It has allowed the Iranian-backed terror group Hezbollah to run a massive distinct army for decades and to sit in its parliament. It’s currency has been in freefall since the COVID pandemic and Hezbollah’s weaponry in the Beirut port exploded in 2020.
It then let Hezbollah launch a war against Israel, together with Hamas on October 7, 2023, further putting strain on its economy, even before Israel retaliated.
Currency exchange of Lebanon lira to US dollar, with spikes in February 2023 and February 2024
Yet The New York Times opted to paint the sorry state of Lebanon as a direct cause of Israel’s decimation of Hezbollah.
On December 30, 2024, the Times ran an article with a headline “Lebanon’s Economy Reels From War: ‘We Are Starting From Zero'” with a sub-title that pinned the matter on “the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.”
NY Times article on December 30, 3024
Israel is surrounded by failed states with Iranian-backed militant jihadi groups waging war on the Jewish State. Even as Israel tries to live in peace and defend itself from genocidal neighbors, the New York Times falsely describes Israel as causing hardship to those around it.
In the middle of a multi-front war that Israel was fighting against Iranian proxies, the Jewish State decided to ban Qatar’s Al Jazeera media because of its positive depictions of Hamas and Palestinian terrorists groups, and negative stories about Israel. The New York Times ran many stories about Israel’s ban.
Last week, the Palestinian Authority also acted to ban the Hamas-supporting news company, as the PA began to arrest various terrorist groups in the West Bank in an attempt to show that it can be a trusted party to rule in Gaza. The story was picked up in a few publications, including Reuters, Variety, The Jerusalem Post, JNS and many other organizations such as i24News, Haaretz and the New Arab.
Yet The New York Times has still not covered the story, despite heavily covering Israel’s ban.
Al Jazeera has long tried to inflame a global jihad against Israel and instigate a Shiite-Sunni war in the Middle East, under the veneer of a legitimate news agency. Perhaps the New York Times is trying to both support the anti-Israel propaganda – which the grey lady echoes – by not covering the PA’s ban of Al Jazeera which would further delegitimatize AJ, and to paint Israel as anti-freedom of the press, which no one bothers to consider for the PA.
The story of Chanukah happened in 164 BCE. The Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes had defiled the Second Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and enacted several laws against Judaism, including banning circumcision, celebrating Shabbat and Jewish holidays, forcing Jews to eat pork, and making it a capital offense to have a torah scroll. The Jews of the holy land revolted against the Syrian-Greek king and got rid of all the anti-Judaism decrees and rededicated the Temple.
This was a war of pagans against the Jewish religion, before Herod built the expanded Temple Mount plaza and before Christianity.
Over the following centuries, King Herod (72 BCE – 4 BCE) built the expanded Temple Mount and Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem by the Romans. Jewish revolts against the Romans in 66CE-70CE and 132-135CE led to the destruction of Jerusalem and expulsion of Jews from the area, renaming the city to “Aelia Capitolina” and the region to “Palestina.”
This was a war of pagans against Jews and Christians, before the birth of Mohammed and creation of Islam.
Mohammed’s quest to bring Islam from the Arabian Peninsula to the world brought a Muslim invasion into the Jewish holy land in the 7th and 8th centuries. Muslims built their third holiest site on top of Herod’s Temple Mount, the Al Aqsa Mosque. Christians and Muslims waged several wars over the holy land between 1095 and 1291.
Those battles between Christian crusaders and Muslims, were over the Jewish holy land and Judaism’s holiest location.
In 1948, Muslim Arab armies invaded and tried to destroy the newly declared State of Israel. The Jordanian army ethnically cleansed all of the Jews on the western bank of the Jordan River all the way through the Old City of Jerusalem. In 1954, it granted citizenship to all Arabs, as long as they were not Jewish.
This was a war of Arab Muslims countries against the physical presence of Jews in the Jewish holy land.
From the Chanukah story to the creation of Israel in 1948, many groups laid siege to Jerusalem, often attacking Jews through anti-religious actions, or lumped in with other religious groups. Since 1948, the war has been about the physical presence of Jews in Jerusalem, a place where Jews have been the majority since the 1860s.
At the story of Chanukah, there was no Temple Mount, no Christianity and no Islam. It was a battle of pagans against a small local tribe’s religion, who lived at the intersection of Africa, Asia, and Europe.
Chanukah marks the beginning of Jews in the holy land being attacked for their religion. The successful battles proved to be short-lived, as most Jews were forced into the diaspora over the following centuries, until the recent past. Celebrating the holiday today amidst a multi-front defensive war and global antisemitic chants that Jews are “European settler colonialists” is a chance to reassert Eight Attestations On Jerusalem:
Jews have an Inalienable right to pray on the Jewish Temple Mount
Banning Jews from living and praying in their holiest city is blatant anti-Semitism, as is denying Jewish history
There is no “Judaizing” Jerusalem, as Jews have been the majority in Jerusalem since the 1860s, and have devoted themselves to the city since 1000BCE
The security of Israel demands that its capital sit well within its borders
Divided capitals are a function of war, not peace. The place known as “East Jerusalem” only existed for a few years, 1949-1967
No part of Jerusalem was ever contemplated to be part of Palestine. Not only is “East Jerusalem” not an actual city, but there is no basis to call it “Occupied Palestinian Territory”
Jerusalem Arabs have been and are continued to be offered Israeli citizenship
There is no ethnic cleansing of Arabs. The Arab population in Jerusalem has grown faster than Jews since Israel reunited city
On Chanukah, diaspora Jews should pay particular attention to the direction of their prayer, the Jewish Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Israel, as Jews have done for thousands of years.
Happy Chanukah signs on the walls of Jerusalem, 2021
The United Nations has long shown its anti-Israel bias in its various agencies. The global leader of the UN has also shows his disregard for civilians around the Middle East, preferring to coddle vile dictators as his clients.
In the aftermath of unveiling of the brutal torture regime of Bashar al-Assad’s prison system which killed over 100,000 people, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres chose to highlight the historic opportunity for the Syrian people as the country was taken over by a hybrid of jihadi terrorist groups of ISIS and Al Qaeda.
While he was making his absurd comments, a young US Congressman named Ritchie Torres was rebuking Syria and its sponsor of Iran’s “machinery of death,” and also called out the “international community” which ignored and continues to ignore the axis’ crimes against humanity, preferring to expend its energy on Israel’s defensive battles.
We know that Iran, Syria and the “axis of resistance” is evil. We must also acknowledge that the United Nations is an enabler of their atrocities and consider how to shrink the global body’s menacing actions.
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.
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.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar announced that the country was closing its embassy in Ireland because of a host of “antisemitic rhetoric” and “efforts to delegitimize and demonize the Jewish state.” While it is well understood that any sovereign country is free to open or close embassies in bilateral fora, it was interesting to see Israel’s foreign minister include a charge of how Ireland treated its own Jewish citizens, stating the “government has failed to take effective measures to combat the surge of antisemitism within Ireland.”
The Jewish State was reestablished in 1948 as a place where Jews were guaranteed self-determination and protection within its borders. Israel is also considering the fate of Jews in the diaspora as it weighs its international dealings.
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.
The media has begun paying more attention to Syria as the country’s 54-year old regime has fallen to insurgents tied to ISIS and Turkey. As part of its coverage, it has marked the Golan Heights on its maps. It makes this an opportune time to review the very different coverage of two contested areas – Golan Heights and West Bank – between Israel and its neighbors.
In the Media
The Guardian’s map of the Golan Heights in December 2024
The Guardian presented a map of the Golan Heights calling the separation between Israel and Syria as the “1949 Armistice line.” It also noted that the Heights were “captured by Israel from Syria during the 1967 Six-day war.” Both of these statements are factually correct.
And completely divorced from how the media describes the “West Bank.”
Rather than use the term “1949 Armistice line”, the press calls it the “1967 border” even though it was never a border nor meant to be a border. As described in the 1949 Israel-Jordan Armistice Agreement in Article VI, “The Armistice Demarcation Lines defined in articles V and VI of this Agreement are agreed upon by the Parties without prejudice to future territorial settlements or boundary lines or to claims of either Party relating thereto.” In other words, the lines were simply set to separate the warring parties but political negotiations would craft the contours of the land in the future.
In regards to the phrase “from Syria,” the media never notes that Israel didn’t capture the “West Bank” land from Palestine but from Jordan, as Palestine did not exist.
The media – and the United Nations – mislead people that Israel took the West Bank from Palestine in an aggressive war. That is completely untrue, and obfuscated by terminology.
Geography
The Golan Heights are an actual topographical piece of earth. The large hills and mountains shoot up from the Sea of Galilee and beyond from volcanic activity.
Not so for the “West Bank.” It has no geographical or historical significance, other than being east of the 1949 Armistice line. It wasn’t even called the “West Bank” until after the 1967 Six-day war, as Jordan had illegally annexed it in 1950 and the UN just called it part of Jordan.
Arab States Breaking the Armistice Agreements
The Israel-Syria and Israel-Jordan Armistice Agreements specifically called on all parties to not take military action against the other. Both Arab states violated those agreements.
Syria shelled the farmlands of Israel’s Galilee for years, forcing Israel to defend itself and take the Golan Heights to keep Syria from repeating the attacks. Similarly, Jordan attacked Israel in June 1967 and Israel captured the region in a defensive action during the Six-day war.
Internationally Defined Borders
International powers created the various lines for Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Palestine after World War I. Each region slowly declared independence but not without difficulties. Each has gone through several wars, including civil wars. A populace more comfortable with tribes and clans operating under the umbrella of the Ottoman Empire for centuries were thrust into statehood. While modern academics blame the regional powers for “colonialization” and “imperialism” which left the locals bereft of natural resources, it was actually the imposition of statehood that has confounded much of the Middle East. Syria, Iraq and Lebanon are perfect examples of the internal strife which has killed millions over the decades.
“Palestine” was similarly crafted by world powers, and then quickly divided further by chopping off the region east of the Jordan River for the Hashemite Kingdom to rule. The balance of the land (which most people think of as pre-1948 Palestine) was designed to be “a national home for the Jewish people,” in the Palestine Mandate as adopted by the League of Nations. While the Golan Heights was marked by the powers to be part of Syria, those same powers marked the “West Bank” to be part of the Jewish homeland.
On one hand, Israel captured the Golan Heights after Syria broke the Armistice Agreement, and on the other, Israel RECAPTURED the West Bank/ area east of the 1949 Armistice Lines, in 1967 after Jordan broke its Armistice Agreement.
Names
Republicans in the United States are putting forward resolutions to stop calling the land “West Bank” and instead refer to it as “Judea and Samaria.” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) said in introducing the resolution that “The Jewish people’s legal and historic rights to Judea and Samaria goes back thousands of years. The U.S. should stop using the politically charged term West Bank to refer to the biblical heartland of Israel.” That is partially true.
Judea and Samaria have historical context and are much bigger contours than the “West Bank.” The West Bank is an artifice of war; it is just the land the the Jordanians took in the 1948-9 war in which they attempted to destroy the nascent Jewish State. The more accurate term for political purposes would be to call it E49JAL, for the area east of the 1949 Jordanian Armistice Lines.
Conclusion
The media is correctly referring to the Golan Heights, an actual region with topographical significance, as having an Israeli side captured FROM SYRIA, across the “1949 Armistice line.” It should similarly stop using the terms “borders,” “West Bank” and “from Palestine” which are all factually incorrect and attempt to frame the conflict with the Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) in a duplicitous manner that portrays Israel as the aggressor.
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.
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.
First One Through 