Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, May 08, 2026

05/07 Links Pt2: Boulder firebomber sentenced to life plus 2,128 years for murder; Israel’s Creation: The Ultimate ‘Decolonisation’ Project; From ‘Punch a Nazi’ to nominate one

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: The obvious truth about anti-Semitism

It is the same with the Prime Minister and MPs who have spent the past week saying that we need to tackle ‘hate’ and ‘extremism’. But what hate? And what extremism? Might the government ban the various Iranian proxies which seem to be behind this recent spate of attacks in Britain? Or are we to tackle all hate? And after we have tackled all hate what shall we move on to next? Gluttony? Avarice?

Ask people to get specific on these questions and almost everybody in any position of power melts away. Last week a member of the audience on the BBC’s Question Time asked the Green party’s deputy leader Rachel Millward to specify where the ‘hatred’ she mentioned is coming from. Millward assumed that look people assume when they know the truth but cannot speak it. She pretended to find the question imponderable before finally saying that the two men who were attacked in Golders Green were the victims of our ‘cost-of-living crisis’, ‘rip-off Britain’ and more. Which is strange, because our ancestors went through far worse economic times and I do not remember stabbing religiously identifiable Jews being one inevitable consequence.

Perhaps Millward, like her party’s leader, Zack Polanski, is hampered by a certain voting demographic and by people in the party? After all, the Greens’ other deputy leader is Mothin Ali, who appeared to celebrate the attacks of 7 October. On the day that Israeli citizens were raped, murdered and abducted from their homes, he tweeted: ‘White supremacist European settler colonialism must end!’ He also seemed to defend the slaughter of men, women and children by Hamas as being the right of ‘indigenous people to fight back’. On winning the subsequent local elections in Leeds he dedicated his win to ‘the people of Gaza’ and finished his victory speech with the trad-itional electoral cry of ‘Allahu Akbar’.

It is easy enough to point to Polanski’s Green party as being a special hotbed of anti-Semitism. Two of their candidates were actually arrested by the police for alleged anti-Semitism in the week of the Golders Green attack. But the problem isn’t with the Greens. It is with Britain as a whole.

I have said for too many years now that Britain is pursuing several things that make no sense. One is the pretence that turning a pretty homogenous society into a ‘multicultural society’ has no downsides: that it is a blessing and that – all together now – ‘diversity is our strength’. Whereas the fact is that if you import a lot of people who bring a backwards worldview into your country then at some stage diversity actually becomes your greatest weakness – especially if you go on pretending that even identifying the sources of contemporary anti-Semitism constitutes a different form of ‘hate’, ‘bigotry’ or even ‘racism’. Several British Muslims have admitted in recent years that anti-Semitism in Britain’s Muslim communities is ‘rife and commonplace’. We know that only a quarter of British Muslims believe Hamas carried out any rapes or murders on 7 October.

There are some very simple answers to all this. And we don’t need another ‘conversation’ in order to arrive at them.

Seth Mandel: A Tale of Two Commencement Addresses

Whenever I see a headline claiming that so-and-so was criticized or canceled for their “pro-Palestinian advocacy,” I usually try to find out what was actually said. In media terms, “pro-Palestinian advocacy” doesn’t mean that the person said “the Palestinians should have self-determination.” Rather, “pro-Palestinian advocacy” inevitably ends up meaning the person said something psychotic about Jews.

And of course, that’s what happened this week.

Rutgers University disinvited its engineering school’s commencement speaker, Rami Elghandour, who is the producer of a revisionist passion play about the Gaza war. I can understand Rami and his fans being disappointed at the cancellation, but you’d be hard-pressed to find them accurately characterizing Rami’s own conduct. Elghandour himself, for example, whined about being canceled for his “advocacy for Palestine.”

What he actually said was: Israel is “running dungeons where they train dogs to sexually assault prisoners.”

In other words, he’s a bit of a lunatic conspiracy theorist who wanted to take his blood libel tour to a college campus. No doubt his speech would have been highly entertaining, as he told a taxpayer-funded university all about “Jewish rape dogs” or whatever he might have said.

The accusations of Jewish sexual deviancy aren’t new, of course—the Hamasniks trying to storm synagogues in New York have taken to emphasizing their belief that Jews are pedophiles. Elghandour fits right in with the activist left and, one imagines, with many in his intended audience. That’s probably part of the reason for Rutgers’s skittishness here: How would it look when a commencement speaker told graduating college students about the importance of destroying the Jewish nation before the Jewish nation gets your kids—and having the crowd applaud in delirious ecstasy?

At the same time, what exactly did Rutgers expect when it invited him? He was on their radar because he’s famous for producing war propaganda. Aren’t they getting precisely what they asked for? You want to invite the sun with no light or heat? You invite the guy who’s famous for calling Jews child-murderers but want him to talk about engineering?

Boulder firebomber sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole, 2,128 years for murder and 100 others charges for antisemitic attack

Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 46, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole and 2,128 years, the maximum available sentence, after pleading guilty on Thursday to first-degree murder and 100 other charges for throwing Molotov cocktails at people rallying, on behalf of Hamas-held hostages, in Boulder, Colo., on June 1, 2025.

Karen Diamond, 82, died from injuries sustained in the attack. Soliman also injured 28 people and yelled “free Palestine” during the assault and expressed intent to kill Zionists.

Michael Dougherty, Boulder County district attorney, said at a press conference on Thursday that “this was an attack on the Jewish community and an act of terror.”

“Today we’ve seen the defendant held fully accountable and fully responsible for the horrific hate crime that he committed and the act of antisemitism he committed after planning it out and taking methodical and intentional steps to harm as many people in the Jewish community as he possibly could here in Boulder,” Dougherty said.

“The defendant is now going to spend the rest of his life in state prison, or federal prison, knowing he destroyed the lives of innocent, wonderful people,” the district attorney said. “And he killed Karen Diamond.”

“As much as this act was brutal and monstrous and horrific, it was also—and hear me loud and clear—cowardly, because you want to come to Boulder County, you want to go to any community and set innocent people on fire, you are truly a coward,” he added. “And we saw that reflected in the statements he made in court today, too.”

Stephen Redfearn, chief of the Boulder Police Department, said at the press conference that he is “very thankful” for the verdict.

“That verdict sent a message, not only to the offender but also to anybody who thinks they can come and harm our community,” he said. “This targeted attack against our Jewish community was unacceptable, and this verdict here today provides some sense of justice.”

“I’ve seen a lot in my career, and this was not my first response to an incident of mass violence,” he said. “But this was one of the most heinous and cowardly crimes that I have ever seen.”

Boulder County gov working with local Jews to commemorate anniversary of fatal attack on pro-Israel rally

The government of Boulder County, in Colorado, is working with representatives of the city’s Jewish community to find ways to mark the one-year anniversary of the June 21 attack against pro-Israel participants in Boulder Run for Their Lives.

The county government is doing so “mark this upcoming anniversary and ensure this tragedy is not forgotten,” it stated.

“Almost a year ago, on June 1, 2025, there was a heinous antisemitic attack on 29 members of the Boulder community during a peaceful gathering in front of the Boulder County Courthouse,” the county government said. “The community members were gathered for the weekly Boulder Run for Their Lives walk, and tragically, Karen Diamond died from her injuries.”

It invited members of the community who want to honor survivors and remember Diamond to come to the Boulder Jewish Festival on June 7.

05/07 Links Pt1: US hits Iranian launch sites, after IRGC fires on American destroyers in Strait; Hamas operatives are being trained in Turkey to launch attacks against Israel; Four more UNRWA staff found to have kidnapped Israelis on Oct. 7

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Israel's ability to defend itself must not be infringed upon, even if US, Iran reach a deal

Despite the pummeling Iran took during the March war, however, changing its stripes and agreeing to cast aside its nuclear aspirations aimed at leveling the Jewish state is a dubious prospect at best.

An Iranian official said the proposal was “more of a wish list than a reality.” On Wednesday, the semi-official Tasnim News Agency said the text contained “unacceptable clauses” and was propaganda “aimed at justifying Trump’s retreat from his recent hostile action.”

While Israel certainly wants an end to the war with an Iran that no longer poses a threat to its existence, what’s alarming about this process is that the government in Jerusalem seems to have no say in the process and is totally relying on Trump’s negotiating team, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, to represent its interests.

Although Israeli officials said they were unsurprised by the developments, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is likely understandably concerned over the deal at hand. He worries about the likelihood that Iran will not honor the agreement, along with the implications for Israel’s ongoing efforts to remove the Hezbollah threat from its northern border.

Whether it was a coincidence or a message that Israel is not going to let its hands be tied in Lebanon, the IDF attacked Hezbollah’s Radwan special forces in Beirut on Wednesday. This was the first attack in Lebanon’s capital in weeks, following the ceasefires with Iran on April 7 and with Hezbollah on April 17.

On Thursday, the IDF confirmed the killing of Hezbollah’s Radwan commander in Beirut, Ahmed Ghaleb Balout, who had directed dozens of attacks against Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon during the war, including anti-tank missile fire and explosive-device attacks.

Balout was also working to rebuild Radwan’s capabilities, including Hezbollah’s long-planned “Conquer the Galilee” invasion plan, the IDF said, adding that it would continue acting against threats to Israeli civilians and troops.

That’s the crux of the matter. An agreement between the US and Iran could theoretically weaken Tehran’s proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah. But it’s far from a foregone conclusion.

That’s why, along with the impression that the Lebanese government appears unwilling or unable to do anything about Hezbollah, Israel must maintain the freedom to act to safeguard the North – even if it results in a diplomatic conflict with Trump and the US.

WSJ Editorial: U.S. Red Lines in the Deal with the Iranian Regime

In nuclear talks, the Iranians are reviewing a U.S. framework which, if accepted, would lead to 30-day negotiations on a detailed agreement. From our discussions with senior officials, here's where U.S. red lines stand in the talks:
The U.S. says it needs Iran's attestation that it doesn't seek nuclear weapons; the dismantlement of the Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan facilities; a ban on underground nuclear work; and on-demand inspections with penalties for violations. The U.S. seeks a 20-year moratorium on Iranian nuclear enrichment and demands the handover of all enriched nuclear material.

Iran would have to reopen Hormuz - gradually, as the U.S. relaxes its blockade, and then fully with the final deal. Most U.S. sanctions relief would be tied to Iran's performance of the deal, not merely its signing, though some assets could be unfrozen to begin.

Dismantlement is more important than any "moratorium" on enrichment, which the U.S. and Israel have already stopped by force. Iran can't enrich now, and while that should be banned permanently, with this regime it's essential to remove facilities and capabilities.

Iran would love to focus solely on its 440 kg. of 60%-enriched uranium. The regime's 20% stockpile may sound less dangerous, but reaching that level is already 90% of the way to weapons-grade. It, too, has to go. The regime has thousands of kg. of uranium enriched to 5% and lower, a solid basis to restart a nuclear program if left in Iran.

Clifford D. May: For Iran's True Believers, a Serious Peace Deal Is Out of the Question

During a Senate hearing, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand told Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth why she is so vehemently opposed to the use of military force to address the threat posed by Tehran: "We did not have any evidence that Iran intended to imminently attack this country in any way, shape, or form!"

How odd of her not to reckon with the fact that by the time we had such evidence, it might well have been too late to do anything about it. Or maybe no evidence would come to light, and the attack would emerge from a clear blue sky as happened on Sept. 11, 2001.

Since 1979, "Death to America!" has been the openly stated - and regularly chanted - policy of Iran's self-proclaimed "Islamic revolutionaries" and their terrorist proxies. Prior to the June 2025 air campaign against Iran's nuclear sites, Iran's rulers "could have built a nuclear weapon with near certainty in less than six months," according to David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security. Is that not imminent enough?

When someone says he intends to kill you, it's essential to take him seriously. Former Iranian President Rafsanjani threatened that "the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything." Iran's rulers see themselves as jihadis fighting a holy war against the enemies of Allah. They can contemplate temporary ceasefires, periods of calm that allow them to rearm for the next battle. But a serious "peace deal" would be out of the question.

Iran Threatens To Cut Off Persian Gulf States’ Supply Of Slave Labor (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Iran Threatens To Cut Off Persian Gulf States’ Supply Of Slave Labor

Tehran, May 7 – In a dramatic escalation of its ongoing conflict with the United States, Israel, and reality, Iran announced Tuesday that it may soon deprive the Persian Gulf monarchies of their primary economic lifeline: millions of imported Asian and African workers laboring under conditions that human rights groups have politely described as "not ideal" and critics have more accurately labeled "modern slavery."

Iranian officials, speaking from bunkers thoughtfully decorated with portraits of the most recent Supreme Leader, warned that continued "Zionist aggression" could lead to a full cutoff of the kafala-sponsored workforce that keeps Dubai's skyscrapers gleaming, Qatar's stadiums staffed, and Saudi malls operational. "If the flow of expendable labor stops," said a Revolutionary Guard spokesman, "who will build their palaces while they sip date juice in air-conditioned tents?"

Gulf states import roughly 35 million migrant workers, who make up the vast majority of the population in places such as the UAE and Qatar. Under the kafala system, these laborers surrender their passports, endure squalid camps, and face legal bondage to employers—arrangements long defended as "cultural" by the same regimes that lecture the West on tolerance.

"Without these heroic proletarians risking their lives for pennies," the Iranian statement continued, "the sheikhs will have to vacuum their own Bentleys. Think of the inconvenience!"

The threat comes amid Iranian missile and drone strikes that have already killed dozens of foreign workers, stranded seafarers, and disrupted remittances — the very economic lifeline many poor families in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and beyond depend on. Gulf economies, built on the backs of men who can't change jobs without permission and women often trapped in domestic servitude, now face the prospect of actual labor shortages if the fighting intensifies.

Human rights organizations expressed deep concern. "This is a tragedy," said a representative from Amnesty International, who somehow found time between condemning Israel for existing. "Migrant workers deserve better than to be collateral damage in someone else's war — but we can talk about Qatar specifically some other time, please. You're making our fundraising department uncomfortable."

Analysts note that Iran, a regime that exports misery through proxies and crushes its own dissidents, now positions itself as the disruptor of Gulf exploitation. Meanwhile, the petro-monarchies, flush with cash from oil sales that fund everything except decent worker protections, suddenly remember they need "stability."

A senior Emirati official, speaking anonymously while his Filipino driver waited outside, dismissed the Iranian bluster. "They can threaten all they want. Our sponsorship system is built to last. These workers come voluntarily — for the opportunity."

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Francesca Albanese was in Athens last weekend to promote her new book, When the World Sleeps: Stories, Words and Wounds of Palestine. Speaking alongside former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, she offered Greeks a warning about their alliance with Israel:

You think that you have chosen Israel to guarantee peace against Türkiye. I don’t think so, Israel has picked you. Israel has chosen you, and it’s going to exploit your fears and your insecurity, because this is what Israel does to advance its regional hegemony.

This isn't policy analysis. This is antisemitic conspiracy theory.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is built on exactly one premise: a powerful Jewish collective secretly manipulates nations by exploiting their divisions, weaponizing their fears, and pursuing domination beneath a pretense of mutual interest. Albanese's formulation has every element of that framework. A secretive powerful actor has chosen Greece, is exploiting Greek psychological vulnerabilities, in service of a hidden agenda — regional hegemony — that Greece naively mistakes for common goals. Replace "Israel" with "the Elders of Zion" and there is no difference.

Some might argue that the Protocols is clearly antisemitic but impugning criminal intent to everything Israel does it not, because Israel does not represent all Jews. Yet the Elders were purportedly a small cabal of powerful Jews, not elected or supported by every Jewish person on earth. What exactly makes the Protocols antisemitic but identical language claiming Israel is secretly planning regional hegemony is not?

They are the exact same accusation.

The treatment of Israel is truly unique. Every other nation's decisions are judged using normal political analysis: Erdoğan's neo-Ottoman ideology and domestic political needs. Iran's regime survival imperatives and Shia crescent strategy. China's economic interests, doctrine, and institutional incentives. Israel alone is assumed evil at the outset and all analysis is using that prism. There is no need to dive into the factors that prompt Israel to want to partner with Greece, or the UAE, African nations or anyone else - it is all subsumed under "this is what Israel does." No explanation necessary; the hidden agenda of manipulating others for ultimate Jewish domination is assumed.

And the poor Greek government is too naive to know it is being manipulated by those brilliant Zionists. It makes decisions that it thinks are for its self-interest but are really part of the circles within circles of the vast Zionist plot. They don't stand a chance. Only even more brilliant people like Francesca Albanese can see through the deceptions and uncover the Zionist evil that animates everything in the world.

After all, Albanese alone noticed that Israel managed to manipulate the world to ignore "genocide" in Gaza. There was no media coverage, there were no daily protests tying up traffic in every major Western city, The world slept. Her book title — When the World Sleeps — proves it! The speech and the book are the same argument: there is a hidden truth about Israel that ordinary geopolitical analysis won't reveal, because Israel is uniquely defined by deception.

Those who argue that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism try to find edge cases that might show a difference between the two. But you can use the same methods to prove that Nazi-style racial antisemitism is not the same as medieval Christian antisemitism. In the end, the structure is the same. And Francesca Albanese, by using the term "this is what Israel does," is adopting the exact same structure as the Protocols.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The Center for the Study of Political Islam International) (CSPII) tracks the growth of jihadism and political Islam worldwide. But its new research brief on Islam in Israel shows not only the huge increase of Islamic organizations in the Jewish state, but also ends up proving that calling Israel Islamophobic or practicing "apartheid" is nothing but absurd.

CSPII's detailed analysis of Islamic organizational growth in Israel is drawn from the Israeli Ministry of Justice's official registry.

They find that there are currently 386 active Islamic organizations registered in Israel, operating across 125 cities and towns. The first was registered in 1952 — four years after Israel's founding, when the state that was supposedly engaged in ethnic cleansing was already registering Muslim charities. The growth since then has been exponential, with more Islamic organizations emerging in the last five years alone than in the entire decade from 2010 to 2020.

The infrastructure numbers are harder to dismiss. There are 126 organizations dedicated specifically to building and maintaining mosques, supporting 252 mosques nationwide. The Israeli government funds more than 100 of those mosques directly (as of 15 years ago) and pays the salaries of their imams. An additional 104 organizations are dedicated to Islamic education and da'wa. Nazareth alone hosts 34 Islamic organizations; Umm al-Fahm has 33.

The "apartheid" framework depends on a picture of a dominant group systematically denying a subordinate group the right to organize, worship, and build institutions. The data from Israel's own government registry makes that picture impossible to maintain. Apartheid South Africa did not fund Black churches or pay the salaries of their clergy. It did not register and protect hundreds of civil society organizations built around Black religious identity. Israel does all of this for its Muslim citizens — and has been doing it continuously since the early 1950s.

Bigotry exists everywhere, including Israel But occasional acts of discrimination— almost all from individuals — is not apartheid, it is not genocide, it is not "Jewish supremacy." Giving it those titles is propaganda.

The facts stubbornly refuse to support the lies.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

05/06 Links Pt2: Antizionism is a totalitarian conspiracy theory rotting the West from within; Michael Oren: The End of the Diaspora?; Zack Polanski is a joke that isn’t funny anymore

From Ian:

Allister Heath: Antizionism is a totalitarian conspiracy theory rotting the West from within

Antizionism is a psychosis dressed up as a theory of justice, the ultimate pathological, nihilistic, anti-Western brew, a disgusting concoction of Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, Third Worldism and critical theory, fused together with aspects of Nazism, Christian anti-Semitism, Islamism and Cold War Soviet nostrums.

The genocide libel justifies doing to Israel what the allies did to the Nazis. It trivialises the Holocaust, absolving Europeans of residual guilt. It banalises the actual genocidal behaviour of Islamist countries. It redefines normal military practices as illegitimate, making self-defence impossible. It rewards Hamas’s monstrous human shield strategy. It rationalises intifada terrorism as freedom-fighting.

Antizionists support a neo-Inquisition that identifies and cancels Zionists. They want to force British Jews to denounce Israel, to renounce friends and family, to pass a purity test. Modelled on the Cultural Revolution’s struggle sessions and the “taking of the knee” ritual, antizionists celebrate “good Jews”, in politics or the arts, who have turned against Israel, who have proved their loyalty, who “converted”, who humiliated themselves.

The antizionists have blood on their hands. Their lies have worked. They have radicalised white Lefties, and emboldened recently arrived extremists. The hatred is atavistic, and follows the pattern of a social contagion. Each time Israel is attacked, UK anti-Semitic violence instantly surges. Anti-Jewish pogroms trigger more Jew-hatred, especially when Israelis are raped and butchered.

Psychologists call this arousal transfer: one violent act heightens other people’s aggression level. Like sharks smelling blood in the water, violence against Jews triggers a quasi-ecstatic reaction in sick minds, and a collective bloodlust ensues. Maniacs detect weaknesses, and go in for the kill. Many suffer deindividuation: they lose their sense of self, and join in the mob.

Is that who we have become? Is the Leftist-Islamist alliance here to stay? Is anti-Semitism the New Normal? I refuse to accept it. This is not Britain. This is not us.

Exclusive: Labour’s Middle East policy let antisemites use antizionism as a cover, claims Badenoch

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has told the JC she believes Sir Keir Starmer’s Middle East policy has been picked up as a “signal” by “people who use antizionism as a cover for antisemitism”.

The leader of the opposition accused the prime minister of being “too preoccupied with his own problems” to consider the consequences of actions taken to “appease his backbenchers”, including recognising the state of Palestine.

In a wide-ranging interview, in Barnet, north London, on the final day of campaigning before tomorrow’s local elections, Badenoch also called for the Nakba Day protest scheduled for May 16 in the capital to be banned.

In critical comments the day after Starmer held a crisis summit on antisemitism at No10, Badenoch suggested his own government’s foreign policy had been at least in part responsible for the situation.

Looking back to the increasingly anti-Israel line Labour took after coming to power in 2024, she claimed that Starmer “had trouble with his backbenchers, his MPs weren’t supporting [him], and so he did things like recognising Palestine while there were still hostages held by Hamas.

“That sort of action, which he did to appease his backbenchers, sent a signal to a lot of people who have been using antizionism as a cover for antisemitism.

“I don’t think he realised the repercussions of those sorts of actions.”

The JC joined Badenoch on a campaign visit to Barnet the day before local elections, as she toured seven London boroughs in a Conservative-branded black cab.

She criticised some Labour MPs, as well as Green and pro-Gaza independent politicians, for extreme anti-Israel rhetoric and antisemitism.

‘Woefully inadequate’ plea deal, with just a year in jail, for man who killed elderly Jew in LA, Jewish groups say

The plea deal, under which Loay Abdel Fattah Alnaji, who admitted to charges related to the 2023 death of a 69-year-old Jewish man near Los Angeles, gets probation and a year in jail, is “woefully inadequate,” according to Joshua Burt, a regional director of the Anti-Defamation League.

It also “emboldens others to act in anger against the Jewish community,” Burt told JNS.

Alnaji, 52, pleaded guilty to all charges, including felony involuntary manslaughter and felony battery causing serious bodily injury, on Tuesday after initially pleading not guilty. Paul Kessler died from injuries sustained in an altercation with Alnaji on Nov. 5, 2023.

The attack occurred in Thousand Oaks, near Los Angeles, amid competing pro- and anti-Israel rallies. Alnaji struck Kessler with a megaphone, and the sexagenarian fell and hit his head on the pavement.

The Ventura County Superior Court has suggested it will place Alnaji on probation, with up to a year in jail, according to the county district attorney’s office. Erik Nasarenko, the district attorney, stated that “Alnaji should be sentenced to prison for his violent behavior, and our office strongly objects to any lesser sentence.”

Under state law, Alnaji could spend four years in jail.

Tom Dunlevy, supervising senior deputy district attorney for Ventura County, told JNS that “the judge offered probation if Alnaji pled guilty, but with a custodial sanction of up to 365 days in jail as a term of probation.”

“If the court places the defendant on probation, they then set the terms of probation,” he said. “One of those terms could be an amount of jail time up to a year in jail.”

05/06 Links Pt1: The ‘Palestinian Land’ Myth; Asymmetric warfare and the ayatollahs; Why Is the UAE ‘All-In’ on Its Relationship With Israel?

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The ‘Palestinian Land’ Myth

The idea behind this is as follows: Jews were massacred and their property stolen by Arabs, therefore Arab Palestinians have a right to it in perpetuity. They believe this is true of Jewish property in Jerusalem and Hebron as well, for example. This is a cornerstone of anti-Zionism, that Jews have no right to life or property.

Yet there’s another point to be made here besides the fact that the mayor of New York and a legion of progressive-aligned anti-Semites revealed their unique combination of ignorance and bad faith. There are a couple of problems with the whole concept of “Palestinian land.”

The first is that “Palestinian” here is used to mean “Arab.” The protest mob reportedly even chanted “From water to water, Palestine is Arab.” When they use the phrase “Palestinian land” they are declaring it Judenrein.

Second: If a Palestinian Arab personally owns a piece of land, that land is a Palestinian’s land, which is not the same thing as Palestinian national territory. From the perspective of national claims and sovereignty, it is, at most, disputed land. There have been two sovereign claimants to land on what is known as the West Bank: Israel and Jordan. Jordan relinquished its claims on the land decades ago. Israel has not annexed it. There is no Palestinian national claim to sovereignty, even if one believes that eventually turning it into Palestinian sovereign national territory is the only just resolution to the conflict.

Thus the Palestinian claim to disputed territory that was once occupied by the state of Jordan can best be described as “land the Palestinians want.” That’s fine! They are more than entitled to make demands in a negotiation process. And they should aspire to precisely the kind of statehood that Israelis—both Jews and Arabs—have built with its capital in Jerusalem. The state of Israel is a worthy model, and though successive Palestinian governments have rejected offers of statehood, perhaps they are reconsidering.

Israel did not invade a place called “Palestine” and take its land. It fought a defensive war against Jordan and won. “Palestinian land” is a concept of the future—if the Palestinians want it.

Trump and the Imaginary Iran Box By Abe Greenwald

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Critics of the war in Iran like to say that Donald Trump has “put himself in a box.” I doubt that’s true. But whether or not it is, Trump is acting as if his critics are correct.

The president’s frustrating unreadability served a tactical purpose at the start of the war. He didn’t want to telegraph any moves to the Iranians or indicate where his thinking was in terms of a timeline or endgame. But after more than two months, the endless vacillations and goalpost shifts, the stop-and-start rhythm of the U.S. operation, and its ever-changing characterization are starting to broadcast a sense of distress over the war.

It could very well be that Trump is still focused and resolute about Iran’s surrendering its fissile material. His decision yesterday to pause U.S. escorts through the Strait of Hormuz and work on a new peace proposal might be yet another expression of his noble but doomed hope that Iran will finally accede to American demands. He’s always been inclined to give peace a chance.

It could also be a head fake, allowing the U.S. to catch the regime off guard with some new kinetic initiative. That’s another Trump favorite.

Relatedly, this could all be an attempt to calm energy markets in advance of more fighting or an extension of the blockade.

But to Americans and Iranians alike, Trump is signaling U.S. weakness.

Not military weakness, there are no grounds for concern on that front. Perhaps, rather, a faltering of will. That’s been the undoing of American victory for decades.

Ruthie Blum: Asymmetric warfare and the ayatollahs

In an interview on May 3, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps spokesman Brig. Gen. Hossein Mohabi pointed out something that the West has trouble grasping about asymmetric warfare. “In the unequal battle we are facing, Iran’s armed forces will be the final victors,” he told the Islamic Republic of Iran News Network. “They fight with the culture of Ashura and consider surrender a disgrace for themselves.”

For Shi’ite Muslims, Ashura is a memorial marking the anniversary of the death of Husayn ibn Ali, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. Though he was killed during the Battle of Karbala in 680 C.E., Husayn is still held up as a hero who didn’t surrender to the massive army of the caliph, Yazid.

“Our model in today’s wars is [that] of Ashura—steadfastness in an unequal battle,” Mohabi said, describing Tehran’s current predicament.

Referring to the United State and Israel, he went on, “Our enemies are specifically one country and one regime with enormous equipment. America brought its latest defensive and offensive equipment to the battlefield. Our equipment and the number of our forces are very unequal compared to theirs.”

However, he said, “our spiritual power enabled us to stand against them.”

To clarify, he added, “In this arena, our fighter either wins or is martyred. Martyrdom is happiness for him. In such a situation, our forces do not falter.”

This wasn’t rhetorical bravado. It’s the essence of radical Islamism and the reason that the phenomenon has been nearly impossible to combat, let alone eradicate.

Mohabi admitted that Iran’s forces are outmatched in conventional terms, with fewer resources and an inferior arsenal. He didn’t mention his regime’s goal of obtaining nuclear weapons, of course. Not only has the Islamic Republic insisted that its nuclear program was always for “peaceful purposes,” but the enriched uranium in its possession was and is President Donald Trump’s casus belli.

So Mohabi steered away from that particular topic. He focused instead on the main weapon that compensates for the deficiencies he acknowledged: the willingness, even desire, to die as martyrs for the cause of regional and worldwide hegemony.

Herein lies the weakness of liberal democracies in the face of barbarism. Such societies sanctify life and human rights, and their militaries operate under legal, ethical and psychological restraints.

In the United States and Israel, for example, soldiers are trained to minimize civilian casualties and the governments that send them into battle and are held accountable by courts and public opinion. Jihadist states and organizations scoff at these practices, viewing them as the enemies’ Achilles’ heel.

The DSA Is More Radical Than Any Mainstream Left Party in the Western World

I previously wrote about the contradiction between Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib's membership in the Democratic Socialists of America and their oath of office to defend the Constitution.

The problem runs deeper. The DSA's goals are more anti-American, more illiberal, and more against the principles of the Democratic Party itself than the media tells you.

The DSA's current platform describes these goals:

Our goal is to put workers in charge of the government through a new democratic constitution that establishes civil, political, and democratic rights for all, is based on proportional representation in a single federal legislature, and ends the role of money in politics.

Reading this carefully, there is a glaring contradiction. The DSA program says that they would provide "civil, political, and democratic rights for all," but the only people allowed to be in charge of the government are "workers." This means that anyone who is not a worker under socialist theory — the McDonald's worker who just got promoted to assistant manager, the immigrant who scraped together money to open a bodega in Brooklyn and who hires a local teen to make deliveries, the hotdog pushcart vendor, the project manager at a high-tech company, the middle-class 401(k) holder who invests in the stock market and is therefore a partial owner of large corporations — is ineligible to be in the government. These non-workers do not have the right to participate in governing.

The socialists support rights, but not equal rights for all. Some 30% of the American workforce do not qualify as "workers" under the DSA definition because they are self-employed, managers, small business owners or supervisors. About 60% own equities through investments which means that they are partial owners of major corporations. Saying that a large portion of Americans cannot join the government is not only anti-American — it goes against everything the Western liberal world has stood for over the past two centuries: unalienable rights and the dignity of all humans.

The DSA can no longer be dismissed as a mere fringe group. DSA's membership grew from roughly 50,000 in October 2024 to over 90,000 by December 2025, nearly doubling in just over a year — fueled first by Trump's reelection and then by Mamdani's mayoral campaign. Over 250 DSA members now hold elected office across 40 states, with 90% of them elected after 2019 — including 96 city councilors and county commissioners, eight mayors or county executives, and significant council blocs in Chicago, Portland, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles. At the federal level it holds two House seats. And its most prominent recent success is Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York City.

The media has largely covered this as a sign of democratic vitality — an energized grassroots left finding its voice. What the media has declined to cover with equal energy is what DSA actually says it wants to do with that power, in its own words, in its own publications, discussed openly at its own conventions.

This next passage from the same platform makes the internal logic explicit:

"With a government by, for, and of the working class and with powerful labor unions and social movements organizing in every city and town, we hope to build a socialist society..."

This is a deliberate rewriting of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, where he said "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." The DSA wants that government to perish. It has replaced "the people" — all of them — with "the working class," a category DSA itself defines and controls.

This is not only an anti-American platform that cynically rewrites one of America's most important speeches — a speech that genuinely did champion equal rights for all people. It is a platform more extreme than anything found in the major parties of Europe. Even the Green parties, the most radical formations operating in mainstream Western parliaments — the ones willing to block traffic, disrupt fossil fuel infrastructure, and push the outer limits of acceptable political action — ground themselves explicitly in universal rights. The European Green Party states that its belief in democracy is "founded upon the mutual recognition of all individuals as equals" and explicitly invokes "inalienable rights" as the foundation of its politics. The British Greens are characterized by political scientists as holding "libertarian-universalistic values" — left, libertarian, and committed to universal rights without class qualification.

DSA's own platform acknowledges that its vision "pushes further than historic social democracy." This is accurate, and DSA means it as a boast. What the boast reveals is that DSA has stepped outside the liberal framework that every mainstream left party in the democratic world — Labour, the SPD, the Scandinavian social democrats, the Greens — operates within. Those parties argue about what the state owes its citizens. DSA is arguing about which citizens the state is for.

The DSA Is Not Part of the Democratic Party. It Says So Itself.

The media's framing of DSA as the Democratic Party's progressive wing isn't just imprecise — it inverts the reality. DSA doesn't consider itself part of the Democratic Party. Its own documents, conventions, and internal debates make this explicit.

Start with policy. The 2024 Democratic Party platform supports the existing Constitution, backs Israel as a key ally, calls for secure borders alongside expanded legal immigration, and supports funding accountable policing. DSA's platform calls for replacing the Constitution entirely, opposes any legitimacy for Israel, opposes all border enforcement as racist and anti-working-class, and treats policing as a capitalist tool of class control. These are not differences of degree. They are direct contradictions on foundational questions.

Then there is the strategy. DSA's dominant electoral approach — endorsed at its 2025 National Convention without serious dissent — is called the "dirty break." The concept is straightforward: run socialist candidates on the Democratic Party ballot line because third-party runs fail under America's winner-take-all electoral system, use those campaigns to build an independent organizational infrastructure, then abandon the Democratic Party entirely once DSA has accumulated enough power to survive on its own. The Democratic ballot line is a ladder. The plan has always been to kick it away.

This is not inferred from DSA's behavior. It is stated in DSA's own publications. One DSA-aligned outlet describes the Democratic Party as "the reactionary capitalist graveyard of social movements" and calls on DSA to break from it urgently. Another describes the dirty break strategy plainly: run on the Democratic line "but use their campaigns to build an independent party-like organization capable of eventually becoming strong enough to break from the Democratic Party." The Metro DC DSA chapter states plainly on its own website that it organizes "as a quasi-political party to build power independent from the corporate and wealthy interests that pull the Democratic Party to the right" — treating the Democratic Party as an obstacle to be worked around, not a home.

This is not a secret. It is debated openly in DSA publications, conventions, and strategy documents. The media's choice to describe DSA as the Democrats' left flank, rather than as a self-described Trojan horse using the Democratic ballot line as a temporary vehicle toward goals the Democratic Party itself explicitly rejects, is a failure of basic reporting.

The Leaders Who Don't Qualify Under Their Own Rules

If DSA's platform is taken seriously, its most prominent elected officials present a problem the organization has never resolved.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez worked as a bartender and waitress before her 2018 election — genuinely working class by almost any definition. She now earns $174,000 a year, employs a large staff, wields significant institutional power, and answers to no employer extracting surplus value from her labor. Rashida Tlaib spent a decade as a Michigan state representative before reaching Congress; her career has been in law and politics, not production. Zohran Mamdani is a former academic and career politician whose only non-political work experience was a stint as a housing counselor, almost certainly for a nonprofit or government agency, meaning he has never worked for an exploitative capitalist by DSA's own definition of the term.

Under DSA's Marxist class analysis, none of these people are workers. They are state functionaries and professional-managerial class members — the layer that orthodox Marxist theory regards with suspicion as structurally unreliable representatives of proletarian interests. DSA has built its public face out of people its own framework disqualifies, and has never acknowledged the contradiction, because acknowledging it would require applying the framework honestly.

The problem extends downward. Each of these officials employs a paid staff: schedulers, communications directors, legislative aides, district office workers. Those employees sell their labor to a boss who sets their pay, controls their working conditions, and can terminate them. Under DSA's own class analysis, AOC and Tlaib and Mamdani are not their staffs' comrades — they are their staffs' employers, which is precisely the relationship DSA's platform identifies as exploitation. The movement to liberate the working class is being led by professional politicians who are, on their own terms, exploiting the workers beneath them. DSA is willing to overlook its own foundational principles whenever the person being promoted is sufficiently well-credentialed and sufficiently useful — which is to say, whenever the principles become inconvenient.

Rights For Some

DSA's contempt for genuine equal rights doesn't remain abstract. Its platform endorses Palestinian terrorism as described in the ‘al-Thawabit’ principles set by the Palestinian National Council in 1977, which means treating armed attacks on Israeli civilians as legitimate political action. DSA has made this a near-expulsion issue internally, withdrawing its endorsement of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in part over her insufficient support for it.

Once you establish that some civilians' right to life is contingent on their political context — that Israeli civilians are legitimate targets because of the class or national position DSA assigns them — you have abandoned the premise that rights are universal. You have conceded that rights are political awards, granted to those on the correct side of the correct struggle and withheld from those who are not. Every subsequent guarantee of "rights for all" in DSA's platform rests on the same logic: rights exist for those whom the workers' government recognizes as deserving them.

History has seen this before. The Soviet constitution of 1936 — Stalin's constitution — was praised at the time as one of the most progressive documents ever written. It guaranteed free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and the inviolability of the person, for all Soviet citizens. The workers were supposedly in charge of the government. These rights existed on paper. What followed is known. The lesson is not that DSA will necessarily replicate Stalinist terror — it is that "rights for all" under "workers in charge" has a track record and it isn't good. There is nothing that the DSA, or Marxist theory in general, does to structurally block the system they want to build from becoming worse than what they want to replace.

The United States Constitution was designed precisely to prevent concentrated power, recognizing the potential for abuse. Its architecture of separated powers, checks and balances, federalism, and individual rights protections exists to ensure that no faction — however righteous its self-description — can accumulate enough power to silence those who disagree with it. The framers understood that the danger to liberty comes not from obvious tyrants but from movements convinced of their own virtue. They built a system that protects minorities, dissenters, and the politically disfavored against majorities who believe they have history on their side.

DSA's platform contains none of these safeguards. Its new democratic constitution would concentrate power in a single federal legislature, eliminate the Senate's counter-majoritarian role, gut judicial review, and place governance in the hands of a class defined by DSA itself. The people DSA disagrees with — the bodega owner, the assistant manager, the 401(k) holder, the Zionist — have no structural protection in this vision, only the goodwill of the workers' government. That goodwill, as the Soviet constitution demonstrated, is not a substitute for rights.

DSA is, in the end, everything it claims to oppose: a movement seeking concentrated power, using the language of liberation to justify removing rights from those it has decided don't deserve them, hiding an authoritarian logic inside democratic vocabulary. The Constitution it wants to replace was built by people who understood exactly this danger. That is why DSA wants to replace it.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Two sitting members of Congress belong to an organization whose official platform calls for demolishing the constitutional order they swore, repeatedly, to defend.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) and Rashida Tlaib (MI-12) are proud, card carrying members of the Democratic Socialists of America.

The DSA's official national program — "Workers Deserve More," adopted at a 2021 convention and carried forward through 2025-2026 — is explicit about what it wants:

"Our goal is to put workers in charge of the government through a new democratic constitution that establishes civil, political, and democratic rights for all, is based on proportional representation in a single federal legislature, and ends the role of money in politics."

The DSA demands a new constitution. It describes the current Constitution as a product of slaveholders and capitalists, one that must be superseded — not revised. They are not asking for amendments to the Constitution — only its destruction. The Senate would be abolished, the Electoral College eliminated, the Supreme Court's power of judicial review gutted.

Calling for this kind of constitutional demolition is entirely legal. Free speech in America protects even radical demands for systemic replacement, as long as they stop short of incitement to violence.

But if you are a member of the DSA, according to its own Constitution and Bylaws, you are required to "agree with the principles of the organization." The adopted national program is the "overall expression of the movement's aims." Joining is a formal act of subscription to those principles — including the one about replacing the constitutional framework.

This means that when AOC and Rashida Tlaib took their oaths of office after the 2021 "Workers Deserve More" platform, they supported the overthrow of the United States government.

And here is what they said in their oaths, every two years:

"I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion..."

AOC and Tlaib never renounced their membership of the DSA after its position was officially to uproot the Constitution. At the very least, they did not find that part of the platform to be unacceptable; at worst they actively support it.

And they then turn around and swear that they will defend the Constitution that their membership in DSA says they want to destroy.

Any reporter should ask them whether they agree that our country's Constitution must be abolished, and if not, why they are still members of the DSA. Every social media influencer should ask them this question all day every day until they respond. Because either they will be forced to denounce the DSA — or denounce the Constitution they swore to defend.

And this should lead to a more critical analysis of the DSA itself. The DSA is not just an American flavor of European socialist movements - it is more extreme than any mainstream European socialist party and it directly contradicts the liberal philosophy that underpins all of Western civilization. That is a topic for another essay.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

05/05 Links Pt2: Jews Now Live in a World Where Right and Wrong Have Been Reversed; Jordanian pleads guilty to lesser charge in murder of pro-Israel protester Paul Kessler

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Jews Now Live in a World Where Right and Wrong Have Been Reversed

The Palestinian cause and the fictitious Palestinian identity that underpins it are devoted to the destruction of Israel and the theft of the Jews' own ancestral history in the land. Far from being moral, it's an evil cause. The stock in trade of the Palestinian Arabs is to project their own crimes onto the Jews and to accuse the Jews in turn of committing atrocities of which they have, in fact, been the victims. Everyone who has perpetrated these lies is an accessory to murderous violence against Jews.

Horrifyingly, anti-Zionism and antisemitism have become so deeply ingrained in the West as an unchallenged narrative presenting Israel as the fount of all evil that they've developed into a belief system that defines an individual's moral identity.

The shocking outcome, therefore, is that the West has framed antisemitism and anti-Zionism as conscience itself. Small wonder that Jews and all decent people feel as if they're now inhabiting a looking-glass world where truth and lies, right and wrong, victim and aggressor have all been reversed.

Seth Mandel: Progressive Radicals Face No Resistance

Yesterday, Axios reported that longtime anti-Israel campaigner Maher Bitar, a former Biden administration intelligence official, will essentially be running the Democratic Party foreign-policy group founded by Jake Sullivan and Ben Rhodes. While Rhodes is held in low regard in the foreign-policy world, Sullivan is not. But the former national security adviser appears to be handing the torch to a veteran of the anti-Semitic BDS campaign against the Jewish state.

The key takeaway here is that there is almost no resistance within the party structure to the ascendant anti-Zionist contingent. There won’t be a fight for the party; there will simply be a process in which the old hand the reins to the new.

The Philadelphia Inquirer also reported that Chris Rabb, a state lawmaker running for Congress, shared a social media post that blamed the Bondi Beach massacre on “Zionists,” pushing a conspiracy theory that the whole attack was a Jewish false flag.

Rabb blamed a staffer and said he condemned the sentiment. But while Rabb’s post was grotesque, it wasn’t necessarily shocking. Last week, he campaigned with prominent progressive anti-Semitic influencer Hasan Piker, who backs Hamas over Israel and has used various slurs to refer to Jews.

As Jewish Insider notes, Rabb is in a competitive primary contest, but he has received the backing of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the leader of the anti-Israel congressional bloc and possible 2028 presidential candidate. He was also endorsed by Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen and Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.

And today the Washington Free Beacon reports a rather unsettling detail about one of the Democrats running for the party’s nomination for a New Jersey congressional seat. Adam Hamawy “was an associate of terrorist mastermind Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman—the ‘Blind Sheikh’—and served as a defense witness at the trial that ultimately saw the cleric put away for life, court records show.” The Beacon piece contains a number of interesting details about the friendship between Hamawy and the man connected to the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993.

Jonathan Tobin: Anti-Zionists who condemn antisemitic crimes are gaslighting us

Last week’s stabbing attack against two Jews in London’s Golders Green neighborhood was just the latest instance of what even local police agreed was an “epidemic” of antisemitic crimes. It was just one of many such incidents in the United Kingdom, the United States, continental Europe and Australia over the course of the last 31 months in which Jews were subjected to violence merely for being conspicuously Jewish.

Since the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab attacks on Israeli communities on Oct. 7, 2023, such incidents have become commonplace. The connection between the two is not a coincidence. That’s because the Oct. 7 attacks were the spark for a global surge of Jew-hatred. It’s rooted in the idea that the war to destroy Israel—for which the atrocities of Oct. 7 were just a trailer for what would happen to the rest of the Jewish state should Hamas and its allies triumph—was a righteous cause that enlightened progressives should support.

And in the name of this supposedly righteous cause of ending the one state on the planet that is Jewish, where half of the world’s Jews just happen to live, a lot of harm is being done to Jews elsewhere.

They don’t want to be called ‘antisemites’
The curious thing about the people who support these awful ideas is that they don’t wish to be considered antisemitic.

Listen to those like leftist podcaster Hasan Piker and former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan, who openly support Hamas, and they’ll tell you that while they support the destruction of Israel, they want to assure Jews in the Diaspora that they have nothing to fear from them. Or, at least, not as long as they don’t support Israel.

They are adamant in asserting that anti-Zionism—a movement that denies rights to Jews that no one would think to deny to any other group or people—is not the same thing as antisemitism. Indeed, like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, they are proud of their public advocacy against the Jewish state and their nonstop floating of lies about it committing horrible fictional crimes while denying or rationalizing the actual crimes committed against it and its people.

At the same time, they deny that this has anything to do with the unprecedented worldwide increase in acts of Jew-hatred. Piker was at pains to make this argument in, of all places, JTA, which was once the respected primary source of news about the Jewish world. He claims that he’s trying to fight antisemitism while leading the charge in favor of demonizing the Jews of Israel and their supporters abroad.

05/05 Links Pt1: Alan Dershowitz: Why Are Some in Our Media Cheering for Iran?; Trump pauses Strait of Hormuz operation; What We Learned From Today’s ‘Palestine Action’ Verdict

From Ian:

Alan Dershowitz: Why Are Some in Our Media Cheering for Iran?

It is shocking how many people with major media platforms would rather see Iran win its battle to preserve its nuclear program.

Both the U.S. and Israel are taking proper military action against a tyrannical and unlawful regime that might well use a nuclear arsenal against its enemies, were it be allowed to develop one.

Preventive wars against threatened nuclear attacks are justified both morally, legally, and under any theory of just war.

No decent person should be on Iran's side or remain ambivalent about the need to defeat Iran's genocidal ambitions.

No decent person should support Iran's repression and murder of tens of thousands of its own citizens just this year.

There can be little dispute about these democracies being on the right side in their conflict with a tyrannical regime sworn to their destruction.

The First Amendment gives Americans the right to cheer for Iran if they want, just as it gave them the right to cheer for Nazi Germany. But that doesn't mean that others don't also have the right to point out that they are wrong on the merits.

Palestinian activist says UK ‘betrays democracy’ by continuing to back Mahmoud Abbas

A Palestinian political activist has accused Britain and other Western governments of “betraying Palestinian democracy” by continuing to treat Mahmoud Abbas as the legitimate leader of the Palestinian people.

Samir Sinijlawi, an East Jerusalem-born activist and former Fatah youth figure, made the comments at an event at JW3 in north-west London, where he warned that the lack of democratic renewal in Palestinian politics was “dangerous for Palestinians and for Israelis”.

Speaking at Emerging Partners: Perspectives of a Palestinian Insider, Sinijlawi said: “Each leader of yours, when he hosts Abbas and receives him as a legitimate leader of the Palestinian, he is betraying the Palestinian democracy. He’s betraying everything that I am fighting for.”

He added: “We deserve democracy. You cannot tell us that democracy is good for you… and it’s not good for us.”

The event, for which Jewish News was a media partner, brought together organisations including We Democracy, UJS, Progressive Judaism, Yachad and the New Israel Fund, and was chaired by Sunday Times journalist Josh Glancy.

Aizenberg: Hamas Confirms: October 2023 IDF Strikes on Homes Targeted its Commanders

In October 2023, Israel’s opening air campaign in Gaza was often characterized as indiscriminate, with family homes struck and incidents catalogued as “civilian-only.” That conclusion rested on a faulty assumption: absent proof of combatant status, the dead were treated as civilians. In Gaza’s operating environment, where Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) dress in civilian clothing for combat, use private homes for weapon storage, as their leaders admit, as well as for command centers and tunnel shafts, that assumption was always going to misclassify outcomes.

Airwars is an NGO that catalogues fatalities in conflict and connects them to specific airstrikes. Its methodology in Gaza also defaulted to treating all those killed as civilians. Since Hamas hides its losses as a matter of policy, and Gazan residents also avoid disclosing combatant deaths, it follows that Airwars would classify the large majority of attacks as civilian-only. This produced the absurd claim that 96% of 606 assessed IDF airstrikes in October 2023 killed only civilians, which in turn fed the broader allegation that the IDF was deliberately targeting civilians and reinforced genocide claims.

That record is now changing. As Hamas and PIJ release martyr notices, often identifying commanders, many October strikes can now be reexamined in light of new disclosures. Incidents once cited as evidence of indiscriminate bombing are now being shown to have killed commanders located in residential structures. Civilian casualties remain and must be accounted for, along with the fact that Hamas and PIJ, by strategy, do not operate from traditional military bases. But the emerging evidence directly challenges the claim that these strikes lacked legitimate military targets and calls into question a methodology that defaulted to “civilian-only” in a context where combatant status was systematically concealed.

The following examples focus on strikes on family homes that were originally labeled “civilian-only” but are now shown to have killed commanders. They represent just a small sample of what has since been disclosed.