Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, March 23, 2026

03/23 Links Pt2: Hatzola ambulances set alight in Golders Green arson attack; We love life, they love death and Britain still can't pick a side; Can Democracies Survive the Age of AI Propaganda?

From Ian:

The Golders Green ambulance attack reveals the depths of the new Jew hatred

We’ve been told since Brexit that a new 1930s is upon us. Apparently, British voters politely asking for more democratic clout and better border control constituted a terrifying descent into Nazism. All the while, those menacing Britain’s tiny Jewish community – smaller in number than British Sikhs – were rendered invisible.

Smashed shops, firebombings, murder – purely because they are Jews. I don’t know how many echoes of history need to ring out, how much broken glass needs to rattle on the ground, before the anti-fascists rouse from their slumber. Or realise they’ve slipped on to the other side.

Muslim anti-Semitism, in particular, has been lent cover by all the usual idiots and cowards. Despite anti-Semitic attitudes being stubbornly higher among British Muslims, despite Islamic extremism being the biggest terror threat we face by a country mile, every political discussion must at some point pivot to the spectre of the ‘far right’.

Given you could now fit the actual far right in the back of an Uber XL, this requires smear tactics and spectacular mental gymnastics – like when Gary Neville responded to the Heaton Park killings by bemoaning the blokes putting Union flags on lampposts, or when Green MP Hannah Spencer blamed the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing on the ‘division’ generated by Reform UK.

The arguments are almost too stupid to rebut. Apparently, Jihad al-Shamie only decided to lunge at Jews with a knife because he was made to feel ‘unwelcome’ by the sight of our national flag, and Salman Abedi only blew up girls at a pop concert because he stumbled across one of Nigel Farage’s old speeches to the European Parliament.

These are just the more low-wattage attempts to defend the indefensible. Jew hatred is back. But our rulers cannot compute it, let alone fight it. For that would require ditching their comforting ideologies, their identitarian blinkers, their deranged Israelophobia. It would mean accepting that they are part of the problem.

Jake Wallis Simons: We love life, they love death and Britain still can't pick a side

The firebombing of the ambulances is a case in point. We saw it in the Manchester synagogue stabbings and in all likelihood, we have seen it again: unbridled antisemitic incitement has consequences. Ever since October 7, our country has been debased by weekly carnivals of Jew-hatred on our streets, powered in large part by the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies. Yet when Suella Braverman labelled them “hate marches”, it was she who was silenced rather than the racist agitators.

Once again, even as the ambulances smoulder, the same propaganda is all over social media. If the Jews hadn’t tried to defend themselves against the jihadi hordes of Hamas and the Islamic regime in Tehran, if they had simply rolled over and joined Kier Starmer in bleating that vanquishing your enemy is “against international law”, they claim, then ambulances would not be firebombed in London.

Such are the foul consequences of lies. Such is their weaponisation. Such are the results of fanning the flames of hatred for years, or taking no action when it happens under our noses.

There was no “genocide” in Gaza – which genocide features evacuation warnings and humanitarian aid? Which genocide involves soldiers fighting hand-to-hand in tunnels to avoid harming civilians when the Strip could easily have been levelled from the air? – just as there are no “war crimes” in Iran.

Saturate people’s brains with footage of the appalling sufferings of war, however, and deceitfully frame it as evidence of atrocities, and lies have borne the fruit of hatred. Even our political leaders are not immune. With one eye on the Muslim vote, which is increasingly functioning as an anti-democratic sectarian bloc in a contribution to our social decline, the Prime Minister recognised a state of Palestine with the Israeli hostages still in the catacombs, earning the open congratulations of Hamas.

About ten days later, two Jews were killed in Manchester, again to the great satisfaction of the jihadis in Gaza. When David Lammy turned up to offer his condolences, he was heckled by the grieving Jews of Manchester, and with good reason.

What does all of this amount to? Simple: Britain faces a choice. Either we find the courage to look the Islamists in the eye and tell them that enough is enough, or we see the disappearance of our Jewish community and the gradual fall of our democracy. If that sounds alarmist, look back at history. Read the 2015 government report on the Muslim Brotherhood, which labelled the group a national security threat and yet resulted in no action.

As Israeli prime minister Golda Meir famously said, “they say we must be dead. And we say we want to be alive. Between life and death, I don’t know of a compromise.” Does Britain wish to stand on the side of the ambulances that seek to save us, or the arsonists who fetishise blood? Disturbingly, the country is finding it hard to make up its mind.

Daniel Sugarman: Golders Green, antisemitism and Passover

In a little more than a week, we will sit at the Passover table to conduct the seder. We will tell our children the story of the Exodus from Egypt. The people of Israel were honoured in Egypt – Joseph served as the Imperial viceroy – until it all came crashing down. What happened? The book of Exodus, quoted in the Haggadah, the telling over of the Passover story, tells us. “A new king arose, who did not know Joseph”. Did he literally not know who Joseph was? Unlikely. But Joseph – and his service to Egypt, helping protect the populace from the ravages of famine – meant nothing to him. The Bible goes into detail about what was the first instance of antisemitism in history – the charge, repeated so many times down the millennia, of dual loyalty.

“Let us deal wisely with them”, says Pharaoh to his people. “In case they increase in number and a war befall us and they join our enemies and wage war against us.”

A little later on in the Haggadah, we will read the paragraph of Vehi Sheamdah, which says “in every generation, our enemies rise up to destroy us”. It would be taken as paranoia were it not demonstrably true. The last few years have seen a sickening sanitisation of Jew hate in public life. In an era where every antisemitic attack is followed by a tidal wave of accusations of false flags and dual loyalty, where Jews are blamed for the very attacks they are targeted by, this takes on a new meaning.

That paragraph of the Haggadah ends by saying “and the Holy One, blessed be he, rescues us from their hands.” Returning momentarily to my charedi upbringing, the word for “rescues us” – matzilenu – has the same Hebrew root as the name of the organisation whose ambulances were firebombed – hatzola – literally, “rescue”. At the time I write this, more than £1 million has been been raised for Hatzola NW, raised by thousands of people, Jewish and non-Jewish alike – and the government has pledged to replace all the ambulances that were destroyed.

Those who seek to intimidate us and bring us down will find it far harder to do so than they think.

03/23 Links Pt1: Suicide by Timidity; Trump negotiating potential deal with Iran; Cracks in Tehran's Regime Widen; Iran Lost the Arab Street

From Ian:

Suicide by Timidity

There is a particular kind of comfort in the phrase no imminent threat, a talking point that has gained prominence with the joint U.S.-Israeli military operation against Iran. For opponents of the operation, on the left and the right, the phrase serves as evidence that the rationale for attacking Iran is fraudulent. It functions both as a linguistic sedative—whispered by bureaucrats and pundits to assure a nervous public that the wolf is not yet at the door—and as an assertion that any military action at this time constitutes reckless and unnecessary warmongering. It is the language of “principled restraint,” a rhetorical shield used across the ideological spectrum, from the skepticism of Sens. Mark Warner and Elizabeth Warren to the isolationist critiques of Tucker Carlson and Rand Paul. But beneath the surface of this bipartisan consensus lies a profound psychological pathology.

By reducing the complexity of strategic judgment to a single, binary metric—Is an attack occurring right this second?—we have traded genuine security for a dangerous, and ultimately temporary, emotional relief.

In the realm of behavioral economics, this tendency is known as “present bias” or “hyperbolic discounting.” Humans are hardwired to undervalue future risks in favor of present comforts. For a modern populace, the “immediate reward” of social stability today—no sirens, no mobilization, no disruption of the daily routine—is so intoxicating that we are willing to accept the “delayed punishment” of an adversary completing a nuclear facility that renders future defense impossible. Avoiding military action delivers an instant hit of political relief, while the catastrophic risks of inaction remain deferred and abstract. We are, in effect, choosing a quiet today at the cost of a radioactive tomorrow.

This cognitive trap is reinforced by a legal doctrine that has failed to keep pace with the physics of modern slaughter. The traditional formulation for anticipatory self-defense emerged from the Caroline incident of 1837, when Canadian militia, under British authority, crossed into the United States and destroyed the Caroline, an American steamer that had been used by sympathetic Americans to supply Canadian rebels, nearly setting off a crisis between the United States and Great Britain. The legal theory, articulated in the diplomatic correspondence between U.S. Secretary of State Daniel Webster and British envoy to the U.S. Lord Ashburton, required a threat to be “instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.” In the mid-19th century, when armies moved at the speed of a horse, and mobilization was a visible, weeks-long process involving steamships and infantry, this standard was a workable safeguard against adventurism.

But we no longer live in the world of the Caroline. Modern warfare has compressed the timeline of destruction into a digital pulse. Ballistic missiles, cyberwarfare, and nuclear enrichment programs have eliminated the visible “mobilization phase” of old. Today, an adversary can achieve a “breakthrough” that permanently alters the strategic balance before a single soldier crosses a border.

Legal scholars like Daniel Bethlehem have proposed a necessary evolution: Imminence must be assessed contextually. It must weigh the probability of an attack, the pattern of hostile conduct and, most critically, the “last window of opportunity” to act. As Mark L. Rockefeller has argued, equating imminent with immediate risks transforms the sacred right of self-defense into a “strategic suicide pact.” If we wait until the missile is airborne to satisfy a 19th-century definition of timing, we have already lost.

Israel Is America's Best Ally - We Must Reject the Evil of Antisemitism

The stunning and ominous rise in antisemitism in the U.S. cannot be disputed, but can be resisted. It is particularly the obligation of genuine Christians to participate in the repression through education of the ancient evil. It is the particular obligation of Christian institutions to do their part in making this sin once again an obvious source of shame and to help cure those who suffer from it and, where it cannot be cured, to force it back by shaming and shunning into the deepest shadows where it belongs.

In a dangerous world, even the dominant superpower - the U.S. - needs allies. Israel is, objectively, the most important ally of the U.S. It is the equal of any military on the globe in its ability to strike far and hard and to dominate its region. It's an intelligence superpower and an engine of technological excellence and ever-increasing breakthroughs. If any country had to pick one strong ally not named the U.S., it would pick Israel.

Israel is also a reliable and fully-integrated-into-our-military ally. Israel takes what the U.S. makes and improves on it, as had been the case with the F-35 fighter. It sometimes takes the rudiments of a technology and develops them to scale and deploys them, as with Iron Dome and soon Iron Beam. Those advancements will return to America as the Golden Dome and the Golden Beam.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Israel shares America's founding values of individual liberty and democratic governance. Freedom of speech is as robust there as it is here. Human rights are respected there as they are here. It is a "Western nation" in every respect.

Criticizing Israel in Wartime

According to a survey by the Institute for National Security Studies, 91% of Israeli Jews support the war against Iran, which most view as a battle for Israel's very right to exist. Israel's American critics say Iran does not present an imminent threat.

In practice, Iran's ballistic missile program was growing at a rapid rate and becoming an extreme threat to Israel, of which we are now getting an initial "taste." Iran was also building new nuclear facilities at Natanz and Isfahan and would eventually have unearthed the 400 kg. of highly enriched uranium, sufficient for the first 10 bombs.

Part of adulthood is the ability to put one's overall political preferences aside and assess specific issues on their merits. Trump and Netanyahu are doing an effective job of severely degrading a major threat to American security and an existential one to Israel's. On this they deserve our support and appreciation.

The critics have never had to cower in their shelters and safe rooms, grab their kids off the swings in a playground during an alert, or jump into a ditch on the highway. They rarely served in the IDF or sent their children to serve. They have never spent three or more years of sleepless nights, worrying whether their sons - and increasingly daughters - who serve in combat units are all right. Most American Jews have never lived in a country in which one is rarely out of sight of the nearest hostile border.

They have never had to live for decades in the face of existential threats and the knowledge that Israel's enemies would annihilate its civilian population if ever given the opportunity, as proven so tragically on Oct. 7. They have never had to live with continuous terrorism and repeatedly had to call the cell phones of loved ones to make sure they were okay after another barbarous attack.

If you care deeply about Israel and want to have a positive impact, support AIPAC. It may not be perfect, but it is the only pro-Israel lobby.

On February 24, 2022 — the first day of Russia's invasion of Ukraine — a Russian Tochka ballistic missile with a cluster munition warhead struck outside a hospital in Vuhledar, killing four civilians and wounding ten, six of them healthcare workers. HRW published a full report the very next day. It named the victims, interviewed the hospital's chief doctor, identified the weapon from remnants, and laid out the legal case under customary international humanitarian law — noting that Russia's non-signatory status to the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions was no excuse, since the prohibition on indiscriminate attacks applies to all parties regardless of treaty status. HRW's arms director Steve Goose called it "unlawful" and demanded Russia stop immediately.

It has now been three weeks since Iran shot its first cluster bomb missile at Israeli civilians, and HRW has not written a word.

Since February 28, 2026, Iran has fired approximately 850 ballistic missiles at Israel. According to the IDF Home Front Command, roughly 50 percent of those missiles — approximately 425 — have been armed with cluster munition warheads, releasing between 24 and 80 submunitions each across areas of up to 10 square kilometers. CNN's analysis of two separate Iranian cluster munition attacks confirmed impacts spread across areas of seven and eight miles respectively, falling at random on homes, businesses, roads and parks. The IDF has had to instruct Israeli citizens not to approach unexploded ordnance after attacks, because the duds function as landmines. Arms expert N.R. Jenzen-Jones of Armament Research Services reviewed the pattern of strikes and concluded that these warheads have no "clear military purpose" and are being used "primarily to sow terror amongst a civilian population."

Israelis have been killed by these bombs. Yaron and Ilana Moshe, a couple in their seventies in Ramat Gan, were killed after a cluster warhead struck their building. Two construction workers were struck by submunitions at a work site in Yehud. Nine civilians were killed in a single strike on a residential neighborhood in Beit Shemesh. Three women were killed in a beauty salon in Beit Awwa. A Thai agricultural worker was killed by submunition shrapnel at Moshav Adanim. In total, at least 18 Israelis have been killed and over 3,700 wounded by Iranian attacks — the vast majority involving cluster munitions.

HRW has not found the time to write a single word about these.

The weapons Iran is using against Israel fall squarely within the definition of cluster munitions under the Convention on Cluster Munitions: conventional munitions designed to disperse explosive submunitions each weighing less than 20 kilograms. Iranian warheads carry submunitions of approximately 8 kilograms each. Iranian warheads carry between 24 and 80 submunitions with no self-destruct capability. Iran, like Russia, has not signed the convention. As with Russia, that is legally beside the point: the customary IHL prohibition on indiscriminate attacks applies regardless.

HRW wrote about and condemned a single cluster bomb missile in Ukraine within one day. They have not written about Iran's hundreds of similar missiles targeting Israeli civilians in three weeks.

What it has published on Israeli conduct in this war includes a report calling Israeli white phosphorus use in an evacuated Lebanese town "unlawful" — despite HRW's own admission that it could not verify a single civilian was present. It includes a report on the Minab school strike that keeps Israel in the headline despite Israel's denial and overwhelming evidence of American responsibility. And it includes a general statement from February 28 noting that HRW was "currently investigating" all parties — an investigation that, three weeks later, has produced reports exclusively targeting Israeli and American conduct.

HRW did publish one report on Iranian attacks on civilians in this war: a March 17 investigation documenting Iranian drone and missile attacks on Gulf states — Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia. Those attacks killed approximately 21 civilians across all those countries combined.

As far as I can tell, none of the missiles exploded in the Gulf states included cluster munitions.

Human Rights Watch co-founded and chairs the Cluster Munition Coalition. It has spent decades building the legal and advocacy architecture that makes cluster munition use a recognized war crime. It applied that architecture to Russia within 24 hours of a single strike killing four people. It has declined to apply it to Iran after 425 strikes over three weeks killing and wounding thousands.

That is not an oversight. An organization with HRW's expertise and institutional focus on cluster munitions does not accidentally fail to notice 425 ballistic missile cluster strikes on a civilian population. It notices. It chooses not to report.

The question that follows — why — is one HRW should be asked to answer publicly. But the pattern itself, across this conflict and others, already contains the answer.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Human Rights Watch published a report on March 9 accusing Israel of unlawfully using white phosphorus munitions over the southern Lebanese town of Yohmor on March 3. The headline is unequivocal: "Lebanon: Israel Unlawfully Using White Phosphorus."

The body of the report quietly dismantles HRW's own conclusion.

The prohibition HRW invokes is specific: white phosphorus used as an incendiary weapon is unlawful when deployed in or near concentrations of civilians. That's the operative requirement under Protocol III of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, and under the customary IHL principles HRW cites for states like Israel that haven't ratified the protocol.

If there are no civilians, it is not unlawful.

Here is what HRW's own report says about civilian presence in Yohmor on March 3:

"Human Rights Watch has not verified whether people were in the area or injured as a result of white phosphorus use."

That single sentence, buried in the body of the report, should have ended the legal analysis. HRW cannot establish that the munitions were used "over concentrations of civilians" — their exact words in the conclusion — while simultaneously admitting they don't know if anyone was there.

HRW acknowledges that Israel's Arabic-language military spokesperson Avichay Adraee issued an evacuation order for Yohmor and 50 surrounding villages at 5:27 a.m. on March 3, ordering residents to move at least 1,000 meters outside village boundaries. He repeated the warning at 12:12 p.m.

Two things follow from this. First, Israel had clear awareness that Yohmor was a populated area — this wasn't an oversight. Second, the repetition of the warning before any strike indicates Israel was actively waiting for the town to clear. A military operating with indifference to civilian life doesn't issue the same evacuation order twice.

HRW tries to reframe the warnings as themselves potentially unlawful, arguing elsewhere that Israel's evacuation orders across southern Lebanon may constitute forced displacement. That's a separate legal argument about displacement policy (and a contested one) but it cannot substitute for the absent evidence of civilian presence required to sustain the white phosphorus charge. You can't simultaneously argue that Israel's evacuation orders were so effective they caused mass displacement of 300,000 people, and also that civilians were concentrated in Yohmor when Israel fired.

Even more telling was HRW's update to the report. It carries an editor's note: "March 9, 2026: This version of the news release was updated to accurately reflect the number of images verified and geolocated by Human Rights Watch." In other words, HRW found it important to correct a peripheral detail about its image count.

What the update does not include is the Israeli military's response, reported by the Associated Press: that Israel is "currently unaware and cannot confirm use of shells that contain white phosphorous in Lebanon as claimed," and that "any weapons that contain white phosphorus are used in line with international law." That denial is directly responsive to the report's central legal claim. Updating the number of images examined that appear nowhere in the core argument while omitting the Israeli military's on-record denial of the report's headline conclusion shows that HRW has the ability to update reports with new information - and chose not to include Israel's denial.

Also omitted from HRW's report is the fact that Hezbollah is known to operate from Yohmor - and that it uses civilian infrastructure. Somehow HRW is not concerned with that violation of the laws of war.

The structure here follows a pattern that we've documented from NGOs across multiple conflicts: the legal conclusion is written first, and the factual record is assembled around it. When the facts don't cooperate — as they don't here — the gap is bridged with hedged language that the headline doesn't reflect.

"Unlawfully" is a serious word. It implies a finding that specific legal standards were violated by specific acts. HRW's own reporting establishes that Israel warned the civilian population twice, that no civilians have been confirmed present, and that no injuries have been confirmed. Under the law HRW itself cites, that is not an unlawful attack on civilians. There is no evidence it was an attack on civilians at all.

A human rights organization that reaches legal conclusions its own evidence doesn't support isn't doing human rights work. In this case, it is anti-Israel propaganda that it disguises as a human rights report.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

03/22 Links: Netanyahu: Iran a threat to entire world; Over 4,500 injured in Israel since start of ‘Operation Roaring Lion’; BBC News and the Tale of Two Hospital Explosions

From Ian:

John Spencer: The rise of the ‘leadership first’ strike — and why it’s so important in warfare

The Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz described war as a contest of wills between political communities. His framework assumed friction, uncertainty, and resilient command structures under pressure.

What he did not imagine was a world in which the senior political and military leadership directing a war might be physically targeted in the opening minutes of conflict through integrated intelligence and precision strike.

The objective of these strikes is not simply destruction. It is a disruption.

For decades, opening strikes focused on suppressing air defenses, destroying aircraft on the ground, and degrading infrastructure. The goal was to weaken an enemy’s military capacity.

Today, some states are experimenting with something different: targeting the leadership directing the war itself.

That possibility introduces a new dimension to deterrence.

If adversaries believe their political and military leadership could be struck in the opening phase of a conflict, the personal risks of initiating war change. Deterrence has traditionally relied on threatening damage to territory, forces, or infrastructure. Leadership vulnerability adds another layer to that calculation.

This capability is not omnipotent. Intelligence can fail. Targets can escape. Succession structures can absorb the loss of leaders.

But the increasing ability to locate and strike senior leadership rapidly at the outset of conflict represents an important shift in how wars may begin.

For centuries, eliminating a supreme leader was usually the end of a war.

In the emerging character of modern conflict, it may sometimes become the opening move.

To Fulfill Iran War's Objectives, More Time Is Required

The regime in Iran continues to function and fight, largely because the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has effectively taken control of the state and is directing the war effort.

Both Israel and the U.S. seek to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, ideally permanently, and to deny it the ability to develop and produce ballistic missiles and drones in quantities and sophistication that no defense system could counter. These are the two existential threats the war is meant to eliminate, at least for years, even if the current regime survives.

Israel is acting across multiple channels to create conditions in which the Iranian people will want and be able to take control of their fate. Efforts to weaken the regime include targeted strikes against security officials and political leaders, and attacks on Basij and Revolutionary Guard facilities.

Israeli officials report results including defections, particularly among Basij members. At the same time, efforts are underway to organize opposition groups and encourage public protests. According to informed sources, these efforts are beginning to bear fruit.

Iran has learned lessons from previous confrontations and prepared well for the current war. It dispersed its military assets geographically and granted local commanders authority to act based on pre-set directives. It moved critical assets underground, including nuclear laboratories, ballistic missiles and launchers, drones, and even fast attack boats. Iran also divided the country into 31 ballistic missile commands, each with independent launch authority. Iran has also moved much of its nuclear weapons program infrastructure underground.

Israel is targeting Iran's missile, launcher, and drone production infrastructure spread across the country. The air force will likely need at least two more weeks to achieve a satisfactory level of damage. Meanwhile, interception rates by Israel's air defense systems have risen from over 85% to more than 90%.

In both Iran and Lebanon, significant achievements have already been made. But for the war's objectives to be largely fulfilled and for those gains to endure for years, more time is required.

Iran Believes It's Winning and Wants a Steep Price to End the War

Three weeks into the war, the Iranian regime is signaling that it believes it is winning and has the power to impose a settlement on Washington that entrenches Tehran's dominance of Middle East energy resources for decades to come.

Despite optimistic U.S. and Israeli pronouncements, Iran has retained the ability to fire dozens of ballistic missiles, and many more drones, every day across the Middle East. Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf's chokepoint, remains only possible with Iranian permission. Surging oil and gas prices are exacting growing pain on economies worldwide.

Tehran has pledged that it will agree to a ceasefire only if Washington and the Gulf states pay a steep price. The spokesman of the Iranian Parliament's foreign affairs and defense committee, Ebrahim Rezaei, said any talks with the U.S. are off the agenda as Tehran "focuses on punishing the aggressors."

"This hubris is dangerous because they are not smart enough to understand that President Trump will never let them win. They don't understand how far he's willing to go," said Jason Greenblatt, who served as the White House special envoy for the Middle East. "The cost of not taking care of the problem will be many times more expensive over many, many years."

Demands voiced by Iranian leaders in recent days as conditions for ending the war include massive reparations from the U.S. and its allies and the expulsion of American military forces from the region. They have also called for transforming the Strait of Hormuz - an international waterway where free navigation is guaranteed under international law - into an Iranian toll booth controlling 1/3 of the world's shipborne crude oil. It is hard to imagine the U.S. - or the Gulf states - accepting such an arrangement.

Iran Is Losing the War It's Fighting. It's Winning the One You're Reading About

Three weeks in, the U.S. military has struck more than 8,000 targets. Iran's air defenses are almost completely destroyed, its command structure decimated, its proxy network in tatters. By any military measure, Iran is losing.

And yet you wouldn't know it from the coverage.

The New York Times tells us Iran has "shown no sign of backing down." The Wall Street Journal runs a sophisticated piece explaining why Tehran "believes it is winning." CNN elevates a disgraced former official's claim that Israel dragged America into war. The Associated Press makes that claim its headline.

This is Iran's cognitive war — and it is being fought largely with Western reporting, on Western platforms, by Western journalists.

The strategy is straightforward. Iran cannot defeat the U.S. military. It can, however, convince Western publics that the war is unwinnable, that the pain is unsustainable, and even that someone reasonable is waiting on the other side of a negotiating table. If that perception takes hold, political pressure does what Iranian missiles cannot.

What Iran needs to sustain this strategy is amplification it cannot provide itself. Iranian state media has no credibility with Western audiences. But the New York Times, CNN and AP do.

They are doing Iran's job for them.

The mechanism was caught in real time last week. When former counterterrorism official Joe Kent resigned and appeared on Tucker Carlson's show to claim that Israel had manipulated America into war, HonestReporting's AI Labs tracked what happened next. Within minutes, Russian state outlet RT was amplifying the specific claim. Pro-Iran networks followed, using language lifted directly from Iranian state framing. Pakistani, Kashmiri, and Latin American accounts joined the cascade. Identical phrasing appeared across multiple platforms simultaneously — a signature of coordinated inauthentic behavior, not organic virality.

And then CNN ran it as the central takeaway. AP made it a headline. ABC followed with nearly identical framing.

No Iranian handler called a CNN producer. They didn't have to. State-linked Iranian allies identify the useful narrative, amplify it to salience, and let Western news values — conflict, dissent, "both sides," and a natural aversion to anything Trump supports — do the rest. By the time it's a headline, the origin is invisible.

Iran's cognitive war rests on an implicit premise: that there is someone to negotiate with, some reasonable outcome available if only Washington would stop the bombs. This premise is false, and its falseness points to something the coverage almost entirely ignores.

Israel's decapitation campaign worked. The leaders who had the credibility, relationships, and political capital to engineer a compromise even if they wanted to are dead.

What remains are survivors who don't have the clout, the charisma or the imagination to do anything but to continue with their predecessors' intransigence. There was and is no Iranian Gorbachev waiting in the wings, and such a figure is not possible, because the Islamic Republic's foundational ideology requires permanent hostility to Israel and America.

This means Iran's triumphalist rhetoric — Foreign Minister Araghchi calling Iran "another Vietnam for the U.S." — isn't only foreign-facing propaganda. It's the only internal narrative available. No one left standing has the authority to propose otherwise.

The media reads this as Iran being unbowed. The more accurate read: Iran is trapped. It is burning through finite munitions to sustain an infinite-sounding narrative, with no one authorized to convert even a successful information campaign into an actual settlement.

There is also an argument so obvious it almost goes without saying — which is perhaps why it goes without saying. Iran is, at this moment, attacking civilian infrastructure across the Gulf and in Israel. It is bombing energy facilities in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and the UAE; shipping through the Strait of Hormuz moves only with Iranian permission.

If the West stops this war before permanent results, this produces an Iran that has learned that attacking civilian targets works - and it will continue to do so. It is the clearest indication of how confusing the cognitive war for the kinetic war results in a worse kinetic war next time.

Countering the cognitive war requires naming it. Not vaguely, but specifically. Here is the claim, here is where it originated, here is how fast it traveled, here is who amplified it, here is what the outlet did with it. The HonestReporting documentation of the Kent cascade is the model.

It also requires insisting on the right metric. Iran has convinced much of the press to measure the war by duration and pain — by that measure, every day that passes is Iranian "resilience." The correct measure is irreversibility. Every destroyed launcher, every dead commander, every degraded node cannot be easily replaced. Iran's ability to do this again is the question. Whether they're still firing today is not.

The kinetic war and the cognitive war are not equivalent. One deals in permanent facts. The other deals in managed perceptions. But if Iran convinces the world that it can maintain its pressure forever and that is cannot be defeated, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Every Western outlet that buys into that narrative is prolonging the conflict, either this round or guaranteeing a next round.

Iran is demonstrating its intentions in real time. The cognitive war asks you not to notice.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Al Azhar condemns Iranian aggression against other Muslims, Iran isn't happy

Egypt's influential Al Azhar University issued a statement condemning Iran's aggression against other Muslim states:

Al-Azhar al-Sharif strongly condemns the continued unjustified Iranian attacks on its Gulf neighbors—represented by the United Arab Emirates, the Kingdom of Bahrain, the State of Qatar, the State of Kuwait, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the Sultanate of Oman—as well as a number of other Arab countries and neighboring states, represented by Jordan, Iraq, Türkiye, and Azerbaijan.

Al-Azhar calls upon the Islamic Republic of Iran—as a Muslim neighboring state—to take an immediate decision dictated by Islam and imposed by its Sharia: to cease the attacks on these brotherly Arab and Muslim countries unconditionally, to respect their sovereignty over their lands, and to refrain from infringing upon it in any way, near or far; in order to preserve the lives of the innocent who bear no guilt in these conflicts and have no stake in them whatsoever.

Al-Azhar affirms that targeting residential areas, airports, hospitals, and energy facilities in countries that were not party to any conflict constitutes a grave violation of international humanitarian law and a clear departure from what Islam mandates in protecting lives, property, and human dignity. It reminds of the words of Allah Almighty: "And do not kill the soul which Allah has forbidden, except by right" [Quran 17:33], and the cry of the Prophet (peace be upon him) to the Muslims: “All of the Muslim is forbidden to the Muslim: his blood, his wealth, and his honor.”

Notice that Al Azhar has no problem with Iran attacking Jewish civilians.

But Iran was not happy. It published a response by Ayatollah Mohammad Javad Fazel Lankarani that explicitly referred to "Jews" as the targets:

Doesn't Al-Azhar ask itself why the countries of the region have given their lands and airspace to the infidels and Jews?
Don't you ask yourselves: What do they aim for with their presence and control over this region?

Don't you realize that they seek to plunder the wealth of Muslims and destroy their people and their property?

Has Al-Azhar forgotten the various verses that forbid accepting the hegemony of the disbelievers and the Jews?

If there is one thing the Iranians and Al Azhar can agree on, it is that attacking Jews is perfectly fine.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

03/21 Links: Allies in name only: Israel left alone against Iranian aggression; Over 100 injured, 11 seriously, in strikes on Arad, Dimona; What Looks Like Resilience in Iran Is Its Collapse Plan

From Ian:

Allies in name only: Israel left alone against Iranian aggression

Essentially, they say: Iran is not such a threat to global peace and security. Israel and the US may be the greater shared threat. Therefore, this is not our war. We will only defend our narrowest of interests a bare bit.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has sought to wrap repudiation of the US and Israel in highfalutin diplomatic terms. “We lack a mandate from the United Nations, the European Union, or NATO for the war,” he said. “Diplomacy and de-escalation” are the preferred route for handling Iran, he predictably added.

Yeah, sure. As if “mandates” from impotent international edifices are more important than winning the war that has been engaged. As if European-led diplomacy has ever effectively defanged or dissuaded Iran from pursuing its path of genocidal aggression.

I say that such studied neutrality in the great struggle against Iran is collusion with the enemy. All the “calm and level-headed” excuses for sitting out this war (of course, excepting “defensive assistance” to several oil-rich Gulf countries) is a grand collapse of Western spine and principle.

I also cast off anodyne sentiments about “heartfelt feelings for all victims of conflict in the region” and other such throwaway international statements. Without determination to quell Iran – and again, without specific expressed concern for Israel and Israelis too – these mushy musings equal profound moral failure.

Indeed, the frostiness exhibited by the “leaders” described above recalls the adage that you rudely discover who your true friends are (and are not) when the chips are down.

Alas, the ethical limpness and political animosity described here regarding the struggle against Iran is of a piece with the rotten global standard in relation to the Arab-Israeli conflict, going back decades.

The response of UN and EU leaders to every Palestinian-Israeli conflagration long has been to condemn the “continuing cycle of violence” (and then press for endless negotiations while boosting Hamas blood libels about Israeli war crimes). As if Israel and the Palestinians each were cavalierly engaging in murder just for fun or out of comparable burning hatred. As if “both sides” were “suffering casualties” and equally responsible for the “cycle” of warfare.

What is missing from the above comments in relation to both the Iranian and Palestinian fronts is a no-nonsense diagnosis of enemy aggression. Few are willing to reference Tehran’s almost five-decade-long record of assault against non-Shi’ite Arab, Western, and Israeli interests. Nobody has the guts to remark upon the death-glorifying political culture of Palestinians that repeatedly chooses war and terrorism over peace negotiations.

This nonalignment keeps the storyline in a neat, supposedly non-judgmental, and purportedly “level-headed” comfort zone – bereft of any right-minded backbone, free from any commitment to explicitly recognize and concretely fight evil. Alas, such detachment is tantamount to betrayal of Israel and the US, and is perfidy against the future of Western civilization.

The Buenos Aires Bombings

The decades of institutional failure that defined Argentina’s response to the AMIA bombing reached an inflection point with the 2023 inauguration of President Javier Milei. Whereas Kirchner was willing to accommodate Tehran, Milei has anchored Argentina firmly within a Western–Israeli security axis, designating Hamas, Hezbollah, and the IRGC’s Quds Force as terrorist organisations and joining the Combined Maritime Forces to combat Iranian-backed threats in international waters. In April 2024, Argentina’s Federal Court of Criminal Cassation, the country’s highest criminal court, formally declared the AMIA attack a crime against humanity and attributed responsibility to senior Iranian officials and to Hezbollah, thus lending the weight of the country’s highest criminal tribunal to what investigators had argued for thirty years. In 2025, Milei’s government used newly passed legislation to authorise the trial in absentia of ten Iranian and Lebanese suspects—among them former intelligence minister Ali Fallahian and Ahmad Vahidi, the former Quds Force commander who directed the unit responsible for planning the AMIA operation and who has been subject to an Interpol red notice since 2007. On 28 February 2026, US and Israeli strikes killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and decapitated much of Iran’s senior military leadership, including IRGC commander Mohammad Pakpour. Vahidi, who is wanted for the murders of 85 people in Buenos Aires, now commands the IRGC.

What Argentina’s experience reveals is not simply that Iran projects violence across continents, though it does. It also shows that such projections are more likely to succeed when a target’s state institutions are vulnerable. The lawlessness of the Tri-Border Area enabled the logistics. The corruption of Judge Galeano provided impunity. The political calculations of successive governments delayed justice. Each failure compounded the last, and for thirty years the gap between what is known and what has been adjudicated has remained almost unchanged. The names of the planners are on file at Interpol. The mechanics of the attack are documented in thousands of pages of investigative records. The dead have been counted, mourned, and memorialised. But justice has never been served.

Recent US–Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities have triggered fresh security alerts across Argentina at Jewish institutions, airports, and border crossings. The Buenos Aires bombings serve as a reminder that Iran’s willingness to strike at Israeli and Jewish targets outside the Middle East is not merely hypothetical. Argentina has already been a front in this war, and the traces of that history remain visible on its streets today. Concrete barriers line the entrances of Jewish community centres across the city, standing as a permanent physical acknowledgment that the threat that destroyed the AMIA building has never fully receded. Thirty years on, the most important question is whether the lessons of that experience have been learned by those who failed to deliver justice—and by those who may yet need it.

A Historic Moment: The Case for Ending Both the Iranian Regime and Hamas Once and for All

The critical question is whether we will stop at weakening the Iranian regime or Hamas or move toward ensuring that they can never again recover as long-term threats to their neighbors or global security. At this moment, leaving those regimes in place – the ruling mullahs in Iran or Hamas in Gaza — is probably the most dangerous option.

Authoritarian regimes such as Iran's, and terrorist groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic State and the Taliban, rarely respond to setbacks by abandoning their ambitions. Instead, they pause, regroup, and rebuild.

Russia and China, each with its own anti-American calculations, could provide political cover, technological assistance, and indirect support that would allow Iran to resume its nuclear program. China has already been supplying Iran with "almost everything but troops" during this war, and supplying Russia with military materiel for its war against Ukraine.

If Iran's regime and Hamas are allowed to recover, their primary strategic objective will likely become to rearm as quickly as possible, and we will be right back at war again.

Stopping halfway through such efforts only allows threats to reemerge dangerously in the future. History will judge whether these two opportunities presented today were seized — or allowed to slip away.

03/20 Links Pt2: Douglas Murray: Deranged Tucker Carlson backstabs Trump; Melanie Phillips: ‘Mamdani is a monster’; Chuck Norris dies at 86

From Ian:

Brendan O'Neill: Joe Kent sums up everything that’s wrong with the MAGA Israelophobes

There are two things to be said about Kent’s frothing missive. The first is that it is incredibly dumb. George W Bush and Tony Blair, not Israel, were responsible for the calamity of Iraq. In fact, some Israeli officials warned against invading Iraq. They told the White House ‘Iraq is not the enemy – Iran is the enemy’. And it was the barbarians of the Islamic State who inflamed mayhem in Syria by violently subjecting large swathes of that nation to their cruel, bigoted writ. Treating Israel as the cauldron of all human wickedness absolves the true culprits – in this case, Islamist monsters – of responsibility for their crimes.

As for Iran – as has been well documented over the past three weeks, Trump has long been worried about the Islamic Republic. As the Atlantic says, he ‘telegraphed his bellicose intentions toward Iran for decades’. In his two terms as president, ‘he escalated conflict with the country at every opportunity’. Painting not only a brash president but mighty America itself as the plaything of Israel is historical illiteracy on stilts. Indeed, this week Trump publicly rebuked Israel for striking Iran’s South Pars gas field. Not very poodle-like of him.

The second, more serious thing to say about Kent’s animus for Israel is that it has the pungent whiff of anti-Semitic conspiracism. The damning of Israel as the author of all war, as the chief manipulator of the Western powers, as the dragger of our nations into the pit of ‘decline and chaos’, has clear and eerie echoes of the Jew-baiting of old. Where it was once the Jewish people who were seen as the source of our cultural decline, now it’s the Jewish homeland. Same shit, different century.

Kent sums up everything that’s wrong with the MAGA Israelophobes, that wing of Trumpism that is fast disappearing into the sewer of Jew-linked conspiracism. These people are morally indistinguishable from the woke mob they claim to hate. Not one word of Kent’s self-regarding letter would be out of place in the mouth of a blue-haired campus loon screaming obscenities about ‘Isra-hell’. Both the crank right and gender-bending left see the Jewish nation as the rotten seed of our moral crises. There’s a fascist feel to their neurosis.

It didn’t surprise me when Kent’s first big post-resignation interview was with Tucker Carlson, the man who sacrificed his skills of critical thinking at the altar of blind rage for Israel. Or that Kent has reportedly had associations with certain members of the ‘groyper army’. Trump is right to say ‘it’s a good thing he’s out’. But why was he in? I can’t be the only person horrified that the head of counter-terrorism was an anti-Israel nut. You might as well have Mehdi Hasan up there. The Israelophobic intrigue of the Very Online right runs directly counter to the open, hopeful spirit of the tens of millions of Americans who took a punt on Trump. In fact, it threatens to undermine it, by replacing that working-class yearning for greater democracy with the obsessional delusions of the digitally addicted.

The MAGA movement needs to sort itself out. Just as the old left was dragged down by the carbuncle of wokeness, so American populism is at risk of serious ailment from the crankery of its digital flank. These movements might seem miles apart, the former believing you can have a cock and be a lesbian, the latter being more ‘tradwife’. But they are as one in their vain, self-exonerating hatred for the world’s only Jewish state. Listen, Israel isn’t the cause of your wars or your depression or your girlfriend troubles or your baldness – grow up and take responsibility.

As NYC Oct. 7 hate crime offenders get sentenced, a victim wonders what justice looks like

In November 2023, weeks after the Hamas invasion of Israel, two women tore posters of Israeli hostages off a lamppost on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

A Jewish woman who was walking her dog confronted the pair, saying, “Why are you ripping down posters of victims?”

“I don’t think these are real people. I think this is AI-generated,” one of the women, Stephanie Gonzalez, said. “I believe whoever is in Palestine is real. Whoever’s in Palestine is truly suffering.”

The other woman, Mehwish Omer, gave the Jewish passerby the middle finger, according to video of the incident the victim filmed and shared with The Times of Israel.

As the pair began to walk away, things escalated further: They attacked the Jewish woman, smacking her phone out of her hand and shouting, “Go fuck yourself,” as the victim pleaded, “Don’t assault me.”

“I’m going to assault you. I don’t care,” Gonzalez said.

The women then ripped a Star of David necklace off the victim’s neck, grabbed her by the throat, and clawed her face, causing bleeding in her eye and leaving red welts on her forehead and down her right cheek.

The attack took place on the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht, a mere week before the victim’s wedding.

After a police search, the attackers were arrested a week later and charged with a hate crime assault.

Now being resolved in New York courts, the case was one of a series of hate crimes that took place in the aftermath of the Hamas onslaught on Israel that saw 1,200 murdered and 251 taken hostage to Gaza.

Gonzalez, Omer and the victim, who asked to remain anonymous due to privacy concerns, appeared this month for a court hearing that illustrated complications surrounding hate crime sentencing and the lasting trauma caused to victims.

“For two and a half years, I really have lived with this,” the victim said. “My soul has not been able to rest.”

MinterEllison pulls logo from Sydney Biennale after DJ storm

Law firm MinterEllison asked the Sydney Biennale to remove its logo from a list of major partners, distancing itself from the arts festival due to DJ Haram’s inflammatory opening-night speech praising “martyrs” and attacking Israel.

MinterEllison, a pro bono legal adviser to the biennale for more than 20 years but not a financial sponsor of the festival, had been credited on the biennale’s website as a major partner as recently as Tuesday.

DJ Haram created a storm after her comments at the Sydney Biennale opening night at White Bay Power Station.

But by Thursday the logo had disappeared. When contacted by The Australian Financial Review about the logo on the site, a MinterEllison spokeswoman said that “following comments made at the White Bay event on 13 March 2026, we requested its removal”.

“We did not want our branding to suggest any association with, or endorsement of, those views,” the spokeswoman said. “We firmly and unconditionally condemn antisemitism in all its forms – that is a core value of this firm.

“Our pro bono legal relationship with the biennale as an institution is continuing. It is separate from this year’s exhibition and from the actions or views of any individual performer or artist.”

On Saturday, the Financial Review revealed the content of DJ Haram’s speech of March 13, which included leading a chant of “long live the resistance” and referring to “the Zio-Australian-Epstein empire”, a phrase appearing to link Israel to the crimes of convicted sex offender and New York financier Jeffrey Epstein.

The speech has been condemned by NSW Premier Chris Minns and Arts Minister John Graham, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry and the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies.

03/20 Links Pt1: The West should double down on the Iran war; That Was Before October 7; Guterres and the gutless United Nations; Iranian missile hits Jerusalem’s Old City

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: That Was Before October 7

For some reason, the world still hasn’t quite grasped how much has changed since that day, at least for Israelis. One reason is the terrifying “what if” that Israeli policymakers have had to ask themselves: What if Hezbollah had invaded along with Hamas on October 7, when Israel’s defenses were down and it had to fight to regain territory within its own borders?

What if Hamas’s control of the highway near the Gaza Envelope meant a Lebanese convoy could be on the scene within two hours? By many accounts, it took IDF units twice as long to reach Kibbutz Be’eri that day.

Even without the prospect of an actual Hezbollah ground invasion, consider: Hamas pushed Israel’s border residents into retreat, essentially moving the border itself for a brief period. Hezbollah periodically forces the same effect on residents of the north just by using rockets. And while both of those groups were working to herd Israelis into the center of the country, Iran was developing the capability to overwhelm Israeli air defenses with its ballistic-missile arsenal.

Each of those three threats must be neutralized. There cannot be a force in Gaza able to slaughter communities on the other side of the fence. There cannot be an arsenal in Lebanon that forces the evacuation of Israeli towns. And Iran cannot be allowed to retain or reacquire the means to make the country dwell in bomb shelters.

October 7 revealed what can never happen again. That’s why a yellow line divides Gaza. Lebanon is getting its own line, whatever color it ends up being designated.

New lines, new rules, new terms—all set by Israel. That’s how this works now.

The old rules put Israel’s enemies in a great position to strike at the Jewish state’s vulnerabilities. But, well, that was before October 7. They will not get a second shot at it.

Seth Mandel: The Media’s Attempt to Drive a Wedge Between the U.S. and Israel

Trump is indeed responsible for elevating Kent to his recently vacated position. But thankfully the administration very publicly vested exactly zero credibility in Kent. He was given a job with an important title, but he was not responsible for policymaking and his influence was nil. Kent is under FBI investigation, and he decided to leap before he was pushed.

So who is Kent influencing against Israel? Democrats don’t need his help, unfortunately, independents repeatedly rejected him as a candidate for office because of his ties to white nationalists, and Republicans back Trump in the war with Iran.

The third and final example is at least a point of legitimate debate: the question of whether the U.S. and Israel have contradictory war aims.

CNN uses the Israeli attack on Iran’s Pars gas field to frame this question. That attack was followed by an Iranian retaliatory strike on Qatar’s section of the gas field, sending energy prices up. Trump disavowed any knowledge or approval of the initial Israeli strike, but that is not remotely plausible. Nonetheless, it’s clear that Trump doesn’t want a repeat of that incident.

It’s also clear that Israel will respect the president’s wishes. Indeed, at yesterday’s press conference, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made this point explicitly. Trump, he said, is “the leader. I’m, you know, his ally. America is the leader. Israel is, as the national security memorandum described us … they called Israel the model ally. That’s how they call it, the model ally. It’s not a superpower.”

You can see the progression here of attempts by narrative-setters to degrade Israel’s credibility. First it was that Israel is joining Trump’s war, and Trump’s war doesn’t poll all that well. Then it was “Israel is responsible for this war.” But nobody believes that, and Trump has been happy to own this war; he sees it as a legacy-defining conflict. Then it was “Israel’s interests clash with U.S. interests.” But that, too, fails to ignite because Israel comes right out and says it’ll follow Trump’s lead on every aspect of the war. And now it’s “Israel’s reputation will continue to suffer if it sticks with this war.”

That has been the case since October 7, 2023. Israel has been forced to choose between survival and shallow, fleeting popularity with the president’s critics. Israel is not going to “fix” its unpopularity by committing suicide, and this type of concern trolling is ineffective against people fighting for their survival.

Spectator Editorial: The West should double down on the Iran war

The regime may yet be proven right. America’s Nato allies equivocate over efforts to restore freedom of navigation – a core interest of the West. The traumas of past interventions have encouraged formidable resistance within the US political establishment to deploying ground forces. European political leaders, including our Prime Minister, are courting short-term popularity by resisting what they see as Trump’s ‘adventurism’.

But what would the consequences be if this war was allowed to end with the Iranian regime still in place? Our allies in the Gulf – from Oman to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia – would be left to reflect on our inconstancy. They would be left, too, with a wounded and resentful Iran, plotting its revenge. Tehran would have renewed incentive to fund terrorist proxies and nuclear missile technology, the better to deter and overawe its neighbours. Russia and China would feel confirmed in their view that a weakened West has neither the strength nor the stamina to resist their own adventurism. Iran’s people would see the democracy they dreamt of vanish beyond the horizon, and those who had been anything other than fierce in their loyalty to the regime would be crushed underfoot.

What of the West? Those celebrating such an outcome would be the ‘post-colonial’ left, who would rejoice in an epochal reversal of American power, and the ethno-nationalist right, who rage against Israel, Jewish influence and ‘the Epstein class’ which, as they see it, dragged us into a costly and counter-productive debacle. These are the forces within western society that disdain western civilisation itself – liberal, open, capitalist, creative, Judeo-Christian and confident. These people would feel emboldened in their drive towards identitarianism, division and communal enmity.

Victory in Iran, by contrast, would give that country the chance to show the world what a free, successful, post-Islamist but majority-Muslim society could achieve. It would liberate the talents, voices, and consciences of millions. It would undergird the stability and prosperity of Gulf powers and their orientation towards the West, with the leadership of nations such as the UAE in the vanguard. It would liberate Israel from existential threat and enable both an accommodation with its Palestinian neighbours and western support to that end. It would re-affirm the ability of the West to secure its strategic goals through united deployment of military strength and thus bolster the defence of Ukraine and the security of Taiwan. It would place control of oil and gas in the hands of western allies to counter the huge economic advantages that China has built up.

Victory is far from easy or assured. It will require a commitment of time, troops and patience that has so far not been articulated. But if that commitment is not made then the price will be far higher than what we might endure in the weeks ahead. We can either finish the job in Iran, or it will finish us.

New Oscar Category Created To Honor Candace Owens: Best Portrayal Of Psychosis (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Hollywood, March 19 - The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has unveiled its boldest innovation yet: Best Portrayal of Psychosis, a category honoring immersive, unscripted depictions of delusional thinking, paranoid elaboration, and reality-defying conviction delivered across digital platforms. The inaugural award already boasts a frontrunner, "conservative" commentator Candace Owens, whose recent output has fused personal vendettas, geopolitical conspiracies, and antisemitic delusions into a sprawling, high-production-value psychological epic.

Since the September 2025 assassination of Charlie Kirk, Owens has channeled her grief — or resentment— into the multi-part YouTube series Bride of Charlie. The project fixates on Erika Kirk, Charlie's widow and current Turning Point USA CEO, portraying her as a deceptive figure who allegedly manipulated her way into power. Owens scrutinizes Erika's background: questioning her birth date, humanitarian work in China, family ties, and post-tragedy demeanor, often framing Charlie's marriage as a profound betrayal. Subtext drips with jealousy — Charlie "chose" Erika over their once-close bond, removing his wedding ring the night before his death, erasing photos, and leaving Owens sidelined from what she implies was her rightful emotional centrality. "He loved his family... but he loved me more," the narrative whispers through layered accusations of opportunism, financial schemes, and indifference to Charlie's fate.

Yet cinema critics note that this personal obsession serves as merely one thread in a larger tapestry of unraveling. Owens weaves in elaborate antisemitic delusions, accusing shadowy "Zionist" forces, Israeli operatives, or a "Jewish cabal" of orchestrating Charlie's murder — sometimes linking it to France's Emmanuel Macron, the military-industrial complex, or even Brigitte Macron's alleged secret identity as Jean-Michel Trogneux. These claims echo her longstanding pattern: promoting theories of Jewish control over media, government, Hollywood "secret gangs," and historical events such as the JFK assassination or transatlantic slave trade. She has invoked "synagogue of Satan" rhetoric, labeled pro-Israel figures "satanic pedophiles," and tied perceived enemies to demonic or occult influences — all delivered with unwavering certainty that dismisses counter-evidence as part of the cover-up, in what observers call a "masterful" on-screen performance.

Academy spokesperson Mira Delusion called it "a tour de force of sustained psychosis." "Candace doesn't simulate delusion; she inhabits it fully. The Brigitte Macron saga alone — staking her reputation on a disproven gender conspiracy now facing defamation suits — shows total immersion. Layer on the antisemitic webs connecting Charlie's death to global Jewish plots, and the Erika fixation becomes the emotional core: romantic rejection reframed as cosmic betrayal by a hidden elite. Opera can't compete with this."

Voters praise the authenticity — no script breaks, no ironic distance. "She builds these intricate, self-reinforcing realities where every fact-check is proof of suppression," one Academy member said. "It's like watching a live-action Pi meets The Truman Show, but the protagonist refuses to acknowledge the walls."

While other figures flirt with conspiracies, Owens's output stands apart for its volume, production polish, and fusion of personal resentment with antisemitic paranoia. Her defiant embrace — celebrating past "Antisemite of the Year" nods while doubling down — only amplifies the performance, etched in a logic even she probably does not comprehend.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Catholic University Demands "Both Sides" on Antisemitism — But Not on Genocide

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) sent a letter dated March 18 to Catholic University of America president Peter Kilpatrick, and it's a case study in how antisemitism gets laundered through procedural neutrality.

On January 19, the student group Students Supporting Israel submitted two event requests through the university's official portal. The first would have brought U.S. Congressman Randy Fine to speak on the documented rise of antisemitism in higher education. The second would have featured Col. (Res.) Dr. Dany Tirza — the primary architect of Israel's security fence — to explain the engineering, the route decisions, and the security rationale behind one of the most discussed infrastructure projects in the world. On February 25, both requests were denied. The university cited its Presentations Policy and told SSI to "restructure the event and resubmit a request to have speakers representing both sides of this issue" — both sides, apparently, of antisemitism.

FIRE pulled the actual text of CUA's Presentations Policy (last reviewed April 17, 2023) and found that it says no such thing. The policy gives the university discretionary authority to refuse speakers who advocate views "counter to the clear and unambiguous official teaching" of the Roman Catholic Church, and notes that balanced programs with multiple viewpoints may be staged for educational purposes. "May," not "must." Unless CUA is prepared to argue that a sitting U.S. congressman discussing the rise of antisemitism contradicts Catholic teaching, the policy provides zero basis for the denial. No such explanation was given to SSI.

The letter documents, in footnote 16, a series of single-viewpoint student-group events that CUA approved without any "both sides" requirement. The Democratic student group hosted speaker nights featuring Amanda Riddle (February 10, 2026) and Payton Ziegler (November 18, 2025) with no demand for Republican counterpoints. The College Republicans brought in American Moment CEO Nick Solheim for a kick-off event (September 8, 2025) with no requirement to balance his conservative perspectives. The College Democrats hosted then-Congressman Maxwell Frost (October 19, 2023) and the Republicans hosted Congresswoman Kat Cammack (November 15, 2022) — clearly one-sided political events, both approved without conditions. A speaker event featuring Dr. Monica Miller as "Author, Activist, Theologian" (October 17, 2023) promoted pro-life activism from a single viewpoint, and the university found no need for an opposing voice there either.

The most striking example involves a topic far more contested on today's campuses than anything SSI proposed. In October 2024, a student group called The Olive Branch hosted a talk titled "What Is Genocide?" featuring Dr. Martin Shaw, a British sociologist whose academic record leaves no ambiguity about where he stands. Shaw has described Israel's actions in Gaza as genocide in peer-reviewed publications going back to 2023, and his most recent article in the Journal of Genocide Research — titled "The Genocide that Changed the World" — opens by treating the conclusion as settled, describing what he calls "the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza." His 2025 book carries the title The New Age of Genocide: Intellectual and Political Challenges after Gaza. The man does not hedge. Yet the flyer for his October 2024 campus talk bears an official stamp: "Approved by Catholic University of America." There was no requirement to add a speaker arguing the other side, and no demand to restructure the event to include someone who disputes the genocide framing.

The university approved a one-sided talk asserting Israeli genocide without condition, and then denied a Jewish student group permission to discuss antisemitism without demanding opposing speakers. That is not a content-neutral policy applied consistently — it is a content-based decision dressed up in procedural language, and it is applied in only one direction.

The FIRE letter requests a substantive response by April 1, demanding that CUA approve SSI's event requests and publicly assure all students that the administration will not compel speech as a condition for hosting events. The legal argument is straightforward: CUA is a private institution not bound by the First Amendment, but it is contractually bound by the free-expression commitments it has voluntarily made to its students, commitments that include the right to organize a one-sided event and advocate a particular view without being forced to dilute it. Forcing SSI to add anti-Israel speakers to an antisemitism talk is no different, legally and morally, than forcing the College Democrats to add a MAGA speaker to their next event — something nobody would suggest, and nobody has suggested, because the only group facing this requirement is the one that supports Israel.

The FIRE letter, signed by Program Counsel Jessie Appleby, is dated March 18, 2026, and was sent to President Kilpatrick with a copy to General Counsel Matthew C. Dolan.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)