Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, February 16, 2026

02/16 Links Pt2: Sen. Graham: Trump, Netanyahu are of one mind on Iran; Where is the fury over the plot to massacre Manchester Jews?; Green Party activists say Zionism is a form of racism

From Ian:

Brendan O'Neill: Where is the fury over the plot to massacre Manchester Jews?

Then there’s the left. ‘Fascist!’, these people cry at everyone from the mums in pink tracksuits who protest outside migrant hotels to those northern communities that are planning to vote for Reform UK. Yet when two men are jailed for an advanced plot to carry out the bloodiest of pogroms, they go schtum. For the first time ever the word ‘fascist’ clogs in their throats. We need a franker verison of that Martin Niemöller poem to describe such rank cowardice and snivelling silence in the face of true racism: ‘When they came for the Jews, I said fuck all.’

We need a reckoning with this culture of chilling indifference to Islamo-fascism. With the failure of our self-styled moral leaders to speak clearly about the surging poison of anti-Semitism. Last year there were 3,700 anti-Semitic hate incidents in the UK, the second-highest annual total ever. Sickeningly, 80 of those incidents were recorded in the 48 hours after the terrorist assault on the Heaton Park Synagogue, also in Manchester, on Yom Kippur in October, when two Jews were killed. Some of those incidents involved ‘face-to-face taunting’ of Jews and ‘celebration’ of the Heaton Park attack. It’s the 21st century and people are responding to the murder of Jews by jeering at Jews. Where are the anti-racists? Their silence indicts them in ways they cannot fathom.

To watch the clip of Amar Hussein in his police interview coldly saying ‘Yes’ when asked if he supports ISIS is to look into the face of evil. His arms crossed, his demeanour arrogant, he announces with nauseating pride his allegiance to the sworn enemies of Western civilisation. The questions pile up. Hussein is from Kuwait and Saadaoui is from Tunisia – what were they doing here? Were they emboldened in their Jew hate by the Israelophobic mania that swept Britain after 7 October 2023? It is undeniable now: our broken immigration system, our failure to tame the anti-Semitism of the post-7 October moment and officialdom’s dread of calling out Islamism for fear of being called ‘Islamophobic’ – these craven trends have mingled to create fertile territory for the violent rebirth of the world’s oldest racism.

There are 40,000 suspected jihadists on Britain’s terror watchlist. Hundreds of young men from anti-Semitic cultures arrive illegally on our shores every week. Venomous hatred for the world’s only Jewish nation has become the moral glue of the chattering classes. Anti-Semitic attacks are spiking. Jews are being murdered, or mercifully saved from murder. What signal does it send to Jew-haters when we fail as a society to speak out about these horrors? The elites’ yellow-bellied nonchalance on the Islamist threat doesn’t only betray Britain’s Jews – it also emboldens those who loathe them.

David Collier: ChatGPT is protecting the mythical status of Palestinian identity

Some stories take months to uncover. Others are stumbled across by accident. This is one of the latter. But it is no less important for it.

Artificial Intelligence engines (LLMs) such as ChatGPT are not neutral observers of reality. They are policing the boundaries of Palestinian identity, shielding it from scrutiny and elevating it to a sacred moral construct.

That should concern everyone.

Wikipedia was once the world’s primary reference point. It evolved, in many areas, into a partisan battleground where anti-Jewish narratives could be shaped and manipulated in plain sight. But at least Wikipedia’s distortions were visible. Its edit history could be examined. Its biases could be traced.

AI is different.

It is now rapidly replacing Wikipedia as the dominant interpreter of truth. Yet it operates as a black box. There is no edit trail and no transparency.

If these systems are quietly protecting a mythologised version of Palestinian identity – treating it as a moral token that must be defended – then we are not simply drifting into a post-truth world – we are engineering it.

The Palestinian from Aleppo
While recently researching an anti-Israel propagandist, I encountered a familiar piece of Nakba revisionism. Wafic Faour presents himself as a Palestinian, and his family history follows a well-worn script: innocent civilians violently uprooted when their Arab-Palestinian village was attacked in 1948 by Zionist militias. He claims his family was expelled to Lebanon and eventually made their way to the United States. Today, he serves as the local “Palestinian” face in Vermont, leading protests that demonise and ostracise Israel.

For him, Palestinian identity is his key credential.

On examination, however, his claims quickly began to unravel. Archival records show that his village had been openly violent. Its inhabitants fled only after their military position collapsed. This is how his family ended up in Lebanon.

More significantly, a local history written by the villagers themselves records that the activist’s family originated in Aleppo, Syria, and had migrated into the Mandate area, probably in the late 19th or early 20th century.

The story, as presented publicly, could not withstand scrutiny. The family’s documented origins lay in Aleppo, Syria. The activist himself was born in Lebanon and later built a life in the United States. There was no evidence of deeper ancestral roots in Palestine. The identity he projects is a political construct built on omission.

I incorporated these findings into a wider investigation documenting his distortions and propaganda.

As part of my normal publication process, I ran the final draft through ChatGPT to check for grammatical errors.

What happened next was unexpected.

ChatGPT did not focus on spelling or grammar.

It challenged my description of him.

Shany Mor: Many on my feed are understandably outraged by this essay, which they feel is a cynical misuse of the memory of the Holocaust, deployed in a contemporary political debate for which it is entirely unsuited.

Many on my feed are understandably outraged by this essay, which they feel is a cynical misuse of the memory of the Holocaust, deployed in a contemporary political debate for which it is entirely unsuited.

I don't think they're seeing the whole picture.

Let's start by looking at this gem, also from the NYRB, from 2023 that ostensibly argues AGAINST the use of the memory of the Holocaust as a way of making sense of a current event.

It's signed by all the "genocide scholars" that would become rockstars in the ensuing months, and at first glance, it would appear that the two articles contradict each other (which is allowed) and show a cynical preferece for Holocaust analogies only when convenient.

But a closer read shows something else. These articles are not arguing opposite things at all, and are in fact entirely consistent with one another.

What unites both pieces is an unbridled resentment at Jews for the "luxury" of the Holocaust and its memory.

Both essays are centered around claims that powerful Jewish figures are gatekeeping the trauma of the Shoah in order to exploit it. And both go to great lengths to imply, not with much subtlety, that today's Jews are the real Nazis anyway.

Both pieces make some incredibly weak arguments about current events: The 2023 piece gives a potted history of the conflict, and flips its own argument on its head in just four paragraphs at the end in order to slip in the Israelis-as-Nazis meme. The 2026 piece can't seem to distinguish immigration policy from extermination. But skip the weak arguments. Both pieces can't conceive of Jewish memory of the Shoah as anything but a feint. This is deep ontology of "genocide studies" and much progressive thought on race and social justice.

02/16 Links Pt1: The UN Doesn’t Deserve to Be Free of Francesca Albanese; Waltz calls UN a 'cesspool for antisemitism'; Hamas is inching toward another war; The Tucker Carlson effect

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The UN Doesn’t Deserve to Be Free of Francesca Albanese

The current controversy is over Albanese’s remarks at a recent Al Jazeera conference which Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal also addressed. Albanese referred to Israel as the “common enemy of humanity.” Albanese’s defenders deny that she was referring to the Jewish state as the “common enemy,” and that she was only talking about those who “control vast amounts of financial capital, algorithms, or weapons.”

To reiterate: that is the defense of Albanese. That the enemy of humanity is merely a global cabal of financiers who support Israel.

My sense is that the hilariously weak “defense” of Albanese is evidence of Albanese’s own likely belief that her comments don’t require a defense or an explanation at all, because she does see Israel as the common enemy of humanity. Albanese has never been subtle about this. Her long history of anti-Semitism exists in the public record precisely because she does not want there to be any confusion about her bigotry.

So it’s encouraging to see the French foreign minister say enough is enough: “[Albanese] presents herself as a UN independent expert, yet she is neither an expert nor independent — she is a political activist who stirs up hate.”

Austria and Germany have joined France’s declaration of no confidence in Albanese. Longtime UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric distanced Secretary General Antonio Guterres from Albanese’s comments and, in general, “much of what she says.” Next week, at a UN meeting, France will publicly call for her resignation. Britain may even join the club.

But what would the UN do without Albanese? What would it be? It would certainly be less honest, for starters. People should think of Albanese when they think of the UN. She is an indefatigable agent of misery, a publicist for totalitarian death squads, and a figure of unity in the vast interconnected movement of Jew-haters worldwide.

We deserve a better UN. And until we get it, the UN and Francesca Albanese deserve each other.

Jonathan Sacerdoti: Hamas is inching toward another war

The question is how long this equilibrium can endure. Israel is keen to demonstrate patience: it has no more hostages in the strip, dead or alive. It is comfortable letting America negotiate and threaten Hamas into demilitarisation, as agreed. Israel has surrounded Hamas on every side so that it cannot re-arm or rebuild in any real sense. The Palestinians in Gaza pose little to no real threat to Israel in this current situation. If and when the US efforts to demilitarise Hamas fail, Israel will have the opportunity to go in and take care of it themselves. They are in no rush.

Israel will use repeated violations like yesterday’s to build publicly the case for their renewed military action, banking it for when that time comes. They are keen to show Hamas is testing their restraint daily. But that only works if they do carry through, if they aren’t complacent about their strength.

There is a wider lesson here. Societies adapt to chronic threats. In Israel, the Iron Dome allowed daily life to continue under intermittent rocket fire. In the United Kingdom, repeated jihadist plots and attacks have been met with more monitoring of suspects and vigils affirming our love for ‘diversity’. Synagogue attacks (foiled and successful) are met with more funding for more security. More CCTV is put up. Doors are reinforced. More concrete flowerbeds are planted. Over time, abnormal conditions become administratively manageable. Physically, it might make us safer, but it is also dangerous.

Extremist movements operate through increments. A rocket here. A tunnel there. A balloon drifting across a fence. A breach under rubble. Each act tests tolerance. Each restrained reply informs the next move.

Israel now stands at a delicate point. It seeks to uphold the ceasefire and avoid immediate escalation, giving the US time to pursue its carrot and stick approach with the Palestinians in Gaza. It also carries the memory of what accumulated restraint produced in October 2023. So the Yellow Line still stands, and the ceasefire technically holds.

But eventually, the equation must and will be altered permanently by real, decisive, visible victory. We in the West must also learn from that Israeli resolve and determination for victory. Anything else recreates the conditions that lead to violent collapse.

Behind the Humanitarian Halo: MSF, Oxfam, and World Vision Publicly Exposed

The lack of neutrality is not limited to Oxfam but rather part of a larger problem at global institutions. Former senior editor at Human Rights Watch (HRW), Danielle Haas, likewise recently noted that the organization “rewarded divisive, aggressive tactics — especially when aimed at Israel.” When Haas brought up the “lack of balance” in the organization, the concerns were dismissed. In one instance, while editing a report involving Mohammed El-Halabi, Haas requested that the document include the specific charges against him to provide necessary context. Her request was rejected on the basis that the charges were “wild.”

The existence of deeply entrenched antisemitism and politicized framing within such organizations raises serious questions concerning their moral authority and global credibility. Because when it comes to Israel, they are clearly not interested in maintaining the neutrality they claim.

The cases of MSF, World Vision, and Oxfam reveal how humanitarian organizations can be co-opted to shield terrorist actors while undermining the credibility of their own missions. These organizations have helped preserve a narrative that shields Hamas from accountability while undermining the credibility of the very humanitarian principles they claim to uphold.

This is just the beginning. More and more information is likely to be exposed in the coming months, including vindication of the Israeli narrative that has been so often either ignored or attacked by a media that prefers to take Hamas claims as fact.

But will the media even cover the stories, let alone retract when the evidence is incontrovertible?

Diversity, Palestinian style

It is amusing when people try to import progressive cultural mores into the space of decidedly non-progressive Palestinian contexts.

Here's an academic paper published last year, "Boardroom diversity and financial performance in Palestinian banks and insurers." It looks to see if there is any relationship between diversity in the members of the boards of Palestinian financial institutions and their performance.

This is the sort of topic one would expect to be written in any Western nation - does a diverse board result in better performance? This has been a major topic in Fortune 500 companies for at least three decades.

But something about the abstract is a little off:

This study examines the impact of board diversity—precisely age, nationality, and experience—on the financial performance of 13 Palestinian banks and insurance companies listed on the Palestine Stock Exchange (PEX) from 2011 to 2022. Using a comprehensive panel data approach and controlling for endogeneity with a two-step system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimator, the analysis explores how diverse board characteristics influence financial outcomes measured by ROA and ROE. Unlike previous studies focused mainly on developed markets or gender diversity, this research offers new insights into the role of board diversity in emerging economies, particularly in the Middle Eastern context. The results reveal that while age diversity negatively impacts firm performance, experience diversity positively correlates, underscoring the importance of industry-specific expertise in financial governance. Nationality diversity, however, exhibits no significant effect, suggesting that foreign representation may introduce complexity without necessarily enhancing performance.

The markers of "diversity" in Palestinian institutions isn't gender or disability or race. They are age, nationality and experience.

Which indicates that the amount of real diversity in these boardrooms, in the Western sense, is practically zero.

I went through the names I could find of the board members of these banks and insurance companies. Every one is an Arabic name. There are very few that can be identified as Christian based on their names, and very few that are women. Obviously the the Arab Islamic Bank and the Palestine Islamic Bank have zero women and non-Muslims, but the other institutions also had very few.

(There is one notable exception - Bank of Palestine had, as of 2022, 5 female board members out of 11.)

And as far as "nationality" is concerned, they are all 100% Arab. The amount of viewpoint diversity between Palestinians and Saudis and Iraqis from the boardroom is probably close to zero - it isn't like there are any Dutch board members.

So the paper uses excellent data science to prove essentially nothing about the value of what Westerners would call "diversity." And, in a way, it covers up the lack of diversity in these institutions by not calling out the obvious homogeneity that each of these boards have.

In short, there is no real diversity in Palestinian banks and insurance companies. That is the real story. Doing fancy math to show whether banks dominated by Arab Muslim men have some small differences correlated with their age or experience is almost comic - the differences in their performance will be much more reliant on other factors like loan policies, amount of corruption, and marketing instead of whether two board members came from Jordan.

Where are the feminists, the anti-racists, the DEI leaders denouncing the fact that most Palestinian boardrooms don't have any diversity to speak of?

They are writing letters denouncing Israel, of course.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Recently the peer-reviewed geography journal Antipode published an article by Wassim Ghantous, “Homological Correspondence: Israel as a Frontier of Global Domination.”

The prose follows a familiar contemporary academic pattern: dense terminology that substitutes conceptual layering for empirical constraint. For example:

The positioning of Israel as the frontier of the homological space denotes distinct spatiotemporal articulations… the frontier is a space of indistinction, intermixing, hybridity, and confusion… an unruly elastic force field of diffusion, expansion, and intensification…

This language matters less for its obscurity than for its function: it allows the argument to operate through metaphorical coherence rather than testable claims. The paper’s thesis is not built by adjudicating competing explanations but by embedding Israel into a totalizing interpretive model in which it necessarily becomes the generator of global violence.

A key example concerns the laws of armed conflict:

Israel plays an entrepreneurial role in pushing the limits of global frameworks regarding the rules of war… Israeli practices become normalized and emulated internationally.

There is a kernel of truth here. Israel does appear frequently in military legal scholarship discussing difficult operational dilemmas. But the paper reverses causality.

International humanitarian law — from the UN Charter through the Geneva Conventions — was constructed around implicit structural assumptions:

states monopolize organized violence
governments control armed forces
war has a beginning and an end
battlefields can be separated from civilians
armed groups protect their own population
front lines exist
non-state actors are peripheral

Modern non-state armed groups deliberately violate these assumptions. Organizations such as Hamas or Al-Qaeda embed military assets within civilian environments precisely to exploit the legal framework governing state militaries.

Israel therefore encounters edge-cases first not because it seeks to erode law, but because it is repeatedly placed in situations the law’s original model did not contemplate. Military legal literature studies Israel for the same reason aviation investigates rare accidents: it is where the framework is stress-tested.

Customary international law then evolves in response to these stress cases.

The direction is thus:

assumption-breaking warfare → legal adaptation → international diffusion

The article asserts the reverse:

Israeli deviation → global normalization of violence

The difference is methodological. One treats legal development as reactive adaptation to new forms of conflict. The other treats it as ideological export.

The paper signals its underlying framework in subtler ways as well. It presents accusations such as “genocide” as settled premises rather than argued conclusions, and it refers to the holocaust in lowercase — notably diverging from the journal’s own historical usage. That typographical choice is not trivial; it collapses a specific historical event into a general category of violence, which is necessary for the article’s broader comparative structure to function.

In other words, the argument depends on a prior assumption: Israel must already occupy the position of paradigmatic global harm. Once that assumption is installed, examples across law, policing, and technology can be narratively aligned to reinforce it.

Remove that assumption, and the explanatory structure no longer uniquely selects Israel; it instead describes a general pattern of legal systems adapting to new forms of warfare.

The paper therefore does not primarily present empirical findings. It presents a coherent interpretive schema — one whose stability depends less on evidence than on preserving its initial premise.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

02/15 Links: Human rights activists and organizations legitimize antisemitism; Bondi Beach terrorist, charged with 15 counts of murder; India agrees arms deals with Israel worth $8.6b

From Ian:

Jason D. Greenblatt (Arab News-Saudi Arabia): Negotiation, Trump Style

No one knows what is in President Donald Trump's head, and that is by design. Revealing his strategy would forfeit leverage, eliminate surprise, and weaken negotiations before they even begin. Strategic ambiguity is not confusion. It is strength.

Many predicted he would strike Iran quickly. I did not. Weeks ago, I wrote that he would first test whether diplomacy could work - real diplomacy, aimed at real results. Not another paper promise that looks good in headlines and collapses in practice. The last deal [in 2015] merely kicked the nuclear threat down the road and gave the Iranian regime space to cheat.

Trump wants an agreement that eliminates the nuclear threat - one that is verifiable, enforceable and immediate. One that addresses Iran's growing missile capabilities and regional aggression. Trump understands that the first victims of the Iranian regime are the Iranian people themselves. They live under crushing sanctions imposed because of their leaders' warmongering, repression and extremism. They suffer for ambitions they did not choose. At the same time, the threat to Israel and to America's Arab allies remains real and, if left unchecked, will only grow far more dangerous.

Trump seeks peace and prosperity. That is what drives him. He is, at heart, a dealmaker. Leaders across the region share a clear-eyed understanding of Iran's threat. Trump has rebuilt American strength and is unafraid to use it. He negotiates from power, not apology. Over 23 years, I watched him close deals so-called experts dismissed as fantasy. He does not accept conventional limits.

No one should fault him for exhausting every peaceful option before choosing the hard path. Trying to prevent war does not make him weak or naive or indecisive. It means he is doing his job. If there is a responsible way to avoid war, a president must pursue it. That does not mean Trump is being played. He recognizes deception. He senses bad faith. If negotiations become a charade, he will know. Quickly.

If he ultimately concludes that force is necessary - or that supporting Israel in war is unavoidable - he will do so knowing he explored every alternative.

Bernard-Henri Levy (WSJ)Is Help Still on the Way for Iranian Protesters?

Should there even be a deal with Iran? Is it reasonable to "deal" with men who killed 30,000 of their own compatriots in two days and who threaten, should demonstrations resume, to kill tens of thousands more?

Can one settle for sanctions, pressure, and concessions wrung out and immediately circumvented, when one knows that Russia has long since found ways to flood Tehran and its proxies with the resources they need to continue their enterprise of destruction?

Is any compromise possible with fanatics who proclaim that they prefer the apocalypse to defeat?

I hope the American administration understands this. I hope it has grasped that the era of containment is over, that deterrence doesn't work against a state that has made internal terror, regional destabilization, and the end of the world both a mode of governance and a program.

The time for regime change has come.

Ben-Dror Yemini: Human rights activists and organizations legitimize antisemitism

It is curious to speak at an Al Jazeera conference—the flagship channel of Qatar—about “we, who do not control large amounts of financial capital.” Who exactly is “we”? According to one investigation after another, most recently by the Free Press, Qatar has invested “nearly $100 billion to buy influence in Congress, colleges, research institutes and corporations.” The channel itself is funded almost entirely by Qatar, with an annual budget of about $1 billion. But in Albanese’s formulation, this becomes “we, who do not control large amounts of financial capital.” And no, this is not satire.

Last Thursday, Caroline Yadan, a member of France’s right-wing National Assembly party, submitted a parliamentary question to Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot regarding the continuation of Albanese’s tenure in her senior UN post. Barrot responded immediately, announcing that, at the opening of the next session of the Human Rights Council on February 23, France intends to present a demand for the dismissal of the racist who rose to that senior position. Additional European countries have announced they are joining the request.

Yadan was met with a wave of responses, including from the French newspaper Le Monde, with the peculiar claim that this is not what Albanese said and that it was not a racist statement. Amnesty International issued a statement asserting that “European states must retract their outrageous attacks against Albanese.”

One does not need a comprehension test to understand what Albanese said. She published the full text herself. She did not speak about any other country. Only about Israel. Moreover, the phrase “a common enemy of humanity” is well known from the antisemitic lexicon. Once it was said about Jews. Now it is said about the Jewish state.

Yadan responded with a long list of Albanese’s racist statements, before and after October 7. She previously published an anti-Israel cartoon depicting spider webs spread across the world with banknotes and gold coins, spoke about the “Jewish lobby,” justified the October 7 massacre, cast doubt on allegations of rape by Hamas terrorists and much, much more. UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer has published extensive investigations into Albanese’s conduct, including activities funded by Hamas supporters.

There have already been attempts to remove Albanese. Nevertheless, in April 2025, her mandate was extended by three years. The New York Times printed a sympathetic profile of her. And the world’s largest human rights organization, Human Rights Watch, condemned the United States for imposing sanctions on her.

The tragedy is that racism reigns not only in the automatic majority of dark regimes within UN bodies. It is a cancer spreading through a camp that imagines itself enlightened. And the gap between human rights and human rights organizations and activists has never been greater.

Do "pro-Palestine" activists really "love Palestine" or hate Israel? A technical analysis. (updated)

The US Campaign for Palestine Rights wrote a fundraising email on Valentine's Day:

But today, on Valentine’s Day, I’m reminded of the power of love, hope, and community.

At the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, our love for Palestine fuels our organizing and advocacy work every day. And our hope for justice and collective liberation inspires us to keep fighting, especially in moments like this, when our communities are under attack.

It seems to me that this claim, that their "love for Palestine" is what fuels their advocacy, can be empirically tested.

I asked an AI (ChatGPT) to go through a sample of their posts on their website and X feeds and determine how many of their posts show a "love of Palestine" as opposed to a hate for Israel.

My hypothesis is that they, and most "pro-Palestinian" organizations, are more fueled by hate for Israel than "love for Palestine."

Each item was classified into one of three mutually exclusive categories:

Love-of-Palestine (LP)
Affirmative depiction of Palestinian society independent of antagonists.
Examples: culture, daily life, education, art, religion, civic activity.

Mixed Humanitarian (MH)
Descriptions of hardship without explicit attribution of agency.

Oppositional-to-Israel (OI)
Messaging primarily criticizing, accusing, or mobilizing action against Israel or related actors (e.g., boycott campaigns, genocide allegations, protest calls).

I used nearly all of their X posts for the past two months and all of their website posts for the past year (according to Google searching.)

Across roughly 90 items:

About 82% of the messaging was directly about opposing Israel

About 17% described suffering without explicitly naming a perpetrator

About 1% actually presented Palestinian life on its own

In other words, almost none of the content showed Palestinians as a society — people studying, building, creating, celebrating, debating, or governing themselves, which is what one would expect if their main motivation was "love for Palestine.". Instead, the structure was overwhelmingly, "Israel acts → Palestinians experience → audience mobilizes."

Even many sympathetic posts about hardship were functioning as evidence in an accusation rather than as a description of a community.

Then I asked a second question: Who is the main actor in the sentence? Is the message about Palestinians doing things and living their lives — or about Israel doing things to them? Are they portrayed primarily as victims or as proud people in their own right?

This was categorized as:

Israel-centric (IC)
Israel is the active agent performing actions.

Reactive-Palestine (RP)
Palestinians appear primarily as recipients of actions.

Palestine-centric (PC)
Palestinians appear as independent social actors.

This method avoids subjective interpretation by analyzing syntactic structure rather than sentiment.

The results were


Israel-centric	61%
Reactive-Palestine	37%
Palestine-centric	2%

Thus, even humanitarian content largely operates as evidence within a "blame Israel" narrative.

This matters because movements normally centered on a people tend to talk about the people — their culture, institutions, internal life, and future.

Here, the narrative center is different. Israel is usually the subject of the sentence. Palestinians are usually the object of the sentence.

I strongly suspect that analysis of other "pro-Palestinian" group messaging would show similar results. When even Palestinian cookbooks are usually framed as "resistance" and not as pure celebration of Palestinian cuisine, the entire "pro-Palestinian" movement appears to be centered about what they hate rather than what they love.

The control group - Razom for Ukraine

One might object - Palestinians are under siege, they are in a devastating war, USPCR is meant as a US-based advocacy group that lobbies Congress so naturally they will be more focused against Israel than for Palestinians.

So I did the same analysis for a similar pro-Ukrainian group as a control: Razom for Ukraine. Razom is a U.S. nonprofit that raises money, lobbies Congress, and organizes activism on behalf of a population under ongoing invasion. In other words, it fills the same functional niche as US Campaign for Palestinian Rights — but for Ukraine.

I analyzed roughly two months of Razom social media posts and website publications using the same categories used earlier:

Identity-centered: content about the people themselves (culture, society, civic life, history, community)
Humanitarian: suffering described without political mobilization
Adversarial: primarily about condemning or mobilizing action against the attacker

Here are the results for Razom compared to USPCR:

Organization	Identity	Humanitarian	Adversarial
USCPR	0.6%	17%	82%
Razom	43%	16%	41%

How about who the subjects are in their posts?

Adversary-centric — enemy is the acting subject
Victim-centric — people appear mainly as recipients of harm
People-centric — people appear as agents (society, culture, civic life)

Organization	Adversary-centric	Victim-centric	People-centric
USCPR	61%	37%	2%
Razom	40%	18%	42%

If messaging is motivated primarily by love of a people, that people should appear as a society, with culture, agency, memory, and future.

Razom centers Ukrainians as a people. USCPR almost completely ignores Palestinians as a people and centers Israel as an enemy.

This comparison shows that adversary-centered communication is not inevitable in wartime advocacy. It is a choice.

And that choice reveals what the messaging is really organized around

In other words, there is almost no "love of Palestine" seen in "pro-Palestinian" advocacy groups. . It is nearly all hate of Israel.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

When UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese gave a speech at the Al Jazeera Forum recently, clips were circulated indicating she called Israel the "common enemy" of humanity.

She and her defenders then said that in context, she was talking about a "system", not about Israel.

So let's look at what she actually and her clarification, and using only her words and their logic, we can see exactly what she meant without any hand-waving.

Here is the entire speech and transcript:

We have been spending the last two years looking at the planning and making of a genocide. And the genocide is not over. The genocide as the intentional destruction of a group as such is clearly unveiled. Now it’s been in the air for a long time and now it’s a full display. It’s been difficult to report the genocide. Al Jazeera knows better than anyone else in the media realm, because of all the losses, it does suffer as a media company.

But no other people knows it better than the Palestinian themselves. The Palestinians have continued to narrate the deluge of conscience that fell upon them relentlessly.

And this is a challenge, the fact that instead of stopping Israel, most of the world has armed [it], giving it political excuses, political sheltering, economic and financial support, this is a challenge. The fact that most of the media in the Western world has been amplifying the pro-apartheid, the genocidal narrative is a challenge. And at the same time, here also lays the opportunity.

Because if international law has been stabbed in the heart, it’s also true that never before the global community has seen the challenges that we all face. We, who do not control large amounts of financial capitals, algorithms and weapons. We now see that we, as a humanity, have a common enemy, and freedoms, the respect of fundamental freedoms, is the last peaceful toolbox that we have to regain our freedom. But we need to stand up. We need to do the right thing, all of us in our individual sphere, being as lawyers, journalists, educators, students, ordinary citizens at home, we all have a role to play, and this role is changing our habits. From what we choose to buy, to consume, to read, to how we stand in front of power.

We need to be able to speak up. We need to have the strength to look at each other and see our brothers and sisters, and see allies in them. And in this respect, I think the Al Jazeera has a bigger challenge than others, because it is to stay true through its core values, through to the mission that has made it known around the world its ability to produce true facts and march toward justice with them in their hands.

I do believe that Palestine will be free. I do believe that we will all be free, because too much human rights conscience is rooted in today’s world after 80 years of preaching and teaching human rights. But we need to, we need to act. And the time is now. So, for a 26th of full commitment toward accountability and justice.

Francesca Albanese tried to clarify her “common enemy of humanity” remark by saying she wasn’t talking about Israel itself. She meant “the system that enabled the genocide in Palestine – the financial capital that funds it, the algorithms that obscure it, and the weapons that enable it.”

But that clarification does not soften anything. It actually demonizes Israel more.

Her whole speech is built on one claim: Israel is committing genocide. Everything else in the speech hangs off that. The “arming,” the “political shelter,” the “media amplification,” the “international law stabbed in the heart” – all of it is presented as support for Israel’s alleged crime.

So when she says the system that enables this is the “enemy of humanity,” she is not downgrading Israel’s role. She is building a hierarchy:

Israel is the actor committing the alleged genocide.
The system that enables Israel is the enemy of humanity.
And anyone who will not join the indictment is implicated as part of that system.

The word “system” does not detract from the claim that Israel is uniquely evil. It is the opposite. It turns Israel into the paradigm of evil and then expands the blast radius outward to include everyone who refuses to treat Israel that way.

In short, if the system that allows Israel to exist is an enemy of humanity, all the more so is Israel itself. Calling the enablers “the enemy of humanity” does not make Israel less of an enemy. It makes Israel, logically, the central enemy of humanity — and it enlarges the category of "enemies of humanity" to include anyone who doesn’t treat Israel as a pariah - Americans, British, French, even her own Italian government.

So reading her own words - and her explanation - does not make her less of an antisemite. It proves it.

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

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02/14 Links: MSF admits presence of gunmen in Gaza hospitals; Fetterman eviscerates anti-Israel ‘rot’ in Dem party; Francesca Albanese represents UN inability to acknowledge truth and morality

From Ian:

When antisemitism becomes normal, what comes next?

Antisemitism has risen to such high levels around the world that William Daroff says he does not know if there will ever be a moment when Jews can declare victory. The best they can hope for, he told the ILTV Podcast, is to reach a point where Jews can say “that people feel a little safer.”

Daroff, the CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, is in Israel for the group’s annual event, which kicks off on February 15. He visited the ILTV studio to discuss the state of world Jewry in the aftermath of October 7, pointing to the “metastasizing of antisemitism and Jew hatred to a point where it is normalized in a way that also wouldn’t have been fathomable 10 years ago.”

He described the situation as “incredibly troubling” and warned that the “biggest danger” for Jews is when any level of antisemitism becomes acceptable, especially when there is a belief that as long as it stays at a low simmer, it can be managed.

“I think what we’ve learned since October 7 is that there is no baseline that’s acceptable,” Daroff told ILTV.

According to Daroff, antisemitism has increasingly shifted to focus on Israel. While openly attacking Jews is no longer socially acceptable in many spaces, attacking Israelis often is. He said antisemites now hide behind what they call “legitimate criticism” of Israel, but stressed that it is not legitimate.

Since October 7, Daroff said many progressive Jews in the United States have become politically homeless, feeling alienated both from the Democratic Party and from more conservative figures like President Donald Trump.

“I think there are moderates in both parties who are looking to try to engage and bring a bigger audience towards them,” Daroff said. “I think in the mainstream in both parties there are leadership roles that [Jews] can take and are taking. I think that it is incumbent upon all of us, but particularly those who are involved in both parties, to say that this antisemitic, anti-Israel filth on the far left of the Democratic Party and the far right of the Republican Party are totally unacceptable.”

At the same time, Daroff noted reports suggesting that as many as one-third of Jewish voters in New York supported Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who is openly anti-Israel and, some argue, antisemitic. Daroff said he believes the figure is somewhat lower, but said the result highlights a deeper political failure.

“You cannot beat someone with no one,” he said.

Francesca Albanese represents UN inability to acknowledge truth and morality

Her over-the-top antisemitic views seem to be an offshoot of her desire to please her Jew-hating supporters and benefactors – to the point where she even compared Israel to Nazi Germany.

Her personal view that the October 7 massacre was merely a “response to oppression” renders her incapable of being a fair arbiter of what is considered just, honorable, and righteous in the eyes of rational and reasonable human beings.

Her sick contention that “Palestinians have a right to resist oppression” makes her incapable of all objectivity, given that cold-blooded murder of innocent civilians can in no way be justified as a legitimate form of resistance – especially since any oppression suffered by them has come from their own corrupt and evil leaders.

But there have been grave consequences for her controversial positions – one of which was the revocation of her visa, barring her from the US, meaning she cannot even set foot in the UN – which she ironically represents. Additionally, her US assets have been frozen, and she was blacklisted as if she “were a terrorist or drug trafficker.”

“Consequently, all of her transactions involve cash. She cannot receive transfers or donations, collect her salary, or even buy a plane ticket online. She cannot open a bank account anywhere in the world or have a credit card, because she has been placed on the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) list of the US Treasury Department, which targets money laundering and terrorism.”

Although Albanese requested intervention by her home country, given that its leader, Giorgia Melonia – who is a close Trump ally – no assistance has been granted.

Albanese has made herself a pariah, and is responsible for her own undoing. But for someone who longs for the privileges of which she has been stripped, she cannot think that characterizing Palestine, as a moral compass, will be helpful to her cause.

In the end, this is the sad story of a woman who lacks the capacity to judge with any rational or reasoned acumen. Devoid of discernment, or just jaded as a result of unbridled ambition, Albanese is, indeed, paying the price for the folly of provocateur status.

Apparently, resigned to being an outcast, she is the willing abrasive mouthpiece for terror organizations and governments who would like to see a swift end to the Jewish homeland. In that respect, Albanese is a proxy flame thrower, doing the dirty work that others have been too cowardly to take on.

When you think about it, she is nothing more than a useful tool, much in the style of Hezbollah and the Houthis who do the bidding for Iran.

02/13 Links Pt2: Think of it as 251 Nancys; The Fall of Europe; Three men jailed in UK over Islamic State-inspired plot to kill hundreds of Jews; James Van Der Beek, dead at 48, had longstanding ties to Israel

From Ian:

Think of it as 251 Nancys

Continuous reporting has filled television airways and made headlines in the United States about the kidnapping in Tucson, Ariz., of Nancy Guthrie, the mother of NBC News anchor Savannah Guthrie. Practically every news outlet has devoted time to each twist and turn of this story, which began on Feb. 1. It is a full-throated whodunit garnering viewers’ attention, and seemingly all have been caught up these past two weeks in worry and concern for this 84-year-old woman.

A little more than two years ago, on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel was invaded by thousands of Palestinian terrorists from the Gaza Strip, led by Hamas. They invaded the southern border and proceeded to murder 1,200 people, injure some 2,000 others, and kidnap 251 men, women and children, dragging them into Gaza. The vicious perpetrators provided ample evidence of their ghoulish actions with their own GoPro cameras.

Think of it as 251 Nancys.

Israel went to war for the next two years—not just with Hamas in Gaza, but with Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and Iran itself. On Oct. 13, 2025, the last of the living hostages returned to Israel. On Jan. 26, the last hostage body of Ron Gvili, 24, was brought home.

In Hostages Square in Tel Aviv and throughout the Jewish Diaspora, the fate of the kidnapped became a gut-wrenching campaign. They were Israel’s 251 Nancys. Jews worldwide wore yellow ribbons and dog tags to show their solidarity. When visitors arrived at Ben-Gurion International Airport, photos of the captives stared back, their beautiful faces pleading for help. These same images were displayed in every corner across the country. The countdown to their return was tracked down to the second.

Those rescued alive were celebrated as heroes, and for families whose relatives were buried, thousands attended funerals to grieve along with them.

These same images of the hostages were desecrated on streets across the globe by the same keffiyeh-wearing mobs that rioted in support of the terrorists and against Israelis and Jews everywhere. At least, in the case of Nancy Guthrie, nobody is screaming for her people’s destruction and accusing her family of genocide.

Yes, some of the hostages were Nancy Guthrie’s age. And there were many more young people. There were babies even—the redheaded Ariel and Kfir Bibas babies, who at 10 months and 4 years were just beginning their lives. The victims were light-skinned and dark-skinned. Some weren’t even Jewish, but Arab, Bedouin, Druze. Some weren’t Israeli, but guests and workers from abroad. Some had helped Palestinians in distress for years, some employed Gazans in their homes and fields, and some had been at a music festival, dancing and having a good time.

The Fall of Europe

From Paris to Brussels to Amsterdam and elsewhere it is happening across all the West, but still: What explains this bizarre mental mass resignation, so to speak, that affects a country known since the blitz for its tough spirit of resistance? On Oct. 2, when a 35-year-old Syrian-born British citizen, called Jihad al-Shamie attacked the worshippers of the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation in Manchester killing two and injuring three before being shot by police, the whole country seemed briefly shocked, but nothing ensued, either. Meanwhile, in December 2024, one of the most influential medical journals worldwide, The BMJ, published an essay signed by 25 academics arguing that banning female genital mutilation—an illegal practice in the U.K. since 1985—is harmful and stigmatizing toward migrant communities.

Meanwhile, the city of London and the Labour Party, have already both adopted a definition of Islamophobia that is now being discussed in an all-party parliamentary group, and according to which, if passed, even mentioning the grooming gangs will be considered offensive and therefore fall under the law restricting free speech. This law, called the “noncrime hate incidents law,” specifies that police can knock at your door for any statement you may have made, deemed “offensive” or threatening by a self-designated “victim.” It is under this law that the comedian Graham Linehan was arrested last September at Heathrow for inciting violence after a social media post about trans. Even worse, last October, the Telegraph posted a video showing two policemen after they had arrested a man whose Magen David had “antagonized” pro-Palestinian protesters. And in November, six police officers rang at the home of Rosalind Levine, 47, to ask her about emails she had sent her daughter’s school in which she offered to help arrange for Holocaust survivors to address pupils—an interaction with the school presented as “harassment.”

Great Britain is also the only Western country to tolerate no less than 85 active Sharia courts on its soil, an investigation by The Times found last summer. Also named councils, these courts rule over civil matters such as marriages (100,000 marriages are believed to have been performed by them, a quarter of which involve polygamy) and attract an increasing number of Muslims from across Europe and North America. Birmingham alone, whose population is roughly 30% Muslim (four-and-a-half times the national average), counts three of them.

Whatever the endemic reasons may be for that state of things, like elsewhere, Oct. 7 has worsened it. And here again, Birmingham serves as an accurate template for the rest of the country: In July 2024, in the city where the median gross annual pay is just £33,952 (against a national average of £37,617), where the majority of jobs are in social care, wholesale and retail trade, and where employment stands at just 66%, compared to the English average of 76%, voters have sent to Parliament two of the five MPs that English media call the “independent Gaza MPs” because Gaza was their sole electoral platform and program. One of those MPs is Ayoub Khan, the man who launched the first petition in Birmingham against the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans coming to town.

“Probably for the first time in England, certainly for generations, you have people elected with a specific religious slant,” Paul Stott, head of security and extremism at the London-based think tank Policy Exchange told me. “Previously, Muslims had voted heavily for the Labour Party, for a range of other parties as well, but predominantly Labour. Here the Muslim candidates have been able to run against Labour and indeed win quite comfortably, if you look at some of the results. It’s a challenge to our liberal democracy.”

To my knowledge, there are no specific studies so far on the role played in those elections by the Sharia courts. But Emma Schubart, who is data and insights manager at the Adam Smith Institute, confirmed to me that the win for these five Islamic MPs “is not just a demographic matter. What happens is that they are just mobilizing the Muslim population very, very well. They have a community where women can’t go to the polls unaccompanied, for instance, and they make use of that. They also have a lot of multifamily homes and they send in a package of mail-in ballots and lots of votes from just one address. The decisive factor is concentrated mobilization, not sheer population head count. The risk that it happens on a larger scale next May in cities like London, Bradford or Birmingham is absolutely real.”

And this is where the Villa Park game story takes its full, national significance. Earlier this month The Telegraph revealed that, among the eight mosques that WMP officials said they spoke to in order to assess the risks represented by the Israeli fans, included were the Al-Habib mosque, the Jami mosque, and above all, the Green Lane mosque, which also houses a Sharia court. In the first mosque, days after Oct. 7 a preacher delivered a sermon titled “Knowing the Facts” in which he claimed Jews were planning to “become sole rulers of the world” and recommended the reading of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion; in the second mosque, in November 2023 another preacher delivered a prayer in Arabic to call for the death of the Jews; and in the Green Lane mosque, fittingly enough, a third preacher spoke about the World Cup, arguing that Jews “keep the people busy with sports and games” and “that’s why all those people make all that money.” Any of those could have passed along the Game Over Israel document. (On Jan. 6, senior police officers from the WMP facing the Home Affairs Committee admitted that their decision to ban the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans was partly based on intelligence that Muslim vigilante groups were arming and planning to attack the Israelis; instead of acting upon the potential attackers, they choose to focus on alleged threats posed by the potential victims.)

In July 2024, newly elected Birmingham MP Iqbal Mohamed said during his victory speech: “We must take over the whole of Birmingham. The whole of West Midlands. The whole of the U.K. We will not be taken for granted, and we will win.”

Since then, he and his four colleagues have helped resurrect former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and, together, they have created a new formation called Your Party, plagued ever since by personal rivalries and hopeless ideological chasms. Does it mean that Iqbal Mohamed was wrong? A grim future will soon tell.

It doesn’t matter whether Americans call themselves ‘Zionists’

Politics over faith
It is a basic truth of 21st-century American life that politics now plays the role that religion used to have in their lives. So, it is unsurprising that a not insignificant percentage of the majority of Jews who are neither religious nor politically conservative would be greatly influenced by the way the base of the Democratic Party has embraced the toxic doctrines of critical race theory, intersectionality and settler-colonialism. They demonize Israel and falsely label Jews as “white oppressors.”

Indeed, Israel’s critics have always pointed to the fact that the vast majority of Jews have been political liberals who generally opposed sectarian causes in favor of universalist ones and also voted for Democrats, who were often critical of the Israeli government. At the same time, the majority of Israelis are Jews of color who came from North Africa and other parts of the Middle East, not exactly the epitome of white Europeans.

What that narrative of the study left out is the fact that poll after poll proves that huge majorities of Jews still consider Israel to be very important to them. They may not have thought well of Israel’s leaders, and neither knew nor understood much about why the majority of the Jewish state’s voters had long since discarded any backing for a “two-state solution” that the U.S. foreign-policy establishment long asserted was the only answer to the conflict. But most of these Jews still support Israel’s struggle for survival against hostile Arab and Muslim forces determined to destroy the one Jewish state on the planet.

A boost in affiliation
The good news about the JFNA survey is that it validates the widespread perception that the shock of the atrocities committed by Palestinian Arabs on Oct. 7, and the way they incited a wave of antisemitism around the globe, has influenced many Jews to come back to Jewish life. The results show that nearly half of all Jews, including many who don’t label themselves Zionists, are part of a parallel swell of greater engagement in Jewish life since the atrocities of Oct. 7. That includes an increase in affiliation, synagogue and event attendance, and a greater connection with and an interest in Israel.

That shouldn’t lessen worries about assimilation. Nor should the pro-Israel community be complacent about the way that a biased media—and a combination of woke left-wing and alt-right antisemitism—has worked to erode support for the Jewish state. This fact alone has served to increase the number of those who identify with or are willing to believe the lies spread by its genocidal foes, even among those who call themselves Jews.

But the idea that anti-Zionists, whose views seek to strip Jews of rights that no one would think of denying to any other people and thus are indistinguishable from antisemitism, now represent the majority of American Jews is absolutely not true. The organized Jewish world may be largely obsolete, and led by organizations and leaders who have failed to respond adequately to the challenges of the moment. And the labels that were once meaningful in determining the views of most people are just as out of date. But the trauma of Oct. 7, and subsequent increase in global hatred and even violence, has not convinced most Jews to abandon the Jewish state. American Jewry may be in demographic decline, yet the overwhelming majority of those who choose to remain part of the Jewish people still stand with Israel.

02/13 Links Pt1: The Economic Case for the US-Israel Partnership; Palestine’s Anti-Constitution; MSF now admits Nasser Hospital was a terrorist base; How an Indian Researcher Exposed the Nazi–Palestinian Alliance

From Ian:

The Economic Case for the US-Israel Partnership

Recommendations
Washington should treat the US-Israel partnership as strategic industrial architecture and act accordingly. Below are four concrete steps to do so.

1. Enforce against boycott spillover. Use trade law, financial authorities, and anti-boycott statutes to deter measures that disrupt US-Israel technology integration. European restrictions affecting American firms should be treated as trade barriers and addressed through bilateral leverage and multilateral channels. Indeed, Washington can respond with targeted tariffs, procurement exclusions, export-control adjustments, investment-screening scrutiny, or the suspension of sector-specific cooperation agreements. The point is to raise the cost of discriminatory treatment until reciprocity becomes the rational choice. In parallel, Washington should also offer a structured US-Israel-EU technology framework to align procurement, defense, and digital policies within a coherent allied system.

2. Modernize the free trade framework. The White House should update the 1985 US-Israel Free Trade Agreement to reflect a digital- and services-driven economy. The administration should also incorporate binding provisions on data flows, AI and cybersecurity standards alignment, facilitation of joint ventures in critical technologies, and protections against third-party coercion. Regulatory certainty is a competitive asset in technology ecosystems.

3. Institutionalize coproduction in critical technologies. The US should seek to shift its procurement deals with Israel to structured coproduction in sectors where Israeli capabilities complement US capacity gaps. This effort should seek to embed advanced defense, cyber, and emerging technology systems into American production lines to increase America’s industrial depth.

4. Build a bilateral industrial integration platform. America should establish a federal industrial matching mechanism linking Israeli firms to US manufacturing clusters. The mechanism should tie incentives to physical production, workforce development, and supply chain integration on American soil to bolster shared production capacity.

Collectively, these steps would secure the US-Israel partnership at the level that matters in strategic competition: capital control, production ecosystems, and institutional alignment.

Conclusion
Critics of the US-Israel partnership present it as a legacy arrangement sustained by habit and the idiosyncratic preferences of special interest groups. In fact, it is a prototype of allied codevelopment under conditions of strategic competition. The central challenge facing the United States is constructing an international economic order capable of outperforming authoritarian alternatives over time. The US-Israel relationship demonstrates what that order looks like when it matures: integrated innovation, institutional trust, and resilience verified under stress.

Alliances built on codevelopment and shared industrial capacity generate compounding returns. The United States possesses one that works. Washington now needs to protect it and scale it as part of a broader allied economic architecture for the next generation.

Seth Mandel: Palestine’s Anti-Constitution

The original Hamas charter, it’s worth noting, was straightforward in its “struggle against the Jews.” The Palestinian Authority’s own proposed constitution doesn’t mention Jews at all. This is the problem when dealing with each of the Palestinian national movement’s leaders in its century-old existence: Jews are either excluded entirely or they are mentioned only as the object of a genocidal raison d’etre. To these Palestinian nationalists, Jews either don’t exist or else they must be made to not exist.

This should take some of the pressure off of Israel. After all, if the Palestinians don’t want self-determination then it shouldn’t be forced on them. This document is an anti-constitution—it is intended to prevent the need for a Palestinian constitution in perpetuity.

No one should be surprised by this: Israel tried to give the Palestinians their own state multiple times, and each time the Palestinians responded with outrage and violence. The world cannot make the Palestinian leadership want a state.

But outside of whether the Palestinians want this state, the world should also ask itself whether it wants this Palestinian state—not some theoretical state that European leaders imagine, but this state that is on offer.

As the Jerusalem Post reports:
“Article XXIV described how the state would ‘work to provide protection and care for the families of martyrs, wounded, and prisoners, and those released from the occupation prisons and the victims of genocide.’

“This article is drafted into the constitution, appearing to formalize the continuation of the PA’s controversial ‘pay-for-slay’ policy, which provides financial stipends to families of convicted terrorists and terror suspects.”

In addition to the grotesque display of bloodlust here, this should also be taken as a slap in the face to the “State of Palestine’s” biggest boosters.

“The ‘pay for slay’ has ended,” crowed French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot in September. When it was reported two months later that the Palestinians had merely hidden such payments, French President Emmanuel Macron was right back at square one, pleading with Mahmoud Abbas to end what Macron had been fooled into believing had already ended.

Macron then offered France’s help in writing the Palestinian constitution. The Palestinians went forward without such input and came up with a constitution that enshrines pay-for-slay. How many times will France allow itself to be humiliated this way?

A few months ago Keir Starmer, who is somehow still the prime minister of the United Kingdom, was reported to “insist that the Palestinian Authority ends its ‘pay to slay’ policy of handing out stipends to the families of ‘martyrs’ killed or detained for attacks on Israelis,” according to the Telegraph. This would be required “before any two-state solution is finalized.”

Isn’t this all getting so very tiresome? Those who want a Palestinian state are either going to have to convince the Palestinians to want one too, or move on with their lives.

A 1923 Romanian university student newspaper suggested murdering Jews - because their med school needed cadavers

Ever notice how today's antisemites always use morality and liberal ideas to justify their noxious ideas? And how universities, which are supposed to be the source of philosophy and morality, are instead the epicenters of hate?

Here's how that looked 103 years ago:

Kill Jews So You May Have Corpses for Dissection
February 5, 1923 - JTA
Wholesale pogroms on Jews are urged as a means of providing corpses for the dissection rooms of the Klausenburg University, in an article appearing in the students’ publication there. The writer predicts that the pogroms will serve a two-fold object: the extermination of the Jew, and the supply of corpses. The University authorities have taken the student publication’s assertion under advisement.

There was a real problem of a shortage of cadavers. How can medical students continue their studies? It is a moral issue!

So the student newspaper published a simple solution - kill Jews, who are human enough for these purposes. And as a bonus, it will exterminate the Jews! Win-win!

The university did not reject the idea outright. It said, OK, we'll consider this.

The university, now known as Babeș-Bolyai University, dates from 1581 and is one of the most prestigious universities in Romania.

This story didn't make it into the New York Times or wire services. And, from everything I can see, the university never took it seriously.

But there is another lesson from the 1923 incident. When one makes outrageous suggestions like this, it moves the Overton window to allow less outrageous ideas seem almost sane.

From The Jewish Press (Omaha, NE) Thu, Mar 25, 1926, 100 years ago:

The Romanian government said that Jews could not dissect Christian bodies, and must provide their own. And this idea was not limited to Romania - a Warsaw institute was roiled by the same demand also in 1926.

This was a major topic in the mid 1920s using this as an excuse to limit the numbers of Jewish medical students, since Jewish law does not allow Jewish corpses to be used in this manner.

But notice how these antisemitic demand were framed: not as bigotry but as fairness. The intelligentsia of Romania and Poland would no doubt protest mightily that they were not antisemitic; that these laws targeting Jews were in fact ethical and necessary for the well being of the entire population.

What is obvious antisemitism today was considered mainstream thinking then. And this is a constant pattern - the things that are considered antisemitic now were always positioned as fairness or morality or scientific.

And in fifty years, the current BDS movement and UN/NGO obsession with Israel and "genocide" accusation and weaponization of international law and all the rest will be seen clearly as antisemitic and a direct successor to earlier versions of Jew hatred. But in the moment, the haters have enough power to make their hate sound almost reasonable.

Just like the cadaver affairs of the 1920s.

History is rhyming, hard, today.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)