10/29 Links Pt2: The Orwellian rewriting of the October 7 massacres; Blaming the Jews for Everything in Michigan; Anti-Israel activists have ‘co-opted’ American Psychological Association

From Ian:

The Orwellian rewriting of the October 7 massacres

On October 7, 2023, 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage to Gaza. In proportional terms, that would be the equivalent of roughly 8,400 killed and 1,750 kidnapped in Britain. Nor can those numbers convey the suffering of the victims of rape and other sexual violence.

And then came the Orwellian plot twist. Before the dead had been buried, while the hostages were being brutalised in Gaza, and as Israel’s military response was taking shape, the account of what happened began to change, manipulated by Hamas and its allies, enablers, and useful idiots in the West. History was turned on its head. The deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust was blurred, rationalised, justified, celebrated, and, in certain quarters, dismissed as a false-flag operation.

I saw this again recently when I addressed a large university audience in Europe. Fifteen students, strategically positioned around the room, offered a case study in chanted slogans substituting for thought. They robotically repeated accusations of “Nazi-like genocide”, “ethnic cleansing”, and “settler-colonialism”, more intent on reinforcing one another’s certainties than examining the outrageous, unexamined claims they made.

More consequentially, over time, some governments that should have known better began sacrificing high-minded principle for street-level politics. Students at so-called elite universities in the US and UK revealed how little they knew, or cared, about the facts. Too many media outlets seemed quicker to question the evidence staring them in the face than to scrutinise Hamas’s fictionalised claims. Organisations that professed universal concern for women and children were conspicuously missing in action, or raised the evidentiary threshold to new heights, when the victims were Israeli. And the United Nations once again showed how far it had strayed from its founding ideals. It was not until September 2025 that the General Assembly endorsed a declaration condemning Hamas’s October 7 attacks, while some ostensibly neutral UN staff working on relief efforts in Gaza were revealed to be Hamas sympathisers or even moonlighting as Hamas terrorists.

Hamas had announced its intention to destroy Israel long ago. On October 7, its attackers acted on that aim with unprecedented ferocity, in full view of the world, in some cases gleefully recording and sharing their crimes with family and friends. Yet, in the story that took hold in many quarters, democratic Israel became the villain, the aggressor, and even the alleged perpetrator of genocide. Terrorist Hamas, meanwhile, was sanitised as a resistance movement and its reports treated as gospel. Its killers were romanticised as freedom fighters and, in some circles, all but fetishised.

Western capitals rightly supported Ukraine as it defended itself against Russia’s illegal invasion. Yet too many could not, or would not, recognise Israel’s need to fight back powerfully against the aggressors on its own border. Instead came sanctimonious lectures from Dublin to Madrid, Paris to Oslo, and Brussels to Ottawa, as if Israel were confronting a foe that cared a whit about the laws of war.

Strip away the rhetoric, and what many seemed to be saying was something else: for the sake of our streets, our electoral fortunes, our domestic political pressures, and our wider Middle East interests, appease. Sacrifice your interests for ours. Trust the untrustworthy. Be good Christians (!) and turn the other cheek.

Then, in September 2025, London, Paris, Ottawa, and Canberra recognised a Palestinian state without agreed borders, a unified government, or control over its territory – while hostages remained in Gaza. What a sense of timing! What an unearned gift! What shameless pandering!

Meanwhile, amidst this diplomatic circus, history, geography, and reality all got upended.

First, history. Before the attack, Israel maintained neither settlements nor a permanent military presence inside Gaza. It had dismantled its settlements and withdrawn its forces 18 years earlier, giving Gaza’s leaders their first chance ever to chart the strip’s future. They could have chosen Dubai or Singapore as a model. Alas, they did not.

Second, geography. Striking how collective amnesia sets in whenever there is discussion of Gaza’s “encirclement” by Israel. Lo and behold, Gaza has a second border. It’s with Egypt, an Arab and Muslim-majority country. Yet many neglect this inconvenient fact. Why does Egypt maintain such a formidable Gaza border fence, topped with layers of concertina wire?

And third, reality. The “experts” in government, universities, social media, and think tanks presume to know exactly what Israel is not supposed to do. But what, precisely, would they have had Israel do after October 7? Leave a genocidal foe in power on its doorstep? Abandon the hostages, some of whom would endure brutal captivity for more than two years? Defer to Hamas’s use of civilians to shield its fighters and ignore the vast armed infrastructure it built above and below ground? Pretend that Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood had no interests of their own in the conflict? It is easy to preach restraint and question strategy from a distant armchair. It is harder to say what Israel should have done against an enemy determined to destroy it.

Yet for all the second-guessing, all the libellous accusations of genocide, Israel demonstrated two things: military resolve and an effort to limit civilian harm.

It fought a war on seven fronts to weaken its declared enemies and restore the power of deterrence. In that fight, it showed any number of wobbly, flaccid Western nations what valour, patriotism, and resilience look like.

To be sure, there were tragic civilian deaths. Every such death is an incalculable loss. Israel nevertheless sought to minimise civilian casualties as best it could in an immensely difficult, weaponised, and confined environment. In fact, Israel risked the lives of its own soldiers in that effort rather than relying solely on air power. It also permitted humanitarian assistance, albeit with interruptions, much of which, alas, was seized by Hamas for its own use and profit.

Hamas started a war. It was a naked act of aggression. And then, along with fellow travellers, it methodically convinced much of the world that it was the innocent victim of the very war it began. George Orwell, where are you?

David Bell: My report on antisemitism in education is based on hard evidence – now let’s implement its findings

What matters is what emerges when that evidence is considered together. The survey responses, testimony and wider evidence presented to the review consistently point to antisemitism being a real issue among young people and within schools and colleges.

Antisemitism is rising in wider society and it has filtered into our schools. You do not need to look far to see deeply troubling cases involving Jewish pupils and teachers. Statistics are important, but we do not need a single statistic to tell us that antisemitism is present – it is clearly visible.

Questions have also been raised about my impartiality when conducting the review. I did not come to this review with an agenda or narrative I wanted to promote.

Instead, throughout this work I have been led by the evidence presented to me, and I would encourage anyone questioning its conclusions to engage with that evidence in full.

Free speech and open debate are vital, especially in schools and colleges where young people are learning how to navigate these types of conversations.

Young people should be able to discuss difficult and contentious political questions, including the actions of the State of Israel.

That's why I don't believe asking schools and colleges to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism will inhibit legitimate debate. Applied in a way that respects their legal duties, including on equality and freedom of speech, it should help institutions distinguish legitimate criticism from antisemitism.

Debate must be encouraged in education, but school and college leaders also have a responsibility to ensure political expression is appropriate, particularly in the classroom, and that they meet their legal duties.

My conclusion is clear – antisemitism is a serious problem in our schools and colleges, and we must tackle it in a coherent and comprehensive way. My report is a start in that direction so now it’s all about implementation.

WSJ Editorial: Blaming the Jews for Everything in Michigan

A common theme of antisemites throughout history is to blame the Jews for any and every social ill.

Now this has reappeared in America with a new ad for Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed that blames grocery prices on U.S. support for Israel.

The ad features a couple agonizing over high prices at a supermarket. The wife tells her husband that "you're going to have to put those eggs back" because "we have to set that $7 aside for killing Palestinians."

Later the husband asks about the Israelis, "Don't they get universal health care too?" "Yeah, they do. And we're paying for that too probably," she replies. "Might as well put the bananas back."

The unmistakable message: Americans are paying more and making personal sacrifices because the U.S. is supporting Israel's alleged genocide against Palestinians.

Most Michiganders are smart enough to know that Israel isn't responsible for inflation, but the ad is intended to feed grievances on the far left and right.

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10/29 Links Pt1: JPost: Netanyahu, Eisenkot, Bennett must put Israel first and talk unity; Shin Bet probes Qatari, Turkish funding to boost Arab turnout in Israeli election; Israeli ship sinks in Black Sea after being hit by 3 suicide boat drones

From Ian:

Bret Stephens: Very Little Is Likely to Change after Israeli Election

The first thing to say about Tuesday's election in Israel is that the country is having one. Competitive, lawful, on schedule. That's more than can be said of the Palestinian Authority under the presidency of Mahmoud Abbas, who was elected to a four-year term in 2005 but has bypassed elections ever since. It's more than can be said for Hamas, which won Palestinian legislative elections in 2006, went to war against its domestic political opponents, and has ruled through fiat and fear ever since.

It's difficult to take Israel's inveterate critics seriously when they demand a "Free Palestine" without registering the slightest audible objection to the tyrannies in Ramallah and Gaza; or when, in the name of freedom and equality, they seek to abolish the Middle East's only functioning liberal democracy.

For an election widely billed as the most important in the country's history, very little is likely to change, at least as far as the outside world is concerned. Not one of the leading contenders wants a Palestinian state. Not one of them is going to remove Israelis from the West Bank or issue a blanket ban on settlement construction. Not one of them wants anything less than an assertive military posture toward Hamas, Hizbullah and Iran.

Of the many intellectually flabby critiques of Israeli policy since Oct. 7, the idea that Israel should have traded its physical security for the sake of some added dollops of liberal pity is among the flabbiest. Israel doesn't exist to showcase Jewish victimization. It exists to end it.

At stake is whether a people who have borne the burden of Hamas's terror and Iran's missiles and a nonstop state of emergency and the unceasing chorus of global condemnation that is one part ignorance, two parts bigotry and three parts self-delusion should have a government worthy of their sacrifice, steadiness and courage.

After Oct. 7, Israelis Were Forced to Choose between Two Bad Options

Politicians on the left and right in the U.S. these days often seem more focused on Israel, its treatment of the Palestinians, and its policies in the Middle East than on the usual local concerns, like the number of children in a classroom or unemployment. This preoccupation is a puzzle to many Israelis.

Do Israelis really not care what the world thinks about them? No. They care a lot. But what concerns them even more is what their enemies think. Israelis want the Western world to love them but their enemies in the Middle East to fear them.

In the days after the Oct. 7 massacre of Israelis by Hamas, most Western countries displayed a deep empathy for Israel. But the coin had another side. Hamas's invasion and the slaughter signaled to the neighborhood that Israel had lost power. Western love moved Israelis, but their enemies' dissipation of fear aroused existential anxiety.

Three years later, the successes of the Israeli Army rehabilitated the army's deterrent power in the Middle East. The trouble is that the actions that restored Israel's image in the region have severely damaged its image in the West. Any restraint that Israel might have shown to maintain Western sympathy would have prevented it from restoring the fear felt by its enemies. And everything it did to establish fear eroded sympathy. The catch is that it can't have both.

After Oct. 7, Israelis were forced to choose between two bad options. Going to war against a terrorist army requires ground operations amid a civilian population - a blueprint for large-scale death and devastation. But not going to war would have left Hamas with the ability to repeat the massacre, signaled to Israel's enemies that it had lost the ability to defend itself, and stripped Israelis of confidence that they could continue building a future in their own country.

There is broad agreement in Israel: the war and its justifiability are not topics of public debate in the current election. Israel was required to choose bad over worse but judged as if it had chosen bad over good.

Israelis Are Broadly United on Attitude to Country's Enemies

Despite the inconclusive result of Israel's general election, it remains highly unlikely that replacing Netanyahu with Eisenkot would have any profound impact on the many security challenges facing the wider Middle East. When it comes to issues surrounding Israel's security, there is little to distinguish between the two main contenders for the premiership in terms of their uncompromising approach to defeating Israel's many foes.

Eisenkot, 66, the former head of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) who served in Netanyahu's war cabinet after the Oct. 7 attacks, is just as much a hawk as Netanyahu when it comes to defending Israelis from the many regional threats they face. He shares Netanyahu's view that Israel must prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons at all costs, and that it is vital to disrupt and degrade Tehran's terrorist infrastructure throughout the Middle East.

Following the national trauma of Oct. 7, it is a prerequisite for almost all Israeli voters that whoever leads their country regards the defense of the Jewish homeland as their number-one priority. So far as the wider Middle East is concerned, the next Israeli government will be equally robust when confronting its many foes.

Israel will continue to target any attempt by Iran to reconstitute its nuclear program, the majority of which has been reduced to rubble. Likewise, Israel will continue to press for the complete disarmament of Hamas terrorists in Gaza, and will maintain its efforts to disrupt the activities of Hizbullah and other Iranian-backed terror groups in the region.

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Activists To Link High Fuel Prices With Israel: Firebomb Gas Stations 'For Palestine'

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook and Substack pages.

Los Angeles, October 29 - A group of students and community organizations branding itself grassroots while enjoying the funding and direction of tech donors and professional consultants announced plans this week to connect California’s persistently high gasoline prices to Israeli policy and to stage coordinated actions at filling stations across the state. The campaign, described by organizers as “material solidarity,” includes calls to disrupt pump operations and, in some literature, to set stations alight, leaving behind "Free Palestine" graffiti to let everyone know whom to support.

At a press conference outside a Chevron station in Culver City, spokespeople for the newly formed Fuelestine Alliance argued that pump prices above five dollars a gallon stem directly from “settler-colonial energy politics.” One organizer, a graduate student in critical theory, told reporters that every gallon of refined petroleum sold in Los Angeles “subsidizes the occupation” because several major oil companies maintain business relationships with Israeli firms or hold investments linked to the country.

When asked how arson at a California gas station might alter conditions in Gaza or the West Bank, the speaker retorted that the question itself reflected “a colonial demand for measurable outcomes” and that the primary value of the action lay in “refusing normalcy.”

The group’s materials do not address California’s combination of state gasoline taxes, low-carbon fuel standards, refining constraints, or the absence of new in-state refinery capacity — factors state energy officials have repeatedly cited as the main reasons local prices exceed the national average by more than a dollar per gallon. Instead, the literature frames any attempt to discuss those factors as an evasion. A flyer distributed at the Culver City event lists “U.S. imperial complicity” and “Zionist capital flows” as the operative causes and urges readers to “make the pumps inoperable.”

"Palestinians suffer restrictions on their movement," explained a Students for Justice in Palestine coordinator, referring to Israeli security measures to prevent terrorist attacks. "No one is free until Palestine is free. Thus, restrictions on movement in California, by any means necessary."

Several local chapters have already begun mapping stations for what organizers call “direct action days.” Internal planning documents describe a preference for nighttime operations, and advise participants to avoid stations that employ large numbers of Palestinian or Arab staff so that the actions “cannot be spun as anti-Palestinian.”

The same documents contain no estimates of how the proposed disruptions would affect fuel availability for the several hundred thousand Californians who commute long distances, nor any assessment of secondary price effects if stations are forced offline. One organizer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said such considerations were “beside the point” because “Palestinians don’t experience relief from cheaper American gas either way. The point is for us to feel good about doing something we think is righteous, and to have righteous cover for violence.”

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Books by Elder of Ziyon

Reclaiming the Covenant Protocols He's an Anti-Zionist Too! At Ptach Lo (ebook) The Muslim Question (ebook, $8) Sarah Makes the World Better (ages 3-8)

More at: media.elderofziyon.com · Substack

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