Israel's War Against Hamas - Updates

[Flash]

You need to get some facts and perspective on the situation. Do you think Jesus would approve of that?

It is not true that the Gazan civilians can't leave Gaza, they can and do leave, but they can't enter Israel or Egypt without permission from the Israeli or Egyptian governments. Every day, tens of thousands of Gaza civilians go to their jobs in Israel, and others enter Israel for medical care, and still others who have legitimate business in Israel or Judea or Samaria get permission to go there.

Since Hamas is committed to the destruction of Israel, for security reasons, the coast of Gaza is blockaded, but Gaza can receive shipments from anywhere in the world through either Israel or Egypt as long as they don't contain weapons. "Open air prison" is clearly just a propaganda term with no basis in reality.

You can spin it anyway you want. You remember how the Israelis used spin about the attack on the USS Liberty? They said it was an "accident".

I really don't give a shit. However, the undeniable facts is that the Palestinians are pissed off at the friggin Israelis. You can argue all day long about the reasons but it is a fact like in all human disputes.

Those people over there have been pissed off at one another for thousands of years. As an American I don't need to take sides. Both sides are assholes. The Palestinians have been shitheads ever since I can remember and the filthy ass Israelis have been arrogant welfare queens of the US and have caused us nothing but trouble for 50 years now. Piss on both of them.

Why in the hell did this Potatohead idiot deploy American assets in another Middle East War? Was it because it was for the US or was it because Potatohead can't stop himself from fucking up?

The bottom line here. Now we have all the goddamn Muslims in the Middle East pissed off at us for supporting the goddamn Israelis and are looking at the Iranian Mullahs for leadership. What could possibly go wrong with that?

 

[toomuchtime_]

You can spin it anyway you want. You remember how the Israelis used spin about the attack on the USS Liberty? They said it was an "accident".

I really don't give a shit. However, the undeniable facts is that the Palestinians are pissed off at the friggin Israelis. You can argue all day long about the reasons but it is a fact like in all human disputes.

Those people over there have been pissed off at one another for thousands of years. As an American I don't need to take sides. Both sides are assholes. The Palestinians have been shitheads ever since I can remember and the filthy ass Israelis have been arrogant welfare queens of the US and have caused us nothing but trouble for 50 years now. Piss on both of them.

Why in the hell did this Potatohead idiot deploy American assets in another Middle East War? Was it because it was for the US or was it because Potatohead can't stop himself from fucking up?

The bottom line here. Now we have all the goddamn Muslims in the Middle East pissed off at us for supporting the goddamn Israelis and are looking at the Iranian Mullahs for leadership. What could possibly go wrong with that?

There was no spin, you made false statements about Gaza, and I corrected you.

 

[Sixties Fan]

Egypt’s continued closure of the only exit point for Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip is a wakeup call for the world regarding the attitudes of moderate Arab leaders towards Hamas and radical Palestinian Islamic jihadists.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi personally knows Hamas. The Palestinian group is a long-standing member of the radical Muslim Brotherhood, which Egypt, along with Saudi Arabia and the UAE, have labeled a terrorist organization.

The Brotherhood briefly ruled Egypt after coming to power following the Arab Spring in 2011. El-Sisi then launched a coup against it when the Brotherhood tried to impose a strict and unpopular Islamic constitution on the Egyptian populace.

It should not be a surprise, then, that Egyptians don’t want hundreds of thousands of radical Palestinians pouring into their country. They’ve encountered many armed conflicts with Islamic jihadists coming from the Gaza Strip.

As the BBC reported on Oct. 17, Egypt’s restrictions on Palestinian movement “have mostly been about security concerns in North Sinai where the Egyptian authorities have long been involved in a deadly conflict with jihadists.”

Cairo’s anti-Palestinian policy is only the latest example of the disdain with which moderate Arab leaders view the Palestinians and their cause.

It’s significant that the savage Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel came as Israel and Saudi Arabia were moving towards full diplomatic relations. Various Israeli cabinet members visited Riyadh just weeks before the assault. Behind the scenes and in very private moments, many Gulf State leaders express dislike for the Palestinian people and their leaders.

Indeed, on Oct. 19, Emir Turki al-Faisal, the former head of Saudi intelligence, condemned Hamas for “its attempt to prevent normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel.”

I personally encountered these same anti-Palestinian views back in 1991 when ABC’s “Good Morning America” sent me to Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Shield, the U.S.-led military coalition buildup that followed Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait.

At the time, I was “GMA”’s Washington-based White House and Pentagon producer. My assignment was to prepare five days of live coverage from five U.S. military bases for a Thanksgiving special.

As American forces surged into Saudi Arabia, I stayed in Dharan, a city overlooking the Persian Gulf, for about four months.

Saudis were curious about the flood of Americans into their country and, until the Gulf War, no American television network had been permitted to enter and broadcast from the country. My job was to negotiate with various Saudi officials in order to receive permission to broadcast our live “GMA” show from Saudi Arabia via satellite back to our studios in New York. At that time, such an arrangement was unheard of.

I also traveled to Bahrain to meet with members of the royal family in order to arrange a live “GMA” broadcast from the deck of the USS Blueridge, the command-and-control ship for the Persian Gulf.

Over the course of these negotiations, I had many dinners and meetings with officials and citizens of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. In their private, off the record statements, I was surprised by their utter disdain for the Palestinians. Saudis repeatedly told me that, in the Arab world, there is a pecking order. The Palestinians, they said, sat at the lowest possible rung of respectability.

Saudi officials carefully explained that they regarded the Palestinians as “shiftless, lazy and untrustworthy” and “the lowest of the low.” All said they would never do business with them.

Their candor was especially surprising because they knew I was Jewish.

Even back then in 1991, the Saudis outlined for me their vision of what would later materialize as the historic Abraham Accords, in which Arab nations began to establish diplomatic relations with Israel. The Saudis enthusiastically spoke of a Middle East alliance with Israel’s technological prowess and Gulf petrodollars. They privately imagined such an alliance could transform the Middle East into a real superpower.

Of course, in 1991, Saudi disdain for the Palestinians was somewhat understandable. Immediately after the invasion of Kuwait, the PLO and ordinary Palestinians flooded the streets to joyfully celebrate. I know this privately sickened most Gulf leaders.

The Gulf states’ continuing aloofness towards the Palestinians can be seen in their ongoing and steadfast refusal to invest their huge sovereign wealth funds in Palestinian-controlled territories According to the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute, these funds collectively manage around $3.7 trillion.

A 2023 U.S. State Department report on the investment climate in Palestinian-controlled territories showed that “Ninety-nine percent of firms in the West Bank and Gaza are family-owned small and medium-sized enterprises employing fewer than 20 people.” It also found that these territories compared unfavorably to other middle-income countries, even as their neighbors boasted large sovereign wealth funds.

“Private investment levels, averaging about 15-16 percent of GDP in recent years, have been low compared with rates of over 25 percent in middle-income economies,” the State Department reported.

Instead of the Palestinian territories, Gulf wealth funds eagerly invest in Western enterprises like Space X, Uber, Live Nation and many others.

Yes, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have contributed aid to the Palestinians. But interestingly, 77% of these donor funds come from non-Arab sources, according to the non-profit group the Arab Center. The E.U. and the U.S. alone contribute 33% of the funds, double the contributions made by Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

The one exception is Qatar, which has been a major financial supporter of Hamas and other radical Islamic causes. Qatar is also close to Iran, the chief sponsor of both Hamas and Hezbollah.

There is only one reason the Gulf states do not speak publicly about their views of the Palestinians. As Ronni Shaked of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Truman Institute recently told the Jewish News Syndicate, many moderate Arab leaders are still afraid of their citizenry.

According to Shaked, “All the Arab countries are afraid of their public opinions.” Thus, there is a huge gap between Arab leaders, whose interests are aligned with those of Israel, and their publics, whose actions are guided by emotion and concepts such as “Arab unity.”

However, Shaked was hopeful that moderate Arab states would eventually act favorably towards Israel.

“In the end, the Saudis’ own interests will supersede those of the Arab world, even if it takes time to rehabilitate the normalization deal,” he said.

During my face-to-face discussions with Gulf leaders over the years, I pointedly asked them why they never publicly expressed their distaste for radical Palestinians. They always replied, “We would never criticize our brothers in public.” Nonetheless, their silent condemnation has been consistent for decades and will likely remain so.

Arab Leaders’ Secret Condemnation of the Palestinians - Algemeiner.com

JNS.org - Egypt’s continued closure of the only exit point for Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip is a wakeup call for the world regarding the attitudes of moderate Arab leaders towards Hamas and radical Palestinian Islamic jihadists. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi personally knows...

www.algemeiner.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Get out your calculators. While you’re at it, a set of blinders, too. Israel’s imminent Gaza campaign is going to get ugly. If you’ve been paying close attention, the moral and mathematical problem has already been revealed.

More Palestinian civilians undoubtedly will be killed in the latest chapter of this ongoing war between Israel, a democratic nation, and Hamas, a brutal terrorist entity. The word “de-escalate” was uttered by progressives even before Israel began to retaliate. “Ceasefire” was the operative word on American college campuses this week, along with “Intifada!”—words otherwise irreconcilable in their meanings.

Very soon the IDF will accelerate its Hamas manhunt. Going house-to-house will invariably include collateral damage. There will be calls for Israel to exercise “restraint.” Another phrase will enter the national conversation: “proportionate response.” Is the death toll lopsided with a far larger Palestinian body count?

All these words mean the same thing: “Israel, put down your weapons. You are disqualified from getting justice for the biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. A terrorist can’t be touched if it might result in a civilian death.”

No other nation, most especially the United States, with its atomic payload over two Japanese cities, the bombing of Dresden, Germany and Vietnamese villages, its post-9/11War on Terror against the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and Allied Coalition Forces removing ISIS from Mosul, has ever been held to such an exacting standard of precision while responding in self-defense.

I know about this topic. During Israel’s last war with Gaza in 2014, I wrote what became a widely decried Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal, in which I examined the crazy-making moral position Israel finds itself in.

That dilemma in Gaza is present, still.

“An eye for an eye,” found in the Old Testament, along with Hammurabi’s Code, is often mistaken for blood vengeance when, in fact, it’s a call for proportionate justice. The loss of an eye creates a debt for the repayment of the wrongdoer’s eye—no less, and no more.

Vengeance and justice are really the same. Too much of the former is unjust, but there is no justice if victims are not made to feel vindicated. That’s why the language of revenge is always framed in mathematical terms: “measure for measure,” “settling the score,” “evening the debt,” “demanding payback.”

It is the handiwork of CPAs, not lawless vigilantes. It has worked all throughout the world to keep the peace long before courtrooms were introduced to resolve disputes.

This kind of rational, proportionate revenge fails in the context of warfare, however. Measurements are invariably inexact—the nearly 3,000 murdered on 9/11 were surely dwarfed by the number of dead Iraqis and Afghanis. Got a problem with that? Should the War on Terror have come to an end the moment we killed 3,000, or the moment Osama bin-Laden was assassinated? Most Americans would not have felt satisfied, I suspect.

These disparities in body count are especially present in Fourth Generation Warfare, where enemy combatants wear no uniforms, hide behind civilians, and shirk the rules of war. Exploiting these asymmetries is Hamas’ specialty.

For nearly 20 years, Hamas has launched tens of thousands of rockets at Israel. Fortunately, most either landed harmlessly or detonated in the sky courtesy of Iron Dome. Until October 7, relatively few Israelis were killed by Hamas. Does proportionality require Israel to not deploy its missile defense system so it can achieve a more balanced body count of dead Jews?

Hamas is seeking the annihilation of all Jewry. Should their intent not matter simply because, in the past, their aim was off?

Making matters worse is that Hamas chooses to fight Israel on a battlefield that looks exactly like its home turf—because that’s what it is: A war inside the homes of its fellow citizens, or in mosques, hospitals, and schools. Because Hamas places no value on human life—whether it be Jewish or Muslim—it regards this theater of war as a home court advantage. The rules of engagement are discarded in favor of a civilian death strategy that culminates in the global condemnation of Israel.

What this all means is that Gazan civilians are going to die—and a lot them. But the Geneva Convention, which prohibits the targeting of civilians, was not written with Gaza in mind—both the necessity of urban warfare, and a complicit civilian population that offers homes as command centers and children as human shields. The parents are civilians, of course, but are they “innocent”? Remember, Hamas was democratically elected. Gazans saw Hamas’ genocidal campaign platform, and marked their ballots accordingly.

Hamas knows the West suffers from short-term memory lapses. The Iran Hostage Crisis? 9/11? Munich Olympics’ Massacre? London Subway Bombing? Boston Marathon Bombing?

Ring a bell, anyone?

Hamas also knows that the West faints at the first sight of blood. The New York Times, MSNBC and BBC view dead Palestinian children as Pulitzer Prize-worthy material. Dead Israeli children merit not even a footnote.

Public sentiment is worsening each day—especially on the Arab street, which, as Europeans have come to learn, gravitated to their streets—replete with death chants and flag burning. Until last week, Americans didn’t realize how much Muslims enjoy gathering in large mobs and calling for the death of another country and its people. Soon you’ll hear “Death to America!” in Detroit, “Intifada!” in Brooklyn, and the burning of American flags in Pico-Robertson—all protected by the First Amendment, and the protocols of political correctness.

In a less antisemitic world, the evil handiwork of Hamas would have generated enormous sympathy for Israel and a judgment that Hamas is a menace to humankind—like Nazis and ISIS. Instead, we have Jewish students afraid to walk around campus, a female synagogue president fatally stabbed in Detroit, and rallies around the country glorifying Hamas as heroes.

Given the grisly crime scene in southern Israel, justice is an unsolvable equation. When you chop the heads off 40 infants, and gang rape and mutilate scores of teenage girls, there is no equivalency in “eye-for-an-eye” parlance, no precise number for getting even. The proportionate response is infinite.

IDF soldiers are in a war, but more accurately—they are on a mission. Setting anguish and hesitancy aside, they know they must kill all who are responsible for these monstrous crimes. Human shields are tragic, but the world should be denouncing Hamas for using them, not Israel for trying to avoid them. Israel is now justifiably guided by a moral imperative, and they will not be denied.

For those shouting “ceasefire” and “proportionality,” would they prefer to see IDF soldiers getting even by slitting the throats of 40 Palestinian infants, and then raping Palestinian teenagers. Sorry, Jews won’t oblige, and no moral principle in Judaism would excuse it—for any reason.

Besides, the people demanding Israel’s surrender are the very same ones who refuse to even acknowledge the depravity of what Hamas did.

A mammoth debt was created on October 7, and satisfaction is owed. Settling this score won’t be easy. The wrongdoers committed unspeakable acts. Numbers can’t be assigned. In Gaza, the math of revenge will have no equal.

Gaza—Where the Moral Math of Revenge Has No Equal

No other nation, most especially the United States, has ever been held to such an exacting standard of precision while responding in self-defense.

jewishjournal.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

WATCH: 'We Muslim Americans failed critically' | World Israel News

Muslim American Leadership Alliance founder laments failure of many in her community to denounce Hamas following invasion of Israel.

worldisraelnews.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

The IDF found a USB key containing a PDF of al-Qaeda material which included instructions to behead babies, take hostages and create chemical weapons.​

Herzog also said that claims that Israel had blocked all water, electricity, and fuel from entering the Gaza Strip are "part of the distorted information.

"It was Hamas missiles which broke down electricity infrastructure in Gaza, nothing to do with us. We only supply 7% of the water [in Gaza], there is fuel for humanitarian needs, and it is under UNRWA.

(full article online)

Hamas terrorists ordered to use chemical weapons on civilians - Israel

The IDF found a USB key containing a PDF of al-Qaeda material which included instructions to behead babies, take hostages and create chemical weapons.

www.jpost.com

 

[Flash]

There was no spin, you made false statements about Gaza, and I corrected you.

Tgere are more lies and spin that come out that region than you can count with a stick.

Piss on all of them.

 

[Sixties Fan]

Following Hamas’ unprecedented mega-terrorist attack on October 7, a litany of news outlets and commentators have sought to reframe the attack, away from being a horrific and indefensible assault on innocent Israeli civilians, seeking to pivot towards the baseless claim that Israel is somehow responsible for Hamas’ decision to murder men, women and children in southern Israel.

In a slew of recent columns in The Varsity, the student newspaper at the University of Toronto, a crop of writers joined this cavalcade of ignorance.

One column entitled: “The Western response to the Israel-Palestine conflict is hypocritical,” by author Raafia Shahid, described the Israeli civilians massacred by Hamas as “Israeli settler civilians,” despite the reality that they were in southern Israel, on land that is universally acknowledged in international law as part of Israel.

Shahid sneeringly referred to Israel as “the Zionist state,” writing that while Hamas’ murder of innocent people is “saddening and deplorable,” so is the Israeli military’s killing of Palestinians since 2008, making no distinction whatsoever between civilians and Hamas terrorist targets.

Shahid continued her column by calling Israel’s independence in 1948 as a “catastrophe,” making her position clear that the Jewish State has no right to exist. While Shahid may be a student at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, her positions chillingly mirror Hamas’ murderous statements against Israel.

Another column entitled: “U of T departments’ silence on Palestine displays immense cowardice,” by author Fatima Zahra Mohammed, a graduate student in urban planning, made the indefensible claim that Israel is guilty of “75 years of occupation” (ie since its independence in 1948), and is “an apartheid state that is breaking international law to wipe out an indigenous population.”

Notwithstanding Mohammed’s remarkable ability to fit so much absurdity into a single sentence, multiple falsehoods strung together do not constitute truth.

Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish People, who are indigenous to Judea, today making up part of the land of Israel. For three thousand years, and despite many attempts to erase their presence and memory, the Jews have continued to live in their historic and ancestral homeland. Consequently, Israel cannot illegally occupy its own land.

Israel is a liberal democracy offering equal rights to all its citizens, and the Palestinian Authority’s adamant refusal to make peace with Israel is the root cause for the lack of a Palestinian state, not Israel’s non-existent “apartheid.” Neither is Israel seeking to “wipe out” any population, as evidenced by the remarkable population growth of the Palestinians since 1948.

In another column entitled: “We have to acknowledge that Hamas’ recent attack did not occur in a vacuum,” writer Lina Obeidat, a first-year student studying social sciences, attempted to convince readers that when Hamas massacred 1,400 innocent people in southern Israel, ranging from babies to the elderly, whose only crime was being Jewish inside Israel, that was no different than Israel defending itself against those demonic Islamist terrorists.

In fact, lest there be any doubt, Obeidat went further, writing that “Until liberation and return become a reality, Palestinians will have every reason to resist.” Such justification for terrorism expressed by Obeidat is more than just morally reprehensible, but supremely self-defeating: the victims of Hamas’ brutality aren’t just Israelis, but the 2.2 million Palestinians inside Gaza, who will continue to suffer as long as Hamas controls their lives with an iron fist.

In another article entitled: “U of T Israeli and Palestinian students process the violence in Israel and the Gaza Strip,” author Jessie Schwalb provided an extensively misleading picture of Hamas terrorism against Israel, falsely writing that on October 7, “violence broke out between the Israeli government and Hamas,” rewriting the terrorist attack as if it were a tit-for-tat military exchange between two sides and not a bloody massacre of innocent civilians.

Schwalb made a number of false allegations against Israel, including the claim that the country “expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes in 1948,” when in reality, a huge number left as a result of pressure from Arab leaders, not Israel. Such unfounded declarations are more than just an affront to history; they serve as the basis for the ongoing delegitimization of Israel by anti-Israel detractors, as well as the justification for ongoing terrorism by Hamas and its supporters.

The University of Toronto is one of the world’s leading post-secondary institutions, and its student newspaper must uphold editorial standards which, while providing free expression to its contributors, do not allow itself to become a cesspool of hatred, justification for Islamist terrorism, and kindergarten-level political commentary.

https://honestreporting.ca/petitions/university-of-toronto-student-newspaper-publishes-multiple-anti-israel-articles-including-a-justification-of-terrorism/?utm_source=Honest+Reporting+Canada&utm_campaign=530d30e4fc-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_01_01_06_22_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-c2395b4f14-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D

 

[Sixties Fan]

Post-secondary institutions are meant to be places where minds are challenged to think differently, and to develop critical thought, and campus newspapers, as the grassroots voice of students, are an extension of that goal.

But sometimes, campus newspapers help not to open minds to new information, but to spoonfeed them hateful disinformation.

In an October 17 column published in The Manitoban entitled: “Destruction of Gaza forecasted in film,” the student newspaper of the University of Manitoba, author Jessie Krahn, who serves as the newspaper’s editor, tackled the recent surge in violence between Israel and Hamas, prompted by the Islamist terrorist group’s October 7 terror attack on southern Israel, which was the largest massacre of Jewish since the Holocaust.

Describing Hamas as a “militant group,” Krahn wrote that its fighters “launched an attack that killed at least 1,400 people in Israel,” failing to inform readers that the victims were overwhelmingly innocent Israeli civilians massacred while at a music festival, or at home, or driving down the street.

But rather than identifying the bloodthirsty massacre as a horrific crime against humanity which spurred on subsequent violence, Krahn took the opportunity to provide a moral equivalence between Hamas, a genocidal terrorist group, and Israel.

“Nobody paying attention was surprised by this tragedy. The attack was in response to decades of what academic Ilan Pappé outlines as Israeli settler colonialism. Israel has continually annexed land, displaced Palestinians and destroyed their ways of life,” Krahn wrote.

The absurd claim of “Israeli settler colonialism,” despite it being repeated ad nauseum by anti-Israel detractors, is a farcical statement.

Colonialism is when a foreign power invades a land in order to dominate it for economic or other means. Israel is not a foreign power to the land it possesses; it is the culmination of three thousand years of habitation in the Jewish People’s historic and ancestral homeland. To blithely dismiss three millennia of history in favour of a narrow ideological agenda is not only ignorant, but supremely anti-intellectual.

Ultimately, when groundless propaganda accusing Israel of being a colonial enterprise is adopted, it inevitably leads to such moral blindness as articulated by Krahn, claiming that the massacre of 1,400 innocent people was a natural “response” to Israeli government policies.

There should be no doubt that Hamas, as a demonic terrorist group which gleefully recorded its torture and murder of countless innocent Israelis, seeks to destroy the Jewish State through violent means. This is not a matter of debate or speculation; those goals are set out in the group’s founding charter.

The very presence of Jews living anywhere in their ancestral homeland is clearly such a trigger for Hamas that it will never stop in its quest to murder as many Jews as possible in their land.

Additionally, there is no policy change that Israel can make that would assuage Hamas’ brutality or its bloodthirstiness, and any assertion that if only Israel ceased certain actions, Hamas would lay down its weapons is a flight of fantasy.

In her column, Krahn brazenly and without any evidence whatsoever, claimed that Israel is preparing to undertake a “genocidal project” against the Palestinians, doing “something evil in response to evil,” refusing to acknowledge the difference between the intentional targeting and murder of civilians, as Hamas has repeatedly done, and Israel’s actions, which – as imperfect as they may be – target Hamas fighters and facilities, and do not target innocent Palestinian civilians.

In another column published on October 17 entitled: “The casting of moral stones,” author Kyra Campbell took issue with the depiction of Hamas’ murderous terrorist attack as “unprovoked,” repeating the terror group’s claims that it was merely a “response to the wider oppression of the Palestinian people.”


(full article online)

https://honestreporting.ca/petitions/university-of-manitoba-student-newspaper-editor-claims-hamas-attack-a-response-to-israeli-settler-colonialism/?utm_source=Honest+Reporting+Canada&utm_campaign=530d30e4fc-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_01_01_06_22_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-c2395b4f14-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D

 

[Sixties Fan]

Joining a host of other egregiously anti-Israel columns recently published in campus newspapers, an October 17 column in the student newspaper at Queen’s University, The Queen’s Journal, piles onto the hateful disinformation.

The column, “Shame on Queen’s University for turning a blind eye to the Palestinian plight yet again,” by author Layth Malhis, railed against the Queen’s University administration for a statement that was apparently insufficiently anti-Israel for Malhis.

Malhis’ column parroted some of the most extremist, baseless and hateful propaganda lobbed against Israel in recent decades, including referring to Hamas, the murderous genocidal Islamist terrorist organization which murdered 1,400 innocent Israelis in cold blood on October 7, simply as “the governing body of the besieged and imprisoned Gaza Strip.”

Malhis’ whitewashing of an Islamist terrorist group was only the beginning of his hateful screed.

He claims that Israel’s military action against Hamas since its October 7 massacre is aimed purely at “collective punishment” and “achieving the mission of ethnically cleansing historic Palestine of its Indigenous Arab population,” and not, as it truly is, defending Israel against the Hamas genocidaires who sought to murder as many Jewish men, women and children as possible.

Hamas’ murderous intent is not a matter of opinion, or personal perspective. The group’s founding charter spells out explicitly its goal to destroy Israel through violent means, and replace the country with an Islamic State-style caliphate.

The only obstacle between Hamas and murdering every single Jew in Israel is the Israeli military, which has a right and an obligation to defeat Hamas as thoroughly as possible.

Apparently unsatisfied in minimizing the grotesque terrorist attack from Hamas, Malhis then proceeded to take a page out of the group’s playbook, rewriting history and delegitimizing Israel’s very right to exist.

“Peace—the way the West advocates for it—unequivocally supports a setter colonial regime that has been occupying, displacing, and erasing native inhabitants for the last 75 years,” Malhis writes in his bombastic monologue.

While Malhis refuses to acknowledge the incontrovertible truth, Israel is not a “settler colonial regime,” nor anything close to it. Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish People, the indigenous people of the land of Israel, and who have lived in the land uninterrupted for three thousand years, despite many attempts by foreign powers, ranging from ancient Babylonian Greek and Roman, and others to destroy them, long before any group identifying as Palestinians ever appeared.

The State of Israel is based not only in its extensive historical rights, but in incontestable rights under international law, rendering any claims of “occupation” ludicrous.

Malhis’ column is not a defence of the Palestinians’ human rights. If it was, he would be praising Canada’s condemnation of Hamas, for it is the Islamist terrorist group which is the party responsible for the suffering of 2.2 million people in Gaza, and turning the small enclave into a hell on earth. Since Israel’s full and complete withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, and Hamas’ 2007 conquering of the area in a violent coup, Gazans have been held hostage to a fanatical, medieval terrorist group happy to keep them in poverty and suffering for no reason other than to use as a weapon against Israel.

Malhis may just be a student at Queen’s University, but his rhetoric and contempt not only for the facts, but for Israel’s very right to exist, is taking a page out of the Hamas playbook. Denying the Jewish People’s three millennia of history in their ancestral homeland, falsely accusing Israel of being a settler-colonial power and refusing to label Hamas a terrorist organization, represent more than just an assault on the truth, but an attack on the Jewish People as a whole and their right to self-determination.

Such abhorrent hateful propaganda has no place in The Queen’s Journal.

https://honestreporting.ca/petitions/queens-university-newspaper-author-calls-israel-settler-colonial-regime-refuses-to-label-hamas-terrorists/?utm_source=Honest+Reporting+Canada&utm_campaign=530d30e4fc-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_01_01_06_22_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-c2395b4f14-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D

 

[Sixties Fan]

On October 20, a small group of anti-Israel demonstrators protested on the Edmonton campus of the University of Alberta. The next day, The Gateway, a student newspaper at the university, dedicated roughly 1,500 words to covering the modest protest.

The article entitled: “Students protest Israel-Hamas war in support of Palestine,” co-written by Katie Teeling, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief, and Dylana Twittey, the news editor, did more than simply give extended coverage to the protesters; it gave them an unfettered platform to spread their bile with no context whatsoever provided.

Teeling and Twittey wrote that demonstrators marched on campus, chanting “from the river to the sea, Palestine you will be free,” choosing not to share with readers that the chant is an anti-Israel dog whistle, and is a thinly-veiled call for the elimination of Israel.

Giving background on the current violence, the authors wrote that “on October 7, Hamas, a Palestinian militant group, attacked civilians at a music festival in Israel. Since then, a war has broken out between Hamas and Israel,” adding that Israel’s subsequent bombing of Gaza has killed 3,500 people.

Not only did the authors fail to refer to Hamas, a recognized terrorist organization in Canada, as such, preferring to call it a “militant group,” they did not share with readers that 1,400 innocent people were butchered by the Islamist terrorist group, whose only crime was that they were Jewish.

Teeling and Twittey repeatedly quoted and paraphrased protesters, and writing that Israel occupies the Gaza Strip, an objectively false statement with no basis in fact whatsoever. Israel has not occupied the coastal enclave since 2005, when it withdrew all Israelis from the strip.

One student quoted by the writers, Mohamed El Henawy, told the newspaper that Israel is committing “colonization” against the Palestinians. While El Henawy is entitled to his opinions, no matter how ignorant, the newspaper’s failure to correct his absurd claim is remarkable. Israel is not a colonizer, but in fact the very antithesis of one. Israel, while only 75 years since its independence, is the continuation of three thousand years of Jewish presence in the land of Israel and Judea, long before any people ever self-identified as Palestinian.

The Jewish presence in the land of Israel is not a matter of debate; there is copious historic and archaeological proof of the Jewish People’s extensive presence in their homeland, and while El Henawy can believe whatever fiction he chooses, the fact that Teeling and Twittey chose to repeat his disinformation without any context or correction represents a total failure of journalistic accountability.

They also quoted one student, Bilal Ali, a student at the University of Alberta, who told the newspaper that people in Gaza “are resisting over 75 years of oppression, systematic genocide, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid.”

There is no evidence whatsoever of systematic genocide, ethnic cleansing or apartheid against the Palestinians. In what would be a remarkable miracle in the face of supposed genocide, the population of Palestinians has dramatically increased since Israel’s independence in 1948.

While Teeling and Twittey are not responsible for the hateful words uttered by students at the anti-Israel demonstration, they are certainly responsible for not giving them an extended platform to spread their ignorance, they are responsible for providing factual information and context, and ensuring that readers to not take the fiction spread by protesters as being anything resembling the truth.

While The Gateway is entitled to give coverage to any topic it wants, it also has a duty to uphold standards of accuracy and truth. This article, which gave extended and unfettered coverage to hateful anti-Israel ideologues, who repeatedly spread falsehoods without any pushback whatsoever, represents a profound embarrassment for the newspaper, and more importantly, a catalyst requiring major introspection moving forward.

https://honestreporting.ca/petitions/university-of-alberta-student-newspaper-gives-extended-coverage-to-anti-israel-demonstration-providing-no-challenge-or-context-to-anti-israel-disinformation/?utm_source=Honest+Reporting+Canada&utm_campaign=530d30e4fc-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_01_01_06_22_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-c2395b4f14-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D

 

[Sixties Fan]

A brief history of Gaza aid being stolen by Hamas​

In 2018, Middle East Online reported:

Hamas is accused of deepening the crisis of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, after the criticism it has been exposed to regarding the seizure of international grant funds and aid from more than one party.
Hamas, as it controls the Gaza Strip, receives millions of dollars in support from countries and international organizations to build hospitals, schools, and roads for more than two million Palestinians stuck in the Gaza Strip.
Despite the harsh measures and siege imposed by Israel on Gaza under the pretext of preventing Hamas from arming, which further complicates the lives of Palestinians, the movement spends a lot of money to purchase and develop weapons and equip its military arm, the Al-Qassam Brigades.
Hamas is accused by the Palestinian National Authority of practicing a policy of blackmail by seizing international support, as the Palestinian government said in 2018 that Hamas “steals the money of the Palestinian people and seizes all of the sector’s revenues, refuses to transfer them to the public treasury, and imposes fees and taxes on citizens for its treasury.”

It is one of the great untold stories of Gaza: hundreds of millions of dollars worth of aid has been diverted by Hamas into its own terror operations.

Here are some examples:

In 2009, dozens of Hamas militants attacked a charity, Cooperative Housing Foundation International (CHF), arrested its workers, and confiscated aid meant for needy families.

In February 2009, UNRWA accused Hamas of stealing over 3,500 blankets and 406 food parcels meant for UNRWA "refugees." Days later, UNRWA said Hamas stole 200 tons of wheat and 100 tons of rice.

In 2010, French aid group Help Doctors accused Hamas on Wednesday of seizing computer equipment, telephones, chairs, office equipment and medical files.

Also in 2010, Hamas was accused of stealing medicine and medical equipment provided by the PA and putting them for sale in Hamas-owned pharmacies. People talked about seeing medicine clearly labeled "in support of the Palestinian people" or "donated by Charity X."

In 2014, Hamas was again accused of stealing medicine meant to be given for free to Palestinians.

In 2019, poor Gazans accused Hamas of stealing meat sent by Saudi Arabia during Ramadan and reselling it on the black market, along with medicines and other aid.

Meanwhile, Gaza stores could be seen selling UNRWA-marked food packages, saying in English "not for sale."



We don't know if Hamas stole than and then sold them to stores, but clearly aid to Gaza was not reaching its intended recipients.

With this history, why would anyone believe that current aid to Gaza will not be diverted to Hamas first? That's what they do. (And so does the Palestinian Authority.)

So as terrible as this sounds, aid should not be sent if Hamas is the primary beneficiary. All the controls in the world cannot stop that theft from happening, and Hamas threats keep the witnesses mostly silent.

A brief history of Gaza aid being stolen by Hamas

Blogging about Israel and the Arab world since, oh, forever.

elderofziyon.blogspot.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

How do we know Amnesty International is antisemitic?

I once listed 15 separate reasons, examples of egregious Amnesty bias and lies about Israel. And I could have listed dozens more.

Here's yet another.

Amnesty released a report on the early part of Israel's bombing campaign against Hamas.

The Israeli army claims it only attacks military targets, but in a number of cases Amnesty International found no evidence of the presence of fighters or other military objectives in the vicinity at the time of the attacks. Amnesty International also found that the Israeli military failed to take all feasible precautions ahead of attacks including by not giving Palestinian civilians effective prior warnings – in some cases they did not warn civilians at all and in others they issued inadequate warnings.

“Our research points to damning evidence of war crimes in Israel’s bombing campaign that must be urgently investigated. Decades of impunity and injustice and the unprecedented level of death and destruction of the current offensive will only result in further violence and instability in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories,” said Agnès Callamard.

“It is vital that the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court urgently expedites its ongoing investigation into evidence of war crimes and other crimes under international law by all parties. Without justice and the dismantlement of Israel’s system of apartheid against Palestinians, there can be no end to the horrifying civilian suffering we are witnessing.”

These three paragraphs show that culminate in the "apartheid" libel which has nothing to do with Gaza proves that Amnesty's aim is dismantling Israel, not justice for Gazans.

If Amnesty does not know the targets of the attack, then it cannot call the attacks unlawful. In the past I've documented scores of cases where Amnesty claims that only civilians were killed and weeks later terror groups published the names of their members killed in the same attacks.

The fact is that Amnesty is clueless as to what the real targets were. If the targets were senior Hamas members, then no warnings could or should have been given.

That is real international law, not the fabricated version Amnesty pretends exists.

Amnesty's methodology is to interview survivors who claim that there were no terrorists around,. Often these people are lying, and sometimes these people are themselves members of terror groups!

Moreover, when Amnesty publishes these reports, it doesn't even consider that a professional army would not shoot expensive precision weapons at civilians for no reason. No, Amnesty thinks it can read the IDF's minds, and knows that there was no possible reason for the attack. To Amnesty, the IDF - with multiple layers of checks and balances, lawyers reviewing every target and every airstrike, and approvals needed at all levels - is just randomly attacking civilians.

Amnesty's track record of investigating these types of events is beyond awful. It shows a pattern where Palestinians are believed without question without even Googling their names, and where Israeli denials are assumed to be lies.

Even worse, an Amnesty researcher has admitted that Palestinian "eyewitnesses" often lie. But they haven't changed their methodology of believing their lies implicitly.

Beyond that, Amnesty never mentions that Gazans would be punished by Hamas if they were known to be saying anything Hamas doesn't like. That is a salient fact when they quote Gazans but Amnesty doesn't want anyone to know that.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is beyond sloppiness and beyond ignorance of how modern warfare works. That is antisemitism - assuming malicious intent from Jews and nothing but the truth from those with a long track record of lying to Amnesty.

Amnesty's absurd report on Israeli airstrikes proves its antisemitism

Blogging about Israel and the Arab world since, oh, forever.

elderofziyon.blogspot.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Barrister and international law expert Natasha Hausdorff puts the biased BBC in its place.

While IDF soldiers re fighting the battle against Hamas in Gaza, Israelis and Jews arond the world are fighting digital and media battle, countering lies and misinfiormation that are being spread in order tarnish Israel.

Natasha Hausdorff, a knowledgeable UK barrister, provides a brilliant explanation of how international law impacts Israel’s response to the Hamas massacre in her recent appearance on the BBC and puts the biased network in its place.

 

[Sixties Fan]

The northern German city of Bremen deleted the entry of the reportedly pro-Hamas group “Bremer Peace Forum” (Bremer Friedensforum) because the group allegedly seeks the destruction of Israel.

Christoph Sonnenberg, a spokesman for the city of Bremen, responded to a Jerusalem Post press query on Monday, stating “We have looked at the contents of the page 'Bremer Friedensforum' and have come to the conclusion to immediately terminate the link to the page of ‘Bremen.de.’ Israel's right to exist is inviolable for the Bremen Senate."

The Bremen journalist Dr. Marcus Ermler first exposed the antisemitic activities of the pro-BDS "Bremer Friedensforum" group last week on the pro-Israel website The Axis of Good (Die Achse des Guten).

Will the German city of Stuttgart cut links to a Hamas-linked group?​

The Post sent new press queries to the city of Stuttgart and its mayor Frank Nopper who continue to allow a Hamas-linked group called the Palestinian Committee Stuttgart to provide information on the municipal website.

Brig.-Gen. (ret.) Amir Avivi, founder and CEO of IDSF (Israel's Defense and Security Forum), told the Post after the outbreak of the war that Stuttgart’s mayor Frank Nopper should “delete” the posting of the Palestine Committee Stuttgart on its municipal website. “Terrorists use it” and “This is a tool of war and a tool of terror” he said, with respect to Stuttgart's enabling of the Palestine Committee Stuttgart.


(full article online)

German city deletes pro-Hamas group from website after 'Post' query

The German city of Bremen deleted the links of the reportedly pro-Hamas group the Bremer Peace Forum, but the city of Stuttgart still has links to a different Hamas-linked organization.

www.jpost.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

This is a real press release from the UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon:

UN Special Coordinator Joanna Wronecka held a round of meetings this week with Lebanese and international stakeholders to try to safeguarding Lebanon’s security and stability from the ongoing warfare between Israeli and Hamas, which has already resulted in tensions along Lebanon’s southern border with Israel. In all her meetings, the Special Coordinator underlined the urgency of restoring the calm along the Blue Line between Lebanon and Israel and of protecting Lebanon from a further spillover of violence at a time when the country was already in the throes of a protracted political and socio-economic crisis.

There are two more paragraphs, but they all have the same problem: they don't mention Hezbollah or Iran as players in this little drama.
This would be comical if it wasn't so insane: How, exactly, has Israel's battle with Hamas resulted in "tensions" along the Lebanese border? Who might be responsible for that? Who might be threatening the other party?
I can give her a hint from Lebanese media::

Hezbollah deputy chief Sheikh Naim Qassem has vowed that Israel will pay a high price whenever it starts a ground offensive in the Gaza Strip, saying that his Lebanon-based group already is "in the heart of the battle."

If the UN can't even say Hezbollah's name and condemn it for its threats to start a war for no reason except Iran instructs it to, then it should just pack up and leave. Conflicts cannot be solved if you aren't even sure of who the two parties are.

UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon seems allergic to the words "Hezbollah" and "Iran"

Blogging about Israel and the Arab world since, oh, forever.

elderofziyon.blogspot.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

The head of the Spanish Jewish community warned of “the greatest escalation of antisemitism in Spain in recent times” during a meeting on Monday with the country’s prime minister.

Jews in Spain were confronting “a very worrying moment,” Isaac Benzaquén — president of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain (FCJE) — told Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.

Along with European neighbors, Spain has witnessed a notable rise in antisemitic incidents since the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom in southern Israel unleashed a new war between the Jewish state and the Gaza-based terrorist organization.

However, while government ministers elsewhere in Europe have generally been supportive of Israel’s right to self-defense, several ministers in Spain’s left-wing coalition government, including Sánchez himself, have called for an immediate ceasefire, with one member of the cabinet from the far left Podemos alliance falsely accusing Israel of “genocide.”

The incidents recorded over the last fortnight include antisemitic graffiti daubed outside the home of a Jewish family in Madrid, as well as a rock lobbed through the window of a Jewish couple’s home. Pro-Palestinian slogans have also been scrawled on synagogues in Madrid and the Catalan city of Girona. In the most prominent incident, a pro-Hamas mob attacked the Or Zeruah Synagogue in Melilla, a Spanish enclave on the coast of North Africa, last Wednesday.

A statement from the FCJE on the upsurge in antisemitism highlighted the statements of Ione Belarra, Spain’s social rights minister, who accused Israel of “genocide.”

“The demonstrations against Israel, the burning of Israeli flags, the proclamations calling Israel a murderer, genocidal, and the author of a planned ethnic cleansing, as Minister Ione Belarra has reiterated on several occasions, have inflamed [the situation],” the FCJE observed.

After attending a pro-Hamas demonstration in Madrid last Saturday, Belarra tweeted: “Dignity has filled the streets of Madrid, [which] today urged the end of the genocide that Israel is planning against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. Freedom for Palestine.”

Two other far left members of the cabinet — Equality Minister Irene Montero and Consumer Affairs Minister Alberto Garzón — echoed Bellara’s views, with Garzón claiming that “what the Israeli government is doing is pure cruelty.”

The statements elicited an angry response from the Israeli Embassy in Madrid. “It is deeply worrying that certain elements within the Spanish government have chosen to align themselves with this kind of ISIS-style terrorism,” a statement from the embassy declared.

In a telephone conversation on Sunday with his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu, Sánchez called for what he described as a “humanitarian ceasefire,” expressing his “deep concern for the protection of all civilians and the need for sufficient and sustained humanitarian aid to reach the people of Gaza.”

While Netanyahu is planning to meet in person with EU leaders including French President Emmanuel Macron and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, no meeting with Sánchez is on the agenda.

Over the weekend, Sánchez participated in a “peace summit” of Arab leaders in Cairo which failed to produce a unified statement on the escalating war.

“It is necessary to avoid a regional escalation of the conflict. We must address a definitive solution to reach peace, based on the two states-solution, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and safety,” the Spanish leader said following the parley.

Spain’s Jewish community is one of the smallest in Europe. According to the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (IJPR), the “core community” numbers 12,900, with up to 22,000 eligible for Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return.

Spanish Jews Highlight Rising Antisemitism, Pro-Hamas Statements by Government Members, in Meeting With Prime Minister - Algemeiner.com

The head of the Spanish Jewish community warned of "the greatest escalation of antisemitism in Spain in recent times" during a meeting on Monday with the country's prime minister. Jews in Spain were confronting "a very worrying moment," Isaac Benzaquén — president of the Federation of Jewish...

www.algemeiner.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

IDF shows foreign press Hamas bodycam videos, photos of murder, torture, decapitation

Government says it's revealing horrific footage collected from various sources to the media in order to fight 'Holocaust-like denials' of Hamas's massacres in southern Israel

www.timesofisrael.com