Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, February 13, 2026

A 1923 Romanian university student newspaper suggested murdering Jews - because their med school needed cadavers

Ever notice how today's antisemites always use morality and liberal ideas to justify their noxious ideas? And how universities, which are supposed to be the source of philosophy and morality, are instead the epicenters of hate?

Here's how that looked 103 years ago:

Kill Jews So You May Have Corpses for Dissection
February 5, 1923 - JTA
Wholesale pogroms on Jews are urged as a means of providing corpses for the dissection rooms of the Klausenburg University, in an article appearing in the students’ publication there. The writer predicts that the pogroms will serve a two-fold object: the extermination of the Jew, and the supply of corpses. The University authorities have taken the student publication’s assertion under advisement.

There was a real problem of a shortage of cadavers. How can medical students continue their studies? It is a moral issue!

So the student newspaper published a simple solution - kill Jews, who are human enough for these purposes. And as a bonus, it will exterminate the Jews! Win-win!

The university did not reject the idea outright. It said, OK, we'll consider this.

The university, now known as Babeș-Bolyai University, dates from 1581 and is one of the most prestigious universities in Romania.

This story didn't make it into the New York Times or wire services. And, from everything I can see, the university never took it seriously.

But there is another lesson from the 1923 incident. When one makes outrageous suggestions like this, it moves the Overton window to allow less outrageous ideas seem almost sane.

From The Jewish Press (Omaha, NE) Thu, Mar 25, 1926, 100 years ago:

The Romanian government said that Jews could not dissect Christian bodies, and must provide their own. And this idea was not limited to Romania - a Warsaw institute was roiled by the same demand also in 1926.

This was a major topic in the mid 1920s using this as an excuse to limit the numbers of Jewish medical students, since Jewish law does not allow Jewish corpses to be used in this manner.

But notice how these antisemitic demand were framed: not as bigotry but as fairness. The intelligentsia of Romania and Poland would no doubt protest mightily that they were not antisemitic; that these laws targeting Jews were in fact ethical and necessary for the well being of the entire population.

What is obvious antisemitism today was considered mainstream thinking then. And this is a constant pattern - the things that are considered antisemitic now were always positioned as fairness or morality or scientific.

And in fifty years, the current BDS movement and UN/NGO obsession with Israel and "genocide" accusation and weaponization of international law and all the rest will be seen clearly as antisemitic and a direct successor to earlier versions of Jew hatred. But in the moment, the haters have enough power to make their hate sound almost reasonable.

Just like the cadaver affairs of the 1920s.

History is rhyming, hard, today.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

69% of Jews Feel Unsafe Hearing "Globalize the Intifada." Why Doesn't That Matter?

Yesterday, I wrote about a lecture by Magda Teter that noted a major difference between antisemitism and racism studies: Antisemitism studies tends to focus on perpetrators , while racism studies tends to focus on the harmed.

This seems to be empirically true.

When Black communities or other victims of racism experience language as being hurtful, it is taken very seriously, even when the language itself is contested or ambiguous.

The real estate industry replaced "master bedroom" with "primary bedroom" across major MLS systems, with HGTV and homebuilders following suit, because it could evoke the pain of slavery for Black Americans.

The tech industry replaced "master/slave" with "primary/replica" and "blacklist/whitelist" with "blocklist/allowlist." Twitter, JPMorgan, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology all made the switch.

The Washington Redskins became the Commanders.

In each case, the same logic applied: the affected community said this language causes pain, and institutions deferred to that experience — even when others disagreed, even when the etymology was contested, even when the original intent was benign.

That is, by any measure, a healthy institutional response. It reflects decades of scholarship in racism studies that trained institutions to take the lived experience of targeted communities seriously.

But when Jews are offended by words or phrases, their opinions are not considered to be nearly as important.

The AJC just released its 2025 State of Antisemitism in America Report, and two numbers jumped out at me.

When asked how hearing the phrase "Globalize the Intifada" would make them feel as a Jewish person in the United States, 69% of American Jews said it would make them feel either somewhat or very unsafe.

83% of American Jews consider the phrase "Israel has no right to exist" to be antisemitic.

These are overwhelming supermajorities of the affected community telling you what causes them fear and pain.

The people who are extra sensitive to hurting the feelings of other minorities seem more often to defend phrases or words that Jews say explicitly make them feel unsafe.

This is a concrete example of Teter's observation. And it shows that people simply don't care about quantifiable Jewish pain and fear.

The AJC survey finds that 55% of American Jews report changing their behavior out of fear of antisemitism — avoiding events, hiding Jewish symbols, self-censoring online. 91% say they feel less safe after the violent attacks on Jews in America in 2025.

These numbers describe a community in distress. And yet the institutional response is not to defer to Jewish experience. It is to debate it.

News media fight to find the fringe Jews who support those statements and try to normalize them as mainstream. You never see them do that for Blacks.

There is a methodological inconsistency in how each minority group is treated by our institutions, and it has real consequences.

If the standard is that the affected community's experience of a phrase matters — and I think that's a reasonable standard — then it should apply consistently. You cannot defer to Black communal experience on "master bedroom" while dismissing Jewish communal experience on "Globalize the Intifada."

If 69% of a targeted minority says a phrase makes them feel unsafe, that should at minimum be taken as seriously as a real estate term with a debatable etymological connection to slavery.

When a supermajority of Jews says a phrase is threatening, universities should not need a two-year committee process to decide if they agree.

When Jewish students say campus slogans make them feel unsafe, the response should not be "that's just political speech" any more than "master bedroom" was "just a real estate term."

The double standard isn't about free speech. The KKK has the right to protest and use racist language, but the response to those demonstrations is quite different to that of speech that most Jews consider hurtful. I'm not arguing to restrict free speech. I'm saying that the media, universities, and other institutions should treat those phrases as offensive.

There is a big difference between allowed speech and legitimate speech. Too many antizionists pretend that they are the same for their offensive speech but different for speech they find offensive.

When 83% of Jews say denying Israel's right to exist is antisemitic, that communal consensus should carry at least as much institutional weight as the consensus that led to renaming a bedroom.

The AJC data tells us what Jews experience. The question is whether anyone is listening.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

02/12 Links Pt2: Natan Sharansky: Why I'm Optimistic about the Jewish Future; The BBC rewrites the history of Jews in Morocco; Trump invited to receive Israel Prize in Jerusalem

From Ian:

Natan Sharansky: Why I'm Optimistic about the Jewish Future

"Jewish children have to be reminded how much strength the Jewish people have; you will not find anything like the story of the Jewish people," Natan Sharansky, who served 9 years in a Soviet prison, told the Jerusalem Post on Monday.

After the Six-Day War, when Jews in the Soviet Union began to connect to Israel and learn about their identity, "You discover that there is a great history that you want to be a part of. There are great people, there is a great country."

"Then, there suddenly appear values in your life which are bigger than survival, than political career, professional career, and then you have enough strength to say publicly that you want to go to Israel; that you want to be Jewish."

While working as Israel's interior minister, he realized that the "Free World" was not as free as he thought.

"In 2003, I had my trip as a minister of Israel to certain different universities; it was the time of the Second Intifada. I discovered that there are more and more Jews in the best universities in America - at Harvard, in Columbia, in Berkeley - who want very much to express their solidarity with Israel, but they're afraid that it will condemn their careers."

Sharansky then wrote an article published in Maariv called "Traveling to Occupied Territory," referring to the American universities.

This was "the most important battle for the future of the Jewish people, because our survival depends on whether we have a proud, strong Jewish identity."

"I believe that our history, our very tragic history, is very optimistic. You will not find anything like this. Not in terms of survival of a people, not in terms of rebuilding after thousands of years and gathering in exiles and rebuilding the state. So yes, I am optimistic."

Bret Stephens: We Jews Have the Honor of Being Hated

This article is adapted from the author’s “State of World Jewry Address,” delivered on February 1, 2026, at the 92nd Street Y.

After Édouard Manet caused a firestorm in the late 1860s with his politically provocative paintings The Execution of Maximilian, he got a consoling note from his friend, the poet and critic Charles Baudelaire. “Monsieur,” Baudelaire wrote, “it seems you have the honor of inspiring hatred.”

And that, in a sentence, is also the state of world Jewry in 2026. The Jewish people—Israeli Jews and Diaspora Jews; observant Jews and secular ones; right-wing Jews and left; all of us together; all of us, ultimately, in the same boat, whether we like each other or not—have the honor of being hated.

We should take it as a compliment, just as Baudelaire intended it.

We have the honor of being hated by the people who say “Zio” when what they mean to say is “Jew.” We have the honor of being hated by the campus lemmings chanting anti-Semitic slogans whose meaning most of them aren’t bright enough to understand—though some of them understand it perfectly well. We have the honor of being hated by Ali Khamenei, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and other despots whose loathing of Jews is directly proportionate to their crimes against their own people. We have the honor of being hated by Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens, Alice Walker, Roger Waters, Francesca Albanese, Tucker Carlson—the out-and-out Jew-haters and their sly enablers. We have the honor of being hated by those who think Jesus was a Palestinian. We have the honor of being hated by the so-called feminists who downplayed the rape of Israeli women on and after October 7, and by the so-called progressives who denied it. We have the honor of being hated by virtually every political movement, left or right, that also opposes the idea of personal merit as an organizing social principle. We have the honor of being hated by UN mandarins who would like you to know that the preponderance of human rights violations are committed by one small country: Israel. We have the honor of being hated by “Queers for Palestine,” who have neglected to notice what happens to queers in Palestine. We have the honor of being hated by the Hamas water carriers masquerading as reporters at the BBC and other media. We have the honor of being hated by all the Hollywood celebrities who see nothing amiss with demanding boycotts of Israeli artistic institutions but not of, say, Chinese ones. We have the honor of being hated by our charming new mayor, who thinks that he can endorse the erasure of one state and one state only, the Jewish state, and still acquit himself of the charge of anti-Semitism. We have the honor of being hated by people who parade their so-called Jewishness only when it serves as a tool to defame and endanger half the Jewish people—as if they’ll be spared the furies should, God forbid, Israel someday fall.

In short, we have the honor of being hated by an axis of the perfidious, the despotic, the hypocritical, the cynical, the deranged, and the incurably stupid. What shall we do with all this hatred—other than to take it as a badge of honor and turn it to our advantage?

Melanie Phillips: The deepening madness against the Jews

In a thoughtful but provocative lecture last week at New York’s 92nd Street Y, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens said that since antisemitism is immune to rational engagement, Diaspora Jews should stop trying to defeat it. Instead, they should concentrate on building and maintaining thriving Jewish communities devoted to instilling Jewish knowledge and culture among their young.

Building up Jewish identity and peoplehood is indeed absolutely critical. However, that’s no reason to abandon the fight against the madness engulfing the West.

First, Jews have a duty to bear witness against such a monstrosity and to stand up for truth and justice. Second, it’s wrong to cast the issue as antisemitism. While anti-Jewish feeling is certainly at its core, it expresses itself through anti-Zionism. And this has gained such traction because it uses claims that purport to be observable facts.

Even though these are wildly distorted and false, they derive from actual events, such as the war in Gaza, which gives these claims a level of plausibility. That has persuaded many who are not antisemites to believe them as true, and therefore to hate Israelis and Zionism.

Those lies can and should be fought. Indeed, anti-Zionism is an evil in itself and should be attacked as such.

It is bizarre and wrong to single out one country for double standards—to demonize it alone by wall-to-wall lies and distortions, to deny to one people alone the right to their own ancestral homeland. Anti-Zionism should be fought as a form of bigotry in itself.

But while there are good reasons for not publicly identifying this onslaught as antisemitism, the fact remains that bigotry against a country doesn’t have the same level of evil as bigotry against a people—and this bigotry only happens with Jews.

We need to face squarely what we’re up against. Jew-hatred isn’t just another kind of prejudice or racism. It’s a unique desire to rid the world of a people because their very existence is felt to be unbearable.

Such haters don’t think Jews are victims because they don’t behave as victims. They are instead conspicuously successful. This inspires resentment and jealousy among Westerners, who therefore think claims of antisemitism and Jewish victimization must be a Jewish scam to sanitize Jewish wrongdoing.

And the really terrible reason that the murderous attacks on Jews incite and inspire such Westerners to double down with calls for more attacks on Jews is that, like the Islamists, they believe they’re now within sight of their goal to get rid of the “Jewish problem” once and for all.

They treat as gospel what’s said by the entire global humanitarian establishment that has framed the demonization of Israel and dehumanization of Zionists as “anti-racism” and has cast Israel and its supporters as pariahs. They hear no push-back whatever from the lily-livered liberals and revolutionary fellow travelers that form the governments of Britain and France, Canada and Australia.

Hypocritically wringing their hands about Bondi, Manchester and Oct. 7—and professing falsely that there’s no place for antisemitism in their own countries while doing nothing to stop it—these governments parrot propaganda that incites hatred of Israel and have given way to Islamist intimidation and cultural creep at home.

So Jew-haters think their time has come. If they now pile in to kick the Jews in the gut when they’re down and vulnerable, they may get rid of them altogether from their heads, their conscience and their world.

In other words, the Jews are facing a cultural war against them. The proper response to such a war is not to give up or deflect it. It is to fight back better.

Seth Mandel: Define ‘Anti-Zionism’

Recent Jewish intracommunal debates have focused on the lack of a common definition for “Zionism.” But what would be more useful at this point is for the adherents of “anti-Zionism” to define the term by which they self-identify.

A Jewish Federations of North America survey making waves this week contended that only a third of American Jews publicly categorize themselves as Zionists. When you dug into the poll questions, however, you saw quickly that 90 percent of U.S. Jews are Zionists—the gap is between them and the number who self-identify as such. Nine out of 10 respondents believe Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state, and therefore are Zionists whether they are comfortable saying so or not. The rest either have a different definition of Zionism or are intimidated by peers into avoiding the word.

Zionism is a specific term that, at its core, revolves around one concept: Israel’s existence. It can conjure all sorts of other ideas, emotions and affiliations. So for many Jews, belief in Israel’s existence might be the necessary ingredient of Zionism but it isn’t sufficient to describe their own worldview.

As interesting as this discussion is, then, it doesn’t get into a much bigger quandary: Jewish anti-Zionism. Or, rather, Jewish “anti-Zionism.”

Zionism and anti-Zionism are not opposites. Anti-Zionism isn’t Zionism’s evil twin, even if it might be evil. The two terms aren’t even the same species: Zionism is a concept and anti-Zionism is an ideology.

This isn’t unusual. “Anti-Semitism” isn’t the opposite of “Semitism,” which isn’t really a thing outside of esoteric linguistic trivia. But it can be confusing. Any coherent definition of anti-Zionism died in 1948, because it only makes sense if the question of Jewish statehood has not yet been answered.

But it is undeniable that there are many people who call themselves anti-Zionists. So what do they actually believe? This is a lot less clear than what Zionists believe.

In the wake of the Jewish Federations survey cited above, JTA interviewed Robbie Gringras, who co-leads a project with Abi Dauber Sterne in which the two interview self-described Jewish anti-Zionists. “I have a feeling many more of these pieces are now going to come out,” Gringras said. Get ready for this discussion to take a central place in Jewish communal discourse, in other words.

Gringras and others, such as the social researcher Janet Aronson, talked about engagement with anti-Zionists in the context of two opposing sides of an argument. For her part, Araonson doesn’t think that’s likely to work.

“For these highly engaged anti-Zionists who have gone through serious Jewish education and involvement, they actually have already heard all of the arguments that mainstream Judaism has to present,” she said. “I think that’s one of the reasons why they say, ‘We don’t need to hear your side.’ Because they’ll say, ‘We have learned it. You’ve taught it to us and we reject it.’”

But that strikes me as a mistake. I don’t believe many anti-Zionists know what they believe.

02/12 Links Pt1: Everything You Need to Know About Gaza’s Fatality Numbers; Hamas and Fatah: Different Paths, Same Destination; PA drafts constitution, omits Jewish ties to Jerusalem, calls for Sharia

From Ian:

Everything You Need to Know About Gaza’s Fatality Numbers

6. Thousands of Child Combatants are Part of the 70,000 Total
There is no doubt that Hamas and other militant groups use child combatants, in some cases children as young as 12. Demographic analysis of the fatality lists already pointed to this reality, with roughly 2,000 excess deaths among male teens. That inference is now confirmed by direct evidence. Numerous martyr posters, funeral notices, and social media posts identify underage fighters killed in combat. Most recently, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) publicly acknowledged that 9% of its announced fighters killed were minors , based on its own fighter death lists cross-referenced with Hamas’ fatality list. This shows that combat participation by minors was neither rare nor incidental. Yet media outlets and NGOs that cite headline death totals remain silent on the use of child combatants. Acknowledging their presence would complicate the simplistic civilian-versus-combatant narrative. Once child combatants are counted as combatants rather than automatically classified as civilians, another pillar of the prevailing fatality narrative collapses.

7. Gaza Fatalities Are Heavily Skewed Towards Adult Males
Hamas’ own data show 34,069 male fatalities aged 18–59 versus 10,976 women of the same age, an excess of more than 23,000 adult males of combat age. When teenagers are included, based on earlier fatality lists that broke deaths down by individual age, the pattern is unchanged: 73% of deaths among teens and adults combined are male, a ratio of roughly three to one. This demographic pattern is decisive. A three-to-one dominance of males among combat-age fatalities is exactly what one would expect from a campaign focused on dismantling an armed group. It also corroborates estimates of 25,000 combatants killed, including child combatants, particularly given evidence that Hamas’ lists omits fighter deaths. Hamas’ latest figures also show that about 52% of all reported fatalities are now adult males. The long-repeated claim that “most” of those killed in Gaza are women and children is false. These figures still remain distorted by the inclusion of natural deaths, deaths caused by Hamas itself, and child combatants. Even so, the demographic signal is clear: Gaza’s reported fatalities are heavily concentrated among males of fighting age.

8. Civilian-to-Combatant Ratio is Approximately 1.5 to 1
The civilian-to-combatant ratio is the metric most closely tied to claims of indiscriminate warfare, war crimes, and even genocide, and is therefore aggressively contested. Israel’s critics seek to maximize it by falsely inflating total deaths toward 100,000 while simultaneously minimizing combatant losses to as few as 8,900. The evidence supports neither move but the desire to inflate the ratio explains why this type of propaganda persists. Once the Hamas fatality total is properly decomposed, the ratio tightens dramatically to about 1.5 to 1. Natural deaths embedded in Hamas’ lists must be removed. Deaths caused by Hamas itself, through executions, misfired rockets, gang violence, and internal clashes, must be separated. Child combatants cannot be automatically classified as civilians. And combatant deaths that never appeared on Hamas’ lists must be added back. With these corrections, the structure of the fatalities becomes clear. The civilian-to-combatant ratio aligns with what the demographic data in Hamas' own numbers already indicate: a campaign focused on dismantling an armed group embedded within a civilian population.

Conclusion
The evidence shows that Gaza’s fatality figures have been widely misread and repeatedly used as narrative proof rather than analytical data. The headline total reflects real deaths, but its composition has been systematically distorted through the inclusion of natural deaths, Hamas-caused deaths, and child combatants, alongside the omission of significant fighter losses. Claims of large numbers of excess deaths or missing “under the rubble” fatalities ignore the reporting mechanisms and compensation incentives that make large-scale undercounting implausible. When these factors are properly accounted for, the civilian-to-combatant ratio tightens substantially and the demographic pattern points to a campaign aimed at dismantling Hamas and other militant groups, not indiscriminate harm. Once this ratio is recognized, the use of the headline fatality number as evidence of indiscriminate warfare collapses, revealing how the figures have been framed to advance a narrative rather than to describe the war as it was actually fought.

Khaled Abu Toameh: The Palestinians' Other Big Lie

That such a large number of Muslims are able to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem every week shows that Hamas's claim that the Jews are desecrating the mosque and plotting to control it is another big lie produced by the terror group and its supporters.

It is worth noting that Jews do have a right to visit the Temple Mount, primarily because it is also the holiest site in Judaism, where the First and Second Temples once stood.

[T]he arrangement set up in 1967 allowed non-Muslims to visit the Temple Mount but restricted praying there to Muslims.

Ten days after the Six Day War, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, out of respect for Muslim concerns, forbade Jews to pray on the Temple Mount and proclaimed the Kingdom of Jordan the protector of the holy site.

Non-Muslims, including Jews and Christians, regularly tour outdoors on the grounds of the Temple Mount but, since 2000, have not been allowed to enter inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque or the Dome of the Rock.

Palestinian officials and media outlets regularly and falsely portray the visits as "violent incursions by extremist Jewish settlers." It is worth recalling that to many Palestinians, all Jews in Israel are "settlers" and that, in their eyes, all of Israel is just one big settlement.

It is abhorrent to see the Palestinians and many Muslims use a mosque -- especially falsely -- to justify terrorism and the murder of Jews. It is even more abhorrent to see Hamas and other Palestinians proudly name their dishonorable crimes after a mosque.

The long-familiar Palestinian campaign to destroy Israel continues to this day. Palestinian officials continue to repeat all the same fraudulent accusations. Unless this anti-Israel and anti-Jewish campaign stops, the next October 7-style massacre by Palestinians -- presumably what they would like, distracting from and derailing US President Donald J. Trump's attempts to rebuild Gaza without Palestinian leadership -- is just around the corner.

Cesspool Offended At Comparison To Knesset (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Moshav Keshet, February 12 - A collection pond for raw sewage voiced its displeasure today upon discovering that some writers and pundits have such a low opinion of its function that they wish to associate it with something as repulsive as Israel's parliament.

The pond, known locally by the euphemism "the pool," after decades of faithful service to the moshav's septic system, issued a rare public statement through a spokesperson who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid further contamination of its reputation. “We process what enters us with quiet dignity,” the spokesperson declared. “We settle solids, digest organics, and release clarified effluent in a manner consistent with environmental regulations—most of the time. To compare that steady, unglamorous labor to the Knesset insults not only our integrity but the very concept of functional governance.”

The offense traces to a viral social-media thread last week in which a prominent commentator described a particularly fractious plenary session as “a cesspool of egos and horse-trading.” The phrase ricocheted across Hebrew X, Telegram channels, and at least one op-ed in Haaretz, prompting the pond to retain legal counsel. “We tolerate metaphor,” the spokesperson continued, “but this crosses into defamation. A cesspool performs an essential public service: it contains chaos, neutralizes pathogens, and prevents overflow into the surrounding environment. The Knesset, by contrast, appears designed to generate toxic overflow on a daily basis.”

A slide circulated among local agricultural WhatsApp groups—titled “Comparative Utility Metrics: Cesspool vs. Knesset (2020–2025)”—illustrated the disparity. The pond scored consistently high on “predictable output” (effluent quality within 85–92% of standards) and “minimal public scandal” (zero coalition or structural integrity collapses). The Knesset chart showed volatile spikes in “procedural filibusters,” “no-confidence motions,” and “ministerial resignations due to corruption probes,” with a flatline in “legislative productivity per session.” A small footnote noted that both entities produce methane, though only one receives subsidies for it.

When reached for comment, a veteran MK from the opposition shrugged off the pond's complaint. “Every system has its critics,” the lawmaker said. “We debate, we posture, we occasionally pass a budget after midnight. The pond just sits there and ferments. If it wants respect, perhaps it should try holding a filibuster or leaking classified documents to the press.” The pond's spokesperson retorted that it has never leaked anything unintentionally, a record unmatched in either branch of government.

A Moshav Keshet dairy farmer who relies on the pond's output for irrigation defended its honor. “It does what it promises,” he said. “Unlike certain coalition agreements that evaporate the morning after signing.” He added that the pond has never demanded a state-funded pension or immunity from prosecution, and its integrity and reliability score far higher than any political entity.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Magda Teter, a historian at Fordham University and author of Christian Supremacy and the National Jewish Book Award-winning Blood Libel, was just named the inaugural Scholar-in-Residence at the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism. Her first public lecture, titled "On Jewish Suffering, Empathy, and the Need to Rethink Antisemitism," took place this week.

Based on what we know from the Yale Daily News and Yale's own announcement, Teter wants to move the field beyond the exhausting definitional debates — IHRA vs. Jerusalem Declaration, is criticism of Israel antisemitism, and so on — and toward something more fundamental.

Based on her earlier lectures and her book Christian Supremacy, we can see what she has in mind.

Teter draws a sharp contrast between how antisemitism and racism are studied academically:

Antisemitism studies tends to focus on perpetrators — their texts, ideologies, conspiracy theories, and emotional hatred. It analyzes the haters.

Racism studies tends to focus on the harmed — legal exclusion, economic disparity, incarceration rates, structural consequences. It analyzes systemic impact on victims.

Each field, in other words, is doing only half the job.

If antisemitism studies focuses on perpetrators without examining how hatred restructured Jewish lives, it is studying the disease without examining what it does to the patient.

And if racism studies focuses on structural harm without examining the theological and philosophical architecture that made racial hierarchy morally coherent in the first place, it is studying symptoms without understanding the underlying logic.

A complete analysis of any form of bigotry needs both: the intellectual architecture that made it coherent and the lived impact on the people targeted.

Her work on how theology became law, combined with her observation that antisemitism studies focuses on haters while racism studies focuses on the harmed, points to something neither field has fully modeled: there is a feedback loop that operated for centuries in Christian Europe.

It worked roughly like this:

Theology → Law → Economic Adaptation → Stereotype → Renewed Hostility → Law

Christian theology cast Jews as subordinate — "the elder shall serve the younger." That theological idea was codified into law: Jews were prohibited from holding authority over Christians, from owning land, from joining guilds, from holding public office.

Those legal restrictions forced Jews into specific economic roles — finance, trade, moneylending. Those adaptations then fed back into stereotypes: "Jews control money." "Jews are parasitic." The stereotypes reinforced hostility, which produced new restrictive laws. And the cycle continued.

Antisemitism wasn't just hatred floating in the air. It was an architecture — theology became law, law shaped lives, and shaped lives reinforced the theology.

We can then push this framework into more modern territory.

The historical feedback loop depended heavily on law — formal legal restrictions that structured Jewish (and Black) vulnerability. In modern liberal democracies, those explicit laws are gone. The 1964 Civil Rights Act, Jewish emancipation in Europe, constitutional equality guarantees — these dismantled the formal legal architecture of bigotry.

So if the feedback loop requires a legal component to be durable, where is it now?

I cannot answer that for racism studies, although I imagine there are still plenty of laws and regulations that are still racist in effect. This is not my field.

Yet for daily, personal antisemitism — harassment, vandalism, campus hostility — the law piece is largely absent. There is no legal structure forcing Jews into particular economic roles or restricting their citizenship. There are university policies and how they are selectively enforced, and while those are important, it is not the same role as state law has been in the past. Daily antisemitism is still real and harmful, but national laws protect Jews at least as much as they are used to attack Jews. Law doesn't have the structural durability that the old loop produced.

For Israel, however, the picture is very different.

The legal arena hasn't disappeared. It has scaled upward — from domestic law to international law and from antisemitism to antizionism.

The structural parallel is compelling. In medieval Europe, church law prohibited Jews from holding authority over Christians. Today, international legal frameworks are used to contest the legitimacy of Jewish sovereignty itself.

The legal categories being deployed — "apartheid," "genocide," "illegal occupation," "colonialism" — are not just political accusations. They are formal legal terms that trigger institutional consequences: UN resolutions, ICC investigations, sanctions campaigns, academic boycotts, corporate divestment.

And just as the old legal restrictions produced a feedback loop, so does the new one:

Legal accusation → Institutional action → Political isolation → Behavioral adaptation → Reinforced accusation

When Israel is framed in international law as an apartheid state or a genocidal regime, that framing doesn't just sit in a legal brief. It shapes UN voting patterns, campus culture, media framing, and diplomatic relations.

Israel adapts to the pressure. It adds layers of policies for how to wage wars it never wanted. Israel's enemies take advantage of those controls to exploit them. Israel tries to come up with creative ways to protect the lives of its people - and this often leads to the next round of accusations or even new international laws and novel interpretations created just for Israel. The loop sustains itself.

This is structurally parallel to what Teter documents historically, but at a different scale. Where Jews were once restricted by municipal and church law, Jewish sovereignty is now contested in global legal forums. The arena has changed. The structural mechanics haven't.

If Teter is right that antisemitism studies needs to examine the impact on Jews — not just the ideology of the haters — then it also needs to examine how international law functions as the contemporary legal architecture of delegitimization under the guise of "anti-Zionism."

That means antisemitism studies can't just treat the Israel question as a definitional debate ("is criticism of Israel antisemitic?"). It needs to ask a structural question: How does the selective application of international legal categories function as a mechanism of legitimacy contestation against Jewish sovereignty?

When legal categories are applied asymmetrically — when "apartheid" is invoked against the one Jewish state but not against states with far worse records — something beyond ordinary legal analysis is operating. But it is using law as a weapon against Jews, in startlingly similar ways to medieval antisemitic laws, and that is a pattern that has been understudied.

Teter has given antisemitism studies a powerful framework. The feedback loop — from ideas to law to lived experience and back again — is the right model. But if we take that model seriously, we have to follow it where it leads.

The law didn't disappear from the antisemitism equation with Western emancipation and enlightenment,

It scaled up.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

"Anti-Zionist" groups silent on anti-Zionist vandalism at Maryland synagogue

On Tuesday night, the Shaare Tefila synagogue in Olney, MD was defaced with anti-Zionist graffiti.

The acronym "AZAB," short for "All Zionists Are Bastards," was painted on the synagogue's main sign, and a sign that is anti-hate as well as a sign supporting Israel. The main sign also had a swastika, and the pro-Israel sign said "Genocide."

Suddenly, all the "progressive" voices who claim to be against antisemitism are struck mute when the attack on a synagogue is done by one of their own.

Neither JVP, SJP nor IfNotNow condemned the vandalism, even their campus or local branches.

The one interesting exception is CAIR-Maryland. Even though the vandalism is clearly anti-Israel, it chose to pretend that it was "Neo-Nazi Vandalism."

AZAB is a variation of the progressive, anarchist "ACAB" - All Cops Are Bastards. It is not used by right wing antisemites at all. CIAR knows this - it linked to one of the news stories that did not mention the acronym at all.

One other prominent person commented - to complain about Jews "weaponizing" antisemitism when they are the victims of a hate crime. Imani B., a social media influencer with hundreds of thousands of followers, posted on Threads that it was "probably an inside job" that had nothing to do with "Isntreal."

Anyone who denies that anti-Zionism is a form of antisemitism is a liar.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

02/11 Links Pt2: Couldn’t the Israelophobes give it a rest for one day?; The Jew-Trolling Right’s Empty Pageantry; ‘Zio’ Is the New ‘N-Word’; The Arab Who Taught Us Zionism

From Ian:

Brendan O’Neill: Couldn’t the Israelophobes give it a rest for one day?

It is astonishing, and nauseating, that people howled for more ‘intifada’ as the Israeli president was embracing a woman who lost her husband to the ‘intifada’ at Bondi, to that Jewphobic frenzy carried out by suspected Islamists. And they were calling for intifada not only in the Holy Land but in ‘Gadigal’ too, in Sydney, in the very city that just suffered one of the worst massacres of Jews of modern times. What, 15 dead people aren’t enough for you? You want more?

The events in Sydney shone an unforgiving light on the cult of Palestinianism. The cruelty of this bourgeois mania now stands starkly exposed. Its inhumanity is clear for all to see. These keffiyeh-shrouded agitators pose as anti-war and yet it is apocalyptic violence they dream of. ‘Intifada!’, they wail, knowing well that to president Herzog and the Jews of Australia, that word will conjure memories of the slaughter of Jews in discotheques and pizza parlours by the madmen of Hamas.

It seems there is no ‘pause’ button on Israelophobia. It is wholly unrestrained by morality and basic decency. It is extraordinary that not one organiser in Australia’s ‘pro-Palestine’ lobby thought to say: ‘Let’s give it a rest while they commemorate Bondi. We’ll get back to our Herzog-bashing tomorrow.’ Instead we have been treated to side-by-side footage of Jews weeping at Bondi as leftish hysterics in the city bellowed for more of the very violence that consumed their loved ones. What sickness is this?

Then came the final insult: the mob stole victimhood from the Jews. The New South Wales Police Force cleared protesters off the streets. The protest had been officially banned, so those who gathered were breaking the law. The cops dragged away a group of young Muslim men who were praying to Mecca. And that is literally the only thing Australia’s chattering classes are yapping about today: this supposedly ‘Islamophobic’ assault on pious Muslims.

It’s nonsense, of course. That street-praying was no mere religious act – it was a political provocation carried out as part of the anti-Herzog protests. Being a Muslim does not give one special immunity from the laws of the land. Yet this is where we’ve ended up: with grieving Jews being drowned out and Muslims being held up as the *real* victims. It is brazen narrative theft, with people’s focus being ruthlessly dragged from the racist murder of Jews to the supposedly ‘racist’ dispersal of praying men.

I’m not easily shocked, but the madness that befell Sydney yesterday felt genuinely unnerving. It felt like the salt of Israelophobia rubbed into the wound of Bondi’s anti-Semitism. A shameful day.

Seth Mandel: The Jew-Trolling Right’s Empty Pageantry

“Whether a student says, ‘I believe there are only two genders,’ or ‘I believe Palestinians are undergoing a genocide,’ they should not be silenced or punished for expressing their beliefs.”

This snack-size bite of Burkean wisdom comes from Sameerah Munshi, who appears to have worked with former Miss California Carrie Prejean Boller to hijack the president’s commission on religious liberty, leading to a bizarre hearing yesterday and Boller’s dismissal from the commission today.

Boller seems to have accepted a position on the esteemed committee because of her heartfelt belief in her own need for more social media followers. Enter Munshi, an anti-Israel activist who serves as an adviser to the same religious liberty commission. Munshi, a booster of the rabid anti-Semite Candace Owens, has been—no doubt out of the goodness of her heart—helping to elevate Boller’s own personal Owens-esque cry for attention. On Munshi’s Instagram, for example, one of the few posts is a shared posting of Boller’s claim that “Gaza was a precursor to the release of the Epstein files.”

According to Boller, the goal of the you-know-whos involved in Gaza and Epstein is to “normalize and justify the torture and killing of innocent children.” The post ends with a call to solve the problem with this one neat trick: “Defund Israel.”

Today the religious liberty commission’s director, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, announced that Boller is being removed from the committee. “No member of the Commission has the right to hijack a hearing for their own personal and political agenda on any issue. This is clearly, without question, what happened Monday in our hearing on antisemitism in America.” No doubt she will start one heck of a podcast now, though.

Boller was booted for turning yesterday’s committee hearing into a circus by raving like a lunatic about Zionism. The recent Catholic convert attempted to do so in the name of Catholicism, but Catholics on the commission patiently explained church doctrine to Boller and corrected her Jew-baiting claims.

It’s worth noting that the Munshi-Boller duo’s first choice to hijack the hearing wasn’t to have Boller be the one to deliver the rant. Via Boller, they tried to feed the commission names of witnesses who would deliver the anti-Zionist lines themselves: Norman Finkelstein topped their list of prospective guests. “All of our suggested witnesses for the hearing on Anti-Semitism were denied,” she complained. “All of our suggested witnesses were also critical of the Israeli government.”

Daniel Finkelstein: how the world’s antisemites turned on me

The thrust of these messages, hundreds this time rather than thousands, is that it is deeply hypocritical of me to believe that there should be a country for Jews (Israel) but not for English people.

I tried rational argument. I pointed out that I did want a country for English people, that we had one and I live in it. I also said that Israel wasn’t exclusively for Jews and that it wouldn’t need to exist in the first place if there weren’t so many people interested in deporting me. But in the end I found these exchanges as unavailing as it would be to argue with someone who called the Holocaust “the Holly”.

What would my parents have thought of all this? They would definitely have agreed it was right to confront it. That’s what my grandfather had done in Germany in the Twenties and Thirties, after all. They would have been realistic. Because Jews are a small minority in almost every country in which they settle, this kind of antisemitism has lasted for hundreds of years and always been dangerous. They would also definitely have found it upsetting. Anyone would. Particularly the fact that it comes from young people in the United States, because the young and Americans were people they believed in.

But one of the most important things about both of them is that they had a sense of proportion. They were never complacent. Yet they weren’t going to live their lives as victims, despite what had happened to them. They wouldn’t want me too either. And I won’t.

In the history of civilisation, I don’t think there’s been a better time to be alive or a better place to live than now and here. I think that’s an objectively defensible statement. But it’s also how I feel.

My parents didn’t just survive. They lived. And I am doing that too.

‘Zio’ Is the New ‘N-Word’

What’s most telling—and disheartening—about the entire Odessa A’Zion saga is her use of the word “Zio” to distance herself from Zionism. Fear is clearly the dominant motivation here even if A’Zion cannot fully recognize it. Fear of career damage and professional decline. Of social media attacks or eventual ostracism. Fear of being maligned and misunderstood—but ultimately fear for her safety.

This is where “Zio” and the “N-word” most odiously converge—both are agents of unbridled hate speech doing double duty as a call to arms. Except one is anathema, and the other flows freely without consequence.

Which is why I was so certain, upon receiving my first accusations of being a “Zio,” it was unlikely to be my last. In both the centrist precincts I currently inhabit and the progressive communities that shaped my past, “N-gger” is a word that is simply never spoken. But in both worlds, “Zio” is screamed louder than ever.

To be sure, some who use the term “Zio” think that they can deploy it to disavow the Israeli government without defaming Israel or its people. Seemingly, that’s what Odessa A’Zion had in mind. This is, of course, an impossibility, as it is Zionism that created the State of Israel and all that it contains. But ultimately, most who chant “Zio” want Israel destroyed, and many want its Jews lynched en masse, just like so many African Americans before them.

The fact is that most Jews, across the political spectrum, are probably too fearful to openly compare “Zio” to the “N-word,” lest they be canceled or condemned. But having been the target of both slurs, I can attest that their ideological contiguity could not be any clearer.

“Gaza, Gaza make us proud, put the Zio in the ground,” shouted Oxford student Samuel Williams in London earlier this year at a demonstration by the aggressively anti-Israel Palestine Coalition.

Kind of reminds me of a Klan rally.

02/11 Links Pt1: Hamas’ World Vision Operative and the Campaign to Obstruct His Trial; Guterres faces backlash for congratulating Iranian regime; France calls on UN rapporteur Albanese to resign

From Ian:

James Kirchick: The Chutzpah of Yoram Hazony

The thrust of Hazony’s argument is that combatting anti-Semitism is as alienating or more alienating to voters than anti-Semitism itself. This reasoning is both morally and tactically wrong. Polls continue to show that a large majority of conservatives support Israel and oppose anti-Semitism. And yet Hazony believes that the 25 percent of the party that is exercised about anti-Semitism should avoid hurting the feelings of the 10 percent who are anti-Semites. Tucker Carlson, Hazony said, is “a very smart, passionate, and very likeable man when you meet him in person.” At the first NatCon conference in Washington, D.C., “he gave one of the best speeches we have ever hosted.” Moreover, “Tucker has been saying—as clear as the day—that he is not an anti-Semite.” Acting like the tough Israeli sabra, Hazony is the cowering Jew of the shtetl, furious at his fellow Jews for provoking anti-Semites.

Hazony’s analysis of American politics and history—epitomized in his laughable claim that Lindsay Graham, Ted Cruz, and Mike Pompeo are the ideological heirs of Nelson Rockefeller and John Lindsay—is as apt as his prognostication skills. In a November interview with Ross Douthat of the New York Times, Hazony said that he was “hoping” Vice President Vance will have “the skill of determining what the boundaries of the coalition are.” The following month, Vance decried “endless, self-defeating purity tests” and righteously affirmed that he would not “bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to deplatform.” Hazony also told Douthat, “I assume that Heritage is going to solve the problem [of anti-Semitism]. I know a little bit about what steps they’re taking, and I think it’s very, very likely that Heritage is going to get on an appropriate and excellent path.” As of this writing, more than 60 senior Heritage staff have left the think tank since Roberts avowed the institution’s unflinching loyalty to Carlson.

While Hazony feigns at playing a moderating force within the movement, what he’s really doing is covering his own tracks, desperately attempting to retain his influence by whitewashing the egregious behavior of his allies and the logical outcomes of his own philosophy. Through his books (The Virtue of Nationalism and Conservatism: A Rediscovery) and conferences, Hazony has been a principal figure in the drive to undermine universalist Enlightenment values as the basis of the American founding. According to Hazony, those who believe such hogwash are “imperialists” who support “the ideal of an international government or regime that imposes its will on subject nations when its officials regard this as necessary.” Proper nationalists, by contrast, believe that “nations should be free to set their own course in the absence of such an international government or regime.” Into the former category Hazony places the Third Reich, the European Union, and the late Charles Krauthammer.

Furthermore, American conservatives have got their history all wrong, a failure for which they must “repent.” The real intellectual fathers of the American Revolution are not John Locke and Thomas Jefferson, whose classical liberalism Hazony conflates with the antinomianism of the 1960s, but rather the 15th-century English jurist John Fortescue and the 17th-century John Selden, whose writings he uses to endorse the concept of America having a state-backed religion (Christianity). If this fake history sounds like a right-wing version of the 1619 Project, that’s because it is.

The rise in anti-Semitism on the right is attributable to a handful of individuals whom Hazony is too cowardly and embarrassed to condemn. Like a vengeful alcoholic at an intervention, he is lashing out and blaming everyone but himself for the wreckage he helped create—the mirror-image of the left-wing Jew who makes excuses for his anti-Semitic comrades. Imagining himself a world-class intellectual, he is, for lack of a better term, a moron. How else could he have thought that forging alliances with European-style blood-and-soil nationalists would be good for the Jews, or America?

Hazony sees himself as a scholar-statesman on the level of a Jabotinsky or Ben-Gurion when he’s really an arriviste. In a reprehensible attempt to protect his access to power, Hazony is willing to gainsay his American co-religionists, who know better than him the threats they face. Watching Hazony’s Jerusalem speech reminded me of no one so much as Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf from Philip Roth’s novel The Plot Against America, in which Charles Lindbergh defeats Franklin Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election and keeps the country out of World War II. The oleaginous Bengelsdorf, who supported Lindbergh, becomes the new president’s court Jew. “I have encountered considerable hostility from members of the Jewish community for allying myself in the 1940 election with the Lindbergh campaign,” Bengelsdorf tells a Jewish family, one of whose sons lost a leg fighting with the Canadian army against the Nazis. “I am pleased to tell you that it took no more than two or three sessions alone with the president to get him to relinquish his misconceptions and to appreciate the manifold nature of Jewish life in America.”

Alas, not even Bengelsdorf’s obsequiousness can outweigh the fact of his Jewishness, and the FBI arrests him for being “among the ringleaders of the Jewish conspiratorial plot against America.” At the end of the book, Bengelsdorf is released and writes a face-saving memoir in which he admits the error of his ways. At this point in his intellectual career, a mea culpa is the least Yoram Hazony can do.

Commentary PodCast: The Price of Chutzpah

Today we are joined by Commentary's new Washington commentary columnist Jamie Kirchick to discuss his new piece on Yoram Hazony. Plus the positive job report, Trump's deal-making obsession on the backdrop on Netanyahu's visit to Washington, and John once again recommends Natan Sharansky's Fear No Evil.

Human Rights Watch’s Frankenstein moment

Shakir’s tactics were not deviations. They were the logical outcome of habits the institution had long tolerated — even rewarded — when they advanced approved narratives. Over time, small permissions sent a clear signal: toxic behavior was acceptable, limits were flexible, standards negotiable.

I saw those habits take hold firsthand.

In 2019 and 2021, I raised concerns with multiple senior staff members about what I saw as a growing “lack of proportionality, context, and balance” in work. I warned that internal discourse was drifting away from HRW’s stated values and that published work “in structure, content, and tone does not meet basic standards of balance and professionalism.” There was no meaningful response.

By 2022, resistance to internal scrutiny was more explicit. The Israel-Palestine chapter of the World Report — HRW’s global review of abuses that I oversaw — became a battleground.

One exchange involved the trial of Mohammed al-Halabi, a World Vision employee. The draft described the proceedings as a “mockery of due process.” But it did not mention the charges against him — that he was accused of funneling money to Hamas. When I asked Shakir to note the charges, as per normal standards of balance, he declined, saying, “The charges are wild.”

In emails sent over my head, Shakir said my review “smacked of being selective.”

A manager reminded him that I reviewed all chapters, including his, and backed my position: “We should never mention a case without mentioning what the charges are. If we think the charges are not credible, we should explain why.” It was a relief — but rare.

For the most part, managers placated, ignored, and excused. “This has been mostly instructive as to how things appear to work with Omar and who calls the shots,” I wrote to a manager after several bruising rounds with Shakir. “Three of us raised issues, including yourself, and in a call to me, you said various elements that remain are not acceptable. And yet you totally back down.”

Accommodation often reflected ideological alignment. But it also sometimes reflected quiet capitulation by an older guard increasingly overwhelmed by strident activist tactics. Watching them try to restrain the shift was like watching Canute try to hold back the tide. “I’m torn between saying the future is clear and I’m not part of it — and taking a stand,” one told me. “It depends how much energy I have on any given day.”

Whatever energy did exist proved insufficient; an increasingly divisive, outraged, aggressive way of doing business continued to gain ground. Foreshadowing last week’s petition signed by 200 staff, Shakir played a key role in rallying some 120 employees after October 7 to pressure senior managers to include references to Israeli “apartheid” in a press release about hostages.

“Argumentation” and “balance” were giving way to “messaging” and “narrative” — increasingly amplified by a new, under-the-radar partner: celebrities.

In the days after October 7, staff referenced talks with “Disney,” “top-tier celebrities,” and the “Hadid sisters” — American-Palestinian influencers Gigi and Bella Hadid, whose rhetoric since has included very familiar language: Israeli “apartheid,” colonialism, and ethnic cleansing.

Human Rights Watch’s own methodology holds that while individuals commit abuses, responsibility ultimately rests with the institutions that enable, direct, or fail to restrain them.

Its public fallout with Shakir is a lesson for institutions that believe they can harness ideology and activism — even when doing so strains their own standards — without those same forces eventually turning inward and coming for them too.

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are the sole responsibility of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

“We’re not experts in Islamic law — but we’re pretty sure scamming the American people for a living violates every religion,” declared Republican National Committee Press Secretary Kiersten Pels.

She said it with that familiar Western confidence—the kind that assumes every faith, deep down, plays by roughly the same moral rules we do. In this case, the remark came as people were asking hard questions about Rep. Ilhan Omar’s husband, Tim Mynett, whose wine venture eStCru allegedly defrauded an investor out of $300,000 (settled in court), stiffed winemakers, and limped to its grave with just $650 left in the bank. Mynett converted to Islam to marry Omar. Yet he built a business selling bottles named “The Devil’s Lie” and “Blockchain.” Alcohol. Straight-up haram. Forbidden.

Somehow these details get hand-waved away while the financial sleight-of-hand is the thing that raises eyebrows.

And this is the crux of the problem.

Too many in the West look at something like Omar and Mynett’s improprieties and think, Dishonesty is wrong in every religion, right? As if Islam were just Christianity or Judaism with different holidays. As if the moral grammar is identical.

It’s nothing new. We’ve heard the soothing bromides about Islam coming out of Westerners’ mouths since forever.

George W. Bush, for example, called Islam a faith that inspires “honesty, and justice, and compassion,” insisting that we all share the same beliefs regarding God’s justice and human responsibility. Barack Obama stood in Cairo and spoke of justice, compassion, and tolerance, as if these were universal values—as if Muslims see these things the same way as Jews or Christians.

Some bigwigs, notably Pope Benedict XVI and Kofi Annan spoke of the overlapping commitments of the three major religions, to dignity, charity, and basic human goodness. Assumptions that are demonstrably untrue and that lull Westerners into complacency, dangerously unprepared for the wall they keep slamming into. Repeatedly. Without learning anything about Islam in the process.

American policymakers consistently misread Middle Eastern dynamics shaped by Islamic history, tribal loyalties, honor culture, grievance narratives, and religious doctrine. Western negotiators prioritize signed agreements, institutional trust, and reciprocal transparency. Regional actors often prioritize long-term positioning, tactical ambiguity, and fluid alliances built on immediate interests rather than enduring value alignment. Sunni Hamas cooperates with Shi’ite Iran despite doctrinal hostility. Iranian negotiations repeatedly coincide with continued proxy warfare and nuclear advancement. Statements frequently serve strategic positioning rather than candid moral declaration.

The negotiations with Hamas are illustrative of the West’s misunderstanding of the Islamic mindset. Donald Trump has been pushing hard on his 20-point peace plan for Gaza that began with a ceasefire that isn’t. There are daily Hamas breaches targeting IDF soldiers. Yet Trump continues to express total confidence that Hamas will disarm in Phase 2.

In Davos last month, Trump warned that Hamas must hand over weapons and hostage remains “within weeks” or be “blown away very quickly.” His team, including Jared Kushner, assured us that “Hamas signed a deal to demilitarize; that is what we are going to enforce.” Trump even floated a two-month ultimatum, seeing disarmament as the “linchpin” for peace—assuming compliance based on initial agreements and mediator optimism—an assumption that was wildly overoptimistic.

Just this week, in fact, senior Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal rejected Trump’s demand for disarmament outright. Mashaal called disarmament “an attempt to turn our people into victims, to make their elimination easier and to facilitate their destruction at the hands of the Israeli side.”

Mashaal framed the concept of disarmament as victimization. “Questions about the resistance’s weapons are being raised forcefully. Some want to place it in the context that whoever carried out Oct. 7 must be cornered and made to pay the price... As those who participated in the resistance, we must not accept this.”

And he tied it all to deeper roots: “Protecting the resistance project and its weapons is the right of our people to defend themselves. The resistance and its weapons are the ummah’s [Islamic nation’s] honor and pride.” Senior Hamas official Musa Abu Marzouk jumped on the bandwagon, saying “Not for a single moment did we talk about surrendering weapons”—insisting the issue was never even raised in negotiations.

That flat-out denial exposes the gap between the West and the Middle East: Trump’s banking on an “agreement” that Hamas leaders say doesn’t exist, leaving the president chasing a fantasy of compliance that would never be realized.

The divide runs deeper still. Sharia law is built on a historical memory of expansion as glory, a division of the world into realms of Islam and realms of war, and—in certain contexts—religious justifications for violence against those outside the fold. In many Muslim-majority countries, large numbers say they want Sharia as the law of the land. Integration challenges, no-go zones, blasphemy riots, persecution of Christians and other minorities are not poverty or political grievances—they’re more closely related to religious ideas the West has trained itself not to name.

Even when the West gets a glimmer of the truth, it chooses appeasement over censure. In January, for example, President Trump designated key chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon as terrorist organizations. This is because the Muslim Brotherhood is a political-Islam network with ties to Hamas and an agenda of gradual supremacy. Europe, however, keeps inviting them to conferences, funding their organizations, treating their violent proclamations as just another voice in the world community.

The West needs to stop imagining that Middle Eastern moral and strategic frameworks line up neatly with its own, to stop assuming that “every religion” rejects dishonesty or violence in the same way. Else, we all pay a terrible price: botched policies, eroded security, societies overtaken by immigrants who do not share their values. And of course, cruelty and horrific violence, such as we saw on October 7. Such as we see now with Iran’s treatment of those who protest against Khamenei’s “vision” of what an Islamic republic should be.

The West needs to stop leaning on comforting platitudes about shared Abrahamic values. Instead of assuming that all people, everywhere, are the same, the West needs the courage to look straight at where Islam diverges from Judaism and Christianity—on alcohol, on “resistance,” on diplomacy and deception, on supremacy, on the status of non-Muslims—and deal with reality as it is, not as it wishes it were.

Western values are rooted in goodness. Take Americans—they’re nice. They want to be kind and open-minded about Islam, while in reality they are only being naïve and reckless at their own peril. The cost of Western blindness to Islamic values continues to climb as Western leaders rack up missed warnings and policy failures—as they fail to make peace while claiming they already did, and taking credit for something that never happened. The future looks grim, because misunderstanding Islam, tends to lead to violent reprisals.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)