Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, August 28, 2025

How to criticize Israel and not be antisemitic

The Nasser Hospital incident appears to show that the IDF made significant mistakes.

Here is an analysis by military expert Ryan McBeth:

Israel’s Channel 12 has reported that the first strike targeted a man who had been monitoring IDF forces with a camera on the hospital’s fourth floor, a justification repeated by the IDF. Israel’s military also claims to have killed six terrorists in the strike from both Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. None of this, however, absolves the IDF for what happened next.

Video footage showing a second strike that killed emergency workers responding to the initial impact is deeply troubling. Normally, precision strikes are carried out with drones or guided munitions, not by tank shells. Whether this was a legitimate strike, an operational error, a breakdown in communication or something more sinister will need to be determined through a full investigation. There remain significant questions about proportionality and anticipated collateral damage in this strike.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior IDF commanders have already suggested that something went wrong. The IDF has promised to ‘examine several gaps’ in the strike, including who authorised it. Netanyahu was far more emphatic. He said Israel ‘deeply regrets the tragic mishap’ that led to the strike, and promised a ‘thorough investigation’. The IDF owes Israelis, Palestinians and the international community a clear and transparent explanation.

Both military experts do not hold back when they see something problematic. Yet they don't come close to crossing the line into antisemitism.

Today's "anti-Zionists" insist that they are not antisemitic, that they are only criticizing Israel, and that Zionists are conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism for political reasons stop all criticism of Israel. Their claims fall apart when you compare their hysterical accusations against what McBeth and Fox are doing here.

The difference between the approaches is simple.

"Anti-Zionists" start from the assumption that Israel is evil, and their "criticism" is all couched in that assumption, sometimes stated ("Israel is a genocidal apartheid state!") and sometimes implicit (media righteously declaring "We could not independently verify Israel's claims" - but never say that for Gaza sources.)

Legitimate criticism starts from the knowledge that Israel has valid military reasons to destroy Hamas, that it has safeguards and policies to protect innocent civilians, that it is operating in a theatre where the civilians are themselves tactical defensive shields for Hamas, and that in war sometimes there is a breakdown in communication and the chain of command - which is not to excuse it.

Legitimate critics understand that Israelis are humans doing the best they can under nearly impossible and artificially imposed constraints that no army in history has ever had to work under. Antisemites start with the conviction that Jews are malicious to the core, have a secret agenda of Jewish supremacy and cannot be trusted.

Treating Israel as irredeemably evil while bending over backwards to justify Hamas actions (like HRW's changing the definition of "human shields" only for Israel's enemies) is not "legitimate criticism." It is thinly disguised antisemitism.

A newer dynamic is taking place, where the "anti-Zionists" are becoming to emboldened by the lack of pushback and by their adulation from Jew-haters that they are crossing the line into explicit antisemitism.

This attitude gets certified kosher by the Jewish antisemites. Today, Haaretz's Gideon Levy wrote:

Uberkommandant Avi Bluth, the head of the army's Central Command, decided that he'll show them. With his military kippah worn at an angle, blood-curdling eloquence, boundless arrogance and sick double standards of morality, he ordered "redesign operations" to be implemented so that "everyone will be deterred, any village that dares to raise a hand against any of the residents."

He is saying as clearly as possible that religious Jews are Nazis. This in turn gives license for others to do the same.

The new antisemitism is becoming so mainstream that it is difficult for casual readers to notice it when it occurs. But comparing coverage of Israel in much of the media with how these two actual experts criticize Israel show the huge difference between criticism and papered-over hate.

(h/t Scott, YMedad)

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Saudi newspaper: The Israelis in Gaza are just like the Jews who tried to kill Mohammed!

A Saudi Al Madinah columnist M. Talal Al-Qashqari writes:

Is there a similarity between the Jews' attempts in the early days of Islam to kill the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) and their attempts in this era to exterminate Gaza?

I am certain that the answer is “yes.” The evildoers who tried to kill the Prophet are the same evildoers who are trying to exterminate more than two million Muslims from his nation. They share the same ideology, belief, and hatred for Islam, Muslims, and the Prophet of Islam - may the best prayers and most complete peace be upon him.

The Jews tried to kill the Prophet three times. The Jews of Banu Nadir threw a stone at him from above a wall, but Allah saved him. The Jews of Khaybar put poison in his food, but Allah saved him, but the effects of the poison remained in his body until his death. He continued to complain about it. The Jews of Medina put magic in the well of Dharwan, but Allah saved him. Gabriel, peace be upon him, taught him how to break the magic by reciting Surahs Al-Ikhlas, Al-Falaq, and Al-Nas. Allah spoke the truth when He described the Jews as the most hostile of people to those who believe, even more hostile than the polytheists who worship idols and humans instead of Allah.

Today, the Jews of Israel are reproducing the same attempts against Gaza, with astonishing consistency, almost a carbon copy, supported by the hateful Crusader West. From throwing stones at the Prophet, to dropping bombs on the homes and civilian facilities of Gaza, which are crowded with women, children, the elderly, the sick, journalists, and doctors. From poisoning the Prophet's food, to injecting toxins and pollutants into the Palestinians' water, food, and medicine through dubious "humanitarian" institutions. From casting spells on the Prophet to the magic of electronic spying on Palestinians to assassinate them indiscriminately.

There's another similarity that Mr. Al-Qashqari missed: They are all fictional.

The only source for the Banu Nadir story is from Mohammed claiming a divine message warned him and he got up before the stone was to be dropped. There was no stone that he saw - just Allah's warning. Meaning, it was made up.

The bewitching story in the well is not even accepted by many Muslims because it makes Mohammed look like he was subject to magic. But again, the only source is Mohammed talking to an angel.

The Khaybar story might have possibly happened, but if it did, it wasn't "the Jews" - it was one woman. Blaming all Jews for her actions is as classic a bigoted idea as they come.

And the Gaza examples are just as made up.

So, yes, there are some startling parallels here: antisemites in seventh century Medina and 21st century Gaza lie just as easily as each other.

Here is yet another example where a mainstream Arab news source doesn't distinguish between Jews and Israelis, proving that anti-Zionism is antisemitism. But if any "anti-Zionist" wants to dispute that, just publicly denounce this article as antisemitic with your real name. I'll be happy to post about it and give you credit.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

08/27 Links Pt2: ‘Gaza’ As An Ideology; Younes Ali Younes charged over Adass Israel Synagogue Arson; Israeli intelligence assisted Australian Security investigation into Iran

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: ‘Gaza’ As An Ideology

Forget being on the other side from this crew, politically. What is the effect on aspiring Democratic activists? If you are told to ban the Star of David from the Dyke March, you are made to understand that you will not be considered an ally of LGBT unless you first shed any sign of Jewishness.

If your climate-change priestess wears a keffiyeh and demands you menace a Jewish performer, then that’s what you’ll do. If your public-gardening co-op requires a pledge of anti-Zionism before you can water the flowers, well, can’t let the flowers die.

These are actual real-life cases, and as far as the Gaza ideologists are concerned, the sillier the better. The reason your astronomy TA at Columbia instructs you to think of Gaza when you gaze at the night stars is because you’re being trained to think of Gaza before you think.

So is everyone in the Democratic Party orbit really obsessed with Gaza? No. Whether that’s the good news or the bad news depends on the party’s commitment to asserting its own authority and keeping its own gates. If the progressive activist wing of the party succeeds in making “Gaza” a blood oath to get in the door, then it doesn’t matter if the individual members are passionate about it. They might be passionate about climate change or paid family leave, but if they can’t join those clubs without professing loyalty to Gaza, then Gaza becomes the most important issue by default.

This is also the reason behind one of the pro-Israel world’s great frustrations. Every few years, Hamas starts a new war. And each time, there is a whole new cast of useful idiots in the West that appear to have been born yesterday. Somehow, both traditional media and social media are filled with Hamas windup toys. I don’t mean the bots—I mean the people who might as well be bots. The talking points are the same; the mindless receptacles are different.

Where is this lemming farm? How is it that the enemies of the West always appear to be buying in bulk?

The answer has something to do with the DNC’s gatekeeping problem. Those who feel strongly about Gaza don’t want everyone else to care about Gaza nearly as much. They just want everyone to be required to say they care. They want pliancy, not passion. That’s how their numbers balloon. And it’s up to people like Ken Martin to stop the anti-Zionist inflation over which he is currently presiding.

The DNC Passed a Resolution Calling for ‘Unrestricted’ Aid to Gaza and a Two-State Solution. The Party’s Chairman Pulled It After Anti-Israel Dems Complained That It Didn’t Go Far Enough.

A Democratic National Committee meeting on Tuesday devolved into an anti-Israel slugfest, leading its chairman, Ken Martin, to pull a resolution many party members believed was not harsh enough on the Jewish state. Instead, Martin invited the anti-Israel members to join a committee to reevaluate the party’s position on Israel.

The Martin-backed resolution, which the DNC initially approved, called for "unrestricted" aid to Gaza and a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, language that moderate Democrats have long used. An alternate resolution championed by the party’s anti-Israel wing went significantly further, calling for a full-scale arms embargo on Israel, the suspension of American military aid, and recognition of "Palestine as a country."

DNC members initially adopted the more moderate version in an uncounted voice vote, but Martin ultimately pulled both from consideration after the party’s anti-Israel members revolted. Semafor reporter Dave Weigel captured Martin during a private discussion "with the alternative Gaza resolution sponsors" before he canceled the vote.

"There’s a divide in our party on this issue," Politico quoted Martin as having said. "This is a moment that calls for shared dialogue, calls for shared advocacy."

After abandoning his own moderate proposal, Martin pledged to assemble a DNC committee "comprised of stakeholders on all sides of this" that will "continue to have the conversation, to work through this, and bring solutions back to our party."

The tumult during the meeting reflects the Democratic Party’s growing divide on Israel in the nearly two years since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attacks against the Jewish state. The terrorist organization's massacres ignited a flurry of violent protests, primarily involving the party’s progressive base. Anti-Israel Democrats formed an "uncommitted" delegation during the 2024 election, protesting the party’s convention over its failure to grant a speaking slot to a Georgia state representative with a history of pro-Hamas rhetoric.

Allison Minnerly, the 26-year-old DNC member who spearheaded the arms embargo resolution, told the Nation in an interview published Tuesday that her efforts represent the will of the Democratic Party.

08/27 Links Pt1: The U.N.’s long war against Israel; How the UN Engaged in Data Fraud to Undermine U.S. Humanitarian Aid; When hospitals become battlefields

From Ian:

Clifford D. May: The U.N.’s long war against Israel

Given this history, I thought the U.N.’s demonization of Israel had gone as far as it could go.

I was wrong.

Last week, the U.N.-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) released a “report” declaring “with reasonable evidence” that famine now exists in parts of Gaza. It goes without saying – actually it’s being incessantly repeated – that Israelis are to blame.

To make these claims, the IPC manipulated its methodology, adjusted its criteria, and reinterpreted the legal definition of genocide utilizing dubious data from the Gaza Health Ministry – i.e., Hamas – and discarding data provided by Israel.

What’s more, one of the authors of the report, Andrew Seal, had already begun accusing Israel of genocide on the second day of the October 2023 counterattacks against Hamas.

No one denies that, amid a war that has dragged on for almost two years, Gazans are suffering terrible hardships, including food insecurity and, in some cases, malnutrition.

But the incontrovertible facts are these: Hamas started this war and refuses to end it; Hamas takes no responsibility for the people it has ruled and is determined to continue to rule; Hamas refuses to release hostages abducted from Israel and whom it is torturing – even though doing so would almost certainly lead to a ceasefire.

One more fact: Since May, more than 10,000 aid trucks have entered Gaza, with eight out of ten bringing food. This has resulted in wider availability of essential foods at reduced prices in Gaza markets.

The U.N. is making distribution of this aid more difficult by demanding that UNRWA be in charge despite UNRWA letting Hamas take a cut both to feed its leaders in the tunnels and resell for cash to pay its troops on the streets above.

The UN adamantly refuses to work with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an American/Israeli project delivering free food directly to Gazans with Hamas excluded.

Much of the media have been helping weaponize public opinion against Israel. Olivia Reingold and Tanya Lukyanova revealed in The Free Press this month that even before the IPC designation, at least a dozen “viral images of starvation” published by The New York Times, NPR, CNN, and other major news outlets were in fact photos of children with “significant health problems” such as cerebral palsy – not famine victims.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee observed on X: “Hostages ARE starving, Hamas is getting fat, & the UN declares famine while 92% of THEIR food is stolen to be sold by Hamas. Meanwhile UN food sits rotting in sun. The UN should declare itself corrupt & incompetent.”

Which raises a question: Why are American taxpayers still spending roughly $13 billion a year on the most globalist of institutions which for half a century has been waging a disinformation war – including bogus charges of racism, apartheid, genocide, and intentional starvation – against the only democracy in the Middle East which also is America’s most reliable ally in the world?

Memo to President Trump: Thank you for your attention to this matter!

Author of UN-Backed Gaza Famine Report Peddled Anti-Semitic Tropes, Conspiracy Theories, and Terrorist Apologia

An author of a U.N.-backed report that accused Israel of creating "famine" in Gaza is a longtime anti-Israel radical who has defended Hamas, claimed Jewish politicians have a "conflict of interest" on Middle Eastern issues, and supported boycotts targeting the Jewish state.

Andrew Seal, who serves on the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) famine review committee and helped write the IPC’s highly publicized report published earlier this month, has a history of incendiary rhetoric that includes comparing Israel to Nazi Germany and accusing the Jewish state of having killed its own people on Oct. 7, 2023.

The report, which declared the situation in Gaza a "famine" and called for an immediate Israeli "ceasefire," said the "time for debate and hesitation has passed, starvation is present and is rapidly spreading."

Numerous mainstream media outlets picked up the IPC’s claims without disclosing Seal’s history of attacking Israel and defending Hamas terrorists or noting the possibility that his beliefs could have influenced the IPC report. Newspapers and networks like the New York Times, NPR, CNN, and ABC News relied on the IPC report to claim 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."

Just one month after the Oct. 7 massacres, Seal defended a statement from Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad in which the terrorist promised to repeat the attacks "again and again." Seal said he believed Hamad’s comments were reasonable because Israel was "currently committing genocide."

"You can’t ignore the fact that one side is currently committing genocide and the other isn’t," Seal wrote. "And, do you realistically expect a political leader of occupied & oppressed people to say they will stop fighting in absence of an alternative? Let’s be real."

In another post on X, Seal claimed there was "no evidence" Hamas committed sexual violence against Israeli women, describing footage of the Oct. 7 attacks as "propaganda."

Andrew Fox: When hospitals become battlefields

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior IDF commanders have already suggested that something went wrong. The IDF has promised to ‘examine several gaps’ in the strike, including who authorised it. Netanyahu was far more emphatic. He said Israel ‘deeply regrets the tragic mishap’ that led to the strike, and promised a ‘thorough investigation’. The IDF owes Israelis, Palestinians and the international community a clear and transparent explanation.

What happened at the Nasser Hospital encapsulates the tragic reality of the Gaza war. It also highlights the sadistic logic used by Hamas to protract the war at all costs. It has embedded fighters, weapons and command centres in hospitals, schools and mosques. In doing so, it gains a cruel advantage: if Israel refrains from striking, Hamas benefits militarily. But if Israel does strike, Hamas benefits politically, as images of civilian casualties dominate headlines worldwide. Israel, meanwhile, is forced to make decisions in an environment where the normal distinctions between civilian and military sites can be impossible to discern. In such circumstances, mistakes are inevitable. Yet each one becomes a source of global outrage, with Israel pinned as the callous perpetrator of an alleged war crime, long before the facts are established.

The Nasser Hospital strike is, in many ways, a distillation of the insoluble moral and strategic problems of the war in Gaza. It shows how boundaries between civilian and combatant are deliberately erased, how international law is abused for the benefit of terrorists, and how Israel is condemned for fighting an enemy that hides behind the sick and wounded.

The world should demand answers about Monday’s strike – but it should also demand accountability from those who have deliberately turned hospitals into battlefields. Of course, that would mean admitting that this war is far more complex than the standard narrative allows.

When hospitals become battlefields: The strain on Israeli soldiers

International law does not demand perfect outcomes in war. It demands distinction, proportionality and feasible precautions. The Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions (Art. 57) states that attackers must take “all feasible precautions” to avoid civilian harm—but feasible means “that which is practicable or practically possible, taking into account all circumstances ruling at the time.” Scholars like Yoram Dinstein emphasize that commanders are not required to sacrifice their soldiers’ lives for marginal reductions in collateral damage.

Comparable practices exist elsewhere: “U.S. Joint Publication 3-60” on targeting notes that collateral damage estimation must always be balanced against “force protection and mission accomplishment.” NATO’s doctrine on urban operations similarly acknowledges that standoff firepower may be necessary in asymmetric conflicts where insurgents exploit civilian structures.

Here, the target was a legitimate military objective; at least seven of the dead were confirmed combatants, including participants in Oct. 7; and feasible alternatives that posed less risk to civilians would have required unacceptable risks to IDF soldiers.

No ethical system requires troops to walk into the jaws of a tunnel war to shave down collateral damage that the enemy itself engineered. When Hamas embeds cameras, launchers and fighters in and around medical centers, it is Hamas that erases the line between combatant and civilian.

The tragedy at Nasser Hospital was not born of reckless IDF firepower but of Hamas’s calculated tactic of using civilian cover to wage war. The IDF is left balancing the impossible: protect its soldiers, fulfill its ethical code and fight an enemy that thrives on turning hospitals and homes into battlefields.

Seven of the dead were not innocents. They were armed actors in a brutal conflict, some with blood from Oct. 7 already on their hands. That does not erase the grief of the other lives lost, though it does shift the moral calculus.

The hard truth of Khan Yunis is this: There is no surgical way to fight an enemy that tunnels beneath your feet and hides behind patients’ walls. The burden on IDF soldiers is immense, and the responsibility for civilian casualties rests first and foremost with those who made hospitals into fortresses.

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

Last week I addressed the accusation of “famine” in Gaza in a letter (HERE) signed by more than 80 Open Orthodox rabbis. This week, I want to look at the second charge in that same letter: so-called “settler violence.”

To hear the rabbis tell it, extremist settlers are raining down bloody hell on “Palestinians.” But that is exactly false. Which suggests that the signatories have not at all done their due diligence before affixing their names to what stands as a very public condemnation of Israel at a time of extreme peril for the Jewish people.

If they had done the bare minimum research before signing their John Hancocks to that statement accusing Israel of not doing enough to combat “settler violence,” they would have discovered that only four months earlier, in April 2025, Israeli NGO Regavim had released a detailed report on this very subject, “False Flags and Real Agendas, The Making of a Modern Blood Libel: The ‘Settler Violence’ Narrative as a Weapon in the Battle to Delegitimize the Jewish Presence in Judea and Samaria and the State of Israel”

Regavim, which monitors land use and policy in Judea and Samaria, examined the UN database that is perpetually cited as proof of “settler violence.” What they found was that the numbers collapse under scrutiny, reduced to dust.

“The UN incident list we obtained distinguishes between 2,047 incidents of violence against Israelis and 6,285 incidents defined as violence against Palestinians… once one delves into the list of incidents, the clear conclusion is that the vast majority do not describe violence related to settlers, and certainly do not describe violence initiated by settlers against Palestinians. Among the 6,285 incidents… 1,361 were simply Jewish ascents to the Temple Mount, every one counted as ‘settler violence.’ Another 1,613 were general complaints, such as ‘entry onto land’ during tours or hikes, which do not involve assault or harm. Ninety-six involved legal infrastructure projects carried out by the State of Israel.”

This is the extent of the UN’s “evidence” of settler violence. Temple Mount visits. Land surveys. Legal infrastructure. In other words: ordinary life contorted into charges of violence. And when those distortions are stripped away, we are left with a big pile of nothing.

“After subtracting these cases, only 833 incidents remain, which the UN classified as settler violence against Palestinians in the Judea and Samaria, allegedly resulting in bodily harm and in some cases also property damage. This constitutes only ten percent of the original list, which sought to reflect alarming levels of severe violence by settlers against Palestinians in the Judea and Samaria. Not only did this review cut 90% of the events, undermining the foundation of the UN’s arguments and their consequences, but the remaining cases suffer not only from lack of credibility but also from a disgusting level of false accusation against the real victims.”

Ten percent. That’s all that survived the first cut. Yet these reports, too, are riddled with distortions. Almost half of the reported cases were clashes with both sides involved. Of the rest, some cases of "settler violence" were attributed to Israeli security forces, while others were Arab terror attacks against Jews—recast as ‘settler violence.' Blood libels dressed up as data.

As Regavim concludes:

“…examination of these cases revealed that in many of them, it is not settler violence of one kind or another, but rather the opposite: these are terror attacks by Arabs against settlers that ended with the injury or elimination of the attacker.”

Had the rabbis taken five minutes to investigate, they would have found this information—current, comprehensive, and devastating to their claim. Instead, they affixed their names to a letter built on entries in a database programmed to tell lies. Even the name of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik is invoked, as if to give the letter's distortions a veneer of authority. But the Rav, as he is known to those who revere him, would never have put his name on something so harmful to the Jewish people.

Which brings us to the names of the rabbis, themselves.

As my friend Julie P. on seeing the list of names helpfully pointed out, "Not one is Sephardi or Mizrachi."

Look down the list of 80 signatories. It’s tragic really. You’ll see Schudrich, Greenberg, Yanklowitz, Dolinger, Chernick, Feigelson, Schlesinger—names that could have come straight from an early, 20th century Lower East Side synagogue membership roster.

With one half-exception—a single hyphenated surname suggesting a mixed background—the entire coalition is Ashkenazi.

And this is telling. Sephardim, even those who are not religious in practice, are deeply respectful of rabbinic authority and tradition. Watching how they comport themselves in the presence of a sage is instructive. I have seen secular Sephardi women cover their arms and heads with a shawl when a rabbi entered the room. Nobody asked them to. They simply revere the rabbis who have guided their people according to the same traditions for generations. Perhaps it is that steadfastness that inoculates Sephardim against the hubris of lecturing Israel on “moral clarity” while parroting Hamas propaganda without looking deeper at the actual facts.

List of signatories
Rabbi Yosef Blau

Rabbi David Bigman

Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich

Chief Rabbi Michael Melchior

Chief Rabbi Jair Melchior

Rabbi Joav Melchior

Chief Rabbi David Rosen (former CR)

Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz

Rabbi Dr. Yitz Greenberg

Rabbi Hyim Shafner

Rabbi Daniel Landes

Rabbi Herzl Hefter

Rabbi Shua Mermelstein

Rabbi Yoni Zolty

Rabbanit Mindy Schwartz Zolty

Rabbi Frederick L Klein

Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky

Rabbi Michael Whitman

Rabbi Dr. Jeremiah Unterman

Rabbi Barry Dolinger

Rabbi David Silber

Rabbi Yonatan Neril

Rabbi Ysoscher Katz

Rabbi Isaac Landes

Rabbi David Polsky

Rabbi Baruch Plotkin

Rabbi Mikey Stein

Rabbi Elliot Kaplowitz

Rabbi Ariel Goldberg

Rabbi Ben Birkeland

Rabbi Ralph Genende

Rabbi David Glicksman

Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman

Rabbi Dr. Martin Lockshin

Rabbi Dr. Pinchas Giller

Rabbi Avidan Freedman

Rabbi Daniel Raphael Silverstein

Rabbi Dr. Shalom Schlagman

Rabbi Dr. Daniel Ross Goodman

Rabbi Aaron Levy

Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller

Rabbi Dr. Mel Gottlieb

Rabbi Dr. Joshua Feigelson

Rabbi Jonah Winer

Rabbi Dr. Michael Chernick

Rabbi Dr. Eugene Korn

Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger

Rabbi Elhanan Miller

Rabbi Joel Hecker

Rabbi Michael Gordan

R. Sofia Freudenstein

Rabbi David Levin-Kruss

Rabbanit Myriam Ackermann-Sommer

Rabba Ramie Smith

R. Shayna Abramson

Rabbi Zachary Truboff

Rabbi David A. Schwartz

Rabbi David Jaffe

Rabbi Steve Greenberg

Rabbi Gabriel Kretzmer Seed

Rabbanit Rachel Keren

Rabbi Benyamin Vineburg

Rabba Dr. Lindsey Taylor-Guthartz

Rabbanit Leah Sarna

Rabbi Dr. Wendy Zierler

Rabbanit Sarah Segal-Katz

Rabbi Shimon Brand

Rabba Melissa Scholten-Gutierrez

R. Emily Goldberg Winer

R. Dr. Erin Leib Smokler

Rabba Adina Roth

R. Dr. Meesh Hammer-Kossoy

Rabbi Drew Kaplan

Rabbi Dina Najman

Rabbi Emile Ackermann

Rabbi Daniel Geretz

Rabbanit Sarah Segal-Katz

Rabbanit Tali Schaum Broder

Rabbi Max Davis

Rabbi Tyson Herberger

Rabba Aliza Libman Baronofsky

At first, I wondered whether one surname on the list—Neril—might break the pattern. I had never heard that one before and thought perhaps it was Sephardi. But no. Rabbi Yonatan Neril is Ashkenazi, and best known for founding the Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development, an organization that promotes environmental action across faith communities. His presence on the list highlights the broader orientation of many of the signatories toward progressive and ecumenical causes, rather than toward Israel’s defense in its hour of need.

The rabbis who signed this letter of betrayal may have meant no harm to their own, but intentions matter little here; the effect is the same. That letter was like piling logs onto a raging fire—then dousing it with gasoline.

History will not remember the rabbis' statement kindly. At best, the signatories will be judged naïve or misguided. Sad, but with tragic consequences for the Jewish people and in particular for Israel’s hostages and soldiers. The rabbis' missive jeopardizes Israel’s ability to free the hostages by emboldening the enemy, who now see that even Jewish clergy can be turned into weapons against the Jewish state.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

I came across this sentence fragment on an entertainment site: "Formerly respected and now woefully disgraced author J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" books are not only getting a peculiar new HBO series..."

Rowling's crime? Have a nuanced view of transsexuals, and correctly noting that in some circumstances they infringe on the hard-won rights of women. She has never denied the humanity of trans people, nor has she advocated hatred. Her arguments have been calm, reasoned, and grounded in the language of women’s rights.

She has said or done nothing offensive. But the "progressive" community have declared her a transphobe, and the media is too lazy to deal with the nuance and merit of her position.

The only thing that makes her "disgraced" is that certain people declared her to be, and the repetition of the lie at one point in time became the accepted truth, a shorthand associated with her that is extremely difficult to break.

Sound familiar?

Israel acts morally against enemies that take advantage of that exact morality. It does more to minimize civilian casualties than any state in the history of war, yet it is vilified while the Islamist enemy, which has done more that any military force in history to put its own civilians in danger, escapes such scrutiny. Israel is labeled "genocidal" and "using starvation as a weapon of war," when all one needs to do is to read for five minutes to see that none of this is true.

But in the case of both Israel and Rowling, at one point something happens: the lies overtake the narrative.

Once a false framing takes hold, the burden of proof flips. The accused can no longer defend themselves against charges that were never true to begin with. Worse, even neutral or sympathetic observers unconsciously adopt the language, because the shorthand becomes journalistic muscle memory.

This is narrative capture: when repetition, not reality, determines reputation. It is a form of cancellation not through argument, but through branding and the Big Lie. And once it sets in, it requires extraordinary courage - and constant, conscious pushback - to undo.

Rowling and Israel remind us that reputations can be reshaped less by what one does than by how one is described. In a healthy culture, labels are earned through evidence. In a captured culture, labels are imposed by narrative convenience. The result is a distortion of public perception. In the case of a nation like Israel, it is a distortion with deadly consequences, not only for Israel but for Jews worldwide.

In a healthy world, fact checking and skepticism would be taught as normal high school subjects. Anyone can be manipulated but people can learn to resist it and think for themselves, rather than outsource their opinions to journalists or protesters.

Until we recognize and resist this mechanism, more individuals and more nations will find themselves condemned not for what they do, but for how they are framed.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

How bad are "ethnic studies" textbooks? Really, really bad.

Recently, the San Francisco Unified School District voted to use the 'Voices' ethnic studies curriculum.

I saw some pages from the textbook. Here's one:

The number of things wrong with this page takes up more text than the page itself.

It positions historical US style racism against Blacks as unique, while ignoring how there was also discrimination against other European groups (Slavics, Ashkenaz Jews) and there are was also major discrimination in other cultures (i.e., the caste system.) The analysis would change significantly if US style discrimination against Blacks was placed into context of all such bigotry,

The use of a Nazi-era image of racism in a page on American racism subtly equates the two, comparing US racism today to to that of Nazis in the 1930s. Students would view this as moral equivalence, which is grotesque.

The Toni Morrison quote is presented as fact and used twice, forms the moral anchor of the page. Yet it is contradicted on the page itself - the next paragraph refers to Irish Americans, Italian Americans and Jewish Americans.

Portraying those groups assimilation as them being "absorbed into the expanding category of being called White” implies some sort of colonialist mentality by the majority culture - another rhetorical weapon against the normative desire by the immigrants to become part of their new nation in order to succeed.

The very concept of "Whitening" is a racial interpretation of normal assimilation into American culture, something that both the immigrants and the larger society largely wanted to occur. A racist society would resist, not encourage, the "other" to become part of the majority.

Moreover, the groups who did successfully assimilate are positioned as a kind of traitors, choosing to become racist "whites" when they just wanted to succeed, as most normal people want. (Of course, the essay is against normativity as well.)

The page is meant to define "Whiteness," but it changes the meaning throughout. Is it a racial descriptor, or an implied power structure, or a norm-enforcing ideology? The last sentence of the first paragraph would allow many of today's' Black people to be defined as "white." The word becomes a pejorative when it can mean nothing more than becoming an integral part of American society. Or perhaps the message being given is that there is something wrong with being a proud American.

The "whiteness as racelessness" theme is also muddled. White supremacists clearly do not consider themselves raceless - they are proud of their so-called "white heritage." This page positions whiteness as damned if you do, damned if you don't - by any definition, being white is racist.

The idea that whiteness is implicitly "normal" and other groups are then inferior is contradicted by the Jewish experience, where Jews are positioned as dominant and scheming - as too smart and too particular. As is often the case, the Jewish example proves the ideology's basic tenets are wrong.

This is astonishingly bad for a textbook that is meant to give children a moral framework. The cure is worse than the illness.

The publisher of "Voices" says it is "committed to making an ethical difference in the world of public education." I guess that is true. It is making public education significantly less ethical.

This page itself is all the proof you need that ethnic studies, as taught today, is not just wrong but is itself immoral.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Gabriel Epstein has gone deep into the weeds of the Gaza aid delivery debacle, and discovered something interesting.

While virtually all of the World Food Programme food aid has been stolen since July 1, UNICEF aid has been far more successful at reaching its destinations safely.

The apparent reason is that UNICEF hires private security to transport and guard its shipments.

The Al-Aqsa Transport, Security and Guarding Company announced on August 4 that it was securing UNICEF convoys in Gaza, and even posted a promotional video (you can see the UNICEF logo at 0:54):

This chart Epstein created shows the percentage of aid that made it through by NGO in August.

UNICEF collected only 6% of the aid collected at Gaza borders - yet it successfully delivered 61% of the aid that arrived to the intended destinations.

There are other private security organizations in Gaza as well as clans willing to secure aid shipments as well as commercial vehicles. Capitalism is the most efficient way to get things to work, but apparently that goes against WFP principles, so they let Hamas grab the food instead - to resell.

Think about it: if WFP would spend 20% of the money they get on security, they would deliver maybe 90% of the food instead of zero. Hundreds of thousands of people fed. No possible famine. Seems like a pretty easy calculation, doesn't it?

The UNICEF experience also shows the lie of the Gaza NGOs that claim that the Gazza Humanitarian Foundation is illegitimate and immoral because it "militarizes" aid. Look at the video again, or the video from the Al Mughasib clan securing UNICEF and other aid. Looks militarized to me!

A cynic would say that WFP has more of an interest in painting Israel as intentionally starving Gazans and in projecting famine-like conditions in Gaza than in feeding Gazans.

It gets harder every day not to be cynical.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

If you want to know what things are going to be link in the US in a few years, look at Europep now.

From a new report by B'nai Brith International, the European Union of Jewish Students and democ on antisemitism in European universities:

Threats and physical violence directed towards individual Jewish students or staff

In a general environment of normalized anti-Israel rhetoric and amid a growing number of antisemitic incidents, attacks targeting individual Jewish students have been among the most worrying.

At the Faculty of Health at Toulouse-III-Paul-Sabatier University in France, the words “Sale juive crève” (“Dirty Jewess die”) accompanied by a swastika were found on a student’s personal belongings.

A Jewish German-Israeli student was beaten by a fellow student of the Free University of Berlin (FU Berlin). He was hospitalized with facial fractures.

The co-president of the Union of Jewish Students of Belgium (UEJB), was physically assaulted near the campus building occupied by pro-Palestinian protesters, while retrieving his car. As a passer-by tried to intervene, the assailant claimed the attack was necessary because the UEJB president was Jewish.

Also in Belgium, at the College of Europe in Bruges, a Jewish student’s dorm room was vandalized with antisemitic graffiti and swastikas.

On the campus of the University of Strasbourg, three Jewish students were verbally threatened, then hit and knocked to the ground by six people shouting “Zionist fascists”. These Jewish students, who are active members of the Union of Jewish Students of France (UEJF), were putting up posters calling for the release of Hamas hostages and bearing the words “No to antisemitism”.
The Jewish Chaplain at the University of Leeds faced a targeted campaign of threats, including messages such as: “Find him and bring him to me [knife emoji]”, “Why are people not hunting him down and 3xecuting him? [sic]” and “Bros know what to do when they see this nazi Neutralise!”. As a result of numerous death threats and security concerns, police put extensive security measures in place and advised the chaplaincy family to temporarily move out of Leeds.

That's just the beginning. The report documents how supposedly "anti-Zionist" student protests had explicit calls to violence, explicit solidarity with Hamas and its attacks on campus, calling for the destruction of Israel, treating terrorists as heroes and Holocaust inversion.

What is clear is that the pretense of a difference between antisemitism and "anti-Zionism" is disappearing. But instead of antisemitism shaming the anti-Zionists, they are starting to embrace it and normalize it.

Which should worry everybody.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

08/26 Links Pt2: Iranian Ambassador expelled; Tehran Was Behind Anti-Semitic Attacks in Sydney and Melbourne; Yes, the whole world is wrong about Israel

From Ian:

Jonathan Tobin: Yes, the whole world is wrong about Israel

We’ve been here before, observing other examples of when journalistic groupthink in the mainstream media creates false narratives.

In September 2000, at the start of the Second Intifada—the Palestinian Arab terrorist war of attrition that answered Israeli and American offers of statehood—another atrocity story became emblematic of how false reporting can influence world opinion. The television channel France 2 broadcast edited footage claiming to show that a 12-year-old boy, Mohammed al-Durrah, was shot dead by Israeli forces while clinging to his father. The claim set off a global tsunami of anti-Israel and antisemitic demonstrations, as well as providing an alleged justification for more acts of murderous Palestinian terrorism.

Yet, as subsequent investigations showed and documented in Richard Landes’ 2022 book, Can The Whole World Be Wrong?, the incident was staged by the Palestinians in a classic “Pallywood” information operation that made it clear the allegation was a hoax. Nevertheless, the mainstream media acted as stenographers for Israel’s foes in much the same way they now do for Hamas’s claims about civilian casualty statistics, starvation and other supposed Israeli misconduct.

Nor is this mentality limited to anti-Israel media bias. Journalistic groupthink, motivated by partisanship or ideology, can have the same impact on other issues.

It happened when some of these same outlets that now defame Israel about Gaza were insisting in 2017 and 2018 that there was credible evidence that President Donald Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election, though the American public now knows that the charge was a lie debunked by the FBI even before the smear was made public. No one at the Times or The Washington Post has subsequently given back the Pulitzer Prizes they got for those misleading, if not downright erroneous, stories. But in the first years of Trump’s first term, even those who were inclined to support him figured there had to be some truth to the claims if so many journalists all agreed they were true.

The current campaign of disinformation is just as dishonest. But when you consider that its impact is to empower antisemites on both the left and the far right, and to create an atmosphere in which Jews are increasingly at risk, the consequences are not merely an unfairly hobbled administration but a wave of violent Jew-hatred.

Battling untruths is difficult for those who are engaged in the business of public discourse and journalism. How much more challenging is it for ordinary people and college students to stand up against the tide of invective and to defend the justice of a war to eradicate the terrorists for the sake of both Israelis and Palestinians?

It may take more courage than many individuals possess to correctly identify the corporate media’s conventional wisdom about Israel as blood libels that have led to the mainstreaming of antisemitism. Nevertheless, we must remind ourselves and others that just because what seems like the whole world is ready to buy into a lie, that doesn’t make falsehoods true. And just because questioning conventional wisdom that emanates from Hamas propaganda is being labeled as no different from “Holocaust denial” by journalists who pose as truth-tellers, that shouldn’t deter us from pointing out that their narratives are at odds with facts about the war in Gaza.

Though you wouldn’t know it if all you read is the Times and similar outlets, the world is lying about Israel—and those who defend it are not.

Seth Mandel: Iranian Terror in Australia Clarifies the Stakes

Late last night (in DC time, anyway), Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called a rather remarkable press conference. Australia’s domestic intelligence agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, had been digging into a spate of anti-Semitic attacks since Oct. 7, 2023. Albanese announced that the agency “has gathered enough credible intelligence to reach a deeply disturbing conclusion—that the Iranian Government directed at least two of these attacks,” including one on a synagogue in Melbourne.

Albanese continued:

“ASIO assesses it is likely Iran directed further attacks as well. These were extraordinary and dangerous acts of aggression orchestrated by a foreign nation on Australian soil. … A short time ago we informed the Iranian Ambassador to Australia that he would be expelled. We have suspended operations at our embassy in Tehran, and all our diplomats are now safe in a third country. I can also announce the Government will legislate to list Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC, as a terrorist organization.”

It is no secret that Albanese has received much deserved scorn lately for his handling of Australia’s relations with Israel and its role in the current conflict. The premier at first signaled that he would proceed with caution on the matter of whether to recognize a Palestinian state. But he threw that caution to the wind once all his friends started joining that particular club.

The pleas of Australia’s Jews fell on deaf ears. Albanese seemed suddenly unconcerned with anti-Semitism and the government’s responsibility to confront it. Upon Israel’s objections to this indifference, Albanese’s government got prickly. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced Albanese as weak-willed, and Albanese’s home affairs minister shot back that Israel measures strength “by how many people you can blow up.”

The row left Australia’s Jewish community even more on-edge. Yet it clearly left the government looking for a way to prove itself tougher in the face of terror and foreign manipulation. The discovery of Iran’s directing attacks on the Australian homeland was just such a chance. And Albanese didn’t fumble it.

Indeed, moving to outlaw the IRGC is a substantial-enough response. One can argue that it should have already been done, but here we are. As for the diplomatic penalties levied on the Islamic Republic, Foreign Minister Penny Wong, who joined Albanese at the presser, explained that this was “the first time in the post-war period that Australia has expelled an ambassador.”

Might, dare one hope, this stiffened Australian spine influence other Western leaders the way those leaders’ weakness influenced Australia? At the risk of courting disappointment, it’s worth considering what France in particular can learn from this series of events.
Iran is waging a war on the West - Australian antisemitism is the latest front On July 31, the US, UK, Albania, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden issued a joint statement condemning growing attempts by Iranian intelligence services to kill, kidnap, and harass journalists, dissidents, Jewish citizens, and current and former officials.

The US Justice Department alleged in November that IRGC asset Farhad Shakeri had used the criminal associations he developed in prison to plan the murder of US President Donald Trump and Iranian-American human rights activist Masih Alinejad.

Shakeri was also tasked by the IRGC with the surveillance and murder of two Jewish businesspeople and was asked to plan a mass shooting attack on Israeli tourists in Sri Lanka.

Brooklyn resident Carlisle Rivera and Staten Island resident Jonathon Loadholt were contracted by Shakeri to stalk and murder Alinejad.

Iran has repeatedly targeted Alinejad, including an alleged 2022 attempt in which an Eastern European crime syndicate was contracted to murder her.

The US Justice Department said in March that Georgian citizen Polad Omarov and Iranian citizen Rafat Amirov were paid $500,000 for the assassination and that they subcontracted fellow criminal organization member Khalid Mehdiyev to commit the deed. Mehdiyev was arrested before the attack due to a traffic violation.

Last May, the Swedish Security Service alleged that the Islamic Republic had been using criminal networks in the country to target its enemies. This included dissidents from the Iranian diaspora, Israelis, and Jews.

“Iran has earlier carried out acts of violence in other European countries to silence criticism and what it regards as threats to its regime,” it said in a statement.

“In order to carry out these security-threatening activities, the Iranian regime has sometimes made use of criminal networks,” it added.

One such incident in Europe may have been the attempted assassination of Spanish Vox party founder Alejo Vidal-Quadras Roca in November 2023, Reuters reported.

Eight people were charged in July for trying to kill Vidal-Quadras. Unknown individuals committed the assault on behalf of a criminal organization seeking revenge for the politician’s support of Iranian opposition groups.

Further, the UK Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament warned in July that Iran had made 15 attempts to kill or abduct Jewish citizens and residents in the country since 2022.

In a threat assessment given by the Counter Terrorism Operations Centre in London in October 2024, MI5 Director-General Ken McCallum said that the Islamic Republic was making extensive use of criminals, “from international drug traffickers to low-level crooks,” to target British citizens and residents. McCallum said security forces had foiled 20 Iranian-backed plots.

Case in point, in May, five men were arrested by London’s Metropolitan Police on suspicion of planning a terrorist attack. Four of them were Iranian nationals. Three more Iranian citizens were arrested in a counterterrorism operation the day after. The Telegraph reported that a plot had been set against the Israeli embassy in the UK.

Iran has been using criminal elements as proxies and directing attacks in other countries for years, with Australia becoming only the latest example of this.

ASIO said that it was likely that other attacks were conducted at Iran’s behest, hinting that it remains to be seen how many of the country’s antisemitic attacks were at the Islamic Regime’s orders.

The rise in antisemitic incidents across the world raises the question of how many other countries may have been victims of Iranian-backed plots.

Whether the West wishes to recognize this or not, Iran is already at war with it, using its criminal proxies to strike within sovereign borders and then cover itself in thinly veiled deniability.

08/26 Links Pt1: We are not being told the truth about Gaza; Six killed in Nasser Hospital were terrorists; The numbers just don’t support the UN-backed Gaza famine report

From Ian:

Brendan O'Neill: We are not being told the truth about Gaza

The truth – as we have come to expect on everything Israel-related – is far more complicated. What the IDF database actually says is that 8,900 – around one in six – of the dead in Gaza are ‘named fighters’ from ‘Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad’. There will be many other dead, it says, who are either fighters who could not be identified or fighters from other Islamist groups. Indeed, the purple-prose ‘exposé’ of the IDF’s supposed genocidal ruthlessness undercut its own claims by acknowledging that the number of fighters killed is ‘likely higher’ than 8,900 since the IDF’s database ‘does not include… operatives who were killed but could not be identified by name [or] Gazans who took part in fighting but were not officially members of Hamas or PIJ’.

Right. So it’s not true that only one in six of the dead are militants. That was a reckless and sinister misrepresentation of the facts. It’s even feasible that the number of fighters who could not be identified is higher than the number who could be: war, after all, is a messy business where establishing facts is hard. And yet the post-truth insistence that 83 per cent of the dead are civilians spread like a fire in influencer circles. ‘Barbarians’, they cried. ‘Demons’, even. The small print, the truth, was incinerated in the rush to damn Israel as genocidal.

It seems the butchery of truth is a small price to pay for that most jealously coveted goal of the West’s cultural establishment: to find Israel guilty of genocide. It’s not only numbers they’ll twist – it’s language, too. Recall when the Irish government said the International Court of Justice should broaden its definition of genocide in order that Israel might be put in the dock for its ‘collective punishment’ of Gaza. Can’t find Israel guilty of genocide? No problem, just change the meaning of genocide. Classic Orwellianism. One human-rights expert reminds us dimwits that genocide is ‘a crime that can be committed without a single person dying’. So whether Israel had killed 60,000 people or none, it could still be deemed a genocidal state. This is a species of madness.

Also last week, the IPC – the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification group linked to the UN – ruled there is famine in Gaza. No one doubts there’s huge suffering in Gaza, including deathly hunger. And yet some scepticism is warranted here, too. Israel says the IPC applied a lower ‘famine threshold’ to Gaza than it does for other countries. The IPC report also seems highly politicised: one of its contributors is an expert on international nutrition who has a track record of stinging commentary on Israel, including describing its founding in 1948 as being built on ‘the destruction of the state of Palestine by Jewish insurgents’. Could we not have some neutral analysis for once, please?

The screws are truly being turned on Israel. A sick union of anti-Semitic militants and fashionably Israelophobic Westerners has devoted itself to damning the Jewish nation as the wickedest nation. Nothing better captures the crisis of civilisation than this sinister pincer movement, this double siege of Israel by the neo-fascists on its borders and their gurning useful idiots in the cultural citadels of the West. Israel should win in Gaza City. But that other flank, the one overrun by Westerners so suspicious of our civilisation that they find greater common cause with its enemies – that will be a harder fight. And not just for Israel – for all of us.

The numbers just don’t support the UN-backed Gaza famine report

However, using an unjustifiably low threshold was only part of the problem. The much bigger issue was that the IPC discarded half of the available data and misrepresented what the remainder actually showed. The key claim for declaring famine was that child malnutrition had surged from around 10 per cent in early July to 16 per cent later in the month, supposedly crossing the famine line. But this “trend” can’t be backed up by the data.

In reality, the IPC based its conclusion on only half of the July sample, covering about 7,500 children, which gave an average of roughly 16 per cent. The full dataset of more than 15,000 children showed rates closer to 12 per cent – well below the famine threshold. Even within the partial sample, the claim of a dramatic upward trend did not hold: the numbers remained flat across the month with no increase at all. By failing to use the complete data, the IPC created the illusion of both a breach and a surge that never occurred.

The same pattern played out with mortality, the second key pillar of a famine declaration. The IPC analysis quietly admitted that reported deaths were below the famine threshold, but then suggested that many deaths might not have been counted. What they did not spell out is just how enormous the gap really was.

For Gaza City, the famine line would have meant close to 200 deaths every single day from hunger or related disease. The actual reported figure was about six deaths per day across the entire Strip – nowhere near the threshold. Even if every one of those deaths had been in Gaza City and directly caused by malnutrition, the rate would still have been more than 30 times lower than the famine threshold.

Of course, in any war zone some deaths may go unreported. But to claim that actual mortality was 30 times higher than the numbers on record is an extraordinary leap. And as the late Carl Sagan famously said: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” The IPC did not provide such evidence. Instead, it relied on speculation and on a few highly controversial studies that were far from sufficient to support claims of hundreds of unreported starvation-related deaths per day. Yet it was precisely this assumption that underpinned the famine declaration.

In addition, the report downplayed or ignored positive signs of recovery, such as increased aid deliveries, falling food prices, and expanded humanitarian access. Observers have also noted that at least one of its authors has a record of anti‑Israel bias.

Taken together, these issues raise serious questions not only about the technical rigour of the analysis, but also about its objectivity and neutrality. In short, the evidence presented by the IPC did not even come close to justifying the use of a famine designation. By lowering the bar and relying on speculation, the report turned a situation of undeniable hardship into a claim of catastrophic collapse that the data simply did not support.

Front-Page NY Times Falsehood Charges “Most” Food Blocked from Gaza

According to the first sentence on the front page of Saturday’s New York Times, Israel “has blocked most food and other aid from entering the Gaza Strip” during the war with Hamas.

The damning charge is repeated in a second Times story, published around the same time, which tells readers that “Israel has blocked most food and other aid from entering the enclave since the war began nearly two years ago,” on Oct. 7.

The statements, a clear message to readers that Israel has allowed only a trickle of food into Gaza, are categorical, sweeping, and definitive.

They are also false.

On average, thousands of tons of food aid per day have entered the Gaza Strip since the Hamas attack. Even with the temporary blockage of most aid between March and May 2025, which contributed to concerning food insecurity (and a spate of dishonest reporting), the rate of food aid into Gaza since Oct 7 massacre has exceeded the pre-war rate.

OCHA’s dashboard shows an average of 2,285 trucks of food per day entered the Gaza Strip in 2023 before the war.

A data portal by the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs documents the entry of goods both before and after the start of the war. From January through September 2023, an average of 2,285 truckloads of food per month entered the Strip, according OCHA. With an estimate of about 15 tons of food per truck, that amounts to 1,142 tons per day of food entering Gaza prior to the war.

OCHA’s dashboard shows 17,665 truckloads of food between Oct. 23, 2023 and May 7, 2024.

The same portal describes 17,665 truckloads of food aid entering between Oct. 21, 2023 and May 7, 2024, the last date for which OCHA has complete data. That comes to about 1,332 tons per day.