The Arts Sector Has Found a Way to Practice Antisemitism Without the Word "Jew"

A new report from the UK-based advocacy group Freedom in the Arts, "The New Boycott Crisis," documents that the UK arts sector has developed interlocking mechanisms that exclude Jewish artists systematically — and these methods work precisely because they never name what they're doing.

The report, based on surveys and interviews with 194 artists, venue leaders, agents and promoters, identifies antisemitism as "the dominant form of identity-based exclusion documented across the data, operating at every level from overt to institutional, frequently unrecognised by the very frameworks designed to prevent discrimination." That last clause is the key one.

The first mechanism is the reversal of where pressure originates. The conventional picture of a boycott crisis is external: protesters outside the door, audiences threatening to stay home. What the data shows is the opposite. "There was no audience backlash. The pressure came from staff." Across venue after venue, the force driving cancellations came from inside — overwhelmingly far-Left staff complaints, internal networks, and advisory bodies — while audiences remained largely indifferent or actively wanted the work. The sector is responding not to its public but to a small number of internal ideological enforcers.

Which leads to the second mechanism: the weaponization of safety language. Once a staff member frames a political objection as a welfare concern — "I don't feel safe with this performer booked" — the word "safeguarding" does for institutional antisemitism what "anti-Zionism" does at street level: it launders a discriminatory outcome into an ostensibly neutral concern. Jewish identity itself becomes a "reputational risk." Jewish-themed art becomes "too sensitive." A klezmer band gets its gig cancelled not because anyone articulated a problem with the music, but because Jewish identity and an Israeli singer had been absorbed into the venue's ambient danger calculus. Strange Brew in Bristol later acknowledged in its apology that the band "was likely only subjected to this level of scrutiny… because they are a Jewish band performing with an Israeli singer." That's the mechanism caught on paper — which almost never happens. The internal Israel-haters claim that they would be endangered if the Jewish artists performs, even though there is no evidence that this would in fact happen. But safety must be taken seriously by every institution. They game the system.

Most cases produce no paper trail. That's the third mechanism — what the report calls the silent boycott. "Opportunities dry up. Invitations stop coming. Communications go unanswered. Projects stall indefinitely." Jewish artists describe this pattern post-October 7: their loss of gigs came not from anything they said or did, it simply happened, undocumented and unchallengeable. The mechanism is engineered for impunity: if an artist receives a termination letter, she can consult a lawyer; an artist who receives silence can challenge nothing. Agents, knowing this, advise concealment — steer clear of certain festivals, make the Jewish identity less visible, don't put the artist forward where rejection is anticipated. Self-censorship becomes a professional service delivered under duress, converting institutional discrimination into career advice. the result is that overtly Jewish art or lectures have virtually disappeared because the entire art infrastructure has no way (and seemingly little desire) to fight the invisible boycott.

The EDI and "values" frameworks that were supposed to prevent discrimination become, in this environment, the mechanisms that enable it. A political demand framed as a diversity concern gains access to formal institutional complaint machinery. "Values-led" organizations reserve the right to refuse bookings on grounds they define, with the definition expanding under pressure until Jewish association itself falls outside the ethical boundary. The report documents a Bristol arts venue whose CEO described, as institutional achievements: signing a pledge not to stock Israeli products — under the banner of institutional values. The circular logic completes itself: the framework designed to protect diverse voices now ejects anyone who questions the framework.

The report documents a consistent pattern through the case studies: when organizations held their ground and followed well-defined procedures protecting their artists and art, the predicted catastrophe failed to materialize. Example after example of book festivals, music events and theatres that held their ground and calmly explained that they are following their own procedures and support artistic expression usually held the events  without serious incident.  

The report's conclusion from these cases is direct: institutions that appease do not purchase peace but permanent vulnerability, while institutions that resist frequently discover the threat was largely phantom. The antisemitic pressure within the arts sector is, for now, a minority phenomenon that has learned to punch far above its weight — exploiting the sector's conflict-aversion, its "safety" language infrastructure, and the rational calculation of precarious freelancers that silence is cheaper than resistance. The open letters threaten, but in the end the protests either don't appear or remain small and peaceful. The audiences show up. 

That asymmetry between perceived threat and actual threat is the most actionable finding in the report. Jewish artists are being excluded, Jewish culture is being suppressed, and careers are being ended — not because the sector's audiences demand it, but because a small number of internal actors have learned to operate mechanisms that produce discriminatory outcomes without ever requiring the institution to say the word "Jew."

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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04/28 Links Pt2: Three Years After October 7, Anti-Semitic Violence Is Still Rising; Oslo's Collapse - and the Cost Israel Kept Paying; Israel rebukes Norwegian Holocaust Center’s Nakba-Holocaust events

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Three Years After October 7, Anti-Semitic Violence Is Still Rising

Underlying our public debate about anti-Semitism is the belief that we’re dealing with a kind of punctuated equilibrium: periods of mostly stable levels of anti-Semitism followed by occasional bursts that give us a new normal.

But what if that’s wrong? What if there aren’t periods of stability anymore?

Post-October 7 anti-Semitism seemed primed to follow the usual pattern, in which certain metrics of anti-Semitism will improve after the surge and others will level off at the crest of the surge. So all the metrics are considered in light of the assumption that the surge will fade as the Hamas attacks get further in the rearview mirror.

But the surge is acting funny.

When Tel Aviv University released its annual report on worldwide anti-Semitism for the year 2025, the main headline was that more Jews had been killed in anti-Semitic incidents (20) than in any year in over three decades. It was no consolation to say that this was because there was a massacre in Australia that pushed the numbers so high and that such massacres are blessedly rare—after all, attempted anti-Jewish massacres continue to take place. If the recent attack on a Reform shul in Michigan had succeeded, God forbid, 2026 would far surpass 2025 on this metric just a few months into the year. To be Jewish in some parts of the world now is to feel more like a target than ever.

Delving into the report far beyond that headline statistic reveals why that feeling is so widely shared: Three years after October 7, violent anti-Semitism is still rising across parts of the West.

Oslo's Collapse - and the Cost Israel Kept Paying

As part of the Oslo Accords, Israel agreed to pursue peace and coexistence with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The PLO promised to end terrorism and "armed struggle" against Israel, prevent incitement to violence, actively combat terrorism, and avoid unilateral actions. The core concept was mutual commitment: the PLO-PA would deliver peace and coexistence, while Israel would provide financial support.

The PLO and the PA never fulfilled their commitments. The PLO, dominated by Fatah, the party of Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, never truly abandoned terror. Fatah leaders have repeatedly stressed this. The PA education system has been consistently criticized for radicalization, antisemitism, and the promotion of violence against Israel and Israelis. Instead of combating terror, the Palestinian leadership refers to the genocidal terrorists of Hamas, who planned and executed the October 7, 2023, massacre, as legitimate "Palestinian factions."

Incitement to violence, terror, and murder, as well as the glorification of terrorist murderers, led by the PA, remain commonplace. The PLO-PA also developed and implemented a multi-million dollar "Pay-for-Slay" terror reward policy. In the international arena, the PLO-PA repeatedly acted unilaterally, requesting that the UN recognize the "State of Palestine."

While the PLO-PA did not fulfill most Oslo commitments, Israel continued to collect and transfer taxes which accounted for 65-70% of the PA's total budget. By continuing to transfer these funds to the PA, Israel was bankrolling its own potential demise. In June 2025, Israel ceased transferring the taxes to the PLO-PA.

Since the PLO-PA has fundamentally breached every provision of the Oslo Accords, Israel is fully within its rights to refuse to continue transferring the funds. If the PLO-PA does not fulfill its commitments, there is no reason whatsoever why Israel should be expected to continue funding Palestinian terror, whether the physical murder of Jews or the diplomatic terror in international forums.

U.S. Politics Broke Bipartisan Support for Israel

In his essay on the "sorting" of American politics and its implications for Israel advocacy, Uriel Zehavi argues that Israel lost Democratic support not because of any one war or settlement announcement, but rather that Israel became trapped inside the broader "great sort" of American politics, the decades-long process by which nearly every politically salient issue gets absorbed into partisan identity. Once that happened, a bipartisan consensus on Israel became structurally unstable.

In an earlier era, both parties contained ideological diversity. Liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats created overlapping coalitions. But modern American politics no longer functions that way. Party identity now acts as a master category through which voters interpret almost every issue.

Once progressive activists increasingly coded Israel as aligned with nationalism, militarism, and American conservatism, many Democratic voters followed elite cues from their own ideological ecosystem. At the same time, evangelical Christians and conservatives embraced Israel even more strongly, making support for Israel increasingly identified with Republican identity. The result was a widening partisan gap that could not have been avoided regardless of Israeli policy choices.

Organizations built for a consensus era are trying to defend ground that no longer exists. Instead of one message aimed at a unified political center, Israel advocates may need entirely different arguments, messengers, and vocabularies for Republican and Democratic audiences.

Nevertheless, there remains overwhelming revulsion among mainstream Americans, including most Democrats, toward terrorism and overt antisemitism. After Oct. 7, many Americans were horrified not only by the massacre itself but by celebrations of the attacks on elite campuses and social media. The more that radical anti-Israel movements fuse themselves with excuses for terrorism, harassment of Jewish students, or conspiracy-laden rhetoric about Jews and power, the more they may repel most Americans who still distinguish between criticizing Israeli policy and celebrating mass murder.

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04/28 Links Pt1: Qatar promised to 'look after' ICC prosecutor Khan if he pursued Netanyahu; UAE to withdraw from OPEC; Amer Hujirat, Defense Ministry civilian contractor, killed in Lebanon

From Ian:

Jason D. Greenblatt: The Revolutionary Guards Are Executing the Clerics' Vision

The New York Times published a detailed account last week of Iran's new leadership structure. It states that power has shifted to "an entrenched, hard-line military" and that "the broad influence of the clerics is waning." The implication is that this represents a radicalization of what came before. It does not.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the cleric who led Iran for 35 years, advanced Iran's nuclear program to the edge of weaponization, built the ballistic missile program, the drone program, and the network of proxies including Hizbullah, Hamas, the Houthis and the Shia militias in Iraq that threatened Israel, the Gulf states, and American forces across the region for decades.

He crushed the Green Movement in 2009. His regime executed protesters in the crackdown that followed the 2022 uprising. He directed the IRGC's Quds Force under Qassem Soleimani, whose operations killed and maimed American soldiers for years. The IRGC was not a force that the clerics restrained. It was the instrument through which the clerical vision was executed.

A claim repeated in media commentary and on Capitol Hill held that the U.S. was not already at war with Iran before the February strikes. That claim has always been a fiction. Iran had been waging war on the U.S. and its allies for decades, through terror proxies, attacks on American troops, and a nuclear program designed to hold the region hostage.

Pretending otherwise did not make Americans or our allies in the Gulf and Israel safer. It made the eventual reckoning easier to mischaracterize as aggression rather than a long-overdue response to a severe threat that had been growing for 45 years.

The clerics built this. The IRGC executed it. They are not in tension. They are in partnership. The only thing that has changed is that sustained military pressure has left them with fewer options than they have ever had.

Walter Russell Mead: It's Way Too Early to Declare U.S. Defeat in Iran

The establishment consensus is that President Trump's war with Iran is a disaster. Time will tell, but it would be a mistake to assume that Mr. Trump is desperately looking for the exits.

Viewed from the Oval Office, the war may seem less costly than critics charge, and the likelihood of a favorable outcome may appear significantly greater than a horrified foreign-policy establishment can bring itself to believe.

True, the war has gone on longer than originally hoped and is taking a toll on the president's popularity. But he may feel less trapped than critics think he should.

In the Gulf, American naval forces have, without taking casualties, consolidated a crushing blockade of Iran that Tehran seems unable to counter.

And support in the Gulf for a decisive effort against Iran is stronger now than at the outbreak of hostilities.

For now, the president can afford to wait and see how mounting pressure affects the Iranian side.

U.S. Cannot Accept Iran Retaining Control of Hormuz, Rubio Says

Asked about the main roadblock to an agreement with the Iranian government, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Fox News on Monday: "The country's run by radical Shia clerics; that's a pretty big impediment....People talk about moderates and hardliners. They're all hardliners in Iran. But there are hardliners who understand they have to run a country and an economy, and there are hardliners that are completely motivated by theology....Unfortunately, the hardliners with an apocalyptic vision of the future have the ultimate power in that country."

"If what they mean by opening the straits [of Hormuz] is, 'Yes, the straits are open as long as you coordinate with Iran, get our permission or we'll blow you up, and you pay us,' that's not opening the straits. Those are international waterways. They cannot normalize, nor can we tolerate them trying to normalize, a system in which the Iranians decide who gets to use an international waterway and how much you have to pay them to use it."

"The nuclear question is the reason why we're in this in the first place....They seek to dominate the region. And imagine that with a nuclear weapon. Look what they've done with the straits - great example. The straits is basically the equivalent of an economic nuclear weapon that they're trying to use against the world, and they're bragging about it. They're putting up billboards in Tehran bragging about how they can hold 20% of the world's energy hostage. Imagine if those same people had access to a nuclear weapon. They would hold the whole region hostage."

"I think they're serious about figuring out how can they buy themselves more time. We can't let them get away with it....They're very experienced negotiators, and we have to ensure that any deal that is made, any agreement that is made, is one that definitively prevents them from sprinting towards a nuclear weapon at any point."

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If Ireland and Spain are so "moral" by boycotting Eurovision, why don't they quit EVERY entity that Israel is a member of?

Ireland, Spain, and Slovenia are boycotting Eurovision because Israel is a participant. They believe that Israel is guilty of the most heinous crimes and their participation amounts to normalizing genocide. 

But if that's the case, why stop at a meaningless song contest? They should - no, they must -  boycott every organization in which Israel holds membership.

Israel competes in FIBA EuroBasket. So do Ireland and Spain. Israel plays in the Davis Cup alongside other European nations. Israel competes at the Chess Olympiad, where Israeli players regularly contend for top honors. Israel participates in the Olympics under the IOC, which — like the EBU — has considered the question and kept Israel in.

Then there is UEFA. Both Ireland and Spain are members. So is Israel. If they find it morally repugnant to share a stage with Israel at a singing competition, all the more so to share a pitch with Israeli clubs and national teams.  By that standard, every Champions League broadcast, every Nations League fixture, every World Cup qualifying match involving a UEFA member is equally complicit. The should do the moral thing and quit UEFA. Otherwise, by their logic,  they are baby killers. 

But why stop at sports? Political organizations are, by the boycotters' own logic, far more directly implicated in Israel's supposed crimes. Ireland and Spain claim Israel deliberately targets hospitals — yet both remain members of the WHO, which has not expelled Israel and continues to treat it as a normal member state. The International Monetary Fund might do some important work, but nothing is more important than making a statement in support of "Palestine." Boycott the World Bank!

And then there is the UN itself. Israel has been a member for over 75 years. How can Spain and Ireland and Slovenia  sit in the same General Assembly while there is a Zionist in the room? Don't they have any morals whatsoever? If they are principled then they must conclude that remaining in the UN is the equivalent as murdering babies and using their blood for matzah. 

Oh, sorry, I jumped the gun on their planned accusations against Israel in 2028.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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Projection: Why Arab Extremists Think Jewish Prayer Is Conquest

A group of Haredi tourists in Marrakesh found themselves running short on time before mincha and did what observant Jews have done in sports stadiums, airports, and trade shows the world over: they found the most inconspicuous corner available, gathered a minyan, and prayed quietly for ten minutes against a wall at Bab Doukkala.

The reaction from Moroccan social media, amplified enthusiastically by Algerian media, was immediate and unhinged. Social media users demanded to know whether the Jews wanted to "rule" them. Activists insisted the tourists were attempting to establish a new Western Wall. A former actor turned Islamist called for the wall itself to be demolished and rebuilt to cleanse it of Jewish prayer. A group of Moroccan youth gathered to perform a ritual purification of the site. Graffiti appeared: "Bab Doukkala is for Moroccans and not for the Jews." Israeli flags were burned at protests that stretched into a second day.

A dozen men praying for ten minutes produced days of protests, flag-burning and outraged articles for nearly a week now.

The question worth asking is why — not as a matter of condemning individual Moroccans or Muslims, but as a matter of understanding what mental framework makes this reaction feel coherent to those who hold it. 

The answer is psychological projection.

Judaism and Islam have fundamentally different relationships to religious expansion. Islam carries a missionary imperative; conversion is actively sought and celebrated. Judaism actively discourages converts, requiring potential proselytes to be turned away multiple times before acceptance. One of these traditions has historically treated the physical presence of its religion in public space as a marker of territorial and civilizational advance. The other has not. The call to prayer broadcast over loudspeakers into mixed neighborhoods, the mass prayers staged in Times Square or Trafalgar Square — these are not simply acts of private devotion made public by logistical necessity. When religious display is deliberately chosen for the most iconic and contested spaces available, and amplified to reach populations who did not seek it out, the message exceeds devotion. It is a statement of presence, of belonging, of claim. There is no other explanation for why any of those settings would be chosen over a mosque — or a park, for that matter, where the public is not inconvenienced.

This is not a claim about Islamic prayer as such. A Muslim praying in a corner because he cannot reach a mosque in time is doing exactly what those Haredi tourists did at Bab Doukkala. The question of intent is settled by the choices made: where, how loudly, toward whom, and at whose inconvenience.

The extremists reacting to Marrakesh have absorbed the framework in which public religious display means territorial claim, because that is the framework their own political tradition has operated within. When they see Jews praying in public, they reach for the only interpretation available to them: the Jews are doing what we would be doing. They are marking territory, they are asserting ownership, they must be stopped before the claim hardens.

The absurdity of this is arithmetically obvious. Seven million Jews cannot dominate half a billion Arabs through the strategic deployment of mincha. Israel's interest in Morocco extends exactly as far as it does with every other Arab state: normal relations, trade, coexistence. The Greater Israel fantasy that Arab political culture attributes to Zionism is not a reading of Israeli behavior — it is a mirror held up to Arab political culture's own ambitions and projected outward.

Saner Moroccan voices saw through it. One Moroccan outlet asked the obvious question: Muslims pray in public spaces across the world — streets, airports, parks, the heart of European capitals — and this is treated as a natural expression of religious freedom. What changes when the people praying are Jews? The double standard, that outlet noted, does not reveal a principled defense of public order. It reveals whose religion is entitled to public space and whose presence in that space constitutes a provocation.

The answer the extremists gave, through days of protests and flag-burning and ritual wall-cleansing, was not really about Jews at all. It was about what they would mean if Jews thought the way they do.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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04/27 Links Pt2: Behind the scenes with Met Police hunting synagogue arsonists; “But Zionism!” Isn’t an Argument Anymore; Irish President’s Sister Joins Gaza Flotilla

From Ian:

Behind the scenes with Met Police hunting synagogue arsonists

A Jewish primary school is not the site of a typical crime scene.

But it is where the two industrious Metropolitan Police officers – Pc Zachary Stimson and Sgt Simon Vandepeer – are investigating a report of “hostile reconnaissance” on Friday afternoon, hours before the Sabbath.

They were called by the school’s security guard, who saw a young man pacing up and down in front of the school gates.

He appeared to be taking pictures and videos of the building on a quiet residential road in north London.

When confronted, the suspect had shouted: “I don’t give a f--- about Jews”, before fleeing, according to the guard.

The unsettling incident comes amid a backdrop of skyrocketing anti-Semitism including an arson attack that destroyed four Hatzola ambulances in north-west London.

On Friday, three men and a 17-year-old boy appeared at the Old Bailey, charged with criminal damage after allegedly attacking the vehicles. Police are investigating whether Iran is hiring locals to carry out the targeted attacks on their behalf.

Seconds after the confrontation, the two police officers and I charged down the North Circular towards the scene with sirens on and blue lights flashing.

Though a report like this would always be concerning, it is taken especially seriously in light of the recent anti-Semitism and a Jewish community living in fear. Jewish community living in fear.

The officers responding to this phone-in are part of a large, multi-pronged campaign called Operation Compertum, from the Latin comperire, meaning “to find out or discover”.

Launched a week ago, the aim of the initiative is threefold: arrest would-be arsonists, deter anyone tempted to commit a crime with a visible police presence and reassure the Jewish, and wider, community they are safe and that the state cares about their security.

So far, police have had enormous success arresting 25 people linked to the arson attacks and an additional 41 people for anti-Semitic and Islamophobic hate crimes as well as interviewing a further six people under caution.

This unprecedented undertaking by the Metropolitan Police, counter-terror officials and British intelligence services came in response to the firebombing of four fully-stocked Hatzola ambulances costing around £1m in damages and striking fear into the heart of the British Jewish community.

A group calling itself Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia [HAYI], meaning Islamic Movement for the People of the Right Hand, claimed responsibility for the strike.

They used Telegram, an encrypted communications app, to distribute propaganda videos of the assaults on pro-Iran networks.

But sadly, Hatzola was only the beginning.

26th suspect arrested in connection with antisemitic attacks in London

Another suspect was arrested in the United Kingdom on Sunday in connection to the series of recent antisemitic attacks against Jewish-affiliated sites in London, according to the Metropolitan Police.

The 37-year-old man was detained near Barnstaple, Devon by officers from the Counter Terrorism Policing unit.

“He was arrested on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts and has been taken to a London police station for questioning,” according to the Met, which did not disclose the man’s name.

Since the setting ablaze of four ambulances belonging to the Hatzola Jewish group in Golders Green, London, on March 23, a total of 26 suspects have been apprehended by British authorities.

Eight people have been charged with arson-related offenses and one person has been convicted of arson, the Met Police said.

Last week, police arrested a 25-year-old man in nearby Stevenage and three others, a 26-year-old man and two women aged 50 and 59, near Birmingham. On April 21, police arrested a 39-year-old man in Ealing in connection with an “investigation following the discovery of jars of a non-hazardous substance in Kensington Gardens,” according to a police statement.

“But Zionism!” Isn’t an Argument Anymore

The sophisticated antizionist will say he is making a political argument about the character of the state. A binational arrangement. Consider what that actually means. Seven million Hebrew-speaking Jews give up majority status, give up the political sovereignty their grandparents built, give up the only country on Earth where Jewish life has demographic and military weight, and trust that a binational entity including Hamas voters and West Bank militants will treat them fairly. They are to return, voluntarily, to the Diaspora condition they left, with its known downside of periodic mass murder, the desire for which is enshrined in founding documents.

This is where the distinction between antizionism and antisemitism becomes, in practice, an academic curiosity. Bari Weiss wrote in How to Fight Anti-Semitism that it’s one thing to consider whether to have children before you get pregnant, but it’s another thing entirely to consider parenthood after your kid is born. Maybe the distinction between antizionism and antisemitism matters in a Jewish Studies seminar. For the Israeli seventeen-year-old in Haifa however, it’s meaningless. What the antizionists are demanding of her is that she dissolve the basic conditions of her existence. Whether your motive is classical Jew-hatred or high-minded political theory is immaterial to the demand itself.

It is also not racism, at least not in the Nazi sense. Nazi racial antisemitism offered Jews no escape: you are what you are biologically, and no renunciation could save you. Antizionism does offer an escape: Renounce your people’s sovereignty, disavow Zionism, adopt the vocabulary of your accusers, and you will be welcomed. This is the sophisticated antizionist’s position. In that structural sense, antizionism resembles not racial antisemitism but the old Christian antisemitism, which promised to receive Jews warmly if only they would convert.

That is why the honest word for it is not racism. A movement that seeks to erase a national and ethnic identity through propaganda, persecution, and sometimes violence is not a legitimate political position. It is a hate group. That broad political circles in the West now grant this hate group intellectual respectability is a problem of its own, and not different in kind from the fact that racial doctrines once enjoyed wide acceptance, or that Christian Jew-hatred was once the bedrock assumption of educated European life. Popularity has never been evidence of legitimacy.

What Israelis are
Israelis don’t owe anyone an argument for their existence. They don’t need to win the debate about whether Zionism was the right idea in 1897. They don’t need to persuade Ezra Klein or Hasan Piker or the student encampments that their country’s creation in 1948 was just. The debate is over, not because one side won, but because the thing itself came into being. They are a people. They speak a language. They live on a piece of land and have mortgages. That is what peoples do. The Greeks do it. The Poles do it. The Québécois do it. The arguments about whether they should are, at this point, a leisure activity for people who live elsewhere.

The core goal of Zionism, the one all its strands shared, was to make the Jewish people a nation like other nations: speaking its own language, exercising sovereignty in its own homeland. Different Zionisms added different ingredients. Some are incomplete. Some never will be. But the core was achieved. To be a Hebrew-speaking Jew in the Land of Israel is now as unremarkable as being a Frenchman in France. Zionism as an ideology has produced something that no longer needs ideology: a national, ethnic, and cultural identity with a life of its own.

For a long time, Jews have been expected to justify their existence to every new generation of critics, in every new language, using the vocabulary the critics themselves handed us. Zionism and the Israeli project, at its deepest level, is the project of not having to. Of simply being. Of the dignity of waking up somewhere, ordering a latte (“cafe-hafuch”) and croissant in Hebrew (OK, the Hebrew for croissant is croissant, a French word, but still), and speaking a language and raising a family and going to work. Antizionism is a demand that Jews return to the mode of being in which they have to justify all of that. Israelis, for the most part, are not interested. And they shouldn’t be.

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04/27 Links Pt1: Israel and US won in Iran, and the critics refuse to admit it; The calumny of the ‘settler-colonialism’ charge; The self-anointed ‘good’ Israelis

From Ian:

Israel and US won in Iran, and the critics refuse to admit it

The moment the first Israeli and American jets hit their targets in Iran, two different realities emerged: one unfolding on the battlefield, and another constructed in news studios and political circles.

Understanding the gap between these two realities is essential to understanding what has actually been achieved by the United States and Israel.

Let’s start with the objective facts, because the critics won’t.

A country of 92 million people spent decades preparing for this confrontation – to no avail. Iran couldn’t mount a real response. Israel and the US moved through Iranian airspace like they owned it. They hit what they wanted, when they wanted. The enemy talked big for years, but when the moment of truth came, they were totally vulnerable. Minimal damage for Israel

For Israel, the casualty figures also tell the real story. Every pundit who predicted a massacre looks foolish now. Israeli losses were less than a tiny fraction of the lowest estimates. Not one Israeli plane went down.

The damage on Israel’s home front was minimal, and far below the doomsday numbers the experts kept repeating. Every single dark prediction was wrong.

By any honest measure, this is the most successful military campaign Israel has ever conducted. In fact, it may be the most successful campaign of its kind in modern history. But if you listen to the noise, you would think it was a disaster.

The criticism directed at the Israeli government and against the Trump administration – both in Israel and in the United States – contains not an ounce of objectivity. It is politics, top to bottom.

These critics aren’t trying to help the war effort; they’re trying to sink the people in charge. They can’t admit it’s a win because that would mean their rivals, US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, succeeded.

It’s a cold trade. A win for the nation is a loss for their party, so they refuse to see or acknowledge it.

Seth Mandel: Iran’s Imperial Jenga Tower Is Collapsing

The real friends of the Arab states, that is, are the U.S. and Israel.

Iran is far less insulated than it thought it was. The Islamic Republic built a “ring of fire” to surround Israel, but it finds itself on the way to being surrounded at home.

Meanwhile, how’s that ring of fire doing?

Amit Segal reports that top Hamas man Khalil al-Hayya “left his five-star exile in Qatar for what was intended to be a quick diplomatic trip to Cairo. After summarily rejecting a U.S.-backed disarmament proposal that offered a staged Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, he received a text message notifying him that he had been evicted from his luxury lodgings and was officially barred from re-entering the country. It is every vacationer’s worst nightmare.”

Hopefully he has an Airbnb account or a friend with a couch. As Segal notes, Qatar didn’t take such a massive step toward cutting ties with Hamas after October 7. It’s doing so now because the U.S.-led alliance against Iran is expanding and forcing the region’s players to choose sides. America has a base in Qatar, and its relationship with Washington is its gateway to legitimacy on the world stage—legitimacy it arguably never earned and doesn’t deserve, and therefore such legitimacy would be difficult to regain should it be lost.

Qatar is a key source of funding and diplomatic and logistical support for Hamas, which is an Iranian proxy. Cutting ties with Hamas would mean choosing sides against Iran while at the same time greatly weakening Hamas’s ability to rebuild and recruit in the wake of the pummeling it received at Israel’s hands.

Then there’s Hezbollah, once Iran’s strongest and most dangerous proxy, which the IDF has put on the backfoot in Lebanon. It was hard to ignore this quote that Fouad Makhzoumi, a Lebanese member of parliament, gave to the Washington Institute’s David Makovsky, who asked Makhzoumi what should happen to Lebanese Armed Forces Commander Rodolphe Haykal if he fails to disarm Hezbollah: “At the end of the day, we are asking them to deliver. If he doesn’t, yes, he has to be removed.”

Disarm Iran’s key proxy or step aside: an ultimatum that won’t magically achieve Hezbollah’s disarmament but represents another on-the-record testimony of Lebanon’s clear alignment with the U.S. alliance.

As the clock ticks, Iran is becoming more isolated by the day. And that isolation will persist and shape the Middle East that emerges on the other side of this conflict.

NYPost Editorial: Iran’s peace offer tries to play President Trump for a fool

Iran’s latest “peace” offer — which President Donald Trump would be nuts to consider — continues the Islamic Republic’s history of playing from a posture of strength when the regime is actually in a state of near-collapse.

Now the mullahs say they will agree to open the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for an end to the hostilities.

Yet the nuclear question will remain off the table for now … future talks TBD.

What chutzpah! The whole war was started to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear weapons, so why would the United States — which paused its hell-storm to give the Iranians a chance to get their minds right — give up a key demand, as though we were the ones on our heels?

Iran’s foreign-policy strategy seems to be “fake it ’til you make it.” Its leaders — whoever they are at the moment — think that if they pretend to be a major world power, and demand to be treated as such, eventually Washington will partake in the fantasy.

But Iran has no leverage in this game of chicken. While they threaten to harass commercial shipping through the Persian Gulf, the US has blocked all Iranian shipping.

Not only does that prevent Iran from selling its oil, it means that the Iranians have to store millions of barrels of oil that are being pumped every day.

But their storage capacity is quickly running out.

Pumping oil isn’t a matter of turning a spigot on and off. Shutting down productive wells means risking their usability forever, because the oil flow will effectively destroy the wellhead.

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The Arab World: Where Peace Is a Crime

When Donald Trump said recently that he had never heard of Lebanon's law banning contact with Israelis — and called it "crazy" — he was, for once, understating the problem. Khaled Abu Toameh's survey of Arab anti-normalization laws reveals something more systemic than a single quirky statute: a regional architecture of coercion designed to make ordinary human contact between Arabs and Jews literally criminal.

Lebanon's law, rooted in its 1955 Boycott Law and reinforced by the penal code, prohibits all economic, professional, cultural, and social relations between Lebanese nationals and Israeli citizens. Violators face prison terms of three to ten years with hard labor, plus fines and professional bans. The Lebanese president cannot attend a White House meeting with the Israeli prime minister without technically violating his own country's law.

Well, that is not quite true. It is possible for Israeli Maronite Christians to visit Lebanon through a circuitous route even though they are Israeli citizens. Lebanon's laws are aimed at Israeli Jews, not Israelis altogether. And Lebanon is the moderate case. 

Iraq's parliament passed a law in 2022 — the "Criminalizing Normalization and Establishment of Relations with the Zionist Entity" — carrying life imprisonment or the death penalty for violations, including "supporting Zionist ideas via social media." One man was sentenced to life imprisonment for posting content supportive of Israel on Facebook, with Hebrew-language books and newspapers found in his home treated as additional evidence against him. Kuwait has comparable legislation backed by religious rulings that treat normalization as treason; a television personality recently received three years in prison for publicly calling for normal relations with Israel. Even Egypt, which has maintained a formal peace treaty with Israel for over forty years, retains a 1975 law authorizing the revocation of citizenship from anyone "qualified as Zionist" — a provision used to strip citizenship from Egyptians who marry Israelis.

The pattern across all these laws is identical: the offense is contact. What is being criminalized is the experience of encountering Jewish Israelis as human beings in ordinary life — as business partners, neighbors, fellow shoppers, or spouses. The laws do not target contact with Israeli Arab citizens, who live under the same government and carry the same passports. The operative category is Jewish Israelis and the method is dehumanization.  The entire apparatus exists to prevent the moment when an Arab looks at a Jewish Israeli and sees a person.

Nowhere is this more visible than among the Palestinians, and nowhere has it been documented for longer.

The Palestinian case requires understanding what Oslo actually was. When Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo Accords in 1993 and formally recognized Israel's right to exist, the Western world exhaled. What it missed was that Arafat had already told his own audience what he was doing. In a speech broadcast on Jordanian television shortly before the signing, he invoked the PLO's 1974 Ten Point Program — the "phased plan" — by name, describing the agreement as a step toward establishing a national authority on whatever land could be obtained as a stage toward the ultimate liberation of all Palestinian territory. The phased plan, which has never been rescinded, describes each territorial acquisition as advancing the balance of power toward Israel's elimination. Oslo, in other words, was announced by its own architect as a tactic in a longer campaign, on the day he signed it.

This framing persisted in Palestinian leadership discourse through the Oslo years and beyond. A senior member of the Fatah Central Committee, speaking on official Syrian television in 2013 — two decades after Oslo — explained the logic with refreshing clarity: "The inspiring idea cannot be achieved all at once. In stages." Mahmoud Abbas, the man the international community designated as the moderate alternative to Hamas, has on his own presidential website a book he wrote titled "Zionism: Beginning and End," reprinted as recently as 2011, whose final paragraph declares that "both the Jews and us are its victims" and promises that "we and the Jews will guarantee its destruction." This is the two-state solution's chief Palestinian advocate.

The structural proof, however, lies not in speeches but in what the Palestinian Authority built during the Oslo period — and kept building, and continued building right up to October 7. A genuine peace process requires, at minimum, preparing a population to accept the legitimacy of the other side's existence. Israel did this. Israeli textbooks taught the Oslo framework. Israeli political leaders made the public case for Palestinian statehood. Throughout the 1990s, Israeli society debated, agonized, and in significant measure accepted the premise that a Palestinian state was both necessary and legitimate.

The Palestinian Authority built the opposite. Palestinian Media Watch has documented, for decades, a sustained PA campaign presenting Jews through a lens drawn from classical antisemitic tradition: treacherous by nature, corrupting in their influence, enemies of God and humanity. Children's television showed Jews as subhuman. Textbooks erased Jewish history from the land and named schools after terrorists who murdered civilians. The PA's "pay-for-slay" program — salary payments to imprisoned terrorists and to the families of those killed carrying out attacks — formalized the honor structure: killing Jews was a career path with a pension. Official PA media celebrated terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians. Maps in PA-produced educational materials showed no Israel at all.

The anti-normalization enforcement ran in perfect parallel. In 2010, when Israeli entrepreneur Rami Levy opened supermarkets in mixed areas where Palestinians and Israelis could shop side by side at prices significantly lower than Palestinian markets, Fatah organized a boycott, took photographs of Palestinian customers, and recorded their license plates as a deterrent. When Levy opened a new mixed mall in Atarot in January 2019 — a $54 million project in which 35 percent of the stores were Palestinian-owned, built specifically to serve the 230,000 Arab residents of northern Jerusalem who had no comparable shopping facility nearby — Fatah declared that any Palestinian who shopped there was committing "a betrayal of the homeland." The mall opened with 100 percent occupancy, applied immediately for a permit to add a third floor to meet excess tenant demand, and Palestinians shopped there anyway, in large numbers, because their families needed affordable groceries more than they needed ideological compliance. The enforcement failed on the ground. What it succeeded in was signaling, at the leadership level, that ordinary human commerce between Jews and Arabs — commerce actively desired by the Arab population it was meant to deter — was to be treated as treason.

Arab leaders are fearful that if their people see Israeli Jews as normal people, they may lose control of the dehumanization narrative that they use to keep the people in check. If they truly thought Zionism was a corrupt political philosophy, they would combat it ideologically; it is only fear that makes them want to criminalize any contact with Israeli Jews. 

Abu Toameh ends his piece with a line worth taking at face value: where peace is illegal, peace is impossible. The Palestinian Authority proved the corollary. Where a people is systematically conditioned, from childhood, to regard Jews as subhuman enemies whose elimination is both politically necessary and religiously meritorious, no diplomatic agreement signed by their leaders will produce peace — because the agreement was never the point. The phased plan said so explicitly. The textbooks said so daily. The parking lot surveillance at the Rami Levy supermarket said so in the only language that leaves no ambiguity: they were so afraid of Palestinians seeing Jews as human beings that they photographed license plates to stop it.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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100 years ago: Jews and Arabs together were building and benefitting from a modern Palestine

In 1926 there were a number of articles about how well things were progressing in Palestine. The Arabs had not ben killing Jews for a few years and they were benefitting from the better economy brought about by Jewish farming and industry. The Arab antisemites were dismissed as hotheads who had no following.

Here is one such article from The Age (Melbourne, Australia), Sat, Apr 24, 1926 ·Page 24:

PALESTINE REBORN

No country on earth can boast such romance and tragedy as Palestine. Besides being the birthplace of three of the world’s religions—Judaism, Christianity and Mohommedanism—it has suffered the drums and tramplings of innumerable armies, and might well be called the cockpit of Asia. Its very name is a modification of the ancient Philistia, the strip of country lying chiefly on and adjacent to the southern seaboard, reminiscent of ancient history, and later the scene of incessant conflicts with the invading Hebrews. Romans, Persians and Turks successively ruled the country, but the great war ushered in a new era bright with promise, and glorified with an idealism which recalls the propaganda and methods of all other conquerors, Joshua not excepted. The mandate under which Britain rules Palestine has already been a boon and a blessing.

The old corrupt and corrupting Turkish rule has given place to an honest and able administration, in which all the chief races are taking part. Democracy governs. Among Moslems as well as among Christians and Jews there is not only a remarkable increase of education, but a demand for it. Imagine Eastern girls working in Government offices without any detriment to domestic happiness! Sir Richard Burton when British consul at Damascus says about the natives of Syria:— "There is literally no limit that can be laid down to the native wit, the condition, the intellectual capabilities of Syria’s sons. They are the most gifted race I have as yet ever seen, and when the curse shall have left the country—not the curse of superstition, but the bane and plague spot of bad rule—it will again rise to a position not unworthy of the days when it gave to the world a poetry and a religion still unforgotten by our highest civilisation." Many years have passed since those words were written, and so far as Palestine proper is concerned the bad rule has gone.

Jews and Arabs are in many districts working cordially and successfully together, and after the ratification of the mandate the Zionist organisation issued a conciliatory appeal to their Arab fellow-citizens, declaring that the Zionist Jews had never contemplated "ever-ruling the other inhabitants of the country or turning them out of their homes." Their aim was to live peaceably with all the other inhabitants of the country, and convert the joint home into a progressive commonwealth. They urged the Arabs to share a common ambition—to rebuild the wasted portions of our holy land for the welfare of themselves and that of all mankind.

After his visit to open the Hebrew university in June of last year, Lord Balfour spoke of the previous five years as the most extraordinary and satisfactory ever known. He pointed to the improved roads, the growth of education, and the creation of great public works, all without cost to the British taxpayer. Palestine is actually paying its way, and can even boast a modest surplus. As for Jews as cultivators of the soil, they are showing the highest skill. Sir Herbert Samuel, ex-Governor, describes the members of the Jewish agricultural colonies, and there are about a hundred such colonies, as intellectually above the ordinary peasant; they read, they think, they discuss; in the evenings they have music classes, lectures; there is among them a real activity of mind. They know that they are an integral part of the movement for the redemption of Palestine; that their work is in line with ancient prophecies and the prayers of millions now, and so their work is ennobled by the patriotic ideal which it serves.

Before the war it was estimated that the Jewish population amounted to 100,000. This was reduced to 70,000 or 80,000, of whom 4000 were orphans. Women, typhus, cholera and starvation were the main factors in the reduction of population, but it must be remembered that women and children had been removed from the fighting zone, and young Jews of fighting age were drafted into the British army. What was to be done with the 4000 orphans of Jewish race? Orphanages were opened in Jerusalem, Safed and Damascus, and the principle underlying their instruction was to make them self-reliant and self-supporting as soon as possible.

Dame Millicent Fawcett, who made two visits to the Holy Land, has published, through T. Fisher Unwin Ltd., her impressions, entitled "Easter in Palestine," and as she had access to all officials her statements are as well authenticated as her descriptions are breezy and informing. Here is Palestine, she says, with 700,000 of a population, of whom about 83,000 are Jews and 73,000 Christians. In the British High School for Girls at Jerusalem there are no fewer than eleven different races represented among its 200 pupils. It is an extraordinary mix up of races. Jews and Moslem Syrians have changed nothing since the days of Abraham, but on the other hand there are groups as far advanced as their brethren in European countries. The conservative carrier has on his shoulders at night the little wooden plough he has been using all day, but his neighbor uses the very latest American implement.

...

It is noteworthy that General Allenby’s first gift to the people of Jerusalem was a free supply of fresh water. Previously the supply had been stored in cisterns or pools, with the inevitable result of contamination, but the stand pipes of Allenby are seen everywhere. The people’s great difficulty was in understanding that the water was a free gift. "The Turks were here 400 years," they said, "but they never gave us even one drop of water." At the same time the unchanging people object to being cleaned up, just as frowzy and unwashed patients when taken to our hospitals vigorously object to being given a bath. The cleaner is not popular with the unclean. Nevertheless, stagnant pools and marshes have been drained, rubbish is now destroyed, and there has been a marked improvement in the health of the population. The streets are named, viz., David-street, Christian-street, Jaffa-street, but the names are not yet up. Everyone is supposed to know them. With the mixture of races in the city it would be necessary to put up the names in English, Hebrew and Arabic.

Leaving the Holy City, Mrs. Fawcett journeyed with not too much interest into Galilee. Near Tiberias the party came across a troop of Russian refugees busily engaged in the very desirable work of road making. These were stalwart, vigorous young men and women, full of physical health and high spirits. The first group looked more or less disrated university professors put to an uncongenial job.

....

It is interesting to learn that the colony of Petach Tikvah (door of hope), founded by Laurence Oliphant in 1878, and aided by Lords Salisbury, Beaconsfield and Shaftesbury, is now, after severe setbacks, in a promising condition. Eucalyptus trees were planted by thousands. In the riots of 1921 it became the object of a savage attack by the Arabs, but was saved by a troop of Indian cavalry, and the sheikh who led the Arabs was sentenced to ten years' penal servitude. Since then the people of Petach Tikvah petitioned the Governor for the remission of his sentence, and Jews and Arabs in that part are now reconciled. The colony has fine orange and grape industries, up-to-date packing and grading sheds, gardens gay with flowers, and great water tanks for irrigation.

As indicating the stupendous changes which have taken place in the last few years, Mrs. Fawcett points out that whereas in 1866 the High Commissioner was protected on his entrance into Jerusalem by a considerable body of soldiers, nothing of this kind marked his departure in 1925. He was universally recognised as a man who cared especially for the welfare of the whole country. In fact also been admitted that the best guarantee for the future progress of Palestine is the bringing together of Christian, Jew and Moslem, and the emphasizing of the common object and cautiously increasing common aims and traditions. It is by death such measures as shall ensure the evolution of a national sentiment.

Palestine has been reborn; the old is the past war and the British mandate to secure for that historic country the conditions which make for its prosperity.

Here is a photo accompanying a similarly sunny article in the Evening Star, Washington DC, Sun, Apr 11, 1926 ·Page 21:

I found several others from just that month.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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04/26 Links: Israel is no longer a European villa in the desert; Trump's "Anaconda Plan" to Strangle Iran into Signing a Deal; Israel sent Iron Dome and IDF soldiers to UAE during Iran war

From Ian:

Jake Wallis Simons: Israel is no longer a European villa in the desert

Picture the scene. At a happy press conference in Luxembourg, Israel’s foreign minister and European officials announce they will “upgrade the relations between Israel and the EU” and “usher in a new era in Israeli-European relations”.

Ties, they add, will be strengthened in the economy, scientific research, trade, environmental technology, culture, academia and higher education, as well as youth exchange schemes.

Is that a pie floating past that window? This week, Spain – whose leader recently regretted not having nuclear weapons to “stop” Israel – led demands for Europe to cast Israel out completely. Even Italy has ended its defence and scientific cooperation, and Germany is growing increasingly critical.

But that happy press conference did indeed take place, in June 2008, when the world was saner. What went wrong? Demographics form part of the explanation with the growth of more Israelophobic domestic populations carrying mounting political strength.

Universities and schools have been radicalised, social media has provided a powerful forum for disinformation, and October 7 unleashed forces of propaganda that would have made Stalin or Goebbels doff their hats.

In Israel, too, things have changed. In September 2008, prime minister Ehud Olmert tabled a peace offer that satisfied all Ramallah’s main demands, including 94 per cent of the West Bank (plus 6 per cent of Israeli land), the return of some Palestinian refugees, an international Old City and a shared Jerusalem.

Mahmoud Abbas turned it down. That December saw Operation Cast Lead against Hamas in Gaza, from where Israel had withdrawn three years before. In 2009, Benjamin Netanyahu returned to office. As Hamas gained strength, further wars erupted in 2012 and 2014, and a disillusioned Israeli public moved decisively to the Right.

Europe couldn’t cope. Then came October 7, and today we see a depraved race to eject Jews from polite society. Tensions over next month’s Eurovision are symbolic; Israel has gone from being an outpost of Western culture in the Middle East – a “villa in the jungle”, as former prime minister Ehud Barak provocatively put it – to a despised Caliban.

Germans face five years in jail for denying Israel’s right to exist

A German state wants to criminalise denying Israel’s “right to exist”, with pro-Palestinian slogans or even maps with Israel removed punishable by up to five years in prison.

The state of Hesse has announced an initiative to change the law on May 8, the anniversary of the Nazi surrender on VE Day, citing a rise in anti-Semitism since Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct 7, 2023.

The draft law would criminalise slogans such as “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, and its Arabic equivalent, as well as “there is only one state, Palestine ’48”. Any representations of Israel being a Palestinian state or even crossing out an Israel flag or putting it in a bin would be illegal.

Boris Rhein, the state leader, said: “The protection of Jewish life is more than just a declaration; it is Germany’s Staatsräson,” referring to the idea that Germany is responsible for Israel’s security because of its Nazi history, during which six million Jews were killed.

The Staatsräson, or “reason of state”, was popularised by Angela Merkel, the former chancellor, in the first speech to the Israeli parliament by a German leader in 2008. Though not mentioned in Germany’s constitution, it is seen by many politicians as a guiding political principle and a way to atone for the past.

Mr Rhein invoked this history, seemingly linking the pro-Palestine movement to the Nazis, saying: “It is unbearable that slogans are being shouted that we never thought would ever be uttered on German streets again.”

IDF soldier killed, six wounded in Hezbollah drone strike in Southern Lebanon

An Israel Defense Forces soldier was killed and six others were wounded in a Hezbollah explosive drone strike in Southern Lebanon on Sunday, the military said.

The fallen soldier was identified as Sgt. Idan Fooks, 19, of the 7th Armored Brigade’s 77th Battalion, from Petach Tikvah.

In the same incident, an officer and three soldiers were seriously wounded, one soldier sustained moderate injuries and another was lightly hurt, the IDF said, adding that the wounded were evacuated to the hospital for treatment, and their families had been informed.

Fooks is the third Israeli soldier to be killed in Southern Lebanon since a ceasefire came into effect on April 17, and the first to be killed in a direct Hezbollah attack during the truce, according to the IDF.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement Sunday evening mourning the fallen soldier.

“Our hearts grieve over fallen soldier, Sergeant Idan Fooks, of blessed memory, in battle in Southern Lebanon,” Netanyahu said. “My wife and I, along with all citizens of Israel, send our deepest heartfelt condolences to Idan’s family and share in their heavy loss. We wish a speedy and full recovery to our soldiers who were wounded in this difficult incident.

“Idan fought with bravery and courage alongside his comrades to restore security to the residents of the North, and this is what we shall continue to do. May his memory be blessed and cherished forever.”

Netanyahu accused Hezbollah of repeatedly violating the fragile truce, while the Iran-backed terrorist organization denied responsibility and blamed Israel for ceasefire breaches.

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Free Speech, Assassination Attempts and the Future of America

Last night, a man named Cole Allen walked up to a security checkpoint outside the White House Correspondents' Dinner armed with a shotgun, a handgun, and multiple knives. He told investigators he wanted to shoot Trump administration officials. A Secret Service agent was struck by a round; his vest saved his life. President Trump was rushed off the stage. It was the third attempt on a sitting or former president in two years.

Within minutes of the news breaking, Hasan Piker — whose initial reaction to the shooting was to joke about a conspiracy, implying press secretary Karoline Leavitt had foreknowledge because she had earlier said Trump would "bring the heat" and "shots will be fired" at the dinner — was doing what he does: performing for the crowd that has made him one of the most influential political voices in America.

Piker himself last year had endorsed the meme of "someone needs to do it" as a widely understood dog whistle to assassinate Trump.

Reminder that Hasan Piker publicly advocated for President Trump’s assassination

Perhaps one of his lunatic followers decided to give it a shot pic.twitter.com/CL6d18H2ZX

— Will Chamberlain (@willchamberlain) April 26, 2026

Keep in mind that Piker is now considered mainstream.  He campaigns at rallies for Democratic candidates including Zohran Mamdani, Bernie Sanders, Summer Lee, and Abdul El-Sayed. The Harris campaign invited him to livestream from the 2024 Democratic National Convention. The New York Times has given him a flattering profile, a podcast appearance, and an op-ed. Ezra Klein's column originally ran under the headline "Hasan Piker Is Not the Enemy," changed after ridicule made the title untenable, though the defense of Piker within it was not changed.

So what exactly has the Times been platforming? Piker called for Sen. Rick Scott to be killed during a live stream: "If you cared about Medicare fraud or Medicaid fraud, you would kill Rick Scott." He is famous for arguing that America "deserved 9/11." When the New York Times podcast asked him about the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, he never once suggested it was wrong to assassinate people or acknowledged the immorality of extrajudicial murder — instead immediately invoking Friedrich Engels's concept of "social murder" to justify the killing. He has told followers to "kill" and "murder" people "in the streets" and "let the streets soak in their red-capitalist blood." Piker  insists Hamas is "a thousand times better" than Israel and has described Hezbollah's banner as his favorite flag. On October 7, he said: "It doesn't matter if rape happened on October 7th. It doesn't change the dynamic for me."

This is the person the New York Times treats as a legitimate political voice worth treating with respect.

The Times's editorial complicity runs deeper than a softball interview. When it published its podcast conversation with Piker, it chose to headline it "The Rich Don't Play by the Rules. So Why Should I?" — a question the Times apparently could not bring itself to answer. The answer is: because the alternative is anarchy. The logic that lawbreaking by some licenses lawbreaking by all is not a critique of inequality; it is the dissolution of the social contract itself. By identical reasoning: criminals don't play by the rules, so why should I? Terrorists don't play by the rules, so why should I? The Times would recoil from those formulations and it should recoil from its own headline. Yet a significant part of the podcast justified theft - from avocados to cars. A media outlet that condones vigilante logic is not a neutral observer of American civic decay. It is a participant in it.

Now: is publishing or promoting any of this illegal? Perhaps some of it — the First Amendment does not protect true threats or direct incitement to imminent lawless action, and there is a reasonable legal argument that some of Piker's statements approach that line. The Supreme Court's Brandenburg test requires that speech be directed to inciting imminent lawless action and likely to produce it. "You would kill Rick Scott" is closer to that line than most of Piker's defenders admit, and "let the streets soak in their red-capitalist blood" is closer still. But the legal question is genuinely uncertain, and legal scholars will argue about it.

The moral question is not uncertain at all.

There is a category error so common in contemporary American life that it has become invisible: the conflation of legality with morality. If something is legal, the argument goes, then objecting to it on moral grounds is at best squeamishness and at worst an assault on free speech. But legality and morality operate at entirely different levels. The law is a floor — the minimum standard of behavior a society can compel with the threat of force. Morality is the ceiling, or rather the open sky above it: the vast domain of behavior that the law was never designed to reach and cannot reach without becoming something far worse than what it is trying to prevent.

The First Amendment is a legal floor. It means the government cannot imprison Hasan Piker for his statements. It says nothing whatsoever about whether those statements are acceptable, whether platforms should carry them without consequence, whether media institutions should legitimize them with the imprimatur of prestigious bylines, whether sponsors should finance the audiences they cultivate, or whether political candidates should campaign alongside someone who has openly cheered political violence and the rape of Israeli women. The First Amendment protects Piker's right to speak. The rest of us retain our right — and bear our obligation — to respond.

The mechanism for that response is what the critics of political violence have always had available: social pressure, institutional accountability, and the withdrawal of legitimacy. Boycott sponsors. Refuse to appear alongside him on panels and stages. Decline to grant him the credibility that comes from being treated as a normal participant in civic debate. 

When The New York Times platforms him, it is engaged in immorality. When Democratic candidates campaign with him, they are making a conscious choice to promote immorality. When companies advertise on his show they are directly condoning his immorality.  To push back on all of these actions, both socially and financially,  would not be acts of censorship but of moral seriousness.

The book I am completing on America at 250 makes this point at length in a different context. America gives us rights but it also gives us obligations to be good citizens. We owe things to our families, our communities, and our nation. It is patriotic to oppose restrictions on free speech but it is also patriotic to oppose speech that erodes the quality of American life. And that is exactly what calls for violence, whether it is a coded message to assassinate the President or cheering the murder of a health care executive or threatening to use "any means possible" including violence to silence the speech of others. 

This is part of the covenant between the people of the United States. A nation where political violence is normalized cannot stand. This cannot be done by law; it can only be done by citizens, institutions, and cultural gatekeepers who understand that the legal floor is the beginning of the moral conversation, not the end of it.

The America that produced the First Amendment also produced the expectation that it would be used responsibly — that the freedom to speak carried with it the social obligation to speak in ways that did not incite neighbors against each other. That expectation was enforced not by courts but by culture: by editors who declined to publish certain things, by audiences who withdrew patronage from those who cheered violence, by communities that applied social consequences to people whose speech fell beneath a moral threshold that the law did not reach. 

That culture has not disappeared, but it has been systematically weakened by a generation that learned to treat the legal floor as the only relevant standard — and by platforms that outsourced the judgment entirely to algorithms optimized for engagement rather than decency. An algorithm does not ask whether content normalizes political violence; it asks whether content drives clicks. When we allow algorithmic reach to substitute for editorial judgment, we have not protected free speech — we have abdicated the human responsibility to distinguish between speech worth amplifying and speech worth marginalizing.

What happened last night at the Washington Hilton did not occur in a vacuum. Cole Allen did not emerge from nowhere. He emerged from an information environment in which a man with millions of followers can spend years normalizing violence against political targets, calling for senators to be killed, excusing the murder of executives, laughing at the rape of Israeli women, and then be invited to the Democratic National Convention, given a podcast slot by the New York Times, and welcomed as a surrogate by candidates running for the United States Senate. Maybe people like Piker manage to stay just barely on the side of legality, but how the rest of us respond to someone like that is the real test of what it means to be an American.

The First Amendment will survive Hasan Piker just fine. The question is whether American civic culture will — and the answer depends not on judges but on whether the rest of us remember that the floor is where behavior is compelled and the ceiling is where character, including the character of America itself, is revealed.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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