Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, November 28, 2023

11/28 Links Pt1: Israel, Hamas, and the Spirit of 1948; Ten Israeli hostages freed as Hamas breaks ceasefire in Gaza; Heartbreak in Tel Aviv

From Ian:

John Podhoretz: Heartbreak in Tel Aviv

I’m in Tel Aviv and have only been here for about 24 hours, so my impressions are just that—impressions. But walking the streets on Monday night and Tuesday morning and afternoon, the overwhelming feeling is one of heartbreak. Not mine—no, it’s as though the emotion of heartbreak is somehow present in the air of this usually vibrant, often chaotic-seeming city. And that seems to be the case even though Israelis, as far as I can tell, are finding a measure of relief in the release of the hostages that began a few days ago, which they have not experienced since October 7.

Ask people here how things have been since that day and they say the feeling is unlike any they’ve ever known. What does that mean exactly? I think it means very different things to different people, but the common thread seems to be that everyone is experiencing what might be called a personal crisis of national confidence.

The story of Israel, despite the wars and the strife, is a story of building and creation. A hundred years ago, Tel Aviv was a town of 15,000 people. That town is now home to 435,000, and sits in the midst of a metropolitan area 4 million strong. Through decades rife with political maelstroms and economic reversals and ideological spats, Israel has simply gotten bigger and more competent and stronger and become a more desirable and prosperous place to live. My sense is Israelis, no matter how slightingly they have spoken of the economy’s inequalities and the disgracefulness of its politicians, nonetheless swell with pride at their own place as a living and breathing element inside one of the world’s most purposeful countries—a place they hold in part because so many of them serve in the military as their first acts of adulthood.

Because security is a paramount concern, and because security is so much a part of Israel’s national identity, the collapse of that sense of security on October 7—and the collapse of the security itself—has been devastating. Blame it on whomever you choose. There’s Bibi, because he’s been the person in charge since January (and was in charge from 2009 to 2021). There are the political leaders that preceded him in government in 2021 and 2022, who also failed to pick up the signals that Hamas was planning something very big and very clever. There’s the active military, which apparently thought a chain-link fence would suffice as a border. There are the officials in the chain of command who dismissed the eyewitness warnings literally sent to them from the soldiers—women, mostly—who served in the watchtowers overseeing Gaza over the course of 2023 that there was mischief afoot. There are the once-vaunted and legendary intelligence services, which almost certainly were being fed false info by fake spies that lulled the government into a false sense of complacency.

Seth Mandel: Israel, Hamas, and the Spirit of 1948

On Oct. 6, Eilat was a town of 50,000 residents. Less than two months later it is currently at about 110,000, unofficially. The resort town in Israel’s south has become an absorption center for Israelis all over the country whose own towns were evacuated in the wake of the attacks.

Some of those were “routine” evacuations—towns in the north in range of Hezbollah rockets. (As strange as it is to consider such an evacuation “routine.”) But others are as far from normal as Israelis have ever dealt with. Sderot, a community of 30,000 near Gaza that has become synonymous with living under the threat of rocket fire, is a ghost town. Because the threat isn’t “just” rockets anymore.

Nir Oz, the kibbutz that lost nearly a quarter of its residents to Hamas’s bloodlust on Oct. 7, has existed in one form or another for almost as long as the state of Israel has. Kfar Azza is even older than Nir Oz. Be’eri was founded in 1946 to enable Israelis to repel an Egyptian invasion. These places represent the ideal of the chalutzim—Jews, often fleeing nearby Arab states, willing to move to Israel’s sentry towns.

And now they are empty.

This occurred in the state’s early years too. Occasionally a community would be forced to relocate temporarily for its own safety. But soon that stopped happening.

Until it happened again on Oct. 7, 2023.

This is crucial to understanding Israel’s stated resolve to fight this war until it is won. The current conflict isn’t just a more-intense version of, say, the 2014 outbreak of violence in and around Gaza. The difference isn’t one of degree; it is one of kind.

This is obvious to Israelis, even as Westerners are largely oblivious to it. “It was a shocking moment because it felt like it was a scene from 1948,” Einat Barzilai, a writer, told the Times of Israel two days after the attack.

JPost Editorial: Finish the job

While there are questions about how many hostages Hamas can actually produce – dozens, if not more, are reportedly being held by other terrorist groups and perhaps even private individuals in Gaza – so long as the group is indeed able to hand over hostages, Israel should keep this arrangement going, provided it does not impair the IDF’s ability to continue the military campaign once the pause ends.

Israel launched this campaign with two stated goals: toppling Hamas and bringing the hostages home. Military leaders had been supportive of the initial four-day pause in hostilities, saying that not only would it not undermine the army’s ability to continue its efforts against Hamas – it would actually facilitate them. This appears to hold true for the additional two days, as well.

Israel must finish the job
In Israel’s understanding, its two goals are mutually reinforcing: it is the military campaign against Hamas that applied the pressure necessary to force the group to start freeing the hostages – and it is the release of the hostages and the transfer of humanitarian aid to Gaza in the context of the deal that will enable the campaign against Hamas to continue once the pause concludes.

Our message is simple: Israel should finish the job: Both jobs.

Israel should continue to do whatever is necessary – and within the bounds of what its military leaders determine is bearable – to free the hostages so long as the pause continues, and it should be prepared to immediately relaunch its military effort to eradicate Hamas’s capacity to carry out a massacre like October 7 ever again.

In so doing, Israel’s leaders will fulfill their commitment to the people of the Jewish state and bring this painful episode to its natural conclusion.

At the end of the Gaza War’s first half, Israel’s position is strong

Israel negotiated from strength
While all Israelis want the hostages back, not all support the dangerous trade. Yet the War Cabinet, the full Cabinet and the Knesset all backed the deal. While opponents of the deal claim that Israel negotiated from a position of weakness, the exact opposite is true. Israel negotiated the hostage deal from a position of great strength.

First, the IDF is one of the world’s strongest militaries. It is absolutely destroying Hamas, with only a portion of its military might. Israel and Hamas both understand well that a four-day pause does little to change Israel’s overall strategic advantage on the battlefield, even if Hamas manages to regroup and rearm.

Israel’s moral superiority
Second, in placing such a high value on retrieving its hostages, Israel has once again demonstrated its moral superiority. While Hamas values martyrdom and a culture of death, Israel values life, and will risk life and limb to save one of its own. That is a message being heard loud and clear inside Gaza, where civilians recognize that Hamas has invited death and destruction into the Strip, and does little to protect its residents.

It is a message that is reverberating around the world as well. The return of Israeli hostages to the headlines reminds the international community that Israel was severely victimized on Oct. 7 by a brutal terror organization.

That Hamas has been essentially forced to give up 50-70 of its bargaining chips for only 4-6 days of pause in the fighting demonstrates how desperate a situation Hamas is actually in.

Netanyahu shames Hamas in Gaza
Adding insult to injury for Hamas was a surprise visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the strip on Sunday, where he held situational assessments and met with IDF soldiers that continue to hold their positions.

Netanyahu’s visit sent clear messages both in Israel and Gaza. First, Netanyahu has not-so-subtly signaled that as the head of the strongest military force in Gaza, he is now the Strip’s sovereign leader. From this point forward, it is Netanyahu who will determine the fate of Gaza, not Hamas.

The visit is a terrible embarrassment to Hamas, and this is the reason they have not openly commented on it. The visit would have gone viral globally and been more difficult to ignore had Netanyahu opted to record statements in English, in addition to the statements he made in Hebrew while with the Israeli soldiers.

IDF pressure campaign to resume
Second, as Netanyahu repeatedly told the soldiers, as did Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in Gaza the day before, the military campaign will resume as soon as Hamas is no longer able to deliver hostages. Gallant has repeatedly insisted that it was IDF pressure that forced Hamas to negotiate the return of hostages, and he continues to insist that further IDF pressure will lead to the release of additional hostages in the days and weeks to come. The defense minister has stated that fighting in Gaza is expected to continue for months yet. Netanyahu and Gallant have no choice but to beat Hamas at its own game.

Understanding Hamas’s strategy
On Oct. 7, Hamas intentionally launched an attack so heinous that Israel would have no choice but to retaliate on an unprecedented scale. And it is obvious that the IDF, as one of the world’s strongest and battle-ready militaries, has enough might to defeat a terror entity with fewer soldiers and inferior weapons.

Hamas understood from the outset that it could never defeat Israel on the physical battlefield. Instead, it sought to use the physical war to defeat Israel on the psychological battlefield, and in the realm of public opinion.

Interview With Judean Rose On The Repercussions Of October 7 (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

Varda Meyers Epstein lives in Eretz Yisrael and contributes to the Elder of Ziyon blog under the pseudonym Judean Rose. I wanted to get her perspective on the repercussions we are seeing in the wake of October 7.

Judean Rose

In the 2 weeks following the Hamas Massacre on October 7, there was a 400% increase in antisemitism, according to the ADL. Were you surprised by the breadth and intensity of these antisemitic protests and their violence?

No. I was not surprised, only sad. I’m sad that there was no other way for Diaspora Jewry to understand that this is still with us, other than for October 7th to happen. Now they understand and it’s heartbreaking. We feel it. They feel it, too.

What do you think caused this ferocity?

It was a powder keg getting ready to blow. When Hamas did what it did on October 7th, the call went out to make excuses for this in the context of supposed Israeli occupation and oppression, which of course is delusional propaganda. But the West that wants to hate Jews doesn’t care to examine things any too closely.

Do you think there is anything that can be done?

No. But while I don’t believe in boycotts, I do believe in individuals taking a stand against giving antisemitic actors, for example, royalties. I read about Susan Sarandon spouting falsehoods about Israel and I said to myself, “I will never watch another movie with her in it, again.”

The majority of creatives really hate the Jews. Sure, there are the actors who wrote a letter in support of Israel and against terror and antisemitism, but it’s all a numbers game. There are more haters than there are moral people on the side of right.

Protecting yourselves is another thing. If you want your Jewish child to get an education, you have to leave. It’s no longer safe for them to go to school. The hatred is no longer just on isolated college campuses. Antisemitism and antisemitic attacks have even hit elementary schools in the US and Canada.

I’m assuming you get where I think all Jews should be. I believe that were every Jew to make Aliyah today, the world would be too afraid of us to ever mess with us, again. Here too, it’s a numbers game. There needs to be more of us in Israel, since there are not more of us in the world. The terrorists, for example, are terrified of the God of Israel. When they see the Jews massing and banding together, they quake in their boots. It subdues them, and the world quiets down for a bit, maybe goes into hiding for decades. But it always returns at full force at some point.

While Israel retaliates, we have seen media bias as Israel strikes back against Hamas. But have there been any differences this time in the media? Considering the callousness of the Hamas massacre, do you think the media has been more circumspect?

No. But perhaps they get caught lying more frequently. Look how the BBC had to retract what they wrote about the al Shifa Hospital.

They reported the exact opposite of what happened, stating as if it were fact that Israel targeted medical teams as well as Arabic speakers. Unbelievable chutzpa, or as they might say over at the Beeb: “cheek.”

I read a lot of news and listen to a lot of podcasts and talk shows. Israel is more in the news now, and I am impressed that Fox News is sympathetic to Israel. But they get so much of it wrong! Dana Perino, whom I really like, has spoken about how people are so ignorant of the history of the region, so they come to the wrong conclusions. She mentions, for example, that Israel left Gaza in 2005 and that claims of occupation are therefore imaginary.

Dana Perino

But if Perino is so knowledgeable about the region, why does she refer to Gaza as “Palestine.” One after the other, I have heard Fox news people refer to “Palestine” as if it were a thing. It is not. They get it wrong, and by doing so, they perpetuate the violence. They think they’re on the side of right, but in their smug ignorance, they are anything but. They’re spreading propaganda, thus carrying water for the other side and perpetuating falsehoods.

What do you see as the cause of this bias -- is it ignorance or maliciousness?

Malice. If it were merely ignorance, they would still be culpable for malice, because they didn’t care enough to discover the truth and were willing to smear Israel and the Jews without doing even minimal research.

There are codes of ethics for journalists. They have to follow the rules because otherwise people get hurt. But if no one is following the rules, they can get away with it, especially in a Jew-hating, Israel-hating world.

Are there any in the media you would single out, one way or the other?

By far, the BBC is the worst.

Their blatant bias is the norm. It’s never an accident. The incident with Jeremy Bowen reporting that Al Ahli Hospital in Gaza “was flattened” is a good example. The network was forced to issue a vague apology when the story was discovered to be a complete fabrication.

Asked if he regretted the damning report, in which Bowen, citing a Hamas source, also claimed that hundreds had been killed and thousands injured, the reporter said he didn’t “feel bad at all.” He went with what the photos looked like to him at that time. Is this proper journalism? No. It’s the unspoken policy at the BBC. Make Israel the lede; make it, Israel, bleed.

But the BBC is only a reflection of British society and seriously ingrained British antisemitism. When it comes to antisemitism, I always say that “the British are first and worst,” going all the way back to 1144 and William of Norwich, the first known case of the blood libel.

Can anything be done?

It’s difficult because you have useful idiot Jews they can parade before the public and then they can forever more say, “Even so and so with a yarmulke says Israel is evil,” as happened with Christiane Amanpour’s Benzi Sanders interview.

What about Israel and Hasbara -- What else can be done?

I’m not big on Hasbara. I’m big on the truth, which is why I think there should be more support for independent bloggers advocating for Israel. We say things you won’t hear in the media, and right now our people are thirsty for accurate information. The best bloggers always bring reputable sources, which they link to for credibility so you can read more deeply on the subject.

The media bias parallels the overall anti-Israel propaganda that we have seen. In what areas has anti-Israel propaganda been successful?

The anti-Israel propaganda has been so rip-roaringly successful on so many levels that it’s difficult to know where to begin. But let’s start with the worst one, in my opinion, legitimizing the massacre. There is no context that makes the events of October 7th okay. Anyone who parrots such thoughts, even if they don’t really care and just want to be popular, should not be part of normative society.

Ripping down posters of captives? Why is that a thing? Because they’ve legitimized the massacre.

Why does a professor say he is "exhilarated" by the massacre? He says it to let you know that the massacre was not only legitimate but indicated. He also says it in order to normalize genocide, to laud terrorists for murdering Jews in cruel ways.

The success of this propaganda is enabled in part by the distancing of American Jews from Israel. What do you think has led to this alienation of American Jewry?

Jews are very vulnerable to Stockholm Syndrome. In order to be accepted by the predominantly non-Jewish world, they adopted beliefs antithetical to the good of their own people—of themselves. Why does any Jew call for a two-state solution? Don’t they know that the Arabs got 78% of the British Mandate for Palestine? Don’t they know that when they sing “Next year in Jerusalem” at their Passover seder they are actually affirming the right to return to their indigenous territory?

Do you think the Hamas massacre has served as a wake-up call?

Yes. Just as Kristallnacht served as a wake-up call. So tell me: why do we still need wake-up calls? When will we understand antisemitism as a permanent feature of life that can only be dealt with by strengthening Israel?

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Hamas never lied about its intentions to destroy Israel, kill all Jews and create a new caliphate. Why can't the intelligentsia understand that?

Peter Coy is "a veteran business and economics columnist [who] unpacks the biggest headlines" at the New York Times.

Looking at world events through the prism of economics is usually a useful endeavor. But Coy, and the experts he consults, completely misread Hamas and its rationality. They are making the same mistakes that most analysts do.

Coy writes:

In an influential article in 1995, James Fearon, a Stanford political scientist, then at the University of Chicago, showed that in most cases (not all), a rational leader should be able to clear up confusion and make decisions with sound information. Given how destructive and deadly wars are, political leaders have a strong incentive to use “diplomacy or other forms of communication to avoid such costly miscommunications,” Fearon wrote in “Rationalist Explanations for War,” which was published in the journal International Organization.

...Fearon specified three cases where leaders might miscalculate even while behaving rationally. One is where one side or the other has private information about its power or resolve and incentives to misrepresent such information to the other side. Bluffing, for example. Another is where one or both parties can’t reliably commit to an agreement to keep the peace because they have an incentive to renege on the terms. A third is where the parties can’t compromise by splitting the prize down the middle because the prize is indivisible — say, a throne that two princes are vying to occupy.

The second of the problems that Fearon highlighted, the commitment problem, comes up again and again in diplomacy, [Eli] Berman [an economist who studies war at UCSD] told me. Combatants do battle for years because neither trusts the other to abide by a peace agreement — and there’s no third party that has the power or motivation to force them to do so. The United Nations is too weak. The United States has lost interest in serving as the world’s policeman.

The decades-long failure to reach a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine is a classic example of a commitment problem. Israel resists the formation of Palestine as an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza out of fear that it would become a base for attacking and destroying Israel. And to many, attacks like the one by Hamas on Oct. 7 justify those concerns, pushing the prospect for peace even further into the distance. Each side believes that the other understands only force.

No, the Israel-Palestinian conflict is not "a classic example of a commitment problem." It is a classic example of the "indivisible prize" problem, the third situation Fearson mentions, not the second.

The "prize" - Israel's existence - is what the conflict is about.

Hamas leaders have described their desire to eradicate Israel consistently and virtually daily since it was founded in 1987. There is no ambiguity there. They aren't trying to hide it. Hamas wants to destroy Israel and Israel doesn't want to be destroyed. There can be no compromise between the two.

Yet these very smart people like Coy and Berman simply cannot wrap their heads around this concept. They want to look at the conflict as a "commitment problem," hoping that if only Israel would give up more, then the goodwill would be reciprocated. There is literally zero evidence that this is true - Israel already gave the Palestinians Gaza with no strings attached! - but these academics want it to be true so badly that they ignore all the evidence.

(Fearon's article also downplays the possibility of a true indivisibility problem in real life: "the issues over which states bargain typically are complex and multidimensional; side-payments or linkages with other issues typically are possible; and in principle states could alternate or randomize among a fixed number of possible solutions to a dispute. War-prone international issues may often be effectively indivisible, but the cause of this indivisibility lies in domestic political and other mechanisms rather than in the nature of the issues themselves." That is probably true in most of the world, but certainly not with Hamas or the other Palestinian terror groups.)

Moreover, Hamas is also explicit in its other goals: to murder all the Jews in the world, and to create not a Palestinian state but a pan-Islamic 'ummah that is ruled by Islamic law.

Given Hamas' stated aims, its leaders are indeed acting rationally.

From an economist's perspective, Hamas miscalculated - if you assume that Hamas cares about the two million people living under its control. On October 6, the Gaza economy was the best it had been since Hamas took over the territory. There were more imports and exports from Gaza than there had been in decades. Thousands of Gazans had well-paying jobs in Israel, an experiment that appeared to be doing quite well. The "siege" was over by any objective measure.

But Hamas is indeed rational in its irrational goal to destroy Israel and murder all Jews. Hamas never cared about its own people. Just as with Nazi Germany, murdering Jews is a higher priority than the wellbeing of its own population. Once you understand that about Hamas, everything that seems crazy makes sense.

But doesn't Hamas at least want to survive? Of course it does - and the hostages are its life insurance policy. Israel cannot destroy Hamas while ensuring the safety of its own people. This is all supremely rational once you understand Hamas is truly evil.

Anyone who bothered to read its charter that is still in force would know that.

The real question is how intelligent people can be so self-delusional as to not believe Hamas when Hamas has stated its goals and its jihadist strategy as clearly as possible for 36 years.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

NPR is thoroughly clueless about Israel's released hostages, saying their families - most of whom are still in mourning or praying for other family members - have been made "whole" again.

NPR's Ailsa Chang spoke with Liz Cathcart, executive director of the non-profit Hostage U.S., about "what life can be like for hostages once they’re free."

Clueless doesn't begin to describe this interview.

I'm sure that Cathcart is an earnest person who deals with Americans who are held hostage abroad for various reasons. But she clearly doesn't know anything about what the Israeli hostages went through.

She says things like "The best story of hope that we can give is that the vast majority of cases that we deal with and with a family who is whole again, who recognizes that they went through an incredibly traumatic experience and they are built stronger and have learned coping mechanisms that they can apply to many different scenarios in their lives."

The hostage families are not whole again. Most of them have family members who were murdered. Some of them witnessed the murder or rape of their loved ones or friends. Certainly all of them lost friends and neighbors. Many have husbands or fathers still in captivity. They are not living in their own homes and won't be for months, and many homes were destroyed. The trauma is not just for the hostages themselves but for the other surviving members of their families, and for their entire communities who have lost so many.

Chang and Cathcart use a tone of voice indicating how much they care, but they couldn't be bothered to do even a modicum of research. They don't care. They just thought this would be a good segment, and pretending to care is what they need to do for their audience.

The entire segment is an advertisement for Hostage US. The "advice" given is utterly useless in helping any Israeli hostage who was released, and it is tone deaf about what they went through. It trivializes the real trauma that they are continuing to go through and instead it recommends vacuous kumbaya cheerleading.

(h/t Irene)

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

11/27 Links Pt2: Hamas Is Lying About the Hostages; The hypocrisy of the feminists; What is up with Ireland?; Exposing Max Blumenthal's Lies

From Ian:

Israel Can Either Win the Narrative or Win the War

Why have the Jewish people long occupied mental real estate in non-Jews’ minds? Andrew Klavan recently clarified. The Jewish people are, Klavan said, “The theater in which God plays out his relationship with humankind.”

The God of the Jews harshly judged child sacrifice (Isaac and Jacob), sexual immorality (Sodom), and slavery (Egypt); these were common in pre-biblical civilizations. Introducing a new moral code was disruptive and revolutionary to the established order.

The Jewish followers of Jesus, a Jew, introduced Christianity to mankind. Muhammad was, according to Islam, a descendant of Ishmael, son of the Jewish patriarch Abraham.

The Jews are the theater in which God plays out his relationship with humankind.

What movie are we watching today? The West’s mainstream understanding of just war is shifting, and Israel is the theater.

Our traditional view of good and evil emerged from the Torah.

“The destitute you shall not favor in his complaint” (Exodus 23:3).

“You shall commit no injustice in judgment; you shall not favor a poor person or respect a great man” (Leviticus 19:15).

Justice, strength and wealth are not mutually exclusive. Neither are injustice, weakness and poverty.

But news coverage has reduced a war that Hamas started on October 7 to a scoreboard where Israel’s relative strength becomes its greatest diplomatic weakness. In this movie, the higher the body count reported by Hamas, the crueler Israel becomes.

But more German non-combatants were killed in World War 2 than American or British.

So the Allies were baddies, and we ought to feel guilt over the 1-3 million dead German civilians, including many children.

In future conflicts, will the U.S. military’s rules of engagement be further tightened to account for voters’ preferences?

Seth Mandel: Hamas Is Lying About the Hostages

Why wouldn’t Hamas know where some of the captives are being held? Because, the Financial Times reports, “Hamas has told Qatar that its fighters did not capture civilians, blaming it on other militant groups and Palestinians who rampaged through southern Israel after fighters broke through the Israeli security barriers around Gaza, [Qatari Prime Minister] Sheikh Mohammed said. When the hostage deal was brokered, it was agreed 50 women and children would be released because that was the number Hamas said it had been able to secure, Sheikh Mohammed said.”

Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani may or may not believe his own statement, but it doesn’t really matter. Two paragraphs later the Financial Times makes clear: “Video posted on social media on the day of the October 7 attacks, as well as footage collected by the Israeli military in subsequent weeks, showed Hamas fighters, some in uniform, and other Palestinians going through Israeli houses killing civilians and taking others captive.”

The fact that anyone would pretend to need video proof to believe Hamas harms civilians in the year 2023 shows us the level of intellectual dishonesty we’re dealing with. According to the IDF, Hamas seems to have kidnapped some of the hostages and transferred them into a different faction’s custody. If true, that goes even further toward exposing what a sick and farcical shell game this whole hostage negotiation is. And one of those believed to be in that group of hostages is a ten-month-old child. A baby.

It’s also worth noting, as Seth Frantzman did last night, that whatever lack of communication Hamas has with “other groups” in Gaza didn’t get in the way of a relatively clean ceasefire. The agreement was with Hamas, but everyone stopped shooting at Israelis. Either Hamas has tight control of Gaza… or Iran does.

You know who doesn’t have control of Gaza? Qatar. The filthy rich middleman. Good work if you can get it.

Hamas is lying in order to stay in power and continue murdering and torturing innocents. It cannot be allowed to succeed. That’s the whole ballgame. Everything else is noise, and Biden should filter it out.

Hamas leader Sinwar spoke to hostages in Gaza, released Israeli says

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the man behind the planning of the October 7 massacre, spoke to Israeli hostages while they were held in Gaza, one Israeli who was released from captivity this week told her family, Israeli media reported on Monday evening.

Sinwar allegedly arrived in a tunnel where she and other hostages were being held, checked how they are, and told them in fluent Hebrew that they would not be harmed.

Israel's Channel 12 claims that this report was verified by her investigators in Israel's security systems.

Current concerns among Israel's defense and military analysts relate to Sinwar's plans for the rest of this war - namely, the exploitation of the humanitarian crisis among Palestinian civilians in order to advance Hamas's terror goals.

Sinwar's Israeli interrogation of 1989
The use of his people's suffering for the terrorist organization's gain is nothing new to Sinwar, whose 1989 police interrogation in Israel was recently unveiled, during which he expressed a deep antipathy for the Palestinian people.

For example, in 1987, Sinwar wanted to experiment with dropping explosive charges. Of all places, he chose Shifa Hospital in Gaza City as a dummy target.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

There is something almost refreshing about Houthi antisemitism.

It doesn't pretend to be only "anti-Zionism." They aren't worried about being shamed by MEMRI translations. They don't claim that they treated Jews well in the old days.

No, their hate for Jews is full force, and based directly on Islamic texts.

From the September 26 Houthi site:

The most eloquent description of the Jews is as stated in the Holy Qur’an, the Blessed and Most High, saying: "And neither the Jews nor the Christians will be satisfied with you until you follow their religion. Say, 'Indeed, God’s guidance is guidance. And if you were to follow their desires after the knowledge that has come to you, you will have neither guardian nor helper with God.'" (Al-Baqarah (120))...

The Jews are aware in advance that the eternal and absolute hostility between them and the Muslims is a historical hostility that extends for decades. This is a fact established by the Holy Qur’an that the Jews are most hostile, hateful, and spiteful to Islam and the Muslims. As stated in the Almighty’s saying: "You will find that the people most hostile to those who believe are the Jews and those who associate others with others." (Al-Ma’idah: (82)..).

For this reason, the Holy Qur’an decided not to be loyal to them, or to normalize relations with them, or to court them, or to enter into negotiations with them, for fear of falling into the snares of their cunning and deceit, and the nets of their machinations... in accordance with the Almighty’s saying: "O you who have believed, do not take my enemy and your enemy as allies. You will meet. To them with affection, but they have disbelieved in the truth that has come to you." (Al-Mumtahana (1)).

Therefore, Islam acknowledges that the only and best way to liberate Palestine and Jerusalem is to declare absolute jihad. The Jews are more cunning and hypocritical, and their cunning is fighting, in accordance with the Almighty’s saying "And fight in the way of God those who fight you, and do not aggress. Indeed, God does not like aggressors." (Al-Baqarah (190).

Therefore, the leaders of the Arab and Islamic nation as a whole must heed the lesson of history and keep in mind that the liberation of Palestine was not and will not be through negotiations or truces, but rather through declaring absolute jihad. Failure to prepare militarily for any reason is evidence of weakness that leads to terrible defeat.

One of the Jewish leaders says: We do not fear socialist, revolutionary, or democratic regimes in the region, but rather we fear the Islamic awakening.

The Islamic awakening is the imminent danger that the Jews fear and tremble at.

Therefore, the components of the Arab-Islamic renaissance must be based on a comprehensive conception of man, the universe, and life derived from the Qur’an and the Sunnah of the Prophet, closely linked to Islamic studies and work, and laying down Islamic educational foundations that take into account Islam’s conception of the individual, society, and the universe, based on the Qur’an, the Sunnah, the biography of the Prophet, and the scientific and cultural achievements that Muslims have achieved throughout history. ..

Naturally, none the Muslims who swear that they are not antisemitic and respect Jews ever say anything negative about the Houthis' explicit Jew-hatred.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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11/27 Links Pt1: 11 Israelis freed from Gaza; WH: Israel and Hamas agree to two-day extension of truce; Israel’s choice: Body or soul; The Road to a Second Kristallnacht

From Ian:

Michael Oren: Israel’s choice: Body or soul

If Hamas had only butchered, burnt, and raped 1,200 Israelis and not taken any of them hostage, then Israel could have invaded Gaza and crushed the terrorists without hesitation, flooding their tunnels with seawater. Conversely, if Hamas had killed no Israelis but only taken hostages, Israel could have exchanged them for all the terrorists in Israeli jails. But Hamas, savagely, did both, wholesale murder and mass abduction.

“Forget the military victory,” my daughter exclaimed. “Israel’s only goal must be to free the hostages. If the state won’t do everything to rescue my children should they someday fall prisoner, how can I send them to the army?” To which my son replied, “Without an Israel, you won’t have an army to send them to.” Between my daughter’s position and my son’s, which was I to choose?

This is our fundamental, nightmarish, dilemma. Either we give priority to restoring our deterrence power and returning the more than 200,000 displaced Israelis to their homes, or we focus primarily on securing the hostages’ freedom. Either we convince Iran and its proxies never to attack us again and persuade additional Arab countries to make peace with an indomitable Jewish state, or we fulfill Israel’s oath to never abandon our fellow Israelis. Either we accept an Israel that may well be rendered defenseless or an Israel that our citizens may no longer be willing to defend.

Body or soul, we had to decide, and yet Israel refused to choose either. Instead, we declared a twofold target of destroying Hamas and rescuing the hostages, as though they were not mutually exclusive. And yet, by sheer perseverance and the determination of our troops, we succeeded in pursuing both goals simultaneously. Downgraded and surrounded by the IDF, Hamas opted for a deal. In exchange for a 5-day ceasefire, it agreed to free 50 Israeli hostages.

With that agreement now in effect, Israel has offered to extend it. For every ten hostages released, the IDF will hold its fire for one additional day. If accepted, this deal means that Israel will once again give precedence to saving Israelis over saving the state itself. The choice will once again be delayed.

But for how long? Ultimately, Hamas will not release all the hostages, knowing full well what the IDF will do to it once the last of them is freed. In the end, Israel will almost certainly have to decide whether to destroy the terrorists completely or save the remaining hostages – to choose, once again, between our national body and soul.

Yet a third option exists. There is still time to reframe the goal of the war from annihilating Hamas to securing Hamas’s unconditional surrender. There is still time to offer Hamas free passage from Gaza – recall the PLO’s evacuation from Beirut in 1982 – in return for the hostages’ release. The terrorists can sail off to Algeria, Libya, or Iran. Our captives will be united with their families.

In the novel, Sophie has to make the most unthinkable of all choices, but Israel can be spared that fate. By maintaining the military pressure on Hamas and keeping the door open to further negotiations, we can defend our state and redeem its defenders. Our dual purpose, our body and soul, can be preserved.

Douglas Murray: The Easy Politics of Criticizing Israel

My first war in Israel was the 2006 Lebanon war. Since then, I have had an allergic reaction to a number of attitudes that crop up every time Israel is involved in a conflict.

The first is the tendency of international observers, both friendly and unfriendly to Israel, to offer the country advice on how it should — or should not — conduct its military responses.

Opponents of Israel demand a cease-fire the moment any atrocity occurs against Israel. But that has been the response of Israel’s enemies ever since the creation of the state. Every time Israel’s opponents attempt to wipe it out, they swiftly demand a return to the status quo that existed precisely before the attack. It is the same this time around. None of Israel’s opponents were demanding a cease-fire on the morning of October 7. But, just as the Arab armies did in 1967 and 1973, when they lose — or sense that they’ll lose — they immediately balk at their territorial and human losses and cry “injustice” over them.

Friends of Israel are equally prone to offering the country military advice. Some will fall away as any war progresses, boosting their “mainstream” or “centrist” credentials by calling for a cease-fire some way into the conflict — always before the stage at which Israel can declare victory. For Israel seems to be the only country in the world never allowed to win a conflict. It is allowed to fight a conflict to a draw, but rarely to a win. Which is one reason why the wars keep occurring.

I mention this tendency only because of its utter futility. There is no reason why the IDF or Israel’s political or military class should listen to the opinions of people with little to no skin in the game. Whenever Israel is involved in a conflict, international observers of all varieties waste their energies shouting into the whirlwind.

A far better use of time, it has always seemed to me, is to work out what can be done in your own country.

The October 7 attack has created an exceptional sense of national unity inside Israel. As my friend Melanie Phillips has commented, almost everybody in Israel knows at least one family that has already lost a loved one. Every Israeli knows somebody who has been called up, if he has not been called up himself. The nation will need this unity and purpose in the period to come. Nobody who knows Israel well will be surprised by the fact of this unity.

It is outside the country that things are actually rotten. It is on the streets of New York City and London that local Muslims and young hoodlums have torn down posters of abducted Israeli children. It is in Berlin that a synagogue has been petrol-bombed and houses of Jews had Jewish labels scrawled on their doors. It is on the streets of Milan that Muslim immigrants have chanted that they want the borders open “so we can kill the Jews.” It is on the streets of Europe’s cities and in the halls of American campuses that the most rabid Jew-hatred has spilled out. And it is these factors I should like to dwell on.

Bret Stephens: The Road to a Second Kristallnacht

We are now witnessing, on a daily and even hourly basis, and on a scale only a few of us thought possible just a few years ago, the same kind of moral and logical inversions; the same “heads-I-win, tails-you-lose” sleight-of-hand reasoning; the same denying to Jews the feelings and rights granted to everyone else; the same preparing of the public mind for another open season on the Jews.

You see it everywhere, right here, in front of our noses.
- Israel is told it has a “right” to self-defense — and that every conceivable means of self-defense amounts to a war crime.
- Israel is sternly warned not to “re-occupy” Gaza in the wake of the present war — even after it was previously accused of continuing to “occupy” Gaza long after it had stopped occupying any part of it in 2005.
- Israel is told not to “blockade” Gaza by depriving it of fuel, electricity, and other goods — even after it was accused for years of blockading Gaza when fuel, electricity, and other goods flowed.
- Israel is expected to stop building or to dismantle settlements in the West Bank for the sake of a Palestinian state — and then told that the kibbutzim whose members were slaughtered last month were also “settlements.”
- Israel is asked to give Palestinian civilians time to flee Gaza before its military campaign begins — and then denounced for creating a “nakba” by forcing Palestinians to flee their homes.
- Israel is told that it must scrupulously abide by the laws of war — even as the wanton murder, rape, and kidnapping of Israelis is treated as a legitimate form of “resistance.”

And then there are the absurdities that Americans are supposed to swallow.
- We are told that “From the River to the Sea” is a call for the creation of a Palestinian state, without any mention that it is principally a call for the destruction of the Jewish state.
- We are told that we must hold Israel to a high moral standard because it’s a democracy, and that we should also denounce it because it’s an apartheid state.
- We are told that we should support calls for “Free Palestine,” and that the vehicle for doing so is a Hamas regime that has stripped Palestinians of every civil and human right, not least by treating them as cannon fodder or human shields in its theocratic death struggle against democratic Israel.

And then, the greatest lie of all: that Israel — the victim of one of the greatest massacres in memory, the proportional equivalent of sixteen 9/11s by American standards, an atrocity that would have been 10 or 100 times worse if the perpetrators had been given the means and opportunity — is, in fact, the real aggressor, the real perpetrator.

The perpetrator, on account of all its alleged crimes before October 7, which meant it got what was coming. And the perpetrator, for having the gall to fight back.

The War Against the Jews

We need to start by calling the current antisemitic wave a war rather than a pogrom. Pogromists preyed upon the powerless; we are far from that. Jews everywhere must realize that they, too, are at war, that the battle is to defend their own homes, and all available resources must be deployed. Antisemitism has torn off its mask, and it is far more widespread, integrated, and bloodthirsty, than many of us imagined. The time has come to prepare a response.

Many people have realized this independently and are spontaneously rising up — the instinctive and creative energy of many donors, activists, and institutions is to be commended. They have moved past fear and into action. But war requires not only many soldiers but also strategic thinking and coordination. To that end, I’d like to suggest a few principles that might be a helpful place to start.

1. Protect Jews everywhere. Every community is now an outpost and every Jew a soldier — and none should be left behind. Technology allows us to stay connected instantaneously. We need to build more obvious communication channels to share resources, ideas, tools, and political and psychological support. Every Jewish institution also needs physical security — professional security and hardening of Jewish targets, and essential volunteer guards, including the shomrim long present in Haredi communities. We must also consider more “kinetic” forms such as armed civilian defense organizations if policing is inadequate to the moment.

2. Recognize our enemies. Do not be afraid of that word. Every person who actively takes part in demonstrations demonizing Israel, who refuses to condemn Hamas’s actions, who rips down posters, who calls for the annihilation of Israel, or who makes excuses for barbarism is endorsing the butchery of Jews everywhere. Many of them would gladly replicate Hamas’s behavior if given the chance. Recognize the bloodlust in their calls and in their eyes. They are enemies of our people.

3. Recognize our own power. We need not fear the mob. We need to assess threats, allocate resources, and fight back. When faced with the attacks of October 7, Israelis immediately overcame their divisions, regrouped, and came together in full force both militarily and in civil society. Diaspora Jewry must do the same. The potential for unified Jewish power is immense: Jewish organizations, philanthropists, and activists working in concert can channel resources, aggressively deploy known weapons, and develop new ones to test on the battlefield. These include legal action and new legislation; intelligence-gathering; civil defense; rapid-response teams on campuses and in neighborhoods; and the creation of a cross-communal “war room” to monitor the operations of our enemies, gather intelligence, assess threats, and share experiences and new ideas across the Jewish world.

4. Shift the balance of fear. Wars are not won solely by playing defense. Jewish institutions should be focusing now on taking the fight to the enemy and working to shift the balance of fear. This has already begun with donor revolts, public shaming of students who support Hamas or people who tear down hostage posters, and more. The principle should be clear: It is not the Jews who should be afraid. It is those who take the side of barbarism, who indulge in terrorizing spectacle, who must be made to fear instead. (It’s starting to work — notice how many protesters and poster-rippers are now wearing masks.) Those who hold positions of power but who sit on the fence because they fear the mob, including many university administrators, should be made to fear the side of moral clarity even more.

5. Recognize our friends. Jews have friends — and the current crisis has provided a powerful litmus test of this friendship. Taking advantage of such friendships means crossing previous political, cultural, or religious divides. It no longer matters if someone is a Republican or a Democrat; an Asian parent or an Evangelical Christian. As the Israelis have done so stunningly, we need to drop our differences, create new alliances, and muster all the support we can get.

6. Demand our rights. Jews have rights and are protected by law, like any other group. We must demand — loudly — that those protections be enforced, and that those who violate our rights or the law be punished. On campuses and in private institutions, where codes of conduct and organizational value statements also pertain, we must demand that Jews be treated like any other group. Those who violate behavioral standards and value systems must be punished, and the hypocrisy of fence-sitting and mob-fearing leaders — corporate, academic, or governmental — must be called out every time.

7. Adjust our philanthropic priorities. Mobilizing donations to Israel is worthy and helpful. But recognizing that this is a global war also means funding the Diaspora’s war effort — including campus groups, media and social-media strategies, educational and advocacy efforts, community-relations initiatives, and Jewish communal institutions writ large. Together, these have the grassroots reach both to mobilize Jews and allies and to act as nodes in the broader Diaspora war effort. They can also provide the intellectual, spiritual, emotional, and communal support needed to sustain our troops.

8. Fight the long-term battles now. What we are seeing, especially in elite Western circles, is the product of half a century of investment in anti-Western and antisemitic ideas. These have been heavily funded and have spread across our institutions. Every false narrative about Jews, Israel, and the West can be traced to books and essays written long ago, whether in Moscow, Paris, or Columbia University. It’s time for us to fight the war of ideas as well — but with our own long-term strategy. We need a multifaceted approach to investing in Jewish culture (film, TV, museums, public history); intellectual life (journals, books, think tanks); and scholarship and academia (where we must wrest back the study of Jews and Israel from those long captured by anti-Israel and anti-Western ideas. A war that was launched through books cannot be won with billboards and banner ads alone.

From Israel National News:

Among the hostages released on Sunday evening was Roni Krivoi, who was not released through the hostage deal between Israel and Hamas but rather as a gesture by Hamas to Russia and President Vladimir Putin.

Yelena Magid, Krivoi's aunt, revealed on Monday that her nephew managed to escape Hamas captivity for four days, after which he was caught by the terrorists.

In an interview with Kan Reshet Bet, the aunt said that Krivoi took advantage of the fact that the building that he was held in collapsed after an IDF bombing and managed to escape his captors.

"He said he was caught by terrorists who held him in a building which collapsed from the bombing. He managed to escape and hide on his own for four days," she recounted.

"He tried to reach the border and did not succeed. In the end, the Gazans caught him and returned him to the hands of the terrorists," Magid added.

Just another data point whenever people claim that ordinary Gazans do not support Hamas and do not support kidnapping innocent people.

We aren't hearing too many "righteous gentile" stories out of Gaza.

(h/t Ezequiel)

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

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Not Jordan or Pakistan - this is London.

A new survey by the Campaign Against Antisemitism is being released.

According to CAA officials, it shows that nearly half of British Jews are considering leaving the country because of the huge increase in antisemitism.

Binyomin Gilbert, engagement manager for the group, told LBC News that "we have seen a 1300% increase in anti-Semitism" since the October 7 pogrom.

The survey also shows that 69% of British Jews say they are less likely to show visible signs of their religion.

Moreover, "more than six in 10 British Jews have either personally experienced or have witnessed an anti-Semitic incident since October 7 or that they know somebody who has."

The survey was carried out between 12th and 17th November 2023, with a total of 3,744 responses.

Gilbert continued, "This is not a situation that can continue. We have seen week after week central London become a no go zone for Jews.

"We've seen mass criminality, we've seen glorification of terrorism, support for banned terrorist organisations like Hamas and, and incitement to racial, religious hatred against Jews.

"I think the sad truth is that British Jews currently do not feel safe in our capital city.

"And it's important that we now draw a line."

During the anti-Israel demonstrations two weeks ago, the Campaign Against Antisemitism observed:

Once again, the marches featured genocidal chants, Hamas headbands, antisemitic signs comparing Israel to Nazis and others caricaturing prominent minority politicians as coconuts, and the marchers who may not have engaged in these activities knowingly and readily marched alongside those who did. They are just as complicit.

We are also aware of Jewish families being targeted on their way out of synagogue and have received multiple reports of police having to escort congregants away in groups for their own safety.

Islamist extremists, the far-left, and the far-right were out on the streets, all on one day. What a day to be a Jew in London.

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The City of Seattle commissions a crazed, incitement-filled antisemitic article on its government website.. Two days later a synagogue is desecrated.

Front Porch is an online magazine run by the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods, part of the City of Seattle.

They write, "In celebration of Native American Heritage Month, we invited journalist, Luna Reyna, to curate a series of stories to amplify and honor the people and experiences of Seattle’s Native American community." At the end of the article they write that these stories were commissioned - meaning almost certainly that seattle tax dollars were used to pay Luna Reyna toi write these articles.

One article, "Land Back from Turtle Island to Palestine," drew analogies between Native Americans and Palestinians - and is filled with antisemitic lies.

It includes these three astonishing paragraphs in which every single sentence is a lie.

Israel is a settler colonial state that has embraced erasing the people who inhabited the pre-colonized land through violent resource extraction, environmental desecration, displacement and genocide. Israel has accomplished this through widespread dehumanization. Palestinians have been called “human beasts” and “children of darkness” who live by the “laws of the jungle,” while settlers are told they have the “right” to the land based on the Book of Genesis, resulting in at least 120,286 Palestinian people being murdered by the Israeli government and settlers in just the last 15 years.

It’s important that we acknowledge the throughline of settler colonialism globally and the impact that continues to have on the Land that each of our nations stewarded since time immemorial.

Being in solidarity with Palestinians who want to remain in their homelands does not equate to condoning the actions of Hamas or any violence. Context is also important. Hamas was created after decades of violence by the occupying Israeli government. The cruelty, violence and bloodshed of Palestinian people by the Israeli government has been unconscionable for over 75 years. It’s this occupation, the tactics of a colonial military backed by world powers, and now the ongoing genocide of Palestinian people in Gaza, that many Native people connect with. There is a direct correlation with the tactics used by the occupying Israeli government and the U.S. government to the Indigenous people of what is now the United States.

Where to begin? Israel is not settler-colonialist. Zionism is an indigenous rights movement. It is not based on promises in Genesis but on the very deep emotional and historic attachment of Jews to the Land of Israel. Even if you accept the most absurd accusations of the Hamas government, Israel hasn't killed anything remotely close to 120,000 Palestinians in the past 15 years - or the past 75 years, for that matter - and most of those who were killed were terrorists. The ""context" given indeed justifies Hamas violence. And even the context is wrong, since anti-Jewish violence in Palestine was there long before modern Zionism.

All of these lies are pure incitement against Jews and Judaism which centers our prayers and practices on Eretz Yisrael, the Jewish homeland that pre-dates Arab control of the area (and, indeed, Islam) by many centuries.

If these lies and incitement were published in a college newspaper, it would be bad enough. But despite the article's disclaimer that "the opinions expressed and information contained herein do not necessarily reflect the policies, plans, beliefs, conclusions, or ideas of the City of Seattle," the fact is that this article officially commissioned by the City of Seattle is incitement against Jews and Jewish beliefs. it makes it open season on proud Jews.

And this is not theoretical incitement. Seattle's anti-Israel rhetoric directly leads to antisemitic violence in the area.

The day after this article was published, the City Council in Seattle had a five hour meeting in which the main topic was bashing Israel.

The day after that, a synagogue in Mercer Island right outside Seattle was desecrated and covered with anti-Israel, antisemitic graffiti.

This isn't "anti-Zionism." This is antisemitic hate. This is a hate crime against Jews. And it is all supported by the incitement that the City of Seattle not only allows but directly encourages.

Jews in Seattle are simply not safe. And instead of protecting them, the city is encouraging the attackers by justifying their hate of Jews.

(h/t Mike Report)

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

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Is Israeli Hasbara Getting Better, Or Are Journalists Losing It? (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

There is always concern about Hasbara, Israel's ability to counter anti-Israel propaganda, especially during conflicts with Hamas terrorists in Gaza. When it comes to the reaction from the IDF, there are obvious problems where there is a need to get the facts out quickly while making sure the information is confirmed. Just as important, the spokesperson has to have a good command of the language of the audience to which he is speaking and must also speak confidently and coherently.

This has been a continuing concern.

There is also the need for Israeli spokespersons to present Israel's case when interviewed on live TV by journalists who are not necessarily sympathetic, or even objective. Some recent examples show that Israeli spokespersons can hold their own. Those same examples call the objectivity and ability of the journalist into question.

Here is Mark Regev, former Israeli ambassador to the UK and currently an adviser to Netanyahu. The journalist doesn't attack anything Regev said or Israel has done. She just makes a disturbing comparison in passing and Regev reacts immediately.

He doesn't just challenges the comparison of Israeli hostages with Palestinian Arab prisoners. When the interviewer attempts to defend herself by bringing up the example of a 14-year-old Palestinian Arab, Regev challenges her again to reveal what crime the boy had been imprisoned for. She could not.

Here is another example, this time with Israeli Government Spokesman Eylon Levy. Here,
Kay Burleigh of Sky News, says she spoke to an unnamed hostage negotiator who

made the comparison between the fifty hostages that Hamas has promised to release, as opposed to the one hundred and fifty that are Palestinian that has said it will release. And he made the comparison between the numbers and the fact that does Israel not think that Palestinian lives are valued as highly as Israeli lives?

Just look at Levy's eyebrows -- and listen to his sharp rebuke.

In both interviews, the deliberate attempt by journalists to make Israeli hostages comparable to violent Palestinian prisoners is disturbing. It also reflects the narrative that we will continue to see in the media.

Burleigh's attempt to portray the larger number of Palestinian Arabs being released as reflecting poorly on Israel reminds me of a paper published in 2007 that theorized that,

Arab women in Judea and Samaria are not raped by IDF soldiers because the women are de-humanized in the soldiers' eyes.

Something that would be seen as reflecting positively on the IDF is turned into a negative. Nevertheless, the paper won a Hebrew University teachers' committee prize.

But Makor Rishon editor Amnon Lord noted the absurdity:

It is noteworthy that Palestinian propaganda around the world frequently accuses Israelis of murder and rape. Such that this situation is unique: An army is found blameworthy of rape, and is also blameworthy of not raping.

Here is one last example. The interviewer is not speaking to an Israeli spokesperson. A British doctor is describing his experience in the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza and how hospital staff was ordered not to enter certain areas -- and warned that they would be shot if they disobeyed.

In response to the doctor being threatened with being shot for going into certain areas of the hospital, she responds:

They would say there could be many other reasons that you would be told not to go to a particular area of a hospital. It's not unusual.

She's right, of course. They -- Hamas -- likely will say there are other, perfectly rational reasons why they forbade free access in a hospital to a doctor using the threat of death. But it is jarring to hear her do their work for them.

A British doctor who used to work in Gaza's Shifa hospital recounts: "I was told there was a part of the hospital I was not to go near and if I did, I'd be in danger of being shot."

Is this also totally normal in the hospitals you frequent @BowenBBC? pic.twitter.com/JGwIwEiR3K
— Aviva Klompas (@AvivaKlompas) November 19, 2023

Defending Israel in the media, and having to have an immediate answer to questions that are usually unsympathetic is a daunting task. Especially when the media asks what they consider questions in the interests of "evenhandedness." When done successfully, it is reassuring.

But these media confrontations, like the current Gaza War itself, are far from over.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!