Biden’s Italian Strike

o sooner had Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the Biden administration on Tuesday of withholding arms shipments for Israel than American officials depicted him as delusional. “We … do not know what he’s talking about,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre explained to reporters. Yes, she said, the Biden administration is withholding one single shipment of 2,000-pound bombs, out of fear that they might be used in densely populated Gaza, but “there are … no other pauses or holds in place.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking in Europe after having met with Netanyahu in Israel, repeated the claims of Jean-Pierre almost verbatim. Besides the 2,000-pound bombs, he explained, “everything else is moving as it normally would move.”

But this assertion of normalcy is easily refuted. Last month, Politico reported that an order by Israel for Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs)—converter kits that turn “dumb” bombs into “smart” bombs—“came up for license in December 2023, and the administration has been sitting on it ever since.” The JDAMs, Politico further reported, are but one of “multiple” sales that the State Department “is reviewing.”

The ‘Gaza famine’ myth

www.montecruzfo.org

It’s now quite clear that there are simply no facts at all—none—that will alter the fixed narrative of lies, distortions and blood libels with which the liberal internationalist order is demonizing and delegitimizing Israel.

The claim that Israel is starving the civilians of Gaza and causing an imminent famine has been pumped out incessantly since soon after the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war.

In February, the United Nations said that more than a quarter of Gaza’s 2.3 million people were “estimated to be facing catastrophic levels of deprivation and starvation” and that, without action, widespread famine was “almost inevitable.”

In March, Biden administration officials told Benny Gantz—then a member of Israel’s war cabinet who was visiting Washington, D.C.—that the “food shortage crisis” impacting Palestinians in Gaza was “intolerable.”

At the end of that month, Janti Soeripto, president and chief executive of Save the Children US, declared that famine and starvation in Gaza were already happening.

In May, Director of the World Food Program Cindy McCain said that parts of Gaza were experiencing a “full-blown famine” that was rapidly spreading throughout the territory.

Also last month, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court sought arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on the grounds that Israel was “causing starvation as a method of war including the denial of humanitarian relief supplies [and] deliberately targeting civilians in conflict.”

The world has brushed aside Israel’s repeated protests that there has been no shortage of food trucks arriving with aid for Gaza and that the problem lay instead with distribution because Hamas was stealing the supplies.

Instead, the liberal international establishment has repeatedly demanded that Israel immediately stop the war, thus inescapably surrendering to Hamas and forfeiting the military leverage required to free the remaining hostages.

Yet now, the famine claims have been debunked.

The Famine Review Committee (FRC) conducts investigations into world hunger on behalf of a partnership formed between governments, international organizations and NGOs.

In March, the committee reported that “famine is now projected and imminent” in northern Gaza and was expected to take hold before the end of May. Preventing such a famine, it stated, required “an immediate political decision for a ceasefire together with a significant and immediate increase in humanitarian and commercial access to the entire population of Gaza.”

In April, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), a food security monitoring initiative founded in 1985 by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) went even further by stating there was “reasonable evidence” that, since April, northern Gaza had been experiencing a famine and this would persist at least until the end of July.

But on June 4, the Famine Review Committee published a report in which it rejected the FEWS NET analysis as not “plausible” and said it could not endorse its famine projection.

The committee said there was a lack of reliable evidence about the number of trucks entering Gaza and the level of humanitarian assistance that was arriving and being distributed around its various areas.

In order to compensate for these gaps in the data, it said, FEWS NET had relied on “multiple layers of assumptions and inference” about food availability and access as well as nutritional status and mortality, and had made “deliberate choices over assumptions, without the necessary supporting evidence.”

Such assumptions, said the committee, had ignored or underestimated the value of both commercial sources of food and certain forms of humanitarian aid.

Although this didn’t alter the fact that Gaza was experiencing “extreme human suffering” and that urgent measures were needed to boost humanitarian supplies, the committee concluded that flows of aid and the availability of food had increased significantly in March and April and “that nearly 100 percent of daily kilocalorie requirements were available for the estimated population of 300,000 people in April, even using conservative calculations.”

In other words, the committee reversed its own dire predictions and damned the famine early warning network for excluding evidence that gave the lie to its anti-Israel narrative. The categorical declarations of imminent famine being caused by wicked, heartless, war-criminal Israel just weren’t true.

It’s worth remembering that USAID, the parent body of FEWS NET, is run by Samantha Power, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during the Obama administration.

In 2002, Power suggested in a “thought experiment” that America might have to invade Israel to prevent an Israeli genocide against the Palestinians. She also suggested that the only people who might be alienated by this would be American Jews, who she said exercised tremendous political and financial power over America.

Other research has also exploded the “Gaza famine” claims. At Columbia University, two professors have said the evidence shows that sufficient amounts of food are being supplied to Gaza.

They told The Jerusalem Post that it was “a myth that Israel is responsible for famine in Gaza” and suggested that the International Criminal Court and U.N. had joined Hamas in blaming Israel for a “famine that never was, hoping to stop the war.”

Yet there are no signs that these rebuttals of the “Gaza famine” claim are having any effect on the Israel-bashing crowd. A few days ago, The New York Times was still referring to “starving civilians” and blaming deaths from malnutrition on “restrictions on aid and commercial goods entering Gaza.”

BBC News reported this week that “warnings of famine are looming once again in northern Gaza,” broadcasting distressing footage of infants said to be suffering from dehydration and malnutrition caused by restrictions on aid at the Rafah and Kerem Shalom border crossings.

Other than Fox News, it seems that no mainstream media outlet has reported the Famine Review Committee’s findings that the claim of famine in Gaza cannot be justified. Nor have the anti-Israel humanitarian organizations, although the World Health Organization’s Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has now subtly adjusted his rhetoric by talking about “famine-like conditions.”

Famine is not the only anti-Israel falsehood whose debunking has been ignored. The mainstream media and humanitarian crowd are still using the Hamas figure of 37,000-plus civilians killed in Gaza, despite the fact that the U.N. itself revised its own casualty totals sharply downwards after it emerged that some of the claimed deaths had been drawn from media sources and were fabricated.

Some outlets such as The New York Times, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Time magazine are still claiming that the International Court of Justice said the Palestinians in Gaza faced a “plausible risk of genocide” even though the court said no such thing. As the ICJ President Joan Donoghue herself said, the court decided “that the Palestinians had a plausible right to be protected from genocide. … It didn’t decide that the claim of genocide was plausible.”

While Israel continues to be defamed by blood libels about famine and its war of self-defense in Gaza, some five million are facing actual famine in Sudan where up to 150,000 have been killed and up to 10 million displaced. Some 25 million are estimated to need humanitarian assistance as a result of a 14-month-long civil war.

Yet this vast and catastrophic scale of human suffering is being almost totally ignored. On Fox News, Hadeel Oueis, editor-in-chief of the pan-Arab media outlet Jusoor, said: “Sudanese [people] are asking why the world turns a blind eye as the third-largest country in Africa is laid to waste while at the same time fixating on the smaller conflict in Gaza.”

Good question. The answer is as obvious as it is brutal: The world only cares about suffering humanity when it can blame the Jews. That malevolent prism shapes a fixed and murderous narrative about Israel and the Jewish people that no actual facts can be allowed to disturb.

UNRWA “has become part of the problem. UNRWA supplies the ammunition to continue the conflict. By supporting UNRWA we keep the conflict alive, it’s a perverse logic.”

Senseless Silence

There comes a time when in the face of unremitting enmity, silence is no longer a viable option.

As we face a tsunami of hate and delegitimisation not seen since pre-World WarII times, the necessity to speak out has never been more urgent.

At times like this, one discovers who is likely to stand on the side of truth and is prepared to face the consequences of their actions. Individual decisions such as whether to shrink into the undergrowth or stand tall can split families and communities.

The same goes for countries and, in particular, Israel at this fraught period in its history.

There has always been a conflict between those advocating a quiet diplomatic response and those wanting to respond in a much more robust manner. In the early days of the State this was epitomized by the more restrained and reserved advocacy of Moshe Sharett, Israel’s first Foreign Minister as opposed to David Ben Gurion, the more outspoken Prime Minister.

In his speech given after an attack by Arab terrorists in the early 1950’s, Ben Gurion spoke up loud and clear concerning the United Nations and its failure to tackle anti-Israel hate. His refusal to remain silent in the face of international hypocrisy should be a lesson for today’s leadership.

“As a member of the Jewish people I say: With all due respect to the institutions of the United Nations and its members, until Isaiah’s prophecy that ‘nation shall not lift up sword against nation’ is fulfilled, and as long as our neighbours plot to destroy us, we won’t have security unless it’s through our own strength…There is no nation more fervent than us in following the principles laid down in the foundation of the UN – but the UN whose success and authority  we wish for is currently only an ideal. And the Security Council acts out of bias and glaring discrimination…in our region, acts of murder and sabotage, robbery and trespassing by our neighbours are becoming more and more frequent, and we must put an end to it – even if no one else wants to or is able to do so.” 

These home truths articulated by a lifelong member of the socialist movement, if uttered today, would be savaged by the leftist lemmings who have morphed into haters of all Jews and Zionists.

Since that time, the UN and its associated bodies have sunk to even lower depths of moral depravity. In fact, the rot is so endemic that it needs more than speeches of diplomatic reproof.

When the Secretary General can blithely add Israel to a blacklist of child human rights abusers together with Hamas then you know that silence is no longer an option.

When the UN General Assembly, UN Human Rights Council and the International Criminal Court can label Israel a pariah and thereby unleash worldwide venom against Jews, it is obvious that something more than restrained rhetoric is called for.

When the UN-appointed officials tasked with “investigating” UNRWA staff culpability with Hamas terror activities produce a report that exonerates them from any wrongdoing and issues a whitewashing clean bill of health, one should expect howls of outrage. Instead you have the New Zealand Foreign Minister welcoming this confirmation of UNRWA “neutrality” and announcing a resumption of aid. The fact that NZ taxpayers’ money will end up in schools hosting weapons and terror tunnels and where children are taught to murder Israelis is seemingly irrelevant.

At the recent G7 meeting, it was decreed that “UNRWA must operate unhindered in Gaza.” In simple English, this declaration means that it must be business as usual, with Hamas working hand in glove together with the UN agency. No peep of protest has been heard against this appalling appeasement.

The time has well and truly arrived when something more than futile verbal acrobatics against UN obsessions with Israel is called for.

Suspending participation or even quitting this totally failed body should be seriously considered. Banning UN officials from the country would be a good start.

The French have always shown their true colours when it comes to Jews and Israel. With the numbers of residents from Middle Eastern countries now constituting sizeable numbers in many cities the consequent rise in Jew and Israel hate has become serious. Add in the local homegrown haters of the left and right, and you have a toxic mix of threatening French Jewish communities with violent intimidation. In true French appeasement mode Israeli companies were banned from participating in a trade fair and even individual Israelis were shunned from attending. This has now been overturned by a court decision but the message and original intent is unambiguous.

As Hezbollah attacks Israel and Lebanon is on the verge of being dragged into a confrontation the French propose a “get together” in order to defuse matters. Rather than confronting the source of the evil the French Government, like the Americans, prefers Israel engage in a meaningless and futile exercise. In a desperate attempt to save the forthcoming Olympic Games from terrorist attacks the French authorities have suggested an Olympic truce in Ukraine and the Middle East.

It seems that surrendering is preferable to confronting evil. It is a scenario very familiar to French political leaders. Following the recent unrest in New Caledonia why is the international community silent over the occupation of that territory and the refusal of the French Government to grant freedom to its indigenous inhabitants? Why are Jews declared illegal for living in Judea and Jerusalem while real colonial settlers occupy a remote territory far away from France?

At a far-left conference in Berlin hosted by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, an Arab member of the Israeli Knesset let the cat of the bag when she declared that “Hamas is part of the Palestinian People.”  According to NGO Monitor this extreme left foundation received Euros 79.8 million in 2020 from the German Government.

Where is the outcry over this funding of terror supporters and the admission that the rapists and murderers of Hamas are part and parcel of Palestinian Arab society? An overwhelming majority of Arabs in a recent poll deny that the atrocities of 7 October even took place.

The senseless and shameful silence on the part of all those who know the truth is disgusting. Instead of daily condemnations we are faced with muted mumbling or complete indifference.

The tendency to avoid hard facts and instead indulge in fictitious fake woke flights of fancy has been developed into a fine art.

Take the example of none other than the President of the United States as indicative of how truth becomes inverted in true Orwellian fashion.

Speaking on the occasion of the Islamic commemoration of Eid Ul Adha the current incumbent of the White House uttered these memorable words: “we renew our commitment to values that unite us – compassionempathy and mutual respect – which are both American and Islamic.”  

At the same time, he once again reiterated that “the only way to achieve lasting peace is via acceptance of his ceasefire plan.”

These two delusionary declarations had hardly been articulated when Hamas issued the following response:  “we will continue terrorism until we reach Jerusalem – Jihad until the destruction of Israel.”

Mein Kampf clearly foretold what was intended and the world remained indifferent and silent.

Today’s successors of the 1930’s Jew haters have also detailed their objectives.

Something more drastic than senseless and shameful silence is urgently required.

Missiles embedded

Following attacks on Israel’s northern border more than 45 years ago, when Ariel Sharon was Israel’s leader, the Israel Defense Forces invaded Southern Lebanon in 1982.

The result of Israel’s 1982 incursion into Lebanon was the creation of a buffer zone inside Lebanon , which absorbed most of the attacks from the north.

However, attacks from the north did not cease for a moment.

In May 2000, with Israel Prime Minister Ehud Barak at the helm, the Israel Defense Forces conducted a unilateral retreat from the buffer zone in southern Lebanon.

However, that did not stop missile barrages on all parts of Israel from Southern Lebanon, until , in July 2006, the situation evolved into yet another war between Israel and Lebanon.

What curtailed the war in 2006 was UN resolution 1701, adopted in August 2006 , which established a new cease fire, with UN forces deployed between Israel and Lebanon, with a new commitment from Lebanon to cease and desist from cross border attacks.

Yet UN 1701 created no mechanism to enforce that cease fire, especially because a “hudna”, the Arabic term used for this kind of truce , represents little more than a “respite in war” between Islamic & non-Islamic forces. Indeed, the authoritative Islamic Encyclopedia (London, 1922) defines “hudna” as a “temporary treaty” which can be approved or abrogated by Islamic partners to the “hudna”.

Since the passage of UN resolution 1701, open intelligence sources confirm that Lebanon created more than 100,000 sites to deploy missile batteries, embedded in the Lebanese population, aimed at all parts of Israel population

Fast forward to 2024. Lebanon now fires thousands of missiles at Israel. Upwards of 100,000 civilians – Jews, Arabs, Christians and Druze- who live in the northern region of Israel – have been evacuated from their homes until the missile attacks stop.

Two major cities in northern Israel , Metulla and Kiryat Shemoneh have virtually emptied out

The Israel Defense establishment saw this coming when the IDF withdrew from the security zone in southern Lebanon.

Confirmation of massive missile batteries deployed in and around Lebanese villages occurred in September, 2006.

Israel’s response so far to the missile barrage from the north has been to locate and attack leaders of the Hizbulla, the faction of the Lebanese regime which claims responsibility for the attacks on Israel.

The reality is that targeted attacks on Hizbullah leaders has not deterred attacks from Lebanon.

That leaves Israel one option: To launch attacks against missile batteries embedded in the Lebanese population.

The consequence: That will cause massive casualties. Israel will once again be accused of a genocidal attack against a civilian population.

Jews in Israel and abroad are not ready for this scenario.

‘I don’t believe in peace now,’ released Gaza hostage tells BBC

photo credit: Hostage and Missing Families Forum

An Israeli peace activist who was seized from her home on 7 October and held hostage for 53 days in Gaza has told the BBC how her ordeal destroyed her belief that peace is possible between Palestinians and Israelis.

A Date With Destiny in Hebron

SEASON 2024 EPISODE 24: Yishai is back in the Holy Land and tours two famous YouTubers DESTINY and LONERBOX. Hear Yishai’s interview with Steven Bonell (aka Destiny) on why he came to Israel on his fact-finding mission and who he perceives are the winners and losers of the October 7th conflict. Then, Ben Bresky on why dairy food became associated with Shavuot, and the early Zionist Bikkuim parades which celebrated the revived agriculture in the Land of Israel. Finally, Table Torah on the Light of God’s Face.

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Knee-jerk script

Whenever Israel acts to counter terror, you can confidently predict the pre-ordained reactions.

It follows an ancient and well-worn agenda refined over millennia, especially when Jews decide to fight back against their oppressors.

A common denominator is righteous wrath pouring forth from those whose silence about real human rights abusers is starkly evident. The orchestrated orgy of condemnations and censuring is so predictable that one wonders why some individuals are still surprised that it actually occurs.

Having remained conspicuously silent during all the years of Hamas terror rockets being launched at Israeli civilians, the international choir has now been blaring its disapproval of Israel ever since 7 October. Hezbollah fires missiles from Lebanon, and thousands of Israelis are evacuated from their homes, but this mysteriously prompts nary a peep. Iran barrels its way to nuclear blackmail status unhindered by any meaningful action to thwart its genocidal ambitions. The Yemeni Houthis continue their piracy undeterred by any sort of countermeasures.

It is important to be reminded of this because as surely as day follows night, the hypocrites of the international community will awaken once Israel feels it needs to take action.

Instead of universal international action forcing the Islamic terror groups to release kidnapped Israelis, their plight has been quickly swept under the carpet. In place of decisive punitive action, “deals” designed to release terrorists with blood on their hands in exchange for a few dead or still-alive hostages are promoted.

This is when the script becomes entirely predictable.

Sensing the lack of will to act on the part of the democracies and having the backing of an assortment of human rights abusers, Hamas and its fellow gangsters ramp up the pressure. They confidently know that accusing Israel of crimes and refusing to surrender will give them fantastic headlines with a mendacious media only too eager to muddy the truth in favour of salacious headlines.

The next step in this choreographed script is to inflate casualty numbers. Making no distinction between terrorists, their willing helpers and civilian human shields the terror groups can always stage a Hollywood spectacular displaying alleged casualties. Media and politicians alike are inevitably sucked into this charade, with Hamas-inflated allegations taken at face value.

The discovery of terror tunnels in UNRWA schools, beneath children’s bedrooms, in Mosques and hospitals and weapons hidden in baby cribs is a non-reporting event.

Adding to the mix of lies and disinformation is the UN and its associated bodies all ready and primed to convene in emergency sessions and ready to pillory Israel.

Waiting in the wings is the President for Life, Abbas, and his corrupt crew. They know with certainty that gullible world leaders will ride to their aid and blame Israel for refusing to acquiesce to the creation of a terror state in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. They can see and sense the weakness of the Biden Administration as it twists and squirms in the face of Islamic terror. As unhinged ignorant Jew/Zionist hating mobs besiege universities, spew vile threats and slogans and vandalize property, PA media and officials join their Iranian patrons in offering overt and covert support.

So-called “human rights” groups strangely silent when Jews are the victims suddenly find their voices as soon as retribution is meted out.

Self-loathers, funded by far-left sources, are eagerly sought out by the media. Self-flagellating Jews make wonderful headlines, especially when they can be quoted equating Israel with Holocaust perpetrators.

The most glaring examples of how this script is following its natural course are now on full display for all to witness.

Following the successful and daring Israeli rescue of four hostages held in Gaza, each and every scenario described above has burst forth once again. It is truly a classic case of knee-jerk convulsions following a well-scripted score. It is as though a dam has burst with torrents of vitriol released, not on the heads of the terror perpetrators but rather in the face of the victim.

In no particular order of imbecility, here are some of the actors performing according to a well-worn script.

President Putin lashed out at Israel over its continuing campaign in Gaza against Hamas. It is a sign of the times that nobody challenged him over his continuing war against Ukraine and the horrendous toll of innocent civilian fatalities. It is instructive to note the absence of worldwide demonstrations and occupation of universities by the same mobs currently causing mayhem in support of Hamas.

The UN Secretary General can always be relied upon to put Israel into the dock. Sure enough, he has added Israel and Hamas to a blacklist which labels them as complicit in harming children. Hamas, Hezbollah and the PA recruit children and indoctrinate them to become jihad warriors in summer camps and UNRWA schools. The UN’s compulsive urge to equate Israel and terrorists demonstrates its continuing moral degeneracy.

After Israel targeted a UN school where Hamas terrorists were barricaded the Secretary General huffed and puffed that “”UN premises are inviolable.” If that is the case why does he not get the UN to expel terrorists who have taken over UN sites and are hiding among civilian human shields? Instead, he prefers to blacklist Israel for doing what the UN fails to do in the first place.

The EU “High Representative” (perhaps related to Gilbert & Sullivan’s Lord HIGH Executioner) called the hostage rescue operation “another massacre of civilians in Gaza.” Needless to say the media loved this and splashed his assertions all over their front pages.

Joining in the condemnation chorus was the UN Special Rapporteur, Francesca Albanese, whose litany of libels against Israel goes back quite some time. She had no qualms about labelling Israel’s hostage rescue as “genocidal.”

Right on cue, Abbas, in an effort to outflank Hamas, demanded an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council. If that ploy fails, he will no doubt turn to the General Assembly, where an automatic majority of non-democracies and dubious regimes will vote to condemn Israel for the sin of rescuing its kidnapped citizens.

Not to be left out of the anti-Israel lynch gang, Jordan and Egypt issued condemnations of Israel’s actions. The former purports to be the guardian of Muslim and Christian holy places, which, of course, excludes Jewish sites, and the latter maintains a cold relationship. In both cases, the notion of accepting Jewish legitimacy has not trickled down to the average citizen.

The aspiring Ottoman Sultan in Turkey vented his spleen yet again, calling Israel’s rescue operation “barbaric.” This is the same leader who denies the Ottoman Armenian genocide and has no hesitation in denying Kurdish ethnic aspirations by bombing and killing them.

To round off this by no means exhaustive summary of unhinged responses a few further “pearls” cannot go amiss.

Vice President Kamala Harris, no doubt in a frantic effort to appease Muslim voters, mourned the death of all the Palestinians during the rescue operation. She and others like her obviously is oblivious to the fact that without the wholehearted support of Gazans, the hostages would not have been “hosted” in homes and tunnels. The Hamas leadership is on record as praising civilian deaths as a “necessary sacrifice” and a martyrdom reward.

A US official stated, “the successful rescue complicates efforts to reach a deal.” On the one hand, the Biden Administration is full of praise, while on the other hand, it is feverishly trying to find a way to appease the kidnappers.

The Israeli operation energized self-loathers in their campaigns to denounce and decry Israelis, having the audacity to fight back. Thus, Jewish Voice for Peace trotted out the genocide libel yet again. This canard was embraced by all the usual suspects who claim to be “progressive.”  If their sort of “peace” actually eventuated, it would not be long before several more 7 Octobers managed to wipe out any Jewish presence in every part of Israel.

The BBC outdid its usual anti-Israel reporting when one of its interviewers demanded to know why Israel had not warned Gaza residents prior to rescuing the hostages.

CNN went one better when its headlines stated that the hostages “had been released,” implying that it was Hamas which had graciously released them.

This quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin sums up the cynical script now being staged worldwide:

“We are all born ignorant but one must work hard to remain stupid.” 

The hostage rescue exposed the lie of the ‘uninvolved’

The “uninvolved” were part of the Hamas system, which held all seven hostages that the IDF has so far released in “civilian” residential apartments: Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov, and Shlomi Ziv (in Nuseirat), Fernando Simon Marman and Louis Har (in Rafah) and the soldier Ori Megidish (in an apartment in the Shati refugee camp).

Many of the “uninvolved” neighbors knew. Most remained silent. Hamas itself, in order not to appear as having been negligent in guarding the hostages, admitted time and again that “the released Israeli prisoners were with civilians, not with Hamas,” thus providing further proof, for those who still needed it, of how involved the “uninvolved” were in Hamas terrorism.

David Tahar, the father of the late Sgt. Adir Tahar, who fell in the battles on Oct. 7, described how the IDF found his son’s severed head near Palestine Square in the center of Gaza, inside a backpack in a freezer in an ice cream shop. The terrorists who murdered him tried to sell his head to greedy “uninvolved” for thousands of dollars so that they could make more money off of Israel.

How quickly the world forgets. Some 20,000 “uninvolved” workers from Gaza entered Israel daily before the massacre for many long months. They were employed in the areas surrounding Gaza, Sderot, and Ofakim. Some of them prepared for the massacre and recorded details about the targets: the number of residential homes and bedrooms, the location of shelters and living rooms, how many family members lived in each house, and where cars were parked. Everything went to Hamas. It was part of the infrastructure for the pogrom. The “uninvolved’s” contribution to the horror.

The “uninvolved,” thousands of them, “demonstrated” on the eve of the massacre right next to the fence, buried explosives along it and marked weak points. They took part in the great deception operation, which succeeded for Hamas beyond all expectations.

During the massacre itself, after the infiltration, thousands of “uninvolved” arrived in the area around Gaza, some barefoot, to complete the job: murder, looting, and arson. On Oct. 7, they danced like madmen around the trucks with the kidnapped children, women, elderly, and youths, chanting “Death to the Jews,” and helping Hamas hide them.

The “uninvolved” assisted Hamas in moving rockets to hiding places. “Uninvolved” teachers taught Gazan children that it is a religious duty to kill Jews, and “uninvolved” mothers declared they were proud to send their children to battle to become “shahids” (martyrs).

During the war, it became clear that in the thousands of homes of “uninvolved” families, weapons were buried, rockets were hidden, or tunnels were dug as part of Hamas’ tunnel network in the strip. Last Saturday, some “uninvolved” joined the siege that Hamas terrorists tried to impose on the stuck rescue vehicle in which three of the hostages were staying.

The list of events in which the “uninvolved” were involved, whether in a terror-supporting environment or beyond that, is long, and there is not enough space to detail it. And yet, one more small detail: Hundreds of thousands of Gazans voted for Hamas in 2006, whose charter called for the destruction of the Jews and the State of Israel, giving it 18 out of 24 directly elected seats in the strip. They accurately reflected the choice of Gaza’s residents.

Statement Regarding Misrepresentation in The Times Article Published on June 7th 2024

We generally do not respond to press articles. However, due to the cynical exploitation of our interviews in the article published online by The Times Magazine on June 7, 2024, we feel compelled to depart from our policy.

Since October 7th we have been working actively to amplify the voices of sexual assault victims, especially in forums where such voices are often ignored. In this context, we agreed to be interviewed about the sexual violence that occurred on October 7.

Regrettably, the published article misrepresented our words, twisting them to convey the impression that we support the prejudiced argument that claims of sexual violence are being manipulated by Israel. The article aims to discredit and gaslight the victims of heinous acts of sexual violence. Hence, much of what we said was omitted, and only selective excerpts were used, taken out of context to serve the article’s agenda.

We are shocked and disappointed by the exploitation of our willingness to be interviewed and the attempt to use our expertise to give credence to the reporters’ views. The article joins those who are guilty of the unacceptable politicization of sexual violence. In this instance, the reporters’ agenda replaced the professional and ethical commitment to presenting evidence accurately.

As specialists, we are acutely aware of the attempts to manipulate public opinion at the victims’ expense, and we are walking cautiously in this minefield. understand the profound mental struggles victims endure and the delicate balance required in addressing these issues. It is our duty to ensure that the full extent of what happened is acknowledged. The use of sexual violence as a weapon of war was a significant part of the October 7 attack. Denying the evidence of such violence has become a disturbing aspect of the global pro-Palestinian discourse, adversely affecting the well-being of sexual violence survivors of the massacre, as well as survivors everywhere.

Prof. Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, of hashtagTheDinahProject 7/10 and Academic Director of The Rackman Center מרכז רקמן Bar-Ilan University; former Vice-President of the hashtagUN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (hashtagCEDAW)

Dr. Sarai Aharoni, Head of the Gender Studies Program, Ben Gurion University

Orit Sulitzeanu CEO, The Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel