Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, July 24, 2025

Israel Honors Its Debt To The Druze--Even in Syria (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

For me, Salim symbolized the living partnership between us, certainly the covenant of blood. He was with me when I was in mourning and I was with him when he was in mourning – but a great living partnership. Salim Shufi was a great moral force. He was a splendid man – modest, deep and imbued with values; I loved him very much.
PM Netanyahu on Salim Shufi, the Druze who saved his life

There are times when the media appear incredibly fickle in focusing their coverage of the news, especially in the Middle East. Even with their constant coverage of the region, we are all aware of what they will emphasize and where the media biases lie.

Here is Reuters briefly describing the current situation in Syria:

The fighting began a week ago with clashes between Bedouin and fighters of the Druze community, which like some other minorities distrusts Sharaa's new Islamist government. Damascus sent troops to quell the fighting, but they were drawn into the violence and accused of widespread violations.

Interim President al-Sharaa has blamed the violence on "outlaw groups", promising to protect the rights of Druze and hold to account those who committed violations against them.

The article frames the conflict as sectarian violence between Druze and Bedouin. Later, it goes on to bring up Israeli measures to protect the Druze and mentions in passing Israel's justification for their bombings in Damascus, namely "the goal of protecting the Druze and keeping southern Syria demilitarized."

There is no explanation of why Israel is protecting the Druze in particular.

The Druze are a relatively small ethno-religious group whose beliefs and practices are relatively unknown. Their bond with Israel is partly explained by their loyalty to the state in which they reside. Those who live in Lebanon are loyal to Lebanon, those in Syria are loyal to Syria, and those in Israel are devoted to Israel. The Druze loyalty to Israel goes back to 1948 and even before that, to the Haganah.

And even earlier.

The bond between Jews and Druze goes back as early as the 12th century:

Benjamin of Tudela, the Jewish traveller who passed through Lebanon in 1165, was one of the first European writers to refer to the Druze by name. Even then, they were known as mountain-dwellers, and Benjamin described them as fearless warriors who favoured the Jews.

Although the Druze are Arabs, they have a historically strong connection not only with Israel, but with Jews in general, even back when Jews were neither strong nor a nation. This history helps explain the reason why Israel has actively defended the Druze, including those living in Syria.

And what exactly is Israel defending the Syrian Druze against?

John Spencer, author and researcher of urban warfare, posted on X on June 19:

The perpetrators include radical Islamist militants, Bedouin gangs, and regime-backed elements, all empowered by years of state collapse and lawlessness.
The carnage has been captured on video and is now spreading across social media. These are not vague reports or unverifiable claims. There is footage of Druze civilians being hunted down and executed.

Elders are dragged into the streets. Their mustaches shaved in acts of humiliation. For the Druze, this is not just an insult, it is desecration. In Druze culture, facial hair, especially the mustache, is a powerful symbol of dignity, piety, and manhood. Elder men are traditionally known for their modest appearance, religious devotion, and strict adherence to tradition, including the wearing of facial hair as a sign of spiritual discipline. Forcing a Druze elder to be shaved is meant to strip him of identity, honor, and religious status in front of his community. It is not just abuse. It is psychological warfare. It is a calculated act of degradation meant to erase who they are.
Women are stripped and assaulted. Men are beaten, tortured, and forced to leap from rooftops as militants cheer. More than one video shows Druze men being driven to the edge of their balconies, their homes surely quiet moments before. Balconies once filled with carefully nourished plants are suddenly overrun by screaming men with AK-47s. The peaceful stillness of domestic life is shattered by terror. The Druze men are forced to climb over the railings. As they leap, they are shot multiple times as they are leaping to their deaths. It is a special kind of evil. Deliberate. Performative. Proud.
All of it is filmed. All of it is shared online for the enjoyment of the killers...

The New York Times takes the same understated approach as Reuters:

The clashes, between armed groups from Bedouin tribes and the Druse religious minority, erupted earlier this month and renewed fears of widespread sectarian violence and attacks against religious minorities.

In a world where terrorists are "freedom fighters" or "militants," we see "massacres" melt away, to be replaced by "sectarian violence". If only these minority groups could get their act together and learn to live with one another so al-Sharaa and his government didn't have to step in and keep the peace!

But Reuters and The New York Times are not framing an accurate narrative.

In a recent edition of Ask Haviv Anything, Haviv Rettig Gur spoke with Rania Fadel Dean, who comes from a prominent Israeli Druze family. Her organization, Covenant, teaches Americans about the Druze community. Dean criticized the prevailing media narrative:

[T]he basic narrative in the international press is that there's this sectarian violence there, you know, this one Middle Eastern tribe and this other Middle Eastern tribe, and you know how it is with Middle Eastern tribes. And so there's a bunch of violence and the Syrian government is coming in to sort it out, and the Israelis are, again, bombing somebody.

The reality is something different. There is a pattern at work that the media fails to explore. She describes Shaara's pattern, referring to him as Julani--his name when he led Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, a terrorist branch of al-Qaeda:

Julani always does that. He sends this HTS forces, or as they call them Kouwa al-Amn al-Aam, which is the security forces. They send them, they do the massacre, and after that he comes. He speaks to the Western media or the Western leaders, and he whispers this: "I can't control them; I have to open a real investigation and everyone who did that will be punished, and we will pay for that."

This pattern was also pointed out in Israel by Gideon Saar:

Hiba Zayadin, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, responded to the Syrian government's investigation of the massacres--which has been criticized as not going far enough--as showing a pattern:

These are not isolated incidents, but part of a recurring pattern of abuse tolerated, and at times facilitated, by the authorities. We are now seeing that same pattern extend to violations against Druse communities.

The Wall Street Journal gives some concrete details on the extent to which al-Shaara's government exacerbated and facilitated the massacres:

o Hundreds of the armed Arab Bedouin tribesmen who entered Sweida on July 13 successfully passed through dozens of government checkpoints, mostly run by Sunni Muslim forces.

o On July 14th, Syria’s Defense Ministry announced the death of at least six of its soldiers after an ambush by “unlawful groups,” a term they use to refer to Druze militias.

o On July 19th, Sharaa described the Bedouin tribes in a televised address as “a symbol of noble values and principles,” and went so far as to praise their nationwide mobilization to defend their community. By contrast, in the same speech, he referred to Druze militias as “outlaws.”

o Last Friday, Volker Türk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that his office had documented an attack where “Armed individuals affiliated with the interim authorities deliberately opened fire at a family gathering.”

Not surprisingly, there has been some open support for Israel's attacks on Syrian military headquarters in Damascus.

And some Syrian Druze are even carrying Israeli flags:

It is not clear how long and how far Israel can go to defend the Druze in Syria. Leaders in the West may still be giddy after having visited Syria and shaking al-Shaara's hand. They may be too vested in his taking control and dealing with the various factions and instability--too vested to raise questions on just how much sense it made to give the "former" jihadi leader free rein, and financial support, in war-torn Syria.

But they will always have Israel to criticize.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

German site Democ., which documents anti-democratic movements, covers a protest in Berlin last week:

Around 300–400 supporters of Syrian ruler Ahmed al-Sharaa (also known as al-Jolani) gathered in front of Berlin's Red City Hall on Saturday, July 19, 2025. They chanted slogans against Israel, Druze, and Alawites—including open calls for murder and rape.

During the demonstration, anti-Israel, anti-Druze, and anti-Alawite slogans were repeatedly chanted – accompanied by explicit calls for murder and sexual violence. Among other things, the term "tūbz" (Arabic for "to bend") was used as a threat against Druze – a vulgar and extremely violent expression from Syrian Arabic that calls for the sexual humiliation and murder of Druze. In local parlance, the term also describes a particularly degrading posture into which victims are forced before being executed with firearms while kneeling on the ground.

Coming soon to a town near you.

(h/t Daniel)

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

GHF: "We'll partner with anyone to feed every Gazan." The UN: "Screw the Gazans, we'd rather work with Hamas."

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sent a letter to the UN offering to provide security for the delivery of aid that is rotting away inside Gaza.

UN agencies continue to assert that a lack of permissions and security is impeding aid delivery. However, the reality on the ground tells a different story. More than 400 aid distribution points run by the UN and its partners remain closed. Kitchens have shuttered, trucks sit idle, drivers are striking, and convoys are routinely looted. This is not an access issue. It is a capacity and operational issue, and the world deserves honesty about that distinction.

We are aware that the UN and other aid organizations have essential aid stuck sitting in warehouses, including rice that has been sitting for more than 90 days, flour about to expire, and critical medical supplies already expired. We’ve seen the footage and heard the accounts of trucks being destroyed and food stolen. We’ve even been asked if we can provide security for convoys of other aid organizations. The answer is yes: we stand ready and willing to provide security for UN aid workers and assist in delivering aid.

We invite the United Nations and its partners to join us in adapting to the realities of this complex environment. The people of Gaza simply cannot afford for the world’s largest humanitarian organization to walk away. Our door remains open. We are prepared to support the safe and accountable delivery of UN aid to final distribution points across Gaza. But time is short. The population cannot wait for interagency political games while food sits in warehouses and people go hungry.

Here is the UN's response:

There is enough work for many humanitarian organizations for us to work with. We welcome working with any other partners. All we ask is that those partners work based on the most basic humanitarian principles, one of them being that don’t set up an operation that will increase the risk of people to be shot at or trampled while trying to get food. Also, we have a system that works. All we’re asked is to be allowed to do that system. I don’t think we need to add another layer of for-profit organizations. We need humanitarian partners, and we welcome working with any and every humanitarian partners that works along those basis.

The UN's hypocrisy is clear.

Even if they disagree with GHF's methods of distributing food, that doesn't mean they cannot use them for security. They can insist that the GHF adhere to their principles for securing the delivery. Their blanket "no" to GHF shows that their supposed concern about humanitarian principles is not principled at all.

But this goes deeper than that. The UN has cooperated with Hamas for years, before and during the war, for aid delivery. Hamas is not exactly a humanitarian organization. But in that case, the UN says that its principles are overridden by practical considerations of how to get the aid to those who need it.

Hamas hanging with UN members

Their willingness to partner with Hamas and not with GHF tells you that the UN doesn't care about principles, but politics. It wants control over the aid to Gazans and it has no problem with Hamas skimming the aid and selling it to bankroll its terrorism.

Think about this: The UN has never said a negative word about Hamas stealing aid, or attacking aid workers and Gaza civilians, or using civilians as human shields, or putting weapons under hospitals. It has criticized an organization that has distributed tens of millions of meals more in the past two months than it has criticized Hamas in 20 years.

Given all these incontrovertible facts, the UN cannot pretend to care about Gazans today. It wants to take down GHF more than it wants to feed Gazans. And it prefers Hamas to an aid agency that bypasses it to give food directly to the people.

Did the UN ask Gazans if they would accept GHF to secure the trucks and bring in food to their distribution points? Obviously not, because we know what Gazans would prefer. Which means that the arrogant UN is saying that it knows what's best for Gazans better than Gazans themselves.

Speaking of arrogance, compare the tone of the two messages. GHF recognizes that its model cannot provide food for all and it is begging to partner with the UN. The UN, which has said for months that the reason it cannot distribute the food in Gaza is because of security, changes its tune when its perceived competition offers to solve that problem.

By any metric, the UN is a thoroughly immoral organization - even in Gaza itself.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

07/23 Links Pt2: Jewish Peoplehood Is Not a Right-Wing Concept; The most rock and roll thing about Ozzy Osbourne was his defence of Israel

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Jewish Peoplehood Is Not a Right-Wing Concept

Whatever its American politics, a Jewish rabbinical institution training Jewish clergy to oppose Jewish peoplehood is a blatant attempt at ethnic self-destruction.

And that brings us to the larger forces at work here. Attacking the legitimacy of the very concept of Am Yisrael has gained purchase in American liberal Jewish circles because for the first time in modern Jewish history, Jewish nationhood has been designated a right-wing, conservative value.

The country saw a glimpse of this after President Trump announced an executive order to fight campus anti-Semitism during his first term, in 2019. Under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, it is a violation to discriminate on the basis of race or national origin. Building on the work of federal agencies in the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, Trump instructed that Title VI be applied to protect Jews on campus. This was uncontroversial among those who had been following the policy development for a decade and a half, but a fair number of left-wing commentators and activists—a surprising number of them Jews—objected vociferously to the concept of Jewish peoplehood being integrated into U.S. law.

It was a glaring neon sign that something was amiss in part of the American Jewish community’s understanding of its own heritage. More broadly, the left seemed to settle on the idea that this was Jewish nationalism as a right-wing political concept and was therefore to be discarded from modern Jewish identity.

Past Jewish intellectuals would have been shocked by such a mistaken assumption. Simon Dubnow, the great Russian Jewish historian who died in 1941, rejected his parents’ Orthodox lifestyle as so much superstition, but he became a prominent advocate of Jewish autonomism. Ahad Ha’am, among the most famous Jewish intellectuals of his era, is universally regarded as having founded “cultural Zionism.” Ha’am’s key insight was that the Jews must first understand themselves as a nation while in diaspora; only then could they responsibly pursue statehood.

It’s true that Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism, is his era’s foremost authority on Jewish (or any other) nationalism, and that his political heirs today are on the Israeli right. But Jewish peoplehood was not then, nor ever, a right-wing concept—neither politically nor religiously. (There are ultra-Orthodox anti-Zionists still today.) American Jews must educate themselves on this heritage and embrace it just as their leaders all across the political spectrum always have. Kehillat Israel’s letter is a well-timed reminder of this important facet of Jewish identity.

Gil Troy: 50th anniversary of the Zionism-is-racism resolution - opinion

In four months, a sobering anniversary risks being overlooked: the 50th anniversary of UN General Assembly Resolution 3379 condemning Zionism as racism. Unless they start planning now, America, Israel, and the Jewish people seem doomed to blow the educational and ideological opportunity.

Jewish organizations and educational institutions, along with the Israeli government, should use November 10, 2025, to convey three important messages:

1. Fifty years ago, the Western world united, Left and Right, black and white, to condemn this anti-Zionist resolution as antisemitic, not “just” anti-Israel. Most understood Israel’s centrality to modern Jewish identity. They recognized the Jew-hatred singling out only one form of nationalism, Jewish nationalism, in that forum of nationalisms.

2. Although the UN rescinded this resolution in 1991, this libel nevertheless entered the international bloodstream. Today, too many people believe “Zionism is racism,” that “Israel is apartheid, settler-colonialist, and an oppressor” and now, that Israel is committing a genocide in its justified war of self-defense against Hamas. Resolution 3376, creating a Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, also passed in 1975, keeps doing damage. Establishing a permanent institutional infrastructure for anti-Israel hatred made Israel the most hated nation.

3. Mainstreaming this green-and-red, Islamist-progressive lie, it’s now fashionable to attack not only what Israel does but that Israel is. What Israel’s UN ambassador Chaim Herzog told America’s UN ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan then remains true: “The real core of the conflict is the denial by the Arabs of Israel’s sovereignty and Israel’s right to exist.” Fortunately, it’s now “most” Arabs, not all. What Moynihan feared would happen then, is also true now: Whenever violence erupted in the Middle East, “whether Israel was responsible, Israel surely would be blamed: openly by some, privately by most.” Eventually, “Israel would be regretted.”

The forces shaping anti-Zionism
Another framing for the anniversary examines the origins of the Zionism-is-racism resolution to expose the forces still shaping anti-Zionism. Moynihan didn’t focus on “the accused… but the accusers.” The “obscene” anti-Israel resolutions, he observed, “reeked of the totalitarian mind, stank of the totalitarian state.”

It’s extraordinary that so-called “progressives” toast sexist, racist, homophobic dictators, terrorists, and rapists – in Iran, in Hezbollah, among Palestinians – as long as they oppose Israel. Moynihan denounced this “politics of resentment” and “economics of envy.” Understanding anti-Zionism as an attack on America, democracy, and decency, he proclaimed: “If you define the world as rich and poor –we are guilty; if you define the world as liberal and illiberal – they are guilty.”

The Blood Libel Express

This is based on an ancient prejudice, a conspiracy theory if you like, holding that Jews kill children for ritualistic reasons. In modern times it is more coded, suggesting Jews provoke wars which result in the “suffering of innocents”, or deliberately target children, or institutions linked to children like schools and paediatric hospitals. Or – most recently – images as above depicting the children as starving to death, reminiscent of the images from the Ethiopian famine that provoked Bob Geldof to launch “Live Aid“.

I was disappointed to see an approving repost by British journalist, James Bloodworth, who sneered: “When you’ve lost the daily express …”

The implication is, I suppose, that the “war crimes” of Israel are so great that even the right-leaning Express can’t ignore them.

Even Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, has bought into this. Today, calling for the recognition of a ‘Palestinian State’, he emoted: “Starving children searching hopelessly for food in the rubble. Family members shot dead by Israeli soldiers as they search for aid…”

Israel certainly is losing the propaganda war chiefly because, I think, the suffering of Jews is subconsciously viewed as “deserved” for the same reason blood libels are so effective. Whether they acknowledge it or not, many otherwise ‘good people’ like to think the worst of Jews and ascribe absolutely everything they do to malice. Even an existential fight for survival is viewed as ‘malicious’ when undertaken by Jews. But I am no psychoanalyst, so I will leave it there. Why did Hamas start a war and take hostages when it knew this is what the outcome would be? The answer is not a big reach: because it created precisely the opportunity they wanted. The real frontline fighters are not the armed wing of Hamas, they are the media officers at their so-called Health Ministry. Their daily salvos are more damaging to Israel than rockets.

Any journalist can watch endless footage coming out of Gaza showing well-fed people. Why don’t they ask themselves how this handful of children can be starving when others around them are not? Is it too much to ask that journalists ask questions before pumping out this fiction? There are plenty of wide-angle images of civilians in Gaza in the news every single day. None show incidental cases of starvation. The only ones that do are specifically posed close ups. The reason is obvious!

07/23 Links Pt1: Fever pitch in the war against Israel; Israel’s Gaza War Faces an Inflection Point; GHF offers to secure UN aid convoys against Hamas looting

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Fever pitch in the war against Israel

What “drip feeding of aid”? What Israeli “denial of essential humanitarian assistance”? Israel has supplied 1,863,357 tons of aid to Gaza. The IDF’s aid division COGAT says that recently close to 4,500 trucks entered Gaza with supplies, including flour for bakeries and 2,500 tons of baby food and high calorie special food for children.

There are currently around 950 humanitarian aid trucks that have crossed into Gaza but are just sitting there because the UN and its proxies can’t or won’t distribute their contents. The GHF has pleaded with the UN to collaborate with it in the major task of distributing aid throughout Gaza. The UN is simply refusing to do so.

It’s Hamas that’s been stealing the food and other aid for its own use, causing Gazan civilians to go hungry; it’s Hamas that’s been murdering Gazans for collecting food supplies from the GHF because Hamas knows that if it can’t steal the aid for itself, it’s finished.

Of course the IDF don’t deliberately kill Gazans queuing for food. Why on earth would they do that, since they’ve set up and are policing an entire infrastructure to deliver it to them?

Hamas, on the other hand, have killed hundreds of Gazan civilians for receiving food supplies. Where some Gazan civilians have been killed by the IDF around the food queues, this has clearly been an accidental result of the soldiers firing into the air to warn off these possibly Hamas-infiltrated crowds if they look like they’re about to rush the Israeli troops.

Yet Lammy and the other foreign ministers make zero reference to Hamas stealing the aid and zero reference to Hamas killing Gazan civilians. Instead they blame Israel. Why have they perpetrated this blood libel? Do they actually know this is the reverse of the truth? Do they realise it makes no sense? Are they playing some cynical game? Are they capable of any intelligent thought processes at all? Or are their minds just totally poisoned by hatred of Israel?

Arsen Ostrovsky: I’m a Human Rights Lawyer: What’s Happening to the Druze in Syria Is a Real Genocide. Gaza Is Not.

Israel’s objective has never been to wipe out the Palestinian people, but to dismantle Hamas’ military and governing capabilities, stop further terrorist atrocities and return the hostages.

In war, innocent civilians die. That is a tragedy. But it is also the inevitable consequence of Hamas using their own people as human shields and embedding rocket launchers, tunnel and weapons inside and underneath homes, schools, hospitals, and mosques.

Despite this, Israel has taken unprecedented steps, unmatched by any military in modern history, to uphold the laws of armed conflict and mitigate civilian harm, including issuing warnings, dropping leaflets, establishing humanitarian corridors, facilitating aid and foregoing the pursuit of legitimate military targets to spare civilians.

This is the exact opposite of genocide. This is a state doing everything possible to avoid civilian casualties.

That is a world apart from what al-Sharra’s forces are doing in Sweida: mercilessly targeting a minority group for extermination, an actual genocide.

And yet the world, apparently, couldn’t care less.

Why? Because condemning Ahmad al-Sharra, the jihadist-turned-wannabe-statesman, and new darling of the international community, doesn’t make headlines? Or perhaps the Druze aren’t a trendy cause in the progressive elites?

Perhaps it’s just far easier to bash Israel than confront the real monsters, perpetrating heinous crimes.

Sadly, today the word “genocide” is being tossed around like a political football by those who care more about scoring ideological points than about actual human suffering.

Those levelling the genocide accusation against Israel, don’t care about law or facts. For them, the label is a propaganda weapon, a tool of lawfare aimed at vilifying Israel and absolving Hamas of its actual genocidal intent, which it acted out on during the Oct 7th massacre, and have vowed to repeat “again and again” until Israel is “annihilated.” Genocide is not a political weapon - it is “the crime of crimes.” And when it is falsely and maliciously applied to Israel, it not only distorts the truth, it cheapens and demeans the suffering of real victims, like the Druze, who are being massacred before our eyes in Syria.

John Spencer: I’m a War Scholar. There Is No Genocide in Gaza

Israel has delivered more humanitarian aid to Gaza than any military in history has provided to an enemy population during wartime. More than 94,000 trucks carrying over 1.8 million tons of aid have entered the territory. Israel has supported hospitals, repaired water pipelines, increased access to clean water, and enabled over 36,000 patients to leave Gaza for treatment abroad.

The IDF has coordinated millions of vaccine doses, supplied fuel for hospitals and infrastructure, and facilitated the flow of food and medicine through the UN, aid groups, and private partners. The U.S.–Israeli Gaza Humanitarian Foundation alone has delivered more than 82 million meals—one to two million a day—while weakening Hamas’s control over aid. This is not genocide. It is responsible and historic mid-war humanitarian policy.

Bartov cites death tolls from Hamas health authorities without question. He says 58,000 have been killed, including 17,000 children. But these numbers come from a terrorist organization. They mix civilians and fighters and count anyone under 18 as a child, even though Hamas uses teenagers and younger children as combatants. The figures are not independently verified and have been shown to contain false details, including names, ages, and sex. Civilian deaths are tragic, but in Gaza, they are also part of Hamas’s strategy. No military operation is judged solely by body counts or destruction figures. If we used Bartov’s logic, every major war would be called genocide. Two million civilians died in the Korean War, an average of 54,000 per month. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars killed hundreds of thousands. The fight against ISIS leveled multiple cities and killed tens of thousands. None of those wars were considered genocidal. Gaza is not either. War is evaluated based on the actions of commanders, the goals set by leaders, and how well the military follows the laws of war, not by statistics taken out of context.

War is hell. It is inhumane, destructive, and ugly. But it is not automatically a crime. Nations must not target civilians. They must follow the rules of distinction, proportionality, and take all possible care to avoid civilian harm. Israel is doing that. I have seen it.

In Rafah this summer, Israel spent weeks preparing evacuations. It opened new safe areas and waited until civilians had moved before striking Hamas targets. That operation killed Hamas’s top commander, recovered hostages, and kept civilian deaths very low. It was a clear example of Israel’s extraordinary intent and actions to protect civilians while targeting only Hamas, a part of the story ignored by those who reduce war to headlines and numbers.

What is happening in Gaza is tragic. But it is not genocide. And it is not illegal.

Genocide requires clear, provable intent to destroy a people through sustained, deliberate actions. That burden of proof has not been met. Bartov and others have not even tried. Likewise, the laws of war do not prohibit war itself. They require that military operations distinguish between combatants and noncombatants, that force be proportional to the objective, and that commanders take all feasible precautions to protect civilian life. I have watched the IDF do exactly that. I have seen restraint, humanitarian aid, and deliberate compliance with legal standards, often at tactical cost.

This is not a campaign of extermination. It is a war against Hamas, a terrorist army embedded in civilian areas by design.

The law matters. So does precision. And above all, truth matters.

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

The war in Gaza rages on, and the images of destruction and suffering are inescapable. Yet, if truth be told, I feel a profound apathy toward the plight of Gaza’s civilians. My emotions are reserved for the suffering of my own people—Israelis, Jews, soldiers, survivors, hostages, and hostage families. The events of October 7, 2023, and their aftermath, consume all my energy, leaving me unable to muster sympathy for those who, in my view, have aligned themselves with terror.

My feelings are instead completely taken up with the hostages and the 895 IDF soldiers who have died trying to free them. Each soldier’s death ripples through our communities—friends, neighbors, or children of friends. We exchange pained messages on WhatsApp: “Another soldier.” These are not faceless numbers; they are our boys, some barely out of high school, others young fathers or newlyweds. Their sacrifice haunts me, as does the moral calculus: is it right that so many die to save so few?

The hostages, too, consume my thoughts. I can’t linger on the horrors they’ve endured—starvation, beatings, confinement in dank tunnels—without risking my own ability to function. I push away intrusive images of October 7, when Hamas and Gaza’s civilians breached our borders, murdered, raped, and kidnapped. Civilians bragged about their atrocities, spat on our dead, and hid hostages in their homes. They voted for Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, in UN-overseen elections. They allowed tunnels and weapons under their children’s bedrooms. They are absolutely, 100 percent complicit.

You often hear people say things like, “the majority of Muslims are peaceful” and this always makes me roll my eyes. With what authority do people say this? If such a thing could be quantified, one would have to consider the ample evidence that shows the children of Gaza to be indoctrinated with Jew-hate from birth. They imbibe it with their mothers’ milk.

Do I believe every Gazan is evil? They’re complicit! How can they not be? Maybe some woman whose husband will beat her if she doesn’t vote for Hamas is innocent. I have no clue. But unfortunately, people get killed in war. And this war was started by Gaza. Not only by Hamas, but the people of Gaza, headed by Hamas. And it is definitely the people of Gaza who crowd the streets when there’s going to be a hostage release ceremony. They love to see Jews in captivity. They love to watch them be ridiculed. They love to jeer and spit and grab at them. They love to hate them.

So no. I do not believe that most Gazans are peaceful and neither do any of the polls I’ve seen on the topic. The people of Gaza continue to support Hamas and participate in the atrocities.

Now Gaza is rubble, its people hungry and desperate. Hamas shoots those who seek food or escape. Neither Egypt nor Jordan will take them in. No one will. But my focus must be with my own. My people, our soldiers, my son in the reserves, who leaves his wife and three young children to serve, again and again.

I asked my Facebook friends why they do or don’t care about Gaza’s suffering. Their responses were like an echo of my own thoughts, but perhaps offer greater nuance as well as important context I might have missed.

Avi Perez, 57, who made Aliyah from South Africa and lives in Ramat Beit Shemesh, pulls no punches:

“When a potential Middle Eastern Singapore chooses murder, terror, missiles, and more over prosperity and possibility ... mercy for monsters has left the store.”

Tehilla O., 60, living outside Israel, is uncompromising:

“They aren’t suffering. If they are, it’s self-inflicted. All the hostages are released at the same time, it ends. Simple. They know where they are. Even as ‘civilians,’ they are Hamas. And quite frankly, after 7 October and since and what has and is still being done, they can cry me a river.”

Elihu D. Stone, 67, a religiously observant Zionist in Judea, expresses sorrow but places blame squarely on Hamas:

“I care deeply about innocents suffering the ravages of war in Gaza. The agonies wrought upon families who must endure the predictable and anticipated consequences of Hamas’s savagery of October 7th is absolutely heartbreaking. I wish that the global community would back Israel’s war effort against Hamas whole-heartedly and bring immense pressure to bear… to return all those whom Hamas kidnapped.”

Yael Pedhatzur, 76, from Meitar, Israel, sees Gaza’s suffering as their own doing:

“I have very little empathy for the plight of Gaza and the Gazans as I believe their situation is of their own making. No other country has been made to aid their enemy during wartime. As one who wants complete surrender of Hamas, I know it can’t happen as long as we provide them with food and supplies.”

“Hamas obviously doesn’t care about them either as they shoot their people who take the aid.

“I have been saying this for the last several campaigns in Gaza over the past 15-20 years. No electricity, no water, no food. That’s how you end a war.”

Mark Isser Coopersmith, reflecting on past expulsions, is direct:

“We should be starving them until they let the hostages go.”

Toby Dachs from Jerusalem focuses on Israel’s losses:

“My concern and pain is for the hostages and all the families who lost their sons in this horrific war.”

Batsheva Gladstone, a longtime friend, differs from me in that she makes the effort—she actively struggles to find compassion:

“I have to fight to care in the slightest about any palestinians. I have to remind myself almost daily that G-d doesn’t want us to turn off our humanity. And, if there are indeed any innocents in all this horror inflicted upon the Jewish nation we should try to muster up the decency to differentiate between the terrorists, the terrorist sympathizers, and the victims of circumstance. It’s admittedly a tall order, and sometimes I fail, but I try, and sometimes I can…

“Do I think the war is justified? Yes, sadly, 100%, and necessary. ”

Iris Breidbord Langman questions the existence of innocent Gazans:

“My only concern is for our hostages. The perpetual ‘victims’ joined Hamas in brutalizing our people. Is there a difference between them and Hamas? Show me one ‘civilian’ who came forward to help a hostage and I will care about that person.”

Cheryl Mallenbaum-Ninyo would care about the innocent, but finds none to care about:

“I care about the suffering of innocent people in Gaza. But where are they? (That’s a genuine question.) I can’t help but remember that when Israel offered immunity, safety, and a CEO added financial incentive for anyone in Gaza who helps return a captive, not one single Gazan came forward. So I genuinely wonder: Where ARE these ‘good, innocent people’? (Possibly the exception being newborns who have not yet been indoctrinated to needlessly hate and seek destruction.)

“Those in Gaza (or elsewhere) who support Hamas or who raise their children with blind hatred or who think murder, rape, burning, beheading, kidnapping, mutilation, etc. is justified to “bring attention to a cause” or who hold innocent civilians (and dead bodies) for psychological torture? They don’t have my sympathy.

“If the only way to spread your ‘message’ is to harm others, the ‘message’ isn’t worth spreading.”

Alisa Chessler dismisses the notion of civilian innocence:

“I only care about ‘innocent civilians’ and since we are nearly 2 years with NOT ONE person coming forward to identify the location of our hostages, I don’t believe there are any ‘innocent civilians’ in that sh*thole. So therefore, they can turn the place into a parking lot for all I care.

“My only concern is the environmental impact of the garbage there. It needs to be removed to restore the land back to something livable for Israelis.”

Jan Poller contrasts the lack of Gazan compassion with Israel’s pain:

“We care about a lot more than they cared about the men, women, and children they raped and beheaded.”

Deborah K., a 70-year-old Jew from Scotland, feels torn by guilt but still unmoved about the Gazan people:

“I don’t care about the Gazans… but feel guilty because ‘I’m supposed to/I ought to.’ They’ve been offered various options several times over the years to live there peacefully, refused every time, voted in Hamas, and as long as Hamas are around, Israel is in danger. And Israel has to exist.”

Hinda Rochel Anolick-Rachel Ann prioritizes her people:

“I care about the people in Gaza. I care more about my people in Gaza. And I care more about my people period. They come first. However terrible it is there, it is worse for my people who are being held hostage, and to give in to terrorists will result in greater harm to my people. It isn't a matter of caring, it is who I care more about.”

These voices, varied in tone and perspective, reflect a shared sentiment: Gaza’s suffering feels self-inflicted—and distant—when weighed against Israel’s personal, uninvited tragedy. We didn’t choose this war. They did.

So when the sound of planes overhead draws my attention away from work, my thoughts are on the men in those planes—not the hunger in Gaza. I pause and say a few psalms.

The moral weight of this war rests not in Gaza’s ruins, but in the lives of our soldiers and hostages. My heart holds only so much—and its space is reserved for my own suffering people: those who are chained, those who are fighting, those who are grieving, and those still waiting for their loved ones to come home.

One name in this piece has been changed at the request of the contributor.

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The UN calls Gaza "the hungriest place on Earth." They don't know their planet very well.

In May, the UN called Gaza "the hungriest place on Earth."

Here's a headline from the (Arabic) Sudan Tribune in January:

Khartoum, January 18, 2025 – The Preparatory Committee of the Sudanese Doctors Syndicate revealed on Saturday that more than 500,000 infants have died due to malnutrition.

Adiba Ibrahim Al-Sayed, a member of the Omdurman branch of the Doctors Syndicate's Preparatory Committee, told Sudan Tribune that the number of infant deaths has reached 522,000, while cases of malnutrition have risen to 286,000 since the outbreak of the war.

She added that Darfur has witnessed the deaths of 45,000 children due to malnutrition, in addition to 680,000 cases of the same disease among pregnant women.

54 cases of tuberculosis have also been detected among children in South Kordofan, due to weakened immunity caused by malnutrition.

In another context, Adiba Al-Sayed confirmed that 197 children have been raped since the outbreak of the war, noting that most of the victims were young girls, some of whom suffered severe bleeding leading to death, or ruptured vaginal membranes, cervical injuries, involuntary urination, and urinary fistulas resulting from repeated sexual assaults.

Hey, it is only 10,000 times worse than Gaza. Nothing that it is worth protesting, making a sign or tweeting over.

And there is Haiti, Mali, Somalia, Congo, Chad, Yemen, North Korea....but who cares about them?

Jews cannot be blamed!

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Everything you need to know about the Gaza war you can learn from the Al-Ahli Hospital incident

The media continues to parrot Gaza Health Ministry and Hamas press releases as if they are reliable.

But they know it isn't true. Because virtually every major media outlet proved, on their own that they routinely lie and exaggerate when the war was only ten days old.

Let's review:

On October 17, 2023, Hamas and the Gaza Ministry of Health claimed that Israel bombed the Al Ahli Hospital, killing 471 people and injuring 342.

Every non-partisan investigation of the incident showed that these were all lies.

The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, AP, the Washington Post, Le Monde and experts interviewed in other media all concluded that a Gaza rocket was much more consistent with the evidence than an Israeli bomb. Moreover, not one of them believed the casualty figures quoted by the Health Ministry, as an explosion of that size would not kill that many people.

Video showed that the parking lot was hit, not the hospital. There was no crater, as Israeli munitions would leave.

Hamas claimed at one point that it had portions of the Israeli munition, but never showed it to any reporters and then later claimed that the remnants were all vaporized, leaving nothing left. That is not consistent with any known munition. Also, Hamas members were seen immediately after the incident clearing out the rocket debris, which is what they always do when an errant rocket hits civilians.

Every expert that viewed the damage didn't believe Hamas' claims of 471 dead. Many of them estimated about 50, some went as high as 100 or so - but nobody, and I mean nobody, agreed that 471 people were killed. Even HRW noted that having more deaths than injuries is highly unlikely.

In short: Hamas lied and covered up the lie. The Ministry of Health lied about casualties. Islamic Jihad lied in denying it shot the rocket. And everyone in the news media knows that they lied and covered up their lies.

Yet today the Hamas Health Ministry counts 471 fictional people as being killed by Israel on that one day alone.

The problem isn't that Hamas and its health ministry routinely lie. It is that the media continue to give their statements credibility.

When they know, firsthand, that Hamas and the health ministry lied directly to their face..

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The Dresden Deception: How Inflated Death Tolls Become Propaganda (sound familiar?)

The Allied firebombing of Dresden, Germany, in February 1945 has served as a propaganda tool against the West for over eight decades.

No one denies the horrifying scale of destruction: a massive bombing campaign triggered a firestorm that killed thousands of civilians. But almost immediately, various parties began using Dresden as supposed proof that the Allies were just as guilty of war crimes as the Nazis.

Unlike other Allied bombings, where the Nazi regime often downplayed civilian casualties to maintain morale, the Nazis actively highlighted and exaggerated the Dresden death toll. Their aim was to recast themselves as victims.

On February 25, Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet estimated nearly 200,000 killed in the raids without citing a source.

The Nazi Federal Foreign Office picked up on this article in a telegram in which it instructed the diplomatic mission in Bern to quote this Svenska Dagbladet article in its communication about Dresden.

It seems entirely possible that the Germans "leaked" the death toll to the Swedish reporter, who eagerly printed his scoop. The Nazis could then use it as proof of Allied war crimes.

The Germans knew this was a lie. The Dresden police estimated a month after the raid that about 25,000 had been killed.

But the Nazis told Westerners that the numbers were much higher.

In May, British POWs who were released in Dresden reported that the Nazis told them that 300,000 were killed in the raids.

Note the last paragraph describes how German propaganda newspapers seized on Dresden as a way to position the Allies as wiping out the an entire civilian city.

Kurt Vonnegut's classic 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-5 centered on the Dresden bombings, and Vonnegut asserted that 135,000 people - mostly civilians - were killed, comparing it with Hiroshima. Vonnegut probably got his 135,000 figure from Holocaust denier David Irving, who published that number in the 1966 edition of his book "The Fall of Dresden."

But the city of Dresden created a historians' commission to determine the real death toll. The report, released in 2010, estimates that the number of dead was no more than 25,000 - the same number the Dresden police estimated in 1945.

That doesn't stop anti-Western movements to continue to exaggerate the death toll for the same sort fo propaganda that the Nazis used.

Protesters, today, still quote the 300,000 figure. Here is 2008 graffiti in a Dresden railway underpass saying "300,000 dead" overwritten with "Antifa."

And here is a recent German right-wing demonstration with a banner claiming 250,000 killed in the Allied "holocaust."

The Russian Foreign Ministry tweeted in 2023 that the numbers killed were as high as 135,000 in an attempt to discredit the US and UK criticism of the Ukraine war.

Propaganda thrives on numbers, especially when they’re unverified. By 1945, concern for German civilian casualties was not a priority for the Allies. The war's aim was victory and the destruction of the Nazi regime.

That moral framing gave Nazi propagandists an opening.

It took 65 years for historians to agree on a realistic death toll in Dresden. Wartime casualty estimates are notoriously unreliable in the moment, and that uncertainty offers a rich opportunity for manipulation.

The media, hungry for numbers, often reports the first figure it finds, regardless of source. In the fog of war, those figures can become permanent fixtures in historical memory, long after the facts are known.

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Haredi Rabbi Menachem Brod wrote an article in "Haredi 10" saying that even Jews who would not visit the Temple Mount, like him, should still make the awareness of the Temple site a central part of their lives:

In recent decades, our enemies have been investing great efforts in trying to deny the existence of the Temples on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, in complete contradiction to Muslim tradition itself. Ancient Islam saw the Foundation Stone of the Temple as the location of Solomon's Temple, and the construction of the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount was intended to glorify Jerusalem and present Islam as the successor to Judaism. Today, Muslims are trying to rewrite history and erase any Jewish connection to the Temple Mount and Jerusalem.

In recent years, there are groups that have attempted to deepen the connection to the Temple Mount by visiting the site. Most Torah and mitzvot observant Jews do not support this approach, given the absolute prohibition of the great men of Israel to ascend the Temple Mount. But this does not mean, God forbid, that the Temple Mount should be left out of the consciousness.

This activity of our enemies should inspire us to take the opposite action. The attempts to deny the connection of the people of Israel to the Temple Mount should serve as a warning bell for us, if we have not fallen asleep a little in cultivating the connection to our holiest place.
...
The attempts of our enemies to deny this are a signal from heaven that we must engage in deepening the awareness of the Temple and instilling it in the younger generation. We must know every detail of the Temple structure and be well-versed in the procedures for working in it. The very act of engaging in these issues will make us feel more strongly about the rebuilding of the Third Temple soon in our day [with the Messiah.]

He is not demanding Jews ascend to the Temple Mount - quite the contrary. He just wants Jews to study about the Temple and center it again in their lives.

If Muslims truly felt that the Temple Mount was theirs, this article wouldn't bother them. They don't believe in the Jewish messiah, and if Jews want to believe that the Temple will be rebuilt in messianic times, Muslims could just laugh and forget about it.

But there was a fierce reaction to this article from Egypt's Al Azhar Observatory.

In response to Rabbi Menachem Brod's claims, Al-Azhar Observatory affirms that the attempts of some rabbis and Jewish extremists to falsify history and claim absolute religious rights to Jerusalem and the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque are nothing more than an extension of a supremacist discourse that seeks to legitimize the occupation in the name of the Jewish faith.

The Observatory ...affirms that Jerusalem is an Islamic endowment, and that Al-Aqsa Mosque, whose surroundings God has blessed, is an inalienable right of the Islamic nation, not to be falsified by historical falsification or by force of arms.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks. If Muslims were secure in their belief that the Temple Mount is Islamic, then why would a major center of Islamic thought even bother with a response?

They know the truth. They know that the idea that there were no Temples on the Mount is only several decades old. Muslim sources discuss the Temple. The Dome of the Rock was built to replace it.

It was all a usurpation, and the Muslim world knows it. When they say that Jewish claims are lies, they are trying to convince themselves.

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07/22 Links Pt2: A Techno-Dystopian Era of Anti-Semitism; Trump Withdraws from UNESCO; Ireland's Antisemitic Obsession; Ozzy Osbourne, heavy metal legend and Israel advocate, dies aged 76

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: A Techno-Dystopian Era of Anti-Semitism

The pretense for the arrest appears to be nonspecific—that is, these particular Israelis weren’t considered suspect beyond the fact that they, like most Israeli adults, did their mandated national service.

The organization connected to the detainment is a very important part of this story. As I wrote in January, the Hind Rajab Foundation is not actually a human-rights group. Its founder and leader is a former Hezbollah member and military trainee. He fooled Belgian authorities into giving him asylum, where he founded a hate group that was behind anti-Semitic riots in Europe.

Hind Rajab, then, is an outgrowth of Middle Eastern terrorist groups’ strategy of seeding homegrown anti-Semitic extremism in Europe. After the Jewish tourists’ arrest and alleged beating, Hind Rajab celebrated: “The suspects were identified and arrested with a clear show of force at the Tomorrowland festival in Boom.”

Such thuggish talk is perfectly in character for a group that essentially acts as a modern version of 20th century European street fascists.

But in the great spirit of “ISIS in place,” anti-Semites seeking to draw up lists of Jews to harass don’t need to be personally trained by Hezbollah or be located in places so familiar with Nazi tactics. Activists in Canada have created a website (which I obviously won’t link here) seeking to list the names, ages, locations and other personal information of any Canadian Jews who have served with the IDF.

But the site goes a step further, indicating where such “Jew lists” are headed. Visitors to the site are told that Canadians ought to know who these Jews are and “the networks they’re a part of that may have influenced their decision to join the military.”

In other words, the names and locations of their parents, employers and the Jewish schools, Jewish youth groups and Jewish university groups they attended or participated in. Since Oct. 7, 2023, anti-Semites have opened fire on Canadian Jewish schools several times. Other Jewish establishments have been firebombed, stoned and vandalized.

Melanie Phillips: Britain waves the white flag to Islamization and illegal immigration

Ever since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led atrocities against Israelis, British Jews have run a gauntlet of hatred, intimidation and attacks, both verbal and physical, as the direct result of incitement based on a systematic campaign of demonization and eye-watering falsehoods about Israel’s behavior in Gaza.

Through distortion, decontextualization and outright lies, Britain’s media — led by the BBC and Sky — have channeled Hamas propaganda day in, day out.

They have wickedly misrepresented Israel’s just and agonizing war to defend itself against extermination and its attempts to safeguard as far as possible the lives of Gazan civilians being used as human shields and cannon fodder as genocide and war crimes.

With Israelis being painted as diabolical child-killers, British Jews find themselves being personally accused of “killing babies” and restaurants and pubs refusing to serve “Zionists.”

No other group is spoken of in such a vile manner. No other people is subjected to such profound and obsessional injustice. No other nation is told it has no right to its own country and its national-liberation movement is a source of evil.

Yet instead of defending the country’s Jews against this pre-pogrom incitement, the Starmer government has poured petrol on the flames by parroting the same Hamas lies about Israelis killing “too many” civilians or depriving Gazans of food — this while Israel and America are providing millions of meals to Gazans for the first time receiving food aid that’s not being stolen from them by Hamas.

Starmer’s behavior displays the dire effects of the alliance that’s been forged between Western liberals and Islamist radicals.

It’s laying waste to America’s Democratic Party and found its most alarming expression in Zohran Mamdani, the Islamist poised to become New York mayor.

He too channels Hamas lies about Israel; he too will make his city’s Jewish community more unsafe; he too will undermine America’s security.

Americans should gaze upon Britain and be warned.

Jake Wallis Simons: David Lammy is unfit to be Britain’s Foreign Secretary

Yet Lammy and the rest of this atrocious Government has been entirely taken in by the disinformation. When’s the last time you heard our Foreign Secretary criticising Hamas or their enablers in the West?

UNRWA employees reportedly took part in the atrocities of October 7. At least 1,200 of them, according to Israeli intelligence, are card-carrying members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad. Has the Foreign Secretary ever made mention of that?

His interview with BBC Breakfast this morning was a case in point. All the usual slurs were present. In an exhibition of preening self-fashioning, he stated that he was “sickened” and “appalled” by Israel.

Jerusalem’s actions were “grotesque”, he said, as Lammy had seen “innocent children holding out their hand for food… shot and killed in the way that we have seen in the last few days”.

The Foreign Secretary might as well have delivered a speech entitled “your foreign policy is in the hands of a man who is fool enough to believe Hamas propaganda”. Lammy declared that if Israel failed to reach a ceasefire in Gaza, Britain would impose further sanctions upon it.

Does Lammy really think that it is purely in Israel’s gift to reach a ceasefire? Doesn’t it take two to fight a war? Again and again, negotiations in Qatar have been derailed by Hamas, which strings the talks along only to scuttle them at the last minute. Why? Because it understands that if it released the hostages, it would soon be out of power.

For Israel to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza now, with its citizens still in the catacombs and the jihadis still clutching the levers of power, would only store up further atrocities, war and unrest in the future.

Israel has tried unilateral withdrawal in the past. In 2005, it pulled all Israelis out of Gaza, handing over the keys to the Palestinians. The result? A terror state in which every aspect of governance was geared purely towards the deaths of the Jews.

Lammy’s short-sightedness is beyond belief. But it is not just Israel that the Foreign Secretary is betraying. It is the West as a whole, which accelerates towards its final decline with every jihadi victory.

07/22 Links Pt1: Just Say It: ‘Israel Was Right’; The World Looks Away from Syria's Atrocities but Fixates on Gaza; Munich citizens form human chain around synagogue to protect from pro-Palestine rally

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Just Say It: ‘Israel Was Right’

Of course there’s plenty of throat-clearing throughout the piece, for example the repeated insistence that Israel hasn’t proved that Hamas steals the aid. Which is weird, because the article is about the writers discovering beyond any shadow of a doubt that Hamas steals the aid. Palestinians in Gaza are risking their lives to detail to American publications what Hamas is doing to them, and the journalists make sure to insinuate that everybody—literally everybody, Israelis and Palestinians alike—is lying and that Hamas is good, actually.

Is this just another example of media bias? Ho-hum, right? Not exactly—there’s more to this particular story. The same day the Post ran the preceding story, it also ran a second story on humanitarian aid in Gaza. This one was an attempt to paint the one group delivering aid to Gazan civilians directly—an effort backed by the U.S. and Israel and involving Western companies—as the problem.

The piece repeats evidence-free accusations, parroted directly from Hamas, that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is acting as some kind of lure to hungry Palestinians so that the IDF can shoot them. Rumor-mongering such as this has consistently led to firms backing out of working with the aid group, other aid groups boycotting them, and restaurateurs abroad being physically attacked for providing food for the GHF to distribute to Gazan civilians. Hamas is starving Palestinians, and some of the critics of the GHF are gleefully advancing that starvation agenda.

The main point of the GHF is to provide aid to Gazans without letting Hamas commandeer that aid instead. Here is what this second Washington Post story has to say about that: “Hamas is demanding a return to the U.N.-coordinated system of aid delivery that operated in Gaza for decades. Israel charges that Hamas has corrupted that system.”

“Israel charges.” If only there were some way for reporters to investigate the situation and publish a 2,000-word story in one of America’s largest daily newspapers!

Israel also says water is wet but offers no proof. So who knows.

We don’t have to he-said-she-said the living daylights out of the news. Everybody involved knows the facts, and those facts comport precisely with what Israel has been saying all along.

Selective Outrage: The World Looks Away from Syria's Atrocities but Fixates on Gaza

For the most part, the world did not take much notice of the brutality of Syrian soldiers in the Druze region of Sweida. The first article about the situation to appear on the front page of the New York Times print edition was on July 17. That piece led not with the story of atrocities in Sweida, but "deadly airstrikes" launched by Israel in Damascus.

In the 10 days since the incident that spurred the fighting in Syria that claimed more than 1,200 lives, the Times devoted more of its front page to stories and pictures about Gaza and Israel than to Sweida and Syria.

In an age where pictures are more important than words, there were no pictures from Syria but two large pictures from Gaza on the Times front page during this period. The Times' lead story on Monday was "Israelis shoot dozens rushing for aid in Gaza," a piece that relied heavily on figures provided by Hamas, numbers Israel insists are significantly inflated. That same day, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported 205 people killed in Syria - more than the number cited in Gaza. Yet it was Gaza that led the front page.

The disparity in international attention is predictable. Gaza leads the global conversation. The fighting in Syria, unless Israel is involved, struggles to get notice. Israel is held to different standards and is judged by a different measuring stick. Moreover, Hamas spokespeople - camouflaged as the Gaza Health Ministry - feed journalists a steady stream of data, images, and interviews.

Gaza fits a frame the media loves: strong vs. weak. That David-and-Goliath template is easy to tell and emotionally resonant. Sweida? It's messy. Bedouin militias, Government loyalists, Druze fighters. No clear villain, no single victim group. It's complex, local, tribal. That makes it harder to explain and easier to ignore.

Pro-Palestinian advocacy is highly organized, heavily funded (thank you, Qatar), and globally embedded - across university campuses, human rights organizations, and social media influencers. The Druze, on the other hand, have no such infrastructure. They're not backed by Gulf money, and they lack a global network of activists lobbying on their behalf. This is, ultimately, about what the world chooses to see and what it opts to ignore.

Andrew Fox: The Gaza War and the West's Reckoning

Here is the key point: these are not just fringe outbursts. If there are Nazi flags at a rally, it becomes a Nazi rally. The same standard should be applied to Palestinian protests: any antisemitism makes them antisemitic rallies.

The West’s openness has become its Achilles heel. Adversaries understand this. Iran, Hamas, Qatar, Russia and their fellow travellers exploit our freedoms with surgical precision. They flood our social media with lies, fund our institutions, radicalise our youth and our immigrant populations, divide the remainder, and then sit back as our societies unravel from within.

Even international law has been weaponised. South Africa, echoing Hamas’s own rhetoric, took Israel to the International Court of Justice over false genocide charges. This was lawfare, pure and simple: an attempt to use legal institutions to delegitimise a liberal democracy defending itself against terrorism. The ICJ, by entertaining these claims, granted Hamas the antisemitic, Holocaust-inverting propaganda victory it sought.

This is not just about Israel. It never is. As history shows, when antisemitism surges, democracy itself is under threat. The Jews are the canary in the coal mine. If we cannot protect them, we have failed to protect the moral integrity of our society.

The Gaza conflict has exposed the fault lines. It has demonstrated that Western democracies are at risk not because we are weak, but because we have become complacent. The antisemitism now widespread in our streets is a reflection of national health. As Jonathan Tobin said, “If as a society we can’t stand up and protect our Jewish communities, we are done for.”

How do we fight back? How do we defend the values that made our societies strong? How can a divided society of strangers restore freedom, reason, tolerance, and truth when a tsunami of malign propaganda and foreign funding floods us?

The perfect example in the last 24 hours: disinformation over Gaza has led to twenty Western governments demanding that Israel immediately cease fire, even though Hamas is the party that rejected the most recent proposed ceasefire deal.

I fear we are lost. Our governments cannot even recognise the problem, let alone conceive a solution. We are ignoring the canary’s warning, and the entire mine is collapsing around us.