Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, April 13, 2024

04/13 Links: Iran launches over 100 drones towards Israel; What Happens When You Have to Win a War; Melanie Phillips on Media's Anti-Israel Bias and Outright Lies

From Ian:

What Happens When You Have to Win a War

War is war, a horrible time demanding attention to impossible possibilities. Those making decisions do not have the time that scholars have, after the fact, to carefully contemplate choices that could have been made. We expect our generals to be decent men but not overburdened by moral complexities. Being distracted by them gets in the way of decision-making, which must often be quick. We hope, we pray, we count on them to do what they have been chosen to do, to win our war, to not let our enemies defeat us. That is priority one, two, and three. We can only hope they are making good choices. If they have given extra thought to moral concerns, that is a plus, but we shouldn’t expect it from them. Their other purposes are too important. Whatever flaws they may have, our generals must satisfy the reason that we need them, to guard the country, to protect us, to win the war.

What’s most extraordinary is that Israel is fighting a war for its existence while employing measures to reduce civilian casualties so extensive and laborious that our own World War II generals—and civilians—would have deemed them preposterous: dropping millions of leaflets and placing millions of phone calls urging Gazans to evacuate in advance of military strikes, observing pauses to allow for aid delivery and safe civilian passage, strategically deploying munitions in ways that reduce their maximum effectiveness so as to spare civilian life in Gaza. Yes, the fight is vicious and the IDF is fierce in battle. But Israel bears no sign of the indifference to civilian casualties that was a simple, accepted fact of American warfighting in World War II.

Despite terrible press throughout the world describing Israel’s war on Hamas, despite President Biden’s criticism, most Israelis agree that their safety depends on Hamas being eliminated. They are today a nation of 9 million, 75 percent are Jews, on a small piece of land 85 miles at its widest. They don’t have oceans to protect them. No Israeli can ignore the repeated history of Jews being successfully slaughtered. Their fear is justified, as is their rightful fury. Never again. The phrase has been repeated so often that it may have lost its sting. But not its meaning. Jews will never again simply submit to those wanting to eliminate them. Whatever it takes, those intent on seeing them dead will pay the price, and others will think a thousand times over whether they want to arouse the sleeping giant. Yes, giant. Not many men, not much land, but a giant. Cruel experience has taught that a Jewish image less than that invites disaster from those looking for trouble.

Jews in Israel sit on a keg of dynamite. What happened on October 7, 2023, happened on August 16, 1929, the day after Tisha B’Av. Muslims were told that it was their duty to take revenge. “Defend the Holy Places” became the battle cry. Mobs of armed Arab worshippers inflamed by anti-Jewish sermons fell upon Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall, destroying Jewish prayer books and notes placed between the stones of the Wall. Soon after, more than 1,000 Arabs launched attacks on Jews throughout Jerusalem. Forty-seven people were killed. This was followed by widespread attacks on Jews throughout Palestine.

It isn’t coincidence that Israel has one of the great military forces in the world. Some of this may be due to savvy, but it is foremost an illustration that necessity is the mother of invention. Israelis cannot ignore danger. Ten miles away, their neighbors’ offspring are taught from an early age that Jews are evil and must be eliminated. In Iran, they don’t mince words. Mobs chant “Death to Israel” as they conclude their prayers. They also chant “Death to America.” But even if the very worst were to happen, and we were attacked, we—unlike Israel—wouldn’t fear annihilation.

Even in times of relative calm, there have been unimaginable reminders that Israeli citizens are not safe. Their enemy doesn’t care about projecting a respectable image. Quite the opposite. As with the Nazis and ISIS, inducing terror is the centerpiece of their public-relations initiatives. No other nation has had its athletes murdered at the Olympics. Trampling on the Olympic ideal, a moment of peaceful competition, these murders were almost as unthinkable as an attack on a sacred temple or church filled with congregants who had placed themselves in God’s hands. Correction: Synagogues, churches, and mosques are favorite places for terrorists to attack. The more revered the site and the moment, the greater pleasure it gives terrorists. Hamas deliberately chose Yom Kippur, the holiest Jewish holiday, to initiate a war. Their hatred becomes clarified and total when expressed at the most sacred time and place. Choosing death at the finish line of the Boston Marathon was also no coincidence. Terrorists find the greatest bliss in killing when those they hate are joyful in the bosom of their finest moments. Israelis are reminded again and again that it is not paranoid to recognize this. They are not being oversensitive. Evil, the most perfect expression of hatred their enemies can conceive, is even worse than our imaginations can conjure. The task of combating it to preserve oneself, one’s family, one’s country, and one’s civilization combines self-interest and nobility. We did right in World War II, notwithstanding all the wrongs. And Israel is doing right right now.

Israel: Standing Alone Against Multifaceted Threats, Thanks to the Biden Administration

Israel is currently facing a multi-front war for its survival, with Qatar, Iran and Iran's proxies, which are encircling Israel, leading the charge. The gravity of this aggression cannot be overstated: not just for the existence of Israel, but also for that of the US, Europe and the West.

Israel's struggle for survival is not solely a regional conflict; it is a battle between civilization and those who think international law, human rights and the rules of war are a Western joke. Since the founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979, its rulers have been calling for "Death to America" – now also demanded in Dearborn, Michigan.

Which side is the US on? President Joe Biden's legacy, especially after surrendering Afghanistan to the Taliban in 2021, will be "Biden, friend of the Terrorists."

All the US would have to do to stop much of Iran's bellicosity is take out the bases of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) inside Iran -- so there is a direct cost to Iran, not just to its human shields.

Iran, on the way to having nuclear bombs, has provided support to terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and the Houthis, all of which have vowed to annihilate Israel. Hezbollah, based in Lebanon, boasts an arsenal of an estimated 150,000 missiles, many precision-guided, aimed at Israel's population. Meanwhile, Hamas has demonstrated its willingness to commit a genocide, launching more than 12,000 indiscriminate rocket attacks just since October at civilian targets in Israel, a country the size of New Jersey.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has outlined his vision for Israel's demise in his book, Palestine, a 416-page "guide to destroying Israel," and railing against "The Great Satan," the United States. This is not a hypothetical scenario; it is a meticulously planned campaign of annihilation.

While the Biden administration is threatening to withhold life-saving arms from Israel, the Biden administration just rewarded both of its chief attackers, Iran and Qatar.

The Biden administration just actually invited Hamas's main funder, Qatar, to operate a planned pier in Gaza to bring in humanitarian aid. All of it will certainly end up with Hamas, not Gazan civilians -- and, one can imagine what else Qatar will allow in, from heavy weapons to more terrorists.

A Hamas "victory," incentivizing aggression, cannot be rewarded; it must be stopped.

Pompeo Explains How Biden Put America and Israel in Iran's Crosshairs

"We've lost the bubble, we've lost deterrence." That's the assessment of former CIA director-turned-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo regarding the state of play in the Middle East as an Iranian attack on Israel is feared within 48 hours.

As the former senior member of the Trump cabinet explained in an interview with Martha MacCallum on Fox News Channel's "The Story" Friday afternoon, it didn't have to — and shouldn't — be this way.

"Iranians already attacked Israel on October 7," Pompeo noted of the nonexistent deterrence that saw Iran's proxy Hamas invade Israel and kill the most Jews in any single day since the Holocaust. That attack and the current threat against Israel is more proof of Biden's "continuation of a failed policy to protect Israel."

Worse than merely failing to deter Iranian attacks on Israel, Pompeo said President Biden and his administration's statements in recent days have given Tehran a green light to keep up its attacks.

When asked about the sobering threat against Israel on Friday, Biden's message to Iran was simply: "don't." But that's not a policy, Pompeo noted. "It's not even a deterrent."

The Biden administration's handling of the Middle East since October 7 only "evinces weakness and fearfulness," continued Pompeo. What's more, the White House and Biden administration have accepted the premise of Iran's threat, one that is incorrect.

"When the Iranians said 'stay out of this,' they haven't left us out," Pompeo corrected. What Biden's statements turn a blind eye to are the attacks by Iran-backed terrorists targeting U.S. service members on the Red Sea, in Iraq, and elsewhere with deadly consequences. Yet Biden's response to such attacks — not to mention the fact that American citizens are still being held by Iran-backed Hamas in Gaza — have not demonstrated strength and certainly have not provided a deterring effect.

Inexplicably, with his latest comments, Biden has given "a green light" to the Iranian regime that has made very clear it wants to destroy the United States, known as the "Great Satan" to Iran, as well as Israel.

04/12 Links Pt2: The Failed Practice of “Jew-Washing”; Silence is acquiescence; Palestinian membership at UN appears on hold; ISIS plot to poison Sea of Galilee

From Ian:

Andrew Pessin: The Failed Practice of “Jew-Washing”

The Jew-washer might naturally object here that it is not because those individuals are Jewish that he dislikes them. The proof is that there are many other Jews, the good Jews, that he likes perfectly well. It is because they are Zionists that he does not like them. It is not them personally—it is their ideas, their ideology, their behaviors in support of that ideology. His attitude and behavior reflect anti-Zionism, then, not antisemitism. And of course (many agree) it is acceptable to object to, be hostile toward, even to hate, an ideology, and that ideology’s concomitant behaviors.

But now, let us note, this response only succeeds if we endorse the Generality Assumption, i.e. if we assume that antisemitism requires hating all (or at least most) Jews. For if Jews come in many types—if there are many different ways in which individuals manifest or express or conceive their Jewishness—then it is perfectly conceivable that someone legitimately characterizable as an antisemite might not hate all or even most Jews.

The crucial question should not be whether he hates all or most Jews, in other words.

It is whether the people he hates, he hates for their Jewishness.

To see this, imagine officials of the medieval Church rejecting the charge of antisemitism. “We do not hate all Jews,” they might say, “only those Jews with a certain ideology and behavior. When Jewish people change these—and convert to Christianity—they are A-1 by us!”[11]

The flaw in this defense is obvious: the ideology and behavior these officials rejected was the very essence of those individuals’ Jewishness. They may not have hated the individual people who were Jews (once they converted), but they hated Jewishness. They then absurdly claim not to hate Jews because they do not hate those people who are no longer Jewish by the relevant criteria—namely people who reject Jewishness.

But now Zionism, too, is intimately or essentially related to many Jews’ self-conception and identity. Not every Jew’s, obviously—many Jews claim to derive their anti-Israelism from their Jewishness (as we shall discuss below), and often express their anti-Israel sentiments prefaced with “As a Jew…” But there are in fact many more Jews for whom their Zionism, their connection to and support for the State of Israel, grounded in three-plus millennia of Jewish connection to the Land of Israel, is an essential part of their Jewishness.[12] To hate them for their Zionism just is to hate them for their Jewishness. A person may have a lot of anti-Israel, A-1 Jews among his friends, then, but that itself does not exonerate him from hating the Jews he does hate for their Jewishness.

This account is coarse, clearly, and needs to be refined. As currently formulated, for example, it may turn many of the divisions within the Jewish people into antisemites against each other: if it counts as antisemitic to hate Zionist Jews for their Zionist Jewishness, it would also count as antisemitic to hate the “As a Jew”s who ground their anti-Israelism in their form of Jewishness. Similarly, when generalized this account may classify almost any objection to any group’s ideology or practices as a form of racism or bias. To hate members of ISIS for their ideology might have to count as a form of Islamophobia, since presumably their form of Islam is essential to their ideology and identity, and so on.

To prevent these serious consequences at least two things are needed:
(1) Articulation of just when and where certain beliefs and practices become essential to or part of individuals’ identities. This would yield a distinction between ideologies (toward which it is generally acceptable to be hostile) as opposed to people and their identities (toward whom it is generally not acceptable to be hostile).
(2) A close look at the specific contents of the beliefs and practices that compose people’s identities to see which, if any, it might be legitimate (i.e. not a form of “bias”) to oppose.

These are large projects beyond the scope of this essay, but a start may be made at least with respect to Jew-washing. We shall begin in the next part of this essay by getting a little clearer on just how Jew-washing works.

The Holocaust as Jew-Haters’ ‘Gotcha’

Curious, isn’t it? Leftists as a rule recognize the right to national self-determination. Jones, for instance, has written for Catalonia’s right to form a new nation, calling it an expression of that “basic democratic principle.” The tenet is enshrined in yellowing volumes of Lenin and honored by progressives with respect to countries around the world. Only when it comes to the Jews is national sovereignty regarded as uniquely wicked, to the point that a trendy word exists — anti-Zionist — to convey opposition to a state’s very existence. Leftists really should ask themselves the question I once did, setting myself on the path from Trotskyism to Zionism: Since our tradition supports the right to self-determination absolutely everywhere, why is Zionism considered shorthand for evil? The question answers itself.

Another way of considering the issue of Holocaust guilt, by the way, is to see it as a source of never-ending hostility against the Jews — for burdening non-Jews with guilt over what was done to the Jewish people. As Howard Jacobson writes in a brilliant essay, “When Will Jews Be Forgiven the Holocaust?” the answer to his titular question is “Never.” “Those we harm, we blame,” he observes, “mobilizing dislike and even hatred in order to justify, after the event, the harm we did. From which it must follow that those we harm the most—we blame the most.”

And while Germany is the most immediate bearer of this guilt, Jacobson suggests the feeling is universal. Jews prick the world’s conscience, and the world resents it. This includes the left, which nurtures itself on gratifying myths about its part in that seemingly Manichean era known as World War II. Our people were the bravest and best fighters against the Nazis, they say; how dare anyone say we have a problem with Jews?

But this legend has a disturbing way of falling apart. A glance at history reveals that those fighting under the red flag demanded that Jews reject “particularism,” including Zionism, and remain in Europe to fight for socialist revolution. Revolution did not come; the industrialized slaughter of the Jews did. Jews paid the price for the failure of the socialist vision.

This genocide should have prompted not only a deep rethink on the left, but a plumbing of its soul. A hint of it came after the war by Polish Jewish Trotskyist intellectual Isaac Deutscher, who wrote that “of course” he’d abandoned his anti-Zionism. “If, instead of arguing against Zionism in the 1920s and 1930s I had urged European Jews to go to Palestine,” he wrote, “I might have helped to save some of the lives that were later extinguished in Hitler’s gas chambers.”

But how many of Deutscher’s comrades, and their ideological descendants, have shown themselves willing to reflect on their program and actions in the early 20th century — about how their dogmatic insistence that Jews rely on universalism and the solidarity of their proletarian brothers ended with Auschwitz? So fourscore years after history established the legitimacy of Zionism, anti-Zionism is more popular than ever. The last genocide of the Jews is hurled against the Jews, in support of those pursuing a new extermination campaign against the Jews, by those whose tradition regarding the Jews isn’t as irreproachable as they want to believe.

“Get over it!” a member of my former party once yelled at our German comrades, who were seen as harboring neurotic, crippling shame over the Holocaust. So Jones would like Germany to get over it, and rejoin the war on the Jews, absolved and free at last of that nasty, pesky guilt.

Silence is acquiescence

And where were our elites? University professors celebrate murder. Women’s groups ignore rape. Newspapers publish cartoons that trade on anti-Semitic tropes. Our government will not condemn a specious allegation by a corrupt regime that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza, and not only supports a UN resolution that calls for a ceasefire without the return of the hostages as a precondition, but would even deny Israel the means to defend herself against an avowedly genocidal terrorist organization (if it could, but thankfully cannot).

The incinerated bodies of October 7 awoke the generational trauma of the ovens of the Holocaust; now rampant anti-Semitism here awakes memories its precursor, Germany in the 1930s. Prospects of a government-sponsored genocide in Canada remain remote. But public expression of Jew-hatred has become normalized in six short months. Escalation of the violence we have already seen seems likely. Many of our Jewish neighbours are terrified, and so should we be too.

Have you ever wondered what you would have done in Germany in the 1930s? Would you have stood against the gathering storm? Would you have fought to save the sophisticated, civilized society that Germany was? Would you have hidden Jews or helped them escape? Or would you have stayed silent and inactive, distanced yourself, looked the other way, avoided your Jewish friends out of fear? Or worse, would you have reported them to the Gestapo?

Well, now you know.

If you are a bystander now, then you would have been then too.

If you are (God forbid) one of those parroting the new anti-Semitic tropes, chanting “from the river to the sea,” accusing Israel of genocide, or ripping down posters of the hostages, then you might have been one of those betraying Jewish neighbours to the Gestapo.

We are now called upon to make good on the pledge the world made after the Holocaust: never again. Never again is now. Not just for the sake of our Jewish neighbours, although that is reason enough. But for the sake of our own society.

We cannot sit this out. If we remain silent, if we do not stand up to this tsunami of hate here in Canada, then haters are exactly what we will become. To be silent is to acquiesce; to remain neutral is to become complicit in a vile refashioning of our society.

Perhaps, once Israel achieves its aims in Gaza, the tsunami will recede and the acts of hate will decrease. But a cancer of hatred has metastasized within our body politic. If we do not act now to cut it out, it will spread further, and one day we will look back and wish we had acted, because those few decent people left will not recognize what we will have become.

04/12 Links Pt1: Israel expects Iranian attack within 48hrs; Hamas is at war with the Jews and Judaism; Iran and Hezbollah responsible for AMIA and Israel embassy bombings

From Ian:

UK Statistics Authority urged to review fabricated Gaza casualty figures

The UK Statistics Authority has been urged to review the Palestinian Casualty figures in the Gaza War after several analyses indicated that the figures have been fabricated.

UKLFI Charitable Trust (“UKLFI CT”) has written to Sir Robert Chote, Chair of the UK Statistics Authority, inviting it to assess the quality of the Palestinian casualty statistics. These statistics are produced by the Hamas controlled Ministry of Health, and then circulated by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) as well as other UN bodies.

Several analyses show that the Hamas produced figures have been fabricated, regarding both the totals and the breakdowns into men, women and children.[1] UKLFI CT is concerned that these unreliable statistics are invoked and relied upon to support allegations of serious violations of international humanitarian law and genocide by Israel.

Jonathan Turner, chief executive of UKLFI commented: “Credence given to these allegations is fuelling antisemitism on a major scale and is also liable to lead to incorrect decisions by public authorities on important issues.”

The Palestinian statistics are also deployed in a way that implies wrongly that all the Palestinian Arabs killed were civilians, as there is no reference to the number of Palestinian Arab combatants killed. The ratio of civilians to combatants killed is particularly relevant when assessing the proportionality of Israeli military actions and hence whether they are likely to have violated international humanitarian law.

The Israel Defence Forces estimated that 13,000 Palestinian Arab combatants had been killed by the end of February 2024. This indicates a ratio of civilian to combatant deaths of less than 1.5:1, even if the apparently fabricated total figures produced by the Gaza Health Ministry are used. This ratio is much lower than the usual ratio of civilian to combatant casualties in urban warfare, as indicated by a Report by the UN Secretary General which found that in urban armed conflicts worldwide in 2021, 89% of the casualties were civilians.

Furthermore, the Gaza Ministry of Health statistics do not distinguish the many Palestinians killed by Palestinian munitions (such as their own rockets that fall short in the Gaza Strip, as well as ground fire and explosive devices). These are included in the total deaths that are attributed to Israel.

FDD: Hamas-Run Gaza Health Ministry Admits to Flaws in Casualty Data

The Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health said on April 6 that it had “incomplete data” for 11,371 of the 33,091 Palestinian fatalities it claims to have documented. In a statistical report, the ministry notes that it considers an individual record to be incomplete if it is missing any of the following key data points: identity number, full name, date of birth, or date of death. The health ministry also released a report on April 3 that acknowledged the presence of incomplete data but did not define what it meant by “incomplete.” In that earlier report, the ministry acknowledged the incompleteness of 12,263 records. It is unclear why, after just three more days, the number fell to 11,371 — a decrease of more than 900 records.

Prior to its admissions of incomplete data, the health ministry asserted that the information in more than 15,000 fatality records had stemmed from “reliable media sources.” However, the ministry never identified the sources in question and Gaza has no independent media.

Hamas is at war with the Jews and Judaism

There are only two things you need to know to understand what is happening in the Middle East, and they both appear in the 1988 Hamas Charter.

First, Hamas is fighting for Islam and its war against Israel is a religious war. The charter states: “It is necessary to instill in the minds of the Muslim generations that the Palestinian problem is a religious problem and should be dealt with on this basis.”

Hamas asserts Islam’s claim to the territory of the Land of Israel; not the claim of any political organization, the Palestinians or anything else. “The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgement Day,” the charter states.

“This,” Hamas explains, “is the law governing the land of Palestine in the Islamic Sharia (law) and the same goes for any land the Muslims have conquered by force, because during the times of (Islamic) conquests, the Muslims consecrated these lands to Muslim generations till the Day of Judgement.”

Hamas also clearly states that its war for Islam is a war against Judaism: “Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious.”

In the eyes of Hamas, Jews are permitted to live only under Islamic oppression. This is what Hamas means when it says that it “strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine, for under the wing of Islam followers of all religions can coexist in security and safety where their lives, possessions and rights are concerned. In the absence of Islam, strife will be rife, oppression spreads, evil prevails and schisms and wars will break out.”

Under Islamic law, that “coexistence” is a system of religious apartheid in which all minorities are subjugated by the Muslim majority.

Thus, Hamas has an essential problem with Zionism: Zionism is the demand, the insistence, that Jews will not live under anyone. It is the insistence on Jewish independence and the maintenance of Jewish power to defend that independence.

Iran and Hezbollah responsible for AMIA and Israel embassy bombings, Argentina says

Iran and Hezbollah committed crimes against humanity and are responsible for the 1994 Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) and the 1992 Israeli embassy bombings, the Federal Court of Criminal Cassation said on Thursday in a ruling on an appeal of a 2019 decision on cases of corruption and cover-ups by law enforcement and intelligence officials.

The court said that the AMIA bombing "was organized, planned, financed and executed under the direction of the authorities of the Islamic State of Iran, within the framework of Islamic jihad, and with the main intervention of the political and military organization Hezbollah."

High-level Iranian officials and members of the diplomatic mission in Argentina were involved in the ordering of boths attacks, which according to the court fall under the Rome Statute as crimes against humanity for being widespread or systematic attacks against a civilian population.

The court reminded that Former Iranian Intelligence Minister Ali Fallahian, former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander Mohsen Rezaee, former IRGC Quds Force commander Ahmad Vadidi, former cultural affairs officer at the Iranian embassy in Argentina Moshen Rabbani, former diplomatic secretary Ahnmad Reza Ashgari, and alleged Hezbollah operatives Hussein Mounir Mouzannar, Salman Raouf Salman, and Farouk Abdul Hay Omairi have standing Interpol arrest warrants for suspected involvement in the bombing.

The court said that Former Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati former Iranian ambassador Hadi Soleimpenpour were also suspected of involvement but had immunity from the issuance Interpol warrants because they hold public office, and additional suspects fromer Hezbollah foreign intelligence chief Imad Fayez Moughnieh, Former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi, and alleged Hezbollah operative Alí Hussein Abdallah are dead.

The court said that Iran and its proxy Hezbollah were motivated by Islamic jihad against the west and its democratic values, and suggested possible political motivations to punish Argentina for not trading agreed upon materials and technology that could be used in its nuclear program.

As crimes against humanity, double jeopardy did not apply in the petition filed by friends and families of the victims of the attacks, AMIA, the Justice Ministry, and police officers who were wrongly detained by the suspects who were falsely implicated by the officials involved in the cover-up.

Former AMIA investigator Judge Juan Jose Galeano, former State Intelligence Secretariat director (SIDE) Hugo Alfredo Anzorreguy, SIDE deputy director Juan Carlos Anchezar, Department for the Protection of Constitutional Order (DPOC) Police chief Carlos Antonio Castaneda were found to have tampered with evidence and covered up the true culprits of the crime. Galeano was given four years prison, Anzorreguy 4 years and 6 months, and Anchezar and Castaneda three years prison.

Golf clubs with Hebrew names are becoming VERY hot this week

Golf aficionados are excited over a new golf club that they only became aware of this week - with a Hebrew name.

From GolfWeek:

Bryson DeChambeau, who opened with a 7-under 65 in the first round of the Masters at Augusta National Golf Club, is playing with a custom set of single-length irons made by little-known clubmaker Avoda that are made by 3-D printing and weren’t approved by the USGA until Monday. With no hesitation, DeChambeau inserted them in the bag at the Masters.

Avoda is a Hebrew word with multiple meanings, one of which is precision. According to Avoda’s website, the company makes two different types of irons, one-length irons like the clubs DeChambeau played when he was sponsored by Cobra, and combo-length irons.

Well, "avoda" does not mean precision - it means labor, or work - but the clubs have a Hebrew word printed on them, "diyuk/דיוק," which does mean "precision."

You can even buy their caps with the Hebrew word:

I don't have too much information on Avoda Golf. .Its owner, Tom Bailey, has previously worked alongside DeChambeau’s coach, Mike Schy. He started this company to help pay for his own golf habit. DeChambeau helped design the club, Bailey's brother turned it into a CAD drawing to have it custom 3-D printed, and the USGA only approved the club for use this week.

Apparently, DeChambeau has played better this week than he has in years.

I have no idea if Bailey is Jewish or how he came up with the names.

But it is sort of cool to see Hebrew on golf clubs.

(h/t Dan)

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!

Egyptian media antisemitism just keeps on coming

Youm7 is the most popular news site in Egypt, with 60 million views a month.

It has a general interest article about the Seven Most Dangerous Books Ever Written.

One of them is the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, which they highly recommend:

This is classified as one of the most dangerous books that appeared in world history. It is the book The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, or the Jewish Danger to the World, as it has caused a global uproar in the West since the appearance of the Russian edition in 1905. No one can fully appreciate it except by patiently studying the entire Protocols, word for word. He must gain insight, be an expert in the currents of history and the norms of society, and be familiar with the events of Jewish and world history, especially the current events and the Jewish fingers behind them, and then be an expert in knowing historical trends and human nature. This is what the writer did in this book, as he revealed the infernal Jewish conspiracy that aims to. foment corruption and disintegration of the world to subject it all to the benefit of the Jews and their control to the exclusion of all other human beings.

Over at El Balad, Major General Muhammad Al-Ghobari discusses current events on a TV show, and mentions that "The Jews are always working to distort religious beliefs and break the established beliefs in countries hostile to them, "

Which could have come out of the Protocols, come to think of it.

At the similarly named El Balad News, Karima Abu Al-Enein helpfully gives a primer on "Hasbara:"

I've seen this term "Hasbara" in Hebrew a lot, so I searched for its meaning and found that it means the doctrine of making lies. I was not surprised by its meaning in Hebrew, as everything that is Hebrew is known for its skill in lying, distortion, denial, and incitement, and history is the best witness to that. This term existed in Zionist thought before the declaration of their ill-fated state in 1948.

Israel's peace partner, Again and again. And not a bit of pushback against Egyptian antisemitism within or without Egypt.

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!

Hezbollah mouthpiece Al Madayeen reports:

Another win for the BDS movement has been recorded after Samsung Next, the innovation sector of the Korean tech giant, Samsung, announced shutting down its operations in "Tel Aviv", occupied Palestine.

Samsung Next, which has invested in some 70 Israeli start-ups so far, is the latest to join the list of companies that have left the Israeli tech sector, accounting for 50% of exports. According to the BDS movement, in 2023, investment in Israeli tech firms dropped by 56% as opposed to that in 2022.

Here is what BDS doesn't want you to know:

Samsung will continue investing in Israeli companies, just from overseas. As their email to employees announcing the decision says,

Israel remains an attractive market for Samsung Next, and the existing relationships with partners and portfolio companies will remain unchanged. ...Although our physical presence in Israel will cease, we remain committed to investing in the region and encouraging referrals from builders and founders.

Samsung Next has no presence in any other countries besides the US and South Korea, so this appears to be a consolidation.

Here's what else BDS doesn't want you to know: The lower investment in tech firms in 2023 was a worldwide phenomenon, not just for Israel.

And yet another thing the BDS movement doesn't want you to know: Since October 7, Israel's high tech sector has still gotten lots of new business. As Startup Nation General reports:

Private investment rounds: There were 220 private investment rounds announced since October 7th, with an estimated $3.1 billion raised.
M&As: The sum of M&As since October 7th is $3.7 billion. There were two very large M&A deals finalized with total acquisition amounts nearing $1 billion. Additionally, nine acquisition deals of over $100 million were finalized, six of which were in the security technology sector.
New Funds: Since October 7th, over 20 new funds have been established, raising a total of $1.7 billion.

Reports of the death of Israel's tech economy are highly exaggerated.

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!

Hamas admitting Haniyeh's sons were killed is part of their cognitive war

Hamas finally admitted, for the first time since October, that adult males linked to the group have died in Gaza.

Up until now, Hamas has only spoken about dead women, children, aid workers and journalists. Since the first days of the war, even though Israel has killed many major Hamas figures, the terror group has remained silent about them. (They admit those killed in Lebanon.)

But with the killing of three of Ismail Haniyeh's sons this week, now Hamas is publicizing the deaths.

The reason is the same as why Hamas is silent about the thousands of terrorists Israel has killed. Because from the beginning, Hamas has waged a cognitive war, one that has been as wildly successful as its kinetic war has been a failure.

The media, NGOs and international politicians never understood this war, and for the most part they have been willing pawns - if not combatants - for Hamas.

For example, Hamas announces over 13,000 children killed. It is a lie. UNICEF repeats the lie, adding as an aside "according to Gaza authorities." The media then repeats it, adding "according to UNICEF." Then other media and politicians and NGOs repeat it in turn, without citing a source. In this way a lie becomes accepted as the truth and Hamas wins a huge victory in world public opinion.

If Israel is only killing civilians, and no terrorists, it must be a supremely immoral war.

So what is different about Haniyeh's sons?

First of all, Hamas is denying that Haniyeh's sons are members of the Al Qassam Brigades. They are treating them like innocent civilians themselves. That's their story to the international community..

But Hamas saw in this incident an opportunity to shore up its support among Palestinians who are upset at Hamas leadership living in luxury in Doha and Turkey. They are now publishing articles and posting videos about how Haniyeh's sons remaining in Gaza is proof of Palestinian steadfastness in their attachment to the land and Haniyeh's willingness to sacrifice for the cause.

Clearly, Hamas doesn't want the world to know about the thousands of Gazans desperate to leave. And when Hamas sends the head of the health ministry to Egypt, it is to go on TV and spread more lies about Israel.

Hamas media are also emphasizing Haniyeh's apparent stoicism upon hearing the news, which they say is meant to deny evil Zionist satisfaction that they caused him pain.

Finally, Hamas later claimed that the same airstrike also killed four (or more) of Haniyeh's grandchildren. This seems unlikely considering the size of the car they were in.

The media has shown an eagerness to accept everything Hamas says at face value. Hamas knew this going into the war - there is an unstated rule that anything Israelis say are to be treated as probable lies so Hamas accusations get a pass from news organizations.

Remember that October 7's success, from Hamas' perspective, was by fooling Israel into thinking that they cared about the lives and welfare of the people under their control, making Israel think that it was in Hamas' interest to keep things calm. Hamas deception and cynicism about caring about their own people is what started this war.

News organizations have under-reported about Hamas' cognitive war. Because, all too often, they are willing participants.

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I don't often see Al Jazeera in my surveys of Arab media antisemitism. Usually they are careful to only say they are against Zionists, not Jews. But a new op-ed, written by Egyptian writer and editor Anwar Al-Hawary, lets the mask slip.

The article surveys the history of Zionism and justifies European antisemitism, distinguishing it from normal European xenophobia.

He says that persecution of Jews by Europeans in the 19th century was nothing special - European colonialists oppressed lots of people around the world.

But the difference between Jews and non-Jews - among the peoples who were subjected to European violence in the nineteenth century - was not in the persecution itself, nor its type, nor its size, nor its extent. The difference was in a fundamental idea: The Jews are the only people who have experience, coexistence, and mixing with Europe, for several centuries, Jews and Europe were not strangers to each other from across borders. This coexistence gave the Jews sophistication in dealing with Europe. The Jews excelled in making money, just as they excelled in science, the arts, philosophy, music, and literature. They also excelled in the skill of social organization. They also excelled in the game of political communication, exerting pressure, influencing, and gravitating towards power, wealth, and influence.

Even in light of persecution, the Jews were an influential and powerful force that provoked envy, hatred, and provocation. The strength of the Jews was one of the reasons for the violence directed against them, while the weakness of other peoples was the motivation behind Europe’s audacity to conquer the world.

The Jews have always been a force of danger and influence everywhere they have a presence, even when they were without a state, even when they were subjected to persecution from the middle of the nineteenth century in Tsarist Russia, to approximately the middle of the twentieth century in Nazi Germany. In these hundred years, the Jews had an ability that was not available to any people other than them, the ability to deal with several empires, and even to toy with them, and to play them against each other. They played with the money they had and the experience in managing it, they played with the superior personalities they had, they played with the connections and instinct they had for espionage, conspiracy, and plotting.

The last hundred years witnessed the development of the influence of the Jews within America, and then their influence on its policy in the Middle East. America was in many ways trying to balance between the Jews and the Arabs, but it always failed under the influence of the Jews’ control over the financial circles, the press, and the media, and their financing of the presidential and congressional elections, and it will continue. This situation is until the Americans discover what the British have already discovered: the idea of Israel is a lost cause.

I bet that Al Jazeera and Al-Hawary doesn't even consider it to be antisemitic at all. They would say that they are complimenting the Jews on their resourcefulness and political savvy. But this is fundamentally what the Protocols of the Elders of Zion says: that Jews collude to gain power at the expense of everyone else.

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04/11 Links Pt2: Douglas Murray: 'One truth can puncture a thousand lies'; America’s elite universities failing Jewish students; Amnesty is now a morally bankrupt, worthless sham

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: 'One truth can puncture a thousand lies'

Author and journalist Douglas Murray, who received an award of appreciation from the president of Israel and the Minister of Diaspora Affairs on Wednesday, visited the Arutz Sheva - Israel National News studio in Jerusalem to discuss the event.

“I was deeply moved and honored. I don't do it for awards or anything. It was enormously moving to be honored for my work. I don't see myself as a PR soldier, just as a writer and as a journalist. I think it's very important to see things with your own eyes, and that's always been my policy as a writer. That's all I've tried to do. I guessed early on that the world would spend very little time concentrating on the massacre. The next day people were celebrating the massacre in Times Square in New York. I thought right then that I've got to get there as soon as I can because I thought they'll move on to Israel's response.”

He discussed how that has happened in the USA: “I think Biden has been really supportive, even when he has said things that are critical. He has continued arms supplies, for instance. As the IDF has been more and more successful in ridding Gaza of Hamas, the narrative has changed.”

Although advocacy is difficult, he doesn’t see himself quitting. “I think I would do what I do even if I didn't think I was making a difference, but as it happens, I think I am. My belief has always been that one truth can puncture a thousand lies. In the age of social media, that theory is being put to the test in real-time. A lot of the media has an agenda now. That's their right. I'd like Israel to win this conflict, some of them would like Hamas to win, some of them would just like Israel to lose.”

Murray denounces the focus on Israel. “None of these newspapers covered the far greater death toll that has been going on for the last decade in Yemen and Syria. Why are they so obsessed with this one? It's their opportunity to hold on to something that gives a feeling of crisis, but they have arsonist and firefighter reversed here. Many may talk about the history of the conflict, but that only proves it more.”

He notes other oddities about the war: “It's a very uncommon situation for one side to be fighting and also nourishing their opponents. It's an extraordinary testament to this country, but it's highly unusual. I can think of no other conflicts that I've covered or seen or read about in which that's the case. It's also an uncommon situation in war for one side to not only want the death of its enemies but also wish that its enemies should kill its own people. Israel must both fight this enemy and supply them. There's no doubting the appalling suffering of many of the citizens in Gaza, but that's what happens if you start a war.”

Melanie Phillips: The surreal echo chamber of lies

It is the people of Israel, not just Netanyahu, who are demanding that the IDF defeat Hamas. It is the people of Israel, not just Netanyahu, to whom the American proposal for the Palestinian Authority to run post-war Gaza is unthinkable. Because it’s the people of Israel who have now seen, in the most horrific way possible, that there is no Palestinian Arab entity that can be trusted not to slaughter them again and again.

The West’s second major error is failing to realize that this is not just Israel against Hamas or Iran. Israel is on the front line of the war being waged by the Islamic world against the West.

The West doesn’t get this because it doesn’t understand Islam. Nor, astonishing as this may seem, do the Israelis. Their failure to grasp Hamas’s true intentions lies in their failure to understand the implacable nature of Islamic Jew-hatred.

In a notable interview in Israel Hayom, Professor Moshe Sharon, an adviser on Arab affairs to several Israeli governments, observed that Islam has abhorred the Jews from the time of Islam’s creation, an animosity that is “a continuing sentiment stretching across time from that period until the ‘end of days.’” Islam’s overall objective, he said, is to take over the world. It is enjoying a considerable degree of success in pursuing this goal—in Europe, Canada and America.

None of these countries, however, is prepared even to admit this, let alone do anything about it.

With the IDF pulling most of its troops out of Gaza, commentators both inside and outside Israel are claiming that the Rafah offensive has been abandoned, the war is effectively over and Israel has lost. Netanyahu and top military brass insist that, on the contrary, Rafah will indeed be taken and the war will be won.

Israelis are braced for whatever is to come. Despite the Greek chorus of doom from the Israeli media and despite the despicable manipulation of some of the desperate families of hostages by activists determined to bring Netanyahu down at the expense of Israel losing the war, the spirit of the vast majority of Israelis remains heroically unbowed.

Israel will survive. At its current rate, the West will not.

But in these terrible times, what is very hard indeed for Jews to take is the devastating feeling of being so mercilessly abandoned by a world that has become a surreal echo chamber of murderous lies.

America’s elite universities failing Jewish students, per ADL report

America’s elite universities are failing to address Jew-hatred on campus, according to a new tracker released by the Anti-Defamation League on Thursday.

The ADL’s Campus Antisemitism Report Card awarded nine of America’s 10 top-ranked universities an “F” or “D” grade, including failing marks for Harvard University, Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Duke University was the lone top-10 school to earn a respectable “B” for “better than most.”

Many of America’s best universities are not doing enough for their Jewish students, said Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and national president of the ADL.

“Every campus should get an ‘A.’ That’s not grade inflation. That’s the minimum that every group on every campus expects,” Greenblatt stated. “Like all students, Jewish students deserve to feel safe and supported on campus. They deserve a learning environment free from antisemitism and hate, but that hasn’t been the experience with antisemitism running rampant on campus since even before Oct. 7.”

The ADL selected the 85 public and private schools to rank both from Hillel International’s list of campuses with the highest percentages of Jewish students and from the top-ranked schools in U.S. News & World Report.

It then assessed the universities by reviewing administrative policies on antisemitism; cataloging antisemitic and anti-Zionist activity; and measuring the extent to which they foster Jewish life on campus.

The nonprofit then surveyed 160 Jewish college students about how they would weigh criteria, including whether or not the college offered kosher dining options or had taken an official position against the BDS movement to boycott Israel. The ADL gave the colleges a chance to respond both pre- and post-assessment.

Only two of the 85 schools graded got an “A”: Waltham, Mass.-based Brandeis University and Elon University, in North Carolina. A dozen schools received an “F.”

Several university leaders begin cracking down on anti-Israel disruptions on campus

Six months after anti-Israel activity began to dominate many college campuses in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks — with minimal action taken by college presidents to quell rising levels of antisemitism — administrators at schools such as Pomona, Columbia and Vanderbilt have taken a harder line in recent weeks. As a result, Jewish leaders are wondering whether these three schools’ tougher responses could represent the leading edge of a trend that takes root across the country.

Jacob Baime, CEO of the Israel on Campus Coalition, told Jewish Insider that other universities will only take similar action if they are pressured to do so. “The suspension of anti-Israel activists at schools like Vanderbilt University is a step in the right direction in addressing the campus climate,” Baime said.

In a statement to Pomona College on Friday, the school’s president, Gabrielle Starr, warned that “any participants in today’s events… who turn out to be Pomona students, are subject to immediate suspension. Students from the other Claremont Colleges will be banned from Pomona’s campus and subject to discipline on their own campuses.”

“I don’t see this as a victory and I don’t know if it’s going to change anything in the future,” Ayelet Kleinerman, a fourth-year Pomona student from Israel who founded the group Haverim Claremont in 2022, told JI. “There is a lot of backlash here from students, faculty and community members on the outside,” she continued. “So we will have to wait and see how things unfold, but when people are arrested I don’t see it as a victory — it’s sad that we got to a situation in the first place where police needed to be called. We shouldn’t have gotten to this in the first place.”

Kleinerman, who started Haverim as a way for Jewish and non-Jewish students to connect and learn about antisemitism — something she felt was missing from on-campus groups in the past — said the climate on campus for Jewish students since Oct. 7 “has been hard and intimidating, [filled] with a lot of [anti-Israel] protests.”

For months, Jewish students and alumni from the Claremont Consortium— Pomona College, Scripps College, Claremont McKenna College, Harvey Mudd College, and Pitzer College (known as the 5Cs), have urged administrators to take action in response to what they called in a Nov. 6 email “harassment of Jewish Students at Pomona College.”

“We are particularly alarmed by the administration’s acquiescence in the face of gross violations of College policy and applicable law,” the letter, signed by a group of 5C alumni said, pointing to several incidents at Pomona, including a demonstration on Oct. 20 when “Claremont Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace held a rally at Pomona’s Smith Campus Center with several hundred attendees. At that rally, SJP and JVP members assembled, at the Smith Campus Center (a shared space intended for use by all College students), a display honoring the Hamas terrorists responsible for the genocidal attacks of October 7.”

There was news in Israel today:

Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, will normalize ties with Israel in exchange for Jerusalem’s approval of its request to join the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), following three months of discreet negotiations between the two countries and the organization, Ynet learned on Thursday.

"I am pleased to announce the Council has officially agreed to the clear and explicit early conditions according to which Indonesia must establish diplomatic relations with all OECD member countries before any decision is made to admit it to the OECD,” OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann wrote in a letter issued two weeks ago to Foreign Minister Israel Katz and approves by Indonesia beforehand.

Most Indonesian media ignored the story, but an Indonesian business publication seemed to welcome it, calling it "exciting:"

Membership in the OECD is believed to have a positive influence on the Indonesian economy because it can increase investment from OECD countries by up to 0.37% and increase GDP by up to 0.94%. For this reason, Indonesia prefers not to be included in the BRICS group of countries pioneered by China. BRICS is an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (South Africa).

But then it said that the country's foreign ministry denied the whole thing:

Meanwhile, the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs dismissed the issue that Indonesia would normalize diplomatic relations with Israel so that it could be accepted as an OECD member. "I emphasize that up to now, there are no plans to open diplomatic relations with Israel, especially in the midst of the current situation of Israeli atrocities in Gaza," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Lalu Muhamad Iqbal in his statement on Thursday evening. He emphasized that Indonesia's position has not changed and remains firmly in support of Palestinian independence within the framework of a two-state solution. "Indonesia will always be consistent and be at the forefront of defending the rights of the Palestinian people," he said. Regarding Indonesia's membership in the OECD, Iqbal said that the process would take quite a long time.

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04/11 Links Pt1: New Video showing Hamas capturing IDF women ‘worse than what we imagined’; Israel to normalise relations with Indonesia; The Stunning Hypocrisy of Blinken and Power

From Ian:

New video showing Hamas capturing IDF women ‘worse than what we imagined’

Newly emerged video shot by Hamas terrorists showing the capture of female Israeli soldiers on the Gaza border has been described as “hard to watch” by Israeli media.

In the video, parts of which have not been shared with the public, Hamas terrorists are initially seen with five female IDF spotters, with two more later added.

“We will exchange you for our people,” the terrorists say.

Another terrorist forces one of the soldiers to show him how to dial a Gaza number from her cell phone. The terrorists later put the soldiers into stolen Israel Defense Forces vehicles for transport to Gaza.

Shira Albag, the mother of the kidnapped soldier Liri Albag, 19, watched it several weeks ago.

“I watched the video. They showed it to us three weeks ago. The IDF spokesman called us and showed us a video from the day of the kidnapping, something we had not seen and did not know about.

“We all only imagined what happened to the girls on Oct. 7, and unfortunately this video proved to us that it was even worse than we imagined,” she said.

According to a recent report by the Times, a number of new female IDF recruits have refused to serve as observer soldiers out of fear that “what happened to them could happen to me,” as one young Israeli recruit, Romi Fisher, told the Times.

At least 15 female soldiers were killed at Gaza border army bases on October 7 with roughly six others taken as hostages by Hamas, including Liri, who was reportedly working her third shift as an observer soldier when she was kidnapped.

Israel to normalise relations with Indonesia

Israel is set to normalise relations with Indonesia, the largest Muslim-majority country in the world, Ynet reported on Thursday.

The move comes after three months of secret talks between Jerusalem and Jakarta. In exchange for establishing diplomatic ties with the Jewish state, Jerusalem will reportedly lift its opposition to Indonesia becoming the 39th member of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann sent a letter to Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz around two weeks ago, with Jakarta approving the wording.

“I am happy to announce that the Council has officially agreed to the early, clear and explicit condition that Indonesia maintain diplomatic relations with all members of the organisation before any decision to accept [it in] the OECD,” the letter states.

“Moreover, any future decision to accept Indonesia as a member of the organisation will require unanimous agreement among all the members, including Israel. I am convinced that this provides you with security on this important point,” the letter continues.

In a reply letter that Katz sent on Wednesday night and which was seen by Ynet, the minister wrote that “I share your expectation that this process will be a change for Indonesia, as I expect a positive change in its policy towards Israel, and in particular a renunciation of the discriminatory policy towards Israel, towards the establishment of full diplomatic relations between the parties.”

Indonesia has spoken out against Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza and supported South Africa’s lawsuit at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide. However, on Tuesday an Indonesian aircraft participated in an airdrop of humanitarian aid into Gaza, marking the first time that an Indonesian aircraft has flown through Israeli airspace.

Indonesia was one of the Muslim-majority countries that Jerusalem was working to add to the Abraham Accords in the months before the Hamas-led invasion of October 7.

Stephen Pollard: How Israel secured diplomatic relations with Indonesia

The Jewish Insider report was clearly correct. But the principal reason for Indonesia’s change of heart since 2020 is based almost entirely on Indonesia’s self-interest – and is far more prosaic than the era-changing vision of the Abraham Accords and. Indonesia is set to begin formal diplomatic relations with Israel because of one acronym: OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development).

Indonesia has been trying to join the OECD for the past few years but in recent months, as its progress towards membership has speeded up, an obstacle emerged. New members require the approval of all 38 existing members – one of which is Israel.

Israel appears to have used this requirement to secure something of a diplomatic triumph. It has been reported that OECD secretary general Mathias Cormann had initially made clear to Israel that it expected it "not to object" to Indonesia’s application to join, but Israel refused – a stance hardened by Indonesia’s criticism of the Gaza war and its moves against Israel at the ICJ in The Hague.

Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz is said in response to the OECD to have demanded that Indonesia show a “gesture of goodwill”. Fearing that the long-planned membership of Indonesia would be blocked by Israel, the OECD secretary general agreed to insist that diplomatic relations were established.

This was not quite the demand it might seem, however, as negotiations towards such an agreement had been proceeding for some months, with both sides anticipating a successful outcome before October 7 derailed everything.

Reports suggest that this normalisation of relations would have been agreed last autumn. A Memorandum of Understanding which is said to have included a commitment towards Indonesia joining the Abraham Accords process was signed in September.

But whilst this new diplomatic process has come as a surprise to many, there have been long been economic ties. The exact amount of trade is impossible to quantify as much of it is via third countries, but it is estimated by one analyst as “the high end of hundreds of millions of dollars a year”, most of which is said to be Indonesian agri-tech exports - and there has been an Israel-Indonesia Chamber of Commerce in Tel Aviv since 2009.

Teen's Room Proves Rich Archaeological Trove During Passover Cleaning (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Efrat, April 14 - A local mother alerted the Israel Antiquities Authority today upon discovering what could only be ancient treasures under the detritus and dust in her adolescent son's domicile, the Jerusalem Post reported today.

Hannah Cohen, 42, contacted the IAA shortly after beginning the task of cleaning Adir Cohen's room in advance of the Passover holiday, which begins Monday evening next week. "The moment I saw the amount of dust accumulated on the furniture and some of the other stuff in the room, I knew I had to call in some experts. I didn't want to disturb anything of value," she told the Post.

Cohen disclosed that she repeatedly admonished Adir to clean his room over the last year. "Might as well have been asking Palestinian terrorists not to rape and murder," she lamented with a shake of the head.

Antiquities Authority representatives declined to say whether any of the objects from the bedroom qualify as artifacts. "It is certainly too early to announce anything," cautioned IAA spokesman T. Peshesray. "We do not wish to make any premature pronouncements, not least because it would invite scavengers and unwelcome guests unlikely to show proper care and reverence for the site. We do not want them poking around where other finds might still await discovery. Also, Mrs. Cohen will chew their ears off, and not just about leaving the room a mess. So it's for everyone's benefit that we make our investigations first, and, only once we are certain of the provenance of various artifacts, notify that public whether we have found anything of note."

In a separate phone call, Hannah Cohen described the process that led her to contact the IAA. "I wasn't prepared for the bardak I found," she recalled, using a word for turmoil, adopted into informal Hebrew from Russian, that literally translates as "whorehouse on fire." "The food wrappers and dirty dishes were bad enough. But do you know the last time he changed his bedsheets? Probably sometime during the Mameluk era (1260-1516). I might have to throw them out."

"Don't even get me started on the laundry and dirt," she continued, clearly not in need of someone to get her started. "It was the dirt and dust that made me think of calling the Antiquities Authority in the first place. I know this place was clean a year ago, but you wouldn't know it from looking at it now. I swear, that boy and his stuff attract dirt at a hundred times the normal dust accumulation rate. The Ark of the Covenant could be under there somewhere, if it weren't in some Nevada warehouse."

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Prominent Egyptian Al Azhar preacher says Jews will be "slaughtered like cows."

Remember the "Red Cow" that Arab media claimed would be slaughtered on Eid al Adha this week ahead of the destruction of Al Aqsa mosque?

After the date came and went with nothing happening, the same media went silent. I cannot find one that says that their confident predictions didn't pan out, just as the hundreds of previous predictions of the imminent destruction of Al Aqsa over the past century have all been false.

But one story on Tuesday ahead of the alleged disaster that never happened is noteworthy.

Dr. Muhammad Ali is an Islamic preacher at Egypt's prestigious Al Azhar. He had hundreds of thousands of followers on social media and has been interviewed countless times on Egyptian TV.

He was interviewed by Cairo24 about the Red Cow story, and his response was to curse all Jews.

The Jews distorted the Torah, and among what was written by their hands was a lot of talk about the Battle of Armageddon and the Red Cow. ... God Almighty says: “Woe to those who write the book with their own hands and then say, ‘This is from God.’ "

The Prophet, may God’s prayers and peace be upon him, said: “Woe to the valley in Hell, into which the infidel will fall forty falls before he reaches its bottom.” Ibn Abbas said, “So woe to them”: the torment is upon them... and the torment is coming upon them inevitably according to the text of the Book of God and the Sunnah of His Messenger, may God’s prayers and peace be upon him, the day will come that the stone and tree will speak and say: 'O Muslim, O servant of God, this is a Jew behind me, so come and kill him.' They will be killed and slaughtered like the slaughter of cows. This is the promise of my Lord and the promise of His Messenger, and it is coming inevitably. "

Someone call the International Criminal Court. Prominent Egyptians are publicly calling for the genocide of all Jews.

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The Gaza health ministry statistics show that hundreds of "martyrs" came back to life over the past weekend

The Telegram channel of the Gaza health ministry releases a detailed, 40+ page document every few days to describe in detail all of their statistics.

As we've been reporting, they have kept three tallies of the deceased: the ones that they count directly who have been brought to hospitals they can verify, the ones that "trusted media sources" (meaning Hamas) tells them to count (which are over 90% women and children,) and the ones that they have received from relatives filling in an online form. Over the last few reports, they have been downplaying the Hamas numbers and giving detailed reports only of the other two categories, which add up to some 21,000 people.

That document no longer claims that 72% of the dead are women and children. Of the ones they count, about 54% are women and children.

Something interesting happened between the April 4 and April 7 reports: hundreds of supposedly verified "martyrs" from the online forms miraculously came back to life.

The total number of verified deceased went from 21,720 on Thursday to 21,317 on Sunday - 403 people were no longer dead.

The ministry claims to go through a verification process of the online forms, and they don't count any that do not have complete information including identity number, full name, gender, date of birth and date of death. The number that they counted from those forms went down from 2,786 to 2,367 - meaning they disqualified 419 of the forms that had been "verified" three days before.

Also significantly, the number of those they count in hospitals only went up by only 16 in those three days - from 18,934 to 18,950. That's a lot less than the increase in numbers they issue every day in their press releases. In those three days, they added 138 total dead, meaning that while they reduced the numbers they could count, they added 541 new dead from the unverifiable Hamas sources.

I am willing to be charitable and say that the people who work on these detailed reports are conscientious and really trying to do their jobs. It clearly take many hours to compile those reports. They researched more about those who were input by relatives and found duplicates or bogus entries and removed them.

Yet at the same time, their bosses at the ministry highlight the larger, unverified numbers that include the nearly 12,000 that only came from Hamas.

Significantly, even their daily totals no longer claim 72% of the "martyrs" are women and children, although various UN agencies still repeat those as if they are accurate.

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