Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, March 14, 2025

03/14 Links Pt1: Israel: Hamas offer to free hostage, four bodies is ‘psychological warfare’; It’s time to abolish the UN’s pro-Hamas bureaucracy

From Ian:

Bernard-Henri Lévy: ‘The war against Hamas and Russia is one battle against the same evil’

The greatest French-Jewish intellectual of our time has been trudging through the snow of Pokrovsk, an under-fire city near Ukraine’s eastern front.

It’s a dangerous place to go. But big thinkers, and Bernard-Henri Lévy is certainly one of those, know how to rise above the fear. And in the interview, it becomes clear that the conflict and its implications for Israel and the newly fractured West is at the top of his mind.

For Lévy – who was in Ukraine to chair a film festival, visit the front line and write it up for French and US newspapers – Israel’s war against Hamas and Kyiv’s struggle against Russia are two sides of the same coin: it is the free, democratic world against tyranny and evil. For this reason, he says, he is “terribly worried. You have here two fragile democracies. Two twin fights that should be fought together.

“That worries me: the fact that the US is separating the two struggles. They are thus playing into the hands of our common enemies.”

Lévy, who has been one of the key European voices speaking up for both Ukraine after the 2022 invasion and for Israel in the wake of October 7, has a bleak assessment of the direction of travel for European security.

“We know that Donald Trump’s America will not protect us if one of our countries is attacked. The comfort of the post-Second World War [era] is over. We must defend ourselves and build a European army.

“Europe may have done ‘a lot’ to support Ukraine. But has it done enough? No. Because doing ‘enough’ would have been to help Zelensky defeat Putin. We helped him resist, not win. We ensured that Ukraine was saved without, however, trying to bring about the collapse of Russia.”

What is more, for Lévy, Judaism – as a foundation stone of Western values – may well be in Vladimir Putin’s sights.

“He will destabilise Europe. Ukraine is, for him, only a step on a long road that ends in the weakening of Europe. That is not in doubt. Personal vengeance against countries deemed responsible for the collapse of the USSR? Hatred of Judaism and Latin Christianity? Hatred of the liberal model that remains an ideal in this part of Europe? All of this is part of the long-term war Putin has declared on the European Union and its values.”

Netanyahu compares Purim story to fight against today’s ‘Persian axis’

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu participated in the traditional reading of the Book of Esther during the holiday of Purim at the National Police Academy in Beit Shemesh, west of Jerusalem, on Thursday evening.

Addressing the police officers, the prime minister drew a comparison to the story of Purim, in which the Jewish people were saved from annihilation in Persia, now present-day Iran, to the modern Jewish state’s conflict with the Islamic Republic.

“Two thousand five hundred years later an enemy of the Jewish people arose in that land. He, too, wants to destroy and annihilate the seed of the Jews from the face of the earth,” Netanyahu said.

“Heroes like you have arisen—the heroes of our people. And with stratagem, heroism and courage we turned the tables upside down, and we are breaking the Persian axis,” he said, referring to Iran.

“That’s what’s happening these days. If history repeats itself, at least the people are the same people. This is the new miracle of Purim. This miracle is thanks to you; thanks to our heroic soldiers, our heroic fighters, the policemen and women, who stopped the disaster with endless heroism, and fought back,” he said, referring to the actions of the police on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led terrorists invaded the western Negev.

“We won our state; we won it with you. I am sure that each and every one of you will do your duty in performing the new miracle of Purim in our days. Happy Purim to all of you,” Netanyahu said.

It’s time to abolish the UN’s pro-Hamas bureaucracy

We are currently experiencing the worst surge of antisemitism in living memory. But that realization shouldn’t lull us into thinking that the world prior to October 2023 was a relative bed of roses for the Jewish people. From the end of the Second World War until the Hamas massacre in Israel, there were myriad episodes and events which underlined that hatred and suspicion of Jews as a collective did not die out with the Nazis.

Later this year, we’ll mark the 50th anniversary of one of the most heinous of those outbursts, whose fallout we are still living with: the passage by the U.N. General Assembly of Resolution 3379 of Nov. 10, 1975, which determined that Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jews, was a form of racism.

Israel and its allies have eight months to decide whether that anniversary will be marked as a posthumous victory or as a day of mourning.

Sure, one could argue that victory already came in 1991 when, in the wake of Iraq’s expulsion from occupied Kuwait and the consequent U.S. attempt to convene regional peace negotiations, American diplomacy—which, in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, was without a serious rival—secured the General Assembly’s repeal of its 1975 resolution. But that, sadly, was a fleeting victory for two reasons.

Firstly, the anti-Zionist ideology underpinning the resolution persists. Orchestrated by the Soviet Union, Resolution 3379 denounced Zionism as a “threat to world peace and security.” It drew an explicit linkage between Israel and the former white minority regimes in South Africa and Zimbabwe to demonstrate its charges of “racism” and “apartheid.” Those charges will sound eerily familiar to Jewish college students now weathering the pro-Hamas onslaught, all born long after 1975.

Secondly, while the General Assembly annulled Resolution 3379, the pro-Palestinian bureaucracy created within the United Nations at exactly the same time also persists. As a result, the world body still behaves as though “Zionism is racism” remains on the books. If the November anniversary is to carry any message of hope for Israelis and Jews, then it’s imperative to tackle and dismantle that bureaucracy, and its associated propaganda operation.

In the 18 months that have lapsed since the Hamas pogrom in Israel, we have seen that bureaucracy in action. UNRWA—the agency originally created in 1949 to deal with the first generation of Arab refugees from Israel’s War of Independence—has been a mainstay of anti-Israel messaging, unphased by the unmasking of dozens of its employees as Hamas operatives. The U.N. Human Rights Council, which dedicates an entire agenda item to Israel alone at its thrice-yearly deliberations while ignoring serial violators like Russia, Iran and North Korea, last week released a litany of fabricated accusations in the guise of a “report” that amounted to what Israel called a “blood libel.” One of the more noxious Israel-haters on the scene, Francesca Albanese, continues to serve as the U.N. special rapporteur on the “Occupied Palestinian Territories.”

Haman's wife Zeresh is a fascinating figure in the Megillah. When Haman says how much he hates Mordechai the Jew, she jumps in and says exactly what should be done: execute Mordechai, publicly, as a spectacle in front of the entire kingdom, and teach all his people a lesson.

As soon as Haman's fortune starts to fade, Zeresh suddenly has a different insight, seeming to say that the Jews are going to win and Haman will lose.

Zeresh is a skilled opportunist, sensing which way the wind is blowing and trying to take advantage.

But while Haman was not shy about his hatred of Jews and his desire to wipe them out, Zeresh hides her opinion behind plausible deniability. She hates the Jews as much as her husband, but she lets him appear to take the lead. She can frame the gallows as only to punish a man for not following a royal decree, not as an act against all Jews. She can then say that she supported the Jews all along. You can just hear her cry, "No guilt by association! I had nothing to do with Haman's plans!"

It is the sort of hair-splitting justifications we hear today: "Just because the only country I am obsessed with demonizing happens to be filled with Jews doesn't mean I'm an antisemite!"

But history judges Zeresh as just another Jew hater. The Shoshanat Yaakov poem sung after the Megillah is unequivocal: Cursed is Zeresh. Her equivocations and explanations and excuses don't stand up to the facts.

Just like today's "anti-Zionist" antisemites.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The @WashingtonPost Khalil article is a textbook example of media bias: cherry picking "experts" to come to a wrong conclusion

The Washington Post's official slogan is "Democracy Dies in Darkness." Outrageously, the newspaper actively contributes to the darkness it claims to dispel.

It writes, "Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest violates First Amendment protections, lawyers say." The article is written by the Post's Sarah Ellison, their "Democracy Reporter."

The article quotes four lawyers. Jeffrey Pyle, First Amendment specialist at Prince Lobel, says Khalil's detention is “as clear a First Amendment violation as any case I’ve ever seen.” Sonja West, First Amendment professor at (University of Georgia Law School, asserts the government “disappeared” Khalil for his speech. Stephen Vladeck, constitutional law professor at Georgetown, labels it a “core” First Amendment case, not fringe. The fourth lawyer quoted is Baher Azmy, from the Center for Constitutional Rights, who is on Khalil’s defense team.

Sarah Ellison started her research from the premise that this is a First Amendment case and only interviewed lawyers with a First Amendment focus.

They didn't interview a single expert on immigration law.

As I've shown, a strong case can be made that Khalil should be deported under existing immigration law because he is a representative of a political, social, or other group that endorses or espouses terrorist activity. No one can claim he is not a representative of Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) and it is difficult to argue that CUAD does not endorse or espouse terrorist activity. They handed out "newspapers" with an ad showing Hamas embarking on their October 7 pogrom saying "Victory to the Resistance" and they praised the terror attack in Tel Aviv last October that murdered seven civilians.

There are other reasons that examining this case through the lens of the First Amendment is false. Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained this on Wednesday:

When you come to the United States as a visitor, which is what a visa is – which is how this individual entered this country, on a visitor’s visa – as a visitor, we can deny you that visa. When you tell us when you apply, ‘Hi, I’m trying to get into the United States on a student visa. I am a big supporter of Hamas, a murderous, barbaric group that kidnaps children, that rapes teenage girls, that takes hostages, that allows them to die in captivity, that returns more bodies than live hostages,’ if you tell us that you are in favor of a group like this and if you tell us when you apply for your visa, ‘and by the way, I intend to come to your country as a student and rile up all kinds of anti-Jewish student, antisemitic activities, I intend to shut down your universities,’ if you told us all these things when you applied for your visa, we would deny your visa....If you actually end up doing that once you’re in this country on such a visa, we will revoke it, and if you end up having a green card, not citizenship, but a green card as a result of that visa while you’re here doing those activities, we’re going to kick you out. It’s as simple as that. This is not about free speech.

It is journalistic malpractice to characterize this as a free speech issue in an article published a day after the Secretary of State explicitly says why it isn't.

Moreover, the Post also ignores reports of Khalil’s national security investigation, as Rubio notes.

There are other legal issues even beyond Rubio's and my earlier points that transcend free speech. For example, last November, CUAD handed out flyers that, according to some, may be considered material support for a terror organization:

A coalition of anti-Israel student groups at Columbia University distributed pamphlets just outside of the school's Morningside Heights gates encouraging attendees to "get involved" with the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, an anti-Semitic organization recently sanctioned in the United States for providing material support to terrorists. In doing so, the students themselves may have provided support to terrorists, one expert told the Washington Free Beacon.

Members of Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) distributed the pamphlets—which were labeled "CUAD's Guide to Operational Security" and listed an email address associated with CUAD's "collective defense team"—just outside of the campus gates on Tuesday afternoon, sources said.

Similarly, last March, CUAD hosted Khaled Barakat, a leader of the US-designated terror group PFLP, who praised airplane hijackings while his wife from Samidoun praised Hamas tunnels and the October 7 attack itself, as this video shows:

This may all constitute material support for terror, a crime. While some claim this is protected speech, Holder (2010) ruled that coordinated advocacy for a designated terror organization, like platforming a PFLP leader, constitutes material support, not free expression. It is not a slam-dunk but it is definitely a legal issue - one that the Washington Post's "legal experts" completely ignore.

In fact, instead of even noting CUAD's clear and unambiguous support for the most heinous terror attacks, the Post sanitizes them by saying things like "The First Amendment protects the right of citizens and noncitizens alike to criticize government policies and positions. " This is a little worse than criticizing the US government - it is a celebration of, and arguably a call for, murdering Jews.

This indicates that the article is not journalism - it is propaganda that is meant to hide the truth, not shine a light in the darkness.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

It occurred to me during Thursday night's Megillah reading that, personality-wise, King Achashverosh (Ahasuerus) is a lot like Donald Trump.

If you disrespect him, you an get your head (metaphorically) chopped off.

To be in his inner circle you have to not only fawn over him but also you have to know exactly how.

Once you gain his favor, he trusts your judgment and let you act largely independently.

Also, for those he trusts, they can gain a great deal financially.

If you cross him, his punishment is immediate and overwhelming.

He will eagerly move assets from his perceived enemies to his friends.

Finally, he really loves to send out executive orders to the nation that cannot be easily be rescinded while he is in charge.

UPDATE: One more hit me duuring the morning reading of the Megillah: They both sponsored beauty pageants!

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

03/13 Links Pt2: Phillips: Democrats’ Israel betrayal; Cardinal Dolan: The Evils of Antisemitism; Peter Beinart’s bewildering path; Lawyer for Mahmoud Khalil Repped Al Qaeda Members

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Democrats’ Israel betrayal: How the party flipped on its staunchest ally

The Palestinian cause has become for all liberal progressives the must-have badge of moral worth. But this cause is based on the demonisation of Israel.

This poison has infected the universities. Overwhelmingly dominated by liberal progressives, they have turned a blind eye to or actively connived at the hate marches, demonstrations and encampments that have turned so many of them into crucibles of Jew-hatred.

Rather than come to the defence of Jewish students running this gauntlet of hate, Democrats actually reinforced it.

In the face of the sometimes violent “occupations” of US campuses that consistently called for the end of Israel, President Joe Biden said the protesters “have a point,” while Vice President Kamala Harris said of one protester accusing Israel of genocide: “Listen, what he’s talking about, it’s real.”

Trump has vowed to deport foreign students and imprison “agitators” involved in “illegal protests”. The administration announced last week it’s rescinding $400 million in federal grants to Columbia, accusing it of failing to fight antisemitism on campus.

This is extremely welcome. But generations have been indoctrinated with propaganda demonising Israel and sanitising the exterminatory Palestinian cause.

And violence and intimidation have increasingly become tolerated over a range of issues such as Black Lives Matter and Antifa as well as Gaza.

These ideologies are all anti-West and anti-America. As I write in my new book, The Builder’s Stone: How Jews and Christians Built the West — and Why Only They Can Save It, Jewish values are at the very heart of western and American culture.

Concepts at the core of democracy — limited government and the rule of law founded in the consent of the people — were introduced to the world by the Hebrew Bible.

They were explicitly drawn upon by America’s Founding Fathers when they laid down the principles of the US Constitution and defined the American nation. That nation and its foundational values have been under sustained assault by liberal universalists led by the Democratic Party.

Scratch an opponent of Israel, and you’ll find someone who believes the worst of the West and rubbishes its institutions. Scratch a protester against the West, and you’ll find an enemy of Israel.

The war against Israel is a war against the West; and the war against the West is a war against the Jews.

Michael Oren: Our choice between ‘never again’ and ‘again’

Israel declared its independence in 1948, but 77 years later, has largely forfeited it. From American leaders participating in our war cabinet meetings to our dependence on foreign arms and military aid, Israel has hemorrhaged sovereignty. Though we will remain a small nation navigating between superpowers, we must nevertheless strive to achieve the maximum degree of freedom in our decision-making and our ability to implement it. No longer must Israeli citizens feel compelled to appeal to a president to do what their own government appears incapable. Israeli officials must work to regain the basic trust of our people, even those who oppose their policies, and their respect for the democratic system. We must once again take pride in, and zealously preserve, our sovereignty.

Independence must reign not only in Israel’s foreign relations, but, even more pressingly, in our domestic affairs. South of Beersheva — 62 percent of the country — there is minimal enforcement of Israeli law. Gun and drug trafficking, illegal building, are rampant. An additional 13% of the country’s population, the ultra-Orthodox, also rejects the state’s authority, if not its very legitimacy, refuses to serve in the IDF, and to provide a basic modern education for its youth. In Judea and Samaria, a minority of Israeli citizens flagrantly, and occasionally violently, defy Israeli law. Just as a state that does not safeguard its external freedom cannot fully defend that of its inhabitants, neither does a state that cannot govern itself retain the resilience necessary for national defense.

Resilience — khosen, in Hebrew — is essentially a prerequisite for keeping any promise of “Never again.” As captured Hamas documents agonizingly attest, the political divisions within Israeli society prior to October 7 rendered it vulnerable to large-scale attack. While democratically elected governments have every right to pursue their chosen policies, they also have the duty to maintain a basic degree of unity. America might be able to afford extreme political polarization; not so, Israel. Thus, though almost all of the security chiefs forum’s two dozen participants are outspoken critics of the government, the government must heed the forum, which warned that further efforts to weaken judicial checks on elected officials would again weaken Israel’s resilience. Unlike the United States, where the president is also the commander-in-chief, Israeli leaders cannot simply order Israelis to fight; rather, they must convince them. Conserving those powers of persuasion is critical for the state’s security and its ability to ensure “Never again.”

Seeking realistic peace options with our neighbors, strengthening our bonds with world Jewry, rebuilding ties with nations alienated by the war — all are essential if we are serious about averting “Again.” We must work to narrow what has become one of the world’s widest income gaps and to make our minority communities part of the Israeli story. Most crucially, we must struggle relentlessly against the sin’at chinam — gratuitous hate — that plagued our society prior to October 7. There is a dark and direct connection between the fighting that broke out around the Yom Kippur services in Dizengoff Square on September 25, 2023, and the catastrophe that befell us less than two weeks later.

The choice is ours. Only we can determine whether “Never again” remains merely a declaration and a vision that the state will stay ill-equipped to uphold. The founders of 1948 made a pledge and went to vast lengths — fighting off invaders, absorbing immigrants, forging a nation — to fulfill it. We now must do the same. We alone can decide if the next picture presented in the Oval Office shows, alongside those of Holocaust survivors, the images not of the defenseless victims of terror, but of Israelis standing indomitable, unified, and secure.

Cardinal Dolan: The Evils of Antisemitism

The Church’s stance on antisemitism is unequivocal. Our Savior was a faithful Jew killed by the Roman occupiers of Judea. He died for the sins of all mankind. According to our faith, Jesus brought about a New Covenant that exists side-by-side with the Old Covenant between God and the Jewish people. As Pope Saint John Paul II often observed, “God’s covenant with the Jews is unbreakable.”

We also believe that every human life is created in the image of God, regardless of race, religion, or ethnicity. As Pope Saint John Paul II said, “The Church rejects racism in any form as a denial of the image of the Creator inherent in every human being.”

John Paul II’s words do not exist in isolation. In the Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, also known as Nostra aetate or In Our Time, that seminal document of the Second Vatican Council, the Church tells us to decry “hatred, persecutions, displays of antisemitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.”

In 1986, John Paul II reiterated that statement while visiting the Great Synagogue of Rome. “I repeat,” he said, “ ‘By anyone’.”

Fourteen years later, when he visited the Western Wall in Jerusalem, he left behind this prayer: “God of our fathers, you chose Abraham and his descendants to bring your Name to the Nations: We are deeply saddened by the behavior of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer, and asking your forgiveness we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant.”

Pope Benedict XVI, John Paul II’s successor, likewise reaffirmed the incompatibility of antisemitism and Christianity.

“The rulers of the Third Reich wanted to crush the entire Jewish people, to cancel it from the register of the peoples of the earth. . . . Deep down, those vicious criminals. . . wanted to kill God,” Benedict XVI said while visiting Auschwitz in 2006.

“By destroying Israel, by the Shoah, they ultimately wanted to tear up the taproot of the Christian faith and replace it with a faith of their own invention,” he added.

I hope this message is clear enough: Antisemitism is a grave sin, the work of Satan himself. The devil hopes to divide God’s people, to make them fear and eventually hate each other. In rejecting Satan’s lies and empty promises, as Christians are called to do this Lent, in the weeks before Easter—and as our Jewish neighbors prepare for Passover—we renounce his plans to divide the children of Abraham from one another.

Not long after the October 7, 2023 atrocity in Israel, which irrationally unleashed a new viral strain of Jew-hatred, I received a letter from a Jewish mom on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Every morning she would walk her little daughter to school and would smile at her neighbor as that mom walked her two children to the nearby Catholic school. “That Catholic mom must have noted my anxiety and fear those dreadful days after the attack,” the Jewish mom wrote, “because she came up to me and whispered, ‘Why don’t we all walk together?’ ”

For any Jewish people who might be reading this, please know: The Catholic Church stands with you in the struggle against antisemitism. And for those on social media who call themselves Christians but spread hate against Jews, we say that they have become blinded to core tenets of the faith they proclaim; that we are all equal in the eyes of God, that Christianity is a stem that grows off the good olive tree that is the Jewish faith, and that in the words of Pope Francis, “a Christian cannot be an antisemite.”

“Rather,” the Holy Father added, “we are called to commit ourselves to ensure that antisemitism is banned from the human community.”

03/13 Links Pt1: Phillips: The West is facing an Islamic holy war; Navi Pillay’s antisemitic commission of infamy; The International Red Cross: Exposed.

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The West is facing an Islamic holy war

The Palestinian cause is being used as a wedge issue to weaponize Western antisemitism against Israel and the Jews, whose destruction is viewed as an essential front in the wider war against the West, Christianity and the entire non-Islamic world.

In the West itself, this war is being waged by the Muslim Brotherhood—a covert, Sunni Muslim group aiming at global Islamic domination. The Brotherhood shrewdly calibrates its activities to vary between terrorist violence and the subversion of Western societies through immigration and a high birthrate, political entryism and intimidation.

A report published in 2020 by the British think tank Policy Exchange noted that the Brotherhood’s goal is “to capture power in order to make governance more Islamic” and to “seek to mobilize Muslims behind an agenda of communalism, sustained by a narrative of grievance and victimhood, in the service of an ideology that at its heart contests the legitimate foundations of the modern Western state.”

Shia Iran is also intent on Islamizing the rest of the world. In Britain, alarm by the security service over potentially violent Iranian infiltration has reached such heights that all organizations connected to the regime in Tehran are now required to register with British authorities.

Yet even now, the British government refuses to ban the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or the Muslim Brotherhood. Across the West, governments and the public alike persist in a state of lethal timidity and denial.

There have been no massive street demonstrations against the Syrian atrocities. There have been no protests at the massacres of Christians, not even by the church itself. The war to destroy Christianity across Africa and Asia is never even mentioned. The only outrage is against Israel for defending itself against these horrors.

Why is this? In part, it’s through ignorance about the Middle East and Jewish history. In part, it’s antisemitism. In part, it’s the pernicious belief that people with brown or black skins can never be criticized—even when they are slaughtering others with brown or black skins. In part, it’s through simple fear and funk.

It’s also because it busts the narrative about Israeli “colonization” and reveals instead that there is a massive worldwide problem with Islam.

The West won’t accept that it’s facing an Islamic holy war because it believes it can’t win against the world’s 1.8 billion Muslims. So it’s giving up without even putting up a fight, sheltering instead behind the comforting fiction that if Israel behaved differently everything would be absolutely fine.

It needs instead to take off its blinders, join up the dots and fight like Israel to survive.

Ruthie Blum: Navi Pillay’s antisemitic commission of infamy

A report issued on Thursday by the “U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel” is the world body’s latest assault on the Jewish state. And boy is it ever a brutal one.

No surprise there, given that the chairwoman of the pro-Hamas farce is former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay. The 83-year-old South African—who hails from Durban, home of two antisemitic “world conferences on racism”—was appointed to her current post nearly four years ago. That was when the commission was established by the U.N. Human Rights Council for the purpose of concocting a report to demonize Israel.

This aim, though transparent, wasn’t spelled out in Resolution S-30/1, adopted at the UNHRC “emergency special session” on May 27, 2021. But the gist was obvious.

The U.N.’s excuse at the time was “Operation Guardian of the Walls,” Israel’s 11-day campaign that month to defend its citizens and cities against the thousands of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad rockets launched from Gaza. Experts at distorting reality, Pillay and her team came up with the usual lies about Israeli “violations” of international law and “inherently discriminatory features that made the pursuit of justice for Palestinian victims extremely difficult.”

In sum, the Pillay dossier noted the “strength of prima facie credible evidence available that convincingly indicates that Israel has no intention of ending the occupation, has clear policies for ensuring complete control over the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and is acting to alter the demography through the maintenance of a repressive environment for Palestinians and a favorable environment for Israeli settlers.”

There’s a mendacious mouthful for you. On the other hand, it’s an honest rendition of what the commission has been about since its inception: siding with those whose raison d’être is killing Jews and annihilating the only democracy in the Middle East—one that constantly seeks peace with its Arab neighbors.

It doesn’t take a jihadist rocket scientist to realize this. After all, Hamas’s invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023—with thousands of terrorists and Gazan “civilians” committing the worst atrocities against Jews since the Holocaust—didn’t put a dent in U.N. hostility to the Jewish state.

On the contrary, the mass rape, murder and abduction perpetrated by Islamist barbarians on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah served only to enhance the antisemitism of people like Pillay. The neat trick she came up with to invert reality was to charge Israeli security forces with committing widespread sexual crimes against Palestinians throughout the ongoing war.

According to the commission’s Orwellian inversion, “Israel has increasingly employed sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence against Palestinians as part of a broader effort to undermine their right to self-determination and carried out genocidal acts through the systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities.”

Daniel Pomerantz: The International Red Cross: Exposed.

In a groundbreaking new report, RealityCheck has uncovered specific evidence that the International Committee of the Red Cross (the “ICRC”) habitually violates its duty of neutrality, as well as its obligations under international law: putting Israelis, and the world at large, in danger.

The ICRC is a supposedly neutral, humanitarian body, tasked with protecting civilians in conflict zones. Yet Israelis have long been disturbed by a general sense that the neutral humanitarian body is neither neutral nor humanitarian, especially after its failure to visit Israeli hostages held in Gaza, and its participation in Hamas’s cruel “hostage release ceremonies.” The ICRC vigorously denies the allegations, stating that it has no choice or control over certain situations, and that it fulfills its duty of neutrality throughout. RealityCheck has, for the first time, proven the ICRC’s claims to be incorrect, with specific examples.

In our exclusive report, which is based on specialized OSINT (open source intelligence) and dark web research, we uncovered examples of ICRC officials discussing strategy and communications with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, speaking about the IDF and the Israeli government as an enemy, and prioritizing Palestinians (including terrorists) over Israeli civilians. The following are several notable examples.

Officially, the ICRC meets with armed non-state actors (including terror organizations) for the purpose of visiting captives and providing aid to civilians. The ICRC violated these standards in a meeting on February 18, 2020, when Gilan Devorn, Director of the ICRC in Gaza, his deputy Fayez Al-Aqraa, and ICRC Public Relations and Media Officer Youssef Al-Yaziji, met with senior leaders of the internationally designated terror organization, Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Specifically, the meeting included senior terror operatives Hajj Abu Wasim Al-Wadiyyah, Sheikh Khader Habib, Hajj Abu Hazem Badr, and Sheikh Omar Foura.

According to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Red Cross officials met with the terror leaders to discuss “the role of the International Committee of the Red Cross in pressuring the Israeli occupation” and “efforts to expose the crimes of the Israeli occupation.” The content of this meeting violates ICRC’s standards for appropriate interactions with non-state armed groups.

Another violation of the ICRC’s principles occurred on February 2, 2014, when its spokespeople Masada Saif and Youssef Al-Yaziji met with senior leadership of the internationally designated terror organization, Hamas. The meeting included Hamas’s Director of Public Relations and Government Media Office Ihab Al-Ghusain, who also served with the Hamas Ministry of Interior and National Security. Reportedly, the purpose of the meeting was to coordinate messaging, enhance cooperation, and provide training for journalists. None of these priorities fit the ICRC’s mission of meeting armed groups to further humanitarian goals, provide aid to civilians, or visit captives.

Press Coverage Of Move To Daylight Saving: Israel Steals Hour From Palestinians (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Press Coverage Of Move To Daylight Saving: Israel Steals Hour From Palestinians

Tel Aviv, March 13 - International media continued its customary framing of Middle East events today when reporting on the "spring forward" changing of the clocks this week by calling the onset of the "summertime clock" in the Jewish State an act of depriving Palestinians of sixty minutes of the day.

"Israel Takes Entire Hour Away from Palestinians," read the Reuters headline, while the Associated Press proclaimed, "Palestinians Struggle Under Netanyahu-Imposed Truncation of Morning Daylight Hours."

Al Jazeera devoted an entire six-minute segment to the travails of Palestinians suffering as a result of the onset of Daylight Saving Time in Israel. The segment went into close detail about the challenges "the Resistance" faces, in particular the need to ensure that timers on bombs aimed at Israelis explode at the scheduled time and not, as has occurred at least once in the last thirty years, prematurely and fatally for the bomb's planters.

Columnists in The Guardian called the annual phenomenon "yet another manifestation of the oppression of Israeli Occupation." Owen Jones characterized this year's instantiation of Daylight Saving Time in Israel as "a harsh reminder that Palestinians face genocide not just of their people, but of their very sense of orientation in the world as Israel brutally targets all their foundations of coherent human experience, among them time."

Guest opinion columnist, British Minister of Foreign Affairs David Lammy, dismissed observations that the hour gets "restored" in the fall when clocks are reset to standard time. "The Palestinians exiled in 1948 do not settle for mere compensation in kind," he noted. "Addressing the legitimate grievances of the people of Palestine requires the full dismantling of Zionist power structures, not mere real estate arrangements. Here, too, a simple readjustment of the clock each October does nothing to remedy the trauma, the displacement, and the chronologic cleansing. A full undoing of Zionist time offers us the only way to rectify this historic injustice perpetrated year after year after year."

President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins called on the international community to punish Israel for depriving Palestinians of an hour of morning daylight - even if that hour now occurs in the afternoon or evening instead. "The disposition of Palestinian hours is not for Israel to decide," he intoned. "The United Nations and the global powers must unite to enforce Israel's compliance with basic norms, which it has flouted for far too long, and suffered no adverse consequences. At the very least, we must withhold, uh... all the watches we export there? Someone help me out. What does Ireland produce?"

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

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This academic paper from 2013, Purim in the Public Eye: Leisure, Violence, and Cultural Convergence in the Dutch Atlantic, by Aviva Ben-Ur, is blowing my mind.

The Jewish holiday of Purim as celebrated in Suriname and Curaçao in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was neither a private occasion nor limited to Jews. Instead, Jews and Christians, along with the enslaved and manumitted peoples who outnumbered them, participated in public holiday revelry with abandon. In Suriname, Purim lasted nearly a week and sometimes longer. Crowds of masked Jews, young and old, poured into the streets of Paramaribo, yelling out obscene declarations against Christianity. Surrounding them were bands of field slaves pulling wagons laden with costumed Jews and their domestic bondsmen. Sometimes these bondsmen circled the masquerading Jews, shouting and singing through the streets. Intoxicated Jewish men dressed up as armed soldiers, sailors, and even Maroons and Indians, and women donned men’s clothing, their female slaves following suit. Christians purchased masks from Jewish vendors and disguised themselves, with the suspected intention of attacking their enemies incognito. In Curaçao, meanwhile, Jews stretched out the observance of Purim to eight or ten days. Each year, masked youths paraded through the streets of Willemstad, dancing and singing to the tune of an accompanying band and visiting Jewish homes. The carousing included a magnificent fireworks display, the firecrackers bursting into the air or zigzagging erratically across the ground. Purim in Curaçao, one observer remarked in 1853, “constituted carnival.” In both colonies, not only the Jewish community’s ruling institution, the Mahamad, but also successive colonial governors stepped in to curb such public displays of boisterous commotion and intemperance.

The Jewish community in Suriname from the17th-19th centuries had more autonomy than anywhere else, possibly in the world. They were one third to one half or so of the "white" population (although most were Sephardic) and some established an autonomous territory in the rainforest that later became known as Jodensavanne ("Jews’ Savannah".) They had their own court system for civil affairs and even their own militia in Jodensavanne. This relative power, plus economic power, influenced everyone else - and the Dutch Indies Purim, in some ways a Carnival, reflected that.

If we consider the enthusiastic participation of the enslaved, it is clear that Purim in Suriname from the second quarter of the eighteenth century had become an Afro-Creole festival, akin in many ways to what scholars and many contemporary observers in the Caribbean have understood as a local variety of carnival. Within the synagogue, Purim retained its characteristics as a classical Jewish holiday celebrated by Jews. But once it took to the streets, its ethnic applicability broadened. Its masquerade and crossdressing, the relaxation of social boundaries, and dancing and singing through the streets invited the participation of others... The holiday by the early 1800s had become a joint cultural production with strong West African overtones.

Ben-Ur says that Purim was given outsized importance by the local Jewish community because so many of their members descended from crypto-Jews who had hidden their religion for so long: they identified with Esther, who also hid her religion in the king's palace.

(The image is AI-generated of what Purim might have looked like in Jodensavanne.)

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Teaching hate in Palestinian books for small children

Here is a video that sarcastically goes through a picture book to teach children to hate Israel. I can't add too much to the dry wit of the narrator.

Notice that there is very little here about how wonderful "Palestine" is, instead it is how awful Israel is.

I found a book with a similar theme, written within weeks of October 7 2023: "Eliyas Explains What's Going On in Palestine."

It is available for free online from Muslim Children's Books.

The book teaches Muslim kids that all of Israel is "occupied" and illegal:

Mum began, "Well, in our times, Palestine has been occupied by the state of Israel." ..."It's when the military of a country takes control of the land of another country. Palestine is under the control of the Israeli army, which it doesn't belong to.
..."That's not fair!" I protested, bouncing out of my seat, "Why doesn't someone do something? Are they allowed to do that?"
"Of course Not," Dad shook his head, "the occupation of Palestine has been recognised by international law as an illegal occupation,"

Here is how it describes October 7:

"This time, it was with force." Yeah, a Palestinian shoved an Israeli.

Note that they are saying Israel is committing "genocide" only days into the war.

There are many, many books like these that are brainwashing Muslim children - and many of them are aimed at brainwashing everyone else.

(h/t Jill)

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I found this article quoting London newspapers in 1774 (The Caledonian Mercury, Apr 04, 1774):

From the London Papers, March 29.
Rome, Feb. 26.
A Decree of the Vicar General was published here the 22d inst. forbidding the Jews, under the penalty of corporal punishment, on occasion of their approaching feast of Purim, (called by abuse, their Carnaval,) to wear masks either within or out of their houses, to give feasts, balls, or any other public diversions, of whatever kind, whether Christian or Jewish, to receive into their houses any Christian of any state, sex or condition. This declaration further gives notice, that any that shall contravene the above order, whether Christians or Jews, shall be rigorously proceeded against by the Inquisition.

What was the Church's problem with Purim celebrations in Rome, and why were they so concerned about mingling between Jews and Christians specifically on Purim? After all, Jews lived in the ghetto, and social interaction would be expected to be minimal outside of business dealings.

My theory is that Purim celebrations were looked upon as a serious temptation for Christians to violate the restrictions of Lent.

Outwardly, Purim celebrations resembled Carnaval in Rome, which also involved drinking, costumes, masks, feasting and public performances ahead of Lent. In 1774, Purim was celebrated during the second week of Lent. The Papal leaders may have been concerned that the boisterous Jewish celebrations would tempt Christians to join in. It is similar to how Muslim countries today ban all public eating during the days of Ramadan, even by non-Muslims.

Even though the Jews were largely confined to the ghetto, their Purim-spiels - the comedic Purim plays that Jews would perform - likely attracted non-Jews. These plays, influenced by Italian Commedia dell’Arte , drew in Christians over the years in other parts of Europe. Encyclopedia Judaica notes, " The printed version of the Akhashverosh-shpil was burned by the city fathers of Frankfort presumably because of the play's indecent elements. This was probably the reason for a public notice of 1728 in which the leaders of the Hamburg community banned the performance of all Purim-shpils."

In 18th century Rome, theatres were closed during Lent and public performances were restricted or banned. A Purim spiel, even in the ghetto, would have been a strong attraction for Christians.

Moreover, by that time period, Purim-spiels had evolved from satires of the Book of Esther into other topics. It can be assumed that by 1774, these plays satirized contemporary issues, lampooning Christianity and political leaders. When the decree mentions "public diversions" it almost certainly refers to the Purim-spiels - and possibly plays that were subversive.

Not only that, but Jews in Italy - like the Christians during Carnaval - would wear costumes and masks during the holiday. Christians who chafed under Lent restrictions could don masks to disguise themselves to enjoy a night out during Lent.

Tonight, as we celebrate Purim 250 years later, this decree shines a light on a hidden moment in history. The Church wasn’t just worried about Purim-spiels or satire—they were worried about losing control during Lent. By banning Purim celebrations, and emphasizing that the ban is not only for Jews, they tried to stop Christians from skipping the fasting and joining the party in the ghetto. This shines a light on a previously unknown chapter in Jewish-Christian relations in the Papal States during the 18th century.

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Yale suspends terror group member who backs murdering Jews—@NYTimes backs the terrorist

The New York Times reports that an academic at Yale was not linked to a terror group.

The terror group disagrees.

From The New York Times:

Helyeh Doutaghi, a scholar in international law, began a new job in 2023 as the deputy director of a project at Yale Law School.

As an activist who had championed pro-Palestinian causes in both published papers and public appearances, Dr. Doutaghi seemed to fit into the left-leaning mission of the Law and Political Economy Project, which promoted itself as working for “economic, racial and gender equality.”

Last week, though, she was abruptly barred from Yale’s campus in New Haven, Conn., and placed on administrative leave. She was told not to advertise her affiliation with the university, where she had also served as an associate research scholar.

Yale officials cited the reason as allegations that she was tied to entities subject to U.S. sanctions. It was an apparent reference to Samidoun, a pro-Palestinian group placed on the U.S. sanctions list last year, after the Treasury Department designated it a “sham charity” raising money for a terrorist organization, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The decision came three days after a news site, powered at least in part by artificial intelligence, published a story about Dr. Doutaghi’s connections to the group.

The news site called her a member of a terrorist group, citing postings referring to appearances she made on panels at Samidoun-sponsored events, but a lawyer for Dr. Doutaghi said she is not a member of Samidoun, a global organization that sponsors meetings and protests supporting Palestinian causes.

In an interview, Dr. Doutaghi, 30, called herself a “loud and proud” supporter of Palestinian rights. “I am a scholar,” she said, adding, “I am not a member of any organization that would constitute a violation of U.S. law.”

Dr. Doutaghi said the actions against her are part of an attempt to silence scholars. “This is the type of thing that happens under fascist dictatorships, which Donald Trump is trying to establish,” she said in the interview.

The article about Dr. Doutaghi was published on March 2 on Jewish Onliner. On its website and on Substack, Jewish Onliner says it is “empowered by A.I. capabilities.” It does not identify any reporters on its site.

Doutaghi refers to herself as a "scholar" and the NYT accepts that without question. She denies having anything to do with any terror group and the NYT accepts that without question. It describes her as championing pro-Palestinian causes and implies that any accusation that she harbors terrorist sympathies is a scurrilous, AI-generated lie.

What the "newspaper of record" doesn't do is the least amount of fact checking.

It took me seconds to Google Doutaghi to find out that she not only spoke at Samidoun sponsored activities, but Samidoun says that she is a member of the organization - which is, by itself, enough for Yale to want to distance itself from her.

The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control OFAC designated Samidoun as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) entity acting for the PFLP (an FTO) in October 2024, (under the Biden administration). Any affiliation with Samidoun could expose Yale itself to sanctions under Executive Order 13224. This includes blocking assets or prohibiting transactions with SDGTs. By suspending Doutaghi and barring her from campus, Yale minimizes the risk of being seen as facilitating her alleged activities. For its own protection, Yale must prohibit her from using its name or resources and conduct an internal review to ensure no ties to Samidoun, minimizing its legal and reputational risks.

It might even be worse than that.

It took only another few minutes to find X posts where Doutaghi not only praises "armed resistance" in context of Hamas - meaning, terrorism - but dismisses any non-violent alternative for Palestinians.

And what did she post on October 7 2023, in response to a Hamas pogrom of rapes, murders, burning families alive, kidnapping and taking dead bodies hostage?

She called it "decolonization."

This further could expose Doutaghi to charges that she provides material support for Hamas, not just the PFLP through Samidoun. Even if she improbably quit Samidoun before it was designated, her support for Hamas terrorism also can put Yale at risk. It might be a high bar to prove given freedom of speech, but Yale Law School has to protect itself. It is not only reasonable to suspend Doutaghi - it is the only thing it can do to protect itself.

You wouldn't know any of this if you only read the New York Times.

Why couldn't the NYT find these posts and articles that took me only minutes?

Because it doesn't want to. It chose a position and only researched what supported that position. This is how bias works, and we've seen it countless times - the narrative is created before the story, and only the facts that fit are worth researching and reporting.

Indeed, the AI newspaper that reported that Doughati was a supporter of terror and member of Samidoun was more accurate and did a better job of reporting than the New York Times does.

This is really two stories.

It is a story about an academic at Yale who not only supports terror but is even a member of a Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity.

And it is a story about the most prestigious newspaper in America deciding to trivialize, ignore or whitewash any evidence that an Ivy League law school acted properly.

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

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03/12 Links Pt2: On Purim, celebrate Jewish self-defense, not self-loathing; The Antisemitic Influencer Problem; Mahmoud Khalil had security clearance from British Government

From Ian:

What Has Israel To Do With Civilization?

Josh Hammer’s new book, “Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West” will be available on March 18, 2025. Preorder it: HERE.

The question, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” has never been more poignant than at a time when both Europe and Israel are the canaries in the coal mines of a civilizational war.

That war, cultural, spiritual and material, and its antithesis in Athens and Jerusalem, are at the center of Josh Hammer’s new book, ‘Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West’. Hammer, a writer, lawyer and thinker whose world spans everything from the First Liberty Institute to Jews Against Soros, evocatively captures that crisis.

Beginning with Oct 7 and the western response which ran the gamut from horror to enthusiasm, on both the left and the alt-right, Hammer turns to the roots of the biblical truths of the Judeo-Christian consensus that is now under attack from all sides to rebuild a new unity.

The Left rejects both Athens and Jerusalem, choosing a crude pantheistic paganism, devoid of both reason and faith, in which hedonistic cults, exotic sexualties, and public manias are to liberate us from the confines of a civilization created by ‘dead cishet white male slave owners.’ The ‘altists’ on the Right reject not only the idea that Athens has anything to do with Jerusalem, but seek to tear out Jewish influences on the West which, depending on their varied credos can include anything from Christianity itself to the Enlightenment or even the very idea of monotheism, They long to return to an old paganism, a bronze age of barbarism devoid of divine morality and religious consciousness making way for bloodshed, slavery and eugenics.

Neither idea is new. Europe flirted with both beginning with the French Revolution and climaxing catastrophically with Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. But many of the influencers of a new generation are returning to the same old follies and that is why ‘Israel and Civilization’ is so vital.

Hammer not only rebuts many of the antisemitic obsessions of the influencer caste by delving into the actual history of Judaism, but he asserts the centrality of the Bible and its teachings within the West and more specifically in the founding of the United States of America, tracing the origins of the Mayflower Compact, Thanksgiving and the debates over the Constitution to religious ideas and values emerging out of Judaism.

While the idea of a Judeo-Christian code came to be mentioned much more frequently after the rebirth of Israel, Hammer shows that even Founding Fathers like John Adams anticipated a return of Israel alongside that of the newborn United States. To them, Washington D.C. needed both an ‘Athens’ and a ‘Jerusalem’ to thrive and take root in the mind and heart of a new nation.

“I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize Men than any other Nation. If I were an Atheist and believed in blind eternal Fate, I should Still believe that Fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential Instrument for civilizing the Nations,” John Adams wrote.

Jake Wallis Simons: Trump is right about Hamas-supporting activists. Britain should emulate him

Yesterday, all hell broke loose in the United States when the Trump administration took into custody a former employee at the British embassy in Beirut by the name of Mahmoud Khalil. They intend to deport him. Syrian-born Khalil had spearheaded virulent anti-Israel rallies at Columbia University – which last week lost $400 million in federal funding on account of the antisemitism endemic at the college – and, according to the White House, had distributed leaflets bearing the Hamas logo.

The group to which Khalil apparently belonged, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, had made its ideology clear in a post on Instagram last August. “We are Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilisation,” it said, adding that members “seek community and instruction from militants” as part of “our Intifada”. There was much interest in this online in the wake of Khalil’s arrest.

Despite details such as these, the episode inevitably drew outrage from the Democrats, civil rights groups and free speech advocates, who accused the administration of using its immigration enforcement powers to silence freedom of speech. This neatly summarised the problem: these people seem to think that supporting jihadism equates to reasonable criticism of Israel. What will it take for the penny to drop?

The British link has brought many in this country up short. The United States may have a problem with Hamas sympathisers, especially on its most prestigious campuses, but this one had worked as an officer of His Majesty. What does this say about our vetting?

Or – even more worryingly – the culture prevalent in certain pockets of our Arabist foreign office, which allows men like Khalil to take plum positions at our embassies? I’m reminded of the time, for instance, when our Deputy Consul General in Jerusalem led a British team at a “Palestine Marathon” event that was held in protest against the “apartheid” security barrier that protects Israeli civilians from potential suicide bombers in the West Bank. The plucky British diplomats wore T-shirts showing a map of the region that did not contain Israel. Because of course they did.

It’s time to get Trumpy on these people. For years, British society has been riddled with Hamas activists, sympathisers and attendant useful idiots who have been subverting our values from within. For years, Whitehall looked the other way while charities allegedly linked to Hamas raised millions of pounds a year, which — according to Israeli intelligence — was funnelled into the terror group’s coffers, funding their terror tunnels and armaments.

Cotton introduces two bills targeting ‘rotten culture on university campuses’

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) took aim on Tuesday at colleges that have housed anti-Israel and antisemitic protests—and some of the students that participated in them.

Cotton reintroduced legislation, the Woke Endowment Security Tax (WEST) Act, to impose a one-time, 6% tax on the endowments of 11 leading U.S. universities, including Columbia University, Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania.

A separate bill, the No Student Loans for Campus Criminals Act, would prevent students convicted of crimes in connection with protests from receiving federal student loans or loan forgiveness.

In introducing both measures, Cotton referred to the protests, some of which backed an independent Palestinian state but others that called for the destruction of Israel, glorified the terrorist group Hamas or attacked Jewish students on campuses.

“Many of America’s so-called ‘top’ universities continue to grow massive endowments almost entirely tax-free while failing to condemn antisemitism and violence against Jewish students on their campuses,” Cotton said.

The senator said that the excise tax—which also would apply to endowments at Cornell University, Johns Hopkins University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, Princeton University, Stanford University, Washington University and Yale University—would help boost security along the U.S. southern border and reduce the federal debt.