Category Archives: 2023 Gaza War

Columbia Syndrome

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The sorry state of Columbia University’s treatment of Jews is apparent to all. The administration, teachers and student-led groups have participated in the harassment, intimidation and assault on Jews and Jewish life on campus before the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led massacre and very significantly thereafter.

It is now manifest that graduates of the school – including some Jews, remarkably – have bonded with Hamas and rationalized its barbarism and whitewashed its antisemitism.

Consider anti-Israel Jewish alum Anna Baltzer. According to her Wikipedia page, Baltzer has written a number of books, and it seems that Noam Chomsky is a fan of her 2014 book “Witness in Palestine,” which details “Palestinian resistance” against the existence of Jews in the land of Israel. On November 12, 2023, shortly after the Hamas-led massacre, she wrote on the socialist-jihadi site Common Dreams an opinion piece titled “Hamas Didn’t Attack Israelis Because They Are Jewish,” in which she attempted to argue that Hamas killed Israelis because Israeli Jews are White supremacist colonial invaders, not because of their religion.

It is willful and blind stupidity.

Hamas’s foundational charter makes very clear that it views the conflict as a religious war against Jews:

  • “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it.” (Opening)
  • “Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious.” (Preamble)
  • “raise the banner of Jihad in the face of the oppressors, so that they would rid the land and the people of their uncleanliness, vileness and evils.” (Article 3)
  • “Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews)… there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him” (Article 7)
  • “Nothing in nationalism is more significant or deeper than in the case when an enemy should tread Moslem land” (Article 12)
  • “In face of the Jews’ usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised…. the Palestinian problem is a religious problem, and should be dealt with on this basis.” (Article 15)

The Charter would go on to spin a bunch of Jew-hatred conspiracy theories lifted from the forgery Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which has NOTHING to do with the conflict in the land.

  • “In their Nazi treatment, the Jews made no exception for women or children… [Jews] attack people where their breadwinning is concerned, extorting their money” (Article 20)
  • “With their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others. With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein…. They obtained the Balfour Declaration, formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of their state. It was they who instigated the replacement of the League of Nations with the United Nations and the Security Council to enable them to rule the world through them. There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it.” (Article 22)
  • “The Zionist invasion is a vicious invasion… using all evil and contemptible ways… infiltration and espionage operations on the secret organizations… aim at undermining societies, destroying values, corrupting consciences, deteriorating character and annihilating Islam. It is behind the drug trade and alcoholism in all its kinds so as to facilitate its control and expansion…. Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people.” (Article 28)
  • “the ferocity of the Zionist offensive and the Zionist influence in many countries exercised through financial and media control.” (Article 30)
  • “The Zionist plan is limitless. After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.… here is no way out except by concentrating all powers and energies to face this Nazi, vicious Tatar invasion. The alternative is loss of one’s country, the dispersion of citizens, the spread of vice on earth and the destruction of religious values… fight with the warmongering Jews.” (Article 32)

So how does this Ivy League-educated anti-Israel Jew deal with these facts? She pointed to Hamas’s revised charter of 2017 which says in Article 16 “Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.”

If this were true, why did Palestinians throw a 69 year old wheelchair bound American Jew war veteran off a ship when he wasn’t an Israeli? Why did Palestinians shoot up a synagogue in Rome? Why did Palestinians separate Jewish passengers who weren’t Israelis to be hostages when the Arabs hijacked planes?

The list of Palestinian anti-Jewish non-Israeli physical attacks is long.

Hamas and its leaders have long denigrated Jews, calling them “the brothers of apes and pigs,” and told their followers that “Jews are a people who cannot be trusted,” among many other insults.

The list of Palestinian anti-Jewish non-Israeli verbal attacks is long.

Surely Baltzer knows all of this. So why make an argument that is plainly untrue, and why do it to fellow Jews?

While not all Jews are pro-Israel (or eat kosher, live in Israel, celebrate Jewish holidays or a variety of things that are inherently Jewish), some – like Baltzer – are anti-Israel. They may hate some government policies, the entire government, or the entire state. They may actually not hate Israel but are eager to see local Arabs achieve a state of their own.

Yet one needn’t be pro-Israel to acknowledge that Hamas is a deeply antisemitic genocidal jihadist death cult.

So how can people like Baltzer willfully ignore the deep Jew-hatred of Hamas? How and why do they try to convince fellow Jews that despite everything Hamas says and does, its radical views of Islam and jihad are somehow not toxic to Jews everywhere?

It’s a variant of the Stockholm Syndrome. In the case of Stockholm, an abused person develops a strong bond with their abuser and defends their actions in a strange twist of empathy. In this iteration, which I call the Columbia Syndrome, the root source is not purely from the ABUSER’S actions, but from the desire of someone to purge a part of their identity.

In an effort to rid oneself of a component of the Jewish collective – Israel in this case – a person bonds with someone who similarly attacks that element (Hamas, here). The fact that the abuser is not solely focused on that narrow element, or gives some soft talking points as cover to mask the general hatred in order to enlist people to the cause, is excused. The person suffering from Columbia Syndrome wants to expunge a core association so profoundly, that they will empathize with groups or people who despise them completely.

Columbia University did not originate this phenomenon and the phenomenon is not confined to anti-Israel Jews. People like Peter Beinart (Yale alum) have long been attempting to shield antisemites like Rep. Rashida Tlaib of charges of Jew-hatred. Brown University held a panel discussion about antisemitism which included Jews and non-Jews that echoed each other that Jews are not indigenous to the land of Israel, and to combat antisemitism one needed to be anti-Israel. Student groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow routinely link arms with those with extensive antisemitic credentials.

But Columbia stands above the rest.

Home to Edward Said and Rashid Khalidi, the school has long served as a fountain of denial of Jewish history and heritage. Today it is home to Joseph Massad, who celebrated the October 7 massacre of Jews and said that the Jews of the Old Testament are really “Palestinian Hebrews.”

Columbia is a campus where people yell “we are all Hamas!” and student leaders say “be grateful that I am not going out and murdering Zionists.”

Columbia is where students hoist banners calling for an “intifada” and point to Jews to be the next victims for Hamas.

Columbia is where socialist-jihadi politicians come to fawn on students harassing Jews.

Rep. Ilhan Omar at Columbia “encampment”

And Columbia is located in the largest Jewish diaspora community in the world, New York City. The university has the largest percentage of Jews of all the Ivy League schools, according to Hillel, and likely the largest Jewish alumni network of the Ivies.

Jews on campus and Jewish alumni witness the vocal anti-Israel fervor and must make a decision of how to respond: fight, flight, join or ignore. Many students worked very hard to gain admission to the institution to get a good education, and are loathe to leave the school or exert the physical and mental energy required to fight the tide of hatred. The majority of Jewish students are left with the choice to either listen to the toxicity or join the seemingly popular horde.

The Columbia environment echoes the school curricula of UNRWA, the temporary United Nations agency to care for descendants of Palestinian Arabs who left Israel at its founding. They are lied to that Jews are “colonialists” and “invaders” who “stole the land” from local Arabs. They are taught that all of Israel is an illegal “Zionist project” which should be terminated and handed to the stateless Arabs of Palestine (SAPs).

In such framework, Columbia Jews hear teachers and students echo the Democratic Socialists of America who argue that every Israeli Jew cannot be considered a civilian and is fair game for Palestinian Arabs “deploying violence to liberate themselves.”

Israeli Jews are no longer victims and Palestinians can longer be considered terrorists in such mindset. Even Arab men stabbing children to death while they slept, as happened in 2011, was supported by 51% of Arabs in Gaza. Some Columbia allies of SAPs may find the actions and associated support for killing children abhorrent but believe it has context for which Israel is solely to blame.

The depravity is appalling but it is part of the culture; it is deeply embedded in the Palestinian historical narrative at this point. The “allies” of SAPs have ingested the toxicity, including anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian Jews. What may have begun as just wanting SAPs to have freedom or an objection of Israeli policies, became a marriage made in hell.

Anti-Israel Jews try to cleanse Palestinian terrorists of antisemitism to rationalize their allegiance and to get fellow Jews to join the self-immolation. Rather than rethink the dangerous dynamic, the anti-Israel Jews affix themselves to people who want to see them dead – after they help destroy Jewish relatives.

People suffering from Columbia Syndrome are not only convinced that they are acting rationally but also morally. Like Jews who push for laws to ban the ritual slaughter of meat or circumcision, they concoct moral arguments for such actions. Driven by their profound desire to amputate part of their ethnicity and culture, they embrace people and movements which want to decapitate them.

Too many Jews are suffering from Columbia Syndrome in which they join forces with Hamas and other vicious antisemites to amputate any tinge of Zionism in their comportment. While Stockholm syndrome is understood by society to develop from a trauma-related experience, unfortunately, Columbia syndrome is viewed by a socialist-jihadist culture as a form of moral awakening.

What Would Be The Rights Of Palestinian Jews?

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Ireland and eight other countries decided to recognize Palestine in 2024. Should the borders of Palestine follow the contours of the 1949 Armistice Lines that Israel agreed to with Transjordan and Egypt, there would be roughly 720,000 Jews inside Palestine, of which 220,000 would be in “East Jerusalem” and 500,000 in communities east of the 1949 lines, commonly referred to as the “West Bank.”

What do Ireland and the other countries think should be the rights of these 720,000 Palestinian Jews?

  • Should they be allowed to become full Palestinian citizens with all relevant rights? Should they be allowed to take on permanent residency status? Should they be forced to renounce their Israeli citizenship?
  • Should they be allowed to live in the homes they purchased and live in? To keep the schools and synagogues open for education and prayer?
  • Should Palestinian Jews have their guns confiscated? Should the protective fences around their communities be dismantled?
  • Should they be forced to abandon their homes and property in East Jerusalem? Should they be evicted from the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem?
  • Should Jews be allowed to pray freely on the Jewish Temple Mount? To rebuild their holy Temple?

On December 28, 2016, departing US Secretary of State John Kerry said “Does anyone here really believe that the [Jewish] settlers will agree to submit to Palestinian law in Palestine?” He made it sound like there was no way Jews could accept Palestinian rule because Palestine would be ruled as a radical Islamic state which would subjugate Jews.

Are Ireland, Spain and Norway recognizing a radical jihadist State of Palestine which will subjugate and torment Jews? A government which will support October 7-type massacres again-and-again against Palestinian Jews inside its new borders?

When Norway recognized the Palestinian unity government which included Hamas in 2007, it urged “Palestinian authorities to respect basic international standards as regards compliance with previously concluded agreements, renunciation of violence and recognition of Israel’s right to exist.” Will it similarly demand that all Palestinian Jews be afforded every basic human right?

When Spain voted in favor of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 in 2016 making it illegal for any Israeli Jew to live in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem, did it support ethnically cleansing all Jews from the Old City or did it imagine that all of the Jews would be free to live there and worship on the Temple Mount under Palestinian rule?

When countries vote in favor of a Palestinian State, they should make clear what rights – if any – nearly three-quarters of a million Palestinian Jews should have in such new country. If they deny Jews the right to live and pray everywhere in this new Palestine, their recognition of Palestine in the shadow of the October 7 slaughter is a noxious endorsement of jihad. If there is any justice in the world, that jihad should swallow their countries first.

Related articles:

Palestinians View Jews Like The French Viewed Nazis (August 2023)

Palestinian Jews and a Judenrein Palestine (December 2016)

If Jesus Were Alive…

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If Jesus were alive in the 7th century, he would have been murdered by invading Muslim Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula.

If Jesus were alive in 1949, we would have been ethnically-cleansed from Bethlehem and the region by the Transjordanian army because he was a Jew.

Jews ethnically cleansed from the Old City of Jerusalem in 1949 by invading Arab Muslim armies

If Jesus were alive today, he would be banned from praying on the Temple Mount because it offends Muslims.

If Jesus were alive today, he’d be hiding in a bomb shelter from the “axis of resistance.”

If Jesus were alive today, Hamas would call for his rape and murder.

If Jesus were alive today, his dead body would be paraded through Gaza, where the local Arabs would gather to spit on him.

If Jesus were alive today, he would be a hostage in Gaza, and his picture would be ripped down in the streets of major U.S. cities.

If Jesus were alive today, his synagogue would be vandalized.

If Jesus were alive today, the United Nations would call him a “settler.”

If Jesus were alive today, Democratic Socialists would call him a “colonizer.”

If Jesus were alive today, he would be harassed and intimidated on college campuses.

If Jesus were alive today, Ireland would boycott him.

If Jesus were alive today, he would be fighting in the IDF.

If Jesus were alive today, he’d be lighting the first light of Chanukah, celebrating the rededication of the Jewish Temple in Judaism’s holiest city of Jerusalem.

The New York Times Absolves United Nations-Hamas Gaza Partnership And Lambasts Israel For Hungry Gazans

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The United Nations’ operation in Gaza is almost completely staffed by local Arabs. Since Hamas’s takeover of the coastal strip in 2007, UNRWA, the UN agency which runs schools and hospitals in the area, have operated in tandem with Hamas. The school circula is approved by the US-designated terrorist group and its facilities operate with Hamas’s oversight.

After Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, 2023 and butchered 1,200 people, Israel sought to bring the perpetrators to justice, to save the 250 hostages stolen by the Gazans militant groups, and ensure that the terrorist groups could never attack again, as they had promised to do.

As Israel has been decimating Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist groups and their infrastructure in Gaza, local armed Arab gangs have been stealing aid being delivered into the strip.

The New York Times blames Israel for making Gazans hungry.

When nearly 100 trucks were seized by local Arab gangs in November, the NYTimes refused to state clearly that Palestinian militants were stealing the aid and placed the blame on Israel. In a December 23, 2024 article, the Times finally made clear that armed Gazans were stealing the aid but still placed the onus on Israel.

December 23, 2024 New York Times article about looting in Gaza

The article squarely put blame on Israel for: 1) its “bombardment and invasion of Gaza”; 2) its limiting flow of goods around Gaza; and 3) not putting a new government in charge of Gaza.

How absurd.

Hamas launched the invasion, not Israel. Hamas took hundreds of captives into Gaza, demanding Israel’s counter-invasion. Hamas’s history of importing and moving vast weapons of war and terrorists around Gaza necessitates Israel’s control of goods and people.

And it is the Palestinian Authority that is supposed to govern Gaza, not Israel. The world demands that Israel leave the strip so how does it simultaneously demand that its should put in place a new government?

The Times shared that UNRWA decided that it would no longer deliver aid through one of the major entry points into Gaza, and that relief is piling up at the crossings. It acknowledged that the Gaza police force is an arm of Hamas but they are rarely seen in Gaza these days.

The Times inadvertently highlighted the farce of the entire situation stating that “The United Nations does not allow Israeli soldiers to protect aid convoys, fearing that would compromise its [the UN’s] neutrality.” Unsaid, is that only under the protection of Hamas and other Gazan terrorist groups can UNRWA operate freely, showing that the UN group has always been extremely biased.

The article moved beyond the lawless areas without Hamas or Hamas’s police ruling the area to sectors “fully controlled by the Israeli military. UN agencies have been able to avoid looters and deliver some relief.” However, not enough according to the UN: “‘There is continued tolerance by the Israel Defense Forces of unacceptable amounts of looting.”

According to the article, Israel is responsible for the entire situation in Gaza. Not the Gazans who are doing the actual looting. Not Hamas which refuses every ceasefire and to return all the hostages. Not UNRWA, the joint venture between the United Nations and Hamas, which teaches Gazans that Israel is an illegal entity which should be destroyed and replaced with a purely Arab Palestine.

UNRWA collapsed because Hamas is defeated. Local Arab gangs steal humanitarian relief because Iran, Turkey and others have been smuggling in vast amount of weaponry into the region, despite the official Israeli and Egyptian blockade of the terrorist enclave.

Gazans are hungry today DESPITE the efforts of Israel, and because of the toxic policies of the United Nations and local Arab warlords for the past decades.

First Time In History, People Under ‘Genocide’ Reject Ceasefire. Repeatedly.

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Some groups like Amnesty International and countries like South Africa have drummed up the idea that Israel is committing a ‘genocide’ against the people of Gaza, or Palestinian Arabs, or the Arab or Muslim world, depending on how narrow or broad the defaming party chose to go. They have ignored the lowest civilian-to-militant death ratio in any urban war, the declining number of women and children killed as the war moved on to a ground invasion, and many other statistics in Israel’s defensive war in making the accusation.

It is curious that people have also not considered the basic fact that Israel has offered many ceasefires to Hamas since the war started in October 2023. No target of a genocide has ever been offered a ceasefire.

Let alone reject it.

Yet Hamas has rejected one ceasefire after another since the war started.

If an army was intent on slaughtering a group of people, would it offer a ceasefire every month?

If a persecuted population felt like it was desperate for the killing to stop, would it reject offers to stop the fighting?

Jews in the Holocaust were not offered a ceasefire. They were defenseless. They had no army. They had no government advocating on their behalf to stop the slaughter.

But Palestinians do have an army and a government which speaks on their behalf. And that government is very popular and the majority of the people want the war to continue, despite the heavy losses.

The heavy loss of life among Gazans is because of a war they started and refuse to cease. It is the deep-seated antisemitic genocidal intent of Gazans to destroy Israel that has perpetuated the war, not Israel’s desire to eliminate Gazans as declared by know-nothings under heavily tarnished brands.

After fourteen months of refusing ceasefires, it is time for the Arab and Muslim world to force Hamas to admit defeat and surrender so that the killing can stop and the day after can begin.

The UN Secretary General Doesn’t Want Israel Fighting ISIS In Syria

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The United Nations has long come together to fight only two terrorist groups, ISIS (Da-esh) and Al Qaeda. The UN tracked and sanctioned individuals and groups associated with the terrorist groups for decades.

ISIS continues to be very active, with 153 attacks in the first six months of 2024 between Syria and Iraq. It is projected that the group may have double the number of attacks in 2024 as 2023.

So it is no surprise that Israel is worried about the Islamist militant group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), taking over Syria, to Israel’s immediate northeast. According to the BBC, “HTS was set up under a different name, Jabhat al-Nusra, in 2011 as a direct affiliate of al-Qaeda. The leader of the self-styled Islamic State (IS) group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was also involved in its formation.”

The United States is playing close attention.

On December 9, shortly after HTS took over Syria, the U.S. Department of Defense issued a release that “Centcom, together with allies and partners in the region, will continue to carry out operations to degrade ISIS capabilities, even during this dynamic period in Syria.” U.S. Air Force fighter and bomber aircraft struck more than 75 targets on December 7 as part of the effort to denigrate ISIS.  

The United Nations Secretary General suddenly was worried about foreign involvement in Syria. Despite the UN stating clearly that ISIS and Al Qaeda are a global threat, UNSG Guterres tweeted that he was deeply concerned about the “recent and extensive violations of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

The U.S. has been operating in Syria for years, so it would be strange for Guterres to suddenly admonish the U.S.’s efforts to destroy ISIS. Turkey has conducted many raids inside Syria since 2016 and controls large swaths of northern Syria directly and through proxies.

Turkey-controlled areas in northern Syria

One must therefore assume that Guterres sudden interest was in regards to Israel’s attack on Syria’s air force, navy and chemical weapons stockpiles, as the Jewish State does not want the new Al Qaeda-linked regime to have such destructive capabilities next door.

Even though the UN labeled ISIS and Al Qaeda dangerous terrorist groups for years and said nothing about the United States and Turkey fighting in Syria for a long time, the head of the UN suddenly became concerned about Israel removing weapons from Al Qaeda-linked jihadi groups.

It is another sign of the depravity at the United Nations, and why it should be neutered in terms of funding and voice in international law.

Echos Of Entebbe: Ugandans Debate Israel’s Right To Self Defense

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The most famous Ugandan has long been Idi Amin (1928-2003) who served as president of Uganda from 1971 to 1979. He was known for his ‘reign of terror’ which systematically attacked minority groups including Christians, with over 100,000 people likely killed during his tenure.

A new Ugandan has emerged on the world stage, a 70-year old judge by the name Julia Sebutinde (1954-).

Julia Sebutinde, serving on the International Court of Justice

Sebutinde was the lone judge on the International Court of Justice who did not vote in favor of admonishing Israel regarding its war with the Palestinian terrorist-political party Hamas in several decisions, including on January 26, May 24 and July 19.

On May 24, she issued a lengthy dissenting opinion in which she argued that “I firmly believe that Israel has the right to defend itself against its enemies, including Hamas, and to continue efforts to rescue its missing hostages.” She believes that the ICJ overreached in essentially denying Israel such basic right, even as she agreed that Israel’s defensive actions need to be proportionate, adding “neither international law in general nor the Genocide Convention in particular deprive Israel of the right to take necessary and proportionate actions to defend its citizens and territory against such armed attacks on multiple fronts.”

The opinion was not appreciated by the government of Uganda which distanced itself from Sebutinde, stating her “ruling at the ICJ does not represent the Government of Uganda’s position on the situation in Palestine.” [Uganda recognizes Palestine as a country.]

“Uganda government disowns judge who voted in favor of Israel at UN court”

Uganda took its sharp turn against Israel and sided up with jihadists early in Amin’s reign.

Uganda aligned with Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi in February 1972 declaring that their regimes would be based on Islam and stand against “Zionism and imperialism.” A few months later, Amin sent a telegram to the United Nations Secretary General applauding Palestinian Arab terrorists murdering Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games in Munich, Germany. The telegram added that the locale was appropriate because “It happened because Hitler and all of the German people knew that the Israelis are not a people who work for humanity and because of that they burned them alive and killed them with gas on the soil of Germany.” He repeated the comments that Hitler was right to kill Jews the following year.

Amin continued to align with “the plight of the Palestinian people” by expelling all Israelis and shutting the Israeli embassy in Uganda in 1973. He declared that the Abayudya native Ugandan Jewish community was illegal and granted the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) permission to operate training facilities in Uganda.

That set the stage for Amin to allow Palestinian Arab terrorists to land a hijacked civilian airplane at its capital city airport of Entebbe in 1976. He watched as the Palestinian terrorists separated Jews and non-Jews, allowing the non-Jewish hostages to fly to France while the 94 Israelis and non-Israeli Jews plus 12 Air France crew remained hostages.

Julia Sebutinde was 22 years old when she watched her country platform Palestinian terrorists and hold 106 Jewish civilians as hostages. She must have marvelled at Israel’s ability to come to their rescue on July 4, 1976 in Operation Thunderbolt.

Roughly 48 years later in 2024, Sebutinde spoke of Israel’s right to fight for another group of 100-plus Israeli hostages held by Palestinian terrorists, this time, trapped in Gaza:

An Israeli operation in February 2024 resulted in the rescue of two hostages, and more recently, the bodies of three more hostages killed in captivity were recovered from Rafah. It is plausible that additional hostages in captivity remain in the area, which is why Israel has declared its intention to locate and return them, dead or alive, to their families. This is a right that the Court cannot deny Israel or the hostages.

The United States government stands with Israel’s right to self defense while a vocal minority of citizens ignore the hostages and call to “Free Palestine” and “Globalize the Intifada.” In Uganda, the situation is reversed, with a government hitched economically and politically to jihadi regimes, while a 70 year old judge declares the obvious, that Israel must be allowed to defend itself and bring back the hostages.

The Bookend of Sheikh Jarrah Eviction?

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In May 2021, Israeli courts ruled that Arab squatters would be evicted from homes owned by Israeli Jews in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood north of the Old City of Jerusalem. This action set off a mini war with Hamas in Gaza, and law enforcement never proceeded with the eviction.

There was another property dispute going on at that time in Silwan, just southeast of the Old City, a neighborhood founded by Yemenite Jews in the 1880s. The eviction of the Arabs, the Ghaith family, was similarly postponed and the family appealed the decision in Israeli courts and lost. For the past few weeks they have been advised to vacate the two-story building but refused. December 10 was set as the eviction date, and it happened this morning according to the Palestinian Authority-run media site, Wafa.

Wafa reporting on eviction from Silwan

Wafa reported the story from Gaza, a strange dynamic as the PA has no presence there. Presumably it was done to make the action look like a military takeover by “Israeli colonists, under the protection of the Israeli Occupation Forces.”

The United Nations had weighed in against Israel about the evictions on July 30, 2024 when it said “These [eviction] cases are examples of an ongoing systematic settlers’ campaign and application of a range of laws discriminatorily, to uproot Palestinians from their homes, take over their property and implant Israeli settlers in the heart of Palestinian neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem.” Israel’s court disagreed and stated it was simply a real estate matter in returning the property to the rightful owners who had been ethnically cleansed from Silwan when Jordan invaded and illegally seized the land in the 1948/9 war.

The May 2021 mini war launched new terrorist groups east of the 1949 Armistice Lines (E49AL, “West Bank”) and set local Arabs on a genocidal path to kill Jewish civilians inside Israel. In March 2021, 18% of West Bank Arabs wanted to kill Jewish civilians; it rose to 57% by March 2023, close to the level of Gazan bloodlust.

The failed eviction of Arab squatters from Sheikh Jarrah in May 2021 initiated the soft launch of the massive war engulfing the region. Perhaps the December 2024 actual eviction of squatters from Silwan will mark the beginning of the end to the war.

Anti-Israel Horde Has Called Israel “Genocidal” For Years

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Many pro-Israel people are outraged by Amnesty International calling Israel’s current actions in Gaza a “genocide,” by highlighting that Israel never wanted the war and would end it immediately if the hostages were released and Hamas surrenders. As there is no “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,” as the term is defined in the Genocide Convention, the basic premise falls flat on its face before even getting to the physical nature of the battlefield and fatalities.

But that is exactly the point that anti-Israel people are making in their own narrative. Whether Israel’s current war is defensive or not is irrelevant. Whether the number of civilians-to-militants killed is the lowest ratio of any urban combat is dismissed.

Israeli police officers evacuate a woman and a child from a site hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip, in Ashkelon, southern Israel, Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023(AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)

The anti-Israel crowd ties colonization to ethnic cleansing to apartheid to genocide. It is one big ball of “European White Supremacy” and “settler imperialism” that has been internalized as gospel by the anti-Israel mob.

Consider that in 2016, sixty different groups in the Black Lives Matter movement penned a manifesto labeling Israel as “an apartheid state with over 50 laws on the books that sanction discrimination against the Palestinian people,” and that America’s aid to Israel made it complicit “in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people.”

Even when there was no war, and the Israeli Arab AND West Bank Arab AND Gazan Arab all had populations which skyrocketed decade after decade – dwarfing the growth of Israeli Jews and of Arab populations of surrounding countries – the BLM movement ignored any physical requirement of a “genocide” and rallied around perceived intent.

Whether the Jewish State is the most liberal country for a thousand miles in any direction was considered misdirection. Pointing out basic pluralistic truths was considered PinkWashing or GreenWashing or a rainbow of other colors meant to serve as red herrings to the core issue.

The anti-Israel community considers the creation of Israel an original sin that can never be righted until it is destroyed. To give Palestinian Arabs dignity requires a genocide of Israeli Jews, and their supporters.

The “axis of resistance” of Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and its global supporters is against the Jewish State, which it considers a foreign “cancer” inside the purely Arab Middle East. Today’s war is the same as 1948, to annihilate the Jewish entity in their midst.

A growing number of pro-Palestinian activists are echoing the Hamas narrative, even as the military capabilities of the terrorist Palestinian party dwindle. They have internalized a lie which offers Israel no escape other than dissolution.

The “genocide” claims and cases against Israel now have a veneer of credibility as “human rights” groups accuse the country amidst a difficult defensive war. In truth, they are tools to arm the second wave – of judicial and economic attacks – to destroy the Jewish State, as the axis’ military offensives end in defeat.

The Axis Of Nonexistence

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Iran and its associates have long referred to the United States and Israel as “Great Satan” and “Little Satan”, respectively. The jihadi extremists positioned themselves as the “axis of resistance” against western influence in what they perceive to be a purely Islamic Middle East.

The leading edge of the warmongering jihadists are rapidly fading.

Hamas, the Popular Islamic Palestinian Arab Terrorist Group

Hamas has been listed by the United States as a foreign terrorist group (FTO) since the US began the list in 1997. The Palestinian Arab group which ran Gaza and has a majority position in the Palestinian parliament since 2006, has the most antisemitic foundational charter of any country. It is sworn to the destruction of Israel.

Hamas invaded the Jewish State on October 7, 2023 and slaughtered 1,200 people and took over 250 hostages. In Israel’s response to the assault, it has decimated Hamas’s leadership including Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh and Mohammed Deif. Hamas’s arsenal and tunnel infrastructure has virtually been eliminated and thousands of its members are either dead or in Israeli jails.

Hezbollah in Lebanon

Hezbollah, like Hamas, is sponsored by Iran. The Lebanese-based US FTO launched an attack on Israel on October 8, and Israel began responding more aggressively over the past few months. During this time, Israel killed much of Hezbollah’s leadership including Hassan Nasrallah, Ali Karaki, Ibrahim Qubaisi, Fuad Shukr, Ahmed Mahmud Wahbi and Ibrahim Aqil.

After Israel incapacitated much of Hezbollah’s fighting force in southern Lebanon, the group accepted a ceasefire agreement. Israel hopes that the government of Lebanon will assume military control of its territory, expunge Hezbollah from parliament and emerge from decades of being a failed state.

Hamas and Hezbollah flags, under foot

Syria

The Iranian-backed government of Bashar al-Assad has overseen a brutal civil war which has left over 600,000 dead and millions displaced since 2011. Since Hezbollah’s ceasefire, Syrian resistance forces have overtaken many of the large cities of western Syria and are closing in on Damascus. It is possible that Assad’s regime may fall as Russia is too weakened by its war with Ukraine, and Iran is too vulnerable to extend resources to its proxy.

Islamic Republic of Iran

The leading state sponsor of terrorism is fully exposed after Israel launched a massive air strike in late October. While Israel has not followed up with additional attacks to remove the Iranian nuclear weapons program at this time, Iran has pulled back on its attacks against Israel, out of fear of being highly vulnerable.

What began as a massive war of Iran and its proxies to eradicate the Jewish State and prevent its integration with Sunni Arab countries including the UAE and Saudi Arabia, is becoming a rout of the jihadi regimes. The “axis of resistance” is vanishing into the “axis of nonexistence.”

It remains to be seen if the vanquished jihadists will repeat the “three Nos” slogan from 1967, or consider accepting the basic human rights and dignity of the Jewish State. Unlike 57 years ago, the incoming US president and Saudi Arabia will be important factors in shaping the contours of the regional relationships into the future.