Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, January 23, 2026

01/23 Links Pt2: Don’t Legitimize ‘Anti-Zionism.’ Defeat It; The infantile Israelophobia of Ms Rachel; Shul Runnings: Israeli bobsleigh team makes Olympic history

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Don’t Legitimize ‘Anti-Zionism.’ Defeat It

I admit I winced when I read that last line. I had just been reading the Guardian’s coverage of Australia’s efforts to crack down on incitement. Initially the bill, set forth by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Labor Party, was reportedly far too restrictive of plain speech to the point of being unsalvageable. But Liberal Party MPs were able to “gut” the overreach and pare down the bill.

Still, the Guardian made sure to quote the Jewish Council of Australia, a progressive group called upon to As-a-Jew the issue into oblivion. The legislation, they said, represented “an attempt to slander and intimidate hundreds of 1000s of Australians who have been protesting against Israel’s genocide and egregious human rights abuses.”

Of course, a publication like the Guardian would quote an organization like this, despite anti-Israel lunacy being a distinct minority opinion among Jews. It’s useful to them. But besides the political tokenization angle, it’s also a reminder that the Jewish community contains within it organizations whose entire purpose appears to be to enable state suppression of Jewish rights and Jewish security.

The Jewish Council of Australia, it turns out, was founded in the spring of 2024—meaning it was launched after the October 7 attacks in order to join the global anti-Israel pile-on.

The Jewish community has an obligation to battle, not coddle, the anti-Zionism within its ranks. It has the same obligation to mount a full-scale fight against anti-Zionism in mainstream discourse. The movement of anti-Jewish assault shutting down Jewish shops and restaurants calls its worldview anti-Zionism. So the proper response is clear: That which calls itself anti-Zionism must be defeated.

How the Internet Fell for a Supposed Condemnation of Christian Zionism

Despite the unanswered questions, or perhaps because of them, a fight soon erupted. Evangelical Christian Zionists defended their theology. “It’s hard for me to understand why every one who takes on the moniker ‘Christian’ would not also be a Zionist,” wrote US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee.

Meanwhile, Catholic critics of Israel promoted the statement on X, declaring that the top Catholic figure in the Holy Land, Latin patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa, had definitively rejected Christian Zionism.

Unfortunately for them, he did nothing of the sort.

Pizzaballa is a fluent Hebrew speaker who is well regarded by Jewish leaders. Though he is not afraid to speak out about pressures on Christians in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank, he is not looking to make headlines attacking the Jewish state or Zionism.

What’s more, breaking with its usual practice, the Latin Patriarchate did not publish the Christian Zionism statement or share it on social media. Pizzaballa’s name does not appear on the statement. Neither does his signature.

Custodia Terrae Sancte, a Catholic body that oversees Christian sites in the Holy Land, removed the statement from its website as well.

Even more tellingly, when asked if the Patriarchate supports the statement, an official from the Patriarchate said only, “No comment.”

So how and why did a statement go out that ostensibly speaks in the Latin Patriarch’s name?

Many assume that since Pizzaballa is part of the Patriarchs and Heads of Churches group, he must have personally signed off on the statement. But the group doesn’t work in such an orderly fashion. The group’s secretariat sends out a draft, and says that if there are no objections by a certain time—last week it was 5 p.m.—then it will assume that all the church leaders agree with the statement.

Needless to say, if a patriarch is traveling that day, the first time he sees a message may be when it is published.

The main impetus for the statement, according to sources from two churches, is a fight led by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate against a group of Israeli Christians calling themselves the Israeli Christian Voice and the Eagles of Christ Movement.

The movement leader, Ihab Shilyan, was a career officer in the IDF and actively encourages young Christians to enlist as well. He was recently welcomed at Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s annual reception for Christian leaders, and has met multiple times with Huckabee.

It is no coincidence that last Saturday’s statement was posted on the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate website and shared with local journalists by a figure closely affiliated with the Greek Orthodox Church. The leader of Israeli Christian Voice boasted in response to the statement: “It appears that my meetings with senior and influential figures … have placed significant pressure on vested interests.”

What some touted as a clear rejection of Christian Zionism by the top Catholic official in the Holy Land was instead an episode in which one church rather disingenuously used a joint forum to drag other institutions into its fight. Far from expressing a unified Christian voice, the statement undermined the shaky trust between the historical churches in Jerusalem.

Why are the celebrities I used to love suddenly so anti, well… me?

So why have these stars all jumped on the bandwagon? “Different actor/ activists have different motivations,” says Jeremy. “Some are animated by prejudice against Jews (hi, Roger!), but fortunately I don’t think that’s many of them. And while it’s possible some performers are paid, others are terribly vulnerable to the anti-Zionism hate movement because, as an actor, you have to need to be “seen” and the publicity can help your career. Add to that the charge you get when the major news organisation asks you your opinions about world affairs, and anti-Zionism is positively addictive.”

For me, it’s the hypocrisy that grates. That old double standard of holding Israel (hence, Jews, and hence me) to a far higher standard than any other country or ethnicity. It’s been said many times before, but where are these performers on China, Sudan, North Korea, Iran?

The Iran case is particularly topical. Iranian stand-up comic Omid Djalili is – quite rightly – being feted by the mainstream press as a voice of the uprising in that country. Where were the corresponding Israeli voices in autumn 2023?

Of course, there are some pro-Israeli (hence, pro-Jewish, and pro-me) voices: Gal Gadot, Jerry Seinfeld, Pink, Jamie Lee Curtis – all of these have stood up in support. But all these actors are Jewish – or have Jewish heritage – and so it’s somehow less meaningful. There’s an irony in how Jews historically have always stood up for civil rights causes, but when the table are turned, no-one seems to stand up for us.

With hope in my heart, I started to Google. Tom Cruise? Nope, he supported his agent when she was sacked for anti-Israel commentary. Paul Mescal participated in the Cinema for Gaza auction, donating items to raise funds for Palestinian humanitarian aid. Brad Pitt is a producer on pro-Gaza film, The Voice of Hind Rajab.

There is, perhaps, a silver lining in the post. Jeremy feels there may be a backlash down the line. “Despite what Sam Goldwyn once said, there is such a thing as bad publicity,” he says. “I wouldn’t be surprised if some actors have done long-term damage to their careers and legacy as they cross the line between responsible empathy into antisemitism.”

That aside, there are signs of hope. Quentin Tarantino recently gave an interview where he declared he would "die a Zionist". And just today, I came across an X post of actress Sydney Sweeney posing with released hostages, Noa Argamani and Avinatan Or.

As a final word, we probably should remember those who have said nothing at all. There is, after all, no constitutional duty to proclaim ones political alignments. It’s a small field, but let’s keep our fingers crossed for Leonardo di Caprio, Zendaya, and Taylor Swift. As long as Taylor is (implicitly) on our team, we should be ok.

01/23 Links Pt1: Douglas Murray: Trump’s new Board of Peace is necessary because the UN has failed again and again; Adam Louis-Klein: Why anti-Zionism is the newest hate movement

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: Trump’s new Board of Peace is necessary because the UN has failed again and again

Over the years that the UN’s “peacekeeping force” was in southern Lebanon, the Iranian proxy terror group stockpiled tens of thousands of long- and short-range missiles. And promptly started another war.

When I was there, I saw the Hezbollah bases and tunnel entrances that had literally been created under the UN troops’ own eyes. The peacekeeping force’s bases and watchtowers had Hezbollah infrastructure mere yards from them. The UN’s “peacekeepers” had clearly said and done nothing.

The UN troops stationed in Lebanon when I was there were from Ireland and Sri Lanka. And as I said at the time to Post readers, find me an Irishman or Sri Lankan who is willing to lay down their lives in a confrontation with Hezbollah and I will try to find a bridge to sell you.

Of course they wouldn’t risk their lives. The average Irish or Sri Lankan soldier has zero interest in a confrontation with Hezbollah. So which troops would?

To date, the answer in the region each and every single time has been the same: Israel and America.

But why should young Israeli and American soldiers have to be solely responsible for stopping anti-Western terrorist groups in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and any number of other places? Why shouldn’t the other countries whose security is at stake from these ayatollah-funded terror groups also put their young people’s lives on the line?

Why shouldn’t Egypt — which used to control Gaza — have responsibility for security and be held to account for it? Why shouldn’t Qatar — which hosted and funded Hamas — now pay for the destruction it helped create?

The nervousness of some people about the “Board of Peace” centers on the fact that there are some distinctly shady actors who have been invited onto it. But if Trump can get these countries to actually pony up, it would be a very different matter.

Of course that will require a commitment of troops and funding that are not connected to terror. The Turkish and Qatari governments are too entwined with the region’s terror axis to be trusted with stationing troops. But they should be made to pay for it. And they and other countries can and should be made to help keep the peace in Gaza and help to rebuild it in other ways.

Through his recent interventions on the world stage, Trump has shown he is capable of knitting together — not tearing apart — this country’s coalitions. By the admission of Mark Rutte — the NATO secretary-general — at Davos, if it had not been for Trump, there is no way that European countries would have fulfilled their military spending commitments.

If it had not been for Trump, this country’s NATO allies would have continued to piggyback off American taxpayers and expected America to keep funding their security. By making some (often undiplomatic) threats to those allies, Trump has made them take their own security seriously again.

Could the same thing now happen in the Middle East?

By appointing himself chairman of the Peace Board, Trump has shown that he is committed to the peace plan that is in place. By inviting regional actors to join him, he has shown that for once, it will not be just Israel and America that are expected to police the Middle East.

But the main threats to Middle Eastern security remain the same. The terrorists still run the Islamic revolutionary government in Iran. The state of Qatar is still funding anti-Western propaganda and terrorist groups across the region. Even here at home in America.

But if anyone is in a position to tell them to cut it out and accept the new reality, Trump is in the position to do so.

If he succeeds, you can expect those howls of alarm to turn to cheers.

Jonathan Tobin: Trump’s end run around the old world order

Despite Trump’s promises, the Board of Peace and the team of supposedly apolitical technocrats working for it won’t ensure that the coastal enclave can be turned into something other than a Hamas stronghold and a platform for continuing the Palestinian war on Israel’s existence. That’s not just because the board will count among its members the leaders of Turkey and Qatar (and others who support Hamas), although that in itself is a deal-breaker when it comes to any kind of realistic settlement of the dispute.

Simply put, Hamas won’t disarm or give up control of the 47% of Gaza it still holds. And the International Stabilization Force that is supposed to police the Strip and ensure that the terrorists abide by the terms of the ceasefire agreement will be composed of soldiers from nations that have no intention of fighting Hamas terror operatives. The only way to do that is to give a green light to the Israel Defense Forces to finish the job. The gap between the reality of politics in Middle East and fantasies about rebuilding a peaceful Gaza that was also unveiled at Davos by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, remains vast.

Which means that the Board of Peace is likely to fail unless or until the war against Hamas resumes—something Trump hopes to avoid since it will puncture his claim to be a uniquely successful negotiator, even in a region marked by turmoil.

Smashing an obsolete and harmful establishment
Even if it doesn’t succeed, the board’s creation will provide the president with yet another tool to push aside the United Nations and marginalize the international foreign-policy establishment.

The chattering classes are deeply unhappy about what has transpired, as one can read in the various accounts of Davos published in The New York Times. They believe that Trump is undermining all they hold sacred. Yet it’s necessary to look beyond the issue of whether the president is playing nicely or by the rules of diplomacy, and offending the sensibilities of the self-important celebrities of Davos and the international bureaucrats associated with the United Nations.

Trump might not succeed on every issue, and he may not behave in a manner that engenders the affection or respect of the educated classes that look up to these institutions. But he is right about one thing, above all. The basic truth at the heart of all of his efforts to smash the postwar order is that the United Nations, as well as the Davos set, must be trashed and bypassed if the West is to be saved from the Marxist and Islamist foes that threaten it in the 21st century. America’s geostrategic enemies in China and Russia also depend heavily on preserving the existing international establishment.

In taking up this struggle, Trump is taking aim at institutions that are causing real harm and seeking to address the most important threats to America, Israel and the West. Rather than deride him as a buffoon or a vandal, he should be applauded for defying the suits in Davos and all they stand for.

Florida House adopts bill to ban use of West Bank term in official documents

The Florida House of Representatives has advanced a bill that seeks to recognize Judea and Samaria and prohibit the use of the term “West Bank” in official government materials.

Two almost identical bills, both of which are called the ‘Recognizing Judea and Samaria Act,’ have been introduced.

One, CS/HB 31, was introduced to the Florida House and sponsored by Debra Tendrich and Chase Tramont, and a second, SB 1106, is the Senate companion bill introduced by a senator (Ralph Massullo) to the Florida Senate.

In state legislatures (like Florida’s), it is common for the same policy idea to be filed in both chambers – one as a House bill and one as a Senate bill – as it gives the proposal more chances to pass and essentially expedites the process.

As such, the House and Senate versions were drafted to match so that if both pass their chambers, one text can be agreed on in conference committees or through amendments.

Both bills intend to amend legislation to refer to the region by the name Judea and Samaria and not “West Bank” in official materials. Such materials would include guidance, rules, documents, press releases, and the like.

The bill, if passed, will also prohibit money being spent to create official government materials with the term West Bank. It would come into effect on July 1, 2026.

What military options are there in Iran?

RealityCheck writes that there may be war as early as this weekend:

The carrier strike group U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln is expected to arrive “in theater” today or tomorrow.

U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to return from the Davos conference today (Friday), placing him in Washington in time for the weekend.

The biggest clue: two days ago, the United States significantly increased its deployment of aerial refueling aircraft in the region. Due to their high maintenance costs and vulnerability while on the ground, such aircraft are usually deployed only in the final days before a strike, making this an especially meaningful signal. Aerial refuters are not typically used for mere misdirection due to the aforementioned cost and vulnerability.

My question is, what can the US practically do to help the protesters? Trump is not going to engage in a long war. What can be done with surgical airstrikes?

This becomes complicated by timing. The protests have mostly ended because of the brutality of the crackdown. It is unclear if anything the US can do will re-energize the protesters.

I don't believe the people who say that an attack would put the Iranian people on the regime's side. They are not that shortsighted. But, again, what can be done?

There would be some gain by attacking the IRGC buildings, which would make it harder for them to crack down on protesters. But I see a lot of the possibilities as being indirect or psychological - try to get the IRGC members to defect or refuse to enforce directions, which may be why Iran imported outside enforcers.

I think that whatever is done should be done together with a major cyber attack to disrupt communications and coordination.

And of course the question is what happens if Israel gets dragged into this - or whether that is part ofthe plan so Israel can do dirty work that the US cannot, like assassinations.

Things are heating up.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

On January 17, 2026, the Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in Jerusalem issued a statement condemning Christian Zionism as a “damaging ideology” that misleads the faithful, harms Christian unity, and threatens the Christian presence in the Holy Land. They asserted that they alone represent Christians in matters of religious and communal life, and criticized Israeli and international officials for engaging with alternative Christian voices.

It is a fascinating statement. It does not give any theological arguments against Zionism. It is entirely about protecting turf and silencing any opinions of Israel besides their own.

And they hate Israel.

The churches behind this declaration – primarily Eastern and Oriental Orthodox bodies – have a long, unresolved history of antisemitism and theological hostility toward Jewish sovereignty. Unlike the Catholic Church after Vatican II, these institutions have never formally repudiated supersessionism, never acknowledged their role in fostering anti-Jewish theology, and never meaningfully reckoned with the consequences of that theology in the modern Middle East.

This is not ancient history. In 2009, Palestinian church leaders issued the Kairos Palestine document, a text that framed Israel’s existence as a sin, rebranded classical Christian anti-Judaism in the language of “liberation theology,” and provided theological cover for the global Christian campaign to isolate and delegitimize the Jewish state. The document was not a marginal curiosity – it became a touchstone for church-based anti-Israel activism worldwide.

In 2006, the spokesman for the Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem accused Israeli women of diabolically spreading AIDS among virtuous Palestinian men.

That is the moral and theological lineage from which this new statement emerges.

The January declaration repeatedly invokes “unity,” but unity here does not mean dialogue or mutual respect across Christian traditions. It means submission to their opinion.

The claim that the Jerusalem church leaders “alone represent the Churches and their flock” is not about doctrine; it is about control. Visiting Christians – many of them Evangelicals or post–Vatican II Catholics – are implicitly told that supporting Israel, or even engaging Israeli officials independently, constitutes interference and moral harm.

No one believes this standard would be accepted in reverse. If foreign church leaders visited Rome or the United States and were told to not spread their anti-Israel propaganda, they would not only refuse, but they would publicly flout the demand and complain that they were being censored.

So much for unity!

Christian Zionism is condemned in this statement not because it is heretical – no doctrinal argument is made – but because it rejects the Jerusalem churches’ political theology: a theology that treats Jewish sovereignty as illegitimate, Israel as a moral stain, and Christian witness as necessarily aligned against the Jewish state.

For many Christians, support for Israel is not political fashion but moral repentance – a conscious rejection of centuries of Christian antisemitism. That is precisely why it is threatening to institutions that have never abandoned replacement theology or their hostility to Jewish national self-determination.

Churches with a documented record of antisemitism and anti-Israel activism are now warning others about “damaging ideologies” and claiming exclusive moral authority in the land of Israel – without a word of self-reflection, repentance, or historical accountability.

This is not a call for unity. It is an attempt to enforce conformity with a hateful ideology while insulating past sins from scrutiny.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

01/22 Links Pt2: Australia marks day of mourning for Bondi terror attack victims; Anti-Semitism on the Couch; Syria was never one country, and Israel knows it

From Ian:

‘She’ll Be Right’ Is Not a Strategy: How Australia Sleepwalked into a Crisis of Antisemitism

Slogans matter in this context, not because words are inherently violence, but because words can be permission structures. They can normalize contempt. They can be recruitment tools. They can teach people which targets are legitimate. After October 7, Australians watched a pattern take hold: open hostility toward Jews, moral inversion, and rhetoric that did not aim for peace but for escalation. Chants such as “Globalize the intifada” were tolerated in protests and on campuses, even though they function as a call to export violence into Western streets. In the wake of subsequent events, commentators and security analysts have repeatedly warned that hate speech does not stay in the realm of slogans: it translates into intimidation, harassment, and sometimes violence, with the deliberate purpose of making communities afraid. Australia was warned in real time. Too many people chose to treat those warnings as exaggeration, or as an inconvenience to the national self-image.

Then it happened here.

On Sunday, 14 December 2025, Jews celebrating Chanukah at Bondi Beach were attacked. It is difficult to overstate what that meant. Bondi is iconic Australia, the postcard version of our national story. The target was not an abstraction. It was Jews gathered openly, publicly, celebrating their identity. The Commonwealth later recognised the national impact with formal reflection and commemoration. A royal commission was announced to examine the circumstances and failures around the massacre.

But here is the part that should make every decent Australian pause. A commission, however necessary, is not a substitute for cultural and civic accountability. And the most chilling detail is not only that this attack occurred, but that our public debate still struggled to speak plainly about the conditions that made it possible.

Because even after Bondi, the line kept moving. The instinct to rationalize, to relativize, to insist that “it’s complicated,” to reach for euphemisms rather than speak plainly, remained. If a society cannot draw a clear boundary after a mass casualty attack targeting Jews at a religious celebration, then the problem is not confusion. It is moral failure, and it is institutional cowardice.

This is where the “she’ll be right” mentality becomes dangerous. It tells decent people the adults will handle it, the institutions will self-correct, the extremists will burn out, the country will naturally return to balance. But extremists do not burn out when they are rewarded with attention, tolerance, and platform. They escalate when they learn there is no meaningful cost.

The media conversation, too often, has been trapped in a false binary: free speech versus censorship. That frame is convenient for those who want to avoid doing the difficult work of distinguishing legitimate political expression from incitement and harassment. It also obscures the cumulative reality. One sermon becomes a “controversy.” One rally becomes “passionate activism.” One antisemitic incident becomes “unfortunate.” One campus campaign becomes “student politics.” And then people act shocked when Jewish Australians say they no longer feel safe, when security becomes normalized around synagogues and schools, when families reassess what it means to live openly as Jews in a country that once felt uncomplicated.

Australia did not “suddenly” change. We were watching it change. We just did what we often do best.

We shrugged.

So where to from here? Australia has a choice. We can keep treating antisemitism as episodic, or we can confront it as systemic. That requires more than statements. It requires enforceable standards and the willingness to apply them consistently. It means drawing bright lines around incitement and vilification, and acting when those lines are crossed. It means refusing to launder hate through the language of “debate,” and being honest that dehumanization, intimidation, and calls to violence are not contributions to a pluralist society. It means treating Jewish safety as a national issue, not a niche concern, because Bondi was not only a Jewish tragedy. It was an Australian one.

And it means demanding institutional courage from universities, cultural institutions, and community leaders, rather than watching them outsource moral judgement to PR teams and crisis committees. A liberal democracy cannot function if it has no confidence in its own moral boundaries. Multiculturalism cannot survive if it becomes a cover for tolerating extremism. Social cohesion is not maintained by pretending the problem is smaller than it is. It is maintained by confronting what threatens it, early, clearly, and consistently.

Australians are proud of being laid-back. But there is a difference between being laid-back and being asleep.

“She’ll be right” might be fine when you are talking about a dented car door, a late train, or a rainy weekend. It is not fine when hatred is organizing, recruiting, preaching, marching, and escalating.

We got here because too many good people assumed someone else would stop it.

If Australia wants to be the country it says it is, then the next cultural reflex cannot be a shrug.

It must be resolve.

Anti-Semitism on the Couch

Congress has taken notice. Last December, the House Committee on Education and Workforce sent a letter to Debra Kawahara, the president of the APA. “The Committee is gravely concerned about antisemitism at the APA, which represents more than 172,000 researchers, clinical professionals, professors, and students across the country in the field of psychology,” wrote Chairman Tim Walberg (R-Mich). Walberg cited as evidence the letter from Psychologists Against Antisemitism and a new report from the Anti-Defamation League on professional organizations that identified the APA as an entity about which it had “major concerns” requiring “substantial action.”

Walberg’s committee requested all APA documents, communications, publications, programming materials, complaints, and actions related to anti-Semitism since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack. Upon review, it will then consider “whether potential legislative changes are needed.” The association’s millions in federal funding for training programs and contracts could be at risk.

This moment is fraught with paradox. It was Jews who pioneered psychotherapy and psychoanalysis (once called “the Jewish science” by Nazi critics but later resurrected by some admirers and practitioners, including Freud’s daughter, Anna). All but one of the early members of Freud’s inner circle of 13 were Jewish. The anti-Semitism waged against Austrian physicians had constrained their professional opportunities but left open the unexplored territory of the mind, regarded as a marginal area at the time. The original psychotherapy patients were mostly Jewish, too, reflecting the value placed by Jews on introspection, intellectual life, and the ethic of repair.

Surely, there remain therapists who are emotionally mature—they may even represent the majority of seasoned professionals. Trust has nonetheless been resoundingly damaged on several fronts: among colleagues in the field, among colleagues and their professional organizations, and between patients and therapists. Today, Jewish and Zionist individuals who seek psychological care must search carefully for an experienced therapist who, no matter his or her politics, will regard the patient, foremost, as a fellow human who is suffering.

New documentary depicts the lawsuit that humbled Henry Ford – and revved up US Jewry

After years of spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories in his Dearborn Independent newspaper, Henry Ford was finally called to account for it. In 1927, the billionaire American auto magnate, famed for the assembly line and the Model T, was sued for libel by Aaron Sapiro, a Jewish American lawyer and a cooperative farm organizer in the United States and Canada. The ensuing trial in a Detroit federal courthouse — and subsequent apology by Ford — had repercussions for the American Jewish community and its relations with wider society.

This drama is retold in a new documentary film, “Sapiro v. Ford: The Jew Who Sued Henry Ford.” Directed by New York-based Gaylen Ross and produced by Detroit native Carol King, the film made its world premiere at the Miami Jewish Film Festival on January 18, and is available locally to stream through the festival’s website. It was also screened on January 21 at the New York Jewish Film Festival, which will show it again on January 28. Additional upcoming screenings include the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival and the Boca International Jewish Film Festival.

“I think it’s an unknown story,” King said in a joint Zoom interview between the filmmakers and The Times of Israel. “People are curious. So many people have not heard of it. They know about Henry Ford, but they did not realize the extent of what happened — with the libel suit against him by Sapiro and the resultant apology.”

“Our goal,” she added, “was to really introduce people to this hero [Sapiro], a man who risked so much, because he believed so passionately in the cause.”

Beyond amplifying Sapiro, the film looks at the ever-present debate between balancing First Amendment protections for free speech with defending minority rights in America.

“We definitely support freedom of speech,” Ross said, while noting “the concern we have for when hate speech often turns to hate crime. That’s the difficulty of protecting rights and freedom of speech at the same time… and also protecting the vulnerable.”

The Miami festival is billed as the largest showcase of Jewish and Israeli films; this year’s lineup features over 100 selections. After Miami, “Sapiro v. Ford” makes its way to the New York Jewish Film Festival, then it’s back to Florida for the Palm Beach Jewish Film Festival. Its first three in-person screenings — one in Miami, and two in New York — have all sold out.

Within the film’s length of an hour and 10 minutes, the filmmakers have found creative ways to tell the story. Contemporaneous cartoons about the trial come to life through Garry Waller’s animation. Descendants of Canadian farmers whom Sapiro organized give perspectives on how he transformed their families’ lives for the better. And the post-trial euphoria among American Jews was humorously captured in a catchy 1927 Yiddish dialect song, “Since Henry Ford Apologized to Me,” which gets played twice. The filmmakers also used the well-known documentary approach of interviews with experts, including Brandeis University American Jewish history professor Jonathan Sarna and Indiana University adjunct law professor Victoria Saker Woeste, who is the author of “Henry Ford’s War on Jews and the Legal Battle Against Hate Speech.”

01/22 Links Pt1: The Genocide Slur Is Not Just for Jews; Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Islamism, Iran and the West’s descent into barbarism; Fanon and the Ayatollahs; The ICC is the theater of the absurd

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: A Caesar in the White House

Opinion today is divided between those asserting that Trump is saving the world and those asserting that Trump is destroying the world.

The reality is that he’s not a fascist, racist or madman; he is rather a self-styled emperor. He demands fealty, is driven by transactionalism, narcissism and revenge, and gets his way through the exercise of raw power.

This is hardly desirable. Still, Trump is motivated by love of America, Western civilization and the Jewish people. His political opponents, on the other hand, are motivated by hatred of America, Western civilization and the Jewish people—or are chillingly indifferent to those who do.

There’s surely no contest.

Trump’s new world order has emerged because the old one has so catastrophically failed. International law and transnational institutions were created to destroy the power of imperial overreach in the interests of peace, freedom and justice. But that international order has betrayed and abandoned peace, freedom and justice. The outcome is a Caesar in the White House.

Trump is the best friend Israel has ever had in the Oval Office. That doesn’t make him perfect. He can be the Jews’ best shot and can do some brilliant things, and yet at the same time be a flawed individual. Those flaws may sometimes prevent him from doing the right thing and lead him instead into making terrible errors.

We must all just hold our breath.

John Spencer: The Genocide Slur Is Not Just for Jews

The Korean War underscores the same point even more starkly. Roughly 2 million North and South Korean civilians were killed over 37 months of war. If the same statistical logic now applied to Gaza were imposed retroactively, stripped of context about who died, how they died, and who killed them, that figure would translate into more than 54,000 civilian deaths every single month. Yet the Korean War is understood, correctly, as a lawful collective defense against invasion, not as a genocide.

This is what happens when the laws of armed conflict are replaced by statistical absolutism. Law becomes a tool of political warfare. Legal terms become slogans. The side that fights lawfully becomes uniquely vulnerable, judged not by intent or conduct, but by the inevitable suffering that accompanies urban combat.

When civilian suffering becomes the decisive weapon, advantage flows to those who want civilians to suffer. If accusation and optics define legality, the optimal strategy is to embed among civilians, prevent evacuation, fight from protected sites, and manipulate information so that every death becomes ammunition. That is not the protection of civilians. It is the exploitation of them.

If this logic becomes the standard, the result will not be fewer civilian deaths. It will be more. The new standard by which Israel “committed genocide” in Gaza will validate hostage taking, the use of human shields, the engineering of humanitarian crises, and the manipulation of casualty figures as weapons. It will tell future adversaries that the fastest way to defeat a democratic military is not to fight it, but to endanger civilians until the defender is condemned for trying to stop the violence. In that world, urban areas become more lethal, not less. Civilians become more vulnerable, not more protected.

The implications for the United States military are direct and dire. Every serious contingency in the Pentagon’s war-planning scenarios involves dense urban terrain. Defending Seoul, Taipei, or NATO’s eastern flank means fighting in cities where civilians cannot be separated from the battlefield and where adversaries are trained to exploit information and lawfare as much as maneuvers and firepower. If civilian harm alone becomes proof of criminality, democratic militaries face an impossible choice: Fight and be condemned, or refrain and concede defeat.

Accusations of genocide being leveled against Israel do not merely constitute baseless defamation of an ally, as I have personally seen with my own eyes during six research trips to Gaza over the course of the war. It is a weapon aimed at lawful self-defense. The tragedy of civilian suffering in war is real. It should never be denied. But turning tragedy into a legal verdict without proof of intent is not moral progress. It is paralysis.

If baseless slander becomes law, lawful self-defense becomes impossible. And if lawful self-defense becomes impossible, democracies will have lost the next wars before they begin.

Seth Mandel: You Can’t Have It Both Ways on ‘Genocide’

Similarly, today Jewish Insider reports that Scott Wiener is stepping away from his post as co-chair of the California legislature’s Jewish Caucus. As I wrote last week, Wiener declined to say Israel’s counteroffensive in Gaza constituted genocide at a candidates debate against two of his congressional primary opponents. He, like Mallory McMorrow, thought they had moved on. He was wrong, and he got slammed by progressives for equivocating, and so he filmed a soul-crushingly pathetic video changing his answer to “yes.”

It certainly would be inappropriate for him to continue on as Jewish Caucus co-chair, and he recognized as much. But I was struck by his plea for open-mindedness: “As we move through this moment, it is even more important for Jews here and globally to foster open dialogue and acceptance of disagreement, even on the hardest of issues.”

Does he feel that way about other genocides? Again, how much “acceptance of disagreement” does he feel there should be in the Jewish community toward Holocaust denial?

Wiener and McMorrow—and who knows how many others, but the number is high—don’t think Israel committed genocide. They don’t actually believe that there are much more important things to talk about and that genocide is a distraction. They lowered themselves to gain the approval of terrible people, and they feel dirty about it, and they would like to not have to do it again. Their problem is simple: It’s degrading to accuse Israel of genocide and then have to look at yourself in the mirror.

Seth Mandel: A Trumpian Version of ‘Leading From Behind’

The post-WWI map of the Middle East briefly looked very different from the one that was to gain a patina of semi-permanence. The Ottoman state, having lost the war, was divided up by Western powers in 1920. Among the minority nations who were given a taste of autonomy under Western rule were the Kurds. Turkish nationalists rebelled and this time were successful in their more limited ambitions; a new treaty in 1923 inaugurated a Turkish state—at the Kurds’ expense.

The phrase “at the Kurds’ expense” would become a familiar one. This week, Western powers would continue their century-plus tradition of seeking stability at the Kurds’ expense.

In essence, recent events are the result of simple power politics and the Trump administration’s prosecution of its foreign policy along those lines.

President Trump tends to favor the stronger party in any conflict, or at least tends to give the stronger party more latitude in finishing the fight. This sometimes works against America’s traditional allies—Ukraine, for example, and this week the Kurds. It’s a form of leading from behind as applied to Trump’s unsentimentalist approach to conflict resolution.

The Kurds have held semi-autonomous regions in Iraq and Syria and their militias were instrumental in the American war on ISIS. Thousands of Kurds died in the war and many more continued to put their lives on the line guarding ISIS prisons.

Full Kurdish independence has never seemed just around the corner, but the working assumption was that the U.S. would never diminish Kurdish sovereignty, even if we couldn’t bring ourselves to expand it. That policy survived the Syrian civil war and the fall of the House of Assad, but it died this week in favor of aiding Ahmed al-Sharaa’s consolidation of power in the new Syria.

Sharaa is an exemplar of win-and-you’re-in geopolitics. Had his militia, which had its roots in an al-Qaeda offshoot, failed, Sharaa would have been immediately forgotten by history. Instead, he led the coalition of rebels to victory over Damascus and, now, has received U.S. backing and the lifting of sanctions. Sharaa has traded fatigues for tailored suits, like many an erstwhile rebel before him.

Activists Declare 45-Minute Hunger Strike In Solidarity With Palestinian Detainees (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Tel Aviv, January 25 - In a powerful display of moral commitment that will surely reverberate through the corridors of history—or at least the group chat—local solidarity activists have announced a carefully choreographed 45-minute hunger strike in support of Palestinian detainees currently held without charge or trial.

The action, scheduled to begin promptly at 7:00 p.m. and conclude at 7:45 p.m. sharp, was described by organizers as “a meaningful sacrifice that puts our bodies on the line, just not for very long, and definitely after dinner has been consumed.”

“We felt it was important to match the duration of suffering with something proportional,” explained lead organizer Piyar Stunt, who recently completed a 72-hour juice cleanse for climate justice. “Forty-five minutes is long enough to feel a little bit uncomfortable—especially if you’ve had coffee—but short enough that we can still make our 8 p.m. yoga class. It’s about sustainable activism.”

Participants will gather outside a municipal building whose precise relationship to the Israeli prison system remains somewhat abstract, holding signs that read “ENDLESS DETENTION = BAD” and “WE ARE LITERALLY STARVING (for 45 minutes).” Bottled water and electrolyte packets will be available on a folding table for medical safety, and a playlist featuring Bon Iver and Sufjan Stevens has been approved to maintain the appropriate somber mood.

When asked why the strike was not longer, Chen-Walters cited the need to balance radical solidarity with self-care. “We’re not trying to be performative about it,” she said, adjusting her keffiyeh-printed scrunchie. “Real change happens when people can still function afterward. Also, the falafel place closes at 9.”

Several attendees noted that the 45-minute timeframe neatly aligns with the average length of a Netflix episode, allowing participants to “hold space” for the detainees while still catching up on the latest season of whatever everyone is watching. One striker, who requested anonymity to protect his professional brand-consulting career, confessed he had set a gentle chime on his smartwatch to remind him when the sacrifice would be complete.

Critics have questioned whether such a brief fast can truly convey the experience of indefinite administrative detention. Organizers responded that the gesture is “symbolic, not literal,” and that expecting them to go without food for days would be “unrealistic and frankly ableist.”

As the clock ticked toward the final minutes of the protest, participants could be seen checking their phones, calculating protein intake for the post-strike meal, and quietly debating whether the nearby ramen place would still be open. At precisely 7:45 p.m., a small cheer erupted. The fast was broken with a ceremonial unwrapping of Clif bars and the collective posting of black-square Instagram stories captioned simply: “We did it!” and a raised-fist emoji.

The detainees were reportedly unavailable for comment, because this time, prison authorities had taken away their phones for real.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Antisemitic California mayor avoids censure - by voting against it himself

SFGate reports:

A tumultuous Richmond City Council meeting on Wednesday ended with a failed attempt to censure Mayor Eduardo Martinez after he shared posts on social media last month that councilmembers said were antisemitic. The council instead approved Martinez's own atonement plan.

Martinez is under fire for several posts he made on LinkedIn in the aftermath of the December terrorist attack that targeted a Hanukkah celebration at Australia's Bondi Beach, killing 15 people. Martinez reposted and "liked" content that characterized the attack as a false flag and promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Soon after, the Bay Area chapter of the Jewish Community Relations Council demanded his resignation. The JCRC is an organization that advocates for the interests of the local Jewish community.

Martinez issued an apology in response, saying that at the time he didn't "fully read and understand the meaning" of what he was reposting.

By the time stories like this make it into the mainstream media, the specifics are airbrushed out, so it looks like, hey, maybe he was just misunderstood.

But here are the posts he "liked" and reported. Not just one accidental post, but a series of them.

Calling Bondi Beach a false flag attack by Israel.

Blaming Israel for all antisemitism.

Naming a Jew as the shooter at Bondi Beach.

Most damningly, reposting that Jews publicly celebrating Chanukah is an expression of power and meant to demean and insult Muslims.

There is no way to spin that post as "criticism of Israel."

Not surprisingly, Martinez is also an anti-Israel activist. He was a speaker at the People's Conference for Palestine in Detroit last year, and he has worn a baseball cap calling for death to the IDF.

The city of Richmond itself passed a resolution that condemned Israel in October 2023 - and did not say a word about the Hamas attack on Israeli civilians. It raised a Palestinian flag outside City Hall last year.

At the council meeting, his supporters held signs saying "People power from Richmond to Palestine."

Martinez's antisemitism is tied tightly to his "pro-Palestinian" politics. Not that the San Francisco newspapers would draw that line.

Yet he wasn't censured. The vote was 4-3 against.

And who was the tiebreaker? The mayor himself, who is a member of the city council, too.

Instead, Martinez proposed his own plan to fight his own antisemitism. Like meeting twice with a rabbi in town. Really.

Then he can declare that he is cured of the disease that he only reluctantly admitted he had, and everyone applauds.

And that plan was accepted.

The story proves, yet again, that when you scratch the surface of an "anti-Zionist" you find an antisemite. And too many people refuse to believe that they are related. Because the antisemites themselves insist it isn't true.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The Jerusalem Post reports:

Israeli police have allowed Jewish visitors to bring prayer pages onto the Temple Mount in Jerusalem for the first time in years, a significant departure from the long-established status quo governing the highly sensitive religious site.

Under the new policy, Jewish visitors may enter the site with a single prayer page, but only if it is prepared in advance and distributed at the entrance by the Temple Mount Yeshiva. Visitors are still barred from bringing personal prayer books, phylacteries, or other religious items. The approved page includes visitor instructions as well as the Amidah, a central prayer said three times daily.

Palestine Press Agency calls this "a violation of the sanctity of Al Aqsa."

Just for context: Palestinians regularly display huge Hamas banners on the Temple Mount.

They play soccer, volleyball and parkour. They excavate rocks and throw them at Israelis. They shoot fireworks at police from inside the Al Aqsa Mosque itself. They secretly dig under the Mount. They've hidden weapons there.

But a prayer sheet is a threat to its sanctity.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

01/21 Links Pt2: Inciting Terrorism Is Not Free Speech; Nation to pause to honour Bondi victims; One in 10 young Irish adults believe Holocaust is a ‘myth’

From Ian:

Inciting Terrorism Is Not Free Speech

Our law has long recognized that words can be dangerous, even criminally so. That is why we have rules against crimes like solicitation, incitement, and conspiracy. To be sure, the line between protected speech and speech in furtherance of criminal behavior is fuzzy. But courts are perfectly willing to uphold convictions involving, for example, antitrust violations based on this distinction.

Despite these precedents, the court of appeals held that Al-Timimi’s convictions could not be squared with the First Amendment. Al-Timimi did not commit incitement, the court concluded, because his “exhortations were vague and general,” failing the “imminent lawless action” standard set out in 1969’s Brandenburg v. Ohio. Though he “encouraged unlawful acts generally,” he was not guilty of criminal solicitation because “the evidence did not demonstrate that he encouraged, with the requisite intent, a specific unlawful act.” This may seem like a loophole for bad actors, but the court reminds readers that “plenty of speech encouraging criminal activity is protected under the First Amendment.”

This is true, but plenty of speech is also not protected. The only standard the court employed to tell if Al-Timimi’s speech was protected was whether the criminal acts he encouraged were sufficiently specific. Since that standard can only be resolved by intuition, it’s probably best left to a jury—like the one that concluded Al-Timimi’s encouragement, advice, and instruction did meet that standard.

One wonders what is left of crimes like solicitation and conspiracy under the court’s reasoning. After all, prosecutors could have hardly hoped for better evidence in their favor. The men even testified at trial to Al-Timimi’s decisive role in helping them overcome their fears and join terrorist groups. If telling men you know are heavily armed to attack America is too vague and general to warrant prosecution, then any form of solicitation will be extremely hard to prove.

The Supreme Court will not likely review, much less overturn, this case. But it should be on the lookout for cases that allow it to re-establish the proper relationship between national-security concerns and the First Amendment.

The Court has already made clear that limitations on dangerous speech tailored to prevent terrorism are constitutional, even if applied liberally. In Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project (2010), the Court held that simply explaining the law to terrorist organizations may be prosecuted as material support for terrorism consistent with the First Amendment. “Given the sensitive interests in national security and foreign affairs at stake,” the majority wrote, courts should defer to the political branches when they “have adequately substantiated their determination that . . . it was necessary to prohibit” acts, even speech-based acts, that further terrorism.

In spite of this, lower courts have consistently balked at the notion of enforcing laws designed to disrupt terrorist networks before they begin victimizing Americans. They have set the bar for conviction so artificially high that, as in Al-Timimi’s case, no prosecutor could possibly reach them.

The First Amendment does and should protect even abhorrent expression. What got Al-Timimi prosecuted, though, was not the abhorrence of his expression. It was that his speech played an important role in getting dangerous people to take up arms against the United States. Judges’ appeals to the “vitality” of “offensive” speech in letting him off the hook ring hollow.

Seth Mandel: Josh Shapiro and the ‘No Free Shots’ Rule

Jewish leaders wasted no time in taking the Harris Committee on Un-American Activities to task for its embrace of the dual-loyalty canard. And Harris certainly deserves every ounce of criticism she and her team have received, and probably more. After all, if Shapiro can be disqualified for having as a teenager visited Israel and volunteering on a kibbutz, it could potentially have a chilling effect on young American Jews, who are already being pressured into hiding their involvement in Jewish communal activities. The attack on Shapiro is an attack on American Jewry.

Which is why Shapiro’s response is so noteworthy. We know about the obnoxious questioning not from an anonymous campaign leak or (don’t laugh) a high-status reporter digging into the undercurrent of anti-Semitism at the highest levels of progressive organizing. We know about it because Josh Shapiro wrote about it, put his name to it, and swung back at his party’s presidential nominee for good measure.

“I wondered,” he writes, “whether these questions were being posed to just me — the only Jewish guy in the running — or if everyone who had not held a federal office was being grilled about Israel in the same way.”

In any event, Shapiro concluded, the whole affair “said a lot about some of the people around the VP.”

As to whether Shapiro would, as Harris requested, grovel and beg the forgiveness of people chasing Jews while cheering Hamas’s Nazi atrocities, he “flatly” said no.

What is unusual about this news cycle is not that an ambitious politician with national aspirations sought to put some distance between himself and his party’s failed past leaders, or that he would paint himself as having shown toughness and nerve in his own recollections of the incidents at hand.

Instead, what is striking is that he would do so on the subject of Israel and anti-Semitism. Shapiro isn’t letting them take free shots at the Jews.

The Harris team’s behavior was atrocious, but they might have expected to get away with it on the assumption that no one wants to draw attention to accusations that they are a double agent or a Manchurian candidate. Shapiro, however, refused to play that game. His response was, essentially, OK let’s talk about it. Let’s play “Ask the Jew” in front of the whole country.

Josh Shapiro wasn’t supposed to be confrontational about it. He was supposed to take the hint and know his proper place as a Jew in national politics. He was not supposed to tell them to their faces how offensive their medievalist questioning was, and then to tell the world.

There is probably not one campaign operative in a thousand who would tell Shapiro to center his Jewish pride at a moment when so many progressive activists and organizers are out for Jewish blood. It contradicts the conventional wisdom.

But conventional wisdom didn’t prevent some anti-Semitic and anti-Israel lunatic from burning Shapiro’s house while his family was inside on Passover. Should he apologize to the man who tried to murder his family, too? Surely the Harris campaign would say yes.

Shapiro didn’t ask for this fight, but he’s not running from it. Hopefully it stays that way. The next generation of American Jewish activists and politicians are watching.

Tevi Troy: Are Jews Still Welcome in the White House?

Yet this same dynamic of high visibility combined with inter-elite competition and grassroots hatred may bring about a period of unprecedented friction and danger for Jews, in which high-level Jewish political involvement proves irksome to antisemites and even to other inter-elite competitors—who, in turn, will have no shortage of Jewish rivals to scapegoat. This dynamic would likely be mirrored throughout the rest of society. Disaffected individuals or groups may also target prominent Jewish officials as a way of gaining sympathy for violent actions. We saw an element of this with the Passover firebombing of Gov. Josh Shapiro’s mansion by a disturbed anti-Israel activist.

Another, also unpalatable, possibility is that this fourth phase could couple rising elite and popular antisemitism with diminishing opportunities for Jews, as national politicians fear that prominent Jewish appointees might alienate key voting blocs, be they Muslims in Michigan, progressive Israel critics, or anti-globalists on the right. In the summer of 2024, for example, Gov. Shapiro’s Jewishness clearly seemed to count against him in the Democratic vice presidential selection process, as demonstrated by the offensive question from the Harris team of whether Shapiro was an Israeli agent. Bypassing Shapiro resulted instead in the choice of the less-talented Tim Walz as Kamala Harris’ running mate.

In fact, there is evidence to suggest that the increasing mainstream acceptance of antisemitism in both major parties may already be causing the pipeline of future higher-level Jewish appointees to dry up. Baer, for one, suggested that the high-level Jews in the Biden administration could be a lagging indicator, reflecting high Jewish participation in the Clinton and Obama years rather than the current reality. According to Baer, some Jews faced challenges breaking into the lower levels of the Biden administration, which could affect Jewish participation in future Democratic administrations. This could stem from both discomfort with Jews from anti-Israel Democrats and reductions in qualified Jewish applicants being admitted to top schools—driven by that same discomfort. In the future, Baer feared that opportunities for Jewish staffers “might be hitting a brick wall depending on where the Democratic Party goes.”

Related to this are concerns about a broader decline of Jews in elite institutions. As Jacob Savage wrote in his widely read 2023 Tablet article “The Vanishing,” “Suddenly, everywhere you look, the Jews are disappearing … In academia, Hollywood, Washington, even in New York City—anywhere American Jews once made their mark—our influence is in steep decline.” If it continues, this scenario could be bad for Jews and bad for America, as countries that mistreat their Jews often struggle with other pathologies. Bernstein, however, is less worried, noting that the likely 2028 Democratic candidates have “plenty of Jewish senior people around.”

A third direction that the future may take is that the current surge in antisemitism will wane, and the fourth phase will be a better version of the third phase, with opportunities rising and antisemitism dwindling. This scenario is optimistic about both the Jews and America. As former Obama and Biden aide Chanan Weissman notes, “The Jewish story is the best story that America tells about itself.” He adds, “Societies that treat their [Jewish] communities well, benefit.” His scenario may not be one that many Jews see as likely at the moment, but it would be in keeping with the generally positive trajectory we have seen up until now. The problem with it is that straight-line extrapolations are often lacking in predictive power; in this case, they ignore the recent reemergence of antisemitism—which appears to be quite real.

The long history of the Jews and power in America is ultimately unique because of how little public controversy it has caused. Jews and Jewish ideas have been an essential part of this nation since its founding. While the current attacks on Jews from both the left and the right are by no means unique in the context of Jewish history, they are alien to American political culture—which is what makes this moment frightening. The attempt to mainstream antisemitism on both the left and the right should be properly understood as an attack by extremists in both parties on the existing political culture and on the principles of the American founding.

The American tradition is far more closely linked to the Jews and their many contributions to it than it is to the antisemites of the left or the right, whose hatred of the Jews reveals a rejection of that tradition—which they hope to reorder and replace with various European-born ideologies, from communism to fascism to theocracy, that have proven toxic to their political hosts. As Americans, Jews must lean in rather than retreat in the face of antisemitism, which in turn entails an embrace of this nation’s philosemitic and Enlightenment-based founding principles.

In America, Jews belong everywhere, from the White House on down. Any future White House that rejects Jews would be reflecting its own rejection of the American founding tradition.

Seth Mandel: Matt Gaetz and the Jewish Firebugs

As Jews, we’re encouraged to be a light among the nations. But sometimes I think people get the wrong idea. Every so often, we are collectively accused of setting things alight among the nations.

That’s what happened in recent weeks as fires raged in Argentina. A conspiracy theory gained some traction online that held that Israelis were setting wildfires in Patagonia in order to cheapen the value of land and then buy that land. How were they setting the fires? With Israeli grenades.

By January 12, all of this had been thoroughly debunked, and an Argentine broadcaster at the center of it apologized. Naturally, the following day, Matt Gaetz—the scandal-soaked weirdo chased from Congress by ethics investigations into another career as a wannabe Candace Owens—did a whole segment repeating the conspiracy theory about Jewish firebugs and Zionist grenades.

The fact that Gaetz chose to run a segment on it after the country where it started denounced and debunked every falsehood is one reason Gaetz is viewed as a clown even among the crowd of maniacs he associates himself with.

Nevertheless, this clown was a congressman and was even nominated to be attorney general by President Trump. Tucker Carlson, currently the dean of the anti-American propaganda fetishists, has been making appearances at the White House. So we have to grapple with the question of how much damage we think the right-wing influencer ecosystem is capable of. After all, it wouldn’t be much consolation to say Matt Gaetz has the intellectual depth of a ceramic ash tray if he were the U.S. attorney general.

One type of damage is indicated by the fact that we’re talking about the firebug conspiracy theory, and that such a canard is worth talking about at all. On that front, history has a warning.

Included in the anti-Semitic slang that has managed to persist through time is the phrase “Jewish lightning.” It’s a relic, and it’s not all that common, but it refers to the reputation that American Jews got thanks to rumors that they were uniquely liable to carry out insurance fires in the 19th century. As a result, insurance companies began to deny Jews insurance coverage. Industry manuals warned of the risk of Jewish firebugs.

01/21 Links Pt1: How António Guterres turned ‘international law’ into a weapon against Jews; Netanyahu accepts invite to join Trump’s Board of Peace; Iran’s coming reckoning: Regime collapse is likely — democracy is not

From Ian:

How António Guterres turned ‘international law’ into a weapon against Jews

Guterres has not merely presided over this corruption; he has normalized it, defended it, and amplified it. In doing so, he has used his position to advance an ideological agenda that singles out the Jewish state for delegitimization while shielding those who commit the most egregious human rights violations.

Anti-Zionist obsession at the United Nations has become indistinguishable from antisemitism in practice. When the world’s only Jewish state is uniquely targeted, denied the right of self-defense, and subjected to standards applied to no other nation, the conclusion is unavoidable.

Israel does not wage war against civilians. Hamas does.

Israel builds bomb shelters. Hamas builds tunnels under children’s bedrooms.

Israel warns civilians to evacuate. Hamas forces them to stay.

Any legal framework that erases these distinctions is not international law; it is propaganda.

International law was meant to restrain barbarism, not protect it; to defend human life, not terror infrastructure; to uphold truth, not political theater.

By weaponizing international law against Israel and tolerating terror in the name of false balance, Guterres has disgraced the office he holds and accelerated the United Nations’s descent into irrelevance.

The world deserves better.

The victims of terrorism deserve better.

And the Jewish people, who know all too well where institutionalized bias can lead, deserve better.

History will remember who stood for justice, and who turned law into a tool of moral inversion.

Alan Baker: Buzzwords and false allegations are Western human rights inversion - opinion

With tragedies abounding, the Western brainwashing machinery is working overtime against Israel.

Thousands murdered and brutally subjugated in Iran. Thousands of non-Arab ethnic groups butchered in Sudan. Massive death tolls in the Ukraine-Russia conflict. Myanmar violently represses its Rohingya and other minorities. Mass atrocities by Boko Haram and other extremist groups in Nigeria. Extrajudicial killings of civilians in Tanzania. Massacres of Christians in churches and hospitals in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

But Western media outlets, social-media platforms, UN and human rights committees, political leaders and parliamentarians, incited university students, and ignorant show-biz celebrities spout accusations against Israel of genocide, apartheid, starvation, and disproportionate military actions.

Such paragons of humanitarian virtue claim to defend human rights and advocate for Palestinians, but glaringly ignore everyone else and deny the rights to which Israel and its citizens are entitled. They ignore genocidal violence and terror by Palestinian and Islamist fanatics, which is incited by Palestinian leadership and supported, encouraged, and financed by Iran, Qatar, and Turkey.

No less glaring is the fact that the Western world chooses to forget the Hamas massacre on October 7, 2023 – the rape, torture, burning, and butchery of thousands of Israelis and foreigners; the taking of hundreds of hostages; and the use of Hamas’s own civilians as human shields.

What should be a universal moral standard of human rights has become a cynical and transparent political weapon, directed against Israel.