Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, August 11, 2022

Activist Torn Between Helping Native Americans, Claiming Palestinians There First (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

native American attire Chattanooga, August 11 - A man who campaigns for the recognition of indigenous status for the descendants of the tribes who inhabited the Americas before Europeans colonized the land acknowledged today his ambivalence about his efforts, because those efforts conflict with two key axioms of his worldview, namely that Palestinians were there first and that their claims take priority among all progressive causes.

Michael Hayes, 23, shared his internal conflict with a group of fellow activists during a drive from the Washington, DC, area to a retreat just outside Memphis where like-minded campaigners for human rights will share experiences, ideas, and reflections on their work. "There's this tension I've been sensing for some time," he confessed to his two car-mates at a rest stop. "I get that solidarity with other rights gives smaller groups the ability to generate greater impact and make more noise. The thing is, the only pattern I know is for other causes to cede primacy to the Palestinian cause, and I'm struggling with how to do that effectively in my work."

"Let's take Indian reservations," he explained. "Anyone can see the neglect, even outright hostility, that animates official policy on reservations. But I'm having trouble determining where the transition is supposed to begin from combating that systemic abuse and dispossession, with all the associated traumas and side-effects, to using the phenomenon merely as a prop to illustrate what Palestinians face. Like, are we actually supposed to care about indigenous Americans, or does the importance of their suffering and their status as victims of injustice exist only while it can serve as leverage for the true cause, Palestine? I need clarity."

His buddies offered encouragement. "You'll get to an equilibrium," predicted Mason Fletcher, whose activism against over-policing in minority communities has overlapped with anti-Israel campaigns alleging Israeli complicity in the phenomenon. "I know my focus area isn't the same as yours, but we're all fighting an oppressive system from different directions and each of us has to decide for themselves what weight to give Palestine in that constellation of considerations. A lot of it depends on funding, to be honest."

"Ain't that the truth," spat Haida Batar, a women's rights campaigner whom both Fletcher and Hayes have tried to impress with their feminist credentials, so far without success. "Goddamn Zionists and all their money. We wouldn't need money like this if the patriarchy weren't so entrenched. That's exactly why we have to liberate Palestine. Everything flows from that. I don't know how, exactly, but social justice language has always featured prominently in anti-Jewish stuff, which must mean we're on the right track."

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08/11 Links Pt1: The ‘Fix’ Is In: How Hitler-Praising Palestinians Are Warping Gaza Conflict Coverage; Progressives for jihad; A look back at the first disastrous ‘Two-State Solution

From Ian:

Honest Reporting: The ‘Fix’ Is In: How Hitler-Praising Palestinians Are Warping Gaza Conflict Coverage

New York Times’ Fady Hanona Urges Missile Attacks on Israel
Out of the eight articles produced by The New York Times during the three-day PIJ-initiated conflict, six credit Fady Hanona as having contributed from Gaza City (see here, here, here, here, here, and here).

Hanona, a freelance producer and fixer who has also been hired by the BBC, The Guardian, and VICE News, appears to be working to further the anti-Israel narrative promoted by Palestinian terror organizations that seek the destruction of the world’s only Jewish state.

For one, he supports arch-terrorist Marwan Barghouti, having backed him repeatedly on Facebook (here, here, and here). Prior to his incarceration, Barghouti co-founded and headed the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, an organization that murdered dozens of Israelis in suicide bombings and shooting attacks during the Second Intifada (2000-2005).

Hanona moreover made light of the escape from prison of members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in September of last year (see here and here). Most of the escapees were serving life sentences for their roles in attacks on Israeli citizens. Ayham Kamamji, for example, was convicted of kidnapping and murdering teenager Eliyahu Asheri.

Indeed, Hanona makes no attempt to hide his desire that Israel be removed from the map, referring to the country’s sovereign territory as the “[19]48 lands,” while putting “Israel” in scare quotes.

During 2014’s Operation Protective Edge against Hamas in Gaza, the New York Times freelancer took to social media to threaten the murder of Ghassan Alian, an Israeli Druze who commanded the IDF’s Golani Brigade at the time.

Then, on August 18, 2014 — days before a ceasefire took effect between Israel and Hamas — Hanona urged the Palestinian “resistance” to reject a truce and continue its missile attacks on Tel Aviv, which had at that point already cost the lives of five civilians.

In another online post from the same month, he went as far as invoking Nazi leader Adolf Hitler to support his point about the strength of Gazan fighters. “As Hitler said, give me a Palestinian soldier and a German weapon, and I will make Europe crawl on its fingertips,” Hanona’s post read, citing an unconfirmed quote attributed to the man responsible for the murder of six million Jews.

Furthermore, the NYT fixer shared a now-deleted propaganda video of terrorist groups in Jenin on Facebook, telling his followers that Palestinians should return to “the culture of fighting and killing Israelis.”

“I don’t accept a Jew, Israeli or Zionist, or anyone else who speaks Hebrew. I’m with killing them wherever they are: children, elderly people, and soldiers,” Hanona asserted, adding: “The Jews are sons of the dogs… I am in favor of killing them and burning them like Hitler did. I will be so happy.” According to his Twitter feed, Israel’s security services subsequently flagged his name when he applied for a permit to travel to Jerusalem.

Brendan O'Neill: Progressives for jihad

Remember when progressives were opposed to hardline religious movements that use violence to try to destroy democratic states? Islamic Jihad is a thoroughly regressive movement that says it will settle for nothing less than the obliteration of Israel. It wants to create an Islamic State of Palestine in which Sharia would rule and all who fall foul of it - uppity women, homosexuals, atheists - would suffer.

Islamic Jihad is not a national liberation movement. It is a violent and extremist religious organization generously funded by Iran's Revolutionary Guards. It rejects the political process and has executed numerous acts of indiscriminate slaughter in Israel in recent years, massacring hundreds of Israeli citizens in restaurants, at supermarkets, on buses.

Name me one nation on Earth that would turn a blind eye to such existential threats? If there was a well-armed group of religious fundamentalists a few miles from Britain that had sent suicide bombers to slaughter British men, women and children, we would act, no? And yet Israel is always condemned for acting.

Islamic Jihad is not good for the Palestinian people. Its activities in recent years have in part been designed to weaken the Palestinian Authority (PA), the Mahmoud Abbas-led government of the West Bank. It wants to dislodge the PA. That will help the Palestinian people, will it?

A look back at the first disastrous ‘Two-State Solution

To fully understand its origins, we must go back to the early years of the 20th century.

In 1920, Great Britain was given the responsibility by the League of Nations to oversee the Palestine Mandate after the ending of the 400-year-old Ottoman Turkish Empire’s occupation of much of the Middle East. Britain was to uphold the League’s express intention of reconstituting within the Mandatory territory a reborn Jewish national home.

The League of Nations created several articles in line with the original intent of the Balfour Declaration of November 29, 1917. At the last minute, however, a new article was introduced by the British Colonial Office: Article 25.

It became apparent that its inclusion directly enabled Great Britain in 1921-22 to tear away all the vast Mandatory territory east of the river Jordan and give it away to the Arab Hashemite tribe: The territory to become Trans-Jordan, led by the emir Abdullah.

British officials claimed that the gift of Mandatory Palestine east of the Jordan River was in gratitude to the Hashemites for their contribution in helping defeat the Turks. However, T.S. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) described in derisory terms the Hashemite role as “a side show of a side show.”

Ironically, Britain was aided far more by the Nili underground movement in defeating the Ottoman Turkish Empire, which had ruled geographical Palestine for 400 years.

This was the first partition of the non-state geographical territory known as Palestine and the first two-state solution. It created a new Arab entity some 100 years ago called Trans-Jordan, covering some 35,000 square miles, or nearly four fifths of the erstwhile Palestine Mandate. Immediately,

Jewish residence in this new Arab territory was forbidden in an act of Islamic apartheid (which no one protested on US college campuses...), and it is thus historically correct to state that Jordan is Palestine. Note too that Jordan’s population is comprised of well over 75% Arabs who call themselves Palestinians.

In 1923, the British and French colonial powers also divided up the northern part of the Palestine Mandate. Britain stripped away the Golan Heights (with its ancient Biblical Jewish roots) and gave it to French-occupied Syria.

The Balfour Declaration issued by Lord Balfour, British foreign secretary, never envisaged that the Jordan River would be the eastern boundary of the reconstituted Jewish homeland.

As early as September 19, 1919, the London Times newspaper had thundered in an editorial: “The Jordan will not do as the eastern frontier of Palestine … Palestine must have a good military frontier east of the river Jordan … Our duty as Mandatory is to make Jewish Palestine not a struggling state but one that is capable of vigorous and independent life.”

During its administration of the remaining Palestine Mandate’s tiny territory, between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, (a mere forty miles in width) Britain severely restricted Jewish immigration and purchases of land while turning a blind eye to massive illegal Arab immigration into the territory from neighboring stagnant Arab territories. This had been Britain’s policy since it was given the Mandate from 1921/22 up until 1947 and Israel’s subsequent independence in 1948.

Britain’s sorry record of appeasement of the Arabs, at the expense of Jewish destiny in the remaining tiny territory, culminated in the infamous 1939 White Paper, which limited Jewish immigration to a total of just 75,000 souls over the next five years. This draconian policy, coming as it did on the eve of the outbreak of World War 2 and the Holocaust, was a deathblow to millions of Jews attempting to flee extermination by Nazi Germany.

Despite the warm peace between Israel and the UAE, at least one member of the royal family has maintained her hate for Jews.

Sheikha Hind bint Faisal Al Qasimi has been sending out some outrageous tweets recently, displaying her hate and ignorance.

One was a bizarre attempt at a comparison between Jews killed in an organized, planned genocide in the Holocaust and millions of Muslims killed mostly by...each other.

Of course, Israel killing terrorists is the exact same thing as the Holocaust, in her twisted mind:

To hammer the point, she says that what Israel is doing is the "systematic annihilation" of Palestinians, just like the Nazis.

Yet she insists she is not antisemitic - one of her best friends is Jewish!

Al Qasimi makes her antisemitism crystal clear in this tweet:

"You know who."

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

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Even Islamic Jihad doesn't claim it was "defending Gaza"

One of the dumber memes that came out during Operation Breaking Dawn was that "Palestinians have the right to defend themselves."

Given that virtually the only military actions by Gaza militants were shooting rockets into Israeli civilian communities (each one a war crime,) it is unclear how that defends Palestinians. Yet that is what these people are justifying: war crimes.

But there is a more fundamental issue: The idea that Islamic Jihad was "defending Gaza" is completely made up.

Islamic Jihad never claimed that this micro-war was about defending Gaza. It was all about...Islamic Jihad.

Their name for the fighting was "Unity of the Arenas," meaning that the message they wanted to give to Israel is that any Israeli actions against their terrorists and allies in the West Bank will result in responses from Gaza.

This article in the Islamic Jihad military wing website that declares that the battle was a success describes the goals and accomplishments from Islamic Jihad's perspective. And the safety and defense of Gazans is not even on their radar.

On the land of Palestine, no voice is louder than the voice of the resistance.. Once again, Gaza returns to the fore and the Mujahideen of Saraya al-Quds lead the stage of clashing with the Zionist enemy in the battle of unity of the arenas in order to keep the flame of the conflict burning with the usurping entity, and to confirm that Gaza is like Jenin, Nablus and Jerusalem, and that any aggression on the land and people are crossing all red lines and that all arenas will remain present to respond to the Zionist arrogance in all the cities of the occupied West Bank, and that all the desperate attempts of the occupation to eliminate Islamic jihad and resistance and break the rules of engagement that have been established by blood and fire will be broken on the rock of defiance and violence among the children of the school of (PIJ founder) Dr. Fathi Al-Shaqaqi .

The article is about a speech by Muhammad Hamid, a member of Islamic Jihad's political bureau, where he praised the fighting and described its goals.

Not once does he use the word "defend." Not once does he even mention the security or safety of Gazans. He does say, "the battle for the unity of the arenas is clear in purpose. There are no exceptions in the struggle of our Palestinian people, and there is no distinction between the blood spilled in the occupied West Bank and the blood spilled in Gaza, and therefore this battle has been of great strategic importance in the history of our Palestinian people."

Hamid gave two reasons for shooting the rockets at Israel. The first and primary one was as a response to Israeli arrests and attacks against terror cells in the West Bank, and the second was the assassination of terrorist Taysir al-Jabari on Friday. he was proud that they responded with hundreds of rockets within hours of the airstrike.

Notably, Hamid does not claim victory based on Israel's supposed agreement to release a couple of Islamic Jihad prisoners. In fact, Israel today said the opposite, that the Islamic Jihad terrorist leader Bassem Saadi will remain in custody for some more time.

Also, his words seem to lend support for Israel's charge that Islamic Jihad was planning a major attack in response to Saadi's arrest. Hamid is confirming that Islamic Jihad planned a major response to Saadi's arrest in order to "unify the arenas."

But defending Gaza? That is the least concern for Islamic Jihad. And the people of Gaza know this very well.

The Mehdi Hasans of the world who go on about "the right of Gazans to defend themselves" are doing nothing but defending terror. Just ask Islamic Jihad.

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

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Amnesty Australia hosted someone who threatens Jewish businesses in Australia

Last month, Amnesty Australia held an event:

Join us for a special screening of ‘My Love Awaits Me by the Sea’. We have invited Muhib Nabulsi, a representative of Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement Australia and programmer for the Palestinian Film Festival to speak.

Nablusi must be an admirable human rights activist to be invited to speak by Amnesty, right?

Here is a thread that Nablusi posted on Twitter where he published a hit list of Australian Israeli restaurants for targeting.

This is a barely-veiled call for violence against Australian Jews and Israelis. It is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that somehow Israeli-themed restaurants are part of a worldwide network of anti-Palestinian operatives.

It is an unhinged display of hate and intolerance.

And Amnesty Australia considers Nablusi a role model.

You can guarantee that they will not disavow him, because he is a Palestinian, he is disabled, and he is the type of person who incites violence. Amnesty will never go against that trifecta.

(h/t Joel T)

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

08/10 Links Pt2: Normalizing Relations Between Israel and the Arab World Continues Calmly in a Turbulent World; Israeli students accuse Ben & Jerry’s of occupying tribal land in Vermont

From Ian:

Jonathan Tobin: Why Jews don’t control America’s foreign policy

That ought to be painfully obvious, not least because, as (Walter Russell) Mead points out, the United States has not been consistently supportive of Israel. Indeed, it was not until after its astonishing victory in the 1967 Six-Day War when Israel was first perceived as a potentially important strategic ally for the West in the Cold War did the United States start to really help the Jewish state.

Even after the alliance became a reality, different schools of thought emerged to try to explain why America cared about Israel and usually provided the wrong answers to the question. So-called realists believed that Israel was an impediment to better relations with the Arab world and blamed it for American problems that had nothing to do with sympathy for Zionism. The American left, which had been supportive of Israel in its early years, eventually turned on it because it, too, came to view it in an ideological context that was equally detached from the reality of Israel. Meanwhile, Jacksonians liked Israel for the same reasons that others detested it: their tough response to terrorism and assertion of national rights. For those seeking simple explanations to complex questions, Israel and the notion of hidden Jewish power manipulating America to do things against its interests is an easy answer, yet always a wrong one.

Israel has a powerful and perhaps far more loyal non-Jewish constituency among evangelical Christians. It’s also true that the two most pro-Israel presidents with respect to policy—Richard Nixon, who provided crucial help to save it during the 1973 Yom Kippur War and Donald Trump, who recognized Jerusalem and aligned himself very closely with the Jewish nation—were also the two presidents most despised by the majority of American Jewish voters.

Above all, successive American administrations took up the search for Middle East peace on the false premise that achieving it would solve a host of other problems. Belief in the peace process became, especially among the foreign-policy establishment of veteran diplomats, academics and journalists who are considered “experts” in the field,” a holy grail that took both Democrat and Republican presidents down a rabbit hole from which none emerged unscathed or successful.

Mead points out that the peace process was not only not a holy grail but actually a “MacGuffin,” the term filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock coined to describe a plot device that seems to motivate and drive the main character’s actions, but which is actually of very little intrinsic value. That ought to have been conclusively proven by Trump’s Abraham Accords in which Arab states essentially abandoned the Palestinian cause in favor of normalization with a Jewish state that is a valuable strategic ally and trading partner. Even after that, belief in the importance of the grail that’s really a MacGuffin persists.

Mead provides a valuable history of successive American administration approaches to the Middle East from the failures of the two Bushes, Clinton and Obama, and then Trump’s surprising partial success. It’s important to understand that America has always pursued policies that were the function of its leader’s beliefs—whether avowed realists like the first Bush, convinced that democracy could be spread like the second Bush, true believers in the peace process like Clinton and Obama or a Jacksonian like Trump—about what they thought was in America’s best interests, not Israel’s.

Yet despite the changing script in which America’s political parties have flipped their positions on Israel and the shifting geostrategic realities of the Middle East have been made apparent, credence in the existence of a “hidden Jewish hand” manipulating America continues to exist on both political extremes. That this is so is a testament to the fact that anti-Semitism remains a far more powerful force than most of those who think about America and the Middle East are prepared to admit.

Normalizing Relations Between Israel and the Arab World Continues Calmly in a Turbulent World

Even in the Palestinian Authority and Gaza, these moves elicited only a cursory response. The same scenes that played out in Arab cities were played out among Palestinians.

It is not surprising, then, that Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid’s meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah, in which they agreed to develop a joint economic hub near the King Hussein bridge where Israeli and Jordanian businessmen could meet, was met with calmness – in almost prophetic contrast to the reaction to Bourguiba fifty-eight years ago.

Neither the meeting nor the proposal demonstrated any bravery on the part of the Hashemite King. Jordan signed an agreement six years ago to purchase 45 billion cubic meters of Israeli gas for ten billion dollars over fifteen years.

There was so little opposition on the “Jordanian street” that security forces took no action against Hisham al-Bustani, the coordinator of “the Campaign Against the Enemy’s Gas,” who accused by name the Jordanian ministers involved in the agreement’s ratification. If the regime had felt threatened, it would have arrested him for incitement. They were correct: two years after the video in which al-Bustani appeared, only 145 people viewed it, with only one comment supporting the King.

Normalization with Israel is not met with equanimity in so many Arab states because of a love for Israel. Nor has the realization of Israel’s technological achievements changed public attitudes toward the Jewish state.

The transformation is far more fundamental and internal. Arab publics are engrossed by the challenges that they face in their states. For example, in Lebanon, there are economic burdens, growing animosity toward Hizballah, and the threat of renewed civil war that Hizballah control evokes. In Iraq, there is the danger of political and economic meltdown not as a result of the Shi’ite/Sunni divide as it was a decade ago, but more ominously, in the intra-Shi’ite conflict fueled by Iranian meddling. And in Egypt, there is the perennial concern of keeping Egypt above water economically, not to mention Tunisia.

In short, when the “Arab street” takes to the streets, they cannot add the burden of the Palestinians to their concerns. Last year, a Syrian opposition member who Palestinian students heckled at Hebrew University responded, “You live in paradise compared to what Syrians face!”

The Arab street’s lack of reaction allows Arab leaders to pursue their relations with Israel to benefit themselves and their constituents.

It’s time to address the horrific injustice done to Jews from Arab lands

When addressing the defining moment of the 20th century in terms of man’s inhumanity to man, we often reflect on the sheer barbarism of the Holocaust. But throughout the blood-stained annals of Jewish history, many other anti-Semitic massacres have been committed.

Tragically, what is often neglected and summarily dismissed is the forced expulsion, evacuation and flight of 921,000 Jews of Sephardi and Mizrachi background from Arab countries and the Muslim world, primarily from 1948 to the early 1970s.

For over 2,500 years, Jews lived continuously in North Africa, the Middle East and the Gulf region. The first Jewish population had already settled there at least 1,000 years before the advent of Islam.

Throughout the generations, Jews in the region were often subjected to various forms of discrimination—and in many cases, ranked lower on the status of society than their Muslim compatriots—but they were nevertheless loyal citizens who contributed significantly to the culture and development of their respective countries.

Despite the positive influence that Jews brought to the places where they lived, more than 850,000 Jews were forced to leave their homes in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Morocco and several other Arab countries in the 20 years that followed Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. Another major forced migration took place from Iran in 1979–80 following the Iranian Revolution and the collapse of the Shah’s regime, adding 70,000 more Jewish refugees to this number.

In 1947, the Political Committee of the Arab League drafted an anti-Semitic law that violently oppressed the Jewish residents in all of its member states. In the international arena, Arab diplomats pretended to ignore the Arab League’s collusion in encouraging state-sanctioned discrimination against Jews, seeking publicly to attribute blame to the Arab “masses”—and even the United Nations itself—for any danger facing the Jews across the region. This covert move was part of the Arab states’ attempt to divert attention from the official discriminatory practices of their governments.

Between 1948-1951, 260,000 Jews from Arab countries immigrated to Israel, accounting for 56% of the total immigration to the newly-founded state. The Israeli government’s policy to accommodate 600,000 immigrants over four years, doubling the existing Jewish population, encountered mixed reactions in the Knesset, as there were those within the Jewish Agency and government who opposed promoting large-scale immigration by Jews from Arab lands.

The footage of the Islamic Jihad rocket doubling back on Jabaliya was like something out of a Cecil B. DeMille movie. Except that it was real. The rocket begins its journey; its target, Israeli civilians. Then, all of a sudden, with a “whoosh,” the rocket reverses course, as if the hand of God itself were guiding it away from the Jewish people (or perhaps playing boomerang). In the background, we hear the Muezzin’s eerie call to prayer blaring from the loudspeakers. It seems a kind of judgment, a biblical moment—one the media does not want to own.

Columnist Daled Amos contends that Israel did a great job getting the truth of the Jabaliya story out to the media. As a result, he says, “Israel was able not only to present its case that it was not responsible, but also to get the media to present a balanced report that presented Israel's contention that the explosion was the result of a misfired rocket from Palestinian Islamic Jihad.”

Daled Amos is right on the mark. For a change, Israel got ahead of the propaganda machine. This time, the Jewish State was quick to supply verifiable facts and footage to show the truth of what had happened: An Islamic Jihad rocket, launched in the direction of Israel with the intention of murdering as many Jewish civilians as possible, misfired and murdered 7 Gaza residents, including 4 children. In other words, Islamic Jihad terrorists tried to kill Jews, but murdered their own, instead.

Daled Amos is also correct in stating that as a result of Israel’s speedy proactive response, the media presented a more balanced account. But perhaps balance was not what was needed here. When there are verifiable facts and footage, it’s not a case of he said/she said, but documenting what happened for posterity.

We know what happened on D-Day, at Pearl Harbor, in Gettysburg. Some things are just not in dispute. The rocket attack on Jabaliya is such an event, something that should be recorded as military history. Yet CNN, for example has the Palestinian Health Ministry saying one thing, and Israel saying another (emphasis added):

In one incident Saturday, four children were among seven people killed in an explosion in Jabaliya. The Palestinian Health Ministry initially said the blast was caused by an Israeli airstrike. Israel rejected the claim and said it was the result of errant rocket fire, and released a video showing what it said was the Islamic Jihad rocket sharply changing course in the air and hitting the building.

Instead of this balanced report, why not a factual report on what happened on August 6^th? “Today in Gaza, an Islamic Jihad rocket misfired, killing seven people in Jabaliya, including 4 children.”

That would have been the unvarnished truth. But reporting the truth is apparently not a CNN value. CNN would rather hedge, presenting the story as a case of competing narratives, under the pretense of “balance.” Forced by facts to exonerate Israel, CNN instead chooses to leave things fuzzy, to leave the reader thinking, “Who knows what really happened? But it was probably that &*$@*%^ Israel, again.”

In other words, the balance is not balance, but a calculated lie, so that even if you know the facts, you begin to question them. The purpose of the lie, of course, is to minimize anything that makes Islamic Jihad look bad: “Yes, they’re terrorists, but they’re OUR terrorists.”

Why? Because Gaza is the darling of the wokerati, while Israel is the object of their hate. So minimize, minimize, and minimize the damage some more, and find a way to “balance” things out.

It’s not only CNN, of course. Daled Amos cited many similar reports, including this one from the NY Times (emphasis added):

Three children were also killed on Saturday, though it was not immediately clear whether they were hit by an Israeli strike or a misfired Palestinian rocket. The Israeli military said they were killed by a failed Islamic Jihad rocket launch.

Instead of reporting the story as is, the NY Times tells its readership that it’s not clear who killed the 7, Israel or the Arab IJ terrorists. But it IS clear. Today, everything is verifiable. People have phones. They love to record rocket attacks and share the clips on social.

The Israeli military didn’t “say” it was a failed Islamic Jihad rocket launch. They proved it. But that’s not how the NY Times chose to report the story. Why exonerate Israel, when you can leave the story fuzzy around the edges, ripe for interpretation and as fodder for the anti-Israel propaganda machine?

The AP, as cited by Daled Amos, begins with the same “balanced” narrative (emphasis added):

The Israeli military said an errant rocket fired by Palestinian militants killed civilians late Saturday, including children, in the town of Jabaliya, in northern Gaza. The military said it investigated the incident and concluded ‘without a doubt’ that it was caused by a misfire on the part of Islamic Jihad. There was no official Palestinian comment on the incident.

This, however, turned out to be not ambiguous enough for the AP. So they did an about-face (much like that IJ rocket) in a subsequent report containing no allegations or reports of a misfire at all. Instead, the new report mentions an “Israeli offensive,” leaving the impression that Israel is somehow responsible for the Jabaliya dead (emphasis added):

Two other militants and five civilians also were killed in the attack, bringing the Palestinian death toll to 31 since the start of the Israeli offensive Friday. Among the dead were six children and four women. The Palestinian Health Ministry said more than 250 people were wounded since Friday.

It is easy to rationalize "balanced" reporting on Israel. One might reason that balance is a whole lot better than the out-and-out shameless lies of Al Jazeera:

Al Jazeera flat out lying.

The “massacre” was the result of Palestinian terrorist rockets misfiring and killing their OWN citizens including children. pic.twitter.com/gAfLgfRZWs
— Emily Schrader - אמילי שריידר (@emilykschrader) August 6, 2022

But the lies of Al Jazeera are not worse, only different. Lies can be blatant or come disguised as “balance.” In the end, lies are lies.

Why would the media lie? In the case of Jabaliya, reporting the facts makes Israel out to be the good guy. As the media well knows, however, a bit of balance can go a long way toward making it seem otherwise.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Gaza staged fauxtography 2022

As sure as the flower after the rain come the obviously staged photos in the rubble of any Israel/Gaza fighting.

Like these:

I don't know if the AFP photographer told the subjects where to stand, or if the Palestinian terror groups that run Gaza set up an event for kids in the rubble and called the photographers. (As we will see, it is probably the latter.)

Either way, this is not close to spontaneous. It is staged for maximum effect.

The photos were taken in Rafah. Israel destroyed the building where Khaled Mansour, the Islamic Jihad commander for southern Gaza, was. The total damage is restricted to that building and surrounding buildings - less than one city block.

If you want to cheer up kids, why take them specifically to the most dangerous place in all of Rafah? Why set up a pop-up summer camp in on top of unstable rubble and exposed electrical wires, when you can move a short distance away and be in a neighborhood that looks like this?

And look at how many photographers there were to cover this story!

Photos like this don't reveal the truth: they are specifically meant to hide it. And the journalists happily do their part, to show Gaza the way Hamas wants it to be shown - and nothing else.

(h/t Yoni)

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

08/10 Links Pt1: Israel Is the Bad Guy in the Eyes of the Media, Once Again; Palestinians to demand full recognition of the “State of Palestine” in upcoming UN session; Iranian in plot to kill John Bolton

From Ian:

Israel’s military operation against PIJ was a short-term success. Here’s how it could be a longer-term one too.

Previous rounds of fighting have historically concluded with an expectation of the one to follow next. But could the final act of Operation Breaking Dawn hold the seeds of a different future amid the shifting sands of the Middle East?

The apparent refusal by Israel’s government to release two PIJ prisoners, Al-Saadi and Khalil Awawdeh, as part of the ceasefire agreement reinforces the administrative separation between Gaza and the West Bank, thereby strengthening the hand of Hamas as an ostensible address for Israel in the south. Senior Israeli officials are speaking of a new “opportunity” to secure the handover of Israelis being held in Hamas captivity and to advance “cooperation [that] we can do, predominantly through Egypt, to improve the situation in Gaza.”

Counter-intuitive as it may seem, Hamas—despite its famous animosity toward Israel—may yet emerge as an independent, if not unlikely, interlocutor for the Jewish state, notwithstanding the difficult implications that this could have for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah. Israel’s quick removal of sanctions on Gaza and immediate reinstatement of work permits for Gaza residents subsequent to the truce will serve to cultivate pragmatism within Hamas ranks.

Equally noteworthy is the fact that local PIJ ranks in Gaza were able to impose their will for a cessation of hostilities with Israel over the objections of their movement’s Secretary-General, Ziad Nakhaleh, who—while meeting with Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Commander-in-Chief General Hossein Salami in Tehran on August 5—summoned other Gaza-based factions to take up weapons alongside PIJ militants.

These developments take place against the backdrop of the Abraham Accords, the normalization deals signed between Israel and an array of Arab countries across the Middle East and Africa. Statements by the United Arab Emirates and Morocco—two kingdoms that are forging new diplomatic relationships with Israel—pointedly refrained from criticizing Israel’s conduct in Gaza, attesting to the robust nature of these contacts. Eventually, the example of these mutually beneficial ties might persuade decision-makers in both the West Bank and Gaza to also favor constructive engagement with Israel over an alternative fate of increased isolation and despair.

Israel Is the Bad Guy in the Eyes of the Media, Once Again

Many left-wing media outlets frequently place the blame on Israel for its conflicts with the Palestinians and Palestinian terrorist groups, which are proxies for Iran. The New York Times ran a headline that omitted any mention of Palestinian rockets, saying, “Israel Strikes Gaza as Tensions Rise.” The Times article mentions the rocket response in the second sentence of the subheading, saying, “Militants responded with a volley of rockets into Israel.” The Times makes the 1,100-rocket barrage launched at Israeli civilians sound like a game. They also neglect to mention the PIJ by name in the subheading, instead referring to the terrorist organization as “a Palestinian militant group.” See the pattern?

Israel is often blamed for civilians killed during conflicts with Palestinian terrorists (even though Palestinian terrorists use women and children as human shields), but rockets from Palestinian Islamic Jihad actually killed more Palestinian civilians during the fighting than Israeli bombs did. The Associated Press tweeted, “Close to one-third of the Palestinians who died in the weekend of fighting . . . may have been killed by errant rockets fired by the Palestinian side, according to an Israeli assessment that appears consistent with AP reporting.” Surprisingly accurate and fair reporting.

The AP should have included the video evidence that shows an errant rocket being fired from Gaza and then going off course and landing in Jabalia, which killed five Palestinian children. Here is an instance captured by Hezbollah’s Mayadeen outlet showing a long-range missile being fired from Gaza City and then malfunctioning and falling inside a civilian area in Gaza.

Avi Mayer, a former spokesman for the foreign press for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), posted videos that reportedly show the IDF aborting operations because of the possibility of civilians being killed:
Incredible video: Israeli Air Force pilots aborted an airstrike targeting Palestinian Islamic Jihad commander Khaled Mansour *three times* due to the presence of children; the airstrike was carried out only once it was confirmed no children were nearby. pic.twitter.com/qbVKl9zYup
— Avi Mayer (@AviMayer) August 7, 2022

WATCH: Israeli Air Force aborts airstrike targeting Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror site in Gaza after civilian spotted nearby. pic.twitter.com/sVbBOQUtGe
— Avi Mayer (@AviMayer) August 7, 2022
The fact that the media routinely view Israel’s conflict with its terrorist neighbors — PIJ and Hamas — through a lens that finds a moral equivalence between both sides is not only bad journalism, it’s morally repugnant.

Last month I reported that the advisory panel for USAID, the American aid agency that funnels millions of dollars to Palestinian organizations, has recommended that the US should build institutions in Area C, ostensibly to promote Israeli-Palestinian cooperation.

However, these institutions would almost certainly not be available to Jews who already live in Area C, meaning that they would be effectively a way for USAID to take land away from under Israeli control and give it to Palestinians.

One of the more outrageous proposals mentioned was to build an entire university in Area C for Palestinian use.

Now, Israel's Channel 14 is reporting that Joe Biden supports the idea.

From the Arabic Ultrapal news site:

Israeli Channel 14 said, on Wednesday, that US President Joe Biden gave oral approval to a request submitted by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to establish a Palestinian university in an area classified as C according to the Oslo Accords.

She added, that a senior official in (USAID) confirmed to her the news, and that the agency recently held a closed meeting to discuss this file after Biden's approval, and an informal tour is expected in the coming weeks to choose the land that will be allocated to the university buildings.

She noted that USAID officials presented the idea to Biden during his recent visit to Jerusalem.

As I wrote, USAID programs are supposed to be officially joint Israeli-Palestinian initiatives, but if Palestinians are meant to reap the benefits, why not place them where the Palestinians mostly live?

The MEPPA funding program behind these ideas has two goals: economic development of the Palestinian private sector and "person to person" peacebuilding programs. Building a Palestinian high tech university on Israeli-controlled lands is not either of these - it is a land grab. Even if some of the instructors are Israelis.

I don't know if the USAID officials were taking advantage of Biden's possible confusion, or if Biden understands that this is a direct challenge to Israel's rights.

A convenient list of As-A-Jew groups who love to lie

A group of Israel hating groups that have the word "Jewish" or a Hebrew word in their names issued a statement against Israel's attack on Islamic Jihad.

We, member groups of the International Jewish Collective for Justice in Palestine, are filled with sorrow and outrage at Israel’s unprovoked aerial bombardment of the community of Gaza, Palestine. We condemn it and its dishonest rhetoric.

This is not a dispute between two sides. An occupying military is attacking an occupied, blockaded community. Israel called this a ‘pre-emptive’ assault, although it provided no evidence for its just-in-case bombardment of crowded cities. Israel has no legal right to military aggression to bolster a blockade which is, itself, in violation of law. This has nothing to do with Israel’s self-defense. We saw with our eyes that it is occupied Gaza that needs defense, and has the right to defend itself.

Meaning, they support thousands of rockets to Israeli cities.

In three days, Israel killed 44 Palestinians including 15 children, and wounded 350. Scores of Gazan families are homeless and 650 homes were damaged in just the first 24 hours. No Israelis were killed.

By the time this statement came out, even Palestinians knew quite well that many of the dead came from Islamic Jihad rockets. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights counts 27 dead, because it knows that most of the children killed were killed by the terror groups. And many of those 27 were killed by terrorist rockets as well that PCHR doesn't admit.

Israel chose to attack a besieged community on Tisha B’Av – a day when Jews lament our losses by siege, two thousand years ago. This choice shames the religion that Israel appropriates to launder the image of its settler colonialist project.

Of course, what would an anti-Israel letter from As-A-Jews be without throwing in a mention of something Jewish? Tisha B'Av is about not hating one's fellow Jew, and this letter is the perfect example of baseless hatred against the vast majority of Jews in the world.

Who is appropriating religion? These groups' entire purpose is to weaponize Judaism to attack the Jewish state.

So here's the list of the As-A-Jew signatory organizations who are willing to lie and promote antisemitic terror, in the name of a religion that they use only to attack Jews.

Independent Jewish Voices – Canada

Jewish Voice for Just Peace – Ireland

Boycott from Within (Israeli citizens for BDS)

Jews Say No! – US

Jews against the Occupation – Sydney, Australia

Jewish Voice for Labour – UK

Jewish Voice for Peace – US

Independent Australian Jewish Voices – Australia

Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East – Germany

Sh’ma Koleinu – Alternative Jewish Voices of Aotearoa New Zealand

Tzedek Collective Sydney – Australia

South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP) – South Africa

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Al Jazeera has an article by "senior political analyst" Marwan Bishara that takes psychological projection (where people attribute to others what is in their own minds) to new heights.

Why Israel hates the Palestinians so much

To my mind, Israel’s hatred of the Palestinians is shaped and driven by three basic sentiments: fear, envy and anger.

Israel fears all that is Palestinian steadfastness, Palestinian unity, Palestinian democracy, Palestinian poetry, and all Palestinian national symbols, including language, which it downgraded, and the flag, which it is trying to ban.

Not only is he delusional in thinking that Israel fears Palestinian unity and democracy - he believes that without Israel there would be Palestinian unity and democracy!

Israel fears Palestinian poetry? Israel translates Palestinian literature into Hebrew! Now, how much Hebrew literature us translated into Arabic?

Palestinian national symbols? Who burns the other's flag again?

Israel is also angry, always angry at the Palestinians for refusing to give up or give in, for not going away; far away.

Um, this describes Palestinians perfectly. They still anticipate the day all Israeli Jews flee in terror.

Israel is also envious of Palestinian inner power and outward pride. It is envious of their strong beliefs and readiness to sacrifice, which presumably reminds today’s Israelis of early Zionists.

Zionists, early and contemporary, value life. Sacrifice is sometimes necessary but it is not an inherent value - no Zionists blew themselves up to kill random people eating out. No one envies those for whom life is worthless.

But the most delusional part is this:

Israel is most envious of the Palestinians’ historic and cultural belonging to Palestine; of their attachment to the land, an attachment Zionism has had to manufacture in order to entice Jews into becoming colonial settlers. Israel hates the Palestinians for being so integral to the history, geography and nature of the landscape it claims as its own. Israel has long resorted to theology and mythology to justify its existence, when the Palestinians need no such justification; belonging so effortlessly, so conveniently, so naturally.

Wow. Zionists made up myths to say Jews have a history in the land of Israel. And these myths were so strong that they managed to fool hundreds of thousands of Jews about their own fake history!

Israel has tried to erase or bury all traces of Palestinian existence, even changing the names of streets, neighbourhoods and towns.

Apparently, "Nablus" and "Al Quds" are ancient terms while "Shechem" and "Jerusalem" are brand new.

Israel hates the Palestinians for being the living proof that the foundations of Zionism – a people without a land settling in a land without a people – is mythical at best and violent and colonialist in reality. Israel hates them for impeding the realisation of the Zionist dream over all historical Palestine. And it especially hates those living in Gaza, for turning the dream into a nightmare.

Yes, Hebrew newspapers are filled with articles about how Israelis are really envious of Gaza.

The premise is laughably wrong: Israel doesn't hate the Palestinians.

It is bored with them. It is indifferent to them. They are an irritant. Israel already tried the peace route - and was rejected and given terror instead. Now Israelis just want to manage the issue, since Palestinians clearly do not want to live side by side with Israelis. Israelis to minimize conflict, because actual peace is not possible with this generation of Palestinians.

Palestinians are irrelevant. They are no longer regarded as serious peace partners by the world. It isn't Israel that hates Palestinians, but the converse. And one reason why they hate Israel is that they live in an honor/shame society, and they want to feel important, not marginalized.

Terror and Gaza rockets are puerile attempts to show that Palestinians still matter. Like a toddler with a temper tantrum, they want attention. And they will do anything they can to feel important and relevant. During wars, Palestinian Arabic articles are filled with photos showing Israelis running to bomb shelters, because they are so proud that they made a difference in some Jewish lives. Pathetically, it makes them feel important and proud.

But Palestinians hate Israel for other reasons.

Palestinians hate Israel because it is successful. Because it really is a democracy. Because it cares more about Palestinian lives than Palestinians do. Because it shows what a tiny nation can accomplish. Because the hated dhimmi Jews defeated them in their avowed specialty - war. Because it now has better relationships with much of the Arab world than the Palestinians do.

Fear, envy and anger - yes, that sums it up pretty well.

UPDATE: There is a joint Israeli-Palestinian project to translate Hebrew literature into Arabic. (h/t Irene)

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

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08/09 Links Pt2: A New Iron Curtain Descends on Russia’s Jews; Anti-Israel Exec Departs Ratings Giant Amid Scrutiny; Sieges in the Land of Israel are nothing new; what's changed is how they end

From Ian:

A New Iron Curtain Descends on Russia’s Jews

For two decades, the Russian president has cultivated an image of himself as the philosemite-in-chief. Say what you will about Vladimir Putin, he was supposedly the best Russian leader the Jews ever had. There was a reason for this: As long as you had the Jews in your corner, you couldn’t be a fascist. And being anti-fascist was central to the story that the Soviets, and now the Russians, tell about themselves. (Just ask anyone who’s spent Victory Day in Moscow.) It masked Russia’s own, darker, fascistic impulses—which we are now seeing play out in Ukraine.

But now the charade is up. Putin has revealed himself to be not so different from his predecessors, and the echo of Russian antisemitism is no longer an echo.

In May, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov insisted that Hitler had “Jewish blood.” In June, television anchor Vladimir Solovyev took to Russia’s Channel 1, which is really a Kremlin media organ, to warn of Russian-speaking “traitors” who “have some relation to the Jewish people.” “You sold out our people long ago, when you decided to serve those who are reviving Nazi ideas in Europe,” Solovyev said.

Just a few weeks later, the Jewish Agency was informed of its closure, and late last month, Russia’s leading Jewish intellectual dissidents—Yevgenia Albats, Dmitry Aleshkovsky, and Dmitry Bykov—were declared to be foreign agents.

All of this—the purge of the intellectuals, the state-sanctioned insinuations of Jewish treachery, and now the closing of the Jewish Agency—are in keeping with the old Soviet model. The only unanswered question is how much Russian Jews will suffer.

It is also a reminder, in case one was needed, of why the Jewish state exists in the first place.

It was easy, until not so long ago, to forget. It’s been decades since Jews had to be airlifted to safety en masse, to say nothing of death camps or pogroms or ghettos. It seemed that we were living in a more enlightened era—one in which one could always book a flight and wake up in Tel Aviv. An era in which Israel is a military and technological powerhouse.

It was also easy to forget that, at its core, Israel was and is not simply a Jewish home but a Jewish haven. That the privilege of Jews in safer, more democratic climes—Jews who claim, like Soviet-Jewish apologists once did, that Israel doesn’t have anything to do with their lives, that the Jewish state doesn’t represent their values—is a privilege Russian Jews would be lucky to enjoy.

I cannot believe we have to have this conversation about the Holocaust and antisemitism again.

Seriously, this conversation again. The Holocaust is not a political tool for you to score political points. Last October, I wrote a piece published in the Reno Gazette-Journal saying that mask and vaccine mandates were not like the Holocaust. In January, I again wrote about antisemitism in The Nevada Independent condemning the lack of support for the Jewish community after the Colleyville hostage crisis.

The Nevada Independent’s CEO, Jon Ralston, tweeted this week that the Nevada State Democratic Party hired Shaun Navarro as their new “coalitions coordinator.” Ralston pointed out that Navarro had previously used the term “Nazi” to attack Republicans and gubernatorial nominee Joe Lombardo. Back in March, Navarro accosted Lombardo and asked him where his “Nazi uniform” was while berating him with abusive language.

Prominent Nevada Democrats — U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, Gov. Steve Sisolak (Lombardo’s November opponent) and Assemblymember Steve Yeager — issued statements condemning Navarro’s verbal abuse of Lombardo.

Even further evidence of Navarro’s antisemitism problem is his comment on a post by Sisolak on Facebook, where the governor committed to standing against antisemitism. Navarro responded about genocide against Palestinians, making an implication that Jews are committing genocide instead of recognizing that you can advocate for the Palestinians without disparaging the Jewish community. Again, this is antisemitism as stated by the State Department, nearly all Holocaust education organizations, and Holocaust museums and memorials.

The use of Nazism to appropriate the Holocaust is dangerous and degrades the atrocities the Nazis committed. If you want to oppose Lombardo based on his politics, that’s fine. And honestly, I’m sure Lombardo is okay with your opposition.

Unfortunately, the state party has decided to ignore the Jewish community by allowing its staff to attack Jews for defending themselves from antisemitism. Navarro implied that Jews who condemn the language used by Congressmembers Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar are racist and misogynistic.

David Singer: Wennesland in La-La Land ignoring Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine

It seems inconceivable that [Tor] Wennesland was then unaware of this Saudi plan. Why didn’t he inform the Security Council of its existence and direct his Deputy Special Coordinator Lynn Hastings to do so one month later?

Wennesland simply continued to trot out the old shibboleths - part of the UN’s patter since 1994: - “It is crucial that all parties take immediate steps to lower tensions and reverse negative trends that undermine prospects for a peaceful two-State resolution of the conflict, with a contiguous, independent, viable and sovereign Palestinian State.” - “Settlements constitute a flagrant violation of United Nations resolutions and international law. They undermine the prospect of achieving a two-State solution by systematically eroding the possibility of establishing a contiguous, independent, viable and sovereign Palestinian State.”

Why not add:
“I bring to your attention a new two-state solution emanating from Saudi Arabia on 8 June that should be considered by the Security Council to replace the two-state solution unsuccessfully pursued by the Security Council for the last 29 years.” The Saudi plan would be finalised in direct negotiations between Israel and Jordan that would delineate the international border between The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine and Israel and resolve Israel’s security concerns.

Suffering by both Jews and Arabs meticulously recorded at length by Wennesland in his monthly reports and escalating right now would end – as would the conflict and any further need for UNSCO.

Wennesland is in la-la land and needs to return to the real world.

From Funker530:

An automated machine gun position manned entirely by female members of the Israeli Defense Force conducts fires against a known PIJ outpost after a Merkava tank failed to make a direct hit.

So, fun fact. All of these automated machine gun positions are manned by female members of the Israeli Defense Force. The program is called Roa Yora, which when translated means "See, Shoot," but in a feminine connotation. It was started as a way to offer female members of the Israeli Defense Force a front-line combat unit job that would not force other elite combat units to lower their standards to allow women into combat roles.

This video was released by the Israeli Defense Force today, the shots you're seeing in the video were recorded after a Merkava tank failed to make a direct hit on the tower, causing the PIJ member to abandon his post. Unfortunately for the PIJ fighter, he fled the post directly into the line of sight of an IDF Roa Yora position and found out why the word shoot is included after the word see.

It is unclear if this happened during Breaking Dawn. If so, there are some terrorists who have not yet been counted.

(h/t Daniel)

UPDATE: It is probably Mohammed Ahmed Nasrallah.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!