Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, December 10, 2025

Settler Colonialist Theory Is Wrong

In recent essays, I introduced two tools that have proven remarkably effective at slicing through political narratives masquerading as “theory.”

The first is the falsifiability audit, a razor-sharp test that simply asks: Does a theory depend on assumptions that can be disproven? And if those assumptions are false, does the theory collapse?

This is the method I used to demonstrate that the “Gaza genocide” accusation is not only false, but logically impossible once one identifies that one of a triad of load-bearing assumptions must be true for the accusation to be possible, and none of them hold. It is easy to make grand claims — it is much harder to survive a falsifiability audit.

The second tool is a distinction I drew last week between two competing models of truth in academia: Correspondence truth, used most often in hard sciences, where statements must match reality, and Coherence truth, usually seen in social sciences, where statements need only fit into an internally consistent narrative to be considered true. My argument was that much of modern academic theory has abandoned correspondence entirely and functions instead as a coherence machine. A theory survives not because it is true, but because it can endlessly reinterpret facts so they remain congruent with the internal story.

These two tools — falsifiability and coherence-testing — turn out to be extraordinarily effective when applied to perhaps the trendiest theory around: settler colonialism theory (SC).

In this article, I use both methods to demonstrate two related but distinct points:

Israel does not satisfy the defining assumptions of settler colonialism, and therefore SC cannot be applied to Israel.
This is a falsifiability failure.
Settler colonialism theory itself becomes incoherent when tested against real history, because it continually absorbs contradictory evidence rather than correspond to reality.
This is a coherence failure.

We will demonstrate that SC fails at the applied level and at the theoretical level.

It is not an analytic framework. It is a narrative.

PART I: Israel Fails the Falsifiability Audit — Settler Colonial Theory Cannot Apply

An analysis of academic papers finds that the number that argue that Israel is a settler-colonialist state outnumber those that argue the opposite by about 100-1 (and those that assume Israel's settler colonialism as fact dwarf these numbers.) But academic consensus does not equate to truth.

Settler colonialism has several load-bearing assumptions, both explicit and implicit. These are not optional. They define the theory. If even one is false in a given case, the application collapses.

Nearly all of them fail when applied to Israel within SC's own framework.

Below is a non-exhaustive list of the core assumptions and the corresponding disproofs.

1. Territorial Primacy Assumption — Settlers come for land as a resource

Settler colonialism presumes the settler group seeks territory for generic reasons: land, extraction, agriculture, strategic depth. But Zionism is unique in world history: Jews rejected alternative homelands like Uganda that have expansive areas to use (and exploit, under SC's model), and instead insisted on a tiny piece of land, much of it desert, where they have religious, historical and cultural ties.

Their motivation was identity, not acquisition. This alone disqualifies Israel from the model.

2. Non-Indigenous Settler Assumption — Settlers must come from outside with no ancestral ties

Jews view themselves as indigenous to the land of Israel. They have had a continuous physical presence, unbroken ritual and legal memory, linguistic, cultural, and genetic continuity and a documented history of forced exile and repeated attempts to return.

This collapses the core settler/native binary that SC theory requires.

3. Eliminatory Structure Assumption — Settlers must seek to erase or replace natives

Early Zionist writings, from Herzl to Ahad Ha’am, explicitly envision Arab-Jewish cooperation. Land was purchased, not seized. Arabs remained, grew, gained citizenship, representation, and full civil rights.

The prominent forms of Zionism never were eliminatory ideologies. They emphasized more Jews entering, not Arabs being expelled or eliminated.

This falsifies another load-bearing assumption of settler colonialism.

4. Racial Hierarchy Assumption — Settler identity must be racially supremacist

Israel is the least plausible racial project in modern history. The state absorbed Jews from Yemen, Morocco, Syria, Persia, and more recently Ethiopia and India.

The idea that Israel rests on a racial hierarchy is contradicted by Israel’s actual demographic composition and civic norms.

One can argue that SC is not really racially based, but its centering of capitalism as a key component of the settlers' incentive appears to be directed at European settlers more than any other kind.

5. Assimilation-as-Destruction Assumption — Native identity must be dissolved

Arabs in Israel speak their language, maintain their religion, run their schools, hold political office, operate independent media and maintain distinct cultural identities. The Israel Museum has major exhibits on Islamic and Christian Arab history in the land. Muslim archaeological sites are unearthed and preserved. Arabic is on highway signs, stamps and currency. Any attempts to explain this away veers into conspiracy theory.

No cultural elimination has occurred. Israel does not satisfy this assumption either.

6. Clear Native/Settler Boundary Assumption — Settler and native must be distinct categories

Significant numbers of Arabs migrated into Palestine during the late Ottoman and Mandate periods for economic opportunity, complicating the native/settler binary. Are they "settlers" under this model?

Jews were the majority of Jerusalem residents decades before modern Zionism emerged. Are they "natives" who were being eliminated by the settlers?

Reality does not produce the neat binaries the theory requires.

7. Invasion-as-Event Assumption — Settlement must occur through seizure or conquest

Most Zionist land was purchased legally from private owners. There was no invasion, no imperial metropole, no seizure campaign. The mechanism is incompatible with the theory’s model which is based on the concept of invasion.

Under the falsifiability audit, if a theory requires certain assumptions and those assumptions are false, the theory cannot be applied. As we have seen, many if not most of settler colonialism's load bearing assumptions do not fit Israel.

Therefore the classification is not merely mistaken. By SC's own rules, Israel fails its criteria.

We have now falsified nearly every defining assumption of SC as applied to Israel. No matter how many academic papers argue otherwise, if they cannot answer these straightforward points, they are simply wrong.

PART II: Settler Colonialism Theory Fails the Coherence Test — It No Longer Corresponds to Reality

A good theory fits reality. A bad theory retrofits reality. Whenever a critic points out that settler colonialism doesn't explain something real, it explains away the new fact as fitting the theory.

This means that settler colonialism is unfalsifiable - and that makes it essentially a conspiracy theory.

1. The Central Claim — “Invasion is a structure, not an event” — Is Empirically False

Patrick Wolfe’s famous line is the entire theory in seven words. If invasion is permanently structural, then indigenous empowerment within that model should be impossible.

But it is happening everywhere.

In Canada, indigenous sovereignty is expanding, land is being returned, and cultural revival is celebrated. In Australia, native title is recognized, indigenous parliamentary bodies exist and the government apologizes for past harm. In New Zealand there is shared governance, native language revival and treaty settlements.

If “invasion is a structure,” then these developments cannot occur. But they do. Therefore the core claim is false, which means that the theory collapses.

2. To Survive, the Theory Reinterprets Contradictions as Confirmation

Instead of accepting the failure, SC theorists resort to “coherence mode." Empowerment becomes “co-optation, ” sovereignty becomes “managed sovereignty," cultural revival becomes “neoliberal containment,” legal rights become “symbolic gestures, ” reconciliation becomes “masking the structure.”

This is exactly what a coherence-based worldview does: no evidence counts against the theory.

The colonial history of Latin America simply does not fit the settler-colonial model. European colonists intermarried extensively, adopted indigenous languages and customs, and created hybrid societies in which indigenous peoples were incorporated - often coercively, but not eliminated. This is the opposite of the rigid settler-native binary assumed by settler colonial theory. Yet SC theorists retroactively redefine cultural blending and mestizaje as forms of “elimination” so they can force the entire continent into a framework that was never designed for it.

That move exposes the theory’s core weakness: it survives not by describing reality, but by reshaping reality to preserve the theory.

SC advocates say that every counter-example is really part of a larger pattern of continued invasion, or that they are examples of native pushback and not settler accommodation. But no matter what happens, they cling to the theory over reality. The theory is unfalsifiable - no matter what the facts are.

A theory that cannot be wrong is not a theory. It is an ideology.

3. The Capitalism Criterion Reveals an Anti-European Bias, Not an Analytic Category

SC claims to be universal but restricts itself to post-1492 European contexts. The capitalism requirement excludes the Arab conquest of the Levant, Chinese settlement of Tibet and Xinjiang, Mongol replacement systems, African and indigenous American expansions, and Ottoman demographic restructuring.

These are functionally identical phenomena. There is nothing magic about "capitalism" that changes the either the settlers' actions or the effect on the natives. These other examples are excluded only because the theory’s purpose is political, not descriptive.

This is why the capitalism criterion works like a proxy variable: a way to smuggle an anti-European lens into a theory without admitting it.

4. Real Migration Is Too Complex for Settler Colonialism’s Binary Boxes

Human history includes refugees, persecuted minorities, voluntary migrants, shifting demographics, hybrid cultures, assimilation, resistance, revival, conquest and reversal. The Puritans came to America not to exploit land but to escape religious persecution. White and non-white people migrated to America in the 19th century for many reasons, and some themselves were discriminated against in the New World.

Settler colonialism cannot handle this complexity. It needs binaries - settler vs. native, dominator vs. dominated - that history simply does not obey.

5. Jewish History Further Exposes the Theory’s Contradictions

I have posited in the past that Jews are almost invariably a factor that confounds simplistic philosophies and theories. It is true here as well.

Jewish migration to America, Canada, and Australia was involuntary (fleeing persecution), non-imperial, non-capitalist, largely urban (not land-based,) and itself the target of racial and social exclusion.

Under SC logic, they are "white settlers." But this is absurd and, frankly, an antisemitic classification.
Thus SC must either classify Jews fleeing persecution as settlers, or invent an exception to avoid that conclusion which is intellectually dishonest.

Either way, the theory cannot explain reality.

Conclusion

Using the falsifiability audit and the coherence test yields two clear, unavoidable conclusions: Israel is not settler colonialist under the SC framework, and the framework itself cannot pass the coherence and falsifiability audits.

Its core prediction is false. Its resistance to disproof is ideological. Its criteria selectively shield certain histories and target others. It survives through coherence with progressive thinking, not correspondence to reality.

Social sciences often adopt the vocabulary of falsification and rigor, but resist their discipline. Settler colonialism theory is a perfect example: when subjected to scientific standards, it collapses, and then tries to rewrite reality to save itself.

A theory that cannot describe reality, that has no predictive power and cannot survive falsification has no place in serious analysis.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The BDS Movement published a statement from the Palestinian Sociological and Anthropological Association insisting that the Israeli Sociological Society remain suspended by the International Sociological Association.

The statement says idiotic things like "We study and document a society that survived the attempted genocide of 1948." (According to Benny Morris, there were more Jews killed in the war than Palestinian Arabs.)

But I wanted to find out more about this Palestinian Sociological and Anthropological Association. How many members does it have? What are its bylaws? How much does membership cost? Who is its president?

They do not have a working webpage.

They have an X account - 5 posts between 2018 and 2020, none since, only 2 followers.

They have a Facebook page - a few dozen posts but nothing at all since 2020.

No posts at all on their LinkedIn. 2 posts on their Instagram, the last one also in 2020.

The PSAA has been dormant by any definition. And it may have never existed in any real sense, although an archive of its 2018 webpage shows a couple of dozen members worldwide.

Which means that this academic association, like many Palestinian NGOs, is effectively the equivalent of the person in the basement who manages to portray himself as important. BDS is trumpeting this non-entity as if it means something.

"Palestine" likes to jloin international groups and forums to make itself look like a real state - but in the end, all it does it use that position as a platform to denigrate Israel. It was never interested in water conservation or climate or women's rights or any of the many other groups it joins. But it always tries to hijack the conversation to try to marginalize Israel.

And that is what we are seeing with this PSAA - a non-existent group that exists foe the sole purpose of issuing anti-Israel statements.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

12/09 Links Pt2: The Rise of Lifestyle Anti-Zionism; Oct. 7 communities: Still mourning but beginning to rebuild; Ireland Is a Wounded Tiger

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The Rise of Lifestyle Anti-Zionism

Zionism is at its core a simple belief in Jewish rights in Israel. Much of the time when pro-Palestinian activists in the West use the word Zionist, they mean “Jew.” But when they attack “Zionism” as a concept, they are making a political and ideological statement about coexistence. Anti-Zionists believe that rights are zero-sum, that Arabs in the historical Land of Israel cannot be free unless the Jews there are unfree.

Similarly, they believe that the safety and security of Palestinians must come at the expense of the safety and security of Jews. Outside of Israel, this includes Zionists—people who support or advocate for equal rights for Jews in their homeland. Anti-Zionism has become a totalizing worldview, an ideology of far greater expanse and application than Zionism itself ever was.

Anti-Zionism is an all-encompassing ideology now. It requires no association with the land of Zion. Anti-Zionism, like ISIS’s infamous “jihad in place” strategy, is about hating Jews and punishing their supporters wherever you happen to be. Think global, act local.

This is why we are seeing the founding of explicitly anti-Zionist political parties in Western Europe, of all places. And it’s why anti-Zionism has swallowed anti-colonialism as a discipline on campus. It’s why we’re even seeing the advent of anti-Zionist coffee shops. Opposition to equal rights for Jews is becoming a lifestyle for a growing number of Westerners. Now there is really no limit to what you can blame on the Jews.

Anti-Israel Celebrities Accept Major Saudi Payday To Attend Jeddah Film Festival

Some of Hollywood’s most ardent anti-Israel activists are flocking to Saudi Arabia this week for a government-sponsored film festival—and the kingdom is compensating them well for their time.

The Red Sea International Film Festival, which has been held annually in Jeddah since 2021 under the authority of the Saudi Ministry of Culture, has drawn a star-studded guest list including actors like Riz Ahmed, Juliette Binoche, Michael Caine, Kirsten Dunst, and Idris Elba—all of whom have accused Israel of committing atrocities in response to Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack and none of whom have spoken about Saudi Arabia’s human rights record.

The festival has been known to pay large sums to celebrity guests. Filmmaker Spike Lee received between $2.5 million and $3 million for presiding over the festival’s jury last year, Puck reported, though it is unclear how much this year’s jury president, Oscar-winning director Sean Baker, has received. A source familiar with the festival confirmed Saudi Arabia has compensated actors and filmmakers for attending, and NBC reported that "many [attendees are] set to receive checks." The festival said in a statement to NBC that it will "on occasion engage with talent on a contractual basis for work we ask them to do at the festival which includes labs, in conversations, mentorship sessions with emerging regional talent." Though representatives for the festival did not disclose the names of actors and filmmakers it is paying, Ahmed is a member of the jury, Dunst participated in a conversation on Thursday, and Elba will do so on Wednesday.

The film festival—and appearances from actors who frequently condemn Israel—comes after a group of U.S. comedians faced scrutiny for performing at the Riyadh Comedy Festival in September in the face of Saudi Arabia’s policing of speech and widespread human rights abuses. Comedian Shane Gillis, who turned down a "significant" payout, said he declined the offer because most of the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia.

"I’m not doing it," he said. "Then they doubled the bag. It was a significant bag. But I’d already said no. I took a principled stand. You don’t 9/11 your friends."

Dave Chappelle, meanwhile, used his performance at the festival to bash the United States—after signing a gag order shielding Saudi royals from criticism—because it was "easier to talk here than it is in America."

The Annual ‘Jesus Was a Palestinian’ Christmas Lie Is Back — and It’s Antisemitic

Each December, as holiday decorations go up and familiar music fills the air, another relatively new holiday ritual returns with equal predictability — social media fills with declarations that “Jesus was a Palestinian,” often joined by the equally fictional assertion that he was a “Palestinian refugee.”

These claims appear every Christmas season as reliably as ornaments and carols, as though the propagandists believe that repeating the lies might someday transform fiction into fact.

But this isn’t just a harmless anachronism — like depicting Moses checking Google Maps while wandering in the Sinai. It is part of a longstanding effort to erase Jews from their own history, an effort that has resurfaced in recent years precisely because it is politically useful.

The Truth Has Never Been in Dispute
Jesus lived and died as a Jew from Judea. He was born into a Jewish family, observed Jewish law, taught in synagogues, quoted Jewish scripture, and was addressed as “Rabbi” by his followers. Christian scripture traces his lineage directly to the kings of Judah.

No credible historian debates this. There is not a single academic school, anywhere, that regards Jesus as anything other than a Jew living in the Jewish homeland.

Denying the Jewishness of Jesus is not a new mistake. It is part of a familiar form of appropriation — including supersessionism (replacement theology) — that has targeted Jews for centuries.

The Colonialist Name Activists Pretend Was Ancient
The assertion that Jesus was “Palestinian” collapses instantly under the simplest timeline. During the first century CE, the land was known as Judea, Samaria, the Galilee, or the Land of Israel. At that time, there was no place or nation called “Palestine,” no “Palestinians,” and no political or cultural identity by that name. No person during Jesus’s lifetime ever referred to himself as a “Palestinian.” Claiming otherwise is like insisting that a Pilgrim stepping off the Mayflower in 1620 called himself an “American.”

Notably, the first political or national entity in history to use the word “Palestine” emerged nearly 2,000 years after Jesus, in 1920, when the British Empire established the “British Mandate for Palestine.”

And the Roman Empire only introduced the geographic term “Syria Palaestina” in 135 CE — a century after Jesus’ death — to punish Jews for the Bar Kokhba revolt and to try to break their connection to their own land.

Today, anti-Israel activists echo that Roman attempt at erasure and call it solidarity.

Dave Rich: We will fight tooth and nail for a better way of thinking

“What is anti-Zionism for, exactly?” The question was posed by Dr Dave Rich in his trenchant Robert Fine Memorial lecture to supporters of the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism.

And Rich, director of policy at the Community Security Trust, in a complex and detailed analysis of the thinking behind present-day anti-Zionism and antisemitism, had a simple and chilling answer.

“If we strip away the political sloganeering and academic ambiguities, it is a plot to kill a nation. That’s it. Anti-Zionism is a campaign, across decades and continents, to kill the nation of Israel, erase its name and its national identity from history, and replace it with something non-Jewish…Anti-Zionism is utterly unique, and fundamentally anti-democratic.”

In his searing lecture, Rich broke down the levers of anti-Zionism and antisemitism, using references ranging from the Star Wars Death Star to even more prosaic examples of everyday Jewish hatred. His audience laughed and shivered at much the same time.

He cited Loose Women’s Nadia Sawalha, who “took to social media to defend Louis Theroux, after his interview with Bobby Vylan, from what she called the ‘group of people’ who ‘live by their pound of flesh rule…So many of us are sick and tired of being bullied…the threat that has hung over our heads for years and years that we may be antisemitic — you’ve worn it out.” Rich commented: “There’s a brashness, a daring sense of freedom in finally saying what needs to be said about the Jews”.

Dave Rich: The Robert Fine Memorial Lecture: where are we now? (text)

12/09 Links Pt1: Netanyahu: "We're Not Going to Create a State that Will Be Committed to Our Destruction"; Doha Puts the Horseshoe on Full Display; Ron DeSantis Designates CAIR, Muslim Brotherhood as Foreign Terrorist Organizations

From Ian:

Netanyahu: "We're Not Going to Create a State that Will Be Committed to Our Destruction"

At a joint press conference with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: "The purpose of a Palestinian state is to destroy the one and only Jewish state. They already had a state in Gaza, a defective state, and it was used to try to destroy the one and only Jewish state. We believe there's a path to advance a broader peace with the Arab states and a path also to establish a workable peace with our Palestinian neighbors. But we're not going to create a state that will be committed to our destruction at our doorstep."

"We are obviously going to take care of our security. The one thing that we will always insist upon is that the sovereign power of security from the Jordan River, which is right here, to the Mediterranean Sea, which is right there, will always be in Israel's hands. And that means that Israel will control its destiny, continue to protect its security."

Hamas not committed to peace plan or disarming, Israeli foreign minister says

Israel’s foreign minister warned that Hamas is not committed to the US-backed peace deal, which calls for the terror group to cede its weapons, warning that the Jewish state would enforce the condition no matter what.

Speaking with The Post on Monday, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar slammed Hamas’ latest insistence that it would neither give up its arms nor cede power to an international board unless its demands for Palestinian statehood were met.

“We will give a fair chance to see whether we can get Hamas to disarm and Gaza de-militarization in the context of the plan,” Sa’ar said about the ongoing negotiations. “If not, we will have to do it ourselves.”

Sa’ar’s statement echoes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has repeatedly warned that war in Gaza could be reignited if Hamas fails to comply with the terms of the cease-fire deal.

Hamas’ leadership has recently claimed that it would give up power to Palestinian technocrats, as laid out in President Trump’s peace deal — but the terror group has fully rejected the formation of a Board of Peace set to rule Gaza in the interim.

“So I believe that if you read the statement that was given publicly this weekend, it doesn’t demonstrate that [you are] really committed to the peace plan and what it requires from them in the next stage,” Sa’ar explained.

The foreign minister also expressed distrust in Hamas’s willingness to cede power as it has effectively regained control of the 43% of the Gaza Strip not occupied by the Israeli military.

Seth Frantzman: Gaza ceasefire's Catch-22: Hamas delays disarmament as it calls for IDF withdrawal

Hamas is trying to slow-play the Gaza ceasefire deal so that it can eke out as much wiggle room as possible and remain in charge of the Gaza Strip. “We accept the deployment of UN forces as a separation force, tasked with monitoring the borders and ensuring compliance with the ceasefire in Gaza,” Hamas official Khalil Al-Hayya said recently.

The goal of Hamas now is to perpetuate a Catch-22 in the Strip, whereby it says it will only disarm if the IDF withdraws, knowing full well that the IDF won’t withdraw until the terror group disarms. As such, Hamas creates a situation in which it always has an excuse to do nothing. It assumes time is on its side. Hamas knows that Israel doesn’t want to return to fighting.

There is one hostage that must be returned. There is no major pressure in Israel or any incentive to go back to war.

Hamas also knows that Israeli officials don’t want the Palestinian Authority to run Gaza. As such, Hamas knows that the power vacuum in the Strip will also lead to de facto Hamas control.

For almost two decades, Hamas has relied on the assumption that Israeli officials prefer to have Hamas in Gaza in place of the PA, in order to divide the Strip from the West Bank. It thus benefits from this situation. Disarmament is also an amorphous term. Hamas assumes it can quietly find a way out of this obligation.

What is the regional media saying? Arab News noted last week that “Hamas said Saturday it was ready to hand over its weapons in the Gaza Strip to a Palestinian authority governing the territory on the condition that the Israeli army’s occupation ends.”

As noted above, Hayya said, “Our weapons are linked to the existence of the occupation and the aggression… If the occupation ends, these weapons will be placed under the authority of the state.”

Hamas also said: “We accept the deployment of UN forces as a separation force, tasked with monitoring the borders and ensuring compliance with the ceasefire in Gaza.”

I've mentioned Hussein Aboubakr Mansour before - a brilliant thinker who shows more knowledge of theology and philosophy in a single article than I can ever hope to learn in my lifetime.

I was most interested in his latest essay where he attempts to analyze antisemitism, which is of course a topic I have thought deeply about over the years.

Mansour's Substack article "Thou Art The Man," explores the theological roots of antisemitism by analyzing Jewish and Christian scriptural approaches to Jewish self-criticism. He correctly realizes that the sheer amount of criticism of Jews in the Hebrew Scriptures is unparalleled in any other culture, and correctly notes how other Abrahamic religions use those very criticisms as the launching pads for their own criticism of Jews. Yet, Mansour shows, the Hebrew Scripture self-criticism is not coming from the outside but from within, in his language it is not horizontal from outsiders but vertical from God. He then quotes the story of the prophet Nathan rebuking King David for his sin by giving him a parable, and David's realization that he is the guilty party when Nathan tells him "Thou art the Man" whom you just said should be put to death. This caused David to accept the criticism and admit his sin.

Mansour says that the New Testament, written by Jews, continues in this prophetic tradition and criticizes Jews from within, the vertical criticism. He claims that this was the original context of the New Testament's stories criticizing the Jews and their leaders at the time. Mansour references Martin Luther to argue that Christianity ultimately declared the “Thou art the man” moment impossible for mortal man without grace - it is a standard too high for fallen humanity. At this point, the inward-turning blade of prophetic critique is turned outward. The Jew, who had once stood as the moral subject of the Bible, becomes its object, and eventually, its scapegoat.

Thus, for Mansour, the descent into antisemitism is not a Christian betrayal of Jewish tradition, but a failure to sustain its deepest moral requirement: the willingness to judge oneself by one’s own sacred texts.

Here is where I disagree, and the disagreement has far reaching implications.

I do not see the New Testament criticism of Jews and Judaism to be an internal self-criticism. There were many Jewish sects at the time and they all disagreed with each other about fundamental principles. This was not inward facing criticism but criticism of the Other, no matter that everyone was Jewish. As far as I know, nothing in the New Testament positions the sinning Jews as "us." There is always an intermediary, an outsider as a foil or critic. And this is key.

The entire point of the withering self-criticism in the Hebrew Scriptures is to elicit repentance, teshuva. David's realization that he was "the man" was a paradigm of teshuva - the shattering realization of one's own shortcomings and the promise to change oneself into a better person. This teshuva ontology is the key to understanding the entire Prophets. Even the idol worshippers of Tarshish can engage in teshuva, much to the consternation of Jonah who fears the Jews will look bad by comparison.

This is the major split between the New Testament and the Hebrew Scriptures. In Christianity, teshuva is too hard - or impossible - to achieve. One needs help from God, grace, to get closer to Him. Man is too weak. This idea is anathema to Judaism, which admits it is difficult but achievable for all; it is the work of a lifetime.

Christianity's antisemitism doesn't come from Biblical criticism of Jews. It comes from the realization that Jews continued to exist and perform what was supposed to be impossible according to Christian philosophy. And, as my thesis throughout my journey researching antisemitism says, antisemitism is the eliminationist impulse that comes when philosophies - religious or secular - cannot accommodate the existence of Jews.

Luther said Jewish style repentance is impossible. Yet Jews exist and refuse to convert to a system that is supposed to replace teshuva with grace. Therefore, their very existence is a refutation of his very philosophy - and as a result, they must be eliminated as a religious group. Luther cannot admit he is wrong - that would be, to him, the literally impossible teshuva.

Mansour identifies that the Christian tradition saw “Thou art the man” as unsustainable. But he doesn’t ask why. The answer is that Christianity rejected the concept that human beings could take full moral responsibility. They didn’t want that responsibility.

The rejection of teshuva is not just theological. It’s psychological. It’s existential. Grace was not just a gift - it was a release from obligation. Everyone understands that real teshuva, real repentance, is hard. Admitting it is possible makes it obviously preferable, which collapses the philosophy that replaces it.

This rupture is compounded by another move: Christianity’s universalization of the covenant. What was once a sacred path for a small, specific people becomes a message for the entire world. And that universalization requires the Jews to step aside.

But Judaism never claimed to be for everyone. The Torah’s demands are absurdly high, and intentionally so. They were meant for a particular people, bound in covenantal responsibility. Christianity flattens this into a one-size-fits-all framework, and then offers grace as the mechanism by which the burden is lifted.

But in doing so, it severs the relationship between effort and meaning. It transforms responsibility into guilt, and guilt into helplessness.

And the Jews? They remain, because they refuse to outsource moral responsibility.

And this is not limited to Christianity. Every system that promises moral closure, whether religious, secular, Marxist, or nationalist, will eventually find the Jew unbearable. Because Jewish thinking is not a moral conclusion. Jewish thinking is a moral process that does not let people off the hook.

Mansour’s insight - that antisemitism emerges from the breakdown of inward critique - is powerful, but it is incomplete. Teshuva is the missing piece, the glue that holds the Jewish texts together, the layer of responsibility that so many want to run away from. Without teshuva, prophetic critique is nonsensical, or an excuse for projection against Jews.

Modern antisemitism isn't a secularization of Christianity's misreading of the New Testament - it is a secularization of Christianity's rejection of Jews because they simply do not fit their philosophy.

UPDATE: Mansour gave a thoughtful response to me on Substack.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The "America-First" Right Is Being Played

Something troubling is unfolding inside the conservative movement. For the first time in decades, a loud faction of younger “America First” activists has turned not just skeptical of Israel, but openly hostile toward it, complete with parallel antisemitic messaging.

And what stands out most is how familiar their language sounds. It is not the language of traditional conservatism or even of principled nationalism. It is the rhetoric of the academic Left, the campus radicals, the DEI bureaucrats, and the post-colonial theorists who spent years constructing a vocabulary of oppression designed to delegitimize the West.

That vocabulary has now been adopted wholesale by the anti-Israel Right. They declare, as fact, that Israel is committing “genocide” and “apartheid,” that Palestinians are “victims” in a zero-sum morality play, and that the Jewish state is inherently illegitimate. None of these claims are true – and none of them are conservative ideas. They are all imported lies from the progressive movement.

None of this happened organically. It did not emerge from a sober rethinking of American strategic interests or from serious foreign-policy debate. This shift was engineered, amplified, and fed into their social-media feeds by the very forces they believe they are resisting.

The truth is uncomfortable but undeniable: today’s young conservatives are being played.

They are repeating the same progressive narratives they claim to despise, while believing themselves to be bravely rebelling against the establishment. They are being manipulated by foreign influence campaigns, shaped by malign online ecosystems, and nudged along by grifters who understand that antisemitism is the quickest path to viral engagement. And they are doing it without realizing that the ideas they treat as edgy and “based” were born in the faculty lounge and refined in the activist Left long before they ever reached a conservative timeline.

The key concepts driving this new pseudo-conservatism were hatched by the socialists they think they are fighting. These ideas were designed to attack the foundations of Western civilization. They are the language of Marxist revolutionaries, not patriotic Americans. Advocating the violent overthrow of the United States – which the quickly mainstreaming far-Right increasingly suggests – is Che Guevara, not George Washington.

The Network Contagion Research Institute recently published a report showing that Nick Fuentes’ “popularity” was not organic at all, but an algorithm-driven foreign operation. The wave of engagement for his posts – tens of thousands of “supporters” amplifying his content within minutes – came not from fans but from bot farms in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Malaysia, and Indonesia. This is what made him appear influential. The media, always hungry for a sensational character, treated him as a major thinker in the movement and thus helped sustain the illusion.

Countries that seek to undermine the United States know exactly where to target their influence campaigns. Whether the fingerprints belong to China, Iran, or Russia is secondary – the point is that this is foreign manipulation masquerading as “America First.” These actors are using modern tools to convince young conservatives to turn against America’s closest democratic ally, to question the value of alliances themselves, and to reintroduce antisemitism into the bloodstream of the Right.

And the supposedly tech-savvy young conservatives are being played by the same forces that progressives have been aligned with for decades.

Foreign adversaries understand what some young Americans do not: nothing fragments a superpower more effectively than turning its factions against both each other and their allies. This is not America First – it is Divide America.

The new Right is repeating progressive talking points with only a slight tilt. “We shouldn’t spend our money on foreign causes, but instead on (insert trendy program here.)” It is an overly simplistic framing that appeals to people who have no idea how geopolitics works or how America engages with the world to strengthen its own interests. America First does not mean America Alone. It means America works with its like-minded allies to keep the world from sliding into the kind of chaos that will eventually engulf America as well. Israel is on the front line of that struggle – not a drain on American resources.

What young conservatives almost never hear is that supporting Israel is not a betrayal of America First principles – it is the fulfillment of them. Israel strengthens America’s global position by sharing intelligence that protects U.S. soldiers, by innovating technologies that safeguard American lives, by providing battlefield data that improves American defense systems, by stopping cyberattacks that would otherwise hit U.S. infrastructure, and by stabilizing a region that would eventually require a massive American military footprint. Israel is not a burden. It is a strategic asset. Funding Israel is not “throwing money away,” but one of the highest-yield security investments the United States has ever made.

And let us be clear: American soldiers are not dying for Israel. Israeli soldiers are dying for the same ideals Americans have fought for – liberty, democracy, human dignity, and resistance to tyranny. They are fighting the same Islamist threat that struck the United States on 9/11.

Abandoning Israel would not put America first. It would hand victories to Iran, Russia, and China.

The tragedy is that none of this is being explained to the young Right. The institutions that once articulated the conservative case for Israel have grown weak, been captured, or stopped speaking to younger audiences altogether. Into that silence step opportunists like Fuentes, who understand the algorithms far better than they understand geopolitics. Antisemitism spreads quickly, rewards engagement, and offers the illusion of bravery and transgression. It fills the vacuum left by the collapse of conservative intellectual confidence.

For generations, American conservatism stood for moral clarity, for alliances with democratic partners, for resistance to tyranny, for reverence for Scripture, and for the defense of the West. There is nothing conservative about cheering terrorists or adopting the frameworks of the progressive Left. There is nothing nationalist about amplifying propaganda placed into American social media by foreign adversaries. There is nothing patriotic about helping hostile regimes undermine America’s alliances and erode its civilizational identity.

If someone does not say this plainly, the damage will last a generation.

The young Right believes it is fighting the system – but it is being manipulated by a much more sophisticated system that sees them as puppets. They believe they are rejecting progressive lies, but they are mindlessly repeating them. They believe they are saving America, but they are undermining the alliances and values that make America strong. And whether they know it or not, they are allowing a new wave of antisemitism to masquerade as patriotism.

This is the moment for clarity, courage, and truth. The future of the conservative movement – and America’s strategic stability – depends on whether this generation learns the difference between real morality and the socialist version they are subconsciously adopting.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

A forgotten antisemitic statement from pre-eminent 19th century evangelist D. L. Moody

Dwight Lyman Moody was by far the most popular evangelical preacher of the 19th century, traveling the nation and regularly speaking to tens of thousands of people. He is considered the Billy Graham of his day.

He founded the Moody Bible Institute in 1889 in Chicago, which is one of the most influential evangelical training institutions in America. It is known to fight antisemitism, and Moody himself was said to have pro-Jewish viewpoints.

But I'm wondering if there is a little revisionist history here.

150 years ago, Moody gave a talk in Philadelphia. Here is the Philadelphia Inquirer's description of his evening service to thousands on December 29, 1875:

EVENING SERVICE.
The tabernacle last night was about half filled, the stormy weather having a very perceptible influence upon the congregation. The audience was again largely composed of ladies, who seem to brave the miserable atmosphere much better than the men to attend the ministrations of the evangelists. Mr. Sankey did not sing a single solo before Mr. Moody began on his text, which was something unusual, and after the congregation had sung the 107th hymn the revivalist took a text from the 5th verse of the 53d chapter of Isaiah, or about the death of the Son of God.
He said he wanted to tell of the sufferings of Christ, His physical sufferings, and then speak of the scenes on the battle-fields during the rebellion. The preacher then began to depict the scenes of suffering through which the Saviour passed while upon the earth. The word-painting of Christ before Pilate was so vivid and eloquent as to draw tears from the eyes of many persons in the congregation. He severely condemned the Jews for their crucifixion of Christ, and said that not long ago a thousand Jews met in Paris, and one of the orators exclaimed, "We have the honor of killing the Christian's God."
This infamous language was wildly applauded by the assembled Jews. "It was hellish," cried Mr. Moody, "that in the afternoon of the nineteenth century such a scene should have occurred. But what are the Jews to-day," he said, "a people without a kingdom, without a leader, without a home, wanderers up and down the earth."
The sermon was one of remarkable power, and its effect was seen in the increased attendance in the inquiry rooms. After the congregation had sung the 91st hymn, "There is a fountain filled with blood," the benediction and dismissal followed.

This incident caused a stir, with Jews writing to newspapers to complain about the obvious lie. Here is an example in the New York Tribune the very next day:

Another letter to the New York Sun also criticized Moody and was republished in other newspapers:

I don't see immediately any other stories of Moody disparaging Jews in his many revivals, but it is difficult to believe that he was philosemitic while saying a statement like this. Perhaps his namesake institute has managed to whitewash his reputation, or maybe no one really remembered this incident.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

12/08 Links Pt2: Unapologetic American Jewry Is the Future; F grades handed to 14 colleges in antisemitism ‘report card’ as Jewish students forced to hide identities

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Unapologetic American Jewry Is the Future

So what’s the dog that didn’t bark? That would be the legion of personalities connected to the UJA who ignored the haters and celebrated the gala and refused to consider a groveling apology in the days after the event. No apology was necessary or even appropriate, of course. But it is crucial that the organized Jewish community recognizes this.

Meanwhile Isaac Herzog, Israel’s president and a scion of the Labor left, was in New York last night and delivered an equally unapologetic speech to Yeshiva University.

In New York City, Herzog said, “We see the rise of a new mayor-elect who makes no effort to conceal his contempt for the Jewish democratic state of Israel, the only nation state of the Jewish people.”

Notice the word “Jewish” twice in that one sentence. The attempts by anti-Zionist groups to shame Jews into severing their history and heritage from their modern identity must fail.

Herzog slammed Mamdani’s justification for an anti-Semitic mob that descended on a Manhattan synagogue that was hosting an event about making aliyah. The incoming mayor had suggested the shul was facilitating the violation of international law by talking to prospective emigrants to a sovereign state. Herzog pulled no punches:

“Delegitimizing the Jewish people’s right to their ancient homeland and their age-old dream of Jerusalem legitimizes violence and undermines freedom of religion. This is both anti-Jewish and anti-American.”

Well said. Mamdani, let’s remember, is still vowing to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which would be a truly lawless act. Herzog and Netanyahu were once political rivals, but that could not possibly matter less at the moment. Herzog’s message to American Jewry was to be steadfast, unapologetic, and to be able to recognize those who seek its harm. That message is, thankfully, catching on.

Who You Gonna Call?

Amit Segal is having a moment. A longtime TV reporter for Israel’s Channel 12 and print journalist for Yediot Ahronot, the country’s most widely circulated newspaper, Segal burst into the English-speaking spotlight courtesy of multiple post–October 7 appearances on Dan Senor’s Call Me Back podcast, numerous op-eds in the Free Press, the Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere, and a popular Substack aimed at a foreign audience. He presents a cogent, witty, and likeable center-right perspective, often in friendly contrast to center-left sparring partners like Yediot’s Nadav Eyal, and he comes across as a happy warrior, a smiling avatar of mainstream, security-minded Israelis.

His latest book follows this blueprint, cheerfully but critically examining the history of leadership (and, at times, lack thereof) in the Israeli prime ministerial class. A Call at 4 AM is about some of the consequential choices of Israel’s premiers during the country’s eight-decade-long existence. “My aim,” Segal writes, “is to describe the political decisions that they made,” like the ones that helped create Israel’s byzantine electoral system under the guidance of its first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion. In seating the 120 members of their Knesset, Israelis elect by party, not geography, a method used by Slovakia and the Netherlands and no other land on earth. And so, in Israel, Segal contends, “the movement is more important than the man; the party more important than the individual.”

Segal calculates that Israel, in its first 72 years, wasted more than 11 years on elections and coalition negotiations. The opportunity costs are no less steep. Had the 1969 elections been held on a regional basis, Ben-Gurion’s party would have won an astounding 103 seats. In 2020, Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party would have secured 92 mandates. Equally striking is “the massive gulf between public opinion on matters of religion and state,” the result of the perpetual horse-trading created by Ben-Gurion.

Still, security questions dominate Israeli politics and have for half a century. The question that means the most to voters is this: “When the red telephone rings at 4:00 a.m., who should answer?” That notion, which provided Segal with his title, arguably originated with an actual 4:00 a.m. call on October 6, 1973, when Prime Minister Golda Meir belatedly came to realize a war was brewing. Her failure to act resulted in military and political disaster.

The prime beneficiary of Golda’s disaster was Menachem Begin, the long-suffering leader of Israel’s national camp, who overcame decades of electoral failure and finally secured the premiership in 1977. He cobbled together disparate center-right parties and appealed to the neglected Sephardi community, skillfully navigating what Segal calls the “multiple identities” possessed by all Israelis. Begin recognized that “internal contradictions do not always impede the creation of victorious political alliances; sometimes they are even a hallmark of them.”

David Collier: The Vermont Hate Crime Fantasy Sweeping the Nation

Who in the world wishes for a hate crime in their community? Apparently, Vermont elected officials do.

With no hate crime charge, no law enforcement or judicial finding of deliberate targeting, and no evidence establishing motive, Vermont U.S Senators Bernie Sanders and Peter Welch, and Representative Becca Balint used the two-year anniversary of the tragic shooting of three Palestinian students to tell Vermonters a divisive fiction – a story crafted to satisfy sectarian political appetites rather than to reflect the truth.

It is not a new pattern. In another era, during the Dreyfus Affair, French elites clung to a narrative too emotionally gratifying to question. The parallel is not the substance of the case but the psychology: when a story feels right, it becomes a story that must be true, no matter what the evidence says. The Shootings and the Race to Interpretation

On November 25, 2023, three college students were shot on a residential street in Burlington, VT – the largest city in America’s second-smallest state. The three, Hisham Awartani (Brown University), Kinnan Abdalhamid (Haverford College) and Tahseen Ali Ahmad (Trinity College) were visiting during their Thanksgiving breaks.

Two are U.S citizens and one a legal resident. All three are of Palestinian heritage. Two of the victims were wearing keffiyeh (the headdress associated with Arab Palestinian nationalism since it was adopted during the Arab Revolt in the 1930s). All three were wounded; Awartani was the worst-injured – according to his family, a bullet lodged in his spine left him paralyzed from the chest down.

Local CBS affiliate WCAX-TV was the first to report that the victims of this tragic shooting were Palestinian – a detail initially unsupported and unattributed, but later confirmed by police.

The anti-Israel movement weaponised the tragedy instantly. Neighbours targeted local Jews online, joking that their whereabouts at the time of the shooting should be investigated.

12/08 Links Pt1: ‘International Law’ Isn’t Real; Israel must refuse phase two of Trump’s Gaza plan until Hamas is fully disarmed; Gaza Fatality Analysis: The Truth Behind the 70,000 Number

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Israel must refuse phase two of Trump’s Gaza plan until Hamas is fully disarmed

The problems, of course, are that Hamas is refusing to disarm, the PA has indeed not reformed from its path (particularly its pay-for-slay policy of financing the families of terrorists), and, as pointed out last week, Hamas is still holding onto the body of slain policeman Ran Gvili.

Trump is banking on all of the parties being on board, including the immediate surrounding countries, the states making up the ISF, and, of course, Israel.

The pressure on Israel is already beginning to mount. Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani agreed that there really is no ceasefire in Gaza, and put the onus on Israel.

“A ceasefire cannot be completed unless there is a full withdrawal of the Israeli forces; [until] there is stability back in Gaza, people can go in and out, which is not the case today,” he said on Saturday at the Doha Forum.

Saudi minister Manal Radwan said at the same forum that it’s not the PA but Israel that needs reform.

“We have an Israeli government that opposes the two-state solution. We have an Israeli government that has officials continuously inciting against Palestinians, against Arabs, and against Muslims,” said Radwan. “We don’t see that we have a partner for peace, not even a partner for a sustainable ceasefire. So that is the actual and important reform that we are hoping to see.”

The question now is whether Trump will stick to the 20-point plan and insist on the disarmament of Hamas, or if he will join the ISF partners, like Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, who told the forum that disarming Hamas only needs to take place once there is a governance body set up in Gaza.

That’s why Israel must be more vigilant than ever and demand that Hamas be disarmed at the outset of Phase 2 of the ceasefire. The pressure from the Arab partners on the deal is one thing, but with Trump intent on seeing his deal work, he’s likely to join in the pressure on Israel to compromise.

That’s something we cannot do. Others may see the rebuilding of Gaza and the “peace” trophy in the Middle East as the most urgent items on the agenda. For Israel, however, the safeguarding of its borders and removing the Hamas threat, once and for all, is the overarching goal.

Regardless of the pressure, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must defy his closest ally in Washington and insist that the second phase commences with Hamas disarming and no longer posing a threat to Israel.

Gaza Fatality Analysis: The Truth Behind the 70,000 Number

Conclusion
This analysis points to a grounded estimate of 61,125 war-related deaths due to IDF action: approximately 25,000 combatants and 36,125 civilians (plus the 4,000 deaths caused by Hamas and internal actors). Civilian casualties are tragic, and the large number of minors killed cannot be dismissed; however, they overwhelmingly result from Hamas’s human-shield strategy, in which military assets are deliberately embedded where civilians are present, and in which civilian deaths are viewed by Hamas leadership as beneficial to its aims.

A civilian-to-combatant ratio of 1.45 to 1 is remarkably low by the standards of modern urban warfare in Iraq or Afghanistan, and it demonstrates that the IDF conducted a highly targeted campaign against Hamas under extraordinarily difficult conditions. Claims that large numbers of civilian deaths remain unreported do not withstand scrutiny: families had over two years to report fatalities, even without a body, and numerous “rubble” deaths are already known to have been added through the MoH’s notification process.

The evidence shows that Hamas’s headline fatality toll is a distortion. The true picture is of a war in which Israel inflicted massive losses on Hamas’ fighters while carrying out one of the most targeted urban campaigns in modern military history.

More People Died in 1 Month in One City in Sudan Than in Entire Gaza War

So what’s different in the coverage?
1. The media reports on it, but doesn’t make it the lead, doesn’t push the story constantly and treats it as something happening ‘over there’ the way it does most foreign wars. This is very different than the coverage of Israel where even the most minor confrontation, like clashes between Jewish farmers and Muslim/leftist activists in which no one is hurt, somehow become major stories.
2. The reporting doesn’t directly clarify the players in a way that’s easily understandable. That’s opposed to the media’s constant denunciations of Israel. Who is the RSF? Most people don’t know or care. Tell them that the RSF is really an Arab Islamic militia known as the ‘Janjaweed’ and that it’s backed by Muslim countries and they might have more clarity. Which is why the media tends to bury that part. Especially the Muslim racism.
3. Leftist activist groups haven’t taken up the cause, so there are no protests, little in the way of social media posts, little conversation. Whatever conversation there isn’t amplified by the media in the same vicious cycle that saw Gaza take over everything in 2024.

Neither Muslims nor the Left are especially interested in discussing the topic. Some genuine human rights activists care, but they’re not going to get any traction.

And that’s why real Islamic genocides get ignored, whether in Sudan or Nigeria, while any self-defense against Islam, such as by Israel, America or India, are falsely labeled as genocide by the actual Muslim genociders.

We know why this happens. And we can see it happening again. It’s not about the genocide, it’s about the propaganda.

As I continue refining the Derechology framework, I keep uncovering deeper layers of the Jewish mindset that shaped it. One of them is that Jewish thinking has always been keenly aware that there are others who will want to actively attack it, and it built in safeguards to minimize the threats - not just of physical but also of spiritual and intellectual extinction.

Most of the moral philosophies we study today, whether in university ethics courses or in public debate, were built in times of relative comfort. Greek philosophy took shape in the stability of Athenian academies. Christian theology was forged and systematized under imperial protection. Enlightenment ethics emerged from coffee houses and salons among elites who only had contact with other elites.

They all had their insights on philosophy, but they all shared one assumption: that society was more or less stable, that truth could be discussed in good faith, and that moral reasoning happened between equals.

Judaism never had this luxury.

Jewish moral thought was not forged in peace. It was given to a people who suffered under slavery, refined in exile, preserved under threat, and tested in nearly every form of institutional, rhetorical, and physical hostility imaginable. From Egypt to Babylon, from Rome to Inquisition, from Crusades to Cossacks to concentration camps, Jewish communities were almost never the dominant voice in their societies, and they knew that their values could be misunderstood, misrepresented, or used against them. Jewish ethics and philosophy is not simply about being good. It’s about surviving in a world that often punishes goodness, distorts truth, and rewards those who shout the loudest.

In that sense, Judaism is not merely a moral tradition. It is a moral survival system. That’s what makes it so urgently relevant right now.

Today, we are all minorities. There is no nation, religion or ethnic group that predominate the world. We now all face what Jews always faced: misrepresentation, precarity, and the moral burden of visibility. No one has the luxury any more of assuming that their ideas and ideals are universal, and no values can be taken for granted anymore as if they are universally accepted. We have been moving - slowly, and now suddenly - into the very conditions Judaism was built to endure.

Trust is breaking down. Institutions are faltering. Truth itself is under attack, not by one dictator or ideology, but by the very structure of our media and digital ecosystems. Media platforms incentivize distortion. Deceptive persuasion and propaganda techniques are the norm, not the exception. And the people tasked with navigating this new information ecosystem, whether journalists, teachers, politicians, parents, are increasingly defenseless.

Judaism is not.

One of the most profound instincts baked into Jewish ethics as a direct result of always being in the minority is the awareness that your actions, especially in public, carry weight far beyond yourself. This is the concept of Chilul Hashem - the desecration of God’s name - which is centered on public moral responsibility. When you are visibly associated with a people or a moral system, your actions reflect on your entire people and that entire system.

For Jews in exile, this was a survival issue. If a merchant cheated, it wasn’t just a scandal - it could invite a pogrom. If a rabbi spoke recklessly, it could damage the credibility of Torah itself. One person’s pride could cost many lives. So Jewish tradition insisted: behave in a way that sanctifies, not desecrates. This is not an exercise in public relations but of survival itself. In a world that increasingly misinterprets and weaponizes every visible act, this is not just a Jewish value. It’s a necessary ethic for our time.

The legal system was designed with sabotage in mind. The category of eidim zomemim - false collaborating witnesses - didn’t just punish liars. It punished coordinated attempts to weaponize testimony itself, conspiracies to attack the innocent. The Torah requires an unusually high standard of proof for convicting such conspirators, demanding that their lie be exposed by placing them in a location where they could not have witnessed the event. This careful design shows that Jewish law didn’t assume good faith by default. It assumed that truth could be targeted, manipulated, and used as a tool of oppression, and it responded by building defensive layers that could detect, expose, and deter systemic falsehood.

Even timekeeping had to defend itself. The Jewish calendar depends on accurate witnesses announcing the appearance of the new moon, and in ancient times, a decentralized system of signal fires on mountaintops transmitted the news rapidly across the land. But when sectarian groups began lighting false fires to confuse the public, the rabbis shut the system down. They replaced it with a slower, verifiable system using messengers and testimony. In doing so, they sacrificed speed for integrity. The episode reveals a core instinct of Jewish thinking: when truth is under attack, the system must adapt to avoid collapse. It’s better to be slow and trustworthy than fast and compromised.

Closely linked to this is the Jewish suspicion, almost an allergy, toward charismatic leadership. In hostile environments, false messiahs are dangerous. Judaism has had its share: populists who rise up, who promise certainty, triumph, clarity, glory. Every one of them made things worse. So over centuries, the tradition developed an anti-charisma bias. Real leaders were not the ones who sought honor, but those imbued with humility. And as the Talmud teaches, “Whoever runs from honor, honor pursues them.”

Jewish leadership is designed not to dazzle, but to serve. Moses, the greatest leader of them all, described himself as "slow of speech" and is described as a stutterer. David wept publicly and repented. The Jewish scriptures are filled with stories of leaders who fall short. The rabbinic leaders during exile earned their authority through restraint, responsibility, and a willingness to be correct themselves when wrong.

In Jewish political thinking, leadership is never supposed to be about self-expression. It’s about shlichut, mission. Leaders are not picked because they want to be followed. They are chosen because a task needs doing, and they have the tools to do it. The moment it becomes about status or honor, it becomes dangerous. This is not only about the importance of humility, but it is itself a defense mechanism. Ego corrodes clarity, and in high-stakes, adversarial environments, clarity is essential to know what must be done.

This defensive posture is part of a larger pattern in Jewish ethics. It distributes wisdom rather than centralizes it. The Talmud is not a chain of command but a network of dialogue - structured disagreement, recursive correction, and preserved pluralism. No single voice owns the truth. No single authority can crash the system. That decentralized architecture is what allowed Jewish moral thinking to survive the loss of prophets, the fall of the Temple, the fragmentation of communities across continents. When empires fell, the Jews kept learning. When rulers banned Jewish books, the oral tradition remained. This was resilience through redundancy and security through humility.

Judaism also built in a theory of moral repair. Teshuvah is not just forgiveness: it is the formal recognition that systems break, that people fail, that priorities drift. And that these facts are not exceptions: they’re expected. So the tradition doesn’t collapse when humans or institutions fall short. It rebuilds and adapts. Jewish thinking doesn’t seek moral perfection. It seeks derech—a consistent direction, a return path. And that makes it one of the only traditions whose moral identity is not in being flawless, but in being corrigible.

Humility in Judaism isn’t just an emotional attitude or a simple value among many. It’s epistemic scaffolding. Humility allows for mistakes, protects against demagogues, and creates room for slow wisdom. It prevents ethics from turning into ideology, and ideology from hardening into violence.

Of course, Judaism is not purely defensive. It rewards morality, clarity, and community, all of which actively preserve the system and allows flexibility and pluralism that can bend but not break under pressure.

All of this matters because we are already in a world that resembles the one Jews always lived in - a world where truth can be twisted, systems can turn, and mobs can form from a single careless word. Acting with integrity in public may cost you. No one can afford to assume their good intentions will be fairly interpreted. In this world, we don’t just need ethics. We need and entire ethical infrastructure - structures built to handle pressure, ambiguity, distortion, betrayal.

Judaism built them. It had to.

Western moral philosophy assumed good faith. Jewish moral philosophy prepared for its absence.

And so a system that may have once seemed parochial, ancient, and irrelevant is now beginning to look like a prototype for us all. we all need to adopt the lessons from a system designed for survival under siege. And what allowed Jews to survive may now be what helps civilization itself to endure. We are all living in a world Judaism was built to endure. And the wisdom that allowed Jews to survive may now be what helps civilization endure.

In the end, Judaism wasn’t optimized for dominance. It was optimized for dignity under fire. And in an age of accelerating chaos, that may be the most precious form of moral wisdom we have.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)