10/22 Links Pt2: How Israel debriefed its survivors of hell; Trump’s granddaughter Arabella Kushner sends handwritten notes to freed hostages; A Jew hunt at City University

From Ian:

John Podhoretz: Still Fighting After All These Years

Commentary Magazine turns 80 this month. Back in November 1945, it was a modestly funded intellectual exercise with spectacularly immodest ambitions: to explain America to the Jewish people and to explain the Jewish people to Americans.

That is the gift of the intellectual magazine, and the profound service it provides its readers and the culture at large. The deep human impulse to make these arguments, the need to have these things out, is still everywhere and is unchanged. So new media have arisen to make them possible. The citizen journalism practiced by bloggers has now been professionalized, by Substack, for example, and the free market of ideas supported by readers who feel they profit from these ideas has never been more vibrant. Here at Commentary we play with ideas in a new way every weekday on our podcast.

But the greatest of all modern vehicles for the presentation of ideas in readily consumable but still formidable fashion is still the magazine. And there are so few of any value still left, still publishing, still thriving. Well, Commentary is still here. Still publishing. And judging by the enthusiasm of our audiences, we are not only thriving at present but show every sign of continuing to thrive in the future.

I have been the editor of Commentary for 16 years now, constituting one-fifth of its lifespan. The arguments and analyses that have been hosted in these pages during my tenure have spanned the Obama, Trump, Biden, and second Trump administrations; the rise of a dangerous new left activism; the emergence of a politically destabilizing populist movement on the right; the politicization of gender itself; the poisoned chalice that higher education has become; the weaponization of public health; the deserved collapse of trust in once-unassailable institutions; a psychic crisis of meaning for America’s youth that seems to be related to the omnipresence of always-connected internet devices; and an explosion of Jew-hatred without precedent in this country’s history.

The Jewish state faced the worst threat in 50 years on October 7, 2023. We were all forced to note, with horror and disappointment, how voices expressing sympathy and understanding for our plight began to go quiet while the fight to speak freely as Jews and for Jews to live freely in their own nation stretched across two long years. We saw such people lose their stamina, their heart, their spine, and go supine.

But not you. Not you, reading these words. I hope we did our part to help you retain your stamina, to strengthen your heart, and to stiffen your spine. And I hope that we set your minds on fire.

May Commentary live to be 120.

Antisemitism: Face it. Fight it. Finish it

When Hamas unleashed its massacre on Oct. 7, 2023, the world witnessed the barbaric result of organized hatred. In the two years since, StopAntisemitism has been working not as a bystander but as an active counterforce. We have exposed more than 1,000 egregious antisemites, causing over 400 of them to lose their jobs, while more than 300 remain under investigation. This is a record of moral clarity in dangerous times.

The work of StopAntisemitism is not an academic exercise, but a necessary response. Jew-hatred was already rising before Oct. 7, with a strengthening alliance between the radical left and radical Islam. College campuses were already a hotbed of false narratives, bigotry and harassment of Jews and Israelis. And we were fighting it.

But since that earth-shaking day, the scale of Jew-hatred exploded, and almost overnight, the reports flooding into our organization increased by roughly 1,500%. Our team had to double in size just to vet, verify and act on those alerts.

And in the time since, in an unhappy new twist, the cancer of antisemitism is spreading to some previously reasonable voices on the political right. These voices, once well-known television anchors and personalities, seem to have bought into the hatred for no apparent reason but to take advantage of social media clicks to sustain their popularity.

From day one, we adopted an expose and hold accountable model, showcasing people who espouse Jew-hatred, whether they be public figures, workplace actors, academics or healthcare professionals. In each case, our goal is not vengeance but rather consequence. When those who traffic in antisemitic slurs and conspiracy theories realize they cannot hide behind anonymity, when their institutions feel pressure, that cost matters. That is true accountability.

Some will balk at that, asking, "Isn’t this cancel culture? Isn’t it enough to argue and debate?" Not in this case. Antisemitism is a metastasizing cancer. When society allows Jew-hatred to fester unchecked, it does not stop at targeting Jews. It corrodes trust, erodes institutions, infects public discourse and undermines the very foundations of pluralism and democracy.

We have seen what happens when antisemitism creeps in. University after university failed Jewish students, even as threats mounted. Our 2024 Report on Campus Antisemitism documented a 3,000% increase in anti-Jewish incidents. Students told us that 43% would not recommend their school to a Jewish peer.

John Podhoretz and Dan Senor: Podcasting Through Two Years of Hell

JOHN PODHORETZ: Dan, you and I are in a unique position because for the last two years, our respective podcasts have become a key source of a complex blend of information, news, perspective, and comfort to people deeply affected by October 7 and the two-year war that followed. And one of the things that Call Me Back and The Commentary Magazine Podcast have in common is that this was entirely situational. We didn’t plan it. We didn’t think that this is what we were going to talk about for two years on the morning of October 6, 2023. You had been doing this podcast about what America might be like after the coronavirus. Then, after a couple of months of podcasting about the aftermath of October 7, Call Me Back took off like few things I can think of taking off. It was like suddenly two months in, it was all I heard people talking about, you shot up the Apple charts. Why did you connect so viscerally with so many people?

DAN SENOR: What I felt was missing from all the international press coverage and many of the conversations was Israelis speaking to the world from Israel trying to explain the dilemmas and the challenges they were dealing with as they were confronted with this war—Israelis who don’t always agree with each other and don’t always agree with certain parts of our audience. I had no idea there’d be a big market for it. I had no idea there’d be that much interest in it. It was who I wanted to hear from. And in hearing these Israelis wrestle with these challenges and talk about these challenges, they also explained basic facts and basic history when the conversation and the press coverage turned so dark over here and was so unnerving to so many of us in the Jewish community. I mean, it’s crazy. There’s your podcast, there’s my podcast; we can probably count on one hand how many others that actually just provided basic facts, basic history. Listeners were like, Oh, this could be my anchor. This could be the place I go to just make sure I’m not losing my mind. No, Israel’s not actually trying to impose a mass famine on the Palestinian people. No, Israel’s not targeting hospitals in order to kill babies in incubators. We were providing that content to people who needed it. One thing I did, and you sometimes give me a hard time about, is I included in the conversations people who are considerably to the left of me. And I know that made some of our listeners crazy, but I just thought it was important to keep everybody in the room, you know. I’ve heard from many people over here in this community, in the Diaspora community, including someone who’s a close friend of yours and mine, say to me, “You know, your podcast is holding the whole community together. Like, otherwise it’s gonna split apart.” Now, I don’t think our podcast was single-handedly doing that, but in a sense, it’s a metaphor.

JOHN: There’s also a question of family.

DAN: I think we talk about how October 7 and the war that followed touched every single Israeli. As Tal Becker said on my podcast, Israel is a very small country, but it’s a really big family. As a percentage of the population, more Israelis served in this war than Americans fought in World War II. And those family connections are broader than that. We have that, right? You have a nephew and a nephew-in-law serving. I have sisters who are living through this and whose daughters and sons have all served in some way, been called up for reserve duty, have spouses and boyfriends who’ve all been called up, one of whom is literally right now in Gaza waiting for when he gets pulled back but hasn’t been pulled out yet. What’s the secret sauce? I think part of it is that we have this very intuitive, instinctive sense for what’s going on. Because we’re talking to family members who are in it every single day.

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10/22 Links Pt1: ICJ rules Israel ‘has not substantiated’ allegations of Unwra Hamas ‘infiltration’; Former Doctors Without Borders leader calls group 'accomplices of Hamas'

From Ian:

Meir Y. Soloveichik: Marco Rubio in the City of David

In September, Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered one of the most meaningful American speeches in recent memory. Rubio was in Jerusalem, and the setting was dramatic. In the wake of all that has transpired since—the assault on Gaza City, the negotiations to end the war, the arrangement for the return of the hostages—Rubio’s remarks have been overlooked, and perhaps understandably so. Nevertheless, it is vital that his speech not be forgotten by Americans, because though it was delivered in Jerusalem, it was really about America—about the uniqueness of our founding and history and what the 250th anniversary of the United States should mean to all of us.

The speech was framed around Zionism in its most literal sense, given that it was delivered inside Zion itself. “Zion” is the name that King David assigned to the mountain where his capital Jerusalem was founded, where his psalms were written, and where his dream of a Temple was given expression—a site known, then as now, as the “City of David.”

Rubio had come with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to attend the inauguration of the opening of the “Pilgrimage Road”—a path by which hundreds of thousands of pilgrims, millennia ago, ascended to the Temple from the pool of Siloam within David’s city to Judaism’s holiest site. Its discovery and excavation are among the triumphs of archaeology in our time. The road is, one might say, the ultimate reminder of who the “indigenous people” of Zion really are, demonstrating as it does continuity between their presence there at least 3,000 years ago and the presence of 7 million Jews in the Jewish state today.

Rubio implicitly referenced this fact in the opening of his remarks, making mention of America’s upcoming anniversary and how America was actually “young” compared to the nation whose story is represented by where he stood. He then turned to the meaning of the Founding and what set America apart.

The United States was founded on a powerful idea, defined not by geography, ethnicity, or anything else. It was founded on the very powerful principle that the rights of mankind come from their creator.

These are words whose constant reiteration is necessary and proper, especially from a Republican administration, since we are now hearing from some affiliated with the conservative movement that America is not really defined by an idea. The secretary of state was not, of course, saying that America is utterly disconnected from the circumstances of its location. Rather, he was asserting that, at its core, America is a covenantal nation, defined by a set of principles. And by linking America’s more recent founding to the ancient and modern capital of Israel, he implicitly reminded us that, as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks put it, “America and Israel, ancient and modern, are the two supreme examples of societies constructed in conscious pursuit of an idea.”

Appropriately, Rubio then turned in his remarks to the site where he stood and gave voice to Isaiah’s vision of all the earth learning from biblical teachings in God’s sacred city that “from Zion shall go forth the Torah, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” It was only because of this word of God, Rubio argued, that the American idea came to be enunciated.

Gil Troy: Moynihan’s Warning, the World’s Folly, and Israel’s Resilience

Fifty years later, and despite the resolution’s repeal nearly 34 years ago, many believe that the Israel-bashers have won, since the Zionism-is-racism libel is trending worldwide.

Yet anti-Zionism keeps failing as Zionism and Israel thrive. In 1975, Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin used the enmity to unite his people. “Zionism, Judaism, the State of Israel, and the Jewish people are one,” he said, locating the pull to the Land of Israel and the longing to return to Zion at Judaism’s core. Israeli cities rechristened “United Nations Street”—so named in November 1947—as “Zionism Street.” Thousands of schoolchildren protested, with Golda Meir explaining Zionism to 10,000 high school pupils in Tel Aviv. Students distributed half a million buttons proclaiming: “I AM A ZIONIST.”

Similarly, decades later, on the worst day in modern Israeli history, Zionism was vindicated. On October 7, the Israeli government failed. The IDF failed. But Zionism succeeded. Zionism never promised a state on “a silver platter”—a warning by Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann. If Zionism began as a national survival strategy for the Jewish people, it worked that day as a call to immediate and vital action. The thousands of Israelis who mobilized and repelled the jihadi marauders represented a living, breathing, dynamic Zionism no libels can touch. By giving the Jews an ideology and a methodology, Zionism motivated Israelis to fight and ensured that they were sufficiently well trained and well armed to save Israel.

Simultaneously, October 7 unleashed waves of Zionist activism worldwide. Within weeks, Diaspora Jews contributed a billion dollars. Missions kept visiting Israel, bringing helmets and Kevlar vests, socks, and home-baked cookies. Washington, D.C., hosted the largest Jewish protest in American history, with 290,000 marchers and another 250,000 joining via livestream.

The fighting in Israel, the volunteering and donating throughout the Jewish world, reflected the Zionist ethos of self-defense. But something more spiritual happened, too. Even Theodor Herzl understood that Zionism would not just revive the Jewish body but the Jewish soul as well. “Zionism,” he said, “is a return to Jewishness even before there is a return to the Jewish land.”

As Jew-hatred surged, Jewish leaders described “the surge” in communal engagement and identity. From Hillels to synagogues to day schools, rates of participation and passion peaked.

In Israel, the patriotism—and the mourning— triggered a profound Zionist revival. Hundreds of stickers immortalizing fallen soldiers’ defining slogans decorate Israel’s public spaces with medleys of Zionist ideas and sensibilities. Some are Zionist classics, including Am Yisrael Chai (the Jewish people live) or Ain Li Eretz Acharet (I have no other homeland). Some are more personal but deeply Zionist, including “We chose to make aliyah to this land, we won’t let anyone hurt it.”

Most reflect a gritty, resilient generation of New Jews living the Zionist dream. Many urge their survivors to maintain Israelis’ characteristic love of life: “be happy,” “be good.” Evoking the traditional phrase ve-samachata be’chagecha (delight in your holidays), one sticker reads: ve-samachata be’chayecha (delight in your life). Others are feistier, explaining, “Soldiers don’t love what they do, they learn to love what they must do,” insisting that it “doesn’t matter what happens, you’ll get over it.” Crossbreeding optimism and fortitude, that well-known Israeli phrase yehiyeh beseder assures: It’ll be all right.

This Zionist revival rests on three pillars:
First, although Jew-haters don’t make the Jew—the Jew makes the Jew—the Jews can’t make Jew-haters disappear without fighting back. Ra-ther than being defensive, one must champion genuine liberalism. Social Justice Zionism or Liberal Zionism should seek to rescue “social justice” and “liberalism” from the illiberal liberals. True social justice begins with rejecting all bigotry, articulating an egalitarian liberalism recognizing everyone’s inherent rights and dignity, without romanticizing those deemed “oppressed” and demonizing the supposed “oppressors.”
Second, Responsibility Zionism expresses the Zionist commitment to Jewish self-determination. Caring Zionists must assess what Israel and the Jewish people need to flourish, internally. Responsibility Zionism is rebuilding Israel’s south after the Hamas attack—and the oft-neglected north, wounded by decades of Hezbollah fire from Lebanon. It’s trying to make Israel’s politics and society worthy of the soldiers, the reservists, the volunteers, and their families. And it’s tree planting, not firefighting; being proactive, not just reactive.
Finally, Identity Zionism builds from the “I” to the “us.” In an age of alienation, of what Émile Durkheim the sociologist called anomie, in a throwaway society where many feel disposable and can easily cancel others, Zionism emphasizes history, identity, continuity, community—roots and ties. Zionism offers a Jewish counterculture improving on the outside world while cultivating a broad, unifying, welcoming peoplehood platform for the Jewish world. Secular Jews can find meaning without God, and religious Jews can build a broader sense of belonging.

Fifty years ago, Moynihan’s colleague at the UN, Israeli Ambassador Chaim Herzog, called Zionism “nothing more—and nothing less—than the Jewish people’s sense of origin and destination in the land, linked eternally with its name.” He went on: “It is also the instrument whereby the Jewish nation seeks an authentic fulfilment of itself.” He stood in the UN on that November day, representing “a strong and flourishing people which has survived” all the haters before “and which will survive this shameful exhibition.” Herzog then ripped up the resolution.

Zionists worldwide will continue seeking authentic fulfillment for their people and themselves. And they should challenge everyone to transcend today’s deep-rooted anti-Zionist mania, disdaining it, in Herzog’s words, as just another “passing episode in a rich and an event-filled history.”

Former Doctors Without Borders leader calls group 'accomplices of Hamas' over Gaza war response

Doctors Without Borders, or Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), is an organization that most assume is focused on delivering much needed aid and supplies in harsh environments without bias or favor. However, one of the organization’s former leaders is criticizing how MSF has handled the situation in Gaza, going so far as to say its members have acted as "accomplices of Hamas."

Alain Destexhe, who worked as a doctor with MSF in the 1980s before serving as the group’s secretary-general in the 1990s, told Fox News Digital the organization moved away from its impartial, humanitarian roots.

"Well, it would have been impossible at the time when I was secretary-general of MSF to be as biased as MSF — Doctors Without Borders — is now in Gaza. We were defining ourselves as a neutral, impartial and humanitarian organization," Destexhe told Fox News Digital. "I think now MSF in Gaza is really taking the side [of] Hamas and against Israel.

"Americans need to know that Doctors Without Borders is not anymore the organization that it was 15 or 20 years ago. It has become a biased, partial and militant organization."

On Oct. 12, 2023, less than a week after Hamas carried out its brutal massacre and took more than 250 people hostage, MSF condemned the slaughter but also called for an end to Israel’s actions in Gaza, making no mention of the hostages.

"Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is horrified by the brutal mass killing of civilians perpetrated by Hamas, and by the massive attacks on Gaza, Palestine, now being pursued by Israel," the organization wrote. "MSF calls for an immediate cessation to the indiscriminate bloodshed, and the establishment of safe spaces and safe passage for people to reach them as a matter of urgency."

Beyond the organization’s condemnation of both the massacre and Israeli actions, Destexhe uncovered several social media posts on accounts allegedly belonging to MSF staffers appearing to celebrate the Oct. 7 massacre. Destexhe explained to Fox News Digital that much of MSF’s staff in the Gaza Strip are Palestinians, not foreign workers.

Destexhe acknowledged that to operate in Gaza, MSF has to work with Hamas because the terror group has control over "all civil society and all the medical facilities" in the enclave. He said operating alone would have been impossible during his tenure as secretary-general and that the organization would have said it could not work with "a totalitarian and terrorist organization."

"The only thing that MSF can do is to say, 'No, we don't want to be part of this. We have to quit Gaza. And we don't want to become accomplices with a terrorist organization like Hamas,'" Destexhe told Fox News Digital.

MSF has faced scrutiny over its actions and statements regarding the situation in Gaza.

Earlier this year, MSF launched ads against the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a U.S.- and Israel-backed organization. MSF accused GHF of partaking in "systemized violence."

GHF spokesperson Chapin Fay called MSF's accusations "false and disgraceful." He said the organization was amplifying misinformation.

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10/21 Links Pt2: When the police suggest being Jewish is a provocation; Louis Theroux’s whitewashing of Bob Vylan is disgraceful; The Maccabi Tel Aviv ban is a shameful act of appeasement

From Ian:

Stephen Pollard: When the police suggest being Jewish is a provocation

There is an old adage: when you’re in a hole, stop digging. It’s a notion that the beleaguered Metropolitan Police might observe. Under fire over almost everything it does – or rather doesn’t (such as catching criminals and tackling open Jew hate on the streets of London) – the Met have somehow managed to make the latest bad situation worse, this time over the arrest of a Jewish solicitor who was monitoring an anti-Israel demonstration in August.

Video emerged over the weekend of the suspect being questioned at Hammersmith police station, where he had been taken after his arrest. The lawyer claimed that he had been taken away – handcuffed and then detained by police for nearly ten hours – because he had been wearing a Magen David necklace and that this was considered provocative, given that he was in the vicinity of an anti-Zionist protest.

The Met responded with a lengthy statement to the effect that this wasn’t at all why he was arrested: “[T]he claim this man was arrested for wearing a star of David necklace is not true. He was arrested for allegedly repeatedly breaching Public Order Act conditions that were in place to keep opposing protest groups apart…The man told officers he was acting as an independent legal observer but his actions are alleged to have breached the conditions in place, and to have gone beyond observing in an independent and neutral way to provoking and, as such, actively participating as a protester.”

But the Met’s statement is an object lesson not so much in missing the point as in demonstrating just how far gone the police now are, and how problematic – to put it mildly – the attitudes raised by their questioning of the arrested man are. To be blunt, it is entirely irrelevant why he was arrested. Maybe be breached the conditions, maybe he didn’t. We don’t know. The issue is not why he was arrested but the questioning he faced when he was being interviewed. And what we do know, with stone cold certainty, because we can all see the footage, is how that questioning by the police played out. And it is chilling.

Nicole Lampert: Louis Theroux’s whitewashing of Bob Vylan is disgraceful

In a podcast interview with the Bob Vylan rapper Pascal Robinson-Foster – who became infamous for his anti-Semitic rant at Glastonbury about his Jewish former record boss followed by his cry of “death to the IDF” – Theroux ends up exposing his own mad ideas, such as the view that Jewish Zionists created a “prototype” of ethno-nationalism which is now being rolled out in other countries such as Hungary and America.

Ignored in their chat, which showed how far some Left-wingers have gone down the anti-Semitic conspiracist rabbit hole, were inconvenient facts about how now over 20 per cent of Israelis aren’t Jewish, and the long history of white supremacist movements which predate Zionism.

One could also comment on how Jews, who are never seen as white by the far Right, were the primary victims of the Nazi ideas of white supremacy. Apparently, mentioning that is “post Holocaust Jewish exceptionalism”. Or something.

The much-loved broadcaster made his comments after Robinson-Foster said that Zionism is “white supremacy” and then repeated the idea that American police officers had been taught how to use racist tactics against “black and brown communities” by the IDF. This much-debunked claim became popular after the murder of George Floyd. All anti-Semitic conspiracies posit that the ills of the world are ultimately down to the Jews, and this is no different.

Theroux not only failed to challenge this but agreed in sentiment: responding to the claptrap dressed in the language of academic anti-Zionism. “There’s an even more macro lens which you can put on it which is that Jewish identity in the Jewish community, as expressed in Israel, has become almost like an acceptable quote, unquote, way of understanding ethno-nationalism,” says Theroux, who earlier this year made a BBC documentary about extremist settlers in Israel which was accused of being biased at the time.

“And so it’s like they’re prototyping an aggressive form of ethno-nationalism, which is then rolled out, whether it’s by people like Viktor Orban in Hungary or Trump in the US.” He added: “It’s become sort of this certain sense of post-Holocaust Jewish exceptionalism or Zionist exceptionalism, has become a role model on the national stage for what these white identitarians would like to do in their own countries.”

Robinson-Foster agrees: “Yes, big time, that’s the point I was making. It needs to be viewed [with] a wider lens, a much wider lens.”

Jake Wallis Simons: Keir Starmer owes Suella Braverman an apology

Now that the Prime Minister has endorsed the idea that “from the river to the sea” is antisemitic, however, Sir Sadiq has surely been outranked. And given the thousands upon thousands who intone the slogan every week, this should be something of a big deal.

The vast majority of those radicals who continue to march against Israel despite the ceasefire, whether in London, Manchester, Edinburgh or elsewhere, indulge with enthusiasm in the provocative chant.

If all of them, according to the Prime Minister, are indeed expressing antisemitism, a great many laws are being routinely broken, from the Public Order Act to the Equality Act and back again.

By Starmer’s reckoning, what we are seeing, in other words, is nothing less than massed criminal hate speech, week after week, with the police standing meekly by. Remind you of anybody? Step forward Suella Braverman, who as home secretary in 2023, drew much controversy by referring to the Gaza rallies as “hate marches” and accusing the police of “double standards”.

Actually, then as now, “from the river to the sea” was the mildest of the chants deployed by the Palestine mob. Other choice slogans include “globalise the Intifada” and, more recently, “death, death to the IDF”.

Given his candid views, therefore, you’d have expected Sir Keir to defend Braverman, right? Wrong.

Here’s what Starmer wrote in the Sunday Telegraph at the time: “Few people in public life have done more recently to whip up division, set the British people against one another and sow the seeds of hatred and distrust than Suella Braverman. In doing so, she demeans her office.”

How times change, eh? To be fair to the man, Sir Keir edition 2023 would have taken one look at the sea of Union flags at his own conference 2025 and squealed about the “far-Right”. Flip-flopping has always his modus operandi.

Nonetheless, I think the Prime Minister owes Braverman an apology. If “from the river to the sea” is inherently antisemitic, then the Gaza marches are indeed hate marches, whatever the Mayor of London may think.

So what is Starmer going to do about it? Surely he can’t just do nothing. Admitting to such mob displays of antisemitism and failing to curb them would be demeaning to his office indeed.

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10/21 Links Pt1: As Hamas Sows Fear in Gaza, the Western Appetite for Involvement in Demilitarization Is Decreasing; The remains of Gaza hostages Tamir Adar, Arie Zalamanowicz are identified

From Ian:

As Hamas Sows Fear in Gaza, the Western Appetite for Involvement in Demilitarization Is Decreasing

Two Israeli soldiers were killed and another was wounded when Palestinian militants launched an anti-tank missile at an army vehicle in Rafah on Sunday, the Israeli military said. Israel called it a blatant violation of the ceasefire agreement. Hamas officials were quick to disavow the attack.

Hamas distanced itself from the Rafah attack, even divulging that it had lost contact with its fighters in Rafah in March and did not know whether any of them were still alive. That admission laid bare the ceasefire's fragility: If Hamas is indeed unable to control one of its fighting units, it may be unable to fully enforce its side of the ceasefire, making it less likely that Israel will fully withdraw.

The return of all the living hostages has also freed the Israeli military to retaliate against Hamas harder, whenever and wherever it chooses to strike, with no more fear of harming its own citizens, said Tamir Hayman, a former head of Israeli military intelligence who now leads the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.

Hayman said that Hamas was trying to sow fear and reestablish its dominance in Gaza, pointing to the executions by Hamas militants of eight rivals on a crowded Gaza City street last week. "By doing that, they're stronger, and it creates much more difficulties when you're trying to demilitarize them. The appetite by Arab or Western countries to be deeply involved in demilitarization is decreasing by the hour."

We Are Not Fooled by You, Hamas

"Hamas is not just at war with Israel. It is at war with Jews, Christians, and the very foundations of civilization itself.... This is not politics, this is a religious war. Its purpose is to replace Judaism and Christianity with radical Islam. If the world does not understand this, everyone will pay the price." — Mosab Hassan Yousef, eldest son of Hamas founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef, JNS, August 17, 2025.

Notwithstanding peace treaties or a tenuous cessation of hostilities between Israel and its neighbors, much of the Islamic world remains at war with the West, especially with many dedicated activists, such as Qatar, Turkey and the Palestinian Authority in its midst.

Their leaders, perhaps not wishing to get into a scrape with Trump, as well as seeing the delicious prospect of being in charge of the future Gaza chicken coop -- refuse to acknowledge this reality.

Many leaders in the West also would possibly prefer not to admit the risk, even though their societies are precipitously at risk of being overwhelmed by the mass immigration of Muslims -- who boldly practice a competing faith founded on displacing all other faiths. Western leaders appear to wish to placate the Islamist voters in their midst, despite the harm being inflicted on their citizens -- with more expected in the offing.

With the release of some 2,000 terrorists from Israel's prisons as part of the Trump peace plan, Hamas's forces received a timely reinforcement of their depleted ranks from this event, "None are expected to take up careers in high tech or humanitarian relief," writes Professor Thane Rosenbaum.

While Israel may have substantially defeated Hamas militarily in the Gaza campaign, it can fittingly be said, as by columnist Dan Schnur, that "Hamas won its war against Israel in the eyes of the rest of the world". Any success of the anti-Israel and anti-Semitic mass media can be attributed to their lies about Israel and Jews.

The escalating social and political turmoil in nations such as France, Britain, Australia, Spain, Italy and Canada can be directly attributed to domestic Islamist agitation, Muslim demographic explosion, and the spread of religious Islam throughout the infrastructure – which most leaders would rather appease than confront. With mosques being built at a rapid rate, complete with public calls to prayer over loudspeakers, and special Sharia courts, councils and schools, Islam has come to significantly dominate the landscape in the major cities of western Europe. In the UK and France, for instance, certain street scenes are reminiscent of the Muslim cities from where immigrants originated.

MEMRI: Growing Criticism of Hamas in the Arab World and Calls to Hold It Accountable for Gaza Tragedy

Around the second anniversary of Hamas's Oct. 7 massacre, the Arab press published numerous articles sharply criticizing Hamas and its decision to carry out the terror attack, which led to extremely severe consequences for the Palestinians. The writers accused Hamas of carrying out a horrific massacre, including against women, children and innocent civilians, and of embarking on an irrational and reckless "military adventure." Some even claimed that Hamas had brought a "second Nakba" upon the Palestinians.

The articles criticized Hamas's attempt to claim victory. Saudi journalist Abdulrahman Al-Rashed wrote in Asharq al-Awsat that Hamas exaggerated the gains of the war, noting that the Palestinian cause has returned to the spotlight, that squares all over the world thronged with protesters, that Western media is criticizing Israel. But "these achievements are small and temporary compared to the harm caused by the war to the [Palestinian] people and the political losses that have changed the map in Israel's favor."

The articles called on the Palestinians and the Arab world to hold Hamas accountable for the disaster, and to disarm this movement and prevent any possibility of its remaining part of Gaza's political future.

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10/20 Links Pt2: Hamas hands over body of hostage Tal Haimi, slain defending his kibbutz; Macron Occupies a Jewish Family Home in Baghdad; Ireland has fallen to the cult of Israelophobia

From Ian:

Macron Occupies a Jewish Family Home in Baghdad

France appropriated the home of a displaced Jewish family and has used it as its embassy in Iraq for 50 years without paying the family a single euro in rent. Now, instead of returning the property to its rightful owners, or compensating them for its continuing occupation by the emissaries of the Quai d’Orsay, the government of Emmanuel Macron has apparently determined to continue dragging the family through the courts and belaboring them with technical questions like whether they voluntarily surrendered property ownership when they fled Iraq in the 1950s.

The family has launched a lawsuit in the French courts, asking for a trial to decide the ownership of a house whose desirable location, ornate balconies, carved columns, cornice entries, grand mirrors and marble mantels give it an estimated market value of more than $22 million. After rejecting an offer to mediate, France now argues, citing lack of jurisdiction, that any trial should instead take place in Iraqi courts, which are ill-disposed to rule against a diplomatic ally and in favor of a Jewish family that was chased out of the county a half-century earlier.

The descendants of the original owners, who today live in Montreal, reject the French argument. “France is using our house, so France can choose to pay for the house it’s using,” said Philip Khazzam, the grandson and grand-nephew of original house owners Ezra and Khedouri Lawee. “Instead, it pretends to have no authority and hides behind Iraq.”

Khazzam added that France is paying its rent to Iraq at a low rate. “They know they’re getting a sweet deal,” he said, adding that paying market rates for its lavish embassy would cost France much more.

The French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs’ defense brief argues that by fleeing Iraq the Lawee brothers technically lost ownership of their house. Copied link

When asked for comment on questions relating to the property and Khazzam’s accusations, the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs responded that “the case is before the courts, so we cannot comment.”

Last month, Khazzam traveled to New York to personally ask the French president for the back rent that he believes he is owed. He planned to approach Macron when the president was visiting the French Cultural Center on Fifth Avenue but never got close enough to ask his question.

Iraqis began attacking Jewish property under King Faisal I in the ’30s and ’40s following Iraq’s independence from the British. 1941 was among the worst years for such attacks. Following a failed pro-Nazi coup in June, Iraqi riots exploded into a pogrom known as the Farhud that killed, raped, robbed and looted the properties of thousands of Baghdad Jews.

Farhud—a word which loosely translates to “devour” or “gobble” in Arabic—launched what would become a mass exodus of Jews from Iraq, as the storied 2,500-year-old Jewish community fled increasingly restrictive discriminatory laws accompanied by terrifying and repeated outbreaks of mass violence and state-sponsored show trials. It marked the beginning of the end for Iraq’s thriving Jewish population, who in many cases traced their lineage back to 587 BCE when Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II conquered the Kingdom of Judah and enslaved and exiled much of its Jewish population.

More on the Jews of Iraq
Conditions for Iraqi Jews became especially acute after the creation of Israel, during the period known as “denationalization” in 1950-51. New laws stripping Iraqi Jews of their nationality and their property accompanied a bombing campaign aimed at local synagogues and Jewish businesses.

Ezra and Khedouri Lawee were among the thousands of Jews who fled Iraq during this time. The Jewish Iraqi brothers had built and owned a beautiful house—nicknamed Beit Lawee, or House of Lawee—which was eventually seized by Saddam Hussein after he came to power in 1970, two decades after they had left the country. Records show Khedouri traveled to London and New York before settling in Montreal. His brother Ezra also settled in Montreal, after stopping along the way in Israel, Egypt, and New York.

Responding to lawyers representing the Lawee descendants, the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs’ defense brief argues that by fleeing Iraq the Lawee brothers technically lost ownership of their house under a set of discriminatory laws from 1951 whose very aim was to strip Iraqi Jews of their property.

Anti-Semitism has infected the NHS

Britain’s National Health Service has become a hotbed of anti-Semitism. It seems nearly every week brings a new case of an NHS doctor expressing foul views about Jews. Worse, these views seem to be expressed with impunity. The problem is now so serious that the health secretary, Wes Streeting, has vowed to overhaul the UK’s medical regulator to ‘root out the evil of racism’ from the NHS.

A report in The Times cites the case of Rahmeh Aladwan, a trainee doctor from Manchester. In September, she faced the Medical Practitioners’ Tribunal Service (MPTS) for describing the Royal Free Hospital in north London as a ‘Jewish supremacy cesspit’. She also said that the Holocaust was a ‘fabricated victim narrative’ and described the terrorists who carried out the 7 October 2023 pogrom as ‘martyrs’ who were repelling ‘foreign Jews’. According to The Times, she was even filmed making a ‘throat-slit gesture’ towards a group of Jews.

Shockingly, the MPTS didn’t see what the fuss was all about. It dismissed the complaint made by the General Medical Council (GMC) against Aladwan, declaring her fit to practise because she posed no ‘real risk to patients’. Her lawyer successfully argued that, as a Palestinian and ‘direct victim of genocide and dispossession’, she was merely ‘exercising her freedom of speech to oppose crimes by Israel, including those identified by the UN’. She was the real victim here, in other words.

This was a bridge too far for Streeting. In response to the MPTS’s decision, he promised to overhaul the GMC, which he said he had ‘no faith’ in. Alarmingly, he added that medical regulators are ‘completely failing to protect Jewish patients’. His most significant proposal so far has been to make sure that doctors accused of misconduct are stripped of their right to practise while under investigation. At Streeting’s instance, Aladwan will face another hearing at the MPTS later this month.

Indeed, it may be shaping up to be a busy few months for the medical tribunal. That is because Aladwan is far from alone: there have been more than 500 complaints of anti-Semitism, made against 123 separate doctors, since 7 October 2023.

One case that stands out amid this vast catalogue of hatred is that of Manoj Sen, who until recently was a surgeon at Northwick Park Hospital in north London. In a series of social-media posts, Sen referred to a Jewish man as ‘Jew boy’, ‘circumcised vermin’ and ‘Untermenschen’ – a phrase used extensively by the Nazis, meaning subhuman. Sen’s defence – that alcoholism was to blame for his ‘injudicious’ statements – was to no avail, and he was struck from the medical register last month. Evidently, there are limits to playing the victim card. Even at the MPTS.

It gets worse. Ellen Kriesels, a consultant paediatrician at London’s Whittington Hospital, was due to treat a disabled Jewish child in June last year. However, the young boy’s family objected to the doctor’s pro-Palestinian lanyard. Further investigation of her beliefs – boastfully articulated on her public X account – revealed what can only be described as a profoundly disturbed mind. On X, Kriesels said that ‘virtually every Jew has some feelings of supremacy’, which she attributed to their ‘Zionist upbringing’. She opined that ‘secular Jews are very much part of all this evil and they certainly have feelings of supremacy’. ‘World Jewry’, she claimed, had been ‘complicit or silent’ in the ‘slaughtering [of] Palestinians’.

Jewish Onliner's Table of Anti-Israel Lies

Since October 2023, an unprecedented wave of disinformation targeting Israel has flooded social media platforms, spreading faster than fact-checkers can respond and reaching millions of users worldwide before verification can occur.

This non-exhaustive, continuously-updating list examines the most viral and damaging false narratives that have circulated about Israel since the war began. By debunking each claim with verifiable evidence, expert analysis, and credible sources, we aim to restore clarity to a landscape deliberately obscured by those who profit from confusion and conflict.

The lies documented here are not mere mistakes or misunderstandings, they are calculated attempts to manipulate public perception through emotional manipulation and selective presentation of facts. Understanding how these falsehoods spread and why they gained traction is essential for anyone seeking to navigate the current information environment and distinguish between legitimate criticism and deliberate deception.

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10/20 Links Pt1: The Implications of Hamas's Public Executions and the World's Silence; King Charles visits Manchester synagogue attacked on Yom Kippur; Maccabi Tel Aviv decide NOT to sell tickets for Villa game over safety fears

From Ian:

NYPost Editorial: The ‘pro-Palestine’ crowd must be the first peace movement ever to pray for war to resume

The “pro-Palestine” crowd must be the first peace movement ever to pray for war to resume.

In the next phase of the peace plan, Hamas’ combatants are supposed to lay down their arms and exit Gaza — but that’s not happening anytime soon.

At least, not voluntarily — and who’s going to make them?

Images of Hamas terrorists publicly executing local Palestinian “collaborators” did not emerge by accident: The brutal Islamists staged this savagery to let everyone — inside as well as outside Gaza — know that they mean business.

Anyone who accepted food aid outside of Hamas-approved channels counts as a collaborator, as do members of families that have historically challenged the terrorists’ rule.

Meanwhile, Hamas has re-opened detention and “interrogation” facilities at Al-Shifa and other Gaza hospitals.

It’s telling the world, Yes, we are the bad guys. What are you going to do about it?

President Donald Trump has said Hamas better behave or “we’ll take care of it.” But he’s not going to send US troops to pacify the territory.

Perhaps the Muslim nations that signed on to the peace plan will deal with Hamas, though what that force would look like is a mystery, with no historical precedent.

Waging war with unprecedented caution for civilian casualties and world opinion, the IDF in two years failed to wipe out the terror group that conducted the Oct. 7 attack.

Yet the Jewish State has redeemed the hostages, defanged Hamas’ ability to strike outside Gaza and established a protective buffer zone.

Israel has every right to finish the job if Hamas won’t go, but it has no duty to save the poor people of Gaza from the terrorists’ rule.

If “pro-Palestine” folks won’t save them, how about some of the governments that just recognized that Palestinian state?

When Hamas turned its guns on us Gazans, the ‘pro-Palestinian’ chorus fell silent

Repression is the regime’s primary instrument: surveillance, arrests, intimidation and unspeakable scenes of public executions and torture. Just as Hamas live-streamed the atrocities of October 7 to terrify Israelis, it makes use of video recordings of its brutality against alleged enemies within to strike fear into ordinary Gazans. A careless word can brand someone a traitor, a blasphemer, or a rival to be eliminated. And it works: Hamas is gradually reasserting control over areas beyond the reach of the IDF.

Meanwhile, the world’s sympathy flows easily, but moral clarity does not. Where are the protestors who for two years claimed to care for Gazans, now that footage of Hamas’s cruelty against its own people floods social media? Are the activists who filled the streets of Western cities and all those human rights organisations truly for us Palestinians – or simply against Israelis?

On Hamas Telegram channels the group pronounces that they won't disarm. They see the ceasefire as merely time to rebuild to restart the next war. It already broke the deal, attacking IDF positions, prompting deadly retaliation.

Humanitarian concern is necessary, but without political honesty it becomes another ritual that sustains the cycle. Viewing Gaza purely as a battlefield between two sides ignores the internal oppression that prolongs its suffering.

Real peace requires more than ceasefires or aid. It demands dismantling the economic and ideological machinery that profits from endless conflict – from regional patrons to local rulers who depend on despair to maintain power.

The vision of a Gaza governed by civilians rather than militants is not naïve; it is the minimum condition for recovery. A society that values education, opportunity and safety over martyrdom could, for the first time in decades, begin to resemble a normal community rather than a permanent front line.

The longing for normal life now outweighs the appetite for heroic slogans. People want to wake up without fear, to rebuild without permission, to live without being told that survival itself is victory.

Over the rubble, banners of triumph still flutter. Yet beneath them, the truth endures – one that even an old man with fading memory can still recall: those who have lost everything cannot celebrate defeat disguised as victory.

Khaled Abu Toameh: The Implications of Hamas's Public Executions and the World's Silence

Hamas, in short, has decided to eliminate any Palestinian opposed to terrorism and supportive of coexistence with Israel.

Hamas's actions also demonstrate that the terror group is determined to exploit the current ceasefire to reassert its control over the Gaza Strip.

The silence, or apathy, of the international community, including so-called pro-Palestinian groups and individuals, towards Hamas's crimes only encourages the terror group to proceed with its crackdown on its own people. The silence of the world, in addition, sends a message to the Palestinians that they should refrain from rising against Hamas and other terror groups in the Gaza Strip.

We have not yet heard of a single Hamas terrorist talking about recognizing Israel's right to exist. In the eyes of Hamas leaders, the Trump peace plan is just another temporary ceasefire that should be used for rearming, regrouping, and preparing for massacring more Israelis.

In recent months, Hamas has been quoting a famous statement by its former leader, the late Ismail Haniyeh, to confirm that the terror group will never recognize Israel's right to exist: "We said it five years ago and we say it now... we will never, we will never recognize Israel."

No transitional government or "Board of Peace" will ever be able to enforce law and order as long as Hamas terrorists feel free to murder any Palestinian who wants peace and coexistence with Israel.

De-radicalization will happen only after Palestinians see that Hamas has been totally defeated, disarmed and removed from power.... Failure to eradicate Hamas will only pave the way for another October 7 massacre against Israel.

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10/19 Links: The shape-shifting story of Hind Rajab; The Birmingham jihad; Anti-Jewish sentiment has poisoned our police; In a blatant violation of the ceasefire, two IDF soldiers killed in Gaza

From Ian:

Mark Zlochin: The shape-shifting story of Hind Rajab

Over the months following Hind Rajab’s death, the narrative about the circumstances of this tragic incident changed shape many times. Through successive retellings by Al Jazeera, Forensic Architecture, and others, what appears to have been a fog-of-war incident was gradually recast as a seemingly clear-cut case of deliberate targeting. Yet the deeper examination shows something far more uncertain — a scene defined by confusion, poor visibility, and overlapping gunfire. These central issues were steadily pushed aside even though they are essential to understanding what really happened.

Summary of main findings:
1. Ignored contextual factors affecting visibility: None of the reconstructions considered the combined effect of three critical factors — the cloudy, low-visibility weather; the car moving north despite Israeli instructions for civilians to evacuate south; and the use of plastic sheeting over the car windows, which would have further obscured visibility inside the vehicle. This crucial context undermines claims that those inside the car could have been clearly seen and deliberately targeted, while its omission in every reconstruction undermines the integrity of those investigations.
2. Early vs. later accounts: Early descriptions depicted a car under fire while still moving — a scenario which, in combination with the low‑visibility factors described above, explains why the car could’ve been reasonably perceived as a potential threat. Later accounts, however, shifted to a stationary car parked in clear view, eliminating the motion factor that made misidentification under conditions of high uncertainty plausible and recasting the episode as deliberate attack on an unambiguously civilian target.
3. WhatsApp transcript omissions: Two key messages appear in the Arabic screenshots featured in the English-language Al Jazeera investigation, but are missing from the English narration and all subsequent coverage: the first message noting that two family members had left the car, and the final message in which Mohammed Hamada informs the Red Crescent that Layan has been killed. These omissions directly contradict both the narrative that the family remained trapped inside the car throughout, and the Red Crescent’s account of their supposed final call with Layan — underscoring the significance of what was left out..
4. Forensic Architecture’s analysis: Their modelling depended entirely on the contested recording, which — even taken at face value — reveals at least two weapon types, inconsistent shot counts, and contradictory sound signatures — strong indications of crossfire rather than a single, deliberate volley. Moreover, the claim that the shooter had a “clear view” of the children ignores the evidence that the shooter’s view was heavily obstructed by the plastic‑covered windows, the seatbacks, and the low-visibility conditions on that cloudy day.
5. Shifting timelines and destinations: The family’s supposed route and the timing of the attack changed repeatedly across accounts. Apart from the obvious issue of the reliability of these accounts, in the latest version, which places the first attack in the early morning, there remains a gap of over six hours between the alleged start of the incident and the first documented contact with the Red Crescent. No published reconstruction acknowledged or attempted to explain this glaring six-hour gap, even though it fundamentally affects how the sequence of events — and any claim about intent or coordination — can be interpreted.

Taken together, these inconsistencies reveal how a battlefield encounter clouded by uncertainty in the midst of crossfire was gradually reframed into a narrative of deliberate atrocity. The evidence instead suggests a chaotic encounter in which poor visibility, miscommunication, and the pressures of combat likely resulted in tragic misidentification and the deaths of civilians caught in the crossfire. Recognizing these complexities does not diminish the human loss; rather, it restores factual integrity to a dramatic event that has been repeatedly weaponized for political ends.

Melanie Phillips: The Birmingham jihad

Yet Khan turned this “Jew-hunt” into Maccabi “hooligans” who he called “violent fans,” thus reversing offender and victim. This kind of inversion, of course, characterises the Palestine cause itself, which preposterously accuses Israel of the genocidal intentions that the Palestinian Arabs have towards the Jewish state simply because Israel defends itself against such an onslaught. As with the Palestinian Arabs and Israel, so with these British Muslims and the Maccabi fans.

The British state in unable on every level to deal with this. Indeed, it doesn’t even understand what’s happening to it.

Keir Starmer said he was appalled by the ban. His government is reportedly “doing everything in our power” to reverse it and is “exploring what additional resources could be required” to guarantee public safety.

Good luck with that one. Given the incitement against the Maccabi fans by Khan and his ilk, this has now become an even bigger headache than it originally was. But the real problem is vastly more huge and significant than one football match in Birmingham.

Sectarian Islamic politics and the demonisation of Israel and Jews are now out of control in Britain and have breached the walls of Parliament itself. Although one Muslim MP, the Conservative Saqib Bhatti, has spoken out bravely against the Maccabi ban, others along with Ayoub Khan are making vicious statements. Iqbal Mohammed MP has said:
Thank you all who put the safety of Aston Villa fans, Birmingham residents snd the British public above the zionist and political pressure to let Israeli hooligans and terrorists run riot in our country.

Zarah Sultana MP, the former Labour MP who now sits as an independent and has a long history of eye-watering hatred of Israel, also posted on X:
Next UEFA must ban all Israeli teams.We cannot have normalisation with genocide and apartheid.

The presence of such virulent Islamic extremists in parliament reflects in turn the antisemitism, threats and incitement being promoted by Islamic clerics to which successive governments have resolutely turned a blind eye.

A Nottingham imam Asrar Rashid, who has said that if the Maccabi fans come to the Birmingham match “we will not show them mercy,” has also called for Muslims in the UK and “other white nations” to take up arms to carry out pre-emptive strikes against “white people and white nations” who have been committing “genocide” against Muslims — in Canada and Australia, don’t you know, as well as in Gaza.

Stephen Daisley: Anti-Jewish sentiment has poisoned our police

It says that officers who have been trained to avoid victim-blaming in other circumstances feel comfortable intimating that a Jew making known his Jewishness is asking for trouble. It is outrageous, too, that a detective would pursue a line of questioning that suggested there was something provocative about a Jew wearing a modest Star of David pendant. It seems we are very much in the realm of: ‘Well, you were wearing that miniskirt, love.’

What do we think would happen if the police had behaved the same way with, say, a Muslim woman? She turns up at a pro-Israel rally in her hijab seeking to document the activities of protestors. The police arrest her and an interviewing officer suggests her head covering is ‘antagonistic’. How long do we reckon it would take between the video hitting social media and the Met commissioner issuing a grovelling apology and sending half the force on Islamophobia awareness training?

The hijab hypothetical would never happen because the police are scared of Muslims. Not the majority of Muslims who cause no trouble for anyone but that minority who take to the streets to protest offence, and sometimes attempt to intimidate, as seen with the Batley Grammar teacher who was hounded after showing a picture of the Prophet Muhammad, the schoolpupils who scuffed a copy of the Quran in Wakefield, and the mobs who forced The Lady of Heaven film out of British cinemas in 2022.

Muslims who wish to bully authorities into submission have the implicit threat of public disorder or violence. Wouldn’t want a Charlie Hebdo attack on your hands, would you? Jews have no such calling card attacks in the West to demonstrate the consequences of failure to bow to their demands.

The experience of Jews in Britain is an object lesson in the brutal realities of a multicultural democracy. The more law-abiding, productive, and integrated a demographic, the more likely it is to face mistreatment by institutions of the state.

The primary duty of the state is not the protection of its citizens but the maintenance of the illusion of harmony in a country where thuggishness prevails. Jews, on the whole, are not thuggish. They pose no threat. They have no power.

You can arrest them, you can interrogate their religious apparel, you can call the Star of David ‘antagonistic’, and no mob will come for you. This is where we are and where we’re heading.

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10/18 Links: Hamas’s dangerous game; Hamas hands over two more hostages’ bodies to Israel; Jewish man arrested after his Star of David ‘antagonised’ protesters

From Ian:

Hamas’s dangerous game

It is now unmistakably clear that Hamas intends to cling to power in Gaza—at any cost. Its latest maneuvers are not signs of a group preparing to disarm or surrender but of a terrorist organization determined to preserve its rule through chaos, deceit and bloodshed.

Hamas is once again playing a cynical and dangerous game. On the one hand, it manipulates the fate of the murdered hostages, using their bodies as bargaining chips to extract political leverage. On the other hand, it stokes internal violence in Gaza, executing and torturing members of rival clans in a ruthless effort to reassert control.

The images of Gazans being beaten and shot in the streets recall the same barbarity Hamas displayed in 2006 when it hurled Fatah men off rooftops.

Reports suggest that Hamas now wants to involve its old allies—Turkey and Qatar—in what it claims is a “search” for the remains of hostages. These supposed humanitarian gestures are nothing more than tactics meant to buy time, embarrass Israel and undermine the emerging U.S.-led coalition spearheaded by President Donald Trump.

Iran, as always, is the puppeteer behind the curtain, using Hamas to destabilize any prospect of peace.

After being forced on Oct. 9 to accept a peace framework, Hamas briefly feigned cooperation by returning 20 hostages alive. Now, it is withholding the bodies of 18 murdered Israelis, testing Israel’s patience and exploiting its moral anguish.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to ensure that every hostage—living or dead—is returned, yet Hamas continues to stall, counting on international hesitation and division.

Meanwhile, U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s expected arrival in the region marks a critical juncture. The Middle East stands at a crossroads: either Hamas relinquishes control and allows the reconstruction of Gaza to begin under international oversight or the entire peace process collapses.

Seth Frantzman: Gaza's ticking clock: Hamas illustrating it can reorganize itself despite war setbacks

Hamas is demonstrating its ability to organize itself again as it continues to reassert itself in Gaza.

This is significant because it was unclear at first if the terrorist organization would be able to quickly regain control of Gaza once the war had ended, or rather, if the enclave would descend into chaos instead.

What has been happening so far is evidence that Hamas is still well-organized.

This means that the clock is ticking in Gaza.

Each day that trickles by is one where Hamas has the ability to reconstitute itself, regaining its control. This terrorist organization uses various methods to do that, such as executions and other mafia-like coercion methods.

Every day brings more evidence of this through videos and accounts from Gaza. For instance, clips are showing Hamas murdering so-called dissidents and calling people in for interrogations.

There is little evidence that people are resisting Hamas’s rule. In fact, they seem resigned to it. They appear to accept that this is what their futures will hold. However, the Palestinians do not appear to be celebrating either. This is important because it illustrates that Hamas is neither able to galvanize major street demonstrations in its favor nor push people into defiance.

Julie Burchill: How do so many women end up as ‘Feminists for Islam’?

FiLiA – though it sounds like a knock-off sports shoe – is a gender-critical-feminist charity. Like any other lively organisation, it has had its fair share of skirmishes.

In 2015, Jane Fae (a man) pulled out of a conference due to divergent views on prostitution (the man was in favour – quelle surprise!). Julie Bindel and Caroline Criado-Perez also backed out as a result. Just last year, the woefully trans-captured Plaid Cymru banned the FiLiA stall from its spring conference in Caernarfon, after being informed that these feminists’ views were ‘potentially contrary to the party’s values’. (Amusingly, PC had to admit just a few months later that canceling FiLiA’s booking amounted to ‘an act of discrimination under the Equality Act 2010’.)

I had replied reluctantly in the negative to a few offers to wheel me out to the nearby Brighton Centre last weekend, where the most recent conference took place. But looking back, I see it was much for the best that I swerved it, as I’ve never got into a fight in my current disabled state and I’m not altogether sure that I’d give a good report of myself.

It started out predictably, with the usual gang of violent cross-dressing men vandalising the venue before the conference began. The BBC website stated: ‘Masked figures were seen in online videos smashing windows and spray-painting the building, ahead of a three-day event billed as one of the largest grassroots feminist gatherings in Europe. Activists from Bash Back, which describes itself as a ‘trans-led direct action group’, posted a statement saying it carried out the vandalism because the conference would be hosting ‘some of the most vicious transphobia in… politics’, and warned of ‘further action’ to come. FilLiA CEO Lisa-Marie Taylor bracingly boasted that ‘the activities of a small, violent minority will not diminish the spirit of sisterhood and solidarity which FiLiA embodies’.

Around 2,500 people came to hear from 250 speakers from around the world, according to organisers. One can easily fight back against an enemy who makes himself known – even when the men involved cover their faces and/or attack under cover of darkness, we know what they are, if not precisely who they are. But identifying and combatting the enemy within is the real struggle. Civil wars are said to be the most poisonous and the hardest to recover from, turning brother against brother – or in this case, sister against sister.

The first sign that something might have been amiss at FiLiA was a hijab’d woman selling similar head-coverings in the foyer. ‘What next, binders?’, Sonya Douglas asked on X. The number of keffiyehs and Palestinian flags on show could have persuaded a person that they had wandered into the Oxford Union debating chamber by mistake. Veteran feminist Bev Jackson posted that: ‘An organisation called Total Woman Victory had a stand at FiLiA disseminating a pamphlet with some of the most virulent anti-Jewish tropes I’ve ever seen.’

Jewish women have had to put up with enough monstrous bullying and belittling from the world generally over the past two years (BELIEVE ALL WOMEN – UNLESS THEY’RE JEWISH, as the saying has it). And now the poison of anti-Semitism seems to have trickled into the very heart of a conference where women of all races and belief systems should feel safe. But sadly, we’ve seen before that Islam and diversity, though often used in tandem by politicians and other clueless scolds, are often strangers to each other. Here at the FiLiA conference was evidence of a strange beast – here was Feminists for Islam.

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10/17 Links Pt2: Democrats’ Ugly War on AIPAC; What is happening in Birmingham is a sinister vision of Britain’s future; Emily Damari calls Maccabi ban a ‘disgusting decision’

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Democrats’ Ugly War on AIPAC

Winking at these conspiracy theorists is all the rage among Democratic officeholders with higher aspirations. Rep. Ro Khanna, a California progressive who mostly talks about Jeffrey Epstein when he’s not badmouthing AIPAC, is likely to run for president in the next cycle. Yet to Khanna’s credit, his hatred of AIPAC and his desire to capitalize on his base’s suspicions of the group haven’t stopped him from at least slapping down the claim that AIPAC should register as a foreign agent.

“They’re American citizens,” Khanna has said. “If you’re an American citizen and you’re articulating a point of view, that’s your right. … They’re American citizens. They’re lobbying for their interests. They’re lobbying for the Netanyahu government’s interests because they think that’s what benefits America.”

Unfortunately, Khanna made that statement in an interview with an anti-Zionist filmmaker for a video including anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists such as Ian Carroll. Khanna also repeats in the video the debunked lie about Israel’s supposed intentional starvation of civilians.

Khanna posted a clip of the video on his Twitter account. The video he posted begins with Carroll saying to the camera: “Ninety-three out of 100 U.S. senators were taking money from a group that represents a foreign government and foreign interests in order to operate our government on behalf of someone else,” as a Star of David in American flag colors appears on screen.

So the best Democrats can do is a congressman who says AIPAC isn’t a foreign agent but then posts on social media a video of a Holocaust distortionist explicitly saying that AIPAC is the agent of a foreign government?

As a dedicated progressive, Khanna can be expected to wade into these extremist waters. But Moulton, like Slotkin, was supposed to stand athwart the screeching Jew-baiters and conspiracist slop-artists. That he believes he needs them in order to win a Senate seat is an ominous sign for the direction of American politics.

Isabel Oakeshott: What is happening in Birmingham is a sinister vision of Britain’s future

Given the demographics, some such trouble in Birmingham did seem likely. Indeed, such is the hatred towards Jews among extreme elements of the Muslim population in this country that a number seem to want bloodshed. In the kind of language that would risk landing a Right-wing protestor in jail, one influential figure – Islamic scholar called Asrar Rashid – has gone so far as to publicly call for visiting fans to be shown “no mercy”.

Various pro-Palestinian politicians have lost no time in joining the charge. Among those who have been winding up Muslim voters is Ayoub Khan, an Independent MP whose Perry Barr constituency includes Aston Villa’s grounds. He has spent weeks demanding that the fixture be cancelled, on safety grounds. This is the same Ayoub Khan who, in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 horrors in 2023, publicly questioned whether the massacre of innocent Jews by Hamas had been exaggerated.

At the time, he was a Liberal Democrat councillor and was offered “anti-Semitism training” by the party. Utterly unrepentant, he turned it down, claiming there was “simply no need” for him to undertake such a course.

Plenty of other political influencers have fuelled the fire, including a pro-Palestinian activist named Hussain “Hoz” Shafiei, who is one of the main characters promoting tomorrow’s march. His social media content is a projectile vomit of crackpot conspiracy theories and anti-Israeli propaganda (“Israel is the Devil”). He describes himself as a “Proud British Citizen, Iranian by blood, Arab by birth and English by upbringing”. Such a mix of identities might sound confusing, but is hardly unusual in Birmingham, a city in which many recent arrivals now seem unsure exactly who, or where, they are.

As the countdown to the match on November 6 begins, the authorities have become increasingly rattled. Their scandalous solution to what should simply be a policing challenge? To ban Israeli fans from watching the match. What a grotesque insult to all Jews – and what a craven response to what should be a total non-dilemma.

Of course there might be trouble – yet all the police need to do is their actual job. Isn’t maintaining order in all manner of settings their core offer? It is a role that West Midlands Police, and other forces, perform well enough, week in week out, including at countless pro-Palestinian marches. What exactly is different about this?

It is hard to avoid a horrible feeling that the answer to this question is the type of people who would have been coming to Birmingham for the match, namely Jews. As the Israel Solidarity Movement has pointed out, the decision is about far more than a sporting restriction. It is a deeply disturbing symbol of how Jews and Israelis are increasingly treated in our country, not only by countless faceless ignorami, but by far too many people in positions of authority, who should know better.

Brendan O'Neill: The ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans is a moral outrage

To witness a ‘Jew hunt’ like that and think to yourself ‘We can make sure it doesn’t happen here by keeping the Jews away’ – do people understand what a profound moral outrage this is? I can’t believe this needs to be said, but if there had been another ‘Jew hunt’ in Birmingham, the problem would not have been the Jews but their hunters. The pox on our society would not be the young Jews visiting from Israel for a day or two of footie and rowdiness but the elements within our society whose minds have been so addled by Israelophobia that they would have felt compelled to fume against those Jews. To ban Jews to try to calm those who hate them is a grotesque genuflection to the twisted logic of Jew hatred.

Here’s what I think: if it is not safe for Jews from Israel to attend a football match, then that match needs to be called off. There should be no event, no venue and no street in Britain where Jews, whether British or Israeli, are not safe from the hate and the blows of anti-Israel fanatics. Historically, you’ve been able to tell a lot about a society by how it treats its Jews. By whether it ghettoises them or lets them live freely. By whether it occasionally hunts them or leaves them alone. What we can tell about Britain from this nauseating decision is that we now prize the peace of Jew haters more highly than the rights of Jews – the sacrifice of Jewry at the altar of anti-Semitism.

Then there’s the despicable role played by certain MPs and the anti-Israel bigots of the left. They’ve been whipping up suspicion towards the visiting Maccabi fans for months. They’re thrilled by the ban. Ayoub Khan, a Birmingham MP, said he ‘welcomed the decision’. He wrote: ‘Sports entertainment should be enjoyed by all, regardless of their race, ethnicity and background. But….’ But! You don’t even need to know the rest of that sentence. There should never be a ‘but’ when it comes to the right of all people, whatever their ‘race’, to partake in the joy of sport. That there now is a ‘but’, and that it applies to one group alone, is proof of how thoroughly the Israelophobic mania has corrupted our country.

‘Kick racism out of football’ was the cry of Britain’s ‘progressives’ for years. Now it’s ‘Kick Jews out of football’. Now it’s ‘Kick Israelis out – for their own protection’. This cannot stand. Keir Starmer says the ban is ‘wrong’. ‘We will not tolerate anti-Semitism on our streets’, he says, and the police must ‘ensure all football fans can enjoy the game, without fear of violence or intimidation’. Well, do something about it then. Put your money where your mouth is. Overturn this gross ban and deploy whatever forces are necessary to defend visiting Jews from racist violence. A nation where Jews from overseas cannot travel freely and securely is an anti-Semitic nation. Is that us?

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10/17 Links Pt1: They Said Justice. They Meant Jihad; Mamdani’s anti-Israel obsession is key to his rise; Oct 7 Terrorist Charged With Entering the United States Illegally

From Ian:

New Poll Finds Soaring Approval for Trump's Handling of Israel-Hamas War

President Donald Trump's net approval rating on his handling of the Israel-Hamas war surged after his peace deal secured a ceasefire and the release of hostages, according to a poll released Friday.

"Following the Gaza ceasefire deal, 47% of voters approve of Trump's handling of the war between Israel and Hamas, while 34% disapprove," Emerson College Polling reported. "Public opinion has flipped since the Emerson 100-day poll [in April], when 30% approved and 46% disapproved of the president's handling of the war between Israel and Hamas."

Republican voters overwhelmingly support Trump's handling of the conflict, 80 percent to 7 percent, while Democrats disapprove by a 57-to-19 margin, according to Emerson Polling executive director Spencer Kimball. "The shift in overall approval comes from independents, who approve 43% to 38%; in April, independents disapproved 43% to 25%."

Trump's peace deal last week brought a ceasefire in the two-year war that began with Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel. The terror group has released all 20 living Israeli hostages but failed to make good on its promise to return the bodies of all 28 dead hostages. Israel, which has released nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, responded to the hold-up by keeping a Gaza border crossing closed and restricting aid until Hamas returns all dead hostages.

They Said Justice. They Meant Jihad. By Abe Greenwald

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It would be fun to watch him take a shot at that. Those, such as father and son Mamdani, who’ve been intimately entangled with SJP surely know that it’s a straightforwardly pro-Hamas (and generally pro-jihad) organization. That’s why they got involved.

But the question will never be asked because it also exposes the media’s complicity in pretending that the Jew-hating zealots of the woke jihad were actually concerned for suffering Gazans. In May, for example, Sharon Otterman of the New York Times described SJP as “the most organized pro-Palestinian group on many college campuses.” A month after Hamas’s October 7 attack, the Times’ Alan Blinder characterized SJP as “perhaps the most popular and divisive campus organization championing the Palestinian cause.” What say you now, Otterman? Blinder?

Probably not much. While the committed Hamasniks are coming out of the closet, their liberal followers and enablers will likely make themselves scarce. They were conned. That’s the way leftist radicalism works. The true believers pitch well-meaning liberals a sweet-sounding story to get them on board. And, boy, did it work this time.

The war is over, and the part-time anti-Zionists have left the stage, most still thinking they were part of something noble. But the work of their groomers, the full-time terror propagandists, doesn’t end when the war stops. Groups like SJP will cheer so long as some jihadist, somewhere, is killing someone in the name of Palestine.

Jonathan Tobin: Mamdani’s anti-Israel obsession is key to his rise

Since foreign policy is not part of the responsibility of an American mayor, it’s fair to ask why this is so important to him. The answer is patently obvious.

It’s something he learned from his far-left parents—his father, Mahmood Mamdani, is a professor at Columbia University, and his mother is India-born filmmaker Mira Nair—and even shared by his wife, who publicly mourned the death this week of a pro-Hamas influencer who cheered for the Oct. 7 atrocities. He grew up around and became friends with hard-core scholastic ideologues like Edward Said, author of Orientalism, and Rashid Khalidi, who helped normalize hatred for Israel and the denial of Jewish rights. And so, such sentiments are at the core of his being.

Hatred and intolerance for Jews and their rights are not marginal to the 21st-century Marxist mindset that he exemplifies. The embrace of toxic ideas like critical race theory, intersectionality and settler-colonialism that brands Jews and Israel as “white” oppressors is at its heart. The key to understanding the impact of these ideas is that, as the Democratic Socialists of America’s condemnation of the ceasefire-hostage release deal that ended the post-Oct. 7 war showed, those who believe this consider Israel’s existence illegitimate under any circumstances and justify any actions, no matter how atrocious or inhuman, as justifiable “resistance.”

While such views were confined to the fever swamps of the far left not so long ago, they have gone mainstream in the wake of the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement in the last decade, coupled with the surge of international antisemitism since the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Mamdani is therefore the perfect illustration of the same attitudes that are causing much of the Democratic Party to oppose Israel, and to accept and spread blood libels about Jews committing genocide against the Palestinian people. The fact that The New York Times published a fawning paean this week to one of the world’s leading pro-Hamas antisemites, U.N. special rapporteur Francesca Albanese, is just another symptom of how a person like Mamdani could become the idol of the Democrats’ left-wing base.

A Mayor Mamdani will not have much power to harm the State of Israel. Nor will his adherents be rounding up Jews in the streets of New York. And whoever is governor—especially if, due in part to Hochul’s support of Mamdani, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), a congressional scourge of antisemites, is elected governor in 2026—could make it difficult for him to do anything. Nevertheless, his command of the New York City Police Department will be a godsend to antisemitic mobs on college campuses or in the streets of the city, who will know that the man in charge will not only be reluctant to arrest them but actually be on their side. That will have a tangible impact on the security of the city’s Jewish population.

Just as important, Mamdani’s election will be a potential turning point in American Jewish history as antisemitism not only becomes endemic but part of mainstream political culture.

We’ve continued to see the knee-jerk reaction of the mainstream liberal media to any attempt to call Mamdani to account for his extremism and Jew-hatred by falsely labeling it “Islamophobia.” Along those lines, demonizing Mamdani’s critics as “Islamophobic” demonstrates how most such accusations are nothing more than an attempt to silence critiques of jihadist ideology and Muslim attacks on Jews.

Of course, this is still a minority view in the country as a whole. The overwhelming majority of Republicans reject the antisemitic views of the left and even those on the far-right, like political commentators and podcasters Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens. That said, an America in which Mamdani isn’t just the mayor of New York but representative of the views of a large percentage of the Democratic Party and its media cheerleaders, like the Times, is a place where Jews can no longer think of themselves as entirely safe.

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10/16 Links Pt2: Enough is enough. We must clamp down on universities now; Maccabi Tel Aviv fans banned from Aston Villa match over ‘safety’

From Ian:

Warner Bros. Discovery Speaks Out Against Israeli Film Boycott: ‘Our Policies Prohibit Discrimination of Any Kind’

Warner Bros. Discovery has responded to a legal letter regarding calls for a boycott of Israeli film institutions, acknowledging such a pledge would likely violate its internal policies.

“Warner Bros. Discovery is committed to fostering an inclusive and respectful environment for its employees, collaborators, and other stakeholders,” a spokesperson for WBD told Variety.

“Our policies prohibit discrimination of any kind, including discrimination based on race, religion, national origin or ancestry. We believe a boycott of Israeli film institutions violates our policies. While we respect the rights of individuals and groups to express their views and advocate for causes, we will continue to align our business practices with the requirements of our policies and the law.”

Last month a plethora of industry figures including Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo and Javier Bardem signed a pledge organized by Film Workers for Palestine vowing to avoid working with Israeli film institutions “implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people.” Examples of “complicity” suggested by Film Workers for Palestine include “whitewashing or justifying genocide and apartheid, and/or partnering with the government committing them.”

In its FAQ section, Film Workers for Palestine clarifies that Israeli citizens of Palestinian heritage would not be subject to the same boycott as Israeli citizens of other heritage, with a different set of “context sensitive” guidelines applied instead.

However law associations on both sides of the Atlantic have warned the boycott is likely to violate equality laws. As Variety reported exclusively last week, the group U.K. Lawyers for Israel has warned studios, agencies and unions that the pledge breaches the Equality Act 2010 making it “highly likely to be a litigation risk.” This could also have a knock-on effect on insurance and film finance.

Brendan O'Neill: Get your hands off the Holocaust, Mehdi Hasan

The most striking part of Hasan’s tweet is where he says ‘One of the ways’ in which Gaza feels worse than the Holocaust…. So post-war jokes are not the only thing that make Gaza worse? What else does, Mehdi? It’s not the numbers, that’s for sure. The estimated death toll for the two-year war in Gaza is 70,000, a great many of which will be Hamas militants. That’s far lower than the toll for other recent wars – Yemen, Syria, Sudan – which are rarely called genocides.

But here’s the thing: at the height of their Jew-killing frenzy, in 1944, the Nazis were exterminating 6,000 human beings a day at Auschwitz II in Birkenau. Men, women, children, the elderly, the disabled: gassed, burnt, vaporised. More in 12 days than in two years of war in Gaza. It is a grotesque insult against memory, against truth itself, even to say the word Gaza in the same sentence as the word Holocaust. Hasan must know this? He went to Oxford FFS. Actually, maybe that explains it.

The numbers are only one part of the story. There’s intention, too. The wild clamour of the keffiyeh mob and their enablers in the NGO world to have the Gaza war branded a ‘genocide’ wilfully overlooks that Israel’s aim was not to destroy the Palestinian people but to destroy Hamas. There was a time when progressives would have considered it noble for a Jewish army to take the fight to a fascist militia that had raped and massacred its people. How do the ‘genocide’ nuts explain that the war is winding down – we hope – now that the hostages have been returned and there’s a peace deal that says Hamas must disarm? Do you know when the Holocaust would have ended had the Allied forces not intervened? When there was not one Jew left on Earth.

Hasan is back-pedalling. He says his tweet was ‘clumsily’ worded. He’s telling those who accuse him of Holocaust relativism to ‘go fuck yourself’. Defensive much? The fact is he gave voice to an untruth that has spread like a pox in educated circles – that Gaza is a genocide, not unlike that genocide. NGOs gleefully peddle this calumny. Pompous columnists rattle it off. You see it on every soulless march against Israel, with placards calling Israel the New Nazis and likening Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto.

I can’t read Hasan’s mind. I have no idea why he parrots this myth. But I have my suspicions about why the broader ‘pro-Palestine’ movement does. Howard Jacobson says the reason Israel’s haters always reach for the Holocaust, despite there being ‘thousands of years of pitiless warfare’ they could reference instead, is ‘to wound Jews’, ‘to punish them with their own grief’. To my mind, it’s something worse than Holocaust relativism. It’s Holocaust inversion, where the Jews are reframed as the perpetrators rather than the victims of the greatest crime in history, all to the end of washing away the historic guilt of privileged woke Westerners. Now that the war in Gaza has stopped, please, can this war on truth stop, too?

Holocaust Museum director rebukes Gazans identifying as ‘holocaust survivors’

Those who say that Gazans are “holocaust survivors,” having endured Israel’s defensive war against the Hamas terror organization, are to be “widely condemned,” according to Sara Bloomfield, director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

“Falsely comparing the Holocaust to Israel’s response to Hamas’s terrorist attack is an outrageous weaponization of the genocide of European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, who systematically murdered six million Jews,” Bloomfield told JNS. “It’s antisemitic, inaccurate, highly offensive and must be widely condemned.”

One social media account has received 3.2 million views for a post claiming to be a “holocaust survivor” of war in Gaza. Another post from a “survivor of the Gaza holocaust” garnered 525,000 views, and a post from an artist wearing a keffiyeh, referring to “my survival from this holocaust,” received 40,000 views.

Former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan, who created a media company called Zeteo, wrote in a since-deleted social media post that “one of the ways in which the Gaza genocide is worse than a lot of previous genocides—Rwanda, even the Holocaust—is that you didn’t have Hutus or Nazis mocking the genocide after it was over. They were shunned, deradicalized, prosecuted.”

Deborah Camiel, senior vice president of communications at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told JNS that Hasan “based his outrageous comment comparing the Oct. 7 war to the Holocaust on the canard that Israel’s military response to Hamas atrocities was a genocide.”

That claim is a “tired inversion widely used by antisemites, who try at every opportunity, no matter how inexact or intellectually lazy the comparison is, to portray Jews as Nazis,” Camiel said. “Israel’s war of self-defense was not against the Palestinian people but the vicious terrorist group Hamas.”

“As Hasan well knows, Hamas, itself a group with a genocidal charter, embeds itself among Palestinian civilians, in private homes, mosques, schools and hospitals, purposefully exposing them to terrible harm,” the Wiesenthal Center spokeswoman told JNS. “It is clear today that most of the world agrees that it is this maniacal jihadist group that should be shunned, eradicated and prosecuted.”

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