Sunday, May 17, 2026

Mamdani's tweet includes a deliberate lie

On Friday, New York Mayor Mamdani tweeted out a video for "Nakba Day."

Here is a screenshot of his tweet and a frame from the video:

Notice the difference in wording?

Mamdani quoted from this screen of the video, but erased the words "and displacement." The video was careful to include it because Palestinians know very well that most of them left their homes expecting to return; they wanted to avoid the war but they were not expelled.

Mamdani made this decision to change the text to make it sound like the Zionists had ethically cleansed 700,000 Palestinians. In reality the number that left was closer to 600,000 and the vast majority never saw a soldier.

If the mayor of New York is deliberately even less honest than Palestinian propaganda, how much can anyone trust him for anything?

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

Reclaiming the Covenant on America's 250th (May 2026)

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

05/16 Links: IDF infantry platoon commander killed by Hezbollah drone; Israel’s Noam Bettan finishes second at Eurovision; Bill Maher : New Rule: No Jews, No News

From Ian:

Why does Jerusalem belongs to the Jews? Because history says so

Facts do not cease to exist simply because anti-Israel ideologues seek to erase them.

Nor should anyone forget what happened when Jerusalem was divided between 1948 and 1967 under Jordanian rule.

During those 19 years, Jews were completely barred from accessing the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, despite explicit guarantees in the 1949 armistice agreements. Fifty-eight synagogues in the Jewish Quarter were destroyed or damaged by the Jordanians. Ancient gravestones on the Mount of Olives, some dating back centuries, were desecrated and used for roads, military camps, and even latrines.

The city’s reunification in 1967 ended 19 years of Jordanian control of eastern Jerusalem, with the Hashemite Kingdom’s annexation having been recognized by only two countries.

Yet, somehow it is Israel that now stands accused of restricting religious freedom.

The truth is precisely the opposite.

Since reunifying Jerusalem in June 1967, after Jordan joined the Six Day War, Israel has safeguarded access to holy sites for all faiths. Muslims pray freely at al-Aqsa Mosque. Christians maintain churches and institutions throughout the city. Jerusalem, under Israeli sovereignty, has become one of the few cities in the Middle East where Jews, Christians, and Muslims all have genuine religious freedom protected by law.

The city itself reflects that vitality.

Today, Jerusalem is home to nearly one million residents, making it Israel’s largest city. It boasts well over 1,000 synagogues, hundreds of churches, and dozens of mosques. It is the seat of Israel’s parliament, Supreme Court, and national institutions. It is a living, thriving capital, not a relic of ancient memory.

And that is ultimately what Jerusalem Day represents.

It is not merely the anniversary of a military victory. It is the celebration of an ancient people returning to its historic heart after centuries of dispersion and longing.

When Israeli paratroopers reached the Western Wall in June 1967, commander Motta Gur famously declared, “The Temple Mount is in our hands.” At that moment, Jewish history came full circle.

Jerusalem was not conquered in 1967. It was liberated and reclaimed.

At a time when lies about Israel spread with alarming speed across campuses, social media, and international forums, it is more important than ever to stand unapologetically for truth.

Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people because history says so. Archaeology says so. Demography says so. And 3,000 years of uninterrupted Jewish memory say so.

The facts are there for anyone willing to see them.

The Covenant and the Wooden Box

Jews in Britain are not a peripheral concern of that threat. They are a primary one. Jewish faith schools in north London closed their doors in October 2023, citing security fears. The phrase “Globalize the intifada” is chanted openly at marches through the capital, month after month, without prosecution. After two men were killed at the Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester in October 2025, the prime minister told the House of Commons that anti-Semitism was not a new hatred, that Jewish buildings, Jewish lives, and Jewish children required extra protection, and that he would do everything in his power to guarantee their safety. Then he did next to nothing. The IRGC remained unproscribed. The marches continued. The files stayed closed.

On April 29, 2026, as Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, sat in Madrid discussing Gaza with the Spanish prime minister, a man ran along Golders Green Road armed with a knife, hunting Jews. He stabbed two—a man of 34 and a man of 76. He had been referred to Prevent—the government’s counterterrorism program designed to identify and steer individuals away from radicalization—in 2020. His file was closed the same year. The prime minister visited Golders Green the day following the attack and was met with chants of “Keir Starmer Jew Harmer.”

“Anti-Semitism is an old, old hatred,” Starmer said. “History shows that if you turn away, it grows back.” He was right. Perhaps this time the words will be followed by action, but the word “perhaps” is doing a lot of work here. The record does not encourage hope. And the record matters because of what it confirms: This was not managed ignorance—the filed report, the averted gaze, the truth quietly administered out of existence. It showed something much worse: explicit knowledge, explicit condemnation, explicit promise—and then nothing.

This is the strategic cost—the final destination of the managerial habit that brought about the auction listing for Nelson Street and the conduct of council offices of Rotherham, that wound through the corridors of Broadcasting House, arrived at the gilded antechambers of Buckingham Palace, and came, finally, to the streets of Golders Green. Writing in The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt argues that the decline of the nation-state and the loss of political self-knowledge were not merely cultural tragedies but the preconditions for totalitarian penetration. A society that cannot know itself cannot defend even its most vulnerable children. Britain has not produced totalitarianism. But it has produced, with patient institutional thoroughness, exactly the condition Arendt identified as its precursor: a governing class that has lost the will to know what it is, what it values, and what it owes to those in its care. The Chinese Communist Party understands this with the clarity of a predator that has studied its prey. It targets the gap between what British institutions know and what they have decided, for reasons of procedural calm, to pretend they do not know. That gap—patiently widened over decades by a managerial class that chose comfort over conscience—is now a strategic aperture through which a hostile foreign power has walked into the heart of the British establishment.

Americans reading this would be wise to resist the comfortable assumption that what is described here is a foreign pathology—a peculiarly British failure of nerve from which the New World is naturally immune. It is not. The pipeline that rewards ideological conformity with credentials and institutional authority operates on both sides of the Atlantic. The universities that incubated the assumptions that made Rotherham possible sent their graduates into British newsrooms, council offices, and police commands; their American counterparts sent theirs into the FBI, the Department of Justice, the prestige press, and the administrative apparatus of every major American city. The same spirit of iconoclasm that came for Churchill’s statue came for Washington’s and Jefferson’s, too—pulled down by crowds in Portland in 2020 while city administrators placed them in storage and commissioned reports on whether they deserved to stand at all. A committee reporting to the mayor of Washington, D.C., formally recommended removing or relocating the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial.

The same willingness to brand truth-tellers as extremists—which destroyed Sarah Champion’s career for stating the obvious about Rotherham—was visible in the treatment of every American official, journalist, or academic who raised questions that the managerial consensus had decided were impermissible. Britain did not fail because it was uniquely weak. It failed because its governing class lost the will to know itself—and the consequences of that loss, once set in motion, proved impossible to contain. America’s governing class is further along that same road than it yet knows. The wooden box, in America, has not yet been built. But the administrators who would build it, if asked, are already at their post. The question is not whether it is being constructed. It is whether enough people—in Britain and in America—will recognize the lumber being assembled before all the nails go in.

In the summer of 1940, when every counsel of prudence pointed toward negotiation, one man looked into the abyss and refused to blink. He had spent decades preparing for that moment, honoring a covenant older than the war itself: declaring his support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, fighting the White Paper that would have closed Palestine’s gates to Jews fleeing extermination, prosecuting at the cost of everything the war against the regime whose explicit purpose was to end Jewish life in Europe. He understood that the Lord deals with the nations as the nations deal with the Jews—that England’s fate and the fate of the Jewish people were bound together in a moral order that transcended any government or generation. That conviction did not make him perfect. It made him, at the moment of maximum cost, faithful. He turned down a dukedom.

Those who have inherited stewardship of the covenant—the politicians, police, and civil servants—are failing it right now, if not betraying it outright, in the streets of Golders Green, in the halls of Parliament, in the lecture halls and council offices and police commands where the custodians made the same choice—managed truth over honest reckoning. What remains of that moral order, in the hands of those now charged with keeping it, is not easy to say. It endures—but not in the institutions, which have failed it, or in the bronze, which has been spray-painted, or for much longer in the synagogue, which has all but been sold. It endures in Leon Silver, who could not bear to let go of a building half a mile from where he was born.

It endures in Henry Glanz, who blew the shofar every year for the children who never reached England. It endures in Sarah Champion, who said the plain thing and paid the price for it. “The outside is very plain,” Leon Silver said of the building constructed from its first brick to be a synagogue but that’s now being stolen away to become a symbol of Islam’s triumph over Britain’s Jewry. “But people say the inside is beautiful, which I think so too.” The moral truth Silver might not even have known he was echoing with his words—“the inside is beautiful”—endures in everyone who has named what the governing class could not bring itself to name and everyone who refused to look away from what the governing class chose not to see. The moral truth endures—because covenants of that depth do not dissolve when institutions fail them. They wait.

Nicole Lampert: Why doesn’t Starmer make a video warning about far-Left hate marches?

On Friday night, Sir Keir Starmer took time out of being knifed by his Labour colleagues to warn of an impending threat in a statement posted on social media. He couldn’t have looked more serious; the sinews of his neck were taut. He used his hands in his best headmaster mode to drum home his points.

Soft music, with just a hint of menace, played in the background.

There was going to be a march in London, he warned, organised by people who were “peddling hatred and division, plain and simple”. The march, he added, was “a reminder of what we are up against in a battle of our values”.

Writing on X Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy, also emphasised the danger of this march, warning, “if protest turns violent, we will act swiftly, with extra court capacity in place.”

Hallelujah! Could it really be that our political leaders had, after the stabbings in Golders Green, the arson on synagogues and Jewish ambulances, the deadly attack in Manchester, finally woken up to the horror of the “pro-Palestine” hate marches and the anti-Semitic, violent, pro-terrorist, genocidal rhetoric they endorsed?

Of course not.

They were talking about the march with the Union flags, not the ones with flags of Palestine and the Islamic Republic of Iran. If you want to know just how upside down our world has become, we need to look at today: which march was deemed hateful and which one they tried to ignore.

05/15 Links Pt2: VDH: The Four Horsemen of the New Antisemitism; Face it, Jewish liberals: You have no friends on the left; Jews targeted worldwide as well-funded leftist, Islamist groups join for ‘Nakba 78’ protests

From Ian:

Victor Davis Hanson: The Four Horsemen of the New Antisemitism

Few predicted that blaming Israel and the Jews who support it would flare up in the early 21st century—and in America of all places, where there are nearly as many Jews as there are in Israel.

After all, Israel is the only consensual society in the Middle East. It holds regular elections and maintains tripartite judicial, executive, and legislative checks and balances.

Free speech is found in the Middle East only in Israel, where religious apostasy, criticism of one’s own country, gender equity, and tolerance of gays are guaranteed in marked contrast to all its neighbors.

It was once common knowledge that Israel had survived the huge numbers of its enemies because its tiny population was better educated, freer, more adept at Western technology, more tolerant of dissent—and because it enjoyed the goodwill and bipartisan support of the United States.

True, the recent affluence of the Gulf States has presented a thin veneer of Westernism that has fooled many in the new anti-Israel media. But just because Qatar did not censor a celebrity newsman’s broadcast from Doha does not mean Qatar is a free society. After all, no Western journalist would dare schedule a broadcast from Qatar with a Qatari who had condemned the regime for its intolerance or announced his religious apostasy from Islam.

So why and how did millions of Americans begin to express hatred for Israel and, albeit more subtly, the Jews who support it?

There are four converging fronts in this perfect storm.

Seth Mandel: Can Jewish Democrats Still Save Their Party?

It’s something. But it might be both too little and too late. The time it has taken Democratic Jewish figures to come around to the need to fight anti-Semitism within their own tent has left them forever playing catchup. Worse, it has enabled the rise of the very candidates Soifer now claims to be concerned about.

Additionally, Republicans have on occasion urged voters to back the Democrat in general-election races if the Republican nominee is truly unacceptable. There is no sign any Democrats of influence would follow the same path. Staying neutral is the most backbone they’ll show at this point.

And the party isn’t at all swayed by JDCA finally showing a bit of hesitation about a Democrat. Platner’s name was raised at the conference by Simon Rosenberg, a Jewish Democratic strategist. His position on Platner: “The Maine party is excited, ready to go, and we’re all going to be along the Platner train in a few weeks.”

According to JTA, the “big tent” argument seems to be the main excuse being deployed to convince Democratic Jews to go along to get along: “Ami Fields-Meyer, a former Biden White House adviser who spoke more critically of Israel than most of the summit’s speakers, did not weigh in on Platner specifically. But he echoed Rosenberg’s call for building coalitions that include ‘people we don’t agree with,’ and advocated for the Democratic Party and Jewish community to embrace a wider range of viewpoints on Israel.”

It should go without saying that if Jewish Democrats aren’t going to resist having extremist anti-Semites representing their party, then virtually no one will. If that’s the case, the battle has already been lost.

Karol Markowicz: Face it, Jewish liberals: You have no friends on the left

Where is the outcry from liberal Jews, saying they’ll never read that slop again?

Or from their absent friends, saying they won’t allow vicious lies like that to be spread?

This is not a both-sides issue.

Only one half of our political divide is standing in silence.

On the right this week, non-Jewish influencers, podcasters and politicians have been pushing back on the lies and the violence targeting Jews.

CNN commentator Scott Jennings called the Times piece “a journalistic atrocity that I actually feel stupid reading out loud” and said everyone involved should be fired.

Radio host Buck Sexton, after reading the Civil Commission’s report: “Given the demonic realities of Oct. 7, Israel acted with considerable restraint in its Gaza campaign, and should be commended for it.”

Harmeet Dhillon of the US Department of Justice tweeted video from the Brooklyn riot and promised to “collect evidence and analyze potential charges.”

And sure, there are antisemites nominally on the political right, Tucker Carlson infamously among them.

But so many non-Jews in the conservative world — President Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), commentator Victor Davis Hanson and a host of others — have lined up against Carlson’s foul suggestions that his influence on that side of the aisle is sinking like a stone.

That’s just a tiny sample of voices on the right speaking up for Jews, regularly and often.

Who on the left is doing the same?

This week’s silence should be humiliating.

It should be clarifying.

It should, at last, wake up those Jews on the left who care at all about self-preservation — or that of their children.

It’s long past time to leave this one-sided alliance behind.

05/15 Links Pt1: After the Ayatollah; Justice Dept seeks death penalty in murder of Israeli Embassy staffers; The anti-Jewish fever dream of NYTs

From Ian:

Jason Greenblatt: After the Ayatollah

What exists now in Tehran is a set of overlapping factions: Mojtaba at the apex on paper, the IRGC running operations, the Supreme National Security Council coordinating, the Foreign Ministry providing the diplomatic interface. The wartime succession has made the fragmentation deeper and not legible from the outside, or from within Iran itself. There is also a possibility worth naming directly: Mojtaba was elevated precisely because he could preserve continuity while remaining beholden to, possibly controlled by, possibly entirely subservient to, the security establishment that installed him. There is a harder possibility still that cannot be ruled out: Whether he is alive and functioning at all remains genuinely uncertain.

When Iran’s foreign minister signs an agreement, the question is not only whether he intends or has the power to honor it. It is also whether that signature binds the IRGC commander who controls the nuclear facilities. Whether it binds the Quds Force officer managing proxy networks. Whether it binds the engineers at the enrichment sites who may answer to a chain of command that runs through the Guards, not through the Foreign Ministry. The JCPOA, negotiated when Iran had a functioning and consolidated supreme leader, was still contested inside the IRGC from day one. The hard-liners who opposed it moved to dismantle its constraints the moment political cover appeared. That was the counterparty problem with a strong leader in place. The counterparty problem now is structurally more severe.

Trump did not inherit this negotiating position. He built it through sustained military and economic pressure that degraded Iranian capabilities to a degree no previous administration achieved. Israel’s military operations were indispensable to that result. He arrives at the table with more leverage than any American president has held on this issue since the revolution.

The problem is that leverage is only as durable as the pressure sustaining it, and a deal is only as durable as the authority of the party committing to it. Whether Iran currently has a supreme leader who can make the system honor a commitment, or whether what exists is a set of competing factions that could fracture the moment pressure lifts or internal power dynamics shift, is genuinely unclear.

That is not a reason to walk away from negotiations. It is a reason to build any agreement on the assumption that the counterparty may not hold. Verification cannot depend on good faith. Enforcement cannot require a trip to the U.N. Security Council, where some have historically shielded Tehran from consequences. Europe cannot be a decision-maker here. Its track record on Iran enforcement is a history of deference dressed as diplomacy, and it has spent two decades prioritizing engagement over accountability. Consequences for breach need to be automatic, pre-agreed, and executable by the United States. If Iran breaks a deal, the response cannot hinge on whether those with a Security Council vote are having a cooperative month.

The best hand in a generation is worth playing. But you need a table and cards and players across from you who can cover their bets. Right now, at least one of those conditions remains genuinely in doubt.

US arrests Iraqi Kataib Hezbollah commander wanted for plots against Jews, US interests

The US has arrested Iraqi national and senior member of the Kataib Hezbollah terrorist organization, Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi, on Friday. He was charged with providing material support for Iranian-backed terrorist organizations and accused of directing attacks targeting US citizens and interests

On May 15, the US Justice Department announced “the arrest of Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi, an Iraqi national and senior member of Kataib Hezbollah,” the department said. “In recent months, Al-Saadi has also allegedly directed and urged others to attack US and Israeli interests, including by killing Americans and Jews, to further the terrorist goals of Kataib Hezbollah and the IRGC.”

The case is the latest in US attempts to go after Iranian-backed militias in Iraq. The Justice Department posted a photo of Saadi with the late IRGC Quds force commander Qasem Soleimani. The US killed Soleimani in a 2020 drone strike in Iraq, also killing Kataib Hezbollah commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in the same strike.

In recent months, the US has put out at least four rewards of $10 million each for information on various Iraqi militia leaders.

The Saadi charges appear important and illustrate that the US long arm of justice can reach out and find these perpetrators.

“Al-Saadi was charged by complaint with six counts of terrorism-related offenses for his activities as an operative of Kataib Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including his involvement in nearly 20 attacks and attempted attacks throughout Europe and the United States,” the US stated. Saadi is 32 years old, the report says.

He was transferred to the US from overseas, although the US did not specify where he was arrested.

“Al-Saadi was presented earlier today before US Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn in Manhattan federal court and ordered detained pending trial,” according to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

Blanche added that “thanks to the dedication and vigilance of law enforcement, this alleged terrorist commander is now in US custody… As alleged in the complaint, Al-Saadi directed and urged others to attack US and Israeli interests and to kill Americans and Jews in the US and abroad, and in doing so advance the terrorist goals of Kataib Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.”

IDF soldier KIA by Hezbollah mortar fire in Southern Lebanon

Staff Sgt. Negev Dagan, 20, from Moshav Dekel in the northwestern Negev, was killed by Hezbollah mortar fire in Southern Lebanon, the Israel Defense Forces announced on Friday.

Dagan, a soldier in the Golani Infantry Brigade’s 12th Battalion, was operating near the Litani River on Thursday night when Hezbollah terrorists fired mortar shells at Israeli forces in the area, the military said.

One of the shells exploded near Dagan, mortally wounding him. Combat medics attempted to treat him at the scene but were forced to pronounce him dead.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated on Friday, ahead of the soldier’s funeral, that he and his wife shared in the “heavy loss” and conveyed their deepest condolences to his family.

“We all embrace his family and dear ones at this hour of grief, and salute the heroism and courage with which Negev, of blessed memory, has fought to defend our country,” Netanyahu said. “May his memory be blessed and cherished forever.”

Residents of Dekel remembered Dagan as “the salt of the earth” with “an amazing soul” who was deeply committed to serving in the military.

“We lost a diamond,” a family friend from the moshav told Army Radio on Friday. “He gave all of himself and it was important to him to serve in the army.”

The world did not complain when Jordan annexed Jerusalem. They condemned when Israel reunited it.

My last post described how UPI reported on Israel's defeating Jordan in the battle for Jerusalem in 1967. But the joy felt by Jews and many others was not reflected in the international community.

Here's a news story from later that month, when Israel officially declared Jerusalem to be one city. The United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, the Vatican and much of the UN scrambled to denounce the move.

For nineteen years, Jordan controlled the holy places. A Muslim nation had full control over Christian and Jewish holy sites. Jordan explicitly denied Jews from entering the city even though the armistice agreement specifically demanded open access to holy spots.

For those nineteen years, the international community was largely silent. The Vatican didn't condemn Jordan's annexation. The UN never called for the open access agreement to be enforced despite numerous complaints by Israel.

But when Jews took over control - and actually implemented free access to all holy spots by all (except for Jews to visit their own holiest site on the Temple Mount) - suddenly the world warned Israel that this was terrible, that a Jewish state could not possibly act responsibly when the Muslim state had already shown it had no interest in keeping Jerusalem open.

The hypocrisy was blatant, including from the State Department. And the hypocrisy persists today, every time anyone demands that Jerusalem goes back to the "status quo," by which they mean the anomalous 19 years when the world's Jews were banned from the city.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

Reclaiming the Covenant on America's 250th (May 2026)

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Since this is Yom Yerushalayim, here is the UPI article filed when Israel reunited the city during the Six Day War.

Holy City of Jerusalem Reunited

By ROBERT MUSEL JERUSALEM, (UPI)—A Jew in a paratrooper’s uniform blew a triumphant blast on a ram’s horn at the Mandelbaum Gate today and signaled the fall of Jordan’s old section of the holy city to Israeli forces. For the first time in 20 years Israelis prayed at their wailing wall.

There was fighting, bloodshed, prayer and joy. Shortly after the old city with its shrines of Christendom fell to the Israelis and the sound of sharp fighting died away, Israel’s one-eyed Gen. Moshe Dayan rode into the town.

He went to the wailing wall and offered prayers. Hundreds of troops, dirt-caked, sweaty, tired, stood silently in prayer at the wall which is the only remnant of the ancient temple of Jerusalem.

As Dayan, the new Israeli defense minister, toured the streets, he rode past burned-out vehicles and on one street, three Jordanian snipers lay face down, captives of the Israelis.

Some Jordanian wounded were taken to the Israeli sector of the city for treatment.

There was no immediate estimate of damage to shrines. But there was a hole plainly visible in the 16th century Lion’s Gate.

Israelis drove around joyfully in streets forbidden to them since the partition of the holy city into Jordanian and Israeli sectors.

Flags of Surrender Some rode in Jordanian cars and trucks. One Israeli with a grin from here to here toed through the streets with a big picture of Jordan’s King Hussein stuck on the radiator.

White flags hung like limp pennants from Jordanian homes. The Israelis had broadcast appeals to show the flag of surrender and slowly the residents did so.

The Israelis said they were doing everything possible to protect the physical treasures of the holy city.

A large number of Israeli soldiers was stationed near the Mosque of Omar, sacred to Islam.

I watched the Israelis pound the Jordanian last-ditch defenders who had sited their guns in the Christian quarter of the old city and around the Mount of Olives.

“We appealed to them to stop firing, using an Arabic language appeal on a loudspeaker,” an Israeli officer said.

But I heard the vicious chatter of machinegun fire and saw smoke and flames rise from the old section which holds the sacred shrines of Christendom.

Then Israeli jet planes and tanks combined to pound the Jordanian positions outside the old city into submission. Israeli troops, who had surrounded the Jordanian half of Jerusalem for two days, closed in.

A few minutes later the Mandelbaum Gate opened and the division of the Holy City ended after 20 years. Whooping Israelis claimed it would never be divided again.

“Once And For All” Again and again they chanted that the old section, sacred to Jews for 3,000 years, was “once and for all in our hands.”

Elderly men, some with the prayer shawls of orthodox Jews surged up to the gate and asked permission to enter the old section to pray at the Wailing Wall, the only remnant of the ancient Temple of Solomon.

Young soldiers returning from battle advised them to stay put. Sniper fire still crackled in the ancient narrow streets.

But bearded paratroop Gen. Shlomo Goren, chief chaplain of the Israeli Army, raised a Shofar (rams horn) to his lips at the Mandelbaum Gate. He blew it mightily to announce Jews could once more worship in the City of David at the Wailing Wall.

Israel’s capital exploded with excitement.

Men, women and children who had withstood two days of Jordanian shelling that injured more than 500 persons and destroyed or damaged 1,000 homes poured into the streets and applauded the troops returning victorious through the gate.

Through the gate, in the old section, in the final moments before victory, I had to duck frequent bursts of sniper fire and mortars crunched nearby.

“Keep your head down,” shouted Rabbi Shear-Yashuv Cohen, vice mayor of Jerusalem, a veteran with a limp from his soldiering in the 1948 war with the Arabs.

He dropped down beside me and we cautiously looked over a wall just as an Israeli plane scored a direct hit on a Jordan position outside the old city, sending up clouds of black smoke.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

Reclaiming the Covenant on America's 250th (May 2026)

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

05/14 Links Pt2: A Day in the Life of a New York City Jew; King Charles meets Golders Green stabbing victims; Britain can’t fight antisemitism without confronting its main driver: hatred of Israel

From Ian:

A Day in the Life of a New York City Jew

After the massive protests in Jewish neighborhoods across New York City over the past few days, I think a lot of people genuinely do not understand what something like that actually feels like for the people living there, so I want to try to walk you through it.

You wake up in the morning and see a message in the community WhatsApp chat. Maybe it’s from the local Jewish council. Maybe it’s from your congresswoman. It’s a warning that there’s going to be a protest in your neighborhood that night.

You open the flyer and see men in keffiyehs holding rifles, militant imagery plastered across something the media will later describe as a “demonstration.” The address is around the corner from your house. The flyer never explicitly calls for violence, but you’ve seen the videos from the last one and the one before that, and you already know there is a very real chance this is going to turn ugly.

Your first thought is your family.

A few months ago, you bought a firearm and locked it in a safe in your bedroom, away from the children. You know that if the day ever comes where you actually need to use it to defend your family, then something has already gone catastrophically wrong, and even if you survive that encounter, there is a very good chance the legal system in a city like New York will spend years trying to destroy your life afterward.

There is not much you can do, so you put your phone away and go to work, spending the entire day trying to keep your mind off what is waiting for you back home.

On the drive home, traffic suddenly stops. Streets are blocked off and police cars are everywhere. Sirens are flashing on every corner. And you remember that your neighborhood is about to be flooded with hundreds of people screaming about intifada and resistance while politicians and reporters insist this is all perfectly normal political expression.

You get home before the kids.

One by one they walk through the door while you keep checking the window to make sure they made it back safely. Your oldest tells you the principal made an announcement warning students not to walk or bike through a certain area after school, but refused to explain why, probably because nobody wants to be to explain to a group of Jewish children that there will be a mob outside their neighborhood later that night chanting slogans that openly glorify violence against Jews.

Report: German Intelligence Agency Documents Secular Pro-Palestinian Extremism

Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), released new background material in May 2026 documenting secular pro-Palestinian extremism across Germany, a heterogeneous movement comprising decades-old organizations and groups formed after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack, united by their denial of Israel’s right to exist and anti-Jewish agitation disguised as political criticism.

The intelligence service identifies key actors, symbols, and protest patterns, warning that secular pro-Palestinian extremists use Israel-hatred and antisemitism as a bridge between Islamists, German and Turkish left-wing extremists, and Turkish right-wing extremists.

The BfV documents how extremist actors in the scene have appeared in protest activity that has included anti-Israel and antisemitic content, riots, and attacks on police, journalists, and counter-protesters, especially in Berlin

Key Extremist Organizations
The BfV material describes terror-linked and extremist networks, including people from the PFLP milieu and former Samidoun actors, as continuing to influence Germany’s pro-Palestinian extremist scene.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)
According to the BfV, people from the milieu of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, an EU-designated terrorist organization since 2002 whose members helped hijack Lufthansa Flight 181 “Landshut” in 1977, have regularly helped organize anti-Israel rallies, particularly in Berlin.

The Marxist-Leninist organization openly advocates armed struggle to establish a Palestinian state “within the borders of historical Palestine,” meaning Israel’s complete elimination through what it calls ending “Zionist occupation.”

Samidoun – Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network
Germany banned Samidoun, on November 2, 2023, after the group celebrated the Hamas massacre as “resistance.” Founded in 2011 by PFLP members abroad, Samidoun demands release of Palestinians imprisoned for terrorism links and provides propaganda support to the PFLP, Hamas, and the Turkish terrorist group DHKP-C.

Before its prohibition, the network was documented to have exploited pro-Palestinian demonstrations and social media for recruitment, fundraising, and spreading disinformation. BDS and Affiliated Groups

The BfV says BDS-linked groups in Germany have used antisemitic narratives, participated in anti-Israel demonstrations after October 7, and, in some cases, are now assessed as confirmed extremist endeavors. The agency interprets the BDS call to end occupation of ‘all Arab lands’ as a demand for ‘all of Palestine’ and, therefore, the end of Israel’s state existence

The report notes that extremist individuals without formal organizational membership have become key mobilization drivers through extensive social media reach, repeatedly disseminating hate messages and violence calls that fuel radicalization and willingness to use force.

Britain can’t fight antisemitism without confronting its main driver: hatred of Israel

Britain is experiencing a surge in antisemitism, yet much of the public discussion about how to respond to it avoids the central issue driving it. Today’s antisemitism is overwhelmingly rooted in hostility towards Zionism, sustained by false claims about Israel and the war in Gaza. This hostility only makes sense, it only inflames the imagination, because it is everything that has sustained Jew-hatred for millennia, culminating in the Holocaust. It’s effectively the same thing with the same target, even if it has a different new fancy name. Until this reality is openly acknowledged and confronted, declarations of opposition to Jew hatred will continue to fall short.

The sharp rise in antisemitic incidents is not occurring in a vacuum. Nor is it driven simply by ignorance or longstanding prejudice. It is being fuelled by a sustained campaign of disinformation about Israel, Gaza, the IDF and Hamas, and by the moral licence that these narratives grant to those who believe “Zionists” are legitimate targets.

Public figures and institutions frequently express opposition to antisemitism, often sincerely. But these declarations increasingly ring hollow because they fail to engage with how antisemitism actually manifests in Britain today. Statements of concern alone achieve little if there is no willingness to address what is motivating the hostility.

That motivation is frequently explicit. When the extremist group Ashab Al Yamin claimed responsibility for the arson attack on Kenton United Synagogue, it justified the attack by describing the shul as “one of the centres of Zionist influence in the British capital”. Its supposed crimes included hosting a “Kenton for Israel” group, holding events such as “Shabbat for Israel”, and singing Hatikvah. A typical synagogue in suburban London was attacked because it was considered too Zionist. If Kenton United is too Zionist then all of us are and therein lies the point.

Kenton was not an isolated case. Finchley Reform Synagogue and Hatzola have both been targeted for similar reasons. In one particularly stark example, a former synagogue that is in the process of being converted into a mosque was also subjected to an attempted arson attack. A local man interviewed by the BBC expressed confusion: “That synagogue has been turned into a mosque, so I don’t know why someone would petrol bomb it.” The answer lies in the way “Zionism” is now treated not as a political belief but as an inherent moral stain, one that clings to places and institutions even after Jews themselves have gone.

This obsession with “Zionist influence” is viral. Punk artist Bobby Vylan, best known for chants of “death to the IDF” at Glastonbury last year recently took to YouTube to claim that the British Department for Education had been “captured by Israeli forces”. He went on to ask what hope there was of resisting “growing Zionist influence” if even the education system was not free of it. The language is familiar to anyone who understands antisemitism: claims of capture, control and hidden power, updated for a modern audience.

Outside Parliament, activists now regularly gather during Prime Minister’s Questions to distribute fake banknotes headed “Bank of Zionism”. They hold placards depicting senior UK politicians branded with the same slogan and unfurl banners calling to “End Zionism control of UK Politics”. At larger demonstrations against Israel, chants such as “Palestine is Arab” and demands for “Intifada revolution” are common. These are not calls for peace or coexistence. They are declarations that deny Jewish self‑determination entirely and frame violence as justified or even necessary.

The same assumptions are increasingly tested in the courts. Palestine Action, a group that has attacked British defence firms, banks, insurance companies and even a law firm, argues that such actions are justified because these institutions are allegedly complicit in Israeli “genocide”. Whether or not the group is ultimately proscribed, the underlying premise often goes unchallenged: that extraordinary action against “Zionist” entities is morally virtuous.

This brings us to the question many remain unwilling to confront. The claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza is false. It does not meet the legal definition of genocide, it is not supported by the facts on the ground, and it is contradicted by serious analysis of Israeli military intent. Yet it is repeated endlessly with absolute moral certainty. That matters, because genocide is not just another accusation. It is the ultimate crime, and once it is accepted as fact, almost anything becomes permissible in response.

Streeting would effectively tackle sectarian politics and rising antisemitism as PM, say allies

Wes Streeting is convinced he can directly challenge and confront the rise of sectarian politics, increased division, and rising antisemitism in the UK as Prime Minister, allies have said.

Streeting resigned as Health Secretary in a move aimed at pressuring Keir Starmer to accept that his time as Prime Minister should come to an end.

Aides said they believe the Ilford North MP would prove to be a more effective communicator if given the chance to lead.

In his resignation letter, Streeting criticised the “drift” at the top of government and told the Prime Minister it is “clear” he will not lead Labour into the next election.

While he praised Starmer’s “many great strengths” and “courage and statesmanship on the world stage,” Streeting continued: “Where we need vision, we have a vacuum. Where we need direction, we have drift.”

Jewish News understands that last week’s election results in Redbridge—where Labour held on to the council, beating back the challenge posed by the Jeremy Corbyn-backed pro-Gaza independents—convinced Streeting of the need to attempt a move to replace the PM.

Although Labour suffered significant losses to the Greens and Reform UK elsewhere, Streeting became convinced that effective communication was key to tackling the advance of extremist politics in the country.

Colleagues in Redbridge confirm that Streeting played a “very active” role in the local elections, attending meetings on campaign messaging and taking part in regular door-knocking to listen to local voters for months leading up to the May 7 poll.

Streeting also featured in a couple of online videos urging locals not to vote for the pro-Gaza independents.

In one video, he told residents to remember that they were participating in a vote about Redbridge, “not the UN Security Council.”

05/14 Links Pt1: The Laughing Monsters; Why did the world look away when Israeli women were raped?; CENTCOM chief says 90% of Iran’s defense industry destroyed

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The Laughing Monsters

As for what had made these many Palestinian perpetrators and spectators so happy—well, it’s a dark document. But the patterns are worth pointing out.

Some of the images studied by medical experts and catalogued with the investigating committee:

“The body of a young man lying on a sidewalk outside a concrete public shelter on Route 232, with severe burn injuries concentrated in the groin area.”

“A young woman with her insides protruding out of the groin area.”

“The body of a female victim with what appears to be a gunshot wound to the groin area.”

“The bottom half of a female body with bleeding in the groin area.”

The report is full of such accounts. The above are from victims who were found at the site of the Nova music festival. The scenes were similar at kibbutzim. One typical example: “On October 13th, first responders discovered two abused bodies in a destroyed home, one of them naked. The rescue efforts are documented in several videos and images that are archived with the Civil Commission. One of the first bodies found was that of a female victim. The body appears to be completely naked. Her ankle had been tied with a thick black chord. According to witnesses who provided testimony to the Civil Commission, the body had several nails driven into her lower abdomen and groin area, as well as a metal or plastic object embedded in the groin area.”

Pages and pages and pages of this stuff. Children shot in the face, victims decapitated and dismembered with hoes and shovels.

One video shows a terrorist yelling “God is great” while standing over the dead body of a woman who is naked from the waste down.

In one disturbing crime scene, a man was found “with his genitals cut off, and next to him, the body of a woman, holding his cut-off genitals, in what appeared to be a staged display to humiliate the victims.”

Again, this report is nearly 300 pages long, and it is full of such documented atrocities.

Jew-hatred strips the humanity from whatever it touches. There is nothing else like it.

Katya Sedgwick: Towards a Palestinian Autonomous Region—or Any Other Meaningful Settlement of The Arab-Israeli Conflict

It’s often said that all Left-Islamic unions inevitably end as 7th century theocracies—the Islamic Revolution in Iran is frequently cited as an example here. Yet Soviet—and Chinese, for that matter—history suggests otherwise. The USSR ruthlessly eradicated Muslim religiosity within its borders—and with it, the terrorist fervor. these days, its former Central Asian “republics” are the most moderate Muslim states—even if they are populated by tribes also found in the neighboring Afghanistan.

The Eurasian behemoth’s post-Soviet experience with Chechnya is far less rosy, of course, but even that relationship is currently stable. When religious violence does take place, the authorities squash it with gusto. Responding to the 2024 terror attack in a Moscow suburb, Russians did not hesitate to adopt every measure at their disposal, including—very publicly—torture. The world shrugged. It’s not just that the Kremlin knows about that Gaza pit bull, Russians are, stereotypically, natural dog trainers.

Russia already quietly resettled over a thousand Gazans, mostly in the Muslim regions of Chechnya and Dagestan. They don’t need to take all two million of them—just a sizable number, proudly and publicly. In doing so, they will set an example to the world. In the aftermath of the Ukraine war, Russia has a reputation to salvage—and I can’t think of a better way to approach it than by aiding Palestinians.

If necessary, Trump can sweeten the deal for Putin in Ukraine. It’s hard to see how American interest would change should the border between Russia and Ukraine move in either direction. America does have interest in Middle East peace and global commerce.

If Ukrainians are forced to shake hands on something not entirely to their liking, they can think of it as a payback for centuries of Cossack genocide. Not to mention that the turn of the century pogroms, mostly perpetrated in what is now Ukraine, prompted the creation of political Zionism. The way Zelensky, likely in coordination with Qatar, recently accused Israel of trading in stolen grain echoes the ugliest stereotypes. Perhaps Ukraine would like to resettle a few thousand Gazans?

A simple majority of Gazans want to leave and a plurality have been wanting to leave even before Israel brought the war home. They prefer comfortable Western countries where their clans have already grown roots, but Russia is almost the West and Muslim communities there are numerous. The way Russians today began thinking of themselves as Eurasionists, presupposes a multi-ethnic imperial dynamic that embraces Islam.

Some would object to the measures I am proposing, even calling it, inaccurately, “ethnic cleansing”. Most of them are the same people—and there are many who share that opinion these days, particularly on the left and among the young—that claim that Jews don’t need Israel because Joseph Stalin founded a homeland approximation for us on China’s border. That would be the so-called “Jewish Autonomous Region” of Birobidzhan. It turns out, they support not just ethnic cleansing—a gulag.

Why not create a Palestinian Autonomous Region in Siberia, right next to the Jewish one? This way the two Semitic nations can live peacefully side by side, under the watchful eye of their Russian brothers. Granted, the Jewish settlement of the Far East never took hold so there is hardly a Yid left in Birobidzhan. And there is no shortage of uninhibited land in Russia regardless. And many Muslims in Russia’s capital.

This of course is a crazy idea. But “crazy” is another way of saying “extraordinary” and the Trump Administration is already thinking in these terms.

Half of Gaza is now living in tents; not even their neighbors on the Strip are willing to shelter them. Considering that most terror tunnels are still usable and Hamas is still around, at some point Israel will have to finish the job. Will anyone think of the humanitarian emergency?

Given the current regional power arrangement it’s highly unlikely that Gazans can can be deployed as proxies against Israel anyway—so why bother maintaining them as such? Russia might want to keep that conflict frozen, but it’s highly unlikely that they will be able to thaw it.

Some kind of resolution to the crisis is two years overdue. Right now, time is not on Russia’s side. They may need to settle the conflict quickly and they will accept American demands. Maybe even rejoin the civilized world.

Confronting the Iranian Regime's Holy War: Will the West Rise to the Challenge?

The U.S.-Israel strikes on the Iranian regime are definitive military responses to 47 years of religiously-fueled terror carried out by the world's foremost radical regime of the modern era. This formidable challenge to the West is compounded by the Free World's hesitation to acknowledge the jihad Iran has waged against Israel and the U.S.-led Western alliance since 1979.

Tehran and Washington are both playing for time in a war of economic and strategic attrition. The Iranian regime aims to buy time to rearm its Islamic resistance forces. The Islamic Republic's approach is underpinned by its apocalyptic and radical brand of Twelver Shi'ism.

Some 500 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters had received training in Iran under direct IRGC Quds Force supervision before Hamas's invasion and massacre in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

In the early days of the war, the IRGC's English-language social media output aimed to dismantle the pro-Israel coalition. The Tel Aviv-based firm Cyabra identified more than 40,000 inauthentic accounts originating largely from Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. Researchers determined that one in four accounts posting about the war were inauthentic, the largest foreign influence operation against U.S. opinion in the digital era.

The strategic effect has been to invert the moral architecture of the conflict. Hamas, its sponsors, and its supporters have framed jihadist violence as legitimate resistance. To judge their impact, at least 20 countries have recognized "Palestine" since April 2024, including the UK, Canada, Australia, France, Belgium, and Portugal.

In August 2025, senior Hamas political bureau member Ghazi Hamad asserted that the Oct. 7 invasion of Israel paved the way for the Western recognition of a "Palestinian state," convincing the world that defeating Israel "is now possible." A Harvard-Harris poll found that 51% of Americans aged 18-24 agreed that Palestinian grievance justified the Oct. 7 killings.

American and Israeli military and counterterrorism gains of the past two years are only partial. The ultimate battle is for the hearts and minds of the Free World. Â The West requires strategic patience, resilience, and determination to overcome jihad's "forever war."

Hordes Of Pakistani Trolls Somehow Not Translating Into Tucker Allies' Electoral Success (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook and Substack pages.

Washington, May 14 - Political analysts aligned with Dan Bilzerian, James Fishback, and other Tucker Carlson-endorsed firebrands expressed profound bafflement Tuesday at the stubborn refusal of American voters to reward what they described as “unprecedented online momentum” generated by devoted supporters in Lahore, Karachi, and Islamabad.

“Every day our metrics show millions of engagements from accounts that are clearly organic Americans who just happen to post at 3 a.m. Pakistan Standard Time and spell ‘Israel’ with seven additional letters,” said a visibly perplexed strategist for Bilzerian’s long-shot congressional bid in Florida’s 6th District. “The ratio game is off the charts. Yet when the actual ballots are counted, it’s like those passionate voices vanish into thin air. We’re mystified.”

Bilzerian, the influencer-turned-candidate known for posting shirtless photos with automatic weapons and thoughtful geopolitical takes such as “kill Israelis,” has amassed impressive X impressions thanks to what his team calls a “highly motivated diaspora of freedom-loving patriots” in South Asia. Similar patterns have emerged around Fishback’s gubernatorial campaign, where Tucker himself declared that “pretty soon all winning Republican politicians will talk like this” — a prophecy that, so far, has manifested mostly in retweets from accounts whose bios feature both the Pakistani flag and Adolf Hitler.

Campaign insiders say the discrepancy between digital dominance and electoral irrelevance is “deeply concerning for democracy.” One Fishback aide, speaking on condition of anonymity while refreshing engagement stats, noted that their candidate’s clips routinely rack up hundreds of thousands of views from users who type “Based” in Urdu script and then disappear the moment poll workers in Florida ask for ID.

“How do you explain robust support from people who can’t legally vote in U.S. elections translating into zero primary wins?” the aide asked, gesturing at a wall covered in heat maps of bot activity. “We have Pakistani teenagers ratio’ing Randy Fine and Byron Donalds into oblivion every night, yet on Election Day the turnout from that crucial demographic is mysteriously low. It defies every model we’ve built on Grok and Telegram.”

Experts within the movement insist the phenomenon cannot possibly reflect actual American sentiment. “Real voters are out there,” insisted a Bilzerian surrogate. “They’re just too busy liking posts to fill out mail-in ballots. Or maybe the Zionist deep state is suppressing the IP addresses of true patriots. Either way, the hordes are real. The numbers don’t lie — except when they do, in which case it’s still someone else’s fault."

"Are numbers Jew- I mean Zionist?”

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

Reclaiming the Covenant on America's 250th (May 2026)

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The Rededication

This is the last part of this series and of the book Reclaiming the Covenant that is now available for purchase.

The actual book includes two appendices - source materials and an overview of the philosophical basis for the book.

This is about half of the final chapter.

The Questions Nobody at the NYT Asked

Before the New York Times published Nicholas Kristof's piece alleging that Israeli forces train dogs to assault Palestinian prisoners, the claim had been circulating in other outlets for weeks. During that period, I asked an AI whether it was scientifically possible. The answer was no — for physiological and behavioral reasons specific to how dogs work, reasons that canine experts confirmed publicly once the Times story went viral. It seems like a reasonable thing to check before publishing. Neither Kristof nor the many layers of editors above him thought to ask it.

Why not?

The easy answer is bias — that the Times is hostile enough to Israel that it accepts ludicrous claims from Israel's detractors while applying normal evidentiary standards to everything else. Bias is certainly part of the story, and it shapes reporting in ways invisible to the reporters doing the shaping. But it doesn't fully explain the failure, because bias alone would still leave a careful editor asking whether the central claim was physically possible. The more unsettling explanation is that the question genuinely never occurred to them.

And the dog question was only the most obvious one nobody asked. Any competent reporter who wanted to test these allegations — not spike them, test them — could have found a random Israeli prison guard. Not one handed over by an NGO with an agenda, but a Yosef Shmo willing to talk anonymously, who could have described how many policies these claims would violate, how many cameras are mounted throughout the facility, how rigidly procedures are followed, and how many people — the dog trainer, the handler, multiple guards on multiple shifts — would have to maintain a coordinated silence for the story to hold together. If that guard said yes, he'd seen it or believed it was happening, that would be real corroboration. If he said the claims were institutionally impossible, the story would have to reckon with that. Kristof gathered fourteen accounts from people who had every reason to make these allegations and consulted no one with institutional knowledge to test whether the allegations were structurally coherent. No editor stopped to ask whether he had tried.

This is where the standard critique of bad journalism stops: the reporter only sought confirming evidence. But the problem runs deeper than confirmation bias, which is usually framed as a question about the reliability of sources — is this person telling me the truth? The prior question, the one that confirmation bias analysis skips, is whether the claimed facts are even possible given everything else we know about how the world works. A prison is a bureaucracy. Bureaucracies run on procedure, documentation, and the path of least resistance for the people inside them. Any claim requiring dozens of institutional actors to coordinate ongoing misconduct in silence, across shifts, over months, without a single incident report or leaked photograph, fails a test that has nothing to do with the credibility of any individual witness. The question is architectural, and it comes before the question of testimony.

Most people are never taught to ask it — and this is an alarmingly underexplored gap.

The science of persuasion has been industrialized for a century. Edward Bernays founded modern public relations in the 1920s by applying Freudian psychology to mass persuasion, with the core insight that people respond to images, fears, and tribal identity far more reliably than to argument. Everything since has been refinement and acceleration: the tools now backed by neuroscience, behavioral economics, and surveillance data that tracks every click. Social media algorithms can identify what you are susceptible to before you have consciously formed an opinion, and the manipulation is personalized, optimized, and delivered at a scale Bernays could not have imagined. Online news aggregators watch which stories you click and adjust what they show you accordingly. Every major platform is engineered for maximum engagement, which turns out to mean maximum emotional activation. All of it is designed to move you before you have a chance to think.

Human beings have not kept pace.

There are questions a careful reader should bring to any claim. How reliable is this source and what do they want from me? Is the claim is falsifiable or constructed to absorb any objection? What frame is doing the argumentative work the evidence cannot? What assumptions underlie the reasoning and do they correspond to reality? What are my own biases are and are they are pulling me toward a conclusion I want rather than one I have earned?

There are books on critical thinking, but it has never been

These questions form a coherent discipline that has never been named or systematically taught. Philosophy departments teach formal logic, abstractly, to students who sought them out. Journalism schools teach sourcing and verification, which operate entirely downstream of the questions above. Law school does some of this for a small fraction of the population. No institution owns the skill of evaluating claims in real time, under conditions of uncertainty and motivated pressure. It falls through every crack in the curriculum from elementary school through graduate education, and nobody notices the gap because the gap has no name.

Meanwhile the persuaders have had a century's head start, and their tools improve every year.

I am planning a series of articles that will work through those questions and more — what they are, why they matter, and how to make them habitual rather than effortful. The goal is a practical toolkit for the reader who would prefer not to be the last person in the room to ask whether dogs can actually be trained to do that.

We have never been taught how to think clearly while those who want to manipulate us have been taught, expensively and continuously, how to convince us that their narratives are reality. The first step toward closing that gap is recognizing that it exists.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

Reclaiming the Covenant on America's 250th (May 2026)

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)