Monday, June 30, 2025

06/30 Links Pt2: This is an anti-fascist; the Book That Saw October 7 Coming; How Palestine Became the Left’s Omnicause; Europe slams Israel, then buys its weapons

From Ian:

How Israel was turned into the fount of all evil
The conviction that Israel is evil, then, is sustained by several, prominent overlapping arguments: that it is perpetrating a holocaust, that Jews are the bearers of white privilege, and that Israel is no more than an expression of white colonial domination.

These arguments have been germinating in universities and other elite educational institutions for a while. Ideas such as white privilege and Israel being a colonial-settler state have long been taught under the rubric of critical race theory and post-colonial studies. So when students organise anti-Israel protests at universities, they are not ‘rebelling’, as they seem to imagine – they are conforming to what their professors have taught them.

What happens in the university clearly does not stay in the university. Over the past two decades or so, a cadre of graduates has joined our political and cultural elites. They have taken up roles in government, non-governmental organisations, the media and the broader culture industry. Many are all too happy to promote the idea of the Jewish State as exemplifying a malevolent spirit.

That Israel is evil has become the ‘right’ thing to think. Celebrities have been desperate to get in on the act, and proclaim their virtue in opposition to Israel. Superstar environmentalist Greta Thunberg is a prime example. Too old to continue posing as a schoolgirl campaigner against climate change, she can now be found on assorted anti-Israel protests and ventures, including this month’s so-called aid ship to Gaza. Last October she appeared at an anti-Israel rally in Milan, where she proclaimed: ‘If you, as a climate activist, don’t also fight for a free Palestine and an end to colonialism and oppression all over the world, then you should not be able to call yourself a climate activist.’ Obviously she wore a keffiyeh, an Arab headscarf, as an ostentatious symbol of her virtue.

It seems that hatred towards Israel has become a cornerstone of the woke elites’ worldview. No doubt they believe that it is the virtuous pose to strike. That they are on the right side of history. But they’re not. By casting the Jewish State as the epitome of evil, they are perpetuating racial animosity towards Jews in a 21st-century form.
Andrew Pessin: Zohran Mamdani and the Book That Saw October 7 Coming From a Mile Away
The Book That Saw October 7 Coming From a Mile Away: Richard Landes, Can “The Whole World” Be Wrong? Lethal Journalism, Antisemitism, and Global Jihad (Academic Studies Press, 2022) (November, 2023)

When it’s all over, when Israel is gone, the Jews are gone, the world as we thought we knew it is gone, this is the book people will read in order to understand what happened. Landes is a medieval historian, an expert on millennial apocalyptic movements, which gives him a unique perspective on current affairs. This book attempts to bring you into that perspective and, to the degree that it is successful, suddenly everything might look different to you, like the gestalt switch in perceiving the ambiguous image, the beautiful young woman suddenly yielding to the crone. Once seen, however, you can’t unsee it, and you will now see so many current events through its lens.

And it will terrify you.

Or at least that’s its aim.

The book is too deep and wide-ranging to do it justice in a short review, so I will just a highlight a few points, noting only that Landes supports everything with extensive documentation and argument. In short, it aims to turn everything you think you understand about the Jews, Islam, and the West upside-down—because it exposes how "lethal [activist] journalism" inverts reality in the ways it portrays these issues and conflicts, which in turn informs the left-leaning, progressive mindset largely in charge of Western policy-making. In so doing the book argues that we have been profoundly and dangerously misled by the Western mainstream media, which turns out, in the end, to be working in service to a globalist Islamist movement that in fact seeks to destroy the West, including those same media.

So, can “the whole world be wrong”—about Islam and its relation to the West in general, and about the Arab-Israeli conflict in particular that is at the heart of this book (or as I prefer to call it, to highlight its complexity, the Israeli-Palestinian-Jewish-Arab-Muslim Conflict)?

Landes writes:
As a result of a confluence of intellectual trends (postmodernism, postcolonialism, anti-Orientalism …) the role of honor-shame motivations in key [Arab] decision-making in this conflict since the Oslo Accords has been systematically ignored. Indeed the entire ‘Peace Process’ was predicated on the rational, positive-sum assumption that, offered the right deal, the Palestinians will say yes. As a result, scholars and policy makers alike have ignored abundant evidence of a limbic captivity to honor concerns among Arab patriarchal elites ... (191-2)
Brendan O'Neill: This is an anti-fascist
The name we should remember from this weekend is not Bob Vylan. Or Pascal Robinson-Foster, to give the Israelophobic punk who caused such a stink at Glastonbury his real name. No, it’s Yisrael Natan Rosenfeld. For as Bob Vylan was whipping the smug mob of Glasto into a frenzy of violent loathing for the IDF, this young IDF soldier, himself a Brit, was laying down his life for the Jewish people. He was killed in Gaza on Sunday as he did battle with that army of anti-Semites, Hamas. Now that’s anti-fascism.

Natan – as he was known – was 20 years old. He was born in London and moved to Israel 11 years ago. He was a sergeant in the 601st Combat Engineering Battalion of the IDF. He was killed by an explosive device in northern Gaza. His sister’s boyfriend, also an IDF soldier, died in combat during Hamas’s pogrom of 7 October 2023. Natan’s father paid tribute to him this morning. He was fighting ‘for his parents, his family, his people’, he said. ‘I feel he has a place in history.’

This is the Briton we should be talking about – not the sozzled, moneyed brats of Glastonbury who got a sick thrill from chanting ‘Death, death to the IDF’, but this fresh-faced warrior against Islamofascism. Not that Bob Vylan faux-punk who hollered for the death of the Jewish State’s soldiers, but this soldier of the Jewish State, this British Jew just out of his teens, who ventured into enemy territory to fight the Islamists who butchered so many of his people. Not the fake anti-fascists of Britain’s wet, vain left, but this real anti-fascist who put his life on the line for the Jewish homeland.

That Natan died just hours after thousands of his one-time compatriots chanted ‘Death, death to the IDF’ is chilling in the extreme. One can only hope that in his final few hours he did not see any clips of these privileged, hateful Gentiles in the country of his birth dreaming of the death of Jews like him. How betrayed he would have felt. To look from Natan’s smiling face to the malicious gurning of that Glasto mob is to behold the Two Britains: one brave, optimistic and willing to fight for what it believes in, the other indolent, self-regarding and only able to derive meaning through its hatred of others.

Here’s what horrifies me. Two groups of people were thinking ‘Death to the IDF’ on Saturday – the keffiyeh classes at Glastonbury and the barbarous militants who planted the device that ended Natan’s precious life. Britain’s middle classes were saying out loud what that neo-fascist militia was thinking as it laid its deadly trap for the soldiers of the Jewish nation. There was a meeting of minds, a most sickening meeting of minds, between the fashionably Israelophobic of the West and the murderously Israelophobic of Hamas. ‘Death, death to the IDF’, roared affluent Britons; ‘Okay’, replied Hamas.
‘We have to be united’: Father’s plea at funeral for UK-born IDF soldier killed in Gaza
IDF soldier Sgt. Yisrael Natan Rosenfeld, 20, who was killed during fighting in northern Gaza, was laid to rest at the Ra’anana cemetery on Monday.

According to an initial IDF probe, Rosenfeld, who was known as Natan, a member of the 601st Combat Engineering Battalion, was killed by an explosive device during operations in the Kafr Jabalia area.

Thousands of people joined the funeral procession, holding Israeli flags and paying their respects to Rosenfeld before he was buried.

In a teary eulogy, Rosenfeld’s father, Avi, said: “It’s so hard to stand here, but I am proud of you. You’re a hero.”

“Natan said we have to stay together,” he said. “He said that he is fighting in Gaza because we have hostages that must return home,” he added.

Avi delivered a message of unity to the country, declaring that “it’s not the time to argue.”

“It’s not the time to have arguments in the Knesset or on the streets. Think of our soldiers: they fight every day, they give their lives every second. Be together, give them the respect, the support. We have to be together, united,” he said.

“We suffered the Holocaust, the 7th of October, all the families of the soldiers who have fallen, and all the hostages who are now dead or are still there; the suffering is beyond belief. Hashem, it’s enough! The people of Israel are good people. Hashem save us, because it’s only You,” Avi stated.

“As far as Sam and I are concerned, our boy is still with us,” he added.

In her eulogy, his mother, Samantha, said: “Natan, we hope you are the last sacrifice anyone should have to pay for the price of our land and our freedom. There is no religious, secular, or Haredi person in the army; we are all one people, with one heart. We need to come together and put aside our differences. You shall not die in vain.”

“I can’t actually quite believe that I’m standing here at your funeral. It’s really quite unbelievable in your 20 years, how much you’ve been able to achieve,” she said.

Athalia, his younger sister, said she was “so proud” when Rosenfeld joined the army.

“I always envied you for everything. You were happy and surrounded by my friends. Since you enlisted, I sent you messages every day telling you to take care of yourself. One day, I stopped because I realized you would be OK. I didn’t think it was possible that you wouldn’t be OK,” she said, adding she wished she could have done something to stop him from returning to his service.


How Palestine Became the Left’s Omnicause
Greta Thunberg, too, has joined pro-Palestine demonstrations at University of Stockholm. Since 20 October 2023, she has jumped aboard the Palestinian liberation bandwagon. The Swedish truant was deported from Israel this month, after the IDF intercepted a yacht that she and eleven other members of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition tried to sail across the Mediterranean. Before doing so, she refused the government’s offer to watch the footage from the October 7th massacre. It seems her pathological altruism only extends to one side. Thunberg claimed she had been “kidnapped”; but just like when German rail company Deutsche Bahn spoiled her photo-op by revealing she sat in first class, the vacuousness of her activism was exposed by photos showing her smiling while Israeli soldiers handed her water and sandwiches.

This shift in grift could be forecast from miles away. In 2019, Thunberg co-authored a piece explaining the motives for her truancy were to save the planet from “a crisis of human rights, of justice, and of political will. Colonial, racist, and patriarchal systems of oppression have created and fueled it. We need to dismantle them all.” Thunberg’s copycat, Scarlett Westbrook penned an op-ed in the Independent, explaining Greta sailed to Gaza because “The carbon footprint of the first 15 months of Israel’s war on Gaza is greater than the annual planet-warming emissions of 100 countries combined.”

Mary Harrington calls these overlapping obsessions the “Omnicause”: a set of seemingly incoherent positions on political topics — climate change, trans rights, Palestine — connected by their advancing the intersecting interests of aggrieved minorities. The full suite of fashionable beliefs is pejoratively labelled “the Current Thing”. They are presented as a coherent worldview to the emotionally incontinent by social-media algorithms and Instagram graphics, reducing complex issues to thought-stopping cliches and a few Canva slides.

But there is ideological connective tissue between these topics. This is why a handful of old-left Boomers still gather outside Parliament every week with banners and flags, demanding aid be allowed into the Gaza strip. “Third-Worldism” emerged as an internationalist doctrine after Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev pledged support for “wars of national liberation” abroad, in 1961. Frantz Fanon provided the ideological gunpowder in his Wretched of the Earth that same year, with Jean Paul-Sartre writing in the foreword that to “shoot down a European is to kill two birds with one stone … [to] destroy an oppressor and the man he oppresses at the same time: there remain a dead man, and a free man.” Fanon proposed “Revolutionary socialism all together everywhere” as the sole solution to the supposed theft of largesse from the third-world by the first.

Hence the eyesore of a diagram that declares “Palestine is THE issue”:
The plight of Palestinians is window-dressing for revolutionary racial communism and the imperial designs that Islam has on the West. Jews code as white, because they are pale and the precursors of Christianity, Israel codes right-wing, because it has high GDP-per-capita, above-replacement birth-rates, a competent military, and ethnic and religious homogeneity. Britain is blamed for giving Israel its land; America is blamed for giving Israel its arms and aid. Its wealth, success, and self-confidence make its people, state, and allies the enemies of anti-white racists who cloak their grievances in post-colonial and critical race theory. Environmentalist misanthropes glue themselves to the coalition because America’s failed regime-change ventures in the Middle East concerned the security of global oil and gas supplies. Devious Islamist groups use both as useful idiots, and, thanks to mass migration, have a standing army of millions of Muslims in Europe for whom solidarity with the Ummah takes precedence over loyalty to their host nation.

Liberals will twist themselves into pretzels condemning the sentiment of this movement, while defending its right to protest. But why? They aren’t shy about their desire to ransack our traditions, deface our monuments, and cast lots for our belongings. Chants of “Intifada” are a promise to repeat the atrocities of October 7th in Britain. We shouldn’t have to put up with this. Hungary and Poland don’t have this problem, because they didn’t import it. Without laws that give it standing, and policies to provide it demographic and thereby democratic demand, we wouldn’t either.

If Palestine is the omnicause, then it can be our starting point for rewinding their whole revolution.
Seth Mandel: Anti-Israel Resolutions Aren’t About Israel
On Saturday, the North Carolina Democratic Party’s executive committee passed a resolution accusing Israel of “genocide” and calling for the U.S. to institute a defense embargo against the Jewish state. The vote was a long time coming, and Manning, who was the head of the Jewish Federations before running for Congress, excoriated the party ahead of the vote: “Time and time again, the Jewish Caucus of North Carolina has attempted to unify and collaborate with the leadership of the North Carolina Democratic Party, which seems unwilling or unable to reciprocate. Instead, Party Chair Anderson Clayton and First Vice Chair Jonah Garson have continued to tolerate extreme anti-Israel rhetoric and antisemitism from within the party on social media, in executive committee meetings, and even in the exclusion of Jewish members from Interfaith Caucus meetings.”

In the classic sense, it’s a symbolic move, of course. The North Carolina Democratic Party’s executive committee, thankfully, has no power over national-defense policy. But is it still a symbolic move if it achieves some other, intended goal? The point of such resolutions isn’t to influence the war against Israel but to make the institutions voting on the resolution even more hostile to Jewish members.

Just as the term “Zionists” is used by its critics exclusively to mean “Jews,” an increasing number of institutions bring anti-Israel politics up for the sole purpose of alienating Jews in their midst. The resolution has no effect on Israel because it’s not about Israel; like the BDS movement in America, its entire purpose is to make Jews uncomfortable and unwelcome.

BDS is a failure only on the terms on which it pretends to want to be judged—isolating the world’s Jews from global commerce. If that were really its goal, donors would stop wasting their money on it. If the BMA’s goal had anything to do with the health of Palestinians, their approach would have to change. But it doesn’t, so it won’t. And if the North Carolina Democratic Party were intending to sway an international conflict, it would try to find a way to do so. But it has a different goal, and it has found the perfect process to carry it out.

Institutions that spend their time and capital designing ways to make Jews feel uncomfortable are not actually focused on Israel. We should keep that in mind as these “symbolic” tactics proliferate.
Funded by Qatar, Silent on Iran: The UN’s Counter-Terrorism Fraud Report
The latest report from the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism (UNOCT) lands like a bad joke—if it weren’t so tragically dangerous. Not a single terror group is named. No Hamas. No Hezbollah. No ISIS. No Al-Qaeda. No Boko Haram. Zero. Zip. Nada.

Since 9/11, Islamic terrorism alone has claimed over 240,000 lives worldwide and from nearly 106,000 terrorist attacks. These attacks have devastated countless families, communities, and nations, leaving a legacy of destruction, fear, and death. Yet, the UNOCT report ignores these grim facts as if terrorism is some vague, abstract threat—never naming a single terrorist organization or acknowledging their real, brutal impact and cause. This isn’t counter-terrorism. This is willful deceit.

The UN’s self-inflicted legitimacy crisis
How can the UN even claim to be fit for counter-terrorism when it is deeply entangled with terrorist organizations? UNRWA, the UN agency responsible for Palestinian “refugees,” which employs terrorists implicated in kidnapping and slaughtering innocent civilians. Its schools indoctrinate children into jihad—schools administered by Hamas leaders not only in Gaza, but also in Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank. And according to the UN, jihadi education is in line with “UN principles”

The UN wants the world to believe that the root cause of Islamic terrorism is “lack of equality” and “opportunity.” This theory, while politically convenient, is a dangerous lie. It ignores the hard facts: radical jihadist groups openly preach religious extremism, global jihad, and genocidal hatred. It is not poverty or inequality fueling these campaigns of terror—it is ideology. It’s Qatar and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Qatar: The elephant in the UNOCT room
The absurdity peaks when you realize who bankrolls UNOCT. Qatar—the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism, harborning Hamas and the Taliban—is also the largest funder of this very UN counter-terrorism office. But is not all, it almost looks like a money laundering scheme: Qatar is the top funder of the UNOCT, and in return, receives the lion’s share of the UNOCT “expenses.” A whooping 38%.

On March 27, the Fourth High-Level Strategic Dialogue between Qatar and UNOCT took place to discuss “strategic priorities” and “collaboration” on counter-terrorism. Ask yourself: how can Qatar advise member states on countering terrorism when it actively supports and spreads it worldwide? This is like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.
An Anishinaabe Zionist on how Indigenous history is weaponized to promote antisemitism
Retired Canadian judge Harry LaForme stood at a podium in Tel Aviv and began his remarks with a familiar ritual, but one rarely heard in Israel: a land acknowledgement.

“We are gathered here today,” he said. “In the homeland of the Indigenous Jewish people.”

In Canada, land acknowledgments are a common way to begin public addresses — a formal recognition of the Indigenous peoples on whose traditional territories an event is taking place. But this time, LaForme was far from home, delivering his words not in Ontario, but as part of the keynote address at Tel Aviv University’s Annual Democracy Forum in May, hosted by the Irwin Cotler Institute.

For LaForme, a member of the Anishinaabe Nation and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, and a self-described “Indigenous Zionist,” the connection was instinctive: “I don’t know of anyone who can claim indigeneity more than the Jewish people in Israel,” he said.

The jurist was on his first visit to Israel, a trip he described as “a dream come true.”

“We learned all about this impossible country,” he said. “Our love for it grew.”

As the first Indigenous judge appointed to an appellate court in Canada, LaForme’s life and legal career have been shaped by “the shadow of settler colonialism,” which he says contributed to the deep kinship that he feels to Jewish people and their “ancestral homeland.”

The notion of an “Indigenous Zionist,” let alone a First Nations justice, finding deep common cause with Jewish Israelis, may seem to some counterintuitive or even provocative, particularly in Canada, where parallels between Palestinians and Indigenous peoples have become a powerful talking point among pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel activists, many of whom frame Israel as a settler-colonial project.

Today, rhetoric surrounding Israel often morphs to adopt the dominant moral vocabulary of the society in which it appears. In the United States, it’s framed through the lens of systemic racism; in South Africa, apartheid; in Europe, Nazism.

In Canada, where colonialism and policies to erase First Nations’ cultures are widely acknowledged as foundational national sins, Israel is cast as a stand-in for colonial guilt, a way to absolve and redirect collective shame over Indigenous suffering.

For LaForme, whose culture, history and identity are often invoked as political talking points, it is deeply offensive.

“The [Jewish people’s] history is obvious — it goes back at least 4,000 years, and I don’t understand Canada’s reluctance to recognize this,” he said. “But people aren’t interested in history.”

The activists making arguments against this history, he noted, are rarely Indigenous themselves and see no irony in appropriating the grievances of First Nations to agitate for a foreign conflict.
Islamist extremists fuelling rise in antisemitism, Blunkett warns
Britain faces an “enormous and ongoing threat” from Islamic terrorists, a former Labour home secretary has warned.

Lord Blunkett said the October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas and the subsequent war in Gaza had instilled a growing and “disturbing” level of hatred against Jewish people in the UK that is being enabled to fester by Islamic extremists.

He made the comments in a foreward to a major report by the Counter Extremism Group that exposes the rising threat of antisemitism fuelled by Islamic extremists in the UK. Portrait of Lord David Blunkett.

The 94-page report accuses the government’s counterterrorism officials of a “widespread failure to recognise the extensive recent history of antisemitic incidents involving Islamists in the UK”.

It highlights how speakers in certain mosques have promoted the idea that Allah is pleased by the killing of Jews and have led prayers for the mujahideen — those who engage in jihad, without directly naming Hamas.

They have also promoted conspiracy theories about the October 7 attacks.

The report is authored by Daniel Allington, a reader in social analytics at King’s College London, for the Counter Extremism Group, a think tank providing non-partisan research, commentary and policy on all forms of extremism which was previously led by Robin Simcox, the government’s counterextremism commissioner.

The study, which began in September 2023 but was shaped by the October 7 attacks and their aftermath, warns that Islamic extremists in the UK are using the war in Gaza as a recruiting sergeant. Islamists are attempting to build coalitions with organisations on the far left across the West, it added.

Dr. Daniel Allington, Senior Lecturer in Social and Cultural Artificial Intelligence.
Starmer’s Labour has spectacularly failed to address Muslim anti-Semitism
A new report has only confirmed what I have known for a long time – Islamist anti-Semitism remains a major problem in modern Britain.

The 94-page report by the Counter Extremism Group reveals the rising threat of anti-Semitism fuelled by Islamic extremists in the UK. It also accuses the Government’s counter-terrorism officials of a “widespread failure to recognise the extensive recent history of anti-Semitic incidents involving Islamists in the UK”.

In the report’s foreword, Lord Blunkett, the former Labour home secretary, said it was “unforgivable” for anyone to use the actions of the Israeli state as an “excuse for anti-Semitism”.

Blunkett is correct. While I believe that the current Israeli government is a malevolent regime which includes Jewish religious extremists such as Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, and Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, the level of violence, intimidation, and harassment faced by British Jews shows that we are anything but a bastion of a multi-faith democracy.

Supporting Palestinian statehood and the right to self-determination is a noble cause, but the displaying of pro-terror paraphernalia and the chanting of anti-Jewish slogans at pro-Palestine marches – all too often under-policed – has revealed the dark side of multicultural Britain. The glorification of the October 7 terror attacks should have no place in a genuinely civilised society.

The truth is that anti-Semitism is disproportionately concentrated in Britain’s Muslim communities – especially the more orthodox and segregated elements of this population. Back in 2013, the British-American broadcaster Mehdi Hasan wrote for the New Statesman that “the virus of anti-Semitism has infected the British Muslim community”.

A 2017 report published by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research found that found more than half of Muslims (55 per cent) held at least one anti-Semitic attitude (compared with 30 per cent of the general population), with Dr Jonathan Boyd, its director, concluding that “there does seem to be some relationship between levels of religiosity in the Muslim population and anti-Semitism”.

This was followed by the 2020 HJS report, which found that British Muslims who are socially segregated in terms of the religious background of their closest friends were more hostile towards Jews than their more integrated co-religionists.
Europe slams Israel, then buys its weapons
Across European capitals, a familiar duality is taking shape. In official statements and international forums, EU governments harshly criticize Israel’s conduct in Gaza, invoking humanitarian concerns and calling for restraint.

Yet, within security establishments and strategic circles, these same governments quietly seek out Israel’s battle-proven expertise and defense cooperation.

This paradox is more than political optics. It reflects a deeper tension between public posturing and strategic necessity. As global threats rise and European security structures face increasing strain, especially along NATO’s eastern flank, many capitals have come to depend on the capabilities developed by Israel, not through theory or simulation, but through sustained operational experience.

Israel’s defense ecosystem is shaped by necessity and refined through real-time confrontation with persistent threats. This unique context produces groundbreaking technology alongside – and more importantly – a depth of institutional knowledge and operational agility that European states, many of which lack comparable combat exposure, increasingly find indispensable.

The appeal of a defense partnership with Israel lies in its demonstrated ability to adapt swiftly, integrate intelligence with operational planning, and respond decisively under pressure. These attributes resonate strongly in an era where geopolitical certainties are eroding and traditional deterrents are being tested.

Europe's calculated stance toward Israel
Yet, despite this growing appeal, much of Europe’s defense engagement with Israel remains discreet. At defense expos, Israeli firms may be present but not prominently featured. Strategic dialogues unfold quietly. Procurement decisions are pursued with minimal publicity. It is a calculated posture: benefit from Israeli know-how, while minimizing public association amid political sensitivities.

This contradiction has sharpened in recent months. The war in Gaza has inflamed European public opinion, prompting calls for sanctions and reevaluation of bilateral ties. Still, behind the scenes, defense cooperation continues. Governments are navigating a fine line, condemning Israel in public while embracing its capabilities in private.
Why France is afraid of Israel’s defense industry
The biennial Paris Air Show is the place where producers of the latest military aircraft go to show off their wares, and where potential buyers go to see them. At the most recent show, which took place the weekend before last, French authorities set up black barriers around exhibits of offensive weapons by Israeli companies, citing “the situation in Gaza.” The move seemed like a typical instance of European governments’ penchant for symbolically lashing out at Israeli. Some quipped that Israel gave a much better, real-life demonstration of its aerial capabilities over the skies of Iran while the show was going on.

But Takele Mekonen suggests that the real motivation behind France’s behavior was economic:
When exhibition organizers mandated that Israeli weapons systems be concealed behind black barriers, they effectively illustrated the mounting anxiety over Israel’s capacity to disrupt the entrenched defense-economic establishment. . . . [W]hile France grapples with marketing its conventional platforms to emerging markets, Israel thrives in penetrating new territories precisely through its agility and innovation. Middle Eastern, Asian, and African markets favor modular and cost-efficient solutions over expensive monolithic weapon systems.

The broader economic significance is that current diplomatic friction stems not merely from international relations, but from fierce competition for market dominance in a rapidly expanding industry. It’s reasonable to conclude that the prohibition on showcasing Israeli offensive systems in Paris constitutes an implicit recognition of Israeli technological supremacy, coupled with French reluctance to face direct competition.
Huge update on Sydney nurses who allegedly declared to 'kill Israelis' in viral video - as they suffer a major blow
The two nurses at the centre of a viral video where they allegedly made violent threats against Israelis have copped further sanctions.

Ahmad Rashad Nadir and Sarah Abu Lebdeh have both received a two-year ban from the National Disability Insurance Scheme, four months after they were stood down from their jobs at Bankstown Hospital in Sydney's south-west.

The pair were among 133 individuals and businesses banned from working with NDIS participants in the first five months of 2025 for various reasons, the Daily Telegraph reported.

They were previously banned from working as nurses nationwide after the NSW Nursing and Midwifery Council suspended their registrations.

Nadir’s lawyer told the publication his client wouldn't be commenting on the NDIS ban.

Others sanctioned include disability carer who was banned after OnlyFans videos of her and her client were found on his phone and a former Lions president and his wife behind a NDIS company that was permanently banned by the watchdog.

Nadir and Lebdeh were working at Bankstown Hospital in February when they made the alleged threats in a conversation via online platform Chatruletka.

Footage posted online by Israeli social media personality Max Veifer showed them them claiming they would refuse to treat Israelis and kill them instead.
Toby Dershowitz: The Woes of Argentina’s Peronist Icon, Former President Cristina Kirchner
Kirchner additionally faces criminal charges for seeking to cover up the Islamic Republic of Iran’s role in Argentina’s deadliest terrorist attack, the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center, in which 85 people were killed and hundreds more wounded.

The prosecutor in the AMIA bombing, Alberto Nisman, believed Kirchner sought to obstruct the case against senior Iranian officials for whom there were international arrest warrants and INTERPOL red notices. In 2015, Nisman filed a legal complaint naming Kirchner, among others, based on thousands of legally obtained wiretaps. Days later, he was murdered in his apartment. In January 2025, a new investigation by an Argentinian judge has reopened the case.

Kirchner faces a long list of other criminal charges that are winding their way through the courts, based on allegations of kickbacks for government contracts and money laundering operations, also including her late husband, her son and close associates.

The United States designated Kirchner for corruption in March 2025, rendering her ineligible for entry into the United States. In the future, she may also face asset freezes for any property in the US, under the Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act.

The US Congress in 2023 passed a law calling for the President to designate Kirchner for corruption. Senator Ted Cruz noted that she has both stolen from Argentina’s citizens and “undermined American security interests in the region by placing Argentina’s institutions at the service of Iran’s global terrorism campaign.”

Kirchner continues to deny any wrongdoing and blames her woes on her political opponents, saying she is being persecuted.

The Argentine people have had to wait for years to see Kirchner’s corruption addressed. But her political career appears to be over. And she will no longer be able to shop for gold bracelets at Bulgari. Instead, she will have to wear surveillance ankle bracelets, courtesy of Argentina’s judicial system.
From “Heil Hitler” to “Death to the IDF”: This is MaoNazism with a Palestinian Flag
Just as Mao’s Red Guards were told to smash temples, denounce their parents, and burn the books of the past, today’s Palestine-obsessed radicals torch Jewish history, rewrite maps, and chant “Free Palestine.”

Today’s purges aren’t carried out with bullets. They are algorithmic. They trend on TikTok. They go viral on Instagram. They are enforced by digital mobs, online inquisitions, and professional exile. One wrong question, one misplaced word, and you’re gone—fired, de-platformed, your presence, questions or opinions, not allowed.

We saw this erasure of reality play out in real time. Amnesty UK, instead of condemning a crowd chanting for the death of Jews, declared that the real “news” of Glastonbury wasn’t the incitement—it was “the genocide.” A complete distortion of reality. A lie treated repeated as gospel.

Like Maoism, it is not enough to support the cause. You must worship it. And like all such movements, it will devour its own.

Ask the Jewish progressives who dared to cry for those slaughtered and kidnapped by Hamas, blocked. Ask feminists who wondered why Hamas’s rapes and forced child marriages are not discussed, canceled. Ask LGBTQ activists who asked about how Hamas burns gays alive, demonized. Questioning the cause and bringing up the facts on the ground is “racist,” its “pro-genocide.”

Ask the former UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, who refused to label the war in Gaza as genocide without legal basis, she was fired. Silenced for not submitting. Because in this new religion, truth doesn’t matter—only the narrative.

This isn’t social justice. It is submission.
You don’t have to be Israeli to be a target. You just have to disobey or have doubts.

And still, the useful idiots march—for “justice,” for “freedom”—while glorifying movements that execute gays, enslave women, and train children to blow themselves up. They think they’re fighting oppression but are building the next totalitarian nightmare.

Because the other branch of the movement—the one they’re too ignorant or too cowardly to see—the jihadists—fuse martyrdom with militarism, perfected by Iran and groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. Like Imperial Japan, they teach death is holy, surrender is shame, and the body a bomb. They groom children for suicide, sending them to die in the name of “Allah” and “Palestine.”

Both branches share the same virus: a Nazi-style lust for Jewish blood—not just hatred of Israelis, but Jews. The aim isn’t “ending occupation,” but finishing what Hitler did not.

Those chanting in Western streets are not leaders or fighting for social justice. They are useful idiots, indoctrinated by a new form of worship, “Palestine.” They are to indoctrinated to realize how they are serving the Muslim Brotherhood’s and the Islamic Republic’s agenda, the fall of western civilization in exchange or a global Caliphate.

History’s warning is clear:
Ask the Red Guards. Ask the SA. Today, they chant to “Death to the IDF.” They don’t realize how they will be hunted by “death to the unbelievers.” What they don’t realize, the Palestinian movement purge of its “own people,” just like October 7th, will be streamed live.
Brendan O’Neill: Glastonbury has become a sinister festival of anti-Semitism
The question that hangs darkly over Glastonbury’s death dreaming is this: why the IDF? Why not ‘Death to the People’s Liberaton Army’, which visits such horrors on the Uyghur people? Or ‘Death to the Rapid Support Forces’, the psycho militia that has caused tens of thousands of deaths in Sudan over the past two years? Or, indeed, ‘Death to Hamas’, that reactionary, racist army that started the war in Gaza with its fascistic pogrom of 7 October 2023? A pogrom that involved mass rape and murder at a music festival not unlike Glastonbury.

We all know why. It’s because hating the Jewish State is all the rage among the activist classes. Singling out the Jewish nation as the most bloodthirsty nation is what passes for ‘politics’ on today’s left. They damn this tiny country as the greatest menace to humanity, as a Nazi-like entity, as a nation so swimming in sin and blood that it deserves to be erased, ‘from the river to the sea’. Tell me there isn’t bigotry here. Tell me it doesn’t echo the older, darker damnation of the Jews themselves as a bloodlusting people, the poison in the well of humanity.

For me, that’s what Glastonbury felt like yesterday: a woke Nuremberg rally. With their gleeful cry for the death of Israeli soldiers, for the destruction of the army that defends the Jewish homeland, these people sounded more like the moral heirs of Oswald Mosley than Sylvia Pankhurst. It was a like a gathering of Guardianista versions of Unity Mitford essentially saying, ‘F**k the Jewish nation’.

Glastonbury has apologised. The festival said it was ‘appalled’ by what unfolded. But there’s no doubt that this felt like a turning point. The mania of Israel-hate stood exposed before the world. The true nature of the bourgeois cult of Palestinianism, with its virulent hostility not only to Israel but to the West itself, was clear for all to see. We glimpsed, briefly, the threat that the delirium of Israelophobia poses to Jewish security, to the values of our own civilisation, and to all that is decent. These people have had the stage for too long – it’s time for the good among us to stand up.
‘Rot of the West rise to the surface’: Young people side with Hamas following October 7 Spiked Online Chief Political Reporter Brendan O’Neill discusses the “rot of the West rise to the surface” following the Hamas massacre on October 7.

“We have really seen the rot of the West rise to the surface … young people siding with Hamas, essentially,” Mr O’Neill told Sky News host Danica De Giorgio.

“Every weekend on the streets of Sydney, London, New York, this is a battle between civilisation and barbarism, between the democracy of Israel and the barbarism of Hamas.”


‘Very frightening’: Glastonbury crowd chants anti-Israel slogans
Executive Council of Australian Jewry President Daniel Aghion KC reacts to an anti-Israel chant performed at Glastonbury.

“It’s very frightening, that chant then became an echo because it was repeated in the pro-Gaza protest in Melbourne this Sunday,” he told Sky News host Steve Price.

“It’s gone around the world, and it’s gone local here.”




UKLFI: Daniel Berke discusses death chants at Glastonbury on TalkTV
Daniel Berke, a Director of UK Lawyers for Israel, discusses the death chants at Glastonbury, including the responsibility of the BBC, with Ian Collins on TalkTV


Bob Vylan Is A Racist Idiot
Visegrad24 founder Stefan Tompson shares his take on the Glastonbury Festival scandal.

The rapper Bobby Vylan took to the festival’s third-biggest West Holts Stage on Saturday shouting “Free, free Palestine,” before leading crowds to chants against the Israeli military.

In this video, we take a look at what Glastonbury has become.

00:00 - Introduction
00:28 - Progressives & Islamists
04:28 - Open Borders
07:43 - Self-Hatred




Glastonbury denies giving Palestine Action green-light to recruit and fundraise at festival
Glastonbury Festival have denied giving the Palestine Action organisation the green-light to use this year’s festival as a recruitment and fund-raising opportunity ahead of their expected proscription by the UK government.

Jewish News infiltrated one of the meetings put on by the group at Glastonbury, which was advertised on the official festival app, at which supporters of the violently anti-Israel group boasting of further and more extreme actions in the future at which those involved had be supported despite the likelihood of them receiving long prison sentences.

At a Palestine Action event inside Glastonbury’s Speakers Forum tent, Francesca Nadin, who had been remanded in prison ahead of a trial on criminal damage charges, read out the work of of Georges Abdallah, an ex-guerrilla in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), sentenced to life in prison for his involvement in the murders of US military attache Charles Robert Ray and Israeli diplomat Yacov Barsimantov.

Inside Palestine Action Glastonbury meeting
Nadin, who has described herself as a “political prisoner” and who writes on the Revolutionary Communist Group’s website, urged those in attendance at the numerous Glastonbury events she spoke at to purchase black “We Are Palestine Action” t-shirts, and to donate funds to the group as they launched a legal challenge to the government’s attempt to proscribe them.

All of the stage crew in control of the sound at the event on Saturday also sported black T-shirts.

In an earlier appearance on stage on Thursday evening Nadin, remanded in prison earlier this year over charges relating to the attack on a Barclays bank, and over a separate case, was cheered as she boasted:”Palestine Action, we do direct action against arms factories in this country …. we smash them up.”

After Jewish News filmed and recorded some of the speakers at Saturday’s event, we were challenged by a female who said she was working for the festival who asked us to delete pictures of those taking part in a Q&A session.

We refused, citing the comments made by one activist who threatened extreme actions by Palestine activists even if the group are proscribed.
Jake Wallis Simons: Tim Davie must surely fall on his sword now
Has anybody seen Tim Davie? Ever since the BBC beamed death chants from Glastonbury into millions of sitting-rooms around the country, its director-general has been conspicuous by his absence. Could he be lying low in the hope that the storm will pass, leaving the broadcaster free to return to business as usual?

I’d wager my house on it. And frankly, I wouldn’t blame him. This evening, it emerged that the boss of the Beeb became aware of the Glastonbury death chants while – get this – at the festival himself.

Mr Davie says he was not offered the option to take down the livestream. Why not? How could an otherwise sensitive and adroit operator not see the potentially catastrophic pitfalls? Was he thinking that Middle England would have no problem with death chants at Glasto? Mind you, he probably did believe that, as none of his own friends would have objected. Well, now his fingerprints are all over it.

From the Cliff Richards scandal of 2014 to the revelations about Auntie showcasing Hamas propaganda more than a decade later, whenever its journalism is under the spotlight, the Beeb only has one playbook.

First, ignore. Then deny. Then defend. Then ignore some more. Finally, when there is truly nothing else to be done, squeeze out an apology in an equivocal and mealy-mouthed manner and hope everybody forgets about it.

I remember the battle the Jewish community had in 2022, when the BBC alleged that a bunch of kids celebrating Chanukah in London had brought an antisemitic assault upon their own heads by using an “anti-Muslim slur”.

The corporation dug its heels in for months, even after the Board of Deputies had commissioned a forensic audio expert to prove that no such “slur” had been uttered. Eventually, when it was condemned by Ofcom, the BBC apologised. And everybody moved on.

Not this time. The director-general has been left holding this depraved baby of woke-jihad and he ain’t going to get it adopted that quick. Not since the Jimmy Savile scandal have we seen public anger so intense as at the mishandling of Glastonbury, which had quite obviously become a disaster of exactly this sort waiting to happen.

In the extensive run-up to the music festival – music festival? Let’s call it a carnival of cranks – the BBC repeatedly toadied up to the Eavis clan, which has openly converted the event into a hormone-fuelled display of adolescent politics.


Nicole Lampert: My hostage son is chained up alone & going blind in Gaza dungeons while sick Hamas captors are CELEBRATED at Glastonbury
THEY both set out to celebrate peace and love.

But while Glastonbury was this weekend awash with support for Palestine, there was little if any recognition of the 378 people massacred by Hamas at the Nova music festival in Israel on October 7, 2023.

Amid a sea of Palestine flags waved by the crowds at Worthy Farm, punk performers Bob Vylan chanted, “Death to the IDF” and Northern Irish rappers Kneecap led a chorus of “F*** Keir Starmer”.

The victims of the atrocity nearly two years ago — which marked the onset of full-scale war — were all but forgotten.

Instead, here in the UK, its perpetrators were held up as heroes.

You would have had to look hard to spot a flag at Glastonbury honouring those killed or taken hostage at the Nova festival.

Unsuspecting party-goers there were slain amid a hail of bullets and rockets as waves of Hamas fighters swarmed across the border from Gaza.

Rockets blasted across the border from Gaza.

It became the scene of the biggest massacre at a music event in history.

Incredibly, festivals held since then have not only failed to acknowledge what happened at the Israel gig, but have at times celebrated the terrorists behind the devastation.

The attack on the event, as well as small villages and towns near the Gaza border on that same day, led to a conflict that has seen thousands of Palestinians killed as Israel continues in its quest to dismantle Hamas and return its hostages.

Lebanon and Syria have become different countries with the weakening of Hezbollah.
As a BBC journalist, I’ve never felt more ashamed
What are Jews meant to think? This is more than irresponsibility by the BBC, it’s literally created a safe space for antisemites to spread Jew-hate of the most pernicious type.

I have seen the private online conversations which have been going on between multiple Jewish staff at the BBC ever since those disgusting thugs puked out their chant of “Death death to the IDF” and it is very depressing. They are incredibly alarmed, upset and at a loss as to how the BBC could have allowed this to happen.

There is an entire gallery of experienced BBC producers, directors and operators watching every second of every performance at Glastonbury. A decision should have been taken immediately to cut the live stream as soon as this garbage first uttered their antisemitic filth.

All it takes is the push of a button. But no-one made that call. No one in that gallery felt that “Death death to the IDF” crossed a line. No one felt it was bad enough. No, the show must go on. Let’s just put up a warning about discriminatory language, that’ll do.

Sadly, that didn’t do. All it did was reinforce that the BBC has learnt absolutely nothing about antisemitism since 7/10. And now the damage has been done, and the damage is huge. The Jewish community, and others, are clamouring for answers, and very clear answers at that. Why did the BBC allow it to happen, who made those wrong calls, and what will be done as a result. Whoever was in charge made a catastrophic mistake, and they must be held accountable.

Whatever little trust remained between the BBC and its Jewish staff has now evaporated. It is difficult to see what it can do to rebuild it, but rebuild it it must.

The impression though is that this latest debacle will barely be put to rest before the next one comes along.


It is obvious the BBC anticipated Bob Vylan rant
Others have made the point so I won’t dwell on it except to say that after hundreds of young people were murdered and raped in the most brutal way at a similar music festival on October 7th 2023, I cannot understand how or why the Glastonbury organizers would invite those who support the killers to perform at their festival. Their words of condemnation ring hollow and performative. I can only imagine they wish to safeguard their lucrative broadcast agreements with the BBC.

But here is the fact: the Glastonbury organizers deliberately invited people they could reasonably anticipate would express these views. One act is currently on trial for waving a flag in support of Hezbollah, for goodness sake! An activist group invited to speak is currently also facing being banned under the Terrorism Act. As I argued above, the BBC itself anticipated trouble and did nothing to mitigate it. It now accepts it should have done more. Their spokesperson said: “The antisemitic sentiments expressed by Bob Vylan were utterly unacceptable and have no place on our airwaves.”

But an apology is not enough. This smacks of the “do what you want to now and say ‘sorry’ later” approach. It seems devious and dishonest.

I don’t want them to be fined by Ofcom because, as a publicly-funded service, the wrong-doers will just end up paying with our money. They are already too cavalier with the public’s money. No, what I would like to see is a moratorium on the partnership with Glastonbury. If Glastonbury’s management cannot be trusted not to book acts which will outrage the public and potentially break the law, and the BBC cannot be trusted to broadcast this festival responsibly, then it must be axed from the line-up.

The call should be for NO GLASTONBURY ON THE BBC.

UPDATE:
If there is any amusing aspect to this story it is that the BBC management are so wet that they’re taking all this flack on behalf of some morons who ‘dissed’ them to their audience and implied they were complicit in covering up a genocide. Maybe they should join the promoters who have dropped them and stop their airplay on their platform. It’s not like they’re grateful for it.
BBC says Bob Vylan’s Glastonbury set ‘utterly unacceptable’ as it promises review of live event rules
The BBC has condemned antisemitic chants aired during a Glastonbury set as “utterly unacceptable” and admitted it should have pulled the livestream mid-performance.

In a strongly worded statement issued on Monday, the broadcaster said it “stands firmly against incitement to violence” and pledged a review of its live event protocols following outrage over comments made by Bob Vylan on the West Holts stage Saturday afternoon.

Footage shared widely on social media showed the performer leading festival-goers in chants of “Death, death, death to the IDF”, invoking violence against Israeli soldiers. He also declared, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, inshallah” – a phrase widely understood as calling for the elimination of the Jewish state – and railed against “Zionists in the music industry”.

The BBC confirmed it live-streamed the full set on iPlayer, including the chants, without edits or bleeping but said on-screen warnings were issued at the time. “With hindsight, we should have pulled the performance. We regret this did not happen,” the statement read.

It added: “The antisemitic sentiments expressed by Bob Vylan were utterly unacceptable and have no place on our airwaves. We welcome Glastonbury’s condemnation of the performance.”

The performance is no longer available on-demand, and the BBC said it would review its internal guidance “so we can be sure teams are clear on when it is acceptable to keep output on air.”

Avon and Somerset Police confirmed on Sunday they are assessing footage from the set to determine whether any offences were committed.

Glastonbury Festival said in its own statement: “We were appalled by the statements made by Bob Vylan… There is no place for antisemitic hate speech or incitement to violence.”


Lisa Nandy tells MPs she is not satisfied with BBC’s explanation over Glastonbury
Lisa Nandy has told the Commons she is “not satisfied so far” at the explanation given to her by the BBC about the decision to continue to broadcast “Death To The IDF” remarks made by an artist on stage at the Glastonbury Festival.

In a statement to MPs the Culture Secretary criticised the “appalling and unacceptable” scenes at the Glastonbury festival, as the acts Bobby Vylan and Kneecap performed on Saturday.

Nandy confirmed that Avon and Somerset Police had announced a criminal investigation into footage and audio from Bob Vylan and Kneecap’s performances at Glastonbury Festival on Saturday

The Culture Secretary said the Government would not tolerate antisemitism, after the comments on stage by Bob Vylan. Ms Nandy said she had called BBC director general Tim Davie after the broadcast on Saturday to find out why it had aired, and why the feed had not been cut.

“I expect answers to these questions without delay. I have made that view clear to the BBC leadership and I will of course update the House as soon as I can,” she said.

Nandy said she had spoken to members of the Jewish community, including attendees at Glastonbury, who said they were concerned by imagery and slogans and ended up creating their own “safe space”.

She also said said “problems with broadcasts” at Glastonbury “should have been foreseeable” by looking at the history of statements made by the artist on platforms such as social media.

Responding to shadow Culture Secretary Stuart Andrew, Nandy said:“I would say that those of us who do believe in the importance of our national broadcaster are probably more angry than anybody about what has happened over the last few days. It’s precisely because we understand the importance of the BBC that we know that the BBC has to do better.
Culture Secretary accuses pro-Gaza MP of ‘aligning himself with antisemites’
A Labour minister has accused the pro-Gaza MP Ayoub Khan of “doing nothing for the Palestinian cause by aligning himself with antisemites.”

In a fiery Commons exchange, Lisa Nandy took issue with Birmingham Perry Barr MPafter he responded to condemnation of the chants at Glastonbury by raising reports of Israeli Maccabi Tel Aviv fans chanting anti-Arab slogans during violence last season at a football match in the Netherlands.

Khan provoked widespread groans in the Chamber as he responded to the government’s condemnation of Glastonbury performer Bobby Vylon’s “Death To The IDF” chants by asking why there was no ministerial statement when Israeli football fans chanted “Death To Arabs.”

Responding, Nandy explained that while any MP would condemn anti-Arab chanting, she had delivered a statement on Glastonbury in the Commons “because our national broadcaster, funded by the license fee, paid for by the British public, has broadcast something that is deeply offensive to a community in this country.”

Nandy then added of Khan:”Can I just say to him that, as a long standing supporter of justice for the Palestinians, he does nothing for the Palestinian cause by aligning himself with anti semites.”

Khan later attempted to raise concerns about Nandy’s comments about him doing the Palestinian cause no favours by aligning himself with anti semites, as a Point of Order, in which he suggested the Culture Minister might want to apologise to him.

His demand was rejected by the Deputy Speaker.


US State Department cancels Bob Vylan visa after ‘death to IDF’ chant
The punk/hip-hop band responsible for “death to the IDF” chants at the Glastonbury festival on Saturday will be unable to tour the United States later this year, after the American government cancelled their travel visa due to their “hateful tirade”.

‘Bob Vylan’ frontman Pascal Robinson-Foster led a Glastonbury crowd in chants of “death to the IDF” from the festival’s West Holts stage, also saying that he had “done it all including working for f***ing Zionists” and talking about a former “Zionist boss.”

A statement on Monday from the Deputy US Secretary of State, Christopher Landau, confirmed that “the State Department has revoked the US visas for the members of the Bob Vylan band in light of their hateful tirade at Glastonbury, including leading the crowd in death chants. Foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country.”

The band were due to travel to the US later this year, with 19 shows scheduled over October and November in cities including New York, Chicago, Boston and Los Angeles.

The news of the visa revocation comes shortly after both the band’s talent agent and management team announced that they would be dropping the group, with the BBC also apologising for continuing to broadcast the performance from the pair despite the on-stage outbursts. The organisers of the Glastonbury festival also criticised the band’s actions as “appalling.”

Bob Vylan are due to be playing in Manchester in July; the Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester & Region has called on the city’s Victoria Warehouse venue to cancel the planned performances.


Bob Vylan axed by agent and manager after Glastonbury ‘Death to IDF’ chant
Bob Vylan have been dropped by both their talent agency and management team following backlash over a Glastonbury performance in which frontman Bobby Vylan led chants of “Death to the IDF” from the stage.

United Talent Agency (UTA), one of the world’s biggest agencies, confirmed on Monday it had cut ties with the band. Their name no longer appears on the firm’s online roster. The group’s management has also stepped away.

The decision marks the first major industry consequence for the punk-rap duo after Saturday’s incendiary set on Glastonbury’s West Holts stage, which was livestreamed unedited by the BBC.

In the performance, Bobby Vylan also declared: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, inshallah” – a slogan widely seen as a call for the destruction of Israel – and accused “Zionists in the music industry” of censorship.

Festival organisers condemned the chant as “appalling”, saying it had “crossed a line”. Police have confirmed they are reviewing footage to assess whether any criminal offences took place.

The BBC initially kept the set live on iPlayer for several hours before removing it. In a statement, the broadcaster admitted it failed to act fast enough: “With hindsight, we should have pulled the stream during the performance. We regret this did not happen.”

The corporation added: “The antisemitic sentiments expressed by Bob Vylan were utterly unacceptable and have no place on our airwaves.”

Posting on Instagram the following evening, Bobby Vylan responded defiantly under the heading “I said what I said”, claiming he had received “a mixture of support and hatred” and arguing that young people must be encouraged to campaign for change.


NSFW


Iowa governor signs executive order combating campus Jew-hatred
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, signed an executive order on June 27 aimed at combating antisemitism at the state’s higher education institutions.

The new executive order directs the Iowa Board of Regents to collaborate with the U.S. Department of Education’s civil rights office to enforce Title VI obligations regarding Jewish students. It also requires them to review university policies concerning hate speech and responses to antisemitic incidents on campus since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Under the order, the board is required to complete its review by Nov. 1, 2025, and provide a report to the governor by Dec. 1, 2025. It will conduct a follow-up review by December 2026.

“Since the Oct. 7 attacks, we’ve seen an increase in antisemitism across the U.S., including on college campuses,” Reynolds said. “While many of Iowa’s colleges and universities have condemned such activity, we want to be clear that antisemitism has no place in Iowa.”

The Iowa Department of Education has also been instructed to make educational materials concerning the Holocaust, Jewish history and Israel more readily available, as well as provide best practices for teaching these topics.

In June 2023, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Reynolds in Israel and thanked the governor for her “unreserved support” of the Jewish state.
A Tenured MIT Professor Accused Me of Having a ‘Zionist Mind Infection’
Before Oct. 7, 2023, I was the literal poster boy for a PhD student at MIT. I was featured in a July 2023 profile in MIT News, which relayed my background and aspirations. “Although he has just two years of graduate school under his belt,” it said, “Sussman is considering a career in academia.”

That career is no longer available to me. In January, I left MIT because of the antisemitism I experienced on campus. Now I’m suing the university.

The antisemitism didn’t start on Oct. 7. I joined the board of MIT Grad Hillel during my first year on campus because, as I told MIT News, “I think it’s important to demonstrate Jewish culture at a time when antisemitism is on the rise.” Three months after the profile was published, Hamas terrorists waged the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust—and my fellow students at MIT celebrated, posting “Victory is ours.”

As president of Grad Hillel, I had to cope not only with my own grief but also with that of my community members who sought support in the face of antisemitism that they encountered on campus. We witnessed our peers chant for violence against Jews, take over buildings, interrupt classes with antisemitic rants, and harass, intimidate, and bully Jews for being Jewish.

This hostile environment was exposed to the world in December 2023 when MIT’s president, Sally Kornbluth, was called to Congress alongside the presidents of Harvard and Penn to answer for the antisemitism on her campus. She testified, now infamously, that calls for the elimination of the Jewish people can be antisemitic “depending on the context.” After that day, calls for the genocide of Jews continued, and the climate of terror on campus intensified.

Students, staff, and nonaffiliates piled on, amplifying the professor’s vitriol against me. One staff member sent a mass email painting me as a racist.

It became increasingly difficult to focus on my computer science research. Students were arrested for unruly protest both inside and outside of my office building. A man urinated on the window of the MIT Hillel Center. When demonstrators erected an encampment in the middle of campus, MIT Hillel was forced to move and postpone its long-planned annual celebration of Israel’s Independence Day.

With MIT doing nothing to curb the escalating antisemitism on campus, the situation spiraled out of control. In November 2024, a tenured MIT professor posted online that a “Zionist ‘mind infection’” is being funded by “Jewish student life organizations” such as Hillel and Chabad. When I pointed out that his message was extremely dangerous rhetoric, the professor began targeting me personally in X posts to his 10,000 followers. He did so over and over again. In his sixth post, for example, he referred to me as “an excellent case study.”

I sent the professor an email with a simple request: “Please leave me alone.” He then emailed the entire Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, including students and faculty, promising to use me in his upcoming seminar as a “real-life case study” of the Jewish “mind infection.” He continued targeting me in a relentless series of mass emails, copying high-level administrators, including President Kornbluth. In one of these mass emails, he stated that I have “powerful connections” to the media and to “influential friends in Congress like Rep. Elise Stefanik”—which is false.

Suddenly, I became the target of widespread harassment. Students, staff, and nonaffiliates piled on, amplifying the professor’s vitriol against me. One staff member sent a mass email painting me as a racist. My mother worried I would be killed.

The most disturbing aspect of this whole episode was that President Kornbluth—who was copied on the exchange where the harassment was on display in real time—stayed silent, as did the other high-level administrators. Not one of them intervened.
Ben & Jerry’s foundation amid tensions over Gaza, audit
Unilever is cutting off millions in funding for Ben & Jerry’s charitable foundation after it refused to provide audit documents, escalating what has become a microcosm for corporate “woke” wars.

Peter ter Kulve, who runs Unilever’s ice cream business, told Ben & Jerry’s executives in an email that the foundation’s trustees “have continued to resist basic oversight” and are not cooperating with requests from corporate auditors ahead of the ice cream business’ spinoff from Unilever. The probe into the foundation began in part because of its giving to pro-Palestinian organizations, Semafor reported earlier this year.

“It represents a marked departure from the norms of charitable organizations, for whom transparency is typically a bedrock operating principle,” ter Kulve wrote in the email, which was seen by Semafor.

The Ben & Jerry’s foundation distributed more than $5 million of Unilever’s money in 2022, to mostly progressive organizations, and has done so ever since the quirky, left-leaning Vermont creamery was acquired by the Dutch corporate giant in 2000. Since then, Ben & Jerry’s politics have been a headache for its parent, and the tensions between the two have grown more acute as the business community got swept into the culture wars — first pulled to the left in the mid-2010s, then retreating rightward under the second Trump administration.

Ter Kulve wrote that management of the soon-to-be standalone ice cream company had met with foundation trustees and “consistently sought to accommodate concerns” they raised, including switching audit firms and promising to keep certain information about grantees private.
Harvard Violated Jewish Students’ Civil Rights, Trump Admin Finds While Threatening Remaining Federal Funding
Harvard University’s treatment of Jewish and Israeli students violated civil rights law, putting its federal funding at risk, the Trump administration told the Ivy League school on Monday.

Harvard "has been in some cases deliberately indifferent, and in others has been a willful participant in anti-Semitic harassment of Jewish students, faculty, and staff," the Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism wrote in its letter. It detailed findings from a Title VI investigation conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Civil Rights, noting that a quarter of Jewish students reported feeling physically unsafe and anti-Semitic incidents, such as Jewish and Israeli students being assaulted and spat on.

The violation notice is the Trump administration’s latest escalation in its battle with Harvard over campus anti-Semitism, having already frozen nearly $3 billion in federal funding, revoked the school's authorization to host international students, and proposed removing Harvard's tax-exempt status. The move also typically precedes either a lawsuit from the Department of Justice or a resolution with the university, though it appears Harvard is weighing a deal.

"Harvard's commitment to racial hierarchies—where individuals are sorted and judged according to their membership in an oppressed group and not individual merit—has enabled anti-Semitism to fester on Harvard's campus and has led a once great institution to humiliation, offering remedial math and forcing Jewish students to hide their identities and ancestral stories," the letter reads. Failing to "institute adequate changes immediately will result in the loss of all federal financial resources."

Harvard spokeswoman Sarah Kennedy-O’Reilly said the university shared its recently published anti-Semitism task force report with the Trump administration. Though the report details pervasive anti-Semitism at Harvard, Kennedy-O'Reilly said the school "strongly disagrees" with the administration's findings.

"Harvard is far from indifferent on this issue and strongly disagrees with the government’s findings," she told the Washington Free Beacon in a statement. "Harvard has made significant strides to combat bigotry, hate and bias," she added. "We are not alone in confronting this challenge and recognize that this work is ongoing."

"In responding to the government’s investigation, Harvard not only shared its comprehensive and retrospective Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias Report but also outlined the ways that it has strengthened policies, disciplined those who violate them, encouraged civil discourse, and promoted open, respectful dialogue," Kennedy-O’Reilly said in a statement. "Harvard is far from indifferent on this issue and strongly disagrees with the government’s findings."


Columbia Bestows ‘Highest Academic Distinction’ Upon BDS-Supporting Professor
Columbia University has appointed Farah Jasmine Griffin, a longtime supporter of the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, to the position of "University Professor," the Ivy League school's "highest academic distinction" reserved for "exceptional scholars."

Columbia president Claire Shipman announced the move in a Monday statement, lauding Griffin as "a scholar of rare breadth and clarity" known for "the depth of her contributions to Columbia's intellectual life." Griffin joined Columbia in 2000 and served as the inaugural chair of the school's American and African Diaspora Studies Department. She has been an outspoken proponent of the BDS movement during her time at Columbia.

As early as 2002, Griffin signed a divestment petition targeting Israel, prompting criticism from Columbia's then-president, Lee Bollinger. More recently, in 2016, Griffin signed a faculty petition that accused Israel of "inhumane segregation and systemic forms of discrimination" and called on Columbia to "take a moral stance against Israel's violence in all its forms" by divesting "from corporations that supply, perpetuate, and profit from a system that has subjugated the Palestinian people for over 68 years."

Photos from last spring, meanwhile, appear to show Griffin serving as a protest marshal at the illegal encampment that plagued Columbia's campus, a role that saw some faculty members stand guard and protect student participants.

Griffin's appointment comes as Shipman aims to restore Columbia’s funding relationship with the Trump administration after it slashed over $430 million in federal funding and threatened the school’s accreditation. Her role in honoring Griffin, however, could complicate the effort.

To become a University Professor, a faculty member must enjoy broad support from Columbia's most powerful faculty members and administrators.

Only eight professors can hold the title at the same time, according to Columbia's faculty handbook, which states that University Professor candidates "are nominated to the Trustees by the President on the recommendation of the Provost and with the affirmative advice of the tenured members of the Executive Committee of the University Senate." That committee's chairwoman, tenured professor Jeanine D'Armiento, emerged as a vocal supporter of the Columbia encampment last year.

"University Professors are exceptional scholars with the highest distinction who have served the University extensively," the handbook states.

Lishi Baker, a Columbia senior studying Middle Eastern history, questioned Griffin's appointment.

"I'm all for viewpoint diversity," he told the Washington Free Beacon, "but if Columbia is trying to change the culture on campus, they should reward faculty whose contributions don't come with antisemitism, discrimination, or disruption."


BBC axes ‘anti-Semitic’ broadcaster
A journalist employed by the BBC has been accused of calling for Israel “to be dismantled” and appearing to suggest that Jewish people “are not meant to have a land”.

Osman Ahmed has also been accused of mocking the Israeli victims of Iranian missile strikes by posting videos poking fun at people fleeing towards air raid shelters.

The freelance reporter, who has previously worked for ITN and CNN as well as the BBC, has posted numerous items on social media commenting on the Gaza conflict since Oct 7 2023, when more than 1,200 Israelis were murdered by Hamas gunmen.

He has made posts about the Iranian-Israeli war and has reposted several items on social media that have been described as virulently anti-Semitic.

Following complaints to the BBC, the broadcaster said it would no longer employ Mr Hamed.

‘Jewish people are actually not meant to have a land’
One post shared on the London-based reporter’s Instagram accounts showed a group of orthodox Jews from a fringe sect attempting to set fire to the flag of Israel with the comment: “Yes, that’s correct. Jewish people who truly understand their religion recognise that Israel is a terrorist state and Jewish people are actually not meant to have a land”.

Another video posted on Mr Ahmed’s Instagram with a sweating emoji showed airline passengers fleeing towards a shelter during a recent Iranian missile strike, with the caption: “Chaos at Ben Gurion Airport as Israelis scramble to flee ‘the promised land’.”

Mr Ahmed, who recently worked as a producer on the World Service’s Newsday and the BBC’s breakfast radio show for listeners in Africa and Asia, has previously also worked for BBC Arabic, the corporation’s Arabic language service.

BBC Arabic has been repeatedly criticised for bias against Israel, amid claims that its contributors and presenters have displayed open anti-Semitism and have celebrated Oct 7 as “armed resistance by the Palestinian people”.


Panel votes to impeach Arab MK Ayman Odeh, paving way for possible ouster from Knesset
Lawmakers in the Knesset House Committee came out overwhelmingly in favor of impeaching MK Ayman Odeh on Monday, in what the chairman of the Arab-majority Hadash-Ta’al party decried as an attempt to silence Arab Israelis.

Following two days of contentious debate, lawmakers, including representatives of the opposition Yesh Atid and National Unity parties, voted 14-2 in favor of impeachment. The matter will now be referred to the Knesset plenum, where 90 MKs would have to vote in favor in order to oust Odeh from the parliament.

At issue in the impeachment hearings was a statement Odeh made earlier this year that appeared to equate Israeli hostages held in Gaza by terrorists with Palestinian security prisoners held in Israel.

The Arab lawmaker drew outrage from lawmakers across the political spectrum on January 19 when he posted on X that he was “happy for the release of the hostages and prisoners” under a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

Odeh later defended his statement, characterizing the released Palestinian prisoners as minors and insisting that “most of the prisoners released that day were not charged with anything at all.”

While none of those released were charged with murder, several were behind failed terror attacks, including 15-year-old Mahmoud Aliowat, who was convicted of carrying out a shooting in the City of David area of Jerusalem, wounding two people, when he was 13. MK Ayman Odeh stands with protesters opposing his impeachment outside the Knesset building in Jerusalem on June 30, 2025. (Charlie Summers/Times of Israel)

In response, Likud MK Avichai Boaron earlier this month began collecting legislators’ signatures in an effort to kickstart the impeachment process, arguing that “whoever sticks a knife in the back of IDF soldiers and the State of Israel will not be a member of Knesset.”

Addressing dozens of left-wing demonstrators protesting against his impeachment outside the Knesset ahead of the vote, Odeh contended that Boaron’s push was part of a larger effort to silence Arab Israelis.

“Under the cover of this war, they want to bring us backwards, to hurt freedom of expression that we over the course of many years struggled to expand,” he charged, as demonstrators waved giant red flags with the communist hammer and sickle alongside signs in Hebrew and Arabic declaring their support.
Seth Frantzman: Is West Bank terror threat reduced or concealed?
This is the latest statement by the IDF regarding the ongoing clashes in the West Bank. The question now is whether the main challenge for the IDF in the West Bank is trying to keep the peace, and that means also preventing Israeli extremists from attacking Palestinians, or whether the terror threat has merely been hiding.

This is an essential issue because two things may be happening simultaneously. There are increasing attacks on Palestinian civilians and towns in the West Bank. This could lead to a cycle of violence and reprisals. It could fuel anger.Concurrently, the defeat of Iran and weakening of Hamas in Gaza could lead to Palestinian factions in the West Bank rethinking their strategy.

The Iran-backed proxy groups, such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, may feel isolated. They no longer have leaders in Damascus, for instance.

They appear to be cut off from the Islamic Republic. That means funding as well, probably. They are also cut off from Hezbollah.

In addition, the IDF has strengthened its posture along the Jordanian border by activating the new 96th Division. This is a territorial division similar to the Gaza Division, which is located along the Gaza border, or to the 210th Division, which guards the Syrian border.

Israel has divisions on other borders as well, such as the Egyptian border and the Lebanese border. The new unit will provide the IDF with more tools to secure the Jordanian border. This could reduce some weapons smuggling.

What are the overall trends in the West Bank? For now, they seem to be trending toward fewer terrorist threats. That does not mean that there is no tension and violence.

The clashes between Israeli Jews and the security forces are a challenge. This could spill over. It could lead to the creation of new cycles of violence.

On the other hand, the Palestinian factions may be biding their time. They may be speaking with the Gulf states to decide their strategy.

Hamas wanted to leverage the October 7 massacre to increase its influence in the West Bank. It tried to overthrow the Palestinian Authority or become part of the PA via some kind of technocratic government.

This may still be its long game. It remains to be seen what the relative quiet in the West Bank will bring.


Israeli mayor bans Haaretz over anti-IDF ‘blood libel’
Arad Mayor Yair Maayan announced on Friday that he would ban the left-wing daily Haaretz from his city over what he said was a “false blood libel” in a feature article accusing the Israeli Defense Forces of “deliberately” firing on Gazans near aid distribution sites.

“The municipality will not allow false incitement against IDF soldiers and the State of Israel, certainly in times of war. The municipality will act to prevent the entry of the inciting newspaper into the city in accordance with the Prevention of Incitement Law,” Maayan told JNS.

The mayor wouldn’t say if the ban would include door-to-door deliveries of Haaretz to subscribers, although that number is likely negligible given the newspaper’s relatively small Hebrew print distribution.

The Haaretz article, by Nir Hasson, Yaniv Kubovich and Bar Peleg, titled, “‘It’s a Killing Field’: IDF Soldiers Ordered to Shoot Deliberately at Unarmed Gazans Waiting for Humanitarian Aid,” cites anonymous Israeli soldiers and officers who accuse the IDF of firing on Gazans using tanks, artillery and snipers to prevent them from approaching areas where they weren’t permitted.

The IDF rejected the accusations, saying its directives “prohibit” intentional attacks on noncombatants. “The IDF did not instruct the forces to deliberately shoot at civilians, including those approaching the distribution centers,” the IDF Spokesman’s Office said in a statement.
PM: Right-wing rioters who damaged IDF facility should face swift punishment
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday expressed support for bringing to justice the rioters allegedly responsible for burning down a military facility and attacking IDF soldiers during overnight protests across southern Samaria’s Binyamin region.

“No civilized country can tolerate violent and anarchic acts such as the burning of a military facility, damage to IDF property and assaults on security personnel by the country’s own citizens,” he said. “Those who commit such acts undermine the rule of law and harm the state.

“I call on law enforcement authorities to swiftly investigate the events and prosecute the rioters to the full extent of the law,” Netanyahu said, while noting that the vast majority of Judea and Samaria’s residents are exemplary role models for “developing the Land [of Israel], meaningful service in the IDF and contributing to the cultivation of Torah scholars.”

According to an Israel Defense Forces statement on Monday morning, a group of Israelis “set fire to and vandalized a security site containing systems that assist in thwarting terrorist attacks and maintaining security in the Binyamin Brigade” area of deployment.

It added that the damage caused to the site, estimated at several millions of shekels, “poses a danger to the safety of residents.”

Graffiti left at the site following the attack reportedly read, “Revenge from Beit She’an,” suggesting that the perpetrators were not residents of Judea and Samaria but rather hailed from the northern Israeli city.

A senior officer in the 7114th Battalion, which is deployed to the area, told Israel’s Channel 12 News that “these are people from the Center, from the Sharon plain, and not from the Binyamin communities.”

The IDF condemned “any act of violence against security forces,” saying it expected authorities “to bring to justice those Israelis who harm the forces that are fulfilling their role of protecting Israeli civilians.”
Three more Israelis nabbed for spying on Iran’s behalf
Israeli security forces recently arrested three more citizens of the Jewish state who allegedly harmed national security by carrying out tasks for Iranian handlers, the Israel Police said on Monday.

In three separate arrest raids on June 14-15, the Israel Police, assisted by Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) officials, took into custody Mark Morgain, 33, a resident of the Jordan Valley, and Yoni Segal, 18, and Nehorai Omri Mizrahi (20), both from the northern city of Tiberias, police said.

Segal and Mizrahi were allegedly asked to perform “various tasks” for the Islamic Republic, including photographing shopping malls and providing details about security measures and other information.

The locations they were said to have documented for Tehran included Haifa’s Grand Canyon mall, Big Fashion Tiberias, the Dizengoff Center in Tel Aviv and Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center’s Ichilov Hospital.

The two suspects urged their handler to send them additional missions, police said, calling it “a serious case of transferring information to be used by Israel’s enemies to plan attacks on innocent civilians.”
Hamas tortures Gazans to silence protests
The face of the young man staring into the camera as the crowd streams around him is strong and defiant.

In his hands, the 26-year-old holds a banner bearing an incendiary message: “Hamas does not represent us.”

An accompanying video shows him spurring on others, openly fanning the flames of dissent while many of the people around him nervously avert their faces to avoid being identified on camera.

That man is Ahmed al-Masri, one of the key organisers in northern Gaza of the protests that rocked the enclave in April and May.

This week, pictures emerged of the same man on a stretcher, a frightened and helpless look in his eyes, his legs a bloodied mess.

According to multiple sources who spoke to The Telegraph, Mr Al-Masri was abducted by Hamas gunmen in Beit Lahia, near the northern border with Israel, whereupon he was brutally tortured.

His feet were deliberately broken with large stones and iron crowbars; he was also shot in the legs.

The atrocity is part of an escalating wave of bloodshed unleashed by Hamas against the ordinary Gazans it purports to represent.

As the terror group faces an unprecedented squeeze on its military and economic strength by Israel’s grinding campaign, it is turning to ever crueller methods to keep control of an increasingly desperate population.

Khaled Abu Toameh, a lecturer and expert on Palestinian affairs, said: “After the protests of the last few months, they began executing and arresting people in order to intimidate the population and to terrorise.

“I think it’s working. After a certain point, the protests disappeared.”

In recent weeks, reports have multiplied of people being dragged out of aid lines, tortured in basements, or simply executed in broad daylight.


FEMA announces $94 million in security funds for Jewish groups
The Federal Emergency Management Agency announced on Friday that it had awarded $94.4 million in security grant funding to a total of 512 Jewish organizations nationwide, around half of a long-delayed supplemental funding round.

Applications for this funding, provided as part of last year’s national security supplemental bill, opened in the fall of 2024, and grant awards were initially expected to be announced early this year. But they were delayed in a government-wide review of federal grant funding implemented by the Trump administration.

“DHS is working to put a stop to the deeply disturbing rise in antisemitic attacks across the United States,” Tricia McLaughlin, the Department of Homeland Security’s assistant secretary, said in a statement. “That this money is necessary at all is tragic. Antisemitic violence has no place in this country. However, under President [Donald] Trump and Secretary [Kristi] Noem’s leadership, we are going to do everything in our power to make sure that Jewish people in the United States can live free of the threat of violence and terrorism.”

The grant funding was open to all nonprofits, with a focus on organizations facing higher threats due to the war in Gaza.

But the funding round was expected to include the full $220 million in remaining NSGP funding from the national security supplemental legislation. It’s unclear at this point how and under what procedures FEMA plans to disburse that remaining $126 million.
Ottawa fires lawyer who allegedly vandalized Holocaust monument
The City of Ottawa fired a 46-year-old man, identified as Iain Aspenlieder, from his role as a city lawyer after he was accused of vandalizing the city’s National Holocaust Monument on June 9.

Ottawa police stated that the man, who was scheduled to appear in court on June 28, is accused of mischief to a war memorial, mischief exceeding $5,000 (about $3,500 U.S.) and harassment by threatening conduct. It added that the department’s hate and bias crime unit was leading the investigation.

Mark Sutcliffe, the Ottawa mayor, stated on Saturday that “while it’s encouraging to see that the police investigation into the incident at the National Holocaust Monument has progressed, I’m very disturbed to learn that the person charged is a city employee, who was on leave.”

“As a community and as an employer, the actions at the monument do not represent our values,” the mayor stated. “I’ve asked city officials to take all appropriate action in light of these developments.”

The CBC reported on Sunday that the city fired Aspenlieder. Stuart Huxley, the interim city solicitor, told Radio-Canada that the man “was on leave at the time of the incident and is no longer employed by the city,” per the CBC.
Germany seeks increased Israeli partnership on cyber-defense, plans ‘Cyber Dome’
Germany is aiming to establish a joint German-Israeli cyber research center and deepen collaboration between the two countries’ intelligence and security agencies, German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said on Sunday.

Germany is among Israel’s closest allies in Europe, and Berlin has increasingly looked to draw upon Israel’s defense expertise as it boosts its military capabilities and contributions to NATO in the face of perceived growing threats from Russia and China.

“Military defense alone is not sufficient for this turning point in security. A significant upgrade in civil defense is also essential to strengthen our overall defensive capabilities,” Dobrindt said during a visit to Israel, as reported by Germany’s Bild newspaper.

Dobrindt, who was appointed by new German Chancellor Friedrich Merz last month, arrived in Israel on Saturday. On Sunday, Dobrindt visited the site of an Iranian missile strike in Bat Yam where nine people, including three children, were killed and hundreds wounded overnight on June 14-15.

“We must deepen our support for Israel,” said Dobrindt, standing amid the rubble with Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, in the first visit by a senior foreign official since the Israel-Iran war ended.

Bild said Germany’s decision to expand cyber cooperation with Israel was due at least in part to the role Israeli cyber capabilities played in thwarting larger Iranian attacks during the 12-day war that ended with a US-brokered ceasefire on Tuesday.

According to the Bild report, Dobrindt has outlined a five-point plan aimed at establishing what he called a “Cyber Dome” for Germany, as part of its cyber-defense strategy.

The plan reportedly calls for establishing a joint German-Israel cyber research center; strengthening cooperation on cyber defense; increasing cooperation between Mossad and its German counterpart, the BND; expanding Germany’s anti-drone defenses; and developing a system of civil shelters and emergency warnings like that used in Israel during the Iran war.
Israeli tech sector raises $9b in funding in first half of 2025
Israeli tech firms received more than $9 billion in private funding in the first half of the year, the strongest six-month period of the last three years, an Israeli nonprofit promoting innovation announced on Monday.

Some $9.3 billion was invested in Israeli hi-tech since the beginning of the year, a 54% jump compared to the second half of 2024, according to a mid-year analysis by Startup Nation Central.

This recovery, which began in late 2024, accelerated in Q2 2025, with funding rising from $3.3 billion in Q1 to $6 billion in Q2, despite a decrease in the number of investment rounds from 214 to 151, the report found.

Enterprise software led all hi tech sectors with more than $3 billion invested in the first half of the year—due to a $2 billion deal with Safe Superintelligence—followed by cybersecurity, with nearly $2 billion invested. Fintech was third with some $750 million, followed by health tech with about $620 million.

“The quantity-to-quality trend we’ve been tracking is only getting stronger, with fewer deals, but each round is larger and more focused,” said Yariv Lotan, VP of Digital Products and Data at Startup Nation Central. “Along with active dealmaking in stealth-stage companies, this reinforces the ‘startup baby boom’ trend we pointed to at the end of 2023 and mark a standout investment opportunity in Israel’s tech ecosystem.”

The peak year for foreign investment in Israeli high-tech was in 2021, with more than $30 billion in funding.




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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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