Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, February 17, 2025

Are Zionist Jews hurting the cause for Zionism? (Guest post)

Guest post

Jewish education is at a crossroad. It is being challenged, like never before, by college professors, grade-school teachers, hostile journalists, biased historians, unhinged social media influencers, human rights organizations, and other wealthy domestic and foreign Non-Governmental Organizations. Making matters worse (if you can imagine such a thing) there is, at best, a chaotic conversation within the Jewish community about defining a Jewish curriculum. There was a time when the curriculum was exclusively taught in yeshivas, based upon classical texts. That is no longer the dominant model. Most Jewish congregations create ad hoc curricula that reflect the political views of the local community and are influenced by news media and other non-Jewish sources.

Further muddying the waters, there are several websites that try to shape the Jewish curriculum from a highly politicized perspective. One such website is Jewish Unpacked. It is tailored to a high school/college target audience. It addresses the challenges of being a Jewish minority in a hostile environment. On a superficial level, it seems to provide counter-narratives that Jewish students can use in their own defense. It fails for several reasons. The website seems to endlessly repeat, and thus promote, the worst stereotypes about Jews and Israel, all while making muddled and weak efforts to counter those stereotypes. The counter arguments rely too heavily upon survey data, which is easily manipulated and misinterpreted. They sometimes include harmful subliminal messaging, which contradicts the purpose of the counter arguments.

As just one example, consider the UnPacked podcast "Wondering Jews with Mijal and Noam"

As Spotify describes it:

"Mijal Bitton and Noam Weissman are two of the most dynamic, interesting, and thought-provoking Jewish leaders today. Two seasoned educators who love to talk, listen, laugh, challenge, and grow, Mijal and Noam are the Wondering Jews, leading us through thought-provoking discussions that are as serious as they are entertaining.

Whether you're a seasoned scholar or just curious about Jewish culture, this show offers a refreshing perspective that's both enlightening and enjoyable. It's not just a podcast; it's a thoughtful conversation that invites everyone to wonder about the rich tapestry of Jewish ideas in the context of our daily lives. Brought to you by Unpacked, a division of OpenDor Media."

Dr. Noam Weissman has sterling credentials. He is the Founder and Director of LaHaV, as well as the Senior Vice President of Education for "Jerusalem U," an online content creator. Prior to that, Noam was the Principal of Shalhevet High School in Los Angeles. Jerusalem U was created by Raphael Shore, and has been renamed OpenDor Media, based in Hollywood, Florida. Dr. Weissman is currently Executive Vice President at OpenDor Media. Dr. Weissman is also the Executive Vice President and Head of Education at ConnectED. He is a Civil Society Fellow at the Aspen Institute. From his biography at Tikvah.org, we learn that his doctoral "dissertation, entitled 'Approaching Israel Education,' argues for a new vision in learning about the modern State of

Israel, focusing on Zionist identity development, narrative formation, and the ability to have a mature and loving relationship with Israel without sacrificing empathy." With a biography like that, why should anyone criticize Dr. Weissman?

Let's jump to the latest episode, S3, E1, "Is 'Zionism' dead?: Redefining identity in 2025."

The podcasters spend 44 minutes essentially making the point that the label "Zionist" means different things to different people. They also drive home the warning that identifying as a Zionist will make one unpopular. I could have said the same in 10 seconds, but I would not broadcast such a warning in the first place. The question should be "What can we do about it?" Instead, the podcasters just wallow in the mud of anti-Zionism, and apparently soak in some of the negativity. The final result borders on anti-Zionist gaslighting.

Here are a few quotes that illustrate the anti-Zionist biases in this supposedly Jewish podcast:

"Are we past Zionism? Did Zionism happen? It came, it went, it conquered..."

This is a direct slur against the very foundation of Zionism. Early Zionists never spoke of conquering land. The League of Nations Mandate For Palestine said nothing about conquering land. It was the Ottoman Empire that conquered Palestine along with the entire Levant and more, and occupied this empire for 400 years. The British liberated the land in World War One, with the help of the Egyptian army and other Arab legions. The League of Nations mandates assigned the liberated land to the natives of the region, which included both Jews and Arabs. The Arabs never complained about taking control of Ottoman colonies. The mandates had the full support of local Arabs. Prince Faisal, who led the Arab delegation to the Paris Peace Conference, had also agreed to the creation of a Jewish country. He signed an agreement with Chaim Weizmann. The Arab League only complained about recognizing a small sliver of Jewish land as a neighbor after the mandates had been assigned. The mandates were never defined as colonies, but rather, as trusteeships. There were also mandates proposed for the creation of Kurdish and Armenian states, but Turkey refused to sign the Treaty of Sevres. Apparently, Turkey did not reject the creation of the Jewish state.

"Zionism happened, and it’s a term, it’s a term, by the way, that’s been utilized and viewed negatively by so many people who don’t identify as Zionists across the spectrum, meaning if you’re an ultra-orthodox Jew, the term Zionist has been a negative. In the late 19th, early 20th century, to be called a Zionist was in some ways to be called an insult, from religious Jewry. And now to be called a Zionist is in many contexts is viewed as a pejorative."

Zionism is not simply "a term," nor is it a pejorative. It is the political movement that created the country of my birth. In an underhanded way, Noam Weissman is erasing my identity. Sorry Noam, but you deserve a little push-back for that dig. As for the orthodox Jewish view of Zionism, it is not monolithic. Noam is himself a graduate of Yeshiva University, so he should know better. The overwhelming majority of Orthodox Jews support Israel. The religious argument stems from the predictions of the messianic age, when a Jewish Kingdom will emerge. So-called "Ultra-Orthodox Jews" (there is no such branch of Judaism) are not opposed to a Jewish state, they only distinguish it from the biblical kingdom of prophesy. They are also citizens of the current State of Israel. Real anti-Zionists, such as the SJP activists with the megaphones who shout their hateful screed on college campuses, seek to violently dismantle the existing Jewish state, and never let it reorganize, ever again. Noam Weissman is being intellectually dishonest by conflating two distinctly different narratives.

"...the term Zionism actually has like a really, really bad, I would say like a PR or marketing problem that it’s just come to mean some like really, really bad things for different people."

The marketing of anti-Zionism is funded by some of the wealthiest oil exporting nations in the world. That is the reason we find ourselves in a defensive position. We are being attacked by dishonest libel, and it is not due to anything we have done. The answer is not to throw up our hands, or distance ourselves from Zionism. We should not fall for the gaslighting of false narratives. Noam and Mijal seem to argue that we should just go with the flow.

"...a Gallup poll that came out a few years ago that said that 95% of American Jews have favorable views of Israel. And based on that, they said 95% of American Jews are Zionists"

That is not what they said.

"...according to Pew, the one that came out in 2021, reflecting attitudes from 2020, eight out of 10, so roughly 80% of American Jews feel somewhat or very connected to Israel"

"...a study that the Cohen Center ran in Los Angeles in 2021, only 42% of respondents described themselves as Zionist"

Comparing two different surveys that use differently worded questions in different sample populations is dishonest. The only conclusion one could make is that the wording of the questions can make a dramatic difference in the results. A properly designed survey would ask identical questions to a stable population over time, in order to measure trends in opinions.

Why the obsession with surveys? As the podcasters admit, labels mean different things to different people. A poorly worded survey question has little value in measuring attitudes. Imagine if a survey was conducted asking people if they identified as "egalitarian." Some might think it refers to fans of the Philadelphia Eagles. Swifties would respond "I used to be, but I converted to being a "Chieftain." Others who don't understand the question would likely respond "no." Few would be assertive enough to ask for the definition. If the positive response rate was low, can the survey conclude that most people reject egalitarianism? It would be dishonest to do so.

Another problem with relying on surveys is that they accomplish nothing. They do not teach, nor change opinions. They do not offer meaningful information about the shortcomings of the educational system, the one we all assume teaches the importance of Zionism.

"...so I’m gonna just share fact number one, or at least data point number one, is that there’s often a gap between those who say they are connected to Israel and those who self-identify as Zionists."

The point Mijal Bitton is driving home is that not all "survey Jews" identify strongly as Jewish defenders. If someone is merely connected to Israel, that might mean they have a relative in Israel, or just a friend who lives there. One would not expect such a tangential connection to Israel to translate into a devotion to the IDF. Ms Bitton's point is moot, and only serves to weaken the defense of Israel. Furthermore, the surveys Mijal quotes do not ask the general public about their support of Israel's defense. That is the central US policy question that has any practical meaning. The American public does not need to declare devotion to "Zionism" in order to continue selling weapons to Israel. The simple fact that Israel is a liberal democracy surrounded by anarchy and violent despots should be reason enough for most Americans to continue supporting the country.

"So Matt decided to do a cognitive test of these questions. So he wanted to test four things. So the four questions that he tested was: (1) How emotionally attached are you to Israel? Then he wanted to test questions around (2) criticizing Israel’s government, (3) describing oneself as a Zionist, and (4) Israel as an apartheid state, okay?"

Did you catch the subliminal messaging there? Mijal Bitton uses a supposedly scientific study to challenge the emotional attachment to Israel, to validate criticism of the Israeli government (for what purpose?), to stigmatize the Zionist identity, and to validate the "apartheid state" slander and libel.

As for the title of the podcast, "Is 'Zionism' dead?: Redefining identity in 2025," it is implied from the transcript that the podcasters are projecting their desires. They apparently want Zionism to die. They certainly don't make any effort to defend it. They want to redefine Jewish identity, so that Zionism no longer has a role. In effect, they are comfortable with stateless Jews, who simply assimilate into their host countries. Is this their solution to a "PR or marketing problem?" Is that what Yeshiva University teaches these days? How would Natan Sharansky describe Jewish life in the Soviet Union? I believe the best PR is based on telling the truth.

In an interview with Anouk Lorie, on her "RAW" podcast at Reichman University, Dr. Weissman states

"Young people have been saying for a long time 'stop asking us to close our eyes. We're not going to listen to you. Don't do the Myths And Facts thing about Israel. It's not real, it's not real.'"

I disagree with Dr. Weissman. Having read Mitchell Bard's "Myths And Facts," I have gained a confident educational foundation, which has strengthened my ability to defend my country's creation and legitimacy.

In the same interview, Dr. Weissman says he has no interest in wasting time on "bad faith actors" who criticize Israel. I disagree with Dr. Weissman, once again. I believe these bad faith actors need to exposed, before they recruit even more activists and comrades in arms.

While I share Dr. Weissman's goal of having a loving relationship with Israel without sacrificing empathy, I also refuse to close my eyes. While Dr. Weissman refuses to acknowledge the brutal truth documented by Palestinian Media Watch, MEMRI, UN Watch, and Corrie Gil-Shuster's street interviews, I recognize this part of the truth. Antisemitism is endemic in many Arab cultures. I have no empathy for that, and I certainly won't ignore it. I invite Dr. Weissman to do the same.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Long Before Plans To Make It Another Riviera, Gaza Was Actually Compared To Singapore (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

On February 4th, Trump held a joint press conference with Netanyahu:

We have an opportunity to do something that could be phenomenal. And I don't want to be cute. I don't want to be a wise guy. But the Riviera of the Middle East, this could be something that could be so...This could be so magnificent. But more importantly than that is the people that have been absolutely destroyed that live there now can live in peace in a much better situation because they are living in hell. And those people will now be able to live in peace. We'll make sure that it's done world class.

Trump has not supplied much detail on how he plans to bring this transformation about or what it might look like, but mention of the Riviera does conjure up a certain image:

French Riviera

But Trump is the only one to have come up with a plan. Last year, Netanyahu introduced his own plan for Gaza. Netanyahu called his plan -- Gaza 2035. It has 3 stages:

Stage 1: Humanitarian aid. Israel will create safe areas free of Hamas control. This step is planned to take 12 months to complete. A coalition of Arab countries, consisting of Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Bahrain, Jordan, and Morocco will supervise humanitarian aid in the safe areas, which would be run by Gazan Palestinians

Stage 2: Israeli security responsibility would be moved to Israel, while the Arab coalition mentioned in Stage 1 would creat the Gaza Rehabilitation Authority (GRA) to oversee reconstruction and and manage Gaza's finances. This would be coordinated with a "Marshall Plan" and a deradicalization program.

Stage 3: Self-governance. Israel would retain the right to act against security threats. Authority would slowly be transferred either to a local Gaza government or a unified Palestinian government, which would include the West Bank. It would be contingent on Gaza being successfully deradicalized and demilitarized and subject to agreement by all parties. The final step would be for the Palestinian Arabs to fully manage Gaza independently and join the Abraham Accords.

In addition to governance and security, the plan also covers ways to ramp up the Gazan economy. These include various plans for connecting with the Saudi NEOM mega-project, creating massive free-trade zones, creating solar energy fields, and turning Gaza into a hub for electric vehicle manufacturing.

AI-generated image of Gaza found in the PMO's plan for a post-war Gaza, May 3, 2024.

But talking about turning Gaza into a Riviera might remind us of a time when Gaza--and the West Bank--had an economy whose potential for growth rivaled, and even surpassed, some formidable economies at the time.

In the July/August 2002 edition of Commentary Magazine, Efraim Karsh wrote an article, What Occupation? He describes Gaza and the West Bank following the Six Day War, when those areas came under Israeli control.

Efraim Karsh writes about how severe the situation of the Palestinian Arabs was before the start of Israeli control following the 1967 War:

The larger part, still untold in all its detail, is of the astounding social and economic progress made by the Palestinian Arabs under Israeli "oppression." At the inception of the occupation, conditions in the territories were quite dire. Life expectancy was low; malnutrition, infectious diseases, and child mortality were rife; and the level of education was very poor. Prior to the 1967 war, fewer than 60 percent of all male adults had been employed, with unemployment among refugees running as high as 83 percent. Within a brief period after the war, Israeli occupation had led to dramatic improvements in general well-being, placing the population of the territories ahead of most of their Arab neighbors.

Compare that with the the development of Gaza just during the 1970's:

During the 1970's, the West Bank and Gaza constituted the fourth fastest-growing economy in the world-ahead of such "wonders" as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Korea, and substantially ahead of Israel itself.

The World Bank report, published in 1993, bears this out.

Page 10 of the report discusses the crisis in 1993 resulting from the First Intifada and compares that to the economic situation of both Gaza and the West Bank during the 1970's:

The charts below from page 13 support Karsh's conclusion. The growth of the economies of the West Bank and Gaza outpaced Singapore, Hong Kong, and Korea, and was substantially ahead of Israel:

The intifada's and the border closings necessary for security reasons did not do the Palestinian Arabs any favors.

But that did not stop Israel from making another offer to help turn the Gazan economy around. In March 1995, the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs offered to see to it that Soon The Gaza Strip Will Be Competing with Singapore, thanks to

industrial parks which the leadership of the [Israeli] Foreign, Industry and Finance Ministries is planning at this very moment, under total secrecy. The goal: to establish between 8 to 11 such parks on the cease-fire line between Israel and the autonomous areas, which the Palestinian Authority will control within the next few months.

Foreign Minister Shimon Peres is the one who envisioned all this, and those close to him say with pride: We are getting closer to Singapore, Taiwan and Hong-Kong, in huge steps.

And then, after the vision arrives to develop the cities Gaza, Dir Al- Balah, Ofakim and Sderot it will be copied in the cease-fire line between Afula and Jenin, to Mt. Hebron and Tul-Karm, and will reach the entrance of Kochav Yair.

Each industrial park will be established for about 10,000 employees, and will sit on 2,000 dunam of land, with considerable financial assistance from foreign investors and also governmental subsidies. The Palestinians will run them, and be its workers, for the most part.

Gazan cooperation was not forthcoming, so neither was the rejuvenation of the Palestinian Arab economy.

So here we are, once again, offering to reimagine Gaza.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Jordanian media this weekend rediscovered a 32-year old fatwa that says that is it better for Palestinians die as martyrs than to leave their homes.

The Jordanian Fatwa Council in 1993 ruled that the people of Palestine are not permitted to emigrate and are not permitted to evacuate the Holy Land to the Jews.

"The people of Palestine remaining in their land is a jihad in the way of God, and they will have the reward of the mujahideen for it. Their opposition to the enemy is a jihad in the way of God, and they will have the reward of the mujahideen for it," it says. "Those who are killed in those clashes are living martyrs with their Lord, and they are provided for. All support for the steadfastness of the people of Palestine is support for the mujahideen and they are doing so in the way of Allah."

The cynicism of the fatwa, given by Jordanians to Palestinians, is obvious. It is easy to tell your political enemies - which in reality is what Palestinians are to Jordanians - that they must die, and then to justify it with religion.

But that cynicism is being seen today, by the international community, just by substituting "human rights" for "religion." The world is insisting that Gazans do not have the right to emigrate to other Arab countries, even if they want to.

This points to a major flaw with Donald Trump's insistence that the US should take over Gaza and remove the Gazans from the region.

It is almost certainly against international law.

Moving people against their will - deportation, population transfers, what have you - is one of the primary evils in current international law. Yes, it was a standard practice before the Geneva Conventions, but that argument does not hold water today. The only way that it might be justified is to say that it is for their own safety, which is a reasonable argument given how many explosives and Hamas booby-traps are sprinkled throughout Gaza. But that cannot justify not allowing the Gazans to return.

In reality, international law is largely a myth. Powerful nations can and do violate international law with impunity with only token complaints from human rights groups. The double standards applied to Israel is proof positive that international law is just another political tool and is not applied equally to all.

However, international law is still a powerful force, justly applied or not.

And the right to emigrate to escape a dangerous situation is an equally powerful human rights and international law concept.

Trump could have leveraged international humanitarian law in a simple way that would largely accomplish the same goals with the opponents looking like fools. And that would be to insist that Gazans who want to leave Gaza voluntarily and enter Arab and Muslim countries should be allowed to do so.

Throughout the past sixteen months, I have found only a single article by a human rights worker that said the simple truth that Gazans should be allowed to flee Gaza. Significantly, it was written by Bill Frelick, HRW's refugee rights director worldwide. No Middle East HRW employee would dare say something like this because they are so staunchly anti-Israel.

The article was barely mentioned by HRW and ignored by the world. Otherwise, the human rights community has been silent about a clear human rights issue.

Trump could have called out this hypocrisy. He could have noted that hundreds of thousands of Gazans would love to relocate elsewhere - one third said so before October 7. No one could have seriously argued then with his pressuring Egypt and Jordan and Turkey to take in refugees, just as they took in hundreds of thousands from Syria, Iraq, Sudan and elsewhere.

Their hypocrisy in refusing to accept Palestinians and only Palestinians would have been clear to the world, and pressure would have ensured that they accept them.

It is still possible that the threat of US withholding of aid to Jordan and Egypt will result in a token response. But it could have been done so much better.

No sane Gazan would stay in a war zone if they can leave - except for Hamas members. Allowing Gazans to leave voluntarily would make the still necessary job of clearing out Hamas much easier and with fewer casualties.

It was a missed opportunity. And it is a shame.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Attacks from Palestinians in the West Bank every hour of every day - and media silence

Palestinian site Safa reports:

26 resistance operations continued in the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem during the past twenty-four hours against occupation soldiers and settlers.

The Palestine Information Center "Ma'ati" indicated that the resistance activities included a shooting operation, armed clashes, 6 explosive device detonations, damaging a military vehicle, confronting settlers' attacks, in addition to the outbreak of confrontations and stone-throwing in 17 locations.

It was not an unusual day.

The Ma'ati website counts an average of 15 attacks a day. For 2025 so far they count

107 Shootings

119 Explosive devices

3 Run-over operations

3 Stabbing operations

28 Damage and destruction

11 Molotov cocktail attacks

plus rock throwing, fireworks and other lower level attacks.

Even Israeli media downplays these attacks - and many aren't covered at all. Which means the mainstream media ignores all of these attacks unless they are fatal.

Nobody realizes how active the Palestinian Authority-controlled front is in this seven-front war.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

02/16 Links: Trump’s question for Arab rulers; Western Countries Have Funded Palestinian Hostility toward Israel for Decades; The Moral Bankruptcy of the International Red Cross

From Ian:

Clifford D May: Trump’s question for Arab rulers

Though Trump is famously unpredictable, I wouldn’t be astonished – based on remarks he’s made over recent days—if he were to tell Sissi and King Abdullah something along these lines:

“You receive huge amounts of American aid along with vital security assistance. These are not entitlements.

“I’m trying to put an end to endless wars in the Middle East. That requires that Gazans not be ruled by Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, or the mullahs in Tehran.

“So, are you with me or against me? Are you an ally? Because I expect America’s allies to contribute to the collective security and give at least as much as they take. Is that you or not?

They should think hard before answering.

Ben-Dror Yemini: Western Countries Have Funded Palestinian Hostility toward Israel for Decades

Before we criticize Trump's Gaza Plan, we must also condemn Western countries which, for decades, have financed the Palestinian terrorists' ideology.

They have funded the Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA and supported Palestinian NGOs that promote the destruction of Israel through the "right of return."

For decades, the Western approach toward the Palestinians has been one of dangerous appeasement that only fuels radicalization and obstinacy.

The Palestinians have rejected every proposal unless it calls for the elimination of Israel - that is, the "right of return."

The two-state solution is irrelevant as long as it is clear, with high probability, that any Palestinian state will become an Iranian outpost or a Qatari branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Change is possible; it has already occurred in parts of the Arab world such as the UAE, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia.

There is a direct correlation between changes in textbooks in some Arab countries and an increased willingness to reconcile with Israel.

Not a single dollar should go to the Palestinian Authority as long as hate is being taught. Not a single dollar to NGOs that support BDS.

Anyone who wants peace must begin by fostering an atmosphere of reconciliation.

Amb. Alan Baker: The Moral Bankruptcy and Hypocrisy of the International Red Cross

The 1986 foundational Statutes of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) proclaim that it is "a worldwide humanitarian movement, whose mission is to prevent and alleviate human suffering wherever it may be found, to protect life and health and ensure respect for the human being, in particular in times of armed conflict."

For an organization whose sole purpose and mission is to help victims of wars and human rights violations, it is patently obvious that the ICRC has totally failed in its mission, as reflected in its mishandling of Israel's hostage crisis.

The ICRC failed in its most basic responsibilities to the more than 250 kidnap victims from some 20 nations taken hostage as part of Hamas's egregious invasion, mass murder, and rape. Moral and legal responsibility lies chiefly with the Swiss government under whose auspices the ICRC functions, together with the state's parties to the Geneva Conventions who finance its very existence and are in the position to monitor, direct, and influence the ICRC's functioning.

Why have they not impressed upon those elements influencing Hamas - chiefly Qatar, Egypt, the UN, and other Arab elements - that Israeli victims of terror and kidnapping are entitled to humane treatment?

How is it conceivable that the Swiss government and the ICRC have sat idly for more than 16 months while being openly manipulated and abused by the Hamas terror organization? Rather, they have passively accepted Hamas's refusal to allow the transfer of medications, and medical and humanitarian visits, to the sick and wounded and all illegally-held hostages.

Moreover, it challenges all semblance of logic and moral clarity that the ICRC can countenance images of armed, masked terrorists standing on ICRC vehicles displaying the Red Cross emblem and flag while such vehicles transport tortured, suffering, and ill Israeli hostages - and its representatives participating in "release ceremonies" with terrorist leaders.

Plenty of people have already reviewed and savaged Ta-Nehisi Coates' book "The Message" section on Israel. I have not read the whole thing but I was looking at Benny Morris' scathing review and saw him mention something that prompted me to check out its context.

Coates describes his visit to the Temple Mount. Actually, he doesn't: he only describes waiting in line.

On my first full day in Jerusalem, I walked with a group of fellow writers, editors, and artists into the Old City of Jerusalem. ...There were about a dozen of us total, pulled from all over the world—South Africa, Kashmir, the U.K., and America—at the invitation of the Palestine Festival of Literature. ....Our group of companions walked to the brink of the Lion’s Gate, where we met the custodian of one of Islam’s holiest sites: the Haram al-Sharif complex, which includes the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. This was the object of our visit, but it was made difficult by the phalanx of soldiers who examined our passports and then, for no discernible reason, made us wait.

The land of the Haram al-Sharif complex is holy to both Muslims and Jews.....The Old City is in East Jerusalem, and, for the moment, a Jordanian-funded Waqf exercises nominal control of Al-Aqsa. But the real control belongs to the occupying power, with predictable results: Israelis regularly tour Al-Aqsa, while Palestinians are barred from the Western Wall.

We stood at the Lion’s Gate for the next forty-five minutes or so, talking amongst ourselves, unsure of what was happening or why we had been stopped. Was it that we had cameras? Was it that our guide was Jordanian? No justifications were given, no questions asked, no instructions offered. The soldiers just stood there with their enormous guns, blocking the way. I leaned against a nearby wall and watched as groups of tourists streamed in and out of the Gate, unmolested and unquestioned. But no one visibly Muslim passed through the Lion’s Gate in all the time we were made to wait. I could not quite put words to what I was seeing, but watching those soldiers stand there and steal our time, the sun glinting off their shades like Georgia sheriffs, I could feel the lens of my mind curving to refract the blur of new and strange events.

None of this makes any sense - until you realize that Coates is not describing Lion's Gate but the Mughrabi (Moroccan) Gate. The Mughrabi Gate is the only gate to the Temple Mount that the Waqf allows non-Muslims to use for visiting the Temple Mount complex. (They hold the keys to all other gates.)

There are about half a dozen accessible gates to the Temple Mount. For all of them but this one, Muslims enter and exit pretty freely. There are no lines to enter using those gates except during major holidays and perhaps Fridays when tens of thousands go there to pray.

That's the reason Coates saw no Muslims entering. Those heavily armed guards were not there to prevent Muslim worshippers, who can stroll in through the other gates. Here's a Google Street View image of the entrance from the Cotton Merchants' Gate - no barriers, no turnstiles, no obvious metal detectors.

The guards at Mughrabi Gate are there to protect the tourists who have very limited hours that they can visit. They are there to block Jews and Christians from bringing in religious or political objects like prayerbooks or flags. They protect the Mount itself from fanatics like Denis Michael Rohan, the Christian who set part of the mosque on fire in 1969.

Those scary guards are there to make it difficult for non-Muslims, not Muslims.

Going to the Mount as a group of a dozen people, including professional photographers with equipment, including a Jordanian who would normally enter through another gate, would definitely require more scrutiny than the average tourist during visiting hours.

In 2013, they stopped me - a quite identifiable Jew - from bringing in various pieces of video and sound equipment for the video tour I made. I had to leave most of it with the guards and retrieve it afterwards, recording my visit with a single camera.

Muslims don't have to jump through the hoops that Jews and Christians have to in order to visit. Coates' observation that there were no Muslims is not evidence of anti-Muslim apartheid - it is evidence of anti-Jewish and anti-Christian apartheid!

Also, Israeli Arabs and Palestinian residents of Jerusalem can visit the Western Wall any time with no issues. West Bank Palestinians need a permit, just as they do to go to the rest of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. Coates makes an assumption based on his hate of Israel and doesn't bother to do the least amount of checking.

Just this one section of the book shows that Ta-Nehisi Coates is an unreliable and sloppy reporter, looking for evidence that fits his biases and showing no interest in finding out the truth.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Arabs: "Our strength and Allah stop Jews from conquering us from the Nile to the Euphrates"

A large amount of anti-Israel and antisemitic propaganda has this formula:

* Project Arab mentality on Jews

* Notice that Jews don't act on that mentality they supposedly have

* Proudly say that their own actions dissuaded the Jews

One example that we see all the time is the assumption that Israelis and Jews intend to demolish the Al Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock to build a new Temple. Since they haven't done it, the Arabs say, it proves that their own actions have prevented this catastrophe.

We see this over and over again, "explaining" why Israel might accept a hostage deal, for example.

Dr. Mazen Krishan retired from the Jordanian army with the rank of brigadier general, during which he held several positions, the last of which was Director of Moral Guidance. He is not a marginal figure. This article, published this weekend in Al Bosala, is as good an example as any of mainstream Arab Muslim antisemitism, projection, Islamic attitudes towards Jews, and the utter inability to see things from any other perspective than their own mindset and through the Quran:

The "Israeli" Dream Will Not Come True
The dream of a state of "Israel" stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates will not be realized, God willing. They will not expand beyond Gaza to the Nile, nor will they cross the Jordan River to the Euphrates. This is the promise of Allah, and Allah does not break His promise. As stated in the Quran:
"The Jews say, ‘God’s hand is tied.’ May their own hands be tied and may they be cursed for what they say! No! Both His hands are wide open: He gives as He pleases. What has been sent down to you from your Lord will surely increase many of them in rebellion and disbelief. We have cast enmity and hatred among them until the Day of Resurrection. Whenever they kindle the fire of war, God extinguishes it. They strive to spread corruption in the land, but God does not love those who spread corruption." (Al-Ma'idah 64)
— This verse indicates that whenever the Jews plan a war against Muslims, Allah prevents them from achieving their strategic objectives. The war here may refer to a comprehensive strategic war, including military, political, media, and economic aspects. The verse also clarifies that Allah's anger is upon them due to their corruption and the harm they cause to humanity.
— In Surah Al-Isra, this meaning is further emphasized: whenever the Jews attempt to dominate and control various fields—military, political, and economic—Allah sends upon them His servants, strong and resolute, who destroy their rise and stand against their strategic goals, due to their widespread corruption.
One of the greatest signs of this is the destruction brought by the "Al-Aqsa Flood":
The destruction of their material and moral military infrastructure.
The dismantling of their economic foundations.
The collapse of their psychological warfare and media deception, exposing their lies to the world.
The downfall of their social structure, as the "Al-Aqsa Flood" led to the displacement of nearly a million Jews from Palestine and halted further immigration.
The breaking of despair and hopelessness that Jews planted in the Arab psyche, reviving determination, courage, and hope for victory over Israel and its allies.
— Surah Al-Isra also explains that Allah gave the Israelites a second chance to repent and abandon their corruption, but they persisted. For example:
The Jews were the masterminds behind the Crusades.
The Jews played a role in causing both World War I and World War II.
The Jews promoted capitalism through the Jewish professor Karl Ritter and communism through Karl Marx. Through these ideologies, Palestine was occupied, and Jews were planted there. These ideologies also led to attacks on religions, the spread of atheism, corruption, colonialism, the spilling of millions of innocent lives, and the most horrific forms of torture in prisons and detention centers.
After all this corruption and more—too vast to list—Allah gathered the Jews from across the earth into Palestine, not to establish their great state, but to destroy them. As the Quran states:
"And after him, We said to the Children of Israel, ‘Live in the land, but when the final promise comes, We will bring you forth in crowds.’" (Al-Isra 104)
The "final promise" is explained further in the next verse of Surah Al-Isra:
"If you do good, you do good for yourselves; if you do evil, it is for yourselves. And when the final promise comes, We will send upon you those who will disgrace your faces and enter the Masjid as they entered it the first time, and utterly destroy all that they conquered."
— The statements of President Trump confirm, beyond doubt, an attempt to obscure the victory of the resistance, which was reinforced by divine miracles and the legendary steadfastness of the people of Gaza. On the one hand, they attempt to suppress the moral impact of this victory on Muslims and prevent any hope for a new Arab Spring. On the other hand, they seek to instill fear and despair in the hearts of the nation’s leaders and people.
— Furthermore, they aim to hide this moral influence from the American and European people, who have risen against Israeli massacres targeting children, women, and hospitals in Gaza. Many of these people have converted to Islam in large numbers, which represents a major disaster for the global Freemasonry, which has spent billions and used every means possible to eliminate religions and global morals, especially Islam.
O Allah, this is our belief and understanding of Your promise and Your divine will. Count us among the witnesses, the liberators, and the martyrs.

So whenever Israel wins, it is because Allah is setting things up for the Jews to be destroyed. And when Israel supposedly loses, that is proof that Allah wants to destroy the Jews.

This isn't a conspiracy theory of what Jews do, but a conspiracy theory to explain how Allah acts!

This former Director of Moral Guidance is a dyed in the wool antisemite.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

From The Lancet:

Life expectancy losses in the Gaza Strip during the period October, 2023, to September, 2024

In the central variant, life expectancy in the Gaza Strip decreased by 34·9 years during the first 12 months of the war, about half (–46·3%) the prewar level of 75·5 years. Life expectancy losses were larger for males (–38·0 years [–51·6%]) than for females, but nonetheless, females also suffered large losses (–29·9 years [–38·6%]). Losses between the low and high variants ranged between –31·1 years (–41·1%) and –39·4 years (–52·2%) for both sexes combined.

According to the paper, the life expectancy of people in Gaza is currently 40.6 years.

The researchers used various methods to ensure that their conclusions would be worse than reality.

First, a note on the definition of "life expectancy." No one can seriously say that a child born in Gaza today has an expected lifespan of only 40 years. Their models assume that the war would go on indefinitely, and therefore if the war continues with the intensity of the first twelve months for the next 50 years, then the life expectancy of a child born today would be 40 years.

That assumption is clearly bizarre. Assuming an intense war for decades is nowhere close to reasonable. It is not a true reflection of how long one would expect a child born in Gaza today to live.

The study also cherry picks the data timeframe. The number of deaths, even according to the Gaza Health Ministry, kept continually decreasing with each month of the war as the IDF managed to get civilians out of the way and only target militants more accurately. So while in October 2023, the ministry counted 8,000 deaths, that went down to about 1,300 deaths in December 2024. By choosing the 12 month period starting in October 2023, instead of, say, calendar year 2024, the researchers are over-emphasizing the first months of the war that do not represent the more steady-state mortality numbers of the latter months. This affects their life expectancy calculations a great deal by assuming a steady state of 3,500 deaths per month (for the 12 months of October-September) rather than less than 2,000 deaths per month average for calendar year 2024, or less than 1,300 deaths per month by looking only at the last months of 2024 which would be a normal assumption even assuming the war would continue. In fact, the curve of ever-decreasing death rates per month indicate that the trend of deaths would continue to decrease even if the fighting continues throughout 2025 and beyond.

In other words, the 40.6 life expectancy is artificially low, the result of choosing data that is not representative of Gaza before the cease fire.

One other point is that the average terrorist can be assumed to be between 18-30 years old. Younger people's deaths dramatically affect the life expectancy calculation. Even if the IDF had perfect aim, and killed 20,000 Hamas terrorists and no one else, the total life expectancy in Gaza would be expected to change markedly. It doesn't mean the average non-Hamas Gazan has a lower life expectancy.

To my understanding, life expectancy is typically calculated under the assumption that mortality rates will return to normal once the crisis ends—which the study ignores. There are life expectancy models that account for short term disruptions like wars or pandemics, and this study does not appear to use any of them.

This study is yet more anti-Israel propaganda disguised as science.

(h/t JW)

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Al Jazeera interviewed UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini last week outside the Munich Security Conference, and he told a whopper of a lie:

Interviewer: Are there plans being made for a Plan B if if UNRWA wasn't there or is there not a plan B?

Lazzarini: Well, if UNRWA cannot operate anymore we will have to go back to the General Assembly. Now I have also warned the member states, please do not make any mistake: if we are unable to provide basic services to the Palestine refugees they will not lose their refugee status, and if they do not lose the refugee status, I mean, there will be more pressure on issues related to return or resettlement.

OK, let's read the Refugee Convention, article 1D:

This Convention shall not apply to persons who are at present receiving from organs or agencies of the United Nations other than the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees protection or assistance.

This is the UNRWA exception to which refugees get protected by the Refugee Convention.

When such protection or assistance has ceased for any reason, without the position of such persons being definitively settled in accordance with the relevant resolutions adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations, these persons shall ipso facto be entitled to the benefits of this Convention.

This says that as long as UNRWA exists, Palestinians get protection from UNRWA, not the UNHRC like the rest of the world.

If UNRWA no longer exists or cannot provide protection for any reason, then Palestinians who are refugees would be protected by the UNHRC - and therefore have to follow the UNHRC eligibility requirements for being defined as refugees, which would exclude nearly all of the Palestinians that UNRWA considers "Palestine Refugees" today.

This is international law - an international law that Lazzarini chooses to ignore.

Lazzarini also gave a press conference in Munich, and see how he pretends to care about international law there in context of Trump's suggestion to relocate Gazans:

The plan talks also about forcible displacement of Gazans from their homeland which would be totally contrary to International laws.

But if they are living in their homeland, then they are not refugees - under international law! The Refugee Convention says this explicitly that a refugee must be "outside the country of his former habitual residence."

UNRWA continues to play fast and loose around its mandate, claiming simultaneously that Palestinians under UNRWA protection are both refugees and residents of their homeland. The two statements cannot be both true under any definition of refugee.

It is a shame that no reporter at the press conference seems to be knowledgeable enough to point out the contradictions.

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

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02/15 Links: How Hamas influenced int'l media to not cover emaciated hostages; BBC risks becoming ‘Hamas propaganda mouthpiece’; Hezbollah supporters set UNIFIL vehicles on fire

From Ian:

Gil Hoffman: Hoodwinked: How Hamas influenced int'l media to not cover emaciated hostages

THE PRO-ISRAEL media watchdog HonestReporting singled out three major media outlets for condemnation: the BBC, CNN, and The Guardian.

The BBC reported that there were “concerns over the appearance of hostages on both sides,” equating the innocent civilians kidnapped and starved by Hamas with Palestinian terrorists who can earn university degrees in Israeli prisons and are visited by the Red Cross, who ignored the hostages until they taxied them to Israel.

For hours, the BBC’s live news homepage featured a celebratory image of Palestinian prisoners embracing their families instead of showing the emaciated hostages, in what was, at the very least, a problematic editorial choice.

CNN balanced its headline, “Israel condemns frail appearance of captives,” with a sub-headline about the Palestinian prisoners, saying that “many of them appeared emaciated and in poor health.”

Never to be outdone, The Guardian announced its agenda with its headline, “Gaunt captives emerge from Gaza and Israel.”

These headlines could be dismissed or even mocked if they were not so immoral and dangerous. Media framing matters. When such comparisons mislead the public and distort reality, people around the world believe Israel is no better than the terrorist organization that attacked our civilians on Oct. 7, 2023.

The Wall Street Journal deserves credit for following up by interviewing neighbors of Sharabi but wrote that he “lost family members during the initial Hamas attack,” as if they merely went missing. The same article said that Levy’s wife “had died,” instead of telling the world that she was murdered in the bomb shelter of death where the late heroes Aner Shapira and Hersh Goldberg-Polin had saved lives.

Hamas has threatened to stop releasing hostages, but it should not surprise anyone if the next ones released are in even worse condition and are ignored even more by mainstream media and the so-called influencers who have become so dangerously powerful.

Influencers who support Hamas boasted on Instagram and TikTok about how healthy the released female hostages looked.

According to the latest Pew Research study, 20-24% of Americans, including 37% under 30, regularly get their news from influencers on social media, enhancing the impact of biased coverage. In the US presidential race, 24% of all Americans got their election news primarily from social media in 2024.

Major outlets like CNN and NBC are cutting a significant portion of their workforce while shifting their focus to digital media. These shifting news consumption patterns amplify the impact of biased coverage, as readers encounter skewed information on official news outlets’ social media pages.

It is no wonder that young people, who have been statistically proven to be more impressionable than their parents, could think that Israel perpetrated a genocide in Gaza and not believe that more Israelis were murdered on Oct. 7, 2023, than any one day since the Holocaust.

Media misinformation leads to indifference at best and hate at worst, and that is why the lessons of the coverage of Eli Sharabi, Or Levy, and Ohad Ben Ami must be learned immediately.

My grandmother’s picture on the wall at Yad Vashem proves what happens when the world does not take the suffering of the Jewish people seriously enough. 

BBC risks becoming ‘Hamas propaganda mouthpiece’

The former director of BBC Television has warned that the broadcaster risks becoming a propaganda mouthpiece for Hamas.

Danny Cohen said BBC coverage of the Gaza conflict had repeatedly drawn an “appalling false equivalence” between the release of Israeli hostages held in terrible conditions by Hamas and the freeing of Palestinian prisoners by Israel.

Mr Cohen said the BBC had also underplayed the suffering endured by the hostages freed as part of the ceasefire deal, while at the same time emphasising the privations it says were endured by the Palestinians prisoners.

He also accused the corporation of failing to mention that many of the Palestinian prisoners were guilty of terror crimes, including bombings and knife attacks.

The report coincided with the latest round of hostage releases on Saturday which came after fears the ceasefire deal could collapse.

In his report analysing the BBC’s coverage of the release of hostages taken by Hamas on October 7 2023, Mr Cohen stated: “In their rush to gloss over the undeniable torture, starvation and beatings that hostages have endured and their determination to highlight claims of poor conditions in Israel’s jails, the BBC is repeatedly drawing offensive false equivalence between victims of war crimes and hundreds of convicted violent offenders.

“The BBC is at risk of becoming a Hamas propaganda mouthpiece. They have repeatedly given a free pass to terrorists who have committed violent racist murder. It will be very hard for many in the Jewish community to ever forget it.”

In his analysis of the BBC’s coverage of the ceasefire deal’s arrangement for Israeli hostages to be released in exchange of prisoners, Mr Cohen claimed that the broadcaster’s reporters had failed to point out the crimes committed by jailed Palestinian fighters.

He said that instead, the BBC had gone out of its way to highlight the scenes of joy at the men being reunited with their families and their apparently emaciated appearance after years spent in Israeli jails.

During its coverage of the release of nearly 200 Palestinian prisoners on Feb 8 the BBC failed to describe any of them as terrorists, according to the report, even though half had been serving life sentences for murder.

Mr Cohen said a BBC News website story a few days earlier did not mention that a freed Hamas member it quoted expressing joy at his release had been held for his part in a 2018 gun attack which killed two civilians.

The report also accused the BBC of focusing on Palestinians freed from administrative detention without trial, while making only “passing reference” to the 733 convicted for violent offences who had been freed.

02/14 Links Pt2: A Jewish Moment Without Parallel; Erin Molan: Arnold Roth begs Trump: ‘Avenge my daughter’s death!’; Welcome to Hamassachusetts

From Ian:

Meir Y. Soloveichik: A Jewish Moment Without Parallel

In contrast, perhaps the most striking feature of Netanyahu’s trip to Washington is that it featured a meeting with major evangelical leaders, but not with Jewish ones, reflecting the fact that it is millions of non-Jewish Americans who make up the heart of the America-Israel alliance. And this, in turn, reveals a fact about our moment that has no parallel in the biblical past: For the first time since the emergence of Abraham’s covenant nation, there are, numerically, more Gentiles who care about the well-being of the Jewish people than there are Jewish people on this earth. We live, one might say, in unprecedented times.

Here, then, is where our moment becomes mysterious. Various aspects of Jewish existence at present seem less like the biblical description of what once was, and more like the biblical prediction of what will be. The Bible speaks of a city of Jerusalem that expands far beyond its walls, that will attract the admiration of nations. None of this is an excuse for Israel to rest on its laurels or ignore its daunting challenges. Scripture also stresses that other redemptive moments in the prophetic past have been squandered by mistakes made by Israel’s leaders, or its people, just as it predicts that Israel’s miraculous story will attract the ire of nations that will ally themselves against it. But it does mean that there may not be other examples of statesmanship in the past that speak precisely to our moment, and that much of our age is paralleled not in history, but in prophecy.

In his address to his son’s high school, Scalia described why the American Founders sought to learn from history, and he utilized the Bible in his explanation.

They knew they were facing great challenges in seeking to establish at one and the same time a federation and a democracy. But they did not think for a moment it was an unprecedented challenge. If you read the Federalist Papers, you will find they are full of examples to support particular dispositions in the Constitution—from Greece, from Rome, from medieval Italy, France, and Spain. So if you want to think yourselves educated, do not believe that you face unprecedented challenges. Much closer to the truth is a different platitude: There is nothing new under the sun.

The Bible does indeed say this, but it also predicts that radically new moments in the Jewish future are yet to come. We seem to be, in some respect, in such a time. Thus Jewish statesmen and leaders, in Israel and the Diaspora, will need, increasingly, to turn not to the tales of Greece and Rome, but to the Bible in order to search for instruction—to not only its description of past events, but also its vision for the Jewish future. This vision was presented thousands of years ago, but it seems increasingly relevant today. And this surely means that, especially in this trying period, we may hope for more surprises and wonders yet to come.

A Free Nation, in Our Own Land

On Oct. 7, 2023, the past became my present. Although San Francisco has been my home for 50 years, having grown up in a Jewish family in Tel Aviv before the creation of the State of Israel, that day was 1943 again and I was a 5-year-old child in a third-floor apartment on Montefiore Street.

Two British soldiers rang the bell and my mother, Lisa, opened the door. “This is a search.” My grandmother Baboo and I hovered behind my mother, knowing that the appearance of British soldiers at the door could spell trouble. Just the sight of British uniforms was scary enough. My mom spoke some English but we did not, adding to our bewilderment. My father, Boris, who was in the Haganah, the largest Jewish defense group at that time, was not at home.

Our apartment in Tel Aviv consisted of two rooms, a balcony, a kitchen, and a shared bath. The soldiers looked under the beds, pulled open the drawers of the big armoire in the bedroom, rifled through the contents, and shifted the hanging clothes from side to side while whispering to each other. Baboo and I watched the soldiers’ faces. Even as a 5-year-old, I sensed that the soldiers were nervous, too.

We didn’t know what they were looking for or what might happen to us if they found something incriminating. Meanwhile Lisa, as if a hostess at an elegant party, escorted the soldiers around the apartment, gesturing proudly and smiling an appeasing, coquettish smile.

Not finding anything suspicious under the beds, in the geranium planters on the balcony, or behind the small curtain under the sink in the kitchen, the men turned their attention to the large rectangular wooden boxes hanging above the windows. Accordion-like wooden shutters rolled up into these boxes during the day and rolled down at night.

Were any guns hidden there? Any Haganah documents? While they whispered, I heard my mother’s voice,

“Would you like a refreshing drink?”

“Yes, please.”

Lisa emerged from the kitchen with two glasses containing a green liquid and two small cloth napkins on a tray. You might have thought this was a garden party in a fancy house and the men were in military costumes just for fun. In those days, you couldn’t choose from 30-plus varieties of bottled beverages. A cool drink consisted of a spoonful of sweet purple, pink, or green syrup mixed with water.

“You first!” said one soldier, handing my mom the glass with the green drink.

Lisa sipped from the glass daintily. No, not poison. And the soldiers drank. Then they opened all the shutter boxes and finding nothing, left the apartment bearing no contraband. We were safe for now.

At that time, we were under the British Mandate, which was created to bring order to the territory. The resident Arabs resented the mandate and became violent; the Jews responded in kind. To control the violence, the Brits imposed random lockdowns in the cities. Loud sirens pierced our ears day or night and loudspeakers boomed: “Everyone inside!”

Occasional half-hour respites would be blared out, allowing the residents to go out for food. When a break came, my mom grabbed a basket and we ran to line up at the nearby bakery for bread. She wore the new housedress she had bought for these occasions (a simple flowery, button-down cotton dress with pockets). She would look good while queuing up for bread and later, in the bomb shelter, during the War of Independence. Our Arab neighbors to the north, east, and south did not agree that this land of Israel is the home of the Jews.

Welcome to Hamassachusetts

Inside the Massachusetts statehouse on Monday, State Representative Simon Cataldo displayed the image of a dollar bill folded into a Star of David in front of a packed audience of teachers, activists, and staffers. They were there to attend a hearing on the state of antisemitism in Massachusetts public schools.

“You’d agree that this is antisemitic imagery, correct?” Cataldo, who co-chairs the state’s Special Commission on Combating Antisemitism, asked Max Page, the president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA)—the largest union in New England, representing 117,000 members.

“I’m not gonna evaluate that,” Page responds calmly.

Cataldo pressed him. “Is it antisemitic?”

Page continued to sit stoically, before breaking into a smile. “You’re trying to get away from the central point,” Page said, “which is that we provide imagery, we provide resources for our members to consider, in their own intelligent, professional way.”

In fact, this image is referenced in materials recently made available to Massachusetts educators for teaching about the Middle East. Entitled “Resources on Israel and Occupied Palestine,” the union’s Training and Professional Learning Division developed the framework “for learning about the history and current events in Israel and Occupied Palestine, for MTA members to use with each other and their students.” Last December, the union published the resource document on a webpage accessible only to MTA members.

The person who created the document is Ricardo Rosa, an MTA director with a history of pushing anti-Israel rhetoric, including showing support for Leila Khaled, a terrorist who hijacked a plane headed to Israel in the 1960s. Two days after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Rosa posted “Free Palestine” on his Instagram account, The Daily Wire reported.

Page was asked by the Massachusetts commission about a series of posters contained in the MTA materials, which appear to display an anti-Israel bias. These materials include a poster of a militant wearing a keffiyeh and holding an assault rifle, that reads, “What was taken by force can only be returned by force.”

Another poster portrays George Habash, the founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a Marxist-Leninist group designated by the U.S. as a foreign terrorist organization. It, too, depicts a militant with an assault rifle.

A third poster calls for a “day of rage” to “decolonize this place,” and a fourth tells “Zionists” to “fuck off.”

Another shows a picture of Joe Biden, labeled a “serial killer” for his support of Israel during his presidency. Yet another displays “Unity in Confronting Zionism” beneath a snake—another antisemitic trope once used in Nazi-era posters.

02/14 Links Pt1: Sagui Dekel-Chen, Alexander Troufanov and Yair Horn to be freed on Saturday; Trump’s Gaza Plan and Its Larger Meaning

From Ian:

Elliott Abrams: ‘Gaza Shall Be Forsaken’

Trump’s plan tacitly understands another reason Gaza has never developed into the Singapore that Shimon Peres dreamed of, and that is the condition of the society that has developed in Gaza in the past two decades of Hamas control. Economic and political development require both sound government and a culture in which the polity can advance. One look at Haiti is a reminder of that obvious point. Trump’s plan accepts that development will not happen in the current Gaza situation, where society is permeated by corruption, brutality, hatred, and terror.

This is a simple fact about life and is not a reflection of prejudice against Palestinians. Gouverneur Morris, one of George Washington’s envoys to France, watched the revolutionaries there play at becoming the next United States of America. He wrote in July 1789, just days before the storming of the Bastille, that “they want an American Constitution, with the exception of a King instead of a President, without reflecting that they have not American citizens to support that constitution.” It is a profound point. Governments and constitutions are what Marx would have called the superstructure, but they must be built on an actual, existing society. The Constitution was not a piece of paper but the product of the free society that had been built by colonists in British America, and by their children and grandchildren.

Gaza does not have Morris’s “American citizens” either, and Trump recognizes that pouring more money into it from Qatar or UNRWA (or the United States) will only reproduce what is there now: more terrorism, more death and destruction, and more misery. So he, in effect, suggests that we rely on Zephaniah’s vision for a while—“there shall be no inhabitant”—perhaps for 10 years, while the physical Gaza is transformed. As Trump put it, “Do a real job, do something different. Just can’t go back. If you go back, it’s going to end up the same way it has for years.”

Perhaps 10 years of living without Hamas in a variety of countries would transform Gazans, too. Some would stay in the places to which they moved, while others would want to go “back” to the new Gaza—but this time not as UN-certified permanent “refugees” from the naqba of 1948. This time, as people with options for a decent life who chose to live in Gaza because it offered economic opportunity and peace.

It’s fanciful, and very, very unlikely. But it’s a better, truer, understanding of what led to Gaza’s current situation and what could possibly lead out of it than decades of “peace processing” and UN resolutions, which in the end have produced terrorism, war, and misery.

Trump is treating Gaza as a physical place and its people as suffering humans, which is more than has ever been done by any Arab League resolution condemning Israel and calling it a war crime to allow Gazans to move away. “We will not allow the rights of our people… to be infringed on,” declared Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has not permitted an election in 19 years. Trump’s scheme would “undermine the core of the Palestinian national project,” said Algeria, which is true if the core of that project is endless violence aimed at destroying Israel. An Arab League statement said Trump’s proposal would “threaten the region’s stability” which is also true if, by stability, is meant the 77 years of refusal to accept Israel in peace as a Jewish state.

Gaza is, as Trump called it, a “hellhole,” and history suggests it will remain so. Not because of anything the Israelis did. They left it in 2005 with an open possibility for a better future. Not because of Donald Trump, who in his first weeks in office offered a different future and asked Arab governments to think for once about Gazans as people rather than cannon fodder in the struggle against Israel. But it is apparently still easier to dream on about the “two-state solution” and the “right of return,” and far easier to scream about Israeli crimes and Palestinian victims, than to let the Jews live in peace. Until that changes, “Gaza shall be forsaken.”

Seth Mandel: What If Nothing Changes At All in Gaza?

On Feb. 6, the newspaper Maariv reported that three weeks into the cease-fire the campaign was still ongoing: “The terrorist organization began executions and a widespread wave of arrests. Not only those suspected of any collaboration with Israel, but also anyone who rebels against the situation in Gaza, in any form whatsoever, including on social media, is arrested by Hamas members.” Yesterday, Hamas reportedly opened fire on a family near Khan Younis.

Hamas does this after every war. It’s tradition.

Not that Gazans were free of that tradition during the war. But it’s a more focused campaign now that Hamas brigades aren’t afraid to operate out in the open.

Hamas, of course, really does rule with an iron fist. The terrorists of Gaza also kill with reckless folly: Today, an errant rocket aimed at Israel fell inside Gaza and killed a Palestinian teen.

None of this is terribly unusual. But it’s worth pointing out that Hamas remains able to commit horrific crimes against Israeli hostages and Palestinian locals at the same time. Which means that, while Hamas may be far from its pre-war strength, the status quo in Gaza remains.

Which is another way of saying that there will be no rebuilding of Gaza in the near future. Hamas remains in control of the enclave, and its behavior is identical to the way it acted during and before the war. There is less for Hamas to break in Gaza, but it intends to break what it can find.

Considering all this, there is something almost silly about the way the discourse on the conflict has become monopolized by the subject of postwar recovery. Even if Palestinian civilians wanted to leave the enclave temporarily to allow their neighborhoods to be rebuilt, Hamas wouldn’t let them go anywhere—and Hamas certainly wouldn’t leave of its own free will.

During active conflict, Hamas is the biggest threat to Gazans: Israel creates safe zones and gives advance notice of attacks in the hot zones, and Hamas’s use of those humanitarian sectors puts civilians in the line of fire. And when there’s not active conflict, Hamas is still the biggest threat to Gazans: It just goes around executing them at will.

Any plan, therefore, that aims to improve life for Palestinians requires a realistic way to rid Gaza of Hamas. Without that, there is no “Riviera on the Med,” no two-state solution, no peace—no change at all.

Seth Mandel: How Netanyahu Fought To Save the Hostage Deal

If Netanyahu wanted to keep the hostage releases going, he now had a problem: The public protests against him reduced some of his leverage against Hamas, because Hamas realized it could hold onto the hostages and if anything happened to them it would be blamed on Netanyahu.

Enter Donald Trump. The president was asked about Hamas’s threat to suspend the cease-fire, and Trump made clear he had run out of patience with Hamas. In fact, his comments strongly suggested he believed the deal was already weighted in Hamas’s favor, since the hostages were being released in “drips and drabs” and Israel was pulling out of all of Gaza except a buffer zone on the border. Trump, whose envoy had negotiated the deal at the president’s direction, was telling Hamas that it had better not try to make a fool of him on the world stage.

“As far as I’m concerned,” Trump said, “if all of the hostages aren’t returned by Saturday at 12 o’clock—I think it’s an appropriate time—I would say, cancel it and all bets are off and let hell break out.” Hamas wasn’t the only one who could change the terms of the deal.

In doing so, Trump was taking some of the responsibility off of Netanyahu’s shoulders—if the war was going to restart, it would do so on Trump’s terms. If Netanyahu preferred that option, he could simply do nothing and wait.

But if he wanted to keep the cease-fire deal going, he had a new problem: Trump demanded the release of all the hostages at once. That was unlikely to happen this week.

In order to simply get the existing deal back on track, Netanyahu would have to reduce Trump’s demands without undermining the president’s negotiating authority. So the Israeli government put out a series of statements with vague language to buy it time to strategize with the White House. Then Netanyahu essentially put himself as the mediator between Trump and Hamas so that any reduction in America’s demands was seen as coming from the White House, preserving Trump’s place as the senior partner in the alliance.

In the end, the sides agreed that Hamas would release three hostages as originally planned and Trump gave his blessing without removing the implicit threat of his own impatience with Hamas: “If it was up to me, I’d take a very hard stance. I can’t tell you what Israel is going to do,” Trump told reporters this afternoon. Thus Trump can play off his initial threat as simply what he would do if he were in Israel’s shoes, not what he was planning on doing as U.S. president. Netanyahu looks reasonable but not weak. Hamas is back in compliance with the deal.

Had Netanyahu truly wanted the deal to collapse this week, it would have—because Hamas was the one who suspended the deal and Netanyahu had Trump’s backing to go back to war. The only reason that didn’t happen was because Netanyahu preferred the deal to restarting the war. Hopefully that will earn him some credit with the hostage families who have been suspicious of his motives until now.