Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, February 27, 2025

02/27 Links Pt1: Itzik Elgarat, Ohad Yahalomi, Tsachi Idan, Shlomo Mantzur murdered by Hamas terrorists; USAID Official Says Biden Steered Grants to Terror Supporters; Too Stupid To Know They've Lost

From Ian:

‘Killing ourselves,’ Nobel laureate says of releasing terrorists

Yisrael (Robert J.) Aumann was awarded the 2005 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contribution to Game Theory, a branch of applied mathematics that studies strategic interactions between individuals or groups.

Aumann has said that if he could describe Game Theory in one word, it would be “incentives.”

JNS caught up with Aumann on Feb. 23 at his offices in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he is a member of the Einstein Institute of Mathematics and The Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, to ask what he thought of the current prisoner exchange deal between Israel and Hamas.

The deal called for the release of 33 Israeli hostages in exchange for about 1,900 imprisoned terrorists, many of them murderers serving multiple life sentences.

In a word, said Aumann, “Crazy.”

“The basis of Game Theory is to give incentives to the other side to do what’s good for you,” Aumann told JNS. “And we keep doing the opposite. We are literally killing ourselves. We are killing our own children. It’s not only that they will kidnap more. We are incentivizing them to attack us again and again, to make war against us, to repeat Oct. 7,” he said, referring to the Hamas-led massacre of Oct. 7, 2023.

Q: Do we know the recidivism rates of these released prisoners who return to terror?

A: We don’t have the exact number. It’s important. Someone should pull together those numbers. It doesn’t even require any analysis. It’s just a matter of gathering the available data. There are a lot of sources.

When it comes to recidivism, not every terrorist attack is successful. In fact, my subjective impression is that most terrorist attacks are not successful. Most of the time, they kill the terrorist, or they stop him before he manages to kill someone.

Let’s say the number of unsuccessful attacks is somewhere between 50% to 75%. But that leaves successful ones between 25% and 50%, and if you talk about 1,000 terrorists released, we get maybe between 250 and 500 successful terrorist attacks where they manage to kill somebody, at least one person. That’s at least 250 dead for 33 live hostages.

Just on that basis alone, it’s obviously a terrible deal.

But that’s not the worst of it. The worst of it is that again and again we’re going to have people kidnapped. We’ve shown the enemy that it’s worth it, that we will completely give up and raise a white flag even if you abduct one, like with Gilad Shalit [an IDF soldier kidnapped by Hamas in June 2006 and exchanged five years later for 1,027 terrorist prisoners.]

We’ve given them incentives to go and kidnap more and more. And they’ve said they’re going to do it. They did it in the past. So we better believe them.

Hamas dropped its victim narrative with sadistic hostage releases

The summer of Gazan love has ended with a thud. The ability to scream about the resistance, about the river and the sea, along with the free-wheeling accusations of genocide, all without accountability, is over.

Hamas has, to no one’s surprise in Israel, made itself completely unpalatable, let alone heroic. It has required its fellow travelers to excuse, contextualize, or defend conduct that, were there no Jews involved, would be universally condemned and despised.

Hamas did it all by itself and to itself. It did it by showing its true colors and straightforward world view, on its own initiative. The morphing realities and narratives in Gaza

In this regard, the ironies are immense and all but overwhelming. That is because, with its discretionary handling of the return of the hostages, Hamas has just made Israel’s case for why it should be expunged from Gaza, and indeed from history.

What happened to the starving, bereft Gazans? We have morphed from pictures of bedraggled Gazans to pressed uniforms, cheering crowds, and an environment worthy of a Hitlerian rally in the 1930s.

All of this was to show the world that Hamas had won. This in and of itself undercuts the case of devastation that must be stopped, privation that must be addressed, and an all-but-eradicated people that must be rescued.

The face that Hamas has chosen to show the world is not one of “We survived Israel’s onslaught,” but in effect one of “Israel never laid a glove on us.” That, of course, beggars the imagination.

However, it is with its treatment of the returned hostages that Hamas has shown its true colors to any who would look objectively at its doings, and listen to what it is, in effect, saying.

Of course, the images of the returned hostages, particularly the men, speak for themselves. Those of us who are allergic to any analogies with the Holocaust nevertheless found ourselves invoking such comparisons when presented with pictures of some of the released men.

The world clearly saw the heinousness of Hamas, and, by extension, its formerly bereft but now screamingly happy acolytes, as Hamas stormtroopers orchestrated scenes that could have easily devolved into lynchings and certainly had all the feel of them.

Itzik Elgarat, Ohad Yahalomi, Tsachi Idan, Shlomo Mantzur murdered by Hamas terrorists

The Prime Minister’s Office announced on Thursday that the deaths of Ohad Yahalomi, Tsachi Idan, Shlomo Mantzur, and Itzik Elgarat have been confirmed following forensic analyses.

“Following the completion of the identification process by the IDF, the Health Ministry National Center of Forensic Medicine and the Israel Police, IDF representatives have, overnight, informed the Yahalomi, Idan, Mantzur and Elgarat families that their loved ones—Ohad Yahalomi, Tsachi Idan, Shlomo Mantzur and Itzik Elgarat, of blessed memory—were murdered and have been returned for burial in Israel,” the PMO statement said.

“Pursuant to the intelligence and all of the information at our disposal, Ohad Yahalomi, Tsachi Idan and Itzik Elgarat were murdered while held hostage in Gaza. Shlomo Mantzur was murdered in the 7 October 2023 massacre and his body had been held in the Gaza Strip,” the statement continued.

“We share in the families’ sorrow at this difficult time.”

Kibbutz Nir Oz announced earlier on Thursday that Israeli hostages Elgarat and Yahalomi, whose bodies were among four returned to Israel overnight Wednesday, were murdered in Hamas captivity in Gaza.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum and Idan’s family shortly thereafter confirmed the identification of Mantzur’s and Idan’s remains, respectively.

The terrorist organization handed over to the Red Cross what it claimed were the bodies of the four Israelis at around midnight in Gaza.

Hamas Vows To Rebuild Clothing Store Named 'Hitler' (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Hamas Vows To Rebuild Clothing Store Named 'Hitler'

Gaza City, February 27 - The owner of a now-destroyed garment sales enterprise named after the most notorious, genocidal dictator of all time announced today he had secured funding from the Islamist group that governs this territory, to reestablish the shop, which will carry the numeral "3" after the fascist leader's name instead of the "2" in the previous incarnation of the business.

Nidal Radwan, owner of the now-rubble "Hitler 2" clothing store in this city before the current war, sent messages to friends, business contacts, and former customers today, to the effect that Hamas will help pay to rebuild the store. He credited the organization with committing to provide more than $75,000 to make Hitler 3 a reality. A spokesman for Hamas "Liked" one of the posts announcing the project on social media, and another commented that the movement has chosen Hitler 3 as one of its flagship reconstruction tasks.

Hitler 2 met a dusty, violent end last year during the IDF's ground operations in Gaza to locate hostages and smash Hamas's fighting ability in the territory. The cause of the destruction remains uncertain: Israeli airstrike, Israeli artillery, house-to-house fighting, or booby-traps could each serve as plausible explanations. All the areas in which the IDF fought were crisscrossed with Hamas tunnels and bunkers, making all the structures above them likely targets.

Reconstruction of Gaza remains an uncertain and contentious issue, as does its future governance. Israel failed to dislodge Hamas from its position as the ruling entity, but powerful international interests have stated they will not accept that situation for long. Various governments have voiced hesitation to fund building in Gaza again if it will all get demolished in yet another war several years hence - Hamas has repeatedly insisted it will attack Israel again and again, making destructive retaliation an inevitability. Partly to cement its position as the only credible Gaza governance option, the organization has begun to assert itself in the role by announcing several reconstruction initiatives to which it wants to call attention, among them Radwan's Hitler store.

"These projects showcase the priorities of the Resistance in rehabilitating Gaza," explained a movement spokesman. "Of course we will rebuild facilities and positions of military significance. But the morale dimension also requires attention. Rebuilding Hitler - as many times as necessary - is a statement that the enemy cannot defeat us, that our movement is anchored in history, and that we cannot be deterred from continuing Hitler's work."

"But those mannequins were butt-ugly," he added, "and we will insist that Mr. Radwan not use them this time."

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Support for Israel among Democrats plummets, it remains high for Republicans

A new Gallup poll shows that most Democrats now have unfavorable opinion of Israel, and he percentage who have a favorable opinion is down to 33%.

Here is the trend over time of those who have a favorable impression of Israel:

That is a precipitous drop.

Gallup says:

This year marks the first time any party group has had majority-level unfavorable ratings of Israel, with 60% of Democrats expressing that view. Forty-four percent of independents also have an unfavorable opinion of Israel.

Democrats’ and independents’ sagging views of Israel have pushed its favorability to 54% among all Americans, its lowest rating since January 2000, when it was also at 54%. The last time Americans had worse opinions of Israel -- 48% favorable -- was in February 1992. The all-time low was 45% favorable (and 45% unfavorable) in 1989.

In 2014, 74% of Democrats had a favorable opinion of Israel; in 2020 it was 67%.

More Democrats have a favorable view of the Palestinian territories - 45% - than Israel.

Also, Democrats gave higher scores to Egypt - 61%.

Other countries the Democrats prefer to Israel are Cuba and Colombia.

To me, this indicates the effectiveness of anti-Israel propaganda and of anti-Israel media bias over the past year. Democrats - and independents - get most of their news from the mainstream media which has shown lots of photos and videos of Palestinian civilians and nearly none of Hamas terrorists whose decisions made them miserable.

Perhaps this next chart is more important. Here is a chart of all Americans' opinion of Palestinians for the past 25 years:

That jump in favorability this year is primarily from Democrats (26% to 45%). In fact, no other demographic (age, income, race) showed as much of a change in opinion as Democrats altogether.

Even if you accept the slander that Israel is guilty of "genocide," which most of the Democrats seem to think, why would this translate into more favorable opinions of Palestinians? What did they do this year to make them more admirable?

Certainly the PA did nothing. And Hamas spent the past year lying about casualties and bragging about attacks. The corruption and support for violence has not gone down in the least.

Why would Democrats opinions of Palestinians jump so much in a year when the Palestinians did nothing positive, and plenty negative?

This may indicate that the zero-sum mentality so prevalent among Palestinians has now infected Democrats. To them if Israel is bad, Palestinians must be good.

Zero-sum thinking is a consequence of honor/shame culture. It is childish and amoral.

Perhaps worse is that Democratic leaders have not been outspoken in their support of Israel, out of fear of alienating their noisy pro-terror constituents. Outside of John Fetterman and Richie Torres, the Democratic politician message on Israel has been ambiguous at best and hostile at worst. This is a big contributor to the deepening rift between Israel and the Democratic party.

When Israel is no longer a bipartisan issue, it is bad for everyone.

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Batman weeps: A mother’s fight, two little lions, and a nation forever changed (Forest Rain)

By Forest Rain

Batman weeps: A mother’s fight, two little lions, and a nation forever changed

How much impact can a person have on the world when they are only given four years to live?

Words shape reality. They give form to our emotions and channel their power. That’s why I believe it is so important to articulate what we feel in response to the murder of Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas.

I’ve seen it written that Ariel loved Batman. I didn’t know him, so I don’t know how deep that love ran. Did he dress up as Batman often, or was the video we’ve seen of him in his Batman costume from one Purim? I don’t know.

I do know that the image of Batman crying for the little boy who is no longer here felt like a stab in my heart.

Painting by Elisabetta Furcht

Ariel—his name itself carries weight. A combination of "Arieh" (lion) and "El" (God), it is one of the many names of Jerusalem. A powerful name for a little boy who might have dreamed of being a foreign superhero—only to become a symbol for an entire nation.

So much horror has unfolded. Why, among all the pain, has our nation focused so intensely on this one family?

If we limit our emotions to pity or even rage at their murderers, we do a disservice to ourselves and to the Bibas family. There is more here. Within this terrible loss, there is also a gift.

Ariel and Kfir were the youngest hostages taken by the Gazans, but they were not the only child hostages.

Other babies were murdered. Rescue teams found families burned alive in an embrace—parents shielding their children with their own bodies, older siblings covering the youngest in a desperate attempt to protect them.

We saw Shiri’s terror, captured on camera. That split second of horror as she found herself alone, surrounded by the invaders, with no one to help her or her babies. Other Jewish mothers had that same moment, but we didn’t see them live on TV.

We saw Shiri again on video, in Gaza, wrapped in a blanket, still clutching her two boys as she was dragged into captivity. Carrying a four-year-old and a nine-month-old is difficult even in normal circumstances. How long did she hold them in her arms? How long before she no longer could?

Now, in death, she carries them still. They were buried together, forever locked in that embrace.

And Yarden? We saw his abuse. The beating as he was ripped from his family. The starvation in the tunnels. His torment when his captors told him that his beloved wife and babies were dead—and then shoved a camera in his face, forcing him to beg for them to be returned to him.

Now, we see his dignity and heroism. In the instructions he gave us—to tell the world what was done to his babies. In the way he articulates his love for them. In his wonder and appreciation that our Nation is trying to wrap him in love. And in his quiet acknowledgment that this enormous love, is not the simple love of his beloved, the only love he really wants.

The Bibas family captured our hearts because they are special. But also because they have become symbols that help us live with our own trauma.

The mind cannot comprehend the enormity of what we have experienced—what we are still experiencing. There are not enough tears for all the children. For all the broken families. For all the survivors struggling not to be swallowed by the abyss.

But we can cry for Ariel and Kfir. Little lions who will never grow up. (Kfir is the Hebrew word for lion cub.)

It is easy to call the murder of babies evil. The very idea of a grown man choking an infant to death fills us with revulsion. It is paralyzing to imagine men mutilating the body of a dead child—to frame the murder in a way that serves their twisted narrative. The dead child feels no pain. But what does it take for someone to look at the lifeless body of a baby and still feel that it is necessary and good to smash it?

We need to think of Ariel and Kfir because we cannot take into our hearts the evil unleashed on so many others. The children tortured in front of their parents before being butchered. The children forced to watch their parents being tortured before they too were killed. The children found tied together and burned.

The soul screams, and the mind shuts down. It’s too much. We don’t want to know. We can’t take it all in.

But these things happened. And the world needs to know.

That is why Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir are so important. And Yarden too.

For their family and friends, they remain their private, individual selves. But for the rest of us, they are symbols—symbols we desperately need.

They allow us to grieve. We cry for them while crying for all the others.

They force the world to see what evil looks like. There is no nuance, no excuses. Babies versus baby killers is an equation no one can ignore.

Shani Louk, in her grace and light, dancing at the Nova, contrasted with the hideous image of her twisted, half-naked body paraded in a pickup truck—men cheering, children spitting on her—made it impossible to ignore the sickness in Gazan society.

The Bibas family clarifies this evil further.

Some have attempted to excuse the horrors Gazans brought to the Nova might as generalized violence of men against women, an outburst of bloodlust, facilitated by terrorists on drugs with the opportunity to do whatever they want to the enemy population. The Bibas family puts the evil in hyperfocus, in a way that is impossible to define other than what it is - the deliberate destruction of Jewish families. A hatred so deep that it erases all empathy, making it impossible to see a baby as a precious form of life. Giving no respect for a mother battling to protect her cubs. The evil that strangles and mutilates babies is not a fluke in the system, it is the system. It is a building block in a society that seeks the destruction of ours.

Batman became a superhero after a terrible event in his childhood. His pain drove him to want to prevent others from suffering. He didn’t have any special magical abilities. He developed tools that enabled him to serve the people of his city, and most of the time he did it alone.

What a terrible, all-too-familiar burden.

Shiri and Yarden just wanted to be parents. Ariel and Kfir just wanted to be themselves—happy, exploring, growing boys, wrapped in the love of their family.

Who wants to become a symbol? Particularly not one born in trauma and horror. No one wants to embody the battle between good and evil, life and death.

But that is what they have become.

I cannot undo what was done to them. I cannot ease their suffering.

But I can be grateful for what they have given us—a way to express the emotions that are too vast for our small nation to contain. A defining truth, for us and for the world, of right and wrong, good and evil. The ultimate line that must never be crossed. Proof that no justification or excuse can ever make it acceptable to allow monsters to live on our doorstep.

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The Telegraph revealed this week:

The BBC has been accused of “whitewashing” the views of participants in its controversial Gaza documentary after repeatedly mistranslating references to “the Jews” and omitting praise of “jihad”.

The Telegraph can reveal that on at least five occasions the words Yahud or Yahudy – Arabic for “Jew” or “Jews” – were changed to “Israel” or “Israeli forces”, or were removed from the subtitles altogether.

An interviewee praising Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader, for “jihad against the Jews” was also mistranslated as saying he was fighting “Israeli forces”.

Immediately, Palestinian apologists insisted that the original translation was accurate:

So what does Jihad really mean, and what do Gazans mean when they use the word - do they normally mean "struggle" or "war"?

I searched for the Arabic word in Palestinian (.ps) websites.

The first result was jehad.ps, which is the website of the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization, which obviously considers jihad to be primarily military.

But one of the first results pointed to an academic paper, "Jihad between the aims and means," from Al-Aqsa University Journal (Humanities Series) Volume Twenty-One, Issue Two, pp. 109-141 June 2017. Al Aqsa University is in Gaza.

Here is the translation of its section on defining jihad:

Definition of Jihad (المطلب الأول: تعريف الجهاد)
Linguistic Definition (تعريف الجهاد في اللغة):
Jihad is derived from the root word "جاهد" (jaahada), which means to exert effort or struggle.
It is used to describe fighting an enemy or exerting effort and energy to repel an opponent.
Technical Definition (تعريف الجهاد اصطلاحًا):
According to Hanafi School (تعريف الحنفية):
Jihad is calling people to the true religion and fighting those who refuse to accept it.
According to Maliki School (تعريف المالكية):
Jihad is fighting a non-Muslim who does not have a treaty with Muslims to exalt the word of Allah.
According to Shafi'i School (تعريف الشافعية):
Jihad is exerting effort in fighting disbelievers to support Islam.
According to Hanbali School (تعريف الحنابلة):
Jihad is specifically fighting disbelievers.
Chosen Definition (التعريف المختار):
After reviewing the definitions from the various schools of thought, the paper adopts the following definition:
"Jihad is exerting one's utmost ability, effort, and energy in fighting disbelievers—after inviting them to Islam and their refusal—in order to elevate the word of Allah and honor His religion.

The paper specifically addresses the obligation of jihad against Israel and its goals:

Resisting Occupation and Expelling the Invader (مقاومة الاحتلال ودحر المحتل):
Purpose and Justification:
An enemy may occupy Muslim lands for various purposes, such as:
Eradicating Islam and its followers.
Exploiting natural resources of Islamic countries.
Occupying lands that were historically under Muslim rule.
Facilitating immigration and creating favorable living conditions for settlers from the occupying state, leading to the displacement of the indigenous Muslim population, as happened in Palestine.
Objective of Jihad Against Occupation:
If the occupier's objective is to achieve any of the aforementioned goals, then expelling the occupier becomes a legitimate objective of jihad in Islam.
In this case, jihad becomes a compulsory duty (fard ‘ayn) on all Muslims by the consensus of the following schools of thought:
Hanafi
Maliki
Shafi'i
Hanbali
Zahiri
Obligation of Defense:
It is obligatory for the inhabitants of the occupied land to use all their means to repel the aggressor.
If they cannot achieve sufficient defense, then the obligation of jihad extends to neighboring Muslims, then to those beyond them, until the enemy is expelled from Muslim lands.
This is based on the principle of collective duty (fard kifaya) becoming an individual duty (fard ‘ayn) when the threat is imminent.

The word "jihad" in this context explicitly means a religious obligation to attack every Jew (disbelievers include civilians) and to expel every Jew from the land.

It means genocide.

Translating that as "struggle" is not at all accurate.

-------

What about the "greater jihad" that so many use to say that jihad is primarily an internal struggle?

That interpretation comes from a hadith which is considered weak or non-authoritative in mainstream Islam. The idea comes from Sufi Islam but has been more widely adopted colloquially among Sunnis. Some traditionalists and Salafists critique this interpretation of jihad altogether, saying it is purely military.

In this context, however, it is clear that "jihad" means nothing less than a holy, total war on Jews in Israel.

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AP uses heavy deception to imply - but not directly say - that the IDF uses AI unethically

Last week, AP published a long article about how the IDF uses artificial intelligence.

Like other articles, it fundamentally misunderstands how it is being used.

The bias is clear in the first paragraphs:

U.S. tech giants have quietly empowered Israel to track and kill many more alleged militants more quickly in Gaza and Lebanon through a sharp spike in artificial intelligence and computing services. But the number of civilians killed has also soared, fueling fears that these tools are contributing to the deaths of innocent people.

No, the number of innocent people killed are a direct result of Hamas embedding itself among the civlian population. If AI was responsible for more civilian deaths, then wouldn't we have seen far more civilians die in Lebanon, where Israel is using the same AI systems to assist targeting as they use in Gaza? Yet the ratio of civilians to terrorists killed in Lebanon was quite low, hundreds compared to thousands.

Militaries have for years hired private companies to build custom autonomous weapons. However, Israel’s recent wars mark a leading instance in which commercial AI models made in the United States have been used in active warfare, despite concerns that they were not originally developed to help decide who lives and who dies.

The first sentence plus the "However," implies that Israel's AI systems are autonomous weapons. They aren't. They are software tools to go through enormous amounts of data to find valuable information.

IDF policy for years has been that life and death decisions must be made by humans, not autonomously by machines. AP's use of "autonomous" here is highly deceptive.

The main new point of the article is that Israel us using commercial AI products from Microsoft and OpenAI in some of its data analysis.

“This is the first confirmation we have gotten that commercial AI models are directly being used in warfare,” said Heidy Khlaaf, chief AI scientist at the AI Now Institute and former senior safety engineer at OpenAI. “The implications are enormous for the role of tech in enabling this type of unethical and unlawful warfare going forward.”

What does she mean by "directly"? Israel would not use commercial software for actual warfare, for the simple reason that commercial software is not designed for that - the requirements in warfare are far stricter.

As the article says later, Israel's use of Microsoft Azure is mostly for translation, transcription and searching huge amounts of data. That is not "direct" use in war. The quote is either a lie on her part of AP's not telling her what it knew itself.

But Khlaaf is not exactly an impartial scientist.. She called the war in Gaza a genocide - on October 13, 2023.

As U.S. tech titans ascend to prominent roles under President Donald Trump, the AP’s findings raise questions about Silicon Valley’s role in the future of automated warfare.

Again, Israel is not engaging in automated warfare. AP knows this, so it only implies it - over and over again.

Finally, AP quotes the truth after 10 paragraphs of sly innuendo of Israel building war robots:

The Israeli military says its analysts use AI-enabled systems to help identify targets but independently examine them together with high-ranking officers to meet international law, weighing the military advantage against the collateral damage. A senior Israeli intelligence official authorized to speak to the AP said lawful military targets may include combatants fighting against Israel, wherever they are, and buildings used by militants. Officials insist that even when AI plays a role, there are always several layers of humans in the loop.

“These AI tools make the intelligence process more accurate and more effective,” said an Israeli military statement to the AP. “⁠They make more targets faster, but not at the expense of accuracy, and many times in this war they’ve been able to minimize civilian casualties.”

Another nugget of truth:

It’s extremely hard to identify when AI systems enable errors because they are used with so many other forms of intelligence, including human intelligence, sources said. But together they can lead to wrongful deaths.

Which means that the errors are nearly always human - mistakes in data being input, mistakes in interpreting it, and even mistakes in how to integrate AI in the decision making process.

The real question, that AP doesn't answer, is what percentage of human decisions are mistakes and what percentage of AI plus human oversight are mistakes? Looking at AI in a vacuum and not comparing it with the alternative is simply bad reporting.

The article notes that some AI models can make mistakes or even add false data in translations, and quotes an expert:

“Should we be basing these decisions on things that the model could be making up?” said Joshua Kroll, an assistant professor of computer science.

But after that incendiary accusation, AP adds almost skeptically:

The Israeli military said any phone conversation translated from Arabic or intelligence used in identifying a target has to be reviewed by an Arabic-speaking officer.

(I often use automated translation tools for my writing, but if anything seems off, I will verify with either other tools or with a human expert. My writings are not life or death. Anyone assuming that an army would kill someone based on a single tenuous piece of information is not an honest person.)

The article lists potential mistakes that anonymous IDF officers admit to have seen in AI, like mistranslations or mislabeling a spreadsheet. But these are errors that humans can do too - and worse - and in these cases, the human oversight found the errors. If IDF workers don't follow procedure and ensure that data is verified, that is a problem that must be solved, but it is no different from any other army grunt not following proper procedures.

AP also seems shocked that Israeli employees at Microsoft might be - shudder - patriotic:

Microsoft also operates a 46,000-square-meter corporate campus in Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv, and another office in Gav-Yam in southern Israel, which has displayed a large Israeli flag.

Horrors! Israeli employees are Zionist!

Finally, the article quotes anti-Israel tech people to inject more fear in the reader:

Former Google software engineer Emaan Haseem was among those fired. Haseem said she worked on a team that helped test the reliability of a “sovereign cloud” — a secure system of servers kept so separate from the rest of Google’s global cloud infrastructure that even the company itself couldn’t access or track the data it stores. She later learned through media reports that Google was building a sovereign cloud for Israel.
“It seemed to be more and more obvious that we are literally just trying to design something where we won’t have to care about how our clients are using it, and if they’re using it unfairly or unethically,” Haseem said.

The entire point of sovereign clouds is for regulatory and security reasons. Some data is not allowed to cross national lines for various reasons, including higher security. It is not something Google created for Israel: all major cloud companies offer this option and it is meant to safeguard the data. Haseem is saying that cloud companies should be responsible for how their services are used and act as Big Brother to ensure that it fits their own standards.

If that was true, they would have no customers.

Altogether, this is a hugely biased article of the sort we've seen often in major media. There are no direct lies, but it was written deliberately to imply that something really evil is happening when there is none.

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02/26 Links Pt2: This Is Our Moment for Fearless Zionism; If Hamas Won’t End the War, Israel Will; The Myth of the ‘War That Created Israel’; Trump shares Gaza AI-video

From Ian:

Gil Troy: This Is Our Moment for Fearless Zionism

Fearless Zionists are not swivel-headed, forever looking over our shoulders, wondering, “What will they say?” We are level-headed, forever looking straight ahead, asking ourselves, “Who are we? What do we need to do? And how do we do it right?” We learn from Americanism, not just Zionism, that liberal-democratic nationalism is a force for good in this world, and that while no nation is perfect, some dictatorial regimes and terrorist organizations are perfectly evil. We are proud, passionate, thoughtful patriots, not afraid of words like “pride,” “love,” “power,” or “anger.” We define true patriots as those who love their country because of its politics always, despite its politics always.

Fearless Zionists understand that war is hell. We know that this war’s moral calculus starts with holding Hamas responsible for everything that has happened since October 7: They started the war, committed despicable crimes, keep holding and abusing hostages, refuse to surrender, and hide behind their own civilians as human shields. We can regret the deaths of Palestinian civilians caught in the crossfire, we try to minimize the death of innocents, but we know the moral onus is on Hamas, not us.

Fearless Zionists aren’t “April 1 Zionists”: supporters of Israel who nevertheless blamed Israel and not the fog of war, along with the instigators of the war Hamas, when seven aid workers were killed mistakenly, tragically – and then started saying “enough, stop fighting,” as the media turned increasingly on Israel. Fearless Zionists don’t call fending off 320 Iranian missiles “taking the win.” They know the difference between defense and offense, between avoiding catastrophe and restoring deterrence. And fearless Zionists have a moral code too, but theirs doesn’t come from anguishing and blaming our soldiers for the holy work of doing the Western world’s dirty work. Our moral code comes from fighting evil, not just condemning it, while understanding how restrained and disciplined and, yes, ethical Israel has been despite facing an enemy that turns mosques into HaMosques, hospitals into Hamaspitals and kindergartens into killergartens.

We reject Jean-Paul Sartre’s formulation, and The New York Times’ assumption: The antisemite doesn’t make the Jew. The anti-Zionists, including that small, loud minority of anti-Zionist Jews, don’t define the Jew. The Jew makes the Jew. I am not a Zionist because of their hatred, but I do occasionally have to shape my Zionist agenda to fight it.

Fearless Zionists learn from our courageous soldiers. We can come from the right and the left, be religious and nonreligious, be pro-Bibi or hate him, pro-Trump or hate him, but we focus on our enemies and fight them with clarity when they come to get us. And we never, ever, stop singing and dancing and continuing our celebration of life.

At Texas Hillel, before starting Friday night services, so many students said how grateful they were for their community, their camaraderie, their people. And one student — soon enlisting as a lone soldier in Israel — declared his gratitude about belong to a people who refuse to be Jews with trembling knees. That’s Fearless Zionism.

And in building our big, broad, blue-and-white tent, we emphasize our foundational consensus, which doesn’t start in hedging or regretting or fixating on those who betray us. Instead, we affirm. We root ourselves in our amazing tradition and our 3,500-year-old story, reach out to our people and likeminded allies worldwide, and find our strength and joy in shouting from the rooftops: “We are Zionists – and will continue to thrive, not just survive.”

Melanie Phillips: Reconciliation — or surrender?

At a time when the west is beginning to wake up to the nature and extent of the threat from the Islamic world, Jewish faith leaders in Britain appear to be waving the white flag of surrender.

Earlier this month, a group of prominent Jewish and Muslim faith leaders — including Britain’s Chief Rabbi — presented to the King the “Muslim-Jewish Reconciliation Accords” which had been created in secret over the course of a year.

Described as a “framework of reconciliation, understanding, and solidarity”, the document calls for “sustained dialogue, mutual understanding and practical collaboration”.

Acknowledging that “tensions in the Middle East often have ripple effects on Muslim-Jewish relations locally,” it says:
These conflicts can lead to mistrust, heightened emotions, and fractures to relationships that we cherish and value so dearly.

Talk about understatement. “Tensions”? “Ripple effects”? “Mistrust”? Do such bland vagaries really convey the impact of the past 16 months of Muslim-led hate-marches against Jews and Israel following the Hamas-led pogrom in Israel on October 7 2023?

While most Muslims pose no threat whatever, and many of the most vicious antisemites and Israel-bashers are white-skinned, Muslims have played a disproportionate part in this anti-Jewish hysteria. The incitement against Israel and the Jews has been orchestrated by both Sunni and Shia Muslim extremists in alliance with the western left. And as opinion polling repeatedly reveals, antisemitism in the Islamic world is far higher than in the general population.

The inter-faith document says that “both communities must strive to offer reassurance, promoting dialogue and reaffirming our shared commitment to peace and mutual understanding”.

“Shared commitment”? Really? How many Muslim members of this group publicly denounced Hamas after the October 7 atrocities and said “Not in our name”? How many have publicly rejected the Muslim Brotherhood, the jihadi parent body of Hamas that’s entrenched in Britain’s Muslim community? How many have publicly condemned those members of their community who regularly parade through the streets chanting for intifada, the death of Jews and the destruction of Israel?

Seth Mandel: The Myth of the ‘War That Created Israel’

The Israeli War of Independence has no other name. This shouldn’t create much of a problem, even for anti-Zionists: they simply oppose the state that won its independence in that war.

But lately, the trend of discounting Israel’s existence has picked up steam in the media, which has latched onto the “nakba” narrative. Now, “nakba” is not a replacement for “Israeli War of Independence.” Nakba is a descriptive term coined by Arab intellectuals after the war for the combined Arab armies’ military defeat by Israel. (Later on, it was repurposed to refer to the flight of Arabs during the war.)

The fact that nakba isn’t a substitute for the war’s name poses a problem for the Western press: What does one call the war if one doesn’t want to accurately convey what one is talking about?

It would appear the current answer is: Call it “the war that created Israel.”

Now, it should be noted that this, too, is purely descriptive. So it is possible to use this phrase organically and not necessarily to signal one’s disapproval of the fact of Israel’s existence. But the context in which it is usually used makes clear that, most of the time, it is deployed in bad faith.

Sometimes the bad faith is overt and undisguised.

In the New York Times this week, Fatima AbdulKarim and Erika Solomon published a highly editorialized “report” about Israel’s current operation in and around Jenin, where Iran-backed separatists have dug in and threatened the security of both Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Israel’s attempt to suppress the terrorist hive required evacuation of certain neighborhoods. (There is a dispute as to whether 14,000 or 40,000 were temporarily displaced, and a few thousand have already returned to their homes.) Although Palestinians were already returning home after three weeks, AbdulKarim and Solomon claim the displacement “evoked painful memories of the Nakba, the Arabic word that has been used to refer to the mass flight and expulsion of Palestinians during the 1948 war that created Israel.”

You can see from the text how awkward it would be to call the war by its name: It would make clear that the nakba has always been about the failure to destroy the Jewish nation.

The clunky phrase “war that created Israel” isn’t new, but it has been cropping up all over print media recently. (It is rarely used even in the written stories of broadcast news agencies like CNN and Fox.) In October, the Financial Times ran an absurd piece making the case for UNRWA—the Hamas-adjacent agency whose employees were involved in the Oct. 7, 2023 slaughter—to win the Nobel Peace Prize. In it, UNRWA is described as having a “mandate to care for Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war that created Israel.” The Financial Times had used that exact same phrasing just months earlier in reporting on UNRWA’s Hamas-connected employees.

Seth Mandel: If Hamas Won’t End the War, Israel Will

This is a good reminder that the deal on the table here has always been on the table. Gaza invaded Israel to spark the war, taking hostages; Israel went into Gaza to get those responsible—i.e., the leadership of Gaza’s governing party and armed forces, Hamas—and to bring back its hostages. That Israel was willing to let Hamas leaders leave the enclave alive was generous. There is no reason that all of the pressure from world leaders (and, ahem, protesting publics) should not have focused on lobbying for this particular outcome from Day One.

Wars are not over when both sides get a few good shots in; that’s a hockey fight. Wars do not end when their fundamental underlying conditions are left intact, even if fighting temporarily ceases; that’s an intermission. It is rather maddening to remember that “give back the hostages you took and leave Gaza” was the offer to Hamas leadership—not every member of Hamas, let alone everyone in Gaza; just the top leaders—and yet the war continues because Hamas and its supporters around the world believe “give back the hostages you took” is incompatible with a freshman decolonization course someone tricked their parents into paying thousands of dollars for.

What if Hamas leaders don’t want to live in a penthouse in Qatar? They can keep releasing hostages under the rubric of phase one.

So that’s two overly generous offers from Israel to Hamas. What’s behind door number three? Ah, that would be the gates of hell: “Hamas can choose the end of the ceasefire, which would mean a return to all-out war.” As one Israeli official told the Times of Israel, “It would be different [than before]. A new defense minister, a new chief of staff, all the weapons we need, and full legitimacy, one hundred percent, from the Trump administration.”

The deadline is March 8. If there are no additional hostage releases by one week from Saturday, the cease-fire ends.

This clarity is, as the official suggests, almost entirely a function of the change of administration in Washington. Donald Trump came into office wanting this war over. Both sides have the means to end this war—Hamas by surrendering and accepting exile for its leaders, Israel by forcing Hamas out of power and its leadership out of Gaza. For the next 11 days we will watch as Hamas mulls over whether it or Israel will end the war.

But one of them will. And after the series of demonic festivals-of-death performed by Hamas each week, and after the revelations of what Palestinians did to those hostages and to the Bibas family, and after it became clear that there was no famine and certainly no genocide and that Hamas had made it all up, Israel may very well have the stomach to end the war if Hamas won’t.

02/26 Links Pt1: Israel comes to a standstill to mourn the Bibas family; President Herzog: As president, I ask for your forgiveness; Hamas To Hand Over Four Hostage Bodies

From Ian:

Israel comes to a standstill to mourn the Bibas family

Tens of thousands of Israelis have paused to pay their respects at the funeral procession for Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, Ariel and Kfir, who were taken hostage and murdered during the Hamas-led attack on October 7.

Mourners gathered in central Israel, including at Kfar HaMaccabiah in Ramat Gan, before the procession passed through Yavne, Ashdod and Ashkelon, en route to the Sha’ar HaNegev Regional Council near the Gaza border.

The private burial ceremony took place at Tsoher Cemetery near Kibbutz Nir Oz, the family’s home. Eulogies were being broadcast live from Israel at 9.30am local time, as crowds gathered in solidarity at Hostages Square in Tel Aviv.

Yarden Bibas, husband of Shiri and father of Ariel and Kfir, who was recently released from Hamas captivity as part of the ceasefire deal, shared emotional tributes to his family.

Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas were buried together in a single casket.

The funeral’s MC, Carmit Palty Katzir, whose family members were killed and kidnapped on October 7, said: “They will remain together and close, just as Shiri enveloped the children, always, including on that accursed day.”

Speaking through the Hostage Family Forum, Yarden expressed his deep love and heartache for his loved ones taken from him.

“Shiri, I love you and will always love you! Shiri, this is the closest I've been to you since October 7th, and I can't kiss or hug you, and it's breaking me!,” Yarden said, paying tribute to his late wife.

Reflecting on the loss of his two sons, he added, “Ariel, you made me a father. You transformed us into a family. You taught me what truly matters in life and about responsibility. Ariel, I hope you're not angry with me for failing to protect you properly and for not being there for you. I hope you know I thought about you every day, every minute.”

Yarden also spoke of his youngest son, Kfir, with heartbreaking tenderness: “Kfir, I didn't think our family could be more perfect, and then you came and made it even more perfect… I remember your birth.

"I remember during the delivery when the midwife suddenly stopped everything—we were frightened and thought something was wrong—but it was just to tell us we had another redhead. Mom and I laughed and rejoiced. Kfir, I'm sorry I didn't protect you better, but I need you to know that I love you deeply and miss you terribly!”

Dana Silberman-Sitton, the sister of Shiri Bibas, spoke emotionally about her sister and her two young nephews, Ariel and Kfir, at their funeral.

Using the nicknames she had for her loved ones, “Baz,” “Lulu,” and “Purpur,” Sitton reflected on the special bond they shared. “We waited to be aunts together, just to be called ‘aunt,’ and you, Shiri, were like no other aunt, loving and protective,” she said.

Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas buried in a single casket: ‘They will remain together’

Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, Ariel and baby Kfir, who were abducted by terrorists to the Gaza Strip and then murdered there, were buried together Wednesday in a single casket, mother and children wrapped in an eternal embrace, at their joint funeral.

They were buried at Tsoher Cemetery, near the home in Kibbutz Nir Oz, from which they were seized on October 7, 2023.

“They will remain together and close, just as Shiri enveloped the children, always, including on that accursed day,” said Carmit Palty Katzir, who acted as MC at the funeral.

She was referring to a haunting video clip of traumatized Shiri, clutching her boys to her chest, as a mob of terrorists dragged them from their home. The images became symbolic of the horror of the attack and seared their fate into the national conscience.

Ariel was four years old when the family was kidnapped from their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, 2023, and Kfir was just nine months old. The kibbutz was one of the hardest hit on that day — terrorists broke into all but six homes in the community.

Though the funeral was kept as a private event — state officials and the public were asked to stay away — it was broadcast live on a video feed that was simultaneously carried by all major Israeli networks.

The funeral procession began in the central city of Rishon Lezion where the bodies were prepared for burial. Tens of thousands of people gathered along roads and highways of the 60-kilometer route from there to the cemetery to pay their respects. Many held orange balloons or wore orange, a tribute to the bright colored hair of Ariel and Kfir that became an icon of their plight.

In a heartbreaking address, Yarden Bibas eulogized his wife and children at their funeral, speaking with his sister Ofri at his side. Yarden, who was also taken hostage, was released earlier this month as part of a ceasefire deal with Hamas.

Bibas Brothers Join Count Of 55 Israeli Children Killed Since October 7 Attacks

The bodies of Ariel and Kfir Bibas were returned to Israel on Thursday by the terrorists who kidnapped and murdered them. Upon official identification of their bodies, their death increases the total number of children from Israel who have died in the fallout of the October 7 attacks to 55.

Kfir was nine months old when he was kidnapped, and Ariel was 4.

According to a July 2024 report from Israel’s Ministry of Justice, 53 children were known to have been killed during Hamas’s October 7 massacre and during the war that followed. Twelve of those children were killed by a Hezbollah missile while on a soccer field in the Druze Town of Majdal Shams.

“Our hearts were broken today. On October 7, 2023, Israel suffered its deadliest attack in history,” Dr. Cochav Elkayam Levy, the founder and chair of the Civil Commission on Oct 7 Crimes by Hamas against Women and Children, told The Daily Wire. “ Families were massacred, tortured, taken hostage, witnessed the murder of their loved ones, separated from each other and many, including children, were exposed to the atrocities on social media.”

A total of 870 youth lost one parent in the war, and another 23 lost both parents. Three nuclear families were entirely wiped out.

A report by the Dvora Institute, which Levy helped author, found that Hamas killed civilians as their family members bore witness, especially children. Levy’s report deemed Hamas’s tactics on October 7 a “kinocide,” or a systematic and widespread attack directed against families.

“The Bibas family is not alone,” Levy said. “They are among many who faced unimaginable horrors. Families like the Idan family, Arava family and Sharabis suffered devastating losses.”

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

We’ve all heard of people spurning God when tragedy strikes. They say things like, “God didn’t help me when I needed help. Therefore he doesn’t exist,” or, “If there were a God, He wouldn’t have made the Holocaust,” or, “If there is a God, He’s not a loving God but a cruel God and I refuse to worship him.”

But the Israeli Jews taken captive on October 7 experienced no such crisis of faith. They turned to, rather than away from God, embracing Jewish law as best they could. The hostages understood that their persecution was due to the fact that they were Jews. So they doubled down. Because the Jews are a stiff-necked people.

It doesn’t matter where you start out as a Jew. When push comes to shove, we know what to do. Many of the hostages were disconnected from religion prior to being kidnapped. Keith Siegel, for example.

Growing up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Siegel attended a Conservative synagogue with his family. But after 40 years on a secular kibbutz, Keith had pretty much forgotten any of the prayers he’d learned as a child. This is not to say that Siegel had turned away from God. He probably just hadn’t thought much about religion or God during those years.

But held captive in a Gaza tunnel, Keith Siegel began saying the Shema, an affirmation of faith: “Hear oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.”

Siegel knew that what had happened to him, had happened to him because he was a Jew. It shifted something inside of him, something that called out to him in the haze of the endless starvation and torture, and the constant dread of death. Keith Siegel reached out to the one God he’d almost forgotten, and pledged allegiance. “Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad.”

With plenty of time alone with his thoughts, Siegel reviewed his slim knowledge of Judaism. He knew the blessing for bread. It was really the only blessing he remembered. So he began saying the Hamotzi blessing at meals. “We had a pita bread for every meal, that was the first thing I would eat after I said the bracha (blessing),” said Keith.

One day, Keith caught a glimpse of an Israeli TV show after his captors happened to switch the set on. The program was about something like good places to eat in Tel Aviv. Siegel heard one participant make the "borei minei mezonot," blessing said over baked goods and pasta before taking a bite. Keith decided that from then on, he too would make this blessing, whenever he ate anything other than pita bread.

Someone else might have thought that wrong. That you cannot say the mezonot blessing over, for example, a grape or a date. But with his mezonot, Keith Siegel was connecting to God with the only resources God gave him. “I thought it was appropriate,” he said. “But it was the only [blessing] I knew.”

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It was what Keith Siegel had. These were the tools of his survival: the shema, the hamotzi blessing, and now, the mezonot blessing. These things comforted and strengthened him. They were his pathway to God.

When Keith Siegel was finally freed after 484 days in captivity, his family recognized that something remarkable had happened, that cleaving to God was what had kept him alive. His daughter Shir spoke about it.

“Dad searched for his Jewish identity while in captivity, and he found it in small prayers. He started saying blessings over food, like ‘Borei Minei Mezonot,’ which he had never said before, and ‘Shema Yisrael,’ which he had never recited in his life.

"He said that amidst all that hell, he wanted to remember that he was Jewish, that there was meaning to his people and to the place from which he came, and that strengthened him greatly.”

Ah, there it is right there, that backbone Jews get when between a rock and a hard place, life and death, the Inquisition and the Holocaust or a tunnel in Gaza. It only stiffens our resolve and our necks, which is why they never succeed in getting rid of us.

“After he returned,” continued Shir. “I asked him what he wanted us to do for our first Shabbat meal together. I imagined he’d want some dish he loves or a good challah. He replied, ‘You know what I want most of all? A kippah and a Kiddush cup.’”

“Who is like Your people, Israel?” (Samuel 7:23)

Keith Siegel is not the only freed hostage who turned to, instead of away from God. There are many such stories. And we will have plenty of time to tell them.

In fact it will be a delight to take our time in telling the stories, knowing that the enemy will have it rubbed in their faces for years to come. This is what happens when you try to kill the Jews.

It isn’t possible. You can’t do it. Because we’re a stiff-necked people, who, in intolerable situations will always seek to reclaim that spark in the soul that the Arab enemy so desperately wants to extinguish.

But never will.

***

We must thank two readers for bringing my attention to sources that state that it is acceptable to say the mezonot prayer on everything except water or water and salt, b'dieved (a posteriori).

A reader shares the following, "According to the Chayei Adam (58:3) and implied by the Gemara in several places (Brachos 12a, Brachos 35, somewhere in Nedarim that escapes me for the moment), 'Borei Minei Mezonos' on everything but water and salt is acceptable bdi'eved."

Yehudah Posnick comments that Rabbi Aaron Hamaoui of of the Sephardic Community of Greater Boston said that bdi'eved, the mezonot blessing covers all foods, except for water, because the word "mezonot," suggests that the item to be ingested is satiating, and water doesn't sate. (See his comment below for the full thread.)

My take: Keith Siegel did his best and his best was the right thing to do. Disclaimer: I am not a rabbi.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

I am trying out Substack as an adjunct (not a replacement) for this blog. I've been placing some of my longer, original articles on Substack. You can visit the page here.

So far I've been treating Substack as a place for my essays much like I've been treating Instagram as a place for my cartoons and graphics.

It appears to be a nice platform. I have not yet taken advantage of its features like notes and podcasts, but I might as I get more comfortable.

Subscribing to my Substack is free at this time. (I won't object if you want to pay, and some are!) You can then get my essays via email as soon as they are published.

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Speaking of email, those who were on my email list noticed that the list has been down for several months. I used Madmimi for my mailing lists and it went out of business, and I lost the subscriber list of over 1,500 people. If you want an email digest from the blog, you can use https://blogtrottr.com/ but I have no control or visibility into who does that. I'm not sure if it is worth it to restart the list at this time.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)