Showing posts with label Hamas war crimes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hamas war crimes. Show all posts

Friday, December 22, 2023

On Thursday, the Washington Post published an investigation  casting doubt on whether Shifa Hospital in Gaza was being used as a Hamas command center.

Its top major finding: "The rooms connected to the tunnel network discovered by IDF troops showed no immediate evidence of military use by Hamas."

The key to the story is the word "immediate:"
“The law is about what was in the mind of the attacker at the time the attacker planned and executed the mission with respect to both what they expected the collateral damage they expected to cause and the military advantage they anticipated gaining,” said Michael Schmitt, an emeritus professor at the U.S. Naval War College.

The IDF would not comment on the military advantage sought or achieved.

What was the urgency? This is not yet being demonstrated,” said Yousuf Syed Khan, a senior lawyer with Global Rights Compliance, a law firm, who has drafted U.N. reports on siege warfare.

While the underground tunnel uncovered by Israeli forces after the raid does point to a possible militant presence underneath the hospital at some point, it does not prove that a command node was operating there during the war.

“We’re getting more of a granular, three-dimensional understanding of al-Shifa Hospital, the tunnels underneath it,” said Brian Finucane, a former legal adviser at the State Department and now a senior adviser at Crisis Group.

“What we’re really lacking here is a confident understanding of the fourth dimension, which is time. When were various elements of the hospital being used in certain ways? When were the tunnels beneath the hospital complex being used in certain ways?”
The Washington Post has its doubts:
The bare, white-tiled rooms showed no immediate evidence of use — for command and control or otherwise. There are no signs of recent habitation, including litter, food containers, clothing or other personal items.  
Let's look at the context.

Hamas' use of the hospital for military purposes was well known as early as 2006. Even the Washington Post itself wrote in 2014 that it  “has become a de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders, who can be seen in the hallways and offices.” 

Israel had built bunkers under the hospital when Gaza was under Israeli control, but bunkers aren't tunnels. However, we know that there were tunnels under Gaza's Al Wehda Street that were bombed in the 2014 war, and that street leads directly to the hospital compound. Given that Hamas built hundreds of tunnel shafts underneath their offices and leaders' homes, it is apparent that there were connections between Hamas offices in the hospital basement and the tunnels under Al Wehda Street.


Israel might not have revealed the specific locations of each shaft, and that is hardly important considering that there is no doubt that these tunnels existed directly underneath a hospital.

Just as there is no doubt that the only purpose of these tunnels, underground rooms and bathrooms is military. They aren't hotels or summer camps.

The IDF first laid out a specific series of accusations about the Shifa Hospital on October 27, nearly three weeks before the raid, before the ground war even began. There were unofficial discussions of Shifa Hospital before that. It didn't show "urgency" - it showed unheard-of patience before moving in.

Hamas knew the IDF was coming for them. And they had weeks to clear out and clean up the evidence from the tunnels (even though they left behind plenty of weapons on the hospital grounds themselves, which were harder to clean up since there were so many people around.)

Here's the part that no one is talking about: The IDF knew quite well that they were giving Hamas a heads up that they were coming. They knew Hamas would not stay and it would hide evidence of explicit military use. So why give the warning at all? Why not surprise Hamas? What army tells the enemy where they will be going?

The warning was meant to force Hamas commanders to move to other areas. 

This achieves three military aims. Firstly, it  disrupts their operations temporarily. Secondly,  it allows the IDF to go there, gather evidence and valuable intelligence like footage from cameras, and destroy the military infrastructure beneath Shifa without a firefight and endangering patients and civilians taking shelter. And thirdly, Hamas leaders moving to other areas allows Israel to attack them without worrying about the complexity of protecting hospital patients during a battle.

Israel has now released evidence that Hamas brought hostages to Shifa. The tunnels had electricity and plumbing that were attached to Shifa's infrastructure. Weapons were found in the radiology ward and in a garage on Shifa's grounds. We know that employees and even directors at other hospitals were also Hamas terrorists. The Gaza health ministry is Hamas and it admits its officials have Hamas military rank. While there might not be direct evidence of Hamas using those tunnels underneath Shifa in mid-November as their main headquarters, no one can seriously doubt that Hamas used the hospital for military purposes and that the reason was to use the patients as human shields. 

Israel managed to clear Hamas out of the hospital it was using for military purposes with a minimum of fighting and a minimum of physical destruction. That is not violating international law - it is adhering to it in ways far beyond the limited imaginations of those whose entire worldview is poisoned by always assuming malevolence from Israel.



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Wednesday, December 20, 2023

The Hamas ministry of health released a statement this morning in response to the video of Kamal Adwan Hospital director, Dr. Ahmed Al-Kahlot admitting that Hamas militants control the hospital, uses their ambulances and offices for military activity.

They claim that Kahlot's statement was given after he was tortured, writing on Facebook: 
In the face of a new chapter of ongoing crimes targeting the health sector, the occupation forces destroyed large parts of Kamal Adwan Hospital and arrested the hospital director, intimidating and coercing him to give the story of the occupation under the force of beating and torture, we would like to clarify the following:
Their explanation pretty much admits a great deal that Kahlot said!
1. Dr. Ahmed Al-Kahlot works within the cadres of the Military Medical Services, which is an official body affiliated with the Palestinian Ministry of Interior and within the approved components of the Palestinian National Authority.

 So the hospital is run by the Hamas military. 

2. The rank of brigadier general is a job rank in the medical services apparatus affiliated with the Ministry of Interior, and it is a known and applicable rank throughout the world.
They admit giving Al-Kahlot a military rank within Hamas.
3. The presence of official components and bodies inside the hospital, such as medical investigations and official agencies affiliated with the Palestinian Ministry of Interior, came as a result of the destruction of the infrastructure of these agencies and the search for a place that provides the necessary work requirements, and they are approved agencies within the structure of the Ministry of Interior.
So the Hamas Ministry of Interior - which is responsible for police and other security services - really did have offices in the hospital. (They don't say what everyone knows: the Hamas police are also largely members of the Hamas Al Qassam Brigades.)

4. What was stated by Dr. Ahmed Al-Kahlot was under the force of oppression, torture and intimidation, and we call on all human rights institutions to denounce this criminal behavior practiced by the occupation against our people in general and against health work crews in particular to extract a story consistent with the occupation’s demand, and to extract this testimony under threat. Publishing it in audio and video is a war crime in itself.
There you have it. Using hospitals as military sites isn't the war crime  - posting video of the hospital director admitting it is the real war crime!
We call on human rights institutions to open an urgent investigation into the Kamal Adwan Hospital massacre, where children were besieged without water, without food, without electricity, and without water for extended days, which ended with the bombing of the hospital, the killing of two women and two children among the patients, and the injury of dozens. This was followed by storming the hospital and arresting dozens. Of the displaced, the sick, the health personnel, the brutal assault against them, the digging up of graves, the demolition of the hospital, the crushing of bodies under the tracks of tanks, and other horrific details.
Translation: We have to get the narrative back!

The problem is, they probably will. The media is always willing to give Hamas the benefit of the doubt while casting aspersions on everything the IDF says. Which is, really, a form of antisemitism, to say that Jews are suspected of lying with everything they say, even when compared to terrorists who celebrate murdering women and children.



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Times of Israel reports:

The director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan hospital in Jabaliya has revealed in a Shin Bet interrogation that his northern Gaza hospital was turned into a military facility under Hamas’s control and that at one point, it had housed a kidnapped soldier.

In footage published on Tuesday by the Shin Bet and Israel Defense Forces, hospital director Ahmed Kahlot could be seen telling an Israeli interrogator that Hamas had offices inside the hospital and used it as a base for operational activity.

According to Kahlot, who said he has been a lieutenant colonel in Hamas since 2010, some 16 members of the hospital’s staff — including doctors, nurses and paramedics — were Hamas operatives serving in the al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the terror organization.

He added that several members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s Al-Quds Brigades were also employed in the hospital.

Here is his statement:


 Kahlout was widely quoted by the media for two months. Now that we know he is Hamas, we can assume that a large percentage of his statements that helped shape world opinion were propaganda.

So what has the media quoted a Hamas official as if he was a dedicated medical professional?

AP quoted him November 7 defending how casualty numbers from Hamas' health ministry are trustworthy.  

“Hamas is one of the factions. Some of us are aligned with Fatah, some are independent,” said Ahmed al-Kahlot, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza. “More than anything, we are medical professionals.”

The Guardian, November 12:

 The head of northern Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital has told Al Jazeera that the hospital has run out of fuel.

“Ahmed al-Kahlout, the head of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, said in an interview with Al Jazeera that the facility’s main generator has run out of fuel, forcing the hospital to shut its operation,” the news organisation reports.

More than 5,000 people are sheltering at the hospital in addition to patients, al-Kahlout said.

The Guardian, November 22, quoted him again:

The hospital had received more than 60 bodies with over 200 injured since last night, he added. “The medical teams are very tired. We don’t have a single drop of fuel. We work in the dark using handheld searchlights,” he said

In another message distributed by the health ministry, Kahlout said the hospital was using cooking oil rather than diesel to run the hospital’s generators, and an ambulance targeting the wounded had been struck near the hospital grounds.

CNN, December 11, quoted him as saying that the maternity ward was hit by tank shelling, killing two women and leaving two more so badly wounded their legs required amputation.

Pravda, December 12:

"Israeli drones target anyone entering or leaving the hospital. ...The IOF targeted the hospital's water system, and we had to rely on groundwater. No electricity, water, or food in the hospital. The IOF shelled the maternity ward. Three children in the hospital lost their lives in the last three days due to a shortage of oxygen. "

Every quote from every medical professional in Gaza since October 7 is as suspect as Al-Kahlout's. But there was no skepticism about his accusations - until now. 

Now that he is telling everyone that Hamas controls the hospitals and ambulances, the Times of London has lots of reservations about  his statements:
Israel has sought to justify arresting scores of medical staff in Gaza by posting a video that purports to show a hospital manager confessing to working for Hamas.
Ahmed Kahlot, head of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, was detained last week along with 70 other medical staff.
The release of the video was condemned by pro-Palestinian groups, who said there was no justification for publishing interrogation evidence obtained under unclear conditions without the presence of a lawyer.
Ghassan Abu Sitta, a British-Palestinian surgeon who spent weeks earlier in the conflict working in both al-Shifa and al-Ahli hospitals, said the Israelis were taking these actions because their attempts to show al-Shifa had been used as a command centre had failed.
“The Israelis plan to have show trials to justify the attacks on hospitals, because the whole narrative on al-Shifa was so ludicrous,” he said.



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

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Wednesday, December 06, 2023

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

When the war started, I phoned my neighbor to make sure she knew she was welcome to bring her family to our safe room, at any time of the day or night. We talked about logistics and how we were having a key made for them and how I didn’t at all mind a LOT of children in a small space because I’d had 12 of my own. The whole time, my neighbor, whom I’ll call “Terry” out of respect for her privacy, said, “Thank you, but so far we’ve been sitting in the stairwell, and that’s fine with us.”

I got the idea she didn’t think the missiles were all that big a deal, and so finally I confessed, “Yeah. To tell the truth, I don’t worry so much about the missiles either. It’s the other stuff I worry about.”

“Exactly. It’s the other stuff,” said Terry.

Neither of us had to elucidate the nature of that “other stuff,” and I won’t say it here, either. But the thing I think about when I think about that “other stuff," is rape.

I can’t swear that this is the thing that worries my neighbor most, when she thinks about the things she fears most. She didn’t say. But then again, she didn’t have to—fear of rape is not exclusive to this writer—it’s fairly universal among women and researchers have been studying the phenomenon for years.

Take, for example, this abstract from “Fear of Rape Among Urban Women,” a 1985 paper by the (in-)felicitously named Mark Warr, of Penn State University (emphasis added):

Sample survey data from Seattle are used to examine fear of rape among urban women. The magnitude and prevalence of such fear are striking, particularly among younger women, who fear rape more than any other crime. The high fear attached to rape stems from the fact that it is perceived to be both extremely serious and relatively likely; and from the fact that it is closely associated with other serious offenses such as homicide and robbery. Fear of rape also lies behind fear of other offenses among women in our sample, and is strongly associated with certain social or lifestyle precautions.

Some four paragraphs into the introduction to this paper, Warr says something that touches on the universal nature of fear of rape among women. More women, it seems, are scared of rape than are actually raped (emphasis added):

This paper is not about those who rape, nor is it about those who are direct victims of rape. Rather, the paper considers a much larger group: those who fear rape. One of the major developments in criminology during the past 20 years has been a general realization that the social consequences of crime are not limited to those who are directly victimized. That principle is particularly true when it comes to fear of victimization, because the number of fearful individuals greatly exceeds the number of actual victims during any given period.

Wikipedia has something on “Rape Fear” that speaks to cause: the socialization of women. Women have been raised to fear and protect themselves from rape (emphasis added):

Socialization of Women

The fear of rape, unlike other fears of specific crimes, is almost exclusive to women. Among women, it is also one of the strongest crime-related fears, and is the strongest crime-related fear for young women. Levels of fear of rape vary among women by age, race/ethnicity, residential area, and other factors, but are especially high for women who have been victims of rape in the past or know victims personally (the latter group may include a significant portion of women, with one study estimating that over half of women know rape victims). Women are socialized from a very young age that rape can happen anywhere, to anyone, at any time. They are taught that they should always be aware of the possibility of rape and protect themselves from it. Young women are taught strategies to keep themselves safe, and this idea is instilled in them at a young age. This teaching women about the possibility of rape at a young age may contribute to higher levels of fear of crime in women. Studies have shown that women that take more precautionary steps to avoid being raped have more fear of actually being raped, whereas women who work nights and are outside in the dark tend to have less fear of rape. This may be because women that are out in the dark alone are more familiar with the area, so they feel that there is less of a threat.

What women know and men don’t: Women have an ever-present fear of being attacked,” a 2019 review of a PBS documentary, begins with a taste for the reader, of how fear of rape is experienced by women, and why (emphasis added):

Every day, women live with fear. It’s not paralyzing, but it’s omnipresent -- whether you’re walking out of work in the dark or asking a friend to watch your drink.

“Ask any woman you know. You always have a plan,” said Mary Dickson, who worked on a PBS documentary about women and fear in 1996. Nothing’s changed since then, she says.

The fear is low hum beneath the music of your regular life, implanted in your teenage years. You’re afraid a strange man will attack you.

So you don’t run at night.

You don’t park in a public garage.

You don’t enter an elevator already occupied by a single man.

You don’t leave a party without your friends.

Women are raised to fear and protect themselves from rape. But fear of rape exponentially increases when women read about or see images or footage of rape. Perhaps that is the reason I sensed that my neighbor Terry felt as I did, after photos emerged of a female hostage being led away to Gaza, her pants bloodied at the crotch. I am also fairly certain that like me, Terry finds it difficult to stop thinking about Shani Louk, whose story I can’t bring myself to relate here.

We, the women of Israel, know that Hamas, in addition to raping women—and it must be said, men—uses fear of rape as a form of psychological warfare, to inspire incapacitating fear in Israeli women and rage in their men. For this reason, Israeli experts have advised Israelis not to watch the footage, read the stories, see the photos, or listen to podcasts where the atrocities might be mentioned. These things spike fears; in the case of women, fear of rape.

Female Fear, a US Dept. of Justice resource, speaks of several types of media that can trigger rape fear in women, among them “frightening press accounts” (emphasis added):

In the United States, the Nation with the highest rape rate in the world, warnings, admonitions, and fear of rape are handed down from mother to daughter. Although rape happens to 1 female in 12, frightening press accounts, violent pornographic movies, cultural stereotypes of rapists and their victims, attacks on friends and acquaintances, and escalating statistics have contributed to women's fear of rape. In exploring the social and psychological specter of rape in women's lives, this study probes both the myths and realities of rape and society's response to it, including strategies women have developed to protect themselves. Fear of rape is reflected in the way women think, organize their lives, and relate to others. As the authors indicate, a reasonable amount of fear is useful in motivating women to take reasonable precautions. The book presents concrete ways both women and men can begin to alleviate the destructive effects of the fear of rape. These include educating the public, integrating women into their communities, promoting legal reform, and forcing accountability in media coverage.

Fear of rape explains the “Believe Women” campaign, which arose out of the #MeToo movement. Rape is one of women’s foremost fears and concerns. Why then, do women at the forefront of efforts to support women, make excuses for Hamas rapists when the victims are Jewish? 


The UN, however, bears special mention for its spectacular betrayal of Israeli women in the face of widespread rape by Hamas terrorists, still an ongoing situation for Israeli hostages of both sexes.   

An October 26 Jerusalem Post editorial speaks of that betrayal (emphasis added):

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s speech to a special Security Council meeting on the Israel-Hamas war on Tuesday began promisingly enough.

“Nothing can justify the deliberate killing, injuring, and kidnapping of civilians – or the launching of rockets against civilian targets,” he said at the beginning of the speech.

Then Guterres’ moral compass went haywire, and he began to justify what he had just said was unjustifiable.

“It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum,” he said. “The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.”

Why does Guterres justify violence against Israeli Jews, and fail to mention at all, the sexual violence and the rape and degradation of Israeli women? How does anything make rape an excusable offense? In the enlightened world, how can it be that the head of the UN uses his soapbox to blame the Jewish victims and tell lies about the Jewish State—and the Gazan people?

By November 30, however, Guterres had apparently changed his tune. It must have been getting more difficult to get away with the sort of outright Jew-hatred that makes allowances for rape when the victim is a Jew. Hence his post on X.

"There are numerous accounts of sexual violence during the abhorrent acts of terror by Hamas on 7 October that must be vigorously investigated and prosecuted.

"Gender-based violence must be condemned. Anytime. Anywhere."

But why so vague? Where is the mention of rape? Where are the words “support Israel women” and “believe Israeli women” and what do we gleam from these omissions?

Here is my takeaway: with his fuzzy pronouncements of “investigating accounts” and “sexual violence” Guterres is telling the world that it’s okay to suspend belief in women when they are Jewish and Israeli; that it’s understandable that Hamas terrorists would rape Jewish women; and finally, that it’s fine and dandy to lie in public and make public proclamations about Jews occupying their own indigenous Jewish territory when everyone knows the bible is their deed.

My neighbor Terry is somewhat new to Israel. She and her family made Aliyah after there was a drive-by shooting not far from their home in the States. They took the shooting as a sign that it was time to leave the States and come to Israel. She hasn’t changed her mind. Why would she when the entire world repudiates her because she is a Jew, doesn’t care if she is raped because she is a Jew?

Rape fear is real for women everywhere, but fear of rape is compounded in a woman who is Jewish and Israeli, because she knows that the world sees her rape as legitimate resistance, and that the head of the UN himself, sees her genitals and body as free-for-the-taking, subhuman instruments for the release of pent-up Arab anger.



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!

 

 

Thursday, November 30, 2023

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

Then it deleted the post.

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

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

Here is the initial post and what replaced it.

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

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


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

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

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

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

It hasn't said a word.

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





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!

 

 

Thursday, November 23, 2023















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!

 

 



Monday, November 20, 2023

(Guest post by Andrew Pessin,  professor of philosophy at Connecticut College.)

The One Simple Question That Determines Everything

Andrew Pessin

apessin@conncoll.edu

1. Yes or No

It’s a simple yes or no question. Much follows from how one answers the question, but we’ll start with just the question.

(Q) “Is it acceptable to slit babies’ throats, rape little girls, chop off of the hands and feet of teenagers, gouge out eyes, murder children in front of their parents, murder parents in front of their children then kidnap the children, bind entire families together then burn them alive, and livestream all the above including posting videos of their murders to the victims’ own social media accounts—and worse—on a mass scale—in the pursuit of some political aim?”

I’ve been asking question (Q) of various faculty members at my institution and elsewhere, people whom I previously thought to be quite decent with serious commitments to ideals such as diversity, inclusion, toleration, and anti-racism, in the form of asking them to publicly name the perpetrators of the October 7 massacre and condemn the atrocities, full stop.

They have overwhelmingly refused to respond.

Based on what I have seen, out of some 200+ faculty members at my institution only four are willing to publicly condemn the brutal, sadistic, barbaric slaughter by Hamas of some 1200 mostly Jewish civilians, including many babies, children, teenagers, disabled people, and grandmothers, full stop.

If any other identity group had experienced a mass slaughter like this, or even a far smaller one, or even an abstract harm of some sort, does anyone doubt these faculty members would erupt, loudly and for days? Not a hypothetical, at least here: not only was there much outraged chatter after (for example) the Pulse nightclub massacre in 2016 or the George Floyd matter in 2020, but this past spring our now former President scheduled an event at a venue that had had discriminatory policies fifty years ago, and the faculty here exploded in weeks of outrage, departmental statements of solidarity with harmed students, with cancelled classes and then a cancelled President.

But when it’s Jewish babies and children, raped, tortured, dismembered, decapitated, there is silence.

And these are the decent people.

Many others across many campuses clearly think the answer to (Q) is “yes.” Cornell professor Russell Rickford found the October 7 bloodshed positively “exhilarating”; Columbia professor Joseph Massad was filled with “jubilation and awe,” finding the massacre “astounding.” And Marc Lamont Hill of CUNY answered (Q) more or less explicitly when he wrote,So many university academics who insist upon doing performative, virtue signaling ‘land acknowledgements’ at every public event are eerily silent as real liberation struggles are happening. Guess decolonization really is a metaphor for some folk…” He clearly derides those who are all talk and no action, so for him, at least, the answer appears to be “yes,” at least in the pursuit of “decolonization.”

Nor are these professors alone in their sentiments. Lamont Hill’s remark also came after ten days of massive campus rallies openly celebrating the “resistance,” the sanitized word for the mass torture and slaughter of Jewish civilians. Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), the leading campus group with some 200 chapters, immediately endorsed and defended the massacre by openly proclaiming that “decolonization is a call to … actions that go beyond … rhetoric,” including “resistance … in all forms,” including “armed struggle,” and illustrated their social media with images of homicidal hang gliders in case we missed the point. Most tellingly, they declared that they “are PART of this movement, not [merely] in solidarity”—the movement, that is, that guns down unarmed dancing teenagers.

So Rickford, Massad, and Lamont Hill have a lot of fellow travelers in the affirmative camp, faculty and students, people for whom all that gore is apparently fine if it’s for “decolonization,” at least when the victims are Jews.

I have many thoughts about how academics (and then their students) become so gripped by ideology that they lose sight of basic moral truths, to the point where they see the mass sadistic murder of children as the moral high ground. The people just above are at least open about who they are so you know who you are dealing with, but, frankly, the “decent” ones, the silent ones, are ultimately no different. October 7 at least brings the benefit of clarity and sharp lines into matters often featuring obscurity and nuance. In my view any academic who cannot simply answer “no” to question (Q) above is literally in the same ideological position as the Nazis, for whom there were no moral limits to their extermination campaign, just possessed of some marginally different ideology, as we’ll see below.

For now maybe a few simple thoughts will do.

Speaking of land acknowledgements: In the lobby of a central building on my campus there is an enormous posterboard proclaiming that “You are on Pequot and Mohegan homeland,” noting that the college “celebrates Indigenous People’s Day.”

By the decolonization rationale above, our local Native Americans would be within their rights to invade our campus and mercilessly slaughter every single one of us. Indeed those who support indigenous rights and decolonization ought to be the first to offer their throats to avoid that vapid virtue signaling that Lamont Hill derides and actually live (and die) by what they believe.

Do our professors really support the Mohegans’ right to come in and gouge our eyes out, cut off our hands and feet, tie us up and burn us alive, and rape us while they are at it?

Or do they only support such when the alleged colonizers are Jews? (One suspects that when they learn that it’s the Jews who are actually the original indigenous inhabitants of the land and the Arabs the colonialist conquerors, they will be less enthusiastic about the slaughter of babies and children. More on this below.)

In fact in the very same tract declaring themselves “part of” the “armed struggle” movement for decolonization, SJP acknowledges that their chapters are on “occupied Turtle Island,” and further admit that they are themselves Palestinians “in exile,” i.e. not indigenous here. So by their own logic they should be the first to offer their throats to their local Native Americans; or since they’re keen to be a “part of” the violent decolonization movement, they probably should just eliminate themselves.

Note too that these same folk see themselves in “exile” and demand the “right of return” to their homeland in literally the same breath as they reject the Jews’ right to return from their own exile to their own homeland. And when Jews in fact did just that, these people endorse slaughtering them en masse; so again by parity of reasoning they should be offering their throats to the local Native Americans in the name of “decolonization”—not to mention slaughtering all non-indigenous people everywhere, which would include all immigrants and refugees in every country around the world.

Of course all this is absurd, outrageously so.

There’s actually a word for violence targeting civilians for political aims: it’s terrorism. And anyone incapable of identifying and condemning October 7 as such is pro-terror, pure and simple, no matter what the alleged grievances are that allegedly led to the violence. If you can’t answer “no” to (Q) above, full stop, then you are pro-terror, period.

This actually isn’t difficult. You don’t need to know anything about the conflict to know that that mass terror attack was abominable. Who watches babies having their throats slit and little girls raped and then dismembered alive (yes) and says, “Well, I need to learn more before making a judgment”? Who watches a mother and a father and their three small children tied up together and then burned alive (yes) and says, “Well I need to hear the other side before I make up my mind”? It simply doesn’t matter what preceded these events. By my lights, all decent people everywhere should recognize that there are moral limits to what people can do even in response to their alleged “oppression,” and that it is never, under any circumstances, acceptable to target civilians, particularly in that sadistic, barbaric, inhuman way—even if they are Jews.

This is not about politics. It doesn’t require you to be “pro-Israel.”

This is about humanity.

It’s either yes or an unqualified, full-stop “no”—because the second you add a “but” or “it’s complicated” or “look at the context,” you are turning your alleged “no” into a “yes.”

If your ideology endorses the mass extermination of a people, it’s time to rethink your ideology.

And, perhaps, to be removed from campus.

 

2. The True Nature Of Palestinianism

Let’s now see what follows from the “no” answer—from acknowledging that October 7 was a mass terror attack.

First and foremost, the “no” answer reveals something that was actually never hidden, except to those who have long chosen not to see it. Since such atrocities are never justifiable by any recognizable moral norms, the “no” answer reveals that the people perpetrating them do not respect those norms. And that in turn means that the movement in question is not what its Western progressive allies like to pretend it is.

The Islamic Resistance Movement, known by its acronym Hamas, has never made any secret of its views. From its 1988 founding charter—which literally endorses the murder of every Jew on earth, and quotes repeatedly, and “factually,” from the antisemitic Nazi-worshipped forgery Protocols of the Elders of Zion in order to support its genocidal program—to nearly every action and every statement in the 35 years since, it has been telling us exactly what it thinks. A week after the massacre their leaders did so again, calling on every Muslim on earth to bring the Jihad against Jews to everywhere on earth. Another week after that they declared their intention to repeat the October 7 massacre time and again, until all the Jews are gone.

Hamas, in other words, is not a liberation movement, not a decolonization movement, not about peace, negotiation, Palestinian self-determination much less “two states,” not concerned about “justice” as Westerners understand it nor even about the welfare, well-being, or betterment of the lives of its Palestinian civilians or subjects, all the things that should rightly matter to genuine campus progressives. It is not responding or objecting to any particular Israeli policy or practice, or alleged offense, such as an “occupation.”

It is the very existence of a Jewish state to which Hamas objects—because Hamas is an openly anti-Jewish genocidal movement that aims to establish its version of Islam over the entire globe, including murdering every single Jew on earth, starting with those in Israel. (They also are interested in destroying the United States and global Christianity, but the Jews are the first priority.)

That the animus is not restricted to Israeli Jews is also clear by the global reaction. Mass rallies in major cities around the globe celebrated the October 7 slaughter, called to “Globalize the Intifada!,”  and attacked local Jews and Jewish institutions. Within days of October 7 antisemitic incidents had skyrocketed across the world, and by early November there had been hundreds of incidents of harassment of Jews including many incidents of physical assaults, including at least one murder in Los Angeles and possibly another in Detroit, and with uncountable incidents of vandalism against synagogues, Hillel and Chabad Houses, Jewish stores and the like. And on our campuses: as noted above, SJP openly declared its support for Hamas with social media celebrating the mass slaughter of Jews (which they call “resistance”), then launched a campaign to “bring the resistance” to every campus in order to “dismantle” Zionism everywhere. Lovely words—except when “resistance” openly means “slaughter Jews,” when “dismantling Zionism” means removing, “by any means necessary,” anyone on campus who believes that Jews have human rights too, and when they illustrate their campaign with a celebratory image of the homicidal hang glider about to gun down every unarmed dancing teenager in his sight.

This is open endorsement of, and incitement to, mass homicidal violence—occurring on, and directed towards, not only Israel and Israelis but every Jew everywhere, including on our campuses.

“We are all Hamas!” one excited young woman at the University of North Carolina screamed exuberantly, part of a massive crowd of evidently like-minded individuals.

Nor are Hamas and its campus supporters alone in this platform. Hamas’s main internal rival, the Palestinian Authority, led by “moderate” dictator Mahmoud Abbas, is entirely on the same page, as seen from its long-running “pay-to-slay” policy incentivizing murdering Israeli Jews to its recent proclamation requiring all its mosques to preach that exterminating Jews is a Muslim imperative, to openly just announcing that its main party, Fatah, actually took part in the massacre. The mosque sermons weren’t about “Israeli” Jews, mind you, but “Jews,” full stop—like the full stop that should accompany the “no” answer to question (Q) above.

And it’s not just the Palestinians. Hezbollah in Lebanon has been actively involved in firing on Israel from the start, as have the Houthis in Yemen, as have some Syrian groups, all of whom are backed and directed by Iran. The Algerian parliament declared war on Israel. The most prestigious Islamic university in the world issued a fatwa declaring that no Israeli Jews are civilians, including babies and grandmothers, thus legitimizing violence against them. (This is the same university that previously issued special fatwas sanctioning suicide bombing against Jews, despite the general Islamic prohibition on suicide.) Another Muslim body issued a fatwa calling on all Arab states to join the war against Israel. Both Al-Qaeda and ISIS have called on their followers to strike Israeli, U.S., and Jewish targets around the world. Based on the massive rallies in Arab and Muslim countries around the globe celebrating October 7, it appears that what we are seeing is, in fact, a global Islamist war against the Jews.

This is what the “no” answer to (Q) reveals to us.

What Israel, and world Jewry, have been dealing with for years is in fact a war of global Islam against every Jew on the planet (and ultimately against Christianity and the West too). Those piles of mutilated Jewish bodies strewn all over the ground and the internet—that is the Palestinian movement, now understood as merely the leading front in the Islamist war against the Jews and the West.

That is what is being celebrated and supported around the world, including on our campuses.

Once you understand this then nearly everything about the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict” looks different. First, that name is oversimplified and misleading: it should be called at least the Israeli-Palestinian-Jewish-Arab-Muslim-Iran Conflict. More importantly, it’s not in fact about Israelis allegedly oppressing disenfranchised Palestinians but about Jews defending their lives from a global genocidal Islamist movement. So understood, you’ll need to reorient yourself about who, exactly, is the oppressor, and who is the underdog. Opponents of Israel like to show maps of “big” strong Israel dominating little, fractured, vulnerable “Palestine.” But a more accurate perspective is given by something like this map, with that tiny sliver of Israel, 32 of which would fit inside the state of Texas, dwarfed by the surrounding Arab and Muslim nations who openly seek to destroy it. Look at that map and sincerely ask yourself: who exactly is the oppressor and who is the oppressed here? Who in fact is the colonialist, the imperialist, and who is the one resisting that colonial imperialism? Ask yourself seriously, which party actually seeks coexistence and which one seeks the extermination of the other?

The answer to that last one might be given by answering another question: Where in the Middle East and North Africa do Jews and Arabs in fact coexist, and where in that same region are there essentially no Jews?

October 7 reveals the true nature of the Palestinian movement, now impossible not to see even for those who have long chosen not to see it. (Q) is a yes or no question; and if “progressives” truly are opposed to oppression, on the side of the oppressed, against colonialism, and for coexistence and peace, then the “no” answer to (Q) dictates which side they should be on here.

Part 2

Part 3


 

 

 




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Friday, November 17, 2023



In October, I predicted "If polls come out about the Simchat Torah massacre, the results (from Palestinians) will almost certainly be overwhelmingly in support. 84% supported the Mercaz Harav massacre in 2008, 77% a 2008 suicide attack that killed a woman in Dimona, 80% supported the wave of stabbing attacks in 2014 including the murder of four rabbis in Har Nof."

I was right.

A new poll from AWRAD, Arab World for Research and Development, shows that the vast majority of Palestinians support the October 7 pogrom. 75% of all Palestinians supported the massacre while only 12.7% opposed it.


The Gazans polled were generally in temporary housing in southern Gaza, and "only" 63% supported the murder and raping spree. But in the "moderate" West Bank, an astonishing 83% supported the massacre. 

This poll was taken after the details were publicized, after the videos were shared, after everyone know the death toll. That didn't dampen their enthusiasm for the attack - it may have increased it.

Palestinian women are just about as bloodthirsty as the men are with their enthusiasm for murdering Jews well within the margin of error for the poll.

When asked about their preference between a one-state solution for Jews and Arabs, a two state solution for two peoples, or a single Arab Palestinian state from the river to the sea, things were just as lopsided. 75% want to see a Judenrein Arab Palestinian state from the river to the sea - the question used those exact words. All the apologists for the term who claim it means a single state with equal rights are gaslighting everyone: only 5.4% of Palestinians support their utopian dream. 




And the attack made Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades terror wing the most popular entity in the territories, with nearly 89% of all Palestinians feeling positive about that group, higher than every other political party, terror group or country. 


The poll is crystal clear and cannot be spun: Palestinians overwhelmingly support the most heinous terrorism against Jews. Palestinians want to rid the Middle East of Jews. 

As I've been emphasizing, the obstacle to peace isn't Israel. It is Palestinian Jew-hatred, hatred that predates the "occupation" and "siege" and "nakba." Unless there is a new Palestinian leadership and a generation of Palestinians who grow up learning about coexistence and tolerance, there is no chance for peace. 




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

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Wednesday, November 08, 2023



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

Rallies have figured large in the wake of October 7th. Not in Israel, mind you. In Israel, we are too busy to hold rallies. We prefer to rally around each other.

Outside of Israel, things are different. There, the rally has become an important vehicle for expressing solidarity; for taking sides, and in some cases, for whipping up the masses to kill Jews. 

The rally is many things, but what, in fact, does the rally really achieve for those of us on the side of Israel? It’s all a numbers game, and their numbers will always be larger: There are more of them than us.

Does it matter? Of course it does. The rally is a kind of test; a chance to choose good or evil, though it’s not always cut and dried. There are the sheeple who passively allow themselves to be swayed by the crowd; they just want to fit in. On the other hand, there is true evil, the thugs, and the academics who say they are exhilarated by what happened to the Jews—and the people who tear down posters of Jewish babies held hostage in Gaza.

Evil takes other forms, sometimes in the guise of a Jew who will tell you that as Jew, they say it’s okay to commit atrocities as long as you know the context—as long as you know the history. . .

 . . . or the woman who shouts “I’m a rabbi and I demand a ceasefire!” These Jews are sick, sicker, sickest and the very definition of the banality of evil.  

It must be said that sometimes, and here there is only one phrase, crude as it is, to describe the phenomenon: the rally is a pissing contest. Sometimes the participants scuffle or worse. 


Sometimes someone hits an elderly Jew over the head with a megaphone and kills him, and the police can’t decide if it’s murder.

It’s not all bad, though. There are Jews, pure of heart, who flock to rallies to express anguish and cry out for justice, “Justice, justice, you shall pursue.”

That’s very nice. But as I told my relatives on the eve of October 11, “From experience, all of you should stay close to home. I wouldn't go to shul or to rallies. It's not worth the risk, even with beefed up security. Personal safety is more important, and it's bad to be in crowded places. . . Don't be lulled into thinking you're far away and safe. I mean it. Please just stay safe. The rallies don't help us anyway, IMHO.”

The response? “This was an attack on all of us.”

That’s true. I’m glad their eyes are open. But it doesn’t help us in the aftermath. There’s a war, and it is those of us in Israel who must fight it.

What would help us would be unceasing rallies at the White House, protesting Biden’s aid to Iran and Hamas, and his demands for a ceasefire. Short of that, rallies are pretty useless. They may make you feel good, and give you a feeling of communal bonding, but that’s not a good enough reason to get together when it isn’t safe out there for Jews and lovers of justice and light.

***
Our IDF soldiers need ceramic vests to keep them safe as they fight Hamas. We have started a crowdfunding campaign to purchase these vests for my son's platoon:  Ceramic Vests for IDF Soldiers.

Even a small donation would be greatly appreciated--each vest costs approximately $520.



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!

 

 

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