Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, January 08, 2026

01/08 Links Pt2: Australia must answer this question before it investigates Bondi; Hamas document casts shadow over former EU envoy’s role in Gaza; Georgetown Taps Hamas Apologist Mehdi Hasan as Visiting Fellow

From Ian:

Hamas document casts shadow over former EU envoy’s role in Gaza

In the document, dated 28 September 2021, officials from Gaza’s Hamas-run interior ministry describe Kühn von Burgsdorff as “a professional figure” who “strongly supports and sympathises with the Palestinians”.

“He is demanding [that the EU] open official channels to engage with Hamas, but the public policy of the EU dismisses this,” the document states.

At the same time, Hamas officials acknowledge that the envoy’s stance did not reflect the EU’s institutional position and could change with his departure.

“The positive approach and inclinations of the EU representative to the Palestinian territories and his sympathy with the Palestinian cause are a personal approach, and this might change when the current EU representative changes, since the European position is committed to the red lines of American policies,” the document reads.

Asked about Hamas’ assessment of his conduct, Kühn von Burgsdorff told Euractiv that he acted fully within his mandate.

“I have defended the internationally enshrined right to self-determination of the Palestinian people in full compliance with and implementation of applicable EU policy,” he said.

He added that he consistently represented Brussels’ official position. “At no point have I made public statements that contradicted the EU’s officially adopted policy towards Israel and Palestine,” he said.

Last year, Kühn von Burgsdorff contributed two op-eds to Euractiv on the Gaza conflict, including one under the headline “The EU’s moral collapse”.

‘Jerusalemite martyrs’

The Hamas report also claims that Kühn von Burgsdorff was “hated by both the Israeli occupation and the Palestinian Authority” due to his solidarity with “Jerusalemite martyrs” whose homes were demolished, and his expressions of sympathy following the death in custody of Nizar Banat, a Palestinian activist and critic of the Palestinian Authority.

The document recommends strengthening coordination and communication between the EU and “Palestinian political, governmental and [Hamas] movement parties”.

Olga Deutsch, vice-president of NGO Monitor, said the documents confirm that Kühn von Burgsdorff “actively worked to undermine official EU anti-terror vetting policies”.

“It is deeply troubling to see a senior EU diplomat engage in open, ideological political advocacy, particularly when it serves an EU-designated terror group,” Deutsch told Euractiv. “In Hamas’ own words, he even ‘demanded’ the opening of official EU channels to engage with a proscribed terror organisation – an appalling subversion of EU regulations and a blatant contradiction of the Union’s public policy.”

She added that the EU must significantly strengthen its internal controls and vetting mechanisms. “How can the EU guarantee that its grantees are not engaging in terror glorification if it cannot even vouch for its own diplomats?” she said.

Amnesty International Refuses to Admit That Hamas Wants to Kill All Jews and Annihilate Israel

In its nearly 200-page report on the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, “Targeting Civilians: Murder, Hostage-Taking and Other Violations by Palestinian Armed Groups in Israel and Gaza,” Amnesty International omitted years of statements by Hamas leaders and language from its charter demonstrating genocidal intent against Jews.

This omission renders Amnesty’s account of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack fundamentally flawed — because it disregards strong evidence of Hamas’ genocidal intent and distorts both the nature of the massacre and Israel’s response.

According to the former Deputy Director of Amnesty’s now defunct Israel branch, Yariv Mohar, this report on Hamas’ attack was delayed by eight months. It had already been nearly finalized by the same time the organization released its December 2024 report, titled, “‘You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza.”

The organization, according to Mohar, told Israeli staff that the two reports would be published within weeks of one another.

According to Mohar, Amnesty delayed the Hamas report to keep the focus on Gaza, fearing that highlighting Hamas’ atrocities would undermine efforts to end the war. Mohar added that this was driven by a belief that Western audiences prefer a simplified moral narrative, and also because of Amnesty’s fear of backlash from its ultra-radical activist base.

Notably, the non-profit’s substantially longer Gaza report in 2024 used several out-of-context and debunked quotes by Israeli leaders to portray them as having genocidal intent.

Conversely, Amnesty’s treatment of Hamas sharply downplays the terror group’s own explicit ideology and objectives.

Hamas’ charter calls for the complete destruction of Israel as a condition for the liberation of Palestine, achieved through holy war (jihad). The charter specifically states that Hamas’ “struggle” is “against the Jews.”

Press Emblem Campaign Is the Latest Press Rights Org to Count Terrorists as Journalists

Since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war in 2023, the purportedly high number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces has been a consistent focus of mainstream media, social media pundits, and rights organizations.

At HonestReporting, we have been tracking this trend, noting that studies conducted by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Reporters Without Borders (RSF) on journalists killed in Gaza include a significant number of Palestinians who are affiliated with Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or other Gaza-based terror groups. This affiliation takes the form of serving in a military capacity on behalf of these terror groups, working for media organizations owned and operated by the terror groups, and spreading propaganda on their behalf.

Now we can add another press freedom organization to the ranks of those that whitewash terror-affiliated journalists and diminish the integrity of journalism in the Gaza Strip.

The Press Emblem Campaign (PEC), a Geneva-based organization that “aims at strengthening the legal protection and safety of journalists in zones of conflict and civil unrest or in dangerous missions,” has released its end-of-the-year statistics on journalists killed around the world in 2025.

According to the PEC, almost half the journalists killed in 2025 were killed in the Gaza Strip. However, a closer look at the 60 journalists reportedly killed in Gaza named by the PEC, 23 (roughly 38%) have some form of affiliation with Palestinian terror groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Among these 23 terror-affiliated journalists are nine who are alleged to have been terror operatives active in the Gaza Strip, 13 who worked for terror-affiliated media organizations, and one who served as a terror propagandist.

01/08 Links Pt1: How international law has been weaponized against Israel; Iran Is on the Edge of Revolution; US to proceed with Gaza phase two despite no Hamas disarmament and missing hostage

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: How international law has been weaponized against Israel

The ICJ case is a glaring example of how international law repudiates justice and truth in concert with its “human rights” enablers.

At the center of this web of hate squats the United Nations. People believe its self-designation as the ultimate custodian of peace and justice in the world. This is because it represents most of the world’s countries, and so plays into the pleasing fantasy of the brotherhood of man.

But most countries are dictatorships, kleptocracies or other human-rights abusers. These dominate the U.N. General Assembly, while the presence of tyrannical Russia and China on the U.N. Security Council makes a mockery of holding the world’s malefactors to account.

Last year, what was the number of times the General Assembly condemned Cuba, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, China, Sudan, Turkey, Hamas, Somalia, Pakistan, Lebanon or Venezuela? Zero. The number of times it condemned Israel? 15.

In its increasingly brutal crackdown against the current insurrection in Iran, the Tehran regime has killed at least 36 protesters. The number of U.N. resolutions or emergency sessions about this? Zero.

International law isn’t the pathway to a fairer and more civilized world. In its ferocious weaponization against Israel, it has been turned into the negation of justice and the legal instrument of evil.

The rules-based order has expired in disgrace. The only “might” it constrained was the ability of the victims of aggression to defend themselves. The only rule that should govern tackling evil is instead to bring about its total defeat.

The UN’s Apartheid Accusation: Political Narrative Over Facts on the Ground

It is now a well-established tactic to accuse Israel of any wrongdoing under the sun with a fancy name. Definitions get twisted deliberately in order to be leveled against the only Jewish state. Facts are either purposefully ignored or intentionally warped to fit a pre-determined narrative that frames Israel as a state continuously convicted of the most horrendous crimes.

The UN, on January 7, did exactly this yet again by accusing Israel of “racial segregation and apartheid” in the West Bank. The report spans several years, but focuses specifically on the period from October 7, 2023, to September 30, 2025.

Although the report has yet to make front page news in the vast majority of outlets – likely because the UN accusations leveled against Israel have unfortunately become commonplace and therefore unnewsworthy – the BBC wasted no time in publishing the story, displaying the outlet’s obsessive desire to push an anti-Israel agenda.

Counterterrorism Efforts in the West Bank
Incredibly, while the focus of the report is on the aftermath of the October 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas, the report merely skims over them. Had it recognized the severity of the attacks, the UN would then also have to acknowledge that Israel’s counterterrorism and security strategy shifted in real time to prevent terrorist attacks before they occurred and counter any perceived threats.

From October 7, the potential opening of a new front in the West Bank was not just some delusional possibility but a high likelihood, as Hamas and other terrorist organizations have established strongholds in several cities. Hamas even called on Palestinians living in the West Bank to carry out armed attacks against Israel in the immediate aftermath of October 7.

Any state that had just experienced a horrific terrorist attack against its civilians would be expected and indeed obliged to take more preventative and preemptive measures to ensure that nothing like that could ever occur again. This requires the IDF to implement new counterterrorism operations in hotbeds of terrorism such as Jenin and Tulkarm. This is not apartheid but counterterrorism and ensuring the safety of Israeli civilians.

The UN attempts to prove its point that the IDF is indiscriminately targeting Palestinians living in the West Bank, with a spike in deaths reported after October 7, using data provided by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Not only is the context of October 7 once again missing, but the UN also conveniently omits that many of these Palestinians were members of terrorist organizations, or operating as lone actors attempting to or committing terrorist attacks against Israelis. When the ongoing terrorist threat is considered alongside the fact that Israeli operations have been concentrated in cities long known as hotbeds of terrorism, the claim of indiscriminate targeting collapses under even minimal scrutiny.

While the UN attempts to draw a connection based on the disparity between Israeli and Palestinian fatalities in the West Bank, the data more accurately reflects the effectiveness of Israel’s counterterrorism operations, resulting in the reduction of Israeli fatalities.

The Palestinian Authority’s long game in Gaza

Western officials speak endlessly about “the day after” in Gaza, as if it were a technical planning exercise rather than a brutal political struggle. For the P.A., the real endgame is the day after the day after.

It seeks to return to Gaza not as one faction among many, but as an internationally installed authority—armed with donor funding, security guarantees and insulation from blame for the war that preceded its return.

This is why it has invested so heavily in cultivating diplomatic respectability while doing almost nothing to improve Palestinian lives anywhere outside the patronage networks of its dictator, Mahmoud Abbas, now 90 years old. It assumes that any multinational transitional authority will either fail or depart—and that the final choice will be between the P.A. and anarchy.

The P.A. is positioning itself accordingly, maneuvering to be included in any transitional governance framework, even if it is just a small role, so that it can gradually assume more control until inevitably it has the job. Long-term thinking is an Islamist strength the West struggles to match.

Gaza’s civilians bear the cost. Hamas sacrifices them on the altar of resistance; the P.A. on the altar of legitimacy. Palestinian suffering in Gaza is not incidental to the P.A.’s strategy; it is instrumental. Each war, each humanitarian collapse, each funeral deepens a claim that only its rule can restore order and international standing. The message is simple: “You may not like us, but look at the alternative.”

This logic has worked for decades. Israel alone has consistently challenged this cynical and destructive formula.

When the P.A. finally moves to reclaim Gaza, it will insist that Hamas and Israel are gone, and that responsibility for the devastation lies elsewhere—with Israel, the global community or history’s arch itself.

What it doesn’t want is continuity. It wants a reset without reckoning. The P.A. doesn’t want to govern Gaza as it is, but Gaza as a symbol: liberated, suffering and returned at last to “legitimate” Palestinian hands.

This type of strategy is not confusion or incompetence; it is patience, weaponized. It is the belief that international guilt will eventually converge to restore its power without demanding reform, compromise or courage.

Until this strategy is named honestly and confronted openly, Gaza’s future will remain bleak. It will continue to be ruled by those willing to destroy it—and claimed by those waiting to inherit the ruins.

Israelis Returning From Far-Flung Places Abroad Report Far-Flung Places Full Of Israelis (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Tel Aviv, January 8 - Post-military-service travel to various exotic locales remains a cultural touchstone among IDF veterans, an almost-inevitable opportunity to stretch the legs and the imagination after nearly three years of regimented army life - and, according to those who have participated in the customary trips, a surefire way to meet other compatriots, no matter how out-the-way the destination.

Israelis who have returned from their loosely-structured odysseys to India, Thailand, Brazil, Paris, New York, Cape Town, or myriad other international sites report that those myriad sites are infested with other Israelis.

Returnees who spent as little as two days and as much as seven months in such places as rural India, bucolic Vietnam, suave Copenhagen, and humid Rio de Janeiro noted how much Hebrew they heard while there.

"It's like I never left Ramat Gan," remarked Shir Elbaz, 22, who backpacked through Southeast Asia for four months after completing her service as a casualty-support social worker in the IDF. "I got to this green-as-you-can-imagine rice field not far from Saigon, just the picture of idyllic existence, and as I'm thanking the cart-driver who dropped me off, I hear another visitor offering a bite of a snack to his buddy, 'Yalla, rotze bis?'"

"It was the same thing in Phuket [Thailand]," she recalled. "My traveling companion and I were being really careful not to give anyone a pretext for anything, because you know how charged the topis of Israel can be almost anywhere, so we're communicating with each other only in English, and there's this group of guys hiking past in the other direction, chattering away in Hebrew without a care. Loud, too. Cringe."

Similar scenes played out for countless other young Israelis seeking solitude in the world's remotest corners, only to discover that solitude is apparently not on the menu when your fellow citizens are involved.

"It was surreal," said Eitan Cohen, 23, fresh off a six-month jaunt through South America. "I trekked three days into the Bolivian salt flats—literally the middle of nowhere, white as far as the eye can see, not a soul around—and there’s this group setting up camp, blasting Ofra Haza from a portable speaker. One guy spots my Teva sandals and yells, 'Achshli, motek! Where'd you serve?' I hadn't even opened my mouth."

Veterans of the post-army pilgrimage report that the phenomenon has only intensified in recent years, thanks to social media groups with helpful names like "Israelis in Goa—Who's Got Cheap MDMA?" and "Tel Avivians in Tulum—Shabbat Dinner?" These digital beacons ensure that no beach hut, jungle trek, or Ayurvedic retreat remains Israeli-free for long.

"I deliberately chose Svalbard," confessed Noa Levy, 21, who opted for the Arctic archipelago to escape the heat—and apparently her people. "Polar bears, midnight sun, total isolation. Perfect. Day two, I'm on a dog-sled tour, and the guide points out another sled team ahead. They're singing 'Hahayim Shelanu Tuttim' at the top of their lungs while passing around Bamba. I almost asked the huskies to turn around."

Travel agents specializing in Israeli youth report brisk business in "guaranteed Israeli-free" packages, once the exclusive province of the Arab League boycott. "We whisper them," admitted one agent on condition of anonymity. "Last time we mentioned a quiet village in Laos, it had a Chabad House within a week."

Psychologists attribute the inescapable Israeli swarm to a potent mix of wanderlust, herd mentality, and an unshakable conviction that wherever they go, the locals secretly crave hummus. "It's comforting," explained Dr. Yael Friedman. "After the army's intense camaraderie, they seek familiar chaos abroad. Also, they really like shouting in Hebrew at 2 a.m."

Back in Tel Aviv cafés, the returned travelers swap stories with wry grins, already planning their next escape. "Maybe Antarctica this time," muses Shir Elbaz. "I hear it's beautiful, empty, and cold enough that no one will want to grill there."

She paused. "Though someone will probably bring a mangal and a jembe drum anyway."

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Israel has been absurdly accused of "genocide" since 1948

The first time Israel was accused of genocide was in 1948 during the very drafting of the Genocide Convention, when the Syrian delegation tried to ensure Israeli actions would be considered genocide.

As detailed by Holocaust historian Norman J.W. Goda:

There was another attempt to link Israel to the Genocide Convention during its drafting. In an October 1948 meeting of the UN Legal Committee, which completed the draft convention for consideration by the General Assembly, Syrian delegate Salah Eddine Tarazi insisted that Article I, which defined genocide as “committed in time of peace or in time of war,” should be expanded by the phrase “or at any moment.” The reason, Tarazi said, was what he insisted was Israel’s illegal status. The UN partition resolution on its own, he said, did not create a state; it only recommended one. Thus, the Arab states’ intervention in May 1948 was “not a war” with another state, nor had it occurred “in a time of peace.” Rather it was an attempt at “restoring law and order” in Palestine. And whatever Israel was, Tarazi said, “the Jews had committed atrocities against Arab civilians during the campaign, and those crimes deserved to be punished.”

But Tarazi was not finished. The Syrians also made a proposal to expand the definition of genocide under Article II to include “Imposing measures intended to oblige members of the group to abandon their homes in order to escape the threat of subsequent ill treatment.” On October 23, Tarazi asked that it be included, because, as he put it, “. . . any measures directed towards forcing members of a group to leave their homes should be regarded as constituting genocide.” This crime, he said, was “far more serious than ill treatment.”

The next time Israel was accused of "genocide" at the UN was by the Soviet Union in 1976, calling Israeli actions in the territories "racial genocide."

The 1982 Lebanon War mainstreamed the "genocide" narrative. Arab and communist delegates at the UN debates repeatedly accused Israel of the crime.

Tunisia: "Forty years after Hitler and Nazism~ which we thought we had buried forever,, here we have Begin seeking to make history by resorting to the same terrible outlawed methods of genocide."

Syria: "Israel, supported by the immense destructive potential of the United States, is committing the crime of genocide against the Arabs in Palestine and in Lebanon in order to eradicate the traces of. the crime committed without equivocation and without shame in 1948 and then in 1967."

PLO: "In the affected areas of Lebanon, ....almost one million children according to the estimate of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), are victims of the most recent of Israel's acts of aggression and genocide, of Begin's holocaust of the Palestinian and Lebanese civilian population....The United States has played the role of dillying and. dallying, giving the Israeli's more time and more diplomatic ·and material support to proceed with their criminal onslaught, this holocaust, this campaign of genocide."

USSR: "Israeli troops are attempting to drovn in blood the struggle of the Palestinian people for their freedom and independence. But the policy of genocide being pursued against the Palestinians is doomed to failure."

Lebanon: "So many speakers have described the holocaust and genocide that my delegation's testimony here would be superfluous. May I, however, say once more how appreciative and how grateful we are for such manifestations of support and friendship?"

Here is a Soviet poster saying "Stop the genocide in Lebanon" with the word "Zionism" formed in the chains.

The next major accusation of genocide against Israel came not from nations but from NGOs. At the NGO Forum at the World Conference Against Racism in Durban in 2001, Israel is accused no less than four times of "acts of genocide" as well as apartheid, racism, ethnic cleansing and other crimes. This one sentence can be seen as the blueprint for NGO's attitudes towards Israel over the past 25 years:

Appalled by the on-going colonial military Israeli occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (the West Bank including Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip), we declare and call for an immediate end to the Israeli systematic perpetration of racist crimes including war crimes, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing (as defined in the Statute of the International Criminal Court), including uprooting by military attack, and the imposition of any and all restrictions and measures on the population to make life so difficult that the only option is to leave the area, and state terrorism against the Palestinian people, recognizing that all of these methods are designed to ensure the continuation of an exclusively Jewish state with a Jewish majority and the expansion of its borders to gain more land, driving out the indigenous Palestinian population.

These earlier accusations didn't even pretend to define genocide - they just declared it. I'm not sure if that is better or worse than current nations and NGOs who are purposely making up new definitions of the term and pretending they are authoritative.

In all cases, the provably false accusation comes before any facts. The narrative is that Israel is unfathomably evil, so genocide is a given; there is no attempt to first look at the real definition of genocide and see if the evidence fits. Whether by Syria, the PLO, the Soviet Union or Amnesty International, the accusation comes first, and the justification is either contrived later or not at all.

But then, like now, the driving force behind the accusation was antisemitism. Today everyone can see that the Syrians in 1948 and Soviets in 1982 and even the NGOs in 2001 were obviously antisemitic even as they all strenuously denied it; today's anti-Zionism is just as clearly antisemitic as its precursors for those who are willing to look at it objectively.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

ADL sees a significant drop in antisemitic incidents in 2025 compared to 2024

The ADL has a "heat map" of extremist incidents, including antisemitism, that they update throughout the year.

While all the incidents from 2025 have not yet been counted, it looks like there was a dramatic drop in antisemitic incidents last year compared to the previous two years.

They counted 3,059 incidents in 2025 through October. If we assume the same rate for the last two months of the year, this would mean less than 3,600 incidents, a sharp 60% decrease from the 9,355 counted in 2024.

In 2023, the number was 8,872, in 2022 it was 3,698 and in 2021 it was 2,717. It averaged about 2,000 per year from 2018-2020.

This major decrease was certainly not seen in New York City, where the number only slightly decreased from 345 to 330 last year, while the percentage of all hate crimes that were against Jews increased from 54% to 57%.

Even with the lower numbers, the sheer amount of incidents is numbing. Here are the incidents just from the last week of October 2025:

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

01/07 Links Pt2: Norman Podhoretz Leaves a Legacy of Political Principle; Calvin Coolidge’s “Hebraic Mortar”; Oct. 7 Hostages Reveal the Music That Helped Them Hold On

From Ian:

Norman Podhoretz Leaves a Legacy of Political Principle

Podhoretz’s death comes as the notion of even having political principles has become tenuous. On the left and right, many politicians and pundits refuse to criticize their own side. The principled and courageous perspective that marked Podhoretz’s life and writing, with a willingness to leave former allies, is rare. The few politicians who do it—like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, who broke with their party over January 6—often pay a price for being courageous, and lose their seats.

Today, publications like The Dispatch and The Free Press exist because their founders and many of their writers were unwilling to embrace progressive shibboleths or MAGA elements and thus had to leave institutions where they’d once belonged. Last month, Ben Shapiro, founder of The Daily Wire, demonstrated moral courage at a TPUSA event and may pay a price for it.

As a Christian who believes that human beings are made in the image of God, I resonated with Podhoretz’s perspective. We should we care about democracy and human rights around the world because humans are made in God’s image. Why should we battle Marxist and Islamist dictatorships and hope to see human flourishing expand through free markets, entrepreneurism, and innovation? Because people are made in the image of God. For Podhoretz, religion was not central, but his point of view had deep roots in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Podhoretz also understood the importance of stewardship regarding the Western canon of literature, philosophy, and stories. He was grateful for the gifts our forebearers bequeathed to us, and we should remember how his ideas shaped the understanding of Ronald Reagan, Kirkpatrick, and others who led the global movement to defeat the Soviet Union.

Podhoretz’s body of work reminds us that we don’t need to “make America great again,” because its principles, legal structure, history, and symbols are already great. It’s a treasury to be stewarded, as the Constitution says, to made more perfect rather than deconstructed.

Podhoretz’s legacy of principled stands based on deep moral conviction deserves remembering. As our Jewish friends often say at a moment of loss, may his memory be a blessing to us—a nation in search of its soul—at this fraught moment.

Seth Mandel: It Was Ever Thus

Review of 'Antisemitism, an American Tradition' by Pamela S. Nadell
Indeed, American history is littered with instances of full-blown anti-Jewish violence. When Major-General Ulysses S. Grant expelled all Jews from the territory under his control during the Civil War after accusing them of disloyalty to the Union, he didn’t “merely” cause them economic loss and social disruption. He also opened them up to vigilante attacks from citizens who were riled up by their war leader and took matters into their own hands.

The discrimination discovered in hospitals surely cost some Jewish patients their lives—doctors and relatives of deceased patients later testified as much. In 1902 on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, hundreds of Jews participating in a funeral procession were attacked by factory workers and then the police; some victims compared it to pogroms back in Russia. And then there were the immigration restrictions: Calling it “social anti-Semitism” was of no consolation to the many Jews around the world who were condemned to systematic murder in their home countries because the gates of America were closed to them.

The lesson that jumps off the pages of Nadell’s book is not that some forms of anti-Semitism are harmless but that all forms of anti-Semitism are connected and will, with the reliability of a law of physics, proceed toward violence unless acted upon by an outside force. Responding to the Damascus Affair, Nadell writes, U.S. Jews “honed strategies that they would employ to counter discrimination and persecution in the future. They held public meetings, lobbied the government, appealed to the press, welcomed allies, and stood up individually and collectively against antisemitism wherever and whenever it arose.”

Which is why Nadell’s concluding chapter is so important. She weaves together the post-10/7 wave of discrimination against Jews in major institutions and across party lines. In Nadell’s telling, that very much includes not just the post–October 7 atmosphere on campus but the two decades’ worth of buildup to this moment in colleges throughout the country. “The battle lines over antisemitism, anti-Zionism, and anti-Israelism—the disapproval or demonization of all things Israeli—on campus were drawn,” Nadell writes about such fights in the early years of the new century. “They would widen into deep trenches in the years to come. Jewish students and faculty experienced what they perceived as antisemitism no matter what others called it.”

Nadell should be commended for refusing to adjudicate the debate over terminology. What matters most is what is happening, not what name you give it. The goal of all these anti-Jewish and anti-Israel extremist movements is clear, ambitious, and evil: Exclude Jews from society, and put targets on their backs in the process. And they will ultimately fail so long as American Jews remain vigilant and willing to exercise their rights.

Calvin Coolidge’s “Hebraic Mortar”

In May 1925, President Calvin Coolidge offered a vivid tribute to the “Hebraic mortar … of American democracy.” It should have been a vanilla speech at a prosy Washington event—the dedication of a new Jewish community center. But Coolidge took stock of the moment; a century later, his address is worth revisiting.

Just a couple of years earlier, in 1923, Henry Ford—America’s great industrialist, in many ways the Elon Musk of his time—had dominated multiple presidential polls, trumping the incumbent, Warren G. Harding. Ford never announced his candidacy for the 1924 election, nor had he ever held elected office. But he had captured the American imagination as an avatar for business ingenuity, education reform, and general uplift for the American middle class. It is also undeniable that Ford sought to mainstream anti-Jewish sentiment in the United States. He ultimately endorsed Coolidge for president in December 1923, after Harding’s sudden death from a heart attack. In Coolidge’s 1925 speech to a largely Jewish crowd, he decisively broke with the anti-Jewish element of Ford’s movement.

In November 1920, Ford published the first installment of The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem. A multivolume anthology drawn from Ford’s anti-Jewish weekly, The Dearborn Independent, it was soon translated into sixteen languages—including six editions printed in Germany between 1920 and 1922. By the mid-1920s, the Dearborn Independent had reached a circulation of between 700,000 and 900,000. These numbers were in part due to the paper’s distribution in Ford automotive dealerships, but are nonetheless significant, considering that the New York Times had a circulation of 345,149 in 1925; the Chicago Tribune reached 608,130.

Of course, other forms of bigotry flourished in the teens and twenties. The 1915 silent film Birth of a Nation was banned in cities across the Midwest for its insulting depictions of black people. Despite these widespread restrictions, then–President Woodrow Wilson watched the film upon its release, in the first-ever movie screening held at the White House. Birth of a Nation soon inspired a new iteration of the anti-Catholic, racist, and anti-immigrant Ku Klux Klan. Hugo Black, the Alabama politician and sometime Klan member who eventually became a Supreme Court justice, built his early career attacking Catholicism; he delivered dozens of anti-Catholic speeches at Klan meetings across Alabama during his 1926 Senate campaign.

It was in this troubled atmosphere that Coolidge took the stage at a dedication ceremony for a community center, in 1925, “a year of dedications and rededications.” Hearkening to the start of the American Revolution in 1775, Coolidge attributed the success of the American project to a “common spiritual inspiration” powerful enough to “mold and weld together into a national unity, the many and scattered colonial communities that had been planted along the Atlantic seaboard.” He reminded his audience that tension among the early colonies seemed more organic and far more likely than cooperation. There was no guarantee that the colonies would form a national entity for revolution, and no clear idea of which colonies might agree to join it:

01/07 Links Pt1: Trump signs order withdrawing US from 66 global bodies, including 31 UN orgs; How Maduro’s Arrest Became Another Anti-Israel Campaign

From Ian:

Trump withdraws US from dozens of international and UN entities

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that the United States would withdraw from dozens of international and U.N. entities, including a key climate treaty and a U.N. body that promotes gender equality and women's empowerment, because they "operate contrary to U.S. national interests."

Among the 35 non-U.N. groups and 31 U.N. entities Trump listed in a memo, opens new tab to senior administration officials is the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change - described by many as the "bedrock" climate treaty which is parent agreement to the 2015 Paris climate deal.

The United States skipped the annual U.N. international climate summit last year for the first time in three decades.

"The United States would be the first country to walk away from the UNFCCC," said Manish Bapna, president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Every other nation is a member, in part because they recognize that even beyond the moral imperative of addressing climate change, having a seat at the table in those negotiations represents an ability to shape massive economic policy and opportunity," said Bapna.

The U.S. will also quit UN Women, which works for gender equality and the empowerment of women, and the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), the international body's agency focused on family planning as well as maternal and child health in more than 150 countries. The U.S. cut its funding for the UNFPA last year.

"For United Nations entities, withdrawal means ceasing participation in or funding to those entities to the extent permitted by law," reads the memo. Trump has already largely slashed voluntary funding to most U.N. agencies.

UN report accuses Israel of ‘systematic’ racial segregation, apartheid

A new report released on Wednesday by the office of Volker Türk, U.N. high commissioner for human rights, claims that “Israel is violating international law requiring states to prohibit and eradicate racial segregation and apartheid.”

The report, titled “Israel’s discriminatory administration of the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem,” argues that unequal treatment and abuses of Palestinians have intensified since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and Jerusalem’s subsequent military response.

“There is a systematic asphyxiation of the rights of Palestinians in the West Bank,” Türk stated, using the international term for the Judea and Samaria region. “Whether accessing water, school, rushing to hospital, visiting family or friends or harvesting olives—every aspect of life for Palestinians in the West Bank is controlled and curtailed by Israel’s discriminatory laws, policies and practices.”

“This is a particularly severe form of racial discrimination and segregation that resembles the kind of apartheid system we have seen before,” Türk added.

The Israeli mission to the U.N. in Geneva condemned the publication of the report, stating that Türk’s office “abuses its position and dire resources to issue yet another unmandated report against Israel” while “other mandates remain nixed on account of budget cuts.”

The Israeli mission said the report itself contains “absurd and distorted accusations of racial discrimination” which ignore “fundamental facts that lie at the basis of the conflict.”

Hamas-Linked Groups in UK Launch Campaign Demanding "Freedom for Palestinian Hostages"

The Palestinian Forum in Britain (PFB) and the Global Sumud Flotilla have launched a joint campaign, “Demanding Freedom for Palestinian Hostages.” The initiative invites supporters to take part in a red ribbon online action by updating their profile pictures and sharing videos or messages that feature the ribbon for “Palestinian hostages.” The campaign begins at 8 p.m. Jerusalem time on January 15th and leads up to coordinated street demonstrations on January 31st.

The campaign has drawn attention for its deliberate use of a red ribbon, a clear appropriation of the yellow ribbon that has become an internationally recognized symbol of solidarity with the 253 Israeli hostages abducted by Hamas during the October 7th terror attack. By adopting similar imagery and language, the campaign seeks to reframe convicted or detained terrorist prisoners as “hostages,” attempting to draw a moral equivalence between civilians kidnapped by Hamas and individuals imprisoned for terrorism related offenses.

The collaboration, promoted on social media in early January 2026, comes as UK Treasury investigators examine whether to impose sanctions on PFB leader and Freedom Flotilla Coalition International Zaher Birawi under counter-terrorism regulations. Both PFB and the Global Sumud Flotilla have documented ties to individuals and entities designated as terrorist organizations and operatives.

Birawi Under Investigation
According to the Telegraph, HM Treasury’s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation confirmed in December 2025 it is investigating Zaher Birawi for potential designation under Counter-Terrorism Sanctions Regulations 2019.

Birawi both chairs PFB and heads the International Committee for Breaking the Siege of Gaza. He has also called himself a “founding member” of the Freedom Flotilla International Coalition aid boat Madleen. He has denied all allegations, describing them as “baseless.” If sanctioned, he would face asset freezes and prohibitions on receiving funds or economic resources.

Labour MP Christian Wakeford named Birawi in Parliament in October 2023 as a “Hamas operative living in London” and asked, “Given the national security implications, can we have an urgent statement in Government time on what the Home Office is doing about Hamas operatives here in Britain?“ Israel designated Birawi as a main Hamas operative in Europe in 2013.

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely the responsibility of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

Back in November 2023 — only weeks after October 7 — Angelina Jolie accused Israel of bombing “a trapped population who have nowhere to flee.” She wrote: “Gaza has been an open-air prison for nearly two decades.”

Fast forward to January 2026. Jolie visits the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing into Gaza, ostensibly to check on injured Gazans and the flow of aid. And there she is: standing on the border with Gaza — in Egypt.

So here is the question that should be unavoidable now, even for celebrities who don’t do geography:

Did Jolie not know where she was standing?

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A post shared by Angelina Jolie (@angelinajolie)

Because there are two land borders with Gaza. One is with Israel. The other, with Egypt. If Gazans have “nowhere to flee,” it’s because of Egypt. Because Egypt has a border too — and refused to open it to the fleeing Gazan masses, most of whom are their cousins.

But Jolie does know where she is standing. She is standing on the border she ignored. She would have been well aware of it all along, because she served as a Special Envoy for UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. Surely she had at least a nodding acquaintance with borders and crossings.

Now, it is no longer possible for her to claim ignorance of this second border. Her inability to look at a map. Because she has stood at Rafah, on the Egyptian side of the border. Jolie should apologize for demonizing Israel. That she has failed to do so, proves what we already know: Angelina Jolie is an antisemite. She hates Jews.

There is no other explanation — she hates us too much to even contemplate an apology to the Israeli people, even at the expense of her integrity.

And still, there is no apology on her lips. Not a peep. No: “I’m sorry. I know it wasn’t Israel trapping the people of Gaza. That Egypt could have let the fleeing Gazan refugees in and given them safe harbor, but refused. Israel deserves my humblest apologies.”

But of course, there will be no such apology. Humble or otherwise. There never is.

Two borders, one ignored.

Because acknowledging the other would make Egypt the guilty party, the bad guy. And they want the bad guy to be Israel. They want to make Israel the bad guy for not letting them in after October 7— they want to blame the Jews, and increase hatred against them. Then come the protests that turn into riots, the riots that morph into bodily assault, and finally spiral into murder. A Jewish museum affords that opportunity. As does the home of a Jewish governor and his family, set on fire at night while they were asleep.

It's all the same. Two borders, one ignored — and finally erased.

Even as one stands right there on the border with Gaza. Even as the Angelina Jolies of the world lose their integrity, one by one:

Two borders, one ignored.

It's a lie that betrays a deep and evil hatred of Jews.

The people who will never disappear.

**
Please note that Jolie's father, Jon Voight, has been a staunch friend to Israel and the Jewish people. From Arutz 7:

Jolie’s criticism of Israel was met with a sharp response from her father, actor Jon Voight, who said his daughter “has no understanding of God's honor, God's truths" and added, “The Israeli army must protect thy soil, thy people. This is war. It's not going to be what the left thinks. It can't be ‘civil’ now. Israel was attacked by inhuman terror on innocent babies, mothers, fathers, [and] grandparents."

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What is missing from this 1940's Arab propaganda graphic? Hmmmm.....

This was the cover of the Lebanese "Photographer" (or "Images") magazine, apparently from 1945, with the flags of Arab states staked into the ground of British Mandate Palestine.

Notice what is missing: The Palestinian flag!

From the start, no one was interested in an independent Palestinian state. The entire point was always to destroy any chance for a Jewish state.

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.@Amnesty further expands the definition of "genocide" to keep Israel guilty forever

We've already seen how Amnesty International has made up its own legal definition of "genocide" just to accuse Israel of the worst crime imaginable.

What about after the ceasefire?

Oh, Amnesty says, the "genocide" didn't end.

Budour Hassan, Amnesty International's researcher for Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territory, made a video posted by Amnesty-UK saying that Israel's "genocide" isn't over, because it is still imposing "impossible conditions of life," including denying medical aid and medical evacuations.

Budour Hassan, Amnesty International's researcher for Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territory, shares her hopes for 2026 and why the ‘ceasefire’ does not mean the genocide against Palestinians has ended. pic.twitter.com/8MBlluKlRB
— Amnesty UK (@AmnestyUK) January 6, 2026

None of this is true. For example, UN OCHA reported two days before this video was published that "The January 2026 monthly general food assistance has begun with an adjusted ration size of two food parcels and two 25-kg bags of flour per family, covering 100 per cent of the minimum caloric requirement."

Israel never blocked medical aid or evacuations - but Hamas did.

Besides the lies, this is still a further expansion of the definition of genocide even beyond Amnesty's own previous made-up definition. Yet, amazingly, Amnesty has gone even further.

On December 30, Amnesty's Senior Director for Research, Advocacy, Policy & Campaigns, Erika Guevara Rosas, posted:

Israel’s decision to bar humanitarian organization, including @MSF, @NRC_Norway @CARE @Oxfam, from Gaza is not just an outrage, it is a deliberate escalation of its genocide against Palestinians.

Blocking life-saving aid while civilians face starvation, disease, and bombardment despite the so called ceasefire is a blatant violation of international law and an assault on humanity itself. This is collective punishment on a catastrophic scale.

None of this is true. Israel gave 10 months for international NGOs to comply with new rules to ensure that all their employees are vetted for terrorist ties. The ones that complied are still in business; the ones that refused are the ones who can no longer work. The vast majority of aid comes from the ones that complied.

For example, here was Israel's response to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF):

Israel’s registration protocol for international organizations operating in Gaza is a standard transparency and security mechanism, designed to prevent the exploitation of humanitarian infrastructure by Hamas — whether knowingly or unknowingly. Over 20 international organizations have fully complied with this process and continue to deliver humanitarian assistance on a large scale. Israel has actively supported and facilitated their operations.
In contrast, MSF has declined to meet these requirements, refusing to submit required personnel documentation despite repeated outreach. This refusal is especially concerning in light of verified cases involving MSF-employed individuals linked to terrorist activity, as well as ongoing engagement with Hamas-controlled entities such as the Gaza Ministry of Health.
This pattern of conduct has also drawn criticism from within MSF’s own leadership ranks - with a former MSF president publicly accusing the organization of acting as an accomplice to Hamas. read more

And of the ones who didn't comply, like MSF, they seem to have good reason - because their employees were often terrorists themselves.

One of the terrorists Israel killed, Fadi Al-Wadiya, was a physical therapist for MSF and a prominent terrorist in Islamic Jihad, serving as an expert on rockets, electronics and chemistry.

So Hamas violates the ceasefire, Israel is only killing terrorists who are attacking, more aid is coming through then at any point since 2023, there are no restrictions on medical aid or evacuations or any other humanitarian needs - and Amnesty is calling this "a deliberate escalation of its genocide against Palestinians."

This is conscious use of lies by Amnesty to extend the existing genocide libel alive. The sad part is that the enormous resources Amnesty is putting behind this slander means that it does far less publicity on real human rights issues worldwide.

This is how antisemitism warps how people think.

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I came across this fascinating bit of history, an anti-Zionist song originally written in Yiddish in 1931 and translated to English and Russian.

Here are the lyrics and their translations, because the Russian and Yiddish versions are more ironic:

Oy, ihr narishe tsionistn Mit ayer narishn seykhl Ihr mag dokh geyn tsu dem arbeter Un lernen bai im seykhl! Ihr vilt undz forn keyn Yerushalaim! Mir zaln dortn golodayen Mir viln beser zain in Rusnland Mir veln zikh bafrayen!	Oh, you foolish Zionists With your foolish minds You might as well go to the worker And learn some sense from him! You want to take us to Jerusalem! We'll starve to death there We'd rather stay in Russia We'll liberate ourselves!
Oh you foolish little Zionists With your utopian mentality You'd better go down to the factory And learn the worker's reality You want to take us to Jerusalem So we can die as a nation We'd rather stay in the Diaspora And fight for our liberation
Глупенькие сионисты Вы такие утописты Вы бы лучше шли в рабочие Или в трубочисты В Иерушалаим Идти за вами не желаем Мы в Рассее останемся - Бороться с Николаем!	You little foolish Zionists You're such utopians You'd better go become workers Or chimney sweeps To Jerusalem We don't want to follow you We'll stay here in Russia— To fight against Nikolai!

Ah, wasn't life wonderful for the Jews under communism?

Not to mention the irony of socialists calling Zionists "utopian."

The 1917 political poster on the top promised that Jewish culture would be preserved under communism. It promises "A democratic republic! Full civil rights for all! National autonomy for Jews!"

Their promises are the same ones we are hearing from the Democratic Socialists of America and New York's new mayor. And they are just as empty.

Yet anti-Zionist Jews romanticize the Bund as their model. Russia dissolved the Bund soon after the revolution, in 1921, yet these Jews still romanticize the very philosophy that destroyed them.

If they were only idiots, OK. But they want to drag all other Jews down to their dangerous depths of stupidity.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)