Monday, March 17, 2025

03/17 Links Pt2: The pro-Palestine left is facilitating fascism; The Unbounded Anti-Semitism of the BBC; Are Defenders of Mahmoud Khalil Ready to Defend Speech they Despise?

From Ian:

Phyllis Chesler: How the West was won, and how it can be saved
The Islamification of the West began long ago with Arab and Islamic attacks against infidels, especially the Jews. By the beginning of this century, anti-Zionism characterized the new antisemitism. Israel became the scapegoat of the world for the crimes of their persecutors.

In the last quarter-century, Israel and the Jews have faced large armies, as well as well-funded and relentless propaganda. It has simultaneously been defamed and sanctioned in every language; anti-Israel resolutions and reports have been issued by student bodies, human-rights groups, literary prize judges, academic faculties and the United Nations, whose only accomplishment has been the legalization of Jew-hatred. Students and outside agitators in the West “flood” streets and campuses, Hamas-style; and take over university buildings on behalf of the sadistic and barbarian aggressors they believe are the victims of alleged Israeli apartheid, colonial oppression and genocide.

Thus, as Israel is fighting for its very life and good name, the entire world believes that Israelis are the aggressors and that the true victims are the leaders of an infidel-hating death cult.

How are we to understand such an Orwellian reversal of reality, such a triumph of Nazi-style propaganda? British journalist and JNS columnist Melanie Phillips explains it to us in her new work, The Builder’s Stone: How Jews and Christians Built the West—and Why Only They Can Save It. In doing so, she joins and updates the work of writers and researchers Steve Emerson, Oriana Fallaci, Daniel Pipes, Bruce Bawer, Douglas Murray and Asra Nomani.

First, Phillips notes that Israel and the West are up against two death cults: one is external and consists of Islamist jihadists; and the other is a fifth column of elite, “politically correct” Westerners who have been persuaded that the West is evil beyond redemption and that barbarians are entitled to destroy what’s left of society. These Westerners refuse to believe that Islamic regimes have been and remain the largest practitioners of gender and religious apartheid. They refuse to believe that various Islamic regimes still own slaves and murder apostates, dissidents, homosexuals and feminists. They ignore any proof that Islamic regimes currently persecute or forcibly convert, but, more often, genocidally murder Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and Baháʼí.

Despite all this, Arabs, especially Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, are still always the victims.

None of Phillips’s predecessors had to ponder the world’s unexpected and, at first, unbelievably bizarre reaction to the Hamas-led pogrom on steroids in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. This is something Phillips deftly tackles as she explains why so many “woke” Westerners deny Jewish victimhood, especially the atrocities that took place that day.
The pro-Palestine left is facilitating fascism
Yet, over recent years, anti-Semitism and attacks on the Jewish community have increased because of the ongoing wars in the Middle East. This rise in anti-Semitism and racism towards Jews is coming not from the political right, but from the left and those it chooses to ally with. This includes people who believe themselves to be anti-fascists in their support for Palestine. There has been a sinister turn of events since 7 October 2023, when Hamas soldiers and supporters murdered and tortured civilians in Israel, before taking hostages into Gaza. What followed in the West was a rise in fascist language and ideology among the ‘pro-Palestine’ movements, including the conspiratorial view that a global Zionist movement is pulling the strings of international affairs.

On social media and on pro-Palestine marches, I have seen and heard absurd accusations that Israel has been responsible for all manner of atrocities. I have seen Nazi salutes thrown and heard Holocaust denial. This is clear, unhinged racism. And yet it is rarely called out.

I cannot imagine a situation in which the organised left would march side-by-side with the traditional far right. Yet the pro-Palestine left has been happily marching almost weekly for 18 months with people who are Holocaust deniers, racists and believe anti-Semitic conspiratorial ideology as if it were fact. Who seem to think Hamas is made up of freedom fighters resisting imperialism, rather than far-right, anti-Semitic terrorists. They are turning a blind eye to those who promote fascism and racism among them.

We must confront this dangerous alliance, lest we forget the lessons of the Second World War and allow a new form of fascism to take root in Europe once again.
Seth Mandel: Blame-the-Jews Lawfare Comes To America
Which brings me to the case of Mahmoud Khalil, the green-card holder who has been made subject to deportation proceedings over accusations of support for Hamas. Khalil was part of the larger, functionally pro-Hamas tentifada movement, but the administration has yet to lay out the specifics of its case. Until it does, the courts will keep Khalil here in the U.S.

Taal and the ADC tie their complaint explicitly to Khalil’s case, using it to bolster their claim that the executive order protecting Jewish rights on campus is illegal.

The implication is clear: Blame the Jews.

It just so happens that the executive order in question does not change immigration law in any way, nor does it advocate for the removal of anybody’s due process rights. One provision of the order, late in the text, adds that “the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Education, and the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with each other, shall include in their reports recommendations for familiarizing institutions of higher education with the grounds for inadmissibility under 8 U.S.C. 1182(a)(3) so that such institutions may monitor for and report activities by alien students and staff relevant to those grounds and for ensuring that such reports about aliens lead, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to investigations and, if warranted, actions to remove such aliens.”

The lawsuit claims that the subsequent statements of administration officials displayed bad faith in the form of their expressions of enthusiasm at the possibility of cracking down on “pro-Hamas” aliens.

But the executive order is not primarily about immigration; it is an across-the-board directive to agency heads to report their findings and progress in cracking down on anti-Semitic harassment in each of their legal domains, and to coordinate where necessary. Nothing about the order dissolves any existing legal rights. It is akin to telling a city cop to crack down on jaywalking.

If the law is illegitimate, it should be challenged. But what is being targeted here is the part of the order (and a separate, immigration-focused executive order) that represents a written encouragement to enforce that law. And why? The most likely answer is to delegitimize as unconstitutional the administration’s attempts to protect Jewish students.

The attempt to dismantle efforts to reduce anti-Semitic harassment on campus is entirely gratuitous here. Taal’s rights and the rights of Jews in America can coexist. Taal’s reaction to the events of Oct. 7, 2023, however, would suggest that that would not be a satisfactory solution to him and to the other parties behind this particular complaint.


Stephen Pollard: Labour is indulging Muslim extremism, and Starmer won’t stop it
Superb as Sir Keir has been on the world stage, in at least one critical area of domestic policy he has shown that he has learned nothing, and is dangerously wrong. I refer to his and Labour’s Achilles’ Heel: its inability to tackle, indeed its willingness to work with, Muslims who hold what might be termed problematic views.

Last week, for example, Sir Keir held a reception for Ramadan at Downing Street. Quite right, too. It is one of our many strengths as a nation that we celebrate the contributions made by different faiths. But when you hold such an event, it is of critical importance that invitations are only extended to those who deserve to be lauded – and are not handed to those with views that need to be tackled. Certainly not to anyone who celebrated the October 7 Hamas massacre.

Yet at least one attendee, Liverpool imam Adam Kelwick, did just that, posting on social media four days later: "David beats Goliath!" and later urging fellow Muslims to "pray for victory" over Israel in the Gaza war. He has posted how he looks forward to Israel’s death, writing that it is “lashing out like a wild animal that thinks it’s about to die”, which is a “good sign” militarily.

This is not a one-off mistake but is emblematic of Labour’s approach to such people. Deputy prime minister Angela Rayner confirmed last month that she is setting up an Islamophobia commission to draw up a governmental definition chaired by Dominic Grieve. The former Conservative Attorney-General is just about the worst possible choice for the role, having written the foreword to the 2018 report by the All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims which proposed the definition which was then adopted by Labour. It states that “Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.” This is so all-encompassing as to classify almost any criticism of Islam as a religion as racist and which, were it to be enacted, would be in effect a blasphemy law – and one which singled out only Islam for protection.

Last November, Sir Keir responded to a demand by Labour MP Tahir Ali that he “commit to introducing measures to prohibit the desecration of all religious texts and the prophets of the Abrahamic religions” by saying that he would tackle “Islamophobia in all its forms”, describing “desecration” as “awful” and urging it to be “condemned across the House”. Three weeks later the government then said it would not introduce a blasphemy law. But such a statement is meaningless. No one suggests Labour would openly legislate to recriminalise blasphemy; the point is that the measures Labour does want to introduce – such as on Islamophobia – would amount to a blasphemy law.

The direction of travel is clear. Within weeks of taking office Labour started refunding Unrwa, supported the ICC arrest warrants on Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant and imposed restrictions on arms sales to Israel. In January, junior minister Sir Stephen Timms attended a Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) dinner, despite a government ban on engagement with the group which has been in place since 2009. He is still in post.

As for why: it is a combination of ideology and political demographics. Put simply, Labour needs the Muslim vote and is afraid of losing a significant chunk of it. At the last election, candidates who sought to appeal almost entirely and only to Muslims had a huge impact, with four independents winning seats along with Jeremy Corbyn. Labour’s vote fell by over 14 per cent in constituencies where the Muslim population is above 15 per cent. This matters: there are 37 constituencies with a Muslim population of more than 20 per cent, while a further 73 seats have a Muslim population between 10 and 20 per cent. The implications of this are obvious, and they are being played out in government now.

Sir Keir Starmer may now be a global statesman, but at home he remains a captive of his party’s need to court the Muslim vote.
Stephen Pollard: The Unbounded Anti-Semitism of the BBC
The BBC’s coverage of Israel is now clearly part of a broader pattern in its coverage of Jews. In 2021, it covered an attack by a gang of Muslim youths on a bus of Jewish children in Oxford Street in London by asserting that one of the Jews had said “dirty Muslims.” The Jewish child was in fact calling for help in Hebrew, but the BBC reported the slur as fact—as if it was desperate to find a way to blame the Jews and excuse the behavior of their Muslim attackers.

At every stage in the coverage of this incident, the BBC behaved as if it regarded those who were angry with its reporting—Jews, that is—with pure contempt. When the boys’ lawyer wrote to the BBC, it demanded he hand over their names as a condition of engaging with the complaint—an astonishing and outrageous attempt to remove the anonymity of the minor victims of an assault. Then when the BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit released its findings after a series of complaints, it said merely that “more could have been done” to “acknowledge the differing views…on what was said.” The difference between truth and fiction, that is.

Sometimes the BBC’s attitude is revealed in what it doesn’t say, as in its coverage of the Beth Israel synagogue siege in Texas in 2022, when a rabbi and three other Jews were taken hostage by a British Muslim named Malik Faisal Akram. Not once in the report on its flagship 10 p.m. news bulletin was anti-Sem-itism mentioned. Nor at any point did Ed Thomas, the BBC’s special correspondent, even hint that the gunman might possibly, perhaps, have had an issue of some kind with Jews. Thomas began his report by asking: “What made Malik Faisal Akram leave Blackburn, the place he called home, to travel to Texas, arm himself with a gun, and hold people hostage inside a synagogue?” A real mystery, that.

The entire broadcast was predicated on Malik Faisal Akram’s having mental-health problems, as if he was some kind of tortured soul for whom we should have had pity. Indeed, for the BBC reporter, the real outrage was that Akram was killed, and the report included a friend of Akram’s family attacking the police: “It’s the way he was killed, he was shot—that shouldn’t have happened.” Ed Thomas continued that this raised a series of questions, which he then itemized. Not one was about why Akram hated Jews so much that he flew from Britain to Texas to attack them.

The BBC’s bias against Israel and Jews is not merely clear; it is, it increasingly seems, its raison d’être. Given the huge reach of its coverage, this is a problem not just for the Brits who are forced by law to pay for it. The question that must be addressed, therefore, is what is to be done about it.
British police are letting pro-Palestine vandals run riot
Palestine Action has vowed to continue its violent behaviour. Just this week, three activists occupied part of the Allianz offices in central London and covered the windows in red paint. They scaled the building to unfurl a banner demanding that Allianz ‘drop Elbit’, an Israel-based defence contractor, as an insurance customer. Police stood around for hours, apparently helpless to do anything, until the protesters were finally brought down and arrested.

Also this week, in Manchester, two Palestine Action activists were arrested after climbing on to the Aviva office in the city centre. Again, they covered the building’s windows in paint, set off flares and waved Palestinian flags. Aviva, Palestine Action claims, also has links to Elbit.

Incredibly, some see the thuggish behaviour of Palestine Action as sexy and glamorous. On 7 October 2024, the anniversary of Hamas’s massacre, Vogue even wrote a soft-soap piece featuring one of its activists.

This is mad, isn’t it? As Jonathan Turner, chief executive of UK Lawyers for Israel, tells me: ‘The failure of the police and criminal-justice system to deal robustly with the vandals of Palestine Action and other criminals is incomprehensible. If the British authorities do not get a grip, it will lead to a loss of confidence in the UK as a safe and civilised country to live, work and invest.’

We all know that if you have a car stolen or a house burgled, it’s almost impossible to get a copper to investigate. Now we are seeing vandalism by the likes of Palestine Action go practically unpunished. Meanwhile, other pro-Palestine protesters are able to engage in actual violence, often in front of the police, without facing any consequences. How lawless are we going to allow our society to become?

Most of the Palestine Action attacks – 148 of them – have been on the British arms industry. But it only works tangentially with Israel. And ordinary people are bearing the brunt of these stunts. Activists stand outside offices and factories on a weekly basis, spitting at staff, calling them ‘baby killers’ and taking photographs of them as they try to go to work.

Police are not doing enough to combat the pro-Palestine thugs running riot across the UK. They can vandalise and intimidate law-abiding citizens with little consequence. If this double standard continues, Britain will become a place where the worst actors know they can get away with anything.
The Israeli Jew kidnapped by British jihadi thugs
Last week, the kidnappers were sentenced to eight years apiece at Swansea Crown Court. During their trial, the full, calculated horror of what had taken place was unfurled. Faiz Shah, 23, Mohammad Comrie, 23, and Elijah Ogunnubi-Sime, 20, were trying to extort money. But they also saw this as their ‘jihad’. ‘Each one of us has 100 per cent faith in Allah, so we cannot fail’, said Ogunnubi-Sime, in the days before the kidnapping, on encrypted app Telegram. They speculated Kashti may have profitted from West Bank settlements and noted that he had attended some pro-Israel marches: ‘No remorse for a man like this, he ain’t just some Jew doing it for the bag [money], he actually loves this shit.’ Shah, Comrie and Ogunnubi-Sime hailed from Leeds, Bradford and London respectively. They met online – coming together, seemingly, out of a shared interest in extortion, thuggery and the world’s oldest hatred. They warned each other to conceal the ‘Islamic angle’ of their plot against Kashti. And Shah said they should kill him if necessary: ‘I am not going to pen [jail] without his bread [money] or his soul.’ ‘I have no doubt that the victim was targeted due to his Jewish heritage’, said the judge.

Kashti’s mind couldn’t help but turn to 7 October 2023, when Israeli Jews were butchered and kidnapped for the crime of being Israeli Jews. ‘I’m not suggesting [what I went through] was anything as remotely horrific’, he says in an interview with the Jewish Chronicle. ‘But it’s interesting to see what the weight of national trauma can have [on a person].’ Our visceral disgust with the perpetrators should be mixed with a dose of shame that this mini pogrom was attempted in supposedly safe, tolerant Britain.

There will always be sadistic scumbags with disgusting beliefs, willing to act on them for kicks (and cash). But we cannot ignore the context here. For a year and a half, Jew hatred has poured forth on our streets. There was a 96 per cent rise in anti-Semitic assaults following 7 October. Activists have walked around with paraglider stickers – celebrating the Hamas fighters who descended on the Nova music festival, shooting and raping their way through the crowd. Supposed leftists have waved placards showing a swastika embedded in the Star of David. Islamic extremists have chanted Arabic war slogans about the 7th-century murder of Jews. Jew hatred in its purest form has been unleashed.

And yet there has been no real, sustained outrage about any of this. It’s as if the Great and Good simply can’t compute this evil. And of course sections of the Great and Good are also, essentially, complicit in it – burnishing the anti-Semites’ narrative about Israel being a uniquely barbarous, child-killing state committing ‘genocide’, rather than defending itself from genocidal Islamists. All this is resuscitating age-old tropes about bloodthirsty Jews. Even those who do not share these prejudices tend to look away, mentally filing the endless incidents we’ve witnessed under ‘Israel – complicated’. If Kashti were a member of another minority, I’m certain this story would have made more headlines than it has.

Well, to those who have been struggling to summon the minerals to condemn what has been happening, this is where the new Jew hatred leads. Violent, brazen anti-Semites revelling in the kidnap and brutalisation of a man because he is Jewish and Israeli. Because they hold him personally responsible for the alleged crimes – real and imagined – of the Israeli state. Because he comes from a nation which has had the temerity to defend itself against the kind of anti-Semitism that came raining down on his head in that Welsh cottage last summer. We cannot continue to turn away.
Andrew Pessin: A Bone-Chilling Lecture
Last week I attended a lecture at our local public library that chilled me to the bone. Maybe it shouldn’t have, because last month I had attended another lecture at another public library by the same lecturer, and my bones were already chilled from that one. The lecturer’s name is Dr. Andrew Bostom. He’s an accomplished physician who works as an independent scholar on Islamic antisemitism, and he is, in my opinion, doing very important work and seems to be doing it largely alone. In 2020 he published an updated version of a true magnum opus, a 750-page book called “The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History,” a dense, heavily documented and data-driven tome that will take your breath away in its painstaking description of just how deep and dangerous the phenomenon is. Its glowing-with-praise blurbers include a who’s who of relevant public intellectuals, including Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Victor Davis Hanson, Martin Gilbert, and more. This book needs to be far more widely distributed and read.

The two lectures I’ve seen were also both fully documented and data heavy, and they will chill you to the bone. I believe both are available on Bostom’s website, but I’ll offer his brief summary of the more recent lecture and provide the relevant links.

Called “Understanding the Pandemic of Modern Antisemitism,” its highlights include:
- Demonstration that Muslim Antisemitism is the major source of contemporary Jew-hatred as revealed by two decades of Anti-Defamation League (ADL) (& other corroborating) survey data tabulating extreme Antisemitism, worldwide, including data released 1/14/25
- Demonstration that authoritative institutional Islam, not merely the so-called “radical Islam” of jihad terror organizations, drives this Muslim Antisemitism, particularly in relation to the October 7, 2023, jihad carnage in southern Israel, & the explosion of Antisemitic expressions & attacks since that event.
- Demonstration that Islamic teaching institutions/mosques, from the most authoritative, like Sunni Islam’s Vatican equivalent, Al-Azhar University, and its mosque, to local U.S. mosques, including the Islamic Center of Rhode Island in Providence, inculcate “sacralized” Islamic Jew-Hate from Islam’s core text, the Qur’an itself and the traditions of Muhammad, unchallenged by feckless, cowardly “Jewish community leadership,” paralyzed by fears of being sprayed with false, execrable smears of “Islamophobia.“


US Jews think Oct. 7 ‘could happen here’: 10 quotes from Chuck Schumer’s NYT interview
On Sunday, The New York Times published a sprawling, multipart interview with Chuck Schumer that covers everything from his take on the Democrats’ future to his anxieties about antisemitism and how the October 7, 2023, Hamas atrocities changed the landscape for American Jews. Some 1,200 people in southern Israel, most of them civilians, were slaughtered in the terror onslaught and 251 were kidnapped to the Gaza Strip.

The interview was published two days before the New York senator’s book, “Antisemitism in America: A Warning,” hits the shelves. It also came out just days after he, as Senate minority leader, helped push through a Republican-led funding resolution that averted a government shutdown — and ignited criticism from his colleagues.

The conversation’s audio runtime clocks in at close to an hour, but here are 10 highlights — including Schumer’s recollections of antisemitism on Capitol Hill, his workout sessions with Republicans and his view of the accusation that Israel is committing genocide. The interviewer, Lulu Garcia-Navarro, did not ask Schumer about US President Donald Trump repeatedly calling him a “Palestinian” — and Schumer did not bring it up.


Anti-Schumerism in America: Senate Minority Leader Freezes Book Tour as Activists Call for His Resignation
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) has postponed all promotional events this week for his upcoming book, Antisemitism in America: A Warning, as Democrats protest his decision to vote with Republicans to prevent a government shutdown.

Schumer's book tour is delayed due to security concerns, a spokeswoman said. His first event, originally scheduled for Monday evening in Baltimore, was expected to draw protests from the anti-Israel group Jewish Voice for Peace, Jewish Insider reported.

The Senate minority leader also postponed an event set for Tuesday evening in New York City's Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center, which would have had Rep. Ritchie Torres (D., N.Y.) as moderator, along with a Wednesday appearance at the Sixth & I synagogue in Washington, D.C..

The tour's postponement comes just days after Schumer sparked intraparty backlash by unexpectedly flip-flopping to vote for advancing a Republican bill that keeps federal agencies running for the next six months. Following Schumer's announcement, eight other Senate Democrats and independent Sen. Angus King (Maine) also voted to advance the bill. King and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D., N.H.) went on to vote with Republicans to pass the final bill.

Democratic activists have since demanded Schumer's resignation, with the New York Times reporting that Democrats are holding protests outside his Brooklyn residence. Former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), meanwhile, called Schumer's decision "unacceptable," and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.) called for the "next question" after a reporter asked if he wanted new leadership in the Senate.

Schumer has long faced Republican scrutiny for downplaying anti-Semitism in the United States. The Democrat privately advised Columbia University leaders to "keep heads down" and ignore GOP criticism of the school's handling of campus anti-Semitism, saying that the school's "political problems are really only among Republicans," according to a congressional report.


Jewish activists plan NYC protest against Schumer on day of his book launch: ‘Double-speak and failure to protect’
Jewish activists are planning a protest against Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer when his book warning of antisemitism is released Tuesday — with them accusing him of failing to help stop antisemitism.

The 74-year-old Jewish Democratic senator from New York is slated to release his tome “Antisemitism in America: A Warning” — as the critics prepare to congregate outside an Upper East Side cultural center to protest what they say is his failure to pass the proposed Antisemitism Awareness Act.

“The only thing Chuck Schumer knows about Antisemitism is how to spread it,” Jewish activist Aliza Licht wrote in a statement.

“The Jewish community will not allow Schumer to masquerade as the self-proclaimed ‘shomer of the Jews’ when he has fueled Antisemitism in America with his double-speak and failure to protect Jewish Civil Rights,” Licht said.

Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish official in the US, last year promised leaders in the community that he would attempt to pass the proposed Antisemitism Awareness Act to help curb antisemitism on campuses across the country.

But the effort stalled over disagreements between him and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) about how to push it through. Schumer wanted it tacked onto legislation such as the National Defense Authorization Act involving more money for the military, while Johnson sought for it to be a stand-alone vote, Axios reported.


The rise of Jew-hating right-wing ‘influencers’ threatens the GOP
If you have little talent and few prospects, the quickest way to turn things around these days is to go on social media and accuse the Jews of starting the Vietnam War or blame them for replacing beef tallow with seed oil. Call yourself a “historian” or “researcher,” and wait. You’ll be a guest on Tucker Carlson’s podcast in no time.

Indeed, in the past couple of weeks, two of the most unhinged antisemitic “influencers” have been guests on two of the most popular podcasts in the country.

Joe Rogan has 14.5 million followers on Spotify. About 11 million people reportedly download each episode. To put that into context, Fox News, which dominates cable news, averaged about 2.38 million viewers during prime time in 2024. Rogan, as we witnessed during the 2024 presidential race, is now a media power broker.

How does he normalize antisemites? On March 1, Rogan’s guest was the legendary comic actor Bill Murray. On March 4, he interviewed guitarist and lead singer of Smashing Pumpkins Billy Corgan. Then, on March 5, he slipped in “independent researcher” Ian Carroll, an unhinged antisemitic activist, who went from obscurity to over 1 million followers on X in a short time.

As bigoted cranks go, Carroll is extraordinarily boring. This isn’t Gore Vidal we’re dealing with. Carroll contends Israel was responsible for 9/11. He’s “researching” whether sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was working for Israeli intelligence to blackmail the entire U.S. government. He’s in on the Pizzagate conspiracy, which is too stupid to merit an explanation. In the days before social media Idiocracy, Carroll would be handing out xeroxed flowcharts of Jewish power for Lyndon Larouche at the regional airport.

Rogan gravitates toward unconventional topics and hosts offbeat guests who are passionate about esoteric beliefs, some of them conspiracy theorists. And a free society should make room for people who push back against conventional wisdom. The problem is that no matter what bizarrely insane things his guests propose, Rogan is going to give them a hearing without real pushback — basically personifying Carl Sagan’s warning that you shouldn’t keep your mind so open that your brains fall out. And that’s fine, I guess, unless the person you’re interviewing is a wanna-be Julius Streicher.

The same week that Carroll was on Rogan, podcaster Theo Von, whose show This Past Weekend likely gets about a million downloads per episode, hosted one of the most contemptible antisemitic nitwits in the country. There’s no political or moral crisis in the world — today or ever — that Candace Owens doesn’t blame on the Jews. The authors of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion would probably tell her to cool it.

Owens, who has nearly 7 million followers on X, is the model of a quasi-educated bigot who grabs strands of history and extrapolates to create alternative realities that are plausible to her credulous audience. During a recent interview with an accused sex trafficker Tristan Tate, she suggested that communist dictator Joseph Stalin was secretly Jewish and used the Soviet Union as a tool against Christians. “I found a friend who,” she explains, “understands Georgian, and they were like, everybody knows that Stalin was Jewish, and I am like, Americans don’t know this.”


Justice Department, FBI form task force probing Hamas and US-based supporters
The US Justice Department on Monday announced the creation of a task force to investigate Hamas for its October 7, 2023 attack, as well as potential civil rights violations and acts of antisemitism by supporters of the terror group.

Agents and prosecutors participating in “Joint Task Force October 7,” or JTF 10-7, will investigate and seek to bring charges against Hamas terrorists directly responsible for the rampage in southern Israel, the department said.

“The barbaric Hamas terrorists will not win — and there will be consequences,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement, announcing the task force.

The Biden administration’s Justice Department unsealed charges last September against Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and other senior Hamas figures who helped carry out the October 7 massacre.

The impact of the case is mostly symbolic, given that Sinwar was killed by Israeli forces weeks later and several other defendants are believed now to be dead. The new task force will nevertheless take over those pending charges, the department said.

The announcement of the task force came as US President Donald Trump has issued what he has called a “last warning” to Hamas to release all remaining hostages held in Gaza.

His administration has taken universities to task over a perceived failure to stamp out antisemitism on their campuses, as well as foreigners who participated in anti-Israel demonstrations.

The Justice Department announced this month that it was investigating whether Columbia University concealed “illegal aliens” on its campus, and federal immigration agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate student prominent in anti-Israel protests on the New York campus.
Columbia University’s Anti-Semitism Problem
In “listening sessions” with students, task-force members heard one recurring complaint: that administrators were strangely indifferent to Jewish students complaining about abuse. Rather than investigating incidents, some administrators steered Jewish students to mental-health counseling, as if they needed therapy to toughen them up. Students who had filed official reports of bias with the university claimed that they’d never heard back. (To protect the privacy of listening-session participants, the task force never confirmed specific instances, but it deemed the complaints credible.)

Perhaps, early on, one could imagine benign explanations for the weak response. But in June, as the task force went about its investigation, The Washington Free Beacon reported on a series of text messages fired off by four Columbia deans as they attended a panel on Jewish life at Columbia. (A panel attendee who had sat behind one of the administrators had surreptitiously photographed the text thread over her shoulder.) Instead of sympathetically listening to panelists discuss anti-Semitism, the deans unwittingly confirmed the depth of the problem. These officials, whose role gave them responsibility for student safety, snarkily circulated accusations about the pernicious influence of Jewish power. “Amazing what $$$ can do,” one of the deans wrote. Another accused the head of campus Hillel of playing up complaints for the sake of fundraising. “Comes from such a place of privilege,” one of them moaned. After the Free Beacon published the screenshots, Columbia suspended three of the administrators. Not long after, they resigned.

A month later, at the beginning of the academic year, the task force published a damning depiction of quotidian student life. An especially powerful section of the report described the influence of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the organizer of the anti-Israel protests. CUAD was a coalition of 116 tuition-supported, faculty-advised student groups, including the university mariachi band and the Barnard Garden Club.

CUAD doesn’t simply oppose war and occupation; it endorses violence as the pathway to its definition of liberation. A year ago, a Columbia student activist told an audience watching him on Instagram, “Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.” At first, CUAD dissociated itself from the student. But then the group reconsidered and apologized for its momentary lapse of stridency. “Violence is the only path forward,” CUAD said in an official statement. That wasn’t a surprising admission; its public statements regularly celebrate martyrdom.

When groups endorsed CUAD, they forced Jewish students to confront a painful choice. To participate in beloved activities, they needed to look past the club’s official membership in an organization that endorsed the killing of Jews and the destruction of the world’s only Jewish-majority country.

According to the task force, complaining about the alliance with CUAD or professing sympathy for Israel could lead to a student being purged from an extracurricular activity. When a member of the dance team questioned the wisdom of supporting CUAD, she was removed from the organization’s group chats and effectively kicked off the team. A co-president of Sewa, a Sikh student group, says that she was removed from her post because of her alleged Zionism. In an invitation to a film screening, the founder of an LGBTQ group, the LezLions, wrote, “Zionists aren’t invited.”
The Mahmoud Khalil Case
If Khalil had merely led peaceful pro-Hamas demonstrations, then deporting him would indeed raise an interesting freedom of speech issue: Can an alien (in this case a lawful permanent resident alien) be deported solely for speech that would be protected for US citizens under the First Amendment? That is not clear. Certainly lawful permanent residents don’t enjoy all of the rights of US citizens (e.g., they don’t vote). But the specific issue of deporting an alien solely for protected speech hasn’t been directly addressed by the US Supreme Court. Some lower courts have said you can do this, on the theory that since pro-terrorism speech is a valid basis for excluding someone from entering the US, so it is also a basis for deporting someone who has already entered. Other courts say no, that once an alien enters the US, he or she enjoys the same speech protections as a US citizen. Two recent podcasters are worth listening to on this, former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy and law professor Eugene Volokh. I could argue it both ways, but it’s not relevant to the Khalil case.

Khalil was involved in illegal occupations of buildings (Alexander Hall at Columbia which was vandalized and a school janitor injured, and the Barnard library where classes were disrupted). He served as the negotiator on behalf of the occupying students with the university, pressuring the administration to accommodate student demands based on their illegal activity. He helped organize an illegal encampment on the campus that denied access to “Zionist” students. Therefore the First Amendment defense will not get him off, because many of his actions are not protected speech. (Note: These are state crimes, but no one expects Alvin Bragg, the partisan New York County district attorney, to follow up in these cases with prosecutions.)

Secretary of State Rubio did not rely on either Khalil’s potential criminal activity (aiding and abetting break-ins) or Khalil’s possible visa fraud to explain the decision to deport. Instead Rubio cited this provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act: “An alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.”

Does Secretary Rubio have reasonable ground to believe there are potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences in this case? I believe so. Allowing pro-Hamas actions on US college campuses that incite violence (such as occupying university buildings) and threaten Jewish students undercuts the US policy of combating antisemitism overseas. Passivity could also hurt relations with allies that oppose Hamas, e.g., Israel and the UAE.

Ultimately Khalil’s deportation may present a constitutional issue, but that would be a separation of powers issue. Can a federal judge substitute her or his judgment for that of the secretary of state on what is a reasonable decision in foreign policy? The constitution gives the President (and designees) plenary power in the conduct of most foreign affairs. In the statute cited above, the Congress recognizes that power in deportations. Thus I feel confident that the federal bench – at some level – will side with the secretary of state’s judgment in this area.

It would be more difficult to deport a foreign student who had solely expressed antisemitic hate speech or expressed support for Hamas. That free speech issue, however, is not what we are facing in the Khalil case.
Are Defenders of Mahmoud Khalil Ready to Defend Speech they Despise?
Defenders of Khalil would rather not delve into his actual views; they emphasize instead that his rights are being violated. I read a strong piece in City Journal by Erielle Azerrad, an attorney who specializes in anti-terrorism litigation, arguing that “deporting Hamas supporters like Mahmoud Khalil is perfectly legal.”

But let’s assume it’s not. Let’s say, for the sake of discussion, that the Khalil case is indeed only about his free speech rights.

Are his defenders ready to go down that road?

“It’s funny how quickly the left moves from arguing that ‘speech is violence’ to embracing a maximalist stance on free expression,” Abe Greenwald writes in Commentary. “The same mobs who wanted you punished for using the wrong pronoun are now the country’s most passionate defenders of the First Amendment.”

As a passionate defender of the First Amendment myself, I’m ready to go down that road. I’m willing to tolerate protected speech that offends Jews, Muslims, transgenders, Blacks, Latinos, Asians, whites, the rich, the poor or any other type of American. That doesn’t make me a masochist; it makes me a freedom lover. The way I see it, even deeply offensive speech is the price we all must pay for the invaluable freedom to think and speak as we wish.

Are righteous defenders of Mahmoud Khalil ready for that kind of offensive free speech-for-all? As they demonstrate for Khalil’s right to defend terrorists, are they ready to defend the right of Nazi sympathizers to spew their own hateful rants on a college campus?

It’s easy to defend a hater whose hateful views against Israel don’t bother you one bit. But what about a hater whose views you absolutely abhor?

Until Khalil’s defenders are willing to defend the speech rights of all haters, their high-minded talk of free speech will be nothing more than faux speech.
Columbia janitors trapped, attacked by anti-Israel mob say they faced retaliatory harassment for reporting antisemitic conduct as civil rights probe launched
Columbia University is facing a new federal investigation over allegations from two janitors who claim they were unlawfully forced to scrub off swastikas spray-painted on campus before later being attacked and briefly trapped by an anti-Israel “mob” during the takeover of Hamilton Hall last spring.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), a federal agency tasked with enforcing civil rights laws in the workplace, has opened a probe into complaints from Lester Wilson and Mario Torres, who were forced to fight their way out of Hamilton Hall nearly a year ago, The Post has confirmed.

Both men are making claims under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, alleging that they faced retaliatory harassment at the institution for “reporting antisemitic and racist conduct.”

“We welcome the EEOC’s decision to open an investigation into Mario’s and Lester’s charges of discrimination,” former US Attorney General Bill Barr, whose firm Torridon is representing the two men, told The Post.

“Columbia has a legal and moral obligation to protect the civil rights of its students and employees. It must be held accountable when it fails to do so,” Barr, 74, who attended Columbia University and lived through the riots of the late 1960s there, added.

It is not fully clear when the EEOC commenced the probe, but records seen by The Post show that the agency was working on the investigation last month.

Wilson and Torres, who had worked at the school for over five years, were both left injured as well as traumatized from the scourge of anti-Israel unrest that engulfed the Ivy League school and have since been unable to return to work as a result, according to the complaints they filed last October.

“Hours after President [Minouche] Shafik issued her statement [that the university had become ‘unsafe for everyone‘], an antisemitic mob assaulted two janitors inside Columbia’s historic Hamilton Hall, calling them ‘Jew-lovers,'” the two complaints for both men recalled of the Hamilton Hall takeover in April last year.

“Columbia had indeed become unsafe for everyone, including the two janitors who were trapped inside Hamilton Hall. And for these two men, Columbia had for months been a hostile environment in violation of Title VII,” the complaints added.
Columbia Declined To Investigate Swastikas Scrawled Throughout Hamilton Hall Because They Were 'Written in Chalk and Could Be Erased': Complaint
In December 2023, months before Columbia University student activists took over Hamilton Hall, a group of them "ran riot" through the campus building and "scrawled obscene graffiti, including swastikas," a school janitor alleged in a federal discrimination complaint. Columbia did not investigate the ordeal because the swastikas were considered "free speech" and were "written in chalk and could be erased," according to the janitor, Mariano Torres.

Torres filed the complaint alongside his colleague, Lester Wilson, in October. Both men were working inside Hamilton Hall on the night of April 29, 2024, when Hamas-supporting rioters stormed the building and hoisted a banner calling for "intifada."

Those rioters had a trial run months earlier, according to Torres, who detailed in his complaint a "night in December 2023" in which "dozens of masked and unmasked demonstrators ran riot through the building shouting, 'Free Palestine!,' and 'From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!'" They "carpeted almost all of Hamilton Hall's eight floors in leaflets" and "scrawled obscene graffiti, including swastikas, throughout the building."

A campus security officer came to take photos of the graffiti and "stated that demonstrators had done the same thing in other buildings on recent nights," Torres's complaint states. But Columbia officials declined to follow up "because the graffiti was 'free speech'" and "was not 'vandalism' because it was written in chalk and could be erased."

"True to the security officer's words, Columbia did nothing in response to the incident," the complaint continues. "It did not increase security inside the building. Nor, to Mr. Torres' knowledge, did Columbia investigate who was responsible for the invasion of Hamilton Hall."

The complaints, which accuse Columbia of illegally retaliating against the two janitors for "reporting antisemitic and racist conduct," come as the Trump administration conducts a full review of the school's $5 billion in federal funding. The administration canceled $400 million in Columbia grants and contracts earlier this month and followed up by slashing another $30 million on Friday, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

They also come as Columbia attempts to fend off civil rights investigations from the Department of Education, Department of Justice, and, now, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which has opened a probe into Torres's and Wilson's complaints, according to the New York Post.


Deported Brown University doctor attended funeral for slain Hezbollah chief, had ‘sympathetic photos’ of terror leaders on her phone: DOJ
The Trump administration deported a Lebanese doctor who was an assistant professor at Brown University’s medical school after she addmitted that she attended a funeral for slain Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, officials said.

Dr. Rasha Alawieh, 34, was arrested after arriving at Boston’s Logan International Airport from Lebanon on Thursday. Her family claimed that officials provided no reason for her deportation, and they argued her rights were being violated because she had an active visa to live and work in the US.

The DOJ has since alleged that the Providence, Rhode Island, resident and visa holder has an affinity for the Hezbollah terrorist group, with Alawieh allegedly admitting that she attended the Nasrallah funeral last month while visiting family in Lebanon.

Alawieh claimed she attended the ceremony “from a religious perspective” and not a political one, according to Politico.

The Lebanese terror group leader oversaw the daily rocket attack on Israel, which began the day after the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas terror attacks. He was killed in a coordinated Israeli airstrike on his bunker in September 2024.

Alawieh, a kidney transplant doctor, was also allegedly caught with pictures and videos of Hezbollah leaders in the deleted items folder of her cellphone, Politico said.

“A visa is a privilege not a right — glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be denied. This is common sense security,” the DHS said in a statement.

“CBP questioned Dr. Alawieh and determined that her true intentions in the United States could not be determined,” Assistant US Attorney Michael Sady wrote in a filing to the court on Monday.


How Trump can put a stop to masked terror on campus
President Trump is right: “NO MASKS!”

That was his final jab in a Truth Social post this month in which he threatened to end federal funding for any college or university that allows “illegal protests” — particularly the ugly antisemitic demonstrations that have dogged many campuses for nearly 18 months.

Columbia University alumni last week pressed the school to enact an official mask ban after the latest round of chaotic pro-Hamas protests.

But Trump himself has the power to end masked riots on campus via executive order, just as many states cracked down on the masked marches of the Ku Klux Klan in the past.

The president’s ability to force change is clear. Existing federal authorities and grant programs give his administration broad discretion to require colleges and universities to take actions that are in students’ interests, especially when their physical safety and civil rights are involved.

The case against masks is also clear — and constitutional.

Although the First Amendment protects freedom of speech, it doesn’t give anyone the right to join violent or intimidating mobs and otherwise engender public disorder.

That’s exactly what protesters have done on college campuses across the country, driven by their hatred of Israel and Jews — donning masks precisely because they don’t want to be identified by police and campus administrators.
Rejecting faculty dishonesty
On February 27, Spectator published a Letter to the Editor from Joseph Howley, professor of classics and program chair for Literature Humanities, a required class for Columbia College students. In the letter, Professor Howley took issue with a recent op-ed from David Lederer, SEAS ’26, in which Lederer took issue with Professor Howley and his colleagues’ “whitewashing of antisemitism.” Professor Howley wrote that he does not endorse exclusion as a protest tactic, that systematic exclusion did not happen at the encampment which he supported, and that he was only present at the encampment to de-escalate.

Given Professor Howley’s behavior and the events on campus since October 7, 2023, I am surprised by the claims in this letter. We watched protesters in the encampment link arms to drive Zionists out of the encampment in April. We saw professors block students from entering the encampment at the will of those same protesters. In fact, as an observer, I saw Professor Howley participating in the protest from both inside and outside the encampment, standing alongside dozens of faculty members with orange vests enabling the encampment’s exclusionary tactics. Professor Howley’s claim that that faculty members were present at the encampment for “de-escalation” is particularly baffling. The encampment and accompanying protests were themselves an escalation, a violation of University rules and policies, and involved antisemitic chants and efforts to intimidate and harass other students. Protecting an escalatory encampment is not de-escalation; it enables escalation and continued disruption. If Professor Howley truly sought to de-escalate, he could have condemned the encampments rather than participating in them and defending them.

It is entirely possible that Professor Howley believes what he wrote in his letter. If this is the case, I am led to believe that he is unaware of or is in denial about the hateful motivations behind so much of the anti-Israel activism on our campus. Perhaps he does not recognize the cognitive dissonance caused by a movement he supports being discriminatory. Or, maybe he is just gaslighting us when he says that he “wouldn’t be associating with this protest movement if I thought that anyone here harbored or espoused prejudice of any kind.” I see no value in continuing to go back and forth about this in the pages of Spectator. It is clear to me that Professor Howley associated—and still associates—with this protest movement, and it is clear that this movement both harbors and espouses prejudice against the Jewish community.

At the end of the day, if Professor Howley wants us all to “do better,” he should start by looking in the mirror. Rather than continued accusations and denials I invite Professor Howley to have a public, honest conversation with me about antisemitism on campus and the role of faculty in student protests. I believe a conversation like this would contribute to our learning community at Columbia and reinvigorate the spirit of open dialogue.
‘Disqualifying’: Member of Top DOE Physics Panel Said ‘White Empiricism’ Undermines Theory of Relativity, Accused Israel of Genocide
A professor of physics and gender studies who has argued that "white empiricism" undermines Einstein’s theory of general relativity now sits on a top physics advisory panel within the Department of Energy, raising questions from fellow scientists about the panel’s integrity and providing a potential target for the Trump administration as it seeks to stamp out DEI within the federal government.

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, a cosmologist at the University of New Hampshire who has suggested that string theory "failed to succeed" because the field has too many white men, was appointed to the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP) under the Biden administration in 2024. The panel advises the Energy Department on research and funding priorities for particle physics, giving it significant say over which projects receive federal support.

Prescod-Weinstein will remain on HEPAP until 2027 unless the Trump administration takes action to remove her. Her role at the Energy Department has rankled some scientists, who say that an institution tasked with directing federal research should not be advised by a woman who, in one 2020 paper, wrote that "Black feminist theory intersectionality should change physics."

Prescod-Weinstein’s "scientific accomplishments seem modest and her racialist and sexist view of science, combined with her uniquely destructive activism, ought to be disqualifying," said Sergiu Klainerman, a mathematician at Princeton University who studies the theory of general relativity. "It seems to me incredible that she has a voice on important decisions concerning the DOE physics division."

Dorian Abbot, a geophysicist at the University of Chicago, declined to comment on Prescod-Weinstein specifically but said it was important for HEPAP to remain apolitical. "It is essential for political leadership to appoint panel and board members for federal scientific enterprises who are fully committed to promoting excellence and selecting grants and personnel based on merit, and to remove those who are not," Abbot told the Washington Free Beacon. Prescod-Weinstein did not respond to a request for comment.


French Publisher Caves to Woke Mob
While universities in the United States argue that freedom of research has been curtailed by Donald Trump’s withholding of federal funds from schools promoting progressive ideologies, in France, left-wing censorship is actively suppressing academics who seek to challenge the dominance of progressive thought. Three researchers have just had their collective work on ‘woke obscurantism’ rejected for publication by the Presses Universitaires de France (PUF), the leading French academic publisher.

For several weeks, French universities have been doing their utmost to decry the supposed ‘Trumpist’ censorship of American universities. Meanwhile, at home in France, we are witnessing a full-blown witch hunt against researchers accused by the left of colluding with the ‘Trumpist camp,’ and consequently deprived of the opportunity to communicate the results of their research.

What is at stake in this affair is not an essay concocted by some over-excited right-wing activist, but rather in-depth work crowning several years of research. Three academics from the Sorbonne have had their work called into question: historian Pierre Vermeren, a specialist on North Africa; literature professor Emmanuelle Hénin, who teaches comparative literature; and Xavier-Laurent Salvador, a specialist in medieval literature.

The PUF commissioned their book three years ago, requesting a “manifesto against wokism.” For three years, they conducted an in-depth investigation to show how woke ideology was infecting all intellectual disciplines at the university and compromising scientific research. Their investigation covered the entire spectrum of university disciplines, from the humanities to the hard sciences, giving a voice to scientists working in biology, genetics, medicine, and not just the social sciences. The researchers are dismayed. “This work took a long time because we wanted to produce a rigorous scientific work that would meet the standards of PUF,” Pierre Vermeren said in an interview with the weekly magazine Marianne.

The publisher announced the suspension of the publication of their essay to the three co-directors of the work by email—after the left-wing press had taken the lead: the newspapers Libération and L’Obs had already announced with great fanfare the suspension of the book’s publication—even though it was still officially listed in press announcements and included in the catalogue of forthcoming works at PUF.

“The context is highly unfavourable to the publication of the work,” the publisher clumsily justified, claiming that he believed the case had “clearly become political” and that, under these circumstances—how brave!—he preferred to withdraw.
Courtesy Of Canadian Taxpayers, A New Project Helps Filmmakers Call Critics Of Palestinian Terrorism “Racists,” Where Is The Media Outrage?
Courtesy of the ever-generous Canadian taxpayer – but unbeknownst to the vast majority of them – thousands of dollars will be awarded to a filmmaker who creates a project focusing on “anti-Palestinian racism.”

While combating racism appears unobjectionable at first glance, anti-Palestinian racism (APR) is an initiative launched in 2022 by the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association which is a thinly-veiled attempt to demonize critics of Palestinian terrorism and extremism, and label them as racists.

As articulated by Dania Majid, the president of the lawyer’s association (and who is a signatory to a hateful 2023 open letter which justified Hamas terrorism against Israel), “anti-Palestinian racism” can include “denying the nakba or Palestinian ties to their land…or are supporters of terror or hate.”

On March 5, The Toronto Palestine Film Festival, in conjunction with the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association, announced a call for filmmakers to apply to “create new 10-20 minute film/video projects on Anti-Palestinian Racism” as part of a residency.

According to the post, selected filmmakers would receive financial support to help offset production costs, up to $5,000 per filmmaker.

The costs of this project are being shouldered, in part, by the Canadian taxpayer, as the Instagram post noted, acknowledging that it was supported in part by the Government of Canada, namely the Department of Canadian Heritage.

Despite the seemingly unobjectionable name, ‘anti-Palestinian racism’ represents a full frontal attack on free expression.

As the National Post covered in April, 2024, “an official committee within York’s Department of Politics has proposed that any defence of Israel be viewed as ‘anti-Palestinian, Islamophobic, and anti-Arab.’” Tristin Hopper, the article’s author, later commented that “the term ‘anti-Palestinian racism’ has been brazenly adopted as a means to shut down legitimate criticism of this country’s worst modern hate movement.”

That move by a York University committee is hardly anomalous, and fully in line with what proponents of APR are seeking to create: an environment where opposing Palestinian rejectionism, extremism and terrorism is not seen as free expression, but as racism.


Israeli journalist arrested on suspicion of terror incitement
The Israel Police on Sunday arrested Israeli journalist Latifeh Abdellatif on suspicion of incitement to terror.

Abdellatif, a member of the Government Press Office, had allegedly published material from October through December praising the Hamas terrorist organization, including a video with an address by the group’s former leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, Israel Hayom reported.

She was apprehended in her home in Jerusalem’s Old City, according to police.

“In recent weeks, the David Region police opened an investigation against a resident of the Old City who published inciting content online,” said Assaf Harel, head of Investigations and Intelligence in the David Region of the Jerusalem District Police superintendent Assaf Harel was quoted by Israel Hayom as saying,

“It is important to emphasize that the connection between incitement and violence, disturbances and terrorism is direct and clear. Therefore, the issue is a key focus for us,” said Assaf Harel of the Jerusalem District Police.

Law enforcement are “constantly conducting monitoring and prevention activities, including online, against those who incite terrorism and call for harm against civilians,” he added.

According to Abdellatif’s social media accounts, she has worked in the past for Reuters, ABCnews, Al Jazeera English and the BBC and has 210,000 followers on Instagram.

Pro-Palestinian activists have reportedly called for her release.

Israel Hayom reported that she works today as a writer and photographer for UNFPA Palestine, a United Nations organization “dedicated to promoting and protecting the sexual and reproductive rights and health of the Palestinian people,” per the organization’s website.


Khaled Abu Toameh: Do Not Count on the Arabs to Rebuild Gaza or Help Palestinians
The truth, however, is that most of the Arab countries have always refused to receive Palestinians. Most Arabs view the Palestinians as ungrateful.

Qatar has funded every Islamist extremist group from the Muslim Brotherhood to the Taliban to Al Qaeda, both with donations and through its broadcasting empire Al Jazeera. Qatar was the only Arab country that provided direct financial aid to the Hamas-rulers of the Gaza Strip over the past two decades. The Qataris did not do so out of love for the Palestinians, but to ensure that Hamas remains in power, in order to eliminate Israel and replace it with an Islamic state. October 7, 2023 was the result. Now Qatar is negotiating to preserve its client, Hamas.

The Arab plan, notably, also does not call on Hamas to lay down its weapons. Do the Arab leaders really believe that Western donors would rush to invest tens of billions of dollars in the Gaza Strip while terrorists belonging to Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other groups continue to roam the streets?

The latest Arab plan does not even include a commitment from the Arab regimes to contribute to the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip. Instead, it states that the sources of funding would come from the United Nations, international financial institutions, and donor countries, as well as foreign direct investments and private sector contributions.

For Hamas, holding onto its weapons is far more important than rebuilding the Gaza Strip.

For the Arab countries, the new plan just another attempt to avoid responsibility towards their Palestinian brothers and shift the blame onto Israel.

"The reality is that the Arab emergency summit was also about demonizing Israel and throwing the Gaza hot potato into its court. A closer look at the summit's final statement reveals its true purpose: attacking Israel rather than addressing Gaza's future... Until Hamas is removed, every so-called 'peace plan' will be nothing more than another chapter in an endless cycle of destruction." — Dalia Ziada, Egyptian political analyst, March 12, 2025.


Seth Frantzman: Iran disowns Houthis as US airstrikes batter proxy network
The Iranian comments come as the Iranian Supreme Leader said that Iran is not interested in a recent letter from Trump that offers talks. “We have always declared – and we declare again today – that the Yemenis are an independent and free nation in their own land, with an independent national policy,” Salami said during a speech on Sunday.

Iran openly says this is their response to “President Donald Trump’s statement ahead of ordering a wave of airstrikes against Yemen on Saturday.” He warned Iran. Iran has received the warning and apparently doesn’t want to find out that he is serious. “We publicly announce responsibility for any military operation or support we provide,” the Iranian officer said. He then referenced the attack on Israel last year.

“There is no reason for us to carry out an action and not accept responsibility for it,” he added. “We warn all enemies that we will confront any threat and will respond even more forcefully,” he said.

Meanwhile, Iran’s top diplomat, Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, said that the US will not dictate policy to Iran. This also came in response to Trump’s comments about the Houthis.

“The United States Government has no authority, or business, dictating Iranian foreign policy,” Araqchi wrote in a post on X. IRNA noted that Trump had said on Saturday that he had ordered a series of airstrikes on Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, and threatened to hold Iran “fully accountable.”

Meanwhile, Araqchi spoke with his Dutch counterpart, Caspar Veldkamp, and said Iran is ready to “engage in dialogue with European countries based on mutual respect and shared interests,” IRNA noted. Thus Iran is distancing itself from the Houthis and also not ready for talks with the US but is open to talks with European countries.

It appears that Iran may be distancing itself from the Houthis or at least trying to insulate itself from responses if the Houthis carry out attacks. Iran doesn’t seem to want to confront the US at this time. This also shows how the Iran proxy network that seemed so strong after the Hamas attack, and ran wild in the region for a year, now faces challenges. Its strength is also its weakness. It is too spread out, and Iran can’t protect the proxies.

Iran has tried to close the Red Sea to shipping, attack US troops in Iraq, set the West Bank ablaze, and push Hezbollah to war, all since October 7, 2023. The Hamas attack was meant to be a first shot in a regional and global war. However, Iran may have miscalculated. The proxies cannot withstand the blows by themselves; they only work when they can do a multi-front war or get appeasement. They did this for years in Iraq until Trump killed Soleimani and Kataib Hezbollah leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. Now, Iran fears the same for the Houthis.


Iran’s Nuclear Threat: A Critical Turning Point for U.S. and Allied Security
Iran's Nuclear Advancements: A Growing Threat
Iran’s nuclear program is advancing rapidly. By March 2025, reports show Iran could produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a bomb in less than a week and 10 bombs within a month. At the same time, Iran's missile arsenal — the largest in the Middle East — is becoming increasingly capable of delivering nuclear payloads over vast distances. These advancements significantly increase the risk of a nuclear-armed Iran.

Ballistic Missiles: A New Danger
Iran’s missile capabilities have reached alarming levels. U.S. intelligence warns that these missiles, constantly improving in range and precision, are capable of delivering nuclear weapons. Tehran is closer than ever to having the ability to launch nuclear warheads beyond its borders.

A Comprehensive Strategy: A Four Point Approach
FDD outlines a four-faceted approach:
Full, Permanent Disarmament: Iran’s nuclear program must be completely dismantled — no temporary freezes or concessions.
Precondition for Talks: The U.S. should only negotiate if Tehran commits to nuclear disarmament upfront.
Economic and Military Pressure: The U.S. must ramp up economic sanctions, targeting Iran’s oil and petrochemical exports, and maintain a credible military threat.
Fundamental Change in Iran: If necessary, support efforts to replace Iran's theocratic regime, ensuring long-term stability and security in the region.

The Window is Closing
The threat of a nuclear-armed Iran is no longer hypothetical; it is imminent. As Iran accelerates its nuclear and missile programs, the time to act is now. The report stresses that Iran will only back down when it perceives strength — and that strength must come from the U.S. and its allies.

Mark Dubowitz, CEO of FDD, emphasizes the urgency: "The opportunity to stop Iran's nuclear ambitions may never be more ripe." The U.S. must use all its leverage to force Iran into dismantling its nuclear program permanently. If diplomacy fails, military action must remain on the table.

The threat is clear, and the time for action is now. A comprehensive, verifiable dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure — backed by economic, diplomatic, and military pressure — is the only way to ensure that one of the world’s most dangerous regimes does not acquire the world’s most dangerous weapon.


Johannesburg votes to name U.S. consulate street after terrorist as councilor chants ‘we want Hitler’
In a stormy session of the Johannesburg City Council last Thursday, a motion to block the renaming of the U.S. consulate’s street after a Palestinian terrorist was voted down and a councilor shouted “we want Hitler” at a Jewish colleague.

Members of Johannesburg City Council have since 2018 sought to rename a central artery in the South African city after Palestinian terrorist Leila Khaled. The council voted on Thursday against a motion to keep the current name, Sandton Drive.

Khaled became known as the world’s first female hijacker for her role in two attacks in 1969 as a member of the terrorist group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The address of the U.S. consulate in Johannesburg is currently 1 Sandton Drive; if the effort is successful, the consulate’s new address would be 1 Leila Khaled Drive.

Joel Pollak, Breitbart’s senior editor-at-large, who confirmed reports from South African media and political parties that he is a leading candidate for U.S. ambassador in Pretoria, posted on X after the vote that the American consulate in Johannesburg should be closed if the street is renamed after the terrorist.

The Patriotic Alliance, a South African opposition party, said in a statement that “besides the fact that Sandton Drive hosts the U.S. Consulate and it would be profoundly insulting towards [the U.S.] and contrary to South Africa’s diplomatic relations with our second-largest trading partner, there are many deserving South African historical heroes who should rather be considered and who continue to be overlooked.”

“Leila Khaled threw a hand grenade at children during a failed plane hijacking and it was only God’s grace that prevented it from going off,” the Patriotic Alliance noted.

Sandton, the neighborhood in which the road is located, is home to many of South Africa’s 50,000 Jews.
'We want Hitler': Johannesburg politician threatens to wear Hitler shirt
A Johannesburg city councilor interrupted a pro-Israel Jewish colleague with remarks about Nazi tyrant Adolf Hitler at a Thursday meeting and threatened to wear a shirt emblazoned with Hitler’s face if the opposing politician continued to use a laptop computer with an Israeli-South African flag case.

Pan Africanist Congress of Azania and Community Development councilor Tebogo Nkonkou took offense at Democratic Alliance councilor Daniel Schay’s Israel-themed paraphernalia, which included a tie and a computer case. Nkonkou demanded that the Israeli flag not be displayed in the chamber because it represented the killing of innocent women and children.

“I will also come in a shirt with the face of Hitler,” Nkonkou said to Speaker Nobuhle Mthembu. “I will do that because you allowed this to happen.”

Mthembu said that Nkonkou was setting a bad example, but the PA member continued to interrupt Schay’s speech, interjecting, “We want Hitler.”

An Economic Freedom Fighters party member said that the display of the flag was abuse to them.

“This flag, we really can’t stand it; we can’t stand the flag of an apartheid country in a country where we experienced apartheid,” said the EFF councilor. “Kids are being killed in Gaza even today, and you are watching.”

Councilors continued to heckle Schay, decrying the “racist flag” and chanting, “From the river to the sea, free free Palestine.”


Cryptocurrency platforms need better clarity to avoid being a petri dish for antisemitism
Many tokens that have appeared on Pump’s homepage with KH status include antisemitic themes and conspiracies. These include the following: “JewNazi” (accompanied by a thumbnail of a Star of David and a swastika inside), “Dirty F***ing Jew” (accompanied by a thumbnail of the Happy Merchant on a coin); “Jews did 911;” and “Jew” (captioned with Jews in Control).

Other tokens deploy Hinduphobic themes. One token, for example, titled “Jews vs. Hindus,” appears alongside a thumbnail of two Happy Merchants – one dressed in Jewish attire and the other in purported Hindu garb with a Nazi armband – chained to one another. The token is captioned with the following description: “They’re both literally the same, they s*** on everything, invade everything, destroy the economy and housing.”

Racism expressed against Black people is also prevalent throughout the platform. Multiple tokens explicitly invoke the “N-word,” and some call for the death of Black people or call upon users to “pump” tokens to kill them.

Other coins, such as “Monkey Wars,” employ other derogatory, anti-Black themes. Some coins even glorify the Ku Klux Klan, bearing thumbnails depicting a clansman alongside a description, “We are still here to protect you. Protect yourself and support us today.” The effect of these coins is clearly to gamify, glorify, and even normalize expressions of violence against black people.

Pump has also platformed tokens that appear to promote extortion and torture. One token, for example, reads, “LIVE REAL TORTURE UNTIL 100M MC (TORTURE).”

By allowing such tokens to feature on its platform, and occasionally on its very homepage, Pump has become tacitly complicit in promoting their obscene messaging. As one of the biggest cryptocurrency trading platforms, Pump must clear its portfolio once and for all of the bigoted and violent content, especially antisemitic vitriol, within its ranks.
Pennsylvania man caught with child porn, antisemitic mass attack plans
A 20-year-old male resident of the western Pennsylvania town of Glenwillard has been indicted by a federal grand jury in Pittsburgh on possession charges of child exploitative content, according to the US Justice Department. The defendant was also in possession of antisemitic and extremist hate-driven content and a cache of firearms.

On Monday, Acting United States Attorney Troy Rivetti announced the one-count indictment against Aidan Harding, 20.

Information presented to the court, as well as the indictment, state that around December 11, 2024, Harding had material showing the sexual exploitation of a minor, including video content. The video content contained sexual abuse of minors pre-puberty, emphasizing a young age.

Just over a month later, Harding was charged and detained. On February 12, 2025, at a detention hearing, he was ordered to be held without bond pending trial. Additional evidence was allegedly presented by federal authorities, stating additional material was found depicting violent sexual assaults.

Posing a threat to his community in several ways
Authorities presented a case in which Harding presented an “unacceptable danger to the community” — for more than just child pornography. Evidence gathered included threats to carry out “political and revenge-driven” mass casualty events, particularly targeting the Jewish community. He adhered to racially motivated extremist ideology and had more than 20 firearms in his possession, including fliers targeting Pittsburgh’s Jewish community.

In his targeting of the Pittsburgh Jewish community in his rhetoric, he reportedly distributed antisemitic fliers and made statements online about his interest in “political and revenge-driven” mass casualty events. According to the indictment, this included references to the shooter who murdered 11 congregants at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.

The 20-year-old reportedly made a series of terroristic threats and had discussed a desire to commit a “high kill” attack. The indictment also said he had filmed himself re-enacting the Columbine shooting at a memorial for the 1999 high school shooting. He also allegedly had videos of violent events of that nature in his possession.
German Jewish students have felt increasingly unsafe on campus since October 7
The Berlin office of the American Jewish Committee (AJC Berlin) and the Jewish Student Union of Germany (JSUD) released a report in late February highlighting a surge in campus antisemitism in Germany.

The report, titled "Antisemitism at German Universities," acknowledged that since October 7, 2023, Jewish students have felt increasingly unsafe on campuses nationwide.​

Within the report, AJC Berlin and JSUD advocated for sanctions against antisemitic incidents and emphasized the necessity for educational and preventive measures to ensure Jewish students can study and live without fear of discrimination and violence.​

"Since October 7, many universities have ceased to be safe places for Jewish students. They stay away from campus out of fear, hide their Jewish identity, or are afraid to express their opinions due to the massive anti-Israel and antisemitic agitation on campus. In this report, we have compiled our experiences from the past year," said Hanna Veiler, President of the JSUD.

"Although many universities have now recognized the problem, and the German Rectors' Conference has also taken action, this is still not enough in many places. Our report shows that some universities still lack effective prevention and intervention structures, which is why antisemitic incidents are often not adequately responded to. Our report explicitly calls on those responsible at universities and in politics to take measures to ensure that universities are safe places for everyone again.."
A Jewish and an ex-Nazi conductor walk into a bar… and inspire an off-Broadway play
The one time I visited Vienna I had two must-do things on my itinerary. I would not leave the city until I sat for a concert at the Musikverein, nor would I consider the trip a success until I tasted the Sacher-Torte at the Hotel Sacher’s famous Blaue Bar.

The concert was a triumph (Ádám Fischer conducted Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto and Mahler’s Symphony No. 5), but the nosh a little less so. We got there a little on the late side — so much for the concept of artists and intellectuals staying up all night over coffee — so we were shunted to one of the less sanctified rooms, whereupon I discovered that the fabled dark chocolate cake sweetened with a thin layer of apricot jam was alarmingly dry. It was as if the French horn section of the Wiener Symphoniker all stood up and blew a flat.

When life lets us down, however, we can turn to art, and that’s where Peter Danish’s new play “Last Call” steps in. It is set at the Blaue Bar (it looks like they got the carpet pattern right), and if the reaction of the performers is to be believed, the dessert is divine.

“Last Call,” currently running at New World Stages in New York City, is a 90-minute daydream Danish cooked up upon learning that, in 1988, not long before each of them passed away, the two most famous orchestra conductors of the 20th century, Herbert von Karajan and Leonard Bernstein, bumped into one another and talked for a while. The two men, by all accounts, were friendly but not exactly friends. Danish’s text exploits the commonly known aspects of their personas — von Karajan the perfectionist, Bernstein the sensualist — and broadens this into a great philosophical debate. You can probably guess which of the two kvells over the torte and who barely touches his.

There’s a bit of a model here. Tom Stoppard’s “Travesties” seized on the fact that James Joyce, Tristan Tzara and V. I. Lenin were all in Zurich at the same time, and Steve Martin’s “Picasso at the Lapin Agile” imagines a meet-up between the famous Spanish artist and Albert Einstein prior to their major breakthroughs. I don’t think “Last Call” will have the lasting impact of those other two works, but by focusing on great interpreters of music it does benefit from the occasional appearance from some great works from the Western canon.

Johannes Brahms, for example, is practically a co-star in the piece. When we first see von Karajan, he’s analyzing a score to the melancholy master’s Symphony No. 1, wondering if there are still mysteries to be found in its contours despite having conducted it well over 100 times. That’s when Bernstein saunters in, and after realizing it would be awkward to not say hello, the two men begin lightly ribbing one another, before picking at old scabs.

Leonard Bernstein, of course, was a proud Jew. If you watch Bradley Cooper’s film “Maestro” you can watch him wave away Serge Koussevitzky’s suggestion that he change his name to something like “Len Burns.” Herbert von Karajan — and there’s really no point in denying this — was a Nazi.

Was he a rah-rah supporter of the Third Reich and did he hate the Jews? I suppose we’ll never know for sure, but there is evidence to suggest that he was one who joined the party strictly so he could maintain his position. His second wife was one quarter Jewish (enough to raise eyebrows) and it is said that Hitler never particularly liked him. His “denazification” process was thorough enough that one can still walk Herbert von Karajan Platz in Vienna — in fact it’s just across from the Hotel Sacher. This is all recounted in “Last Call,” but so is the fact that plenty of other artists fled Europe during World War II while the Salzburg-born von Karajan stayed at the podium of the Staatskapelle Berlin.


Terrorist MACHETE attack left me for dead: Tal Hartuv
Survivor Speaks Out: Brutal Machete Attack & The Fight for Justice #survivorstory #truecrime #realhorrorstories

Imagine being brutally attacked with a machete, left with 30 broken bones, a collapsed lung, and a sliced diaphragm—yet still walking a mile to survive. This is the unbelievable true story of Tal Hartuv, a survivor who endured an unimaginable assault and lived to tell the tale.

In this shocking interview, Tal recounts the horrifying moment he realized he was going to be beheaded, the pain of every bone-crunching, and the resilience it took to survive. This story is about survival and the deeper issues of justice, violence, and society’s response to brutal crimes.

This video is a must-watch if you are interested in true crime, survival stories, and real-life horror. How does someone survive such brutality and keep going? Like, comment, and subscribe to hear more real stories that need to be told. What are your thoughts? Do you think justice was served? Let’s discuss in the comments.






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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

    
 

 



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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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