Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, January 20, 2025

Israel is seen more favorably than CNN and the EU by Americans - and young Americans now support Israel more than most other age groups!

A Harvard CAPS/Harris poll was just released, and it shows that Americans remain strongly pro-Israel.

Taken on January 15-16, the survey asked 2,650 US voters a series of questions about the political environment ahead of President-elect Trump's inauguration today.

One question asked how favorably Americans judged a series of institutions:

Israel is seen more favorably by Americans than the European Union, CNN. MSNBC and X. The gap of favorable over unfavorable is better for Israel than the US Supreme Court, the Department of Justice and Fox News. (If you calculate the percentage of favorable answers over all people who held an opinion, Israel also edges Facebook.)

Given the huge amount of anti-Israel reporting and coverage of anti-Israel events for the past 15 months, this is pretty remarkable.

Another response is perhaps even more surprising:

It is not surprising that 4 out of 5 Americans support Israel over Hamas. But the age breakdown shatters the impression that has been given that young Americans are inexorably becoming more anti-Israel.

A higher percentage of US voters 18-24 say they support Israel than any other age group under 55!

The pattern of younger people becoming more and more anti-Israel appears to have been broken by Gen Z.

This is something worth investigating. Did the pro-Hamas college encampments turn them off? Are they now getting most of their news from social media and therefore not as exposed to the toxic hate from the mainstream media? Is hasbara actually working for the first time in decades?

I hope some organizations look at this further (and I wish I had the resources to do this myself.)

(h/t JW)

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Is all aid entering Gaza being inspected for weapons by Israel? At least some appears to go straight through Rafah

This photo bothers me a great deal.

This and many other photos taken yesterday indicate that "humanitarian aid" is bring transported directly into Gaza from Egypt without going through the extensive inspections that are done at the Kerem Shalom border crossing.

This is the Rafah crossing normally open only for people. The gate on the right that the trucks are going through is only opened for exceptional circumstances and, officially, those goods are inspected by the Egyptian army or the NGOs there. Israel is not in the loop.

The Kerem Shalom crossing has an opening from the Egyptian side. It is two miles to the south of the Rafah crossing. When I visited there over ten years ago, it was merely a dirt road from Egypt blocked by a cheap fence and a mound of earth. Satellite photos taken recently show that there is little (if any) infrastructure on the Egyptian side of Kerem Shalom.

The the past seven months hundreds of trucks of aid from Egypt has gone through Israel where they were inspected at Kerem Shalom for the south and Crossing 96 for northern Gaza.

The Egyptian Gazette, on the other hand, reports:

The flow of humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip began on Sunday with the first moments of the ceasefire taking effect, facilitated through the Rafah Border Crossing.

A source in North Sinai confirmed that approximately 300 aid trucks entered through the Rafah crossing en route to the Al-Auja and Kerem Shalom crossings, the official Middle East News Agency (MENA) reported on Tuesday.

Of these, 250 trucks are set to reach the Al-Auja crossing and 50 to the Kerem Shalom crossing for inspection before entering Gaza as an initial batch. Meanwhile, hundreds of additional trucks remain stationed at the Rafah crossing, awaiting the green light to proceed.

The trucks carried large quantities of relief supplies, including food, fuel, and medical supplies, tailored to meet local needs in coordination between the Egyptian Red Crescent, the Palestinian Red Crescent, and security authorities.

This makes it sound like most trucks do get inspected by Israel, but it makes no sense that the trucks directly entering Gaza are being routed back outside and then into Gaza again. The "Al Auja crossing" is the Nitzana crossing between Israel and Egypt, 25 miles to the south of Rafah. There is no way trucks enter Gaza and then go back out to Nitzana.

Reuters reported, "The aid trucks were using the Kerem Shalom entry point pending completion of maintenance at the Rafah border crossing into southern Gaza from Egypt, the sources said." But again, the photos and videos at Rafah tell a different story.

The best I can guess is that some goods are getting routed through Israel for inspection but others, including fuel and at least some dry goods, are being allowed to enter Gaza directly through Rafah.

There is no question that the goods entering Gaza are being skimmed or taken wholesale by Hamas before they get to the people. Hamas maintains its economic strength through this aid. The international community has been doing everything they could to stymie Israel from blocking Hamas from stealing the aid.

Egyptian authorities control Rafah, and are said to do their own inspections there. However, there are clearly no giant X-ray machines like Israel has in Rafah. Egyptian officials are also subject to bribes and the entire crossing regime is corrupt, as we saw with the huge fees Egyptian officials extorted from Gazans trying to leave.

I have seen no direct evidence that weapons have been smuggled into Gaza through Rafah between October 7 2023 and May 2024 when Israel took control of the corridor. The IDF is still there, at least for now, but again they do not have the facilities to inspect trucks inside Gaza.

COGAT has not answered by queries about this as of this writing.

Small arms and Iranian cash can certainly be hidden in the large containers of aid we are seeing going straight into Gaza.

How does anyone know that that isn't happening?

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

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Mustafa Barghouti, Palestinian "moderate" advocating non-violence in English on @CNN, condones "armed resistance" and Hamas terrorism in Arabic

Hamas held a meeting in Doha along with top officials of major terror groups Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front, the Popular Front-General Command and the Palestinian People’s Party, to talka about a "day after" scenario in Gaza.

Pointedly, no one from Fatah attended.

But also attending this meeting was Mustafa Barghouti, the head of the "National Initiative," sitting two seats away from the head of Islamic Jihad and four seats from Khalil al-Hayya, the Hamas official who praised October 7 and vows to continue more attacks until Israel is destroyed.

Barghouti sat in a place of honor at the front of the room along with major terrorist leaders.

According to Hamas, the participants of the meeting saluted all the "military wings of the Palestinian resistance factions" as well as those who shot rockets and drones to Israel from Yemen, Iran, and Iraq.

Barghouti is considered a "moderate." He is a frequent guest on Western cable news shows; he was interviewed by Fareed Zakaria of CNN on Sunday and by Christiane Amanpour last week.

While in Doha he appeared to agree with Hamas that October 7 was a great accomplishment; when he returned to Ramallah a day later he told Zakaria that he espouses non-violence and even claimed, ludicrously, that he convinced Hamas to abandon violence for five years in Gaza before Israel attacked.

Why is Hamas inviting him to this meeting that supports violence against Jews unless he tacitly agrees with them?

While he doesn't say it in English, his "National Initiative" movement (which appears to be tiny) says that it does support armed resistance "as long as international humanitarian law is respected." Barghouti does not elaborate on exactly what that means - many Palestinians have claimed that terrorism is legal under international law - but in this interview he is asked to clarify whether he supports the October 7 attacks and he weas careful not to say anything negative about them, saying that Palestinian people have the "right to resist." He later emphasized that he does not say he supports "peaceful popular resistance" but merely "popular resistance," saying others ascribed the word "peaceful" to him, and then admits that he believes that "armed resistance" is a legitimate and complementary component to popular resistance.

His refusal to condemn Hamas rapes, murders and burning families indicates that Brghouti is not the peace-loving person he claims to be on CNN.

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

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01/19 Links: Hostages Romi Gonen, Emily Damari, Doron Steinbrecher return to Israel after 471 days

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: An obscene spectacle

To all those in the west who have perpetrated the lie of Israeli genocide in Gaza for the past 15 months: look at the pictures of the mob surrounding the three Israel women hostages who were freed today, and see thousands of Gazans who are well-fed, well-groomed and well-dressed.

What do you have to say now about the murderous libel you have perpetrated against the Israeli victims of these people, the lie that the Israelis were deliberately starving them, that they were the victims of Israeli-induced famine, that the Jews were behaving like Nazis? Do you have a scintilla of shame or regret about what you have done in spreading this foul incitement? Do you even understand what you saw today? Or are you too busy cheering on instead the pictures of those “pro-Palestinian” hate-marchers in London yesterday, dozens of whom were arrested by the police because they were absolutely determined to harass and terrorise British Jews at their synagogue Sabbath services nearby?

Look at that horrifying footage of those Gaza mobs, those enormous potential lynch mobs jeering and threatening the three Israeli women as they were handed over to the Red Cross — the same mobs who abused the live hostages and desecrated the bodies of the murdered ones when they were all dragged into Gaza after the October 7 massacre; look at that footage and then tell us all again that the vast majority of Palestinian Arabs in Gaza are innocent civilians and victims of the Israelis.

Listen to those mobs chanting ecstatically for the murder of Jews in a willed repetition of the slaughter of Jews by Islam’s founder Mohammed in 7th century Khybar; then watch Sky News report this as a “celebration,” and then begin to understand the depravity of the western media that’s sanitised this barbarism for 15 months and demonised its victims.

Look at the thousands who have emerged in Hamas uniform and armed to the teeth, vowing to carry out more and more October 7 massacres until every Jew is dead and Israel is destroyed — Hamas murder squads loudly declaring that they will use the ceasefire to regroup, rearm and attack Israel; and then listen to the politicians hailing this development as the beginning of peace.

Look with breaking heart at the poignant joy and indescribable relief from suffering of the families reunited with their newly freed girls — how can this be anything other than a source not just of joy but also shuddering horror at what they have endured and at who knows what scars they will bear for the rest of their lives; and a source also of the most profound agony over the vast majority of the Israeli captives, both alive and dead, who remain incarcerated as pawns of these Palestinian Arab psychopaths, and who will now be used to eke out further unbearable distress among the hostages and their families, and to extort and manipulate the Israelis into ensuring that Hamas survive, regroup and resume the business of genocide.

Jake Wallis Simons: The West stands on the brink of destruction

Over coffee a little while ago, during one of her visits to London from her home in Israel, the British public commentator Melanie Phillips fixed me with her characteristic warm and penetrating gaze and remarked: “As you know, Jake, in my career there hasn’t been a hill I haven’t died on.”

Her penetrating mind is familiar to everybody who knows her work; but her warmth is most tangible in person. Nonetheless, both qualities come across strongly in her new book, The Builder’s Stone: How Jews and Christians built the West – and why only they can save it, which reads like both an anguished letter to friends and a desperate map of blood-stained battlefields.

Melanie’s basic thesis is that the West can only be saved by restoring to its rightful place its foundation stone of Judeo-Christian faith. Prescribing religion as a remedy for a sick society? In these days of arrests of people praying in silence outside abortion clinics, this is one of the least fashionable and most badly defended hills of all. We have arrived at Melanie’s Little Bighorn. Along the way, however, are many other hills and she defiantly circles the wagons on each.

This is risky writing. Melanie raises her musket at the destruction of childhood in a tsunami of “all must win prizes” and “drag queen story hour”, the liberalisation of drugs and the decline of the family.

She also takes aim at the collapse of religion, demographic malaise, the decline of Western deterrence, the denial of Islamism, the weaponisation of human rights and conservatism itself, which has “forgotten what it needs to conserve”.

Several gory hills will take you by surprise. The Greeks. Dawkins. Freud. Eastern religion (“part of the West’s ongoing cultural tragedy”). Tattoos (“I ink therefore I am”).

Last but by no means least, the author kneels for seppuku on the most dangerous hill of all when she places Islam outside the spheres of progress and modernity, embracing the dagger with both hands.

These are not isolated debates. To Melanie, all are battles in a greater war, one that will only be won when faith is restored in the debauched and arid heart of society.

Is she shouting into the wind? Despite the widely publicised uptick in church attendance in recent years, this is little more than a blip in a wider trend of spiritual decline. At one point, Melanie calls for a “PR makeover” for religion. If the future of the West rests on the Alpha Course, I’m packing my bags for Israel.

Nonetheless, her call for society to learn lost resilience from the Jews is compelling and her plea for the West to rediscover its soul is both vital and poignant.

Khaled Abu Toameh: A Deal that Keeps Hamas in Power Is Meaningless

Those who think that the Iran-backed Palestinian terrorist group Hamas will abandon its Jihad (holy war) to murder more Jews and destroy Israel in the aftermath of the recent ceasefire-hostage agreement are mistaken. The deal does not require Hamas to disarm or cede control over Gaza. To Hamas, this is just another deal similar to ceasefire agreements reached with Israel after previous rounds of fighting over the past 20 years.

Hamas supporters in Khan Yunis took to the streets to celebrate the ceasefire-hostage deal and chanted: "We will go to Jerusalem, we will sacrifice millions of martyrs!" Hamas supporters in Ramallah, the de facto capital of the Palestinian Authority, chanted slogans in support of slain Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif, the masterminds of the Oct. 7 carnage.

A ceasefire-hostage deal that allows Hamas to remain in power means that it is only a matter of time before the terrorist groups attempt to launch another Oct. 7-style attack on Israel. Hamas's defiant statements show that its leadership is willing to sacrifice more of its people to fulfill its objective of destroying Israel. The only deal that will actually bring peace is one where Hamas ceases to exist.

What Hamas Looks Like after the Ceasefire Deal

For the IDF commanders involved in the protracted and complex fight against Hamas, it is clear that further action will be necessary.

Defense officials believe that Hamas or other rogue groups in Gaza likely will provide justification for resuming combat operations.

Military commanders anticipate years of ground operations in Gaza to scale Hamas back to its size of two decades ago.

Hamas still retains tens of kilometers of tunnels, particularly in central and southern Gaza, that could be used to restart limited weapons production, conceal thousands of weapons, and hide senior commanders.

Hamas has also recruited and armed hundreds of new members, including teenagers, to replenish its ranks.

Hamas retains two brigades in Nuseirat and al-Bureij in central Gaza, which have been largely untouched - possibly due to the presence of hostages in the area.

The Terrorists Live to Fight On

The ceasefire deal legitimates Hamas as a continuing force in Gaza. They will remain on the ground and Israel will not. Hamas now knows they will be part of future negotiations. Plenty of malign actors - many of them in Western governments, policy elites and media - will even start to hail them as peacemakers.

Moreover, the deal will prove that hostage-taking works. If Hamas had simply murdered those 1,200 plus people on Oct. 7, they would have won themselves no protection against Israeli retaliation. Because they took the hostages, they were able to make Israel hesitate.

The deal will also be seen in Islamist minds as a successful precedent. Capture Jews, will be the internal message, torture them, kill a proportion of them, play cat-and-mouse about the ones who live, and it will give you power. So, when you get the chance, do it again.

As the country founded to offer refuge to Jews everywhere, Israel has a Talmudically inspired duty to rescue them wherever it can. It is pierced, too, by the deep personal pain inflicted on so many families. Politically, it may be that there is an Israeli consensus round the idea that this deal is, as one Jewish friend expert in the region put it to me, "bad, but essential."

But I cannot let go of the point that, with this deal, Hamas have pried open the jaws of defeat and won, if not a victory, at least the chance to live and fight and murder for much more than another day.

Book review: "Young Zionist Voices"

Young Zionist Voices: A New Generation Speaks Out is a collection of 31 essays that make one hopeful for the future.

Similar to his previous book, Jewish Priorities: Sixty-Five Proposals for the Future of Our People, David Hazony found a diverse group of writers to each write about a specific topic, in this case Zionism.

While the writers have different colors, nationalities, politics and opinions, they all share a love of Israel and they are all unapologetically and proudly Zionist.

This is not a book that makes the case for Zionism. It is a book that shows the passion and challenges that young people today - all seemingly under 30 - have in living in a world where antisemitism and its twin anti-Zionism have become mainstream. Virtually all of them have chosen to respond to the recent tsunami of hate, especially after October 7, by leaning in to their love of Israel.

The essays are all smart and forceful. A few of the writers go beyond intelligence into wisdom.

They also make me feel old. I started my Israel advocacy when I was already more than a decade older than every one of these writers, and the ones who were born after I started this site were not yet in first grade. I am ashamed to say that I was not familiar with most of them and I need to expand the circle of people I follow on social media to include many of them.

To be sure, there are occasional passages that show that a few of the thinkers do not have the experience or historical knowledge to properly put today's events in context of the past two millennia of Jew hatred. That's okay - they will learn, and they are eager to learn.

The target audience seems to be people who are already committed Zionists, to make use feel better about the future. That's fine - we all need chizuk. However, I think that there is another audience that really needs to read this: the young Jewish adults just entering college or those who find themselves confused by seeing their friends turn against their spiritual homeland.

I recently wrote about "permission structures," the concept behind J-Street and JVP to allow Jews to become anti-Israel while pretending to remain committed to Judaism. If Jews see their fellow Jews turn against Israel it gives them "permission" to do the same.

Young Zionist Voices can and should be used to give a permission structure for young Jews to become proud Zionists. The modern "permission structure" gives a false pretense of "human rights" to smear their people, parents and ancestors. Young Zionist Voices gives a permission structure to be proud of who they are and to stand up for their own people. It shows that the most admirable Jews are the ones who fully and unapologetically support their own.

Young Zionist Voices represents the Jewish and Zionist leaders of tomorrow, and the future is a lot brighter than we thought.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Reminder: @UNRWA teachers in Gaza celebrate terror - and Hitler

International organizations are rallying to pressure Israel not to shut down UNRWA in its territory. The World Food Programme, for example, last week wrote in a report, "WFP can send around 1,600 trucks of food (30,200 tons) each month to facilitate distributions for over 1 million people. In order to reach everyone in need, UNRWA’s support is critical. WFP is committed to bolstering UNRWA’s food assistance delivery efforts. "

I was just browsing around some UN documents and I came across a submission by an Israeli NGO Amuta called "Palestinian Exploitation of Children as Weapons of War."

One footnote references a post I wrote on this site in 2015, which is quite relevant today as the international community wants to shore up UNRWA as a legitimate organization.

I had found a Facebook group of Gaza UNRWA teachers. Among the things the teachers posted were photos of their students pretending to be jihadists:

Here is a "prescription" for shooting rockets to Israel.

Name of patient: Ben Gurion Age: 78 years old Male

1 M75 (Hamas rocket) twice a day, a rocket in the morning and a rocket in the evening at 6 o'clock, before eating, together with a warning siren

And here is a (false) Hitler quote:

"I could have killed all the Jews of the world but I left some of them (alive) so that the world knows why I am killing them" - Hitler

UNRWA never acknowledged this. They silently removed the group without apology. They never, as far as I know, disciplined the teachers and employees who proudly posted antisemitism and support for terror in their group.

There is no reason whatsoever to think that those teachers are not still teaching hate in Gaza.

This is only one reason why UNRWA should not exist.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

On Friday, the UN issued a press release:

Under-Secretary-General Miguel Ángel Moratinos, High Representative for the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC), will hold a hybrid press briefing to announce the launch of the United Nations Action Plan to Enhance Monitoring and Response to Antisemitism.

The United Nations has long worked on addressing antisemitism. The Action Plan, which is focused on the United Nations system, is developed by UNAOC. Building on the numerous efforts undertaken by the UN over past decades, this Action Plan aims to ensure an even more coordinated and effective response to counter antisemitism.

In particular, the Action provides detailed recommended actions for enhancing the United Nations Monitoring and Response to Antisemitism. These action points include:

Establish a United Nations Monitoring and Evaluation Working Group to monitor and evaluate the impact of policies and measures to address antisemitism
Enhance awareness and understanding of antisemitism among United Nations personnel
Promote implementation of the Action Plan on the UN’s monitoring and countering antisemitism

Yes, the world's most prominent organization that justifies antisemitism claims to be an authority in fighting antisemitism.

The document itself doesn't say anything directly objectionable. Indirectly, it does, by refusing to accept the IHRA definition of antisemitism even though it knows that is the only one accepted by any country.

The ability to understand and identify antisemitism is crucial to global efforts to combat hatred and prejudice, and to uphold human rights and human dignity. While a shared understanding can serve not only the work of the United Nations, but of all nations striving to create effective policies and programmes to combat this form of hate, the absence of a universally accepted definition cannot affect decisive action aimed to root out antisemitism.

As of December 2024, 45 United Nations Member States have adopted or endorsed the IHRA version as a non-legally binding working definition of antisemitism, and many use it for training law enforcement agencies and educators. While there is a diversity of views and other definitions have been developed , unlike the IHRA definition, none of them have been adopted by any United Nations Member State. Nonetheless, the United Nations Secretariat does not endorse any definition on antisemitism.

It is important to note that any definition of antisemitism should be applied taking into account the guidance provided in the Human Rights Committee general comment No. 34 on freedoms of opinion and expression (2011), in the Rabat Plan of Action (2012), and in the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination general recommendation No. 35 on combating racist hate speech (2013). In this regard, the Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion and belief noted in 2019 that criticism of the Government of Israel is not per se antisemitic, , unless it is accompanied by manifestations of hatred towards Jews in general or by expressions that build on traditional antisemitic stereotypes.

This is their way of saying that the IHRA definition calls normal criticism of the Government of Israel antisemitic - when it says the opposite. What the UN is really saying is that no criticism of Israel can be considered antisemitic unless it explicitly mentions Jews or says things like "Zionists control the world financial system."

Holocaust inversion, for example, is not antisemitic according to the UN.

Saying that Jewish nationalism is racist while other nationalisms are not is not antisemitic according to the UN.

The announcement is a study in hypocrisy.

After all, when UN representatives say antisemitic things, the UN doesn't say a word of protest.

Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories agreed with a social media post that compared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler. She has compared the Gaza war started by Hamas with the Holocaust several times. In February 2024, Albanese stated that the victims of the October 7 Hamas attacks were killed "not because of their Judaism, but in response to Israeli oppression," a remark that was condemned by France and Germany as antisemitic.

Miloon Kothari, a member of the UN Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry on the Situation in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza made comments in July 2022 referring to the "Jewish lobby," echoing age-old antisemitic tropes.

Richard A. Falk, when he was UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, posted a cartoon in 2011 depicting a dog with a Jewish head-covering urinating on Lady Justice while devouring bloody human bones. Only when people complained did he apologize.

In all cases, the UN did nothing.

But that only scratches the surface, because the UN's double standards and obsession with Israel - so many anti-Israel resolutions both in the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council while all but ignoring human rights violations by the rest of the world - makes the UN one of the top causes and purveyors of antisemitism today.

And now we are going to believe the UN when they claim they are going to combat antisemitism?

Fire Albanese to begin with. Publicly accept the IHRA definition of antisemitism that says that double standards for Israel is not acceptable. Then maybe we can discuss whether the UN does anything concrete to combat antisemitism.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Ari Fuld's murderer is getting released. A rapist is getting released. Major terror leaders are getting released. This is SO BAD.

I really want to find a silver lining in the hostage deal, but every day it seems worse.

Hillel Fuld tweeted that the person who stabbed his hero brother Ari Fuld to death is on the list of terrorists to be released.

This was not a terror attack from 20 years ago during the second intifada. Ari was murdered in 2018, and he managed to shoot his murderer and save other lives before succumbing.

Other people being released include leaders of terror organizations, not just low level operatives. Most of them have already been in prison for over two decades. But when I see a name like Mahmoud Atallah, I am enraged. Atallah was indicted in September for raping a female prison guard at Gilboa Prison but he has been accused of having female guards under a reign of sexual terror at the prison, a scandal that also involves guards turning a blind eye.

How could such a monster be released?

Studies have been done showing that the number of people killed by released prisoners is far higher than the number who have been saved in swaps. More Israelis will be killed by these murderers in coming years, without question. It is irresponsible to release them knowing that the lives saved today will be far outstripped tomorrow.

It is the highest duty of a nation to protect its citizens. That doesn't only mean today but also in the future.

I want to see the hostages released safely to their families as much as anyone, but this puts the entire nation of Israel at further risk.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

01/18 Links: Shoah Revisionism After Gaza; Israel’s Prisoner’s Dilemma; Israel-Hamas truce to begin Sunday at 8:30 am; 70+ arrests at anti-Israel London protest

From Ian:

Dr. Dave Rich: Shoah Revisionism After Gaza

Still, any misleading equivalences or flawed comparisons made by supporters of Israel are as nothing compared to the unrelenting avalanche of bad faith, malign and ignorant distortions and abuse of the Holocaust that have become entirely normalized within anti-Israel discourse. Every anti-Israel demonstration features countless placards comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, Israeli politicians to Hitler, and Gaza to Auschwitz. You’ll hear it on radio phone-ins and TV debates, while #GazaHolocaust trends repeatedly online. Even Holocaust museums and archives have been targeted: “Gaza” was daubed on the sign of Lon- don’s Wiener Holocaust Library in November 2023, and a pro-Palestinian demonstration was called outside the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, although that was subsequently cancelled after an outcry. You find it at the highest levels of Palestinian politics: Mahmoud Abbas blamed Israel for “fifty Holocausts” in 2022, and the following year in a speech at the United Nations he compared Israel to Nazi propa- ganda chief Joseph Goebbels. The Hamas charter accuses Israel of “Nazi treatment” of Palestinians. It is difficult to convey just how ubiquitous this is, and how much it goes unchallenged in anti-Israel circles. It would be banal were it not so grotesque.[5]

There are lots of reasons why people do this. Some of it reflects a well- meaning, if perhaps naïve, effort to use the idea of “Never Again” as a rallying cry for peace and humanity in today’s world. However, this is the exception rather than the rule. Most of the time when people invoke the Holocaust to criticize Israel, they do not have such admirable motives. For some, it is an exercise in finger-wagging at the Jewish people, as if they failed to learn the right lessons from their own near miss with exter- mination. For others, there is gleeful relief that they no longer need to listen to Jews going on about the Holocaust, because now those same Jews are behaving just like the Nazis did. There’s a sense of bringing the Jews down a rung or two on the hierarchy of competitive victimhood, allied to a belief that any political or societal benefits derived from this will transfer on to other, more deserving, groups. Then there is the sheer taboo-busting pleasure of doing something so monumentally offensive in the name of anti-racism and human rights. The one place a person of the left can wave a swastika around without worrying about losing their progressive status is, with no irony at all, on a march against the world’s only Jewish state. It’s how self-identifying anti-racists get to experience the transgressive thrill of pretending to be Nazis for a day.

There is a much less vulgar version of the widespread accusation that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza. This has, of course, reached the status of a formal case at the International Court of Justice, which will presumably follow due process in adjudicating on that case. In that respect, it is worth noting that talk of a genocide in Gaza began within just a few days of the October 7 attack, and often came from people who had already been arguing for some years that the Palestinians were being subjected to a ‘slow genocide’ by Israel. The alacrity with which so many of these anti-Israel voices began to proclaim a genocide in Gaza so soon after October 7 almost gave the impression of a ghoulish anticipation that events seemed to be catching up with the discourse, rather than the discourse following and describing events.

Buried within this world of Nazi comparisons and genocide allegations lies an intellectual effort to construct an argument that Israel’s sins are so egregious, the Jewish people—or at least, those Jews who have been seduced by Zionism—have lost the moral standing to continue as the guardians of Holocaust memory. Perhaps the most serious and thoughtful example of this came in a 7,500-word essay in the London Review of Books in March 2024, written by the author Pankaj Mishra, titled “The Shoah after Gaza.”6 Drawing on the writings of Holocaust survivors such as Primo Levi and, especially, Jean Améry, as well as Israeli intellectuals and writers including Boaz Evron and Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Mishra sketched a portrait of an Israel in thrall to paranoid victimhood and “a pitiless national ethos” that is replicating the darkest episodes of human history. According to Mishra, Israel has “turned the murder of six million Jews into an intense national preoccupation.” He quotes Leibowitz accusing Israel of “Nazification” and Evron warning that Israel is displaying “racist Nazi attitudes,” and Mishra himself con- demns “the liquidation of Gaza”—a form of words that seems to mimic the Nazi liquidation of Jewish ghettos during the Holocaust. At the same time, Mishra argues, diaspora Jewry since the 1960s, especially but not only in the United States, has willingly gone along with the instrumen- talization of Holocaust memory in the service not only of Zionism but of the Western post-war political order.

Matti Friedman: Israel’s Prisoner’s Dilemma

Facing the hostage dilemma in 1985, some figures in government had to publicly, and embarrassingly, reverse earlier positions. Seven years before, for example, Yitzhak Rabin, had criticized a deal to free one Israeli soldier for 76 prisoners: By releasing terrorists guilty of killing Israelis, he raged, the government had “crossed the red line.” But at the time of that statement, Rabin was in the political opposition. When the Jibril deal came up for a vote in 1985, he was in power, and he said yes. One of the prisoners released was Ahmed Yassin, who later became the spiritual leader of Hamas.

Having leaders say one thing when in opposition, and another when in power, would become familiar to Israelis confronting the hostage dilemma in subsequent decades—and indeed this week. One outspoken critic of the Jibril deal, as it happens, was the young politician Benjamin Netanyahu. The future prime minister positioned himself as an expert on counterterrorism with books like A Place Among the Nations, from 1993, where he castigated the deal as a fatal blow to Israel’s efforts to forge an international front against terrorism. (The lone fatality of the heroic Entebbe raid that freed the hijacked hostages was Netanyahu’s brother Yoni, who led the rescue mission.) Netanyahu wrote that the Palestinian uprising known as the First Intifada, which began two years later, in 1987, was due in part to the irresponsible release of more than 1,000 prisoners by Israel’s leaders.

Just a year after the trauma of the Jibril deal, however, Israelis were presented with a tragedy that illustrated the opposite danger—that of failing to make a deal. In 1986 an air force navigator, Ron Arad, had to abandon his fighter jet after a technical malfunction over south Lebanon, and was captured by Lebanese Shia fighters. Arad was alive, and his captors named their price, but public opinion was still stinging from the previous year’s asymmetrical bargain. Attempts to win Arad’s release through military means failed, talks dragged on, and by 1988 the navigator had vanished, never to be found. To this day, the name Ron Arad is familiar to most Israelis, including millions who weren’t even born when he was taken prisoner. It’s one you hear frequently right now: Many Israelis say they fear that some of today’s hostages will become “Ron Arads,” the worst fate of all—people whose fates are never known.

Several decades and hostage swaps later, in 2011, Netanyahu was prime minister, and found himself facing the same dilemma he had written about with such assurance as a younger man. A tank crewman, Gilad Shalit, had been captured by Palestinian fighters on the Gaza border five years earlier. Nothing Israel had done brought him any closer to release, and his captors wouldn’t budge on the price. Public sympathy grew for the soldier and his parents, who conducted an effective campaign in favor of a deal with the backing of most of the Israeli press. Netanyahu found, as others did before, that it’s easier to stand on principle when you’re not facing public opinion or fainting mothers—and also understood that the majority of citizens, then and now, want to see their captives home even if the price seems reckless. With the support of most Israelis (though not all), Netanyahu made a deal that freed 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for the crewman—an exchange even more lopsided than the 1985 deal he had opposed.

Among the dangerous prisoners freed in Netanyahu’s deal was Yahya Sinwar. Sinwar went on to mastermind the October 7 attack, including the taking of the current hostages. He led Hamas in Gaza until, a year later, he was killed by Israeli troops amid the carnage of the war he started.

The first stage of the current deal, slated to last 42 days, is meant to release 33 hostages—although “release” is the right word only for the ones who are alive, and not all are. According to reports, Israel will release upwards of 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. The rest of the hostages are to be returned in a planned second and third stage, accompanied by Israeli withdrawals from Gaza and ultimately by the end of the war, but skepticism about these later stages is in order. Much can and will happen before then.

Israelis face the current deal with hope that at least some of the familiar faces from the hostage posters will finally return to their families after 15 months of horror, and also with relief at a pause in the Gaza fighting, which seems to be sinking into a war of attrition, exhausting our military reserves and delivering high Israeli casualties with diminishing returns. But the regional war that began on October 7, 2023 isn’t over, and neither is the terrible dilemma that faces Israel every time hostages fall into enemy hands. Yahya Sinwar might be dead, but the tactic that freed him, and which will now free his comrades, lives on.

Jake Wallis Simons: The Gaza cease-fires is the first win for Trump’s ‘big stick’ dimplomacy

The suffering borne by Palestinian civilians and Israeli families as the war has ground gruesomely on has been immeasurable. The end to all that is welcome. But it’s a coin toss whether this marks an end to Hamas or simply removes the boot from their necks.

The jihadi gang has certainly been dismantled as a coherent military force. It has lost 80% of its men and 90% of its fighting capacity at the hands of the IDF. But as Israeli opposition leader Benny Gantz remarked last March, there’s no point extinguishing 80% of a fire.

This week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken claimed that Hamas has been coming back hard. Its new recruits may be untrained and underage, but in the continued absence of a plan for the postwar Gaza governance, they will help Hamas retain its grip.

If Hamas keeps quiet and awaits the reconstruction phase, could it build back for another October 7? Perhaps. This time, however, things are different. Hezbollah is castrated in Lebanon, Assad is history and the Ayatollah of Tehran is mourning the smoking ruins of his air defenses, awaiting the coup de grace – which Trump may well deliver – to his nuclear program.

Which brings us to Biden. If this deal had been struck in May, as he had intended, Israel’s Gaza success would have been far more modest.

Rafah would still be a Hamas garrison town, Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh still alive, and the smuggling tunnels from Egypt still ferrying armaments, personnel, and cash into the Strip.

Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, would not be dead, his pagers and walkie-talkies would not have exploded, Tehran would not have lost its S-300 air defenses and Assad may not have been deposed. This war would have ended with a bruised but belligerent Hamas ready to strike again.

So it was hard to take Biden seriously as he faltered through his statement at the White House.

“It’s America’s support for Israel that helped them badly weaken Hamas . . . and create the conditions for this deal,” he bragged.

American weapons shipments were welcome, but Kamala Harris and Blinken had tried to block these Israeli achievements every step of the way.

It’s not that Biden gave off small-stick energy. It’s that he often had no stick at all. His administration’s craven addiction to the status quo — which presented “de-escalation” as the only legitimate response to every bad guy everywhere — led the world into its most dangerous state since the end of the Second World War.

What began with the shameful Afghan withdrawal ended with missiles on Tel Aviv. Along the way, Biden eased Trump’s “maximum pressure” policy on Venezuela and Iran — look how well that went — and war returned to Europe. Then Trump was elected. And he began to swing that stick.

01/17 Links Pt2: ‘Back to Normal’ After the Gaza War?; Melanie Phillips: 10 Steps the West Must Take In Order to Survive; JVP is a shield for hate, not a voice for peace

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: ‘Back to Normal’ After the Gaza War?

If the Israel-Hamas ceasefire agreement really does herald the end of this war, then combined with the transfer of power in Washington, the political world will largely move on from its yearlong fixation with the Mideast. But we’ve learned some important things about American politics that should inform any attempt to go “back to normal.”

The Israel-Hamas war exposed, for example, the hypocrisy of the #MeToo movement. The more that evidence of Hamas’s use of mass rape and sexual torture mounted—including detailed and graphic admissions by Hamas terrorists who carried out these monstrous acts—the more progressive voices denied it.

We also learned the hard way that “speech is violence” contains some important caveats. The truth, we now know, is that as far as campus activists and Squad-affiliated members of Congress are concerned, Jewish speech is violence—and anti-Jewish violence is speech.

The struggle against racism is noble, which is why it must be continued without the participation of people who fill the streets chanting for the Houthis, a slave-driving and institutionally racist arm of Iranian expansionism, and without white kids from Brooklyn who scream “white imperialist” at a woman from Ethiopia because she wears a Star of David around her neck.

The fight for artistic freedom and freedom of speech will be an uphill battle. The publishing industry has gone to great lengths to suppress Jewish voices; the same is true of the music industry and Jewish performers. The banishing of Jewish authors from bookstores and films with Israeli characters won’t make it any easier, nor will the violent hounding of Jewish and Israeli speakers from campuses.

Speaking of which, reclaiming academic freedom might be the longest of the long shots, as loyalty oaths have come roaring back in America’s institutions of higher learning. Nor does the anti-disinformation campaign have much hope, led as it is by those who post only disinformation and blood libels.

I could go on, but the point is made. Of all the hypocrisies facing the Jewish community post-ceasefire, however, surely none stings more than the one regarding the concept of ceasefires itself.

House Republicans urge Trump to immediately nominate an Abraham Accords ambassador

A group of 47 House Republicans led by Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) urged President-elect Donald Trump to immediately nominate an ambassador-rank special envoy for the Abraham Accords, a position that has been left empty since it was created by Congress in late 2023.

Lawler and Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) introduced legislation in 2023 to create a new ambassador-level position for the Abraham Accords, Negev Forum and Middle East regional normalization, which was incorporated into and passed into law through the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act in December 2023.

But the position was left empty as normalization efforts became a secondary priority in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel.

In a letter to Trump on Thursday, the lawmakers said that they’re confident Trump will “prioritize” expanding normalization agreements between Israel and the Arab world in his second administration, and said that having a dedicated official leading those efforts would be “key to a cohesive, effective, and long-lasting normalization effort.”

The lawmakers said that the Biden administration’s failure to fill the slot — in spite of bipartisan pressure to do so — showed “clear indifference to the Abraham Accords,” which they described as “incomprehensible, bad policy, and after the NDAA’s passage in 2023, unlawful.”

“In light of President Biden’s shortcomings, we urge you to make this nomination an immediate priority,” the lawmakers continued. “We know expanding the Abraham Accords remains a key priority for your Administration and having a Presidential Envoy will be a key player in spearheading these efforts. We look forward to working with both you and the Presidential Envoy in the future to strengthen Israel’s role in the Middle East and reach long-lasting stability in the region.”

Ilya Shapiro’s new book ‘Lawless’ calls out dysfunction in higher education

Legal scholar Ilya Shapiro had a personal run-in with cancel culture in 2022, when a tweet he later admitted was poorly worded sparked an online uproar and allegations of racism, leading to an official investigation by Georgetown University Law Center, where he had been hired to lead the university’s Center for the Constitution.

Months later, the university closed its investigation and cleared Shapiro’s name. But too much damage had been done, Shapiro said, and he resigned just days after formally taking the helm of the center.

Now, three years after he posted the ill-fated tweet that criticized President Joe Biden for promising to name a Black woman to the Supreme Court, Shapiro has many more allies in his criticism of the “illiberal takeover” of higher education and legal education in particular, a problem he describes in his new book, Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elite.

The aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks in Israel and the rise in antisemitism that followed at many top American universities proved to be a tipping point, Shapiro argued.

“It raised the issue of the dysfunction and pathologies in our institutions of higher education to a national level,” Shapiro, a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute, told Jewish Insider in an interview on Thursday.

Shapiro, whose career has been spent in libertarian and conservative institutions, asserts that his critique of legal education today is not about the fact that most law school faculty at the nation’s top universities lean to the left politically. In other words, he insists that his concerns are not just the grievances of someone whose views place him firmly in the minority in the legal sphere.

“I want to emphasize that this is not the decades-long complaint that conservatives have with the hippie takeover of the faculty lounge, if you will,” said Shapiro.

Instead, Shapiro is sounding the alarm about what he fears is the corrupting of the legal profession, a field that is crucial to so many facets of American life, by a culture of silence and groupthink.

01/17 Links Pt1: Melanie Phillips: Dealing with the devil Schrödinger’s Ceasefire; Antisemitic vandals target home once owned by high-profile Jewish leader

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Dealing with the devil

Taking the Israeli hostages was an evil masterstroke by Hamas. However, America is largely responsible for abandoning them to their fate and allowing Hamas to continue to deploy these innocents as an infernal weapon of blackmail and extortion.

The “hell” of which both Trump and Cotton have spoken should have been threatened on Oct. 8, 2023, against Hamas’s sponsor and protector, Qatar. If the Biden administration had told Qatar that unless the hostages were released within five days the United States would end every arrangement with it on which the Gulf state depends, the hostages would have been freed.

Not only did the Biden administration not do this, but it has continued to this day to treat Qatar as a legitimate interlocutor—while undermining Israel’s desperate attempt to defend itself.

The United States threatened and blackmailed Israel into admitting into Gaza aid supplies most of which were stolen by Hamas, enabling it to make millions of dollars to reinforce its own genocidal war machine. The Bidenites repeatedly instructed Israel to reduce attacks on Iran or its proxies, forcing it to fight its war of survival with its hands tied behind its back in a way that America wouldn’t have dreamed of behaving had it been targeted itself in this way for annihilation.

In part, the Bidenites’ attitude toward Israel—in many respects a continuation of former President Barack Obama’s profound animus against the Jewish state—has been driven by malice. But it’s also infused with the belief that Israel can never win its battle against the Palestinian Arabs and therefore must compromise with them.

That, in turn, is rooted in the liberal belief that all conflict is soluble through negotiation and compromise. But when the conflict is between those committed to genocide and their intended victims—as is the case between the Iran/Palestinian Arab axis and Israel’s Jews—any compromise by Israel is tantamount to offering its throat to be slit.

Trump doesn’t subscribe to this liberal delusion. And his commitment to Israel is genuine and deep. However, Trump is famously transactional. He appears to believe that all conflict is soluble through a deal—provided that he, the supreme practitioner of “the art of the deal,” is directing it.

And so, alarmingly, he has apparently reached out to Iran to begin negotiations over its nuclear program and other nefarious activities. But any negotiation with people who have a non-negotiable agenda strengthens them and weakens their victims.

Trump doesn’t want a war on his watch. He has virtually promised the American people that he will bring an end to war. But sometimes an enemy arises with whom any agreement is a deal with the devil.

If Netanyahu is seen to have been forced to agree to Israel’s defeat in Gaza, he will be finished. As for Trump, the fear is that his transactionalism will mean he ends up playing the same role as the Biden administration in empowering evil.

We can only hold our breath.

Douglas Murray: A real cease-fire deal must ensure the destruction of Hamas

“Bring them home” has been the slogan of the hostage families in Israel since October 7, 2023.

But when Hamas murdered 1,200 people, including 46 Americans, and when it took 254 people hostage, including 12 Americans, there should have been a different slogan: “Give them back. Now.”

Since that day, so many opportunities have been missed.

On October 8, Joe Biden could have called up the governments in Qatar, Iran and other rogue states and told them to get their friends in Hamas to hand over the hostages now.

Or else.

With the leverage the US has in the Middle East, a hardball approach against the Qataris, Iranians and Turks could have solved this mess 15 months ago.

Instead it has taken the pressure of the incoming Trump administration to get a deal agreed to.

It is still a bittersweet moment.

On the one hand, everyone except Hamas and its goons in the West must feel their hearts lift at the idea of the remaining hostages being released.

These are men, women and babies who did nothing wrong but have spent 15 months in the hell of Hamas captivity.

On the other hand, the deal includes the release of Palestinian prisoners, including murderers.

In the first round of releases, nine ill and wounded hostages will be exchanged for 110 Palestinian prisoners who are serving life sentences.

Just think about that.

An Israeli baby could be released in exchange for a dozen grown murderers.

This is very difficult for the Israeli public to stomach, not least because the last time a similar deal was done, Israel released Yahya Sinwar, who went on to mastermind October 7.

Biden has tried to make matters worse by claiming this deal is exactly the same as one he had put in place last May.

What he misses is the work that the IDF has managed to do in the last eight months.

Seth Mandel: Schrödinger’s Ceasefire

Secretary of State Antony Blinken was confident enough to make his farewell speech all about implementing a plan for postwar Gaza: “For many months, we’ve been working intensively with our partners to develop a detailed post-conflict plan that would allow Israel to fully withdraw from Gaza, prevent Hamas from filling back in, and provide for Gaza’s governance, security, and reconstruction… We will hand it off to the Trump administration to carry forward.”

But now that another full day has gone by without a signed agreement, a familiar feeling that comes when covering the Middle East is overtaking the media. The New York Times currently has the following two headlines next to each other on its website: “Hamas After Cease-Fire: Weakened, Isolated but Still Standing” followed immediately by “Deadly strikes in Gaza continue despite the announcement of a cease-fire deal.”

Indeed, according to the IDF, “Muhammad Hasham Zahedi Abu Al-Rus, a Nukhba terrorist who infiltrated Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and participated in the massacre at the Nova Music Festival, was eliminated overnight in an intelligence-based strike. Additionally, the IAF conducted strikes on approx. 50 terrorist targets across Gaza over the last day, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists, military compounds, weapons storage facilities, launch posts, weapons manufacturing sites, and observation posts.”

Meanwhile, the Washington Post’s headline writers must think they’re being pranked, as they ping-pong from “Gazans eye ceasefire with mixed feelings: ‘What do we have left?’” to “Ceasefire deal delayed as Netanyahu bargains with far-right allies” and back to “Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal brings hope for devastated northern Gaza”—again, one right after the other.

It’s Schrödinger’s ceasefire!

The real lesson, however, is that there is no such thing as a permanent ceasefire so long as Hamas is in power. After all, there was a ceasefire in place on Oct. 6, 2023. And the trove of reporting in the wake of the attacks made clear that Hamas never had any intention of upholding that ceasefire: its restraint was a key part of its Oct. 7 strategy to lull Israel (and the world) into thinking it was becoming a responsible party in Mideast politics.

Yes, this particular deal is unique because of the circumstances, namely Israel’s hopes of getting back its captives—not because it is going to bring about a permanent truce.

The Middle East you’ll find in Western newspapers doesn’t exist. The reality for those who live in Israel is that, as its enemies say every day, there is one conflict: the attempt to eradicate the Jewish state. Does a boxing match end permanently between rounds? In football does the score go back to 0-0 after halftime?

There’s nothing wrong with diplomats touting a deal they helped negotiate. But the triumphalism from every corner except Israel ought to tell you that one party isn’t expecting a reprieve.

Richard Kemp: Hamas must be eradicated. If it isn’t, this Gaza ceasefire is a failure

Hamas is now isolated and to crown it all Donald Trump is entering the White House next week. They fear that will unshackle Israel from the constraints of Joe Biden who tried his best to prevent Netanyahu’s “total victory”. They also fear that Trump will do what Biden failed to do: force Qatar to expel their political leadership and also reduce the international pressure on Israel on which Hamas depends. There is every likelihood Trump will sanction the International Criminal Court and at the same time put the boot into the Israel haters at the UN.

All that is why Hamas has now accepted Israel’s red line: the IDF will maintain military forces in key strategic areas in Gaza and Israel retains the right to resume the war when the ceasefire ends. The terrorist organisation will meanwhile be planning to utilise its international backers to pressure Israel not to resume hostilities – including the useful idiots who parade on our streets and university campuses every week.

But while any hostages are retained in Gaza and while Hamas continues to represent a threat to its people, Israel can and should go back on the attack. For that they will have Trump’s backing. His nomination for National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz, told Fox News: “I’d like to make something very clear to the Israelis, if you need to go back in, we are with you. We are 100 per cent committed to destroying Hamas as a military organisation”.

Meanwhile the focus of the war is likely to shift to the head of the jihadist octopus, Iran. Netanyahu and Trump have almost certainly already agreed on that, and this deal should be seen as one element of their joint strategy. Eliminating the ayatollahs’ nuclear programme and further undermining their regional proxy network is vital. Isolating Iran and strengthening Israel’s security is not a military project alone. Trump is also likely to return to the Abraham Accords, bringing Saudi Arabia into the fold. The prospect of that alarmed Iran so much that it triggered Hamas’s murderous atrocities on 7th October.

Nevertheless, those who are horrified by this deal are right to highlight its grave risks. It seems to involve release of more than a thousand Palestinian terrorists in exchange for 33 Israeli hostages. And a cessation will give Hamas some opportunity to regroup and rebuild its capabilities. Above all it leaves Hamas in a position to maintain its stranglehold on Gaza’s population. That would certainly be disastrous and the eventual eradication or survival of Hamas will be the true measure of the success or otherwise of this ceasefire.

The worst part of the hostage deal

Perhaps the worst part of the hostage deal is that it was made without Israel knowing which hostages are still alive. That information should have been a prerequisite for even negotiating to begin with, not a detail to find out after Hamas gains anything.

In February 2006, Hassan Nasrallah announced in Hezbollah media that he planned to get Samir Kuntar released from Israeli prison that year. Kuntar was the most loathsome terrorist in Israeli custody, having murdered a father in front of his 4-year old daughter and then smashing her head, killing her too. (It gets worse. Gruesome details here)

In July Hezbollah ambushed IDF soldiers on the border, kidnapping two and killing three - and killing five more during a frantic attempt to get the soldiers back. Immediately Nasrallah announced he wanted Kuntar released in exchange for the two soldiers, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser.

Israel refused and went to war instead. But in the end, Israel agreed to the deal Nasrallah launched the war to get.

During the negotiations for the exchange two years later, Hezbollah did not reveal whether Regev and Goldwasser were still alive. Hezbollah never let the Red Cross visit them. The entire country was kept in agony during the negotiations, hoping they were still alive.

No one knew for sure until the actual deal occurred and all Israel receive was two coffins in exchange for Kuntar, several other Hezbollah militants and 200 bodies.

Hezbollah achieved all of its war aims and Israel achieved none. The only thing Israel seemed to gain was UNSC 1701, which by the time of the exchange was clearly never going to be implemented by Lebanon. The deal is what made Hezbollah the unquestioned victor of the 2006 war.

All of this feels like déjà vu now. This nightmare is being repeated. Getting thousands of prisoners released was one of Hamas' primary aims in the October 7 attacks. Israel learned nothing from the deal they made in 2008.

The worst part is that we do not know the fate of a single hostage. Even those that made videos may, God forbid, no longer be alive. Hamas already claimed that one female hostage was killed by an Israeli airstrike this week - psychological torture fo rwhich it pays no price.

Like 2008, Israel is trading living terrorists for what may be only corpses. It is important to retrieve bodies, of course, but not nearly as important as saving the living. The price being paid is way too steep without knowing how many are alive.

Israel is bound by international law to treat its prisoners humanely. Hamas has no such concerns. I personally would have no moral qualms about killing every single Palestinian terrorist with blood on their hands and then telling Hamas as their bodies are returned, "oops, they must have been killed by your rocket attacks." Unfortunately, Israel cannot do that, and the next Yahya Sinwar could be freed in this deal.

But after the Kuntar deal, how could Israel make an agreement without knowing ahead of time which hostages are alive and which aren't?

(From a tweet early this morning. I couldn't go back to sleep until I wrote it.)

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