Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, January 29, 2025

New batch of EoZ cartoons and memes

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

I've been pointing out the antisemitic underpinnings of the media coverage of the Gaza war. The media, UN and NGOs has consistently accepted the Hamas narrative lies - their casualty numbers, most victims are women and children, starvation, genocide, indiscriminate bombings, blocking aid - while every piece of evidence offered by Israel countering the lies has been dismissed or questioned. Proof that Gaza officials blatantly lie is ignored.

The lie that Jews are inherently deceitful is not new. Here's an example from the mid-18th century.

At the time, there was a huge debate in Britain about the "Jew Bill," the Jewish Naturalization Act of 1753, which would allow foreign born Jews to become naturalized citizens without being forced to take a Christian oath. It would not, however, allow Jews to vote or hold political office.

The antisemites of the day brought forth lots of antisemitic tropes to support their opposition to the bill. This essay was the lead article of the Gloucester Journal, July 31, 1753. :

LET a Cause be ever so bad, where there is Money to pay, there will not be wanting Advocates to plead. It is not, therefore, to be wondered at that we have Writers who would gloss over the Jewish Act, endeavour to persuade us out of our Senses, and make us believe that the Jews are the best Sort of People in the World, and that wherever they come they are a National Blessing.

Much has been said about their vast Knowledge in Mercantile Affairs, as if our Commerce was in a great measure depending upon their superior Abilities. Yet the Truth is, their Commerce is but a Trifle, their Knowledge is chiefly in the Stocks, and their Arts of Merchandize are exerted principally in Exchange-alley. That the Nation gets Riches by them has been confidently asserted; that they acquire great Riches by the Nation has been sufficiently demonstrated. All that has been said in their Favour has been only by begging Questions: Let us, therefore, lay down some certain Rule for Argument; let us establish some uncontroverted Principle to reason upon, by which we may judge, Whether the Jews are, or not, in a political Light, a Benefit to the British Nation?

We will, therefore, advance this one short, but unerring, Rule, "That no Set of People whatever can be of real Service to any Community, who are notorious for acting upon dishonest Principles and contrary to Conscience."

The short Question, then, is, Whether the Jews are, in general, a People who act upon honest Principles, or not? If not, they cannot, even in a political Light, be of Service to any State. But, to judge impartially, let us consider what it is that chiefly makes Men act honestly and according to Conscience, and whether the Jews are possessed of that Principle, or not.

Everyone will acknowledge that it is not in the Power of human Laws to bind the Hearts of Men; they may, indeed, compel their outward Compliance to such Things as they enact, but Men may be very bad, and very detrimental to Society, without directly and openly infringing their Laws, because those, who are restrained from dishonest Actions only out of the Fear of Punishment from human Laws, will be ever studying to elude, and may in many Things escape, the Justice of them. It is, therefore, the Laws of God only, the Laws of Him who knows the human Heart, and the Belief of a future State of Rewards and Punishments, that can thoroughly influence the Hearts of Men to act uprightly. Now, as the Jews deny the Word of God, and disbelieve a Resurrection! they are not possessed of that chief Principle which obliges Men to act honestly and according to Conscience. Therefore, to set the bad Consequences of their Want of Conscience to those among whom they live in a clear Light, let us consider the Manner by which all of them, both Rich and Poor, maintain themselves.
—Do the Jews grow rich by trafficking abroad, and exporting the Commodities of this Country, as has been asserted? No. It is a known Truth that they export but very little. How, then, have the Rich Ones got all their Wealth? By State-jobs, Lotteries, and other iniquitous Arts of Exchange-alley!
—How do the Poor Jews get their Bread? Do any of them plough the Land or Sea? No.
—How, then, do they get their Living? By peddling about, and cheating the Public with bad and counterfeit Commodities!
—Since, then, the Rich Ones get their Money by the Arts of the Alley, and the Poor Ones live by imposing bad Wares upon the Public, Can they be said to act upon honest Principles and according to Conscience? Or, Can the Nation be really benefited by such a People?

As to our Most Holy Religion, (though it is certainly very wrong, and contrary to the True Christian Doctrine, to persecute any People on account of their Religious Principles, yet) it can never be right to encourage Infidelity so far as to incorporate the Blasphemers and Crucifiers of Christ.
—It has, indeed, been said, by those who have wrote in favour of the Jews, “That the Ruler of Heaven and Earth may have guided the Hearts of our Superiors in making this Act to naturalize them; and that it may probably be a Step towards their Conversion to the Christian Faith.”
—As to who or what guided the Hearts of our Rulers to make this Act, it may not, perhaps, be so proper to explain, though not at all difficult to guess: But to think to convert the Jews to the Belief of the Prophecies in Sacred Scripture by endeavouring to prove them to be false is certainly one of the refined Strokes of our Modern Politics.

Jews, by rejecting Christianity, prove that they cannot be trusted. QED.

The Jew Bill passed, and then months later was rescinded. Jews could not become full British citizens with equal rights until more than a century later, in 1858.

The slur of Jews as deceivers is as ingrained in the Christian world as it is in the Muslim world, where Jews are framed as breaking covenants. Today's supposedly enlightened, modern thinkers believe that they are beyond such prejudices, but the Gaza war proves otherwise. Most people believe what they want to and find justifications afterwards, and that is the dynamic at play in today's news media and human rights groups, more than willing to believe and repeat antisemitic lies while statements from Jews are automatically suspect.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

How to make Israel look like a country of religious nationalist fanatics, @Haaretzcom style

Haaretz writes:

Israel Has Bigger Share of 'Religious Nationalists' Than Any Other High-income Country

Judy Maltz Jan 28, 2025 7:00 pm IST

Religion plays a far more important role in national identity in Israel than it does in other developed countries, according to a global survey published on Tuesday by the Pew Research Center.

Israel was the only high-income country surveyed in which at least a third of the respondents said that following the predominant religion – Judaism, in this case – was a very important element of national identity. Fewer than a quarter of the respondents in the other high-income countries agreed with this statement.

Three dozen countries participated in the survey, which found that people who live in middle-income countries are more likely to be "religious nationalists" than people who live in high-income countries. Still, religious nationalists did not account for the majority of the population in any of the countries surveyed.

For the purpose of the survey, people were classified as religious nationalists if they identified with their country's historically predominant religion and took a strongly religious position on a number of questions related to the role of religion in national identity and government. The findings are based on nationally representative surveys of nearly 55,000 adults conducted between January and May of last year.

Everything Maltz writes is technically correct - and highly misleading.

First of all, Jews are both a people and a religion, so when Israelis say that being Jewish is a very important part of national identity, they interpret the question quite differently than people of most other religions.

But beyond that, the survey does not distinguish between countries that are officially associated with a religion and those where most citizens happen to belong to a religion. Israel is the only high income country surveyed that associates itself with a religion, but there are many other such countries that were not part of the survey: Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Brunei, Qatar and the UAE, and officially Christian countries like Liechtenstein, Monaco and Malta. Without including those countries, any conclusions about Israel is at best a half-truth.

Indeed, those polled in Muslim countries (including upper-middle income Muslim countries like Malaysia and Turkey) tended to be much more likely to say that Islam was a critical part of their national identity than Israelis did, and one can presume that this would be the case with high-income Muslim countries as well.

When you compare Israel to other countries that define themselves religiously, it has a much lower percentage of people who answer this question affirmatively.

Now, let's look at the headline. The first paragraphs of the article imply that more than one third of Israelis are "religious nationalists." But Pew's definition of that term is much more restrictive - something Haaretz buries further down - and the percentage of Israelis who fit that definition is only 9% (compared to 6% in the US.) This is hardly the country of religious fanatics that Haaretz wants its readers to believe.

That's a lot of missing context to promote a narrative of Israel as being uniquely religious-nationalistic fanatic.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

UN accredited NGO has been accusing Israel of inflicting a "holocaust" on Palestinians since at least 2008

The International Organization for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (EAFORD) is a non-governmental organization in special consultative status with the UN. It issues reports every year or so to the UN that is filled with pure Jew-hatred.

It routinely compares Israeli Jews to Nazis. For example, this submission to the UN from August 2008:

Have Jews everywhere forgotten the terrors of the Holocaust to such an extent, as to allow Israel to pursue, and inflict one on the Palestinian people?

...Unseen, and most times, unheard, because of the great Israeli lobby that would accuse us, vilify us, of anti-Semitism if we did report the grave violations. Let us, once and for all, catch on to this game plan, because for all that it is, it is simply just: an old and abused attempt at utilizing the feeling of guilt amongst some to inflict another holocaust on innocent Palestinians and to deny access to the present truths.

To those of us, to whom much has been given, much is expected! The present day Holocaust of the Palestinian people, their dignity, and their struggle for freedom will not be cancelled, as the Jewish Holocaust was not, from history. Basic humanity impels us to make a stand, to shout from the roof-tops- NOT AGAIN, NO MORE!

EAFORD accused Israel of inflicting a "holocaust" on Palestinians even the first Gaza war with Hamas, making direct comparisons between the Jewish Israelis and the Nazis.

And it repeated this blood libel in other submissions. For example, in 2014: "It is appalling that Israel, after the tragic Holocaust history of the Jews in Europe, has turned the Jewish legacy from a victim of the Nazi racist ideology into a victimizer."

Its embracing of antisemitic tropes goes back even further. In 1986, EAFORD gave their highest honor to the crackpot Paul Findlay's book on the Israel lobby, They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby. (The entire book is on the EAFORD site.)

The UN gave EAFORD an award as a "peace messenger" the following year.

A look at EAFORD's history explains its antisemitism.

EAFORD was launched during the International Symposium on Zionism and Racism held in Tripoli, Libya in 1976, under the auspices of that human rights paragon the Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi.

Gaddafi is widely believed to have bankrolled EAFORD, which moved to Geneva. The NGO soon became accredited to the UN and gave a pretense of caring about other topics than Israel, but every submission it makes to the UN is condemning Israel.

EAFORD was also heavily involved in the infamously antisemitic Durban UN conference in 2001.

Who funds EAFORD nowadays?

Officially, the UN must receive reports on the funding of the NGOs it supports. EAFORD says on its website, "In compliance with the requirements applied to all non-governmental organizations with Consultative Status, EAFORD submits regular reports to the ECOSOC Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations regarding the sources of its funding."

I asked both EAFORD and ECOSOC for copies of these reports, and they ignored my queries.

This is just a small example of how anti-Israel NGOs end up gaining respect and prestige even when their origins and continuing work show that they are the ones who support discrimination and bigotry while pretending to fight against them.

EAFORD is an antisemitic organization by any sane definition of antisemitism. The UN's elevating EAFORD shows that the UN is no better.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

01/28 Links Pt2: The Holocaust Cannot Be Hijacked to Describe Other Conflicts; The religious mania of Owen Jones; What the Irish President Should Have Said about His Country and the Shoah

From Ian:

Elisha Wiesel: Will We Continue Giving Moral Credibility to Voices Who Say Israel Is the Villain for Refusing to Die?

Auschwitz was liberated 80 years ago Monday. The world told itself they were doing all they could - even as the railroad tracks to Auschwitz were not bombed; as the St. Louis ship, full of Jewish refugees, was turned back from Florida to Europe; as Britain froze European Jewish immigration to the British Mandate for Palestine, preventing the escape of hundreds of thousands who could have been saved.

It is hard to look evil in the face. To see the jihadists in Gaza fire rifles in the air as 90 Palestinian prisoners were exchanged for three Israeli women. One of the terrorists set to be released by Israel is Abu Warda, who was responsible for killing 45 civilians in the 1996 bus bombings in Jerusalem. Does he occupy the same moral universe as these women?

It is easier to believe that this militant mob wants their own state than to hear, really hear, what they shout: that their mission is the eradication of Israel. Americans must not forgive Hamas. We must confront evil when and where we see it.

Will we continue explaining away the images of non-uniformed Palestinian civilians celebrating - and actively aiding Hamas - in the Oct. 7 attacks? Will we continue confusing the concepts of perpetrator and victim? Will we continue giving moral credibility to voices who say that the tiny nation of Israel is the villain for refusing to die?

Seth Mandel: Food for Thought for the Anti-Zionists

Perhaps one reason this type of vandalism has so few defenders even among progressives is because they like to claim that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism—and the accusations of food appropriation demolish that ridiculous fiction like almost no other argument.

Israel is the name of a geographic location; if you are upset about Israelis eating or making a particular kind of food it is because you actually object to Jews eating or making that food. The fact that a person in one region of the world would be eating the same food as his neighbor across the street is unremarkable. But when one of those two people is a Jew, it becomes fodder for the fever swamps.

You will not find, for example, vandalism by Syrian activists against Palestinian-identified shops for making a version of a dish in, say, Nablus even though the dish predates Palestinian Arab nationalism. Which is why my Syrian Jewish friends, as they cook their centuries-old family recipes, don’t whine about Palestinians also cooking a similar Syrian dish while putting a slightly modern twist on it and calling it Palestinian. You’d have to be insane to do something like that.

Easily my favorite such controversy, however, is the recurring one over couscous. Pro-Palestinian activists get particularly upset over seeing dishes labeled “Israeli couscous.” Columbia’s anti-Zionist professor Joseph Massad claims he once stomped out of a New York restaurant after seeing it on the menu.

A more recent example comes from Yale. Last year, students posted pictures from the dining hall purportedly showing that Israeli couscous suddenly had the “Israeli” part removed. Things had gotten so tense on campus that the school, it turned out, had decided to remove regional or cultural labels from the dishes they served. But then “Israeli couscous” reappeared. Yale explained to JTA: “In this case, Israeli Couscous is indeed an actual ingredient and is explicitly listed on the ingredient list. Considering it is the main ingredient, it is appropriate to remain in the title, and we will correct this oversight.”

The reason for this is that Israeli couscous isn’t couscous at all, and Israelis never tried to pass it off as such. It’s a relic of Israel’s early days when food manufacturers were pushed to make a grain product that was cheaper than rice. It looked like couscous but wasn’t. Israelis didn’t call it couscous. They called couscous, couscous. They didn’t call it Israeli couscous either. It acquired that name later to differentiate it in stores from couscous.

Which is to say: when something is labeled “Israeli couscous” it is not to “steal” couscous but to announce that it isn’t couscous.

This is indicative of the larger point: There are no winners in the food wars, because merely participating in this stuff makes you sound like a lunatic. Objections to Israeli food are thus helpful only because they identify people who have way bigger problems than ill-formed opinions on geopolitics.

Yisrael Medad: ‘Shofar’s call to ‘rehabilitate’ Zionism

Shofar, an interdisciplinary journal of Jewish studies whose editors are committed “to publishing a diversity of beliefs, ideas and opinions,” is a project of cooperation with Purdue University. The academic institution was beset, as were many campuses, last year with pro-Palestine rallies and demonstrations, and even set up a “Liberation Zone,” although it would seem none for any Israeli hostages. I have no information that those events had a direct influence on the publication of an issue dedicated to anti-Zionism, but it exists.

Shaul Magid of Dartmouth College led that Shofar special issue, which was devoted to “Zionism and Its Jewish Critics.” He claimed that “while some scholars argue that the concept [of Zionism] has biblical origins, most acknowledge that it is a modern Jewish iteration of Western European nationalism that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century.” Who are these “most” scholars who champion perverse purposeful ignorance? What is their academic weight? Are these the instructors properly suited to lecture university students, Jewish and non-Jewish?

Magid and fellow travelers would have us believe that the many dozens of Torah commandments, hundreds of verses of Tanach, thousands of Midrashic, Talmudic and Second Temple literature pieces, as well as thousands of rabbinic dicta and responsa spanning some 2,500 years of Jewish core religion, culture and ritual revolving around Zion, Jerusalem, the Land of Israel and a Jew’s obligations to the same are to be erased and ignored. Similarly, the constant presence of Jews residing in the Land of Israel—immigrating and traveling to it, and sending charitable dollars to those living there all during the 1,800 years of our Exile, not to mention the Return to Zion during the sixth-century BCE—is to be disregarded.

In a follow-up response, Lior Sternfeld of Penn State University addresses the topic of “Settler Colonialism, From the River to the Sea, and the Israeli Case After October 7.” He intends “to offer a way to unpack some of the volatile concepts often used to analyze the Israel-Palestine conflict.” Nevertheless, he promptly engages in a volatile position and, as if objectively, observes that “well-meaning scholars and activists have sought to rehabilitate the concept of Zionism.”

And what is the need for that? Sternfeld knows and suggests that “Zionism, at least in its twenty-first-century form, negates the very existence of Palestinian identity and Palestinian nationalism. As such, the peaceful existence of the two peoples, enjoying freedom, independence, and self-determination, could never be achieved.” All the fault of the Jews. Sorry, the Zionists. For what is Zionism if not, according to Sternfeld, “settler-colonialism”?

01/28 Links Pt1: Netanyahu is first foreign leader invited by Trump to White House; Hostages spent eight straight months in tunnels; Senate Democrats block ICC sanctions bill

From Ian:

Hamas May Be Cheering, But It Is Writhing in Pain

All the stories about how Hamas has swiftly recovered, replenished its depleted ranks with new recruits, and resumed governing contradict the realities on the ground. Hamas has not renewed any of its military capabilities and has not yet reestablished its battalions. Nor has it resumed rocket production or tunneling work. The new recruits in the displaced persons camps have not been given any real training. Its civilian apparatuses are operating on a very limited scale.

Countless tweets and videos show that the local population has learned that it can both hate Israel and despise Hamas. Several clans in southern Gaza have formed armed gangs that are prepared to clash with Hamas operatives. Hamas may have a large amount of money, but it has gotten that money by scalping goods at the civilian population's expense. Everyone knows this.

It is clear to Hamas officials that no serious sum of money is going to be given to rebuild devastated Gaza as long as they remain in control. They have been practically begging PA President Mahmoud Abbas to assume responsibility for administering Gaza, but the PA won't enter unless Hamas first disarms. Neither the Emiratis nor the Saudis will open their wallets, and Israel isn't about to let Qatar sneak its way in.

For those who have already begun to weep bitterly because Hamas survived and supposedly emerged with the upper hand, they should think again.

Seth Mandel: Qatar’s Bid to Destabilize Israeli Politics

We know, and have known for some time, that the live return of all the hostages was not on the table in December 2023. We also know that the positioning of Israeli troops was so different in December 2023 that in terms of the reality on the ground, the deal would not have looked anything like the deal that was signed earlier this month.

As a reminder, here is what then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken said a few weeks ago regarding the barriers to a deal:

“The two biggest impediments to getting that over the finish line — and we’ve been so close on several occasions and as we speak today, we’re also very close — there have been two major impediments, and they both go to what drives Hamas. One has been whenever there has been public daylight between the United States and Israel and the perception that pressure was growing on Israel, we’ve seen it: Hamas has pulled back from agreeing to a cease-fire and the release of hostages. And so there are times when what we say in private to Israel where we have a disagreement is one thing, and what we’re doing or saying in public may be another. But that’s in no small measure because with this daylight, the prospects of getting the hostage and cease-fire deal over the finish line become more distant.”

Scapegoating Israel for the lack of a deal is nothing more and nothing less than a form of diplomatic sabotage. It is what Hamas was doing then, and it is what Qatar is doing now.

But to what end? What’s the purpose of Qatari misbehavior at a time like this? The answer is that Qatar is playing games with Israel’s domestic politics. Emotions are, of course, raw. And that is especially so around the hostage deals, in which Hamas and its Western chorus line have succeeded in portraying Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the roadblock.

We know now that this wasn’t the case all along—we know now definitively that it was Hamas acting as Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown each time. But we’ve known this for quite some time. Nonetheless, Israelis had one government they could petition: their own. That petitioning morphed over time, for many in the Israeli public, into an article of faith that Netanyahu was negotiating against himself. Hamas took advantage of this and poked and prodded at Israel’s internal divisions, tormenting families and constantly reopening wounds.

That is what Qatar is doing now. The Qataris want what Hamas wanted: the destabilization of Israeli politics. And so they portray Israel as the only party to the conflict with agency. And they are willing to continue doing so, even if it maximizes the suffering of grieving Israelis.

End America’s unwise alliance with Qatar

An alliance with the U.S. — specifically, a Major Non-NATO alliance — was once the most highly coveted relationship a nation could earn, a sacrosanct pact of mutual importance. But one such alliance is now a liability for both the U.S. and its long-time allies.

Qatar, our oil-wealthy “ally” in the Persian Gulf, is funding and harboring terrorists that not only threaten American forces but are attacking long-standing American allies. Worse yet, Doha believes this terrorist/ally balance is protected because the country hosts the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East.

A U.S. base should give America leverage with the country hosting it — it should not give leverage to Iran, in the case of Iraq; and it should not give leverage to Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis in the case of Qatar.

Qatar is counting on the proposition that hosting a strategically significant U.S. base insulates Doha from the repercussions of funding and supporting Hamas attacks against Israel and helping the terrorist organization survive to carry out more such attacks in the future —attacks promised by Hamas leaders from luxury hotels in Doha.

How did the Hamas political office end up in the capital of a U.S. ally? Qatar’s ambassador to the U.S. says the nation was asked by the Obama administration in 2012 to set up “indirect lines of communication” with Hamas. Doha gravely mistook the request. Qatar was certainly not asked to give Hamas billions of dollars, give its leaders a platform on Al Jazeera to call for jihad, and embed its reporters to film terrorist attacks.

There should be a cost: targeted sanctions and designations like those established by the Russian Elites, Proxies, and Oligarchs Task Force, which was set up to seize and reallocate assets to support the victims of Vladimir Putin’s aggression. The U.S. should seize assets tied to individuals and entities in Qatar for supporting terrorist groups, especially those tied to Iran, a state sponsor of terrorism. The U.S. should use those funds to replenish the U.S. Victims Of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund.

It’s time to put Doha on notice that they are jeopardizing their relationship with the U.S. by providing material support to designated terrorist groups. Qatar is clearly acting like a state sponsor of terror and should not be allowed to use the U.S. banking system to bypass existing, though not enforced, sanctions on funding Iran and its terrorist proxies.

The Real Humanitarians

Curiously, those in the West who most loudly claim to be champions of Palestinian human rights, international law, and a voice for the downtrodden have a bizarre double standard. The very people who are ordinarily the loudest advocates for the rights of refugees and asylees, are adamant that the right to leave a warzone doesn’t apply to Gazans.

Syrians, Afghans, Iraqis, Ukrainians and others are welcomed with open arms but Gazans? Well, hang on a minute, that’s much more complicated. For Gazans their advocacy is limited to outrage at both the conditions in Gaza and at the suggestion that Palestinians might choose to leave.

The absurd position these so-called humanitarians take is that survivors of what they claim is a genocide, must be prevented from leaving the place of their tragedy. What kind of monster demands that survivors of genocide live in tent cities for decades, and under the iron grip of the same oppressive regime which brought about this disastrous war in the first place?

Yet this is the position these sanctimonious hypocrites take. Instead of supporting Gazans right to rebuild their lives on their own terms, western activists fetishize Gazan suffering so they can display their professed moral virtue.

What then of the “brotherly” Arab nations? Where is their solidarity? Unless you count words, it’s just not there. Egypt, which ruled Gaza before Israel or Hamas and sits on vast tracts of empty land keeps its border slammed shut- refusing to accept any refugees. Gazans speak the same language, have the same religion and many have family ties in Egypt, but even the sick and wounded in Gaza are not permitted to leave for medical treatment unless it is to be treated in a third country. What about Yemen, which boasts of its solidarity with Gaza. Well, it turns out that the Houthi’s solidarity extends only so far as their effort to murder Israelis. They do nothing to save Gazans or reduce their suffering.

Others in the Arab world issue routine condemnations of Israel, but concrete help to Gazans other than dropping aid on their heads, or sending food which they know will be stolen by Hamas and sold for extortionate prices? Forget about it. With the exception of Bahrain and the UAE, the nations which make up the Arab League continue their decades long policy of using the Palestinians as a weapon against Israel, even though everyone knows they couldn’t care less.

Trump’s suggestion that Gazan be allowed to leave and rebuild their lives is a welcome break from the usual hot air, slander of Israel and slavish adherence to policies that have failed Arabs and Jews for decades.

Human rights advocates insist that Gazans leaving Gaza would be “ethnic cleansing”, ignoring the fact that no-one calls it this when refugees voluntarily leave other war zones, or that forcibly expelling Jews from Judea and Samaria is the preferred policy option of most govts. They aren’t humanitarians they are hypocrites.

True compassion for Gazans would be to genuinely free them. Not from Israel which left Gaza in 2005 and only went back to retrieve the hostages stolen by Hamas, but from those who claim to represent them. Hamas and Fatah do not care for Gazans, we saw in this war, and the negotiations to end it, that there is literally no-one on earth who cares less for them.

Certainly no-one serious is talking about forcing Arabs to leave Gaza, but let them leave if they wish. Let them start over in places where their children can grow up without fearing the next airstrike. Let them escape the grip of Hamas and the indifference of their “allies.”

Denying Gazans who wish to leave the chance to rebuild their lives elsewhere is not humanitarianism. It’s cruelty masquerading as solidarity.

Did the US provide Hamas with condoms that they turned into IEDs? Probably not, but UNRWA did.

In 2020, the Jerusalem Post reported:

Two years after Palestinians first started launching flaming kites and other improvised explosive devices (IEDs) like condoms and balloons into the South, the phenomenon has yet to abate.
It started with kites with burning rags or embers attached to them. Three months later, booby-trapped balloons and condoms began to be carried east toward the South, carried by winds coming off the Mediterranean Sea.
While the use of kites – a popular Middle Eastern pastime – seems to have disappeared, scores of balloons and condoms with explosive devices attached to them continue to land in schoolyards, agricultural fields and highways.
Though condoms or balloons bearing messages of “Happy Birthday” or “I ❤️ You” flying through the air may sound silly, the hard truth is that these primitive devices have wreaked havoc, burning thousands of hectares of land and causing millions of shekels of damage.

Could these condoms have come from the US taxpayer? The White House just said that they blocked a planned shipment of $50 million in condoms to Gaza.

That figure seems quite high. Condoms are not the most popular method of birth control in Gaza -

The UN has reported that the condoms that NGOs (including UNRWA) did ship to Gaza were often not used for their intended purpose:

It was noted that the amount of methods dispensed to NGOs doesn’t correspond to the number of beneficiaries they serve. During a focus group discussion (FGD) with the members of the FP steering committee in Gaza, a key informant at one NGO said, “We receive condoms from MOH but we use them for something else other than family planning. We use them to cover the head of the ultrasound probe during doing vaginal ultrasound”.

The report says, "UNRWA is the second biggest provider (27%) after the private sector (for birth control) and is the main provider in the GS (61%), much more than in the WB (11.4%)"

UNRWA almost certainly provided condoms to Hamas that were used as delivery systems for IEDs.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Last year, someone offered an online series of seminars called "Hospicing Zionism: Cognitive, somatic & ritual practice toward Jewish recovery."

Our premise is all survivors and perpetrators of Zionism will need healing and recovery...This course asks, what does healing look like for Jewish survivors of Zionism? Akin to dismantling internalized white supremacy, the invitation is to dismantle the intersecting, internalized supremacist constructs of of Zionism, whiteness, Ashkenazi normativity, ableism, Islamophobia, and anti-Semitism; and to examine the internalized and external structures of nation states, imperialism and settler colonialism. We aim to do so not just cognitively and intellectually, but also in a sturdy container of somatic practices, ritual, and deep empathic witnessing.

Wait, it gets better:

Recognizing that the soul wound of relational separation and disconnection underlies Zionism, as it does all forms of settler-colonialism, together we’ll practice deactivating the affective, cognitive and relational patterns that reinforce that separation and fuel dehumanization and violence done in our names. We are clear that through the colonial process of assimilation into whiteness, combined with intergenerational trauma, many Ashkenazi Jews have lost connection with body and earth based ways of being and relating to self, other humans, the more than human world (trees, waters, land, animals, plants, elements, the whole earth, etc), our earth and body honoring ancestors, and the Divine. As such, this course intends to support participants in not just developing cognitive understanding of Zionism and its alternatives, but also recovering and regenerating the capacity for sacred and honorable connection, reciprocity, presence, and intimacy with all of our relations. In this way, we will collectively cultivate secure attachment in relationship to all these layers of relationality.

How much does it cost to learn how to babble like this?

INVESTMENT / EXCHANGE

The exchange for this course is $3,000 ($250 month ‐ actual cost), $2400 ($200/month) or $1800 ($150/month).

Who is it meant for?

This course is an affinity space for Jewish folx, and is best suited for white, Ashkenazi Jews who feel ready to do the work of unpacking Zionism and all its related siblings of supremacy with both rigor and support. If you are Jewish and have Mizrahi or Sephardic lineage and/or are BIPOC, you may feel that this is not the right container for you as you have different lineages, lived experiences and relationships with Zionism/white supremacy/settler-colonialism. However, if you are a Sephardic, Mizrahi and/or BIPOC Jew who identifies as white adjacent, white presumed, or who simply feels that this container speaks to you, you are welcome to apply! We are also happy to discuss this further if you have questions.

Who created this absurdity?

Stacey Prince, PhD, SEP Stacey (she/her) is a psychologist and somatics practitioner living on the stolen lands of the Duwamish and Coast Salish peoples in what is colonially known as Seattle, WA. She is queer, an anti-occupation Ashkenazi Jew and a visitor on these lands with a lifelong commitment to examining and dismantling her complicitness with whiteness, settler-colonialism and modernity. She founded and stewards The Living Room, a collective of politicized healers. In addition to psychotherapy she offers supervision, consultation, group workshops and healing spaces, and is an adjunct professor in the department of psychology at the University of Washington.

Simon Wolff, SEP Simon (they/them) is a politicized healer, ritualist, and artist weaving one-to-one and small group somatic, ancestral, and cultural healing vessels in service to collective liberation. They support Jewish people to cultivate embodied and animist resilience and relationality amidst lived and intergenerational trauma. Simon identifies as a white antiracist, antizionist, queer, trans, disabled person of the Ashkenazi Jewish diaspora living on Anishinaabe land called Waawiiyaatanog / Detroit, MI. Starting in June 2024, they will be living on Nipmuc and Pocumtuc land known as Northampton, MA. To learn more about their work, visit www.simon-wolff.com.

The course - sorry, vessel - started last summer and is supposed to occur once a month for a year.

I would be very surprised if they attracted a single paying attendee.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

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.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

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.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

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.”