Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, September 25, 2025

Recognition Without Rules: Europe’s Double Standard on a Palestinian State

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

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

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

None. Not one.

The EC Guidelines vs. “Palestine”

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

The missing conditions

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

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

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

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

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

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

(h/t Irene)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

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

From Ian:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dave Rich: Tinkerbell Statehood

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From Ian:

The West is sliding into an anti-Semitic abyss

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Fight Inside Amnesty International over Its Hamas Report

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From Ian:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is an excerpt from a speech given by then-senator John F. Kennedy to a Zionist convention 65 years ago:

Three weeks ago I said in a public statement: "Israel is here to stay." The next day I was attacked by Cairo radio, rebuking me for my faith in Israel, and quoting this criticism from the Arabic newspaper Al-Gomhouria:

As for the question of the existence and the nonexistence of Israel, Mr. Kennedy says that Israel has been created in order to exist. Time will judge between us, Mr. Kennedy.

I agree. Time will judge whether Israel will continue to exist. But I wish I could be as sure of all my prophecies as I am of my flat prediction that Israel is here to stay.

For Israel was not created in order to disappear - Israel will endure and flourish. It is the child of hope and the home of the brave. It can neither be broken by adversity nor demoralized by success. It carries the shield of democracy and it honors the sword of freedom; and no area of the world has ever had an overabundance of democracy and freedom.

May this coming year be one of Jewish unity and strength, of health, happiness, renewal, real peace and the safe return of the hostages.

(h/t Jill)

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Why Israel can’t just “wrap up this war” (Karen Bekker)

Guest post by Karen Bekker

Why Israel can’t just “wrap up this war”

Bill Ackman reports that “young conservatives [are] getting tired of defending Israel.”

My colleagues at CAMERA and I have spent the past two years responding to a tsunami of lies about Israel, beginning in the immediate aftermath of October 7, 2023, with the claim that Israel caused the attack on itself. Then there was the claim that Israel attacked Al Ahli hospital, killing hundreds of people; the claim that Israel intentionally targeted World Central Kitchen aid workers; the claim that Israeli snipers were shooting Palestinian children in the head; and the starvation and genocide libels, including the absurd claims that 83 percent of casualties were civilians and that 14,000 babies were imminently about to die of starvation. It’s exhausting.

It would be tempting for me to say that no one wants Israel to end the war more than I do. But I’m pretty sure that every single IDF soldier fighting in Gaza, not to mention the wives and mothers of those soldiers, wants Israel to conclude a lot more than I want it. Certainly, those with actual skin in the game want that more than Megyn Kelly, who said on her September 16 podcast that “Israel needs to wrap up this war .... This is a crisis for Israel, [a] PR crisis.”

We all have war fatigue, and we all want it to be over. If only it were that simple.

Hamas are fundamentalist jihadists. They are not motivated by any kind of rational thought. That’s why ending this conflict is so tragically intractable. Hamas doesn’t pursue its ‘self-interest’ according to the secular assumptions of many in the foreign policy establishment. There is no amount of destruction of Gaza that will make them sit up and say, “you know what, maybe October 7 was a mistake.” If that were possible, they would have already surrendered.

If the organization is left intact in Gaza, they will rebuild and attack Israel again. Ghazi Hamad, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, stated in no uncertain terms, “The Al-Aqsa Deluge [as Hamas calls its October 7 attack] is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth.” He continued, “Will we have to pay a price? Yes, and we are ready to pay it.” Hamad even recently appeared on Al Jazeera celebrating what he called the “fruits of October 7.”

Even if it takes ten or 20 years or longer for them to rebuild, and for Israel to fall again into the October 6, 2023 complacency that provided the window of opportunity, such onslaughts will keep happening if Israel doesn’t decisively end Hamas’s grip over Gaza. Not only could the next attack potentially be worse, the response would likely be even stronger. That’s not good for anyone directly involved, except for the jihadists.

It must be noted that the comments above were made in the context of discussions over Charlie Kirk, whose funeral was on Sunday. I never met Charlie or attended any of his events – I’m not in his target demographic – but obviously his killing was horrific and my heart goes out to his wife, his children, his parents and his staff. May his memory be a blessing for them. Beyond that, I’m not going to address the type of ludicrous conspiracy theories that have sprung up in the wake of his assasination.

Andrew Fox of the Henry Jackson Society wrote recently on Substack that destroying Hamas is impossible. Israel has done the impossible before, and more than once. Now it must do so again, even if some of its supporters in the West are weary.

Prior to this war, according to the ADL, over a billion people in the world harbored antisemitic attitudes. (By 2025, that number has doubled.) This compares to less than 16 million Jews worldwide. We are vastly outnumbered in the public relations sphere. Israel is surely well-aware of how the public relations war is going for it. But that doesn’t change the reality on the ground.

A government’s primary responsibility is the protection of its citizens, not good PR. As Golda Meir once said, “If we have to have a choice between being dead and pitied, and being alive with a bad image, we’d rather be alive and have the bad image.”

So yes, young conservatives, yes, Megyn Kelly, we get it. We’re tired, too.

But for Israel, this is existential, and there is no choice but to see it through. As long as Hamas is alive in Gaza, Israel must keep fighting, and as long as those enemies promote slanders in the public square, we will keep rebutting them. You don’t have to be with us, though it would be great if you were. But please don’t be against us, just because you’re tired of it.

Karen Bekker is the assistant director of the Media Response Team at CAMERA.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Is the West rewarding terror? Probably - but it is definitely rewarding Palestinian antisemitism

With Britain, France, Canada and others recognizing a fictional state of Palestine, the typical pushback from Israel's side is that this is a reward for terror - Hamas murders, rapes and burns Israelis and it gains something Palestinians have been craving for decades.

But the Western nations insist that they are not supporting Hamas - they don't want to see it control Gaza, they make performative demands for the hostages to be released.

Let's forget that their stated intent has nothing to do with perception. Let's pretend that somehow their mouthing anti-Hamas statements means something. Let's take them at their worthless word and accept that they are only rewarding the Palestinian Authority.

Let's go back August 2023, six weeks before October 7.

Mahmoud Abbas - the president of the Palestinian Authority, and an undisputed beneficiary of any recognition - gave a speech at the Fatah Revolutionary Council where he unleashed a string of vile antisemitism:

They say that Hitler killed the Jews for being Jews, and that Europe hated the Jews because they were Jews.

Not true. It was clearly explained that [the Europeans] fought [the Jews] because of their social role, and not their religion. ...The [Europeans] fought against these people because of their role in society, which had to do with usury, money, and so on and so forth. Even Hitler...

"Everybody knows that during World War I, Hitler was a sergeant. He said he fought the Jews because they were dealing with usury and money. In his view, they were engaged in sabotage, and this is why he hated them. We just want to make this point clear. This was not about Semitism and antisemitism.

He went on to repeat the myth that Ashkenazic Jews are really descended from Khazars, and that Israel didn't want Mizrahi Jews to immigrate to Israel but used bombing and murder campaigns against them to scare them into coming.

These are the same lies Abbas had said previously - and even partially apologized for. And this is the Abbas that the Western states wants to lead the Palestinian Authority.

Abbas never apologized for these comments.

80 years after the Holocaust, antisemitism is no longer a disqualifying feature of leadership. On the contrary, it is quickly becoming a requirement. At least according to Canada, France, Spain, Australia, Portugal and the UK.

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

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09/21 Links: Irwin Cotler: Palestine recognition would reward terrorism and contradict international law; The Gaza ‘genocide’: a 21st-century blood libel

From Ian:

Irwin Cotler: Palestine recognition would reward terrorism and contradict international law

Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said on Sep. 16 that Ottawa would recognize a Palestinian state at the UN despite its failure to implement any of the conditions and demands set forth in Prime Minister Mark Carney's July 30 announcement of Canada's recognition plan. This is a mistake, which would regrettably reward terrorism, make peace less likely, and contradict the longstanding international legal frameworks for recognizing statehood and for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Carney said Ottawa's "intention" was "predicated on the Palestinian Authority's commitment" to fundamentally reform its governance, hold general elections "in which Hamas can play no part," and demilitarize the Palestinian state. None of these commitments have been implemented. Carney also demanded that Hamas immediately release all hostages, disarm, and "play no role in the future governance of Palestine." None of these demands have been met.

The international legal criteria for statehood require that a nascent state have a) a permanent population; b) a defined territory; c) a government with effective control over that population and territory; and d) capacity to enter into relations with other states. The European Council (EC) added several non-binding criteria in its 1991 guidelines for recognizing new states in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. These include prospective states providing their citizens "the rule of law, democracy, and human rights."

One of us (Irwin Cotler) has personally met with PA President Mahmoud Abbas and his aides many times over the years. They have repeatedly promised that they would abolish the pay-for-slay program and move towards demilitarization and deradicalization. Regrettably, those promises have largely gone unfulfilled.

The Gaza ‘genocide’: a 21st-century blood libel

The goal of the genocide libel, repeated and repackaged by myriad academics and journalist is to legitimise the dissolution of the Jewish State. Just as the 7 October massacre was rationalised by the supposed ‘context’ of Israeli oppression and occupation, the eradication of Israel will be painted as just recompense for their ‘genocide’ in Gaza.

Most of the same claims that originated in the JGR have found their way into other, seemingly authoritative sources. Earlier this month, a UN commission of inquiry, set up by the UN Human Rights Council, issued a report finding Israel guilty of genocide. The commission’s lead members, Navi Pillay, Miloon Kothari and Chris Sidoti, have a long history of anti-Israel posturing. While the factual basis of the report is beyond the scope of this essay, the genocide claims have been conclusively debunked in a 300-page paper, led by Israeli professors Danny Orbach and Yagil Henkin.

Orbach and Henkin show that claims of deliberate starvation in Gaza before March 2025 are based on flawed data. Furthermore, they explain how UN agencies and human-rights groups have created an ‘echo chamber’ through circular citations and ignored corrections. Surveys indicate very few non-violent child deaths, contradicting starvation claims and instead pointing to disruptions in the medical system caused by the war and Hamas’s misuse of health facilities. Indeed, Hamas’s tactics include an unprecedented 500-kilometre tunnel network integrated into civilian infrastructure and the use of human shields to inflate casualties.

Moreover, Orbach and Henkin find no evidence of systematic civilian targeting or deliberate bombings. They note that isolated potential war crimes exist but they are outliers, not indicative of Israeli policy. Most of the UN report’s claims lack forensic proof and rely on unreliable sources. IDF measures, such as unprecedented evacuations and vetoed strikes for proportionality, aim to reduce harm, though some cases do suggest negligence on Israel’s part.

The UN report regurgitates many of the JGR Gaza forum’s themes. It dismisses the idea that Hamas posed an ‘existential threat to the State of Israel’. It implies that the 7 October massacre was a natural response to ‘the fact that [Israel] has taken [Palestinian land] by force and is unlawfully occupying and settling Palestinian territory by continuing violence, denying the rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination’. And it also relies on the same misinterpreted and misrepresented remarks from Israeli politicians, from Netanyahu’s Amalek comment to Gallant’s ‘human animals’ statement, in order to establish Israel’s supposed genocidal intent. For the UN commission, even humanitarian measures like letting civilians escape are ‘proof’ that Israel is committing genocide.

Underlining the UN report’s lack of credibility, it features truncated remarks by Israeli president Isaac Herzog in the immediate aftermath of 7 October, when he said that ‘it’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. It is not true, this rhetoric about civilians who were not aware and not involved. It is absolutely not true.’ It omits the rest of Herzog’s words in which he stressed that: ‘There is no excuse for murdering innocent civilians in any way in any context. And believe me, Israel will operate and always operate according to the international rules. And we do the same in this battle, too.’ In any case, belligerent rhetoric during wartime is hardly proof of genocide. President Obama spoke of the war against ISIS in terms of ‘eradicating a cancer’.

The genocide accusation has consequences. It has already fuelled lethal attacks on Jews around the world, including in Washington, DC and Boulder, Colorado. And yet the supposed consensus around Israel’s genocide stems from a small cadre of highly partisan academics who have long ago decided upon Israel’s guilt. Their theory is unfalsifiable, as even Israel’s adherence to international law is taken as proof of genocide.

For these experts, Israel essentially ‘had it coming’. They claim that the 7 October massacre was the end result of decades of ‘Jewish supremacy’ and occupation, despite the fact that Israel completely left Gaza in August 2005. They have convinced themselves that the supposed genocide in Gaza is an essential feature of Israel itself, a desire inherent to Zionism. They are certain above all that Israel is evil.

This is not an academic theory or analysis – it is a comprehensive belief system. And it is thoroughly delusional.

JPost Editorial: King Abdullah's silence: Quiet consumes growing radicalization in Jordan

In March 1997, when a Jordanian soldier opened fire on Israeli schoolgirls at the Island of Peace, killing seven young teenagers aged 13-14, the nation’s King Hussein bin Talal did something extraordinary. The Jordanian monarch personally traveled to Israel to visit the grieving families, offering his condolences in person.

After the 1997 massacre, King Hussein crossed into Israel and visited the bereaved families, a gesture widely remembered in Israel as reinforcing the spirit of the 1994 peace treaty. The Jerusalem Post later contrasted that empathy with Amman’s current posture.

Fast forward to September 2025, and the world witnessed a different response from Hussein’s successor.

On Thursday, “A driver bringing humanitarian aid from Jordan for Gaza opened fire and killed two Israeli military personnel at the Allenby crossing” before being shot dead, authorities in both countries said. Israel then moved to shut the crossing, pending review.

King Abdullah II, Hussein’s son, has remained conspicuously silent.

This silence has precedent, too.

Silence on terror attacks
In 2024, “A gunman from Jordan killed three Israeli civilians at the Allenby Bridge border crossing,” the IDF said after the attacker exited a truck and opened fire. Jordan announced an investigation and temporarily closed the King Hussein (Allenby) crossing.

Does Abdullah’s silence over two terror attacks committed by Jordanians prove his thoughts on the Israel-Jordan relationship?

Last week, at the Arab summit to discuss Israel’s attack on Hamas leaders in the Qatari capital of Doha, the Jordanian king stated that “the strike in Qatar is proof that the Israeli threat knows no bounds, and our response must be clear and deterrent.”

He also called on Arab and Islamic states to adopt practical decisions on the matter and to “review all tools of joint action” to face this threat.

Israeli concerns about threats from Jordan have grown so serious that the IDF established the 96th Division specifically to defend the Jordan border, fast-tracking it into operation in June. The 47th Battalion, known as the Lions of the Valley, now patrols the Jordan Valley as a coeducational combat unit. The fact that a new unit was forced into creation shows that Israel recognizes that the Jordanian border has become a problem.

I saw an article on how "most therapy is trash." I cannot vouch for the article, but it made me think - how would therapy work under the ethical framework I have been working on? How different would it be?

The answer seems to be, quite a lot.

The Derechology framework I have been working on posits a basic fact that most systems do not accept: that values are baked into human thinking, and are not external. This could change the assumptions behind therapy as it has been practiced.

Walk into any therapist's office today, and the conversation will likely begin the same way: "What brings you here? What's wrong? What symptoms are you experiencing?" The entire therapeutic enterprise is built on a medical model that treats emotional and moral struggles as pathology to be diagnosed and fixed.

But what if this approach has it exactly backwards? What if the problem isn't that people are broken, but that they've lost connection to their own moral compass? What if healing doesn't require fixing what's wrong with someone, but helping them rediscover what's right about them?

Modern therapy inherits its framework from medicine: identify symptoms, diagnose conditions, apply treatments. Depression gets treated with cognitive restructuring. Anxiety gets managed with coping strategies. Relationship problems get addressed through communication skills.

But when these problems are looked at through a derechological lens, the idea is that they are rarely suffering from cognitive deficits. They're suffering from moral drift.

They've lost touch with their core values. They can't navigate competing obligations. They don't know how to make decisions that align with who they actually are, rather than who they think they should be.

When you look at values as atomic to human nature itself, as fundamental to our being as language or consciousness, it changes the entire model of healing. Moral confusion isn't a character flaw or psychological disorder. It's more like being lost without a compass. The solution isn't to diagnose what's wrong with your navigation system - it's to help you reconnect with your internal moral GPS.

The question isn't "What's wrong with you?" but "Where are you on your derech (moral path,) and what might growth look like from here?"

I worked with my AskHillel AI to develop a system for therapy. It suggested practical tools like:

Moral Compass Scan: Helping clients identify their most trusted internal signals, whether they are somatic sensations, behavioral patterns or recurring thoughts, that indicate alignment or misalignment with their core values.

Derech Drift Map: Instead of treating disorientation as failure, this tool helps people understand where they are in their moral journey: whether they're in a period of rupture, wilderness wandering, return, or transformation.

Teshuvah as Moral Version Control: Change isn't about erasing the past or achieving perfection. It's about making the next "commit" in your moral development - iterative growth rather than binary success/failure.

The therapist's role becomes fundamentally different too. Rather than diagnosing disorder, the therapist becomes a derech witness - a mirror for the client’s moral motion, not a mapmaker; a partner who offers models rather than mandates for ethical response.

The system treats people as inherently worthy moral agents rather than broken systems needing repair.

This isn't just more compassionate - it's more accurate. When you start with the assumption that people have intrinsic moral dignity and are capable of ethical growth, you create space for the kind of healing that actually transforms lives rather than just managing symptoms.

And there's a deeper implication here. If this values-first approach proves more effective for individual healing, it suggests something profound about human nature itself. It validates the core insight of Derechology: that morality isn't something imposed on humans from outside, but something that emerges from our fundamental nature.

People want moral clarity. They want to know not just how to feel better, but how to live in alignment with who they actually are.

If therapy could offer that - if it could help people reconnect with their intrinsic moral architecture rather than just managing their psychological symptoms - it might finally address the deeper crisis driving so many people to therapists' offices in the first place.

To my understanding, this is similar to the approach used in ACT therapy, but it is more oriented towards morality and moral path more than just values.

It is important to emphasize that while these insights come from my work on Jewish ethics, the moral path discovered does not have to be Jewish at all. Everyone has their own "ethical gravity well" that comes from their upbringing.

The question isn't whether people are broken. The question is whether they remember who they are.

And that's a question worth building an entire therapeutic framework around.

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

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Last week, Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel would like to obtain the Siloam Inscription, a Hebrew inscription from the 8th century BCE that records the construction of the Siloam water tunnel, from Turkey. According to Hebrew scripture, the tunnel was commissioned by King Hezekiah to secure Jerusalem's water supply in preparation for an impending siege by the Assyrians It is one of the most important ancient Hebrew texts discovered and is a significant piece of evidence supporting the historical accounts in the Tanach.

Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan answered brusquely, saying the artifact "is a trust from our ancestors.....It seems that he (Netanyahu) wanted to try something by using expressions that go beyond his limits regarding our first Qiblah, Holy Jerusalem. We certainly understand what these people are trying to do,. Besides this inscription, we will not give you even a small stone from Holy Jerusalem.....Jerusalem, with Muslims, is the dignity and honor of humanity. We will continue to defend it and the rights of all religions, and we will preserve it as a trust from our ancestors, despite the occupiers."

There are layers of hypocrisy here.

Turkey claims that since the inscription was found in what is now called "East Jerusalem," it cannot belong to Israel. But if that is true, why not offer it to the Palestinians to house in one of their museums? His language does not say that Jerusalem is Palestinian, but Muslim, and that anything found there during the Ottoman times are Turkish property, not Palestinian.

Additionally, Turkey demands that other nations return Ottoman artifacts that were taken from Turkey - but is unwilling to do the same for archaeological treasures from Jerusalem. Indeed, the Istanbul Archaeological Museum that houses the Siloam Inscription also has the Temple Warning inscription that proves the existence of the Second Temple that many Muslims deny.

Moreover, if Turkey cared so much about the inscription, why has it not displayed it in the museum? It was briefly viewable to crowds in Jerusalem in 1891 before being shipped to Istanbul, but there is no record of it being publicly exhibited there in over a century - it's stored in reserves, accessible mainly to scholars. If Erdogan really believes that he defends the rights of all religions, why withhold the Siloam Inscription - that helps prove the historic Jewish claim to Jerusalem from Biblical times - from the public?

Turkey's actions are not consistent with respect for all religions, nor it is consistent with respect for Palestinian claims on Jerusalem. Turkey's statements on Jerusalem have been neo-Ottoman, claiming that Turkey is in the vanguard as custodian of Jerusalem even today.

Turkey, Jordan and the Palestinians all claim the city, in some sense, as their own. The only consistent theme in the Arab and Muslim worlds since 1967 has been that Jerusalem must be taken away from the Jews - the only rulers of Jerusalem in 2,000 years to freely allow all religions to have access to their holy places

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)