Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, May 15, 2024

Amnesty calls for the destruction of Israel on Nakba Day

Amnesty issued a press release for "Nakba Day" that calls for the destruction of the Jewish state:

The current forced displacement of almost 2 million Palestinians and mass destruction of civilian property and infrastructure in the occupied Gaza Strip puts a spotlight on Israel’s appalling record of displacing Palestinians and its ongoing refusal to respect their right to return for the last 76 years, said Amnesty International marking Nakba Day. The day commemorates the displacement of more than 800,000 Palestinians following the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.

Amnesty has a bizarre interpretation of the "right of return" generations after the population left that does not apply to any other people. In fact, Amnesty has twisted international law to justify this mythical "right."

The entire point of "return," of course, is to destroy the Jewish state by flooding it with antisemites who want to ethnically cleanse the Jews from the Middle East. Somehow that does not bother this "human rights' NGO.

Moreover, it cannot even get basic facts straight. No reputable source says 800,000 Palestinians left in 1948. Amnesty apparently learns its statistics of counting Palestinians from Hamas. And many of the 600,000-700,000 who did leave (most voluntarily) left before May 14, 1948, not after.

Amnesty, in its zeal to wipe out the Jewish state, can't even recount history correctly.

And do you know what word is not mentioned in this 800-word screed against Israel?

Hamas.

The very reason Israel is in Gaza to begin with is not mentioned at all. Amnesty wants its followers to believe that Israel just invaded Gaza for no reason, or perhaps to grab back the land it left in 2005.

Amnesty redoubles its hate for Israel and Jews by mentioning "imminent risk of genocide" in Gaza, a purely antisemitic slander

This is antisemitism. And Amnesty, knows it, because it wrote an entire paragraph to deny it:

The instrumentalization of antisemitism to discredit protesters or criminalize criticism of the state of Israel’s policies, and the conflation of antisemitism with criticism of Israel’s violations of international law are particularly problematic and undermine authorities’ efforts to address the real and enduring scourge of antisemitism. Authorities must hold people accountable for both hate crimes and any advocacy of hatred that constitutes incitement to hostility, discrimination, or violence, regardless of whether directed at Jewish people or at Palestinians, Muslims or other groups.

Amnesty, by invoking "genocide," is directly guilty of incitement to violence in the many incidents of antisemitic violence especially in Europe. A Jewish man was murdered at point blank range in Egypt, on first person video, and the killer said "Shalom from Gaza's children."

The constant barrage of lies about Israel's war against Hamas, especially by "Human rights" NGOs, is indeed direct incitement to kill Jews. As such, it fits the very definition of antisemitism that Amnesty claims exonerates it.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Israeli produce seen in Gaza markets

Ramallah News reports that 52 trucks of food made it to southern Gaza yesterday. They show photos from the markets.

Notice the Hebrew on the packaging?

Ramallah News photoshopped the avocados to remove Israeli stickers. Compare their photo with that found by Abu Ali Express:

Abu Ali Express adds another:

Israel is exporting its own produce directly to Gaza. Apparently the traders in Gaza are selling the food for very high prices.

Good luck finding this mentioned in the media.

I wonder whether BDS will condemn Gazans for importing from Israel.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

"Jewish Voice for Peace" ignoramuses think Israel scheduled Yom HaAtzmaut to coincide with "Nakba Day" this year

Here is a tweet from "Jewish Voice for Peace:"

Yes, they are really claiming that Israel scheduled its holidays to obscure Nakba Day!

The truth is the opposite: Nakba Day (first declared in 1998) was created to coincide with the anniversary of Israel's independence in 1948. If "Nakba" means "catastrophe," then why not choose the date of the Deir Yassin incident or the date that Arabs fled their homes in Jaffa? No, the Nakba is Israel's existence, not anything that happened to Palestinian Arabs in 1948.

But JVP's idiocy only begins there.

Yom Hashoah's date was chosen in 1959. The original desire was to have it coincide with the beginning of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising but that was the even of Passover to it was moved to a week after Passover.

Israel's Yom HaZikaron does not celebrate "Israeli militarism." Created in 1951 and enacted into law in 1963, it is a remembrance of all those who fell in Israel's wars and Arab terror attacks, including thousands of civilians. JVP, of course, doesn't give a damn about them.

And, most incredibly, JVP does not seem to understand that Israel uses the Hebrew calendar! This year the Hebrew date of Yom HaAtzmaut coincided with the secular date of Israel's independence, though that doesn't usually happen.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised at how a group that writes Hebrew backwards doesn't know the basics about Israel or Judaism, even if they throw the word "Jewish" in their name.

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!

Israel-haters haven't changed since 1949

Today is "Nakba Day," the day that mourns not any expulsion or massacre of Arabs in 1948, but the declaration of independence of Israel.

And it has ever been thus. Deaths and displacement are never the main gripe that Palestinians and their Arab allies have with Israel - it is the state of Israel itself.

Nakba Day wa not celebrated in 1949. Wikipedia finds a single reference to several demonstrations in Transjordanian-occupied areas on May 15, 1949, but they were not reported in the news media (as opposed to an anti-British demonstration by Arabs in Libya at the time.)

But here is a description of Arab intransigence towards Israel on the first anniversary of independence, 75 years ago, that shows that Arab antipathy towards Israel was never about injustices or mistreatment: it was always about the refusal to accept a Jewish state in any form. And that applies today to the entire anti-Israel crowd.

Read this column by Carroll Binder in the Star Tribune, May 15, 1949 written on Israel's first birthday, and compare it to, say, this year's Eurovision. It is an eerily accurate description of animosity towards Israel 75 years later.

The Future That Faces U.N. Member No. 59

WHEN ISRAEL BECAME the 59th member of the United Nations May 11 its delegate was escorted to a seat flanked on the left by the seat of the Arab delegate from Iraq and on the right by the seat of the Arab delegate from Lebanon.

This was not a tactless oversight on the part of the protocol department of U.N. It was a routine operation of the alphabetical seating system of U.N.

But it coincidentally symbolized Israel's position in the midst of the Arab world. Symbolical also, was the conspicuous absence of the Iraq and Lebanon delegates. Unable longer to block Israel's entrance into the U.N., the Arab delegates had stalked out of the assembly while Israel was being ushered in.

This was to demonstrate Arab resentment at the world's newest republic, the U.S. and those nations particularly responsible for Israel's present status. It was a futile gesture for Israel is a political actuality and nothing the Arabs can do will erase Israel's sovereignty. But it served notice on Israel and its friends that Arab hostility to a Jewish state in Palestine remains unyielding. That is just as ineradicable a factor in world affairs as the existence of a Jewish state.

This Arab animosity finds expression in unexpected places as well as in anything affecting the Middle East. For example American and British efforts to write into international law enlightened practices of obtaining and transmitting information have been persistently opposed in the U.N. by Arab delegates.

At Lake Success the Arabs voice profound antagonism against the American press, radio and movies which they say is pro-Israel and anti-Arab. They fasor rigorous governmental controls of media of public information by way of protest against the attitude of those media.

Arab animosity crops out in negotiations for oil pipelines, control of Italian colonies, military bases. etc.

A New York Times correspondent reported from Beirut on May 8 that "opinion seems unanimous in Transjordan. Syria and Lebanon that the Arab nations have a moral obligation to fight again in Palestine as soon as they are able to. Coupled with this is a whole- hearted rejection of the U.N. as a source of justice for the Arabs. The U.N. will accept anything (in Arab opinions) that is imposed by force and the Arab can hope for justice only through the strength of their own arms"

A New York Herald Tribune correspondent, who toured the same area a fortnight earlier, told his readers of Arab "anger and humiliation"' at their defeat in a 10-month war which cost them $300 million and exposed their military weakness.

The Arabs. he said. "do not disguise their determination to win revenge - to destroy Israel. To the Arab. the 'first round' has been lost but the climactic battle is still to come; maybe 10, maybe 20. maybe even 100 years from now."

Mrs. George Antonious. widow of a renowned writer on Arab affairs and herself a social leader in Jerusalem, told the Herald Tribune correspondent, "I will slap the face of any Arah who trades with a Jew. We have lost the first round - not the war.

This mood cannot be disregarded either by the Israeli or those who concern themselves about political, economic and military conditions in the Middle East. If it is not modified. Israel will have to devote a large part of its human and material resources to national defense for years to come. Since Israel will need every resource at its command to take care of the million people already living within its narrow confines and the hundreds of thousands desirous of immigrating there, the indefinite prolongation of a state of insecurity would be a tremendous handicap. The Israeli fortunately can count on substantial help from their co-religionists in the United States. Over half of the $150 million raised in 1948 by American Jews for philanthropic work went to immigration. settlement and upbuilding in Israel.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

05/14 Links Pt2: The Meaning of Israeli ‘Independence’; The Woke Jihad; Hamas terrorists use UN vehicles, UNRWA compound; Israel marks 76th Independence Day

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The Meaning of Israeli ‘Independence’

“There is no question that this year, our Yom Ha’atzma’ut celebrations are different,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog said in an Independence Day message to Jews abroad. And indeed, the Jewish state’s transition from Memorial Day to Independence Day—as the former ends, the latter begins—was by all accounts less abrupt this evening, since the solemn and subdued atmosphere continued from one into the other.

The past seven months have been filled with fear and mourning, he said, but they “have reminded us, also, of our core qualities, of our power as a people to stand up, again and again, against hatred. To survive and speak our truth. Of our deep and sustaining caring for one another.”

Israelis used this moment to wrestle with what independence actually means to them, highlighted by two alternate takes on the traditional torch-lighting ceremony.

Forgoing the regular torch lighting in Jerusalem, reports i24 News, torches were “lit in Gaza border communities affected by the October 7 attacks, as well as in IDF bases that have suffered losses in the ongoing conflict. The individuals chosen to light the torches this year are being honored for their heroism during the October 7 attacks or their bravery in the subsequent war.”

One of those torches, notes the Times of Israel, sits “next to a giant stack of burned cars destroyed on the highway during the Hamas attack.”

As depressing as that scene sounds, it does well represent the state’s original idea of independence. As I noted in November, Israelis who lived in the Gaza border towns were raising their kids and their crops on the same land on which settled brave Jewish pioneers through the state’s birth pangs. Every inch of the land, right up to the borderline, had to be defended; anything that wasn’t guarded would be taken—some of the land that was guarded was taken anyway.

Then there is a fascinating, flipped version of the ceremony where torches are extinguished. Not torches representing Israel as a state, mind you—these aren’t anti-Zionist ceremonies. But they are harsh in their implicit and explicit criticism of the government. Relatives of hostages or victims, as well as survivors of the October 7 attacks, extinguish torches they hold that are symbolic of “sins” that led to the slaughter.

“I hereby extinguish the torch of the sin of conceit,” said one participant whose daughter was killed during the attacks. Two survivors extinguished the “the torch of indifference,” in their words.

Some were more profound than others, needless to say. But the theme seemed to be winning independence from assumptions that put the state in danger.

There is another aspect to the debate over independence that is made newly relevant by the events since October: independence from allies.

Abe Greenwald: The Woke Jihad

The first thing to understand about any left-wing protest movement is that its nominal cause is irrelevant. Black Lives Matter isn’t about saving black lives. Trans activism isn’t about protecting trans children. And intersectionality isn’t about the suffering of the diverse disaffected. Never were, never will be. Underneath their particular brands, social-justice movements are assorted fronts in a radical war against the good. And so it is for the “pro-Palestinian” encampments.

Would a group trying to save black lives have seized on a statistically tiny number of police killings as justification to rid black neighborhoods of police? That’s what Black Lives Matter did. And by the time the cops were hobbled, and violent crime spiked precisely where police were most needed, the movement’s leaders were using corporate donations to buy safe suburban palaces. BLM was an attack on law enforcement, because law enforcement maintains the good working order of the United States. Undermine that and you’re left with chaos, which is the objective.

And celebratory chaos is precisely the goal of the radical trans movement. Consider Rose Montoya, the trans activist who went topless on the South Lawn of the White House during a Pride Month celebration. How does that viral stunt protect trans kids or evoke empathy for an outcast demographic? Every aspect of the movement is designed to undo our common appreciation for a safe and sane way of life. Denying solid biological reality, throwing kids into emotional disarray, scaring the hell out of parents, endorsing ruinous medical procedures for minors, and trolling everyone who’s not convinced—that’s the game. And just as BLM leaders got rich, trans stars are furnished with endorsements and media deals once they’ve done their part to tear down the edifice of stability.

Intersectional ideology has infiltrated our lives mostly through the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion training programs at work and school. To conquer, you must first divide. That’s the DEI trainer’s remit—splitting formerly cohesive groups into racial, ethnic, and gender camps, highlighting their differences and coaxing out ugly resentments. Not surprisingly, DEI work increases bigotry. As one DEI theorist recently admitted to the Wall Street Journal, “People often leave diversity training feeling angry and with greater animosity toward other groups.” Because that’s what it’s supposed to do, especially regarding Jews. Soon after October 7, Tabia Lee, the disenchanted former head of DEI at California’s De Anza College, told the New York Post that she was called a “dirty Zionist” for bringing Jewish speakers to campus. And school administrators refused her request to issue a condemnation of anti-Semitism. Lee says, “I was told in no uncertain terms that Jews are ‘white oppressors’ and our job as faculty and staff members was to ‘decenter whiteness.’” Of the left’s post–October 7 bigotry, she writes, “This outpouring of antisemitic hatred is the direct result of DEI’s insistence that Jews are oppressors.”

Yes, there are well-meaning individuals who support civil rights, gay rights, and gender equality. And if these well-meaning people are still supporting social-justice campaigns because they believe their stated aims, then they’ll support anyone.

But the performative lunatics who turned identity fanaticism into a national pastime are enemies of Israel, the Jews, the United States, and human decency itself. That makes them natural allies of terrorists, whatever their do-good cover stories.

As with previous left-wing campaigns, the “pro-Palestinian” movement offers nothing in support of its supposed purpose. It sides with Gaza’s governing terrorists, who start wars with the express goal of producing a surplus of dead Gazans. American Hamas supporters chant “Cease-Fire now” as Hamas refuses every cease-fire offer that Israel and the U.S. put on the table. Why? Because a cease-fire means no more dead Gazans, and dead Gazans are Hamas’s chief natural resource and most valuable export. It’s what brings in the billions of aid money that’s used to build tunnels where Hamas hides—while civilians absorb the blows overhead. If Israel were to stop short of eradicating Hamas, as the protesters want, many more Gazans would die in the future wars that Hamas has vowed to instigate.

No, the encampments aren’t pro-Palestinian. They’re the latest expression of the social-justice left’s impulse to destroy the virtuous and raise up the wicked.

Jerry Seinfeld showed anti-Jewish protesters are a minority

Ironically, Seinfeld probably worked harder for a degree he received just for showing up than many of the Palestinian flag-waving, keffiyeh-wearing future unemployed people protesting him.

Not only that, but his speech was laden with advice that would make these students’ lives infinitely happier.

“The slightly uncomfortable feeling of awkward humor is OK,” Seinfeld said. “It is worth the sacrifice of an occasional discomfort to have some laughs. Don’t lose that. Even if it’s at the cost of occasional hard feelings, it’s OK.”

But while we certainly need to address the explosion of antisemitism that has made life hell for Jewish students on campuses across the country (let alone on city streets across the world), we must also be sure to appreciate the full picture.

At Duke University, while a handful of students decided to walk out like petulant children who just couldn’t bear listening to the apolitical advice of a Jewish man, the vast majority stayed, listened, and drowned out the protesters by chanting, “Jerry.”

And while Golan endured far worse before, during, and after the Eurovision Song Contest, she received overwhelming support from the voting public, including maximum points from 14 different countries, many of whom are experiencing their own explosions of antisemitism.

None of this is to downplay what we’re seeing across the world. Life for Jews has become immeasurably worse in the West following Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack, which somehow acted as a catalyst for further anti-Jewish hate here at home.

But it does remind us that the people marching in the streets, the people making threats, and the people stomping their way out of their own graduation ceremonies are in the minority. An incredibly vicious and vocal minority, sure, but a minority nonetheless.

And while there is certainly work to do to ensure peace and safety for Jews in the West, we should take solace in the fact that while there are some people out there who refuse to listen to Jerry Seinfeld because he is Jewish, their voices are drowned out by the majority who wanted to hear from him and cheer obvious truths: “We’re embarrassed about things we should be proud of and proud of things that we should be embarrassed about.”

Palestinian "strategist" praises Egypt for blocking aid to Gaza

The New York Times reported on Friday that Egypt has refused to send aid through the Rafah crossing while Israel is there, and it has also refused to send the trucks backed up along that border to the Kerem Shalom crossing. This was to show displeasure at Israel's operation in Rafah where they took over the Gazan

The story from the premier US newspaper has not been picked up by other news outlets. So US News, for example, reports it as "both sides blaming each other," even though Egypt didn't deny that it had closed the Rafah crossing from its side.

It's pretty clear that Egypt is the problem here. Israel is pleading with European governments to pressure Egypt to allow aid shipments to resume.

"The key to preventing a humanitarian crisis in Gaza is now in the hands of our Egyptian friends," Israel's Foreign Affairs Minister Israel Katz said in comments released by his office.

Katz said he had spoken with his British and German counterparts about "the need to persuade Egypt to reopen the Rafah crossing", adding he would also speak with Italy's foreign minister later on Tuesday.

The Palestinian militant group Hamas, which has governed Gaza, will not "control the Rafah crossing", Katz said, citing security concerns over which Israel "will not compromise".

The comments drew a swift and angry response from Egypt's foreign ministry, which said Israel was responsible for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and that Israel's military operations in Rafah were the main factor blocking aid.

Egypt has been telling Gazans to go to hell for seven months, building a huge wall to keep Palestinians out and extracting bribes for the rich ones to escape - and ends up smelling like a rose in the eyes of the media.

But it gets even more Orwellian.

From Egypt's Al Qahera News:

Palestinians (in Ramallah, naturally) are thanking Egypt for starving Gaza! They are "principled!"

The media and NGOs all read the New York Times. They know that Egypt is blocking aid. And they want that story to die so they can resume blaming everything on Israel, which is actually trying to bring in aid (and it is bringing some in through the northern crossings, although not enough for all of Gaza.)

This one episode shows that it isn't the world being upset at Israel because it cares about Palestinians. The world is pretending to care about Palestinians as an excuse to demonize Israel.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

05/14 Links Pt1: Why Joe Biden Has Gone from Friend to Enemy; IDF kills Hamas terrorists embedded inside UNRWA school; The UN’s World of the Absurd

From Ian:

John Podhoretz: Why Joe Biden Has Gone from Friend to Enemy

This political maneuvering just doesn’t pass the smell test. Nor do Biden’s expressions of disapproval at Israel’s “indiscriminate” bombing, which has been the opposite of indiscriminate. Something else is going on here.

Now, I’m not saying the Biden people are being disingenuous. It could be, as Matthew Continetti points out in his column this month, that they’re just bad at politics and are miscalculating the electoral importance of the anti-Israel voter. But what if it’s not just that. What if it’s something darker?

For three years, Biden and his team have been fighting to get the American people to give him and themselves credit for a booming economy. Whether he deserves that credit or not, it’s not happening. They are beside themselves with frustration because they are not receiving the gratitude they think they deserve. Add to this that there’s nothing they can do about Biden’s own personal infirmities. These matters appear out of their control, and beyond their ability to fix, and it’s maddening to them. And they’re terrified—maybe even more terrified now that it’s clear that three of the four criminal cases against Donald Trump will not reach a courtroom before Election Day. They have been pinning their hopes on a turn in American opinion against Trump due to multiple Trump convictions. They might get the verdicts they want in the Stormy Daniels case, but the public’s lack of response to his being found liable for sexual assault and financial fraud might suggest even that anti-Trump moment will not be the knockout blow they desperately crave.

Ask yourself: Might there be something irresistibly seductive for the Biden team and Biden himself in the idea that his electoral woes have a foreign root? Doesn’t the disorder and crisis in and around Israel provide a convenient scapegoat for his own failings? No, it’s not that inflation has eaten away at the ordinary American’s financial gains. It’s not that Biden now needs his staff to stand between him and photographers to obscure video images of his halting gait. It’s not that he sounds like his throat is coated in sandpaper and that his tongue lolls about around his mouth when he speaks.

No, it’s that damn Bibi that’s threatening to drag him down.

The obsession with Netanyahu—when Israel’s prime minister is doing nothing more than reflecting the consensus opinion of his people about the necessity of winning the war—is reminiscent of another shameful moment in English history. “Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?” Henry II is reputed to have said of Thomas à Becket, after which four knights cornered Becket in Canterbury Cathedral and murdered him. Perhaps, in his private councils in the White House and perhaps in conversation with Chuck Schumer before Schumer’s speech, Biden offered some woke variant of the same sentiment: “Who will rid me of this meddlesome Jew?”

Biden’s policy now is that Hamas should be allowed to live to massacre another day. In the end, then, while Biden spent months being the best friend Israel may ever have had in the White House, he has now become one of its worst enemies.

And, again, for what? For Wales?

The Gates of Gaza

The healthy alternative to the Star Wars paradigm, which has so visibly and spectacularly failed to assure Israel’s security, is “Mad Max.” This alternative paradigm states that new and old weapon systems will merge, thanks to innovative concepts of operations. Mad Max understands that the twenty-first century battlefield is home to T-64 tanks, which fought their first battles in the early 1960s, as well as state-of-the-art cyber-electronic warfare. Mini drones that are commercially available across the globe can spot for Cold War-era artillery.

Never underestimate technologically inferior adversaries, the Mad Max paradigm counsels. High-tech tools and weapons will never be the sole or even the primary factor determining the winner of wars. This dictum is especially true for the wars of the Middle East, where great powers external to the region determine the balance of power on the ground.

Because war remains today what it has always been, a political activity, we cannot gauge the true advantage of any weapon—be it new and technologically advanced or old and rusty—without first considering the political-military strategy that it serves. Victory comes not to him who kills the most enemy soldiers or who fries the most motherboards but to him who converts what transpires on the battlefield into the most beneficial political arrangements. Losers on the battlefield frequently win wars, by bleeding giants until they are too exhausted to continue fighting. For example, in Vietnam, the second Iraq War, and Afghanistan, the U.S. repeatedly outmatched its adversaries militarily but lost the wars, nevertheless.

The digital revolution has enhanced the powers of technologically advanced countries in many ways, but it has also exposed them to new risks while also delivering surprising new tools to underdogs. Even the poorest of powers, thanks to the internet and smartphones, now enjoy a bonanza of open-source intelligence that just a few years ago was not available to even the richest of states. Cheap drones purchased off the shelf can offer startling reconnaissance capabilities to Ukraine against Russia. Cyber-enabled supply chains and GPS present an otherwise ragtag group like the Houthis opportunities to disrupt global commercial shipping. The list goes on.

The Star Wars paradigm also rests on the assumption, often unstated, that taking and holding territory has somehow become a secondary part of warfighting. While it is certainly possible to name wars that have been won without territorial conquest, they are few and far between. Almost inevitably, the magnitude of such victories is small, because victors who impose their will from over the horizon—from the air, sea, or through economic leverage—lack the physical presence on the ground that is necessary to shape a new political order.

The Mad Max mentality cultivates a heightened sensitivity to the phrase “on the ground.” With minor exceptions, armies translate battlefield victories into lasting changes either by seizing territory or threatening persuasively to do so. In the brave new digital world, traditional warfighting assets—large combat formations, replete with artillery, rocket systems, engineering units, and heavy armor—will not disappear, because only they can take and hold territory decisively.

Under the influence of Star Wars, Israel neglected its role by allowing its land forces to atrophy. In 2018, Brigadier Roman Goffman, who was then the commander of the 7th Armored Brigade, took the extraordinary step of airing his concerns about this issue openly before the senior leadership of the IDF at a command conference. “Chief of Staff,” Goffman said, referring to his senior most commander, General Gadi Eisenkot, “I first want to tell you that we [in armored units] are ready to fight. There is one problem. You don’t activate us… [T]here is a very problematic pattern that is developing here, namely, the avoidance of the use of ground forces.”

Eisenkot sat in the front row of the audience flanked by the top leaders of the IDF. Behind them sat hundreds of senior officers who greeted Goffman’s remarks with smirks. But he continued undeterred. The non-deployment of ground forces, he argued, “ultimately affects the will to fight. What makes us into combat commanders over time is friction with the other side.” Absent friction with the enemy, he continued, the military enters a state of “clinical death.”

On October 7, the Israelis tasted what Goffman meant by “clinical death.” The Israeli military had at its disposal a glittering arsenal of exquisite weapons, including a large squadron of radar-proof F-35s, whose capacities previous generations would have considered to be the stuff of science-fiction. As it turned out, however, none of these weapons were of the slightest use against terrorist bands, armed mainly with Kalashnikovs, who were intent on murdering, raping, and kidnapping civilians.

The Legacy of the Maalot Massacre

Fifty years ago today, Palestinian terrorists attacked a school in northern Israel, taking hostages and murdering 22 students. The memories endure for those who survived, and the lessons learned in 1974 resonate anew for a country facing another hostage crisis.

An intersection opposite the central bus station in Tzfat illustrates the interwoven trauma between that city and the Galileean town of Maalot, a half-hour’s drive away. At the intersection, one sign designates the road’s name as 22 Children of Tzfat Street, while a sign at the adjacent bus stop calls it 22 Children of Maalot Street.

Fifty years after a notorious terrorist attack that killed 28 Israelis near and in Maalot, including 22 students on a field trip from a Tzfat high school, places and people testify to the lingering pain.

It’s there a few hundred yards from the Tzfat intersection, on the Fig Kindergarten sign for the school named after Sarah Madar, “murdered in the Maalot disaster of May 15, 1974, may her memory be blessed.” Bracha (meaning blessing), a teacher there, told me that it’s one of 22 flora- and fauna-named kindergartens in Tzfat that memorialize the victims.

It’s there in Maalot’s Founders Museum, where a wall placard tells of the tragedy that began May 13, 1974, when three Palestinians who’d trained in Lebanon infiltrated Israel through the border fence a few miles north, setting off a series of security failures and attacks that culminated in the same terrorists taking more than 100 Israelis hostage in the Netiv Meir School and murdering the 22 students.

It’s there down the street from the museum, where a sculpture memorializes the Cohen family, who lived in the next apartment building until the terrorists shot them to death en route to the school.

It’s in a memorial in the Maalot school building where the teens’ lives were extinguished; in Tzfat’s Amit School that they attended, since relocated and renamed The Religious Comprehensive High School in Memory of the 22; in that school’s first-floor room with a wall filled by the victims’ pictures on branches of a painted tree and, next to the tree, a stained-glass window with 22 chiseled brown circles containing their names; in a bomb shelter that a Maalot survivor renovated, inside whose entrance he hung pictures of his 22 classmates; and in the cemetery where the children were buried together down a hill from the ancient part of the city renowned for its holiness.

It is even 7,500 miles away in the Los Angeles suburb of Irvine, California, in a Reform synagogue that in 1975 renamed itself Congregation Shir Ha-Ma’alot in solidarity. The synagogue includes its namesake, out-of-the-way town on each congregational visit to Israel and a decade ago paid for the memorial site in the Maalot classroom that it also refurbished.

“It’s part of our hearts, part of our soulful connection, how much more so in the period we’re now living in,” said Richard Steinberg, the synagogue’s rabbi.

This letter, by the chancellor of University of California-Irvine Howard Gillman, is a model of how universities should treat students who are protesting properly - and improperly.

May 13, 2024
Dear Campus Community,

The situation at Rowland Hall has not changed over the past week.

Students have said that they will not rejoin conversations with the university until we end normal administrative enforcement of university policies. As I noted previously, we cannot selectively waive our rules against encampments (or other relevant policies) for this situation and not other situations. Such selective enforcement is unlawful. Moreover, a decision to abandon enforcement of our policies would effectively permit any group of people – campus affiliates or otherwise – to come onto campus and establish an encampment for any reason, without consequences. Setting such a precedent would create ongoing threats to the safety of our community and our ability to do our important work.

However, as we have informed our students, the outcomes of conduct proceedings depend on factors such as the severity of the violation, the intention to engage in more misconduct or not, and the impact of one’s activities on others. Students who proactively contact Student Affairs as soon as possible to arrange for their departure from the encampment will find their cooperation reflected in the outcome of their cases.

Moreover, far from engaging in the mere expression of anti-war sentiments, encampment protestors have focused most of their demands on actions that would require the university to violate the academic freedom rights of faculty, the free speech rights of faculty and fellow students, and the civil rights of many of our Jewish students. While there is a fine tradition of anti-war protests, it is important that one not confuse that legacy with efforts to intimidate and silence students with whom they disagree and or to diminish the rights of our Jewish students at their university.

I have heard from some that I should welcome the efforts of these students given my commitment to the protection of free speech and academic freedom. Indeed, I have consistently upheld the right for these students and their supporters to express their views. There have been many lawful protests, events, and messages where their positions have been freely expressed without any effort at censorship or punishment. But everybody understands that free speech does not grant the right to speak in any manner you want at any time you want, or in violation of laws and rules while claiming their violations should be exempt from sanctions. To be clear, my concerns are not with their speech, but their violations of important policies and with their assault on the free speech and academic freedom of others.

Some in our community have expressed support for the encampment, standing with our students. Of course, the well-being of our students is crucial. Accordingly, we have scores of dedicated employees working every day, diverting their time away from their normal responsibilities, to help maintain a safe campus environment and the well-being of the encampers. However, those who are committed to standing by our students should also stand for and support the students (and employees) who are being targeted by the protesters. And, of course, we must not forget our support and commitment to the tens of thousands of other students who worked diligently to get into UCI and want to pursue their dreams of a great college education free from concerns of larger-scale disruptions or disorder of the sort we have seen on too many other campuses.

Let us also stand by the principle that members of a university community must be willing to tolerate the fact that other members may hold views they disagree with or even despise.

We remain eager and willing to talk to the encampers so that we can arrive at a peaceful conclusion of this situation and prevent the protesters from having to experience the most serious consequences for their actions.

As always, I urge all members of the campus community to act in ways that maintain the peace of the campus and our ability to continue with our work, and I urge members of the broader public to take no steps that threaten the safety or well-being of our students, faculty, and staff.

Fiat Lux,

Chancellor Howard Gillman

There is no compromise on free speech - as long as it is truly free and doesn't infringe onthe rights of others.

This is one of the few communications I've seen where the rights of Zionist and Jewish students are placed on par with those of the protesters.

(h/t Miriam Elman)

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US upset at Israel for having no plan, while it pushes a very bad plan

The US wants Israel to have plans:

President Biden’s national security adviser said on Monday that while the United States was committed to Israel’s defense, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government had still failed to provide the White House with a plan for moving nearly a million Gazans safely out of Rafah before any invasion of the city.

In a lengthy presentation to reporters, the adviser, Jake Sullivan, also said Israel had yet to “connect their military operations” to a political plan for the future governance of the Palestinian territory.

But the US' own statements on what it wants to see contradict each other:

More than seven months into the Israel-Hamas war, the Biden administration’s top priority is to try and secure a hostage deal. This would commence a weeks-long truce, but Washington’s goal is for that pause to be turned permanent.

“If we can get a ceasefire, we can get something more enduring and then maybe end the conflict,” White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said this month.

What appears less clear, though, is how pushing for this ceasefire squares with another US commitment, which is to eliminate the threat of Hamas.

“An enduring defeat of Hamas certainly remains the Israeli goal, and we share that goal with it,” Kirby said last week.

The two objectives seem to clash, given that a temporary-turned-permanent deal with Hamas would ostensibly leave the terror group standing in Gaza.

And the US plan?

“What we are trying to do is advance a vision where Hamas would be marginalized, while Israel would be stronger through improved relations with its Arab neighbors,” the official explained. “By doing that, we are able to eliminate the threat of Hamas without having to continue the war indefinitely.”

“It’s a years-long process, and it will require Israeli buy-in, but the alternative is a never-ending cycle of violence that the Israelis could be left alone to deal with,” a second US official said, referencing the danger of waning international support.

The four sources described an international effort to support the re-deployment of the Palestinian Authority’s security forces in the Gaza Strip.

They recognized that the PA is not currently in a position to immediately assume security — let alone governing — responsibilities in Gaza.

The US along with its Arab and European partners are not deterred, though, and are working to establish mechanisms for a reformed PA to return to the Strip.

So let's get this straight. The US is against Israel destroying Hamas because it is not a realistic goal, but somehow getting the PA to rule Gaza, which they admit would take years at best, is more realistic?

The most recent PCPSR pol shows that most Palestinians - including in the West Bank - want to see Hamas control Gaza, not the PA.

So the US is pushing a plan that Palestinians do not want. How realistic!

Stop talking about solutions. Talk about the least bad of bad scenarios. And while another occupation of Gaza by Israel would be awful and something no one wants, the alternatives are even worse or pipe dreams.

The West is trying to leverage Hamas atrocities into creating a Palestinian state. But a Palestinian state would be a disaster for Israel, for Palestinians themselves and for the world. They have no path for a state because Palestinian nationalism was never about building a state but destroying one. 30 years after Oslo, between the repeated refusal to accept a state that was offer to them, through the second intifada, wars in Gaza, continued corruption from Palestinian leaders and high Palestinian support of terrorism including October 7, this is pretty obvious.

But the West believes in the religion of the two state solution. There's no realistic plan there either for the day after, but for some reason that doesn't require a plan.

Israel does need to ensure that civilians in Rafah have food and medical help. It is trying to do that. It is Egypt that is withholding aid, not Israel - and no one says a word against that.

The hypocrisy stinks to high heaven.

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Has Hamas silenced the Ministry of Health after they contradicted Hamas casualty claims?

During April, the Palestinian health ministry issued their detailed reports of casualties in Gaza - documents that are typically about 45 pages long - every day or two.

Their Telegram channel published those statistics on April 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 27, 28, 29,and 30, May 2 and 3.

Since then - silence.

Meanwhile, Hamas continues to publish its own statistics from its Gaza Media Office that contradict the latest MoH report.

	GMO	MOH
Total casualties (confirmed)	35091	24691
Children	15103	7798
Women	9961	4961

Why the sudden silence from the health ministry?

While I and others have been pointing out the contradictions between the two sources for quite a while, only recently has the UN started to report the detailed MoH figures that cut the number of women and children allegedly killed in Gaza by half.

Can it be that Hamas was embarrassed when the UN finally started publishing the MoH statistics that flatly contradicts the Hamas claims? (There are 12,305 more dead women and children according to Hamas, but only 10,400 more total casualties - which is quite impossible.)

Did Hamas tell the health ministry to shut up and stop making its bosses look bad?

Meanwhile, the health ministry continues to report Hamas' inflated total numbers in its own daily press release, as it has the entire time, ignoring the discrepancies from its own staistics.

If the health ministry publishes a new report, it will be interesting to see whether they try to square away their numbers with Hamas' inflated claims.

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"Look! A Zionist said something I don't understand! It must mean he wants to murder all Palestinian children!"

Monday was fun on Twitter/X.

I posted a meme. Admittedly, not one of my best ones, neither in AI artwork nor execution.

I captioned it, "And who wants that?"

It went viral. As of this writing, over 3 million views.

The hundreds of comments from Israel haters, assume that somehow this graphic is celebrating genocide and a large percentage believe I am advocating murdering Palestinian children specifically.

The intended point, which I didn't do a great job at, is that if the "State of Palestine" is represented by a watermelon, it would not be the type of watermelon anyone would enjoy.

I stand by that opinion. A Palestinian state, whether in the territories or replacing Israel, would be a corrupt, autocratic, terror supporting, misogynist, gay bashing, Jew-hating dictatorship (as the PA is now) or it would be all that plus an Islamist fundamentalist ally of Iran that would happily nuke itself and its people to destroy Israel (as Hamas is now.) It would be another Algeria or Libya or Syria.

And who wants that?

The watermelon pictured is not damaged or destroyed, just very unappealing.

But the crazed reactions say a lot about how bigoted Israel-haters are.

They are convinced that Israeli Jews are trying to wipe out Palestinians. They will twist any facts or statements to support that pre-established conclusion.. No other explanation of the war that Hamas started even enters their tiny brains. They are mind-readers, and they know that by default Jews are rotten, disgusting, murderous, genocidal people - so therefore everything they see is refracted through the prism of "Jews bad." Not coincidentally, their opinions of Israel are aligned with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

That knee-jerk reaction to any information, that everything is evidence of evil Jewish intentions, is proof that it isn't the Jews who are the bigots.

Even after I explained the joke, they insist that I'm just gaslighting and they know that the meme was advocating killing Palestinian children.

It isn't the first time haters misunderstand one of my memes and assume I'm a bigot, and it won't be the last. But their assumptions prove who the bigots really are.

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Proud to be a Zionist 5784

Every year for the past 23 years, even before I started this blog, I've written an essay for Yom HaAtzmaut entitled "Proud to Be a Zionist." Here is the latest edition for 5784.

____________________

It is an understatement to say that this was a difficult year.

The big problems from 12 months ago - when judicial reform seemed to be splitting the Jewish state - suddenly, in October, became very small problems.

Now, Israel is in the midst of a seven front war.

Now, the main disagreement among Israelis is whether to prioritize a deal for hostages or to destroy Hamas.

Now, even some of Israel's friends have faltered.

Nevertheless, there is perhaps more to be proud of this year than any other.

Once you filter out the propaganda and lies, it becomes readily apparent that Israel's conduct in the war has not just been moral - it has been exemplary. The large civilian death toll is awful, but it is entirely - and I mean entirely - because of Hamas using dead civilians as their major military strategy.

Israel has succeeded far better than the best Western military experts predicted in October. Israel has innovated new techniques in tunnel warfare that other Western countries will be studying. Hamas fully expected that the IDF would leave them alone in their tunnels because the risk was too high - and Israel proved that it is possible to fight and prevail in even the most difficult combat conditions anyone ever imagined.

That is because of Israeli creativity, Israeli genius and Israeli motivation to do what needs to be done to win.

As far as I can tell, every military expert who has given an opinion finds Israel's conduct in this war to be beyond anything they had seen before in terms of protecting civilian lives as well as in effectively fighting in an urban battlefield. I'll listen to them over "human rights" NGOs an day of the week.

Although I am not an Israeli, I am damned proud of the IDF and how it has fought this war.

The world sees an Israel filtered through the eyes of the media, so-called "human rights" NGOs, Palestinian and other Arab antisemites, and "progressive" anti-Israel organizations on college campuses.

The real Israel has no resemblance to the Israel one sees in the media or on campus placards.

The real Israel is messy and beautiful. It has diametrically opposed viewpoints and surprising amounts of consensus. It has passion and cynicism, the heights of joy and the depths of sadness, incredibly serious decisions that affect people's lives and black humor. And the morality that Judaism gave to the world is entrenched in everything most Israelis do.

I am a proud Zionist and I embrace all of these.

While Israel must never discriminate against its non-Jewish minorities, it is and must remain a Jewish state. That is what makes it special. It is the only place in the world where a Jew can be him or herself without apologetics, without explanation, without fear. I am still tickled when I visit and see so many tiny examples of living in a Jewish state - Talmudic expressions in graffiti, quotes from Tanach on the side of a delivery truck, buses whose electronic signs with everyone a happy holiday in Hebrew, the automatic "Shabbat Shalom" said by cashiers and in emails on Fridays and "Shavua Tov" Israelis say on Saturday night.

There is a reason that the expression "Shver tsu zayn a yid" (It is hard to be a Jew) is in Yiddish and not Hebrew. Because for all the problems in Israel, it is much easier to be a Jew in Hebrew-speaking Israel - even during wartime - than it ever was anywhere in the Diaspora.

After a pause of a few decades, antisemitism is becoming mainstream again, often disguised as "progressivism" or "human rights" or whatever else is popular. This year that trend accelerated, powered by, of all things, a horrendous terror attack against Jews. And I am glad to know that no matter what happens elsewhere in the world, Israel is there and will welcome me.

Israel is wonderful. Israel is maddening. Israel is glorious. Israel is frustrating. The real Israel is filled with Jews who want to do the right thing, and disagree strongly and passionately on what that is. The reason they can be so earnest, so loud and so argumentative is because they are all family - and people are more comfortable raising their voices at their own family members than at strangers. When a soldier falls, every Israeli mourns.

Right now Israelis are fighting together - Mizrahi with Ashkenazi, Druze with Jews, religious with secular, women with men. The unity in the field will hopefully transition to peacetime.

May we have a complete victory and may it bring in a real peace.

Am Yisrael Chai!

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05/13 Links Pt2: On Memorial Day, Israeli leaders promise brighter future; The UN and Eurovision: A tale of two votes on Israel; While we mourn, others celebrate murders of Jews and Americans

From Ian:

Richard Landes: The Paradoxical “Proof” that Jews are the Chosen People

The deeper motives of anti-Semitism have their roots in times long past; they come from the unconscious, and I am quite prepared to hear that what I am going to say will at first appear incredible. I venture to assert that the jealousy that the Jews evoked in other peoples by maintaining that they were the first-born, the favorite child of God the Father, has not yet been overcome by those others, just as if the latter had given credence to the assumption.” (Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism)

It’s well known that the thing about the Jews that most grates on gentiles – especially derivative monotheists and post-monotheists – is the notion that Jews are the chosen people. And yet, the claim is specifically enunciated in Jewish scripture that God chose the Jews to be mankind’s moral leadership.

Observe these laws carefully, for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.” For what nation… is there so great, that has statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day? (Deuteronomy 4: 7-8).

The pretension to be “the chosen people” has inspired both hatred and emulation. Both Islam and Christianity, the two religions most likely to generate Jew-hatred, are also claimants to the status of God’s chosen people, replacing, erasing the Jewish claim.

Recently, modern progressives have expressed if not anger, then exasperation at so primitive and pretentious a notion. Nobel-prize author Jose Saramago deplored “the monstrous and rooted ‘certitude’ that in this catastrophic and absurd world there exists a people chosen by God…” Science writer Jostein Gaarder declared (in the royal “we”):
“We do not believe in the notion of God’s chosen people. We laugh at this people’s fancies and weep over its misdeeds. To act as God’s chosen people is not only stupid and arrogant, but a crime against humanity. We call it racism.”

Among those attitudes most associated with antisemitism is a hostility to, a resentment of the Jewish claim to be a chosen people. Indeed, a good progressive Jew views that problematic claim with great wariness if not scorn: ‘we are the same as everyone else.’

Of course, even if one rejects any divine claims, biblical or otherwise, about the Jews being chosen, there is historical evidence for the claim. Studies of the resilience of Jewish communities over time, of Jewish success in societies based on merit, certainly indicate that there is something special about Jews, whether God chose them, or they imagined that God chose them, or they chose a God they invented. The very survival – and vigor – of Jews to this day suggests that something unusual is at work.

But I think the most striking proof that the Jews are the chosen people comes from what social scientists call “non-reactive” evidence, that is from a pattern of evidence produced by agents who do not behave in reaction to being seen, but whose behavior nevertheless unconsciously reveals evidence they might deny, even vigorously, were they aware. And the proof, in our day, for the chosenness of the Jews, comes from the dual phenomenon of the extraordinary obsession gentiles display over Jewish behavior, on the one hand, and the extraordinary inversion of reality – both moral and empirical – that obsession takes, on the other.

The obsession is not hard to document. If one were to weight the international news coverage of countries by their population, then the coverage of the only Jewish state by international news organizations is skewed by several orders of magnitude. One study published in 2013, found that, aside from the US (“the uncontested world news hegemon”), articles about Israel and Palestine rank the highest, literally pushing out China, Russia, and Europe. If one factors in size and population, this means over a hundred-fold greater attention to this particular Middle East state and its behavior with its hostile neighbors, than any other global story including the entire US. Similarly, if one factors in casualty figures, then Israel/Palestine media footprint is the exact inverse of the Democratic Republic of Congo: about ten thousand dead in twenty years (1989-2009) has filled global media, whereas about four to six million dead in the same period in the Congo, remains nearly invisible to the world―one of many stealth conflicts.

Phyllis Chesler: The prophet unhonored

Is Joe Biden on Hamas’s payroll? If not, why is his administration withholding promised military equipment to America’s most reliable and stable ally in the Middle East? Does Biden fail to understand what Israel is up against?

Clearly, his administration is acting as if Iran and its proxy armies, beginning with Hamas, are “good” people, no different from the rest of us. He thinks they are “reasonable” people with whom he can negotiate or even outwit.

I strongly beg to differ.

Long ago, I was held captive in Kabul as a young bride. When I managed to get out, I understood in my bones that the West and the East are very different places. Other Americans do not understand this.

Although I loved many things about the Muslim world—the awe-inspiring mountains, the ancient bazaars, the ceremonial aspects of dining, rose petals in the pudding, the biblical barefoot nomads tinkling as they walked together with their sheep and camels—I saw that the East was very wild. It was rife with unending blood feuds, vigilante (in)justice, illiteracy, poverty, disease, cruelty and above all hatred.

Hatred of infidels, especially Jews, Christians and Hazaras who are Shiite, not Sunni Muslims. Hatred of women. Hatred of servants. Hatred of daughters-in-law. Hatred of their own political dissidents and free-thinkers. Hatred of Americans. But respect for Nazi Germany and German products.

One cannot blame any of this on imperialism or colonialism. These customs were all indigenous. It is crucial to understand this.

Why? Because this is the neighborhood in which Israel lives. The Jewish state has weathered every storm. We are an eternal people and will always survive. But the cost in blood has been high. The IDF is now fighting brilliantly. The Israelis are miraculously resilient.

Seth Mandel: Lifting Hamas’s ‘Fog of War’ Reveals a Very Different Conflict

The fog of war is no excuse to use unethical counting methods. And it is no excuse to lie.

Does anyone feel guilty for what they’ve done here? We’re left with a circus-like cycle of duplicity: Hamas puts out fake numbers, the White House promotes those fabrications, which fuels street protests, which the president uses as an excuse to shift policy against Israel, which incentivizes Hamas to publish more fake numbers, etc. Around and around the blood-libel Ferris Wheel we go.

Something in the machinery of the White House has come loose. The whole edifice most closely resembles the Boeing planes with faulty bolts that just started falling apart mid-flight. Instead of bringing calm, the Biden team increasingly brings chaos—and seems unwilling or unable to act responsibly. The media that report the Hamas numbers are complicit in transforming America into an erratic actor on the world stage.

All of this is now undeniable. The only question left is what Joe Biden is going to do about it.

The NYT notices that Gaza citizens cannot talk without fear from Hamas. It won't affect its coverage at all.

From the New York Times:

The Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has for years overseen a secret police force in Gaza that conducted surveillance on everyday Palestinians and built files on young people, journalists and those who questioned the government, according to intelligence officials and a trove of internal documents reviewed by The New York Times.

The unit, known as the General Security Service, relied on a network of Gaza informants, some of whom reported their own neighbors to the police. People landed in security files for attending protests or publicly criticizing Hamas. In some cases, the records suggest that the authorities followed people to determine if they were carrying on romantic relationships outside marriage.

Hamas has long run an oppressive system of governance in Gaza, and many Palestinians there know that security officials watch them closely. But a 62-slide presentation on the activities of the General Security Service, delivered only weeks before the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, reveals the degree to which the largely unknown unit penetrated the lives of Palestinians.

The documents show that Hamas leaders, despite claiming to represent the people of Gaza, would not tolerate even a whiff of dissent. Security officials trailed journalists and people they suspected of immoral behavior. Agents got criticism removed from social media and discussed ways to defame political adversaries. Political protests were viewed as threats to be undermined.

This story only gives a little bit of information that was not known before - the extent of Hamas' oppression and limiting of freedoms.

But from the beginning of Hamas' takeover of Gaza, it was obvious that the people were expected to tell Western reporters and NGOs only what Hamas would allow them to say.

For years, whenever Human Rights Watch or Amnesty reported on "witnesses" to events in Gaza, the anti-Israel witnesses were named, and the ones who confirmed Israel's side of the story were anonymous. Amnesty even once wrote a report about how unreliable eyewitnesses could be when they are in a heavily politicized environment.

The reporters who aren't completely incompetent know all of this quite well. They are looking for an anti-Israel angle and will not bother reporting anything that adds complexity to the "evil Israel, good Palestinians" narrative. They know their stringers will bring them the right people to interview that will tell them what Hamas wants them to hear.

So now we know a bit more about how extensive Hamas' control has been over Gaza and over what people could say to Westerners. Will any newspaper or NGO go back over their last 15 years of Gaza coverage and re-examine their interviews in this light? Will they issue corrections saying that the Gazans happen to be deathly afraid of Hamas and their words need to be viewed from that viewpoint?

Come on.

Only two weeks ago, CNN reported on a demonstration in Gaza of children thanking US university students for their support. Does anyone seriously think that this rally was organized by the kids who are holding professionally created signs in English but don't even know which side is right side up?

CNN showed no curiosity as to who organized the demonstration, or who printed the signs.

The Palestinian Authority is just as repressive as Hamas, although I don' t know if their spying abilities are quite as extensive. Every Christmas, the wire services dutifully interview Palestinians in Gaza and Bethlehem about how Israel oppresses them. At the same time, some courageous Christian news outlets dig a little deeper and find anonymous Palestinian Christians who describe how they are being oppressed by their own leaders and by the larger Muslim population. But nothing will change in media coverage in the West Bank, either.

Not even from the New York Times which belatedly mentions what every reporter knows.

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