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News from Syria shouldn’t distract from what’s been going on in Gaza
By BERNIE BELLAN Amidst the head-spinning news coming out of Syria this past week, it’s easy to forget that there is still a war going on in Gaza. What, exactly, Israel’s government is trying to accomplish there now is not easy to figure out.
The Israel Defense Forces would seem to have achieved all their military goals, including completely nullifying Hamas and Islamic Jihad as threats to Israel, so what more does the Israeli government (and here, I want to clearly differentiate between the goals of the government and the goals of the IDF) hope to accomplish?
In asking that, I want to reflect on two recent articles that appeared in Haaretz. One was about a Hebrew University professor by the name of Lee Mordechai, who has been carefully cataloguing war crimes that the IDF has been committing in Gaza.
Here is the introduction to that Haaretz article: “A woman with a child is shot while waving a white flag ■ Starving girls are crushed to death in line for bread ■ A cuffed 62-year-old man is run over, evidently by a tank ■ An aerial strike targets people trying to help a wounded boy ■ A database of thousands of videos, photos, testimonies, reports and investigations documents the horrors committed by Israel in Gaza”
The article goes on to note that “The report Dr. Mordechai has compiled online – “Bearing Witness to the Israel-Gaza War” – constitutes the most methodical and detailed documentation in Hebrew (there is also an English translation) of the war crimes that Israel is perpetrating in Gaza. It is a shocking indictment comprised of thousands of entries relating to the war, to the actions of the government, the media, the Israel Defense Forces and Israeli society in general.”
In talking with many people about what’s been going on in Gaza over the past year and a half, the reaction I often receive when I suggest that Israel achieved all its military goals very early on in this war is: “Good, let them keep on hitting them so that they’ll never pose a threat to Israelis again.”
That’s understandable, but the dehumanization of the Palestinians in Gaza is something that many of us find detestable. If Israeli soldiers have lowered themselves to the same level of brutality as their enemies, is that anything to be proud of?
As for the rationalizations that by now we’ve become so accustomed to hearing – that you have to fight dirty when you’re fighting terrorists or that the IDF maintains the highest principles of conduct – notwithstanding any evidence to the contrary, simply don’t excuse the kinds of behaviour that Dr. Mordechai describes in graphic detail in his report.
As if that weren’t enough to lead one to doubt Israel’s ongoing campaign in Gaza – which is being pushed forward by the right wing forces who are calling the shots within the Likud-led government of Israel, there was yet another thorough indictment of Israel’s strategy offered up recently, this time by former Defense Minister and Army Chief of Staff Moshe Ayalon, who accused the IDF of engaging in “ethnic cleansing” in northern Gaza.
In an interview with Channel 12 news in Israel, Ayalon maintained that “The IDF is not the most moral army in the world.”
Later in that same interview, Ayalon offered two clarifications of what he meant by using the term “ethnic cleansing.” According to a report, also in Haaretz, Ayalon explained that “First, his definition of ethnic cleansing did not include genocide, but rather ‘evacuating civilians from their homes and demolishing those homes, as is happening in Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya.’ He also said that he does not hold the military responsible for these crimes but rather the government, in particular far-right lawmakers like National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Betzalel Smotritch, who have repeatedly declared their intentions to build Jewish settlements in Gaza.”
I would venture to say that, if you didn’t know who it was that offered that assessment of what Israel has been doing in Gaza, you would likely think that it came from one of the usual suspects, such as UN Secretary-General António Guterres. The fact that it came from a former Israeli defense minister, also a former IDF chief of staff, not to mention a member of the Likud Party, should lend it some credibility.
But, in the black and white worldview that permeates so many individuals’ thinking when it comes to what Israel has been doing in Gaza, Ayalon would no doubt simply fall into the category of naive critics of Israeli policy according to so many defenders of Israeli government policy.
It’s hard to know where readers of this publication stand, however, on what Israel has been doing in Gaza. There have been almost no letters to the editor commenting on this particular issue – not that letters to the editor offer a true picture of people’s thinking. Further, I don’t make it a habit of engaging everyone I meet in a conversation centering on Israel’s strategic goals in Gaza. Frankly, as is with the case involving a discussion of Donald Trump, tempers can flare easily – and trying to engage in a relatively dispassionate conversation about either Gaza or Trump isn’t easy.
But, a recent survey conducted by three different Canadian Jewish groups shows how diverse opinions are among Canadian Jews are when it comes to Israel.
The survey was conducted by marketing firm Leger and was sponsored by the New Israel Fund, JSpaceCanada and Canadian Friends of Peace Now.
Here are some of the findings from that survey:
• While 84% of Canada’s Jews say they are “very” or “somewhat” emotionally attached to Israel and 94% percent support the existence of Israel as a Jewish state, just 51% of Canadian Jews consider themselves Zionists.
• The poll also found that 34% of Canadian Jews believe the continued building of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank hurts Israel’s security, with only 27% saying they believe it helps Israel’s security. The remainder of those polled either said it made no difference or they didn’t know.
• Most Canadian Jews still believe that the ideal outcome to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a two-state solution – a Jewish state of Israel alongside an Arab state of Palestine, with 61% support amongst Canadian Jews with an opinion on the subject. 55% of Canadian Jews agree that Canadian politicians should increase pressure on Israeli and Palestinian leaders to engage in a meaningful peace process.
• Canadian Jews are also more likely to indicate their intention to vote for the federal Conservative party if the election were to be held tomorrow, with 55% indicating support for the Conservatives, and 26% for the Liberals. These trends are similar to those in the general population, but the decline in Liberal support and increase in Conservative support is more pronounced among Jews.
I would suggest that the majority of Canadian Jews don’t pay much attention to what Jewish federations do – and here it’s important to note that determining who is Jewish is not easy – as I showed repeatedly ever since the results of the 2020 census came out. (For instance, I was able to establish that only 6700 Winnipeggers identified as Jewish both in terms of their religion and ethnicity in that census.)
The groups that conducted this most recent survey of Canadian Jews’ attitudes would likely not be considered mainstream Jewish organizations in the sense that they do not follow along with what our Jewish federations and CIJA would suggest is the nominal position of most Canadian Jews on Israel. All three are highly critical of Israeli government policies and all three strive to promote peaceful co-existence among Israeli Jews and Palestinians.
Yet, by referring to the work done by Prof. Mordecai documenting Israeli war crimes in Gaza, the assessment that Moshe Ayalon offered that what Israel has been doing lately in Gaza amounts to “ethnic cleansing,” and the recent survey of Canadian Jews’ attitudes towards Israel, I wanted to show how thoughtful Jews – whether they’re in Israel or in Canada, can hold highly divergent opinions from what you are likely to read in most Jewish media (including The Jewish Post). If nothing else, if I can get some readers to consider different viewpoints when it comes to thinking about Israel, I will have accomplished something.
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Australia’s Jewish History Might Have Unfolded Differently
People attend the ‘Light Over Darkness’ vigil honoring victims and survivors of a deadly mass shooting during a Jewish Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach on Dec. 14, in Sydney, Australia, Dec. 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Hollie Adams
The deadly pogrom that took place in Australia at a Hanukkah event on Bondi Beach was the culmination of more than two years of hate and violence directed at Jews following the October 7 Hamas terror attack on Israel.
Australian Jews have learned that what they once considered to be one of the safest and most comfortable places in the world to be a Jew, is anything but. Yet the Jewish experience in Australia might have been very different.
The idea of a Jewish refuge somewhere other than Israel predates the modern Zionist movement. In the 20th century, two possible havens for Jewish refugees were considered during the lead up to World War II; both were rejected.
The more widely known effort involved a proposal for a refuge in Alaska. It was the initiative of Harold Ickes, US Secretary of the Interior, who was concerned that Alaska’s sparse population (only 70,000) would make it a tempting target for attack. (This story is the historical basis for Michael Chabon’s 2007 novel The Yiddish Policemen’s Union.) The proposal received only lukewarm support from President Roosevelt and after three days of presentations to the US Senate Committee on Territories and Insular Affairs in May 1940, it died.
The second effort, less widely known, involved a proposed Jewish sanctuary in Australia, a possibility I learned about only recently when I was going through some Yiddish literature left by my parents.
I grew up in Montreal, the son of Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe.
For the first half of the 20th century, Montreal, the home of writers such as the poet J. I. Segal, was a major center of North American Yiddish culture. My parents would often mention Melech Ravitch, pen name for Zecharia-Chune Bergner, a well- known Yiddish poet and essayist, who was a leading figure in Montreal Yiddish circles.
I discovered that Ravitch, originally from Poland, spent several years during the 1930s in Australia, before ending up in Montreal. While there, he investigated the feasibility of establishing a haven for Jewish refugees in a sparsely inhabited region of northwestern Australia known as the Kimberley.
The proposal, backed by a European group, the Freeland League, would involve the purchase of land (a little over 10,000 square miles) in Western and Northern Australia. An advance contingent of 500 Jewish refugees from Europe would begin the process of creating a settlement, followed by 75,000 to 100,000 people to follow. Ravich envisioned an eventual population of one million, this at a time when the population of Australia as a whole was less than seven million.
The company that owned the land agreed to sell the desired tract, and leading religious and public figures, including the Premier of Western Australia, were in favor. But opposition at the federal level prevented the plan from moving forward. The League was informed that the Australian Government, led by Prime Minister John Curtin, was not in favor of “alien settlement in Australia.”
The Australian government was consistent. The Évian Conference, held in July 1938 at the French resort city of Évian les Bains, was initiated by President Roosevelt to find a solution to the plight of hundreds of thousands of stateless European Jews. Thirty-two nations, including Australia, participated. The conference achieved very little. The Australian chief delegate, Colonel T. W. White, declared “as we have no real racial problem, we are not desirous of importing one by encouraging any scheme of large-scale foreign migration.”
The Jews murdered in the Holocaust were doomed by worldwide indifference to their fate, but also by the fact that there was no independent Jewish state that could have served as a refuge when they needed one. That’s why Israel is needed now — and why an Australian refuge would have made such a huge difference nearly 100 years ago.
Jacob Sivak, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is a retired professor, University of Waterloo.
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Debunked Hamas Casualty Figures and Their Impact on Reporting
Palestinian gunmen stand guard on the day that hostages held in Gaza since the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack, are handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), as part of a ceasefire and hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Oct. 13, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Since October 7, 2023, Hamas has shaped global public opinion through its propaganda warfare. The terrorist organization excitedly recorded and uploaded the atrocities committed against Israelis that day to social media platforms, and those who saw any trace of it were rightfully horrified.
But shortly after, when the images weren’t as fresh and no longer front-page news, Hamas turned to a new strategy — playing victim to the Israeli army. And since then, the media has run with it.
For instance, on October 17, 2023, reports claimed an explosion occurred inside the Al-Ahli Hospital. The media rushed to re-print Hamas’ claim that more than 500 people had been killed.
Evidence then came out that displayed it was a parking lot adjacent to the hospital that had been hit by a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket, and the casualties were fewer than reported.
The media has continued this pattern since. Any death toll that the Hamas-run Ministry of Health (MoH) publishes is immediately reported on by Western media, oftentimes without any attribution to Hamas.
This has resulted in blood libels being printed on the front pages of newspapers, blaming Israel for targeting non-combatants, including women and children.
But the vast majority of the casualty numbers that have been used throughout the war have been purposefully misrepresented by Hamas.
As of December 2025, the Hamas-run MoH has claimed that over 70,000 people have died in Gaza since the start of the war.
But further analysis done by Salo Aizenberg, a board member of HonestReporting, displays that this includes the casualties of Hamas fighters, natural deaths, and internal fighting amongst Gazans.
While the analysis is based on informed estimates, and the precise toll may take years to verify, it nonetheless highlights the extent to which Gaza casualty figures have been misrepresented in media coverage over the past two years.
Although it is difficult to determine the exact number of terrorists killed by the IDF since the beginning of the war, estimates suggest the number to be more than 22,000 as of October 2025, not including those who were killed during the terrorist attacks on October 7. President Donald Trump has confirmed the number to be greater than 25,000, the number used in Aizenberg’s analysis.
Beyond combatants, throughout the war, there were likely to be around 11,000 natural deaths, based on pre-war patterns. Another 4,000 deaths were caused by internal fighting within Gaza from different factions, including firing on civilians at aid sites or executions of individuals Hamas deemed to be collaborating with Israel. An additional 1,000 estimated deaths can be attributed to errors in reporting.
After removing these casualty numbers from the total of 70,000, there are a remaining 54,000 deaths. Of the 54,000, one can reasonably assume that around 25,000 were terrorists, leaving 36,000 civilian casualties. While every innocent civilian casualty is a tragedy, this is nonetheless a remarkably low civilian-to-combatant ratio of 1.45:1, especially given the circumstances of urban warfare.
Visualization based on data by Salo Aizenberg.
These numbers entirely dispute the claims that the majority of deaths are civilians — a claim the media has previously made. One “investigative” piece done by The Guardian and +972 Magazine, published in the summer of 2025, claimed that 83% of casualties were civilians.
What the outlets willfully omitted, however, was that this figure counted only terrorists whom the IDF had identified before the war and could conclusively confirm as eliminated, excluding thousands of combatants who could not be identified during the fighting. By presenting this partial dataset as comprehensive, the article created a misleading impression that was then cited as authoritative.
This information is not necessarily new either.
A December 2024 report by the Henry Jackson Society found that 84% of the publications analyzed failed to make the critical distinction in total numbers between combatant deaths and civilian deaths, further illustrating the extent to which misleading casualty narratives have been allowed to take hold. The report also found that men of combat age were disproportionally represented, and natural deaths were included in casualty statistics.
Perhaps even more telling is the ratio between male and female casualties. Males of combat age (18-59) died at 3x the rate of women the same age, resulting in a 3:1 ratio. The 32,690 deaths of men of combat age account for 46.7% of total casualties.
Visualization based on data by Salo Aizenberg.
Outlets, including the Associated Press, BBC, and Washington Post, have all previously parroted the claim that 70% of the casualties in the war were women and children. Naturally, it was based on falsified data, and the new casualty analysis once again disproves this claim.
Even after the UN walked back this percentage due to incomplete information, news outlets have continued to print that more than half of the casualties are women and children.
Throughout the two years of war, the media have repeatedly reprinted Hamas’ libels and casualty figures with little skepticism, allowing a terrorist organization to shape the narrative without rigorous analysis or verification.
Inflated civilian casualty claims will continue to distort public understanding of the war by obscuring the true civilian-to-combatant and male-to-female casualty ratios.
It is therefore only responsible journalism for every outlet that published Hamas’ casualty figures without questioning them to issue corrections and acknowledge that not every casualty during the war has been the result of IDF action.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
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Fatah’s Gender Equality Terror: ‘Since the Start, Women Have Been Partners in the Struggle’
Palestinian demonstrators display a poster showing terrorist Dalal Mughrabi alongside the late PLO leader Yasser Arafat. Photo: File.
In two recent videos, Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah Movement highlights its message to youth: Female terrorist murderers are heroes, and should be emulated.
Fatah’s university student group for women, “Sisters of Dalal,” is named after terrorist Dalal Mughrabi, who led the murder of 37 people, 12 of them children.
Introducing one of the videos, Fatah presented “Sisters of Dalal” as a continuation of terrorist murderer Dalal Mughrabi:
Posted text: “The Sisters of Dalal Mughrabi
Not only yesterday, but today on every front; symbols of sacrifice and creators of pride and self-sacrifice.“
Fatah’s video showed various images of Mughrabi. At the end of the video, young female students are seen standing in formation while wearing vests with the text: “Al-Asifa Forces (i.e., Fatah terror unit) — Sisters of Dalal.” The video included a song with the following lyrics:
Lyrics of song: “O lady of the girls, O noble and brave one, O women wrapped in keffiyehs
O lady of the girls, O daughter of the Shabiba. Pride and firmness. She is equal to a brigade”
[Fatah Commission of Information and Culture, Facebook page, Nov. 26, 2025]
In a second video, a Fatah official praised murderer Mughrabi as the woman “who led a group of men” to carry out “a self-sacrificing operation” — i.e., the hijacking of a bus and taking Israeli passengers hostage, eventually murdering 37 of them, 12 of them children.
The Fatah official presented as an achievement that women have always been “partners in the struggle,” and that the student group for women is named after a murderer:
Fatah intellectual academy leadership council member Ala’ Mleitat: “Since the start of Fatah, women have been partners in the struggle.
‘The Sisters of Dalal’ in the Fatah Shabiba [Student Movement] are named after our sister Dalal Mughrabi, the great Martyr who led a group of men to the Palestinian [i.e., Israeli] coast to carry out a self-sacrificing operation.” [emphasis added]
[Fatah-run Awdah TV Live, Facebook page, Nov. 25, 2025]
Palestinian Media Watch has previously documented the status of role model given to Dalal Mughrabi by the PA.
The author is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this story first appeared.