Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, December 04, 2024

12/04 Links Pt2: The Closing of the British Mind; Melanie Phillips: The hug of hypocrisy; Oxford Union ‘apartheid Israel’ debate accused of breaking the law by glorifying violence

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The Closing of the British Mind

We’ve had Writers Against Books so it’s not unexpected to see the arrival of Artists Against Art.

Jewish sponsorship of the arts in the UK has been deemed vulgar, as the British appear to have swapped culture for kultur. The message, even from artists, is that it would be better to have no art at all than to have a Jewish-sounding name attached to the room that houses it, for example Gertler. Candida and Zak Gertler are generous art patrons in the UK but after pro-Hamas activists occupied a campus exhibition space adorned with the Gertlers’ good name, that name was removed from the space and from the gallery’s board. The Gertlers’ crime? Donating to the Jewish National Fund.

Last year in London, Anita and Chaim Zabludowicz announced they would, over similar complaints, close the Zabludowicz Collection, an institution they founded in 2007 to increase the visibility of avant-garde work by young artists. The “pro-Palestine” left has volunteered for the young artists who depend on such patronage to learn to code, or something. You know, for The Cause.

Let them eat watermelon emojis. After all, Chaim Zabludowicz simply had to be punished for, as Art Forum notes, having cofounded a company that “aims to reject all characterizations of Israel as an apartheid state, as Amnesty International cast it in a 2022 report”—although Zabludowicz “relinquished his role as chairman of the organization in 2013 and departed as director in 2019.”

All of this was back in the news again this week at the presentation of the British art award the Turner Prize. The coveted award went to Jasleen Kaur, a Scottish artist who wowed audiences by draping a car in a large doily. But the art project itself is beside the point; the true art is protesting people with names like Chaim Zabludowicz and Zak Gertler. From the New York Times:

“As the award dinner began, about 100 activists gathered at Tate Britain’s steps and listened to speeches demanding that the Tate group of museums end any association with Israel, including the high-profile donors Anita and Poju Zabludowicz. In a protest letter published online, the activists said the Zabludowiczes have ‘well-documented economic and ideological links’ to Israel’s government through the Tamares Group, the family’s real estate investment business.

“The letter’s signatories included Kaur and two of the other artists nominated for this year’s Turner Prize, Claudette Johnson and Pio Abad.”

The Glasgow-born Sikh accepted the award wearing a Palestinian-themed scarf because, let’s be honest, we’re all Palestinian during award season.

Meanwhile headlining performances by Coldplay and Katy Perry at London’s upcoming major Christmas event have come under fire, as anti-Israel activists have set their pitchforks on the Jingle Bell Ball. (Is nothing sacred?)

The rise of antisemitism in the arts

On December 5 th Rob Rinder will be chairing a discussion about whether Jews are still welcome in the arts in Britain today. There are two striking things about this event. First, that it is taking place at all. As we shall see, it is happening because it is unfortunately very timely and relevant. Second, that the advertisement doesn’t give a location. It just says, “North West London venue.” Presumably, if you sign up you will be e-mailed a location. This may sound a little paranoid but it is unfortunately very realistic.

Recently, there was a very unpleasant anti-Israel demonstration outside JW3, Britain’s largest Jewish cultural centre. Police officers were there to prevent violence, but unfortunately — as so often in London — the police did nothing to stop the aggressive chanting and waving of Palestinian flags to intimidate local Jewish residents. The Jewish Literary Foundation, which hosts Jewish Book Week every Spring, has just been presented with a substantial security bill, which it will struggle to pay. And, finally, the Barnet Literary Festival, which takes place in Barnet Library every year, has had to take place online this year because of the Council’s security concerns.

The larger issue, why Jews are increasingly excluded and discriminated against in British culture, is unfortunately even more pressing. Last year when I went to see Tracy-Ann Oberman starring in The Merchant of Venice 1936 my wife took a plastic bottle of water. The security people at the door asked her to drink from it to prove that it didn’t contain acid, in case she was planning to throw it at the actors.

Last week, the Royal Court Theatre was reported to the Charity Commission for allowing its staff to campaign for the Palestinian cause by wearing “Free Palestine” badges. This was not entirely surprising, since the Royal Court has a history of producing plays by playwrights who are known for being passionate critics of Israel: for example, Perdition by Jim Allen, which was intended to be directed by Ken Loach, and Seven Jewish Children – a Play for Gaza by Caryl Churchill.

Also last week, Nicole Lampert wrote online about the story of Candida Gertler OBE, an Anglo-German art philanthropist and writer, who has donated millions to help struggling young artists. Lampert wrote, “She’s also a Jew and, like most Jews, a Zionist. Of course that meant she was ripe for cancellation. Her name was taken off a donor board at Goldsmiths College and there was an attempt to also have her cancelled from the Tate. Well, they’ve got their way. Another major donor to the arts has decided to walk away rather than be hounded by the bullies who want to see Jews hounded by the bullies who want to see Jews hounded out of public life. Describing why she was quitting all her voluntary positions in the UK arts world, she asked why people were refusing to stand up to these bullies. She has left as a protest, writing: ‘As someone who has dedicated much of my life to supporting contemporary art, championing dialogue, and creating platforms for diverse voices, I can no longer stand silent when institutions, intimidated by violent and aggressive activism that dismisses dialogue or any kind of communication fail to uphold the foundational values f equality and respect. Recent revelations of vile antisemitic sentiments in these spaces have shocked and appalled me. These are not isolated incidents but part of a broader culture that seeks to marginalise and dehumanise Jews.’”

Seth Mandel: Those To Whom Jewish Survival ‘Smells of the Devil’

It’s not about how many Palestinians died but how many Jews lived.

And look at them all there, by the millions. That’s the atrocity. That’s the war crime.

And so in some respects, it’s actually true that the Nakba continues to this day. The attempt to destroy Israel hasn’t stopped and hasn’t succeeded. The Gaza war is indeed a continuation of this phenomenon, of the original intent and meaning of the Nakba.

In 1921, one of the era’s prominent as-a-Jews, Ralph Philip Boas, wrote an article in the Atlantic called “Jew-Baiting in America.” The conceit was one of Boas’s obsessions—that social discrimination is all that’s left of anti-Jewish bigotry in America and therefore not worth complaining about. (Carey McWilliams dismantled this idea in a 1947 essay for COMMENTARY, found here.)

Boas’s essay makes for some amusing reading a century later; he is wrong about everything.

Well, except one thing. He’s at least partially correct when he writes: “At the root of European anti-Semitism undoubtedly lies the shuddering hatred that men always feel for that which they cannot kill. The amazing vitality of the Jew is sufficient reason for believing any tale that is whispered of him; his survival smells of the devil.”

Those who claim a “genocide of the Palestinians” began on October 7, 2023, show that this mindset is found outside of Europe as well. This includes not just the poets who use their award speeches to reveal something foul about their own character, or the protest groups on campus who seek to appropriate October 7 as a day for them to wail publicly and don sackcloth and ashes.

The expounders of the genocide libel are all over the place, everywhere. Do they actually believe it? In many cases, no. What they believe is that the Jew’s survival smells of the devil. And we should freely remind the public that that is what’s actually bothering them.

12/04 Links Pt1: The Mideast Diplomats Trapped in the ’90s; Our friends, the French; Itay Svirsky’s body retrieved from Gaza for burial

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The Mideast Diplomats Trapped in the ’90s

In his first term as president, Donald Trump’s successful Mideast diplomacy required him to break through the wall of stale conventional wisdom that had been constructed by a tunnel-visioned DC establishment. He may have to do so again.

Watching experienced Mideast diplomats process reality is a great way to see a person unlearning every relevant lesson in real time. The New York Times interviewed outgoing UN Mideast envoy Tor Wennesland, and the article makes for frustrating reading. Here’s how it opens:

“In September last year, the top United Nations envoy for the Middle East peace process left a meeting with Hamas leaders in Gaza thinking that he had helped avert a major escalation.

“The veteran Norwegian diplomat, Tor Wennesland, said he believed that Hamas had agreed to reduce recent tensions along the Israel-Gaza border in exchange for more work permits for Gazan workers.

“But Hamas had bluffed Mr. Wennesland, along with the Israeli leadership and much of the international community. Days later, the group’s fighters attacked Israel, setting off the deadliest year in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

It’s a familiar story. Hamas fooled everybody and plunged the region into bloody chaos. So what’s the lesson that Wennesland learned from this? That focusing on steadily improving the quality of life in Gaza and making peace between Arab states and Israel were big mistakes. “Both approaches, Mr. Wennesland said, ultimately failed to solve the main issue driving the conflict in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank: the lack of a permanent settlement between Israelis and Palestinians.”

Let’s just spell it out. The current conflict is the result, according to Wennesland himself, of negotiators and politicians in Israel and abroad falsely believing that Hamas was interested in political stability, not war. So the decade spent helping Palestinians on the ground and spreading peace and reconciliation throughout the Middle East should have, instead, been spent trying to get Hamas to agree on a political settlement?

This aversion to reality is almost comical. Wennesland thinks the mistake was trusting Hamas and so the fix would be to treat Hamas as an honest broker.

As the interview develops, it just goes further off the rails. The failure to achieve a two-state solution “was also linked to how Western leaders — distracted by the migration crisis in Europe, the coronavirus pandemic and, finally, the war in Ukraine — had stopped convincing Israelis of the need for a two-state solution and Palestinians of the need for a united front, Mr. Wennesland said.”

Jonathan Tobin: Trump voices the moral clarity on hostages the world needed

We don’t know yet what impact President-elect Donald Trump’s bombshell statement about the fate of the Israeli hostages still held by Hamas will be. But in one post on his Truth Social site, he neatly summarized what has been lacking in terms of American leadership when it comes to the fight against Iranian-funded Islamist terrorism for the past four years.

Trump’s post—with its characteristic bombastic tone and use of capital letters for emphasis—was very different from the public statements of the Biden administration foreign-policy team in recent months on the same topic or that of any other world leader. The United States has condemned Hamas, but in the last year has been primarily focused on pressuring Israel to give up its campaign to eliminate the terrorists and agree to a ceasefire with only a partial release of the hostages. That would effectively hand the perpetrators an undeserved victory for the massacre of 1,200 men, women and children in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Instead, Trump put the onus for achieving the release of the hostages—something all decent people should support—on the Palestinians. They were responsible for that rampage of mass murder, torture, rape and kidnapping. But by specifying that the “All HELL TO PAY” would be felt throughout the Middle East, he was also sending a powerful message to Hamas’s foreign backers. Iran, as well as nominal U.S. allies like Qatar and Turkey, who have provided the terrorists with aid and diplomatic cover are also now on notice to secure the hostages’ freedom lest they, too, face Trump’s wrath once he returns to the White House on Jan. 20.

It’s true that the Biden administration has been working on trying to broker a deal that would lead to the release of at least some of the 101 hostages (approximately 60 are believed to be alive) that are still unaccounted for. But there has been no such unambiguous message from Washington about what it expects from the Hamas terrorist organization or its allies in the Muslim and Arab worlds. Instead, and in keeping with its consistent efforts to undermine and topple the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since Israelis elected it in November 2022, Biden has wanted Netanyahu to make concessions that wouldn’t return all the hostages at once and that would hand over Gaza to the weak and corrupt Palestinian Authority, which has, despite its rivalry with Hamas, never condemned the atrocities that took place on Oct. 7. That is a formula to ensure that Hamas would soon return to power there, leaving Israel in as much danger as it was when the Palestinians started this war.

Wanting Israel to ‘finish’ and win
Trump has made no secret of his desire for a clean slate in the Middle East when he takes office, with Israel having completed its wars against both Hamas in the south and Hezbollah to the north. While that puts Netanyahu on notice that the next administration is hoping not to be distracted from its domestic priorities by conflict in the Middle East, Trump was equally clear that he had no compunctions about the severity of Israeli military actions in Gaza or Lebanon. He just wants the Israelis to “finish” and achieve “victory” over Hamas—an idea that the Biden team has consistently opposed. Once that victory is achieved, Trump is obviously hoping to pick up where he left off when he left office four years ago by building on the 2020 Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and four Arab and Muslim-majority nations.

Many of Trump’s critics were predictably appalled by his hostage post because of its tone and what they consider to be his bias in favor of Israel and against the Palestinians. Despite starting the war with barbaric atrocities and sticking to their goal of wiping Israel off the map and committing genocide against the Jews, Hamas and its supporters—a category that includes what may well be a majority of Palestinians as well as their cheerleaders in the international media and on American college campuses—expect themselves to be depicted as the sole victims in the conflict.

Biden’s willingness to kowtow to that mindset has undermined his administration’s efforts to end the war.

Bassam Tawil: Arabs No Longer Buying the Lies of Hamas, Hezbollah

"Where is the victory? How much did it cost? What defeat is more terrible than such losses? How can one claim victory in the face of a massacre that has destroyed all the logic of resistance? It's not too late to ask Hezbollah to explain its unilateral and deadly decision to open the confrontation [with Israel] under Iran's cover." — Nabil Bou Monsef, prominent Lebanese journalist, kataeb.org, November 27, 2024.

Over the past 14 months, Hamas and Hezbollah have dragged the Palestinians and Lebanese into wars that have claimed the lives of thousands of people -- all to serve their patrons in Iran. Instead of admitting their defeat, both in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, the terrorists, at the behest of Iran's mullahs, are continuing to sell imaginary victories to the Arabs to encourage them to join the Jihad (holy war) against Israel.

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

With the death of American hostage Omer Neutra now confirmed, that leaves at most three American hostages in Gaza left alive. All told, there are seven American hostages still held in Gaza; four of them, including Neutra, are dead, their families denied even the right to bury their dead and process their grief. Does it matter that come January 20^th a new, tough-talking sheriff in the form of President Elect Donald J. Trump is coming to town?

It does and it doesn’t. The fact that someone in Israel’s corner is moving into the Oval Office doesn’t change the fact that the American hostages were betrayed by the most powerful nation on earth: America. It was always a possibility because that’s the way it goes with American Jews. American administrations come and go, some of them more and some of them less pro-Israel. Some of them more and some of them less antisemitic.

Joe Biden, or whoever operates under his guise, doesn’t care about some Jews who left America voluntarily to live in a state that is nothing but a pain in the neck to Joe. A thorn in his side. (Those pesky Jews.)

President Trump will be far better, as was proven on Monday afternoon following the news of IDF confirmation of Neutra’s death on October 7. Taking to Truth Social, President Trump issued a firm threat to Hamas:

Everybody is talking about the hostages who are being held so violently, inhumanely, and against the will of the entire World, in the Middle East - But it’s all talk and no action! Please let this TRUTH serve to represent that if the hostages are not released prior to January 20, 2025, the date that I proudly assume Office as President of the United States, there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East, and for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against Humanity. Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!

This is my President! There must be serious consequences for holding any hostage but America needs to exact severe consequences for kidnapping and murdering AMERICAN hostages. https://t.co/Qh8dq78mUM
— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) December 2, 2024

Netanyahu offered Israel’s heartfelt thanks to President Trump for this strong show of support. Trump’s stern warning was exactly what was needed but had been sorely lacking every day for the past 424 days. The Biden administration, however, was focused only on restraining Israel while appeasing Iran. Biden and his handlers just didn’t care about a handful of American Jews who had chosen to leave the Land of Opportunity for a country that everyone hates.

I want to thank President Trump for his strong statement yesterday about the need for Hamas to release the hostages, the responsibility of Hamas, and this adds another force to our continued effort to release all the hostages.

Thank you, President Trump. pic.twitter.com/sm4gvEDnwi
— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) December 3, 2024

The betrayal by America of its hostages in Gaza is real, and it should be food for thought for American Jews who have not yet been bit by the Aliyah “bug.” It’s a fact: American Jews cannot count on their government to protect them or help them in their time of need. The Biden Administration proves the point. Some presidents may indeed help American Jews when they are in trouble, but others won’t, and it won’t matter if said American Jews are held in Gaza, slashed in the face on a street in Brooklyn, or harassed and violently abused on an American university campus. Some administrations won’t care enough to come down hard enough on the perpetrators to put the fear of God into them.

Jews with American citizenship are, in the end, still less worthy of protection than other Americans. Witness the Biden administration’s lack of will to do much of anything at all for American citizens being held and brutalized in Gaza because they are Jews. Trump coming into office will change this dynamic for a while, and we can hope it will last a good long time, but for the sake of self-preservation, American Jews would be well advised to accept that America is not a place they can count on. When push comes to shove, American Jews may or may not receive the help they deserve at the time it is needed most.

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!

New study: Hiring managers discriminate against Jewish and Israeli sounding names

The ADL commissioned a study comparing how hiring managers for an administrative assistant position respond to essentially identical cover letters and resumes whose only differences were indications that the applicants were Israeli or Jewish.

They chose administrative assistant jobs since those positions generally meet the public, so hiring managers would want to ensure that the people like the person in front.

While the qualifications were the same, "Kristen Miller" received more responses than "Rebecca Cohen" and "Lia Avraham." Here were the only differences in their resumes:

The report says:

Across specifications, we see that both the Jewish and the Israeli Treatments experienced a decrease in positive response rates relative to the control. These differences are statistically significant across all three models. ....This means that, to receive the same number of positive responses as the Western European Treatment, the Jewish Treatment must send 24.2% more inquiries, and the Israeli Treatment must send 39.0% more inquiries.

Their city by city analysis had samples sizes too small to be statistically significant - except for one city, Seattle:

The only market in which the difference in response rates is statistically significant at the city level is in Seattle, where the Israeli Treatment is 16.3 percentage points less likely to receive a positive response relative to the control (23.1% vs 6.8%),

This mirrors a survey by Resumebuilders in 2022 that I did further analysis on.

Antisemitism is real and measurable in the United States, and it is getting worse.

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!

Turkey's Yeni Safak news site .(and others) has a story about how Jews in Europe are complaining about antisemitism, which is of course a lie:

In Europe, protests continue against the massacres carried out by the Israeli genocidal army in Gaza. Jews accuse those protesting Israel's massacres of anti-Semitism, as is classic, and claim that the countries they are in are unsafe.
While Zionist Israel is massacring defenseless civilians in Gaza with its brutal attacks, the conscientious people of the world are filling the squares to protest Israel. The actions in support of Palestine that took place in many cities in Europe have caused panic among the Jews living in the region. Jews who are not ashamed of being citizens of a genocidal regime have accused the countries they are in of anti-Semitism.

Notice the antisemitic trope that all Jews are citizens of Israel.

The story goes on to say say that Jews bring trouble wherever they go and they were the aggressors in Amsterdam but cry as if they are victims.

Not only that but many Jews in Europe are considering moving to Israel,

The lengths Jews go to to appear to be victims!

There is a consistent pattern in the comments of Jew-hatred that didn't even pretend to be merely anti-Zionist:

May it be worse for them. May they never see peace..
May God make them miserable, amen
May God make everything beautiful, and we will see the days when the whole world will be your enemy, God willing. Don't find a hole to hide in
Let them go to the ground

Beyond that, we see comments welcoming the idea of European Jews fleeing to Israel - because that makes genocide easier:

Let them go, that's where they will die en masse.
God is gathering them all in one place. Our job will be easy.

This echoes a speech by Hassan Nasrallah in 2002 where he also said that Allah is putting sll the Jews in one place to make it easier to destroy them.

Their aim has always been extermination of Jews. In Turkey, at least they are being honest.

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!

BDS scrambling to find reasons to keep boycotting Sabra Hummus after it is bought completely by PepsiCo

The BDS group CJPME, "Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East," has a fact sheet on why they boycott Sabra Hummus - because it is half owned by an Israeli company Strauss which supports the IDF.

At the end, they write:

The boycott of Sabra will end once it is no longer owned by the Strauss Group, and thus is no longer complicit in the oppression, violence and war crimes committed by Israel against Palestinians.

Recently, PepsiCo announced that they were buying out Strauss' half of Sabra. The Strauss Group decided to sell Sabra to its partner after losing market share as fallout from the discovery of salmonella in its hummus manufactured in Virginia in 2021, as retailers decided to diversify their hummus suppliers.

BDS, predictably, is claiming that their campaign worked and they are the reason Strauss is selling Sabra, although that doesn't quite explain why PepsiCo would want to buy it for $244 million.

Nevertheless, this means that Sabra no longer has anything to do with Israel. It is not manufactured there and no Israeli will profit from it when the sale is complete. So the boycott is over, right?

Ha! BDS is not based on little things like facts. They loved boycotting Sabra brand dips, whichhelped them recruit antisemites, and they aren't going to stop now. They just need to dig up new reasons for the boycott.

The BDS Reddit group started off vague about the reasons: "PepsiCo now owns 100% of Sabra. That means every tub of hummus on shelves still funds oppression."

How, exactly?

it took ten days, but yesterday, BDS tweeted their new excuses for continuing the boycott. Sabra is still guilty of "blatant cultural appropriation of Arab foods" and Pepsi owns Sodastream, which BDS falsely claims is stealing Bedouin land.

Of course, if those reasons were valid, then BDS would be calling for the boycott of every hummus brand sold in the world that is not manufactured by Arabs. It would be calling for a general boycott of all Pepsi brands, including Aquafina water, Quaker Oats, Lay's Potato Chips and Cap'n Crunch cereal.

But there is no call by BDS to boycott other brands of hummus nor other Pepsi products (besides Sodastream.)

Right now, BDS cannot find any way that boycotting Sabra will hurt Israel in the least. They cannot find a way that boycotting Sabra will help a single person in Gaza.

Which is as good a proof as any that BDS has nothing to do with human rights or helping Palestinians or "justice." It has always been about inciting people to hate proud Jews and Israel.

Because Sabra is a Hebrew word.

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!

Survey: The Jews who are the most likely to sympathize with Hamas and swallow the "genocide" lie are the ones who are the most ignorant

In November, Mosaic United (together with Israel's Ministry of Diaspora Affairs) published a poll of Jewish teens in English-speaking countries worldwide about their attitudes towards Israel, Hamas, the Gaza war and Jewishness.

Two results were extraordinarily concerning.

A huge 36% of the teens felt that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, and an astonishing 32% felt sympathy for Hamas.

At first blush, it looks like Jewish teens are continuing the trend of younger people being less sympathetic to Israel. But when you look at the details, the actual takeaway is a bit different.

The majority of those who sympathize with Hamas are 14 or 15 - 60% . By the time they reach 18, the support for Hamas plummets to 9.2%.

In other words, the teens who support Hamas are the ones who know the least. As they go through high school and learn a little more about the world, they completely turn around. You wouldn't trust a 14 or 15 year old's opinion on politics - why would anyone think they know what Hamas is?

A similar but not as dramatic transformation takes place for the "genocide" question: from 49.5% to 25.2% the older they are. To a 14-year old, "genocide" means "acting mean." 18-year olds are more likely to know what the word means and the difference between a war and extermination.

When you look at the strength of their Jewish background (exposure to Jewish education and camps,) you see a similarly dramatic straight line between how little Jewish education they have and how much they agree with Israel haters. Those with little Jewish background were five times more likely to say there was a genocide than those with a strong Jewish background, and ten times more likely to sympathize with Hamas.

Among Jewish teens, it is the ignorant - both Jewishly and generally - who are more likely to sound like BDSers.

The answer, as it has always been, is more and better education. The teens who had visited Israel, the teens with friends and relatives in Israel, the teens who have learned about Israel are the ones who are more pro-Israel.

But it is not only exposure to and education in Zionism. It is also more general exposure to Jewish education and to Jewish rituals.

It is not hard to understand why. Those who believe that they are part of a larger people - who look at their fellow Jews as family - are going to sympathize more with their people.

Ignorant Jewish teens who are thrown into college are generally on their own for the first time, and they gravitate to groups they can identify with. The "Jewish Voice for Peace" type groups give them the pretense of hanging with Jews while they can pretend to be revolutionary and break away from their parents, which is, after all, fun.

Jewish parents who do not immerse their children in Judaism from birth are doing their kids a huge disservice, and they are doing their people a huge disservice. Kids need to feel that they are part of something much bigger than them, part of a people who have contributed more to the world than any other, part of a history that goes back thousands of years, part of a tradition of morality that does not easily change with the times. They cannot get that from being raised as "liberal" or as "conservative" alone - words that have changed their meanings in living memory.

This survey is frightening, to be sure. But it gives us the clearest path forward of any such survey I've ever seen. The Jewish community - and, especially, the American Jewish community - has got to wake up and go back to fundamentals.

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!

12/03 Links Pt2: Amnesty’s Genocide Inversion: A Preliminary Analysis; Mother of US-Israeli hostage Keith Siegel dies; The Backstory Behind the Fall of Aleppo

From Ian:

NGO Monitor: Amnesty’s Genocide Inversion: A Preliminary Analysis

Israel’s Protection of Civilians
Amnesty’s premise, that Israel seeks “to bring about their [Palestinians] physical destruction,” is obviously absurd when judged against its actions in Gaza during the past 14 months. .

According to COGAT – the IDF body that facilitates aid into Gaza – by November 26, 2024, over 1.1 million tons of aid had entered the territory since the beginning of the war. In addition, Israel has constructed humanitarian corridors, imposed tactical pauses, and vaccinated hundreds of thousands of children. COGAT also established a joint task force with the UN and aid organizations to coordinate the transport and distribution of aid.

Moreover, as Amnesty acknowledges, Israel has designated “safe-zones” for the civilian population, designed to protect them and limit their exposure to the fighting.

The contention that a country ostensibly engaging in genocide would provide aid, vaccinate children and establish safe havens for the millions of people it supposedly seeks to destroy is inherently nonsensical.

Systematic Methodological Failures
Sham methodology is a hallmark of Amnesty publications on the conflict. When describing specific Israeli operations, Amnesty informs readers that it had “found no evidence that any of these strikes were directed at a military objective.”

It is unclear – absent communication with Hamas members or access to Israeli intelligence – on what basis the NGO has made such a sweeping claim, particularly given the Hamas modus operandi of locating all of its members and materiel in civilian settings.

According to international law, assessment of the legality of a military strike requires knowledge of the specific target, the anticipated collateral damage, if any, and of the military advantage that the attacker believed it would gain – knowledge that Amnesty clearly does not have. Additionally, Amnesty does not have access to the requisite information to determine if a particular individual was a civilian or a member of Hamas or other Palestinian terrorist organizations.

Moreover, contrary to what is implied in Amnesty’s statement, the fact that civilians were harmed in an attack – in cases in which the casualties were in fact civilians – does not ipso facto make it illegal under international law. Every loss of civilian life is tragic, but not every tragedy is a war crime.

In another blatant methodological failure evident in the press release, Amnesty apparently parrots the Gaza Ministry of Health in citing 42,000 as the number of Palestinian fatalities as of October 7th, 2024. As has been repeatedly documented, these claims are not credible, and do not distinguish between combatants and civilians. In contrast, when discussing Israeli casualty data, Amnesty makes a point of distinguishing civilians from soldiers.

The press release also includes some examples – none of which can be independently verified – that ostensibly support the accusation of genocide. For example, Amnesty claims to have “documented the genocidal acts” in 15 air strikes between 7 October 2023 and 20 April 2024. “Amnesty International found no evidence that any of these strikes were directed at a military objective.” As noted, Amnesty had no independently verifiable evidence of anything taking place in Gaza and could not possibly document any of the claims – this and similar accusations are entirely without substantive merit and designed to reinforce the propaganda claim.

Propaganda to Promote ICC Lawfare and Arms Embargoes
Amnesty’s report, rather than serious research, must be viewed in the context of the ICC and the NGO arms embargo cases in which Amnesty is playing a central role, used as a PR tool to bolster these campaigns. According to Amnesty, states must “arrest[ing] and hand[ing] over those wanted by the ICC,” referring to Israel’s Prime Minister and former Defense Minister. Additionally, the NGO asserts that “States that continue to transfer arms to Israel at this time must know they are violating their obligation to prevent genocide and are at risk of becoming complicit in genocide.”

It is clear that in promoting genocide inversion, Amnesty – which has devoted many years to the delegitimization of Israel regardless of policies – is simply continuing its decades long lawfare campaign.

As the six former US prosecutors of Nazi war crimes wrote, “The core truth is that the genocidal frenzy of killing, rape, torture, kidnapping, and mutilation that Hamas launched in Israel on Oct. 7 were crimes of monstrous evil …. People of goodwill here and abroad should reject propaganda that conflates genocide with the heartbreak of casualties in defensive war and that dishonestly portrays Israel — which is combatting genocide no less heroically and necessarily than did our fighting forces in Europe in the 1940s — as a perpetrator of that infamous crime.”

It's a Fallacy that Ideas Can't Be Defeated

It is a fallacy that ideas can't be defeated. Received wisdom has it that unless root causes are addressed, no conflict can be resolved. The same sophistry asserts that Israel can't conquer Hamas even if it annihilates the internationally designated terrorist entity militarily. Of course it can.

Hizbullah has just come crawling to a ceasefire agreement with Israel. Its ballyhooed status as the most powerful non-state actor in the world has been stripped away in the aftermath of Israel's targeted campaign against its leadership, followed by a full-scale invasion of southern Lebanon.

In its 13-month war with Israel, in solidarity with Hamas following the Oct. 7, 2023, atrocity, Hizbullah has been defeated. The regional alliance of militias, funded and buttressed by Iran, has been proven a chimera. Iran can't come to the rescue of any of its proxy states because Iran itself has been having a very bad year. Its barrage of 300 missiles and drones against Israel on Oct. 1 was ineffective and humbling, undermining the credibility of Iran's axis of resistance, and upending regional dynamics.

Some are lauding the ceasefire as a rare win for diplomacy in the Middle East. But it would never have happened if Hizbullah hadn't been shaken to its combat boots, just as every overwhelmed and fractured warmongering side has only come to the negotiating table when its very existence came face-to-face with extinction.

All of this leaves Hamas isolated and clinging by its fingernails, with 18,000 of its fighters dead, and much of its vast tunnel network destroyed, Gaza reduced to a lawless, chaotic mess, with tens of thousands of Palestinians dead, hundreds of thousands displaced, and Yahya Sinwar burning in hell. That war grinds on, Hamas's violent ideology still intact, but its sphere of potency is shrunken and its raison d'etre delegitimized.

Brendan O’Neill: There's Nothing Radical about Flying the Palestinian Flag

To the fashionably Israelophobic of the Euro activist classes, waving the Palestinian flag might just be a convenient way to prove your moral worth to your fellow intimates in right-thinking society. But to Israelis, the flag can prick awful memories of the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.

There are just too many of these flags now, right? They're everywhere. Take a walk round London and you'll see more Palestinian flags than Union flags. You might even see more Palestinian flags than Pride flags. The middle classes drape them over their shoulders when they bravely take a break from Saturday brunching to march against the Jewish State. They flutter from lampposts. There isn't a campus in the land that is not adorned with them.

There are TikTok videos advising the young on how to match a red beret with a green blouse and black trousers so that everyone you encounter will know what an amazingly moral person you are. Don't get me started on the keffiyeh, the uniform of the self-righteous, the sartorial signifier of political rectitude.

Some scoff at the idea that Jews might feel put out by the flag under which a thousand of their co-religionists were butchered last year. I think these ubiquitous flags have far more to do with us than with Palestinians. Not content with commandeering the keffiyeh and making it the hot must-have of polite society, now the Palestinian flag is a thing the city elites might hang from their windows so their neighbors will know they're Good. It's about a kind of cultural supremacism.

The Palestinian flag's omnipresence feels oppressive to those of us who've long since tired of our towns and cities being turned into soapboxes by an activist class that loves nothing more than impressing its moral dominion over us little folk. There's an ironically conformist bent to these ostentatious displays of the Palestinian colors.

There's nothing radical about flying the Palestinian flag. If you want to be radical, wave the Israeli flag. People will splutter and rage and manhandle you. They will grab your flag and run off with it. They will destroy it like some Dark Ages hysteric burying a blasphemous icon.

12/03 Links Pt1: Ben Shapiro: A 60 Day Ceasefire; The ICC Throws Itself a Giant Pity Party; Gulf countries talk like Iran, act like Israel; Biden’s Radical Reading

From Ian:

Ben Shapiro: A 60 Day Ceasefire

Let’s be clear about why Israel signed onto this ceasefire. There are three reasons:
1. Joe Biden has been slow-walking aid to Israel. That slow-walking has gotten Israeli troops killed. The ceasefire is designed to allow Biden to leave and Israel to be re-armed by the incoming Trump administration.

2. Joe Biden has been threatening Israel with U.N. abstentions on his way out the door if Israel does not end action in Lebanon; furthermore, Israel is attempting to broker a deal with France to end France’s support for the antisemitic International Criminal Court targeting of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant.

3. Even under these conditions, Israel has an interest in taking Hezbollah off the board as a chess piece with regard to Hamas. Hamas has attempted throughout the Oct. 7 war to rope in other powers to save it. Hezbollah openly pledged that it would not stop its war until Hamas was preserved. Hezbollah failed. Its leadership is dead, its weapons caches largely destroyed, all at an insanely low military cost to Israel. Now Hezbollah is no longer there to split Israel’s attention and prolong Hamas’s resistance. What does this mean? It means that Israel sees this ceasefire as just that: a ceasefire until Joe Biden is gone. It is a 60 day ceasefire. Joe Biden leaves office in 54 days. That is not a coincidence.

If Hezbollah abides by the terms, so much the better: Israelis go home and live in security in the north. But Israel is working under the likely correct assumption that Hezbollah will not abide by the terms, and that the agreement as interpreted by the Trump administration will actually allow Israel freedom of action (a freedom of action denied by Biden under his spurious and ugly interpretation of the same agreement).

How can you tell all this is true? Netanyahu in his statement openly said that if the agreement is violated, they will go back in, and that the goal in the north is the return of the residents—and he hasn’t called for them to go home yet. The durability of the ceasefire is completely dependent on Hezbollah and Lebanon abiding by it. If they don’t, and Jan. 20 comes, Israel will do what it must.

Seth Mandel: The ICC Throws Itself a Giant Pity Party

The degree to which the ICC has shredded its own credibility cannot be exaggerated. The current head prosecutor is Karim Khan. In 2013, Khan wrote a blistering report about the ICC’s lawless, corrupt assault on the “fundamental rights” of the accused as laid out in the treaty that established the ICC. The clear point was: The ICC is in noncompliance with its own founding document. That Khan now spearheads the corrupt process he once decried and is leading the court into its biggest crisis of legitimacy is poetic, and arguably reinforces the point.

Meanwhile, the solution to this problem is hidden in one of the supposed pieces of evidence that the court is in crisis. Per the AP: “The court, which has long faced accusations of ineffectiveness, will have no trials pending after two conclude in December. While it has issued a number of arrest warrants in recent months, many high-profile suspects remain at large.”

Is it a bad thing that the ICC will have no trials pending after December? This is a good example of the upside-down incentives of a permanent international court: If it isn’t putting anyone on trial at the moment, it must be failing in its responsibilities. And so it has doled out a few extra arrest warrants in the hope that someone—the court doesn’t really care who—gets hauled in to the Hague so salaries can be justified. If the ICC cannot adjudicate any of the current war-crimes accusations, then it’ll just have to invent some.

What did the world do before the advent of the permanent court in 2002? It assembled courts to adjudicate specific cases of crimes against humanity. The Nuremberg Trials predated the ICC by a half-century. In 1994, a comprehensive international court was established to adjudicate the Rwandan genocide. The same is true regarding the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s.

The ICC’s need to justify its budget should not be Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant’s problem.

Cleveland State international-law professor Milena Sterio criticized the attacks on the ICC and the broad opposition to its recent arrest warrants as impediments to the court’s work.

“It becomes very difficult to justify the court’s existence,” Sterio told the AP. Indeed it does, professor.

FDD: Gulf countries talk like Iran, act like Israel

Israel might read the GCC statement and take offense, seeing that Saudi Arabia remains adamant on an impossible two-state solution as its only pathway to normalization with Israel.

Iran might also read the statement as Saudi Arabia staying away from Israel, and therefore remaining defensively more vulnerable to Tehran and its regional proxies.

But a closer look suggests that while the GCC rhetoric sounds pro-Iran, Gulf policies are against the Islamic Republic. And while the GCC bashes Israel, Gulf policies align perfectly with everything that Israel has been pushing for – both militarily and diplomatically.

Perhaps it is time for Gulf countries to reconcile what they say with what they want to see happen.

Israel has been trying to change the region to serve its interests, and these happen to overlap with Gulf interests. It’s only fair that the Gulf give Israel a hand, not only implicitly and behind closed doors, but also openly. Should the GCC do that, the momentum resulting from its shift in rhetoric would go much further than tying money rewards to what they want to see happen.

IDF troops kill seven Hamas terrorists who took part in Oct. 7 massacre

Seven Hamas terrorists who participated in the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre in Israel’s northwestern Negev were killed in Israel Defense Forces operations in central Gaza in recent weeks, the military announced on Tuesday.

Troops from the 99th Division’s 990th Reserve Artillery Regiment eliminated many terrorists, including the Oct. 7 perpetrators, whom the army named as Abd al-Razzeq, Marzouk al-Hur, Maaz al-Hur, Abd Abu-Awad Yusri, Omar Abu-Abdallah, Ahmed Zahid and Maad Abu-Garboua.

On that day, thousands of Hamas terrorists, followed by Gazan civilians stormed across the border, murdering 1,200 people, wounding thousands more and kidnapping 251 to Gaza, where 101 are still being held, including 97 from Oct. 7. Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer reportedly told U.S. President-elect Donald Trump last month that 60 are believed to be alive.

Additionally, the IDF said that troops from the 179th and 551st brigades conducted several targeted raids in the Central Gaza Strip Corridor, dismantling Hamas military sites, including observation posts and sniper positions.

Latest EoZ cartoons (plus, my cartoon book is coming!)

I am almost ready to announce my cartoon book: "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" Stay tuned!

Meanwhile, here are some cartoons I hadn't yet posted on the blog.

(Amsterdam)

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!

President-elect Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform:

Everybody is talking about the hostages who are being held so violently, inhumanely, and against the will of the entire World, in the Middle East - But it’s all talk, and no action! Please let this TRUTH serve to represent that if the hostages are not released prior to January 20, 2025, the date that I proudly assume Office as President of the United States, there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East, and for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against Humanity. Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!

This is very nice, and it has helped the families of the hostages feel better.

But what, in reality, can Trump do to help gain the release of the hostages?

The open-ended threat is itself a useful tool - if it gets taken seriously by Hamas. Together with other factors like Israel successfully decoupling Hezbollah from Gaza, it could help prompt Hamas to be more flexible in hostage negotiations.

This is all assuming that Hamas can still operate as a top-down organization that actually controls the whereabouts and treatment of the hostages, which is not at all obvious.

But if Trump enters office without a hostage release, and doesn't do anything major, it makes America look weak. It would be no different from Obama's "red line" on chemical weapons in Syria or Biden's "Don't!" to Iran on attacking Israel.

If Hamas ignores the threat, what can the US do that Israel has not done?

Trump isn't going to bomb Gaza. There are already sanctions against Hamas leaders.

The US can stop pressuring Israel on humanitarian aid which is going to strengthen Hamas. That's something, but not much.

The most effective thing that could be done is also unlikely. Trump could pressure Qatar to stop propping up and supporting Hamas. But, as Jewish Insider notes, "[W]hen it comes to Qatar, the president-elect has been friendly, including hosting the Qatari emir in Florida in September and appointing former Qatar lobbyist Pam Bondi as attorney general and Steve Witkoff, who has financial ties to Doha, as Middle East envoy."

Trump can certainly strengthen sanctions on Iran to what they were before the Biden administration, but he would have done that anyway.

There may be some ways to pressure Turkey to pressure Hamas. But these are all diplomatic efforts, not "all hell to pay."

Trump may be hoping that his threat will prompt Hamas to release at least the American hostages the way Iran released the US Embassy hostages as soon as Ronald Reagan took office out of a vague fear that something bad could happen to the hostage takers. But this is a risky game.

While Trump's actions are always a wildcard, calling his bluff doesn't seem to leave many viable options. This could weaken his effectiveness throughout his term.

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!

The pro-ICC "complementarity" argument can be used to get the ICC to accuse Israel of vaporizing Gazans as well

On November 24, the Washington Post published an editorial against the ICC decision to issue arrest warrants on Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant. It briefly discussed the "complementarity" issue:

Israel needs to be held accountable for its military conduct in Gaza. After the conflict’s end — which is long overdue — there will no doubt be Israeli judicial, parliamentary and military commissions of inquiry. Israel’s vibrant, independent media will do its own investigations. Some Israeli reserve soldiers have already been arrested over accusations of abuse against Palestinian detainees. More investigations will follow. The ICC is supposed to become involved when countries have no means or mechanisms to investigate themselves. That is not the case in Israel.

A "legal scholar" from Egypt named Abdelghany Sayed, currently a graduate student in England, responds in Al Jazeera.

Complementarity in no way means that the elected officials and independent judiciary of a democratic state shall enjoy immunity from ICC prosecution. Instead, it means that Israel needs to show it has active investigations. The fact of Israel’s inactivity in relation to war crimes and crimes against humanity by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant in and of itself already means that the complementarity assessment has been exhausted and the court may proceed.

And even if it were active, Israel would need to demonstrate the willingness and ability to genuinely prosecute the perpetrator and conduct. The law of the ICC allows it to intervene if the “investigative activities undertaken by the domestic authorities are not tangible, concrete and progressive”, as laid out in a decision in the case of Ivory Coast first lady Simone Gbagbo, accused of crimes against humanity.

First of all, the war is still going on. To say that Israel must mount an investigation on its top leaders during a war - and its failure to do so is evidence that it has no ability to independently investigate any crimes - is insane.

But the absurdity of the argument doesn't end there.

Before Israel can investigate itself for genocide, there needs to be a shred of evidence for genocide. There isn't any. Genocide requires intent, and every sane Israeli from the right to the left knows that there is no intent to wipe out the people of Gaza. Every piece of evidence proffered by Israel's enemies for genocide has been handily refuted by actual facts that show that the supposedly genocidal statements are twisted and Israel's military actions are consistent with what every army would do under the same circumstances

According to people like Sayed, the "genocide" charge requires no solid evidence. Just the repetition of the charge by antisemites is enough to make it respectable enough to be investigated. And, they say, if Israel doesn't mount an investigation around every bogus accusation, that is proof that it is unwilling to investigate itself and therefore the ICC must step in.

Calls for investigation of bogus charges against Israel is a standard playbook by antisemites. In 2010, the "Palestine Telegraph" made up a story that Israeli teams helping earthquake victims in Haiti were stealing their organs, and former British MPO Jenny Tonge called for an independent investigation - for Israel's own good, of course. “To prevent allegations such as these — which have already been posted on YouTube — going any further, the IDF and the Israeli Medical Association should establish an independent inquiry immediately to clear the names of the team in Haiti,” she said.

Last week, Hamas called for an independent investigation into the absurd lie that Israel is using illegal weapons to "vaporize" Gazans.

Israel haters are putting together their "evidence" of the fictional vaporization weapon. Their proofs are just as bogus as the "genocide" charge, but by stringing together previously reported lies and half-truths, they are trying to make a plausible case. An obscure Indian site called "Defense Mirror" does it this way:

* The head of Gaza's Health Ministry accuses Israel of using weapons that vaporize bodies.

* The EuroMed Monitor NGO made the same accusation in May, suggesting Israel might be using thermobaric weapons.

* Antony Loewenstein wrote a book that claims that Israel uses experimental weapons in Gaza in order to be able to market them worldwide.

Put them together, and antisemites have all the proof they need!

The bogus evidence for this mythical weapon was bolstered by Electronic Intifada in September:

Did Israel kill my friend Bashar Abed al-Wahad along with his family by using banned thermal weapons?

I learned that when a civil defense crew came to find the bodies left under the rubble of the house they shared in Gaza City’s al-Daraj neighborhood which was bombed in August, they didn’t find any human remains.

This suggests Israel might have used special munitions – like thermobaric bombs – that can vaporize human bodies.

Only one problem. The bodies of the family were recovered and transferred to the Baptist Hospital. They weren't "vaporized." The Gaza writer lied to create this story, which was reproduced numerous times on social media. Now it is part of the canon that Israel uses vaporizing weapons.

(By the way, there are still body remains even with the most powerful thermobaric weapons. Outside of nuclear bombs, I cannot find any weapons that "vaporize" bodies.)

In other words, anyone can make up a lie, whether it is "genocide" or "vaporizing weapons," and given enough time to dig up or manufacture evidence, make a case that it is worthy of "investigation." And if Israel refuses to mount such an investigation - because it knows it is not engaged in genocide nor in manufacturing vaporizing ray guns - that is considered evidence that it is covering up its crimes.

Calls for "independent investigations" is a means to make a lie sound plausible. In genocide case, the ICC willingly went along.

The playbook of the "vaporizing" case is the exact same thing. Falsely accuse Israel, support it with lies, and then use the Big Lie technique: let the Israel haters repeat it until people believe it. Israel's denials are just more evidence of its "truth."

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!

The State Department says it wants Hamas terrorists who attacked Americans extradited to the US. Except for Ahlam Tamimi, Sbarro massacre murderer.

On November 18, at the daily State Department briefing, spokesperson Matthew Miller said:

What I would say on behalf of the United States is that we don’t believe the leaders of a vicious terrorist organization should be living comfortably anywhere, and that certainly includes in a major city of one of our key allies and partners. Remember that Hamas is a brutal terrorist organization that has murdered a number of Americans, continues to hold to this day seven American citizens hostage, and of course that’s not even to speak of the citizens of other countries that it has murdered and that it has held hostage.

So to the extent that members of Hamas are in Türkiye or in any country, look, a number of these individuals are under U.S. indictment, have been under U.S. indictment for some time, and we believe that they should be turned over to the United States.

As soon as I read that, I tweeted:

Has the @StateDept told this to Jordan regarding Ahlam Tamimi?

After all, it is the exact same situation. A Hamas terrorist, who is under US indictment, is living comfortably under a US ally, Jordan, which is actively protecting her.

In 2017, the US Justice Department announced:

A criminal complaint was unsealed today charging Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi, also known as “Khalti” and “Halati,” a Jordanian national in her mid-30s, with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction against U.S. nationals outside the U.S., resulting in death. The charge is related to the defendant’s participation in an Aug. 9, 2001, suicide bomb attack at a pizza restaurant in Jerusalem that killed 15 people, including two U.S. nationals. Four other U.S. nationals were among the approximately 122 others injured in the attack. Also unsealed today was a warrant for Al-Tamimi’s arrest and an affidavit in support of the criminal complaint and arrest warrant. The criminal charge had been under seal since July 15, 2013.

Maybe Matt Lee of the AP read my tweet, because the very next day, he asked Miller:

MATT LEE: If it is, in fact, true that you press countries to return or to extradite people indicted in U.S. courts, what about the woman in the Sbarro bombing in Israel years ago who’s been living free in Jordan now? There was long talk of her – of efforts to get her extradited, and nothing has ever come of them. So why should these Hamas guys worry if you’re just going to —
MR MILLER: Matt, I’m going to admit you’re speaking to a case that predates my tenure, that I have a limited, at best, factual understanding of it, so I shouldn’t speak to it. But when it comes to these terrorists who are members and leadership of a group who continue to hold Americans hostage, we do think it’s appropriate that they face justice.

Funny. Because this is not the first time Lee asked Miller about Tamimi. And not the first time Miller deflected the question.

February 13, 2024:

Today Secretary Blinken hosted King Abdullah. What is the State Department doing to get Jordan to extradite Ahlam Tamimi, a terrorist wanted by the U.S. for a bombing that killed two Americans in 2001?

MR MILLER: So as it pertains to your first question, I’m going to defer comment to the Department of Justice, as we always do when it pertains to matters of extradition.

February 14, 2024:

Following up on a question I asked yesterday regarding Ahlam Tamimi, who’s a terrorist wanted by the United States, did Secretary Blinken bring up that case in his meeting yesterday with King Abdullah?

MR MILLER: I don’t have any further readouts, other than the note we issued publicly.

How can Miller say he is not familiar with the case now when he has been asked about it twice before this year?

The annual State Department country report on terrorism Jordan said in 2022 under the Jordanian entry:

The United States has continually emphasized to Jordanian authorities the importance of holding Ahlam al-Tamimi accountable in a U.S. court for her admitted role in a 2001 bombing in Jerusalem that killed 16 people, including Americans Malki Roth, Shoshana Greenbaum, and Chana Nachenberg. While the United States considers the extradition treaty with Jordan to be in force as a matter of international law, the Government of Jordan’s position, citing the ruling of its highest court, is that its Constitution forbids the extradition of Jordanian nationals. The United States continued to impress upon the GoJ the importance of this case and continued to seek all viable options to bring Tamimi to justice.

(Even though the State Department is required by law to issue these reports every year by April 30, no reports were published in 2023 or 2024.)

It seems disingenuous, at the very least, for the State Department spokesperson to claim ignorance on a case that has been around for decades, especially when the State Department itself writes about the importance of extradition.

It sure sounds like the stated desire to bring a terrorist who murdered Americans to justice is not real, but only words meant to shut up the bereaved parents of the victims and the many people who want justice for Malki Roth and the other victims of Ahlam Tamimi.