RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/whats-behind-the-propaganda-war-against-israel-why-biden-pushes-to-end-fighting-24694f11?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

What does Israel have to do to be allowed by the rest of the world to defend itself?

The insistent effort by some governments, officials and much of the media in the U.S. and Europe to get the Jewish state to relent against enemies that actively seek to destroy it gives rise to the suspicion that for too many of them, perhaps Israel doesn’t deserve the right to exist at all.

Fortunately, Israel doesn’t need the West’s permission to save itself. It’s still worth reflecting on why, singularly among nations, Israel’s right to fight for its survival is widely disputed.

The Biden administration has commendably resisted the clamor from the increasingly strident anti-Israel wing of the Democratic Party to ostracize the Jewish state. But it’s a mark of the power of that wing that the president feels obliged to balance his support with a rhetorical campaign of increasingly shrill, daily denunciations of Israel’s efforts in Gaza. Israel has a right to defend itself, he seems to be saying, but it should stop the war now.

Mr. Biden expressed this dichotomous position in his State of the Union address last week. He was at it again over the weekend, when he told MSNBC that the offensive in Gaza was “hurting Israel more than helping Israel. . . . It’s contrary to what Israel stands for and I think it’s a big mistake.”

If you’re inclined to think that war fatigue and understandable pain at the deaths of Palestinian innocents are driving the pleas for an end to Israel’s offensive, let me remind you that calls for Israel to call off its response to the Oct. 7 attacks have been coming since days after the massacre of Jews on a scale not seen since the Holocaust.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/how-the-gaza-ministry-of-health-fakes-casualty-numbers/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_

The Jewish publication Tablet has a feature from Abraham Wyner, a professor of statistics and data science at the Wharton School, digging into why the Hamas-compromised Gaza Health Ministry’s casualty numbers are highly suspect. Even for the innumerate English major (such as myself), Wyner’s work is digestible, incrementally working through what data are available. Perhaps best of all, he makes no claims as to what the casualty numbers might be in actuality (Netanyahu’s figures suggest 1–1.5 civilian deaths per Hamas militant killed; for reference, there were 15 million combat casualties and 38 million civilian casualties in WWII) and instead focuses on his area of expertise to enlightening effect.

Wyner writes:

Recently, the Biden administration lent legitimacy to Hamas’ figure. When asked at a House Armed Services Committee hearing last week how many Palestinian women and children have been killed since Oct. 7, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the number was “over 25,000.” The Pentagon quickly clarified that the secretary “was citing an estimate from the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry.” President Biden himself had earlier cited this figure, asserting that “too many, too many of the over 27,000 Palestinians killed in this conflict have been innocent civilians and children, including thousands of children.” The White House also explained that the president “was referring to publicly available data about the total number of casualties.”

Here’s the problem with this data: The numbers are not real. That much is obvious to anyone who understands how naturally occurring numbers work. The casualties are not overwhelmingly women and children, and the majority may be Hamas fighters.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/hamass-operation-ramadan-and-ours-israel-war-biden-cease-fire-backfire-69b4921d?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

There is an idea that it is wrong to fight an Islamic country during the holy month of Ramadan, which this year starts Sunday night. It’s nonsense: Look at Egypt and Syria’s 1973 Ramadan War against Israel or Iran’s 1982 Operation Ramadan against Iraq. Conversations with senior Israeli political, military and legal officials, however, suggest that the taboo is a weapon—and every player in the Gaza war has an Operation Ramadan of its own.

For more than a month, the Biden administration has set the start of Ramadan as the deadline for a deal to release Israeli hostages and stop the war. “There’s got to be a cease-fire because Ramadan,” the president said Tuesday. “If we get into circumstances where this continues to Ramadan, Israel and Jerusalem could be very, very dangerous.” The danger, in his formulation, is all on the Israeli side, so Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had better cut a deal.

Israel’s leaders lamented privately that every day in February and early March seemed to bring a new U.S. shot across Israel’s bow—an unprecedented sanctions regime; new strings attached to weapons transfers; Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s call for a “timebound, irreversible path to a Palestinian state”; a turn against the war effort, which Mr. Biden called “over the top”; loud opposition to an offensive in Rafah, now termed a “red line”; a new policy deeming all settlements illegal; blame pinned on Israel for humanitarian aid problems; calls for an “immediate cease-fire”; and leaks that the U.S. could demand its weapons not be used in Rafah.

Meanwhile, the president no longer speaks about defeating Hamas, let alone destroying it. Victory is off his list of priorities—and Israelis worry that Mr. Biden is the most pro-Israel member of his administration. Where American words gave Israelis succor after Oct. 7, they now confound and demoralize the country. According to a senior Israeli official, Mr. Blinken “says it right in your face: ‘You can’t win.’ ”

https://worldisraelnews.com/senator-fetterman-blasts-hamas-cowards-hiding-behind-ramadan/

Pennsylvania Democrat says Hamas ‘must be destroyed,’ gives backing to Israel’s counter-terror campaign.

Hamas terrorists attacked Israel on a Jewish holiday on Oct. 7—50 years and a day after a group of Arab nations launched a surprise attack on the Jewish state during the High Holiday of Yom Kippur.

Many world leaders, including in Washington, are saying that Israel should halt attacks during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) is not one of them.

Sharing a Wall Street Journal article titled “Hamas bets on Ramadan to help it survive Israel’s assault,” Fetterman wrote, “Of course. Hamas cowards hide in tunnels, hospitals, schools and refugee camps. Now, behind a holy time.”

“Hamas must be destroyed, and Sinwar brought to justice or eliminated,” he added, of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. “I fully support Israel’s campaign to achieve this.”

David McCormick, a Republican candidate for the other Pennsylvania senate seat, agreed with Fetterman. “He’s right,” McCormick wrote. He added of his opponent, “It’s past time for Bob Casey to agree.”

Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, also responded to Fetterman’s post.

https://verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com/

Israel is at war on the ground with terrorist barbarians and virtually with a hostile media, international academies and ignorant and hypocritical protesters.

Thanks to Michael Ordman we learn about the real Israel which gives the lie to the narrative of the vile cretins who have made an art form of libeling and bashing Israel. Please read it all. rsk

POSITIVE NEWS DURING A WAR

Gap-year students mentor displaced kids.  Israeli high school graduates in a pre-army volunteer program are supporting children evacuated due to the war. 60 joined NGO Bakehila (see here previously) mentoring Jewish and Arab kids relocated from Kiryat Shmona to Haifa. Others helped at Bakehila’s Jerusalem’s communes.

https://www.israel21c.org/gap-year-israelis-mentor-kids-impacted-or-displaced-by-war/

Son of Chabad emissary surprises parents. (TY Sam Kramer) Chabad emissaries, who thought that their son was fighting in Gaza, were overjoyed when he was invited to join them on stage at a dinner in Florida.  Join Israel Good News Only WhatsApp: https://chat.whatsapp.com/LH48ij0tIvFHnxg0hL8f8T

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/386270

Residents of Shlomit return. (TY WIN) Residents have returned to the Israeli village of Shlomit, just a few kilometers from Gaza, five months after having been evacuated following Oct 7. They are building a daycare center, funded by JNF-USA., to show that life has restarted and give strength to all the families in the region.

https://israfan.com/2024/02/29/homecoming-to-shlomit-a-communitys-resilient-return-amidst-ongoing-struggle/  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPMs4yIcrwU

Regrowing Israel. Prior to Oct 7, the 40,000 hectares of western Negev agricultural land supplied 70 percent of Israel’s fresh produce. Regrow Israel (see here previously) intends to help farmers rehabilitate the land. It has support from the VIP non-profit, Israel’s Volcani Center, Ben Gurion University. and the MIGAL Institute.

https://www.israel21c.org/farms-deliberately-destroyed-by-hamas-to-get-long-term-rehab/

Aid for the war wounded. After Oct 7, Israel’s largest volunteer organization Yad Sarah went into war mode. It filled container loads of equipment and relocated them outside hospitals where Yad Sarah didn’t have a branch. It then opened “The Soldier Rehabilitation Unit” to aid disabled soldiers physically and socially.

https://www.israel21c.org/war-testing-israels-biggest-medical-aid-volunteer-group/ 

Massive land purchase discounts to IDF veterans. IDF soldiers leaving the war can qualify for a discount on the land in the Galilee or Negev regions to build a home.  A soldier who does not own an apartment will receive a 90% discount and a combat veteran will receive a 95% discount – making it almost free.

https://worldisraelnews.com/idf-vets-to-receive-massive-land-purchasing-discounts/

Ohad goes to Wembley. (TY Yanky) Freed hostage Ohad Munder (see here previously), who spent his 9th birthday in Gaza, travelled to Wembley to watch his favorite UK team, Liverpool, play Chelsea in the cup final. He also met Israeli international and Tottenham striker Manor Soloman.

https://www.thejc.com/community/released-hostage-ohad-munder-gets-to-watch-his-football-heroes-yvne4rgh

So many heroes. The Middle East forum mission to Israel met a country of heroes. They included Nova massacre survivors who were in uniform a week later to help clean up houses, feed pet fish, find missing cats and dogs, and empty refrigerators and freezers of rotting food. And the resilience of Israelis was everywhere.

https://www.jns.org/israels-heroes-will-ensure-victory/

Saved by paramedic who trained in his methods. Yonati is CEO at Extreme Solutions that trains elite units and emergency organizations to handle extreme emergency situations. On Jan 8, in Gaza, he was hit by six bullets, one piercing his lung. Luckily, IDF medic Litav had taken an Extreme course and saved Yonati’s life.

https://5townscentral.com/2024/02/26/ceo-saved-by-idf-paramedic-who-trained-in-his-own-lifesaving-methods/

https://www.city-journal.org/article/no-ramadan-ceasefire

As the March 10 start of Ramadan nears, international pressure has significantly increased on Israel to reach a ceasefire agreement with Hamas in exchange for the release of Israeli hostages. While the idea of advocating for a ceasefire with a genocidal terrorist organization is fundamentally misguided, the notion that Israel should halt its military efforts to respect Ramadan is even more perverse.

Historically, Palestinian terror groups have used Ramadan as a bargaining chip to pressure Israel into making concessions in exchange for calm—a ploy that the Biden administration has bought wholeheartedly. Those who support Israel’s making such concessions argue that failing to appease Palestinians during Ramadan might incite further terror.

The data, however, don’t align with that contention. As Hill Frisch from the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security wrote in 2023, “Almost none of the most tumultuous periods of Palestinian violence occurred during the month of Ramadan.” Frisch even argued that “A reading of the data strongly suggests that the dangers [of disproportionate violence during Ramadan] are grossly exaggerated, if not entirely false.” In other words, according to Frisch’s research, American and Israeli officials’ concerns about Palestinian terror during Ramadan are at least overstated.

While Frisch’s research suggests that Palestinians are not more likely to commit terror acts during Ramadan, that doesn’t mean that such attacks never happen. Historically, such Ramadan-tied incidents typically follow Palestinian leaders’ prolonged incitement efforts, which culminate in their exploiting the holiday for a preexisting political objective. This time, that objective would be Hamas’s survival.

https://www.jns.org/is-israel-taking-ramadan-restraint-too-far/

“Israel’s policy has always been, and always will be, to safeguard freedom of worship for all faiths,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday at the start of a special session with cabinet members and security chiefs to prepare for the imminent month-long Muslim holiday that begins this year on March 10-11. “This is what we have also done during Ramadan, and this is what we will do now.”

He went on: “We will do everything to safeguard freedom of worship on the Temple Mount, while appropriately taking into account security and safety needs, and will enable the Muslim public to mark the holiday.”

This was a reference to the location of the Al-Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, a house of prayer that doubles as a base of violence. Because radical Islamists around the world have turned it into a dual symbol of victimhood at the hands of the “infidels” and victory over them, it is always an incendiary hotspot.
It is especially so during spikes in Palestinian terrorism and Ramadan, which usually go together. This is bad news for Muslims who treat the holiday—one of the Five Pillars of Islam—as a period for spiritual contemplation and self-discipline.
It’s far worse, however, for the Jews targeted by those who consider the 30 days of fasting and feasting an opportune time for waging jihad. Not that the latter need Ramadan or Al-Aqsa as an excuse.
Indeed, they’re just as happy to commit mass murder on Jewish and Christian holidays. Hamas’s genocidal Oct. 7 massacre on Simchat Torah and a Shabbat morning is only the most recent example.
But it was the casus belli of the current war in Gaza. Yes, Israel realized on that day five months ago that it had no choice but to destroy the terrorist organization that perpetrated the rape, immolation, decapitation, maiming, slaughter and abduction of hundreds of innocent men, women and children.

https://www.jns.org/palestinian-hate-crime-hoax/

Statistics show that antisemitism is on the rampage, while Islamophobia is minuscule. And that’s bad for the Palestinian cause.

The Vermont man charged with shooting three Palestinian-American college students on Nov. 25 was a defender of Hamas, The New York Times has belatedly acknowledged—and with it, the No. 1 example of an “anti-Palestinian hate crime” has completely crumbled.

For the past three months, the Times and other major news media have portrayed the incident in the city of Burlington as proof that Palestinians are victims of hate crimes in America. Whenever somebody points to the outsized number of recent antisemitic incidents, Arab advocates cite the Vermont shooting as evidence that Arabs and Muslims are just as much victims as the Jews.

It’s reached the point that when some universities announce they are forming a committee to investigate antisemitism, they also announce one to investigate Islamophobia—as Harvard recently did. Even the Biden administration, after unveiling its U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, then announced it is preparing a national strategy to counter Islamophobia, too.

But it turns out that Exhibit A of “anti-Palestinian hate” apparently was nothing of the sort.

As early as last December, local media in Vermont reported that the alleged shooter’s social-media accounts included pro-Hamas statements.

The major news media ignored this myth-busting news—until now. The New York Times Sunday Magazine, in its March 3 edition, included a long essay by Rozina Ali, formerly a Cairo-based journalist who now teaches adjunct at New York University. She is writing a book on “the recent history of Islamophobia in the United States.”

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-790620

While some advocates of a Palestinian state have been claiming that the state would be demilitarized, others are already making the case for building up a Palestinian army.

A feature in the Washington Post this week warned that the Palestinian Authority’s security forces are not yet big enough or powerful enough for the Palestinian state that the Biden Administration is now advocating. The PA forces are “underfunded and widely unpopular [and] ill-equipped to take on the massive responsibilities that their Western backers are envisioning.”
 
So what will the Palestine statehood crowd prescribe as the solution? Give them more funds and more weapons, of course. Build them into a full-fledged army, disguised as a “security force.”

The excuse will be that the PA needs the money and guns to fight terrorism. Everybody seems to have forgotten that the PA was supposed to have been fighting terrorism since it was created back in the 1990s by the Oslo Accords—but it never has done the job.

The first Oslo Agreement, in 1993, stipulated that the Palestinian Arabs would have “a strong police force.” (Article VII) It didn’t say anything about the formation of an army. But the Palestinian Authority quickly exploited the opportunity. The original 12,000 man “security force” ballooned to 60,000—and the international community didn’t say a word. 

Then came Oslo II, in 1995, which spelled out more specifically that the PA security forces are obligated to “apprehend, investigate and prosecute perpetrators and all other persons directly or indirectly involved in acts of terrorism, violence and incitement.” (Annex I, Article II, 3-c).