Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, January 28, 2025

Trump says Palestinians who want to start new lives elsewhere should have that chance. The media, NGOs and Arab leaders say they shouldn't. Who cares more about human rights?

Haaretz reports that Donald Trump "doubled down" on the idea that some Gazans should be allowed to leave if they want to.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday doubled down on his desire for Egypt and Jordan to take in displaced Palestinians from Gaza, 48 hours after his suggestion to "clean the whole place out" caused significant uproar across the world and rejection from the parties involved.

Shortly after speaking with Egypt President Abdel Fattah Al-Sissi, Trump said "I'd like to get them living in an area where they can live without disruption, revolution." He further told the press pool that "when you look at the Gaza Strip, it's been hell for so many years."

"I think you could get people living in areas that are a lot safer and maybe a lot better and maybe a lot more comfortable."

Under the Biden administration, the idea of "voluntary migration," a plan promoted by far-right Israeli ministers eyeing the Jewish resettlement of Gaza, was considered highly controversial, with most Palestinians and their supporters rejecting the idea of relocating, even temporarily.

Much outrage has come from Trump's initial comment to "clean the whole place out," as usual taking his words literally when he has made it clear that he is not demanding ethnic cleansing or forced migration. Rather, he wants to give Gazans the option of living elsewhere, short or long term, while the situation in Gaza remains unresolved.

That is not a violation of human rights. It is an embrace of human rights - and one that no major NGOs or media have even allowed themselves to take seriously.

Is it any wonder ordinary people voted for Trump? He cares more about the day to day lives of Gazans than all of the supposedly "pro-Palestinian" and "pro-human rights" community combined.

How many Gazans would rush to take advantage of Trump's suggestion that they move to other countries?

A survey of Gazans taken immediately before October 7 2023 found that 31% considered emigration. That is equivalent to 650,000 Gazans who said they would like to leave before the war started. That number could only have increased since then, although there are no recent polls I am aware of asking that question.

It is not out of the question to believe that over a million Gazans would relocate to Egypt or Jordan or elsewhere if given the chance.

It is the "human rights community" and the "pro-Palestinian advocates" who are insisting they stay, not the Gazans themselves.

The media refusing to mention these easily verified facts is unconscionable.

More evidence comes from sites like GoFundMe, where thousands of Gazans are begging for money so they can escape Gaza. The page only allows a limit of 1,000 appeals per query, but as of today, over 1,000 GoFundMes use the specific phrase "escape Gaza," another 1,000 use the phrase "evacuate Gaza," 360 more ask to "flee Gaza" and over 1,000 ask to "leave Gaza."

There is reality, and there is a funhouse mirror version of reality that the media covers. This story is a prime example of how the news media and NGOs pursue an agenda that is the polar opposite of human rights and the desire of Gazans themselves, instead they go out of their way to hide the truth from their readers and viewers.

Moreover, since 1948 we have seen self-declared Palestinian "leaders" claim that most Palestinians reject becoming citizens of other countries. No one has ever done a survey asking that specific question, it is just an assertion that is often made by UNRWA and pseudo-academics. (See this 2010 paper: "Naturalization is also strongly rejected by the Palestinians, who insist on their right to return to Palestine " Even though they surveyed Lebanese Palestinians they did not ask that question.)

Yet when Egypt, Lebanon or Jordan offered up the possibility of citizenship for a subset of Palestinians, there is no resistance. During Mohamed Morsi's reign in Egypt, thousands of Gazans with one Egyptian parent - including prominent Hamas official Mahmoud Zahar - applied for citizenship. In the 1950s, some 50,000 Palestinian Christians were offered and accepted citizenship in Lebanon, and some 60,000 other Palestinians - Sunni, Shi'a and Christian - were given citizenship in 1994. When Jordan offered citizenship to Palestinians under its control in the 1950s, no one rejected it by claiming that it would compromise their principles.

This is a question of human rights. Palestinians who want to start new lives elsewhere should have the same opportunity to do so as everyone else in the world. The coverage of the Palestinian issue is so imbued with latent antisemitism ("this is what the racist apartheid-loving illegal Jewish settlers want them to do!") that this simple and quite obvious fact gets buried under falsehoods and misdirection. This blatant hypocrisy proves that the obsession of opposing Israel is prioritized by much of the Western world over Palestinian human rights.

In this case, Donald Trump is showing more compassion for Palestinians than Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, the Arab League, the EU, the entire mainstream media, and all of the student protesters combined.

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How many people would have died if Israel dropped bricks randomly on Gaza cities?

Last month, Islamic Jihad published this graphic saying that Israel had dropped 87,000 tons of explosives on Gaza.

If Gaza's health ministry is telling the truth about fatalities, that is about 1.8 tons of explosives for every fatality.

If Israel intended to kill people, that is a remarkably inefficient use of explosives.

It is like dropping three grand pianos filled with explosives for every death.

So I wondered, if Israel would have dropped bricks instead of bombs, and if it was done randomly in urban areas where most of the explosives were dropped, how many people would we expect to be killed?

I put together a scenario where 70% of the Gaza population live in urban areas, and assuming that about one-third of Gaza land is urban. That comes out to a population density of over 16,000 per square kilometer, which is pretty close to the density of Gaza City.

If the people are randomly distributed in those areas, and if a falling brick has a 50% chance of being fatal if dropped within a half meter radius of a person (a falling brick would hit the ground from a plane at about 150 km/hour), and Israel dropped 87,000 tons of bricks which is about 35 million bricks, 450,000 bricks would land on or right next to people and about 225,000 people would be killed by falling bricks - five times the official Gaza numbers for the same mass of high explosives!

Israel could have killed a lot more people and saved a lot of money if they chose bricks instead of bombs.

Now, of course most people would be indoors and the bricks would likely only penetrate the top floor or two of a building. On the other hand, Israeli pilots have computer guidance systems that could clearly aim bricks to enter through windows or walls on any floor of a building if they intended to kill people. My numbers are for random distribution of bricks; intentional aiming of bricks at people would result in far more casualties!

The silliness of the exercise does not detract from the serious point: if 47,000 people were killed in Gaza with huge bombs and precise munitions, this disproves the slander of genocide - because clearly Israel did not intend to kill innocent people. This brick exercise shows that takes a great deal of effort not to kill hundreds of thousands of people in an urban area with 87,000 tons of bombs.

This is one more proof that anyone who claims Israel intentionally kills innocent people is not a serious person. Which is a nice way of pointing out that they are just Jew-haters.

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

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01/27 Links Pt2: Howard Jacobson: We have still not been fully liberated from Auschwitz; Pres. Higgins’s hatred for Israel is bringing shame on Ireland

From Ian:

Howard Jacobson: We have still not been fully liberated from Auschwitz

It has been said often enough that Holocaust denial takes many forms, from the brute mathematics of those who jotted down the dimensions of Auschwitz to prove that it was no bigger than Butlin’s, and probably more fun, to historians who claim to have found evidence that Jews had done it to themselves to justify invading Palestine. Of all forms of denialism, the worst minimises the slaughter by arguing that Jews were always just Nazis in waiting anyway, thereby forfeiting in advance the world’s pity, first by showing none themselves, and then by claiming what we might call “Shoah exemption”.

I have yet to meet a Jew in real life – as opposed to on a panel or at a literary festival – who believes that what was done to his grandparents in Bergen-Belsen gives him the right to murder children in Gaza, but this passes as psychology in some quarters, especially where Jews of a certain over-educated sort get together and squirm whenever Jews without degrees and from the wrong side of the tracks make a dog’s dinner of defending Israel.

There has always been a reluctance to embrace Zionism among professorial Jews, as much for social reasons as political ones. It is part of the parochialism you are eager to put behind you when you leave Hendon for Oxford, and one of the reasons you march alongside people who don’t know where Hendon is.

I am not a marcher myself. I don’t care for their mood-music. But I have occasionally forgotten to be cautious – or tactful, if you prefer – and allowed myself to stray too close to what’s left of a march late on a Shabbes afternoon. “How dare you?” I have muttered under my breath at the straggling churchy people wrapped in Palestinian scarves who don’t want to go home. “How dare you, as members of a society or practitioners of a faith that made Jews pariahs for two thousand years, sit in judgment yet again in a matter of which, frankly, given what you chant, you know nothing?”

Towards those who have an unborrowed grievance I feel differently. It wasn’t centuries of Arab contempt for Jews that led ineluctably to the camps. But I would like them to know more of what it is they accuse Jews of exploiting, if only to understand the nature of Jewish apprehension. It appears at times as though Israel’s neighbours view the Holocaust as just another of the ways Jews have stolen a march on them, one more Jewish advantage, akin to controlling the media and running Hollywood. Call it Holocaust Covetousness.

My brothers, I want to say to them, believe me, you wouldn’t want it. Go and see A Real Pain if you doubt my words. Played in a low key, it is not a film about the horrors of the Holocaust or any advantage Jews have tried to wrest from it. Without fanfare or self-pity, it tells of the slow-burn of depletion and depression that endures all these years later.

One way or another, the lesson of the last 15 months is that the greatest calamity to have befallen a people – to have befallen the Jews, anyway – remains unknown or disbelieved, no matter how often we recount it or how many schlock Holocaust novels people read. The Chartered Accountant of Auschwitz might while away a tedious hour, but it hasn’t brought knowledge or enlightenment.

The true story cannot be told often enough – not only as history of terrible events we are duty bound to commemorate, but as an honest reckoning with the aftermath. And we Jews have to stop being apologetic about repeating it.

Aviva Klompas: When everything is genocide, nothing is: A call to preserve the term’s weight

In a bitter twist of irony, some of the most vocal anti-Israel protesters who invoke the Holocaust to condemn Israel often indulge in genocidal rhetoric themselves, chanting slogans like “From the river to the sea,” which calls for the elimination of the Jewish state.

The word genocide was coined by a Polish lawyer, Raphäel Lemkin, in 1944 and enshrined in international law in 1948. It refers to “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” This definition, the U.N.’s no less, emphasizes deliberate, systematic targeting — not unintended harm amid conflict.

When I first visited the Majdanek concentration camp as a teenager, I stood before a giant mound of ashes preserved as a testament to the industrialized murder of the Holocaust. I was struck by the meticulous intentionality of it all — the systematic effort to annihilate an entire people. That is genocide. Misapplying the term to describe the conflict in Gaza trivializes the 6 million Jews who were murdered and undermines the legal framework designed to prevent such atrocities.

Meanwhile, real genocides go largely ignored. In early January, then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken determined that the Sudanese Rapid Support Forces were committing genocide in their struggle with the Sudanese Armed Forces. This conflict has killed 150,000 — more than three times the number of deaths in the Israel-Hamas war — and displaced 11 million. Yet there is scant media coverage, no International Criminal Court arrest warrants, no campus protests and no celebrity speeches at award shows.

The same neglect applies to the Burmese military’s atrocities against the Rohingya and the Chinese government’s brutal repression of Uyghur Muslims, both of which the State Department recognized as genocides in recent years. Where is the outrage?

Instead, the global focus is on Israel, where the accusations of genocide require a distortion of international law. Amnesty International, for instance, dismisses what it calls “an overly cramped interpretation of international jurisprudence.” This amounts to moving the goalposts, turning genocide into a catch-all accusation, and making a mockery of international law.

Sadly, international legal bodies are complicit in this confusion. Last year, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants against political leaders from both Israel and Hamas, charging both sides with “extermination…as a crime against humanity.” This false equivalency — drawing parallels between a democracy defending itself and a terrorist organization deliberately targeting civilians — is a moral and legal outrage.

As legal scholar Eugene Kontorovich has noted, “If Israel’s defense against Hamas constitutes genocide, then American wars from World War II to Obama’s campaign against ISIS do as well.” And this is precisely the problem: If anything is genocide, nothing is genocide.

In 1945, Allied general and future American President Dwight D. Eisenhower liberated a concentration camp at Ohrdruf in Germany. He later documented what he saw and heard, “in order to be in a position to give firsthand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to ‘propaganda.’” Today I see a new battle unfolding — not just against Holocaust denial but against Holocaust dilution.

If we are silent as genocide is recklessly redefined, we dishonor its victims and weaken our collective ability to prevent future atrocities. In memory of those who perished and in defense of those still at risk, we must stop the politicization of genocide. Instead, we must preserve the term’s integrity, uphold its legal weight, and direct our outrage where it truly belongs — toward those who commit the most heinous crimes.

The debasement of the Holocaust

The Holocaust has been ripped out of its historical context. So much so that its historical meaning has now been thoroughly inverted by assorted anti-Israel activists. After Hamas’s pogrom on 7 October 2023, ‘pro-Palestine’ protesters quickly characterised Israel’s self-defence as Nazi-like aggression. On their marches, they waved placards featuring a Star of David inside a swastika. They compared Israel’s siege of Gaza to Nazi concentration camps. They cast Israeli soldiers fighting to defend their nation as Nazi stormtroopers. In the most grotesque inversion of all, they cast the Hamas terrorists responsible for the atrocities of 7 October in the role of the Holocaust’s Jewish victims.

It now seems that Gaza is equated with Auschwitz itself. In May 2024, pro-Palestine demonstrators went so far as to disrupt an Auschwitz remembrance march with a ‘Stop Genocide’ protest. According to Maung Zarni, a supposed genocide expert, Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza is a ‘repeat of Auschwitz’, and a ‘collective white imperialist man’s genocide’.

This wilful warping of the historical record is breathtaking. If Gaza is the new Auschwitz, then where are the packed trains transporting their ‘passengers’ to their death? Where are the deadly gas chambers? Where is the routine violation of the corpses of the dead? Anti-Israel zealots are not merely robbing the Holocaust of its horrific reality, they are also hollowing out its moral significance.

Holocaust inversion is rife among the anti-Israel crowd. As Lesley Klaff explains, it involves both ‘an inversion of reality’, casting Israelis ‘as the “new” Nazis and the Palestinians as the “new” Jews’, and an ‘inversion of morality’, in which the ‘Holocaust is presented as a moral lesson for, or even a moral indictment of, “the Jews”’.

Anti-Israel propaganda is infused with Holocaust inversion. The UK-based Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) has even called for the boycott of today’s Holocaust Memorial Day on the grounds it is ‘morally unacceptable’ that Gaza is not considered as a genocide alongside the Holocaust. It wrote to 460 town halls and educational centres asking them to boycott the event.

The words ‘Never Again’ have become thoroughly corrupted. Decontextualised and Disneyfied, the Holocaust has become a weapon to be wielded against the very people who were its historical victims. The ease with which Hamas and its Western supporters have turned the memory of the Holocaust against its historical victims is an indictment of Western culture.

We must start reasserting an uncompromising commitment to ‘Never Again’. Eighty years after its liberation, the memory of Auschwitz must be freed from the powerful forces committed to distorting its meaning.

01/27 Links Pt1: Hamas’s crimes against women must not be erased; Eight dead in Hamas list of 33 hostages to be freed; Released Hostage: ‘2 million terrorists’ in Gaza

From Ian:

Hamas’s crimes against women must not be erased

International non-governmental organisations, normally at the forefront of campaigning to end violence against women and girls, were slow to issue any kind of response. Human Rights Watch issued 51 press releases about Gaza in the eight weeks following 7 October, including accusations about ‘Israeli war crimes’. But when it finally addressed the 7 October rapes in December 2023, it merely called for an investigation, rather than addressing the already extensive evidence.

The United Nations finally got round to sending a special representative on sexual violence to Israel several months after the Hamas attack. Its report acknowledged that there were ‘reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence – including rape and gang-rape – occurred across multiple locations of Israel and the Gaza periphery during the attacks on 7 October’.

Yet even this, it seems, was not enough to spur global networks of feminist campaigners into action. The names Naama Levy and Emily Damari have never been uttered by those feminists who, only a few years ago, were getting worked up about knee-touching, bad dates and rudeness on social media.

That the hostages released so far have been able to walk out of Gaza with their heads held high is testament to their incredible strength of character and phenomenal bravery. Reports suggest that Emily Damari asked her Hamas captors to free fellow hostage Keith Siegel in her place because she believed he was in worse shape than her. Her request was denied. On making it safely back out of Gaza, Damari ditched the Palestinian lanyard all the hostages had been forced to wear and draped herself in the Israeli flag. Her body may have been abused but her spirit remained undefeated. Damari, a living embodiment of resilience and fortitude, should be a celebrated feminist icon, a role model for an entire generation of girls. Instead, newly released hostages are still having to fight to have their plight acknowledged.

This weekend’s release of women soldiers raises questions about the hostages left behind, including Shiri Silberman Bibas, who was taken captive alongside her husband and two young sons, Ariel and Kfir. Sadly, these young boys and their mother may now be dead, although this has not yet been confirmed. If Bibas and other female hostages are released in the coming days it will be no thanks to global organisations that campaign for an end to violence against women and girls. Tragically, we must even ask who will believe the captives’ story when they are ready to talk about their experiences.

We should celebrate the release of Karina Ariev, Daniella Gilboa, Naama Levy and Liri Albag. But we must not forget how few professional feminists agitated for their release.

Israel: Eight dead in Hamas list of 33 hostages to be freed

Eight of the 33 hostages intended for release during the first phase of the ceasefire-hostage deal with Hamas in the Gaza Strip are dead, according to a list provided by Hamas.

Israeli government spokesman David Mencer confirmed that the terrorist group stated the remaining 25 hostages are alive. The list was delivered to Israel overnight on Sunday.

After repeatedly violating the truce deal with Israel, Hamas is to release three additional captives on Thursday, the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem announced on Sunday night.

The hostages to be released are civilian Arbel Yehud, Israel Defense Forces soldier Agam Berger and an unidentified man. Three more abductees are to be freed on Saturday, per the terms of the ceasefire.

So far, seven hostages have been freed. Yet 87 of the 251 individuals taken by Hamas during the terrorist attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, are still in Gaza. This includes the remains of at least 34 hostages, confirmed dead by the IDF. Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered Gaza in 2014 and 2015, as well as the body of an IDF soldier killed in 2014. Another soldier’s remains were recovered earlier this month.

Hamas failed to provide the list on Saturday, as required by the terms of the ceasefire, prompting Jerusalem to postpone the return of displaced Palestinians to northern Gaza.

On Monday, Palestinians began crossing on foot via a coastal road through the Netzarim Corridor south of Gaza City. Vehicle crossings via a parallel highway inland followed, leading to heavy traffic. While vehicles are subject to inspection under the ceasefire agreement, the details of the inspection process remain unclear.

Bibas family ‘nightmare’ as children and mother left off hostage list for another week

The relatives of the only children still held hostage in Gaza have said that their “world came crashing down” when they were left off the list of those slated for release yet again.

The family of Shiri, 33, Kfir, 2, and Ariel, 5, were named for release in the first phase of the deal which requires Hamas to prioritise the release of civilian women and children.

The Bibas father, Yarden, is slated to be released later in the deal’s first phase.

But the mother and children have not been released in the first two exchanges of the deal.

Relatives of the family have condemned Israeli media for failing to convey “our pain, our struggle, and, most importantly, the crucial discussion about the complexity and tragedy of them not being on the list,” after Hamas violated the deal by releasing captive female soldiers before civilian women.

When the four Israeli women soldiers were freed on Saturday, fears over the Bibas’s fate soured. If alive, they should have been released before any soldiers, according to the terms of the deal.

In a statement on Saturday, the Bibas’s relatives described how their “world came crashing down” when they discovered that Shiri, Kfir and Ariel, were left off the list of captives to be released later in the day.

IDF Spokesman Daniel Hagari said the terror group had violated the terms of the deal by not first freeing all female civilians.

He said Israel would make sure that civilian hostage Arbel Yehud, who is believed by Israel to be alive, is released soon, along with Shiri Bibas and her two small children, Ariel and baby Kfir.

Condemning Israeli media, the Bibas relatives’ statement went on, “Does the grave concern for their lives cancel out the fact that they are civilians in captivity who must be brought home?

“Does the grave concern for Shiri’s life mean that there is no longer a need to display her photo as a kidnapped civilian in Gaza whose fate remains unknown?

“The answer is — no.

“Liri, Daniela, Naama, and Karina — We are waiting to see you smiling, wrapped in love, at home with your incredible families,” the statement continued. “Shiri, Yarden, Ariel, and Kfir — We will continue to hope and demand your return. It’s not over until it’s over.”

Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong

TheJC wrote in August:

There are certain jokes that only make sense to Jews, a sort of coded language that only members of the Tribe understand.

And that trademark Jewish humour was on full display this week after a screenshot of a very Jewish team name on the BBC game show Only Connect.

The Four Opinions team - made up of three Jews named Jacob Epstein, Rafi Dover and Aron Carr.

One fan of the show wrote on X/Twitter: “What a name,” while another said “I cannot express how much I love this.”

The team went through to the next round having beat opponents the Bean Farmers.

Only Connect is a British television quiz show presented by Victoria Coren Mitchell, in which teams compete in a tournament to find connections between seemingly unrelated clues.

The Four Opinions team members each wear a kippah. So I spent way too much time this weekend trying to watch the three episodes they have appeared in so far, all of which they have won. They are now going to the semifinals.

Here is their first appearance, against the Bean Farmers.

And their most recent show, against the Al Frescans, shown last week:

I could not find a (legal) copy of their second match against the Cat Cows, but here is a screenshot of one of the clues that they solved (the goal is to figure out the fourth in the sequence.)

Answer on the bottom of the post.

This is without a doubt the most challenging game show I have ever seen. I am stunned at how good these contestants are. The show requires not only an encyclopedic knowledge of trivia but also the ability to think way outside the box to find very non-obvious connections between the trivia answers. The three "Four Opinions" have studied Talmud together (they considered the name "The Talmudics") so that was good training for them. But it doesn't hurt that they also know Minesweeper.

I would be happy to blame my inability to answer nearly every question on the subjects being heavily British, but I watched an episode that had half of the questions about the United States and I did just as poorly.

In other words, The Four Opinions are wicked smart, as are their opponents.

I don't know when the semi-finals will air, but I'm looking forward to watching them and rooting for the Jews.

----

Answer: -4: BOA. Each word is the result of removing successive letters from the word BOAT.

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Video of Netanyahu speech from 1988. Things haven't changed much (Real Jerusalem Streets)

The more things change - the more they stay the same.

Between 1984 and 1988, Benjamin Netanyahu served as the Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations. In 1988, he spoke to a full house at the Hebrew Academy of Greater Washington during the height of the first intifada.

Sarah Stern, who in 2005 founded and is president of the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET), a pro-American and pro-Israel think and policy institute in Washington, D.C. was key in arranging the event.

Recently digitized, the recording reflects discussions about Israel at 40 years—remarkably similar to the challenges Israel faces today at 76.

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From Al Mayadeen:

The Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip has documented 4,500 cases of amputations, involving both upper and lower limbs, since the outset of the Israeli genocidal war on the besieged Palestinian enclave, Anadolu Agency reported, citing a senior health official in Gaza.

"We have recorded 4,500 amputation cases by the end of 2024, as a result of the continuous Israeli airstrikes and ground attacks on Gaza," Zaher al-Wahidi, the head of the Health Information Unit at the ministry, confirmed in a statement on Friday.

Al-Wahidi highlighted that approximately 800 of the amputees were children, representing 18% of the cases, while 540 were women, accounting for 12%.

According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics citing the health ministry, some 64% of those killed in Gaza are women and children.

How is it possible that 64% of those killed in Gaza are women and children, but 70% of the amputees are adult males? Those losing limbs would certainly be a representative sample of those who lost their lives and have similar demographics - bombs cannot be calibrated to kill mostly women and children but to maim mostly adult men, which is what the health ministry is claiming.

Roughly half of the population of Gaza is under 18, and roughly half of the remainder are women. If Israel's bombings were indiscriminate, we would see over 70% of the amputees to be women and children and less than 30% to be adult males, not the other way around.

Statistically speaking, the chances that a similar population would have such different results for fatalities and amputations (p-value) is less than 0.01%.

Unless Gaza doctors deliberately choose not to perform amputations on women and children, preferring that they die instead, those two statistics cannot be reconciled. Even I don't think the doctors are that monstrous.

This is yet additional proof that the Gaza health ministry lies about fatalities.

(h/t Irene)

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

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How will the new Trump administration affect the Middle East?

Based on the first Trump administration and what we are seeing so far, this is my initial impression of the major factors that will affect US relations with the Arab world.

1. A transactional approach

It seems very clear that Trump is not interested in exporting US values or human rights in the Arab world. He sees every relationship as an opportunity to help the US financially. He will not condition arms sales to Saudi Arabia on anything but getting top dollar.

I am not so clear whether he prioritizes Israel's military superiority in the region when considering what weapons to sell to Israel's rivals. On the other hand, Trump's tendency to make decisions based on broad strokes and not sweating the details seems well aligned to Arab mentality. A Bidenesque approach where support for Israel is conditional makes the US look inconsistent and strengthens the hands of Israel's enemies.

2. The Strong Horse

This transactional approach supports the theory that (at least the leaders of) the Arab world are attracted towards the "strong horse" and will tend to naturally align with that perceived leader for their own interests. Trump is interested in a United States that projects strength and this will naturally keep the Arab world in the US camp.

3. Honor and Shame

Israel's existence remains the biggest source of shame for the Arab world. But Israel is highly aligned with the US and Trump supports Israel, so Arab leaders are not going to make it into an issue. They will continue to use anti-Israel rhetoric in public, to maintain the appearance of honor to their people, but their pragmatism outweighs their sense of shame at tacitly aligning with Israel.

Remember, there was a huge outcry at Trump moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, but in the end, there was no change at all in the Arab diplomatic posture towards the United States. One could argue that the US under Trump being strongly and unapologetically pro-Israel prompted the Abraham Accords. Only when they see daylight between the US and Israel do they return to their fantasies of destroying Israel.

4. Abraham Accords part 2

Trump will certainly try to extend the Abraham Accords to include Saudi Arabia, which is the big prize, and other Arab countries (like Oman) would fall into line along the way. The Saudis will try to gain symbolic concessions from Israel about Palestinians but in the end they want the same thing Trump does. Being on his side is more important than honor in this case. And ultimately, Israel and the Saudis are on the same side in most matters.

5. The Palestinian issue

It has been obvious for well over a decade that the larger Arab world is no longer interested in the Palestinian issue except as a rhetorical device. They poured billions into the Palestinian Authority and it remains as corrupt and as little interested in statehood as ever. Arab leaders, like Trump, no longer want to spend money on the Palestinians when there is no return on the dollar. Either the Palestinians realize this and accept compromise to achieve a state or they remain in stateless limbo forever. There is little indication that they even begin to understand how little the rest of the Arab world respects them, as they take the empty rhetoric at face value and wishful thinking.

In the end, the PA has a choice between becoming like the UAE or like Hamas, and they consistently choose Hamas.

6. A single bullet away from chaos

The biggest worry in all of these is the possibility of pro-US regimes falling and being replaced with Islamists who, for honor/shame reasons, cannot allow themselves to appear to accept Israel in any way.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

01/26 Links: Ghosts of a Holy War : Peace Was Never the Goal; Trump: send Gazans to Egypt and Jordan; Qatar: Hamas will hand over Arbel Yehud and two other hostages before Friday

From Ian:

Peace Was Never the Goal

Ghosts of a Holy War stands out as one of last year’s most under-reviewed and yet most read-worthy books on the Middle East. It spans the Hundred Years' War between Arabs and Jews over a piece of real estate the size of New Jersey and was praised by Israel’s major papers. Apart from the Wall Street Journal, it was basically overlooked in the United States. It deserves better.

Even Mideast mavens will keep turning the pages after the first of 30 chapters complete with 20 pages of tiny-print footnotes. They will be rewarded with a first-rate blend of scholarship and boots-on-the-ground reportage—a far cry from the breathless fare served up by the daily media.

Yardena Schwartz does not present a one-sided view of the War for the Unholy Land. Her heart is with Israel, where she had lived and worked for 10 years as a prize-winning journalist, but her head is that of a scholar who knows how to dissect interests and ideologies.

This book is not yet another regurgitation of the world’s most intractable conflict, but a refreshingly original take. The centerpiece is Hebron, the West Bank’s largest town—hardly a headline-fetching hotspot. Hebron’s main claim to fame is its biblical stature. Arabs call it "Khalil" ("friend"), shorthand for Abraham as "Friend of God." According to Scripture, this is where the Patriarch bought a grave for himself, his wife Sarah, Isaac, and Jacob. It is a holy site revered by both Muslims and Jews.

Why focus on Hebron? Ghosts of a Holy War owes its birth to a sheer fluke, a box of letters, photos, telegrams, and a diary from the 1920s gathering dust in a Memphis attic—a bequest from an American named David Shainberg to his family, which it passed on to Schwartz. Young David had gone to study at the Hebron Yeshiva, the largest within the British Mandate. He was no Zionist—he just wanted to be nearer to God, to coin a phrase. The Tomb of the Patriarchs was close enough.

In Hebron, Shainberg studied Talmud and Torah in a world more hospitable than the Pale where the tsar’s Cossacks had routinely slaughtered Jews. Hebron was a place where Jews and Arabs had peaceably lived side-by-side for ages, sharing comity and coffee. Schwartz relates how the city’s "Arab leaders danced into the night alongside rabbis" during holidays and weddings.

On August 24, 1929, the old dispensation descended into a paroxysm of mass murder. Some 3,000 Arabs armed with daggers and axes invaded the Jewish Quarter, butchering 67 men, women, and children, including Shainberg. Fast-forward from Hebron to Hamas on October 7 in southern Israel, a far more deadly orgy exterminating 1,200 with unspeakable cruelty.

At that point, Schwartz’s project—retracing the Hebron Massacre with the help of Shainberg’s treasure trove—cried out for redesign. The author draws a "direct line" from Hebron 1929 to Hamas 2023. "The forces that drove Arabs to slaughter their Jewish neighbors in 1929 were identical to [those] behind October 7." She explains: "The parallels … were so overwhelming, haunting, and chilling" that she had to lay out the whole blood-curdling story in 432 pages.

Israel Declares Victory in Region-Shaping Conflict

On its first day, Hamas's motorcycles, pickup trucks, and hang gliders successfully crossed the border, and their 6,000 riders did a lot of killing and pillaging, but it took hardly 48 hours to kill, wound, capture, and chase away the entire invading force, to the last man. The Gazan fighter, once in combat, proved militarily undertrained and logistically naked. To accomplish the deeper invasion Hamas had in mind, it had to supply its troops with food, gas, and ammunition.

Hamas's assumption that Hizbullah would invade the Galilee was dashed, and Hamas failed to predict that Hizbullah would be floored: its leadership annihilated, its troops decimated, its hardware incinerated, and its outposts razed.

Moreover, Hamas's overarching assumptions, that the IDF would not dare enter Gaza's dense urbanity, and that Israelis had lost the will to fight, proved unfounded. Gaza was invaded big time; Israel's soldiers fought tooth and nail; Hamas's troops were killed by the thousands; and Gaza's houses, roads, plazas, and pavements became piles of rubble, cement, and dust.

Yes, Hamas's offensive will be counted among military history's most successful surprise attacks. However, its planners will be counted alongside Hitler's when he stormed Stalingrad and Japan's when it bombarded Pearl Harbor. They had no idea what they were provoking.

In addition, Hamas's attack triggered Iran's attacks on Israel, which resulted in Israel's counterattacks, which exposed Iran's military weakness. Lastly, Hizbullah's defeat made the Syrian rebels decide that the time for their assault on Damascus had arrived, leading to the downfall of the Syrian regime and its army's demolition by the IDF. The chain reaction now leaves Hamas all alone.

The war since October '23 has ended in Israeli victory, because Hamas lost its Iranian roof, its Lebanese backyard, its Syrian flank, and its geopolitical umbrella, after Russia's loss of its Syrian fort.

WSJ: This Israel-Hamas Deal Sets a Dangerous Precedent

In 2012, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received a report from a former president of the Supreme Court aimed at preventing Israel from paying exorbitant ransoms in exchange for its captives and hostages abducted by terrorists. The recommendations weren't enacted into law.

Over the years, 48 Israelis have been killed in military operations to free hostages. Netanyahu sustained a bullet wound while freeing a hijacked Sabena airplane in 1972. His brother Yonatan was killed four years later in an operation which successfully freed more than 100 hostages from Palestinian hijackers at Entebbe International Airport in Uganda.

In recent years, Israel has begun to pay increasingly exorbitant prices for its hostages. Once it refused to negotiate with terrorists; today it does. In the hostage deal of January 2025, for the first time in history, a state is paying a strategic price on the battlefield for the return of its citizens.

Not only are murderers who killed hundreds of men, women and children about to be released, but now the IDF is also withdrawing from northern Gaza, which it conquered at the expense of more than 100 lives. How did this happen?

A combination of factors contributed to the lopsided hostage deal: President Biden was determined to bring an end to the war at any price - war that had cost the Democratic Party during an election year. Netanyahu, in the face of crushing public pressure, needed to bring the hostages home. Trump was eager to prove that he could succeed where his predecessor failed.

Seeing the hostages at home fills the heart with joy. No words can capture the profound relief at seeing men, women, children and the elderly brought home from Hamas's terror tunnels. Yet we must not forget the devastating price extracted.

Israel's Strategic Security Objective in Gaza Is Demilitarization

The ceasefire agreement has breathed new fighting spirit into Hamas's leadership and members. Khalil al-Hayya, head of Hamas's political bureau who led its negotiating team, promised the struggle would continue until complete victory. Hamas in Gaza will exploit the ceasefire to revitalize their personnel, smuggle and manufacture weapons, reassert control over the population, and maximize political gains from the release of operatives in Gaza, the West Bank, and regionally.

Israel cannot allow the existence of combat forces, means, and military capabilities that threaten its citizens' security. Complete demilitarization of Gaza means denying Hamas and other organizations their military operational capabilities. Alternatives to Hamas rule won't be acceptable to Israel until demilitarization is achieved.

The Palestinian Authority recently concluded a six-week operation in Jenin. The operation ended with reconciliation between the PA and the "Jenin Battalion," providing another proof of the PA's limited capabilities.

Hamas is riding the wave of joy and elation following the release of its operatives from Israeli prison and calling for "escalation of resistance" from the West Bank.

"By Any Means Necessary:' Palestinian leftists historically used Westerners as terrorists, and campuses today are recruitment centers for the next generation

Last year, Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung wrote about how Palestinian Leftist groups like the PFLP recruited young women from the West to be terrorists attacking Israel.

The article highlights a French woman, a teacher, named Evelyne B. who was recruited by an Algerian theatre director to the PFLP in 1970. She smuggled weapons from Beirut to Paris that were used in an airplane hijacking, she drove Palestinian terrorists to blow up an oil depot in Rotterdam and then she was set to be a ringleader of a series of attacks in Tel Aviv on Easter Monday 1971, but she was caught at the airport with explosives meant to attack hotels.

Another young European woman, Anne-Marie B., a pharmacy student who was recruited by the same Algerian to help a planned attack on a camp in Vienna with Soviet Jews en route to Israel.

People don't remember that the actual hijackers of the plane to Entebbe in 1976 included two Germans, Brigitte Kuhlmann and Wilfried Böse. Members of Germany’s Revolutionary Cells, Italy’s Red Brigades and the Japanese Red Army cooperated with the PFLP in several terror attacks including the 1972 Lod Airport Massacre.

More recently, in 2006, International Solidarity Movement volunteers posed happily holding weapons with the Palestinian terrorists they were helping.

When we see slogans like "Globalize the Intifada" and "By Any Means Necessary" being shown prominently in anti-Israel demonstrations organized by communist and socialist organizations like Within Our Lifetime and International ANSWER, it seems highly likely that they are brainwashing the next generation of violent radicals and setting the agenda for a larger group to justify the upcoming terror attacks.

Today's "progressives" claim to eschew violence, but on their more radical websites they justify all violence against Jews. It is not difficult to draw a direct line from the students recruited in the name of Palestinian solidarity in the 1970s and those who support Hamas today.

Only a tiny percentage of the leftists of the 1970s actually engaged in terror, but a larger pro-Palestinian, anti-Western movement created the conditions for those people to emerge. The playbook today sure feels a lot like that of fifty years ago.

(h/t Daniel)

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The media is aghast at President Trump floating an idea for Gazans to temporarily relocate to other Arab countries. Articles are filled with Palestinian fears of ethnic cleansing, of another "nakba." The broad implication is that Trump is trampling on the human rights of Palestinians by suggesting they be allowed to go elsewhere.

There is one word that the media is avoiding mentioning as much as possible: "voluntarily."

Nobody is proposing that Gazans be forced to leave Gaza if they don't want to. The idea is that they should be treated like any other people worldwide who can leave a war zone if they so desire.

As far as I see, none of the articles are mentioning this. AP notes that Egypt and Jordan already host many refugees from other conflicts, but instead of advocating that Palestinians be treated exactly the same way, it gives excuses as to why they should not.

The New York Times has to make up facts to justify the anti-Palestinian policies of other countries:

Millions of Palestinian refugees are living in camps in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and a few other countries in the Middle East. Since the start of the war, Egypt has said that it will not take in any more Palestinian refugees, and that any attempt to force Palestinians into their territory risks agreements that it has with Israel.

There is not one camp for Palestinians outside the UNRWA camps in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the Palestinian territories. Egypt has no camps, and neither does Saudi Arabia or the UAE or Qatar or Libya or anywhere else descendants of Palestinian refugees from 1948 have moved to. The people living there are not refugees according to the definition in the Refugee Convention. and UNRWA uses doubletalk to paper over this fact.

The media avoids mentioning that hundreds of thousands of people desperately tried to flee Gaza for safety during the war. Tens of thousands of those with the financial means paid huge bribes to Egyptian officials to become "VIPs" who were allowed to get temporary visitor visas.

Not once does the media or NGOs mention the basic fact: Palestinians have the human right to voluntarily seek better lives elsewhere, and this right that is being denied by every Arab country. Outrageously, this right is emphasized by human rights organizations for every war zone except Gaza.

If the media would mention the voluntary nature of the plan, it would damn the Arab countries who have different policies for Palestinians than for every group of refugees from places like Syria, Iraq and Sudan.

One could even say that these different policies for Palestinians and for everyone else is in some ways the very definition of apartheid.

People who pretend to care about Palestinians love to say how many times Gazans were forced to leave areas where Hamas used them as human shields. Their cynical pretense to care about human rights never extends to allowing Palestinians to leave Gaza to seek safety and asylum elsewhere - on the contrary, they frame this refusal by Egypt and Jordan as if they are protecting Palestinian human rights.

If the news articles would include the simple word "voluntarily," everyone would see that this is a human rights issue. That is the last thing the media wants its readers to know.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

One of the prisoners scheduled for release on Saturday was Ammar Marzi Al-Huwaitat. He is a Jordanian citizen who was sentenced to life imprisonment plus 20 years for murdering an Israeli in Judea and Samaria in 2002.

Huwaitat was supposed to be released to Jordan, but Jordan refused to take him. Apparently the Jordanians aren't keen on a murderer being released free on their soil, even if he killed a "settler."

Israel tried to find another place to release Huwaitat to, either the West bank or Gaza or even another Arab country. Huwaitat refused, saying if he cannot return to Jordan, he'd rather stay in Israeli prison than go anywhere else.

Now, Huwaitat has accused the Israeli prison authorities of beating him mercilessly. In 2023, a month after October 7, he claimed that 15 guards beat him, broke his ribs and forced him to be hospitalized.

Now he is saying he prefers to stay in captivity in an Israeli prison that he claims mistreats him rather than go to the West Bank or Gaza or anywhere else.

Most people serving a life sentence and given an opportunity for freedom, even if it had to be in another country, would eagerly accept such a deal. If they were being constantly mistreated in prison, all the more so.

But Huwaitat prefers to stay in Israeli prison for the rest of his life than go anywhere that might take him.

Either he is a masochist, or his life in prison is a far cry from the lurid descriptions that Palestinians tell credulous Westerners about rape and torture.

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

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01/25 Links: Freeing hostages should be a standalone imperative; Hamas parades 'victory' in hostage deal: The message behind the spectacle; Israel: UNRWA has five days to leave Jerusalem

From Ian:

Irwin Cotler: Freeing hostages should be a standalone imperative

The singling out of Israel for selective opprobrium and indictment, coupled with indulgence of Hamas demands, only prolonged the painful process, and the pernicious paradigm that underpinned it. In not condemning Hamas’ outrageous demands, the international community delayed a ceasefire and thereby contributed to the suffering of Palestinians and Israelis alike.

The Canadian government was missing in action, thereby prejudicing this process and the cause of the hostages. As a major G7 country and founding nation of the rules-based international order and its multilateral institutions like the UN, Canada’s foreign policy positions matter in influencing other countries and shaping the global narrative.

The government could have more clearly called for “the immediate and unconditional release of all the hostages,” without referencing any other considerations in the same statement. While negotiations are the means through which this would be achieved, the rhetoric surrounding it matters, and “unconditional and immediate” underscores the illegality of hostage-taking and reinforces international norms against it, while increasing pressure on Hamas. Many others, such as the U.K. government, have effectively done so.

Far too often, the Canadian government linked the recovery of hostages to other considerations or conditions including a ceasefire, two-state solution (which we otherwise support), and the broader situation in the Middle East, thereby encouraging other countries to do the same and emboldening Hamas intransigence.

In echoing false accusations against Israel like the Al-Shifa hospital bombing — where the evidence revealed that the bombing was by Palestinian Islamic Jihad — and becoming the first G7 country to ban sales of defence materials to Israel, Canada further marginalized Israel amidst hostage negotiations, strengthened Hamas, and was marginal amongst major allies. Even Hamas issued a statement thanking the Canadian government for its positions.

As counsel to families of hostages and victims of October 7, we have been supporting the ongoing investigations by U.S. law enforcement, which led to the issuance of indictments against Hamas perpetrators. While Canada had initiated criminal investigations for Russian crimes against Ukrainians, ISIS crimes against Yazidis and others, and Canadian victims of terrorism and kidnapping abroad, the government has opted not to pursue justice and accountability for the Jewish Canadian victims of Hamas.

This did not only hurt Israelis and Palestinians, but also Canadians, who are at increasing risk of being abducted abroad. As hostage-takings rise around the world, Canada’s words and deeds inadvertently normalized the largest international hostage-taking in history, thereby undermining the international norms against it and putting all Canadians abroad at risk.

As the hostage recovery and ceasefire agreement is implemented, all Canadian public officials and parliamentarians can support its success by continuing to emphasize the standalone nature of the hostage crisis, and the need for the return of all the hostages, including human remains being illegally held captive. Particular reference should continue to be made to Toronto-native Judi Weinstein, who deserves a dignified burial and her Canadian family the closure of a funeral and gravesite. As well, specific support should be extended to hostages with close Canadian connections, such as Omer Neutra, Agam Berger, and Hadar Goldin.

The current hostage crisis and concomitant rise of other global hostage-takings — and Canada’s insufficient leadership therein — demonstrates the need for a new approach.

When Parliament resumes in March, it should adopt Bill C-353, the Foreign Hostage Takers Accountability Act, which makes important improvements to the legislative framework to combat hostage-taking.

Canada should also establish a standalone office for freeing hostages with a dedicated staff and an integrated whole-of-government approach, headed by a Special Envoy or Ambassador. This would be in line with our major allies, where the U.S. already has a Special Envoy — the cornerstone of a bipartisan foreign policy priority — and the U.K. is in the process of establishing one, after having already appointed an ambassador and team specifically for the October 7 hostages.

Grounded in the Canada-led Declaration on Arbitrary Detention in State to State Relations endorsed by 79 states — and wherein hostage-taking by terrorist state proxy would logically be within its mandate — Canada should convene a global task force of states against hostage-taking with concrete collective actions against hostage-takers and their state backers.

The return of hostages must continue to be urgently pursued as a humanitarian imperative until all are free. It is a legal obligation of the first order, as every day hostages remain in captivity is an ongoing Crime Against Humanity. Canada can now help free the captives in Gaza while combating the global scourge of hostage-taking by exercising global leadership.

Seth Frantzman: Hamas parades 'victory' in hostage deal: The message behind the spectacle

HAMAS MADE it clear that this exchange on Saturday is a military affair. It kidnapped the women from Nahal Oz base on October 7, 2023. The women were sheltering in an area that was supposed to be safe. They were part of an IDF unit of women lookout observers who were unarmed and had been stationed on the border.

Hamas kidnapped the women from Nahal Oz base on October 7. The women were sheltering in an area that was supposed to be safe. They were part of an IDF unit of women observers who were unarmed and had been stationed on the border.

Many members of the unit, which is mostly women, were massacred. They had no real protection at the Nahal Oz base. The base was not designed to be able to withstand a mass assault of the type that Hamas conducted. In addition, it took many hours before the surviving women IDF soldiers were actually kidnapped on October 7.

The realities of October 7
In addition, it took many hours before the surviving women IDF soldiers were actually kidnapped on October 7. The kidnapping was caught on video taken by Hamas members that was later recovered. It shows five of the women being kidnapped. However, two other members of the unit were also kidnapped alive.

Ori Megedish was rescued from Gaza in the first days of the ground offensive in late October. Noa Marciano was kidnapped alive but she was later killed near Shifa hospital.

Agam Berger, who was kidnapped alongside Karina Ariev, Daniella Gilboa, Naama Levy and Liri Albag, is still held in Gaza.

The images of these five women, who were 18 and 19 years old when they were abducted from Nahal Oz on October 7, have been common sights across Israel. The image of Naama Levy being pulled by her hair out of an IDF jeep that the Hamas members stole on October 7 has become one of the most jarring images of the war as well.

The kidnapping was caught on video taken by Hamas members that was later recovered. It shows five of the women being kidnapped. However, two other members of the unit were also kidnapped alive. Ori Megidish was rescued from Gaza in the first days of the ground offensive in late October. Noa Marciano was kidnapped alive, but she was later killed near Shifa Hospital. Agam Berger, who was kidnapped alongside Karina Ariev, Daniella Gilboa, Naama Levy, and Liri Albag, is still being held in Gaza.

These images have been seen worldwide. Hamas knows this, and it staged the spectacle in Gaza on Saturday to exploit these images as much as possible. Hamas also wanted to show that it can deliver the women soldiers back to Israel in a ceremony in which the women appear healthy.

This is all part of Hamas propaganda designed to showcase the terror group as if it were a normal organization. In contrast to the images from October 7, of the women being roughly pushed and made to walk over gravel in bare feet, some of their faces and clothes bloodied, the terrorist group is trying to show that all is well in Gaza. This is Hamas’s “total victory” moment.

2023: The Woman in the Hamas Video Is My Daughter

You have seen the video of my daughter Naama Levy. Everyone has. You have seen her dragged by her long brown hair from the back of a Jeep at gunpoint, somewhere in Gaza, her gray sweatpants covered in blood. You may have perhaps noticed that her ankles are cut, that she’s barefoot and limping. She is seriously injured. She is frightened. And I, her mother, am helpless in these moments of horror.

On October 7, Naama had been sleeping at Kibbutz Nahal Oz, and was awakened by the chaotic sound of a missile barrage. At 7 a.m., she sent me a WhatsApp message: “We’re in the safe room. I’ve never heard anything like this.” That was the last I heard from her.

The next day, I saw the video, but the woman in the footage was so bloodied and disheveled it was hard to tell if it really was her. Naama’s father called and confirmed the terrible news.

Before that day, every video our family had taken of Naama was joyful—dancing with friends, laughing with her three siblings, and simply enjoying life. Naama is only 19, but she’ll always be my baby girl. A girl who truly believes in the good of all people. She enjoys athletics and dreams of a career in diplomacy, and her greatest passion is helping those in need. As a girl, she was a member of the “Hands of Peace” delegation, which brings together American, Israeli, and Palestinian youths to promote global social change.

But now, one video, totally unrepresentative of the life she had led until October 7, is how the world knows her.

It has been deeply disturbing to see the United Nations and feminist organizations refuse to acknowledge that Hamas raped and committed appalling sexual crimes against women, simply because the victims are Jewish. It took two months for some to finally admit the scale and the brutality of the horror. Meanwhile, Israeli experts are gathering the evidence. Shari, a volunteer worker at the Shura military morgue, told The Washington Post about what she documented: “We saw many women with bloody underwear, with broken bones, broken legs, broken pelvises.”

The same monsters who committed those crimes are holding my daughter hostage.

There are seventeen young women still in captivity. They range in age from 18 to 26. I think of what they, and my Naama, could be subjected to at every moment of the day. Each minute is an eternity in hell.

On Monday, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said that one of the reasons Hamas doesn’t want to release the young female hostages “is they don’t want these women to be able to talk about what happened to them during their time in custody.”

Everyone knows exactly what he means.

What would you do if your daughter were being held hostage by violent rapists and murderers for two months? Perhaps the better question is: What wouldn’t you do?