Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, February 25, 2025

"Palestine Studies" is academically acceptable antisemitism. Here's why.

My Monday post joking about me applying for the job of "Palestinian Studies" instructor at Hunter College may have been tongue in cheek, but the description of the job itself points to a very uncomfortable fact: The entire field of Palestine Studies should really be called Anti-Zionism, and its obsession with Israel makes it a truly antisemitic field.

Let's review the topics that Hunter wants the candidates to be familiar with:

We seek a historically grounded scholar who takes a critical lens to issues pertaining to Palestine including but not limited to: settler colonialism, genocide, human rights, apartheid, migration, climate and infrastructure devastation, health, race, gender and sexuality.

Notice what is missing. Nothing about Palestinian politics, or culture, or history. Nothing about how Palestinian women or children or gays live outside the prism of "occupation." Nothing about how Palestinians treat animals or the environment. Nothing about how Palestinian Arabs live outside the territories, and the challenges they face as second-class residents in the Arab world for generations.

Most glaringly, nothing about Palestinian terror or "resistance," which is a fundamental part of Palestinian psyche. Most Palestinians support murdering Jews, in poll after poll taken after specific terror attacks. Palestinians consider salaries for terrorists to be the most important budget item for their government. They name schools and sports contests after murderers.

If Palestine Studies was a legitimate, objective field, why is it so centered on slandering Israel? All of the listed issues, without exception, are mainly about attacking Israel, not studying Arab Palestine. (I have sometimes seen papers on topics like Palestinian women's health or other issues that don't revolve around blaming Israel, but they are the exceptions that prove the rule.)

This job description shows that there is no room in Palestine Studies for debate on its core tenets. The field postulates that Israel is guilty of apartheid, genocide and settler colonialism. One cannot advance in the field of Palestine Studies without accepting those lies as axioms.

And yes, they are lies. But even if you do not accept that they are lies, you must admit that there are some excellent arguments on the other side of those issues. Within the bubble of Palestine Studies, however, these are settled issues. Any other opinion is not only unthinkable; anyone in the field who dares contradict the orthodoxy would be canceled and lose their jobs. Palestine Studies is as objective as a Yemeni Studies program where the only valid point of view is that of the Houthis.

Palestine Studies exists as merely an excuse for putting a scholarly facade on old fashioned Israel bashing. It is not an organic yearning to study Arab Palestine but purely a reaction to, and forum for attacking, Israel.

If you think that I am overly generalizing from Hunter College's job description, let's look at how the field is described in the website of Istiqlal University in Jericho. The "Educational Objectives and Outcomes" include:

Finding a Palestinian elite capable of engaging in a sharp, serious, scientific, academic, and cognitive engagement with Israel’s political, intellectual, religious, and historical system and its narratives that target the Palestinian cause.

Strengthening the Palestinian presence in the Arab collective memory, which Israel has begun to target through cultural normalization, and filling this void only through a solid and academic Palestinian presence.

The truth is not a goal. Countering Zionist narratives is.

And what kind of job can one expect to get after achieving a masters degree in Palestine Studies? Among others, according to the site, is working on boycott campaigns against Israel!

Or look at how the Centre for Palestine Studies at SOAS University of London chooses to illustrate its program - with a picture of a defensive barrier Israel constructed to limit Palestinian terror attacks against Jews but framing it as prison walls.

Their description of their fields of study is, again, Israel-centered (and also inaccurate.)

The question of Palestine and the lack of resolution to the so-called conflict with Israel has implicated various countries across the Middle East and North Africa and further afield. Palestinian refugees remain the largest body of refugees in the world, Palestine is the theatre of the longest ongoing illegal occupation recognised as such in international law, Palestinian holders of Israeli citizenship have been permanently engaged in fighting for their rights, and a wide range of social and political movements locally and globally claim to represent the Palestinian voice.

The best known purveyor of Palestine Studies is the Institute for Palestine Studies. They held their third annual Palestine Forum in Doha last month. The forum featured over hundred presentations over three days. Virtually every paper features or centers an anti-Israel component; even a lecture on Palestinian graffiti is based around the artwork drawn on the separation barrier.

If the field has nothing to say about Palestinians without referring to Israel, that is a strong indication that Palestine Studies, and indeed Palestinian nationalism as a whole, is a reaction and counter to Zionism that has little to do with "Palestine." In Palestine Studies, Palestinians themselves become bit players in a grand anti-Israel narrative. They are defined purely in relation to Israel.

If Israel didn't exist, neither would Palestine Studies.

Let's compare with Israel Studies. There are lots of people in Israel Studies programs who are anti-Zionist, who are passionate critics of Israel, even professors who would accuse Israel of apartheid or genocide. Being an anti-Zionist does not automatically disqualify someone from the field of Israel Studies.

Do you think there is a single Zionist instructor in Palestine Studies? The very idea is laughable.

All of this makes Palestine Studies a dogma, not an academic field. It is as scholarly as a Flat Earth society that debates whether the Earth is shaped like a circle or a square.

Since Palestine Studies is wholly congruent with anti-Zionism, that makes it effectively antisemitic. As Professor Andrew Pessin comprehensively demonstrates and as Jews worldwide can feel in their bones, anti-Zionism is largely a form of antisemitism. They are both characterized by the irrationality and obsessive hate of their believers. My book gives example after example of how anti-Zionism is modern antisemitism.

There is one major difference between how antisemitism infiltrated German universities in the 1930s and how modern antisemitism disguised as anti-Zionism has invaded Western academia. That difference is not complimentary towards today's academic antisemites.

The Nazis fired all professors who were Jewish or who didn't accept the racial purity beliefs of the Third Reich. They imposed antisemitism into all academic fields from the top down.

Today, no government is forcing the antisemitism/anti-Zionism that is rife in academia now. It is the academics themselves who are embracing a fundamentally hateful, anti-intellectual philosophy and imposing a set of beliefs that are utterly at odds with both the truth and with free inquiry. Palestine Studies may have been designed to make anti-Zionism (and therefore antisemitism) acceptable, but its false ideas have infected the rest of the social sciences and is moving into every conceivable academic field. It is almost comical to see how students and academics try to find new, novel crimes to accuse Israel of.

The German professors had no choice but to embrace antisemitic philosophy. Today's Western academics are too often the trendsetters for modern antisemitism.

Any objective review of Palestine Studies leads one to that conclusion.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

02/24 Links Pt2: Olmert reveals map of Palestinian state he offered Abbas; There was no famine in Gaza… according to famine review groups’ own data

From Ian:

Yisrael Medad: Jewish anti-Zionists weaponize Jewish customs to attack Israel

Jewish anti-Zionists have been gnashing their teeth in uncontrollable grimacing these past years in reaction to the IHRA’s (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) working definition of antisemitism.

The definition includes denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, that Israel’s existence is a racist endeavor, comparing Israeli policy to that of the Nazis, or aiding the harming of Jews in the name of an extremist view of religion.

Those elements negate most of the essentials of Palestinianism, especially the version promoted by Hamas.

Psychotherapist Mark Golden, from Newton, Massachusetts, published a column in The Boston Globe on February 13 positing that criticizing Israel is not being antisemitic. Moreover, as a Jew, Golden asserted he is “offended when legitimate critiques of Israel’s violent campaign in Gaza are branded as antisemitic.”

He fears he may be silenced. All, of course, depends on the criticism’s content.

Jewish anti-Zionists
A decade ago, Richard Landes wrote that “forms of Jewish self-criticism need to be understood” as they can cross over “into pathology” when shared by Jew-haters and deniers of Jewish national identity who “would use it to promote demonizing and scapegoating narratives.”

And that is what has happened.

Golden’s column is in harmony with the recent “Stop the Ethnic Cleansing” advertisement published in The New York Times, which displayed the names of 350 rabbis and a few actors and public figures. According to the Vatican News, the ad was financed by progressive donors affiliated with the In Our Name Campaign.

This collective of Jewish philanthropists seeks to raise $10 million for organizations that support efforts to “build self-determination in Palestine.”

Their signatures were nowhere to be seen on a similar advert in 2005 when more than 8000 Jews, including corpses, were ethnically cleansed from Gaza. Nor will you see their signatures on petitions protesting a planned ethnic cleansing of 725,000 Jews from Judea & Samaria and post-1967 Jerusalem neighborhoods.

Who is calling who a Nazi?

The use of Nazi imagery has become so ubiquitous among Democrats that it almost precludes notice. But Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s parallels between U.S. President Donald Trump’s political agenda and the rise of Nazi Germany during his “State of the State” budget address on Feb. 19 hit a new low.

Veering from his speech, Pritzker, who is Jewish, referred to Nazis no less than six times during his criticism of Trump and his policies. In a glaring warning to Illinois citizens, he compared the rise of the Nazis to the Republican Party leader in the White House.

After castigating the president’s policies, including the deportation of violent illegal criminals, Pritzker said: “It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic.”

Such deceitful criticism of Trump reeks of partisan animosity of the basest kind. The governor’s confusing use of Nazi imagery is targeting the wrong culprit and, in the process, exonerating the real perpetrators.

Pritzker’s comments lend fuel to the anti-Israel and pro-Hamas protestors who have regularly used Nazi euphemisms against the Jews, libeling them as “genocide” perpetrators in Gaza and calling for the “final solution” for Jews all over the world. His comments ignore the reality of a president who was praised by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House.”

Indeed, Pritzker’s rebuke of the president came on the same day that the Trump administration stopped all funding for the Palestinian Authority, which continues its “pay for slay” policies, paying terrorists and their families for murdering Jews. It comes two days after Israel received a shipment of heavy MK-84 bombs from the United States, following Trump’s lifting of a block imposed on the export of the munitions by the Biden administration.

Pritzker must not have gotten the memo regarding Trump’s executive order two weeks ago outlining a broad federal crackdown on “the explosion of antisemitism” in the United States, especially on college campuses. The executive order cites “an unprecedented wave of vile anti-Semitic discrimination, vandalism and violence.” It instructs U.S. policy to use “all available and appropriate legal tools to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence.” This includes the canceling of visas for foreign students who are “Hamas sympathizers” and deporting “pro-jihadist” protesters.

02/24 Links Pt1: Detoxing Gaza: The Problem Beyond Hamas; Israel should judge all attacks by intent and respond accordingly; Where is the outrage for the Bibas family?

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: ‘Palestine’ has proven again and again it is a death cult of lies

These similarities are no coincidence. From the early years of the 20th century, when Hitler’s ally the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al Husseini falsely accused the Jews of aiming to destroy the al-Aqsa mosque — a claim repeated even today by al Husseini’s explicit fanboy, the Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas — the attempt to suppress and then destroy the Jewish homeland has been a feature of Islamic holy war.

The Jews are the only people for whom the land of Israel was ever their national home. Palestinian identity is a fabrication that was cooked up in the 1960s by the Egyptian-born “Palestinian” terrorist leader Yasser Arafat — who was radicalized by al Husseini — and the Soviet Union, in order to steal from the Jews their ancestral home and their own history in those lands.

Yet Palestinianism is the default cause of Western progressives, who believe the lie that the Palestinians are the indigenous people of the land who have been exiled and oppressed by the Israelis — and are mostly merely wretched and poor and have nothing to do with terrorism.

But behind the Hamas storm troopers who led the October 7 attack, Gaza civilians poured across the shattered border to rape, murder and kidnap Jews and others.

“Ordinary” Gaza civilians paraded and abused those who were dragged back into Gaza and desecrated the bodies of those who had already been murdered.

The Arabs of Gaza not only elected Hamas, but the vast majority have said repeatedly that they support the murder of Jews and want Israel destroyed.

Polling shows even greater majorities for this agenda among the Arabs of the “West Bank.” Officials of Fatah — the main party in the supposedly moderate Palestinian Authority — have openly celebrated the October 7 atrocities and declared their intention to repeat them.

For months, the Israelis have been struggling to keep the lid on dozens of terrorist plots emanating from the Arabs of the “West Bank,” against a backdrop of threats to perpetrate an October 7-style invasion of Israeli towns in central Israel.

A few days ago, an enormous plot to detonate bombs on rush-hour buses in central Israel was foiled only when a number of these devices exploded in empty buses the previous evening — because when priming the bombs, the terrorist had confused 9 a.m. with 9 p.m.

Support for the Palestinians has knocked the West off its moral compass altogether. It’s not just that it’s signed up to a cause that’s profoundly anti-Jew. It’s because the West has come to believe that an evil cause represents conscience itself.

Islamism is a death cult. So is its “Palestinian” offshoot. But the West is unable to acknowledge this because it’s in the grip of a death cult of its own.

As I write in my new book, “The Builder’s Stone: How Jews and Christians Built the West — and Why Only They Can Save It,” the West has had a cultural death wish for decades. Undermining its core values, it no longer believes in objective truth. Everything is a matter of opinion. Feelings trump facts and evidence.

Inverting truth and lies, victim and aggressor, the West is unable to see the Palestinian cause for the evil that it is. And consumed by the belief that Western civilization is fundamentally bad, it refuses to acknowledge the Islamist threat not only to Israel but also to itself.

So as the West’s cultural elites undermine and hollow out their own civilization, the Islamist death cult is moving in for the kill — with the Palestinian Arabs creating the Trojan Horse of the Middle East.

It’s high time the West woke up to the bitter reality of the entire Palestinian cause, and to the way its own agenda of cultural self-loathing has softened it up for the triumph of its enemies.

Seth Mandel: Detoxing Gaza: The Problem Beyond Hamas

What is one to do with this information? The Bibases don’t just symbolize Hamas’s brutality, though Hamas was the reason the invasion happened and the party responsible for the demonic ceremony celebrating the dead children.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, in addition to participating in that ceremony and perhaps holding the captive Bibas family, not only joined the Oct. 7 pogrom but has taken the lead in shepherding anti-Zionism on campus, training participants in the pro-Hamas tentifada, and organizing a high-profile conference at which a Democratic member of Congress spoke. The PFLP and its front groups should be treated no differently from Hamas as part of any permanent cease-fire.

Hamas’s feats of terror would not be possible without Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which Hamas used as a decoy organization in its prewar deception scheme and which is Hamas’s most prominent Gaza-based ally in this war. Surely any policy applied to Hamas would be applied to PIJ and its members.

The same, presumably, would go for the Mujahideen group that claimed credit for the Bibas kidnapping, as well as the other groups represented in the grotesque Hamas-led ceremony. Which is to say: Every so-called resistance organization in Gaza must be disbanded, with no exceptions.

Finally, how does a sweeping policy toward institutions deal with civilians? The answer is, it isn’t just armed groups responsible for what happened on Oct. 7. Gaza’s government and armed forces led an invasion that opened the way for civilians to take part in the murder and looting spree.

How is it that the removal of parts of a fence can inspire civilians to cross into another territory and randomly murder, torture, plunder, and kidnap? The answer is that generations of Palestinians in Gaza have been brainwashed from birth to believe that that is a reasonable course of action toward Jews. And who brainwashed them? We can start with the UNRWA schools responsible for “educating” Palestinian children.

These schools quite famously teach the most demented Jew-hate one can imagine. The textbooks have been opened, the schoolchildren have told the world what they have learned. We don’t wonder what happens in an UNRWA school; we wonder how any country could possibly fund it, support it, defend its existence.

UNRWA is now being ordered to cease its operations in Israel and the territories. Gaza’s de-Nazification should encompass both its ideological institutions—of which UNRWA is one—and its institutions of violent governance. Dismantling Hamas is necessary, yes. But it would be far from sufficient if we want to give future generations of Gazans a chance at a life outside of a death cult.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Hamas's October 7 Massacre Is Part of Its Jihad to Destroy Israel

Some people in Israel are demanding that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu step down and agree to Hamas's demand to end the war in the Gaza Strip.... These Israelis fail to understand that the October 7 massacre is just another phase of the Islamists' Jihad (holy war) against Israel.

Since its violent, brutal takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007, Hamas has done nothing to help the local residents. Instead of building hospitals, schools and economic projects, Hamas, with the help of Iran and Qatar, has devoted huge resources to manufacturing weapons, such as rockets and missiles, and building a massive network of tunnels throughout the Gaza Strip.

Hamas, in a document published shortly after the October 7 attack, openly admits that it is opposed to the presence of Jews in Israel. The document frankly admits that the conflict did not start as a result of the Holocaust, or when Israel declared independence in 1948, or on October 7, 2023, but 105 years ago, "including 30 years of British colonialism and 75 years of Zionist occupation." The document goes on to explain that Hamas "is a Palestinian Islamic national liberation and resistance movement. Its goal is to liberate Palestine and confront the Zionist project."

Hamas's 1988 charter emphasizes the importance of Jihad as the main means for the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) to achieve its goals...

Significantly, the charter quotes Hassan al-Banna, who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928, as saying: "Israel will arise and continue to exist until Islam abolishes it, as it abolished what went before." Hamas is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

US President Donald J. Trump would do well to designate the Muslim Brotherhood, the font of all the Islamic jihadist organizations, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. Such an act would make it difficult for those countries that promote and finance jihadi terrorists to keep on doing so.

What happened on October 7 should be seen in the context of Qatar's, Iran's and Hamas's continuing Jihad. The massacre on October 7 was just another phase in the Islamist groups' efforts to eliminate Israel. After the October 7, massacres, the Qatari government media consistently praised the massacres, and weeks ago vowed more of them.

Anyone who believes that Hamas would abandon Jihad as a result of a ceasefire agreement is engaging in extreme self-deception. Hamas has not yet accomplished its mission of destroying Israel. Hamas's main goal, especially now, is to remain in power after the war.... Any deal that keeps Hamas in power would pave the way for the Islamist murderers, rapists and baby-killers to carry out still more massacres against Israelis.

Regrettably, there is no alternative to eradicating Hamas.

Three ridiculously antisemitic articles in Egyptian media on Sunday alone

This weekend saw at least three separate antisemitic articles in Egyptian media.

At Shorouk News, columnist Imad Al-Din Hussein spins an antisemitic conspiracy theory claiming that the three simultaneous bus explosions in Israel last week were a false flag meant to give an excuse for Israel to attack the West Bank. The "evidence" is that the only people arrested so far are Jews, and no one was injured.

Al Masry al Youm quotes Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris, who says that in Gaza, "the resistance knows very well that the occupation forces are heartless, brutal and usurping, and the Jews believe that they rule the whole world."

Yes, even a billionaire thinks Jews are too powerful.

Rosa el-Youssef Magazine has an article about Coptic beliefs and their supersessionism as decades-old lectures that were recently republished:

In Bishop Youannis’ lecture, he clearly said, “The current Israel has no relation to the Israel mentioned in the Bible, but rather it is Zionist gangs that represent a fascist, racist colonial movement that relies on aggression in its principles and uses violence to achieve its goals.” He explains, “Israel in the Bible has three meanings, the first is the name given to Jacob, son of Isaac, son of Abraham, and the second is a name given to the descendants of Jacob in the Old Testament, and the third is Israel, with its symbolic meaning, referring to the Christian Church, i.e. believers in Christ in the New Testament. Thus, ancient Israel in the Bible is distinguished from today’s racist, terrorist Israel, which has no support in the Bible. ...Christianity teaches that “The descendants of Abraham do not mean the physical descendants, but the spiritual descendants of Abraham, which are all believers in Christ. As for the eternal kingdom of David that they are striving to establish, the Jews understood the king in a literal, material way, while God meant by the kingdom the spiritual kingdom,” Anba Youannis confirms that Israel “has ended as a religion, as Christianity believes that the Torah was an incomplete book that Christianity completed with its teachings and beliefs contained in the New Testament. Accordingly, there is no Judaism as a religion now, and consequently there is no Israel. ...The Jewish nation has ended and no longer exists before God because it is under divine wrath. As long as the Jews are now under God’s wrath and the curse has not ended, they have no recognized entity before God, and all their efforts are nothing but a human attempt destined for certain failure, and God’s wrath will not be turned away from them. unless they realize their mistake and sin in rejecting Christ...

This is mainstream thinking in all Palestinian and Middle East churches, which is one reason Christians in the Middle East don't look at Jews as fellow sufferers under Muslim rule but as worse than their Muslim oppressors.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Where In The World Is Released Terrorist Abu Warda Supposed To Be--And Why Does It Matter? (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

Israel has announced that it is pausing the release of Palestinian Arab terrorists in exchange for Israeli hostages. Specifically, Israel will stop releasing the prisoners until Hamas stops staging “ceremonies that humiliate our hostages."

This follows the condemnation by the UN human rights chief, Volker Turk last week:

The parading of bodies in the manner seen this morning is abhorrent and cruel and flies in the face of international law.

But this past Thursday, when the remains of the Bibas babies were paraded around in coffins, another apparent violation by Hamas was mentioned in passing.

In the middle of an article describing Hamas's parade, the Wall Street Journal notes:

Amid the crowds were some Palestinians recently released by Israel in the cease-fire deal who, according to the terms of the agreement, were supposed to be exiled from Gaza. Those spotted in the crowds included Mohammed Abu Warda, who was sentenced for planning a 1996 bus bombing that killed more than 40 Israelis.

Haaretz describes Abu Warda in more detail:

Mohammad Abu Warda, who was sentenced to 48 life terms for his role in two terror bombings on Jerusalem's bus line 18 in 1996, which killed 45 people. In court, he declared, "The struggle of our people against you will never end. On the contrary, we will stand firm and determined until you leave our land." At the time, the military prosecutor described him as "a mass murderer standing before the court today."

While the Wall Street Journal believed he was supposed to be exiled from Gaza, when Abu Warda spoke with Al Araby, the interviewer told him very matter-of-factly, "Today, you are being sent to Khan Yunis"-- in Gaza.

But unlike either the Journal or Al Araby, Haaretz was not sure where Abu Warda was supposed to be deported to--and so reported that he was to be exiled to either Egypt or Gaza.

Abu Warda's appearance in Gaza was also confirmed on X. Abu Warda wasn't hiding. On the contrary, he gave an interview. According to the Times of Israel, he made it very clear that Hamas terror attacks would continue “until we reach liberation of [Jerusalem] and all our lands.”

Was Abu Warda exiled to Gaza? That would seem unlikely. According to Haaretz, he was sentenced to a total of 48 life terms, making Abu Warda "the prisoner with the most Israeli murder convictions among those being released." Israel is hardly likely to want such a prominent terrorist back in Gaza where he would serve as an inspiration to wannabe terrorists.

But if Israel's intent was for Abu Warda to be exiled to Egypt, why is he in Gaza? Is Hamas again violating the cease-fire?

According to the Times of Israel, Egypt--which was one of the countries involved in formulating the terms of the cease-fire--is not cooperating with its implementation:

According to the Kan broadcaster, Egypt refused to grant entry to Abu Warda and 19 other released security prisoners and has demanded that other prisoners it has already taken in be deported elsewhere before it will accept new prisoners.

Hamas claims initial agreements have been received from Algeria, Indonesia, Malaysia and Qatar to accept released Palestinian prisoners, but this has not yet been implemented, Kan reported.

Theoretically, this terrorist could end up in Gaza, Egypt, Algeria, Indonesia, Malaysia, or Qatar. But barring the implementation of a plan for Gaza that rids it of Hamas, Gaza does seem to be his most likely destination.

Where he can plan his next mass murder attack.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

By Forest Rain

"I could never strangle a baby!"

Many around the world began to grasp the depth of Gazan depravity when it was revealed that baby Kfir Bibas, just 10 months old, and his four-year-old brother Ariel were brutally murdered by Gazans (not just Hamas) while being held hostage in Gaza sometime in November 2023. The Bibas children were taken alive, along with their mother Shiri, during the “Al Aqsa Flood” invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023.

Other children—and even babies—were slaughtered in the attack. Other mothers were taken hostage and forced to watch their children suffer. Other fathers lived through the devastation of being unable to protect their families. But the Bibas family's horror was caught on camera. We saw it happen—live, in living color.

The depravity Gazans unleashed on Israel was not new. We have witnessed it before: the cold-blooded murder of babies, the rape of women, the beheading of men, people torn apart with bare hands. What set this apart was the magnitude—and the location: Israeli kibbutzim within the pre-1967 borders.

This horror should not have been a surprise. But for many, the kidnapping, murder, and mutilation of the Bibas children was an ice-cold bucket of water, shocking them awake to the evil on Israel’s borders.

And that awareness is a good thing. To address reality, we must first recognize it.

For decades, we all pretended that Arabs didn’t really mean what they said when they declared their intent to wipe Israel off the map. But Hamas, Fatah, Gaza, and the Palestinian Authority have always been clear. Their charters, their education systems, their religious institutions—every aspect of their society is not built to uplift themselves but to destroy the Jewish state. Their goal is to turn Israel into “Palestine.”

Now, many of those recently awakened to the depth of this depravity have realized that this threat to Jewish life cannot be allowed to continue. The existential threat to Israel is not just a threat to Jews—it is a threat to Christians, to the Western world, to civilization itself.

And that awareness is a good thing. To address reality, we must first recognize it.

This understanding has led many to declare that Gaza—Hamas—is Amalek. That Amalek must be destroyed.

With this, I agree.

But some take it further, arguing that Gaza and Hamas are not human—that they are a mutation, a different species, something we could never be.

With this, I vehemently disagree.

That statement makes me angry. Really angry.

I had to think hard to understand why. And then it hit me: because to address reality, we must recognize it. And getting this wrong puts our lives in danger. I have had enough hostage-taking and brutal terrorism for a lifetime. We cannot live like this anymore.

Who Was Amalek?

Amalek originates from Esau, the twin brother of Jacob. According to Genesis 36:12, Amalek was the grandson of Esau through his son Eliphaz and a concubine named Timna. This makes him a direct descendant of Isaac and Abraham, just like Jacob (Israel).

The Amalekites first attacked the Israelites in Exodus 17:8-16, striking the weak and weary as they fled Egypt. Because of this cowardly, unprovoked evil, the Torah commands Israel to remember Amalek and wipe out his memory. Amalek represents the embodiment of pure evil—the enemy that targets the defenseless and seeks the destruction of the Jewish people.

Since then, genocidal Jew-hatred has been understood as a recurring manifestation of Amalek. Haman, the Nazis, Hamas—all are embodiments of this spirit of Amalek.

At the same time, Jews and Arabs share a common ancestor: Abraham. The Jewish people descend from Jacob (Israel), while Arabs trace their lineage to Ishmael, the son of Abraham and Hagar. Meanwhile, Amalek comes from Esau, Jacob’s brother. Whether tracing from Esau or Ishmael, both Jews and Arabs ultimately come from the same grandfather.

Evil Is a Choice

The Torah teaches that all people are created in the image of God. It explains our shared ancestry, but it also makes something else very clear: some people choose evil.

Gaza’s culture has created an evil society—one that glorifies death, thrives on violence, and is ruled by fear. This cannot be fixed. Like Amalek, it must be wiped out.

But that is not to say that Gazans are inherently different from birth. They are not a genetic mutation.

If any of us were raised in their society—exposed to their education, media, and religious indoctrination—we would be just like them.

It is comforting to believe otherwise. Comforting to think that we are superior by nature, that we could never fall to such depravity. Comforting to believe that we could never strangle a baby.

Who wants to wrap their mind around that horrible, revolting image? But that false comfort blinds us to the true source of danger.

The difference between us and them is not in individual human potential. The difference is in society, values, and culture.

We are not superior as individuals. But we ARE superior.

We are superior because our culture is superior.

They do not believe they are doing evil. They believe they are doing good. That is a hard thought to swallow, isn’t it?

We have a different understanding of good and evil because, even those of us who are not religious live by the laws and values of the Torah.

We choose life—they choose death.

We build—they destroy.

That is what makes us different. That is why we cannot become like them. That is why we couldn’t strangle a baby.

But if we lived in the society of Amalek—we could.

And only if we understand this can we make the changes necessary for survival.

Because the society of Amalek cannot be allowed to live. If it does, we won’t.

Jews are supposed to be a light to the nations. That means providing an example of good and evil. We choose good. We always have.

Now, it is time to point out the evil and stamp it out.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

UK Lawyers for Israel has written a lengthy and comprehensive rebuttal to the accusations of famine in Gaza.

It goes into detail on many of the arguments I have written about, but the report goes beyond that showing serious methodological flaws in the reports issued by the IPC Famine Review Committee (FRC) and the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET).

The report highlights consistent mistakes by these organizations in their reports, such as misestimating the number of people in various parts of Gaza and therefore predicting famine based on incorrect amounts of incoming food per person.

The report is a bit wonky and difficult for the average person to read, which is a shame. Times of Israel does a decent job summarizing it:

A review conducted by the UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) organization into allegations by international famine review bodies that famine and severe malnutrition were widespread and prevalent in Gaza during the war between Israel and Hamas has found that famine did not break out in the territory according to the figures of the very organizations making the claims.

The report noted severe problems with the reports these organizations issued, due to what it said was their use of “incomplete or inaccurate data,” the inconsistent application of methodological standards, failure to take into account new data, and “potential bias” in how it interpreted and presented the information it had.

UKLFI’s review of the issue, published last week and which highlighted these criticisms, found that there was no famine in Gaza during the war, as defined by IPC standards, and that even levels of acute malnutrition were only marginally higher than pre-war figures.

That last point was one I had not previously looked at, and it is significant. If the baseline that they are using for malnutrition in Gaza is wrong, their entire analysis is wrong.

There are two major ways to calculate General Acute Malnutrition (“GAM”). One of these is the “weight-for-height Z-score” (“WHZ”); the other is the “mid-upper arm circumference” (“MUAC”). To calculate how much worse things are getting you need to compare apples to apples. But

FEWS NET compared apples to oranges.

They said that malnutrition in Gaza was at 0.8% pre-war for children under 5 based on WHZ and then compared that to numbers during the war based on MUAC. But even their own documentation showed that the pre-war MUAC malnutrition rate was at 4% - five times higher than what they used to say how bad things were getting.

In North Gaza they said the MUAC malnutrition rate was 6-9%, in February it was 12-16%, but in May it went down to 1%. The organizations assumed that the May figures were anomalous but didn't consider that the February figures were the anomalous ones; there is evidence that they were weighted towards only measuring children who were already sick.

In November, it measured MUAC malnutrition for all of Gaza at 5% and North Gaza at 2%. Given that the rate for all of Gaza was 4% before the war, this means that things were not getting significantly worse after 12 months of war - the entire "famine" narrative collapses.

The UKFLI report needs to be rewritten as a friendlier, graphics-heavy Amnesty style report to show how the entire "famine" narrative - relied heavily upon by the ICC and Western media - has been based on faulty data and faulty assumptions.

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"Palestine Studies" instructor sought at @Hunter_College. I think I am the best candidate.

Here is part of an advertised faculty position at Hunter College:

As part of a Palestine Studies cluster hire, Hunter College is honored to announce its search for an open rank tenure-line professor in one of the social sciences who would join one or more of the departments of Anthropology, History, Sociology, Political Science, or Women’s and Gender Studies. This position is one of two positions in Palestine studies. The other search, in the humanities, can be found here (ADD).

We seek a historically grounded scholar who takes a critical lens to issues pertaining to Palestine including but not limited to: settler colonialism, genocide, human rights, apartheid, migration, climate and infrastructure devastation, health, race, gender and sexuality. We are open to diverse theoretical and methodological approaches. We seek candidates interested in public-facing work and who exhibit a commitment to being part of the life of the college, a diverse and exciting undergraduate minority serving institution.

I think I am the perfect candidate. I have written extensively on the topic for over twenty years; I've authored books, articles and given lectures and podcasts on these topics. My ideas have been taught at Ivy League universities and quoted in numerous scholarly works.

Since they are seeking diverse theoretical and methodological approaches, they might find my ideas on their specific topics mentioned a bit revolutionary, but certainly well founded and with lots of factual support:

- Palestinian nationalism is a relatively new phenomenon, about a century old, created purely as a reaction and counter to modern Zionism. This remains the case today as Palestinian leaders have shown far less interest in creating a state than in destroying the Jewish state.

- The concept of settler-colonialism does not apply to Jews in Israel, who have had a deep psychological and spiritual connection to the land of Israel for millennia. Part of this connection is no doubt due to their being attacked as outsiders no matter how long they lived in their host countries. The irony of Jews now being considered white Europeans after centuries of European antisemitism and marginalization, including racial antisemitism, is just one of the topics that deserve more coverage in academia.

- Genocide requires intent. There is no intent by the State of Israel to destroy the Palestinian people, and every single attempt to fabricate such intent by ignoring counterevidence or taking quotes out of context is pure antisemitism, specifically the disgusting need by so many to accuse Jews of being as bad or worse than the Nazis.

- There are real issues with human rights of Palestinians. They must be balanced with the human rights of Israeli citizens. As with every nation on Earth, the rights of citizens are prioritized over the rights of those who are dedicated to destroying their nation.

- There is no apartheid in Israel against its Arab citizens by any definition of apartheid, and the concept of apartheid does not apply to non-citizens, by definition.

- Palestinians by and large migrated from their homes in 1948 without being forced out. Most simply fled a war zone. The only reason they have not been integrated into the lands they moved to like all other refugees is because of deep Arab antisemitism and shame at having lost a war to the despised, weak Jews. It would be a wonderful academic exercise to compare, say, Egyptian or Jordanian attitudes towards refugees from Syria, Iraq and Sudan with those who are considered Palestinian. For some reason, I haven't found any such study.

- Blaming Israel for climate change is absurd on the face of it to anyone who has the ability to look at a world map and try to find the several pixels that represent Israel.

After I wrote this I decided to actually count the pixels in the first world map I searched for. Out of the 739,000 pixels in that map, no more than 25 are Israel, maybe 2 are Gaza. The word "Israel" takes up about five times the area of Israel itself.

Most of the professors in the fields mentioned are innumerate, so I already have a huge advantage over most social sciences academics.

- Gaza's infrastructure has indeed been devastated. This is entirely due to Hamas using all of Gaza's infrastructure for military purposes, which makes them valid military targets according to international law.

- I have done serious analysis of accusations of health issues against Israel in The Lancet. They have all been shown to be baseless. I am willing to bet that my knowledge of no more than arithmetic and how to use spreadsheets goes way beyond any other candidate Hunter is considering.

- I have no idea what race has to do with the Israel-Arab conflict. I would suggest that to try to shoehorn Israeli Jews as "white" and Arabs as "people of color" into other constructs is itself racist and antisemitic.

- I have no idea what gender has to do with the conflict. I would suggest that any claim that Israel specifically attacks Palestinian women is antisemitic.

- There is plenty to speak about on sexuality in the region - Palestinian laws specifically against women and gays, for example. I am as qualified as any to discuss it. It is hardly my area of expertise but since it is a topic that is all but ignored by mainstream academia I am pretty much as much of an expert as anyone else being considered for the position. Of course, if the only discussion of sexuality is meant to be twisted against the most liberal state in the region, then I would again suggest that the discussion is inherently antisemitic.

I think Hunter will find my qualifications to be superior to every other candidate, except that I do not have a PhD. I cannot imagine getting one would be difficult given the poor quality of the papers I have read in these fields over the past decade. In general, I would claim that my extensive knowledge gathered in other fields like the sciences, data analysis, international law, Judaism and history, as can be seen in my 40,000 plus articles in this website, would bring a novel and invigorating perspective in a field that badly needs alternative points of view.

As far as Hunter’s prestige being enhanced by my presence on campus, I have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

To make things interesting, I would be happy to challenge any of Hunter's existing Palestine Studies professors to choose any one of my longer articles on their own area of expertise and critique it, and then give me a chance to defend it, online. Most of my articles are written in less than an hour, so finding mistakes in my own research should be simple. All my facts are referenced with hyperlinks. I have no specific academic expertise in any of the fields they mention and I would still be happy to defend my writings against the best they have to offer. Let independent scholars judge whose arguments are best.

But if the position is meant to only be given to anti-Zionists, then perhaps that should be made more clear in the job description. At least that would be honest.

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02/23 Links: The child murderers of Gaza; The BBC is turning into a megaphone for Hamas; Andrew Roberts: History’s Case for Trump’s Gaza Plan

From Ian:

Ruthie Blum: Babies in bandanas

Before the caskets were transferred to the Red Cross, masked Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Fatah operatives proudly basked in the cheering crowds of Palestinian “civilians.”

These male and female jihad-lovers came out in droves, with children of all ages in tow, decorated in bandanas. Not ones with bat wings, of course. No, those with terrorist insignias. After all, their superheroes are “martyrs” for Allah. That’s whom they are taught to glorify and emulate.

Following the horrifying display of joy over the dead Jews, the crowd dispersed and the coffins were transported back to Israel, a short car-ride—yet light years—away. Once past the border that separates hell from heaven, they were delivered to the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute for autopsy.

Lifshitz was identified relatively quickly. It took several more hours before members of the extended Bibas family were informed of the even worse news than already expected.

The remains of the woman being examined did not belong to Shiri. Furthermore, Ariel and Kfir had been murdered in cold blood in November 2023, about three weeks after they were snatched.

“The terrorists did not shoot the two young boys; they killed them with their bare hands,” Israel Defense Forces spokesman Daniel Hagari revealed on Friday. “Afterward, they committed horrific acts to cover up these atrocities.”

Gasps could be heard around the country and beyond. Memories came flooding back of the footage of a terrified Shiri, clutching her babies for dear life, being ushered by Palestinian “civilians” into a residence in Khan Yunis, never to be seen or heard from again. Until Friday night, that is, when Hamas deigned to return her actual body.

No mother in Gaza empathized with her fate. On the contrary, the women of the Strip continue to view her as a perfectly legitimate target for sadistic abuse.

It’s in keeping with how they educate their children in the art—and skill—of savagery. It’s why so many Gazan youngsters continue to be taken to observe the nauseating hostage-return ceremonies aimed at a last hurrah of humiliation for the State of Israel.

Those children wear the headbands of one terrorist faction or another. You know, for the cuteness of it all.

Batman symbolizes the fight for justice. He stands for righteousness in the face of evil. His mission is to protect the innocent. To fight for the weak. To ensure that villains do not triumph over good.

This is what Israeli children grow up to admire. Heroes who defend, not attack. Warriors who sacrifice for the sake of others, not themselves. The IDF soldier who protects civilians at all costs. The paramedic who rushes to the scene of terror attacks, unarmed, to save lives. The firefighter who runs into flames while others flee.

Contrast this with the children of Gaza and the Palestinian Authority, who are raised on a steady diet of hatred. Their heroes are bombers, not Batman. Mass murderers, not saviors.

This is the reality of a society governed by blood lust. It’s the result of rulers who use their people as human shields and ideological pawns, indoctrinating generations into believing that the path to paradise is paved with mutilated Jews.

It’s high time for the Tribe, in Israel and abroad, to internalize this reality and realize that coexistence with heathen monsters is impossible. Anyone who has a temporary lapse in judgment on this score should remember what befell the Bibas family.

Daniel Greenfield: The child murderers of Gaza

“O God, do not be silent; hold not Thy peace, and be not still,” IDF Chief Rabbi Brig. Gen. Eyal Krim prayed the words of Psalm 83 over the bodies of two murdered children, their mother and an old man, in the Gaza Strip on Thursday.

Hamas and PLO terrorists had mockingly paraded their coffins to the cheers and jeers of Muslim men, women and children occupying Gaza while upbeat music played, they had mixed up the bodies, locked the boxes and then attached keys that did not work. After inspecting the coffins for explosives, Israel had covered them with its blue and white flag and prayed over them.

Islam is an honor-shame culture; to humiliate the bodies of the children of your enemies is to show the strength of Allah, and jeering the bodies of murdered children shows the glory of Islam.

The celebration and mocking of the bodies of murdered children was not the work of some fringe group. Hamas took care to have every Islamic terrorist organization taking part in claiming victory, including the PLO’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades representing the Palestinian Authority and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (Martyr Omar Al-Qassem Forces), popular on college campuses, as well as the Al-Ansar Brigades, which has links to Al-Qaeda.

There is no “Palestinian” group that was not there to take its share of credit for the dead children.

The message being sent by the representatives of seven Islamic terrorist groups in Israel, carrying the coffins of their victims, is of a united front committed to the destruction of Israel, and the killing of all non-Muslims to be followed by the creation of an Islamic theocracy.

Nor was the ghoulish scene some local “Palestinian” phenomenon as people like to think.

Hen Mazzig: Indifference is worse than hate

The silence of the world in response is not neutrality—it is complicity. When atrocities against Jews elicit only passive indifference, they encourage more brutality. When protests erupt worldwide over justified military actions, yet remain silent about slaughtered children, it creates an unmistakable double standard, one that implicitly declares Jewish lives less worthy of global empathy.

“Never Again”—a solemn vow forged from the ashes of the Holocaust—once seemed immutable. Yet, as atrocities against Jews grow more grotesque and are met only with deafening silence, one wonders if “Never Again” was ever more than mere words, comforting yet hollow, easily forgotten when the victims become inconvenient.

We cannot allow humanity’s moral compass to be reset in the face of such brutality.

Silence is complicity; indifference is enabling. As Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel famously said, “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.”

We owe it to Avera Mengistu, to Shiri Bibas, to Ariel and Kfir, to Evitar David and Guy Gilboa-Dalal—to every victim of this unimaginable cruelty—to speak loudly, clearly, and urgently.

Because if Jewish dignity is negotiable, if atrocities reminiscent of our darkest past provoke no global outrage, then “Never Again” isn’t just a broken promise—it’s a devastating lie.

In 1948, the IDF turned down an offer for the Enigma encryption machine from the British

Haaretz has a lengthy account of how the British broke the Nazi "Enigma" machine encryption and how the Nazis denied that such a thing was possible even when evidence mounted, shortening World War II.

At the very end of the article, it adds an intriguing detail I had never heard before:

Enigma was also the subject of a brief chapter in the history of the Israel Defense Forces. At the end of the Mandate, the British gave the Jewish state's nascent army a few dozen Enigma machines – naturally, without relating the exploits at Bletchley Park (which is today a historical landmark and museum). According to some reports, the British, who apparently hoped for full access to the secrets of the IDF, didn't know that one of the mathematicians who had worked on breaking Enigma had made aliyah, and, upon hearing of the British gesture, hinted to the relevant authorities here that some gifts are better left unaccepted.

Now, this is interesting! People who worked on the British codebreaking project were famously reticent about telling anyone about what they did during the war. It took decades for the details to be publicized. Who was this Jew who worked in Bletchley Park and recommended against the IDF accepting this Trojan Horse gift from the British in 1947 or 1948?

TheJC published an article about the many Jews who worked on the British codebreaking efforts:

In those early days of the war, the Jewish staff invited to share the Sabbath meal with Rebecca and Philip Bogush and their daughters — the only known Jewish family in Bletchley village, who had been evacuated from Stamford Hill during the Blitz — were as eclectic a group as the rest of “Station X”.

There were established academics at the height of their careers, young servicemen recruited for their mathematical or linguistic skills, clerks and messengers who combined fast typing with languages, including the Bogush daughters, Muriel and Anita. They came from a variety of social backgrounds, the famous names of Anglo-Jewry alongside recent immigrants from Germany and eastern Europe.

Among the academics were great figures in the history of computer science, not least Max Newman, whose lectures Alan Turing attended at Cambridge University. Newman’s work at Bletchley was critical to cracking the “Tunny” code used by the German High Command. Convinced that codebreaking could be mechanised, he was a driving force in the creation of Colossus, the world’s first programmable computer. It was the remarkable technological breakthroughs of Newman, Turing, Welchman and others that the scholar George Steiner had in mind when he described Bletchley as perhaps the greatest achievement of Britain not just in the Second World War but in the 20th Century.

There was also a vibrant group of younger Jewish academics who would meet on Wednesday evenings at the flat of Joe Gillis, a lecturer at the Maths faculty of Queen’s University, Belfast. There they discussed the future, personal and political. Some of Bletchley’s most talented staff were regular attendees: Rolf Noskwith; Morris Hoffman, a young civil servant who had been one of the earliest members of the Federation of Zionist Youth before the war; Jack Good, a gifted mathematician and British chess champion, who was Turing’s statistical assistant; Michael Cohen, a Scot who had been at Glasgow University studying Divinity with a view to becoming a rabbi; and the remarkable Ettinghausen brothers, Walter and Ernest.

Later on we see:

The meetings at Gillis’s flat were more focused on the future than current atrocities. It was there that the Professional and Technical Aliyah Association was founded, to encourage Jewish professionals to emigrate and build a modern, democratic Israel.
Walter Ettinghausen declared at one gathering that he would be on the first boat to Palestine after the war. He left in 1946 and, as Walter Eytan, went on to play a key role in Israeli foreign policy and public service.
Gillis himself became a founder and professor of Applied Mathematics at the Weizmann Institute; by 1948 Michael Cohen was coding messages for the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem and went on to help found the “British Kibbutz” in Upper Galilee.
There were many other Jewish Bletchley veterans who put their skills at the service of the new state; when Noskwith saw Eytan at the UN in 1947 to offer his own expertise in Israel, Eytan responded: “Codebreakers we have plenty of!”

According to the 2023 IDF book "Jewish Warfare in the Second World War" (Hebrew), it was indeed Walter Eytan (Ettinghausen) who advised against the IDF accepting this "gift." They mention this in his brief biography:

Walter Eytan - In 1946, he established the 'Institute for Advanced Studies' (School for Diplomats) within the Political Department of the Jewish Agency. He also served as the liaison officer for the English press and was involved in secret missions. His extensive experience should have made him a valuable asset to the Yishuv's intelligence, but there is no evidence to support this. The British ability to eavesdrop on the Jewish Agency's communications and decipher its codes became widely known long before, after the King David Hotel bombing on July 22, 1946. Therefore, his contribution, if any, to enhancing communication security was probably not significant, except for his objection that prevented the purchase of 'Enigma' machines for the IDF.

The way this is written, Eytan - who didn't even tell his wife what he did during the war - probably just recommended that the IDF not accept the machines without explaining exactly why.

This is a fascinating footnote to the history of the breaking of the Enigma code.

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Anecdotes from Nasrallah's funeral

Here are some random bits of interesting information around Hassan Nasrallah's funeral today.

IDF Arabic spokesperson Avichay Adraee wrote a message to Lebanon on X:

Today is the funeral of Hassan Nasrallah , and his environment is in mourning... But let us stop for a moment and ask: What is the mourning for? For the man who turned Lebanon into a failed state? For the one who sold your future to Iran's interests? For the one who destroyed the economy, fragmented the people, and involved the country in futile wars? Since Nasrallah took over the leadership of Hezbollah, Lebanon has witnessed nothing but collapse. Lebanon was taken hostage by the "Islamic Revolution" project... It does not matter if the people go hungry, or the country is plunged into darkness, or the future is lost, as long as his agenda continues. To all those mourning him today... Are you really sad for him? Or are you refusing to face the truth?

He also noted that there were no Lebanese flags to be seen in the massive stadium funeral.

Question! Where is the Lebanese flag in the Camille Chamoun stadium, the man during whose reign the only known flag was the Lebanese flag?

🔸Every time, #Hezbollah proves that it is not part of Lebanon, but rather an independent entity with loyalty that goes beyond its borders. His last funeral was not just a farewell, but a show of influence and the imposition of its own identity, as the Lebanese flags disappeared and were replaced by the party’s banners and Iran’s militias, as if the state had never existed.

🔸But the glaring paradox? The party did not find a place to bury its leaders Nasrallah and Safieddine except in the city founded by President Camille Chamoun, the man during whose reign the only known flag was the Lebanese flag, and no foreign flags were raised over Beirut. So how did Beirut, which was the capital of sovereignty, turn into a square where the flags of a party that openly declares its affiliation with Iran are raised, while the flag that is supposed to protect everyone is absent?

Naharnet writes:

Hezbollah leader Sheikh Naim Qassem said the group would keep following the path of slain chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Sunday during a televised speech broadcast at his massive funeral on the outskirts of Beirut.

"We will uphold trust and walk on this path, we will uphold your will," Qassem said referring to Nasrallah, adding: "you are still with us: your... path and struggle live within us" and "I am loyal to the legacy Nasrallah".

If he is so brave, why didn't he show up in person?

One party that did appear in person was the IDF:

Lebanese state media reported Sunday Israeli planes flying at a very low altitude over Beirut, with AFP journalists hearing the rumbling noise while tens of thousands attended Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah's funeral near the capital.

"The hostile warplanes flew at low altitude over the skies of Beirut and its suburbs," the National News Agency said.

Some reports indicate that Hezbollah paid $44 million for the plot of land for Nasrallah's mausoleum. But they are selling souvenirs to help make up for the price.

Finally, in the same article L'Orient Today talks about how Hezbollah tried to keep the media out of the stadium during the preparations.

At the stadium entrance, a small group of shabeb [young men] equipped with walkie-talkies lift the barrier blocking access to the stands. "Do you have authorization?" one of them asks, peering at the inquirers with one good eye and one glass eye. “Come back Saturday, there will be a special tour reserved for the press,” he says.

How could a young Hezbollah man with a walkie talkie have lost his eye?

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