Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, February 13, 2025

UN quietly stops reporting Hamas lie "10,000 missing under rubble"

For months, the UN-OCHAOPT has faithfully reported Hamas statistics unless they were found to be completely bogus.

One of those statistics was the supposed 10,000 presumed dead Gazans missing or under the rubble, as this February 4 infographic says:

In its February 11 infographic, however, OCHA stopped reporting on that figure.

Others have also reported on the "10,000 buried under rubble" claim based on the UN quoting Hamas.

For example, the BBC on January 20:

I've been reporting that the "under the rubble" statistics were entirely made up for nearly a year now. But with the ceasefire now in its fourth week, and no impediments to recovering these thousands of bodies, the lie is more obvious every day - because the average number of bodies recovered daily keeps going way down.

Here are the numbers of bodies recovered, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, for each of the weeks since the ceasefire (current week extrapolated from the days counted):

Tuesday they recovered only two bodies.

It sure doesn't sound like there are 9,500 more bodies to be found.

The UN simply parroted what Hamas' Civil Defense said and publicized those numbers in other venues without question or caveat. Now, as it is increasingly clear that those estimates were simply made up to exaggerate the number of dead in Gaza, the UN has silently stopped quoting that figure.

But the numbers are still out there, quoted in the media and by NGOs.

Reporters should ask the UN about this sudden ceasing of transcribing Hamas lies.

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02/12 Links Pt2: Why Anti-Semitism Is Getting Younger; Majority of American Jews Believe Anti-Israel Campus Protests Are Anti-Semitic; Court gives Gazans right to settle in UK

From Ian:

Why Jews are fleeing the West

Over time, Jews attitudinal shifts will influence where they settle. According to Pew, 51 per cent of all Jewish immigrants are migrating to Israel. Many other more secular Jews are remaining, but simply melding into the general population and losing their religious identity. Given low birthrates and assimilation even among the large US Jewish community, some pessimistically project America’s Jewish population dropping by a third by the end of the century.

The Jewish diaspora in both America and Britain will become increasingly Orthodox, sustained largely by groups like the ubiquitous Chabad movement. For those who do not want to be led by pious rabbis, Jews will seek their community in places that they consider safe and welcoming.

This used to involve moving from the inner city to the suburbs. But the big move in America now is towards certain regions, primarily in the South, once considered the home of antidiluvian racism and religious prejudice. In the 1930s, 60 per cent of American Jews lived in the north-east. Today the north-east is home to barely 40 per cent while the percentage of Jews living in the South has grown from nine per cent in 1960 to 22 per cent today.

The largest growth has occurred in big metros like Atlanta, Houston, Dallas and Miami. Jews are also thriving in smaller southern cities, which often had small but well-established Jewish communities. Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim in Charleston is the nation’s second-oldest synagogue, and Savannah’s Mickve Israel was founded in 1735, shortly after the city’s founding.

Jews have long been prominent players in places like Charleston. Former police chief Ruben Greenberg, a half-Jewish, half-Black Houstonian, reclaimed the city’s streets during the 1980s. He also humiliated the white nationalists by personally leading the protection of a Ku Klux Klan march in the 1980s, something that was never repeated. Today one feels safer as a Jew in downtown Charleston than in Paris, London or even New York.

Jewish students are also headed south. Most schools ranked safest for Jewish students by the Anti-Defamation League are in the South, while Ivy League colleges and top University of California campuses rank least safe.

This shift in college attendance could accelerate the southward movement, as students often stay close to where they attend school. Already the first- and third-largest Jewish student populations are at the University of Florida and University of Central Florida. These Southern schools, known for viewpoint diversity as well as football and Greek life, are ascendant, attracting ever more students from the West Coast and north-east.

In the wake of the crisis initiated by the 7 October massacre, Jews across the Anglosphere are reassessing their politics and location. The most sustained anti-Semitic tide since the 1930s will continue to inflict both physical and psychological dislocation. But as they have done for millennia, Jews will have to survive and hopefully thrive by adjusting to changing realities.

Izabella Tabarovsky: Canceled ... in Finland

In recent days, two Finnish universities canceled my scheduled appearances on their campuses, turning me briefly into a minor celebrity in the country. Åbo Akademi University, in Turku, barred me from delivering my keynote address at an international conference on antisemitism set to take place on its campus. The University of Helsinki killed what was supposed to be a public talk. The title of both lectures: “From the Cold War to University Campuses Today: The USSR, the Third World, and Contemporary Antizionist Discourse.” The two schools caved to a smear campaign orchestrated by a “pro-Palestinian” Instagram account that weaponized my pro-Israel social media posts for the purpose.

In the U.S., the censorship of “wrong-thinking” speakers, including Jews who hold Zionist beliefs, has become so commonplace that it’s practically a nonevent. But this was Finland’s first major controversy of this kind, and my photo got splashed across the local press. It was also a first for me, forcing me to confront head-on the same cowardice, hypocrisy, and stupidity that the American academy has displayed for years—especially in the wake of Oct. 7.

That the incident took place in Finland was particularly ironic for me, given the topic of my lecture and my background as an ex-Soviet Jew. For former Soviet citizens, Finland is indelibly linked to the history of the Bolshevik revolution. Not only did Lenin spend extended periods of time there, but also he and Stalin first met at a 1905 Bolshevik conference in the Finnish city of Tampere.

During the Cold War, Finland—forced to maneuver to retain its independence in the shadow of the neighboring USSR (see: Finlandization)—adopted a servile stance toward the communist superpower. Criticism of the USSR was taboo and self-censorship was rife—all of which Finnish media helped to enforce. Soviet influence extended to the country’s intellectual, political, and cultural elites. In the 1970s, a scandal broke out when one of Finland’s municipalities successfully inserted materials from the Finnish-Soviet Friendship Society—a branch of the USSR’s global “friendship societies” influence network—as well as from Soviet textbooks into the school curriculum for grades 1-9, teaching Finnish children that there was no pollution in the USSR and that socialist central planning was superior to capitalism.

When Moscow launched its rabid anti-Israel propaganda campaign in 1967 and started building its “Anti-Zionist International,” Finnish intellectuals were drawn in as well. In 1975, Finnish writer Matti Larni, whose book castigating the U.S. made him popular in the USSR, published a piece about Israel in the Literary Newspaper—the Soviet Union’s most influential cultural publication. Larni’s article echoed key Soviet talking points, branding Israel a Jewish supremacist, racist state and depicting Soviet Jewish immigrants in Israel as miserable, regretful traitors longing to return to their Soviet motherland. In 1980, the article was republished in Zionism: Truth and Fiction, a collection edited by Yevgeny Yevseyev—one of the USSR’s most viciously antisemitic ideologues with close ties to the KGB, who played a pivotal role in shaping the key tropes of Soviet “anti-Zionist” ideology.

Another Finnish name appears in the Soviet 1984 propaganda pamphlet Criminal Alliance of Zionism and Nazism. The pamphlet recounts, in English, a press conference staged by the “Anti-Zionist Committee of the Soviet Public”—a notorious KGB front designed to vilify Israel and Zionism to foreign audiences under the guise of representing Soviet Jews. The entire event was dedicated to spreading the toxic equation of Zionism with Nazism—a cornerstone of Soviet anti-Israel propaganda—to international audiences. Known as Holocaust inversion, this false equivalence is widely viewed by scholars of antisemitism as a potent tool of incitement against Jews, used by both the far right and the far left. As Deborah Lipstadt has noted, the trope contains a grain of Holocaust denial, exaggerating “by a factor of zillion any wrongdoings Israel might have done,” while simultaneously diminishing, by the same factor, the acts of the Germans. The USSR and its Western enablers—including, it seems, the Finnish ones—played a significant role in embedding this inversion among the global left.

The cancellation of my lectures by the two Finnish universities, then, echoed in a weird way some of their country’s Cold War history. One of my Finnish contacts may have been right when she told me that Finland has yet to fully come to terms with that past.

Court gives Gazans right to settle in UK

Palestinian migrants have been granted the right to live in the UK after applying through a scheme meant for Ukrainian refugees.

A family of six seeking to flee Gaza have been allowed to join their brother in Britain after an immigration judge ruled that the Home Office’s rejection of their application breached their human rights.

The family had made their application through the Ukraine Family Scheme and the decision to accept their case came despite warnings by lawyers for the Home Office that it could open the floodgates to “the admission of all those in conflict zones with family in the UK”.

Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said the case showed changes to human rights laws were needed so that Parliament, not judges, controlled who could settle in the UK.

02/12 Links Pt1: Eugene Kontorovich: Next, Defund the United Nations; Jordan and Egypt Are Repeating Abbas’s Mistake; How USAID Funded Hamas

From Ian:

Eugene Kontorovich: Next, Defund the United Nations

If an America-first approach means anything, it should be that the U.S. won’t pay international bureaucrats to do what it forbids its own employees to do. Most federal workers are at least U.S. citizens, voters and taxpayers. Employees at international organizations generally aren’t, and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency should seek to cut U.S. contributions to these agencies by significantly more than it cuts the federal bureaucracy. Only about a sixth of U.S. spending goes to mandatory membership dues to organizations. The rest is voluntary.

DOGE should begin by ending voluntary contributions to agencies that have adopted DEI or gender ideology agendas. Federal law already requires defunding U.N.-affiliated international organizations that accept Palestine as a member state. The failure, since the Obama administration, to enforce this law has undermined American credibility at the U.N.

It is impossible to quit entities like Unrwa, which Mr. Trump defunded this week, because they are U.N. subsidiaries rather than free-standing entities. While defunding them is necessary, past aid cuts have been reversed by subsequent Democratic administrations. Such agencies can ride out a liquidity squeeze.

Durable reform involves ending the U.S. relationship, as Mr. Trump has already done with the World Health Organization. Because these are treaty organizations, rejoining would be subject to congressional approval. DOGE and the State Department should review U.S. membership in these organizations with the same determination to make permanent cuts that they have shown domestically. Take one example: The International Labor Organization has been around since the League of Nations, despite massive changes in the global economy and labor relations. But the ILO has kept up with the times by embracing DEI and LGBT issues.

The Trump administration can also cut U.S. contributions to the U.N. peacekeeping system. Peacekeeping is one of the biggest parts of the U.N.’s budget, and the U.S. pays the lion’s share. Unlike other U.N. programs, peacekeeping operations must be regularly reauthorized by the U.N. Security Council, and the U.S. can veto them. Missions to be vetoed should include the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, which has shielded Hezbollah, and the U.N. Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara, whose function has been made moot by U.S. recognition of Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara.

Peacekeeping is the jewel in the crown of the U.N. system, evoking nostalgia for the original vision of the U.N. as an army that stops bad guys around the world. Starting by canceling a few of these missions may be one of the few ways the Trump administration could show the secretariat that there will be consequences for failing to reform.

Seth Mandel: Jordan and Egypt Are Repeating Abbas’s Mistake

It’s worth taking a brief walk down memory lane here. In the last year of his first term, Trump proposed a demilitarized Palestinian state without requiring Israel to disband its settlements in the West Bank. Instead, land swaps inside Israel would make up for the lost territory. The plan included massive investment in the Palestinian economy and “transportation links” connecting Gaza to the West Bank.

It was the first time an offer to the Palestinians was worse than previous offers. Abbas’s decision to walk away from a 2008 offer from Israel that gave the Palestinians everything they wanted came at a cost. Until Trump came into office, the Palestinian Authority had been rewarded for turning down statehood in 2000 and 2008. Now, Abbas was horrified by both the plan and the concept of his actions having consequences. “We say a thousand times over: no, no, no,” was his response.

It is now five years later and Abbas seems to realize that if he doesn’t do something soon, the next Trump statehood offer is going to make the 2020 plan look like—well, look like the generous 2008 plan he walked away from. So he wants to go back in time.

It is hard to overstate just how much Trump has shaken up the Mideast status quo. The old process went something like this: The U.S. and Saudi Arabia and Egypt would ask the Palestinians’ permission to do something that shouldn’t have required the Palestinians’ permission. The Palestinians would say no, and so no one would do anything.

Trump had no patience for it. He moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem because it was American property on Israeli territory and therefore had nothing to do with the Palestinians.

In the past, no regional deals could move forward unless the Palestinians were at the center of negotiations. But this time, when the Palestinians told Trump they weren’t interested, he moved on. The Abraham Accords with Israel, Bahrain, and the UAE were signed eight months after Abbas declared his “thousand” no’s.

Egypt and Jordan ought to think about how this history might be a precedent for their current stalemate with the president. Mahmoud Abbas rejected deals without offering a counter-proposal, and he paid dearly for it.

Trump wants the Arab countries in the Middle East to play a constructive role in figuring out what to do with Gaza. Egypt is the recipient of billions in U.S. aid and a poor relationship with high-ranking Democrats in Congress, especially the Senate. Jordan is unlikely to elicit much sympathy from Trump. These countries may not like Trump’s opening bid here, but as Mahmoud Abbas can tell them, the alternative is to wake up one day five years later wishing you’d at least engaged with it.

Arbel Yehoud with her partner Ariel Cunio, still captive in Gaza, and their rescue puppy, Murph

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

When Eli Sharabi appeared on our screens wasted, skeletal, like an apparition from the Holocaust, it broke our hearts. We knew he’d been through a Holocaust without having heard the details. And like so many other survivors of the previous Holocaust, Eli was to learn what he’d hoped against hope was not true: no one in his immediate family was waiting for him. Eli Sharabi’s wife was gone. His two daughters were gone. His home was gone. Even his dog was gone—on October 7, Hamas shot Eli Sharabi’s four-legged friend dead, too.

Before the release of Eli Sharabi, there was Arbel Yehoud, squeezed on every side by masked Hamas terrorists armed to the teeth. She was terrified. No one had explained what was happening to her now, and she was sure that this time she would not manage to cheat death as she had for over a year. But Arbel did survive and she did get out.

Arbel’s partner, of course, is still suffering, still locked away in Gaza—we hope—because the alternative is death. But Arbel’s dog Murph is not suffering, and not locked away for some indeterminate period of unending time. Murph was shot dead by Hamas terrorists on October 7.

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Emily Damari impressed us all with her spunky personality still shining through after going through hell. With good humor, Emily gave us the victory sign despite her missing fingers. Hamas had shot her in the hand. They sewed it up crudely, without anesthesia, in unhygienic conditions, but Emily survived.

Emily Damari’s dog Choocha did not. Like so many other faithful family dogs on that black day in October, Emily’s dog had been shot dead.

What are we supposed to make of terrorists whose hate for Jews runs so deep and so black that even their pets must be eliminated? Do Nukhba “fighters” and the “just regular Gazan folk” who poured across the border to slaughter Jews, see these dogs as having a taint by association with their Jewish masters, or did the terrorists simply murder them for sport?

Here we see a dog come bounding out of a house towards the October 7 attackers, hoping to protect his owners, only to be immediately mowed down with a barrage of bullets

He staggers along through several shots

Did they murder the dogs to shut them up so they wouldn’t alert their owners to the horror that was about to descend upon them? Or did the murderers perhaps murder these beloved family pets to inflict maximum pain on their Jewish owners? Who knows?


At last he succumbs, after a final bullet takes his life.

Perhaps the murderers murdered these voiceless, intelligent creatures because in their brand of Islam, dogs are impure and spread impurity and may therefore be mistreated and killed at will. Especially, if you happen to be a monster that craves blood. Maybe it doesn’t matter whose blood is shed, blood is blood, and all of it makes terrorists happy. They see red and it gives them joy. And it didn’t begin on October 7.

In November 2022, Tayseer Abu Sneineh, the mayor of Hebron and a convicted murderer of six Israelis, announced a 20 shekel bounty—about $5—to anyone who captured or killed a stray dog. The Arab residents of that town proceeded to go on a wild shooting spree, torturing and killing dozens of dogs. Judging by the subsequent flood of footage and photos on social media, the Hebron dog massacre was probably less about the money than the easy attainment of a license to kill. This appalling episode suggests that PA and Hamas-ruled Arabs do indeed enjoy spilling the blood of living things, in particular, Jews and dogs.

It’s reasonable to wonder what Islam has to say about killing dogs, creatures unable to defend themselves from a maniac with a gun. Well, it’s not that the Quran says it straight out: “Kill dogs.” But it comes pretty close. According to one Hadith, for every day that a Muslim keeps a dog as a pet, he loses a part of his heavenly reward:

[Ibn ‘Umar] said:
“I heard [Mohammed] say: ‘Whoever keeps a dog, except a dog that is trained for hunting or a dog for herding livestock, his reward will decrease each day by two Qirats.’”
. . . What is the meaning of Qirats? When the companions asked [Mohammed] about its meaning he said: “Equal to two huge mountains.”
Raising a dog or keeping a dog decreases our good deeds.
When keeping a dog for any of the reasons known in shariah then you should prepare a separate place for it [as] dogs shouldn’t enter the house.

Muslims are permitted to keep dogs for practical reasons like hunting, herding, and serving as watchdogs. Unfortunately, abuse of these smart, sensitive animals is widespread. “I volunteer at the Gush Etzion Municipal Pound,” relates Efrat resident Leora Hyman. “We get dogs from the surrounding area. We have had dogs and puppies come in with no ears. Their ears are hacked off. I have heard that it's done so when the dogs are guarding outside in the rain, the rain and the wind will get into their ears and bother them so much, so they won't fall asleep. One puppy came in with no ears, cigarette burns and a knife wound.

“I adopted one of those puppies and he could never get over his trauma of being in a small place,” said Hyman. “If he were in a small space he would become aggressive. If he saw Arab workers, he would bark at them even though he was friendly to everyone else. Always.

“Other puppies have come in and not been so traumatized, but their ears are gone and they struggle in the rain and wind. I bought my dog an ear covering for walks in the rain.”

It’s painful to hear about and witness such cruelty, but even more difficult to understand why the world would cheer on a motley crew of dog killers. Sure, we understand that the world hates Jews. But dogs??

You’d think that all the students and others protesting Israel’s “genocide” of “innocent” Gazans, in addition to supposedly caring about the Gazan people, would also care about animal rights. What would these green-smoothie-drinking college campus protesters say were we to show them the clips and photos of Hamas terrorists shooting defenseless creatures dead on October 7? There’s no lack of such photographic evidence. The terrorists filmed the whole thing themselves with their GoPro cameras.

Would the protesters make excuses of some sort for this show of barbarism—the cold-hearted murder of harmless pets? Surely pets have no religion and no political bent for which they might reasonably be slaughtered. Or is killing a dog somehow different when it happens while ridding the world of colonialist Apartheid Jew occupiers?

Can excuses be made in such a case? Or even denials? Can one reasonably claim that the GoPro footage was edited?

There was no outrage at the gang-raping and genital mutilation of Jewish women on October 7. There was no outcry as Jewish women in captivity continued to be sexually abused by their captors. But there was also no outcry and no outrage at the murdering of several of man’s best friends.

Could it be that when a man is Jewish, man’s best friend is nothing but a conniving Jew?

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

No, @Variety, the "Captain America" protesters aren't "pro-Palestine." They are obsessive, deranged anti-Zionists - at the most charitable interpretation.

From Variety:

Several dozen pro-Palestine protesters gathered Tuesday outside the Hollywood premiere of “Captain America: Brave New World” and called for a boycott of the film over its inclusion of the Israeli superhero Ruth Bat-Seraph, aka Sabra, played by Shira Haas.

Protesters held signs that read “Sabra has got to go,” “Disney supports genocide,” “Boycott ‘Captain America'” and “Pray 4 Princess Jasmine.” They chanted phrases such as “Free, free, free Palestine” and “Disney, Disney you can’t hide.”

The video of the protest shows that it was pretty pathetic.

Now, what exactly offends them about "Captain America: Brave New World"?

Because an Israeli actress portrays an Israeli-born employee of a US intelligence agency in the movie.

That's it. There is nothing anti-Palestinian, anti-Muslim, or anti-Arab in the movie. And there is nothing pro-Israel in the movie either.

They are protesting a non-political Israeli character played by an Israeli actress.

That is not "pro-Palestine." That is an obsessive, deranged hate for the Jewish state.

The only kind of hate that is remotely as divorced from reality is one that is more familiar to many in Hollywood: hatred of Jews.

Because they are one and the same.

So stop calling these protesters "pro-Palestine." They don't a damn about Palestinians when they are languishing in Lebanon or Syria.

They only get upset when they can blame Israeli Jews.

I have to admit that a sign saying "Pray 4 Princess Jasmine" at least shows a tiny bit of wit, which is unusual in these kinds of mindless chanting hatefests. But even that shows their hypocrisy: when the original Aladdin animated movie was released, the opening song "Arabian Nights" had the lyrics

Oh, I come from a land

From a faraway place

Where the caravan camels roam.

Where they cut off your ear

If they don't like your face

It's barbaric, but hey, it's home.

There were no protests outside theaters for the lyrics, just a letter writing campaign and press releases. Disney changed the lyrics for the home video release.

Where were the signs, the chants, the blocking sidewalks?

The only reason that actress Shira Haas is offensive to these bigots is because she is an Israeli Jew. That there are noisier protests over her than there was in 1992 for Aladdin shows that in the end, they are protesting against Jews, not for Palestinians or Arabs.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Over the past day, this video has been widely seen:

🚨 #BREAKING: NSW doctor and nurse stood down after chilling footage emerged of the pair claiming to have killed Israeli patients in Bankstown Hospital

SIGN & SHARE petition at https://t.co/uGABTzsHcM demanding authrities:authorities

1. publicity identify the pair
2. lay… pic.twitter.com/RVlZ0OlZZE
— Avi Yemini (@OzraeliAvi) February 11, 2025

The people have been identified and fired from their nursing positions.

Usually, when outrageous events like this happen, the organized Muslim community is quick to issue press releases condemning the vile sentiments and to say that they do not represent the views of the larger, peaceful Muslim community.

But I looked at the web pages and social media accounts of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, the Australian National Imams Council, the Alliance of Australian Muslims, and the Australian Muslim Advocacy Network - and found nothing.

This is a big story, widely covered in Australian and UK news media. These groups are well aware of it, and most of them have active social media accounts. It would take minutes to craft a post condemning the disgusting words of Muslim medical professionals.

But as far as I can see, they choose to remain silent.

The reason may be that the video only talks about Israelis, not "Jews" specifically. And the only conclusion I can come to is that these Muslim organizations condone the murder of Israelis worldwide.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Sheikh Salem Al-Taweel is a Kuwaiti Salafi scholar and preacher who has been considered one of the more important Kuwaiti Salafi thinkers.

He was recently attacked for an older fatwa where people accused him of saying "leave Palestine to the Jews." Last night he responded to the accusations, saying that he is saying that Gazans - and all Muslims - should have the right to migrate wherever they want to go as an individual decision.

Here are excerpts:

As for the issue of migration from Palestine or any other place, migration is something even the Prophet (peace be upon him) did. People have different circumstances. The Prophet endured hardship in Mecca, then he migrated, then he fought battles, then he made peace treaties, and then he fought again—all based on circumstances, the strength of Muslims, and their ability to act.

Today, countless people migrate—not for religious reasons, but for worldly gains. How many Arabs, Egyptians, Palestinians, Jordanians, Lebanese, and Iraqis have left their homelands? Many have migrated to Australia, America, Europe, and Canada, never to return. If someone is forced to leave Palestine due to hardship—just as Syrians fled Syria, Iraqis fled Iraq, and many others left their countries due to oppression, poverty, or seeking better opportunities—this is a personal decision.

I never said to Palestinians, "Migrate!" That is up to the individual. He must assess his own circumstances: Can he practice his religion? Can he live safely? Many Palestinians have remained in Palestine and obtained Israeli citizenship. Those in the 1948 occupied territories all carry Israeli passports, IDs, and official documents. I have even met some of them in America, holding both Israeli and Palestinian passports—just like those here with American passports. What is the difference? One is issued by a Jewish state, and the other by a Christian-majority country.

Some Palestinians even work in the Israeli military and government offices. This is known to the people of Palestine, even before my time.

Everyone has their own circumstances, even financial reasons may force someone to migrate.

Who can seriously claim that they won when Gaza has been reduced to ruins? Gaza was once full of mosques, universities, streets, beaches, buildings, and schools. Now, everything has been destroyed, yet they claim victory.

If the borders with Egypt had been open during the bombings, three-quarters of Gaza’s residents would have likely left, but they were trapped. Some assume that all Gazans are fiercely attached to staying, but the truth is, under extreme hardship, many would leave if they could—just as the Prophet (peace be upon him) and his companions left Mecca when persecuted.

Migration from Palestine is not new—it has happened for decades. Many Palestinians have settled and lived in Kuwait, among other places. This is not something I initiated, nor is it a conspiracy with Trump, as some foolishly claim.

In conclusion, if someone can practice Islam and has some influence in his land, he should stay. If he is persecuted but can fight back, he should fight. If he is weak and cannot resist oppression, he has the right to migrate.

Al-Taweel is no philosemite, but he has criticized Hamas since October 7 (and he has been harshly attacked for it.)

His common sense view, that Palestinians should have the same rights as any other Muslims to migrate if they want to, is stifled from public discourse. And I'm not only talking about the Arab and Muslim worlds - I mean in the pages of the New York Times, the capitals of Europe and the pronouncements of Amnesty International, where the simple right of Palestinians to leave a war zone cannot be discussed.

The reasons are a combination antisemitism and fear of being attacked by antisemites.

It is a little insane that a fundamentalist Islamic Kuwaiti preacher cares more about Palestinian human rights than most Western leaders.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Right now (at least as of this writing Tuesday night) we have President Trump warning Hamas to release all hostages by Saturday noon, or "all hell will break out." Hamas refuses, falsely claiming that Israel hasn't held up its part of the deal and setting the stage to blame Israel if things get hot.

Trump is also engaging in diplomacy of threats with Egypt and Jordan, demanding that they allow Palestinians to take refuge there. In those cases, the US has leverage in the form of withholding aid which is crucial for both those countries' economies. Egypt's response is its own threat - to tear up the peace agreement with Israel, claiming that US aid was part of that agreement. (Permanent US aid to Egypt was certainly not part of Camp David.)

Trump uses these sorts of threats as opening moves in his game of negotiations. To him. everything is a deal, everything is negotiable, everyone has a price whether it is in terms of carrots or sticks. Keeping his negotiating partners off balance is part of his tactics.

To a large extent, it works. In only the past three weeks since the inauguration we are seeing that Trump's outlandish sounding statements move the needle towards his desires, and the compromises made are therefore more favorable to Trump's side.

But what happens when Trump's negotiating tactics come up against the pure honor-shame driven mentality of Islamists like Hamas?

Dead fighters don't deter Hamas. Hamas sees dead civilians as assets. What can deter Hamas when it is so wedded to the idea that capitulation itself is shameful, and therefore to be avoided at all costs?

The honor/shame dynamic seems to indicate that Hamas does not fit into Trump's transactional worldview. The Islamist desire to avoid shame is more important than life itself.

However, Donald Trump has identified one asset Hamas would do anything to avoid losing: land.

The world and the media has not linked Trump's threat to take over Gaza with his open-ended threat to Hamas of all hell breaking out if they don't release the hostages (except in the sense that they believe Trump is crazy in both threats.) But they are one and the same.

Palestinians are very sensitive to the idea that they could permanently lose the land they control. They have felt secure for decades that international law and the majority of world leaders are on their side when they claim the entire Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Really, the only reason Israel hasn't annexed parts of Area C is fear of world reaction, including and especially from the US.

Clearly Trump doesn't care. He has put something on the table that has never seriously been placed there: the idea that Palestinians can lose some of the land awarded to them at Oslo as a consequence of their actions.

The idea that land conquest is a violation of international law is quite recent. The world accepted conquest as a legitimate means of acquiring land for the 4,000 years before the 1945 UN Charter and 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention. Trump instinctively understands that it is illogical that wars can be waged without permanent consequences to the aggressor. To him, and indeed to most of the world, an attacker must not be rewarded by always having the game clock reset to zero after every war they start and lose. Of course Hamas must lose control of parts or all of Gaza, otherwise they have every incentive to keep attacking forever. Taking away their land is true justice.

I'm not sure whether he is consciously thinking this way, but Trump's announcement that the US will take over Gaza - and his doubling down on that - is in effect the US part of the hostage negotiations with Hamas. He's saying that if the hostages aren't released, the US will soon take the land, however that happens (with the probable help of the Israelis.) And unlike Israeli leaders, he really doesn't care if Europe or the UN screams at him that this violates international law; he knows that there is nothing morally wrong with forcing Hamas to accept that its crimes have consequences not only to them but to their people.

It is also a message to the Palestinian Authority: don't think that the land you have is safe from being taken if you continue to support terror.

An analyst I admire looks at Trump this way: "he has an 'on the spectrum' savant quality, a lightning-fast perception mechanism and speech that’s ill-regulated from the standpoint of social usage, but if you just look past that, and listen to the meaning of what he’s saying, his speech is very intentional and is meant to have kinetic effects, to provoke movement and activity for the ends he envisions." I think this is right on.

Which means the next four years will be just as interesting as the past few weeks have been

The new normal is anything but normal.

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02/11 Links Pt2: Progressives’ Sickening Embrace of the PFLP; The UN’s loathing of Israel is out of control; Simon Sebag Montefiore: The “Golden Age” for Jews Has Ended

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Progressives’ Sickening Embrace of the PFLP

At a student roundtable with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday, a Georgetown law student told the premier about an upcoming event at her school featuring a convicted terrorist with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Netanyahu was aghast. The conversation elevated concerns about the event, which Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) had already been criticizing.

By last night, the event was “postponed so that the University could conduct a thorough investigation into serious safety and security concerns that had arisen in connection with the event,” the school told Torres, according to Jewish Insider.

The PFLP is a designated terrorist organization, so that was reason enough for the raised eyebrows. PFLP officials have been all over the tentifada movement, which has thus far had the perverse effect of normalizing its presence in civilized society.

The PFLP has particular appeal to the progressive left for two reasons: One, its history of hijackings and other forms of terrorism that left-wing activists have always romanticized, and two, because it is a Marxist-Leninist—and therefore secular and recognizably leftist—version of Palestinian nationalism. An organization that aims to kill Jews while espousing revolutionary socialism is the perfect entity to a not-inconsequential portion of today’s campus activists.

Which is why students at Columbia received PFLP “resistance” training, and George Washington University protest groups used a PFLP manual for a teach-in. Even Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) spoke at a PFLP-connected conference in Detroit, the program of which was saturated with PFLP speakers.

Then there’s Samidoun, a group masquerading as a pro-Palestinian organization but which has now been banned in the U.S. and parts of Europe for being “a sham charity that serves as an international fundraiser for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,” as the U.S. government puts it. Prior to its October designation, Samidoun popped up at the campus demonstrations as well.

Jonathan Tobin: Super Bowl antisemitism ad is no way to tackle Jew-hatred

New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft is an exemplary member of the American Jewish community. Over the years, he has donated a great deal of money to Jewish causes, locally in his hometown of Boston and in the State of Israel, even building a football stadium in Jerusalem. The National Football League magnate’s philanthropy testifies to his own strong sense of Jewish peoplehood, in addition to a decent concern for others less fortunate than himself, as shown by his family’s support of a variety of educational and health-care causes.

Among the efforts he has supported is the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism (FCAS), which he founded with money he pledged as a result of his winning the Genesis Prize in 2019. The idea behind the foundation was to fight the movement to boycott, divest and sanction Israel, as well as other efforts to battle Jew-hatred. The campaign itself was marked by a bright blue square with a moniker called “The Blue Box Campaign” that urges standing up to hate.

But for all of his various efforts on behalf of that important cause, probably none gained as much attention as the FCAS advertisement that appeared during the Super Bowl this past Sunday. It featured two mega-celebrities—rapper and actor Snoop Dogg, and NFL great Tom Brady, who won seven Super Bowls, including six for Kraft’s Patriots. In it, they spout various reasons why people hate each other before concluding that “things are so bad that we have to do a commercial about it,” before the two walk off together in a gesture of amity.

A missed opportunity
That’s a colossal mistake, as well as a missed opportunity that Kraft and anyone else who cares about the issue should deeply regret.

While no one should doubt the good intentions of Kraft, the 30-second blurb sums up everything that is wrong with the mindset and the efforts of liberal American Jewish efforts to deal with the problem.

Indeed, if that’s the best that the FCAS can manage, then Kraft would be well advised to close it up and transfer the money he’s currently wasting on it to those interested in fighting antisemitism in a way that will make a difference.

The UN’s loathing of Israel is out of control

The United Nations – unlike the US, the EU, the UK and other Western states – does not consider Hamas to be a terrorist organisation. This was true before the Hamas invasion and massacre on 7 October 2023. And it has remained true in the months that have followed.

In February 2024, Martin Griffiths, a British diplomat then serving as UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, explained the UN’s position in the starkest of terms: ‘Hamas is not a terrorist group for us’, he told Sky News, ‘it is a political movement’. He gave that interview just four months after Hamas had slaughtered, raped, kidnapped and literally terrorised Jewish men and women in southern Israel.

The recent sacking of a senior UN official provides further evidence of the organisation’s warped perspective. Alice Nderitu is a longtime human-rights advocate involved in conflict resolution in many different parts of the world. In November 2020, she arrived at the UN headquarters in New York, from her native Kenya, to take up her new role as the UN special adviser on the prevention of genocide.

Her four-year career at the UN can be divided into two distinct periods – before and after Hamas’s invasion of Israel.

Before, Nderitu travelled widely, assessing evidence of genocide and genocide denial in places like Darfur, Sudan. She held press conferences, wrote op-eds and issued dozens of public statements and even wrote a helpful briefing document called ‘When to Refer to a Situation as “Genocide”’. There she explained that a determination of genocide must be carried out by ‘a competent international or national court of law with the jurisdiction to try such cases after an investigation meeting appropriate due process standards’. None of this was particularly noteworthy or controversial. She was simply outlining the strict conditions and legal processes involved in establishing whether something is or isn’t a genocide in the eyes of the UN.

But then Hamas invaded Israel and everything changed. Her world began to unravel. By early 2024, she was under intense pressure from both within and without the UN. In an exclusive interview this month with Air Mail’s Johanna Berkman, Nderitu said that she was ‘hounded, day in, day out… with protection from nobody’. ‘It’s instructive that this never happened for any other war’, she said. ‘Not for Ukraine, not for Sudan, not for DRC, not for Myanmar… The focus was always Israel.’

02/11 Links Pt1: Hamas’s Torture Tactics Are Finally in the Spotlight; Why Yitzhak Rabin urged moving Gaza’s Arabs to Jordan; Hostage Shlomo Mansour, 86, was murdered by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Hamas’s Torture Tactics Are Finally in the Spotlight

Now that Hamas’s abuse of Israeli hostages threatens to derail the cease-fire, the subject will get more attention. The hostages, especially those who were freed recently, have been concentrating on recovery. In the future, we expect to learn in much greater detail what happened to the captives in those tunnels and dungeons, but what we know already is troubling enough.

This week the attention is on Or Levy, Ohad Ben Ami, and Eli Sharabi because their abuse was evident before they even said a word. But more information has come trickling out: they were, reportedly, burned with hot objects, hung upside down, kept in chains, at times gagged to the point of suffocation, starved and dehydrated.

It is not the first shocking testimony from ex-captives.

Amit Soussana was chained up in a child’s bedroom. After her captor let her bathe, he stripped her of her towel and sexually assaulted her, Soussana told the New York Times in March. Later, she was suspended in the space between two couches and beaten. According to recently released hostages, Soussana’s captors beat her at gunpoint viciously until another captive convinced the Hamasniks that they had mistaken her for an IDF officer.

According to other testimony, sexual assault of the captives was widespread. Hamas also apparently tortured a child with an item similar to a hot branding iron.

Physical abuse is common, according to the captives. Yarden Bibas and Ofer Calderon were beaten and kept in cages. Bibas was also subject to the psychological abuse Hamas takes special pleasure in doling out. His wife and two young children were also taken hostage. At one point, Bibas’s captors told him his family had been killed in an Israeli airstrike, and took a video of his anguish. Hamas has not confirmed the fate of Bibas’s wife and children, even after his release. They reportedly tormented Bibas about his family throughout his nearly 500-day captivity.

The hostages would often be told they were being freed when they weren’t. Gadi Mozes, an 80-year-old farmer released last month, was at one point kept in a hot pickup truck for 12 hours underneath a Red Cross building in Gaza. He hoped he was being processed for release, but it turned out he was just being moved to a new location.

During the initial Oct. 7 attacks, before taking Emily Damari captive, Hamas terrorists shot her dog. While she was comforting the dog as it lay dying, Hamas shot her in the hand, taking off two of her fingers, then dragged her to Gaza.

Another form of torture practiced by Hamas was to let serious injuries go untreated and force the captives to watch them deteriorate.

Elliott Abrams: A Paradigm Shift for the Middle East

A year and a half ago, Iran's nuclear weapons program was steadily producing enriched uranium; by 2024, it had enough for several bombs. Washington was largely not enforcing its sanctions on Iran, greatly improving the regime's finances. And the "ring of fire" of Iranian proxies - Hizbullah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria, and the Houthis in Yemen - seemed to be a problem Israel could not solve.

But since then, Israel has turned the tables. Hamas has survived the invasion of Gaza and remains dominant there. But it will never again pose a serious military threat to Israel. The Israelis have wiped out Hizbullah's leadership and given Lebanon a chance to reclaim its sovereignty. Assad's regime is gone, and the weapons highway that has long run from Iran through Syria to Lebanon, Gaza, Jordan, and the West Bank appears to be closing.

Trump can take advantage of the situation, but only if his administration is willing to abandon Washington's habitual goal in the Middle East - "stability" - and presses instead for dramatic changes that will bolster its interests and allies and actively weaken its adversaries.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio: Hamas Is "Pure Evil," "Needs to Be Eradicated"

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio reacted to the video of the latest Israeli hostages released by Hamas on SiriusXM Patriot 125 radio on Monday: "You look at these images of what they - first of all, the humiliation that they have to go through. Just put aside for a moment the horrifying conditions they were kept in and the horrifying things that happened to some of those hostages, on top of the fact that these were innocent civilians. I mean, none of these were soldiers. These are not combatants. These are just people that were abducted for purposes of being used as leverage. And they're getting, what, 200 certified killers in exchange for one innocent hostage. But it reveals who Hamas is."

"Look at the humiliation they put them through before they're released, where they do these big public displays of force. Do any of those Hamas fighters look like they've been skipping meals?...And then the conditions they're held in. So, it's incredibly revealing about what we're dealing with. This is an evil organization. Hamas is evil. It's pure evil. These are monsters. These are savages. That's a group that needs to be eradicated."

"If they still are the dominant power in Gaza when all this is done, there is not going to be peace in the Middle East, as long as a group like Hamas physically controls territory and is the most dominant power in Gaza or anywhere in the Middle East. And I hope people can see who these people actually are, in the condition of these hostages."

"The big challenge for this whole two-state solution has not been Israel. It's been: Who's going to govern that second state? Who's going to be in charge of it? If the people in charge of it are Hamas or Hizbullah or anybody like that, these are groups whose goal is the destruction of the Jewish state." "I don't know how you're going to have peace if you're turning over territory to a group whose stated purpose is the destruction of the Jewish state. Why would any country in the world agree to create a second state on their border that is governed by armed elements who kidnap babies and murder babies and rape teenage girls and abduct innocents and whose stated goal and purpose for existing is your destruction? Who would agree to that?"

By Forest Rain

Psychological Warfare 101: Humiliating the Enemy

Hamas can release hostages any day of the week. They’ve proven this before—hostages have been returned on Thursdays, for example. So why do they choose to release hostages on Shabbat?

Because it’s not just about returning captives. It’s about humiliating the Jewish nation.

This is psychological warfare at its core: using our love for family to break our connection to God and the land He gave us.

This is a religious war. Pay attention.

Some will say: “The hostages’ lives are in immediate danger. God will understand.” Or, “Who cares about religious rituals right now? The main thing is getting them back.” These arguments sound reasonable—at first. But let’s look at the facts.

Hostages have been released on other days—in other words, it is entirely possible to arrange releases without desecrating Shabbat.
Why do we have no demands? Since when does Hamas dictate all the terms? When we insist, we can apply pressure—as we did in the case of Arbel Yehud.
Even if some of us aren’t religious, our enemies are. In their worldview, everything is about honor and shame. When the Jewish state fails to demonstrate that Judaism matters to us, our enemies see weakness. They believe that our claim to this land is illegitimate and, in their eyes, our behavior proves them right.

Not demanding respect for our own religion is a victory for those who seek to sever our connection to this land.

Any way you look at it, allowing this to happen is wrong.

This is a religious war. Pay attention.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Is Trump Willing To Apply Pressure On Jordan--And If So, Over Which Pressing Issue? (Daled Amos) (updated)

By Daled Amos (updated with new information)

Jordan's King Abdullah II will be the first Arab leader to meet with Trump since he assumed office.

In past years, when the King of Jordan visited the US, a major topic of discussion has been its refusal to honor its treaty with the US and extradite Ahlam Tamimi for her role in masterminding the Sbarro Massacre in 2001. Instead of being imprisoned or at least shunned, Ahlam Tamimi went on to become a television host and public speaker with celebrity status in Jordan.

Last week, there were reports Jordan was finally considering expelling the terrorist and was ready to extradite Tamimi to the US if no Arab state was willing to take her in. Later, Jordanian Parliament Speaker Ahmad al-Safadi denied these reports. Normally, this would have led to speculation online about Tamimi's extradition. But this time, Jordan is a topic of discussion for other reasons.

The media is abuzz with stories about Trump's plan for Gazans to clear out and relocate to Jordan and Egypt. With Trump's invitation to King Abdullah II to visit the US, connecting his visit with Trump's plans for Gaza is only natural.

Another consideration is Trump's 90-day funding freeze on all foreign aid. Israel and Egypt are the only two exceptions. That leaves Jordan under the freeze. This is a topic the king is likely to bring up, giving Trump leverage. But will he use it as a bargaining chip for his Gaza plan or for extraditing Tamimi? We know that kind of leverage works, because of indications that Abbas is ending the infamous "pay for slay" program. The leverage in this case may be the threat of US courts imposing heavy fines on the PA in connection with lawsuits filed by families of terror victims. Financial pressure works. [Update: newer information indicates that Abbas's claim to end "pay for slay" merely moves the program to the Palestinian Economic Empowerment Foundation. Times of Israel reports that the change just "moves the families of prisoners and slain attackers into the same welfare system as the rest of Palestinian society, which receives stipends strictly based on economic need"]

Could we be entering a new era in the way the US is willing to deal with terrorist attacks on US citizens?

In 2016, then-Congressman Ron DeSantis chaired a hearing before the Subcommittee on National Security of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The topic was Seeking Justice for Victims of Palestinian Terrorism in Israel. At issue was whether the Office of Justice for Victims of Overseas Terrorism was fulfilling its purpose and obtaining justice for the families of the victims of Palestinian terrorism.

DeSantis questioned the Assistant Attorney General on the 64 Americans killed and 91 wounded between 1993 and 2016

Mr. DeSantis: Mr. Wiegmann, the committee has counted that since '93, at least 64 Americans have been killed, as well as two unborn children and 91 have been wounded by terrorists in Israel in disputed territories.

How many terrorists who have killed or wounded Americans in Israel or disputed territories has the United States indicted, extradited, or prosecuted during this time period?

Mr. Wiegmann: I think the answer is--is none.

Mr. DeSantis: Okay. How many terrorists who have killed or wounded Americans anywhere else overseas has the United States indicted, extradited, or prosecuted?

Mr. Wiegmann: I don't have an exact figure for you.

Mr. DeSantis: But it would be a decent size number, though, correct?

Mr. Wiegmann: It would be a significant number, yes.

A few moments later, DeSantis addresses an alleged reason for the failure of the US to prosecute any of those Palestinian terrorists over 23 years:

Mr. DeSantis: Now, it's- been alleged that the reason that DOJ does not prosecute the Palestinian terrorists who harm Americans in Israel, the disputed territories, is that the Department of Justice is concerned that such prosecutions will harm efforts to promote the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, or that it will actually harm the Palestinian Authority.

So let me ask you straight up, is that a consideration the Department of Justice?

Mr. Wiegmann: I can assure that is absolutely not the case.

Mr. DeSantis: And has the State Department ever made arguments to the Department of Justice to handle some of the Palestinian terrorism cases differently than you may normally handle, say, a terrorism case in Asia?

Mr. Wiegmann: Absolutely not.

Even if concerns for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process are what derailed the prosecution of Palestinian terrorists, there are indications that over the next four years, there will be a different approach to that peace process. And if concerns over the fragility of Abdullah II's kingdom are preventing the US from insisting on the proper enforcement of Jordan's treaty with the US and Tamimi's extradition, Trump's willingness to apply pressure may be a good omen.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)