Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, August 30, 2025

08/30 Links: IDF Plan to Takeover Gaza City Sends Hamas Into Hysteria; Houthi PM and 8 ministers killed in Israeli airstrike; Gaza's 'journalists' are Hamas operatives, not press heroes

From Ian:

IDF Plan to Takeover Gaza City Sends Hamas Into Hysteria

While there’s no shortage of doom and gloom predictions over Israel’s war in Gaza, there’s one group in particular that is dreading the IDF’s planned takeover of Gaza City: Hamas. How could this impact hostage release negotiations? And is it also connected somehow to the Gulf states? I explored this in my Shabbat column for Israel Hayom, an excerpt of which is below.

It’s a shame Israelis don’t hear what senior Hamas officials have been saying in recent days. If they did, they might feel a bit more encouraged and argue a bit less. The organization is in complete hysteria over Israel’s threats to enter Gaza City. The euphoria following the “Al-Aqsa Flood” has evaporated, and the effectiveness of the starvation campaign has ended. In fact, they no longer even speak of October 7 as a victory that brought huge achievements and returned the Palestinian issue to the center of global attention.

This week, Belgium distanced itself from Palestinian recognition, while the United States once again made clear, through Steve Witkoff, that Hamas must leave Gaza quickly.

Within Hamas, the entry into Gaza City is being called “the final battle.” In their view, every country has abandoned them except Yemen. Iran has stopped its support, and even the Qatari money that stirs debate in Israel is, from their perspective, proof that Doha too has abandoned them.

That is the reason for Hamas’ lowered demands, for their support of a partial deal. Entry into Gaza City, as Hamas sees it, could seal their fate entirely. Total surrender and the return of all hostages, however, is not on the table, since for them that would be the final nail in the coffin of Yahya Sinwar’s vision. After all, he ordered the October 7 massacre in an attempt to prevent Israeli normalization with Saudi Arabia. An Israeli victory in Gaza, however, would also bring along Syria, Lebanon, and other states.

But Benjamin Netanyahu is unwilling to accept a partial deal. This leads to two related questions: First, is it better to wave around the threat of entering Gaza City than to actually carry it out? Perhaps the threat of conquering the city is more effective than the slow, costly reality, in terms of both human lives and international legitimacy. Second, could this be an Israeli deception tactic? Maybe it’s a sophisticated way to force Hamas’ hand. What happens if, fearing an IDF takeover of the city, Hamas agrees to release more hostages in a partial deal?

Six European foreign ministers condemn Israel's planned Gaza City operation

Foreign ministers from Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Norway, Slovenia, and Spain condemned Israel's planned takeover of Gaza City in a joint statement published on their respective government websites on Friday.

In the statement, the ministers said that they "condemn the most recent Israeli offensive launched in the Strip and the announcement to establish a permanent presence in Gaza City.

"We reiterate that the intensification of military operations will endanger the lives of hostages who cruelly remain in the hands of Hamas and will lead to the intolerable deaths of innocent Palestinian civilians, including women, children, and elderly people."

The joint statement continued to describe the IDF's planned operations in the Palestinian city as "opening a new phase of uncertainty and intolerable suffering for both sides." The ministers urged the Israeli government to halt its planned operations and reconsider.

The ministers then referenced the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), which declared there is a famine in the Strip, stating that it's imperative that UN agencies and NGOs operate in the area "to alleviate the humanitarian catastrophe."

Israel's Foreign Ministry and Prime Minister's Office condemned the IPC report, with the former saying it's a "tailor-made fabricated report to fit Hamas’s fake campaign,” and the latter saying, "Israel has a policy of preventing starvation." Days later, Israel asked a global hunger monitor to retract the IPC assessment.

Explaining Israel's actions in Gaza is pointless - this is why

Confront: Israel and its supporters are outnumbered and out-financed, but there is enough energy in the Jewish world to make sure not a single anti-Israel demonstration goes unchallenged - even if it’s 10 demonstrators facing 10,000. Antisocial media, like TV, is a close-up medium. A small, quirky group can get as much coverage as a large, conventional one - maybe more. Israel needs to learn how to be small and quirky.

Confronting anti-Israel groups also means tracking them online and harassing them within the limits of the law. (I had to say that.) They should start worrying about their cybersecurity. The Jewish world is full of young experts who could take this idea and run with it - if only Jewish leadership, in Israel and abroad, would adopt the policy. If that means fewer self-congratulatory dinners and awards for Jewish leaders in New York, so be it.

Word: This is as close to traditional hasbara as we should get. A single billboard in New York’s Times Square can be worth its weight in gold if it carries the right message. With hundreds of thousands of billboards worldwide, why not a contest offering free trips to Israel? Or fun video games with a message? Once free of the old “just tell the truth and it’ll be fine” mindset, the possibilities are endless.

But, like hasbara, none of this will work if Israel’s actions are indefensible.

Not wrong, mind you - indefensible. That means if Israel’s 21st-century wars are fought according to 20th-century rules, Israel loses.

Most of what Israel has done since the Hamas pogrom of Oct. 7, 2023 - when Gazan terrorists breached the border, murdered, raped, and burned more than 1,000 Israelis, and took 250 hostages - can be legally and morally justified. In the post-truth world of antisocial media, that doesn’t matter.

Selling a war that lasts nearly two years in an impoverished territory where society glorifies victimhood was never possible. There is too much raw material for distortion, lies, and fabrications - too much to counter or explain. In a world of short attention spans and narrative-driven “truth,” Israel needed to end this war in weeks, not months, certainly not years - pull out, and prepare for the next round. After two years of combat, that outcome looks likely anyway.

Allowing nonstop anti-Israel propaganda to flood the world for two years, engulfing allies and threatening to turn Israel into a pariah state, is the greatest failure of the Gaza war. And that’s saying something, considering the monumental failure that marked its beginning.

The conclusion: By reordering its priorities and focusing on methods that bring results, Israel can turn back the tide of antisemitic propaganda, even if it takes years.

But none of this will succeed unless Israel’s leadership makes strategic decisions with the world in mind - not just domestic politics.

That, too, goes far beyond hasbara.

08/29 Links Pt2: IDF recovers body of murdered hostage Ilan Weiss in Gaza; Why the promise of a two-state solution empowers terrorism; Tehran’s unofficial embassy at Yale

From Ian:

Why the promise of a two-state solution empowers terrorism

Looking at the world in which we find ourselves, we Jews experience a sense of panic at the virulent mass-attended anti-Israel marches taking place in too many major cities globally. “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free,” shout the participants.

And how do the West’s governments react? Australia, France, and New Zealand have committed to recognizing Palestine at the forthcoming United Nations General Assembly, days away, in September. Canada and the United Kingdom have announced that they, too, are ready to recognize a state of Palestine if the war has not ended by the time the UNGA commences.

What a gift this is for Hamas, which has now been informed that to ensure that the UK and Canada recognize Palestine, the war must continue. Certainly, this is no incentive for Hamas to end the war or return the hostages held in captivity for almost two years.

True enemies of the two-state solution
Can it be that those consistently calling for a two-state solution have not understood – or choose not to understand – who is against this concept and has been since the UN voted for the partition of Palestine in 1947?

Israel accepted the small part it was allocated, but the Arabs rejected outright the opportunity to have their own state. Instead, they chose to be part of five Arab countries that attacked Israel the moment David Ben-Gurion declared the coming into being of the State of Israel in 1948.

Are the millions calling for the recognition of Palestine today unaware that “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free” translates into the reality that Israel will be eliminated?

Both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have consistently refused to accept a Jewish state.

Hamas’s charter calls for the total annihilation of Israel.

The PA conceived a different route by which to abolish the one Jewish state. They insist that any future peace negotiations with Israel must ensure that those Arabs who in 1948 became “refugees” in other lands must be allowed to return to Israel together with their successive generations. A figure of seven million returnees is quoted. It does not take a mathematician to recognize that this would translate into the end of the one Jewish state.

Consistently saying no
Before, during, and following the 1948 War of Independence, some 750,000 Arabs fled the newly created State of Israel with encouragement from their leaders, who promised their safe return together with the commitment to ensure the imminent destruction of Israel.

At the same time, some 850,000 Jews were expelled from Arab countries where Jews had lived continuously for 2,500 years. The newly created State of Israel accepted and integrated these Jewish refugees, many arriving with only the clothes on their backs.

Conversely, the United Nations founded UNRWA specifically to ensure that those Arabs who left Israel would retain refugee status, irrespective of which country they relocated to in 1948.

Exactly 58 years ago, on August 29, 1967, eight Arab heads of state participated in a four-day conference in Khartoum, Sudan. The conference called for the continued struggle against Israel. It adopted the dictum of no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, and no negotiations with Israel. Unsurprisingly, the conference became known as “The Three Noes Conference.”

July 2000 saw the Camp David Summit, initiated by then-US president Bill Clinton with the participation of prime minister Ehud Barak and PA chairman Yasser Arafat. It ended with Arafat walking away and then initiating the Second Intifada, resulting in the barbaric murder of some 1,000 Israelis – primarily civilians – with women and children being the prime targets.

Between 2006 and 2008, prime minister Ehud Olmert held no less than 36 negotiating sessions with PA President Mahmoud Abbas in an unprecedented endeavor to reach a peace agreement. Olmert’s plan included ceding some 94% of the West Bank to the PA. The overall offer was incredibly generous to the Palestinians; but once again they walked away, much to the dismay of Olmert, whose proposal far exceeded anything hitherto.

Tehran’s unofficial embassy at Yale

The excitement I once felt arriving at Yale University from Tehran in 2023 for my studies quickly turned into concerns about my safety as an anti-regime Iranian. At school, I witnessed the unchallenged authority of Islamic Republic sympathizers in American universities. Faculty tied to the regime have long presented themselves as presumptive Iranian voices, normalizing the regime’s illegitimate rule by erasing the realities of Iranians living in Iran.

Yale’s fall 2025 course catalogue, for instance, features a class by now-disgraced U.S. diplomat Robert Malley, who led negotiations for the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the Iran nuclear deal, under former President Barack Obama.

Malley’s class will “examine the past in order to better appreciate the two governments’ worldviews” and place students “in the shoes of U.S. and Iranian decision-makers.”

Course assignments for “Adversaries by Design: Deconstructing the Iran-U.S. Relationship” have students cosplaying as diplomats for the regime, as if this is some benign Model U.N.-like exercise rather than a calculated attempt to humanize the theocratic, colonizing dictatorship responsible for the majority of crimes against humanity in the region since 1979.

The course revolves around defending Malley’s failed magnum opus, the JCPOA, and his syllabus mentions having guest lecturers such as Ali Vaez, Hossein Mousavian and Mohammad Javad Zarif, all of whom have acted on behalf of the regime at one time or another. Malley purports to offer “Iranian perspectives,” but the class will likely only feature Islamic Republic officials and supporters.

One might wonder how it’s possible for a former U.S. government official who lost his security clearance and had close contact with Islamic Republic agents to lecture at an elite American university. But fear not! This is Yale, a Western institution where enabling the ideologies of designated terrorist groups is appropriate under the pretense of academia. And this isn’t an isolated incident for Yale.

Stephen Pollard: Britain is no longer an ally of Israel

What more is it going to take to bury the notion that the UK remains an ally of Israel? It’s been revealed today that the Government has banned Israeli officials from attending DSEI, the international defence conference and exhibition which is due to take place in London between 9 and 12 September. Although Israeli companies are still being allowed to come, all Israeli officials – political, defence or administrative – have been told to stay away.

The message could not be clearer or more consistent. From its first days in office, Labour has been ever more zealous in its treatment of Israel as an enemy, rather than a key strategic ally.

Within weeks it had restored funding to Unrwa, the UN agency, despite allegations that it employed some of the terrorists behind the October 7 2023 massacre; had banned the export of some arms to Israel; and had backed the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants against Netanyahu and former Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant.

Then it imposed sanctions on two members of the Israeli government: Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. These are awful men with disgusting views. But the sanctions took hypocrisy to new levels, given that we do not sanction Qatar, which funds and houses Hamas; we prostrate ourselves before its moneymen begging them to invest.

All of those decisions were symbolic of the Government’s stance – a stance driven more by crude domestic UK political calculations than anything else, as I have written here before. But they were little more than symbols with little real impact.

All the obligations demanded by the Prime Minister have been placed on Israel, as some sort of recalcitrant state which needs to be brought to heel. How much clearer could Starmer, Lammy and the rest of them be that they seem to regard Israel as the enemy whose government needs to be defeated by outside pressure, and that the UK must support Israel’s enemies in their demands?

08/29 Links Pt1: Netanyahu releases footage of Hamas atrocities; Trump Admin Revokes Visas for Pal Officials for UN Meeting, Citing ‘Incitement to Terrorism’

From Ian:

Israel’s ceasefire dilemma: Hamas hostages, and the price of delay

From the local Palestinian point of view it should be emphasised that no serious country would invest in Gaza’s reconstruction while Hamas rules it, and Israel would likely block pro-Hamas states like Turkey or Qatar from doing so. Thus, a withdrawal leaving Hamas in power would condemn Gazans to miserable lives under a ruined land and cruel terrorist rulers.

Israel has, meanwhile, publicly set conditions for ending the war: Hamas’s disarmament, the demilitarisation of Gaza, the exile of its remaining leadership, and the installation of a third-party (not the Palestinian Authority) to manage Gaza’s civilian life and reconstruction. Crucially, Israel insists on retaining security authority, meaning IDF operations against terrorists would be permitted even after a withdrawal, similar to how Israel operates in the West Bank. The IDF would also establish a security perimeter inside Gaza to prevent infiltration to the border’s fence. If Hamas were to accept these terms, the war would end and Israel would withdraw.

But realistically, even after months of negotiations, Hamas is very unlikely to agree to such terms. Thus, if Israel agreed to the phased hostage Hamas now offered, by November, at the end of the 60 days of talks, Jerusalem would find itself facing an excruciating choice: launch a months-long war to conquer Gaza City and the central camps, or abandon its conditions and allow Hamas to retain control of the Gaza Strip.

The pressure inside Israel to fight will be enormous, but it will face an even louder and stronger anti-Israel coalition worldwide. Worse, Hamas would use the 60 days to prepare defences, plant explosives, and fortify its positions, and the IDF would need to retake ground it had already vacated. Any resumed war would then cost the IDF far more casualties.

At the heart of the dilemma is thus the fate of the hostages: should Israel agree to a partial deal now, rescuing half of them but leaving 10 in Hamas’s hands, and then fight later under far worse conditions? Or is it wiser to fight now – when military and diplomatic conditions are more favourable – but with double the number of hostages still held by Hamas, whose lives would be in grave danger?

Some argue that once Israel enters a ceasefire process, it may never be able to resume fighting – due to external pressures (Washington’s policy shifts, European sanctions) or internal ones (government collapse, elections). According to this view, Israel must fight now while it has strong U.S. backing, or risk losing its last chance to destroy Hamas.

Others claim that if Israel does accept a ceasefire, and Hamas then refuses its terms, Israel will regain international legitimacy for a renewed offensive, having proven its willingness to compromise. But this is wishful thinking. Experience shows that Israel’s “goodwill” is met with cynicism, especially in Europe. Even US support may not survive another two years of grinding war, no matter how Israel justifies it. This question must be raised directly with US officials, to clarify where they would stand if Israel chose the ceasefire path.

In short: on the long and difficult road to freeing Gaza from Hamas, dismantling its military, and rescuing the hostages, Israel now faces two options:

Delay war to secure the release of half the hostages now, but fight later under far harsher conditions, or perhaps lose the chance to fight altogether.

Fight now, under more favourable military and diplomatic conditions, but at the probable cost of more hostages’ lives.

Seth Mandel: The End of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon

Upon the news that the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon will be ending its mandate, I will refrain from saying “good riddance.” It would be insufficient, after all. In fact, I wish UNIFIL only the greatest riddance in the world, a riddance the likes of which few have ever seen. A riddance that would be the envy of all the riddances that came before it.

Any time I mention some of UNIFIL’s old scandals, I hear from readers who are truly shocked. For UNIFIL stood out among the various agencies of the United Nations as the one that never tried to disguise its alliance with Israel’s genocidal enemies. Even UNRWA, the agency that became an adjunct of Hamas in Gaza, went through the motions of attempting to establish plausible deniability.

As I wrote recently, in 2006 UNIFIL stood accused of broadcasting sensitive Israeli troop movements during the war in Lebanon with Hezbollah. I picked up the phone and called the office of the UN secretary general to ask for confirmation. The office gave me the personal mobile number of a senior UNIFIL official on the ground in Lebanon. I called him and asked him about the allegations. He nonchalantly admitted on the record that yes, the allegations were correct.

But we don’t have to go back to 2006—or all the way to 2000, when UNIFIL withheld video proof of Israelis being kidnapped by Hezbollah—to understand why we should just give UNIFIL the gold watch and wave them off into the sunset. As I am writing this, proof of UNIFIL’s purposeful futility is all around us.

Israel and Lebanon, with the help of the United States, are engaged in negotiations over the disarming of Hezbollah. Almost 20 years ago, the Second Lebanon War ended with a UN Security Council resolution requiring Hezbollah to disarm. So why are we still negotiating over something that has been required for two decades by previous negotiations? Because the UN is useless, that’s why. And the consequences are visible all around the Mideast.

So this week, the U.S. decided it would only agree to the renewing of UNIFIL’s mandate if it would be the last such renewal. That way, UNIFIL could start preparing for the end. After 2026, it’ll pack up and go, ending nearly a half-century of thumb-twiddling.

NGOs and UN Agencies Demand Blind Acceptance, Now the "Halo Effect" Is Crumbling

For decades, there has been an unspoken rule: never question what the UN or major NGOs say. Reports are taken at face value. Their press releases become headlines, their statistics are repeated without scrutiny, and their conclusions are treated as objective truth. What NGO Monitor has long called the “Halo Effect”—the aura of credibility surrounding these organizations—meant that their findings were virtually immune to fact-checking and often amplified by the media.

How NGO information flows to media in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
October 7th changed something fundamental in this dynamic. For the first time, a broad spectrum of people—journalists, researchers, technologists, and ordinary citizens—began scrutinizing these organizations with a critical eye. Watchdogs had been doing this work for years in limited ways, but now thousands of independent voices from diverse backgrounds and political leanings are dissecting UN and NGO claims. Using open-source intelligence, statistical analysis, and investigative methods, they are exposing uncomfortable truths that can no longer be hidden. The “halo effect” is cracking. They are exposing: who wrote the reports, how the data was gathered, exposing contradicting evidence, what assumptions were made, and—most importantly—what agendas are being pushed.

The most recent is the famine declaration in Gaza City. The IPC (Integrated Food Security Phase Classification) released a report declaring famine in Gaza City. On paper, the IPC has strict criteria: mortality, acute malnutrition, and lack of food access must all be verified to declare famine. All requiring very strict methodologies. Yet the Gaza report sidestepped these standards. Instead, it relied on selective data, and questionable assumptions and methodologies. Since its release, data analysts have identified glaring flaws, while independent journalist Eitan Fischberger uncovered bias among one of its key authors—including open support for terrorist groups targeting Israeli civilians.

UN Watch Director Hillel Neuer revealed how Andrew J. Seal, co-author of IPC report on Gaza, often posts IRGC propaganda from Press TV & Iranian regime foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Araghchi, such as anti-US “false flag” conspiracy theories. He normalized IRGC's killing of 176 civilians on Ukrainian flight PS752. Calling him a “nutcase who backs the Houthis & Iran's regime.”

Even the U.S. envoy to the UN, speaking at the latest Security Council session, warned:
“We can only solve problems with credibility and integrity. Unfortunately, the recent report from the IPC doesn’t pass the test on either. One of the report's key authors has a lengthy record of bias against Israel, including openly justifying the Houthis' terrorist attacks against Israeli civilian targets.”

Two days ago, MFA Director General Eden Bar Tal sent a formal letter to the IPC demanding it retract its forged Gaza report. The evidence is clear: the IPC hid contradictory data, cherry-picked results, and manipulated figures—producing a fabricated report for political purposes. At his press conference, Bar Tal was even more direct:
“The IPC report is forged for political purposes. No doubt the IPC manipulated and ignored data, broke its own rules and hid contradictory evidence. That report was fabricated for a purpose—to support Hamas’ fake starvation campaign.”

This is where the Halo Effect comes full circle. The IPC could only publish such a document because it assumed nobody would question it. That is the power of the UN/NGO halo: the ability to present selective, distorted, or even fabricated findings as “science,” shielded by institutional prestige. But once the halo slips, the report looks less like a neutral study and more like a propaganda tool dressed in technical jargon. The expectation could not be clearer: forget definitions, ignore evidence, stop asking questions. Just accept our conclusions as holy gospel and sacred fact, including redefining “genocide.”

The crowdfunding site GiveButter has this story:

Sahar is a Palestinian trans woman currently displaced in Gaza. Since losing her home to IOF aggression, Sahar has been living in a tent with her 6 sisters, hardly able to afford basic survival needs.

With the brutality continuing to escalate, Sahar has made the difficult but critical decision to attempt to leave the Gaza strip. To do so, she turning to the international community for support.

Sahar is seeking to raise $35,000 to finance her move out of Gaza and into safety.

Read below to hear from Sahar in her own words,

“I am not used to asking for help and this is the first time in my life that I ask for help in order to save my life and the lives of my family. This war touches the feelings of people around the world. It is a very difficult decision to leave Gaza, but we have no other choice to save our lives and save the lives of our children … It's an expensive process, but together we can achieve it.

The war on Gaza has injured us [with] psychological trauma and extreme terror as a result of the continuous bombing, the killing of children, the destruction of homes and displacement. The Gaza Strip has become foodless, and the water is polluted. The occupation destroyed all health and industrial facilities in the Gaza Strip, making it uninhabitable.

I am alive, but my friends and neighbors who were killed in Gaza are still under the rubble of their homes. No one can save them because of the continuous bombing of the occupation of houses in Gaza. With the destruction of all of us, we have no choice but to leave Gaza, our lives are precious to us… [we] in Gaza are not just numbers. We are human beings who love life and want to live freely, peacefully and safely.”

Read Sahar’s story today + share it widely to help her gain the support she needs. In closing, Sahar writes:

“Thank you for your sympathy, generosity and solidarity with us. We can make a difference and help my family find the safety and protection they urgently need. Together we can achieve the goal.”

This is such an obvious scam that I cannot believe that GiveButter allow this.

For starters, there are no trans women in Gaza. How would it work? Some guy has an operation in Gaza? Or he leaves Gaza to a Western country for surgery, and then returns as a woman and the family is fine with this and the neighbors don't care?

The person's life expectancy after the surgery would be measured in hours.

Secondly, no one is leaving Gaza no matter how much money they have. Egypt is not taking anyone butt medical cases (and Israel has to approve.) So the appeal to raise money to leave Gaza is obviously a lie.

Thirdly, "Sahar"'s letter was not the voice of a Gazan. It is an anti-Israel activist pretending to channel a Gazan."It's an expensive process, but together we can achieve it."? Those are the words of a fundraiser, not a Gazan.

So far idiots have donated at least $4,600 for this scam.

(h/t Rabbi Poupko)

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Why "Anti-Zionist" Jews don't want you to listen to the Torah tomorrow

By far, the favorite Torah verse of anti-Zionists is "Tzedek, Tzedek Tirdof" - "Justice, Justice shalt thou pursue." They quote it all the time to justify their anti-Israel actions in the name of "justice."

Who defines justice? Why, they do!

They love that verse and that word so much that the first officially anti-Zionist "synagogue"- which is virtually all on-line - is called "Tzedek Chicago."

At the same tie that they create prayers saying "I promise to view each new day as another opportunity to learn how to be kinder, more loving, more hopeful, and to better enact justice" they call the vast majority of Jews who support Israel "genocidal."

Tomorrow we will read that verse they love so much. But it has a second half:

It says that God is giving the Land of Israel to the Jews.

That doesn't exactly jive with their ideas of "justice," does it?

How can the same Torah verse that they think is so integral to what makes them "Jewish" also go against everything they are trying to accomplish?

They are as Jewish as a pork chop.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Defense News reports:

Israel will not set up a national pavilion at the DSEI UK 2025 exhibition scheduled to take place in London Sept. 9-12, the Israeli Ministry of Defense announced on Friday.

The reason, according to the ministry’s statement, is “the British government recently imposed unilateral restrictions on the official Israeli government and military representatives participation in the exhibition.”

This is the third European defense exhibition in which Israel has been penalized. Defense News recently reported that Israeli companies were banned from participating in the Dutch NEDS exhibition, which is expected to take place this November.

In June, the Israeli pavilions at the Paris Air Show were blocked with black walls after being asked not to display what were labeled “offensive weapons.”

The reasons given for these restrictions are all over the place. Saying that "offensive weapons" cannot be shown at an arms fair is pretty absurd. NEDS used the excuse of potential "social unrest" - last year protestors clashed with police and broke windows. But they also added that allowing Israeli firms to exhibit while the Dutch government advocates sanctions would create contradictions.

When multiple reasons are given for the same decision, chances are the real reason is not being said out loud.

Right now, European countries are increasing their defense budgets dramatically as a result of the war in Ukraine. The weapons that are most desired are the ones Israeli defense firms are the best at: drones, counter-drone technologies, air defense systems (like the Iron Dome and David's Sling), and advanced munitions.

This puts Israeli firms in direct competition with major European defense companies like Leonardo (Italy), Rheinmetall (Germany), and BAE Systems (UK).

Israeli defense firms have been booming since the Gaza war. Unlike their competitors, many of their systems are battle tested. European countries don't want to risk spending hundreds of billions of euros on systems that might be second best. IAI, Elbit and Rafael have order backlogs of some $70 billion between them - the bulk of which is from European customers.

It is not difficult to picture how other defense firms want to keep Israeli products out of arms expos. Governments and event organizers can claim they are acting on "moral" or "security" grounds, when in reality, they may be quietly pleased to remove major competitors from showcase events.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The If/then fallacy, 2025 edition: "If we recognize Palestine, there will be peace."

For years I have been discussing the If/Then Fallacy. Its usual formulation is that if only Israel would do X, then everything would be peaceful and wonderful.

Examples include:

1988: If Israel would put forward a credible peace plan, then no one will blame Israel if the PLo rejects it. (Proven wrong at Camp David.)

2000: If Israel would withdraw from Lebanon, then Hezbollah would have no reason to exist and would no longer be a problem. (Israel did, sand Hezbollah kidnapped soldiers sparking the 2006 war.)

2003: If Israel would withdraw from Gaza, then there would be no more rocket attacks and no incentive for terrorism in Gaza.(We know what happened.)

2022: If Israel signs a maritime border agreement with Lebanon, Hezbollah would never attack because it has something to lose. (They did and Hezbollah attacked.)

2023: If Israel would lift the Gaza blockade, then Hamas would spend its time governing and would not be a threat. (The months before October 2023 Israel had allowed more good into Gaza than at any time since before Hamas took over Gaza.

Now we have a variant from the Israeli-born Middle East advisor to Emmanuel Macron named Ofer Bronchtein.

He told Israel's Channel 12 that October 7 "would not have happened if there had been a Palestinian state."

He claims that there would be security in the region if there was a Palestinian state.

Not only is this stupid, but Bronchstein knows it.

He said only last year that it was not possible to talk about a two state solution while the war was raging and the wounds are fresh.
“I’m fully aware now is not the right time for Israelis and Palestinians to speak or even think about peace,” says Bronchtein. “They’re in a war, they’re losing people dear to them, and they’re mourning. There’s no empathy on either side for the other.”

He acknowledges any possible resolution isn’t imminent.

So last year he said that there cannot be peace unless Israel and the Palestinians agree to a peace plan, and that wasn't likely,

But now he is saying not that peace is necessary for a two state solution, but a Palestinian state would magically bring peace - the exact opposite of what he said last year.

His boss Macron obviously intends to recognize a Palestinian state next month, thinking exactly that - not that peace is a prerequisite for a state but that a state will naturally bring peace.

The other countries planning to reward Hamas with a recognition of "Palestine" have all said the same thing themselves - they want a state because that is the way to bring peace. No Palestinian compromises, no concession from them - no, if they get exactly what they have demanded for years, then somehow peace will come.

A lot of people cannot distinguish fantasy from reality.

In a region where compromise is judged as weakness and an opportunity for further attack, a Palestinians state is a guarantee for endless war - one where Israel cannot properly defend itself.

How do we know this? Because Israel was not on the ground in Gaza on October 6 2023. Hamas turned the entire area into a giant military base. And Israel couldn't stop it.

Israel can and does stop West Bank Palestinians from building tunnels and rockets. If Israel couldn't do that, what kind of idiot thinks that a Judenrein West Bank is more likely to bring peace?

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

08/28 Links Pt2: One eye and four blindfolds; Iran’s evil does not stop at its borders; The UN’s Blue Flag, Hamas’s Black Hand; UNIFIL’s Looming End: Why the UN Won't Let it Happen

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: One eye and four blindfolds

So why has Albanese suddenly decided to act against the Islamic regime? The reason is almost certainly that he has begun to feel some heat over his government’s appalling behavior.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed diplomatic niceties to one side by chewing him out in public over the Rothman ban, while Israel has stripped some Australian diplomats of their visas. This may have concentrated Albanese’s mind on the fact that intelligence-sharing with Israel remains crucial to Australia’s national security.

In 2017, Israel alerted ASIO that there was a plot to blow up an Etihad Airways flight leaving Sydney. And this week, Sky News revealed that a tip-off from Israeli intelligence had assisted ASIO during its investigation, which unraveled the Iran connection to the terror attacks.

More significant still, U.S. President Donald Trump appears to be taking a very dim view indeed of Australia’s anti-Israel antics. He has yet to meet Albanese.

And Australia’s defense minister, Richard Marles, was humiliated this week by American defense officials’ ambiguity over whether exchanges with his U.S. counterpart, Pete Hegseth, in Washington, D.C., were an actual “meeting” or a “happenstance encounter.”

Any idea that Albanese has now seen the light over Israel is vanishingly unlikely.

On Sky News Australia, Sharri Markson revealed that in 1998, a “starry-eyed” Albanese met Yasser Arafat, head of the terrorist Palestine Liberation Organization, which had sponsored and funded his trip to Ramallah.

Two years later, she said, during the Second Intifada, when Palestinian Arabs were blowing Israelis to bits on buses and in pizza parlors, Albanese joined protests against Israel, during which American and Israeli flags were burnt.

In a speech to the Australian parliament while Israel was struggling to stop the slaughter of more than 1,300 of its citizens, Albanese condemned Israeli roadblocks and other restrictions on Palestinians as abuses of their civil rights.

Albanese has now admitted that he has been an advocate for the Palestinian cause his whole life and says he is angry at the anti-Israel protesters—only because their extremism is undermining that cause. In other words, in the great battle now underway between civilization and barbarism, Albanese has put Australia on the wrong side.

This matters not just to Israel but to the West. Australia is a member of the Five Eyes security alliance. The other four members are the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and New Zealand.

In its hostility to Israel—the West’s indispensable front line of defense in the Middle East—Australia has been puncturing that alliance, a breach that its belated burst of realism over Iran cannot repair.

Unfortunately, though, it’s not alone in this. The United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand have also turned into foes of the Jewish state, demonizing it with lies aimed at its delegitimization and preparing to recognize the illusory “state of Palestine” which is being willed into existence purely as a means to Israel’s destruction.

Only America is holding fast to Israel’s security and defense. So the Five Eyes alliance has now turned into One Eye and Four Blindfolds.

Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand can no longer be trusted with the defense of the West. It’s now America and Israel fighting for a free world that no longer understands what that means.

Iran’s evil does not stop at its borders

These revelations should hardly have shocked Albanese. After all, Iran has long exported its brand of violent Islamism well beyond its borders. This has ramped up especially since 7 October 2023 and the start of the Gaza war.

In May, seven Iranian nationals were arrested across the UK, accused of plotting two separate terror attacks. A July report from the UK parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee described Iran as a ‘wide-ranging, persistent and unpredictable’ threat. Iranian-backed attacks have also been carried out in Spain, France and Argentina. Even 7 October itself had Iran’s fingerprints all over it. The Hamas militants who murdered 1,200 people in southern Israel were flush with Iranian cash and weapons.

It is, of course, hardly positive news that a foreign country is sponsoring anti-Semitic attacks in your own country. Yet you can’t help but think the career politician in Albanese must have breathed a sigh of relief. Flanked by Australia’s top spy Mike Burgess and foreign minister Penny Wong, Albanese was suddenly able to pose as a protector of Australian Jews. Even though he has been anything but in the recent past.

Indeed, Albanese cannot fully wash his hands of the crisis of anti-Semitism in Australia. Ever since 7 October, he has depicted Israel as essentially the sole perpetrator of every misfortune in Gaza. His Labor government has repeatedly demanded ceasefires which would have offered strategic advantages to Hamas. It even condemned Israel for its counter-attacks against Hezbollah – Iran’s most lethal and well-armed proxy. Albanese’s one-sided, unwavering criticism of Israel has cultivated a national hostility to the Jewish State. It is not hard to see how this has allowed anti-Semitism to flourish.

Anthony Albanese is right to stand up to the Iranian terror threat. But Australia’s Jewish community will expect far more from the prime minister before trust is restored. The arson attacks may have been ordered from abroad, but the broader climate of Jew hatred is largely homegrown.

The UN’s Blue Flag, Hamas’s Black Hand: A Case Study in Complicity

The UN’s Three-Part Mantra of Excuses
1 Humanitarian Necessity – UNRWA claims it is the “only game in town.” But humanitarian aid isn’t just bread and water, it has included cement, wiring, and infrastructure that repeatedly ends up in Hamas’s tunnels. The UN knows it, yet refuses to answer the obvious: where did all that concrete go? There is even little to no oversight or accounting regarding the projects all the cement, wires and infrastructure was slated for from the beginning. How many schools or health facilities were never developed because the supplies were designated to construct Hamas's underground world?
2 Institutional Separation – UNRWA insists its staff are “civilians.” Yet OIOS admits some were terrorists, and polls show the majority of Palestinians in Gaza as well as Judea and Samaria support Hamas. The idea that UNRWA employees are immune from these sympathies is absurd. Teaching jihad in classrooms, wiring electricity from UNRWA buildings to Hamas tunnels, turning blind eyes to tunnel entrances hidden inside compounds, this is complicity, not neutrality.
3 Process Over Outcomes – When scandals erupt, the UN launches reviews, frameworks, reforms. Endless paper. But the system never changes, because the bureaucracy exists to protect itself, not reform itself. Reviews become fig leaves for corruption.

Donors: Suspend, Resume, Repeat
When Israel exposed the October 7 connection, donors briefly froze funding. Then, predictably, they resumed. The EU returned to business as usual. Only the U.S. codified its funding halt into law until at least March 2026. Donor governments know UNRWA is compromised, yet they cling to it out of habit and fear of logistical headaches.

What Honest Neutrality Would Look Like
True neutrality would demand:
- Full Transparency – Line-by-line staff records, affiliations, and vetting against terror lists, continuously audited.
- Independent Verification – If a statistic comes from Hamas ministries, it should be labeled “unverified,” not “UN-confirmed.”
- Operational Redesign – Break UNRWA’s monopoly. Fund private or independent alternatives like the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (@GHFUpdates), which has proven aid can reach civilians without Hamas skimming off the top.

The Moral Bottom Line
Neutrality does not mean parroting terrorists. It does not mean rockets in schools, tunnels under headquarters, or staff participating in massacres. It does not mean reviewing the problem to death while feeding the same beast year after year.

Until the UN stops outsourcing truth to Hamas ministries and proves it can police its own payroll, Western governments must stop pretending this setup produces neutral information. It doesn’t.

It produces propaganda wrapped in a blue flag.

The only immediate solution, one that will save billions in taxpayer funds, is simple: Defund the United Nations!

08/28 Links Pt1: Israel Shows Some Diplomatic Spine; US, Israel applaud France, Germany, UK decision to reimpose sanctions on Iran; IDF strike on Houthi military leaders

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Israel Shows Some Diplomatic Spine

Israel is responding aggressively and appropriately to two recent public relations challenges, suggesting Jerusalem understands the gravity of its situation as well as the fact that it is in the right on both.

The first is the “famine” libel. Israel is asking the IPC, the multinational monitor, to retract its debunked report on Gaza City. According to Reuters, the Israeli Foreign Ministry is warning that “if a new report were not presented within two weeks, Israel would continue to challenge the assessment and would ask the IPC’s donors to halt their financial support.”

Good. Israel can no longer afford to simply be correct on the merits. If corrupt global agencies are going to insert themselves as partisans into this war then they’ll learn to take a (metaphorical) punch.

As a reminder, Israel first meticulously proved the report false based on the IPC’s own data, which suggests the agency is not merely incompetent but corrupt and compromised.

Indeed, it’s clear the report was released as a preemptive attack on Israel’s new operation in Gaza City. The IPC simply declared famine in the one place in Gaza that the IDF was looking to enter, which was also the one place in Gaza relatively untouched by the war. Still, it’s important to have the numbers on your side, and Israel did (all emphasis in the original):

“The report relied on only half of the data actually collected in July — five sub-samples covering 7,519 children, described on pages 49–50 of the FRC report, with a combined average of roughly 16% — just above the threshold.

“By contrast, a Nutrition Cluster presentation released on August 8 — a week before the August 15 cut-off date — reported the full July sample of 15,749 children. Those results showed unweighted and weighted GAM rates of 13.5% and 12.2%, respectively — both well below the famine threshold.”

So the data were clear: no famine. That the IPC chose to manipulate the data for political purposes suggests the agency has forfeited its legitimacy.

Andrew Fox: How a Humanitarian Crisis Became a Fight for Influence

Our central finding was stark: Israel was effectively absent as a source in the media field covering Gaza, while Hamas became the default provider of information. I recently came across a study by the NCRI, a research center based at Rutgers University that examines disinformation, extremism, and media manipulation. Its report on famine coverage has now confirmed the same patterns.

Four things stand out.
First, Hamas-linked sources are treated as if they were neutral. Reports routinely cite the Gaza Health Ministry without noting that it is run by Hamas. Both our own research and NCRI’s analysis found the same result: in roughly 75–80% of coverage, the Hamas affiliation was left out.

Second, Hamas figures are often repeated without any attribution at all. Almost one in five reports simply quoted the numbers as if they were common knowledge. The Guardian was the worst offender, doing this in 43% of its coverage effectively treating Hamas propaganda as fact.

Third, the headlines tell their own story. NCRI found that they blamed Israel or the GHF for famine, but never once Hamas. That matters, because most readers don’t get beyond the headline. About 75% share stories without opening them. In NCRI’s experiment, such headlines cut attribution of violence to Hamas by 70%.

Finally, damaging rumours about GHF have been amplified far beyond Gaza. One striking case was the claim that its flour contained narcotics. The story was traced back to Hamas’s Gaza Media Office, but by then it had already been echoed in NGO briefings and sympathetic coverage abroad. A rumor repeated became the story.

Tom Fletcher from the UN also became a source of disinformation with a reach of millions. Several months ago, his post on X went viral, falsely claiming that 14,000 children would die in Gaza within two days. The claim was later retracted, but not before more than 2.5 million people had seen it. Coming from a senior UN official, it carried extra weight, making the damage impossible to undo. Later corrections were too little, too late to counter the impact of the original message. What is happening in Gaza is more than a military conflict. It increasingly looks like a struggle for institutional survival: the UN seeking to retain control of aid flows, Hamas working to delegitimize alternatives, and GHF challenging a decades-old monopoly.

WSJ: Israel: "We Need to Survive First. After that Comes Popularity"

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar interviewed by Elliot Kaufman
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar marvels at how governments in the UK, France, Canada and Australia "came to the conclusion they need to recognize a Palestinian state now. In the beginning, it was supposed to be under certain conditions" - if the Palestinians would make peace. Instead, they made war, and "all conditions were forgotten." The states plan to make their recognition official in September.

Many Europeans "cannot understand that the Palestinians - all the factions - their ideology is to eliminate the Jewish state. It's a nice term, 'two-state solution.' First of all, you have a solution. But when you ask, 'Do you want a terror state?'" it becomes a different conversation.

In Gaza, "the real aid situation has improved dramatically. The prices of basic products that had been very expensive fell during the past weeks. And this is because the quantities that enter Gaza, mainly by trucks, and also by airdrops, are huge." Israel has had to facilitate the increase, knowing it is "sustaining Hamas's war machine."

"Of course we are in a very tough diplomatic battle. We are a small nation. We are standing against huge propaganda." But "take into consideration that the current reality comes after a consistent two years of war. I want to hope it won't last with the same temperature on calmer days. We will finish this war."

"We will not risk real interests for a temporary period of quiet and better PR. I still recall how Israel had great PR after the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005." It didn't last. Hamas took over and Israel is still paying the price, in diplomacy and in lives.

"We need to survive first. After that, there comes popularity and how much we are able to convince others around the world."

For Your Convenience, Package Delivered Not To You, But Halfway Across Town (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook and Substack pages.

Jerusalem, August 28 - The courier company tasked with getting the item you ordered into your possession announced today by text message and e-mail that, to improve your experience as a customer of the company from which you ordered that product, said product will be waiting for you at a pickup point that requires you either to walk for some time in the summer heat, or to spend additional money on transportation to get there to claim the order, instead of the hassle you might face by having the parcel dropped off at your home address, which you provided when you submitted the order.

HCC, the delivery company subcontracted to deliver the apparel that you ordered online two weeks ago, notified you this morning that the package is waiting for you at a refreshment shop and newsstand three neighborhoods over from yours, for you to collect at your convenience, provided that your convenience coincides with the establishment's operating hours, and tough luck if that forces you to take time off from your regular daytime commitments to collect it. This, the delivery company assured you in the same message, is to help you, as everyone knows the kind of trouble that occurs when a package gets delivered to the very address where you told the supplier you wanted it delivered.

"For your convenience, we have delivered your order to Hertzl's Makkolet, at 3 Yahalom Street," the notification read. The location necessitates a twenty-five-minute walk in the sun from your current location, or a twenty-two-minute journey by public transportation, which also requires waiting in the sun - there is no convenient parking in the area, and you do not own a car anyway.

The location differs form the pickup point for previous orders you submitted, albeit not from the same seller and not through the same website as this one. Those establishments, while also not your address, at least lie within normal walking distance, and in locations near those of errands you run with some frequency.

"Store hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays, closed on weekends," the message also stated. This added convenience will require you to clock out of your job to collect the delivery, since you work from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Your lunch break, which gets automatically deducted as thirty minutes if you do not clock out for it, will not provide enough time to get to Hertzl's Makkolet, collect the package, and return to your desk.

HCC also stated in the message that it will soon introduce further improvements to its services for your convenience, which, you assume, will include socks delivered to separate locations, at separate times, when you order them as a pair.

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Recently, the International Committee of the Red Cross released a perplexing document titled, "The Treatment of Detainees: From the Perspective of Islamic Law."

It lists 16 rules, most of which are derived from or somehow linked to Islamic sources, about how prisoners should be treated. The rules are:

Do not kill detainees

Treat detainees humanely at all times

Do not use detainees as human shields

Provide medical care to the detainees

Take detainees to a safe place after their capture

Feed and clothe the detainees

Allow the detainees to contact their families and receive visitors and messages

Do not publish the names and pictures of the detainees

Allow the detainees to practice their religion, without any compulsion

Detain women separately, with female guards

Hold children only where it is in their best interest

Release the detainees when the reasons for their detention cease to exist; or where the detaining party is unable to provide for their basic needs

Make a list of all detainees with their full name; date of birth; rank; service number; when and where they were captured; their state of health; and who is responsible for their detention.

Inform your superior when you take detainees.

Inform the ICRC about any detainees as soon as possible and allow the ICRC to visit the detainees and to speak to them in private

If a detainee dies, inform your superior, record how they died and where their remains are. If possible, inform their family and return their remains.

The choice of rules to highlight, and which ones not to mention (like the right to enslave or execute prisoners), makes it very clear that the ICRC curated this list to make it appear that they are supporting the Israeli hostages in Gaza. This isn't a list of Islamic rules - it is a list of ICRC-approved Islamic rules.

Every single one of these rules has been violated by Hamas and at first glance this appears to be a way for the ICRC to shame Hamas into treating the hostages humanely.

Except, it isn't.

Usually when an organization releases a new publication, they want people to know about it.

And yet....there was no press release. The ICRC did not even tweet about this booklet. It's been out for two weeks, and there has been no media coverage.

The book says things like:

The Qur’ān and the earliest Islamic historical literature (Sīrah) documented numerous examples of humane treatment that detainees received at the hands of the Companions of Prophet Muhammad. Follow these rules, make them known to your group, and report any violations to your superiors.

This makes it sound like the target audience is jihadists. Yet it is not available in Arabic or any other language that Islamists are likely to read.

So why was a booklet, ostensibly to teach Muslim hostage takers how they should act, published to begin with? It isn't a book for Muslims, it isn't a book for the human rights community, it isn't a book for the general public.

It is hard to escape the idea that the ICRC does not want this booklet to be publicized. They can shame Hamas into treating the hostages well by pointing out that they are violating Sharia law - and they don't. They will issue press releases slamming Israel, but not against Hamas.

The ICRC didn't publish this document to help the hostages. They did it so they can point to something when Jews complain about their inaction over the Gaza hostages. "Look! We published an entire book on Islam and detainee law!" they can say - when pushed. But they sore don't want anyone to read it, Muslims or not.

It sure looks more performative than helpful.

(h/t Irene)

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There have been a number of excellent detailed criticisms of the IPC report that claimed that parts of Gaza are now officially in a state of famine. The NCRI released two such reports, summarized here.

I found one major problem with the IPC report that I didn't see anyone else address.

The IPC made a remarkable claim: Gaza’s Ministry of Health (MoH) undercounts non-trauma deaths, especially those linked to hunger. This appears on pp. 22–23 of the IPC Famine Review Committee (FRC) report, and it serves as a crucial plank in their case that famine was already underway in Gaza Governorate.

The claim is not just weak. It is flatly contradicted by Hamas’ and the MoH's own behavior.

Every day, Hamas’ official Telegram channel publishes the alleged total number of starvation deaths in Gaza. These figures are trumpeted as evidence of deliberate Israeli “genocide.” Far from ignoring or downplaying non-trauma mortality, Hamas actively foregrounds it for propaganda purposes.

This is the opposite of what you would expect if the MoH were “failing to capture” malnutrition or disease deaths. In fact, the MoH has an incentive structure that strongly favors maximizing those figures. Starvation deaths are propaganda wins - why would they undercount them?

Yet the FRC writes that the MoH “focuses mainly on trauma-related deaths and fails to capture much of the non-traumatic mortality,” adding that “different analyses indicate that MoH data systematically underestimate overall mortality.”

And then, on page 25, the report made the key leap:

Direct evidence on nutrition-related mortality is not available. Indirect evidence suggests that deaths primarily due to undernutrition significantly exceed reported deaths. The MoH mortality counts are those that die in a health facility or whose body is taken to a health facility, missing deaths in the community.

In fact, the MoH takes pains to count deaths beyond those in hospitals. All of its social media ask that Gazans fill out forms for "martyrs" not known to the ministry. About 24% of their deaths counted are self-reported (12,914 as of the May 11 MoH report.) So here the FRC is quite provably wrong.

These indirect sources evidence indicate a much higher mortality rate than malnutrition deaths reported by the Ministry of Health, providing reasonable evidence that mortality thresholds for famine have been passed. The FRC considers the analysis team’s current classification (IPC Phase 5 Famine with reasonable evidence) to be plausible.

There is zero evidence that the MoH is undercounting starvation deaths by orders of magnitude necessary to justify the famine accusation.

If we take the MoH at its word, then 24% of all deaths in Gaza are not taken to hospitals. Presumably most of those are people who were killed instantly by bombs. Injured people don't stay home to die, and neither do people in danger of dying by starvation. We would expect close to 100% of the starvation deaths to happen in hospitals. The IPC's assumptions are way, way off.

But even their indirect evidence doesn't add up.

While the FRC paper does not give footnotes to the "indirect evidence" claims, the language strongly suggests that they are leaning on secondary studies - including Lancet analyses I’ve already dissected for their flaws, like the "capture-recapture" methodology that was wrong to begin with. Or studies that assume Hamas was telling the truth when it claimed that there were 11,000 missing in the rubble which turned out to be completely false. Or other studies that compare reported and unreported deaths in other wars, but do not account for the fact that Hamas is the source of all reported deaths and therefore its counts are not at all comparable to those of independent medical professionals or NGOs in other conflict zones.

The IPC did not explain why these fragile models were weighted more heavily than the MoH’s own daily reporting - reporting that, again, is biased toward inflation, not suppression. As we've seen countless times, many of the deaths blamed on starvation were in fact pre-existing medical conditions.

Mortality is the most decisive evidence in famine classification. When direct evidence is weak, IPC allows “reasonable evidence” to substitute. But here, the FRC crossed a line: it made the false assumption of undercounting part of its formal justification for declaring famine. They do not describe their "reasonable evidence" in ways that stand up to scrutiny, and the counter-evidence is not only available but also follows common sense - few people starve to death at home. Without these false and biased assumptions, the mortality data would not have come close to meeting famine thresholds.

This is not scientific caution. It is narrative-building.

The IPC’s famine declaration carries enormous weight in diplomacy, law, and media. That makes methodological rigor non-negotiable. Yet the FRC leaned on a claim that collapses under the most basic scrutiny: Hamas is not undercounting famine deaths. It is advertising them daily.

Until the IPC can produce independent, time-matched, probability-based mortality surveys that genuinely show undercounting, its conclusion should be treated as speculative. And if the famine finding depends on that speculation, then its credibility is compromised at the core.

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