Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, November 27, 2025

Everyone is teaching the Holocaust wrong

There has been an uproar over comments by Sarah Hurwitz at the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America this month. As JTA reports:

“Holocaust education is absolutely essential,” she said. “But I think it may be confusing some of our young people about antisemitism, because they learn about big, strong Nazis hurting weak, emaciated Jews, and they think, ‘Oh, antisemitism is like anti-black racism, right? Powerful white people against powerless black people.’ So when on Tiktok, all day long, they see powerful Israelis hurting weak, skinny Palestinians, it’s not surprising that they think, ‘Oh, I know the lesson of the Holocaust is you fight Israel. You fight the big, powerful people hurting the weak people.’”

Immediately the "progressive" Left attacked her, saying that she was justifying Gaza "genocide" and other nonsense.

Hurwitz is correct. Holocaust education falls into a number of buckets, all of which are problematic for one reason or another. Some make it into a vapid lesson on generalized tolerance. Others use it as a tool to compare the Holocaust with other genocides, without noting the particular horrors that make it unique. Some concentrate on Jewish victimhood, making Jews passive characters in the only narrative they are confutable teaching, "oppressor vs. oppressed." Yet others concentrate on democracy and anti-authoritarianism, implying that something like this could never happen here. All the while, some Jewish groups think that Holocaust education is some sort of magic bullet to fight today's antisemitism.

Everyone is ignoring the real lesson of the Holocaust - how we cannot be complacent, because we can also fall into the same mindset that the Germans did. Some of the most cultured, educated and technologically advanced people in the world descended into supporting the horrors of genocide in less than a decade. How could this happen, and how can we ensure it never happens again?

This is a lesson in ethics, a topic that public education seems allergic to for fear of offending someone. But without a strong ethical backbone, any Holocaust curriculum is not going to accomplish what it is supposed to. And there are basic ethical imperatives that everyone should be able to agree upon.

This is exactly where the philosophy I have been developing, Derechology, shows its value. Together with my Derechology AI GPT, I came up with a sample curriculum that makes the Holocaust relevant to today. It doesn't shy away from hard questions - it is meant to make students uncomfortable in an age-appropriate way.

In the derechological curriculum, students don't just learn about the Holocaust: they are trained to think ethically:

They learn to identify moral collapse through values like Tzelem Elokim (the sacred image in every person), Pikuach Nefesh (life trumps ideology), and Anavah (moral humility).
They study how professions failed—medicine, law, academia—and how moral distance allowed people to commit atrocities while feeling innocent.
They engage in Moral Audit Projects—applying Holocaust ethics to modern issues: medical ethics, refugee policy, social media algorithms, and more.
They reflect on moral resilience—what Jewish tradition preserved under annihilation, and how spiritual courage outlasted empire.

The sample curriculum spans eight modules. Here’s a taste:

Ground Zero of Moral Collapse — This module begins with the question of how a civilized society—full of artists, scientists, and thinkers—could become a machine of genocide. Students are introduced to key ethical values and the idea of structural moral failure. The focus is not on Jews or Nazis yet, but on the disappearance of override values like human dignity and mutual responsibility under the guise of "science "and "progress." Racial theories were accepted as scientific fact by everyone in the early 20th century. Are there any current social theories being taught today that might be disproven tomorrow?

How Antisemitism Functions — Antisemitism is not just another form of hate; it’s a diagnostic tool for system failure. Students learn how antisemitism morphs across ideologies and Jews are blamed for contradictory crimes. They will examine how antisemitic ideas infiltrated German law, theology, education, and popular culture, becoming the emotional and ideological engine of genocide. Students also examine how tropes from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion—accusations of secret Jewish power, global manipulation, and dual loyalty—have not disappeared but adapted to modern political language. Conspiracy theories portraying Jews as both omnipotent and subversive remain widespread across ideological spectrums. The module challenges students to understand how these narratives persist even when explicitly disavowed, and how they distort ethical reasoning. This module challenges students to recognize similar rhetorical and structural patterns in contemporary discourse.

Collapse of the Professions — Doctors, lawyers, engineers, and professors were not exceptions to Nazism: they were instruments of it. This module shows how professional codes eroded when they aligned with racial ideology and state power. Medical ethics books justified extermination of "subhumans." Students learn how moral collapse isn’t chaotic - it can be planned, bureaucratic, credentialed, and efficient.

Moral Arrogance — What happens when humility is removed from the ethical system? This module introduces Anavah—moral humility—as a structural necessity. Nazis didn't think of themselves as monsters - they were in the forefront of animal ethics while justifying the murder of millions of humans. Students explore how Nazi ideology elevated certainty, hierarchy, and dehumanization over ethical restraint, creating a worldview where genocide felt like progress.

The Machinery of Death — The Holocaust was a technological, administrative, and logistical operation as much as it was ideological. Students learn about the train systems, data tracking, and bureaucratic layers that allowed millions to die while most participants believed they were “just doing their jobs.” The concept of “moral distance” helps explain how ordinary people justified extraordinary evil. Some resisted but the vast majority did not, thinking that their parts in the genocide were too inconsequential to matter.

Mass Consent: The Storytelling of Genocide — This module explores how the Nazis used propaganda to normalize the abnormal. Students analyze films, speeches, posters, and school materials that reframed genocide as moral duty and racial hygiene. They study classic persuasion techniques—repetition, euphemism, scapegoating, visual symbolism—and compare them to how modern media and social platforms and advertising shape narratives today. The goal is to train students to detect ethical hijacking before it becomes cultural collapse.

Jewish Ethical and Physical Resistance — Against totalitarian power, Jews didn’t just survive—they preserved structure. Students learn about the Jews who fought in the Warsaw Ghetto and in partisan forces. But beyond that, they embraced spiritual resistance: holiday observance, Torah study, mutual aid, even ethical debates in camps. This is framed not as passive suffering but as the fierce refusal to let moral structure die even when they had no control over any other aspect of their lives.

Teshuva Epochs — After the Shoah, some systems tried to reckon with their collapse. Students examine examples of postwar repentance: Christian theological shifts, German reparations, the Geneva Conventions, and the moral rebirth of Israel. The challenge here is to distinguish real teshuva (ethical return) from performative gestures ("we're sorry you were offended.") it is not about guilt, but about a true change in one's derech (moral path.)

Moral Audit Project — In the capstone module, students apply Holocaust ethics to contemporary moral dilemmas. They identify a system where human dignity is at risk, run a derechological analysis, and design an override mechanism. This turns memory into action—and trains moral architects, not just historians.

Students come away not just with knowledge, but with conscience - and tools that would help them navigate real life.

They learn that remembering isn’t enough. “Never Again” means never again on your watch. The Holocaust is not a Jewish story with universal lessons—it is a universal story revealed through the unique Jewish experience.

This is only one version of the curriculum I've developed. There are many other subtopics and ethical entry points into the Holocaust that could be explored. I believe specific vignettes are especially effective—moments students can visualize and emotionally process. For example, while Nazi death camp commandants could spend their evenings listening to music and enjoying a hearty meal with their families after a day of mass murder, Jewish prisoners would sometimes share a single potato peel found in the dirt as if it were treasure. One dinner table preserved privilege; the other preserved dignity.

This curriculum doesn’t teach certainty. It teaches the humility to recognize that you might be wrong and the courage to act before it’s too late.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Today's Houthi antisemitism

According to surveys, the most antisemitic places on the planet are the Palestinian territories (93% holding antisemitic views), Iraq (92% and then Yemen (88%), followed closely by Libya, Algeria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt.

But in the media Yemen still takes first place. Other Arab countries pretend to be only against Zionism and not Jews, so their media at least makes an attempt to pretend not to be antisemitic. But the Houthis proudly say "Damn the Jews" in their slogan and flag, they have no compunctions about being honest in their hate for Jews.

Which is actually refreshing. We know that the overwhelming majority hate Jews, they know they hate Jews, why pretend otherwise? At least the Houthis are honest.

Today's example in the Al Thawrah newspaper has a columnist railing against Arab countries who have relations with Israel. Not because they are Zionists but because they are Jews. (And Christians are no better.)

The martyred leader, Sayyid Hussein bin Badr al-Din al-Houthi—may God be pleased with him—spoke about the danger posed by the Jews, their cunning, malice, and crimes against God Almighty and against the rights of all humanity, especially Arabs and Muslims.

...Everyone ignored the teachings of the Holy Quran and rushed greedily to achieve what they call peace, while witnessing the crimes of the Jews and Christians and their betrayal every time they conclude a covenant or pact with the Muslims; their pursuit stems from false greed whose futility and loss they recognize, but they delude themselves with the possibility of peace.

The Jews' characteristics and nature include cunning and deception, and the Quran confirms that. If the Muslims returned to the Quran, they would know the truth about these criminals, which is what the martyred leader—may God have mercy on him and dwell him in the spacious gardens of Paradise—called for: "Those who delude themselves that they can obtain something from the Jews through negotiation do not know them and do not understand the truths of the Holy Quran, which said about them: 'Or do they have a share in the kingdom, so they do not give the people a naqīran?' [Quran 4:53]. And the solution with them is not through negotiation but through resistance, which they want to eliminate."

What the martyred leader said is a preemptive vision that reveals to the nation the true nature of the Jews, based on the Holy Quran. It is a call to adhere to the truths of the Quran, which clarifies the crimes of these people who have incurred God's wrath and gone astray, violating the rights of God Almighty and the rights of all humanity. If they were to return to the Holy Quran, they would know that these people cannot give us anything of their own accord, and that we must take our rights and liberate our homelands from them through resistance, not negotiations, because they will not give anything, not even the smallest thing.

There you go, Israel will never give up an inch of land. That's why it left Gaza, withdrew from the Sinai and from southern Lebanon.

I often wonder how much of this is stupidity and how much is just straight out lying. And whether it makes a difference.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Is Thanksgiving based on the Jewish festival of Sukkot?

Here is an article from the Dodge County Republican (Minnesota) from Nov 27, 1874:

Throughout much of the 19th and early 20th centuries, American newspapers often tied Thanksgiving to the Jewish holiday of Sukkot ("Feast of Tabernacles.")

The connection seems obvious - the Pilgrims were religious and modeled themselves as the Jews of the New World, and Sukkot is a harvest festival.

But after World War II, those articles all but disappeared in annual descriptions of Thanksgiving. Why the change?

It seems that scholars could not find any evidence that the Pilgrims themselves ever associated that first Thanksgiving in 1621 with the Jewish festival. No one made that connection until Unitarian minister Rev. Alexander Young wrote about it in 1841. None of the American proclamations of the festival mention the Bible.

Nevertheless, the claim is plausible, if not documented. The Jews who went on pilgrimage festivals would give the voluntary thanks-offering (todah) when they reached the Temple, and the English translation of the Bible uses the word "thanksgiving" for this.

So the evidence is thin that American Thanksgiving is based on Sukkot. But that doesn't mean that Jews shouldn't give thanks. As the American Israelite wrote on Thanksgiving 1920:

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

11/26 Links Pt2: Palestine 36 is an insult to history; John Cleese apologises for sharing antisemitic posts; Notorious ‘Jewish supremacy’ rant doctor FINALLY has medical licence suspended

From Ian:

Palestine 36 is an insult to history

Palestine 36 is a new movie about Arab resistance to colonialism in British-governed Palestine in the late 1930s. It is a moving and eye-catching story, but it suffers from a big problem: it is not true.

Annemarie Jacir’s film looks the part, with its mix of beautifully realised life in the hill villages, Haifa townscapes and jazz-age cocktail parties. It is replete with neat production values, paid for with cash from BBC Films and the British Film Institute.

The performances from Karim Daoud Anaya, as young, radicalised journalist Yusuf, and Yafa Bakri, playing a widow called Rabab, are moving. Jeremy Irons, who plays British high commissioner Arthur Wauchope, and Robert Aramayo, as British intelligence officer Orde Wingate, are hiss-worthy music-hall villains.

The account of the conflict on which the movie is based – the events of 1936 to 1939 – is far less convincing. Jacir takes it as read that the British are working on behalf of the Jewish settlers, who are depicted as vicious and rapacious ‘colonisers’. Yet the truth about what is known as the Great Revolt is that the leaders of the Palestinian Arabs were more opposed to Jews than they were to British imperialism – indeed, they said straight-forwardly that they would have supported Britain if only it would stop Jewish immigration to Mandate Palestine.

Throughout the film, it is the Jews who are portrayed as the problem, while Britain is blamed for taking their side. In one scene, Rabab’s daughter, Afra, looks on at the Jewish women building their settlement and asks why they have come. Her mother replies ‘their countries don’t want them… I don’t know why.’

In the film, Jews are shown being allocated land by the British that was confiscated from Arabs. But that was not British policy. Whatever land Jews had in 1936, they had bought from Arab owners. ‘Palestine is not for sale’, say protesters in the movie. But the truth is that it was, and for a decent profit, too, for Arab landowners.

John Cleese apologises to Jewish News for sharing antisemitic posts – vows free Israel show

John Cleese has issued a fulsome apology to Jewish News for inadvertently sharing false and antisemitic content online – as he reiterated his pledge to make good on his pledge to perform again in Israel.

In an exclusive hour-long interview, the 86-year-old comedy icon said he was “extremely sorry” for reposting material he later discovered had been fabricated, including a false quote attributed to former Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely and another suggesting Israel “controls global finance.

“I didn’t check them properly,” he said. “I couldn’t believe some of them had been completely invented. It was a mistake.”

The posts provoked widespread anger among Israelis and British Jews and came ahead of Cleese’s cancellation of three sold-out shows scheduled in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem between 26 November and 1 December.

Initial statements cited “security concerns,” while online speculation claimed he feared BDS pressure.

Cleese said the decision stemmed from anxiety rather than politics. “I was dreading it weeks before the posts,” he said. “I thought someone would ask me something political, and if I didn’t say the right thing it would be unpleasant for the rest of the tour.”

Asked whether he feared for his safety, he replied: “I think there was always a security element… but I didn’t know.”

The Fawlty Towers and Monty Python star admitted to being “naïve” about how easily posts can be manipulated and said he now intends to stop commenting on Israel online. “I don’t understand the internet,” he said. “People create things and don’t care that they can be disproved.”

Cleese condemned Hamas as “the nastiest of all terrorist organisations” and stood firmly by Israel’s right to defend itself, while expressing concern about some actions of the Israeli government. He also voiced concern about record levels of antisemitism in the UK, saying he was deeply saddened by reports from Jewish friends who told him how unsafe they now feel.

Revealed: Police quizzed wrongfully arrested Jewish mother over her faith

A wrongfully arrested mother was interrogated by police about her Jewish faith and involvement in a Holocaust Memorial Day event at her daughter’s school, the JC can reveal.

Citing a claim of “harassment” against her, an officer asked Rosalind Levine, 47, about emails she had sent her daughter’s school in which she offered to help arrange for Holocaust survivors to address pupils and requested the removal of her child from Christian prayer.

Levine and her partner, Maxie Allen, 50, received a payout from Hertfordshire Police earlier this month after the force admitted they had been wrong to send six officers to arrest the couple at their Borehamwood family home in January over complaints the pair had made about their daughter’s school.

CCTV footage captured the uniformed officers hauling the parents away as their three-year-old, Francesca, cried.

Documents seen by the JC now suggest Cowley Hill Primary School cited Levine’s emails relating to her Jewish faith, her Israeli family and her desire to promote Shoah education as part of a harassment report.

Levine said it felt like she had “slipped into an alternative reality” when she was forced to explain her religious rights from inside a police cell. “I felt I was in a weird nightmare,” she told the JC.

Shadow education secretary Laura Trott, said: “The family’s Jewish faith was entirely irrelevant, and questioning them about it was unacceptable. Freedom of religion is a cornerstone of our democracy, and any attempt to threaten it must be fought absolutely.”

Shadow DfE equalities minister Claire Coutinho called on Hertfordshire Constabulary “to come clean” on why Levine was questioned about her religion.

“This appears to be part of a worrying trend of Jewish people being asked about their religion in police interviews in a way that other groups wouldn’t be,” Coutinho said.

Former Attorney General Sir Michael Ellis added: “The appalling way these parents have been treated exemplifies the dire state of British policing at the moment.”

The couple were arrested on suspicion of harassment, malicious communications and causing a nuisance on school property – allegations later dismissed as baseless.

11/26 Links Pt1: Body of hostage Dror Or returned to Israel; Does it matter that they’re lying about Israel?; Minister Strock: ‘Time to end the Oslo illusion’

From Ian:

Jonathan Tobin: Does it matter that they’re lying about Israel?

A curious thing happened last week in Israel. More than 100 military officers from 20 countries attended an international conference hosted by the Israel Defense Forces. Among them were representatives from countries that had falsely accused the Jewish state of committing war crimes, deliberate starvation or even genocide in Gaza during the war with Hamas that followed the Palestinian terrorist attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

While there, they visited the sites of the Oct. 7 massacres and attended briefings about the challenges presented by urban warfare as well as discussions of how the IDF used AI, drones, artillery and medical services for the wounded.

Some nations, like the United Kingdom, whose left-wing government continues in its vitriolic demonization of the Jewish state and has passively accepted the growing mainstreaming of antisemitism in British society, boycotted the event. But others who were just as vociferous in backing up the claims that what Israel had done in Gaza was uniquely awful, such as France and Canada, showed up alongside representatives from friendlier countries like the United States, the Czech Republic and Hungary.

They were accompanied by officers from Germany, Finland, India, Greece, Cyprus, Poland, Austria, Estonia, Japan, Morocco, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia. Many have either joined in the international community’s Israel-bashing, recognized “Palestine” as an independent, albeit still non-existent, country or chose not to stand with Israel during the past two years as it fought for its life against genocidal Islamist terrorists.

They don’t really believe the lies
That Israel has much to teach the world about the use of high-tech and intelligence in warfare, added to its expertise in avoiding civilian casualties and how to deal with emergencies, is nothing new. The Israelis have been sharing their knowledge in these and other topics with other nations for decades. So, in that sense, the military conference wasn’t all that newsworthy.

But it matters because it shows that many of those countries that tacitly or openly endorsed the blood libels against Israel during the course of the war that, at least temporarily, concluded with the ceasefire-hostage release deal brokered by the United States in October, don’t really believe the accusations. If they did, they wouldn’t have been there or subsequently, members of their delegations would have spoken about alleged links between Israeli military tactics and the claims of mass murder.

‘Wrong from the very beginning,’ Hungarian minister says of EU Israel policy

Europe has shifted on Israel. Since Oct. 7, 12 European countries, including the United Kingdom, France and Spain, have recognized a Palestinian state and now routinely vote against the Jewish state at the United Nations.

One country bucking that European trend is Hungary, which joins the United States and Argentina as among the only countries to vote with Israel consistently at the United Nations. Hungary is also deemed sufficiently safe for Jewish and Israeli institutions that it now hosts many of the Israeli national soccer team’s home games, even as one Israeli club has been banned from playing in the United Kingdom.

JNS sat down on Nov. 21 with János Bóka, the Hungarian minister for European affairs and its prime ministerial envoy to combat antisemitism, to discuss what sets his country apart.

“I believe that the European position has been wrong from the very beginning,” Bóka told JNS, of the bloc’s position on Israel. “This short sighted approach has tremendously contributed to the European Union being sidelined in the Middle East peace process in general.”

“It’s not a coincidence that the European Union is not at the table where things are decided. It’s not a coincidence that the European Union is not able to influence the political agenda anymore in the Middle East,” he said.

“This is a natural consequence of the wrong policy choices that were made,” he added. “We don’t want to contribute to further wrong choices being made on behalf of the European Union.”

Patel praises Netanyahu after ‘great meeting’ on Israel visit

Shadow Foreign Secretary Priti Patel has met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for discussions designed to portray the Conservative Party as a friend and ally of the Jewish state.

Photographed alongside the Israeli PM, Patel wrote on X:”A great meeting with my friend Benjamin Netanyahu and a discussion about how we must stand together to fight for the freedoms and values our countries are founded on.

“Israel is a beacon of democracy and freedom in the Middle East and our friend and ally. ”

In a follow-up video posted on social media, Patel, a strong supporter of the Conservative Friends of Israel organisation, stressed the long-standing history of information sharing between the UK and Israel, especially in security, defense, and trade, adding, “It’s in Britain’s interests to strengthen this relationship.”

Meeting with survivors, hostages, and their families from the October 7 attack during her visit, Patel also said:”Since these horrific terrorist attacks, Israel has seen prolonged attacks from Iranian-backed Hamas-Hezbollah and the Houthis.

“These are groups that oppose the values that we hold, democracy, freedom, and the right to expression.

“Their actions have brought immense suffering to countless people.

“We hope the 20-point police plan will lay the foundations for sustained peace in the region.

“But of course, this can only work if allies, including the United Kingdom, come together to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure in Gaza, to eliminate Hamas, and to tackle the ongoing threats from Iran to deliver much-needed peace and stability.”

Esther Denouncing Haman, Ernest Normand

I’m no rabbi, but the level of depravity exhibited by Hamas, the things they did on October 7, the horrors inflicted on hostages—were so creatively cruel that they can’t, to my mind, be anything but Amalek. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the “innocent people of Gaza” are also Amalek, along with those under the Palestinian Authority. The greatest achievement of these people seems to be taking depravity to new heights.

The October 7 massacre—1,200 Israelis slaughtered, women raped, babies burned, genital mutilation, starvation, mental and physical abuse, families torn apart in an agony for years. Even now, over two years since that black day, I’m still learning about fresh atrocities. The way they behaved is inhuman.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu invoked Amalek twice in the weeks following the attack, as did Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. In fact, the *cough cough* International Court of Justice (ICJ) seized on any and all references to Amalek they could find to help South Africa “prove” that Israel harbors genocidal intent in its war against Hamas. As we find ourselves once again in a ceasefire that isn’t, it’s time to think about this: If Hamas is Amalek, doesn’t Jewish law demand its obliteration? And doesn’t that indeed equate to genocide?

I’ll leave these questions to the rabbis and philosophers—because I’m definitely not leaving it up to the ICJ to decide. Not that it matters, because despite Netanyahu calling Hamas “Amalek” twice, he has ruled over this war with restraint in the face of existential threat. We did not wipe out the people of Gaza. And we did not wipe out Hamas. This was the choice our leaders made. A choice that says we DON’T see them as Amalek, either that, or we don’t care about God’s directive to wipe out Amalek. Or maybe we’re too cowardly to do what needs to be done. Too afraid of what all the other countries will do if we do what we should.

Primer: What is Amalek?

Hindy Gross wrote a great condensed story of Amalek for Jewish Resources. Read the whole thing, but here are a few excerpts:

King Agag was the sole survivor of the battle. Hashem had instructed Shaul to leave no trace of the Amalekite race, however Agag was left alive, spared by Shaul. As a result of this tragic mistake, Haman, the descendant of Agag, was born, and went on to persecute the Jews. Had King Shaul killed Agag as he had been commanded to do, the nation of Amalek would not exist today. . .

. . . Haman, as an Amaleki himself, would stop at nothing to see the Jews fall. He pursued this task with the same sinas chinam (baseless or pointless hatred) that we sadly see in our own communities. There was no point to Haman’s demands, yet Achashverosh went along with it all, even to stamping the Amalekite’s plan with his royal signet. The way of the Amalekim is to unjustly pursue the death of the Jews without purpose, and without logic. So too, our love for God must be pursued without logic, to dispel all doubt. . .

Today as yesterday, we are commanded to blot out the blood of Amalek. Rashi explains this as a missing element in the world. Hashem’s name will not be complete (ושמו אחד) until Amalek’s presence and name is gone. Just as Haman called for the complete eradication of the Jews, so too we must remove the name of Amalek from the world in order to restore this missing element.

“Restore this missing element.” Lyrical, but easy to misconstrue. Still, Netanyahu said it, Hamas is Amalek, “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember.”

Smotrich, as previously mentioned, also said the “A” word—Amalek—demanding stronger, more decisive action against a horrible enemy. The concept of “Hamas is Amalek” even wound its way into Israeli pop culture. The 2023 hip-hop track Harbu Darbu by Ness Ve Stilla, went viral with over 4.5 million Spotify streams and 16 million YouTube views.

Harbu Darbu is powerful and it names names, such as Dua Lipa and Bella Hadid, along with now-eliminated bad guys, Haniyeh, Mohammed Deif, and Nasrallah and takes them to task. The lyrics offer some catharsis to young Israelis in this tragic time. It expresses what they feel.

Can anyone say definitively that Hamas is Amalek? No. But in the end, we do have the Vehi Sheamda verse that we've read at every Passover seder:

And it is this (the promise) that has stood by our ancestors and for us. For not only one (enemy) has risen up against us to destroy us, but in every generation they rise up to destroy us.

But the Holy One, Blessed be He, delivers us from their hands.

The Jews have read those words, wherever they were, for thousands of years. They serve as a guide: When they rise up to destroy you, that's how you know they're bad guys. Hamas is just one among many evil entities who just really, really want to k*ll Jews.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

There are two kinds of people: those who think that there are two kinds of people and those who don't.

This old joke is clever but it in fact describes the world much more accurately than it appears.

This morning I watched a new Ami Horowitz video where he interviewed Muslim Brotherhood leaders and members. They openly described how they view the West as irredeemably immoral and how it must be overthrown. But they also mention how the far Left are natural partners for them - because they think the same way.

All extremists, whether Muslim or nationalist or progressive, have a core argument that is based on truth. Hollywood really does make money off of immorality; unlimited immigration can have negative effects on a nation, there are huge inequalities in society that feel unfair. The problem is not that they are completely wrong: the problem is that their response is to inflate their particular grievance as the overarching problem in the world and then to use it as a reason to tear it all down.

The idea of fixing society's ills is not even considered. Indeed, when institutions try to meet the extremists halfway and try to fix the most egregious practices, the response is not appreciation but scorn and it is seen as an opportunity to pressure them further.

The problems are binary, and the solutions are as well - keep or destroy.

There is an intense irony here. That binary thinking is a direct outgrowth of Western thinking centered on Greek philosophy. To the Greeks, theory is the only playing field, and if reality doesn't conform, there must be something wrong with reality.

Western civilization has unconsciously adapted this mindset. Western culture trains people to think in binaries long before they encounter ideology. The scientific worldview, the legal worldview, the political worldview, the media worldview, the academic worldview — they all default to classification and clarity. Messiness feels like a failure of analysis. Ambivalence feels like incompetence. Contradiction feels like corruption. So when a radical movement arrives and offers a crystalline schema to explain everything, it does not feel alien. It feels like coming home to a familiar mental grammar.

The radical takes Greek categorical thinking to its logical endpoint. If reality does not fit the theory, reality must be trimmed, silenced, or eliminated. If people complicate the story, they do not represent human nuance but moral threat. If exceptions arise, they are not instructive but dangerous. In a binary frame, deviations from the theory must be treated as impurities to be purged.

This is why extremists always end up with cleansing rhetoric. They cannot fix the brokenness because fixing requires grappling with gradients. They cannot coexist with disagreement because disagreement muddies the purity of the scheme. They solve discomfort by eliminating complexity. They are not thinking differently from the culture around them, but rather that they are thinking more intensely in the style that Western culture already rewards.

The Jewish tradition approaches reality differently. It does not begin with abstract categories but with lived obligations. It does not demand purity of moral identity but acknowledges perpetual imperfection. It does not treat contradiction as a threat but as a condition of human life. It assumes that moral growth happens through tradeoffs, humility, and slow internal repair rather than through sweeping external purification. This derech model accepts that the world is murky and that we must navigate through the murk rather than pretend we can eliminate it.

Most importantly, the Jewish model is centered on the idea of repair. (Yes, even the Tikkun Olam people have a grain of truth behind their thinking.)

When someone fails, Judaism does not say “purify the sinner from society.” It says “how does one return, how does one repent, how does one regain integrity?” When a system fails, the question is “how do we fix it” rather than “how do we destroy it.”

In Jewish thought, the obligation always starts inward before it moves outward. One changes oneself first and only then engages with the world. Binary thinking reverses that. It demands that one change the world first, and eliminate one’s enemies (metaphorically or physically) as the prime driver.

Pornography is enormously popular in the Muslim world, but viewing it is a major sin. So the guilt gets externalized to "destroy the people who are making me feel this way."

The progressive movement is dominated not by oppressed minorities or by overworked factory workers but by privileged whites who feel guilty at their own societal advantages - so they must assuage their guilt by calling for revolution.

Many on the Right cannot reconcile their bigotry with their primary Christian personal obligation to love your neighbor, so they turn the other into a threat to their faith who deserves only loathing.

Each example is guilt projected outward.

The extremists exploit this very human need to resist feeling guilty. They create an irredeemable enemy because that enemy stabilizes their identity and allows them to externalize their guilt and avoid fixing themselves.

If the defined enemy changes or improves, the binary collapses. If the system can repair itself, the crusade becomes pointless. If nuance is admitted, the absolutist dissolves.

Abortion rights activists must be murderers. Gun rights advocates must be trigger happy hillbillies. Muslims must all be terrorists. Israel must be committing genocide. The definitions describe the required binary, not the reality.

All of this stems from the same inherited cognitive posture: the belief that the world must be forced to fit into a conceptual grid. The radical merely inverts the categories but preserves the structure. They are not thinking outside Western civilization; they are playing inside one of its deepest and often unnoticed legacies.

The antidote is not “be nicer” or “be tolerant” or “be moderate.” The antidote is an entirely different relationship to reality. It is accepting that truth is not categorical, that people are mixtures of impulses and histories, that institutions can fail and recover, and that moral judgment must allow space for growth. It means replacing the demand for a final theory of everything with a method of navigating the world that is iterative, responsive, humble, and relational.

Some people are drawn to extremism not because they crave hatred but because they crave simplicity. They crave cognitive closure. They crave a tidy story with clear sides. They mistake simplicity for truth. The real challenge is: can we build a culture that helps people tolerate ambiguity? Can we help them see nuance not as a lack of conviction but as a mark of maturity? Can we build a moral language that replaces purity with responsibility and replaces binaries with obligations?

Once you see the underlying error, you realize that the real divide today is not Left vs. Right, secular vs. religious, West vs. Islam, or elites vs. populists. The real divide is between those who think the world must fit the theory and those who think the theory must bend to the world.

The problem is the people who think there are only two kinds of people.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Journalistic malpractice: The @NYTimes and @NYTimesCohen calls Israel "Imperial" by taking an old quote out of context

Here is the headline of an article from the New York Times today:

The term "Imperial Israel" is in scare quotes, but by making it their headline, the New York Times is endorsing this characterization of Israel as an imperial power.

Later on, we get the source of the quote:

The region is adapting to what Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a prominent political scientist in the United Arab Emirates, calls an “imperial Israel,” a country that will kill enemies anywhere: from Lebanon to Syria, Gaza to Iran, Yemen to Qatar. Pre-emptive Israeli strikes are the new norm.

That is a bizarre definition of "imperial." Imperialism involves establishing control over territories and peoples. Conducting military strikes against adversaries - which many countries do - is fundamentally different.

Abdulkhaleq Abdulla is indeed a prominent political scientist, but he wasn't interviewed for this article. (There are no other quotes from him in the article besides those two words.)

Abdulla used that term in different interviews, for different media, in different contexts altogether.

He was quoted in the Washington Post last September in an article about Israel threatening to annex parts of the West Bank:

Emirati political scientist Abdulkhaleq Abdulla said many in the Persian Gulf country were already questioning the wisdom of normalizing ties with Israel.

“It’s a very clear message not just to Israel, but to the Americans: It’s either the Abraham Accords or annexation of the West Bank, it’s your choice,” said Abdulla, a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. “The sentiment in the UAE is: Don’t take us for granted. We value peace and stability, but we won’t go along with this kind of imperial Israel that Netanyahu and company are showing. It’s just not the kind of Israel that we want to be associated with.”

Abdulla used the term correctly in that context - annexation of foreign territory is genuinely an imperialist act, even though Israel has legitimate legal claims to parts of the West Bank under international law

I found Abdulla quoted in June as well in a more ambiguous way, describing how Israel might be supplanting Iran as the region's imperial power:

"In many ways, we have the end of imperial Iran, losing most of its bargaining power. Without proxies, missile and a strong nuclear power, Iran is weak and that's good for the region we haven't seen that for the past 45 years," Abdulla said, while adding: "The rise of imperial Israel is not good either for the stability of region."

In this context, Abdulla appears to be using 'imperial' loosely to mean 'dominant regional power' - a usage that's analytically imprecise for both Iran and Israel, neither of which were building empires in the classical sense.

Roger Cohen took one of these quotes out of context, applied it to a situation that cannot possibly be called "imperialism" by any definition, and the New York Times placed it in their headline!

"Imperial" is an inflammatory term, used only as an epithet, evoking European style colonialism. It has nothing to do with Israel.

That is not journalism. That is anti-Israel advocacy.

(h/t Brad)

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The Jewish Chronicle published an essay by Albert Einstein in 1921 about antisemitism and Zionism. It is not so well known and has some interesting parts.

He discussed why right-wing antisemites proudly identify as such, but socialist antisemites do not, which is as true today as it was then:

In many instances anti-Semitism is a question capable of a political solvent. It often, in other words, depends on the political party to which a man belongs whether he becomes a professed anti-Semite. A Socialist, for instance, even if he is a convinced anti-Semite, would not make his creed known, or act up to it, because it is not in the programme of his party. Among Conservatives, however, it is different. Anti-Semitism in their case arises from a desire to exacerbate for their party purposes the ill-feeling inherent in the populace.

Since the socialist, progressive Left define themselves as being against bigotry, they must hide their bigotry behind other labels - nowadays, anti-Zionism.

he describes how antisemitism in Germany was more pronounced than in Switzerland or England, especially against Jews who fled Eastern Europe.

Until two years ago I lived in Switzerland, and during my stay there I did not realise my Judaism. There was nothing that called forth any Jewish sentiments in me. When I moved to Berlin all that changed. There I saw the trouble many young Jews were in. I saw how, amid anti-Semitic surroundings, a well-ordered study, and with it a way to a safe existence, was made impossible for them. This refers specially to the Eastern-born Jews living there, who were exposed continually to provocation. I do not believe that their number is a large one in Germany as a whole. Only in Berlin are they at all numerous. Nevertheless, their presence has become a public question. At meetings, conferences, and in newspapers there is a movement for the disposing of them quickly or for the interning of them. Housing difficulties and the economic depression are used as arguments for these harsh measures. Facts are being exaggerated intentionally, in order to influence public opinion. These Eastern-born Jews are made the scapegoat of all ailments of German political life of to-day, and for all the after effects of the war. Instigation against these unfortunate fugitives who only just saved themselves from that hell which Eastern Europe represents to-day, has become an effective political weapon which all demagogues successfully use. When the Government intended the expulsion of these Jews, I stood up for them, and pointed out in the “Berliner Tageblatt” the inhumanity and foolishness of such a measure.

Einstein then goes on to describe how his experience of German antisemitism turned him into a Zionist, noting that denying Jewish peoplehood is itself deplorable - a point I made recently when I wrote that today's anti-Zionism is indeed antisemitic for that very reason.

These and similar happenings have brought about in me the Jewish National sentiment.
I am a National Jew in the sense that I ask for the preservation of the Jewish, as of every other, nationality. I look upon Jewish nationality as a fact, and I think that every Jew ought to come to definite conclusions on Jewish matters based upon this fact. I look upon the rise of Jewish self-assertion to be, too, in the interest of non-Jews. That was the main motive of my joining the Zionist movement. For me Zionism is not merely a question of colonisation. The Jewish nation is a living thing, and the sentiment of Jewish Nationalism must be developed both in Palestine and everywhere else.

To deny the Jews nationality in the Diaspora is, indeed, deplorable. If one adopts the point of view of confining Jewish effort to nationalism to Palestine, then one, to all intents and purposes, denies the existence of a Jewish people. In that case one should have the courage to carry through, in the quickest and most complete manner, entire assimilation.

We live in a time of intense and perhaps exaggerated nationalism. But my Zionism does not exclude in me cosmopolitan views. I believe in the actuality of Jewish nationality, and I believe that every Jew has duties towards his co-religionists. The meaning of Zionism is thus many-sided. It opens out to Jews who are despairing in the Ukrainian hell or in Poland hopes for a more humane existence. Through the return of the Jews to Palestine, and so back to a normal and healthy economic life, Zionism means, too, a productive function, which should enrich mankind at large.

But the principal point is that Zionism must tend to strengthen the dignity and self-respect of the Jews in the Diaspora. I have always been annoyed by the undignified assimilationist cravings and strivings which I have observed in so many of my friends. Through the founding of a Jewish Commonwealth in Palestine, the Jewish people will again be in the position to bring their creative abilities into unhindered full play. Through the erection of the Hebrew University and similar institutions, the Jewish people will not only help their own national renaissance, but will enrich their moral culture and knowledge, and, as centuries ago, be directed to new and better ways than those which present world-conditions necessarily entail for them.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Sixty years ago, in 1965, the United Nations debated the text of what was to become the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD.)

The United States proposed that the Convention include three words:

The States Parties to this Convention undertake to adopt immediate and positive measures designed to eradicate all incitement to, or acts of, such discrimination and to declare and, to this end, to recognize as offences punishable by law all dissemination of ideas based on racial superiority or hatred, acts of violence or incitement to such acts against any group of persons or individuals of another race or of different colour or ethnic origin, including anti-Semitism, and also any assistance to racist activities, including the financing thereof.

The Soviet Union was very upset at including antisemitism in the text, as were the Arab countries. So it suggested its own language that compared Zionism with antisemitism, Nazism and apartheid:

The States Parties to the Convention condemn anti-Semitism, Zionism, Nazism, neo-Nazism, apartheid and racial discrimination in all its forms, and all ideologies and practices based on racial intolerance and hatred.

This upset Israel quite a bit, as well as most of the West, so the UN did what it normally does - it took out all language from both proposals as a compromise, meaning that the Soviet Union won by ICERD not including antisemitism as one of the things it is against.

In fact, the Israeli representative called it out in exactly those terms. The notes of the meeting says that he suggested that the "amendment had been put forward for reasons of political opportunism or in order so to complicate the work of the Committee as to achieve the elimination from the Convention of any reference to anti-Semitism.... it was an affront to Israel and to the Jewish people everywhere."

But the Soviet Union had also planted the weeds of the UN becoming doctrinally anti-Israel with that amendment. They grew quickly. In only ten years the UN associated Zionism with racism It took a little longer to associate it with the others - it linked Israel to racial discrimination 36 years before the Durban conference, and with apartheid some 55 years before major NGOs more or less simultaneously colluded to come up with the conclusion that Israel was practicing apartheid. (So far the only people I've seen try to equate Zionism with antisemitism are the haters at Electronic Intifada, although the number who blame Israel for antisemitism is increasing quickly. and equating Israel with the Nazis is the entire point of the "Gaza genocide" slander.)

The facts haven't changed since 1965 when the world roundly rejected the idea that Zionism was something to be condemned. But propaganda works with the mindless repetition of falsehoods so that the association is burned into the brains of generations who don't even have the ability to think for themselves.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

11/25 Links Pt2: Why the Palestinians Are Famous According to Mahmoud Darwish; Nas Daily: I’m determined to show the real Israel; Understanding anti-Jewish immigrant roots behind Mamdani's progressive antisemitism

From Ian:

Gadi Taub: The Viral ‘Prison Rape’ That Never Happened

Many unanswered questions remain: While the court probably did not know it was being lied to, why did it accept arguments that were clearly implausible? Why did AG Baharav-Miara not order the arrest of Tomer-Yerushalmi or the confiscation of her phone and her computer immediately after she tendered her resignation? Did she not realize that Tomer-Yerushalmi, who had already done so much to cover her tracks, could use that time to destroy evidence and potentially coordinate testimonies? Baharav-Miara herself will be at least a witness, if not a suspect, in the case. Yet she still refused to recuse herself from overseeing the investigation into Tomer-Yerushalmi, and snubbed the Knesset’s joint session of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, before which she was summoned to appear.

All this prompted Justice Minister Yariv Levin, author of the now-defunct judicial reform, to announce that Baharav-Miara would be barred from the investigation. Her office retorted that the minister had no authority to bar her. To which Levin responded by appointing a special prosecutor—an institution hitherto unknown in Israel. This was a major vindication for Levin: The entire episode—the cover-up, the lack of transparency, the illicit intimacy between law enforcement and the judiciary (over which Israel has no oversight agencies), and the collective contempt for the normal legal process when these agencies investigate themselves—convincingly showed why his controversial legal reforms were necessary.

But Baharav-Miara was not about to relinquish control of the investigation in which she and her subordinates have been implicated, ever since she defended Tomer-Yerushalmi in court. The matter reached the Supreme Court, which decided to bar Baharav-Miara from overseeing the investigation. The judges were clearly not happy to discover they had been lied to by the people whose good name they were helping to protect. Although it ruled against Levin’s special prosecutor based on a technicality, the court authorized him to appoint another (however, it suspended the new appointment last Thursday, to Levin’s understandable chagrin).

When a prosecutor is finally agreed on, it is not clear whether the investigation will manage to get to the bottom of the affair—especially the involvement of Baharav-Miara and her allies in Israel’s various bureaucracies. Nevertheless, the foundations of Israel’s juristocracy have been shaken. Rifts have opened among the various branches of what the Israeli right calls the “deep state.”

Three other dramatic events also recently transpired: Tomer-Yerushalmi was hospitalized after overdosing on medication while under house arrest, in what appeared to be an attempted suicide. One of the Force 100 soldiers, with a distinguished career in combat service, suffered a heart attack. And the president of the military court has recommended that the IDF prosecution accept the request of the defense to halt all proceedings against the Force 100 accused soldiers—now that the alleged victim is no longer in Israeli custody.

There’s also a cultural aspect without which it is difficult to make sense of all this. Israel’s contemporary elites look at the masses with contempt, viewing them as deplorables. In the eyes of these elites and the mainstream press, the riot in Sde Teiman was an attack on the rule of law, which Tomer-Yerushalmi upheld. Here were the right-wing proto-fascists wielding their pitchforks against the gatekeepers of impartial justice. In this view, the Force 100 soldiers and the rioters belonged to the same crowd of tribal ethno-nationalists who share a common contempt for liberal values and human rights. The right saw it very differently: Unpatriotic globalist progressive elites were weaponizing the law in the middle of a war to show the world they are better than the rest of us. Indeed, Israel’s progressive elites have come to define themselves in opposition to those mostly non-Ashkenazi masses, whom they view as too Jewish, too provincial, and too nationalistic.

Tomer-Yerushalmi may argue that her leak was in the wider public interest: to show international jurists that Israel is willing to use force to apprehend its own soldiers and thereby deny international tribunals a legal reason to intervene. Implausible as it seems to most of us, she may well have believed that throwing Force 100 under the bus was a convincing demonstration of Israel’s high-minded moral standards.

Yet it seems that in this case, as in others, identity trumps ideology. To imagine themselves as members of the enlightened global elite, Israeli progressives must define themselves against the Israel that “right-thinking” people abhor. The beautiful people of Spain or the Netherlands or Berkeley, California, don’t particularly care what the facts of Israel’s conflicts with its neighbors are or whether the Israel they have constructed through sloganeering about “colonialism,” “apartheid,” and “genocide” is real or a malevolent fiction. Expressing their abhorrence of a brutal rape that never happened in Sde Teiman was an opportunity for Israel’s elites to show whose side they were on: their fellow elites or the deplorables. Nothing about their choice should be surprising.

300 pack London launch as UK Israel Alliance debuts with Douglas Murray conversation

Around 300 people attended the launch of the UK Israel Alliance (UKIA) in Central London last week, as the organisation – formerly UK Israel Future Projects – unveiled its new name and mission with a headline conversation featuring author and commentator Douglas Murray.

Interviewed on stage by Daily Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson, Murray reflected on reporting from Israel and Gaza after Hamas’s 7 October atrocities, the regional shifts shaped by the Abraham Accords, and the challenges and opportunities facing pro-Israel advocacy in Britain.

The evening opened with tributes from committee members Bernard Shapero and Sir William Shawcross to the late Martin Green, the 92-year-old founder of UK Israel Future Projects, remembered as a committed Zionist and a pillar of the UK pro-Israel community.

Guests included cross-party parliamentarians from both Houses, diplomats, journalists and long-standing supporters of the group. UKIA says its rebrand signals a renewed commitment to strengthening UK-Israel ties by bringing together activists and thought-leaders “from all political, religious and ethnic backgrounds”.

Chaired by Lord Bew, UKIA’s multi-faith committee includes Sir William Shawcross, Tim Vince, Simon Marks, Bernard Shapero and Dr Efrat Sopher. The organisation plans a rolling series of public events with international speakers addressing key issues affecting both countries.

Lord Bew said the launch demonstrated “the depth of support for Israel outside the Jewish community”, adding: “UKIA’s duty is to proactively reach Brits from all walks of life and proudly celebrate the fact that our two countries are stronger together. Israel has been subjected to an appalling smear campaign, but it is abundantly clear that many Brits cherish the shared values our great countries stand for.”

Nas Daily: I’m determined to show the real Israel

Israeli-Arab influencer Nuseir Yassin has described his mission to “show the Israel I want and like” and insisted he was now more hopeful about the future Middle East than at any time.

Known to 68 million social media followers as Nas Daily for his videos chronicling the lives of people in far-flung corners of the globe, he addressed more than 400 guests at Magen David Adom’s annual dinner last night.

In conversation with broadcaster Rob Rinder, he described how he left a safe job in tech almost a decade ago to create videos showing the “exact opposite” of the stories that tend to dominate discourse around the Middle East. Or, as Rinder put it, to “turn the toxicity of social media into something positive”.

“Twenty percent of Israel is Arab,” he said. “One force says you’re Palestinian and you shouldn’t have anything to do with Israel. Another force says we need to share the land and build up the land together. To escape the first force is hard. To call myself Israeli means I love Israel. It means freedom of speech. It’s the work that organisations like MDA are trying to do. This is what we should all be trying to promote, whatever the cost.”

“The most controversial topic in the world today is Israel and Palestine. Each time you talk about it, you pay a price. But you’ve got to humanise Israelis and Jewish people around the world and humanise Arabs as well. If you get to know someone, it’s very hard to hate them.”

He describes this as the safest time to land in Tel Aviv and paints a picture of a time when you could have lunch in Beirut, dinner in Damascus and then head back to Jerusalem in one taxi ride.

As for the two million Israeli Arabs within Israel, he said, they had a decision to make after the horrors of 7 October. “I think a large proportion have decided – including me – that we belong in Israel,” the former Harvard student told the audience. “That is the shock it takes to be able to see clearly. We don’t want to live under a Palestinian or Jordanian government. Despite the hardships, we are all Israelis.”

Oscar-winning filmmaker moves to Israel and trains his lens on October 7 survivors

Oscar-winning filmmaker Richard Trank has been making documentaries about Israel for decades. Today, he finally lives here.

“I wish I had made this decision earlier,” Trank told The Times of Israel about his aliyah to Israel last month, after a lifetime living and working in Los Angeles. “But I can’t change that.”

One of the first films Trank is working on under his brand-new production company, Sea Point Films and Media, aims to tell the story of Israelis recovering from the October 7 attacks and their rehabilitation journeys.

“I started thinking about really a post-October 7 project, because we all know what happened on October 7. We’ve all heard the stories, and it’s important to tell those stories,” Trank said during a recent video interview from his new home in Herzliya. “But I started thinking about, how do you come out of that? How do you rebuild your life?”

That film, titled “The Road Home,” is part of a fresh start for Trank, who spent more than 40 years at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, spearheading its Moriah Films production branch, helping to create an impressive slate of award-winning documentary films on Jewish and Israeli themes.

Trank left the Wiesenthal Center at the beginning of this year, around a year after its founder, Rabbi Marvin Hier, retired from the helm.

“At the end of 2023, new leadership came in, and they made a decision to move Moriah into a different direction, away from documentaries,” Trank said. “And there really wasn’t a place for me.”

The departure marks a major shift for Trank, who wrote and directed 16 documentary films for Moriah, telling stories of Jewish and Israeli life and working with some of the biggest names in Hollywood. His most recent film, “Never Stop Dreaming: The Life and Legacy of Shimon Peres” – narrated by George Clooney – is currently streaming on Netflix.

Prior to that, he adapted Yehuda Avner’s book “The Prime Ministers” into a series of two films that included Sandra Bullock, Michael Douglas, and Christoph Waltz, in voice acting roles. Trank’s film on Theodor Herzl was narrated by Ben Kingsley, and past documentaries also featured Nicole Kidman, Michael Douglas, Dustin Hoffman, and Morgan Freeman.

The last project he completed before leaving the Wiesenthal Center was a long-in-the-making documentary about David Ben Gurion, narrated by Julianna Margulies, which has yet to be released by Moriah.

“It’s really up to Wiesenthal about what they ultimately do with that film,” said Trank. “But I’m proud of it.”

Trank won the Academy Award for best documentary for co-producing 1997’s “The Long Way Home,” about the journeys of Holocaust survivors in the aftermath of World War II.

In many ways, he said, “The Road Home” — exploring the journey of October 7 survivors — mirrors that film’s exploration of how Holocaust survivors started over and rebuilt their lives in the wake of World War II.

11/25 Links Pt1: Israel receives body said to be hostage held in Gaza; You Cannot Build a Stable Peace with a Partner that Openly Prepares for the Next Massacre

From Ian:

You Cannot Build a Stable Peace with a Partner that Openly Prepares for the Next Massacre

Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies and the Misgav Institute, said that Washington's basic assumption that Hamas can be induced into a demilitarized political arrangement is flawed.

"The Americans still believe they can implement the [ceasefire] plan by having the Turks, Qataris, and Egyptians pressure Hamas. They are convinced that with an international force and Arab involvement, Hamas will eventually comply. I think this is naive and wrong. Hamas does not intend to comply."

For Michael, Hamas's behavior during and after the fighting shows that it sees any ceasefire not as an end state, but as a tactical pause. "They continued recruiting people, training them, rebuilding tunnels, and reconstructing their capacities from the first day of the ceasefire."

"They butchered opponents in the streets, they appointed new governors, and they operated ministries. They are reconstituting their governmental and military capacities since day one. This is not the behavior of a movement preparing for demilitarization."

"As long as Hamas remains in control and is committed to another Oct. 7, the American ceasefire framework will not get anywhere. You cannot build a stable peace with a partner that openly prepares for the next massacre. At some point, the United States will have to recognize that Hamas is the obstacle, not part of the solution."

"Israel has to give the Americans the time and space to try their way, so that the responsibility for the failure of the plan falls on Hamas. But in the end, I believe they will move to Plan B, securing eastern Gaza under IDF oversight, expanding it gradually to the west while crushing and dismantling Hamas if it continues to violate the agreement."

"Hamas will regroup simultaneously in Gaza, the West Bank, and other countries, rebuild its capacities, and look for the second opportunity for another Oct. 7. This is exactly the reason we have to crush them and dismantle them. As long as they hold on to their weapons and ideology, no ceasefire framework, American or UN, will produce real peace."

The World's Been Too Rough with Israel

Israel's response to the October 2023 Hamas-led massacres and kidnappings of over one thousand civilians, as well as to missile and drone attacks from Iran and its regional militias, has been vigorous.

Pursuing victory - ending the threats to Israeli towns and cities from Hamas in Gaza, Hizbullah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and the regime in Tehran - requires the application of determined, and at times overwhelming, military force.

In Gaza, Israel's army has been operating in some of the most difficult urban warfare conditions in history.

Tragically, thousands of Palestinian civilians have died during the fighting over the past two years. But here is a simple truth: Hamas's leaders could have released the hostages and ordered their men to lay down their arms at any point.

They knew Palestinian women and children would be collateral damage as they fired missiles and launched attacks from apartment buildings, inviting airstrikes.

Preeminent news outlets routinely accept Hamas's allegations and lies at face value and downplay or overlook the group's actions, whether its use of human shields that have caused thousands of civilian deaths or its vicious tyranny and misogyny.

The coverage and political gesturing in the West have been, at best, disproportionate and prejudiced, and, at worst, dishonest, malicious, and likely to extend the war and the suffering.