Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, August 10, 2025

Human rights NGOs continue to lie about "missing in Gaza," trusting Hamas provable lies

The "Independent Commission for Human Rights" was established in 1993 by a presidential decree from Yasser Arafat.It is supposed to be a truly independent Palestinian institution for monitoring and reporting on human rights and violations by both Israel and the Palestinian leadership.

Recently, it issued a report on 11,200 people still supposedly missing in Gaza.

The report itself is not yet available on the site, so I have no idea where it got that number from. But it is identical to the number of missing persons that has been published by Palestinian Civil Defense in Gaza - which is Hamas - in January.

Since then, hundreds have been recovered from the rubble, the Red Cross has re-united thousands of families, the number of "missing under rubble" has been found not to be anywhere close to the estimates and even the UN stopped referring to the higher numbers.

The Palestinian Civil Defense that is the source for this number also claims that 2,840 of the missing bodied were "melted" and left no trace. How they could come up with an exact count of invisible bodies is a remarkable achievement, and how Israel built a weapon that vaporizes bodies leaving not even bone fragments or shoes is another remarkable fact. Yet these 2,840 are apparently included in the 11,200 cited by NGOs.

The 11,200 figure from January seems to be the source for the ICHR assertion in July. Which means that the ICHR is not at all interested in reporting the truth, but in parroting whatever ridiculously high numbers anyone makes up to make Israel look evil.

The Ramallah-based Palestine Central Bureau of Statistics also repeats the 11,200 number as fact, today. For a statistics bureau to accept obvious lies makes one wonder about the entire organization that the world relies upon for official Palestinian statistics.

Yet they aren't the worst offenders.

Save the Children issued a press release in mid-2024 estimating 21,000 missing children. Their methodology was to add a complete guess by the UN spokesperson to a separate made up number by Hamas.

No one believes there are 21,000 missing children in Gaza - since even the UN no longer believes the 11,000 total figure.

But has Save the Children updated their estimate in the past year? Of course not.

NGOs are quick to believe the most unsourced, made up statistics to maximize incitement against Israel and extremely reluctant to correct their data when it is shown to be wrong.

NGOs have a "halo effect" that makes questioning them sound like sacrilege. Yet as we see clearly, their interest in telling the truth is next to zero when they have a political reason to exaggerate.

The ICHR is an active member of the Global Alliance for National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI) with "A" accreditation. Save the Children is globally respected and achieves high charity ratings.

Which tells you something about the quality of human rights NGOs in the world.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The anniversary of the deadly 1929 riots that killed over 100 Jews in Palestine is coming up.

Nesan.net has an article about 1929 painted in glowing colors and lies:

The "Buraq Revolt" was the first Palestinian uprising against the attempts to Judaize Jerusalem during the British Mandate. Large-scale clashes broke out between Arabs and Jews at the Buraq Wall (the western wall of Al-Aqsa Mosque) on August 15, 1929. The revolt culminated on August 23, 1929, with dozens killed and wounded.

The Buraq Revolt erupted when Jews organized a massive demonstration at the Buraq Wall on August 14, 1929, to mark what they called the "anniversary of the destruction of Solomon's Temple," claiming it was a place reserved for Jews alone.

The next day, August 15, 1929, they followed it with a massive demonstration through the streets of Jerusalem, reaching the Buraq Wall. There, they chanted, "The Wall is ours," and sang the "Zionist national anthem," while simultaneously insulting Muslims.

The British police had been informed of the demonstration in advance and sent large forces to escort the Jewish demonstrators.

On the third day, Friday, August 16, the anniversary of the Prophet Muhammad's birthday, Muslims rallied to defend the Buraq Wall, which the Jews intended to seize. Violent clashes erupted between the two sides, sweeping across much of Palestine .

The revolt saw clashes between Palestinians on one side and Jews and Mandate forces on the other in Hebron, Safed, Jerusalem, Jaffa, and other Palestinian cities, lasting for days.

The Palestine Bulletin at the time shows that the only violence in the first days were by the Arabs against a single Jew - a shammash, or beadle - who didn't flee the Kotel on that Friday:

Many have previously noted the parallels between the 1929 atrocities and October 7. Women raped, their breasts cut off, children murdered, men castrated, unarmed Jews burned alive by a bloodthirsty Arab crowd in an orgy of antisemitic violence.

But it is not only Jews who draw the parallel - Arabs do as well. The Arabic Post wrote about 1929 also in glowing terms, exactly thirty days after October 7, to cement the idea that they were both glorious rebellions against the Jews.

Since October 7, the Al-Aqsa Intifada, Gaza City has been witnessing a war that has resulted in the deaths of more than 10,000 people and the injury of more than 30,000 in just one month. Some have described the war as a genocide of the city's population by the Israeli occupation army.

However, this uprising was not the first in the history of occupied Palestine. The year 1929 witnessed the first uprising against the Jews in the city of Jerusalem, which is also called the Three Martyrs' Uprising or the Buraq Revolution .

The Buraq Revolution was the first Palestinian uprising against the attempt to Judaize Jerusalem during the British Mandate.

In both cases, the Palestinians consider the attackers, rapists and child murderers to be heroes.

Let's give them a state!

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

08/09 Links: Israel must end the ‘Palestinian exception’; AOC organizer arrested for terrorist threat; London: 466 Palestine Action supporters arrested; Montreal: Jewish man attacked in broad daylight

From Ian:

Israel must end the ‘Palestinian exception’

The “Palestinian” refugee crisis is not an accident. It is a design. A permanent grievance factory engineered by the Arab world (or the KGB, depending on whose narrative you prefer), canonized by the United Nations and subsidized by the West, all to sabotage the Jewish state.

But this hostile Arab population is not Israel’s responsibility.

It never was. It is not moral to keep Arabs trapped under the Palestinian Authority or Hamas. It is not moral to keep Jewish families next to people trained to slaughter them.

It is not moral to sacrifice Jewish soldiers or prolong a war Israel has the power to end, if only it stops asking permission.

The world has mechanisms for dealing with refugees. But Israel itself prevents those mechanisms from working, by being the only country that stops the process before it starts. By asking “Where will they go?” Israel keeps millions trapped—not just inside Gaza, but inside a miserable weaponized identity that serves only those who profit from Jewish blood.

Tiny Israel absorbs every Jewish refugee, not just from Europe and Africa and the Middle East, but from every corner of an increasingly hostile planet. Let the Arab League, with its 22 member states, massive wealth, and expansive territories, reabsorb their ethnic kin.

Let the 53 Muslim nations show even a fraction of the decency and responsibility the Jewish state has shown by integrating their brothers and sisters of the ummah. Let the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, representing over 2 billion people and claiming to “safeguard and protect the interests of the Muslim world in the spirit of promoting international peace and harmony,” actually live up to its mandate.

Or let any of Israel’s accusers, from Ireland to South Africa, demonstrate that “Palestinians” mean more to them than just excuses for antisemitic blood libels and fulminations. There are abundant options, all of which are more humane and make more sense than the infernal status quo.

Israel was carved out of a historic Jewish homeland, 80 percent of which remains, to this day, ruled by colonialist Arab regimes in which no Jews are permitted to live. It is time for Israel to stop being the Arab world’s toxic waste facility—a dumping ground for generations trained to kill us and to die doing it.

And if anyone dares ask Israel, “But where will they go?” the answer must be: “Great question; you figure it out. Because it’s not our problem anymore; not after Oct. 7. We tried everything—aid, land, coexistence; we even uprooted our own people by force, but they chose murder. You created these monsters; fed them, funded them, taught them to hate, paid them to kill. Now you deal with them.”

Israel must stop being the only nation on earth expected to feed, house, shelter and empower those sworn to destroy it.

But first, Jews must stop asking the question that no country on earth ever asked about us: “But who’s going to take them?”

Brendan O'Neill: In defence of whataboutery

Brilliantly, some non-Europeans are rising up against Gaza myopia. Luai Ahmed, the Yemeni-born writer who lives in Sweden, has directly confronted the UN on its Israelophobic mania. In a speech at the UN Human Rights Council earlier this year, he asked: ‘What about Yemen?’ Half a million souls have perished there these past 10 years, he said. Yemen suffered one of the worst famines of the modern era in the wake of the Saudi-Yemen war. ‘Why does no one care when half a million Yemenis die?’, he demanded. You can envisage the moral preeners of the keffiyeh classes clubbing together to denounce this pesky Yemeni for his crime of whataboutery, for polluting their self-serving ‘Gaza genocide’ narrative with the inconvenient fact that there have been worse wars this very decade.

Even history must now bow to the Gaza delirium. Britain’s independent MP Zarah Sultana tweeted this week about the 80th anniversary of the nuking of Hiroshima. That was a ‘crime against humanity’ that ‘killed tens of thousands in an instant’, she said. Then, like a Pavlov’s dog of Palestinianism, she said ‘We also remember Gaza’, where Israel has dropped ‘five times the power of the atomic bomb’ that was launched over Hiroshima. ‘[This] is genocide’, she cried.

This is a kind of madness, isn’t it? Yes, with hilarious unwittingness Sultana actually made Israel’s case for it: that Israel has apparently dropped more firepower on Gaza over two years than America did on Hiroshima in a split second, and yet the casualities in Gaza are fewer than in Hiroshima, rather proves that this is not a genocide but a war on Hamas. But there’s a moral frenzy here, too. There is a class of people who think of nothing but Gaza. It colonises their every waking moment. It brutally blocks out all other political concerns, domestic and international. It casts its shadow over the present, the past and that starving child in Nigeria. Every human being, alive or dead, now finds his pain measured against Gaza. Ninety thousand human beings burnt to a crisp in Hiroshima? Okay, but what about Gaza? This isn’t activism – it’s hysteria.

I know what they say: it’s because our own governments support Israel that we are angrier about the Gaza conflict than any other. Bollocks. Our governments supported the Saudis too, yet I don’t remember you bawling in the streets every Saturday for the dead of Yemen. Our governments, via the aid industry, are catastrophically failing Nigeria and Sudan, yet you raise not one word. More to the point, the BBC – not to mention CNN, AP and the rest – are meant to be neutral news-collectors, not anti-government leftists. So why are they infected with the malarial Gaza fetish that ails the left and the cultural establishment?

Something else is going on. And we all know it. We all know that hating Israel has become the key source of moral virtue for the influential of the West. We all know Gaza is the issue through which high political society distinguishes itself from ‘the unenlightened’. And we all know that the consequence of this fetishisation of Palestine to the end of boosting the moral fortunes of time-rich, virtue-hungry Westerners is that black Africans and the Slavic victims of Russian imperialism are callously cast aside. That’s my charge: your swirling, one-eyed Israelophobia has nurtured a collective culture of abject indifference to our suffering cousins in Africa and elsewhere. So, tell me – what about them?

Palestine recognition ‘shows Hamas that killing people pays off’

His concern is that, in the eyes of both Hamas and Moscow, violence has been validated by the Western world.

“If Hamas can see that killing pays off, that they [Palestine] will be recognised, they will survive. Russia – similar. If they feel that the international community is willing to recognise that aggression pays off, Putin will not stop there.”

And, with Estonia bordering Russia, the threat feels immediate. “We are getting closer to a much more dramatic and turbulent world,” he said.

“Those forces that have played a decisive role in keeping stability in the Middle East are not today ready or able to make a difference. I mean, first and foremost, the US.

"The situation is difficult. The US is not able to be the unique power player. Nowadays, you have China, Russia, Iran, North Korea. Their aim is to destroy or redefine the current world order.”

After October 7, Mihkelson visited the sites of the Hamas massacre in southern Israel, including Kibbutz Be’eri and the Nova music festival. “It made me understand very deeply the consequences of the past and what could happen next,” he added.

He acknowledged the terrible suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, but also suggested that images of the conflict are being used dishonestly to sway public opinion. “The optics – what is coming out of Gaza – can be used as a manipulative tool. But also without any manipulation, you can see the suffering of civilians is horrible.”

While Estonia voted in favour of a UN General Assembly resolution last year calling on Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian territories, Mihkelson said future steps must focus on results not symbolism.

“Our position has been for a long time similar – we don’t exclude the full recognition of independence of a country… but our first and most important principal here is: if we do so, do we help to bring peace into the region? Will this be more than a political declaration? How will this resonate with what happened on October 7?

"Isn’t this recognition of Hamas, a terrorist organisation that still has as its primary goal to destroy Israeli statehood and kill Jews?”

Likewise, he supports a two-state solution, but said that October 7 pushed the prospect of peace further away. “Estonia’s position has been the same as other countries – agree with two-state formation – unfortunately, there is a very limited will specifically from the Palestinian Arab side to achieve this peace.

"October 7 was a major turning point that pushed that goal of two states living next to each other in peaceful terms further into the future.”

But, despite numerous meetings with the Palestinian Authority, he said he encountered “a lack of courage, leadership and the will to break with a violent past and build something different within the Palestinian state”.

08/08 Links Pt2: The media front in the war against civilization; What Real Decolonization Looks Like; Dems move from Joe Lieberman to Mamdani

From Ian:

Melanie Philips: The media front in the war against civilization

All journalists in Gaza work on terms dictated by Hamas. Arab reporters and photographers who supply Western media outlets with material either fear or support Hamas. Any Gazan reporter or photographer who steps out of line faces being removed or killed.

Yet the media have never once publicly acknowledged that every report or image from Gaza is produced under Hamas censorship. As Friedman noted in 2014, it’s why AP would censor certain information from Gaza because Hamas had threatened the agency’s reporters if it appeared, but failed to inform its readers about those threats and told them instead that Hamas was “becoming more moderate.”

News desks collude in these lies because they are ravenous for the story their Gaza fixers, stringers or photographers provide—the story of “Palestinian” suffering and Israeli evil.

Not one of their reports or images from Gaza can ever be assumed to be truthful, because their sources are all Hamas mouthpieces or sympathizers.

On today’s Gaza battlefield, the risks posed by this media corruption, both to Israel’s security and to the truth, are magnified many times over.

It’s not just that opening up Gaza to Western journalists would mean even more Hamas-dictated propaganda bamboozling even larger swaths of the Western public, and playing into their own innate prejudices against Israel and the Jewish people.

Given the obsessive and malignant partisanship by Western journalists in support of the “Palestinian” cause, they might well pass on to Hamas information they discover about IDF positions, intentions or army units.

The despicable behavior by the Western media is not some marginal sideshow. The media is itself an active front in this war, a crucial weapon being wielded by the Islamic world against Israel through Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, Qatar and Iran.

This axis has been waging a cognitive war against Israel by suborning and weaponizing the entire liberal internationalist establishment through the United Nations, human-rights law, international courts, NGOs, the universities and, above all, the Western media.

Whether they realize it or not, all have been harnessed to the same cause—to bring about the darkest and most deeply embedded desire of the West to knock the Jews off their moral pinnacle and cast them instead as the cancer of the world.

The Western media must therefore be regarded as an enemy force in the service of a great evil. Rather than giving it more access and privileges, it must accordingly be fought, along with the Islamic forces that have deployed it as a key front in the war they are waging against civilization itself.

What Real Decolonization Looks Like

Jewish and American Indian cooperation isn’t as novel as people may think. In an article in American Jewish History, historian Avery Weinman documents a forgotten moment of solidarity between American Jews and American Indians. From Nov. 20, 1969, to June 11, 1971, the IAT, or the Indians of All Tribes, occupied Alcatraz Island as a full-throated protest and expression of “Red Power.” They stood for “rejection of assimilation, renewed interest in tribal sociocultural and linguistic traditions, and staunch advocacy for American Indian self-determination and legal autonomy on ancestral lands.”

In 1969, Joel Brooks and Rabbi Roger E. Herst, prominent members of the American Jewish Congress at the time, christened a boat Shalom I and sailed it to Alcatraz. Arriving on the fourth day of Hannukkah, Rabbi Herst had brought his own hanukkiah and shared a feast in solidarity with the occupiers, declaring Hannukkah “a Jewish holiday of national liberation.” They broke a challah, ate Jewish food, exchanged Hanukkah gifts, and engaged in “Jewish and Indian folk dancing.”

At that heady juncture of American radical history, where liberation movements had sprung up overnight during the agitation of the ’60s, Jews and Native Americans found a lot of common ground in their retrospective experiences and histories. According to Weinman, these commonalities included “historical themes in three main categories: survival of extreme oppression (including attempted genocide), preservation of socioreligious and linguistic traditions, and strong connection to ancient ancestral lands.”

Uninterrupted and consistent ethnic, spiritual, and cultural ties to the land of Israel go incontestably to the Israelis. Their presence as a people has been documented in the Late Bronze Age. Their story in the land is subsequently chronicled from the Iron Age onward, in their own textual corpora over the centuries, in those of the nations that fought against them, and in the archaeological record. The first temple is under the mosque of the Dome of the Rock, signifying historical primacy. The nation of Israel, as self-declared by Jews, predates the Palestinian cause—it’s not a nation yet—by approximately 3,400 years.

The Palestinian people cannot claim such a pedigree. Which begs the question, is their identity Indigenous so much as it is ethnic and pan-Arab? If the colors of the Palestinian flag are any indication, Palestinian identity is not tied to the land itself so much as to Islamic and pan-Arab identities. Take the Palestinian flag, for instance. Flown since the 1920s, it directly reflects pan-Arab roots. A variant of the 1917 flag of the Arab Revolt, the flag has colors that represent the main dynasties of Arab Islamic history. The Palestinian movement, in other words, was conceived as part of a pan-Arab, not nativist, movement. It has been so since its inception.

To even raise these arguments around the pro-Palestinian mob, however, is to be shouted down, and generally with the same robotic settler colonialist rhetoric, if you can get them to speak. As Izabella Tabarovsky has pointed out time and again, framing Israel as a settler colonialist, apartheid state is vintage propaganda from the Soviet politburo; it was crafted in the ’60s, then circulated robustly across the Soviet Union and through the Middle East. So it is no wonder to find it so readily rolling off the tongues of Islamic extremists and Hamas-supporting Columbia University graduates. It has been around for a while.

It’s the turgid illogic of these narratives that has led some Native American, First Nations, and Aboriginal peoples to subject them to a smell test. As actual suppressed peoples with a history of forced settlement, land theft, and genocide, they know a true colonialist when they see one. This gradual awakening of allyship began at the fringes but is now slowly making its way into the mainstream.

Take Jason Watson, for instance, a Native American activist who is a member of the Chickasaw Nation. Married to a Jewish woman, he lives in Israel and now writes columns and regular blog posts for The Times of Israel. He is also actively involved in restorative justice programs that foster dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians.

In a June 11 blog post, he addressed the anniversary of Israel’s Six-Day War in light of the current conflict in Gaza. Watson noted the Colorado terror attack days earlier, where several elderly protesters were set on fire by an Egyptian asylum seeker yelling, “Free Palestine.” The same chant shouted by Elias Rodriguez after murdering Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim with a handgun two weeks before that. It’s a phrase that has been robotically chanted thousands of times in the streets of every U.S. city and on every major Ivy League campus since October 2023. Rodriguez’s tone and cadence were indistinguishable from those of any pro-Palestinian protester.

For Watson, the current toxic rhetoric, the escalation of hostility against Jews, and the Six-Day War are profoundly connected: “At first glance, these events may seem unrelated. They are, however, connected by a deeper thread: the misuse of history, the moral confusion around terrorism, and the erasure of real Indigenous voices in the name of activism.”

He continued, citing his own work with Native American issues and their misappropriation by pro-Palestinians: “I have watched our struggles be co-opted by others. At recent immigration protests, signs reading ‘No one is illegal on stolen land’ were waved alongside Palestinian flags and chants of ‘intifada.’ The implication is clear: that American immigration enforcement, Zionism, and colonialism are all one and the same. It is a neat narrative, though not a true one.”

Watson’s analysis is sobering, but it does not shrink from the stark realities and moral clarity that are required to truly address the issue of Israel’s survival. This starts with recognizing a shared history between Indigenous groups and Israelis. Watson ultimately envisions a world where honest dialogue, divested of harmful rhetoric and mendacious revisionist history, opens the possibility for bridge building.

“Indigenous survival is rooted in reality, not rhetoric,” he concludes. “We do not exist to be used as moral cover for other people’s ideologies. When Indigenous pain is invoked to justify terrorism against Israeli civilians, that is not solidarity. That is erasure all over again.”

Seth Mandel: Sinwar the Symbol

The death of Yahya Sinwar in October of last year was a revelatory moment in the West. After key campus groups like Students for Justice in Palestine and Columbia University Apartheid Divest mourned Sinwar’s death, celebrated his life, and built verbal monuments to his status as a martyr, there was nothing left to learn about the tentifada protests across America and beyond: The motivations behind these groups were evil.

Because Sinwar was pure evil. There was no other side to him, no complexity to his character or his contributions to life on earth.

Which is why, though it might sound like a silly thing at first, the news of the rising popularity of Yahya as a baby name in the UK is to be lamented.

Obviously “Yahya,” apparently a name for John the Baptist but not a variant itself of “John,” is far from unheard-of as an Arabic name. But it is not exactly a dime a dozen. I suppose it’s impossible to prove a correlation between the increase in babies named Yahya in 2024 and the attacks of Oct. 7 and the ensuing war. But… come on.

The larger point is less about names and more about the fact of an evil man’s beatification. The coming generation of Yahyas is only going to serve as an unavoidable reminder.

But perhaps that reminder won’t be needed anyway. Progressive activists in the West—who will no doubt soon be walking the streets of hipster Brooklyn with their labradoodle puppies named Yahya—don’t beat around the bush.

“The news regarding the great commander has left our hearts heavy and out [sic] chests breathless,” students at the City University of New York published after Sinwar’s elimination. “Today, we mourn the loss and celebrate the martyrdom of the lion of Al Quds, the beloved Commander, President, Fighter, his eminence, Yahya Sinwar…Every kuffiyeh drawn on the neck of a CUNY student is tied to the neck of the great commander who woke up the world from their deep daze.”

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.

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

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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.