Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, October 13, 2025

10/13 Links Pt2: Hamas is terrorising Palestinians once again; The sinister truth about Greta’s selfie ship; How can anyone now deny these are ‘hate marches’?

From Ian:

Andrew Fox: Hamas is terrorising Palestinians once again

The ceasefire with Israel has also allowed Hamas to turn its murderous attention to any opposition to its rule in Gaza. Throughout the war, small groups of Palestinian fighters and local clans have taken advantage of Israeli military bombardment to put pressure on Hamas. Now that a truce is in place, Hamas has started to brutally eliminate these rivals.

Hamas is trying to instil as much fear in the Gazan population as it can. Last month, outside al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, it publicly executed three men accused of collaborating with Israel. They were blindfolded, kicked to the ground and shot in the head – all to cheers from those who had gathered to witness the executions. Hamas aims to terrorise potential challengers, whether ordinary civilians or members of hostile clans.

Critically, Hamas has openly refused to disarm. A senior official was even quoted recently as saying this would be ‘out of the question’ and ‘not up for negotiation’. Having seized Gaza by force in 2007 and maintained control since then, Hamas is committed to surviving both politically and militarily.

Hamas’s second objective is to influence the court of global public opinion. Hamas has framed the Gaza war as an Israeli-made tragedy of genocidal proportions. This has galvanised international pressure against Israel and partially absolved Hamas of blame for starting the war. Central to this propaganda push is the narrative of a ‘Gaza holocaust’ – an outrageous inversion of reality that casts Israel as a Nazi-like perpetrator and Palestinians as the victims of an extermination campaign. Indeed, Hamas leaders and their media mouthpieces have repeatedly invoked the Nazi Shoah to condemn Israel’s actions. While this media jihad may have been based on lies, it has succeeded in isolating Israel on the world’s stage.

Hamas’s ruthless and malignant nature means it will continue to be a difficult foe. We know it will stop at nothing in order to cling to power. It will use intimidation and bloodshed – and show the same contempt for Palestinian lives as it has shown for Israeli lives.

If Hamas manages to hold on to power in Gaza, any hope for a stable and non-violent future will vanish, at horrific cost to ordinary Palestinian people. It will take real pressure and determination – particularly from Arab countries – to remove Hamas for good.

Regardless of the outcome of the Egypt peace conference, one thing is crystal clear: Hamas’s actions are further proof it is a morally bankrupt, evil organisation. Its aims are not statehood or peace for Palestinians, but the perpetuation of its own Islamist tyranny and terror.

True progress in Gaza remains impossible as long as Hamas continues to poison the well.

Netflix, BBC and Others Sent Legal Letter Over Israel Film Boycott Signed by Joaquin Phoenix, Olivia Colman: ‘Highly Likely to Be a Litigation Risk’

Some of the U.K.’s most prominent studios and screen organizations have been sent a legal warning over an industry boycott of Israeli film institutions.

The letter from U.K. Lawyers for Israel states that the boycott, which has been backed by Hollywood stars including Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone, Olivia Colman and Mark Ruffalo, is a breach of the U.K.’s Equality Act and may also have a knock-on impact on financing and insurance.

The U.K. outposts of Netflix, Disney, Amazon Studios, Apple and Warner Bros. Discovery are among those who have been sent the letter as well as domestic companies including the BBC, Film4 and ITV. Other recipients include film organizations such as the BFI and Pact, agencies Curtis Brown and United Agents and unions including Bectu and Equity.

“[The Equality Act 2010] is the key legislation in the U.K. protecting against racism and discriminatory treatment,” states the letter, which has been seen by Variety. “If the U.K. television and film industry colludes with acts contrary to this legislation, organizations are themselves likely to be in breach. It also creates a dangerous precedent: one that condones the exclusion of individuals and/or organizations based solely on their nationality, ethnicity, and/or religion.”

The letter also claims that the boycott’s attempt at “selective application — exempting some institutions based on the ethnicity or religion of their members — strongly indicates that [its] operation is based not only on nationality but also on religion and ethnicity.” According to Film Workers for Palestine, which organized the boycott, it does not apply to Palestinian Israelis, for whom there are different “context sensitive guidelines.”

Although the boycott claims only to target Israeli-linked film institutions and not individuals, the Equality Act protects organizations as well as people. This is likely to be particularly relevant in the screen industry, where many actors and producers contract their services through companies.

Studios could potentially be liable for any breaches of the Equality Act carried out by their “staff and agents,” according to the letter. Actors, producers, agents, managers, production companies, producers and “anyone else who instructs, causes, induces, or helps to implement the Boycott– for example, encouraging a distributor not to deal with Israeli outlets, or advising a colleague to insist on a Boycott clause” could also incur liability.

The sinister truth about Greta’s selfie ship

After Israeli forces had detained and removed her from a flotilla supposedly carrying aid to Gaza, all-purpose activist Greta Thunberg arrived at Athens airport on Monday night to a raucous hero’s welcome.

If you listen carefully, though, the crowd seemed less interested in the plight of Gazans than in calling for the death of Israelis. Specifically, members of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). Cries of ‘Death, death to the IDF’ were so loud and protracted that they, and other chants, twice interrupted Thunberg’s press conference.

The 40-boat Global Sumud Flotilla on which Thunberg had been sailing had been intercepted by the IDF roughly 100 kilometres off the coast of Gaza. Those on board were taken to the Port of Ashdod in southern Israel, arrested and mostly flown home by Israeli authorities on Monday. Thunberg has alleged ‘abuse and mistreatment’ at the hands of Israelis – a claim that is hard to reconcile with the sight of a healthy, unharmed Thunberg, energetically addressing a crowd late at night after an international flight. Then again, she could hardly have told the crowd that she had been rescued by the very people they wanted to kill.

The crowd’s intense loathing for Israel was evident from the moment Thunberg arrived. A supporter who introduced the Swedish activist to the crowd emphasised the importance of her giving a speech ‘the day before Israelis use 7 October to lick their wounds’ – which is one way to talk about the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust. These were hardly the words of someone who ‘believes in human dignity and power of nonviolent action’ – a core principle of the flotilla, at least according to its website.

Other members of the flotilla have expressed views even more repugnant. The public comments of activist Sarah Wilkinson afford a glimpse of the kind of small talk that might have been on offer below deck. ‘The Israelis are not human’, Wilkinson said. ‘They have hands, they have faces, but they are not one of us. They are monsters.’ She described Hamas fighters who took part in the 7 October attack as ‘heroes’, and celebrated the news of Israelis ‘fleeing their homes’. She posted these comments along with a picture of an Israeli woman running for her life from Hamas terrorists at the Nova music festival.

There is a distinct possibility that Wilkinson’s views were the rule, rather than the exception, among flotilla members. This week, an Israeli government department published a report linking several of the armada’s ‘steering members’ with Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The evidence includes members of the flotilla being photographed at meetings with senior members of Hamas and attending the funeral of Hassan Nasrallah, the former leader of Hezbollah.

One thing the flotilla appeared to have no interest in, despite its public objective, was delivering aid to Palestinians. Israeli police claimed that none of the ships on the flotilla was carrying food, water or medical supplies. Not an ounce, they said, could be detected of the purported 300 tonnes of vital supplies that the media told us the flotilla was so gallantly conveying to Gaza.

10/13 Links Pt1: Netanyahu and Trump have been vindicated; We must never forget the ‘progressive’ betrayal of the Israeli hostages; Israel recovers four bodies from Gaza

From Ian:

Elliott Abrams: No, the Israel-Hamas Ceasefire Could Not Have Happened Earlier

How did the Gaza ceasefire happen? The anti-Israel left, and Democrats rushing to explain why former president Joe Biden could not achieve it, have invented the phony argument one can find prominently displayed in a New York Times "analysis" that asks, "Why Now?" and in the sanctimonious X threads of former Biden officials explaining how they laid the groundwork for this historic deal.

It goes like this: Biden offered similar ceasefire plans a year ago. The hostages would have been home in 2024, and lots of deaths and injuries avoided, if Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had not been so nasty and right wing, and had not sought to prolong the war for his personal political advantage.

The truth is that the war ended because Israel and the United States exercised power—political, diplomatic, and military. In June, Israel bombed the Iranian nuclear sites and eliminated many of its top scientists and generals. President Trump followed days later with devastating strikes on the largest Iranian nuclear sites. Israel’s assault on Gaza City, Hamas’s last stronghold, began in late August and taught Hamas that holding hostages would not prevent such an assault. Then on Sept. 9, Israel struck at Hamas leaders in Doha, scaring the Qataris into begging for protection from Trump. He offered it—but it is no coincidence that this was the moment when the Qataris began to pressure Hamas to agree to a ceasefire and to release all the living hostages on day one. It was Qatari diplomatic pressure that brought Turkey to push Hamas for the same concessions.

Democrats acknowledge all this in a backhanded way, though they won’t say it in so many words. Former secretary of state Antony Blinken, for example, told the New York Times that "this is a different moment—we didn’t have then what President Trump has now. Hamas is defeated as a military organization, isolated diplomatically, it’s lost its patrons—Iran, Hezbollah, and the Houthis ... ." Blinken was silent as to how everything that "Trump has now" came about—that is, the use of military power by Netanyahu and Trump in ways that Biden urged the Israelis against and would never have contemplated himself.

Blinken claims that the Biden administration had a plan that would have achieved everything, but when Trump came in, "the moment was squandered." Some people never learn. There is more candor from former negotiator Brett McGurk, who told the New York Times "the 12-day war with Iran really moved the needle."

So did Trump’s repeated statements that if Hamas did not agree to stop fighting, he would back Israel fully. Trump said on Sept. 29 that if Hamas did not agree to his 21-point plan, he would "let Israel do what you have to do," adding that Israel "would have my full backing to finish the job of destroying the threat of Hamas." Standing next to Netanyahu at the White House, Trump had—much to the chagrin of some New York Times reporters—delivered "an ultimatum to Hamas."

Seth Mandel: Trump’s Affection for Israel

Why was it a “catastrophic defeat”? Because, Bannon said, the Israelis “pushed this Greater Israel project and it came crashing down around them.” He then ranted about the Mossad for a while and got angry on behalf of the Qataris, par for the woke-right course.

The “Greater Israel” comment is intended to convey worry that Israel is seeking to expand its borders through war, but of course Netanyahu does not want Gaza, just as Egypt was glad to be rid of it and refused to take it back when Israel offered in 1967. Gaza is a millstone not a medal—that’s why we’re in this situation to begin with.

Why would a grizzled veteran of the woke right like Bannon feel the need to pretend this was a “catastrophic defeat” for anybody but his own angry faction of the party?

One reason is the way Trump described the Gaza deal today at the Knesset: “What a victory it’s been, all right, what a victory.” That victory is not just Israel’s but America’s, and therefore it is a victory for the alliance of democracies. American victory is the isolationists’ kryptonite, as it vindicates the idea that America has an important role to play in the world and that it is fully capable of doing so.

Another way of saying “American victory” is “American success,” and the Bannon-Tucker-Owens wing of the right cannot abide American success. They can only tolerate American humility.

The other reason has to do with the sentimental nature of Trump’s attachment to Israel. Bannon and Tucker Carlson and the rest obviously lost their fight against the pro-Israel contingent within the administration, that’s not exactly news. But they could handle their defeat better if the president’s support for Israel in a military conflict at least required him to hold his nose. Instead, Trump is having the time of his life. He loves it when Israel wins. Bannon is the one who is tired of all the winning.

What this past year has revealed is that Trump likes Israel. That the special relationship between the two countries is still there, still holding on, despite the woke right’s attempt to sabotage it. The haters don’t like it, but the fact remains: America and Israel are good together, and together they are good for the world.

God’s Shelter Still Stands By Abe Greenwald

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The success of those wildly complicated and audacious operations speaks for itself. But three months later, it’s clear that the miracles never stopped. While media, foreign governments, activists, and NGOs launched a blood-libel campaign about a false Israeli starvation plot, the IDF was busy routing Gaza City of Hamas and fielding the world’s first operational laser-light missile-defense battery. In September, Israel struck at Hamas’s leadership in Qatar, a move that was both broadly condemned and framed as a complete failure. But it was that very strike that would, in time, convince the Qataris to pressure Hamas into a cease-fire and a total release of Israeli hostages.

In a list of Israel’s divine blessings, the presidency of Donald Trump ranks right at or near the top. Neither influenced by the famine fraud nor moved by the stunt of Palestinian-state recognition, Trump stood by Israel for as long as it needed to fight. Once Israeli victory presented the opportunity, however, he coordinated an unprecedented diplomatic effort to initiate the cease-fire and the return of the hostages. And so, here we are.

Nor has Trump been a blessing only to those Jews who reside in Israel. It may not seem like much of a miracle to some, but the Trump administration’s ongoing crackdown on anti-Semitism in higher education is something I never thought we’d see.

It can be very hard to see sometimes, but God continues to protect the Jewish people. And, as Sukkot comes to a close, I’m dumbstruck with gratitude. As for the harvesting aspect of the holiday, it feels as if the Jews are about to reap a great bounty. Considering what Israel has accomplished while under deadly attack from all sides, there’s no telling what it will be able to achieve in the wake of a victorious war.

Egypt's El Balad's Karima Abu El-Enein describes the Jewish custom of Kaparot, a symbolic transfer of sins to a chicken before Yom Kippur that the author takes literally:

It has been practiced for 1,000 years. In this ritual, Jews use chickens to cleanse themselves of sins and transfer the guilt from the man to the chicken. The chickens are then slaughtered and donated to the poor and needy.

This Jewish belief is the same belief that justifies the killing of Palestinian children in particular and Muslims in general because they are true enemies of the Zionist state. The Jewish belief transcends all concepts and makes the Jew the most superior of creation and all humans his slaves and servants because they are God's chosen people. We do not know on what basis they made themselves a special and chosen people because God simply did not choose a people who kill children, women and the elderly and spread corruption on earth!!

The Kaparot are a small part of a doctrinal system created by the rabbis to change global and human thinking and make everything Jewish superior and distinctive. Judaism as a religion is recognized, but Zionism as a global occupation movement must be confronted and exposed for what it is, that it insults, diminishes, and distorts the Jewish religion.

The Kaparot represent a clear concept among the Jews that no matter how much they sin, it is easy for them to hold religious ceremonies and special rituals through which they throw their sins onto the chicken. We do not know why chickens in particular are the ones to whom their sins are transferred. Why did they not choose large animals to throw their sins and burdens onto? Is it because chickens are cheap and therefore it is easy for them to commit any amount of sins and buy a quantity of chickens and recite hymns and religious rituals over them and then donate them to the poor and needy? Or is it because chickens are more and more available? Or is it because the taste of chicken is popular with the children of Zion? Whatever their explanation and argument, they are a deceitful people who have no covenant or trustworthiness.

Kaparot is not just a doctrinal trend as much as it is a new kind of colonialist trend that entitles the Jew to commit all major sins, atone for them, and throw them to the birds. After that, he becomes pure and clean, qualified to continue his life and commit sins. The sane mind rejects Kaparot and rejects all beliefs that do not accept that man is responsible for himself and bears his sins, and that there is no one in the world who has the ability and capacity to bear the sins of another and face them on the Day of Judgment.

The Kaparot are a Zionist illusion and a form of brainwashing carried out by renegade rabbis in order to attract new generations who kill, plunder and spread corruption on earth under the Kaparot claim that their sins will be borne by other birds and will be wiped away by prayers and donations.

Article 98(f) of Egypt's Penal Code prohibits showing contempt for one of the "heavenly religions" (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) or their adherents.

Article 161 prohibits mocking or ridiculing religious ceremonies.

Article 176 punishes public incitement that holds a religious community in hatred or contempt.

Egyptian media has been attacking Jews and Judaism for decades, and these laws are never enforced.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The Octopus Doctrine: How Israel Learned to Strike the Sources, Not the Symptoms

There are too many moving parts, too many secrets and too little solid information around the current hostage release and US-brokered/pressured ceasefire to know whether it is a complete victory or not. But we can look at the past two years and see a change in Israel's defense posture and military strategy that definitely helped revolutionize the entire region for the better.

Before 2023, Israel's military strategy was always against those who directly attacked it - whether Hamas, West Bank militant groups or Hezbollah. It was no secret that these groups were supported by Iran, Qatar and Turkey but Israel was most reluctant to go after their sponsors because of fears of escalation and international pressure.

After October 7, Israel's posture changed to the realization that the octopus' tentacles will always grow back no matter how many times they are severed. And, crucially, its fear of condemnation by the world went to zero.

It may even be that the slanderous and utterly false charges of "genocide" hurled at Israel in the immediate months after October 7 helped crystallize this strategy, since once the world already accuses you of the worst possible crime, what downside is there to escalate to attack the financial, political and military source of the threat?

Israel's blows against Hezbollah and Iran, both the spectacular attacks on highly visible targets as well as the non-stop lower-level attacks on Iran's supply chain to Hezbollah across Syria, can be seen a year later as being key to the severe degradation of Hezbollah's military and political fortunes. The very acts that prompted the most extreme anti-Israel rhetoric were the ones that contributed most towards a more peaceful Middle East by largely sidelining and silencing Iran. Lebanon is no longer living in fear of Hezbollah, Syria's leader has fallen and (for all the many caveats on its new leadership) Syria has turned into a potential partner for peace.

But while Iran supports Hamas, its real oxygen comes through Doha and Istanbul. And Israel's seemingly failed attempt to assassinate Hamas leaders in Qatar changed the entire calculus of the region.

Even though it seemed at the time to be a major failure and indeed embarrassment, Israel's strike at a Hamas meeting in Doha sent a signal to Hamas' sponsors that if they continue to support the terror group, there is nothing - not even Donald Trump - that restrains Israel's desire to stop them.

This message didn't only reverberate in Qatar but in Turkey as well. Instantly, Hamas went from an asset that can be used to leverage popular support into a major liability. One cannot overstate the importance of honor and shame in the Muslim states of the region, and being hit from thousands of miles away with impunity is a serious source of shame - and hosting Hamas is what enabled that.

Trump recognized this and saw an opportunity to use this new chess board to his advantage. But in the end, Israel's goals for the war - saving the hostages, ending Hamas' rule in Gaza - never wavered. While it is too soon to know for sure, it appears that everyone in the region is finally agreeing with those goals and willing to pressure Hamas to end its rule over Gaza.

The deal is far from perfect, and the devil is in the details of what Hamas' future will be and whether it will be energized by the release of its worst terrorists. Remember that Yahya Sinwar was released from Israeli prisons in the Shalit deal.

But it was Israeli strength, tactical brilliance, unparalleled intelligence, unwavering goals and willingness to go after those who gave Hamas oxygen that led to this day. Israel's regional neighbors received this message loud and clear. Israel's political fortunes can only go up from here, and it has regained the respect and fear of the entire Middle East, which is a prerequisite for any sort of lasting peace.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The @NYTimes belatedly publishes about a massacre in Sudan. On page 7. 36 hours after it was online.

From the New York Times:

At least 57 people were killed in the besieged Sudanese city of El Fasher late Friday when paramilitary forces launched drone and artillery strikes on a shelter for displaced people, local medics and aid groups said.

The paramilitary group, called the Rapid Support Forces, or R.S.F., has for months tightened its siege of El Fasher, a city in the western region of Darfur that has become one of the worst battlegrounds of a two-year civil war between the R.S.F. and Sudan’s military.

About 260,000 civilians are trapped in an ever-smaller space within the city, struggling with hunger, disease and mass displacement.

The paramilitary group has bombarded shelters, hospitals and mosques in the city in recent days. The violence killed at least 53 civilians and wounded more than 60 between Oct. 5 and 8, according to the United Nations, which says those figures may underestimate the true toll.

Last month a missile slammed through the roof of a mosque, killing about 75 people.

The war in Sudan has killed as many as 400,000 people, by some expert estimates, and driven the world’s largest displacement crisis, according to the United Nations. Across the country, nearly 12 million people have been uprooted, and shelters have become vectors of disease like cholera and dengue fever.

Sounds worse than even the exaggerated Hamas reports about Gaza. Yet while the NYT routinely places multiple stories and photos of Gaza on the front page, this article - written on Saturday afternoon - is not being published in the print edition until Monday's edition.

On page A7.

The article says that "Footage from the scene of the shelter, collected by locals... showed bloodied bodies, rubble and buildings with caved-in roofs." Yet even the online edition doesn't share any of those photos, while photos of injured Gaza civilians have been a mainstay at the NYT for the same two years as the Gaza war.

Sure sounds like a double standard, doesn't it?

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

10/12 Links: The End of October 7 Denialism; Israel won its war, but the West’s is only just beginning; Coleman Hughes: Antisemitism and the Black experience; Mr. FAFO Finally Found Out

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The End of October 7 Denialism

So that’s it—riddle solved, question answered. Every Gazan who stormed through the destroyed border fence that day was a participant in an explicitly genocidal attack with specific encouragement toward heinous crimes against humanity and to document it all so there could be no confusion, no denial, no debate: “Undertake these actions intentionally.”

All of this was obvious from the moment it happened. But the ranks of Western anti-Israel activists are filled with people trained to deny the obvious. Now it is fact, and it is undeniable. Every accusation made against Israel by Hamas’s supporters was pure projection.

One can imagine how frustrating this might have been, at least at first, to Hamas itself. Its top leadership specifically called for the entire world to witness Hamas’s crimes, to know they were intentional, and to inspire others to globalize the intifada along with them. The fact that they inspired more such ghoulishness among Western activists than random Palestinians in the West Bank should haunt us all. Gaza became the last true Nazi citadel, and lots of people in Europe and America thought it was grand.

Moreover, the denialism that crept in was a strategic problem for Hamas. It contradicted the entire point of the operation.

Just as frustrating must have been the slow development of the assumption among many that Hamas’s meticulously planned operation was disordered and disorganized. It wasn’t. It’s just that many Palestinian “civilians” in Gaza joined in the bloodletting, giving the impression of randomness.

Why does it matter that the Hamas attacks were so meticulously organized? Because the idea of “disorganization” has been used by some in the “pro-Palestinian” chorus to claim that the very worst crimes were unintended. Gazans kidnapped and murdered and then mutilated the body of a baby. They were following instructions. Gazans abused defenseless women and children in horrific ways. They were following instructions. Gazans dragged elderly people in failing health across the sand into hellish captivity. They were following instructions.

I suppose “free Palestine” can mean different things to different people. But to those in America, Europe and Gaza, it means everything laid out above.

‘The voice is Jacob’s but the hands are Esau’s’

The October 7 onslaught shattered any pretense that Hamas’s wars were mere repetitions of the past. Unlike previous clashes—from 2008 through 2021—October 7 was designed not to echo history but to reverse it: to reinsert Palestinians into a moral narrative of redemptive violence, where bloodshed could undo 1948. The massacres were not simply acts of terror; they were ritual performances of revenge.

That leap into barbarism shocked the modern conscience but only briefly. In its aftermath, Hamas discovered that atrocity could enhance legitimacy. By obliterating the fragile consensus around “two states for two peoples,” its cry of “Palestine from the River to the Sea” resonated through the Middle East and beyond. Erdoğan defended Hamas; protesters across the West waved its banners in city streets, interrupting classes, graduations, and concerts—all in the name of “liberation.” The massacres were thus reframed as moral theater, violence transfigured into virtue.

To call Israel colonial, racist, and genocidal is to indulge in a narrative detached from evidence but nonetheless seductive. It turns Hamas into a providential force, and its leaders into martyrs of justice. But this mythology traps Palestinians in a cycle of victimhood that precludes the very statehood they claim to seek. Theirs is a political culture that elevates grievance over governance, tragedy over transformation.

Evangelizing martyrdom, Palestinian politics has built its identity around the Nakba, the catastrophe of 1948, rather than around the arduous work of institution-building. Statecraft requires compromise, calculation, and the will to secure material stability—qualities absent from movements that glorify self-sacrifice and see every negotiation as betrayal. State building may be arduous and uncertain, but it is the only one that leads toward independence.

Storytelling, when untethered from analysis, can enchant but it cannot explain. And so, the question remains: when President Trump demanded that Hamas “hurry up or face consequences,” whom was he really warning—the terrorists holding the hostages, or the world still reluctant to confront the myths that sustain the savagery seemingly too costly politically or economically for its leaders to confront?

Only states could broker an agreement to bring back all the hostages and generate the forces to end the Gaza War. States are compelled to engage in rational, strategic calculations to protect territory and resources. Their calculations may sometimes be wrong but they are, at least, subject to bargaining and trading one set of goods for another. The pivot from Hamas to Qatar and Turkey, from terrorist movement to independent states crafted the preconditions for what can easily become another chapter in The Art of the Deal.

Jake Wallis Simons: Israel won its war, but the West’s is only just beginning

The celebrities who spent two years demanding “Ceasefire Now” fell conspicuously silent when Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu secured a ceasefire now. Clearly, they had been hankering only after the kind of ceasefire that followed an Israeli defeat. Or to put it another way, a victory for Hamas.

Was any of this a surprise? The information warfare has been intense. In the heat of battle, the United Nations turned itself into a disinformation machine, endorsing lies of “genocide” and “famine”. Meanwhile, our media erased Hamas, exposing audiences only to pictures of suffering Palestinian civilians. Did nobody wonder how the dead and wounded jihadis had vanished? Any conflict with one side removed makes tragic collateral death feel like “genocide”.

A study by Fifty Global Research Group showed that 98 per cent of mainstream English-language news reports cited Hamas numbers, of which just two per cent were acknowledged as unreliable. By contrast, Israeli figures were cited in only five per cent of reports, and half of those questioned their credibility. No wonder support for the only democracy in the Middle East was left at rock bottom.

Driven by complacency, naïveté and self-regard, the West has driven itself mad. As the dust settles, international isolation may be Israel’s challenge, but that country is resilient. We, on the other hand, have been left with a social rot accelerating our collapse from within.

The excuse of “Gaza” may pass, but after decades of reckless immigration, political sectarianism is here to stay. The hard-Left mobs and Muslim Brotherhood fanatics have won control of our streets, vowing to maintain their aggression regardless of the ceasefire. The Palestine flag now competes with the Union Jack. We don’t know who we are any more.

Donald Trump’s genius has left Israel in a position of great strength. Its society is resilient, its economy booming, its demographics young and growing, its enemies castrated. In the West, meanwhile, we are in great jeopardy on all those counts. Israel’s war may be over, but for us, it is only beginning.

Meir Y. Soloveichik: A Primer for the Promised Land

REVIEW: ‘Explaining Israel: The Jewish State, the Middle East, and America’ by Peter Berkowitz
To have the pleasure of knowing, and learning from, Peter Berkowitz, is to encounter a polymathic mind whose insightful intellect ranges across politics and the academy, law, philosophy, and history. My own experience working with Berkowitz as a member of the State Department’s Commission on Inalienable Human Rights was a true privilege for which I will be forever grateful. The range of Berkowitz’s knowledge can be found in a newly published collection of columns that are ostensibly all about one subject—the state of the State of Israel—but range across 10 years of that country’s controversies and crises, especially on the debate on the future of the Judiciary and the world after October 7.

Some of the reflections regarding the latter subject are especially invaluable. Thus there is Berkowitz’s succinct summary of all that is wrong with the odious International Court of Justice in The Hague. Drawing on his own experience in foreign policy, Berkowitz describes all the true injustices this purported court has ignored. Most noteworthy of all, perhaps, is the "internment of some 1 million Muslim Uyghurs by the Chinese Communist Party."

And then there is a moving description of the author engaging in the unusual activity of teaching the writings of Burke, Mill, and Locke, to a group of adult members of the Israeli Haredi community (often inaccurately rendered "ultra-Orthodox"). I know of no one else who could have the right balance of gifts to lead this unique form of pedagogy. Berkowitz movingly describes the discussion between himself and his students, and reflects how freedom and religion are not "inevitable antagonists," but rather "working partners and perhaps friends."

How is this balance being struck in Israel, and how comparable is it to the cultural moment in America? Berkowitz compares the two countries at various points in the book, but I am unsure the comparison holds. Thus, praising a book by the Israeli intellectual Micah Goodman, Berkowitz describes how secularism can teach Jewish Orthodoxy that too often it fosters "a sense of guilt stemming from the experience of always falling short of God’s commandments." Mutual understanding between the faithful and the secular, Berkowitz concludes, "may have the additional benefit—in the United States as in Israel—of tempering the increasingly entrenched enmity between right and left."

The Ceasefire That Protesters Aren't Celebrating (Daled Amos)

Everyone who has been talking about October 7 over the past two years is now talking about the ceasefire.

Well, almost everyone. Remember the mobs we saw in growing numbers, protesting, rioting, and disrupting traffic?

Many of them have now been silent on the actual ceasefire agreement that is set to take effect in a few days. But why is that?

Journalist and commentator Haviv Rettig Gur is one of those who has pointed this out. The silence does not make any sense. As Rettig Gur points out:

You don't have to be silent. Even if you don't like every aspect of the deal, even if the deal leaves the full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza to the second stage, even if you have critiques of the deal--the deal ends the war; it ends the genocide which you believe is underway.

With all the protests against the alleged genocide in Gaza, if these same people are not speaking out about the ceasefire to this war, then maybe there really wasn't a real genocide going on after all.

The Palestinian American activist and commentator, Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, has also written about this phenomenon. He writes about The ‘Peace Protesters’ Who Won’t Give Peace a Chance:

The lack of support from self-styled peace activists in the West is unsurprising. A lack of clarity, consistency, or levelheaded thinking has been a staple of Western-based activism that purports to care about the Palestinian people in Gaza.

...The first step to freeing Palestinians from the horrors of war is to free them from the Free Palestine Movement in the diaspora and Western world. The unholy alliance between the far left, far right, and Islamist hooligans who normalize Hamas's narrative is harmful first and foremost to the Palestinian people.

Many of these voices have long called for a ceasefire that would merely freeze the conflict, as opposed to fundamentally altering the landscape in Gaza to effect real political transformation and deliver a lasting peace.

The protesters seemed intent on a ceasefire much like the previous one that kept Hamas in power until it picked a time of its own choosing to break it by invading Israel and slaughtering over 1,200, mostly civilians.

Of course, the response to the deal is not merely support or silence. There have been politicians who have taken advantage of the plan to attack Israel on the one hand, while recognizing it without giving any credit to the president under whose influence the deal was made.

Mayoral front-runner Zohran Mamdani refused to credit President Trump for helping broker a long-awaited truce deal in Gaza – and instead bashed Israel – as other New York Democrats offered tepid kudos to the commander-in-chief Thursday.

Other politicians in New York answered similarly when asked about the ceasefire, with US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Gov. Kathy Hochul, and mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo praising it as a positive step, while leaving Trump's name out of it.

In New York, the Democratic state Assemblyman Kalman Yeger did say that the president deserves “much” credit for the deal--and went much further, praising Israel and also Prime Minister Netanyahu as well:

The resilience of the Israeli people, the relentless focus of Prime Minister Netanyahu and his strong allies in the Knesset and the tremendous backing of a US President who recognized that no nation can survive if it gets on its knees to terror, combined for an unbreakable force that brought about the Hamas surrender and the hopeful quick return of the hostages.

Of course, being from Brooklyn would explain why Yeger was able, and even needed, to say the things that many Democratic politicians would not and could not.

The sudden silence of so many who once filled the streets, blocked traffic, and shouted about genocide is telling. If this ceasefire is not worth celebrating, if peace is not worth endorsing, then perhaps those demonstrations were never about saving lives at all. The truth is that Israel’s enemies—whether on the battlefield or in Western capitals—are invested less in Palestinian safety than in Israel’s destruction. That is why the same voices that cried for a ceasefire now fall mute when one has finally been achieved. Their hypocrisy has been laid bare: what they sought was not peace, but Israel’s defeat. The real test is not in shouting slogans when bombs fall, but in welcoming the chance for quiet when the guns fall silent. On that test, the self-styled champions of justice have failed.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The UN no longer reports on how Hamas steals nearly all the aid

Over the past few months, I and others have been using UNOPS data to show how most aid going into Gaza - and essentially all the food aid from the World Food Programme - have been stolen before reaching their intended destinations.

As the data mounted, while the WFP kept asking for more money without admitting that none of the food actually makes it to hungry Gazans without going through Hamas or other militants, something had to break.

And of course, it isn't the NGOs that have been providing the food to Hamas to resell.

No, instead, the UN rewrote its mechanism to report on aid delivery so that the stolen aid is no longer reported.

The previous reports were on the UN2720 "App" site. That site was updated daily. But it has not been updated since at least October 1.

Instead, it has been replaced with another dashboard, that emphasizes aid that Israel is rejecting - even though that is far less than the aid that is being stolen.

One has to read it carefully to see that Israel has approved over 82% of the requests for aid of all kinds throughout the war, which again contradicts the UN narrative that Israel is heavily restricting aid arbitrarily. (I'm not counting the aid still under review.)

Now, why would the UN change its dashboard from reporting the huge majority of aid that was stolen by Gazan militants and to emphasize the minority of aid rejected by Israel?

Apparently, the truth wasn't as aligned with the UN narrative as they wanted it to be.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Sabreena Ghaffar-Siddiqui, Ph.D, is a "Professor of Sociology and Criminology, a researcher, and an independent consultant who provides expert analysis, training, and strategies on DEI+Justice, communications, public policy, organizational development, and public relations." She works at Rutgers University.

She's also an antisemite who cheers murdering Jews at synagogues on Yom Kippur - but only synagogues which are Zionist, which is merely 99.99% of them.

If a pro-Israel Zionist synagogue in the U.K was attacked because of the genocide in Palestine then we shouldn’t be surprised or horrified.

Firstly, synagogues have been found to not be some benign neutral places of worship. They are known to be used to not only indoctrinate Zionist ideology into young Jews who are radicalised into IOF recruitment, but they are also essentially used as corporate buildings with financial ties to Israel, where real estate events are routinely held for the illegal sales of illegal settlement properties in occupied Palestine.

Secondly, Zionist Jews have spent 2 years convincing us that “Zionism and Judaism are the same”. I mean literally every single time I have respectfully delineated between Zionism and Judaism, I have been corrected that “95% of Jews worldwide support Israel” so if I’m criticising a Zionist I’m criticising all Jews. I am also continuously told by Zionists that ethnic cleansing Palestinians is essential to Jewish religious doctrine, Palestine was “promised to them by God”, and their “divine right on that land” makes them the only rightful inhabitants.

I mean, if they want us to really believe in their “Jewish supremacy” and that 2 million indigenous people must be killed and starved for European Jews to feel more comfortable while they bathe on beaches that don’t belong to them, then I’m sorry, but any hate towards said Jews would be valid.

We should be expecting more of these kinds of incidences, tbh. The moral world’s patience pressure valve has burst.

See - she represents the "moral world!"

She goes on, repeating wild and absurd rumors about supposed Israeli atrocities that only exist in the minds of Jew-haters - something that she does regularly. (If Hamas says Israel is booby-trapping toys and canned food, that's enough evidence for her!)

Her little screed, sent to over 30,000 followers on October 2, has so far elicited no statements from Rutgers, no condemnations from Muslim groups that claim to be against antisemitism, no outrage from the very progressive and anti-violence Left, and as far as I can tell, no denunciations from any mosques.

Which means, by her own logic, every moral person can start attacking mosques since they all condone (at the very least) murdering Jews and ethically cleaning all Jews from the Middle East.

I mean, that is her logic, isn't it?

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

10/11 Links: How Israel’s Strength Paved the Way to Peace; Burn towns, slaughter, broadcast: 2022 Sinwar memo said to detail Hamas plan for Oct. 7

From Ian:

How Israel’s Strength Paved the Way to Peace

Many Americans have wished the Zionists well, but those warm feelings did not immediately translate into a strategic partnership. Washington only embraced the diplomatic and strategic possibilities created by Israeli military power after Israel repeatedly defeated its enemies. The Americans do not value Israel because they have been manipulated, emotionally or otherwise. Jewish strength made the alliance strong.

Another biblical story, of King David and his mighty men, better captures why Israel matters so much to Americans. Some of these elite warriors were not Israelites, but they nevertheless worked with the Jews to defeat their common foes. At times they were too eager to do battle, and David refused a gift they brought to him after one especially risky mission. Without them, Israel would have been in much greater danger.

Modern Israel is a sovereign country, and the United States is not its king, but there are some important similarities: Just as Jerusalem and Washington share friends, Israel's enemies are America's too. The Israelis are remarkably effective at defeating those enemies, and many of the terrorist organizations Israel has counterattacked since October 7 have American blood on their hands. Like King David, the Americans sometimes can only accept these victories with reservations. The Biden administration in particular tried to slow or halt Israeli counteroffensives.

This story also contains an important warning: David did not always reward the mighty men for their faithful service, and his kingdom suffered for it. His reign began to decline when he betrayed one of them, Uriah the Hittite, and as the consequences cascaded, he spent the rest of his life fending off revolts and dissension.

After one of the worst moments in its history, Israel rallied to protect itself and many others. The hostages, their families, and their countrymen are the first to benefit from this great victory. The Americans are not far behind.

Israel’s war for survival is only just beginning

Over the past two years, anti-Zionism, coupled with an irrational, emotional attachment to Palestine, has become a prominent feature of youth culture. The keffiyeh has become a must-have for self-styled ‘progressives’. To be for Palestine is a way to affirm one’s virtuous anti-Western identity.

In many cases, anti-Zionism in the West has served as a medium for expressing anti-Jewish sentiments. Too often the explosion of these sentiments has been misleadingly blamed on Israel’s conduct in its war with Hamas. Yet the current wave of anti-Jewish hatred is rooted in trends that predate 7 October. The war has merely given anti-Semites a chance to publicly give vent to their prejudices. Indeed, in the form of anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism has even been endowed with respectability.

The very public surge in anti-Zionism has furthered the demonisation and isolation of Israel. Numerous Western governments have felt the need to show that they too are now on the ‘right side of history’ by distancing themselves from Israel. Various tactics have been deployed to this effect, from sanctions and boycotts to the recognition of a Palestinian state. Israel today is far more isolated diplomatically than at any time in its history.

The hostility directed at Israel by Western activists and their supporters among the cultural and political elites is not simply a response to Israel’s war conduct. With Israel treated as the embodiment of all that is rotten about the West, anti-Zionism expresses a sense of estrangement from Western civilisation itself. That is why some of Israel’s most zealous and ideologically committed enemies are to be found on the streets of the capital cities of Western Europe.

Looking back over the past two years, it becomes clear that Israel was always having to wage a war on two fronts: first, against Hamas, and second, against the Western self-loathing that now prevails in Europe and America. For those under the influence of this anti-Western zeitgeist, Palestine represents the moral antithesis of the West. History shows that this profound cultural self-loathing can easily lead to outbursts of frenzied irrationalism. That is why young people who know next to nothing about the Middle East can so spontaneously come under the spell of anti-Israeli hysteria.

Whatever the outcome of the current peace negotiations, the spirit of this anti-Western, anti-Zionist zeitgeist will continue to haunt the Western world. Its power and influence represent a threat to Israel and the West that is no less dangerous than that posed by Hamas and other Islamist groups. Long after this phase of the war is over, Israel will have to fight an existential, cultural and diplomatic war against its anti-Western detractors.

Israel now has no choice but to prepare for war on two fronts. The cultural battlefield in the West is no less important than the military battlefield of the Middle East.

We must tackle the poisonous lies about Israel to stop the rising tide of anti-Semitism

I welcome the Government’s long-overdue pledge to give the police greater powers to ban repeated anti-Israel protests, but, if we’re to have any chance of preventing more attacks like that which occurred last week, it needs a comprehensive approach which tackles the interrelated challenges of anti-Semitism, extremism and the Iranian threat of domestic radicalisation.

First, the Government should require all public bodies to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism in full and without amendment. This explicitly says that criticism of the Israeli government is not anti-Semitism – but it provides some critical guard rails to prevent grotesque comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany or denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination.

This should be allied to the establishment of an independent reviewer of anti-Semitism in the public sector, who should be required to publish an annual report.

As recommended by the Board of Deputies’ Commission on Antisemitism, the Government should host a summit of NHS leaders to tackle anti-Semitism in the NHS. When Jews are removing Star of David jewellery before visiting the doctor, something has gone terribly wrong. The current medical regulatory system is, the Health Secretary has rightly argued, completely failing to protect patients and NHS staff.

A similarly robust stance must be taken towards the anti-Jewish racism on our campuses and at the BBC.

Second, the menace of “hateful extremism”, identified by the Commission for Countering Extremism in 2021, must be taken on. As the former counter-extremism commissioner, Sara Khan, has noted, successive governments have failed to address gaps in legislation which allows Islamist extremists (and a host of other repellent individuals and groups, such as neo-Nazis) to operate just beyond the terrorism threshold. “They are carefully steering around existing laws … openly glorifying terrorism, collecting and sharing some of the most violent extremist propaganda, or intentionally stirring up racial or religious hatred against others,” the commissioner of the Met Police, Sir Mark Rowley, who co-authored the 2021 report, argued at the time. This does not simply stoke violence and hatred, it also creates “an ever-bigger pool for terrorists to recruit from”.

Third, Iranian ideological centres in the UK, which operate through a network of community centres, charities and student organisations, are promoting Tehran’s violent and extremist ideology in the UK. They have even hosted talks by virulent anti-Semites in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. After years of inaction by the Tories, the Government has pledged to proscribe non-state threats, such as the IRGC. It needs to put the necessary legislation on the statute books as swiftly as possible.

But this needs to be just the first step. The Government should develop a cross-departmental task force to tackle the Iranian domestic threat, including through countering its support for radicalisation; declining extremists’ entry; and identifying and sanctioning Iranian regime oligarchs, elites and proxies in the UK. It should conduct a thorough review of links between Iran and the charitable and NGO sector akin to previous reviews of espionage and abuse in the sector carried out with regards to China.

Finally, the Government needs to actively and consistently challenge the effort to delegitimise Israel. It should speak out against the bigotry of the BDS movement – including the manner in which Jewish performers are being excluded from the arts – and make clearer that its disagreements are with the Israeli government, not the Israeli people: decisions such as that to suspend free trade agreement talks send the opposite message.

Ministers should also think carefully about some of the rhetoric they deploy given that Israel isn’t just the world’s only Jewish state, but a key western ally and the region’s only democracy. It’s time that – above all the hate and opprobrium – that message is heard loud and clear.

Hollywood hypocrites Why aren’t all the Israel-bashing celebrities celebrating cease-fire?

Last month, more than 2,000 artists signed a petition pledging to not work with Israeli filmmakers or “institutions that are complicit in Israel’s human rights abuses against the Palestinian people.”

Boldface signees included John Cusack, Joaquin Phoenix and director Ava DuVernay. This week, those three have simply shared videos criticizing Trump and the peace plan.

I expected a huge celebration from Stalter’s “Hacks” co-star Hannah Einbinder, who literally wore an “Artists4Ceasefire” pin to the Emmys and used her win to scream: “Free Palestine and f–k ICE.”

After this week’s news, she initially posted a video of her decrying Zionisim as a betrayal of Judaism and a sad meme about the Eagles losing to the Giants. By Friday night, two days after the fact, Einbinder found the right prepared post to share: “We are elated by the Gaza ceasefire news,” it reads in small type.

Larger are the words, “Now the world must hold Israel to account for 2 years of genocide.”

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. When Hamas murdered more than 1,200 innocent Israelis and kidnapped 251 hostages on October 7, 2023, there was relative silence from Hollywood’s hypocrites. And it eventually became much more fashionable to become a shameless Israel-basher.

Perhaps most shameless of all is Spanish actor Javier Bardem. He has posted a few videos of children celebrating in Gaza, but his happiness was tempered by whinging posts that the ceasefire does not address the real issue of a free Palestine.

Maybe he should take that up with boys from Hamas.

In 2014, Bardem and wife Penélope Cruz signed an open letter, published in a Spanish newspaper, accusing Israel of genocide.

When the actor received blowback, he issued a statement saying, “While I was critical of the Israeli military response, I have great respect for the people of Israel and deep compassion for their losses.”

Fast-forward to the Emmys, when he showed up in a keffiyeh and once again accused Israel of genocide.

When protesters in Madrid disrupted the La Vuelta bike race because Israel’s team was competing, Bardem praised the agitators, adding, “we can’t allow” them to compete.

Guess he never really had compassion for the people of Israel after all.

The goal posts are always moving with this crowd.

In their calls to “free Palestine,” it’s always about Israel — never about Hamas, who turned Gaza into a terror staging ground after Israel withdrew from there in 2005.

The silence today speaks volumes about what sure looks like their real and very sinister aim: wiping Israel off the map.

10/10 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: The return of hope; Biased media fuels American Jewish opposition to Israel; Manchester and the Exodus From Britain

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The return of hope

For the past two years, they and others with a similar world-view — and all four of them desperately trying to appease a Muslim population that is threatening their own countries no less than Israel — have been essential to Hamas in its strategy of psychological and diplomatic war against the Jewish state. These four leaders have led their countries in gaslighting Israel and the Jews, shedding crocodile tears over the hostages and over the rampant Jew-hatred in their own countries, and disseminating wall-to-wall lies and falsehoods produced by Hamas that have been swallowed by the west to defame, demonise and delegitimise Israel as a means to its eventual destruction.

This victory over Hamas has been achieved despite Starmer, Macron, Carney and Albanese; achieved in the teeth of everything they have been so dishonorably doing to ensure that Israel lost this desperate war of survival; and against the background of the Jew-hatred convulsing their own population that they did absolutely nothing to stop and a great deal to foment. Any claim to any moral authority that these four leaders ever had has been shot. No-one should anyone view anything they say with respect ever again.

The war against the Jews is far from over. Iran is re-arming and regrouping. Israel will probably have to go to to war against it once again. Qatar remains an enemy not just of Israel but of the west, which it is assiduously subverting through the Muslim Brotherhood that it leads. And the war against the Jews being waged by the haters of Israel and the west within the west will not only continue but may become ever more frenzied as western countries fall apart through social and cultural division and the accelerating crumbling of their own identity.

In the coming days, the Jewish world will hopefully rejoice at the return of its people from their underground tomb where we all feared they would be lost forever; but it will also mourn.

It will mourn those who have been lost on October 7, in the hellish dungeons of Gaza and in this terrible war.

And it will also mourn what we have so shatteringly learned in the past two terrible years: that when the Jews were faced with a second Holocaust, openly declared by Iran and Hamas, the world either didn’t care or was actually cheering it on.

We learned that far too many in the west were determined to deny the Jews the status of victims. Deny they had been victims of anything; ever. Deny that they were victimised now, on October 7 and in the war of self-defence that followed.

Instead, these western “progressives” were determined to stick it to the Jews, to blame them for their own extermination, to accuse them of being the prime source of evil in the world. They appropriated the word “genocide”, the term invented to describe the unparalleled evil that happened to the Jews under the Nazis and was now being openly threatened against the Jews once again, and instead accused the Jewish state of committing that monstrous crime by waging its war of defence against it.

They have stolen the word “genocide” from the Jews just as the Palestinian Arabs try to steal from the Jews their own homeland and their own history in the land of Israel. The west has aided the genocidal “Palestinian” agenda by turning Israel into the Jew among nations.

For this the west will never be forgiven. The Jewish people owe Trump a debt of gratitude. The four horsemen of the anti-Jewish apocalpyse, Starmer, Macron, Carney and Albanese, deserve nothing but contempt.

Israel is hopefully now emerging from a long nightmare. Western nations are descending into theirs.

The end of ‘the West’

Countries cannot exist without people; economies depend on workers to maintain themselves and avoid collapse. Governments understand this; those suffering from a birth crisis have turned to welcoming migrants into their borders. What they’ve failed to understand is that countries cannot be merely a collection of individuals who live in proximity to each other and pay taxes to the same government. They also require an ethos, produced by a collective memory of a shared history that cannot be imported. When native populations are cut by a quarter—in some cases by half—with each generation and are replaced by a massive influx of people who do not carry with them this collective memory, the ethos fades away. A nation, a people, is turned simply into a population, and societal collapse is sure to follow.

That’s the thing about low fertility rates; both their cause and their effect signal troubled societies. The societal collapse in most of the Western world is already showing on the streets. Major protests in support of Islamic terrorism against not just Israel but these countries’ own governments are emblematic of this. The massive and violent protests in Europe, Canada, Australia and the United States signal trouble for these countries first and foremost, less so for Israel.

While some politicians have tried pacifying these protesters (through, most recently, unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state), this has not helped since the root of this unrest is much deeper. In the United Kingdom, the murder of Jewish attendees at a Yom Kippur service in Manchester, England, took place after statehood was declared by Prime Minister Keir Starmer; in France, the government has collapsed for the fourth time in President Emmanuel Macron’s second term. A new parliamentary election could see his political camp fall apart, with calls for his resignation growing ever louder. His move to recognize “Palestine” did nothing to prevent or alleviate this.

For many of these countries, it’s too late to change course. Too much damage has been done; the current trajectory cannot be reversed. For some, recent events sound a dire warning; they have not yet fallen off the cliff, but are dangerously close to it. Major changes in policy are required. First and foremost, pro-natal ones are necessary to encourage those living in these countries to build new generations of natural-born citizens. Another requirement is for immigration policies to be centered on social and political assimilation, even if this draws cries from advocates of political correctness.

As for our ally Israel, what should it do? The first conclusion, which I’ve highlighted in previous pieces, is to adopt a policy of maximalist self-sufficiency. Jerusalem must realize that many of its traditional partners are no longer the reliable allies they once were. Those who still are, such as the United States, may unfortunately also change for the worse in the coming years, and Israel must be prepared for this.

With time, global trends will give rise to new powers, and with that to new alliances and partnerships. We’re already seeing this, for example, in Israel’s growing relationship with India. The end of the fossil-fuel age will also change global dynamics in Israel’s favor. While I have no doubt that opportunities will be abundant, a change of course and preparation for a tough interim period, spanning several decades, is a must.

Drew Pavlou: The World After October 7

Civilisational Conservatism
Witnessing all this, I personally decided that I opposed the concept of having my own head sawn off by Third Worldist jihadists in the name of race communism.

This is just the stand that I chose to make: opposing the idea that everybody I love should have their heads sawn off by raving jihadists in the name of ‘‘decolonisation.’’ I still supported universal public healthcare, but if my own personal reluctance to be beheaded by jihadists made me anathema to the left, I was fine with that.

Unlike drug-addled depressed communists like Gretchen, I loved life. So I didn’t yearn to bare my neck to the executioner’s blade as some kind of penance for having been born as a Westerner in a first world country.

After October 7, I realised that deep down I was a philosophical conservative, simply because I liked my country, my culture and my civilisation. I didn’t hate myself and crave my own oblivion and destruction. I didn’t hate my parents and my family members and my loved ones. So I rejected the radical left’s deep yearning for personal and collective suicide and self-destruction. And I rejected their blood libel.

October 7 taught me that all their decolonial talking points targeting countries like Australia as inherently ‘‘genocidal’’ settler colonies - it’s blood libel designed to prepare the road for terrorist violence in the West. It’s blood libel meant to justify terrorist violence to destroy liberalism and democracy and Western civilisation more broadly.

Our culture, our way of life, our loved ones - they would heap everything we love onto the bonfire and destroy it if they could. Because they don’t share our morality. Nothing we love has any value to them. We saw what their ‘‘decolonisation’’ looked like and it was demonic.

It’s ultimately as simple as this: if you spent the past 24 months cheering on jihadist pack rape and murder and mass killings while promising that your most ardent desire was to extend this bloodshed to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the US, all the ‘‘Western settler colonies’’ - we are fucking enemies. It’s as simple as that.

I refuse to go meekly to my grave and offer my neck to the executioner’s blade like Gretchen. I’m not going quietly. I choose Western civilisation over barbaric jihadism and suicidal Third Worldist race communism. And like the Israelis, I choose to fight rather than roll over and die.

10/10 Links Pt1: Douglas Murray: Trump’s historic peace deal brings joy and relief — but it comes with a bitterly high cost; Why Trump’s Gaza peace plan infuriates the left

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: David Is Goliath, and That’s Great

The peace process that took off soon after would lock this framing into place. Put simply, it held that the Palestinians lived on their own land, so all Israel needed to do was release that land to them and the conflict would subside. No matter that the Palestinian Arabs had always rejected statehood alongside a Jewish state or that they had become a cat’s-paw of the Arab world, whose land and population dwarfed Israel’s. The Arab–Israeli conflict was transmuted into the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. In this new framing, Israel was big and strong, the Palestinians small and weak and dependent upon the patronage of others to survive. As if to drive this point home, Hamas named its most recent war strategy in Gaza “Stones of David.”

But is this fair to David? After all, he wasn’t weak—just underestimated. The actual David became king, united the Jews, and expanded his kingdom by winning wars of annihilation that were waged against his people. David Lauter was wrong—Goliath doesn’t win 99 percent of the time. We only know about Goliath because he lost. David beats Goliath every time, otherwise he isn’t David. The enemies of Israel are wishcasting when they claim that Israel has become Goliath. They should be so lucky, because, again, Goliath loses; mere size isn’t enough to vanquish canny innovation and strategic thinking. Instead, they’re stuck with David.

This explains why anti-Zionists needed to think up an entirely new backstory for the Jews and Arabs of Palestine, one in which the ongoing presence of Jews in the Holy Land from time immemorial is a myth and the idea of Israel is simply an outgrowth of 19th-century European nationalism that used stories from the Hebrew Bible to create a false history.

This is what Yasir Arafat told Bill Clinton at Camp David, a ludicrous piece of revisionism considering that the Tel Dan Stele, a piece of carved stone from the ninth century b.c.e discovered in 1993 (seven years before Arafat’s conversation with Clinton), literally mentions “the House of David” in the Aramaic language. Pretending that the Jews are foreign colonizers was and is intended to dissociate them from the Davidic legacy and raises the anti-Semites’ hope that perhaps Israel can be defeated.

Whatever the motivation for the big lie of Israel as a European colony, the implications are unambiguous: The Jewish state must be dismantled in the name of justice. Older generations of American liberals didn’t feel this way. They still liked the Ari Ben Canaan of Exodus, the strapping Jewish man of action who sought to break bread with neighboring Arabs and simply find a place on earth for his suffering people. To them, Israel’s post-1967 expansion was the problem, but Israel’s rebirth in 1948 was still right and just.

The formative domestic experience for those American liberals was the civil rights movement. And since the large majority of 20th-century American Jews became loyal Democrats, the world of left-of-center activism contained a lot of common ground; American Jews sought full rights for American blacks just as they sought full recognition of Israel’s right to exist.

Had that tradition of American liberalism persisted into the 21st century, the aftermath of October 7, 2023, inside the United States might have looked a lot different. In an earlier era, left-wing activist groups likely would have seen it as the perfect opportunity to demonstrate that they would leap to the defense of a Jewish victim just as quickly as they would for any other victim.

But that’s possible only in a world in which Jews could, under the right conditions, be victims. That’s not something the newer generations of progressive activists believe. They had long ago internalized the concept of the irredeemable Israeli. They subscribed to the dogma of decolonization, and October 7 affirmed their worldview. Hamas’s murderous and genocidal spree was, grotesquely, proof to them that the arc of history still bent toward justice.

American Jewish organizations were blindsided by this. Suddenly their calls to other minority-rights groups went straight to voicemail. The decades they had spent building relationships in good faith crumbled overnight.

Should they have expected this turn of events? Those who cast a critical eye on the “David and Goliath” framing certainly did. In 2014, Joshua Muravchik published his extraordinary book, Making David into Goliath: How the World Turned Against Israel. What begins as a chronicle of the well-known narrative ends with a bit of foreshadowing. Muravchik wrote of the new anti-Zionist realignment taking shape on the left: “As with the proletariat under classical Marxism, the favored groups—blacks, browns, former colonials—were not merely objects of sympathy; they were regarded as the vessels of universal redemption. Not only were Gandhi and Mandela seen in this light, but even, to some, Ayatollah Khomeini. The French social theorist Michel Foucault wrote rapturously of the Iranian revolution in Le Nouvel Observateur in 1978, seeing in it an ‘attempt to open a spiritual dimension in politics,’ a ‘possibility we [Westerners] have forgotten since the Renaissance and the great crisis of Christianity.’”

Under the old regime, victimhood could be temporary. But “former colonials” are forever. One can never stop being a “former colonial,” no matter one’s current station. And the anti-colonialist takeover of American academia ensures there will always be an intellectual framework to prop up this Weltanschauung.

For American Jews, then, the days of apologizing for Israel’s strength should be over. And no matter one’s position on the settlements, the Jewish connection to the land should never be downplayed or denied. Finally, American Jews should remember the difference between criticizing Israeli government policies and painting the state or its government as illegitimate or inhuman. Today’s anti-Zionists are not arguing about what kind of state Israel should be. They want it gone entirely. The American Jewish community must adjust to this new reality and celebrate Israel as David—not the lowly shepherd, but David, the author of the Psalms, the father of a divinely inspired nation, Melech Israel.

Douglas Murray: Trump’s historic peace deal brings joy and relief — but it comes with a bitterly high cost

That deal was a bitter one for Israelis to swallow. But they did swallow it — in order to get their young man home.

Sinwar went back to Gaza and increased his control inside Hamas. His renown among his fellow jihadists was only increased through his time in prison. And then he launched October 7th, 2023.

How will this time be different? How will the Israeli public know that the hundreds of prisoners released in exchange for their hostages will not be the next Sinwar?

There is only person who can ensure that the last two years of bloody conflict and loss is not just the latest Gaza war but the last Gaza war. That man is President Trump.

It is the president who has managed to put together the remarkable regional coalition that appears to be bringing this war to an end. The relationships he has built over many years have often been the subject of criticism, but they will have proved invaluable if this peace deal passes and holds.

And it is that second bit that will matter most. That the deal holds.

Because it is crucial that whatever happens in the next few days, Hamas or similar jihadist groups can never again control Gaza. That they are never again in a position to invade and slaughter their neighbors.

For that to happen President Trump is going to need to remain engaged in the post-war aftermath.

He has already talked of the “Board of Peace” which he will chair and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair will be on. Blair has his critics, but he also has an unparalleled contact book for the region.

With the engagement of the Arab states it is possible that post-war Gaza could indeed be rebuilt. But it must be rebuilt in the knowledge that the citizens are preparing for a life of peace — not a future of war.

President Trump has brought the people of Israel and Gaza to the brink of peace. Now he has to make it hold.

Seth Mandel: Winning a Small War Is a Big Deal

Small wars are usually insurgencies, which means they are often directed against an occupying power that will pick up and leave if the cost gets too high. Israel’s small wars are the opposite, hence that Golda Meir quote: There is nowhere to go. The Jews have reconstituted their state on the same land where they have done so for thousands of years. There’s no place for the Land of Israel to go. So it either survives or is destroyed.

The indigenous nature of Jewish sovereignty in the land, and the sliver on which Jews can live freely surrounded by the gargantuan Arab world, forecloses every option except coexistence and slaughter. Hamas, as the government of Gaza, chose slaughter, which means someone has to lose.

Hamas chose the nature of the war: the kind for which democracies quickly lose their nerve. And indeed, many democracies did: Only the president of the United States and the chancellor of Germany seemed to understand the threat that would be unleashed if they surrendered to the most evil force the world has seen since the Nazis.

In this atmosphere, Israel’s refusal to back down should be a great point of pride. Even after thousands of years, the Jews are still told by the world that they have a place among the nations only as a subservient minority population. The pressure to conform was immense, the moral and psychological blackmail was taken to obscene levels, and still the Jewish state held to its demands.

There was no honest argument against Israel’s insistence on the return of the hostages, so insane arguments were invented. The “genocide” label was perhaps the most ridiculous of all if only because it was debunked before it was even applied. Israel said “return the hostages you took and concede the war, and we’ll end the operation in Gaza.” Genocidal intent cannot be construed from this even by the cleverest anti-Semite in the world.

And now Israel has kept its word to the letter. Hamas has been defeated and Hamas’s supporters abroad have been humiliated. But you can see why they thought they might not be left looking foolish: Most of the time you can accuse a democracy of committing genocide and that democracy will back out of a small war.

Winning a small war in this environment required incredible fortitude. Israelis were up to the task.