospital in danger

Hamas, a ruthless terrorist organization, operates without any regard to the norms of international law or value of human life, with a longstanding practice of systematically embedding their operations in hospitals, using civilians as human shields and building military tunnels underneath hospitals.

Fifteen months into the war initiated by Hamas, there is hardly a hospital or medical facility in Gaza the terror group has not turned into a military command center, including the Kamal Adwan Hospital. There, Israel has detained over 240 Hamas terrorists, including some disguised as patients, and found caches of weapons, including guns and explosives. Each of these acts is an undisputed violation of the law of armed conflict.

Among the suspects taken for questioning was the director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, Hussam Abu Safiya, who is suspected of being a Hamas terrorist leader, in addition to approximately 15 terrorists who infiltrated Israel during the Oct. 7 Massacre. In these circumstances, during which Hamas turned Kamal Adwan Hospital into a terrorist staging ground, the hospital lost its protected status under international law and become a legitimate target for military operations.

Israel’s military objective is clear and defined: to eliminate the military capabilities of Hamas, which continues to use hospitals and other civilian areas in Gaza to plan and execute acts of terror against Israel, as well as the rescue of the remaining 100 hostages that the terror group is holding captive.

However, merely because Hamas has seized hospitals as its own personal launching pads and terrorist command centers does not provide carte blanche to conduct military operations. Nor does it mean that patients and staff inside the hospital immediately lose their civilian status. Under humanitarian law, Israel must still abide by fundamental rules such as distinction, proportionality and precaution. In each case, it has acted in accordance with its obligation.

Based on clear intelligence, Israel targeted a military objective used by Hamas terrorists, as evinced by the approximately 240 operatives arrested. There were hardly any civilian injuries in the operation, indicating that the expected incidental damage was not excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated from the operation.

Israel also took ample precaution, including providing advanced warning, evacuating civilians and providing additional medical supplies to the hospital. Prior to the beginning of the targeted operation, as well as the process during, some 450 patients, as well as caregivers and medical personnel, were evacuated, while tens of thousands of liters of fuel, food and medical supplies for the essential functioning of the hospital were also delivered to Kamal Adwan during this period.

Quite simply, Israel has gone to unprecedented lengths to comply with its obligations pursuant to the law of armed conflict, whereas Hamas is doing everything possible in order to maximize casualties.

In the wake of the targeted counterterrorism operation at Kamal Adwan Hospital, the World Health Organization said that “The systematic dismantling of the health system in Gaza is a death sentence for tens of thousands of Palestinians in need of health care.”

To date, the World Health Organization has not condemned Hamas for the systematic use of hospitals in Gaza for military purposes. The global call to Hamas should be stop putting hospitals in danger. Many ignore that Hamas has systematically dismantled the health system in Gaza, with the acquiescence of an international community that refuses to call it out.

The World Health Organization also fails to acknowledge that Israel is trying to bolster the health system in Gaza, working with many groups to supply the five active hospitals in Northern Gaza and almost 20 field hospitals.

Those who truly care about the wellbeing of civilians in Gaza, and who are rightfully aghast at the scenes coming out of Kamal Adwan Hospital would be well advised to direct their outrage at Hamas, which continues to unconscionably and illegally turn hospitals into their personal control and command centers and severely risk the lives of innocent civilians.

In the 1990s, "Torah Codes" were a craze. The theory is that one could find hidden codes in the text of the Torah by skipping "n" letters. Three mathematicians wrote a paper in the journal Statistical Science that found that patterns that matched rabbis names were encoded in the same "spaces" as their birth and death dates, thousands of years before they were born.

One theory was that the minimum skip distance of a word is significant. So I wrote a program many years ago (in BASIC) to look through Genesis and try to find the minimum skip distances of the names of the patriarchs, not counting their names themselves (a skip distance of zero), to see where they would come out. Would they appear in the parts of Genesis that they were actual characters?

My program was slow and at the time finding even five letter words took a long time. Three letter words were all over the place with a skip distance of 1 so "Leah" and "Rachel" were sort of useless, let alone two letter names like "Noah."

But one of the best ones I found was Yaakov - Jacob - in this week's parasha.

Genesis 50:6:

וַיֹּ֖אמֶר פַּרְעֹ֑ה עֲלֵ֛ה וּקְבֹ֥ר אֶת־אָבִ֖יךָ כַּאֲשֶׁ֥ר הִשְׁבִּיעֶֽךָ׃

And Pharaoh said, “Go up and bury your father, as he made you promise on oath.”

The smallest skip distance I could find for Yaakov in Genesis was 5, and it occurred in a verse that was about Yaakov but didn't mention his name!

The statistical paper was mostly debunked but I always felt it was useful. The idea that all the world's knowledge is contained in the Torah always had sounded nonsensical to me - how could all knowledge be in a finite text? The codes show that an infinite amount of information can indeed theoretically be encoded in a finite text. There is no reason to use equidistant skip distances - why not use digits of pi, or pairs or triplets of them, for skip distances? There is literally no end to what could be done with that method.

I'm not saying that the codes have validity. But they point to a way that information could be encoded, and that by itself is an interesting idea.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)