Tuesday, September 02, 2025

09/02 Links Pt2: The Smear-Merchants of Venice; Hamas Hails 'Victory' as Media Outlets Execute Coordinated Anti-Israel Campaign; Al Jazeera “Journalists” Caught Working for Hamas

From Ian:

The UN has failed the 7 October rape victims
It seems that some victims of sexual violence are not deemed as worthy of support as others. Too many Western feminists allowed their loathing of Israel to trump their feminism. It was almost as if Jews were seen, at best, as slightly sub-human, and, at worst, as not human at all.

The UN – and especially UN Women – ignored the atrocities. Indeed, on 8 October 2023, UN Women was busy tweeting in celebration of men who declare themselves lesbians. It took a full two months before it issued even a half-hearted criticism of Hamas’s rape and slaughter. By March 2024, the UN could only manage the mealy mouthed phrase that there was ‘reasonable grounds to believe’ Hamas had committed sexual violence, despite the genocidal lunatics recording their crimes on their GoPros. Only now, as the massacre’s second anniversary approaches, has the UN decided to formally ‘blacklist’ Hamas for its sexual crimes.

It should never have taken nearly two years to establish the facts. Proof was overwhelming from the outset – there were multiple sources and multiple categories of evidence. What was in doubt was not the evidence, but the victims’ worth. Only relentless Jewish pressure forced the UN to accept what the evidence was telling it.

Even then, the UN refrained from offering anything approaching moral clarity. Instead it acknowledged Hamas’s proven atrocities at the same time as reiterating allegations – sourced from biased reports – about supposed Israeli abuse of Palestinian detainees. The UN could not resist diluting its condemnation of Hamas without taking another swipe at Israel.

It is shameful that the UN has forced a small community to bear the burden of proving, again and again, that its daughters, sisters and wives matter as much as anyone else’s. It is shameful that these women’s agony has been placed on the same moral plane as their rapists’ supposed grievances. The UN’s constant, reflexive ‘but’ speaks of its moral cowardice. There must always be an implied caveat, a suggestion that perhaps Israel had it coming.

The women raped and killed on 7 October deserved far better than the apathy and hypocrisy of the UN. To dehumanise these women is to degrade humanity itself.
Seth Mandel: The Smear-Merchants of Venice
In case you’ve ever wondered how much those who encourage the isolation of Israel intend to practice what they preach, the artistes at the Venice Film Festival have provided an answer: not one bit.

Filmmaker Jim Jarmusch wanted to bask in admiration while promoting his next film. Unfortunately, the politicization of every corner of life intruded. Jarmusch’s new movie, Father Mother Sister Brother, is being released by the distributor and streaming company Mubi. Recently, anti-Israel activists have targeted Mubi because one of its investors, Sequoia Capital, has also invested in an Israeli defense-tech startup that focuses on border security in response to the Hamas invasion of October 7, 2023. Since Israeli self-defense tech is highly controversial among opponents of the Jewish state’s survival, activists have sought to make Mubi appear guilty by association with a firm that is guilty by association with Israel.

It’s not a very strong case, as one can tell by the number of associations involved in declaring Mubi’s guilt. And that is exactly what Jim Jarmusch could and should have said when asked about his working with Mubi. Instead, Jarmusch got annoyed because he was asked, metaphorically, to sleep in the bed he made.

Jarmusch pronounced himself “disappointed and quite disconcerted” by Mubi’s reported relationship with a company that has a relationship with an Israeli company. He then proceeded to offer the following self-exoneration:

“I’m not the spokesman [for Mubi]. However, yes, I was concerned. I also have a distribution agreement with Mubi for certain territories, which I also had entered into before my knowledge of this. But having said that, on a personal level, I have to say I’m an independent filmmaker, and I have taken money from various sources to be able to realize my films. And I consider pretty much all corporate money [to be] dirty money. If you start analyzing each of these film companies and their financing structures, you’re going to find a lot of nasty dirt. It’s all there.”

So, yes, the money is dirty. But all money is dirty, not just money that is second cousins with Israeli money. Jarmusch is arguing that everything he does is tainted but he’s got to get paid:

“We could avoid it and not make films at all, but the films are what I choose to carry. So yes, I’m concerned, but one thing I don’t like is that — and you have not done this — but putting the onus of the explanation of this on us, the artists. It’s not us, it’s Mubi you must address. … Not just Mubi but other companies as well.”

What do you want Jim Jarmusch to do—not make movies? What kind of world would that be? And anyway, you shouldn’t be asking him about the ethical investments of the companies that pay him, because he cannot be expected to match his deeds to his words on Gaza.
Eve Barlow: Dear Chris Martin
Chris, on October 7, Palestinians and Hamas breached the border of the Gaza envelope, and slaughtered 1,200 innocents. Rape was used as a weapon of war on October 7 by Hamas, and by Palestinians from Gaza. The United Nations has now since recognized this as fact; women were abused and butchered in unimaginable ways. Of the 250-plus innocents who were kidnapped into Gaza on that day, 50 remain there, held captive, some alive and some dead. Held by Palestinians and Hamas. It is the 697th day of their captivity. When you tell two young Israeli women you that will treat them as “equal humans on earth regardless of where they come from” and then you qualify their existence by mentioning that Palestinians exist, too, it is a double hit of dehumanization. It does the opposite of what your words claim to intend. I’ll break it down for you.

First, you are weaponizing a shame that has engulfed the world - that for some reason Israelis need to apologize for their existence, that Jews from their indigenous homeland are “controversial”, that our mere presence is affronting. This is what the Nazis did to lay the ground for the Holocaust. They dehumanized the Jewish people, treating us as sub-human. Your words may have come from an awkward, meandering place, but they humiliated two young Jews. You normalized the idea that Israelis must be reminded that they can be considered “equal humans” if the person in power so decrees. Replace them with any other minority. What if it were two Black kids? Two gay kids? Two Chinese kids? And you offered that you would treat them as equal humans? You treated two Jews like Martians.

Second, you qualify a Jew’s existence by participating in a sort of all-lives-matter-ing, acknowledging in the same breath our sworn enemies who want to kill and destroy us. It’s an inconvenient truth that the Palestinians have a bloodlust for murdering Israelis and this is undeniable in the wake of October 7 - a day that killed the dream of a two state solution. For many Israelis, including those who survived the massacre on October 7, the word “Palestinian” has new meaning. If you ever go to the Gaza envelope, and visit the kibbutzim there, places like Kfar Aza, Nir Oz, Kissufim, Re’im and Be’eri, you will speak to people who were the most beligerent about peace and a two state solution pre-October 7, but who have sobered up to reality.

Chris, I asked one survivor of Nir Oz her story, and she did not describe the people who broke into and ransacked her house, murdered her neigbors, and attempted to kill her and her daughter as “Hamas”. She did not refer to them as “Gazans”. She referred to them as “Palestinians”, because that’s what they were. Because Gaza has a culture that has been created by Jihadists, and it goes far beyond the political leadership Hamas. This survivor’s parents founded Kibbutz Nir Oz. They were pioneers and peaceniks. They gave people from Gaza jobs. Every day Palestinians came from Gaza to work in the kibbutz. On October 7, Palestinians came from Gaza to betray their neighbors.

So please never ever qualify the existence of a Jew, Israeli or not, with the existence of an Arab who calls themselves a Palestinian. If you had introduced two people from Ramallah onstage, I sincerely doubt you would have felt the need to remind the crowd that there are also Israelis. If they were two Ukrainians, would you have reminded your audience that there may be Russians in the room? The Israelis are the equivalent of the Ukrainians, just FYI. I said something mean about your band Coldplay yesterday. I said that the truth is Savage Garden could have been as big as Coldplay. I love Savage Garden. I love Travis. I love Keane. I love many bands that could have been as big as Coldplay. You know though, it doesn’t matter. Hard work gets a band to where you, Jonny, Guy and Will have gotten to. But you know too that it’s luck of the draw. You know that the popularity and the following you’ve accrued makes you a leader in this world. For your fans, for your friends, for your own children, I ask you sincerely, please. Do better.


Dave Rich: Having your cake and eating it
Removing responsibility from Hamas for the slaughter of so many civilians on October 7 also allows Hamas to retain their position as champions of the oppressed and heroes of the resistance. It may not be a coincidence that the band Lambert manages, Kneecap, are the focus of controversy for expressing support for Hamas and Hizbollah on stage. Given that over 360 people were murdered at the Nova music festival on October 7, you might even think that Kneecap have an incentive for convincing themselves, and others, that it was Israel, not Hamas, who killed them. Otherwise they might look like hypocrites and fools.

As well as absolving Hamas for their crimes, this conspiracy theory fortifies the belief that Israel is unimaginably and uniquely cruel and callous. What kind of nation, what kind of people, would kill so many of their own through such cold political calculation? Coincidentally or not, a similar line of thinking can be detected in allegations levelled at Jews by antisemites through the ages. The imaginary Jew of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion would be more than capable of such a crime.

Whether it is influenced by this older antisemitic tradition or not, it’s a way for anti-Zionists to have their cake and eat it: to excuse Hamas’s “resistance” while also denying the appalling reality of what it entailed. The doublethink is clear: Israel is so inhuman, that whatever Palestinians deem necessary as resistance is justified; and Israel is so inhuman, they probably did it to themselves anyway.

The question of what all those Hamas fighters were doing, filming themselves going door to door in Israeli kibbutzim on October 7, if it was really the Israeli army who killed hundreds of their residents, doesn’t enter their mind. But then this isn’t about the facts: it’s propaganda to prop up a moral crusade for the eradication of the State of Israel, the ultimate goal of anti-Zionism. Any political movement with such a hateful, destructive goal, will always be susceptible to such grotesque distortions: it cannot function otherwise.
The Free Press: Al Jazeera “Journalists” Caught Working for Hamas
For much of the world, Al Jazeera remains a household name for frontline coverage of the Middle East. But for the people we interviewed in Gaza, the network represents something else entirely: an arm of Hamas’s repressive machinery, weaponized not only to broadcast the group’s message but to help enforce its rule through intimidation, arrests, and torture.

The Israel Defense Forces have previously accused several Al Jazeera journalists of being active members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad, pointing to documents recovered in Gaza as well as photographs with Hamas leadership as evidence of their affiliation. Among them was Anas al-Sharif, the Al Jazeera correspondent killed in an Israeli strike in August, whom the IDF identified last year as a Hamas operative.

This complicity, CPC chief operating officer Michael Nahum said, is why Al Jazeera itself has become a target of public anger in Gaza: “The symbiosis between Al Jazeera and Hamas is so widely known that we’ve even seen popular protests of thousands of Gazans denouncing Al Jazeera for not covering anything unfavorable to Hamas. When they denounce Hamas, they also denounce Al Jazeera and their journalists by name.”


Hamas Hails 'Victory' as Media Outlets Execute Coordinated Anti-Israel Campaign
Major Outlets Cover Without Critical Analysis CNN reported on the campaign as legitimate journalism advocacy, stating: "Nearly 200 outlets from 50 countries will take part in the demonstration, according to organizers, with print newspapers running blacked-out front pages, broadcasters and radio stations interrupting their programming."

CNN's coverage made no mention of the coordinated scripts, standardized templates, or unified hashtag campaigns revealed in the leaked documents, instead presenting the effort as an organic journalistic response.

NPR and The Guardian also reported on the campaign, with both outlets mentioned among the participants in initial reports. The Guardian posted a list of names and an image showing the photos of 238 journalists and media workers they claim have been killed in the Israel-Hamas War.

However, many of the journalists on the list have previously been exposed as moonlighting for terror organizations such as Hamas. One example is Abdallah Aljamal, who does not appear on the list but was left in the accompanying photo. Aljamal was previously revealed to be a Hamas operative who held Israeli hostages in his home while also writing for the US-based outlet Palestine Chronicle.

Neither organization has issued detailed statements addressing the leaked documents that revealed the coordinated nature of the campaign since the Jewish Onliner report was published.

Ongoing Implications
As the story continues to develop, media organizations face mounting pressure to address questions about editorial independence and the role of external advocacy groups in shaping news coverage. The Hamas official's public celebration of the campaign as a "victory for the Palestinian narrative" has intensified scrutiny of the participating outlets' decision-making processes.

The revelation has also prompted broader discussions within journalism circles about the difference between legitimate press freedom advocacy and coordinated propaganda campaigns disguised as independent journalism. Such coordinated campaigns reflect a troubling systemic bias where outlets abandon their watchdog role to advance predetermined political narratives.


‘Thieves, Child Killers, Sexual Abusers, Thugs, Criminals’: Syracuse University Scholar, a Pulitzer Prize Winner, Goes on Tirade Against Israeli People
A Syracuse University visiting scholar and the 2025 Pulitzer Prize winner for commentary described Israelis as "thieves," "child killers," "sexual abusers," "thugs," and "criminals" at a conference in Detroit over the weekend.

Palestinian "poet" Mosab Abu Toha spoke at the People's Conference for Palestine on Sunday on a panel titled, "Gaza Resists, Gaza Remains." He argued Israel’s war effort will "fail" because, "We know that no matter how long a thief keeps your property, it will remain your property." Israelis, he said, "will remain thieves."

"Now they are not only thieves, but they are child killers, they are sexual abusers," he said. "I mean, what else should the Palestinian people do to show the world that these people are thugs [and] these people are criminals? They should be held accountable."

Abu Toha's appearance at the conference came just months after the Pulitzer board awarded him the prize for commentary for a series of anti-Israel essays published in the New Yorker. His extremist social media posts surfaced some 24 hours later, including one in which he objected to the media's "humanization" of Israelis abducted by Hamas.

"How on earth is this girl called a hostage? (And this is the case of most 'hostages')," Abu Toha wrote on Facebook in early February, shortly before Pulitzer deliberations began. "This is Emily Damari, a 28 [year-old] UK-Israeli soldier that Hamas detailed [sic] on 10/7… So this girl is called a 'hostage?' This soldier who was close to the border with a city that she and her country have been occupying is called a 'hostage?'"

Damari, who was abducted from her home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza and spent 471 days in Hamas captivity, condemned the Pulitzer board for giving Abu Toha the prize. The Pulitzer board has not addressed the controversy, nor has it reached out to Damari.

Abu Toha did not shy away from controversy at the People's Conference for Palestine. His presence alone raised eyebrows, given the event featured convicted Palestinian terrorists as speakers. Once on stage, Abu Toha likened the "Nakba" to the Holocaust.

"The other point that I wanted to share with you is that on October 7, we heard a lot of the Western media, mainstream media, saying that Hamas killed Holocaust survivors and they abducted Holocaust survivors," Abu Toha said. "But how many of you heard any journalist saying that Israel, until today, they killed over 1,000 Nakba survivors? Have you ever heard of that? No."

At another point on the panel, Abu Toha decried the "Israeli occupation's tactic to murder, imprison, and intimidate Palestinian artists and writers." To back up the claim, he cited Ghassan Kanafani, a former spokesman for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine who was involved in the terrorist organization's 1972 Lod Airport massacre outside Tel Aviv, as well as Dareen Tatour, an Israeli Arab known for releasing a poem that included the lines, "Resist, my people, resist them. / Resist the settler's robbery / And follow the caravan of martyrs."
UPenn Taps Vox's Zack Beauchamp, Best Known for Inventing a Bridge Between Gaza and the West Bank, as a 'Distinguished' Global Affairs Fellow
The University of Pennsylvania's global affairs hub, Perry World House, has named Vox writer Zack Beauchamp a "distinguished visiting fellow" for the 2025-26 academic year, giving students a chance to learn about international affairs from a man who once explained the "Israel-Gaza crisis" by accusing Israel of limiting traffic on a bridge between Gaza and the West Bank that has never existed.

Back in 2014, Beauchamp authored Vox's viral "11 Crucial Facts to Understand the Israel-Gaza Crisis," where he informed readers that Gaza and the West Bank are "connected only by a bridge that Israel limits traffic on." There is no such bridge, as Vox acknowledged in a correction note.

"An earlier version of this post suggested there was a bridge connecting Gaza and the West Bank," the note read. "Various plans to do this have been floated, but the bridge was never actually built."

That geographical whoopsie didn't slow Beauchamp's career. At Penn, he'll now brief faculty, deliver guest lectures, and mentor students on democracy, global justice, and security—subjects he's covered for Vox with the same self-assurance he once deployed to invent Israeli infrastructure.

The Perry World House program aims to bring "knowledgeable and accomplished experts" to campus. Alongside former cabinet members, U.N. officials, and NGO leaders, Beauchamp stands out as the only fellow who once had to issue a correction about an imaginary bridge.
Ben Sasse: The Universities and the American Crisis
It’s been obvious for decades that both our K-12 schools and our colleges and universities are overmatched by the magnitude of our moment—from the disruption of work and community by amazing but frightening technologies, and also from the neglect of our shared civic inheritance, perhaps wrought by our affluence and our ease. But the particular challenges of the last several years have revealed in much sharper detail the hollowness of our educational institutions. Our once great universities have been exposed as emperors without clothes. At present, the sole ticket to teaching the next generation is having written a jargon-filled dissertation read by no more than a few dozen people in an increasingly rarified field. And it’s evident to increasing numbers of Americans that such a system is absurd.

At the same time, many of these universities claim that no meaningful debate about capital-T truths could be allowed. As a result, they’ve substituted silly, new, and untested theories and narratives for the older traditions and enduring debates. Today, at far too many elite universities—which signal status above all, as if diplomas were Gucci handbags—free will, individual agency, forgiveness, personal improvement, and cross-cultural pollination are obliterated by omnipotent determinisms. This is the kind of education that led academics at the Smithsonian to create a graphic for children that portrays America as irredeemably racist and asserts that rugged individualism, the nuclear family, and hard work are “internalized aspects of white culture.” The message was clear: success is always a privilege and never the result of hard work or community or faith or parents or grandparents or any of the amazing voluntary organizations that are the beating heart of America. Such virtues as self-reliance are supposedly unattainable for minorities. This is the hogwash that the recipients of the most advanced degrees from our most prestigious universities wish to preach.

This cloistered elite believes that the world must be remade by academics, because, they tell us, for our entire history privileged oppressors ran roughshod over the oppressed and marginalized, and now the oppressors must be brought low to atone for history’s sins. This is a faith without guardrails, without external scrutiny, without grace, and certainly without a promise of reconciliation. This faith requires a life of constant moral struggle against the devil and the world, but without any accompanying eschatology of hope. There is no heaven and no messiah.

This religiosity has colonized humanities departments across supposedly secular institutions of higher education—ostensibly dedicated to the search for truth, the exploration of ideas, and the advancement of human flourishing. Instead these institutions have devoted themselves to inquisitions and struggle sessions where students are urged to catalog microaggressions and to conflate comfort with safety. Faculty who dare to treat students like adults with a sense of grit and a grand sense of potential face professional consequences. Administrators police language. Hiring committees compel credal statements that disavow basic American truths. Academic conferences provide safe spaces instead of thought-provoking forums; admissions officers devise formulas to rank students based on race, gender, class, and other external characteristics; administrators respond haplessly to mobs wielding the hecklers’ veto to shut down deliberation and debate about the big and meaningful and interesting questions that young people have given up four years of their lives to think about. All the grandest reasons to go to school are what they want to shut down.

The grotesque moral confusion on so many campuses after the October 7 massacre of 1,200 Israelis, and the taking 251 hostages, fits a familiar pattern. The acceptability of the speech depends on the speaker; individuals from oppressed groups are given leeway to target so-called oppressor groups through disruption and threat. This victimology allowed pro-Hamas factions—supposedly the oppressed—to target, intimidate, and harass Jews, who are the oppressors in the morally backward universe of American campuses. In late October, 2023, terrified Jewish students at Cooper Union were locked in a library while a mob banged on doors and spat out anti-Semitic slogans. And the absurdities at Columbia are practically too numerous to count: constant anti-Semitic babble, taking janitors hostage, disrupting classes, and vandalizing buildings—with no real consequences for the perpetrators; putting one of the biggest faculty cheerleaders of the encampments in charge of the core curriculum; offering the disruptors food instead of arresting them; the president apologizing to the protesters instead of to the students she had been charged to educate—and whose education the protesters sought to prevent.


Humans of New York or ‘Humans of Gaza’? Photographer Faces Backlash Over Series on Palestinian Aid Group With Alleged Terror Ties
A popular social media photoblog known for sharing moving profiles of New York City strangers is now being accused of platforming hate.

“Breaking: Humans of New York just posted a fawning story about Marwa Abu El Nour, a Gazan psychologist working for Doctors Without Borders,” a Middle East analyst, Eitan Fischberger, wrote on X. He claims, however, that Ms. Abu El Nour shared a pro-Jihadist message online on the day of Hamas’s October 7 attack.

“Humans of New York” launched in 2010 as a photoblog featuring street portraits and interviews collected by New York City-based photographer Brandon Stanton. As the account gained popularity — it boasts nearly 30 million followers across Instagram and Facebook — Mr. Stanton expanded his street photography past the five boroughs.

Most recently, Mr. Stanton turned his focus to Gaza, documenting the plight of several Palestinian medical professionals working with a humanitarian NGO, Doctors Without Borders, to provide medical care for Palestinians in the Strip. Each post features a series of photographs alongside first-person accounts of their experiences working in Gaza.

One post profiles Marwa Abu El-Nour, whom Mr. Stanton describes as a mental health supervisor in Gaza. She recounts losing her entire family to an Israeli strike and shares what she would tell her loved ones if she had one last moment with them. Thousands of users commented to express sympathy and praise Ms. Abu El-Nour for her bravery.

However, posts that Mr. Fischberger uncovered from Ms. Abu El-Nour’s personal Facebook account appeared to paint a different picture. One post dated October 7, 2023 — the day of Hamas’s attack on Israel — shows Ms. Abu El-Nour praying to Allah for the “victory” of the mujahideen — the Arabic term for jihadists — against “the Jews.”

An Israeli political scientist, Gerald Steinberg, who founded a non-governmental organization watchdog group, NGO Monitor, says “nobody should be surprised” to see a Doctors Without Borders employee supporting the October 7 massacre. According to Mr. Steinberg, the organization has become a “propaganda campaign for Hamas.”

“Listen, the doctors they send to Gaza are already primed to do their propaganda. And that’s probably one of the reasons that those are the people who go. There’s no oversight. There are no limitations,” Mr. Steinberg tells the Sun.
Mariam Elsayeh: Influential British Journalism Union Activist & Peddler of Anti-Israel Extremism Online
One of the main British organizations spearheading campaigns against Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza is the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), one of the top trade unions representing media workers in the United Kingdom.

From demonstrations and memorial services to petitions and media appearances, the NUJ has been incredibly vocal about its opposition to Israel’s conduct in the Gaza Strip.

One of the individuals at the forefront of the NUJ’s anti-Israel campaign is Mariam Elsayeh, a freelance journalist for Al Jazeera, who has also contributed to BBC Arabic and the New Arab. Elsayeh also serves as a training officer for the freelance branch of the NUJ and sits on the NUJ’s Ethics Council.

As a member of the Ethics Council, Elsayeh is tasked with working to “improve standards of journalism,” “to educate the public about the role of journalists,” and to educate journalists and students “about better practice.”

However, Elsayeh’s social media activity calls into question her ability to serve as an authority on professional journalistic standards. Instead of exemplifying journalistic integrity, Elsayeh’s social media is full of misinformation, the whitewashing of terrorism, and the platforming of extremist voices.

Fake News: Mariam Elsayeh’s Misinformation
Since the October 7 Hamas massacre and subsequent war between Israel and the terror group, Mariam Elsayeh’s social media has been interspersed with misinformation about the Jewish state and its fight against Palestinian terror groups.

For example, at the beginning of the war, an explosion rocked Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City. Hamas officials initially claimed that an Israeli strike on the hospital had killed 500 people. It was later determined that the explosion had been caused by an errant Islamic Jihad rocket, had occurred in the courtyard of the hospital, and that the number of casualties was lower than first reported.

Although many mainstream media organizations initially echoed Hamas’ unsubstantiated claims as fact, Elsayeh took it one step further, ludicrously tweeting that 1,000 people had been killed at the hospital, essentially doubling Hamas’ fake casualty count.

In another instance in October 2023, Elsayeh tweeted about an Israeli counter-terror operation in the West Bank, claiming that there was “No Hamas in west bank [sic],” implying that Israel was going after normal Palestinians and not terrorists.

Any observer of the region (which Elsayeh appears to be) would know that this claim is completely false and that Hamas is one of several terror organizations embedded within Palestinian areas of the West Bank.
BBC Arabic guest posted that Jews ‘infiltrated’ America
BBC Arabic’s Egypt MeanTime programme has hosted yet another pundit with a history of posting antisemitic conspiracy theories, prompting renewed criticism.

Material shown to the JC by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (Camera), a Boston-based pro-Israel NGO and media watchdog, show that one of its latest guests, Professor Gamal Qalyoubi, has publicly claimed that Jews control large swathes of the US.

Qalyoubi wrote in a 2024 article that American Jews were “holding the keys to wealth, politics, and the media” and had “infiltrated the institutions of the American people,” according to a Camera translation.

His appearance on Egypt MeanTime on May 29 adds to a growing list of controversial figures who have featured on the show under executive producer Mahmoud Sheleib, who was investigated by the BBC in 2023 for inflammatory posts on X about October 7.

The day after the massacre, Sheleib joked about an Israeli woman whose grandmother had been kidnapped receiving her “inheritance”. He also suggested that young Israelis could be targeted by Hamas terrorists because they are akin to soldiers.

Following an internal BBC investigation into his social media activity, Sheleib was reinstated in late 2023.

BBC Director General Tim Davie later claimed that the disciplinary process that Sheleib and others had undergone was “tough”.

Since returning to the show, Sheleib has continued to post on his now private X account.

On the night that Iran bombed Israel on June 14, he posted, “May Allah make your evening happy”. Last October, he commented on a JC article headlined “BBC stands by ‘kill the Jews’ doctor”, writing in Arabic, “No, that’s me, not them.”

Since Sheleib’s return to Egypt MeanTime, Camera – which the executive producer described as a tick or leech – has documented a pattern of the show featuring guests with histories of inflammatory rhetoric about Jews and Israel.

Among those figures flagged by Camera, Qalyoubi is the tenth. His appearance on BBC Arabic follows academics and commentators who, as revealed by Camera, have praised the October 7 attacks, likened Israel to Nazi Germany, and promoted conspiracy theories about Jewish control.


Green Party elects Jewish non-Zionist Zack Polanski as new leader
Zack Polanski – who has previously said he is “proud to be Jewish” but is “certainly not a Zionist” – has been elected as new leader of the Green Party.

The vegan London Assembly member beat joint candidates Adrian Ramsay and Ellie Chowns, in a members vote on the back of his “eco-populist” agenda for the party.

In a commanding victory the 42 year-old won with a vote of 20,411 members, a vast majority over the 3,705 votes cast for Ramsay and Chowns, who are two of the Greens’ four MPs.

The Leeds councillor who hailed the “end of white settler colonialism” on October 7 was also elected as the deputy leader of the Greens, the party confirmed.

Mothin Ali previously defended the right of “indigenous people to fight back” after October 7, while, on the day of the attack, he wrote on X: “White supremacist European settler colonialism must end.”

In his acceptance speech, new leader Polanski claimed the Greens would now “replace” the Labour government, which he accused of supporting “the genocide in Gaza”.

He later added:”The Green Party now has a Jewish leader, and a Muslim deputy leader.

“We recognise that antisemitism and Islamophobia are two sides of the same coin… when communities ask for solidarity, including the trans community, the only authentic response is to give that solidarity”.


Israel arrests Hebron PA mayor on suspicion of supporting terrorism
The Palestinian Authority mayor of Hebron was arrested by Israeli security forces on suspicion of supporting and inciting terror, Hebrew media reported on Tuesday.

Tayseer Abu Sneineh was taken into Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) custody on Tuesday morning after expressing support for Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, according to Channel 12 News.

Pending the investigation, Abu Sneineh is reportedly being held in administrative detention.

The Israel Defense Forces’ Spokesperson’s Unit confirmed to JNS that the matter fell under the Shin Bet’s authority. The internal security agency did not respond to a JNS request for comment on Tuesday.

In 1980, Abu Sneineh took part in a terrorist ambush in Hebron in which six civilians, including two Americans and a Canadian, were killed and 16 others wounded. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Israeli security forces kill Palestinian terrorist in raid near Nablus
A Palestinian terror suspect was killed by Israeli security forces near Nablus (Shechem) during an arrest raid overnight Monday.

The suspect attempted to escape during the raid in the village of Tammun, according to the Israel Defense Forces. Border Police fired at him and “a hit was confirmed,” it added.

Israel’s Ynet outlet reported that the suspect was killed, and had been on his way to carry out an attack at the time of the raid.

“Security forces will continue to act to thwart terrorism and bring to justice any terrorist who seeks to harm Israeli citizens,” the IDF said.

In January, an IDF soldier was killed and an officer seriously wounded when their vehicle hit an explosive device in Tammun.

Palestinian terrorists targeted Israeli Jews in Judea and Samaria at least 6,343 times in 2024, according to figures published by the Rescuers Without Borders (Hatzalah Judea and Samaria) NGO on Feb. 17.

Hatzalah Judea and Samaria’s figures, which were cross-checked against official data from Israeli security services, included 179 terror shootings.

Twenty-seven Israelis were murdered in Judea and Samaria in 2024, and more than 300 others were wounded, the group said in its annual report.


US sanctions network accused of smuggling $300 million worth of Iranian oil
The Trump administration sanctioned a shipping network it says smuggles about $300 million annually in Iranian oil falsely presented as originating in Iraq, the U.S. Treasury and State Departments said on Tuesday.

The federal government also sanctioned Waleed Khaled Hameed al-Samarra’i, an Iraqi businessman based in the United Arab Emirates, accused of running the network.

Washington said that the oil is presented as being “solely of Iraqi origin to avoid sanctions” and is transferred from ship to ship using the Iranian regime’s “shadow fleet.”

“Iraq cannot become a safe haven for terrorists, which is why the United States is working to counter Iran’s influence in the country,” stated Scott Bessent, the U.S. treasury secretary.

“By targeting Iran’s oil revenue stream, Treasury will further degrade the regime’s ability to carry out attacks against the United States and its allies,” he said.

Gregory Brew, a senior analyst at the Eurasia Group, said Washington was “clamping down on one of the best-known oil smuggling routes.”

“For years, Iraqi businesses have profited by disguising Iranian crude and shipping it out in defiance of sanctions,” he said. “This round targets a prominent Iraqi national and adds another nine tankers.”


Anti-Israel protesters attack man speaking Hebrew in Los Angeles area
The Santa Monica Police Department is probing an assault on an Israeli man at the Santa Monica Pier, a popular tourist attraction west of downtown Los Angeles, on Sunday as a hate crime, a department spokesman told JNS.

The victim, who was speaking Hebrew, sustained minor injuries from the attack, according to Lt. Lewis Gilmour, a department spokesman. Gilmour said officers are investigating the attack as a hate crime “based on statements made during the incident and circumstances reported.”

The Jewish Journal identified the victim as Ariel Yaakov Marciano, 24.

Marciano, who was wearing a Star of David necklace when he was attacked, told the Journal that he was visiting from Sacramento for his cousin’s bar mitzvah.

When the assailants noticed he was talking Hebrew to an Israeli man from Las Vegas, they attacked him, he told the paper. “One of them hit me on the back of the head, and I started bleeding,” he told the paper. (JNS sought comment from the victim.)

The victim told the paper that he was pushed and attackers tore the necklace from him and that he pushed an attacker, who was masked. He told the Journal that about 20 people attacked him.

One drew a knife and said, “You’re lucky I’m not stabbing you,” and another pepper-sprayed him, he told the paper.

The police spokesman told JNS that there were “several verbal altercations and disturbances” between what he called a “pro-Gaza demonstration” at a nearby park and a counter-demonstration, with about 100 people.

“We are deeply disturbed by this incident and the hateful conduct reported in connection with it,” he said. “The Santa Monica Police Department condemns all forms of hate and antisemitism. We want to be clear: Hatred and intimidation will not be tolerated here.”


Florida man with ‘detailed’ plans to attack Jews, black people gets 25 years
John Kevin Lapinski Jr. was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Aug. 29 for “a series of firearm offenses and for amassing weapons, tactical gear and attack plans targeting Jewish and black Americans,” the U.S. Justice Department said.

The 41-year-old, of Margate in the Miami metropolitan area, had pleaded guilty to owning a gun and body armor as a convicted felon and having an unregistered silencer.

Police found a “shooting target depicting a black male riddled with bullet holes” in Lapinski’s Florida home, where they also found five guns, more than 3,000 rounds of ammunition, gun parts, two silencers, body armor, smoke grenades, tactical gear and a camouflage Ghillie suit, on Oct. 31, 2024, the department stated.

As a convicted felon, he was barred from owning such items.

In his home, police also found “maps of local schools, parks and other community sites scrawled with racial slurs targeting black and Jewish people, as well as a ‘target list’ naming ‘groups to attack’ based on race and religion,” the department said. “The list included a Jewish member of Congress, local synagogues, Jewish-owned businesses, and other religious and ethnically identified sites.”

Investigators tied Lapinski to an August 2024 attack, in which the “home and vehicle of a Jewish resident were riddled with bullets,” the Justice Department stated.
Man arrested after Jewish woman left with serious injuries in scooter attack
Police have arrested a man after a Jewish woman was hospitalised following an e-scooter attack in north east London, in which the alleged assailant reportedly shouted “f***ing Jew”.

The incident happened at 2.20pm on Monday on Clapton Common, Hackney. Footage released by Shomrim London North & East shows the assailant carrying out two unprovoked antisemitic assaults.

A 21-year-old woman was rammed by the attacker, who is believed to have shouted “F***ing Jew”. She was admitted to hospital with a fractured arm, bruised leg and facial scar after being chased into the road.

Moments later, the same man rammed into a 24-year-old woman who was with her three-year-old daughter, knocking her to the ground. The child was left shocked and traumatised.

Shomrim volunteers tracked the suspect until Hackney Police officers made an arrest on suspicion of racially aggravated common assault and common assault.


Belgian hospital suspends doctor who shared antisemitic political cartoons
A hospital in Belgium defended on Tuesday a physician who had last week identified in medical papers a patient as Jewish, but suspended him over antisemitic cartoons posted on his social-media account in 2023.

The physician was identified as Dr. Qasim Arkawazy by the Jewish Information and Documentation Center, a communal watchdog group in Antwerp.

On Aug. 29, Arkawazy included references to a patient’s nationality and ethnicity in a hospital admission form in his capacity as a radiologist at AZ Zeno Campus Knokke-Heist, the hospital wrote in a statement on Tuesday. The patient was a 9-year-old girl who came in for treatment for pain in her left arm, her medical papers stated.

The hospital initially claimed that the distinction of the patient’s ethnicity “was included for medical reasons,” then acknowledged how it “could be seen as offensive.”

“We have changed the digital patient file,” the hospital stated.

JID’s investigation into that incident led them to find two cartoons that Arkawazy had made on social media in October 2023 following the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct.7.

One cartoon showed Haredi men with vampire teeth approaching a baby menacingly. Another showed a Haredi Jew branding an Arab with a Star of David symbol as the Arab bows before Uncle Sam, seemingly to represent the United States.


Booking.com drops two guesthouses that refused to accept Israeli visitors
Travel agency Booking.com has taken action against a hotel in southern Italy and a hostel in Bosnia after the two venues refused to accept Israeli guests, apparently due to the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, according to a Tuesday report.

It came as Spanish booking site eDreams announced that it would no longer list any Israeli guesthouses located in the West Bank.

In one incident, an Israeli woman was denied a Booking.com reservation for a hotel in Naples, while in another, a man from Israel was turned away at the front gate of a guesthouse in Bosnia, Channel 12 reported.

Anti-Israel and antisemitic incidents have spiked since the start of the war in Gaza, with critics blaming Israel for the ballooning humanitarian crisis and civilian death toll in the Palestinian coastal enclave.

According to the report, Booking said in a statement regarding the Naples case that every location advertised on its website must abide by a contract that includes “an unequivocal commitment to prevent in any way discrimination.”

When trying to book a room at the hotel, the Israeli woman was told during written communications that she cannot stay on the premises if she either did military service in the Gaza Strip or supports the Netanyahu government.

The tourist, identified only as Shir, told Channel 12 that she felt it was “serious and unacceptable discrimination against Israelis.”

Bookings said it opened a probe into the matter and confirmed it removed the hotel from its site.


Here I Am With Shai Davidai: 1.5 Million Followers Later | My Jewish TikTok Story with Melinda Strauss
In this Season 5 premiere, host Shai Davidai sits down with Melinda Strauss, a modern Orthodox Jewish creator and author with over 1.5 million followers. Melinda shares her journey from starting a food blog to becoming a prominent voice on Jewish life, faith, and food across social media. The conversation covers her approach to answering questions about Judaism, building inclusive communities, and addressing misconceptions—ranging from kosher food to Jewish identity and cultural appropriation. Melinda emphasizes the importance of curiosity, education, and making personal choices in religious practice, while also discussing the diversity within the Jewish community. This episode is a thoughtful exploration of Jewish culture, social media influence, and the power of sharing authentic stories.


Coleman Hughes: Hostage Families Divided: Ceasefire Now or Total Victory Over Hamas?
I sat down with three hostage families: Talik Gvili, the mother of Ran Gvili; Tzvika Mor, the father of Eitan Mor; and Dalia Cusnir, the sister-in-law of brothers Iair and Eitan Hom.

Everyone wants the war in Gaza to end. The reason the war is not over is because about 50 people are still being held hostage by Hamas.

Twenty of them are alive, but on the brink of death. About 30 of them have already been killed, and their bodies remain in Hamas captivity.

There are differing opinions on the best way to bring them home: continue the ground war in Gaza, or take the partial deal put forward by Qatar and Egypt—which includes a 60-day ceasefire and the release of 10 living hostages and 18 bodies in exchange for hundreds of security prisoners.

This war is one where everyone has an opinion. But in my view, no opinion matters more than those of the families whose loved ones, including their children, are living in Hamas terror tunnels. These families are in a collective debate about the best way to bring their loved ones home.

So I want to play a really special episode from Conversations with Coleman that illuminates these differences, and showcases arguably the largest debate in Israeli society today.






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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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