Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, April 16, 2024

04/16 Links Pt2: How woke leftists became cheerleaders for Iran; The News Media Has Helped Normalize Hamas; Tucker Carlson’s Turn

From Ian:

Brendan O'Neill: How woke leftists became cheerleaders for Iran

The truth is that Iran has been laying violent siege to Israel for decades. Through its proxies, it has slaughtered thousands of Israelis. The fascistic pogrom of 7 October was the bloody handiwork of an anti-Semitic army backed by Iran. Two other Iran-backed militias – Hezbollah and the Houthis – have fired hundreds of missiles at Israel since 7 October. The idea that Israel’s bombing of Iranian military men in Damascus was unprovoked, out of the blue, a cunning ploy to drag poor little Iran into a war, is a grotesque inversion of reality. Iran had already declared war on Israel. And visited war on Israel. And made clear its desire to destroy Israel. It isn’t even coy. ‘Death to Israel!’, Iranians cry at regime-sponsored gatherings. The same words are emblazoned on the literal flag of the Houthis movement that does Iran’s dirty work in Yemen.

Surely, it makes more sense to see Israel’s Damascus attack as a ‘retaliatory strike’? Retaliation for the unspeakable barbarism of 7 October, for Hezbollah’s missiles, for the Houthis’ virulently anti-Semitic warmongering? Those who rage against Israel and make excuses for Iran are about as far from being anti-imperialists as you can get. Rather, they’ve thrown their lot in with Iranian imperialism, with the theocratic tyranny’s deployment of war, terror and political favour to the end of fortifying its regional influence. Whatever their placards might say, these activists are objectively pro-war, objectively pro-domination.

The Western left’s blaming of Israel for everything, and its implicit absolution of Iran, is grimly revealing. These people seem to view Israel as the only true actor in the Middle East, and everyone else as mere respondents to Israel’s actions. Israel is the author of the Middle East’s fate, while the rest of them – Hamas, the Houthis, even Iran – are mere bit-part players with the misfortune to be caught up in Israel’s vast and terrifying web. This is identitarianism, not anti-imperialism. A new generation of radicals educated into the regressive ideology that says ‘white’ people are powerful and ‘brown’ people are oppressed can only understand the Middle East in these terms, too.

The end result is that they demonise Israel and infantilise Iran. The Jewish State comes to be seen as uniquely malevolent while Iran is treated as a kind of wide-eyed child who cannot help but lash out at its ‘Zionist’ oppressor. Israel is damned as a criminal state, while Iran’s crimes against humanity are downplayed, even memory-holed. This is where wokeness leads, then: to sympathy for one of the most backward and repressive states on Earth on the deranged basis that its criminal strikes against Israel represent a blow against the arrogant West itself. In encouraging our young to hate their own societies, we’ve made them moral fodder for a far worse society.

Seth Mandel: Who, Exactly, Does the Hezbollah-Flag-Waving Dirtbag Represent?

Politicians used to chase the Soccer Mom vote. Now they appear to be chasing the Execute-the-Soccer-Mom vote.

Also among the demonstrators were those wearing Hamas headbands. Hamas is the Gaza-based version of Hezbollah and it started the current war by murdering and kidnapping Americans and Israelis. These protesters are ostentatiously anti-American: They were burning American flags and yelling “death to America.”

Again, non-rhetorical question for the politicians who cower before those who yell “death to America”: How many of your constituents do they represent? What is it you stand to lose by forfeiting their vote? What slice of your political coalition chants “death to America”? And why, pray tell, are the opinions of Lebanese terrorists so important to your assessment of the war in Gaza?

We hear a lot about the way these folks intend to deter President Biden’s reelection prospects, which is why the president sent his aides to try to placate a large group of them in Michigan. Can the president explain why he wants the vote of somebody who burns American flags on behalf of a group holding Americans hostage?

The political behavior of a fair number of Democrats has changed in accordance with the demands of these groups of protesters. That is what you do when you must be inclusive of all parts of your electoral coalition. So don’t just obliquely refer to the demonstrators; claim them. Tell us what they mean to you, and why you need them, and why U.S. policy should be shaped by them.

Or stop running from them and start standing up for yourselves.

The News Media Has Helped Normalize Hamas

As a former foreign correspondent in the Middle East, I've frequently found myself defending the industry with Israelis who charge media bias. But as I observe the cluelessness of Hamas apologists worldwide, I realize we have failed to tell the story of a jihadi outfit considered a terrorist group by the U.S.

Support for Hamas in this war is not support for the Palestinian cause of an independent state on a share of the Holy Land. That is not only not the cause of Hamas - it is precisely what Hamas has for decades been laboring to prevent. Hamas is not in power in Gaza due to elections but because of a coup. It runs a quasi-theocratic mafia state where opposition will get you killed, and it seeks eternal war till total victory. Since the 1990s, whenever there were peace talks, Hamas tried to scuttle them with terrorism.

In the case of the Gaza war, the media has largely stuck to its instincts for impartiality: "Both sides" have their narratives, and both have good and bad. One may be a terrorist group and the other a Western-leaning democracy, but in this era of progressive decolonization narratives, an association with the West will not get you very far with much of the Western media.

Hamas is a violent fundamentalist movement that seeks not just the demise of Israel but also, with its jihadi fellow travelers, of the West. Hamas and its accomplices share none of the values that drive the modern world, from respect for human rights to freedom of speech to the rule of law. Are so many Westerners too feeble-minded to get this?

Some argue that no one appointed journalists to connect the dots for people, and that the wisest approach would be to just "report the facts." But when the result is the normalization of a monstrosity like Hamas, that is malpractice.

Pro-Hamas ‘Journalists’ Blur the Line between Coverage and Propaganda

The latest high-profile Gaza-based journalist to have her terror support on full display is Hind Khoudary, who has even been profiled by the New York Times, among other papers. After briefly examining her social-media pages, I posted a thread last week on X (formerly Twitter) that highlighted some of the publicly available content from Khoudary’s social-media accounts to show that she was unfit to don a press vest, including her affiliation with the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, a Switzerland-based organization with deep ties to Hamas, and the fact that she has repeatedly glorified terrorists and violence. Such behavior should be completely unacceptable for any media outlet using Khoudary’s work (as well as for the United Nations World Food Programme, for which she works as a content producer).

Unsurprisingly, upon posting the findings about Khoudary, I faced the wrath of pro-Hamas activists for supposedly putting a “kill target” on her and insisting that I should be held responsible if she were to be killed. All because I simply reposted her own content.

A similar situation occurred when the founder and editor of the Free Press, Bari Weiss, brought attention to disturbing posts by Refaat Alareer, a Gazan professor, poet, writer, activist, and journalist who once tweeted, under the account “Gaza Writes Back,” “Are most Jews evil? Of course they are.” Weiss was subject to the mob’s ire for flagging a post in which Alareer mocked babies who were slaughtered by terrorists on October 7. When Alareer was later killed in an Israeli airstrike, radicals unjustly placed the blame on Weiss.

Journalists in conflict zones bear a significant responsibility. Ideally, they serve as objective sources from which the public can derive reliable information on which to base their own opinions. However, the reality often falls short of this ideal.

Given these alarming examples, perhaps the most troubling revelation is that the objectivity of a journalist, once the cornerstone of trustworthy reporting, is no longer a chief concern for many. This shift, evident in the media’s acceptance and even glorification of biased narratives during the current war, underscores a worrying trend in the dissemination of news and information.

In a world increasingly fragmented by biased narratives, the role of journalism becomes even more critical. And in such a world, contrary to the claims of some vocal online activists, journalists should be subject to the highest level of scrutiny.

On April 1, a UNIFIL patrol was attacked by pro-Hezbollah residents of the town of Baraashit in southern Lebanon.

They punctured the vehicle's tires and put a Hezbollah flag on it.

I could not find a statement by UNIFIL about this.

On Monday, a very similar incident happened in another Hezbollah stronghold, this one near Beirut.

A vehicle belonging to the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) was seized by residents Monday in the Beirut southern suburb of Hay el-Sellom, which is a Hezbollah stronghold, media reports said.

The vehicle ended up in the aforementioned area due to a “GPS error,” the reports said.

This is not the first such incident in recent months.

On March 1, a similar occurrence sparked an altercation with locals and a brief detention of the peacekeepers, also in Hay el-Sellom.

The article goes on to say that these kinds of things happen against UN vehicles and personnel in south Lebanon all the time.

The UNIFIL Twitter/X account is again silent.

The UN cows before Hezbollah and even Hezbollah supporters. What a totally useless organization.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

04/16 Links Pt1: Benny Morris: Iran Contra Israel; The “Don’t” Doctrine; IDF has decided on type, not timing, of counter-strike on Iran; All Hamas needs to do is survive

From Ian:

Benny Morris: Iran Contra Israel

While everyone understands that actual American military power remains robust, there is a perception of America’s weakness of resolve and reluctance to use force, rooted in two pre-Biden episodes. The first took place under President Obama in 2013, when Biden was vice-president, when Obama warned Syria’s President Bashar Assad not to use chemical weapons against his opponents in the Syrian Civil War. Despite Obama’s warning that this was a “red line,” Assad went ahead and used chemical weapons anyway and Obama refrained from doing anything in response. The second episode took place in September 2019. In a kind of preview of the recent assault on Israel, Iran launched cruise missiles and drones against Saudi Arabia’s oil installations, causing major damage, yet President Trump did nothing to help America’s ally. (In the 14 April assault, the Iranians launched more than 10 times as many missiles: at least 110 ballistic missiles, 30 or so cruise missiles, and more than 170 drones.)

To this catalogue of incidents highlighting American irresolution and lack of resolve, we should add Washington’s striking reluctance to provide Ukraine with F-16 fighters and various advanced munitions and, of course, America’s unsuccessful wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, culminating in the shameful retreat from Kabul. This is not how Great Powers behave.

In the context of the current Middle East war, Biden said “don’t” back in October, in the hope of deterring Iranian and Hezbollah involvement, just after Hamas’s savage assault on southern Israel. Washington even sent a naval task force to the region. Nonetheless, Hezbollah and the Houthis, obviously directed or at least authorised by Tehran, went ahead and launched their wars of attrition against northern Israel and in the Bab al Manad straits—and the two groups have persisted in, respectively, launching daily rockets at Israeli military positions and communities and in launching rockets against both Israeli and non-Israeli shipping in the Red Sea. Indeed, the day before their missile strike against Israel, the Iranians, in defiance of international law, brazenly hijacked a Philippines ship in the Straits of Hormuz at the entrance to the Persian Gulf. Clearly, Tehran does not fear Washington’s wrath.

How exactly the Iranian attack of 14 April and its frustration will affect the war in Gaza is unclear. The Iranians may have wanted to signal their support to Hamas—even though the attack appears to have been mainly motivated by Iranian calculations regarding their own position in the Middle East. Since launching its assault on Israel’s southern border communities on 7 October, Hamas has hoped to widen its war with Israel and ignite a regional war, involving Iran and its other proxies, who might rain down missiles on Israel from the north, east and south. The mini wars of attrition Hezbollah is waging from Lebanon and the Houthis from Yemen have only partly fulfilled Hamas’s hopes. Perhaps the Hamas leaders see the Iranian missile strike on Israel as a further token of regional support for their war.

On Israel’s part, the country has certainly drawn comfort from the fact that Jordan helped to block the Iranian strike (the Jordanians reportedly shot down several Iranian drones), and Washington certainly views Jordan’s cooperation as a sign that its plans to consolidate an Arab Sunni bloc to impede Iran’s ambitions to dominate the Middle East are bearing fruit. We should expect an improvement in Israeli–Jordanian relations over the coming weeks.

But the key question is whether Israel will agree to join the emergent bloc, which Biden has been advocating since 7 October, even if it entails accepting a two-state peace settlement with the Palestinians (which would imply eventual Israeli withdrawal from the occupied West Bank and perhaps East Jerusalem) and allowing the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority to take over the Gaza Strip after Israel completes its withdrawal when the war with Hamas comes to an end.

So far, Netanyahu has agreed to neither of these conditions and is unlikely to agree to them in the future, given his desire to maintain his right-wing coalition government. This is a major reason why Washington—together with Israel’s liberals and left-wingers—is seeking Netanyahu’s ouster as quickly as possible. The problem is that Netanyahu’s ruling coalition controls 64 seats in Israel’s 120-seat Knesset (parliament) and, unless a handful of coalition members defect, there is no way to unseat Netanyahu and his coalition before the general elections scheduled for 2026. Hence, Biden’s geopolitical plans are out of synch with internal Israeli politics.

Meanwhile, Israel has withdrawn most of its forces from the Gaza Strip, has allowed tens of thousands of Gazans to move from the southern end of the Strip back to their homes in the north, seems undecided about conquering the town of Rafah and its environs—the last piece of Gaza still under full Hamas control—and has reached a dead end in the negotiations for the return of the remaining hundred or so hostages whom Hamas abducted from Israel on 7 October. So far, Hamas has refused any deal and insists that Israel must definitively end the war and pull all its forces out of the Strip before Hamas will even contemplate an exchange of hostages for Palestinian terrorists (or “freedom fighters”) in Israeli prisons.

The “Don’t” Doctrine

This capitulation to aggression against a key ally embodies the flaws of Biden’s “don’t” doctrine: words followed by minimal action toward adversaries, and pressure on allies not to respond to attacks. It’s an approach that recalls the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the tepid response to Houthi terrorist-pirates attacking American-owned vessels and destabilizing crucial shipping lanes. Thanks to the “don’t” doctrine, Iran has established a new status quo: it can fire scores of rockets and drones at an American ally and emerge materially unscathed.

The only saving grace of the “don’t” doctrine, and the associated capitulation to Iranian aggression, is that it inadvertently highlights an important truth often overlooked by the U.S. government, media, and punditry: that the Iranian regime is fundamentally responsible for the ongoing chaos in the Middle East and the deaths in Israel and Gaza.

Moreover, the situation underscores the potential of the Abraham Accords, the series of agreements seeking to normalize Israel’s relations with Arab states. Jordan’s and Saudi Arabia’s participation in the joint defense effort against Iran’s attack demonstrates how security cooperation between Israel and Arab states can enhance regional stability—a potential nearly derailed by the Biden administration’s initial reluctance to embrace the accords.

The U.S. urgently needs a shift in strategy. Biden must abandon his ineffective “don’t” doctrine and adopt a more assertive regional posture. This does not mean deploying American ground troops, a move widely opposed in the U.S. and Israel alike. It does, however, mean rallying Democratic support for unconditional defensive weapon sales to Israel, allowing Israel to strike back at Iran, reinstating the embargoes on Iranian drones and missiles that expired in 2020, and initiating a broad international sanctions regime to isolate Iran further.

Unfortunately, the G–7 summit convened by President Biden to address Iran’s attack resulted only in a strongly worded statement condemning the Tehran regime. The administration needs to do much better than this.

Aviva Klompas: Biden said 'don't,' but Iran attacked anyway. How should Israel respond now?

Biden wants diplomatic response to Iran attack
The question is, now what?
President Joe Biden has told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the United States won’t support a counterattack on Iran, according to a White House official. In a statement released Saturday night, Biden said the United States seeks a “diplomatic response to Iran’s brazen attack.”

But what message does that send Iran?

Understandably, nobody wants to spark a regional war or, given the tinderbox that is the Middle East, the next world war. For that reason, Israel has until now withheld from directly confronting Iran.

At the same time, a tepid response to this weekend’s large-scale assault reinforces the message that there are no real consequences for Iranian aggression. The regime already assessed as much when it decided to launch a direct attack.

Iranian leaders have seen Israel’s allies repeatedly backtrack on their “unwavering” commitment to Israel.

The ayatollahs have watched in recent days as the United States allowed the United Nations to pass a cease-fire resolution that didn’t tie the end of hostilities to freeing hostages. They have seen the calls on Capitol Hill to halt military aid to Israel spread beyond the left-wing fringe.

And they’ve taken note that Canada and Sweden resumed funding the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees despite that group’s ties to terror.

On Friday, when Biden was asked about Iran’s plans to attack Israel, his response was: "Don’t.”

But Iran did.

The regime is dangerously emboldened, having already destabilized Iraq and Syria and empowered its terror proxies to exert power in Lebanon, Yemen and Gaza. Iran has learned there are no red lines. Not for financing and directing terror groups. Not for disrupting maritime trade in the Red Sea. Not even for killing three American soldiers in Jordan earlier this year.

How will Iran be reined in after latest aggression?
Where, then, is the red line?
Iran will continue to foment unrest and destabilize the Middle East unless there are consequential repercussions for its aggression.

Now is the time to finally show resolve and deliver a morally unambiguous lesson that the ceaseless war fomented by Iran and its radical Islamist proxies is neither normal nor acceptable.

How Biden helps Iran pay for its terror by refusing to enforce current sanctions

President Biden has spent his three years in office making it clear to Tehran’s terrorist regime that America won’t make it pay a price for attacking our allies, bankrolling Hamas and expanding Iranian nuclear capabilities.

In fact, by refusing to enforce sanctions already on the books, Biden is helping Iran foot the bill for its aggression, including the first direct attack on Israel in the regime’s 45 years in power.

Each year since Biden took office, Iran has steadily increased oil exports — its most lucrative revenue source — following a historic collapse of sales during the Trump administration’s maximum-pressure campaign.

The increase is no accident. “U.S. officials privately acknowledge they’ve gradually relaxed some enforcement of sanctions on Iranian oil sales,” Bloomberg revealed last year.

This month, Iran boosted oil production to an estimated five-year high of 3.4 million barrels per day — primarily for China, which buys the commodity at a discount.

From oil alone, the regime has earned upwards of $100 billion — and a handy cushion from the consequences of its own actions.

Another source of Tehran’s revenue is liquified petroleum gas, which the regime has started to export in record quantities, rendering it the top seller in the region.

In public, the administration denies it is going easy on Iran. Accordingly, the sanctions it should be enforcing are still on the books: specifically, regulations requiring the administration to sanction individuals and foreign financial institutions that trade in Tehran-origin commodities.

The administration has also left in place Executive Order 13846, issued by Donald Trump, which provides a toolkit to penalize anyone involved in the “purchase, acquisition, sale, transport, or marketing” of regime petroleum.

So why isn’t the administration acting?

In a word: appeasement.

Team Biden — populated by many Team Obama veterans — believe dogmatically that they can keep the Middle East quiet and finally pivot to Asia by paying Iran to behave.

The Oct. 7 massacre proved otherwise — Hamas depends on Tehran’s reliable provision of funding, training and weapons.

The administration’s flawed ideology has also led Washington to pull its punches across a spectrum of Iran-backed threats: the regime’s advancing nuclear program; dealing with Hezbollah and other Iran-backed militias; the Houthis’ attacks on global shipping; and the unprecedented arming of Russia with missiles and drones for use against Ukraine.

Tehran is more capable of attacking the United States, Israel and our allies thanks to its windfall from US sanctions nonenforcement.

The ADL published its annual audit of antisemitic incidents.

In 2023, ADL tabulated 8,873 antisemitic incidents across the United States. This represents a 140% increase from the 3,698 incidents recorded in 2022 and is the highest number on record since ADL began tracking antisemitic incidents in 1979. In fact, ADL tracked more incidents in 2023 than in the previous three years combined.

Incidents increased in all major Audit categories. Assault incidents increased by 45% to 161 incidents, vandalism increased 69% to 2,177 incidents and harassment increased 184% to 6,535 incidents.

The dramatic increase in incidents took place primarily in the period following the October 7 terrorist attacks in Israel. Between October 7 and the end of 2023, ADL tabulated 5,204 incidents -- more than the incident total for the whole of 2022. Fifty-two percent of the incidents after October 7 (2,718) included references to Israel, Zionism or Palestine.

None of this is surprising for anyone who reads the news. But even without October 7, the trend was towards a record setting year:

However, even prior to October 7, there were monthly increases in February (402), March (471), April (432), May (437) and September (513). Each of these months broke the prior record for most incidents recorded in a single month, set in November 2022 (394).

And if you assume that the incidents after October 7 were all related to Israel, think again:

After October 7, ADL observed explicitly antisemitic and anti-Zionist rhetoric at 1,352 anti-Israel rallies across the United States. Leaving out all Israel-related incidents, antisemitic incidents still rose by 65% to 5,711 over the 3,457 non-Israel-related incidents recorded in 2022.

...ADL’s 2023 Audit numbers contain 1,350 incidents included due to a post-October 7 methodology update (see Major Findings below). Excluding incidents included under the methodology update, ADL tabulated 7,523 incidents, a 103% increase in antisemitic incidents from the incident total in 2022.

The ADL is careful to exclude any incidents that are legitimate criticism of Israel. Even burning the Israeli flag is not counted as antisemitic. Only things that refer to Israel that cross the line into antisemitism, like this:

Universities saw a huge increase in antisemitic incidents:

ADL recorded antisemitic incidents at over 300 universities across 43 states and the District of Columbia. The campuses with the most incidents in 2023 were Columbia University (17), The University of Michigan (15), Stanford University (14), Rutgers University (14) and the University of Washington (12).

Jewish students were targeted in campus residence halls on several occasions. For example, in February, mezuzot were removed from the doorframes of several Jewish students’ residences at the University of Denver. Pork products were also glued to Jewish students’ doors. In May, swastikas made of feces were smeared in a residence hall bathroom at the University of California, San Diego.

The report includes many similar horrifying examples.

The Israel derangement on campus was shown even on October 7 itself:

Immediately after Hamas’s terrorist attacks in Israel, students, faculty and staff on several campuses praised the violence and demonized Zionists and Jewish students. On October 7, a residence hall leader at Wellesley College sent an email to students living in a campus dorm that read, “[There] should be no space, no consideration, and no support for Zionism within the Wellesley College community.” A student group at Portland State University released a statement on October 7 that declared: “Our hearts are with the brave Palestinian liberators fighting collectively for their homeland and people...they have the absolute right to defend themselves by any means necessary.”

But it wasn't only on college campuses. Even elementary and high schools saw a dramatic increase in antisemitism:

A student yelled, “Fuck Jews! I hate Jews! I hate Israel” at a Jewish classmate on a school bus.
An elementary school student approached a Jewish classmate and stated that “Jews are bad people” and “Israel is bombing everyone.”
A Jewish high school teacher was harassed by a student who stated, “You’re a Jew “and “Your people need to stop killing babies.”
A middle school student stated to a Jewish classmate, “Go Hamas, Go Hezbollah....The Palestinians should kill all the Jews.”
School-based harassment in 2023 also included one-off incidents such as when a middle school administrator received a note containing antisemitic death threats or when a high school student threatened their Jewish classmates stating that if they supported Israel, they would beat them up.

Harassment incidents also included recurrent antisemitic bullying, such as classmates taunting Jewish students with Holocaust jokes and references as well as anti-Zionist comments.

The 464 incidents of antisemitic vandalism in K-12 schools in 2023 represents a 100% increase from the 232 incidents tabulated in 2022. Of the 464 vandalism cases recorded, swastikas were present in 87% of K-12 vandalism cases (402 incidents). Vandalism incidents included graffiti such as “Fuck the Jews Hitler was Right (sic),” “We hate Jews” and “I like what the Nazis Did, I hate Jews.”

The 26 incidents of antisemitic assaults in K-12 schools in 2023 represents a 360% increase from the five incidents tabulated in 2022. Assault incidents included one-off cases of Jewish students being shot at a high school with a bb gun, a Jewish and non-verbal autistic student returning from school had a swastika carved on his back and a student pushed a Jewish classmate while on a school bus and stated, “You have to go sit up front. K*kes can’t sit in the back.”

The goldene medina is tarnishing very quickly.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Last month, a UN report found that Iranian authorities had murdered Mahsa Amini, the 22 year old woman who was beaten by Iran's "morality police" for not wearing a hijab properly.

That murder prompted huge protests throughout Iran, with the police killing hundreds of protesters.

Since the protests, the morality police have kept a lower profile. But within a month after this report was published, Iran's Supreme Leader gave a speech where he said that Islamic hijab is mandatory "both from a Shari'a point of view and from a legal point of view" and he asked all institutions and government officials to focus on their "Sharia and legal duties" in order to observe the mandatory hijab laws.

And now the morality police are back in force.

On April 13, Tehran police announced that they will again strictly enforce the laws mandating hijab for women. Their statement said they would "deal with social anomalies in the field of hijab and chastity,"

And now they are out in force on the streets.

Videos are circulating of the morality police stopping women at the entrances to universities, forcing them to change their clothing to be more modest.

These are the heroes to progressive, anti-Israel Americans.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

The Washington Post reported last week:

A Lebanese man sanctioned by the U.S. for his alleged links with the Palestinian group Hamas was found dead Wednesday after he went missing for a week, Lebanese state media and judicial officials said.

Mohammad Srour, 57, was sanctioned by the U.S. in August 2019 for giving “financial, material, technological support, financial or other services” to Hamas and for his affiliation with Hezbollah. He was accused of transferring tens of millions of dollars annually from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to Hamas’ military wing, the Qassam Brigades, which is currently at war with Israel’s military in Gaza.

Lebanese judicial officials say Srour worked for Hezbollah’s financial arm.

Lebanese authorities now blame the Mossad:

A Lebanese minister and two senior officials said preliminary findings suggest Israel's Mossad spy agency was behind the killing of a U.S.-sanctioned Lebanese man accused of sending Iranian money to Hamas.

Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi told Al-Jadeed TV late Sunday that, "according to the data we have so far, (the killing) was carried out by intelligence services".

Asked whether he was referring to Mossad, Mawlawi confirmed.

Al Mayadeen, a Hezbollah mouthpiece, says that a woman lured Srour to her villa to give her funds from a money transfer, from which he was abducted, allegedly tortured and then shot several times.

Whether it was the Mossad or not, this will give any other Hezbollah and Hamas financiers second thoughts.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

No, the people disrupting traffic Monday are not "pro-Palestine"

The local news media all get it wrong.

There protesters are not "pro-Palestinian."

If they were "pro-Palestinian," they would protest how terribly Lebanon treats its Palestinian "guests."

If they were "pro-Palestinian," they would protest how Egypt doesn't let any Gazans desperate to leave to enter Egypt without paying hefty bribes.

If they were "pro-Palestinian," they would have protested how Syria besieged and starved Palestinians at Yarmouk camp.

If they were "pro-Palestinian," they would protest Palestinian laws that are officially anti-women and anti-gay.

When thousands of Palestinian Arabs were killed during Black September in 1971, there were no crowds protesting at Jordanian embassies.

When hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs were expelled from Kuwait in a single week in 1991, there were no rallies supporting them.

When Hamas and Fatah fought in Gaza in 2007, none of these activists called for a "cease fire."

There has not been a single pro-Palestinian protest since October 7, or even for years beforehand. They are all anti-Israel.

The two are not synonymous.

Being anti-Israel does not mean you are pro-peace, pro-Palestinian, or anti-war. It means you are against human rights for Jews.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

04/15 Links Pt2: Israel’s Splendid Isolation; Why the Media Ignore Anti-Semitism; Exposed: UNRWA’s Rigged “Independent” Review

From Ian:

John Podhoretz: Israel’s Splendid Isolation

So maybe there is a certain type of rueful wisdom to be taken from these undeniable statistics. Maybe the thing is, Israel doesn’t need the support of the international community and the Council on Foreign Relations and the panel on Washington Week in Review and the jawboners at the Aspen Institute and the billionaires who drink ambrosia from the boots of tyrants at Davos. Maybe the thing is, Israel is a nation that has had this miraculous rise because it has a purpose, which is something most other countries do not have or need, and something that Thomas Friedman and his ilk are (again) too unnerved by to understand.

Israel is engaged in a purpose that is both world-historical and outside history. It exists as a refuge and haven and homeland for the world’s most stateless people, and its claim to statehood is not just due to its need for protection but based in part on a literally transcendent claim. That’s why I say it exists outside history as well.

To ensure the continuity of its existence, Israel must act. First, it must beat back those who would destroy it and who have been coming at it relentlessly since the day it was founded—genocidal evildoers whose Amalekite faces are now showing themselves even in America, really for the first time in our history.

Second, it must not only survive but thrive, because the fulfillment of its purpose depends upon it slowly making Jewish power a simple and undeniable and enduring reality in a world that has not known such a thing before—and is, as I said before, unnerved by it.

That was, in fact, happening during the 2010s with the Abraham Accords—until that progress was halted in part by a bizarrely feckless Biden administration that decided to hinge our national policy toward the world’s most important oil-exporting nation on the murder of a single person in a consulate in Turkey several years earlier. The fact that Israel had grown the way it had grown and shown how to be an innovative nation in a region mired in backwardness was its calling card.

But perhaps it was too focused on hurrying time along. For over the course of the past decade, Israel somehow found itself, like the sightless Samson in John Milton’s imagining, “eyeless in Gaza”—and made itself vulnerable to the worst single event in its history. At least Samson had been blinded by enemy Philistines; Israel’s leaders blinded themselves. They didn’t see the gathering danger because they wanted to look elsewhere and do other things.

Its response has, yet again, isolated Israel. That isolation is wearing away at the determination of some Israelis to see this war through to victory or is causing them to despair that there can be victory. It is a hateful thing, the isolation. It is unjust, it is foul, it is hypocritical, and it is, of course, anti-Semitic at its root.

But as the past six decades have shown us, when it comes to Israel’s purpose as both a change agent in history and a representative of a force outside of history, the isolation doesn’t matter at all. They—we—are not isolated. They—we—are chosen.

Christine Rosen: Why the Media Ignore Anti-Semitism

In fact, the decision to downplay the anti-Semitic threat from the left is deliberate. Left-leaning media do not like to cover the behavior of their own, as the inconsistent coverage of the Jew-baiting members of the Democratic Party’s “Squad” during the past several years attests. Mainstream reporters at outlets like the New York Times take great pains to provide context and explanations for Representative Ilhan Omar’s blatant anti-Semitism, for example. A 2019 piece gave Omar and her defenders ample space to claim she was being unfairly targeted for criticism because she was a progressive Muslim woman while glossing over the fact that she had repeatedly accused Jews of having dual loyalties.

Amid the current conflict, it’s evident there is tacit agreement among most in the mainstream media that because Israel is defending itself by trying to root out Hamas in Gaza, the behavior of protesters is somehow justifiable and acceptable—but only because it involves Israel and the Jews.

This goes well beyond the deliberately misleading stories and factual errors about the war that have appeared in outlets such as the Washington Post. As Zach Kessel and Ari Blaff outlined in National Review, in a deep dive of the Post’s coverage of the Israel–Hamas war, the newspaper “has been a case study in moral confusion and anti-Israel bias” and has “violated traditional journalistic principles that have shaped coverage of foreign conflicts by American newsrooms for decades.”

Similarly, a recent story in the Free Press by Uri Berliner, a long-time editor and reporter at National Public Radio, described how NPR “approached the Israel-Hamas war and its spillover onto streets and campuses through the ‘intersectional’ lens that has jumped from the faculty lounge to newsrooms,” which meant “highlighting the suffering of Palestinians at almost every turn while downplaying the atrocities of October 7, overlooking how Hamas intentionally puts Palestinian civilians in peril, and giving little weight to the explosion of antisemitic hate around the world.”

By contrast, imagine if an elderly African-American civil-rights activist were being heckled and bullied with racist taunts while trying to speak before a red-state city-council meeting about the need to properly recognize Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Every major newspaper, magazine, and television and cable network would air nonstop coverage of the event.

The double standard at work in mainstream media has become impossible to ignore and is a sign of a deep moral failing in the profession of journalism: When it comes to threats and attacks against Jews, integrity is sacrificed on the altar of ideological conformity. Thus the self-proclaimed seekers of truth became handmaidens to barbarity and the world’s oldest and most destructive hatred.

Seth Mandel: The Evil Campaign to Remove Jews from the Public Square

In her book People Love Dead Jews, Dara Horn recounts the furious response she received once when she mentioned, in a lecture, that the common story of immigration officials changing Jewish family names at Ellis Island is a myth. Immigrants’ names were taken from ship manifests, which were compiled using the immigrants’ own passports. Inspectors were there to confirm, not record, each passenger’s name.

Name-changers in the early-20th century were often Jews, but they were much more likely to be already-settled middle-aged parents of children who were pursuing a trade or a degree in higher education. In 1932, according to the historian Kirsten Fermaglich, 65 percent of those petitioning to change their name had Jewish-sounding last names. Most of the name changes—for Jews and non-Jews alike—at this time were motivated by the desire “to abandon ‘foreign’ names that were ‘difficult to pronounce and spell’ and to adopt instead more ‘American’ names,” Fermaglich writes. “These individuals were hoping to shed the ethnic markers that disadvantaged them in American society by taking on unmarked, ordinary names that would go unnoticed.”

This came at a time when public opinion in the United States had been turning against immigrants for a decade. Especially Jewish immigrants. A restrictive immigration bill would become law (over President Woodrow Wilson’s veto) in 1917. Momentum would soon get rolling toward another, even more restrictive one in 1924. Because immigration law was country-of-origin focused, there could be no official “Jewish quota.” But there were quotas for the parts of Europe that Jews were seeking to leave, and those quotas could be reduced in favor of more “desirable” countries of origin.

“The Hebrew race… in spite of long residence in Europe, is still as it has always been an Asiatic race,” thundered prominent immigration restrictionist Prescott Hall. Bolshevism, he said, was a “movement of oriental Tatar tribes led by Asiatic Semites against the Nordic bourgeoisie.” The historian Howard Sachar quotes a U.S. foreign-service officer inveighing against the Polish Jews seeking to come to America: “They are filthy, un-American and often dangerous in their habits.” Most of them “lack any conception of patriotic or national spirit, and the majority of this percentage is mentally incapable of acquiring it.”

That last line was intended to convey the point that assimilation into American ways was impossible for Jews. Therefore, one was right to be suspicious of them—whether or not they were born in America. Thus no one with a Jewish-sounding last name was spared the suspicion that he might not ever be truly American. Clubs and hotels and even residential neighborhoods tightened their policies excluding Jews. In 1922, Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowell repeatedly encountered potential donors who demanded to know how the president planned to “leave our university free of this plague.” Official quotas were still controversial, but the Ivies ultimately figured out the same thing the congressional crafters of immigration quotas did: You could limit your intake of Jews by adjusting geographic quotas. By the 1930s, Harvard had dropped its share of Jewish enrollment from over 25 percent to 10 percent, and Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, and Swarthmore had gotten their Jewish share into the single digits.

Downed Iranian missile in the Dead Sea

From Naharnet:

Hezbollah has congratulated Tehran on its attack on Israel, saying it "achieved" its military objectives.

"Hezbollah presents its congratulations... to the leadership" of Iran and its people for the "unprecedented" attack on Israel, the powerful Lebanese group said in a statement.

Hezbollah also praised Tehran's "brave and wise decision to respond firmly to the Zionist attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus".

The Islamic republic launched more than 300 drones and missiles towards Israel from late Saturday, Israel's military said.

It achieved military objectives? How, exactly?

The answer is the same as the answer to this question posed by a supposed expert, Richard Haass, on Twitter/X (and later in a more extensive interview in Politico):

At first glance reported Iranian attacks on Israel violate Napoleon's dictum "Never interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake." This will change the narrative and create new support for Israel. All of which raises the question: Why did Iran widen the war at this moment?

People, even supposed "experts," still think that Middle Easterners think like Westerners. They project their own logic onto people whom they have little in common with.

Iran's objective wasn't military. It was psychic. It needed to restore its "honor."

Just reading Iranian media shows this. They are congratulating themselves on the few missiles that made it through Israel's defenses. And now they are bragging that Israel's defenses are not "impenetrable," which no one ever said.

Honor is the coin of the realm in the Middle East. And honor, almost by definition, includes lying in order to avoid shame.

Iran has to claim victory. Even if Israel has stopped 100% of the projectiles, today's headlines in Iranian media would be about the amount of effort and time and money Israel spent, how it relied on other allies and couldn't defend itself alone, how this was one of the biggest attacks in history. They would be trying to ascribe honor to themselves and shame to Israel.

Facts don't matter. The results were of little importance, as long as Iran can twist facts to claim victory.

Just like Egypt in 1973. Just like Hamas in all previous Gaza wars. The facts don't matter because honor is the point, military victory is secondary.

The entire Middle East conflict is an attempt by Middle Eastern Muslims to erase the shame of a small number of weak, dhimmi Jews defeating them in 1948 and 1967. If you want a root cause, that's it.

People who do not understand the importance of honor and shame to Israel's enemies cannot possibly be Middle East experts.

Once you understand the honor/shame dynamic, you realize that the only real solution is Israeli victory that cannot be denied. This is why Muslims are deferential to Christian-majority Europe - because they lost to them, definitively. That is the reason Bahrain and the UAE wanted peace - they realized Israel isn't going anywhere.

Undisputed Israeli strength is the only peace plan that makes sense. Unless you want another Holocaust.

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04/15 Links Pt1: Strangling Israel slowly; Iran Pre-Coordinated Its Attack Against Israel With The U.S.; How Did the War Begin? With Iran’s Appeasers in Washington

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Strangling Israel slowly

What country other than Israel would be told by the so-called civilised world that it must not respond to an onslaught of more than 300 cruise and ballistic missiles and armed drones fired at the entire country?

If a minute fraction of such an attack were to be mounted against America or Britain, they would declare themselves at war and destroy the enemy before it could attack them again. It’s only Israel that is not to be allowed to defend itself in the same way.

After Sunday night’s attack, in which Iran stopped hiding behind its proxies and revealed itself openly for the first time as the actual enemy of Israel and the free world, Israel reportedly intended to attack Iran but was stopped by US President Joe Biden in a phone call with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Biden’s public comments through his spokesman were grotesque. Israel, he said, should “take the win”and not “escalate tensions” with Iran since the attack had caused minimal damage and casualties as a result of Israel’s “military superiority”.

So because Israel fended off that attack it must now do nothing against Tehran and wait for Iran to attack it again? Hezbollah has 150,000 missiles pointing at the whole of Israel. They are fast and accurate, and the fear is that Hezbollah will unleash so many they will overwhelm even Israel’s effective defences.

Does the Biden administration need to see a few thousand Israelis killed in skyscrapers if missiles get through to Haifa or Tel Aviv before it comes to its defence again?

Deterrence does not mean being able to defend yourself against attack. Deterrence means deterring an attack in the first place. Biden’s prohibition would destroy the very concept of Israeli deterrence and allow Iran to continue to tighten its ring of proxy fire around Israel in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Yemen — and Gaza (where Biden wants Israel to submit to a Palestinian terrorist administration after the war).

Michael Oren: How Did the War Begin? With Iran’s Appeasers in Washington

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran to repeatedly assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. Press reports about President Biden’s refusal to support an Israeli counterattack against Iran indicate, sadly, that nothing substantial in the U.S. position has changed. He has reportedly urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to see the coordinated response to the attack as a “win.”

The Iranians, though, will not see things that way. Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity. If Israel follows Biden’s advice it will send one message to the ayatollahs: “You can launch another 350 missiles and drones at Israel or try to kill Israelis by other means. Either way, the United States won’t stop you.”

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”

The story of America can end only one of two ways: either it stands up boldly against Iran and joins Israel in deterring it, or Iran emerges from this conflict once again unpunished, undiminished, and ready to inflict yet more devastating damage.

Seth Mandel: Why Weren’t Iran Sanctions Immediately Triggered by the Attacks?

On Sunday morning, barely twelve hours after the conclusion of Iran’s unprecedented missile barrage on Israel, White House spokesman John Kirby was asked on Fox News Sunday about the Biden administration’s recent decision to waive some sanctions on Iran.

“You know the conversations about unfreezing assets, about waivers on sanctions,” Shannon Bream began. “Could this administration have been tougher on Iran? Did it sense an opening?”

Kirby responded: “It’s hard to look at what President Biden has done with respect to Iran and say that he hasn’t been tough on Iran, or that we haven’t put pressure on them.”

Is it? Because it seems to me that if the administration was prepared militarily for the Iranian attacks Saturday night, and if the president doesn’t want Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to retaliate, then a punishment of some kind could have been ready to be instituted immediately, and certainly two days later. At the very least, it would have been easy for the president to cancel the recent sanctions waiver.

It is certainly not the case that sanctions are somehow off the table, at least conceptually. “Biden on Sunday convened leaders from the Group of Seven nations, who said they would consider new sanctions on Iran,” reports the Wall Street Journal. The Journal article, like most of the reporting since the attacks, stressed that the president wants a diplomatic response. It is also clear from the statements that Biden considers sanctions a plausible contribution to such a diplomatic response.

So, where are the sanctions?

The Germans don’t seem to be an obstacle here. “I am strongly in favor of extending [sanctions] to Iran, because we can see how dangerous its actions are at the moment,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said.

Would the British consider more Iran sanctions? “Yes, absolutely,” says Foreign Minister David Cameron. “We already have 400 sanctions on Iran. We put in place a whole new sanctions regime at the end of last year, which is proving very effective. We’ve sanctioned the IRGC, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, in its entirety, and we’ll continue to look at what further steps we can do.”

Great. So once again, where are they?

Were the allies waiting to see how much damage was done by the Iranian missiles and drones? If so, that’s an indication that no, there will not be sanctions immediately forthcoming. And there is evidence for this idea that the seriousness of the attack would only be judged by the seriousness of the damage it caused. It’s an absurd scale on which to weigh a response because, like spritzing a misbehaving cat with water, it loses its effectiveness if not done right away. The West had the ability to ensure that this case would be more like touching a hot stove: Iran would immediately feel the burn, triggering a response that was basically automatic.

Having the debate over sanctions now—or any retaliative measure, to be honest—only makes it seem as though you can escape punishment by attempting and failing to murder lots of people.

Israeli defense stocks soaring. Sorry, anti-capitalist anti-Israel protesters!

Today, anti-Israel protesters are attempting to attack all of capitalism in the name of "justice."

The protests already started in Australia, where the so-called A15 Group say they are attacking "the arteries of capitalism" claiming "the global economy is complicit in genocide."

As usual, they conflate all the causes they believe in and create artificial linkages between them. This is the logic of "pinkwashing" and "ecocide" and all the other absurd allegations they come up with.

So of course, capitalism is one of the targets.

This is typified by the book The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World written by by Antony Loewenstein where he pretends that Israel's selling defense tech is immoral. Of course, he is not concerned that North Korea sells missile technology to Iran or Iran selling drones to Russia. Their profits are pure.

He must be fuming that Iran has helped boost Israeli defense and tech stocks.

Israeli defense stocks are doing very well over the past two days (the markets are open in Israel on Sundays.)

As Globes reports,

Sigma Investment House CEO Yair Shani told "Globes," "The story of the defense stocks is quite simple. There was very significant proof yesterday of the technological capabilities of the State of Israel, behind which are the defense companies, not all of which are publicly traded, but some are. There is no doubt that there will be very large demand for defense products from Israel."

Shani expects a major boom in the sector. He stressed, "Countries to which we want to supply defense technology will now be eager to buy, after seeing how the country is protected. This is the best sales promotion. Iran has done excellent sales promotion for Israel's arms companies. This will give a very big boost to the industry, of course focusing mainly on defense."

Aerodrome ("solutions for collecting, processing, and analyzing information from the air using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), advanced software, and artificial intelligence applications in the civil and security markets"), went from 74.30 shekels before the open Sunday to 84.2 today, a jump of 13%.

Elbit jumped 4.5% at the open Sunday before easing back a little today.

Next Vision Stabilized Systems which makes stabilized cameras, went up 8.6% since Sunday morning.

Third Eye Systems, which makes high-end object recognition algorithms used by the IDF, soared 17% since close last week, going up from 375 to 439 on the TASE.

Yes, Israel's defense industries will make a lot of money off of Iran's attack of Israel.

Countries worldwide will want to buy anything that helps them defend against terrorists, jihadists and totalitarian regimes that these supposed "human rights defenders" all seem to love.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

It was one of the largest such combined attacks in history. Many Iranian missiles failed. And other Day 2 observations on the weekend events.

An Israeli newspaper summed up the Iranian "Operation Truthful Promise" as "The Iranian lion roared like a cat."

As we get more information, we learn that the attack was in most ways larger than anything Russia has mounted against Ukraine.

The extent of the attack was one of the largest seen in modern warfare. Russia's opening "shock and awe" barrage on the first day of the invasion of Ukraine, on February 24, 2022, included between 160 and 200 cruise missiles and ballistic missiles - against a country more than 20 times the area of Israel.

Russia first used Iranian-made Shahad drones in conjunction with a missile attack on October 10, 2022, a barrage aimed at Ukraine's infrastructure,. This included a total of 84 missiles and 24 UAVs. Only about half of the Russian missiles were intercepted.

This compares to 185 drones, 110 ballistic missiles and 30 cruise missiles launched by Iran towards Israel.

Iranian media is claiming a "clean victory," saying that their ballistic missiles landed exactly where they were intended.

So that means they wanted to create an easily repairable crater on a runway in the desert and on a road.

The attack shows that the ballistic missiles are the most difficult to defend against, since several made it through. That doesn't detract from the amazing achievements of blocking them. The videos of missile intercepts in space, probably from an Arrow-3, are spectacular:

A surprising number of Iranian missiles failed, either exploding in Iran or en route.

Iran’s missile technology is to a great extent based on Soviet and North Korean know-how.

U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal that half of the ballistic missiles that Iran launched either failed to launch or fell from the sky before reaching their targets.

Here's video of one that landed in Iran, this single missile causing more damage there than all the projectiles did in Israel combined:

As the Institute for the Study of War notes, however, Israel cannot afford to be complacent. The claimed "99%" intercept rate is somewhat exaggerated - it was probably closer to 97% or 98% - and the several that did make it through could have caused great damage had they hit populated areas:

Iran’s ability to penetrate Israeli air defenses with even a small number of large ballistic missiles presents serious security concerns for Israel. The only Iranian missiles that got through hit an Israeli military base, limiting the damage, but a future strike in which several ballistic missiles penetrate Israeli air defenses and hit Tel Aviv or Haifa could cause significant civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure, including ports and energy. Russian strikes on Ukraine have demonstrated that even a small number of precise strikes against key nodes in energy or other infrastructure can cause disproportionate effects. Israel and its partners should not emerge from this successful defense with any sense of complacency.

In 2022 Iran announced, to much fanfare, that it had manufactured hypersonic missiles than could not be stopped by known interceptors. They also claimed to have upgraded those missiles last year. Iran is now claiming that every hypersonic missile it shot at Israel successfully hit their targets.

It is unclear whether any of the missiles launched were indeed what would be considered hypersonic - meaning, traveling at greater than Mach-5 speeds while maintaining maneuverability. Regular ballistic missiles hit hypersonic speeds as they descend from space but that does not make them hypersonic missiles, which are usually defined as either hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs) and hypersonic cruise missiles (HCMs). Iran's so-called hypersonic missiles are medium range ballistic missiles with limited maneuverability. It is not clear at this time whether any of the missiles that made it through were the Fattah-1 or Fattah 2 "hypersonic" missiles of Iran.

What is clear is that Israel would not be able to rely on allies being able to help them stop all future similar attacks, especially without so much advanced warning. The simple math of being able to overwhelm Israeli defenses, which are much more expensive than the projectiles being shot are, remains an issue as it does in Gaza or Lebanon.

Saying that Israel should regard this as a victory is shortsighted. As others have pointed out, surviving someone shooting at you many times because of your bulletproof vest is not a victory. The shooter can reload and only needs one bullet to make it through. Israel cannot afford to remain in a purely defensive posture forever, especially as Iran has proven that it is now willing to directly attack Israel.

The question is not if, but when.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

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Israel released this infographic showing where the attacks came from.

While the trajectories are not meant to be precise, they show that the missiles and drones came from Iran and Yemen.

The Houthis have claimed that their shooting at Israel during the past six months is meant to "support Gaza" and that they decided to do this on their own, not because Iran asked them to. This weekend attack indicates otherwise.

As (anti-Iran) Arab analysts point out, the Houthi attack proves that they are doing Iran's bidding, not acting independently. Their participation "reveals the falsity of its claims regarding support for Gaza. Its participation in Iran’s response is in favor of Iran’s plans in the region, and not, as it claims, in support of Gaza."

Reports say that Syrian and Iraqi pro-Iranian groups also joined in.

Now, why didn't Hezbollah use any of its longer-range rockets at the same time? Because that would be a clear expansion of that front, and Israel would not feel constrained in retaliating hard. As it was, there was an escalation of activity by Hezbollah in Israel's north, and Israel did hit back even as the Iranian drones were en route.

There is plenty of other evidence of Iran's heavy involvement with Hezbollah, of course. But even Iran would agree with Hezbollah that overstepping would not serve their purposes before Hezbollah takes over all of Lebanon and then treats the Lebanese people with the same level of disrespect that Hamas treats Gazans.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

04/14 Links: The Real War in the Middle East Comes into Focus; Israel-Arab Normalization Proves Its Worth; Hamas rejects hostage deal

From Ian:

Matti Friedman: The Real War in the Middle East Comes into Focus

Last night should make clear, for those still in doubt, that Gaza is just one part of the broader story of Iran’s growing power and its tightening encirclement of Israel. When understood in this context, the behavior of Israel and its opponents becomes easier to understand.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza are one link in the Iranian encirclement. The Houthis in Yemen, who have been harassing commercial ships and firing at Israel’s southern port of Eilat, are another link. The Iranian-backed militias in Iraq make up a third. The Iranian forces and proxies in Syria, including the Revolutionary Guard commanders killed in the recent Israeli airstrike in Damascus, are a fourth. (The strike on April 1, which came after months of attacks against Israel by proxies directed and armed by the Revolutionary Guards, is typically being cast by Israel’s opponents as an unprovoked attack on a diplomatic facility, as if the commanders were cultural attachés in town for a goodwill concert.) Lebanon’s Hezbollah, whose bombardments have depopulated a swath of northern Israel since October 7, is the fifth. If you look at a map, you’ll see that Iran has methodically installed proxies that can strike Israel from almost any direction except the west, where we border the Mediterranean.

The importance of last night’s barrage was that for the first time, the full Iranian alliance gave us a practical demonstration of its scope, orchestration, and intentions. The radical departure here was that the Islamic Republic itself dared to attack directly for the first time. If you’d been watching from space, you probably could have seen the lines of this new Middle East etched in orange and red across the map of the region. You might have also seen the second part of the story, which is the successful defense mounted not just by Israel but by the U.S. and Britain, and also by Jordan and, apparently, by Saudi Arabia—a welcome development hard to imagine a few years ago, and still puzzling to a Western observer fed stories about an “Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

Whether this attack was a masterstroke or an error by Iran will eventually become clear. But it’s already obvious that they’ve done observers a favor by emerging from the shadows to end any doubt about what this war is and who’s fighting it.

Col. Kemp: The world stands on the brink of all-out war

Israel will have no choice other than to respond to this Iranian attack, as every country would. The IDF has of course been preparing for that as well, perhaps by striking military targets inside Iran and other countries from which any missiles or drones are launched.

As the US sought to prevent Iran from attacking Israel by intensive diplomatic efforts, the Biden administration will likely try to pressure Israel to limit its retaliation, in other words to de-escalate. However, even if limited damage is inflicted in this attack, Israel should strike back hard – perhaps with even greater strength – to deter further attacks.

While hostilities directly with Iran are unlikely to expand beyond air attacks and possibly naval conflict, a major attack by Hezbollah might well lead to an all-out war in Lebanon, which has been on the cards since October.

This latest development in the Middle East shows that this is not just a conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. The war in Gaza was initiated by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, both Iranian proxies, and has been joined since the start, in the form of attacks on Israel, by Tehran’s proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq and the West Bank.

The ayatollahs have been declaring their intention to eradicate the Jewish state for many years and have built a proxy “ring of fire” around Israel to achieve that, as well as working on a nuclear weapons programme.

However this conflict develops, Israel’s allies, including the US and UK, must do all that is needed to stand strongly by their main ally in the Middle East, if necessary with military action. Failure to do so will increase the prospects of escalating conflict in the region.

Seth Mandel: Israel-Arab Normalization Proves Its Worth

The 1991 Gulf War, in which President George H.W. Bush organized a coalition to dislodge Saddam Hussein from Iraq, offers a good point of contrast. The Desert Storm coalition notably included Saudi Arabia and Egypt, a diplomatic coup for Bush. In order to try and split off the Arab world from the coalition, Hussein ordered the firing of dozens of Scud missiles at Israel, intending to provoke a response that would force the Arab states to the sidelines. Bush understood that the breadth of the coalition was a historic achievement and that as the Cold War ended, the emergence of a pro-Western bloc in the Gulf would be of immense strategic value.

This meant Israel had to sit on its hands, despite fear that some of the Scuds might be carrying chemical weapons. In return, American Patriot interceptors would protect Israel from the Scuds. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir agreed.

The problem was that the Patriots were far less effective than expected. Israeli civilians were killed both by direct Scud attacks and by heart attacks and unnecessary injection of anti-nerve-gas medications. The absence of the promised protection made it harder for Israeli leaders to hold their fire. (It didn’t make it any easier that the U.S. was claiming an absurdly high interception rate that wasn’t publicly debunked until well after the war.) This was less a matter of effectiveness—the U.S. needed no help defeating Saddam’s troops, so Israeli intervention was viewed as high-cost and low-reward—than a basic demonstration of self-defense of a nation under fire.

In the end, Israel held its fire but won itself no favor from the Bush administration for doing so, leaving a sour taste in many Israeli mouths.

Fast forward to 2024, and we read this report in the Times of Israel: “Jordanian jets downed dozens of Iranian drones flying across northern and central Jordan heading to Israel, two regional security sources said in a dramatic show of support from Amman, which has heavily criticized Israel’s prosecution of its war against Hamas in Gaza.

“The sources said the drones were brought down in the air on the Jordanian side of the Jordan Valley and were heading in the direction of Jerusalem. Others were intercepted close to the Iraqi-Syrian border. They gave no further details.”

The coalition was mobilized not for offensive moves but for the sole purpose of defending Israeli territory from Iranian missiles. Israeli and American and Jordanian and British jets flew a coordinated defense maneuver, presumably with the tacit support of Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Arab states.

This is the post-Abraham Accords Middle East. And it is the key to understanding the true strategic accomplishment of those peace agreements: all these states are in a very public coalition not only with the United States but with Israel. Recognition and normalization of ties with Israel by Arab states enables the U.S. to organize and broaden its own alliances. The only variable now is whether the Biden administration wants those alliances to thrive or whether it will continue its courtship of Iran, whose overarching goal is the destruction of all of America’s strategic gains over the past 30 years.