11/03 Links Pt2: The battle for the soul of Israel… and Britain; Australia heightening security for Chanukah after Bondi Beach massacre; Boy George at Nova memorial: ‘I stand with the Jews’

From Ian:

Australia heightening security for Chanukah after Bondi Beach massacre

Australian police are dramatically increasing their security presence for Chanukah next month following last year’s deadly holiday attack.

The police have deployed a newly established 250-member unit armed with assault rifles to conduct high-visibility patrols at major public events, places of worship, and crowded spaces.

The move comes after it emerged that only a handful of general-duty police officers were on duty during the Bondi Beach Chanukah attack in December 2025, despite earlier warnings by the Jewish community over a heightened climate of incitement to violence.

“There is no denying that seeing such heavily armed police officers on the streets of Sydney is deeply confronting, and as someone who experienced firsthand the horrific attack at Bondi, I wish it did not have to come to this,” Arsen Ostrovsky, head of the Sydney office of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) and a survivor of the Bondi terrorist shooting, told JNS on Monday.

“But the reality is that these measures have become necessary to protect not only the Jewish community, but all Australians, from the ongoing threat of terror.”

Australian Jewish organizations have long condemned the government for allowing a climate of incitement to violence following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre to run unchecked, saying it led to a series of hate-based assaults across the country that culminated in the Bondi attack.

Fifteen people, including a 10-year-old girl and an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor, were killed by father-and-son gunmen in the shooting at Bondi Beach on the first night of Chanukah 2025.

About 110,000 Jews live in Australia, primarily in Melbourne and Sydney. This year, the holiday begins at sunset on Dec. 4.

Germany sees sharp rise in Islamist-motivated antisemitic crimes since October 7

Islamist-motivated antisemitic crimes are on the rise in Germany, according to a newly published response by the German government to a parliamentary question, citing Federal Criminal Police Office data.

German authorities recorded 670 antisemitic offenses classified as Islamist in 2025, a 6% increase from the previous year.

Greens MP Lamya Kaddor asked the federal government last month what figures it has regarding antisemitic incidents in Muslim or Islamist contexts before and after October 7, 2023.

Parliamentary State Secretary Christoph de Vries responded with data from the Criminal Police Reporting Service for Politically Motivated Crime (KPMD-PMK). This revealed 16 cases of Islamist-motivated antisemitic crimes in 2022 and 33 from January 1, 2023, to October 6, 2023. In the just three months following October 7, 2023, there were 331 incidents. This almost doubled to 631 in 2024, and now 670 in 2025.

Outlet WELT AM SONNTAG gained access to the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) breakdown of incidents. It reported that almost half of them concerned the use of signs of banned organizations such as Hezbollah and the so-called Islamic State. In addition, the BKA registered numerous incidents of antisemitic graffiti, insults, and threats. The most serious was attempted homicide: a knife attack by a Syrian on a Spanish tourist at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin in February 2025.

6,548 antisemitic offenses reported in Germany across all ideological categories
On X/Twitter, Kaddor said: “Islamist antisemitism must be decisively combated, without placing Muslims under general suspicion.”

“For this, effective prevention, reliable data, and cooperation with Muslim communities are needed, instead of cuts and generalizations,” she added.

It is important to note that 670 is not the total number of antisemitic crimes in Germany in 2025. The nation recorded 6,548 antisemitic offenses across all ideological categories last year. Of these, 3,163 (48.3%) had an Israel-related connection. Right-wing extremism remained the largest ideological category.

Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews, told German media: “Today, Islamist-influenced hatred of Jews is being unleashed quite openly on the streets, at universities, and on the Internet.”

Toronto Conference Glorifying October 7 Massacre Hints at Terrorist Speaker Line-Up

Several terrorists have been teased as potential speakers a November conference in Toronto organized by a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, according to social media posts from October and November promoting the “Three Years of Al-Aqsa Flood Conference.”

The November 28-29 Canadian conference, organized by Masar Badil Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path, aims to advance “revolutionary” efforts in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attacks. In posts published in October 20 and November 3, keynote speakers were described as “liberated Palestinian prisoners.”

The term “liberated Palestinian prisoners” and similar phrases have previously been used by Masar Badil and its sister group Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network to refer to terrorists released as part of deals for hostages held captive by Hamas.

Code for Terrorist Guest Speakers
Masar Badil described Hamas international spokesman Hussam Badran as a “liberated Palestinian prisoner” in a February statement. Samidoun used the same phrase in its own statement about a Masar Badil webinar with Badran, who had been released in the 2011 Gilad Shalit deal. Samidoun used the exact phrase again in a November 2025 statement about terrorists released in exchange for October 7 Massacre hostages. In contemporaneous statements about the release of terrorists during the October 7 War, Samidoun consistently described them as “liberated prisoners.”

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine subsidiary groups have repeatedly hosted or organized talks featuring terrorists released in exchange for October 7 hostages. Hamas terrorist Othman Bilal, who was reportedly involved in the planning of bombings that killed 12 people, was featured alongside Masar Badil co-founder and Samidoun founder Khaled Barakat in a December 2025 webinar. Bilal spoke alongside alongside PFLP commander Nader Sadaqa in an April 2026 webinar in Argentina co-organized by Masar Badil. Fatah terrorist Nael Barghouti, who had been released in both the Shalit and October 7 War deals, spoke to participants in Madrid and Budapest in April events organized by Masar Badil’s youth movement Tariq El Tahrir and Samidoun-linked organization Alkarama Palestinian Women’s Movement. The latter group described Barghouti as a “freed prisoner.”

Samidoun and Palestine Action
Beyond the so-called “liberated prisoners,” other terrorism-tied individuals are expected to speak or attend the two-day conference. On Tuesday it was announced that Barakat, who was previously identified by the PFLP as a leader of its organization, is set to speak at a panel about the “red-green alliance” between revolutionary Islamists and socialists. Barakat was specifically sanction by the U.S. Treasury alongside Samidoun. Samidoun was listed by Canada as a terrorist entity, due to its close links to the PFLP, in a joint October 2024 action with the U.S. Treasury. Barakat’s wife and Samidoun international coordinator Charlotte Kates is also listed as a speaker.

Another speaker are representatives of Palestine Action Canada, a branch of the United Kingdom-based political vandalism network Palestine Action. Palestine Action was designated a terrorist organization by the UK in July 2025 and by the U.S. in August. Palestine Action Canada only recently claimed responsibility for an October attack damaging infrastructure belonging to GeoSpectrum, an Ontario subsidiary of Israeli defense firm Elbit Systems.

Another Palestine Action-link expected to speak at the conference is Calla Walsh. Walsh was one of the founders of Palestine Action US, and like Kates appears to now be based in Beirut. According to the Free Press, she is on a suspicious persons watch list, and regularly appears on Iranian-state media.

Other speakers appear to include participants in the protest encampments that paralyzed academic campuses worldwide during the height of the October 7 War.

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11/03 Links Pt1: Trump: Netanyahu agreed to end $4 billion in US aid to Israel by end of 2026; RFK Jr. In Defense of Israel; The sacrifice of Haley Stevens and the future of the Democrats

From Ian:

Walter Russell Mead: Why the Middle East Is Hard to Quit

Every president since George W. Bush has come into the White House hoping to limit America's risks and costs in the Middle East. The longing for an exit is understandable. Over the last generation, the burden of America's commitments in the region has grown, yet our need for Middle Eastern oil has diminished.

The shale revolution has turned the U.S. into an energy superpower, producing more oil than Saudi Arabia. The Western Hemisphere produces more oil than the Middle East, with increasing fossil-fuel production from Canada, Venezuela, Guyana, Brazil and Argentina. Given this, people ask why we spend billions, even trillions, to police a region whose oil resources we don't need.

Yet the Middle East still matters. The Western Hemisphere may have pumped 37.4% of the world's oil against 30.9% from the Middle East in 2025, but a price shock still reverberated around the world this year when Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz. Similar shocks hit the world's farmers as Middle East exports of urea and phosphate fertilizers fell.

If the forecasts of the U.S. Energy Information Administration prove accurate, projected increases in Western Hemisphere production of fossil fuels won't be enough to prevent price shocks from the Middle East. For the foreseeable future, American security and economic interests are going to keep us engaged, no matter how many presidents in both parties dream of walking away.

Instead of fantasizing about an escape from the Middle East, Americans need to think harder about how to safeguard our essential interests at the lowest possible risk and cost. We need to cut the burden of our commitments without sacrificing interests that still matter.

Facilitating smarter security cooperation between Israel and key Arab states will remain a crucial American objective, and Indian and American interests are broadly aligned in the Middle East. Besides securing energy supplies, India cares deeply about the millions of its citizens who work in the Persian Gulf.

Deepening defense and tech ties with Israel and shared concerns about terrorism commit India to promoting cooperation between Arabs and Israelis. And with Pakistan closely aligned with China, India's interests in countering Pakistani influence in the Middle East line up with American concerns about Beijing.

Robert Kennedy Jr.: In Defense of Israel

Media outlets piled on this week to express outrage at my observation about the troubling dearth of scientific output from the world's 22 Arab nations over the past five decades. However, the reporters omitted critical context, presumably to bestow plausibility on their accusations that my statements were racist and Islamophobic.

However, my speech was not a critique of Arabs or Islam, but of Islamism (also known as "Political Islam"), a toxic ideology conceived and promoted by the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist group. Islamism is a violent corruption of mainstream Islam that summons adherents back to the seventh-century ideal of bloody jihad.

Sheikh Ahmed El-Tayeb, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar - the Muslim equivalent of the Vatican and the highest authority in Sunni Islamic thought - has rejected Islamism as "false Islam" and a "perversion of the Islamic religion" and accused it of "barbaric crimes."

Islamism is intensely anti-American, anti-Western, and hostile to modernity. It is explicitly contemptuous of democracy, constitutional government, capitalism, minority rights, gay rights, women's rights, free speech, and virtually all personal freedoms. Its central aspiration is for a global caliphate ruled by a single theocratic despot with absolute power to impose sharia law that dictates every aspect of human conduct.

I pointed out that the Muslim Brotherhood's antipathy for modernity is a dramatic departure from Islam's historical affinity for science and learning. During the 8th through 15th centuries as well as during the Ottoman Empire, Muslim leaders promoted a brilliant flowering of innovation and scholarship in science, mathematics, philosophy, art, literature, astronomy, pharmacology, psychology, engineering, architecture, medicine, and navigation that continues to enrich the world today.

Genocidal hatred against ALL Jews and Christians and other minorities is foundational to Islamism. In 1948, the world's 22 Arab nations were host to 750,000 Jews living in communities that predated Muhammad by 1,000 years. Today, there are virtually no Jews in those nations. In Nazi terminology, they are Judenrein: Jew-free. In 1948, Christian populations represented 20% of those nations; today they represent 4%. These are the real ongoing genocides of the Mideast.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s faith in the Democratic Party

Hers is a theory of coalition politics: reject the radical left’s ideas, fight them in primaries, keep moderates in control, and if one of their candidates wins the nomination, tolerate him rather than sacrifice a Democratic majority.

That tolerance is where many in the Jewish community are uncomfortable. They fear that tolerating such candidates gives cover to antisemites and to those who accuse Israel of genocide. Their concern is not that most Democrats share those views, but that ideas can move from unacceptable to tolerated to normalized long before they command a majority. A party does not have to embrace a fringe to be changed by it.

She said that being a Democrat is no more difficult for her today than it was two decades ago. Asked about pro-Israel colleagues who say the caucus feels lonely, she acknowledged that it can feel lonely, though she attributed much of it to reactions to the current Israeli government.

I respect Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and I admire her commitment. She is trying to defend her convictions while remaining inside a coalition under strain. It is not easy to be a pro-Israel Democrat right now, and she has not walked away from the party or the fight.

But I left our conversation unable to reconcile the line she draws with the compromise she accepts. She rejects the DSA and El-Sayed’s genocide accusation, and says she would never campaign for him. Yet when I raised Harris and Obama standing with him, her answer was about other priorities. Each position is defensible on its own. Together they expose the tension between the boundary she draws and what her party is increasingly willing to stand beside, or even endorse. Democratic Party arguing over Israel, socialism

That tension is what many American Jews see: a party arguing with itself over Israel and socialism. Representative Josh Gottheimer, also a Democrat, warned in The Free Press this August that the “socialist fringe is trying to hijack the Democratic Party,” and that for “a growing number of my colleagues, being anti-Israel has now become a nonnegotiable moral litmus test.” Both love the party. They are describing different parties.

Staying in the tent and fighting from inside is a legitimate choice, and it may prove right. But goodwill is not a boundary. A boundary matters only if crossing it has consequences. The real test comes after candidates who hold ideas she rejects win.

Her answer is that moderates will retain control and the fringe will not set the party’s agenda. That is the wager at the heart of her faith in the Democratic Party: that the party can tolerate the fringe without being changed by it.

Many American Jews hope she is right. But they are watching some of the Democratic Party’s most prominent leaders campaign for El-Sayed, who accuses Israel of genocide and appeared with the streamer she calls a “stone-cold antisemite.”

At what point does supporting such a candidate stop being merely a strategy for preserving a Democratic majority and begin to change what the party is willing to accept – and ultimately what it stands for? And for American Jews, how long can it remain their political home?

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Iraqis think Jews are trying to take over Baghdad

This week, an archaeologist went on Iraqi TV to talk about Jews.  But of course.

Amer Abdul Razzaq said that Jews are secretly visiting Iraq, in disguise, to visit the tombs of Biblical figures like Ezra and Ezekiel. This part is actually true, for practical reasons: if they go openly as Jews they just might be killed.

But then he went into conspiracy theory mode against Jews from Iraq claiming their properties that were seized in the 1950s.

Host: Do you agree today that we should invest in this—for instance, by creating tourism for these holy places where visitors can come?

AAR: Every day, discussing this topic creates controversy because people will ask, "How can you talk about Jews [owning/visiting property] today?" But we have to admit—both you as a media professional and I as an archaeology expert—that accepting to discuss such a sensitive topic takes a high level of boldness. It requires careful phrasing. When I am asked about this, we must differentiate between Judaism (Jews) and Zionism.

Host: Sure, absolutely.

AAR: But practically speaking, we cannot easily make that distinction. As an archaeology expert, a human being, and a presenter, do you agree that these properties belong to Jews and that they should repossess them? In my opinion, I do not agree.

Host: You don't agree?

AAR: I do not agree. Because I do not trust—there are around 13,000 real estate properties—I do not trust them. Can we really separate people from the Zionist entity, which I call a destructive, terrorist movement against humanity and culture? We cannot separate them. They are tied to it, and according to their narratives, they have a promised land. Their religion is tied to their state (Israel), even if they live outside it.

Host: Indeed.

AAR:  I have even heard suggestions not only about reclaiming their old buildings and land, but asking: "Why don't we allow them to buy new properties?" How could we allow them to buy land and risk turning Baghdad or Iraq into a second Palestine? Their projects and plans are extremely dangerous.

Host : You mentioned a very important point—asking how Baghdad could be turned into a second Palestine. Do you believe Jews are planning for that today?

AAR: Yes, they are planning for that  using attractive concepts: brotherhood, peace, accepting the other, the Abrahamic Faith, and integration. Look at how broad and dangerous these concepts are—presented under shiny, beautiful covers, but dangerous to the extreme.

This is not an isolated crackpot. I wrote on my Substack recently that Al Jazeera was pushing the same rumor, and the results can be fatal:

On June 23, Al Jazeera published an article titled “An Israeli Assault on Iraqi Real Estate.” The article described Jewish investors allegedly offering large sums for Iraqi properties and using Arab and foreign intermediaries to conceal their identities. No names were published. An Iraqi company accused of buying two hotels on behalf of Jewish interests publicly denied having any connection to Jews or Israelis.
The article even discussed legitimate Iraqi Jewish property claims, from Jews who had been expelled in the 1950s, as part of the supposedly suspicious activity. Even the possibility of Jews returning to reclaim property was being interpreted as part of a dangerous foreign conspiracy.
Four days later, on June 27, Al Jazeera reported, citing Reuters, that prominent Shiite cleric Ayatollah Kazem al-Haeri had issued a fatwa declaring that the blood of any Jew purchasing Iraqi real estate could be shed.
Conspiracy theories like the “Jews are buying property to take over” aren’t just funny stories we can mock. If Jews are assumed to be collectively attempting to seize territory, an individual Jew buying a house can be treated as an enemy combatant in an imaginary war. The accusation doesn’t have to be true for someone to be killed over it.

Now any Iraqi can kill any Jew and claim that the Jew was planning to purchase Iraqi land, so the fatwa demanded it. They don't need any more evidence than pointing to Al Jazeera. 

---

 

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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11/02 Links Pt2: The ‘Third Worldist’ roots of the Islamo-left alliance; UNRWA faces shutdown to be replaced by Board of Peace; Israeli-founded startups claim nearly half of Fortune's 2027 Cyber 60 list

From Ian:

The ‘Third Worldist’ roots of the Islamo-left alliance

The New Left’s estrangement from class politics went hand in hand with ‘the cultural turn’ towards identity politics. Above all, it involved a turn towards a distinctly counter-Enlightenment tradition of thought. There was plenty of resistance to this shift among significant figures on the New Left, writ large in works such as EP Thompson’s The Poverty of Theory. But there’s little doubt that influential New Left-era thinkers, especially in France, drew most of their inspiration from those who sought to diminish or even dethrone human reason, from the protests of the Romantics to reactionaries like Friedrich Nietzsche or the card-carrying Nazi Martin Heidegger – the ‘unavoidable’ thinker as the New Left-adjacent Jacques Derrida described him. Even those associated with the New Left who still invoked Marx, like French Communist intellectual Louis Althusser, emptied his work of its ‘Hegelian’ or humanist-centred content.

Many on the New Left used these deeply reactionary, counter-Enlightenment thinkers to ruthlessly critique post-Enlightenment modernity – or even the post-Socratic West, in Heidegger’s case. And like much of the counterculture more broadly, the New Left tended to damn all those living within Western society too, as conformist victims – the duped members of the ‘society of the spectacle’. They reduced Westerners to mere ‘bearers’ of ‘relations of production’, in Althusser’s words, or cast them, Matrix-like, as effects of structures or systems of power forever beyond their control.

Here we come to one of the key moments in understanding the development of what would become the Islamo-left. With the turn away from domestic class politics, large parts of the New Left simultaneously embraced the ‘Third World’ – a term coined in 1952 by French demographer Alfred Sauvy to designate the Third Estate-like revolutionary force emerging in the colonial and the post-colonial sphere. In this reading, the Third World, from Vietnam to China to Cuba to Algeria, was set to challenge the established capitalist and Communist powers of the first and second worlds.

In part, the New Left’s Third Worldism built on traditional left-wing anti-imperialism – that expression of political solidarity with colonised peoples in their fight for the same freedom and autonomy enjoyed by people in North America and Europe. No doubt many left-wingers were still classically anti-imperialist. But there were elements to the New Left’s relationship with the decolonising postwar world that were new. For some, their Third Worldism was based less on class solidarity than on cultural identity – that is, on an almost psychological identification with the radically ‘other’, precisely because the Third World was not the West. As one American radical wrote of Fidel Castro’s Cuba in the late 1960s: ‘We look to Cuba not only because of what we sense Cuba to be, but because of what the United States is not… we needed to tie our fates to someone, somewhere in the world, who was seizing the chances for a humane society.’

There were modernist, interwar antecedents to this identification with the anti-Western and often the anti-modern, too. Think of ‘primitivism’, that modernist celebration of people and ways of life deemed closer to nature. Or think of the French Surrealists of the 1920s, who threw their lot in with the Berbers after a French colonial intervention in Morocco in 1925. ‘We profoundly hope that revolutions, wars, colonial insurrections, will annihilate this Western civilisation’, ran one of the Surrealists’ innumerable manifestos.

Elements of the New Left took this to another level. The Third World was effectively conjured up as the means by which the West might be de-Westernised and saved from itself. This is captured well by Jean-Paul Sartre’s infamous preface to the so-called ‘bible of decolonisation’, Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1961). Going far beyond anything Fanon actually wrote (The Wretched of the Earth was principally a radically humanist work about and on national liberation), Sartre hailed the rise of the Third World for exposing Western ideas of humanism, liberty and equality as ‘an ideology of lies’. From this perspective, independence movements, from Cuba to Algeria, were simultaneously in the process of purging the West of itself – exposing Europe and America’s grand heritage as no more than a ‘justification for pillage’. ‘We in Europe, too, are being decolonised’, concluded Sartre, ‘that is to say that the settler in every one of us is being savagely rooted out’.

Sartre may have got carried away with his own rhetorical brilliance – after all, his political affiliations and sympathies seemed to be in perpetual motion throughout his life. But many other New Leftist elements seemed thoroughly committed to embracing the Third Worldist ‘other’ as the gravedigger of the West. In ways that anticipate the contemporary leftist identification with Islamism, New Left Third Worldists tended to recast themselves as alien ‘others’ within their own societies. In America, anti-Vietnam War protesters filled the streets chanting, ‘Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, the NLF is gonna win’. Elsewhere, Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara became an icon to be emulated, while upper-class Parisian radical Régis Debray transformed Guevara’s guerrilla exploits into a voluntarist model (‘focoism’) for revolutionary action throughout the West and beyond in Revolution in the Revolution? (1967) – a model taken to terroristic extremes by the West German Red Army Faction, Italy’s Red Brigades and America’s Weather Underground. As the politics of Third Worldism streamed through the New Left, this also supercharged racial identity politics among minorities – it’s no coincidence that black separatist movements began flourishing in late-1960s America.

It was in the Third Worldist context, too, that Palestine first began to emerge as what it is today – the anti-Western rallying cry of today’s Islamo-left.

Herzog lauds work of Jewish lawyers in battling antisemitism and lies about Israel

In his address on Sunday at the opening of the conference of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists (IJL), President Isaac Herzog, himself a lawyer, praised the work of Jewish lawyers in combating antisemitism and lies about Israel.

“We are seeing an expanding cycle of prominent entities, governments, NGOs, media outlets, politicians, and influencers investing infinite resources in indoctrinating the lies about the Jewish people and the world’s only Jewish democratic state,” he said.

“We are seeing our enemies exhibit their distorted view of Israel, and lecture the free world with vile, false allegations against us, while completely overlooking truth, fact, and reality.”

Looking out at the large gathering of distinguished lawyers and jurists from around the world who were seated in Jerusalem’s Museum of Tolerance, Herzog remarked that it is no coincidence that IJL has a special consultative status at the United Nations.

IJL’s reputation and legal expertise, he continued, have informed and influenced international discourse, proving particularly significant for legal matters involving Israel and its worldwide family.

Herzog attributed this to the fact that, in the eyes of the international community, Israel is the focal point of nearly every debate concerning human rights and the rule of law “as a single issue that plagues the family of nations.”

He surmised that the distorted views shared of Israel and the false allegations against it and the Jewish people could be considered antisemitism, as those who repeat them completely overlook truth, fact, and reality.

“The reality is that, for three years, Israel has been embroiled in a war we did not seek, in civilian terrain of our enemies’ choosing,” he said, adding that Israel had no choice other than to defend itself, “despite being dragged into an urban battlefield, forcing us to combat terrorists in schools and hospitals just to keep our borders and people safe and bring our hostages back home.”

Herzog recalled that it was his great-uncle, Sir Hersch Lauterpacht – a Holocaust survivor who prosecuted Nazis at the Nuremberg trials – who was the first to formulate the legal definition of Crimes Against Humanity.

Herzog warns of collapse of the post-Holocaust world order
Based on current disruptions in geopolitics, Herzog warned of a collapse of the post-Holocaust world order, which includes an aggressive delegitimization of Israel by international institutions and a dangerously violent assault on world Jewry.

Turning to Israel’s recent elections, Herzog noted that the pillars of democratic life must be strengthened through foundational judicial cornerstones.

Israel’s ultimate task is to ensure that the state remains rooted in the ideals on which it was founded, he said, listing security, freedom, Jewish pride, democracy, and a commitment to upholding rights for all.

He also emphasized that, on the “day after” the war, Israel must continue to pursue peace agreements with its neighbors.

“At this moment, your role is particularly important,” Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion told conference participants, citing the chilling reality that Jewish students outside of Israel cannot study in safety. He said that it is the duty of IJL members to defend Jewish communities and institutions.

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11/02 Links Pt1: Why the US midterms are the election that matters to Israel most; Dan Schueftan: Why Israel Doesn't Need Your Approval To Defend Itself

From Ian:

Why the US midterms are the election that matters to Israel most

THAT OBSESSION, Israel and Zionism’s status as the ultimate political and cultural “omnicause,” continues to inflame the most consequential midterm races. In Los Angeles, for instance, DSA-aligned mayoral candidate Nithya Raman has finally succumbed to DSA demands that she embrace the BDS movement lest she lose the party’s endorsement.

In Michigan, an ad late last month in support of anti-Zionist Senator candidate Abdul El-Sayed blamed US aid to Israel for America’s high food costs. The commercial was so overreaching and extreme that El-Sayed released a statement saying that it was “not affiliated with his campaign.”

Most disheartening are campaigns by Michigan Jews intended to convince other Michigan Jews to vote for El-Sayed.

In this perverse reversal of logic, well-known Jews such as actor Mandy Patinkin are exhorting Michigan’s Jews to vote for El-Sayed not only as an example of Jewish values, but because “Jewish safety depends on a real multiracial democracy, and Abdul is the one fighting to protect it,” said Patinkin in late last week.

In a second ad a few days later bemoaning attacks on El-Sayed’s Muslim faith, Patinkin suggested that fighting Islamophobia is the best way to combat antisemitism. “Who is going to stand up for the rights of all of us? Abdul,” he added.

Netanyahu fits neatly into this self-sabotaging worldview, serving as the ultimate bogeyman for Jews like Patinkin, ever eager to perform their anti-Zionist ablutions, along with the Gentiles who affirm them. Of course, Eisenkot, a career military man, is nearly as hawkish as Bibi. But as an enigma and newcomer, he would prove far less of a rallying-cry for America’s progressive masses.

Should candidates like Raman, El-Sayed, Troy Jackson in Maine, and Angie Nixon in Florida triumph on Tuesday, the consequences will be seismic no matter who ultimately leads the nation. In July, a vote by more than 100 Democrats to halt aid to Israel was defeated this past summer owing to Republican Congressional control.

But should that control switch from Red to Blue, similar measures are almost certain to be forthcoming – and win.

Even more worrisome for Israel, declarations of “genocide” and other anti-Israel litmus tests are likely to anchor the Democratic platform in the 2028 presidential race.

Already, Kamala Harris is suggesting her 2024 defeat was tied to Joe Biden’s refusal to rein in Netanyahu in Gaza. She and other potential Democratic challengers are unlikely to make the mistake of under-criticizing Israel again.

This type of fundamental policy shift has no precedent, even for a politician as seasoned and wily as Netanyahu. Which means even if he wins the battle to lead Israel, Israel’s war with Washington may not have even begun.

David Collier: Israel’s Election: Why the Coalition Arithmetic Does Not Tell the Whole Story

Eisenkot’s Dilemma
When Eisenkot receives the first mandate, his options are limited.

Without Arab-party support, his existing bloc falls well short of a majority. Cooperation with the ultra-Orthodox parties would create another set of conflicts over military conscription – and still would not be enough.

And why would the ultra-Orthodox parties break the long-standing union with the Likud for a government that just does not look as if it has a long shelf life?

A minority government dependent on Arab-party support is theoretically possible, but politically contentious, particularly in the aftermath of October 7.

He could also explore a unity arrangement with Netanyahu, although that would contradict explicit campaign commitments.

If Eisenkot fails to form a government, the political balance changes again.

Netanyahu’s Different Calculation
Netanyahu could then have an opportunity to negotiate from a different position.

He could approach Eisenkot with a straightforward argument: neither of us can govern alone, and another election carries risks for both. Why not reach an agreement?

But Netanyahu’s assessment of those risks would be very different.

He could reasonably look at the electoral threshold effects, the opposition’s difficulties and the possibility of another contest and conclude that returning to the polls is an acceptable alternative to making substantial concessions.

Would the tens of thousands who flew in especially to help unseat him – want to repeat the exercise again in a few months? Would the Arabs, having seen the futility of a large turnout, simply stay at home next time?

Eisenkot, by contrast, would have to consider the political damage of failed negotiations, particularly if they involved controversial discussions with Arab parties.

That creates an asymmetry: one leader may feel greater pressure to reach an agreement than the other.

The Succession Question
There is another dynamic that deserves attention.

Netanyahu cannot lead the Israeli right forever. Whenever his departure comes, a struggle for succession will follow.

And there is no undisputed heir.

Both Bennett and Lieberman emerged from the political right. Their ambitions may extend beyond replacing Netanyahu as prime minister through an opposition coalition.

They may also see opportunities in the eventual contest to lead the post-Netanyahu right.

Do not dismiss this just because it seems unlikely today. Gideon Sa’ar was also an ex-Likudnik sitting in the anti-Bibi camp. He made the move first, returning to the fold, probably with an eye to future leadership positions. Lieberman is an ex-Likudnik too. Bennett was once leader of a party to the right of the Likud. In Israeli politics – everything is possible.

This adds another layer to negotiations already shaped by competing interests and political calculations.

What Happens Next?
The central mistake in much of the analysis is to treat Israel’s coalition negotiations as a simple mathematical exercise.

They are nothing of the sort.

Bennett and Lieberman can support his candidacy while rejecting the compromises he may need to make.

Looking at the weakness of the camp, they may both favour another election. It is likely Lieberman does. That would reduce Eisenkot’s problematic 48 seats to an impossible 41.

And behind all of this lies the unresolved question of who eventually succeeds Netanyahu.

To understand what happens next, we need to stop asking only who has enough seats to form a government.

We also need to ask who has the most to gain if they fail.

By my calculations, the majority of seats (right wing 53, Lieberman 7 and some of Bennett’s 12 = up to 72 seats) may well prefer another election.

And if this is the case, we can expect another election in Israel in the spring.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Qatar Glorifies Terrorism: Al-Jazeera's Propaganda Machine Celebrates Hamas

The Hamas officials featured in Al-Jazeera's footage are portrayed as military leaders, strategists, and figures worthy of admiration.

The program included footage of meetings inside Gaza's underground tunnel network, discussions about terror attacks, and documents that purportedly shed light on the preparations for the October 7 massacre.

Among the most disturbing revelations was an operational order attributed to Deif and dated October 5, 2023. According to the network's presentation, the document specified that the invasion of Israel would begin at 6:30 a.m. on October 7.

What exactly was Al-Jazeera trying to communicate to its Arabic-speaking audience? The message is clear: These are your heroes – men who planned and carried out the massacre of Jews on October 7 and whose declared objective is the destruction of Israel.

This is not journalism exposing terrorism; it is a platform for glorifying it.

Al-Jazeera could have used the material to examine how Hamas transformed Gaza into a military base, diverted resources into tunnels and weapons production, and prepared an assault in which they murdered approximately 1,200 people in Israel and abducted 251 others.

Instead, Al-Jazeera chose to turn the architects of the massacre into celebrated military figures.... These were, however, the leaders of an Iran-backed Islamist terrorist organization whose October 7 assault included the deliberate mass-murder of civilians, rape, torture, and hostage-taking.

Qatar has hosted senior Hamas leaders for years [and] has also served as a diplomatic base for purportedly "neutral" negotiations involving the terrorist organization.

The US Congressional Research Service, which notes that Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, has also documented Qatar's engagement with the organization...

Al-Jazeera English presents itself as a major international news organization, competing for credibility among Western viewers.

Al-Jazeera Arabic, meanwhile, operates in a political and cultural environment in which the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas enjoy considerable support among segments of the public.

American universities, policymakers, and media organizations should ask whether foreign government funding creates conflicts of interest and delectable opportunities for political influence.

Qatar cannot simultaneously present itself as a trusted Western partner and avoid serious questions about its relationships with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the current Emir of Qatar, and his family, who provide a media platform for Hamas's leaders to glorify the October 7 massacre, should not be allowed to hide behind the claim that they are merely reporting the news.

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UNRWA may finally be dismantled! Palestinian leaders are freaking out.

In what could be a major development, Israel Hayom reports that UNRWA's acting commissioner-general Christian Saunders is advancing a plan to gradually dismantle the agency and transfer its responsibilities to other organizations.

According to diplomatic sources, UNRWA's schools, clinics and other operations in the West Bank would be transferred to the Palestinian Authority, while its Gaza operations would move to the US-backed Board of Peace. The proposal does not appear to immediately affect UNRWA's operations in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

The Palestinian leadership is reportedly furious and has vowed to fight the plan at the United Nations.

When you understand why, you understand the Middle East better than 90% of its "experts."

Not one Palestinian would lose services. The proposal would transfer UNRWA's services, not eliminate them. Palestinian children would still attend schools, and Palestinian families would still receive medical care. The Palestinian Authority has had its own education and health ministries for over thirty years, serving Palestinians who are not registered with UNRWA. 

UNRWA has provided a parallel education, health and housing infrastructure to what the Palestinian governments in the West Bank and Gaza have. Normally, one would expect a government that wants to have its own state to take more responsibility for its own people; this provides a path to doing exactly that. 

As I pointed out last year, there is no compelling reason for this duplication. So why is the Palestinian leadership so determined to preserve a separate UN agency providing essentially the same services? 

The answer is that UNRWA has always served a political purpose.

I have argued for years that UNRWA's essential services should be transferred to other institutions, while its unique role in perpetuating Palestinian refugee status should end. UNRWA was established as a temporary agency in 1949, yet seventy-seven years later it continues to serve millions of people, far more than it did originally, the overwhelming majority of whom were born generations after the original refugees fled or were displaced.

In 2017, I quoted Ghassan Weshah, a Palestinian academic at the Islamic University of Gaza, who explained:

"The responsibility of UNRWA is to help refugees, but it must also continue this work to remind the world of the refugee issue and the right of return. If UNRWA goes, the refugee issue is over."

That is the key.  Palestinians define themselves to the world as "refugees," even though the Refugee Convention definition does not include people who live in their own land, under their own government. That is unique to Palestinians. And the fake "refugee" designation has enormous political value to them. 

UNRWA institutionalizes the idea that millions of Palestinians, including those living in Palestinian-controlled territory, remain refugees whose ultimate destination is supposedly Israel. In 2011, I reported that a senior Palestinian official said even Palestinians living in a future Palestinian state would not automatically receive citizenship there.

Palestinian leaders insist on maintaining refugee status for people who would be living in their own state, because they insist that they maintain the "right" to move to Israel and destroy it demographically. Otherwise, why would they want their own people to move to a state that they tell the world is dedicated to genocide against them?

This is why the reported proposal is so significant. It would separate the legitimate humanitarian needs of Palestinians from the political machinery that has helped keep their refugee status permanent.

Saunders is an interesting figure in this story. A longtime UN administrator who previously headed UNRWA temporarily in 2019-2020, he is hardly an Israeli advocate. But he seems to prioritize the humanitarian aspect of UNRWA; he actually wants to help Palestinians. This is in marked contrast to the UNREA directors of recent decades who have prioritized the political aspect of the agency, insisting that it must remain and continue to grow indefinitely until Israel allows the "refugees" to "return." UNRWA used to try to convince Arab states to allow Palestinians to become integrated in their societies, back when it actually cared about the problem. Those days are long gone. 

But here is an acting head of the agency who seems to actually care about the original mandate of UNRWA, including that it was always meant to be temporary. There is also the practical matter of UNRWA losing much of its funding; it simply cannot continue the way it has been.

The most revealing aspect of this story is the Palestinian leadership's response. If its primary concern were ensuring that Palestinian children receive education and Palestinian families receive health care, it would be negotiating the details of a transition that safeguards those services.

Instead, it is fighting to preserve UNRWA itself.

This is obviously not a done deal. There will be pressure to keep UNRWA exactly as it is, as a political tool to destroy Israel over the long term. But most of those who support UNRWA are not willing to fund it to that extent. Arab nations have drastically cut their own UNRWA support over the past 15 years. The annual UNRWA begging to demand hundreds of millions more cannot go on forever when the "refugee" population will only get bigger. The problem has been kicked down the road for a very long time, and every year it is more expensive.

Dismantling UNRWA would not solve the Middle East. But it would go a long way towards dissolving a problem that should have been resolved in the 1950s. It would remove a major institutional mechanism that has helped perpetuate the refugee issue for generations.

After seventy-seven years, that would be an enormous step forward.

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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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11/01 Links: The Misguided Palestinization of America; Haley Stevens’ act of bravery as her party abandons Jewish voters; Herzog offers party leaders ladders down, signals push for unity government

From Ian:

Islamic Warfare and the October 7th Massacre: An Ancient Doctrine Marches On

Hamas's Oct. 7 massacre manifested the Islamic categorization of territory into the House of Islam and the House of War, and the imperative of reconquering formerly Muslim-controlled territory.

Hamas also murdered fellow Muslims that day whom they considered traitors to Islam.

Today's Islamic civilization seeks to eventually subjugate and Islamize non-Muslim societies through any means possible, among which are mass immigration, information warfare, and the spreading of Islam in the educational and cultural spheres.

Western governments and officials who relentlessly seek permanent peaceful solutions with Muslim-majority countries do so at their peril.

Westerners continue to ignore the fact that the values and objectives of Islam differ from those of the West. Muslims understand the Western concept of compromise as a form of defeat.

Why My Anti-Zionism Didn't Survive a Houthi Missile

"On the ground. Now." I dropped. Face down on the stones near a Ramle market, hands locked behind my neck. Somewhere above me, a piece of technology was trying to intercept a missile from Yemen.

I had spent two years calling for the divestment of the very system I was now praying would work. The missile had not read my posts.

13 days after Oct. 7, Israel hadn't launched its ground invasion, yet somehow, Stanford students had become genocide scholars overnight. And I was one of them.

Only one question mattered: Were you against genocide or not? Nothing recruits faster than the promise of being on the right side of history.

I was marching for a Palestinian state. The one time I mentioned two states, my new friends from the campus encampment corrected me, gently, the way you correct someone embarrassing themselves: believing Israel should exist made me a Zionist. A slur. Next day, I was an anti-Zionist.

Months later, someone sent me an email about an exhibit in LA about the Nova Music Festival massacre. I decided to go. Somebody had to fact-check it. I stayed longer than I meant to. I realized I was fluent in the state's sins but illiterate in its people. So I went to meet them.

In Ramle, all I could think was: will it hit, will it hit, will it hit? I turned my head and saw it: a thin white line climbing to meet another one.

Ramle has mosques and synagogues a few streets apart. Whoever fired it was aiming at both. Then the interception. The boom.

Then everyone just kept walking. The marketplace reopened almost immediately.

The Misguided Palestinization of America

I am a Black American who is not Jewish. In the aftermath of Oct. 7, 2023, I was constantly looking for activities in Atlanta that expressed solidarity with Israel and the Jewish people. I wanted to find opportunities to stand alongside people who understood that the Hamas-led massacre of Israeli civilians was not merely another development in an interminable geopolitical dispute. It was an assault on human beings, on Jewish life, and on the fundamental right of a people to exist without fear of annihilation.

Amid the increasingly visible demonstrations against Israel, what I witnessed as the real-time Palestinization of America struck me as a profoundly misguided response to the events of Oct. 7 and their aftermath. Too often, I saw political activism that appeared less interested in understanding the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than in making Israel the embodiment of every grievance imaginable.

Let me be clear: Palestinian civilians possess human dignity and legitimate rights. Their suffering deserves serious consideration. One can argue for Palestinian self-determination without denying the Jewish people's right to national self-determination. But there is a difference between advocating for Palestinians and demanding the elimination of the Jewish state. There is a difference between pursuing justice and dressing up hostility toward Jews and Israel in the language of human rights.

I could never accept the proposition that an existing sovereign state should simply cease to exist because someone objected to its existence. The Jewish people's historical and religious connection to the Land of Israel extends back thousands of years.

The Jewish people have endured centuries of persecution, expulsion, discrimination, and violence. The Holocaust remains the bloodiest and most devastating modern expression of that history, but antisemitism did not disappear with the defeat of the Nazis. Jewish communities continue to navigate the consequences of an ancient hatred that repeatedly finds new language and new political surroundings. Oct. 7th added another terrible chapter to that history.

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“Excuse Me, Is This Yours?”: An Interview with Enigmatic Author Tuvia Tenenbom (Judean Rose)

Tuvia Tenenbom. Photo: Isi Tenenbom.

                                                            

Tuvia Tenenbom’s latest book, “Excuse Me, Is This Yours?”, recounts the better part of a year he spent living with the settlers of Judea and Samaria. Along the way he asks everyone, bigwigs and not-so-bigwigs, one question: why hasn’t Israel annexed Judea and Samaria in all the years since 1967?

No one gives him a straight answer. Not Yossi Dagan, Simcha Rothman, Bezalel Smotrich, Itamar Ben Gvir, or Zvi Sukkot, the very people you would expect to make it happen. They tell Tuvia he’s right, and then they make excuses. It’s complicated. It has to be done a certain way, at the right time. They also add what most settlers believe: the concept of annexation doesn’t apply because you can’t annex what already belongs to you. Rather, the goal is the application of Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria. We need to say clearly, this is ours.

And this is not something we have done. This cradle of biblical history is still under military rule. The world still insists it’s not ours, and we haven’t responded by asserting our right to our indigenous territories.

I say “we” because I have lived in Judea since 1984. I have never understood why no declaration of sovereignty has been issued, even under the most right-wing, most pro-settler government in Israel’s short history.

So I read Tenenbom’s book hoping for answers, and what I found instead was the man who asked the questions. Like its predecessors, it offers a glimpse into its author, and I am intrigued. Who is Tuvia Tenenbom, who makes himself at home among people others might fear? And what do we call his particular brand of man-on-the-street investigative journalism?

I like his technique, actually. He asks people whatever comes into his head, in his quirky English. As I read him, I begin to think I know what he thinks. Then I decide I don’t understand him at all.

What does Tuvia Tenenbom believe? Is he tolerant or intolerant? If you were in his book, could you expect him to portray you kindly? I don’t know. Go ask the woman who failed to produce so much as a glass of tap water during his visit (I’m looking at you, Hadassah Froman), or the guy who danced on the table in his dirty shoes, though dirty-shoes guy probably wouldn’t care.

Having crossed paths with the man, one thing is certain: if he takes a liking to you, he is warm and gracious. I met Tuvia at the final event of the Jewish Media Summit. During a Q&A, an obnoxious, whiny British Jewish newspaper editor demanded to know why Israel doesn’t fund his publication. Tuvia had been sitting quietly at our table until then, but that set him off, and he let loose with an absolute TORRENT of Yiddish curses. They simply rolled off his tongue.

Well, at least I think they were curses. I don’t know Yiddish, but I’m pretty sure I got the gist of it. Something along the lines of “No one wants to pay for your drekkishe newspaper,” only far, far spicier. I tried (not very hard) to suppress a guffaw.

Tuvia Tenenbom and Varda Epstein at the Jewish Media Summit, 2022.

Tuvia glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, with the glint of a bad boy acting up, and you could see he felt encouraged by my finding him funny. Then, apparently strictly for my benefit, he let fly another string of curses, no doubt very choice ones.

After the event we spoke briefly, and to my surprise the author was humble; kind and understanding when I couldn’t shake hands; and happy to talk craft with a fellow writer. (I told him I like when he writes about food.)

That contrast between the man who suffers no fools and the man with courtly European manners makes Tuvia Tenenbom even more of an enigma to me. If he likes you, you may get the gentleman. But if he doesn’t like you because you’re acting like an idiot, watch out, lest you become the equivalent of “Va Var Vard Varda” in his next book.

Oh . . . and don’t tell Tuvia I’m a Litvak. He says we have no sense of humor. 

***

Varda Epstein: In “Excuse Me, Is This Yours?” we learn, I think for the first time, that you did a stint in the IDF. We don’t know how you ended up being in the army. Can you share how that transition came about?

Tuvia Tenenbom: In “Careful, Beauties Ahead!” which is about the Haredi world in Israel, I tell the story of how I got to leave the Haredi world. My first steps once I left the “black” yeshiva world were at Merkaz Harav yeshiva in Jerusalem, followed by a Hesder yeshiva in Ma’alot and then Yeshivat Hakotel in Jerusalem.

Varda Epstein: Reading “Careful, Beauties Ahead!” I felt you were rediscovering your own people and writing about them with affection and a new appreciation. Does that reflect your experience? Did working on the book change your relationship with the family you grew up with?

Tuvia Tenenbom: I always kept in touch with my family. I’m not the kind of person who shuns people whose ideas about life are different from mine. That said, writing the “Careful” book while living in Mea Shearim made me feel closer to the people I left quite some years ago. I guess that inside of me I’m still “Haredi,” at least from a social perspective. There will always be a part of me that is “Haredi,” no matter what I believe in or don’t.

Varda Epstein: Your books have been translated into ten languages, but you write in English. What makes English your language for writing? Is it also the language you think in, or does that change depending on what—or whom—you’re writing about?

Tuvia Tenenbom: After my army service, I moved to the United States, where I spent the next 15 years studying at various universities in New York. Part of my studies was in the fields of mathematics and computer science, and part in English literature and drama in general. And so I got used to writing in English. As simple as that.

Varda Epstein: Some of the phrasing in your English-language books makes me wonder about the influence of Hebrew, Yiddish, or German. Do those languages shape your English prose? How do you and your editor decide what to change and what to preserve as part of your voice?

Tuvia Tenenbom: It’s not the Hebrew or Yiddish that gets in the way of my English… It’s more the “Jewish” way of thinking, at least “my Jewish” way of thinking, that influences my writing—and this applies not only to English but also to my Hebrew.

With Minister Bezalel Smotrich. Photo: Isi Tenenbom.

Varda Epstein: In “Excuse Me, Is This Yours?” you point out that the Mei HaShiloach seems to be in practically every settler home you visit. You are descended from its author, the Ishbitzer Rebbe, through his grandson, the Radzyner Rebbe. We get the impression that you think these settlers don’t really get Chasidus and are misinterpreting your ancestor’s teachings. Have we read you correctly? What do they get wrong? And what do you think the Ishbitzer himself would make of his popularity among this group?

Tuvia Tenenbom: The settlers, as I have come to know them in the eight months of living with them, might read, or study, the Mei HaShiloach properly, but they miss the whole “geshmak” of the Hasidic world. They are more like the “Litvaks,” meaning they lack the sense of humor that makes the Hasidic Yiddish speakers so lively, funny, friendly, and warm. Look at the food that the settlers eat: “Healthy” and often tasteless. More like the folks of Los Angeles than of any Hasidic group.

Tuvia Tenenbom on Mount Gerizim during the Samaritan Passover sacrifice. Photo: Isi Tenenbom.

Varda Epstein: There are moments in “Excuse Me, Is This Yours?” where your writing turns lyrical about the beauty of Judea and Samaria (Yehuda and Shomron). Does that beauty help you understand the people you meet and their willingness to sacrifice to keep their hold on the land? Or do you experience that beauty as you would in any other part of the world? Is there something special about Judea and Samaria that makes it distinct?

Tuvia Tenenbom: There is something special about the place. It’s hard to understand the Bible without being in what I call “Biblical Israel.” That’s where Judaism was born, and that’s a big part of what being Jewish means. Judaism and the land create a unity that no other religion does, at least none of the ones I know. The Bible, and the God of the Bible, are “obsessed” with the land. You can’t divorce one from the other. Beverly Hills might be beautiful, but the God of Israel is breathing down your neck only in Biblical Israel.

Tuvia Tenenbom. Photo: Isi Tenenbom.

Varda Epstein: You wrote a beautiful inscription in this latest book, thanking your wife for following you into scary places during a war. Presumably she follows you on all your journeys, taking photographs of you and the people you meet. How did this trip compare with the others, and what was the hardest part for each of you?

Tuvia Tenenbom: We were there during wartime, with missiles flying above our heads, some of them falling right near us. The people around us were running through the streets to find shelter, while we stood on our balcony looking at them. It was bizarre, if I can use this word. And while driving on roads I didn’t know, often enough, the GPS was jammed, and I had no clue where we were and in what direction I should drive. I just followed Palestinian cars, hoping that they knew where they were going.

Tuvia and Isi Tenenbom. Photo courtesy Isi Tenenbom.

Varda Epstein: As a settler myself, I keep wondering about the question you put to so many settler leaders: In all these years, why hasn’t Israel applied sovereignty to Judea and Samaria, even under this government? Did you come away with your own answer?

Tuvia Tenenbom: This is a tough question, because the answer is quite sad.

The current government, the most right-wing government Israel has ever had, and one in which settlers themselves hold positions of power, has refused to annex the land, or “apply sovereignty,” as they prefer to call it.

The reason? The Almighty Shekel. Money.

Originally, the settler movement was driven by people with a strong ideology, people like Moshe Levinger and Benny Katsover, for example. But those pioneers are either no longer with us or have grown old. They belong to a different generation.

Today, many settlers are either anti-Zionist, like some in Yitzhar, for example, or were never Zionists to begin with, like those in Beitar Illit and other Haredi communities.

Even the main settlement organization, Amana, is, at its core, a for-profit financial enterprise.

And here's the thing: as long as Israel does not annex the territory, owning a house there is much cheaper than in the rest of Israel. Add to that lower taxes and government funding that flows far more generously than in other parts of the country.

Settlements also receive financial support from various Jewish organizations abroad, precisely because they are settlements.

In short, all these financial benefits, all these “goodies,” would disappear the moment Israel annexed the land.

And the settlers, at least most of them, don't want that. The exception to this rule is the so-called Hilltop Youth; they are still ideological.

If you're wondering who told me all this, the answer is simple: The settlers themselves, including some of their leaders.

With Yossi Dagan, head of the Samaria Regional Council. Photo: Isi Tenenbom

Varda Epstein: Mida called you “the ultimate leftist and humanist who loves all people, is everything the left pretends to be but is not.” Your books show us what you question and reject. What do you believe, politically and religiously, and which convictions have stayed with you over the years?

Tuvia Tenenbom: Before any book I write and any journey I take, I try to “forget” anything I know, or think I know, about the people and places I’m writing about and let the people themselves guide me into their souls. That’s the only way I know how to write a book. And it makes my journey into the people fascinating and exciting: a journey of discovery.

With Minister Itamar and Ayala Ben Gvir. Photo: Isi Tenenbom.

Varda Epstein: You live in New York and Germany. I can understand New York, but what attracts you to Germany? If I even hear a German accent, my skin crawls. How do you live with the history of the place and its people in relation to the Jewish people? What can you tell us about how it feels to be Jewish in Germany today?

Tuvia Tenenbom: Years back, my wife-to-be, Isi, lived in Germany, and that’s how I got to live in Germany as well. And in response to your question: The history of Germany and the Jews is not a happy story, that’s for sure, but that is also the history of Jews and Europe, Jews and Christians, Jews and Muslims. London is no less antisemitic than Berlin; neither is Paris or New York. I met Americans who hate Jews more than the average German. We may not want to admit it, just like German Jews were blind to the hate around them before WWII, but reality has nothing to do with what we admit or deny.

Varda Epstein: Has anyone you met on your writing journeys changed your mind about something you were sure of? And where are you heading next? Which community will you write about?

Tuvia Tenenbom: Almost always, I change my mind once I live with the people I write about. I didn’t think Britain was antisemitic, but then I lived with them… I hated Russians, but I ended up falling in love with them after living with them. I thought America was the freest country on the planet but totally changed my mind during the process of writing about them while travelling the country for about a year. I have learned that I must embed myself with the people I write about and leave my prejudices in the nearest garbage can. That’s why it takes me months upon months of living with the people in order to write about them. As for the next book: I have no idea. Usually my German editor and publisher are the ones coming up with ideas for the upcoming book. It was not, for example, my idea to write about the settlers or about the Haredim. I simply agreed to take these assignments once they were offered to me.

***

For Elder’s take on “Excuse Me, Is This Yours?” see his review.

Want to hear more from Tuvia Tenenbom? He will be speaking at the Begin Center in Jerusalem on Sunday, November 15, 2026, at 7:30 PM, in conversation with Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, ‘Amcha Yisrael’ candidate and former Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem. The event is also available on Zoom.

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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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"Moderate" Al Azhar scholar warns about a world government under Jewish control

The headline in this Egyptian newspaper says:

Sheikh Ahmed Karima: “The Abrahamic religion” paves the way for a world government under Jewish control

The picture on this article tells you what you need to know:

Karima is a professor of Islamic Sharia at Al-Azhar University, Egypt. And he has identified yet another method that the Jews are using to take over the world.

Dr. Ahmed Karima, Professor of Islamic Sharia at Al-Azhar University, affirmed that the so-called "Abrahamic Religion" is nothing but a dangerous cover and plot intended to draft the "New World Order religion" and pave the way toward a unified world government forcibly imposed on humanity. He described it as a "frightening upcoming war" aimed at promoting the "doctrine of the expected Jewish king."

Dr. Karima explained to El Safha El Oula that the alleged Abrahamic religion represents one of the most prominent names and roles of Freemasonry, which he described as a secret, terrorist organization aiming to ensure Jewish control over the world's resources and spread atheism, obscenity, and corruption.

Karima warned of the intellectual and moral danger of these organizations (Freemasons and Illuminati) , pointing out that their most prominent beliefs and methods consist of undermining monotheistic religions, bringing down legitimate governments and national ruling systems, permitting immorality and using women as a tool for control, in addition to inciting sectarian and racial strife, fragmenting countries from within, and taking complete control of media outlets and influential international organizations through complex networks of leverage and money.

Wikipedia says that Karima "is best known for his religious moderation."

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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

Read More