Friday, August 29, 2025

08/29 Links Pt2: IDF recovers body of murdered hostage Ilan Weiss in Gaza; Why the promise of a two-state solution empowers terrorism; Tehran’s unofficial embassy at Yale

From Ian:

Why the promise of a two-state solution empowers terrorism
Looking at the world in which we find ourselves, we Jews experience a sense of panic at the virulent mass-attended anti-Israel marches taking place in too many major cities globally. “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free,” shout the participants.

And how do the West’s governments react? Australia, France, and New Zealand have committed to recognizing Palestine at the forthcoming United Nations General Assembly, days away, in September. Canada and the United Kingdom have announced that they, too, are ready to recognize a state of Palestine if the war has not ended by the time the UNGA commences.

What a gift this is for Hamas, which has now been informed that to ensure that the UK and Canada recognize Palestine, the war must continue. Certainly, this is no incentive for Hamas to end the war or return the hostages held in captivity for almost two years.

True enemies of the two-state solution
Can it be that those consistently calling for a two-state solution have not understood – or choose not to understand – who is against this concept and has been since the UN voted for the partition of Palestine in 1947?

Israel accepted the small part it was allocated, but the Arabs rejected outright the opportunity to have their own state. Instead, they chose to be part of five Arab countries that attacked Israel the moment David Ben-Gurion declared the coming into being of the State of Israel in 1948.

Are the millions calling for the recognition of Palestine today unaware that “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free” translates into the reality that Israel will be eliminated?

Both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have consistently refused to accept a Jewish state.

Hamas’s charter calls for the total annihilation of Israel.

The PA conceived a different route by which to abolish the one Jewish state. They insist that any future peace negotiations with Israel must ensure that those Arabs who in 1948 became “refugees” in other lands must be allowed to return to Israel together with their successive generations. A figure of seven million returnees is quoted. It does not take a mathematician to recognize that this would translate into the end of the one Jewish state.

Consistently saying no
Before, during, and following the 1948 War of Independence, some 750,000 Arabs fled the newly created State of Israel with encouragement from their leaders, who promised their safe return together with the commitment to ensure the imminent destruction of Israel.

At the same time, some 850,000 Jews were expelled from Arab countries where Jews had lived continuously for 2,500 years. The newly created State of Israel accepted and integrated these Jewish refugees, many arriving with only the clothes on their backs.

Conversely, the United Nations founded UNRWA specifically to ensure that those Arabs who left Israel would retain refugee status, irrespective of which country they relocated to in 1948.

Exactly 58 years ago, on August 29, 1967, eight Arab heads of state participated in a four-day conference in Khartoum, Sudan. The conference called for the continued struggle against Israel. It adopted the dictum of no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, and no negotiations with Israel. Unsurprisingly, the conference became known as “The Three Noes Conference.”

July 2000 saw the Camp David Summit, initiated by then-US president Bill Clinton with the participation of prime minister Ehud Barak and PA chairman Yasser Arafat. It ended with Arafat walking away and then initiating the Second Intifada, resulting in the barbaric murder of some 1,000 Israelis – primarily civilians – with women and children being the prime targets.

Between 2006 and 2008, prime minister Ehud Olmert held no less than 36 negotiating sessions with PA President Mahmoud Abbas in an unprecedented endeavor to reach a peace agreement. Olmert’s plan included ceding some 94% of the West Bank to the PA. The overall offer was incredibly generous to the Palestinians; but once again they walked away, much to the dismay of Olmert, whose proposal far exceeded anything hitherto.
Tehran’s unofficial embassy at Yale
The excitement I once felt arriving at Yale University from Tehran in 2023 for my studies quickly turned into concerns about my safety as an anti-regime Iranian. At school, I witnessed the unchallenged authority of Islamic Republic sympathizers in American universities. Faculty tied to the regime have long presented themselves as presumptive Iranian voices, normalizing the regime’s illegitimate rule by erasing the realities of Iranians living in Iran.

Yale’s fall 2025 course catalogue, for instance, features a class by now-disgraced U.S. diplomat Robert Malley, who led negotiations for the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the Iran nuclear deal, under former President Barack Obama.

Malley’s class will “examine the past in order to better appreciate the two governments’ worldviews” and place students “in the shoes of U.S. and Iranian decision-makers.”

Course assignments for “Adversaries by Design: Deconstructing the Iran-U.S. Relationship” have students cosplaying as diplomats for the regime, as if this is some benign Model U.N.-like exercise rather than a calculated attempt to humanize the theocratic, colonizing dictatorship responsible for the majority of crimes against humanity in the region since 1979.

The course revolves around defending Malley’s failed magnum opus, the JCPOA, and his syllabus mentions having guest lecturers such as Ali Vaez, Hossein Mousavian and Mohammad Javad Zarif, all of whom have acted on behalf of the regime at one time or another. Malley purports to offer “Iranian perspectives,” but the class will likely only feature Islamic Republic officials and supporters.

One might wonder how it’s possible for a former U.S. government official who lost his security clearance and had close contact with Islamic Republic agents to lecture at an elite American university. But fear not! This is Yale, a Western institution where enabling the ideologies of designated terrorist groups is appropriate under the pretense of academia. And this isn’t an isolated incident for Yale.
Stephen Pollard: Britain is no longer an ally of Israel
What more is it going to take to bury the notion that the UK remains an ally of Israel? It’s been revealed today that the Government has banned Israeli officials from attending DSEI, the international defence conference and exhibition which is due to take place in London between 9 and 12 September. Although Israeli companies are still being allowed to come, all Israeli officials – political, defence or administrative – have been told to stay away.

The message could not be clearer or more consistent. From its first days in office, Labour has been ever more zealous in its treatment of Israel as an enemy, rather than a key strategic ally.

Within weeks it had restored funding to Unrwa, the UN agency, despite allegations that it employed some of the terrorists behind the October 7 2023 massacre; had banned the export of some arms to Israel; and had backed the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants against Netanyahu and former Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant.

Then it imposed sanctions on two members of the Israeli government: Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. These are awful men with disgusting views. But the sanctions took hypocrisy to new levels, given that we do not sanction Qatar, which funds and houses Hamas; we prostrate ourselves before its moneymen begging them to invest.

All of those decisions were symbolic of the Government’s stance – a stance driven more by crude domestic UK political calculations than anything else, as I have written here before. But they were little more than symbols with little real impact.

All the obligations demanded by the Prime Minister have been placed on Israel, as some sort of recalcitrant state which needs to be brought to heel. How much clearer could Starmer, Lammy and the rest of them be that they seem to regard Israel as the enemy whose government needs to be defeated by outside pressure, and that the UK must support Israel’s enemies in their demands?


IDF recovers body of murdered hostage Ilan Weiss in Gaza
The IDF and Shin Bet have recovered and identified the body of hostage Ilan Weiss, and what appears to be the remains of an additional hostage whose name has not yet been released, in the Gaza Strip, the military confirmed on Friday.

"Together with all the citizens of Israel, my wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the dear families and share in their deep sorrow," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated.

"The campaign to bring back the hostages continues without pause. We will not rest and we will not be silent until we return all our hostages home, both the living and the fallen."

The IDF stated that the identification process of the additional hostage is still ongoing, and the family has been notified.

"Ilan showed courage and noble spirit when he fought the terrorists on that dark day. In his death, he gave life. And ever since, his family has shown extraordinary strength in their struggle for his return," President Isaac Herzog wrote.

"I wish to express profound appreciation to our heroic fighters who risk their lives day and night to return all the hostages - the living and the fallen alike," Defense Minister Israel Katz said, adding that returning the hostages is the "central goal of the approaching maneuver."

Weiss, 56, was a resident of Kibbutz Be'eri in the Gaza border area and served on the kibbutz's emergency standby squad. In January 2024, the kibbutz confirmed that he was killed during the October 7 massacre, with his body taken by Hamas back to the Gaza Strip.

Weiss's wife, Shiri, and daughter, Noga, were also taken hostage by Hamas on October 7, but were released in late November 2023 during a temporary ceasefire.

His other two daughters, Meytal and Maayan, were able to hide from Hamas during the massacre and were saved by Israeli soldiers.

The family dog, Ketem, was also killed by Hamas terrorists when Shiri and Noga were abducted.


Months After Boulder Firebombing, Anti-Israel Agitators Led By Left-Wing City Council Candidate Force Jewish Group Into Hiding
Just a short walk from where an Egyptian national firebombed a Jewish group, a woman held a bullhorn to her mouth and called the group’s leader "a genocidal c#nt" to her face.

"Rachel Amaru is a genocidal c#nt," the woman shouted in a video obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. She yelled it over and over while mocking Amaru for praying for the Israelis that Hamas is holding hostage.

"She loves to pray for 20 people. Twenty people who are alive," she yelled. She ignored the fact that Hamas is also holding 28 deceased hostages.

Flanking her side was Aaron Stone, a Boulder city council candidate and an apparent ringleader behind a slew of anti-Israel counterprotests targeting Run For Their Lives, a group that hosts weekly marches intended to raise awareness for Israeli hostages. The group was the victim of a terrorist attack less than three months ago, when Mohamad Soliman shouted "We have to end Zionists" as he threw molotov cocktails, killing one and injuring 15.

Stone made no effort to distance himself or stop the woman from hurling insults. Instead, he stood by silently until the pro-Israel protester filming the agitators passed him.

"Good to see you here," he said calmly as agitators continued to scream at the Jewish group.

Harassment against Run For Their Lives has become so pervasive recently that the group’s weekly marches "will no longer be publicly advertised and will take place under heavy security at undisclosed locations," the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) announced Wednesday.

"In recent weeks, anti-Israel protesters, including a candidate for Boulder city council, have stalked and screamed vile insults at participants, even mentioning organizers’ children," the group said. The JCRC "has reviewed videos where protestors hurled slurs like ‘genocidal c**t,’ ‘racist,’ and ‘Nazi.’ The harassment has spilled into Boulder city council meetings, where Jewish residents have been intimidated and bullied."

Stone has played no small part in that. He’s helped organize counterprotests that follow closely behind Run For Their Lives during their weekly marches, shouting the names of babies he says the IDF killed, and has called Amaru a "Nazi" on at least one occasion, video obtained by the Free Beacon shows.

Stefanie Clarke, the co-executive director of Stop Antisemitism Colorado, said it’s unacceptable that "Jews in Boulder are once again being forced into hiding," particularly so soon after Soliman’s terror attack.


Red Cross visits to jailed Hamas terrorists trigger PA ‘pay for slay’
Palestinian Media Watch accused the International Committee of the Red Cross on Thursday of playing a significant role in the Palestinian Authority’s “pay for slay” program, saying ICRC visits to imprisoned Hamas terrorists enable them to start receiving monthly stipends from the P.A.

An Aug. 18 hearing at the Israeli Supreme Court, sitting as the High Court of Justice, on whether Red Cross representatives should be allowed to visit jailed members of Hamas’s elite Nukhba Force failed to address the fact that the P.A. uses the ICRC to confirm that prisoners are indeed in Israeli custody, PMW said.

“For years, we’ve been warning that Israel’s policy of allowing Red Cross visits to security prisoners has a direct consequence,” PMW Director Itamar Marcus said. “It enables payments to convicted terrorists.

“These payments are banned under Israeli law as they constitute financial support for terrorism,” the Israeli researcher said.

Marcus explained that ICRC confirmation allows terrorists to designate a bank account for payments by signing a power of attorney form, with the process explicitly detailed in Palestinian Authority decrees since 2010.

While the P.A. temporarily suspended the need for Red Cross follow-up visits following Israeli restrictions put in place in the wake of the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, Ramallah maintained its requirement for an initial visit to prevent fraudulent financial claims, Marcus said.

“As a result, allowing these visits effectively enables Hamas terrorists to start receiving their salaries,” Marcus continued, adding that the issue was not raised in the court hearing. He urged the government to bring this to the attention of the judiciary, stressing that facilitating such payments could place Jerusalem in violation of its own counter-terrorism laws.

PMW warned against the practice in December 2023, but the Red Cross has apparently continued to facilitate payments to terrorist prisoners.
The DOJ’s Leo Terrell Is Fighting Antisemitism and Standing Up for the Jewish People
This past July, Leo Terrell stepped onto the stage at the Israel on Campus Coalition National Leadership Summit, the largest pro-Israel student gathering in the United States. As he stood before the crowd, he explained why he was wearing a red baseball cap. It was not the signature MAGA hat supporting his boss, President Donald Trump, but one with the words “Hadar Goldin” on them.

“He was a member of the IDF, and in 2014, during a ceasefire, he was murdered and kidnapped, and he has been in the possession of Hamas for 10 years,” he said. “I met his mother and his twin brother. Hadar Goldin should never be forgotten. We have an obligation to make sure he’s returned home. A mother has a right to bury her son.”

Whenever Terrell makes a public appearance, he wears the hat.

“I want people to know his name,” he declared in a social media post. “I want to tell his story – because he and the other hostages have to be returned.”

Terrell isn’t Jewish. He’s Black, practices the Baptist faith, and worked as a civil rights attorney and media commentator for more than three decades. However, after seeing the horrors of what happened on October 7, Terrell, who was a contributor at Fox News at the time, started to speak up.

“It was a loss of humanity,” he told the Journal. “You saw innocent people being murdered, raped, and brutalized because they were Israeli. Because they were Jews. For one day in this country, we were all united that this was wrong. But that changed on October 8, which I found to be very offensive. Never in my life had I seen hatred towards the Jewish people.”

Terrell kept speaking up, and this past January, President Trump nominated him as Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division and the chair of the Department of Justice’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism.

“I love this country, and I think President Trump is the right president for the current time we’re in,” he said. “He gave me the opportunity to work here with a great Attorney General, Pam Bondi.”

Since taking on the role, Terrell said it’s been a 24/7 job. Along with posting nonstop on X and retweeting pro-Israel, pro-Jewish accounts, he was tasked with visiting and assessing 10 universities, including Columbia, Harvard, and UCLA, that have experienced a surge in antisemitism since October 7.
From the Amazon to Academia: Antisemitism, Zionism, and Indigenous Identity
As the school year kicks off, Adam Louis-Klein shares his unexpected journey from researching the Desano tribe in the Amazon to confronting rising antisemitism in academic circles after October 7. He discusses his academic work, which explores the parallels between indigenous identity and Jewish peoplehood, and unpacks the politics of historical narrative.

Manya Brachear Pashman:
And did you understand it when you were there? Did you come to these realizations when you were there, or did you start to piece all of that together and connect the dots after you emerged?

Adam Louis-Klein:
So part of my research looks at how indigenous people engage with Christian missionaries who try and translate the Bible into indigenous languages. So when that encounter happens, it's actually quite common throughout the world, that a lot of indigenous people identify with the Jewish people quite strongly. So this might sound a little counterintuitive, especially if someone's used to certain activist networks in which indigeneity is highly associated with Palestinians, Jews are treated now as settler colonists, which is basically the opposite of indigeneity.

And that's become a kind of consensus in academia, even though it seems to fly in the face of both facts and our own self understanding as Jews. So I saw that in the Amazon, in the way people at the margins of the world who might not already be integrated in the academic, activist kind of scene, sort of organically identify with the Jewish people and Israel.

And they admire the Jewish people and Israel, because they see in us, a people that's managed to maintain our cultural identity, our specific and distinct civilization, while also being able to use the tools of modernity and technology to benefit us and to benefit the world. So I think that also kind of disrupts some primitivist notions about indigenous people, that they should remain sort of technologically backwards, so to speak. I think that they have a more nuanced approach.

Manya Brachear Pashman:
So I guess, what did you discover when you did emerge from the Amazon? In other words, October 7 had happened. When did you emerge and how did you find out?

Adam Louis-Klein:
So I'd been living in a remote Desano village without internet or a phone or any connection to the outside world for months. And then I returned a couple days after October 7 to a local town, so still in the Amazon, but I was signing onto my computer for the first time in months, and I remember signing onto Facebook and I saw the images of people running from the Nova Festival.

And that was the first thing that I saw in months from the world. So that was a very traumatic experience that sort of ruptured my sense of reality in many ways, but the most difficult thing was seeing my intellectual milieu immediately transform into a space of denial or justification or even just straightforward aggression and hate to anyone who showed any solidarity with Israelis in that moment, or who saw it as a moment to to say something positive and inspiring and helpful about the Jewish people. That was actually seen as an act of violence.

So I went to Facebook, and I don't remember exactly what I said, I stand with the Jewish people, or with Israelis, or Am Yisrael Chai, or something like that. And many people in my circles, really interpreted that as an aggression. So at that point, it was really strange, because I'd been living in the Amazon, trying to help people with their own cultural survival, you know, their own struggle to reproduce their own civilization in the face of assimilation and surrounding society that refuses to validate their unique identity. And then I came back to the world, and I was seeing the exact same thing happening to my own people.

And even stranger than that, it was happening to my own people, but in the language of critique and solidarity. So the very language I'd learned in anthropology, of how to support indigenous people and sort of to align myself with their struggles was now being weaponized against me in this kind of horrible inversion of reality.
Jake Wallis Simons: From ‘dee do dee’ to ‘death to the IDF’: how music festivals lost the plot
What happened to dee doh dee doh de de? In the old days that was enough for an interactive interlude at music festivals. Freddy Mercury would improvise up and down the scale, the drunken crowd would approximate it and that would be it. Everyone loved it. On with the next song.

Much was written about Glastonbury when it took place, largely on account of Bob Vylan’s contemptible chant of “death to the IDF”. By contrast, Reading festival came and went without attracting controversy.

In a normal world, however, it would have raised a scandal. Act after act lectured the audience about colonialism, capitalism, and most of all Palestine. I know because my kids went along and filmed it.

There’s a famous photograph taken in 1936 showing a sea of people giving the Sieg Heil while one man stands with folded arms. This is believed to be August Landmesser, a German who was in a relationship with Irma Eckler, a Jewish woman. For this he was arrested and sent to a concentration camp.

Eckler was murdered at Bernburg in 1942, while Landmesser lost his life in Croatia two years later. I mention this poignant story because although we are very much not in Nazi Germany, that picture resonates with how my children felt at Reading.

In a video taken by my daughter, the British singer-songwriter Rou Reynolds, the singer and keyboardist of a middle-rate rock band called Enter Shikari, came across more like an evangelical pastor at an outdoors megachurch prayer session than a purveyor of mindless entertainment.

In a quasi-religious rant that lasted several minutes, he delivered a sermon that made me marvel at how jihadi propaganda can be given a veneer of human rights. Every other statement, it seemed, was either deeply provocative or of, shall we say, questionable accuracy. I found myself ticking them off on my fingers.
Suspended suspension for solicitor over antisemitic and offensive posts
A solicitor whose use of “emotive and antisemitic language” on social media appeared designed to cause “maximum offence” has been given a six-month suspended suspension.

The suspended nature of the sanction lasts a year and is conditional on Mohammed Sarfraz completing 10 hours of mandatory training on equality, diversity and inclusion, and four hours on antisemitism in that time.

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) said its decision reflected the “important distinction” between regulating political opinion and maintaining professional standards of conduct.

It explained: “This was not a case about stifling legitimate political debate, but rather about ensuring that a solicitor, who had voluntarily undertaken professional obligations in exchange for significant privileges and public trust conducted himself with appropriate judgment and dignity even in political discourse.”

Mr Sarfraz, a director at Bradford firm Cartwright Solicitors, admitted that 15 posts on Facebook and X between November 2019 and January 2022 were variously antisemitic and offensive.

The SDT said his posts exhibited “systematic patterns of antisemitic content, including accusations of disloyalty against prominent British Jews, conspiracy theories about Jewish financial influence, religious defamation (claiming ‘Jews did whack Jesus’), and broader conspiracy theories about Jewish control of the media and involvement in 9/11”.

The posts also targeted specific individuals, including the Chief Rabbi, TV presenter Rachel Riley, and politicians, “often using crude and seriously offensive language”.

“[Mr Sarfraz] apologised unreservedly for posting them and extended this apology to include some of his more ambiguous posts, which he accepted could be interpreted as antisemitic, particularly when viewed in the context of his more obviously antisemitic ones. He apologised for any upset caused and expressed regret to anyone he may have offended.”


Too Far Gone? Saving American Education from Itself
Jewish students should expect to be confronted by more pro-Hamas mobs and antisemitism when returning to college this fall, says JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin. With legacy media mainstreaming Hamas propaganda and blood libels against Israel, it’s likely that the surge of antisemitism throughout American education that began after the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, will continue in the coming months.

He’s joined in the week’s episode of Think Twice by Cornell Law professor and Legalinsurrection.com founder William Jacobson who says it’s “going to be a very hot fall” with respect to anti-Israel activity. Jacobson believes that the pro-Hamas movement is in retreat as a result of Trump’s crackdown, which has caused many schools to act swiftly to quash antisemitism on campus, lest they lose federal funding. But given the widespread belief in the lies about Israel committing “genocide” in Gaza, antisemitic groups like Students for Justice in Palestine will be even more aggressive than in the past two years. It will be up to colleges and universities to ensure that those who break the rules and engage in illegal activity in the name of “Palestine” are held accountable.

Israel-haters have, Jacobson says, co-opted the entire left-wing movement, sidelining causes like Black Lives Matter and making activism for the destruction of Israel their main goal. This movement is being aided with funding from Qatar and other malign actors and is also seeking to co-opt the right via influencers like Tucker Carlson.

But, he says, their main target is America itself and not just the Jews. “If you wanted to destroy the United States from inside, what would you do differently than the left and now the Islamists are doing to our educational system, which is pitting students against each other based on skin color and identity group? And that's what the mainstream Jewish community refuses to address.

Jacobson says that Trump’s attempts to broker deals with universities like Harvard and Columbia is having an impact on the spread of antisemitism, in part, because of the decline in foreign students who have been a big part of the problem. But he cautions that enforcement of the provisions of those agreements are key, since these institutions are hoping to wait out Trump and go back to their discriminatory policies once he leaves office.

The key to the problem is ridding the system of the plague of the woke catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) which is at the core of the spread of anti-Jewish prejudice because it falsely identifies Jews and Israel as “white” oppressors. He criticized those mainstream liberal Jewish groups that refuse to oppose DEI.

Jacobson said he’s not sure whether the education system can be saved. “We need to now figure out how we protect ourselves from the universities, not how we reform the universities. I do not believe that universities can reform themselves, at least not the so-called elite universities where we're having most of these problems.”

Chapters
00:00 Reforming or Replacing Universities?
02:09 The Influence of Donors and Market Forces
04:37 The Role of Foreign Funding in Education
08:15 Qatar's Impact on American Education
12:47 The Rise of the Woke Right
17:41 Jewish Organizations and Antisemitism
21:40 Legal Insurrection and Advocacy


Texas attorney general to probe Plano school district over alleged Jew-hatred
Ken Paxton, attorney general of Texas, announced on Thursday that he is investigating the Plano Independent School District over allegedly “permitting and facilitating antisemitic behavior” in its schools.

In a letter to the district superintendent, Paxton wrote that there are allegations that “teachers are presenting biased materials and insisting that students take a pro-Palestinian view” and that schools have provided “excused absences” for students to participate in anti-Israel walkouts.

Paxton also stated that “parents have reported widespread anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric in curriculum and classroom discussions to school administrators, board members and City of Plano councilmembers.”

“Those complaints have either been ignored or met with vague responses that do nothing to meaningfully address the problem,” he wrote.

Paxton stated that there is “zero tolerance” for antisemitism in the state’s schools.

“As we approach the two-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 terrorist attack in Israel, it is crucial that PISD take all necessary steps to combat antisemitism and appropriately discipline teachers, staff, and students that act in contravention to state law and PISD policy,” he wrote.

Paxton requested that the district provide a series of documents regarding school policies on walkouts and investigations of students who participated in anti-Israel walkouts, as well as the disciplinary measures taken.

He also requested that the district provide documentation on how it handled reports of antisemitism and anti-Israel rhetoric in the classroom.

“The reports regarding antisemitic activity in Plano ISD schools are alarming and must be swiftly and aggressively addressed,” Paxton stated. “Any teacher or administrator that has facilitated or supported radical anti-Israel rhetoric in our schools should be fired immediately. I stand in solidarity with our Jewish community, and we will continue to do everything in our power to root out antisemitism in all its forms.”


Lebanon may boost Palestinians’ rights in country, though citizenship not on the table
As more Palestinian camps in Lebanon handed over caches of weapons to the country’s army this week, a government official told The Associated Press that the disarmament effort could pave the way for granting descendants of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon more legal rights.

Ramez Dimashkieh, head of the Lebanese-Palestinian Dialogue Committee, a government body that serves as an interlocutor between Palestinians in Lebanon and state officials, said his group is working on proposed legislation that they hope to introduce by the end of the year that could improve the situation of Lebanon’s approximately 200,000 descendants of Palestinian refugees.

The Palestinians, who are all recognized by the UN as refugees despite the vast majority of them not having been displaced during their lifetime, are not given citizenship in Lebanon, ostensibly to preserve their alleged right to go back to the homes they fled or were forced from during the regional mass displacements surrounding the 1948 creation of the State of Israel. They are prohibited from working in many professions in Lebanon, have few legal protections, and cannot own property.

The proposed legislation being drafted would still not confer Lebanese nationality on the Palestinians, Dimashkieh said, but would strengthen their labor and property rights.

“If people see a serious move forward in terms of arms delivery and they see the Palestinians here… are serious about transforming into a civil society rather than militarized camps, it will make the discourse much easier,” he said.
In ‘major increase,’ UN says Iran has executed at least 841 people this year
At least 841 people have been executed in Iran since the start of the year, the United Nations said Friday, decrying “a systematic pattern of using the death penalty as a tool of state intimidation.”

The UN human rights office said there had been a “major increase in executions” by Tehran during the first half of 2025.

“Iranian authorities have executed at least 841 people since the beginning of the year,” spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told reporters in Geneva.

“The real situation might be different,” she added. “It might be worse, given the lack of transparency.”

In July alone, she said, Iran had executed at least 110 individuals — twice the number of people executed in July 2024.

“The high number of executions indicates a systematic pattern of using the death penalty as a tool of state intimidation, with disproportionate targeting of ethnic minorities and migrants,” Shamdasani added.

She cited the executions of Afghan nationals, and of Baluch, Kurdish and Arab citizens.

In the first six months of the year, at least 289 people were executed for drug-related offenses.

Shamdasani said the pattern witnessed across multiple countries showed that when their governments perceive threats to their grip on public order, they become increasingly repressive and less tolerant of dissent.
Facebook STILL hosting fake AI Holocaust images months after Meta alerted
Fabricated images of Holocaust victims generated by artificial intelligence are still circulating on Facebook, months after both Auschwitz Memorial and Jewish News raised alarms and formally reported the accounts behind them.

In May, Jewish News revealed how pages such as 90’s History were copying names and dates from Auschwitz archives, replacing genuine photographs with stylised AI portraits and inventing false scenarios for murdered victims. At the time, Auschwitz Memorial condemned the practice as a “profound act of disrespect” and confirmed it had flagged the content to Meta.

Now, a BBC investigation has shown that the phenomenon is part of a sprawling international spam network, with operators based in Pakistan, India, Vietnam, Nigeria, and elsewhere. These creators collaborate in private groups to mass-produce “AI-slop” – low-quality AI images and captions – specifically designed to go viral and exploit Meta’s content-monetisation programme.

One Pakistani account, named Abdul Mughees, posted screenshots claiming more than 1.2 billion views and £16,000 in revenue over four months. Although those figures could not be independently verified, the BBC’s analysis found dozens of accounts pushing almost exclusively fabricated history content, with Holocaust imagery proving a reliable traffic driver.

The posts have included invented scenes of prisoners playing violins, children abandoned on train tracks, or lovers meeting across camp fences. Many pages had previously impersonated businesses, influencers, or even official bodies before being repurposed to churn out Holocaust AI images. Others boosted reach by mass-sharing each other’s posts into history groups, effectively driving monetisation.

Pawel Sawicki, spokesperson for the Auschwitz Memorial, told the BBC: “Here we have somebody making up the stories… for some kind of strange emotional game that is happening on social media. This is not a game. This is real suffering… we want to and need to commemorate.”
'I am antisemitic': Elderly Jewish woman stabbed in Ottawa store by man with antisemitic history
An elderly Jewish woman was stabbed in an Ottawa grocery store on Wednesday afternoon by another senior citizen, who allegedly has a long social media history of antisemitic tirades.

The victim entered the store with a large Kosher section with a friend, according to an Ottawa Police Service statement, and was approached by a man who stabbed her. OPS later updated on Thursday that the victim and assailant did not know one another.

The wounded woman was assisted by store staff, transported to the hospital by paramedics, and released from medical care.

The man, identified by the Ottawa citizen as Joseph Rooke, was arrested at the scene of the crime by OPS officers.

The 71-year-old Cornwall resident was charged with aggravated assault and possession of a dangerous weapon.

Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe said in a Thursday LinkedIn post that he was in contact with the victim's family and Jewish leaders in Ottawa.

Canadian leadership condemns Ottawa attack
"This reprehensible violence has understandably caused significant distress within Ottawa’s Jewish community," said Sutcliffe. "We must stand together against violence and hatred in all its forms and continue working together to ensure Ottawa remains a safe and inclusive city for everyone."

The Jewish Federation of Toronto said in a Thursday Facebook post that police had considered the possibility that the incident was hate-motivated. The federation said that in addition to being in contact with political and law enforcement leaders, it had been in touch with Loblaws to discuss security.

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs and B'nai Brith Canada alleged that the motive of the attack was antisemitic, pointing to posts on a social media account allegedly owned by Rooke as proof.
Refused permit, US anti-Israel comedian accuses Singapore of censorship; regulators deny it
A US comedian critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza has accused Singaporean authorities of censorship for refusing to grant a permit for his show, but regulators rejected his claims on Friday.

Sammy Obeid said in a social media post that his stand-up comedy performance in the city-state, scheduled for Sunday, was cancelled after regulator Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) did not issue a permit, despite him submitting a much toned-down script.

Aware of Singapore’s reputation for being strict, Obeid said that he “erred on the side of caution and submitted a heavily censored script that only referenced Palestine a few times” and mentioned Israel once, as he wanted the show to proceed.

“After waiting weeks and weeks, the script was rejected… I was told to completely remove all mentions of Palestine and Israel,” he said.

IMDA said Friday in response to an AFP query that Obeid made a number of “inaccurate” allegations.

The application for a license to hold the show was rejected because it was submitted only 10 working days before the event, a spokesperson for the authority said.

Applications are “required to be submitted at least 40 working days before the event, to allow sufficient time for applications to be processed or advisories to be included in publicity materials and advertisements,” IMDA said.

“IMDA had not requested for any edits to be made on the script. At no time, were ‘multiple edits’ requested,” the authority added.

Singapore, one of Asia’s safest countries, has strict regulations on topics like race and religion in a bid to maintain harmony among its ethnically diverse population that covers a Chinese majority, with substantial Malay and Indian minorities.


Here I Am With Shai Davidai: Bonus Episode | Get Up, Rise Up, Kumu :A Conversation with Yonatan Shimriz
In this “Here I Am: Summer of Hope” special episode, Shai interviews an impressive young activist with a moving story of heartbreak, hope, and transforming tragedy into leadership. Yonatan Shimriz’s brother was kidnapped on October 7 and later tragically killed in Gaza by soldiers who thought he was a Hamas terrorist. From that unimaginable loss, Yonatan created the Kumu movement: a vision for Jewish unity, resilience, and a new generation of leaders to meet Israel’s challenges head-on. Kumu is more than a movement. It’s a platform to encourage young leaders to step up and secure a better life for all Israelis. In this powerful conversation, Yonatan shares his journey of grief, courage, and determination — and why he believes every Jew must “get up” and take responsibility to be the leaders Israel needs right now.




Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

    
 

 



AddToAny

Printfriendly

EoZTV Podcast

Podcast URL

Subscribe in podnovaSubscribe with FeedlyAdd to netvibes
addtomyyahoo4Subscribe with SubToMe

search eoz

comments

Speaking

Speaking

translate

E-Book

For $18 donation








Sample Text

EoZ's Most Popular Posts in recent years

Search2

Hasbys!

Hasbys!

2019 Nobel Peace Prize nominee

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.

Donate!

Donate to fight for Israel!

Monthly subscription:
Payment options


One time donation:

Follow EoZ on Twitter!

Interesting Blogs

Show All

Blog Archive

Copyright © Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News | Powered by Blogger
Blogger Templates