2025 ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Monday, April 21, 2025

04/21 Links Pt2: Yom Hashoah: It’s time to change how we look at antisemitism; Eulogizing pope, Jewish groups stress his response to Jew-hatred

From Ian:

Yom Hashoah: It’s time to change how we look at antisemitism

For years, educators have been warning about the declining state of Holocaust literacy in North America. Surveys, like the one released by the Pew Research Center in 2020, paint a stark picture when it comes to Americans’ knowledge of what occurred under Nazi Germany. Only 69% of the U.S. adults surveyed could accurately answer when the Holocaust took place. Less than half of respondents knew how many Jews were killed by the Nazis. Even fewer could answer how Adolf Hitler came to power.

Shortly after Oct. 7, however, Holocaust education centers like the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum began to notice an uptick in interest in their programs. Those educational displays that discuss the causes and effects of Jew-hatred are gaining increasing attention now, including from visitors not familiar with the age-old scourge.

“Many people are being exposed to the term for the first time,” USHMM historian Edna Friedberg told me during a recent conversation. “People are struggling to understand antisemitism—how to recognize it, what causes it, what it says about our societies and the risks we all face, Jewish or not.”

Friedberg believes that the Oct. 7 attacks and the escalation of anti-Jewish behavior that followed are now prompting Americans to ask more questions about what occurred during the Holocaust. “The rise in global antisemitism before Oct. 7 and its global eruption afterward should reinforce to all of us that longstanding antisemitism is what made the Holocaust possible and its continued threat,” she said.

If we want younger generations to understand the link between antisemitic behavior and the risk of tragedies like the Holocaust and Oct. 7, shouldn’t we be discussing the global history of Jew-hatred as well?

For my grandparents’ and parents’ generations, the Holocaust was a singular event—one that wasn’t necessarily discussed in relation to its cause (namely, antisemitism) the way it is today. The traumatic events of the Holocaust were for its survivors events to forget. Nor were they topics one necessarily talked about with family or members of the wider community. For my generation, asking about our grandparents’ experiences growing up in Europe or Russia was off the table, so acknowledgement about the dangers of antisemitism was as well.

I believe that this may be one of the reasons why America’s youngest generations today have such a disjointed understanding of what fueled the Holocaust. Antisemitism isn’t something that the Nazis created in Germany; it was an ancient set of social attitudes that they capitalized on, as old as Jewish culture itself.

“We must start by no longer trying to isolate the Holocaust from the rest of Jewish history or contemporary struggles,” wrote Jonathan Tobin, editor-in-chief of JNS.org, in his column, “Yom Hashoah After Oct. 7: How Holocaust Education Failed” (May 6, 2024). Although Tobin’s observation was made specifically in the context of how Holocaust education is often taught in American schools, it’s a statement that is just as relevant when it comes to the message we impart in our Holocaust memorials, museum exhibits and other educational venues.

If we want younger generations to carry on the lessons we are imparting today about the dangers of antisemitism, we need to be willing to discuss antisemitism’s millennia-long history, as well as the role it played in fomenting a major event like the Holocaust. The tragedy of Oct. 7 did something extraordinary: It inspired people to seek out knowledge independently that they may have felt they weren’t getting in schools and through the media.

We now have an opportunity to build upon that momentum by expanding how we talk about antisemitism globally and why the victims of the Holocaust are never forgotten, and are still honored today.

Jonathan Tobin: Trump isn’t exploiting antisemitism; he’s attacking its root cause

Critics of the Trump administration’s offensive against antisemitism in academia are right about one thing. The list of demands that President Donald Trump’s Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism sent to Harvard University, as well as those sent to other schools under intense scrutiny for their tolerance and encouragement of Jew-hatred, do go beyond that issue.

Trump has sought to change the way elite institutions of higher education conduct admissions, hiring and conduct discipline, as well as probe the immigration status of foreign students, who are key to the pro-Hamas cause and who led mobs on campus that were guilty of acts of intimidation and violence. He has also threatened to pull federal funds from them if they fail to comply. But in doing so, the task force he appointed aims at more than just making college quads safer environments for Jewish students and faculty.

That has led some Jewish liberals, including many who have expressed criticism of the way Harvard and the other schools that are in peril of losing billions in federal funding, to claim that Trump is “exploiting” the issue. And despite their patent failure to deal with the problem, some Jewish college presidents, including the leaders of Harvard, Princeton University, Wesleyan University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, all have the chutzpah to claim that they—and not the administration in Washington—have a better idea of what is and isn’t antisemitism.

They seem to be speaking for many on the political left.

That’s especially true of Jewish liberals, who have long been in denial about the reality of left-wing antisemitism. Their hatred for Trump—rooted in partisanship and class distinctions—simply will not allow them to accept that the “bad orange man,” who is largely supported by working-class voters, is actually fighting antisemitism instead of encouraging it. They also seem to brush aside the fact that, for all intents and purposes, Democrats they have ardently supported, like former President Joe Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris, actually fueled the fires of antisemitism while claiming to combat it.

Is fighting antisemitism ‘bad?’
This viewpoint is represented by a letter circulated by the left-wing Jewish Council on Public Affairs, an umbrella group of Jewish community relations councils once tied to Jewish federations but is now independent of them. It asserts that Trump’s effort to deal with antisemitism on campuses is actually “bad” for the Jews. The missive sticks to partisan talking points about antisemitism being primarily a right-wing phenomenon that were long out of date. Indeed, they are shockingly out of touch with reality since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the surge of hatred that followed that attempt at Jewish genocide. Their main point is a disingenuous claim that attempts to root out the prejudice against Jews and Israel that has become not only mainstream in academia and popular culture, but a new orthodoxy since Oct. 7, must be opposed because these efforts are against “democracy.”

They seem to think that moves to stop pro-Hamas mobs from harming Jews is an abridgement of the rights of those chanting for Jewish genocide (“from the river to the sea”) or terrorism (“globalize the intifada”), even though what is in question is not free speech but unlawful actions that violate the rules of these schools that have gone unenforced.

The text of the letter reflects the signers’ desire not merely to distance themselves from a Trump-led campaign against Jew-hatred but also from the State of Israel. Like individuals who oppose the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, these Trump opponents seem to want to create a “safe space” for those who oppose the existence of the only Jewish state on the planet that would exempt them from responsibility for their prejudice against Jews.

That this letter was signed by groups representing the major liberal denominations of Judaism in the United States—Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist—is a scandal. It’s also a terrible reflection of the way these movements have prioritized liberal or left-wing partisanship over their solidarity with fellow Jews or their sacred responsibility to stand up against bigotry and hatred.

Hey, Harvard—Woke Will Make You Broke

No Ivy League official condemned the massacre on October 7. No one called for the return of the hostages. Most shocking of all, Hamas was treated like a campus mascot. No one highlighted that Hamas is a genocidal death cult that is as much an enemy to Palestinians—most especially women and homosexuals—as it is to Jews.

Universities demand free speech and academic freedom—but only if it is approved speech and the freedom to spread lies and distort history. To this day, each of these institutions believes that threatening Jews is justifiable so long as it is ancillary to supporting Palestinians and criticizing Israel. Talk about shapeshifting, disingenuous nonsense.

Really? You mean if I happen to oppose racial equity, I can shove an African-American on campus and shout, “Lynch Blacks!”? Does academic freedom mean that the Harvard History Department, if it so chooses, can teach only one perspective on the Civil War—the one espoused by the Confederate Army and plantation owners—with each course concluding that Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was presidential overreach?

Universities have surrendered critical thinking to groupthink, replaced free speech with selective censorship, and categorically forbidden viewpoint diversity, especially if it involves seeing Israel as anything other than a settler-colonial, apartheid regime.

Punitive measures were necessary and most definitely deserved. They had well over a year and a half to properly respond to the antisemitism that had overtaken their campuses. Instead: academic jargon and lip service.

At the first, infamous congressional hearing, three presidents of elite schools refused to concede that calling for the genocide of Jews violates their Codes of Conduct. (It’s not protected under the First Amendment, either.) They dissembled, appearing contemptuous, all the while fearing how their testimony would play at home.

The natives on campus were restless, after all. The joke was on Congress. The gods of DEI were running these elite, out-of-touch, self-indulgent academies. Neither the safety of Jews nor the obligations of open inquiry were going to get in the way. Is it any wonder Jewish enrollment at these schools has been declining?

Some things, of course, never change. Many of the Jewish legacy organizations, and the Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist movements, signed a letter opposing the deportation of pro-Hamas foreign students and the denial of federal funds to these universities.

Black Lives Matter déjà vu, anyone? Jews are always pumping their fists at the front of the line, loudly proclaiming their tikkun olam bona fides, only to end up standing alone in other lines, destinations unknown, wondering what went wrong.

04/21 Links Pt1: The Dangerous Return of Pre-Oct. 7 Thinking; Douglas Murray: Society is being polluted by people who hate us; Kneecap, Green Day target Israel at Coachella

From Ian:

Jonathan Sacerdoti: Judaism Commands Us to Pursue Peace, but also to Confront Evil

Some 36 out of more than 300 members of the Board of Deputies of British Jews published a letter in the Financial Times on Wednesday rebuking Israel's military response to the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas. The Jewish religion and culture values disagreement. But the letter marks a deeply regrettable moment because it presents personal ideology as communal leadership.

It is entirely legitimate for Jews and anyone in the world to criticize Israeli policy, including during wartime. Jewish tradition has long prized argument, debate, and conscience. But it must not - particularly in times of war - blur the moral lines between those who defend life and those who seek its destruction.

The signatories claim that "Jewish values" are on their side - that war is inherently at odds with Judaism, and that diplomacy alone offers a path forward. But this is a selective reading of our tradition. Jewish values embrace both compassion and realism.

The Torah commands us to pursue peace, yes - but it also commands us to defend life, to confront evil, and to understand that in a world where enemies plot genocide, force is sometimes not only justified but required. Ecclesiastes teaches, "There is a time for war and a time for peace." The signatories would have us believe that Judaism demands surrender. It does not.

Their central claim - that diplomacy alone, not military action, has saved hostages - is historically and logically flawed. Every negotiated release of hostages has taken place under the shadow of Israeli military pressure. Hamas has never released hostages out of goodwill; it has done so because it has feared the consequences of continued defiance. Diplomacy works when backed by credible strength. Without it, there is no leverage - only wishful thinking.

The Israeli government did not "choose" to return to war, as if it were an option freely available. Rather, it resumed military action after Hamas repeatedly violated ceasefires, paraded hostages for propaganda, and rejected further disarmament proposals. Ignoring these facts is a refusal to deal with reality.

The dilemmas faced by Israel's leaders are excruciating. Every option is dreadful. But to pretend that there is an easy, bloodless alternative is not an act of conscience. It is an abdication of solidarity. In a time of war, clarity - about who we are, what we believe, and whom we stand with - is not just necessary. It is an obligation.

Seth Mandel: The Dangerous Return of Pre-Oct. 7 Thinking

The shedding of pre-Oct. 7 thinking on the part of many American Jews has occasioned a backlash from the revanchists who seek to undo any progress or advancement the Jewish community has made since that horrific day.

One example of revanchist thinking: the reversion to “keep your head down” Judaism out of fear that if we advocate for our own rights we will be blamed, fairly or unfairly, for the consequences.

This conceit is being increasingly deployed to argue against punishing universities and those affiliated with them for violating Jewish students’ civil rights. The Trump administration has penalized, sometimes harshly, schools that are in breach of federal law. The main fight is over the gobs of taxpayer cash these universities receive while seemingly violating the terms of that government funding.

Those who receive that money (or benefit directly from it) do not want to lose it. One such person is Yale medical professor Naftali Kaminski, who repeats a popular argument: The Jews will regret this.

Kaminski is not wholly representative of his fellow Keep Your Head Downers: he defends the pro-Hamas protests and pretends they are the only affront to Jewish civil rights on campus, which is of course nonsense. He even calls them—and I kid you not—“mostly peaceful.” In contrast, there are plenty of American Jews who don’t want the universities punished for their anti-Semitism but who are willing at least to admit that violent anti-Semitism and institutionalized religious-discrimination policies are bad.

But both end up at the same place: They worry that people will be angry at the Jews.

To which any sentient person would respond: “will be”?

It’s true, the Jews will be scapegoated. That’s how we got here, in fact. Goosestepping campus Hamasniks are scapegoating Jews. A key lesson of Jewish history is that whether or not Jews assert their dignity, they will be blamed for anything that goes wrong. The least we can do in the meantime is stand up straight and demonstrate a little self-respect.

Ruthie Blum: The significance of Netanyahu’s address to the nation

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the nation on Saturday night was not merely justified; it was crucial. In fact, the only real criticism one can reasonably level at it is that he announced it two days in advance.

That misstep, given the tense and fragile national psyche, led to unrealistic expectations. Was a major hostage deal in the works? Had the Israel Defense Forces already struck Iran? The lead-up spurred hopeful speculation among Netanyahu’s supporters and caused his detractors to repeat their usual “anybody but Bibi” mantras.

Not that the content of his 11-minute video mattered to Channel 11, mind you. No, Israel’s national broadcaster, paid for by the public’s tax shekels, didn’t even deign to interrupt its regular programming to air it. Channels 12 and 13 pulled a different stunt—cutting off the clip in the middle, dismissing it as unworthy of a full viewing.

Never mind that Israel is still fighting a multi-front war. Leave aside the fact that its most important ally is engaging in talks with the very entity heading the campaign to annihilate the Jewish state, while striving for regional and global hegemony.

In the eyes of a very vocal, culturally powerful minority, Netanyahu is far more dangerous than the Islamic Republic and each of its murderous proxies. But ignoring what he had to say was as self-defeating as the protest camp’s overall attitude.

It’s true that his statement lacked dramatic breaking news. Still, it was a message that everyone at home and abroad had to hear.

He needed to signal that he has no intention of caving to calls to end the war before achieving all of its goals: freeing the hostages, eliminating Hamas and ensuring that the denizens of Gaza never again pose a threat to Israel.

Though there’s nothing novel about his reiteration of these aims, he was compelled to counter the false narrative that’s been circulating about first freeing the hostages and later dealing with Hamas. On this, he set the record straight.

“Hamas is a gang of despicable murderers, but they’re not stupid,” he said. “They’re demanding binding international guarantees that leave no room for the illusion of a ‘trick’ that all the so-called ‘experts’ in the TV studios are trying to sell us. They have no idea how the international system actually works.”

He went on, “No one—certainly not the United States, not China, not Russia, not any other member of the Security Council—no one will cooperate with such a ruse, which would make returning to war impossible. We would have no legitimacy to do so.”

This week's hysterical "Al Aqsa Is In Danger!" comes courtesy of some random guy who made a video showing the Dome of the Rock exploding and being replaced with a Temple.

This is all over Arab media including Al Jazeera.

So some other random guy on Instagram took the picture of the Temple from that video, and used AI to blow it up instead.

No one seems too upset over that.

Meanwhile, the main preacher at Al Aqsa, Sheikh Ekrima Sabri, spoke "exclusively" to Egypt's Al Masry al Youm where he described the imminent destruction of Al Aqsa exactly as Arabs have predicted it for over a hundred years.

In exclusive statements to Al-Masry Al-Youm, Sheikh Ekrima Sabri, the Imam and preacher of Al-Aqsa Mosque, warned of the recent increase in Jewish settler incursions into Al-Aqsa Mosque. He stressed that these incursions have stirred up Muslim sentiments due to the intruders performing Talmudic prayers in the courtyards of the Noble Sanctuary.

Sabry explained to Al-Masry Al-Youm that extremist Jewish groups are exploiting the current circumstances to attack Al-Aqsa Mosque, pointing out that there is a gradual plan targeting the mosque that begins with imposing temporal and spatial division, then imposing Israeli sovereignty over the compound. He explained that the “Jewish extremists” are planning to strip the Islamic Waqf of its powers, leading to the demolition of the mosque and the construction of what they call the “alleged temple” on its ruins.

The Imam and preacher of Al-Aqsa Mosque emphasized that the occupation authorities have so far failed to achieve their primary goal of temporal division, despite campaigns of repression, arrests, and the expulsion of thousands of worshippers from the holy mosque.

Between 1995 and 2016 there was an annual "Al Aqsa Is In Danger!" festival in Israel, sponsored by the now banned Islamic Movement, which would attract as many as 30,000 people, all certain that the mosque will be destroyed in the subsequent year and equally convinced that the reason it hadn't been destroyed the previous year is because of their strength.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

So far, we have emphasized the Jewish sources and inspiration for Western ideas and philosophies that have been instrumental in the US Constitution and the Western legal system.

There is one important area where Jewish ethics diverges from Western law: the concept of rights.

The idea of "natural law," meaning that there is a rational moral order in the universe that can be determined by reason, has its origins in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. Thomas Aquinas fused that idea with theology, saying that natural law reflected the will of God and that the moral laws that could be derived from reason also aligned with Biblical principles. And as we have seen, John Selden codified natural law as a basis for the Western legal systems based on his study of the Noachide laws and Jewish sources, grounding natural law in shared duties.

All of this thinking centered the idea of human responsibilities.

John Locke, in his "Two Treatises of Government" (1689), introduced the revolutionary idea that beyond duties and obligations, all humans are born with natural rights to life, liberty, and property. These were not responsibilities but entitlements, discoverable by reason and granted by God. Later thinkers, most notably Thomas Jefferson, strengthened this concept by declaring these rights “unalienable”—meaning they could not be surrendered, even with consent, such as through a social contract with the state. This marked a major philosophical shift: rights were no longer dependent on reciprocal duties, as in earlier natural law traditions like John Selden’s, but became moral absolutes that stood apart from obligation.

As the idea of rights became more entrenched in Western thought, such as in the United States Bill of Rights and in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, rights became the central concept of political morality, replacing obligations. (Importantly, the U.S. Bill of Rights was originally framed as a check on state overreach, not a generator of positive entitlements.)

The West has been adding to the list of rights over time while declaring them self-evident - the right to free speech, the right to privacy, the right to bear arms, the right to pursue happiness. The sea change from the centrality of duties to that of rights has weakened the Jewish ethical idea of the moral and legal obligations that people have towards another.

This is not to say that Jewish ethics denies the concept of rights. Rather, rights emerge as a byproduct of mutual obligations. If everyone has an obligation not to steal, then everyone gains a de facto right to their property; the prohibition against murder and the value saying everyone is created in the image of God (tzelem Elokim) leads to the right to life. But the emphasis is different: rights are the result, not the foundation, of moral codes.

Placing rights higher in the moral hierarchy compared to duties also subtly changes the focus of one's role in the world. When obligations are central, it teaches people to be selfless - you treat others with dignity, you respect others' property, you do what you need to do to ensure a frictionless society where everyone treats all others as having inherent value. When rights are central, then the self becomes the focus - the world owes things to you.

Responsibility gets replaced with entitlement.

The concept of rights as inalienable has prompted some groups to use the language of rights to bypass any legal or ethical objections to an ever-lengthening list of "rights," real or imagined. While Locke emphasized rights from interference (from anyone taking away people's life, liberty or property,) today's rights language is oriented towards "positive" rights, to receive things for free (education, healthcare, income, housing.) They have changed from promoting freedom into entitlements, And over time, more and more of these rights are being asserted as social obligations of entitlements from the state, with no obligations in return: rights to free college education, abortion, paid vacation, parental leave, Internet access. These have further expanded to include controversial assertions: the right not to be offended, the right to compel others to use one's chosen pronouns, or the right to unrestricted access to social media platforms or national borders. When these are framed as inalienable, debate is shut down rather than encouraged.

As more social demands get turned into purported "rights," they inevitably interfere with other rights. The "right" not to be offended contradicts freedom of press.

Rights have gone from an assertion of basic human needs to a political weapon to silence opponents.

The repercussions of a rights-centric society are being seen today. While the list of rights - real or imagined - keeps getting longer, the list of responsibilities expected of people diminish. The world is becoming egocentric instead of altruistic.

What can be done?

Looking closer at an example where Jewish ethics conflicts with Western rights can help illuminate a way forward.

In the American context, free speech is treated as a near-absolute right. But in Jewish ethics, while speech is certainly valued, it is also heavily regulated. The laws of lashon hara (gossip or harmful speech), motzi shem ra (slander), and ona’at devarim (verbal abuse) all limit speech that is legal under secular law.

Jewish ethics asks, “Should I say this?” while Western law often stops at, “Do I have the right to say this?”

Having secular law incorporate the laws of lashon hara is not the answer nor would it be desirable. We are already seeing the negative effects of today's supposed human rights defenders now policing the speech of their political opponents. The rights framework is failing in front of our eyes.

The answer comes from how Jewish thought has bridged the gap between law and ethics. As we have seen, the concept of lifnim mishurat hadin - going beyond the letter of the law - is at the intersection between what the law demands and how people should want to act, and it plays a vital role. The multi-tiered Jewish ethics system ensures that even if an action is technically permissible, one should consider whether it is right.

Western ethics should do the same. Just because free speech is legal does not mean it is moral. Instead of justifying hateful speech and incitement by recourse to legality, the Western world needs to revert to thinking about whether the speech is ethical. The responsibility belongs to the speaker.

One of the dangers of a rights-only framework is that it invites people to maximize their own entitlements while minimizing their duties to others. This mindset encourages people to assert their rights aggressively, even when doing so causes harm, division, or cruelty. It enables moral minimalism: “If it’s not illegal, it’s fine.”

Jewish tradition pushes in the opposite direction. It cultivates moral maximalism: “What more can I do to act with compassion, integrity, and responsibility?” It actively discourages things that are "patur aval assur" - technically legal but still unethical.

There are similar conflicts between law and ethical responsibility. One has the right to their money, but a responsibility to give charity to others. One has the legal right to sex between consenting adults, but it could ruin marriages, families and lives.

In all of these, the Jewish framework urges us not to hide behind legality, but to evaluate our actions against a higher standard.

This does not mean abandoning rights. Rights are vital for protecting individuals from tyranny. But Judaism proposes a complementary paradigm: one in which people voluntarily restrain their use of legal rights in order to uphold ethical responsibility.

A society built on rights alone can become fragmented and adversarial. A society built on responsibilities cultivates trust, cohesion, and moral aspiration.

In this way, Jewish ethics offers a vital corrective to the rights-centric moral language of the West. It asks not “What am I allowed to do?” but “What is the right thing to do?”

This approach may offer a bridge between legal systems and moral conscience. Western societies would benefit from embracing not just individual freedoms, but the ancient Jewish insight that true morality is based on responsibilities, and rights are the outcome of these responsibilities, not the precondition to them.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Hamas/Hezbollah/Iran are pissing off Jordan, Lebanon

Last week Jordan announced that it had discovered a local plot to manufacture rockets, linked to people in Lebanon, which it blamed on the Muslim Brotherhood. I didn't think the local MB was likely behind it, since their position in Jordan is precarious enough; it seemed for likely to be an Iranian plot using Hezbollah and/or Hamas as proxies.

New details have come up which indicate I am right:

“This plot was likely orchestrated by a dissident group with extremist leanings, but the government may have used the opportunity to undermine the Muslim Brotherhood as a whole, especially following the IAF’s [MB political party] electoral gains,” said Neil Quilliam, a senior associate fellow at Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa program.

The Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood swiftly denied any involvement, saying it has “always supported the security and stability of Jordan.” That disavowal reportedly angered Hamas and its supporters, according to several observers.

“From an ideological standpoint, this could involve Hamas operatives in Lebanon,” said Jordanian political analyst Amer Sabaileh, noting that Lebanon has also detained Palestinians and Lebanese nationals in connection to the case. “Jordanian intelligence has tracked a Hezbollah- and Hamas-linked network working to move weapons into the kingdom and train operatives.”

Sabaileh also warned of a broader Iranian effort to turn Jordan into a logistical hub for its regional strategy. “After many arms seizures, the focus shifted to domestic weapons manufacturing and training local operatives,” he said.

Since then, the Lebanese army has arrested Hamas operatives who fired rockets towards Israel, and even foiled a planned attack:

The Lebanese Army announced Sunday that it had thwarted a planned rocket attack from southern Lebanon toward Israel and arrested several suspects in the Saida region.

Rockets launched into Israel on March 22 and 28, which were never claimed and were intercepted by the Israeli army, were used as justification by the Israeli army for two deadly strikes on Beirut's southern suburbs, and almost daily strikes on the South and Bekaa regions.

In a statement, the Lebanese Army said that following the arrests of “members of the group that carried out these operations,” it obtained intelligence indicating preparations for a new attack.

A military patrol subsequently raided an apartment in the Saida-Zahrani area, where it seized “several rockets and their launch pads.” Several individuals involved in the plot were arrested, the statement added.

On April 16, the army said it had arrested members of a “group composed of Lebanese and Palestinians” suspected of launching the rockets in March. A security source told L’Orient Today's correspondent that three of the suspects were members of Hamas.

Hamas has shown that it is willing to drag other countries into the conflict against their will. It seems to believe that the constant media coverage of civilian deaths in Gaza is strengthening its political position in neighboring Arab countries, and this is a major miscalculation. Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon hate Hamas and will do anything they think necessary to shut it down.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah's position in Lebanon, while not endangered yet, is subject to increasing criticism.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun affirmed on Sunday that the decision to confine all arms to the state has already been made, but he emphasized that its enforcement hinges on the “right conditions” to determine the timing and method.
Aoun’s statement came two days after Hezbollah Deputy Secretary-General Naim Qassem firmly rejected any possibility of disarmament. “We will not allow anyone to disarm Hezbollah or the resistance,” Qassem had said in a televised address.
He warned that Hezbollah has “other options,” though he stopped short of specifying them.

Hezbollah is still threatening Lebanon, and the Lebanese people are fed up both with it and with Hamas.

Iran is the common denominator behind all of this, and while Jordan and Lebanon do not feel comfortable yet in directly criticizing Iran, you can be sure that behind closed doors they understand that Iran is their real enemy - and Israel isn't.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Last December we reported about a Call for Papers in the Journal for Architectural Education that celebrated Hamas murder and rape of Jews.

This is not an exaggeration. The document labeled the October 7 attacks as part of "a rise of new formations of struggle and power" and forming a "pathology of hope." It also praised the bloodthirsty orgy of unspeakable violence as "the breaching of the border fence and the rupture of settler containment."

The call for papers caused immediate backlash, including from an ad-hoc group called Architects Against Antisemitism with gathered 700 signatures in a letter describing the call for papers as an act of “academic malpractice” that was “clearly aimed to glorify Hamas violence and demonize Israel under the pretense of scholarship.” It added, accurately, that “the ASCA is one of many academic institutions getting swept up in the same type of behavior that preceded the Holocaust for over a decade in German intellectual society. If you ever wondered what you would have done if you were alive back in 1930s Germany, it will be how you will respond to this moment.”

The journal's publisher—the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) - canceled the issue. But not because they objected to the sickening antisemitism and support of Hamas' own genocidal aims, but because of political pressure - two governors said that this issue violated existing laws against antisemitism, and the ACSA was also concerned about Trump's executive orders against antisemitism.

The journal's entire board resigned in response to dropping the issue.

What principles! So many people are so committed to supporting the right of schools to incite hate against Jews and Israel. They would never dream of supporting academic freedom for racist or homophobic speech, but attacking the Jewish people is sacrosanct.

They aren't ashamed of their stances. They are proud of them.

Antisemitism has always been the canary in the coal mine to predict the fall of societies. This is just one of many examples indicating that Western civilization is in serious danger.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

04/18 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: The Jewish community's fifth column; Vermont, Mohsen Mahdawi, and Mountains of Useful Idiots; Harry Truman’s Seder Message

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The Jewish community's fifth column

To issue such a public denunciation during a war for Israel’s existence is an act of treachery and betrayal. And in their supreme arrogance, the 36 are inflicting this damage from the relative safety of their homes thousands of miles away.

Even though they amount to merely one tenth of the Board’s 300 representatives, the message has gone out out through the mainstream media that those speaking for the Jewish community have denounced the war and blamed Israel’s government.

In a desperate attempt to mitigate the damage, the Board’s president, Phil Rosenberg, has written an article emphatically distancing the Board from the letter. He writes in the Jewish News:
Whether intentionally or otherwise, the impression that has now been put forward by certain national and international news outlets is that yesterday’s letter published in the Financial Times, signed by approximately ten percent of Deputies, is the position of the Board of Deputies as an organisation and therefore the position of the UK Jewish community as a whole. This is emphatically not the case, and as president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, I speak for the organisation as a whole…

We yearn for the return of the remaining hostages, whose absence is more acute than ever now, during the Festival of Freedom. Yet given that Hamas just this week rejected yet another mediation put forward via Egypt, which would have required the terrorist group to disarm, I am simply unable to agree with the viewpoint aired in the FT letter which lays blame squarely on the Israeli Government. I am confident that the vast majority of Deputies and the Jewish community as a whole agree with me…

It is remarkably easy to get the media to listen to you in this country if you highlight your Jewish identity while vocally criticising Israel or its government…for a letter signed by three dozen people to make headlines in an assortment of national newspapers, while TV and radio producers fight among themselves to get signatories to appear on their shows, makes very little sense.

Oh, but alas it does. For of course the letter has been seized upon with unrestrained glee by the mainstream media and others who want to bring Israel down. Just like the way in which the Iranian regime uses the handful of fanatics of the Jewish Naturei Karta sect, or as Jeremy Corbyn used other Jews who sought the destruction of Israel, the 36 letter-writers have provided the mortal enemies of Israel in the west with the opportunity that’s been seized upon by Jew-haters throughout the centuries — to use the Jews to do the haters’ own dirty work as enemies of the Jewish people, work that can then be plausibly denied as being anti-Jew.

The usefulness of this disgusting tactic was promptly demonstrated by John McDonnell, Corbyn’s former shadow chancellor, who tweeted about the 36 letter-writers:
Every signatory should be welcomed into that courageous band of Jewish people who have stood up for peace & an end to the killing.

Got that? The letter is being used to demonise all those Jews who support Israel in its desperate struggle to survive. These 36 signatories have now provided further rocket fuel for attacks on British Jews.

In their ineffable absence of self-awareness, they appear totally unaware that they are classic examples of the “As a Jew” Jews who were mercilessly satirised by Howard Jacobson in his novel The Finkler Question.

Now it turns out that the Board members include 36 Finkler “As a Jew” Jews. They don’t represent Britain's Jewish community. They don’t even represent the Board. They are the Jewish community’s fifth column, they are a menace to both the security and good name of that beleaguered community, and it is a disgrace that they are on the Board at all.

Decent people watching this unsavoury spectacle might well wonder how on earth Jews of all people can behave like this. The tragic reality is that Jews like this who turn against their own people with pathological viciousness have existed in every generation. The most acute threat to the Jewish people comes not from the world’s multitudinous antisemites, nor even from those waging war or genocide against Israel. The gravest threat to the Jewish people comes from Jews like these.

Azerbaijan: Augmenting the Abraham Accords

Two recent media reports underscored the emerging international stature of the Caucasian republic of Azerbaijan and its ties to Israel.

The first relates to the growing involvement of Azerbaijan’s State Oil Company (SOCAR) in Israel’s energy sector, entailing SOCAR’s first drilling operations outside of Azerbaijan.

The second related to a visit by President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff in Azerbaijan. This took place after endorsement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a group of prominent rabbis. The rabbis, including the founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, urged including Azerbaijan in the Abraham Accords framework and for the bolstering of a trilateral alliance between Washington, Jerusalem and Baku.

Some months ago, the value of such an axis was raised in a previous column of mine, and recognition of its merits, then enumerated, appears to be growing.

Arguably, one of the most fundamental traits of international relations is its inherent uncertainty. Indeed, it is a field where today’s truth is often stranger than yesterday’s fiction.

To illustrate the point, consider anyone in the early 1980s suggesting that:
Within less than a decade and a half, the mighty USSR would disintegrate;
The Warsaw Pact, once a formidable alliance confronting NATO, would crumble, with some of its members even joining the ranks erstwhile foes as part of NATO;
Then-impoverished nations, such as China and India, would become industrial and commercial powerhouses, with the former beginning to challenge America’s global economic hegemony;
There would be a massive shift of industry and commerce to Asia from the West.

Undoubtedly, any such far-sighted prophet would have been dismissed as totally out of touch with reality, if not as borderline deranged.

But that is precisely what transpired, with the world today far closer to the predictions of some outcast eccentric than that of the adherents of the then-prevailing conventional wisdom.

Daughter is born to Chabad rabbi Zvi Kogan, 5 months after his murder in UAE

A daughter has been born in recent days to Rabbi Zvi Kogan, an Israeli-Moldovan Chabad emissary who was murdered in November in the United Arab Emirates.

Rivky Kogan gave birth to a baby girl five months after Kogan, who was working to expand Jewish life in Abu Dhabi, was murdered by three Uzbek terrorists, according to the COLlive website, which reports on the Chabad community.

Kogan’s body was found in late November in the Emirati city of Al Ain after he had been reported missing several days earlier.

Friends and colleagues of the 28-year-old rabbi spoke fondly of him as a selfless leader who lived to help others.

Last month, the three murder suspects were sentenced to death in an Abu Dhabi court.

04/18 Links Pt1: Now It Can Be Told: Hamas Is Mortal; Mike Pompeo: We Don’t Need a Fake Deal With Iran; What the Shapiro attack tells us about America in 2025

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Now It Can Be Told: Hamas Is Mortal

This follows a familiar pattern: Israeli and American officials say something that is grounded in experience and rationality and thus is likely correct. The world bellows a collective How dare you? and rolls on. Eventually what the Israeli and American officials said is proved true. No one says “sorry.”

It has long been apparent that if there is hunger in Gaza it is because of Hamas, and if there is poverty in Gaza it is because—primarily at least—of Hamas. The terror group hijacked food aid and then impoverished civilians by raising prices of the very food they were supposed to be given.

Unlike humanitarian aid, which is physical, some aid groups have been able to get money to Gazan civilians through digital cash apps. But to buy their own “free” food back, Gazans then have to use a money-changer to turn that digital currency into cash, and the money-changer probably works for Hamas and charges, according to the Journal, a commission of 20 percent. If the Gazans are able to make it that far into the process, they must then use the “free” money to buy the “free” food at exorbitant prices. Which means in the end, they have paid dearly for less food than they probably should’ve gotten for free.

This is the miracle of “humanitarian aid.”

Now that the aid has been suspended, the Journal reports, “Salary payments to many Gaza government employees have ceased, while many senior Hamas fighters and political staff began receiving only about half of their pay midway through last month’s Ramadan holy period, the intelligence officials said.”

Plus, “the Israeli military has said it killed a money changer who was key to what it called terrorist financing for Hamas.”

This is how you defeat a terrorist army. Hamas isn’t an idea; it’s a human organization surviving on physical goods and paper money. Deprive it of those things and watch it disintegrate.

Trump Admin Eyes Fresh Hamas Sanctions Under 'Human Shield' Law That Biden Admin Ignored

The Trump administration is eyeing fresh sanctions on Hamas over the terror group's use of Gazan civilians as human shields—and using a longstanding law that the Biden administration ignored to do so, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

During President Donald Trump's first stint in the White House, in 2018, Congress passed a law requiring the president to sanction terrorist entities, including Hamas and Hezbollah, that use "innocent civilians as human shields." In the wake of Hamas's Oct. 7 terror attack, lawmakers amended the legislation to include mention of Palestinian Islamic Jihad and to compel the Department of Defense to submit a report on its work "hold[ing] accountable terrorist organizations for the use of human shields."

Biden, who repeatedly condemned Hamas for using human shields, signed the law as part of an April 2024 package that provided emergency aid to both Israel and Ukraine. But his administration never unveiled sanctions that cited the law and never submitted the human shields report to Congress, according to a senior Senate aide, prompting bipartisan criticism. Now, Treasury and State Department officials are pledging to reverse course as part of a broader "maximum pressure" sanctions campaign on Tehran and its terror proxies.

The push comes as Hamas struggles to pay its rank-and-file fighters amid a halt in humanitarian aid that Hamas seizes and sells to generate funds. Additional sanctions, then, could further bankrupt Hamas.

The powers granted under the human shield law allow the Trump administration to target any terror leader who has authorized the use of human shields, giving the administration broad flexibility to sanction virtually anyone tied to the practice—past and present. Penalties could include the seizure of all property and assets belonging to Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad members. Though some of those penalties are in effect through existing sanctions, the Treasury Department said it is keen to use "every tool available" to ensure Hamas gets no reprieve from punitive measures.

"It comes as no surprise that the Biden Administration enabled these terrorists through inaction, but we are pleased to be reversing course in order to keep Americans and our allies safe," a Treasury spokesman told the Free Beacon in a statement.

"The Treasury Department is proud to use every tool available to us, working in close coordination with the entire Trump Administration to hold Hamas and other terrorists accountable for horrific actions which clearly violate U.S. and international law."

Seth Mandel: A Mall in Ramallah

Most hilariously, Haaretz quotes Ramy Abdu, the head of an NGO whose sickening fealty to Hamas repulses Palestinians too. Abdu, one of the most widely reviled anti-democracy activists in the conflict, whines that the director of the mall is Qassam Barghouti, son of Marwan Barghouti, a prominent Palestinian politician in Israeli jail for his alleged role in numerous terrorist attacks. Barghouti is also considered a serious challenger to PA President Mahmoud Abbas should he be released by Israel. Were Barghouti to eventually become Palestinian president, his constituents would surely benefit more from the construction of shopping centers and the opening of employment opportunities than from an endless commitment to bloodshed apparently preferred by Abdu.

And that’s the crux of it, really. Statehood and self-determination is not as attractive to these Palestinian activists as is mutual, perpetual misery. Who wants food and jobs when you could have war?

In fact, the real objection of so many Palestinian pundits to signs of normality and commerce is the contrast they set with Gaza. Palestinians have made choices over the years. Those choices have resulted in two different national projects: one looks like the West Bank and one looks like Gaza. Which is the more desirable path forward?

The Icon Mall isn’t going to bring peace. But it has a Palestinian branch of an Israeli luxury textiles chain, and that puts Ramallah closer to coexistence with Israel than pretty much every U.S. college campus.

Considering Gaza’s real estate and the unholy gobs of money the world throws at it, Gaza could out-gleam Ramallah any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Gaza’s condition today is what happens when you take all that human and physical capital and put it in Hamas’s hands.

The Palestinian-governed parts of the West Bank aren’t exactly a land of endless prosperity. And the Abbas-run PA is an incompetent and corrupt bureaucratic dinosaur. Yet there is still such a difference between that and Gaza.

The Palestinian pundits and activists quoted by Haaretz don’t want that difference to be emphasized. But Palestinians ought to know how much better their lives would be without Hamas or another death cult in charge. In that sense, the son of an imprisoned terrorist opening an enormous mall in Ramallah is what we call generational progress, even if we’re grading on a Palestinian curve.

Chag Sameach, again

I will be off for the next two days for the end of Passover.

Here's a report of something I wrote a few months ago that is appropriate:

This is an excerpt from "Moon Of Israel," a 1924 Austrian film that depicted a love story between a Jewish slave and an Egyptian prince. It is perhaps best known for its depiction of the splitting of the sea, which was considered by critics at the time to be technically superior to that of Cecil B. DeMille in his 1923 silent version of The Ten Commandments. Unfortunately, the film quality of Moon of Israel is not close to restored versions of the original Ten Commandments. (You can see that version here, start around 30:00.)

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Can ethics exist without a religious framework?

This has been a fundamental question ever since the Enlightenment first separated moral reasoning from religious doctrine. Thinkers from Immanuel Kant to John Stuart Mill, and from Marx to Ayn Rand, have proposed frameworks to ground human morality in logic, reason, emotion, or social need. Yet time and again, these secular ethical systems have failed—either in application, coherence, or resilience.

Utilitarianism is a good example. At its most basic level, it says that people should choose the action that gives the greatest good to the greatest number of people. But the naive version of utilitarianism would therefore say you can kidnap a healthy man and steal his heart, liver, kidneys and lungs to save the lives of up to five people. Seems like a simple calculation - 1 person's life for 5. Of course, this is monstrous.

Since that cannot be moral, utilitarians added layers of complexity on top of the theory. One version says that rules are layered on top of the direct results, because a rule that you can't murder someone is better for society in the long run. Others add the negative psychological effects of people knowing that they can be snatched at any time which is also bad for society. Another school created "preference utilitarianism" saying that people's preferences are a major factor in the "greatest good" calculation, and most people prefer not to donate their organs before death. Others added a layer of "bodily autonomy" as another factor in calculating people's welfare. John Stuart Mill adds another factor, of people's rights, as an additional layer of the calculus - while utilitarianism does not recognize rights, the concept of rights indirectly helps everyone's welfare. Another prominent utilitarian added that it can operate on multiple levels - sometimes an individual can make his utilitarian calculations and sometimes he has to fall back on the "rules utilitarianism" mentioned above.

In the end, we have a mess to explain why the straightforward philosophical test case of why 1 healthy life for 5 is in fact immoral. It is as if the philosophers know that there is a major flaw in the elegant rule, but instead of throwing away the rule they are making the simple rule absurdly complex and unusable for average people making their decisions. Every one of these exceptions and qualifications and reframings undermine the very simplicity that makes the philosophy attractive to begin with.

The utilitarians know intuitively that the idea of a calculation to determine morality is wrong, since this trivial case proves it. The only reason they know that is because they have an internal moral compass that screams "this is wrong." But they are so emotionally tied to the elegance of the idea in its pristine form that they cannot let it go so they create new fences around the rules to protect the idea, the single moral value of maximizing good. And yet, despite the increasing complexity, the original flaw remains: the system cannot tell you why sacrificing one for five is wrong - it can only try to obscure the horror through layers of abstraction.

All secular philosophies have their own problems. Some, like Kantianism, offer rigid rules but no real mechanism to decide the overriding values when they conflict. Still others, like existentialism, place moral weight entirely on the individual conscience, which opens the door to moral relativism or nihilism. These systems may be elegant but they are either too simple, too brittle, or too context-insensitive to govern the real moral complexity of life.

The appeal for a secular system of ethics is clear. Such a system, if it works, can be used as a baseline for the world, across cultures and belief systems, giving everyone a common ethics language. Yet the question remains: how can an ethical system be built that is rigorous, adaptable, and inspiring without recourse to religion?

I am arguing that Jewish ethics and the Jewish ethical framework, as we've been describing it in previous chapters, may be the best candidate to serve as the foundation of a universal, secular moral framework.

Jewish ethics does not require faith in God for one to understand, adopt, or apply it. Its strength lies not in divine command theory, but in its accumulated wisdom, its case-based reasoning, its openness to critique, and its built-in tools for self-correction. It is the closest thing humanity has to a moral large language model, trained on centuries of dilemmas, arguments, precedents, and diverse perspectives.

I would argue that the values we've listed, like life, truth, dignity, compassion, justice, community, humility and responsibility, are fairly universal. There may be disagreement on their relative values but they are truly universal.

The system really shines in the framework itself, which is independent of the underlying values.

It is the adjudication layer, to balance competing values, and the integrity layer, to ensure the process includes course corrections and is resistant to political pressure, which makes the Jewish ethical model both unique and suitable for everyone. Unlike many secular systems, Jewish ethics doesn’t pretend that there is always one right answer: it shows you how to think about the question through multiple viewpoints, not just one rule. Like Supreme Court opinions, the process not only records the winning argument but enshrines the losing argument too, because next year or next millennium circumstances may change and the minority opinion may become relevant in another context.

The system's transparency allows criticism and refinement. Its decentralization makes it difficult to be hijacked. Its longevity and long-term views ensure that it will not decide based on passing fads.

There is nothing in the system that is inherently faith based. Because it uses a halachic/legal framework, it is structured like a legal tradition. It can be studied and applied without belief. Just as the U.S. Constitution was inspired by ideas from Jewish covenantal thinking but functions as secular law, so too can Jewish ethics. While Jewish law can and does answer questions with "because God said so," Jewish ethics does not.

Jewish ethics has helped a minority people survive millennia, navigate moral complexity, adapt to wildly different political regimes, and maintain integrity. It is not a thought experiment. It’s a lived system.

Earlier chapters have shown that Jewish ethics goes beyond halacha. Concepts like lifnim mishurat hadin (going beyond the letter of the law), naval b’reshut haTorah (a scoundrel within the bounds of the law), and ethical writings like Pirkei Avot make clear that the Jewish moral tradition goes way beyond legality. Indeed, it asks people to do the right thing, not just what is legal.

This is what secular systems are missing: an ethic that combines rigor with compassion, structure with adaptability, and values with humility.

The Talmudic phrase lo bashamayim hi - "it is not in heaven" - means that once the Torah was given, moral reasoning (and even legal interpretation) became a human responsibility. Even divine authority does not override the consensus of human interpreters when applying law and values. This idea, astonishing for its time and still powerful today, affirms the legitimacy of human reason to interpret and apply moral frameworks. And it is the key to allow secularists to adapt it as a usable, functioning ethical system.

In other words, the Jewish system itself says: You don’t need prophecy. You need commitment, curiosity, logic, and moral courage.

To be sure, a system based on Divine revelation is more compelling for people of faith than for secularists. The faithful may cite scriptural texts to support their ethical decisions, but not to decide them. Yet the system does not rely on any such revelation, and therefore should not be objectionable to secularists. In fact, rejecting it purely because of its religious origin, rather than pointing to actual flaws in the system, would be evidence that secularists are just as prone to blind judgment and bias as any religious person.

If secular moral thought is genuinely objective, then it should be willing to evaluate frameworks not by their origin, but by their structure, adaptability, and results. Jewish ethics does not demand belief - it demands engagement. The study of these topics is itself considered a virtue. To reject it outright purely due to its religious roots is to commit the very fallacy secularists often critique in others: irrational bias.

All people are biased. It is better to examine oneself, admit and examine one's biases up front and (if necessary) compensate for them than to deny that they are there and pretend that one is uniquely objective. The bias might be cultural, or religious, or just to be committed to an idea to the point that you can no longer think rationally about whether it is true or not.

The underlying base values of the Jewish ethical system may be considered God-given within Judaism, but one does not need God to say that human life is valuable, kindness is a virtue and honesty is the best policy. Nearly every part of the system beyond the base values have been created, maintained and refined by people, not angels.

The concept that Jews should be a light unto all nations means that Jewish ethics should be inspirational, not imposed. They should be able to stand up to any and every other moral system. Jewish ethics may have begun in particularity but it aspires to universality. It already has informed legal systems, civic virtues, and constitutional design far beyond the Jewish world. Its structure is flexible enough to dialogue with other cultures, and strong enough to offer a coherent moral vocabulary.

One may ask why this moral system is superior to ancient Eastern systems, for example, that have also stood the test of time. I cannot claim to be an expert on Eastern religions or morals. I am arguing for the Western world to adopt the Jewish ethical framework, since that is where I am from and almost certainly where you are from, too. My guess is that the other systems can gain by adopting a Jewish-style framework, feel free to argue.

I’ll happily admit my bias: I believe that Western civilization is worth preserving and improving. It has achieved amazing things. I am alarmed with the direction the West has been moving with influence - often subconscious -from Communism, social justice and progressivism. Antisemitism has been my moral test for these other worldviews - if they accept or encourage hate of Jews or Judaism or Israel as the Jewish state, then they are not moral systems and this is a good indication that they must be fought against, not merely accepted as other valid viewpoints.

This is what this project is about - to define an alternative that is moral, universal and tested.

As a bonus, Jewish ethics is already interwoven with the moral DNA of the West—through law, culture, and conscience. No one has to adopt a new culture, a new ethical vocabulary or make major changes in their way of thinking. While I recognize that Jewish ethics is not the only moral system with value, it is already congruent with what most people in the West accept. If a moral system both honors tradition and fosters reform, respects the individual and the collective, and has already shaped the world we live in, why reinvent the wheel?

This is not about cultural superiority. It’s about moral maturity.

The Jewish ethical framework has been battle-tested through oppression, exile, renewal, and complexity. It is a moral language that integrates past and present, law and values, community and conscience.

It can be learned. It can be adapted. And it can form the backbone of a secular ethical system that is not fragile, not ideological, and not simplistic.

For secular thinkers searching for a better way, Jewish ethics is not an outdated, rigid, fanatic worldview. It’s a model that fits what they want most of all - an ethical system that actually works. It cannot give all the answers but it is the best way to frame the questions, and that is the best that we can ever hope for in a world that is anything but simple.

Let’s learn from the longest-running moral system still in use - and make it our own.

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Last week, antisemitic far-Right sites breathlessly posted a video by a Jewish influencer that described the yellow-capped Kosher for Passover Coke, claiming that this is proof that Jews run the world since Coke is making it "just for Jews."

These posts received millions of views.

The comments add more information that we Jews apparently try to keep secret from the goyim:

And of course this encourages the antisemites even more:

I cannot quite figure out the conspiracy angle. Jews want non-Jews to consume corn syrup? Then why don't we make Jew Coke all year instead of for only one week?

I was upset that I couldn't find regular yellow-capped cane sugar Kosher for Passover Coke this year - the stores were sold out. The goyim bought them all so we Jews couldn't get it!

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Ibrahim Ibrash is a professor of political science at Al Azhar University in Cairo and a former culture minister in Egypt.

In the Palestinian Sama News, he asks, "Why does Israel refuse to stop the war?"

The answer cannot be something simple like "because Hamas hasn't released the hostages." No, that is too simplistic for the esteemed professor. He starts off expanding on the question:

Despite all the flexibility offered by Hamas in the Cairo negotiations over the past two days, Israel continues to refuse to stop the war. This is because Israel's problem in the Gaza Strip and in waging a war of genocide and ethnic cleansing was not Hamas, its weapons, or the kidnapped Israelis.

Israel's goal is broader than that, and it found in Hamas's Operation Flood of Al-Aqsa an opportunity to achieve or accelerate it. Its goal is not to end Hamas's military presence and recover its kidnapped soldiers, as Netanyahu declared, but rather to have much greater objectives.

Oh? What exactly is it?

To find out, we go on a Biblical detour:

One of the Jewish religious books, (1 Kings 4:24), which dates back to the reign of Solomon, as the Jews claim, states: “The borders of the Kingdom of the Jews end at the borders of the city of Gaza, which was never included in the Kingdom of the Jews. After that, it remained the property of the Palestinians. Since that date, Gaza has been cursed by the Jews.”

We will not delve into the above text at length, but assuming it is authentic, it confirms, on the tongue of the Jews themselves, two facts: the first is that when the Hebrews came to Palestine, they found the Palestinian people there, and this refutes all their claims that there is no people called the Palestinian people; and the second is that Gaza has a history of struggle that extends back to ancient times and has not stopped.

The verse citation is wrong and the quote is wrong as well - Kings 5:4 mentions Gaza as one of the edges of Solomon's kingdom, and nothing beyond that.

And of course this professor cannot tell the difference between Philistines and Palestinians.

Finally, he says the real reasons Israel is at war:

Because Gaza is all this past and present, and because Gaza is also the only seafront for the Palestinian state in the event of its establishment, and because there is oil and gas in its waters, and because Gaza refuses to be separated from all of Palestine and has responded to the call of duty when our people in Jerusalem and the West Bank called for help, and because this entity wants Gaza and its problems to divert attention from the main battlefield in the West Bank and Jerusalem... For all of this, it has hatred towards it and plans to destroy it and accomplish what the early Hebrews were unable to do, as their religious myths say, in addition to thwarting the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem.

It is hard to explain why Israel withdrew from Gaza to begin with when it had all these plans!

Ibrash, perhaps mimicking Egyptian thinking, goes on to say that Hamas is idiotic for not putting down its weapons and fleeing!

Finally, if Hamas had not started its "flood" and abandoned its stubbornness and obstinacy at the beginning of the negotiations, it would have been possible to disrupt this strategic Zionist plan and all these losses and destruction would not have occurred. But now I fear that matters have reached a point where even Hamas handing over all the kidnapped Israelis and giving up what remains of its weapons will not deter the enemy from implementing its goals and things will not return to the way they were. Herein lies the dilemma of Hamas and the dilemma of the Palestinian cause. The only solution is a serious Arab and international official and popular movement to force Israel to stop the war, even if temporarily, in exchange for Hamas giving up its weapons and leaving the Palestinian scene militarily and politically.

Because he believes that Israel's goal is to eradicate all Palestinians and flatten Gaza, the idea of Hamas laying down its arms and leaving Gaza are presented as a compromise!

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