07/03 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: The fateful question for Diaspora Jews; Why two Jews left London for the Jewish State; 70+ NGO staffers allege antisemitism, lack of accountability in new report

From Ian:

Jonathan Tobin: On its 250th birthday, Jews mustn’t abandon the fight for America

If Jewish life is unsafe in America, it will be unsafe everywhere. And that will impact Israel as well. That’s why it is essential that, rather than giving up or giving in to hysterical talk about the end of American liberty and even the end of American Jewry, we must recommit to the fight to roll back the woke tide on the left and its antisemitic echo on the right—and to defeat it.

This may be a generational struggle in much the same way that leftist efforts to impose these false beliefs on the United States were one. But it is a battle that is necessary to fight—not just to save American Jewry, but to save the canon of Western civilization on which our freedoms rest.

The contempt for traditional patriotism and belief in the truth that the American republic—flawed though it might be—is a force for good in the world has already been made clear by left-wing elites. But as discouraging as this discourse may be, it is a reminder that the stigmatizing and targeting of Jews is part and parcel of the same struggle that other Americans are engaging in. America is and always has been exceptional. But it will only remain that way so long as a broad cross-section of its citizens—Jews and non-Jews, liberals and conservatives, Democrats as well as Republicans—are willing to stand up against the woke forces seeking to traduce its founding values.

The appropriate answer to attacks on Jews is not flight or a call to shelter in place. Jews must speak up and not abandon the streets or the public square to the antisemites and woke mobs. The rejoinder to anti-Jewish violence and intimidation is for Jews to act in the most quintessential American way possible: to arm themselves and make it clear that they will not be intimidated or silenced.

Those who hate the founding principles of the United States, in addition to its Jewish residents, may seem to be on the ascent, as election results in various Democratic Party primaries have shown. But they are wrong about the end of American greatness or the need to transform it into some pale reflection of Marxist or Islamist concepts. And as dire as the situation may seem at the moment, these enemies of liberty may be sealing their own fate with their attempt to foist antisemitic extremists on a country that is inherently moderate and where Jew-hatred of this type has always been confined to outliers rather than the mainstream.

Faith in the good sense and decency of the American people may seem like a forlorn hope when you witness the ability of figures like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to affect the future of American democracy. But those who bet against America have always been shortsighted suckers. Right now is no time to doubt that this will continue to be the case.

On this 250th Independence Day, rather than writing off America, we should be embracing it all the more enthusiastically and pledging to defend it against those who wish to tear it down. The alternative is not merely unthinkable; it’s an abandonment of Western civilization, and all that decent people hold dear.

Happy birthday, America! Even on your worst day, we still believe in you, and we know you’re worth fighting for.

Melanie Phillips: The fateful question for Diaspora Jews

More profoundly, Zionism is not a political cause. The religion of Judaism is itself inseparable from the land of Israel. Judaism consists of the belief by the Jewish people that they were given a Divine command to create a particular kind of society in the land that was promised to them.

Jewish religious liturgy is studded with countless references to Zion, the ancient Hebrew name for the land. Zionism, which emerged as a discrete political movement in the 19th century, is thus intrinsic to Judaism.

Of course, Jews who aren’t religiously observant are still Jews, just as are Jews who are anti-Zionist. But in Judaism, the people, the faith and the land are inextricably connected. Trying to pluck Zionism out of Judaism is to destroy it by plucking out its heart.

So, attacking the Jewish world is to attack the West; attacking Israel and Zionism is to attack Judaism.

Many Diaspora Jews won’t acknowledge this because the implications are too devastating. Especially in America, where the majority of Jews have signed up to anti-Jewish liberal ideologies, many of them will therefore dump Israel.

Observant Jews will remain loyal, and more of them will move to Israel. A number of progressive Jews, meanwhile, are agonized. Finding that their erstwhile comrades have now turned viciously against them over their support for Israel’s existence, they feel like politically homeless Jewish orphans.

It’s now more than 1,000 days since the terrible events of Oct. 7. During that traumatic period, which is still far from over, Israel has changed. It has returned to the biblical ideal of the heroic Jewish warrior nation.

This isn’t just because of its astounding military and intelligence prowess, or the awesome bravery of its fighting forces.

It’s also about its moral courage. It’s about the way it surmounted the devastating shattering of its security; the trauma of seeing so many of its precious and beautiful children fall in battle; the nightmarish return of the unspeakable shadow of the Holocaust, from whose ashes it had somehow emerged.

It’s about how it stared down disaster, demoralization and death, determined instead to fight for life—the life of its people in their ancient home.

Israelis fight to live because they passionately love what they are. They aren’t conditional Jews or Jews with trembling knees or confused Jews with hyphenated identities.

They are Jews who are made whole and complete by the land of Israel. They triumphantly reaffirm every single day what Judaism is: the faith and culture of a people created through a sacred covenant in their own land.

Oct. 7 and its aftermath forged the Israeli spirit anew in iron. Oct. 7 and its aftermath left Diaspora Jews terrified and uncertain about what they are.

The Israelis are fighting for the life of the Jewish people. Can Diaspora Jews say the same?

Why two Jews left London for the Jewish State

"A terrorist just tried to stab Jews at my work" - This was the text Joseph received in January 2024, moments after a Muslim terrorist walked into his local Kosher supermarket in London and tried to stab Jewish shoppers. The only reason no one was killed was because a heroic worker held the terrorist off with a shopping cart until his arrest.

The attack itself was terrifying, but what followed was worse. The perpetrator, Gabriel Abdullah, was arrested, charged, and convicted - but didn’t serve a day in prison. To Jews, the message was clear: Britain tolerates violent antisemitism.

A few months later, Joseph experienced this ‘tolerance’ firsthand when an antisemitic mob surrounded and threatened him, as seen in the video below. The police were present, but instead of intervening, they just watched.

For Alex, the turning point came during the 2014 Gaza war. That year, Alex and Joseph began filming Palestinian protests together, and he quickly realized the antisemitism they were witnessing wasn't an aberration; it was the tip of the iceberg.

While the spike in antisemitic incidents in the UK was alarming, it was what Alex saw in France that truly disturbed him. During the 2014 Sarcelles riots, a synagogue was besieged, and Jewish-owned businesses were targeted in scenes reminiscent of a darker era, signaling a complete collapse of public order for the Jewish community. Witnessing the speed at which this hatred manifested in France, he concluded that it was a contagion: the turmoil he saw in Paris would inevitably reach Britain, and the patterns established in London would eventually reach America and Canada.

The Ratchet Effect
After the conflict ended, Alex identified a recurring pattern he termed the ‘ratchet effect.’ During the conflict, antisemitic incidents surged, but with the toxic combination of social media and changing demographics, the baseline of hatred never retreated to previous levels after the conflict ended - it just ratcheted up. He realized then that this was a cycle without a ceiling. From Gaza and Lebanon to the catastrophe of October 7, each flare-up has made these incidents increasingly violent and uninhibited.

As the number of attacks on Jews increased, the British authorities consistently failed to protect Jewish citizens. The failure reached a nadir during the May 2021 Gaza war; on the same day that Islamic extremists were hunting Jews on streets with a police escort, a convoy of cars drove through Jewish neighborhoods with a megaphone, calling to rape Jewish women. No one was jailed for these offenses.

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07/03 Links Pt1: Why the Lancet study suggesting a far higher Gaza death toll is deeply flawed; Operation Entebbe, 50 years on: The rescue that reshaped Jewish history; Israel accuses Turkish FM of incitement to genocide

From Ian:

Why the Lancet study suggesting a far higher Gaza death toll is deeply flawed

Dramatic outliers like this are a clear red flag, and according to the survey's own design, catching this kind of problems was supposed to happen during fieldwork. In our critique, we pointed out that it didn't: neither Gaza9 nor Gaza3 was flagged as an outlier during the data collection.

In response to our critique, the authors dispute this and claim that these anomalies "were visible from early in the survey and actively discussed." However, the paper itself contains no indication that the anomalous data were flagged to field workers or supervisors as they emerged. Instead, the discussion of the Gaza9 anomalies appears only during the analysis phase, when the authors calculated violent death estimates, after all survey data had already been collected.

As part of that analysis, they also estimated the effect of excluding Gaza9, noting that doing so "does substantially lower our estimate for the size of the MoH undercount." Only then do the authors report looking into the reason for the outlier, writing: "So, we investigated further and found that three PSUs [survey sampling areas] covered by this team were in shelters that give special preference to families that have lost members during the fighting…"

And that after-the-fact analysis covered only Gaza9's mortality numbers. Nowhere in the paper are Gaza9 or Gaza3 identified as having unusual demographic profiles – smaller households and far fewer children – which should have also been flagged as anomalies. The paper does discuss demographics, but only to show that the data set as a whole doesn’t match what's known about Gaza's population overall. That is a different claim entirely: it says nothing about whether any specific team's results were completely out of line, which is exactly the question Gaza9 and Gaza3 raise.

Rather than address that gap, the authors try to downplay the importance of these imbalances by pointing to their use of statistical weighting – a procedure meant to adjust the results, so the full data set matches the population's known characteristics. However, while weighting can correct some small deviations, it cannot repair a situation where a handful of teams produced vastly different results. It's a bit like putting a band-aid on a structural crack: it may make the surface look more even, but it does not repair the underlying problem and doesn't clarify why the problem wasn't addressed early on.

The authors further suggest that the Gaza9 results may reflect a "genuine spatial concentration of violence". However, the data show that Gaza9 consistently reported higher mortality than other teams operating in the same areas. In at least one particularly clear case, Gaza9 reported deaths in 10 out of 20 households, while another team working just a few buildings away reported none. Such a discrepancy is difficult to reconcile with any claim of a “genuine spatial concentration of violence”.

Differences of that magnitude cannot plausibly be explained by local variation. If location were the primary factor, teams operating side by side would be expected to report broadly similar results. Instead, the discrepancies appear to track the teams, not the locations – pointing to a problem with how the data were collected rather than where they were collected.

The bottom line
The survey's headline claim – that the Ministry of Health undercounted deaths by roughly 35 per cent – rests on the assumption that the sample represents the population. The study’s own data say it doesn't. Fieldwork repeatedly seems to have departed from the sampling plan, a small number of teams drove a disproportionate share of the results, and those same teams produced demographic profiles unlike the wider population. Remove their data, and the gap largely disappears within the survey's own margin of error.

This isn't some technical nitpicking for its own sake. What's at stake here is a dramatic claim that got treated as settled fact – cited, repeated, and stretched to cover deaths it never actually measured – when, in fact, the sample behind it was just too broken to support it.

UN COI Report Discredits Itself With Claims About IDF Quadcopter Attacks On Minors

The June 18 Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory (COI) report, alleging that the Israeli military deliberately targeted Palestinian children as part of a strategy to commit genocide during the October 7 War, is based heavily on fantastical beliefs, presumptions, and speculation about Israeli military technologies and tactics that severely discredit the document’s conclusions. In the first in a series of articles on the claims, the COI’s allegations about fleets of firearm-equipped quadcopters demonstrates the unreliability of the report.

COI Commissioner Srinivasan Muralidhar explained to CNN in a Saturday video interview that the “strongest evidence” that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) was deliberately targeting children was “a combination of quadcopters, sniper rifles, and drones.”

Yet the arguments regarding these quadcopters are also the elements that most cast doubt on the veracity of the report.

Many of the alleged incidents highlighted as evidence in the COI report involved the ostensible use of quadcopters equipped with rifles and sniper rifles to target children, claiming that of 168 minors reported to the COI killed or wounded by gunshots between November 2023 and July 2025, 70 were supposedly shot by quadcopters. Anonymous doctors reportedly told the COI that there was a consistent pattern of children seeking treatment from quadcopter gunshots. One doctor reportedly estimated that, within two weeks of her tenure in a hospital, she supposedly saw around five children shot by quadcopters.

Firearm Quadcopters are Uncommon
The chief problem with the underlying claim that serves as the basis of much of the COI report is that firearm-equipped quadcopters are simply not in service to the extent that would match the supposed widespread pattern. Prototypes for firearm-equipped quadcopters exist, but there is no evidence for widespread deployment in Gaza. To the contrary, the use of firearm-equipped quadcopters is rare enough that Gaza deployment veteran IDF soldiers consulted with by HonestReporting had never seen or were unfamiliar with such a platform. Military analyst Andrew Fox also wrote in 2024 that his sources within the IDF indicate that the weapons were not in widespread use by the Israeli military.

Cube-Shaped Bullets
Perhaps the most implausible claim about the armed quadcopters is that they shoot cube-shaped pellets. Muralidhar told CNN that cube-shaped pellets were used by armed quadcopters in at least one instance. The report asserted that the supposed ammunition was designed to cause superfluous injury and unnecessary suffering. The quadcopter models mentioned in the report are equipped with standard firearms adapted for the drones. These firearms operate in a manner unlikely to facilitate cubed projectiles. This, along with the ballistic aerodynamic issues for such a projectile, make them unlikely to exist.

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A celebration of Jewish American history from 1926

From the Buffalo Jewish Review, July 30, 1926.

The Jews in Colonial and Revolutionary Periods

BY HAROLD BERMAN

At this time, when the sesquicentennial of the signing of the Declaration of Independence is being celebrated, the role of the first Jewish settlers in the early history of the country is of particular interest. The part played by the Jews in the life of the nation up to the time of the Declaration of Independence is dealt with in this series, the present dealing with the Hebraic influences on the Pilgrim Fathers and the growth of the Jewish settlement in Rhode Island, founded on the broad basis of religious freedom and outstanding for its tolerant attitude to all sects.—THE EDITOR.

It is a fact, too little known to most people, that the Pilgrim Fathers, the real founders of the American Commonwealth, and the builders of this now so mighty and free nation, were animated by the old Hebraic spirit that they had imbibed from their daily and attentive perusal of the Old Testament. The Pilgrim Fathers, in their revolt against the Church and Governmental authorities in the homeland, which revolt drove them to seek asylum first in the more hospitable Holland and afterwards to cross the Atlantic in search of a new home, drew their inspiration from the Books of Moses and the Prophets. And when, after much peril and hardship, they finally did reach a haven of safety, they set about to organize their new life on the old Judaic pattern.

In the writings of the time, the Pilgrims frequently refer to themselves as “Christian Israel,” James I, their persecutor, is “Pharaoh,” the Atlantic was the “Red Sea” that they had crossed in order to reach the “New Canaan,” to get to America. “Whither the Shekinah had guided them through the sea.” “Hebrew mortar,” says Lecky, “cemented the foundations of American democracy,” while the historian John Fiske affirms that “the same ethical impulse which animated the glowing pages of Hebrew poets and prophets, and which has given to the history and literature of Israel their commanding influence in the world” has also influenced the early American colonists.

And later on, when fate had ordained it that the colonies should undergo the test of fire in the days of the Revolution, to prove their heroism and devotion to the country of their birth or adoption by their action of self-sacrifice and daring that such luminous pages in the annals of the period form.

What is said above is especially true of the Rhode Island colony.

It was the great privilege of Israel of old,” reads the foreword to the 1658 revision of the Pilgrim Code, “and so was acknowledged by them, Nehemiah the 9th, 13th. That God gave them right judgment and true lawes and accordingly wee can safely say that wee have had an eye primarily and principally unto the aforesaid Platforme.” “Ye Judicals of Moyses,” says Bradford, “are immutable and perpetual.”

The sentiment in the American colonies being such, it stands to reason that the Jews, suffering from persecution in all Christian countries at that time and undergoing actual martyrdom and untold tortures in some of them, should seek asylum in the colonies planted by a freedom-loving people in a land situated on the further side of the wide ocean, far, far removed from the flames of the Inquisition and the ferocity of persecuting rulers and fanatical populaces. And so we find Jewish settlers in practically all of the thirteen American colonies; a greater number in some of them, a lesser number in others, but everywhere forming a highly intelligent and active element, contributing of their best to the economic and cultural development of the growing settlements.

For this broad-minded attitude, so much in contrast with the narrow-mindedness and intolerance that characterized the neighboring Puritan Colony of Massachusetts, the founders of Rhode Island received not a little of scolding and reprobation, it is true. Cotton Mather, the great Massachusetts Divine, refers sneeringly to the new colony as “the common receptacle of the convicts of Jerusalem and the outcasts of the land.” But this sneering did not at all deter Roger Williams and his noble-minded associates from proceeding with their task of establishing on the American continent one little spot that shall serve as a haven of refuge and safety for all men, irrespective of the creed that they profess or even the absence of any. This was an attitude centuries ahead of time, an ideal not yet entirely translated into life even in our present day.

No sooner did the news of the founding of the Rhode Island Colony reach the Jews of New York, still subjected to many lurking restrictions and annoyances at the hands of its Dutch rulers, than an active movement began amongst them for emigration into the new colony. In 1657 quite a few of the New York Jewish settlers left for Rhode Island, and there were presently augmented by the arrivals from Brazil the West Indies and other points. In 1755 (before the N. Y. exodus), the Jewish Community of Newport, R. I., counted 40 families. Their number increased with the passing of time, and with the growth of the town as a commercial center.

How important Newport was considered commercially in Colonial days can be learned from a perusal of contemporary documents, the records of the customs entries of that and other ports, as well as by reading the pages of subsequently-written history. “He was thought a bold prophet,” says the historian Eggleston, “who then said that New York might one day equal Newport.”

Among the earliest known and most active Jewish settlers of Newport were Jacob Rodriguez-Rivera and his son-in-law Aaron Lopez. Rodriguez-Rivera arrived at Newport in 1743, while Lopez came in 1748. Both were exceedingly enterprising and active men of business, contributing not a little to the industrial and commercial prosperity of the rising settlement. It is a matter of record that of the 150 vessels engaged in general trade at Newport at this period, Lopez owned not fewer than 30—or 20 per cent. Jacob Rodriguez-Rivera was extensively interested in whaling, in the manufacture of candles (of which he had in operation no fewer than 13 factories at one time), in the manufacture of whaleoil and other widely-used products. Indeed, the extent of Rivera’s traffic in these necessities was such that his sway extended to practically the entire New England region, so that it had been facetiously remarked by some students of the period that the true progenitor of the Oil Trust was not John D. Rockefeller, but Jacob Rodriguez-Rivera of Newport, and the oil thus monopolized was not the modern petroleum, but the oil extracted from the blubber of the whale. Its ramifications, however, Inter-Colonial in their scope, affecting the inhabitants of most of the New England colonies.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! Reclaiming the Covenant on America's 250th (May 2026) "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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The Committee to Protect Journalists just gave Hamas a gift

The Free Beacon reports:

The internal chaos roiling the Committee to Protect Journalists deepened late Wednesday, when the embattled advocacy group’s board of directors—under fire for the anti-Israel bias of several members, including the vice chair—voted to affirm that "organizations affiliated with militant groups" meet the criteria of a legitimate journalistic outlet "provided they are not engaging in combat or inciting violence in a manner likely to have imminent effect."

The CPJ’s board voted 17 to 1 in favor of keeping this contentious definition, according to one person familiar with the situation, with Fox News’s representative casting the lone no vote. The CPJ’s influential list of "Journalist Casualties in the Israel-Gaza War," which has been used by news organizations to discredit Israel’s war effort, contains dozens of names of military operatives for Hamas and other terror groups.

This sounds principled — do not presume a journalist is acting as a combatant unless they are holding a gun. But it betrays an ignorance of how war works.

A spotter is a person whose entire job is to watch enemy positions and movements and relay what he sees to the fighters who will act on it. The  ICRC's Interpretive Guidance on Direct Participation in Hostilities treats that activity as combat. Section V.2.(c) lists "the identification and marking of targets, the analysis and transmission of tactical intelligence to attacking forces" among the acts that constitute direct participation in hostilities, stripping civilian protection. The Guidance's own worked example, in footnote 103, is a civilian who repeatedly peeks into a building where enemy troops have taken cover in order to indicate their location to attacking forces; the ICRC concludes she has directly participated in hostilities, because what mattered was the importance of the transmitted information to the execution of a concrete military operation. A person whose only observable act is watch-and-report loses protection under the framework built to protect civilians.

That is for a civilian. All the more so does this apply to a member of a militant organization who reports to a media outlet that is also part of the military. It would be naive in the extreme to presume that a person whose entire salary is paid by, and whose allegiance is entirely to, a terrorist group is only observing enemy positions rather than relaying them. It is even more naive to think that the militant news outlet is not relaying information to their own bosses who are holding the guns. Journalists who belong to Hamas use even more effective tools of combat than a traditional spotter - they can openly operate with a camera (with a telephoto lens) that displays, in real time, video of the enemy position over the Internet directly to Hamas leaders.

The United States DoD Law of War Manual (§5.8.3.1) names the spotter as a paradigm case of direct participation, alongside relaying target intelligence and guiding forces to a target, and no one can plausibly accuse the DoD Manual of violating international humanitarian law — it is the codified practice of the world's most-scrutinized military and it lands in the same place the ICRC does. Two frameworks built from opposite starting points, the humanitarian and the operational, agree that transmitting tactical observation to a fighting force is combat.

The CPJ just handed Hamas and every terrorist organization a gift. Terrorists need only issue every spotter a 'Press' jacket, and CPJ will protect them  by policy. The global journalism apparatus that follows CPJ standards has made itself an accessory.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! Reclaiming the Covenant on America's 250th (May 2026) "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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Asser Levy, the American Jewish Hero who Fought the Antisemitic Peter Stuyvesant

In September 1654 a French frigate put twenty-three Jewish refugees ashore at New Amsterdam, and a few weeks earlier a handful of Jewish traders had arrived from Amsterdam on their own account. These were the first Jews in what would become the United States.

Holland was the most liberal nation in Europe towards its Jews. Sephardic Jews owned houses among the wealthiest Amsterdam merchants, worshipped openly, and held a real if deliberately limited form of city citizenship. For most of the medieval centuries a Jew in Christian Europe could not own land, making the Jew a licensed guest rather than a rooted member of any place. Amsterdam was where that rule had bent. The Jews who sailed for Manhattan already knew what a measure of equality felt like, and they meant to keep it.

On Manhattan they met a governor determined to take it away.

Most Americans who know the name Peter Stuyvesant at all know him as a peg-legged Dutch official from a Washington Irving story. What the record shows is a man who tried to keep the Jews out of the colony entirely and, failing that, spent years working to make their lives there untenable, and who was candid about why. When the refugees landed he wrote to his employers in Amsterdam for permission to expel them, calling the Jews a “deceitful race” and “hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ” who should be required “in a friendly way to depart” before they could “infect and trouble this new colony.”

New Netherland was a commercial venture of the Dutch West India Company, whose directors in Amsterdam answered to profit and to their own shareholders, a number of whom were Jews. When Stuyvesant asked to expel the refugees, the directors refused him, citing the “considerable loss” the Jews had suffered in the fall of Dutch Brazil and the “large amount of capital” that Jews still held in Company stock. They ordered him to let the Jews “travel,” “trade,” “live and remain” in the colony. This handed the small Jewish community two things a royal colony never would have: an appellate authority above their local tormentor that could be moved by commercial interest, and a written grant of rights they could hold the colony to. Every fight that followed, they fought on that ground.

And fight they did. Stuyvesant would move against them, the community would appeal over his head to the same directors, and the community would win. When he forbade them to trade at Fort Orange and on the Delaware, confining their commerce to Manhattan, they cited the Company’s own grant that they might trade “like other inhabitants,” and the directors reversed him again. Having failed to expel them, he had tried to fence in their livelihood, and that failed too. This was a community that knew its rights and pressed them forcefully.

In the fall of 1655, with the colony ordered to arm against the Swedes on the Delaware, the council ruled that Jews would not stand guard alongside the other townsmen, citing the “disinclination and unwillingness” of the Christian militia to share a guardhouse with “the aforesaid nation.” In place of service the Jews would pay a special monthly tax, sixty-five stivers a man. It was a tax laid on Jews alone, dressed as an exemption from a duty they had been forbidden to perform. 

Asser Levy, a butcher who had only recently arrived, refused to pay, along with Jacob Barsimson. He petitioned instead to be allowed to stand guard like everyone else, or else be released from a tax charged only to Jews for an exclusion they did not ask for. The council held its line and told the two men they were free to leave the colony if the arrangement displeased them. Levy did not leave, and within a year and a half the record shows him standing guard like any other burgher.

The colony still refused to let Jews own real property, blocking Salvador d’Andrada’s purchase of a house he had won at public auction, and here the community pressed the point they had already won. In a March 1656 petition the Jews noted that if they were taxed and burdened like other burghers, they should “enjoy the same liberty allowed to other burghers,” to trade and to own land. Obligation and right were two halves of one thing, and a government that wanted the first could not forever withhold the second. That is the moral logic of citizenship, argued from the floor of a Dutch trading post more than a century before Jefferson wrote a word of it.

Levy again was in the forefront. In April 1657, when the city made burgher status a precondition for trade, he appeared in court two days later to demand it, resting his claim on the very guard duty the colony had first tried to deny him. He kept watch and ward like any burgher, he said, and held a burgher’s certificate from Amsterdam besides. The court, taken aback that he would ask, refused him and referred the matter up to Stuyvesant and the council, who reversed it: Jews would be admitted as burghers of New Amsterdam.

Levy went on winning. When the city licensed him as a sworn butcher in 1660, the oath of the office required slaughtering hogs; Levy asked to be excused on religious grounds, and the magistrates agreed.

In 1662 Levy became the first Jewish landowner in North America, with a house on Stone Street in what became New York City.

By 1664, when the wealthiest inhabitants were called on to lend the city money against the English threat, Levy was the only Jew among them, and he lent his hundred florins with the rest.

In 1673, he sued the City Weigher, Dietloffson, for “affronts” — probably antisemitic remarks. The court decided in Levy’s favor. That’s a Jew in colonial New York suing a city official for what was likely an antisemitic insult and winning.

What the Dutch records show most of all is Levy in court, again and again, arguing his own cases and mostly winning them. His tireless fighting for Jewish rights earned him respect among the Christians. Property in dispute was placed in his keeping. Christian merchants named him executor of their wills. When a Jew ran into trouble with the authorities in Connecticut, Levy intervened and got the fine remitted, and the court recorded that it did so “as a token of its respect to the said Mr. Asser Levy.” A man who had refused to accept second-class terms, and who forced colonial courts to treat him as an equal, ended up trusted rather than despised. The fighting was what earned the respect.

We’ve discussed the importance of Washington’s letter to the Jewish congregation in Newport, where he said "to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” But the Jews were not granted those rights in pre-Revolutionary America. They earned them. And Asser Levy was one of the leaders in that fight.

Louis Marshall saw this clearly when he wrote about Levy for the Buffalo Jewish Review at America’s sesquicentennial in 1926. He said that the records of Levy’s civic victories were “more potent in their consequences than those won on the bloody fields of battle.” He was right: a battlefield victory secures a country while a courtroom victory of Levy’s kind defines what kind of country it will be. Equality in America was not handed to the Jews as a gift of the founding. Some of it was already theirs before the founding, because men like Asser Levy had walked into court and fought for it.

Drawn from Louis Marshall’s “The Ascent of American Israel” (Buffalo Jewish Review, July 30, 1926) and Samuel Oppenheim’s “The Early History of the Jews in New York, 1654–1664” in the Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society. Stuyvesant’s 1654 letter to the Amsterdam Chamber and the Company’s 1655 reply survive in the Dutch colonial records; the Asser Levy entry draws on Leon Hühner’s biography.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! Reclaiming the Covenant on America's 250th (May 2026) "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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07/02 Links Pt2: The Military Danger of the Congressional Anti-Israel Obsession; Two mayors, one hatred; Ruth Wisse: How to Save the Jewish People

From Ian:

Ben Cohen: The UN’s crusade against Israel is fueling the pro-Hamas left

A smirk laid bare the United Nations’ unremitting hostility toward the state of Israel and its people.

Last week UN Special Rapporteur Reem Alsalem sat stone-faced and silent as she reluctantly listened to wrenching testimony from Ilana Gritzewsky, a young Israeli woman abducted and viciously raped by Hamas during its Oct. 7 atrocities.

“Even now, the feeling of being violated and powerless still lingers,” Gritzewsky said, her voice breaking.

The Jordanian diplomat — whose mandate is to prevent “violence against women and girls” — let out an exasperated sigh in response.

Moments later, Gritzewsky pleaded with her: “Will you look at me?”

And Alsalem finally did so, a smirk playing on her lips.

Her chilling cruelty can be interpreted in only two ways.

Either she believes Gritzewsky was lying, in keeping with the rapporteur’s claim last November that “no independent investigation found that rape took place on the 7th of October.”

Or she believes that Gritzewsky and the other Israeli women subjected to grotesque sexual violence and mutilation by those Hamas terrorists got what they deserved.

Whatever the answer, Alsalem’s callous demeanor encapsulated the loathing with which UN appointees regard Israel, and their embrace of the wildest assertions made by Palestinian propagandists.

Because the problem isn’t Alsalem’s alone: It is institutional and structural.

And its impact is not limited to the UN, as the current surge of far-left anti-Zionists in US domestic politics demonstrates.

In the last month, the UN’s human rights bureaucracy has stepped up its crusade to convict Israel of the crime of genocide.

On June 16 Vanessa Frazier, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, placed the Israel Defense Forces on a blacklist of armed forces that abuse children.

That list also includes the Russian Army and ISIS — but not Turkey, despite the horrors inflicted on the Kurds, including children, by its armed forces.

Tellingly, none of the other state armed forces on that list were ever compelled, as the IDF was after Oct. 7, to engage in a war sparked by a massacre of their own civilians.

But such nuances never trouble the UN when it comes to Israel.

Indeed, when Danny Danon, Israel’s UN ambassador, voiced his objection to Israel’s inclusion on the list, Frazier dispensed with diplomatic protocol and attempted to shout him down.

The Military Danger of the Congressional Anti-Israel Obsession

An effort by Rep. Ro Khanna (D., Calif.) to strip a provision on U.S.-Israel cooperation from the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act was ruled out of order on Monday.

The provision isn't about the West Bank. It would expand U.S.-Israel cooperation in missile and drone defense, anti-tunneling, cyber warfare and AI.

"We need to compete with China," says Bradley Bowman of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

"That requires learning from beleaguered democracies like Ukraine, Taiwan and also Israel, which is the best in the world in some areas of defense tech."

Israel excels at going from concept to fully funded combat capability - a U.S. weakness. Bowman rues the seven years the Pentagon took to adopt Israel's Trophy system to defend U.S. tanks.

The rising anti-Israel obsession is a gift to U.S. adversaries.

Two mayors, one hatred

Karl Lueger, mayor of Vienna from 1897 to 1910, used antisemitism to win popularity, making detestation of Jews a key plank of Austria’s Christian Social Party. Adolf Hitler lived in Lueger’s Vienna and would praise him in Mein Kampf, although, for the most part, the mayor did not back up his anti-Jewish rhetoric with policies.

Jew-haters and those who, like Lueger, used Jew-hatred for political purposes, coined the term “antisemitism” in 1870s Germany to make their bigotry sound modern and scientific rather than ancient and religious. Today, those obsessed with Jews and the State of Israel as ultimate sources of evil do the same with “Zionism.” It makes antisemitism sound “progressive.”

Zionism is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people. Pogroms in the 19th century and the Holocaust in the 20th century taught Jews the inherent vulnerability of living at the sufferance of others. Zionists understood that only a sovereign Jewish state could ensure Jewish equality.

Today, resurgent antisemitism uses anti-Zionism as a gateway drug. The abuse took root in 1975, when the U.N. General Assembly passed the infamous Soviet-inspired, Arab League-promoted “Zionism-is-racism” resolution. The resolution was Moscow’s revenge for Israel’s defeat of its Egyptian and Syrian clients in the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s new mayor, belongs to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). The party’s economic and social views mark it as neo-Marxist. Two of the three successful Democratic Party insurgents Mamdani endorsed in the city’s June 23 congressional primaries are also DSA members. The third is a former member. All three followed the mayor in accusing Israel of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip.

They do so because the “racist Israel” libel has not quite done the trick. Not when Israeli Arabs are the freest Arabs in the Middle East, and Israel rescued tens of thousands of endangered black Ethiopian Jews.

“Genocide” has replaced “racist” as the ultimate anti-Israel malediction. But the indictment is false. In Israel’s war in Gaza against Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other perpetrators of the Oct. 7, 2023 pogrom, the ratio of noncombatant-to-combatant deaths among Gazans has been lower than in Iraq and Afghanistan when U.S. and British troops battled Islamic fanatics.

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07/02 Links Pt1: 1,000 days after Oct. 7, the Jewish people stand proud; Military Victory Is Not Enough; Not All Terrorists Are Journalists (satire)

From Ian:

Military Victory Is Not Enough

Israel has demonstrated extraordinary military capability in confronting the Iranian-led axis. Together with the U.S., it has significantly degraded Iran's ballistic missile and nuclear infrastructure while weakening Tehran's network of terrorist proxies. Yet the decisive contest increasingly centers on influence, legitimacy, and public perception. It is a war fought through political warfare, psychological operations, legal campaigns, media narratives, and disinformation.

The Oct. 7 massacre demonstrated that terrorism today operates simultaneously on the informational battlefield. While Hamas carried out unprecedented acts of mass murder, the accompanying global narrative rapidly shifted from documenting the atrocities to portraying Israel as the primary aggressor. International institutions, human rights organizations, university campuses, and social media platforms became arenas where Israel's legitimacy itself was placed on trial.

The objective extends beyond criticism of Israeli policy. It seeks to isolate Israel diplomatically, weaken its alliance with the U.S., divide Israel from Jewish communities abroad, and erode Western public support for its security. Recent polling illustrates the challenge. Fewer than half of Americans identify Iran as an enemy of the U.S., while substantial portions of the public fail to recognize the ideological connection between radical political Islam and attacks such as Sept. 11. Such knowledge gaps create fertile ground for hostile disinformation campaigns and ideological manipulation.

The expectation that terrorist organizations could be fundamentally moderated through political processes proved misplaced. Rather than abandoning their long-term objectives, organizations such as Hamas continued pursuing Israel's destruction while simultaneously benefiting from enhanced international legitimacy.

The military campaign against Iran and its proxies has demonstrated Israel's operational superiority. Whether those achievements translate into lasting strategic gains will depend increasingly on success beyond the battlefield. The struggle over legitimacy has become Israel's eighth front.

Military victories cannot by themselves prevent the erosion of political support, diplomatic standing, or international credibility. Information warfare is one of the principal theaters in this conflict. Israel must become as effective at defending the truth as it has proven at defending its borders.

What "Defensible Borders" Means for Israel after the War

True security comes from anticipating threats before they emerge and sustaining the moral and material strength needed to deter aggression and protect the nation's survival. The phrase "defensible borders" has been used in Israel for many years to explain why Israel could not accept the 1967 lines as defensible, mainly with regard to Jordan and Syria.

Israel remains a small country with a population of 8 million Jews compared with 400 million people in the Arab League countries. At the UN, Israel faces 21 Arab states and 57 Muslim-majority states. The broad asymmetry facing Israel means it cannot remake the region into liberal democracies or significantly reduce hatred of Israel, no matter how many wars Israel wins. Therefore, after every war, however successful, Israel must begin preparing for the next one.

Israel's survival is not guaranteed by diplomatic agreements, but rather by objective strength and how that strength is perceived by enemies and rivals. National-security decisions must not rest on assuming deterrence exists. Whether it has been achieved is unknowable.

One of the main lessons of the war concerns Israel's ability to defend its borders in future defensive battles. It is crucial to prevent the formation of a large threat close to the borders even in periods of quiet. Israel must adopt an active worldview that regards preemptive operations aimed at preventing the construction of a significant threat as an essential tool of defense. The importance lies in preventing the adversary's ability to create a border threat in the first place.

An American Commander's Case for Israeli Strategic Depth after Oct. 7

Hamas's massacre in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, settled an old strategic argument. Israel, about the size of Maryland, is bordered almost entirely by adversaries intent on its destruction. Defending Israel requires strategic depth. The country lacked buffers in Gaza, southern Lebanon, and on the Syrian Golan front.

A familiar argument says precision rockets, cruise missiles, and one-way attack drones make terrain obsolete. But while rockets and drones are lethal, they are not war-winning. Hizbullah, Hamas, and the Iranian regime do not aim to harass Israel - they seek its elimination. That requires a ground invasion like Hamas executed. Buffer zones, demilitarized areas, and topographical control prevent such invasions.

The recent record of American military operations reinforces the same conclusion. The Taliban were defeated in five weeks in 2001; Saddam Hussein's regular forces collapsed in three in 2003. The American error in both theaters was the assumption that follow-on political reconstruction could remake those societies in a Western democratic image. It could not. The applicable lesson for Israel is: defeat the adversary's capability to threaten and to invade, do not attempt to remake his worldview, and return to dismantle the capability whenever it begins to reconstitute.

Oct. 7 showed what happens when geography is left undefended and threats are allowed to grow. Defensible borders are the minimum required for a small state's survival in a hostile neighborhood, and the precondition for any lasting peace.

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Mamdani Fires Staffer Who Suggested NYC Prioritize NYC Over Palestine (PreOccupied Territory)

 Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook  and  Substack pages.

New York, July 2 - The city's mayor fired his deputy chief of staff Thursday after the aide had the audacity to propose that city resources focus on New York City rather than the Palestinian cause, in a move progressive activists haled as a principled stand against localism.

The disgraced staffer, identified as career civil servant Rachel Katz, reportedly circulated a memo suggesting the administration tackle subway delays, migrant shelter overflows, and street crime before allocating more municipal staff time to Nakba commemorations and virtual Gaza solidarity hours. Sources say Mamdani read the document, turned pale with ideological fury, and immediately summoned the traitor for a closed-door re-education session that ended with security escorting her from City Hall.

“Betrayal like this has no place in my administration,” Mamdani told reporters afterward, flanked by aides waving keffiyehs. “For too long, narrow-minded New Yorkers have hoarded dignity and infrastructure for themselves. Every single one of us committed to dignity in Brooklyn must be committed to dignity in Rafah. Suggesting otherwise is unacceptable.”

According to TikTok clips from the 45-minute tirade, Mamdani demanded to know how Katz could sleep at night while “genocide unfolded before our eyes” and the BDS movement needed city contracts reviewed. “You want to fix the F train? What about fixing the occupation?” the mayor allegedly shouted, citing his long history of placing Palestine at the core of his identity since his student days co-founding a campus SJP chapter.

Insiders described the firing as “long-overdue housecleaning.” Mamdani’s inner circle, heavy with alumni of anti-Zionist organizations, had grown concerned that some holdovers from previous administrations still suffered from “progressive except for Palestine” syndrome. One senior adviser called Katz's memo “textbook settler-colonial thinking” that ignored how every pothole filled in Queens represents stolen resources from Gaza.

The mayor’s office moved swiftly to replace Katz with a new hire fresh from a Columbia encampment alumni network. The appointee’s first act: drafting an executive order requiring all city departments to open meetings with a land acknowledgment for both Lenape territory and historic Palestine.

Reaction from New Yorkers has so far proved mixed. Queens residents dealing with another round of migrant arrivals expressed mild confusion. “I voted for affordability,” said one bodega owner. “Not for my tax dollars to fund more protest permits while rats run the streets.” Progressive groups, however, celebrated. Jewish Voice for Peace called the termination “a necessary step toward decolonizing City Hall budgeting.”

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! Reclaiming the Covenant on America's 250th (May 2026) "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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Book Review of EoZ's "Reclaiming the Covenant" by Daled Amos

By Daled Amos

As America turns 250 this July 4th, our thoughts turn to celebration. Eldad Tzioni, writing under his website name, Elder of Ziyon, argues that the day calls for something else: rededication and renewal. That requires understanding the Jewish roots beneath the Founding Fathers' vision of government. In his new book, Reclaiming the Covenant: America's Remarkable 250 Years and Assuring It Continues, Tzioni argues that the anniversary means nothing unless Americans grasp what the founding of America is all about—and that requires a Jewish lens. What sets America apart, he argues, is that it's not a nation defined by blood, soil, or religion, but by covenant: by what you accept, not what you are. That idea, he writes, traces back not to Locke or Montesquieu, but to Mount Sinai.

In the Preface to the book, Tzioni states three goals: to understand what makes America great, to identify what threatens that greatness today, and to lay out what faithfulness to the Founding Fathers' vision demands of us today.

What Makes America Great

The book's central argument rests on one concept: covenant.

Covenant is the specific kind of agreement that defines membership by what you accept rather than what you are. [p. 4]

America was the first nation to make acceptance of the covenant itself the explicit basis of national membership—open to anyone willing to accept its terms, regardless of race, religion, or origin. Other 18th-century nations worked differently: in France, emancipation was granted by the majority; in England, Jews held civil liberties but not full citizenship and could not hold public office); across Europe generally, the "Jewish Question" consumed public debate.

This makes accepting the covenant of US citizenship comparable to the covenant at Mount Sinai, which created Jewish identity. In both cases, identity flows from acceptance — meaning that leaving the covenant means losing the identity that was gained by joining it. Tellingly, when the Founders used the word "federal" to describe the new system of government, they drew it from the Latin foedus—covenant.

Tzioni is careful to note that this doesn't mean the Founders simply transplanted a Hebrew political model. They drew from many sources, including classical republicanism, common-law constitutionalism, and Lockean liberalism. The Hebrew political tradition contributed something more specific:

[T]he Hebrew political tradition gives you the structure by which a diverse people becomes something together that none of them was individually—bound not by shared identity but by shared obligation... [p. 24]

These shared obligations are embodied in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the subsequent amendments.

What Threatens America's Greatness Today

Like the covenant at Mount Sinai, America's covenant immediately raises a difficult question: 

How much uniformity does a covenant require, and how much difference can it tolerate?" [p. 17] 

One measure of a society's health is how it handles its inevitable disputes—and not all disputes are alike. Tzioni introduces the Jewish legal tradition that distinguishes between machloket l'shem shamayim—argument for the sake of heaven—and sinat chinam—baseless hatred. In the former, the dispute is in pursuit of truth, with each side recognizing the other's legitimacy. In the latter, the opponent isn't someone you're arguing with—he is unworthy of participation. Healthy disputes, Tzioni writes, "treat disagreement as disagreement rather than as evidence of bad faith or malign intent." [p. 22]

Participants in an honest disagreement are willing to revise their views when the evidence contradicts them. They recognize that even settled certainties are provisional — and that you can't claim the covenant's protections, such as free speech, for yourself, while denying them to others.

Today, Tzioni argues, a clear example of sinat chinam is the refusal to accept being wrong—something especially prevalent in identity-based politics, where a position is rooted in who you are rather than what you think. Under those conditions, political defeat is perceived as an existential threat. The resulting hatred and divisiveness are visible throughout social media and public life.

This polarization extends to disputes over the covenant itself when it fails to deliver on its promises. A classic case arose in the 1960s:

The civil rights movement did not say America's founding was a lie and must be replaced. It said America's founding was real, its terms are binding and you are in breach of them. That is the most powerful form of moral argument available within a covenantal framework—and it is only available if the covenant is real. [p. 11]

Done properly, civil disobedience within the covenantal framework doesn't reject legal authority altogether — it breaks one specific law to challenge one specific injustice, then accepts the legal consequences. That act of acceptance itself acknowledges the framework's authority, even as it challenges it. It appeals to the covenant's terms and holds it to its own standards.

Tzioni contrasts this with today, where civil disobedience has deteriorated into outright defection, with claims of exemption from the process itself. Instead of arguing that a law violates the Constitution's own standards, we hear that the system itself is corrupt and is undeserving of allegiance.

On the other hand, the correct approach has a recurring precedent in Jewish history:

The Temple was rebuilt after the return from exile, and the covenant was renewed—at Moab before the entry into the land, at Shechem under Joshua, under Josiah when the forgotten Torah scroll was rediscovered, under Ezra and Nehemiah after the return from exile. Each renewal acknowledged breach. Each renewal restored rather than dissolved. [p. 21]

Violation of the covenant is inevitable. But that doesn't void it—it calls to renew it.

What Faithfulness to the Founders' Vision Demands of Us Today

To survive, a covenant must be transmitted to the next generation. Jews do this through study and ritual, but the clearest example is the Passover seder. The seder is more than a celebration or commemoration; it is an active renewal of the covenant: "In every generation, each person is obligated to see themselves as if they personally left Egypt."

America has no comparable rededication. There was a time when public readings of the Declaration of Independence on July 4 were common; not anymore. Today, the Fourth of July celebrates the past rather than renewing the obligations of the covenant.

Tzioni points out a key difference between America and Europe.  In Europe, citizens participated in the state through their representatives, paying taxes and, in return, receiving protections and services. --whose relationship to the state was largely mediated through government-- There, citizens participated in the state through their representatives, paying taxes and receiving protections and services in return. In the US, Lincoln's phrase "of the people, by the people, for the people" was taken literally. Americans took on social problems themselves—through churches, civic organizations, businesses,charities, and local communities, rather than waiting for government action.

The French philosopher and diplomat Alexis de Tocqueville noted this in 1835, in his two-volume Democracy in America. In France, he observed, citizens looked to the government when they had a problem; in England, to a lord; in America, to their neighbors. Americans formed associations and voluntary groups to build roads, found schools, run hospitals, and organize charities — solving problems collectively rather than waiting on government to act. That instinct still shows up in the numbers. A 2023 AmeriCorps survey found that 28% of Americans — more than 75 million people — volunteered through formal organizations to help their communities, while 54% helped their neighbors informally. The harder question is whether Americans will extend that same care to fellow citizens whom they will never meet, scattered across the country. That's where dedication to the covenant has broken down.

Rededication doesn't have to be complicated — it can be as simple as reading the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, or getting involved in your community.

As Americans mark the nation's 250th birthday, Tzioni argues that fireworks and parades are not enough. Anniversaries matter only if they renew the commitments that made the occasion worth celebrating in the first place. America's covenant, like the covenant at Sinai, cannot survive on inherited sentiment alone. Each generation must consciously choose to accept it anew.

Whether or not readers accept every aspect of Tzioni's argument about the Jewish roots of the American experiment, Reclaiming the Covenant offers a fresh and thought-provoking way to understand both America's extraordinary success and its current divisions. At a time when many see only reasons to abandon the American project, Tzioni makes the case that the nation's founding principles are not exhausted, but neglected. The task before Americans is not to replace the covenant, but to recover it, renew it, and once again make it their own.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! Reclaiming the Covenant on America's 250th (May 2026) "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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07/01 Links Pt2: Argentina’s Milei urges Latin American countries to join Isaac Accords; Boy George brands Roger Waters a ‘sanctimonious t***’

From Ian:

Argentina’s Milei urges Latin American countries to join Isaac Accords

Argentinian President Javier Milei on Monday urged Latin American countries to strengthen continental ties with Israel as envisioned in the Isaac Accords, saying it was an existential fight between good and evil.

The public exhortation comes amid a historic shift across Latin America, where a right-wing wave is reshaping alliances with the United States and Israel, and the political left is on the retreat.

“From my first day as president, I made the firm decision to place Argentina on the right side of history,” said Milei during an address to Latin American legislators affiliated with the Israel Allies Foundation. “What this region decides in the coming years will determine which side of history we end up on,” he continued.

The Isaac Accords, launched by Milei and Israeli leaders in Jerusalem earlier this year, are a diplomatic initiative aimed at improving relations between Israel and Latin American countries, modeled on the 2020 Abraham Accords brokered by the United States between Israel and four Arab nations.

He called the accords “a moral, diplomatic and cultural coalition” against antisemitism, terrorism and drug trafficking.

In a forceful and impassioned keynote address to the pro-Israel lawmakers from over a dozen countries, the Argentine leader argued that evil can only be defeated by organized good.

“Words without actions are just words, and the region already had too many speeches and too much inaction,” he said in a characteristically unsubtle rebuke of decades of anti-Israel policies on the continent by predominantly left-wing governments. “We have prayed, lit candles and held hands, and all the while terrorism continued.”

The unabashed philo-semite broke with decades of Argentinian foreign policy by both left-wing and right-wing Argentinian governments since entering office in December 2023 by forming an unprecedented alliance with both the United States and Israel, emerging as one of the most outspoken wartime supporters of the Jewish state.

The Argentine leader became the first non-Jewish head of state to receive the Genesis Prize last year in recognition of his staunch support for Israel. The Genesis Prize Foundation established American Friends of Isaac Accords to operationalize the vision of the Accords through public and private diplomacy.

‘Latin America can take a clear stand,” he said. “Neutrality is not an option just as it never has been in existential struggles.”

Abdul-Hussain: My journey from anti-Israel to pro-Israel is a model for the Arab world

At a launch event for his book, The Arab Case for Israel, on Tuesday, writer and researcher Hussain Abdul-Hussain argued that the path to peace in the Middle East begins with Arabs reexamining long-held assumptions about Israel, drawing on his own transformation from believing anti-Israel propaganda to an advocate for the Jewish state.

Speaking days after Israel and Lebanon signed a U.S.-brokered framework agreement, Abdul-Hussain said the Lebanese people can follow in his footsteps, as the country remains divided between a faction that promotes the Iranian narrative that Israel “only understands the language of war and force,” and those seeking to reclaim the country’s sovereignty.

“The Lebanese have had their share of sacrifices for big powers. This started back in the 1960s. The Lebanese will stand up for sovereignty and independence. They’ve been thrown under the bus time and time again and this makes them always wary and they try not to stick their neck out… this is what’s keeping them back,” Abdul-Hussain said.

The invitation-only event for the book, published in February, was hosted by Antoun Sehnaoui, businessman and philanthropist, and Morgan Ortagus, former deputy U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, at the Mark Hotel on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

Abdul-Hussain, a Shia Muslim raised in Iraq and Lebanon where he said he was taught to hate Israel and the West, is now a Washington-based research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. The Arab Case for Israel chronicles his unusual journey away from holding anti-Israel views, detailing his argument for why all Arabs should do the same.

“My story is the story of an average person who was told something and when he dug up the story it turned out to be something else,” Abdul-Hussain told some 50 attendees — a mix of Jews, Christians and Muslims — at the event. “I was taught, like every other kid was taught, that Israel must disappear. And I believed it.”

“Over the course of my life, events pushed me to try to learn about Israel.” The biggest turning point, he recalled, was in 2000 while he was working as a reporter in Lebanon. “We covered the Israeli military pulling out of the south and that day I drove my car to the border, which at the time was just a flimsy wire so I could see Israelis,” said Abdul-Hussain. “I became really curious. At the time, I could get on the FM radio of the Israeli channels. If you were in Lebanon at the time, your sources on Israel were [staunch Israel critics] Edward Said, [Noam] Chomsky and [Norman] Finkelstein.”

After learning Hebrew, Abdul-Hussain said he “discovered everything they taught us about Jews — that they were scheming to kill every Arab Lebanese kid — was not true.

Boy George brands Roger Waters a ‘sanctimonious t***’ after Pink Floyd founder’s anti-Israel remarks

Boy George has called Roger Waters a “sanctimonious t***” after the Pink Floyd co-founder predicted that the state of Israel will soon cease to exist.

In a pre-recorded video address to an ‘antizionist’ event in Ireland this week, Waters said: “I think the awful experiment that is the state of Israel is coming to an end,” prompting cheers from the audience.

He added: “And there will be equal rights, civil, human, every kind of right for all our brothers and sisters living between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea.”

A clip of the remarks was shared online.

In the replies, Culture Club singer Boy George responded to another video of Waters appearing on Piers Morgan Uncensored, writing: “Sanctimonious t***” Not you Piers!”

On Monday, Boy George responded to a July 2024 clip of Waters on Uncensored in which the singer-songwriter, who left the band in 1985, denied there was evidence that rapes had occurred during the October 7 attacks.

Boy George wrote: “Go to the Nova Exhibition you t***!”

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07/01 Links Pt1: Israel has outfoxed Iran (and Donald Trump); Terrorists who kill Jews are not ‘journalists’; NY woman arrested for funding PIJ, wished 'every day was Oct 7'

From Ian:

My cousin gave the world the word ‘genocide’ – don’t let anyone profit from it

My family’s name was never meant to become a marketing asset. Yet that is what it has become, and the only people who can stop it are reading this with the power to act and, so far, the patience to wait.

Raphael Lemkin was my cousin. He was a Polish Jewish lawyer who watched the Nazis murder dozens of our relatives and, instead of surrendering to despair, sat down and invented a word for the crime he could not otherwise name. He called it genocide. He spent the rest of his short life, often alone and often broke, persuading the world to turn that word into law.

The 1948 Genocide Convention exists because one man refused to let the slaughter of his people pass without a name. He died in 1959 with almost nothing to his own name except the one he had given to history.

That name now appears on the letterhead of an organization my family never authorized: the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention. We did not consent. We were not asked. And for years we have watched it raise money, build a public profile, and borrow the moral authority of a man it never knew, using a name that belongs to his family and to his victims.

I am a lawyer. I do not make accusations lightly, and I am not asking anyone to take my word for what the law requires. I am asking the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to enforce its own.

This week, together with the European Jewish Association, my family sent 100 letters to the officials who can act. We wrote to Governor Josh Shapiro. We wrote to Attorney-General Dave Sunday, whose Charitable Trusts and Organizations Section has plain authority to investigate a charity that solicits donations under a name it has no right to use.

We wrote to the leaders of the General Assembly, to Pennsylvania’s congressional delegation, to the Justice Department’s task force on antisemitism, and to the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt organizations. Every letter was verified. Every recipient was named. We did the work so that no one could claim the case was too complicated to understand.

It is not complicated. Pennsylvania law protects donors from charities that mislead them. It protects names from commercial exploitation. A complaint is already pending before the Department of State (Case 26-98-001879). A statement signed by 112 scholars is on file.

Jake Wallis Simons: Israel has outfoxed Iran (and Donald Trump)

Two weeks ago, it looked like Iran had placed the American-Israeli alliance in checkmate. With a flourish of a felt-tip pen, Donald Trump signed a “memorandum of understanding” that freed Tehran from American hostilities, promised it hundreds of billions of dollars, and allowed the nuclear can to be kicked down the road.

As if that was not enough, Israel was obliged to cease operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon, tying its own hands while the jihadist group rained rockets and drones upon its northern towns.

This remarkable Iranian military and diplomatic coup, aided greatly by the Islamist regimes in Doha and Ankara, drove a wedge between Washington and Jerusalem, making Trump look like a weakling and a fool.

The beauty of the deal – from the Iranian point of view – was that the more the president criticised his ally Benjamin Netanyahu, berating him as “f---ing crazy” and having “no f---ing judgment”, the weaker and more foolish he looked.

Well, Trump may still look weak and foolish, but the same cannot be said of Netanyahu. With an election approaching in September or October, he is not just fighting for the lives of his people but his political life, too; that is just the sort of thing that has always focused his mind. Israel has responded with a military and diplomatic coup of its own, in the form of a deal with Lebanon.

For the first time in 44 years, Jerusalem and Beirut have agreed to a framework that recognises each other’s sovereignty and commits to dismantling Hezbollah along Israel’s northern border.

Reportedly, the process begins with the establishment of two pilot zones in which the Lebanese army will relieve Israeli troops and take over the repression of the jihadists. Importantly, the IDF is permitted to remain in Lebanon for as long as it takes to neutralise the Hezbollah threat.

The proof of the falafel, of course, is in the hummus. As difficult as this pact was to confirm, its implementation will be immeasurably more so. Hezbollah has long been the most glittering jewel in Iran’s poisonous crown; Tehran will not allow it to go down without a dreadful fight.

NY woman arrested for funding PIJ, wished 'every day was October 7'

A 37-year-old New York woman named Catherine Beth Washburn was arrested and charged with attempting to provide funding to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the US Justice Department stated on Tuesday.

According to the criminal complaint, Washburn is a leader of the Direct Action Movement for Palestinian Liberation (DAMPL), an extremist organization founded after the October 7 massacre. DAMPL has committed acts of sabotage and property destruction in support of Palestine and against entities that it associates with Israel, rejecting the idea of peaceful protest.

Washburn herself celebrated acts of terror against Israel and praised the bravery of PIJ terrorists. In messages recovered by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) in February and March, Washburn and an individual who identified himself as a PIJ member and who claimed to have engaged in PIJ attacks against Israel discussed purported PIJ attacks on Israel, weapons, and ammunition.

An image shared by the DOJ also appears to show Washburn posing with grenades and a Hamas flag in the background.

Washburn also told the individual that she hated Jews “very much” and that she wished Israel “would disappear.”

“I wish every day were October 7th,” Washburn stated in one message.

“I feel excited every time I see news of the killing of an occupation soldier,” read another. Washburn sends money to terror organizations

According to the DOJ, Washburn made approximately 80 cryptocurrency transfers totaling about $30,116 to an account used by the alleged PIJ member.

“As alleged in the complaint, this defendant, fueled by her self-described hate of Israel and Jewish people, went to great lengths to attempt to provide financial support to terrorist organizations that use violence to further their agendas, including the Palestine Islamic Jihad,” said US Attorney Michael DiGiacomo for the Western District of New York.

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