The Shelved Report That Exposes HRW's Antisemitism

Two senior Human Rights Watch staff members, Omar Shakir and Milena Ansari, resigned last month over the organization's decision to shelve a report concluding that Israel's refusal to allow Palestinian "refugees" and their descendants to "return" constitutes a crime against humanity. The New York Times and other outlets are framing this as a story about HRW's internal politics and the courage of principled researchers.

They're missing the real story: the report's underlying logic reveals how accusations against Israel consistently rely on assuming Jewish evil from the outset—and that assumption is itself antisemitic.

While the report hasn't been published, the NYT article provides enough detail to reconstruct HRW's likely legal argument. The dispute centers on "whether there is a solid legal basis for the sweeping determination that denying the right of return to a particular location causes a level of suffering that rises to a crime against humanity."

Under the Rome Statute, crimes against humanity require proof that acts were committed "as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack." 

Here are the crimes against humanity listed in the Rome Statute:

(a) Murder;
(b) Extermination;
(c) Enslavement;
(d) Deportation or forcible transfer of population;
(e) Imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law;
(f) Torture;
(g) Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity;
(h) Persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender
 (j) Apartheid;

How on Earth can a nation's immigration policy be put in the same category as these crimes? How can it be considered an "attack" at all, which is the very definition of a crime against humanity? 

It cannot - but the HRW report almost certainly relies on an additional item listed in the Rome Statute:

(k) Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.

Notice what's embedded both in that formulation as well as in the general definition of crimes against humanity: intentionality. 

Let's be explicit about what HRW's theory requires: Israel's immigration policy must be intentionally designed to cause great suffering to Palestinians. No nation on Earth allows anyone to become a citizen without fitting some criteria, and Israel's is no more onerous than that of most other countries. As a Jewish state, it favors Jews - but millions of people became citizens of European states without even being residents because of their ethnic ties. Germany's Spätaussiedler program, Hungary's citizenship-by-descent law, and Ireland's generous policies for those with Irish grandparents are all considered legitimate expressions of national identity. 

Only when Israel does that same is it considered an active act of aggression against another group of people specifically to cause suffering. HRW is arguing that Israel's immigration policy - denying entry to descendants of people who left in 1948, most of whom have never lived in Israel - belongs in the company of extermination and mass rape.. That standard immigration controls exercised by every state somehow constitute "intentionally causing great suffering" comparable to murder, torture, and enslavement.

We aren't even getting into the discussion of Israel's security needs that prompted the policy not to allow Arabs who fled in 1948, hoping for a quick defeat of Israel, to return. Nor about how the UN resolution that is misread to give a "right" to return also specifies that the people must be willing to live in peace, a requirement that was never met. 

The Arab world has been clear from the start that their insistence on "return" is a means to destroy Israel. Muhammad Salah al-Din Bey, Foreign Minister of Egypt, said in 1949, "It is well-known and understood that the Arabs, in demanding the return of the refugees to Palestine, mean their return as masters of the Homeland… they mean the liquidation of the State of Israel."

Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser was equally explicit. In 1961 he stated that Arab demands meant "the destruction of the State of Israel." Even more directly, Nasser declared: "If the refugees return to Israel – Israel will cease to exist." Arab leaders weren't hiding their intent - the "right of return" was always a demographic weapon to eliminate the Jewish state

HRW is not advocating human rights for Palestinian Arabs. It is demanding the destruction of Israel.

The  assumption of malicious intent when Israel is doing what every other nation does is not limited to this report.   It's the common thread running through every major accusation against Israel:

"Genocide": Amnesty International's recent report claims Israel commits genocide in Gaza. But genocide requires "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." If Israel's intent is to destroy Hamas then the entire argument falls apart - but Amnesty embedded the result claiming intent for genocide into the assumption. The accusation assumes the worst possible motive while ignoring the obvious alternative: self-defense against a terrorist organization that openly seeks Israel's destruction.

"Apartheid": Multiple NGO reports claim Israel practices apartheid. But apartheid requires intent "to maintain [a] regime of systematic oppression and domination." Israel's laws enshrining equality for its Arab citizens demolishes the "intent" requirement. As I've documented, Amnesty invented its own definition of apartheid to reach this conclusion.

"Illegal settlements": The portrayal of Israeli communities in the West Bank assumes they exist to "steal land" or "oppress Palestinians"—not for security, not because Jews have historical and legal claims to the territory, not because successive Arab rejections of peace offers left the status unresolved.

In every case, the methodology is identical:

1. Assume Israeli Jews act from uniquely malicious motives
2. Ignore obvious alternative explanations (security, self-defense, standard state practice)
3. Use that assumption of evil intent to "prove" the predetermined conclusion
4. Create legal standards that apply only when you've assumed malicious intent from the start

In this case, it is crystal clear that the HRW report was written with the conclusion first, and the legal justification shoe-horned in afterwards. (Which is similar to Amnesty's report which was referred to internally as the "genocide" report while it was being written.) 

This isn't just bias. It's a modern variant of an ancient libel.

The classical blood libel assumed Jews murdered Christian children for ritual purposes. The modern version assumes Jews design state policies specifically to maximize gentile suffering. The structure is identical: attribute uniquely evil motivations to Jews, dismiss obvious innocent explanations, use the assumption to "prove" extraordinary Jewish wickedness.

When you assume a Jewish state operates from fundamentally different and malicious motives than other states, you're not applying universal standards. You're applying a Jewish exception. And when that exception consistently assumes the worst possible intent while ignoring obvious alternatives, it reveals the prejudice driving the analysis.

The antisemitism becomes even clearer when you examine how Arab states treat the exact same Palestinian population.

Israel's immigration policies have been in place since 1948. There is no active oppression in not allowing Arabs to "return" to a state that almost none of them have ever lived. 

But Arab nations that have hosted Palestinian Arabs since 1948 have refused to give them citizenship for over 75 years. And this is a deliberate policy - the Arab League says that Arabs can become citizens of other Arab countries except for Palestinians.

Under HRW's own logic - that denying people citizenship causes 'great suffering' - this active, ongoing discrimination against actual residents would far more clearly constitute a crime against humanity than Israel's standard immigration policy. History has shown that Palestinians want to become citizens of Arab countries if they could, and the rare times that brief windows opened to allow some of them to be naturalized they enthusiastically took advantage of that. The 1951 Refugee Convention says, "The Contracting States shall as far as possible facilitate the assimilation and naturalization of refugees" and every Arab state has flouted that. (Even Jordan, which naturalized the West Bank Palestinians in 1951, has not done the same for Gazans who went to Jordan after the Six Day War; they are still living in camps without access to state services.) 

Don't hold your breath for HRW to accuse Lebanon, which doesn't even allow Palestinians to purchase land and forces them to live in overcrowded camps, of "crimes against humanity." But if HRW wasn't institutionally antisemitic and truly believed that keeping Palestinians stateless is a crime, that is exactly what they would do. 

Even Kenneth Roth, HRW's executive director from 1993 to 2022, called this "a novel legal theory that was unsupported by the facts and law." When Kenneth Roth - whose anti-Israel bias has been extensively documented - can't defend your reasoning, you've revealed the prejudice underlying it.

Interestingly, HRW and Amnesty claimed that the "right to return" is a legal requirement over 20 years ago, using a different argument. It was based on a purposeful misreading of  the Nottebohm ICJ case. They quote-mined an ICJ decision about citizenship disputes to mean the opposite of what it says - because they started with the conclusion that Israel must be violating international law and worked backwards, just as they have done countless times since. Elevating the argument to the even more absurd "crime against humanity" shows far more about HRW than about Israel. 

The report was led by Omar Shakir, HRW's Israel-Palestine director for nearly a decade. Shakir has a documented history of opposing Israel's existence dating to his college years. HRW hired him knowing this - they wanted someone who would assume the worst about Israel.

And that's precisely what this report represents: start with the assumption that Israeli Jews are uniquely evil, construct a legal theory that only works if you maintain that assumption, apply it only to Israel while exempting states engaged in far worse conduct.

The report may be shelved, but the effort to write it reveals the antisemitism embedded in HRW's institutional approach: assume Jewish malice, ignore alternative explanations, use that assumption to prove predetermined conclusions, and call it "human rights research."

When your entire analytical framework depends on assuming Jews act from uniquely evil motives, you're not doing legal analysis. You're perpetuating an ancient prejudice in modern legal language.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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A new Arab claim that many Israelis are descended from 19th century converts (Subbotniks)

We know that Arabs love the Khazar theory, which allows them to claim that most of the Jews in Israel don't really descend from the Israelites and therefore are purely European colonists.

I just saw a new variant in the UK-based Al Araby:

But how did these Europeans become Jews, claiming today to be the "Children of Israel" mentioned in the Bible? Although the Bible speaks of a Middle Eastern people whose features are not European, and whose stories all take place between Egypt, Sinai, and Palestine, there is no clear answer to this central question. While historical information begins with the Khazar Kingdom, which converted to Judaism in the 8th century CE, artificial intelligence tells me that in the 19th century, some Eastern Europeans and some peasants in regions like Russia and Ukraine began to recognize Judaism as part of their cultural and religious identity within the Enlightenment movement. Some of these communities adopted the Jewish religion or some Jewish customs. In short, the situation of these European Jews with our countries is similar to that of someone from Mexico, for example, who converted to Hinduism and then came demanding that the Indians reclaim their temples and holy sites.

What is he talking about? 

It seems he means the Subbotniks. a small sect of Christians who started to take on various Jewish rituals starting in the late 18th century. Some of them did convert, some of them embraced Karaitism, some of them made aliyah in the early 20th century and blended into Israeli society as Jews, but they were a fringe movement; reaching at most 10,000 members, a tiny percentage of European Jewry. 

It is very clear that they are only a tiny percentage of today's Jews in Israel. The author appears to know this quite well, being careful not to say "most" of the Israelis are Subbotniks, but heavily implying it. 

Deep down, Arabs know that Jews are more native to Israel than they are This is why they are so anxious to create new theories to discredit them as being related to the Israelites. 

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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02/04 Links Pt2: The Anti-Zionism Exception; A Hamas Hostage’s Secret Ordeal; Britain’s shameful tolerance for terrorism; The Woman Who Refused to Give Flowers to Hitler

From Ian:

The Anti-Zionism Exception

Civil rights law has an anti-Zionism problem. In cases alleging discrimination, courts typically allow civil rights plaintiffs to use a contextual test—assessing what the U.S. Supreme Court has called the “totality of the relevant facts”—to prove that discrimination in fact occurred. And when key facts are disputed, courts rely on juries to resolve them. Juries are quintessential finders of fact, and discrimination is a quintessential fact question.

But now, for Jews and Israelis, there is an emerging exception to the customary contextual test. Under this exception, behaviors styled as “anti-Zionism”—opposition to Israel’s continued existence—are deemed inherently not discriminatory. Although this anti-Zionism exception started with progressive activists, it has recently jumped to the pages of a published decision by a federal appeals court, which seemed to imply that anti-Zionism, once draped over someone’s speech, generally disproves allegations of discrimination.

This anti-Zionism exception is wrong. It obscures that, in context, anti-Zionism can involve discrimination based on both national origin and race. If it stands, the civil rights of Jews and Israelis will be profoundly unequal to those of other groups that experience discrimination. And, for those who discriminate against Jews and Israelis, anti-Zionist arguments and rhetoric will function as a sort of “get out of jail free” card, enabling them to skirt legal accountability.

As a civil rights lawyer, I have had a front-row seat to the emerging anti-Zionism exception in civil rights law. For years, I’ve stood shoulder to shoulder with other advocates to oppose discrimination of one kind or another, from racially disparate policing to President Donald Trump’s anti-Muslim travel ban. Sometimes we win. Sometimes we lose. But through it all, there has been one constant: a broad, contextual approach to diagnosing discrimination. In no area of civil rights law is there a magic word that defendants can utter to automatically defeat the charge of discrimination.

Instead of following the typical path in discrimination cases, the court seemed to do something different just for anti-Zionism and just for Jews.

That’s because discrimination can be subtle, especially in an age when being seen as a bigot is often socially undesirable and legally risky. As a result, even the most serious cases of discrimination often manifest through tacit double standards rather than explicit bigotry. Consider a police officer who allegedly deems it suspicious when a Black man, but not a white man, puts his hands in his pockets. Or an employer who, as one court put it, deems a man “assertive” but a woman “pushy.” Normally, a jury or other fact finder would be asked to decide whether, in context, these situations reflect discriminatory double standards or instead something more benign.

So it should be with anti-Zionism.

For starters, when deployed as a reason to target “Zionists,” such as by excluding them from school buildings, anti-Zionism is at least arguably, as Harvard Law Professor Stephen Sachs has explained, “a form of national-origin discrimination.” The reason is simple: Discriminating based on national origin includes insisting that people disavow a specific nation, especially their own nation of origin. Just imagine how easily laws prohibiting national-origin discrimination could be defeated if courts were to indulge wordplay such as “Oh, I’m not refusing to hire Italians and Haitians; I’m refusing to hire Italianists and Hatianists.”

Yet activists have resisted that logic for people they deem “Zionists.” And it’s easy to see why.

Particularly since the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7, 2023, anti-Zionism has become a pillar of progressive movements. Sometimes it is bare opposition to Israel’s existence. But sometimes it is more extreme. Indeed, I have witnessed people who consider themselves civil rights supporters—people I know—express support for Hamas. But unlike their right-wing counterparts, who openly revel in Jew hatred, progressives want to believe that they oppose explicit discriminatory postures. Instead, they insist that there is something unique about “anti-Zionism,” which they view as a response to a “Zionist” political ideology, that exempts their statements and actions from standard antidiscrimination analyses.

The Weaponization of the Word “Ethnostate” Against Israel

Israel is, by its own description, an ethnostate, and saying otherwise would be a “ludicrous lie.” At least, that’s according to Tucker Carlson in a recent conversation with white nationalist Peter Brimelow.

Because Jewish identity is matrilineal, meaning a person is considered Jewish if their mother is Jewish, Brimelow and Carlson argue that the Jewish religion is racially based and therefore a “racial component” is inherent in the State of Israel. Being that the state was founded by atheists who “identified as Jewish racially,” Carlson suggests that Israel can only be described as such.

However, Israel, by its own description, is not an ethnostate in the way that Carlson and his guest describe. It is not a ludicrous lie to say this, but rather a simple understanding of the state’s laws and what an ethnostate actually is. This term, nevertheless, has become increasingly popular amongst anti-Israel influencers and journalists to negatively single out the only Jewish state for being just that – a Jewish state.

An ethnostate, at its basic understanding, is a state dominated by a certain ethnic group. But anti-Israel influencers have taken this term to mean something drastically different when applied to Israel, because, being a Jewish-majority state, would naturally make Israel an ethnostate in the same way that other ethnic or cultural majority states, such as Japan or Greece, would also fall under this category.

But when applied to Israel specifically, the entire understanding of the term changes to be one of racial discrimination based on fundamental misinterpretations of Israeli and Jewish laws.

Israel’s establishment as a Jewish state grants every Jew in the world the right to live in Israel, under the Law of Return. Under this law, anyone with one Jewish grandparent is eligible to become a citizen of the state. This is not a racial hierarchy as Carlson and Brimelow allude to, but rather a policy rooted in peoplehood, history, and refuge. The Law of Return exists because Jews are a nation with a shared identity that predates modern racial categories and has survived thousands of years, despite much of that time being in exile from the land of Israel.

Crucially, Israeli citizenship is not limited to the Jewish people. Arab Israelis account for 21% of the total population and hold the same rights as Jewish Israelis, including holding positions of government and law.

Yet this has not stopped journalists such as Briahna Joy Gray from incorrectly and continuously repeating that as an ethnostate, Israel denies Arabs equal rights.

Seth Mandel: The American Jewish Novel After October 7

One of the more interesting questions about Jewish culture after October 7 is: What will the future of American Jewish fiction look like? It will be particularly interesting to see how Israel is portrayed in the imaginations of Jewish writers of the Diaspora.

Conveniently, two recent books, both just named finalists at next month’s National Jewish Book Awards, can shed some light on the topic. The best way to describe Israel in American fiction before October 7 is by conjuring the film trope of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Coined by Nathan Rabin in 2007, the term refers to the female character who “exists solely… to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.”

American Jewish novelists have just gone through a period in which Israel appears as the national version of this archetype: Call it the Manic Pixie Dream Country. In the books, American Jews are assimilated and spiritually adrift, while their Israeli counterparts are tan and fearless. The Americans are outwardly dismissive of the Israeli machismo but inwardly captivated by it. The Diaspora Jew and the New Sabra look at each other the way one imagines the Flintstones and the Jetsons might, as if their co-presence represents some kind of tear in the fabric of the universe. And if the American characters end up in Israel, it is at the end of a redemption arc, a moment of salvation and fulfillment.

In the most extreme versions, the plot involves Israel’s literal destruction, as if a non-Israeli Jewish future can only be imagined if there is no Israel, so strong is the Jewish state’s gravitational pull. As the novelist David Bezmozgis once said: “The Jewish future is to be found in Israel. The Jewish past in Europe. Where in this equation is North America?”

The apotheosis of this genre is, unfortunately, Jonathan Safran Foer’s 2016 novel Here I Am, an absolute chore of a book. In it, an earthquake hits the Middle East, devastates Israel and leads to a mass invasion of it by regional powers. Even with Israel on the edge of the abyss, the U.S.-based Jewish family remains unable to find its own identity. (Like many of the books in this genre, it owes something of a debt to Philip Roth’s The Counterlife.)

A much better version of the disaster storyline plays out in 2024’s Next Stop, by Benjamin Resnick, in which a supernatural phenomenon that makes people disappear also makes Israel disappear. The Jews are blamed for the anomaly and in the U.S. they are herded into ghettos.

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02/04 Links Pt1: Hamas terrorists use ambulances, schools, hospitals in violation of US-brokered ceasefire; US charges Elias Rodriguez with terrorism in killing of two Israeli diplomats

From Ian:

Trump signs bill ending shutdown, with more than $4 billion for Israel

Legislation that U.S. President Donald Trump signed into law on Tuesday included more than $4 billion for Israel, as well as several other provisions in support of the Jewish state, according to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Trump acted fewer than three hours after the U.S. House of Representatives cleared the bill that would reopen the federal government through Sept. 30 after a short shutdown. The Senate had passed the legislation earlier.

Atop the list is $3.8 billion for the U.S.-Israel Memorandum of Understanding, which includes $3.3 billion in security assistance and $500 million for missile defense, such as Iron Dome and Arrow.

“Congress sent a powerful message about the strength and vibrancy of the U.S.-Israel alliance,” AIPAC stated. “This funding makes America safer, stronger and more prosperous, and ensures our democratic ally can defend itself from our shared enemies.”

Other funding includes $47.5 million for U.S.-Israel emerging technology cooperation (a $27.5 million increase), $75 million for U.S.-Israel counter-drone and directed energy investment (up $20 million), $80 million for U.S.-Israel anti-tunnel defense cooperation (a $32.5 million increase), $37.5 million for the Nita Lowey Middle East Partnership for Peace Act that supports economic cooperation and peace building and $3 million for U.S.-Israel international development cooperation.

The measure also bans funding for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA); the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, both in The Hague; and the U.N. Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry against Israel.

“Congress once again came together to send an unequivocal and bipartisan message of support for Israel and the U.S-Israel relationship,” AIPAC stated. “This strong bipartisan support reflects that the enduring partnership between the United States and the Jewish state remains stronger than ever.”

US charges Elias Rodriguez with terrorism in Washington killing of two Israeli diplomats last May

A man accused of killing two Israeli diplomats in Washington last year was indicted on four additional counts of terrorism, in a new indictment that was unsealed on Wednesday.

The new indictment includes nine charges, including hate crimes, filed earlier. Several of the charges carry a maximum penalty of death or life imprisonment, the US Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia said.

"These additional terrorism-related charges carry a mandatory life sentence under DC Code, while also reflecting the reality that this act was in fact an act of terror," US Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro said in a statement.

Prosecutors accuse Elias Rodriguez, 31, of opening fire on people leaving an event for young professionals and diplomats hosted by the American Jewish Committee, an advocacy group that fights antisemitism and supports Israel.

He fired approximately 20 shots from a semi-automatic handgun, and called out "Free Palestine," according to prosecutors.

Lawyers for Rodriguez did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, 26, who both worked for Israel's Embassy in Washington, were killed.

Darren B. Cox, the FBI assistant director in charge of the Washington Field Office, said Rodriguez wrote and published a manifesto as an attempt to "morally justify his actions" and inspire others to commit political violence.

US slams South Africa’s expulsion of Israeli diplomat

U.S. State Department Deputy Spokesperson Tommy Pigott said South Africa’s expulsion of Israel’s senior diplomat prioritized political grievances over the country’s national interests and its citizens’ well-being.

In a post on X on Wednesday, Pigott called Pretoria’s move “another example of its poor foreign policy choices. Expelling a diplomat for calling out the African National Congress party’s ties to Hamas and other antisemitic radicals prioritizes grievance politics over the good of South Africa and its citizens.”

South Africa declared Israel’s chargé d’affaires, Ariel Seidman, persona non grata on Jan. 30 and ordered him to leave the country within 72 hours, according to a statement from the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (Department of International Relations and Cooperation, DIRCO).

South African officials said the decision was based on what they described as “violations of diplomatic norms,” including the alleged use of official Israeli platforms to criticize South African leadership and a failure to notify authorities of visits by senior Israeli officials.

In response, Israel’s Foreign Ministry designated South Africa’s top diplomat in Israel, Shaun Edward Byneveldt, persona non grata, ordering him to leave the country within 72 hours. The ministry said that “additional steps will be considered in due course.”

The diplomatic exchange further strains relations between Jerusalem and Pretoria, which have deteriorated sharply since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Both countries recalled their ambassadors in the weeks that followed.

South Africa has been a leading critic of Israel’s military campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip and has pursued legal action against Israel at the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, both based in The Hague.

The United States has strongly opposed South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the ICJ. President Donald Trump last year froze most U.S. aid to South Africa, citing Pretoria’s positions toward Washington, including its ties with Russia and Iran and its legal campaign against Israel.

Incoming U.S. Ambassador to South Africa Leo Brent Bozell has said that defending American policy on Israel will be a top priority when he assumes his post later this year.

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No One Is Illegal—Except When It’s the Jews (Judean Rose)

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

At the Grammys, Billie Eilish announced that “no one is illegal on stolen land.” Her proclamation was received with applause, reverence, and the familiar assumption that a complicated moral question had just been settled by a pop star wearing a weird, tux-like garment.

💯 https://t.co/vC6hDyGZO3

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 2, 2026

Her “No one is illegal on stolen land” proclamation was offered as a foregone conclusion, requiring no explanation. The line worked precisely because it sounded finished, as though nothing more needed to be said. After all, it was Eilish saying this, and Eilish is famous. That, apparently, was enough to give authority to a statement that makes no sense whatsoever.

Taken seriously, the logic becomes absurd. Imagine a burglar breaking into your home and explaining that nothing illegal has occurred, because the house sits on land once taken from someone else. The theft of the land, under this reasoning, somehow nullifies every theft that follows.

Israel, after all, is routinely described as “stolen land.” Its presence is labeled “illegal occupation.” Jewish communities are not merely contested but criminalized. Entire legal, academic, and activist industries are devoted to arguing that Jewish sovereignty itself is unlawful.

It is a shame the International Court of Justice has spent years laboring over Israel’s supposed crimes. Under the principle that no one is illegal on stolen land, the allegation itself would defeat the charge. A claim of theft would eliminate the possibility of illegality altogether. There could be no crime, no unlawful presence, and no verdict to render.

Jews, of course, reject the premise of illegal occupation entirely. Because it makes no sense. The charge that Israel is “stolen land” collapses under even casual historical scrutiny. The Jewish connection to the land is documented and continuous, embedded in Jewish history, language, and practice.

The Jewish relationship to the land of Israel is one of symbiosis. Jewish prayer tracks its rain, Jewish law depends on its soil, Jewish time follows its seasons. Exile is experienced as dysfunction rather than displacement.

None of this figures into celebrity activism, which treats land as interchangeable scenery—something that can be stolen, reassigned, and morally laundered with a sentence. The idea that a people’s law, language, and obligations might be inseparable from a specific place does not fit neatly on a placard.

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Ironically, the most grounded response to Eilish’s comment came not from pundits or performers, but from the Tongva people, whose ancestral land includes much of present-day Los Angeles.

Rather than attack the celebrity, the Tongva acknowledged their history and thanked Eilish for the visibility. They asked—politely—that the tribe be explicitly named when discussing its ancestral land. They made no accusations and didn’t call for eviction. No one said anything about the moral side of what happened, or what the law had to say. And no one said boo.

In fact, people were really impressed by the way the Tongva handled Eilish’s idiotic land acknowledgement. They asked that we say their name when we talk about their ancestral land. It all makes a sharp contrast to the way Jews are perceived, when they own their history and plainly state that Israel is Jewish land. The world basically explodes with hate whenever we say, “Israel is ours—it belongs to the Jews.” But when Tongva do it, no one concludes that Los Angeles must cease to exist, or that its residents are therefore illegitimate.

That conclusion is reserved almost exclusively for Israel, where historical claims are treated not as context, but as a mandate for reversal.

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Eilish’s comments drew applause from some and ridicule from others, much of it focused on her wealth and lifestyle. That debate, however, never touched the actual claim she made. Once treated as anything more than a momentary expression, it produces conclusions that even its defenders seem unwilling to follow—especially where Israel is concerned.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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The University of Ottawa has a very bad antisemitism problem - and it actively covers it up

Last October, Marie-Eve Sylvestre, the University of Ottawa’s president and vice-chancellor, sent out a vague email to all students condemning an antisemitic graffiti incident. The contents of that email was not published nor was the incident reported in the media at the time. The university did not issue any statement, and neither did police who were investigating it. 

Three months later, we finally have details on what happened. Swastikas were painted outside a Jewish student's dorm room on campus. 

The silence around this case highlights a larger problem about campus antisemitism at uOttawa, one tackled by Isabelle Leahey Jay, the reporter at the student newspaper who broke this story. 

The campus Chabad Rabbi Chaim Boyarsky said that students reported to him that there were desks etched with swastikas at the campus library,  students joking during lectures that “Jews are the cause of natural disasters”, Jewish students enduring insults and slurs as they walk on campus.

Soon after October 7 2023, Jewish students met to pray for the victims of the attacks and were harassed by anti-Israel students tell them to leave. 

Perhaps most disturbing, the students are reluctant to report these incidents because they believe that this will only make things worse for them. They have good reason to think this: even after this report in the Fulcrum, an online discussion included people justifying hate against Jews because of "Palestine" and others calling it a Jewish false flag operation. 

Nevertheless, the university spokesperson  Jesse Robichaud said in December that the graffiti was an "isolated incident."

The University of Ottawa created a position of Special Adviser on Antisemitism held by Professor Jonathan Calof. Surprisingly, he was not quoted in this article. He reports to the Vice-Provost, Equity, Diversity and Inclusive Excellence which makes one wonder how effective he can be; antisemitism is not just another form of bigotry that can be fought with similar tools and diversity/inclusivity/equity teams are often the problem more than the solution.  

The head of the EDIE group at uOttawa, Awad Ibrahim,  organized a conference in 2024 that was meant to be about antisemitism, Islamophobia and "anti-Palestinian racism." Yet the only Jews invited to the panel were both members of an anti-Zionist group who railed against the "Israel lobby" - evoking the very antisemitic tropes they are supposed to fight against. . This is not just an oversight - this shows how little the DEI at the university understands about modern antisemitism. 

I am concerned that this position of special adviser on antisemitism, reporting to a leader who is either ignorant about antisemitism or actively tries to minimize it, is more a figurehead rather than having any teeth. 

For example, Professor Calof does not have a webpage where he can issue statements directly to students. After the swastika incident occurred in October, he was quoted as saying that there were three more antisemitic incidents that week alone. Shouldn't these be publicized (without identifying victims)? Shouldn't the news about this incident have come from his office before the student newspaper uncovered it? It seems like the university is very interested in sweeping antisemitism under the rug, and Dr. Calof does not have the tools to do anything real besides counsel student and faculty victims of antisemitism.

“I’ve had students crying in my office because they have been isolated by people, they thought they were their friends, who are now afraid of wearing a Magen David,” said Calof. “I’ve had faculty say that their colleagues stopped speaking to them due to differences in opinion. It has gotten really bad. The illegal encampment, protests and graffiti of last year have given way to a more institutionalized form of antisemitism.”

Calof did not respond to my request for comment.

The role was created in 2024, but the professor who was appointed was forced out after only three months for tweeting his support of Israel's pager operation against Hezbollah, calling it "brilliant." Which it was. If the person who is meant to fight antisemitism at the university cannot be publicly and proudly pro-Israel, then the  role is all but meaningless - it means that anti-Israel activists have veto power over a role that would expose them as antisemitic. 

The fact that the adviser role remained vacant for over a year afterwards makes one wonder how important fighting antisemitism is to the university compared to making it look like they are taking it seriously. 

More than half of all hate crimes in Ottawa are against the small Jewish community there. Based on the reporting I'm seeing, it seems that this is a severe undercount. 

Working behind the scenes has its advantages, but from all appearances, the University of Ottawa is more interested in hiding its antisemitism problem than publicly fighting it. When that happens, light is the only real disinfectant. 

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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200 years ago: the Papal Government reimposed laws on Jews startlingly similar to the Nazi Nuremberg Laws

This is a news item from February 4, 1826 in the "Public Leger," Richmond, Indiana:

These are not medieval laws. These were laws in the heart of Italy that lasted until 1870. Napoleon had rescinded these laws but these particular laws were reinstated after Napoleon's defeat.

The parallels between the Papal Government laws and Nazi laws re inescapable:

Aspect	Medieval Christian Laws	Nuremberg Laws (1935) & Nazi Extensions
Identification & Segregation	Required badges (e.g., yellow wheels or hats) or clothing to mark Jews publicly (1215 Lateran Council; enforced in Papal States).	Mandated yellow Star of David badges (1941 onward); confined Jews to ghettos (1939–1941), mirroring 1555 Roman Ghetto.
Intermarriage & Relations	Banned marriages/relations between Jews and Christians to prevent "contamination" (e.g., 339 CE Constantius laws; repeated in canon law).	Prohibited marriages/extramarital relations between Jews and "German blood" citizens; invalidated existing ones.
Citizenship & Rights	Denied full citizenship, public office, or property ownership; treated as perpetual outsiders (e.g., Magna Carta 1215 limited Jewish debts; expulsions stripped rights).	Revoked citizenship for Jews; excluded from professions, voting, and public life (over 400 decrees by 1939).
Economic Restrictions	Barred from guilds, land ownership, or certain trades; heavy "tolerance taxes" (e.g., under Maria Theresa in Hungary).	Banned from businesses, property ownership (1938 decrees); forced asset registration and Aryanization.
Humiliations & Violence	Forced conversions, ritual murder libels, pogroms (e.g., Black Death blame); Luther's calls for destruction.	Propaganda revived libels; led to Kristallnacht, deportations, and genocide.

History textbooks typically describe the Nuremberg laws as if they were unique innovations by Nazi Germany, but in fact many of them mirrored how Christians treated the Jews for centuries. They didn't seem outrageous at the time because they mirrored how Jews had been treated in Europe by Christians in living memory. 

The Nazis would have claimed that their restrictions were different. After all, Christian antisemitism was based on irrational religious bigotry while the Nazi version was based on the latest race science and social Darwinism. 

The reasoning was different - racist bigotry compared to religious bigotry -  but the effects were the same.

And if you think about it, today's "anti-Zionist" flavor of antisemitism echoes both of these. Not nearly as blatant - after all, today's anti-Zionists also think of themselves as modern and progressive - but the parallels are pretty clear when you examine them.

Israelis don’t need badges - they are identified by their Hebrew names and shunned and protested against. Zionists are not allowed to join progressive spaces or groups. Israelis are increasingly banned from visiting other countries under bogus pretenses. BDS groups boycott any Jewish-owned Israeli businesses. Zionists are publicly demonized. Any attempt by Jews in universities for dialogue are shunned. Vandalism against Jewish and Zionist sites are increasingly common. 

Antisemitism is often more a structure than an ideology. 

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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Arab reporter says Palestinians would bring their kids to riots hoping they'd be injured or arrested so they would get paid by the PA

Palestinian Media Watch has a huge scoop.

Mustafa Al-Miqdad, a respected Syrian journalist who works with the British think tank  Arab Progress Center for Policies, was interviewed on Palestinian TV this week where he publicly admitted something astonishing: that it is well known that Palestinian parents would bring their children to participate in violent demonstrations in the hope that they would be injured or imprisoned by Israeli forces. 

So they could get paid in the PA's "Pay for Slay" program.

Years ago, at the Gaza border, there was friction with the Zionist enemy. There were those who would go out to marches and protests there. There are stories I won't hide from you, that we all know, meaning as families, some would go together with their children, etc., so they would be injured or something would happen to them, so they could later receive the monthly aid or the monthly salary, or even be arrested and imprisoned to receive just what would support their families as a result of this situation, as a result of the existing neediness. 

Read that again: Palestinian parents would deliberately put their children in harm's way to make money.

We've seen isolated incidents, like this 2016 episode where a father urged his 3 year old son to throw rocks at IDF soldiers and dared them to shoot and kill the boy.

But no one reported that this was routine behavior. 

Some people claim that the PA's "pay for slay" program, where they pay families of "martyrs," prisoners and those injured by Israeli forces, is not a reward for terror, but just a social program. This shows this to be a lie: it is not only a reward, it is an incentive to teach kids to try to murder Israelis. 

One detail of this sickening story is perhaps nearly as bad.

Notice also how Al-Miqdad, speaking to a Palestinian TV interviewer, says that "we all know" about families going out to get their kids injured, speaking to a Palestinian audience. 

Palestinians know it. Their reporters know it. The NGOs that attend the protests know it. The Palestinian  "human rights activists" employed by international NGOs know this. 

But no one publishes it.

Even this story has not yet been picked up by any media as of this writing. 

I'm sure there are some Palestinian mothers who love their children, who tell them to stay out of trouble. But we never see stories about them, even in Arabic media.

Apparently, Palestinian lives aren't worthless. They are worth an annual salary. 

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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02/03 Links Pt2: Did the Bondi Attack Actually Change Australia?; Congressional watchdog says UNRWA wrong to say its report absolves agency

From Ian:

Matti Friedman: New Wave, Old Land

Can a foreign observer show up in another country, without living there or speaking the language, and say something original and definitive about it—something that wouldn’t strike locals as illiterate or banal?

Almost never. My answer would be the same, I imagine, as that of most Israelis, flooded as we are with the confident fantasies of countless such observers in every corner of social media and what’s left of the international press. Whether believing themselves to be journalists or tourists, what most outsiders see in a foreign country is nearly always what they bring with them from home. They mine distant lands for shiny rocks in which to view their own reflection. This seems truer of Israel than of other places because of the way this country and its residents have featured in the fantasy lives of others for so long.

But there are glorious exceptions. One of them was screened in a recent exhibit at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem: a documentary film of under one hour, shot in four weeks in the spring of 1960 by the French director Chris Marker. The film, Description of a Struggle, deserves to be more famous than it is. This is not just because it’s a portrait of this country—now weathered and scarred by hard living—as a newborn. It’s because the film is a master class in how to see a place and its people, and a restorative for anyone despairing of our ability to look at the world and create an impression in words or images.

When Marker arrived in Israel with his French crew, another foreign film was already shooting here: the Hollywood epic Exodus, starring Paul Newman. This movie, like the Leon Uris bestseller that inspired it, is an example of a fantastical projection with little connection to the actual place in question. In ticket sales and press attention, Exodus was to Marker’s modest film—in which the stars are anonymous kids, farmers, and a few Israeli cats and owls—what a Royal Caribbean liner is to a birch canoe. Sixty-five years later, Exodus is unwatchable and Description of a Struggle is hypnotic.

Chris Marker, who became famous as part of the French New Wave of the 1950s, was a slippery and playful artist. He claimed at times to have been born in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia. In fact his birth occurred, more mundanely for a Frenchman, in France, to parents who called him not “Chris Marker” but Christian Hippolyte François Bouche-Villeneuve. He chose his new name, he once explained, to make it easier to travel. Marker was active into his eighties, experimenting with video games and YouTube in his little studio in Paris. He died in 2012 at age ninety-one.

Seth Mandel: What People Don’t Understand About Jewish Security

This is where the misconception comes in. Jewish institutions across Western Europe, especially in places like France and Germany, have beefed up security. So in many cases, the Jewish children are safe—inside the building.

“But if we take three steps outside,” the Potsdam Jewish leader said, “we are completely on our own.”

When the German office tasked with tallying and categorizing incidents of anti-Semitism completed its report on 2024, it found a rise in Jew-hatred that was not particularly unexpected but nonetheless striking: “In 2024, RIAS reporting offices documented a total of 8 incidents of extreme violence, 186 assaults, 443 cases of targeted property damage, 300 threats” and, for good measure, about 7,500 “cases of abusive behavior.” One example of “extreme violence” was an ISIS terror attack that killed three.

One type of abusive behavior tracked by RIAS: anti-Semitic gatherings, of which there were over 1,800 in 2024: “In 2024, there was an average of 35 antisemitic gatherings per week, compared to 16 in 2023.” Such gatherings—think of the ubiquitous pro-Hamas marches and rallies in major Western cities since the war began—act as a way to “mobilize” anti-Semites, RIAS notes.

Let’s boil it down: There are daily calls for violence and near-daily violent anti-Semitism in Germany. These incidents aren’t taking place inside fortified daycares. The presence of secure buildings in Germany did nothing to slow down the country’s incidence of anti-Semitic violence: People have to get to and from those buildings.

In this way, the argument over securing physical locations, while important, remains incomplete. A wave of anti-Semitism hit Jews in Germany in broad daylight. The only way to avoid it would be for Jews to have simply stayed home. That’s one reason for the suggestion in the Potsdam case that the benefits of securing the daycare center might be offset by the downside of calling attention to the presence of Jewish children: The building will be a gathering place of Jews coming to drop off and pick up their children.

Jews work at offices, eat at restaurants, visit parks, etc.

In 92NY talk, Bret Stephens urges ‘dismantling’ ADL, investing more in Jewish identity

In a speech that described antisemites as an “axis of the perfidious, the despotic, the hypocritical, the cynical, the deranged and the incurably stupid,” Bret Stephens asserted that supporters of the Anti-Defamation League and other Jewish defense groups should largely abandon their current strategy for combating antisemitism and instead redirect their resources toward strengthening Jewish life itself.

Stephens, the conservative New York Times columnist and founder of the Jewish thought journal Sapir, said antisemitism is largely impervious to appeals to tolerance, reminders of Jewish and Israeli accomplishments, or mandatory Holocaust education.

Instead, he called for large-scale investment in Jewish day schools, cultural institutions, philanthropy, media, publishing and religious leadership, arguing that the infrastructure already exists but lacks sufficient scale and coordination.

“What we call the fight against antisemitism, which consumes tens of millions of dollars every year in Jewish philanthropy and has become an organizing principle across Jewish organizations, is a well-meaning, but mostly wasted, effort,” Stephens said, delivering the annual “State of World Jewry” address at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan on Sunday. “We should spend the money and focus our energy elsewhere.”

In an onstage conversation after the talk, Stephens told Rabbi David Ingber, the Y’s senior director for Jewish life, that if it were up to him, he would “dismantle” the ADL, the leading Jewish group fighting antisemitism.

“That’s not how Jewish money should be spent,” Stephens told Ingber, acknowledging that the ADL’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, was in the audience. “That’s not helping raise a generation of young Jews who are conscious of their Jewishness as something other than the fact that they saw ‘Schindler’s List’ and they visited the Holocaust Museum. That cannot be the locus of Jewish identity. If we’re going to survive, victimization cannot be at the heart of our identity.”

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02/03 Links Pt1: The Trump Administration's Delusional Gaza 'Master Plan'; Is Iran Attending Its Own Funeral?; The shameful disinformation over the Gaza death toll; IDF find weapons in UNRWA aid sacks

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: The Trump Administration's Delusional Gaza 'Master Plan'

Even if Hamas does agree to surrender some of its weapons as part of a façade to appease Trump, the terror group will undoubtedly continue to keep or replace as many as possible to maintain a military, political and security presence in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas is not worried about the newly established Palestinian technocratic committee that is supposed to govern the Gaza Strip: the committee does not pose a direct threat to the terror group. The committee is primarily tasked with managing civilian affairs, delivering essential services such as water, electricity, healthcare and education, and rebuilding infrastructure. Security will remain in the hands of Hamas....

Building skyscrapers and an airport in the Gaza Strip will not change the Palestinians' views on Israel. The Palestinians are not going to give up the "right of return" because of foreign investment in the Gaza Strip. Hamas is not going to recognize Israel's right to exist or give up its Jihad (holy war) against the "Zionist entity" because of new homes, luxury apartments and tourist resorts. The only way to change the hearts and minds of Palestinians is through a deep and thorough process of re-education and actual serious pressure, for once, from the outside world. This requires brave, strong and pragmatic leadership -- both from the Palestinians and the international community -- an attribute that, unfortunately, does not seem to exist.

Ruthie Blum: Doctors Without Borders is getting the treatment it deserves

If there was any doubt about that, NGO Monitor has provided proof that MSF is not only far from a neutral humanitarian organization, but is openly partisan. Against Israel, of course.

It’s accused Israel of “genocide,” “collective punishment” and “apartheid,” while lobbying foreign governments to halt arms sales to the country. Nor has it ever condemned the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7, 2023.

But it has frequently decried Israeli operations in Gaza, downplaying or omitting Hamas’s systematic use of hospitals, ambulances and medical infrastructure for terrorist purposes. No wonder it’s been refusing to disclose the identity of its employees.

By resisting such transparency, it thought it could dupe Israeli authorities into allowing it to continue collaborating with mass murderers under the protective international cloak—and guise—of selfless physicians devoted to helping Palestinians in need of medical treatment.

How ironic that it’s been doing so for the very people whom the terrorists have purposely maimed and killed, as well as tried to starve, in order to frame Israel for their deaths. Talk about giving new meaning to the Hippocratic Oath.

As NGO Monitor founder and president Gerald Steinberg told JNS’s David Isaac on Monday, “MSF has gotten away with using its massive annual budget ($2.4 billion) and the influence this buys to promote antisemitic propaganda … and to avoid accountability for links to Hamas. But attempts to use bullying tactics through journalists and European political allies to avoid vital Israeli counterterror registration have failed. Their moral medical facade has been exposed for all to see.”

Indeed, even the best surgical masks can’t hide the group’s true face and ill will—for which there’s no cure.

Au revoir, MSF. Don’t let the door hit you in the derrière on your way out of Gaza.

Seth Mandel: Is Iran Attending Its Own Funeral?

A Mideast summit this Friday looks like it will play host to a group of countries that claim to want to save Iran from U.S. strikes—but in reality want to bury the Islamic Republic alive.

For Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which both plan to be represented at the meetup in Istanbul, it’s pretty straightforward. The Saudis are rivals for Iran’s influence and power projection around the Gulf, and Egypt stands to benefit from a loosening of Iranian proxies’ troublemaking in the Red Sea shipping lanes and its sponsorship of Hamas.

The reason for Turkey and Qatar’s bad-faith participation in the summit becomes clear when you see the kind of proposed “solutions” coming out of Ankara. Haaretz reports: “Turkey might propose, among other things, that the enriched uranium in Iran — including around 440 kilograms (970 pounds) that are enriched to 60 percent — be transferred to Turkey, with a promise that it would never be returned to Iran.”

There’s no reason to spend time listing all that’s wrong with that idea: Everything is wrong with it. But the Turks might as well shoot their shot; Haaretz notes that Russia has offered to hold the nuclear material for Iran and that “Trump may see Turkey as a more reliable entity than Russia.” Well, the planet has yet to see an entity less reliable than Putin’s Russia, so it’s all relative.

Though Ankara’s diplomats will never say so, Turkey is essentially proposing that Iran and Turkey switch places, with Recep Tayyip Erdogan as the steward of all the mullahs’ ill-gotten gains. Nuclear material? Put it in Turkey. Terrorist proxies around the region? Let them answer only to Turkey. Russia’s regional patsy? Turkey reporting for duty, comrade. Counterweight to Israel? Turkey.

The Qataris are playing a similar game. They have an American air base and have ingratiated themselves with Trump’s team. They may be Iran’s ally, but they do not need Iran’s protection. Iran’s newfound weakness poses minimal threat to Qatar, but Doha stands to gain substantial clout in Tehran’s absence. The Qataris, therefore, don’t want Iran to be destroyed by American and Israeli strikes, but they would like Iran to be locked into its current state of weakness, preferably through a deal that would freeze it in place without enabling its resurgence.

Right now, Iran doesn’t have a lot of friends, even among its friends.

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