Monday, July 21, 2025

07/21 Links Pt2: How to spot an antisemite? Ask about Israel’s right to exist; The Joe Roganification of Public Discourse; ‘Hollywood has no spine’: The Jewish director fighting antisemitism through film

From Ian:

Brendan O'Neill: Posh Twats for Palestine
I knew it. As soon as I saw that cast member of the Royal Opera House smugly unfurl his Palestine flag, I knew he’d be some privileged they / them with either blue blood or blue hair. And I was right. His name’s Daniel Perry, he’s a they / them, he was educated at a £48,000-a-year high school, and he calls himself a ‘queer dance artist’. Now all we need to discover is that he has ADHD and he really will be a walking checklist of middle-class twattishness.

Mr Perry has got the pro-Palestine set salivating with infantile glee after he whipped out his flag during the curtain call for Verdi’s Il Trovatore on Saturday evening. A stage manager tried to snatch it from him but Perry yanked it back with all the wild-eyed frenzy of a bloke determined to trend online. He got his way. He’s being gushed over by the internet’s Sun-starved army of armchair Israelophobes. ‘Hero!’, they yelp from their bedrooms, the unbelievably sad bastards.

The Telegraph has Perry’s backstory. He attended an eye-wateringly expensive school in leafy Hertfordshire. He’s nonbinary – sorry, they’re nonbinary. He’s a self-styled ‘queer’ dancer. He seems blissfully unaware that if he ever set foot in Gaza the only pirouette he’d be doing is a mid-air one as Hamas hurled him off a tall building. He recently wore a ‘Free Palestine’ t-shirt to a performance of Cabaret, the musical about the Weimar Republic that foreshadows the rise of the Nazis and the burning of the Jews.

It didn’t take any special insight on my part to guess that this flag-waving irritant would turn out to be a knob of the most insufferably bourgeois variety. Because they’re all like that. Perry belongs to that most vexing clique of preening ‘activists’ – let’s call them Posh Twats for Palestine.

They’re everywhere. Venture into London on a Saturday afternoon and you’ll soon be swarmed by affluent tits in keffiyehs talking rubbish about Israel. Our leafier campuses have been all but colonised by plummy youths screaming the new lie (‘Israel is committing genocide!’) with the same demented fervour with which they once hollered the old lie (‘Transwomen are women!’). The am-dram arseholes of Palestine Action loved to splash around their red paint while wanging on in cut-glass tones about the unholy wickedness of Israel. The government calls them terrorists but they’re something far worse: rich theatre kids.

Some are surprised – and of course cock-a-hoop – that the audience at the Royal Opera House cheered Perry’s self-regarding stunt. ‘Crowds cheered for Perry’s protest’, swooned Novara Media – lifetime members of Posh Twats for Palestine – as if a few hundred dickie-bowed opera-lovers clinking their champagne glasses against Israel were akin to the Chartist march on St Peter’s Field. I’m not surprised at all that the rich and cultured of London rattled their jewellery in agreement with the ‘Free Palestine’ schtick, because hating Israel really has become the moral glue of that section of society. You’re no one in polite society these days unless you have keffiyeh in the closet, a book of poetry by Mohammed el-Kurd and a rosy-cheeked daughter who’s been arrested for saying ‘Fuck the Jewish State’.
Fania Oz-Salzberger: How to spot an antisemite? Ask about Israel’s right to exist
You think that Israel should never have been founded? Legitimate opinion, even if I dislike it. Just don’t confuse it with the pipe dream of shutting the place down and killing off my national and cultural identity. You’re fine with Jews unless they are Zionists? Unacceptable – as most Jews, and many non-Jews, are Zionists, in the simplest sense of supporting a national home for the Jewish people in its ancestral land. Many of us acknowledge the parallel right of the Palestinians, but do not want Israel to be annihilated. That goes for your constituency too, Mr Mamdani. New York may be made of islands, but no New Yorker is an island, and therefore you cannot cleverly avoid the conversation. We need to see you carefully disentangle your Israel critique from any hint of delegitimisation.

Similarly, it’s time for the responsible media to unpack the “pro-Israel” and “pro-Palestine” muddles. Are those two mutually exclusive? Does each of these “pros” signify “Death to the other side”? Many reporters and commentators are intellectually lazy enough to make this automatic assumption. Few are attentive enough to work around it. As my late father used to say: “I am neither pro-Israel nor pro-Palestine. I am pro-peace.”

The same wisdom applies, of course, to the so-called pro-Israelis who wish death or eternal submission on all Palestinians. Those are far fewer, but equally dangerous – especially when they sit in the Israeli coalition government as partners of the notoriously indiscriminate Mr Netanyahu. I hope that, just like the would-be Israel-annihilators of this world, the Smotriches and Ben-Gvirs will be pushed back where they belong: to the wrong side of the red line of decent political conversation.

Thus, one great lesson to draw from the current murkiness of global debate is: demand clarity. From yourself first, and then from others. If you want Israel (or the Palestinians) dead, make sure you say it, so that I can walk away or block you from my feed – and we don’t waste our time on a useless argument. We come from different moral galaxies.

But even among the well-meaning, it is difficult to heal reality when language is getting so badly distorted. Here is one profound example: debate on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict is currently pitting two ancient words and great values – peace and justice – against one another.

“Peace” has become almost solely a “pro-Israel” term. Well-intentioned people use it to support the two-states solution or the shared-homeland solution. “Justice” has become almost solely a “pro-Palestinian” term. It is very often a polite euphemism for ethnic cleansing of all Israeli Jews “back to Europe” – a statement as vicious as it is historically mendacious. Other minds, evil ones, equate "justice" with the genocide of the Jews, pure and simple.

In my view, “justice” is an unreachable Platonic ideal in any international rivalry – especially one as monumental and labyrinthine as the Israeli–Arab conflict. “In the place where we are right,” wrote the wonderful Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai, “no flowers will grow.”

By contrast, fair compromise is reachable. A more just coexistence is reachable. A well-intentioned negotiation for peace is reachable. Letting time heal both sides is reachable – provided that clarity, subtlety, some genuine acquaintance with historical facts, and a distinct refusal to kill off the other side are brought into the conversation.

We pro-peaceniks should page each other more assertively. We need every nuanced voice we can find out there.
Truth, Narratives, and the Middle East
In the late 1980s, Jonathan Torop, a pro-Israel American Jew, befriended Ussama Makdisi, the son of a Lebanese father and Palestinian mother and the nephew of Edward Said. Makdisi is now a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and his comment, after the Hamas invasion of southern Israel—“I could have been one of those who broke the siege on October 7”—was brought up at the recent congressional hearings. Torop recollects the time when he and Makdisi could look beyond their political differences:
Ussama, like his uncle, was a supporter of the PLO and Yasir Arafat. One of Ussama’s favorite refrains was: “The Palestinians never support taking land by force.” Then came the 1991 Gulf War.

Torop confronted his friend over the widespread Palestinian support for Saddam Hussein, who had invaded Kuwait, and the quite explicit support voiced by Arafat:
Ussama’s answer, 34 years later, still sticks with me. “Arafat and the PLO didn’t support Saddam and Iraq. That was a creation of the Western media.” If someone as intelligent and well-educated as Ussama—a Princeton PhD who later became a professor at the University of California, Berkeley—could be so detached from reality, what did that mean for future peace talks?

Of course, the Kuwaitis knew this wasn’t Western propaganda, and got their revenge by expelling Palestinians en masse from their country. Torop would be reminded of this conversation a few years later, when shepherding an American delegation to meet with Arafat in Gaza—at a time when suicide bombings were becoming ever more regular. Someone confronted the veteran terrorist about the terror:
“No! These are not my people!” [Arafat] shouted in thickly accented English. “Everyone knows these bombings are done by right-wing Jews trying to make me look bad! I have proof—I have the identity cards of the bombers. They have Israeli Jewish IDs.” This was the Ussama Makdisi school of thought—the idea that truth was malleable, that reality could be fabricated to fit a narrative.


‘The New York Times’ genocide scholar is no neutral observer
It’s no secret that, over the decades, the editors of The New York Times’ opinion pages have earned every ounce of criticism leveled at them by supporters of Israel—and yet they persist in finding the most extreme writers to showcase. A column published on July 15 may go down as one of the worst hit pieces the Times has published since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks on Oct. 7, 2023.

In “I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It,” Omer Bartov not only charges Israel with crimes it has not committed but also disgraces the memory of the 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust. The essay is more than 3,500 words. A typical New York Times op-ed column is reported to be between 750 and 800 words long. The Times itself has stated, “(T)he suggested length is 650 words.”

Why, then, did the opinion editors at the Times publish such an exceptionally long article? If you’re thinking that maybe it’s because it broke new ground, you’d be wrong. Bartov doesn’t offer his readers any new information that would warrant his verbosity. Instead, the piece repackages the same polemics that have been echoing in academic and activist circles for months, laced with inflammatory language and selective framing that ignores critical context.

Freedom of the press ensures the right of writers and publishers to try and hawk whatever nonsense they want, including lies about Israel engaging in “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide.” But what is outrageous about Bartov is that he presents himself as a fair arbiter when it comes to Israel—and the Times gives him a platform to do it.

Bartov is an Israeli-born professor at Brown University. In his essay in the Times, he seeks to legitimize his slurs against his former home by writing that he “served in the IDF as a soldier and officer.” Bartov should have become infamous in this post-Oct. 7 period for his claims that Israel is committing “genocide” in Gaza. This variation on the “As a Jew” criticism of Zionism and Israel is just as morally and intellectually flawed as any other claim that someone is somehow entitled to issue extreme rhetoric against the Jewish state and be above reproach.

Bartov has become a sensation in certain liberal circles for his hostility to Israel. The Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism at the University of London featured him as a speaker in March. In the announcement for the lecture, Birkbeck stated that Bartov would speak about how Zionism has become “an ideology of ethno-nationalism, exclusion, and domination of Palestinians.” Such language deliberately flattens decades of complex history, ignores Palestinian rejectionism and erases the existential threats Israel continues to face—from Hamas to Hezbollah to Iran.

Let’s be clear: Bartov’s problem is not what is happening in the Gaza Strip. His problem is Israel’s very existence. He has been bashing Israel long before Oct. 7. Back in August 2023—more than two months before Israeli troops even entered Gaza—he was one of the lead signatories on a letter accusing Israel of conspiring to “ethnically cleanse all territories under Israeli rule of their Palestinian population.”


2 Israelis briefly held in Belgium after activists urge their arrest for ‘war crimes’
Two Israelis visiting Belgium for the Tomorrowland festival were detained for questioning after an activist group that seeks to have Israelis prosecuted for alleged war crimes called for their arrests, it was announced Monday.

According to the Belgian public broadcaster, the two, who were apparently seen at the dance festival waving the flag of the Israel Defense Forces’ Givati Brigade, were released after questioning.

One of the two Israelis said they were beaten by police. “The officers hit us, we got blows to the face,” one of the unnamed men told Channel 12 news. “They took us to a secret police station in the compound.”

The Foreign Ministry confirmed the pair’s detention in a statement, adding that the ministry and the IDF “handled the matter and are in contact with the two.”

It was unclear whether the two were still in Belgium.

Belgium’s RTBF reported that the two were detained after a complaint was lodged by the Hind Rajab Foundation and Belgian federal prosecutors determined that they could have jurisdiction on the matter.

Launched in September, the Hind Rajab Foundation has used social media posts by Israeli soldiers, officers, and reservists to locate them in an attempt to have them arrested for alleged war crimes when they travel abroad.

Though the group has been largely unsuccessful in court, it has managed to win widespread media exposure, allegedly caused an Israeli cabinet minister to rethink a trip abroad, and even prompted the IDF to create new rules to better protect troops’ privacy and keep them from being victims of doxxing — the practice of publishing someone’s personal information online to expose them.


Bassam Tawil: Why Al-Jazeera Should Be Designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization
Since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war, Al-Jazeera has been openly serving as the unofficial mouthpiece of Hamas and its military wing, Izaddin al-Qassam.

Even before the war, Hamas's political and military leaders often chose Al-Jazeera to spread their propaganda and call for jihad (holy war) against Israel.

Hamas knows it can trust Al-Jazeera: the two share the same radical Islamist ideology that calls for the elimination of Israel and replacing it with an Islamist terror state.

Hamas does not need its own television station. It has Al-Jazeera, one of the most influential and wealthiest TV networks in the Arab world. This is what happens when most of the funding comes from Qatar, which has used its ties with Islamist groups, especially Muslim Brotherhood, as soft power to boost its regional and global influence.

Al-Jazeera, for its part, has been extremely protective of its friends in Hamas. The television station does not allow any criticism of Hamas or Qatar. When a Palestinian dares to criticize Hamas during a live interview, Al-Jazeera quickly cuts off the interview.

Last year, Israeli security forces disclosed intelligence information and numerous documents found in the Gaza Strip that confirm the military affiliation of six Al-Jazeera journalists with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the second-largest terror group in the coastal territory.

One does not have to be an expert in journalism or the Middle East to understand that Al-Jazeera is nothing but a terrorist organization masquerading as a media outlet.

A number of Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain understand the dangers of Al-Jazeera.

That is why they have shut the offices of Al-Jazeera, blocked its websites and demanded that Qatar curb the television station. Even the Palestinian Authority (PA), headed by Mahmoud Abbas... suspended Al-Jazeera's broadcasting in the West Bank....

Why do some Americans and Westerners still consider Al-Jazeera a credible and professional media station if so many Arabs view it as an organ of Islamist terrorists and Jihadis? ... It is time to designate Al-Jazeera as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
The Joe Roganification of Public Discourse
Consequences, Real and Measurable
This is not merely an aesthetic concern. It is not about taste or tone or manners. The consequences of this intellectual rot are real. Tangible. Measurable. When millions of people believe that vaccines are part of a government plot, that climate change is a hoax, or that school shootings are staged, society does not just suffer a debate. It suffers a breakdown in the basic trust that makes rational discourse possible.

The Roganification of public discourse corrodes institutions, not through critique, but through caricature. It turns science into a punchline, journalism into a joke, and history into a meme. It makes serious topics unserious, and unserious people influential. It teaches its audience that not knowing is not just acceptable—it is preferable. That to be ignorant is to be pure, untainted by the lies of the so-called experts.

In this world, epidemiologists are dismissed because Joe Rogan once interviewed someone with a YouTube channel who “debunked” vaccines over three hours of rambling. Historians are ignored because Ian Carroll posted a grainy screenshot that says otherwise. Geopolitical analysts are irrelevant because Dave Smith yelled louder. Facts are no longer adjudicated. They are outvoted.

The most terrifying part is how quickly this disinformation metastasises. A lie on a podcast becomes a belief in a household, becomes a vote in a ballot box, becomes a policy in a legislature. The damage is not confined to the digital realm. It bleeds into classrooms, courtrooms, and hospitals. It affects who gets vaccinated, who gets elected, who gets silenced.

And the architects of this disaster, far from being ashamed, bask in it. Every rebuke is turned into martyrdom. Every platforming of their nonsense is framed as free speech. Every challenge to their authority becomes proof of a conspiracy. In this upside-down universe, being wrong is a badge of honour, and being laughed at means you’re onto something.

We are not dealing with gadflies. We are dealing with parasites. With self-appointed prophets whose gospel is grievance and whose miracles are monetised outrage. And we will continue to pay the price until we stop treating them as voices of reason and start treating them as the charlatans they are.

A Closing Warning
We are told that bad ideas die in the open. That sunlight is the best disinfectant. That more speech is always the answer to bad speech. But this is a comforting lie. Sunlight only kills what cannot adapt. And the modern huckster has adapted.

These people do not shrink from criticism. They thrive on it. They feed on exposure. Every article that debunks them, every expert who ridicules them, every institution that denies them; these are not obstacles. They are fuel. They use your facts as proof that they are dangerous. They use your outrage as proof that they are right.

There is a price to be paid when we mistake noise for dialogue, charisma for competence, and curiosity for wisdom. That price is cultural cohesion. That price is intellectual clarity. That price is truth itself. When we elevate the unqualified, we erode the very concept of qualification. When we give equal time to fools, we rob seriousness of its dignity.

The Joe Roganification of public discourse is not merely an irritating trend. It is a civilisational threat. It is the triumph of the loudest over the wisest. It is the replacement of deliberation with disruption, of knowledge with novelty, of understanding with entertainment.

We cannot afford to be passive. We must not merely counter this movement. We must ridicule it. We must expose its fraudulence. We must treat its avatars not as thought leaders, but as cautionary tales. And most importantly, we must build new spaces for genuine inquiry, serious debate, and earned authority.

Because if we don’t, the carnival will continue. The charlatans will keep shouting. The audience will keep clapping. And the truth, once again, will leave the stage.
TIME 100 Lists Get the Hype Right — But Miss the Harm
Those chosen for 2025 TIME 100 Creators List are diverse, bold, and on target. But while TIME got the “who” right, it missed the “why it matters” on some of its most controversial figures — failing to interrogate how some influencers wield their platforms in ways that are misleading, harmful, or socially corrosive.

This is nothing new. TIME Magazine has a pattern of whitewashing. Their “100” lists and people “of the year” feature some of the best and the worst — like Adolf Hitler as Man of the Year in 1938. But all of these people are indeed impactful in their own right. That’s why they make the list.

In a letter describing how the list was compiled, TIME’s editor-in-chief, Sam Jacobs, explained:
Most of the people on our list face pressure to respond to news, and criticism comes when their comments don’t match audiences’ expectations. Some of them are polarizing; some of them are delightful—at least for now, until the day they inevitably say something to inflame their followers or those who don’t follow them at all.

Evidently, TIME made an editorial decision to downplay those with “polarizing” views.

So yes, it is important to bring all this to attention, because TIME certainly hasn’t. Here’s what has been left out of the bios of some of the most problematic TIME 100 figures across the board over the last few years.

Joe Rogan: A “cultural force” (2022, 2025)
One of the most well-known and successful podcasters in the industry, Joe Rogan talks about anything and everything on his show — and that means talking to anyone and everyone. TIME called him “a hero to many tired of strict partisanship and looking for a voice to trust.” This year, he was on both the Creators List and the Most Influential People’s List.

His “creators” bio then proceeded with his controversial history: “Yet his commentary and his willingness to platform virtually anyone he deems interesting—including those who promote conspiracy theories and target trans people, among other marginalized groups—has drawn criticism.”

What TIME failed to disclose is that Rogan has hosted Holocaust revisionists like Darryl Cooper, and did not push back on his views that downplay Nazi atrocities. In fact, he asked Cooper to explain his views.

Rogan is also responsible for spreading antisemitic tropes like this:
The idea that Jewish people are not into money is ridiculous. That’s like saying Italians aren’t into pizza.

And certainly not the least of his offenses: defending Kanye West’s “Heil Hitler” song.
Nelson Mandela Foundation Offers Money to Oppose ‘Christian Zionism,’ Accusing It of ‘Genocide’
The Nelson Mandela Foundation in South Africa, devoted to the legacy of the legendary post-apartheid leader, has offered grants to groups that vow to combat Christian Zionism, calling it a force for “genocide.”

Christian Zionism is simply the belief, among Christians, that Jews have a right to self-determination in the Land of Israel. Many Christian Zionists also see modern-day Israel as a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy.

The Nelson Mandela Foundation, rather than promoting the tradition of peacemaking, tolerance, and conflict resolution associated with its namesake, has decided to fight a religious battle against a Christian doctrine.

It claims:
Amid unrelenting and punitive violence in Palestine, Christian Zionism – a theology that conflates biblical prophecy with political support for Israeli settler colonialism – remains a driving force in legitimising occupation, apartheid, and genocide. Deeply rooted in colonial history and amplified by global networks, this ideology has been a barrier to achieving peace and justice for Palestinians. The misuse of religious scripture to justify domination and discrimination is something we know all too well in South Africa.

Ironically, Mandela himself acknowledged a debt to Zionism in inspiring his struggle against apartheid.

In his memoir, Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela wrote that he studied the example of Zionist leaders in establishing the State of Israel, including Menachem Begin, whose book The Revolt was a guide to guerrilla warfare. Mandela also said that he learned from Arthur Goldreich, a South African who had fought with Israel’s pre-independence militia, the Palmach.

While expressing solidarity with the Palestinian cause, honoring an apartheid-era alliance between his African National Congress and Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization, Mandela also enjoyed good relations with Israeli leaders, and encouraged peace.

A quote widely circulated among anti-Israel activists in which Mandela is said to have compared Israel to apartheid South Africa is a hoax, whose author admitted as such — without discouraging its fraudulent use.

The Nelson Mandela Foundation is offering awards of up to R150,000 ($8500) for activities combating Christian Zionism. The application deadline is “June 31,” a date that does not exist (June only has 30 days).

No record exists of the Nelson Mandela Foundation offering grants to combat radical Islamic ideologies.


Half of Israelis view Iran as greatest threat to country, 17% say Hamas - survey
About half of Israeli respondents identified Iran as the greatest threat to their country, while 17% said Hamas, according to a Pew Research Center survey published in July 2025, which offered a comparative look at global threat perceptions.

Other countries, including the United States, China, and Russia, were not cited as significant threats by substantial portions of the Israeli public.

In contrast, 43% of Turks said Israel is the country's greatest threat, followed by 30% who named the US.

Among the 25 countries surveyed, Turkey stood out for naming Israel as its top threat - a position not observed elsewhere in the study.

What did other countries rank?
The Pew report noted that China, Russia, and the US dominated global perceptions of external threats, consistently ranking among the top concerns in most countries surveyed. For example, Americans overwhelmingly cited China as the top threat, while Canadians named the US.
Tehran won't give up nuclear program despite 'serious damage', Iran's FM says
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Tehran cannot give up on its nuclear enrichment program despite “serious damage” to its nuclear facilities, he told Fox News on Monday.

“Our facilities have been damaged, seriously damaged. The extent of which is now under evaluation by our automechanical organization. But as far as I know, they are seriously damaged,” Araghchi said when asked of the extent of the damage to the nuclear enrichment program after the attacks by Israel and the US.

He further explained that he had no specific information regarding whether any of the already enriched material survived or if it is accessible.

“As I said, our automechanical organization is responsible for that. They are now trying to evaluate what has exactly happened to our nuclear material,” Araghchi said.

He concluded by stating that Tehran cannot give up on its nuclear enrichment program even as it was severely damaged.

"It is stopped because, yes, damages are serious and severe. But obviously we cannot give up of enrichment because it is an achievement of our own scientists. And now, more than that, it is a question of national pride," Araghchi told Fox News.


Predatory Sparrow Hacks Iran’s Financial System
The regime’s responses exposed its impotence. It first claimed outages were simply disruptions that would be resolved in a few hours. As public dismay mounted, authorities acknowledged the crisis but wouldn’t confirm it was an Israeli cyberattack. Crude defensive measures—such as reducing access to the internet, banning officials from using connected devices and restricting cryptocurrency transactions—did little to secure Iran’s financial infrastructure.

The strikes on Bank Sepah and Nobitex undermined the regime’s legitimacy in the most intimate way: by denying loyal officials and security personnel access to their own money. Will regime elites now continue entrusting their assets to state-linked banks—or begin hiding them abroad? By penetrating the underground economy, Israel made clear: the Islamic Republic’s financial infrastructure survives at the pleasure of the Jewish state.

These attacks reframe Mr. Trump’s postwar diplomacy. He said at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit that he wants the Iranians “to be prosperous, we want them to do well, but they can’t have nuclear weapons.” This appeal to the profit motive of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei sounds conciliatory, but Mr. Trump is placing before Mr. Khamenei a stark choice: Abandon your nuclear ambitions or face economic ruin.

To make good on this threat, the U.S. and Israel must sustain pressure with two key steps. First, maintain economic sanctions. Beyond imposing costs, sanctions herd regime finances into crypto and shadow banking, where U.S. and Israeli cyber tools dominate. By driving Iranian money into vulnerable channels, sanctions expose the regime to the full force of cyber disruption.

Second, seize that advantage by shifting U.S. cyber policy from passive support to active partnership in offensive operations. Pentagon “restrainers” argue that Washington should pivot from the Middle East to Asia—in all realms, including cyber. But cyber power matches this moment’s needs. It is effective, low-risk and politically sustainable. By combining financial warfare, cyber operations and limited precision strikes by Israel, the U.S. can pressure Mr. Khamenei to accept America’s terms without entanglement in a hot war.

U.S.-Israeli cyber cooperation also complicates cooperation among America’s adversaries. China, Russia, Iran and North Korea have paid close attention to the outcomes of recent live missile and drone exchanges in the Middle East and Ukraine. They’ve all grown more sophisticated. In military affairs, there is no substitute for combat testing.

Cyber warfare also rewards live-fire experience. The more Washington and Jerusalem operate together in combat, the stronger their alliance grows. And when the next big test comes—as it surely will—the nations that have trained together under fire will dominate the field.


Anti-Jewish hate crimes ‘surge’ 58%, now more than 37% of all Chicago hate crimes, per city stats
Earlier this month, Massachusetts reported a “troubling” 20.5% increase in antisemitic hate crimes in 2024 in the state amid an overall decline in hate crimes. Chicago stated on Friday hate crimes in the city “fell by 25% in 2024, with substantial declines across nearly every category.” One of the categories that didn’t see a decline is anti-Jewish hate crimes, which Chicago said was “of particular alarm” and which “surged” by 58% and accounts for 37.6% of all reported hate crimes in the city.

“This is part of a national increase in anti-Jewish hate crimes but is especially troubling given that Jewish residents represent just 3% of Chicago’s population,” according to the office of Brandon Johnson, the city mayor.

The mayor’s office also said that hate crimes against gay men were up, but the press release didn’t say how much.

The Chicago Commission on Human Relations 2024 report on hate crimes and incidents, which was filed to the mayor on Friday, states that there were 79 anti-Jewish hate crimes in Chicago in 2024, up from 50 the prior year. Of the 79, 8% were assaults, 5% battery and 47% were criminal damage.

In 2024, Jews were the main target of hate crimes in Chicago (79), followed by black people (33 incidents, down from 76 the prior year) and gay people (45, up from 36). There were six anti-Muslim hate crimes, down from 16 the prior year, and five anti-Arab incidents, the same number as the prior year.

The commission listed hate crimes against gay men (21% of all hate crimes) before anti-Jewish ones (37.6%) both within the body of the report and in its section on “findings and recommendations.” It estimated that between 3% and 4% of Chicagoans are gay men and that about 3% of Chicagoans are Jewish.

The Chicago mayor, who broke a Chicago City Council tie and voted for a resolution demanding a ceasefire in Gaza in January 2024, has drawn widespread criticism for anti-Israel statements and actions. The Chicago Jewish Alliance said in April that it was “outrageous” that Johnson was photographed wearing a keffiyeh.

The Consulate General of Israel to the Midwest stated in August 2024 that it was “beyond disappointed” by Johnson’s “ongoing support” for anti-Israel protests.


Israeli fighter challenges Muslim influencer over ‘Chase the Jew’ stunt
An Israeli martial artist has challenged a Muslim YouTuber to a fight after footage emerged of the influencer chasing a Jewish man through a New York park.

Viral video from the weekend shows lightweight professional boxer Adam Saleh, who has 4.7 million followers, sprinting after the man in Washington Square Park, wearing boxing gloves and shouting “Free Palestine.”

In a post to social media on Monday, Israeli Natan Levy, known as “Jew-Jitsu”, asked: “Adam Saleh, I see it makes you feel like a big man to chase Israelis in the park and harass older people at a kosher restaurant. I tried to talk to you civilly on Instagram but you played the victim and then blocked me. Now, you’re a boxer and I’m a real fighter.

“So I’ve got an offer for you. If you have a problem with Israelis, Jews, Zionists, whatever you want to call it. You tell me where and when, and I’ll meet you. See you soon.”


Latino-Jewish Caucus marks AMIA bombing, demands justice for victims
The Latino-Jewish Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives sponsored legislation last week commemorating the 31st anniversary of the 1994 car bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Associatión Jewish (AMIA) Community Center in Buenos Aires, demanding justice and accountability for the attack.

It was sponsored by Caucus co-chairs Reps. Mario Díaz-Balart (R-Fla.), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) and Tony Gonzales (R-Texas).

“More than three decades after the tragic AMIA Jewish Center bombing, and there’s still no justice for the 85 victims, the hundreds of injured, and countless people who were traumatized by this attack,” Wasserman Schultz said. “With antisemitism skyrocketing around the world, this gruesome attack on Argentina’s thriving Jewish community cannot go unanswered.”

Reports have long pointed to Iran as behind the attack.

The suicide bombing on July 18, 1994—the worst terrorist incident in Argentina’s history—targeted the seven-story AMIA community center in Buenos Aires, leaving 85 people dead and more than 300 wounded.

Argentina has one of the largest Jewish communities in the world and the largest in Latin America, with a population of about 200,000, according to the World Jewish Congress.


‘Hollywood has no spine’: The Jewish director fighting antisemitism through film
Jewish-American filmmaker and author Wendy Sachs wasn't entirely surprised by the anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish sentiment that reared its ugly head in the United States in the days and weeks following the October 7, 2023 Hamas onslaught on Israel.

Still, she was horrified when the scope of hatred toward Jews on campuses and in major cities began to become clear.

"I was in shock," she said. "Of course, anyone who followed developments in the progressive left and the Democratic Party in recent years, as I did, could see the writing on the wall. Anti-Israeli sentiment and antisemitism had been bubbling beneath the surface for a long time, and suddenly everything burst out like a tsunami.

"However, the silence on October 8 was deafening. On a personal level, I simply felt abandoned by my friends, by my professional groups. Very impressive and educated women, who immediately jump to defend all the world's injustices, suddenly became hostile.

“When over 30 Harvard student groups issued that statement blaming Israel for the massacre, just one day after [it], I immediately understood that the pro-Palestinians had taken control of the narrative and that the messages being conveyed in universities are actually Hamas messages.

"Within less than two weeks, it was already clear to me that I was going to make a film about this."

October 8, the documentary Sachs directed to try to reclaim control of the narrative, was screened on Sunday at the Jerusalem Film Festival.

According to her, the film seeks to explain "how we got to where we got," and it's intended for an international and not necessarily Jewish audience.

But from watching it, it's hard not to feel that Sachs also created it for her brothers and sisters in the United States, and that it documents in real time a process of awakening.

"In the past year, I've been screening the film around the world to non-Jewish audiences," Sachs said. "People cry and react to it very emotionally, because they see phenomena similar to those happening on American campuses also happening where they are – in places like Amsterdam, Sydney, Mexico City and more.

“It was important for me to show that the issue is much bigger than what's happening in Israel...

"Within that, the film is definitely also dedicated to all my Jewish friends who didn't believe that all this was really happening, who lived in their bubble and didn't understand that there's so much antisemitism in America.

“This film provides them with the feeling that they're seen and understood, and also provides them with tools to cope and respond. On October 8, American Jewry woke up. I saw it happen with my own eyes."




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Elder of Ziyon - حـكـيـم صـهـيـون



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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