When a poorly-argued anti-Israel academic paper wins a top prize, what does that say about academia?

In 2021, University of Memphis undergraduate Balqiss Alattiyat wrote a philosophy paper accusing Israel of “cultural genocide” and “cultural gaslighting.”

It reads less like a serious piece of research than the sort of polemic one sees all the time in anti-Israel activist circles. Israel is simply assumed to be a white-supremacist settler-colonial state. Palestinians are simply assumed to be the Indigenous people and Zionists the colonizers. Jewish claims of indigeneity are dismissed because most Jews are assumed to have originated in Europe and nowhere earlier. Judaism supposedly cannot support a claim to nationhood because people can convert to it. Discrimination against non-Ashkenazi Jews from the 1950s somehow becomes evidence that Zionism itself is white supremacist.

From those assumptions, the paper builds an increasingly elaborate catalog of accusations. Israelis enjoying hummus becomes evidence of cultural theft. Replacing recent Arab place names with their original Biblical place names become “memoricide.” Tatreez and the Jaffa orange become evidence of appropriation. The falsely reported Ethiopian contraception controversy becomes evidence of a eugenics project. “Cultural genocide” is treated as an established fact rather than a highly contested concept, and “cultural gaslighting,” a framework published only the previous year, is imported almost wholesale and applied to Israel. The paper eventually announces, without serious citations or evidence, that Palestinian cultural genocide proceeds in four stages: “Memoricide, Renaming, Appropriation, and a move to Innocence.”

Even the most basic premise is never really established. The author speaks repeatedly of Israel erasing a preexisting “Palestinian culture,” but never seriously establishes what constituted a distinct Palestinian national culture before Zionism, when it emerged as such, or how it differed from the broader Arab, Levantine, Ottoman, Muslim, Christian, village and urban cultures of the area. A quick search for the term "Palestinian Culture" in the years before 1948 indicate pre-Biblical Levantine culture, biblical and post-biblical Jewish culture, and Zionist Jewish culture in Ottoman and British Mandate times. 

That does not mean there is no such thing as Palestinian culture today. Judging from a Google Ngram, the terms "Palestinian Culture" is used far more after it has suffered this supposed "genocide" than beforehand. It appears to exist as a result of the "nakba," not a casualty of it. 

There's lots more: A serious treatment of “cultural genocide” would at least acknowledge that the concept has been debated since Raphael Lemkin and was not incorporated as a separate crime into the final Genocide Convention. A serious paper arguing that Israel systematically erases the cultural past would have to address abundant counterexamples of Israeli archaeologists excavating, documenting and preserving Islamic, Christian, Byzantine, Ottoman and other non-Jewish remains. A serious philosophy paper might even ask what evidence would falsify the theory. This one does not.

Normally, I wouldn't waste my time writing about a dopey undergraduate paper that does not fulfill basic requirements for argumentation or fact-checking. But this is not an ordinary paper written by an overeager student. 

This paper was awarded first place for the 2021 Seshat Prize , given out by the University of Memphis Philosophy Department'.

The prize rules say that their first criterion was “Credible Case”: “Does the essay make a substantive and persuasive case for its conclusions?” The second was “Validity”: “Do the arguments and evidence support the essay’s conclusions?”

Those are exactly the areas where this paper is weakest.

There was something about this poorly argued paper that made the philosophy department's referees think it was the best undergraduate philosophy paper of the year. 

I have no idea what the other submissions looked like. I do not know who the referees were, and I certainly cannot prove that they preferred this essay because it attacked Israel. Perhaps they did; perhaps they did not.

But that is not necessary to make the result disturbing.

I recently wrote about the epistemic environment that has been built around Israel: an environment in which accusations that once would have required proof increasingly arrive as established background knowledge. Israel is “settler colonial.” Israel practices “apartheid.” Palestinians are undergoing “ethnic cleansing.” Israel is committing “genocide.” Each conclusion then becomes a premise for the next argument. As I put it there, “The verdict came first.”

The result is a kind of intellectual ratchet. A weak accusation gets repeated by academics or NGOs. It acquires institutional authority. The next scholar cites that authority rather than reexamining the original claim. Eventually a proposition that was never well established no longer feels like a proposition at all. It becomes part of the scenery.

This undergraduate paper looks like a miniature version of exactly that process.

The author does not really have to prove that Zionism is settler colonialism, that Israel is white supremacist, that Palestinians possess an ancient and clearly bounded national culture, or that Israel is engaged in cultural genocide. Those propositions largely arrive pre-approved. The entire department lives in an epistemic environment where these are not arguments, but accepted facts. The intellectual work begins using them as obviously true.

Then everything starts reinforcing everything else. Israel is a settler-colonial state, so Israeli actions are interpreted through settler-colonial theory. Those actions are labeled appropriation, memoricide or cultural gaslighting. Their appearance then becomes evidence that Israel is carrying out settler-colonial cultural genocide.

The conclusion is buried in the premises.

Which raises a possibility that is perhaps more troubling than saying that the referees are anti-Israel. Maybe the assumptions that built the paper's argument were not recognized as assumptions to begin with, but as facts. 

If “Israel is settler colonial,” “Zionism is white supremacy” and “Palestinians are victims of cultural genocide” have become accepted parts of the academic environment, then a student no longer needs to establish them. She can simply start there, pile theory on top, add citations and receive credit for the sophistication of the structure she has built.

At that point, academic quality control stops doing its job. The framework determines which claims require evidence and which ones can simply be assumed.

We have seen versions of this dynamic repeatedly used in academic, media, NGO and political environments.  Definitions stretch, contrary evidence disappears, assertions become citations, citations become consensus, and consensus becomes the premise for the next accusation.

A philosophy department explicitly said it would reward a paper for making a credible case and for demonstrating that its arguments and evidence support its conclusions.

Then it gave first prize to a paper whose most important conclusions rest on assumptions it never seriously establishes.

The undergraduate is not really the story. The university is. 

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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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09/14 Links Pt2: Macklemore dropped from Ed Sheeran’s U.S. tour; Court Holds North Korea Liable for Terror Support Behind October 7 Attack; The ‘anti-Semitic rot’ at the heart of the NHS

From Ian: Federal Court Holds North Korea Liable for Terror Support Behind October 7 Attack

On September 8, a federal court held Iran and North Korea jointly and severally liable to American plaintiffs over seven terrorist attacks, including Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s October 7, 2023 assault on Israel, in a ruling that details a largely overlooked North Korean role involving training, weapons and underground-warfare assistance.

In a memorandum opinion, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema granted default judgment on liability in a case brought by 47 U.S. nationals, including people killed or injured in seven terrorist attacks between 2019 and 2023 and immediate family members of the victims. The court concluded that the plaintiffs had established Iran and North Korea’s liability under the terrorism exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.

The October 7 portion of the ruling is particularly striking. Brinkema wrote that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad jointly carried out the attack that severely wounded American plaintiffs Bernadette and Nir Brauner. According to the court, Iran provided funds, weapons, recruitment assistance and incentive payments to operatives involved in the attack. North Korea, the opinion states, provided training to Hezbollah, Hamas and PIJ operatives involved in the attack, as well as weapons or weapon components and “tunnel-building assistance.”

The underlying complaint is even more explicit. It alleges that North Korea aided the October 7 attack by providing training to operatives from Hezbollah, Hamas and PIJ, supplying weapons including rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and providing assistance related to tunnel construction. Because Iran and North Korea did not answer the lawsuit, those allegations were uncontested. The court nevertheless found that the plaintiffs had presented an adequate legal and factual basis to establish liability and held the two governments jointly and severally liable for the plaintiffs’ injuries and deaths.

A Decades-Old North Korean Pipeline
North Korea’s ties to Middle Eastern militant movements predate Hamas itself, while its military relationship with Iran stretches back to the early 1980s.

The complaint, summarized by Brinkema, describes Pyongyang as Iran’s “most powerful nation-state partner” and traces decades of cooperation involving missile development, weapons, military training and assistance to Iran, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah.

The opinion recounts allegations that North Korean military personnel were dispatched to southern Lebanon in the early 2000s, where they used Pyongyang’s expertise to help develop underground military installations and an extensive network of tunnels. It also describes North Korean training provided to the IRGC and Hezbollah that allegedly flowed through Iran’s broader network of proxies.

That history has previously reached American courts. In a 2014 federal decision involving Hezbollah’s 2006 war against Israel, a U.S. district court found by “clear and convincing evidence” that North Korea had materially supported Hezbollah. The court identified weapons, military training and assistance constructing underground military infrastructure among the support supplied by Pyongyang.

A Congressional Research Service report similarly documented reports that North Korean trainers were sent to southern Lebanon to instruct Hezbollah personnel in constructing underground military facilities. The report also detailed longstanding North Korean weapons relationships with Iran and Syria and reported on the movement of North Korean arms believed to be destined for Hezbollah and Hamas.

Eugene Kontorovich: Houses of Worship Deserve Protection from Disruption

Many conservatives have a bad taste in their mouths from any mention of “buffer zone” laws because of their widespread use in restricting protests and counseling activities outside of abortion clinics. But buffer zone laws are uncontroversially in force to protect the sanctity of places like cemeteries and funerals.

Congress has, in fact, protected houses of worship since 1994, but only as a secondary provision of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, a statute to address a different problem and built around that problem’s assumptions. FACE reaches only force, threats of force, and physical obstruction — but not other kinds of conduct that can in practice disrupt or seriously interfere with religious services.

The free exercise of religion is a core First Amendment right. Thus, it is important to protect churches and synagogues with a free-standing statute. Because the Right to Worship Act protects against interference in religious exercise by private parties, it does not protect the constitutional right per se, which addresses governmental interference. But constitutional protection for worship does demonstrate its safeguarding to be a compelling government interest.

At the same time, it does not sweep nearly as far as abortion clinic access laws, some of which the Supreme Court has struck down on First Amendment grounds. For example, McCullen v. Coakley (2014) struck down a law that in effect barred any kind of speech, including one-on-one conversations within the buffer zone around a clinic. The Court found that while the state had a valid interest in “preventing harassment and intimidation,” a de facto no–speech zone swept too far. But that is exactly what the Right to Worship Act doesn’t do.

The federal bill only restricts particularly disruptive activities, which falls well within the constitutional allowance for time, place, and manner restrictions and is in line with McCullen. One person’s exercise of their rights cannot come at the expense of another — and thus the statute only “buffers” “conduct that meaningfully interferes with the ability of people to participate” in a scheduled religious service, or that “unreasonably hinders or deters” entrance.

It is also quite clear that many local authorities — like New York City’s mayor, who has cheered on synagogue demonstrations — will never enforce available local nuisance laws that could be used against such disturbances.

We recognize that disturbances around houses of worship are, in a sense, matters of local law and order which under a well-functioning system of federalism should not be within the purview of the federal government.

Yet 100 years of expansive Commerce Clause jurisprudence means that as a matter of current constitutional doctrine, it clearly is within federal power. The FACE Act, for example, lacks any statutory requirement connecting the conduct to interstate commerce, a gap the Supreme Court has yet to address.

The Right to Worship bill, by contrast, makes a “substantial effect on interstate commerce” an element of the offense — which means it can only be used in cases that truly do cross state lines. This language was borrowed from the Church Arson Prevention Act of 1996, not widely thought of as massive government overreach.

Thus, the Right to Worship Act doesn’t change the federalism landscape. Moreover, there is no need for conservatives to deny themselves, and themselves alone, the protections of existing constitutional law, while working to change it based on conservative principles.

At a time when religious values are under attack, it is more important than ever to safeguard the sanctuary itself. The Right to Worship Act is modest, bipartisan, and well within what the Constitution allows, at least as currently interpreted by the Supreme Court.

Man arrested for allegedly making Jew-hatred threats against Ben Shapiro

Korby Aaren Strube, 29, of Horton, Kan., was arrested in Florida for allegedly posting threats to kill political commentator Ben Shapiro, referencing the Daily Wire co-founder’s Jewish faith.

Strube was arrested on Sept. 12 and faces 23 counts related to written or electronic threats to kill or cause bodily harm, as well as two counts related to using a two-way communications device to facilitate a felony, according to court records and the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office.

According to an affidavit obtained by JNS from the Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller of Palm Beach County, Strube allegedly made threats against Shapiro in social media posts on July 31, Aug. 1 and Aug. 2. The posts said he would be “giving the world a boost by killing Ben Shapiro for being Jewish” and that he was “killing this stupid Jew,” according to the affidavit.

“He invoked antisemitic conspiratorial themes as justification for the intended killing, attributing violence to ‘semites,’ to ‘Tel Aviv’ and to ‘a foreign government,’” the affidavit stated.

The Aug. 1 and Aug. 2 posts also included countdowns of 52 and 51 days, respectively, to the intended killing. The countdown pointed to Sept. 21-22, the dates of Yom Kippur this year, according to the affidavit.

The investigation began Aug. 4 after a private security firm providing protection for Shapiro alerted authorities to the posts, according to the sheriff’s office. Investigators subsequently determined that Strube was behind the social media account from which the threats were posted. Shapiro told investigators that he believed the threats were motivated by his Jewish faith and wanted to pursue charges.

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09/14 Links Pt1: Former hostages condemn 'NAZA' filmmakers; UNRWA Claims Reform While Terrorism and Incitement Persist; The Palestinians' Dead-End Choice: Fatah or Hamas

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: This year, Israel must move from its October 7 reckoning to national repair

The multitude of Israeli security challenges
What is the strategy for Gaza? How will Israel prevent another October 7 rather than merely promise that it will? How will it confront Iran and its proxies without allowing conflict to substitute for policy? How will it rebuild communities, care for the wounded, and support those who have carried the burden of military service?

The same test applies at home. A government cannot demand sacrifice from reservists and their families while indefinitely avoiding a fair arrangement for military and national service. It cannot claim to defend democracy abroad while treating independent institutions as domestic enemies. Nor can it restore public trust while accountability remains something demanded only of political opponents.

Israel’s international standing must also form part of this reckoning.

This week, British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband accused extremist settlers of carrying out ethnic cleansing in parts of the West Bank and announced measures against settlement trade. Israel has every right to challenge accusations it considers false, selective or inflammatory. It should continue to expose the double standards, historical distortions and antisemitism that too often accompany international criticism.

But indignation is not a foreign policy. This newspaper warned in 2024 that Israel could not afford to become a pariah state and that the belief that it could simply fight alone was dangerous.

That warning has only grown more urgent. Israel cannot control the prejudices of its enemies, but it can control its own policies, the conduct of its officials, and whether extremist violence is confronted or tolerated.

When allies believe Israel will not restrain lawlessness in the West Bank, they begin making distinctions and imposing consequences. Condemning their response does not remove the underlying danger. Israel must enforce the law, protect Palestinians from violence and prevent ideological extremists from determining the country’s diplomatic future.

Hope does not rely on one camp alone
There is reason for hope in the new year, but it does not rest solely on the victory of one camp or the defeat of another. It rests on Israel’s continuing ability to correct course through democratic means.

Voters should demand concrete answers: an independent October 7 inquiry, a fair sharing of national obligations, clear political objectives for Israel’s military power, protection of democratic institutions and a serious plan to repair relations with allies and Jewish communities abroad.

The shofar is not a sound of self-congratulation. It calls us to wake up from slumber.

Israel’s strength has never depended on pretending that it makes no mistakes. It depends on recognizing danger, adapting to it, and refusing to lose the moral and democratic purpose for which the country exists.

This year must be the year in which reckoning finally becomes repair.

Aviva Klompas: Palestinians deserve the dignity of accountability

If Palestinians are entitled to sovereignty, as the Carney government believes they are, then Palestinian leaders should be responsible for building the institutions that make sovereignty viable.

They should be responsible for whether their people vote, whether public money rewards violence, whether schools prepare children for co-existence and whether their political culture treats negotiation and compromise as diplomacy or betrayal.

None of this absolves Israel of responsibility for its actions. It is held accountable for the decisions of its elected government because that is what it means to treat a nation as a sovereign political actor. Palestinians deserve the same standard.

Successful states are built on institutions, accountability, the rule of law and political leadership capable and willing to make difficult choices. Foreign governments cannot manufacture a viable Palestinian state by removing the expectations placed on the people who would govern it.

This is what makes Canada’s decision so baffling. Ottawa granted one of the Palestinians’ most important diplomatic objectives before the reforms it deemed essential to statehood had been adopted. The message was that Palestinian leaders could receive the benefits of statehood before demonstrating their willingness or ability to assume its responsibilities.

The international community speaks about Palestinian dignity and self-determination. But dignity is inseparable from agency. Treating Palestinians with dignity means recognizing they are not victims of forces beyond their control, but a people whose leaders make choices about war and peace, democracy and authoritarianism, education and incitement, corruption and good governance.

The refusal to hold those leaders accountable has real consequences. A Palestinian born when Mahmoud Abbas was elected president could now be old enough to have children without ever having voted in a presidential election. That is not an Israeli policy. It is a Palestinian political failure.

Nor should Hamas’s continued armed presence in Gaza be treated as an unfortunate fact that everyone else must accommodate. Its leaders made choices, its members committed atrocities and its continued brutality carries consequences for the society in which it operates.

A serious commitment to Palestinian statehood requires more accountability, not less.

Canada says it wants Palestinians to exercise the right of self-determination. Then it should treat them as a people capable of exercising it, with all the responsibilities that entails. Palestinians do not need the international community to expect less of them. They need it to take their aspirations seriously enough to expect more.

Bassam Tawil: The Palestinians' Dead-End Choice: Fatah or Hamas

Both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority [PA] owe the Palestinian people – as well as Israelis and other victims – countless apologies. They owe apologies for corruption and mismanagement. They owe apologies for failing to build transparent and accountable institutions. They owe apologies for suppressing dissent and freedom of expression and for persecuting political opponents, journalists, human rights activists, and critics. They owe apologies for repeatedly rejecting compromises and peace initiatives and for policies that have contributed to decades of Israeli and Palestinian bloodshed. They owe apologies for failing to use international assistance to build a functioning economy and institutions that serve ordinary Palestinians. They owe their people an honest explanation for why Palestinians remain divided between two rival governments and without a functioning democratic political system.

The timing of this latest dispute is particularly significant.

Hamas has decided to participate [in the upcoming PA elections on November 28]... if true, such an arrangement would allow Hamas to re-enter Palestinian politics through the back door.

So, instead of changing its goals – brutally ruling Gaza and destroying Israel – Hamas will simply change its "name, structure and framework"?

Changing the label does not change the organization. A Hamas-affiliated candidate does not cease to be affiliated with Hamas simply because the word "Hamas" does not appear next to his name on the ballot.

Such a maneuver would turn the election into a political fiction: Hamas would be permitted to obtain parliamentary representation while avoiding the political consequences of openly running as Hamas. Allowing Hamas— in disguise or not – to run in the election would also legitimize the terrorist group without requiring it fundamentally to change.

That would be a serious mistake. The Palestinians have already seen what happens when Hamas acquires political power.

Hamas is bad, but who said that the PA is any better?

Palestinians have experienced corruption, political repression, and an absence of meaningful political renewal.

The problem is: What if one of the negotiating parties decides never to come to the table? Is the other party just supposed to hold everything in abeyance – unsettled forever – in case one day the other party might change its mind?

The Palestinians need a genuine third way – not merely another faction with a different name. They need leaders who are prepared to challenge the entrenched political culture of Fatah and Hamas. They need leaders who believe that the Palestinian national interest is more important than factional interests. They need leaders willing to confront corruption, reject authoritarianism, protect freedom of expression, build functioning institutions, and end the glorification of violence.

Above all, Palestinians need leaders courageous enough to tell their people an uncomfortable truth: there can be no genuine progress so long as the political choice remains confined to Fatah and Hamas, and that the primary objective of both groups remains the obliteration of Israel.

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Hezbollah caught in a lie - by HRW

Human Rights Watch issued one of its perfunctory reports against Israel's enemies that appear designed purely to be evidence for them to say "See? we are evenhanded! We only attack Israel 95% of the time!"

This report is about Hezbollah using cluster munitions against Israeli communities. They gather evidence, photos and interviews in Metula. The report itself is an article, it isn't like the extensive 45-page PDF HRW issued the same day accusing Israel of "inhumanity" for using white phosphorus.

But one part of the cluster munition piece is interesting:

Human Rights Watch researchers visited Metula in May and confirmed the use of cluster munitions, analyzed the impact sites, and interviewed four witnesses. Hezbollah claimed responsibility on social media for rocket attacks against Metula on March 4 and 15, but in response to a Human Rights Watch request for comment, denied using or even possessing cluster munitions. 

They deny even possessing them??

When a terror group is caught in a lie like that, why does anyone give it any credence again? But the rules are different with those who want to destroy Israel: each lie is just a data point, unrelated to the hundreds of other data points that prove the pattern.

HRW just treats it as a standard denial and doesn't press the point. 

Hezbollah's post on March 4 had an additional lie claiming Metula was a military target:

...The mujahideen of the Islamic Resistance targeted, at 01:20 at dawn today, Wednesday, 04/03/2026, a gathering of the Israeli enemy army forces at the Metula site, with a missile salvo.

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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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09/13 Links: The lie of ‘Naza’ and the truth of ‘Fauda’; UK urged to ban Doctors Without Borders over ‘terror links’; Bin Laden wanted to attack UK and Israel years before 9/11

From Ian:

The Gaza casualty figures the West was too frightened to question

It is particularly revealing that Hamas and PIJ have now begun publishing names of their own dead fighters. Those obituaries provide information which was largely unavailable during the war. In several cases, they have effectively contradicted the original classification of the dead by international media and monitoring organisations.

The response should not be to conclude that every dead Palestinian journalist was a terrorist, or that every Palestinian doctor was secretly a militant. That would be very wrong. The proper conclusion is that every casualty database requires scrutiny.

There is another uncomfortable possibility that Western commentators have been reluctant to contemplate: Hamas and PIJ may have understood perfectly well the extraordinary political and emotional power of civilian status in the Western information environment.

A dead journalist generates headlines, as does a dead doctor. A dead paramedic produces photographs of ambulances, uniforms and bloodied medical equipment. A dead Hamas fighter produces none of these things.

If militant organisations deliberately blurred those categories, they were exploiting precisely the protections that democratic societies have painstakingly established for civilians and humanitarian workers, and that would be a particularly cynical form of information warfare.

But there is an equally important warning for Israel. The discovery of genuine Hamas or PIJ members among journalists and medical personnel does not give the Israeli military a licence to regard every journalist, doctor or paramedic as a terrorist. Nor does it eliminate Israel’s obligation to establish, before an attack where feasible, that a legitimate military target actually exists.

Indeed, recent events demonstrate why that distinction matters. An investigation published this week into the 2024 killing of World Central Kitchen workers has raised serious questions about Israeli targeting practices and the use of guilt by association.

Similarly, the Israeli military has recently opened criminal investigations into the deaths of five-year-old Hind Rajab and 15 Palestinian paramedics, after previously denying or disputing aspects of what happened.

So there are two truths which ought to be capable of existing simultaneously. Hamas and PIJ may have exploited civilian professions for military and propaganda purposes, and Israel can still be responsible for unlawful or reckless attacks against genuine civilians.

The refusal to acknowledge the first truth because it complicates the second is propaganda. The refusal to acknowledge the second because it complicates the first is propaganda too. What is most troubling is the intellectual laziness of the Western debate.

For years, journalists and politicians have demanded that Israel substantiate allegations about Hamas operating from civilian infrastructure. That demand is legitimate, but the same standard should now be applied in the opposite direction.

When an individual appears in hospital photographs wearing medical clothing and subsequently appears in militant imagery carrying a weapon, journalists should investigate, and when the evidence does not stand up, that should be reported too.

That is what journalism is supposed to mean.

The greatest danger is not discovering that Hamas sometimes lied about its dead, it is in discovering that Western media organisations were so invested in a particular leftist narrative that they stopped asking whether it was true.

Gaza has produced enough suffering without adding another casualty to the list: the credibility of journalism itself.

New York Times’ Gaza war coverage was clearly biased against Israel, damning study reveals

The New York Times’ coverage of the first months of the war in Gaza displayed a clear bias against Israel by downplaying the country’s casualties while minimizing Hamas’ role in sustaining the conflict, a new study found.

A review of the Times’ 1,559 articles published between Oct. 7, 2023, and June 7, 2024, showed that the Times often omitted deaths sustained by the Jewish military while looking the other way on ongoing Palestinian violence once the war began after Hamas terrorists’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

Edieal Pinker of the Yale School of Management, who published his findings in the Studies in Conflict & Terrorism academic journal, said the Times’ coverage was clearly skewed against Israel.

“Drawing on a corpus of 1,559 news articles I document a dominant narrative consistent with a framing that assigns near-exclusive agency and responsibility to Israel while diminishing Hamas’s role in sustaining the conflict,” Pinker wrote.

“It describes Hamas’s October 7 attack followed by Israeli military violence and mounting Palestinian casualties, while largely omitting Israeli casualties post-October 7, Hamas fighter casualties, and post-October 7 Palestinian violence.

“Personal accounts of Palestinian suffering appear two out of every three days, while comparable accounts of Israeli suffering rarely appear,” he said.

A total of 437 Israeli soldiers have been killed since the Jewish state began its offensive in Gaza, with dozens of police officers and civilians also killed and injured in terror attacks throughout the war, according to Israeli officials.

Pinker argued that the Times’ coverage ultimately portrayed Israel as the “sole aggressor” in the conflict while Palestinians were depicted as “passive victims.”

Mahmood urged to ban Doctors Without Borders over ‘terror links’

Shabana Mahmood is being urged to proscribe Doctors Without Borders (MSF) over its staff’s alleged links to terrorist groups.

UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) has written to the Home Office, Charity Commission and Fundraising Regulator demanding that it investigate alleged ties between Doctors Without Borders and Palestinian terror groups.

The pro-Israel lobbying group is calling on Ms Mahmood, the Home Secretary, to ban the charity in a manner akin to Labour’s proscription of Palestine Action.

Palestine Action was banned by the Government last year after officials claimed that serious criminal damage it had inflicted met the threshold for proscription under the Terrorism Act. The move made membership of, or support for, the group a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

A report produced by UKLFI, seen by The Telegraph, describes the alleged connections between MSF employees and terrorists, including the late Fadi Jihad Mohammed al-Wadiya, a Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ) militant.

Wadiya, a physiotherapist who was employed by MSF between 2018-22 and then again from Oct 7, 2023, was killed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza City on June 25, 2024, in an attack condemned by the charity.

Doctors Without Borders initially denied Wadiya’s involvement with the terrorist group, but on Feb 24 this year the PIJ published a poster naming him as a “martyr commander” and identifying him as “deputy head of its military manufacturing unit”.

Only then did Doctors Without Borders, who still have Wadiya listed as an employee on their website, edit their post about him to say: “On 24 February 2026, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) publicly stated that Fadi Al Wadiya had been a member of the group.

“MSF had no indication that Fadi Al Wadiya might have been involved in military activity of any kind prior to his killing by the Israeli Forces.

“If the Israeli authorities had any reliable information about Fadi’s involvement in military activity, they never shared it with MSF either prior to his killing or when we reached out immediately after he was killed to ask for clarifications around the circumstances of his death.

“We would never knowingly employ people engaging in military activity. Any employee who engages in military activity would pose a danger to our staff and patients.”

The report also raises concerns about Nasser Hamdi Abdelatif Al Shalfouh, an MSF driver who is accused by Israel of being a sniper for the Hamas Jabaliya battalion.

Doctors Without Borders has never addressed allegations of Mr Shalfouh’s involvement with the proscribed organisation.

In 2023, MSF UK raised £11.3m, and ring-fenced around £1m for projects in the Palestinian territories. In 2024, this amount was increased to £2.7m, according to research by UKLFI.

UKLFI claims that despite these sizeable donations, appropriate safeguarding measures are not in place to minimise the risk that money raised by Britons could be used to benefit people associated with proscribed groups.

A UKLFI spokesman said: “British donors giving money to MSF are entitled to expect the highest possible standards of vetting and due diligence, particularly where substantial sums are being transferred into territory controlled by Hamas.

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09/11 Links Pt2: Israel celebrates first Rosh Hashanah in three years without hostages in Gaza; New boycott of West Bank Jews is based on lies; Hamas planned Berlin-Vienna attacks for Oct. 7 anniversary

From Ian:

Israel celebrates first Rosh Hashanah in three years without hostages in Gaza

Israeli Jews ushered in Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, at sunset on Friday, the first in three years without any hostages in Gaza or major fighting in the Strip or elsewhere, though conflicts on several fronts remain on a low boil, and the military was on alert in case of escalation in the war with Iran.

“Last Rosh Hashanah eve, we asked for a better year to come. But before any other requests, there was one simple, clear request above all: that all of our hostages would come home,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a video published to his personal X account.

It was shortly after the Jewish New Year in 2025 that the US-brokered ceasefire deal secured the return home of the last 20 living hostages whom the Hamas terror group abducted in its October 7, 2023, invasion of Israel, and held captive in the Strip.

Netanyahu, with uplifting music in the background, surveyed Israel’s military accomplishments over the last year, declaring: “Do you know another nation that fights on seven fronts and wins on all of them?” – though the claim was sure to come under scrutiny, as Israel has not secured the promised “total victory” on its major fronts in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran.

Netanyahu’s boast also comes as Israel heads into an election next month, with the prime minister’s role in the failures of October 7 a key issue.

On Thursday, it was reported that Israel was preparing to counter the possibility of Iranian ballistic missile fire, as the Islamic Republic’s persistent attacks against Jordan and the success of the US economic blockade against Iran were both seen to point toward a potential escalation.

However, there was no concrete warning or specific plot uncovered ahead of the holiday.

Bruce Pearl: New boycott of West Bank Jews is based on lies

Much of the reporting relies on a United Nations database treated as a running scoreboard of settler crimes.

A 2025 study by Israeli security expert Gabi Siboni compared the UN’s count of roughly 1,800 settler-related incidents with Israeli law enforcement’s numbers for the same period.

Police opened 967 investigations; 61 led to indictments.

The Kohelet Policy Forum, examining an earlier version of the UN data, found it included confrontations with Israeli security forces and events involving no violence at all.

We saw the same rush to judgment last year when Jews were accused of torching a 5th-century church in the Christian village of Taybeh.

There was a fire nearby, but the church wasn’t touched. Israeli investigators found no damage, while video showed young Jewish men from a neighboring farm running toward the flames with firefighting equipment.

The fire was real, but the story built on top of it wasn’t.

So, yes, condemn violence and hooliganism. Arrest the perpetrators. Prosecute them.

But don’t turn the crimes of a few into an indictment of hundreds of thousands of Jews while treating vastly more numerous Palestinian attacks against those Jews as background noise.

False narratives have consequences.

Britain says its new policy isn’t a boycott of Israel, only of Jews and businesses in Judea and Samaria. So Jews can live and do business in certain places but not in others.

We’ve seen that in the past. That’s called a ghetto.

Florida Rep. Randy Fine has already warned that British companies complying with such a boycott could themselves face exclusion under Florida’s anti-boycott law.

Other states and the federal government should follow suit.

Europe has a long and ugly history of deciding where Jews may live and with whom people may do business.

Before Britain and its neighbors head down that road again, they ought to check both their own history and their facts.

American lawmakers ought to make them.

Hamas planned Berlin-Vienna attacks for Oct. 7 anniversary, indictment shows

Hamas planned coordinated terrorist attacks in Berlin and Vienna to mark the second anniversary of the Oct. 7 massacre in Israel, according to a 214-page indictment filed by Germany’s federal prosecutor.

The attacks were to take place simultaneously or in close succession around Oct. 7, 2025, targeting Israeli and Jewish interests in the two European capitals, according to the indictment, obtained by WELT, which — like POLITICO — is part of the Axel Springer Global Network.

The plot was supported by an international weapons-procurement network that moved pistols, an automatic rifle and hundreds of rounds of ammunition through Denmark, Germany and Austria.

Federal prosecutors said last year that they had arrested men linked to the Palestinian militant group who were suspected of planning attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets in Germany. The indictment, which has not been made public, reveals that Vienna was also an intended target — and that the attacks in the two capitals were to be coordinated. The principal targets included Israeli diplomats, Jewish community centers and pro-Israel demonstrations.

Seven men have been charged in connection with the plot and remain in pretrial detention, according to the indictment. One of the accused was working as a confidential informant for Germany’s domestic intelligence agency. The files show that the informant continued reporting to his intelligence handler while allegedly failing to disclose the full extent of his own involvement in obtaining ammunition for the group.

The indictment portrays the plot as part of a broader shift in Hamas’ operations in Europe. Intelligence assessments cited in the filing say plans existed even before the Oct. 7, 2023 attack to establish and train operational cells on the continent, using Turkey as a base and directing attacks remotely from abroad.

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09/11 Links Pt1: What 9/11 taught us about courage, unity and the price of freedom; If 9/11 happened today; Douglas Murray & Dan Senor; 25 Years After 9/11

From Ian:

John Ondrasik: What 9/11 taught us about courage, unity and the price of freedom

Twenty-five years after 9/11, America finds itself in another battle — this one for the soul of our nation and, more broadly, for the future of Western civilization. Remembering 9/11: How educators teach the tragedy 25 years later Video

The threats are not identical to those we faced in 2001. But they are real. Radical Islamism remains a global threat, while antisemitism and anti-American extremism increasingly find expression across the ideological spectrum. Ideas once confined to society’s fringes now travel instantly, and with little consequence, through universities, political movements and social media. The enemy is in the building, and time is not on our side.

That is why "Never Forget" cannot become merely a slogan printed on a bumper sticker or repeated once every September.

It is an obligation. It is our obligation.

We have a duty to teach our children what happened on September 11, 2001: about the evil fanatics who attacked us, why they attacked us, and the carnage of what unchecked extremism can produce.

But "Never Forget" means something more.

It means remembering the best of us.

It means telling our children about the firefighters who climbed stairwells while everyone else was running down. The police officers, paramedics and ordinary citizens who ran toward collapsing infernos to save people they had never met. The passengers of Flight 93 who understood what was happening and, knowing the probable cost, fought back.

They represent the best of humanity.

Twenty-five years later, their courage should still challenge and inspire us.

Their sacrifice should remind us that America is not sustained merely by institutions, elections or slogans. It survives because generation after generation chooses to defend the principles that make the country worth defending.

Memory fades. History becomes distant. Tuesdays come and go.

But some Tuesdays must never be forgotten.

May the memory of those we lost — and the example of the heroes of September 11, 2001 — give us the strength, courage and fortitude to fight for America every day, especially Tuesdays, for the next 250 years.

Let’s Roll…

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: What Mohamed Atta Was Trying to Tell Us

I began this essay with Mohamed Atta in a Hamburg apartment, calmly writing instructions for his burial while living inside one of the richest and freest societies in the world. That image matters because it strips away the comforting explanation the West preferred: that beneath the theological language there must always lie a more familiar material grievance waiting to be negotiated, subsidized, or therapeutically addressed.

Twenty-five years later, the more uncomfortable truth is that the West has become much better at finding, capturing, or killing men like Atta, but still hesitates to confront the milieu he emerged from: the institutions, networks, doctrines, funding streams, and civilizational ambitions that shape him long before he appears on a watchlist.

Civilizational resilience is not a vague confidence that democracies always muddle through. It is the hard capacity of a people to see its vulnerabilities clearly, repair them in time, and deny its enemies the use of its virtues as weapons. To do that, it is important for us to acknowledge that our virtues are real, and uniquely our own—so much so that millions of men have fought and died over centuries to make them real and widely shared. We did not fight those battles because all cultures are the same, or all values are equal. Rather, our ancestors, real and imagined, sacrificed on a civilization-wide scale, so that men and women of all races and backgrounds could think and live freely, according to the dictates of one’s own conscience. Those who share our foundational values belong among us; those who deny the primacy of those values have every right to pursue their own versions of happiness elsewhere.

It is high time that our elites understand that the primacy of the West is not an accidental gift of fate, nor was it largely unjust. Injustice is a feature of all societies and cultures. The West is unique because of its regard for the individual conscience and its ability to correct its mistakes. It is frankly insane to demand that the West recognize the right of our enemies to destroy and replace the civilization that we built according to the values of the Reformation and the Enlightenment with the values of other cultures distinguished by centuries of stagnation and decay. No such right of replacement exists in any society or culture.

To deny the radical and positive importance of Western culture to the human inheritance is more than a form of historical and individual blindness; it is a death wish that we can no longer afford to indulge. Tocqueville wrote that the greatness of America lay in her ability to repair her faults, not in being more enlightened than other nations, and that is still the right standard by which to judge the republic at 250. The question now is no longer whether America can kill terrorists faster than they regenerate. A resilient civilization would redesign its protections so that free information, migration rules, and associational liberty function as intended, to shelter citizens rather than adversaries. It would rebuild formative institutions, repair its leadership class, and recover enough constitutional confidence to resist civilizational subversion without abandoning liberty itself. It would also build a wall against people who do not share our culture and indeed actively wish to destroy it.

If America and Europe can still do that, 9/11/2026 will be remembered as the moment they chose survival with clarity. If they cannot, Mohamed Atta’s will and the quarter-century that followed will stand as evidence that a civilization can know its enemies, kill their foot soldiers, send mighty armies halfway around the world, and still fail to save itself.

If 9/11 happened today

Osama bin Laden himself would be reframed with remarkable speed. In 2001 he was correctly understood as the operational and ideological leader of the Islamist global insurgency that declared war on the United States and its allies, celebrating the slaughter of civilians and rooting its programme in a coherent reading of Islamic texts and history. Who knows – his image may even be held high by Australian celebrities or emblazoned on our iconic monuments. Elites, academia, politicians and activist networks would insist on ‘context’. So perhaps bin Laden’s oldest son, Hamza, was right when he said, ‘We are all Osama.’

Osama would be presented as a complex, charismatic figure shaped by Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, American support for the mujahedin, Saudi politics and legitimate grievances against the West. Mainstream politicians would still formally condemn the attacks, yet the surrounding conversation would soften the edges: ‘Bin Laden was wrong, but he had a point.’ Replaying the videos of his statements or the celebrations that followed 9/11 might risk ‘stigmatising’ communities and could see demands by our e-Safety Commissioner for further crackdowns on what we can say and who can say it.

One reason 9/11 today would be turned upside down is a deep strategic failure to understand the enemy. As retired US Marine Corps General Jim Mattis explains in Call Sign Chaos, anyone who has studied history knows that the enemy always moves against your perceived weakness. One of ours is allowing those who hate our way of life to migrate to our country believing eventually they will love us.

One of the least-known yet most strategically influential al-Qaeda figures was Abu Musab al-Suri, who was arrested in 2005 in Pakistan. No other individual did more to transform al-Qaeda’s strategy into a globalised umbrella. He saw how jihad could become mainstreamed into many aspects of Western society – not just physical terrorism, but merged with leftist grievances and victim-based struggles now highly visible in Western cities. Al-Suri recognised the opportunity for mass mobilisation. He saw the Palestinian intifada as the prototype, scaled up to reach the home of the American invaders and their infidel allies from every race and place. Al-Suri was a revolutionary mastermind.

Sadly this revolutionary movement will not be tamed by riding the four horses of weakness: apology, appeasement, acquiescence and acceptance. Nor will it be understood through conventional Western thinking and DEI workshops run by earnest facilitators who fear the consequences of offending others with realism. As explained by Richard Belfield in Terminate with Extreme Prejudice, the 12th-century commander Saladin found when he threatened the Ismaili Assassins that they welcomed violence. Their letter replied: ‘We have read the gist and details of your letter and taken note of its threats against us with words and deeds, and by God it is astonishing to find a fly buzzing in an elephant’s ear and a gnat biting statues. Others before you have said these things and we destroyed them and none could help them…. You know the outward aspect of our affairs and the quality of our men, what they can accomplish in an instant and how they seek the intimacy of death…. Prepare means for disaster… for I will defeat you from within your own ranks and take vengeance against you at your own place and you will be as one who encompasses his own destruction.’ This is just as we see it today.

The eerie and evil manipulation by the Islamist global insurgency is the implied threat of further Bondi-style attacks if we do not accept their demands. Yet if this trajectory continues, future generations will inherit a West that has already conceded the decisive terrain – its own population, its own language and its right to name the enemy.

The price of continued denial is not theoretical. It is the slow, irreversible loss of a commitment, and a diminishing courage to fight for something greater than ourselves that is the bright light of Western civilisation.

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Shana Tova U'Metuka! An 1859 newspaper "hallucination" of a false Rosh Hashana custom

From the Buffalo Courier Express, October 1, 1859 ·Page 3:

I cannot corroborate any custom of decorating a synagogue with flowers or garlands on Rosh Hashanah. 

It appears that the writer mixes up Rosh Hashanah with Shavuot, which has such a custom. If there was such a custom among Spanish and Portuguese Jews in the West Indies, I cannot find any record of it. 

Apparently, it is not only modern AI that hallucinates. 

Anyway, wishing you all a sweet and happy New Year, a year of joy, security, unity and victory over our enemies.  

I will not be blogging until Monday. 

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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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09/10 Links Pt2: We are still failing the moral test of 9/11; How ‘Made in Israel’ is powering European security; Error-Riddled Harvard Law School Report Demonizes Israel as ‘Inhumane’

From Ian:

How ‘Made in Israel’ is powering European security

On the last day of August, a group of Greek military officials arrived in Tel Aviv, led by Major General Ioannis Bouras, to sign what would become one of the largest defense export deals in both countries’ histories.

The €3 billion agreement — called Achilles Shield — will provide a suite of Israeli tech to protect Greece against a wide range of threats, including missiles, aircraft and drones.

The deal is the latest installment in a growing relationship between European governments and the Israeli defense sector. As the continent races to rearm, it has largely relied on the United States for guns, tanks and aircraft. For many of the less-visible systems now at the center of modern security — sensors, interceptors, surveillance technology — governments are increasingly turning to Israel.

That dependence is deepening even as Europe’s political relationship with Israel grows more strained. The wars in Gaza and Lebanon have fueled tensions between the European Union and Israel, even as the bloc’s governments have become increasingly dependent on the country for critical systems — but those disputes have done little to slow cooperation between Israel’s defense sector and individual countries.

“Looking right now on our relations with the EU, yes, there are challenges,” said Avi Nir-Feldklein, Israel’s ambassador to the bloc. “But when you look at what we’re doing on the bilateral level with EU member states, the constructive, practical cooperation is intensive and flourishing.”

Israel’s advantage begins with its military. Young engineers serve in elite intelligence and cyber units, where they work on real-world security threats. After leaving the Israel Defense Forces, many join defense companies or launch security start-ups. The result is a conveyor belt between the battlefield and commercial product development. Multicopter drones hang on display at the Elbit exhibition stand at the 2026 ILA Berlin Air Show on June 11, 2026. | Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Israel’s top three defense companies — Israel Aerospace Industries, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Elbit Systems — are either state-owned or maintain deep institutional links to the Israeli defense establishment, with senior military figures embedded in their governance structures.

“Israel is an excellent example of how defense or private companies are so well integrated,” said Kaupo Rosin, the head of Estonia’s foreign intelligence service. “And that makes them very capable.”

Israel’s broader security sector has also become a magnet for investment: Its firms attract nearly a quarter of global cyber investment, according to the Israel Innovation Authority 2025 High-Tech Report, with Google’s $32 billion purchase of Israeli start-up Wiz this year underscoring the sector’s attractiveness.

Hiba Tareef, spokesperson for Israel’s Mission to the EU and NATO, said the appeal lay in the close integration of government, academia and the private sector — and in technology shaped by real-world operations.

“By leveraging our real-time operational experience, we enable our partners to shift from a reactive to a proactive posture, significantly bolstering our collective resilience and defense,” she said. Deepening dependence

A complete picture of Israel’s role in European defense is difficult to establish. Many contracts are undisclosed on national-security grounds, and some Israeli companies operate through European subsidiaries. But dozens of entries in the European tender database reviewed by POLITICO show Israeli firms becoming go-to suppliers for military communications, surveillance and electronic warfare.

Many of the public contracts — including the €3 billion Greek deal — were awarded directly to Israeli firms without opening the work to competing bids as is preferred by EU law, according to the tender notices.

European procurement rules treat competition as the default, even in defense and security. Direct awards are allowed only in narrow circumstances — for instance, in cases of genuine technical exclusivity or narrowly defined national-security concerns.

London bookshop that sold Mein Kampf stocks book calling Jews ‘evil’ and promoting Protocols conspiracy

The central London bookshop at the centre of controversy last month after selling copies of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf has now also been found to be selling a book that accuses Jews of possessing “evil qualities” and reproduces excerpts from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the JC can reveal.

Aafaq Bookstore in Westminster has been found to be selling copies of So That We Do Not Forget: Jewish Crimes - Zionist Resentment, an Arabic-language book dedicated to “every martyr whose blood was shed on the land of Palestine, Jerusalem, and Al Aqsa”.

The book’s first chapter describes Jews as a “people who committed great sins and possess evil qualities, thus deserving the wrath of [God]. God Almighty has mentioned their characteristics and actions in the Holy Quran, and how He punished them, yet they did not learn a lesson. Therefore, we must know their history so that we may be wary of them… God’s victory for the believers over the Jews is inevitable.”

The latest discovery comes just weeks after the bookshop, which is close to West Central London Synagogue, was found to be selling Arabic-language copies of Mein Kampf, with Nazi Germany’s dictator depicted performing a Nazi salute on the front cover.

The store subsequently removed the book from its shelves, saying its presence “should not be interpreted as an endorsement of its content or ideology”. It added that the bookshop rejects “Nazi ideology, antisemitism, racism and all forms of hatred”.

The Community Security Trust (CST) said the latest find merits an investigation by police and Westminster Council.

The book describes “Jewish Zionism” as the “embodiment of the worst characteristics and morals of the Jews, reflected in policies and protocols that demonstrate the evil and deviation that Jews believe toward [non-Jews], with audacity and extreme arrogance, using control of money and economic, and military power.”

It continues: “Today, we are in urgent need of studying the history of the Jews and Zionism, and the history of what happened in Palestine, and what confrontations we have experienced with the Zionist entity in Palestine, in order to rebuild awareness among the nation regarding hidden conspiracies and ongoing measures aimed at implementing the project of establishing a Jewish Zionist state from the Nile to the Euphrates.”

The reference to the Nile and the Euphrates reflects a conspiracy theory that the Zionist movement seeks to establish a single state stretching from Egypt’s Nile to the Euphrates, which runs through Iraq, Syria and Turkey.

The book calls for increased vigilance “across the generations” in confronting Zionism.

It says “Zionist hatreds” is directed “on the colonisation of Palestine, [through] the theft of the land from its owners, the killing, displacement, and extermination of its people to replace it with an expansionist, borderless Jewish Zionist state”.

The book also presents the notorious antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as fact. Produced in the Russian Empire in the early 20th century, the fabricated text was created to propagate the false claim that Jews were conspiring to achieve world domination by controlling governments, economies and society.

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09/10 Links Pt1: The ethnic cleansers of Whitehall; Shame on Ed Miliband, appeaser of Islamists; Europe Joins the Boycott Israel Crowd; Natasha Hausdorff: The Israeli settlements lie

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The ethnic cleansers of Whitehall

The madness that has engulfed so much of the West since the Oct. 7, 2023 pogrom in Israel has now consumed Britain.

Anxious to reset government policy to turn public outrage at politicians into adoration of the Labour Party, the United Kingdom’s rookie prime minister, Andy Burnham, decided to reset relations with the State of Israel by sending them into the deep freeze.

Declaring that an economic boycott of the Israeli “settlements” would enable Britain to “stand up for its values,” Burnham has instead defined the values of the Labour Party as the promotion of lies, defamation and Jew-hate.

Announcing the boycott to a chilling chorus of cheering members of parliament, the foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, proceeded to misstate international law, defame Israeli Jews living in the disputed “West Bank” territories of Judea and Samaria as committing “rampant settler terrorism” and “ethnic cleansing,” and libel Israel as causing the “totally avoidable humanitarian catastrophe” in the Gaza Strip.

This was a tissue of wicked falsehoods and distortions. Neither the Israeli settlements nor the “occupation” are illegal under international law, whatever the kangaroo court run by the systemically anti-Israel United Nations may say.

It was obviously an outrageous inversion of reality to blame Israel for Gaza’s humanitarian catastrophe rather than Hamas, which used civilians as cannon fodder while Israel went to unprecedented lengths to supply them with aid that Hamas then stole.

As for “settler violence,” this is the latest libel to delegitimize Israel as a prelude to its destruction. There is a problem of unprovoked Jewish violence against Arabs in the “West Bank” territories of Judea and Samaria, but this is committed by at most a few hundred delinquent and nihilistic youths who hate both Arabs and the State of Israel.

They are a tiny minority of the half million Jews living in these areas, the vast majority of whom are law-abiding, upstanding people.

Far from being “settler terrorists,” as Miliband claimed, they’re under constant attack by local Arabs. Rocks are thrown at Israelis in their cars; Jewish farmers are having their fields torched and their flocks stolen; Jewish shepherds are finding their goats have been poisoned to death.

In the past few days, a Jewish “settler” was stabbed on a farm and seriously wounded. Over the years, dozens of Israelis in these areas have been murdered.

None of this is reported in Britain. The government’s response to this institutionalized terrorism against Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria is to trash their good name and then subject them all to collective punishment.

The charge that they are perpetrating ethnic cleansing of the Arabs is grotesque. In fact, it’s the Burnham government that’s demanding the ethnic cleansing of every Jew from their own land to create a fantasy state of Palestine that wouldn’t have a single Jew in it.

These sanctions will do no significant damage to Israel’s economy. But they’re certainly not “just symbolic,” as Britain told the Trump administration to head off any possible blowback.

Allister Heath: Shame on Ed Miliband, appeaser of Islamists

Britain's Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband's decision to sanction Israel, the Middle East's only true democracy, the West's praetorian guard against jihad, all to win votes from Islamist sympathizers at next month's by-election, will go down in infamy.

Miliband is engaging in grotesque victim-blaming. He is making British Jews feel even less safe as they head into Rosh Hashanah. As we commemorate the 25th anniversary of 9/11, he is confirming that Britain's answer to Islamism is appeasement. Our Foreign Secretary has sent a clear message to our enemies, to those who seek to destroy our way of life: violence works, threats work, relentless propaganda and blood libels work, delegitimization works, the weaponizing and perversion of international law works.

The double-standards are monstrous: Labour continued to court Qatar this week, a dictatorship that hosts Hamas. Britain remains friends with Turkey, a NATO member which, in addition to occupying northern Cyprus, has seized vast amounts of northern Syria, shifting people into these occupied territories and turning the local Kurds into a minority. Why do so few care about these settlements? Is it because no Jews are involved?

Britain recognizes and effusively supports a Palestinian "state" that fuels hate, operates a pay-for-slay rewards for terror scheme, and bars Jews from buying land (Arabs who sell face a death sentence). Yet it is imperfect but freedom-loving Israel that is being turned into a pariah. Britain's sanctions are being welcomed as a first step towards ultimate victory by the anti-Zionist and boycott movements seeking the destruction of Israel and its replacement by an Arab-dominated state.

Miliband assumes the barrier to peace is Israeli intransigence, while in fact it has always been Palestinian rejectionism: its elites have always chosen war over accepting a Jewish polity and a two-state solution. They define the Palestinian project as thwarting the Jewish one, rather than working towards coexistence. They have rejected every single partition plan since the Peel Commission's in 1937; Israel has accepted many.

Amb. Alan Baker: Britain's Misguided and Ill-Informed Betrayal of Israel

How far does the British government intend to go to damage Britain's traditional interests and its relationship with Israel in order to placate and appease a group of extreme politicians and an increasingly powerful lobby of Islamist influencers intent on taking Britain's government and its policies hostage?

Ed Miliband's rehashing of the "two-state solution" cliche displays amazing ignorance for a foreign secretary. Anyone familiar with the Middle East is fully aware that the term "two-state solution" has never been agreed to in the agreements between the Palestinians and Israel. It was never part of the 1993-5 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinians.

To the contrary, the parties agreed that the permanent status of the territories would be determined only by agreement between them in permanent status negotiations. There was certainly no intention that any third party, whether this be the UN, the EU, or even the British government, would prejudge and predetermine the outcome of the negotiations and dictate a political outcome.

Milliband's reference to Israel's tender for construction in the 12-sq.-km. E1 area between Jerusalem and the town of Ma'ale Adumim as an "unacceptable and destructive act" appears to ignore that this tiny piece of land is located in what was agreed between the Palestinians and Israel in the Oslo Accords to be Area C of the West Bank territory, under Israel's complete jurisdiction and control.

According to the Accords, Israel has the right and prerogative to conduct planning, zoning and construction in this area, in the same manner in which the Palestinians, pursuant to the Accords, are entitled to do in the Areas A and B, under their own control and jurisdiction.

Stephen Daisley: Britain's Turn Against Israel Is No Accident

With the British government preparing sanctions against Israel, this is a victory for the pro-Palestinian lobby and their anti-Zionist worldview. The context is a highly effective (and handsomely funded) campaign since Oct. 7 to demonize Israel so thoroughly in the minds of Western populations that many formerly sympathetic to the Jewish state would turned skeptical, if not hostile.

Much of it is the result of a propaganda war funded by Qatar and Iran, Islamic states suspiciously eager to separate Western nations from a country known for its advanced defense technology, unparalleled intelligence, and expertise in identifying and breaking up Islamist terror cells. Ask yourself why Islamic regimes are so keen for you to feel frustration towards Israel.

While the UK government's Palestine pivot is largely motivated by domestic concerns, the campaign to bring it about was orchestrated overseas with the aim of driving a wedge between Israel and the West. Amplify genuine civilian suffering in Gaza, mix in a whole lot of falsehoods, distortions and propaganda, and Britons across the board would soon shed whatever sympathy they felt for Israel after Oct. 7.

Palestine is simply not a big issue for the bulk of British voters. But there was a demographic with insatiable appetites for a diet of Jewish perfidy in Muslim lands, as the results of the 2024 election showed. Labour reckons that Muslim voters would be reassured by the sight of the party distancing itself from the Jewish boogeyman.

It appreciates that taking up a pitchfork against Israel could well exacerbate hostility and violence towards visibly Jewish Britons, their businesses and their places of worship, but it figures it can always bung in an extra few quid to the fund that gives Jewish children self-defense training for their walk to and from school, because Jewish children in Britain need to be trained in self-defense just to go to school.

All this is terrible. Terrible for Britain's trade with a nation that produces cutting-edge technology and life-extending medicines. Terrible for Britain's Jews who will have to watch over their shoulders even more than usual when they go to pray, pick up their children from school, or walk around in Jewish-populated areas. Terrible for any and all Britons who preferred it when the focus of British politics was Britain and elections won based on factors other than ethno-religious kinship.

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Antarctic Chabad Shaliach Dreading Six-Month ‘Day’ Tefillin Shift (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook  and  Substack pages.

McMurdo Station, Ross Island, September 10 – The Lubavitch Hasidic emissary assigned to the southernmost continent voiced anxiety at his impending predicament: the sun is about to stop setting for months, and with it any decent argument that his tefillin stand is closed.

“I still have night,” said Rabbi Schneur Zalman Polaroff, 34, standing beside a folding table he has not yet been forced to occupy for six months straight. “Night is doing a lot of work for me. In a few weeks night gets fired, and I am supposed to be glad, because a little light expels much darkness. That is easy to say in Crown Heights. Here the light is about to expel my shift change.”

Polaroff arrived for the coming summer season with two pairs of tefillin, laminated cards, hand warmers, and the standard briefing that a shaliach goes to the ends of the earth because that is where the sparks fell. Antarctica, he was told, is a serious end. Humanity must facilitate Dirah b’tachtonim, God's "abode in the lower realms," and Antarctica is as low as realms get. The Creator wants a dwelling in the physical world - and this is as physical as the world gets without becoming a mineral.

“I believe it,” Polaroff said. “I do. The farthest place has the highest sparks. I also believe a glaciologist at what used to be 3 a.m. is going to see a table and think, now is when we wrap.”

McMurdo’s population is already swelling in anticipation of summer. A few of the new arrivals are Jewish. A few more will be Jewish for the length of a strap. Polaroff can quote the part about tefillin binding mind and heart so the animal soul sits down for a minute. He is less prepared for the part where the sun refuses to sit down at all.

He recalled a moment last season when he tried to close. A contractor pointed at the sky. “You cannot tell a man the stand is closed when the creation itself is still open,” Polaroff said. “I sounded like a maamar. He still wanted the tefillin.”

There will be no dusk in which to wrap up and stow away the boxes. Shabbat will arrive by calendar alert and a fight about sunset at 77 degrees south. Headquarters was encouraging: a shaliach is a shaliach, "Ufaratzta" means spread forth, and you do not close on light.

His wife wrote from Crown Heights: “Remember, darkness is only so the light can be revealed.” He has the message above his bunk, which he will miss as much as he misses his wife and seven children.

“That is the whole teaching,” he said. “Elevate the sparks. Reveal the light. I came here for the darkness. The darkness was the job. Soon the job becomes six months of day, and every spark on this continent is going to walk past my table because it can see the table. I am going to miss night. Night never asked me to put tefillin on a man who thought it was weather equipment. Night at least let the sparks sleep."

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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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