Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, May 12, 2025

The UN’s anti-Israel “experts” now quote fake statistics even Hamas hasn’t claimed – and the BMJ follows right along (@bmj_latest @FranceskAlbs)

UN “experts” are willing to endorse even the most outlandish, unsourced claims in the service of slandering Israel – sometimes going further than even Hamas’ own propaganda.

Last week, the UN issued a press release by 39 of its "experts" claiming Israelis intentionally starving Gaza - as a direct response to Israel's attempts to create a means to feed Gazans.

The "experts," in their zeal to demonize the Jewish state, claim:

The group of experts cited over 52,535 deaths, of which 70 percent continue to be women and children, and 118,491 injuries as of 4 May 2025.

The last time the Gaza health ministry gave detailed statistics, it counted 50% women and children, not 70%. even that number is highly suspect given that the ministry has removed thousands of names from its own official lists without adjusting the total numbers of those killed. The only source for 70% - since the beginning of the war - has been Hamas' government media office, which makes up these numbers out of thin air.

The UN "experts" have knowingly published the false 70% figure before. Even though it has been debunked, they cannot help themselves.

But in this latest letter, they go even beyond Hamas' own propaganda.

"Since breaking the ceasefire, Israel has killed hundreds of Palestinians, many daily - peaking on 18 March 2025 with 600 casualties in 24 hours, 400 of whom were children. This is one of the most ostentatious and merciless manifestations of the desecration of human life and dignity,” the experts said.

Israel killed 600 people on March 18 - of whom 400 were children? How did the media miss this story?

According to the Gaza health ministry, between March 18 morning and noon on March 19. there were 436 deaths, of which 183 were allegedly children.

Again, these numbers are highly suspect - but this is a far cry from 400 children killed in one day. It would be difficult for Israel to deliberately kill that many children even if it wanted to.

Where did these "experts" get these bizarre numbers from? As far as I can tell, they made them up. I cannot find anyone - media, Hamas, random social media posters - who made this claim of 400 children dead out of 600 total in one day.

The "experts" who put their names on these clearly fictional statistics include:

This list of UN "experts" who happily sign anything anti-Israel without even a pretense of fact-checking completely discredits the UN as being a source for anything related to Israel.

The lies get worse, though. The BMJ (British Medical Journal) seems to have taken this press release as source material for its own article and uncritically quoted the bogus "400 children in one day" statistic:

This is a supposedly prestigious medical journal that uncritically parrots lies that have no source whatsoever.

When it comes to anti-Israel propaganda, the experts agree - facts are strictly optional.

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05/11 Links: Spencer: Why Palestine Cannot and Should Not Be Recognized as a State; Hamas claims it will free Edan Alexander; ICC decided to charge Netanyahu after Khan accused of sexual assault

From Ian:

John Spencer: Why Palestine Cannot and Should Not Be Recognized as a State

With renewed reports that the United States may consider recognizing a Palestinian state as part of a potential normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia, the question of Palestinian statehood has returned to the diplomatic forefront. While such recognition remains unlikely in the near term, the fact that it is even under discussion reveals how detached the conversation has become from legal reality. The question of Palestinian statehood is not just political or moral—it is legal. Under international law, recognition of a state is contingent on specific criteria. As articulated in the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, a state must meet four basic qualifications: a permanent population, a defined territory, a functioning government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other states. At present, the various Palestinian political entities fail to meet several of these criteria.

3. The Endorsement of Terrorism and Rejection of Nonviolence
The Palestinian Authority’s “pay to slay” program—which provides monthly salaries and benefits to terrorists and their families—does not just glorify violence; it institutionalizes it. These payments are enshrined in Palestinian law and have consumed hundreds of millions of dollars, including foreign aid, to reward acts of terrorism. This isn’t social welfare—it’s incentivized murder. Hamas goes further, openly embracing violence as a core strategy and executing the mass atrocities of October 7, which included the deliberate targeting and torture of civilians. Together, these policies do more than violate international humanitarian norms—they sever any claim to lawful statehood. No polity that uses terrorism as a political tool, codifies it into law, or glorifies it as national identity can meet the threshold of a legitimate sovereign actor under the UN Charter or the binding principles of jus cogens. Statehood requires more than victimhood; it demands adherence to the most basic standards of international law.

Just as Germany was not allowed to rebuild under Nazi ideology, and ISIS was denied any path to statehood despite its de facto control of territory, so too must the world reject the idea that October 7 can become a Palestinian Independence Day. Statehood must be built on peace, legitimacy, and law—not on atrocity.

4. International Precedents and Recognition Criteria
Recognition as a state is not a right—it is a consequence of meeting objective legal thresholds. Entities like Kosovo or South Sudan only achieved widespread recognition after meeting internal governance benchmarks and securing international agreements. In contrast, the Palestinian national project has repeatedly refused to renounce terrorism, dismantle militant factions, or engage in sustained negotiations without preconditions. Recognition without reform would reward intransigence and undermine the integrity of international legal standards.

Palestinian self-determination may remain a legitimate aspiration. But sovereignty comes with responsibilities, not just rights. Until Palestinian leadership unifies under a legitimate government, renounces terrorism in both word and deed, and agrees to defined borders through negotiation—not violence—it cannot be granted the legal status of a state. To do so would set a dangerous precedent: that a fractured, terror-abetting entity can bypass law and diplomacy to claim statehood through bloodshed. That must never become acceptable under the international order.

Ruthie Blum: No, Trump isn’t about to recognize a Palestinian state

Naturally, a flurry of panic or glee ensued, depending on the views of those highlighting the “scoop.” Yet all one had to do was peruse the article to realize that there’s “no there there.”

It isn’t until the fifth paragraph that the author, Ali Hussain, mentions the controversial topic. The passage, which opens with a question in bold letters (“Will Donald Trump recognize a Palestinian state?”), reads as follows:

“A Gulf diplomatic source, who declined to be named or disclose his position, told The Media Line, ‘President Donald Trump will issue a declaration regarding the State of Palestine and American recognition of it, and that there will be the establishment of a Palestinian state without the presence of Hamas.’

“The source also added, ‘If an announcement of American recognition of the State of Palestine is made, it will be the most important declaration that will change the balance of power in the Middle East, and more countries will join the Abraham Accords.’”

An anonymous source from an unnamed country surmising about something that hasn’t happened isn’t news. Nor does Hussain claim that it is.

In fact, he goes on to cite others—on the record—refuting the above. One is U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, who “denied the statements made by this source on X/Twitter Saturday afternoon, saying that Israel has no better friend than the U.S.”

Another is former Gulf diplomat Ahmed Al-Ibrahim, who “told The Media Line, ‘I don’t expect it to be about Palestine. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and King Abdullah II of Jordan have not been invited. They are the two countries closest to Palestine, and it would be important for them to be present at any event like this.’”

It would behoove i24News to issue an apology for instigating a phony brouhaha, based either on indolence or political slant. Meanwhile, viewers of both sides of the spectrum would do well to pause before jumping to conclusions based on hot air.

A case in point is a post that’s been circulating on X about a response to the report by White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt.

The tweet claims she said, “Contrary to the lies being spread, there will be no recognition of a Palestinian state at all.”

Nice. As it happens, however, a search for such a comment in this context comes up empty.

Competing for clickbait may be hard to avoid in the current climate. Credibility, on the other hand, is a more valuable commodity in the long run.

ICC Set Plan to Charge Netanyahu Just After Prosecutor Was Accused of Sexual Assault

The incident is one of multiple allegations of coerced sexual intercourse that the woman has made against Khan, according to documents, her testimony and officials familiar with the allegations. The woman, who is married and has a child, alleges Khan performed nonconsensual sex acts with her on missions to New York, Colombia, Congo, Chad and Paris. Khan also did so multiple times at a residence owned by his wife where he stayed in The Hague, the headquarters of the ICC, according to her testimony.

Khan, through his lawyers, said it was “categorically untrue that he has engaged in sexual misconduct of any kind.”

The woman, a lawyer from Malaysia, stayed at the job because she didn’t want to leave one of the most important offices in human-rights law and worried she wouldn’t be able to pay the medical bills of her mother, who was dying of cancer, according to her testimony and ICC officials. She also came to fear retaliation from Khan, according to interviews with current and former ICC officials.

The accusations facing Khan have become entwined with the international conflict over Gaza. Just 2½ weeks after Khan learned of the allegations against him last spring, he surprised Israeli and U.S. officials by announcing the most dramatic arrest warrant in the court’s history—for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

It was the first time in the ICC’s history that the court’s prosecutor sought a warrant for a Western-aligned democratically elected leader, a move the U.S. had been working to avert for months.

The timing of the announcement has spurred questions about whether Khan was aiming to protect himself from the sexual-assault allegations. The day before announcing the warrant application, Khan abruptly canceled a trip to Israel and Gaza that he had previously said was important to make his decision.

Khan denied that the prosecutor’s decision on the Israeli warrants had any link to the sexual-assault allegations, according to his lawyers.

The warrant shored up support for Khan among anti-Israel ICC nations that would likely back Khan if the allegations ever became public, according to court officials. The warrant also discouraged his accuser for a time from pushing her allegations, officials said, because she strongly supported the investigation of Israeli leaders.

As the abuse allegations were swirling among ICC staff and others, Khan allegedly tried to get his accuser to disavow them by telling her the charges would hurt the Palestinian investigation, according to her testimony.

The casualties of the allegations would include “the justice of the victims that are on the cusp of progress,” he said to her, according to a record of a call that is now part of an independent U.N. investigation into her allegations. “Think about the Palestinian arrest warrants,” she said he told her on another occasion, according to the testimony.

The U.N. is also investigating whether Khan attempted to intimidate or retaliate against the woman and other officials who reported his alleged misconduct, according to ICC officials. A report from the U.N.’s Office of Internal Oversight Services to the ICC’s board is expected in coming months. Any action to remove Khan would require the majority vote of the court’s 125 member nations.

Further complicating the episode is the tenuous authority of the ICC itself. The world’s most powerful and populous nations—including the U.S., India, Russia and China—aren’t members of the ICC and at times clash with the court. Israel isn’t a member either. The Trump administration sanctioned Khan and the ICC in February for issuing the arrest warrant for Netanyahu.

Sorry, @NYTimes, but "tikkun olam" is NOT a "central concept of Judaism"

The New York Times says:

Lee Zeldin, the first Jewish administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, on Thursday affixed a mezuza — a parchment scroll inscribed with Jewish prayers, encased in a small rectangular case — to the door frame of his wood-paneled executive office at the agency’s headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue.

...Many Jewish religious leaders praised Mr. Zeldin for publicly celebrating his identity. But for Jewish environmental activists, the reflection was on something different: Mr. Zeldin’s role in weakening rules designed to limit pollution and global warming.

The obligation to repair the world, or tikkun olam, is a central concept of Judaism. But in his position as leader of the E.P.A., Mr. Zeldin is overseeing a profound overhaul of the agency.

"Tikkun Olam" is not a central concept in Judaism. And the concept of tikkun olam that exists - not in the Torah but in the Talmud and Kabbalah - has nothing to do with environmental or social justice issues.

It is a term hijacked by social justice advocates who happen to be Jewish.

Judaism has nothing against environmentalism. There are plenty of Torah passages about protecting trees and the safeguard the Earth. It is too soon to tell whether the EPA under Zeldin is helping or hurting the environment.

But what I can say is that the EPA had spent hundreds of millions of dollars to things that have nothing to do with the environment and everything to do with "social justice." It has sent tens of millions to groups that are anti-Zionist, anti-American and pro-Hamas.

This money, as well as EPA money for DEI, is hurting Jews. For Jews to complain about the "tikkun olam" part and ignore how money is being spent to attack their own people is not moral - it is perverted.

The people who are aghast at Zeldin putting up a mezuzah on his office door are the ones that support his agency giving money to those that want to destroy Israel and America. If there are any Jewish hypocrites in this story, it is they, not Zeldin.

Not that the New York Times would report on that.

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Reuters reported last week:

European leaders and aid groups have criticised Israeli plans to take over distribution of humanitarian aid in Gaza and use private companies to get food to families after two months in which the military has prevented supplies entering the Strip.
...
U.N. agencies, aid groups and European leaders condemned Israel's plans, calling for the aid blockade to be lifted and for supplies to be distributed by humanitarian organisations that are not party to the conflict.

The UN and others have insisted that Gaza has remained occupied by Israel even after its withdrawal twenty years ago. But if they really believe that Gaza is occupied, then they have to agree that Israel - the occupying power - can provide aid to Gaza in whatever way it deems necessary.

This is what the Geneva Conventions say. Article 55:

To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population; it should, in particular, bring in the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate.

Israel is the party primarily responsible to ensure the aid gets in. The UN and NGOs refusal to cooperate shows that they never really believed that Israel occupies Gaza.

Now Israel is proposing that areas in Gaza would be (re-)occupied, and if that happens, Israel does indeed have the responsibility to provide aid as long as it is not used to help Hamas (Article 23).

And even if Israel is occupying Gaza, it has every right to put conditions on the aid distribution. Commentary to Article 59:

The institution of measures for verifying and regulating the consignments follows logically from the foregoing provisions. Since the free passage of relief consignments represents an important exception to the measures enforcing the blockade, it is only right that the blockade authorities should have an opportunity of assuring themselves that the facilities granted are used only for strictly humanitarian purposes.

The State granting free passage to consignments can check them in order to satisfy itself that they do in fact consist of relief supplies and do not contain weapons, munitions, military equipment or other articles or supplies used for military purposes.

Their passage is regulated according to prescribed times and routes in such a way as to avoid hampering military operations and to conform to the maximum extent with security requirements.

When the UN says Israel cannot provide its own mechanism for providing aid, they are saying that Israel is not occupying Gaza.

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

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05/10 Links: A demilitarized Palestinian state is a dangerous illusion; Douglas Murray: 'Canada has disgraced itself'; A new low for the Pulitzer Prize; Why the Kashmir Crisis Matters to Us

From Ian:

A demilitarized Palestinian state is a dangerous illusion

WHAT DOES all of this ultimately mean for any Palestinian demilitarization “remedy” and Israel’s national security? Prima facie, the Arab world and Iran still have only a “one-state solution” for the Middle East. This “solution” eliminates Israel altogether. Unassailably, it is a “final solution.” Even today, official maps of “Palestine” show a new jihadi state comprising all of the West Bank (Judea/Samaria), all of Gaza and all of the State of Israel.

Back on September 1, 1993, Yasser Arafat affirmed that the Oslo Accords would remain an integral part of the PLO’s 1974 Phased Plan for Israel’s destruction: “The agreement will be a basis for an independent Palestinian State, in accordance with the Palestinian National Council Resolution issued in 1974.” This PNC Resolution calls for “the establishment of a national authority on any part of Palestinian soil from which Israel withdraws or is liberated.”

Later, on May 29, 1994, Rashid Abu Shbak, then senior PA security official, remarked straightforwardly: “The light which has shone over Gaza and Jericho will also reach the Negev and the Galilee.”

Since these early declarations, nothing has changed in authoritative Palestinian definitions of Israel and “Palestine.” This is true for the leadership of both Hamas and the PA. It makes no tangible difference whether one jihadi terror group or another is in power. Both would intend a State of Palestine that is irredentist and violence-centered. To be sure, the egregious crimes of October 7, 2023, would remain a proud symbol of Palestinian “self-determination.”

Those who would still consider accepting Palestinian statehood in some form should recall the following: The Islamic world contains 50 states with more than one billion people. Islamic states comprise an area 672 times the size of Israel. Israel, together with Judea/Samaria, is less than half the size of San Bernardino County in California. The Sinai Desert, transferred by Israel to Egypt in the 1979 Treaty, is three times larger than the State of Israel. Israel is less than half the size of Lake Michigan.

There is one last noteworthy point. The many-sided threat of Palestinian statehood is part of a much larger and more portentous enemy threat.

This suggests, ipso facto, that any crime-based jihadi state would become a significant “force-multiplier” for Israel’s adversaries, both state and sub-state. In a worst-case but fully realistic scenario, the creation of “Palestine” would heighten the probability of a mass-casualty international war in the region. At some not-too-distant point in time, this could mean a no-holds-barred, unconventional conflict.

Why the Kashmir Crisis Matters to Us

The free world has more to lose than China does if the war goes nuclear. India has no interest in becoming America’s sidekick, but its independence and well-being are more important to America than Pakistan’s is to China. A nuclear war would be a humanitarian catastrophe, break another set of international taboos, and significantly set back the effort to keep Asia free from Chinese domination.

A war would also give China invaluable information about its arsenal. Pakistan has nearly 200 Chinese-made fighter jets, and India has dozens of French ones. China had no hard data about how its jets stack up against the competition, but one of them has already reportedly shot down one of India’s French fighters. During the Cold War, Israel’s military repeatedly faced off against Soviet-supplied Arab armies, which helped Washington learn how to defend itself and its allies from the U.S.S.R. China will reap similar benefits.

In an ideal world, New Delhi would punish Pakistan into ceasing its support for terror without triggering a nuclear war. This will be hard to pull off. As of this writing, Pakistan seems eager to match India blow-for-blow.

This is not a fight that the U.S. military should enter, but Washington still has options to stop a war. Pakistan’s military—which essentially runs the country behind a token civilian government—is wary of becoming a Chinese vassal. During the Cold War and the war in Afghanistan, Washington’s aid and equipment gave Pakistan some freedom for maneuver. But Pakistan allegedly supported the Taliban, and American forces found Osama bin Laden living close to a Pakistani military academy. Offering inducements does not seem wise.

But threatening to cut off its other choices might. Pakistan owes $20 billion to the World Bank and is counting on receiving another $40 billion over the next decade, which depends on Washington’s good will. The Gulf Arabs have also propped up Islamabad, and if they use that leverage, Islamabad will have to choose between deescalating and becoming a Chinese satrapy.

This will be a hard sell to the Gulf Arabs, however. For decades, rumors have floated about a secret deal for Pakistan to give Riyadh nuclear weapons when requested. If true, Riyadh will not be eager to give up on Pakistan.

Unless the United States can offer something better—like security guarantees.

05/09 Links Pt2: Probe the foreign influence behind these terror-loving, anti-Jew college agitators; Israel’s fight for civilisation; The willing executioners of today’s anti-Israel hatred

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: Probe the foreign influence behind these terror-loving, anti-Jew college agitators

Of course there are a number of things that need to be not just said but done to stop the spread of this unadulterated evil.

The first is for the Trump administration to act on its promises and cut off all federal funding from universities which allow terrorist movements to seize hold of campus.

There is nothing ground-up about any of this. All of the rhetoric and materials that these terrorist-supporters engage in is a pure import.

What American student, born and raised here, thinks that the terrorists of October 7th are “martyrs”? Let alone “our” martyrs. Who do these students think that “we” are? Is it an act of “liberation” to injure and hospitalize staff on campus who are just doing their job? Is this really a way to express sympathy with a cause and get people onto your side?

The second thing that is becoming increasingly clear is that the US government should order a swift and deep inquiry into the way in which foreign funding is being used to subvert American institutions, especially institutions of higher learning.

If they carry out such an investigation they will find, among much else, the billions of dollars of Qatari money that have been pumped into American universities in recent years. As well as having one of the largest lobbying organizations in the US, the Qataris have in recent years also used their vast oil wealth to try to subvert American institutions and buy off American politicians.

It is one of the greatest scandals of our age, that a oil-rich slave-state like Qatar, which not just funds but hosts Hamas, is able to have its talons into the heart of some of America’s most venerable institutions.

What is going on? How long does this country want to be up for sale to such terrorists and terrorist-supporters?

On Monday, it was protestors at the University of Washington who rampaged through their campus, smashing up the campus and literally starting fires. They are estimated to have caused over $1 million of damage. Let’s see if they are made to pay for it. In every way.

But as I watched the scenes from our own city this week one thing stood out in particular. That was an identifiably Jewish student, wearing a kippah, watching as the new KKK barricaded the doors of the library he was trying to study in.

If this had been a lone black student having to face down a mob of people celebrating the lynching of black Americans I would imagine there would be a swift and harsh response from across every part of this country — and rightly so.

I would expect every person of good will to ask how this had happened here, who was pushing this filth and how every arm of the state could go about stopping it.

So it is — or should be — now. The new Klan has got away with their violence for far too long. To adopt some language they would understand, “It is time to shut this s–t down.”

Israel’s fight for civilisation

Douglas Murray’s On Democracies and Death Cults is a vital account of 7 October and its aftermath.

The anti-Israel bias of the international coverage of the conflict provides Murray with another large target. He notes how the media routinely create a moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel – Hamas has killed women and children in Israel, and the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have killed women and children in Gaza, therefore the two are both equally reprehensible morally, the argument goes. Ignored is the fact Hamas kills its victims deliberately, while the IDF is countering fighters who use civilians as human shields. Hamas also views every civilian death as a propaganda win.

Further dismantling the myth of the ‘moral equivalence’, Murray cites the significant steps taken by the IDF to minimise civilian casualties. Israel sends texts, calls and leaflets, warning Gazans of when and where to expect military operations. But Hamas does not let those in danger flee. Murray cites respected US war scholar John Spencer, who states that the ratio of civilian-to-enemy-combatant casualties is the lowest in the history of urban warfare. To claim Israel and Hamas are somehow equal recalls William F Buckley’s famous line:
‘That is like saying that the man who pushes a little old lady into the path of a bus is morally equivalent to the man who pushes her out of its path, because they both push little old ladies around.’

Reading On Democracies and Death Cults, one gets the impression that Murray is troubled by one question more than any other: can we ever expect to defeat these Islamist death cults like Hamas? He finds hope in the bravery of the Israeli people and one of the most important commandments in Judaism – to choose life.

One criticism I have of the book is that the editing seems rushed. Often, Murray goes back and forth to make his points. Better organised chapters would have made for a tighter book that’s easier to read. It is nearly 200 pages, yet divided into only five chapters, each containing long passages lacking transition.

None of this ultimately detracts from Murray’s compelling narrative. Along with spiked’s Brendan O’Neill, he is one of the two best writers in the English language about this conflict. As Murray writes, history is constantly being rewritten and that’s why this book is so important. In writing it, Murray has done the cause of democracy, and the victims of one of our century’s most unforgivable crimes, an important service.

One podcast, two guests, multiple conversations

It was during their exchange, as I became more and more frustrated at Spencer’s inability to dismantle Smith’s arguments, that I realized what had been bothering me from the interview on the Rogan’s show. During both interviews, Smith was arguing about the morality of war and was using Israel as a case study with which to bash war.

Meanwhile, Murray and Spencer were arguing about the legality of war. Two completely different topics, and this hit me as I watched Smith getting increasingly exasperated with Spencer, who kept going back to the laws of war and to a lesser degree, the history of war.

Smith wants to exist in the world of vague, idealistic theories about whether war is moral or not. This, let’s be honest, is nearly impossible to argue against. Most people would agree that war probably is not the most moral thing in the most literal meaning of the term, but whether we believe war is moral or not, it exists. War always has been, and unless human beings fundamentally change their DNA, war always will be.

So, instead of arguing whether it is moral to make war, civilizations need to create boundaries within which wars can be fought, hence the internationally agreed upon laws of war. Smith didn’t want to debate whether Israel’s actions in Gaza were legal or illegal; he just wanted to argue that they are immoral. This is a conclusion people draw if they remove facts and law from their equation. If war is immoral because civilians die, then yes, Israel’s actions would be considered immoral.

However, if Smith were to step down from his moral high horse—from where he observes the world and casts his net of moral utopianism onto a world that is not a utopia—he might realize a few things. He might realize that war is horrible and that when wars are fought, innocent civilians die. He might realize that in the prosecution of war, some actors do all they can to reduce the loss of innocent life, while there are other actors whose very strategy in war is to maximize the loss of innocent life. They, of course, do this so they can use that carnage as a weapon against their adversary as well, which is what is happening in Gaza today.

Smith might also realize that if the loss of innocent life were so important to avoid, then the actors, in this case Hamas, should not start a war and then fight it from behind or beneath innocent civilians. Israel, I might add, does the opposite; it puts the lives of its soldiers on the line to protect the lives of people in Gaza, and this has cost Israel dearly.

It’s time for Smith to take his head out of the clouds, plant his feet back on terra firma and understand that wars are never fought in sterile environments, devoid of civilians, where all combatants observe the same rules or follow the same laws. If they were, we would not be having this conversation.

One final thing: Israel did not want this war and did not start this war. But morally speaking, we must acknowledge that Israel has a moral obligation to its citizens to prosecute this war to its conclusion. To do anything less would be immoral and a violation of the government’s duty to protect its people.

If Hamas laid down its arms tomorrow and returned the hostages, the war would end. If Israel laid down its arms … well, then maybe Smith would be sitting with Rogan talking about how sickened he is by all the dead Jews, but, then again, maybe he wouldn’t.

05/09 Links Pt1: Trump’s Mideast Shifts Leave Everyone Guessing; Europe's Illegal Land-Grab; Needed: A narrative Iron Dome to shoot down lies

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Trump’s Mideast Shifts Leave Everyone Guessing

Now come two more reports of muddled messaging, throwing even more confusion into the air right before Trump travels to the Mideast. Trump has talked tough about the prospect of an Iranian nuclear deal, all but saying that if a deal fails, the U.S. will do with force and fire what Iran won’t do on its own: dismantle its illicit program. After Witkoff initially seemed open to letting Iran enrich its own uranium (up to a point), which would reproduce one of the flaws of Obama-era policy, he backtracked. Secretary of State Marco Rubio echoed the backtrack: No enrichment should be allowed, none. On Tuesday, Trump reiterated that if Iran insists on trying to obtain a nuke, “it’s going to be a very sad thing, and it’s something we don’t want to have to do but we have no choice: they’re not going to have a nuclear weapon.”

But on Wednesday, when the president was asked if Iran could still have a civilian nuclear enrichment program, he responded: “We haven’t made that decision yet.”

And now the Wall Street Journal reports that nobody actually believes Trump’s declaration of a cease-fire with the Houthis: “We are not going back any time soon,” said Nils Haupt, a spokesman for a major German liner. “It’s a good development, but it needs a lot of security guarantees for the Red Sea to be considered safe for big merchant ships.” The Journal adds that the agreement “makes no clear mention of ending attacks on commercial shipping.”

The Defense Department seemed to acknowledge as much, telling reporters that there has been no official determination on what kind of naval escorts will be arranged to ensure the security of vessels traversing the Red Sea shipping lanes and surrounding area. Meanwhile, Houthi drones are still flying overhead. “It will take some time before the southern Red Sea is safe, and we are working on it,” a Pentagon official told the Journal.

Once a system is in place, moreover, it’ll likely take months, at the very least, of consistent security before major companies switch back to their old routes. In that period of time, anything can happen, including a failed Gaza cease-fire deal and the full resumption of the war.

At the same time, the president will be negotiating with Iran. How much will he be willing to crack down on Iranian proxies like the Houthis? If the Iranians need leverage during the talks, what’s to stop them from letting the Houthis fire away again to put pressure back on the U.S.?

On top of all that, Witkoff is playing with fire by using the hostage families to pressure Netanyahu, which will only introduce more tension and volatility into domestic Israeli politics—and who knows where that will lead, exactly? Not Witkoff. Or Witkoff. Or Witkoff or even Witkoff.

So it’s too soon to say Trump is leaving Israel behind. But it’s not too soon to say that his control over events is tenuous and his penchant for unpredictability often inspires the same in other parties, and therefore Israel should figure out how to end the war in Gaza on its own terms before anything else changes.

Biden team sought to ‘get rid’ of Netanyahu for opposing Gaza plans

The Biden administration considered ways to “get rid” of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he wouldn’t go along with their plans for the Gaza Strip, according to an investigation by Channel 13.

“The White House got tired of Netanyahu and started to roll around a revolutionary idea ... how to get rid of Netanyahu,” claimed Raviv Drucker, who hosts the channel’s HaMakor programme.

The broadcast, titled All the President’s Men involved in-depth interviews with nine members of Biden’s team – including former US ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides, former national security advisor Jake Sullivan, former White House national security communications advisor John Kirby and former senior Biden aide Ilan Goldenberg.

According to the report, the administration became aggravated by Netanyahu’s refusal to discuss the end goal of Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza, specifically who would take charge of the Gaza Strip after Hamas had been ousted.

The Biden team proposed handing security control of the Strip to a foreign force, which would then turn it over to the Palestinian Authority (PA), Goldenberg said.

“We actually had a pretty good program of training Palestinian security forces in the West Bank ... But in the short term you needed something, probably Egyptians, Arabs ... to come in and temporarily hold it because those Palestinians wouldn’t be ready for a while,” he recalled.

However, reflecting on the administration’s assessment that Netanyahu was standing in the way, he suggested that the Israeli leader didn’t want to discuss the “day after” because it would open a “Pandora’s box” and risk collapsing his governing coalition.

Netanyahu has been under significant domestic pressure from the more right-wing elements of his government to continue the war until Hamas is destroyed and to refuse PA control of Gaza.

Goldenberg, who now serves as senior vice president and chief policy officer at J Street, told the programme: “There were a lot of people who are talking about, including in the Oval Office, at times, the idea of... the president going out and giving a speech.”

The West’s two-tier international law doesn’t harm just Israel

There is absolutely no sense in which Israel was in occupation of any of Gaza when Hamas launched its attack on October 7, 2023. And the territories its army has occupied since, mostly a buffer zone near the perimeter and a few key corridors, don’t have very many civilians living in them.

Authority that has been “established and can be exercised” would imply that Israeli forces run the schools, collect the taxes, arrest criminals, operate courts, etc. It’s hard to imagine a territory being occupied by one army without soldiers on the ground and where another local force amasses an arsenal of rockets, fields 20 or so battalions under its command – and is able to hold dozens of hostages for more than a year.

The claims about international law regarding both demographic and territorial issues also doesn’t meet the basic standards of scrutiny. Wherever there is war, civilians flee. Our normal impulse in such situations is to try to end the war, and where that is not possible, to ensure that civilians who wish to leave can do so.

It was under this banner that so many humanitarian organisations mobilised during the Syrian Civil War to press Western governments to accept the millions of Syrians fleeing the conflict when it broke out in 2011. The same impulse was manifest a decade later when almost 7 million Ukrainians fled Ukraine.

On territory, too, the argument makes no sense and isn’t grounded in any actual international law. UN member states are obligated to respect each other’s recognised borders, but the line between Israel and the Hamas-ruled enclave is no such thing. It is an armistice line drawn in 1949 (and adjusted slightly one year later) that reflected the Israeli and Egyptian positions at the end of the 1948 war. The text of the Israel-Egypt armistice, like that of the Israel-Jordan and Israel-Syria but notably not the Israel-Lebanon one, makes clear that “the Armistice Demarcation Line is not to be construed in any sense as a political or territorial boundary, and is delineated without prejudice to rights, claims and positions of either party”.

By insisting that Hamas can’t lose any territory in the war it launched, the international community has invented a norm that never before existed and removed one of the few levers Israel has to pressure it to end the war and release the hostages.

It’s annoying to hear international law invoked against Israel in so many different contexts to condemn actions that are entirely consistent both with actual international law and with the practices of other states at war. But it’s not the hypocrisy that should bother us most.

These commitments have real impacts on the course of the war, and in nearly every case they run counter to the stated objectives of the countries insisting on them.

They made the plight of the hostages much worse and much longer. They made the war much longer than necessary and much deadlier for both sides. And they locked a large civilian population in a war zone where the de-facto governing authority was not only indifferent to civilian losses on its own side, but actually had much to gain by it.

Making it impossible to defeat Hamas in the war it itself launched in 2023 won’t bring peace to Gaza; it will only ensure that the next war will be even bloodier.

The Mideast's Trump Card (guest post by "Blue Flash")

THE MIDEAST’S TRUMP CARD

by Blue Flash

Welcome to Israel's new reality.

A short three months ago at a White House press conference, Bibi Netanyahu was euphoric as President Trump announced the plan (dubbed “Trumpsfer”) to completely level the Gaza Strip and relocate all 2 million Gazans to neighboring countries.

Trump was fulfilling his repeated assertion as “the best President Israel has ever had.”

Now however, with a series of deals that excludes Israeli participation, Trump appears to be remaking the Mideast landscape to Israel’s detriment:

• Houthis: On Tuesday, Trump announced a halt to US attacks on the Houthis. This completely blindsided Israel, who allegedly found out about it on the news.

More troubling, Trump’s announcement – two days after a Houthi ballistic missile struck Ben Gurion Airport – failed to even mention Houthi attacks on Israel.

Israel is now left to fight the Houthis alone.

• Saudis: Next week, Trump will be in Saudi Arabia to finalize a comprehensive deal that allegedly offers the Saudis advanced American weapons, extensive economic cooperation, and support for a Saudi civil nuclear program.

Meanwhile, the entire topic of Saudi normalization with Israel – Bibi’s big diplomat prize – has been sidelined.

• Iran: Trump’s Iran nuclear talks – a nightmare scenario for Israel that could leave Iran’s nuclear program intact – increasingly resembles the ongoing pattern, from Carter to Obama, of US presidents appeasing the Iranian jihadi tyrants. Israel was again sidelined, notified about these negotiations only at the last minute.

Such an agreement would severely restrict Israel’s latitude in attacking Iran. (In April, Trump reportedly blocked an imminent Israeli strike on Iran.)

• Gaza: After a serious of missed ceasefire deadlines, Trump has lost patience with the situation in Gaza, and is floating a deal that leaves Hamas intact. This is a far cry from Israel’s longstanding demand that Hamas be disarmed and prohibited from any role in Gaza’s governance.

• Additionally, Trump is preparing to withdraw US forces from Syria, while cozying up to Erdogan and considering selling F-35 fighter jets to Turkey.

With Israel’s adversaries striking deals with Washington behind Israel’s back, that leaves Israel a much-weakened regional force.

Further, these developments weaken Bibi politically. Combined with ongoing IDF causalities in Gaza, and increased pressure from the hostage families and their supporters, don’t be surprised if Bibi is forced to prematurely end the Gaza war.

(EoZ: I was playing around with a more comprehensive analysis of Trump's thinking but I couldn't finish it this week. I will be traveling for the next two weeks but if I get a chance I'll try to get it out.)

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Peter Beinart went to Harvard Divinity School to promote his new book about how difficult it is to be Jewish while Israel tries to destroy its enemies. His Judaism has very little to do with the Jewish scriptures.

His arguments and rhetoric are tired, even if they strike a chord among the ignorant. He says things like , "if you don't want people to fight you and kill Israelis...you have to deal with the roots of the problem, with the underlying grievances. " But he claims the grievances are the root of the problem when they are an excuse for the attacks. The root of the problem is Arab antisemitism and the honor/shame system that cannot deal with weak Jews having political power in their ancestral homeland. Because if you are looking for roots, you need to explain the Arab attacks on Jews before Zionism, the deadly attacks in 1920, 1921, 1929 and 1936-39. "Grievances" do not explain why they beheaded little girls and murdered non-Zionist yeshiva students in Hebron before the State of Israel existed.

But there is one phrase Beinart used three times during his talk, a clearly deliberate choice of words that proves how utterly depraved he has become.

There was all kinds of Palestinian resistance before 1987, as after 1987. ...There's been Palestinian armed resistance against soldiers, and there's been Palestinian armed resistance against civilians.

And that didn't start with Hamas. In fact, one of the reasons the Israeli government was actually fairly sympathetic to Hamas in the late 1980s when Hamas was created was they couldn't imagine anything worse than the PLO. They couldn't do anything worse than Fatah and leftist groups like the PFLP, because those groups had been involved in armed resistance, including armed resistance against civilians.

....[P]eople in the Jewish community ...denounce Palestinian armed resistance against civilians, which I also oppose.

What the hell is "armed resistance against civilians"? Why can Beinart not say the words "terror" or "murder" or "jihad"?

In the ideological circles Beinart travels in—campuses, NGO salons, anti-Zionist conferences—the word “resistance” is a badge of honor. It connotes nobility. To even say the phrase “armed resistance against civilians” is to launder mass murder through the language of moral defiance. It’s how you make terror respectable. It’s how you turn Hamas atrocities into "tragic outgrowths of oppression."

That’s why he uses the term. Because his fans - those who wave "Resistance by any means necessary" banners and endorse BDS alongside open Hamas sympathizers - want their support of anti-Jewish violence given moral cover. And Beinart provides it.

He offers the progressive Left a sanitized vocabulary of terror: one in which murdering Jews isn’t antisemitic, just the inevitable consequence of how Jews act. In his view, Hamas isn’t genocidal, just misunderstood. To get published in the New York Times and invited to speak at Harvard, Beinart needs to nod to the idea that targeting the innocent is not ideal, while at the very same time excusing those same attacks.

Peter Beinart may claim to oppose killing civilians. But his language says otherwise. When you call terror “resistance,” you are not neutral. You are not moral. You are not Jewish in any meaningful sense of the word. You are a handmaiden to those who cheer when Jews are butchered.

Peter Beinart pretends to be against terror attacks, but his very deliberate phraseology shows that his opposition to attacking civilians comes with a wink to the type of people who will enthusiastically buy his book and use their quoting him as proof that they aren't antisemitic when they say that they support Hamas burning babies.

(h/t Eitan Fischberger)

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The Jewish exception to Jordanian and Palestinian nationality

Jordan's nationality law, today, includes this phrase added in 1954:

A Jordanian national is considered to be:....
2. Anyone who held Palestinian nationality, other than a Jew, before May 15, 1948, and who usually resided in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan during the period from December 20, 1949, to February 16, 1954.

The definition of a Palestinian came from the British Palestinian Citizenship Order of 1925. Jordan used that definition as a basis for its law - and then specifically excluded Jews.

Even stranger is that by starting its residence requirements from December 1949, the law would have excluded Jews anyway since by that time Jordan had ethically cleansed every Jew from the areas under the Kingdom's control, including Jerusalem. There was no practical reason to include a clause excluding Jews. The exclusion of Jews served no purpose except institutionalize bigotry into law.

This is a case of state-sponsored, official antisemitism that is curiously under-discussed.

This antisemitism got extended into the Palestinian Authority's own drafted Nationality Law from 1995. While the text is not easily available online, and the law was not ratified, it also has a Jewish exclusion that was copied directly from the Jordanian citizenship law, apparently in response to Jordan's rescinding its claim to the West Bank and therefore taking away citizenship of all West Bank Palestinians:

The Palestinian National Authority drafted a Nationality Law in 1995, but it was not ratified. Article 7 of this law defines a Palestinian as "anyone who held Palestinian nationality, other than a Jew, prior to May 15, 1948."

Many Arab and Muslim nations have de facto exclusions that makes it nearly impossible for non-Muslims or non-Arabs to become citizens. Saudi Arabia, for example, requires naturalization applicants to be Muslim, effectively barring non-Muslims. Algeria’s 1963 Nationality Code explicitly limited citizenship to those with Muslim personal status. The Maldives goes further, explicitly requiring non-Muslims to convert to Islam under its 2008 Constitution.

But they don't frame it in terms as exclusionary as the 1954 Jordanian law or the 1995 draft Palestinian law.

The claim that Arabs are merely anti-Zionist and not antisemitic gets more ludicrous every day.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The U.S. Department of Justice sent a letter to Judge Analisa Torres concerning a lawsuit against UNRWA by the families of victims of October 7. This letter is hugely important in its changing the US position towards UNRWA.

Previously, the government treated UNRWA as if it was a subsidiary of the UN General Assembly. The US has signed a treaty saying the General Assembly is immune to lawsuits and litigation.

This new guidance says - with compelling logic - that UNRWA is not a subsidiary of the General Assembly but acts like a specialized UN agency. The US never ratified the treaty for specialized agencies, and UNRWA was never designated under the US law (IOIA) that gives those types of agencies similar immunities.

In short, the US now agrees that UNRWA can be sued can be sued, including for charges related to terrorism.

This position has other ramifications.

It means that Executive Order 14199, which blocks US aid to UNRWA, now has more legal weight. It means that banks and insurers are less likely to do business with UNRWA, whose risk profile has just increased. It means individual UNRWA employees can also be sued. It may also mean that any US tax exemptions that UNRWA enjoyed are no longer in force.

Beyond that, it may endanger the tax exempt status of UNRWA's USA fundraising arm, UNRWA-USA. If the DOJ says that UNRWA may have supported terrorism or been complicit in atrocities, UNRWA-USA may be forced to publicly distance itself from UNRWA's misconduct, and anything found out about UNRWA during the current lawsuit can end up stripping UNRWA-USA of its charitable organization status.

This is a big deal. And overdue.

(h/t Irene)

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)