10/28 Links Pt2: Giving Up the Word "Zionism"; How did eco-idealists of the 70s descend into Israel-hating Greens of today?; Abdul El-Sayed: tribune of America’s Islamo-left

From Ian:

Giving Up the Word "Zionism"

Should Jews retire the word "Zionism" since it has become a lightning rod of hate?

Our enemies will persecute us given the chance. They don't play by the rules. They don't use evidence and reason. They are committed to their conspiracy theories, their resentments, their violence and their insatiable need for destruction.

The demands they place on us right now involve changing who we are - the names we choose for ourselves, our commitment to Israel. That alone should be reason enough to say "no."

There will be no relief if we give up the word "Zionist." The enemy will not pocket the win and go home. When it comes to antisemitism, every conciliation brings only further demands.

Zionism was the most important movement of Jewish liberation in thousands of years. It gave us back our homeland, our confidence, our spine.

To be a Zionist is to assert that Jews not only have rights, but also a home and a future.

To give up on that, of all words, is to concede the argument - to implicitly endorse the libel that Zionism is a genocidal, colonialist, supremacist belief.

But the first reason to say we are still Zionists is that it should be a necessary, reflexive response to anyone who wants us to submit to external pressure, as a precursor to pressing us on other things: our identity, our communities.

That's reason enough to say that, yes, we are Zionists. Look into our eyes. We won't give up the word.

Stephen Pollard: Jonathan Powell’s flawed approach to Israel is more dangerous than his wife’s views

Powell uses the Good Friday Agreement to buttress his view that the way to end conflicts is to talk to the other side. In 2008, for example (he left Number 10 in 2007) he said that Western governments should talk to al-Qaeda and the Taliban. His 2014 book is actually called Talking to Terrorists: How to End Armed Conflicts.

Powell’s approach is not merely naïve; it entirely misunderstands the nature of the Middle East conflict. The IRA were, like Hamas and Hezbollah, murderous terrorists. But the IRA wanted Northern Ireland’s status changed, not every Unionist dead. Meanwhile, Article 7 of Hamas’ covenant says that: "The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Except for the Gharqad tree, for it is the tree of the Jews."

Were it not for what Abba Eban famously called the Palestinians’ habit of never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity, it might have been that Powell’s penchant for negotiating with terrorists had worked: Oslo showed that the PLO could be negotiated with. But Hamas cannot.

The two most significant acts over Israel since Labour took office have been recognition of a Palestinian state last September and then, a year later, the imposition of sanctions on Israel.

The former is classic Powell. Even if we take it at face value, and ignore the domestic political pressures driving Middle East policy (Labour’s fear of the sectarian Muslim vote), the idea is at best naïve, at worst pure folly.

It is based on the notion that recognition without any quid pro quo arrangement is a statement of intent designed to build trust.

In reality, all it did was give a propaganda win to Hamas, who could claim that decades of talking got nowhere and it took the October 7 massacre to force the UK and other Western nations to recognise a Palestinian state.

But while Powell’s approach may be misguided, even he could see that Miliband’s decision to sanction Israel could only be counter-productive, showing Israel that the UK can no longer be trusted or even counted as an ally.

Sarah Helm may be a valid target for opprobrium, but her marital status is not what matters. It’s what her husband does that is important.

How did eco-idealists of the 70s descend into Israel-hating Greens of today?

So, what changed? Bale suggests that the most significant shift is in foreign policy. For years, he explained, the Greens saw the US as “the acme of rapacious and hegemonic industrial capitalism”, opposing Britain’s lucrative involvement in the global arms trade and its willingness to project military power overseas. Under Polanski, “Israel has taken over from the USA as the party’s bête-noir.”

Since taking the reins, Polanski’s leadership has seen the party criticised both from within and without for majoring too much on left-wing populism and too little on ecology and conservation, according to Bale.

Shahrar Ali, deputy leader of the Green Party from 2014 to 2016, described to the Jerusalem Post an "authoritarian shift” under Polanski, with party veterans increasingly uneasy about the direction of the party. “The rot [has] set in more deeply from Polanski’s tenure as leader,” Ali said. “Now we’re seeing the old guard like Caroline Lucas and Adrian Ramsay, and some of the MPs, notably Ellie Chowns, getting far more agitated around the direction of the party.”

Ali also pointed to insufficient guardrails and oversight as party membership has grown. “During the last 12 months, the party’s seen a huge increase in membership but a corresponding lack of control regarding who is entering the party and why. There are a lot more pro-Palestine campaigners, Corbynista types who were kicked out of the Labour Party because of antisemitism.”

Peter Cardwell, a Talk TV presenter, former government special adviser and author of Political Animals, offered a more damning indictment, telling me: “Islamist entryists have taken over the Greens and they have become a single-issue party. Even some of their MPs believe the antisemitic ‘Zionism is Racism’ policy is one with which they cannot be associated.”

Cardwell, who hosts an evening show covering UK politics and current affairs, added: “It seems quite a while since anyone I’ve interviewed from the Green Party has actually brought up anything to do with the environment.”

He contrasted the current trajectory of the party with past leaders, or “harmless eccentrics” such as Natalie Bennett and Caroline Lucas, who were at least impassioned defenders of Net Zero and public spirited representatives who truly cared about the core mission of the Green Party.

Greens are no longer a party of peace after ‘Zionism is racism’ motion

Deny, distort, and allege bad faith whenever Jews report antisemitism – it is a familiar, if disturbing, playbook from the Corbyn years. I fought against antisemitism in my own party then.

But even Jeremy Corbyn didn’t preside over a party where so many members actively voted for a discriminatory policy that is so utterly unbothered with actual peace for actual people in Israel and Palestine.

Let’s be clear – peace is the only lasting solution to the conflict in the Middle East, and it will be achieved by leaders and activists in Israel and Palestine. It will not be achieved by the Green Party of England and Wales – not least when its policy, and some of their politicians, won’t disavow “armed struggle”, and want a nation state to be actively “dismantled”.

Their policy is beyond even that advocated in mainstream Palestinian politics, and by the Palestinian Authority. I know more than most how the conflict in the Middle East is imported onto the streets of Britain.

Dealing with several antisemitic terrorist attacks in my constituency, Finchley & Golders Green, taught me that building more cohesive communities is the only way through. Politics as a unifying force, not a divisive race to the bottom.

The publication of the Bell Review underlines just how irresponsible the new Green Party is. Political discourse that favours simplistic slogans over nuanced and sensitive engagement creates a climate where antisemitism can be normalised. Three in five Jewish children surveyed had experienced or witnessed antisemitism in their school.

Our politicians cannot muddy the water by denying antisemitism or rejecting Jewish experiences.

Cllr Thompson’s views are extreme, out of step with the diverse communities she is supposed to represent, and do nothing to advance peace – not in Israel and Palestine, and not on the streets of north London.

The Green Party has turned its back on those of us who yearn for peace. I expect, if they haven’t already, those who yearn for peace will soon turn their back on the Green Party.

Israel-Palestine for Absolute F*cking Morons: Also Known As: Good versus Evil for Idiots

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10/28 Links Pt1: The ‘Israeli apartheid’ libel has completely fallen apart; Attacker shouting 'Allahu Akbar' killed outside Israeli Embassy in Serbia

From Ian:

The ‘Israeli apartheid’ libel has completely fallen apart

Yet even through all the mess and uncertainty, one thing shines bright: Israel is not an apartheid state. What was staggering yesterday was the speed and ease with which the voluble defamers of the Jewish State switched from calling it an apartheid hellhole to giddily sharing clips of Arabs and Bedouin people riding their camels to the polling station to put pressure on Netanyahu. These people know they’re lying, don’t they? Or I guess they might just be thick.

The idea that Israel is an apartheid state is such a flagrant lie you almost have to admire the nerve of those who propagate it. There are 2.1million Arabs in Israel. They have the right to vote, the right to stand for office. They have the same rights as Israeli Jews to healthcare, welfare and labour representation. They serve as High Court judges, senior diplomats, commanders in the army. They play in Israel’s national sports teams.

Indeed, I had to chuckle last month when the digital army of emotionally incontinent Israel-haters started frothing over an evil Israeli footballer who simulated the firing of a gun to celebrate his goal against Austria. They backed off a little, doubtlessly bewildered, when they discovered his name: Saied Abu Farchi. They backed off a little more when it turned out he wasn’t pretending to fire a gun at all – he was mimicking a snooker cue. The Guardian published a retraction. It was a hilarious little implosion of the Israelophobic lie machine. Not an apartheid state. Not a gun-loving people.

Comparing Israel to South Africa is not only wrong – it is also a grotesque falsehood that both demonises the world’s only Jewish nation and minimises the true savagery of Apartheid-era South Africa. South African blacks were subjected to a totalitarian system of dehumanisation. They were forbidden from voting in national elections. They were even stripped of citizenship. Expressly racist laws granted them ‘citizenship’ only in Bantustans (various ‘homelands’ fashioned by the racist government). It was a legal framework engineered for one malicious purpose: to violently strip millions of human beings of every democratic right and every ounce of dignity.

It is a crime against the historical record to use the word ‘apartheid’ to describe Israel. And to describe the West Bank, where of course things are more complicated given the interweaving strips of Palestinian land and Israeli land, but where there is nothing that remotely resembles the horror of South Africa-style Apartheid. What Israel’s critics do, time and again, is rummage through the barbarism of history in search of labels they might stick on the Jewish State. ‘Settler colony’, ‘apartheid’, ‘genocide’ – in the gobs of Israelophobes these are not substantiated accusations but demonising libels, their aim less to explain than to exterminate the Jewish State’s legitimacy.

Everyone agrees critical thinking is good. So let’s have some of it in response to all those headlines about how the Arabs in a supposedly anti-Arab apartheid state might soon have a whip hand over the future government. The keffiyeh mob are too drunk on their racist defamations to let the light of truth in, but everyone else should give it a whirl.

For pro-Israel diaspora, Israel’s Arab voters are a point of pride. For Israeli Jews, they’re a national security threat

The results hadn’t even come in and Israel’s supporters abroad were already touting the strength of the country’s democracy by highlighting the high participation of its Arab minority.

“Israel’s Arab citizens, men and women, are turning out in historic numbers to vote. They can vote, run for office and serve in the Knesset — rights denied to many Arabs and women across much of the Middle East,” tweeted Democratic US Rep. Josh Gottheimer.

“Our critical ally in the fight against terror, Israel, is the only democracy in the region, and today shows it,” he added.

Gottheimer is one of the most staunchly pro-Israel lawmakers in Congress, and an increasingly lone voice among Democrats, which also includes Rep. Tom Suozzi.

“Today, 5.5 million Jewish, Christian, and, notably, Arab Israelis participated in the only democracy in the Middle East,” Suozzi tweeted, employing a common argument used against those who accuse Israel of apartheid.

“The elections in Israel today are a further reminder of the shared values of our two nations. Am Yisrael Chai,” he added. People wait before casting their ballots at a polling station in the Arab Israeli town of Umm al-Fahm on October 27, 2026, on the day of Israel’s legislative election. (AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP)

Another foreigner — albeit one temporarily in Israel — tried to offer the country similar accolades for the voting rights it grants to its Arab citizens.

“Today is election day in Israel… Arabs vote same as Israelis. Contentious process, but it’s a democracy — not many of those in this region!” US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee wrote.

Outside the equation
The American envoy tellingly suggested that Arabs are not Israeli citizens, and he later acknowledged his poor choice of words.

But his initial detachment of Arabs from the rest of the country is one made and regularly accepted by the Jewish public in Israel when discussing the minority community’s political representation.

It is why headlines have characterized Tuesday’s election results as inconclusive, even though a majority of voters backed parties determined to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, thanks to an unprecedented 19 seats from the two Arab-majority parties. Left to right: Yair Lapid, Gadi Eisenkot, Yair Golan, Naftali Bennett and Avigdor Liberman meet at Lapid’s Tel Aviv home, September 26, 2026. (Lihi Lapid)

The anti-Netanyahu bloc is regularly crafted to omit the Joint List (12 seats) and Ra’am (7 seats), leaving it with a minority of 48 seats, after some 90 percent of the vote was counted on Wednesday.

This framing partly owes to the bloc leaders’ own remarks — Yashar party chief Gadi Eisenkot, B’Yachad chairman Naftali Bennett and Yisrael Beytenu head Avigdor Liberman have all ruled out a coalition with the Arab-led parties.

Added criteria
The more Palestinian nationalist Joint List has shown little appetite for such a political partnership, but has expressed eagerness to collaborate with the other anti-Netanyahu parties to at least replace the longtime prime minister who relentlessly demonized Arab voters in the latest campaign and appointed far-right ministers who advanced measures against their communities and their Palestinian brethren beyond the Green Line.

But the more pragmatic Ra’am party is desperate to join an anti-Netanyahu coalition, and its leader, Mansour Abbas, took a series of steps to kasher his faction in the eyes of the Jewish public, including by bringing former senior police commander Yoav Segalovitz onto Ra’am’s Knesset slate.

Abbas has also for years recognized Israel as a Jewish state, meeting a key criterion laid out by Eisenkot for political partnership.

But in the lead-up to Tuesday’s election, Eisenkot added a new condition — recognizing Hamas as a terror group that Israel must destroy.

Attacker shouting 'Allahu Akbar' killed outside Israeli Embassy in Serbia, police say

An assailant armed with two knives attacked a member of Serbia's Gendarmerie guarding the Israeli Embassy in Belgrade shortly after midnight Wednesday, prompting the officer to fatally shoot the attacker in self-defense, according to Serbian authorities.

The assailant, who was a minor, allegedly shouted "Allahu Akbar" — or "God is great" in Arabic — as he slashed the officer in the face, leaving the officer "slightly injured."

Interior Minister Ivica Dacic said authorities are treating the incident as a terrorist attack, adding that security forces had been monitoring the assailant.

Dacic said the attacker supported ISIS and displayed a black flag bearing the terrorist group's symbol on his Instagram account. The attacker was believed to be Serbian and from the town of Sabac, Dacic added.

Israel's foreign ministry confirmed the "attempted terrorist attack," and said the incident was under investigation by the relevant authorities.

"The attacker was neutralized by local police. No embassy personnel were injured, and the mission was closed at the time of the incident, which occurred late at night," the statement said.

According to Serbian prosecutors, an unidentified person wearing black clothes opened the door to the security booth outside the embassy around 12:15 a.m. local time.

Prosecutors said the attacker then walked toward the officer inside, identified as D.S., and threw one of his knives in his direction, hitting the officer in the left cheek.

D.S. then retrieved his service weapon and fired multiple rounds, killing the attacker on the spot, according to the office of the Higher Public Prosecutor in Belgrade.

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David Deutsch has identified the pattern of antisemitism but cannot answer "why the Jews?" I think I can.

In Sunday's Telegraph, columnist Zoe Strimpel discusses a fascinating new theory of antisemitism from physicist and philosopher David Deutsch.

Deutsch argues that antisemitism isn't fundamentally hatred, prejudice or fear. It is something much stranger: a persistent impulse to legitimize hurting Jews, with the moral justifications invented afterward. He calls it The Pattern: “a contagious, irrational pattern of thinking about morality that has persisted for millennia, characterised by a compulsive need to legitimise hurting Jews, for being Jews.”

This explains why Jews have been accused of being capitalists and communists, warmongers and cowards, insular and dangerously influential. The accusations contradict each other because they aren't the real reason for the hostility. They are rationalizations for something that already exists.

Strimpel enthusiastically endorses Deutsch's theory, saying it explains why otherwise intelligent people adopt bizarre moral double standards when Jews are involved.

I think they're both onto something important. But there is a major missing piece.

Deutsch explicitly admits that he cannot explain two things: why Jews are the target, and why this phenomenon has survived for thousands of years across radically different societies.

Strimpel similarly observes, "Why it works like this, only in relation to Jews, is not yet explained."

I believe I have an answer.

Over the past 18 months I have been trying to answer the question of antisemitism from a different angle: why are most forms of antisemitism eliminationist? They don't just want to discriminate against Jews; they want to eliminate them altogether, whether the Jewish religion, or the Jewish people, or the Jewish nation more recently represented by Israel. 

Last December, I proposed a structural definition of antisemitism based on my observation: Jews keep breaking philosophical systems.

Jews, simply by continuing to exist as Jews, demonstrate that fundamental assumptions of supposedly comprehensive worldviews are wrong.

Consider Christianity. The Church claimed to have superseded Israel and inherited its covenant. Yet the Jewish people stubbornly continued to exist, maintaining their covenant and refusing to disappear into Christianity. Jewish survival was a theological problem that demanded an explanation. Jews had to be portrayed as blind, cursed or condemned to degradation. 

Consider racial Social Darwinism. If history was a struggle in which superior races survived and inferior races disappeared, how could Jews have survived thousands of years of persecution without territory or political power? The answer was to invent a special category: the Jew as parasite, surviving by exploiting supposedly superior peoples. And parasites, unlike ordinary competitors, must be eliminated.

Consider Marxism. Jewish identity and history refused to fit neatly into economic class categories. Jews could be workers or capitalists, wealthy or poor, yet remained Jews. Reducing Jewishness to an expression of bourgeois capitalism was one way to force this inconvenient reality back into the theory.

Today, consider certain versions of decolonial theory. The world is divided into indigenous peoples and foreign colonizers. But Jews are an indigenous people who returned to their ancestral homeland and rebuilt their nation. That doesn't fit the simplified framework. So Jewish indigeneity must be denied. Jews must be redefined as Europeans, foreign settlers or merely adherents of a religion with no legitimate national identity.

Universalist philosophies have a similar problem with Jewish particularism. Jews maintain obligations to their own people without denying obligations to humanity. Systems that insist on universal morality simply cannot handle a people who insist that they are a particular people, with a particular purpose. Denying Jewish particularism entails denying what makes Jews Jews. 

In every case, the same thing happens. A philosophy claims to explain the world. Jews demonstrate that some of its load bearing assumptions are false. Rather than revise the philosophy to account for the evidence, its adherents redefine Jews so the philosophy can remain intact. 

Or they try to get rid of them.

The problem isn't that Jews violate the rules. It's that Jews demonstrate that the rules were never correct to begin with. 

This also helps explain something Deutsch does not address. He explains how ubiquitous hate for Jews is, but it really isn't. Historically, there has been practically no eliminationist antisemitism in the Far East.  

He cannot explain it. My theory can. Because there is nothing about Jews that contradicts the basic tenets of Eastern thought.  Jewish existence did not fundamentally threaten their explanatory systems. There was no equivalent of Christian supersessionism, no theological need to explain why Jews survived, and no inherent requirement that Jews disappear for those systems to make sense.

Modern antisemitism certainly reached East Asia, but largely through imported Western ideologies and conspiracy theories. There is nothing I am aware of that insists Jews or Judaism or Israel are an existential threat to Eastern philosophies.

Deutsch argues that the impulse to legitimize hurting Jews comes first, and the ideologies provide excuses afterward. I think the relationship often works the other way around. An ideology encounters something it cannot explain. Its adherents are unwilling to concede that the ideology is flawed. Jews become the exception that must be discredited, redefined or eliminated.

Once that happens, Deutsch's Pattern takes over. Hurting Jews becomes not merely permissible but virtuous, because Jews have been defined as an obstacle to truth, justice, salvation or progress.

This is why antisemitism is so virulent. It is a threat to people's worldview. The people who cannot tolerate Jews (or Judaism or Israel) think that they are defending their entire self-conception. Questioning their own core philosophies is inconceivable. They must rid themselves of the source of the threat.  

My structural definition of antisemitism is:

An ideology is structurally antisemitic if it requires the negation, erasure, or redefinition of Jewishness, as a people, a nation, a covenant, or a moral tradition, in order to remain internally coherent.

That definition provides a way to identify antisemitism before it produces overt hatred or violence. We can examine an ideology and ask whether it can accommodate Jews as they actually are, rather than as the ideology requires them to be.

Deutsch is right that conventional definitions of antisemitism are inadequate. But I think his Pattern describes what happens after a more fundamental philosophical failure.

Perhaps the real mystery is not why so many different societies have found reasons to hate Jews. It is why so many supposedly universal explanations of humanity cannot accommodate the Jewish people without breaking.

And that may be the real litmus test for any philosophy: if it must deny the reality of Jews in order to preserve its own coherence, then it is not just a wrong philosophy: it is potentially a dangerous philosophy, no matter how moral it claims to be.

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Books by Elder of Ziyon

Reclaiming the Covenant Protocols He's an Anti-Zionist Too! At Ptach Lo (ebook) The Muslim Question (ebook, $8) Sarah Makes the World Better (ages 3-8)

More at: media.elderofziyon.com · Substack

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Blogger censored me - for quoting Hamas fans

Earlier today I posted a bunch of messages congratulating Hamas for October 7 from the Al Qassam website.

Google took it down.

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Books by Elder of Ziyon

Reclaiming the Covenant Protocols He's an Anti-Zionist Too! At Ptach Lo (ebook) The Muslim Question (ebook, $8) Sarah Makes the World Better (ages 3-8)

More at: media.elderofziyon.com · Substack

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10/27 Links Pt2: Yes, We Have No Bananas But please don’t blame the Jews; How UK Sanctions on Israel Ignore the Oslo Accords; As Paris lectures Israel, riots leave its Jews fearing for their safety

From Ian:

David Frum: Yes, We Have No Bananas But please don’t blame the Jews.

Do supporters of Israel have to deny the false accusation? Okay, here goes. U.S. military aid to Israel is set at $3.8 billion a year from 2019 to 2028—about one-20th of 1 percent of the total federal budget. In 2024, Congress approved a $95 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel, and other allies—of which, nearly two-thirds went to Ukraine, about $15 billion went to Israel, and about $9 billion was directed to humanitarian relief, including assistance for Gazan civilians displaced by the war that Hamas started. (The rest went to Taiwan and other allies in the Indo-Pacific region.)

Almost all U.S. assistance to Israel takes the form of credits that Israel can use only to buy American-made equipment. This assistance provides at least two direct and immediate benefits to Americans. First, it buys the United States access to Israeli military technology. By partly underwriting the development of Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defense system, the U.S. has gained the use of battle-tested systems that also protect American lives. Second, this assistance lowers the per-unit cost of U.S. systems. The United States buys up to 48 F-35 fighters a year. Israel has bought 75 and is considering an estimated 25 more. Foreign orders allow U.S. arms manufacturers to improve their economies of scale. At a time when other NATO allies are canceling their orders of American equipment because they no longer fully trust the U.S. as an ally or supplier, Israeli orders enhance the efficiency of American defense production.

Meanwhile, all U.S. aid to Israel amounts to a fraction of what Israel’s critics wish to spend domestically. Despite the implications of that El-Sayed ad: Americans spend $1.1 trillion a year on groceries. Canceling aid to Israel would deliver the equivalent of about 30 hours of that spending. Per Mamdani’s complaint that Israel is to blame for bad housing in New York City: The city’s housing authority estimates its backlog of deferred maintenance at almost $80 billion, or about 20 years’ worth of U.S. assistance to Israel at present levels. Expanding Medicare to cover all American citizens would cost perhaps more than $32 trillion in additional federal spending over the first decade. Covering even one month of this plan would take 70 years’ worth of aid to Israel.

By blaming the Jewish state for the price of bananas in Michigan, the super-PAC ad calls to mind political tricks older and more disturbing than the one attributed to Johnson. In 1899, Karl Lueger, the mayor of Vienna and one of the most notorious anti-Semites of the 19th century, gave a speech blaming the Habsburg empire’s economic troubles on its Jews. “Here in our Austrian fatherland the situation is such that the Jews have seized a degree of influence which exceeds their number and importance,” he argued. “And in this respect the Jews operate a terrorism of a kind that could hardly be worse. For us, in Austria, it is a matter of liberating Christian people from the hegemony of Jewry.”

As with the rising cost of living in the U.S., the problem Lueger was concerned with was real. His voter base of artisans and craftspeople was coming under immense pressure from factory competition. There was not much Lueger could do about his voters’ distress. But he could point them toward a politically useful target. Now, with a modest update of Lueger’s language, an outside PAC’s closing argument in one of the most watched Senate races of 2026 blames a familiar “they/them.”

How UK Sanctions on Israel Ignore the Oslo Accords

The announcement by British Foreign Minister Ed Miliband that the UK government intends to impose sanctions on products manufactured by Israeli businesses in Judea and Samaria reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The stated justification for the sanctions is the claim that Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria constitute a major obstacle to achieving a "two-state solution."

Yet the UK Foreign Minister appears to be totally ignorant of the fact that neither the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinian leadership, nor any other international determination, contain any commitment to a "two-state solution." Instead, the parties committed to negotiating an agreement on the "permanent status" of the territory that could ostensibly lead to one, two or three states, or any other agreed solution. But neither the UK nor any other authority has the right to impose any solution on the parties.

In light of the UK's misguided fixation with the "two-state solution," one may ask why the UK has never imposed sanctions on Palestinians who have repeatedly rejected the "two-state solution" and openly engaged in advocating, financing and supporting terror? Why did the UK not impose sanctions on Yasser Arafat for rejecting the peace deal brokered by U.S. President Clinton in 2000, or on Mahmoud Abbas for rejecting the 2008 peace deal offered by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert?

On the issue of Israeli citizens constructing homes, the UK Foreign Secretary appears to be ignorant of the terms of the Oslo Accords, which allow Israel to build in the part of the territory it administers (Area C), just as the Palestinian Authority builds in Areas A and B under its jurisdiction. The accords contain no provision preventing planning, zoning, and construction by the parties in areas under their respective jurisdiction.

Countries that supported the Oslo Accords are now adopting policies, at the behest of the Palestinian leadership, that fundamentally undermine the accords. Invalidating the accords could mean invalidating the Palestinian Authority itself.

How Anti-Zionism Harms Palestinians

Moderate Palestinians know that you cannot build a Palestinian state by destroying its Jewish neighbor.

The only viable path to long-term self-determination is a political process that recognizes the legitimacy and permanence of a Jewish state.

The refusal of anti-Zionist Palestinian leaders to accept offers of statehood from 1937 onwards has condemned the Palestinian people to decades of war, insecurity, poverty and statelessness.

The BDS movement has also been disastrous for Palestinians. By calling for Israel's destruction, its advocates signal to the Palestinians that they should abandon all attempts at coexistence with their Israeli neighbors because their state will soon disappear.

This fuels impossible dreams. Naturally, Israel's refusal to bend in the face of such rejectionism only further embitters Palestinians committed to BDS strategy.

Before Oct. 7, 163,000 Palestinians were employed in Israel and in Judea and Samaria. Their income accounted for 20% of Palestinian GDP, injecting $4 billion into the economy.

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics noted that 22.5% of employed Palestinians in Judea and Samaria worked in Israel or in Israeli communities in 2022.

After Oct. 7, Israel suspended all work permits. While some have been reinstated, more than 100,000 jobs for Palestinians have been lost.

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10/27 Links Pt1: Netanyahu and His Main Opponent Disagree - but Not on Israel's Security; Gal Gadot: ‘Each of us has the chance to make a difference at the polls’; Danon tells Albanese she’s ‘liar, fraud, stain on United Nations’

From Ian:

Netanyahu and His Main Opponent Disagree - but Not on Israel's Security

Israelis will vote on Tuesday in the first national election since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot the leading candidates.

Eisenkot has said he would end Hamas's rule in Gaza within 18 months - whether through President Trump's peace plan or by force - and told Israel Radio he supported building Israeli communities in the West Bank and opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state. "I am adamantly opposed to a foreign army between the river and the sea," he said, referring to the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

The statements leave little separating him on security issues from Netanyahu. Netanyahu's opponents "are basically saying the same thing in a more elegant way," said Tamar Hermann, a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute.

Israelis remain concerned about the prospect of another Oct. 7-like attack and support continued troop presence in Gaza and Lebanon. There is now greater support for building Israeli communities in the West Bank compared with previous years, according to polls.

Nicole Lampert: Even the Israeli Left can see the West is deluded about a two-state solution

And now for most Israelis, whatever their political persuasion, the blinkers have come off. And as much as we see the conflict through a particular lens – through the suffering of the Palestinians – that is just a small part of the picture. Zoom out and you see Hamas growing in power in the West Bank without having disarmed, a radicalised population, and Iran – hurt but not broken – still intent on destroying the country.

Many Israelis feel that we in the West have on the same blinkers that blinded them to the enemies who harboured so much hatred. And that by being blind to the threat around us, we are encouraging it against them and ourselves. “As long as I hear voices coming Europe and America saying that Hamas is a legitimate organisation and they are only freedom fighters who want to liberate their people, I know there is no way for both me and the people in Gaza to have a better future,” says Hila. “We will be tangled in that story and all that is happening is Hamas is gaining its money and power.”

Her cry was echoed even more forcefully from Alon Davidi, the Netanyahu-supporting mayor of Sderot, the nearest city to Gaza which had endured regular rockets from the Strip since Hamas took over in 2007 but has seen a 10 per cent rise in its population since the ceasefire with Hamas.

“With the Muslim Brotherhood influence in London, I am afraid for you, not for me,” he warned. “There is a challenge in understanding that the Islamist radical organisations really want to finish you.”

But understanding doesn’t solve the big issues. These are the issues that Israelis, as divided as they are on internal affairs, are mostly concerned by: the wars that Israel has been enduring for the past three years with Hamas, with Hezbollah in Lebanon, with the Houthis in Yemen and with Iran – the ultimate ringmaster of the three terrorist groups.

All may have been simmering, rather than raging, but they have not gone away.

So if Netanyahu – the man who presided over the intelligence failures that precipitated October 7, who allowed the extremists in his coalition to have a dangerous amount of power, who ignored the pleas of the hostage families and who oversaw his country becoming increasingly regarded as a pariah in Western countries – wins the election it is for this reason.

Many Israelis still feel safer with him despite everything. His endorsement from Donald Trump has felt like a guarantee of America’s support for at least the final two years of the US president’s term.

And if they choose his main rival, Gadi Eisenkot – a former IDF chief who is seen as just as hawkish but without the baggage – it won’t be because he looks at the Palestinian issue in a different light, but because it will be more of the same.

Israelis see that Hamas is still a danger which won’t disappear by itself, however many times Western governments pretend a few stern words will do the trick. “We want peace, of course we do,” says Hila. “We don’t want our children and grandchildren to grow up under the shadow of bombs and rockets. But how do you have peace when there is no partner for it?”

"The Pattern" Theory of Antisemitism Explains a Moral Sickness

The Pattern is a theory of antisemitism proposed by the physicist David Deutsch. It is "a contagious, irrational pattern of thinking about morality that has persisted for millennia, characterized by a compulsive need to legitimize hurting Jews for being Jews." "Legitimization" means "acting to protect [the hurting of Jews] from being deemed morally wrong, dishonorable, taboo or intolerable."

Legitimizing the hurting of Jews is how a lot of antisemitism works these days in the West. Relatively little of it involves physical violence. Most of it involves making contorted and bizarre arguments, in polite or virtuous language, in order to defend, at any cost, regimes or groups or actions whose main purpose is to hurt Jews.

The most common version now is that Israel is committing a genocide, and that the war on Hamas is driven by Israeli zeal for killing Palestinian children. Such a position regularly leads people to excuse and lessen actions of Hamas on Oct. 7 and of Palestinian terror in general.

Antisemitism is not in fact principally a hatred, as coherent as an ideology. When hating or detesting Jews is widespread too, the Pattern posits, this is "a consequence, not a cause, of the need to legitimize hurting Jews." German composer Richard Wagner had an inkling of what was at work in him and his brethren. In 1850, he described "that unconscious feeling, which manifests itself as the People's inherent disgust at Jewish existence." The impulse precedes the manifestation.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali explained the predisposition toward antisemitism: "In Saudi Arabia, everything bad was the fault of the Jews. When the air conditioner broke or suddenly the water stopped running, the Saudi women next door used to say the Jews did it." That there were no Jews there made no difference.

Why it works like this, only in relation to Jews, is not yet explained. But for some reason, it always does. Antisemitism is capable of uniting and mobilizing unbelievably widespread and disparate blocs. Only the Pattern accurately describes the uniquely bizarre moral contortions, contradictions and flagrantly illogical arguments required for ensuring that pathways to harming Jews remain open.

Only through recognizing that the Pattern is a moral sickness can we begin to see its magnitude and power. As Deutsch says, where there is sufficient evil, you will likely see the Pattern. "No demographic is exempt from it."

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US Aid to Israel Is Not What You Think It Is

I posted a chart on X showing where American federal spending actually goes. The $3.8 billion in annual aid to Israel is barely visible next to Social Security, Medicare, interest on the debt and national defense.

It amounts to roughly 0.05% of the federal budget.

I created this particularly as a response to an Abdul El Sayed commercial that blames the price of grocery items on aid to Israel, a particularly absurd proposition. Aid to Israel is a rounding error compared to what the US spends, and what the US wastes.  

Yet critics routinely talk as though American healthcare, education and infrastructure are being sacrificed to subsidize Israel.

But there's a more fundamental misunderstanding about US aid to Israel. It isn't charity. It's a strategic military arrangement that benefits the United States in ways that rarely enter the discussion.

And Israel is now proposing to phase out the financial assistance entirely.

Why is it called foreign aid?

American military assistance to Israel grew substantially in the 1970s, particularly after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and became part of the broader American commitment to regional stability following the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.

It was structured through foreign assistance programs, which is why Israel consistently appears at the top of lists of countries receiving American foreign aid. 

But that classification obscures the purpose of the money.

The United States spends billions maintaining military forces in allied countries. According to the Government Accountability Office, the US spent $20.9 billion in Japan and $13.4 billion in South Korea between 2016 and 2019 alone. Germany also hosts a substantial American military presence.

Nobody describes those expenditures as foreign aid to Japan, South Korea or Germany, even though they provide enormous security benefits to those countries and the money gets spent inside those countries, helping their economies. 

The comparison isn't exact. American bases also serve American interests, and the host countries contribute substantial funding themselves. But that's precisely the point: The United States spends money on allies because it serves American strategic interests, not because Washington is running a charity.

Israel is unusual because it provides substantial military capabilities in an exceptionally volatile region without requiring America to station large combat formations on Israeli soil.

Israel doesn't get a $3.8 billion check to spend however it wants

Under the current ten-year agreement, the baseline is $3.3 billion annually in Foreign Military Financing and $500 million for joint missile defense programs. Additional emergency assistance has been appropriated during wartime, so $3.8 billion is a baseline. Billions were sent to Israel at the beginning of the October 7 war, although not nearly as much as was sent to Ukraine in its own war.($127 billion and counting.) 

Military financing is tied to approved defense purchases. American authorities oversee procurement, impose restrictions on transfers and sensitive equipment, and conduct end-use monitoring.  Israel cannot simply redirect the funding into its general budget.

Most of the procurement money must be spent purchasing American military products. Israel once had a special exemption allowing it to spend a portion in its own defense industry, but that exemption is being phased out entirely by 2028.

The practical result is that much of the money returns directly to American defense manufacturers, supporting American production lines, workers and military industrial capacity.

Even missile defense is increasingly manufactured jointly. In August, a Raytheon-Rafael facility in Arkansas delivered its first fully American-made Iron Dome interceptor.

What does America get in return?

This is the part almost always missing from discussions about aid.

Israel is not merely purchasing American military technology. It is developing, improving and combat-testing technology that the United States can benefit from.

Consider the F-35.

The American F-35 program has cost over $100 billion in projected research and development expenditure. Israel operates a specially modified version, the F-35I Adir, with indigenous electronic warfare capabilities and other adaptations.

In May, Israel announced a $34 million contract to develop and integrate external fuel tanks to extend the aircraft's range and reduce its dependence on aerial refueling.

How much would it cost the Pentagon to independently develop, test and integrate a comparable capability? We don't have a reliable public estimate, or proof that this Israeli development will be adopted by American F-35s. But the potential to share engineering and operational knowledge is obvious. The CEO of Lockheed told the Israeli ambassador to the US that Israeli innovations and feedback was worth billions to his company. 

That's just one defense contractor. 

The same principle applies throughout the defense relationship.

Israel developed Iron Dome, while Israel and the United States jointly developed other missile defense capabilities, including David's Sling and the Arrow systems. These programs have created technology, manufacturing opportunities and knowledge that benefits both militaries.

The US and Israel have also spent years collaborating on methods to detect, map and neutralize terrorist tunnels. Congress has funded hundreds of millions of dollars of joint anti-tunnel research. Such capabilities are relevant well beyond Gaza, particularly when American forces confront enemies operating underground.

Then there's battlefield medicine.

Israel developed the well-known Israeli emergency bandage, used by American military personnel and emergency responders. But the more important contribution may be what Israel is learning about keeping wounded soldiers alive.

An April 2026 US Army report examined Israeli combat medical experience since October 7, highlighting innovations in treating hemorrhagic shock, rapidly evacuating casualties, deploying whole blood close to the battlefield and delivering medical supplies under fire.

These are lessons with the potential to save American soldiers' lives in future wars. No pricve can be put on that. 

And there is something else money cannot easily purchase: combat experience. Israel operates against missiles, drones, sophisticated air defenses, tunnels and other threats that American planners must prepare for. Not everything Israel learns is automatically transferred to Washington, but joint exercises, intelligence cooperation and military exchanges provide the United States with operational knowledge that cannot be reproduced in a laboratory.

American generals love Israel, and for good reason. Israel serves as a relatively inexpensive additional research, development and operational testing partner for the Pentagon.

I'm not even talking about intelligence sharing, which goes beyond the aid budget but is part of the close relationship America has with Israel that saves American lives by stopping terror attacks way before they get operationalized. 

An aircraft carrier that cannot sink

There's a famous observation, often attributed to former Secretary of State Alexander Haig, describing Israel as an American aircraft carrier that cannot be sunk and doesn't require American soldiers. Whether Haig said it or not, the strategic metaphor is useful.

An American aircraft carrier doesn't operate alone. It requires escorts, logistics, aircraft, thousands of personnel, maintenance and enormous operating expenditures. Sustaining carrier operations in the Middle East is a major undertaking.

Israel isn't literally equivalent to an aircraft carrier strike group. It has its own interests and makes its own military decisions. But it provides a permanent concentration of sophisticated military capability in a strategically important region, without the United States having to build and operate that capability itself.

What would it cost America to reproduce Israel's intelligence networks, military infrastructure, regional expertise, air defenses and combat experience independently?

Nobody has a meaningful answer. But the cost would certainly be enormous.

"The money could be better spent elsewhere" game

The usual argument is to take the money the US spends on Israel and claim that it could be better spent on domestic programs that directly benefit the poor or the ordinary citizen.

But that game seems to only be played against Israel.

In 2025, the California Walnut Commission received $3.6 million from USDA's Market Access Program and another $14 million through a multiyear agricultural promotion program. The money helps market California walnuts internationally and expand demand among foreign consumers.

Other agricultural trade organizations receive similar support. The USDA's FY2024 regional agricultural promotion allocations included $10 million for Blue Diamond Growers/Almond Board of California, $5 million for American pistachio producers and $2 million for the Brewers Association.

One can easily say that these millions, or billions spent elsewhere, could have funded housing or healthcare. Yet only Israel gets that type of faux analysis. 

Why?

Israel wants to end the aid anyway

Perhaps the most revealing development is that Israel itself is proposing to phase out American military financial assistance.

In January 2026, Prime Minister Netanyahu publicly proposed eliminating the financial aid over approximately ten years. By May, the two governments had opened formal discussions about replacing the existing agreement, which expires in 2028.

The Israeli proposal is to move from grants toward joint investment in research, development and military production, with both countries contributing and sharing the resulting technology.

This would make the relationship more closely resemble America's defense cooperation with other technologically advanced allies. It would also reduce Israel's dependence on Washington while preserving the substantial benefits of military cooperation for both countries.

The details are still being negotiated, and nothing guarantees that the proposal will become reality. But it hardly fits the popular narrative of a greedy Israel taking advantage of American taxpayers. 

The idea that ending $3.8 billion in military assistance to Israel would suddenly fund America's schools, fix its healthcare system or solve its budget problems is innumerate. And the idea that America receives nothing in return is simply uninformed.

From the beginning, aid to Israel was rarely aid. It was an investment. It is an investment that pays a hell of a better return than aid to countries like Egypt and Jordan that do not share American values. The investment pays in saving America billions in defense and in the infinite value of saving American lives.

 If one wants to compare the spending on Israel with the return on investment for every  federal program, from federal crop insurance premium subsidies ($15B annually) to the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities ($400M), to Fulbright programs ($270M), let's have that discussion. But the people who claim they care about federal spending towards Israel never want to bring up the many other government programs that cost plenty of money and how to calculate their benefits to ordinary Americans. 

Which itself tells you that the people who single out Israel don't give a damn about what is best for America.

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Books by Elder of Ziyon

Reclaiming the Covenant Protocols He's an Anti-Zionist Too! At Ptach Lo (ebook) The Muslim Question (ebook, $8) Sarah Makes the World Better (ages 3-8)

More at: media.elderofziyon.com · Substack

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10/26 Links Pt2: Sir Simon Schama: A howl against rising global antisemitism; Amanpour’s journalistic legacy at ‘CNN’: Neither truthful nor neutral; The BBC is anti-Jewish. Who can be in any doubt?

From Ian:

Liel Leibovitz: Abdul El-Sayed ad is vile, unapologetically Nazi drivel blaming Jews for everything bad

If you’ve ever shopped at a normal American supermarket, you’ve probably heard normal Americans having the following normal American conversation:

Normal American 1: Should we buy some bananas?

Normal American 2: We can’t afford bananas, because all of our money goes to help Israel commit genocide against innocent children in Gaza.

What’s that you say? No actual American talks like that, because Americans aren’t brainwashed zombies who believe everything is or should be about Palestine?

Nor are they antisemites who think Jews control American politics with their dirty money?

Tell that to Cenk Uygur.

Having recently been denied entry to the United Kingdom — even the pro-Palestinian Brits found his Jew-hatred excessive — the media gadfly turned to what he does best: defaming a certain Semitic minority.

Over the weekend, he released a new ad for Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed, in which two Americans who look like they were cast by the Tucker Carlson fan club are moping around their local grocery store and complaining they can’t afford anything — from proper healthcare to a dozen eggs for their kids — because the federal government funnels so much of their cash to Israel.

Get that, Michigan voters? The Jews are to blame for all of society’s ills.

The Jews are our misfortune.

It’s such vile, unapologetically Nazi drivel that it’s tempting to laugh it all off, especially as the bloated buffoon who produced this bit of schlock is best known for such moral nadirs as his warm interview with David Duke and his denial of the Armenian genocide.

But Uygur’s ad strikes a deeper chord.

It reminds Jewish Democrats that no matter how hard they try to fit in, their party now truly and deeply hates them.

It’s a timely reminder, too, for Jewish Michiganders.

NYPost Editorial: Ilhan Omar hurls the ‘genocide’ charge at Israel — but it belongs much closer to home

Rep. Ilhan Omar’s apparent lies about her family and finances are bad enough, but nothing is as outrageous as the way she slanders Israel with the “genocide” libel when her own father in all likelihood took part in Somali dictator Siad Barre’s real genocide.

Omar in her memoir calls her father Nur Omar Mohamed an “educator,” yet it looks like the only educating he did was teaching Barre’s enemies lessons in brutality as a colonel in the Somali Army in the 1980s.

The Barre regime committed horrific atrocities against the Isaaq clan, killing at least 200,000 and displacing another 900,000 in a massive ethnic cleansing.

The United Nations, Human Rights Watch, the International Crisis Group and virtually every other authority agrees that the campaign against the Isaaq was genocidal in intent and in practice: Government forces strafed fleeing civilians, planted land mines at wells and systematically raped girls and women.

There can be little doubt that Omar’s dad was involved in the genocide. As historian and Oxford University doctoral researcher Mohamed Haji Ingiriis told The Post, “Nur Said was a military officer who was loyal to the regime until the end. He was part and parcel of those who caused and created the mayhem they ‘fled’ to live comfortably in the United States.”

Nur Said and his family escaped Somalia as “refugees” following the collapse of Barre’s dictatorship, gaining asylum in the United States in 1995 — improperly, it seems, as war criminals are not entitled to refugee protections.

Omar has long been blatantly antisemitic, with comments like “Israel has hypnotized the world” and saying Jews bought control of US policy because “It’s all about the Benjamins, baby.”

But with her own family’s bloody history, it takes real chutzpah to join in the “genocide” slurs, e.g. by insisting Jewish students at Columbia University are “pro-genocide” and routinely condemning Israel’s supposed “genocidal” campaign against Palestinians.

Omar’s scandals include messy finances and a possibly fraudulent marriage as well as serious questions about the legitimacy of her citizenship, but this hypocrisy takes the cake.

UK antisemitism watchdog GnasherJew exposes 40 antisemitic healthcare workers in NHS

An investigative resource published on the UK watchdog GnasherJew website has exposed approximately 40 medical professionals across the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) who have used their public social media platforms to disseminate antisemitic rhetoric, propagate conspiracy theories, and celebrate violence against civilians.

GnasherJew is a team of Jewish online investigators who identify, expose, and report on antisemitism, Holocaust denial, and extremism. The watchdog group's page of Antisemitic Healthcare Professionals states, “Over recent years, we have exposed doctors, healthcare providers, and other medical professionals for posting antisemitic content on social media, supporting terrorism, and discriminating against Jewish people.”

The dossiers listed on the page detail extensive online activity by practicing doctors, consultants, surgeons, and therapists.

Among the cases documented on the page is Dr. Mazin Fageir, a senior trauma and orthopedic surgeon at the Royal Free Hospital in London.

GnasherJew’s compiled dossier on him included screenshots of his X/Twitter posts showing that he shared a cartoon depicting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wearing an armband with a Star of David and pushing a coffin draped in a Palestinian flag into an Auschwitz concentration camp oven beneath the phrase "ARBEIT MACHT FREI," which translates from German to “work sets you free” and was the sign on the gate at the front of the camp.

Dr. Fageir praises Hamas rocket fire on Israeli homes
In another post from May 2021, during Israel’s war in Gaza known as Operation Guardian of the Walls, Dr. Fageir replied to a post reporting a rocket striking a civilian home in Givatayim, saying, “May you live under rocket fire forever, amen,” and adding that Israeli citizens would be “wiped out one day.”

The page also includes a dossier on Dr. Nizar Ali Mhani, an NHS consultant orthodontist and Cardiff University honorary clinical lecturer.

In the aftermath of the October 7 attacks, Dr. Mhani posted material comparing the actions of Hamas to the Jewish fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, writing, “Would anyone have the audacity or idiocy to ever suggest that the brave Jews who resisted the Warsaw Ghetto genocide used civilians as human shields because they used bunkers and tunnels?”

Another case involves Dr. Asaad Nemer Shamallakh, an anesthetist practicing within the Swansea Bay University Health Board.

Following the outbreak of the war, Dr. Shamallakh published a Facebook post on October 8, 2023, mourning family members, including his uncle and multiple children and women, who he wrote were killed in a missile strike. Writing, “Yes, the Zionist succeeded in gouging out our eyes with them, but he ignited fire and a hell in our souls that will not calm down until we are victorious, take revenge and regain our freedom and our homeland,” he added that after initial grief, “infants, girls and women from the Shamallakh family were the victims of the pigs today... and then you ask why we hate them and fight them with our nails and teeth? Yes, tears fell profusely, and hearts were broken, but we soon returned to the battlefield.”

In another October 8, 2023 post, set against a red background, Dr. Shamallakh wrote: “I swear that the battles of Badr, Uhud and Khandaq, militarily speaking, are a drop in the ocean of the Palestinian battle now. You are the Companions of the Prophet.”

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10/26 Links Pt1: Israel’s moment of truth: Knesset election pivotal to future US-Israel relationship; Israel Is Just the Pretext, The Real Target is the West; UN commission accuses Israel of war crimes in West Bank

From Ian:

Jonathan Tobin: Liberal Jewish insecurity doesn’t come from Israeli policies

For years, liberal American Jews have sought to find a pretext to justify injecting themselves into Israeli election contests, in which those who share their blind faith in reviving the failed “two-state solution” myth have consistently been defeated. Some, like the left-wing J Street lobby, make no bones about their desire to override the verdict of Israeli democracy and to repeat the catastrophic mistake made in 2005 by the late Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon when he withdrew from the Gaza Strip. They seek that for the far larger and more strategic “West Bank.”

As far as Gaza is concerned, that not only led to the creation of a Hamas terrorist state, but set in motion the events that would lead to the horrors of Oct. 7, 2023, as much as the miscalculations of the Israeli military, intelligence and political establishment.

It is entirely true that both Israeli and Diaspora Jews should recognize the need to care about and defend each other, despite the fact that—aspirational rhetoric about Jewish unity notwithstanding—they don’t understand or really know that much about each other.

But the notion that “bad” nationalistic and religious Jews in Israel are embarrassing and hurting “good” liberal American Jews dedicated to coexistence is a misnomer. Whatever you may think of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and those who support the current government, their primary responsibility is to defend a still besieged and beleaguered Jewish state. It’s not to make suicidal concessions to opponents who don’t want peace just so American Jews can feel better about themselves.

Diaspora Jews have every right to express their opinions about Israeli politics and policies, albeit while also showing a little humility about the fact that the Israelis are doing the fighting and dying required to ensure their nation’s survival.

American responsibilities
Instead of second-guessing their brethren, American Jews should realize that their role in the battle against international antisemitism is not to stand on the sidelines kibitzing about Israelis doing wrong. It’s to speak up and defend their own communities from people like El-Sayed, Uygur and Piker, as well as institutions that tolerate and encourage the hatred and bigotry that results in violence against them, not to mention targeting their children on college campuses.

A more realistic and productive approach to “shared responsibility” is not for liberal Jewish denominations to pat themselves on the back for not joining in antisemitic boycotts of Israel promoted by the left. Nor is it to prepare to help Democrats or even those Republicans who are hostile to the Jewish state to override Israeli voters if they don’t cast their ballots the way they want them to.

Rather, it is to deploy all of their energy and strength in confronting a growing antisemitic movement on their own front door. If they were truly interested in shouldering their responsibility to defend Jews, then they would be holding accountable those groups and politicians who prioritize partisan goals over Jewish security and well-being, betraying their constituents by supporting El-Sayed.

The failure of liberal advocacy and faith groups to mobilize against the rise of antisemitic politicians like El-Sayed, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and their “progressive” allies is evidence of their inability to focus on what truly matters. That moral bankruptcy gives the lie to the high-minded rhetoric they deploy when bashing Israelis who don’t conform to their notions of how Jews are supposed to behave when attacked.

As they’ve made clear over and over again, these enemies of the Jews make no distinctions between the “good” Israelis that Jewish liberals root for and the “bad” ones like Netanyahu and his allies. Their complaint isn’t really about what Israel does but what it is: a Jewish state in the Middle East. And that intolerance for Jewish sovereignty and power is what is also motivating the post-Oct. 7 surge of antisemitism Americans have experienced.

If liberal denominations and their supporters want to exercise responsibility for the Jewish future, they’d stop trying to second-guess Israelis and concentrate their minds on opposing the haters around them. If they don’t, their failings will be their own fault, not that of the Israelis.

Bassam Tawil: Israel Is Just the Pretext, The Real Target is the West

Why should anyone expect peace between the Palestinians and Israel while Palestinian leaders glorify terrorism and armed groups continue to attack Israelis?

Above all, how can there ever be peace in the Middle East if the Iranian regime is standing on its feet and supporting the jihad (holy war) to destroy Israel?

[A] central obstacle to peace: the continuing willingness of Palestinians to celebrate violence against Israelis while presenting terrorism as supposedly legitimate national resistance.

This central obstacle is not all that different from what we are seeing this month in France, as well as Belgium, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Albania and even South Korea, where there virtually are no Palestinians or Jews.

Israel is just the pretext. If you think that a Palestinian state, or an election defeat of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, or even the disappearance of Israel itself — would solve anything, you would be wrong. What the West is up against is the desire of Muslim extremists, with a leg-up from Marxists, to overthrow the "corrupt" West and replace it with Islamic Sharia law and eventually global caliphate. Only after this transformation will the world have the "peace" part of the "Religion of Peace." Until then, as the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, vowed, "there will be struggle" (lit. jihad).

These statements, coming from terrorist groups backed by the Iranian regime, reveal a political culture in which murdering Jews is not merely celebrated as an achievement and the terrorists are elevated as national heroes — the same wish holds true for all "infidels" wherever they are.

The October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre demonstrated the devastating consequences of an extremist Islamist ideology that treats people of other religions, in this instance Jews, as a legitimate target. In Nigeria, Islamists treat Christians as legitimate targets. In India, they treat Hindus as a legitimate target. In France and the West, they treat democratic governance as a legitimate target. It is the same war. A few clearly terrified leaders in the West — in France, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Portugal and Spain — might think that if there were a Palestinian state, it might keep the mob quiet for a while. Yes, until breakfast. That is also why US President Donald Trump should not make a "deal" with the rulers of Iran.

Hamas and other likeminded jihadists have no problem murdering civilians — whether in the US on 9/11, the London transit system, the Barcelona and Madrid attacks, Paris's Bataclan Theater, Nice on Bastille Day, German Christmas Markets, the Manchester concert or anywhere else. They are convinced they will be rewarded for it, not just by European politicians in this life, but by Allah in the next — so that no matter how many babies or elderly people they kill torture or mutilate, it is all good.

Iran's regime has recently slaughtered more than 36,500 of its own citizens, and continues to kill — so why should they care if they inflict the same horrors on anyone else?

Palestinian factions such as Hamas and PIJ, like the protesters throughout the West, continue to regard violence as a source of pride and a means of advancing their primary objective — in Israel, the elimination of the "Zionist entity" (Israel), and in the rest of the world, overthrowing man-made (as opposed to Allah-made) infidel democracies.

The silence of the Palestinian Authority — and other Arab and Muslim leaders — is also significant. No public statements condemning the Hebron attack have been issued by Palestinian leaders or representatives or any other Muslim world leader. They object only when it is their territory that is being bombed — which it often is by other Muslims.

Why does Moody’s rate France above Israel? The economic gap deserves scrutiny

Moody’s decision to keep France’s credit rating well above Israel’s raises a question: How much weight does the agency put on each country’s economic performance?

The US-based credit rating agency affirmed France’s sovereign rating at Aa3 over the weekend. Israel remains at Baa1, four notches lower. Both ratings are investment grade, meaning they fall within the categories generally considered suitable for mainstream institutional investment. The difference nevertheless signals that Moody’s considers lending to France substantially safer.

Sovereign credit ratings assess a government’s ability and willingness to repay its debt. They can influence borrowing costs and determine which investors are permitted to buy a country’s bonds.

Such assessments necessarily extend beyond a comparison of growth and debt figures. War, political stability, institutions, and access to financing all matter. Even so, the contrast between the French and Israeli economies deserves closer scrutiny.

Moody’s first downgraded Israel from A1 to A2 in February 2024, roughly four months after the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack triggered the war in Gaza. In September 2024, it cut Israel’s rating another two notches to Baa1, where it has remained.

Israel’s economy has nevertheless demonstrated considerable resilience, acknowledged in assessments by the International Monetary Fund, the international institution that monitors economies and provides financial assistance to member countries.

France, meanwhile, has struggled with weak growth, substantial budget deficits, and political resistance to efforts to repair its public finances. Protests and unrest have added to the pressure on its government.

The question is whether the size of the ratings gap adequately reflects those competing realities.

A substantial gap in growth, debt
Consider economic output per person, a widely used measure of a country’s average prosperity.

According to the IMF figures cited here, Israel’s nominal GDP per capita is expected to reach approximately $72,400 in 2026, compared with about $51,400 in France. These figures measure output in current US dollars and are influenced by exchange rates; they do not directly measure household income or purchasing power.

The growth forecasts also differ sharply. The IMF projects Israeli economic growth of approximately 4.5% this year, while the Bank of Israel, the country’s central bank, forecasts 5.6%.

France’s economy is expected to expand by approximately 0.4%, according to both the IMF and the Banque de France, the French central bank.

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What Israel's Elections Tell Us About Israel's Critics

For years, mainstream American Democrats have tried to walk a delicate line: "I support Israel, but I oppose Netanyahu and his right-wing government."

They probably thought this was smart politics. They could reassure pro-Israel voters while distancing themselves from Israeli policies unpopular with their base.

They didn't realize that they walked into a trap.

On the eve of Israel's elections, anti-Zionists are pointing out that Netanyahu's leading opponents aren't all that different from him on major security issues and Palestinian statehood. Replacing Bibi won't fundamentally change Israeli policy.

Guess what? They are largely right!

But the conclusion they draw is the problem. If even Israel's centrists and liberals agree with Netanyahu on important questions, then, they claim, the problem must be Israelis themselves. They are all supposedly racist, militaristic, and don't give a damn about Palestinian rights.

This has become a constant meme across the anti-Zionists. See, for example, this "analysis" by Turkish media. 

It is possible to take the same facts and reach a radically different conclusion. 

Israelis disagree about practically everything. Religion, democracy, settlements, the judiciary, the economy, and Netanyahu himself divide Israeli society bitterly. Israeli elections are exercises in three-dimensional chess, with voters weighing not only which party best represents their values but which coalition might emerge.

Yet on fundamental security questions, there is considerable agreement. No one wants their homes invaded by Hamas. No one wants to have sleepless nights going back and forth to bomb shelters. No one wants to be stabbed or bombed on their local streets.

That doesn't prove Israelis are all bigots. It means that people who actually live with the consequences of these decisions understand something outsiders don't.

Judaism has a principle called dan l'chaf zechut: judging others favorably, giving them the benefit of the doubt before attributing bad motives. Applied to Israeli politics, it would mean considering that Israelis who must send their children to war, live with terrorism, and bear the consequences of failed peace agreements might have legitimate reasons for their positions.

They can care about Palestinian rights while also caring about their own lives and security. Disagreeing with how someone balances competing moral values doesn't mean that person rejects the values you prioritize.

October 7 made this painfully clear.

Some of the communities devastated by Hamas were among Israel's most committed advocates of coexistence. Their residents had helped Palestinians, supported dialogue, and believed peace was possible. The massacre shattered assumptions across Israeli society, particularly among people who had placed their faith in reconciliation.

Israel's peace camp was largely mugged by reality. Many Israelis reconsidered whether the risks of a Palestinian state were acceptable. Support for a two-state solution, already declining, fell further. Ironically, the idea now seems to have more enthusiastic supporters in Western capitals than in Israel itself.

It is easy to advocate political arrangements when someone else must live with the consequences.

A society that argues so passionately about everything deserves to have its concerns taken seriously when a broad consensus emerges. Calling them racist is something else altogether. 

Israel's critics, even some well meaning ones, assume that they understand Israel's circumstances better than Israelis do. They interpret agreement across political divisions not as evidence of shared experience but as proof of collective moral failure.

This is not merely condescending. It is insulting.

And it is disturbingly close to an ancient antisemitic habit: treating Jews not as individuals making difficult choices under difficult circumstances, but as a collective whose actions reveal some underlying moral defect.

Not every critic of Israeli policy does this. But moving from "Netanyahu is the problem" to "the Israeli electorate is the problem" is a dangerous step toward collective demonization. And Israel-haters have adopted this strategy to take the air out of the tires of the simplistic "Israel has a right to exist, Bibi bad" frame.

When people who disagree about almost everything agree about something important, intellectual humility suggests asking what they know that you don't. Intellectual arrogance assumes they must all share the same moral defect.

Israel's elections will tell us who Israelis want to govern them. But the reactions to those elections are already telling us a great deal about Israel's critics. And it is a pattern that Jews recognize from across the centuries.

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10/25 Links: The ‘homicidal empathy’ of the Islamo-left; There is always an idiot in the room; Nas Daily: Anti-Zionism is antisemitism

From Ian:

Welcome to the era of champagne jihadism

Forget champagne socialism, we are now in the era of champagne jihadism.

The GQ poster boy of this movement is multimillionaire Hasan Piker, who has proclaimed that America deserved 9/11, that his favourite flag is Hezbollah’s and that he would ‘vote for Hamas over Israel’. Awkwardly, if he lived under Hamas, he wouldn’t be able to vote for anyone.

Champagne jihadis needn’t actually believe in God, let alone Islam. They simply need an unshakeable conviction that the West (aka the Great Satan) is the root of all evil, and that anyone fighting it must therefore be on the side of good, no matter their methods.

You can find champagne jihadis speaking from positions of privilege throughout the West. They can be found cosplaying holy war by cheering on the ‘Glorious Martyrs’ of 7 October from the comfortable surrounds of £10,000-a-year Glasgow University, where they’re probably studying queer theory – sadly not on the syllabus at schools in Gaza. Or they can be seen in New York shouting ‘long live Hamas’ during a vigil organised by Israelis for Peace to remember the Israelis and Palestinians killed since 7 October.

More recently, as rioters destroyed French businesses and historic buildings, the champagne jihadis were seen bravely manning the barricades of their verified social-media accounts. ‘Capitalism doesn’t need your grief’, commented actress and sometime Dior model Christina Ricci beneath a post lamenting the looting of a Dior store in Paris. The champagne jihadi is, in fact, the ultimate capitalist, capable of commodifying absolutely anything, including the destruction of capitalism itself. No doubt Ricci’s next Dior campaign will feature her throwing a Dior J’adore Molotov cocktail at a cop car in a $710 DIO(R)EVOLUTION t-shirt.

But the rioters are not destroying capitalism – one Bangladeshi phone shop at a time – for the love of la patrie. They’re doing it for Palestine, the flag of which has largely replaced the tricolore during the riots. I support a free Palestine, but I’m not sure how destroying a North African man’s shop in the French capital helps achieve that. Whether it’s the suffering of ordinary Gazans under Hamas or the destruction of an immigrant’s livelihood in Paris, the revolution demands sacrifice. Preferably someone else’s.

Julie Burchill: The ‘homicidal empathy’ of the Islamo-left

The concept of ‘suicidal empathy’ is having a moment right now. Coined by Gad Saad in his book, Suicidal Empathy: Dying to be Kind, it’s defined by Wikipedia as ‘a purported phenomenon in which excessive, misdirected and pathological forms of empathy are destructive for the party that exhibits them’. We see it in Western countries, whose leaders tell their shivering populations that they’re not allowed to have cheap fossil fuels because of the polar bears. We see it in young liberal women, who would have a fit if a white man whistled at them, but bend over backwards to make men from rabidly misogynistic cultures welcome in their countries – and this despite the fact that we certainly don’t need to import sex offenders when we have enough of the homegrown kind.

In extreme cases of this lunacy, we see alleged feminists voluntarily donning the hijab – the living shroud that so many brave Muslim-born women have been tortured and killed for trying to cast off. There was a shocking example of this in 2017 when Sweden’s self-proclaimed ‘first feminist government in the world’ donned hijabs and chadors on a trade visit to Tehran, in order to make themselves fit to be seen by the righteous Muslims of the Islamic Republic. They did this shortly after promising to promote a ‘gender-equality perspective’ internationally and adopt a ‘feminist foreign policy’, while ignoring the appeal by the Persian women’s rights activist Masih Alinejad, who had specifically asked European female politicians to defy the hijab demands when visiting Iran. Also in 2017 there was the Washington ‘Women’s March’, which involved the grotesque spectacle of many non-Muslim women voluntarily hijabing-up.

We certainly see a massive dose of suicidal empathy among the Islamo-left, from Queers for Palestine – often mocked as Turkeys for Christmas – to Owen Jones. Jones probably thinks that he’s so unique that he could sprout wings and fly if he got thrown off a Gazan roof by the local gay-haters. Do these fools honestly believe that the facts about Hamas hating homosexuals are Israeli propaganda? Or are they so bound up in The Wonder Of Me, so convinced of their exceptionalism, that they are as deluded as that strange girl on TikTok, who mused on how she would be treated if taken hostage by Hamas: ‘They would probably comfort me, make sure I had medical attention, make sure I was doing okay…’

The message is loud, clear and strikingly ignorant. Other women / gays / infidels may get raped and / or murdered, but those big angry men would see me as special. We assume that such people are simply thick, or perhaps suffering from extreme narcissistic exceptionalism. A lot of them are mad at their parents and are acting up or acting out. Is it performative social masochism, in which liberal young white folk seek to outdo each other as if in some silly and sinister sport?

David Collier: There is always an idiot in the room

Brichto says he cares about every life. Yet when Jewish people gathered to discuss the hatred threatening theirs, he promoted a film demonising Israel, mocked those who had not seen it, and questioned their concern for others.

He could have listened. Instead, he made himself out to be morally superior to the others in the room.

This from a man who has campaigned with Zack Polanski, whose Green Party has now declared that ‘Zionism is Racism’.

And having watched Naza myself, my suggestion to those in the room would be: don’t bother.

Watch October 7 footage instead. That will tell you far more about the Jewish position in today’s world and the need for a strong and secure homeland.

In the meantime, Jewish families do not have to pass Adam Brichto’s test before their fears deserve to be heard.

Perhaps Brichto should spend less time mocking those who think differently from him and more time watching October 7 footage himself.

Maybe it would make him a little less of an idiot.

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