05/31 Links: Where have all the Jews gone?; Iran secretly enriching enough uranium for nine nuclear weapons; Radiohead’s Thom Yorke condemns ‘cynical’ Hamas

From Ian:

Where have all the Jews gone?

Just as in the past, American Jews are moving away from urban cores – where violence and now anti-Semitism are more obvious. Historian Arthur Hertzberg estimated that between the end of the Second World War and 1956, one-third of all Jews left the urban centers for the suburbs. When you think of Jewish communities, particularly outside orthodoxy, you think not of the Lower East Side but Long Island and Westchester. In LA, Boyle Heights has been supplanted first by the San Fernando Valley and increasingly the Conejo Valley even further from Downtown. In Greater Baltimore today, three-fourths of all Jews live in the suburbs.

The same forces – crime and rising anti-Semitism – have also prompted many Jews to move to the South. Long seen as too conservative and Christian fundamentalist, the South is now the ‘it’ place for Jews, both in terms of basic safety and economic opportunity. Demographer Ira Sheskin notes that while the north-east’s share of US Jews has dropped from 68 per cent in 1955 to 41 per cent today, the South’s share of the US Jewish population has soared from a mere eight per cent in 1955 to 24 per cent. The ‘hot’ cities for Jewish growth include Dallas, Houston and Atlanta, as well as Miami.

More and more Jewish young people are choosing colleges on similar grounds. For generations, the dream of Jewish parents was to send their offspring to the Ivy League, or the great public universities like Berkeley or UCLA. But today, the leading destination for Jewish students is the University of Florida, with the University of Central Florida ranking third.

The reason for this shift is simple. Jewish young people are safer in the South. According to one study ranking universities’ level of hostility toward Jewish students, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania and three University of California campuses were among the most hostile. The least hostile environments included Tulane in New Orleans, Washington University in St Louis and five colleges in Florida.

Jews may be in the depths of despair, as their havens throughout the West sometimes seem to be turning into an anti-Zionist, Jew-hating hellscape. But they have hope, too. After all, Jews have survived outside Israel for two millennia by adapting, shifting their locales and their political loyalties to fit changing realities. We may be horrified by recent events. But in the face of those who yearn for our destruction, we will persevere.

NYPost Editorial: Hamas’ cease-fire ‘counteroffer’ is just a demand for Israel to give up the war

Witkoff’s latest offer would have Hamas turn over 10 living hostages and a dozen or two bodies, in exchange for 125 terrorists serving life sentences plus another 1,000-plus jailbirds and a 60-day ceasefire and ongoing talks toward a full peace settlement.

But Hamas knows full well that Netanyahu won’t end the war until the terrorists are all dead, surrendered or expelled from Gaza: He refuses to allow for any possibility of another Oct. 7, and Israeli public opinion so far supports him.

So the terror group’s counteroffer is to demand some kind of guarantee that Washington won’t let the IDF resume operations when the 60 days are up, as well as the resumption of aid entering under UN or similar auspices, without Israeli controls.

As things stand, Hamas is toast within months.

To get hostages returned, Israel will allow it a respite — and so risk some development (Netanyahu’s ouster, a drastic shift in the region, Washington concluding it needs the war ended; who knows?) that would let the terror group hang on in Gaza.

Unless Team Trump decides to overrule Israel’s unchanged war goals, Hamas will have to settle for that hope of a lifeline, or no deal is happening.

Iran secretly enriching enough uranium for nine nuclear weapons, IAEA report says

Iran carried out secret nuclear activities with material not declared to the UN nuclear watchdog at three locations that have long been under investigation, the watchdog said in a wide-ranging, confidential report to member states seen by Reuters.

The findings in the "comprehensive" International Atomic Energy Agency report requested by the agency's 35-nation Board of Governors in November pave the way for a push by the United States, Britain, France, and Germany for the board to declare Iran in violation of its non-proliferation obligations.

A resolution would infuriate Iran and could further complicate nuclear talks between Tehran and Washington.

Using the IAEA report's findings, the four Western powers plan to submit a draft resolution for the board to adopt at its next meeting the week of June 9, diplomats say. It would be the first time in almost 20 years that Iran has formally been found in non-compliance.

Tehran says it wants to master nuclear technology for peaceful purposes and has long denied accusations by Western powers that it is seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

Iran said that a report by the UN nuclear watchdog on Saturday is "politically motivated and repeats baseless accusations", state media reported.

Iran said it will "implement appropriate measures" in response to any effort to take action against Tehran at the IAEA governors' meeting.

While many of the findings relate to activities dating back decades and have been made before, the IAEA report's conclusions were more definitive. It summarized developments in recent years and pointed more clearly towards coordinated, secret activities, some of which were relevant to producing nuclear weapons.

It also spelled out that Iran's cooperation with IAEA continues to be "less than satisfactory" in "a number of respects." The IAEA is still seeking explanations for uranium traces found years ago at two of four sites it has been investigating. Three hosted secret experiments, it found.

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05/30 Links Pt2: Phillips: Diaspora Jews under siege; The Anti-Israel Right Joins the Pro-Iran Left; Dishonest reporting kills: DC antisemitic murders are a wake up call

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Diaspora Jews under siege

It’s not what it actually is: a uniquely murderous and deranged creed that all people of conscience must oppose. Unbelievably, for the Western liberal, antisemitism has become a moral obligation. The destruction of the Jewish homeland and the abuse of Jews have become an expression of liberal conscience.

And that’s why the entire humanitarian establishment—the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, the whole apparatus of human-rights law, and NGOs like Amnesty and Human Rights Watch—all of this is focused on singling out Israel and the Jews to be demonized and dehumanized.

It’s why the most “progressive” countries—Britain, Canada and Australia—are the most viciously hostile to Israel. It’s rank, murderous, racist bigotry, all in the name of conscience and justice.

It’s as if Stalinism and Nazism are finally winning against civilization, destroying the Jews through frying the Western brain. This is why so many feel they have stepped through the looking-glass into a living nightmare.

So what is to be done? Clearly, the Jewish world is up against the old evil, but of an unprecedented type and scale. And, of course, against such derangement, reason doesn’t work.

It’s important, though, to put the facts into the public domain for those who are not immune to reason but are simply ignorant of Judaism, the Middle East and the history of the Jewish people. That, unfortunately, includes many Jews.

As for the haters who are indeed beyond rational argument, there is a strategy that would be effective. This involves recognizing their Achilles’ heel.

What they most care about is not the oppressed Palestinian Arabs whose cause they so noisily proclaim. They care, above all, about their image to themselves and to others as moral, compassionate and smart. There’s no point calling them out for antisemitism. And playing defense is worse than useless because it’s to argue on the mind-twisting terms they have set out and so is bound to fail.

Israel’s defenders should instead put these people on the back foot by calling them out for being the very things that they purport to hate.

So, for example, they should be accused of promoting imperialism, in supporting the Arab conquest of another country and extinguishing the rights of its indigenous people; of being stupid, sloppy and credulous in writing and broadcasting manipulative falsehoods; and of being racist.

Arabs comprise about 20% of Israel’s population. By demanding that the “settlers” be removed from the disputed areas of Judea and Samaria because this supposedly prevents the creation of a state of Palestine, the Israel-haters are supporting ethnic cleansing and promoting a doctrine of racial purity. They should be told that their progressivism is bogus.

Jews in America and Britain should stop presuming to lecture Israel about what it should be doing. If they don’t live there, they have no right to do so. Their task—and it could not be more urgent—is instead to start educating Diaspora Jews about Judaism and the Jewish people, and then take the fight to the enemy in a far smarter and more strategic way.

Stephen Pollard: The Left don’t care about racist attacks when the victims are Jews

The hate marches which are now a regular feature of city life are suffused with anti=Semitism. Backing for Palestinian ‘resistance’ – terror – is ubiquitous. Support for Hamas and Hezbollah – both of which are prescribed – is repeatedly on display. Calls to ‘globalise the intifada’ – are the norm.

You want to globalise the intifada? Start at Hampstead underground station – after last week’s murders in Washington DC.

But it’s not the perpetrators of hate who are dealt with. It’s those who oppose it. Last week, for example, the Telegraph reported that a Jewish counter-protester was arrested and charged after he was seen holding a placard satirising Hassan Nasrallah, the former Hezbollah leader. In his police questioning he was asked over and over again if he agreed that the image would offend “clearly pro-Hezbollah and anti-Israel” activists. No one who follows the police’s actions – last year the Met pinned down a counter-protestor carrying a banner reading “Hamas is terrorist” at a march and then arrested him – will be remotely surprised by this. At a march in Manchester after the October 7 massacre, for example, a banner reading “Manchester supports Palestinian resistance” was protected by police standing alongside it.

Open anti-Semitism is rarely met by action, but it is often accompanied by drivel, the most frequent example of which is the phrase repeated ad nauseam by politicians that “There is no place for anti-Semitism”, followed by the name of a city or an organisation which has just proved there is every place for anti-Semitism in its fold.

In December, for example, after an expose of truly shocking examples of open anti-Semitism from NHS staff, health secretary Wes Streeting came out with the usual words: “There is no place for anti-Semitism in the NHS”. The expose had shown that there is in fact a warm welcome for anti-Semitism in the NHS, with none of the NHS Trusts or managers having done anything about it. The same phrase falls regularly from the mouths of Yvette Cooper and Sir Sadiq Khan, but only after an incident which has proved the opposite.

This time, after Monday’s attack on three Jewish boys on the Underground, they can’t even be bothered to be as unbothered as before and trot out some meaningless platitude. Jews hate? Assault? We really don’t care.

The Anti-Israel Right Joins the Pro-Iran Left

Donald Trump says he is going to fight to end antisemitism and the left-wing delegitimization and hatred of Israel that has plagued college campuses since Oct. 7, which led to the murder last week of two Israeli embassy employees. Standing in the way of his efforts to rid America of a violent and deadly scourge are the radical left, Democrats, federal courts, and university presidents who are determined to protect pro-Palestinian terrorists from his deportation campaign.

Everyone wants Trump to lose. This includes certain self-proclaimed MAGA influencers, who are obsessed with the idea of Israel as a uniquely evil force in world history and American Jews as a malignant fifth column. The influencers are joined by Trump officials trying to reorient the president’s Middle East policy and negate the successes of his first term. Both camps now find themselves on the same side as the globalist institutions they say they despise: the United Nations and other world bodies that threaten national sovereignty, America’s as well as Israel’s.

Since Oct. 7, the United Nations has used its monopoly on aid distribution to bring Israel’s military campaign to a halt and save Hamas. The international body has also been the leading voice in what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as the “blood libels against Israel,” baselessly accusing the IDF of genocide and creating a climate that led to the murder of the two embassy employees. On May 20, the day before the attack, the United Nations’ under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs Tom Fletcher said, “There are 14,000 babies that will die in the next 48 hours unless we can reach them.”

But there is no famine—only an ongoing series of reports, many produced by the same organization, warning of famine since almost immediately after Oct. 7, without ever having produced one starvation victim. It’s a blood libel meant to incite antisemitic violence, and it’s also a pro-Hamas propaganda campaign. Call it the famine hoax. It began even before Israel entered Gaza, and was designed to reshape the rules of war in ways that would ensure Hamas’ survival.

On Oct. 16, 2023, nine days after 1,200 were killed and hundreds taken hostage, the World Health Organization warned of a “catastrophe” in Gaza, claiming that there were only 24 hours of water, electricity, and fuel left. “You cannot use aid, or food and water, as an instrument of war for any political or military ends,” said Marwan Jilani, director general of the Palestine Red Crescent Society. “There is an urgent need to alleviate the suffering of Palestinian civilians in Gaza,” said Egypt’s foreign minister. But back then, Israel hadn’t invaded Gaza yet. Egypt controlled the Rafah crossing—and was fully capable of getting food into Gaza. But it didn’t. Needless to say, no international tribunals threatened Cairo with war crimes charges, nor did Palestinian activists accuse the Egyptians of genocide.

In late December 2023, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification issued a famine warning and claimed that at least a quarter of people in Gaza were experiencing famine-level forms of deprivation. In mid-March 2024, the Biden White House’s USAID administrator Samantha Power said that Gaza was at a “serious risk of famine,” meaning that the famine predicted four months previously had not materialized. She called to “dramatically surge” humanitarian aid “as conditions continue to deteriorate.” Again, there was no famine.

That didn’t stop top Biden administration officials from using words like famine and starvation, any more than Israel’s record-low urban warfare casualty rates have prevented celebrity activists like Mark Ruffalo from repeatedly claiming that Israel was committing “genocide.” It seems Biden’s vice president didn’t understand the difference between a famine and a report forecasting a possible famine. “People in Gaza are starving,” said Kamala Harris. “The conditions are inhumane, and our common humanity compels us to act,” she continued.

In reality, of course, the people who were being starved in Gaza for the past two years were Israeli hostages who were fed a quarter of a pita per day while their captors gorged themselves on stolen food aid. After the Palestinians put their captives on parade, Trump expressed revulsion. “It looked like many years ago, the Holocaust survivors,” said the president, “and I don’t know how much longer we can take that when I watch that.”

Famine, starvation, and genocide are simply keywords in an information campaign whose goal is to generate enough outrage among the public and policymakers to ensure Hamas’ survival through Western aid packages, and thereby to ensure that Israel loses its war in Gaza. For instance, a few weeks ago, Iran regime lobbyist Trita Parsi posted a picture of what he claimed was a young Gazan girl who had died of starvation. In fact, it was a photo of a child who was being treated at a UAE hospital for a rare disease that left her emaciated. The veracity of the picture was irrelevant. The point was to advance the famine op.

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05/30 Links Pt1: Kemp: Ignore the Left-wing naysayers, Israel is winning this necessary war; Netanyahu Is Trump’s Leverage With Iran

From Ian:

Israel must not cower: Sovereignty for Judea, Samaria, and Gaza now

ISRAEL’S RESPONSE must be one of resolve, not retreat. Rather than waiting to be boxed into a corner by foreign chancelleries, Israel should act now – on our terms – to extend sovereignty to the entirety of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza.

This is not only a matter of strategic necessity – it is a moral imperative. A people that hesitates to reclaim its own homeland signals weakness to both its friends and foes.

When Menachem Begin extended Israeli law to the Golan Heights in 1981, the world protested. Yet decades later, the United States and others came to accept it as reality. Why? Because Israel stood firm.

When David Ben-Gurion declared statehood in 1948, he did so in defiance of every foreign warning. He knew that sovereignty is never granted. It is taken – by those willing to bear the challenges of history.

Critics will, of course, cry foul. They will claim that Israeli sovereignty over Judea, Samaria, and Gaza means “the end of peace.” But what peace? With whom? With Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, whose senior adviser said last week that Israel orchestrated the Oct. 7 massacre?

What we are witnessing is not the death of peace but the death of pretense. Proposals for a “two-state solution” were a pipe dream that spawned terror and were sustained by denial. It is long past time we gave the idea a proper burial.

Extending sovereignty does not require demographic suicide. There are workable models, such as incentivized emigration for those who refuse to live in peace, and integration for those who do want to. But what cannot remain is the current limbo, which is merely a vacuum exploited by Palestinian extremists and misunderstood by the world. Abraham Accords prove strength earns respect

The Abraham Accords proved that strength earns respect. When Israel stands tall, others align. But hesitation invites hostility. If we do not define our borders, others will seek to define them for us.

France, Britain, and Canada may choose to act unilaterally. So Israel, too, must act unilaterally – but in defense of truth, justice, and survival.

It is time for Israel to say to the world: Enough. Judea and Samaria are not bargaining chips. Gaza will not be a launchpad for genocide. These areas are parts of our ancestral homeland, as central to our past as they are to our future.

From the hills of Judea to the shores of Gaza, the Land of Israel echoes with the footsteps of our prophets and kings. No foreign decree can or will sever that bond. So let’s finally extend Israeli sovereignty over Judea, Samaria, and Gaza and lay claim to what is eternally ours.

Richard Kemp: Ignore the Left-wing naysayers, Israel is winning this necessary war

Hamas’s position is understandable. It is focused on survival and pretty much its only source of funds now is from hijacking and selling aid at premium prices. But what about Kallas, the UN and even our own Government which also does not support this new initiative?

It is hard to escape the conclusion, with the growing chorus of condemnations against Israel, that these people are terrified Jerusalem will win this war. That’s the last thing they want as it would undermine any leverage they might have in pursuit of the holy grail of a “two state solution”.

Lacking insight, or terrified of being seen to have been wrong all along, they utterly fail to recognise that a two state solution is permanently interred after Hamas hammered the final nail into its coffin on October 7 2023.

Unfortunately for the unholy alliance against its victory, Israel is going to prevail – and not just in Gaza. Prime minister Netanyahu launched a dazzling operation against Hezbollah in Lebanon last year that eliminated its overlord Hassan Nasrallah and took out much of its leadership by using explosive-laden pagers. Meanwhile the IDF shattered much of its military capability, especially the long-range missiles that existed to threaten Israel.

Hezbollah is not finished but its potential to cause harm has been dramatically degraded. It will have difficulty rebuilding as it has lost the vital terrain of Assad’s Syria, again as a direct result of Israeli action.

Iran itself, the mastermind of the jihadist plan to suffocate Israel using region-wide terror proxies, was humiliated by its failure to damage Israel with hundreds of missiles and drones, not to mention an inability to protect Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh who was taken out right next to the president’s official residence in Tehran. Even worse, the Islamic Republic is now badly exposed, following the Israeli Air Force’s evisceration of its Russian-supplied air defences.

The likes of Kallas and her faint-hearted fellow travellers have no power to stand in Israel’s path, but their words and threatened actions certainly encourage Hamas. Apart from the hostages it holds, its only card is the vilification of Israel by the international community and the accompanying weaponisation of legal warfare.

Hamas could end all the bloodshed and the deprivation overnight by laying down its arms and releasing the hostages. If the EU, the UN and those governments so eager to condemn the Jewish state actually wanted to achieve peace, they would support Israel in words and actions, and condemn Hamas at every turn.

New Aid Group in Gaza Makes an End Run Around Hamas—and the UN

According to the source, one man who picked up a food box asked four or five times if the food was really free. “It illuminated their perspective on aid and the aid distribution he had experienced in the past.” Videos of Gazans waiting in line to receive food boxes show people waving and cheering.

The hope, says the source, is that once people have more food to eat, the frenzy of the first few days at the secure distribution sites will subside. “I think things are going a little bit smoother the longer we do this.”

The terrorist group steals food aid meant for ordinary Gazans and resells it on the black market. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is trying to change that, writes Madeleine Rowley for The Free Press.

None of the foundation’s success in providing over 840,000 meals so far seemed to translate on social media, where images of the aid handout were rapidly turned into memes comparing Gazans waiting for food to Jewish prisoners waiting at Auschwitz.

A source familiar with the operations on the ground told The Free Press that “Rather than focusing on fake memes, we’re looking to the very real videos and images littering social media of people cheering, thanking America, thanking President Trump, and opening their boxes of food with delight. It’s a shame that feeding people in need has become this controversial and fodder for misinformation by Hamas.”

Haviv Rettig Gur, a senior analyst for The Times of Israel, told The Free Press that the fact that Hamas is openly threatening Gazans is a sign that the new aid group is making a difference. “Why is Hamas threatening this? Because they’re desperate and the strategy is working. They’re desperate not to lose control of the aid.”

In a statement from earlier this month, the United Nations denounced the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, calling it “dangerous” to force Gazans to enter “militarized zones” to collect rations. Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for the UN’s secretary-general, told reporters at a press conference today that the UN will not work with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. “We will not participate in operations that do not meet our humanitarian principles,” Dujarric said. “You know, our efforts in Gaza have been about getting food to people and not forcing people to walk miles in dangerous situations to get food.”

Mike Huckabee, U.S. ambassador to Israel, told reporters in a press conference on May 9 that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation plans to scale their efforts to reach more people in Gaza over the coming weeks and invited the United Nations and other nongovernmental humanitarian aid organizations to join the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s efforts.

“I will be the first to admit that it will not be perfect, especially in the early days,” said Huckabee. “It’s a logistical challenge to make this work, and to make it work well, but all of the partners, both the donors as well as those who will carry out the operation, are committed to getting it launched and making it work.”

A source who oversaw aid operations on the ground told The Free Press that the organization is flexible. “If we’re creating a scenario where people are getting food and then they’re turning around and the food’s being taken away from them, or worse, we’ll rethink how we’re doing this.”

Haviv Rettig Gur told The Free Press that detaching Hamas from humanitarian aid is the right strategy, but the pressure is on to make sure it works. “The Israelis need to understand that there is now a fire burning under them. This aid distribution has to go well and it has to go fast. The war depends on it, the lives of many people depend on it, and Israel’s allies depend on it.”

Jake Wallis Simons: Is there any point arguing with those that compare aid drops in Gaza to Auschwitz?

In his 1911 essay Instead of Excessive Apology, the Revisionist Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky wrote: “Instead of turning our backs to the accusers, as there is nothing to apologise for, and nobody to apologise to, we swear again and again that it is not our fault.

“Isn’t it long overdue to respond to all these and all future accusations, reproaches, suspicions, slanders and denunciations by simply folding our arms and loudly, clearly, coldly and calmly answer with the only argument that is understandable and accessible to this public: ‘Go to Hell!’?

“Who are we, to make excuses to them; who are they to interrogate us? What is the purpose of this mock trial over the entire people where the sentence is known in advance?” Perhaps this is a better response, the next time someone compares Gaza to Auschwitz. Go to hell. Go to hell.

Consider Sudan. It has a population of 50 million, compared to the two million in Gaza. Yet over the last two years of war in the African state, was there a war there? Who knew? – it has received just 1,277 truckloads of humanitarian aid. More than half a million Sudanese children under the age of five have perished from malnutrition in that time.

Gaza, by contrast, has received 92,000 truckloads in the past year and a half alone, with 10,000 further vehicles apparently on the stocks. That’s roughly 72 times more food for 25 times fewer people. Go on Snapchat and see what people in the Strip are posting. Auschwitz it ain’t.

Or consider Yemen. After a decade of conflict – again, who knew? – half of all children under the age of five, and 1.4 million pregnant and lactating women, are acutely malnourished. Of these, 537,000 children suffer from “severe acute malnutrition”, a condition described by Unicef as “agonising, life-threatening, and entirely preventable”. Yet where are the activists marching for them?

In Gaza, there have been more rallies against Hamas in the last week than we have seen on the streets of our capitals since the war began. A couple of days ago, a journalist for an Arabic channel stopped a man on his way to the aid station.

“Aren’t you afraid?” the reporter asked. (Hamas has threatened those who take these handouts. Who knew?)

“Yes, but we want to eat,” the man replied. “We want to eat. Bravo Trump and the IDF!” This led to a great deal of stammering by the journalist, who had been expecting something rather less honest.

Are we really to believe that those who compare the Jews to the Nazis are doing so completely innocently?

Enough with the self-debasement of arguing with these people. As Jabotinsky concluded, “We do not have to account to anybody, we are not to sit for anybody’s examination, and nobody is old enough to call on us to answer. We came before them and will leave after them. We are what we are, we are good for ourselves, we will not change and we do not want to.”

Don’t let them search your pockets.

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Latest antisemitic conspiracy theory: Israel is encouraging Arab crime

+972 Magazine is going off the deep end, again:

“Crime is a strategic project of the state, whose ultimate goal is ‘voluntary emigration’ of Palestinians,” [political activist Ameer] Makhoul argued. “This policy is not limited to Gaza or the West Bank — it also applies to Palestinian citizens living inside the Green Line. And it’s already happening, especially among educated young people and professionals in fields like medicine and high-tech.”

Makhoul pointed to the state’s deliberate inaction in tackling crime as part of a broader effort to push Palestinian citizens to the margins of public discourse. “The Israeli right, led by Netanyahu, is systematically working to push Palestinian citizens into complete despair because they are an electoral bloc that threatens his continued rule,” he said.  

The article quotes a number of other activists who claim the same theory, including an anonymous Facebook post from an anonymous person that only has four comments. 

A case can be made for governmental negligence on the problem of organized Arab crime, but a deliberate policy? Is the "most right wing government in Israel's history" colluding with Arab gangs to intimidate people to leave? 

The government of Israel has embarked on numerous initiatives to fight this problem, including dedicating special police units, a ministerial committee. Just this week police seized millions of dollars of assets from crime families in the north of the country. 

The author constructed a conspiracy theory and then wrote a story around it. And when conspiracy theories involve Jews, they are by definition antisemitic. +972 happily publishes anything to make Israeli Jews look bad, besides their own enlightened selves. 

Notice also that this article does not blame Arab gangs themselves for the crimes, but Israel. The actual criminals have no moral agency. This is itself bias:: assuming that Arabs themselves somehow are natural criminals who cannot help themselves, and only Israel can stop them, is anti-Arab bigotry.

 

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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So far, GHF food distribution looks chaotic but Gazans like it better than Hamas, while the UN continues to lie

After the first day where some problems were exaggerated or overemphasized, how has the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation done since then?

On the one hand, Israel Hayom (Hebrew) reports that GHF is successfully ramping up its operations.

The Gaza Humanitarian Fund (GHF) updated today (Thursday) that it continued its aid activities at three secure distribution sites throughout the Gaza Strip – SDS1, SDS3, and SDS4 – which distributed food in large quantities to residents.

According to the report, approximately 997,920 meals were distributed today alone - bringing the total number of meals distributed so far to approximately 1,838,182. The meals were provided through approximately 17,280 boxes delivered to residents.

Meanwhile, the fund's fourth distribution point, SDS4, was also opened today in the central Gaza Strip in the Burij area. Eight aid trucks were distributed at this point, containing 7,680 boxes, providing a total of approximately 443,520 meals.

The foundation noted that the activity will continue and even expand in the coming weeks, with plans to establish additional distribution sites throughout the Strip, including in the northern areas of Gaza.

But on the other hand, it looks like there is no organization. Gazans report that they are not asked to show ID, there are no biometric scans, but they are very happy to get food packages. “Trump feeds us, while Hamas starves us. God bless the Americans, they're giving us flour and food.”

Some are are taking more boxes than they are supposed to. One report says that the people are taking whatever they want, including tables, while the GHF contractors look on.

But at the same time Gazans are breaking into Hamas warehouses, taking large flour sacks that Hamas was selling for $400 each - and that the World Food Program is claiming were being "pre-posittoned" for distribution.

The UN and COGAT are arguing, as usual. The UN says that Israel approved 800 our of 900 trucks of aid, but only 200 of them made it to where they needed to go, and it blames Israel for that. COGAT responded:

Mr. Dujarric , @UN_Spokesperson, you too are lying.

@UNReliefChief was not in Gaza a few weeks ago. He was in Gaza nearly four months ago, at the beginning of February — during the ceasefire period, when 25,200 aid trucks entered Gaza. 

Let's stop focusing on aid that might be in the pipeline, and start collecting the content of the 550 trucks already waiting for you inside Gaza.

For a full week now, we’ve been offering you alternative routes to facilitate pickup. These are are areas with active military activities, and coordination is for your own safety.

Enough with the lies and accusations — let’s work together to make sure the aid reaches civilians, not Hamas.

What is clear is that while the UN and agencies continue to say that GHF is not working, their own systems are far worse and they seem more interested in insulting Israel than in cooperating to help feed Gazans. 

My biggest concern is that it looks like Hamas can just pick up the GHF food and resell it. Maybe not at the scale of theft it had when it would take entire trucks - their warehouses were not filled up piecemeal - but even the GHD system seems like it can be, and already is starting to be, abused.

 

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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A rare pro-Israel article in UK-based pan-Arab news site Elaph

This article, part 1 of what is intended to be a three part article, is quite remarkable in how pro-Israel and philosemitic it is. 

It was published in Elaph which is an independent, reformist UK-based news site but it is said to be backed by Saudi money. The author, Mohammed Saad Khiralla, is an Egyptian writer and political analyst in self-imposed exile in Sweden.

Here's part 1 of the article:

One of the entrenched pillars in the Arab collective consciousness, which some seek to establish as an eternal truth, is the notion: "Israel is a state that does not want peace with Arab countries." Authoritarian Arab military regimes have contributed to fueling this notion by politically exploiting hatred toward Israel and inciting against it. This narrative has been employed through various discourses—Nasserist, nationalist, Ba'athist, leftist, or Islamist—until it became akin to a "sacred text," difficult to approach or question, despite doubts surrounding it.

I was fortunate, as a "mischievous boy," to pose my thorny questions to my grandmother, my mother’s mother, who was the closest person to my heart. One evening, I surprised her with my question: "Nana, is it true that the Jews don’t want peace? That they hate us and can’t stand us?"

Her response was shocking and transformative to my way of thinking:

"Mohammed, the Jews were our neighbors when I was young. They were wonderful neighbors. We saw nothing but kindness from them until they were deported from Egypt. Don’t believe everything said on this matter."

She then began recounting personal stories about her, her mother, and her siblings with their Jewish neighbors in Alexandria. Her words struck me like lightning. From that day, I began approaching the official narrative at all levels with a critical mind, not taking things for granted but examining, analyzing, and questioning.

In later stages of my life, specifically in late 2011, I met the great Egyptian thinker and late friend Amin al-Mahdi, who profoundly influenced my understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He opened doors to deeper comprehension, revealed much that had been obscured from my awareness, and reorganized the maps of this conflict with a methodical and rational approach.

Many readers might be surprised when I say that, contrary to the prevailing narrative, Israel has never refused peace. On the contrary, it has put forward dozens of initiatives and proposals to end this conflict justly, fulfilling the aspirations of both sides: Israelis and Palestinians. However, all these proposals have consistently met with the solid wall of Arab rejection.

In the following, I will review some of these Israeli initiatives and projects proposed over decades, to serve as a documented reference against the reductive narrative promoted by regimes that do not want peace.

Let’s go back in time, starting with July 8, 1937, when the Peel Commission report, officially known as the British Royal Commission, was published. This was a high-level investigative committee chaired by Lord William Robert Peel, a member of the Queen’s Privy Council and former Minister of State for Indian Affairs.

The commission was formed in 1936 following the outbreak of the Arab Revolt, with the aim of proposing a final solution to the "Arab-Jewish" conflict. It suggested dividing the region into three parts: an area under British mandate including Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and a corridor to the port of Jaffa; a Jewish state encompassing the Galilee and parts of the coast; and an Arab state covering the remaining land, to be united with Transjordan (noting that the proposed Arab state’s area was about 25,000 km², while the Jewish state’s area did not exceed 2,500 km²). The Jews accepted this plan, affirming their desire to end the conflict and live in peace.

Golda Meir wrote in her memoirs that she was with David Ben-Gurion when they learned of the proposal. They consulted Chaim Weizmann, who told them: "A state is better than no state, and acceptance is better than rejection, and we hope the Arab side will reject it." And that’s exactly what happened.

In later years, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem and head of the Supreme Muslim Council, became entangled in what was known as the Nazi "Final Solution" for the extermination of European Jews. Al-Husseini arrived in Berlin in November 1941 after visiting Mussolini in Italy. On November 28, Hitler received him at the Reich Chancellery, describing him as "the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and one of the most prominent symbols of Arab liberation."

Before meeting Hitler, al-Husseini met with Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and visited the Auschwitz camp with Adolf Eichmann, where he saw the gas chambers. Al-Husseini commented that there was "complete alignment in vision," and that Hitler told him: "The Jewish problem must be solved step by step." Hitler promised that, should Germany gain control of the Middle East, "its sole goal would be the extermination of the Jewish element in the region." The Lebanese secretary Osman Kamal Haddad arranged his visit to Berlin.

It’s also worth noting photographic evidence documenting al-Husseini’s visit to the Treblinka training camp in 1942, a facility near Berlin operated by the SS. Photos that surfaced at an auction in Jerusalem show al-Husseini with Nazi officials inspecting the camp.

The idea of two states—one Arab and one Jewish—was repeatedly proposed, indicating that no state called Palestine ever existed. The UN General Assembly’s Partition Plan, Resolution 181, issued on November 29, 1947, explicitly called for the establishment of two states, Arab and Jewish, without mentioning an existing Palestinian state. Had one existed, it would have been named.

This is more pro-Israel than most of his fellow Europeans. 

Once in a great while I had seen articles like this in Arab media, challenging long held assumptions. But I cannot recall seeing anything like this since October 7.

I want to read the other parts!

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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05/29 Links Pt2: A Secular Jihadi Brings the Intifada to Washington; Mamdani’s Astonishing Hezbollah Propaganda; The Man Who Ran Toward Danger: Ari Fuld Remembered

From Ian:

Clifford D. May: A Secular Jihadi Brings the Intifada to Washington

On May 21, a college-educated terrorist fatally shot Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, two young Israeli Embassy staffers. He shot both in the back and then fired repeatedly when they fell to the ground. After that, he tossed away his weapon and strolled into the Capital Jewish Museum. When the police arrived, he pulled out a red keffiyeh and shouted, "Free, free Palestine!"

Elias Rodriguez's red keffiyeh is associated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a secular, Marxist-Leninist organization. The group receives financial and military backing from Tehran. Designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and EU, the PFLP supports "armed struggle" in alliance with Islamists. The annihilation of Israel is its primary goal. Rodriguez, the executioner of a defenseless young woman and an unarmed young man, regards himself as a revolutionary.

Certain circles that claim to champion "diversity and inclusion" find it intolerable that one tiny Jewish state exists among the more than 20 Arab states and more than 50 Muslim states. Note, too, that no one who shouts "Free Palestine" means to suggest that people in Gaza and the West Bank should be guaranteed freedom of speech, press, religion and assembly, which are rights enjoyed by Jewish, Christian and Muslim Israelis.

Sharon Osbourne and Debra Messing among 400+ stars condemning anti-Israel lies after deadly DC shooting

More than 400 entertainment leaders – including actors Mayim Bialik, Debra Messing and Uzo Aduba – have signed a powerful open letter condemning a “toxic mix of distortion, bigotry and incitement” from the anti-Israel movement, warning that celebrity-amplified propaganda fuels deadly antisemitic violence.

The letter, released on Thursday by the non-profit Creative Community For Peace (CCFP), follows the fatal shooting of two young people outside the Washington, D.C., Jewish Museum on 21 May. The attacker reportedly shouted “Free Palestine” during the incident.

“This stream of lies against the Jewish people and the Jewish ancestral homeland has now – unsurprisingly to anyone watching closely – turned deadly in the United States,” said The Big Bang Theory actress Mayim Bialik. “This moment requires public figures to use their platforms responsibly.”

The unprecedented statement – backed by senior industry figures including Haim Saban, Sharon Osbourne, Patricia Heaton and the CEOs of Mattel, Warner Records and FOX Entertainment Global – accuses the anti-Israel campaign of pushing disinformation, justifying Hamas atrocities, and endangering Jews globally.

“We are saying enough,” the letter reads. “Enough with the lies, and enough with the extremism.” It warns that many well-meaning public figures have been “manipulated” into spreading Hamas-aligned narratives, often without realising the damage.

In a joint statement, CCFP chair David Renzer and executive director Ari Ingel said: “For the past 600 days, the anti-Israel movement has espoused an unrelenting stream of extremist rhetoric to demonise Israel and anyone who supports the country… Without a course correction, we will only see more hate, more violence, and more innocent people targeted simply for being Jewish.”

The letter directly links social media-driven incitement to real-world consequences, referencing the D.C. shooting as proof that slogans like “Free Palestine” are being weaponised into calls for violence.

Seth Mandel: Mamdani’s Astonishing Hezbollah Propaganda

Zohran Mamdani is the progressive candidate surging in New York’s Democratic mayoral primary. It’s difficult to get to that position as a progressive without being sufficiently hostile to the Jewish state, and Mamdani certainly checks that box. But this week he crossed a line that was staggeringly militant even in our current age of say-anything shock-jock politics.

To be clear, Mamdani has never been subtle about his extremism. He founded his alma mater’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, the campus pro-Hamas organization that has been most vocal in support of violence against Jews in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks. Mamdani instituted a policy of “non-normalization,” meaning he would not allow the group to work with anyone who believed in the Jewish right to self-determination.

These days, Mamdani spends his time promising to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and getting fundraising help from the Democratic Socialists of America, which just endorsed the murder of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C., outside the Capital Jewish Museum. A key campaign ally of his is Linda Sarsour, among the most infamous and virulent anti-Semites in the modern history of New York City politics.

As if all that weren’t enough, Mamdani, currently an assemblyman, refused to support a resolution condemning the Holocaust. When pressed on the move, his campaign manager made clear it was a campaign-related decision—essentially the product of a left-wing candidate running further to his left, banking on gaining more voters than he’d lose by refusing to take sides on the Holocaust. He has also attended rallies organized by Within Our Lifetime, whose founder has said, “I hope that a pop-pop [of a gun] is the last noise that some Zionists hear in their lifetime.”

Mamdani, then, is a post-Oct. 7 vessel for the de-stigmatized tidal wave of anti-Semitism in the West. And yet, his comments at a campaign stop this week at a mosque showed he could sink further still.

He brought up Israel’s pager operation, likely the most carefully targeted such operation in the history of warfare, in which the pagers only of Hezbollah exploded, maiming thousands of terrorists after the group had waged months of war on Israeli civilians.

Here is how Mamdani characterized the operation:

“Israel’s blowing up of thousands of pagers across Lebanon and killing scores of Lebanese civilians including a young girl by the name of Fatima, who picked up her father’s pager in an act of love and lost her life.”

It is categorically untrue that “scores of civilians” were killed, and not even Lebanese authorities claimed as much. The only way that number is accurate is if Mamdani considers Hezbollah terrorists to be civilians—which is possible, because he does not mention Hezbollah at all in his remarks. Incredibly, Mamdani frames a successful, unimaginably well-targeted counter-terror operation as a wanton attack on random Lebanese civilians. He closes with a classic child-murderer swipe at the Jewish state.

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05/29 Links Pt1: The West’s lies about Israel are falling apart; UNICEF Has Crossed a Line! – Cut All Funding NOW; Two-week old Israeli baby born after terror attack dies

From Ian:

Brendan O'Neill: The West’s lies about Israel are falling apart

Will the media elites retract their defamations? Not likely. My guess is they’ll let this story fade. They’ll subtly memory-hole it. For it heaps shame on them. It exposes them as excuse-makers for one of the most barbarous outfits on Earth. As the Jewish nation struck at the Islamo-cult that visited such apocalyptic racial violence on its people, they effectively pushed the Hamas line. They falsely said this was another bloodlusting assault by deranged Zionists on the civilian infrastructure of Gaza. As Israel faced down the genocidal terrorists that dream of destroying the Jewish homeland, they insinuated that it’s Israel that’s genocidal.

That’s the thing: the media-elite handwringing over the strike on the European Hospital was more than misinformation – it was a complete inversion of truth. It was Hamas that was using the hospital for military purposes, yet they suggested it was Israel that was doing that. It was Hamas that endangered sick kids’ lives by turning their facility into an outpost in a raging war, yet they called Israel child-killers. It is Hamas that cares so little for Palestinian life that its fascist gunmen will happily hide behind patients in a hospital, using the ill and wounded as human shields – and yet it’s Israel, always, that is accused of devaluing the humanity of Gazans. Our cultural establishment falsely charges Israel with crimes that are actually committed by Hamas. These are Kafkaesque levels of deceit and blame-shifting.

This is what has been laid bare by the reported death of Sinwar in a tunnel under a hospital: the ruthless duplicity of Hamas and the staggering gullibility of the Western commentariat. This event threatens to drag the anti-Israel activist class off that moral highground they think they occupy. For 18 months they’ve been libelling Israel as a nation in the grip of such genocidal lunacy that it desires the destruction of every life-giving facility in Gaza. They overlook, or outright deny, the reams of evidence showing that Hamas hides in hospitals, stores weapons in hospitals, uses hospitals as bases in which to torture its opponents. Now we know it even has its highest level meetings under hospitals.

The cynicism and untruths of the anti-Israel set benefit no one but Hamas. In fact they’re the only thing Hamas has going for it right now. It might be losing the physical war with Israel, but at least it’s winning the propaganda war among the deluded faux-virtuous of the Western world. What these people call Israel’s genocidal destruction of the Palestinian people is in truth a war against anti-Semitic terrorism in which thousands of militants have been killed and their leaders taken out. We should be celebrating this dismantling of neo-fascism, not turning truth on its head by calling the nation responsible for it ‘fascists’.

Arsen Ostrovsky: Why the UK must demand Karim Khan’s resignation

The grave allegations against Khan create irreparable harm to the very foundations of the ICC, established in 2002 as a “court of last resort” to end impunity for the perpetrators of the most heinous of crimes, including war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide - not the Orwellian circumstances of arresting Israeli leaders for responding to the pogrom of October 7.

Moreover, Khan’s actions represent not only an assault on Israel’s inalienable right to self-defence against the jihadists of Hamas, but a national security threat to the UK and every democracy fighting terror, by exposing them to spurious and unfounded charges based purely on political considerations, instead of adherence to the rule of law.

Now, the ICC’s own Appeals Chamber took the unprecedented step of reopening the question of jurisdiction regarding “Palestine”, admitting serious flaws in the original rationale that allowed the case to proceed. In addition to Israel not even being a signatory to the Rome Statute, which governs the functioning of the ICC, it is patently clear that “Palestine” fails to meet the most basic of criteria for statehood under international law that is necessary to bring proceedings, or can even legally defer criminal jurisdiction to the ICC under the Oslo Accords.

The UK, a founding architect of the post-WWII legal order, should be alarmed that, rather than upholding the principles of justice, the Court has unleashed a great injustice, morphing into a tool of lawfare – used to politically delegitimise Israel while offering impunity to true violators of international law, like Hamas and their Iranian and Qatari sponsors.

The UK cannot afford to stay on the sidelines, as the very legal order it fought to create and maintain, is being so mercilessly torn apart. If the UK truly believes in the rule of law, due process, and justice for victims of sexual violence, it cannot look the other way. To do so would be a gross abdication of moral – and legal – responsibility.

This is about more than Israel. It is about defending the integrity of the international legal system itself. To salvage it, the UK must demand Karim Khan’s resignation and reject these deeply flawed, politicised warrants.

UNICEF Has Crossed a Line! – Cut All Funding NOW

UNICEF’s latest statement accusing Israel of a “ruthless war on children” is not just disgraceful – it is malicious, dangerous, and dripping with the oldest blood libel. By peddling unverified figures, recycling already-debunked claims, and without even mentioning Hamas, UNICEF has revealed itself as nothing more than a propaganda arm of terrorist apologists.

Let’s be crystal clear: UNICEF is not speaking for children. It is speaking for terrorists.

Their so-called “statement” is riddled with lies and intentional distortions. The numbers they push – 50,000 children killed or injured – have no source, most likely comes straight from Hamas with zero transparency or independent verification. But truth clearly doesn’t matter to UNICEF – only narrative. And what is that narrative? The same one that has haunted Jews for centuries: the slanderous, vile lie that Jews kill children. This is not humanitarian advocacy. This is antisemitic incitement masquerading as concern.

The al-Najjar family report, heavily promoted by pro-Hamas sources and amplified by the UN without a shred of independent verification, is full of glaring inconsistencies. Images allegedly showing the aftermath have been exposed as either AI-generated or recycled from unrelated incidents, with some of the children pictured previously reported dead in entirely different contexts months ago. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have categorically denied any involvement in the alleged strike, and so far, not one piece of credible evidence has emerged to support the claim. Yet the narrative continues to be blindly echoed by the UN, despite its clear fabrication.

Similarly, the video of a child supposedly trapped in a burning school in Gaza City is riddled with inconsistencies. The child is seen calmly walking through flames, with no sign of panic or injury—behavior completely inconsistent with the narrative being pushed. Even more damning, the same child was later seen alive and unharmed in footage posted just minutes after the fire, casting serious doubt on the entire story. These are not mere errors—they are deliberate deceptions, and the UN’s willingness to spread such disinformation plays directly into the hands of Hamas propaganda.

Hamas released a new fatality list on May 11th. The new list revealed how 72% of combatant age deaths and 65% of teens who have died are male. Confirming the use of child combatants by Hamas and contradicting claims of indiscriminate attacks.

Where is the mention of Israeli children kidnapped, burned alive, murdered in cold blood, and ripped from their families on October 7? Where is the outrage for the babies kidnapped and murdered in Hamas tunnels? Where is the condemnation of Hamas for launching this war, for hiding behind civilians, for using schools and hospitals as military bases?

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Trump Criticism Of Industry Full Of Jews Puts Anti-Trump Antisemites In Bind (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook  and  Substack pages.

Washington, May 29 - Jew-hating opponents of the sitting US President have found themselves facing a dilemma over the last several weeks, activists acknowledged today, now that the chief executive has chosen as a target the film industry, a bastion symbolic to them of the very people they purport to exert malignant control over that industry, placing those Jew-haters on the same side of an issue as the hated president.

Advocates of conspiracy theories that allege Jewish domination of Hollywood who also despise Donald Trump must now decide which of those enemies they see as more dangerous: whether to seize the opportunity to speak up in defense of an industry that actually pushes the progressive agenda effectively, or to exploit Trump's criticism to score points against the Jews.

The activists gave token acknowledgement to the existence of a third possibility: to say nothing. Staying quiet, however, has never represented a serious course of action in their behavior.

"Structurally, it's a familiar dilemma for anyone who dislikes Trump," explained Whoopi Goldberg, who by her own admission changed her birth name Caryn Elaine Johnson to sound more Jewish as a way to, she thought, give her better entrée in the entertainment industry. "He often gets us on the left to reflexively yell our opposition to whatever he's pushing, and that's gotten us in to some uncomfortable places: defending criminals, rapists, and violent thugs just because Trump doesn't like them. Voters see that, and we're unable to take advantage of his unpopularity because our reactions make us look like the crazy ones."

"Well, I'm not so sure about what to do now," Goldberg continued. "On one hand, it looks like there's a rising tide of legitimacy for opposition to Jews, which doesn't happen every decade in America. On the other, we've talked up the existential fascist threat of Trump so much that to suddenly agree with him seems not only jarringly out of character; it makes us look like hypocrites. I mean, that's par for the course in our line of work, but it's just more glaring this time."

The challenge, explained podcaster Hasan Piker, lies in the pattern: Trump has a knack for zeroing in on "eighty-twenty" issues, issues firmly in the American electorate's consensus, and taking a proud stance on the side of the eighty percent - and the Democrats and Democratic Party allies follow their knee-jerk reaction: characterizing as evil and destructive whatever the hated Trump supports, establishing them by default in the minority and keeping their poll numbers even lower than Trump's abysmal ratings.

"It's the Jews' fault this is happening, obviously," realized Piker.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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Jewish Ethics Breaks Every Universal Ethical Rule. That's a Good Thing.

Jewish particularism is often accused of being parochial or exclusionary. But in a world obsessed with universalism, maybe particularism is what we need most.

Many thinkers have noted how Judaism is a particularistic belief system, which is in tension with the universalistic thinking of most popular ethical systems. This is probably one reason why Jewish ethics does not receive the same amount of attention in the academy: universalism is considered so obviously superior because it treats all people equally, and Jewish style parochialism - where only Jews have a covenantal relationship with God - is considered gauche. 

In my project to come up with a secularized Jewish ethical system - a universal, testable and open  system that can handle any situation with alacrity - I have to deal with this concept: how do you secularize Jewish-style particularism?

I believe the answer is that it is not only possible, but it is a necessary counterweight to what I would call "naive universalism," the "Imagine"-type ideal of one world where there is no religion, no possessions, and "the world can live as one." 

One problem with universalistic ethics is that Jews are a glaring violator of their rules. They have their own rules, their own identity, their own state, and their own sense of ethics that precede and outperform universalistic ethics. Whether they admit it or not, this can fuel antisemitism since Jews don't "fit" in their idealized world. 

The key to making particularism universal is the Jewish concept of kiddush Hashem, translated as "sanctifying the Name of God." In vernacular, this means always acting in an exemplary manner in front of non-Jews. Jews know, better than anyone, how people tend to stereotype based on how one or very few members of a group behave. If we act nobly, we are a kiddush Hashem, if we act badly, it is a "chilul Hashem."

This idea can easily be extended to any defined group of people. Black people know very well that how they act individually affects how they are perceived as a group. The same goes other minorities, women, and even disabled people. If you are identifiable, like it or not, you are a symbol.

This reality is not generally accepted in universalist ethics. Since everyone should treat everyone equally, when they don't it is only a problem for the bigot, not for the victim. Unfortunately, that doesn't reflect real life.

Jewish ethics reflects the world as it is, not as John Lennon wants it to be. 

When you extend the concept of "kiddush Hashem" to all groups, you are dealing with reality. Being a member of a defined group brings additional responsibilities, whether we like it or not. So there is an additional moral responsibility for every member to act as nobly as possible, especially in public, and avoid shaming their group. 

This is the beginning of universalizing particularism - or, as I would call it, true pluralism. It is recognizing that not everyone is the same, that there are lots of groups that people belong to, and that this membership brings both the benefits (of community) and responsibilities. 

Responsibilities are the key. It isn't only that the Jews consider themselves the "chosen people" - it is that they cannot be un-chosen. They are morally obligated to hold themselves to a higher standard. I can list many Jewish values that also apply to the world, but there are hundreds of commandments that Jews are expected to fulfill that non-Jews are not. 

And this is how to truly universalize the concept. 

Other groups can - and should - feel like they have something unique to teach the world. Every group has admirable values - as a group -  that they emphasize more than other groups. Arabs are unparalleled in how well they treat their guests. The Japanese are known for how respectful they are. Germans are precise and punctual, Americans are innovative. These are admirable cultural and moral traits and they can be object lessons in improving ourselves. 

In short, everyone can be a "light unto the nations."  This is part of the responsibility of being a member of a group: to increase respect for your group with your own particular emphases of morality and culture. 

There are practical benefits, that again universalism would deny -0 or prefer not to - exist. It is that people naturally feel closer to their own people than to others', they will tend to prioritize helping out their own before the rest of the world. This is not an immoral violation of universal principles, it is a quite moral obligation of building community and heling out those closest to you before everyone else in the world. 

If you universalize particularism, you end up with a much richer world than that of naive universalism.

We can even go beyond this. People in the majority culture will gravitate towards being members of groups too. Some of them are because they live in a certain place, some because they share interests, some because they were in the same place at the same time like school or the army. And some will make up their own groups like Daughters of the American Revolution or Rotary Club. 

Kurt Vonnegut scornfully called some of the more arbitrary groups "granfalloons" because they created commonalities when there really is none - "Hoosiers," for example. But he is wrong: a community is whatever people want it to be.

The question is - do they want it to be a force for good, besides the benefits of comradeship? The Kiwanis Club helps children;  there is no reason that Boston Red Sox fans cannot also visit nursing homes - and therefore make a "kiddush Hashem" for all Red Sox fans.

When you prioritize duties over rights, as Jewish ethics does, then your communities do the same. And that enriches everyone. 

To be sure, there is a difference between groups you voluntarily join and those you are born into.  But even when identity is imposed, there remains a real, if hard-won, choice: how to respond, what to do with the cards you’re dealt.

The Jewish story, after all, is one of centuries of persecution against their particularism - being marked, excluded, and defined from the outside. But the response wasn’t just to endure; it was to turn even an imposed identity into an opportunity for purpose, ethical action, and kiddush Hashem.

That’s a lesson available to anyone, in any group. Even if you aren't one of the "chosen people" you can still choose how to represent your people in a positive way.

When you look at our response to being a member of your community as a choice, then perhaps you can see that anyone - minority or not - can choose to build their communities as centers of kindness and charity and moral actions. We cannot always choose to be members of groups but we cn sure choose how to make the best of that community.

 Old-school nationalism does the same for majority or “historic” status. But Jewish tradition - and, potentially, any group that rises to the challenge - says: Don’t rest on your identity. Do something to make it honorable and noble. 

This is where naive universalism falls apart. Naive universalism pretends everyone is (or should be) the same, that group identities are ultimately obstacles to peace, or that difference is only valuable when erased. Today’s progressivism often sanctifies minority status as inherently virtuous no matter what their actions. 

I'm proposing true pluralism. not only recognizing differences. Jewish particularism is based on the idea of a covenant between Jews and God that govern their relationship. What if every group had a tacit covenantal agreement with each member: every member is expected to act in ways that reflect well on the group as a whole.  Every group, if it wants to matter, should not only embrace its particularism but also turn it into an engine for ethical action, self-critique, and blessing for others. Not “all groups are good because they exist,” but “all groups can be good if they rise to the moral challenge of being a responsible group.”

Groups exist whether we like it or not. Prejudice exists and it isn't going away. Extending the Jewish ethical model, based on kiddush Hashem as well as other responsibilities to the community ("All Israel is responsible for one another,") is a way to turn what has been seen as a necessary evil into a positive model for every group to be proud.

When you recognize the world as it is, you can start to map the way to get to the world you want it to be.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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It's funny - the more Israel helps Gazans directly, the more upset the "humanitarians" get. Maybe they don't really care about "starvation."

The Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distributed 1.6 million meals to Gazans - today alone.

Its ramping up of providing aid from zero to this number in only three days is nothing short of remarkable. It shows that private organizations can do a far better job than established NGOs and the UN.

Yet the "humanitarians'  are very upset, throwing ridiculous accusations at GHF. Instead of rejoicing that millions of Gazans are getting food, they are repeating Hamas lies and making up their own. 

Here's a perfect example reported by Wafa:

The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Michael Fakhri, said that Israel has brought Gaza to the "most dangerous stage of starvation," and that the effects will last for generations. He emphasized that what is happening in the Gaza Strip constitutes "genocide, starvation, a crime against humanity, and a gross violation of human rights."

Fakhri added in a press statement on Thursday that what he has witnessed during the past months of war clearly reveals Israel's plan for the Gaza Strip.

He continued: "Israel's plan has always been to inflict the greatest possible damage and destruction, and to inflict the highest possible death toll, in order to achieve its primary goal: to occupy and annex all of Gaza."

The UN rapporteur said that a small amount of aid has recently entered the Gaza Strip, as Israel has allowed a very small number of aid trucks into Gaza, "but they do not meet the needs of the population."

He stressed, "The most important thing to remember is that the numbers we have now are always far lower than the reality, because international journalists are not allowed in, and a very limited number of aid workers are allowed to work there. So we know that the reality is much worse than we can imagine."

He added, "Everyone knows that what is happening is genocide."

Note the timing: he said this today. At the very moment that GHF and Israel are proving that they could do what the UN and other NGOs could not, Fakhri is doubling down on accusations of intentional starvation and genocide. 

It is clear that Fakhri doesn't give a damn about Gazans getting food. He only wants to accuse Israel of the worst war crimes, and when Israel's actions contradict his accusations - just double down.

And this is what the other "humanitarian" agencies are doing over the past week. They care more about politics, about their turf, about their reputations, and above all about demonizing Israel, than they do about helping Gazans. Israel invited them to partner with them and they refused, citing international laws that do not exist. 

Let us be crystal clear: Israel and the GHF have been successful in ramping up, from scratch, a program to feed Gazans. There is no reason to believe that it won't continue to grow, with more distribution sites and more efficiencies, in coming weeks. Yet every major international organization is criticizing an initiative to do what they claim is their highest priority. 

In a normal world, Fakhri would be dismissed  immediately. But since he says what people want to hear, there are  no consequences for his absurd slanders. 

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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