Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, September 25, 2025

Palestinian "scholars" continue to try to erase Jewish history

We recently discussed Turkish president Erdogan's response to Netanyahu's bid to obtain the Siloam Inscription which shows Jewish presence in Jerusalem, building public works projects, in the 8th century BCE.

Now two Palestinian so-called scholars are claiming that there is nothing Jewish about the Siloam Inscription:

Palestinian historian Mohammed al-Marqatan, a specialist in ancient Near Eastern languages and civilizations, told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, "The uproar stirred up by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu over the Palestinian 'Silwan Inscription' is not new. It was sparked nearly three years ago, when we prevented the delivery of the inscription from Turkey to the occupying state. The inscription is Palestinian and does not prove any connection between the Hebrews and the Jews and it or to the occupied city of Jerusalem." Syrian-Palestinian researcher and historian residing in Canada, Tayseer Khalaf, told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, "The language of the inscription is Canaanite, and it does not mention the Hebrews or King Hezekiah."

These "experts" are ignoring the main evidence: the language is Hebrew and has Hebrew-specific features, specifically Benjaminite Hebrew. It consistently uses the "ha" prefix for "the" which was not consistent in other Canaanite dialects, the "vav" prefix to change from future to past tense used expensively in the Torah,

Their denial that this is Hebrew and simply calling it "Canaanite" or even the mythical "Palestinian" id political. All scholars agree that this is a specific Hebrew dialect. The Palestinian "experts" are free to publish their own papers showing their research, but of course they won't because they'd be laughed out of their fields.

For those interested, here is Grok AI's discussion of how to know that the inscription is Hebrew.

While the Siloam Inscription's language is firmly rooted in the Canaanite family of Northwest Semitic languages (sharing script, core vocabulary, and grammar with dialects like Phoenician and Moabite), it exhibits several distinctive features that align it specifically with Biblical Hebrew—particularly a regional dialect from the border areas of ancient Judah and Israel (e.g., Benjaminite or Israelian Hebrew). These "unique" elements aren't absolute inventions of Hebrew but innovations or consistent usages that set it apart from contemporary Canaanite relatives. Below, I'll highlight key specifics from the inscription's text, drawing on epigraphic analysis. I've focused on grammar, morphology, and lexicon, with direct quotes or references to lines.Grammatical and Morphological FeaturesThese reflect Hebrew's evolved syntax and verb/noun forms, which are more standardized than in Phoenician (often simpler and without a definite article) or Moabite (which shares some but lacks Hebrew's narrative chaining).

Feature	Specific Example from Inscription	Why Unique to Hebrew?
Definite article ha- (הַ)	Used throughout, e.g., הַנְּקִבָּה (ha-nəqibbâ, "the tunnel," lines 1–4); הַגַּרְזֶן (ha-garzen, "the pickaxe," line 3); הַצּוּר (ha-tsur, "the rock," line 8); הַמַּיִם (ha-mayim, "the waters," line 14); הַבְּרֵכָה (ha-bereikhah, "the pool," line 15).	Hebrew consistently prefixes ha- to nouns for definiteness, a hallmark absent in early Phoenician (which relies on context) and inconsistent in Moabite. This creates a precise, article-driven style typical of Biblical Hebrew narratives.
Waw-consecutive (וַ prefix for narrative past tense)	וְזֶה הָיָה (wə-zeh hâyâ, "and this was," line 2); וַיֵּלְכוּ (wayyēlkû, "and [the waters] flowed," line 14).	This chaining of verbs with waw- (turning imperfective to past narrative) is a signature of Hebrew prose, more elaborate than in Phoenician (which uses simpler sequences) or Moabite (seen sporadically in the Mesha Stele but without Hebrew's fluidity). It mirrors biblical storytelling, e.g., Genesis.
Feminine singular suffix-conjugation ending -ât on verbs	הָיָת (hâyât, "it was [fem., referring to the tunnel]," line 3, reconstructed as such).	This dialectal ending (-ât instead of standard -â) is a Benjaminite/Israelian Hebrew trait, paralleled in biblical texts like Leviticus 25:21 but rare in Phoenician and only sporadically in Moabite (e.g., Mesha Stele). It marks a northern Judahite influence.

Lexical and Dialectal FeaturesCertain words or forms are regionally Hebrew-specific, tied to Judahite/Israelite culture and geography, distinguishing them from broader Canaanite terms.

Feature	Specific Example from Inscription	Why Unique to Hebrew?
Dialectal form of "his fellow" as rēʿô	רֵעֵהוּ (rēʿēhû, lines 4, 7, 12—but epigraphically vocalized as rēʿô with short ô).	Standard Biblical Hebrew uses rēʿēhû, but this contracted rēʿô is a Benjaminite dialectal marker (seen in Jeremiah 6:21), absent in Phoenician or Moabite equivalents. It reflects local Judah-Israel border speech.
Term for "water-source" as mōṣāʾ	מַּיִם מִן הַמּוֹצָא (mayim min ha-mōṣāʾ, "waters from the source," line 14).	This lexeme (mōṣāʾ, "outflow" or "spring source") is geographically limited to Benjaminite Hebrew contexts (e.g., 2 Kings 2:21 for Jericho's spring), not found in Phoenician trade vocab or Moabite royal inscriptions. It ties directly to Jerusalem's Gihon Spring engineering.
Word for "deviation/fissure" as zēda	זִדָה (zidâ, "deviation," line 8).	Likely an Israelian Hebrew innovation for "crack" or "split" in rock (related to biblical zādâ "rebel/deviate"), not attested in Phoenician or Moabite; it may echo Samaritan Aramaic influences in the region.
Term for "tunnel" as nəqibbâ	הַנְּקִבָּה (ha-nəqibbâ, "the tunnel," lines 1–4).	Derived from the root nqb ("pierce"), this feminine noun form is a Hebrew-specific usage for conduits, paralleling biblical maqōr but with a Judahite engineering connotation; Phoenician uses ḥrp for digging without this precision.

These features collectively "Hebrew-ize" the text, embedding it in the cultural and linguistic world of the Kingdom of Judah around 700 BCE—evident in its alignment with biblical accounts like 2 Kings 20:20. While Canaanite parallels exist (e.g., shared roots like ḥṣb "cut" in line 11's ḥōṣəbīm), the inscription's dialectal nuances (especially the three to four Benjaminite traits) make it unmistakably Hebrew, not a generic Canaanite relic. For deeper dives, epigraphists like Gary Rendsburg emphasize how these reflect a transitional dialect between Judah and northern Israel.

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

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In December 1991, the European Community - today’s EU - adopted a landmark declaration on recognition of new states. It was written for the post-Communist world, but its principles were supposed to be universal: recognition was not automatic, but conditional. To be recognized, a state had to prove it was democratic, respected minorities, settled disputes peacefully, accepted existing borders, and contributed to regional stability.

Those weren’t abstractions. They were applied in practice. Croatia, for example, desperately wanted European recognition in 1991. The EC held back until Croatia amended its constitution to guarantee minority rights, specifically protections for its Serb population. Europe insisted: no guarantees, no recognition.

Fast forward to 2024–2025. Several EU states are rushing to recognize a “State of Palestine.” And how many conditions did they impose?

None. Not one.

The EC Guidelines vs. “Palestine”

EC Guideline (1991)	Where “Palestine” Fails
Must be “constituted on a democratic basis, with respect for the rule of law, democracy and human rights.”	No national elections since 2005/2006; Gaza ruled by Hamas after a violent coup; both PA and Hamas are cited for human-rights abuses.
Guarantees for minorities (CSCE standards).	No enforceable protections; reports of persecution of critics, women, religious minorities, and LGBT persons.
Respect for frontiers, changed “only by peaceful means and by common agreement.”	Borders remain unsettled; recognition today presumes “1967 lines” (really 1949 armistice lines from Arab war of aggression) without agreement.
Commitment to settle disputes by negotiation/arbitration.	Oslo explicitly reserves final status for negotiation, yet recognition rewards avoiding negotiations.
Acceptance of disarmament and regional stability.	Hamas maintains a private army of rockets and tunnels, openly committed to ongoing war.
Commitment “in good faith” to a peaceful process.	One faction (PA) negotiates; the other (Hamas) categorically rejects coexistence.
“Will not recognize entities … result of aggression.”	Gaza’s rulers came to power through violent seizure in 2007 and continue to rule by force.
No territorial claims or hostile propaganda against neighbors.	Palestinian law and media still assert a “right of return” that would dissolve Israel, and hostile propaganda is routine.
Take account of effects on neighbors.	Recognition destabilizes Israel’s security and weakens incentives for negotiated peace.
Recognition must follow “normal standards of international practice.”	Palestine lacks unified, effective territorial control and constitutional order.

The missing conditions

Croatia was forced to prove it could safeguard its Serb minority before recognition. The Baltic states had to demonstrate functioning democratic institutions. Armenia and Azerbaijan were judged on their willingness to resolve disputes peacefully.

With “Palestine,” the opposite approach prevails: recognition is given up front, unconditionally, despite the absence of elections, the split between West Bank and Gaza, the dominance of an armed faction in Gaza, the lack of settled borders, and ongoing rejection of Israel’s legitimacy by one (really, both) of the two governments in power.

Europe once declared recognition was a reward for good behavior. Today, when it comes to the Palestinians, recognition is offered as a consolation prize for bad behavior - and as a weapon against Israel.

That is the point. The EU’s 1991 Guidelines were meant to prevent recognition from becoming a political gimmick. Yet when it comes to the Palestinians, the very same states that once forced Croatia to rewrite its constitution now don’t even bother to ask for elections, human-rights guarantees, or peaceful commitments.

Recognition without conditions isn’t just hypocrisy. It is the abandonment of the very standards Europe once claimed were essential for peace.

This isn't "pro-Palestinian." It doesn't help any Palestinians, or even Gazans, one bit, and arguably makes things worse. Like the entire "pro-Palestine" movement, it isn't pro-Palestinian at all - just anti-Israel.

(h/t Irene)

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

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Mahmoud Abbas ended his address to the UN High-level International Conference for Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and Implementation of the Two-State Solution with a message to Jews for Rosh Hashanah: " I wish all Jews around the world a happy New Year on the occasion of Rosh Hashanah."

He did this while wearing a in with a key symbolizing his desire for Israel to accept millions of Palestinian "refugees" and destroy the Jewish state.

But it wasn't the cynicism that struck Arabs. A greeting to Jews is considered to be the worst thing one can do.

Here are all the comments on X to Al Hadath's tweet upset about the greeting:

I seek refuge in Allah from humiliation and lack of dignity.
This prostrate one is a danger to Palestine more than the Jews.
Isn't it time for this failure to step down?
Is this a Palestinian???? Congratulating those who killed your people!!!! Shame and destruction.
You are a disgrace to the entire Islamic nation.
May God uglify your face and resurrect you with them, you cuckold, you coward.
Agent, son of a dog.
Stupid man.
You are on the religion of Judaism.
A living example of prostitution, humiliation, and degradation.
I am confused; should I cry or laugh?! There is no power and no strength except with Allah the Most High, the Almighty.
This is an impudent animal, pig.
A black year on you and on the Zionists, O Lord.

Can we finally drop the idea that Arabs aren't antisemitic, but only "anti-Zionist"?

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

09/24 Links: U.S. recognition of Judea, Samaria needed to get hostages back; Tinkerbell Statehood; 22 wounded as Houthi drone from Yemen hits Eilat

From Ian:

Eugene Kontorovich: U.S. recognition of Judea, Samaria needed to get hostages back

The legal case for recognition is strong. Judea and Samaria was part of Mandatory Palestine, which became Israel in 1948. When Jordan and its allies invaded to prevent the creation of a Jewish state, they occupied the territory, renamed it the West Bank and expelled the Jewish population. Still, such aggressive conquest does not redraw borders. These places have now been under Israeli control for nearly 60 years, and repeated offers of sovereignty to the Palestinians have been turned down.

Mr. Trump had not planned to act on the Judea and Samaria issue now, but Mr. Macron and company have forced his hand. Palestinian terrorist factions are aware of Israel’s overwhelming military superiority. Their cause is kept alive by the belief that international pressure will break the Zionists, which is why they are so entranced with analogies to South Africa and French Algeria.

An American reaction is necessary to ensure the very survival of its key Middle Eastern ally. The long-term goal of recognition by U.N. Security Council permanent members France and Britain is to provide a basis for future resolutions imposing sanctions and boycotts on Israel, which a Democratic president may not veto, following the precedent of Barack Obama.

Mr. Trump considered recognizing Israeli sovereignty in his first term but chose to defer it to pursue the Abraham Accords. Now, to continue expanding the accords, he must end the war in Gaza, which requires new carrots and sticks. Just as the first-term recognition of Jerusalem and the Golan set the stage for the Abraham Accords, a recognition of Judea and Samaria will create the preconditions for their expansion.

To be sure, Arab states are threatening to walk back their relations with Israel if it applies its law fully to areas of Judea and Samaria. Still, if America legitimizes Israel’s move, Arab capitals will not seek conflict with Washington over a symbolic issue. In any case, Mr. Trump can rightly tell Arab states to address their complaints to Paris and London.

Dave Rich: Tinkerbell Statehood

And yet, despite almost eighty years of trying, efforts to make two states a reality have repeatedly failed; and not enough people are asking why, eighty years on, it still hasn’t worked as a proposed solution.

It’s easy enough to think of the reasons why the basic land-for-peace premise of the Two State Solution has been repeatedly rejected by one or other of the parties to this conflict. Fear, mistrust, extremism and messianism, grievances and hatreds, all play a role. At times this is driven by political leaders, and sometimes it comes from the Israeli and Palestinian populations themselves. There are numerous examples of deals that seemed perfectly reasonable to outsiders being rejected by the protagonists (Yasser Arafat was especially guilty of this). It is counterintuitive to suggest that Palestinians and Israelis don’t want to live in peace - of course they do - but that is different from being willing to accept what is being offered as part of the package. However difficult and painful this conflict has been, it seems that many Israelis and Palestinians believe they have more to lose by paying the price that peace would involve, than what it would cost to keep hold of what they currently have (whether this involves holding on to land, or to security, or refusing to give up the hope they can still secure total victory and all of the land for themselves in the future).

But rather than doing the hard work of truly understanding, at a profound level, what motivates the decision making of Palestinian and Israeli politicians and publics, instead the international community of diplomats, governments, journalists and NGOs assume that they just need another push and this time it will work.

You don’t have to be a pessimist to question this approach. I fear that this latest initiative falls into the same trap of asking “How”, rather than “Why”: how can we make two states happen, rather than asking why has it never happened previously.

I’ve felt for decades that the Two State Solution offers Israelis and Palestinians the best chance of a peaceful future in which they control their own destinies, in their own nation states; but I’m not naïve enough to imagine that it is remotely achievable with conditions as they are right now. At the same time, I don’t see any other options that could work either. The Two State Solution may be impossible, but it is still less impossible than any alternative plan that is moral, legal and viable.

Instead of pretending that the international community can imagine a Two State Solution into being, those who want to make it a reality would do better to try working out what steps need to be taken to help Israelis and Palestinians reach a place where a permanent peace between them is even imaginable. Perhaps the formal step of recognising Palestine is supposed to be a step on that road; but on its own, it has as much chance of bringing a Two State Solution to fruition as all those previous efforts that came to nought.

09/22 Links Pt2: The West is sliding into an anti-Semitic abyss; The Fight Inside Amnesty International over Its Hamas Report; Antisemites are trying to hijack Charlie Kirk’s legacy

From Ian:

The West is sliding into an anti-Semitic abyss

Ultimately, though, Wallis Simons believes that it was Tony Blair’s landslide election victory in 1997, and the dramatic culture-shift that subsequently took place throughout British society, that provided fertile ground in which toxic anti-Semitic attitudes could slowly take root. Suddenly, minority cults, once consigned to the margins of British society, took centre-stage in the nation’s culture wars. He quotes a telling observation made by the writer Douglas Murray in an interview for The Brink: “People have treated themselves to completely absurd ideologies, which are all reliant on a set of presuppositions which are not supported by the ideology they’ve fallen into. Things like human rights, things like tolerance, things like freedom.”

Wallis Simons is particularly critical of what he calls the cult of “centrist fundamentalism”, by which he means the well-meaning but ill-informed liberal elites who appear more interested in promoting minority groups and their views than upholding the long-standing traditions that have forged the nation’s character over many centuries. He argues, for example, that even though Muslims account for just 6 to 7 per cent of the UK’s population, too many national institutions are more likely to respect Islamic holy events such as Ramadan than they are Christmas and Easter. In such a climate, it’s unsurprising that anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiments have replaced, as the norm, traditional British values such as tolerance and freedom from persecution. The result has been a staggering increase in anti-Semitic activity, with 121 incidents of assault reported in Britain in 2024, together with a 246 per cent rise in vandalism and an astonishing 465 per cent spike in anti-Semitism at universities.

One of the most compelling passages in Wallis Simons’s book is when he interviews young Israeli conscripts charged with the daunting task of doing battle with Hamas fanatics hiding in the complex network of tunnels the terror group had constructed beneath Gaza. Rather than complaining about their lot, the phrase these Israelis often used to justify their commitment to defending their country was “this is our shift”: they had no alternative but to tackle the jihadists who threatened their country’s very existence. Indeed, their commitment to defending their homeland echoes the sentiments of Golda Meir, the redoubtable Israeli wartime leader who once remarked: “If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel.”

Yet, instead of making any serious effort to understand why the atrocities committed on October 7 are regarded by many Jews as an existential event, there appears to be more interest in the West in absorbing Hamas propaganda. This is particularly the case on social-media platforms such as TikTok, where recent research has found that, since the 2023 attack, there have been 52 videos that are pro-Hamas or pro-Palestine for every one that’s supportive of the Israeli cause.

While Wallis Simons ranges widely to show how the modern cult of self-loathing has taken root in Western democracies, he can sometimes stray too far from his central theme: how this relates to the re-emergence of anti-Semitism as a threat to 21st-century Jews. No problem could be more urgent. At the end of the Second World War, when the true horrors of the Holocaust were revealed to the outside world, the cry “never again” became a familiar refrain for those determined to ensure history was never allowed to repeat itself. By deliberately choosing the same phrase as the title for his new book, Wallis Simons is making a direct appeal to both political leaders and ordinary men and women: they need to respond “to this great emergency” by “jumping to their feet” and confronting, once again, anti-Semitism’s curse.

Never Again is published by Constable at £20. To order your copy for £16.99, call 0330 173 5030 or visit Telegraph Books

When ‘as a Jew’ actually means “against the Jews’

In my article on who gets to define antisemitism, I wrote about Hannah and her fellow antizionist Jews like Ben Platt and Ilana Glazer who have enjoyed successful careers off their Jewish identities yet jump at every opportunity to denounce the Jewish state in their desperation to be seen by their liberal comrades as ‘good Jews’. Meanwhile, visibly Jewish couples are gunned down in the streets, synagogues in London are defaced with faeces, Holocaust survivors are firebombed and Jewish families on holiday are mauled by dogs, all whilst hearing the chants of “Free Palestine” as the underscore to the horror and violence unleashed on them.

Predictably, following the backlash from Hannah’s Emmy speech, she posted a photo of some pickles on Instagram with the caption, “something ACTUALLY Jewish to cleanse the stories”. To quote the brilliant author Ben Freeman, “American reflections of Jewish identity have reduced 3,200 years of Jewish civilisation to a smoked salmon bagel and a punchline”. As the “as a Jew” Jews like Hannah live their Jewish identities through pickles, it seems as though the rest of us who recite thousand-year-old prayers for the land of Israel in shul, wear kippot and send our children to Jewish schools are left on our own to deal with the violent and antisemitic actions of the pro-Palestine movement.

I want to send an open and clear message to the Jewish people around Hannah, to encourage her to stop speaking on behalf of a community that she is happy to profit off and endanger in equal measure, but I would imagine that if she has any Jews around her at all they will be of the same pickled mindset, only affirming their Jewish identities through jars of Mrs Elswood.

When I walk to shul this Rosh Hashanah, greeting the extra security we have outside the synagogue gates to stop the lunatics from massacring us all in the name of peace and liberation, I’ll think of Hannah munching on a kosher dill pickle, looking out of her million dollar apartment and wondering why the bearded man across the street has a ram’s horn in his mouth.

I should finish by saying that all of the words in this article are from me. Not on behalf of an entire diverse multifaceted community but on behalf of one Jewish person who will not remove his Magen David necklace or his kippah when he walks to shul on a Friday night, even if that means being attacked in the name of peace.

The Fight Inside Amnesty International over Its Hamas Report

As the second anniversary of the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre approaches, Amnesty International, the Nobel Prize–winning human rights monitor, has still not published a long-delayed report on the atrocity—and faces internal resistance to doing so, according to internal Amnesty emails and other documents obtained by The Free Press.

In the works for well over a year, but long since superseded by media reports and other NGO publications, Amnesty’s report is now set for release “in the coming weeks,” an Amnesty spokesperson says.

Yet a faction within Amnesty has waged a last-ditch effort to persuade the group’s senior leaders not to publish the report, arguing that even a belated acknowledgment of Hamas’s crimes might help Israel in the court of public opinion.

“Our concern is about timing and impact,” Usman Hamid, the section director for Amnesty in Indonesia, emailed the organization’s top officials on August 8. “The situation in Gaza is at a peak of humanitarian crisis, famine is unfolding, and the Israeli security cabinet has just approved plans for full occupation. In this climate, there is a real risk the report could be used to divert attention from the current crisis or justify ongoing genocide.”

Seydi Gassama, section director for Senegal, echoed that view the same day. “The situation in Gaza is getting worse,” he wrote in an email. “This decision will worsen the humanitarian crisis and loss of lives. We urge the [international secretariat] to reconsider the timing of the publication of the report as it may be used by Israel to justify its actions.”

Such blatant politicization of what is supposedly an impartial human rights reporting process stunned even critics who have long seen anti-Israel bias in Amnesty’s coverage of the Middle East. The group has produced a 2022 report finding Israel guilty of apartheid and another in 2024 accusing it of genocide in Gaza.

Invective about alleged Israeli atrocities dominates the X feed of Amnesty’s secretary general, Agnes Callamard, and of other Amnesty officials and staff. Earlier this year, the organization suspended its Israeli chapter after some members publicly dissented from the genocide accusation.

“You can see the bias when the organization only holds space for the suffering of one group of people in a conflict,” says a former Amnesty employee who requested anonymity because of the topic’s sensitivity.

“This is what happens when you make human rights work more of a work about narrative,” says Yariv Mohar, former co-director of Amnesty’s now-defunct Israel section.

Don’t buy Israeli-haters’ lies about reporter deaths in Gaza

An enormous number of these “journalists” have been identified as either closely affiliated with Hamas, or outright Hamas militants.

Reporters Without Borders mourned the death of “journalist” Abdullah al-Jamal, a freelance reporter who wrote occasionally for Al Jazeera.

He was killed when Israeli special forces stormed his home, where he was keeping three hostages.

Nevertheless, The Guardian included al-Jamal in a photo spread of murdered Palestinian journalists.

Anas al-Sharif’s video reporting for Al Jazeera made him the “face of the war in Gaza,” per CNN.

His death in August 2025 was met by an international outcry.

But Israel provided substantial evidence that al-Sharif was an active member of Hamas and, in fact, a cell leader in a guided-rocket platoon.

He was photographed being embraced by former Hamas commander Yahya Sinwar.

Fact is, if you’re reporting from Gaza, chances are high that you’re somehow in bed with Hamas, either as a collaborator or a soldier using a “Press” vest as cover.

And that’s been true even before the war: The Foreign Press Association, the oldest and largest organization for foreign correspondents, has long protested the pressure and threats of violence that Hamas routinely imposes on visiting journalists.

In a 2014 statement, the FPA denounced the “blatant, incessant, forceful and unorthodox” methods that Hamas uses to control the dissemination of information in and out of Gaza.

Professionals who’ve worked in the region know that Hamas, a totalitarian regime, will not permit “neutral” observers (or even aid workers) to exist in Gaza.

The Hamas propaganda machine has been running full steam since Oct. 7, with the assistance of its Fifth Column in the West.

It has promulgated lies about the bombing of hospitals, the targeting of children, the outbreak of famine, massacres at aid sites and a “genocidal” death toll 10 times larger than what Hamas itself reports.

The fog of war inevitably generates uncertainty, and that is no different in Gaza.

But outright lies such as Hasan’s about the unprecedented deaths of journalists in Gaza shine so brightly that they offer a beacon by which we can begin to discern truth.

09/22 Links Pt1: Keir Starmer has emboldened the enemies of humanity; Hamas publishes propaganda video of hostage Alon Ohel; Hamas lauds recognition of Palestinian state

From Ian:

Brendan O'Neill: Keir Starmer has emboldened the enemies of humanity

In his statement, Starmer raged against Israel as well as pleasing Hamas. He slammed Israel’s ‘relentless and increasing bombardment of Gaza’. Its actions are ‘utterly intolerable’, he said, and they ‘horrif[y] all of us’. To shame and ridicule an ally as it fights an existential war against the racist militia that invaded its lands and killed its people – what an ignominious new low in British foreign policy. This is surely the most morally abject foreign-policy decision a British prime minister has made since Chamberlain. The nations of the world now know: if you are invaded and pillaged by a 6,000-strong army of terrorists, if your women are raped and your people are murdered, Britain will not have your back. Britain will betray you.

For Starmer to lay into Israel and please Hamas is an act of geopolitical suicide. It harms us as well as our one-time friends in the Jewish State. Violent Islamism is a menace across Europe. Anything that appeases these dreamers of a Caliphate, these soldiers of bigotry who long to punish ‘infidels’, is a calamity for the West, too. Starmer has exposed the soft, yellow underbelly of our own lost and timorous societies, unwittingly inviting other Islamists to seek ‘fruit’ from acts of violence. To advertise one’s penchant for appeasement in an era of profound moral and physical conflict is a folly of incalculable proportions.

Just who is Starmer speaking for when he decrees a new State of Palestine should exist? It’s not ordinary Brits. A new poll has found that nearly nine in 10 Britons oppose the recognition of Palestine without conditions. They clearly see the risk and the lunacy of giving a state to a terror army before it has released the Jews it kidnapped and laid down the arms with which it dreams of destroying the Jewish nation. No, the ‘domestic political pressure’ Starmer is responding to comes from the Palestine obsessives of his own party and his own class – that keffiyeh-adorned section of society that has convinced itself Israel is a demonic entity. This is the most unforgivable thing about his appeasing antics: he has sacrificed our alliance with the world’s only Jewish nation at the altar of the narrowest political expediency; in the name not of democracy but of placating the irrational Israelophobia of a noisy and bigoted minority.

We are still failing the moral test of 7 October. Our societies still fail to appreciate the enormity of the civilisational clash that was birthed by that historically cruel assault on the Jews. Our leaders still dither and appease and fantasise that the violent haters of the West can be pacified with pieces of political fruit. Israel will continue to fight against Hamas regardless of what Starmer and the rest say. It’s us, the Western world, I am worried about.

Mike Pompeo: Recognizing a Palestinian State Will Only Perpetuate a Cycle of Violence

Europe helped draft the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute. Yet some governments now propose recognizing a Palestinian state led by authorities who openly violate both. The price of being naïve about the Palestinian Authority is too high – and is paid in blood.

In a recent exchange with Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot claimed, in defense of the planned recognition, that the PA had ended its “Pay-for-Slay” program. This is wrong. Enshrined in law, the program provides generous monthly “salaries” to over 40,000 imprisoned terrorists, released terrorists, and families of “martyrs.” Regular payments have gone out as recently as September 3rd. It is fantasy to believe that the PA wolf has turned into a lamb.

In the face of clear evidence of the program’s continued existence, pretending otherwise puts France and other European nations in stark contrast with the United States, which recently revoked visas for Palestinian Authority officials. It also means violating international law that makes the incentivized targeting of civilians a crime.

Pledges to recognize a state underscore exasperation with the continued conflict in Gaza. But recognition under the PA would not advance peace or prosperity; it would entrench Palestinians — and Europe itself — into deeper cycles of terrorism and instability.

The problem is not Palestinian statehood in principle, but in the character of those currently positioned to govern it. Recognizing a state under the current PA would reinforce a societal architecture of violence with serious implications for Europe. Proposed plans include granting the PA more power to distribute aid and lead recovery and reconstruction efforts in Gaza, but offer no actionable measures to reform the PA. These moves are reminiscent of the Oslo Accords which failed to deliver responsible governance or civil society.

The PA’s “pay-for-slay” system illustrates the problem. Its budget dwarfs welfare spending, while wasting money and prioritizing and encouraging terrorism over genuine economic needs. This is especially stark because the Palestinians are by far the largest per capita recipient of aid in the world. Coupled with the glorification of terrorists in schools and media, this ensures young Palestinians remain locked in hostility toward Israel rather than offered a future.

The radicalization in Gaza and the West Bank poses dangers far beyond the Middle East – a danger Europe knows all too well. Granting legitimacy to the leaders who foster this indoctrination strengthens their ideology, allowing it to continue spreading beyond the region. Even more troubling, many PA officials are bona fide terrorists who would receive diplomatic status and international mobility. Recognition under such conditions would betray Europe’s progressive values and endorse the militarization of civilian society.

Gaza genocide claims are based on skewed facts, sometimes deliberately, says study author

Less than three months after Hamas touched off the ongoing Gaza war on October 7, 2023, South Africa initiated proceedings against Israel at the International Court of Justice, alleging that the Jewish state was perpetrating a genocide against the Palestinian residents of the territory.

Since then, numerous organizations have accused Israel of committing the same crime, most recently a UN commission of inquiry, as well as two Israeli nonprofits, and a group calling itself the International Association of Genocide Scholars.

Earlier this month, four Israeli researchers issued a 300-page report published by Bar-Ilan University’s Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (BESA) that seeks to refute the genocide allegations.

The authors include military historians Prof. Danny Orbach of the Hebrew University and Dr. Yagil Henkin of Shalem College and the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy, independent scholar and quantitative analysis expert Dr. Jonathan Boxman, and lawyer Jonathan Braverman, an expert in international humanitarian law.

The study focused to a large degree on the most damaging charge against Israel: That it has deliberately starved the civilian population of Gaza by restricting aid.

These allegations have been the focus of international legal proceedings against Jerusalem and subsequently formed the foundation for the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant.

But the study also highlights what the authors say is a glaring omission in such proceedings: Hamas’s use of civilian infrastructure in Gaza, without which Israel’s military actions cannot be understood.

Speaking to The Times of Israel, Orbach, the primary author of the study, noted that the charge of genocide, which requires deliberate intent to destroy a group of people, is untenable in light of Israeli actions to reduce civilian casualties — even if the IDF didn’t try to minimize collateral damage 100 percent of the time, and even if such actions weren’t always effective.

Orbach argued that to prove genocide, Israel’s accusers would have to demonstrate that it had sought to maximize civilian casualties.

The facilitation of “unprecedented levels” of humanitarian aid, warnings given before impending attacks, and implementation of protocols designed to reduce civilian casualties make that case impossible, he said, adding that the genocide allegations have frequently been based on false and erroneous data.