Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, March 18, 2025

Another Wall? Have You Lost Your Mind?! (Forest Rain)

Another Wall? Have You Lost Your Mind?!

This is why liberating the hostages is not enough

by Forest Rain

A new wall has appeared along the highway near Israel’s southern town of Sderot.

Since the war began, the train has been forced to take a long detour to reach Sderot because this stretch of track is visible from Gaza—leaving it vulnerable to anti-tank missiles. Now, a wall stands to block the view, ensuring that terrorists in Gaza can no longer take aim at the train—or at least not as easily. Walls don’t erase reality. The terrorists know where the tracks are. They can check the schedule online, just like any commuter.

With enough determination, any wall can be breached.

This wall gives the train something to hide behind. It offers the illusion of security, not real safety. True security doesn’t come from barriers. It comes from eliminating the threat—the people who wake up one morning and decide they want to blow up a train full of Israelis.

If you get close enough, you’ll see frustration and deep anguish scrawled across the wall in spray paint: “Another wall?! Have you lost your mind?!”

Hiding behind walls didn’t stop the Gazan invasion. In many cases, the bomb shelters families were hiding in became death traps.

The Purpose of the War

When the full horror of the October 7 invasion became clear—the torture, rape, burning, slaughtering, and kidnapping of men, women, children, and the elderly—most Israelis awoke from the Oslo dream of peace with our neighbors. We could no longer afford illusions.

When people declare their intent to kill us, meticulously plan to do so, and seize every opportunity to act on those plans—we must take them at their word.

Most Israelis saw the massacre and burned with rage that became ice-cold clarity: When we said NEVER AGAIN, this is what we meant. Never again would we allow Jews to be slaughtered, tortured, or used as playthings for sadistic monsters who revel in human suffering.

On October 7, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made it clear: “We are at war—not an ‘operation,’ not a ‘round,’ but war.” Since then, he has repeatedly outlined three war objectives—none of which can be compromised:

Return the hostages—both the living and the dead.
Ensure Israelis can safely return to their homes near Gaza (later expanded to include those displaced from the northern border).
Ensure that Gaza can never again be a threat to Israel.

The Hostages—and the True Measure of Victory

The plight of our hostages has rightfully consumed much of our attention. Everyone—without exception—agrees: we must bring them home. All of them, both the living and the dead. We, the nation and our government, owe this to those we failed to protect on that terrible day.

The Israeli government has gone to extreme—and dangerous—lengths to secure the release of the hostages. Hundreds of terrorists have been freed from our prisons, giving them the opportunity to strike again. For Hamas (in Gaza and Judea & Samaria), this is a victory that gives them enormous prestige, the ability to restructure their chain of command and recruit new fighters (who believe that if caught by Israel, they will be released in future ransom deals. The temporary ceasefire has also given Hamas time to prepare for the next battle. The more time that goes by, the more dangerous it will be for IDF troops.

The government made a calculated choice: to risk the future security of every Israeli to rescue as many hostages as possible now. Truthfully, the supposed future risk is not in the future. It is already here.

And with all that, somewhere along the way, many lost sight of the bigger picture. Rescuing the hostages is our moral duty, but it is not the measure of victory.

Israeli media is flooded with voices—self-proclaimed experts, analysts with impressive titles, and understandably distraught family members—arguing that returning the hostages will be our triumph. that bringing the hostages home is the sole objective. That there is no need for revenge. That the war must end.

These ideas are unacceptable. Completely unacceptable.

The Writing on the Wall

That graffiti—“Another wall?! Have you lost your mind?!”—is a scream for real security.

It declares that it is unacceptable for genocidal monsters to live on our doorstep.

Unacceptable to keep hiding behind walls.

Unacceptable and deadly dangerous to mistake the illusion of safety for real security—when in reality, the enemy is always trying to breach our defenses, to invade and slaughter.

That graffiti is a warning. A warning that if we keep pretending, if we keep avoiding the root of the problem, we will face another October 7.

The story of the Idan family makes this painfully clear.

The Idan Family

The Hamas invaders filmed their atrocities, broadcasting their glee as they tortured, burned, and slaughtered.

The footage from the Idan home is something I will carry with me forever. Watching Gali Idan, in the worst moment of her life, gave me an awe-inspiring lesson in what courage looks like.

When I first saw the video, I didn’t yet know that Tzachi Idan had been taken hostage to Gaza—his hands still soaked in his daughter’s blood.

On February 27, 2025, Hamas returned his body as part of a ceasefire deal, along with the remains of three other Israeli hostages: Itzhak Elgarat, Ohad Yahalomi, and Shlomo Mantzur. Tzachi was laid to rest in Kibbutz Einat, next to his daughter, Maayan.

The video from their home needs to be seen. You do not see any of the violence or bloodshed on screen. What you see is terrible enough - what the family experienced and their response. There are abbreviated versions of this video online because, supposedly, people cannot pay attention longer than a few minutes.

But pay attention we should. Imagine being in their place – because it is only by the grace of God that we were not.

18 year old Maayan was shot in the head, in front of her parents, her then 11 year old sister Yael and 19 year old brother Shahar. Terrorists are in their home and none of them know what will happen next. The Red Alert siren blares repeatedly, warning of incoming rockets.

Gali, a ferocious lioness, trying to protect the lives of her children. Tzachi, his hands soaked with Maayan’s blood, trying to be a stalwart backbone for his family. The children, trying to understand what they are seeing. Shahar quietly asking his mother: Is it over? Is it over?

Watch and put yourself in their place.

https://vimeo.com/1066650024?share=copy#t=0

The invaders took Tzachi to Gaza. His wife and surviving children received intermittent signs of life, a flicker of hope that he could be rescued—until they learned that he was murdered in captivity.

After 510 days, Tzachi’s body was brought home but that is not enough to make it safe for Gali and her children to return home.

How can they?

They know the truth: that their safe room became a death trap. That their sister was murdered. Their father was taken and tortured by the same people who still live just across the border. That those monsters are still there, still dreaming of the next October 7.

How can any Israeli parent bring their children back to live next to Gaza—if Gaza is still full of Gazans?

The war cannot end until it is safe for the Idan family to go home. Until it is safe for all of us to go home. And safety will only come when Gaza is no longer a threat to Israel.

Another wall is insanity. Another wall is an invitation for another invasion, another massacre.

Liberating the hostages is crucial—but it is not the measure of victory. Real safety for every Israeli, ensuring our future, is.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Western media simply ignores that everything that comes out of Gaza is pre-approved by Hamas, and anyone who breaks their rules is threatened.

All of the information that the media is reporting from Gaza this morning is what Hamas wants them to say. The only source for the death toll and the allegation that most of the dead are women and children come from Hamas and no one else.

One Telegram message from the Al Qassam Brigades makes this explicit. Although Israeli airstrikes targeted some Hamas leaders, the terror group warned journalists not to report on their names until they get permission:

Urgent Directive and Warning:

We call on activists and media professionals to stop circulating the names of individuals involved in the attacks carried out by the occupation in the Gaza Strip, and to adhere to the statements issued by official authorities.

When a group that wears ski masks and carries weapons gives a directive, it is a threat, not a suggestion.

The main reason the media doesn't report on Hamas' complete control of the media is exactly because it is a threat, not a suggestion. They do not want to appear cowardly or to admit that they are following Hamas rules, so they simply do not report on things like this.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

This is the first year in memory that there don't seem to be any antisemitic Ramadan TV series

Every Ramadan, there are dozens of TV miniseries vying for Arab attention as the viewership spikes during the month.

And every year, there are always antisemitic themes in some of these series.

Last year, an Egyptian TV series Maliha included an elderly man telling his grandson that Jews kill Arab children as a religious obligation - a blood libel inserted into the entertainment.

There was also a children's Ramadan series produced in Yemen last year called "The Temporary Entity," described in MEMRI this way:

In the series, a group of Yemeni children, guided by a hoopoe bird, go back in time using a magical book and track the history of Zionism, and their grandfather also tells them stories about the Jews. In the first episode, a Yemeni boy tells his grandfather that the Arabs must unite and "annihilate the Jews." In the second episode the children discuss how the Jews are the "most cunning enemy of the Muslims." They travel in time to 19th century Budapest, where the bird tells them that the whole world hated the Jews because of their "evil moral values and because they are treacherous."

This year, however, I cannot find any antisemitic TV series, certainly not in the larger Arab world outside Yemen.

One Iraqi TV series provides a counterexample. It looks at architecture, and it has one episode that specifically discusses buildings previously owned by Jews that have "shanasheels," latticework balconies, and how to preserve them.

(I briefly researched these balconies to see if they were a unique feature of Jewish homes, perhaps to use as sukkot in the fall. It doesn't seem to be the case, though - they are not uniquely Jewish and they have permanent roofs.)

To be sure, in recent years some series have been far more sympathetic towards Jews than in years past, sometimes causing controversy.

This lack of antisemitism seems surprising because one would expect that the Gaza war would prompt producers to pitch such series for Ramadan. I wouldn't be surprised if there are still such series on Houthi TV channels - antisemitism is baked into their way of thinking - but not finding any in Egyptian, Iraqi or Saudi series is definitely unusual.

Perhaps things really are slowly changing.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The Institute for Palestine Studies calls itself "the most reliable source of information and analysis on the Question of Palestine." It publishes three academic journals and holds conferences for researchers. It is the original source of the field of "Palestine Studies" that is now taught in universities worldwide.

It has a digital archive of "the main documents on the Palestinian issue and the Arab-Israeli conflict."

In very little time, I found that two of these Arabic documents refer to British sources that simply do not exist.

One refers to a 1799 letter from British philosopher Joseph Priestly, where it claims he wrote a Letter to the Jews saying,

Palestine, the glory of all countries, now forms part of the Turkish Empire, and is almost uninhabited: its soil is never tilled, it is empty and ready to receive you. But unless this state, which maintains that country for itself without any benefit to it, collapses, it can never become your country. Therefore, I earnestly pray for its shackles.

Priestly's "Letters to the Jews" are online, and not one of them mentions Palestine, Turks or the Ottoman Empire. They were all written to convince Jews to convert to Christianity.

The second false reference it has is to the fictional Campbell-Bannerman document of 1907. The IPS describes it:

Recommendation of the London Conference (called the Campbell-Bannerman Conference):

1907
In the urgent recommendations submitted by the London Colonial Conference in 1907 to British Prime Minister Campbell-Bannerman, the conferees emphasized:
"The establishment of a strong and alien human barrier on the land bridge linking Europe to the Old World and connecting them to the Mediterranean, such that it would constitute in this region and in the vicinity of the Suez Canal a force hostile to the people of the region, but friendly to the European states and their interests. The urgent practical implementation of the proposed means and methods is necessary."

The 1905 conference was held secretly and continued until 1907. It was convened by the British Conservative Party, and London submitted its recommendations to the ruling Liberal Party. A committee of leading historians, sociologists, agriculturalists, petroleum scientists, geographers, and economists representing all the empires existing at the time participated in it. Its members include: Professor James, author of The Decline of the Roman Empire; Louis Madelin, author of The Rise and Fall of Napoleon's Empire; and Professors Lister, Lessing, Smith, Dotherting, and Zaharof.

This never happened. It has been debunked by Arab researchers who sought to find the original document in British archives. The rumor was traced back to an offhand comment by an Indian historian sitting next to an Arab historian on an airplane flight in the 1940s.

Both of these fake documents support the conspiracy theory that Great Britain always intended to insert an illegal Jewish entity in the Middle East.

Interestingly, both of these IPS documents refer to the same source: "The Palestine Documents File" from the Egyptian Ministry of National Guidance, General Information Authority, 1969. The Ministry of National Guidance was a propaganda arm of the Egyptian government under Gamal Abdel Nasser, tasked with shaping public opinion and advancing nationalist narratives. It is not a reliable source at all.

Instead of looking up the original sources, the Institute of Palestine Studies used this Egyptian propaganda organization as their primary source.

Another source that the IPS digital archives include in its collection of documents is "Palestinian Documents: Two Hundred and Eighty Selected Documents, 1839-1987" from the Palestine Liberation Organization Department of Culture in Tunis, 1987. While the documents I looked up from this source appear to be real, it is still jarring to see an academic site only link to a secondary source that was created for political purposes. No decent academic journal would link to Encyclopedia Britannica as a source, and this is much worse, since Britannica has much less of a political goal.

Even if these archives were 100% accurate, glancing through them shows that none of the materials point to counter-examples of the common Palestinian conspiracy theory that the European imperialists and the Jews colluded for decades on a plan to expel the Arabs from Palestine. The entire database is cherry picked to support a narrative, not to find the truth. You certainly wouldn't use their database to research illegal Arab immigration into Palestine, which would cast doubt on how many Palestinians are really from the region. There is no doubt that Israeli historical archives include sources that challenge the Zionist narrative.

Academics trust the IPS to be a reliable source for their research. The most charitable explanation for these examples is that the IPS is sloppy in its use of citations in Arabic. Having written about the bias in Palestine Studies recently, I am more inclined to say that the entire field is meant to insert anti-Israel propaganda, and ultimately antisemitism, into universities in an acceptable manner.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

03/17 Links Pt2: The pro-Palestine left is facilitating fascism; The Unbounded Anti-Semitism of the BBC; Are Defenders of Mahmoud Khalil Ready to Defend Speech they Despise?

From Ian:

Phyllis Chesler: How the West was won, and how it can be saved

The Islamification of the West began long ago with Arab and Islamic attacks against infidels, especially the Jews. By the beginning of this century, anti-Zionism characterized the new antisemitism. Israel became the scapegoat of the world for the crimes of their persecutors.

In the last quarter-century, Israel and the Jews have faced large armies, as well as well-funded and relentless propaganda. It has simultaneously been defamed and sanctioned in every language; anti-Israel resolutions and reports have been issued by student bodies, human-rights groups, literary prize judges, academic faculties and the United Nations, whose only accomplishment has been the legalization of Jew-hatred. Students and outside agitators in the West “flood” streets and campuses, Hamas-style; and take over university buildings on behalf of the sadistic and barbarian aggressors they believe are the victims of alleged Israeli apartheid, colonial oppression and genocide.

Thus, as Israel is fighting for its very life and good name, the entire world believes that Israelis are the aggressors and that the true victims are the leaders of an infidel-hating death cult.

How are we to understand such an Orwellian reversal of reality, such a triumph of Nazi-style propaganda? British journalist and JNS columnist Melanie Phillips explains it to us in her new work, The Builder’s Stone: How Jews and Christians Built the West—and Why Only They Can Save It. In doing so, she joins and updates the work of writers and researchers Steve Emerson, Oriana Fallaci, Daniel Pipes, Bruce Bawer, Douglas Murray and Asra Nomani.

First, Phillips notes that Israel and the West are up against two death cults: one is external and consists of Islamist jihadists; and the other is a fifth column of elite, “politically correct” Westerners who have been persuaded that the West is evil beyond redemption and that barbarians are entitled to destroy what’s left of society. These Westerners refuse to believe that Islamic regimes have been and remain the largest practitioners of gender and religious apartheid. They refuse to believe that various Islamic regimes still own slaves and murder apostates, dissidents, homosexuals and feminists. They ignore any proof that Islamic regimes currently persecute or forcibly convert, but, more often, genocidally murder Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and Baháʼí.

Despite all this, Arabs, especially Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, are still always the victims.

None of Phillips’s predecessors had to ponder the world’s unexpected and, at first, unbelievably bizarre reaction to the Hamas-led pogrom on steroids in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. This is something Phillips deftly tackles as she explains why so many “woke” Westerners deny Jewish victimhood, especially the atrocities that took place that day.

The pro-Palestine left is facilitating fascism

Yet, over recent years, anti-Semitism and attacks on the Jewish community have increased because of the ongoing wars in the Middle East. This rise in anti-Semitism and racism towards Jews is coming not from the political right, but from the left and those it chooses to ally with. This includes people who believe themselves to be anti-fascists in their support for Palestine. There has been a sinister turn of events since 7 October 2023, when Hamas soldiers and supporters murdered and tortured civilians in Israel, before taking hostages into Gaza. What followed in the West was a rise in fascist language and ideology among the ‘pro-Palestine’ movements, including the conspiratorial view that a global Zionist movement is pulling the strings of international affairs.

On social media and on pro-Palestine marches, I have seen and heard absurd accusations that Israel has been responsible for all manner of atrocities. I have seen Nazi salutes thrown and heard Holocaust denial. This is clear, unhinged racism. And yet it is rarely called out.

I cannot imagine a situation in which the organised left would march side-by-side with the traditional far right. Yet the pro-Palestine left has been happily marching almost weekly for 18 months with people who are Holocaust deniers, racists and believe anti-Semitic conspiratorial ideology as if it were fact. Who seem to think Hamas is made up of freedom fighters resisting imperialism, rather than far-right, anti-Semitic terrorists. They are turning a blind eye to those who promote fascism and racism among them.

We must confront this dangerous alliance, lest we forget the lessons of the Second World War and allow a new form of fascism to take root in Europe once again.

Seth Mandel: Blame-the-Jews Lawfare Comes To America

Which brings me to the case of Mahmoud Khalil, the green-card holder who has been made subject to deportation proceedings over accusations of support for Hamas. Khalil was part of the larger, functionally pro-Hamas tentifada movement, but the administration has yet to lay out the specifics of its case. Until it does, the courts will keep Khalil here in the U.S.

Taal and the ADC tie their complaint explicitly to Khalil’s case, using it to bolster their claim that the executive order protecting Jewish rights on campus is illegal.

The implication is clear: Blame the Jews.

It just so happens that the executive order in question does not change immigration law in any way, nor does it advocate for the removal of anybody’s due process rights. One provision of the order, late in the text, adds that “the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Education, and the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with each other, shall include in their reports recommendations for familiarizing institutions of higher education with the grounds for inadmissibility under 8 U.S.C. 1182(a)(3) so that such institutions may monitor for and report activities by alien students and staff relevant to those grounds and for ensuring that such reports about aliens lead, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to investigations and, if warranted, actions to remove such aliens.”

The lawsuit claims that the subsequent statements of administration officials displayed bad faith in the form of their expressions of enthusiasm at the possibility of cracking down on “pro-Hamas” aliens.

But the executive order is not primarily about immigration; it is an across-the-board directive to agency heads to report their findings and progress in cracking down on anti-Semitic harassment in each of their legal domains, and to coordinate where necessary. Nothing about the order dissolves any existing legal rights. It is akin to telling a city cop to crack down on jaywalking.

If the law is illegitimate, it should be challenged. But what is being targeted here is the part of the order (and a separate, immigration-focused executive order) that represents a written encouragement to enforce that law. And why? The most likely answer is to delegitimize as unconstitutional the administration’s attempts to protect Jewish students.

The attempt to dismantle efforts to reduce anti-Semitic harassment on campus is entirely gratuitous here. Taal’s rights and the rights of Jews in America can coexist. Taal’s reaction to the events of Oct. 7, 2023, however, would suggest that that would not be a satisfactory solution to him and to the other parties behind this particular complaint.