Thursday, October 22, 2026

Style Reminder: Please Use 'Settler' For Jews, 'Immigrant' For Anyone Else (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Style Reminder: Please Use 'Settler' For Jews, 'Immigrant' For Anyone Else

By the Standards Editor, The Guardian

London, 22 October - It has come to the Editorial Board's attention that some writers employ terminology that runs afoul of the standards this publication demands for purposes of journalistic objectivity - with a specific lapse in the proper application of "settler" as referring only to Jews or Israelis, and "migrant" or "immigrant" as referring to others.

Going forward, we expect strict adherence to this policy. Any writer who fails to use the neutral "migrant" or sympathetic "immigrant" when discussing those who come to Western countries - even if representatives of those migrants explicitly call their movements "conquest" - will face disciplinary measures. While only applicable in a relatively small number of cases, we will also accept "asylum seeker" as the default description of non-Europeans moving to Europe.

This does not hold true in the slightest when writing about Jews who live in the ancestral Jewish homeland, and certainly not about the Jews who moved to, or were raised in, the parts of that homeland that Jordan, Egypt, or Syria conquered in 1948. The only acceptable descriptor for such people remains "settler," regardless of the background of their presence in that territory. Arabs who moved to that territory any time before June 1967, whether under Jordanian, Syrian, Egyptian, British, or Ottoman rule, will under no circumstances be called "settlers," while Jews who moved there, no matter when, were and will always be "settlers."

Please also refrain from referring to Jews who, just before, during, and right after the Holocaust, had nowhere safe to go because no country would admit them - including the British who controlled Palestine at the time - as "refugees." Such sympathetic terminology violates the neutral objectivity incumbent on a Guardian journalist.

On the other hand, Arabs who fled Palestine when Israel was established, and their descendants in perpetuity, will continue to carry the designation "refugee," even while refugees from other conflicts cannot, under international conventions, bequeath refugee status to offspring who are not, themselves, fleeing the conflict.

For the avoidance of doubt, the same discipline applies to historical framing. European-descended populations in the Americas, Australia, or New Zealand may still be described as settlers where the established literature does so. No equivalent latitude exists for Jews in the places of documented Jewish continuity. Attempts to align the vocabulary across these cases will be treated as a failure of objectivity. Copy that observes the distinction as drawn will proceed; copy that does not will be returned. These rules exist to protect the clarity and impartiality our readers expect.

Yesterday, Congressional candidate Brad Lander was briefly detained during a visit to the Palestinian territories ostensibly to help Palestinians pick olives. He used this incident, two weeks before the election, as a reason to vote for him in New York, slamming the Israelis for their conduct.

Clearly Lander seems to prioritize support for Palestinians as one of his most important and distinguishing features.

The question that is rarely asked of candidates, either pro- or anti-Israel, is how they compare Israel to any other country in their foreign policy.

Israel's actions are routinely condemned, its morality questioned, its relationship with the United States challenged. Or we hear statements about special the relationship is between the US and Israel. But compared to whom? The implicit assumption is often that Israel is uniquely evil, or uniquely undeserving of American support, or on the other hand uniquely important. Yet nobody seems particularly interested in establishing a baseline.

Here's a simple proposal. Every candidate for national political office should be asked to answer one question:

Rank the following countries and political entities from most to least deserving of America's friendship and support:

Brazil
Canada
China
Iran
Israel
Palestinian territories/Palestine
Russia
Saudi Arabia
South Africa
Taiwan
Turkey
Ukraine
United Kingdom

No ties allowed. And you must explain your reasoning.

This isn't a question about which countries have governments you like. It isn't a question about which countries have perfect human rights records. It is about how America should prioritize its relationships with others, taking into account shared values, strategic interests, reliability, economic cooperation and whatever else a candidate believes should matter.

This isn't a gotcha question for during a debate. This is a question that requires careful thinking and a thoughtful, essay-sized answer.

The answers should be fascinating.

Some candidates would prioritize democracies. Others might emphasize strategic alliances or economic relationships. Still others might reveal that their foreign policy judgments are driven primarily by ideological sympathies or antipathies. And many would avoid answering the question altogether, which is also a useful answer.

And that's precisely the point.

It is easy to attack Israel in isolation. It is much harder to explain why Israel deserves less American support that countries with proven records of repression, aggression, human rights violations or antipathy towards the US.

The inclusion of places like Taiwan, Turkey, Brazil, South Africa and Palestinian territories makes the question especially interesting. They represent very different kinds of relationships with the United States. A candidate who criticizes Israel over human rights, for example, would have to explain how those same standards apply to Turkey or Saudi Arabia. A candidate who emphasizes shared democratic values would have to explain how those values weigh against economic or strategic considerations. And a candidate who places Palestine high on the list would have to explain whether that reflects support for Palestinian self-determination, approval of Palestinian political leadership, or some other principle.

Anti-Israel activists should in theory love this question, too. After all, some of them routinely accuse Israel's supporters, especially Jewish supporters, of being "Israel-firsters" who supposedly put Israel's interests ahead of America's. What better way to test that accusation than to ask everyone, including those making it, to rank Israel alongside other countries, including staunch allies?

Surely they would welcome the opportunity to demonstrate that their own foreign policy judgments are based on consistent principles rather than a particular obsession with Israel.

There are no objectively correct answers to every comparison. Reasonable people can disagree about the relative importance of shared values, common interests and dependable alliances. But they should be able to articulate their criteria, apply them consistently and defend them, rather than hide behind slogans and sound bites.

That is what makes the exercise valuable. It forces candidates to make comparisons they usually avoid, and exposes the assumptions behind their positions.

I suspect we would learn far more from this one question than from a dozen carefully rehearsed answers about Netanyahu, Gaza and the settlements.

Don't just tell me what you think of Israel. Tell me what you think of Israel compared to everyone else.

And if you refuse to answer, explain why you think the question is not valid.

10/21 Links Pt2: Why the Green Party’s argument about Zionism destroys itself; The rank hypocrisy of the ‘Palestine poppy’; Dustin Hoffman and other stars celebrate the Jewish connection to Israel

From Ian:

Why the Green Party’s argument about Zionism destroys itself

However, in the Soviet Union, the “anti-Zionism” was conducted with a level of unparalleled cynicism. Officially, antisemitism was a crime. In reality, the USSR, under the pretext of anti-Zionism, conducted a policy of institutional antisemitism. Jews were barred from a variety of professions and largely prevented from studying at prestigious universities, as well as being rejected from travel, even internally within the Eastern Bloc. Jews living in the USSR had “Yevrey” stamped in their passports and official documents on the “nationality” line – they may have lived in Moscow, Kyiv or Chisinau, but they were not considered “Russian”, or “Ukrainian” or “Moldovan” . A notorious 1970s Soviet propaganda film about the evils of Zionism, Secret and Explicit, literally re-used footage from a 1940 Nazi propaganda film, Der Ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew).

But it is in various Arab nations that the conflation between Judaism and Zionism was made so unambiguous. The ethnic cleansing of three quarters of a million Jews from Arab lands is an inconvenient truth for much of the far left, so much so that they have had to resort to increasingly desperate attempts to try and explain it away by alleging some vast Zionist conspiracy designed to inculcate fear into local Jewish populations in order to convince them to flee to Israel. Of course, to believe that you would also have to believe that “the Zionists” managed to infiltrate the governments of all Arab states which instituted sweeping campaigns of repression against Jewish communities, confiscating their homes and possessions and stripping them of their citizenship. You would also have to believe that the fledgling state of Israel wanted nothing more than having to deal with a mass humanitarian situation, year-after-year, in which hundreds of thousands of people with little more than the clothes on their backs were arriving in the country. But once you have convinced yourself, as so many Green party members apparently have, that Zionism is the ultimate evil, it is only a short onward step to entering a fantasy land where Zionism is not only capable of, but likely to have conducted, any evil you can imagine.

But we do not have to look so far afield, of course, for a prime example of an anti-Zionist policy leading to antisemitism. After the passing of the UN’s infamous “Zionism is Racism’ motion in the mid-70s, which was pushed by the Soviet Bloc and the Arab League, various far left groups in the UK attempted to use it at universities to shut down campus Jewish Societies. Not Israel Societies, not Zionist Societies; Jewish Societies. The “argument” made at the time was that such groups had links to Israel, or to Zionism. That argument was precisely the one which the Green Party had the opportunity to separate itself from earlier this month, when an amendment proposed that the party make it clear that Jewish people who attended Synagogues seen as “Zionist” would not be targeted. Members at Green party conference resoundingly rejected this amendment.

So if we are indeed to judge an ideology solely by its real-world manifestation, as the Green party would have us do, then anti-Zionism is unambiguously antisemitic, even if many of its ‘anti-racist’ adherents might be horrified by that notion. So I would respectfully suggest that if they are going to continue to defend the indefensible, they’re going to need a better argument.

Nicole Lampert: The rank hypocrisy of the ‘Palestine poppy’

There is a woman who likes to stand outside the Houses of Parliament holding up pro-Palestine placards. She wears a striped outfit and hat to make her look like a prisoner in Auschwitz. A Holocaust survivor.

A yellow symbol – the crescent moon and star of Islam – is sewn onto her clothes to add to the offensive appropriation of one of the great crimes of human history.

She’s been arrested several times but still she continues to do it because, presumably, she enjoys the horror she invokes. She’s never been charged because Holocaust inversion isn’t a crime, just a moral obscenity.

The cult of Palestinianism is built on such things. So it is no surprise that the same people who tramp on war memorials and graffiti statues of Winston Churchill in red paint saying “Globalise the intifada” are now brandishing their own version of the Remembrance Day poppy, which symbolises the brave men and women of our armed forces who fought against tyranny. This is how they do things.

Ironically, many of the activists who engage in the appropriation typical of the pro-Palestinian movement view “cultural appropriation” as a grave sin.

Palestinianism is an empty vessel into which real history, real values, are poured into and poisoned. It tarnishes all that we hold dear, upends history and sometimes makes us question the sanity of the world we live in. That is also its intention.

Cults offer simple answers to complex problems, which is why Palestinianism appeals. But they also need more: icons, history, ideology. But because Palestinianism was created only in opposition to something – the Jewish state – and its only contribution to world history is popularising plane hijackings, there isn’t much there.

Even its flag came from a design invented by the Brit Sir Mark Sykes to unify the Arabs in the Ottoman Empire to rebel on our side. Even the keffiyeh – which isn’t really worn inside the Palestinian territories – came from Iraq.

Palestinianism has put surprisingly little effort into creating its own symbols, preferring to appropriate others. It steals them and it takes joy in knowing how much people get upset by that.

The key people they embezzle from are, of course, the Jews. Thus Jewish history in the land is overturned and ignored. They tell us only Palestinians were native, indigenous to the land, even though Arabs arrived there eight centuries after Jews had been thrown out by the Romans.

And because Jewish history in the land is undeniable – from the history, the archaeological finds – they seek to subvert it.

Twenty-Four Mentions of ‘Jew’ and The New York Times Used Zero

Imagine reading an article about a virulently homophobic or racist professor who sent threatening messages to a gay or African-American colleague. The messages and conduct were so egregious that the professor was indicted for cyberstalking, but none of the quoted threats in the article had anything to do with the professor being gay or African-American.

You probably cannot imagine it because it is nonsensical.

But replace homophobic or racist with antisemitic, and replace gay or African-American with Jewish, and it’s not just imaginable – it happened. On Oct. 7, 2026, The New York Times removed the “Jew” from the Jew-hatred.

In Vimal Patel and Yair Rosenberg’s “Religion Professor Accused of Harassing Colleague with Antisemitic Posts,” the authors reported on Haverford College religion professor Guangtian Ha’s indictment for felony cyberstalking of a Jewish colleague. In doing so, The Times omitted the vilest of Ha’s threats and simultaneously failed to convey the sheer volume of them. Of course, The Times could not be expected to list all of the threats, but that did not explain The Times’ egregious and total whitewashing of Ha’s alleged conduct when it omitted the word “Jew” or “Jewish” from each of the few threats it either quoted or directly referenced in the article.

For example, the indictment included the following threat: “The goyim have woken up, jew [sic]. Run. Flee. Leave. Blurring your home on google map and installing a security camera next to your mailbox won’t help.” The Times edited out the first sentence, beginning its quote with the word “Run.” No Jew-hatred to be seen here.

Vimal and Rosenberg also excised the words “Jew” and “Jews” (which Ha did not capitalize) when it quoted the professor’s threat as saying, “Remember this. You scums have had it too easy.” The Times left out the rest of the threat, which was “LM [Lower Merion] jews are going to have it big time, jew [sic].”

And when describing how Ha threatened to post the victim’s home address, infant child’s name and a photograph of the family’s mailbox, rather than use the quote from the indictment: “Jew, watch your [child’s name]. There will be a sign,” the paper of record described the threat, but made no mention of Ha’s reference to the colleague being Jewish.

With regard to the sheer volume of antisemitic threats that was simply not conveyed by the article, the paper of record ignored an additional 20 instances of Ha using the word “Jew” or “Jewish” in the alleged threats set forth in the indictment. The number increases to 22 if one includes “Israeli” and “Zio.” Rather than give readers a taste of some of the monstrous antisemitism contained in the threats, the authors instead reported that there were “countless antisemitic slurs and threats.”

10/21 Links Pt1: Dems betrayal of Israel fueled by Obama’s wrath toward the Jewish state; Postponed Palestinian elections expose blunder of “statehood” recognition

From Ian:

Dems betrayal of Israel fueled by Obama’s wrath toward the Jewish state

When Barack Obama was president and feuding with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while apologizing to Arab potentates about America’s history in the region, a friend offered an observation.

To wit, that Obama was proving the truth of a deep suspicion among American conservatives that Democrats love Jews but secretly hate Israel.

Time and milestone events have passed since then, but the evidence that my friend was onto something important continues to grow by leaps and bounds.

Acceptable
So much so that the Dems’ hard turn against Israel is now dangerously close to a fundamental party doctrine.

And a reasonable explanation is that Obama made it acceptable and even a requirement for officials and candidates to condemn the Jewish state.

His animus ran deep when he was in the White House, but didn’t stop when he left office a decade ago.

Even now, the former president continues to stir the pot of hatred, as demonstrated by comments he made last week.

Accepting an honorary doctorate from Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland, Obama said, in reference to the creation of the state of Israel, that Jews “took land off people, and they were excessive. And those people understandably said, ‘This is injustice and I want my land back.’ ”

By ignoring the fact that Jews were indigenous throughout the Middle East for thousands of years before the state of Israel was created by the United Nations partition in 1947, Obama comes off as willfully ignorant.

All the more so when he insists that “the attitude of Israel is, now that we are the strongest, the most technologically advanced in the region, then our security will depend on us simply doing whatever we need and taking whatever we want, and not making any concessions to anyone.”

He twisted the knife by saying that Israel has conceded the “moral high ground.”

He’s one of those lefties who likes Israel when it’s a victim, but hates it when it hits back and wins.

He also avoids any mention of the historic Abraham Accords, because that would mean giving President Trump credit and admitting that not all Muslims and Arabs hate Israel.

Bam-Mam link
His biased distortions recall the hateful ignorance that Mayor Mamdani often spews about Israel being an occupier and running an apartheid state.

It’s not a coincidence that Obama has become a Mamdani pal and adviser.

Netanyahu responded to Obama by noting that the former president’s argument is contrary to long-established facts.

“Our land is not stolen land. This is our homeland; it’s called Judea. That’s where Jews come from. We’ve been attached to it for thousands of years,” the prime minister said.

A more thorough and devastating response to Obama came in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, where Elisha Wiesel asks and answers the critical questions the former president conveniently ignores.

“Was it excessive for the Jews of Hebron, a community that had prayed there for centuries, to be slaughtered by rioters in 1929, nearly 20 years before there was a Jewish state, an occupation or a West Bank settlement to blame?” Wiesel writes.

He goes on to ask, “Was it excessive for Jews to accept the United Nations’ 1947 partition plan while facing an impending invasion by five armies in 1948? To offer peace at Camp David in 2000, and again in 2008? To pull every soldier and settler out of Gaza in 2005?

“Is it excessive to want to live in peace?”

The writer’s authority on the subject is unassailable.

Dr. Brian Cox: Postponed Palestinian elections expose blunder of “statehood” recognition

This latest statehood recognition fiasco illustrates in near real-time the utter foolishness of what I have previously referred to as “fairytale foreign policy” so often practiced by the political left.

This approach is marked by repeated attempts to achieve significant strategic objectives by simply wishing them into existence. But as we often say in the military, especially in combat arms professions, “Hope is not a COA” (course of action).

All the statements from leftist governments recognizing the “state” of Palestine last fall expressed the desire then for free and fair elections, yet none of them included this—or any other development — as a precondition for recognition.

They all espouse belief in a viable two-state solution, and recognizing Palestine is, in colloquial terms, essentially an attempt to press the “easy button” to make it happen. The announcement last week postponing said elections until next fall demonstrates precisely why hope is not a COA.

In any event, Palestine has never met the conditions for statehood described in the Montevideo Convention since it was declared an independent country in November 1988. These criteria are widely considered to be an expression of customary law, yet the “state” of Palestine has no unified system of government and lacks the capacity to authoritatively enter into relations with other states

Simply recognizing Palestinian statehood, or clicking one’s heels three times and wishing that it were so, does not magically create the conditions necessary for it to be an actual state.

Far-left progressive activists like Canadian professor Mark Kersten and D.C. social welfare organization J Street are fond of rejecting the claim that recognizing Palestinian statehood is merely a reward for terrorism. The trouble is, terrorists tend to disagree with them.

Indeed, Hamas hailed announcements, all from leftist governments, recognizing the “state” of Palestine last fall as a “deserving outcome of our people’s struggle.” And when news broke that several Western governments were considering the move, Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad celebrated prospective recognition as the “fruits of October 7.”

Governments like Australia, Canada, France, and the UK rewarded terrorism — according to the terrorists they rewarded — by recognizing Palestinian statehood last fall. It should come as no surprise now these governments complained in a joint statement last week that they “deeply regret” the decision to postpone Palestinian elections.

These liberal governments should take a page from President Trump’s business playbook.

They failed to secure the downside when they recognized Palestinian “statehood.” Now the upside — such as realization of free and fair elections in Palestine — is, rather predictably, not taking care of itself.

Earlier this month, Haverford College religion professor Guangtian Ha was charged with cyberstalking a Jewish colleague. According to federal prosecutors, Ha used anonymous X accounts to send approximately 50 threatening messages between October 2025 and May 2026, including threats against the colleague's family and references to his home.

The accounts, with names like America1stLM and DlGoyim, sounded like they belonged to American neo-Nazis. They praised Hitler, invoked concentration camps and threatened to drive Jews out of America. Prosecutors say the FBI linked the accounts to Ha through internet records and that Ha admitted creating and using them. He has pleaded not guilty.

A Washington Free Beacon investigation uncovered many other posts from the accounts, including threats against Ben Shapiro, Randy Fine and Shai Davidai, as well as generalized attacks against Jews that had no apparent individual target. The accounts advocated exterminating world Jewry, confiscating Jewish wealth and completing Hitler's work.

Why would a progressive professor create an American neo-Nazi persona?

Ha's public identity could hardly be more different. He is a scholar of Islam in China, specializing in how Muslim minorities preserve their religious identities under persecution. His academic research also addresses racial stereotypes, colonialism and the mistreatment of marginalized groups.

Politically, Ha is an outspoken progressive anti-Zionist. In August 2024, he wrote:

By this point matter is no longer just ceasefire. The state of Israel must be dismantled and the society de-Nazified. Arms embargo, sanction, boycott, attack Zionism on all fronts. Zionism is Nazism, it is fascism. Zionists are racists.

So we have two Guangtian Has. The public progressive who denounces Zionists as Nazis, and the anonymous neo-Nazi who threatens Jews with extermination.

I have a theory that explains the contradiction.

What if Ha's Jew hatred is not a consequence of his ideology, but the driving force behind it?

His progressive worldview provides an acceptable vocabulary for attacking Zionists as racists, colonialists and Nazis, and for demanding Israel's destruction. But it does not comfortably allow him to threaten Jews as Jews. That would contradict the anti-racist principles his political identity supposedly represents.

The far right, however, has an established vocabulary for precisely that sort of hatred: Jews as parasites, conspirators and threats to civilization, complete with fantasies of expulsion and extermination.

Perhaps Ha borrowed that vocabulary because his own political framework couldn't adequately express his unbridled hate.

The anonymous accounts certainly served a practical purpose. They concealed his identity and allowed him to terrorize his colleague and threaten other Jews. The neo-Nazi imagery also made the threats more frightening. But the many generalized antisemitic posts, apparently unrelated to any particular victim, suggest that the accounts may have served another purpose: allowing him to express feelings he could not openly express in his progressive persona.

There is another revealing contradiction.

In one anonymous message, the supposed neo-Nazi declared:

Fuck anti-Zionism. HH.

HH usually means Heil Hitler in neo-Nazi posts.

Compare that with Ha's public insistence that Zionism itself is Nazism. His anonymous character rejects anti-Zionism while his public persona regards it as a moral imperative.

But for the most part Ha's left wing and right wing personas both agreed that Israel must be destroyed.

I suspect that his right-wing persona was partly a caricature of how progressives perceive the American right: racist, fascist, antisemitic, yet somehow also supportive of how the Left looks at Zionism. This is not necessarily a coherent description of actual right-wing ideology, but it could be how someone immersed in progressive anti-Zionism imagines his political opponents.

Note the phrase "by all means necessary" in one of his right-coded accounts, similar to "by any means necessary" phrase used by Israel haters.

The accounts may have served several purposes simultaneously: concealing Ha's identity, making threats against Jews more believable and frightening, and perhaps even reinforcing the progressive stereotype of the right as neo-Nazi. But the primary purpose was to provide a means for Ha to express his hate for Jews. The striking feature of the two personas is that their ideologies are incompatible while their hostility toward Jews and Zionists overlaps.

One persona calls Zionists Nazis and demands Israel's elimination. The other praises Nazis and demands the elimination of Jews - and Israel.

This suggests something important about antisemitism more generally.

We tend to assume that ideology creates prejudice. White supremacists hate Jews because they believe Jews threaten the white race. Radical anti-colonialists hate Zionists because they believe Zionists are colonial oppressors.

But perhaps we often have the causal relationship backward. Often the hostility comes first, and the ideological justification comes afterward.

Antisemitism has appeared in Christianity, racial nationalism, communism, fascism, anti-capitalism and anti-colonialism. These systems contradict one another, yet each has found ways to portray Jews as uniquely dangerous. The accusations change to fit the prevailing worldview, while the target remains the same.

That may help explain why refuting antisemitic arguments so often accomplishes little. If the argument is merely a rationalization for an existing prejudice, disproving it doesn't eliminate the prejudice. Another rationalization can always take its place.

Ha's case cannot establish where his antisemitism originated, or whether the anonymous persona reflected his sincere beliefs rather than a calculated performance. But it offers a striking illustration of my broader theory: antisemitism need not arise from political ideology. Political ideology can instead provide the language through which an existing hostility is justified and expressed.

And when one ideological vocabulary cannot express the full extent of that hostility, another can be borrowed.

The two Guangtian Has disagreed about almost everything.

Except the Jews.

10/20 Links Pt2: France in Flames: How the Red-Green Alliance Is Undermining Western Democracy; The Money Network Behind Mamdani, Tlaib, And El-Sayed; The Hamas apologism of Sarah Helm

From Ian:

France in Flames: How the Red-Green Alliance Is Undermining Western Democracy

The scenes unfolding across France in October 2026 - burned vehicles, looted shops, arson against public buildings, and clashes that left hundreds of police injured - reveals the operational success of the Red-Green Alliance: the tactical convergence of radical leftists and Islamist networks that has weaponized "Palestinianism" - into a moral solvent dissolving Western self-confidence.

Six months before the April 2027 presidential election, polling points toward a probable runoff between Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Melenchon of the La France Insoumise (LFI) party. LFI and Melenchon have long cultivated proximity to Islamist-linked activists and pro-Palestinian networks while framing criticism of political Islam as "Islamophobia."

Melenchon's public support for the student movement, his criticism of police "maintenance of order" as the true source of chaos, and the presence of Palestinian flags and radical rhetoric within the protests fit a pattern: the Red-Green assault that unites Marxist radicals and Islamists against the liberal democratic West and the Jewish state.

At the heart of this alliance stands Palestinianism - the ideological elevation of the Palestinian cause into the master narrative of a global anti-colonial struggle. Palestinianism functions as the primary vector through which the Red-Green Alliance legitimizes political violence.

Once terrorism is reframed as "resistance," and once the deliberate targeting of civilians is excused, a moral inversion takes hold. Israel is recast as the aggressor; those who butcher civilians are recast as victims or even heroes. This inversion has now boomeranged onto Europe itself.

When successive French governments treated Israel's defensive wars as the primary moral problem in the Middle East while soft-pedaling the genocidal charter of Hamas and the Iranian axis, they helped normalize the idea that Western power is inherently illegitimate.

The 2026 riots are a symptom of a deeper loss of civilizational nerve. The same moral inversion that excuses Oct. 7 as "resistance" now excuses the torching of French town halls and the looting of French shops as expressions of "rage."

Humanities PhD students at US universities more likely to hold antisemitic views than peers

A comprehensive new study published in October reveals that American humanities doctoral students are significantly more likely than other US graduate students to hold anti-Jewish prejudice and hostility toward Israel.

The report, called “Antisemitism and Prejudice Among US Graduate Students,” was conducted by researchers Graham Wright, Shahar Hecht, Daniel Nussbaum, Samantha Shortall, and Leonard Saxe at the Maurice and Marilyn Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies (CMJS) at Brandeis University, in partnership with the Steinhardt Social Research Institute and polling firm Generation Lab.

The research addressed a major blind spot in post-October 7 campus climate studies, which have focused predominantly on undergraduate students and faculty.

Researchers sought to examine graduate students, who make up majorities at many selective research universities, serve as teaching assistants and instructors, and often play central roles in campus political movements, to understand their views on Jews, Israel, other minority groups, political engagement, and protest tactics.

Generation Lab administered an online survey between March 5 and April 30, collecting responses from 3,107 graduate students across 222 four-year colleges and universities in the US.

The sample encompassed five major degree pathways: PhD students across STEM, social sciences, and humanities, and professional degree students in Master of Social Work (MSW), Master of Education (M.Ed.), Master of Business Administration (MBA), and Juris Doctor (JD) programs.

Distinct subgroups of graduate students harbor explicit hostility
The study’s key findings indicate that across all fields of study, nearly two-thirds of graduate students (62%) express low levels of prejudice toward Jews, Israel, Muslims, Blacks, and Asian Americans. However, the data revealed small, distinct subsets of students who harbor explicit hostility. Using Latent Class Analysis across ten prejudicial statements, researchers identified that 9% of graduate students fit a pattern characterized by hostility to Jews, 11% exhibited hostility to Israel, 12% showed anti-Black resentment, 4% demonstrated anti-Asian and anti-Muslim resentment, and 2% displayed hostility across multiple minority groups.

Humanities PhD students stood out across the data as the most likely to express anti-Jewish prejudice and hostility to Israel. While the majority of humanities doctoral students held low levels of prejudice, 26% fell into the “Hostile to Israel” category, and 12% fell into the “Hostile to Jews” category.

Ahmet Korkaya, Salam School, and American Muslims for Palestine

Man indicted in connection with antisemitic attacks in Michigan now teaches at K–12 school with links to American Muslims for Palestine, a group accused of having ties to Hamas. Ahmet Korkaya was indicted in June for his involvement in threatening U Michigan leaders and vandalizing their homes, as well as for attacking the Detroit Jewish Federation building and a Rolls-Royce building.

He is now teaching and coaching soccer at the Salam School, a private K-12 Muslim school in Milwaukee.

Salam School is operated by the Islamic Society of Milwaukee (ISM).

On October 9, 2023, ISM signed a statement condemning the "one-sided narrative...that posits Israel as a victim" and calling for "an end to US support of Israeli apartheid." The statement blamed Israel for Hamas's October 7 massacre and declared that "resistance to oppression is not terrorism."

ISM Personnel's Ties to American Muslims for Palestine (AMP)
Note: AMP has been accused of operating as a successor to the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) and the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), which were shut down in the 2000s for fundraising for Hamas. AMP is a major backer of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)

Othman Atta serves as Executive Director of both ISM and the Salam School. He wrote to the judge on behalf of Korkaya, acknowledging that Salam School is aware of Korkaya's indictment and requesting that Korkaya's ankle monitor be removed and his curfew be extended.

Atta has reportedly criticized the US’s designation of Hezbollah and Hamas as terror organizations, rejected a two-state solution, and invoked antisemitic tropes. He also has referred to Palestinian terrorism as “resistance” and contextualized the October 7 massacre. Atta has longstanding ties to AMP and has repeatedly spoken at their conferences.

ISM's president is Salah Sarsour, who is a board member of AMP. Sarsour was formerly a fundraiser for HLF. He also allegedly used his furniture store to pass money to the leader of Hamas’s armed wing. Sarsour was arrested by ICE earlier this year and faces deportation on national security grounds.

Sarsour’s attorney, Munjed Ahmad, serves as ISM's treasurer and is a member of AMP’s National Board. He previously served as AMP’s vice chairman and as ISM’s fundraising chair. At a 2014 AMP event, Ahmad called for Israel to be labeled a terrorist organization and justified violent terrorism against Israel.

Rami Bleibel is the imam and resident scholar at ISM’s Brookfield mosque. He previously taught Islamic Studies at Salam School and served as national chapters coordinator for AMP. Bleibel has publicly praised PFLP bomber Rasmea Odeh.

Dr. Zulfiqar Ali Shah served as ISM’s religious director from 2006 to 2024. Before that, he served as head of the South Asia Division of KindHearts, whose assets were frozen by the US Treasury in 2006 amid allegations of ties to Hamas and HLF. Shah has also reportedly praised jihad and allegedly warned that “If we are unable to stop the Jews now, their next stop is Yathrib” (Yathrib is the ancient pre-Islamic name for Medina, Saudi Arabia).

10/20 Links Pt1: Elisha Wiesel: Obama's Dangerous Mideast Words; The Truth about U.S. Aid to Israel; Shattering the Palestinians' Hope of Defeating Israel

From Ian:

Richard Goldberg: Time for a Reset in U.S.-Israel Relations

America will only win the century over the Chinese Communist Party if it dominates super intelligence (SI), quantum computing, critical supply chains, and defense technology. Israel is one of the world's most important centers of innovation in every one of these areas - with both a capability and will to align its own strategic investments for the benefit of the U.S. Americans should want Israel to invest billions of dollars into SI and quantum research and development in full cooperation with the U.S.

Notably, Israel's innovation ecosystem also includes research and commercial activity in advanced chemicals, synthetic materials, critical mineral recovery and refining, and the development of substitutes for scarce raw materials. Israel is already a member of the State Department's Pax Silica, a diplomatic alliance aimed at building out an American-led ex-China supply chain for critical minerals.

The U.S. 2026 National Defense Strategy recognizes Israel as a "model ally," already spending a higher percentage of its GDP on defense than any NATO ally. After the U.S., Israel is the most innovative country in the world when it comes to defense technology. It battle-tests American platforms and makes them better. It co-develops missile- and laser-defense systems that help keep both countries safe from threats beyond the Middle East.

Moving from a foreign aid paradigm to an interest-based joint venture will deliver massive economic and security return on investment and help guarantee another American century. That's a U.S.-Israel relationship every American should support.

Elisha Wiesel: Obama's Dangerous Mideast Words

Last week former President Barack Obama said of the Jewish people that after millennia of persecution, "they took land off people, and they were excessive. And those people understandably said, 'This is injustice and I want my land back.'"

Was it excessive for Jews to buy land, at fair or often inflated prices, from absentee landlords in Beirut and Damascus who were glad to sell malarial swamps? Was it excessive for the Jews of Hebron, a community that had prayed there for centuries, to be slaughtered by rioters in 1929, nearly 20 years before there was a Jewish state to blame?

Was it excessive for Jews to accept the UN's 1947 partition plan while facing an impending invasion by five armies in 1948? To offer peace at Camp David in 2000, and again in 2008? To pull every soldier and settler out of Gaza in 2005? Is it excessive to want to live in peace?

And what does "understandably" demanding one's land back look like? There can and should be no understanding of Hamas's ambitions.

The deeper problem is the story itself. In Mr. Obama's telling, Jews were oppressed in Europe and then arrived somewhere else and took too much. Jewish history in the land disappears. My father drew a line when he wrote in the New York Times in 2001: "To compromise on territory might seem, under certain conditions, imperative....But to compromise on history is impossible." That is the line Mr. Obama crossed.

My father's life was a testimony to what words can do. History is replete with speeches, lectures, editorials and textbooks turning neighbors into intruders and murder into justice. Mr. Obama's place isn't with those who call Jewish survival excessive.

Black American pastors rebuke Obama for accusing Israel of taking land

A national organization of Black American pastors on Monday categorically rejected an assertion made by former U.S. President Barack Obama that Israel “took land off people,” saying that claim was a dangerous omission of the Jewish people’s three-thousand-year-old connection to the Holy Land.

The strong pushback by the Christian leaders came just days after the first Black president made the contested remarks in Northern Ireland, adopting a common claim used by anti-Israel activists.

“When a former president of the United States tells a European arena that Israel was founded on theft, he hands a talking point to every campus mob, every synagogue vandal and every ideologue who has spent half a century teaching that the Jewish state is a colonial crime,” said the Black Christian Leadership Council on Israel.

“The Council will not be silent while that happens, and we will not let the claim go unanswered in the African American churches we serve,” the statement added.

At his talk, Obama said that after millennia of persecution, Israel “took land off people, and they were excessive. And those people understandably said: ‘This is injustice, and I want my land back.’”

The church leaders noted that Obama himself had called Israel “the historic homeland of the Jewish people” during a 2013 visit to Israel, and had highlighted that Jews lived, worked the soil and prayed in that land more than 3,000 years ago.

“He was right then. He is wrong now. Nothing in the ground changed between 2013 and 2026. Only the audience did,” the statement continued.

The pastors added that in his Belfast speech, the former president omitted the historical connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel, noting that it was never emptied of Jews and was both lawfully recognized and legally purchased.

The group, which was established this summer and seeks to revive historic Black–Jewish relations, plans to lead a major pilgrimage to Israel next month of 500 pastors and church leaders.

The tour, which has been dubbed “Unfinished Business,” commemorates a large-scale Holy Land visit originally planned by Martin Luther King Jr. in November 1967, which was postponed following the Six-Day War and later prevented by his assassination in 1968.

Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also fired back at Obama’s remarks.

Morocco is unique among Arab countries in its efforts to preserve and celebrate its Jewish heritage. Its constitution recognizes the Hebrew component of Moroccan national identity, the government has restored synagogues and Jewish cemeteries, and King Mohammed VI has repeatedly emphasized that Jewish history is an integral part of Moroccan history.

But that doesn't mean antisemitism has disappeared from Morocco. As I noted recently, a Moroccan newspaper promoted grotesquely antisemitic historical narratives.

That is not an anomaly. For years, efforts to promote Jewish-Muslim coexistence have been under attack.

On Monday, the Moroccan news site Journal24 reported that Moroccan academics participating in an event about historical Jewish-Muslim coexistence had been criticized by opponents of normalization with Israel. Their objection? Discussing Jewish-Muslim friendship during the Gaza war might improve Israel's image. They argued that such events should address the Palestinian situation rather than simply celebrating coexistence.

This is hardly an isolated attitude.

In July 2023, the Moroccan Front for the Support of Palestine and Against Normalization, a coalition of Islamist and leftist organizations, explicitly condemned the proliferation of associations promoting "coexistence, tolerance, peace, and living together," claiming they were designed to mislead the Moroccan public and advance Zionist influence. It warned Moroccans against joining such organizations.

On October 5, 2026, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed reported that the same Front was campaigning against educational, cultural, and academic normalization, warning of supposed Zionist infiltration of Moroccan schools.

These activists have expanded the concept of "normalization" to include organizations that accept Jews as full citizens of Morocco.

The assumption is that Moroccan Jews cannot simply have their history celebrated. Their cultural heritage is presumed to serve a hidden Zionist agenda unless accompanied by the appropriate political condemnations.

The Journal24 article even acknowledges that it lacks sufficient information about the event to determine whether it had anything to do with normalization. The suspicion apparently precedes the evidence.

When celebrating Jews and their history becomes suspicious simply because it doesn't condemn Israel, that isn't criticism of Israeli policy. It is antisemitism.

10/19 Links Pt2: American Intellectual Antisemitism; Sally Rooney is a posturing ingrate; Radical anti-Israel leftist a suspect in car ramming attack on Australian MP; Palestine poppy creator is NHS doctor who branded Israel ‘a cancer’

From Ian:

Shai Davidai: American Intellectual Antisemitism

At its core, American Intellectual Antisemitism recasts Jews as the embodiment of privilege, oppression, and global power. According to this ideology, Jews are White oppressors, settler-colonialists, and European capitalistic imperialists who wield disproportionate influence over foreign governments, financial systems, and global media in order to ethnically cleanse Palestine and establish a Jewish supremacist ethnostate through dispossession, apartheid, and genocide. Hiding behind a polished veneer of academic jargon and intellectual sophistication, American Intellectual Antisemitism portrays the Jewish people not merely as participants in historical events but as the embodiment of evil, responsible for all that’s wrong in the Middle East and far beyond it. By recasting rape as “resistance” and murder as the means for “liberation,” it creates a moral framework through which even the most horrific violence becomes justifiable. Within this framework, no atrocity against Jews, not even the kidnapping and killing of nine-month-old Kfir Bibas, is too horrific to rationalize.

Taken to its ideological conclusion, American Intellectual Antisemitism casts Israel — “the Jew among the nations” — as inherently evil and its very existence as inherently unjust. Insisting that justice can come only through the eradication of the world’s only Jewish state, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, it holds that anyone who supports Jewish self-determination, Jew or non-Jew alike, must be opposed. Put into practice, this ideology sanctions the targeting of Jews and their allies as an act of moral virtue.

Of course, criticizing Israel’s past and current governments, policies, or conduct is not inherently antisemitic. Yet, by crossing the boundary between criticism of Israel’s actions and opposition to its very existence, this seemingly new form of Jew-hatred reproduces deep antisemitic patterns that are anything but new. Satisfying what Natan Sharansky famously called the “Three Ds” of antisemitism, American Intellectual Antisemitism does all three: it demonizes Jews and Israel, delegitimizes Jewish self-determination, and imposes double standards it demands of no other people or nation. Though its language may be new, the underlying Jew-hatred is ancient. Academia did not invent Jew-hatred. It just gave it a PhD.

Naming the ideology, however, was only the beginning. To understand how American Intellectual Antisemitism had taken hold of so many unsuspecting minds, I needed to trace not only its origins, but its transmission. I needed to uncover where these ideas were developed, who gave them legitimacy, how they traveled beyond campus, and which financial pipelines sustained their spread. I needed to expose not only what people had come to believe, but who had taught them to believe it and how obscure academic ideas had entered mainstream American life. Once I understood what I was seeing, I needed to make sure others could see it too.

That investigation became my book, American Intellectual Antisemitism: The Anti-Jewish Movement Tearing Through Our Universities. Tracing the rise of this radical and hateful ideology within American higher education, the book exposes the ideas, institutions, and individual – from Edward Said, Joseph Massad, and Rashid Khalidi to Nerdeen Kiswani, Judith Butler, Katherine Franke, and, of course, Mahmoud and Zohran Mamdani - that helped recast Jews from a persecuted minority into privileged oppressor. In doing so, I traced the pathways through which American Intellectual Antisemitism escaped academia and entered the media, K-12 education, professional organizations, cultural institutions, and politics. Following its journey from the seminar room to the protest encampment, from academic journals to social media, and from elite universities into institutions that shape how millions of Americans understand the world, I draw on my own transformation from a popular professor at Columbia Business School to one of the country’s most outspoken Jewish and Israeli advocates, enduring relentless defamation and death threats along the way, to reveal just how deeply American Intellectual Antisemitism has become entrenched within our academic system. Above all, the book tells the story of how antisemitism, long before it reached the streets, captured the syllabus.

Writing this book helped me understand how we got here, but it also forced me to consider whether things could have turned out differently. I often think back to my conversation with Mr. Rosberg and wonder what might have been. What might have happened had he taken me and the warning I was trying to deliver more seriously? What might have happened had he not dismissed me as a nuisance and an alarmist, but instead recognized that I was raising a critical alarm? What might Columbia have become had its leaders chosen moral clarity, accountability, and a constructive path forward rather than cowardice, appeasement, and indifference?

We cannot undo what has already been done, but we can still decide what happens next. The need for a better path forward is no less urgent today than it was on that bright November afternoon in Riverside Park. If anything, it is greater. We must be willing to name the hateful ideology of American Intellectual Antisemitism even when it disguises itself in the language of social justice, hold people accountable when they turn that ideology into intimidation and disruption, and offer something better in its place — democracy, pluralism, coexistence, intellectual humility, and universal human dignity. You don’t defeat destructive ideologies merely by exposing the damage they cause. You defeat them by helping people understand what is happening, refusing to accept it as normal, and standing up against it.

That is ultimately why I wrote American Intellectual Antisemitism. Not merely to explain what happened, but to prevent it from happening again. Jews and non-Jews alike must recognize the ideological hatred that has taken root within some of our most elite institutions, understand where it came from and how it spreads, and resist it before it takes root elsewhere.

I walked into Riverside Park that November afternoon believing Columbia could still climb out of the moral pit into which it had dug itself. Nearly three years later, I still believe that it can and that other ideologically captured institutions can as well. American Intellectual Antisemitism is a powerful and menacing ideology, but it is not undefeatable. No ideology is. By choosing moral clarity over confusion, accountability over appeasement, and hope over hatred, we can turn what threatens to become a historical turning point into a historical footnote.

I wrote this book because, once I saw what was happening, I could no longer remain silent. Now that you see it too, will you?

Lionel Shriver: Sally Rooney is a posturing ingrate

Amnesty International indignation to the contrary, this is not a free-speech issue. Rooney may still shout her devotion to Palestinians from the rooftops. Should the author truly wish to fund their cause, legal outfits rowdily clamouring for “free Palestine!” are multitudinous: Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Stop the War Coalition, Medical Aid for Palestinians, Oxfam… But, no. Rooney has to plump for Palestine Action, because that will stir a kerfuffle.

This isn’t Rooney’s first gesture of impotent activism. She flaunted her refusal to sell Hebrew translation rights to her third novel, her Israeli publisher being politically impure. She helped spearhead a 2024 authors’ boycott of book festivals funded by Baillie Gifford, supposedly involved in fossil fuels and Israeli defence shares. Yet according to the investment management firm, only 2 per cent of its investments involved oil and gas, and claims of the company’s investment in the Israeli military were “offensively misleading”.

Did this showy, clubby boycott decrease the sale of oil and gas by a single litre or cubic metre? No. Did it deprive Israel of a single bullet? No. But it did convince Baillie Gifford that the fastidious literary set was more trouble than it was worth, leaving Edinburgh, Hay, Cheltenham and six other festivals with funding black holes. While most festivals have recovered, the boycott merely imperilled opportunities for fellow authors to promote their work.

The same Zero Benefit to the Real World model applies to Rooney’s PA spectacle. Will her novels’ withdrawal from British bookshops improve the lot of Palestinians a jot? This grandstanding appears to have nothing to do with Palestinians and everything to do with moral vanity. The gambit is attention-seeking self-aggrandisement. (It’s working. I’m bolstering Rooney’s rep right now.) Real virtue entails action with some small chance of helping the people on whose behalf it was ostensibly taken.

Maybe Rooney will still scrounge a few quid from her paltry savings to toss a proscribed organisation. But does Palestine Action have any effect on the Middle East? The outfit comprises a small, self-righteous group of halfwits in a small island nation itself with no influence on Israeli policy. During a violent 2024 assault on Elbit Systems, the group did over £1m in criminal damage and fractured a police officer’s spine with a sledgehammer.

I challenge you to construct a cause-and-effect narrative that demonstrates how these childish, spiteful ructions in faraway Britain have improved conditions in Gaza by a smidgeon.

Given the woman’s very occupation relies on creativity, Rooney’s pet cause is disappointingly trite, especially for an Irish national. This year, I appeared in two festivals in Ireland, where support for Palestinians, with zilch to do with the Republic, has grown crazed, irrational, manic – even hysterical. Palestinian flags on every lamppost. The signing queue for Avi Shlaim’s Genocide in Gaza out the door and round the corner.

Yet this Irish advocacy is perfectly pointless, reminiscent of the mass trooping about for Black Lives Matter in 2020, when European protests hadn’t the weensiest effect on policing in Minneapolis. This variety of Left-wing activism isn’t driven by a desire to affect the outside world positively. It aspires to a cosy self-regard and parades trendy political credentials. It’s all about me, me, me.

In a London synagogue, a Jewish David stands up to the Green Party’s Goliath

MEANWHILE, THE UK’s “little” David, Highgate Synagogue, steps forward.

The Greens’ Goliath, who passed the Zionism equals racism motion, sent a letter via Councillor Mark Blake, leader of Haringey Green Council, to the rabbi and chairpersons of the synagogue in his area.

He was trying to reassure them about the implications of the party’s disgraceful stance on Zionism and what it means for the local Jewish community. Everything was going to be fine.

This is the usual response of a coward. Having inflicted the blow, the antisemite then goes back to hide behind the parapet with false assurances. This is what Blake did.

Highgate responded with both barrels: “We reject your assurances. You make us unsafe.”

“You may see no connection between the ceaseless vilification of Israel, the blood libels that you and your party regularly trot out, and the hostility to Jews in this country, but we do.”

“We take it from tone and content (of your letter) that you are deeply embarrassed with the decision taken by your party to not only brand Zionism as racism but to call for the eradication by any means necessary, including violence, of the only Jewish state, the only practicing democracy in the Middle East and home to half of the world’s Jewish population…”

“This (motion) has been publicly celebrated by the Haringey branch of the Greens party, aligning itself with Hamas, a genocidal, homophobic, misogynistic, and Islamist terrorist organization.

“This synagogue has had close relatives who were victims of October 7. And let there be no doubt the love of Zion is integral. The threat of the Greens is an ignorant and one-sided view, and we expect you to resign from it.”

The wagons are circled, the war continues.

There is no room for weaseling around, and Highgate Synagogue has sent a message – not just to our enemies who come in many guises, but also to the leaders of the community too often showing themselves inexplicably obsequious. Polite overtures often fall on deaf ears.

During the High Holy Days, government officials were given jars of honey to wish them a sweet new year. Their response was the imposition of sanctions and the desire to disestablish the state of Israel.

Our nation produces brave Davids, not timid Sauls.

As Elie Wiesel said in his oft-repeated guidance: “Stand up, do not stay quiet. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

10/19 Links Pt1: How ‘Palestine’ conquered France; UN Watch Releases Database Exposing Who Funds UN’s Human Rights Experts; As a UN envoy, I saw my colleagues’ anti-Israel obsession first-hand

From Ian:

Brendan O'Neill: How ‘Palestine’ conquered France

This is why the omnipresence of the Palestine flag matters – it confirms France is being consumed by the flames of anti-Westernism, by a nihilistic disdain for the very virtues of our civilisation. For that is what the so-called Palestine cause now embodies – not concern for the Palestinian people but contempt for ‘the West’. Not a desire for a ceasefire in the Middle East but a longing for fire here at home.

Some of us have argued for a while that the Islamo-left’s hysterical, disproportionate, bigoted and at times demented loathing for the Jewish State is proof that Israel has been made into the whipping boy of modernity, into the scapegoat, the sin-eater, of the West and all its supposed crimes. That the birthplace of the Enlightenment is now being burnt down by mobs draped in the Palestine flag proves this beyond doubt.

As one commentator notes, the ‘Palestinian cause’ seems to have become ‘a symbol of protest against Western institutions, national identities and political establishments’, even in situations that ‘have nothing to do with Israel or the Palestinians’. It’s the great, mad omnicause – a raging engine of grievance that absorbs every local resentment and every anti-Western pathology into a single, holy crusade. The actual geopolitics of the Levant are irrelevant to the Palestinianism that has swept the West, except, of course, that many of these people long for the annihilation of the Jewish State as a proxy for Western sin. What Palestinianism really adds up to is a cult of self-loathing. The keffiyeh is the mask the death of the Enlightenment wears.

This is the intifada coming home. The West’s craven failure to hold the moral line after 7 October, its indulgence of the Islamo-left mobs who hailed Hamas and libelled Israel, has started a fire of anti-civilisational hysteria that it will be incredibly difficult to put out. The nation that erodes its borders, tells newcomers their culture is just as valid as ours, fails to assimilate its foreign-origin youths and coaches its own young to feel shame over their national history is a nation that has signed its own death warrant.

Gavin Mortimer at the Spectator made a striking observation. The far-left agitators in France are mostly white, while the looters and cop-fighters ‘appear to be of immigrant background’. ‘The people seen on television forcing their way into the city halls of Marseille and Lille were mainly white’, he said, where the store invaders of Paris and Bordeaux were non-white. This is the New France. The New Europe, in fact. A place where there are youths who have no real roots in society, and youths whose roots have been violently torn up by institutions that have incited them into national self-loathing. Youths who are unassimilated, and youths who are from here but are constantly taught to hate ‘here’.

Entitled whites, young Muslim irritants, foreign-born louts, Islamist troublemakers, post-Enlightenment leftists and sanctimonious pricks who hide their hatred for the West behind a love of Palestine – that’s France now. Who’s next? Germany? Britain? We have so much work to do.

How “Globalize the Intifada” Came to France’s Streets

Israel has seen the devastation and destruction of intifadas firsthand, with buses and cafes attacked by suicide bombers that left countless people dead, injured, and traumatized. The call to globalize such a catastrophe reveals the dark desire to spread that same violence beyond Israel’s borders.

This is especially true in France, where despite the Jewish population representing less than one percent, antisemitic incidents account for 53 percent of all anti-religious acts. And as the protests spread, Jewish institutions are likely to continue to be a target. It is for that reason that in the midst of the protests in Paris, a synagogue was vandalized. In another incident in Marseille, a journalist noted that only Jewish businesses were attacked and set ablaze.

But the trespassing, vandalism, and destruction of property do not stop at a synagogue. Those protesting in the streets of France have frequently found common ground in hostility toward Israel, the Jewish people, and the systems and framework of Western civilization, including the country they are protesting. As such, the Palestinian flag and slogans have been a primary marker at these initially anti-government protests in France and Europe more broadly. Whereas the Palestinian cause has been turned into a vehicle for the radical left to express deeper anti-Western and anti-Jewish grievances, the same protests provide Islamist movements an opportunity to bring the symbols and rhetoric of a far-away conflict closer to enemies at home.

The supposed interconnectivity of these previously unrelated causes led Greta Thunberg, who previously traded her climate activism for the publicity yacht that attempted to challenge Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza, to join the protestors in France. With a keffiyeh draped across her shoulders, Thunberg, who was “incredibly proud” of the protestors, insisted that all protest movements “need to be united” because they face the “same enemy,” which is an “extremely destructive system.”

Ultimately, the protests are a telling sign of how the pro-Palestinian movement is no longer confined to demonstrations explicitly concerned with Palestinians, Israel, or the war against Hamas. The Palestinian flag, symbols, and slogans being chanted have become attached to other social or political movements, regardless of relevance, making the cause a prop for broader anti-Israel or anti-Western activism.

The integration of such symbols has become so normalized that “globalizing the intifada” is no longer merely a slogan chanted without understanding its words, but a European reality. The result is the exportation and glorification of a campaign of violence onto the streets of France.

Don’t Tell Me London Wasn’t Warned

In August 1994, The Independent⁠ reported Jewish students’ complaints about intimidation and literature invoking the killing of Jews. Farid Kassim, quoted as a spokesman for the organizers of a Wembley conference, rejected allegations of antisemitism and said the quotations had been taken out of context. Omar Bakri Muhammad was identified as Hizb ut-Tahrir’s national organizer.

The report also recorded Muhammad condemning the London bombings and the authorities saying there was no evidence of terrorist attacks by the group’s followers. That did not dispose of the concerns about what was being preached and circulated.

By the time I photographed Abu Hamza, officials were familiar with him too. A released Home Office document⁠, dated September 11, 2000, described his activities, his Supporters of Sharia organization and his extreme views. A year before the attacks in America, he was already the subject of government paperwork.

In November 2001, answering questions concerning Al-Muhajiroun and Omar Bakri Muhammad, Home Office minister John Denham said enforcement units were “monitoring and evaluating”⁠ information that might support prosecution.

There were investigations, and eventually prosecutions. The government’s later account of the Hamza case⁠ described earlier decisions that the evidence was insufficient, followed by material supporting charges in 2004. Knowing that somebody holds extreme views is not the same as having the evidence to prosecute them. I understand that. But the official record makes it impossible to pretend the concerns had never reached the people responsible for acting on them.

What I witnessed on London’s streets contributed to my decision to move to Israel in 2007. London remained the city where I grew up, learned my profession and spent much of my working life. Leaving did not remove that attachment. It is why the photographs still trouble me, and why there is anger in the pieces I write about the city today.

I look at today’s images with memories of what I photographed decades ago. I remember the people raising concerns, the public arguments and the assurances that the authorities were paying attention. My archive gives those memories faces, places and dates.

Outside the embassy that day, nobody needed an intelligence briefing to establish that an Israeli flag was burning. It was happening in front of us. I was recording it, and the police decided that my taking pictures risked antagonizing the people doing it.

Watching the rioting and looting in Paris over the past few days⁠, I find myself worrying about London again. The immediate causes are different, but the sight of another European capital struggling with violence on its streets brings back uncomfortable memories. I fear London could face scenes like these. That is my judgment, shaped by years of standing behind a camera in crowds that the authorities knew perfectly well were there.

The police were warned repeatedly. So were the security services and successive governments. Jewish communal organizations kept raising concerns, and the public record shows how long those concerns had been reaching officials. There were investigations and prosecutions, but there are still questions about the years in between. I remember being told to stop taking photographs because I was “antagonising them.” Looking at those photographs now, I wonder how much more people were expected to tolerate before their warnings carried sufficient weight.

Should London face the kind of scenes we are watching in Paris, I will have very little patience for anyone in authority who claims they could not have seen trouble coming.

British investigative journalist David Collier attended the Green Party conference earlier this month, and as usual, he hits it out of the park. He describes a political party that has been taken over by anti-Israel activists to the point where its original environmental mission appears almost secondary.

Collier describes an exhibition hall filled with booths devoted to Palestine, anti-Zionism and associated activist groups. Environmentalism was still present, but the excitement seemed to be elsewhere. Speakers repeatedly insisted that Palestine was an environmental issue, because obviously everything has to be about Palestine nowadays. Otherwise, organizers think, no one cares.

One particularly revealing episode involved the Green Party Women stand. The women displayed a sign reading "More Trees, Less Hamas," referencing the sexual violence committed by Hamas on October 7. According to Collier, a man confronted them, upset that they had criticized Hamas without also criticizing Israel.

To many Green members, women's rights are apparently subordinate to anti-Israel activism.

And the party has now officially adopted a resolution declaring that Zionism is racism, by a vote of 1,022 to 813. In order to do that they needed to redefine Zionism so that by definition it was racist, making the declaration a ratification of a made-up definition. But truth is not something the party values to begin with.

The hijacking is explicit. Animah Kosai, a co-chair of Greens for Palestine, openly explained her approach: "I don't believe in serving the Green Party ... I actually believe in using the party in order to reach certain goals. And in this case, for Palestine, for anti-imperialism."

At least she's being honest.

This should sound familiar to Americans. The Democratic Socialists of America have openly embraced running candidates on the Democratic ballot line to build political power and advance their own agenda. The idea is to use an established political party's infrastructure to change its direction from within even when its values and the values of the governing party contradict each other.

One detail that Collier noticed is most telling. Despite the conference's obsession with Palestine, Collier found that three events specifically devoted to Palestinian causes, organized by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, International Centre of Justice for Palestinians and Friends of Al-Aqsa, were held in rooms that appeared more than half-empty.

Hating Israel and Zionism attracts enormous enthusiasm. A resolution declaring Zionism racist mobilizes the membership. Activists celebrate what they regard as a historic victory. But sessions supposedly devoted to helping Palestinians cannot even fill their rooms.

I've argued for years that much of what calls itself the "pro-Palestinian movement" is better understood as an anti-Israel movement. Palestinian welfare is often used to give moral legitimacy to a campaign whose overriding objective is opposition to the Jewish state, and Palestinians are pawns in this larger desire to delegitimize Israel. The most prominent anti-Israel political party seems to bear this out.

The activists don't spend too much time raising money to provide food or medical services to Gazans. Their energy is in tearing Zionism down, not building Palestine up. It just so happens that the latter is the most convenient excuse for the former.

But to claim that these organizations are pro-peace or pro-Palestinian is false. Their motivation is anti-, not pro-.

And in this, they have illustrious ancestors.

Can you teach philosophy to five-year-olds? I decided to write a book to try!

Introducing Sarah Makes the World Better, my first children's book inspired by Derechology.

As my regular readers know, I’ve spent a lot of time over the past couple of years developing a philosophical framework I call Derechology. It’s an attempt to build a practical system of thinking from first principles that makes intuitive sense and can be applied to literally any situation.

I’m still trying to organize the Derechology book, but as I played with the idea, I wondered: could the concepts be made simple enough for a five year-old?

The result is my first children’s book, Sarah Makes the World Better.

Sarah is a little girl who wakes up one morning to the sound of workers repairing a pothole outside her window. She learns that things wear out and need to be repaired, but also that people can create entirely new things that make life better. She decides that she wants to make the whole world better herself.

It turns out to be harder than she expects.

In the course of a deceptively simple story, Sarah encounters several problems that adults struggle with as well.

She discovers that telling the truth is important, but so is how you tell it. She finds a drooping flower that she wants to move into the sunshine, but doing so might destroy an anthill beside it. Which is more important? How can she know what the right thing is?

These are serious ethical questions that are difficult to answer. That’s the point. Sometimes we don’t have enough information to know what is best, and sometimes legitimate values conflict with each other. How do we navigate these decisions?

Sometimes we should not act. Sometimes we do what is clearly right, like when Sarah visits a friend with a broken leg. Even then, she inadvertently hurts her friend’s feelings, recognizes her mistake, apologizes, and learns to listen to what her friend actually wants.

She also discovers something about relationships: helping one person can help others as well. And since those people are part of the world, making their lives better really does make the whole world better.

Along the way, the story introduces ideas about truth, the limits of knowledge, ethical judgment, competing values, creativity, relationships, and learning from mistakes. These are all central to Derechology, but none of the philosophical vocabulary appears in the story itself.

I wanted to avoid the usual formula where a children’s story presents a moral problem and then supplies the correct answer. Real life doesn’t work that way. Sometimes there are no perfect choices. Sometimes we misunderstand other people. Sometimes what matters most is recognizing that we made a mistake and doing better next time.

Sarah Makes the World Better includes a note for grown-ups on how to discuss some of the issues mentioned in the book with the child. These are mostly open-ended questions but even children face real dilemmas every day, and the book helps children navigate them without giving black and white answers.

The Hebrew word derech means a path. That is really the central idea: ethics isn’t about making one perfect decision. It’s about choosing a good direction and continuing to learn as we travel along it.

Sarah doesn’t solve every problem by the end of the day. But she has made the world better in her own small way, and she wants to stay on that same path tomorrow.

I’m happy at how this came out. It was also an interesting test of Derechology itself: if these concepts are genuinely fundamental to human life, they should be scalable from children to nations.

While Derechology is based on Jewish thinking, the book is for all; there is nothing overtly Jewish in it.

Sarah Makes the World Better is now available on Amazon. It would make a great gift for your children or grandchildren.

You can see all of my current books available on my new media kit.

I’d be interested in hearing what readers think, especially whether the story succeeds in encouraging children to ask questions rather than simply accept the ready-made answers most children’s books offer.