Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, August 13, 2025

08/13 Links Pt1: Why Experts Torch Their Own Credibility to Smear Israel; Hostage families sue ICC prosecutor; Hamas praises Australia’s Albanese on Palestinian statehood

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Why Experts Torch Their Own Credibility to Smear Israel

Yet another case of corrupted international standards once again raises the question: Why is it so important to the world to falsely accuse Israel of causing famine? The genocide charge falls into this category as well: Why is legitimate criticism of warfighting not enough, and why are global agencies and other institutions driven to change their own standards just to convict Israel of a crime it didn’t commit?

The latest examples come from USAID and the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the latter being a food-related coalitional enterprise under the auspices of the United Nations. The Washington Free Beacon reports that the IPC “quietly changed one of its key reporting metrics … making it easier to formally declare that there is a famine in the Hamas-controlled territory.”

For many in the media and activism spheres, this was the announcement they were long waiting for. The credentialism game was again afoot: Activists could point to “experts” who would appeal to their own authority. The IPC said let there be famine, and there it was.

As the Free Beacon pointed out, the IPC simply tailored its metrics to fit the accusation. Indeed, it is the extent of the changes that really tells you how big was the gap between what Israel was being accused of and what Israel was guilty of:

“Unlike previous IPC reports on the humanitarian situation in Gaza, the July report includes a metric—known as mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC)—the agency has not historically used to determine whether a famine is taking place. The report also includes a lowered threshold for the proportion of children who must be considered malnourished for the IPC to declare a famine, down to 15 percent from 30 percent.”

Those arm circumference measurements, by the way, replaced “detailed weight and height measurements to determine whether a child is suffering from acute malnutrition.”

In other words, the agency took rigorous standards and tore them to shreds. And for what? For the opportunity to accuse Israel of a crime the IPC knew it wasn’t committing.

This is an absolutely bizarre trend. Scientific agencies are blowing up their own credibility to score political points in one conflict. That credibility won’t return to them when they turn their attention to other conflicts and perhaps go back to using accurate data.

Why is flawed Gaza data in top US journal? - opinion

The journal Foreign Affairs is one of the most prestigious academic journals in the world. It is published by the Council on Foreign Relations, headquartered in New York. Articles submitted to it undergo strict peer review before publication. Recently, the journal published an article by a respected professor from the University of Chicago, Robert A. Pape, on Israel’s fighting in Gaza.

In our view, the article suffers from fundamental flaws in the professional standards required in any academic publication, especially in one so highly respected. Here we will focus only on the numerical data given by the author.

The data on which the article is based come from reports by Hamas’s health authorities. To the author’s credit, he explicitly notes this. However, he then proceeds to rely on this data without raising the obvious question of its reliability. By omitting such a statement, he sends a clear message that, in his view, these are genuine figures – as if they were reports from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The starting point of the article is the figure disseminated by Hamas, according to which the number of Palestinians dead in Gaza exceeds 61,000, and more than 145,000 have been seriously wounded. How many of them are “Hamas fighters” and how many are “uninvolved civilians”? The author acknowledges that Hamas does not make that distinction, and he follows suit.

Flawed and misleading information
The author does not bother to pose to his readers the obvious question: Why does Hamas not present a clear distinction between “combatants” and “civilians”? Are these truly “real figures”? Or is it simply convenient for Hamas to present a blurred picture, hoping that public opinion will tag them as “civilians” – just as the author of the article does?

This “implicit” message already appears in the subheadline: “Why Punishing Civilians Doesn’t Produce Strategic Gains.” Later, he explicitly states that Israel’s tactic in the war is the “punishment of civilians.”

Only with such a label can the esteemed author define Israel’s military activity in Gaza as “slaughter.” Does this approach meet the standard required of reliable academic research? To us, it seems not.

Clifford D May: America’s fair-weather friends

In an interview on Fox News last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set out the plan’s goals: “We want to liberate ourselves and liberate the people of Gaza from the awful terror of Hamas in order to assure our security, remove Hamas there, enable the population to be free, and to pass it to civilian governance.”

Israelis are divided over the wisdom of the plan. Many think they’ve reached a point of diminishing returns militarily and should strategically retreat to security buffer zones.

What about Gazans? Are they divided? Or would most prefer that Hamas release the hostages and seek a truce—or at least resume negotiations that could lead to delaying Israel’s Gaza City plan?

Gazans who say such things publicly are likely to be summarily executed, with the Hamas-obedient international media giving scant coverage to either their courageous dissent or their untimely deaths.

The Trump administration’s position was clearly articulated by Vice President JD Vance last week: “Number one, we want to make it so that Hamas cannot attack innocent Israeli civilians ever again, and we think that has to come through the eradication of Hamas. Second, the president has been very moved by these terrible images of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, so we want to make sure that we solve that problem.”

I wish Germany, France and Britain were saying the same.

They’re adamant that U.S. President Donald Trump work with them to support Ukraine, a fledgling European democracy defending itself against a revanchist dictator.

Does it not follow, as a matter of principle and self-interest, that they ought to work with Trump to support a mature Middle Eastern democracy defending itself against a terrorist proxy of the Islamic Republic of Iran whose goal is openly and even proudly genocidal?

I wonder if Messrs. Merz, Starmer and Macron understand how tough they are making it for Atlanticists like me to push back against the growing number of Americans who regard West Europeans as fair-weather friends, always there for us when they need us.

Woman who worked in morgue on October 7 accuses Starmer of ‘torpedoing’ peace in Gaza

An Israeli morgue worker who witnessed the extent of Hamas’s atrocities on October 7 firsthand has accused Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer of “torpedoing” any chance for peace or the return of hostages by recognising a Palestinian state.

Shari Mendes, 64, who, as a member of the team at Israel’s national morgue, examined the bodies of many of the women murdered and mutilated on October 7, wrote an “urgent plea” to Starmer yesterday.

“Your offer to recognise a Palestinian state has put the lives of the 20 or so living Israeli hostages in jeopardy and made it harder to recover the bodies of 30 other Israelis,” she wrote. “More significantly, it has torpedoed any chances for peace.”

She wrote that despite her being a “regular person” and not in the habit of writing to prime ministers, it is “unfathomable” to her that Jews should be starved and forced to dig their own graves again so soon after the Holocaust.

She said if Hamas is pressured to surrender then the war would end and a “true demilitarised and peaceful government in Gaza is the first step toward Israeli acceptance that real peace and security is possible.”

If Starmer issues a statement similar to the following, she claimed, he would be able to save lives of both innocent Israelis and Palestinians: “‘In order for there to be lasting peace in the Middle East I must add a condition to any offer to recognise a Palestinian state. Hamas must surrender and release all Israeli hostages they hold before any negotiations over Palestinian statehood can begin. Hamas cannot stay. They must disarm and go into exile. They must leave Gaza as the first step to ending this terrible war which they started, so that reconstruction and a chance for the citizens of Gaza and Israel to live side by side in peace, can start.’”

As part of the unit in the IDF specialising in the identification and preparation for burial of female soldiers, Mendes was invited in early 2024 to the House of Lords in London to give testimony on what she had witnessed working on the mutilated bodies of October 7 victims.

On August 12, four mothers—Galia David, Merav Gilboa Dalal, Viki Cohen, and Sylvia Cunio—traveled to Geneva to beg the Red Cross to do something, anything, for their children, held captive by Hamas since October 7, 2023. I saw the story in Ynet and hoped it might offer a reason for hope—something in short supply these days.

I should have known better. It’s Ynet. There was nothing worth seeing in this story, nothing new—only an anonymous Israeli source claiming the Red Cross hasn’t been cruel or insensitive to the hostages. “An Israeli source familiar with the Red Cross’s work told Ynet that Red Cross officials ‘weren't empathetic enough toward the hostage families mainly because they are Swiss and follow protocols, not because they are anti-Israel.’” In other words, they’re just Swiss—wedded to their protocol, not to saving Jewish lives.

The article suggested that things would be different this time. But instead of coming away feeling better, I felt sick at the thought of the false hope that been fed to these mothers who have been suffering so, so hard, for so long—that something would actually be done this time, that the Red Cross would do its job for once, and do something, anything for our hostages.

A mother’s tears are powerful, but perhaps not powerful enough to sway the “Swiss.”

Oh sure, the mothers came away with hope. They think something has changed. Why should it be different now? It was the awful images we all saw, now burned into our very souls, of Evyatar David and Rom Braslavski, looking like Muselmänner*, like the photos of Jews in Auschwitz, skeletal, skin and bones. Evyatar has lost 41% of his body weight.

In the propaganda video Hamas released, Evyatar is digging his own grave. Rom Braslavski, meanwhile, can no longer stand.

It is hard to believe the agonizing desperation their mothers feel can worsen. But those images of their sons moved them to speak from the rawest place a mother can speak, showing ICRC president Mirjana Spoljaric photos of their sons’ faces with hollows where flesh should be. They pleaded for medicine, for food, for a chance to keep them alive until they can be freed. They thought, “Surely these photos will move the Red Cross,” move Spoljaric, who, after all, is a mother herself.

Spoljaric did all the right things—the expected things. She took their hands, leaned forward, and promised to do “everything in her power.” Her expression seemed to hold the right mix of sympathy and resolve, or at least the mothers thought so. They believed they had touched her heart.

But they hadn’t. What they had touched was a performance—one Spoljaric has given before and is almost certain to give again. She said the Red Cross will try to help, but it should be obvious by now that they won’t.

It’s been more than a year and a half since I wrote about the International Committee of the Red Cross and its refusal to do anything at all for the Israeli hostages. Why? They despise Jews. During the Holocaust, the Red Cross knew about the gas chambers and did nothing. They hid behind a label of “neutrality” when they were anything but.

PM Netanyahu Meets with ICRC President Mirjana Spoljaric, 14.12.2023 © Photo by Amos Ben-Gershom, GPO

What has changed from December 2023—when I last wrote about this—to now, August 2025, when four mothers, evoking the four matriarchs of the Jewish people, went to beg for their children’s lives, for a bit of food and some medical attention for their sons? Mirjana Spoljaric has a son and a daughter. You might think that would make a difference—that she would empathize with the hostage mothers.

But that would be an illusion. The Red Cross holds no empathy for Jews. This is just a cruel new act the Red Cross has added to its repertoire: dangling hope in front of mothers in unimaginable pain, then walking away and doing nothing. Because we know that’s what will happen.

If you want to understand the Red Cross’s true capacity for evil and inaction, remember 84-year-old Alma Avraham. She was released in November 2023 in critical condition: a pulse of 40, a body temperature of 28°C (82.4°F), unconscious and with multiple injuries. Her family had begged the Red Cross—twice—to deliver her life-sustaining medications. Twice, they refused.

Alma spent five months in the hospital fighting for her life. An 84-year-old woman. And the Red Cross looked away and did nothing.

The Red Cross says it “can’t” visit hostages because Hamas will not allow it. But this is not true. It’s not that the Red Cross can’t help the hostages, but that they choose not to. The Red Cross operates in Gaza with Hamas’s blessing. It runs hospitals. It delivers supplies. Hamas gives them no trouble at all. Red Cross personnel have complete freedom of movement under Hamas—except when it comes to saving Jews.

No. The inaction of the Red Cross is not about Swiss neutrality and a need to follow protocol. In fact, the Red Cross is not at all neutral when it comes to Israel and Hamas. It is aligned with Hamas. It respects Hamas for October 7, for the slaughter, for the terror, for the rape of Jewish women and the beheading of Jewish children. It allies itself with Hamas because Hamas has done openly what the Red Cross has always endorsed without saying the quiet part out loud—hurt Jews, mutilate Jews, rape and humiliate them, starve Jews, strip them of all dignity and life.

It’s always been the same Red Cross—the same body that during the Holocaust refused to speak out about the camps, even as Jews were being gassed, starved, and burned by the millions. Back then, the Red Cross played by Nazi rules to keep its privileges because it didn’t care what was done to the Jews—didn’t like Jews. Today, the Red Cross plays by Hamas’ rules for the same reason—and with the same satisfaction.

Remember the Steinbrechers, begging for their daughter Doron’s daily pills, only to be scolded: “Think about the Palestinian side”? The Red Cross is not a powerless observer. It is a willing accomplice—and has been for generations.

This is the same organization that knew about Auschwitz in 1942 but said nothing, claiming it couldn’t jeopardize access to Allied POWs. Roger Du Pasquier, head of the ICRC’s Information Department, even lied about being “ill-informed.” And now, in 2025, the ICRC’s silence on Jewish suffering is once again dressed up as pragmatic restraint.

When lawsuits from hostage families and groups like Shurat HaDin accuse the Red Cross of abandoning Jews, they aren’t exaggerating—they are documenting a pattern. Seventy-six years later, the Red Cross still finds ways to look away from Jewish suffering while keeping its credentials spotless.

And now here we are, with two living skeletons starring in Hamas propaganda videos, their suffering public and undeniable. The Red Cross says they are “appalled” and “reiterate our call for access.” Appalled? Appalled is what you feel when a waiter forgets your coffee order. They’re not appalled. They’re complicit.

From 1930 to 2006, the Red Cross refused to recognize Israel’s Magen David Adom because of “territorialism”—a diplomatic fig leaf meaning no Jewish symbols allowed. The Muslim crescent? Accepted without hesitation. The Iranian red lion and sun? Not a problem. But a Jewish star? Not a chance.

Even now, abroad, Israel must hide its emblem inside the hollow “Red Crystal,” because the Star of David is still not recognized as a protected symbol. A small piece of metal and cloth tells the whole story: to the Red Cross, Jewish identity is something to be concealed, diluted, and finally, erased.

Don’t be fooled. The Red Cross did not meet with the mothers out of empathy or a desire to save lives. They granted a meeting only because the images of those skeletal Muselmänner had leaked out before the public eye. Some show of sympathy had to be made, or it wouldn’t have looked right.

So Spoljaric staged an audience, then sent the hostage mothers packing with the thinnest thread of hope—an illusion of momentum. Did the mothers really think that after seeing those hollowed-out faces someone would care, someone would cry, someone would save their sons?

If so, that’s not what they got.

And now, visit accomplished, the Red Cross can return to business as usual—the business of aiding and abetting the enemies of Israel.

It’s their favorite thing to do.

* Ironically meaning “Muslim men,” but that’s a column for another day.

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From NPR in February:

Khadija al-Ali was just 3 years old when her family fled their home in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and came to this Palestinian refugee camp in Syria.

"My advice to the people of Gaza is to hold on. Do not leave, even if it means they all become martyrs," she said.

Hmmm. The headline didn't mention that last part:

Saying that it is better for 2 million people to die than to seek safety is a hell of a message. Yet this is mainstream Palestinian thinking - when they are not the ones who are in danger of being killed.

There's another message she has:

"The Arab armies were all saying, 'We are coming to fight for you. Leave for eight days, and we will liberate the land,'" she said. "People left carrying their house keys and locking their doors. So people left thinking they would return in eight days."

Those eight days have turned into 77 years in the congested Jaramana Refugee Camp on the edge of Damascus

Yet this small fact - that the Palestinian Arabs were told to leave in expectation of slaughtering the Jews and their imminent victorious return - is left unremarked by NPR.

Instead, it gives a revisionist history of the 1948 war:

That 1948 Mideast War erupted at Israel's founding and pitted Israel against several Arab states. The war scattered some 750,000 Palestinian refugees throughout the Middle East.

It "erupted." No one attacked Israel, no, it was just a volcano. And the attacks against Jews before Israel's founding are left unmentioned. The fact that there were Jewish refugees from the war too, who became citizens - not mentioned. The fact that the Arab world expelled a similar amount of Jews - no one has to know that.

In December 1948, while the war was still ongoing, the United Nations passed Resolution 194, which says refugees should be able to return to their homes at "the earliest practicable date."

NPR decided to exclude another condition: "the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours."

Given the cheers, fireworks and sweets Palestinians routinely provide every time Jews get viciously killed, it seems that these six words were never fulfilled in 77 years.

I wonder why NPR decides to report things so one-sidedly.

Actually, no one wonders that.

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How the data on defining "famine" in Gaza might be false

There is an interesting footnote in the latest IPC fact sheet on Gaza titled "Worst-case scenario of Famine unfolding in the Gaza Strip":

Normally, the IPC chooses to measure Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) using WHZ (weight to height Z score) in preference to Mid-Upper Arm Circumference. Their technical manual says that they should only rely on MUAC under strict conditions:

Preference of GAM based on WHZ: GAM based on MUAC may only be used in the absence of GAM based on WHZ. In exceptional cases where GAM based on MUAC portrays a much more severe situation than GAM based on WHZ (i.e. two or more phases higher), GAM based on MUAC should also be taken into account along with a critical analysis of the contributing factors before a final phase is determined.
GAM based on MUAC classification is based on an analysis of the relationship between WHZ and MUAC in the analysis area and convergence of evidence: GAM based on MUAC must only be used in the absence of GAM based on WHZ, and always using convergence of evidence with contributing factors to arrive at the final phase. In exceptional conditions where GAM based on MUAC portrays a much more severe situation than GAM based on WHZ (i.e. two or more phases), GAM based on MUAC should also be taken into account in the phase classification. MUAC-based classifications should be supported by the relationship between GAM based on WHZ, and GAM based on MUAC in the area of analysis. Convergence of evidence should focus on assessing the status of contributing factors (e.g. disease outbreak, food security crisis) as well as historical trends.

Their data sheet does not explain why they rely on GAM and not WHZ. They have a footnote referring to a detailed sampling methodology and data by the UN Nutrition Cluster yet that document does not mention WHZ at all.

To measure WHZ requires a scale and a height board, which can be expected to be found in every hospital and medical clinic in Gaza. Any health workers who go into the field to take random samples, however, would only be expected to have a tape measure to measure arm circumference. Presumably that is the basis for their choosing to rely on MUAC. Yet even so, they are supposed to show a relationship between the prevalence of GAM based on MUAC and GAM based on WHZ.

Now, let's think about this. The only way they can make such a relationship is by measuring both MUAC and WHZ in hospitals and clinics where there are scales and tape measures. But the children being brought into hospitals are far more likely to have illnesses that would indicate both weight loss and MUAC, like diarrhea or acute respiratory infections, which are temporary. If, say, 40% of children are brought into hospitals/clinics for such reasons, and 40% of the samples taken are from hospitals and clinics (both of those are quite reasonable assumptions), that would be equivalent to the 16% of sampled children exhibiting low MUAC scores - even if every child who is at home is perfectly healthy.

The lack of detail by IPC of their sampling methodology is concerning and could easily be skewed.

Also strange is the sudden dramatic increase of MUAC issues in Gaza City in just one month. Normally these would increase slowly over months in normal areas of famine.

Finally, we have the problem we've had since the beginning: the number of actual deaths counted, while claimed to have increased to the low hundreds, is nowhere near the numbers that are required to declare famine (four child deaths per ten thousand per day) - which would be dozens of deaths daily in Gaza City alone.

The IPC was careful not to say there was a famine in Gaza, or even to say that there was "likely famine" there. It said "worst case scenario of famine unfolding" which has no definition - but it sure gets reported on in the media as if it means an actual famine.

Things aren't adding up.

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

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Hamas performs a war crime on video. World media ignores it.

From COGAT:

🚨WATCH: 5 Armed terrorists operated under the cover of a fake emblem of @WCKitchen placed on a vehicle in Gaza - and were eliminated from the air.

The terrorists deliberately affixed the emblem and wore yellow vests in an attempt to conceal their activity and avoid being… pic.twitter.com/BoeHN6SFsW
— COGAT (@cogatonline) August 12, 2025

This is the war crime of perfidy. We can see it. World Central Kitchen confirms it wasn't there vehicle. Hamas (presumably) pretended to be aid workers to shield themselves from being targeted. This puts all humanitarian workers in Gaza at risk.

An, as I write this ten hours after Israeli and Jewish media covered the story, nearly no one else decided that this was newsworthy.

The only exceptions were the New York Post, CNN and Newsweek.

CNN mentioned it, buried the WCK statement, and then spends more space talking about how there wasn't enough aid in Gaza than on the story itself.

Newsweek put "fake aid workers" in scare quotes, and then watered down the story by adding:

Late last month, The New York Times published an op-ed by Andrés titled "The World Cannot Stand By With Gaza on the Brink of Famine." In it, he disputed Israel's claims of Hamas looting humanitarian aid convoys and criticized what he called a "blockade" imposed by Israel against sufficient levels of food entering Gaza.

It's funny that this is the context that it decides to publish, and not mention that the UN's own statistics show that WCK collected 444 trucks of food since late May, of which 346 - 78% - were intercepted by armed terrorists.

Isn't that relevant when the head of an organization denies any such problem?

But as of this writing, the New York Times didn't report it. Reuters didn't either. AP buried it at the very bottom of an article on a different Gaza story. The Washington Post published yet another "starving Gaza" story but didn't say a word about this one.

Usually, when there is video showing an actual war crime happening, it gets media coverage. But not when Hamas does it. No legal experts consulted to explain the war crime of perfidy. Israel's video is doubted - is it really Hamas? Maybe it is a bunch of other Gazans who have the resources to paint a WCK logo on a vehicle?

The real way to see media bias is to see what the media chooses not to report. This story is proof positive that an event that has every attribute of a compelling story - terrorists caught in the act on video - is largely ignored by the media whose job is to inform the public of what it going on.

If you are wondering why the world is so anti-Israel, this is a big reason.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

08/12 Links Pt2: The ‘Empathy’ Lie and the Erasure of the Hostages; We Will No Longer Tolerate ‘Pay for Slay’; Leaders of terror-linked charity bankroll Democrats

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The ‘Empathy’ Lie and the Erasure of the Hostages

As I explained yesterday, there is no longer any disputing that French President Emmanuel Macron’s announcement that his country would recognize the “state of Palestine,” in conjunction with his and other European leaders’ one-sided pressure on Israel, sabotaged the cease-fire deal that would have brought 10 living hostages home.

Which means that every leader who followed Macron in announcing a plan to recognize a Palestinian state—Mark Carney of Canada, Albanese of Australia, Keir Starmer of the UK—did so knowing the price that would be paid by the hostages.

The remaining hostages, including those who would have been freed had Europe not intervened on Hamas’s behalf, may not survive. But even those who do survive will be tortured, starved, and likely exposed to sexual mistreatment of one kind or another. Every added day of captivity brings them closer to death through painful and utterly inhuman treatment at the hands of Hamas monsters.

To join in the wave of “Palestine” recognition, knowing this, means several Western leaders have made a calculation: They can live with the deaths of the hostages, even when they are partially on their conscience. Such people may not be Hamasnik monsters themselves, but they are at the very least monster-adjacent.

Furthermore, this whole situation exposes something important about the international community. Those who claim to care for the wellbeing of Palestinians in Gaza are not displaying empathy. They are not displaying generosity of spirit or anything of the kind. They are, as they have explained time and again, acting out of domestic political pressure. That is certainly a legitimate driver of political policymaking, but it is not a display of morality or decency.

Were the “humanitarian” activists to advocate with equal force for the hostages, they might be saved. But the rest of the world doesn’t care, and politics is a numbers game: There simply aren’t enough Jews in these countries. That itself is a vicious cycle, and one the callous cowards of the West are unbothered by as well.

Seth Mandel: Why Israel Is Losing the ‘Propaganda War’

Just as recognizing a Palestinian state does not make a Palestinian state suddenly appear. It may be a boon to the people dressing up as the Palestinian state, though.

Is an NGO or some other nonstate entity a “humanitarian” organization because it calls itself humanitarian? Over the weekend there was some excitement in the anti-Israel world over an open letter written by French self-described experts in international law, which made two pretty wild points: that Israel did not have the legal right of self-defense after Oct. 7, and that Israel’s “genocidal intent” toward Gazans was made clear when someone in Israel proposed a “humanitarian city” for Palestinians civilians that was never actually pursued. I’m sure these folks have university degrees in their chosen industry, but not a single person who signs a letter like this is an “expert” in anything except signing their own name.

The propaganda debate over the war is reminiscent of MSNBC’s Joy Reid once explaining that “The enemy of the far-right, in their own words, are Antifa, meaning anti-fascist. So, they are anti-anti-fascist by their own reckoning.” If you oppose a group called anti-fascist, you are a fascist. Magnify this galactic stupidity by a thousand and you have something like what Israel is facing in the international media.

What if we call the Hamas government’s police forces the “Gaza civil police”? Then the UN can argue its trucks are being guarded by legions of people like Dwight from The Office, who boasted of his status as a Lackawanna County volunteer sheriff’s deputy.

And where do you go when you need some solid medical or hospital information? May I suggest the Gaza Health Ministry? The ministry is not affiliated with Hamas because, as you can see, the word Hamas appears nowhere in its name.

Is there a single person on earth in a position of power and influence who actually believes any of this? Of course not. And that is the problem with the propaganda war. Someone who cites the “Gaza Health Ministry” is not someone who has been fooled by one side; it is someone who has chosen one side. There’s no question at all that Israel could stand to improve its response time in providing the real story behind whatever nonsense is leading, say, the Guardian on any given day. But one must also remember why someone would read the Guardian for its Mideast war reporting in the first place.

Meir Y. Soloveichik: We Will No Longer Tolerate ‘Pay for Slay’

In 2002, Benjamin Blutstein was an American student from New Jersey, studying for a semester at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. As he began lunch in the school’s Frank Sinatra Cafeteria, a Hamas-planted bomb blew up, ending his life instantly. He had planned to fly home later that day. Blutstein was one of several Americans murdered in that attack and one of many Americans murdered by Palestinian terrorists over the past 20 years. Several of his murderers sit in Israeli prison—and are to this day given a stipend as reward by the Palestinian Authority (PA). The families of Palestinian “martyrs,” suicide bombers, receive similar sustenance.

It was more than two decades later, this past June, that the Supreme Court addressed the legal rights of Blutstein’s relatives and those of others. The case is technical, focusing on matters abstruse and abstract, but if we pay close attention, we will discover that the jurisprudential debate also makes manifest larger questions relating to American foreign policy, mistakes made over the past years—and the new attitude that must be adopted.

The case, Fuld et al. v. PLO et al., concerns the policy of the Palestinian Authority that is known as “pay for slay,” through which the PA continues to bestow financial rewards on terrorists and their families, thereby incentivizing terrorist acts. Families of murdered Americans like Benjamin Blutstein sued the Palestinian Authority for damages. They relied on the 1990 Anti-Terrorism Act, which allows for verdicts bestowing triple damages to those hurt by international terror. They, in turn, were constantly rebuffed by the courts, which insisted that U.S. law had no jurisdiction over the Palestinian Authority.

In response, Congress in 2019 passed the Promoting Security and Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, specifically stating that the PA would be deemed to have consented to the jurisdiction of United States law if it maintained a presence in American territory and if it continued its “pay for slay” activities. Because the PA does indeed maintain an office in midtown Manhattan, and because its payments for terror are still ongoing, the families of the victims successfully sued the PA in federal court, achieving a civil verdict of hundreds of millions of dollars.

That decision was overturned by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which deemed it a violation of the PA’s due-process rights because it unfairly imposed the burden of “litigating in a distant or inconvenient forum.” While the PA does have an office in New York, the circuit court argued that aside from its presence at the United Nations, the PA had no right to engage in its activities in the United States; the American government was merely turning a “blind eye” to its activities. The PA could not be deemed to have consented to U.S. jurisdiction unless it received some “reciprocal” benefit for its presence in the country.

08/12 Links Pt1: How Israel Can Defend Itself in the Future; Why Is Reuters Carrying Water for Hamas?; IDF kills five terrorists posing as part of World Central Kitchen

From Ian:

Jonathan Schanzer: How Israel Can Defend Itself in the Future

Israeli grayzone operations are undeniably ramping up as the multi-front war quiets down. But the risk-reward calculus for Israel is now likely to vary from one theater to the next across the Middle East. Striking assets in Lebanon and Syria poses little risk right now. Neither Hezbollah nor the regime of Ahmad al-Shara appears particularly eager to fight.

The Iranian regime, however, may be up for another tussle. Should the IDF conduct operations that cross Iran’s red line—a line that is currently ill-defined—there is real risk of escalation. Interestingly, the main critique of the campaign prior to October 7 was that it was too provocative and risked igniting a major war for minimal gains. That may seem ironic in hindsight, but the risk of provoking another major conflict now is not negligible.

Air strikes on military facilities in response to the Iranian regime renewing its ballistic missile production capabilities could trigger a painful response. The regime maintains the ability to launch ballistic missiles at Israel and to strike with considerable accuracy. The Israelis need to think carefully about how and where they conduct future operations in Iran. Indeed, few Israelis relish the notion of returning to their bomb shelters for extended stays.

A different sort of Israeli campaign is likely necessary, perhaps in tandem with calibrated efforts to prevent the regime from returning to its previous strength. This additional campaign might be one in which Israel supports the Iranian opposition movement and otherwise weakens the regime from within. Psychological, political, diplomatic, economic, and other measures designed to erode the power of the mullahs would be deployed with increasing intensity. The Israelis understand that the regime must not be allowed respite after the drubbing it absorbed in June. More important, such a strategy is crucial because it offers a more enduring and non-kinetic solution to the Islamic Republic’s annihilationist ambitions. The Campaign Between Wars could never offer that.

What the return of the campaign does offer is time, and time is what Israel needs. The pager and walkie-talkie operation that cut down Hezbollah’s commanders took years to execute. The gathering of the intelligence required to take out Hassan Nasrallah in his Beirut bunker was painstaking. The forward operation that launched Israel’s “Rising Lion” campaign in Iran, too, required years of preparation.

Israel has fewer tricks up its sleeve than it had a year ago. Most of its recent feats cannot be repeated. So Israel’s war planners and spies are back to the drawing board. They will need time to prepare for the next round against Iran, not to mention other enemies.

Concurrently, Israel has a few other related long-term projects that will also require time. The reconstruction of Israel’s northern communities destroyed by Hezbollah is one. The rebuilding of the communities in the Gaza envelope is another. The revitalization of the Israeli economy, which has taken a brutal hit, is crucial. The expansion of the country’s defense industrial base is another priority identified by the Israelis, after the Biden administration withheld ordnance in 2024 and offered a glimpse into a potential future in which America does not have Israel’s back. Forestalling major conflict for several years to facilitate these initiatives will be vital for the country’s long-term health. Of course, these initiatives cannot begin until the current war ends.

As my colleague Clifford May often says, in the Middle East, there are no permanent victories, only permanent battles. The rise, fall, and rise of the Campaign Between the Wars reflect this reality. It won’t solve all of Israel’s problems. But keeping Israel’s enemies weak and buying time would constitute a major achievement after the grueling war Israel has endured.

UN-Backed Famine Watchdog Quietly Changed Standards, Easing Way To Declare Famine in Gaza

The U.N.-affiliated watchdog group that recently declared a "worst-case scenario of famine" in Gaza quietly changed one of its key reporting metrics while doing so, making it easier to formally declare that there is a famine in the Hamas-controlled territory.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC)—a network of Western governments, the United Nations, and nonprofit groups—determined in a July 29 report "the worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip," claiming that "mounting evidence shows that widespread starvation, malnutrition, and disease are driving a rise in hunger-related deaths." Media outlets like the New York Times, NPR, CNN, and ABC News relied on the IPC report to claim that Israeli policies have led to mass starvation, with the Times stating that "months of severe aid restrictions imposed by Israel on the territory" have caused a famine "across most of Gaza."

Unlike previous IPC reports on the humanitarian situation in Gaza, the July report includes a metric—known as mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC)—the agency has not historically used to determine whether a famine is taking place. The report also includes a lowered threshold for the proportion of children who must be considered malnourished for the IPC to declare a famine, down to 15 percent from 30 percent.

Aid workers traditionally conduct detailed weight and height measurements to determine whether a child is suffering from acute malnutrition. MUAC, by contrast, consists only of a child's arm circumference, a measurement that can be done more quickly and is considered less precise. In the past, the IPC has declared famine after finding that 30 percent of children in an area are suffering from acute malnutrition using their weight and height measurements. In the recent Gaza report, the IPC said it would declare famine if it found that 15 percent of children were suffering from acute malnutrition using their arm circumference measurement and if the agency found unspecified "evidence of rapidly worsening underlying drivers."

The "pretty big shift" in standards, one veteran aid industry insider told the Washington Free Beacon, suggests the IPC is "lowering the bar, or trying to make it easier for the famine determination to be made."

Why Is Reuters Carrying Water for Hamas?

When it comes to the war in Gaza, how is it that the legacy media always defers to the narrative that benefits Hamas? A recent Reuters story illuminates the problem.

Last month, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) produced an internal analysis tracking reports of waste, fraud, and abuse of humanitarian aid in Gaza.

According to that report, between October 2023 and May 2025, USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance received 156 notifications of “fraud, waste, and abuse notifications” from its NGO partners in Gaza, amounting to a loss of more than $4.6 million. The key finding was that “for all 156 incidents, partners did not provide any information in their incident reports alleging SG [sanctioned group] or FTO [foreign terrorist organization] involvement,” according to a slideshow of the findings obtained by The Free Press.

But when the analysis was leaked to legacy news organizations, they reported something completely different.

In late July, first Reuters and then CNN reported that the analysis “found no evidence of systematic theft by the Palestinian militant group Hamas.” ABC later reported that USAID “failed to find any evidence” that Hamas “engaged in widespread diversion of assistance.” Those news organizations didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

There is a world of difference between “notifications” of aid misuse and actual misuse.

Two sources familiar with USAID and its analysis confirmed that the partners’ failure to report terrorist involvement does not mean there is “no evidence” of theft by Hamas. “The report appears to be wholly reliant on self-reporting by UN agencies and NGOs who are extremely reticent to report Hamas interference out of fear of violent retribution by Hamas,” a senior U.S. official familiar with the USAID report told The Free Press.

When the Reuters story was published, “nobody at the highest levels of the USAID administration had seen the report,” said a senior official at the State Department, which oversees USAID. “It was deliberately and intentionally manufactured. . . and distributed to plant a deliberate false narrative.”

Worse yet, Hamas used Reuters’ framing to fuel accusations of starvation and genocide against the U.S. and Israel. Allegations of theft “were recently refuted by an internal investigation by the United States Agency for International Development, which confirmed the absence of any reports or data indicating the theft of aid by Hamas,” said Izzat al-Rishq, a founding member of Hamas’s politburo, on August 1. “We strongly condemn U.S. President Trump’s reiteration of Israeli allegations and lies accusing Hamas of stealing and selling humanitarian aid in Gaza.”

My work on secularizing Jewish ethics has been incredibly productive lately, but one concept, "sanctity," has always been a major sticking point.

As I started writing my book on Derechology (for the third time!) I started clarifying exactly what "values" mean and then to create a universal list of values that maps surprisingly well across disparate ethical traditions, including Eastern traditions.

One of the values that religious systems share is that of "sanctity." Like Judaism's fundamental concept of "covenant," "sanctity" as a value would appear to be a challenge to secularize.

But the resistance to accept this concept as a value may be a major reason why secular ethics has failed up to now. It turns out that the Western world has already secularized the concept - but we didn't realize it.

The word "sanctity" is loaded. In a secular context, it’s often dismissed as a purely theological concept, a relic of a pre-scientific worldview. But in Judaism, and possibly in other traditions, sanctity isn’t just about "holiness" in a standalone, abstract sense. It's profoundly about boundaries - the separation between the sacred and the profane, between the pure and the impure, between what is holy and what is ordinary. This act of drawing boundaries helps create a coherent moral structure for the entire system. The Hebrew word normally translated as "holy," "kadosh," means separate in some contexts.

This insight gave me an "aha" moment: the secular world has its own, unnamed version of this same principle.

Let's call it Category Integrity.

Category Integrity is the moral obligation to preserve the separation between essential distinctions. It is the principle that the boundaries of core concepts are not infinitely malleable. They are the invisible scaffolding of a functional society. While our society relies on these boundaries, it has never formally named or defended the principle itself as a core ethical tenet.

Every serious field has the idea of category integrity baked in. Journalism intends to separate reporting from opinion. Medicine distinguishes between licensed doctors and self-proclaimed wellness experts. Society distinguishes between civilian and military, citizens and non-citizens, minors and adults. The idea of changing the distinction between married and unmarried, no matter what your own position on the topic, is really about maintaining that category and its role within the social structure.

By reframing "sanctity" in this way, we can see that this isn't a religious concept at all. It's a functional necessity for any coherent system, from a legal code to the scientific method.

Once you name this principle, its absence becomes glaringly obvious. Many of our modern societal crises are not a result of bad values, but the absence of this one. When journalism blurs into propaganda, when university teachers turn into activists, when medical practitioners refuse to treat some patients based on their religious or political views, when judges turn into lawmakers, when conflict of interest is considered just another valid choice, when animal rights are elevated to the same level as human rights, the very foundations of a moral society get shaken.

Post-enlightenment philosophy acted like religious concepts were allergens, and it kept the idea of sanctity far away from its attempts to create a secular moral system. This blind spot may be one of the reasons for the cracks we are seeing in an increasingly secular society. Sanctity is not a purely religious concept - it is the basis for the idea of treating different categories of everything differently.

Secular ethics has been so focused on situational harm (consequentialism) and individual rights (deontology) that it has completely missed the meta-level harm of structural decay. It has been debating the morality of individual actions while the invisible scaffolding that holds the entire moral picture together has been crumbling.

Judaism and other religious traditions already have this principle baked into their foundations: man/woman, child/adult, believer/non-believer, cleric/non-cleric, married/single, weekday/Sabbath, house of worship/non-sacred space. By translating "sanctity as separation" into "Category Integrity," we not only find a way to secularize a key religious concept, but we also give modern secular ethics a powerful new tool. It allows us to better understand and defend the fundamental distinctions that make a just and functional society possible.

And it gives us a way to diagnose when things start to go wrong.

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How Western Leaders Twist International Law to Invent a Palestinian State (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

As if to illustrate the saying "fools rush in..." Australia announced this week that it will join France, Great Britain, and Canada in recognizing a Palestinian state during the UN General Assembly’s annual session next month:

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia said on Monday that the move was “part of a coordinated global effort building momentum for a two-state solution.”

He said Australia’s recognition would be “predicated” on “detailed and significant” commitments he had received from the Palestinian Authority’s leader, Mahmoud Abbas, to demilitarize, hold general elections and ensure that Hamas plays no role in a future Palestinian state.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese

Like the others, Albanese also claimed that he had the commitment and support of Abbas to make this work, or--in the case of Great Britain's prime minister--an outright ultimatum to Israel:

* Australia's Albanese claims to have commitments from Abbas to demilitarize, hold general elections, and ensure that Hamas plays no role in a future Palestinian state. (As if Abbas has the wherewithal to remove Hamas from the equation in Gaza.)

* Canada's Carney conditions recognition on Palestinian political reform, Hamas’s exclusion from Palestinian elections, and a demilitarized state. (But who is he expecting to guarantee that Hamas has no further role in Gaza--let alone in the West Bank, where Hamas has significant influence?)

* France's Macron promises recognition, with a mere reminder to Abbas of his commitments to reform. (Not surprisingly, Secretary of State Rubio revealed last Friday that “Talks with Hamas fell apart on the day Macron made the unilateral decision that he’s going to recognize the Palestinian state.")

* Great Britain's Starmer frames the recognition of a Palestinian state as an outright threat--against Israel. He claims he will withdraw that recognition if Israel takes “substantive steps” to remedy Gaza’s “appalling situation,” agrees to a cease-fire, and commits to peace. (He demands none of these things of Hamas.)

Recently, international lawyer Natasha Hausdorff critiqued Starmer's decision in an interview with Patrick Christy on GBNews Online. She debunked Starmer's claim that Palestinian Arabs have an "inalienable right" to a state. It is a criticism that applies to Starmer's buddies as well:

You cannot will a state into existence. And it's important to state that Keir Starmer is wrong, absolutely wrong on the international law when he talks about a supposed "inalienable right" of the Palestinians to a state. There is no such thing. If there was a right to statehood under international law, the Kurds would have a state. There'd be many hundreds more states.

In a second interview, Hausdorff addressed two legal problems that are less often discussed. First of all, granting a state to the Palestinian Arabs is, by its very nature, an attack on Israel's sovereignty. Both Gaza and "Yehuda & Shomron" were initially part of the British Mandate. Their conquest by Egypt and Jordan was not accepted as legal by the international community. (Keep in mind that the off-handed way Starmer and others suggest acknowledging a Palestinian state leaves the status of East Jerusalem--and by extension the Kotel--in doubt.)

She adds:

[I]t would also fly completely in the face of the Oslo accords, which the United Kingdom endorsed, as did many other international players. [It] provided very clearly that after certain territory was given to the Palestinian authority to have an autonomy given by Israel, that any change to borders or any change to the status of the territory would only arise from a bilateral negotiated final status settlement. That piece of paper that the UK endorsed is simply being torn up as a result of these proposals for recognition. And it leaves us with a very difficult position where Israel's not going to be in a position to trust any agreement it enters with international backing and international guarantees if it can be so readily thrown out of the window.

Hausdorff is not alone in pointing out how the decision to recognize a Palestinian state violates international law. The British jurist Malcolm Shaw KC points out that the 1933 Montevideo Convention on Rights and Duties of States identifies the four basic requirements for statehood:

o A permanent population.
o  A defined territory.
o  A government.
o  The capacity to enter into relations with other states.

Of these four requirements, the proposed Palestinian state only meets the first requirement. In their rush to recognize a state, world leaders are ignoring the failure of 3 basic conditions necessary for a sovereign state. Shaw notes:

o  “its territorial extent is undetermined”
o  “there is no effective single government authority over the whole of the territory”
o  “the capacity of the [Palestinian Authority] to conduct formal legal relations with other entities, including States, is hampered by the terms of the Oslo Accords, which [are] still binding upon the parties.”

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry put it another way, noting that these leaders are advocating the recognition of “an entity with no agreed borders, no single government in effective control of its territory, and no demonstrated capacity to live in peace with its neighbors.”

One can understand how Great Britain and France cannot help themselves. Not so long ago, they were significant colonial powers that saw the Middle East as their playground. But one would have thought that Canada and Australia, with their history, would understand the folly of playing games with other people's states.

But who knows, maybe this call for recognition is a con?

Maybe these politicians calling for a state actually understand that their calls for a Palestinian state are filled with legal hot air--and are patting themselves on the back on how they are cleverly mollifying their citizens. But in the process, they are encouraging Hamas terrorists and delaying the very resolution of this war they loudly claim to be working for.

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The "occupy Gaza" gambit may be paying off

Last week, I floated the idea that Netanyahu's plan to re-occupy Gaza might have been a Trumpian negotiation ploy to get a better deal from Hamas. The risk/reward ratio did not make sense otherwise, and Netanyahu is no fool. He has never shown the slightest interest in entering Israel in a permanent Vietnam-style quagmire; every decision made since the start of the war was meant for victory, and the world put constraints on (like not allowing refugees to flee or insisting on prioritizing aid in an active war zone, which is unprecedented) which has kept it going for this long. The Hezbollah and Iranian battles are far more his style.

But in true Trump fashion, Bibi called up reserves, announced an immediate plan to occupy Gaza City, and used the world's antipathy to him as a means to make a very risky plan sound like something he would really do even though his history shows that he is a much more cautious player than his rhetoric implies. And he has used that to his advantage in the past, both domestically and internationally.

The stated plan to occupy Gaza opens up the field to allow a worse outcome for Gaza than had been seen as a possibility the week before.

If it was a gambit, it looks like it may be paying off. Times of Israel writes:

Sky News in Arabic reports that Hamas negotiators are being presented with a new Gaza ceasefire proposal put together by Egypt and Qatar, with Turkish help, which would include an end to the war and the release of all hostages.

According to the report, the deal would see all hostages living and dead released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, while Israel would pull its military back “under Arab-American supervision” until an agreement is reached regarding disarming Hamas and its exit from governing Gaza.

During the interim phase, Turkey and other mediators would guarantee that Hamas freeze any military activities, allowing for talks on a permanent end to the war.

The last sentence is the key:

Sky News presents the proposal as designed to “strip any excuse for occupying Gaza from [Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu.”

The Arab world is convinced - against all evidence and logic - that Israel plans to conquer everything from the Nile to the Euphrates. Turkish media and leaders also routinely say that they are in Israel's expansionist crosshairs as well. When Israel says it plans to occupy what they consider Arab land, they believe it.

Netanyahu uses their own antisemitism to Israel's advantage.

It is too early to say how Hamas will respond, but last week all the momentum was on Hamas' side - Western nations recognizing "Palestine" without putting any conditions on this recognition was the biggest political victory possible and it gave Hamas no incentive to make any concessions on hostages or its military control of Gaza.

Bibi's plan changed the calculus completely: it added a downside for Hamas that simply didn't exist before.

And while Hamas might want to tough it out, its sponsors are not as keen on risking "Greater Israel."

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Palestinian leaders consider all journalists to be part of the "resistance." So do the journalists themselves.

Once again, the world is going crazy over Israel assassinating a Hamas member who was also a "journalist."

Beyond the many Hamas terrorists who moonlight in other jobs, there is another dimension to this:

Both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas look at journalism as a means of "resistance." There is no differentiation between journalism and propaganda - in their own words.

The Palestinian Ministry of Information has, in the past, threatened any Arab journalists who meet with Israelis and report on what they say.

They held a conference in 2009 telling journalists what terminology to use:

Israeli term	Palestinian Arab term
(Palestinian) Terror	Resistance
(Palestinian) Terrorist	Resistance member
Suicide (bombing) operations	Martyrdom-seeking operations
Palestinian violence	Legitimate resistance
Palestinian who was killed	Martyr (Shahid)

The Minister of Information said at that conference:

The media, through its various means, has played and continues to play a major role in shaping human awareness and crystallizing the positions of groups, organizations, and individuals on the issues raised for discussion and debate.

In our Arab case, the media constitutes a pivotal dimension in the Arab-Israeli conflict and a strategic goal for winning the round before achieving victory on the ground...The media must recognize this hurtful paradox and work to establish a language befitting our people's fighters and the achievements of our movement.

Earlier this year, a similar conference was held in Istanbul recommending what language journalists should use.

In 2022, Gaza photojournalist Hosam Salem was let go from his New York Times contract after Honest Reporting publicized that he praised terror attacks. He wrote in response that he indeed supports Palestinian "resistance," and so do all other Palestinian journalists.

In 2023, Israel killed an armed Al Aqsa Brigades terrorist, Ahmed Abu Junaid, whose death was celebrated. He was in journalism school at the time.

The UN has trained hundreds of Palestinian journalists, for free. Those journalists often say that they consider their journalism to be a form of "resistance."

The word "journalist" has a different meaning for Palestinians than for Westerners. Which is why you do not see any dissenting voices in Palestinian media.

They are pro-terror propagandists, not journalists.

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