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 on Mount Gerizim during the Samaritan Passover sacrifice. 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

Read More

"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

10/31 Links: The forgotten Egypt terror attack and its tragic fifth victim; Ex-UN official; UN's Israel obsession sidelines atrocities elsewhere; Eisenkot’s options are all bad, while Netanyahu’s remain good

From Ian:

‘The killer was never punished’: The forgotten Egypt terror attack and its tragic fifth victim

Mor Shamli, 35, the widow of Alon Shamli, who was murdered before her eyes in Egypt on October 8, 2023, became the fifth victim of the shooting attack Friday, after dying following more than three years of psychological anguish.

The shooting took place in Alexandria one day after the Hamas massacre of October 7, as Israelis were still struggling to comprehend the scale of the atrocities and eliminate the remaining terrorists in communities near the Gaza Strip. An Egyptian police officer opened fire with his weapon at a group of Israeli tourists near Pompey's Pillar, a Roman triumphal column considered one of the best-known tourist attractions in Alexandria, Egypt's second-largest city.

Alon Shamli and Amnon Bezalel were pronounced dead at the scene, while Hagai Efrat died of his wounds about 10 days later. Egyptian tour guide Sayed Kamel al-Khawalqa was also killed in the attack. Alon's widow later said: "My life ended there in Egypt on October 8, 2023, when they murdered us. The bullet that struck Alon's heart struck mine too."

Alon Shamli, who was 34 when he was killed, coached a youth team at Hapoel Tel Aviv soccer club. He also worked as a physical education teacher at Rishonim School in Bat Yam. Following his death, Hapoel Tel Aviv said Alon "was highly regarded in the youth department. His players said he always devoted himself to them and pushed them to improve."

Amnon Bezalel, 64, of Bat Yam, served in the Israel Police for about 40 years. He was known as a diligent and respected officer and spent much of his career with the Holon police. His final position was technology coordinator in the Ayalon police region.

Hagai Efrat, 83, of Rishon LeZion, whose death was confirmed about 10 days after the attack, played soccer for Hapoel Haifa in his youth and managed Hapoel Jerusalem's soccer club during the 1970s and 1980s.

Friends of Egyptian tour guide Sayed Kamel al-Khawalqa said he was highly educated and possessed extensive knowledge, which helped him in his work as a tour guide. According to Egyptian media reports, he was also accompanying another group of tourists on the day of the attack and was caught in the gunman's line of fire.

But the attack, which received relatively little attention because it occurred so soon after the October 7 massacre, had another victim: Mor Shamli, who never recovered from what happened. In January, she announced to her Instagram followers that she intended to end her life through medically assisted suicide in Switzerland.

The announcement sparked a wave of false rumors that the procedure had already taken place and that she had died. In Instagram Stories posted that month, she explained the painful decision she had made and the feelings that had accompanied her since the attack, which occurred just one day after the massacre in Israeli communities near the Gaza Strip.

‘I went undercover at an extremist religious sect in Kent where Holocaust denial lives on'

A priest repeating Holocaust denial, a worshipper declaring a former synagogue should be burned to the ground and links to figures from far-right political movements.

Reporter Dan Esson went undercover at a breakaway religious sect in Kent to discover whether the extreme views of its notorious founder live on…

It’s a humid morning in Broadstairs, I’m drenched in sweat beneath my suit, and I’m being asked if I’m “quite good on the Jews” in the dimly-lit kitchen of a former guest house.

Am I “Jew-wise”, I’m pressed.

Joe and I have only just been introduced, though we’ve been sitting on the same pew for about an hour and a half listening to the Latin Mass.

He doesn’t know I’m a journalist. As far as he’s concerned, I’m Daniel Owens, a lapsed Catholic looking to return to the Church.

The middle-aged court typist from Sandwich, who originally hails from Cheshire, is very keen to express the sort of beliefs I thought I’d have to work a bit harder to capture on my hidden recorder.

When the conversation turns to the former synagogue in Margate, he says “thank God” it’s no longer in use, his northern accent still unmistakable despite having moved to Kent many years ago.

“It should be burned to the ground.”

“Father” Stephen Abraham, the main priest in residence, tells me that Jews have constructed a “mythology” around the Holocaust.

“They’ve created that myth because they’re experts; they have the media, the money to spin these stories,” he says.

I focus my eyes everywhere but his, as he continues: “They’re hiding the fact they’re taking over everything, or taking over the bits that matter.”

Presumably Joe and “Father” Abraham wouldn’t have been so open with these opinions if they knew who I was, but neither realised their newest recruit was wired up.

For more than a decade, this group, the Society of St Pius X Resistance (SSPXR), has operated from the property in Broadstairs.

It was founded by the late Richard Williamson, a convicted Holocaust denier and prominent conspiracy theorist whose extreme views made him one of the most controversial clergymen of recent decades.

He died last year, with his funeral held in Canterbury, but the organisation he headed is still operating from the building he bought on the Thanet coast more than a decade ago.

Ex-Palestine supporter blasts ‘insane’ movement for ‘cherry-picking’ oppressors

Parishad Kavyani was born in the Islamic Republic of Iran and spent most of her childhood there until she moved to Canada at 14, a reality she says shaped her nuanced view of the pro-Palestine, anti-Israel movement she once supported.

Now she says it was destroyed by “liberal intellectualism” that overly focused on the oppressor instead of the human rights of all affected.

“I have never faced the amount of homophobia, racism and sexism that I have experienced in the past nine months from the leftists, from the very people that I marched with for over two years for a free Palestine, and that is insanity,” Kavyani told Fox News Digital of leaving the cause.

Kavyani went on to reveal one of the problems she wrestled with while still supporting the Palestine movement — the absence of support for the freedom and rights of Iranian women.

“[They] advocate for liberation of people, [they] advocate for women’s rights, but when it comes to Iranian women wanting freedom, wanting the freedom to wear whatever they want, [they] suddenly are quiet — and not only quiet, but [they] support the oppressor. That’s my issue… [they] cherry-pick between oppressors,” she said.

Kavyani, who admits to being a part of pro-Palestine when the movement began to form before splitting with the cause after an array of its supporters began posting pro-Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps [IRGC] content, detailed the intricate view Iranians develop on advocacy for Palestinians.

“As an Iranian born and raised in Iran… you are raised with a lot of information, a lot of propaganda around what is happening in Israel, what is happening in Palestine, and you are just told this every single day by the authorities. That Palestinians need help, they’ve been oppressed, they’ve been getting killed all of these years, so we have to help them,” she added.

“Then… you enter the society, and you see there is poverty everywhere. You see that the villages in Iran don’t have drinking water. You see that the villagers in Iran don’t have a road to a hospital… Why? Because the government doesn’t actually do anything about the people in need inside the country, and you’re always told, ‘Oh, but we have to save money to send to Palestine,’” Kavyani said.

“The more time you spend in the country you’re like, ‘Why is it my responsibility to save another nation?’” Kavyani added.

The Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, was a tipping point for her.

“When October 7 happened, I had a lot of conversations with people [about it]… Like, just because someone is holding an Israeli passport doesn’t mean that they should just get killed… If there’s a war that you’re including civilians in that war, and you’re taking civilians hostage, and you’re raping civilians or torturing civilians — that’s not something that I support no matter who this person is, because I’m not somebody who thinks someone deserves to die just because of where they’re from or just because the political belief that they hold on to,” she said.

“That is, like, so ideology-driven, which we’re seeing right now on the internet and in real life… You cannot create a hierarchy of people and say this person deserves saving more than this person… That liberal intellectualism is, like, so insane,” Kavyani relayed.

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10/30 Links Pt2: Douglas Murray: the Left’s Palestine 'fetish' – and why the West can still be saved; Pelosi calls Mamdani, El-Sayed's past comments on Israel 'concerning' and 'wrong'

From Ian:

Maxim Shrayer: Up (and Down) In Michigan

I would submit that the phenomenon of Jewish support for El-Sayed and other openly anti-Israel candidates or elected officials in the Democratic party does not logically or rationally stem from issues affecting Israel or the Jewish diaspora. Rather, it exemplifies the phenomenon I would like to call the “Jewish nostalgia for an American political home” in the Democratic party. Fueling this nostalgia is the anxiety that Jews no longer influence mainstream American politics. Various “Jewish cases” for the election of El-Sayed lay hopelessly bare a longing for the time when Jewish in America rhymed with progressive if not socialist, when Jews were civil libertarians if they weren’t gangsters (sometimes both), and when the Democratic party was a political home for the vast majority of America’s Jews.

This nostalgia also stems from a chronic reluctance to recognize that the Democratic party is becoming more and more a party of phantoms of socialism who either refuse to learn from twentieth-century history (especially Soviet history) or are too ignorant to do so. This Jewish Democratic nostalgia, like most other forms of nostalgia, does not address issues or remedy the present. It is a coping mechanism for the ones who have experienced political and social bereavement. Countless are the Jewish losses in America of the first quarter of the 21st century, and the biggest political loss is the Democratic party’s support of Israel. (That a Dominican-American congressman from the Bronx and a maverick Pennsylvania senator—rather than the Jews in the house or senate Democratic leadership—are the staunchest Democratic supporters of Israel speaks volumes about the predicament.)

Calls for the creation of an anti-MAGA Jewish coalition feel like an eleventh-hour performance of Jewish nostalgia for political influence. Such nostalgia has its deeper origins in the late 1960s, when Jewish activism ceased to be inherently Jewish as American Jews had achieved the status quo and overcome de facto discrimination while the still young Israel enjoyed national popularity and antisemitism was becoming marginal or subterranean.

You may wonder why the one writing these lines—a former refusenik, a Bostonian, an author and college professor—is so taken with this year’s Michigan Senate election. The answer is that through the lens of the Michigan Senate race I see a story of the impending Jewish divorce from the Democratic party and thus a refraction of my own political journey in America.

Shedding illusions is hard, and its even harder to do so when nostalgia performs a siren’s song. I speak from the experience of my family members in the former USSR, Israel, and America. When I reference the pain and pleasure of shedding of one’s political illusions, I also speak of the nearly forty years it’s taken to dispel my own. I’ve never once voted Republican, but over the past two years I have realized I can no longer vote Democratic. I detest Trump and will not vote for him or his menials, but I cannot give my vote to those who refuse to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and those who actively seek Israel’s undoing. This acknowledgment of political homelessness, a particularly difficult predicament for a Jewish immigrant in America, brings me to three closing reflections on the subject of the Senate election in Michigan.

One: Learn from the legacy of Jewish refuseniks. I have previously argued that refuseniks were the last great Jewish political movement in Diaspora. The purpose of the refusenik movement was to free Jews from the Soviet bondage. Ours was an activism on behalf of Jews that also made the world a better place, not the other way around. There is a direct lesson for today’s Jewish voters torn between their past allegiance to the Democratic party and the growing threat of its left wing. American Jews tend to celebrate their participation in American progressive politics while failing to see a powerful alternative in the activism of Jewish refuseniks. Would that today’s American Jews abandon the idea of political activism for the sake of others—including those who, like El-Sayed, openly articulate their opposition to Israel and Zionism.

Two: Putting an enemy of Jewish selfhood in the U.S. Congress can never be a Jewish goal. El-Sayed as a Democratic contender who exploits the climate of Trumpian America to empower himself is less troubling than the very idea of a candidate running against Israel. In this sense, El-Sayed is also a cipher for the radicalized left of the Democratic party: a younger, less Soviet (and more Baathist) muscular version of Senator Bernie Sanders. Explaining why he recently gave one million dollars to El-Sayed’s campaign (following the party lead of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), Senator Sanders stated: “I was outraged … that AIPAC … dumped 9 million dollars in support of Mike Rogers. … And what AIPAC wants is continued US financial support for the Netanyahu government in Israel, which, in my view, is a genocidal government … and a continuation of the war in Iran … . AIPAC and Netanyahu want to continue that war with Trump [sic], and I think we’ve got to end that war. Abdul believes we’ve got to end that war.”

Make no mistake: a vote for El-Sayed is a vote against Israel, not a vote against the Netanyahu government. Saying this during the Israeli elections that may well see Netanyahu defeated is especially revealing.

Three: A vote is not a matzevah—whatever else it says besides the pei-nun and one’s name in the past (political) life. A vote is not to be made out of nostalgia for a bygone political era. Do not vote to unearth your political past or your ancestral memories of Jewish activism on behalf of civil libertarianism. Those memories had been put to their final rest in the 1970s. Rather than submitting empty ballots of Jewish dignity, perhaps we should pour what remains of Jewish activism, Jewish influence and Jewish resources into a third party, moderate, centrist, founded on traditional liberal values? Or, perhaps instead America Jews should look beyond these shores toward a new great aliyah—the 21st century American aliyah.

I will stop here—out of nostalgia for the illusion of Jewish unity. In closing, I turn to Isaac Babel, that great poet of Jewish upheaval. Babel has a short story from 1913 titled “Childhood. At Grandmother’s.” This early gem features a Jewish boy’s weekly Shabbat visits with his grandmother. She feeds him abundant meals with gefilte fish and fruit compote and teaches him about life in her imperfect Russian with an admixture of Yiddish and Polish. I used to think that American Jews were done loving their children and grandchildren so much that they would break their hearts with harsh and cynical wisdom. Perhaps I was wrong. What this Odessan grandmother says to her grandson in the 1900s applies to the socio-political illusions of today’s Jewish voters who find themselves at the crossroads:
“’Learn,’ she suddenly speaks with power. ‘Learn, you will achieve everything—wealth and fame. You must know everything. All of them will fall and prostrate themselves before you. All must envy you. Do not have friends. Do not give them money. Do not give them your heart.’”

Month after thwarted flydubai attack, Israel issues stringent new rules for all airlines

A month after the attempted terrorist crashing of a flydubai flight bound for Tel Aviv from Dubai, Israeli authorities issued new, stringent directives on Thursday to both foreign and Israeli airlines, requiring them to submit crew information 48 hours prior to departure, amid other steps to bolster security.

The new directives require that any further updates regarding crew members are submitted during the check-in period and no later than two hours before takeoff, and that a final list be issued at takeoff. Bloomberg reported that the measures were ordered by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after a security review, and are intended to allow adequate time for background checks.

The directives come after a near-disaster on September 30 as flydubai Flight FZ1073 was en route from Dubai to Tel Aviv, when the copilot, Omani national Hamam al-Hammami, attacked the captain, Smit Machchhar, and attempted to crash the aircraft. The plane plunged thousands of feet before several Israeli passengers burst into the cockpit, whose door Machchhar had managed to open, immobilized the terrorist copilot and initially stabilized the plane.

Two off-duty pilots aboard the flight then took over the controls and made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia before a replacement aircraft returned passengers to Tel Aviv.

Machchhar was seriously injured in the attack by Hammami, who struck him in the back of the head with an emergency axe.

The security requirements were issued by the National Center for Passenger Information Data Analysis, also known as Malan, a division within the Israel Tax Authority. The directives apply to all incoming and outgoing flights to and from Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport operated by all airlines, foreign and Israeli.

Non-Israeli carriers and Israeli airlines operating foreign aircraft flying in and out of Israel will henceforth be required to complete an online form with full details about pilots, cabin crew and passengers 48 hours before entering Israel, for review by the Israel Population and Immigration Authority.

The Immigration Authority will approve or reject requests to board passengers and crew members on flights entering Israel, departing from it, or passing through its territory.

The National Center for Passenger Information Data Analysis emphasized that the advance-notice period will give Israeli authorities more time to prepare than international practices generally allow and strengthen their ability to address potential security concerns.

Heroic flydubai captain and crew honored by UAE president

The captain and crew of the flydubai flight to Tel Aviv, which was attacked last month, were honored Tuesday by the president of the United Arab Emirates.

UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan awarded Indian pilot Smit Machchhar and the rest of the crew the First Class Order of Zayed II, one of the Gulf country’s top civilian honors, “in recognition of their courageous efforts to ensure the safety of passengers,” his office said.

The president praised the crew’s bravery and professionalism in protecting passengers during the attempted hijacking on September 30.

The Indian pilot, who has been recovering in an Abu Dhabi hospital after being attacked with a cockpit axe by his Omani co-pilot, attended the ceremony, with scars from his injuries still visible on his head and his arm in a cast.

Despite his severe injuries in the cockpit attack, he managed to open the door, allowing passengers to enter, tackle the assailant and take control of the aircraft.

He has been widely praised as a hero.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has invited him to light a torch at Israel’s Independence Day next year.

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10/30 Links Pt1: Herzog can secure his presidential legacy by bringing Netanyahu and Eisenkot together; Canadian author warns Bondi lessons being forgotten

From Ian:

Herzog can secure his presidential legacy by bringing Netanyahu and Eisenkot together

The politics of delegitimization and defamation, particularly the demonization of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by the Left, make the establishment of a broad Israeli government of repair an unlikely scenario.

Yet this is exactly what Israel needs now – the partnership in government of Netanyahu and one of his major rivals, say, the political parties led by Yashar head Gadi Eisenkot and/or Naftali Bennett – to together tackle Israel’s major challenges.

The question is: Who is going to disabuse both the Left and the Right of their belligerent, separatist, extremist dreams of establishing a one-sided government that relies on haredi (ultra-Orthodox) or Arab parties? Who is going to cajole Likud and Yashar and/or B’Yachad into a pseudo “unity” coalition government?

The answer, of course, should be the Israeli president. But I wonder whether President Isaac Herzog is up to the task.

Herzog comes from the Left (a former leader of the Labor Party), and he is already under pressure from his political home base to mandate and approve a narrow Eisenkot government based on an alliance with anti-Israel Islamists or anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox Jews; a government that defiantly excludes Netanyahu.

The camp’s overriding priority is to dethrone Netanyahu under any circumstances and at any cost. This camp expects Herzog to play along; nay, they demand that he brandish his bully pulpit to legitimize a government that embraces Mansour Abbas and Prof. Yousef Jabareen, or alternatively Yakov Asher and Yitzhak Goldknopf.

Such a government would handcuff the IDF in fighting Palestinian enemies and kill the hope of recapturing the Negev from Bedouin mafia gangs, and it would quash any plan for drafting haredim into the IDF. But so what? In the view of the hard Left, terminating Netanyahu is the higher goal that makes anything and everything kosher.

Herzog needs to repel the pressures and demands of the hard Left and wedge the mainstream parties, the two or three largest in Knesset, into a governing coalition, uneasy and fractious as it may be.

It is not enough for Herzog to say that he “will do everything in his power to avoid a repeat election scenario.” He must actively agitate for a broad Zionist government. He should aggressively intervene in the political process beyond the usual presidential consultative role following elections.

Herzog should declare that he will give the mandate to form a government first and foremost only to a political party leader that is up-front committed to seeking unity as his priority plan of action. And then he should reject any proto-government coalition brought to him that is not broad-based; that is, contingent on fractional Arab or haredi parties.

Herzog can and should go further in making a broad-based government possible by getting into the nitty-gritty of the issues that stand in the way, from Netanyahu’s future (rotation in the prime minister’s post, a timetable for retirement from politics, and a pardon) to good governance (formation of a national commission of investigation into the October 7 disaster, judicial reform, settlement policy, and haredi draft).

Don’t tell me that this isn’t the role of the Israeli president and that he has no powers for such interposition. Indeed, it is not the president’s classic role, and legally he has no such powers.

Jonathan Tobin: Netanyahu is a realist about Israel’s foes, not a fear-monger

Moreover, Netanyahu is on firm ground in reminding Israeli voters that leaders and parties that campaign on pledges never to allow a Palestinian state or to accede to demands for concessions, including territorial withdrawals, often break their word.

That’s exactly what happened with Yitzhak Rabin when he was elected prime minister in 1992 and reassured voters that he would not negotiate with the Palestine Liberation Organization and its terrorist leader Yasser Arafat, let alone empower them in the territories. But then, he did exactly that.

In 2003, Ariel Sharon was re-elected as prime minister by ridiculing his Labor Party opponent for proposing to withdraw from Gaza. Then Sharon, too, carried out the same policy himself in the summer of 2005 by pulling every Israeli soldier, settler and settlement out of Gaza, thus setting in motion the train of events that led to the creation of a Hamas terror state there and the tragedy of Oct. 7.

Moreover, as Haaretz consoled its left-wing readership over the summer, Eisenkot may have declared that he won’t accept a Palestinian state largely in order to curry favor with the voters. But in doing so, he was, the newspaper said, “running away from what everyone knows he believes.” That is probably true. The former general’s statements while he was chief of staff and those made by his advisers all point to acceptance of the Oslo mindset about the imperative of Israeli territorial withdrawals and the creation of a Palestinian state.

Under the circumstances, it’s far from unreasonable for Netanyahu to point this out and to speculate about whether a government led by Eisenkot would resist the inevitable pressure from foreign governments—possibly including the United States once President Donald Trump leaves office in January 2029—for a Palestinian state.

Nor is it fear-mongering to point out that a repetition of Sharon’s catastrophic blunder of withdrawing from Gaza in the far larger and more strategic Judea and Samaria would raise the likelihood of more Oct. 7-style attacks on Israel. Hamas, which would be certain to seize control of a state from its corrupt and feeble Fatah Party rivals who currently control the Palestinian Authority, has promised as much.

Nor is Netanyahu conjuring up imaginary threats when he speaks of the need to finish the process of eliminating Hamas in Gaza and defeating the Islamist regime in Tehran. Israelis know all too well that their enemies are not figments of their imagination on which an unscrupulous prime minister is preying.

And he isn’t making things up when he describes the radicalism of both the Arab parties that did so well in this week’s vote.

Halbfinger is correct that Ra’am has worked hard to sell itself to Jewish voters as a reasonable partner that can be trusted to be loyal to the state while standing up for the interests of Arab voters. Israelis may be proud to live in a country where the Arab minority enjoys equal rights under the law. But even if he served in the government led by Naftali Bennet and Yair Lapid in 2021 and 2022, many, if not most Israelis know that its leader Mansour Abbas’s Islamists beliefs make it impossible to truly accept the legitimacy and permanence of a Jewish state. What’s more, they also know the larger Joint List won’t even pretend to give up their dreams of Israel’s eradication. That’s true even if they are willing, for the moment, to prop up a minority government that would end Netanyahu’s career, due to the fact that he is the greatest foe of those who wish for Israel’s destruction.

Should Eisenkot rely on them to keep a minority government in power outside of the cabinet or ask them to join it outright, he would be giving them an effective veto over future military action to defend Israel against Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. Some on the left may think that’s a good idea. But in rejecting such a scenario, Netanyahu would not be exploiting fears as much as pointing out to Israelis that Eisenkot would be doing what the overwhelming majority of Israelis, regardless of who they voted for on Oct. 27, oppose.

The specter of the genocidal intent of Hamas and Iran, for which the atrocities of Oct. 7 were just the trailer for what they want to do to all of Israel, is no boogeyman that Netanyahu pulls out of his bag of tricks to scare Israelis. It is a clear and present danger that must be addressed by any government of Israel, no matter who is at its head, if it is not to betray the trust of its people.

A still dangerous neighborhood
If Israelis understand—their victories in the post-Oct. 7 war and the survival of the Abraham Accords, notwithstanding the global surge of antisemitism—that they still live in a dangerous neighborhood, it’s not because they are fearful. It’s because they have been paying attention to events and are able to judge what happens when their leaders succumb to the temptation of earning the respect of the Times and liberal pundits, and seek to trade “land for peace.” In each case, such policies were not only a betrayal of campaign promises but also wound up doing nothing more than trading territory for terror that led to the loss of thousands of Israeli lives.

If Netanyahu retains a large amount of support, despite the understandable fatigue with a prime minister who has held power for so long and the impulse to make him the sole scapegoat for Oct. 7, it is because Israelis respect and value his realism. For all of his faults and mistakes, he is still the only major Israeli leader of his era who did not fall prey to the magical thinking that led to Oslo and the Gaza withdrawal, and its betrayed promises of gaining peace in exchange for a Palestinian state that the Palestinians don’t want. Pointing this out isn’t scare tactics. It’s realism.

The prime minister’s critics should consider whether their desire to ignore or downplay the real threats to Israel is something worse than speaking to the fears of Israelis: a deliberate attempt to disarm and weaken them in the face of very real genocidal threats.

Canadian author warns Bondi lessons being forgotten

Kinsella said governments and social media companies were the two entities most important in fighting the problem, and both had “dropped the ball”.

Of social media owners including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, he said: “You’ve got billionaires, in one case a trillionaire, who operate in this lawless, wild west environment where anything goes.

“We’re not asking them to donate a kidney. We’re asking them just to observe certain basic restraints, such as to promote truth and discourage hate and lies.”

He said governments should tell the companies: “You will do this, or there will be consequences … so far, there’s not really a government in the world that has done that.”

Kinsella was also critical of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his Canadian counterpart Mark Carney for recognising a Palestinian state at the United Nations in September 2025. He said recognition had been predicated on elections, governance reform, changes to the school curriculum and an end to the Palestinian Authority’s “pay-for-slay” program.

“None of those things have happened, not one,” he said. “[The] Palestinian state, at least in the case of Gaza, is governed by a designated terrorist entity in this country and in my country.

“We have leadership that is weak and is either recklessly or wilfully blind to this virus of antisemitism and hatred that is spreading in our countries, and that in some cases has cost people their lives.”

Referring to the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, Kinsella said the Australian government had questions to answer over Bondi.

“Here, feet from where we are at the moment, you got 15 people [who] were slaughtered as a consequence of an ideology that was allowed to be taught without restraint in this country, and the people involved in that have to answer that. But so too does the government,” he said. “I’m hopeful that the commission of inquiry deals seriously with what it’s got, which is a serious problem.”

Kinsella also addressed a lunch for AIJAC supporters in Sydney on Monday. “The beast of antisemitism is out of its cage, and it is everywhere to be seen,” he told attendees.

Kinsella said he had fought antisemitism for decades as a lawyer, journalist and political adviser, facing threats against his life and at times requiring police protection. “I have never seen it as bad as it is now. Never,” he said.

He argued that antisemites across the political and ideological spectrum were driven by envy and resentment. “[They] envy your success in every endeavour. They envy the resilience and the strength of the Jewish people,” he said.

Kinsella said Israel was always going to prevail militarily, but a second war – “the information war, the propaganda war” – was under way. He said social media profiles began appearing across North America, Europe and the Middle East 18 months before October 7. He said they sat dormant until the day of the attack, then were used to spread denial of the atrocities.

Kinsella said most people in the West supported Israel and the Jewish community. But he warned that millions of young people on the right and the left “have fallen under the spell of Hamas and Iran and the Jew haters”.

“We cannot lose a generation. We cannot lose the future,” he said.

He said the campaign’s blueprint was devised 40 years ago, and traced its origins to the Soviet Union. “I believe we will win that war,” he said. “Because we must win that war.”

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The Rules Are Always Different For Israel (example #4,523)

Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian territories, tweeted:

Israel allows 2 million Palestinians with Israeli citizenship (who did not become refugees in 1948) to vote and run for office while it denies that right to 6+ million it has kept under a brutal illegal occupation for nearly 60 years. That is not democracy. It is Apartheid.

Say what? 

Apparently, Albanese believes that distinguishing between citizens and noncitizens when determining who may vote in national elections is, um, apartheid.

This is a peculiar definition of apartheid, since nearly every country on Earth distinguishes between citizens and noncitizens when deciding who gets to vote in national elections. But let's give Albanese the benefit of the doubt and try to figure out exactly what she thinks Israel should do to avoid the dreaded "A" word.

One possibility that would fit her formulation is that she wants Israel to annex the West Bank and Gaza and offer Israeli citizenship to all the Palestinians who live there.

I somehow don't think she wants Israel to annex the territories.

Ok, then maybe Albanese believes that Israel should grant noncitizens the right to vote in national elections without requiring them to become citizens.

That is not entirely unprecedented. A 2023 academic study identified five countries that grant broadly available national voting rights to noncitizen residents: Uruguay, New Zealand, Chile, Malawi and Ecuador. The requirements vary, from one year of residence in New Zealand to fifteen years in Uruguay.  Five countries out of 193. 

But that is not what Albanese is demanding. In those countries, to vote you still must be a resident. Albanese is demanding voting rights for people who, according to her own argument, live in territories that are not part of Israel.

That would be an entirely new and unprecedented category of voting rights: noncitizens who are not residents of the country's sovereign territory. Literally everyone in the world would be eligible to vote in literally every national election by that logic, or at least every election that affects them. Iranians should vote in US elections!

Perhaps, in Albanese's twisted mind, the special circumstance is military occupation. Maybe Albanese believes that occupying another territory obligates a country to grant the occupied population the right to vote in its national elections.

But, again, no one has ever done that. 

Turkey has occupied northern Cyprus since 1974. Does Turkey allow Greek Cypriots living in northern Cyprus to vote in Turkish parliamentary elections? Of course not. Turkey reserves those voting rights for Turkish citizens, including Turkish Cypriots who have acquired Turkish citizenship.

The United States occupied Iraq from 2003 until the formal transfer of sovereignty in 2004, and maintained a massive military presence there for years afterward. Should the United States have registered millions of Iraqis to vote for Barack Obama or John McCain in 2008 merely because American troops were still stationed there? 

Is the United States guilty of "apartheid" because Iraqis could not vote for the American president? (Let's not even discuss how US citizens cannot vote for president or Congress if they live in non-state territories like Puerto Rico.) 

Article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights "recognizes and protects the right of every citizen to take part in the conduct of public affairs, the right to vote and to be elected and the right to have access to public service."

The word "citizen" is pretty clear.

So what, exactly, is Albanese demanding? Can she seriously be saying that international law must be rewritten to apply only to one state and no others? Can she really believe that she just redefined "apartheid" to include giving full rights to the minority citizenship of a state?

Come on. It is clear what she really wants. She, and all the others who pushed the same logic in the wake of Israel's elections, wants the destruction of Israel above all. All their pseudo-legal arguments are not serious: they are just means to an end, to incite hate against Israel so it eventually becomes so isolated that it implodes and can be replaced with a Palestinian Arab state that can expel its Jews and everyone would be happy (except Jews, who don't count.)

Can you figure out any explanation that fits the facts better? 

---

 

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

From Ian:

The Orwellian rewriting of the October 7 massacres

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WSJ Editorial: Blaming the Jews for Everything in Michigan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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