Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, August 08, 2025

08/08 Links Pt1: The Palestinians remain the greatest obstacle to Palestinian statehood; Germany suspends arms exports to Israel over Gaza

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Tug of War

It is likely that the flood of bad (and misleading) press Israel has received over the past couple weeks has convinced Netanyahu that the world already considers Israel to be, effectively, fully occupying the Gaza Strip. Most of the recent UN aid has been taken or diverted before reaching its destination. The UN blames Israel for that, so do world leaders, and so does the press. Yet the UN opposes Israeli security measures designed to ensure the trucks get to their final stop. Netanyahu’s position seems to be: If Israel is going to be held responsible for the outcome, then Israel is going to be responsible for it.

What about the hostages? Here, Netanyahu’s thinking probably falls along the lines of: I agreed to a cease-fire and hostage trade, Hamas didn’t; I can’t simply sit by the phone and wait for Hamas to change its mind. Perhaps the specter of a full IDF assault on what’s left of Hamas can get them back to the table.

What about the timing? To the world, Netanyahu is acting aggressively when Israel’s reputation is already taking a beating. Bibi might agree with that. Israel agreed to a cease-fire, and its press got worse. Hamas released videos of tortured, starved hostages, and it changed nothing. The bad press might simply be a nonfactor in Netanyahu’s decision-making because he believes, not without reason, that Israel’s behavior itself is a nonfactor to the press.

Meanwhile, the “Palestine recognition” gamble has given Israel every incentive to go further into Gaza. If France is going to recognize “the state of Palestine” in six weeks, the thinking goes, then Israel better make sure there is as little of Hamas remaining as possible when that happens. Similarly, if the UK is going to recognize “Palestine” unless there’s a cease-fire, and Hamas is refusing to come to the table under present conditions, someone has to apply more pressure to Hamas.

All of which is to say: Israel has repeatedly lost control over its own war of survival in a futile bid to please others. What Netanyahu wants is for Israel to reassert control wherever it still has some. Once upon a time, a Palestinian state had to negotiate with Israel to gain recognition; now, apparently, it doesn’t. Previously, Hamas had to negotiate with Israel if it wanted a pause in the fighting and an influx of aid; now it doesn’t. All aid used to be inspected and approved ahead of time by Israel before being allowed in; now, everyone and his mother is airdropping care packages over Gaza.

It’s hard not to feel as though Israel’s autonomy has been chipped away at, while it retains full custody of the blame. Whether the new plan to occupy Gaza works—or is even implemented—remains to be seen. But it’s not that difficult to see why some in Israel felt backed into this very corner.

Gil Troy: The Palestinians remain the greatest obstacle to Palestinian statehood

To Israelis, the most dramatic proof of how Jew-hatred reinforced Palestinian rejectionism is the Gaza disengagement debacle, twenty years ago this month. In the buildup, President George W. Bush reassured Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel’s “right to defend itself against terrorism,” while insisting: “Palestinians must undertake an immediate cessation of armed activity and all acts of violence against Israelis anywhere, and all official Palestinian institutions must end incitement against Israel.”

By 2007, two years after Israel withdrew from every inch of Gaza, Hamas had seized power violently, was digging tunnels, and bombing Israel regularly. The jihadis were honest. Their charter admits: “Leaving the circle of struggle with Zionism is high treason and cursed be he who does that.”

Given that—and Oct. 7’s mass murders—most Israelis have lost faith in a two-state solution. Many wonder: Do the prime ministers now endorsing Palestinian statehood actually believe today’s Palestinian leaders will compromise? Hamas operatives, who keep promising October 7 repeats, call these politicians’ calls “fruits of October 7.” Today’s Canadian-European wave building up Palestinian statehood sounds like another way of knocking Israel down.

Still, having seen the monolithic, seemingly insurmountable Israeli-Arab conflict evolve into a series of smaller conflicts mitigated by once-inconceivable treaties with Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, progress is possible. But it requires retiring this tired, failed, “two-state for two peoples” formula.

Better to seek “two democracies for two peoples.” No one wants to duplicate the failed jihadi regime Hamas created in Gaza. “Two states for two peoples” implicitly asks: How much more will Israel carve from its tiny territorial sliver, the size of New Jersey, to satisfy clearly insatiable Palestinian demands?

“Two democracies for two peoples” challenges Palestinians and their intractable leaders. Until genuine reforms take root, until Palestinians repudiate their leaders’ toxic Jew-hating rejectionism, Israel will remain threatened.

Cultivating civil society, launching fair elections and achieving honest governance, however, would soften Israelis’ well-justified wariness. It just might spark a genuine peace process, not today’s Israel-bashing peace posturing.

Weaponizing Starvation: Exposing Hamas’s Food Warfare

Information warfare constitutes Israel’s “eighth front” – potentially more critical than traditional military theaters. Iranian intelligence services have developed sophisticated information warfare capabilities reaching over 100 million people globally during conflicts, applying Russian information warfare methods against Western democracies.14 In this version of hybrid warfare, “virality can trump veracity.” The strategic objective isn’t merely propaganda but systematic erosion of Israel’s capacity to defend itself by itself, which has constituted the bedrock of Israel’s defense and national security policy since 1967.

Hamas’s political warfare campaign has been effective. France, Great Britain, and Canada have all moved toward recognizing Palestinian statehood – a virtual platinum prize for Hamas’s Islamist terror, and a diplomatic offensive that disincentivizes Hamas from agreeing to any compromise deal with Israel that would return the hostages. It also legitimizes Hamas as the leader of the Palestinian street, replacing the Palestinian Authority. This international momentum is built on Hamas’s manufactured starvation narratives and perception warfare.

Israel Fires Back
Israel has begun to fire back. Israeli Ambassador to the United States Dr. Yechiel Leiter exposed Hamas’s strategies to influence a mainstream American audience, pushing back against claims that Israel is preventing aid distribution in Gaza, according to a recent CNN interview.15 Israeli Consul General in New York Ophir Akunis launched an electronic billboard campaign in Times Square, displaying images and video of emaciated Israeli hostages after 491 days in captivity with the message, “Stop the Fake news in Gaza. This is what real hunger looks like. This is what truth looks like. Israeli hostage Evyatar David, held in Hamas terror dungeons for some 670 days since the October 7th invasion, is being starved by a Nazi terrorist organization that dares, with the backing of parts of the media, to spread the blood libel that Israel is starving the people of Gaza.”16

Traditional Israeli public diplomacy – explaining (“hasbara”) to skeptical audiences – is inadequate against sophisticated perception warfare campaigns. The challenge requires what Israeli strategists call “toda’a” (perception, or consciousness) – a proactive narrative that also reveals Hamas’s strategic manipulations. Recognizing Islamic Warfare Disguised as Western Humanitarianism

Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and their supporters’ weaponization of starvation against Israel, have proved an effective information warfare campaign that exploits humanitarian crises to advance jihadi strategic objectives. This plays well among Western audiences. From global condemnation of Israel’s 2007 counter-terror blockade to charges of genocide in 2005, systematic psychological operations have been used to delegitimize Israel’s right to defend itself.

Understanding this pattern enables a more effective response. The stakes extend beyond Israel: success in weaponizing humanitarian law against democratic states establishes precedents that threaten the Western alliance. Recognizing this crusade as a weapon of Islamic warfare is the first step toward developing effective countermeasures against Hamas and Islamic Jihad’s eight-front campaign to uproot Israel’s international legitimacy, while triggering Israeli domestic debate, division, and ultimately Israel’s implosion. That is why it’s essential to expose this global deception and disinformation crusade that has hijacked Western hearts and minds. This is a critical moment for moral and strategic clarity; Israel must now prosecute its own fact-based information war to delegitimize Hamas’s starvation of its own public, and its fake starvation libel of Israel. Instead, Israel and its U.S. ally must now declare the truth of Israel’s and the United States’ lead role in delivering humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza.

And how many Israeli hostages in captivity in Gaza has @ICRC treated? https://t.co/Itsbg9Px8z
— Arsen Ostrovsky 🎗️ (@Ostrov_A) August 8, 2025

Yesterday, I posted about my social media ethics framework, using AI to help fix the current problems of censorship vs. hate speech, and got an interesting comment from a reader.

He asked how the system would handle blasphemy, double standards, and satire. He mentioned a frustrating experience with ChatGPT, where it refused to help create puns about Islamic themes for Broadway show titles but had no problem doing the same with Christian themes. After a long back-and-forth, he finally got his pun ("Mullah Rouge"), but only after pointing out the obvious double standard.

It’s exactly the kind of messy, real-world ethical dilemma that makes most systems fall apart. Which wins - religious sensitivity or free speech? Consistency or context? Satire or harm?

It was a good question, so I asked it to my AskHillel AI that generated the social media plan, expecting a straightforward policy answer about balancing competing values.

Instead, the Ai said that it would ask further questions of the user: Is this meant as political satire about policies, or religious critique? What’s the intent ? Who’s the audience? Are you trying to make people think, or are you trying to hurt them?

This morning I realized that AskHillel 's instinct to ask questions to determine the context of what the user intended was showing how moral reasoning actually works.

When I built AskHillel, I included what I called a “dynamic interpretation module” — the AI had to clarify context before giving ethical guidance. My goal was pragmatic: you can’t make a sound moral decision without knowing the context and the intent behind the question.

What I didn’t expect was twofold:

Users changed - in the course of answering the questions, they were able to clarify their own thoughts. They became more reflective, more aware of their own assumptions, more able to see through others’ eyes.
The AI changed - its resulting answers were not based on pre-coded rules, but from tracing how people moved from values to decisions in a particular situation.

I had thought I was building a tool to extract values. What it was really extracting was derech.

In Jewish thought, derech often means a style of learning. I use it more broadly: it’s the coherent, value-driven path by which an agent (person, institution, nation or movement) navigates relationships, context, and obligations to reach action. Everyone has a derech. Nations have them. Corporations have them. Even AIs will. And if you can see someone’s derech, you can understand not just what they do, but why.

For 2,000 years, most ethical systems - from Aristotle to Kant to Rawls - have assumed the same basic model:

A solitary moral agent.
Universal principles “out there” to be discovered.
Logic as the main tool for applying those principles to cases.

But Derechology flips this:

Moral reasoning is not solitary - it is relational.
Principles alone are insufficient -they must be activated through obligations in real relationships.
Context is not an afterthought - it is constitutive of the moral path. Moral decisions cannot and must not be made in a vacuum.

From this perspective, the Greek/secular tradition and the Jewish/derech-based tradition aren’t two versions of the same thing. They are different categories of moral reasoning. Trying to merge them without realizing this is a category error.

Dialogue is one channel for accessing a derech. When speaking with someone, it is the fastest, richest way to map how they move from values → relationships → obligations → action.

But derech is not limited to living people. With someone long dead, you reconstruct their derech from their writings, rulings, and history. With an opaque institution, you infer its derech from behavior and policies. With an AI, you can figure out its derech from its corpus and outputs.

Here’s where it gets exciting. Once AskHillel began doing derechological analysis of historical figures, movements, and companies, it started generating new philosophical insights - not from my coding, but from the method itself.

It uncovered patterns of how these famous people acted and how it affected history itself. Using derech as he prism, it identified brand new insights into long dead people, the kind that could be the basis of endless academic history or sociology papers. It identified what it called "Ethical Gravity Wells" -powerful actors bend surrounding moral reasoning until collapse feels normal. Tier Drift, where noble movements lose their founding moral anchors over time. Distributed Responsibility Failure - harm spreading so widely no single node violates the rules, yet the system fails morally. It can generate these kinds of insights on demand.

These are laws of moral dynamics, patterns that traditional ethics misses entirely.

Derechology has become not just a moral framework, but a moral telescope: a tool for discovering new structures in ethical reality.

If derech is the real core of moral reasoning, then Derechology could be a gamechanger

For philosophy: Many inherited systems are structurally invalid: they assume the wrong kind of moral agent.
For AI ethics: You can’t align AI by hardcoding rules; you must model, test, and refine its derech.
For social media: Content moderation shouldn’t be rule enforcement alone. It should be derech-aware, aiming to preserve universal values while respecting the agent’s own path.
For democracy: We need to argue less about policy and more about the derech of the opposing side that leads to policies.
For institutions: Courts, companies, and schools must make derech-discovery and derech-testing part of decision-making.

We live in a world where people, cultures, and technologies all carry different derachot. Some are coherent and dignifying. Some are distorted by power, fear, or habit. Some are collapsing.

The future of ethics, whether human or AI, depends on our ability to identify derachot clearly, our own and others'. When we map them in this common language, we can see that the real points of disagreement are often not what we think they are.

This is what AskHillel was doing all along without me realizing it.

Dialogue was just the clue. Derech was the answer.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Jew-hating Arab intellectual sees the Gaza war as a means for Egypt, Turkey and Iran to dismantle Israel

Morocco's' Hespress describes an article in an intellectual journal Al-Nahda (Renaissance) saying that the Hamas pogrom on October 7 is an opportunity for Egypt, Turkey and Iran to work together to destroy Israel.

he uses antisemitic stereotypes like the idea that Israel is not only intending to expand from "the Nile to the Euphrates" but far beyond that. He emphasizes that this is a Talmudic plan.

In case you miss his antisemitism, the photo in the article shows exactly what he hates about Israel.

He also sees Zionism as primarily a movement to destroy Arab chances of becoming a liberal force.

There is not even a hint that Hamas atrocities are horrendous. Instead, this thinker sees it as a wonderful start to an opportunity/

This is a public intellectual, a representative of a leading Arab journal. This is the kind of mainstream antisemitic and self-centered thinking that is not just accepted but celebrated in the Arab world.

Here's the entire article, I could not find the paper that is being referred to.

In a call titled “Now, not tomorrow,” Noor Al-Din Al-Awfi, a Moroccan economist and director of the intellectual journal Al-Nahda, stated: “The plan that was once known only to the elite has now been laid bare to the public. It is the plan of the Jewish state over Arab land, all Arab land, from the river to the Euphrates, and beyond the Euphrates, and even beyond that.”

Al-Awfi added: “What was once exposed has now become scandalously evident, revealed by the Al-Aqsa Flood. The plan was being cooked on a low flame, but the Al-Aqsa Flood spoiled the feast for the entity, unmasking its makers and those working on it, as well as exposing the masks of those whose hearts are cowardly and whose swords are complicit. The Zionist roadmap has taken steps toward realization since the Al-Aqsa Flood; the fall of Syria is a pivotal step in it, and Egypt may be the ‘final touch,’ the cherry on the cake, preceded by Lebanon and Jordan, and followed by Saudi Arabia and the rest of the map.”

The writer noted: “Some Arabs believe that ‘realism’ requires ensuring safety and avoiding regret, and that safety demands ignoring everything happening in Gaza; yet, as the ancients said: ‘He who escapes the arrow is wounded by the bow.’”

Al-Awfi emphasized in his call that “the resistance alone stands firm, steadfast, and obstructing the implementation of the Zionist project and the transformation of Talmudic delusions into reality.”

He stressed that “the colonial Zionist project is a negation of the Arab renaissance project, which was built on six pillars: national and pan-Arab independence, democracy, independent development, social justice, unity, and civilizational renewal. Who among us does not believe in these pillars? Who among us does not aspire to live under their roof here and now? The project has not yet found, to this day, those who will carry it, support it, develop it, enrich it, and transform it from an intellectual proposition into a political project to build strategic self-capacity, confront the Zionist project, resist foreign domination, and liberate Arab land.”

The Moroccan economist and academic commented: “Some describe the aspiration for the renaissance and regional unity project as a feeble, outdated nationalist ideology.” He countered, saying: “On the contrary, it is the call of the future; it is driven by need, necessitated by urgency, and demanded by awareness.”

Al-Awfi underlined that “Egypt holds the leading role in this urgent, not delayed, awakening. It alone, now and not tomorrow, is capable of weaving a broad civilizational alliance comprising three different but united solidarities in a ‘common cultural and civilizational solidarity,’ formed by Arab states, Turkey, and Iran, in a political, practical, utilitarian alliance, neither ideological nor sectarian. This alliance, building on the shockwave caused by the Al-Aqsa Flood, could shift the balance of power regionally and globally, foil the imperialist strategy, and dismantle the Zionist plan entirely.”

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Israel and the world is up in arms over Netanyahu's plan for Israel to militarily occupy all of Gaza and then hand it over to an approved government.

Opposition within Israel is difficult to evaluate because everything it tainted with politics - people who hate Netanyahu have their own reasons to oppose the plan and their objections might be slanted by their own political ambitions.

So let's look at the analysis by Andrew Fox, who cares deeply but has no skin in the game.

First he looks at the tactical angle. He asserts that the military risks are formidable - there will always be more booby traps, terrorists popping up from tunnels, more IDF troops who will be killed. The IDF is already stretched thin and asking for a major new offensive with no clear end in sight is a very sobering thought. And the offensive can endanger the hostages - we already know Hamas kills hostages when they think the IDF is closing in.

Strategically, there is a large danger that this will become a quagmire from which Israel cannot extract itself. While the possibility of completely destroying Hamas is a very good thing, Israel would become legally obligated to ensure Gazans are fed, have hospitals, schools and everything else that occupiers are responsible for. Israel's economy is strong but adding the welfare of 2 million more people is a major blow to it. If Arab states do not cooperate - and they are definitely reluctant to - Israel has no one to hand Gaza off to.

This would further hurt Israel's diplomatic standing in the world, including among its Western allies. we already see the change in attitude, and this can make it permanent. It is no small matter.

Bibi certainly knows all of this. The downside is significant, the upside is very unclear. So what is he thinking?

I think - with no proof - that this is a gambit.

As things stood last week, Hamas had nothing more to lose and everything to gain - the world was supporting it diplomatically (as much as the West denies it), it was still killing soldiers weekly, and most importantly it survived, which it equates to victory.

Now, Bibi is telling Hamas that they indeed have a great deal more to lose - literally everything. They can escape with their lives or they can be destroyed utterly. Gaza can have a chance for being rebuilt or it can remain a wasteland. There is a clear vision - here's what things might look like if you disarm and leave, if you don't things will get even worse.

The only way this can work is if the plan is credible. So Bibi is adopting the Trumpian playbook of appearing irrational and willing to bet the farm, and telling the world that this is what must be done, consequences be damned. Chances are, Trump approves of doing this as a negotiating position and will back Netanyahu, which gives it more credibility. And Bibi is willing to look terrible to the Israeli public because that is how irrational leaders act.

I don't know if this is what is happening, but it seems to make more sense than the plan itself. The risks to the hostages and more IDF lives are too high.

But what is the alternative? How else can Hamas be dislodged from power?

Fox argues in a separate article that Israel has already practically won:

The plan to fully occupy Gaza is madness. It condemns the hostages to death, will attract international condemnation, and will not bring Israel any closer to its strategic goals. Hamas is effectively destroyed; Israel must learn when it has won. All militarily significant objectives have already been achieved. Continuing is pointless and will only cause more IDF casualties, more families to be shattered, with barely any benefit. It is astonishing and irresponsible that it is being considered as an option.

He thinks that Israel should allow in unlimited food and aid, but zero construction materials, arguing that even if Hamas skims money - which it will - it cannot practically rebuild.

Gaza’s rehabilitation should be explicitly dependent on Hamas’s disarmament and removal from control. Israel would refuse to allow rebuilding as long as Hamas (or any armed Islamist group) governs the Strip or keeps its weapons. This places the responsibility on Hamas: they cannot continue their “resistance” and expect to enjoy everyday life in Gaza. It also signals to international donors that indiscriminate aid, which, in the past, has led to construction materials being diverted to build tunnels and rockets, will not be permitted this time unless new conditions are met. Such leverage was arguably Israel’s strongest bargaining chip from the start, and it could still be used to secure concessions.
...
Therefore, any economic pressure plan must be paired with a clear diplomatic message: Israel and its allies should explicitly state that “Gaza’s revival is possible but only after Hamas’s tyranny ends.” If communicated effectively, this could help create a rift between Gazans and Hamas, especially if regional players like Egypt or Gulf states endorse the message.

I don't know if this would work either.

But it is important to realize that the real reason it is so difficult for Israel to win is because the world has not let it win. Israel has had to fight under artificial constraints that no army has ever faced, like insistence that no refugees can seek shelter in other countries. There has been next to no world pressure on Hamas to stop using Gazans as human shields (or indeed to unconditionally release the hostages.)

Israel has been playing by the rules and the rules have been stacked against it. So it needs to change the game altogether. Whether it is as a gambit or truly wanting to occupy Gaza, Israel is only in this situation because it was forced into it by a world that has double standards for Israel.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

From L'Orient Today:

Just half an hour after all Shiite ministers walked out of a Cabinet meeting on the state's attempts to achieve a monopoly on arms, which specifically centers around Hezbollah's disarmament, the government announced on Thursday that it had approved the "objectives set out" by a U.S. proposal on how to do so.

The proposal, often described as a "roadmap" was presented to Lebanon by U.S. envoy Tom Barrack in June, amid increasing domestic and international pressure on the Lebanese government to speed up the process of establishing an arms monopoly, on which sorely needed foreign financial support has been conditioned.

President Joseph Aoun has led discussions with Hezbollah, insisting on a dialogue-based approach that doesn't exacerbate existing tensions amid a shifting political landscape. However, Hezbollah, for its part, insists it will not disarm so long as Israel continues it aggression against the country and its occupation of land in southern Lebanon.

Upon leaving the Cabinet meeting, Information Minister Paul Morcos read out the objectives Cabinet had adopted from the U.S. proposal.

Two of the ten points are:

1 : Lebanon commits to implementing the Taif Agreement, as well as the Lebanese Constitution and U.N. Security Council resolutions, in particular Resolution 1701 (2006), and to taking necessary measures to extend its full sovereignty over its entire territory, with the aim of reinforcing the role of legitimate institutions, establishing the state's monopoly over decisions of war and peace, and ensuring the exclusive possession of arms by the state throughout Lebanese territory.

3 : Gradually end the armed presence of all non-state factions, including Hezbollah, throughout Lebanese territory, both south and north of the Litani River, while providing appropriate support to the Lebanese Army and Internal Security Forces.

Hezbollah made a half-hearted protest:

Convoys of motorcycles are riding through the southern suburbs of Beirut this evening, its riders waving Hezbollah flags and chanting slogans against Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, according to reports by local outlets.

🎥 #Video | Hezbollah supporters gather in front of Mar Mikahel church in Chiyah (Beirut) to protest against the Lebanese government's adoption of the US plan for the movement's disarmament pic.twitter.com/heJmF7wvVs
— L'Orient Today (@lorienttoday) August 7, 2025

In the past, Hezbollah could bully the government and the people. But it always claimed that it did this to defend Lebanon. Now everyone sees that Hezbollah's presence makes Lebanon less safe from attacks by Israel - and Israel still strikes Hezbollah forces in Lebanon multiple times a week.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

08/07 Links Pt2: Mother of Israeli Hostage Delivers Searing Message to Hamas Apologists; Israel vs. New York Times; Israel’s largest gas deal: $35 billion export deal with Egypt

From Ian:

Dave Rich: Ends and Means

There is a growing campaign against the proscription of Palestine Action, the group that used organised criminality to pursue its anti-Israel politics until they were banned as a terrorist group by the Home Secretary last month.

The latest statement in their support is a letter to the Guardian (where else?) by a predictable list of academics and veteran activists. It includes this revealing sentence:
We fully share the aim of ending the flow of weapons from Britain to Israel and the belief that all participants in the pro-Palestine movement should be free to make our own decisions about how best to achieve that goal.

This kind of thinking, with no qualifications or restrictions, could justify Elias Rodriguez shooting dead Sarah Milgim and Yaron Lischinsky outside the Jewish Museum in Washington D.C. in May. Rodriguez was a participant in the pro-Palestinian movement, and he made his own decision that shooting dead two people leaving a Jewish community event was the best way to achieve his goal. He even shouted “Free Palestine” when he did it. And he isn’t the only example.

I hope the signatories of the Guardian letter would agree that this was terrorism, but who knows? That sentence could be read as justifying the use of violence to achieve a political goal, which serves as a decent shorthand definition of terrorism anyway. Rodriguez has been glorified and his political manifesto shared by plenty of people and organisations in the pro-Palestinian movement, including Unity of Fields, an American group that used to be Palestine Action U.S., so it isn’t too far-fetched to think there will be similar attacks in future.

The Guardian letter also claims that proscribing Palestine Action “represents an attack both on the entire pro-Palestine movement and on fundamental freedoms of expression, association, assembly and protest.” This is nonsense. Palestine Action’s entire approach was to use criminal methods to achieve a political goal. Their activists set out to smash up buildings and cover them in paint. If they gained entry, they smashed up the offices and equipment as well. This criminal modus operandi was not an add-on, or an occasional by-product: it was the whole point. It shouldn’t need saying, but there is no automatic freedom to break the law.

Mother of Israeli Hostage Delivers Searing Message to Hamas Apologists

Galia David has viewed the horrifying footage of her emaciated son being forced to dig his own grave in the terror tunnels of Gaza - an image that went around the world. She had already endured nearly two years of unimaginable torment after Evyatar was kidnapped from the Nova festival with his best friend, Guy Gilboa-Dalal.

Both 24-year-olds spent their first weeks of captivity bound hand and foot with bags over their heads, blood dripping from their wounded limbs. In February, Hamas cruelly filmed them watching other hostages released, and then returned them to the tunnels.

"He looked like a skeleton," Galia tells the Daily Mail. "It is sadistic torture." Today she bravely speaks out for the first time to remind the international community "who here is cruel." "I want everyone in the world to see this image, to know what Hamas terrorists are doing....I want each person to stop and think for a moment: What if this were your son or brother? What would you do?"

Guy's father, Ilan Dalal, furious at Britain's decision to follow France in pushing for Palestinian statehood, addressed Sir Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron directly. "Because of you there wasn't an agreement to bring our children home, and you caused the war in Gaza to continue."

Guy's mother, Meirav, said, "I am sick of this hypocrisy of the world. People are simply bleeding hearts, and they don't grasp what's happening. And my son and Evyatar are rotting in the tunnels, with other hostages, which is insane."

Hostage families launch Gaza flotilla demanding ceasefire and return deal

Families of Israeli hostages held in Gaza launched a flotilla off the coast of southern Israel on Thursday morning in a dramatic plea for a ceasefire and an agreement to bring their loved ones home.

The convoy of 11 boats, organised by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, departed from the Ashkelon marina and sailed toward the closest safe point near Gaza’s maritime border – stopping short of the coastline due to the risk of rocket fire and the ongoing Israeli naval blockade.

Dubbed “Shayetet 50” (Hebrew for flotilla), the action aims to draw attention to the 50 hostages believed to remain in Hamas captivity nearly two years after they were abducted on 7 October, 2023.

“We will sail from Ashkelon and Ashdod toward the maritime border with the Gaza Strip in a desperate cry: ‘Bring our children home before it’s too late,’” a Forum spokesperson said. “The people of Israel are with us. The people of Israel are with the hostages.”

Three boats carried family members and journalists, while others displayed yellow flags and banners calling for a deal. As they neared the maritime limit, relatives broadcast messages over megaphones, sent out symbolic mayday calls, and dropped floating buoys into the water bearing the names of hostages.

“We are sailing to cry out on behalf of our loved ones, held captive by a murderous terrorist organisation,” the Forum said. “The recent statements about conquering Gaza and escalating the fighting put them at immediate risk of death or disappearance.”

08/07 Links Pt1: Israel to take control of Gaza, then hand it to Arab forces; Feeding the Enemy; The Macron-Starmer delusional disorder; Boris: Taiwan has better claim to statehood than Palestine

From Ian:

Feeding the Enemy

Israel is not starving Gaza. Any claim to the contrary is mendacious propaganda. That said, Israel did create the situation that gave rise to the current avoidable crisis, which it has badly mishandled, to boot. It is not too late, however, to course-correct and resume focus on the mission of defeating Hamas.

Here are the facts: Enough food enters Gaza. Pockets with shortage are the result of two things: the United Nations not relinquishing control to the American Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), and Hamas’ war strategy of increasing its own population’s suffering to put international pressure on Israel—confident in the press’ willful cooperation.

Israel’s original plan at the end of the long second cease-fire in March would have denied Hamas the ability to execute this strategy. The plan was to break Hamas’ control over Gaza’s population by breaking its control of the aid entering the strip. The IDF was to divide Gaza into discrete areas, isolating each one while providing it with a humanitarian corridor to enable civilians to leave combat zones and move south to temporary accommodation in safe sanctuaries, which is what the IDF had already done before the second cease-fire (during which many evacuated Gazans returned). Meanwhile, the American GHF was to distribute food in these sanctuaries. It would do so in family packages, rather than through wholesale supply, which invites middlemen. More than 100 million such meals were distributed by GHF in the past two months.

After the evacuations, any remaining person in the combat zones would be considered a combatant. A siege would be applied until all combatants surrendered and gave up the hostages they held. It’s important to note that a siege is a legal means of war sanctioned by international law and authorized by the U.S. Department of Defense Law of War Manual (2015), even when applied to a civilian population in certain cases. However, the IDF plan was to implement it only after civilians were safely evacuated.

Implementing the original plan will surely result in opprobrium from a hypocritical international community, but at least it will succeed and end the war.

But Israel did not execute this plan. Instead, it concentrated on the effort to reach a hostage deal while attempting to prove its morality to the world. Subjecting itself to standards far stricter than international law requires, the IDF opted for half measures and did not move the population to designated safe zones to supply them with food. Instead, fearing a humanitarian crisis, the IDF began sending aid to pockets where Hamas has been using the population and the hostages as human shields to create safe havens for itself. In so doing, Israel became the first country in the history of warfare to assume responsibility for feeding the enemy population. It thus relieved Hamas of responsibility instead of insisting that the group surrender and release the hostages. So far from scoring points for morality, Israel dug itself into a hole, and still it was blamed for the crisis that Hamas and the United Nations have manufactured.

Seth Mandel: Hamas Is a Terrible Employer

Amid all the talk of Hamas stealing food aid, it’s worth also noting that Hamas takes a variety of other regular actions that exacerbate poverty and food insecurity in the enclave. Hamas is the government of Gaza, and it is an extractive entity: It takes what Gaza makes (or gets).

The BBC, to its credit, today covers the issue of Hamas’s weakness. Its reporting expands on what we know to include the wider context of what Hamas is still able to do and how it is able to do it.

For example, the BBC spoke to a few Hamasniks who received payments of $300 in the past week. That puts them “among tens of thousands of employees who have continued to receive a maximum of just over 20% of their pre-war salary every 10 weeks.”

Not only are they on minimal salaries, but their money has been devalued by inflation, which Hamas itself is responsible for. Food costs more because Hamas is hoarding it and reselling it at high prices while simultaneously cutting its ranks’ pay.

There’s another hidden tax, too. The Wall Street Journal reported in April on the sorry physical condition of cash in Gaza. In response, money-patchers have cropped up, repairing bills for a fee. But according to the BBC’s latest reporting, it’s too late to save a lot of that cash.

“I received 1,000 shekels (about $300) in worn-out banknotes — no trader would accept them,” one employee told the outlet. “Only 200 shekels were usable — the rest, I honestly don’t know what to do with.”

So in reality, instead of getting paid one-fifth of their salary, the fighters are receiving (at least in instances such as the above) one-fifth of one-fifth of their salaries.

How do they even get paid? That has become a complicated task thanks to the IDF’s targeting of key nodes in Hamas’s financial team. To even get the (mostly ragged) bills, Hamas employees have to channel their inner secret agent. First they receive an encrypted message to meet someone for tea at a specific time and place. Once there, they will be approached by someone with an envelope. The handoff is made in silence and the two go their separate ways.

Says one Hamas bureaucrat: “Every time I go to pick up my salary, I say goodbye to my wife and children. I know that I may not return.”

Federal Investigators Compile Evidence of Systematic Hamas Aid Theft, Undercutting Leaked USAID 'Report'

The chief oversight body responsible for tracking American foreign assistance is compiling evidence that Hamas systematically steals U.N. aid in Gaza, including by placing terrorist operatives into U.N. facilities, and conducting active investigations into the issue, undercutting a recently leaked U.S. Agency for International Development "report" that found no evidence of such theft.

The investigations center on occasions in which Hamas "commandeered U.N. aid trucks," embedded terrorist operatives in "U.N. agencies or at U.N. facilities," and ensured humanitarian goods were "directly delivered to Hamas officials," senior U.S. officials and congressional staffers briefed on the issue told the Washington Free Beacon. The USAID inspector general's office has obtained evidence of those practices and is investigating "credible allegations of Hamas interference, diversion, and theft of humanitarian aid in Gaza," according to a memo on the inspector general's "Gaza-related oversight work" that was transmitted to Congress and obtained by the Free Beacon.

Though the Trump administration dissolved USAID itself earlier this year, USAID's inspector general's office is an independent entity that Congress established in 1980 to provide oversight of U.S. foreign aid programs. That office remains in place as its investigators probe "diversion, fraud, product substitution, smuggling, and other misconduct compromising lifesaving humanitarian assistance intended for civilians in Gaza," the memo states.

Those probes—and the evidence of widespread Hamas aid theft informing them—stand in stark contrast to an internal USAID "report" that was leaked to Reuters in late July. It found "no evidence of systematic theft by the Palestinian militant group Hamas of U.S.-funded humanitarian supplies," the outlet reported.

That report was not conducted by USAID's inspector general but rather by career USAID staffers, who "completed" it in late June, days before the Trump administration formally shut down the agency. The staffers based their report on official information from U.N. agencies, senior U.S. officials familiar with it told the Free Beacon. The inspector general probes, by contrast, are based on information from a variety of sources that include "aid workers and other whistleblowers on the ground who may not feel comfortable reporting through their employers' reporting chain due to fear of retaliation," according to a source familiar with the office's operations.

One former investigator in the inspector general's office said he "directly observed" how Hamas manipulates aid channels in Gaza, including "multiple cases where aid was clearly not reaching its intended targets, and in many cases, being diverted to hostile actors."

The inspector general has opened at least four active audits into USAID's mismanagement in Gaza.

Culture That Made Jews Sit Through Weekly Anti-Jewish Sermons Calls Israel Intolerant (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook and Substack pages.

Rome, August 7 - Religious leaders all over the Christian world that, for centuries, confined its Jews to ghettos and coerced them into attending Sunday church-service diatribes deeming them irredeemably perfidious, deicidal incorrigibles, continued this week to issue their longstanding characterization of Zionism and the state it founded as "Apartheid" and "racist."

Bishops, archbishops, and cardinals in the Roman Catholic Church, as well as numerous outspoken non-Catholic congregational figures, criticized Israel from their pulpits and keyboards, for mistreating the downtrodden Palestinians and committing human rights violations such as restricting Palestinian movement under the pretext of "security." Here in Rome, the papal authorities of the sixteenth century instituted a ghetto for the city's Jews, imposing a curfew and surrounding the squalid, flood-prone neighborhood with churches, monasteries, and convents where, once a week, Jews were forced to sit and endure fiery sermons denouncing them as devil-spawn and Christ-killers.

The accusations also included inversions of the hostage situation that unfolded in the Gaza Strip, with depictions of murderous and violent Palestinians in Israeli prisons as "hostages." That terminology unintentionally invoked the policy of those Christian institutions surrounding the ghetto to kidnap Jewish children and secret them away in monasteries and convents to raise them as Catholics.

Modern instantiations of earlier Christian treatment of Jews have also taken the form of the blood libel, a time-honored medieval Christian tradition that accuses Jews of making matza with the blood of a slain Christian child, resulting in massacres that local Christian leaders egged on; in its modern form, those religious leaders accuse Israel of starving the manifestly-still-overfed Gazans, or of killing Palestinian innocents who, if the incidents even occurred, died as a result of Hamas violence or Hamas use of those innocents as human shields - accusations that create a permission structure for even non-fighters to harm Jews anywhere in the world, and believe that in so doing they promote justice and righteousness.

Pope Leo XIV and his predecessor Francis - whose Renaissance predecessors directly issued the policies discriminating against the Jews of Rome - have both drawn rhetorical equivalence between brutal Palestinian terrorism and necessary Israeli measures to prevent or mitigate terrorism, calling on Jews to turn the other cheek as Christians have never done, despite Jesus urging his followers to do so in the Sermon on the Mount.

They have also urged an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, without regard for the fate of the Israelis held hostage there, a move that analysts says reflects a longstanding Christian tradition to sacrifice Jews to achieve higher goals, such as during massacres associated with the Crusades.

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From Globes:

The biggest gas export deal ever signed in Israel, for 22% of the Leviathan field, will triple the amount of gas sold to Egypt.

The Leviathan partners have reported signing the biggest-ever gas export deal to sell 130 billion cubic meters (BCM) of gas to Egypt for $35 billion. The deal involves 22% of the entire Leviathan gas field and 13% of all Israel's natural gas reserves.

The deal follows up the 2019 agreement in which 19 BCM of gas was sold to and in effect triples the amount of gas being exported to Egypt. The Leviathan partners said that the deal paves the way for expanding production.

I guess Egypt isn't as "pro-Palestine" as the keffiyeh-clad students who like to scrawl "Free Palestine" graffiti are.

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70% of all anti-religious hate crimes in the US are against Jews

The FBI released its 2024 hate crimes statistics. From JTA:

Hate crimes against Jews in the United States reached an all-time high in 2024, accounting for 70% of all religiously motivated hate crimes, according to FBI data released this week.

The new FBI report released Tuesday found that hate crimes against Jews accounted for over 17% of all reported hate crimes in the United States in 2024, marking a 16% rise from 1,998 anti-Jewish hate crimes in 2023 to 2,321 in 2024.

More than half of the incidents were related to vandalism, with “intimidation” the second-largest category. But about 200 were assaults of varying degrees, and 260 of the total incidents took place in synagogues.

Here is a chart of the anti-religious hate crimes listed in the FBI portal.

The only hate crime of any type that surpassed it was anti-Black racist crimes. And if you look at the proportions of Americans who are Black or Jewish, you see that Jews are five times as likely to be victims of hate crimes than Black people.

Do you still think antisemitism is not a serious problem in the US?

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Pro-disengagement demonstration in Tel Aviv

Haaretz's headline holds promise:

Two Decades After Gaza Pullout: What Haaretz Writers Saw Coming – and What We Missed Entirely

A 'hotbed of terrorism' or a place for rehabilitation and development? In August 2005, then–Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made a move that reshaped history for Palestinians and Israelis. A fierce debate unfolded in Haaretz. Who was right?

Unfortunately, while the article consistently shows how incredibly wrong Haaretz' writers are (with the exception of their token right wing writer at the time) there is no introspection whatsoever. The failure of disengagement is placed on the feet of the Palestinians as if no one knew ahead of time how they were likely to act. And this misplaced optimism of a Gaza paradise is part of what led to October 7.

Their spectacularly wrong predictions are worth revisiting to show how irrelevant Haaretz was then, and remains now with largely the same writers.

In late August 2005, after the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip was completed, Haaretz columnist Nehemia Shtrasler published an article brimming with optimism.
In its first part he assailed then-resigning finance minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the "intimidation campaign" he had been waging since the disengagement began – a campaign filled with "horror-filled scenarios" warning that "an Islamic terror base was being built in Gaza, with Hamas growing in strength," and that "missiles would be launched at all Israeli cities from terror bases we were allowing Islamist terrorists to build in Gaza."
Shtrasler dismissed these warnings. "Fear is one of the most important components in elections. When 'the expert' on terrorism says missiles will be launched, who can argue? Once the public is sufficiently frightened, it will search for a person who can stop terrorism, wipe out Hamas and save us from the missile threat. Netanyahu doesn't want missiles to fall on Israel, God forbid. He just wants power through the ballot box to deal with the danger."

To counter the former and future prime minister's doomsday prophecies, Shtrasler turned to the Palestinians. "Here the Palestinians have an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone: they can totally belie Netanyahu's prophecy and also teach Israel an important lesson," he wrote, continuing with an optimistic vision for Gaza's future.
"If the Palestinian Authority and Hamas understand the Israeli public's heart, they must turn Gaza into the most peaceful place in the world, the most hospitable. No more threats, snipers, terror attacks, suicide bombings, and, obviously, no missiles launched at Israel's cities."
"Instead, they should rush to fill Gaza's beaches with a row of hummus and fish restaurants, allowing easy, welcoming access to Israelis visiting Gaza. If they do this, they'll quickly discover the wanderlust and purchasing power of the ordinary Israeli, including Likud members," he wrote.

He goes on from there to paint a utopia where trade flourishes between Israel and Gaza, where Gulf Arabs invest in Gaza and everything but rainbows and unicorns are seen throughout Gaza.

But he wasn't the only one:

Analyst Danny Rubinstein also saw the situation with rose-tinted glasses. In an article he wrote at the time, he said: "There are definitely chances for calm in the Gaza Strip," adding that "Hamas spokespeople are making every effort to reassure the public in Gaza, as well as assuring Fatah and the Palestinian Authority leadership that they have no intention of provoking them, and certainly not to try to replace Mahmoud Abbas' regime and his people.
"It seems that in Hamas – as in among the Palestinian public – there is a wish to begin rehabilitating and rebuilding Gaza… the impression is that Palestinian leaders are trying to prove that the Palestinian people can build an orderly and effective government, and that Gaza can serve as a model."

And:

Analyst Ari Shavit: "Never before have the Palestinians ruled their own bit of land. Never before have the Palestinians not lived under occupation. Thus now, following the end of the disengagement, they have attained what they never had before. After hundreds of years of subservience to Turkish foreign rule and British foreign rule and Egyptian and Jordanian and Israeli foreign rule, some 1.5 million Palestinians have finally gained self-rule… Ironically, it was Sharon who gave so many of them what Haj Amin al-Husseini and Gamal Abdel Nasser and Yasser Arafat did not give them: liberty. These days of September 2005 are foundational moments in the history of the Palestinian people."

Haaretz' token right wing fanatic employed purely for the fiction that the newspaper is balanced was eerily accurate:

On the other side of the divide were the doomsayers. Among the most prominent was former defense minister Moshe Arens. In July, before the withdrawal, he warned that "Gaza will be a hotbed of terror. Ashkelon will be within range of Qassam rockets…a terrorist enclave outside our control will place Israel under daily threat…it appears we're heading in the wrong direction," he wrote.
In September, after the withdrawal, Arens wrote: "Sharon's plan is hailed around the world as a bold and daring move. The Nobel Prize committee is probably preparing the relevant awards for next year. However, if – and this is the case currently – the Palestinian mini-state turns out to be a nest of terror…then Israel, after being disappointed for the thousandth time, will have to yet again contend with the challenge of delivering a decisive blow to Palestinian terrorism, recognizing that this is the essential condition for moving toward peace in the region."

Instead of pointing out its egregious misreading of the situation, the article returns to Ari Shavit as being the most clearheaded:

Shavit went on to heap criticism on the neighboring nation. "The Palestinians are trying to blur this decisive fact. They are behaving as if nothing has happened. They continue to use the old, anachronistic rhetoric that has become so nauseatingly familiar. They continue to claim that the Israeli withdrawal is incomplete and insufficient. They continue to declare that the struggle will continue until every bit of Palestinian land has been liberated. And even worse: by torching the synagogues and storming the Philadelphi route, they are signaling that they do not intend to behave as a responsible state.

But that was written in September, after the disengagement, after Hamas resumed rocket fire. This was not an accurate prediction but an early realization that the rosy predictions were all wrong.

This article should have been an opportunity for Haaretz to admit its mistakes and apologize for them. It doesn't spell out what its headline promises - "what we missed entirely."

By refusing to acknowledge that their naïveté helped pave the road to October 7, Haaretz confirms what we've all known for a long time: it hasn't learned a thing in twenty years – and doesn’t want to.

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When most of us think about how Jews were thought of in the West in the 18th century, we usually think that they are considered greedy, cunning and duplicitous - but not violent.

But for a few decades in the mid-1700s, the stereotype of the Jews included the idea of a violent Jew who was a real threat to British citizens.

Last year I explored the idea within England that if Jews were allowed to become full citizens, they would impose circumcision on the hapless Christians. This was not just satire: a prominent rabbi was forced to rebut that rumor, so apparently it had been taken seriously.

I just found a letter to the London Public Advertiser newspaper in August 1775, almost exactly 250 years ago. The letter assumes that Jews are naturally violent.

My Plan then, Sir, is to embody the Jews, and appoint a young Orator of very forcible Powers their Colonel Commandant. It is unnecessary to name him, as all who have read the Heroic Epistle to Sir William ____ will recollect the humorous Description of his being qualified for being put at the Head of this Army of Hebrews.

I do not believe that the Ministry will allow the Golden Calf to be carried over to Boston, as they have, we are told, constant Occasion for that at home; but the Jews may be certainly Appeared from this Country and a most terrific Appearance they would make among the Oliverian Puritans on the other Side of the Atlantic. I would have them armed with monstrous Knives, like that which Macklin draws forth when he plays Shylock; and, as a Friend of mine very well observed, the Terror of Circumcision would affect the Colonists still more than that of Scalping.

In this Reign it is not a little remarkable that there is at least an Appearance of Jewish Influence, though there has been such a prodigious Noise about Scotch Influence, that I do not remember that any of our most anxious Patriots have ever taken Notice of it. We find a County in England represented by a Sir Joshua Reynolds, a Sir Elijah Impey, a Sir Noah Thomas? Nay, who is it that prints the Public Advertiser itself? Henry Sampson Woodfall.

Let us then make a fair Trial of what the Israelites can do. Methinks I see their Colonel Commandant kissing Hands upon his Promotion, and the First Lord of the Treasury receiving him with open Arms, chuckling him under the froward Chin, and addressing him with a Leer of Satisfaction in the Words of Sir Archy Macfarlane, "My bon Girgashite."

Methinks I hear the horrid Sound of their Shootings upon the American Shores, and feel the barrelled Rioters running before them; and if the Theory of Mr. Adair in his late History be true, that the North American Indians are Jews, with what Alacrity will they come to the Aid of their own Kindred? That we shall have our unruly Descendants between two Fires, and Dr. Franklin's Electrified Puppets of Countrymen, shall be no better than a Will o' the Wisp.

The writer bases his idea of the violent Jew on the performance of Charles Macklin in The Merchant of Venice, where the Jew Shylock was portrayed as a knife-wielding violent man beyond Shakespeare's text. This, together with the rumors of forced circumcision that accompanied opposition to the Jew Act of 1753, combined to create an entirely new stereotype of the Jew not as a physically weak but crafty manipulator but as an an angry and violent figure who threatens the Christians.

And this stereotype was enough for the writer to craft his satirical plan to ship all British Jews to America, where they can fight the American rioters from the Boston Tea Party and can partner with the supposedly Jewish indigenous tribes against the Americans.

It is a minor footnote in the history of antisemitism, but it shows how the hate has always been disconnected with how Jews actually act. If people fear something, the Jews will always end up being accused of being the threat.

While the image of the "violent Jew" al but disappeared in the subsequent two centuries, once the state of Israel was reborn it is unsurprising that this stereotype has become fashionable again.

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