Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, January 15, 2025

Is the hostage deal worth it? So far it looks disastrous

13 years ago, as the Gilad Shalit deal was close to being finalized, I wrote that I was conditionally supportive of the deal. As I wrote then:

I'm seeing a number of people in the comments, on Twitter and on groups I follow who are against the Shalit deal if it means that hundreds of murderers are freed in exchange.

The argument has two components.

One is that they are likely to kill Israelis in the future - as we have seen happen in the past, many times. And families of victims of the murderers are understandably upset at the thought that the monster will go free.

The other argument is that these one-sided swaps encourage terror groups to kidnap more people to facilitate more swaps.

I am sympathetic to these arguments. I've even made these arguments. And from a utilitarian perspective, they make a great deal of sense - one person's life is not worth the lives of many possible future victims.

However, there is a flaw in this logic, one that to me can tip the scales towards supporting the swap.

The fact is that the terror groups are already filled with people who would kill Israelis at every opportunity. The fact is that these groups already have a strategy of kidnapping any Israelis they can. With a few exceptions, most of the prisoners are not the brains behind successful terror attacks - they were just facilitators, people who are interchangeable with hundreds and thousands of other members of Hamas and Fatah and Islamic Jihad.

The reason that there have been relatively few terror attacks over the past few years isn't because of a lack of trying - it is because Israel is better at defending herself. The number of potential terrorists has remained steady at best, and the ones being released would not change that appreciably.

Yes, statistically there is a good chance that there will be future attacks involving some of the terrorists in this swap. But chances are the attacks would occur anyway with different people. Brainless terror drones are a dime a dozen in the territories.

The organizers who actually dream up new ways of killing should not be released. But most of the terrorists in the swap, from what I can tell, do not fit that description.

We now have the benefit of hindsight. The Shalit deal was a disaster because one of the people released, Yahya Sinwar, was the mastermind of October 7.

At the time Sinwar was considered a monster - to other Palestinians. He murdered suspected "collaborators" with his bare hands. But he already was an organizer at the point of his second imprisonment, in charge of the program to find and execute these people for the entire south Gaza and he reported directly to Sheikh Yassin, the founder of Hamas. He was not a "brainless drone." He was a leader, proudly ruthless, and should have been recognized as such and never released.

Every single terrorist must be evaluated from the perspective of whether they are potential Sinwars or even potential third level leaders, not whether they have Israeli blood on their hands. The chances that there are no skilled and creative organizers among thousands of released terrorists are very low indeed.

Another point is that at this stage we don't even know how many hostages are still alive. No one wants to put a price on any human life, but if most of them are no longer alive, God forbid, then it makes no sense to trade living terrorists for bodies. Without an accurate list of the living ahead of the deal, there should be no deal, period.

Don't forget that Hezbollah used that ambiguity to great advantage. In 2006 Hezbollah abducted soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser specifically to get arch-terrorist Samir Kuntar released. This sparked the 2006 war, but in the end Nasrallah won: for most of the negotiations it was unknown whether Regev and Goldwasser were alive or dead and in the end it was a swap of their bodies for one of the most notorious and ruthless terrorists; Israel gained nothing.

If most of the prisoners are no longer alive, their corpses are not worth living terrorists. Not to mention that Hamas monsters can easily keep part of their bodies for future deals, forever.

Jewish law and tradition prioritizes saving captives a lot more than bodies.

The swap is only one problematic issue.

Andrew Fox wrote an excellent critique of the deal as we understand it now, and I agree with almost everything he says.

The main problem is not the prisoner release, as bad as that is. It is that Hamas remains in power in Gaza, from everything we can tell. One of the war's goals was to eliminate Hamas as a military threat and while it is weakened, it has shown the ability to fill in every vacuum in Gaza when the IDF leaves an area and continue to control the people and steal aid to cement its position.

Iran's loss of influence in Gaza is not as much of a loss for Hamas as it was for Hezbollah, because Hamas was always aligned more with the Muslim Brotherhood than the Shiites of Iran. Hamas will be rebuilt by money from Turkey, Qatar and the Egyptian MB. As Fox notes, "This deal exponentially increases the risk of a Muslim Brotherhood hegemony filling the void left by Iran’s Shia Crescent of proxies in Syria and Lebanon. Hamas’s reconstruction will take time, but Arab planning does not work in electoral cycles: it works in generations."

This is a major reason I support the UAE as a key player in the "day after" Gaza scenario. It is the least bad of all options to fill the governance gap, outside of annexation by Israel which is a headache no one wants.

Fox also points out that Hamas being allowed to exist makes it the clear winner in the cognitive war. The terror group gained support internationally from the war, and the only thing that could turn that around would be a perception of utter defeat. We see that the Arab world has turned against Hezbollah and the reason isn't a change in philosophy - it is because no one wants the shame of being associated with a loser.

This deal enhances Hamas' perception in the Muslim world. That is unacceptable.

From the Israeli perspective, Fox points out what most were not willing to admit: Israel's war goals were incompatible.

A key problem was Israeli selection of military-strategic aims. Their goals of dismantling Hamas and restoring Israeli security were arguably mutually exclusive to the aim of returning the hostages: only a handful have been freed by military force. The whole IDF campaign plan was designed around the first two, but the Israeli government has ultimately prioritised the third. This strategic disconnect leaves Gaza in ruins, over 400 IDF soldiers dead and over 2,500 wounded. Hamas is degraded but still in control and able to rebuild. Palestinian hatred of Israel unabated and exacerbated. Israel’s international reputation is destroyed, and they have very little to show for any of it.

I'm not sure about the last sentence. As I noted, Israel's reputation in the Arab world has gone way up since last fall with the pager attack, Nasrallah's assassination and Israel's destruction of Iran's air defenses. They don't like Israel any more, but they respect it, and that's the best anyone can hope for.

That respect would disappear if Israel allows Hamas to continue to exist, since most Arab leaders hate the Muslim Brotherhood inspired Islamists.

Finally, Fox addresses one of the worrying aspects of how he deal appears to have been allowed:

The reason behind this ceasefire is possibly more worrying than the ceasefire itself. It is not dictated by the achievement of any strategic or tactical goals; it is dictated by Trump. Last year, I was barracked on X when I urged caution in Israeli jublation over Trump’s election. Sadly my pessimism has been validated, although I did not expect Trump to throw Israel to the wolves so soon. Israeli media reports that Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Middle East envoy, is the one who forced Netanyahu to agree to the deal.

(As an aside, Witkoff has had financial dealings with global malign actor Qatar numbering in the hundreds of millions, possibly billions of dollars.)

Far more seriously from an international perspective, as with his Doha deal with the Taliban that needlessly betrayed NATO’s Afghan allies, Trump has shown himself to be a feckless and untrustworthy ally. We know he is going to force a similar surrender on Ukraine. This should send a rocket through Western militaries reliant on American support—which is no bad thing. A truly bad thing, however, is the message China will receive. As the Afghan shambles encouraged Putin in Ukraine, so this betrayal of Israel will encourage China to invade Taiwan. Globally, this deal places the world a significant step closer to World War Three.

We don't know if there is something going on behind the scenes, like a quid pro quo for the US to support an attack on Iran in exchange for this deal. But how the deal got to this point is indeed worrying.

The deal is no different than the deal the Biden administration has been pushing and Israel has been rejecting. Bibi was prepared to push back against Biden but he does not want to do the same against Trump. It appears that Trump did not care much about the details of the deal, he just wants to get American hostages home and gave Witkoff a lot of latitude as to how to get there - and that pushed Israel from the "destroy Hamas" priority to the "release hostages" priority.

It is a strategic blunder.

We don't know what we don't know, and maybe Israel has an ace in the hole to ensure that Gaza can never return to October 6 Gaza. From what we do know, the deal negates most of Israel's strategic gains in Gaza. We still don't know exactly how the Philadelphi Corridor will be administered, how the aid will be vetted, how much of a buffer zone Israel will maintain, all of which are critical. At this point it seems unlikely. Somehow I also doubt that every prisoner has been implanted with an explosive next to their brains that can be remotely detonated.

We all want the hostages to come home, but not at any price. It is easy to say that the value of human life is infinite but every hostage deal puts a price on life whether we like it or not. This price is way too steep.

The deal all but guarantees the death and kidnapping of more Israelis (and Jews) worldwide in the future.

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ADL antisemitism global survey shows Muslim countries are still the most antisemitic - and getting worse

The ADL released its survey of global attitudes towards Jews in most (but far from all) countries.

As it always does, the ADL asks people whether they agree with a series of 11 classic antisemitic tropes. Only those people who believe in a majority of them are considered for the calculations of this index. So there are plenty of people who harbor several antisemitic attitudes that do not get counted as antisemites in this survey.

The single most common factor to determine whether a country is antisemitic is whether it is a Muslim country. Not region, not socio-economic status, not politics - simply the majority religion.

There is also reason to believe that antisemitism in Western democratic countries is undercounted, because liberals are conscious of looking antisemitic. Directly asking whether they believe Jews have too much influence in world affairs is likely to make people not want to appear antisemitic. So surveys in Western countries do not capture the embarrassed antisemites, and other surveys that use more subtle methods must be used.

Here is a chart comparing the 2014 and 2024 scores for Muslim-majority countries and territories.(Several countries, like Pakistan and Syria, were not surveyed.)

Nigeria had a low score, comparable to Western democracies, in 2014 - but its score nearly tripled this time.

Indonesia also showed a huge jump in antisemitic attitudes from one of the most tolerant Muslim countries to one of the least.

But even already hugely antisemitic places like the Palestinian territories, Kuwait, Jordan and Egypt saw antisemitic attitudes get significantly worse.

Notice that peace agreements with Israel do not seem to bring a lessening of antisemitism in the UAE or Bahrain, It did go down in Morocco, but I've seen a long-standing effort by the Moroccan government to mainstream Jews and Judaism among the public.

Finally, the most under-reported story is Palestinian antisemitism. They are consistently the most antisemitic people in every survey, and the media simply refuses to report that fac - out of fear of being accused of "Islamophobia."

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

01/14 Links Pt2: Reality Is ‘Zionist Propaganda’; Why Israel’s enemies hate cartology; The Democrats’ Anti-Israel Future; ADL poll shows nearly half of adults globally harbor Jew-hatred

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Reality Is ‘Zionist Propaganda’

After the new year, the theater chain Alamo Drafthouse began showing September 5 in Brooklyn. Many of its own employees, organizing under its union, were outraged. They petitioned their employers to stop showing the film. Alamo appears, as of this writing, to have ignored them.

But it’s the petition itself, which of course soon garnered signatures from all manner of local organizers, that has to be read to be believed. Calling the film “Zionist propaganda,” it reads, in part:
“Echoing the well-worn pattern seen since 9/11, September 5 is yet another attempt by the Western media to push its imperialist and racist agenda, manufacturing consent for the continued genocide and cultural decimation of Palestine and its peoples. It is quintessential Orientalism: Depicting Arabs and brown people as evil, antisemitic terrorists, while lionizing the very newsrooms that provide political cover and, in many cases, cheer for endless wars and genocide. We’re certain that Alamo’s quirky pre-show won’t provide this context.”

The movie “depicts” Arabs as “antisemitic terrorists”? The movie is about an actual event, in which Arab anti-Semitic terrorists carried out murderous acts of terrorism. What’s more, the film is about the coverage itself—because a fair amount of what happened was broadcast. People watched it. This was a historical event that happened, like the moon landing.

More from the petition: “We, NYC Alamo United, wholeheartedly condemn the Alamo’s willingness to profit off of the genocide of Palestine.”

So we have two principles undergirding the opposition to the film. The first is that literal history as it happened is “Zionist propaganda,” and the second is that any depiction of Israelis or Palestinians is “profit[ing] off the genocide of Palestine.”

As to the first principle, I happen to agree. Reality is very harsh to the modern Western left’s anti-Zionist narrative, and it is very kind to the position of the Jewish state. As was the case when pro-Palestinian activists picketed showings of footage from Oct. 7 filmed by Hamas themselves, it is very difficult to see Palestinian terrorists as victims if you know what actually happened.

As to the second, I’m afraid the wider entertainment world has certainly adopted a pose that does not agree with the premise but abides by that premise’s preferred policy: It’s just too much trouble to show films or publish books with Jews in them, especially Israeli Jews.

After all, the Toronto International Film Festival, The Hollywood Reporter’s Scott Feinberg noted in September, found itself in just such a predicament:
“My understanding is that TIFF outright rejected September 5, which was the hottest sales title that played at the Venice and Telluride film fests — and, THR reported this morning, has landed at Paramount — ostensibly because it might generate controversy related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So, fearing a backlash, the fest did not screen a film that is going to get a best picture Oscar nomination and maybe even win — it could have done so on opening night, which was, appropriately enough, Sept. 5 — but did screen Russians at War, a documentary thats sympathetic portrayal of Russians involved in the Ukraine conflict did result in protests of such a scale that the fest ended up pulling the film.”

The great hope for the future of art in America is that bigoted censors make arguments that are too absurd for even corporate chains to take seriously, thus delegitimizing the entire outrage industry. In that sense, the reaction to September 5 is off to a good start.

Why Israel’s enemies hate cartology

Enemies of the Jewish state hate cartology—the study of mapmaking—as the world was reminded again last week in the commotion over a map of biblical Israel.

Some Israel-hater noticed that the X (Twitter) account of the Israeli Foreign Ministry included a map showing the biblical borders of the ancient kingdoms of Judea and Israel, including the parts that extended eastward across the Jordan River.

The text asks, “Did you know that the Kingdom of Israel was established 3,000 years ago?” The answer is that, unfortunately, most people do not know that because the facts about the boundaries of the Land of Israel are one of those topics that mainstream media outlets and left-leaning professors never discuss.

The text also mentions King David and King Solomon, and other personalities and events from the biblical period. The Washington Post and the history faculty at Columbia University don’t like talking about this for good reason; they remind us that Israel’s roots in the Holy Land are deep and strong, reaching back literally thousands of years.

The foreign ministry post concludes with another simple statement of fact: “The Jewish people in the Diaspora continued to look forward to the revival of their powers and capabilities and the rebuilding of their state, which was declared in the State of Israel in 1948 to become the only democracy in the Middle East.”

Hysterical comments about the map quickly erupted across the Arab world.

Jordanian leaders were especially overheated in their response. Jordan’s Foreign Ministry said it “condemns in the strongest terms the maps of the region” posted by the Israelis because they include territories that they “claim are historical for Israel, including parts of the occupied Palestinian territories, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.”

Those maps are “racist,” the Jordanians added, using what is fast becoming the most overused word in the English language used to attack Israel. Actually, the maps are exactly the opposite of racism since Israel is a multiracial state in which all groups are treated equally, by contrast with the Arab world, where blacks are victims of genocide (Sudan), are enslaved (Mauritania) and are massacred if they even approach the border in the hope of entering (Saudi Arabia).

Moreover, Israel does not have a law mandating the death penalty for selling land to members of a particular ethnic group, but the Palestinian Authority does—and that group is the Jews.

The speaker of the Jordanian parliament, Ahmad al-Safadi, said the maps “express a criminal mentality and malicious ambitions that cannot be ignored or tolerated.”

Not to be outdone, the P.A. declared that it rejects “alleged maps of historical Israel that include Arab lands.” Official P.A. spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh blasted the “alleged map with a comment fabricating an Israeli history dating back thousands of years in line with the Hebrew allegations.”

The Democrats’ Anti-Israel Future

THE 2024 ELECTION left the Democrats “considering how to navigate a dark future,” said the New York Times. Voices from the progressive wing instantly made clear that one matter at issue will be the party’s stance toward Israel.

The Democrats’ traditional friendliness to the Jewish state had resonated in the words of President Joe Biden’s immediate reaction to Hamas’s invasion and massacre of October 7, 2023. “This was an act of sheer evil,” he pronounced. “Israel has the right…in-deed has a duty to respond… . If the United States experienced [the likes of this] our response would be swift, decisive, and overwhelming.” He said that the U.S. was “surging military assistance” and had moved a carrier strike group and additional fighter aircraft to the area. “The United States has Israel’s back. It’s as simple as that…. We’re with Israel.”

Yet, over the ensuing weeks and months, it proved not as simple as that. Biden grew increasingly focused on protecting Gazan noncombatants and on restraining Israel in other ways. Vice President Kamala Harris, to whom he passed the Democratic standard in withdrawing from the 2024 election, was still more assertive in that direction, as was, to an even greater degree, her chosen running mate, Tim Walz. Their apparent predispositions, and the political currents within their party, prompted CNN political analyst Ronald Brownstein to muse, “Biden could be the last Democratic president for the foreseeable future who aligns so unreservedly with” Israel.

As Biden takes his bows, will the Democrats continue to pull away from Israel? Let us consider the background. Both parties have shared in America’s traditional friendship with that state, but each has done so unevenly. Among the Republicans, Eisenhower was quite unfriendly; Bush 41 was chilly; Nixon was, too, but provided critical aid during the Yom Kippur War. On the other hand, Reagan, Bush 43, and Trump were all warm supporters.

The Democrats had been more consistently friendly. Truman granted recognition to the reborn state, defying his advisers; Kennedy coined the “special relationship”; Johnson elevated the degree of military aid to Israel; Clinton worked furiously to broker a two-state solution and blamed Yasir Arafat when it was not achieved. Even Jimmy Carter, who was viscerally hostile, nonetheless brokered the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.

And then, in 2008, came Barack Obama. He differed from the others in background not only by the epochal fact of being our first black president. He had dabbled in radical ideas as a student, then launched himself into a career as a “community organizer, and turned to politics only, he said, as a different path to the same goals. His rise marked a shift in tone, spirit, and perhaps the long-term direction of his party affecting a range of issues, not least Israel.

The priority of his foreign policy was to improve relations with the Muslim world, which he believed had been needlessly alienated from the United States by George W. Bush’s Global War on Terror. To demonstrate a new sensitivity, he gave his first presidential interview not to the New York Times or CNN but rather to the Arabic-language network Al Arabiya. The first foreign parliament he addressed was Turkey’s, and he later named Turkey’s Islamist prime minister (now president), Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as one of five foreign leaders with whom he felt closest.

Two months later, he delivered a major address in Cairo, saying:
I’ve come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect, and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition.

While in the region, Obama also visited Saudi Arabia, his third Arab capital, but pointedly did not visit Israel, 37 minutes from Cairo by air. He told American Jewish leaders that his goal was to put “daylight” between himself and Israel in a way that his predecessors had not done. “When there is no daylight, Israel just sits on the sidelines, and that erodes our credibility with the Arab states,” he explained. He aimed, said the Washington Post, “to restore the United States’ reputation as a credible mediator …[by] talk-[ing] tough to Israel, publicly and privately.”

In all, he visited more than 40 countries during his first term, some two or three times, but didn’t bother to visit Israel until 2013—during his second term.

Yet all this “daylight” yielded nothing in the peace process, which is not surprising because it was not Israel that was sitting on the sideline. Only months before Obama’s inauguration, Israel’s then–Prime Minister Ehud Olmert sought to bring to fruition a series of secret negotiations with Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas by presenting an offer that aimed to meet Palestinian goals on every issue.

01/14 Links Pt1: No final answer from Hamas regarding hostage deal; Hegseth: ‘I support Israel destroying, killing every last member of Hamas’

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The Deal: A Guide for the Perplexed

What’s good about this for Israel:
—The reunions of more than two dozen hostages with their families is obviously top-of-mind. The country has been tormented for fifteen months over its missing, during which time Hamas’s cruelty has been boundless. Hostages have been tortured, abused, starved and humiliated—children and adults alike—and many of their families have been left to wonder if they are even still alive. Unlike Hamas, Israelis so value the lives of their fellows that every returned captive brings some relief to a suffering country.

—Israel will also have delivered for Donald Trump, whose envoys bulldozed all Israeli concerns so that he could begin his second term with a win. Delivering for an incoming president rather than an outgoing president means Israeli leaders believe (or live in hopes) that their concerns on other regional issues will be heard. That could mean an improvement in the flow of U.S. arms and aid, cooperation on limiting or destroying Iran’s nuclear program, support for Israel’s operations in Syria and Lebanon, Saudi normalization, and a suitably aggressive posture toward the ICC and the UN as well as any countries that are tempted to join their extrajudicial harassment of Israel and Israelis.

—Retaining some control over the Philadelphi Corridor is crucial to preventing the resumption of smuggling routes underneath Rafah and into Egyptian territory. Holding buffer zones along the rest of the border means the Israeli communities in the “Gaza envelope” will be better protected and will facilitate the deployment of troops back into Gaza hotspots. So long as Israeli troops control both sides of all Israel-Gaza borders, those borders will be more secure than they have been, arguably since 1948.

—Any significant reduction in fighting, even if temporary, will boost Israel’s economy and relieve some of the strain on its 300,000 reservists.

What’s bad about this for Israel:
—The withdrawal of troops to a buffer zone will guarantee Hamas survives for now and coalesces support and recruits while it has the chance. In turn, that means the IDF will be back in the parts of Gaza it is currently leaving. The war goes on under the façade of “peace.”

—The honeymoon from conventional Western policy toward the Middle East is over. In Trump’s first term, he put together a team of envoys that questioned stale thinking and thereby facilitated perhaps the most important regional diplomatic breakthroughs since the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace deal. This team featured US Ambassador David Friedman, Jared Kushner, Jason Greenblatt and others. This time, Trump’s envoy is Steve Witkoff, who is content to carry the outgoing Biden administration’s policies across the finish line, which are based on the age-old—and failed—protection of Hamas’s legitimacy and a bias toward the status quo.

—Israel has agreed to leave the Netzarim Corridor, a road that bisects Gaza and enables the IDF to contain recurring spurts of violence from spilling over into the rest of the enclave. That corridor begins right near Kibbutz Be’eri, where Hamas terrorists slaughtered over 100 civilians and took thirty hostages in the early hours of its Oct. 7 invasion. Israel’s disengagement from the corridor will mean it is facilitating the return of Gazans to their homes in the north before many of Israel’s own citizens can safely return to their homes near Gaza.

—The release of violent Palestinian terrorists and inmates will represent security threats, boost loyalty to Hamas and in some cases Hamas’s manpower, and incentivize the taking of future hostages. Hostage-taking, in fact, will be seen as the only successful method of Palestinian “resistance” and the only consistent advantage that terrorist groups have over the West.

—Qatar, the longtime patron of Hamas, facilitated this deal, and in doing so, displayed the considerable influence it will have over a Trump White House.

What’s good about the deal for the Palestinians:
—The ability for many to return to their homes amid a reprieve in Gaza’s longest war. Israel will continue providing the strip with humanitarian aid.

What’s bad about it for the Palestinians:
—Hamas was the reason for the devastation in Gaza, and Hamas is being left in power, which means any reprieve is temporary.

~The survival of Hamas, even in a greatly weakened state, means Mahmoud Abbas will die without seeing the return of the Palestinian Authority to the territory it lost to Hamas. This means Hamas’s influence in the West Bank will surge despite Israel’s devastation of it. The Hamasification of the West Bank, in turn, would sound the death knell for Palestinian self-determination, since there will be no Palestinian party to negotiate with Israel and both Palestinian territories will slide into Iranian satrapy.

Will Palestinians Give Peace a Chance?

If there's ever going to be lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians, the Palestinians must do something they've avoided for nearly 80 years: accept the permanency and legitimacy of the Jewish state.

Since Oct. 7, most Israelis have become increasingly disillusioned when it comes to peace with the Palestinians. On the Palestinian side, a series of recent polls found that many Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank still believe Hamas was justified in carrying out their Oct. 7 assault. Moreover, Palestinians remain broadly opposed to the idea of a two-state solution, the favored approach of international politicians, scholars, and peace advocates for decades.

Since Israel's founding, the complete ideological rejection of any Jewish state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea has been a pillar of Palestinian identity. Treating Israel as anything but a blemish or temporary aberration that can and will be undone with enough determination would be sacrilege in many Palestinian homes. It is precisely this maximalist Palestinian ideology that is at the heart of the conflict.

Going forward, earnest diplomats and committed mediators who have continually avoided this long-held rejectionist view will need to wake up, get real, and have honest discussions with Palestinians. As a first step, outsiders should resist the common knee-jerk reaction of dismissing hard truths. The deep-seated Palestinian vision anchored to endless struggle and never-ending resistance is what keeps the conflict going.

Unless the Palestinians finally acknowledge Israel's right to exist, no land, no new borders, and no other concessions will lead to lasting peace. Palestinians have the power to end the conflict - and it's time we recognize that.

Terrorist releases in exchange for hostages threaten even more Israeli lives

Many Israelis will say that the hostage release deal under discussion is sad but necessary—that it is the government’s moral obligation to free as many hostages as possible, as soon as possible, despite the high price, and that the suffering of our hostages and their families is intolerable on the personal and national levels.

Many will say that giving freed hostages a national hug will be the greatest triumph of all—something so necessary for Israel’s collective spirit and its resilience over the long term.

Many Israelis might feel this to be so even if the deal entails a near-total withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces from the Gaza Strip. In other words, even if Hamas retains power and survives to fight another day.

However one finesses the diplomatic and defense dilemmas here, there is one additional grand security calculus that seems absent from public discourse: the piercingly high price of releasing many Palestinian terrorists from Israeli jails which will be part of any deal.

The released terrorists assuredly will strike again with God-only-knows how many Israeli casualties in the future. Their release certainly will incentivize future kidnappings, pour gasoline onto the terrorist fires already raging in Judea and Samaria, and catapult Hamas toward its intended takeover of Judea and Samaria, too.

I know this because its has been the case with every previous terrorist release. Israel has repeatedly erred by letting terrorists loose to murder more Israelis.

Each time, in advance of every deal, the Israeli “security establishment” arrogantly and falsely has assured Israeli politicians and the public that it “would know how to manage the situation,” i.e., how to track the terrorists and crush any nascent return to terrorist activity without too much harm done.

But this has never proven to be true. Every deal involving the release of terrorists has led to more bloodshed, planned and carried out by these released terrorists.

Hey @IDF: Fix your website!

I and others have been frustrated by the IDF not being as responsive to queries from us and from reporters as we would like.

But many of the questions could be answered if the IDF website was updated, and easy to navigate. It contains lots of evidence of Hamas violating international law and the IDF adhering to it, but finding specific information is not easy for me, with an IT background. It is even worse for people who aren't conversant in searching sites.

One solution is to hire a librarian.

Library science is designed to categorize information and make it easy to find. A list of press releases is not necessarily the best thing to search on - finding everything about Shifa hospital would be much better. Librarians are trained to do this sort of thing. How hard could this be?

Also, keep things up to date. There is a mediocre page (not easy to find) showing evidence of Hamas use of hospitals from 2023, and it says it will be continuously updated with new information.

It never was.

Don't make promises you can't keep - and better yet, keep your promises!

Another way that might appeal more to the IDF is to add an artificial intelligence engine in front of the site so people can ask questions and get answers in plain language. There are plenty of AI products that can slurp up a database of disorganized information and answer questions. It would have to be well tested, of course, to make sure the AI is not saying anything that violates IDF positions or policies, but again - how hard can this be?

The war is now 15 months old. Even if there is a ceasefire, the cognitive war is still going to go on. Having a place where a reporter can ask "Show me evidence of Hamas activity in schools" would be priceless.

What is stopping the IDF from doing something that is such a no-brainer?

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The San Diego Journal of International Law, Spring 2025, will include an article by Avraham Russell Shalev about siege warfare and the double standards of the international community towards Israel.

The abstract:

On October 9th, 2023, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared a “complete siege on the Gaza Strip” following Hamas’s attack on Israel. This siege, aimed at severing all supplies, quickly drew international condemnation from humanitarian NGOs and scholars, who argued it violated laws of war due to Gaza’s civilian population. Despite evidence of Hamas diverting aid, Israel faced pressure to lift the siege and allow humanitarian aid. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) took significant steps, with the ICJ mandating Israel to enable humanitarian assistance and the ICC seeking arrest warrants against Israeli leaders for war crimes, including “starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.”

This article explores whether the international response to Israel’s actions marks a shift in the legal standards governing siege warfare, potentially setting stricter regulations that could effectively ban the tactic in populated areas. It reviews the legal framework of armed conflict relevant to sieges, including The Hague Regulations and the Geneva Conventions, and examines recent Security Council Resolutions concerning the Syrian conflict. The article analyzes Israel’s compliance with international humanitarian obligations during the Gaza siege and considers any special duties Israel might have towards Gaza.

Additionally, the article discusses how recent ICJ and ICC developments may signal reduced tolerance for siege warfare, and the implications for future conflicts. By comparing the international acceptance of siege tactics in other conflicts, such as Fallujah, Mosul, and Marawi, the article argues that the criticism of Israel’s actions may reflect a double standard. It concludes by emphasizing the need for objective legal standards and cautioning against politicizing neutral legal rules.

The paper, after reviewing the relevant laws, concludes that siege is legal under specific circumstances:

Siege can be considered a lawful military tactic within the bounds of established armed conflict laws, such as distinction and proportionality. While besieging parties are not actively required to provide humanitarian aid, they are generally expected to permit third party relief efforts under appropriate conditions. The provision of humanitarian assistance is subject to the principle of military necessity but cannot be denied capriciously or arbitrarily. Humanitarian aid is conditioned on reaching its destination, with no serious concern for diversion or the enemy’s accrual of military or economic advantage. The besieging party may set the technical arrangements for the delivery of aid. The prohibition of starvation of civilians as a method of warfare refers to intentional starvation as the goal of the siege, as opposed to incidental deprivation in a siege aimed at weakening and defeating enemy forces.

Shalev notes that the South Africa ICC case says that a legal siege is really genocide. "While there are legitimate disagreements among states and jurists as to the exact contours of permitted siege under international law, South Africa has alleged that this military tactic is none other than genocide, the “crime of crimes” under international law."

His conclusion:

As seen in Fallujah, Mosul, and Marawi, siege tactics are sometimes employed when other military strategies could lead to even greater civilian harm. Restricting this tactic could require states to rely on more intense force, complicating operations within densely populated areas. Reevaluating siege as a military strategy might unintentionally encourage hostile groups to establish bases in urban zones, anticipating that the international community would be highly cautious about the civilian costs of such operations.

Concerns persist that the criticism of Israeli siege tactics represents a lex specialis directed solely at Israel, rather than a standard applied universally to other states in similar circumstances. Despite condemnations by the United Nations and various human rights organizations, major military powers have recognized siege warfare’s legality in other contexts, such as Fallujah, Mosul, and Marawi. While states and jurists may in good faith debate the specific boundaries of permissible siege tactics, these disagreements differ substantially from accusations of war crimes or genocide. The selective politicization of neutral legal standards risks undermining the international community’s credibility as impartial arbiters and may alienate states that feel subjected to inconsistent treatment.

Which is a polite way to say that the rules are different for Jews.

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The "State of Palestine" says international law protects Hamas using hospitals as military bases

In my last post, I discussed a small part of the insanely biased UN Human Rights report on Israeli actions around hospitals in Gaza.

The Palestinian Authority wrote a response to the report, and it whined that the report was not anti-Israel enough.

The tone is set by its first complaint:

We reiterate the importance of using precise terminology, as we have emphasized previously. Specifically, the term "Israeli illegal occupying forces" have to be used rather than "Israeli defense forces," particularly in light of the recent advisory opinion issued by the International Court of Justice in July 2024, which reaffirmed the illegality of this occupation. Consequently, it is important to refer to the situation not as "military operations," but as "violations of international law in the context of prolonged illegal occupation."

Someone should write to the UN insisting that they never refer to the "State of Palestine" but to "a gang of terrorists who engage in, support and celebrate murdering Jews." It is certainly a more accurate description.

The other complaints are equally nonsensical and lacking in any supporting evidence. For example, the response says flatly that Israel bombed the Al-Ahli Hospital, claiming "numerous independent investigations" have proven that. Therefore they insist that the UN refer to the incident as an Israeli missile and not allow any doubt on the matter. Yet even Human Rights Watch says that it was an Islamic Jihad rocket that exploded.

Furthermore, the PA accuses Israel of an "indirect form of biological warfare against the besieged Palestinian population" because of infectious diseases and the false accusation that Israel is denying allowing vaccines into Gaza. This is a blood libel.

But perhaps the most notable part of the response is that it denies even the existence of any international law that exonerates Israel.

We disagree with the notion that hospitals in Gaza may forfeit their protection, as innocent civilians are seeking refuge there.

The ICRC says quite explicitly:

[T]he protection of medical units ceases when they are being used, outside their humanitarian function, to commit acts harmful to the enemy. This exception is provided for in the First and Fourth Geneva Conventions and in both Additional Protocols. It is contained in numerous military manuals and military orders. It is also supported by other practice.

According to the Commentary on the First Geneva Convention, examples of acts harmful to the enemy include the use of medical units to shelter able-bodied combatants, to store arms or munitions, as a military observation post or as a shield for military action.

The Palestinian Authority explicitly rejects international law. The PA supports Hamas using hospitals as military bases that may never be attacked under any circumstances.

This is an official response by the "State of Palestine." It is not an off-the-cuff remark by some minor official on social media - these are their official positions. While Israel's response to the UN report includes five pages and dozens of links and references to videos, photos and interviews that prove its case, the Palestinian response has none.

Lying is official policy of the Palestinian Authority.

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Two weeks ago the UN Human Rights Office issued a "Thematic Report – Attacks on hospitals during the escalation of hostilities in Gaza (7 October 2023 – 30 June 2024)."

Here is one example of how biased against Israel the UN is.

Israel says that it is only attacking terrorist elements in the hospitals. Here is how the UN describes Israel's claims:

In all instances where the Israeli military has attacked hospitals, apart from Al Awda Hospital in Northern Gaza and Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al Balah in Middle Gaza, Israel has alleged that the hospitals were being used by Palestinian armed groups.[32] In its comments on this report, the Government of Israel makes these arguments specifically in reference to Rantisi, Sheikh Hamad, Al Quds, Indonesia and Nasser hospitals. [33] However, insufficient information has so far been made publicly available to substantiate these allegations, which have remained vague and broad, and in some cases appear contradicted by publicly available information.[34]

Let's compare the footnotes for the competing claims.

Footnote 32 points to an eleven page report from Israel describing in detail terror activity in the hospitals and IDF efforts to not hurt patients. Footnote 33 points to four links from the IDF and Israeli newspapers detailing, with photos and videos, that tunnels and weapons were found in the hospitals.

And the footnote that says that the claims were vague and contradicted by other information? It points to an interview with ICC prosecutor Andrew Cayley in The Guardian:

Cayley said the ICC faced “great difficulty assessing” the level of Hamas militant presence in hospitals “because clearly there are lies being spoken, but that is really something we do need to get to the bottom of as a prosecution office”.

He added: “I think that has been grossly exaggerated, but we need to be able to demonstrate very clearly what the level of military presence was, if at all, in these hospitals because I think we’ve been misled about that in the press.”

Cayley indicated that Israeli operations against Gaza’s healthcare facilities would be examined. “Looking at damage to health facilities, destruction of health facilities, we will be coming on to that probably later next year. We’re having to do this in stages simply because of the resources that we have,” he added.

Cayley says that he thinks Israel is exaggerating its claims, he does not bring one iota of evidence that anything they say is wrong. It's just a gut feeling.

The ICC prosecution - by its own admittance - has not done any investigation and is making statements without any facts.

There is nothing in the article that says that Israel's claims are contradicted by publicly available information. The UN made that up.

The UN points to that one article with no information as a counter-proof to specific Israeli claims that include videos, photos and statements by terrorists themselves who were captured.

Later on in he report the UN dismisses photos of weapons found in the hospitals:

The IDF published pictures of some weapons reportedly found at Al Shifa Medical Complex, although these appeared to be mainly a small number of small weapons and therefore not necessarily of a nature to conclude that hostilities had been launched or directed from the hospital.

The weapons found were just the normal kinds of things one would find at a hospital: automatic weapons, grenades, ammunition and flak jackets.

Why are there any weapons at a hospital? Why would some be hidden in incubators? What is the exact amount of weapons that the IDF must find to prove that a hospital was not being used as a hospital?

The UN is a joke. A very bad one.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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