Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, February 09, 2026

02/09 Links Pt1: Israeli President calls out protests against Australian visit; ‘Sham’ anti-Zionist ad against Herzog’s Australia visit includes names of Nazi kapos

From Ian:

Israel’s President Herzog visits Australia after Bondi Beach terror attack Herzog: 'when one Jew is hurt, all Jew

Israeli President Israel Herzog has begun his visit to Australia in the wake of the December terror attack against Jews at Bondi beach, placing a wreath at the site of the attack as well as memorial stones, in the Jewish tradition, which were brought from Jerusalem.

The Israeli President, alongside his wife Michal, placed the stones at the memorial outside Bondi Pavilion, describing how the Jewish tradition of placing stones at gravesites represents “the endurance of memory, the weight of loss and the unbreakable bond between the living and those we have lost”.

The Israeli President went on to say that “these stones … will remain here at Bondi for eternity in sacred memory of the victims and as a reminder that the bonds between good people of all faiths and all nations will continue to hold strong in the face of terror, violence and hatred.”

Herzog went on to meet family members of those killed during the terror attack, with video footage showing him embracing Australian Jews who thanked him for coming.

In a speech given at Bondi Beach, Herzog described the “fifteen innocent souls who gathered to celebrate Chanukah, the festival of light, were massacred in cold blood by two Islamist terrorists.

“The world’s only Jewish state, the State of Israel and the nation of Israel, stood together with the Australian people. We stood with Australian Jews, for we are one big family – and when one Jew is hurt, all Jews feel their pain. That is why I am here today, to embrace and console the bereaved families.”

President headlines moving evening of reflection

“We have come here not simply to tell you we are with you, but to show you that we are with you,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog told a packed ICC Sydney Theatre on Monday night.

As hate-fuelled protests against his visit with calls to “globalise the intifada” raged just blocks away, inside the theatre the mood was one of unity, family, strength in togetherness, and of a yearning for peace.

“There are certain emotions one can only fully convey through action. Only by doing. By showing up. And so, in the wake of the horror at Bondi Beach, we felt we must come to Australia to look you in the eye. To show up for you,” Herzog said.

“We have come to be with you, just as you have always shown up for us.

“Australian Jewry has been with us in our greatest hours of need. This community is inspirational in its connection to Israel, in its proactive Zionism.”

The President said the hatred that triggered the Bondi terrorist attack on the first night of Chanukah last year “is the very same, age-old, plague of antisemitism endured by our parents and grandparents”.

“It began long before October 7, generations before even the State of Israel was born. Yet somehow- the October 7 massacre, the greatest mass murder of Jews since the Shoah, emboldened closeted antisemites, here in Australia and around the world,” he said.

Herzog also paid tribute to all those who helped in the aftermath of the massacre.

“To all the heroes of Bondi, those who lent a hand, those who prayed for their wounded neighbours, those who gave blood, those who brought flowers and wrote letters, those who sent a meal, those who embraced this incredible community—each and every one of you has the deep admiration, the respect and the prayers of the Israeli people—for you are the finest of Australia,” he said.

“And I am here also to re-invigorate the important relations between our two strong democracies. I know that by working together we will find the way to expand collaboration and increase understanding and upgrade our relations. During my visit, I intend to discuss it with your national leadership.”

Oh look. @Amnesty is lying again about Israel.

Last week, Amnesty International's Senior Director for Research, Advocacy, Policy & Campaigns Erika Guevara Rosas tweeted, and Amnesty reweeted:

Older people in Gaza are facing a brutal, overlooked health crisis amid Israel’s ongoing genocide. A new joint investigation by @Amnesty and @HelpAge reveals how Israel’s continued blockade of aid and essential medicines is causing a devastating collapse in older people’s physical and mental health.

Amnesty's press release about the report says in its headline "Israel’s ongoing blockade of aid and medicines." It describes "Israel’s ongoing unlawful, cruel and inhumane restrictions on the entry of life-saving aid" as being proven fact. It says, "Internally displaced older people also described to Amnesty International how their lack of access to nutritious food, adequate shelter and healthcare was causing extreme harm due to the continuing blockade imposed by Israeli authorities."

The HelpAge report says none of that.

The report was a limited humanitarian survey of older people in Gaza, a needs assessment of 416 older individuals. It relies heavily on self-reported information. It acknowledges methodological limitations. It was designed to understand how older people are coping with displacement, chronic illness, food insecurity, and disrupted services.

At no point does this survey claim that there are any restrictions of aid into Gaza. It was not designed to evaluate border policy. It was not designed to assess whether medicines are being systematically denied entry. It contains no shipment data, no border denial logs, no inspection statistics, no inflow-versus-need calculations, no comparative pre- and post-ceasefire import figures. It does not even attempt to quantify total aid entering the territory.

In other words, it is taking individual interviews about the very real challenges older people have in the wake of a devastating war and claiming that it proves an "illegal blockade" that is part of an "ongoing genocide."

In reality, aid has been pouring into Gaza. Thousands of trucks of aid, including over 600 trucks filled with medical aid, have entered since the ceasefire, as COGAT shows.

Even during the war there were no restrictions on medicines or on medical aid that could not be repurposed for weapons.

The problems have been in distribution, which is the purpose of the NGOs in Gaza, Israel coordinates closely with them to ensure that Gazans, including the elderly, can get the aid they need without compromising on security needs.

Which is more than any other country at war has ever done.

What the report does document is hardship. Older people report difficulty obtaining medicines. Many report interrupted treatment for chronic disease. Many report weight loss, displacement, and overcrowded shelters. None of this is surprising after a war that devastated infrastructure and displaced the vast majority of the population. No serious observer believes that life in Gaza instantly became normal the moment hostilities paused.

What Amnesty has done is take those documented hardships and present them as proof of an ongoing genocidal policy driven by a blockade of aid and medicines. That is simply a lie.

War destroys systems. Infrastructure does not rebuild overnight. Chronic disease management does not resume instantly. Supply chains remain fragile. Distribution networks require stabilization. These explanations are mundane, structural, and tragically common in post-conflict settings. They do not require a theory of ongoing genocide to make sense of observed conditions.

Amnesty has shown yet again that it is more interested in making unfounded and slanderous accusations against Israel than in actually helping the people of Gaza. At least in the Middle East, it is not a human rights organization: it is an antisemitic political organization that hides its hate of Jews in Israel behind human rights.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

By now you have probably seen the Super Bowl ad produced by Robert Kraft's Blue Square Alliance Against Hate.

When was the last time that you heard anyone use the epithet "dirty Jew?"

Well, it's going to happen a lot more now, as a result of this commercial!

In the real world, Jewish students are called genocidal racists. And not by bullying students, but by teachers. In many schools and universities, frameworks used in DEI and decolonial programming categorize Jews as privileged oppressors and supporting Israel is supporting apartheid and genocide.

Being proud Jews helps. Knowing the facts helps. But in the end, how can a student fight something like this on his own?

He cannot. Because the problem isn't the bullying. The problem is that schools, and universities, and NGOs, and most of the media, have abandoned their mission to tell the truth.

But it is even worse than that. Because no one is even learning what truth means. As I've been mentioning, in significant parts of academia, especially within decolonial and critical frameworks, coherence within the ideological system often functions as the operative test of truth, displacing correspondence with external reality.

As I've been working on my Derechology framework based on Jewish thinking, I've been exploring basic questions. One of those questions is as basic as it gets: what is truth? The gold standard is the scientific method, but even the methods scientists use are not provable. Math is based on axioms that are asserted and not provable, science uses methods like deduction, induction and abduction that are pretty good but not proof.

Jewish thinking says that absolute truth exists but is not knowable to man, only to God, so we can only approximate truth and approach it asymptoticly. Modern philosophy is starting to catch up, specifically critical realism which was only developed in the 1970s is very similar.

But this brings up an interesting and critical issue. Typically falsehood is defined as "not truth." But if we cannot know absolute truth, how can we define falsehood?

I have been arguing that falsehood requires its own epistemology. We cannot always prove absolute truth. But we can identify frameworks that contradict themselves, that rely on missing preconditions, that fail to produce necessary consequences, or that depend on structurally impossible assumptions. When a theory survives only because contrary evidence is reinterpreted as further proof of oppression, it ceases to be an explanatory model and becomes a closed narrative system.

This is a very high level of what I'm developing, but the point is that today's academics, pundits, many politicians and students are basing their opinions of Israel on things that are provably false - but they are consistent with other false ideas about Israel, which creates a self-perpetuating coherent framework that is all based in the end on lies. Yet they do not even have the tools to prove them false.

I've been showing that these accusations are structurally false. For example, I've used these methods to show how the idea that Israel is a settler colonialist state is false (and that the claims of settler colonialism itself are provably false as well.) I've shown that the claim that Israel is guilty of genocide is impossible not because of counter-arguments but because for it to be true it depends on assumptions that are impossible to be true. These coherence-based arguments are, in the end, indistinguishable from conspiracy theories.

Today's antisemitism is not simply based on lies. It is based on people not even knowing how to determine falsehood. And we need to return academia to become what it is meant to be - seeking truth - before we can uproot antisemitism at its core.

It is a little more difficult that square blue stickers.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

02/08 Links: Hatred of Israel has become a proxy war on the West; Former pro-Palestinian activist explains why she left the movement; Israeli music icon Matti Caspi dies at 76

From Ian:

Hatred of Israel has become a proxy war on the West

The fact that Israel is a Western, technological, liberal, and successful democracy is one reason for the attack against it, but not the only one. Israel is a symbol of Western success, of refusal to surrender, and of steadfast resistance to terror and extremist ideologies.

For radical movements and Western elites that have lost confidence in themselves, Israel is a convenient target. It is easier to attack “Zionism” than to confront the failures of immigration policies and religious radicalization.

Western values are increasingly portrayed as “oppressive.” Thus, hatred of Israel becomes a tool for undermining the very idea of the West.

The gravest problem is not the extremist chants but the silence of the establishment.

Politicians, university presidents, newspaper editors, and opinion leaders prefer “not to get involved.” They condemn late, weakly, or not at all. In doing so, they signal that this new antisemitism, cloaked in moral language, is tolerable.

History, however, teaches a simple truth: Hatred that is not checked in time does not stop on its own.

The struggle over Israel’s image on the international stage is not a narrow public relations battle. It is a struggle over the character and freedom of the free world. Israel is the frontline, not the final target.

The choice is now clear: Take a firm stand on values or continue to surrender in the name of false morality.

This is not only about Israel’s future. It is about the future of the West as a whole.

De-Hamasification of Gaza: Learning from Western and Arab Models of Deradicalization (pdf)

Since Hamas's takeover of Gaza in 2007, its extremist religious-nationalist ideology has been systematically embedded across all spheres of Gaza life - from education and religious institutions to welfare and the media - producing a profound "Hamasification" of public consciousness.

In the wake of the Gaza war, military disarmament and physical rehabilitation alone will not ensure long-term security and stability. A far deeper process of "de-Hamasification" is required: dismantling Hamas's ideological and institutional hegemony and replacing it with a more moderate civic and normative infrastructure.

Instead of Western deradicalization models such as those implemented in Germany and Japan after World War II, we propose adopting operational principles drawn from contemporary Arab models, particularly the model applied in the Gulf states, which combines a firm crackdown on extremist actors with re-education toward religious tolerance and broad-based economic rehabilitation.

Deradicalization in Gaza should be conceived as a comprehensive institutional and cultural reengineering of the entire sphere of life. The scale of destruction vividly demonstrates to the public the costs of the "resistance" project and may generate openness to a more moderate political and ideological alternative - provided that such an alternative is presented credibly, consistently, and with Arab and international support.

Two models from Arab states are relevant to Gaza. The first is a restrictive containment model that relies primarily on security measures (Egypt, Tunisia). The second is an ambitious model of comprehensive social transformation (the UAE and Saudi Arabia). In both, many of the lines of action are similar, albeit implemented with different emphases.

These include the use of security measures of coercion, enforcement, and surveillance; the inculcation of a national narrative that elevates state identity and state law above all other identities and normative frameworks; the promotion of "moderate Islam" as an alternative to extremist Islam, which is framed as a deviation from religious truth; and the engineering of public consciousness across various spheres of social life, with the aim of undermining the extremist narrative and entrenching the preferred narrative.

The Name "West Bank" Erases the Truth

In the Middle East, a place name is never just a name - it is a claim.

For decades, the term "West Bank" has stripped the land of its historical identity.

A mid-20th-century substitution, it replaced the indigenous names Judea and Samaria to sever the Jewish connection to the region.

Now U.S. lawmakers in a dozen states and both houses of Congress are advancing legislation to restore these original names in official U.S. documents.

Judea and Samaria are crucial to Israel's survival. Their ridges tower up to 3,000 feet over the coastal plain where 70% of Israel's population and Ben-Gurion Airport reside.

These highlands are a strategic asset that protects the country from invasion. Without them, Israel would be less than 10 miles wide at its narrowest point and indefensible.

Samaria is a region mentioned more than 100 times in the Bible as the heart of the Northern Kingdom of Israel.

To the south, Judea is the birthplace of the line of King David. Even under the Persian Empire, Judea was the official administrative name for the province.

Christian scriptures treat Judea and Samaria as the actual districts on the Roman map, proving that a millennium after the kings of Israel, the world still used these names.

When the UN drafted the 1947 Partition Plan, it repeatedly referred to Judea and Samaria.

The transition to "West Bank" occurred in 1950, when Jordan annexed the territory and sought to justify a Jordanian presence west of the Jordan River.

Its rule lasted less than two decades, yet it managed to cloud thousands of years of history.

Students in Australia plan to wear a symbol of terrorism to school February 20

School Students for Palestine is asking Australian students to wear the keffiyeh on February 20 to school.

The group started soon after October 7 2023 and seems to be affiliated with anti-Israel university student groups.

So it is a good time to remind Australian schools that they have every right to restrict students from wearing pro-terrorist symbols. And that is exactly what the keffiyeh is.

Here are some Palestinian posters over the years that directly tie the keffiyeh to terrorist activities:

This one was designed after October 7.

Anti-Israel activists say that the keffiyeh is simply a cultural symbol, and nothing to do with terrorism. However, there is no contradiction: Palestinians consider terror, antisemitism, culture and even "peace" to be the same thing.

There are hundreds of examples where the keffiyeh is used in graphic form to glorify terrorism.

Arguments that the keffiyeh is only cultural is a smokescreen, because it represents a culture of glorifying terrorism and death.

There is no freedom of speech in classrooms, especially when the "speech" is supporting the murdering the relatives and friends of other students.

(h/t Jill)

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Today we celebrate one of the biggest sporting events in the world – the Super Bowl – and beneath the excitement lies a lesson about why ethics is unavoidable wherever humans organize systems.

Football began as a rough contest - rules were minimal, and harm was part of the spectacle. Today, the sport is intensely regulated with safety protocols, targeting and facemask rules, concussion protocols, and officiating systems all designed to reduce harm and sustain the game as a social institution. These are not arbitrary niceties; they are structural necessities that evolved and were imposed by the demands of human involvement.

What is the ideal balance between player safety, fair play, maintaining fans, attracting sponsors and entertaining the masses? It is not an easy question. But ethics is a major part of the discussion.

Few people want a game where the referees decide that a play was too rough and they must penalize one team based on their own instincts. The history of the game shows that safety rules are continuously refined to minimize subjectivity.

This mirrors a deeper truth: when human agency meets uncertainty and interdependence, ethics inevitably emerges - and structure becomes the necessary substitute for unavailable certainty. Human beings cannot know absolute moral truth, just as they cannot know absolute physical truth, but they must act responsibly anyway. Structure is a necessary proxy for absolute knowledge. We cannot know if the person celebrating a sack is mocking the quarterback but we can judge his actions to see if it violates the rules. There is some wiggle room for determining unsportsmanlike conduct but it is kept to a minimum so the game remains as fair as possible.

Actions have moral consequences and can be judged even when intentions remain uncertain.

When it comes to player safety, the league cannot know with certainty how many injuries a given play will cause. Fans cannot agree on what is “too violent.” Coaches disagree on strategy. Players differ on risk tolerance. Everyone’s intuition about harm and advantage will diverge, just as ethical intuitions diverge in life.

So the NFL uses structure - rules, enforcement, replay reviews, fines, and evolving protocols - to approximate ethical coordination among diverse participants and stakeholders. These structures are not moral truths; they are the pathways we use to operate under uncertainty in ways that reduce overall harm and preserve the system.

Different human domains generate different ethical landscapes, but the logic is the same: structure is needed wherever there is human interdependence and uncertainty.

Football is unusual because it does not pretend injury can be eliminated. Like boxing or certain dangerous professions, it accepts bounded harm as part of the activity. The ethical question is therefore not whether injury exists, but how that injury is governed. Professional football attempts, imperfectly, to constrain risk through rules, transparency, compensation, and safety protocols. College football, by contrast, lacks many of these stabilizing structures, making its ethical footing far less secure.

This difference illustrates a broader truth: ethics is the navigation of competing values. Values always clash. Any ethical system that pretends otherwise is flawed. It sounds facile to say that profit is a value, but for commercial ventures, it is - if the business fails, then employees lose their jobs, the business can no longer do positive things (the NFL is involved in many charities, for example.) Injuries are bad but ethics does not demand zero harm. It demands structure strong enough to both minimize harm and to stop unavoidable harm from becoming exploitation.

All mature ethical systems understand tradeoffs. Businesses must stay profitable but not at the expense of employee health. Armies put soldiers in harm's way but shouldn't send them on suicide missions with little benefit.

We can never know the consequences of our actions, since we cannot see the future, but we can impose controls around the present to reduce the chances of bad consequences. That is the structure that is at the core of every working ethical system. Structure matters more than absolute answers when we cannot possibly know with certainty what will happen.

So on Super Bowl Sunday, as you watch tackles and touchdowns, remember: what keeps the game viable is not just talent or spectacle. It’s the structure that makes human coordination possible without absolute certainty - the same logic that underlies all ethical systems.

And the next time someone argues that ethics is optional or subjective, you can point to football and say: No. Ethics is emergent and necessary. It’s inevitable wherever humans must act under uncertainty with consequences that matter. That’s a lesson worth remembering long after the Lombardi Trophy is raised.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

02/07 Links: Beneath Gaza, Israel's war with Hamas has only begun; Former hostage Nimrod Cohen announces return to IDF; UN's Albanese says humanity has 'common enemy' in Israel at Al Jazeera forum

From Ian:

US Jewish orgs are reassessing ‘allies’ after Oct. 7 betrayals, key Jewish leader says

American Jewish organizations are rethinking the value of traditional coalition-building efforts after many long-time allies “punched us in the gut” following the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations William Daroff told The Times of Israel Thursday.

Ahead of the organization’s annual mission to Israel later this month, Daroff, considered one of the most influential figures in American Jewry, said that community leaders are thinking about how to “press reset” after the ceasefire and hostage return that brought Israel’s two-year war in Gaza to a level of closure.

After the shock of the Hamas attack, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 kidnapped, the Jewish world experienced a second shock afterwards, on the proverbial “October 8,” when many saw friends and partners turn against Israel or stay silent, Daroff said.

“The day after the attack, we were punched in the gut a second time when we saw how many of our erstwhile friends and allies, with whom we’d marched and supported, abandoned us,” he said.

For years, mainstream Jewish organizations have invested heavily in community-relations work, building ties with African American, Latino, LGBT groups and labor unions, among others, Daroff said. They joined coalitions on issues such as raising the minimum wage, civil rights and broader social justice agendas. Part of the purpose was basic decency, but there was also a strategic aspect: an expectation that when Jews faced rising antisemitism or when Israel was under attack, those allies would stand with them.

That assumption did not hold after October 7, however, Daroff said.

“The unions that we had stood with abandoned us,” he said bluntly. “Now, in an environment where organizations have limited resources, I think there needs to be a reassessment of how we prioritize engaging with allies.”

Caroline Glick: The truth about Israel and Middle Eastern Christians

Today it is the Christian communities that are being pushed out of many Middle Eastern countries. As Ambassador George Deek, a proud Israeli Christian Arab has explained , “The ethnic cleansing of Christians in the Middle East is the greatest crime against humanity of the 21st century. In just two decades, Christians like me have been reduced from 20 percent of the population of the Middle East to a mere four percent today.”

Christian communities are often compelled to keep their religion to themselves. Dan Burumi, a Jordanian convert to Christianity living in forced exile, recalled in a recent essay on X that last year, Christians in Fuheis, the last Christian majority town in Jordan, installed a statue of Jesus in the town square. “Within two hours, they were forced to remove it because it was deemed provocative to Muslims.”

In recent months, on instruction from Prime Minister Netanyahu, the IDF stepped in to stop the massacre of Druse in Syria. He stated repeatedly that Israel remains committed to defending threatened Christian communities from Syria to Nigeria.

Those presenting false claims of Israeli state persecution of Christians and an equally false portrait of Christian life in the Muslim Arab world are distorting reality. If they are believed, they will make the world less safe for Jews. But as Israel has proven, the Jewish state is capable of defending itself. Those who will be truly harmed by these distortions are the people they claim to care for – the Christians of the Middle East.

The essence of Palestinian identity clashes with Israel’s existence

What is the difference between positive and negative nationalism?
Positive nationalism is a positive concept. It stands for – for the people, the unique culture of the people, the language of the people, an affinity with the historical homeland, and so on.

Negative nationalism, on the other hand, is negative. It is against – against others, their language, their culture, and so on; against various characteristics of the others’ collective-national existence. Hence, negative nationalism does not stand on its own merits but is essentially antagonistic.

Ideological identity is an identity whose organizing axis is a political, economic, social, or cultural ideology. Certainly, the identity of every person is multidimensional. The question, however, is what is the central organizing axis? For a person whose central organizing identity axis is the national identity, belonging to the people and its derivatives are the top priority, whereas for a person whose organizing identity axis is ideological, the specific ideology becomes primary, and through this prism, he also examines the real and desired reality.

This is the place to ask whether Palestinian identity is a national identity. Let’s check:
● An ethos of common family origin at the dawn of history – This ethos is not unique to the Arabs of Judea, Samaria and Gaza specifically, but to the entire Arab region.
● Unique language – There is no Palestinian language, nor is there a uniform Palestinian dialect, but, rather, dialects of the Arabic language common to the entire region.
● Historical homeland – Until the late 1920s, Palestine was never perceived as a separate territorial unit with any special connection to any Arab subgroup. Even today, the symbols of the Palestinian organizations all feature Palestine within the borders of the British Mandate, which are the borders of the colonial division of the Middle East following World War I.
● Unique culture – The culture of the local Arabs is not fundamentally different nor unique in relation to the other Arab groups in the Middle East. There are certainly local nuances, but these belong to specific places or spaces and not to Palestine as a territorial unit.
● Unique history – There has been a unique history in the last hundred years, and it is entirely focused on resistance to the realization of the Zionist enterprise, and the existence of the State of Israel, usually through wars and terrorism.

It seems that Palestinian identity does not meet the characteristics of positive nationalism.

Negative national expressions
A glance at the core documents of the Palestinian movements, alongside their ongoing propaganda, will reveal that they are full of negative nationalist expressions of the denial of the existence of the Jewish people, denial of the historical connection of the Jews to Palestine, and denial of the realization of the right to self-determination for the Jewish people through a sovereign Jewish state in Palestine.

These are aimed at achieving an ideological goal – the nullification of the achievements of the Zionist enterprise and the cessation of the existence of the State of Israel.

This is a radical concept that is the foundation of Arab resistance to Zionism, and it is what makes the idea of a Palestinian state clearly unfeasible, since such a state would devote all its resources to achieving the purpose of its existence – namely, Israel’s destruction.

It is possible that, through a complex process, Palestinianism will undergo a metamorphosis and transform from a negative ideological identity into something else.

It is also possible that the Arabs will choose instead an Arab national identity that has long historical baggage and cultural depth and, most importantly, does not entail anything that requires confrontation with the Jewish people, the Zionist enterprise, and the State of Israel.

The Abraham Accords, as well as courageous figures acting in the Arab region for Arab-Jewish cooperation and friendship, may serve as excellent proof of the feasibility of this.

02/06 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: The West’s pragmatic fallacy; The Smearing of Isaac Herzog; Why That Super Bowl Ad Hit a Nerve; Lawrence Bender: Feels ‘extra special’ making films about Israel

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The West’s pragmatic fallacy

Pragmatism is fine within the guardrails of normative morality. But if it tears out those guardrails and throws them into the trash, then it goes belly-up.

Pragmatism has corrupted the West and exposed it to grave danger in one particularly graphic example. Qatar, an Islamist Muslim Brotherhood state, works to destabilize and ultimately conquer the West for Islam.

Accordingly, over the decades, it has insinuated itself into America and Britain, turning their universities into Islamic propaganda factories and buying up countless individuals in politics and the media.

As a result, instead of viewing Qatar as an enemy, America has treated it as a valuable ally. It used Qatar—the sponsor of Hamas—as an honest broker in the Israeli hostage negotiations, which is why they dragged on at the cost of countless hostages’ and Israeli soldiers’ lives.

And now, Qatar has pride of place on Trump’s Board of Peace—and is using all its influence to stop Trump from destroying the Iranian regime.

You might say that Qatar is the Jeffrey Epstein of world politics.

Dealing with the devil never ends well. Abandon principle for pragmatism, and everything goes smash. It’s a lesson the West clearly has yet to learn.

Starmer has broken his promise to sanction Hamas officials, British hostage families say

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has been accused by the families of British Gaza hostages of reneging on a pledge to sanction Hamas officials.

In September last year, days before the prime minister announced he would recognise a Palestinian state, he said new sanctions on individuals linked to Hamas would be imposed within weeks.

Nearly five months on, however, no measures have been announced.

Eight families of British hostages seized by Hamas on October 7 have written to Starmer seeking “urgent clarity” on when he will fulfil his commitment.

They claim the prime minister personally assured them at a Downing Street meeting on September 11 that sanctions against Hamas and other groups involved in anti-Jewish terrorism would be “deepened and widened”.

Starmer reiterated the pledge publicly days later in a speech announcing Palestinian statehood.

According to The Times, officials have admitted privately that there is no imminent sign of new penalties being imposed due to concern it could upset ongoing peace discussions.

Since Labour entered government in July 2024, there have not been any sanctions placed on individuals associated with Hamas, according to the Foreign Office website.

There are currently 30 individuals with links to the terror group under sanctions by the UK. The last time sanctions were imposed was in March 2024 under the Conservatives.

Some individuals based in Britain have been sanctioned by allied countries to the UK, such as Zaher Birawi whom the US accused of being a “senior official” in Hamas.

Birawi, who describes himself as a journalist, has organised pro-Palestine marches and assisted Greta Thunberg’s flotilla to Gaza.

PEN America, Advocate for 'Free Expression,' Withdraws Defense of Israeli Comedian Who Refused To Condemn Jewish State

PEN America, a self-described "free expression" advocacy group, withdrew its defense of the free speech rights of an Israeli comedian, Guy Hochman, whose New York City show was canceled after protesters blocked the entrance to the performance venue.

"On January 29, 2026, PEN America issued a statement on the abrupt cancellation of performances in New York and Los Angeles by an Israeli comedian, who has been accused by advocacy organizations of incitement to genocide in Gaza," the free speech group wrote in a Tuesday statement. "On further consideration, PEN America has decided to withdraw this statement. We remain committed to open and respectful dialogue about the divisions that arise in the course of defending free expression."

The organization initially issued a statement on Jan. 29 supporting Hochman, who served in the Israel Defense Forces and whose performances were canceled after anti-Israel agitation. A mob in New York City blocked the entrance and a Los Angeles venue demanded that he issue a statement accusing Israel of "genocide, rape, starvation, and torture of Palestinian civilians."

PEN America claims to advocate for "human rights to protect free expression in the United States and worldwide," and initially called the mob action "a profound violation of free expression to demand artists, writers or comedians agree to ideological litmus tests as a condition to appear on a stage."

The group did not respond to a request for comment on why it backtracked.

PEN America’s board includes prominent writers, reporters, and literary figures, including the Atlantic’s George Packer, novelist Jodi Picoult, Harvard Law professor Jeannie Suk Gersen, Brooklyn Public Library CEO Linda E. Johnson, and Hachette Book Group CEO David Shelley. None of these board members responded to requests for comment.

The organization’s decision to withdraw its support for Hochman's right to perform free from mob interference comes after a long period of time in which it has backed up anti-Israel figures, including members of designated terrorist groups, as the watchdog group HonestReporting has shown. Its "Writers at Risk" list includes Khalida Jarrar, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terror group; PFLP member Rasem Obaidat; and Ahed Tamimi, a Palestinian activist who wrote in a public message to Israelis: "We’ll slaughter you, and you’ll say that what Hitler did to you was a joke. We’ll drink your blood and eat your skulls."

PEN America has not, to this point, issued any withdrawals of its support for those individuals.

02/06 Links Pt1: PA To Pay $315 Million to Terrorists and Their Families; Satellite images show Iran is rebuilding missile arsenal, nuclear sites

From Ian:

EXCLUSIVE: Palestinian Authority To Pay $315 Million to Terrorists and Their Families Across Middle East in 2026, Watchdog Report Reveals

The Palestinian Authority will dole out $315 million in payments this year to 23,500 terrorists and their families, earmarking more than $19 million a month for a terrorism incentive program, known as "pay-to-slay," that PA president Mahmoud Abbas declared dead last year, according to a new analysis by the Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) research institution shared exclusively with the Washington Free Beacon.

The PA has concealed these payments from Western governments by channeling them through alternate budgets controlled by the PA Security Forces (PASF), its civil services sector, and its pension office, PMW determined. More than 10,000 former inmates are receiving monthly stipends of around $1,280 to $3,800 each month, while the PA will provide another $87,000,000 throughout the year to 13,500 "martyrs and injured" in Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria.

The findings come just a week after the State Department formally determined that the PA shifted to a new terror payment system it hoped to hide from Western donors, the Free Beacon reported, and present the clearest evidence to date that Abbas is violating his February 2025 decree that he had ended the pay-to-slay program. International donors had asked the PA to stop paying terrorists and their families as part of a "reform" project, but Abbas's government "is not voluntarily disclosing that 10,000 terror reward recipients are hidden in the civil service, the PASF, and as 50-year-old PA pensioners," according to the PMW report.

An additional 6,000 pay-to-slay recipients are within the PA's pensioners program, obscuring the payments at a time when Abbas's government is maneuvering for a role in postwar Gaza, and that number only stands to increase over time. "As thousands of imprisoned terrorists will be released from prison in the coming years, they will be shuttled into government jobs and early pensions, and the hidden Pay-for-Slay will continue to grow, hidden from international donors," PMW stated.

By transferring terror-related payments to various government agencies, the PA has been able to declare pay-to-slay void and continue receiving millions from the international community, which largely froze its funding due to the pay-to-slay program. But most donor countries continue to award cash directly to the PA's civil service programs, including the security forces and pension offices. Even the U.S. government, which froze most of its aid in 2018, still provides funding to the PA's security forces.

PMW used newly unearthed Telegram chat logs to determine that the PA has rerouted terrorism payments through its pension program.

"The wounded and prisoners—6,000 of them [had their files] transferred to pensions in different offices, and they are now registered there, and they are calling them one by one, asking them for bank account numbers to confirm them as pensioners," one recipient wrote.

Despite Israeli demands, Bank of Palestine refuses to shut down pay-for-slay accounts

The Bank of Palestine has refused a request from Israel’s Finance Ministry to close 3,400 accounts reportedly used to distribute payments to released terrorists, two sources familiar with the matter told The Jerusalem Post on Friday.

The revelation emerged during a meeting of the security cabinet on Thursday. The accounts are linked to the PA’s controversial “pay-for-slay” program, which provides monthly stipends to Palestinians who were imprisoned for carrying out terrorist attacks, as well as to the families of those killed during such acts.

According to the sources, Israeli authorities had previously submitted an explicit demand to shut down the accounts. In contrast to a similar case several months ago, when the bank agreed to close 1,700 accounts in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the bank’s management this time responded that it was “unable to act.” The prevailing assessment is that senior PA officials instructed the bank not to comply.

The Finance Ministry identified the accounts and warned the bank that failure to close them could prompt Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to block Israeli banks from continuing to act as correspondent banks for the Bank of Palestine.

Correspondent banks, such as Israel’s Discount Bank and Bank Hapoalim, provide services that allow the Palestinian banking system to conduct international transactions. Because Palestinian banks lack foreign branches, these Israeli institutions act as intermediaries. The State of Israel indemnifies the Israeli banks in the event that their services facilitate money laundering or the financing of terrorism.

Should the indemnification be revoked and intermediary banking ties severed, financial officials warn that the PA could face severe economic consequences, potentially even a collapse.

My article yesterday about Human Rights Watch's shelved report calling Israel's immigration policy a "crime against humanity" reminded me of the last time HRW and Amnesty International claimed that international law requires Israel to accept millions of Palestinian "refugees" and their descendants.

Back in 2013, I noticed something curious: both organizations pointed to the same International Court of Justice case—Nottebohm (1955)—as proof that Palestinians have a legal "right of return" based on maintaining emotional and familial ties to territory their ancestors left. (Amnesty wrote about it in 2001, HRW in 2002.)

Their logic went like this: The Nottebohm case established that nationality requires a "genuine connection of existence, interests and sentiments" between a person and a place. Palestinians who maintain ties to the land—even generations later—therefore have legal rights to return based on this genuine connection. Israel's refusal to honor this violates international law.

There was only one problem: Not only did the Nottebohm case not say what they claimed, it said the opposite.

The Nottebohm case involved a German businessman, Friedrich Nottebohm, who had lived in Guatemala for 34 years. When World War II broke out, he hastily obtained citizenship from Liechtenstein (where he had minimal ties) to avoid being treated as an enemy alien. Guatemala refused to recognize this new citizenship and seized his property. Liechtenstein sued on his behalf, claiming he was now their citizen and deserved diplomatic protection.

The ICJ ruled against Liechtenstein, finding that Nottebohm's "naturalization was not based on any real prior connection with Liechtenstein." The Court stated that nationality should reflect "a genuine connection of existence, interests and sentiments" between an individual and a STATE—not a territory.

Notice the critical distinction: The case was about which state could claim someone as a national for purposes of diplomatic protection. It was about citizenship and state sovereignty, not about territorial rights.

The key passage states: "nationality is a legal bond having as its basis a social fact of attachment, a genuine connection of existence, interests and sentiments, together with the existence of reciprocal rights and duties."

HRW and Amnesty quoted the "genuine connection" language while systematically replacing "state" with "territory" to twist a ruling about citizenship into one about land rights.

Here's what makes this particularly absurd: Nottebohm himself had genuine ties to Guatemala—34 years of residence, extensive business operations, deep roots in the community. Yet the ICJ ruled that Guatemala had no obligation to grant him citizenship or even recognize his Liechtenstein citizenship.

If anything, Nottebohm affirmed that states have absolute sovereign control over who they grant citizenship to, even when someone has genuine territorial connections. The ruling explicitly states: "it is for each State to determine under its own law who are its nationals."

This is the exact opposite of a "right of return" based on ancestral territorial ties.

When I wrote about this in 2013, I kept second-guessing myself. How could I—a non-lawyer, a blogger—have read the case so differently from two major international human rights organizations with teams of highly credentialed lawyers?

I must be missing something, I thought. Maybe there's some nuance in international law I don't understand. Maybe my layman's reading of the text was naive. These organizations have reputations to uphold. Surely they wouldn't deliberately misrepresent an ICJ decision.

So I published my analysis tentatively, always wondering if I'd gotten something wrong.

After writing about Omar Shakir and HRW's institutional bias yesterday, I decided to revisit Nottebohm with fresh eyes—and with new tools. I asked Claude (an AI system with legal analysis capabilities) to review both my 2013 article and the full text of the Nottebohm decision to identify any errors in my interpretation.

The verdict: I was right. HRW and Amnesty were wrong.

The case is explicitly about the relationship between individuals and states for citizenship purposes. It uses the word "state" throughout, not "territory." It affirms state sovereignty over nationality determinations. It provides zero support for territorial rights based on ancestral connections.

My layman's reading of the plain text was more accurate than the "expert analysis" from two major human rights organizations.

This raises a much more serious question: How could two supposedly independent human rights organizations, both staffed with professional lawyers, both look at the same ICJ case and both arrive at the same incorrect conclusion—while I, as a layman, got it right?

The odds of this being coincidental are essentially zero. When two students turn in identical wrong answers on a test, we know what happened.

This is evidence of either:

Coordination: They're working from shared advocacy networks or talking points
Shared ideology: They're part of the same ecosystem where the conclusion (Israel violates international law) is predetermined
Institutional capture: Both organizations have been captured by an anti-Israel ideology that treats legal research as window dressing for predetermined conclusions

Nottebohm is not an obscure footnote. It's one of the most cited ICJ cases on nationality. The language is clear. The distinction between "state" and "territory" is fundamental to international law.

Their lawyers are not incompetent. They knew they were misrepresenting the case. The alternative—that multiple teams of international lawyers at two different organizations all somehow failed to notice they were confusing states with territories—is simply not credible.

This means both organizations made a deliberate choice to cite a case for the opposite of what it says because it served their advocacy goals.

This isn't an isolated incident. It's the pattern:

Amnesty invents its own definition of "genocide" to accuse Israel
HRW claims standard immigration policy is a "crime against humanity"
Both misrepresent Nottebohm to create a fictional "right of return"
Both apply novel legal theories only to Israel
Both start with the conclusion that Israel is guilty and work backwards

What I've learned over two decades of documenting this is that both Amnesty and HRW approach every Israel-related issue from the position that Israel must be violating international law. They will twist evidence, cherry-pick sources, invent new legal standards, and—as Nottebohm proves—cite cases for the opposite of what they say.

Whether this is conscious malice or unconscious bias, I cannot say. But what I can say with certainty is that it's systematic, consistent, and deliberate.

When I wrote about Nottebohm in 2013, I thought maybe I'd misunderstood something. Now I know: They're the ones who chose to lie rather than tell a truth that might support Israel's position.

And that tells you everything you need to know about whether these organizations can be trusted on anything related to Israel.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

02/05 Links Pt2: You Can Do Anything As Long As You Do It For Palestine; Israel-Haters Are Murdering ‘Public Health’; Mamdani Fires Head of Anti-Semitism Task Force

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: You Can Do Anything As Long As You Do It For Palestine

For those seeking at least a hint as to why the court ruled that smashing in the spines of police officers is officially approved behavior in the United Kingdom, one clue comes to us from the Jewish Chronicle:

“While the jury was in retirement, the court heard posters had been put up on bus stops and lampposts near the building which said: ‘The jury decide not the judge,’ ‘Jury equity is when a jury acquits someone on moral grounds,’ and: ‘Jurors can give a not guilty verdict even when they believe a defendant has broken the law.’

“The prosecution said it was aware of the signs being put up in public places during the trial, which set out the principle of ‘jury equity’ — the capacity of a jury to return a verdict according to conscience — and that police had been taking the posters down.”

Translation: You may find the defendants not guilty if you sympathize with the psychotic “anti-Zionism” that motivated their violence.

Again: the British legal system is a joke.

To be fair to the UK, it is not the first state in Europe to enshrine “the Jewish exception” into law. In 2021 in France, Kobili Traoré was deemed not responsible for his actions by the courts, ostensibly because he had smoked marijuana. What were his actions? He beat 65-year-old Sarah Halimi and then threw her out her window to her death. According to his psychiatric evaluation, he was sent into a violent rage by the sight of Halimi’s mezuzah.

Again, to translate: He realized she was a Jew, so he killed her. This was deemed a psychiatric episode not murder. In France, if you hate Jews so much that it makes you act crazy, you are permitted to murder random Jews. In the UK, if your hatred of Jews compels you to go on a violent rampage, you can count on “jury equity” to find you not guilty of the crimes you admitted to in court.

The sick man of Europe is Europe.

Seth Mandel: Israel-Haters Are Murdering ‘Public Health’

Zohran Mamdani pledging to confront anti-Semitism while his own administration staffers engage in taxpayer-funded Jew-baiting is the kind of hypocrisy we will hopefully never get used to.

The New York Post revealed that city Department of Health staffers have created a “Global Oppression and Public Health Working Group” whose entire reason for existence is to lie about Israel. Take it straight from the horse’s mouth: “We really developed in response to the ongoing genocide in Palestine,” one presenter said while, the Post reports, reading from the group’s mission statement at the beginning of its first meeting on Tuesday.

The blood libel club also vowed it will be “supporting colleagues negatively impacted” by the “trauma” of made-up tales of Jewish crimes.

Since this has nothing to do with “global health,” we are compelled to ask what it is about. And there are two answers.

First, as expected, Mamdani’s victory was taken as a green light for anti-Semites to hijack government services—and there’s no indication Mamdani has any objection to it. On the contrary, Mamdani believes New York City should be engaged in the BDS campaign that supports anti-Jewish boycotts, so he has made clear that he wants public money to be spent on his expensive addiction to anti-Zionism.

There’s no middle ground on “globalize the intifada,” much as Mamdani’s spin doctors would want you to believe otherwise. And Mamdani has made his choice. Why wouldn’t his likeminded fellows come out of the woodwork at the first sign that the coast is now clear; Jew-baiters of the world, unite!

Some of this will play out as Mamdani chooses to surround himself with anti-Semites. And some of it will be anti-Semites choosing to coalesce around Mamdani. Very quickly the difference will become immaterial, if it hasn’t already: This will just be a city government that practices and encourages anti-Semitism. How it got that way is less important than the fact that the one guy who can put a stop to it, won’t.

Joshua Namn: Acknowledging Hatred Against Jews Isn't “Complaining” - It's Life Saving

He was referring to poll by the (liberal) Honan Strategy group. It found that 53% of Jewish voters feel threatened by statements by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his allies, while most non-Jews — 55% — say that’s an overreaction fueled by politics.

Unless you actually believe that the statistics lie, and that attacks on Jews haven’t increased dramatically during the last decade, the most terrifying part of that poll is that more than half of New Yorkers think that we are all just “overreacting.”

Jews are also about 10% of New York’s population. They are the targets of 57% of all hate crimes (all, not just religiously motivated crimes).

The only reason any of this is even possible is precisely because complaining is viewed by the mainstream as an inherently Jewish trait.

We have to reject all negative Jewish stereotypes. It isn’t an issue of pride, but of safety. We left the physical ghettos, now it is time to consign the mental ghettos to that same distant past.

So what’s the best defense against Jewish ghetto stereotypes? Be a proud, unapologetic, warrior Jew (in mitzvot and, if necessary, in unapologetic self-defense). That starts with a psychological willingness to embrace being different. Jewish pride isn’t arrogance: it is confidence.

At the beginning of the Book of Joshua it tells us how to behave when we have to deal with adversity: “Did I not command you, be strong and have courage (chazak v’ematz), do not fear and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your G-d is with you wherever you go.”

Chazak v’ematz: Be strong and have courage.

And THAT is how we fight antisemitism.

Never be afraid. Never give up.

Am Yisrael Chai.

Be’eri to Manchester to Bondi: Antisemitism is the canary in the coalmine for extremism

Just like the Jews murdered in Be’eri, the Jews murdered in Manchester and Bondi did not die because of Middle Eastern geopolitics. They died because the modern strain of an ever-mutating, lethal hate has been normalised as legitimate, in the name of progress, justice, and liberation. Because the hatred of Jews has once again been reframed as a moral critique. Because calls for the elimination of Israel, the Jew among nations, from 'from river to sea' are uniquely tolerated as speech, not genocidal intent.

The victims’ biographies matter. Jews fleeing antisemitism. Jews fleeing war. Jews who believed liberal democracies and universal values would protect them. History tells us otherwise.

But the same ideologies that support ‘globalising the intifada’ are not hostile singularly to Israel or Jews. They are openly hostile to the foundations of democracies: rule of law, pluralism, individual rights, and the very idea of national self-determination. Israel is not the cause of this hostility. It is the testing ground. Antisemitism is not just a weapon in this war. It is the proof of concept.

For the past two years, Israel has been on the front lines of this global threat. The war has not been confined to conventional battlefields. The existential threat is raging as a cultural, legal, informational, and moral war. As Jew among nations, Israel is where an axis of evil tests how far it can go, how much terror can be normalised, how much violence can be justified, how many individual and collective ‘Jews’ can be dehumanised, delegitimised, and applied double standards to - before the world objects.

When antisemitism spreads unchecked, it emboldens those who seek to dismantle democratic norms everywhere. When Jews are murdered, it signals that the guardrails are down. This is why antisemitism is the most reliable predictor of democratic collapse. It is the siren that sounds before the raging fire engulfs everyone else.

The lesson of Bondi Beach, like Manchester, Pittsburgh, Paris, Brussels, Mumbai, Washington, Boulder and elsewhere, is not merely that Jews remain vulnerable as canaries in the coalmine. It is those societies that fail to confront antisemitism at its ideological roots that will inevitably embolden the extremism it predicts, fueling broader violence. This is not about Jewish exceptionalism. It is about memory as historical literacy.

The axis of evil no longer hides its intent. It slaughters and tortures the people of Iran, emboldened by impunity. It openly declares its desire to collapse the West and to build a Caliphate on its rubble. It does so by using shape-shifting antisemitism as defined by the IHRA in a long democratic process as both weapon and symptom. The recent UK court decision that chants of ‘death to the IDF’ to which all Israelis must conscript at a music festival aired to millions - “does not meet criminal threshold” should trouble all who cherish life and liberty.

Those who continue to treat antisemitism as a marginal issue, or a subset of prejudice, are willfully ignoring history’s clearest warning sign. The siren is sounding again. The question remains whether we will finally recognise the fire before it consumes us all.

02/05 Links Pt1: Why No One Wants Iran to Win or Collapse; Why is the United Nations Chief Calling for Israel's Destruction?; Tucker Carlson Just Can’t Stop Lying About Israel.

From Ian:

Andrew Fox: Analysis on the rocks: a rebuttal

Throughout his piece, Milburn compares Israeli conduct unfavourably to US operations in places like Mosul, suggesting Israel should have done more to protect civilians. However, as discussed, Gaza posed unique challenges: a fully trapped population, an enemy deeply embedded within civilian infrastructure, and an ongoing threat to Israel’s own civilians (Hamas rockets and the context of a wider regional war). Other Western militaries engaged in similar conflicts (the US in Iraq, NATO in Afghanistan, etc.) often took measures such as establishing safe corridors or pausing operations to facilitate evacuations. Israel did make some attempts at pauses and corridors, but Hamas frequently undermined them (by blocking evacuations or attacking convoys).

Milburn largely overlooks how Hamas drastically increased the difficulty of conducting a “surgical” military campaign. To illustrate: Hamas fighters would fire from within crowds of displaced civilians or move into UN shelters after attacking, effectively daring Israel to respond. This blurred the lines between civilians and combatants in real time. Israeli soldiers on the ground faced an enemy that did not wear uniforms and exploited urban chaos as cover. These are not excuses for any reckless strikes, but they provide essential context. A fair analysis would acknowledge that even the best-trained army would struggle to avoid civilian harm under such conditions. Milburn’s focus, nearly solely on Israeli “choices”, suggests Israel could have attained the same military goals with much less damage if it had chosen differently. He offers little insight beyond generic appeals to restraint. This approach risks echoing armchair generalship that fails to engage with the tactical reality of Gaza.

One must also consider the dangerous precedent that Milburn’s one-sided assignment of blame could set. According to his account, Israel’s overwhelming firepower in Gaza is nearly entirely responsible for civilian deaths, while Hamas’s strategy of using human shields is treated as a minor detail. This framing effectively rewards the use of human shields. If an army knows its enemy will be condemned for any civilian casualties, while it (the defender) faces little blame for hiding behind civilians, the perverse incentive is to continue using this unlawful tactic.

International law explicitly prohibits using civilians to make targets immune (Additional Protocol I, art. 51(7)) for this very reason – it weakens the law’s protections when followed. Milburn’s analysis minimises Hamas’s role to the extent that it may encourage the Hamas strategy: bunker under hospitals, coexist with families, and then hope global outrage restrains Israel. That is a dangerous message to send. To be clear, Israel is not exempt from blame if it caused disproportionate harm, but we cannot ignore that Hamas’s unlawful tactics are relevant to the outcome. Both legally and morally, Hamas bears significant responsibility for endangering Gazan civilians. Ignoring this, as Milburn does, distorts the moral balance and creates a one-dimensional view of the war.

Hamas’s illegality does not absolve Israel. The IDF still faces tough questions. Did every airstrike truly follow the principle of proportionality? Were target validations and intelligence sufficiently rigorous amid the chaos? Did Israel do everything possible to minimise harm (without abandoning its mission)? These are valid questions, and there are grounds for criticising Israel. Indeed, Israeli authorities have at times acknowledged failings or launched investigations into incidents with high casualties.

This rebuttal is not an unfounded defence of all Israeli actions. Instead, it is a plea for analytical balance. Milburn’s broad accusation, essentially claiming that Israel deliberately chose a policy of killing civilians rather than risking harm, is not substantiated by the full record. Proportionality in war is a complex challenge, and reasonable observers can debate specific instances. However, such debate must consider the realities of Hamas’s tactics of human shielding, the unprecedented battlefield conditions, and the inherent uncertainty of war. Once these factors are taken into account, the narrative shifts from a simplistic “Israel behaved recklessly and Gaza’s civilians paid the price” to a more nuanced (and uncomfortable) truth: Hamas created a battlefield where high civilian casualties were almost inevitable, and Israel’s military, while endeavouring to achieve its mission to halt ongoing attacks, made mistakes and caused tragic, unintended consequences, but did not fundamentally deviate from how other professional armies have operated under similar or worse constraints.

Holding Israel to strict IHL standards is justified; expecting zero civilian harm in a scenario deliberately designed by Hamas to maximise civilian casualties is not. A calm analysis understands Hamas’s illegal actions as a significant factor without excusing Israeli mistakes. It also reinterprets proportionality not as a simple casualty measure after conflict, but as a continual obligation of responsible military decision-making amid uncertainty. Milburn’s critique, by largely ignoring the real battlefield limitations, does a disservice to his stated goal of learning how to better protect civilians. A more balanced discussion would recognise that both Hamas’s tactics and Israeli decisions influenced the outcome, and that the real challenge is how democratic armed forces can maintain humanitarian standards when fighting an opponent who intentionally seeks to undermine them. That is the conversation we need, and it begins by correcting the record that Milburn’s biased argument left so vulnerable to critique.

Islamic Warfare and America: Why the West Must Now Confront Jihad at Its Doorstep

The American Constitution enshrined individual rights to freedom of speech, religion, assembly, and thought, regardless of how radical or extreme. Yet these uniquely American liberties have been exploited by its enemies to subvert the U.S. and the West from within. Americans have largely been willfully blind to recognizing that enemy ideologies can eventually undermine U.S. national security and destroy its societal fabric. Why does America continue to struggle to recognize jihadi subversion by Islamist organizations and actors?

America's Islamic enemies have publicly declared their intention for decades. A 1991 Muslim Brotherhood Memorandum discovered by the FBI reveals this strategy in detail. Authored by Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Akram, the blueprint details a "Civilization-Jihadist Process" to destroy Western civilization from within and establish Islamic governance in North America. "The Ikhwan [Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within." These are not metaphors. They are declarations of war.

Dr. Harold Rhode describes the foundational doctrine of Islamic warfare in his book Modern Islamic Warfare, which explains how jihadist movements view their struggle as a cosmic battle that cannot cease "until the world be all for Allah." Among both Sunni jihadists and the messianic variety of Shiite jihadists that dominate the Iranian regime leadership, the West represents an adversary to be subdued, and Israel is merely the first, local hurdle in conquering the world for Islam.

The PLO's original 1964 charter and Hamas's 1988 covenant called for the annihilation of Israel through jihad. Today it is Hamas whose doctrine and political popularity dominate the Palestinian street. The fact that many Americans view the Palestinian cause primarily as rooted in territorial grievance rather than ideological jihad demonstrates the success of their disinformation and deception campaign. Any American policy toward the Palestinians must be conditioned on the explicit and verifiable rejection of jihad, recognition of Israel's permanent right to exist, and adoption of educational curricula free of religious hatred and incitement.

Most importantly, the U.S. must recognize that Israel's fight is also a battle for Western civilization's future survival, safety, and security. Moral clarity and a united front between Israel and the U.S. is necessary to defeat jihadist terror and political subversion.

Rep Rashida Tlaib faces terrorist ties allegations in new report

A comprehensive new briefing document from a prominent nonpartisan research and policy group is sounding the alarm on "serious ethical and national security concerns" related to Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib and her affiliations with individuals and organizations linked to designated foreign terrorist entities.

"The conduct of Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, including her rhetoric, affiliations, campaign infrastructure, and ideological alignment with certain individuals and organizations, raises serious concerns about potential risks to the ethical and institutional integrity of the United States government," the report, released by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy’s advocacy and policy-oriented arm, states.

The report details a "recurring pattern" of behavior that it says suggests an ideological affinity for radical movements, ranging from participation in conferences featuring convicted terrorists to significant campaign payments made to activists linked to Hamas and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-aligned networks.

The briefing covers Tlaib’s financial history and says her campaign apparatus poured large sums of cash to anti-Israel activists, including almost $600,000 between 2020 and 2025 to Unbought Power, a consulting firm headed by Rasha Mubarak.

Mubarak has faced scrutiny for her past affiliations with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2009 Holy Land Foundation terror-financing trial, and the Alliance for Global Justice (AFGJ), which has been investigated for ties to the PFLP-linked group Samidoun.

Tlaib, according to the briefing, has shared the stage with a variety of questionable figures highlighted by a conference alongside Wisam Rafeedie, a convicted PFLP operative, who defended the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack as "resistance."