Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, February 24, 2025

UKLFI uncovers more evidence that "Gaza famine" narrative was manufactured from poor data

UK Lawyers for Israel has written a lengthy and comprehensive rebuttal to the accusations of famine in Gaza.

It goes into detail on many of the arguments I have written about, but the report goes beyond that showing serious methodological flaws in the reports issued by the IPC Famine Review Committee (FRC) and the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET).

The report highlights consistent mistakes by these organizations in their reports, such as misestimating the number of people in various parts of Gaza and therefore predicting famine based on incorrect amounts of incoming food per person.

The report is a bit wonky and difficult for the average person to read, which is a shame. Times of Israel does a decent job summarizing it:

A review conducted by the UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) organization into allegations by international famine review bodies that famine and severe malnutrition were widespread and prevalent in Gaza during the war between Israel and Hamas has found that famine did not break out in the territory according to the figures of the very organizations making the claims.

The report noted severe problems with the reports these organizations issued, due to what it said was their use of “incomplete or inaccurate data,” the inconsistent application of methodological standards, failure to take into account new data, and “potential bias” in how it interpreted and presented the information it had.

UKLFI’s review of the issue, published last week and which highlighted these criticisms, found that there was no famine in Gaza during the war, as defined by IPC standards, and that even levels of acute malnutrition were only marginally higher than pre-war figures.

That last point was one I had not previously looked at, and it is significant. If the baseline that they are using for malnutrition in Gaza is wrong, their entire analysis is wrong.

There are two major ways to calculate General Acute Malnutrition (“GAM”). One of these is the “weight-for-height Z-score” (“WHZ”); the other is the “mid-upper arm circumference” (“MUAC”). To calculate how much worse things are getting you need to compare apples to apples. But

FEWS NET compared apples to oranges.

They said that malnutrition in Gaza was at 0.8% pre-war for children under 5 based on WHZ and then compared that to numbers during the war based on MUAC. But even their own documentation showed that the pre-war MUAC malnutrition rate was at 4% - five times higher than what they used to say how bad things were getting.

In North Gaza they said the MUAC malnutrition rate was 6-9%, in February it was 12-16%, but in May it went down to 1%. The organizations assumed that the May figures were anomalous but didn't consider that the February figures were the anomalous ones; there is evidence that they were weighted towards only measuring children who were already sick.

In November, it measured MUAC malnutrition for all of Gaza at 5% and North Gaza at 2%. Given that the rate for all of Gaza was 4% before the war, this means that things were not getting significantly worse after 12 months of war - the entire "famine" narrative collapses.

The UKFLI report needs to be rewritten as a friendlier, graphics-heavy Amnesty style report to show how the entire "famine" narrative - relied heavily upon by the ICC and Western media - has been based on faulty data and faulty assumptions.

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"Palestine Studies" instructor sought at @Hunter_College. I think I am the best candidate.

Here is part of an advertised faculty position at Hunter College:

As part of a Palestine Studies cluster hire, Hunter College is honored to announce its search for an open rank tenure-line professor in one of the social sciences who would join one or more of the departments of Anthropology, History, Sociology, Political Science, or Women’s and Gender Studies. This position is one of two positions in Palestine studies. The other search, in the humanities, can be found here (ADD).

We seek a historically grounded scholar who takes a critical lens to issues pertaining to Palestine including but not limited to: settler colonialism, genocide, human rights, apartheid, migration, climate and infrastructure devastation, health, race, gender and sexuality. We are open to diverse theoretical and methodological approaches. We seek candidates interested in public-facing work and who exhibit a commitment to being part of the life of the college, a diverse and exciting undergraduate minority serving institution.

I think I am the perfect candidate. I have written extensively on the topic for over twenty years; I've authored books, articles and given lectures and podcasts on these topics. My ideas have been taught at Ivy League universities and quoted in numerous scholarly works.

Since they are seeking diverse theoretical and methodological approaches, they might find my ideas on their specific topics mentioned a bit revolutionary, but certainly well founded and with lots of factual support:

- Palestinian nationalism is a relatively new phenomenon, about a century old, created purely as a reaction and counter to modern Zionism. This remains the case today as Palestinian leaders have shown far less interest in creating a state than in destroying the Jewish state.

- The concept of settler-colonialism does not apply to Jews in Israel, who have had a deep psychological and spiritual connection to the land of Israel for millennia. Part of this connection is no doubt due to their being attacked as outsiders no matter how long they lived in their host countries. The irony of Jews now being considered white Europeans after centuries of European antisemitism and marginalization, including racial antisemitism, is just one of the topics that deserve more coverage in academia.

- Genocide requires intent. There is no intent by the State of Israel to destroy the Palestinian people, and every single attempt to fabricate such intent by ignoring counterevidence or taking quotes out of context is pure antisemitism, specifically the disgusting need by so many to accuse Jews of being as bad or worse than the Nazis.

- There are real issues with human rights of Palestinians. They must be balanced with the human rights of Israeli citizens. As with every nation on Earth, the rights of citizens are prioritized over the rights of those who are dedicated to destroying their nation.

- There is no apartheid in Israel against its Arab citizens by any definition of apartheid, and the concept of apartheid does not apply to non-citizens, by definition.

- Palestinians by and large migrated from their homes in 1948 without being forced out. Most simply fled a war zone. The only reason they have not been integrated into the lands they moved to like all other refugees is because of deep Arab antisemitism and shame at having lost a war to the despised, weak Jews. It would be a wonderful academic exercise to compare, say, Egyptian or Jordanian attitudes towards refugees from Syria, Iraq and Sudan with those who are considered Palestinian. For some reason, I haven't found any such study.

- Blaming Israel for climate change is absurd on the face of it to anyone who has the ability to look at a world map and try to find the several pixels that represent Israel.

After I wrote this I decided to actually count the pixels in the first world map I searched for. Out of the 739,000 pixels in that map, no more than 25 are Israel, maybe 2 are Gaza. The word "Israel" takes up about five times the area of Israel itself.

Most of the professors in the fields mentioned are innumerate, so I already have a huge advantage over most social sciences academics.

- Gaza's infrastructure has indeed been devastated. This is entirely due to Hamas using all of Gaza's infrastructure for military purposes, which makes them valid military targets according to international law.

- I have done serious analysis of accusations of health issues against Israel in The Lancet. They have all been shown to be baseless. I am willing to bet that my knowledge of no more than arithmetic and how to use spreadsheets goes way beyond any other candidate Hunter is considering.

- I have no idea what race has to do with the Israel-Arab conflict. I would suggest that to try to shoehorn Israeli Jews as "white" and Arabs as "people of color" into other constructs is itself racist and antisemitic.

- I have no idea what gender has to do with the conflict. I would suggest that any claim that Israel specifically attacks Palestinian women is antisemitic.

- There is plenty to speak about on sexuality in the region - Palestinian laws specifically against women and gays, for example. I am as qualified as any to discuss it. It is hardly my area of expertise but since it is a topic that is all but ignored by mainstream academia I am pretty much as much of an expert as anyone else being considered for the position. Of course, if the only discussion of sexuality is meant to be twisted against the most liberal state in the region, then I would again suggest that the discussion is inherently antisemitic.

I think Hunter will find my qualifications to be superior to every other candidate, except that I do not have a PhD. I cannot imagine getting one would be difficult given the poor quality of the papers I have read in these fields over the past decade. In general, I would claim that my extensive knowledge gathered in other fields like the sciences, data analysis, international law, Judaism and history, as can be seen in my 40,000 plus articles in this website, would bring a novel and invigorating perspective in a field that badly needs alternative points of view.

As far as Hunter’s prestige being enhanced by my presence on campus, I have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

To make things interesting, I would be happy to challenge any of Hunter's existing Palestine Studies professors to choose any one of my longer articles on their own area of expertise and critique it, and then give me a chance to defend it, online. Most of my articles are written in less than an hour, so finding mistakes in my own research should be simple. All my facts are referenced with hyperlinks. I have no specific academic expertise in any of the fields they mention and I would still be happy to defend my writings against the best they have to offer. Let independent scholars judge whose arguments are best.

But if the position is meant to only be given to anti-Zionists, then perhaps that should be made more clear in the job description. At least that would be honest.

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02/23 Links: The child murderers of Gaza; The BBC is turning into a megaphone for Hamas; Andrew Roberts: History’s Case for Trump’s Gaza Plan

From Ian:

Ruthie Blum: Babies in bandanas

Before the caskets were transferred to the Red Cross, masked Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Fatah operatives proudly basked in the cheering crowds of Palestinian “civilians.”

These male and female jihad-lovers came out in droves, with children of all ages in tow, decorated in bandanas. Not ones with bat wings, of course. No, those with terrorist insignias. After all, their superheroes are “martyrs” for Allah. That’s whom they are taught to glorify and emulate.

Following the horrifying display of joy over the dead Jews, the crowd dispersed and the coffins were transported back to Israel, a short car-ride—yet light years—away. Once past the border that separates hell from heaven, they were delivered to the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute for autopsy.

Lifshitz was identified relatively quickly. It took several more hours before members of the extended Bibas family were informed of the even worse news than already expected.

The remains of the woman being examined did not belong to Shiri. Furthermore, Ariel and Kfir had been murdered in cold blood in November 2023, about three weeks after they were snatched.

“The terrorists did not shoot the two young boys; they killed them with their bare hands,” Israel Defense Forces spokesman Daniel Hagari revealed on Friday. “Afterward, they committed horrific acts to cover up these atrocities.”

Gasps could be heard around the country and beyond. Memories came flooding back of the footage of a terrified Shiri, clutching her babies for dear life, being ushered by Palestinian “civilians” into a residence in Khan Yunis, never to be seen or heard from again. Until Friday night, that is, when Hamas deigned to return her actual body.

No mother in Gaza empathized with her fate. On the contrary, the women of the Strip continue to view her as a perfectly legitimate target for sadistic abuse.

It’s in keeping with how they educate their children in the art—and skill—of savagery. It’s why so many Gazan youngsters continue to be taken to observe the nauseating hostage-return ceremonies aimed at a last hurrah of humiliation for the State of Israel.

Those children wear the headbands of one terrorist faction or another. You know, for the cuteness of it all.

Batman symbolizes the fight for justice. He stands for righteousness in the face of evil. His mission is to protect the innocent. To fight for the weak. To ensure that villains do not triumph over good.

This is what Israeli children grow up to admire. Heroes who defend, not attack. Warriors who sacrifice for the sake of others, not themselves. The IDF soldier who protects civilians at all costs. The paramedic who rushes to the scene of terror attacks, unarmed, to save lives. The firefighter who runs into flames while others flee.

Contrast this with the children of Gaza and the Palestinian Authority, who are raised on a steady diet of hatred. Their heroes are bombers, not Batman. Mass murderers, not saviors.

This is the reality of a society governed by blood lust. It’s the result of rulers who use their people as human shields and ideological pawns, indoctrinating generations into believing that the path to paradise is paved with mutilated Jews.

It’s high time for the Tribe, in Israel and abroad, to internalize this reality and realize that coexistence with heathen monsters is impossible. Anyone who has a temporary lapse in judgment on this score should remember what befell the Bibas family.

Daniel Greenfield: The child murderers of Gaza

“O God, do not be silent; hold not Thy peace, and be not still,” IDF Chief Rabbi Brig. Gen. Eyal Krim prayed the words of Psalm 83 over the bodies of two murdered children, their mother and an old man, in the Gaza Strip on Thursday.

Hamas and PLO terrorists had mockingly paraded their coffins to the cheers and jeers of Muslim men, women and children occupying Gaza while upbeat music played, they had mixed up the bodies, locked the boxes and then attached keys that did not work. After inspecting the coffins for explosives, Israel had covered them with its blue and white flag and prayed over them.

Islam is an honor-shame culture; to humiliate the bodies of the children of your enemies is to show the strength of Allah, and jeering the bodies of murdered children shows the glory of Islam.

The celebration and mocking of the bodies of murdered children was not the work of some fringe group. Hamas took care to have every Islamic terrorist organization taking part in claiming victory, including the PLO’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades representing the Palestinian Authority and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (Martyr Omar Al-Qassem Forces), popular on college campuses, as well as the Al-Ansar Brigades, which has links to Al-Qaeda.

There is no “Palestinian” group that was not there to take its share of credit for the dead children.

The message being sent by the representatives of seven Islamic terrorist groups in Israel, carrying the coffins of their victims, is of a united front committed to the destruction of Israel, and the killing of all non-Muslims to be followed by the creation of an Islamic theocracy.

Nor was the ghoulish scene some local “Palestinian” phenomenon as people like to think.

Hen Mazzig: Indifference is worse than hate

The silence of the world in response is not neutrality—it is complicity. When atrocities against Jews elicit only passive indifference, they encourage more brutality. When protests erupt worldwide over justified military actions, yet remain silent about slaughtered children, it creates an unmistakable double standard, one that implicitly declares Jewish lives less worthy of global empathy.

“Never Again”—a solemn vow forged from the ashes of the Holocaust—once seemed immutable. Yet, as atrocities against Jews grow more grotesque and are met only with deafening silence, one wonders if “Never Again” was ever more than mere words, comforting yet hollow, easily forgotten when the victims become inconvenient.

We cannot allow humanity’s moral compass to be reset in the face of such brutality.

Silence is complicity; indifference is enabling. As Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel famously said, “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.”

We owe it to Avera Mengistu, to Shiri Bibas, to Ariel and Kfir, to Evitar David and Guy Gilboa-Dalal—to every victim of this unimaginable cruelty—to speak loudly, clearly, and urgently.

Because if Jewish dignity is negotiable, if atrocities reminiscent of our darkest past provoke no global outrage, then “Never Again” isn’t just a broken promise—it’s a devastating lie.

In 1948, the IDF turned down an offer for the Enigma encryption machine from the British

Haaretz has a lengthy account of how the British broke the Nazi "Enigma" machine encryption and how the Nazis denied that such a thing was possible even when evidence mounted, shortening World War II.

At the very end of the article, it adds an intriguing detail I had never heard before:

Enigma was also the subject of a brief chapter in the history of the Israel Defense Forces. At the end of the Mandate, the British gave the Jewish state's nascent army a few dozen Enigma machines – naturally, without relating the exploits at Bletchley Park (which is today a historical landmark and museum). According to some reports, the British, who apparently hoped for full access to the secrets of the IDF, didn't know that one of the mathematicians who had worked on breaking Enigma had made aliyah, and, upon hearing of the British gesture, hinted to the relevant authorities here that some gifts are better left unaccepted.

Now, this is interesting! People who worked on the British codebreaking project were famously reticent about telling anyone about what they did during the war. It took decades for the details to be publicized. Who was this Jew who worked in Bletchley Park and recommended against the IDF accepting this Trojan Horse gift from the British in 1947 or 1948?

TheJC published an article about the many Jews who worked on the British codebreaking efforts:

In those early days of the war, the Jewish staff invited to share the Sabbath meal with Rebecca and Philip Bogush and their daughters — the only known Jewish family in Bletchley village, who had been evacuated from Stamford Hill during the Blitz — were as eclectic a group as the rest of “Station X”.

There were established academics at the height of their careers, young servicemen recruited for their mathematical or linguistic skills, clerks and messengers who combined fast typing with languages, including the Bogush daughters, Muriel and Anita. They came from a variety of social backgrounds, the famous names of Anglo-Jewry alongside recent immigrants from Germany and eastern Europe.

Among the academics were great figures in the history of computer science, not least Max Newman, whose lectures Alan Turing attended at Cambridge University. Newman’s work at Bletchley was critical to cracking the “Tunny” code used by the German High Command. Convinced that codebreaking could be mechanised, he was a driving force in the creation of Colossus, the world’s first programmable computer. It was the remarkable technological breakthroughs of Newman, Turing, Welchman and others that the scholar George Steiner had in mind when he described Bletchley as perhaps the greatest achievement of Britain not just in the Second World War but in the 20th Century.

There was also a vibrant group of younger Jewish academics who would meet on Wednesday evenings at the flat of Joe Gillis, a lecturer at the Maths faculty of Queen’s University, Belfast. There they discussed the future, personal and political. Some of Bletchley’s most talented staff were regular attendees: Rolf Noskwith; Morris Hoffman, a young civil servant who had been one of the earliest members of the Federation of Zionist Youth before the war; Jack Good, a gifted mathematician and British chess champion, who was Turing’s statistical assistant; Michael Cohen, a Scot who had been at Glasgow University studying Divinity with a view to becoming a rabbi; and the remarkable Ettinghausen brothers, Walter and Ernest.

Later on we see:

The meetings at Gillis’s flat were more focused on the future than current atrocities. It was there that the Professional and Technical Aliyah Association was founded, to encourage Jewish professionals to emigrate and build a modern, democratic Israel.
Walter Ettinghausen declared at one gathering that he would be on the first boat to Palestine after the war. He left in 1946 and, as Walter Eytan, went on to play a key role in Israeli foreign policy and public service.
Gillis himself became a founder and professor of Applied Mathematics at the Weizmann Institute; by 1948 Michael Cohen was coding messages for the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem and went on to help found the “British Kibbutz” in Upper Galilee.
There were many other Jewish Bletchley veterans who put their skills at the service of the new state; when Noskwith saw Eytan at the UN in 1947 to offer his own expertise in Israel, Eytan responded: “Codebreakers we have plenty of!”

According to the 2023 IDF book "Jewish Warfare in the Second World War" (Hebrew), it was indeed Walter Eytan (Ettinghausen) who advised against the IDF accepting this "gift." They mention this in his brief biography:

Walter Eytan - In 1946, he established the 'Institute for Advanced Studies' (School for Diplomats) within the Political Department of the Jewish Agency. He also served as the liaison officer for the English press and was involved in secret missions. His extensive experience should have made him a valuable asset to the Yishuv's intelligence, but there is no evidence to support this. The British ability to eavesdrop on the Jewish Agency's communications and decipher its codes became widely known long before, after the King David Hotel bombing on July 22, 1946. Therefore, his contribution, if any, to enhancing communication security was probably not significant, except for his objection that prevented the purchase of 'Enigma' machines for the IDF.

The way this is written, Eytan - who didn't even tell his wife what he did during the war - probably just recommended that the IDF not accept the machines without explaining exactly why.

This is a fascinating footnote to the history of the breaking of the Enigma code.

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Anecdotes from Nasrallah's funeral

Here are some random bits of interesting information around Hassan Nasrallah's funeral today.

IDF Arabic spokesperson Avichay Adraee wrote a message to Lebanon on X:

Today is the funeral of Hassan Nasrallah , and his environment is in mourning... But let us stop for a moment and ask: What is the mourning for? For the man who turned Lebanon into a failed state? For the one who sold your future to Iran's interests? For the one who destroyed the economy, fragmented the people, and involved the country in futile wars? Since Nasrallah took over the leadership of Hezbollah, Lebanon has witnessed nothing but collapse. Lebanon was taken hostage by the "Islamic Revolution" project... It does not matter if the people go hungry, or the country is plunged into darkness, or the future is lost, as long as his agenda continues. To all those mourning him today... Are you really sad for him? Or are you refusing to face the truth?

He also noted that there were no Lebanese flags to be seen in the massive stadium funeral.

Question! Where is the Lebanese flag in the Camille Chamoun stadium, the man during whose reign the only known flag was the Lebanese flag?

🔸Every time, #Hezbollah proves that it is not part of Lebanon, but rather an independent entity with loyalty that goes beyond its borders. His last funeral was not just a farewell, but a show of influence and the imposition of its own identity, as the Lebanese flags disappeared and were replaced by the party’s banners and Iran’s militias, as if the state had never existed.

🔸But the glaring paradox? The party did not find a place to bury its leaders Nasrallah and Safieddine except in the city founded by President Camille Chamoun, the man during whose reign the only known flag was the Lebanese flag, and no foreign flags were raised over Beirut. So how did Beirut, which was the capital of sovereignty, turn into a square where the flags of a party that openly declares its affiliation with Iran are raised, while the flag that is supposed to protect everyone is absent?

Naharnet writes:

Hezbollah leader Sheikh Naim Qassem said the group would keep following the path of slain chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Sunday during a televised speech broadcast at his massive funeral on the outskirts of Beirut.

"We will uphold trust and walk on this path, we will uphold your will," Qassem said referring to Nasrallah, adding: "you are still with us: your... path and struggle live within us" and "I am loyal to the legacy Nasrallah".

If he is so brave, why didn't he show up in person?

One party that did appear in person was the IDF:

Lebanese state media reported Sunday Israeli planes flying at a very low altitude over Beirut, with AFP journalists hearing the rumbling noise while tens of thousands attended Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah's funeral near the capital.

"The hostile warplanes flew at low altitude over the skies of Beirut and its suburbs," the National News Agency said.

Some reports indicate that Hezbollah paid $44 million for the plot of land for Nasrallah's mausoleum. But they are selling souvenirs to help make up for the price.

Finally, in the same article L'Orient Today talks about how Hezbollah tried to keep the media out of the stadium during the preparations.

At the stadium entrance, a small group of shabeb [young men] equipped with walkie-talkies lift the barrier blocking access to the stands. "Do you have authorization?" one of them asks, peering at the inquirers with one good eye and one glass eye. “Come back Saturday, there will be a special tour reserved for the press,” he says.

How could a young Hezbollah man with a walkie talkie have lost his eye?

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The likely Arab plan for Gaza: No Hamas, no PA, no deportation

Hussain Abdul-Hussain, of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, describes the likely Arab plan for Gaza:

From left, leaders of Bahrain (CP), Qatar, UAE, Saudi, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt plus Jordanian CP and UAE NSA, met in Riyadh to discuss "Egyptian Plan for Gaza."

Plan not out yet, will likely be unveiled at Cairo Arab League Emergency Summit on March 4. Plan expected to promise enormous amount of Gulf money (up to $20 billion) to Gaza (Egypt will certainly get a cut and PA's Mahmoud Abbas will also get a bribe to buy him out of the plan).

The crux of the plan is this: In return for the enormous money to rebuild Gaza, both Hamas and Abbas will be out of Gaza. In their stead, a Palestinian governing body (the plan calls them technocrats), will be installed by the Arab League and put in charge of rebuilding Gaza, physically and politically. This body will oversee reconstruction and make sure to keep out two things: PA's corruption and Hamas's wars. Funders, after all, want to make sure that all the billions they will invest will not be stolen or not be destroyed in yet another round of war with Israel.

Who will be on the Gaza governing body to be anointed at the Arab League? Each of the leaders in the picture have Palestinians close to them. All of the leaders in the picture are on the same page (against Islamism and supportive of peace) except for Qatar (pro-Islamism and anti-peace - "resistance"). Qatar will likely get someone on the governing body, someone who is Islamist light, who is not Hamas but maybe Hamas likes him. Everyone is perhaps reasoning that Arab consensus is required to edge Hamas and PA.

President Trump's Gaza Plan jumpstarted this Arab Plan for the "day after" in Gaza and gave it good cover. It scared everyone into action, and gave urgency and legitimacy tp the Arab Plan as an alternative to the "plan to displace Palestinians." Between the two plans, both Hamas and Abbas will have to accept the Arab Plan even if they hate it.

But make no mistake, both Hamas and Abbas will do all they can to derail the Arab Plan and take over once they deem enough of Gaza had been reconstructed.

I don't know if this is all true. I'm seeing some sources saying Hamas weapons will not be destroyed but kept in some warehouse, or that the Saudis insist the PA is involved.

As with all plans, it is easy to find problems. Qatar will try to allow Hamas to still exist, albeit under the radar for a while. If Hamas wants to put up a fight, I'm not sure what Arabs would want to fight, even if they can't stand them. Keeping Gazans in Gaza against their will will look bad. A lot of Gazans still support Hamas or other terror groups.

However, it is clear that Israel by itself could not offer a "day after" plan that stands a chance of success. Israel cannot realistically forcibly deport two million Gazans.

This plan, as it stands now, is infinitely better than the situation in Gaza after the other wars and much better than any other alternative anyone was able to offer a month ago (besides mine.)

Remarkably, this plan appears to address Israel's major concerns about Gaza. No Hamas, no PA, demilitarized, controlled by presumably reasonable people who care about the welfare of the Gazans themselves.

While this is not surprising to those of us who follow the Arab thinking, it completely disregards the European consensus that the PA must be in charge of "Palestine." The "everyone knows" scenarios ("everyone knows what the final peace agreement will be") have been torpedoed by the Arab world itself. If the Arab world doesn't trust the PA to control Gaza, that means they don't trust the PA to control the West Bank, either. This is congruent with the Israeli position.

The other remarkable part of the plan is that it tacitly gives Israel veto power over the whole thing. It is not an "Arab peace plan" which is take it or leave it - it is an attempt to offer an alternative to the Trump plan of expelling Gazans while addressing Israel's security needs, something that has never been a priority for the Arab world.

Israel is in a position to say that this is acceptable with additional provisos like Israel maintaining airspace control and the ability to inspect all imports, no UNRWA, no "right of return" for Gazans to Israel and allowing Gazans who want to leave to go to any country that would have them.

I can see Israel accepting this as long as all the countries behind the plan recognize Israel. That might cause Qatar (and maybe Kuwait) to balk, but the Saudis would be on board. That in turn, would take out the Qatari problem.

If Israel is OK with the plan, so is Trump, so the Arab countries need to please Israel.

It is becoming increasingly clear that Trump's plan for Gaza was a feint to scare the Arab world to do something just like this. It is indeed ironic that the major Arab incentive to helping Palestinians is their distaste at the idea of Palestinians moving into their own countries.

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Good news! One of the released prisoners, responsible for the Cafe Hillel bombing in 2003, is dead!

Nael Salama Obeid was a Hamas member and the main organizer of the September 9, 2003 suicide bombing at Café Hillel in Jerusalem. 7 people were killed and he was sentenced to seven life terms plus 30 years.

He was released from prison last week after 21 years with the sixth set of prisoners.

On Saturday morning, he fell off of the roof of his house in Issawiya, Jerusalem, and died.

Let's hope we hear of many more such accidents.

Or should I say "accidents"?

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02/22 Links: Six hostages released by Hamas including two held for a decade; Hamas forced 2 other hostages to watch fellow hostages freed

From Ian:

Sickened, Yes. But Shocked? By Abe Greenwald

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Some of those liberals are employed in media, government, and international nonprofit organizations, and they worked to make the slaughtering of babies on October 7 a contested issue. They didn’t entirely succeed, but they managed to distract attention away from Hamas’s infanticides and child-killings by raising doubts about various details. And when anti-Israel journalists had nothing else to use, the phrase “Israeli authorities claim” got the job done. Because on the left, the specter of the Jewish lie outshines the reality of the terrorist atrocity.

On social media, of course, the defense of Hamas has been more straightforward. Go to X at any hour and you’ll find someone with thousands of followers who just posted that the IDF itself is responsible for October 7. Those who aren’t conspiracy theorists or outright Jew-haters adopt what they believe is a more reasonable-sounding elision, something to the effect of “Hamas’s attack was bad enough. We don’t have to exaggerate it with tales of baby murder.”

That brings us to the larger reason that so many have resisted the truth of Hamas’s degeneracy. There’s a line from Cormac McCarthy’s The Crossing that I return to almost daily: “The wicked know that if the ill they do be of sufficient horror that men will not speak against it. That men have just enough stomach for small evils and only these will they oppose.” Hamas had the timorous world of “global opinion” beat from the start.

What’s more interesting about McCarthy’s line is that, like so many other axioms, it applies to almost everyone—except the Jews. In fact, for Jews, the inverse applies. While men don’t have “enough stomach” to oppose Hamas’s murdering children, in the second century B.C.E., men invented the Jewish blood libel for the very purpose of opposing the Jews. And it’s never stopped. It’s why the Gaza Ministry of Health exists—to amplify the blood libel and perpetuate Jew-hatred. So Jews are falsely accused of killing gentile babies and anti-Semites are falsely cleared of killing Jewish babies.

Given the millennia of persistent and murderous anti-Semitism, it should be hard to shock the Jews. Given the facts of October 7, it should be impossible for Hamas to do so. And I confess that, while infanticide should always be shocking, I wasn’t shocked by the killing of Ariel and Kfir Bibas. Disgusted and enraged, but not shocked. What shocks me is that Hamas and its supporters in Gaza are still alive. And it shocks me because, for Jews, the other implication of McCarthy’s formula should also be inverted. Unlike other men, Jews must oppose those evils of “sufficient horror.” I am more certain than ever that we will.

Daniel Greenfield: Fake Quotes by Saudi and UAE Imams Condemning Hamas Go Viral

Fake quotes by Saudi Grand Mufti Abdulaziz bin Abdullah Al-Sheikh and the Grand Mufti of Dubai Ahmed al-Haddad condemning the Hamas treatment of the bodies of the Bibas children have gone viral.

People are promoting these quotes with the best of intentions but there is no Arabic source for them.

“What we say today in Gaza is a disgrace to Islam, an act of blasphemy against Allah,” Saudi Grand Mufti Abdulaziz bin Abdullah Al-Sheikh reportedly said.

The social media posts claiming this racked up millions of likes. They were even quoted by a few papers which failed to do their research.

The quote has been disavowed.

The quote by Grand Mufti of Dubai Ahmed al-Haddad reportedly stated that, “Hamas has brought shame to Islam on a level never seen before.”

The quote has not been officially disavowed, but an Emirati journalist stated that he had never heard of it.

The only place the quote appears in Arabic is on a Christian Arab pro-Israel woman’s Facebook page. It should be assumed to be fake until proven otherwise.

People insisted on making up and then tweeting these fake quotes out of some hope that Islam was more merciful and decent than it is.

Gaza captor told hostages that Hamas collaborates with US campus protesters, lawsuit alleges

A Hamas member who held Israelis hostage in Gaza told the captives that the terror group was coordinating with “allies” on college campuses and in the media, according to a lawsuit filed in US court on Friday.

The lawsuit was filed by former hostages Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov and Shlomi Ziv. All three were taken from the Nova music festival in southern Israel during Hamas’s October 7, 2023, invasion of Israel.

They were held in Gaza by Abdallah Aljamal, according to the lawsuit and the IDF. Aljamal was a writer for the Palestine Chronicle, a news outlet run by the People Media Project, a US-based, tax-exempt nonprofit that is the focus of the lawsuit.

The hostages were rescued after 246 days in captivity in an IDF operation in June that also extracted hostage Noa Argamani, who was held separately nearby. Aljamal, his wife Fatima and his father Ahmad Aljamal were all killed during the hostage rescue mission. The family’s children survived.

Jan initially filed the lawsuit last year. The judge in the case granted a motion to dismiss the case last month, saying there was insufficient evidence to prove the defendants were aware that Aljamal was a Hamas operative. The judge allowed Jan to refile an amended complaint, however.

The new complaint was filed on Friday, adding Kozlov and Ziv as plaintiffs. The lawsuit, backed by the National Jewish Advocacy Center, was filed in a federal court in Washington State, where the People Media Project is based.

The case argues that the Palestine Chronicle provided Aljamal with a platform to “disseminate Hamas propaganda,” providing material support to a US-designated terrorist organization, in violation of international law.

According to the amended complaint, Ziv said Aljamal “repeatedly expressed his hatred for the State of Israel and the United States,” and told the hostages that “Hamas was in contact and actively coordinating with its affiliates in the media and on college campuses.”

Aljamal told the hostages that “Hamas was going to ensure that the United States, as well as Jews and Israelis, are hated everywhere and that Hamas in Gaza was coordinating with its allies, including its allies in the media and on college campuses, to foment hatred against Israel and Jews,” the complaint said.

02/21 Links Pt2: Columbia students, stand with humanity and against barbarity; BBC removes Gaza doco following ‘terrorist propaganda’ claims

From Ian:

David Friedman: Columbia students, stand with humanity and against barbarity

To Columbia’s faculty and administrators: Academic freedom is not a shield for moral abdication. If you champion free speech, wield it with integrity to denounce terrorism unequivocally. Silence in the face of terror is not neutrality; it is a dereliction of duty.

To the members of Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voices for Peace (a grotesque misnomer for those who promote violence), Columbia University Apartheid Divest, and others who rally behind Team Mohammed: When you chant “violence is the only path forward," you are glorifying the murder of Sara and Matthew and the kidnapping of Sagui. You are celebrating the kidnapping, torture, and butchering of innocent children, parents, and grandparents. When you shout “Globalize the intifada!” you are endorsing not just past atrocities but future violence against Jews worldwide, including in the United States.

Your allegiance to a cause that sanctifies bloodshed is a stain on your humanity. If you genuinely believe in these causes, reflect deeply on the moral abyss you have embraced. And if your support is merely performative or driven by peer pressure, know that you are pawns in a dangerous ideology that would discard you as readily as it did the lives of innocent mothers, children and elderly, and fellow Columbia students.

To those at Columbia, and on campuses elsewhere, who remain indifferent—who just want to focus on classes, social lives, and future careers: Your desire for normalcy is entirely understandable and while we sympathize with you, we also encourage you to heed the post-World War II words of regret from German pastor and theologian Martin Niemöller: “First they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist…then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.”

Today’s targets are Jews; tomorrow, it could be you. This is your moment to educate yourself on a critical issue of our time and become engaged.

To all Columbia students, faculty, and administrators: Now is the time to reject the moral rot of excusing barbarism and supporting terrorism. Instead, act to honor the lives of those like Sagui and the legacies of those like Sara and Matthew as well as Ariel, Kfir and Oded. Stand with humanity and on the right side of history. Choose moral clarity over moral equivalence. Choose courage over complacency. History will judge us all—may it judge us favorably.

Gil Troy: Campus intifada shaped a generation of thoughtful, passionate, and proud Jewish students

These violations of academic standards, classroom etiquette, administrative and professorial responsibility, and basic decency constitute mass educational malpractice.

Garbage in, garbage out. Three generations of activist professors, imposing their oppressed-oppressor and settler-colonialist binaries often targeting Israel, have raised students and teachers who parrot these lies. They think teaching involves radicalizing the classroom, even if they harm some students.

Four factors ripped the mask off Canadian niceness. A rapidly growing, rabid, pro-Palestinian movement of Muslims has been raised to despise Jews, not “just” Israelis, and import thuggish mob politics into Western democracies. Second, the campus’s illiberal liberals obsess about Israel.

Convinced that Israel is committing genocide, they decided that, from “woke” kindergarten to “woke” math, all protests are legitimate. Third, the media firestorm delegitimizing Israel’s actions and demonizing Netanyahu’s government, while minimizing Palestinian crimes, makes Israel look hateful.

Finally, Canada’s weakening national identity and many Canadians’ polite passivity tolerates the intolerable, even as their Jewish neighbors suffer.

All, however, is not lost. At the University of Ottawa, when anti-Zionist goons tried banning me from campus, top administrators, including President Jacques Frémont – a human rights expert – appeared, so the masked cowards didn’t.

At McGill last year, an older non-Jewish colleague approached a Jewish colleague whose “Zio-courses” were protested, found four tall, strong professors nearby, and assured their buddy they had his back. I kept meeting non-Jewish students and professors resisting these outrages, while in Ottawa, many non-Jewish religious leaders attended my talk – on the holiest day of the North American year, Super Bowl Sunday, hours before kickoff.

Most importantly, I met wonderful students. They love Israel, Zionism, the Jewish people and Western values. They laugh off many of their fellow students’ excesses. They refuse to be cowed. They reassured me – and us – that they made new friends, discovered community as extended family, and clarified who they are, what’s important to them, and who they want to be.

They are this moment’s pearls – produced by the grit of Jew-hating oysters – reflecting the best of us and our civilization. Their world has been “turned upside down,” as one student told me. But many students landed on the right side of history and are making their stand.

Fetterman: Palestinian support of Hamas comes with ‘accountability’

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) condemned the scenes in Gaza on Thursday, where Hamas paraded the coffins containing what were believed to have been the remains of four Israeli hostages down the streets of Khan Younis to cheers from Palestinian locals. Three of the bodies were identified as Oded Lifshitz, Kfir Bibas and Ariel Bibas.

Speaking to Jewish Insider from the Capitol on Thursday evening, the Pennsylvania senator said Hamas’ hostage transfer ceremony that took place earlier in the day was indicative of the level of support the terror group has among the Palestinian people. Fetterman argued that such support came with “accountability” attached to it.

“I think it just really reflects just how much of a lot of the population in Gaza supports Hamas and the kind of terrible things that they do. Every time they have these releases, they have people cheering it like they’re cheering for the [Pittsburgh] Steelers or something,” Fetterman said.

“It just reinforces that they actually really want that kind of leadership. Maybe there’s some accountability with everything that happened. I mean, you elect terrorists and you cheer them,” Fetterman continued. “It seems it might attach some accountability to a lot of it. If you’re cheering at dead babies and children, I think there’s some accountability in all of it.”

Fetterman also took issue with the prisoner release that Israel had to adhere to in exchange for the remaining hostages, specifically criticizing the release of Mohammed Abu Warda, a former Hamas commander responsible for several suicide bombings that killed a total of 45 Israelis, as part of the deal.

“I read that the IDF identified that that actually wasn’t them,” Fetterman said, referencing that the coffin containing what was believed to be Shiri Bibas’ body instead held the body of an unknown Palestinian. “They had to release a prisoner that was involved in 45 killings. I just look forward to those prisoners, the ones that killed people, I hope Israel follows up and wastes them. You know, they should never forget and forgive. I fully support that.”

“The fact that they kidnapped, tortured and murdered children, I’ll never understand why you still have people in our country to protest and support that kind of absolutely vile, repugnant stuff. It’s almost normalized in the media,” he added.

02/21 Links Pt1: Sixteen Months of Lies About Everything; Israel confirms Red Cross received remains Hamas claims is Shiri Bibas

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Sixteen Months of Lies About Everything

The revelation that Hamas lied about how and when and by whose hand the Bibas children were killed has some crucial implications for any remotely intellectually honest person.

To put a fine point on it: Hamas lies about everything, and therefore Hamas has lied about everything. Hamas propaganda has shaped the world’s understanding of this conflict, and every syllable of it has been false.

One is tempted to interject here that an intellectually honest person would have already come to this conclusion and therefore perhaps there are precious few minds left to be changed. But integrity compels us to say what is true anyway.

Hamas’s lies about the Bibas family were shocking even by Hamas standards. Shiri and her two sons Ariel and Kfir were taken from their homes on Oct. 7, 2023 when Ariel was 4 and Kfir was less than a year old. Throughout the war, Hamas claimed they were killed in an Israeli airstrike. Yarden, Shiri’s husband and the kids’ father, was also taken hostage but held separately from his family. Hamas taunted him repeatedly, once even on camera for a propaganda video, about his family’s fate. Yarden was released this month.

Yesterday, Hamas returned the bodies of Ariel and Kfir and a third hostage, Oded Lifshitz, as well as a body they claimed was Shiri but turned out to have been a random unidentified Palestinian woman.

That wasn’t the only surprise revealed during Israel’s forensic examination of the bodies. The boys were not killed in an Israeli airstrike; they were murdered by their Palestinian captors, who strangled the children with their bare hands and then mutilated their bodies in order to try and obfuscate their cause of death.

The claim that the Bibases were killed in an IDF airstrike was believable enough—and therefore was widely believed. Even if that had been true, it wouldn’t have mitigated Hamas’s responsibility one iota. But since much of the world, from media to governments to activist organizations, was looking for any excuse to absolve Hamas and the Palestinians and to cast Israel’s counteroffensive as overly aggressive and counterproductive to boot, its underlying assumptions were accepted and repeated and shaped debate over the war even within Israel itself. And since Israel and the U.S. are democracies, public debate shapes war policy and outcomes as well.

In this way, Hamas has stage managed the war to an unprecedented degree.

It’s not as though we hadn’t caught Hamas in lies throughout the war, of course. After all, there are two kinds of Hamas statements: lies that have been exposed and lies that have yet to be exposed.

Jonathan Tobin: The unavoidable necessity to draw conclusions about Palestinian Arab society

But recent events should reinforce the willingness of the administration of President Donald Trump to envision a future for Gaza in which the Palestinians—like the Germans of 80 years ago—are forced to pay a price for their crimes. As historian Andrew Roberts wrote recently in The Free Press, rather than damning Trump’s plan as “ethnic cleansing,” there are clear precedents for this sort of accountability that have been accepted by an international consensus.

More than that, the latest Palestinian celebration of terror and hate should force those members of the civilized world to stop giving them a pass for their behavior.

There may well be many Palestinian individuals who are appalled by what their society is doing. That’s true—not only in terms of the unwillingness to give up “resistance” that amounts to a justification of genocide of the Jews but also what it’s done to their own people. But they have failed to make themselves known or to push back against the culture of terror.

It’s also true that resisting Hamas and the other terror organizations, including the supposedly “moderate” Fatah that controls the Palestinian Authority, would be difficult and extremely dangerous. But in the past, the world has shown no reluctance to judge nations and peoples by their willingness to do just that.

Even in Nazi Germany, where a totalitarian government controlled every aspect of society and fear of the Hitlerian regime was justified, some resisted. And, of course, there were instances of “righteous gentiles” who sought to save Jews from death, even though they were rare in Germany and most proved unsuccessful.

Despite the nearby presence of Israeli forces and even financial rewards offered for anyone who would help one of the hostages escape, there appears not to have been one taker among the Palestinians in Gaza. It would have been a perilous thing to accept that offer. But we have learned that many of the hostages were held by civilians in their own homes, not only in Hamas’s tunnels. They were forced to cook, clean and watch after kids. Yet not a single Palestinian Arab seems to have been willing to save one of the hostages, even those harbored in their homes. There is also the fact that some of the worst of the Oct. 7 outrages were conducted by civilians and not the Hamas assault forces.

When it comes to the Palestinians, all of the well-meaning rhetoric about common humanity was defeated by a collective mindset that, like that of the Germans, demonized Jews.

Drawing conclusions about the Palestinians need not obligate us to mimic their hatred by dehumanizing them. But it does oblige us to be honest about their national culture and demand that it be changed before they are allowed to have any power to inflict further harm on others or themselves.

Faced with total defeat and with their country in ruins, the Germans did change and put their Nazi past behind them, even if not all of those responsible for the Holocaust were held accountable. The Palestinians, however, will never change until the civilized world stops coddling them and making excuses for their culture of death, hate and intransigent dedication to perpetual war on the Jews.

After the latest examples of their collective depravity—the slaughter of an old man, a young mother and her two babies—they should be made to see that a failure to transform their national culture will be punished with policies that will have permanent consequences for their national life and ambitions. The alternative is to doom both Israelis and Palestinians to another century of pointless conflict and more sick exhibitions of hate such as the one that Hamas staged to celebrate the deaths of innocents.

Bernard-Henri Lévy: Ponder How the Bibas Boys Died

I have spent my life witnessing and reporting on the most atrocious crimes, from Bosnia to Somalia, Syria to Algeria and now Ukraine. After Oct. 7—after seeing the burned kibbutzim and gathering the testimonies of survivors—I was often asked if I had ever experienced anything similar. When I think of Kfir and Ariel Bibas and their mother, Shiri, I now answer: No, I’m not sure I have ever encountered such horror.

Consider those phrases “child hostage” and “baby hostage.” In other wars, the death of a child is the ultimate shame, and some remnant of humanity—or rationality—generally prevents captors from bothering with an infant. They abandon the baby. They leave it behind or on the roadside. Someone less hardened might even leave it wrapped in a blanket outside a church, a mosque or a home. Here, they deliberately took the time to abduct these two terrified little beings clinging to their mother.

What went through these men’s minds as they dragged them away like animals? Did they understand the Jewish devotion to children? Had they seen, during their surveillance, how Jewish children are cherished, how beautiful little boys are with their long hair cut the day they are given honey-covered letters to make them love Hebrew? Did they foresee the images of Kfir, 9 months, and Ariel, 4, covering the walls of our cities? Did they revel, in advance, at the outpouring of “Jewish emotion” that this insult to the world’s innocence would unleash? I don’t know.

The Jerusalem Post reports:

Several buses exploded in various locations across central Israel on Thursday evening in a planned mass terror bombing attempt. At least three bombs exploded buses in the area of Bat Yam, Israel Police said.

The initial assessment from the security establishment is that the plan for the attack came from Iran, and was carried out by Hamas terrorists from the West Bank. Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) identified Iranian involvement in the West Bank by supplying weapons, training terrorists to carry out attacks, and assembling explosive devices, according to Maariv.

Iran also transferred large amounts of money to terror cells in West Bank, Maariv added.

The bombs were set to explode at "around 9 or 10am, but were set incorrectly," according to Maariv, and were composed of non-standard explosive material, including fertilizer and urea.

Three bombs exploded, two were disabled.

Outside October 7, this would almost certainly have been the worst terror attack in Israel's history.

Shmuel Hanavi bus bombing

The worst bus bombing during the second intifada was the Shmuel Hanavi bombing in August 2003, which killed 23 and wounded 130. Judging from the photos of the buses that exploded on Thursday night, the force of these explosions were far higher than the second intifada bus bombs. TI don't see how anyone could have survived these blasts. Five simultaneous explosions could have killed at hundreds of people.

Before October 7, the worst terror attack was the Coastal Road massacre which involved bombs and shootings, killing 38.

This is a huge deal, somewhat overshadowed by the Bibas family news. An investigation must occur to see how the bombs were smuggled on without anyone (save one passenger) noticing.

That the attack was foiled is nothing short of a miracle. But Israel's response must be as harsh as if it had succeeded.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

People really need to understand the Palestinian honor/shame mentality.

To Hamas and Palestinians in general, humiliation is worse than death. This is why "honor killings" exist - a twisted morality where one's personal honor justifies murdering a family member.

The 1948 war was not simply a defeat - it was a "nakba," a catastrophe. Not because of the number of refugees but because they lost a war to the weak, dhimmi Jews whom they had treated as second class people for centuries.

They project their immoral mindset onto Israelis as well.

To the Palestinian mind, humiliating Israel is what makes the Gaza war a victory. Gaza could be a parking lot but they would still look at this as a win.

The entire sham of swapping hostages for murderers is designed to humiliate Israel. Spreading out the releases, doing them on Shabbat, sending the wrong body instead of Shiri, the reprehensible festivals surrounding the release of hostages and bodies - all of it is designed to maximize humiliation of Israel.

The honor/shame mindset is highly attuned to symbolism, and the grotesque Thursday ceremony with the coffins was rich in symbolism for Hamas meant to humiliate Israel - symbolism that practically no Israeli noticed.

The staged show was held in the Bani Suhaila cemetery east of Khan Yunis. This was chosen to shame Israel because that was where the IDF searched for hostages and hostage bodies but was not successful in finding any. It was also an area where, according to Hamas, they successfully ambushed IDF soldiers.

The Hamas articles happily admit that every aspect of the show was calculated to send messages to Israel of Hamas victory. The audience was chosen to represent a wide variety of Gazan society to emphasize that Hamas still controls everyone in the sector. "Leaders, scholars, government officials, clans, mukhtars, families of martyrs" plus released prisoners were at the macabre ceremony.

As one "analyst" says, "The scenes will reinforce the narrative of resistance, and will have an impact in shaking the unity of Israeli society, which was brutalized at the beginning of the Al-Aqsa flood, but now has begun the countdown to its psychological and existential loss and the reality of its existence on this land."

Kidnapping and murdering children, even Jewish children, is also shameful. Hamas therefore needs to change the narrative to make it appear honorable.

Read this account carefully:

A leader in the Al-Mujahideen Brigades revealed, during preparations to hand over the bodies of four Israeli prisoners, new details about the Israeli prisoner Shiri Bibas and her children, as well as the circumstances of their captivity.

In televised statements, the leader said, "When we captured her, we kept her children with her out of compassion, and we provided a safe and comfortable place for them, similar to how they would live in their own home. We treated her well, as instructed by our noble religion."

He added, however, "But due to the brutal bombardment by the Nazi army with a missile from an F-16 aircraft, the house was completely destroyed and leveled to the ground. This attack led to the death of the family and the martyrdom of those who were holding them captive."

The leader also disclosed that the prisoner, Shiri Bibas, was enlisted and worked as a secretary in the office of the commander of the Southern District in the Gaza Division, which is part of the Israeli army's Southern Command.

In these paragraphs the terrorists justify abducting Shiri as a combatant, claim that kidnapping her children was an act of mercy for her, that they treated her well and she was murdered by the IDF. All of these lies serve the single purpose of avoiding shame and shifting the shame onto Israel.

Lies are an integral part of honor/shame culture, because when the truth is shameful, lies are the only way out. This is why the Palestinians are so wedded to the word "narrative." Narrative is simply twisting history to achieve honor and avoid shame.

We can now expect Hamas to repeat the sickening ceremony when they insist that the woman whose body they sent instead of Shiri be swapped for Shiri herself. And they will then create a narrative around this woman as a heroic martyr who was unjustly killed by Israeli Nazis for being kind to her Jewish captives.

What people don't get is that there is no ceasefire. The public humiliation and abuse of the hostages in front of worldwide media is another phase of the war.

It is a war only being fought by one side, so it is easy for Hamas to declare victory.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

This week, Morocco hosted the Fourth Ministerial Conference on Road Safety, with representatives from ministers of transportation of many countries participating.

Israel's Transportation Minister Miri Regev attended, causing controversy. Moroccans protested her presence and demanded that Morocco arrest her.

The BDS movement was upset at the Palestinian delegate, Tarek Hosni Salem Zaarab, the Palestinian minister of transport. They declared any Palestinian participation to be "normalization" and a violation of BDS principles.

An official from the Palestinian ministry of transportation defended Zaarab's attendance. His justification for attending reveals how the Palestinians look at international events and conferences.

Most attendees go to these conferences to learn, to meet colleagues, to compare notes, to hear about new ideas, to create standards and to sign resolutions promising that their nations would work hard to improve themselves.

Not the Palestinians. Their attendance at every international forum has nothing to do with sharing ideas or learning from peers.

Undersecretary of the Ministry of Transport and Communications, Muhammad Hamdan, said that the Ministry of Transport and Communications and the Minister attend all international conferences to convey the Palestinian voice and the suffering of the Palestinian people, "and this participation comes to confirm the right of the Palestinian people to establish their state and obtain their rights."

Mohammed Hamdan added, in a comment to Ultra Palestine: "We are present in all places, and wherever we can find a way to do so, to convey the Palestinian voice everywhere."

We've seen this before. The "State of Palestine" eagerly attends every international forum it can find, but it never shows interest in participating. Their attendance has two political purposes: to pretend like they are a real state, and to spread anti-Israel propaganda.

As I wrote in 2017:

Since the PLO started to join world bodies, it has consistently used its position to do only one thing: bash Israel.

It has used UNESCO for years to deny Jewish heritage and history in the Middle East. It has tried to hijack refugee conferences, conferences on children, Human Rights Day, and conferences on women - all to pursue an anti-Israel agenda.

It gets farcical. The "State of Palestine" has used its position to bash Israel at climate conferences and even a recent conference dedicated to saving the world's oceans. It has nothing positive to add to these venues - they are merely excuses to find more ammunition against Israel.

As far as I can tell, this is 100% consistent. The entire point of gaining recognition as a state in international forums is to add new platforms to attack Israel.