‘My tidal wave of monstrous fury’: Simon Schama on tonight’s Holocaust documentary
There is a moment when Sir Simon Schama looks straight at the camera in his latest documentary – the first to take him to Auschwitz – and it is one of the rawest things ever seen on television.Passover and Antisemitism: Three Chilling Insights
Having come face to face with the horror of what antisemitism can lead to, he cannot hold it in. He admits to a “tidal wave of monstrous fury at everyone. Not just the SS. Not just the Germans. It took hundreds of years of bigger dehumanising hatred to make it conceivable that a whole civilisation ends up in smoke.”
And then comes the kicker as his eyes fill with tears and he shakes with fury. “Pity is what others who aren’t Jews feel. Screw the pity.”
Far away from now-cold furnaces of the death camp, in a Maida Vale café, our most erudite and brilliant historian may look cosy in his thick cardigan as he sips decaffeinated cappuccino in the weak spring sunshine, but he still feels that anger and he wants to express it.
“My wife thinks I shouldn’t have said it,” he says when I ask him about the “screw pity” comment. “But I felt very strongly about it. Saying sorry is no good. Your licensed pity should have functioned at the Bermuda Conference in 1943 [when American and British leaders decided not to allow more desperate Jews into either the US or Mandatory Palestine]. It should have functioned by trying to get the parents as well as the children of the Kindertransport out. It should have functioned by letting us go somewhere safe after the war.”
Schama has his enormous reputation behind him and says that means that “when you get to 80 years old, you get quite feisty. Yes, you are terrified that you will wake up and something will have dropped off your body, but on the other hand, you do get sort of weirdly liberated.”
As he looks back in anger, he turns to some of the historians who documented the Holocaust as it was happening and whom he features in his one-off BBC film Simon Schama: The Road to Auschwitz. Historians such as Emanuel Ringelblum, who led the secret Oyneg Shabbos group in the Warsaw Ghetto which collected information about life as a doomed Jew for future posterity.
“History is not just old stuff, it is not a romantic distraction of the past,” says Schama, who feels the echoes of history screaming louder and louder at him. “If you go back ten years ago, the general view, which I probably would have shared, was that, as the survivors die, Auschwitz and the Holocaust will become history. In other words, it would be available for the kind of cool, forensic analysis like you’d apply to the origins of the First World War or the Black Death or something like that; in a time capsule. But after October 7, and possibly even before with the rise in antisemitism, it sort of left the tomb. It walks and stalks us. It’s not gone. It’s not the past. It’s alive and raving.”
That bigger story of dehumanisation is why the documentary does not start, as you might expect, in Germany with the story of the Nazis but in Lithuania where the Nazi invasion lit the fuse for a bloodlust of murder of Jews by their Lithuanian neighbours. “I have some difficulty with the title of the film – I wanted to call it Against Oblivion. My problem is that for the vast number of people who know anything about the Holocaust, it’s Anne Frank and Auschwitz.
The Exodus from Egypt is the world’s oldest case study in antisemitism. Its lessons are alarmingly relevant today.“Antisemitism is incurable,” says Ryvchin
Pharaoh’s propaganda campaign might seem distant but look a little closer and you’ll see something chilling: the script hasn’t changed much in 3,500 years.
Here are three enduring lessons from the Exodus that can help us better understand the real nature of antisemitism—then and now.
1. Antisemitism Isn’t About the Stated Reasons—It’s About the Jewish Spiritual Threat
Pharaoh didn’t say, “We hate the Jews because they believe in one God” or “They make us uncomfortable because they won’t assimilate.”
No—he claimed the Jews were a national security threat. “The Israelites are becoming too numerous… If war breaks out, they might join our enemies and fight against us” (See Exodus 1:9–10). Really? A group of shepherds and laborers, who had lived peacefully in Goshen for generations, were suddenly a military threat capable of starting a war? This excuse is as flimsy as it sounds.
It was a lie. A pretext. And that’s the first insight: antisemitism rarely presents itself honestly. It hides behind superficial grievances—economic anxiety, political conspiracy, military suspicion - even the idea that Jews are easy scapegoats - but these are fig leaves. The real issue is much deeper.
The deeper truth, as the Torah reveals, and Hitler expressed (I show this in great detail in my book Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Jew?), is that antisemitism is rarely about the superficial reasons given—it’s about the Jews being a spiritual and ideological threat. Hitler said that all of World War II was “ideologically a battle between National Socialism and the Jews.”
The Jews have always posed a spiritual and ideological challenge to the dominant culture. In medieval Europe, Jews were blamed for economic woes, accused of usury or poisoning wells, but the real threat was our stubborn adherence to Torah values. Today, we hear antisemitic tropes about Jewish power or wealth, we see passionate protests against Israeli colonialism and committing genocide, but reasonable people know that the Jews are not the greatest violators of human rights on earth. Whether in ancient Egypt, Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, or today’s radicalized Islamic world led by the Palestinian Hamas, the accusations shift—but the double standards reveal the underlying discomfort with Jewish values, impact and distinctiveness.
Antisemitism is not your run of the mill racism; it’s about the Jewish soul, a light that refuses to be extinguished, threatening those who want to dwell in spiritual darkness. Jew-hatred, in the end, is not about what Jews do. It’s about what Jews are and what they represent.
Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive officer of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, has delivered a powerful speech arguing that antisemitism is “incurable” and that Zionism has failed in its original aim to normalise Jewish existence.
Around 300 people attended the B’nai B’rith annual Human Rights Oration at the Glen Eira Town Hall in Melbourne on Sunday, where Ryvchin also received the 2025 B’nai B’rith Human Rights Award.
Speaking exactly 18 months after the October 7 attacks, Ryvchin challenged conventional approaches to fighting antisemitism.
“After thousands of years, it can no longer be characterised as a defect in reasoning that can be untaught,” he stated.
“We are not ordinary. And we therefore have to accept the feelings this invokes in others.”
When asked by the AJN if his view might be controversial, Ryvchin acknowledged it might be, “particularly for those who want clear and compelling answers and want solutions.”
“I’m not in the business of misleading people and giving them satisfactory statements that make them sleep better at night. I think we have to be honest,” he said.
Ryvchin defined the battle as containing antisemitism rather than eliminating it entirely.
“The fight is not to exterminate antisemitism, reduce it to nothing, because that, in my view, is unachievable,” he told the AJN.
“The battle is to contain it, to push it back out to the peripheries of society and the dark recesses of social media, where it can’t do us harm, because at the moment, for the last 18 months, it has materially affected how Jews in this country live.”
Melanie Phillips: Home truths for secularists
At the Menachem Begin Centre in Jerusalem, I was very pleased to be in discussion about my new book with David Hazony, the writer, editor and Director of the Z3 Institute for Jewish Priorities. Among other things, we discussed how a culture needs to be anchored in a religious tradition to protect principles that are essential to everyone, including secular people; how the human rights culture has helped destroy those principles; and the confusion and rethinking that have been occurring among elements of the liberal world in their shocked reaction to the October 7 atrocities against Israel.
John Lithgow’s Oliviers win proves theatre is finally taking anti-Semitism seriously
The decision to hand the hugely prestigious Olivier award for Best New Play to Mark Rosenblatt for Giant, together with two other Oliviers (John Lithgow and Elliot Levey taking Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor), isn’t just a mightily deserved win for the director turned playwright, and the players concerned. It’s a sign that British theatre is emphatically taking anti-Semitism seriously – and with mainstream intent – which is its vital duty in these febrile times.Brendan O'Neill: Sudan’s ‘forgotten war’ exposes the inhumanity of Israelophobia
The work, which premiered last autumn at a resurgent Royal Court (and is about to open in the West End), stars American acting giant Lithgow, 79, as Roald Dahl, and is set in 1983, at an imagined crisis meeting with publisher Tom Maschler (Levey) and a fictitious US sales director Jessie Stone (Romola Garai). The upset follows the fierce anti-Israeli (and anti-Jewish) criticisms made by the avidly read children’s author in a review of God Cried – a book recounting the 1982 siege of Beirut by the Israeli army.
The underlying triumph of Nicholas Hytner’s production is to assert that at a time of polarised views and unyielding agendas, theatre is the perfect space to explore complex, even incendiary subject-matter with nuance and subtlety, opening up debate, not rail-roading it. It hasn’t felt like that of late – heavy-handedness and one-sidedness have, too often, been the order of the day. The clamour to see Giant reflects ardent interest in the topic and a yen for sophisticated drama.
The boon but also the risk was that it landed in a year in which the issue of anti-Semitism, and the discourse around Israel, reached fever-pitch. Having grown out of Rosenblatt’s concern about the politics, and prejudices, of Corbyn’s Labour (“the blurring of language in the discussion around Israel and Judaism..,”), it got the green-light for production two days before the October 7 attacks.
“It’s a play full of delicate sensitivities, and it met the world at the most sensitive and delicate of moments,” said Rosenblatt when accepting two Critics Circle awards the other week. In that context, its line-by-line mixture of light and shade seem even more like a counter-blast to our antagonised, black-and-white times.
What’s heartening about Giant is that its inescapable topicality grows out of its fidelity to its material. It’s the polar opposite of the crass gesture that saw a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream pulled at the Royal Exchange in Manchester last year as a consequence of an activist-minded directorial decision to deploy a “Free Palestine” slogan in the set. Rosenblatt brought much graft and craft to his subject; alongside imagination, reams of research and his own interviews.
We all know what’s happening here: this is the warping effect of the Israel myopia of the West’s opinion-forming classes. It is the twisted consequence of the cultural elites’ defamatory treatment of Israel’s war on Hamas as so uniquely murderous that it blots out all else. Sudanese people know this, too. Sudanese migrants in the UK set up a campaign group – London for Sudan – precisely to plead with the media ‘to take notice of the conflict’. Distressed that the war in their homeland had ‘largely gone ignored compared with the war in Gaza’, they hit the streets essentially to beg for media attention. Please stop minimising ‘the significance’ of our people’s pain, they said.Hostage families demonstrate at ministers' homes to mark year and a half since Oct. 7
This image of Sudanese migrants crying out for coverage shames our media elites. Media influencers who spent the past five years saying ‘black lives matter’ seem staggeringly blasé about the 150,000 black lives lost in Sudan. Worse, they zone out from this human agony for entirely self-serving reasons. Wary of anything that might undermine their Israelophobic morality tale, their feverish insistence that the Jewish nation is the most murderous nation and that they are its morally unimpeachable foes, they block out all inconvenient truths. Such as the inconvenient truth of 150,000 dead Sudanese. Those ‘black lives’ are a fly in the ointment of the cultural elites’ moral prestige, which is increasingly derived from their maniacal loathing for Israel’s ‘genocide’.
In essence, Sudan’s tragedy has been sacrificed to the vanity of cultural influencers whose claims to moral supremacy now rest on the lie that Israel is a uniquely barbarous nation that all good people must oppose. Nothing can be allowed to interfere with this self-regarding narrative, including dead Africans. Anti-Israel leftists say actually they focus on Israel’s actions because it’s a Western ally backed by our own governments. Who’s buying this? For a start, many close Western allies are implicated in the war in Sudan. Turkey and Egypt, both backed by the US, have supported the Sudanese army, while our ‘friend’ the United Arab Emirates has supported the RSF.
But more to the point: since when was solidarity with human beings swept up in the vortex of war dependent on the political authorship of that war? The idea that Western observers’ salacious obsession with every civilian death in Gaza alongside their shameful silence on civilian deaths in Sudan is born from a simple political calculation, from an honourable desire to hold their own governments to account, is a transparent fantasy. To some of us, this glaring disparity of care smacks of something far more cynical – of an attitude to world affairs where human suffering considered morally beneficial to the clerisies of the West is elevated over human suffering that is seen as too complicated, too potentially distracting. Black lives matter, except where they threaten to interfere with the elites’ galvanising religion of Israelophobia.
Animus for Israel is such a powerful drug among our cultural establishments that it now has real, material consequences in global affairs. For good or ill, we live in a world where media attention can lead to action. As London for Sudan says, media focus on Sudan’s troubles might have generated greater ‘humanitarian efforts’ and ‘government action’. We also know that dictators like Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad, then ruler of Syria, ‘capitalis[ed] on the world’s focus on Gaza’ to intensify their assaults on Ukraine and Syrian dissidents respectively. The Israel myopia of the influential of the West has proved a boon for the world’s warmongers, and a disaster for the world’s oppressed. Israelophobia is more than a moral irritation – it kills.
Families of hostages held by Hamas and other Gaza terror groups gathered outside the homes of several ministers on Monday to mark a year and a half since the October 7 massacre.Egypt said to float release of 8 hostages in new truce; Israel denies receiving terms
The main gathering was held at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Jerusalem residence. Hostage families also gathered in smaller crowds outside the residences of other politicians, including Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, Education Minister Yoav Kisch, Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Minister Amichai Chikli, Economy and Industry Minister Nir Barkat, and former health minister Yuli Edelstein.
“There is a heavy and difficult feeling as if the return of our loved ones has been pushed aside; we must bring everyone back now!” the families stated.
The families called for the “immediate return of the 59 hostages from Hamas captivity,” according to a statement from the Hostage and Missing Families Forum.
The protest activity began at 6:29 a.m., the same time Hamas terrorists breached Israel’s border and began their attack on October 7. Demonstrators begin protest to mark a year and a half since the October 7 massacre in front of Amichai Chikli's house (credit: Gilad Gozni)
Demonstrators began by reading the names of the 59 remaining hostages, with a prayer session and recordings of testimonies from captivity survivors, the forum said. 'History will remember'
The families also held signs reading, “History will remember,” while calling on decision-makers to reach an agreement that would “bring about the immediate return of all hostages in a single step.” Erez Adar addresses the gathered hostage families marking 1.5 years since the October 7 Massacre, April 7, 2025. (Credit: Hostages Families Forum)
Erez Adar, uncle of Tamir Adar, whose body remains in Gaza, stated, “Fifty-nine people are in hell, and there is no end in sight. Fifty-nine people, who should be the most urgent issue in the State of Israel, have been pushed to the margins.”
“I am here today because we are at an impasse,” he commented, adding, “We are enraged, and we call on the prime minister to bring back all the hostages in a single step. This is the most important issue on the agenda. We must bring them all back – the living for rehabilitation and the fallen for burial – so that there will be a chance for a better future.”
Varda Ben Baruch, Edan Alexander's grandmother, addressed Netanyahu, saying, “Prime minister, ‘In every generation, a person must see himself as if he came out of Egypt.’ We say this in the Passover Haggadah. Now comes your moment of truth. You are in the United States, and you need to sit with [US] President [Donald] Trump and finalize a deal for everyone to come home. We are expecting this.”
Egypt has put forward a new proposal for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, according to an Arab report Monday, though an Israeli official said that Jerusalem has not received any new offer from Cairo.
The London-based Saudi newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat reported, citing an informed Egyptian source, that the new proposal provides for the return of eight living hostages and the bodies of eight slain hostages in exchange for the release of large numbers of Palestinian terrorists and security prisoners and a truce lasting between 40 and 70 days.
The source said that the proposal represents a compromise between a Hamas offer to release five hostages in return for a 50-day truce and an Israeli demand for the release of 11 living hostages.
The report also said that, according to the new proposal, the eight living hostages would not be released all at once but in stages. So far, neither side has issued a final response to the proposal, it said.
After the report was published, an Israel official told The Times of Israel that, as of Monday evening, Jerusalem had not received any updated Egyptian proposal for a hostage release deal with Hamas.
The official added that Israel is aware of Egyptian efforts to come up with a new formula for a truce deal.
The reported Egyptian proposal came as a Hamas delegation was expected to arrive in Cairo for discussions with mediators about possible developments in the ceasefire negotiations, according to the Qatari news site Al-Araby Al-Jadeed.
Alma’s birthday week is over, and somehow we got through it. For so long I hoped Omri will be here with us, but he stayed “daddy in the photo.”
— Lishay Miran-Lavi (@LishayLM) April 7, 2025
And now we begin Omri’s birthday week, and we are daring to still hold on to hope. Hope that we won’t commemorate this day, but… pic.twitter.com/OL4kYGYijn
@realDonaldTrump and @netanyahu - you are going to meet in a couple of hours. The first , and the most important subject that needs to be on the table is to bring back the 59 Israeli hostages.
— Emily Damari (@EmilyDamari1) April 7, 2025
You can be the modern day Moses, and just like he demanded of Pharoah “let my people… pic.twitter.com/mTMuIoqmVE
When days just keep adding up, and suddenly it’s been a year and a half — the helplessness and confusion return each day, along with the fear of what tomorrow might bring.
— Noa Argamani (@ArgamaniNoa) April 7, 2025
Please, let this madness end🎗
Bring my Avintan home, bring them all home 💔 pic.twitter.com/juYJkTCBj1
Mazal tov on the birthday of one of the biggest Israeli heroes, Rami Davidian, who was attacked by left wing journalists.
— Documenting Israel (@DocumentIsrael) April 6, 2025
Rami saved the lives of about 750 people on Oct 7th & without a weapon. This is mind-blowing!
Some of the people who's lives he saved came to honor him https://t.co/yfdJKQhmPA pic.twitter.com/AuObsxJHIT
US pulls visas from more than 30 additional international students
At least three dozen international students and alumni from Stanford University and colleges within the Univesity of California system recently had their visas revoked by the Trump administration for participation in pro-Palestinian or pro-Hamas campus protests, the New York Post reported.
Stanford confirmed to NBC News that four students and two alumni of the university had lost their visas, while the UC system reported 35 current students and alumni either lost their visas or were otherwise affected by the administration’s vow to crack down on foreign visitors, including international students, who support terrorist organizations or threaten national security.
The “zero tolerance” policy is part of ongoing federal action in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order combating antisemitism. The crackdown, including the deportation of pro-Hamas protestors, began last month when the administration attempted to deport Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil for his leadership of antisemitic and anti-Israel protests at the university.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on March 27 that the administration had revoked more than 300 visas.
“We do it every day,” Rubio said at a press conference in Guyana. “Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visas.”
— Documenting Jew Hatred on Campus at Columbia U (@CampusJewHate) April 6, 2025
WATCH: The disturbing double standard of choosing Nerdeen Kiswani, known for her anti-Israel rhetoric, as a commencement speaker. This is just one of many examples of the antisemitism students are forced to confront on college campuses, as exposed in the film BLIND SPOT.
— StandWithUs (@StandWithUs) April 7, 2025
BLIND… pic.twitter.com/x6eQkUMtxw
Good news - Dept. of Homeland Security has revoked the visas of more problematic foreign nationals at the following schools:
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) April 7, 2025
👉🏽 UMass Amherst: 5 students
👉🏽 UMass Boston: 2 students, 5 grads
👉🏽 Harvard: 3 students, 2 grads
👉🏽 Stanford: 4 students, 2 grads
👉🏽 UC Berkeley: 4…
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Rashid Khalidi has decided to postpone his retirement.
— Shoshana Aufzien🎗️ (@shoshanaaufzien) April 7, 2025
The same man who told a @guardian journalist in October that he didn’t “want to be a cog in the machine anymore” is slated to continue teaching his course on the “History of the… https://t.co/Fk74iF0N6i pic.twitter.com/keYYMOCrsL
🚨 BREAKING: Columbia Protest Leader Behind ICE Op-Ed Calls Jewish Fear ‘Manufactured’
— Shirion Collective (@ShirionOrg) April 7, 2025
⚠️While Raking in $547,000 Cash and Mocking the Students He Helped Terrorize
📰 This dirtbag came here on a visa and now calls the country that gave him freedom a fascist regime.
He… pic.twitter.com/DU6qhUVk0x
🚨EXPOSED! Kei Pritzker, director of the film "The Encampments" uses his journalism to 'normalize civil disobedience.'🚨
— Canary Mission (@canarymission) April 7, 2025
❌ Member of PSL (the Party for Socialism and Liberation) which supports Hamas actions on Oct. 7.
❌ Works for Breakthrough News, a pro-terror news outlet.
❌… pic.twitter.com/0pgglaQfP6
— Canary Mission (@canarymission) April 7, 2025
— Canary Mission (@canarymission) April 7, 2025
Voice your concern to head of school Kevin Glass: kevin.glass@aischool.org
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) April 6, 2025
NYC Public Schools sent out a newsletter featuring Anti-Israel propaganda entitled “Stop Genocide Gaza Toolkit.” There is no place for ideological indoctrination in public education.
— Ritchie Torres (@RitchieTorres) April 7, 2025
An apology from the Department of Education is necessary but insufficient. The individual… pic.twitter.com/pDCuY97crb
Why is @amazon employing an antisemite like Mohammad Qandeel?
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) April 7, 2025
Concerned? darens@amazon.com
Qandeel's posts are archived here:
- https://t.co/kWNt4scP7L
- https://t.co/X83gMWM2r2
- https://t.co/9Pb3GShjmS
- https://t.co/gpZZZisuHZ pic.twitter.com/nd0Cqwfpcp
Nesrine Kamal's antisemitic antics do not stop there:
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) April 7, 2025
– calls Zionists or 95%+ of Jews globally “blood-thirsty”
– compares Ashkenazi Jews to Nazis & claims they are not semitic to erase their identity
– tells Jews to “go back where they came from”
– spreads classic antisemitic… pic.twitter.com/xJHEvtDBPu
Paid your taxes? We can only hope Hatim Hamdan of the @IRSnews @USTreasury isn’t overseeing them.
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) April 7, 2025
This is someone who spreads Holocaust denial, called a Jewish woman a “Nazi” and a “slut,” and dismisses the atrocities committed by Hamas on 10/7.
ACT NOW:… https://t.co/gFuXTE40f6
Important: https://t.co/B45377UnP9
— Ben B@dejo (@BenTelAviv) April 7, 2025
Here, the news outlet Trey Yingst started and was working for at the time, News2Share, says that "pro-Palestine" protestors were protesting in 2014 because of Israeli airstrikes, without saying what triggered the 2014 Gaza war: Palestinians' kidnapping and murder of three Israeli… pic.twitter.com/B9m2O3zTaQ
— Ben B@dejo (@BenTelAviv) April 6, 2025
In 2014, he also accused Israel of intentionally firing artillery at Gaza beaches at times Muslims would be praying. (???) pic.twitter.com/VeiZbk8P6I
— Ben B@dejo (@BenTelAviv) April 6, 2025
How many children under 10 lived in Gaza before and during the war? Using 10 years of actual birth data, we can estimate closely. Palestinian authorities report ~58,000 births/year in Gaza from 2007–2022. What about 2023 and 2024? Let’s break it down: 2/https://t.co/y04fpTKVH8 pic.twitter.com/XZJoX8ZiTo
— Aizenberg (@Aizenberg55) April 7, 2025
UNFPA reported 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza in both late-2023 and Dec 2024—pointing to 60,000+ annual births, consistent with a rising trend. Could be as high as 66,000. Either way: a Gaza baby boom. Image from latest UNFPA situation report (Jan 2025) ⬇️ 4/ pic.twitter.com/81PKNK4p0V
— Aizenberg (@Aizenberg55) April 7, 2025
So how did WHO vaccinate 603,000 children under age 10 in Gaza? Even their own original estimate was 592,000. Where did the extra thousands come from? No clear answer—maybe the real birth rate is 66,000+. Either way, WHO data confirms 60,000+ births per year. 6/
— Aizenberg (@Aizenberg55) April 7, 2025
All the false war narratives collapse under UN, Palestinian, and WHO data: a baby boom, solid population growth, no targeting of women’s reproduction, no targeting of children—NO genocide. (A brutal war started by Hamas—yes.) UN, PCBS, and NGOs cross-corroborate the facts. END
— Aizenberg (@Aizenberg55) April 7, 2025
2/ Here, Alareer's words soared… like a Nazi eagle:
— Gilead Ini (@GileadIni) April 7, 2025
"You jew won't understand, you will never, you are a jew after all."
"Are most jews evil? of course they are." pic.twitter.com/Ur6YeT2srK
4/ Sorry to belabor the point, but note a similar example from former KKK leader David Duke.
— Gilead Ini (@GileadIni) April 7, 2025
Who's the "Zio-Grinch" who stole Christmas?
"(((They)))" are. His post is entirely about "Jews," the "arrogant 2 percent." https://t.co/BS0ooDYFBP pic.twitter.com/nEMh9N7Fgh
6/ Here, Alareer captions the kidnapping of 84-year-old Israel woman Elma Avraham as "Israeli occupation soldiers to be captured by Palestinian resistance." pic.twitter.com/DTxipBBm7Y
— Gilead Ini (@GileadIni) April 7, 2025
8/ Bernie Sanders condemned Oct. 7.
— Gilead Ini (@GileadIni) April 7, 2025
Alareer: "Fuck you." pic.twitter.com/RvqZcjPV0M
10/ Here is Alareer endorsing the execution of hostages. pic.twitter.com/Ubnr7Ku23e
— Gilead Ini (@GileadIni) April 7, 2025
11/ More Alareer gloating over Oct. 7 kidnappings. pic.twitter.com/Y3Qq11nhto
— Gilead Ini (@GileadIni) April 7, 2025
Grocery store in Gaza City.
— Imshin (@imshin) April 7, 2025
TikTok timestamp: 21 minutes ago#TheGazaYouDontSee
Link in 1st comment pic.twitter.com/VvRg2p1K3k
Seth Frantzman: Turkey’s shift in tone: Why is Erdogan downplaying Israel tensions with Syria?
When the Abraham Accords were about to be signed, Turkey threatened to break relations with the UAE. It threatened Greece and also US forces in Syria. Ankara created chaos within NATO.Seth Frantzman: Will Iranian-backed militias in Iraq disarm over fear of Trump?
But it may rethink this strategy this time. Perhaps Turkey thinks that playing nice over Syria could be a long con of salesmanship. Basically, it wants things in Syria, but it can wait.
Turkey also may have been taken by surprise by how aggressive Israel was in Syria. Israel has carried out airstrikes for years in Syria, so its strikes were not particularly surprising.
However, the fact that Israeli media made it clear that strikes on T-4 or at a military airport near Hamas were a message to Ankara illustrates a new approach. This is preemption.
Israel usually let problems fester in the past, allowing Hamas or Hezbollah to grow very powerful. In Syria, the name of the game is preemption.
Ynet had an analysis this week that said, “Israel and Turkey ponder how to split Syria into spheres of influence until stable governance takes hold.”
The writer, Ron Ben-Yishai, a well-known expert, said, “As Israel and Turkey vie for influence in a post-[Bashar al-]Assad Syria, tensions rise over military and economic ambitions. While Israel seeks to counter Turkey’s growing presence, both nations explore mediated agreements to divide control until Syria stabilizes.”
Turkey can read this as well and understands that this message likely comes from the top of Israel’s circles of strategic thinking.
Israel may have gotten Gaza wrong and underestimated Hamas, but Ankara sees that Israel is not underestimating Turkey. Israel knows that Turkey wants to move into bases in Syria. Clearly, the messaging is designed to deter.
While Iran, the Houthis, and others may not have always been deterred, it appears that Ankara may be rethinking things. It remains to be seen how long this will continue.
In 2014, when ISIS invaded Iraq and took over Mosul and other cities, the militias were mobilized under the banner of the PMF. This was because Grant Ayatollah Sisitani, a key cleric in Iraq, put out a fatwa encouraging young men to go fight ISIS. The men joined the militias.The Documentary Podcast: Heart and Soul: Kai Höss - My grandfather the Commandant of Auschwitz
Within months in 2014, the ranks of these militias, and newly formed militias, grew to tens of thousands. Soon, the PMF likely numbered 100,000. They helped defeat ISIS, but by 2017, they had less to do, and they began to harass civilian Iraqis.
Iraq also used them as a kind of Praetorian Guard to put down riots and enact policy. They attacked Kurds after the Kuristan referendum on independence in 2017. They worked with Iran. They began to threaten Israel and attack US forces. In response, the US killed Qasem Soleimani, a key IRGC leader, and also Abu Mahdi in a drone strike in January 2020.
By this time, the militias had become an official paramilitary force of Iraq. Integrated under the Interior ministry, they began to get state salaries. Their brigades were supposed to become normalized. However, many militias continued to operate outside state control. They carried out assassinations and murdered protesters. They went to Syria to help the Assad regime.
Beginning in 2021, they began drone attacks on Israel. After October 7, they carried out dozens of attacks on US forces in Iraq and Syria. In January 2024, they killed they Americans in a drone attack in Jordan.
Pressure to disarm
The militias suffered a setback when the Assad regime fell in Syria. There is now pressure on them to disarm or become more regularized within the Iraqi state. The militias want money, and they want more power. They are unlikely to lay down their arms without a fight.
This is a state within a state of more than 100,000 men who are veterans of the war on ISIS. They have the equivalent of several divisions' worth of small arms and some artillery and improvised armored vehicles. The groups are close to the centers of power. History shows that such groups, whether it is the Janissaries of the Ottoman Empire or a Praetorian Guard, don’t give up power easily. They won’t go quietly into the night.
In a cinema in south-west Germany, an audience is gathered to watch an Oscar-winning film, The Zone of Interest, about the life of Rudolf Höss, commandant of Auschwitz. Those present comprise Jewish people from around the world, and the special guest is Rudolf’s grandson, Kai.The topic was rarely visited during Kai's childhood. It was only after a school history lesson that he began to comprehend Rudolf’s role as head of the largest mass murder site in history. Journalist Shiroma Silva talks to Pastor Kai Höss as he seeks to disabuse congregations of the thinking that has all too often blamed Jewish people for all the world’s ills, and describes himself as a Gentile who has been saved by Jewish leaders.
“My grandfather was the greatest mass murderer in human history."
— Eye On Antisemitism (@AntisemitismEye) April 7, 2025
Kai Höss’s grandfather was Rudolf Höss, the infamous commandant of the Auschwitz extermination camp between 1940 and 1943.
But Kai, now in his 60s, says he only learnt about his grandfather’s crimes while at… pic.twitter.com/ZLSpaSPiho
HRW decries German proposal to revoke citizenship of antisemites, terror supporters
A German coalition proposal to revoke the citizenship of dual-nationals if they were terrorism supporters, antisemites, or extremists has raised the ire of NGOs such as the Human Rights Watch (HRW), which warned on Thursday that the idea instrumentalized citizenship to pursue political agendas and would threaten free speech.
During the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Christian Social Union (CSU), and Social Democratic Party (SPD) federal government coalition talks, according to Deutsche Welle, the CSU and CDU conservative bloc proposed for the coalition agreement to include the amendment to the German Basic Law.
HRW warned that the proposal did not define who would be considered an antisemite or terrorist supporter, and without a clear definition in criminal law, there were no safeguards to prevent the arbitrary application of the proposal.
“The SPD and other parties in parliament should reject the CDU/CSU proposal, which would foment division and discrimination,” wrote HRW researcher Almaz Teffera in a Thursday dispatch. “Instead, parties should ensure that all German citizens have equal rights under the law.”
The Basic Law stipulates that “no German may be deprived of his citizenship” unless they did “not become stateless as a result,” with HRW noting that such clauses were included in response to the Nazi regime’s stripping Jews of citizenship during the Holocaust.
Germany’s nationality law already allows the revocation of citizenship due to participation in fighting on behalf of a foreign terrorist organization or foreign volunteer military service without Defense Ministry approval.
David Miller is now attacking the United Synagogue as a "Zionist organisation" poses the question "Where do rabbis come from"? and then attacks the fact that rabbis study in Israel. 🤦♂️🤦♀️🤦 pic.twitter.com/qqNRaDtzRP
— The Electronic Uprising (@uprising_1) April 7, 2025
We strongly condemn the desecration of the Holocaust memorial in Oud-Beijerland, the Netherlands.
— European Jewish Congress (@eurojewcong) April 7, 2025
Targeting a site that honours Holocaust victims is a shameful act of antisemitism and a painful reminder of rising hatred in Europe.
Monuments like this stand as symbols of memory.… pic.twitter.com/whlGewg3pS
Tel Aviv and Berlin sign twin cities agreement
Tel Aviv-Yafo and Berlin have signed a Twin Cities partnership, their Mayors have announced. A signing ceremony is set to take place in the German capital on Monday, 5 May.
The partnership is part of celebrations marking 60 years of diplomatic relations between Israel and Germany. The intention is to underscore how the two cities both share democratic values and have developed cultural, social, and economic ties. This includes positioning themselves as places where entrepreneurs and startups can build.
Mayor of Tel Aviv-Yafo, Ron Huldai, posted on X, formerly Twitter, about the deal on Sunday and commented: “I am pleased to announce the establishment of a Twin Cities partnership with Germany’s capital, Berlin – a partnership based not only on historical memory, but also on the values of democracy, freedom, and tolerance, which are so crucial in the world today.”
Tel Aviv an Berlin mayors Ro Huldai and Kai Wegner
Huldai added that “Kai Wegner, the Mayor of Berlin, is a true friend of Israel. Since October 7, he visited Tel Aviv-Yafo to express his solidarity, expressed full support for Israel’s right to self-defence, and declared that the Israeli flag would remain raised over Berlin’s City Hall until all hostages return.”
In February, Wegner announced that Berlin’s iconic Brandenburg Gate would be lit up in orange in tribute to the murdered Shir, Arieh and Kfir Bibas.
The Tel Aviv Mayor said his city is “strengthening our ties with Berlin through understanding that strong partnerships are built on shared values, historical responsibility, and a commitment to a better future for the next generations.”
There are so many claims that Einstein was an anti Zionist that I felt compelled to say something about the great scientist's Zionist activism. 🧵 https://t.co/38Xa4bANlj
— Marc Goldberg (@MarcGoldberg111) April 6, 2025
1st President of Israel Chaim Weizmann mentions his friendship with Einstein a great deal in his autobiography.
— Marc Goldberg (@MarcGoldberg111) April 6, 2025
The two scientists became close, in the below pages Weizmann describes how Einstein helped establish the American Keren Hayesod in 1921 pic.twitter.com/YJ3C1dJKU1
Einstein is often used to make an anti Zionist argument because he was outspokenly against nationalism and hoped for a bi national state in which Jew and Arab lived equally.
— Marc Goldberg (@MarcGoldberg111) April 6, 2025
His nuance was far too great for our times (and his) and the demands we all face, especially here on X,… pic.twitter.com/2RBC8NHQ3j
Israel is NOT a 76 year old European colonial project !!!
— The Voice Of Truth 🙌 (@thevoicetruth1) April 5, 2025
Israel is NOT a Compensation for the Holocaust.
Jews are the only ones who are Indigenous to the land of Israel !!!
We are a people, a nation, an ethnicity and a religion.
We have kept the same language for thousands… pic.twitter.com/bO8wqrOEc4
"The Israeli rugby team achieved a huge 16-15 victory yesterday over the Malta team, which is considered strong and ranked 23 places above Israel. But it was not only a victory on the field but also off the field, and in front of the hostile crowd that waved Palestinian flags and… https://t.co/Ya2CsIQBO0
— Eli Dror 🎗️ (@edrormba) April 7, 2025
"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022) |
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