Accusations Against Israel Wither Under Scrutiny

A personal note

I’m excited to share my news with you that I’m starting a new job as a full-time reporter for the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent, leaving my full-time job as a news writer for Jewish Breaking News. This is a great development for me because I will be doing the kind of journalism I love: original reporting covering events in the Greater Philadelphia Area and writing profile pieces.

For example, during the intermediate days of Sukkot, I attended an event at the Weitzman Museum of American Jewish History hosted by B’nai Brith to honor Albania and an Albanian war hero. What’s so great about Albania? Here’s a small bit of info most people never knew; I certainly didn’t until I was assigned this story while doing freelance reporting for the Jewish Exponent.

Albania is the only country in Europe that emerged from World War II with more Jews in its population than it had before the war. Astonishing! I have read extensively about WWII and the Holocaust and never knew this.

I also didn’t know that relations between Albania and Israel have been growing ever warmer. Albania has become a top destination for Israeli tourists, with Israeli tourism up by 700 percent according to the Albanian ambassador to the United States, Ervin Bushati, whom I spoke to at the event.

But what really blew me away was the story of Kadri Cakrani, the Albanian Oskar Schindler who single-handedly saved at least 600 Jews, keeping them alive right under the Nazis’ noses. His story remained a secret his whole life and since his death in 1972. It wasn’t until his family started researching the family history in 2018 that they discovered his incredible deeds during the war. You can read about it here. (The JE will ask you to open an account, but it’s free; and they don’t send annoying emails.)

An example of a profile piece I enjoyed working on was about a former academic who emerged from retirement to fight antisemitism. Edward Beck is the president emeritus of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, an organization he founded to fight Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) on college campuses across the United States, enlisting about 100,000 scholars in his service, with his crowning achievement being a letter signed by 41 Nobel laureates in 2010, which effectively shut down BDS on college campuses. You can read about him here.

All that is to say that I will be starting training next week, and it’s going to be a CRAZY time. So there won’t be a column next week.

Now onto the topic of the day.

The topic of the day

There’s always a small part of my brain that worries that maybe I am crazy, after all. Maybe the whole world is right, after all. Maybe Israel is, if not the villain the world makes it out to be, not as innocent as I would like to believe.

And then I am always amazed that the more I learn, the more I find that the case for Israel becomes stronger than ever.

The case against genocide

I’ve already shown many times over why the case for genocide simply withers away under scrutiny. But I keep finding more and more info that keeps bolstering this case. If a picture says more than a thousand words, take a look at these graphs. It’s worth taking a few minutes to just stare at and contemplate these beauties.

All these charts show in different ways the number of people killed and their share in the population by percentage during modern genocides and wars. When you look at what happened in Gaza compared to other wars and genocides, it’s waaaay down at the bottom.

I need to qualify this by saying that nothing I write here is meant to downplay or dismiss the tragedy of the loss of human life. The death of every innocent is an incalculable tragedy. War is a horror, and that horror means that innocent people die.

But that horrific fact does not turn war into genocide.

The case against mass starvation

COGAT has been having a field day — or rather field year — with this one. Recently, it released this video, which has to be seen to be believed:

And this one:

And one more, showing kids tossing around food packages for fun:

“When aid is left untouched, the conclusion is clear. Gaza is not lacking food; it is flooded with it,” COGAT declared.

“Claims of famine and widespread shortages are not supported by the facts. Continuing to promote them only serves Hamas and its efforts to manufacture a false picture of crisis in Gaza,” it said.

In May 2024, The Times of Israel reported on a study authored by what they called “a group of highly respected academics and public health officials” that showed that the amount of calories provided to Gazans daily exceeded the recommended requirements in wartime: 3,163 calories per person per day compared to the recommended standard of 2,100 calories per person per day. This was more than a year before the October 2025 ceasefire.

I think the requirement of 2,100 calories for every man, woman, and child is extremely generous, being that 2,000 calories is the minimum recommended intake for adult males. More than 3,000 per person, including babies, is a whole awful lot, if you ask me.

But the mass starvation narrative really fell apart when the Hamas Ministry of Health published this:

In the summer of that year, when it became evident that Gaza was on the cusp of a true crisis, Israel paused military operations and surged aid to Gaza, cooperating with other countries to flood the strip with food from all directions, such as air drops in addition to trucks (if memory serves).

And yet, despite all the hysteria from the international community, excess deaths from malnutrition that year turned out not to be a thing.

The accusations against Israel wither and die under scrutiny. Too bad no one is scrutinizing.

That’s it for this week. I posted my previous piece on my Times of Israel blog. Please share it across all your social media to help me gain exposure!