Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, August 14, 2026

08/13 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: Gaslighting on steroids; James Murdoch Throws DEI Spin at Israel Controversy; Marco Rubio Is Right—the ICC Is Dangerously Flawed

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Gaslighting on steroids

Since Zionism is framed as racist, destructive and positively demonic, all Jews are now held to be positively demonic. The result is Jews across Europe and elsewhere in the West being abused, insulted, screamed at, spat at, threatened with murder and physically attacked.

This gaslighting on steroids has produced an alarming response among some American Jews. Instead of fighting back, they are deliberately avoiding any reference to Zionism.

A poll taken last February by the Jewish Federations of North America found that only 37% of American Jews describe themselves as Zionists, even though 88% said Israel had the right to exist as a Jewish, democratic state. The study said respondents were either unclear about what Zionism was or else they thought it implied blanket support for Israeli government policies and actions with which they disagreed.

Some badly gaslighted American Jews are now even saying that the words “Zionism” and “Zionists” should no longer be used. The existence of Israel, they say, means these terms are outdated; and since they’re now associated with racism and killing, they should be junked.

This is a catastrophically wrong conclusion. Words matter. They shape the way people see the world. When the United Nations passed its infamous 1995 resolution declaring “Zionism is racism,” it lit the fires of Jew-hatred across the world. Language has been hijacked to turn words into weapons to destroy Israel and the Jews.

Zionism has been cast as an evil doctrine to detach Israel from Judaism. But the land of Israel is an essential part of Judaism. That’s why anti-Zionism is an existential attack on Judaism itself.

“Genocide” is another word that’s been hijacked as a weapon for Israel’s destruction. To deal with the patent absurdity of describing as a “genocide” Israel’s totally justified war of self-defense, in which it has gone to unprecedented lengths to avoid killing civilians as far as possible, Israel’s foes have changed the meaning of the word.

According to them, genocide now means merely killing any Palestinian Arabs, or—even more imbecilically—just destroying Gaza’s buildings.

Jews should absolutely not be aiding the intended dismemberment of Judaism by helping remove “Zionism” from the lexicon and from the world.

Jews should be asserting that the land of Israel is inseparable from Judaism, that the Palestinian Arabs are ethnic cleansers and that Zionism was the greatest anti-colonialist liberation movement of the 20th century.

The proper response to a malevolent narrative of lies is not to shuffle away for cover. It is to get up off your knees and fight back with pride.

James Murdoch Throws DEI Spin at Israel Controversy

Days after an eruption of condemnations over an issue of New York magazine that repeatedly and falsely accused Israel of genocide and that describes the Jewish state as "the land mass currently called Israel," the magazine’s leadership has finally offered up a wan response.

It’s not exactly an apology, and it’s not exactly "we stand by our story," either.

Instead, the statement from New York magazine's editorial leadership—no names, please—to the Washington Free Beacon dodges the journalistic accuracy and integrity issues involved, along with the antisemitism. Instead, it serves up a salad of lefty buzzwords.

"Our latest cover story is an exploration of a New York subculture that is making its presence felt, both culturally and politically, in new ways over the last few years. As with other communities forged by common experiences of conflict, there is an irreducible political dimension to any coverage of this subject," the statement says. "We have endeavored to capture the tensions and live debates that exist within these communities, including how they relate to Israel. We are aware of the wide range of responses to the piece, including critiques from some in the Jewish community. We take these comments seriously, and, as always, we welcome and acknowledge good faith discussion and criticism about our journalism."

The reference to the "cover story" and "the piece" obscures the fact that it was not just a single article that is fueling outrage, but two articles. One is by Zaina Arafat, an adjunct assistant professor at Barnard College and a featured faculty member at the unaccredited, for-profit "School" of the New York Times. A second article, focused on food, is by Madeline Leung Coleman, whose social media indicates support for the unlawful Gaza encampment at Columbia, which culminated in the storming and occupation of a campus building, and its demand for divestment from Israel. That article matter-of-factly accuses Israel of genocide.

James Murdoch’s Lupa Systems company took control of New York on July 8, and New York’s "Habibi City" cover is being interpreted as a signal of his plans for what the press release announcing the transaction described as "the beginning of a new chapter." Murdoch is not pushing back on that idea.

Vox, which was also part of the James Murdoch deal, on August 10 published an article calling for a U.S. embargo on arms to Israel. "The Democratic Party’s burgeoning support for restricting aid and arms transfers to Israel is well-founded," the article said. "Supplying Israel with money and weapons is contrary to both America’s moral obligations and security interests. It is wrong to subsidize or provision any foreign military’s assaults on human rights. And doing so undermines global respect for both the United States and the concept of international law." The article didn’t explain how it would be in the U.S. "moral" or "security" interest to allow its ally to be overrun by Islamist terrorists, rapists, and murderers, or to turn to alternative arms suppliers such as China or Russia instead of the U.S.

The New York magazine statement that it welcomes "good faith discussion and criticism" also is a not-so-subtle attempt to shift the question from the accuracy and integrity of the magazine’s journalism—which the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, called "a blatant, disgusting double standard"—to the intentions of the magazine’s critics.

For the assignment to cover Middle Eastern food in New York City, James Murdoch hired a reporter, Coleman, who signed an October 26, 2023 "Statement of Solidarity with the Palestinian People" that claimed "Israel’s war against Gaza is an attempt to conduct genocide against the Palestinian people." The statement said, "We come together as writers, journalists, academics, artists, and other culture workers to express our solidarity with the people of Palestine. We stand with their anticolonial struggle for freedom and for self-determination, and with their right to resist occupation." Never mind the "good faith" of the critics, where is the good faith of an editor or an owner who makes such an assignment or publishes the false accusations of genocide it produces?

Simon & Schuster Doubles Down on Notorious Writer Who Calls Jews 'Ghouls,' Will Publish Her New Novel: Writer Taunts Angry 'Zionists' Who Oppose Her Deal

Simon & Schuster's partnership with a notorious antisemite who regularly calls Jews "roaches," "demons," and "ghouls" is deeper than previously reported.

Susan Abulhawa—who has projected the medieval bile for years on her X account—announced in a defiant video that the publishing giant would put out her new forthcoming novel. Simon & Schuster has already faced significant controversy and been condemned by the Anti-Defamation League for its decision to reprint two of Abulhawa's past novels through its Atria imprint.

"The Zionists have missed or don't know, but Simon & Schuster will also be publishing my new novel," Abulhawa said.

"My upcoming novel, The Sun Still Kisses Me, is not yet listed, because its release isn't until next year, but I'll post more about it soon," the author promised.

In a brief video announcing the project, Abulhawa also took aim at Jewish writers and editors who have spoken out against the collaboration—including Washington Free Beacon editor in chief Eliana Johnson and Commentary editor and Free Beacon contributor John Podhoretz—laying digitally altered video of them over foreboding music.

"Zionists are really mad," Abulhawa deadpanned.

Abulhawa promised in the video to donate all funds from the preorders of her books to the Palestinian Youth Movement. The movement "organizes events with the U.S. designated terrorist entity Samidoun" and, according to the Israeli government, has "close ties" with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, also a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization, Sen. Tom Cotton's (R., Ark.) office reported.

Abulhawa's track record of attacking Jews ("Jews" specifically, not just "Zionists") stretches back years and is in plain sight.

"We live in the time of jewish supremacist demons," Abulhawa said in a September 2025 post on X, adding that Jews were a "cultureless, rootless human aberration."

That same month, she blasted another critic as a "lying Jewish supremacist cockroach" and attacked "dual loyalty zionists," citing former Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis as an example.

08/13 Links Pt1: Ex-Mossad Chief: MI5 Praised Us for Foiling Terror Plots in UK; Netanyahu Isn't Blocking Peace in Gaza; Hamas's Secret Weapon to Continue Ruling Gaza

From Ian:

Stephen Pollard: Netanyahu Isn't Blocking Peace in Gaza

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Israeli cabinet: "The IDF will not carry out any withdrawal [in Gaza] until Hamas is disarmed. And when I say the disarming of Hamas, it means heavy weaponry, lighter weaponry, all weaponry." He is far from alone in his response. For what should surely be obvious reasons, Israelis do not trust Hamas.

The idea that Israel should take the word of the organization behind the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust that it will now disarm should be self-evidently preposterous. There is no possibility in the real world of any deal progressing, let alone succeeding, which requires Israel to trust Hamas. Israeli opposition leaders Gadi Eisenkot, Naftali Bennett and Avigdor Lieberman have said more or less exactly the same thing as Netanyahu. Netanyahu is not an outlier on this in Israel.

The merit of the proposed plan is precisely that it does not involve trust. It is based on verification - as outlined in an interview on Channel 12 in Israel with Nickolay Mladenov, the former UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process who now leads the Board of Peace. The proposal does not require Israel to withdraw a single troop from anywhere in Gaza until the first stage of weapons decommissioning has been verified by a U.S.-led body. If Hamas does not meet its obligation to disarm, Israel remains where it is now. Netanyahu said nothing which prevents the Board of Peace plan from being implemented.

Fact Checking NBC: Did Hamas Ever Say it Would Disarm

NBC’s coverage of negotiations over a plan to ultimately rid Hamas of its weapons continues to be problematic. In at least two instances now, the outlet has presented Hamas’ agreement on disarmament as an unqualified factual description of the group’s own stated position. This comes despite a CAMERA correction request.

The first example is from August 3, when Yuliya Talmazan and Yarden Segev’s piece, “Israel conveys concerns to the U.S. about Hamas disarmament deal.” They state that Hamas has “indicated that while it agreed to disarm, this was conditional on Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza and complete cessation of ‘all forms of aggression.’”

Hamas itself disputes the characterization. The use of the word “indicated” grants Talmazan and Segev some leeway with the phrasing, but Hamas senior official and spokesman Ghazi Hamad told the Wall Street Journal on July 30 that the group “didn’t say disarmament, didn’t say handing over the weapons, and didn’t agree on any Israeli involvement.” Instead, Hamad clarifies that Hamas has agreed to “place its weapons in storage,” in control of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), Gaza’s proposed transitional, technocratic government. According to Neomi Neumann of The Washington Institute, “Israel insists on the physical removal” of weapons from Gaza’s territory, while Hamas will interpret the storage of weapons inside Gaza as meeting the deal’s requirements. The latest 15-point roadmap also does not define which weapons would be prohibited in the future Gaza managed by the NCAG.

The Journal report adds that Egyptian mediators did not “explicitly mention that Hamas agreed to disarm in an official statement, noting instead ‘their agreement to the road map’ and a future meeting in Cairo ‘to discuss implementation mechanisms and reaffirm the commitment of all parties to the terms of the agreement.’” Translated from bureaucratic speech, Hamas – infamously patient and determined to drag negotiations out – simply agreed to another lengthy process to continue talking about disarmament.

Coming four days later, Talmazan and Segev’s report should have mentioned these crucial details.

But NBC reporters erred in the same manner when covering Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s August 9 statement that the Israel Defense Forces would not withdraw until Hamas was completely disarmed. It’s to be noted that the original 20-Point Plan calls for the IDF to withdraw from the Yellow Line only after Hamas has been disarmed, a fact reiterated on August 3 by the Board, of Peace.

In the article, “Israel rejects Trump’s 15-point plan for Gaza, Netanyahu says,” Mithil Aggarwal reported that “Hamas had last month said that it would disarm, but only after Israel withdraws completely and stops all hostilities. The group also said that laying down its heavy weapons would come later in the process, conditional on the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

Even within the paragraph, there are major conditional qualifiers to Hamas’ purported statement. Once again, NBC confidently presents the word “disarm,” even after the terrorist organization’s own spokesperson disclosed that it was not currently an option.

Washington remains more optimistic. U.S. President Donald Trump stated on July 30 that negotiators had “reached a historic agreement for the complete disarmament of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza.”

NBC reported the news as if Hamas had published an official statement agreeing to the disarmament process, but without any official Hamas statement confirming that it had agreed to disarm.

Family of American Murdered in Jerusalem Sbarro Bombing Sues Female Hamas Mastermind 25 Years After Massacre

The family of a 15-year-old American girl who was killed in one of the most high-profile terrorist attacks in Israel's history is suing the Hamas operative who planned the operation in an American court for the first time, hoping to secure justice 25 years after the horrific bombing claimed their daughter's life, according to a copy of the lawsuit obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Arnold and Frimet Roth, on behalf of their daughter Malki, filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against Ahlam Aref Ahmad al-Tamimi, the female terrorist who helped plan and execute the 2001 bombing on a Sbarro restaurant in downtown Jerusalem that killed 15 people and wounded approximately 122 more, including seven children. The attack, carried out during the Second Intifada, or uprising, against Israel, sent shockwaves through the country that reverberated internationally. Al-Tamimi was sentenced in 2003 to serve 16 life terms by Israel, but was ultimately released from prison in 2011 during a prisoner release deal that granted her citizenship in Jordan.

Since that time, al-Tamimi has "publicly described her role in the Sbarro attack," "celebrated its lethality," and "expressed no remorse" for the terror bombing, the lawsuit states. Al-Tamimi even became a revered media figure while in Jordan, "hosting a weekly television program on the Hamas-affiliated Al-Quds satellite channel" from 2012 to 2016. Al-Tamimi remains on the FBI's Most Wanted list, and there is an outstanding U.S. warrant for her arrest in Jordan, which will not extradite her to face federal criminal charges originally filed in 2013.

The Roth family’s civil case—filed under the Anti-Terrorism Act in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia—offers a new pathway to hold al-Tamimi directly responsible for her crimes in an American court 25 years after their daughter was murdered. There is already legal precedent for holding foreign terrorists accountable in American civil courts, where they can be tried without the extradition necessary for a criminal trial.

"Jordan can block an extradition but it cannot block a judgment," said Mark Goldfeder, CEO and director of the National Jewish Advocacy Center (NJAC), which is handling the case alongside the Schoen Law Firm. "For twenty-five years, Ahlam Tamimi has lived free in Jordan while the Roth family lived with an empty chair at their table. Congress opened the doors of American courts to American victims of terror, and after twenty-five years, the Roths are walking through them."

Al-Tamimi remains one of the most brazen faces of terrorism living free in Jordan, where she is protected from the FBI and other federal authorities seeking her extradition. The State Department has a $5 million bounty on al-Tamimi's head and, in 2017, the Department of Justice unsealed its criminal complaint and arrest warrant.

Lebanon About Ready To Drive Palestinian ‘Refugees’ Into Sea (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Beirut, August 13 - After more than seven decades of hosting what were supposed to be temporary guests, Lebanese officials are signaling they may finally resolve the Palestinian refugee issue the traditional Middle Eastern way: by doing to their "guests" what the guests hoped would happen to the Jews when the guests moved out of the way to enable seven invading Arab forces plus local irregulars to wipe out those Jews.

Senior sources in the caretaker government confirmed this week that quiet discussions are underway to relocate the country’s remaining Palestinian camps — home to several hundred thousand people who still cannot obtain Lebanese citizenship, still maintain their own armed factions, and still treat large parts of Lebanon as staging grounds — onto barges and push them a few kilometers offshore.

“We’ve tried everything else,” one frustrated cabinet advisor told journalists. “We’ve given them land, ignored their weapons, let them veto our politics, and watched them start wars that destroy our cities. The Mediterranean is right there. It’s deep. It’s wet. And it’s not Lebanese territory. Perfect.”

The proposal, circulating in back channels between the army, certain Christian parties, and increasingly fed-up Shiite and Sunni politicians, would involve a phased “maritime transfer.” Camps in the south and Beirut’s outskirts would be loaded onto floating platforms and towed beyond the 12-mile limit, where the residents could continue their proud national project without the inconvenience of Lebanese sovereignty, electricity blackouts, or occasional attempts at actual governance.

Palestinian leaders in the camps reacted with predictable outrage, calling the plan “a second Nakba” and insisting that any solution short of full political control over Lebanon, the right of return to Haifa, and preferably a veto over Israeli existence remains non-negotiable. “We didn’t come here to leave,” one Popular Front official declared. “We came here to stay until the Zionist entity is gone. The sea is for the Jews.”

Lebanese public opinion, however, appears to be shifting. After years of economic collapse and Hezbollah’s wars with Israeli "occupation" as a pretext, many ordinary Lebanese have grown tired of the permanent temporary arrangement. Social media is already filled with dark jokes about “final status negotiations” involving life jackets and strong currents.

United Nations officials expressed deep concern, warning that such a move would violate international law, human rights norms, and decades of carefully-maintained Palestine Refugee industry funding - as distinct from ordinary refugees, who cannot pass that status down through the generations. One UNRWA spokesperson insisted the only acceptable solution remains the complete dismantling of Israel so the refugees can “return” to homes their grandparents fled in 1948. Lebanon’s response has been notably terse: “Your turn to host them.”

As one Lebanese general put it privately: “They keep saying they want to liberate Palestine from the river to the sea. Fine. We’ll help them start with the sea part.”

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)

Amnesty Canada has not said anything about skyrocketing antisemitism in Canada

Amnesty Canada tweeted this yesterday, twice:

How prevalent are anti-Black crimes in Canada compared to antisemitic crimes?

Since 2023, the number of anti-Jewish hate crimes in Canada has outnumbered the anti-Black hate crimes.

There are roughly four times as many Blacks in Canada as Jews, so the per capita rate of crimes against Jews dwarf those of Blacks.

And the same is true if you only count violent hate crimes. Per capita, antisemitic hate crimes far outnumber violent anti-Black hate crimes. A Jew is between 2-3 times more likely to be the victim of a violent hate crime in Canada than a Black person.

There is plenty of news coverage of the dramatic rise of antisemitism in Canada.

But Amnesty Canada has not written a word about antisemitism. Amnesty has issued no comparable statement about Jews being attacked in Canada. It has published no research report on Canadian antisemitism and launched no campaign demanding protection for Canadian Jews, even though Jews suffer hate crimes at vastly higher rates per capita than Black Canadians.

OK, that's not quite true. I did find one word in a quote from Ketty Nivyabandi, Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada’s English-speaking section, in an article about the first 100 days of the Canadian government.

It blames Canadian antisemitism on Israel.

“Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and as a long-time ally of Israel, Canada has an imperative duty to stop it,” Nivyabandi said. “Across the country, Canadians are horrified by the devastation Israel is inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza and are desperately calling for the government to act, while Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian racism and antisemitism rise to alarming levels at home.”

That is it. Amnesty Canada's only mention of the dramatic rise in antisemitism against Canadian Jews appears in a section about Israel's alleged genocide in Gaza, and says that rising antisemitism is a result of Israeli actions.

Amnesty's only acknowledgment of antisemitism in Canada in recent years comes with its explanation already attached.

Israel did it.

This goes beyond neglect. Amnesty Canada clearly knows that antisemitism is rising; its own secretary general says so. It simply has no apparent interest in protecting Canadian Jews.

Jews become relevant when Amnesty can place their suffering inside its case against Israel. Canadian Jews aren't victims to Amnesty: they are props.

Amnesty Canada spends considerable energy telling Canadians whose lives matter. Its own record tells us where Jewish lives rank.

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)

08/12 Links Pt2: 9/11: The Lesson We Forgot; An endorsement ends any ‘shomer’ myth; 66% of Jewish New Yorkers oppose Mamdani, 75% against DSA; New York Magazine Erased My Family from the Middle East

From Ian:

A Discussion of Rachmil Bryks, May God Avenge Their Blood: A Holocaust Memoir Triptych

If there were justice in the literary world, this moment would be noticed by many: a new translation of Rachmil Bryks’ works had appeared. Instead of celebrating a major literary event, one confronts a question: “Who is Rachmil Bryks?”

Sadly, one has to educate an English-language readership. I hadn’t heard of him either. He was a famous Yiddish writer who wrote a great deal about the Holocaust in Poland. He grew up in Skarżysko-Kamienna, Poland, among Hasidim, and moved to Łódż, where ultimately he survived the ghetto. In 1946, he went to Sweden and from there to the United States. He lived nearly two decades in New York City until his untimely death in 1978. His many books in Yiddish can be acquired free of charge (download) from the National Yiddish Book Center.

History and Horowitz: Jewish and Russian Cultures is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Admittedly, there are many great writers of the Holocaust, so what makes Bryks a stand-out? For me, it is his range, he has pieces that pay compliments to Shalom Aleichem (“Those Who Didn’t Survive”), and other pieces that share traits from Ahron Appelfeld. However, many of his works, such as the Holocaust Triptych, resemble Tadeusz Borowski. In my opinion, Borowski was the finest of all. His enigmatic, condensed, and sparing style hinted at depths that readers were asked to imagine, to fill in the silence left by the author. Borowski told what he saw in flashes and narrow slices, but with great precision and intricate detail. But by leaving out his analysis, he forced the reader to sort out the horrors and draw his/her own conclusions. Thus readers became contributors to the text. It was an effective system.

Bryks is a bit like that. He is a writer, not a philosopher, theologian, moralist, or historian. His material is always local, visits to family, descriptions of relatives, neighbors, or strangers encountered in the here and now. The material in this book is all autobiographical, in the “Triptych” he describes his journeys during the first days of war, his arrest by the Nazis and experience in a work camp. Later he will describe his deportation to Auschwitz. Because this is real literary craft, it is useless to paraphrase. As Tolstoy said in answer to a question of what War and Peace was about, “To answer, I’d have to write the book again from beginning to end.”

To give a sense of his style, I quote from the third part, “From Agony to Life,” when he is in Auschwitz. The chapter is entitled, “The Wild Beast,” and in it Bryks describes a German overseer of the kitchen, Hermann, who takes a young boy, Pinek, to bed nightly and beats a different prisoner with a metal pipe daily. The anecdotal story reflects bare description without analysis.

9/11: The Lesson We Forgot

This is where the political horseshoe closes. On one side, a conspiratorial far right sees hidden Jewish power behind governments, wars and history. On another, a radical anti-Zionist left can arrive at strikingly similar conclusions through different language.

One calls it Jewish power, another calls it Zionism. One says Mossad knew about 9/11, another says the IDF committed 7 October.

The vocabulary changes, the conspiracy survives.

And now comes the warning, one we should all recognise. Consider the cultural distance travelled from “Never Forget” to Hasan Piker saying “America deserved 9/11”.

Increasingly, the question after an atrocity becomes not simply why someone committed it, but what the victim did to provoke it. Context becomes mitigation, explanation begins to resemble justification, and the ideological agency of the perpetrator disappears beneath an examination of the victim’s supposed culpability.

We saw it after 7 October, and this is one aspect of why Israel and the Jews matter to the 25th anniversary of September 11th.

Jews are sometimes described as the canary in the coal mine. What I mean by that is simple, historically, we have an uncomfortable habit of finding ourselves early in the queue.

Israel is not the only target of Islamist extremism and Jews are not its only victims. Al-Qaeda’s principal enemy was America, ISIS murdered Muslims, Christians, Yazidis and Jews, Islamist terrorists have struck London, Paris, Madrid, Manchester, Brussels, Mumbai, Bali and countless cities across the Muslim world.

The West keeps hearing “Israel” and assuming the argument ends at Israel, history suggests otherwise.

Israel is not the final destination, Jews are not the final target, Palestine is not necessarily the limit of the cause. 9/11 should have taught us that.

In a month’s time, the names will be read again, nearly 3,000 of them. I will think about sitting in my car in Sunderland, listening to those names and finally crying for something I had witnessed twelve months earlier but had somehow been unable to process.

For millions alive today, September 11th is history; for me, it never will be. I remember where I stood, I remember the confusion and the fear, I remember the towers coming down and the sensation that the world was changing around me before any of us understood what the new world would look like.

Perhaps that is why our collective amnesia troubles me so much. I was there the last time the West discovered, in the most horrific way imaginable, that an ideology incubated thousands of miles away did not intend to remain there. I watched the towers fall.

Twenty-five years later, we still remember the planes and the buildings, those who jumped and the firefighters who ran in, above all, we remember the names.

What we appear to have forgotten is the warning.

That is why I am writing this now, a month before September 11th. I don’t want to argue, I want to remember. The dead deserve that much. But remembrance without learning eventually becomes ritual.

“Never Forget” was supposed to be both a promise to those we lost and a warning to those who remained.

Twenty-five years later, we haven’t forgotten 9/11.

We have forgotten what “Never Forget” was supposed to mean.

Amb. George Deek: The Christian Israel you are not being shown

If you genuinely want to know whether Christians are flourishing in a country, there are better measures than the behavior of its worst citizens.

Start with the most basic question:

Are Christians disappearing?

In Israel, they are not.

In 1950, Israel was home to roughly 34,000 Christians. Today there are about 184,000, and the community continues to grow.

Then look at what Christians actually do here.

Consider one image that tells you more about Christian integration than a hundred government brochures.

Justice Salim Joubran was an Arab Christian justice of Israel's Supreme Court. He sat on the panel that sent former Israeli president Moshe Katsav to prison. Think about that sentence. An Arab Christian judge helped send the Jewish president of the Jewish state to prison.

And nobody in Israel regarded his ethnicity or religion as an issue. He was a Supreme Court justice doing his job. That is the point.

Christians are physicians and hospital directors, academics and businesspeople, mayors, police officers, soldiers and diplomats.

I happen to be one of them.

The boy from the Christian Scouts in Jaffa eventually joined Israel's diplomatic service and became the first Christian appointed to represent Israel as an ambassador.

Today, I serve as Israel's special envoy to the Christian World, a position created specifically to deepen Israel's relationship with Christian communities around the world. Quite an elaborate way for a country supposedly hostile to Christianity to behave.

There are other inconvenient facts. In 2014, Israel formally recognized the Aramean nationality, giving members of ancient Aramaic and Syriac Christian traditions official recognition of an identity rooted in Christianity's earliest history.

Israel is also investing in Christianity's past and future here.

A few days ago, I visited the excavations at Bethsaida on the Sea of Galilee, where archaeologists identified what is likely to have been the hometown of the Apostles Peter and Andrew.

I watched Israeli and American archaeologists, Jews and Christians, literally digging the world of Jesus back out of the earth.

There is something wonderfully inconvenient about that image: The country supposedly erasing Christianity is uncovering the village of the Apostles.

And Israel is already preparing for 2030, when Christians will mark 2,000 years since the baptism of Jesus, an anniversary expected to bring enormous numbers of pilgrims to the Holy Land. Basilica of the Annunciation

Something interesting is happening beyond Israel's borders as well. Recent polling in Lebanon found strong support among its Christian communities for peace with Israel: 77% among Maronites and 72% among Orthodox Christians.

Perhaps Middle Eastern Christians, after watching what has happened to ancient communities in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere, are beginning to ask questions that old political slogans cannot answer.

Perhaps Jews and Christians in this region have more invested in one another's survival than generations of conflict allowed either side to admit.

08/12 Links Pt1: Why isn’t Iran attacking Israel?; What Trump's deal changed and why Israel was right to reject it; Isolated Israel? Countries rush to sign trade and security deals

From Ian:

Why isn’t Iran attacking Israel?

Iran’s last weapon
Iran has delivered a sweeping set of demands that the United States must meet before the Strait of Hormuz can be reopened to maritime traffic. The Islamic Republic of Iran has been fighting a war with the Great Satan, America, and the Little Satan, Israel, for 46 years.

Iran’s most powerful strategy has been to use proxies and drones. The proxies are on life support, but not their drones. They are able to keep the Gulf destabilized with these drones and also hit American bases, despite the fact that the US and Israel have neutralized more than 90% of those missiles.

Bombing bridges and power plants is not the answer. It will only hurt the Persian people who are crying out for freedom.

Why isn’t Iran attacking Israel?
To understand what is happening, one must ask a simple question: Why is Iran not attacking Israel?

The answer is that Israel fought one of the first true drone wars involving a great power. But what Israel did that was most effective was target Iranian leadership, such as Razi Mousavi, senior IRGC general and overseer of Syrian-Iran military coordination; Mohammad Reza Zahedi, IRGC Quds Force commander for Lebanon and Syria; Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader; Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council; Gholamreza Soleimani, commander of the Basij internal security forces; Alireza Tangsiri, commander of the IRGC Navy; and dozens, if not hundreds, of other Iranian leaders.

Iran is not attacking Israel because Israel targeted the top leadership of Iran, primarily through drone warfare. Cutting off the head of the snake is the key to keeping those snakes from procreating.

Trump has broken Iran’s war machine
What Donald Trump has achieved in the Iran war is astonishing, despite the liberal, godless media attacking him and claiming he has failed. Iran’s nuclear backbone has been broken, and its war machine is in shambles.

The next phase of the war does not have to be a major military operation. Quite the contrary, the US has the largest inventory of advanced drones in the world, but needs to manufacture 10 times that amount.

Iran’s only power left is its drones. They are trying to smuggle more of those fiber-optic drones to Hezbollah through Syria and Iraq and hit US bases in Iran, Kuwait, and Jordan.

Global campaign launched to counter claims of Israeli genocide in Gaza

More than 35 organizations from around the world have joined together in a campaign aiming to debunk “Hamas genocidal propaganda” about the Gaza war.

International Legal Forum CEO Michal Cotler-Wunsh says Hamas’s claim threatens foundational principles of law by hijacking the term genocide to spread what she calls “a modern blood libel,” accusing Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinian people.

Other organizations involved in the “Gaza GenoLIE” campaign include the American-based Anti-Defamation League, the International Legal Forum, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East and the World Columnist Jesse Kline keeps you up to date with what’s happening in Israel and the effects of antisemitism on life here in Canada. Friday mornings.

“The term ‘genocide,’ along with other international legal terms, has been deliberately and systematically hijacked, redefined, inverted, and weaponized to demonize, delegitimize, and apply double standards to ‘the Jew’ among nations,” Cotler-Wunsh said in a statement. “This well-orchestrated campaign to spread a modern blood libel accusing Israel of ‘genocide’ began before any Israeli response to Hamas’ genocidal war crimes and crimes against humanity of October 7.”

The GenoLIE website asserts that the genocide claims began on Oct. 8, 2023, the day after Hamas terrorists invaded southern Israel, killing 1,200 Israelis, most of them civilians. The word genocide was already in wide use, even though Israel’s ground operation did not begin until Oct. 27.

Amnesty International, certain UN bodies and other international groups have found there is evidence Israel committed genocide during the Gaza War. But Israel insists such investigations are fatally biased, and that the nation has done all it can to limit civilian casualties in a war in which the enemy hides behind its civilian population.

Israel acknowledges more than 70,000 people have died in the war. Gaza’s population was about two million prior to the war.

The Gaza GenoLIE website says it is an educational initiative about the “generated and orchestrated genocide lie promoted by anti-Zionists and antisemitic networks in the U.S., Europe and around the world.”

Genocide was defined in the 1948 Genocide Convention, drafted after the Holocaust. Under Article II, genocide refers to certain acts, such as killing, causing serious harm, inflicting destructive conditions of life, committed “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.”

The GenoLIE campaign argues the most crucial element is the word “intent,” noting that the convention does not merely ask whether people died, or whether they died in large numbers, it asks whether the perpetrator acted with the specific purpose of destroying a protected group because of its membership in that group.

The groups argue that Israel waged war to dismantle Hamas and secure the release of the hostages, and the civilian death toll was a consequence of urban combat against an enemy that “purposely and cynically embed(ed) itself” among its own population.

Third Time Is the Charm? The Mecca Pact and the Sad History of Collective Defense

Seventy-five Years of Collective Defense Announcements
The clearest recent illustration of the gap between announcement and defense lies one country away from Riyadh. Turkey has maintained roughly 3,000 troops in Qatar under a defense partnership that deepened considerably after the 2017 Gulf blockade, a presence Ankara initially characterized as a real fighting force rather than a symbolic gesture. That presence was tested twice within a year, and twice it did nothing. When Iran struck the Al Udeid air base near Doha in June 2025, and again during the war in 2026, the Turkish presence neither deterred the attacks nor prompted a response. When Israel struck Hamas leadership in Doha in September 2025, the Turkish response was a condemnation at the United Nations and attendance at an emergency summit, not a military one.

What is missing from the Turkish presence in Qatar, and from every agreement examined here, is the conversion of solidarity into obligation: a common definition of the aggression that triggers the guarantee, forces assigned to it in advance, an integrated command, agreed rules of engagement, and a settled answer to who decides that the common war has begun. This is the difference between these pacts and the alliance they imitate. NATO functions not because its members pray next to one another but because a common threat and an American hegemon willing to underwrite the guarantee made it worth the surrender of sovereignty that integrated command requires. The Middle East’s treaties reproduce NATO’s language while omitting each of these foundations because their signatories face different adversaries, decline to place their forces under a partner’s command, and have no hegemon prepared to compel or reassure them. A mutual-defense clause is cheap to sign and dear to honor, and one cannot collect its benefits without bearing its costs. The Mecca pact reproduces this arrangement on a larger scale, and with fewer troops actually deployed.

The pattern predates the present crisis by three-quarters of a century. The Treaty of Joint Defense and Economic Cooperation of Arab states in 1950, signed a year after the defeat in Palestine, contained the same clause declaring aggression against one member to be aggression against all, and it established a Joint Defense Council that never functioned as a coordinating body, most conspicuously in the 1967 war, in which the Arab League as such did not intervene at all. The United Arab Command, promised at the first Arab summit in January 1964 and placed under an Egyptian commander, was the only tangible product of that promise. When Israel raided the Jordanian-held West Bank village of as-Samu in November 1966, the command did nothing: its Egyptian core was tied down in the war in Yemen, and the frontline states had refused to allow Egyptian troops onto their soil. There was only one instance in which such a mutual defense treaty was honored, and it led to a disaster when, in May 1967, King Hussein of Jordan placed his army under the Egyptian general Abdul Munim Riad in the days before the war. The sole consequence was that General Riad, acting on false reports of Egyptian victory relayed from Cairo, ordered the Jordanian front into an offensive that cost Jordan East Jerusalem and the West Bank within seventy-two hours. The pattern has persisted in the present decade. Egypt’s proposal for a unified Arab force at Sharm el-Sheikh in 2015, and its NATO-style proposal at Doha in September 2025, never came to fruition.

Collective defense agreements in the Middle East have repeatedly functioned as projects of regional order and leadership before they functioned as mechanisms of war. This is why their ceremonial character is substantive rather than incidental. Thus, they repeatedly flounder because collective defense is never merely collective defense. To determine the supreme commander is to determine hierarchy. To place forces permanently in another regional country is to create political leverage inside it. To decide which threat activates the common force is to decide whose definition of regional order prevails. To institutionalize an alliance is therefore to settle, or at least freeze, the struggle for primacy among states that have rarely accepted one another’s primacy.

NATO did not solve this problem through superior committee design. It solved it politically because there was never serious doubt that the United States sat at the apex of the alliance. Western Europeans could integrate because integration did not require Britain, France, West Germany, Italy, and Belgium to settle among themselves which one would dominate the others; an overwhelmingly superior external power already occupied the commanding position, and a massive Soviet adversary supplied a threat sufficiently common to make American hierarchy tolerable.

Assessment
Moreover, the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement is best understood as a message directed at Washington rather than a capability directed at Tehran. Since October 7, Saudi Arabia has worked steadily to advertise its strategic autonomy and its access to alternative partners, first through the bilateral pact with Pakistan, then through the quadrilateral that never materialized, and now through a trilateral agreement staged for maximum visibility. The aim of this sequence has been to raise the cost of American disengagement by demonstrating that the kingdom is prepared to seek elsewhere the guarantees it no longer trusts Washington to provide. The same message is being delivered on other fronts: when the Saudi commentator Ali Shihabi, a reliable barometer of official thinking, warned in the Washington Post that pressing Riyadh too hard on the terms of civil nuclear cooperation could push the Kingdom toward China instead, he was performing the same function as the pacts, reminding Washington that the Kingdom has options and intends to be seen holding them.

For American policymakers, the appropriate response is to read the pact as a piece of diplomatic theater designed to leverage security concessions from Washington. Riyadh’s search for alternatives arises partly from a shortage of defensive capacity and partly from uncertainty about the conditions under which American power will actually be used to defend the Kingdom. Additional air-defense assets can reduce the first problem; only a clearer and more credible understanding of consultation, resupply, and response to proxy attack can address the second. The agreement is, in the end, an argument about American reliability conducted in the language of alliance, and in this region that language has a long history of describing commitments that no one genuinely intends to keep.

When I was a little girl, my father taught me how to kiss the mezuzah. It was a simple thing, but it stuck with me. Maybe it’s the reason that more than anything else, I’m a Jew.

There were other things growing up that helped make me a Jew. Someone always had to hear me say “Shema” before bed. Not the whole prayer. But that one powerful sentence, sung in my childish singsong.

I wanted to write about this. This and other things. But since October 7, I haven’t been able to write. Not like before, when it flowed like a river, from brain to fingers to keyboard.

Now it’s stuck. Maybe something shorted out.

And still, I am trying to find my way back to the keyboard.

So each week I tell myself, “Write something short. Anything. People will understand.”

Instead, I imagine my childhood bedroom, the glossy white paint of its walls and furniture, streaked with the merest tint of pale aqua. My father holding me up to the mezuzah. Teaching me how to kiss it and why.

I only had my father a short time. But I can still hear his voice, its exact cadence and timbre. In thirteen years, he gave me everything I needed.

He made me more than anything else, a Jew.

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)

Israel haters love this week’s Torah portion, Mishpatim. Tzedek tzedek tirdof, usually translated as “Justice, justice you shall pursue,” is the major Biblical quote that every progressive, anti-Israel rabbi knows. It comes from Deuteronomy 16:20, and it is quoted by people who could not tell you what the rest of the verse says, let alone what tzedek itself means.

A little research shows that “tzedek” cannot mean justice in the way that English speakers use the term. Moreover, when they invoke “justice,” they are acting as the judge and jury themselves, which is in no way justice.

The Hebrew word mishpat also means justice or judgment. However, it is not a synonym for tzedek. The proof is in the Torah itself.

Leviticus 19:15 says b’tzedek tishpot amitecha, “judge your fellow with tzedek.” Deuteronomy 1:16 says, u’shfatetem tzedek, “judge with tzedek.” And this week’s verse before the one often quotes, in Deuteronomy 16:18, says v’shaftu et ha’am mishpat tzedek, “they shall judge the people with a mishpat that is tzedek.”

Mishpat is the legal ruling. Tzedek is an adjective describing what kind of legal ruling it should be. Mishpat tzedek does not mean “just justice,” but “correct justice.” Tzedek means “right”. Mishpat tzedek means a ruling that is right, and the phrase only makes sense at all if a ruling can exist that is not right. A judge can follow every procedure, hear every witness, apply the law exactly as written, and still get it wrong. That possibility is built into the vocabulary. (In modern Hebrew, the variant “tzodek” means “correct.”)

The Torah is telling us that legality and rightness are not the same thing, and that having a system is not the same as having the truth. A proper judgment must include intangible factors, such as mercy when appropriate.

The activists who wave “justice justice you shall pursue” at Israel do not distinguish between mishpat and tzedek. They use “justice” the way a toddler uses “mine,” as a word that means whatever gets them what they want. Human rights NGOs and cosplayed trials like “the Russell Tribunal” operate the same way: reach the verdict before admitting any evidence. There is a reason the Amnesty report accusing Israel of genocide was called “the genocide report” internally before it was written. The modern purveyors of 'justice,” like “Students for Justice in Palestine,” have rendered the word meaningless.

One cannot even construct a hypothetical in which these “justice-centered” groups rule in Israel’s favor. No matter how heinous Palestinian crimes are, it is always ultimately Israel who is guilty. A verdict that cannot vary regardless of the facts is neither just nor right. It is a script, and chanting tzedek tzedek tirdof is as mindless as the sham verdicts are. The Torah insists not only on justice but correct, righteous justice. These organizations provide neither.

And then there is the second half of the verse, the part that never makes it onto the progressive rabbis' sermons. Tzedek tzedek tirdof, l’ma’an tichyeh v’yarashta et ha’aretz asher Hashem Elokecha noten lach. “Pursue righteous judgment, so that you may live and inherit the land that the Lord your God is giving you.” In context, this verses are calling for the Children of Israel to create a justice system that not only follows the rules but that applies them correctly, with righteousness. The reward for building a system of mishpat tzedek is the Land of Israel itself. This is one of the most explicitly Zionist verses in the entire Torah, a direct promise linking a functioning, correct justice system to the inheritance of the land.

The idea that the reward for tzedek, tzedek is Jews being able to live in the Promised Land is not very popular among anti-Zionists.

(Paid subscribers to my Substack can see how I relate the verse to my Derechology framework.)

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)

08/11 Links Pt2: On Democracies and Death Cults; What’s the right way to beat the left?; Written Out – The Cultural Erasure of the Jewish People

From Ian:

On Democracies and Death Cults

A terrible mutation afflicts American politics. A pathological hostility toward Israel has become a driver of political identity and debate. The genocide accusation is increasingly treated as settled truth; opposition to Zionism as evidence of virtue; and even Hamas and "armed resistance" can be romanticized or excused. Israel is being cast as such a singular evil that opposing it can seem almost a prerequisite for occupying the moral high ground.

Douglas Murray's recent book, On Democracies and Death Cults, confronts precisely this mutation. He argues that Hamas is a death cult, that Israel is confronting an enemy unlike any conventional military adversary, and that much of the West has become morally incapable of distinguishing between a liberal democracy and an organization that celebrates the murder of civilians.

His central proposition ought to be among the least controversial statements in modern politics: Hamas is evil. The fact that an accomplished writer felt compelled to devote an entire book to persuading educated Western readers of that proposition - and that this is controversial - says volumes about what our society has mutated into.

Hamas's objective is not a negotiated peace or a two-state solution. It has repeatedly opposed such outcomes because it does not seek coexistence with Israel but Israel's destruction. Hamas's own stated aims are impossible to misunderstand.

Murray also describes in excruciatingly graphic detail the evidence he collected of the murders on Oct. 7, in the rural communities invaded by Hamas and at the Nova music festivals - girls shot in the head as they begged for mercy, boys' heads bashed in with hammers, grenades lobbed at people cowering. It is unbearable and leaves no doubt about the evil at work.

Shai Davidai: It’s Time to Stop Playing Defense

Rebutting the “genocide” libel without explaining how Hamas operates from densely populated civilian areas and uses civilian infrastructure for military purposes leaves people without an alternative explanation for the horrifying death and destruction they see in Gaza. Rebutting the “apartheid” libel without explaining how suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks led Israel to construct a security barrier and establish military checkpoints leaves people without an explanation for why those measures exist. Rebutting the “settler colonialism” libel without explaining the Jewish people’s millennia-old connection to the land and the historical circumstances that produced the modern State of Israel leaves people without an explanation for why millions of Jews live there at all. Asking people to abandon an explanation without giving them another through which to make sense of the world risks creating a hole in their story without offering anything with which to fill it.

None of this means lies should be ignored. Some accusations cause immediate harm and must be answered quickly, clearly, and forcefully. Falsehoods can destroy reputations, influence institutions, inspire violence, and become accepted wisdom if no one challenges them. Defense matters. Yet the moment adherents of American Intellectual Antisemitism force us to debate whether their accusation is true, they have already secured an important victory: dictating what everyone else must discuss.

Playing offense means doing something fundamentally different. It means choosing your own questions rather than merely answering theirs. It means deciding which ideas deserve attention, which values should frame the conversation, and which facts people encounter before someone else tells them what those facts mean. It means telling people who the Jewish people are, why we remained connected to our homeland through two thousand years of dispersion, and what happened during centuries in which we lacked the power to protect ourselves. It means explaining why Jewish self-determination emerged, how Israel became the national expression of an ancient people, and why Jewish sovereignty matters in the first place. Instead of spending all our time explaining what Israel is not, we must tell people what it is. We must stop letting our opponents choose the story and start telling the story we actually want people to understand.

On October 7, 2023, Israel’s defensive systems did what they were meant to do: they detected incoming rockets, calculated their trajectories, and destroyed those threatening populated areas before they reached their targets. Over the months that followed, they intercepted thousands more attacks and saved countless lives. Yet no general would confuse successful missile defense with victory.

What is true about the physical war against Hamas is equally true of the ideological war against American Intellectual Antisemitism. If all you ever do is shoot down whatever your opponent fires at you, your opponent still chooses the targets, timing, and tempo of the war. Correct the lies that must be corrected. Defend the truth that must be defended. Shoot down the attacks that cannot be allowed to land. But never confuse successfully intercepting your opponent’s attacks with defeating the ideology launching them.

Defense can keep you alive. Only offense can change the battlefield.

It is time to stop playing defense.

Ruthie Blum: What’s the right way to beat the left?

Combating radicalization, which has creeped into the zeitgeist despite efforts to keep it at bay, is not simply the demand of the day; it’s an existential imperative for liberal Western democracy and civilization. And though the tendency to sound the alarm on individuals running for office is completely understandable, it doesn’t always achieve the desired results. On the contrary.

Greenwald offered a useful reminder of why. “The 2016 presidential election left no doubt about the exact nature of Donald Trump’s flaming outlandishness, and he stunned the world by becoming the GOP nominee and then president,” he wrote. “Starting years before the 2024 election, Democrats made a full-time job of repeating that Trump was a threat to democracy, a sexual predator, a grifter and a convicted felon, and then he was elected president by a greater margin than in 2016.”

The lesson here isn’t that it’s useless to impugn an opponent. It’s that doing so excessively can backfire badly.

Indeed, the irrational, obsessive maligning of Netanyahu by Israeli leftists and their fellow “anybody but Bibi” travelers didn’t succeed at their mission. Instead, they were pummeled at the ballot box in November 2022, ushering in the most right-wing coalition in the country’s history.

The right should take this into account today. It would also do well to consider another problem that Greenwald elucidated: “When a candidate makes his opponent’s unfitness the central message of his campaign, he also makes the race all about his opponent.”

Exactly.

If the right spends the next two and a half months explaining why Eisenkot, Golan and Abbas are the bogeymen, it will be turning them into the protagonists of the election. You don’t have to be an expert in advertising to grasp that this is a way to build, rather than dilute, their brand.

Greenwald’s prescription is worth noting. “Perhaps the best way to go after a radical opponent,” he suggested, “is to get a jump on offering a compelling vision of your own that competes with the dark one he’s peddling.”

That should be the Israeli right’s strategy. Not letting the left off the hook, but preventing it from becoming the centerpiece—and from disguising itself as the center.

08/11 Links Pt1: Want Peace with Israel? Lift the Siege; Benny Morris: A Mid-War Assessment; Mossad ‘toured’ Fordow many times, bombing was ‘fulfillment of all dreams'

From Ian:

Want Peace with Israel? Lift the Siege

One accusation repeated again and again is that Israel is aggressive. But the opposite is true. Israel is denied a peace it has pursued since its establishment in 1948.

The truth is that Israel is surrounded by an explicit desire to erase it, and remaining constantly on guard is what it must do to survive.

On Friday, a defense pact was signed among Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan, champions of Sunni Islam.

It may appear that they want to defend themselves against Shi'ite Iran, but no. Pakistan's defense minister, Khawaja Asif, said: "In the context of Israel, all Muslim countries must unite," describing Israel as "a threat to the entire Muslim world" and calling for a "united military front" against it.

Turkish President Erdogan has made hatred of Israel - and the ambition to take control of Jerusalem - a banner of his politics.

Benny Morris: A Mid-War Assessment

The Islamist war on the Jewish state, which began with the Palestinian Hamas assault from Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, is still with us, with no end in sight. That assault was followed the next day by rocketing by Lebanese Hizbullah, and the Yemeni Houthi rebels and assorted Islamist militias in Iraq joined in a few weeks later. On April 13-14, 2024, the Islamic Republic of Iran directly attacked Israel with ballistic missiles and suicide drones, initiating a frontal confrontation with the Jewish state.

Since then, bouts of intensive fighting have been interspersed with ceasefires, with the halts in warfare invariably imposed on Israel by U.S. President Trump and acceded to by the Islamist belligerents happy to enjoy breathers.

The present stalemate leaves Iran controlling passage through the Strait of Hormuz and Iran's proxies - Hamas, Hizbullah, Iraqi militias and the Houthis - recovering and still in the fight. Iran's periodic rocketing and droning of America's regional Sunni allies - Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Jordan - and U.S. military bases in these countries have severely undermined American power and prestige and have underwritten Iran's current hegemony in the Gulf. Trump is palpably reluctant to resume the war with Iran, and the Iranians are exploiting this weakness to the hilt.

As Israelis see it, the war is far from over, and most assume that the Islamists, once ready, will resume their war-making against the Jewish state and a very revenge-minded Iran will press ahead with its nuclear program. Iran's Islamist leaders have consistently declared that their goal is Israel's destruction.

Israeli observers expect Iran to move as quickly as possible to acquire nuclear weapons in the hope that these will shield it from future American and Israeli attack (and provide it with the means to flatten Israel). But while Iranian intentions are crystal clear, its capacity to rapidly progress toward nuclear weaponry is unknown after its major nuclear enrichment facilities were devastated in 2025-26.

Lebanon Lacks the Will and the Power to Confront Hizbullah

There is a contradiction at the heart of Western policy toward Lebanon. The forces in the country that are willing to negotiate with Israel don't have the power to influence those who are at war with it. The Iran-backed forces responsible for the violence openly reject the talks and make clear that they will not consider themselves obligated by any agreements reached. This contradiction shows no signs of being resolved any time soon.

There is little optimism on the Israeli side that the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) performance this time will differ from past experience. Two UN Security Council resolutions, 1559 from 2004 and 1701, which ended the war of 2006, already called for the disarmament of all non-state military groups in Lebanon. Past Lebanese governments accepted these resolutions. Yet Iran's proxy Hizbullah continued to prosecute its long war against Israel from Lebanese soil, without suffering serious hindrance from the forces of the state.

The current government uses sharper tones in its criticisms of Hizbullah. But the Lebanese state lacks both the will and the capacity to force the non-state element to obey. Moreover, the LAF is believed to consist of 50% Shia among its rank and file and 30% in its officer corps.

So the U.S.-brokered Israel-Lebanon diplomatic process rests on a series of fictions. Israel is aware of these fictions and is not in a position to endlessly indulge this illusion, given its responsibility for the residents of Israel's border communities.

The Canadian university survey details how anti-Zionism is destroying academic freedom, today

There is a lot of material in the Canadian Campus Antisemitism and Student Experiences (CASE) survey that was just released, and I don't want to bury any of the important points. I already discussed the appendix pointing out how the students don't even understand that standard antisemitic tropes are bigoted to begin with.

Another very disturbing finding is how the environment on campus is destroying the fundamental right of academic freedom to begin with.

BDS justifies boycotting Israeli academia in the name of academic freedom, and the irony is obvious: they are shutting down access to Israeli research and study, the very opposite of such freedom, by claiming that this is what Israel does. In reality, every example they give is where Israel is responding to specific security needs: checkpoints that slow a professor's commute from Ramallah to Bir Zeit, a university closed after a wave of terror attacks, a permit denied to a visiting lecturer. That is the preferred frame. Israel restricts, the world's students and faculty must speak up.

CASE describes a chilling effect on academic freedom happening right now, on North American campuses, at a scale that dwarfs anything done to Palestinians.. It is the academic freedom of Jewish students, and almost nobody talks about it.

The survey polled roughly 900 Jewish students across Canadian postsecondary institutions. The results are chilling:

71.8% limit what they say in class about being Jewish.
41.3% avoid certain classes or events altogether.
39.8% say antisemitism has hurt their academic performance.
32.5% have considered dropping a course or leaving their program because of it.
25.9% have considered leaving their university entirely.

When you look at classroom-level issues, the problem is worse. 36% encountered course content or discussion they experienced as antisemitic or biased. 34% had a professor bring up Jews, Israel, or Zionism in a class where the subject had nothing to do with any of it. 47% felt pressured to share their opinion of Israel with other students, 36% felt pressured to conform to a professor's views on the subject, and 20% felt pressured to join an anti-Israel protest.

Eighteen percent of the incidents students described named a faculty member as the source of the problem, and another seven percent named a teaching assistant, meaning the people grading these students' work are, by their own account, sometimes the ones doing the intimidating.

This is what an actual academic freedom crisis looks like: a quarter of the affected population weighing whether to abandon their education, and two in five reporting that their grades have already suffered for it.

The usual debate about academic freedom discusses the freedom of the professors to say what they want. Do they have the right to write offensive things on social media? Do they have the right to bring their politics into the lecture hall? Can they move the class itself to a protest encampment?

Nobody asks whether the professor lecturing on "Zionism as a death cult" or assigning a podcast that likens Zionism to Nazism is violating the academic freedom of the Jewish student sitting in the third row, the one who must now calculate whether raising their hand is worth the risk. A university is a place where students are supposed to be free to question a professor's claims, disagree with a reading, or simply stay silent, without paying for it in a grade or in the room's good opinion of them. The CASE report makes this argument explicitly: a professor's freedom to express a strong political view does not cancel a student's freedom to question it, dissent from it, or decline to answer at all. When 71.8% of a population self-censors and 18% name their professors as the source of the antisemitism they've faced, that second freedom is the one actually collapsing.

Not to mention that there is a power asymmetry between the lecturer and the student. For all the talk among progressives about the dangers of power disparities, this one is not considered a problem when the instructor is on the "right side of history." The silenced student has little power to fight back.

Grading a Jewish student down for writing about the sexual violence of October 7, as one CASE respondent describes happening to her, generates no petition and no coverage, because the assumption on campus is that this is simply what a controversial classroom discussion looks like. It is not. It is a professor using the power to grade as a weapon against a viewpoint she does not share, and the CASE data suggest it happens routinely enough that Jewish students have already built their behavior around expecting it. Self-censorship is as debilitating to a campus environment as external censorship is.

Nobody needs to be fired, no protest needs to be banned, no professor needs to lose the freedom to say something odious about Zionism from behind a podium. A written policy protecting student dissent will not by itself produce it, because the student in the third row is weighing the cost of speaking up against the professor's actual conduct, not the student handbook. If a professor is going to declare that Zionism is an evil ideology or that Israel is a "sea of savages and barbarians," as CASE respondents report hearing, that professor has to say just as clearly, and just as often, that disagreement is welcome and will cost nothing in the grade book. The students deserve the same respect the professors demand for themselves. A lecturer who loudly expresses an opinion must be equally loud that others can disagree. When the disagreement descends into sneering dismissal is when academic freedom is shut down.

The side that has the power to give grades and decide on a student's future is in a position of power, and the more strident the opinion, the more important it is to make anyone who disagrees feel comfortable.

A Jewish student who has watched classmates get frozen out for saying something politically incorrect about Israel or the Palestinians will read an unqualified political declaration as exactly what it is: a rule as to what is acceptable and unacceptable to say in the classroom.

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)