Thursday, June 19, 2025

06/19 Links Pt2: Having Faith While in Hell; Israel Isn’t Striving for Regional Hegemony, It’s Striving To Be Left Alone; Branding the Jew: From Medieval France to Modern Times

From Ian:

Meir Y. Soloveichik: Having Faith While in Hell
This column is about faith and miracles, and it begins with an event wondrous to behold: the New York Times publishing a thoughtful, balanced, and inspiring article pertaining to the current moment in Israel.

The article features an interview with Omer Shem Tov, who until recently was held in cruel captivity by Hamas. Omer, the Times tells us, “had grown up in a largely secular home, and was living a relatively carefree existence after completing his compulsory military service.” Then, on October 7, 2023, he was suddenly snatched and subjected to torture in cramped surroundings for a year and a half. It was as a hostage that Shem Tov embraced the faith of his fathers:

A few days into his captivity, he said, he began to speak to God. He made vows. He began to bless whatever food he was given. And he had requests—some of which he believes were answered. “You are looking for something to lean on, to hold onto,” Mr. Shem Tov said in a recent interview at his family home in Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv. “The first place I went to was God. I would feel a power enter me,” he said.

“Faith kept me going,” he said, adding, “I always believed I would get home, though I didn’t know how or when.”

Shem Tov’s embrace of Jewish observance was not limited to prayer. We are further informed that he “decided to keep kosher as much as he could, eating either the cheese or the canned meat when they were given both, in line with Jewish dietary laws that prohibit mixing meat and dairy products.” The Times concludes by describing how Shem Tov “promised God that if he got home, he would pray daily with ‘tefillin’—the small leather boxes containing scriptures that worshipers tie onto their heads and one of their arms for morning prayers.” The article features a photo depicting Omer Shem Tov doing just that.

At this point, we must pause to ponder what might appear paradoxical. A young man has lived a largely secular life. Many in his circle, it is safe to say, would welcome an age in which Jews were “normalized,” in which they would be a people like any other, in which they would be left alone to create the Silicon Valley of the Middle East. Yet suddenly, at the very moment when he is being tortured for his Jewish identity, and when many of his fellow concert attendees at the Nova festival were murdered for the very same reason, his reaction is to embrace Judaism.

In this, Omer Shem Tov captures, in a certain sense, the story of Zionism itself. In 1897, a secular Jew, Theodore Herzl, had promised the possibility of normalization in his pamphlet The Jewish State. Living among Europeans, he argued, Jews would continue to be hated, but if a separate Jewish state could be created elsewhere, anti-Semitism would cease. The state Herzl originally described had little that was Jewish in its civic character. But not long after, as the Zionist movement suddenly and mysteriously, began to spread, the assimilated Austrian journalist began the ponder with wonder the history of which he was a part.
John Podhoretz: We Are Awesome: A Rant
Why am I praising us? I’m not, actually. I’m actually enraged at a great many of my fellow Jews, who promote cultural ideas I revile and vote for politicians and causes I believe are injurious to America, to civil society, to the world, and to the Jews, both here and in Israel.

No, what I am praising is our birthright—and the good fortune we have been granted because of it. This is something worthy of celebration, and we must give thanks for our forebears for being forbearing. Throughout Jewish history, being a Jew was not something you could say granted you worldly good fortune. But each Jew in history lived and bore children and kept the flame alive to bring us here today, to this moment. It would be a sin against the difficulties they faced, far worse than anything we’ve faced, not to connect ourselves to the thing that connects us deeper than blood.

They said the same prayers we say. They followed the same rules the more rigorous among us follow. If we met them across centuries, if we time-traveled to a Saturday morning in the Alteneuschul in Prague in the 13th century when it was first constructed, one or another of us would be able to say, Hey, that was my bar mitzvah parashah. And depending on how good our memory is, and how good our reading is, and how solidly we know trop, we could go up and take an aliyah and read.

These are all the reasons that being proud of being a Jew, teaching our kids why they should be proud to be Jews, and feeling that transcendent connection across time and space is everything.

No reason to apologize.

And yet so many do. The question is why.

Some of it is a natural occurrence of being a small band conscious of our differences and conscious that others feel we are different, such that we are hyper-aware of the way bad actors might reflect on us. Who among us hasn’t breathed a sigh of relief to discover that, say, some lunatic or evil killer or other—the guy in Idaho, or Luigi Mangione, or the Menendezes—are not members of the tribe? We feel this way because we feel it so keenly when one is. Madoff. Weinstein. Epstein. Whose heart has not sunk to the bottom of his or her chest at the sound of their names?

So we feel responsible for each other, and worry about blame affixing to us, because we are so few.

Now consider the condition of Jews in 2025. Worldwide. Israel was attacked in October 2023. It was invaded. Thousands were killed and injured. And that attack and those killings and casualties ignited an old-fashioned blood lust—a lust for Jewish blood, or at least Jewish humiliation, or capitulation.

That was surprising. I know because we were all surprised. And shocked. And dismayed. And depressed. And filled full of rage. And sorrow. And a sense that for the first time in our lives as American Jews, we were at some form of risk in the land that had been very nearly a paradise for us after 1,800 years in the Diaspora.

What was not surprising, alas, was the presence among those with that blood lust of Jews themselves—or what Eli Lake has called the “as-a-Jews.” The type that says, “As a Jew, I am horrified by the images on my television,” or “As a Jew, I believe in tikkun olam, and Israel is not healing the world the way it should.” I say this was not surprising because these people have been present in our public life since I was a kid. More recently, I think of the example of a 2021 letter issued by rabbinical students condemning what they called Israeli apartheid.
No, Trump Is Not ‘Weaponizing’ Anti-Semitism
If “a liberal is a man too broad-minded to take his own side in a quarrel,” as Robert Frost put it, then a Jewish liberal must be someone who begs for his nation to take anti-Semitism seriously—and then condemns the president of the United States for obliging.

American Jews have sounded the alarm on rising anti-Semitism for years, and the case was made when the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks spurred terrorist sympathizers in the West to take their bigotry to the streets. Campuses revealed themselves as hotbeds of sympathy for the attackers. Universities did nothing to punish flagrant violations of civil rights laws committed by those sympathetic to Hamas, and the culprits remained undeterred. As reports from Harvard, Columbia, and other universities attest, faculty, students, and even administrators continued to bait Jews and Israel in class, on the quad, and everywhere in between. Student groups revealed themselves as unabashed collaborators with terrorist organizations, raising funds for them and promoting their propaganda.

Yet when the federal government finally took upon itself the cause of ridding our campuses (and, where possible, our nation) of these malignities, Jewish public figures rushed to condemn the deployment of state power on the Jews’ behalf. For perhaps the first time in history, a non-Jewish polity has decided that the fate of its Jews is intertwined with the fate of the nation as a whole and acts accordingly. And some Jews have chosen to stand athwart our defenders, yelling “Stop!”

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act prohibits universities from tolerating environments that are hostile to individuals because of their national origin. If schools do not do enough to crack down on discrimination against Jews and Israelis—both are considered “national origins” under federal law—they can lose their federal support. And under long-established immigration law, noncitizens who take up the cause of terrorist organizations may be deported.

These tributaries of antidiscrimination and immigration law have blended on elite campuses, where foreign students and faculty have spearheaded a campaign of discriminatory harassment in service of terrorist organizations. Joined by young American leftists, they have used bullhorns, cement, spray paint, and just about any other instrument at hand to turn campuses into platforms for radical views. They have repeatedly forced the cancellation of classes, disrupted study sessions, destroyed libraries, pulled fire alarms on guest speakers, and blocked off campus thorough-fares. As if to demonstrate the subordination of edu-cation to activism with crystalline precision, some professors held classes within encampments—those “Zionist-free zones”—or offered extra credit for participation in demonstrations.

Is this the system of higher education the American people want to support to the tune of billions per year? Clearly not. Enter the Trump 2 administration, which has made no secret of its antipathy toward higher education in its current state. “Too many Universities and School Systems are about Radical Left Indoctrination, not Education,” he tweeted in July 2020. “Our children must be Educated, not Indoctrinated!” Conservatives have long lamented the corruption of the university, manifesting in ideological uniformity, stifling speech codes, and the proliferation of thoughtless activism. It was a matter of time before a Republican administration would use its legal leverage and threaten to revoke universities’ federal funding and even tax-exempt status.

And pervasive anti-Semitism, which had exploded but met little pushback from the Biden administration, provided an opening. A newly formed federal task force nominally focused on anti-Semitism first targeted Columbia University, which had been wracked by building occupations, vandalism, and a vacuum of leadership. “We’re going to bankrupt these universities,” said its chair, Leo Terrell. “We’re going to take away every single federal dollar.” The task force first froze some discretionary grants while threatening that the worst was yet to come. Mimicking one part of the Title VI enforcement process—during which universities must be allowed to come into “voluntary compliance” with government-determined remedial measures—the administration made its demands. If Columbia did not expel or suspend students who had broken into and occupied Hamilton Hall, ban masks on campus, treat anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism, place the Middle Eastern Studies Department under academic receivership, begin reforming admissions procedures, and more, it would lose billions in federal support. Columbia’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, agreed publicly to cooperate with the demands while privately vowing not to. She resigned a few weeks later. As of now, the extent of Columbia’s acquiescence remains unclear.
Branding the Jew: From Medieval France to Modern Times
But just as the badge has been used for humiliation, it has also been transformed into defiance.

On October 30, 2023, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, while speaking to the Security Council chamber he decided to wear a yellow Star of David emblazoned with the words “Never Again.”

This wasn’t submission. It wasn’t shame. It was an accusation. It was a statement of anger toward a world that, once again, was showing itself too comfortable with ignoring Jewish suffering—this time after the October 7 Hamas massacre.

Erdan declared:
“From this day on, my team and I will wear yellow stars…”

Some criticized the move, others, like me, saw it for what it was: the reclaiming of a symbol once used to mark Jews for death, now worn by a sovereign representative of a Jewish state at the heart of global diplomacy making a bold and clear statement, NEVER AGAIN. What was once imposed by kings, popes, and Nazis was now worn by choice, in defiance.

And look at where we are now. Today it’s not medieval kings or inquisitors—it’s the United Nations itself leading the inquisition. Just yesterday, they released a report accusing Israel of “exterminating” the Palestinian people, not only a complete distortion and lie, it completely ignored the crimes of Hamas. Complete reality inversion. Last year, on Holocaust Remembrance Day 2024, it was revealed that UN employees actively took part in the October 7 massacre—murdering, raping, kidnapping—while others helped conceal hostages or praised the slaughter online. Today, 622 days later, 53 hostages are still in Gaza in the hands of those who truly carried out acts of extermination.

Today is also the 23rd of Sivan, the day Queen Esther gave the Jewish people the legal right to fight back. A day to remember that survival, liberation and victory starts with that right. That is what Israel is doing against the Islamic Republic of Iran, a regime racing to get nuclear weapons, a regime who will do anything in its power to wipe Israel out of the map.

History echoes. It rhymes. And sometimes, if we’re not careful, it repeats. That’s why it shouldn’t just sit in books; it should be remembered and analyzed.

Always remember: It always starts with the Jews. But it never ends there.

Never again not just a promise, it is also recognizing the signs. And never again is not a slogan—it’s now.


Israel and America Say ‘Enough’: A Commentary Editorial
Almost 50 years to the day, Israel’s new sense of its own military and strategic superiority—earned through its stunning technical achievement of an almost impregnable air defense—was again shaken to the core. The surprise attack on October 7 led to the horrifying realization that Hamas had been building an invasion army and an underground military city almost in plain view of the Jewish state.

The war against the Jews had scored at least a partial success here, and it was gaining ground in the United States and Western Europe as well with the outright expressions of anti-Semitism that exploded outward in every direction. The sense that the enemies of the Jews were winning was exacerbated by the impotence Israelis were experiencing due to the continuing captivity of the hostages. Indeed, when a mission in the tunnels under Rafah came within yards and seconds of rescuing six prisoners in a tiny replay of the heroic Entebbe effort in 1976, those captives were savagely murdered rather than saved. Through its proxy, Iran was not only holding actual living Jews hostage, it was holding the world Jewish community hostage emotionally as well.

What Israel did not know, could not have known, as it was undergoing these existential torments, was just how deeply committed its government and its leadership were to the ultimate battle in the war against the war against the Jews—which is to say, the fight against Iran. Israel began to use countermeasures it had been meticulously setting in place for decades against the true motive actor in the 21st-century war against the Jews.

In April 2024, Israel assassinated two Iranian generals when it bombed an Iranian consulate in Syria. This intelligence triumph so enraged Iran that for the first time in Israel’s history, the mullahs decided to strike directly at the Jewish state. They did so with a drone attack that proved ineffectual (in part due to American participation in shooting down the drones). Israel responded to Iran’s aggression with a surgical strike on a defensive radar system inside Iran near the Natanz nuclear site—a clear message that it had the means of reaching Natanz and doing greater damage but that it had chosen to be measured and guarded…this time.

In the summer of 2024, Israel did something so dramatic, it could have come from the pages of a Daniel Silva novel: It assassinated the head of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, in an apartment in a guest house in Tehran. Reportedly, it had prepositioned a tiny bomb in the room months earlier. That put the Iranians on notice: Israel had them so thoroughly penetrated that no Iranian could be sure any conversation was not being overheard, or that any individual location was safe should Israel decide to act.

And then Israel went to work in Lebanon. In September, literally thousands of Hezbollah operatives were wounded and killed when their beepers exploded simultaneously. A week later, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was meeting in a bunker deep below his terrorist outfit’s Beirut headquarters. Israel blew it and him up, then continued its decapitation of Hezbollah’s operatives. Hezbollah had been killing Israelis and staging terrorist attacks on Jews for 40 years.

The war against the war against the Jews had taken another dazzling turn.

A humiliated Iran chose to act. In October, it launched a barrage of ballistic missiles at Israel—200 in one night. Israel declared it would respond at a time and place of its choosing. That time came three weeks later. Israel showed its hand militarily in its most shocking display of military authority since 1967. In a single evening, Israeli pilots flew 1,000 miles, destroyed very nearly the entirety of Iran’s air defenses, and got home in time for breakfast.

Netanyahu says he gave the order to make the final preparations for a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities in November 2024, once intelligence reports made it clear that Iran was rushing toward the bomb. Something else happened in November 2024, of course—the election of Donald Trump and the end of the Biden-Harris era. An administration increasingly unfriendly to Israel was not going to be succeeded by its clone, which surely came as a relief to Netanyahu and Company.

Still, when Netanyahu was ready to go on April 13, he was informed by Trump that the American president intended to go into direct negotiations with Tehran on a new nuclear deal. Netanyahu pulled back.

Trump told the mullahs he would give them 60 days to see reason. On the 61st day, Israel struck.

What this account of the war against the war against the Jews should suggests is this. Israel would have struck one way or another. It would have struck with Kamala Harris in power. It would have struck even if Trump had been openly hostile. Israel would have struck Iran because it had no choice but to strike Iran.

Preventing Iran from going nuclear is not only the reason Benjamin Netanyahu believes he was elevated to power. It is the very reason Israel exists.

Now the war is on—the war against the war against the Jews, as never before. It is the war that could not be waged four score and seven years ago because there was no strong and determined Jewish state in existence. Israel has spent 78 years of fighting and growing and failing and succeeding and learning and sacrificing to get to this moment.

God bless and Godspeed.
Seth Mandel: Israel Isn’t Striving for Regional Hegemony, It’s Striving To Be Left Alone
Whichever answer you come to, you have to take the same road to get there: Israel either became a hegemon or an almost-hegemon by defeating its neighboring enemies and relying on the diplomatic and military heft of its ally, the United States.

Which means if the region has a hegemon it is… the United States. That’s the beauty of being a superpower—the term “regional” becomes quite flexible. But even more significant is the lesson we can learn from how the U.S. and Israel got to this point.

Israel did not become a near-hegemon by developing a military superiority that no one would want to test. It became a regional power by being forced to demonstrate its strength. The United States is the dominant power in North America but it has not gone to war against Mexico or Canada in nearly two centuries. Israel, however, continues to fight off its would-be conquerors on nearly every front.

Israel’s only pacified border is with Egypt, but Israel had to fight a couple of difficult wars to get there. Additionally, had Egypt not initiated war against Israel in the past, Gaza would not be an Iranian proxy enclave, and the West Bank would be Jordan, a state with whom Israel is at peace.

Regarding Syria, Israel did not depose Bashar al-Assad. The Assad dictatorship fell because of the Iranian axis’s decision to initiate all-out war on Israel. The Iranian regime itself is teetering for the same reason. Indeed, over the past two years, Israel’s actions against Iran have been carefully calibrated to dissuade Iran from all-out war—often by displaying the fact that it has capabilities that Iran may not have known about or expected it to have—while also giving Tehran the chance to save face. In other words, even when hostilities break out, Israel responds in ways meant to give everyone an off-ramp rather than seeking the total defeat and collapse of its enemies.

Which is also why the question of Israel’s supposed regional hegemony is beside the point. Israel would not, in fact, enforce a specific order upon the region no matter how much power it had. Israel would simply do what it has been trying to do since 1948: convince its antagonists to leave it the hell alone.
Stephan Pollard: The Global South vs. Israel
It is a statement of the obvious that the most immediate threat to Israel comes from Islamist terror. And now, with self-described allies such as the UK, France, and Canada turning on Israel and joining more long-standing hostile nations such as Ireland, Norway, and Spain (largely to appease their Muslim voters), there is a renewed focus on how Western attitudes to the Jewish state may be changing.

But understandable as that may be, the concern over European attitudes may be a distraction from a larger long-term threat. I am talking about the concerted behavior of the so-called Global South, which is aimed at the elimination of Israel.

This is already clear in the way African, Asian, and Latin American states have exploited Israel’s war in Gaza to ramp up their decades-long delegitimization agenda. They do so by using their numerical stren-gth in global institutions to attempt to turn Israel into a villain state. This is expressed through various United Nations General Assembly votes, support for South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and the International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

The southern hemisphere countries of the Global South are primarily in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania. Many of them have historically had similar economic and political characteristics—lower GDP and per capita incomes, higher poverty rates, and varying levels of political and economic influence compared with the Global North (Europe and North America). And, crucially in this context, a shared history of colonialism. When calculated by population, some 59 percent of the Global South has now led or backed international legal action against Israel.

The large-scale generational project here has been to coalesce the Global South against Israel as the present-day exemplar of neocolonialism, and therefore the exemplar of all that must be destroyed. So while Israel is fighting as the West’s proxy in the war against terror, it is simultaneously the proxy in another fight: the Global South’s usurpation of the West.

All of this is happening out in the open. Those who seek to utilize the Global South (also sometimes referred to as the Majority World) to destroy Israel are clear about their aim. A paper published last year by ODI Global—which describes itself as “an independent, global affairs think tank” and “a force for positive change”—asserts that “Gaza has opened a rare opportunity for the Global South to have its voice heard.” It goes on: “Rapid and broad support from various nations across different global regions has collectively empowered many formerly colonized countries to expose the Global North’s hypocrisy when it comes to accountability and international law. In this way, Majority World actors are shifting the narrative away from Western-centric framings of a ‘humanitarian crisis’ towards one based on the necessity for justice and solidarity.”

Anti-Israel NGOs and other organizations repeat the mantra. In February 2024, the so-called Islamic Human Rights Commission (an Iranian front group based in the UK) wrote, “What we now see is a resistance to colonialism, which we haven’t seen in decades. This is a meaningful point of changing the narrative from victimhood to liberation. It’s not an accident that many people from the Global South are supporting Palestine.”
Melanie Phillips: The return of the neocon canard
So why is the West so blind to all this? Why doesn’t it understand that it needs to defend itself against this clear and present danger?

The answer, astounding as this may seem, is that people on both the left and right have concluded that the Islamic world’s aggression against the West is all the fault of the Jews.

For the left, the Islamic world is the historic victim of Western colonialism and imperialism. As such, it can’t be held responsible for any violence against the West, which must be viewed instead as legitimate resistance.

Accordingly, Muslims—whether in the form of the Palestinian Arabs or the Iranian regime—can’t possibly be guilty of genocidal aggression against Israel. Their violence can only be seen as resistance, and so the story has to be concocted that Israel is guilty of colonialism and oppression.

Those purported Israeli crimes are held to have enraged the entire Islamic world against Israel and its Western backers. So, for the left, it’s the oppressive and aggressive Jews who are the reason that the world is lurching into war.

On the other side of the political divide, some on the right seek alternative explanations for what seems to them inexplicable and terrifying. These people subscribe to the Western delusion that everyone in the world is governed by rationality and self-interest.

Accordingly, they find it impossible to grasp the nature of religious fanaticism. They can’t understand that Islamic terrorists blow themselves up on the streets of Western cities not out of despair but from an ecstatic belief that they are doing the will of God. They can’t grasp that Iran’s Supreme Leader believes that providing an apocalypse will bring the Shia messiah down to earth.

Ever since 9/11, these people on the right have asked themselves why Muslims hate the West so much, since the West has had nothing to do with the Islamic world. They have concluded that it could therefore only be because of resentment at the existence of the Jewish State of Israel.

So war against the West by the Muslim world is the fault of the Jews for being there at all. And so these ignorant Westerners go straight down the rabbit hole of Jewish conspiracy theory, which tells them that the only explanation for America supporting Israel is that the Jews possess some kind of demonic, magical powers to control events.

How can the Jewish people cope with this fearsome, unprecedented lunacy that has consumed so much of the West?

By standing up for the truth wherever possible, keeping themselves as safe as they can—and by having faith that magnificent, courageous and steadfast Israel will now show the West just what it takes to defeat the real forces of evil.
Melanie Phillips: Israel, Iran and the global struggle against barbarism | The Brendan O’Neill Show
Times columnist Melanie Phillips returns to The Brendan O’Neill Show to discuss Israel’s audacious strikes on Iran, the fanaticism of the Iranian regime, and why Israel is the best contender for leader of the free world.


Alleged Iranian Plot To Assassinate Trump Heads Through Federal Court
An Iranian murder-for-hire conspiracy targeting President Donald Trump has quietly wound its way through federal court, with a pre-trial discovery conference scheduled for next week.

The proceedings, postponed to this point because of a lengthy discovery process, will take place on Tuesday. While the discovery materials will not be made public, the government is expected to set trial dates during the conference, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

The case centers on Farhad Shakeri, an "Iranian asset" who openly told the feds in a phone call from Tehran that he was seeking ways to off Trump on behalf of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to a criminal complaint filed in November 2024.

"According to Shakeri, in approximately mid-to-late September 2024, IRGC Official-I asked Shakeri to put aside his other efforts on behalf of the IRGC and focus on surveilling, and, ultimately, assassinating, former President of the United States, Donald J. Trump," the complaint reads.

Shakeri said his IRGC contacts informed him that the country had already spent "a significant sum of money on efforts to murder [Trump] and was willing to continue spending a lot of money in its attempt to procure [Trump’s] assassination."

Shakeri, 51, is an Afghan national who immigrated to the United States as a child before being deported in 2008 after serving a 14-year sentence for robbery, according to the complaint.

Prosecutors charged Shakeri—in connection with the Trump assasination plot—with murder-for-hire, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison; conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, which would net him another maximum of 10 years; and money laundering conspiracy, which carries a maximum of 20 years in prison.


Hegseth defends Kinglsey Wilson amid questioning about antisemitic record
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth offered a strident defense of Kingsley Wilson, the recently promoted Pentagon press secretary with a history of espousing antisemitic conspiracy theories, under questioning at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Wednesday.

Wilson, prior to her appointment, attacked the Anti-Defamation League for memorializing the 1915 lynching of Leo Frank, a Jewish man who was wrongly convicted for raping and murdering a child, and called the ADL “despicable.” Wilson insisted that Frank was guilty — a niche and discredited theory largely associated with neo-Nazis.

She also has frequently boosted the antisemitic “Great Replacement” theory, advocated for Christian nationalism, used a neo-Nazi linked slogan to praise the far-right Alternative for Germany party, compared the murder of Israeli babies by Hamas to abortion and opposed U.S. aid to Israel, among a host of other controversial comments.

“I’ve worked directly with her, she does a fantastic job, and any suggestion that I or her or others are party to antisemitism is a mischaracterization attempting to win political points,” Hegseth said in a heated exchange with Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), who co-chairs the Senate antisemitism task force.

“Senator, you’re attempting to win political points on the backs of mischaracterizing the statements of a member of my department and I’m not going to stand for that,” Hegseth continued.

“Your lack of an answer confirms what we’ve known all along: The Trump administration is not serious. You are not a serious person, you are not serious about rooting out and fighting antisemitism within the ranks of our DoD,” Rosen responded, as she and Hegseth attempted to shout over each other. “It’s despicable. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

Some Senate Republicans, including the Armed Services Committee chairman, had expressed concern about Wilson prior to her promotion and said that they were probing the issue and expected the Pentagon to address it.
MSNBC Analyst, a Former Obama Official, Calls Iran 'Most Western Nation' in the Middle East
MSNBC political analyst and former Obama administration official Rick Stengel questioned why the United States is aligned with Israel rather than Iran, which he called "the most Western nation" in the Middle East. Though Iranians chant "death to America," Stengel said, they also "love American movies."

"Why is it a foundation issue for Trump that Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapon?" Stengel, who served as an undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs under former president Barack Obama, asked during a Thursday appearance on MSNBC. "Why are we allied with Israel?"

When pressed on Iranians' "death to America" chants, Stengel recalled a 2014 trip to the country. "I was sitting … at a rally," he said. "These young guys were chanting 'death to America.' … They finished the chants. And two young men came over and said, 'Are you American?' I said yes, [and they said,] 'We want to welcome you to our country. We love American culture. We love American movies.'"

"Iran is the most Western nation in the whole Middle East," Stengel went on. "We have much more in common with them than a lot of countries that we do have alliances with."

Stengel's remarks stand in stark contrast to reality in Iran, where chants of "death to America" are widespread, homosexual activity is a criminal offense punishable by death, and women are legally required to wear head coverings in public.

This isn't the first time Stengel has come under fire for defending Islamic radicalism. While serving as undersecretary of state, for example, Stengel refused to acknowledge that ISIS's radical Islamic beliefs played a role in the group's execution of Japanese hostage Haruna Yukawa.


Gaza Humanitarian Foundation delivers more than 2.8m meals, bringing total to 33m
The U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation announced it delivered more than 2.8 million meals on Thursday, bringing the total number of meals to more than 33 million.

All aid deliveries proceeded “without incident,” according to GHF.

“Despite operating in one of the most volatile and complex environments in the world, our dedicated team on the ground continues to deliver life-saving aid to the people of Gaza—safely, efficiently, and without incident,” said John Acree, interim executive director of GHF.

“We welcome collaboration with partners so we can continue to scale our efforts and meet the urgent needs of those we serve,” he stated. “It is our hope that the United Nations and other organizations will join us in this shared mission to feed the people of Gaza.”

“Until then, we remain unwavering in our commitment—delivering food to men, women and children, every single day,” Acree continued.

GHF again denounced “inaccurate news coverage by the international media outlets” for claiming violent incidents occurred at GHF distribution sites when they instead occurred at sites overseen by the United Nations.

“We continue to experience a growing pattern of false information seemingly formulated by the Gaza Health Ministry, an arm of Hamas, and then reported first by Al Jazeera and then echoed by the U.N.,” GHF stated. “It is unfortunate that both organizations, especially the U.N., continue to push false information regarding our operations.”


The key moments from the testy Tucker Carlson-Ted Cruz showdown
Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) interview on Tucker Carlson’s podcast published on Wednesday devolved into a shouting match at times between the two GOP heavyweights, with insults and charges of ignorance and antisemitism dominating the two-hour conversation between one of the Republican Party’s biggest pro-Israel champions and one of the most vocal critics of the U.S.-Israel relationship.

The interview was relatively civil for the first hour, but began to devolve when Carlson and Cruz started debating the benefits of the U.S. relationship with Israel and the merits of Israel and the United States allegedly spying on one another.

Carlson pressed Cruz to say that allies spying on one another was wrong, which Cruz responded to by asking why Carlson and others had an “obsession with Israel” while ignoring similar behavior from other allies. Carlson rejected that he was “obsessed with Israel” before noting that he has never taken money from AIPAC, which he referred to as “the Israel lobby.”

The conversation started to become more animated as the two could not find common ground on the role and purpose of AIPAC, with Carlson insisting that the organization, which is made up of U.S. citizens advocating for the U.S.-Israel relationship, needed to be registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act — an argument sometimes used as an antisemitic dog whistle accusing Jewish supporters of Israel of dual loyalty — and Cruz vehemently disagreeing.

The interview grew more tense after Cruz accused Carlson of having an “obsession with Israel” and asked why he was so focused on asking, “What about the Jews? What about the Jews?” without being critical of other foreign governments.
Tucker Carlson does not represent ‘any significant portion’ of the MAGA base
President of the Centre of the American Experiment John Hinderaker says Tucker Carlson does not speak for “any significant portion” of Donald Trump’s base of the Republican Party.

US Republican Senator Ted Cruz and conservative commentator Tucker Carlson have gone head-to-head in a heated debate over the conflict in the Middle East.

This comes as United States President Donald Trump weighs up the potential for involvement in the conflict.

“The idea that there is a significant part of the Republican Party that is pacifist or isolationist or anti-Israel, is a fiction,” Mr Hinderaker told Sky News host Rita Panahi.




Jewish GOP congressman says he was ‘run off the road’ by a ‘deranged man’ with a Palestinian flag: ‘Blatant antisemitic violence’
An “unhinged, deranged man” waving a Palestinian flag attempted to run a Jewish Republican congressman off the road Thursday, the lawmaker said in a video posted on social media.

“This morning, as I was driving to work, some unhinged, deranged man decided to lay on his horn and run me off the road when he couldn’t get my attention to show me a Palestinian flag,” Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) said in a video posted on X.

“Not to mention death to Israel, death to me – that he wanted to kill me and my family,” the congressman continued. “Thank God my daughter was not in my vehicle or anybody else at the time.”

The congressman, a former Marine Corps Reserves member, said he filed a report with Capitol Police and local authorities after the incident.

“We know who this person is and he will face justice,” Miller said.

“I will not hide in the face of this blatant antisemitic violence,” Ohio’s 7th District rep added, noting that he carried on with planned meetings despite the scary incident.


Rod Stewart cuts ties with Trump, slams Israel in Holocaust comparison
Rod Stewart has publicly severed ties with Donald Trump and accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of pursuing the “annihilation” of Palestinians in a provocative interview with Radio Times.

The 80-year-old British singer said: “What Netanyahu is doing to the Palestinians is exactly what happened to the Jews. It’s annihilation, and that’s all he wants to do – get rid of them all. I don’t know how they sleep at night.”

He confirmed he is no longer friends with Trump, his former neighbour in Florida, stating: “I’m not a great fan of Trump. I knew him very, very well. I used to go to his house. I live literally half a mile away… But since he became president, he became another guy. Somebody I didn’t know.”

When asked directly if he still considered Trump a friend, Stewart replied: “No, I can’t any more. As long as he’s selling arms to the Israelis – and he still is.”

Stewart, who performed in Tel Aviv in 2017 despite boycott calls from pro-Palestinian groups, also criticised the ongoing supply of weapons to Israel by the United Kingdom. “How’s that war ever gonna stop? And we should stop selling [arms to] them as well,” he said.


Columbia Faculty Members Who Signed Letter Defending Hamas Among Donors to Mamdani's Mayoral Campaign
A who’s who of Columbia’s most prolific Israel-haters—who sought to legitimize Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack weeks after the terror group’s massacres—has poured thousands of dollars into socialist Zohran Mamdani’s campaign for mayor of New York, a Washington Free Beacon review of public records shows.

Mamdani, 33, has refused to support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, supports the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement against the country, has falsely accused the country of committing genocide, and has vowed to arrest Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he arrives in New York City.

He recently declined to condemn the phrase "globalize the intifada"—a call for violence—instead describing it as "a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian rights." Mamdani also compared the concept of "intifada" to Jewish resistance to Nazi Germany, saying that "the very word has been used by the Holocaust Museum when translating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising into Arabic, because it’s a word that means ‘struggle.’"

The comments earned Mamdani a rebuke from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which issued a statement Wednesday morning.

"Exploiting the Museum and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising to sanitize ‘globalize the intifada’ is outrageous and especially offensive to survivors," the statement reads. "Since 1987 Jews have been attacked and murdered under its banner. All leaders must condemn its use and the abuse of history."

A number of Columbia faculty members who have donated to Mamdani’s campaign signed a letter just weeks after Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in which they attempted to contextualize the slaughter.

"One could regard the events of October 7th as just one salvo in an ongoing war between an occupying state and the people it occupies, or as an occupied people exercising a right to resist violent and illegal occupation," the missive reads.

Among the signatories were Katherine Franke, Lila Abu-Lughod, Reinhold Martin, James Schamus, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Mamdani’s father, Mahmood.


Kneecap are about as radical as a tea cosy
Here was the Streisand Effect in action. These outrageous charges have only lavished attention on these cringe-inducing attention-seekers. Worst of all, the state has handed Kneecap the edgy persona they so clearly, desperately, crave. When, in truth, they are about as edgy as an afternoon in the Healing Field.

I know. What they said was despicable and people have been thrown in jail for saying much less. But free speech is for insufferable, Jew-baiting rappers, too. Short of direct, credible incitement to violence – and chanting ‘Up Hezbollah’ to pilled-up Islingtonian students clearly doesn’t qualify – the cops should butt right out.

These charges do nothing to tackle anti-Israel bigotry. They just invite the state further into policing arts and culture. Plus, and I really can’t stress this enough, they have put a smile on the face of the smuggest little cunts in music right now. And that really is unforgiveable.

I’m baffled that anyone takes Kneecap seriously, least of all the counter-terror police. This is phoney, nostalgic, edgelord ‘radicalism’ repackaged for the middle-class, Glasto-going market. The political equivalent of when Topman started selling Ramones t-shirts. They are about as revolutionary as that tea cosy on yer man’s head. Let’s please not indulge them a moment longer.


‘Sex and the City’ Star Cynthia Nixon’s Trans Child Is ‘On a Hunger Strike’ in Support of Gaza
HBO’s Sex and the City star Cynthia Nixon says her transgender child — whose grandparents were Holocaust survivors — is “on hunger strike” in support of Gaza.

Nixon’s 28-year-old daughter — who identifies as male and goes by the name Seph Mozes — is “on hunger strike right now” in support of Gaza in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, the actress told Newsweek.

“He and five other of his compatriots are doing a hunger strike in Chicago [since] Monday, for Gaza,” Nixon — who is best known for her role as Miranda Hobbes on the long-running series, Sex and the City — said.

Nixon went on to describe her daughter — a University of Chicago graduate — as “a quite observant Jew” who is “very steeped in Jewish Voices for Peace,” a group that describes itself as a Jewish anti-Zionist organization.

Seph “doesn’t have illusions that he’s going to end the war, but I think he wants to do everything he can,” the And Just Like That… star said.

The group Nixon’s daughter is involved in is reportedly calling on Israel and the United States to “stop starving Gaza” and “stop arming Israel.”

The Ratched actress also noted that while she herself is not Jewish, two of her children are.


Legislators hope next U of Florida president will uphold efforts to combat campus Jew-hatred
As the University of Florida begins its third search for a new university president in three years, Florida Republican legislators are urging the school’s Board of Trustees to ensure Jewish students are protected.

Sen. Rick Scott and Reps. Byron Donalds and Greg Steube sent a joint letter on Wednesday to the university board urging full transparency in the search and interview process for the best candidate who “will continue UF’s efforts as a leader in combating antisemitism and protecting Jewish students.”

The public university in Gainesville, Fla., “has set a gold standard for fighting antisemitism and protecting Jewish students, and its leadership must follow suit,” the letter stated.

The congressmen’s letter specifically criticized the board’s selection process, which they said was “shielded from the public,” and listed their opposition to the board’s recent choice for the position, Santa Ono, former president of the University of Michigan. (Ono was unanimously selected to serve as university president in May but was later rejected by the Florida Board of Governors.)

Ono “failed to quickly and proactively stand up for Jewish students at the University of Michigan,” the letter stated regarding the pro-Palestinian student encampments set up on the Michigan campus in April 2024.

“Ono allowing an illegal, pro-terrorist encampment to take over the University of Michigan campus for nearly a month, putting Jewish students in danger and failing to uphold even the most basic standards of leadership was a complete disqualifier to us,” the legislators wrote.


CNN Steps In for Demolished Iranian State Media HQ, Carries Story of Popular Anger and Threat of Revenge
‘There’s actually someone’s lunch at their desk standing here, which they probably would have been wanting to eat until they had to evacuate the building,’ correspondent Frederik Pleitgen says while holding up a melted spoon

CNN reporter Frederik Pleitgen toured the Iranian state-controlled broadcasting headquarters that Israeli warplanes struck, pointing out the regime's destroyed tech and food remains as he noted that the attack had sparked calls for "revenge."

"You can see the damage is absolutely massive. I‘m standing in the atrium right now, but if you look around this whole area has been completely destroyed," Pleitgen, a CNN senior international correspondent, said as the camera panned over the demolished office.

"All of the offices, all of the technology that they have inside here, the broadcast technology, everything has been rendered pretty much useless," he added. The screen showed phones, keyboards, computers, and other tech that looked decades old.

A hijab-clad presenter was reading regime propaganda on the state-run Akharin Khabar network when it was hit by an Israeli airstrike on Monday. The anchor quickly ran off screen as others shouted in the background.


Suspect arrested after ‘mass shooting’ threat at San Antonio Jewish center "We’ll take all necessary ste
A suspect is in custody after allegedly threatening to carry out a mass shooting at a San Antonio Jewish site, the San Antonio Police Department stated on Thursday.

The FBI’s field office in the city stated that it received information on Wednesday night that someone “may have been planning to conduct a mass shooting at a Jewish cultural enrichment center.”

The bureau worked with the San Antonio police to investigate, and Jewish communal leaders were notified, it said. “Additional protocols were implemented to ensure the safety and security of the Jewish community here in San Antonio,” it stated.

“An individual believed to be associated with this has been located by the FBI in another state and the investigation is continuing to determine the veracity of the threat information,” it said. It added that it doesn’t believe there to be an imminent threat to San Antonio’s Jewish community.

“Antisemitism has no place in San Antonio, and we’ll take all necessary steps to ensure the safety and security of our Jewish neighbors,” stated Gina Ortiz Jones, the city’s mayor.

The city’s police department stated after learning of the threat, it “immediately increased police presence around Jewish facilities throughout the city as a precautionary measure to ensure the safety of the community.”


#Muslim #bedouin Grandfather Fought for Israeli Independence | EP 44 Tamer Masudin
In this episode, Shai Davidai sits down with Tamer Masudin, a Muslim Bedouin Arab Israeli and passionate advocate against antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment. Tamer shares his unique perspective on identity, Zionism, and his family's deep-rooted history in Israel, including his grandfather’s role in the country’s independence. The conversation explores the challenges and hopes of growing up Bedouin in Israel, the complexities of community life, and the power of embracing multiple identities. Tamer’s story highlights the importance of unity, resilience, and understanding across different backgrounds.


Carriers expand airlift to bring Israelis home; outbound flights set to begin Monday
El Al was slated to start operating repatriation flights on Friday from long-haul destinations, including New York and Bangkok, a day after launching an air mission to gradually bring back more than 100,000 Israelis stuck abroad since the start of the conflict with Iran on Friday.

Two flights from New York and one from Bangkok were expected to take off early Friday (Israel time) en route to Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport. Passengers assigned to these flights have been notified, El Al said.

On Wednesday, El Al, Arkia, and Israir began ferrying Israelis from Cyprus, Greece, Italy and other European destinations after they were stuck abroad due to the surprise closure of Israeli airspace six days earlier, as the military launched an offensive campaign against Iran. More than 100,000 Israelis were thought to have been abroad with no way to get back. Some 32,000 tourists and foreign passport holders, meanwhile, are currently stuck in Israel with few options to leave.

On Thursday, El Al operated a total of eight repatriation flights to bring back Israelis from Larnaca, Budapest, Athens, Milan, Rome, and England’s Luton airport. Israir launched two flights from Mykonos, Greece, arriving at Ben Gurion Airport. Arkia operated two flights from Larnaca and Athens. In total, about 2,700 Israelis are estimated to have arrived through Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport on Thursday, according to the Transportation Ministry.

El Al said it plans to operate 14 repatriation flights to Israel on Friday from various destinations that have not yet been announced. Smaller local carrier Israir will return Israelis on six flights from Athens, Larnaca, Batumi, Budapest, Prague, and Palma de Mallorca. Arkia is planning to launch repatriation flights from Paris, Athens, Rome, Larnaca, Vienna, and Montenegro. Around 5,500 Israelis are estimated to return home on Friday, according to the Transportation Ministry.

“If the security situation allows, and we can continue to expand repatriation flights, we hope to bring back between 6,000 and 7,000 Israelis a day going forward,” said Transportation Minister Miri Regev.
Thousands of Israelis returning home despite escalating conflict with Iran
Israel’s Ambassador to Australia Amir Maimon addresses the surge of Israelis seeking to return home amid escalating tensions with Iran. “We have over 150,000 Israelis that are really seeking or looking to return to our beloved homeland,” Mr Maimon told Sky News host Chris Kenny. “There are so many Israelis that are waiting to return, to reunite with their beloved ones. “To be in Israel is such a very difficult time for all of us.”


Brewery creates ‘My Brother’ pale ale for kidnapped soldiers
Parents of enlisted soldiers whose sons were taken captive during the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, have brewed a craft beer called “Ah Sheli” (My Brother), aiming to bring attention to the hostages’ plight.

The project, undertaken with BeerBazaar, an Israeli brewery specializing in craft beers, was initiated by family friends of Nimrod Cohen, a soldier dragged from his tank by Hamas terrorists on October 7. Signs of life were revealed by fellow hostages who were released in February.

“The idea was to draw the attention of the younger crowd, the students, the reservists, who will drink this beer and think about the soldiers held there and drink to their health,” said Nimrod Cohen’s mother, Viki.

Cohen was in a tank whose crew attempted to stem the tide of Hamas terrorists invading the Nahal Oz army base. They were one of two tanks stationed between Kibbutz Nir Oz and Kibbutz Nirim.

Nineteen years old when he was captured, Cohen was the gunner in a tank with Cpt. Omer Neutra, Sgt. Shaked Dahan and Sgt. Oz Daniel. Neutra was the tank commander, Dahan the driver, and Daniel the loader.

Neutra, Dahan and Daniel have all been identified as having been killed during the Hamas onslaught, and their bodies seized and taken by Hamas terrorists to Gaza.

“It’s very complicated,” said Cohen. “Some of the captive soldiers are alive and some are not, and some parents are active and others are not.”
Freed hostage Edan Alexander given jubilant welcome as he returns home to New Jersey
Edan Alexander, an American-Israeli who was released from Hamas captivity last month, on Thursday returned home to jubilant crowds in New Jersey.

Hundreds lined the streets of Alexander’s hometown, Tenafly. The crowd cheered, waved Israeli flags, held signs that said “Welcome home,” and chanted “Edan,” according to video shared by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a hostage advocacy group.

Alexander, smiling and wearing black sunglasses, drove through the crowd in the passenger seat of a black SUV, escorted by a police motorcade.

“In these difficult times, it’s more important than ever to pause and cherish the moments of hope and joy,” the hostages forum said. “His homecoming stands as a beacon of light. May all the hostages experience reunions filled with the same warmth, strength and hope.”

Alexander was released on May 12 after 584 days as a hostage. His release was characterized by the Hamas terror group as a goodwill gesture to US President Donald Trump in the hope that he would coax Israel into agreeing to a deal to end the war.

Political leaders in New Jersey and New York issued public statements welcoming Alexander home.

US Representative Josh Gottheimer, a Jewish New Jersey Democrat, said, “Today is a huge day worthy of great celebration across our state.”

“Edan’s return is a reminder that we must not rest until every last hostage is reunited with their families and loved ones,” he said.


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

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