Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, November 30, 2023

Hamas' price for hostages will get higher and higher

Zaher Jabarin, who is Hamas' official in charge of prisoners in Israel, went on Turkey's TRT yesterday.

According to the Meir Amit ITIC, he said that Israeli hostages will be held until all estimated 8,500 Palestinian prisoners are released. He said the number of abductees held by the “resistance” was large enough that it could impose all its conditions.

That means that the 3-1 ratio of prisoners for hostages will end very soon.

As I've mentioned before, the women and children and foreign hostages are a headache for Hamas, and they lose nothing by releasing them. They always intended to hold onto men and soldiers, remembering the absurd 1000-1 trade of prisoners for Gilad Shalit, and hoping Israelis will keep pressure on the government to keep releasing prisoners.

At what point would the price become too high?

Clearly domestic politics and Israeli pressure is part of the equation. It is less costly and risky to keep a ceasefire going and get 10 hostages a day than to attempt to rescue them.

But at some point Israel has to draw a bright red line: for example, no prisoners who were convicted of murder. No prisoners who were ringleaders of attacks should ever be released. No one with a life sentence.

If Israel hadn't released Yahya Sinwar in the Shalit deal, 10/7 may never have happened. Every life is precious, but Shalit's life in 2011 was not worth 1,200 dead Israelis in 2023.

Hindsight is 20/20 but it can help predict the future, too. Prisoners who have any chance of leading future terror attacks must be off the table.

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Jewish women don't matter to the UN: @UNWomen tries to bury Hamas rapes. UN Office @EndRapeInWar has not said a word about October 7 rapes.

JTA reports:

Nearly 50 days after Hamas’ attack on Israel left 1,200 dead, and after weeks of criticism over its silence about allegations of sexual violence during the attack, the women’s rights group UN Women issued a statement condemning the terror group on Friday.

Then it deleted the post.

“We condemn the brutal attacks by Hamas on October 7 and continue to call for the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages,” read the initial statement, posted on UN Women’s instagram page. It was soon replaced with a statement that dropped the condemnation of Hamas and only called for the release of the hostages.

Reached for comment, UN Women told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the Instagram post had been scheduled in advance and was deleted because the message in it no longer reflected where the organization wanted to put its main focus.

Here is the initial post and what replaced it.

It is pretty obvious that the real reason they took down the post condemning Hamas is that there are a lot of Hamas fans in the UN that were upset..

CNN anchor Bianna Golodryga asked UN Women Deputy Executive Director Sarah Hendriks why they couldn't specifically call out Hamas atrocities. Her response was a word salad about independent investigations that didn't come close to answering the question.

This is all a way to say that UN Women doesn't care about Israeli women victims of war. And it isn't only from October 7 - Hamas sent thousands of rockets all over Israel and women were the targets of those attacks as well. Today there was a terror attack that murdered two women in Jerusalem. Where is UN Women?

UN Women has published about 16 posts on Instagram specifically calling to protect Gazans without mentioning or even hinting at Israeli victims. It cannot be bothered to call out Israeli victims or to condemn Hamas.

But perhaps there is a UN organ that is even worse.

The UN has an Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict. It's X account is named @EndRapeInWar. If any UN organization should condemn the brutal rapes and sexual assaults against Israeli women on October 7, this should be the one.

It hasn't said a word.

The message is clear: Israeli and Jewish women are not a concern to the UN. On the contrary: it actively tries to hide and obfuscate the violence that is aimed specifically at them by Palestinian terror groups.

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Hamas official or "human rights leader"? They sound the same

Who said this?

The Zionist entity knows no mercy and violates all humanitarian laws by killing children.

The Zionist entity does not abide by any international laws, and it seems that this entity came in contravention of international laws and built the state on crimes and blood.

The occupying entity does not know the language of peace, negotiations, and laws, and only knows killing, blood, and committing massacres against civilians.

Sounds like Hamas, doesn't it?

But it is actually a quote from Dr. Haitham Abu Saeed, Permanent Special Representative of the International Human Rights Commission to the United Nations in Geneva, speaking on the Arabic DMC channel.

When "human rights" NGO statements are indistinguishable from those of international terror organizations, there is something seriously wrong. with this world.

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11/29 Links Pt2: Brendan O'Neill: We mustn’t let the left erase the truth of 7 October; Hostages held in homes of UNRWA employees; What Yale Has in Common With Hamas

From Ian:

John Podhoretz: Israel Is Reevaluating

A 32 year-old Israeli who had been pursuing agriculture went into the reserves here after October 7 and in the weeks that immediately followed came to realize his true calling was in serving the nation’s security and the security of others—felt a sense of purpose and belonging vitally important to him—and believes he will be changing his career path once this war is over. A young religious man who has been studying in yeshiva for a very long time and believed he would continue to do so is instead planning on joining the military to join in the fight.

Everywhere you turn here in Israel, people are reevaluating. They are reevaluating everything.

They are reevaluating their political stances. Leftists are expressing regret for what they now see as a kind of foolish utopianism in their view of Gaza and the Palestinians. Rightists who believed the Left could not be trusted with the nation’s security speak of their sense of betrayal and dismay, because the parties and leaders they voted for and worked to elect—parties and leaders who promised they were the only ones in the country who could deal with Israel’s safety from a position of strength—failed utterly to fulfill this first and most significant promise.

They are reevaluating their cultural stances. Anti-Zionist or non-Zionist haredim (the ne plus ultra of the ultra-Orthodox) are abandoning the separation from the state that has been their guiding political philosophy for seven decades and signing up by the thousands to join the military—which they need not do, as they have been exempted from service since the beginning.

Germany is in danger of betraying Israel

Time and again, German chancellor Olaf Scholz has appeared incapable of sticking up for his support for Israel. Indeed, he often seems more concerned with appeasing Israel’s critics.

This became painfully apparent earlier this month during Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s trip to Berlin for a meeting with Scholz. In their joint press conference, Erdoğan claimed that Germany was stuck in a ‘psychology of guilt’ when it comes to Israel. With Scholz standing stoney-faced next to him, Erdoğan said that, because Turkey did not share Germany’s Holocaust history, it had no debt to Israel.

This should have been a chance for Scholz to reject the pernicious idea that Germany only supports Israel because of a deep-seated feeling of historical guilt. Yet Scholz failed to rise to the challenge. He merely said Germany and Turkey had ‘very different perspectives on the conflict’.

It was a profound mistake for Scholz to duck this challenge. After all, it’s not just Erdoğan who thinks that Germany’s support for Israel is born of historical guilt. This view is increasingly widespread among Islamists and the Islamist-adjacent in Germany itself. ‘Free Palestine from German guilt’ was heard at the controversial, borderline anti-Semitic Documenta Fifteen art exhibition in Kassel last year, and it’s now a popular slogan at the many pro-Palestine demonstrations.

Scholz had an opportunity to challenge this mistaken perception of Germany’s relationship with Israel. He had a chance to point out that standing with the Jewish State against the barbarism of the 7 October attacks has nothing to do with historical guilt. It is simply the right thing to do.

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

--1--

As an American-born Israeli, I have worried about antisemitism on American college campuses for decades. For me, it’s personal. My friends and family are there. I worry about the physical safety of their children, but am actually more concerned that the rhetoric will damage their psyches and souls. When we text or speak I always want to ask, and sometimes do, especially if the kids are seniors in high school, “Where will they be going to school?”

My question is no different after October 7^th, but now I voice it to the collective: Where will your Jewish children go to school, now that all of us know they are unsafe? And where will they go to college?

Will they attend Hillcrest High, where a Jewish teacher hid in a locked office for two hours? Will they go to Citizens of the World Charter School-East Valley where teachers spoke to first graders about the “genocide in Gaza”?

Portland-area teacher Hailey DeMarre launched a harassment campaign against Beaverton School District after they told her to remove a Palestinian flag students had painted on the classroom wallshttps://t.co/QgI1CXX0pw https://t.co/QgI1CXX0pw
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) November 19, 2023

Sometimes I imagine what you are thinking now: How long until it reaches the playground, the grocery store, the synagogue, now that it has been proven without a doubt, that Jew-hatred can rise up, as it did on October 7^th, and sweep across a kibbutz, dance festival, or campus like a tidal wave.

It’s not about October 7^th, but about the nature of antisemitism. Too many of us don’t want to learn the lesson that yes, it can happen again. And it did. Because it’s not enough to say a slogan.

--2--

I knew what this column would be called, but I didn’t know what form it would take. All I knew was that I wanted to talk about the fears that Jewish parents must be experiencing right now. Did I want to focus on the individual schools? I didn’t know. I wasn’t sure what I’d need, but I did want to get an idea of the scale. So I went online and boom, boom, boom. The internet started blowing up. Within the hour I had found dope—antisemitic dope, so to speak—on the following 33 schools, the majority of them institutes of “higher” learning.

1. University of Michigan in Ann Arbor

2. MIT

3. Yale

4. Columbia

5. University of Pennsylvania

6. UC Berkeley

7. Harvard

8. NYU

9. University of Southern California

10. University of North Carolina

11. Hillcrest High School

12. University of Maryland

13. Brown

14. UCLA

15. Princeton

16. University of Minnesota

17. Montclair State University

18. Brandeis

19. Bard College

20. CUNY

21. University of Cincinnati

22. Oberlin

23. George Washington University

24. Wellesley

25. Murray State University

26. Cooper Union

27. UC San Diego

28. Stanford

29. University of Arizona

30. University of Massachusetts

31. University of Florida

32. Carnegie Mellon University and University of Pittsburgh

33. Citizens of the World Charter School-East Valley

An hour’s worth of research cannot claim to be exhaustive or authoritative. It is only disappointing that I found so much of this stuff in such a short time, just surfing the internet. It’s not surprising; it’s unsettling. I worry about Jewish children and what the hatred and violence is doing to them. Antisemitism is a kind of crucible. Will they merely wrestle with fear, despair, and faith, or are we looking at a Norman Finkelstein or Max Blumenthal situation?

It’s hard for kids and adults of any age to go through this, to experience antisemitism, no matter how jaded we think we are. It hurts—especially when it comes from a teacher and the university does nothing, or when it happens where you least expect it.

This was discovered today at @BaruchCollege pic.twitter.com/JE4AlLGrM6
— Aviva Klompas (@AvivaKlompas) November 28, 2023

You know what I will say, because I must. I believe that the answer of where your children should go to school is, “in Israel.” There is no remedy for antisemitism, but there’s treatment: come to Israel and strengthen your people. Take your children and move there—move to Israel. Make Aliyah. I wish you would.

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

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The media fell all over themselves last week claiming that a 1,000 boat flotilla was about to sail from Turkey to blockade Israel. The event was to take place last Wednesday.

I was the only one who called it a hoax.

And I was right.

It was all fake news, based on the crazy claims of one guy, Volkan Okçu.

Not one news outlet checked for a shred of corroboration. They didn't ask him who else was involved, the names of any boats, who is organizing it, how they planned the logistics for such a large project. The media simply didn't do its most basic job, to check sources.

I looked at Volkan Okçu's tweets and saw that he had no idea what he was doing and then denied he was the organizer altogether.

And since then, not one media outlet admitted that they were fooled. They just let the story disappear.

Just because "everyone" reports something doesn't mean it is true.

The media is failing; they'd rather report (or, more often, repeat) what sounds juicy than make a phone call to check it out themselves.

I'm not saying this to brag. I spent no more than ten minutes researching this. But I am pointing out that this is a pattern we have seen a great deal during the Gaza war alone.

A large percentage of the news surrounding this Gaza war is as fake as this flotilla, and has just as little corroborating evidence. The sources for much of Gaza news are just as unreliable as Volkan Okçu is. The news comes from one doctor, one "witness," And the news media just runs with it.

They do it with casualty numbers. They did it with the Al Ahli hospital event. They did it with the Salah al-Din Road explosion.

Consistently, the media reports what it wants to be true, and if the editors like the story, they don't bother to fact-check it.

Just because "everyone says" something doesn't make it a fact. Very often, everyone jumping to repeat a story that sounds really good is the best evidence that it isn't real.

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!

11/29 Links Pt1: The Red Cross has Jewish blood on its hands- and it couldn't care less; Hamas claims Bibas family killed in Gaza

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Yes, Hamas Can Be Destroyed

The other idea put forth as a reason for Hamas’s unbeatability is Palestinian nationalism. “I understand the desire to destroy the Hamas apparatus, but I just don’t think it’s doable,” Benjamin Friedman, policy director at the realist think tank Defense Priorities, told the Christian Science Monitor. “If you envision any degree of Palestinian self-rule, then I think some version of Hamas 2.0 remains in power.”

Except Hamas’s belief system isn’t a Palestinian nationalism compatible with Palestinian self-rule, as counterintuitive as that may seem. That’s because Hamas self-rule requires Israel’s destruction.

The terror group made a big show in 2017 of revising its founding charter. The resulting document moved the group’s ideology away from an obsession with jihad and Jews to one that only referred to those topics euphemistically. The entire point, it seems, was actually to give Western apologists an excuse to pretend Hamas endorsed the two-state solution, thereby making it a legitimate representative of Palestinian nationalism.

That passage reads: “without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any Palestinian rights, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.”

As is clearly stated, Hamas will accept (or claims that it will) a Palestinian state along the 1967 lines and with right of return of all descendants of Palestinian refugees to Israel, merely as a step toward reclaiming all the land—most of which is intended to be accomplished with the influx of millions of Palestinians claiming a right to kick Jews out of their homes.

It is an explicitly genocidal doctrine, repeating its intention to erase “Zionism” “from the river to the sea.” Now, genocide is, I suppose, an idea. It may even be a powerful one. But the Allies didn’t rationalize away the need to defeat those who embraced that same idea in World War II and to liberate Europe from the Nazis by fretting that fascist thought could never be fully eradicated.

Yes, Hamas can be defeated. Yes, Israel and the West possess the capabilities to do this. And yes, it has been done before. The final ingredient is national will—and that part is up to Israel and Israel alone.

Ricahrd Hanania: Israel Must Crush Palestinian Hopes

The problem with hampering the Israeli war effort through appeals to human rights norms is that it simply ensures that the conflict continues indefinitely into the future. Are Palestinians being well served right now? Would living under occupation for another 75 years do them good? The way I see it, for Israel to survive there will have to be separation between the two sides at some point, and it would be better for it to happen now than later.

During and after the Second World War, Japan and Germany saw their governments destroyed, and the political ideology that the previous regime had relied on in each country extinguished. Both peoples were better off for it in the end. I think the next generation of Uyghurs will be some of the most loyal members of the Chinese Communist Party. This is a less hopeful example since Chinese totalitarianism is bad, unlike liberal democracy. But it shows that when people are given no other options they adjust to their new reality.

Right now, it’s hard to imagine Palestinians giving up their political dreams. But the idea that Japan would become a pacifist society content to manufacture electronics and watch anime while renouncing all geopolitical ambitions must have seemed just as improbable in early 1945. What ended World War II wasn’t the two atomic bombs that the US dropped, as Japan still had the capability to go on fighting. It was knowledge that there would be a third, a fourth, and a fifth if it didn’t surrender. If there was a way Israel could guarantee with 100% certainty that it wouldn’t stop until Hamas was destroyed, I think Palestinian resistance would decline. As things stand, there’s still a good deal of hope out there that Western pressure will eventually force Israel to stop short of regime change in Gaza. In which case, we would simply find ourselves in the same situation as before October 7.

Unlike the Palestinians, Japan already had a state, so in this case moving on means trying to make Gazans into refugees, in many cases not for the first time of course. This will be tough for one or two generations, but eventually lead to a more humane outcome for all involved. Right now, even Westerners seem outraged by the idea of population transfer. One might ask why in every other conflict in the world, we consider it a self-evidently good thing to get civilians out of war zones. What’s special about this particular conflict is the attachment that Arabs and Westerners feel to the cause of Palestine. But it’s an evil cause, which clearly emphasizes hating Jews more than making its own people better off.

As long as hope for a two-state solution exists, the idea of reducing the Palestinian population in the region conflicts with larger political goals. Gazans themselves, living off of international charity and romanticized as warriors, feel no urgency to call for their leaders to let them leave or demand that the rest of the world welcome them in. The end of the Palestinian cause would reduce the terrorist threat inherent in accepting people from Gaza as refugees and make other countries potentially more welcoming.

Eventually, I think that we can get to a place where emptying Gaza becomes seen as a realistic option both within and outside the region. But it will require Israel to extinguish all hopes of Palestinian statehood first. The US can be useful here by continuing to provide support to Israel, refraining from putting pressure on it on humanitarian grounds, and trying to incentivize other nations to accept Palestinians as refugees.

The Red Cross has Jewish blood on its hands- and it couldn't care less

In the second movie of the hugely popular Pirates of the Caribbean film series, Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow is told that a moment will come when he has the chance to do the right thing. Sparrow’s response? “I love those moments. I like to wave at them as they pass by.”

That is apparently how the Red Cross feels about the opportunity to do anything to help innocent Jewish children and old women, let alone the other hostages.

Under the hostage deal between Israel and the Hamas terrorist organization, the Red Cross was supposed to be able to visit the Israeli hostages who have been held in Gaza for nearly two months. The original date for the end of the ceasefire has passed and it has been extended, and still not a single visit to a hostage has occurred.

The Red Cross did not even try. When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his government that the agreement allowed the Red Cross to visit the hostages, the organization did not spring into action. It did not demand that Hamas fulfill its obligations under the deal, let alone under international law. It did not put any pressure on Hamas. Instead it equivocated, questioning whether the deal really allowed for the organization to do the job it was supposedly created to do.

When the family of Elma Avraham, one of the hostages released this week, attempted to give the Red Cross the medication she needed so she could receive proper medical care while in Hamas captivity, the Red Cross refused them outright.

Elma, who is 84, had to be hospitalized in serious condition when she was returned. According to her daughter Tal Amano, she had a body temperature of just 82 degrees Fahrenheit and a heartrate of just 40 beats per minute.

The Avraham family’s pleas were repeatedly rejected, with one Red Cross official asking: “Again you came with her package of medications?”

It looks like this letter was written within a week or two after October 7. I randomly looked up several of the 300 signatories and all of them are real legal experts, at major law schools.

Public Statement by International Law Experts
On October 7th, 2023, over a thousand terrorists, members of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, infiltrated and captured civilian villages and towns in Israel, as well as a number of military bases. The terrorists massacred over 1300 people, including women, children, elderly people and young adults who were celebrating at an outdoor party. Thousands of people were severely wounded. The numbers of those slaughtered are still not final, and details about the magnitude of the atrocities are still unfolding. These acts constitute gross violation of international law, and, in particular, of international criminal law. As these widespread, horrendous acts appear to have been carried out with an “intent to destroy, in whole or in part” a national group – Israelis – a goal explicitly declared by Hamas, they most probably constitute an international crime of genocide, proscribed by the Genocide Convention and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
In addition to those murdered and wounded, it is estimated that over 150 people were kidnapped and taken hostage. The majority of the hostages are civilians, and they include Israeli as well as non-Israeli citizens. Among those abducted there are women, children, infants, elderly people in need of medical care and people with disabilities. According to media reports, some kidnapped persons were murdered following their abduction. Videos, released mostly by Hamas, posted on social media, document acts of torture, sexual violence, violence towards children and molestation of bodies. Hamas leader Salah Al-Arouri and Abu Obeida, spokesman of Izz ad-Din al-Kassam confirmed that they were holding Israeli abductees. No information has been provided regarding the current location, status and condition of hostages. They are being held without any communication with the outside world, and the ICRC has not had access to them. There is every reason to believe that their lives and basic rights are under immediate threat of the gravest nature.
War Crimes
International law prohibits the taking of hostages, defined in the International Convention Against the Taking of Hostages as seizing or detaining and threatening to kill, to injure or to continue to detain another person “in order to compel a third party, namely, a State, an international intergovernmental organization, a natural or juridical person, or a group of persons, to do or abstain from doing any act as an explicit or implicit condition for the release of the hostage”. The customary international law prohibition on the taking of hostages applies both to international armed conflicts and to non-international armed conflicts. It thus applies to the armed conflict between Israel and Hamas.
The taking of hostages is defined as a war crime, including by article 8 (2) (c) (iii)of the Rome Statue, reflecting customary international law. The laws pertaining to the holding of prisoners of war do not apply to terrorist organizations. Thus, holding both civilian and soldier hostages constitutes a war crime. The circumstances surrounding the kidnapping of all hostages, civilian and soldiers, reveals that they were taken with the purpose of holding them hostage. Hamas must release all hostages immediately.
In addition to taking hostages, according to information posted on social media and testimonials of survivors, members of Hamas deliberately targeted their attacks against large numbers of civilians, committing murder, torture, rape, mutilation and molestation of bodies. Each of these acts constitutes a war crime, for which perpetrators must bear full accountability.
Crimes Against Humanity
Crimes against humanity refers to acts conducted as part of a “widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population”. The acts that may constitute crimes against humanity include, among others, enforced disappearances, torture, sexual violence and persecution. The abduction of people without provision of information regarding their whereabouts constitutes the crime of enforced disappearances. Furthermore, available information indicates that many abductees were tortured by their captors. These acts were multiply committed by Hamas towards the hostages in execution of its policy to attack civilians, and thus constitute crimes against humanity, for which perpetrators must bear full accountability.
Pending the release of hostages, Hamas must provide under international law information regarding the hostages, including their medical condition, and provide them with the necessary medical care. International law imposes additional particular duties of care towards women and children.
It is the legal and moral duty of all states to act swiftly to halt these crimes.
The international community, including all states and relevant international organizations, must take all measures necessary to ensure immediate release of all hostages held by Hamas. Any delay in action will result in more loss of human life and aggravated human suffering.
Pending release of the abductees, all states must demand Hamas to immediately provide clear information as to the actual whereabouts and condition of all abductees.
Pending release, humanitarian organizations, including the ICRC and all relevant UN agencies should demand from Hamas to provide them with access to the abductees. These organizations must also do their utmost to ensure that essential foodstuff and appropriate medical treatment are provided.
Pending release, all states should use all available means to support Israel, the ICRC and all other relevant organizations and states to gain access to the abductees and to receive information about their fate and whereabouts. Such assistance should include, at the least, providing all possible logistical assistance and available intelligence and supporting relevant diplomatic efforts.
Without derogating from the duty to demand the immediate and unconditional release of all abductees, all states and international organization have a duty to use all available means at their disposal in order to pressure Hamas to give precedence to the immediate release of those abductees who belong to specially protected groups: children, women, older persons, people with disabilities and those in need of medical treatment.

Isn't it interesting that the media has so few articles that mention these self-evident points?

And isn't it equally interesting that open letters that accuse Israel of "genocide" or other crimes get far more publicity than letters like this one?

No legal expert can seriously contest anything written here. Which is a large reason why we have never heard anything about it.

(h/t JW)

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!

Palestinian antisemites "cancel Christmas" - and blame Jews

Christmas is canceled in Bethlehem, and Jews are to blame.

That's the message from the Washington Post's Ishaan Tharoor:

In Bethlehem, Christmas is canceled. Palestinian Christian leaders across denominations in the West Bank city decided last week that they will forgo all festivities this year as a mark of solidarity with their brethren in Gaza. There will be no public celebrations, no twinkling Christmas lights and no decorated tree in Manger Square — not as long, they say, as a state of war reigns over the embattled Gaza Strip, and the majority of its residents cope with Israeli bombardments, the devastation of their homes and a spiraling humanitarian crisis.

“This is madness,” Munther Isaac, pastor of Bethlehem’s Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church, told me. “This has become a genocide with 1.7 million people displaced.”

But what about Hamas? Oh, they're pretty cool, according to Isaac:

The delegation’s members condemned Hamas’s actions and deplored its killing of innocent civilians and abduction of hostages. But they questioned Israel’s declared intention to wipe out an organization that is part of the fabric of Palestinian society and seen as a standard-bearer of resistance to decades of Israeli military occupation and domination. “As horrifying as October 7 was, things did not start there,” Isaac said. “And you cannot just begin the story from there and as such, give a green light for Israel to do what it’s doing right now, which goes way beyond, which is a revenge campaign.”

In other words, empty words of condemnation for generic violence on both sides is the worst that Hamas can expect from these Palestinian Christian leaders.

Why? Because Palestinian Christian leaders are antisemitic on a theological as well as deeply emotional level.

The churches in Jerusalem issued a statement on October 7 that didn't condemn Hamas, but instead implied that Israel was responsible for all violence, using the standard keywords of "justice and respect for human rights" which are only applied to Israel.

They didn't even hint at the pogrom before first blaming Israel for violating the "status quo" in Jerusalem - another dog-whistle for Jews visiting the Temple Mount.

Compare this wishy-washy, passive-voiced, both-sides call for ending hostilities with their sharply phrased condemnation of the "criminal attack" on the Al Ahli Baptist Hospital, which is obviously worded to blame Israel ("Military Forces") even though it was actually done by Islamic Jihad:

While the churches in Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Gaza pretend to care about all human lives, Jewish lives really don't matter to them.

And that is because they are doctrinally antisemitic.

The churches in the region still espouse replacement theology, saying that all the Biblical promises to the Jews really apply to Christians (although the curses still apply only to the Jews.) The existence of Jews and Israel itself is a huge challenge to these churches. They still adhere to the worst forms of historic Christian Jew-hatred. The "Kairos Document" that they wrote concretizes this antisemitism as official Palestinian church policy that promotes supersessionism and denies any Jewish connection to the land.

This is the background that needs to be understood before examining why the churches in the region decide to "cancel Christmas" and send representatives to lobby America. Antisemitism in the region has always been at least as prevalent among Christians as it has been among Muslims. Nothing has changed theologically for those churches in their approach to Jews - we are still guilty of deicide and we are still a challenge to their very existence.

In 1864, way before modern Zionism, an observer described how much Jerusalem's Christians hated Jews:

On Good Friday the Jews cannot quit their own quarters, as the Latins, Greeks, and Armenians would insult and otherwise illtreat them. On some occasions the pasha has been obliged to guard the entrances of their streets with bodies of soldiers and police to protect them from the fanatical Christians, who would have made an attack upon them. No Jew, who lives at Jerusalem, dares to pass in front of the court of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, for he well knows how great a risk he runs of suffering for his curiosity. If, on an occasion like this, he were murdered, the malefactors would not be severely punished; for all the native population unfortunately hold the opinion that to injure a Jew is a work well pleasing in the sight of God. This is due to the fact that the Jews, although numerous, do not know how to make themselves respected; and to the sermons constantly delivered by the Latins, Greeks, and Armenians, in which the most opprobrious and unseemly epithets are heaped upon them, even in the churches themselves, and of course still more in less sacred places. These are all believed by the faithful, who are thus excited by their priests to insult all whom they meet. Again, the poorer Jews when going or returning from pilgrimages between Jerusalem and Hebron, avoid passing through Bethlehem to escape the insults which the "good Christians" of that place, excited by their monks, always inflict upon them.

And that is the problem with all coverage of Israel. Antisemitism, both Christian and Muslim, has permeated the region for hundreds of years before modern Zionism. The worst insult an Arab could call another has always been "Jew."

Nothing has changed for Palestinian Christians since then. They are taught the exact same hate, lately refined by specifically anti-Israel "liberation theology." . They have not accepted the 1965 Nostra Aetate of the Vatican that re-evaluated the relationship between the church and Jews. Palestinian Arabs, both Christian and Muslim, rank among the most antisemitic people on Earth.

It may not be politically correct to call all Palestinians antisemitic, but every survey shows that the overwhelming majority indeed are. Ignoring that is ignoring the very foundation of the conflict. And covering, say, a visit by Palestinian Christians to the US without acknowledging this hatred is simply another dimension of antisemitism itself - because to deny the long history of Palestinian antisemitism is to excuse it.

Munther Isaac is entirely correct when he says, "As horrifying as October 7 was, things did not start there." They started long before October 7, with historic Arab prejudice against Jews that remains a constant through today.

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!

Arabs boycott e-commerce site for "supporting the Jews"

Noon is a Saudi-based e-commerce site, much like Amazon, that markets and sells a wide variety of items.

Over the past couple of days, Arabic media have been asking the question: does Noon support the Jews or not?

The answer given is yes, Noon does support "Jews" and therefore must be anti-Palestinian.

This may sound surprising, especially since its website homepage says solicits funds for Gaza and offers multiple ways it will donate to Gaza charities.

So what's going on?

It turns out that the founder and owner of much of Noon, Mohamed Alabbar, is a billionaire business tycoon. His company also owns the Burj al-Khalifa Tower in the UAE.

In 2021, it was revealed that he, together with four other mega-rich people, donated $170 million to feed poor people in Israel between 2003 and 2021. Alabbar himself only started donating in 2018 so his share was significantly less.

Donating to the "hungry in Israel" means that probably half of the funds would go to the Arab community there.

This charity towards Arabs and Jews in Israel is now being spun as "supporting the Jews" or "funding Israel's war" or being "anti-Palestinian."

It is pretty clear that Arabs who boycott a company because its owner gives charity to poor Jews and Muslims in Israel are all antisemitic.

Levels of antisemitism have been rising steeply over the past seven weeks, and Arabs are in for forefront of that bigotry.

There is a cottage industry in Arabic media trying to determine which multinational companies support Israel, by their own bizarre standards. Cinnabon does not but Dunkin Donuts does - because someone took a photo of a donut with a blue Star of David on it. Dominos Pizza does but Nike does not. (Actually, Nike has a store in Tel Aviv. Sorry, boycotters.)

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!

11/28 Links Pt2: 10 Israeli and 2 Thai hostages released; We must never forget that Israel is not a luxury — it is a necessity; IDF names three soldiers killed in Hamas captivity

From Ian:

10 Israeli and 2 Thai hostages arrive back in Israel after 53 days in Gaza captivity

Nine Israeli women and a 17-year-old girl were released by Hamas on Tuesday night after 53 days in captivity in Gaza, amid an extended truce deal with the Palestinian terror group that is expected to last at least until Wednesday, when another group of about 10 hostages is expected to be freed.

Hamas on Tuesday also released two foreign nationals from Thailand as part of a separate agreement.

The release of eight Israeli women, six of them elderly, and one mother and her teen daughter on Tuesday came hours after an apparent violation of the temporary halt in fighting, now in its fifth day, when Israeli troops were targeted in northern Gaza by Hamas explosives and gunfire. A number of soldiers sustained light injuries.

All the hostages were handed over by Hamas and terror ally Palestinian Islamic Jihad to the Red Cross in Gaza Tuesday night, then arrived in Israel via the Kerem Shalom crossing — sidestepping a transfer in Egypt — in a process that was also observed for the past two days of hostage transfers.

They were being brought to hospitals in Israel for further treatment and monitoring, before being reunited with their families.

Hamas released footage of the handover in which the women can be seen walking, flanked by armed, masked terrorists. One of the hostages, Ditza Heiman, 84, was in a wheelchair and was helped into the Red Cross ambulance by medical staff. The handover, brightly lit and filmed by multiple cameras, was stage-managed by the terrorists in front of a large crowd.

Teen hostage Mia Leimberg, 17, was seen in initial clips of the release from inside the Gaza Strip holding her dog Bella, which was thought to have been killed in the October 7 onslaught. That day, thousands of Hamas-led terrorists killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took some 240 hostages including about 40 children.

The youngest among the nine remaining child hostages is Kfir Bibas, who was just nine months old when he was captured along with his parents and four-year-old brother from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7. The baby’s aunt Ofri Bibas pleaded Tuesday for the family’s release as soon as possible.

The IDF said Monday that the Bibas family had been transferred by Hamas to another Palestinian terror group in Gaza, dampening hopes of their release during the current truce.

The doctor leading freed hostages from darkness to light

Dr. Hagai Levine worries about four-year-old Abigail Edan, who saw her parents murdered by Hamas terrorists before she was kidnapped to Gaza on October 7 and released on November 26.

He worries about 84-year-old Alma Avraham, deprived of essential medication for the seven weeks she was captive in Gaza.

He worries about each of the remaining approximately 160 hostages, from the youngest baby to the oldest octogenarian.

But Levine isn’t just sitting around fretting.

While national leaders are working out the difficult details of getting hostages released back to Israel, Levine is working out the difficult details of their medical care.

Levine, chairman of the Israeli Association of Public Health Physicians, volunteered to head the medical team of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum established by the families of the approximately 240 abductees less than 24 hours after the deadly Hamas attacks and kidnappings of October 7.

“This is an unprecedented event,” says Levine.

“Hostages ranging from a nine-month-old baby to an 85-year-old woman with dementia and Parkinson’s were taken and held underground in inhumane conditions. Hamas did not allow them access to the Red Cross or connection with their families,” he says.

“Very early on, we established a medical and resilience team with the aim of bringing them home now, safely, and protecting the health of the hostages and their families.”

The doctor leading freed hostages from darkness to light
Hostage Eitan Yahalomi is reunited with his mother on his return on Nov. 27, at the Kerem Shalom meeting point. Photo courtesy of the IDF Spokesperson.

Levine and the forum worked with the Health Ministry to innovate new guidelines for treating released hostages.

“We are writing a textbook that wasn’t written before because nothing like this has ever happened before,” adds Orna Dotan, head of the forum’s resilience team comprising hundreds of mental-health professionals.

We must never forget that Israel is not a luxury — it is a necessity

The Jewish homeland has been a constant throughout our history. In exile we yearned to return. Then, as the state was granted independence, a partnership across the diaspora brought those dreams to life. When Jews needed to flee persecution, Israel wasn’t just ready and waiting, it orchestrated their escape. It has been a relationship of existential necessity.

And then, October 7, in an instant, Israel stopped feeling like a safe haven. Worse, it felt like its existence was under threat. Those of us too young to remember 1948, 1967 or 1973 had taken Israel for granted. Even with every lesson from our history, we still took Israel for granted.

As it evolved, as the skyscrapers rose and the military grew in power, Israel became an insurance policy to cash in, as and when needed. Israel was there for us. Yet, as a result of our complacency, we could not always say the same.

The immediate response to October 7 has been everything you would expect and more. People who have not given for years have dug deep. The insurance premium is being paid in full — for now. But what happens next? The relationship between Israel and the diaspora had stagnated. As we come out of this trauma we need to press the reset button and, together, re-establish what it means to be the Jewish homeland and to be a Jew outside its borders. The starting point must be a focus on that which brings us together as opposed to the things that drive us apart.

On peoplehood, on a shared history and a desire for a better Israel without demanding a perfect Israel. Too many had made their support for and relationship with Israel conditional. We looked over our shoulder to determine when, how and even if we should state our Zionist credentials, as we sought to avoid the political or social wrath of those who would hold Israel to a higher standard.

Israel is not a luxury, it is a necessity. Never has this been more apparent than when it is seemingly at its most vulnerable.

As people take to the UK’s streets in their hundreds of thousands, some calling for the dismantling of Israel, others for jihad and a number even glorifying the murder of babies, it would be naive not to ask, again, “What if?” What if the baying mob gets its wish? What if it becomes too dangerous to send our kids to Jewish schools?

What if university campuses become no-go areas for Jewish students? Just pick up the suitcase and get on the next flight to Israel? What if there were no Israel to turn to? What if that insurance policy suddenly got cancelled when we needed it most?

And as I look at Britain and look to Israel, struggling to work out how any of this has happened I ask myself, where do we go from here?

Jake Wallis Simons: The Jewish State Is Determined to Defeat the Enemy, Whatever the Price

On Oct. 7, in the sleepy kibbutz of Kfar Aza near the Gaza border, Aviv and Livnat Kutz were hoping to spend the afternoon with their three teenage children and other likeminded locals flying kites near the fence as a gesture of peace towards their Palestinian neighbors. The corpses of the murdered Kutz family were later found huddled together in the same bed.

Looking back, the complacency that prevailed in Israel regarding the threat from Gaza was not only remarkable but agonizingly naive. In the conventional Israeli security picture, the Gazan militias were dwarfed by the threat of Hizbullah in Lebanon and Iran, which was on the threshold of nuclearization. Indeed, as one defense source told me: "If Iran had directed the attacks, Mossad would have known about it."

What Hamas has always missed is the fact that Israel is not a colonial power like France in Algeria. The Israelis have no other country to which to withdraw. And such is the alchemy of Israeli society, whose conscription culture creates deep bonds of social responsibility and national pride, that turning up the volume of agony on its public produces an equal and opposite reaction of solidarity and grit. The Jewish state is determined to defeat the enemy, whatever the price.

On the Israeli side, everything changed on Oct. 7. In butchering the innocent with such savagery, Hamas had changed the security calculation. Israel's policy of containment was torn up.

By way of spectacular success, Hamas had signed its own death warrant. If an effective deterrent is to be re-established, Hamas must be dispatched unequivocally, as costly as this will prove in terms of blood, treasure and international standing.

Last week, an old Palestinian colleague called me from the grounds of the hospital in Khan Yunis in Gaza. Hamas was facing a groundswell of repressed rage from its own people, he confided in hushed tones.