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The Mythologies of the Middle East:
Part Two
By Victor Davis Hanson
Posted By Ruth King
The Myth of “Proportionality”
As a general rule, in the long history of war, victory is found only by being disproportionate in the use of force. That is a truism so banal as to need little elaboration. When both sides are “proportionate” in their ability to harm their opponents, the result is either a bloody tactical deadlock such as at Verdun or the Somme, or an open strategic sore like Vietnam and Afghanistan, or decades-long “proportionate” killing such as the Peloponnesian War or Thirty Years’ War.
The whole point of Western aid to Ukraine apparently and logically is to allow it to harm Russia disproportionally, especially given the vast imbalance in resources, both human and material. The great tragedy of this horrific two-year war is the reality that Ukraine has only been able to achieve proportional success against Russia, as the current deadlocked map of the battle space attests.
Hamas began its war on October 7, seeking to achieve a disproportionate success; that is, to kill more Jewish civilians in any single day since the gas chambers at Auschwitz. It knew the Israelis possessed a disproportionate ability in strictly military terms to retaliate and do real damage to Hamas. But the Hamas terrorist leaders in turn assumed they had a disproportionate ability to appeal to the larger Muslim and Arab Middle East of 500 million people, as well as hundreds of millions of supporters in the old Third World as well as in the U.S. and Europe. Their logic was brutally simple: while the West, the UN, and the rest would for a moment deplore their tactics, Hamas assumed that privately they either would approve of the damage inflicted on Israelis or at least tolerate it and thus use their various levels of influence to restrain the Israeli response.
In other words, as Israelis sought to destroy Hamas through classical laws of a disproportionate response, Hamas sought to limit the Israeli tactical ability to do so by its own geostrategic disproportionate effort to galvanize Western leftists to force Jerusalem to call off the IDF and to send massive “humanitarian” aid to Gaza. Hamas was confident it would find solidarity with the Muslim Street and thus garner cash and weapons from the Middle East. And it could appeal to the anti-Western block of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Turkey, and assorted rogue regimes to offer them both public support and stealthy resupply. In general, the more thuggish the regime, the more likely it was to openly support Hamas.
So we are in a war of disproportionality: the Israelis rush to destroy Hamas tactically to the point it can never recombine to resume control of Gaza, while the Gazans seek to rev up their benefactors worldwide to force the Israelis to accept a ceasefire, after which Hamas will declare victory on the premise it committed the most heinous crimes against the Jewish people since 1945 and survived.
If all belligerents seek to obtain disproportionate and thus victorious strategies and tactics, why does the world seem to demand Israel alone be proportionate? Lots of reasons. It is a powerful Western country and thus supposedly should suffer from the Western Left’s postcolonial, postimperial guilt, especially in a war against the victimized “other.”
As a Jewish state, it suffers the added writ of anti-Semitism, as we saw after October 7th when the supposedly careful distinction between “Israeli” and “Jewish” suddenly disappeared, and pro-Hamas thugs began attacking Jewish-Americans with impunity.
In realpolitik, there are 500 million Middle Eastern Muslims and 11 million Jewish Israelis, so examine the eerie paradoxes. In the real world of geostrategic power, Israel is vastly outnumbered, at least in terms of population, collective GDP, and area. Yet because it fights individual Arab or Muslim entities successfully, it thus somehow is damned as a bully. In other words, the world sides against Israel in part because the numbers, the oil, and the terrorists are all on the other side, but somehow still fault Israel for ganging up on Hamas or Hezbollah because it proves much more adept than either. And so presto, the underdog is conveniently libeled as the overdog the moment it proves too lethal on the battlefield.
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Israel Takes the E Out of DEI
Jews and Arabs alike reject the ideology sweeping the West.
By
Ian Kingsbury
The ideology of “diversity, equity and inclusion” is a direct threat to Israel’s existence. That’s what I learned from Jewish and Arab Israelis during my five days in the country in February. They didn’t only say that DEI goes hand in hand with antisemitism, which it does. They also said it sacrifices the merit that has helped Israel survive in a sea of hostility.
I traveled to Israel on a solidarity trip organized by the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine. Several professors wanted to support Israel while registering their displeasure with higher education’s largely anti-Semitic response to Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack. I joined at their invitation, hoping to learn how Israel approaches the DEI ideology that has swept the Western world.
I quickly noticed that Israelis talk about DEI differently, most notably by excluding or redefining the E. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem is committed to “diversity and inclusion.” Ditto the Israel Institute of Technology, or Technion. Tel Aviv University keeps the E, but instead of equity, it emphasizes “equality and diversity.”
The president of Technion disavowed DEI, telling me that it is an unacceptable answer to the question he asks himself every morning: “Is our work in the interest of Israeli society and Israeli security?”
Instead of lowering standards in pursuit of equity, Technion is reaching out to Arab communities to find more qualified students. Its efforts have increased the number of Arab undergraduate students by about 80%, from 500 in 2020 to more than 900 in 2023, while the dropout rate has decreased.
At the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, I asked an Arab woman who works as a diversity and equity official how her institution understands the topic. She said her school demands equal opportunity, not equal outcomes. The latter, she said, would pit people against each other, deepening divides that Israel has worked hard to close.
Michael Halberthal, director general at Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa, made a similar point. He told us that “people get promotion into their position according to their abilities, not about their religion, not about their gender, not about anything else. And it works.” Mr. Halberthal said that it is the only hospital in the Middle East where an Arab woman heads the nephrology, or kidney disease, unit. After Oct. 7, the hospital’s Arab employees showed up en masse to treat the expected influx of patients. The hospital’s focus on diversity and inclusion rather than equity appears to have united its workforce.
The most telling comment came from a lieutenant colonel who briefed us at Nevatim Airbase, a focal point of the country’s military response to Hamas. I asked if the Israeli Air Force has any initiatives to increase diversity in its ranks. The officer chuckled, then said that while there are efforts to recruit a broad swath of Israeli citizens, assignments and promotions are based on ability. A person has to earn the pilot’s seat in an F-35, because when Israel is at war, Israel must win. It can’t afford to embrace such a divisive and destructive ideology. Neither can the U.S., the leader of the free world.
Mr. Kingsbury is director of research at Do No Harm.
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Food drops are dangerous and Biden's unwarranted death toll rises each day. From Afghan, to Georgia, to Gaza.
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Report: Five killed by aid packages airdropped by US
At least five dead, multiple injured, after suffering direct hits from humanitarian aid packages airdropped by the US.
Gaza reports say that at least five people were killed and others injured Friday afternoon after aid packages airdropped by the US hit them directly, west of Gaza City.
Earlier this week, a Gazan "unboxing" aid packages on social media revealed that they contain four nutritious meals, Tabasco sauce, salt and sugar, and, in addition to the meals, Skittles candies.
On Thursday night, US President Joe Biden gave his State of the Union speech to a Joint Session of Congress.
“I pledge to all the families that we will not rest until we bring all of your loved ones home,” he said.
“Hamas could end this conflict today by releasing the hostages, laying down arms, and surrendering those responsible for October 7th,” said Biden, who stressed that Israel has the right to go after Hamas but also “has an added burden” since Hamas hides behind civilians.
Biden also claimed that Israel has a “fundamental responsibility” to protect civilians in Gaza, adding, “This war has taken a greater toll on innocent civilians than all previous wars in Gaza combined.”
“Tonight, I’m directing the US military to lead an emergency mission to establish a temporary pier in the Mediterranean on the coast of Gaza that can receive large shipments carrying food, water, medicine and temporary shelter,” Biden said.
He promised, “No US boots will be on the ground. A temporary pier will enable a massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance getting into the Gaza every day,” but insisted that, “Israel must allow more aid into Gaza and ensure humanitarian workers aren’t caught in the crossfire.”
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NEWS RELEASE
ZOA Condemns Biden’s Outrageous, Uncalled-For Attacks on Israel During SOTU Address
This Was the Most Hostile, Anti-Israel SOTU Speech Ever. Biden’s Policies Clearly Intended to Harm Israel and Inadvertently Benefit Hamas and Radical Arabs.
Zionist Organization of America National President Morton A. Klein released the following statement:
After briefly mentioning: Hamas’ sexual violence and massacre of 1,200 innocent people on October 7th; the need to bring the hostages home; the fact that “Hamas could end this conflict today by releasing the hostages, laying down arms, and surrendering those responsible for October 7”; and stating that Israel has the right to go after Hamas, Biden outrageously spent almost three times as long falsely castigating and making dangerous demands on Israel during Biden’s March 7, 2024 State of the Union (SOTU) address. Biden’s policies are clearly intended to harm Israel and inadvertently support Hamas and radical Arabs. Among other things:
(1) Biden hypocritically claimed to be a great friend of Israel while demanding a Palestinian state “solution” that imperils Israel’s very existence.
Biden rewards Arab terrorism by wrongly calling for the creation of a Palestinian terror state on Israel’s longest border adjacent to 70% of Israel’s population on Israel’s lawful land, as the “only solution” and “only path.” A Palestinian state would endanger Israel’s very existence, cause more October 7ths and more rockets to fall on innocent Israelis, and reward and encourage more terrorism. On October 7, Palestinian Authority terrorists filmed themselves bragging about participating in the massacre of Jews, including killing Jews and stepping on their heads. 85% of Palestinians support Hamas’ atrocities on October 7th. The Israeli people and Israeli leadership thus oppose a Palestinian state, across the board.
Moreover, the Palestinian leadership firmly maintains that Hamas would be part of a Palestinian state. Biden’s demand for such a terror state thus contradicts his brief lip service that Israel has the right to go after Hamas. (See also “ZOA Strongly Opposes Dangerous Biden Plan for Palestinian Authority (Pay-to-Slay) Terror Regime to Rule Gaza & Create a State,” Jan. 10, 2024, for more details as to why a Palestinian state is untenable.)
(2) Biden overstated number of Gazans displaced and “under bombardment,” and never mentioned that 200,000 Israelis are still displaced, living in hotels and people’s homes and tents due to Hamas, Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies’ destruction of their homes and communities and continuing bombardment; or that all of Israel is under the threat of rocket and other attacks. And that southern and northern Israel is now uninhabitable. Tiny Israel is now even tinier.
Biden also decried “Homes destroyed, neighborhoods in rubble, cities in ruin” in Gaza. But Biden said nothing about the numerous “Homes destroyed, neighborhoods in rubble, cities in ruin” throughout northern and southern Israel. Moreover, the Israeli homes burnt and destroyed were the homes of innocent Israelis sleeping in their beds. The homes destroyed in Gaza were homes that harbored Hamas rocket launchers, terror tunnel entrances and terrorists shooting at Israelis. Israel is not carpet-bombing Gaza. Shame on Biden for attempting to give such a false impression.
(3) Biden wrongly demanded that Israel must make assisting and protecting Gazans Israel’s first priority. In other words, according to Biden, Israel’s objectives of rescuing the hostages, preventing attacks on Israeli civilians, and eliminating Hamas’ terror army must take a back seat to assisting Gazans who overwhelmingly support Hamas massacring Jews who danced in the streets, rejoicing the murders, rapes and torturing of Jews.
Biden’s demand to prioritize Gazan civilians above all else ignores and violates international law. In fact, under international law, the anticipated military advantage of an operation (e.g., to eliminate Hamas’ terror army, prevent attacks against Israeli civilians and rescue the hostages) is weighed against the prospective harm to civilians. A military operation can go forward if the harm to civilians is not excessively out of proportion to the operation’s prospective military advantage. Israel carefully weighs every military operation under international law standards, and often calls off operations when civilians may be hurt. Israel is in fact the most moral army in the world. A far lower proportion of Gazan civilians have been harmed than in virtually any other war around the world, including wars prosecuted by the U.S.
Further, under international law, there is no obligation to supply aid to an enemy population. Israel is also not required to allow others to supply aid to the civilian population if – as is the case here – there is a reasonable concern that the aid will be diverted to military use. Hamas seizes the aid and uses it for its war effort.
(4) Biden parroted Hamas’ unverified casualty numbers as fact.
Biden parroted unverified Hamas and Hamas-controlled numbers when Biden stated: “More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed. Most of whom are not Hamas. Thousands and thousands are innocent women and children. Girls and boys also orphaned.”
According to the IDF – which is reliable - at least 12,000 casualties are Hamas terrorists. Moreover, a recent article by AEI Distinguished Fellow Danielle Pletka details huge discrepancies in Hamas’ numbers; Hamas math simply does not add up. Further, Hamas is responsible for all civilian deaths, as it embeds itself among civilians and caused this war.
Interestingly, Biden previously acknowledged that Hamas’ figures are utterly unreliable.
Back on October 25, 2023, Biden stated at a press conference that he had “no confidence in the [casualty] number that the Palestinians are using.” And on October 26, 2023, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby similarly stated, regarding Palestinian casualty numbers: “We all know that the Gazan Ministry of Health is just a front for Hamas. It’s a — it’s run by Hamas, a terrorist organization. I’ve said it myself up here: We can’t take anything coming out of Hamas, including the so-called Ministry of Health, at face value.” Why has Biden forgotten and ignored this?
And has Biden also forgotten Hamas’ false claim that Israel bombed Al-Ahli Hospital and killed almost 500 civilians there – when in fact a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket hit the hospital parking lot and caused minimal casualties?
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Trump's Powerful Pitch to Teamster Leaders: Listen to Your Members, Ditch the Democrats
By Jonathan Tobin (Editor in chief, JNS.org)
President Joe Biden has spent most of the past few months acting as if the biggest re-election priority was shoring up support from the intersectional Left-wing base of the Democratic Party. But this week, he's taking a break from efforts to try to appease Hamas sympathizers who have been bashing him for giving too much support to Israel since the Oct. 7 massacres and focusing on a far more important problem: the working-class voters who are abandoning the Democrats for former President Donald Trump.
But while he's likely to get a warm reception when he meets with the leaders of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the man who likes to tout himself as "the most pro-labor president in U.S. history" knows that there is one reason the powerful union may hesitate to endorse him: the opinions of their members.
As is the case with all unions, the people who run the Teamsters largely agree with Biden and the Democrats on most issues. It's not just that they fear Republican support for "right-to-work" laws that make it harder for unions to maintain a stranglehold on industrial workforces and to use that to collect dues from employees that give them political muscle and power. The leadership also agrees with Democrats about spending, taxes and, most importantly, not shutting down the country's southern border through which anywhere from 7 to 10 million illegal immigrants have entered the country since Biden took office.
But while some unions—like those that represent municipal and state—can count on members being in sympathy with the leadership's positions on open borders as well as the woke catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) that is an unshakeable orthodoxy of the political Left, the Teamsters are aware that their members can't be counted on to fall in line behind Biden and the Democrats.
That's why the Teamsters made their first significant donation to the GOP since 2004 earlier this year when they sent a check for $45,000 to the Republican National Committee. The odds may be against the Teamsters going so far as to endorse Trump over Biden. But those leading the union need to think long and hard about whether to devote the considerable resources and manpower at their disposal to a push to help the Democrats this year is either politically wise or a move that will cause them problems with their members.
Union bosses are not unaware of the sea change in American politics that has been taking place in the last several years.
The Democrats, once the party of the working class and zealous in defense of its interests, have long since abandoned them. Today, they represent the interests of the credentialed elites and the poor and are more interested in heeding Wall Street hedge fund managers' pleas for trade deals that send manufacturing jobs abroad while importing more cheap labor from immigrants—whether legal or illegal—to keep the cost of doing business low. Their adherence to the woke playbook about prioritizing race over everything else has led them to think that it is fair that working class people should pay off the student loans of those with college degrees and making more money than they ever will, something that amounts to a massive regressive transfer of income from blue collar Americans to the professional laptop class.
So it's little wonder that once the Republicans nominated Trump, a man who sought to defend their interests by opposing open borders, bad trade deals, and woke racism, the GOP has shifted from being a Chamber of Commerce party to one driven by the interests of working-class voters.
That's why instead of pandering to the pro-Hamas mayor of Dearborn, Michigan, America's jihad capital, Biden should have been worrying more about the votes of auto workers in Michigan. It is the workers' sympathy for Trump, despite their union bosses' endorsement of the incumbent, and not angry Arab-Americans and Muslims, who have created the situation in which Biden trails Trump in the crucial battleground state.
Trump may not ever win back college educated voters who used to be more likely to back Republicans. But the polls showing Trump leading among Hispanics and making unprecedented inroads among Black voters demonstrates that his return to the White House is being made possible by a shift among working class voters of every race. While the Teamsters' bosses may find it impossible to shake off their allegiance to a party that no longer cares about workers, their members aren't so blind to what is in their best interests.
Biden can pretend that his party hasn't changed and turned its back on the working class. But Trump has every reason to believe that Teamster members, like so many other Americans who have been shortchanged by the Democrats' contempt for blue collar workers, aren't going to listen to union leaders who are more interested in helping Left-wing political allies than in defending their jobs and their values.
If the Teamsters' leadership is listening to its rank and file, they'll endorse Trump, or at least stay out of a presidential election in which the success of Democrats will mean more misery for union members.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate) and a senior contributor to The Federalist. Follow him: @jonathans_tobin.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNS.org, a senior contributor for The Federalist and a columnist for Newsweek. He is also the host of the Top Story podcast that can be viewed on the JNS YouTube channel and listened to wherever you get your podcasts. He can be reached via e-mail at: jtobin@jns.org. Follow him on X at @jonathans_tobin and on Facebook. Links to articles and videos are at: https://linktr.ee/jonathanstobin.
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The scapegoating of Israel
Humanitarian aid has become the blood libel of the day as wiith breathtaking arrogance and malice, Cameron presumed to dictate to Israel how to conduct this desperate war for its survival. Biden is the same. Opinion.
By Melanie Phillips
Melanie Phillips, a British journalist, broadcaster and author, writes a weekly column for JNS. Currently a columnist for The Times of London, her personal and political memoir, Guardian Angel, has been published by Bombardier, which also published her first novel, The Legacy, in 2018. To access her work, go to: melaniephillips.substack.com
(JNS) The name of David Cameron, Britain’s foreign secretary, is on course to become a synonym for infamy in Britain’s Jewish community to rival that of Ernest Bevin.
Bevin was Britain’s foreign secretary after World War II who took the side of the Arabs in their attempt to thwart the creation of a Jewish state. He imposed severe repressive measures against Palestine’s Jewish leadership and denied the Jewish remnants of the Nazi Holocaust entry into the land, sending the ship Exodus, carrying 4,500 Jewish refugees, back to Germany.
This week, Bevin’s successor Lord Cameron delivered an astonishing dressing-down to Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz, who stopped off in London after talks in America.
In a statement about the meeting, Cameron said he had once again pressed Israel to “increase the flow of aid” into Gaza to address its “devastating and growing humanitarian crisis.” He demanded “an immediate humanitarian pause,” increased access for aid and distribution capacity and provision for “shelter and items critical for infrastructure repair.”
He declared that the U.K. government was “deeply concerned” about the prospect of a military offensive in Rafah. And then he issued a threat.
“The U.K. supports Israel’s right to self-defense,” he began. “But as the occupying power in Gaza, Israel has a legal responsibility to ensure aid is available for civilians. That responsibility has consequences, including when we as the U.K. assess whether Israel is compliant with international humanitarian law.”
What breathtaking arrogance and malice. How dare Cameron presume to dictate to Israel how to conduct this desperate war for its survival?
Israel isn’t “the occupying power” in Gaza. It is fighting a war there to defend the lives of its people against a genocidal enemy. How dare Cameron demand Israel take measures to weaken that defense through allowing in “items for infrastructure repair”—such as, presumably, the concrete and other building materials used by Hamas to construct its infernal underground infrastructure of terror and mass murder?
And if Israel doesn’t thus sabotage its attempt to destroy Hamas, the U.K. is threatening to destroy the Jewish state at the U.N. Cameron himself said at the end of January that the U.K. was considering recognition of a Palestinian Arab state as a way of pressuring Israel to accept a “two-state solution” after a ceasefire in Gaza.
In other words, unless Israel agrees to allow Hamas to survive, the U.K. will do two things: It will throw the Jewish state to the Hamas-supporting wolves at the U.N. and force into existence a terrorist entity that would put Israel’s heartlands in danger of Oct. 7-style pogroms on steroids.
Similar pressure on Israel has come from the Biden administration. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the humanitarian situation in Gaza “unacceptable and unsustainable.”
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller claimed this week that Israeli government ministers were “obstacles” to aid by blocking the release of flour from the port of Ashdod and supporting protests that blocked supplies from the Kerem Shalom crossing point.
It would seem that Israel’s principal allies in the U.K. and U.S. are determined to ensure that Israel doesn’t defeat Hamas, and are actually serving as a megaphone for the terror group’s distorted and manipulative claims of a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.
Certainly, there is death and suffering among the civilian population. This is horrible and deeply regrettable as the inevitable consequence of war. But the scale of the crisis is being hysterically exaggerated.
On January 30, CNN reported: “Palestinians are eating grass and drinking polluted water as famine looms across Gaza.” Yet on the same day, COGAT, which coordinates Israeli government activities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, published a video of Gazans queuing up at a plentiful shawarma stand in Rafah.
Social media footage has shown well-stocked Rafah markets. There have also been videos of Gazans contemptuously throwing air-dropped ready-to-eat meals into the trash.
Some Israeli politicians and members of the public, maddened by the perception that the aid is helping Hamas, have been trying to stop it from getting into Gaza. But contrary to the Americans’ implication, these protests are countered by the government and have been largely ineffective.
COGAT says that, over the past two weeks, almost 50% more food trucks have been entering Gaza than before the start of the war. On Wednesday, it says, 257 trucks entered. Over the past few days, more than 100 trucks were transferred to the northern part of the Strip. Over the past two weeks, the number of operational bakeries went up from 10 to 20, providing more than 2.5 million breads per day to the population.
From the start of the war, more than 750 packages of humanitarian aid have been delivered—mostly to northern Gaza—by 25 airdrops mounted by an alliance of Israel, the U.S., the UAE, Egypt, Jordan and France (not, note, with the participation of Cameron’s Britain).
So Cameron’s suggestion that Israel is not fulfilling its legal responsibility to provide aid for civilians is utterly false. Israel is indeed doing so.
The problems start once the aid arrives.
Israel says there is no limit to the number of aid trucks being allowed into Gaza. There are instead hold-ups at the crossing points because the U.N. is struggling to distribute the aid. And that’s because it uses the U.N.’s Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA—which is controlled by Hamas.
The result is that Hamas hijacks the trucks and steals the food and other supplies, either for itself or to sell to the population on the black market.
On social media, there are videos of aid trucks being commandeered by armed men. There are also videos of Egyptian drivers warning others not to drive aid trucks into Gaza because they are being attacked with rocks hurled through their windscreens, leaving some badly injured and even killed.
Even U.S. officials are admitting that Hamas is stealing the aid that the Biden administration is accusing Israel of failing to provide.
One senior official told journalists that the problem was with distribution once the 250 to 300 truckloads of assistance got into Gaza. He said: “This is a product of, if you will, commercialization of the assistance; criminal gangs are taking it, looting it, reselling it. They’ve monetized humanitarian assistance. … The food is there; it’s coming in.”
Other officials have confirmed that Hamas is involved in aid distribution.
David Satterfield, the senior U.S. diplomat involved in humanitarian assistance for Gaza, acknowledged that police escorts for aid deliveries include Hamas members, and that Hamas has been using other aid delivery channels to “shape where and to whom assistance goes.”
In the remorseless attempt to demonize Israel, humanitarian aid has become the blood libel of the day. When dozens of Palestinian Arabs were reportedly killed last month as thousands stampeded aid trucks entering Gaza City, the incident was falsely blamed on Israeli fire—even though the IDF shot at no one other than a few Gazans who threatened to attack them.
Social media is teeming with distressing images of Gazan babies who have allegedly been starved to death by Israel. Even if all these images are genuine, and they are not, it isn’t Israel but Hamas that’s responsible by stealing the food intended for civilians.
Israel is being scapegoated for the war crimes of Hamas. Scapegoating the Jews is the consistent and defining motif of antisemitism through the ages.
It is also precisely what Cameron and Blinken are doing. As a result, they are giving substance to the “genocide in Gaza” blood libel and stoking yet further attacks on Jews.
Israel’s media spokesman Eylon Levy said this week: “We will accept being scapegoated no longer.”
Israel isn’t on its knees. The Jews of Britain and America should get up from theirs and publicly tell Cameron and Blinken the same thing.
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Sometimes even more. Depends on whose mouth they are coming from,
MLK"s "I Have A Dream Speech" comes to mind.
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Words matter as much as weapons
By Ruthie Blum | (RUTHFULLY YOURS)
Never mind that this actually applies to Jews. The White House must have considered it necessary to tailor the message—and statistics—for Muslims celebrating a month-long holiday.
But what’s Biden’s excuse for not having addressed the explosion of antisemitism in America and elsewhere during his weekend interview with MSNBC’s “The Saturday Show with Jonathan Capehart” or in his State of the Union speech the previous Thursday night?
The question is rhetorical, of course, because the answer is obvious. Biden’s bid for re-election is adding heartburn to his already apparent age-related ailments.
Take his increasingly contradictory Israel policy, for instance. It has less to do with his neurological lapses than with his campaign’s impossible objective: to curry favor with the far left without losing the center.
This explains why he continues to supply arms with which to defeat Hamas, yet suggests that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu isn’t doing enough to avoid civilian casualties in and provide humanitarian aid to Gaza.
That the latter is a total lie doesn’t matter to Israel’s detractors. Nor does it assuage their anger at Biden for insisting on the Jewish state’s “right to defend itself.”
Herein lies the real rub—that Israel is Jewish.
Biden is not an anti-Semite. He’s an old-style liberal with ridiculous ideas about the centrality of Palestinian statehood to peace in the Middle East.
But his administration leans in the direction of the radical wing of the Democratic Party, which has been siding openly with Hamas. And rather than serving as a wake-up call to the “woke,” the atrocities committed on Oct. 7 by the Iran-backed sadists became a rallying cry for anti-Semites of all stripes to join forces against the Jews.
Some Jews on the left mistakenly imagine that Hamas cares about the politics of the people it maims and murders. You know, like “The Zone of Interest” director Jonathan Glazer, who pandered to the anti-Zionists on Sunday night in his Academy Award acceptance speech.
What Glazer and his ilk can’t get through their thick heads is that Hamas makes no distinction between different types of Jews while decapitating them and sexually desecrating their corpses. The victims of Oct. 7, like those of the Holocaust, learned that lesson the hard way.
Biden should be using every platform at his disposal—yes, including on the occasion of Ramadan—to emphasize the evils of antisemitism and the havoc it wreaks on every society in which it is permitted to flourish. Instead, he keeps taking the opportunity of his position to warn against Israeli aggression.
What he ought to know by now is that words matter just as much as weapons in wars against malign actors. Unfortunately, his are slurred these days, and not only due to his overall decline.
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The realization that "the Palestinians aren't just something that can be delayed and appeased but have to be dealt with" has penetrated every Israeli's mind, from the political left to the right. Going forward, Israel's strategy will include: deterrence in the form of increased IDF strength to "demilitarize" growing threats before they occur; dismantling the Palestinian Authority (PA); dissolution of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA); and elimination of Hamas's threat now and in the future. These aims are pursued "while still seeking pathways to limited Palestinian local governance." Ultimately, the urgent need to address "the root causes of the conflict rather than merely its symptoms" requires a "policy of deradicalization" of both Palestinian self- governance and the Palestinian education system. The curriculum in every school in Gaza and the West Bank must be screened by Israel, and every teacher needs to be vetted and monitored. This approach applies as well to Israel's allies and partners who fund Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank. "Israel should not do business with any Palestinian or international entity which allows their organizations to be a conveyor belt for Palestinian radicalization." Dismantling Palestinian rejectionism needs a "strong man" leader who, much like those in Egypt and Jordan, realizes it is prudent to establish good relations with the Israeli government. Even if there will not be "true peace" between the Palestinian Arabs and the Israeli people, "peace between [Gaza and West Bank] Palestinian leadership and Israeli leadership" is a probability. Prime Minister Netanyahu is facing a challenge of leadership in balancing his political career with the "long-term geopolitical strategies that Israel requires." For now, there is little motivation among the Israeli public to change a wartime government, as any attempt to do so would result in "political deadlock." Once the war is over, a commission of inquiry will likely hold Netanyahu responsible for the October 7 failure. . If Hezbollah were to unleash its missiles, Israel would exact a price Nasrallah is hesitant to pay, namely suffering a fate similar to Hamas's. Against the backdrop of the Gaza war, Hezbollah's threat at Israel's northern border with Lebanon still looms. Some 80,000 Israeli residents have been displaced after hundreds of homes there were destroyed by Hezbollah missiles since October 7. The movement's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, although beset by the challenges of domestic governance in Lebanon's failing economy, must justify Hezbollah's existence by maintaining "resistance" to "the Zionist enemy" in Israel's north. While Hezbollah shares the same rejectionism as Hamas and the PA towards Israel, its "strategic goal" differs. With its arsenal of thousands of precision missiles, it serves as a "strategic deterrent on behalf of Iran" by providing a "second strike capability." Thus, should Israel contemplate attacking Iran's nuclear facilities, the real possibility that Hezbollah would inflict major damage on Israel's cities could give the Jewish state pause. However, if Hezbollah were to unleash its missiles, Israel would exact a price Nasrallah is hesitant to pay, namely suffering a fate similar to Hamas's. At present, the U.S. and European powers are pressuring Hezbollah to move 10 km north so that Israeli assets are out of range of Hezbollah's anti-tank fire. While Israeli leaders appreciate the Biden administration's military support fights in Gaza, in the long-term Israel plans to increase its capabilities so that it becomes "an equal partner" to the U.S. rather than a "supplicant or dependent." While past Israeli leaders have managed threats since its establishment, solving them has remained elusive. October 7 and its aftermath finds Israel's leaders "under scrutiny" to secure its future with policies that are "not just a matter of strategic necessity, but of moral imperative to protect Israeli lives." The "seven-front war" that began in Gaza, spread to the West Bank, and continues in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen "finally ends in Iran." Each front demands a strategy of "total victory." Marilyn Stern is communications coordinator at the Middle East Forum. +++++++++++++++++++++ |
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