Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, December 22, 2025

12/22 Links Pt2: Lion-Eater of Judah; Inventing a Nonexistent Famine Should Be a Credibility Killer; Cheers for Ben Shapiro; Vance’s Friends Without Benefits; The Problem Is Mamdani

“Never since the days of Judas Maccabaeus had such sights and sounds been seen and heard in a military camp,” wrote Colonel John Patterson in his 1916 memoir With the Zionists in Gallipoli. If Judas had visited this “great camp with the tents of the Children of Israel,” Patterson went on:
He would have heard the Hebrew tongue spoken on all sides, and seen a host of Sons of Judah drilling to the same words of command he used to those gallant soldiers who fought the Romans: he would have heard the plaintive soul-stirring music of the Maccabean hymn chanted by the men as they marched through the camps. Although it was only a mule corps, yet it was (potentially) a fighting unit and of this the men were all very proud.

As Natan Slifkin recounts in his recently published The Lions of Zion, the Irish-born British soldier was, like the Maccabees he so admired, a fighter of both animals and men. More importantly, as commander of the Zion Mule Corps in World War I and later the 38th battalion of the Royal Fusiliers, which came to be known as the Jewish Legion, he, like those hearty Hasmoneans, helped revive the Jewish national project.

Patterson’s early-career adventures earned him not one but four Hollywood adaptations. In 1898, he killed two man-eating lions that had been chomping their way through a railway construction project in British East Africa. As he would recall years later:
I have never experienced anything more nerve-shaking than to hear the deep roars of these dreadful monsters growing nearer and nearer, and to know that some one or other of us was doomed to be their victim before morning dawned. . . . Shouts would then pass from camp to camp “Beware, brothers, the devil is coming,” but the warning cries would prove of no avail; and sooner or later agonizing shrieks would break the silence, and another man would be missing from roll call next morning.

Hollywood couldn’t resist. Bwana Devil, a 1952 United Artists production, was the first color film made in 3D. Four decades later, in the late 90’s, there was the Man-eaters of Tsavo, a documentary based on Patterson’s memoir by the same name. In a fictionalized version released around the same time, Val Kilmer played the adventurer in Paramount’s Ghost and the Darkness. More recently, the Yellowstone prequel series 1923 featured a character, Spencer Dutton, inspired by the courageous colonel.

Seth Mandel: Inventing a Nonexistent Famine Should Be a Credibility Killer

It’s obviously great news that there was no famine in Gaza. It is terrible news that the organizations responsible for informing the world of such conditions knew the whole time that there was no famine and manipulated data in order to spread false accusations against Israel. The “famine” narrative materially affected the war by convincing supposed members of the democratic alliance to withhold supplies from Israel and force Israel to resupply Hamas, thereby prolonging the war and costing additional Israeli and Palestinian lives. The wider “child killer” narrative, meanwhile, has been part of a global campaign of ever-escalating violence against Jews around the world.

If the objectively false “Israel is deliberately starving babies” narrative never takes hold, the war ends sooner and the Global Intifada is starved of some of its oxygen. It’s a no-brainer, then, that anyone who contributed to the spread of that narrative should be considered outside the bounds of respectable opinion. They can be free to post deranged material to social media just like anybody else, but they should be given no legitimacy by governments and academics and the media.

That last one might be too much to hope for, of course. The Associated Press “report” on the IPC’s acknowledgement of improved conditions in Gaza begins this way: “The spread of famine has been averted in the Gaza Strip, but the situation remains critical with the entire Palestinian territory still facing starvation, the world’s leading authority on food crises said Friday.”

Let’s just be clear: “famine has been averted” is thankfully true of most places in the world today. And if famine was averted, why the passive phrasing? Doesn’t that mean someone was getting food to Gazans even while their own government was hoarding it from them? And wouldn’t that someone be… the State of Israel?

Yes, it would. So here’s what happened: Hamas tried to bring a famine upon the people of Gaza, and Israel (at great risk) made sure to deliver enough food and supplies to stop that from happening even while Gaza’s armed forces remained at war with Israel. In their disappointment that there was no famine, Hamas’s allies in the NGO world pretended there was famine anyway, so that they could also lie about Israel’s efforts to supply Gaza. And a major global news wire rewarded them by telling readers they are the “world’s leading authority on food crises” despite the fact that the lesson of the article is that the IPC cannot be trusted.

The very least politicians can do is ensure that untrustworthy sources have no role in policymaking ever again.

National Review Editorial: Cheers for Ben Shapiro

Well, that will leave a mark.

Ben Shapiro did the conservative movement a service last week by giving two speeches that were deliberate acts of provocation.

First, at the Heritage Foundation, he argued that a political movement, like a nation, needs borders. He illustrated the point with reference to the Heritage Foundation mission statement, which supports free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.

He then compared those principles with the beliefs of Tucker Carlson, with whom Heritage President Kevin Roberts has been in ideological sympathy, up to and including initially defending Carlson’s interview with Nick Fuentes (before backpedaling). Shapiro persuasively argued that by Heritage’s own standards Carlson — who expresses routine contempt for markets, who launders Russian propaganda, who sees the advantages of sharia law, and who gives sympathetic interviews to white nationalists, Churchill-hating World War II revisionists, and proud misogynists accused of rape — is no longer a conservative.

We assume that Roberts won’t be inviting Shapiro back any time soon, but his talk was received warmly by the audience at the Heritage Foundation.

A couple of days later, Shapiro spoke at TPUSA’s AmFest conference. He addressed the rank pandering to audience, widespread conspiracy-theorizing, and cowardly unwillingness to call out lunacy on the right that has infected the right-wing influencer space. Here, Shapiro focused on the absolutely cracked theories promoted by Candace Owens about the Charlie Kirk assassination; these rancid, obsessive musings, which would set off alarms bells for any psychiatrist if spouted by a patient, have significantly shaped the debate on the right about Kirk’s assassination.

Daniel B. Shapiro: Democrats Sound Like They’re in Doha

The end of the U.S.-Israel security partnership would have three immediate effects. First, it would make Israel appear vulnerable, leading Iran and its allies to accelerate their efforts, already under way, to rearm and prepare for another, perhaps decisive, war. Far from advancing the cause of peace, such a move would likely intensify the region’s conflicts.

Second, it would undermine bipartisan efforts to build an integrated coalition of U.S. partners—Israel and moderate Arab states—that assist one another and allow the United States to play a supporting, but not always leading, role in maintaining regional stability. Arab states are deepening their relationship with Israel in large part because they believe that it will bring them closer to the United States. When we are seen as a less reliable partner for our closest regional ally, they will draw obvious conclusions. Cutting off Israel would thus lead to a less stable, more conflict-ridden region. And it would actually set back Palestinian aspirations by undermining the Saudi-Israeli normalization deal that might advance them.

Third, the end of security assistance to Israel would soon mean the same for Jordan and Egypt, whose assistance programs derive from their peace treaties with Israel. Jordan’s stability could be placed at immediate risk, with spillover dangers in Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the West Bank. Egypt would not stop arming itself; it would simply buy weapons from Russia and China. Gulf states, boxed out from purchasing U.S. equipment by ongoing U.S. legal requirements to sustain Israel’s qualitative military edge, would do the same. There is no better or faster way to open the door to our competitors’ planting their flag in a strategic and volatile region than by cutting off Israel.

The net result of these trends will be a dramatic decline in U.S. influence in the Middle East. For those embracing the impulse to look inward, that may seem fine. Early in the cycle of isolationism, as in the 1930s or after the Cold War, it always does. But eventually, a shock or crisis—World War II, 9/11, or one that we can’t yet name but that will surely come—will draw us back into the region, but under far worse conditions and at a much higher cost.

Sustaining a functional relationship with Israel, with all of its flaws, is manifestly more beneficial to U.S. interests than the alternative. And we need to keep perspective. Netanyahu will not govern forever. The Israeli public has moved rightward, but there are reasonable leaders from the center right and the center left to cultivate. A Palestinian state will not be on the agenda in the Israeli election campaign of 2026, but as the war recedes, there will be various ways to engage the Israeli public—an imperative that Israel’s critics utterly ignore but that is crucial for obtaining the outcomes we want in a democracy—to incentivize them to vote in a more moderate direction. Bidding them good riddance and telling them that they are on their own would do the opposite. Ignoring the responsibility of other actors—such as Palestinian Authority leaders who must embrace reform and demonstrate the capacity to govern and defeat extremists—would do the same.

If Israel wants to see Democrats pursue engagement, then it must help. Expressing conceptual openness to Palestinian statehood as part of a regionally integrated framework—even if it takes longer than Palestinians might hope and assumes a form that looks different from previous efforts—will be important. Keeping extremists out of the Israeli government, and cracking down on extremist violence, is crucial. And recognizing that legitimate security operations must include maximum efforts to protect civilians is essential. Although Israel Defense Forces commanders were always clear that their intent was to target Hamas, not civilians, their tolerance of civilian casualties in pursuit of legitimate military targets was far too high. An intense military-to-military dialogue could help persuade them to adjust that calculation. As in any war, specific charges that soldiers committed war crimes must be investigated and adjudicated in a credible military-justice system—something the United States military has done, albeit imperfectly.

Democrats, and all Americans, face a choice in upcoming elections. We can make the moral, political, and strategic error of trying to wash our hands of a relationship with a democratic partner under stress that has made many mistakes as it has fought to defend itself. Or we can commit to working with that partner and its current, flawed leadership while we wait for new leaders to emerge. We can choose to sustain crucial aspects of a relationship that serves our moral and strategic interests, while insisting on changes that conform with U.S. values. The latter course is clearly the better choice.

12/22 Links Pt1: The Maccabees of Bondi Beach; Hating Zionists, killing Jews; Conditional Condolences; Hamas Front Group Runs Wikipedia Editing Course

From Ian:

Dave Rich: Hating Zionists, killing Jews

If this is how things work, then we are entitled to ask: what was the demonising, stereotyping and stigmatising, the increasing hostility and outpourings of hatred, that led terrorists in Australia, Britain and the United States to not only murder Jews, but to all justify it by reference to “Zionists” and child killers?

It’s impossible to separate this from the tidal wave of hatred directed towards “Zionists” from the anti-Israel movement on our streets and online. The cries of “Death to all Zionists”, the calls for Zionists to be driven from our campuses, and the chants of “Zionist scum, off our streets”. The claims that “Zionists” control the UK government and are genocidal baby killers. The comparisons of Zionism to Nazism. The repeated slogans of “Death to the IDF”, “Intifada” and “Resistance”. All of this hatred and dehumanisation, combined with calls for radical action, reached a pitch long ago where terrorism against Jews became entirely predictable.

When people point this out, they are accused of weaponising antisemitism (a particularly revolting phrase, given how often antisemites now use weapons to kill Jews); or distracting people to enable the slaughter of Palestinians; or being part of a coordinated PR campaign to protect Israel; or - most ridiculously - that nobody ever chants “globalise the Intifada” anyway. Ironically, this often comes from the same people who are quickest to point the finger at wider right wing rhetoric when trying to explain far right violence. It’s gaslighting, plain and simple.

Nor does it matter that this incitement is directed at “Zionists”, because we see now - if we ever doubted it - that hatred of Zionists lands on Jews. This operates on a spectrum, from the most murderous to the most fleeting. Last night I went to my local menorah lighting for the eighth night of Chanukah. It was dark and rainy, but a bigger crowd than usual, a sign of solidarity and togetherness after the awfulness of Bondi. The Chabad rabbi tried to inject some joy, as they always do. And a middle-aged woman, walking past, repeatedly shouted “Free Palestine” at the crowd, looking pleased with herself as she did so. I don’t think she is a potential killer. But in her sentiment, her irrepressible urge to harass Jews celebrating Chanukah, she was expressing the same underlying hatred as the Akrams, just in less violent form.

In theory, it should be possible to have a non-extremist movement that campaigns for Palestinian rights. In reality, though, the anti-Israel movement we actually have has provided a welcoming environment for extremists and antisemites. It wouldn’t be the first time that a legitimate cause had been distorted in this way: the far right do the same, hijacking legitimate concerns about immigration to incite hatred of foreigners. A similar thing has clearly happened here too: the Palestinian cause has been co-opted by extremists who use its language and slogans to incite, and act out, hatred of Jews.

It is true that even extremists have a right to protest, but the presence of hateful, violent rhetoric on anti-Israel marches is too visible to deny, and now that this same language is being used to justify the killing of Jews, the consequences are too lethal to ignore. In an ideal world the protest organisers would be proactively trying to help, but that seems unlikely. Instead, it must mean that these demonstrations are policed differently, and it is good to see that this is starting to happen. It should also trouble the MPs, trade unions and NGOs that back the marches or speak at them, that they are associated with this hatred. One way or another, things have to change. Bondi, Manchester, Boulder and Washington D.C.: the most dangerous form of anti-Jewish terrorism today looks, and sounds, like violent anti-Zionism.

Sami Shah: Conditional Condolences

When Christchurch happened in 2019, when Muslims were slaughtered in a mosque, I don’t remember the Left going, “Our hearts go out and we condemn Islamophobia, and also we condemn antisemitism, transphobia, and anti-black racism.” I don’t remember the Instagram posts being like:

“Point 1: It is evil to massacre civilians for being Muslim.
Point 2: Obviously Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, Syria’s atrocities against its own civilians, and Pakistan’s persecution of Ahmadis must continue to be opposed.”

No one did that. Because it would have been psychotic.

Because everyone instinctively understood: this is a moment for the victims. This is a moment to name the people targeted. This is a moment to say “Muslims,” out loud, without flinching like it’s a swear word.

But when it’s Jews? Suddenly it’s “Yes, tragic… anyway, here is my Gaza position.”

Why?

Why does Jewish grief come with terms and conditions?

Why is “All Lives Matter” cringe when it’s used to dilute Black suffering… but completely acceptable when it’s used to dilute Jewish suffering?

Because that’s what this is. “We condemn antisemitism and also anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia and everything else…” It’s the grief version of someone hijacking a birthday speech to announce they’ve started a podcast.

And I saw so many posts—from people who proudly describe themselves as leftists and progressives—reacting to Bondi without even saying the word “Jew.” They said “community.” They said “innocent people.” They said “tragedy.” They said everything except the thing that was actually targeted. Like the victims were killed by a vague weather event; a cloud of bullets drifting in on a sea breeze.

It’s like they were afraid that if they said “Jewish” their phone would vibrate and a committee would appear behind them like, “Just checking: do you also condemn Israel?”

And this is what really makes me feral: this attack was against Jews. A Jewish festival. A Jewish community event. The whole point of terrorism is targeting identity—to make the identity feel unsafe anywhere. And some people’s first instinct is: “Yes, but…”

But what?

But Gaza?

But Israel?

But Netanyahu?

But Zionism?

No.

Stop it.

You can oppose Israeli policy. You can call out Israeli war crimes. You can scream about Gaza until your throat falls out. But if you cannot mourn murdered Jews in Australia without immediately pivoting to Israel, then you are not doing solidarity. You are doing a performance. And the people you’re stepping on to reach the stage are dead.

The Maccabees of Bondi Beach

On the first night of Hanukkah, the Jewish community was thrust into another nightmare, when at least 15 people were killed and more than 40 wounded in a mass shooting by a father-son duo at a Chabad event in Bondi Beach. Those killed in the attack included a 10-year-old named Matilda Bee Britvan, whose family moved to Australia to escape the war in Ukraine, and Alex Kleytman, a Holocaust survivor killed while trying to shield his wife. Australian authorities later confirmed that the gathering had been deliberately targeted and meticulously planned, marking one of the deadliest antisemitic attacks in the country’s history.

In the hours and days that followed, one story quickly rose above the rest. Footage circulating online showed a heroic bystander, later identified as Ahmed al-Ahmed, rushing toward one of the attackers and wrestling a gun out of the terrorist’s hands.

As the footage spread rapidly across social media and news broadcasts, it soon came to dominate the public conversation, increasingly framing the attack as a story of Muslim-Jewish reconciliation rather than an act of antisemitic violence, with Ahmed al-Ahmed becoming the central figure through which the massacre was understood. This reframing allows Australia to look away from its deeper failures that made the attack possible. It also obscures another critical fact: that there were many Jews at the event who also behaved with unbelievable heroism and bravery, whose names have been largely absent from the narrative.

The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR)has issued a report about demands for reform in the Palestinian Authority.

It correctly notes that there are three separate demands for reform:

- The US and Israel want to see an end to paying terrorists and their families while making the PA responsible for preventing attacks from its territory to murder Jews.

- Europe and Gulf states don't disagree but they want to prioritize an end to PA corruption, an independent judiciary, and fiscal transparency run by a technocratic government.

- Palestinians themselves have completely different demands: they want unity between Hamas and Fatah, and elections where they can choose their leaders.

Then we read this:

A series of interviews with five prominent Palestinian figures reveals a powerful consensus on the nature of reform, highlighting the deep chasm between externally imposed dictates and genuine internal needs. ....
There is a unified rejection of key external demands, which are seen as Israeli-led initiatives adopted by the international community to undermine the Palestinian national project. The call to halt payments to prisoners and martyrs is uniformly condemned as an attempt to criminalize the national struggle. The demand to revise the educational curriculum is viewed as a direct assault on Palestinian identity and historical narrative. ...
Furthermore, the idea of imposing political conditions on parties participating in future elections—such as demanding they accept prior agreements like Oslo—is categorically rejected.

The basic prerequisites for any sort of peace with Israel are dismissed out of hand by Palestinian consensus.

Which goes to prove that any attempt to impose a Palestinian state in the wake of the Gaza war is not only foolhardy, and not only destined to fail, but it is a guarantee for more violence, not less. After all, Hamas controlled Gaza politically; it didn't stop them from attacking.

And Hamas (or other terrorists) would win any election today as well as for the foreseeable future.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

"Progressive" Australian media justifies Bondi massacre as reasonable "blowback" to Gaza and "Jewish supremacism"

Two recent articles in Independent Australia shows how antisemitism is now respected, mainstream opinion among the progressive community.

One is an article by Michael Cohen, representing the "as-a-Jew" contingent. Clearly written by AI, the article ends up claiming that Bondi happened because, he says, Chabad is a child-abusing Jewish supremacist cult:

Extremist movements recognise absolutism wherever it appears. They feed on certainty, purity and submission. Groups such as Islamic State operate on that logic.

When Jewish life is publicly flattened into a similar absolutist form, it becomes legible — and therefore targetable. That shift carries real risks.

For Sydney Jewry to survive, it needs to rethink its relationship with the supremacist cult — Chabad. In fact, all of Jewry should take this as a warning.

Funny, because Chabad is more welcoming, more diverse, more tolerant of different opinions and less likely to "cancel" people who disagree than any "progressive" voice I've ever seen.

This article effectively blames Chabad for Bondi, not Islamic terrorists. How dare they do publicly Jewish things which makes them "targetable"?

This is really all you need to know about how thoroughly deranged progressive thought is nowadays.

If that was only one insane op-ed, that could be dismissed as a fringe opinion. Bu a much more prominent voice is also interviewed in the same site, and he dismisses the Bondi massacre as justified anger at Jews.

Chris Hedges, a former New York Times reporter and inveterate Israel hater, is interviewed by IA, and here is how he responds to the first muddled question about Bondi - a question that already assumes that it obviously is connected to Gaza:

MP: I thought we might go firstly to the horrific Bondi massacre, where 16 people are now dead and 40 injured. And I believe that you know, in terms of the war in Gaza at the moment, of course, this is a very significant issue. A lot of people are, I guess, chiming in and speaking up about this and its significance on anti-semitism and all of those things. What are your thoughts on that?
CH: Well, it's blowback. I mean, so you've had over two years of genocide.

That's the entire analysis of the attack. Murdering 15 Jews at a Chanukah lighting party is reasonable "blowback" to what is being misreported in Gaza. This Pulitzer-prize winning reporter has just justified 2,000 years of Jew hatred as a normal response to how Jews act. Hedges, who is also a Presbyterian minister, has opinions that are functionally identical to medieval Christian antisemitism.

And the so-called progressive community not only tolerates such blatant Jew hatred, but celebrates it as intellectual and brave.

If there are progressive voices who are horrified at the idea that Jews are getting what they deserve, we sure aren't hearing from any of them. The YouTube comments are uniformly supportive of this sickening antisemitism. This is entirely because there is more fear of being branded a heretic by the progressive cult than there is from any organized religion.

(h/t Jill)

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Iran uses antisemitic attack to stoke more antisemitism

From Iran's PressTV:

The Chief of Staff of Iran’s Armed Forces has warned that the Israeli regime is staging “self-harm” false-flag operations against Jewish communities abroad to stoke fears of anti-Semitism.

“They (Zionists) have assassinated the Jewish community and their affiliates in other countries to prevent reverse migration, escape internal turmoil, and instill anti-Semitism,” Major General Abdolrahim Mousavi said on Sunday.

Referring to a deadly attack at a Jewish event in Sydney, Australia, last week, he said it is not the first time that Jews have been targeted in an attempt to portray Israel as a victim. He asserted that the regime has repeatedly committed such crimes in the past.

Antisemites use antisemitism to promote more antisemitic conspiracy theories.

In the real world. Iran has been implicated in deadly attacks on Jewish communities (AMIA bombing, Israeli embassy bombing in Argentina) and foiled attempts (Cyprus, Germany, UK, Thailand, India, Africa, the US and, yes, Australia.)

Meanwhile, Iran has been threatening Jews in Iran. And its media is regularly filled with blatantly antisemitic articles.

Iran is beneath contempt.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

12/21 Links: Arsen Ostrovsky: My Family Survived Bondi Beach; The Real War Is Islamism's Infiltration of Western Democracies; Tucker Carlson named ‘Antisemite of the Year’

From Ian:

Arsen Ostrovsky: My Family Survived Bondi Beach

Three weeks after my family had relocated from Israel to Australia, we were in the crossfire on Bondi Beach. One of the gunmen's bullets hit my head. I fell to the ground and bled profusely. To my right, an elderly man crouched, covering his wife. He was also hit, not moving. To my left, a few feet away, I saw body parts strewn on the ground. Another man ripped off his shirt and lent it to me to help stop the blood gushing from my head. My wife had managed to escape unharmed and found refuge with our children. Doctors later told me it was millimeters between life and death, "a miracle" I survived.

Over the past two years, the Jewish community has warned time and again that when hatred is allowed to fester, when it is excused, normalized or mainstreamed, it inevitably leads to violence. Australia doesn't need another inquiry, strategy document or press release expressing sorrow. We need urgent, decisive action. Our laws must be enforced. Incitement must have consequences. Intelligence must be acted on and radical Islamic extremism must be confronted, not managed.

Bondi Was Not a Surprise

I am angry at the government for ignoring antisemitic violence and intimidation, at the media for whitewashing it, at the academics who provided it with intellectual legitimacy, and at everyone who marched and chanted and who justified or minimized antisemitism in Australia because of their feelings about a conflict on the other side of the globe.

I am angry at every official who failed to do their due diligence: in neglecting to vet immigrants from countries where vicious antisemitism is endemic; in allowing a man whose son was suspected of involvement with ISIS to legally own multiple firearms; in never taking a clear stand against Jew-hatred in this country. I am angry at the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, who has blamed the tragedy primarily on firearms and who seems unable to name the cause clearly. I can name it: the poisonous hatred of Jews.

I believe that a silent majority of Aussies are heartily sick of the attacks on our harmony, our culture, and our Jews. At Quillette, we stand with Jews in Australia, in Israel, and throughout the world. RIP: Boris Tetleroyd, Boris Gurman, Sofia Gurman, Reuven Morrison, Edith Brutman, Marika Pogany, Dan Elkayam, Eli Schlanger, Yaakov Levitan, Peter Meagher, Alex Kleytman, Tibor Weitzen, Adam Smyth, Tania Tretiak, and ten-year-old Matilda. May their memories be a blessing.

Jonathan Conricus: The Real War Is Islamism's Infiltration of Western Democracies

The global civilizational conflict between the Free World and the forces of Islamism - a movement that seeks not coexistence, but domination - has only begun. Islamism's most violent expression erupts in the bloodlust of Hamas, ISIS, or al-Qaeda. Yet its more patient, insidious face belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates - groups that have mastered the art of slow infiltration, cultural manipulation, and institutional takeover. Their ambition is the same: the imposition of Sharia and the submission of free societies.

I was raised in Malmo, Sweden, where I watched firsthand the quiet surrender of a liberal Western city to Islamist intimidation. Today, similar scenes unfold in London, Paris, Toronto, Sydney, and New York, where since Oct. 7, 2023, Islamists have marched openly through Western capitals, waving the flags of terror movements and calling for "global intifada."

The response from many Western governments has been paralysis: fear of being called "Islamophobic" outweighs the courage to name the threat. Listen carefully to what Islamists say in their own rallies and mosques. They boast of taking over Western institutions. They preach that democracy is a tool to be exploited until the day it can be replaced. They view liberal tolerance not as a virtue but as a weakness to be exploited.

The same ideology that sent Hamas terrorists across Israel's border on Oct. 7 now works methodically to seize student unions, civil-society groups, and local councils across Europe and North America. In Britain, dozens of municipalities are now governed by officials who declare loyalty not to the United Kingdom but to the global Islamic nation. In the process, this ideology has fueled a resurgence of antisemitism and social fragmentation in the West.

This war is not over. It will only end when Islamism - violent and non-violent alike - is defeated intellectually, financially, and politically. Education must be our front line. That begins with dismantling UNRWA, whose curriculum perpetuates hate and martyrdom in Gaza's classrooms. A generation taught that killing Jews is holy cannot build peace.

Governments should outlaw Islamist organizations where evidence ties them to terror networks. The Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates should be designated terrorist entities. Qatar and Turkey - state sponsors of this ideology - must face consequences, not indulgence. Political correctness is a luxury we can no longer afford. This war will decide the fate of the entire Free World.

In the wake of Egypt's $35 billion deal to buy natural gas from Israel, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese tweeted:

Egypt can say what it wants but purchasing $35bn of gas from Israel violates int'l law, including the ICJ advisory opinion of 2024, and is, honestly, an incredible sign of support to Israel during the genocide of the Palestinians.
States must stop placing profits above humanity.

The ICJ case she is referring to is an advisory opinion which means it is not binding international law, and she knows it.

But even if it were, it doesn't say what she claims it says.

Paragraph 279 of the opinion, which she is basing her statement on, says:

[T]he Court considers that, in view of the character and importance of the rights and obligations involved, all States are under an obligation not to recognize as legal the situation arising from the unlawful presence of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. They are also under an obligation not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by Israel’s illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Every normal international lawyer interprets this as not supporting settlement activity or other Israeli activities in the territories. In no way does this opinion say that any trade with Israel is illegal - but Albanese does.

In fact, and she has said this, she believes that the ruling says that all states must cease all diplomatic relations with Israel. Outside of crazed BDS pseudo-lawyers, she is the only person who believes that this is what the opinion calls for.

In fact, the ICJ explicitly says in the previous paragraph that it insists on states "distinguishing dealings with Israel between its own territory and the Occupied Palestinian Territory." This means that dealings with Israel, and certainly with Israeli gas in the Mediterranean that have nothing to do with any claimed Palestinian territory, are perfectly legal.

Albanese is trying to pretend the UN just made state-level and UN-level BDS international law. No serious legal scholar agrees with her.

It is simply a manifestation of her antisemitism.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Tricks of the Anti-Zionist Trade

Anti-Zionist propaganda operates through a constellation of rhetorical, epistemic, and narrative tactics designed not simply to criticize Israeli policy, but to delegitimize Israel's very existence and moral standing. These techniques appear across media, academia, activism, and social discourse. The following diagnostic list reveals how these "tricks of the trade" structure anti-Israel narratives for ideological effect.

There are two layers to this list. One is the list of tricks themselves; the easily recognized methods that we see all the time. Yet more importantly is Layer 2: the meta-rules that act as firewalls to protect the tricks themselves from contradiction or fact checking.

Specific Methods:

1. Premise Smuggling
This is perhaps the most popular one: treating ideologically charged claims (e.g., "genocide," "settler-colonial state") as factual baselines without evidence, bypassing the burden of proof. This is done deliberately: by treating these frameworks as settled fact, they bypass most people's natural skepticism or ability to compare arguments. There are literally hundreds of academic papers that define Israel as a "settler colonial state" or "apartheid regime" in the abstract without presenting any argument but instead using them as building blocks for further accusations.

2. Selective Framing / Weaponized Omission
Articles will often cherry-pick facts depicting Israeli actions in isolation - ignoring prior attacks, ceasefire violations, or provocations - thereby framing Israel as the initiator of violence. For example, the 2008-2009 Gaza conflict started days before Israel's response with Hamas declaring "Operation Oil Stain" with the largest rocket barrage Israel had ever experienced up to that time, yet virtually every history of the war begins with Israel's response.

3. Circular Citation Networks / Idea Laundering
Anti-Israel academic papers often use echo-chambered sources that cite each other to fabricate the illusion of scholarly or journalistic consensus. But more often they will cite the same small number of sources as if they are unimpeachable and ignore any that say the opposite.

4. Root Cause Absolutism
Asserting that one historical factor - often the founding of Israel or “Zionism” - is the sole root of all current conflict, dismissing the impact of later developments, regional politics, or internal dynamics. So anti-Israel voices blame all present-day Palestinian suffering on the "nakba," ignoring wars, peace offers, Hamas rule, and Palestinian Authority corruption,

5. Framing-Dependent Critique
This is criticism that seems neutral but is entirely contingent on emotionally or ideologically charged framing. for example, stating as fact that the IDF is “targeting civilians” without knowing what the actual targets were, based on sources that define any Palestinian killed in a conflict zone as a civilian unless proven otherwise.

6. Terminology Abuse / Trope Injection
This is similar but not the same as #1 Premise Smuggling - it is the deliberate deployment of charged labels like “apartheid,” “genocide,” or colonialist analogies to provoke outrage and mask analytical weakness. One example is comparing Zionism to European colonialism while ignoring Jewish indigeneity and historical continuity in the land.

7. Undisclosed Substitution
We often see articles quietly redefining key legal, historical, or moral terms, then using those altered definitions to indict Israel. Apartheid does not apply to non-citizens but NGOs will gloss over that; the UN defines Palestine "refugees" using a different definition of "refugee" that the Refugee Convention uses to automatically include descendants in perpetuity, inflating numbers and legal claims.

8. Numerator Abuse
Often, articles will cite raw numbers (e.g., protest participants, open letter signatories) without context - such as ideological composition or denominator - to imply mass legitimacy. So when hundreds of Google or Amazon employees write a letter protesting their employers' Israel policy, it makes then news without mentioning that this was a tiny fraction of the total employees - a true fringe. Same with "rabbis and cantors" signing anti-Israel letters.

9. Red Team Clause Violation/Double Standards
This is using tactics or framings that would be condemned if employed by Zionists or Israeli supporters, revealing asymmetrical ethical standards. Israeli self-defense is labeled "aggression." Rhetoric by Israeli politicians is twisted to make them sound bigoted while blatant antisemitism by Palestinian leaders is not reported or downplayed.

10. Implied Violation Assertion
We sometimes see calls for Israel to follow international law or respect human rights - which implies that it doesn't do that. It sounds neutral but it is an accusation. Another example is calling for Israel responses to terror attacks to be "proportionate," which has a specific legal definition: Israel is always careful to adhere to international law of proportionality but the demand implies the opposite.

11. Moral Role Reversal
The anti-Israel crowd will invariably present Israel's defensive actions as aggression, while treating Palestinian militant attacks as legitimate “resistance.” Not only that, but they will claim Israel doesn't even have the legal right to self-defense, painting anything Israel does as illegal aggression from the outset.

12. The Maps That Lie
The Israel haters love using deceptive graphics (e.g., “shrinking Palestine” maps) that misrepresent reality, ignore historical governance, legal agreements, and context. They also present the borders of British Mandate Palestine as "historic Palestine," implying that those borders are hundreds of years old when they were actually drawn by wester imperial powers.

13. Pallywood / Visual Priming Assertion
We have seen an avalanche of AI created images showing "Palestinian suffering" lately, but false images are decades old - recycling images of injured children from other conflicts and adding a caption claiming they are Palestinians, or repurposing street theatre as reality. Not to mention cases of actual staging of events and scenes by photographers and videographers, directing the "actors" where to stand and what facial expression to use, like the "child with doll in the rubble" meme.

14. Counterposition Suppression
Panel discussions, online forums, or entire academic departments will either dismiss or structurally exclude pro-Israel views under the guise of neutrality. They will choose anti-Israel Jews or far-Left Israelis for "balance." You will rarely find an actual Jewish resident of Judea and Samaria being allowed to give their legal or emotional arguments, for example.

15. Narrative Causality Projection
Constructing moral or political blame by aligning events into a coherent story arc that ignores the truth, contingency, complexity, or alternate explanations. This includes claims that Israel caused the exodus of Mizrahi Jews from Arab countries, or other "false flag" accusations where Israel is blamed even for attacks on Jews.

16. Unquestionable Authority Claim
The media will often trust one side based solely on identity (e.g., Palestinian voices) and rejecting scrutiny, dissent, or factual counterpoints. There is little skepticism for Palestinian claims but a great deal of fact checking for Israeli claims. Of anyone criticizing the anti-Israel position of politicians of color is framed as racist.

17. Moral Posture Integrity Collapse
Articles will show selective outrage over alleged Israeli actions while ignoring greater global abuses - like Uyghur camps, Syrian barrel bombs, or Yemeni starvation - revealing political convenience rather than ethical consistency. Companies that support tourism in the West Bank are castigated more than actual genocides by NGOs like Amnesty.

18. Selective Experts/Selective Bystanders
Newspapers will often show bias by choosing "experts" to quote that are known to be biased, or even members of anti-Israel organizations, and no similar space is given to experts who might disagree. Similarly, members of anti-Zionist groups are quoted in news articles without mentioning their membership, so they are only identified as "Jewish" as if they represent the entire Jewish community.

19. Mind Reading
Declaring that Israel intentionally targeted civilians, or intended to destroy Palestinian cultural treasures, or educational institutions, or reporters, without even asking Israel what the intended target really was (or disbelieving Israeli explanations.)

20. Statistics Laundering
UN agencies will use terrorist-affiliated statistics, and then others will quote them without mentioning the original source, saying that the UN itself made those claims directly; eventually it appears like these terrorist-sourced data was independently arrived at by independent agencies.

21. David vs. Goliath and the victim narrative
This is framing Palestinians as the underdog and therefore righteous, ignoring widespread historic Arab support for Palestinians or Palestinian terrorism.

22. Conflating pro-Palestinian causes with other progressive causes
Claiming that one cannot be Zionist and feminist, or care about climate change, or animal welfare, or any other progressive cause. This is especially bizarre because Palestinian society itself violates virtually every progressive ideal from anti-gay laws, anti-women laws, and polluting the environment.

23. X-Washing Accusations
This has become popular in the past decade: accusing Israel of "pinkwashing" or “greenwashing” or "vegan-washing" for highlighting its progressive record, framing it as cynical PR, not progress. This is a conspiracy theory where Israel doing what would be applauded when done by anyone else is twisted into a crime itself.

24. Creating new categories of crimes for Israel
Accusing Israel of "genocide" is not enough; new "-ocides" must be invented just for Israel, bypassing any critical thought. So it is accused of "scholasticide," "urbicide," "mediacide" and many others - to imply that these are deliberate policies to destroy every vestige of Palestinian existence.

25. False Categorization
When it is convenient, Israeli policies are framed as anti-Arab, when in fact essentially none of them distinguish between Arab and Jew. Israeli Jewish citizens who live across the Green line are called "settlers" but Israeli Arabs never are. Yet at the same time, it is the anti-Israel side that distinguishes between Jewish and Arab citizens, boycotting only Jewish-owned businesses in Israel or in industrial parks in the territories, or calling even Israeli citizens inside the Green Line "occupiers" - but only if they are Jewish.

Layer 2 Meta-Rules

These rules are used to protect the specific tricks themselves from contradiction or fact-checking.

Non-Falsifiability Cloaking
Many anti-Israel claims are structured so that no action Israel takes - military withdrawal, peace agreements, humanitarian efforts - can disprove the accusation. Any evidence to the contrary is dismissed as manipulation, PR, or distraction. This creates a closed-loop narrative that is immune to falsification and self-correcting logic.

Conspiratorial Closure Attribution
When Israel provides evidence or receives support, it is framed as corrupting the institution that supports it. Courts are accused of bias, NGOs of capture, and international allies of Zionist control. This allows critics to maintain their narrative by invalidating any neutral or exonerating institution.

Whataboutism Shield
This rhetorical defense automatically dismisses any comparison or counterexample as irrelevant “whataboutism,” even when the point is to expose double standards or selective outrage. By using this label, critics can shut down discussions that would contextualize or challenge their moral framing. It functions as a one-way filter: only Israel’s actions are judged, while worse abuses by others are considered off-topic or distracting.

This shield prevents comparative reasoning, protects moral posture from scrutiny, and disables discussions of proportionality. In effect, it declares: “Only this narrative matters. You’re not allowed to notice contradictions.”

Redefining Terms to Eliminate Rebuttal
This is a higher-order maneuver that allows all subsequent arguments to flow from distorted definitions. It enables premise smuggling, terminology abuse, and normative hijack by structurally preempting counter-arguments. Terms like "genocide," "apartheid" and "occupation" are consistently given expanded definitions only in context of Israel; Legal concepts like the right to return to one's country of birth are expanded only for Palestinians. Amnesty has done this consistently.

Not only that, but terms like "antisemitism" are redefined as well to shield the double standards applied only to Jews in Israel from being considered a new version of a very old bigotry. Even the word "Jews" itself is redefined as only a religion (from the Left) or only a race (from the Right), denying the inherent nationhood of Jews as a group that has been recognized through two thousand years of diaspora.

Demonization via Concept Inversion

This technique escalates from argument control to moral annihilation. It ensures that even if a pro-Israel argument is logical, legal, or humanitarian, it is dismissed as uniquely evil due to its association with “Zionism" or "Israel." Arguments are no longer even needed; the term itself is considered damning enough. It blends moral role reversal, terminology weaponization, and reputational sabotage into a single moral deplatforming strategy.

Emotional Priority Override

“If it feels unjust, it must be unjust.” Replacing argument with appeals to emotion and personal narrative; someone's pain must make everything they say accurate. Emotional or moral intensity is used to override logic, legal nuance, or factual disputes. Empathy for one side becomes a substitute for evidentiary standards. Emotional testimony or imagery is framed as unimpeachable and are nto fact-checked. But only the Palestinian side is allowed to use emotions to justify their actions - Palestinian terrorism against Jews is framed as a sad but inevitable byproduct of decades of Israeli policy but Israeli settlers who attack Palestinians are never given the excuse that they are upset. Only one side is allowed to appeal to emotion. The slightest accusation against Israel is treated as gospel, while even rapes against Israelis are treated skeptically.

This his hardly a comprehensive list. These techniques do not merely reflect bias - they constitute a structured epistemic and moral assault. Their function is to collapse Israel’s legitimacy by sealing the narrative against facts, law, complexity, or counterpoint. Recognizing these rhetorical systems is the first step toward dismantling them. Funders, scholars, journalists, and policy stakeholders can inoculate themselves and their audiences against ideological manipulation disguised as analysis.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

12/20 Links: ISIS kills Jews while Australian politicians blame guns; The Progressive Takeover of Jewish Campus Life; A Son’s Eulogy for Norman Podhoretz (1930-2025)

From Ian:

John Podhoretz: A Son’s Eulogy for Norman Podhoretz (1930-2025)

So many nice things have been said about him the past couple of days that my sister Naomi pointed out it was a genuine shame he wasn’t here to read them and hear them, because you just cannot imagine how much he would have enjoyed it. How much he would have enjoyed the tributes from Senator Cotton, and Ruth Wisse, and Jonathan Tobin, and Abe Greenwald, and Noah Rothman, and Matthew Continetti, and Elliot Kaufman, and Barton Swaim, and Yuval Levin, and Kathryn Jean Lopez, and Tevi Troy, and Seth Mandel, and Meir Soloveichik. He. Loved. Praise. But there was something in him, some iron in him, some deep well in him, that did not allow him to trim his sails or maintain the reputation that meant so much to him by acting with a careerist’s prudence.

That’s why his greatest flaw, or at least the quality that caused him the most unnecessary pain, was how much he continued to value or judge himself by the cultural settings established by the same fashionable folk who had rejected him for holding fast to his love of country and love of tradition and love of his faith—in Billy Joel’s words, “the people that he knew at Elaine’s.” I once told him that he didn’t know who he was, by which I meant, he had no idea how many people had been influenced by him, who viewed him as a titanic figure, who saw him as one of the great men of our time. He had no idea, really, because while he had contempt for the New York City bubble, he remained inside it for most of his life, and couldn’t find his way out, even after the bubble itself lost control of things.

But not always. In 2004, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In his room at the Hay-Adams Hotel the morning of the ceremony, he sat on his bed as he began to get dressed and began to sob and could not stop sobbing. He was 74 years old at the time. His father had been a milkman. He had shared a pullout couch with a very young uncle in the living room of the family tenement flat until he was 18. His magazine never had more than 30,000 real subscribers. He hadn’t published a bestseller. But there he was, a first-generation Jew whose parents were never fully fluent in English, who never took the easy path, and in a matter of hours the president of the United States would be garlanding his neck with the nation’s highest civilian honor. He wept with gratitude. As he said in his book, My Love Affair with America, “What America has done for me could not have been done for me alone, and could not have been done at all if the institutions, ideas, and attitudes that grew out of its founding assumption had not been in place and applicable to all who were lucky enough to live under them.”

What was this, really, but humility in its highest form? It was the humility that said what has happened to me in my life, the greatest gifts of my life, were gifts—gifts from the Almighty, gifts from the founder, things he did not do for himself but that America “has done for me.”

But there are things he did for himself, and by himself, that marked him as a great-souled person, and they are matters he did not write about, nor did he seek celebration for. If I am a good man, and I hope I am, it is because of the gift he gave me of showing me what it truly means to be a man. Not because he was tough, or intellectually honest, or brave, or possessed of good views. It’s because of what he did for my sisters.

I have three sisters. Ruthie and I are his issue. Rachel and Naomi were not. They were the children of our mother’s first marriage. Norman married Midge when Rachel was 5 and Naomi was 4. Rachel and Naomi had a father. Norman was determined not to interfere with the parental rights or paternal connection between Rachel and Naomi and their biological father. And yet. That man would miss his child-support payments. And that man would skip out on some of his time with them. And when they did have time with him, the girls would often come home from their visits sad or upset or gloomy. A lot of this took place before I was born. Rachel was 10 when I was born and Naomi was nine. And I swear to you. I swear to you. This is my truth, as they say. I never, ever, ever, ever, felt that he was any more of a father to me than he was a father to Rachel and Naomi. Whom he at some point determined he was simply going to have to raise, and care for, and succor, and support, and love.

He became their father. This was a choice he made. It was a choice that, in some fundamental sense, he did not have to make. What he was obliged to do was to be kind to Rachel and Naomi, and be friendly to them, and treat them well. He was a nice guy, so of course he’d be nice and friendly to his wife’s daughters. And they were smart and charming and cute, I assure you, and so, that being nice and friendly to them would not have been hard duty. Besides which, he was a kid. He was 27, 28, 29 when this challenge was presented to him. The challenge to stand up and man up and take responsibility.

So he clasped them to his heart. In a million ways great and small, he made certain that Ruthie and I knew we were not to view ourselves as different from them in his eyes. More important, we felt it. It was inhered in us. The only difference I could discern is that Ruthie and I called him Daddy and Rachel and Naomi called him Normie.

Of course the psychological story for all concerned was more complex than this, as I have come to understand as we all grew and we all aged and we lived through crises and disappointments and then through the horror and heartbreak of our Rachel’s passing 13 years ago, which tore a hole in our family that could never be mended, and then through the final years of our mother’s life. Through it all, we have always been close, closer than most, and more than our mother, more than our shared love for all our children and nieces and nephews and grandchildren and grand nieces and grand nephews, all 29 of them, this was possible because of what he did. He made that happen. He made Ruthie and me feel that Rachel and Naomi belonged to us and we belonged to them, because it could have been otherwise. But it wasn’t otherwise, because he looked at these two girls and he said, “You are mine too.”

On her deathbed, Rachel told Norman that he had made her feel safe. That phrase has been poisoned over the past decade or so, made political and false, but what she meant by it was that he had made the world under her feet feel steady. And what greater tribute could there be to his actions than the fact that it has been Naomi, whom he did not even meet until she was 3, who has been the primary provider of his care and attention these past three years? Ruthie and I owe her a great debt—but then, Naomi and Rachel alike were the greatest rewards we received from him in any case. They were ours because he made sure they became his.

So yes, he was a wonderful writer. And yes, he was a brilliant editor. And yes, he changed the world for the better. And I hope the world will remember him for all of that.

But the man I hope my children will emulate, and that their children will emulate, and all his grandchildren and great grandchildren here in this room—that man is the one who said I will be the father that my God and my wife and my honor demand that I be for these two little girls.

That is the greatest moral success story I have ever known.

That is making it.

Mark Levin: Tolerance, rational discourse are being smothered

The following is a transcript of Fox News commentator Mark Levin’s opening statement from the Dec. 14 episode of “Life, Liberty & Levin.”

The shooting at Brown, two dead students, others wounded. Terrible, terrible, terrible, and our soldiers murdered in Syria. I mean this is serious stuff, and I know our president will deal with what took place in Syria.

We are going to have to figure out how to deal with these colleges and universities. I am not sure but that we do need to figure out. And also this slaughter that took place in Australia.

You know, ladies and gentlemen, people have written books, Hitler’s American Friends, The Abandonment of the Jews, Beyond Belief, Buried by the Times, Stalin’s Apologist. People say that history repeats itself. Is that going to happen now? I fear it damn well might. You have two men slaughtering Jews on Chanukah. You know what it reminded me of? When I watch Schindler’s List, and that colonel goes on the balcony with a rifle. There are Jews in the field and they are working in the camp and he takes his riffle and he starts picking them off one by one as if he is shooting at deer or hogs or something like that.

With a United Nations that is nothing but a cesspool of Jew-hatred, the vast majority of European governments, left-wing governments, are appeasers of Islamists. You have Communist regimes such as China that arm our enemies and arm the enemies of Israel, stoking antisemitism in our own country. You have fascist regimes that are doing exactly the same thing. Monarchies in the Middle East. We have a Western press that is essentially a voice for Marxists and sympathetic toward Islamism, spreading blood libels, accusing Israel of committing genocide knowing they are using false information that Israel is creating famines, executing innocent civilians blowing up hospitals, schools and mosques.

Everybody knows exactly what is going on. Israel is not going in and doing these things. Israel is defending itself for the zillionth time against enemies that surround her trying to obliterate her and destroy all of its people. The Marxist paradigm of Israel the oppressor and its enemies the oppressed. A lie that Israel is occupying lands that are in fact the ancient, indigenous lands of the Jewish people. Do you have a Bible on your night table? If you read it, it will tell you right there, as will the rest of history.

Hamas operative behind group leading anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian marches in UK – report

A man said to be an operative for the Hamas terror group is at the head of an organization leading anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian protests in the United Kingdom, The Times reports.

Zaher Birawi serves as the chair of the Palestine Forum in Britain (PFB), one of six groups that make up the Palestine Coalition which has organized at least 20 rallies this year, including one this week to support detained hunger strikers from Palestine Action, proscribed as a terror group.

Israel said in September that Birawi is one of a number of “high-ranking, well-known Hamas operatives” involved in the Gaza flotilla movement. He is described on the pro-Palestinian outlet Middle East Monitor as a journalist, the chairman of the International Committee to Break the Siege on Gaza, and a founding member of the International Freedom Flotilla Coalition.

In October 2023, Labour MP Christian Wakeford used parliamentary privilege to name Birawi as one of four “senior Hamas operatives” active in Britain, The Times reports.

“This house rightly voted to proscribe Hamas in its entirety in November 2021,” he said. “It is therefore a serious national security risk for Hamas operatives to be living here in London.”

One of the other three individuals named by Wakeford was Ziad El Aloul, who is also connected with PFB, The Times says.

ISIS kills Jews while Australian politicians blame guns

Albanese’s response sends a chilling message to Australia’s Jews: We will protect you symbolically, but we will not confront those who want you dead. We will light candles, hold vigils and issue statements, but when it comes to naming the ideology that made the massacre possible, we will avert our eyes and purse our lips.

This pattern is not new. Jews have seen it across Europe, North America, Britain, Canada and Australia. When jihadists attack Jews, the authorities’ response is always curiously oblique. Leaders speak of “hate,” “extremism” or “violence,” as though these were free-floating abstractions. The word antisemitism is often whispered. Islamism almost never is.

This is because acknowledging Islamist antisemitism shatters too many illusions and upsets too many powerful constituencies. It would force governments to confront the limits of multiculturalism, to debate immigration honestly and to acknowledge the uncomfortable truth that some belief systems are not merely “different,” but actively hostile to liberal democracy and minority safety.

It also complicates the preferred narrative—a superb piece of inverted fiction in which Jews are cast as powerful oppressors rather than perpetual targets. In progressive moral hierarchies, Jews are rarely granted the status of innocent victims. Naming Islamism as the enemy would force a reckoning that many Western elites are desperate to avoid.

So instead, governments regulate objects.

Every time a leader responds this way, extremists learn that their ideology will not be challenged, that their networks will not be named and that their religious justifications will be handled delicately, if at all. The state will busy itself rearranging furniture while jihadists plan their next attack.

Here is what I want Australia’s leaders to say: Australia has a problem with Islamist extremism, and Jews are being targeted because they are Jews. There. That wasn’t so hard, was it? I didn’t even need to issue a press release or hold a media event.

Solving the Islamism problem will require acknowledging its scale and severity; deploying extensive intelligence resources against radical networks; and embracing deportations, surveillance and prosecutions where necessary.

Above all, it will require the courage to say that these ideas and beliefs do not belong—and cannot belong—in a liberal democracy.

12/19 Links Pt2: Chanukah Is Relevant for Everyone—but Not in the Way You Might Think; At TPUSA Ben Shapiro completely dismantles Tucker Carlson; Hezbollah’s Secret Maritime Plot Exposed

From Ian:

Josh Hammer: Chanukah Is Relevant for Everyone—but Not in the Way You Might Think

The core message of Chanukah, then, is one of traditionalism and cultural preservation in the face of menacing and assimilationist forces, both within and without. That's the real meaning of the holiday—not exchanging gifts or waxing poetic about universalist platitudes.

Yet paradoxically, especially in light of tragic recent events, something occurred to me for the first time: This stridently particularist Jewish holiday does have broader—indeed, global—relevance. It's just not the relevance liberal politicians have ascribed to Chanukah. Indeed, it's the exact opposite.

The Maccabees were able to prevail and thereby preserve Judaism, against the odds, because they had purpose and conviction. They believed that Judaism stood for something important: They believed that ethical monotheism was important, the Hebrew Scriptures were true, and the Land of Israel belonged to the Children of Israel. In short, the Maccabees had national and civilizational pride, and it was because of that pride that they fought so valiantly and refused to bend the knee to Hellenistic assimilation. They rejected the universalist cri de coeur that all cultures and peoples are equal—and perhaps interchangeable.

In recent decades, and even more acutely in recent years, Western civilization has had to learn that lesson anew. Human beings, while all made in God's image and thus all deserving of dignity and moral worth, are immensely complicated. We are not reducible to widgets on an economics chalkboard. Our inherited cultural traditions and learned customs and mannerisms are often very different from one another. We don't all value the same things, pursue the same goals, hold the same social standards, or believe in the same political institutions.

We are, in short, different.

The Maccabees understood that there was something special about the truths, values, and principles that Judaism introduced to the world. They were not willing to sacrifice those truths, values, and principles to the siren song of Hellenistic universalism. Western nations today must learn that same lesson anew. The modern Maccabee martyrs senselessly slain last Sunday at Sydney's Bondi Beach are yet the latest victims of Hellenism gone awry, as one culture tries to replace and erase another.

It doesn't have to be this way. A culture can be proud without being chauvinistic. And a people can be self-confident without being imperious. If there are going to be fewer Bondi Beach-style massacres, moving forward, Western cultures and nations are going to have to rediscover and reprioritize what made them great in the first place. They're going to have to remember that human beings, and the specific societies they constitute, are unique. They cannot, and should not, be swapped or frivolously bartered like goods in a marketplace. We have our traditions, values, and ways of life that are worth cherishing and preserving from one generation to the next.

It might not be politically correct, but that is how we can apply the true lesson of Chanukah.

Antisemitism Is Thriving Because Schadenfreude Makes People Happy

One reason our fight against antisemitism is so complicated is that Jew-haters won’t allow Jews to be victims. Victimhood today confers both status and power. Don’t Jews already have more than enough?

I like to study faces and body language. In the hundreds of clips I’ve seen of anti-Israel demonstrators since Oct. 7, I rarely noticed any sadness for the plight of Palestinians. What I saw instead was swagger and bravado, a sense of owning justice and sticking it to those who deserved it.

Because the Gaza war provided so much anti-Israel ammunition for so long, there was a sense of liberation among protesters; a chance to unleash resentment that had built up for years.

The fact that this venom is still being unleashed after the end of the war tells us all we need to know. It’s not about creating a better future for the Palestinians. It’s about creating a terrible future for a people that had it coming. We can only imagine the schadenfreude Jew-haters experienced when Jews were murdered in Australia at the start of that highly visible and joyful holiday of Hanukkah.

I know that hatred for Jews is famously elastic, that haters find a way to hate Jews whether they’re rich, poor, weak, strong, left, right, capitalist, socialist, and so on. Today, maybe because of the extraordinary success of the Jewish state, the dominant reputation of Jews is strong, influential and successful.

A year ago, I quoted British philosopher Eve Garrard who argued that “There are (at least) three principal sources of pleasure which anti-Semitism provides. First, the pleasure of hatred; second, the pleasure of tradition, and third, the pleasure of displaying moral purity.” After seeing the post-war glee on the faces of Jew-haters, I’m suggesting today that we add the pleasure of schadenfreude.

It’s not pleasant, of course, to consider that the more successful one becomes, the more one is likely to be attacked. It’s also not pleasant to think that after all the complex explanations we read about Jew-hatred, a sentiment as primordial as shadenfreude can drive some of that hatred.

But human nature dies hard.

We can only hope for the day when “success” reclaims its place as something to be admired and emulated, not something to be embarrassed about because it’s twisted as “white privilege.”

Until then, we’ll have to settle for the consolation prize that we’re hated for doing great things– even if that ends up bringing temporary pleasure to Jew-haters.

Happy Hanukkah.

X’s Transparency Rules Expose a Synthetic Gaza Disinformation Network

X’s new location-transparency requirement has reshaped the information environment surrounding the Gaza war. After the platform introduced the policy, accounts that had long claimed to report from Gaza displayed locations in Europe, North America, and Turkey. These accounts produced much of the imagery and narrative framing that circulated widely after October 7, 2023. Western journalists, nongovernmental organizations, and policymakers often treated them as front line observers, which gave fraudulent accounts disproportionate influence over public perception and policy debates.

Open Source Intelligence analyst Eitan Fischberger’s November 22, 2025, thread highlighted how X’s new “About This Account” panel first exposed prominent accounts posing as American or local Gaza/Palestinian voices. Fischberger notes that he captured the screenshots himself and urged others to share only accurate examples.

The Gaza information space is target for actors seeking to influence foreign audiences. Accounts that presented themselves as civilians in Gaza posted emotive casualty claims and siege narratives. The new transparency rule revealed that many operated from cities such as Warsaw, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Istanbul. These accounts maintained credibility by repeating familiar themes and amplifying one another to create the appearance of consensus. Several shared identical videos or images from unrelated conflicts, and the repetition increased engagement and reach.

Western media outlets accelerated the impact of this ecosystem. Journalists cited these accounts as eyewitness sources during breaking-news cycles. Nongovernmental organizations incorporated and echoed posts from them in emergency situational reports. These narratives didn’t stay on fringe accounts. Members of Congress amplified them—for example, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) reshared a miscaptioned Syria photo as “Gaza genocide” before deleting it—and then carried casualty figures from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry into House speeches, hearings, and ceasefire proposals. The result was a commentary environment in which unverified accounts—sometimes operating thousands of miles from Gaza—shaped the discourse more than professional reporting.

Open-source analysis reveals several recurring patterns. One account that frequently announced broadcasts from Rafah displayed a European location tag immediately after the transparency change. Another that described Israeli operations in real time was posting from different foreign locations, suggesting the use of obfuscation tools. Several videos that circulated as evidence of Israeli strikes originated from Syria or earlier conflicts. These recycled images spread because audiences reacted to their emotional framing rather than their metadata or provenance.

The structure of this network aligns with broader features of the modern media environment. Newsrooms seek rapid content during crises and often draw material from social-media sources before verification. Non-governmental organizations fill information gaps with viral posts that appear to support long-standing narratives. Policymakers respond to perceived public pressure rather than confirmed reporting. Synthetic accounts understand these incentives and produce content designed to meet them. The result is an information space in which misleading claims gain traction before correction mechanisms engage.

The power of synthetic Gaza accounts also reflects Western cognitive vulnerabilities. These accounts focus on themes—hunger, displacement, bombardment—that provoke immediate moral reactions. The framing encourages audiences to assume authenticity even when indicators point elsewhere. Once a claim enters mainstream conversation, corrections rarely reverse its influence. Narratives take hold when they align with preexisting expectations in Western institutions.