April 2025 ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Thursday, April 17, 2025

Project To Send Uneaten Matza To Gaza, Induce Immediate Surrender (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.
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Rehovot, April 17 - A neighborhood drive launched today to collect all the leftover unleavened bread from the recent Passover holiday and deliver it to the Hamas-governed territory currently holding dozens of Israelis hostage, and thereby to cause the captors to release the hostages, lay down arms, and relinquish control of the territory in favor of a peace-seeking alternative, organizers announced yesterday.

Residents of this Coastal Plain city banded together starting Sunday, the day after the seven-day festival in Israel, to contribute their boxes of uneaten matza. By 10 in the morning today, more than six tons of the bland, cracker-like bread had accumulated in a makeshift warehouse, forcing the organizers into a scramble to find more storage space; a local school volunteered its gym, and deliveries have continued throughout the day. The families behind the initiative believe that if a sufficient quantity of the, uh, foodstuff can be sent to the Gaza Strip, it will horrify Hamas and its minions into surrender.

"Primarily, this isn't really about the hostages, though they remain on everyone's mind," explained Refael Mark, whose 15-year-old daughter Avishag first advanced the idea. "We just spent a week celebrating liberation from captivity, from enslavement. We really must do whatever we can to bring the hostages' ordeal to an end. What Avishag realized was that our need to be rid of this repulsive stuff can be leveraged to pressure Hamas into giving up."

"We don't even need to deliver the whole quantity," suggested Shai, a volunteer. "The initial dump of a ton or two will have a chilling effect not because it will affect so many in Gaza, but because the mere knowledge that several more tons of this gustatory atrocity is scheduled for delivery will generate a more pliant, cowed Palestinian leadership."

Others noted that the matza-disposal scheme can be brought to bear beyond local security concerns. "Iran has been threatening to go nuclear for a long time," observed another organizer, named Tal. "Delivery to Iran is obviously more complex than delivery to Gaza, but that's a question of logistics. With the Trump administration on board, I don't see why parachuting crates of matza into Tehran and various pro-regime strongholds won't scare them into a more accommodating, docile stance, if not outright abdication."

If plain matza proves insufficient to spark surrender, Avishag has also suggested her father's matza balls, which all but one member of the family agree are dense enough to be weaponized.

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04/17 Links Pt2: What to Do with a Bad Guest; The real lesson of the attack on Josh Shapiro; The spoiled brats of Youth Demand; How do the lawyers defending Hamas sleep at night?

From Ian:

Meir Soloveichik: What to Do with a Bad Guest

First: To deport a radical pro-Hamas activist is to do so in the knowledge that those representing such positions on college quads not only dislike Israel. They also hate America. Indeed, the very organization Khalil represented, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, has openly stated that it seeks “the total eradication of Western civilization.” The sympathy with Hamas is the symptom; hatred of the West is the disease.

As the pro-Israel activist Ben Badejo has noted, Khalil—like all others fighting deportation relating to these statutes—has issued many public declamations through his lawyers, but he has never, as part and parcel of their public defense, put forward two simple statements: that he hates Hamas and that he loves America. The refusal to state the former, of course, is linked to his inability to express the latter. This is not, first and foremost, a matter of one’s views regarding the Middle East. For the secretary of state to cite statutes allowing deportation of those who espouse support for terror, and who pose a threat to America’s foreign policy, is to emphasize the fact that individuals like Khalil seek the end of America itself.

The second mistake—that deportation is a criminalization of speech—follows from the first. Khalil is being detained only because he has been told to leave these shores and he has refused. As the Supreme Court has clarified, ordering a noncitizen to leave your country is not a criminal punishment. This was made clear by Justice Robert Jackson in 1952, in Harisiades v. Shaughnessy, a case about an individual deported on the grounds of being “a member of an organization which advocates overthrow of the government by force.” Jackson insisted that it had been “considered closed for many years” that “deportation, however severe its consequences, has been consistently classified as a civil, rather a criminal procedure.” He then went on to cite an earlier Supreme Court decision that explained the matter quite simply:
It is thoroughly established that Congress has power to order the deportation of aliens whose presence in the country it deems hurtful. The determination by facts that might constitute a crime under local law is not a conviction of crime, nor is the deportation a punishment; it is simply a refusal by the government to harbor persons whom it does not want.

And when we ponder the point, it is actually obvious: How is it a punishment to order a guest in your country—or a green-card holder like Khalil, who is here because of the graciousness of the United States—to leave a land he hates? Indeed, how is such an order anything other than a country reflecting basic self-respect and self-preservation for its own future?

Cases like Khalil’s will wend their way through the courts, and this litigation will hopefully provide us with the opportunity to ponder a clarifying question: Why would a country that rightly welcomed a fervently patriotic immigrant like the Jewish woman in Blair’s story—and Secretary Rubio descends from such immigrants—willingly ladle out visas to those who hate it? This is, in other words, another opportunity, as we approach the 250th anniversary of America’s founding, to ponder the meaning of America and of what binds us as Americans. In an address delivered on July 4, 1858, Abraham Lincoln contemplated the fact that many living in America did not descend from those who fought in the Revolution. Yet, he said, their love of America, and of the ideas embraced at the Founding—is what bound the newcomers to Americans like himself.

Melanie Phillips: The real lesson of the attack on Josh Shapiro

In all these hypothetical instances, the attack would have been seen as politically motivated. But when an attack is mounted in the name of the Palestinians, liberals are suddenly struck dumb.

This is because they cannot bring themselves to acknowledge that such a terrible act has been committed in support of a cause upon which they hang their claim to be moral, compassionate and decent people. To condemn it would be to condemn themselves.

It awakens their deepest fear—that to denounce the motivation for such an act would destroy their moral and political personality. They are terrified that it would turn them into the thing they dread more than anything else—to become “right-wing.” In their minds, this is synonymous with evil.

But the Palestinian cause that they so devoutly support is not moral or decent. It’s motivated by genocidal aspirations and Jew-hatred, and violence is its calling card.

Its supporters in the West—having swallowed the egregious lies on which this cause is based—peddle a grotesque inversion of reality in which Israel is blamed for defending itself against a barbaric and genocidal onslaught in a seven-front war of annihilation. It is these Palestinian supporters who are spreading evil.

Balmer told the police that he believed Shapiro’s stance on the war in Gaza was leading to the deaths of Palestinians. It’s not just mentally ill individuals who believe such a thing about Israel and Diaspora Jews.

Since Oct. 7, liberal media and politicians have been promoting the lie that Israel is purposefully killing Gazan civilians, of whom the majority are women and children. The fact that this is totally untrue hasn’t stopped it from becoming so deeply believed and causing such anger among the public that Jews in the Diaspora are being regularly ostracized and abused for supporting the “killing of Palestinian babies.”

Jews find themselves targeted for collective punishment over the malicious fantasy of the crimes of Israel. Individual Jews in the West are singled out grotesquely as accomplices to these alleged crimes simply by dint of their supporting Israel’s attempt to defend itself against annihilation. They also find themselves accused of bad faith if they call out the rampant Jew-hatred that’s exploded across America and Western nations.

Diaspora Jews are being gaslighted, abused, ostracized, intimidated, threatened and attacked just for standing up as Jews for their people and for truth and justice—and now an attempt has been made to burn one of them alive.

What Balmer’s attack tells the West is that, in supporting the Palestinian cause, it is endorsing an innately murderous, hate-mongering and malevolently mendacious creed.

The Israel-haters can hardly try to excuse Balmer’s attack on Shapiro as the action of a madman, given that the blood libels they themselves perpetrate have now caused countless thousands of people in the West to lose their own minds over Israel and the Jews.

The spoiled brats of Youth Demand

‘YOUNG PEOPLE ARE RESISTING’, the website of Youth Demand informs us, breathlessly, announcing the arrival of yet another environmentalist road-blocking protest group – except this one protests about Palestine, too. What follows is the usual combination of Israelophobic nonsense and economic illiteracy:

‘The [UK] government is engaging in absolute evil. They are enabling genocide in Palestine by sending money and arms to Israel. They are contributing to the murder of billions to keep the fossil-fuel profits flowing.’

Youth Demand, an apparent spin-off of Just Stop Oil, is currently having an April jamboree, involving a month of direct action to ‘shut down’ London. Here are its demands:

‘Young people are stepping up to resist this nightmare. We are demanding that the government must:

1) Stop all trade with Israel: impose a total trade embargo on Israel.
2) Make the rich pay: raise [£1 trillion] by 2030 from the super rich and fossil-fuel elite to pay damages to communities and countries harmed by fossil-fuel burning.’

It’s all so agonisingly pathetic. For one thing, we have the supreme naffness of the name. ‘We’re the young generation and we’ve got something to say’ was excruciating when the Monkees sang it nearly 60 years ago. People who claim to be the voice of an entire age demographic are always a cause of full-body cringe. This kind of eternal live-action roleplaying of the 1960s is gut-clenching.

What makes Youth Demand particularly nauseating – and hilarious – is its activists’ dizzying levels of entitlement whenever they get their collars felt. These little darlings are clearly shocked to the core that the authorities have the temerity to notice them. They view with open-mouthed amazement even the pathetically light touch of British law enforcement in the 2020s. These are Veruca Salt brats who have clearly never been told ‘No’ by their mummies and daddies. ‘I want a trillion pounds and I want it NOW, daddy!’

04/17 Links Pt1: Trump Blocks Israeli Strike on Iranian Nuclear Sites; Did Biden Fund Anti-Netanyahu Politicking?; The Anti-Semites in the Conservative Manosphere; Catering to Qatar

From Ian:

Israel's Most Conclusive Victory since 1949

Tenacity is the most important virtue of national leaders at war, which allows them to press on with no assurance of victory, fending off tremendous political pressures to fold. Winston Churchill displayed this quality in 1940, when Paris and Western Europe had fallen and Germany appeared unstoppable.

As Israel fought a major, multifront war in October 2023, key U.S. officials encouraged domestic uproar against Netanyahu and worked to constrain him and even collapse his government. Netanyahu had to overcome calls and protests by Israelis and American Jews, as well as all the usual suspects in European capitals and almost every other world government incessantly demanding a ceasefire, not as a pause, but as an end to the war.

It is against this backdrop that Netanyahu's pure resolve must be understood. His tenacity was the only thing that mattered. Having withstood this unrelenting pressure over the course of a year, Netanyahu had maneuvered into a position where, in the second half of 2024, Israel was able to turn the tables and reshape the entire geopolitical picture

The Mossad and the IDF brilliantly wrecked Hizbullah with exploding pagers, booby-trapped field radios, and the elimination of senior Hizbullah commanders in a precision strike that left the group totally paralyzed, nullifying its vast rocket arsenal. Because he had monopolized Hizbullah's command and control, Nasrallah's death shut down the organization.

As a consequence of Hizbullah's demolition, Iran's Syrian vassal, Bashar al-Assad, found himself defenseless, having long become dependent on Hizbullah and Iranian militias for manpower. With the fall of Assad, and with the IDF in control of the Gaza-Egypt border, the Iranians lost the ability to rebuild Hizbullah and Hamas, giving Israel its most conclusive victory since 1949.

Israel's astounding technical prowess and the fighting spirit of its military are, of course, integral to this victory. But it couldn't have happened had Netanyahu not held out against an unfriendly American administration and an accompanying assortment of authoritative figures and institutions, as well as howling mobs in Israel and around the world that demanded a ceasefire and the Israeli prime minister in handcuffs.

NYTs: Trump Blocks Israeli Strike on Iranian Nuclear Sites

Israel had planned to strike Iranian nuclear sites in May but was waved off by President Trump in recent weeks in favor of negotiating a deal with Tehran to limit its nuclear program, according to administration officials. Israel had sought to set back Iran's ability to build a bomb at a time when Iran has been weakened militarily and economically. Almost all of the plans would have required U.S. help.

Earlier in April, Trump informed Israel of his decision that the U.S. would not support an attack and discussed it with Prime Minister Netanyahu during his recent visit to Washington. Trump made clear to Netanyahu that he would not provide American support for an Israeli attack while the negotiations were playing out.

Israel has long planned to attack Iranian nuclear facilities, rehearsing bombing runs and calculating how much damage it could do with or without American help. But support within the Israeli government for a strike grew after Iran suffered a string of setbacks last year. In attacks on Israel in April, most of Iran's ballistic missiles were unable to penetrate American and Israeli defenses. Air defense systems in Iran were destroyed, along with facilities to make missile fuel. Hizbullah, Iran's key ally, was decimated, and the fall of the Assad regime in Syria cut off a prime route of weapons smuggling from Iran.

Inside the Trump administration, some officials voiced concerns about the Israeli plan, including Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence; Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff; Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth; and Vice President JD Vance.

There is still significant debate within Trump's team about what kind of agreement with Iran would be acceptable. If the talks failed, Trump could then support an Israeli attack, Vance said.

Seth Mandel: The Leak Was the Whole Point

That latter point is one reason Israel reportedly ordered attack plans to be redrawn such that the mission could be launched before Kurilla’s exit. Gabbard’s isolationist leanings and Vance’s incoherent FDR-style cynicism toward allies are now the dominant ideological strands in Trump’s Cabinet, and the president nixed the strike plans.

Kurilla wasn’t the only reason time is of the essence. Last year, Israeli retaliatory attacks on Iran reduced Tehran’s air-defense systems to rubble. The nonproliferationists are open to the idea of taking advantage of this situation, which makes any U.S. involvement in strikes significantly less dangerous while (likely) permanently ending the nuclear threat from Iran, a Mideast client state of China and Russia.

The divestors don’t want this outcome. They don’t see Iranian nuclear proliferation as much of a threat, and they are comfortable with Iranian hegemony over our allies and over the region’s shipping lanes. This was President Obama’s approach as well—to empower Iran and weaken the Saudis and Israel so that a magical balance-of-power would emerge and keep the Middle East on its equilibrium, likely with a cascade of nuclear proliferation throughout the region. Although encouraging this nuclear cascade in the Middle East is an act of apocalyptic stupidity, presidents (and Congress) do like being given excuses to kick the can down the road.

And kicking the can is exactly what this is all about. Trump has been convinced to try his hand at negotiating with Ayatollah Khamenei, who will walk away from the table as soon as Iran’s defenses are in better shape.

Along those lines, part of Israel’s rushed plans to strike Iran—the ones intended to be launched while Kurilla was still around—included further demolishing Iranian defenses. If that isn’t paired with bombing Iran’s nuclear sites, it will at least buy the West some more time to do so by widening the window of opportunity.

That’s where the New York Times article comes in. The detailed leaks are most likely the Gabbard faction’s attempt to delay even that kind of attack by telling the Iranians what to expect. It’s hard to see this as anything other than the director of national intelligence enabling U.S. and Israeli intelligence to be put in front of an enemy state.

The leak is the point. It’s a tactical play to more or less help Iran torpedo American action. That’s the intent, anyway. Whether it succeeds might depend on whether Walz and Hegseth find their voices and their spines.

From Israel Hayom:

Approximately 400 Hezbollah field commanders are slated to leave Lebanon for various South American countries, including Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador, according to a report on Wednesday by a Latin American diplomatic source to the Saudi news outlet Al Hadath.

The report comes amid growing discourse in Lebanon surrounding the possible disarmament of the Shiite terrorist organization, following its defeat in the war with Israel. According to the source, 200 commanders have already reached South America, with the rest expected to depart Lebanon in due course.

The diplomatic source said Hezbollah ordered its commanders to leave Lebanon fearing that they could be targeted if and when the organization's military infrastructure is dismantled. It is worth noting that Hezbollah already has an established terrorist network in South America.

Janoubia adds:

Over the years, Hezbollah has established a strong and multifaceted presence in Latin America, including illicit financing and operational networks spanning several countries, according to local media in these countries.
Information indicates that the area where Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay meet is a major hub for Hezbollah activities. Here, the party engages in smuggling, money laundering, and fundraising through various illicit projects.
In Venezuela, Hezbollah leverages support networks, exploiting the country's political climate and existing diaspora communities to facilitate its operations.
Hezbollah researchers and information in American media outlets indicate that the party cooperates with South American drug cartels, such as the Medellín Cartel, to finance its activities. Key figures, such as Shukri Mahmoud Harb, have been identified as pivotal players in these operations.

Hmmm. What other group of people fled to South America to save their skins over the past century?

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

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Are Jewish ethics just a component of Jewish law, or are they overlapping but distinguishable concepts?

At first blush, it appears that from the perspective of Judaism, Jewish ethics is identical to halacha (Jewish law.) Halacha includes lots of ethical imperatives like charity, kindness to strangers, visiting the sick and honoring one's parents. Legal questions come up with each of these - for example, does one have to listen to their parents' advice when it would be detrimental to the child? The same rabbis that decide whether something is kosher also decide how much charity one must give.

But a little thought shows that while Judaism treats ethics and law similar ways, using similar methodologies and anchoring both in sacred texts, ethics is treated as something beyond the law.

In Pirke Avot, one opinions says that someone who says "what's mine is mine and what's yours is yours" is acting like a resident of the wicked city of Sodom. Why should that be? Clearly, from a legal perspective, he is saying something accurate. Why would such a person be considered to be like the famously evil Sodomites?

One commentator, the Bartenura, says the reason is that the Sodomites did not want any visitors, even though their land had lots of resources and could accommodate guests. This character trait is what made them evil. People risk becoming callous towards others when they insist that what is theirs is theirs, and this starts the slide towards being akin to a Sodomite.

This illustrates the tension in Judaism between halacha and ethics: one is expected, urged and - at times - obligated to act in ways beyond the letter of the law.

This is what the Talmudic phrase lifnim mishurat hadin means (Bava Metzia 30b). It says that people not only can but should act beyond the strict interpretation of halacha. It demands a higher ethical standard.

This is a remarkable concept. Lifnim mishurat hadin appears to exist at the intersection of formal law and ethical aspiration. It seemingly accepts the idea that halacha itself can never be an all encompassing system and it requires ethical concepts beyond halacha to cover all potential questions. The halachic system itself acknowledges its own limitations and encourages people to go beyond them. There are cases where lifnim mishurat hadin were mandated by batei din, Jewish courts, others where it is just encouraged, and stories of people who were praised or going above and beyond what was legally required of them.

There are other similar concepts in halacha where strict adherence to halacha itself is strongly disparaged. A "naval b’reshut haTorah" is a disgusting person who does everything within halachic bounds and not one millimeter beyond. The Talmud states an opinion that Jerusalem was destroyed because people followed only strict law and did not go beyond it.

Some examples make it sound like going above and beyond is praiseworthy, some that it is expected, some that it is mandated. What seems clear is that lifnim mishurat hadin goes beyond the halachic system, yet it can justify itself within the halachic framework by using Deuteronomy 6:18, "Do what is right and good in the eyes of the Lord," as an overarching Biblical source for extra-judicial ethics.

A recent responsum by Rav Yosef Zvi Rimon illustrates this idea of Jewish ethics asserting itself independently of halachic detail.

Soldiers are allowed to seek shelter in the homes of their enemies during wartime. One Israeli soldier asked whether he would be allowed to charge his mobile phone while resting in one such home in Gaza, another asked whether he could take items from another home that was about to be demolished and the items destroyed anyway (presumably because it was hiding a tunnel shaft or was booby trapped.) After looking at this through a strictly halachic viewpoint, Rav Rimon adds that when one is engaged in an obligatory war of self defense, one must not gain any personal pleasure from it as that endangers the moral underpinnings of the war itself. He brings as proof the idea from his own teacher, Rav Aharon Lichtenstein, that when King Saul ignored the commandment to destroy all of Amalek and he justified keeping some animals, "he turned his entire war into something unethical. The war against Amalek is a decree from God. When a person benefits from the results of the war, there is personal enjoyment, and he is not acting solely according to God’s direction. Consequently, the justified killing becomes

murder."

This part of the response is purely ethical, not halachic, but the language is extraordinarily strong in its insistence that one cannot personally gain from spoils of war, even when those gains will not cause any additional loss from the owners.

Concepts like lifnim mishurat hadin and naval b’reshut haTorah show that Jewish ethics are supra-halachic. This means that they can be examined and studied as an independent system, outside the halachic framework. And moreover, it indicates that, unlike halacha, Judaism's ethical standards can be seen as a model for the world, not only Jews.

The Jewish ethical framework may be based on the halachic framework - but it can be decoupled from halacha itself when applied to the world at large. Its rich and deep sources and its unparalleled maturity makes Jewish ethics particularist and universal, ever timely and timeless.

It is an ideal ethical system for everyone.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Israel cuts Gaza aid. Hamas running out of money. The world doesn't see any relationship between the two.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Hamas is facing a new problem in Gaza: coming up with the cash it needs to pay its rank and file.

Israel last month cut off supplies of humanitarian goods to the enclave, some of which Hamas had been seizing and selling to raise funds, according to Arab, Israeli and Western officials. Its renewed offensive has targeted and killed Hamas officials who played important roles in distributing cash to cadres and sent others into hiding, Arab intelligence officials said.

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. Rank-and-file Hamas fighters’ pay had been averaging around $200 to $300 a month, they said.

The shortfalls are creating hardship across Hamas’s ranks in Gaza’s cash economy and signal a deepening organizational dysfunction in the militant group as it also contends with a more aggressive Israeli military strategy.

Once the war started, Israel tightly limited the transfer of physical cash into Gaza, forcing U.S.-designated terrorist group Hamas to find ways around the restrictions. Early on, the group was involved in taking $180 million from branches of the Bank of Palestine and other institutions, current and former Palestinian officials said.

Hamas used the flow of humanitarian and commercial goods to build new income streams, according to Arab, Israeli and Western officials. This has included charging taxes on merchants, collecting customs on trucks at checkpoints, and commandeering goods for resale. Hamas also has used overseas cash to buy humanitarian goods that are then sold in Gaza and turned back into cash, the officials said.

For well over a year, Hamas managed to fund its activities. But when aid dries up, it loses that ability.

Gee, you think the two may be related?

This is not the first time we have seen a relationship between aid and Hamas funding its activities. When Israel cut off all aid in the first weeks of the war, Hamas felt the pressure of losing that income stream and this may have been one factor in Hamas accepting the first ceasefire.

Under the laws of armed conflict, even food and medical supplies can be blocked if they are being used the way Hamas is using them. The Geneva Conventions Article 23 says:

Article 23 - Consignment of medical supplies, food and clothing
Each High Contracting Party shall allow the free passage of all consignments of medical and hospital stores and objects necessary for religious worship intended only for civilians of another High Contracting Party, even if the latter is its adversary. It shall likewise permit the free passage of all consignments of essential foodstuffs, clothing and tonics intended for children under fifteen, expectant mothers and maternity cases.

The obligation of a High Contracting Party to allow the free passage of the consignments indicated in the preceding paragraph is subject to the condition that this Party is satisfied that there are no serious reasons for fearing:

(a) that the consignments may be diverted from their destination,
(b) that the control may not be effective, or
(c) that a definite advantage may accrue to the military efforts or economy of the enemy through the substitution of the above-mentioned consignments for goods which would otherwise be provided or produced by the enemy or through the release of such material, services or facilities as would otherwise be required for the production of such goods.

Everyone knew Hamas used aid to fund its operations way before the war.

Israel has proposed methods of bringing in aid to bypass Hamas completely. Hamas strongly protested the idea. But the international aid agencies have not shown support for any plan that bypasses Hamas, either. And the media has not reported on Israel's plan, which paints Israel as the ones who are blocking aid and Hamas as the ones who want to help Gazans.

If Hamas is using the aid to fund its terrorism, Israel has every moral and legal right to stop that aid and propose alternatives. The lack of reporting on real international law, Israel's attempts to help innocent Gazans and Hamas' diversion of aid for its own purposes cannot be explained by anything but deep, systemic bias against Israel.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Hamas tries to get Gazans to protest it being disarmed. Hardly anybody shows up.

Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades posted on Telegram:

#Photos of a mass march in Beit Lahia, north of the Gaza Strip, in support of the resistance and in rejection of the occupation's demands to disarm the resistance.

It looks like maybe 20 people showed up at this "mass march," of whom many were curious teenage boys.

Maybe Gazans want to see Hamas disarmed....

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

04/16 Links Pt2: Josh Hammer: A renewed Jewish-Christian alliance for Western civilization; What the Oct. 7 Survivors Are Going Through

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Trump's plan provides needed solution to combat campus antisemitism

It is worth recalling that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enforced not just with words, but with funding. Institutions that refused to desegregate lost access to federal support.

Today’s crisis demands the same moral clarity. When Jewish students are being intimidated in classrooms and assaulted on quads, the government has not only a right to intervene – it has a duty to do so.

President Donald Trump himself framed the issue bluntly, writing on Truth Social: “Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status.... Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!”

Critics, including former president Barack Obama, have warned that the administration’s actions represent a threat to academic freedom.

“Harvard has set an example... rejecting an unlawful and ham-handed attempt to stifle academic freedom,” Obama posted on X/Twitter. But his statement ignores the lived reality of Jewish students, who are not enjoying freedom – they are being silenced.

This isn’t about ideology. It’s about restoring the basic promise that all students – Jewish, Christian, Muslim, atheist – deserve to feel safe, respected, and free to learn.

Trump's proposal offers a chance for course correction
What the Trump administration has proposed is a course correction – a necessary and proportional use of government oversight to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not funding hate.

The time for polite letters and listening circles is over. Action is needed. President Trump’s plan recognizes the urgency and responds with clarity. We support it, and we urge Congress, civil rights groups, and Jewish organizations to do the same.

Protecting Jewish students is not an overreach – it’s the bare minimum.

Jonathan Tobin: Harvard’s ‘resistance’ to Trump isn’t about science or academic freedom

Yet would anyone currently decrying Trump’s moves defend the funding of any medical school, hospital or research facility if it involved giving a seal of federal approval to an institution that discriminated against racial minorities protected by the Civil Rights Act? To the contrary, the same voices raised in defense of the “resistance” to Trump would demand the defunding of any entity—no matter how vital its scientific or medical research—that targeted blacks or allowed a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan to operate with impunity on their grounds or in their school buildings. Yet that is exactly what Harvard, Columbia and many other schools did by allowing pro-Hamas groups that support Jewish genocide to operate freely.

Moreover, as author Heather Mac Donald has pointed out, the impact of the DEI policies being defended by Harvard has led to discrimination and the lowering of standards throughout the sciences and math. That poses a far greater threat to American medicine and scientific research than Trump’s request that these schools give up their woke policies and stop antisemitism.

So, let’s be clear about what’s actually at stake in this controversy. It’s not science or academic freedom. It’s about elite schools wishing to remain in thrall to progressive orthodoxies on race and Western civilization that have fueled the surge in Jew-hatred.

Part of this can also be explained by politics.

The success of the left’s long march through American educational institutions over the past decades has created a situation in which conservatives and Zionists are rarities on college and university faculties. A career in academia for anyone who dissents from DEI and woke orthodoxy, as well as the notion that Israel and Jews are “white” oppressors who must be suppressed, can only do so by keeping their opinions to themselves. To openly dissent against the left’s toxic myths about critical race theory, intersectionality or settler-colonialism theory is to effectively guarantee that you won’t be hired for any post in the humanities and social sciences and to never obtain tenure even if you do get that far. Republicans or anyone who openly supports Trump are virtually an extinct species among those who work in higher education.

That’s why faculties like the ones at Harvard and Columbia have been so vocal in their support for the pro-Hamas mobs that target Jews and in defense of Middle East Studies programs, often funded by Islamist sources like the Emirate of Qatar that have become hotbeds of antisemitism.

However, it also creates a dynamic on campus that makes any accommodation with a Trump administration that left-wing Democrats view as beyond the pale, even on anything as clearly legitimate as a response to the rampant antisemitism that has been on display since Oct. 7, as a betrayal. Indeed, so strong is the pull of partisanship that many leading liberal Jewish groups like the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and even Hillel have put themselves on record as having reservations about Trump’s all-out effort to fight antisemitism or even to oppose it. In a country where politics now assumes the role that religion used to play in most people’s lives, opposing Trump is clearly a higher priority for many of those who identify as liberals or Democrats than combating Jew-hatred.

What Harvard is really fighting for
This debate isn’t about Trump’s alleged authoritarian tendencies. It is being triggered by the stubborn refusal of the most prestigious and venerable of American institutions, such as Harvard and Columbia, to ensure the safety of Jews and to give up practices in admissions, discipline and hiring that ensure their continued adherence to leftist ideologies that are at war with the Western canon and Jewish survival.

The cheers for Harvard’s stand are a reflection of the emotional needs of a portion of the American electorate that is overrepresented in the credentialed elites that venerate schools like Harvard. Their anger at the 2024 election results, hatred for Trump and affinity for woke racialism are so deep that they are willing to figuratively die on a hill that involves their support for or acquiescence to the legitimacy of a genocidal war waged against the only Jewish state on the planet. That is a telling indication of, as Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) put it, how “Harvard University has rightfully earned its place as the epitome of the moral and academic rot in higher education.”

Trump’s response to such defiance must be resolute. If Harvard won’t give up its toleration and support for antisemitism, then it must lose every penny of federal funding. And the same should go for any other school that follows its example. The pious platitudes about democracy, science or academic freedom that we are hearing from Trump’s opponents notwithstanding, the only thing they are really fighting for is the right to empower those who seek to harm Jews.

Josh Hammer: A renewed Jewish-Christian alliance for Western civilization

Josh Hammer, senior editor- at-large at Newsweek, discusses his new book Israel and Civilization and makes the case for a renewed Jewish-Christian alliance to preserve Western civilization. Here is my interview with him:

Let’s start with the title of your book, Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West. It sounds like the title is almost a thesis statement – that you’re not just writing a history book or a book of mere social commentary, but you actually have a point that you want to make.

The original title we were brainstorming was actually “Sinai and Civilization.” That gives away the core of the argument. “Israel and Civilization” also makes sense when you understand that “Israel” serves a dual function. It’s not just the State of Israel, but also the Children of Israel, the Jewish people.

The cover features Moses and the Israelites crossing the Red Sea. We wanted to make a statement that this is not a traditional blue and white Magen David hasbara book. I’m an unabashed Zionist, but such books have been written before.

This book was written in response not just to the horrific pogrom on October 7, 2023, but really in response to the world’s reaction to that pogrom. The world had a clear opportunity to choose between a Medieval Islamist death cult and one of the most vibrant, flourishing nations, and the fact that it was so morally confused is telling.

It was time for someone, especially from a younger generation, such as myself, to write a book trying to remind Westerners: “What do you think this is? You’re living in a very flourishing society. Where do you think you got this from?”

The book makes the argument that Western civilization begins with the Bible. The Judeo-Christian tradition going back to Revelation and Mount Sinai really is the core of what we refer to as “Western civilization.” Fundamentally, I’m explaining how the original People of the Book, the Jewish people, have a special and unique role to play not just in Western civilization, but really in the fate of mankind as a whole.

What you’re pointing to is that the reaction to October 7 was like picking up a rock and seeing all the bugs crawl out, realizing there was something very rotten at the core of how so many people in the West think about their own identity. Are Americans your primary audience for this book?

The primary audience is Americans, especially younger Americans. They tend to be more morally confused in public polling when it comes to basic questions like: “Who do you sympathize with, Israel or Hamas?”

Part of the book includes my personal story as someone raised in a very secular setting who has since embarked on a religious journey. Part of that is a message to liberal Reform Jews and secular Jews: To be a true “Light unto the Nations,” don’t just talk the talk – actually walk the walk.

But above all, the number one audience is younger conservatives, maybe especially young Christian conservatives. The evangelicals in America are the Jewish people’s greatest friends, period.

04/16 Links Pt1: Hamas said to reject Israeli ceasefire proposal; Arsonist Targeted Shapiro's Home Over his Support for Israel; Cynthia Nixon wraps herself in Palestinian flag

From Ian:

Arsonist Targeted Josh Shapiro's Home Over Governor's Support for Israel, Police Say

The suspect in the Sunday arson attack on Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro's (D.) residence said he set fire to the home because Shapiro is Jewish and supports Israel, according to a newly unsealed warrant.

According to the warrant, Cody Balmer, 38, targeted Shapiro's home on the first night of Passover because of "perceived injustices to the people of Palestine" and Shapiro's Judaism, PennLive reported.

Balmer, who called 911 after the attack and later turned himself in, told operators that he "will not take part in [Shapiro's] plans for what he wants to do to the Palestinian people." Balmer also called the governor a "monster" and said he needed to "stop having my friends killed," according to the warrant.

Dauphin County district attorney Francis Chardo (R.) said he will use Balmer's statements as evidence of a hate crime, USA Today reported. Court documents released on Tuesday said Balmer was "harboring hatred" toward the governor, according to CBS.

Shapiro, a prominent Jewish Democrat and a finalist to be Kamala Harris's running mate last year, has sparked backlash from anti-Israel members of his party for condemning Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack and supporting the Jewish state. He also called for the removal of a pro-Hamas encampment last year at the University of Pennsylvania after protesters tried to seize a campus building.

Surveillance footage shows Balmer scaling the security fence around the Governor's Residence in Harrisburg before smashing windows and hurling Molotov cocktails inside. While the fire caused extensive property damage just hours after Shapiro hosted a Passover dinner, the governor, his family, guests, and staff were able to evacuate safely.

Authorities have charged Balmer with eight crimes, including attempted murder, aggravated arson, and terrorism. If convicted, he faces more than 100 years in prison.

Media is About to Make Gov. Shapiro Arson Attempt Disappear

The media got very excited when the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion was firebombed because they were hoping it was going to be somebody with the ‘wrong’ politics, but instead the perpetrator, Cody Balmer, was a self-proclaimed “socialist” who claimed that he did it to tell Gov. Josh Shapiro that he “will not take part in his plans for what he wants to do to the Palestinian people.”

Now Balmer seems like a nutjob, but had he been a nutjob with the wrong politics, we’d never stop hearing about it, but now he’s likely to get a whole lot less attention because he did it for the ‘right reasons’.

And there’s a pattern to this stuff.

Hamas is the latest BLM. A mania that all sorts of loonies, grifters and people looking for some cause to glom on to and fight a war over attach themselves to.

BREAKING: Aliakbar Mohammad Amin, has been arrested after allegedly sending threatening text messages about Gabbard and her husband.

Some of his messages included, “You and your family are going to die soon” and “I will personally do the job if necessary.” pic.twitter.com/JnNW1nHEQu
— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) April 16, 2025

Harvard Awards Honorary Degree To Man Who Firebombed Governor Shapiro's House https://t.co/13ExrnQ9eF pic.twitter.com/6hRxCYk6uj
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) April 16, 2025

AI didn't understand that the onion is mixed into the fried matzo batter, otherwise this photo comes pretty close to the real deal

“I should be home in like an hour, is there something to eat?” wrote my baby, really an adult now at the age of 24. The whatsapp message had come out of nowhere, at 7:30pm. We hadn’t been expecting him to be with us for Pesach. Between his duties as an IDF soldier, and his need to kick back with a friend at the end of the holiday, it had looked like we wouldn’t be seeing him at all. But such is the army. I actually never know when I’m going to get that message: “I’m on the way home, what do we have to eat?”

I sent my son a voice message, offering him a variety of options. We had some nice things in the house, including leftover salmon filet from lunch. But of all the things I offered my boy, the one thing he wanted was matzo brie, or as I called it growing up, “Fried Matzo,” the matzo part being pronounced the Lithuanian way, with an “ee” at the end: “matzee.”

I was so happy that of all the things my son yearned to eat on Pesach, it was my fried matzo. It gave me Jewish nachas, an untranslatable word that means something like pride and joy, but also satisfaction. I felt the same way when I watched my grandson eat a bowl of my chicken soup, the quintessential Jewish soul food. He was drinking in our history. Watching him, I knew that my earliest food memories would also be those of my children and their children, too.

I dug out my mother’s recipe for fried matzo, not really needing it—it’s something you just know how to do without a recipe—but for the satisfaction it still gives me to see her neatly typed recipes. My mother was an amazing typist, quick as lightning and the results error-free. Yet her recipe for fried matzo, I had learned, was not typical of what my Jewish friends ate in their own homes.

There were two reasons for this, and pretty much both come down to the same thing: my mother was a Litvak: a Lithuanian Jew. Today, there are almost no Lithuanian Jews left. This is due to the fact that more than 95% of Lithuanian Jewry was exterminated during the Holocaust, a loss more complete than from any other country. I almost never meet a Jew of Lithuanian heritage. The remnants of Eastern European Ashkenazi Jewry are mostly from Galicia.

Galicianers like their food sweet, Litvaks not so much. My mom’s fried matzo is typical of Lithuanian Jewish cuisine, savory rather than sweet, and seasoned with salt, pepper, and chopped onion. The truth is I was appalled when I learned that my friends ate fried matzo topped with sugar or cinnamon sugar. It sounded downright foreign to me. Was it even Jewish?

Of course it was. Probably more than my mother’s recipe actually, considering that we ate it with Heinz ketchup. This latter innovation was likely due to the fact that my maternal grandmother was 100% American born, and 100% Pittsburgh born, home of the Heinz factory, a favorite school field trip for kids growing up in da Burgh. (My homies of a certain age will remember coming home from school with a plastic pickle pin affixed to their collars after a visit to the factory.)

I pulled out my skillet and got busy. I made batch after batch of fried matzo, knowing my soldier boy would have a huge appetite and scarf it down in no time flat. There was none left for me I am happy to report—also for two reasons: A. It was too delicious for my son to resist, and B: Fried matzo is super fattening—and I do not need the calories!

My 45-year old copy of my mother's recipe for Fried Matzo.

Fried Matzo

As handed down by my mother, the late Shirley Kopelman Meyers.

Break matzo (about 1 or two whole pieces per person) into small pieces & soak in water for a few minutes. Beat about 1 egg for each piece matzo, add salt, pepper & chopped onion. Squeeze out water from matzo & and add to egg mixture. Heat butter or chicken fat in large frying pan and fry, stirring occasionally, until browned. If you make a large amount, fry in more than one batch.

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During the Enlightenment, some of the most famous Western philosophers were inspired by physics. The simple beauty of Newtonian equations, like F = ma, caused many to think that if physical laws could be described so elegantly, then human ethics can similarly be reduced to a small set of universal laws.

Immanuel Kant said "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law." Jeremy Bentham said that an action is moral if it tends to promote universal happiness or pleasure and immoral if it tends to produce unhappiness or pain, and proposed a "felicific calculus" to calculate the pleasure or pain from an action. Ayn Rand said one's ethical duty is to maximize one's own benefit in any given situation. They and others attempted to shoehorn all humanity, all decisions, all actions into their moral calculators.

There's only one problem. Ethics are not physics. People are not objects.

These philosophers were recognized as the wisest people in the Western world. Their desire to fit the diverse population of humans, each with their own experiences, their own cultures and their own viewpoints, into a rational structure are laughable. Arguing about which philosophy of ethics is superior is a fun intellectual exercise, but it doesn't mean that any of them are right.

Of course it is seductive to try to find a formula to explain how people should act. That desire to make everything simple has no bearing on reality. In fact, it proves that even the people that are supposed to be the most rational creatures themselves - philosophers - fall for wishful thinking rather than see things as they are.

While they try to fit humans into their worldview, Judaism creates a worldview to accommodate humans as they really are. And you cannot make everything fit on a bumper sticker.

It is true that Hillel said "What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow," which sounds a lot like what some of these philosophers said. But he added, "That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary. Go and learn it." The maxim is only the starting point, not the entire philosophy. That "commentary" is a lifetime effort.

Remember that Hillel said this to an arrogant person insisting on a bite-sized Torah. His response showed respect for a disrespectful question and a way to attract him to a lifetime of studying Jewish ethics. His message was not merely his words but also his delivery and the context.

That is real wisdom.

It isn't only human ethics that cannot be boiled down to Newton's equations. Ironically, even physics itself can't be described accurately that way. Quantum mechanics broke that illusion of perfect predictability. The universe is a lot more complex than Newton or the Enlightenment philosophers could ever imagine. If you insist on an analogy between ethics and physics, perhaps you can say that:

The core values of Judaism (life, truth, dignity, responsibility, justice) are like the constants of nature.
The adjudication layer is like the wave function—fluid, contextual, probabilistic, but still governed by laws.
The integrity layer is like the observer effect in quantum mechanics. The outcome depends in part on who’s asking, how, and why. An electron can act like a wave or like a particle, and both of those are correct depending on how it is viewed.

But that is all it is - an analogy. It represents a way of looking at things and it can approximate a view of Jewish ethics but we should not fall for the same fallacy that the philosophers did: wishing that an analogy to physics reflects reality does not make it so.

Physics describes what is. Ethics prescribes what ought to be. Jewish ethics does not treat people like bowling balls dropped from a building or electrons around a nucleus. Equating moral complexity to an equation inevitably produces systems that are brittle, blind to the myriad of circumstances around the issues, and vulnerable to immoral conclusions.

Jewish ethics, by contrast, has always acknowledged that human beings are complex and flawed, that moral decisions are embedded in particular times, places, and relationships, and that principles must be balanced with each other, not arbitrarily prioritized. This flexibility isn’t relativism - it is a principled pluralism with internal consistency. The laws of physics are immutable, while Jewish ethical decisions can and must change to reflect the messy reality that we humans live in.

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

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The German–Israeli Society, Deutsch-Israelische Gesellschaft, is alarmed:

In a fatwa, the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) declared armed struggle against Israel an individual duty (farḍ al-ʿayn) for every Muslim.

The publication of this fatwa in early April has immediate implications for the security situation in Germany: It obligates every capable Muslim to wage jihad against Israel, the Jewish and democratic state (in Islamist parlance, "the Zionist entity"). The German-Israeli Society (DIG) is alarmed.

The International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) has relationships with well over a thousand mosques in Germany that include its doctrinal authority. Given the call to terror contained in this fatwa, this poses an immediate threat to internal security in Germany .

German politicians (i.e., all federal and state governments) must demand that all Islamic associations in Germany , especially DITIB, the German Muslim Community (DMG), the Islamic Community Millî Görüş eV (IGMG), its Islamic Council, and the Central Council of Muslims , condemn this fatwa as un-Islamic. (All of these organizations have had positive relations with the IUMS in the past.)
Organizations that do not publicly condemn this fatwa pose a threat to public security . Such associations, by refusing to do so, are directly opposing the idea of international understanding (Article 9, Paragraph 2 of the Basic Law).

The draft coalition agreement between the CDU/CSU and SPD emphasizes the fight against Islamism. Now the Federal Minister of the Interior must act in this spirit and take the first steps.

This applies to every Western nation, not just Germany.

The US Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO) and the Islamic Circle of North America have unofficial ties with the Muslim Brotherhood and the IUMS. They issued statements mourning the IUMS' previous leader, Yusuf Qaradawi, who was pro-terror and antisemitic.

It isn't a stretch that Islamists in the West will interpret the fatwa as applying to all Zionists, to all Jewish institutions and to all Jews worldwide. The IUMS site has blatantly antisemitic content, like an article describing 13 awful attributes of Jews ("Anyone who follows the history of the Jews will see the ugly actions and vile morals that characterize these people") and many articles that deny Jewish history. In short, the IUMS incites terror.

The IUMS is considered a terrorist organization in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain.

(h/t Daniel)

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The difference between @NorthwesternU truly fighting antisemitism and @Harvard's lip service

Harvard University is defiantly rejecting Trump administration demands that it address antisemitism on campus as a condition for continued federal funding.

The government demands are far reaching and a good case can be made that they go beyond Title VI requirements. They don't just say to comply with the law but they mandate how. For example, they demand changes in Harvard's governance structure. It is indeed a threat to Harvard's independence and I can understand why the university would want to push back on some of the more intrusive demands.

And yet.

Anything Harvard has done to protect its Jewish students since October 2023 has been done in a reactive way, to avoid lawsuits, bad publicity and government threats. At no point has it given the impression that it really cares about the welfare of its Jewish students and their right to be proudly, publicly Zionist.

Harvard's Interim President Alan Garber established a Task Force on Combating Antisemitism (and a separate one on Islamophobia) in January 2024. The task force issued preliminary recommendations in June. Some of those recommendations were partially implemented; there is no evidence that others have been:

Most glaringly, however, is that the task force promised a detailed follow-up report in the fall—but it never materialized

The findings of our Task Force’s summer research will be incorporated into a substantive report that will be submitted in the Fall. Our final report will offer a detailed analysis of how Harvard got into its current crisis of community and lay out proposals to transform our University culture for the better over the medium- and long-term.

Six months later, that final report has yet to appear.

So while Jewish students can now get hot kosher meals on campus, there is little that makes them feel safer.

Compare this to how Northwestern University has handled antisemitism on its campus. It is also under pressure from the Trump administration but it has implemented its protection for Jewish students far more proactively and transparently.

It started its antisemitism task force in November 2023, before there were any threats of lawsuits or significant pressure. Unlike Harvard, it included student leaders from Hillel and Chabad on its task force (Harvard includes one Jewish student with no record I can find of leadership in Jewish or Zionist causes.) It hosted a "MegaShabbat" which attracted 500 students. It mandated training on antisemitism for all students. It modified its policies significantly to address protests. It has transparently publicized the disciplinary actions taken against students who violated the policies.

Perhaps most importantly, Northwestern has been keeping detailed statistics on antisemitic incidents on campus and is now reporting on them. We have no such data on Harvard even today - there are no university surveys of incidents and no metrics on whether the partial steps Harvard has taken actually help anyone.

On the second day of Passover, antisemitic graffiti was discovered at Northwestern. On Monday, its president issued a clear statement of condemnation in an email to the entire campus community.

But when similar acts of hate and vandalism were found at Harvard (tearing down and writing on top of hostage posters in January 2024), a university spokesperson issued a generic statement - not a pro-active email, not from the president.

The overwhelming impression is that Northwestern cares about its Jewish students and their safety. Harvard pretends to care about its Jewish students and their safety.

I would be a lot more sympathetic to Harvard's position if they were doing what Northwestern is doing. But they aren't. They are paying lip service to their Jewish students while publicly defending those who want to attack them.

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(The chart above was generated by a deep-research AI.)

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)