Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, March 02, 2025

03/02 Links: Infantilising Palestinians, demonising Israelis; How the UN turned Palestinians into permanent refugees; Israel halts aid to Gaza after Hamas rejects US ceasefire proposal

From Ian:

Infantilising Palestinians, demonising Israelis

Humanity is certainly in short supply in Perfect Victims. In the chapter, ‘Tropes and Drones’, el-Kurd tells us again and again that his problem is not just with Israel, it is also with Jews. ‘The people seeking to expel us from our neighbourhood were Jewish’, he writes, ‘the bureaucrat issuing and revoking our blue ID cards was a Jew’, and ‘as for the soldiers who were frisking us to check those IDs… most of them [were] Jewish’.

El-Kurd fumes against the Palestinian notables who wrote a joint letter taking issue with Palestine Authority president Mahmoud Abbas’s anti-Semitic comments in August 2023 – when he claimed that Hitler ‘fought’ the Jews because they dealt with ‘usury, money and so on’. El-Kurd claims that ‘defending ourselves, often preemptively, against the baseless charge of anti-Semitism’ is a mistake, a tactic that ‘elevates the history of Jewish suffering… above our present-day suffering’.

El-Kurd is convinced that Israel is illegitimate and that Israeli Jews are ‘colonisers’. Quoting Frantz Fanon, he says ‘the work of the colonised is to imagine every possible method for annihilating the colonist’.

But Israelis are not colonisers. They are refugees from persecution in Europe up to 1945, and in the Arab world since 1948. Most were born in Israel. By characterising Jews as the ‘colonisers’, el-Kurd is lending a veneer of legitimacy to his vilification of an entire people.

El-Kurd refuses to be drawn on the future of the Jews because, he says, this can only ever mean the de-railing of the Palestinian cause. He protests that the ‘possibility of a second holocaust is given primacy over a holocaust happening in the present’ – that is, in Gaza.

It is certainly true that Israel has been fighting a deadly war with Hamas since October 2023. But it is not in any sense a ‘holocaust’. The victims of holocausts do not generally have their own armies, nor fire missiles at their persecutors. El-Kurd points to the ‘countless examples of annihilatory rhetoric’ by Israeli officials, but he could just as easily list the genocidal remarks made by Hamas spokesmen, like Osama Hamdan or Ghazi Hamad.

Moreover, Hamas ran riot in southern Israel for just 18 hours on 7 October 2023, and managed to kill 1,200 people, most of them Jews. Its organisational commitment to killing Jews goes back to its founding. After Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades attacked Sderot, Be’eri and other towns bordering on Gaza that awful day in 2023, Mohammed el-Kurd was excited. ‘Much of what is happening in occupied Palestine’, he tweeted on 8 October, ‘will be in future history books as an example of revolutionary struggle’. Like so many among the pro-Palestine crowd, el-Kurd has since downplayed the significance of the massacre, complaining that attention is always on 7 October, not on what came before.

El-Kurd claims that Palestinians are denied the ‘common humanity’ applied to others, and are therefore dehumanised. Yet he ignores the clear dehumanisation of Jews that made it possible for Hamas to slaughter families in their homes on 7 October. That is bad enough, but worse is the evasion of responsibility. It is galling to read him protest against ‘the ceaseless infantilisation of the dehumanised subject’, in reference to Palestinians, when he and his fellow anti-Israel campaigners have done the most to infantilise them. For el-Kurd, Hamas should not be held responsible for its actions – any discussion of its atrocities or brutality, he suggests, is a ‘distraction’. What he ignores is that until a leadership emerges that accepts it has a responsibility to make peace, and live alongside its Jewish neighbours, there is no future for Palestine.

El-Kurd concludes his work like a poet, more than an activist, writing ‘the world is changing because it must’. The world is changing, but not in the direction that Mohammed el-Kurd hopes. Hamas has brought disaster upon Gaza. And the prospect of a durable peace between Israelis and Palestinians looks further away than ever.

How the UN turned Palestinians into permanent refugees

To illustrate the absurdity of what has been happening, take the case of Mohamed Anwar Hadid. His father fled Nazareth in 1948 because he ‘did not want the family to live under the Israeli occupation’. He ended up in California where he became a property developer building luxury mansions and hotels in Beverly Hills.

You might not have heard of Hadid. But you are likely to have heard of his daughters, supermodels Gigi and Bella Hadid, both of whom are American-born citizens. Bella, who reputedly earns up to $20million a year, regularly posts anti-Israel sentiments on social media, and has been attending pro-Palestine rallies, chanting ‘From the river to the sea’. Amazingly, the two sisters, their father and other members of the Hadid family are all still registered as Palestinian refugees with UNRWA.

That’s not all. Under the auspices of the UN, people of Palestinian heritage the world over don’t just have a permanent refugee status, they also have a so-called right of return.

Over several decades, the ‘right of return’ has allowed successive Palestinian political leaders to continue a war against Israel by other means – by insisting on their right to return to land ‘occupied’ by Israel. No other group of refugees has been granted a similarly inalienable right of return.

For the Palestine Liberation Organisation, this right was the ‘foremost of Palestinian rights’. Hamas is equally attached to it. In 2018, it organised a massive protest along the border fences with Israel. The objective of this ‘great march of return’ was, according to Hamas’s then leader, Ismail Haniyeh, to ‘break the walls of the blockade, remove the occupation entity and return to all of Palestine’. No wonder novelist Amos Oz, the founder of Israel’s Peace Now movement, has argued that ‘the right of return is a euphemism for the liquidation of Israel’.

The twin issues of refugee status and the right of return have taken on enormous symbolic significance for Palestinians. They have also made, and will continue to make, any peace negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis inordinately difficult.

Now would be a good time to start reassessing Palestinians’ permanent refugee status and the right of return. That way we might finally start taking some of the heat out of this interminable conflict.

Yisrael Medad: Will Palestinians in Gaza get up and go?

Ze’ev Jabotinsky began his 1923 “On the Iron Wall” essay by denying that he is “an enemy of the Arabs, who wants to have them ejected from Palestine, and so forth.”

He insisted that “it is not true.” He did admit that, emotionally, his “attitude to the Arabs is the same as to all other nations: polite indifference.”

A veteran of the campaign for equal rights for Jews in the Russian Empire, including autonomous national rights for all nationalities, he wished to see a parallel reality develop in the Mandate for Palestine. He believed that “there will always be two peoples in Palestine.”

Based on that belief, he added: “I consider it utterly impossible to eject the Arabs from Palestine,” and insisted that he would be prepared to take an oath, binding on future generations, “that we shall never do anything contrary to the principle of equal rights, and that we shall never try to eject anyone.” All that, however, was before the 1929 riots, those of 1936 to 1939, and all the wars since.

He set certain basic principles. There must be peace, and it needs to be obtained by peaceful means. There must be a Jewish majority in the future Jewish state. The Arabs need to agree that the Jews belong to their homeland. Responding to whether all this is possible, he wrote: “The answer to this question does not depend on our attitude to the Arabs, but entirely on the attitude of the Arabs to us and to Zionism.”

A century later, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, speaking at the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in mid-February, said: “Why not give Gazans a choice? … Over the last couple of years … 150,000 Gazans left. … If people want to leave, if they want to emigrate, it’s their choice. And I think President [Donald] Trump’s plan is right on the dot.”

In other words, they should have freedom of movement and the right to emigrate.

Netanyahu could have added that some 70% of Palestinians in Gaza consider themselves “refugees.” As such, they are planning to move away from Gaza in any case. Of course, their desired destination is Israel—with the aim of eradicating the Jewish state, a purpose they adopted as a life’s mission since 1947 when they rejected that year’s U.N. Partition Plan in a not very peaceful manner.

Many of them continued to pursue their aim during the 1950s in the ranks of the fedayeen when they engaged in cross-border raids of theft, destruction and murder. A new phase of their “armed struggle” resumed after the Sinai Campaign with the founding of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1964. In 1987, Hamas was established, designated a foreign terrorist organization by the United States and other countries.

I saw this comment in Substack from Binyamin Zev Wolf:

I am a Palestinian refugee.

UNRWA defines a Palestine refugee as someone "whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict." Moreover, descendants of Palestine refugee males, including legally adopted children, are also eligible for registration.

In 1948, my family was living in the old city of Jerusalem and were ethnically cleansed from their home by the Jordanians. My great great grandfather was a big rabbi and lost all his writings and his position as rabbi in the old city. I should be getting money from UNWRA.

To become a registered Palestine refugee according to UNRWA eligibility criteria, it is not enough to be descended (through the paternal line) from someone who fits the criteria, but one must also register at an UNRWA office in person.

Israel just shut down the UNRWA offices in Jerusalem, but there are still plenty in the West Bank. And lots of people who are descended from Jewish refugees in 1948 now live across the Green line in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.

There may also be Arab Israeli citizens who fit the criteria. Many live across the Green Line, mostly in Jerusalem but also in "settlements."

It would be a great idea for a an Israeli Jew and and Israeli Arab who live across the Green line to both go to an UNRWA office and attempt to register as refugees, with appropriate documentation as described in UNRWA's Consolidated Eligibility and Registration Instructions.

If UNRWA says they cannot register because they are citizens of a country, then ask why Palestinian citizens in Jordan (and some in Lebanon) are considered refugees.

If UNRWA says that they cannot register because they live in Israel, ask them if that means that they consider Judea and Samaria to be part of Israel.

If UNRWA says the Arab is eligible and the Jew is not, ask why they discriminate against Jews.

With the Sheikh Jarrah office closed, unfortunately the applicants might need a military escort to make these applications safely. The stunt would be worth it to expose UNRWA's hypocrisy.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

How to explain the events of this weekend? Israel is taking a negotiating lesson from Trump.

Israel today decided to cut off all humanitarian aid to Gaza. This occurred on the heels of Israel saying it was willing to extend the ceasefire for six weeks.

What's going on?

Israel is playing hardball, taking a page from Donald Trump's book of how to negotiate.

Over the weekend, Israel offered to extend the ceasefire with Gaza according to parameters crafted by Donald Trump's negotiator, Steve Witkoff, which would have Hamas immediately release half the hostages and the bodies in exchange for a continued halt to fighting during Ramadan and Passover, about six weeks.

At the end of the period, if a permanent ceasefire is agreed upon, Hamas would release the remaining hostages.

Hamas rejected the terms, insisting that Phase 2 be implemented immediately and unconditionally.

Hamas' official position is that Phase 2 is mandated by the ceasefire agreement after Phase 1 completed. But it wasn't. Phase 2 was always contingent on both parties agreeing to its specific terms during Phase 1, which did not happen. Without that agreement, Phase 2 cannot start. Witkoff's plan is to extend Phase 1 and keep the ceasefire going.

But without an agreement, as of midnight Saturday night, the ceasefire is over.

Hamas is gambling, thinking that there is too much world pressure for Israel to continue not resuming the war and as well as to allow 600 trucks a day into Gaza as Phase 1 mandated. From Hamas' perspective, they have nothing to lose by insisting that Phase 2 begin and more Israeli concessions - mostly withdrawals that would ensure Hamas can fill the vacuum left by the IDF.

Israel, perhaps in coordination with the US, is saying that Hamas has a great deal to lose. If the ceasefire is over then Israel can decide to stop the aid and resume fighting.

Under the rules of war as stated in the Fourth Geneva Convention, siege warfare is legal. It needs to allow critical humanitarian aid with the explicit exception of when the aid would be diverted by, or improve the military efforts and economic posture of, the enemy - which is exactly how Hamas has used it for the past 16 months.

Since October 2023, after only ten days of war, Israel has been forced by the US to allow in humanitarian aid even though Hamas benefitted from it. As I noted in January 2024, that decision more than any other is what kept Hamas fighting and kept the war going. It could have ended within a couple of months without that pressure from the Biden administration.

Now Israel has support from a US that is willing to let it win.

This is the manifestation of Trump's message to Hamas two weeks ago that if they don't release all the hostages, all hell will break out.

Israel also extended and increased the IDF's option to call up reserves, from 320,000 to 400,000, at the same time. In addition, the US expedited the transfer of billions of dollars of weapons to Israel, a move that was not unnoticed by Hamas.

The message from Israel is clear: It is no longer hostages for prisoners and hostages for Israeli withdrawal - it is hostages if Hamas wants to avoid war and to continue to get aid. Hamas has a great deal to lose by not releasing more hostages.

As far as world pressure on Israel is concerned, the answer is simple: if the world cares so much about aid into Gaza, then pressure Hamas to release more hostages to get that aid. Israel played by the rules that it must provide aid and all it accomplished was extending a devastating war by over a year.

By changing the calculus of aid, Israel is also showing how hypocritical the international community is. They insist that Israel provide unconditional aid. Israel's response, now backed by the US, is that it would be happy to provide aid, but no longer unconditionally. The legal siege can be lifted in exchange for hostages.

Israel is now saying that it is Hamas' decision to keep human beings as hostages, therefore it is Hamas' decision to stop the aid. This puts the international community in a position of saying that they support Hamas keeping hostages more than they support Gazans receiving humanitarian aid.

This has been their position from the start. Israel is now making it explicit.

Without the Biden administration pressuring Israel, the war would have been over a long time ago.

Trump is allowing Israel to change the rules to what they should have been in October 2023.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

There really is no difference between the neo-Nazi and Arab attitudes towards Jews

From the Egyptian news site Dostor:

Journalist Adel Hamouda confirmed that the Jewish lobby in the United States plays an important role in influencing American politics, as it has a great ability to control a number of members of the US Congress and funds a large portion of the budgets of political parties.

He added, during today's episode of the "Face the Truth" program broadcast on Cairo News Channel , that Israel has received $300 billion in American aid until 2023, making it the largest recipient of American aid.

He explained that Jewish influence in the United States is not limited to politics, but extends to all aspects of American life, stressing that 50% of the top 200 American intellectuals and 20% of professors at major universities are Jews, and 40% of partners in major law firms in New York and Washington are Jews.

Sounds just like the Goyim Defense League:

But the Goyim Defense League spreads its hate by placing flyers in plastic bags and leaving them outside homes. Jordanians and Egyptians do it openly in their TV talk shows.

Which again brings up the question: if the progressive Left hates the Right so much, why don't they ever call out when Arabs act exactly like the far-Right?

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

03/01 Links: Why Zionism Is Not Colonialism; Hamas stalls Gaza ceasefire talks, betting Israel won't resume fighting; The BBC is too toxic to even recognise its own disgrace

From Ian:

Begin’s unpublished writings to be released on 33rd anniversary of his death

A collection of previously unseen documents, letters and articles written by former Prime Minister Menachem Begin will be made public next week, coinciding with the 33rd anniversary of his death.

Among the handwritten papers is a document outlining Begin’s views on human rights, the need for a constitution and the tension between the judiciary and the legislature.

In 1952, Begin wrote a 65-page paper titled A Personal View, A National View and Basic Principles. Due to austerity measures in the young state of Israel, he drafted it on discarded rolls of paper from a printing press.

“There is no justice without courts,” Begin wrote. “Justices are but flesh and blood and may make mistakes, be bribed or afraid, but the determinative role of the court in our society is not the human weaknesses of any particular judge but the ‘psychological position’ given to that institution and those who sit in judgment.” He argued that both the judiciary and authorities must uphold the courts’ complete independence.

Herzl Makov, CEO of the Menachem Begin Heritage Center, described the documents as a reflection of Begin’s political philosophy and humility. “It is a sharp political analysis that distills Begin’s liberal-national worldview,” he said.

In the writings, Begin also addressed Israel’s territorial aspirations and the necessity of national might. He warned that Israel’s security depended on its power. “Anyone with eyes in his head knows that when we are strong, we will not be attacked by the Arabs, even without signed agreements. And if we are weak, our Arab enemies will rise to destroy us, even if such agreements are forged in diplomacy.”

Begin criticized Israel’s early leaders for conceding historical lands, lamenting that they agreed to establish the state without key biblical sites within its borders. “National leaders were found willing to sign, in the name of the people of Israel, that Jerusalem, Hebron, Bethlehem, Jericho, Nablus and all the good land east of the Jordan would not be ours. Is there a national-historic crime equal to this?”

Growing threat of US isolationism is a danger to the US-Israel alliance

Throughout history, political movements, even those not initially antisemitic, have often seen their most radical factions steer them toward antisemitism.

In recent years, segments of the American left have embraced militant Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, Critical Race Theory (CRT), Marxist ideologies, and policies that exacerbate societal divisions.

This shift has, at times, fostered antisemitic sentiments as observed in rhetoric from certain college campuses, organizations, such as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Jewish Voice for Peace, national unions, civil rights groups, and members of the “Squad.”

For instance, a recent report from StopAntisemitism revealed that 72% of Jewish college students in the United States feel unwelcome, with over half having faced antisemitism.

The Republican Party has successfully positioned itself against many of these divisive issues, recognizing their danger to the American way of life and the direct opposition to liberal US values. The new administration has already made strides in addressing these social challenges and affirmed itself as a strong ally of the Jewish people and the State of Israel.

However, the GOP has a blind spot for a Trojan horse gaining momentum within its ranks: a faction of “America First” isolationists who promote policies that, if unchecked, could threaten both America’s global standing and its allies, particularly Israel.

Defining themselves sometimes as “restrainers,” these figures advocate a philosophy of strengthening domestic affairs by rallying against most types of foreign aid and limiting military engagement abroad. While a measure of restraint in foreign policy is healthy, taken to an extreme, it risks weakening America’s global leadership and its commitment to strategic allies. The Jewish community must recognize this emerging threat and its potential to undermine the US-Israel alliance.

The United States cannot afford to completely retreat from the world stage without severe consequences for its own and global security.

History has shown that when America stands back, adversaries quickly fill the vacuum – whether in the Middle East, Europe, Asia, or Latin America. A disengaged America emboldens hostile regimes, undermines global stability, and endangers our interests and allies.

Turning away from Israel, as advocated by the America First isolationists, would send a dangerous message to other US allies: America is no longer a reliable partner.

The isolationist sentiment echoes past missteps, such as the US’s reluctance to confront the growing threats of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. If the US pulls back now, nations that rely on American support may be forced to seek alliances elsewhere, including with adversaries like China, Russia, and Iran.

John Aziz: Why Zionism Is Not Colonialism

The claim that Zionism is a form of colonialism is at the heart of a lot of anti-Zionist narratives. The story goes that white, Western Jews decided to colonise Palestine, and displace the native Palestinian Arab population.

John Aziz's Blog is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

One piece of historical evidence that often gets thrown around in these conversations and seems to have gone mega viral a few times recently is this headline from the New York Times, proclaiming that Zionists intended to colonise Palestine:

The implications of this accusation of colonisation is that colonisation is a horrible thing that must end as the arc of history bends further and further towards justice, to paraphrase Martin Luther King, Jr. In other words, the colonisers must give the land back to the previous owners, and return from whence they came.

But ownership of land, especially in a national sense, is a complex and fraught topic. Yes, it’s true that Palestinian Arabs were living in the land as a majority during the British Mandate between 1917-1947, and the Ottoman Empire during 1517-1917. But there were multiple earlier Jewish polities in the Holy Land across history, with the most recent independent Jewish entity ending with the defeat of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 136 AD, after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD following the first Jewish-Roman war.

The result of the Roman colonisation of the land was the enslavement and expulsion of many of the pre-existing indigenous Jewish population, who became scattered across the former Roman empire in Europe and the middle east. Similarly, the ancestors of the Palestinians are not only from later Arab conquerors, and the Romans and Byzantines themselves, but they are also descended in large part from parts of the Jewish population that stayed on the land in spite of Roman rule, and later converted to Christianity or Islam.

This is why Jewish and Palestinian populations are genetically quite closely linked:

The reality of Zionism is that it was the descendants of Jewish people who had previously been displaced from Palestine (or the Land of Israel, or whatever you want to call it) trying to return to the home land of their ancestors.

This is why unlike with classical colonialism, for example the French colonisation of Algeria—which is often cited as an inspiration by Palestinian anti-Zionists—there is no mother country or colonial metropole in the case of Zionism. Colonialism is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as the act of one country acquiring control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically.

Now some may contest this definition. But by that definition, the New York Times description of Zionism as an act of colonisation was simply not accurate.

The question to ask anyone who claims Zionism is colonialism is what is the mother country?

Reform rabbi: ‘Hamas is the Palestinians,’ two-state solution a delusion

The murder of Shiri Bibas and her two children at the hands of Palestinian terrorists has ended the possibility of a two-state solution, a prominent Reform rabbi declared on Friday.

Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, senior rabbi at New York City’s Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, told congregants in an explosive Shabbat sermon that he had “snapped” over the killings.

“This was the week that finally ended the hope–at least in my lifetime–for a Palestinian state and a Jewish state existing side-by-side,” Hirsch said. “The Palestinians themselves strangled this fragile hope in its crib.”

“Until such time as the Palestinians themselves say they want peaceful coexistence–two states living side-by-side–we must cease deluding ourselves that a two-state solution is available now,” he added.

Gazan terrorists abducted Shiri Bibas, 32, and her two sons Ariel, 4, and Kfir, 9-months-old, from Kibbutz Nir Oz in the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Based on forensic evidence, their captors murdered the two children “with their bare hands” within weeks of the attacks, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

The funeral for the three victims was held on Wednesday after their bodies were returned to Israel as part of Phase 1 of the ceasefire-for-hostages deal between Hamas and Israel.

According to Hirsch, the murders and Hamas’s staging of parade-like ceremonies to crowds of cheering Gazans during the release of emaciated Israeli hostages is an indictment of Palestinian society, which suffers from a “moral miasma and social collapse” and whose national movement fuels “an endless cycle of violent depravity.”

02/28 Links Pt2: The West is colonizing the Palestinian cause; Dara Horn returns to history — and literature — after Oct. 7; BBC is in crisis and only systemic change can fix it

From Ian:

The West is colonizing the Palestinian cause

This term “Palestine” was first introduced by the Romans. Expelling the Jews from their land, they renamed Judea as Palestine. Over the centuries, this term was accepted by Jews themselves. The Land of Israel and Palestine became synonymous.

But in the 1920s, the West migrated the term. Arabs in Palestine at the time expressed their collective sentiment through the nascent Hashemite Arab Kingdom of Syria. They identified as Syrians. When France took over Syria and ended the Arab Kingdom, Western colonialist offices imposed a new identity on Arabs in Palestine: “Palestinians.” British diplomat Mark Sykes (of the Sykes-Pictot agreement) even came up with a flag.

While this colonialist identity-engineering exercise was initially rejected by Arabs living in Palestine, European powers cultivated the notion of Palestinian nationalism in order to promote their own Western interests: The British as counterforce to the Jews, Germans as counterforce to the British, and since the 1993 Oslo Accords, the EU and European governments as a counterforce to the State of Israel and by extension to America.

This worked and, by the turn of the 21st century, it was clear that the term Palestine, as well as the Sykes flag represented the national movement of Palestinian Arabs.

But in recent years, and especially since October 7, the term has been migrating, yet again, from describing a group of individuals in the Middle East, toward describing an abstract concept in the West.

This, for example, was reflected in the September 2023 University of Pennsylvania Palestine Writes festival. American students were not expected to write of the longing for a land they never been to – nor knew much of – but about such concepts as: occupation, suppression, injustice. Similarly, President Donald Trump referring to Senator Chuck Schumer as a “Palestinian” is not a reference to his ethnic background, but to his ideology.

Some can argue, cynically, that the re-appropriation of the term is legitimate. After all, it was Europe who “owns the copyright” on the term Palestine: The Romans created it, and the British, French, and Germans promoted it.

But what about the human rights of Palestinians themselves?

Voluntary de-Palestinization
Repeatedly, Palestinians are denied their basic rights to personal self-determination by their European oppressors. When Palestinians chose to be employed and mentored by Jewish-owned businesses, European governments launched aggressive campaigns to have those businesses shut down, such as SodaStream. Similarly, when Palestinians in Gaza chose to flee a war zone, the West failed to provide escape routes, and now that President Trump has introduced such a plan, Westerns are opposing it, effectively denying Palestinians the basic human right to leave.

There is an inevitable clash: Europe and Europhilic circles in the United States care exclusively about Palestinian national rights, even at the price of Palestinian human rights. This, while Palestinians naturally care about their personal safety, prosperity, and indeed rights as human beings.

To put it bluntly, Europeans and Western pro-Palestinians dehumanize Palestinians.

We are in an era of seismic changes. The Middle East of September 2023 is not coming back, and therefore, Western foreign offices and seasoned peacemakers should get rid of legacy frameworks and assumptions that, perhaps, were relevant back then, but are only standing in the way of peace today.

In this realm, there is a golden opportunity to shift away from frameworks based on a zero-sum game, such as “land for peace” and the two-state solution, toward frameworks that are based on a win-win, such as the Abraham Accords and President Trump’s Gaza relocation plan.

Dara Horn returns to history — and literature — after Oct. 7

The last few years have been strange ones for writer Dara Horn. Used to creating imaginative Jewish worlds as a fiction writer, she published her first nonfiction book in 2021, expecting it to be a “detour.” Instead, the publication of People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present, about the very real and often very depressing world that Jews inhabit, changed the course of her career.

“I became this receptacle for all of these horror stories from Jewish readers,” Horn said. “I was immersed in this dumpster fire that now all of us are living in.”

The book was a series of essays examining the ways in which different societies engage with Jewish history and culture — usually, she found, by venerating Jewish suffering in traumatic historical events such as the Holocaust or the Spanish Inquisition, without teaching people to reckon with Jews as they currently are. The argument was explosive even before the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks. Since then, the book’s title has become a ghoulishly ironic tagline for many Jews.

“The premise of the book is really that Jews are only acceptable in a non-Jewish society when they have no power, whether that means politically impotent or dead,” Horn told Jewish Insider in an interview this week. “That is just roaring back at us now. That is the only way that it’s acceptable to be Jewish, if you have no agency.”

Now, Horn has published her first new book in more than three years, a departure from both the award-winning literary fiction she is known for and the nonfiction essays about antisemitism she has written for major publications including The Atlantic and The New York Times since Oct. 7.

One Little Goat: A Passover Catastrophe is a graphic novel, geared toward middle school readers, about a family that gets stuck at their Seder for six months because their house is so messy that the children are unable to find the afikomen. In order to retrieve it, the protagonist must go on a time-travel journey through thousands of years of Jewish history, visiting Seders throughout time — guided by a talking goat from the song “Chad Gadya” — until he retrieves the afikomen, finally saving his family from the longest Seder ever.

“If you’ve ever been to a Passover Seder, you know that they feel like they last forever,” the book begins. In the pane below, the text reads: “It’s a holiday celebrating freedom, but you are stuck at that table for a very long time.” Horn read this passage with a laugh, and a word of praise for the illustration skills of her collaborator Theo Ellsworth, a cartoonist in Montana who she cold-emailed after she found her kids reading one of his books.

“The way he illustrated this is he has this kid sitting in the chair in the top frame, and then the bottom frame is a bearded skeleton covered in cobwebs, seated in the same chair, which is how I feel like a lot of kids feel, and even some adults,” Horn said.

BBC is in crisis and only systemic change can fix it

In a quite remarkable first, after 16 months of anti-Israel bias and gaslighting of the Jewish community, the BBC has admitted fault in relation to its documentary, Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone.

Yes, they passed the buck and failed to take any immediate action, but after the Asserson Report, the 100-plus corrections in “misreporting” they’ve been forced to make, the appalling anti-Israel social media posts senior BBC journalists have indulged in and of course BBC Arabic continuing to employ staff who openly celebrated the Oct 7th massacre, any admittance of guilt feels significant.

Perhaps worst of all was the acknowledgement by the BBC that money was in fact sent to the wife of a senior member of Hamas. This is now a question for the authorities and certainly for Dame Dinenage Commons select committee to investigate.

The complete and utter failure of journalistic standards, lack of due diligence and breakdown in trust between the public and our national broadcaster with regards to this documentary, is the culmination of the arrogance of BBC leadership since the Hamas massacre.

This depth of failure does not happen in a vacuum though. It happens because the BBC’s values & code of conduct, it’s very mission to tell the truth, be impartial and transparent have been eroded over time.

The license fee payer’s money in this country should not be going to terrorists, the content coming out of our national broadcaster should not be terrorist propaganda and BBC talent and staff shouldn’t be signing politically motivated statements, which place their own twisted world views above the importance of their employer’s impartiality.

The BBC is in crisis and when one faces a systemic problem, the only solution is systemic change. For anyone who cares about the integrity and indeed the future of our national broadcaster, let’s hope that Samir Shah and the board have the courage to do just that.

02/28 Links Pt1: Israel Takes a Hard Look at Its Prewar Assumptions; Why a Palestinian state is a security risk Israel cannot afford; ABC leave out ‘Allahu Akbar’ chants from school protest

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Israel Takes a Hard Look at Its Prewar Assumptions

Israel did not believe that Hamas wanted, or was capable of carrying out, a full-fledged total war. But it did, and it planned for it, and here we are.

“Israel believed that leveraging improved civil conditions in Gaza would make Hamas less likely to launch a war,” Fabian writes. “Israel worked to have defenses ready for rounds of conflicts lasting several days and the possibility of it deteriorating into a war, during which the IDF could attack and degrade Hamas’s force build-up. At the same time, Israel worked to reach some level of agreements with Hamas to improve the civil conditions in the Strip. In hindsight, Hamas’s efforts to reach understandings with Israel were part of a deception campaign to trick Israel into thinking it was uninterested in war.”

Any and every drop of legitimacy Israel gave Hamas in the name of improving Palestinians’ lives was paid back in Israeli blood. The result of Israel thinking it could coexist with Hamas was devastation for everybody. Hamas’s ultimate defeat is imperative for Israelis and Palestinians alike; neither can afford to leave Hamas intact. And that is an important lesson for the self-proclaimed pro-Palestinian advocates of the world as well.

As for the second major takeaway: The border fence separating Israel from Gaza was intended to represent merely a part of a larger security network that was mostly out of sight. But the reliance on detection technology, which Hamas was able to disarm, meant that there really only was a fence separating the two. Good fences make good neighbors; Israel did not have either.

But the principle goes for the IDF as well: The Israeli establishment misjudged the extent of Hamas’s tunnel construction underneath Gaza. They, too, couldn’t see the entire playing field because part of it was underground, but they were pretty sure they would know if the reality was significantly different from their expectations. It was, and they didn’t know.

The report has important implications for Lebanon, too. Israel expected Hezbollah to represent the greatest threat on its border. But Hamas’s increased threat didn’t make Hezbollah any less of a threat than it already was, regardless of which one posed the more immediate danger to Israeli civilians. Simply put, Hezbollah (and forces similar) cannot be allowed to put Israel in that situation ever again. If you’re wondering why Israel is taking such a serious approach to any perceived threats materializing in the chaos of Syria’s transition, this should answer that question as well.

Israel—and the region more generally—paid dearly for the belief that as long as these terror groups kept their boots off Israeli soil they were a manageable threat basically at all times. The prevention of another devastating regional war depends on Israel not repeating that mistake, no matter how much the rest of the world wants it to.

Seth Mandel: Israel’s Strategic Goals in Lebanon and the New Syria

This should be obvious: Why would Israel allow a second South Lebanon? The goal is to ensure that when the dust settles on this regional post-Oct. 7 war, the new status quo looks very different from the previous one: No Hezbollahland, no Hamastan. It’s why the IDF is taking a proactive approach toward the Iranian-backed terrorist hive in Jenin in the West Bank. And for that very same reason, Israel is watching the new Syria very closely.

Some of Israel’s Syria policy is designed to help the Syrian Druze feel more secure. If that can be done successfully, a pro-Western corridor running from Kurdish territory through Druze areas to Israel’s border could emerge. This would help the new Syrian government too, since it could settle the nerves of areas that might otherwise consider breaking away from Damascus’s control. Ensuring the safety of ethnic and religious minorities in Syria would also help Damascus convince the West to give it a chance.

There is another problem: Turkey. As I wrote in December, the fall of the House of Assad created the biggest Mideast power vacuum since the fall of the Soviet Union. And Turkey, the pro-Hamas power next door, is primed to fill it.

After all, the Kurds are only on alert because Turkey put them there: Ankara periodically sends its armed forces across the border to harass and weaken America’s Kurdish allies in the fight against ISIS. The new Syrian government owes its existence in part to Turkish backing. The intent is clearly for an array of anti-Israel (and anti-U.S.) forces to use Syria much as Iran used Lebanon: as a place to cultivate and command terrorist proxies against the West.

The idea that Israel is just randomly striking Syrian territory to flex its muscles is absurd. As is the idea, increasingly voiced in some quarters, that Israel wants to sabotage Syrian state stability—as if what Israel longs for is more instability in the region.

Israel doesn’t want a power vacuum south of Damascus and it doesn’t want Syria to become a Turkish puppet regime. So it is taking steps to secure its interests, as any responsible state would, by shoring up its allies and its defenses. The fact that this is controversial while the post-Oct. 7 war is extant is childish and, frankly, hypocritical: One does not hear much caterwauling about Turkey securing its interests in Syria.

Israelis would love it if none of this were necessary. Until that happens, Israel is navigating the world as it is.

Trump's Home Run: Neutralize Hamas, Qatar, Houthis, Iran

"[Iran's] Operation True Promise 3 will be carried out at the right time, with precision, and in a scale sufficient to destroy Israel and raze Tel Aviv and Haifa to the ground." — Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Major General Ebrahim Jabbari, February 2025.

A Trump decision to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a Foreign Terrorist Organization would go a long way toward making it difficult for its many offshoots to continue supporting it.

Even more urgent is for the Trump administration to neutralize Hamas, Qatar, Iran, Hezbollah and the Houthis -- to limit their ability to keep on destabilizing the entire region, as well as to curtail the Houthis' stranglehold on global shipping. The policy is certainly congruent with the long-held American principle of maintaining the international freedom of navigation.

The move would also send a warning to China not to continue its aggressive effort to gain control of the world's critical sea lines near Taiwan, Australia, the Philippines and Japan.

New batch of EoZ cartoons and memes (12 of them!)

It's been month since I last did these...

This one went viral. Hundreds of thousands of views.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Nearly one in three Democrats and nearly half of young people support Hamas over Israel. Let that sink in.

Yesterday I wrote about a Gallup poll that showed historic highs for Democratic support of Palestinians and record low support for Israel.

In case you think that this is simply sympathy for Gaza - it isn't.

A new Harvard/Harris poll shows a great deal of sympathy for Hamas - not Palestinians, Hamas - among Democrats, with 31% more supportive of Hamas than Israel.

Among those aged 18-24, 46% support Hamas over Israel.

These results aren't an indication that the respondents truly support Islamist terror, or rape as a weapon of war, or burning babies alive. Most of these people would not say that they support ISIS or Al Qaeda.

Much of this is just ignorance - blindly associating Hamas with all Palestinians and therefore showing sympathy that way.

But a significant part of these results point to how antisemitism works today.

No one outside the far-Right wants to admit that they are antisemitic. But Jew-hatred still exists and is growing quickly, as we see in the huge increase of hate crimes against Jews. Its increase is directly tied to how people perceive the Gaza war. Denying that is denying reality.

People who define themselves as liberal cannot handle the cognitive dissonance that they also hate Jews. They are progressive - they consider antisemitism is a right wing thing, a thing of the past. They are convinced that they only hate Israel, not Jews.

But when asked the question more elliptically, for many of them, antisemitism shines through.

The poll question was constructed as an either-or choice - which side do you support more? So the conclusion is that many of the Democratic and young respondents hate Israel more than they hate terrorists murdering Jews.

Yes, there are some on the fringes who deny Hamas atrocities. But a significant number know about them, and would nominally condemn them - except when they are against Jews. In that case, terror becomes justified and the Jews deserve to be stabbed, shot, burned, raped and kidnapped.

They would deny up and down that they are antisemitic. But if the exact same question was asked between terror group and every other country on Earth, no one would support the terrorists. No one supported ISIS over Iraq or Syria no matter how bad those regimes were. No one supports Islamist insurgents in Egypt.

Only when the terrorists attack Jews do they become sympathetic.

One they become sympathetic, then the newly-converted supporters of Hamas have to support them all the way.

Who in their right mind could oppose Hamas unconditionally releasing hostages?

Only those people for whom the hostages are considered worse than their kidnappers.

This is what modern antisemitism looks like.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

It is no secret that Al Jazeera uses its English media to promote a much different narrative than it does in Arabic. In English, Palestinians are victims, in Arabic they are victors; in English, Islam means peace, while in Arabic, Islam means vengeance and violence.

The dichotomy within the same source is never more stark than with how it approaches Ramadan, the Muslim holy month that starts this evening.

Last year, Al Jazeera waxed poetic in its Ramadan article, written by a Chicago Islamic leader, "Ramadan and the power of faith and unity."

What if faith can influence a billion people and inspire them to feed the hungry after fasting the whole day?

What if religious conviction can cause a community to become more altruistic and give to welfare and charity for a month?

What if the practice of faith can inspire a billion people to become forgiving of each other’s mistakes?

What if a noble civilisation of over a billion people can dispel the myth that human beings cannot live without violence, looting, robbing and killing?

In Arabic, Al Jazeera's version of Ramadan gives an entirely different message - one that celebrates violence and killing.

Already this year it calls Ramadan the "month of resistance." It makes clear what "resistance" means - Palestinian terror attacks. "The Palestinian resistance led by the Al-Qassam Brigades did what it had to: resist the occupier even if it led to martyrdom. The heroes of the resistance went to their deaths with their heads held high because it was their duty."

In 2024, 2022 and 2021, Al Jazeera published and celebrated lengthy lists of Palestinian attacks on Jewish civilians in Ramadan. Excerpts:

April 7, 2022: The young man, Raad Hazem (29 years old), left his home in the Jenin camp (northern West Bank) until he reached Dizengoff Street. Hazem opened fire on those in the street, leaving behind 5 dead and 6 wounded.

In 2016, the resistance carried out 10 suicide operations, ranging from shooting to stabbing, killing 6 Israelis and wounding 15 others. The most serious of these operations occurred when Muhammad and Khalil Makhamreh, cousins from the town of Yatta in the West Bank, entered the Sarona shopping mall near the headquarters of the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv and opened fire on settlers, killing 4 and wounding 40.

In 2015, a shooting took place near the Dolev settlement, near Ramallah, at point-blank range, targeting a settler’s car. One settler was killed and another was injured.

In 2010, resistance fighters opened fire on a settler’s car in Hebron, killing four of them.

In 2002, resistance fighters Akram al-Hanini, Walaa Surur, and Dhiab al-Muhtaseb carried out an operation against settlers from Kiryat Arba near Hebron, killing 12 soldiers and settlers and wounding 18 others, 4 of them seriously. In the same year, the martyr Sami Abu Halil from Hebron detonated his explosive belt on Mexico Street in Jerusalem, killing 12 Israelis and wounding 47 others.

Ramadan 2001 was crowded with resistance operations. The martyr Maher Habesha from Nablus carried out a bombing operation on a Haifa bus, killing 16 Israelis and wounding 55 others. When his comrades brought him breakfast, he refused, saying, “I will break my fast tonight in heaven.”

Also in Ramadan 2001, the two martyrs Osama Bahar and Nabil Halabiya carried out their double operation against an Israeli army site in Jerusalem, killing 11 Israelis and wounding 190 others. [It was the Ben Yehuda Street pedestrian mall - EoZ].

The two resistance fighters Jihad al-Masri and Muslima al-Araj also stormed the “Eli Sinai” settlement north of Gaza, killing an Israeli nuclear scientist and wounding 5 others.

In this sense, Al Jazeera is perfectly aligned with Hamas, which has published its own celebratory lists of Ramadan attacks.

Last year, Islamic Jihad spokesperson Abu Hamza said "Let Ramadan be a month of terror for the occupation." It was reported in Israeli and Arab media, but virtually ignored in Europe and America.

Because quoting Muslims saying Ramadan is about murdering Jews would be Islamophobic.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The Harvard Crimson reports:

Paul O’Brien, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said military action is not a legally sufficient answer to accusations of genocide at a Harvard Law School talk Wednesday afternoon.

An HLS alum, O’Brien said he came to the Law School to preview a forthcoming article in the Harvard Human Rights Journal about laws surrounding genocide and their application to Israel’s war in Gaza.

“There can be multiple intents. A military actor who has legitimate military goals can intend the genocide in order to accomplish those goals,” O’Brien said at the talk, hosted by the HHRJ. “It can be a means to a military end.”

Based on this reading of human rights law, O’Brien and Amnesty International published a report in December that argued Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza.

...According to O’Brien, Amnesty eventually established that Israel had “a disregard, and credibly, an intention to destroy the civilian population” in Gaza — a conclusion that allowed the organization to publish its findings.

I don't know if students were allowed to ask questions at the lecture. but here are the questions that should have been asked - that would have demolished O'Brien's entire talk.

1. Isn't it true that Amnesty's report used a definition of genocide that was not accepted by the majority of judges of the International Court of Justice? Your report called the ICJ opinion of what constitutes intent to be "overly cramped." In fact, Ireland asked the ICJ to broaden its own definition of intent of genocide when it joined South Africa's case. If you are using a non-standard definition, how can you declare Israel's actions to be genocide as lex lata, the law as it exists?

2. Isn't it true that Amnesty staffers internally and informally called the report the "genocide report" before it was even written, meaning that Amnesty intended to twist the facts - and ignore others - to reach a preconceived conclusion? This was stated in a letter by Jewish Amnesty staffers, including some senior employees. Are they lying?

In fact, according to your Harvard speech as reported, you said that the determination of Israel's intent to perform genocide was "a conclusion that allowed the organization to publish its findings" - does that mean that you wouldn't have published the report if it hadn't concluded that Israel was guilty of genocide? Wasn't this a predetermined conclusion?

3. The report in the Crimson says you hoped your talk would confirm the value of 'free expression' and 'reasonable debate' on difficult issues. Amnesty Israel - who, curiously, were not involved in researching or writing the report despite their obvious expertise in the region - wrote a very serious, reasoned and detailed response refuting the accusation of genocide. Instead of answering Amnesty Israel's points, Amnesty suspended the Israeli branch of the organization, saying that dissenting opinions threaten the "operational coherence" of the organization. How does that fit with your stated ideals of "free expression" and "reasonable debate"? Amnesty shut down the debate!

Moreover, Amnesty justified this suspension by invoking Article 34 of the Statute of Amnesty International. Yet Article 34 does not say it must protect the "operational coherence" of Amnesty, it says it must protect the "operation" of Amnesty - a completely different thing. Did Amnesty make up a new rule just to expel the meddlesome Israeli Jews?

As far as I can tell, the speech at Harvard does not even attempt to answer the many serious criticisms of the Amnesty report. O'Brien simply restates what the report says.

That is not the debate that O'Brien claims to value. On the contrary, Amnesty has done everything it can to shut down any dissenting opinions within its power. It acts exactly like the dictators that it is supposed to be exposing.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

02/27 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: A vile equivalence; Trauma Envy and the Campus Intifada; BBC admits Hamas family was paid for Gaza documentary; Barnard Admin Surrenders To Student Radicals

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: A vile equivalence

Noa Argamani, the Israeli hostage who was rescued from Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces last June, addressed the U.N. Security Council this week. She spoke about being abducted into a “world of torture and humiliation,” where she tried to comfort two small girls who had been dragged with her into the darkness of the Hamas tunnels and where she saw her fellow hostage, Itai Svirsky, brutally murdered.

Her boyfriend, Avinatan Or, who was dragged into the Gaza Strip with her, remains in captivity. Of the 63 remaining hostages, 36 are believed to be dead.

Argamani’s raw testimony was a necessary corrective to the unconscionable indifference in the halls of the United Nations to Israeli suffering and its shocking embrace of Israel’s genocidal attackers.

Shortly afterward, however, someone else addressed the Security Council. This was Daniel Levy, the British former Israeli peace negotiator and now president of the U.S./Middle East Project think tank.

Referring to Kfir and Ariel Bibas, the murdered Israeli infant hostages who were buried in Israel in heartbreaking scenes the following day, he said: “A minute of silence for each of the Bibas children would be appropriate, as would a minute of silence for each of the more than 18,000 Palestinian children murdered in Israel’s devastation of Gaza. That silence would extend to over 300 hours.”

What a breathtakingly vile comment. Hamas terrorists murdered 9-month-old Kfir and 4-year-old Ariel with their bare hands and mutilated their bodies to conceal the crime. How could anyone equate this monstrous depravity with the fate of children in Gaza killed unintentionally in a war to defend Israel against genocide—killed, moreover, because Hamas uses Gaza’s children as human shields and cannon fodder?

Moreover, the 18,000 figure is merely a claim by Hamas that notoriously makes no distinction between dead civilians and combatants, has reclassified numerous adult fatalities as children and includes as “children” teenagers who serve as Hamas gunmen.

Worse, Levy said all this in front of Argamani herself. As she stared at him, Levy claimed sanctimoniously that it was “important to hear your testimony of an awful experience to which no human should ever be subjected”—and then went on to diminish that experience by equating it with a stream of distortions and unverified Hamas propaganda claims.

He hailed as an equivalent victim Dr. Hassan abu Safiyeh, director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, who he said was still being held in detention by the Israelis and mistreated.

The IDF, however, raided that hospital because it was a Hamas hub under the terrorist group’s control. One terrorist arrested there admitted to the IDF that abu Safiyeh had been “orchestrating the terror and Hamas activities within the compound.”

Seth Mandel: Trauma Envy and the Campus Intifada

In other words—and this is the key point in understanding the escalation—these students at Columbia University and other expensive universities have been the most pampered young adults in the history of the universe. Though of course there will be individual exceptions, as a group these folks have been handed more and asked to do less than anyone who walked the earth before them.

The students themselves unintentionally acknowledged this generality last night. After they left their occupation, many of them made a circle outside and cultishly chanted a bunch of slogans, including: “We have nothing to lose but our chains.”

I don’t know how people who have actually been kept in chains would feel about this kind of appropriation by the ultra-privileged, but it tells us something important about the mindset of the comfortable elite: They find themselves and their lives utterly boring.

These activists’ anger at previous generations isn’t for withholding opportunity, it’s for the opportunity itself. There are two kinds of Columbia students who talk unironically about losing their chains: those who know they are privileged and pretend otherwise as a form of escapism, and those who actually think being told to go to class at their expensive private institution is what everybody in history has meant by “chains.”

In the past, this kind of progressive trauma envy took the form of poverty tourism. A trip to Cuba to gawk in admiration at the victims of your own ideology, before getting on a plane and going back to your Manhattan apartment, has long been practically a rite of passage, the closest thing the American left has to a bar mitzvah.

But the mixing in of Palestinian nationalism adds a new and escalatory element to this worldview.

Palestinian advocacy too often teeters into trauma envy. The most obvious example is the obsession with claiming that Jews are perpetrating a Holocaust against Arabs in the Middle East, a lie whose overuse is entirely intentional on the part of anti-Zionists. Holocaust envy has only become more explicit: We see Palestinian journalists and activists calling themselves a “Holocaust survivor” or saying “everyone in Gaza is a Holocaust survivor” and declaring they “will proudly wear the Palestinian Keffiyeh to work, especially during the Palestinian Holocaust, just as I would have worn the Star of David during the Jewish Holocaust.”

To underline the point, “pro-Palestinian” activists in the West routinely vandalize Holocaust memorials, protest Holocaust museums, and fetishize the appropriation of Anne Frank to an uncomfortable degree. Last month, the UK’s Islamic Human Rights Commission went so far as to explicitly say Holocaust commemorations that do not include ceremonies for Gaza should be boycotted.

But it isn’t just the Holocaust. In the early part of the 20th century, Arab leaders openly acknowledged the Jewish connection to the land. When that morphed into Palestinian nationalism, suddenly it became obligatory to deny that history and to perform a sort of Replacement Theology whose writers embarked on an ambitious appropriation project: The Wandering Jew became “The Wandering Palestinian,” Palestinian rewrites of iconic novels like The City Without Jews appeared, Golda Meir’s quotes were repurposed against the Jews.

Trauma envy, a direct outgrowth of progressive grievance culture, is warping minds at a rapid clip, spreading far and wide. But like most other forms of anti-Semitism, it’s just easier to see at Columbia.

The truth about ‘No Other Land’

The Oscar-nominated documentary “No Other Land” portrays the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the microcosm of a collection of Palestinian Arab settlements called Masafer Yatta. In that cluster of makeshift villages, the film gives the impression that impoverished Palestinians confront the oppression of Israeli military demolition crews in an existential struggle to prevent the destruction of Palestinian homes, the displacement of their people and the theft of their land. But ultimately, we are told, the righteous Palestinian resistance survives.

The reality of Masafer Yatta is altogether different. The history of that area exemplifies how Palestinians illegally seize plots of land in Judea and Samaria, and how Israel lawfully defends against these incursions.

The 1920 San Remo Treaty and 1922 Palestine Mandate, under the supervision of the League of Nations, created the state that became Israel. The West Bank, known historically as Judea and Samaria, was part of that allocated territory. These instruments of international law were justified by widespread recognition that the designated land was the ancestral homeland of the Jews.

The State of Israel emerged in 1948 and acceded to membership in the United Nations a year later. By that point, Jordan had illegally invaded and occupied the eastern portion of Jerusalem and land on the west bank of the Jordan River. However, in the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel liberated those territories from Jordanian occupation. Israel then validly applied its sovereign governance to eastern Jerusalem but decided to forego implementing its sovereign right to the so-called West Bank area pending negotiation of peace deals with its Arab rivals.

The Palestinians never had a state that could be occupied. They never even had a treaty or comparable agreement granting them legal ties to eastern Jerusalem, the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. On the contrary, the original 1964 Palestine National Charter of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) expressly disclaimed Palestinian rights to those three domains because they were occupied by PLO ally countries: Jordan and Egypt.

Israel and the Palestinians began an effort to make peace in 1993 when they signed the first of six agreements known as the Oslo Accords. In the area called the West Bank, the accords awarded Israel interim control over a territory labeled “Area C,” and granted the Palestinians interim control of Area A. Area B was marked as shared.

Masafer Yatta lies in Area C, which places it under Israeli civilian and security control.

About 200,000 Palestinians reside in Area C. Some of them live in Masafer Yatta. But in 1999, when Palestinians erected an additional batch of shacks in Masafer Yatta, they violated the Oslo Accords by failing to obtain building permits from Israel’s Civil Administration.

Palestinian Arabs have orchestrated many such unlicensed land grabs in Area C. Using slapdash combinations of cement blocks, mud bricks, corrugated metal sheets, plastic tarps and portable electric generators, they create chess pawns strategically positioned to block the buildout of Israeli communities and enlarge the pretense of “Palestinian land.” The decision to add Palestinian settlements in Masafer Yatta was especially provocative because that barren expanse had been classified in the 1980s as an Israeli military training zone.