Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, November 15, 2018

Death of Officer "M" Does Not a "Botched" Operation Make (Judean Rose)

Officer “M” was killed in an operation so secret, we’re not allowed to know his name. By all accounts, the operation was important and Officer “M” was a hero. Why then, is the media rushing to call the operation “botched?”

Reuters:

Haaretz:

Washington Post:

New York Times:

Financial Times:

CNN:

Jerusalem Post:

It's like a contagious disease, this word "botched." Yet there is no proof that the operation was not a success.

None of these articles carry quotes from Israeli officials to the effect that the operation was “botched." Probably because it wasn't. Brigadier General Ronen Manelis, the IDF spokesperson, to the contrary said, "We are talking about an operation that was well-planned right down to the smallest of details. It is the sort of thing that takes place every night, and in most instances remains under the media's radar.”

This time, added Manelis, the soldiers had found themselves in a "very complicated situation.”

In no way does anything Manelis said suggest the operation was “botched.” Something happened. That doesn’t mean the operation didn’t achieve its goal. That someone died does not mean the operation didn’t achieve its goal. There is just not enough information out there for us to come to that conclusion or to any conclusion at all.

Think of it this way: we all know about the Israeli team that infiltrated Iran to smuggle out their deepest nuclear secrets. Now imagine that just after that intelligence was successfully sent out of Iran to Israel, an Israeli agent was found out and killed. Does that mean his operation, with all the wealth of information he managed to sneak out of Iran, was “botched?”

Of course not.

By the same token, the fact that Officer “M” lost his life in the performance of his duty, does not mean that the goal of his operation was not achieved, or that it was somehow less than a success. A death in the performance of an operation does not make it “botched.”

The question is, why then, did so many news outlets hasten to report it as such?

The answer, of course, is that to call the operation “botched” serves to demonize Israel.

The word “botched” has a negative connotation. When used in association with the IDF, it suggests that mighty Israel is an incompetent failure, something everyone who hates Israel would like you to believe, though obviously, the opposite is true, considering Israel’s military history. The IDF is the finest army in the world.

As the idea for this blog was forming, friends began sending me articles suggesting the operation was botched, or commenting on Facebook threads to the effect that the operation had been botched. One friend wrote, “I thought the botched operation was an attempt to take out the Hamas leadership.”

To which I answered, “I have not seen any proof it was a botched operation. I wish people would stop saying that.”

She saw my point: “Ah. Okay. I just meant that the consequences to us, with the loss of M, were very dire. So, therefore it was not an unadulterated success. But you are correct. In the end, they may have accomplished what they set out to do.”

All the outlets that called the operation “botched” did so without evidence. They did it to harm Israel. My friend read that and it entered her subconscious. So she repeated it.

I don’t blame her. I blame them.

Be we do need to be careful not to absorb these harmful narratives.

A second friend sent me the NY Times article, “Cost of Botched Gaza Spy Mission? Israel’s Back on Brink of War.”

I responded, “It wasn't botched. That's the NY Times telling you a lie. CNN and Haaretz peddled the same lie. You shouldn't ever believe them.”

She asked, “How would I know the difference? I have 7000 people on my list who help advocate for Israel. Would appreciate your guidance.”

I explained it to her, how “botched" has a negative connotation of incompetence. So you have to look to see if they are quoting an actual, credible Israeli official saying that it was botched. None of the outlets have that. The evidence just isn’t there. So clearly, they just want to smear Israel.

And they’re quite willing to exploit the death of the heroic Officer “M,” who gave his life for the State of Israel, to do so.

They simply have no shame.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war. – Winston Churchill, to Neville Chamberlain

As I write this, the recent “security incident” in Gaza seems to have receded to become, well, a “security incident” and not the opening volleys of a war.

It started when one of Israel’s special units had penetrated 3 km. into Gaza to carry out an “intelligence gathering mission,” which was intended to proceed quietly without contact with the enemy. Maybe the intention was to find out about tunnels, or the location of the Israelis (and bodies) held hostage by Hamas. Or something else. In any event, the force ran into a Hamas checkpoint and aroused suspicion. A firefight broke out and the Israeli commander, a 41-year old sgan aluf (referred to only as “Lt. Colonel M.”), was killed, and another officer moderately wounded. The force was extracted with assistance from the air force. Seven Hamas fighters were killed in the incident, one of whom was a battalion commander. The IDF made a point of saying that no Israelis (alive or dead) were in the hands of Hamas.

Hamas retaliated by firing almost 500 rockets and mortars into Israel starting about 4 pm the next day and continuing until the early morning hours, the most concentrated barrage in Israel’s history (during the Second Lebanon War in 2006, Hezbollah succeeded in firing about 130 rockets per day). The Iron Dome system intercepted many of them, but several buildings were hit, there were numerous injuries and one fatality.

In addition Hamas fired an antitank missile at a military bus immediately after dozens of soldiers had disembarked from it. One nearby soldier was seriously injured and the driver lightly wounded. The bus was stopped in full view of the border, in violation of IDF protocol. Disturbingly, it was clear that the bus had been under observation for some time before the attack, and the missile could have been fired when it was occupied, causing mass casualties. It’s been suggested that Hamas deliberately exercised restraint to avoid provoking a massive Israeli response.

In any event, Israel struck back by destroying numerous military targets in Gaza, including three high-rise buildings in urban areas, which an IDF spokesperson proudly announced, was done “without casualties.” The IAF also hit some rocket-launching teams, but many of the rockets were launched by timers and other remote-control devices while the Hamas operatives were safely underground in Gaza’s tunnel system.

The fighting was stopped when the two sides agreed to an Egyptian cease-fire proposal. Some Israeli cabinet ministers (Lieberman, Bennett, Shaked, and Elkin) were strongly opposed, but the position of the PM and the defense establishment was to accept the cease-fire, and since the IDF offered “insufficient options” for continuing to fight, their position was carried without a vote.

In response to what he called “capitulation to terror,” Lieberman has just announced (Wednesday afternoon) that he will resign as Defense Minister and take his party, Israel Beytenu, out of the coalition, leaving Netanyahu with a one-seat margin. That almost certainly guarantees that there will be early elections.

So who won this round?

Hamas suffered greater numerical losses in manpower and military assets, with buildings, tunnels, even ships destroyed. The death of Lt. Colonel M., a highly accomplished career officer who had apparently participated in or led numerous successful operations of the type that failed on Sunday night, was a very heavy loss for Israel that is hard to quantify.

From a psychological warfare standpoint, as always, the incident was a clear victory for Hamas. Although everyone knew it already, it was demonstrated that the Iron dome system cannot provide 100% protection, and that it is possible to overwhelm it with the sheer number of projectiles. Hamas demonstrated that it could fire rockets without risking its fighters. Israelis were sent scurrying into shelters like insects, people were hurt, homes and vehicles were destroyed, and only by luck (or a miracle if you prefer), was only one person killed. Hamas limited its barrage to short-range rockets that only reached Ashkelon, but announced that if Israel continued its response, they would introduce their longer range missiles, which can strike Tel Aviv.

And Israel blinked.

Many Israelis are furious at the government and at the defense establishment, which hasn’t come up with a practical plan to defeat Hamas. There seem to be several reasons for this:

Truly defeating Hamas would probably result in significant civilian casualties in Gaza, since Hamas has embedded its military installations in the civilian population, and officials are afraid that the “international community” (the UN and the EU) would severely punish Israel as a result.
A full-scale war would cause even more casualties and destruction on Israel’s home front, which officials believe the public would not accept, and they would be blamed.
A war against Hamas could provoke intervention from Hezbollah, and would inflame the situation in Judea and Samaria, leading to a much more serious multi-front war and an outbreak of terrorism.
Hamas’ rival, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which is closely tied to Iran, would be empowered if Hamas were defeated.
Israel would have to take full control of Gaza, which would require a military occupation and probably bring about a long-term insurgency.

There may be other reasons. But whatever they are, our leaders have decided that fighting, except in a very limited way, isn’t an option. They have decided to appease the UN and the EU, to try to keep Hamas in power but limit its offensive abilities, and to try – an impossible but in any case pointless feat – to improve the humanitarian condition of the civilian population without allowing Hamas to use the resources provided to strengthen its military capabilities.

For months they allowed the fire-bombing of thousands of acres of agricultural land and nature reserves. Now their response to a murderous rocket attack is to demonstrate our ability to take down tall buildings without hurting anybody.

They have decided to accept an unending war of attrition – which implies sacrificing the citizens of southern Israel, who will get no peace. Hamas is getting more and more competent; its rockets are more numerous, more powerful, and more accurate. When Hamas demonstrated its ability to create chaos with a carefully calibrated attack in the South and threatened to extend it to the heart of the country, our leaders allowed themselves to be deterred and backed down. Hamas is in control. Hamas decides when to fan the flames and when to turn them down.

Our leaders gave in to extortion, and they accepted humiliation. Like Neville Chamberlain, they chose dishonor over war, but like Chamberlain, in the end they will get war.

Lieberman is right. The cease-fire with Hamas is just the latest example of capitulation to terror.

The end result, if this policy is allowed to continue, will be the depopulation of southern Israel and the loss of part of our country. Netanyahu’s Sudetenland will be Sderot, Nahal Oz, Yad Mordechai, Mifalsim, Nativ Ha’asara, Or HaNer, and the rest.

Yesterday a friend in America asked me if I was safe. Yes, I said, I live in Rehovot and the rockets only went as far as Ashkelon. This time. I realized that I was embarrassed. I wanted to say, believe me, we taught them a lesson; they’ll never try this again. But I couldn’t say that because I knew they would. We have given them permission.

Dear PM Netanyahu, Chief of Staff Eisenkot, and whoever will be the new Minister of Defense: this is not acceptable. I know the problem is difficult, but you need to solve it. You need to come up with a solution that is better than giving up, paying them off, and hoping for the best. You need to develop an integrated military, political, diplomatic, and cognitive/psychological plan to extirpate the Nazi-like evil from its nest, to restore our power of deterrence, and to bring back our self-respect as a sovereign nation.

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11/15 Links Pt1: Caroline Glick: Iran Opens a War Against Israel from Gaza; Israel-Hamas ceasefire after Gaza violence pushes Abbas toward irrelevancy; Terrorist stabs 7 police officers in Jerusalem

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Caroline Glick: Iran Opens a War Against Israel from Gaza

A Kornet anti-tank missile hit a civilian bus transporting Israeli soldiers adjacent to Israel’s border with Gaza at 4:30 in the afternoon on Monday.

According to the bus driver, 50 Israeli soldiers had alighted the bus just moments before it was hit by the missile. The missile struck while the bus was moving slowly towards a parking lot. One soldier, who was standing next to the bus, was critically wounded in the blast.

Immediately after the missile strike against the bus, Hamas and its partner, Islamic Jihad, initiated the largest bombardment of Israel they had ever undertaken from Gaza. By late Tuesday morning, the two terror groups had fired more than 400 projectiles into Israel. Fifty Israelis were wounded in the onslaught. One person was killed when a mortar hit an apartment building in Ashkelon. Hundreds of mortars and rockets and missiles were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile batteries. And the government announced it was rushing more Iron Dome batteries to the area.

In the hours following the joint Hamas-Islamic Jihad assault, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman (who stepped down Wednesday) ordered the Israel Air Force (IAF) to carry out a large-scale air assault against Hamas command posts and other facilities in the Gaza Strip.

In a media briefing, a senior Air Force commander said the IAF strikes since Monday night have been the most far-reaching raids Israel has ever conducted in Gaza. More than a hundred targets were hit in under two hours, he said.

Israel’s Security Cabinet, which is authorized to order the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to open large-scale operations, including war, convened on Tuesday morning. Its final decision was to walk back the conflict and agree to a ceasefire, with no terms.

The cabinet’s decision was met with fury by residents of the south. They came out in droves, blocked a major highway leading to the embattled border town of Sderot, and set fire to tires while attacking the government for opting not to go to war against Hamas.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Israel-Hamas ceasefire after Gaza violence pushes Abbas toward irrelevancy

As Hamas celebrated its “victory” after Tuesday’s ceasefire with Israel, with Israel, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is increasingly finding himself irrelevant on issues concerning the Gaza Strip. By all accounts, he is the biggest loser from the recent developments in the Strip.

In recent weeks, Abbas’s insignificance has been accentuated by efforts made by Egypt, Qatar and the UN to reach a truce between Hamas and Israel.

Abbas is furious that the three parties have been negotiating directly with Hamas. He believes that direct negotiations will only strengthen Hamas and earn it legitimacy and popularity among Palestinians.

He maintains that the PLO, in its capacity as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinians,” is the only party authorized to reach a truce with Israel.

Abbas has repeatedly stressed that Hamas is just another Palestinian faction – one that does not have a mandate to reach agreements with anyone, particularly Israel. He even pointed that it was the PLO, and not Hamas, who reached the last ceasefire that ended the 2014 operation in the Gaza Strip.

But the events of the past few weeks have shown that Egypt, Qatar and the UN are determined to proceed with their efforts to achieve a truce in Gaza, with or without Abbas’s consent. The three parties have reached the conclusion that Abbas is not going to change his position regarding the truce between Hamas and Israel, and that’s why they are now negotiating directly with Israel and with Hamas.
Abbas’s biggest fear is that a truce will embolden Hamas and enable it to maintain its control over the Gaza Strip. He also fears that a truce will solidify the split between the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and pave the way for the establishment of a separate Palestinian state in the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave.

Worse, Abbas was forced this week to sit by and watch as Egyptian, Qatari and other international mediators negotiated a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip without referring to him.

Jonathan S. Tobin: In praise of Netanyahu’s caution

People demonstrated in the streets of Sderot on Tuesday, and who could blame them? They had spent days running back and forth to bomb shelters and safe rooms, enduring the tension and dangers of being subjected to hundreds of rockets fired at their town, as well as the rest of southern Israel, by Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists from Gaza.

But their reaction to news of a ceasefire between Israel and its foes didn’t bring the usual joy and relief. They were mad that once again, Hamas had terrorized and held hundreds of thousands of Israelis hostage—and gotten away with it. More to the point, they blamed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for failing them and the country by refusing to respond more forcefully to the 450-plus rockets fired on the country. They said he had not only abandoned them, but had encouraged Hamas to repeat this dismal process the next time it suited them.

Nor were these demonstrators alone in castigating Netanyahu. Some members of his coalition sniped at him for what they considered timorous behavior. Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman denounced Netanyahu and went so far as to resign because of the prime minister’s failure to escalate the conflict against Hamas. Lieberman’s motives were transparently political since he opposed military action only weeks ago; his goal was to position himself to Netanyahu’s right if the country went to early elections. But opposition leaders also joined in the Bibi-bashing, giving some on the left the rare opportunity to criticize him from the right for allowing a dangerous security situation to develop and then not resolving it in a satisfactory manner. Most embarrassing was the way his critics in the Knesset and the media used video clips of Netanyahu saying the same things about former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s similar policies towards Gaza when he was in the opposition.

But being hoisted on his own petard in this manner didn’t appear to faze the prime minister. Nor should it. The world looks a lot different from the perspective of being the person who must make life-and-death decisions, as opposed to those who can criticize from the sidelines.

Pittsburgh shooter a fan of sites that love Electronic Intifada, Max Blumenthal, Mondoweiss

EoZ contributor Petra Marquardt-Bigman writes in The Forward that the white nationalist Pittsburgh mass murderer also hated Israel, and he was a fan of neo-Nazi sites that loved to quote anti-Israel sites.

To give one example he would reproduce posts from a disgusting blog with the disgusting name Diversity Macht Frei. The author of the blog say he's a fan of Electronic Intifada, "which publishes a lot of good research on the Jews, if you can ignore their disturbing sympathy for brown people.”

The blogger often quotes not only Ali Abunimah, but also Mondoweiss several times and Max Blumenthal: (I'm not linking to the site.)

I’ve also recently been reading the book “Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel” by the Jew Max Blumenthal. Some of the details about the systematic ethnic discrimination the Israeli government routinely practises are amazing. Equally amazing is the fact that this is almost completely unknown in the wider world. For example, he describes a law that requires any Gentile who has a relationship with a Jewish girl to register it with the government and provide documentation to the government that the girl’s parents approve of her having a relationship with a non-Jew!!

Obviously, the quality of research by neo-Nazis is roughly the same as that of Max Blumenthal - both hawk anti-Jewish and anti-Israel lies.

Neo-Nazis are quite aware that these leftist sites agree with them about Jews. At least the white nationalists are honest as to their Jew hatred; the far Left and "pro-Palestinian" sites pretend that they care about human rights and swear up and down they aren't antisemitic.

The neo-Nazis and "pro-Palestinian" sites agree that Jews and the Jewish state are their misfortune. The only real difference is that the far Left sites will quote anti-Zionist Jews as proof that they aren't antisemitic; the far right will quote the same to lend proof to their own proud antisemitism - even the Jews admit that the Jews are as evil as they say.

The irony is that EI and Mondoweiss and Blumenthal and company will happily trot out the most bizarre relationships to "prove" that Zionists are antisemitic - when the antisemites are openly praising the far Left and passionately hate the Zionists.

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On March 19, 2004, a man was shot to death while jogging in French Hill in Jerusalem, Israel.
And Fatah was profuse in its apologies.

Why?

The man killed was 20-year-old George Khoury, a Christian Arab and son of a well-known attorney, Elias Khoury of Beit Hanina.

He was killed by Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade (after all, what peace partner doesn't have their very own terrorist group?)

In 1975, George Khoury's grandfather, Daoud Khoury, was killed, along with 12 others, when a booby-trapped refrigerator set up by Fatah exploded in Jerusalem.

In a statement, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades apologized and said that the killing of Khoury was a case of "mistaken identity" -- they thought Khoury was a settler. They went on to say that as far as the terrorist group was concerned, Khoury was a shahid, a martyr.

The most recent Palestinian Arab victim of Palestinian terrorism is Mahmoud Abu Asba, a construction worker in Ashkelon. He was killed this past Monday when one of Hamas' hundreds of rockets hit the apartment building where he was staying while working in Israel.

In Mr. Abu Asba's case, there has yet to be an apology from Hamas.

And what about Abbas?

Abbas has been vociferous in his defense of his payment of stipends to the families of Palestinian terrorists who have murdered Israelis. In the past, as an equal opportunity supporter of terrorism, Abbas has paid stipends to the families of Hamas terrorists as well.

Will Abbas be as quick to dispense a stipend to the family of Mahmoud Abu Asba, who was murdered by Hamas?

For that matter, just how many innocent Palestinian Arabs have been killed by terrorist groups like Hamas and Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade?

Back in 2014, Yisrael Medad wrote a post, "Of Course Hamas Kills Gaza Civilians" and links to a report that can still be found, archived here. The website for the group no longer exists.

In a later post, Does Hamas Really Kill Its Own Civilians?, Medad followed up and found for the first 4 months of 2014:

o 9-22 Januaryout of 36 Home Made Rockets (HMRs)/Mortars, 19 landed in Gaza.

o 23 January-5 February50% fell inside Gaza.

o 6-19 Februaryno mention.

o 20 February-5 March6 dropped in Gaza.

o 6-19 March24 out of 64 firings dropped short/exploded on-site.

o 20 March-2 April.
9 civilians injured and 1 death due to accidents involving explosive devices and unexploded ordnance.

o 3-16 April.
3 fatalities and 6 injuries due to accidental explosions.

o 17-30 April.
8 rockets dropped short out of 24.

In an article in The Syndey Morning Herald in 2014, Gregory Rose, a specialist in International Law, wrote in "How Gaza became one big suicide bomb":

About 5 per cent of Hamas rockets misfire and land on Gazan targets, such as one in a hospital and another in a market last week. Three rocket caches at three UN schools have been discovered in the past fortnight. Ironically, in each case, the rockets were handed by UN employees, who are mostly locals, back to Hamas, which is the local government authority with which the UN co-operates.

In July, 2014, Gabriele Barbati tweeted -- after leaving Gaza -- about Gazan children killed by a faulty Hamas rocket

Even Amnesty International noticed that one:

Amnesty International said Thursday Palestinian rocket fire during the 2014 summer war in Gaza had killed more civilians in the Gaza Strip than in Israel.

...In the deadliest such attack, "13 Palestinian civilians -- 11 of them children -- were killed when a projectile exploded next to a supermarket in the crowded Al-Shati refugee camp," the report said.

Palestinian witnesses blamed the attack on the beachside camp on an Israeli F-16 warplane, but the army denied that, accusing militants of misfiring their own rockets.

Amnesty said "an independent munitions expert who examined the available evidence... concluded that the projectile used in the attack was a Palestinian rocket."

Army figures released after the war ended on August 26 showed Gaza militants fired 4,591 projectiles at Israel.

Of those, 3,659 struck Israeli territory and 735 were intercepted by the Iron Dome air defence system, leaving another 197 falling short and landing inside the coastal enclave.

All of which raises questions:

o How many Hamas rockets have misfired and landed in Gaza?
o How many Gazans have been injured by Hamas rockets?
o How many Gazans have been killed by misfired Hamas rockets?

There is no real way to know.

Hamas is not about to admit to how many of their own people have been killed, and there is no free press to report on what is happening.

But the murders of people like George Khoury and Mahmoud Abu Asba are a reminder that Palestinian terrorists also kill their own people.

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Dr. Ahmed Abu Houli, a member of the Executive Committee of the PLO, called on donor countries to expedite the payment of additional funding to UNRWA pledged at a conference in New York in September.

An Ad Hoc Liaison Committee raised over $120 million in pledges to keep UNRWA going in the wake of the US suspending funding.

Apparently, not everyone has paid up yet.

The donors that pledged funding in that conference were Kuwait, the European Union, Germany, Norway, France, Belgium and Ireland.

Notice that Kuwait was the only Arab country to pledge.

In a similar conference in June, the only Arab country to participate was the UAE.

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11/14 Links Pt2: The Jews of the North Africa under Muslim Rule; Australians do support recognising Jerusalem; The Women’s March Is Victim Blaming. Again.

From Ian:

Ruthie Blum: The Jews of the North Africa under Muslim Rule

Exile in the Maghreb, co-authored by the great historian David G. Littman and Paul B. Fenton, is an ambitious tome contradicting the myth of how breezy it was for Jews to live in their homelands in the Middle East and North Africa when they came under Muslim rule.

"Ever since the Middle Ages," the book jarringly illustrates, "anti-Jewish persecution has been endemic to Muslim North Africa."

Littman, before his untimely death from leukemia in 2012, had intended this book on the Maghreb to be the first in a series that would cover the social condition of the Jews of Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Yemen, Iran and Turkey -- an ambitious project that he was unable to tackle in its entirety.

The impetus for the book, which was first published in French in 2010 and in English in 2016, was to expose the misrepresentation by certain historians of the relations between the Jews of Morocco and Algeria and their Arab rulers. One such historian cited in the book was the French Orientalist, Claude Cahen, who dreamily wrote in his chapter on "Dhimma" in the Encylopaedia of Islam:
"There is nothing in medieval Islam which could specifically be called anti-Semitism... Islam has, in spite of many upsets, shown more toleration than Europe toward Jews who remained in Muslim lands."

The original idea for the book -- a massive collection of personal testimonies, photos and documents spanning ten centuries (from 997-1912) -- came to Littman when he was on a humanitarian trip to Morocco in 1961. Littman noted:
"Following the independence of their country in 1956, the Jews of Morocco had begun to redefine their hopes regarding the future. Whereas new opportunities for them began to loom on the horizon, I was astonished to observe that the Moroccan Jews were making every possible effort to leave their native land to immigrate to the struggling young State of Israel or even to Europe, whose communities were still painfully recovering from the tragedies of World War II."

'Occupied territories' of the Middle East and Africa

Have you heard of the Land of Punt? I certainly hadn't - before I read David Silon's 'Occupied Territories'.

It's a clever title designed to make you sit up. To most people the Occupied Territories have something to do with Israel. Silon means those territories stretching from West Africa to Iraq that came under Arab rule after the 7th century. There is a bewildering variety of peoples, each with a long and complex history.

And the Druze? What do they seek? It seems that in 1921 they had their own state, but were always clashing with the Maronites. Today, however, they do not seem to want to assert their independence from either Syria, Israel or Lebanon, and are content to live as a minority.

Then there are indigenous Christians - the Arameans, Syriacs, Maronites, Copts. All have suffered discrimination and persecution under various Muslim rulers. But did you know that the Crusaders were no less a nightmare for the Arameans? The eastern Christians have a history of squabbling with the church of Rome, yet Assyrians and Maronites call themselves Catholics. Work that one out.

Israel makes an an appearance as the only Jewish state previously ruled by Islam to have reclaimed sovereignty. Silon's chapter gets a little too bogged down in historical detail; he could have written a little more about the rise of the Zionist movement.

We get a chapter on the Nubians, an ancient people now split between Egypt and the Sudan. But why stop there? Where are the Rifian people, the Beja, the Touareg, the Chaouis, the Chenouas and the Mozabites of North Africa? Silon is gracious enough to offer to remedy omissions in future editions.

'Occupied Territories' goes into a lot of detail - and there is perhaps too much reliance on Wikipedia. But Silon's work is an eye-opener - and makes an important point : the 'Arab world' is nothing of the sort. It is a collection of disparate groups and peoples, some of whom still want independence and liberation from arabisation and islamisation.

Australians do support recognising Jerusalem

My organisation, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, was keen to test the veracity of the Roy Morgan survey. We commissioned YouGov/Galaxy to conduct a poll asking: In 1949, Israel designated Jerusalem to be its capital city, and has its parliament there. Do you think Australia should recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel? The survey was conducted in February among 1,205 Australians. The demographic distribution of the sample as between age, gender, marital/parental status, geographical location, income level and educational attainment reflected the results of the 2016 census as published by the ABS. The margin of error was plus or minus 2.9 per cent.

The results paint a very different picture to the published Roy Morgan findings. A key finding of the YouGov survey was that when the question of Jerusalem was framed as one of whether to ‘recognise’ (rather than ‘declare’) Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and was asked without mentioning Trump or the US, Australians supported recognition by a margin of almost two to one (40 to 21 per cent). Based on party preference, those supporting recognition outnumbered those against in every group except the Greens.

My organisation, the peak representative body of the Jewish community, has long supported recognising the reality that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital and moving the embassy there. Of course Jerusalem strikes an emotional chord for all Jews. It has been our people’s spiritual and political capital since the dawn of the Iron Age 3,000 years ago. But we also believe it is in Australia’s interests, and the interests of peoples of the Middle East, for western nations to back the region’s only real democracy, instead of cravenly yielding to threats of retaliation or, worse still, conjuring up the spectre of threats which don’t exist. The announcement of the Australian government that it is open to considering whether Australia’s embassy in Israel should be moved to Jerusalem was made four days before the highly-significant by-election for the Federal seat of Wentworth. The timing of the announcement led to a storm of criticism. Yet when the issue of recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is considered on its merits, without being accompanied by the hoopla of Australian (or US) domestic politics, the idea enjoys far more support than opposition. Its time will come.

MK Shelly Yachimovich, of the Zionist Union, is working for the other side, and I don’t just mean the Opposition. Her Sunday tweet regarding Officer “M” revealed details of a secret operation to the public and put a hero’s family in danger, too. All for the sake of political capital—to show she is against Israel’s Nation State Law. Not only that, but she twisted the facts to suit her own narrative.

I could show you that tweet. It’s still up there, as Yachimovich feels no shame for outing a hero’s family and hurting her country. She feels no shame that she used facts to build a lie to garner votes in the next election.

But I won’t show it to you. Even though every man and his dog (not to mention Hamas) has the ability to find and locate that tweet. I won’t do it because I won’t help her hurt Israel and the family of Officer “M.” I won’t be a contributing factor, won’t share in the evil of this deed.

Here is what she did: she posted a photo of Officer “M” with his two small children, the three faces all blurred out, but with plenty of identifiable details remaining. Then she exposed yet another confidential detail about this secret mission to the public at large: Officer “M” wasn’t Jewish.

Why did she reveal all this info? Why show the touching photo of “M”’s family? For the purpose of making the spurious claim that Israel’s new Nation State Law has turned Jewish Israelis into inhuman bigots.

Yachimovich, you see, had the temerity to state that the only reason the government of Israel didn’t air “M”’s name was because he wasn’t Jewish. Israel, she said, doesn’t honor non-Jews or their contributions to the state. She said that to Israel, non-Jews like Officer “M” are second class citizens.

MK Shelly Yachimovich

This is utter hogwash. Officer “M”’s name has been kept confidential because of the top secret nature of his mission—so secret that this hero’s name must remain under wraps for a very long time. It’s actually an awe-inspiring fact to consider if you are a thinking person: Officer “M” went into a dangerous mission knowing that no one could ever know what he did, or even that he did it, even if he died. Which sadly, tragically, he did.

THAT, my friends, is a hero. Officer “M” was a true patriot, someone who loved Israel and gave his life for the Jewish State. I don’t need to know any more about him than that.

Aside from this one nauseating tweet, all I have heard from my Jewish Israeli friends and from the highest echelon of the army and government, is honor and praise for Officer “M”’s ultimate sacrifice. Contrary to Shelly Yachimovich, who thinks not about “M,” the safety of “M”’s family, or her country, but only about herself and what she can do to gain a leg up in the next election. I think she’s disgusting and I told her so on Twitter, which is the beauty of that forum.

That is all well and good, and I hope that reading this, you are feeling unmitigated umbrage, as I am.

But that is not enough. News cycles are short. Since Shelly tweeted that falsehood-filled tweet, for instance, 400 rockets were shot into Israel from Gaza in a single 24-hour period, a record.

Many more newsworthy events will occur between that terrible tweet and the elections. And the public has a short memory. What I ask you to do is hold this particular tweet/event in your mind and not let it be forgotten.

I ask you to remember that Shelly Yachimovich endangered IDF soldiers, the Jewish State, and Officer “M”’s bereaved family in a horrible tweet filled with outright lies, for the sake of political capital.

Remember that tweet. Remember that name. And remember the party to which she belongs, a party that shares her culpability and her shame.

I don’t just want you to remember the facts of this awful tweet at election time.

I want you to remember it forever and brand it on your mind.

This is a really bad person.

She may do some good things in future. We must not let that blind us to what she did here. She has not taken the tweet down nor shown remorse.

She does not deserve a second chance.

It would not be a fitting tribute to Officer “M” to vote for Shelly Yachimovich or her party, Labor, ever again.

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Man Mystified That Changing Profile Pic Hasn't Ended War (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Kiryat Motzkin, November 14 - A resident of this Haifa suburb voiced confusion and frustration today following a period during which he replaced his typical social media avatar with the logo of a movement to end armed conflict, only to discover that armed conflict nevertheless persists.

Dudu Enema, 25, answered a call on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook for users to switch their profile images to a picture of a dove holding an olive branch in its beak, in an effort to promote peace and end war. The accounts receivable clerk made the change within minutes of seeing the posts asking people to do so, confident that such action would have the desired effect. However, two days later he discovered that the incidence of armed conflict had only increased, with Hamas and Israel trading blows, the Syrian regime continuing to battle Islamist militias in a brutal, seven-year-old conflict, Iran and Saudi Arabia destroying Yemen in a proxy war, and more African countries than he cares to count still mired in civil war, jihad, genocide, and racial violence. Enema admitted he was at a loss to explain the failure of the avatar switch to bring peace.

"I'm struggling to make sense of it," he disclosed in an interview. "Just like with those breast cancer awareness campaigns and who knows what else - as soon as I changed my profile picture to a pink ribbon last year, for example, that was it - I think there's no more breast cancer. Is that right? And everyone knows Black Lives Matter now, as well. Racism has been vanquished. When I saw the posts asking people to make their avatars a peace dove, I thought, well, yeah, of course. My only other thought was that we should have done this sooner."

"Imagine how history would be different if there had been a social media campaign of this nature and power before the Second World War," he continued. "The world would be a very different place. I mean, aside from the fact that the existence of social media before the war would mean things were already very different, but I think you get the point. It's a powerful tool, this changing of profile pictures."

"That's why I'm so puzzled," he added. "Do you think maybe if enough people attended candlelight vigils it would put the movement over the top? I'm thinking maybe this is the solution to all that gun violence in the US. Has anyone thought of trying it?"

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11/14 Links Pt1: NGOs Disappear When Rockets Start Flying from Gaza; Melanie Phillips: So how would England react to genocidal rocket barrages?

From Ian:

NGO Monitor: NGOs Disappear When Rockets Start Flying from Gaza

Over the past two days, Palestinian terror groups in Gaza have fired over 400 rockets and missiles into Israeli population centers, resulting in 1 death and more than 70 injured.

Since each such attack is a war crime, one might expect human rights NGOs to condemn these blatant violations of human rights. In particular, groups and individuals that immediately and routinely condemn any Israeli action that they do not like.

However, that has not happened. Instead, NGOs and NGO officials have entirely ignored the Palestinian violations against Israelis. Some have simply remained silent, while others have focused exclusively on demonizing Israel. Notably, Palestinian NGOs, which claim to meticulously document violations occurring in Gaza, have not released detailed accounts of the illegal launches of indiscriminate weapons into Israel nor systematically examined how combatants embed themselves among civilian infrastructure.

NGOs/officials that have not commented at all include: Al-Haq, B’Tselem, Adalah, Human Rights Watch’s Ken Roth (Executive Director) and Sarah Leah Whitson (Director of Middle East Division), Addameer, Aldameer, Breaking the Silence, Defense for Children International-Palestine, International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH), Broederlijk Delen, Oxfam, Yesh Din, and Hamoked.

PMW: Hamas fights Israel by using civilians as human shields)

It is clear from past wars that Hamas doesn't care about the lives of the almost 2 million Palestinians who live in the Gaza Strip. Palestinian Media Watch has documented that Hamas unscrupulously uses Palestinian civilians as human shields when fighting Israel. This might be what is in store for Palestinians again, as Hamas escalates its missile attacks on Israeli civilian targets in towns and cities. Hamas has launched hundreds of missiles yesterday alone, forcing Israel to respond with military force.

In the 2014 war, Hamas openly and intentionally demanded that civilians ignore Israel's warnings prior to bombings of terrorists hiding among civilians. Hamas insisted they welcome death, so that Hamas could use them as human shields for their fighters and rocket launchers.

Hamas' spokesman at the time, Sami Abu Zuhri, called on Palestinians to "oppose the Israeli fighter planes with their bodies alone" which he said had "proven an effective method" against "the occupation:"

Al-Aqsa TV reporter: "Witnesses are talking about a large crowd. The residents are still gathering to reach the Kaware family home in order to prevent the Zionist occupation's fighter planes from striking it."
Al-Aqsa TV host: "People are reverting to a method that was very successful once."
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri: "The people oppose the Israeli fighter planes with their bodies alone... I think this method has proven effective against the occupation. It also reflects the nature of our heroic and brave people, and we, the [Hamas] movement, call on our people to adopt this method in order to protect the Palestinian homes."
[Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas), July 8, 2014]

Hamas fights Israel by using Palestinian civilians as human shields

Read more about this here: https://t.co/rI6gjsI3iI pic.twitter.com/dCfuzbFOEK
— Pal Media Watch (@palwatch) November 13, 2018

Melanie Phillips: So how would England react to genocidal rocket barrages?

Here’s a thought experiment for British readers.

Suppose Scotland and Wales were not part of the United Kingdom. Suppose Scotland was effectively controlled by… oooh, I dunno, let’s say, Russia, which had installed underneath residential buildings throughout southern Scotland 120,000 missiles pointing at England which Russia repeatedly threatened, in the most demented and blood-curdling terms, to annihilate.

What do you think the English government would do? What do you think NATO might say or do?

Now suppose that Wales, which for decades had been inhabited by people who had long pledged to annihilate England and who – now also backed by Russia – had repeatedly attacked it over the years with missiles; who had for months been trying to storm the border with England and attacked it with aerial incendiary devices, as a result of which thousands of acres of English farmland had been incinerated and destroyed; and who had also been building tunnel networks running into England through which they intended to infiltrate the country and slaughter as many English people as possible.

What do you think the English government would do?

Now suppose that some kind of botched clandestine operation in Wales by English special forces – to try to protect England from further attack – was used as a pretext for the terrorist regime running Wales to fire hundreds upon hundreds of rockets into England, causing fatalities and injuries by direct hits on buses and houses and apartment buildings in, say, Bristol or Salisbury and threatening to hit other cities including London; and that the only reason thousands of civilians had not been killed was that they had shelters in which they had been forced to live for long periods over many years.

What do you think the English government would do? Do you think there’s any doubt that, long before such rocket barrages could be unleashed against it, England would have flattened Wales?

Popular EoZ tweets for the week not covered in the blog

I tweeted some things in the past week that I didn't blog about or only mentioned in passing.

Here are some of the more popular ones.

Linda Sarsour is upset that Israel killed seven Palestinians.

Here is Hamas' tribute picture of them.

Either she is pretending they are civilian, or she is mourning terrorists.

She doesn't look too good either way. pic.twitter.com/g3eC79fflJ
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) November 13, 2018

Um, @ggreenwald forgot to mention that all targets are Hamas command and control centers.

I'm sure it was just an oversight. Only so much you can fit in a tweet. Yeah, that's the reason.

Must be. He's a "journalist" so he couldn't be biased.

Ha. https://t.co/TAgrgcrbkQ
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) November 13, 2018

Israel threatened last week to begin "levelling" high-rises in Gaza and now is making good on that threat, destroying a TV station, a radio station & an apartment building. They're not even pretending this was accidental; they admit they were targeted https://t.co/xEmH4nkoNp
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 13, 2018

Hamas' Interior Ministry warns residents (and, by implication, reporters) not to mention where the "resistance" is operating nor the location of rocket launch sites.

Which proves that the residents are human shields. https://t.co/4jYIFB5oRr pic.twitter.com/3pTWUCzxX8
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) November 13, 2018

Here's the sobering news of the day: As bad as things for Israelis tonight in the south, Hezbollah has as many as 140,000 much bigger missiles aimed all over Israel.

The UN never thought that this was enough of a problem to do anything about.
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) November 12, 2018

What too many on the Left have sounded like lately.

The Right isn't immune to this, though. pic.twitter.com/MufIQLF8kH
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) November 14, 2018

And before this week's events:

A thought:

The IDF does more to minimize civilian deaths in wartime than any army in history.

The IDF is blamed more for civilian deaths in wartime than any army in history.
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) November 9, 2018

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One of the "civilian buildings" that Israel destroyed in Gaza this week was called the Al Amal Hotel.

Articles in Arab and leftist media like +972 identified it as a hotel targeted by Israel among other war crimes.

The IDF said that the hotel wasn't a hotel but was the location of the Hamas interior ministry, where attacks against Israel were planned.

Palestinian human rights groups admit it.

PCHR said "Israeli warplanes carried out 15 airstrikes, launching 57 missiles to target ...al-Amal Hotel which had become the Internal Security’s office that was only few meters away from the former head office of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR)."

Al Mezan also admits "Al-Amal housed an office of the Internal Security Apparatus."

There is no record I can find since 2008 of anyone staying at the Al Amal Hotel. It hasn't been a hotel for years, but Arab propaganda media knowingly reported on the airstrike as if it was still a hotel.

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