Israel’s flag unfurled in central war-torn Gaza sends a message of resilience and resolve.

By David E. Kaplan

Shakespeare had it ‘dead’ right with his phrase in Hamlet “Hoist with his own petard” meaning that a bomb-maker is blown off the ground by his own bomb (“petard“), indicating an ironic reversal or poetic justice. In plain English, the bombmaker is the author of his own misfortune.

It should apply to Gaza that began a war with a barrage of thousands of rockets and a massacre to bloody again the pages of Jewish history. However, the world not only does not see it that way, it purposely protects Hamas’ pseudo image of liberator and purposely prevents the truth of what happened in Israel from finding any traction to a global audience.

Take for example the observations of British journalist and commentator Douglas Murray currently visiting Israel and Gaza. He cited what transpired at Al-Shifa Hospital Gaza’s largest medical facility, when following Hamas’ denial that hospitals were used by the terror group, Israel released closed-circuit TV footage of some hostages being dragged into the hospital, as well as showing a cache of weapons. However, as soon as the evidence exposed Hamas’ lies and deceptions, TV news networks reflexively concocted new narratives to excuse Hamas and blacken Israel.

“The minute they show that the hospital has an arms dump inside it,” says Murray,“and has a load of Kalashnikovs and grenades, Jeremy Bowen of the BBC is asked about it and says, ‘Well, it is not inconceivable that the Kalashnikovs belonged to the hospital’s security department.’”

Sarcastically but poignantly, Murray responded the following day on television saying:

“Yeah, and its possible the grenades were for the cardiology department.”

A joke maybe, but Murray really gets into the “heart” of the issue that no matter how compelling the evidence in support of Israel, it will never be strong enough to overcome embedded bias.

This is the nature of antisemitism. After all, 2000 years is a more than respectable time period to prove a point of prejudice!

Not only is there a manipulation of news against Israel but there is an active attempt to deny news if it supports Israel. Take what happened recently in Canada which exposes how the international news networks are long disinterested in what happened to the Jews on October 7; only what the Jews are doing to Palestinians post October 7.

The images of the October 7 massacre – of decapitated bodies, burned babies, bloodstained bedrooms, mangled remains of raped girls – are faded memories facilitated by a complicit media erasing the imagery as if it never happened. An example of this avoidance by the media is what took place recently in Montreal as reported by a former South African, Israel’s consul-general, Paul Hirschon, who Lay of the Land interviewed some years ago when he returned from his position as Israel’s ambassador to Senegal.

In an interview with The Jerusalem Post (December 22,2023), Hirschon spoke of his attempt to organise a private showing in Montreal of unreleased footage of the October 7 massacre in Israel. He received “a reply from someone at Radio Canada that no one could attend as Radio Canada was busy that day.”

Actual, factual visual evidence of a massacre and the reply to the Israeli consul-general is a disrespectful:

 “Busy that day”!

Hirschon later heard that Radio Canada would not come to the screening because:

 “They want to remain neutral”.

How does one remain neutral to a massacre? Apparently very easy when its Canadians and the victims are Jews. Did not a Canadian official not respond to the appeal for safe refuge by Jewish refugees during the Nazi Holocaust, “that even one Jew was too many.”

It is quite staggering but no less revealing as Hirschon bemoans:

“Radio Canada’s decision to avoid exposure to significant and relevant material on a subject they are giving extensive coverage to.”

What this incident reveals is that the media is facilitating transforming:

 “NEVER AGAIN” to NEVER HAPPENED.

How do Gazans – who could agree to free the hostages today and end the war tomorrow – get away portraying themselves as the innocent victims, free of any responsibility of what is befalling them now? Their battalions of spokespeople, including the complicit global media babble on that the Gazan people are not responsible for the actions of Hamas although they are their elected leadership ruling them for the better part of two decades and according to a respected Palestinian  poll, if an election were held today, Hamas would be reelected not only in Gaza but the Wast Bank as well and by an overwhelming majority.

This is what the world and the global media ignore!

As far as I’m concerned, I’m done with media manipulation repeatedly churning out the same sights in Gaza of urban rubble, to stir up the street crowd into a frenzied state to go out and potentially commit – pogroms. The example was set on October 7, and Hamas has proudly announced it will happen “again and again and again.”

“Israel must be removed,” says Hamas official Ghazi Hamad. Can one doubt this intent after October 7 and that it would not be replicated on any of Israel’s other borders?

With antisemitism rampant across the world as affirmed even by governments and statemen admitting, “it is no longer safe for Jews anywhere,” it is even more reason that Israel has to restore its deterrence and emphatically expunge the evil that descended on it on October 7. As I expressed in my previous article, Israel needs to transform its image from the sitting duck of October 7 to the once feared Lion of Judea. If not to be loved as the world reminds us, let us be feared.

So, unlike most overseas observers of the TV news, when I look upon the devastated landscape of Gaza today, I pine not.

Inflict us with your murderous RABBLE, expect to find yourself in RUBBLE.

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

You said “Never Again” and we believed you. When it comes to Jews, “Again” you remain silent

By Rolene Marks

Dear United Nations

In a few weeks’ time, member states of the United Nations will commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance and Memorial Day. The 27^th of January, is designated as a day of remembrance to coincide with the anniversary of the Red Army liberating the Auschwitz death camp. It is a day separate to Yom Hashoa, Israel’s national Memorial Day. UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres will look suitably solemn, make speeches, and attend ceremonies where he will say “Never Again” and talk about the imperative of memorial and fighting antisemitism. Many world leaders will do the same. In the halls of the UN and around the world, you will all give yourselves a perfunctory pat on the back and look suitably smug. You will acknowledge the Holocaust, looked sad for a day (and those photo opportunities because optics are important) and can tick your annual gesture to the genocide of the Jewish people off your to-do list. Ceremonies done, lip service paid, you can resume your sanctimony.

The United Nations, established out of the ashes of the Holocaust, has a founding document or mandate to protect human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction of race, sex, language, or religion. You said Never Again – and we believed you.

Then 7 October happened. You were silent. The noble tenets of your mandate discarded and replaced with a wall of immovable silence.

When the marauding, plundering, barbaric Hamas terrorists rained thousands of rockets down on Israeli civilians with the intention of murdering us, you said nothing.

Your social media feeds are filled with tweets about Gaza – the children in Gaza, the women in Gaza, the plight of Palestinians in Gaza. Nobody begrudges you that. Nobody is more acutely aware of the plight of Gazan civilians than Israelis are. This is why we are angry and frustrated that Hamas invited this war of wars on both our people. Your silence and that of your agencies UNICEF, UNRWA, UN Women and others about the plight of Israelis is deafening.

The United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) has been conspicuous in their absence of commentary – and empathy for Israeli child victims of the 7/10 atrocities. Where is the litany of tweets in support of Israeli children; don’t they deserve protection in a time of war? Where are your demands for the release of Kfir and Ariel Bibas and other minors held hostage by Hamas? Have you met with the children released from captivity and heard their stories? Have you visited the children from the towns and kibbutzim who have lost their homes, family members, friends, parents and community? They are enduring an unprecedented wave of trauma. Do you realise how many children are internal refugees, having evacuated from their homes in the north and south of Israel? You have not expressed your sorrow and anger about the brutal murder, torture, mutilation and rapes of Israeli children. Why is that? Do their lives not count? Why did you have fundraising campaigns for children of Gaza but nothing for Israeli children? Don’t worry, we hear you loud and clear. Our children don’t count – at least in your eyes.

You advocate for children in Gaza, but where were you when Hamas used child labour to dig their terror tunnels? Many children have died as a result and you have been silent so don’t start with the hypocritical pearl clutching now. Where were you when children were recruited by terrorists to use as child soldiers? Nowhere. I want to talk to you about education of hate but I think that is more applicable to another UN agency – UNRWA.

Let us talk about UNRWA, the United Nations Relief Works Agency, designed to keep Palestinians in perpetual, generational refugee status. For years, various organisations have been warning that not only do Hamas use UNRWA schools and hospitals to store weapons but also textbooks are rife with incitement of hate. Some of your trucks were found on the devastated kibbutzim and as the IDF advance through Gaza we are seeing UNRWA branding in tunnels, on packages and boxes with weapons inside and we know that some of your staff were celebrating the massacre.

The New York Post obtained phone call recordings between a Palestinian man and an IDF officer. The Palestinian civilians accused UNRWA, of being under Hamas’ power, and that the terrorist group has been hogging all the humanitarian supplies. Humanitarian aid that civilians desperately need.

“The situation is terrible because the humanitarian people, those responsible for the humanitarian aid, are thieves,” the frustrated Gaza resident said in the recording.

“Hamas has their hands on UNRWA administration workers, and it manages UNRWA,” he alleges. “From the day they [Hamas] rose to power they took control of everything.”

The Palestinian man also said that Hamas has made sure the incoming humanitarian supplies were distributed to its own people first as opposed to the more than one million civilians who have been displaced by the war.

How do you explain this? Your social media has a black band across your name, indicating a state of mourning, but if your “staff”, some who celebrated the atrocities of 7/10 and some who have been investigated over the years for incitement of hate, are Hamas or assisting Hamas, this makes them legitimate military targets.

The World Health Organisation, also a part of your once venerated organization, has also opted for silence or perhaps amnesia as a reason to not condemn or even comment on the firing on ambulances and hospitals. Director General, Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, said nothing when Barzilai hospital in Ashkelon was hit 4 times by Hamas rockets which in one incident, seriously damaged operating theatres. Nothing was said when Hamas terrorists fired on ambulances on 7/10, destroying them before they could be used to help the wounded. Hamas murdered paramedics like Awad, a Muslim and Amit a Jew. They were found with their latex gloves on. They helped the wounded until Hamas took the last breath from their bodies. World Health Organisation branding was visible in Al- Rantisi Hospital, where the evidence shows some of our hostages were kept there. Hamas have used hospitals as human shields, violating their secure status and turning them into legitimate military targets and still you condemn Israel. Did you forget the oath to “first do no harm”?

Last but certainly not least, I want to address UN Women.

You took nearly 60 days to tweet out that you were “alarmed at reports of sexual violence”. Well, I was not alarmed – I was sickened, distraught, devastated and angry when I first saw the images of Shany Louk’s lifeless and nearly naked body, her legs broken as she was paraded like a trophy through the streets of Gaza, while Palestinian men kicked her and spat on her. I felt a punch not to my gut but to my soul when I saw Naama Levy, who is still being held hostage, dragged by her hair by a Hamas terrorist, the bloodstains around her crotch area for the entire world to see that she had been violated. You should have voiced you anger and condemnation when the world watched with horror – not 60 days later!

Naama’s mother, Ayelet Levy Shachar speaks with a gentle voice and when she talks about her Na’ama in a tone so filled with love, it makes me want to wrap my arms around her and shield her from the pain of knowing what her daughter has and continues to endure. UN Women, you have barely acknowledged her or the pain of other mothers and fathers – let alone the victims. We have heard from doctors who treated the released hostages that several of them, including girls as young as 12 and at least one 30-year-old male had been sexually violated. US officials believe the young women have not been released for the simple reason – they will talk. They will tell the world what they have endured. You are still silent. You have betrayed your mandate – and the trust of victims of sexual violence past and present. When rape is used as a weapon of war, you should be the first to respond. Your prejudice has been exposed for the entire world to see.

Israel’s war with Hamas has exposed not only the gross negligence of the UN and all your agencies, but has shown the public how complicit you are with a terror organization comparable to ISIS. On 27 January, you will observe Holocaust Remembrance and Memorial Day and you will say Never Again. Never again is now – and you failed to prevent or even condemn it.

Shame on you!

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

Red Cross spending more time defending its shameful record than doing its job

By Jonathan Feldstein

There are reports circulating in Israel of high-level talks involving negotiations to release more of the hostages brutally kidnapped by Hamas terrorists on October 7, and held captive in Gaza since. Reports of the hostages’ conditions from the 100+ who have been released are horrifying. They have suffered physical and psychological torture, starvation, held in underground cages in complete darkness, and suffered violent sexual assaults including gang raping women. Speculation is that many are dead, as some of the hostages’ bodies have been found, littered across Gaza as if trash rather than human beings.

When Israel launched its military operation, it had two goals: to eradicate Hamas and remove it and its leaders from any ability to ever control Gaza and its population or threaten Israel, and to free ALL the hostages. Over the course of a week last month, Israelis were glued to the TV every night as Hamas paraded out more hostages, mostly women and children, under the voyeurism of the world media. But some 130 hostages remain in captivity: Arab and Jewish Israelis, and non-Jews of other nationalities. Still, many of the hostages are women and children, one of whom is 10 months old, doesn’t even know his name, and who has spent nearly a third of his life in captivity.

While Israelis celebrated the return of some of the hostages, we were impacted by the psychological warfare that Hamas inflicted. Manipulating the hostages until the last moment, armed and masked terrorists “escorted” the hostages, instructing them to wave for the camera.

The terrorists handed off the hostages to representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), as if batons in a relay race, a scene rehearsed night after night. Israelis who watched the spectacle understood that Hamas was trying to appear humanitarian, and that the Red Cross was inept, playing the role of useful idiot or complicit partner to Hamas’ evil. They did nothing until that point to see or assess the well-being of all the hostages, not providing needed medical care, or anything else that is not only their mandate but their responsibility.

The ICRC’s mission is to “alleviate human suffering, protect life and health, and uphold human dignity,” especially during armed conflicts and other emergencies. It has an annual budget of $2.4 billion. By their own measure of fulfilling its own mission, they have been nothing but an expensive abject failure relating to the hostages.

Early on I realized that the Red Cross was serving as nothing more than a glorified Uber service. Yet there was one horrific difference. The Red Cross, which is supposed to protect the welfare of hostages and others, provided vehicles with clear windows, not remotely attempting to provide any privacy or dignity for the hostages or their well-being. It’s as if they were flaunting their prime-time shuttling of hostages to get maximal world attention, and take credit, more than doing their job.

It’s not the first time that the Red Cross has abandoned its responsibilities, and the Jewish people.  During the Holocaust, the Red Cross avoided taking more aggressive action on behalf of the Jews of Europe and even issued a report white washing the Nazi concentration camp Terezin. Only decades, and six million Jews later, the ICRC admitted its wrong doing.  

Watching the hostages being released put a spotlight on the Red Cross’ inaction. Visiting Israel, the head of the ICRC balked at taking responsibility for advocating on behalf of the hostages, claiming that Hamas won’t allow it, rather than insisting Hamas comply. In another shocking instance, a Red Cross representative horrifyingly chided families of hostages to “think about the Palestinians.”

Looking at its (in)action today, it seems that the Red Cross is spending more time defending its shameful record than it is actually doing its job.

Israelis and Jews are typically not familiar with Christianity, yet many have a reflexive negative stereotype based on millennia of persecution. Historically, Jews feared Christians, their churches, and were revolted by the cross and everything it represented as a symbol of hatred to Jews.

At a time when Christian support for Israel and the Jewish people is at historically unprecedented highs, this should bother Christians deeply. I have asked Christian friends if it angers or hurts them to see the cross, the penultimate symbol of their faith, being used to promote discrimination against Jews and Israelis. It’s not a time for Christians to turn the other cheek, but to reclaim what their faith stands for as represented by the cross, and affirming that to be a Christian means to love and support the Jewish people.

As much as it is shameful that the Red Cross has failed the Jews so abysmally again, another shame of the Red Cross is that the symbol of the cross has been hijacked by the ICRC to portray a negative reflection on Christians.

As I saw the hostages being released, I saw terrorists hiding behind their masks, and the ICRC staff hiding behind the purported neutrality of their cross. I realized that while some Israelis will recognize the Red Cross’ symbol, for many it is equivalent to seeing something Christian. With many Israelis not knowing much about Christianity, or having much interaction with Christians, for many the treacherousness of the Red Cross complements the historic reality of Christians persecuting Jews.

Even though the Red Cross doesn’t represent Christianity, it is time that Christians take back their cross and what it represents. I realize that some will find it unusual, even off-putting and say it’s not my place as an Orthodox Jew to tell Christians what to think or do.  There’s surely something to that. But because I am concerned about building bridges between Jews and Christians which includes breaking down barriers and how Jews look at and perceive Christians and Christianity, I care.  Maybe it comes across with great hubris to say if I were a Christian I’d do so and so.  Nevertheless, if I were a Christian, I’d:

Urge Christians to flood the virtual gates of the ICRC, demanding that they do their job and stop their history of antisemitism.

Implore Christians speak out publicly against the Red Cross, and its history of antisemitic bias that continues to play out today.  

Tell Christians to stop giving to the Red Cross, anywhere, unless there is a complete and permanent overhaul of their anti-Israel bias everywhere.  

Beseech Christians to sign the petition demanding that the Red Cross support the well being and freedom of ALL the hostages.

I don’t know if it’s possible or has any legal basis, but if I were a Christian, I would initiate a lawsuit against the Red Cross, barring it from using the word “cross” or the symbol of a cross anywhere because of the slanderous way it reflects on Christians and Christianity.

These are big wishes for Christmas, but Jews and Christians worship a big God. If we come together, these are little things we can achieve. And if not, I am sure that $2.4 billion can be better used.

May all the hostages be released soon.

About the writer:

Jonathan Feldstein ­­­­- President of the US based non-profit Genesis123 Foundation whose mission is to build bridges between Jews and Christians – is a freelance writer whose articles appear in The Jerusalem Post, Times of Israel, Townhall, NorthJersey.com, Algemeiner Jornal, The Jewish Press, major Christian websites and more.

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).