Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, January 30, 2026

01/30 Links Pt2: Europe’s silenced scholars: the forced Gaza genocide ‘consensus’; Stealing the Holocaust from the Jews; Yoram Hazony’s 15 Minutes

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: For U.S. Jewish Groups, There’s No Going Back to the Old Ways

No one in their right mind will ever again pay into that racket. It was, in a sense, an expression of organizational decadence, mixed with complacency. Anti-Semitism was at low tide, and instead of remembering that the tide always turns, Jewish groups believed they could afford to chip in and show solidarity with fellow “marginalized communities.”

Regardless of the merits of this thinking before October 7, it is clear now that such a strategy cannot be employed again.

So where should the money go instead? A good place to look for answers remains Jack Wertheimer’s 2024 Mosaic essay on the American Jewish community’s post-October 7 philanthropy, since the overall trends remain the same even if the dollar figures have changed since then.

One area Jewish donors have turned to is groups that do nothing more than seek to combat anti-Semitism in the public square. One of Wertheimer’s sources in the philanthropy world told him: “The eyes of funders are now open in new ways; anti-Zionism is well-funded and pervasive in certain sectors. For the first time, funders realize how much those ideas have captured institutions.”

Indeed, this has only become more apparent since the essay’s publication. Anti-Zionism, it turned out, has been molded into a full-fledged ideology, more prevalent on the left than the right. That ideology has little or nothing to do with what Zionism actually is; instead, it’s a movement that sets itself in opposition to Zionists. That is, rather than participate in a debate over Zionism, anti-Zionism is a mercenary ideology that targets people who identify as Zionists—and, crucially, people the anti-Zionists accuse of harboring Zionism in their hearts.

What that means in practice is classic anti-Jewish discrimination in the professions, in academia, and the media. That’s because most Jews believe that Jews have a right to self-determination. So targeting self-identified “Zionists” is a way of targeting Jews.

Anti-Zionism is preposterously well-funded, because it has become a catchall progressive tag, and so some of the mountains of dark money set aside for progressive activism falls in the lap of any group that claims the anti-Zionist mantle. Which, at the current moment, is most of them.

So that’s one place Jewish communal resources must go toward: The battle against anti-Zionism must be joined in earnest. This also means that Jewish organizations should stop playing footsie with Jewish anti-Zionists. Even a big tent must draw the line at those who want to tear the tent down.

Andrew Fox: How academic propaganda is made

The intellectual lineage of this project is obvious: it is AirWars all over again. The same methodological sleight of hand. The same overconfidence and lack of access to genuine intelligence. The same collection of social media claims and hearsay, presented as forensic truth. AirWars gained a reputation by counting allegations as facts and treating propaganda as data, and this project repeats those errors nearly exactly. The only difference is that the flaws are now so well-documented that repeating them can only be a deliberate act.

Then there is the plan to publish via AOAV, described as “respectable.” This is simply not true. AOAV’s leadership has openly campaigned against Israel for years, including promoting the genocide hoax in Gaza, and they specialise in the kind of partisan hit jobs that are the trademark of the far left. Whilst presented as a neutral research platform, in reality it is an activist ecosystem. Publishing there does not enhance credibility: it indicates that the author knows their work would not withstand rigorous peer review by neutral military, intelligence, or legal professionals. It is a safe ideological bubble where conclusions are celebrated rather than examined.

Remove the academic jargon, and this project is extremely simple. It starts with the assumption that Israel is intentionally killing civilians. It then develops a method guaranteed to “prove” that conclusion by excluding all evidence that might challenge it. Classified intelligence is disregarded because it is inaccessible. Operational context is ignored. Hamas-controlled information is given priority. Anything that is not visible in open sources is considered non-existent. The final product is presented as objective scholarship.

This is propaganda with footnotes, but it is rare for a researcher to be so pompous and confident in his echo chamber that he explains the sleight of hand before the magic show begins. The most charitable interpretation is that its author genuinely does not understand how wars are fought, how intelligence operates, or how the law is applied in combat situations. The less charitable interpretation is that he understands perfectly well – and is counting on his audience not to. Either way, no serious person should take this work seriously. We can only thank him for revealing his hand in advance.

Europe’s silenced scholars: the forced Gaza genocide ‘consensus’

Anyone who has followed academia over the past two years might be forgiven for concluding that scholars have reached near-unanimous agreement on one claim: that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza.

Not a week passes without another open letter from academics – often amassing hundreds or even thousands of signatures within days – denouncing Israel in the strongest terms. Across Europe, dozens of universities have now severed ties with Israeli institutions, citing alleged complicity in genocide – or at the very least, systematic war crimes.

In August 2025, the International Association of Genocide Scholars adopted a resolution that appeared to settle the question: the Jewish state, it declared, was guilty of the “crime of crimes”.

In reality, the accusation of genocide is as obscene as it is absurd. Netanyahu and his far-right cronies may be guilty of many things, but there’s no evidence whatsoever that Israel intends to exterminate Gazans, and abundant evidence to the contrary. The eagerness of Western intellectuals to nonetheless accuse Israel of genocide is by now depressingly familiar, as is their blindness to Hamas’s cynical war tactics and the extraordinarily difficult conditions under which Israel has had to pursue its legitimate aims of defeating Hamas and freeing the hostages. In my latest book, Het verraad aan de verlichting (The Betrayal of Enlightenment), I trace this reflex to a postcolonial ideology that casts the West as perpetual oppressor and anti-Western forces as inherently virtuous victims.

A contrived consensus
And yet, there are clear indications that this supposed academic consensus was artificially contrived, a product of intense social pressure, ideological hectoring, and a “spiral of silence.” The IAGS resolution, for example, is not grounded in any original research and offers little substantive argumentation.

In Europe, social pressure is even more intense than in the US. A petition opposing the IAGS resolution garnered hundreds of American signatories, but only a handful in Europe – primarily in Germany and around a single London-based centre for antisemitism research.

In the Low Countries, where I live, my stance on Gaza has left me increasingly isolated within the ivory tower. The rector of my alma mater, Ghent University, declared that any academic questioning the genocide in Gaza can no longer rely on the protections of academic freedom: “This is a line that cannot be crossed.” Five professors have called on the previous rector to discipline me for my “Zionist-tinged” views. I’ve also been deplatformed twice at the University of Amsterdam for my view on Israel.

A spiral of silence
And yet, for the past two years, I have been receiving regular emails from academic colleagues that can be summarised as follows: “I completely agree with you and am glad that you’re fighting this battle, but please keep it quiet – I don’t want to get into trouble.” The social pressure to condemn Israel has become so intense that many “dissidents” no longer dare to speak out.

This reluctance to speak up gives rise to what psychologists call pluralistic ignorance: people mistakenly assume that they are alone in holding a dissenting opinion and therefore either remain silent or misrepresent their own views, inadvertently perpetuating the illusion of consensus and raising the social cost of dissent, as Steven Pinker notes in his book When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows.

I wanted to see if there was a way to break the cycle. What if people could speak honestly without risking their careers? I tested this by inviting primarily Dutch-speaking academics to share anonymous views on Israel and Gaza. What arrived was sobering – and chilling.

'Nothing Less Than Holocaust Inversion': Prominent Holocaust Scholars Denounce Israel-Bashing Nonprofit Named After Holocaust Survivor

More than 100 prominent Holocaust and genocide scholars are sounding the alarm on an "extremist" Israel-bashing nonprofit named after a Holocaust survivor who coined the term "genocide," according to a letter obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. Exploiting the survivor's name while accusing the Jewish state of genocide, the letter's leader said, is "nothing less than Holocaust inversion."

The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit named after Holocaust survivor Raphael Lemkin, was established around 2021 without permission from its namesake's family. It has since used the late lawyer and activist's reputation to undermine Israel on the international stage, the scholars wrote ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The institute began accusing Israel of "genocide" just 10 days after Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023, attack, later claiming Hamas did not commit sexual violence against Israeli civilians.

"As scholars who have written about the Holocaust or other genocides, we share your family's concern about extremists exploiting Raphael Lemkin's name to attack Israel," the experts, led by Rafael Medoff, the director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, wrote in a letter to the Lemkin family. "Israel's counter-terror campaign in Gaza is not genocidal, either in intentions or actions. The civilian deaths there are the result of Hamas embedding itself in residential areas and using the population as human shields."

Medoff told the Free Beacon that the institute's "false accusation of genocide in Gaza" amounts to "nothing less than Holocaust inversion," adding that "the fact that extremists are exploiting Lemkin's name to do so adds insult to injury."

The letter is meant to bolster the Lemkin family's months-long bid to pressure the institute to drop Lemkin's name, saying the institute's "policies, positions, activities, and publications are anathema to Mr. Lemkin's belief system." The family, with legal backing from the European Jewish Association, petitioned Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro (D.) and the state's Bureau of Corporations and Charitable Organizations to intervene on their behalf, though the governor and state have not taken yet any action. As Free Beacon senior writer Ira Stoll reported in late 2024, a Lemkin family member said he was "totally outraged" to see his relative's name used for anti-Israel activism.

01/30 Links Pt1: UN Chief Guterres warns of UN's 'imminent financial collapse'; MSF withholds staff lists from Israel; It’s not war in Iran, it’s mass murder on a scale close to Babyn Yar

From Ian:

Jonathan Tobin: Stop chasing after the Saudis to join the Abraham Accords

That has been a key element of the price tag the Saudis put on their joining the accords. That sounded right to an American foreign-policy establishment that continued to believe that a two-state solution was the only way to end the conflict. Of course, as Palestinians have made clear, over and over again, they have no interest in the idea if it means they’ll have to commit themselves to living in peace with a Jewish state, no matter where its borders are drawn.

After the Second Intifada (2000-2005), and then Oct. 7, the once broad Israeli support for the concept has evaporated. Even most left-wing Israelis know that the Palestinians aren’t interested in peace. Acquiescing to demands for Palestinian statehood would have meant repeating the same catastrophic blunder made by the late Ariel Sharon when he withdrew from the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2005, thus setting in motion the events that allowed Hamas to seize control of the coastal enclave and eventually to be able to commit the atrocities in southern Israel on Oct. 7. Doing so in the far larger and more strategic areas of Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”) would have endangered the very existence of the state.

It’s equally true that the Saudis have no real desire to help create another failed Arab state that would, in all likelihood, be a perfect target to be taken over by Islamists—in this case, Hamas. Yet even before the Palestinians won general Arab and Muslim sympathy by launching a war on Oct. 7 with an orgy of mass murder, rape, torture, kidnapping and wanton destruction, the Saudis were only using the statehood issue to help deflect pressure to join the Abraham Accords.

That should serve as a reminder to Israelis and Americans not to be too disappointed by the Saudis’ decision to attempt to reclaim their status as the leader of Islamist rejectionist forces in the region, a stance that, in recent years, they surrendered to Qatar.

Would it ever have been worthwhile for Israel to have made such a grave sacrifice of its security concerns in exchange for Saudi recognition?

For Israelis, having the Saudis embrace them fully and openly as partners would have signaled the end of the Muslim world’s refusal to accept the Jewish state’s permanent place in the region. But setting up a situation where the Palestinian Authority would likely have been toppled by Hamas would have been suicidal. The scenario in which Hamas assumes control of the territories is a guarantee of nothing but another and even more bloody round of war.

As much as it’s nice to dream of a world where the region could truly be transformed into a “new Middle East,” such as the one that the late Shimon Peres dreamed of when he agreed to the 1993 Oslo Accords, 33 years later, Israelis still don’t live in such a world.

That’s why it is far better to keep such fantasies out of efforts to ensure that the Saudis remain outside of coalitions bent on Israel’s destruction. The Riyadh regime may still hope to develop its economy and needs to modernize its society to achieve that; however, it is never going to be entirely divorced from the Wahabi extremism that put their family in control of the Arabian Peninsula in the first place.

Riyadh can’t change
And so, Americans and Israelis should stop chasing after the vain hope of getting the desert kingdom to behave as if it is anything other than the Islamist regime that it has always been and likely always will be. The Saudis will always act in their own best interests, and if that lines up with a more Israel-friendly policy, then they’ll do that. And being realists and still desirous of friendly relations with the United States, there will be limits on how far they will go in terms of open hostility to Israel. But they can neither be persuaded nor bribed to give up their basic character.

It’s long past time for Washington and Jerusalem to acknowledge this fact and stop trying to pretend that Saudi Arabia is anything other than what it is. It may not be at war with Israel and may even prefer for it to, along with the United States, continue to act to deter Islamist forces that are hostile to Riyadh, even if they are no longer worried about Iran. But it’s never going to be a real friend or ally of a Jewish state.

South Africa declares Israeli chargé d’affaires persona non grata

South Africa on Friday declared Israel’s chargé d’affaires and top diplomat, Ariel Seidman, persona non grata and ordered him to leave the country within 72 hours, according to an official government statement.

South Africa’s foreign ministry, the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO), said it had informed the Israeli government of its decision.

South African officials said the move was based on what they described as “violations of diplomatic norms,” including the alleged use of official Israeli platforms to criticize South African leadership and a failure to notify authorities about visits by senior Israeli officials.

“These violations include the repeated use of official Israeli social media platforms to launch insulting attacks against His Excellency President Cyril Ramaphosa, and a deliberate failure to inform DIRCO of purported visits by senior Israeli officials,” said the statement.

In response, the Israeli Foreign Ministry designated South Africa’s top diplomat in the country, Shaun Edward Byneveldt, persona non grata, saying he must leave Israel within 72 hours, and that “additional steps will be considered in due course.”

Israel responds to South Africa, declares chargé d'affaires persona non grata

Israel has declared South Africa's senior diplomatic representative, Chargé d'affaires Shaun Edward Byneveldt, persona non grata and has been given 72 hours to leave the country, as announced in a statement by the Israeli foreign affairs ministry on Friday.

The action comes in response to South Africa's earlier decision on Friday, in which it declared Israel's chargé d'affaires, Ariel Seidman, persona non grata, according to South Africa's foreign affairs ministry.

Seidman is required to depart from the country within 72 hours, the ministry said in a statement on its website.

It went on to accused Seidman of "unacceptable violations of diplomatic norms and practice which pose a direct challenge to South Africa's sovereignty."

"These violations include the repeated use of official Israeli social media platforms to launch insulting attacks against His Excellency President Cyril Ramaphosa, and a deliberate failure to inform DIRCO (South Africa's foreign affairs ministry) of purported visits by senior Israeli officials," the ministry said.

Israel's diplomatic mission in Pretoria did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Israeli foreign affairs ministry statement referred to South Africa's action against the Israeli diplomat Seidman as "false attacks on Israel in the international arena."

I found yet another academic writing - this one a chapter of a new book - written by a Jewish anti-Zionist. But this one tacitly admits something the other anti-Zionist Jews pretend isn't true: that Zionism is a part of Judaism.

The chapter of Religion, Politics and the New Materialism by Stephanie Gray has the usual dense pseudo-academic/philosophical gobbledygook:

Attention to New Materialist theories transforms how we engage with the political-material effects of religion, including the intersections of white supremacy, fossil fascism, settler colonialism, and climate catastrophe. Climate change apocalypse is both a material and a spiritual concern, especially for those left on the margins. For Judaism, what lessons can we learn from diasporic Judaism rooted in a decolonial land-based politic that would challenge a Zionist ideology that has worked to strip Judaism of its ecological imperative to be in right relationship with the land? Can a Judaism beyond Zionism provide new ways to energize discourses of political liberation, Jewish ritual and practice, and ecological relation to the earth? Here is the potentiality of a kinship that conceives new spiritual and political entanglements that in turn generate energetic possibilities through a process of teshuva, or return. This chapter draws from Jewish and and decolonial studies, to examine the world that is engaged in a genocidal war amid the inescapability of climate change, as well as the world to come, and the world as it could be, in spiritual-material terms.

Hasn't the diaspora been great for the Jews?

Gray's bio says "Stephanie Gray (they/them) ...have have been working for over a decade in grassroots organizing and non-profit consulting, with a focus on accessibility, LGBTQIA2S+ inclusion, and liberatory spiritual practices. "

She once wrote a "dvar Torah" where she found some of the parasha Matot-Masei to be wonderful, but other parts not so much:

“You shall dispossess all the inhabitants of the land... and destroy all their figured objects... You shall take possession of the land and settle in it, for I have assigned the land to you to possess.”

This passage echoes the language and logic of settler colonialism and extraction.

Romans and Byzantines and Mamluks and Crusaders and Ottomans aren't settler colonialist when they conquer areas of the Levant - but Jews are.

The point is that she isn't saying that Judaism isn't Zionist. The Torah passage is clear. She is saying that she wants to make a new "Judaism" that cuts out its heart.

So in a way, the Jewish anti-Zionists who pretend to take Judaism seriously realize that the only way for it to work is to subvert the religion they claim to love.

Which means that they agree with the Zionists on a key point: Judaism has always been Zionist.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The abstract for this paper in Postcolonial Studies is filled with hatred of Israel and American Jews thinly disguised as sober critique:

Emotional politics of Jewish American Zionism: hegemonic feelings and the paralysis of facts

Claire Rosen Sultan - Independent researcher

ABSTRACT
By mapping the emotional politics in circulation today among Jewish American Zionists (JAZs) and the identity constructions and core beliefs therein, this essay explores how those emotions manifest in behaviours and their implications on the capacity for JAZs to engage with facts challenging their core beliefs. This essay traces myriad actors and processes that have led to the normalization of hegemonic JAZ emotional politics, for example, the hegemonic enmeshing of Jewish fears about annihilation with Israel’s fears about (meta)physical security. Engineered emotional politics permeate Jewish American identity formations to such an extent that they are furthering the Zionist mission to violently colonize Palestine. By manufacturing Jewish American repulsions from facts which criticize JAZ identity formations, and by engineering a normalized behaviour response (weaponizing antisemitism) to routinized elicitations of JAZ fear, Zionist narratives are systematically inhibiting engagement with facts revealing Israel as a Genocidal ethnic cleanser. For JAZs to understand Israel as the perpetrator of immense harm, the individual would first need to relinquish the core beliefs upon which their identity formation is constructed. The focus of this essay is the struggle for Jewish liberation from Zionism, which is separate – and inherently linked to – liberation and justice for Palestine.

The amount of psychological projection by Claire Rosen Sultan is off the charts. Anti-Zionists are the ones who refuse to engage with acts that contradict their deeply held positions. And Sultan herself is an anti-Israel activist, saying in November 2023 that the "Gaza genocide" was worse than anything anyone had ever seen before.

The paper itself is just as unhinged as the abstract, as Sultan writes how disturbed she is about being given a JNF charity box at her bat mitzvah to steal Palestinian land.

But one part of the article is even more troubling in that it was allowed to be published altogether.

Throughout the article, the word "genocide" is capitalized when referring to Israeli actions, and a footnote gives the rationale:

The United Nations International Commission of Inquiry (UN COI) and the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) have adopted the capitalisation of Genocide as marker of the ongoing event's elevated status to a proper noun akin to a named historical event, signalling a direct accusation of the most serious international crime against the Palestinian people (United Nations General Assembly, 2024; International Association of Genocide Scholars, 2025)

I looked up the reports referenced, and other UN reports, and never do they capitalize "genocide" when they are accusing Israel of that crime. This footnote is a lie.

But while the paper consistently capitalizes "genocide" when referring to Israeli actions, when it refers to the Holocaust, it deliberately places it in lowercase!

This means that the author does not consider the Nazi Holocaust to be worthy of having an "elevated status to a proper noun akin to a named historical event" - but a war started by Hamas is.

She is saying that the Gaza war was worse than the Holocaust, and that the Holocaust was not unique but just one of many.

Not capitalizing "Holocaust" is, fundamentally, Holocaust denial - in the sense that it is denial that the Holocaust was a unique event. Capitalizing "genocide" continuously indicates that the Gaza war was more consequential and more devastating than the Holocaust was.

Claire Rosen Sultan may have been borna Jew but she is an antisemite.

How can Postcolonial Studies have allowed publication of a paper that violates normal standards of English language capitalization to minimize a real genocide?

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

01/29 Links Pt2: The Men Who Bring Them Home; Arsen Ostrovsky: Surviving the Bondi Beach Attack: Terror, Trauma, and Combating Antisemitism; Jewish orgs welcome EU terror designation of IRGC

From Ian:

The shallow claim that anti-Zionism isn’t antisemitism

You can tell if they are serious by looking at their anti-racism policies. Organisations cannot pretend to oppose antisemitism unless they define it. Without a definition they cannot discipline members for racist conduct.

If you cannot define it, you cannot oppose it.

Ominously, many want to shut down any attempt to limit Jew hate. They want a world without boundaries, where anything goes, and anti-Jewish racism can never be called by its real name.

Their first target is the widely used International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which has been circulating in various forms since the early 2000s. The global left denounces it because it says that the definition has been used to “wrongly label criticism of Israel as antisemitic”.

Within a day of becoming mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani showed his political priorities by withdrawing the city’s endorsement of the definition.

The precise form of words the IHRA drafters used is that it is antisemitic “to deny the Jewish people their right to self-determination by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour”.

You can argue about that. As I said above, people who want to abolish the world’s only Jewish state need to bend over backwards to prove that they don’t just hate Jews.

Good-hearted left-wing Jewish academics took the complaint seriously, and went out of their way to accommodate Palestinian and leftist concerns.

They produced the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism in 2021. It emphasised that it was not antisemitic “to support arrangements that accord full equality to all inhabitants between the river and the sea, whether in two states, a binational state, unitary democratic state [or] federal state”.

All true opponents of racism need to do was oppose anti-Jewish conspiracy theories and race hatred.

A bare minimum you might say. But even this stripped down, permissive, definition of antisemitism is too much for many on the left to bear.

I hoped that the election of the Jewish Zack Polanski to the leadership of the Green Party would mark a break with the antisemitism that so disfigured the Corbyn movement,

Not if a faction among Green Party members has its way, it won’t.

A motion before the Green Party spring conference calls for the party “to reject the IHRA and JDA [Jerusalem Declaration] definitions which have been weaponised to silence legitimate criticism of the state of Israel”.

When the conference starts in March, we will see whether Polanski has the political courage to fight back, or whether he’s just another empty sloganeer.

Turn to the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, and it is the same story,

It too will not even accept the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism because it is “being used to reinforce the illegitimate policing of speech about Palestine and advocacy for Palestinian rights.”

You search its website in vain for examples of the Jerusalem Declaration silencing legitimate debate – and of course there are none. You search for any definition of antisemitism that would be acceptable to pro-Palestinian activists – and of course there isn’t one.

They have no formal means of condemning The Protocols of the Elders Zion, Mein Kampf or the Hamas Charter.

More pertinently from a modern left-wing point of view, they have no means of condemning Nick Fuentes and the antisemites flourishing in Donald Trump’s America.

The Maga movement is loathed by leftists. But at least some on the left would rather give the far right a free pass than accept the smallest restraint on the loathing of Jews.

Seth Mandel: Can Elaine Luria Handle the Squad’s Heat?

Luria was once the kind of Democrat that party leaders wanted to recruit: liberal but poised, with a military career on the resume. (Luria spent 20 years in the Navy.)

Military experience tended to go hand-in-hand with support for Israel, just as exposure to reality tends to increase support for Israel. Those with national security experience in the field would be much less vulnerable to the paranoid conspiracism of the Code Pink world and campus activists, the thinking went. An inherent toughness could make it less likely they’d bend or break in the face of progressive pressure.

And all of that was true—except that last part. One by one, “moderate” Democrats fell in line. Elissa Slotkin, now a senator from Michigan, entertained the idea that AIPAC should register as a foreign agent. Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts Marine, folded like a cheap suit in the face of anti-Israel primary pressure this cycle. Accommodating progressive anti-Semitism became the norm, with very few exceptions (Ritchie Torres, John Fetterman).

Luria says she wants to turn back that tide, or at least show it some resistance. The question is how far she is willing to go when locking horns with her party.

During Luria’s time in Congress, she was at the forefront of a group of Democrats criticizing Ilhan Omar’s anti-Semitism, but she opposed removing Omar from her committee assignments, as Republicans had done with Steve King.

Luria’s willingness to call out some of the anti-Semitism from her own party has the potential to shift the debate if she gets back into office. But the extent of her impact will be decided by where Luria places the limits of her posture. Would she go beyond statements? That is, would she support actual consequences for Democrats who engage in rank anti-Semitism?

Most of the time, Luria seems willing to criticize Omar by name. Will she do the same for Rashida Tlaib, who has been headlining a conference tied to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine? How about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the thin-skinned Squad ringleader and blood libel specialist who may run for president in 2028?

As of now, the odds are in Luria’s favor. Virginia Democrats still nominate ostensibly moderate candidates, and the national mood certainly seems to have swung against Republican incumbents. (Republican Rep. Jen Kiggans, who defeated Luria two years ago, holds the seat.)

Is Luria prepared to be a Slotkin/Moulton Democrat, living in fear of the Hamasniks in her party, or can she envision herself as a Torres/Fetterman Democrat, the much more rare breed with a spine strong enough to stand on principle? The fundamentals of the midterm elections mean we’ll probably soon find out.

Iran's Options: Talking or Fighting

President Trump's ultimatum to Iran calls for it to negotiate away its nuclear program or face a possible attack. Either path risks putting the already weakened regime in a more precarious position. Along with insisting that Iran halt domestic enrichment of nuclear fuel and hand over its stockpile of uranium, Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff has indicated Tehran must accept limits on its ballistic-missile arsenal and abandon its support for militias in the region.

A decision to halt enrichment of uranium would be a humiliating public retreat on a core national priority for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Rebuffing the demand is increasingly likely to prompt Trump to order strikes, further exposing the government's vulnerability.

"Their strategy right now is just buying time," said Alan Eyre, a former senior U.S. diplomat who specialized in Iran and is now at the Middle East Institute. "Their whole strategic outlook is when you're in a weak position you don't compromise, because that invites further aggression."

"The supreme leader is able to do compromises, but those compromises cannot touch the basic pillars of the regime, meaning he won't forgo a missile buildup, he won't forgo helping proxies and he won't forgo enrichment," said Danny Citrinowicz, a former Israeli intelligence officer and a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.

Citrinowicz said killing Khamenei or expecting the other members of the regime to turn against him under U.S. pressure is a faint hope, given Iran's unity at the top. Even if Khamenei was somehow removed, the regime would likely coalesce quickly around a new leader, he said. For all the setbacks the regime has suffered, there are few signs it is facing imminent collapse, such as splits within the leadership or defections.

"They still have cohesion. The regime is still functioning," Citrinowicz said. "If they feel this war is aimed at toppling this regime, it won't topple this regime, because to do it will take time, and Trump has no intention to invest that time."

"You could do airstrikes that significantly restrict this regime's ability to control its population and to project power abroad," Eyre said. "But to get from there to a better form of government in Iran? You can't get there from here."

01/29 Links Pt1: Palestinians Offered Prosperity for Giving Up Dream of Israel's Destruction See It as Humiliating Bribery; Hamas official: We did not discuss disarmament ‘for a single moment’

From Ian:

Palestinians Offered Prosperity for Giving Up Dream of Israel's Destruction See It as Humiliating Bribery

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, President Donald Trump's former senior advisor Jared Kushner presented a vision for what Gaza would look like, under the title "Empowering Gazans with Jobs, Training, and Services." This vision is based on real estate deal logic: property improvement, value creation, and bringing prosperity.

Its foundational assumption, held also by Israel before Oct. 7, is that humans are, first and foremost, rational economic creatures. If we just provide Gazans good livelihoods, luxury hotels, a port, and factories, the motivation for terror will decrease until it disappears.

But Middle Eastern reality and Palestinian reality proves again and again that the struggle is not about quality of life. The critical mistake of the Trump-Kushner approach is the attempt to reduce a deep national, religious, and identity conflict to a cash-flow and urban-development problem.

The Palestinian national movement, and especially its extremist branches controlling Gaza, have never placed economic welfare at the top of their priorities. If they had wanted that, Gaza could have become the Singapore of the Middle East a decade ago, with the billions of dollars that flowed to it.

Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are driven by an ideology that sees eliminating Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel as a lofty goal, sanctifying any sacrifice including poverty and hunger of their own people. For them, the land is not real estate waiting for a developer, but waqf land that must be liberated. When offered prosperity in exchange for giving up the dream of Israel's destruction, they see it as humiliating bribery.

The thought that money will buy quiet is an optical illusion. This is a national struggle. The other side is not seeking a business partnership, but historical victory. A discourse about economic development, without first neutralizing the nationalist-religious aspiration to destroy Israel, is a recipe for repeated disaster.

Hamas Intends to Control Gaza from Behind the Scenes

According to the IDF, Hamas will accept the Palestinian technocrat committee - the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) - with the goal of controlling it from behind the scenes, as Hizbullah has done in Lebanon.

Handing over civilian functions to the NCAG makes Hamas's life easier, as they do not need to invest in civilian issues.

The IDF noted that even though the NCAG will not be formally controlled by Hamas, it will still need to rely on local administrators in the field who are under Hamas control.

This would not truly dislodge Hamas from power absent an additional round of military pressure.

Seth Mandel: Mansour Abbas’s Dilemma and the Israeli Election

One can better understand the phrase “two Jews, three opinions” by looking at Israeli elections, where there is rarely much strength in numbers and where splitting a party can provide more Knesset seats than unifying parties together.

And like everything else in Israel, it doesn’t just apply to Jews. In 2021, the Ra’am party, led by Mansour Abbas, made history by becoming the first Arab party to establish itself as a formal member of a governing coalition. Though Ra’am had won only four seats in the election, those four seats made the difference by giving the “change government,” led by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, a Knesset majority. For first time in a dozen years, Benjamin Netanyahu would not be prime minister.

This time around, Ra’am has agreed to be part of a joint Arab slate, in which the Arab parties all run together. Some polls suggest this Joint List could garner as many as 13 seats. Abbas, however, isn’t thrilled.

Wouldn’t 13 seats—theoretically—be better than four? Not exactly. A joint Arab slate means Ra’am is tying its fortunes to parties that wouldn’t sit in a government. Abbas is pragmatic, the rest of the Arab party leaders much less so. Which means those 13 seats wouldn’t be added to a coalition of Zionist parties that might replace the Likud-led government.

Abbas would rather have four seats and be part of the government than have 13 seats in opposition. Joining a coalition means winning concessions for Abbas’s Arab constituents. Remaining in opposition with more seats would make the Arab coalition louder but mostly irrelevant.

Ra’am has been working to improve its image as a pragmatic party that wants to give Arab voters a stake in the Israeli governing majority, not just its opposition. Abbas has reportedly been seeking a Jewish candidate to join its slate, and a few weeks ago Ra’am announced it was separating from the Shura Council, the religious body of the wider Islamist movement of which Ra’am is part. A technically secular Arab party, perhaps even one with a Jewish candidate, would be another major step toward the normalization of Arab politics on a national level.

But running with the other Arab parties on one giant slate essentially erases all that distinguishes Ra’am ideologically from the other parties. So why would Mansour Abbas agree to the Joint List?

Greta Announces Flotilla To Minneapolis (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Stockholm, January 30 - Dissatisfied with shrinking online engagement numbers, a young Scandinavian climate-cum-Palestine-cum-migrant activist convened a press conference today to invite the cause-of-the-month community to join her in sailing to Minnesota to bring humanitarian relief and support the locals in their fight against Trump's imperialism.

“We have no choice,” declared 23-year-old Greta Thunberg from a folding table set up in a drizzly courtyard, flanked by two solar-powered megaphones - with backup diesel generators available, given the season - and a banner that read “Solidarity Flows Both Ways (and Also Inland).” “The tweets are drying up. The Reels are barely getting 12 likes from my mother. If we don’t pivot to something fresh and photogenic, the algorithm will literally kill the planet.”

The proposed Freedom Flotilla—now officially branded “Sumud Surge: Midwest Edition”—will ride the waves created by all the icebergs that have already melted because her climate alarmism cannot be wrong, either. Organizers promise the fleet will glide effortlessly from the Baltic Sea, through the magically risen Atlantic, across the newly submerged eastern United States, into the expanded Great Lakes, and straight up a Mississippi River that, by departure date, will have become a six-lane superhighway of righteous seawater.

“The water knows what justice looks like,” explained a press aide clutching a clipboard and an oat-milk latte. “It will simply flow around anything problematic—capitalism, Zionism, borders, you name it.”

The armada’s manifest has already begun to coalesce: several German Antifa kayakers who brought their own black bloc dry bags, a handful of French philosophers tweeting live existential dread, two token Jews, one very online American grad student who keeps referring to Minneapolis as “Minne colonized,” and a core group of Hamas members. The flagship remains the same oversized rubber duck from previous campaigns, now repainted with a keffiyeh pattern and equipped with Bluetooth speakers looping a 45-minute remix of “How dare you” set to drill beats.

Upon arrival in Minneapolis, the expedition plans to: establish a “People’s Autonomous Zone” in the skyway tunnels, complete with land acknowledgments and a large stockpile of challah bread so Greta can enjoy her new favorite food; stage daily glare sessions outside the local ICE office while holding signs that read “This Is What Decolonization Looks Like (From 4,000 Miles Away);” and distribute keffiyehs and 3D-printed “solidarity paddles” to residents who promise to obstruct ICE raids at every opportunity.

Ms. Thunberg defended against critics who call her naive: "We're under no illusion that we will have smooth sailing this time of year. That is why we have contracted with a fleet of large trucks to carry our vessels on the roads if that becomes necessary."

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At the Cairo International Book Fair there was a discussion of the book "Jews of the Arab World: Claims of Persecution" by Zubaydah Atta.

The point of the book appears to be to prove that Jews really were not treated bad in the Arab world - an easily provable lie.

One specific statistic that Ms. Atta claimed in the talk was that Jews had been a peripheral presence in Jerusalem, saying that an Ottoman census found only 60 Jewish families in the entire city. I could not find any such census; the lowest number I could find was in 16th century Ottoman tax recordss that said there were 1,194 Jews, about 21% of the total population, which is still significant.

This author is not telling the truth even in her "scholarship."

But this book, being praised by fellow Egyptian "scholars," goes much further than just discussing Jews in Muslim lands. It describes the Jewish mindset (simultaneously pretending to be the victim and supremacist,) it critiques Jewish interpretation of the Torah as being selective, it accuses Jews of inventing stories that distort Islamic history and it says Zionists created false narratives about Jewish history to the West.

This goes way beyond Jews in the Arab world into lots of other fields like European history, psychology and theology, which is strange for a supposedly scholarly work.

But it all makes sense when you realize that these disparate factoids all converge on one theme: Jews are bad.

And this is the level of scholarship that gets celebrated at the Arab world's premier book fair.

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26% of European teachers think that "Jews murder Christian children for their blood" isn't or might not be antisemitic

UNESCO surveyed over 2,000 teachers in the EU about how much antisemitism they witness in the classroom.

The main headlines are bad enough:

- 78% of teachers said they had encountered at least one antisemitic incident among students

- More than a quarter reported seeing nine or more such incidents.

- 61% said they had come across Holocaust denial or distortion in the classroom, with one in ten saying this occurred frequently.

- One in ten teachers reported witnessing physical attacks on Jewish pupils at least once,

- 44% said they had seen students making Nazi gestures or wearing or drawing Nazi symbols.

But I think the most noteworthy and frightening results came from a different question.

The teachers were asked to judge whether a series of statements were antisemitic or not. All of them are.

36.7% are not sure that defacing a Holocaust memorial with "Free Palestine" is antisemitic.

36% think "Jews control the media" might not be antisemitic.

25.7% think the classic blood libel of Jews murdering and drinking the blood of Christian children is either not antisemitic or "depends on context."

Holocaust denial, using derogatory terms for Jews, attacking Jewish properties - a significant number of these teachers don't consider those necessarily antisemitic.

The survey didn't ask the question, but one can assume that a majority of those who answered that these things were definitely not antisemitic actually believe them to be true.

Which means that at least 10% of European teachers are antisemites. Moreover, since so many had no idea what antisemitism actually means, the statistics of how many witnessed antisemitism in their classrooms are certainly undercounted.

I don't know what the numbers would be in America, but the EU has been a harbinger of US antisemitism for quite a while now. This is what US and Canadian classrooms will look like in a few years, unless someone starts to take the fight against antisemitism seriously. Unfortunately I cannot imagine US teachers unions supporting the training and vetting that would be necessary to stop this from happening in America.

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01/28 Links Pt2: Islamists have been given a veto over public life; Hundreds at funeral of Ran Gvili, Israel’s final hostage; A Hospital’s Shocking Treatment of a Bondi Beach Survivor

From Ian:

20 Jews murdered, 815 severe antisemitic attacks took place worldwide in 2025

Twenty Jews were murdered worldwide and some 815 severe antisemitic incidents were documented in 2025, according to a report released Tuesday by the Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Ministry.

The total number of attacks was down from 2024, the ministry said without elaborating, while the number of deaths rose significantly from the one confirmed antisemitic murder in 2024, of Chabad Rabbi Zvi Kogan.

The report also recorded approximately 124 million antisemitic posts on X, formerly Twitter, and over 4,000 anti-Israel demonstrations, of which 365 were classified as posing a high or extreme risk to Jewish communities.

Antisemitic activity and rhetoric skyrocketed after Hamas launched its war against Israel on October 7, 2023. The data was presented during the International Conference on Combating Antisemitism, held in Jerusalem on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The highest numbers of incidents were recorded in the United States (273), the United Kingdom (121), Australia (45), France (44), and Canada (37), the ministry said.

The murders included 15 killed in the Hannukah terror attack at Bondi Beach in December, two killed in a Yom Kippur attack in Manchester, two Israeli embassy staff members killed outside the Jewish Museum in Washington, DC, in May, and a woman killed at a pro-Israel vigil in Boulder, Colorado, in June.

Other noteworthy incidents included an Israeli tourist hospitalized in Greece after a pro-Palestinian attacker bit off part of his ear in July; an elderly Jewish woman stabbed in a grocery store in Canada in August; the torching of a Sydney childcare center in January; the beating and attempted kidnapping of an Israeli in Wales in March; and the torching of a Melbourne synagogue with 20 people inside in July.

Belongings of members of the Jewish community are seen at the scene of a terror shooting at Bondi Beach in Sydney on December 15, 2025. (DAVID GRAY / AFP)

The data showed a clear correlation between spikes in violence and incitement and international security developments related to Israel’s war in Gaza, the report said without elaborating.

Brendan O'Neill: Islamists have been given a veto over public life

The Met imposed severe conditions on the UKIP march. No one, they decreed, is permitted to take part in a UKIP gathering anywhere in Tower Hamlets on 31 January. Their reasoning is truly scandalous. ‘We are not saying that the UKIP protest, in isolation, will be disorderly’, they said. But ‘we reasonably believe’ that ‘groups who are hostile’ will ‘find it provocative’. That means there could be ‘an adverse local reaction’ that might include ‘violence and serious disorder’. Strip away all the euphemistic cop-speak and what is being said here is that a right-wing, pro-Jesus rally is likely to piss off Islamists and thus it is forbidden.

If this doesn’t shock you, I don’t know what to say. The dictionary definition of appeasement is ‘giving in to hostile demands’ in order to maintain some kind of peace. That’s what happened here. The Met cravenly bowed to the belligerence of local bigots. They sacrificed freedom of assembly at the altar of ideological menace.

It matters not one iota what you think of UKIP. To prevent anyone from holding a ‘Walk with Jesus’ because you fear a ‘local adverse reaction’ is to play a dangerously divisive game. What the Met should have done is police those that they suspect will commit violence (local Islamists), not punish those who, by their own admission, are unlikely to be ‘disorderly’ (UKIP). In doing the opposite, the Met have made themselves the footsoldiers of Islamism and the enemies of freedom.

Who will now deny there is an Islamist veto over much of our public life? Courtesy of the moral cowardice of our institutions, Islamists enjoy staggering power over who is allowed to assemble in public, where, for how long, and for what reasons. The Met’s capitulation to Whitechapel extremists comes hot on the heels of the Maccabi Tel Aviv scandal, when West Midlands Police banned Jews from Israel from attending a game at Villa Park because they caught wind of the fact that local elements were planning to arm themselves to attack those Jews. West Midlands Police had earlier banned Birmingham’s 2025 Diwali celebrations, again out of ‘concerns for public safety’.

Anyone who’s thinking of gloating at the fact that a UKIP assembly has been forbidden should think again. For the Islamist veto, this trump card of violent menace, has also led to a prohibition on Jews from Israel and the brute prevention of Brummie Hindus from marking the most joyous festival in their religion. No one is safe from the extra-legal powers that our spineless rulers have gifted to noisy Islamists.

Recent history makes it clear where such kowtowing can lead. For what was England’s rape-gang scandal if not a vile byproduct of the elites’ fear of rocking the ‘multicultural’ boat? That industrial-scale abuse of mostly white working-class girls by men who considered them little more than ‘slags’, as police, councils and politicians looked the other way, was a testament to the horrors that can flow from official cowardice. And how does the Labour government respond to all of this? By obsessing over a new definition of ‘Islamophobia’, which will make it even harder for decent Brits – Muslims and non-Muslims alike – to discuss the Islamist scourge.

Tearing up the Islamist veto, shoving it in the shredding machine of history, is one of the pressing tasks of our time. Everyone who values secularism, liberty and equality should balk at the elevation of Islamist feeling over everyday freedom. This is how you respond when Islamists say a UKIP march, Jewish football fans or a Diwali celebration will cause them offence: So fucking what? Get over it. Stop being a baby.

When hate becomes a business: The monetization of antisemitism

Antisemitism has always adapted to its surroundings. Today, it has adapted to the digital economy.

What once circulated through fringe pamphlets or isolated gatherings now thrives online, in an environment where outrage is rewarded, provocation is amplified and attention can be monetized. Antisemitism is no longer just spreading. In many cases, it is being incentivized.

In the modern attention economy, clicks equal currency. Algorithms are designed to reward engagement, not accuracy or morality. Content that shocks or enrages travels farther and faster, and antisemitic material, unfortunately, performs well in that system. The result is not only broader exposure to hate, but a set of financial incentives that sustain and accelerate it.

We saw this dynamic recently in Miami Beach, where videos circulated online of influencers singing Nazi slogans and performing salutes, first in a limousine and later inside a nightclub. They laughed, played to the cameras, fully aware they were being recorded and without a hint of shame.

The episode spread widely because it was inflammatory. In today’s digital ecosystem, outrage fuels visibility. Visibility drives traffic. Traffic brings revenue. Antisemitism becomes content and content becomes cash.

Extremist figures understand this well. For some, antisemitism is strategic. Provocation drives attention. Attention drives donations, subscriptions, merchandise sales and influence. In these cases, hate is not just ideology. It is a business model.

What once existed on the fringes now operates openly on mainstream platforms, supported by systems that reward engagement without evaluating consequences.

When hate becomes profitable, behavior changes.

Repetition normalizes rhetoric that once would have triggered immediate alarm. Over time, the presence of money dulls moral resistance. If content is rewarded, it can begin to feel acceptable, or at least tolerable.

This is where the danger lies, not only for Jewish communities but for society more broadly. Antisemitism has become embedded in a digital economy that prioritizes virality over responsibility and profit over principle.

01/28 Links Pt1: Now that all hostages are back, Israel must finish off Hamas; PA Promised $200 Million in ‘Pay-To-Slay’ Payments After it 'Scrapped' Program

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Now that all hostages are home, Israel must open inquiry into October 7 massacre

A profound chapter in Israel’s national trauma reached a painful conclusion on Monday: the remains of St.-Sgt. Ran Gvili, the last Israeli held in Gaza after the October 7, 2023 attack, were returned to Israeli soil. After 843 days, the state can say that there are no more Israelis in captivity.

Gvili’s story comprises both courage and heartbreak. A 24-year-old police officer who put on his uniform on that horrific morning while on medical leave, he joined the defense of Kibbutz Alumim and was killed while fighting to protect others. That he ran toward danger and became the last to come home should echo throughout Israeli society.

Gvili’s return is rightly mourned and honored. Families gathered in Hostages Square. The symbolic clock counting the days since October 7 has been turned off. Yet closure brings its own burden: a country that has endured this scale of loss still needs to fathom how and why Israel was so catastrophically unprepared.

Government and military leaders also framed Gvili’s return as a statement of national duty. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he told the family, “We will bring Ran home,” and added, “We will bring them all home.”

IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir said, “We kept our promise to leave no one behind,” calling it a moment the country “is excited about,” because Ran returned “to be buried in Israel.”

Across the political spectrum, voices have called for a state commission of inquiry into the gross failures of October 7. Many of those calls reflect anguish more than politics. Families who lost loved ones, freed hostages, reservists, and civilians want answers about intelligence failures, operational decisions, strategic assumptions, and the broader policy environment that left communities exposed.

At the same time, concerns raised by opponents of a sweeping inquiry deserve a fair hearing. Israel remains in a volatile security environment, and public hearings can affect operational freedom, intelligence sources, and national cohesion. Some also fear that an inquiry will turn into a political battlefield and deepen internal chasms and rifts at a time when unity still carries strategic value.

No retreat: Now that all hostages are back, Israel must finish off Hamas

Why it's time to finish off Hamas
In this war, two critical dimensions are unfolding simultaneously: the present and the future.

The insistence on returning all the hostages held in Gaza embodied the battle over the present – our moral, ethical, and existential duty to save lives here and now. Every moment in which our soldiers and civilians were held captive was an open wound in the heart of the nation, and every effort to bring them home expressed our commitment to the value of life.

At the same time, the insistence from here onward on the decisive defeat of Hamas embodies the battle over the future. A society that cannot defeat its enemies, uproot the threat of terror, and ensure secure borders for generations to come will remain trapped in an endless cycle of bloodshed and uncertainty. The dismantling and disarmament of Hamas is not only a military objective – it is a vision for a future of stability, security, and prosperity in the State of Israel.

The beginning of Phase II is an integral part of the war, and the determination to dismantle Hamas is not only part of the struggle for life, but also – and no less importantly – for the quality of life. Part of this war for life is the moral foundation that obligates us to do everything possible not to leave hostages behind.

The completion of the phase of returning the hostages from Gaza must serve as a lesson – not the first, but one that must be the last – that it is both a security and moral obligation to decisively defeat Hamas. As long as it exists, the threat of rockets, tunnels, and kidnappings will continue to haunt us, and any dream of civilian stability will remain fragile. The defeat of the October 7 perpetrators is therefore a necessary condition not only for survival in the present, but above all to ensure that no Israeli civilian or IDF soldier will again be abducted and held as an asset by Hamas in the future.

The prolonged war in Gaza and along Israel’s other borders – and especially the kidnapping of civilians and soldiers – has tested and continues to test Israeli society. It challenges us to understand that war demands painful prices and enormous economic resources. These reflect our choice to invest in building the tools necessary for our defense, rather than in monuments to our memory.

Andrew Fox: Why cutting military ties with Israel would cost British soldiers’ lives

Four retired senior British Army officers have reportedly urged the prime minister to impose a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel and to “cut all military collaboration with Israel forthwith”, including links with Israeli defence firms.

In the same political climate, the UK has also taken steps to prevent Israeli students from attending one of Britain’s flagship defence courses. You may agree or disagree with any Israeli policy, and you can hold Israel to any standard you believe is appropriate. However, a blanket attempt to sever military-to-military contact with the Israel Defence Forces is not a serious way to protect British troops. It is, in fact, a notable way to ensure that British soldiers die needlessly in the next war Britain cannot escape.

Here is the uncomfortable truth: when it comes to saving young men and women after they have been torn apart by blast and shrapnel, Israel has been learning, adapting and delivering at a pace and scale that the British Army simply has not had to sustain in recent years.

The IDF’s own combat medicine data from recent conflicts shows a steady decline in the “case fatality rate” (the proportion of casualties who die) across major operations, even as injuries have become more severe. That is what a learning medical system looks like when tested under fire.

Consider the first lesson: blood, not “drips”, saves lives. For decades, armies (and civilian ambulances) often reached for clear IV fluids first. Doctors call these fluids “crystalloids” – essentially sterile saltwater solutions used to increase circulating volume.

They are not useless, but they have a fatal limitation: they do not carry oxygen, and they do not contain the clotting components that stop catastrophic bleeding. In mass trauma, too much crystalloid can dilute the body’s ability to clot, cool the casualty, and worsen shock.

The IDF’s data indicates a significant doctrinal shift away from crystalloids and towards blood-based resuscitation. During the Second Lebanon War, 92.7 per cent of casualties receiving resuscitation fluids were treated with crystalloids. In Protective Edge (2014), that figure was still 83.3 per cent. In the current war (Iron Swords), only 29.8 per cent were treated with crystalloids, reflecting a clear move towards resuscitation centred around blood products, especially whole blood.

“Whole blood” matters because it is what the body actually loses: oxygen-carrying red cells, plasma proteins, and platelets that form clots. The challenge is not the concept; it is creating a system capable of delivering whole blood safely, repeatedly, and at scale. Israel has achieved this.

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are the sole responsibility of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

I used to read antisemitic comments online with a sort of grim detachment. The ugliness was real, but it felt like something I could observe from a distance—how people swallow stupid lies, how hatred hardens into certainty, how mobs form without ever meeting the people they condemn.

Since October 7, that distance has narrowed. Sometimes the hatred is no longer “interesting.” It hurts.

It hurts because Jews were butchered and raped—and the global reaction was not what any reasonable person would expect in relation to such atrocities. Victims became villains. Murderers and rapists were recast as “resistance.” And when the Jews defended themselves, they called it “genocide.” We were even told we were “occupiers,” as if an indigenous people can be said to “occupy” its own land. The moral inversion is sickening to anyone in command of the facts of October 7, and what has since transpired.

But it’s not all bad. When the haters peddle awful lies about the Jews, the rare thing that steadies you is a friend who speaks plainly—someone willing to describe reality without euphemism, and to risk doing so, even at a high cost.

Sometimes that friendship shows itself in a single gesture. Senator John Kennedy posted a brief message acknowledging the suffering of the Israeli hostages and their families, and congratulating Israel on the return of the last hostage from Gaza, Ran Gvili. At the same time, he acknowledged the suffering of the Israeli hostages and their families. The replies were a familiar torrent of moral inversion and cruelty. The contrast said more than the post itself ever could about the overwhelming hatred toward a people that were tortured, murdered, abused, and held captive—a people whose babies were burned alive.

The truth is, aside from my favorite senator, Israel has too few true friends today. One of them is Michele Bachmann. Bachmann served in the U.S. House of Representatives for Minnesota’s 6th District from 2007 to 2015 and was a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. She previously served in the Minnesota Senate and is currently dean of the Robertson School of Government at Regent University.

When I heard an excerpt of Michele Bachmann’s remarks at the Pray Vote Stand Summit, I was touched, filled with gratitude for her honest, plain talk. Bachmann got it when so many do not. She saw everything that was bad about putting terrorists and businessmen with regional interests in charge of negotiations, and she was unafraid to say so.

Dean Bachmann asked the right questions. There was no sign that she cared about the risks of speaking the truth. Just a forthright laying out of the facts—trying, and at times failing—to restrain her passion for the subject of how the negotiations were going.

Keep in mind that the summit was held in October. So much has happened since then. Though some things remain unchanged. We still have two non-cabinet figures—Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner—selling an imaginary peace that threatens Israel’s survival (she didn’t say it in those words—that was all me).

“We have a Secretary of State named Marco Rubio,” Bachmann said. “Why wasn’t he involved in these negotiations?”

She turned to Qatar, explaining something that everyone should know, but too many do not:

NEW @nytimes investigation: Trump’s Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff was the target of a Qatari influence campaign in which Qatar would invest in Witkoff real estate projects in order to gain entree to Trump’s inner circle. https://t.co/ZecRXuvICy
— David Enrich (@davidenrich) September 26, 2025

“Qatar is the number-one funder of terrorism in the world,” Bachmann said, painting a picture of a wealthy engine of political Islam and a patron of Hamas. She warned about the way money and access can shape foreign policy decisions, especially when those decisions concern Israel. That having Qatar shape the atmosphere around the talks could not be a good thing.

Trump’s chosen interlocutors, Witkoff and Kushner, do business with Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Yet they were put in charge of negotiations that come with direct consequences for Israel’s security and the safety of its people.

After watching an excerpt of her remarks, I reached out with some questions. I was honored when Michele Bachmann, graciously consented to answer my questions. It’s obvious that Michele Bachmann is a busy lady—someone with a full plate—yet always ready to take on more. It’s the reason I reached out to her.

Varda Epstein: In your remarks at the Pray Vote Stand Summit, you expressed concern about President Trump’s decision to involve Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in negotiations with Qatar, despite their business ties and Qatar’s role as a major sponsor of Hamas. More recently, Israel’s security cabinet has reportedly blamed Jared Kushner for the composition of the Executive Board for the proposed Board of Peace, which includes (rabidly anti-Israel) Turkish and Qatari representation and was, according to Prime Minister Netanyahu, "not coordinated with Israel and runs contrary to its policy."

Why do you think the president continues to rely on Witkoff and Kushner? Who stands to gain from this approach, and what risks does it pose for Israel?

Michele Bachmann: The President has full confidence in his envoys, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff. Their diplomatic portfolios have enlarged in the last year since they were dispatched at the President’s direction during his second term.

Neither envoy appears to be employees of the federal government. They are volunteers, according to press accounts.

Concerns have been raised over past and ongoing business relationships between Mr. Witkoff and Qatar, and Mr. Kushner and Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Mr. Witkoff was a former business partner with Qatar. Mr. Kushner’s investment company was in business, and remains in business, with Saudi Arabia and other Arab investors, all while Witkoff and Kushner are currently conducting U.S. foreign policy with these business partners.

The questions of conflicts of interest are obvious and concerning.

One question concerning these relationships, regards the level of Qatari and Saudi influence on American foreign policy decision making, in particular regarding Israel’s security.

Varda Epstein: In recent months, a number of prominent conservatives—including Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts and commentator Megyn Kelly—have publicly defended Tucker Carlson, even after his interview with white nationalist Nick Fuentes. Why do you think this shift is happening, and what does it signal about the direction of the Republican Party?

Michele Bachmann: Tucker Carlson and other high-profile commentators have made controversial statements this year. These statements are vocal, intentional, and are dividing the pro-Israel Republican base. Grounded by pro-Israel evangelicals, the Republican Party historically supported strong support for Israel.

Tragically, the Democratic Party moved from an often pro-Israel party to holding a decidedly anti-Israel posture.

The anti-Israel embrace of the Democratic Party is now attempting to similarly turn, or at least divide pro-Israel support from within the Republican Party.

The Republican Party is pro-Israel and will remain that way unless it is taken over by an anti-Israel Presidential candidate. An event like that would certainly terminate a Republican candidate’s chances for electoral victory.

Varda Epstein: Given J.D. Vance’s isolationist worldview and his close relationship with Tucker Carlson—including employing Carlson’s son as a senior aide—what do you believe a Vance presidency would mean for Israel?

Michele Bachmann: A Republican Presidential candidate who does not value the importance of the U.S.-Israel relationship to vital national security interests, will likely lose a general Presidential election. Pro-Israel support is a foundational value of the Republican Party.

If Israel is not America’s greatest ally, then which nation is? Which nation has served as America’s greatest partner advancing peace in the Middle East?

What other nation has offered more to America by way of intelligence assets? Weapons development? Innovation and technology development?

What other nation demonstrates similar moral clarity and commitment to advancing civilization and human rights than Israel? No other nation on earth compares to a demonstration of moral clarity more than Israel.

People need to consider where the United States would be without our partnership with Israel. As Prime Minister Netanyahu said, “Israel is what is right with the world.”

Varda Epstein: After watching your Summit address, many of my colleagues and readers remarked how much they miss your voice in government and your staunch support for Israel. How do you see your own role in public or political life going forward?

Michele Bachmann: I use my mind to learn all I can about our world and how humankind benefits from following the truths and precepts of the Bible.

History, Sociology, Economics, Astronomy, Anthropology, Archeology, Biology, Physics, etc., all reflect and demonstrate the truths given to us from the pen of Moses, David, Solomon, and the Prophets.

We, finite humankind, live in a world created by the infinite God. My job is to know Him more, obey Him more, and communicate His love and truth to others.

***

In her Summit remarks, Bachmann argued that Israel was nearing decisive victory against Hamas when diplomacy intervened and stopped it cold. Israelis well recognize this pattern. A war Israel did not choose becomes a war Israel is not allowed to win. The hostages are used as leverage. And a terror organization is encouraged to negotiate.

When Israelis speak about friendship, they are not being sentimental. Friendship means clarity under pressure. It means refusing to sanitize those who finance terror because they also broker lucrative deals. It means understanding that Israel cannot outsource its security to assurances offered far from its borders.

That is why Bachmann’s voice is important. She speaks as someone who understands that Israel is an ally. Not a problem to be managed, but an ally whose survival is nonnegotiable.

Israel has too few friends right now. And Michele Bachmann is indeed a friend—one who understands the wider implications of negotiating with terrorists, not just for Israel, but for the entire world.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)