Friday, May 15, 2026

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.

From The Black Chronicle:

The third greatest number of antisemitic incidents on record were reported in the U.S. in 2025. Of the 10 states with the most incidents reported, Texas ranked eighth, according to a new report from the Anti-Defamation League.

Harris (Houston), Dallas and Travis (Austin) counties accounted for 65% of the incidents reported in the state with Houston accounting for nearly 25% of incidents statewide.

In Houston, 67 incidents were reported, including bomb threats and synagogues being threatened, according to the report.

We know that Texas is a heavily Republican state, so I was wondering if these counties were red or blue in 2024.

Texas has 254 counties. 242 are Republican. And all three of the major counties with the most antisemitic incidents voted for Harris in the 2024 elections.

To be sure, the Democratic counties are also the most heavily populated counties. Those three counties make up 29% of Texas' population.

But 29% being responsible for 65% of the antisemitism is still way out of proportion. I don't know the breakdown of the remaining 35% of incidents.

This doesn't mean that there is no right-wing antisemitism, of course. There is way too much. But isn't it interesting that most of the antisemitic incidents in Texas come from three of the few Democratic counties?

UPDATE: A Democratic-leaning fan makes a good point: 90% of Texas Jews live in those three counties, meaning that the 65% statistic could be interpreted as fewer incidents per (Jewish) capita than in the Republican sections. Just goes to show that the same numbers can lead to different conclusions, which is related to a future project of mine!

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)

05/13 Links Pt2: The New Normal for Antisemitism; Jewish group warned police gunman before Bondi massacre; Abe Foxman and the quest for Jewish security

From Ian:

The New Normal for Antisemitism

Ayear before October 7, 2023, reshaped the political landscape, we founded a nonprofit organization called Antisemitism Watch. The decision followed decades of reporting on the Holocaust and its aftermath, and years of chronicling daily antisemitic incidents. What became unmistakable over time was not simply persistence, but normalization—antisemitism embedding itself across wide swaths of society with diminishing resistance.

In a Newsweek op-ed in which we announced the launch, we wrote that “few contest that antisemitism—history’s oldest hatred of a religious and ethnic group—has had an unmatched post-Holocaust resurgence.”1 The data confirmed record numbers of anti-Jewish attacks across the United States, Canada, and Europe, while social media accelerated newer conspiracies blaming Jews for everything from the slave trade to COVID-19.2, 3

Even then, our concern was not only the scale of antisemitism, but the way it was being confronted. The most prominent institutions tasked with addressing it were doing so selectively, not consistently. The Anti-Defamation League had diluted its core mission by repositioning itself as a more generic anti-hate organization and, in practice, mostly focused on right-wing antisemitism while giving a free pass to anti-Jewish hostility from the political left.

In the months following the October 7 attack, antisemitism shed its inhibitions.

What distinguishes this moment is the collapse of stigma. Expressions that would have ended careers a decade ago now generate applause, clicks, and campaign donations. Language that would trigger immediate condemnation if directed at other minorities is routinely excused, contextualized, or ignored when directed at Jews. Hostility that once hid at the margins has migrated inward—into campuses, political platforms, cultural institutions, and digital ecosystems. The result is an old hatred on steroids—newly unmoored from consequence.

This normalization is not diffuse, but has taken shape through two distinct but mutually reinforcing channels. The progressive left frames Israel as fundamentally illegitimate, a country of inherent injustice. That creates an atmosphere in which hostility toward Israel is cast as an ethical obligation. And for many on the left—and their Muslim activist allies—the distinction between Jews and Israelis frequently collapses.

On parts of the populist right, antisemitism has reemerged through the architecture of conspiracy theory. Jews are cast not as oppressors, but as puppet masters—orchestrators of migration, finance, media narratives, and foreign entanglements. The vocabulary differs from that on the left, but the structural function is identical: Jews are assigned exceptional and malign agency.

Prince Harry issues stark warning over Britain’s antisemitism crisis

Prince Harry has weighed into Britain’s antisemitism crisis for the first time, warning that Jews are being made to feel “unsafe” in their own homes as hatred spreads across the country.

Writing in the New Statesman, the Duke of Sussex said Britain was facing a “deeply troubling rise in antisemitism” and warned that “silence is not neutrality” when extremism is allowed to flourish.

In one of the strongest interventions yet by a senior royal on the issue, Harry wrote: “Jewish communities – families, children, ordinary people – are being made to feel unsafe in the very places they call home.”

He added: “Because hatred directed at people for who they are, or what they believe, is not protest. It is prejudice.”

The prince said recent “lethal violence” in London and Manchester had brought the crisis “into sharp and deeply troubling focus”, as he urged Britons not to confuse legitimate criticism of events in the Middle East with hostility towards Jews.

Kenton United Synagogue in Harrow, north-west London, where an attempted arson attack caused minor smoke damage to an internal room but no injuries or significant structural damage.

Harry warned that anger over Gaza risked spilling into anti-Jewish hatred on British streets, saying: “Nothing, whether criticism of a government or the reality of violence and destruction, can ever justify hostility toward an entire people or faith.”

The Duke also appeared to reference his own past controversies, including wearing a Nazi uniform to a fancy dress party in 2005, admitting he was “acutely aware” of his “past mistakes”.

He writes: “I am acutely aware of my own past mistakes – thoughtless actions for which I have apologised, taken responsibility and learned from.”

The prince insisted antisemitism and other racisms all “draw from the same well of division” and must be confronted with “the same resolve”.

Giant to be shown in cinemas this autumn

John Lithgow has said he is “thrilled” that the Olivier Award-winning play Giant, in which he portrays British author Roald Dahl, will screen in cinemas around the world.

The Mark Rosenblatt debut play premiered in London’s West End in 2024 and went on to collect three Olivier Awards – including best new play and best actor for Lithgow’s portrayal of the children’s author as he grapples with whether to make a public apology.

The play will screen in more than 900 cinemas across 18 countries, including the UK, US, Canada and Australia, from November 2026.

Lithgow said: “In my 53-year, 25-show career on Broadway, I’ve rarely experienced the kind of audience response that we feel night after night with Giant.

“Mark Rosenblatt has written a play of extraordinary intelligence and humanity, and with every performance I can sense the audience wrestling with its questions in real time.

“This is the unique power of theatre at its best. I’m thrilled that our production will now reach movie theatres around the world, allowing even more people to experience the urgency, impact and emotional force of this story.”

Filmed live at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London, the cinema release features the original West End cast comprised of Lithgow as Dahl and Elliot Levey as British publisher Tom Maschler – a role which won him the best supporting actor Olivier Award.

Aya Cash also stars as publisher Jessie Stone alongside Rachael Stirling who plays Dahl’s wife, Felicity Dahl, Tessa Bonham Jones as housekeeper Hallie and Richard Hope as handyman Wally.

The play was transferred to New York City’s Broadway for a 16-week run from March through to the end of June.

05/13 Links Pt1: The Anti-Zionist Affliction; America’s Conspiratorial Consensus; Saudi anchor vs. UAE engine: Why the Abu Dhabi-Israel alliance is transcending the Arab League

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The Anti-Zionist Affliction

Anti-Zionism is many things, including humorless and anhedonic. I often watch news coverage of anti-Israel activism and hear the voice of Carol Burnett’s mean old Miss Hannigan in Annie: “Do I hear happiness in here?”

There is almost nothing in the world quite as campy as the Eurovision song contest, but instead of getting into character and enjoying the shtick, Europeans are whining year-round about the participation of Israelis. This year, the contest even tried changing the rules to prevent Israel’s entrant, Noam Bettan, from matching the Jewish state’s past competitiveness.

Even that didn’t work as planned, since Bettan has now at least qualified for the finals. Four idiots got themselves tossed out of the audience for protesting Bettan’s existence on this earth yesterday during his performance. The Irish public broadcaster not only boycotted this year’s contest but is refusing to even air it on TV.

After all, if you allow people to watch Jews sing, who knows—it could lead to mixed dancing. Before you know it, impressionable children may be using offensive language, like “Israeli couscous.”

And so, no singing. No dancing. No watching, singing, or dancing. It’s like Footloose with keffiyehs.

What about art? If we can’t have music because the Jews have music too, can we look at pictures? Here I will refer you to the New York Times’ subheadline on an article about the Venice Biennale, the prestigious art expo: “The hottest exhibitions at the world’s major art exhibition were shuttered on Friday as part of a pro-Palestinian demonstration.”

Is that not the tagline of our times? More from the Times:

“When the final preview day opened at 10 a.m., dozens of visitors flocked to Austria’s pavilion, where Florentina Holzinger’s performance ‘Seaworld Venice’ which includes numerous naked performers, had drawn hourslong lines all week. They found the pavilion closed, with a sign outside saying that ‘some team members have decided to participate in the strike.’

“Some of the other buzziest exhibitions at this year’s event, including those by artists representing Belgium, Egypt, Japan, the Netherlands and South Korea, were also shut. Signs outside some of those pavilions read, ‘We stand with Palestine.’”

No dancing, no singing, no art, no immodest mer-people. All “for Palestine.” If only they would do something for the Palestinians instead of doing nothing “for Palestine.”

Seth Mandel: Putting October 7 on Trial

Yesterday, Israel showed remarkable parliamentary unity: A bill was sponsored by members of the governing coalition and of the opposition, and it received zero “no” votes as it passed easily.

What was this magic bill? It was a piece of legislation to approve the establishment of a special court to handle trials against participants in the October 7 slaughter. And, crucially, the trials will be public and televised.

The bill, applauded Justice Minister Yariv Levin, represents “one of the most important moments of the current Knesset. One can feel that we are doing the right thing by finding a way to unite at this moment, even though we are on the eve of elections and despite all the disagreements that exist.”

Indeed it was an opportune time to come together. This morning’s report on Hamas’s campaign of sexual violence was the result of a painstaking, yearslong investigative process. And now the terrorists captured alive on that day will have their day in court for the whole world to see.

The world needs to see it because, especially in the West, its key institutions rallied to the side of the slaughterers. They need to see what they support. But more important, the world needs to be shown what our enlightened professors, elite student bodies, progressive government officials and activists, and the rest cheered.

It will take place in a courtroom, where evidence can prevail. It will be in stark contrast to the fake international courts infamous for their corruption and lawlessness. And it will put to shame the way Westerners have tried to conduct their own trials through op-ed pages and manosphere podcasts.

According to the Times of Israel, only judges who are qualified to sit on the supreme court or are distinguished international jurists of similar qualifications will be on the 15-judge panel. Each case, meanwhile, “would be heard by three judges — one of whom would be a retired district court judge — while a five-judge panel would hear proceedings involving multiple defendants. Appeals would be heard by all 15 judges.”

America’s Conspiratorial Consensus

Ironically, this fixation is being eagerly reinforced by contemporary Russian propaganda, whose messages are echoed across America’s emerging red-brown, anti-Israel conspiracist consensus. These include old Soviet tropes equating Zionists with Nazis; the now-familiar claims that Israel controls Washington and pushed the United States into war with Iran; allegations that Israel is persecuting Christians; and the use of Epstein-related code words for Jews, such as the “Epstein coalition,” as documented by Israeli scholar Nati Cantorovich.

When progressive California Rep. Ro Khanna found common ground with former Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene over opposition to the “Epstein class,” champagne corks likely popped in Kremlin propaganda offices. A democracy that chooses to believe that a country the size of New Jersey controls its political system has already lost confidence in its own institutions. Center-left British journalist Lewis Goodall exemplified this mindset recently when he remarked, “Israel is in the driver’s seat, and we—Britain, Europe, the United States—are powerless to determine our fate.”

It’s easy to dismiss such comments as ridiculous, but they carry real consequences. They are demoralizing and disempowering: Why even bother voting if Bibi Netanyahu controls everything? They are also corrosive. Demonization of Israel has long served dysfunctional and tyrannical regimes as a tool to divert attention from their own failures. By importing these ideas into their own democracies, Western elites are helping dismantle them from within. With American elites circulating such brain-rot under the guise of political analysis, America’s adversaries score easy victories in an ongoing campaign of psychological warfare they never stop waging.

Yet anti-Zionist vigilance inevitably turned against the Kremlin leadership itself. One group of Soviet “patriots” warned that Brezhnev’s government was under Zionist occupation and that its anti-Zionist campaign was merely a cover. Why else, they asked, would the country continue to slide into economic decline, moral rot, and alcoholism? The explanation was predictable: The Jewish wives of senior officials were enabling Zionist manipulation from within.

Some of the leading Zionologists themselves succumbed to the logic they had helped institutionalize. Convinced that Zionists were plotting revenge against him for exposing their machinations, Valery Yemelyanov—author of the infamous tract Dezionization, first published in Arabic in 1979 in the Syrian newspaper Al-Ba’ath on Hafez al-Assad’s orders—came to see his wife as the weak link. He murdered and dismembered her with an ax, then burned her body at a nearby construction site. He spent six years in a psychiatric hospital. At his trial in absentia, his supporters claimed he had been framed by Zionists—the real perpetrators of the murder.

It should be clear by now that what is taking shape in American public discourse is in no way a conventional political disagreement over the rightness or real-world effectiveness or this or that Israeli policy. It is the normalization of a way of thinking that flattens reality into a single, self-confirming narrative that has always led to the same place: the mental and political unraveling of the societies that embrace it.

What makes this moment particularly dangerous is that it no longer belongs to the fringes. It has moved fully into mainstream and, having crossed the aisle from left to right, creates the impression of a shared, bipartisan consensus around a modern American version of “the Jewish question.”

Societies that have gone down this path—the USSR, Arab states, Iran—do not emerge stronger, more confident, or more just. They become more paranoid, more dysfunctional, and more prone to turning against themselves. America has not been such a society until now. The question is whether it still has the power to stop.

Amnesty shows how it ignores evidence to accuse Israel. Again.

Amnesty International published a new report yesterday accusing Israel of "war crimes of wanton destruction and collective punishment" for striking at least thirteen high-rise buildings in Gaza City between September and October 2025. The report claims its satellite imagery, video verification, and sixteen resident interviews reveal "a chilling pattern of deliberate destruction... without requisite military necessity."

We know where this is headed. we've seen it before. Amnesty will assume anything Israel says is a lie, anything Gaza residents say is the truth, cherry pick Israeli statements to imply wanton destruction is the goal, and base its legal analysis on this set of false evidence.

The Katz tweet problem

Amnesty leans heavily on social media posts by Defense Minister Israel Katz as evidence that the strikes served no legitimate military purpose. The report quotes his September 8 post — "Today, a massive hurricane will hit the skies of Gaza City and the roofs of the terror towers will tremble" — and his September 14 post about the Islamic University going "soaring to the heavens," characterizing their tone as "celebratory and gleeful" proof of punitive rather than military intent.

The problem is what Amnesty chose to quote and what it chose not to. Katz's September 8 statement also included a direct warning to Hamas: "This is a final warning to the Hamas murderers and rapists in Gaza and in luxury hotels abroad: Release the hostages and put down your weapons – or Gaza will be destroyed and you will be annihilated." That's not proof of wanton destruction. That's wartime rhetoric, the kind of ultimatum issued in every modern conflict. More importantly, Amnesty consistently omits a word Katz used repeatedly: terror. He called these "terror towers," not apartment blocks. On September 5, he said "the first evacuation notice has been delivered to a high-rise terror building in Gaza City before an attack." On September 13, Katz described the Burj al-Nur as a "terror tower." After a single day's operations he announced "25 terror towers destroyed." Amnesty quotes the theatrical language while systematically excising the substantive claim embedded in it that these towers housed terror infrastructure.

A social media post is not legal documentation of military intent, and Amnesty knows this — which is why, when the rhetoric serves their argument, they treat it as evidence, and when it undermines their argument, they omit it. The IDF's own statement before the campaign began said it "conducted comprehensive intelligence research and identified significant Hamas terrorist activity within a wide range of infrastructure in Gaza City particularly in high-rise buildings." Amnesty dismisses this as unsubstantiated without engaging its substance. Because Amnesty assumes Jews are liars.

The Islamic University case

Amnesty cites Katz's September 14 tweet about the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG) as paradigmatic evidence of ideological rather than military motivation. This is interesting, because the evidentiary record on the IUG is not in dispute — it's publicly documented across decades.

The IUG was founded under the direct influence of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Hamas's founder. Senior Hamas figures have held teaching and administrative positions at the university throughout its history — Ismail Haniyeh served as secretary of its board of trustees and chairman of the student council, while Mahmoud al-Zahar, one of Hamas's founders, taught medicine there. The university has publicly stated it was proud that its employees were also Hamas military operatives, and even published obituaries for graduate students and lecturers who died as fighters. After the 2021 conflict, Yahya al-Sinwar told IUG academics that thanks to them and their colleagues with academic degrees who worked in the resistance, Hamas's rockets had achieved "unprecedented precision and capabilities."

This is a public declaration by the head of Hamas that the university's faculty had improved weapons systems. After October 7, the IDF stated Hamas had used the IUG as "a training camp for weapons development and military intelligence." In June 2024, Hamas terrorists gathered at a building on the IUG campus to launch anti-tank missiles at Israeli troops — the IDF struck it after conducting aerial surveillance. An Israeli army spokeswoman told the Chronicle of Higher Education that university facilities were used by Hamas to develop and store weapons, including Qassam rockets. FDDWikipedia

Amnesty's report presents Katz's September 14 tweet about the IUG as evidence of "eliminating incitement" — a legally insufficient rationale — while offering no engagement with any of the above. Amnesty's characterization of the IUG evidence is not a research failure. It is a selection failure.

The methodology conceals a category error

Amnesty's Crisis Evidence Lab "analysed satellite imagery and verified more than 25 videos" and found "no evidence of military use" at the buildings it examined. This is the core of their claim, and it contains a fundamental methodological problem.

Open-source video verification reveals what is visible at the moment of a strike. Hamas does not operate visibly. Its intelligence-gathering equipment is installed inside buildings, not on the roof for satellite observation. Its command-and-control nodes and weapons storage are by design undetectable from the outside. The IDF confirmed, in the case it publicly acknowledged, that it "struck a tower used by Hamas for surveillance" and that "Hamas operatives planted explosive devices in the area near the building, as part of preparations for the army's upcoming offensive." That is military activity. It does not show up in Amnesty's open-source verification because open-source verification cannot see inside buildings.

Amnesty's methodology, in other words, is structured to produce the conclusion it publishes. Absence of visible fighters in verified video does not mean absence of military use. It is idiotic to even make that claim. An organization with Amnesty's resources and legal expertise understands this distinction. They write up their faux legal analysis anyway.

The Hamas baseline problem

What Amnesty's report omits is as significant as what it includes. The phrase "Hamas embeds military infrastructure in civilian buildings" appears nowhere in its analysis as a structural consideration. Yet this is not a contested claim — it is a documented operational doctrine, confirmed by finds across hospitals, mosques, schools, and universities throughout the war. Hamas has exploited universities for terrorist purposes throughout the conflict: Israeli forces found a tunnel under Israa University, discovered weapons and a tunnel at Al-Azhar University, and Hamas repeatedly returned to the Islamic University to reconstitute itself after prior strikes.

An honest investigation of Israeli strikes on high-rise buildings would ask: given Hamas's established pattern of militarizing civilian infrastructure, what standard of evidence should be required before concluding that a building had no military use? Amnesty's answer, operationally, appears to be: it is impossible. Sinwar's praising IUG for its military contributions are apparently not enough evidence for Amnesty. Since open-source imagery doesn't include a big sign saying "HERE IS A HAMAS WEAPONS LAB" with an arrow pointing to it, Amnesty's methodology will always produce the same finding regardless of actual facts on the ground: Israel is guilty and Hamas is innocent of using human shields.

The report isn't proof of Israeli war crimes. It is clear proof that Amnesty wrote its conclusion before the report was written, and then wrote the report to only include facts or half truths that support their conclusions.

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Speaking of human shields, this Lawfare article describes how the UN has ignored Hamas use of human shields altogether, and how this results in more death. Amnesty does the same.

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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)

On November 10, 1975, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 3379 declaring Zionism to be a form of racism.

It wasn't the only UN resolution passed that day.

The General Assembly also passed Resolution 3376, establishing the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.

One resolution declared Jewish national identity illegitimate. The other created the permanent United Nations apparatus that would, from that day forward, operate the framework whose demands the first resolution had articulated.

Resolution 3376 was operationalizing a resolution passed the previous year. In November 1974, the General Assembly had passed Resolution 3236, which defined what it called the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people. The 1975 resolution established the permanent committee to advance those rights. The 1974 resolution detailed those rights.

That resolution reaffirms "the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people in Palestine, including the right to self-determination without external interference" and "the right to national independence and sovereignty." It reaffirms "the inalienable right of the Palestinians to return to their homes and property from which they have been displaced and uprooted, and calls for their return." It "emphasizes that full respect for and the realization of these inalienable rights of the Palestinian people are indispensable for the solution of the question of Palestine." It "recognizes that the Palestinian people is a principal party in the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East." It "further recognizes the right of the Palestinian people to regain its rights by all means in accordance with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations."

Each of these provisions, examined objectively, requires the end of Israel as a Jewish state.

Self-determination "without external interference" applied to a contested territory where two peoples claim sovereignty means Palestinian self-determination without consulting what the existing Jewish inhabitants currently living on the land have to say. National independence and sovereignty, asserted as an inalienable right of the Palestinian people, are articulated without any corresponding mention of Israeli national independence and sovereignty. The right of return, treated as inalienable, requires Israel to absorb the descendants of 1948 refugees in numbers that would end Jewish demographic majority within the state. Recognition of the Palestinians as a principal party in any settlement institutionalizes the Palestinian veto on any agreement that does not satisfy these demands. The right to 'regain rights by all means' — language careful enough to avoid explicit authorization of violence, but ambiguous enough to be read by the PLO as legitimating armed struggle — was articulated by states whose territory was not affected by the means.

Note what isn't in that resolution: any mention of "1967 lines" or "The West Bank and Gaza." It was not a resolution to make a Palestinian state side by side with Israel - it was a resolution to replace Israel. In this resolution, Israeli Jews have no rights - and Israel as a country does not have any rights either, no mater that it is a member of the UN and this goes against everything the UN Charter stands for.

This 1974 resolution is a modern restatement of the Jewish Question. Every demand is on Israel. And its title?

"Question of Palestine."

The dual passage of November 10, 1975 was the institutional consolidation of this framework. Resolution 3379 declared Jewish national identity illegitimate. Resolution 3376 established the permanent committee to advance the Palestinian rights that 3236 had defined. Both resolutions were operationalizing the same structural project. The same coalition of Arab, Soviet-bloc, and non-aligned states passed both. The complementarity of the two moves was institutionally explicit. The entire purpose of The Question of Palestine was to operationalize the "Zionism is Racism" resolution.

It was never about Palestinians. It was always about Jews.

The UN's own timeline

There is one piece of confirming evidence you can see for yourself, today.

The United Nations maintains an official website called The Question of Palestine, with a section titled "Historical Timeline." The timeline begins in 1885 with the coining of the word "Zionism" by Nathan Birnbaum. It continues with the publication of Der Judenstaat in 1896, the First Zionist Congress in 1897, and Chaim Weizmann's visit to Palestine in 1907.

The UN's own institutional account of how the Question of Palestine came into being begins with the Jewish answer to the Jewish Question.

The Question of Palestine, on the UN's own institutional account, did not begin with Palestinian national consciousness, the British Mandate, the 1947 partition, or the 1948 war. It began with Zionism. The framework names what it is responding to. It is responding to the Jewish structural exit from the European Jewish Question. The Question of Palestine is the international system's institutional response to the Jewish refusal to be absorbed into European modernity on the framework's terms, using the language of "rights" and "principles" to destroy Jewish self determination - which would have saved untold millions had Israel been born ten years earlier.

Read this way, the rest of the UN's institutional architecture around Israel is shown to be something other than what it claims to be. The Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, the Division for Palestinian Rights in the UN Secretariat, the annual International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People (held on November 29, the anniversary of the 1947 partition vote, chosen specifically because it commemorates what the framework treats as the moment of original Palestinian dispossession), UNRWA's institutional perpetuation across generations and creation of a new definition of "refugee" just for Palestinians, the annual cycle of General Assembly resolutions reaffirming the inalienable rights articulated in 3236 — all of this is the institutional architecture of a framework whose load-bearing concern is not the welfare of Palestinians but the existence of the Jewish state that the Jewish exit from Europe produced.

The November 29 commemoration is not the only annual UN ritual tied to the Israeli historical trajectory. The institution also holds an annual event on May 15. The UN does not call it "Nakba Day." It calls it the "Anniversary of the Nakba" — the anniversary of the catastrophe.

What is the specific catastrophic event the UN is marking the anniversary of? It cannot be the date Palestinian Arabs left their homes - some 250,000 had already left beforehand. It doesn't seem to be a commemoration of the attack on the new state of Israel by combined Arab armies that started May 15; perhaps their eventual loss is the catastrophe (and in fact the original use of the word was exactly for that reason) but the date would not be the date of the start of the aggression.

The only anniversary that makes sense is this: even though Israel declared the state on May 14 ahead of the Friday evening Sabbath, the Arabs did not consider that legally significant. What they do consider important is the day that the British Mandate ended — and Jewish sovereignty began on parts of Palestine. That was the stroke of midnight the morning of May 15.

The UN's selection of May 15 as the anniversary of the nakba shows that to the UN, the first day of a UN member state's existence is catastrophic.

The two commemorations are paired. November 29 marks the authorization of Jewish statehood as Palestinian dispossession. May 15 marks the start of operative Jewish sovereignty as Palestinian catastrophe. The UN's institutional rituals around Israel frame its entire existence as wholly negative.

The UN would never admit that directly. But its official commemorations show that the UN — not Palestinians, but the UN itself — considers Israel's existence to be a problem that must be solved.

This is the Jewish Question transposed to the 21st century.

Counterfactual

There is a simple exercise that exposes what the Question of Palestine is actually about. Imagine the 1948 war had gone the other way. The Arab armies that invaded the new state of Israel — Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq — had won. Israel does not exist. What would have happened to the Palestinian cause?

The territory of the British Mandate would have been divided among the victors. Egypt taking Gaza and the Negev. Jordan taking the West Bank and the coastal areas. Syria taking the Galilee. The Arab population of the former mandate would have become citizens of one of these three states, just like Jordan gave citizenship to the West Bank Arabs in the areas it annexed.

Would there be a Question of Palestine? Would there be a permanent UN agenda item on the fate of the formerly-Mandate Arabs? Would there be a Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Egyptian-Jordanian-Syrian Arabs of the former Mandate? Would there be a UN Division for the Rights of those Arabs? Would there be an UNRWA for the people displaced by the war? Would Western university campuses host protests on behalf of the Arabs of Gaza-as-part-of-Egypt and the West Bank-as-part-of-Jordan? Would Palestinians-as-a-distinct-people exist as a category in international discourse at all?

The answer is obviously no. None of this institutional architecture would exist. The Arabs of the former Mandate would have been absorbed into Arab states under the usual conditions, and the international system would have had no reason to construct a distinct category for them. The world would not be talking about Palestinians today.

The Question of Palestine is not generated by Palestinian statelessness. It is not generated by Palestinian national aspirations. It is generated by opposition to the existence of Israel as a Jewish state. It is the Jewish Question resurrected.

What the Arab states actually did with Palestinians

Are there any other fourth and fifth generation refugees on Earth besides Palestinians?

No, because the Refugee Convention definition of refugees does not allow automatic refugee status to descendants. Only UNRWA's does. The UN framework, pushed by the Arab nations, is that Palestinians should remain stateless and miserable, living in camps, as eternal pressure on Israel. Arab leaders admitted this numerous times. The Arab League passed resolutions barring Palestinians from becoming citizens in any Arab state.

Egypt expelled any Palestinians in its territory to Gaza. Lebanon didn't allow any Palestinians to own land or to work in many jobs. Jordan killed thousands of Palestinians in eleven days in 1970. Kuwait expelled 400,000 Palestinians two decades later. Syria killed thousands in Yarmouk during its civil war.

There have been no UN resolutions condemning these events. There have been no campus protests against how badly Palestinians have been treated by their own brethren.

The rejection of statehood

The instrumental character of the Palestinian cause is further demonstrated by what Palestinians themselves have done with offers of statehood. They rejected the 1937 Peel Commission's proposed partition giving them a Palestinian Arab state. They rejected the 1947 UN partition plan. They rejected the 2000 Camp David proposal offering Palestinian statehood on roughly 92 percent of the West Bank with land swaps, shared Jerusalem, and refugee compensation. They rejected the 2001 Taba framework addressing the issues left open at Camp David. They ignored the 2008 Olmert offer proposing Palestinian statehood on roughly 94 percent of the West Bank with land swaps for the remainder, a capital in East Jerusalem, internationalized holy basin, and Israeli acceptance of a small symbolic refugee return.

Each rejection was followed not by counter-proposal but by violence. The Second Intifada followed the Camp David and Taba rejections. The Gaza disengagement of 2005, in which Israel unilaterally withdrew all settlements and military presence, was followed by rocket attacks, the Hamas takeover of 2007, and three wars before October 7, 2023.

The Question of Palestine was never about the welfare or rights of Palestinians. It was solely about denying rights to Jews.

BDS: the polite rebrand in compressed time

The most visible contemporary manifestation of anti-Zionism is the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, launched in 2005 with the public framing that its target is Israel and its policies, not Jews. BDS positions itself as a civil-society human rights campaign modeled on the South African anti-apartheid movement, deploying the contemporary international system's most respectable vocabulary.

The framing falls apart on two facts.

The first is that BDS itself acknowledges its lineage when pressed. Omar Barghouti, the movement's founder, stated in 2011 that the 2005 BDS Call "was not the beginning" of the movement but "a culmination of decades of Palestinian boycott initiatives." He continued: "for more than a century Palestinians have used boycotts." Riham Barghouti, another founder, confirmed in 2023 that BDS "builds off a long history of Arab boycott and Palestinian boycott." The lineage they acknowledge begins with the Fifth Palestine Arab Congress of 1922, which formally called for the boycott of Jewish businesses in Mandatory Palestine, twenty-six years before Israel existed. The Arab League formalized the boycott in 1945, three years before Israel existed, targeting what the League called "products of Palestinian Jews." The target was Jews. The State of Israel was not yet available as a substitute.

The second is that BDS does not boycott Arab-owned Israeli businesses - only Jewish-owned ones. The same Israeli legal jurisdiction, the same Israeli taxes, the same Israeli civic obligations — but the boycott operates only against the Jewish-owned firms. The criterion the movement claims (opposition to Israeli policy) cannot account for this. The criterion that does account for it is the criterion the framework has been operating since 1922: opposition to Jewish economic activity, in whatever surface vocabulary the era allows.

It is Marx's argument about the Jewish Question revised for the 21st century.

Criticism seeks improvement. Anti-Zionism seeks elimination. BDS, like every form of polite antisemitism this series has examined, is the second.

The Jewish Question applied to philo-semites

The framework's scope is not limited to Jews. Recall that the antisemites who claimed they were not antisemites — the Tageblatt writers quoted by the Pall Mall Gazette in 1881 — threatened Prince Bismarck with becoming a target of the Question if he continued to defend Jews. "The Jewish question will exist even against him." The polite tier of the framework, the tier that distinguished itself from the brutalities of Jew-baiting, was the tier that issued this threat. The genteel antisemitic threats underlying the Jewish question extends to defenders of the Jews. It treats those who support Jews as themselves candidates for the framework's operation.

We see this happening today. If a non-Jew defends Israel, they immediately get treated like Jews: social media threats, digging into their past, doxxing their families. These threats get noticed by the general population of people who might be sympathetic to Jews.

The framework does not need to actually destroy defenders of Israel or Jews. It needs only to make defense costly enough that most potential defenders calculate that the cost is too high. Bismarck, threatened by the Tageblatt, was the German Chancellor with substantial political capital; the threat was real but he had resources to absorb it. Yet almost none of the academics with tenure considerations, nor the journalists with career considerations, nor the politicians with constituency considerations, nor the corporate executives with consumer considerations, have Bismarck's resources. They often calculate that defending Israel or defending Jews is not worth the threats, the social cost, or the professional damage. Each withdraws into silence or into more moderate-sounding language that does not expose them to the framework's enforcement. The Jewish Question framework wins without ever having to actually punish a defender, because the threat itself is sufficient to clear the field.

This is the framework's most efficient operation. The cumulative effect of many individual calculations is a public sphere in which defenders of Jews and of Israel are rare, defenders who do speak are marginalized, and the polite tier's framework operates without serious public opposition. The mechanism is unchanged from 1881.

The framework's enforcement is the threat. The threat comes not from the Jew baiters or the pogromists, but from the people who claim that they are not antisemitic in the slightest. They just point out that the mob might want to go after the offenders. They might claim to abhor violence but they are happy to leverage it to solve the Jewish problem.

The diminishment program continues

The Jewish Question framework's various pillars all converge, on examination, on the same underlying demand. The right of return, fully implemented, ends Jewish demographic majority. The settler-colonial framing, taken seriously, requires the dismantling of the "colonial" society. The binational state proposal, by definition, ends Jewish sovereignty. The "from the river to the sea" formulation, on its plain meaning, requires that there not be a Jewish state between the river and the sea. The UN commemorating May 15 as the "anniversary of the Nakba" shows that the problem needing solution is the Jewish state's very existence. The pillars differ in respectability and in the speed at which they require Israel to dissolve. They agree on the destination.

The international community insists that Jews must diminish themselves and stop insisting on the right to self determination in order to be accepted. It is the Jewish Question all over again.

And just like some Jews accepted the framework then, some Jews accept it now.

Reform Judaism tried to drop Jewish peoplehood and become Germans of the Mosaic confession. The Bund tried to drop Jewish religion in favor of secular socialist Yiddish culture. The Mendelssohn family did drop everything across five generations, and ended with the family bank liquidated and the Lutheran descendants reclassified as Jews under the Nuremberg Laws. Nothing they did was ever enough, because the excuses for treating Jews differently were never the real reasons.

The contemporary framework is performing the same operation at the state level. It is asking Israel to drop demographic majority, drop Jerusalem, drop the Jewish character of the state, in exchange for acceptance. And like some Jews in Europe did then, some Jews today accept the terms dictated by polite antisemites who claim they of course are against the Holocaust and don't support October 7, but if only Israel would give up on being so darn Jewish, then we would really have peace.

This is the logic of the Jewish Voice for Peace and J-Street Jews, and their analogies in Europe and Australia. They accept the lie that somehow the Jews are the reason for antisemitism, and Jews merely need to adjust their self-image to give up on some of their rights and then they would be respected and loved.

It didn't work then and it wouldn't work now.

The historical record predicts what would happen if the diminishments were performed. The framework would absorb each one and demand the next, because the framework's load-bearing assumption is not satisfied by any specific diminishment. It is satisfied only by the cessation of the Jewish object the framework has selected.

The imaginary line

The Jewish Question existed because educated nineteenth-century Europeans needed a way to articulate the structural assumption that Jewish presence required management without sounding like the mob. The Question was, from its origin, a liberal response to the extremes of antisemitism — a way of saying we are not them, we are the responsible ones, we engage seriously with a serious problem. The line between Jew-baiting and the Jewish Question was the line educated Europeans drew so they could occupy a moral position superior to the mob while sharing the mob's load-bearing assumption.

Anti-Zionism, as portrayed in mainstream media and operative in the UN, is the same construction. It exists because the international community needs a way to articulate the structural assumption that Jewish sovereignty requires management without sounding like Hamas, Hezbollah or Hitler. The respectable form of anti-Zionism is a liberal response to the extremes of contemporary antisemitism — a way of saying we are not them, we condemn the brutalities, we engage seriously with a serious question of human rights and decolonization. The line between calling for Israel's destruction and demanding Israel transform into a non-Jewish state is the line educated Westerners draw so they can occupy a moral position superior to those who chant "Globalize the Intifada" while sharing the same underlying framework. Now, as then, the respective Questions are antisemitism that pretends to be liberal and enlightened, not like the crude people who call for violence.

In both cases, the line is imaginary. The demand that Israel drop the Jewish part of its state, never demanded of Muslim or Christian states, is just an extension of the antisemitic but polite 19th century demands that Jews give up Judaism, Jewish institutional life, or the laws that held them together for 3,000 years in order to not be attacked as Jews. The argument then was that Jews caused antisemitism by being too Jewish. Today the argument is that Israel causes antisemitism by refusing to commit national suicide. Either way, the polite version and the crude version have the same goal: elimination of a critical component of Jewish existence, whether it is religious, cultural, economic or national.

The UN, by its own institutional account, dates the Question of Palestine to 1885. The first event on its timeline is the coining of the word "Zionism." The framework documents its own lineage on its own institutional website. The Question of Palestine is the international system's institutional attempt to negate the only successful Jewish answer to the Jewish Question. The framework knows what it is. It says so on its own pages.

Believe it.