Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, August 14, 2022

Arab media more honest about Islamic Jihad killing Gaza civilians than Western media and "human rights" groups

Amira Hass in Haaretz published a detailed account of the Gazans who died in Operation Breaking Dawn and the circumstances of each death. I disagree with several of her conclusions, and she doesn't identify all of their affiliations with terror groups, but on the whole it is a reasonably fair article that squarely blames Islamic Jihad for the deaths of 19 civilians including 12 children, far more than were killed in Israeli attacks that were targeting terrorists and military targets.

Despite Palestinian media attributing all deaths to Israeli attacks, Gazans know well that a very high number of victims stemmed from failed rocket launches by Islamic Jihad.

The high number of fatalities from so-called internal fire has embittered Palestinians, some Gazans told Haaretz.

Amira Hass is a reliably anti-Israel reporter for Haaretz, often quoted by anti-Zionist activists and faux "human rights" professionals.

Which is why this article is being nearly universally ignored by the anti-Israel crowd who have insisted that every dead child was "murdered" by Israel - and fundraised based on that lie.

The only exception I could find was James Zogby, prominent Arab American and pollster, who took advantage of the fact that the Haaretz article is only visible to subscribers - so he misrepresented the article as saying that all the civilians were "murdered " by Israel.

Mainstream media journalists, who follow Haaretz religiously, have also ignored this story that damns Islamic Jihad for its responsibility for the bulk of the civilians killed. At best they have maintained a "he said, she said" narrative where Israel tells the truth and the Palestinians deny it.

It is essentially a conspiracy of silence to make sure that the world doesn't learn the truth, outside of the one failed rocket attack Israel documented in Jabalia.

But Arabic-language media has no such qualms.

Arabic sites, including the influential UK-based Al Quds, have translated and published the Haaretz article. It was also translated in the popular NABD news aggregator. The article is even in one Palestinian media outlet that regularly translates Hebrew articles into Arabic, as well as in "Palestine Forum."

The Arab world, including Palestinians, is being more honest about Islamic Jihad's culpability in the deaths of children than the Western mainstream media has been.

The worst of all in attempting to hide these deaths are the very "human rights groups" whose job is to protect these civilians. They know the truth very well but have done everything they can to hide it.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

The anti-Israel Left makes up new laws, and ignores international law, when it comes to Israel

+972 Magazine has an article about how awful and immoral the IDF is.

The Israeli news site Ynet quoted army officials boasting that the ratio between “non-combatants” and combatants killed was “the best of all the operations.” And yet, Israel admits that it killed at least 11 people who had nothing to do with militant activities, including a five-year-old girl.

Yes, a five year old girl who was near a top Islamic Jihad target was killed. She was not the target. If there was a way to attack the target without killing the girl, the IDF would have. (Indeed, during Breaking Dawn, Israel did abort attacks on legitimate targets when civilians were around - as long as they could wait and attack the same target later without the civilians.) Since it couldn't attack the legitimate target without killing the girl, she was unfortunately killed as well.

These are the laws of armed conflict. The presence of civilians do not make a military target immune from attack. The fact that there was a five year old girl near the Islamic Jihad commander does not, under any interpretation of international law, mean that Israel must not attack the commander.

The laws of armed conflict are designed to protect civilians without impeding military efficiency in any way. Those words come from the International Committee of the Red Cross, no tme.

And it has to be that way, because otherwise terrorist groups can just ensure that they are well embedded with civilians and can then act with impunity.

That appears to be what +972 wants:

Dana — who asked to use a pseudonym, like all the former soldiers interviewed for this article — is a kindergarten teacher who lives in a wood-furnished apartment full of philosophy books in central Tel Aviv. During her military service, she took part in an assassination operation in which a five-year-old boy was killed in Gaza.

“When I served in the Gaza Division, we were following someone from Hamas, because [the army] knew he was hiding rockets,” she said. “They made a decision to eliminate him.”

Dana served as a signal traffic analysis officer in the operations room, where her job was to confirm that the missile had hit the right person. “We sent out a UAV to follow the man to kill him,” she said, “but we saw that he was with his son. A boy who was five or six years old, I think.

“....They killed the Hamas military operative, and the little boy who was next to him.”

Unless they had a way that they could kill the Hamas operative without killing the boy, this is not only a legal but also a moral decision, albeit tragic. It is a decision any army would make.

But to some, Israel must be held to much higher standards that every other nation. A single civilian killed among a hundred terrorists makes the entire operation immoral, according to them.

And endangering Israeli civilians as a result because of the resultant attacks that would or could happen by not attacking the terrorists? That is not part of the anti-Israel crowd's moral calculus.

That's not the only way this article demands Israel go beyond international law:

The army also admitted that it shoots unarmed people, according to a female officer who gave an interview to Ynet after the latest onslaught. “The [PIJ] operative came down from the position as he was unarmed, and I opened fire,” she said. “When he fell, I fired more.”

Legal combatants are any member of the armed forces (outside medical and religious personnel.) These include those who aid the fighting, not only those with literal weapons. A lookout, a messenger between combat forces, a radio operator helping aim mortars - all are considered combatants under international law, even when unarmed.

It is easy for Israel-hating propagandists to take an incident of collateral damage and frame it as a war crime. It doesn't make it true. From all indications, this operation was as moral as possible in warfare.

That is not good enough for inveterate inciters against Israel.

(The article mentions some other issues that are morally problematic if true. But they aren't publishing them to force the IDF to improve its policies - they are publishing them to incite more hatred against Israel.)

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!

08/13 Links: Salman Rushdie on a ventilator, likely to lose an eye after on-stage attack; Senior UN official loses her post after tweet condemning PIJ rocket fire at Israel

From Ian:

Salman Rushdie on a ventilator, likely to lose an eye after on-stage attack

Author Salman Rushdie is likely to lose one of his eyes and is currently on a ventilator after he was attacked on stage at a literary event in upstate New York on Friday, a report said.

“The news is not good,” the 75-year-old writer’s agent, Andrew Wylie, told The New York Times.

“Salman will likely lose one eye; the nerves in his arm were severed; and his liver was stabbed and damaged,” said Wylie.

Rushdie, who is still unable to speak, was attacked by a lone man while speaking at an event at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, NY, about 55 miles south of Buffalo.

He was scheduled to speak about the United States as a place for exiled authors “as a home for freedom of expression,” according to the institute. After the stabbing, he was transported by helicopter to a hospital in Erie, Pennsylvania, where he underwent surgery.

A witness who was in the audience told The Post that Rushdie tried to run off the stage, and the two men scuffled before audience members rushed onstage to subdue the attacker.

Approximately 2,500 people were in the audience at the time.

Rushdie’s alleged attacker, 24-year-old Hadi Matar, of Fairview, New Jersey, was arrested at the scene by a state trooper who was assigned to the lecture.

Douglas Murray: The best response to Salman Rushdie’s stabbing

It must be said that Rushdie has dealt with all this and more heroically. He does not complain about his lot. He does not make himself into a victim. Instead he has displayed the simple qualities of a hero. In a recent series of Curb Your Enthusiasm he even joked about it. Most impressive, perhaps, was that his well of creativity has never been dimmed. From Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990) right up to his forthcoming Victory City the assaults of the illiterate on him and his work never managed to stop that work.

The attack onstage in New York today is still a subject of confusion. Initial reports said the author had walked off stage with assistance. Now it appears that his assailant stabbed him in the neck. Rushdie has been helicoptered to hospital and is currently be fighting for his life.

In his 2012 memoir – Joseph Anton – Rushdie wrote about the fatwa years. The book is a detailed chronicle of all the people who let him down: the MPs who promised support and then whipped up mobs; the political figures of left and right who said that while the Ayatollah may have caused an offence so had the novelist; the authorities who allowed Muslims in Bradford and others on television to call for a British subject´s murder with impunity.

But it is also a chronicle of the people who supported him, the friends who stood by him and the public figures who stood up for him. One of them was the American writer Susan Sontag, who helped organise a public reading of Rushdie´s work in New York. As Sontag said, the moment called for some basic 'civic courage'. It is striking how much of that civic courage has evaporated in recent years. Today no one would be able to write – much less get published – a novel like The Satanic Verses. Perhaps nobody has tried. From novels to cartoons a de facto Islamic blasphemy law settled across the West in the wake of the Rushdie affair. The attack today will doubtless exacerbate that.

So apart from willing, wishing or praying for Rushdie´s recovery, the only other thing that can be done now is to display that civic courage that Sontag called for three decades ago. The Satanic Verses is a complex but brilliant novel. It includes an hilarious and devastating reimagining of the origins of the Quran. I hope that people will read it, and read from it, more than ever. Because what happened in New York today cannot be allowed to win. The illiterate cannot be allowed to dictate the rules of literature. The enemies of free expression cannot be allowed to quash it. The attacker should get exactly the opposite of the response he will have hoped for. Not just hopefully a failure to silence Rushdie, but a failure to limit what the rest of us are allowed to think, read, hear and say.

JPost Editorial: Iran needs to be shown that it cannot win through aggression

On Friday, Salman Rushdie, the Indian-born novelist who spent years in hiding after Iran urged Muslims to kill him because of his writing, was stabbed in the neck and torso at a lecture in New York State. He was airlifted to a hospital, was placed on a ventilator and was said to be in serious condition.

Stunned attendees helped wrest the man from Rushdie, who had fallen to the floor. A New York State Police trooper providing security at the event arrested the attacker. Police identified the suspect as Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old man from Fairview, New Jersey, who bought a pass to the event.

Matar reportedly was caught carrying a fake driver’s license with the name Hassan Mughniyah. The first name is the same as Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, and the last name is the same as Imad Mughniyah, the Hezbollah military commander killed in a CIA-Mossad operation in 2008.

The attempt on Rushdie’s life was made just days after the United States Justice Department announced that it was indicting a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps for attempting to hire hit men to murder former national security advisor John Bolton in an apparent retaliation attempt for the January 2020 assassination of IRGC Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani.

Shahram Poursafi, aka Mehdi Rezayi, a resident of Tehran, attempted to pay individuals in the US $300,000 to murder Bolton in Washington or Maryland on behalf of the Quds Force, according to court documents.

“The Justice Department has the solemn duty to defend our citizens from hostile governments who seek to hurt or kill them,” said Assistant Attorney-General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. “This is not the first time we have uncovered Iranian plots to exact revenge against individuals on US soil – and we will work tirelessly to expose and disrupt every one of these efforts.”

“Iran has a history of plotting to assassinate individuals in the US it deems a threat, but the US government has a longer history of holding accountable those who threaten the safety of our citizens,” said Executive Assistant Director Larissa L. Knapp of the FBI’s National Security Branch.

Israel says Rushdie stabbing ‘an attack on our values,’ evidence of Iran’s brutality

Prime Minister Yair Lapid on Saturday night condemned the attempted murder of British-Indian author Salman Rushdie the previous day in the United States as an attack on freedom and the consequence of years of incitement by the Iranian regime.

“The attack on Salman Rushdie is an attack on our freedoms and values. It is the result of decades of incitement led by the extremist regime in Tehran,” Lapid tweeted Saturday night.

“On behalf of the people of Israel, we wish him a full and speedy recovery.”

Deputy Foreign Minister Idan Roll also denounced the Iranian regime following the attack on Rushdie during a speaking event in the town of Chautauqua in New York state.

“Yesterday’s shocking attack on Salman Rushdie is further evidence of the brutality & extremism of the Iranian regime, which has gone after and persecuted freethinkers everywhere for decades,” said Roll.

“Iran is a threat to the free world,” he continued.

08/12 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: The closing of the university mind; How six US and UK media moguls aided the nascent Nazi regime; The Sanctification of George Soros

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The closing of the university mind

It takes a brave academic to call out what’s going on. One such is Matthew Goodwin, professor of politics at Kent university. On his Substack blog today, he produces startling evidence to illustrate the extent of the problem. He writes:
Since the 1960s, the ratio of left-wing to right-wing academics has jumped from three to one to eight to one today…[Other studies] similarly find that fewer than 20% of academics today vote for right-leaning parties while 75% vote for Labour, the Liberal Democrats, or the Greens. Last year, in my own work, I found that 76% of my colleagues in the world’s most elite institutions identify on the left while 21% of that group identify as ‘far left’. Just 11% put themselves on the right. And in my own area of political science, a recent study at Harvard found that 72% lean to the left with 14% describing themselves as far left. In America, where this ideological bias is especially pronounced, it is simply no longer unusual to find some departments with not a single registered Republican. Is this healthy for our students? Is this conducive to developing well-rounded, critical thinkers?…

One study finds a third of staff would avoid hiring a known Brexit voter while many openly say they would feel uncomfortable mingling with a colleague who holds gender-critical views. Between one third and one half of left-leaning scholars would consciously mark a bid for a research grant lower if it adopted a right-wing perspective, which really matters because the ability of academics to generate funding has a major impact on their career trajectory. My own survey of academics in the world’s most elite universities similarly found that while two-thirds feel positively about left-wing voters, only one in ten feel the same way about right-wing voters…

Increasingly, in Britain and America, large numbers of academics, around six in ten, support requiring job and research grant applicants to submit ‘diversity statements’ before a decision is made. You don’t have to oppose or question diversity to find the use of these statements deeply problematic. Many influential voices consider them ‘litmus tests’ which are designed to weed out applicants who do not subscribe to the dominant orthodoxy…

One study finds less than half of left-leaning academics think academic freedom should always be put first, even if it violates social justice ideology; another finds that about one-quarter of academics would support some kind of campaign to oust a dissenting academic from their job. Recently, this has been symbolised by prominent cases of academics or honorary academics being harassed, investigated or experiencing negative consequences as a direct result of their beliefs or counter-cultural research, such as Kathleen Stock, Jo Phoenix, Tony Sewell, Selina Todd, Rosa Freedman, Michele Moore, among others. These are not exactly right-wing culture warriors.

This hijack of education has been building up for decades. Back in the sixties and seventies, a mindset became the progressive orthodoxy that the west was fundamentally corrupt — colonialist, imperialist, exploitative, racist and dominated by the “patriarchy” — ie, white heterosexual western men were to blame for all the ills of the world. Western society therefore had to be reconfigured, and the way to achieve this was by the “long march through the institutions” — of which the universities were key — to turn western values inside out.

This has now been achieved to the letter.

The corruption of the universities is at the core of most of our society’s ills. Knowledge and rationality have been replaced by ideological propaganda. Instead of teaching young people how to think, the universities have been instructing them what to think. The identity politics which they have enforced upon so many and turned into unchallengeable dogma has meant that increasingly people have been employed or promoted not on the basis of their intellectual achievement (which has been becoming progressively devalued) but their skin colour or sexual identity. All of which helps explain why, across the board in institutions, professions, businesses, politics and the civil service, so many are so incompetent, know so little and can’t even think straight.

The universities, supposedly the crucible of knowledge, rational thought and the free exchange of ideas, are now responsible instead for the closing of the national mind.

Bad news for the Jews: How six US and UK media moguls aided the nascent Nazi regime

In ‘The Newspaper Axis,’ historian Kathryn S. Olmsted details how prior to WWII, press barons including William Randolph Hearst worked to sway the public toward Hitler’s line

In January 1934, Lord Harold Rothermere, the owner of Britain’s Daily Mail, filed a story from Munich praising Adolf Hitler. The article was published when Jews were being ousted from public life in Germany and the Nazi party had already established a large network of concentration camps across the country.

Rothermere assured his readers that stories of these atrocities were wildly exaggerated. The restaurants and hotels in Munich were bustling with German Jews during the festive season, and none “showed [any] symptoms of insecurity or suffering,” the British newspaper proprietor wrote. This was typical of the pro-Nazi line Britain’s Daily Mail continued to promote that year.

The Nazis needed to control the “alien elements and Israelites of international attachments who were insinuating themselves into the German state,” as Rothermere put it in another article he personally penned in July 1934. The Daily Mail also cheered on the British Union of Fascists — a party led by Sir Oswald Mosley in Britain that was notorious for its support of Hitler and for its anti-Semitic propaganda. “Hurrah for the Blackshirts,” read one infamous Daily Mail headline from January 1934.

California-based historian Kathryn S. Olmsted’s new book, “The Newspaper Axis: Six Press Barons Who Enabled Hitler,” profiles Rothermere and five other powerful media moguls in the Anglophile world on both sides of the Atlantic between 1933 and 1945, all of whom took a pro-Nazi editorial line.

“Lord Rothermere was a pro-fascist who had a deep sympathy for Adolf Hitler,” Olmsted tells The Times of Israel from her office at the University of California, Davis, where she chairs the history department.

As she writes in the introduction to her new book, “For years, Rothermere and his fellow press barons in both Britain and the United States pressured their nations’ leaders to ignore the menace of fascism.”

Olmsted dedicates a chapter to exploring how Britain’s Daily Mail, led by Rothermere, championed Hitler’s Germany throughout the mid- to late-1930s. The paper described Germany under Hitler “as one of the best-governed nations in Europe” and continued to boost Hitler’s popularity, even as the Nazis used terrorist tactics against their political enemies.

The Sanctification of George Soros

All well and good. America is a free country, and Soros has every right to spend his vast fortune however he wants within the boundaries of the law, as well as to justify that spending in the public square. The same applies to those of us inhabiting lower tax brackets, who have no less a right to criticize Soros for how he’s trying to influence American public life—which, to repeat, he is very much, and by his own admission, trying to do. That extremely rich people with grand ideological designs should not be immune to criticism—indeed, that they should be subject to even more of it than the rest of us—is a pretty widely accepted view in America, especially on the political left, where the maxim “behind every great fortune lies a great crime” has long been a guiding principle. Indeed, one might go so far as to say that this lack of deference to the wealthy and the titled is one of our major distinguishing national characteristics.

Or used to be. A week after Soros published his piece in the Journal under his own name, proudly and defiantly justifying his expenditure of vast sums aimed at sparking a revolution in the administration of municipal criminal justice, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio introduced an amendment to the $750 billion climate and tax bill aimed at stymying this agenda by providing funds for local law enforcement to keep violent criminals behind bars. The measure had no chance of passing, and when the Democrat-led Senate predictably rejected it, Rubio took to Twitter. “The democrats just blocked my effort to try & force Soros backed prosecutors to put dangerous criminals in jail,” he tweeted in complaint.

What followed was the sort of Pavlovian response one has come to expect from progressive politicians, activists, journalists, and other social media impact influencers whenever the name of their benefactor is invoked.

Soros, in case you couldn’t tell, happens to be Jewish, a fact that has absolutely nothing to do with his ideas about criminal justice reform, or with Rubio’s opposition to them. Yet it was this utterly irrelevant detail of Soros’ birth that the progressive hive mind seized upon, spurring its minions to attack an unsubstantiated presumption about Rubio’s motives to the exclusion of his substantive arguments. The rebuke from American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten was particularly rich in light of her response to parents upset about their children being denied in-person schooling during the pandemic. “American Jews,” she said in April 2021, “are now part of the ownership class.”

Put aside the merits of the criminal justice policies Soros is trying to advance with his humongous largesse. Also put aside the fact that, while he was alive, the right-wing Jewish casino magnate Sheldon Adelson was routinely denounced by progressives in terms that, by their own lights, are no less “antisemitic” than what they accuse Rubio of fomenting. The question before us today is whether, in the course of criticizing activities that the country’s biggest progressive donor has undertaken “transparently” (his word), it is possible to even utter his name without being accused of bigotry.

The argument that the mere mention of the name “Soros” is tantamount to antisemitism, which is effectively the position of the progressive political, media, and activist elite, is made entirely in bad faith. Stating the plain and observable fact that some prosecutors are “Soros-backed” is no more of an attack on Jews than the broadcaster Soledad O’Brien’s warning to “full-time Florida residents,” an antisemitic dog whistle about God’s waiting room. If the mind of a Soros supporter, upon hearing his name, races immediately to an image of a “Jew,” and one who serves as a stand-in for “the Jews,” it’s probably not the motives of the critic that need questioning. The impulse to connect “Soros” with Judaism and Jewishness is not unlike the bigotry that associates the term “monkeypox” with Black people. It’s a form of essentialism that expects us to agree with the antisemites that “being Jewish” is somehow relevant to what Americans like Soros (or right-wing Jewish billionaires, for that matter) do with their time and money.

Those engaging in this rhetorical tactic are certainly not pursuing the “thoughtful discussion” that Soros says we “desperately need,” but rather the “demagoguery and divisive partisan attacks” he denounces. Worse, they’re minimizing the threat posed by actual antisemitism by cheapening the accusation.

This is very, very typical and mainstream Palestinian fantasy of history and the Israeli Jewish mindset. From Sawalief (Jordan):

Giving from those who do not own to those who do not deserve the Balfour Promise , the British Foreign Minister in 1917 AD sought to rid Britain of the evil, malice and deceit of the Jews by establishing a home for them away from Europe in Palestine if Britain would win the First World War on the Ottoman Empire.

When the war ended , Britain occupied Palestine and colonized it, and began deporting Jews to it from every country until they multiplied in it.

Britain armed them, so they formed armed terrorist gangs such as the Haganah, the Palmach, and the Irgun to frighten and terrorize the defenseless Palestinians of the land.

Gradually and with the malicious British methods that met with the evil Jewish methods, Britain succeeded in establishing a state for the Jews in 1948 on a part of the land of Palestine, including the Palestinian coastal plain, by transforming the Haganah gang and its armed terrorist sisters into a state they called “Israel”.

After that, Britain and its aides continued to invite Jews and foundlings from various care homes in Europe to immigrate to Palestine. Then, with theatrical wars, the emerging Jewish state was able to control all parts of Palestine after it killed those who killed and displaced those who were displaced from the Palestinian people.

Since then and until today, the invading Jews live in a state of constant war in which terror possesses them day and night, as each one of them expects to be killed tomorrow morning, either by being crushed, trampled, or stabbed, or by a heart attack for fear and panic or by stampede when they flee to the shelters in which they spend half their lives.

This is because those of the Palestinian people who remained in their land and homeland, Palestine, swear by God, the Most High, the Great, that the invaders will not be happy to live in their country, and they will not feel safe no matter how long it takes.

The settlers who fled to the shelters are nothing but evidence of the success of this great Palestinian section, which is now being passed down to the new generations.

Therefore, we advise Britain to search again for another safer homeland for her Jews.

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!

In 1922, a Jew who graduated from harvard in 1900 wrote a letter to the president of the university Lawrence Lowell about newspaper reports that Harvard was limiting the number of Jews who would be accepted at the university.

Lowell's response was that limiting the number of Jews at universities was good for Jews.

The logic is convoluted and recognized at the time as being absurd, but this is how antisemites who don't consider themselves antisemites think.

The exchange of letters was published in the New York Times and various Jewish publications in June of that year. Here is Lowell's initial reply:

Dear Mr. Benesch: There is no need of cautioning you not to believe all that you see in the newspapers. As a colleague said to me yesterday, there is perhaps no body of men in the United States, mostly Gentiles, with so little anti-Semitic feeling as the instructing staff of Harvard University. But the problem that confronts this country and Its educational institutions is a difficult one, and one about which I should very much like to talk to you. It is one that involves the best interests both of the college and of the Jews, for I should feel very badly to think that these did not coincide.

There is most unfortunately, a rapidly growing anti-Semitic feeling in this country, causing—and no doubt in part caused by—a strong race feeling on the part of the Jews themselves. In many cities of the country Gentile Clubs are excluding Jews altogether, who are forming separate clubs of their own. Private schools are excluding Jews, I believe, and so, we know, are hotels. All this seems to me fraught with very great evils for the Jews, and very great perils for the community.

The question did not originate here, but has been brought over from Europe—especially from those countries where it has existed for centuries. The question for those of us who deplore such a state of things is how it can be combated, and especially for those of us who are connected with colleges, how it can be combated there —how we can cause the Jews to feel and be regarded as an integral part of the student body. The anti-Semitic feeling among the students is increasing, and it grows in proportion to the increase in the number of Jews.

If their number should become 40 per cent of the student body, the race feeling would become intense. When, on the other hand. the number of Jews was small, the race antagonism was small also. Any such race feeling among the students tends to prevent the personal intimacies on which we must rely to soften anti-Semitic feeling.

If every college in the country would take a limited proportion of Jews, I suspect we should go a long way toward eliminating race feeling among the students, and, as these students passed out into the world, eliminating it in the community.

This question is with us. We cannot solve it by forgetting or ignoring it. If we do nothing about the matter the prejudice is likely to increase. Some colleges appear to have met the question by indirect method, which we do not want to adopt. It cannot be solved except by co-operation between the college authorities and the Jews themselves. Would not the Jews be willing to help us in finding the steps best adapted for preventing the growth of race feeling among our students, and hence in the world?

The first thing to recognize is that there is a problem—a new problem, which we have never had to face before, but which has come over with the immigration from the Old World. After the nature of that problem is fairly understood, the next question is how to solve it in the interest of the Jews, as well as of every one else.

Very truly yours,
A. LAWRENCE LOWELL.

Lowell is saying that hating Jews is a natural part of being human. The more Jews, the more hate. If only there would be fewer Jews, then antisemitism can be limited.

In fact, as Mr. Benesch pointed out in his response, if there were no Jews at all, then that would solve the problem, right?

The last paragraph says it all. Too many Jews on campus is the problem, and Harvard was looking for a solution - and it found one: discriminate against them.

People use similar convoluted logic to justify bigotry today, and they are just as certain that there is no prejudiced bone in their bodies. And in a hundred years, we will marvel at how today's intelligent people accepted today's version of antisemitism as normal.

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!

08/12 Links Pt1: Middle East peace will come despite US policy; Salman Rushdie Attacked on Stage at Event in New York; A revived deal will not stop Iran from becoming nuclear

From Ian:

Mark Regev: Middle East peace will come despite US policy

PRESIDENT Barack Obama entered office in 2009 with aspirations to aggressively move forward on the Israeli-Palestinian track. But despite the efforts of his two secretaries of state, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, no breakthrough was achieved. On the contrary, Obama left the White House after eight years with the negotiations collapsed and any expectation for an early resumption seemingly illusory.

Notwithstanding this failure, Obama inadvertently made an immeasurable contribution to peace. His responses to the Arab Spring, to the Syrian civil war, and to nuclear diplomacy with Iran, all negatively impacted the confidence of America’s traditional Arab allies in the US commitment to them.

Moreover, the repeated declarations of a “pivot to Asia” implied the de-prioritization of the Middle East – this when pro-Western Arab states had for decades based their national security on American protection. Feeling less certain of Washington’s support in a crisis, Arab states sought new security partners – the Jewish state becoming the unintended beneficiary.

After his predecessor unwittingly laid the foundations, president Donald Trump embraced the opportunity. His active engagement produced the 2020 Abraham Accords with the UAE, Bahrain and Sudan, and the normalization of ties with Morocco. This while Trump’s much-hyped plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace remained stillborn, having been adamantly rejected by Ramallah.

Last month, when Biden left the region for home, it remained unclear as to whether the current US president will be making any meaningful contribution to Middle East peace – either by design or by folly.

MEMRI: Hamas Member: We Should Consider A Three- To Five-Year 'Hudna' (Truce) Between Israel And The Resistance In Gaza

In an article published August 10, 2022 in the Palestinian Al-Quds daily, Hamas member Ahmad Yousuf, a former advisor to Hamas political bureau head Isma'il Haniyeh, called for an internationally sponsored three- to five-year hudna (truce) between Israel and the Gaza resistance factions.[1]

Yousuf stated that because Gaza is currently weak and besieged, the Palestinian resistance should recognize its diplomatic failures in the Arab and international arena and consider the option of a hudna instead of the recurring ceasefires after conflicts in which Israel always has the upper hand.

Such a hudna, he wrote, would give the Palestinians a chance to catch their breath, and at the same time allow the resistance to reexamine its military and diplomatic options and come up with a policy that is acceptable to the general Palestinian public. He also suggested that the one-state option be examined, which he said could give the moral high ground to the Palestinian people's struggle and gain Western support for their cause.

Defining the recent Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)-Israel conflict as a political stratagem hatched by Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid and Defense Minister Benny Ganz as part of their election campaign, he said that the PIJ had been dragged into a battle in which Israel set the rules of the clash and inflicted a decisive blow on the PIJ.

Below are excerpts from Yousuf's article.
"There is nothing to prevent Israelis from firing on Palestinians whenever and however they wish. It is already customary, during election campaign seasons [in Israel], to provoke the Palestinians in order to drag them into a military conflict. [These conflicts are] political investments by those in Israel's ruling circles and decision-making [centers]. Furthermore, the [candidates'] rivalry in spouting extreme slogans and [making] security threats eventually reaches the battlefield, and serves as a standard for a particular candidate's ability to maintain security – an issue that is generally a decisive factor [in the choice] between the most important contenders on the right and the extreme right for the governmental and political leadership in Israel...

"If we look at the most recent military conflict, between the Israeli occupation army and the Islamic Jihad movement [PIJ] in the Gaza Strip – in an arena set up by [Yair] Lapid and [Benny] Ganz – we clearly see that the [pre-conflict] tension emanated from [Israel's] fraud and provocation against the PIJ through its arrest and direct humiliation of [West Bank PIJ official] Sheikh Bassam Al-Saadi. This was a stratagem hatched by those who lust after the premiership in the November elections – that is, Yair [Lapid] and [Benny] Ganz...

"We cannot ignore the fact that Israel landed a painful blow against the PIJ and [its military wing] the Al-Quds Brigades by striking the movement's two most important military figures in the Gaza Strip – Tayseer Al-Jabari and Khaled Mansour – and other officials... This was in addition to the destruction of many military targets – that is, PIJ outposts and property.

"Iran Pushing the Violence from Gaza, Israeli Defense Minister Warns"

Iran is driving the escalation of violence against Israel from the Gaza Strip, Defense Minister Benny Gantz warned, saying that the Islamic Jihad terror organization “has an open tab in Iran.”

Gantz hosted his Cypriot counterpart Minister of Defense Charalambos Petrides on Thursday in Tel Aviv and the two discussed “common challenges and reflected on the implications” of the IDF’s Operation Breaking Dawn against the Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip over the weekend.

During a press conference held together with Petrides, Gantz said that “while the world watched ‘another escalation between Israel and Gaza,’ I stopped to emphasize: the Iranian Ayatollahs are involved in this front. Islamic Jihad in Gaza is a violent Iranian proxy. Their leadership visits Iran and meets Iranian leaders frequently.”

Islamic Jihad head Ziyad al-Nakhalah was in Tehran over the weekend, as the members of his terror organization launched about 1,100 rockets into Israeli cities and towns, including toward Tel Aviv and the Jerusalem area, over the course of 55 hours.

The Islamic Jihad “has an open tab in Iran. Iran provides Islamic Jihad in Gaza with tens of millions of dollars per year. Iran, via the IRGC [Revolutionary Guards], transfers know-how and attempts to smuggle materials to Gaza, which are then used to build weapons aimed at civilians,” Gantz underscored.

The Islamic Jihad enjoys extensive material backing from Iran in their arming efforts, which has provided millions of dollars in funding, as well as training and weapons. Israeli intelligence sources are quoted as saying that Islamic Jihad has an annual budget of $70 million, most of which is provided by Iran in payments made via money changers and supposed welfare organizations.

After the fighting, Gazans go right back to the beach

Al Resalah's headline is, "Palestinians enjoying their time on the seashore of Gaza City after life returned to normal and the Israeli aggression stopped."

Nearly all of Gaza was untouched by Israeli weapons, and the Gazans know it, even though the Israel haters (in Western and Arab media) try to pretend that there was massive devastation and permanent psychological damage.

I had seen lots of photos of horses on Gaza beaches, but never a camel before now.

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!

Updated database of Gazans killed in Operation Breaking Dawn - and who killed them

Here is my latest database of those killed in Gaza. I will keep this one updated. Some of the circumstances are still unclear but this is the best information I have. I'm belatedly adding some links to show where I get my information from.

1- Imad Abd al-Rahim Shallah, 50 Gaza.	With PIJ
2- Youssef Salman Qaddoum 24 Gaza.	PIJ
3- Tayseer Mahmoud Al-Jabari, 50 Gaza City.	PIJ
4- Salama Muharib Abed 41 Gaza.	PIJ
5- Alaa Abdullah Qaddoum, 5 Gaza City.	With PIJ
6- Donyana Adnan Attia Al-Amour 22 Gaza.	Likely tank fire ("artillery shell"), see below
7- Mohamed Ahmed Abdel-Fattah Al-Madhoun, 26 Al-Nada Towers.	PIJ
8- Fadl Mustafa Zorob 30 Khan Younis.	PIJ
9- Muhammad Hassan Al-Bayouk, 35, Khan Younis.	PIJ
10- Ahmed Mazen Azzam, 25 Gaza Strip.	PIJ
11- Tamim Ghassan Abdullah Hijazi, 23 Al-Zana.	PIJ
12- Osama Abdul Rahman Al-Suri, 27, Bani Suhaila.	PIJ
13- Hassan Mohamed Mansour, 26, Jabalia.	PIJ/DFLP
14- Naama Muhammad Abu Qaida 62 Jabalia.	Unclear, IDF may have targeted a car nearby
15- Nour El-Din Ali Al-Zubaidi 19 Jabalia	Likely IDF (Qassam Brigades)
16- Hazem Muhammad Salem 12 Jabalia.	Jabalia rocket
17- Ahmad Muhammad Al-Nayrab 13 Jabalia.	Jabalia rocket
18- Moamen Muhammad Al-Nairab 4 Jabalia.	Jabalia rocket
19 - Khalil Iyad Abu Hamadeh, 19, Jabalia.	Jabalia rocket
20- Ahmed Walid Al-Fram, 18 Jabalia.	Jabalia rocket
21- Misbah al-Khatib 50 Jabalia agreed.	Jabalia rocket
22- Muhammad Muhammad Ibrahim Zaqout 19 Jabalia.	Jabalia rocket
23- Ziad Ahmed Al Mudallal, 36 Rafah.	PIJ
24- Muhammad Iyad Hassouna, 14 Rafah.	With PIJ in Rafah
25- Ismail Abdel Hamid Mohamed Salameh, 30 Rafah.	With PIJ in Rafah
26- Hana Ismail Ali Salameh, 51, Rafah.	With PIJ in Rafah
27- Rafat Saleh Ibrahim Al-Zamili, 45, Rafah.	PIJ
28- Khaled Saeed Mansour 47 Rafah.	With PIJ in Rafah
29- Alaa Saleh Al-Tahrawi, 30, Rafah.	With PIJ in Rafah
30- Ahmad Muhammad Afana, 31, Jabalia.	Hamas, killed by falling wall after PIJ rocket attack
31- Dia Zuhair Al-Borai, 30 Jabalia.	Rocket (House in Jabalia)
32- Jamil Ehab Najm 15 Jabalia.	Rocket (Fallujah cemetery)*
33- Jamil Najm Najm 6 Jabalia.	Rocket (Fallujah cemetery)*
34- Nazmi Fayez Abu Karsh 16 Jabalia.	Rocket (Fallujah cemetery)*
35- Hamed Haider Najm 17 Jabalia.	Rocket (Fallujah cemetery)*
36-Mohamed Salah Najm 17 Jabalia.	Rocket (Fallujah cemetery)*
37- Muhammad Yasser Nimr Al-Nabahin 13	Rocket (Al Bureij)
38- Ahmed Yasser Nimr Al Nabahin 9 Al-Bureij.	Rocket (Al Bureij)
39- Dalia Yasser Nimr Al Nabaheen 13 Al Bureij.	Rocket (Al Bureij)
40 - Yasser Nimr Mahmoud Al Nabahin 45 Al-Bureij.	Rocket (Al Bureij), Hamas police
41 - Khaled Ayman Yassin, 27 Zaytoun	IDF attack - Fatah operative
42- Shady Emad Nimr Kahil, 27 Zaytoun	IDF attack - Hamas municipal worker with #41
43- Abd al-Rahman Jum’ah al-Silk 19 al-Shuja’iyya.	Apparent IDF attack
44- Mahmoud Daoud in Gaza	Apparent IDF attack, Hamas policeman
45- Haneen Walid Abu Qaida, 10	Unclear, see #14
46- Fatima Obaid, 15	Rocket (Beit Hanoun)
47- Ibrahim Shehda Abu Salah, Beit Hanoun	Apparently killed with #15
48- Lian Al-Shaer, 10	Attack that killed PIJ members 8 and 9 above.
49- Anas Khaled Anshasi	Member of Salafist group, probably targeted by IDF

#6, Donyana Adnan Attia Al-Amour, seems to me to have been possibly killed by a PIJ rocket. A projectile went through her window and killed her in her room. There is a spray pattern but not as intense as most PIJ rockets. Her death was reported as coming from an "artillery shell" but I had not heard of the IDF using artillery towards houses and not for attempts to kill a terror leader. Haaretz says that Israel used artillery towards fixed military positions, and this house does not look like that at all.

Amnesty says that it identified the shell as a120mm M339 tank round.

ITIC says a PIJ commander was in her house.

*ITIC thinks that the cemetery attack was from the IDF. I am mystified by that, the pictures and video show no crater and a definite spray pattern from PIJ rockets, and none of the anti-Israel "human rights" NGOs on the ground in Gaza (UN OHCHR, DCI-P, PCHR, Al Mezan) have counted this was an IDF airstrike after investigating. Haaretz also counted it as a definite rocket misfire. Only children were killed. I'm still counting it as a PIJ rocket strike and hoping to get clarification from ITIC.

Haaretz now reports that unnamed Israeli officials admit that the attack was from the IDF. Nothing official.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

The Fallujah cemetery in Jabalya, where 5 children were killed by an Islamic Jihad rocket.
Note the spray pattern of tiny holes from the shrapnel that PIJ uses to maximize death and damage.

The response of "human rights groups" to the fighting in Gaza last weekend proves, beyond any doubt, how they try to obscure the truth about Islamic Jihad's killing of over 20 civilians, including at least 12 children - even though they know the truth quite well.

No fewer than four human rights groups have investigated every death in Gaza last week. If you parse their statements carefully, every one of them know that Islamic Jihad rockets killed most of the kids.

And not one will say this explicitly, because that would water down their criticism of Israel.

Gaza's Health Ministry says that 48 were killed over the weekend (and from their wounds since) including 16 children. PCHR issued their summary in their weekly report yesterday, after they have had four days to investigate the deaths. They count 27 deaths in Gaza - and say "Meanwhile, PCHR is still investigating other incidents that inflicted casualties and damage to property." They list only 3 children.

They completely ignore the deaths of (by their count) 21 civilians, including 12 children (the last one may have died after their report was prepared.)

What kind of a human rights group ignores the violent death of 12 children, not even mentioning them beyond a laconic mention of "other incidents that inflicted casualties"?

A typical one, it seems. Because we see the same lack of interest in mentioning Islamic Jihad rockets at the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights.

According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, 47 Palestinians were killed during the offensive, including 16 children and four women, and 360 others were injured, including 151 children and 58 women. Eighteen residential units were destroyed, while dozens of others were partially damaged.

Al Mezan’s fieldwork team works to document and investigate every single act of hostilities that occurred in the Gaza Strip and has so far verified the killing of 27 Palestinians and the complete destruction of 12 homes by Israeli forces. Al Mezan continues to conduct its own independent field investigations and collect information on all incidents of killing and damaging or destruction of houses, property, and other civilian objects in Gaza.

They know at least 20 civilians were killed by Islamic Jihad - and they refuse to even mention the possibility. 12 kids dead and the two major Palestinian human rights groups ignore them.

But it is not only Palestinian human rights NGOs. The Palestinian division of Defense for Children International has done the exact same thing. As I have reported, their headline is meant to give people the impression that Israel killed 16 children: "16 Palestinian children in Gaza dead after Israeli military offensive." But they can only document 3 children, and say, "DCIP is still investigating the source of four explosions across the Gaza Strip that killed another 13 Palestinian children. "

At least DCI-P mentions the possibility of the children being killed by rocket fire, unlike PCHR and Al Mezan. But even after listing the mysterious unknown explosions, they emphasize that they want to blame Israel alone, saying, "The Israeli military launched airstrikes across the Gaza Strip on August 5, killing at least 44 people and injuring at least 350, according to Al Jazeera." Their own investigations proves Al Jazeera is lying, but they want to blame Israel for the deaths of the children so they artfully write a report to give that impression.

And then there is the UN Human Rights Office of the Commissioner, which issued a press release that heavily implies that Israel is responsible for the deaths of all Gazans, but doesn't directly say it - because they know the truth as well.

UN Human Rights Chief Michelle Bachelet today expressed alarm at the high number of Palestinians, including children, killed and injured in the occupied Palestinian territory this year, including in intense hostilities between Israel and Palestinian armed groups in Gaza last weekend.

The civilian cost of the latest escalation in Gaza from 5-7 August was heavy. The UN Human Rights Office has verified that among the 48 Palestinians killed, there were at least 22 civilians, including 17 children and four women. The status of 22 fatalities remains undetermined.

...In violation of international humanitarian law, Palestinian armed groups also launched hundreds of rockets and mortars in indiscriminate attacks, causing civilian casualties and damage to civilian objects in Israel as well as in Gaza.

You really have to parse the press release carefully to realize that they are barely hinting that some 20 civilians were killed by Islamic Jihad - and they don't mention that the majority of those "undetermined" ones are children.

All four of these human rights NGOs clearly know the truth, and all of them bend over backwards to obfuscate it and direct their audience's anger at Israel only - even though their own investigations indicate that over 80% of the children were killed by Islamic Jihad.

By blaming Israel exclusively for the deaths of the children, they are engaging in a blood libel, saying that Jews either purposefully target children or show a wanton disregard for their lives. In fact, every single child that was killed by Israeli airstrikes had been either a human shield or an unfortunate casualty during an attack on a legitimate military target, and there is no evidence of the slightest bit of Israeli negligence or violation of international law.

But beyond that, they have not issued a single word of condemnation for Islamic Jihad, not even mentioning its name. By ignoring or downplaying the rocket attacks and only blaming Israel, they are exonerating Islamic Jihad's war crimes.

Even worse, these reports from four major human rights NGOs show that the lives of the children really do not matter to them unless they can blame Israel. Their careful language is meant to hide the facts. Unless dead kids can be blamed on Israel, they don't want to talk about them. They try not to technically lie but they sure as hell don't want to tell the truth.

Which means that these are not human rights organizations. They are anti-Israel organizations who use human rights as a weapon against the Jewish state.

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!

From Space.com:

Iran will soon have access to sharp orbital imagery, thanks to a newly launched spy satellite.

That spacecraft, called Khayyam, lifted off atop a Russian Soyuz rocket today (Aug. 9) at 1:52 a.m. EDT (0552 GMT) from the Russia-run Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Khayyam, which is named after the famed Persian poet and mathematician Omar Khayyam, is a Russian-built Kanopus-V Earth-observation satellite that can resolve features as small as 3.9 feet (1.2 meters) on Earth's surface, The Washington Post reported last week.

"Potentially the most significant benefit," the newspaper added, citing unnamed Western security officials, "will be Iran’s ability to 'task' the new satellite to conduct continuous surveillance on locations of its choosing, including military facilities in Israel, oil refineries and other vital infrastructure in neighboring gulf states."

This is a major danger to Israel. Iran can relay military positions (or civilian positions) to Hamas and Hezbollah in real time.

Can Israel do anything about it?

No one has been speaking about this, but when Israel first started designing the Arrow-3 anti-ballistic missile system back in 2009, an article in Space News said that it could be adapted to become an anti-satellite weapon relatively easily - and it anticipated this exact scenario from Iran 13 years ago:

Israel’s planned Arrow-3 high-altitude ballistic missile defense system could relatively easily be adapted to destroy Iranian spy satellites if and when Tehran manages to deploy high-resolution orbiting vehicles, military space experts here say.

“At the moment, Israel enjoys tremendous superiority in space vis-à-vis its Arab and Islamic neighbors. But it is worthwhile to address ASAT (anti-satellite) technological and political issues in case such operations will be needed in the future,” said TalI Inbar, head of the Space Research Center at the Fisher Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies.

The agile, exoatmospheric, hit-to-kill Arrow-3 interceptor being developed by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) of Lod, Israel, and Chicago-based Boeing Co. is inherently multirole, and could be adapted, if needed, for A-Sat roles, said retired Maj. Gen. Yitzhik Ben-Israel, chairman of the Israel Space Agency.

“If there’s a threat from space, a logical answer is the Arrow upper tier” system, said Ben-Israel, a former director of Israeli military research and development.

In a rare public acknowledgement of Israeli interest in the A-Sat mission, a Tel Aviv University workshop, co-sponsored by Israel’s Ministry of Defense and leading de-fense firms, included a presentation on space warfare that alluded to Israel’s ability to blast orbiting spacecraft much in the way that the United States in early 2008 used an Aegis ship-based Standard Missile-3 interceptor to destroy a wayward U.S. satellite. The Nov. 3 workshop was entitled “Israeli Space: Crisis or Opportunity.”

“It’s proven that an anti-ballistic missile system capable of operating at higher altitudes like the SM-3 also will have the ability to shoot down low-Earth orbiting satellites,” Yair Ramati, IAI’s corporate vice president for marketing, told participants at the workshop.

Ramati, a leading Israeli missile engineer and former Arrow program director, told workshop participants that security restrictions prevented him from discussing how Israeli systems, such as the Green Pine radar, could track satellites. “Most of the radars used to track surface-to-surface missiles are also capable of tracking objects in space,” he said.

I have not seen much about these ASAT capabilities in the intervening decade, but this article from January about a successful Arrow-3 test sure seems in retrospect to be talking about exactly this satellite threat:

Israel conducted a successful test of its Arrow 3 anti-ballistic missile system on Tuesday morning

outside the Earth’s atmosphere, the Defense Ministry said.

The trial tested a number of “breakthrough” capabilities for the missile defense system, which can be used immediately by the Israeli Air Force, the Defense Ministry’s Missile Defense Organization head Moshe Patel told reporters on Tuesday.

“We have made a breakthrough in every part of the system, in the detection arrays, in the launches, even in the interceptors themselves, so that they match the threats that are expected in the region. There were highly, highly significant technological breakthroughs here that were assessed and can be used by the air force in its operational systems immediately,” Patel said.

Boaz Levy, the president and CEO of the Israel Aerospace Industries, which manufactures the Arrow 3, said the breakthroughs were principally in the area of “algorithms,” the ways in which the systems detect incoming threats and calculate launch trajectories for interceptors.

“I won’t elaborate, but it gives the system more capabilities in dealing with threats,” Levy told reporters.

If Israel attacks Iran's satellite, it would be a game changer for the entire world - war would enter space.

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!

08/11 Links Pt2: The 'forever war' against the West; The Extraordinary Bad Faith of Mehdi Hasan; The forgotten heroine of the deadly 1975 Savoy Hotel terror attack

From Ian:

Clifford D. May: The 'forever war' against the West

Following an 11-day conflagration with Hamas last May, the Israelis have been attempting to make life easier for Gazans. That has meant assisting efforts to rebuild infrastructure and provide more reliable electricity. Up to 14,000 Gazans have been permitted to enter Israel to work for higher wages than they could command at home. Hamas leaders, thinking strategically, have not been uncooperative.

PIJ, however, cannot abide even a temporary détente. Israeli intelligence learned that the group was preparing terrorist attacks not only from Gaza but also from the northern West Bank. PIJ fighters have been gradually displacing the PA security forces in this area and clashing with the Israeli Defense Forces, which have been responding to a wave of terrorist attacks that has claimed 19 Israeli lives since March. Knowing PIJ's intentions, the Israelis decided it was necessary to do what they could to degrade its capabilities.

On Monday, the IDF arrested the PIJ leader in the West Bank, Bassem al-Sa'adi. On Friday, the IDF launched a precision airstrike in Gaza, killing PIJ northern Gaza division commander Taysir al-Jabari. On Saturday, the IDF killed PIJ southern Gaza division commander Khaled Mansour and several other senior PIJ officials.

PIJ fired more than a thousand missiles at Israeli cities and towns. Many fell short, killing Palestinians, including four children in Jabalya in southern Gaza, according to Israeli officials. Other missiles were destroyed by the Iron Dome system. On Monday, with Egypt acting as broker, a ceasefire was announced.

PIJ leader Ziyad al-Nakhaleh spent the weekend in Tehran meeting with Ebrahim Raisi, the president of the Islamic Republic. What are they planning to do next? Your guess is as good as mine (though perhaps not as good as the Mossad's).

Israelis today are at peace with more of their neighbors than ever before. Though they are always willing to participate in "peace talks," they understand the Reaganesque doctrine that peace is achieved through strength. And strength must be demonstrated – repeatedly and consistently.

Al-Qaida and PIJ have been hit hard. But neither organization will be "gone" anytime soon.

Al-Qaida will soon have a new emir. The frontrunner appears to be Saif al-Adel, a 62-year-old former Egyptian special forces colonel, a longtime Al-Qaida leader who has been living in Iran as the regime's guest.

As for PIJ, I'd guess Iran's rulers will want to build their proxy back better. That will be expensive, but the Biden administration has been offering those rulers hundreds of billions of dollars they can use to support whichever terrorist/jihadi organizations they like. All that's asked of them in return is a promise to slow-walk their nuclear weapons development program. To believe such a promise would be a fatal mistake.

The Extraordinary Bad Faith of Mehdi Hasan

MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan has a book coming out later this year entitled “Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking.” But in times of economic uncertainty and high inflation, why spend $27.99 when you can learn Hasan’s “art” for free just by observing his public tirades?

Based on a pair of his most recent displays of this “art,” it appears to boil down to three tactics Hasan commonly employs:
1. Master the art of the straw man fallacy;
2. Make outlandish claims and hide them behind false appeals to authority; and
3. Constantly lie by omission.

So with apologies to Hasan for stealing his thunder, here is a primer on the Mehdi Hasan “art” of debating.

Lesson #2: Hide Your Outlandish Claims Behind False Appeals to Authority
On the Mehdi Hasan show, whenever the topic of Israel comes up, inevitably the phrase “the UN says” will be repeatedly wielded alongside any number of hotly disputed, controversial, or dubious factual and legal claims.

That’s how, for example, on Sunday, Hasan got away with claiming Israel “still technically occup[ies]” Gaza, notwithstanding the only living Israelis in Gaza are two mentally handicapped civilians held hostage by Hamas.

To be fair, it is hard to sound serious arguing that Israel exercises the functions of government and can project effective control in Gaza (absent a full-scale military invasion) while over a thousand rockets are being lobbed from Gaza at Israeli communities and everyone acknowledges Hamas is the “de facto authority” of the territory.

But that’s the value of lesson two. As demonstrated by Hasan, one can sidestep these obvious deficiencies by hiding behind the dubious claims of others. This way, Hasan avoids having to delve into important details like who at the UN said it, what authority or expertise they have, whether they’re a credible source, or even whether it came from a fundamentally political entity proclaiming political viewpoints, not factual or legal claims.

Another example from Sunday is when Hasan suggested that 70% of Gaza’s population are refugees – “according to [the] UN” – notwithstanding these “refugees” never actually left the “Palestinian territories” from which Hasan suggests they are refugees. By lazily relying on “according to [the] UN,” Hasan avoids dealing with the obvious complications of his argument, such as how if one were to apply the actual definition of a refugee, only about 5% of the five million “Palestine refugees” would likely qualify as refugees.

Pro-Israel groups hold meetings with multiple state officials over Morningstar’s anti-Israel bias

Following last week’s Reuters report that Missouri’s attorney general opened an investigation into the practices of the Chicago-based investment research firm Morningstar and its subsidiary, Sustainalytics, multiple sources told JNS that Missouri is far from the only one looking into the issue.

Officials from agencies in multiple states have had conversations concerning Morningstar’s anti-Israel bias in its investment ratings in recent weeks, JNS has learned.

“There have been meetings with all kinds of state officials: governors’ representatives, attorney general representatives, treasurers’ representatives,” Elan Carr, a member of the Combat Anti-Semitism Movement’s advisory council, told JNS. “States need to know that this is nothing other than BDS dressed up as social-justice investing.”

Carr, a former U.S. State Department Special Envoy on Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism, said he and others have briefed state officials about the practices of Morningstar and Sustainalytics, and the potential that they violate various states’ anti-BDS laws. Carr, referred to Sustainalytics’ practices as “backdoor BDS,” and said the task force is “laser-focused” on the Morningstar controversy. He noted that a wide swath of Jewish American organizations from both the center-left and center-right are in consensus on the issue.

“We believe that BDS through the guise of ESG (environmental, social and corporate governance) investing is extremely dangerous for Israel. The Morningstar/Sustainalytics model is especially egregious, replete with biased sources and fundamentally anti-Israel assumptions. They lead to terribly biased reviews of Israel and anyone conducting business in Judea, Samaria or Jerusalem,” said Carr. “We regard this as nothing other than a manifestation of the BDS movement.”

Even anti-Israel DCI-P NGO tacitly admits that 13 of 16 children who died in Gaza were killed by Islamic Jihad rockets

Defence for Children-Palestine is a rabidly anti-Israel NGO that uses the deaths of children as a means to attack Israel.

To give an idea of how little context they give their stories, they are counting 16-year old terrorist Hussein Taha, being mourned as a jihadi fighter, as a "child" killed by Israel.

In an article about the children killed over the weekend in Gaza, their headline is written to imply Israel was responsible for 16 children being killed:

But when you read the article, you see that they really only know about three - and the other 13 are still being "investigated."

Israeli forces killed three Palestinian children in three separate airstrikes between August 5–7, according to information collected by DCIP, while DCIP field researchers continue to investigate four other incidents where 13 Palestinian children were killed.

Which means they know very well that the 13 were killed by Islamic Jihad rockets in four separate incidents:

DCIP is still investigating the source of four explosions across the Gaza Strip that killed another 13 Palestinian children. Each explosion coincided with Israeli drones flying over the areas as well as the launches of rockets from Palestinian armed groups.

Four children killed (plus three adults) from a rocket in front of a supermarket in Jabalya.

Five children killed from a rocket at the Fallujah Cemetery in Jabalya.

Three child siblings and their father killed in a rocket that hit their home in te Bureij camp.

One child killed and her sister injured from a rocket in Beit Hanoun. There is video of this out of control rocket corkscrewing to the ground and its massive explosion:

What about the other three (now four) children? They were either human shields or they were unfortunately killed when Israel targeted major terrorists.

One killed during the strike on Taysir al Jabari.

One killed when Israel killed southern PIJ leader Khaled Mansour in Rafah.

One killed when Israel apparently targeted a car in Jabalia (I'm still not sure if this was Israel or a PIJ rocket.)

One killed when Israel targeted two PIJ terrorists in Khan Younis.

This is not irresponsible. This is how wars are fought - do everything possible to avoid civilian casualties but civilians cannot shield legitimate military targets of great value.

Defence for Children Palestine, despite trying to spin these deaths as being from Israeli airstrikes, knows quite well they were killed by Islamic Jihad. And they are not defending those children.

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!