Showing posts with label #Israel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #Israel. Show all posts

Saturday, July 25, 2026

What Every American Should Know About U.S. Aid to Israel

Much is argued against the $3.8 bill aid given by the USA. But it is not all one way. Beyond Israeli contributions to the F-35 program saving billions in US R & D and related aviation technology, supporters of the aid relationship point to several areas:

1. Intelligence Sharing

Israel provides intelligence on: Iran's nuclear and missile programs , Terrorist organizations such as Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS affiliates, and others, Russian and Chinese military equipment used in the Middle East, U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies cooperate extensively on counterterrorism and regional security. 

2. Missile Defense Development

Joint development of: Iron Dome, David's Sling and  Arrow 3. These programs involve shared technology, testing, and co-production between U.S. and Israeli firms. �

3. Combat Testing and Operational Experience

Israel frequently operates U.S.-made systems in real combat environments. This is sometimes described as Israel acting as a "real-world laboratory" for certain systems, although the value of this is debated.

4. Cybersecurity and Technology

Cooperation in: Cyber defense, Artificial intelligence applications, Unmanned systems and Electronic warfare.

5. Defense Industrial Benefits for the U.S.

Most U.S. military aid to Israel must be spent on American-made equipment. Thus, that means much of the money flows back to U.S. defense companies such as Lockheed Martin⁠�, Boeing⁠�, and Raytheon⁠�.

Missile-defense co-production involves numerous American manufacturers and workers. �

6. Strategic Presence in the Middle East

Many U.S. policymakers view Israel as a reliable regional ally in a volatile region. The alliance provides: Military cooperation, Joint exercises, Pre-positioned U.S. military stockpiles and Access to regional intelligence. �

In Short

If you exclude the F-35 and related R&D, the biggest benefits usually cited are:

Intelligence on Iran and regional threats.
Joint missile-defense technologies.
Combat experience and operational feedback on U.S. weapons.
Cybersecurity and defense-tech cooperation.
Economic benefits to the U.S. defense industry.
A close strategic ally in the Middle East.

Tuesday, June 2, 2026

Industrial Intifada

JFeed Staff JUN 1, 2026

A new anti-Israel campaign is publishing maps and location details of factories, ports, vessels and supply routes it claims are connected to Israel’s military infrastructure, while encouraging activists to disrupt those sites.

A new anti-Israel campaign is publishing maps and location details of factories, ports, vessels and supply routes it claims are connected to Israel’s military infrastructure, while encouraging activists to disrupt those sites.

The project, launched by Global Intifada under the name “Genocide Supply Chain,” claims to identify companies and transport routes involved in supplying military equipment to Israel. Its stated goal is to help activists “disarm” Israel by targeting the supply chain behind the IDF.

But the campaign’s scope appears broader than Israel-linked companies alone. Some Western defense firms with no known direct Israeli contracts are also listed, based on claims that they contribute to a wider defense ecosystem or could transfer technology through allied governments.

The map includes profiles of facilities, ports and companies, with claims about what each site produces and how it is allegedly connected to Israel. Each entry is given a confidence rating, reflecting how strongly the campaign says the information supports its claim.

Some targets have obvious Israel-related links, including facilities connected to Israeli defense firm Elbit Systems. Others are more indirect. One Glasgow shipyard was reportedly listed not because it builds vessels for Israel, but because it contributes to the broader “global naval design and technology ecosystem.” A Washington-based company was included despite the map acknowledging no known Israeli contracts, citing concern over possible technology transfer from the United States to Israel.

The campaign calls on dockworkers to refuse work connected to suspect vessels and encourages activists to organize pickets. It also promotes “direct action” alongside groups such as Palestine Action, whose actions have often included vandalism and sabotage against defense-linked sites.

Global Intifada’s messaging frames the campaign as part of a broader struggle against Israel, Western defense industries and what it calls one global war machine. It also seeks to reclaim the term “intifada,” arguing that it should be understood as resistance rather than terrorism.

The group appears to be closely connected to Gaza flotilla activist networks, including through joint social media activity and promotion of organizations involved in flotilla campaigns.

The publication of target maps raises concerns that anti-Israel activism is moving further from protest toward coordinated disruption and potential sabotage of industrial, maritime and defense infrastructure.

Thursday, April 9, 2026

Trump and the End of Tehran's Illusion

 by Ahmed Charai  •  April 8, 2026 at 4:00 am

for the full article go to;  https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/22422/trump-iran-illusion 

  • If this war stops with the regime still standing, still organized, and still capable of rebuilding, Tehran will do what it always does: declare survival a victory, turn endurance into propaganda, and return more dangerous than before. A wounded regime is not a reformed regime. It is often a more vindictive one.
  • A ceasefire that leaves the regime structurally intact is not peace. It is an intermission. It is a guarantee that the same threat will return in altered form, demanding a higher price later. But military pressure alone cannot write the final chapter. That chapter belongs to the Iranian people.
  • Trump has already helped shatter the myth that Tehran is untouchable. He should not now allow the regime to survive this war by pretending survival is strength. He should finish the job.
  • It must end with Iran's terror state broken, America's allies strengthened, deterrence restored, and the opening of a different future for Iran and for the Middle East.

Tuesday, March 31, 2026

Israel’s Right to Exist

 The question of whether Israel exists by "right" is a central, deeply contested issue in international politics, law, and philosophy. Perspectives on this claim range from legal recognition to moral, historical, and ideological arguments. 

 Here is a breakdown of the different viewpoints based on current discourse:

1.    1Legal and Diplomatic Perspective (Recognition by Right)

 UN Recognition: Israel was admitted as a member state of the United Nations on May 11, 1949. Under international law, this recognized its sovereignty and legitimacy.

  • International Recognition: As of early 2026, Israel is recognized as a sovereign state by approximately 163 of the 192 other United Nations member states.
  • The Oslo Accords: In the 1990s, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) officially recognized Israel's right to exist in peace and security, a cornerstone for diplomacy, according to the U.S. Department of State

2. Legal Skepticism (No Inherent "Right")

 International Law Argument: Many scholars argue that international law does not confer an inherent "right to exist" on any state. States are created, recognized, or dissolved based on historical, political, and military factors, rather than a codified legal right.

  • Unique Application: Some critics and commentators note that Israel is often the only country asked to defend its "right to exist," a phrase that is rarely applied to other nations.
  • Challenging the Basis: Some observers, such as those at the Mises Institute, argue that existence is not a legal right but a geopolitical reality, according to mises.org

3. Historical and Ideological Perspectives

 Self-Determination: Proponents argue that Israel exists by the right of Jewish self-determination, fulfilling a historical and religious connection to the land. This includes references to the Balfour Declaration and the UN Partition Plan of 1947.


  • Contested Legitimacy: Opponents often point to the Nakba (the displacement of Palestinians in 1948) to challenge the legality of Israel's founding, arguing it was achieved through the violation of Palestinian rights, according to Jewish Voice for Labour

4. Current Context (Right to Exist vs. Right of Function)

  • Right to Security: Many defenders emphasize that Israel’s right to exist is synonymous with the right of Jewish people not to be targeted and to have a secure state, a position reinforced by groups like the Israel Policy Forum.
  • Conditions of Existence: Some, including many critics and human rights organizations (e.g., Amnesty International), argue that while Israel may exist, its actions—such as occupation, settlement expansion, and policies in the West Bank and Gaza—violate international law. 

In summary, for many, Israel's existence is a legitimate right based on international law and self-determination. For others, particularly critics of its policies, the focus is on challenging the legitimacy of its actions rather than its mere existence, or arguing that no state has an inherent "right" to exist. 

Wednesday, March 25, 2026

How Soroka Hospital Managed Two Mass-Casualty Events in Quick Succession

https://unitedwithisrael.org/how-soroka-managed-two-mass-casualty-events-in-quick-succession/

 By Amelie Botbol

Such events are particularly complex, as many patients suffer minor physical injuries or psychological trauma but cannot be discharged promptly because they have nowhere to go.

As nearly 200 wounded Israelis arrived at Soroka Medical Center on Saturday following Iranian missile attacks on the southern cities of Dimona and Arad, Prof. Roy Kessous, deputy director of the hospital, described how staff managed two mass-casualty events in quick succession.

At 7 p.m. and again at 7:30 p.m., the hospital received alerts following a missile strike on Dimona. From that incident alone, 60 casualties were brought in, including a severely wounded 12-year-old boy who was transferred directly from initial assessment to surgery and remains in intensive care.

Kessous said the hospital is experienced in handling such situations, having dealt with multiple mass-casualty incidents in recent years.

“Very quickly, we implemented the appropriate protocols and mobilized both on-site medical personnel and staff from home,” he told JNS.

He noted that such events are particularly complex, as many patients suffer minor physical injuries or psychological trauma but cannot be discharged promptly because they have nowhere to go.

“Many of them had their homes destroyed in the missile strike. With the help of administrative teams and municipal services, we gradually discharged patients to safe locations for the night,” he said.

Shortly after the Dimona incident, the hospital was notified of another missile strike, this time on Arad. A total of 115 patients were transferred to Soroka, including 70 children. Nine were listed in serious condition, with at least twice that number moderately wounded. Many of the casualties were members of the same families.

To reduce additional distress, hospital staff compiled lists to group relatives together and ensure they were treated in proximity.

Patients arrived with blast injuries and wounds caused by missile fragments. Others were injured in falls from higher floors or while attempting to reach protected areas.

Kessous said one of the main challenges stemmed from Health Ministry directives requiring treatment to take place in protected spaces, limiting the hospital’s overall capacity.

“We are minimizing ambulatory services and have almost entirely halted elective procedures over the past three weeks,” he said. During mass-casualty incidents, the hospital closely monitors intake to avoid exceeding capacity.

“We are not alone—we have support from the Health Ministry and the Clalit Health Services. We continuously assess the number of incoming patients and determine whether transfers to other hospitals across Israel are necessary,” he said.

Capacity, Kessous added, is not defined by a fixed number, but depends on the volume and severity of incoming cases, as well as available staff—though staffing has not been a limiting factor, given the hospital’s size.

“At one point yesterday, ambulances and even a helicopter were waiting as we assessed whether transfers were needed. Fortunately, we were able to treat everyone here,” he said. “We prioritized keeping families together and avoided separating children from their parents.”

 

 

Sunday, March 8, 2026

Something about Israel Makes People Uncomfortable

 An excellent article by Alister Heath, a British journalist for the Daily Telegraph:

 There’s something about Israel that makes people uncomfortable, and it’s not what they say it is.

They’ll point to politics, settlements, borders, and wars. But scratch beneath the outrage, and you’ll find something deeper. A discomfort not with what Israel does, but with what Israel is.

A nation this small should not be this strong. Period.

 Israel has no oil. No special natural resources. A population barely the size of a mid-sized American city. They are surrounded by enemies. Hated in the United Nations. Targeted by terror. Condemned by celebrities. Boycotted, slandered, and attacked.

And still, they thrive like there’s no tomorrow.

In military. In medicine. In security. In technology. In agriculture. In intelligence. In morality. In sheer, unbreakable will.

 They turn desert into farmland.
They make water from air.
They intercept rockets in mid-air.
They rescue hostages under the nose of the world’s worst regimes.
They survive wars that were supposed to wipe them out, and win.

 The world watches this and can’t make sense of it. So they do what people do when they witness strength they can’t understand.

 They assume it must be cheating.
It must be American aid.
It must be foreign lobbying.
It must be oppression.
It must be theft.
It must be some dark trick that gave the Jews this kind of power.
It must be blackmail.

 Because heaven forbid it’s something else.
Heaven forbid it’s real.
Heaven forbid it’s earned.
Or worse, destined.

 The Jewish people were supposed to disappear a long, long time ago. That’s how the story of exiled, enslaved, hated minorities is supposed to end. But the Jews didn’t disappear. They actually came home, rebuilt their land, revived their language, and brought their dead back to life — in memory, in identity, and in strength. That’s not normal. It’s not political. It’s biblical.

 There’s no cheat code that explains how a group of people return to their homeland after 2,000 years.

There is no rational path from gas chambers to global influence.

And there is no historical precedent for surviving the Babylonians, the Romans, the Crusaders, the Inquisition, the pogroms, and the Holocaust, and still showing up to work on Monday in Tel Aviv.

 Israel doesn’t make sense.

Unless you believe in something beyond the math.

This is what drives the world crazy. Because if Israel is real, if this improbable, ancient, hated nation is somehow still chosen, protected, and thriving.

 Maybe God isn’t a myth after all.
Maybe He’s still in the story.
Maybe history isn’t random.
Maybe evil doesn’t get the last word.
Maybe the Jews are not just a people… but a testimony.

 That’s what they can’t stand.

Because once you admit that Israel’s survival isn’t just impressive, but divine, everything changes. Your moral compass has to reset. Your assumptions about history, power, and justice collapse. You realize you’re not watching the end of an empire. You’re witnessing the beginning of something eternal.

So they deny it.
They smear it.
And rage against it.

Because it’s easier to call a miracle “cheating” than to face the possibility that God keeps His promises and He’s keeping them still.

Wednesday, March 4, 2026

Tragic Missile Strike in Bet Shemesh

We are now four days into the US-Israeli military campaign to bring down the fanatical Iranian regime. Here in Jerusalem, we have repeatedly hunkered in our bomb shelters as dozens of Iranian missile barrages sailed overhead on their way to Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities. Each time, the explosions from rocket interceptions above us got louder and the ground impacts came closer.

In fact, on Sunday we saw the tragic missile strike which leveled a synagogue and public bomb shelter in Beit Shemesh, only 12 miles from Jerusalem. Nine people have died from the blast so far. Entire families were wiped out. One woman lost her husband the day before they were supposed to celebrate their 13-year-old son’s bar mitzvah. Instead, the boy had to bury his father yesterday.              

Within hours of the Beit Shemesh disaster, Iran started deliberately targeting Jerusalem for the first time, using their best guided missiles. One unexploded warhead fell in the Hinnom Valley outside Jaffa Gate, just 500 meters from the Temple Mount. Another rocket blew a large crater in a main highway in Jerusalem. Iran even brazenly announced it had targeted Israeli government offices in “East Jerusalem.”

Like the Iranian attacks on numerous Arab countries, the missile barrages on Jerusalem are signs of a desperate regime in the last throes of their power. With the confirmed death of Ayatollah Ali Khameini and dozens of other senior Iranian leaders on day one, the Islamic Republic knows it is about to meet its end. Masses of Iranian people are longing for that moment, but we do not know yet exactly when it will come.

Since the war began on Saturday morning, many Christians have joined us in praying for a swift and decisive victory over the Iranian regime before the end of Purim on Wednesday. This festive biblical holiday marks a famous triumph of the Jewish people over their enemies within the ancient Persian empire. Thus, a resounding victory this week by the Jewish nation over its implacable enemies in Tehran would be so appropriate.

Still, Israeli authorities have told the public to expect the fighting to continue until at least March 12, while US President Donald Trump just said it could take three to four more weeks to finish the mission. We simply do not know how long this war will last and whether it might spread further throughout the region.

But what we do know is that right now Israel needs our help. This is a pivotal moment for the Jewish people gathered back in their ancestral homeland. A clear victory could radically change the dynamic in the region, expanding the prospects of Israel’s wider acceptance by its Arab neighbors. But they need to know that Christians are at their side, to give them the courage and stamina to endure the Iranian missiles now raining down on Israeli cities.

 

Sunday, January 25, 2026

Why Putting Turkey, Qatar in Charge of Gaza is a Farce

                          

Michael Freund, full article at  https://tinyurl.com/52dn9b9b

The article argues that the Trump administration’s reported plan to place Turkey and Qatar on a “Board of Peace” to oversee Gaza is fundamentally flawed and dangerous. The author contends that both countries are not neutral mediators but active enablers of Hamas: Qatar is described as Hamas’s main financial patron and host of its leaders, while Turkey, under President Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan, openly defends Hamas, rejects its designation as a terrorist organization, and uses extreme anti-Israel rhetoric.

According to the article, neither Ankara nor Doha has ever called for Hamas to disarm, relinquish control of Gaza, or abandon its charter. Instead, Hamas is portrayed as strategically useful to both states as a proxy against Israel and a source of Islamist legitimacy. Expecting them to dismantle Hamas is therefore, in the author’s view, unrealistic and absurd.

The piece concludes that any Gaza “peace plan” that does not begin with the complete dismantling of Hamas is doomed to fail. By elevating Turkey and Qatar—without prior consultation with Israel—the U.S. is said to be undermining Israel’s security and rewarding Hamas’s backers. The author warns that this approach will not bring peace, but rather entrench Hamas further and pave the way for future conflict.

When the next round of violence erupts – as it inevitably will – no Board of Peace and no communiques or diplomatic euphemisms will obscure those who enabled it or the responsibility they bear for the consequences.

Thursday, November 27, 2025

The Eighth Front – How BOTs Acted to Influence the Israeli Public with Hamas Messages.


The Great BOT Purge on the X Network (Twitter): Who Is Behind Them.

A BOT is an automated software program designed to perform repetitive tasks over a network, often imitating or replacing human actions, but at a much faster speed and higher accuracy. These programs can be helpful, but they can also be malicious, used for tasks like sending spam or launching denial-of-service attacks. 

 

BOTs run independently based on a specific set of instructions, without needing a person to manually start them each time.

They are ideal for performing tasks that would be tedious or time-consuming for humans, such as communicating with users.

Today, after the hostage-release deal is behind us and the X network (formerly Twitter) removed overnight a wide range of accounts that were impersonating an individual in one simple and ingenious move of revealing the operator’s location such as Qatar, Turkey, Bangladesh, Pakistan and others, none of whom were in Gaza as they purported to have one believe.

The public in Israel, were a target for foreign attacks - the eighth front in its full force!

The campaign strategy is to flood messages on social networks on a large scale, utilizing the Hamas propaganda messages. High-quality messages formulated by the management layer of initiator, with a deep understanding of Israeli society, with emphasis on a very rapid response to current events, using well-crafted profiles that appear to be Israeli or Gazans but are not.

a. Many groups of user-operators participated in running the network uploaded thousands of tweets on to X (Twitter):

b. By adopting a political identity, the user identified the issue of the hostages and opposition to the government as points through which there is potential to bring the war to an end and lead the campaign to ‘adopt’ an Israeli opposition political identity.

d. Almost all the fake profiles of the campaign adopted the identity of left-wingers, opponents of the government, and supporters of a deal for the release of the hostages.

e. The campaign’s messages were formulated in an attempt to align with the messages of the hostage families and the opposition in Israel, in order to create identification and cause them to share the messages.

f. Comprehensive monitoring of the campaign revealed that there is no activity in it to spread right-wing messages or support for the government.

g. The initiators studied Israeli society - what its values are, who the tribes composing it are, and who its key figures are - in order to find the cracks through which they could promote messages that would tilt Israeli public opinion toward supporting a halt to the war.

h. The network operated to publish statements of the spokesperson of Hamas’s military wing, despite Israeli censorship, in order to bring the harsh content to the knowledge of the public in Israel and assist Hamas’s influence and psychological warfare efforts and tilt Israeli public opinion.

For the full article go to https://abualiexpress.com/en/en62305/

 

Wednesday, November 26, 2025

Arab-Israel Conflict – Forgotten Facts!


The term "Palestinian" is itself a masterful twisting of history. To portray themselves as indigenous, Arab settlers adopted the name of an ancient Mediterranean tribe, the Philistines (“Invaders” in Hebrew), that disappeared over almost 3000 years ago. The connection between this tribe and modern day Arabs is nil. Romans, in order to conceal their shame and anger with rebellious regions, changed the references to Judea and Samaria by naming them Palestine.

1. Nationhood and Jerusalem - Israel became a nation in the 14th century BCE. Two thousand years before the rise of Islam.

2. Since 1272 BCE the Jews have had dominion over the land for up to 1,000 years with a continuous Jewish presence in the land for the past 3,300 years.

3. The only Arab dominion since the Arab invasion and conquest in 635 C.E. lasted no more than 22 years.

4. King David founded the city of Jerusalem. Mohammed never came to Jerusalem.

5. For over 3,000 years, Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital. Jerusalem has never been the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. Even when the Jordanians occupied Jerusalem, they never sought to make it their capital and Arab leaders did not come to visit.

6. Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in the Tanach, the Jewish Holy Scriptures. Jerusalem is not mentioned even once in the Koran.

7. Jews pray facing Jerusalem. Muslims pray facing Mecca (often with their backs toward Jerusalem).

8. In 1854, according to a report in the New York Tribune, Jews constituted two-thirds of the population of that holy city. (The source: A journalist on assignment in the Middle East that year for the Tribune. His name was Karl Marx. Yes, that Karl Marx.)

9. In 1867, Mark Twain took a tour of Palestine. This is how he described that land: A desolate country whose soil is rich enough but is given over wholly to weeds. A silent, mournful expanse. We never saw a human.

10. In 1882, official Ottoman Turk census figures showed that, in the entire Land of Israel, there were only 141 000 Muslims, both Arab and non-Arab.

11. A travel guide to Palestine and Syria was published in 1906 by Karl Baedeker. The book estimated the total population of Jerusalem at 60,000, of whom 7,000 were Muslims, 13,000 were Christians and 40,000 were Jews.

12. As the Jews came and drained the swamps and made the deserts bloom, Arabs followed. They came for jobs, for prosperity, for freedom. And they came in large numbers.

13. In 1922 with what was widely acknowledged as the illegal attempt to separate Trans-Jordan – on the east side of the Jordan river, the Jews were forbidden to settle in almost 77% of the British Mandate of Palestine, while Arab settlement went unrestricted and encouraged by the British mandatory authority.

14. Prior to the Second World War Mojli Amin, a member of the Arab Defense Committee for Palestine, proposed the idea "that all the Arabs of Palestine will leave and be divided up amongst the neighbouring Arab countries. In exchange for this, all the Jews living in Arab countries will leave and come to Palestine."

15. Did you know that Saudi Arabia was not created until 1913, Lebanon until 1920? Iraq did not exist as a nation until 1932, Syria until 1941; the borders of Jordan were established in 1946, in violation to Articles of the Palestinian Mandate, and Kuwait in 1961. Any of these nations that would say Israel is only a recent arrival would have to deny their own rights as recent arrivals as well. They did not exist as countries. They were all under the control of the Turks. Over 80% of the original British Mandate land was given to Arabs without population transfer of Arabs from the land designated for Jews.

16. In 1947, the Jewish state huddled on 18% of the original British Mandate land. The Jews accepted it gratefully. The Arabs rejected it with a vengeance and seven Arab states immediately declared war against Israel.

17. In 1948, the Arab refugees were encouraged to leave Israel by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of Jews. Most of them left in fear of being killed by their own Arab brothers as traitors.

18. Some 850,000 Jewish refugees were forced to flee from Arab countries, due to Arab brutality, persecution and pogroms.

19. The number of Arab refugees who left Israel in 1948 is claimed to be around 630,000 (where did they get this number?). Based on the population census, the estimated number of Arabs who left Israel was around 460,000. They were ordered to leave by Arab leaders at the time.

20. From 1948 to 1967 Arabs made no attempt to create a Palestinian state. Under Jordanian rule, Jewish holy sites were desecrated, 58 synagogues in Jerusalem were destroyed and the Jews and Christians were denied access to places of worship. Under Israeli rule, all Muslim and Christian sites have been preserved and made accessible to people of all faiths.

21. Arabs began identifying themselves as part of a Palestinian people in only in 1964, on the initiative of Egyptian-born Yasser Arafat. The idea became a popular Arab propaganda tool after Israel re-captured Judea, Samaria and Gaza in the defensive 6-Day War of 1967.

22. Out of the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, Arab-Palestinians are the only refugee group in the world that has never been absorbed or integrated into their own peoples' lands. Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into Israel.

23. Arab refugees INTENTIONALLY were not absorbed or integrated by the rich Arab oil states that control 99.9 percent of the Middle East landmass. They are kept as virtual prisoners by the Arab power brokers with misplaced hatred for Jews and Western democracy.

24. There is only one Jewish state. There are some 50 Muslim countries, including 22 Arab nations.

25. The PLO's Charter still calls for the destruction of the State of Israel.

26. Pan-Arabism or the doctrine of Muslim Caliphate declares that all land that used to belong to Muslims must be returned to them. Thus, Spain, for example must eventually be re-conquered. 

For the full Shamrak Report article see below.

The Shamrak Report | Defending Israel and Promoting Jewish Zionist Ideals

Wednesday, November 12, 2025

The Illusion of Palestinian Peace

written by Fiamma Nirenstein November 4, 2025 

The orgy of blood on Oct. 7, 2023, and everything that followed should have inspired a dream of peace. For anyone with a conscience, the horror would be enough to say: “Never again.”

Yet that isn’t what happened. When you ask Israelis how they are, their automatic “Fine, thank you” is no longer true; it’s merely a social convention. Their souls remain shaken.

But across the divide, in the Palestinian territories, the picture is far more disturbing. According to a recent survey by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, 59% of Palestinians living under the Palestinian Authority—that is, in Judea and Samaria—believe that the decision to carry out the Oct. 7 massacre was “correct.” In Gaza, 44% agreed.

Even more shocking, 54% blame Israel for Palestinian suffering, while only 14% blame Hamas. And so, we must ask: what peace are we talking about? The one preached endlessly by the U.N., by Europe, and by French President Emmanuel Macron — “two states for two peoples”? Not only does it lack realism; a majority of Palestinians reject it outright.

The same survey shows that 40% of Palestinians believe an independent state must come through armed struggle, not negotiation; in Gaza, 35% say the same. These are not marginal numbers—they represent a society still enthralled by the myth of “resistance,” not the idea of coexistence.

As Israeli journalist Amit Segal has noted, Shany Mor’s essay “Ecstasy and Amnesia” explains this phenomenon well: the intoxication of violence, the inability of parts of the Islamic world—and the Palestinian one in particular—to separate history from religious emotion.

The “ecstasy” of jihad was visible on Oct. 7, in videos of young men calling their parents to boast about killing Jews with their own hands, and in the mobs cheering as kidnapped Israeli girls were paraded through Gaza’s streets.

Even academics in the West, such as Cornell’s Russell Rickford, revealed the same moral sickness when he called the massacre “exhilarating.”

Arab–Palestinian wars have always followed this script: an initial eruption of homicidal and suicidal ecstasy, followed by crushing defeat—the War of Independence (1948), the Six Day War (1967), the Intifadas, and now the war of Oct. 7. Yet from each failure, what remains in memory is the thrill of violence, not the price of it.

 

 

Sunday, October 26, 2025

Westerners Help Hamas Win the Propaganda War

 By Tom Gross  25 October 2025

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-westerners-helping-hamas-win-the-propaganda-war/

After two years of war, and despite Israel’s many successes on the battlefield, Hamas can also claim a kind of victory – at least for now. The terror group has survived and is once again exerting control in the areas of Gaza under its authority. Public executions, whippings, stonings and kneecappings have returned. In the first five days of the ceasefire, Hamas executed at least 100 Gazans.

Hamas’s survival was achieved not only through its remaining fighters and its holding of hostages, but also thanks to a chorus of western apologists. A coalition of so-called progressives and professional activists has excused, rationalised and defended the group’s actions across universities and in newspaper editorials. The BBC, Sky, the Guardian, the FT and the New York Times have all parroted Hamas talking points.

Tales of impending famine in Gaza, for instance, were broadcast as fact, sourced from UN bureaucrats and ‘aid agencies’ with long records of anti-Israel bias and, in some cases, open sympathy for Hamas. This isn’t journalism: it’s agenda-driven activism disguised as news. What the BBC and others failed to grasp is that, for Hamas, the western media is the battlefields.

From the outset, even before Israeli troops had entered Gaza, Hamas’s operatives and sympathisers in the West were shouting about ‘genocide’ and ‘famine’. It was a propaganda trap – and the western media walked right into it.

Consider, for example, these headlines from the early weeks of the conflict in 2023:

11,15,30 October, 6 November: “Fuel in Gaza will run out in 48 hours”

The pattern speaks for itself. It’s been the same story with Gaza being ‘on the brink of famine’ for the past two years. This is how it works:

Step one: The Hamas ‘health ministry’ makes up a casualty number which could be debunked by the most cursory statistical analysis.

Step two: Aid organisations repeat the number without independent confirmation.

Step three: UN agencies in Gaza (some staffed by Hamas members) cite the aid organisations.

Step four: Media outlets quote the UN agencies.

Step five: Hamas’s supporters in the West claim the numbers are ‘UN verified’.

UN officials have also contributed to the fiction directly. In May, Tom Fletcher, a humanitarian coordinator for the organisation, told BBC Radio 4: ‘There are 14,000 babies that will die in the next 48 hours unless we can reach them.’ Almost no babies died as a result of the war in the following days. But that didn’t stop the BBC running the claim in bulletins and news outlets around the world repeating it, citing the BBC as a reliable source.

The Hamas narrative has been amplified, too, by disinformation campaigns driven by Iranian, Russian and Chinese state-linked bots on social media, which have exploited Gaza as a means of destabilising western societies. These regimes understood how easily such narratives could tap into a pre-existing willingness among many in the West to believe anti-Semitic libels.

Today, falsehoods are disseminated by journalists, academics and UN officials – cloaked in the language of human rights but echoing ancient prejudices.

Why were Hamas’s inflated casualty figures reported as facts? Why were incorrect claims of Israel bombing hospitals repeated without scrutiny – while confirmed cases of Hamas rockets hitting Israeli hospitals in Ashkelon and Beersheba were ignored? In part, this was down to journalistic complacency. The facts were accessible.

Independent researchers discovered that some of the most widely shared images of ‘starvation in Gaza’ were from Yemen. One prominent photo showing a skeletal child was highlighted by the media as evidence of famine. In reality, the child wasn’t malnourished due to famine. He had cerebral palsy, hypoxemia and other genetic conditions. That didn’t prevent the Guardian, Times and New York Times running it on their front pages, inflaming the emotions of millions of readers. Despite its resources, the much-touted BBC Verify unit missed these falsehoods.

The good news? Large swaths of the British public aren’t buying it. Scroll through the reader comments under articles about Israel, and you’ll find thousands of ordinary people who haven’t lost their critical faculties. They know casualty figures from terrorist regimes aren’t a sacred truth. They can spot propaganda when they see it.

Unlike some intellectuals, they don’t lose all logic the moment the word ‘Israel’ is uttered. As George Orwell once quipped: ‘You must be an intellectual. Only an intellectual could believe something quite so stupid.’ Today, he might have aimed that line at Guardian readers or BBC news staff.

In this war, it is not Israel or even Hamas that has lost its purpose, but the media.

 

Thursday, September 11, 2025

Starmer in UK has declared war on Western values

 

What is happening to our country? When did we give up on truth, democracy and Western values? When did we choose to reward terrorists, butchers, kidnappers and barbarians? Why is Britain turning its back not just on Israel, a democracy on the front line against Islamism, but also, increasingly, against its Jewish citizens?

The explosion in anti-Semitic sentiment and crimes in the UK is a national emergency, an existential threat to the liberal society painstakingly constructed since the 1850s, yet, unlike other kinds of racism, it is dismissed or ignored. Why? Is it elite prejudice of the sort Emile Zola exposed in France all those years ago? Is it electoral politics? Can’t Labour see that it is making everything worse with its unfair, mendacious attacks on Israel?

The double-standards are sickening. There was anger that Isaac Herzog, Israel’s Left-wing president, is in Britain meeting Sir Keir Starmer; yet the PM’s tête-à-tête with the Palestinian Authority dictator Mahmoud Abbas, holder of an anti-Semitic PhD from a Soviet university and proponent of pay-per slay support for the families of Palestinian terrorists, was uncontroversial. How can this be right?

And why doesn’t Starmer put maximum pressure on Hamas to release its hostages and quit Gaza, and make the case for a multinational, Arab-backed temporary government to rebuild it, rather than promising to unconditionally recognise a virtual Palestinian state that would still be committed to Israel’s obliteration? Does Labour only pretend to care about Gazan civilians?

Britain, courtesy of a ruling class that has lost its moral bearings, home of Left-wing broadcasters that no longer pretend to be objective, is now among the global centres of Israelophobia. The Jewish state is always on trial, guilty until proven innocent.

The savage Hamas blackmailers who were targeted in Qatar rebranded themselves as “the negotiation team”, even though they were the terror group’s most hardline leaders. Each one of their blood libels, of their incendiary calumnies, goes around the world, lapped up by a gullible audience that never learns. A little more mud sticks every time. Israel isn’t committing a genocide, as the Foreign Office has quietly admitted, and yet 45 per cent of voters believe, absurdly, that Israel treats the Palestinians like the Nazis treated the Jews.

Israel needs to fight anew for its legitimacy every day. It is never given the benefit of the doubt. Britain, America, France: all made terrible errors in wartime, all are plagued by their fair share of rogues, and yet few believe that these nations have forfeited the right to exist as a result.

There is no empathy, no contextualisation, no historical knowledge, no interest in all the times Israel sought to agree a land-for-peace swap but was rejected. Israel must be perfect, more moral than anybody else, or else it will be demonised, vilified and sanctioned. Our Western-centric, secular intelligentsia refuses to accept that Palestinian elites are rejectionists. They don’t want a two-state solution: they want control, from the river to the sea, with the Jews ethnically cleansed.

Hamas pioneered a new form of warfare, squandering billions in aid to build a network of tunnels under homes, hospitals and mosques. This will be studied by military historians for centuries; Israel has so far only destroyed 35-40 per cent of all these tunnels. Gaza’s population is used as human shields, in the hope that as many as possible are killed to score propaganda points, while the terrorists hide in tunnels. It’s an obscenity, and the West falls for it.

Anti-Semitism is a virulent, ever-evolving pathogen. As a form of social contagion, it is ideal for social media, with its fake or misleading viral images, incendiary accusations and propaganda campaigns. A world where critical reasoning has been superseded by short-form videos is an ideal ecosystem for the resurgence of a medieval hatred based on rumour, gossip and hearsay.

In today’s post-Protestant woke world, which worships a certain form of weakness and glamourises the oppressed, Israeli Jews are too strong. Their country represents everything the woke detest: a patriotic, demographically healthy nation-state that believes in strong borders and military virtues, all with a biblical backdrop.

The Left, which used to see Israel as a case study in decolonisation and anti-imperialism, a beautiful story of the return of a dispossessed people to its indigenous homeland, has switched sides. It now falsely categorises Israel as a “settler-state”, like the US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, countries that it deems to be axiomatically racist and guilty of “white supremacy” and “genocide”.

To the woke, the Balfour declaration, a great moment, was Britain’s original sin. The Labour Government should be fighting this tidal wave of madness; instead, it is trying to ride it. The scale of its betrayal is off the charts.

            Allister Heath. Full article at

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/09/10/labour-betrayal-british-jews-historic-disgrace/