Thursday, September 25, 2025

09/25 Links Pt2: The Evil Roots of Jew-Hating Social Influencers; 1,200+ Entertainment Leaders Reject Boycotting Israel; Holocaust survivor and last Bielski Brother Aron Bielski dies at age 98

From Ian:

Howard Jacobson: "Kill the Jews!": The Cry Went Out across the World
Let’s be clear – the anti-Semitism of today is more than hate that doesn’t know what else to do with itself. This is purposive, orchestrated hate, combining Islamic hostility to the very idea of a Jewish state on Arab land; Christian anti-Judaism that goes back two thousand years, and which Hamas has been adroit at mobilising to its cause (see, for example, the staged photographs of Virgin Mary in a hijab cradling an emaciated Palestinian Jesus); Leftist mistrust of bankers and financiers with bulbous features; and professorial obsession with settler-colonialism, a made-up academic discipline that denominates Zionism as an ideology of conquest, no matter that the first Zionists were returning to their historic homeland as refugees from the pogroms of Eastern Europe. Being kicked from pillar to post for hundreds of years is now to be understood as marauding. Behold an intifada well and truly globalised.

As for the argument that you can hate Zionism and not hate Jews – it being a mere coincidence that the same language is employed for both – that was blown apart in the first weeks of October 2023 when all such distinctions were dropped in the carnival excitement of the butchering and raping of Jews wherever they came from and whatever they believed.

“Kill the Jews!”, the cry went out across the world. Not just Zionists and Israelis, but all Jews. Here was the diabolic genius of the Hamas massacre – it de-parochialised the Palestinian struggle, capitalising on that pity deficiency John Gray described, freeing the world’s conscience from a guilt it had never been truly comfortable feeling. In the outpouring of jubilation that greeted the rapes and killings in such Meccas of feminism and anti-racism as Harvard and Oxford could be heard loud sighs of relief. The spell of Holocaust immunity had been broken.

We have come a long way from those first callow deniers who turned up on the roof of Auschwitz like schoolboys on the first day of term with a new supply of rulers and set squares, determined to prove that six million Jews could never have been gassed in such cramped conditions. Thereafter, denial took more varied and sinister forms.

Hadn’t some Jew handed others over to the Nazis? Hadn’t local Jewish leaders connived in the Holocaust in order that fear would swell the numbers wanting to flee to Israel? Didn’t Romanies and homosexuals suffer as many casualties? And what was so special about this Holocaust anyway? Holocausts were common – a democratisation of the Shoah that led to some Holocaust Remembrance Day events not mentioning Jews at all. After which, Shoah envy began to creep in. Everyone wanted to have one.

Obligingly, Benjamin Netanyahu has gone some way to giving the Palestinians a taste of their own. Some way. Ferocious as Netanyahu’s assault on Gaza has been, it began as a response to a brutal attack on innocent civilians. It met war with war. No such provocation sparked off the Holocaust. The camps were not a response to a Jewish massacre of young Germans. There’d been no jostle for land. No history of territorial dispute. The Third Reich’s hatred for the Jews was not political. It was brewed up in its imagination, stimulated into madness by hundreds of years of Christian anti-Semitism.
Anti-Israel activism has produced the next generation of violent far-Left icons
The only new prisoner heroes were abroad, in the form of the Palestinian movement. Marxist-Leninist terrorist groups like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine exported the stories of Palestinian "political prisoners" to far Left American audiences.

"The US state isn't the only state to hold political prisoners. We would be remiss if we failed to mention that illegitimate state of Israel, its occupation of Palestine, and the thousands of Palestinian freedom fighters who have been locked behind bars for largely the same reasons of those who have fought here in the United States," Domond said in the 2021 PSL lecture.

PFLP terrorist Walid Daqqah has become cited by far Left activists as much as Shakur, with PSL, International League of Peoples' Struggle, and the Workers World Party engaging in calls for his release when he still lived.

Dozens of socialist groups signed a Palestinian Youth Movement petition for his release. Lebanese terrorist and PFLP affiliate Georges Abdallah had also captured the imagination of many socialists, up until his release from a French prison this year.

According to Workers World, PFLP proxy Samidoun NY/NJ coordinator Laila Boutros quoted imprisoned PFLP leader Ahmad Saadat at a 2021 Philadelphia rally calling for the release of Abu-Jamal, stating “Whether the name is Mumia Abu-Jamal, Walid Daqqah or Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, political prisoners behind bars can and must be a priority for our movements."

"These names illustrate the continuity of struggle against our collective enemy - their legacies of organizing that reach back to the anti-colonial liberation movements of the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, to today," Bourtros continued. "Political prisoners are not simply individuals; they are leaders of struggle and organizing.”

Framing of Gaza Strip as 'open-air prison'
The Palestinian cause has been important to radical socialist activists, but with the October 7 Massacre, the cause seems to resonate even further. Socialists embraced the framing of Gaza as an "open-air prison."

Revolutionary Communist International called the Hamas-ruled territory as such on October 11, and an October 9 Socialist Worker article framed Palestinians as tearing "down the fences that imprison them."

Other far Left activists saw the October 7 Massacre as a bid to free "Palestinian political prisoners" from Israeli prisons. Communist social media influencer Black Red Guard said in November 2023 that Palestinian terrorists released in a ransom for hostages captured by Hamas was the "fruit of the armed struggle."

An X user claiming to be associated with the Democratic Socialists of America said a month later that October 7 "was designed to embarrass the IDF and capture hostages for prisoner exchange."

The resonance of October 7 and the ensuing war seemed to rally the dormant Marxist martyr-complex. Since 2023, there has been a surge in anti-Israel domestic terrorism, and with this, a new generation of martyrs for the anti-American revolutionary cause have arisen.
Inventing Genocide in Gaza: The UN's Fertility Clinic Blood Libel
None of these claims are even minimally substantiated. The UN report rests entirely on an April 2024 ABC News article, published more than four months after the alleged December 2023 strike. It quotes the clinic’s director—who was not present, could not identify the date, and merely asserted without evidence that an IDF shell was responsible. The article never asks how a clinic director could independently determine the ordnance used. Israel stated it was unaware of any strike at the site. No forensic analysis was undertaken, no fragments recovered or examined, no trajectory studies performed, no experts dispatched, and no effort made to reconstruct the events of that day. Even the UN report concedes it is not actually certain how the clinic was damaged, stating it was “most probably” an Israeli shell.

Photographs also contradict the UN’s case. ABC News images show the clinic still standing (see Figure 1), with limited interior damage, while a Reuters photo (see Figure 2) omitted from the UN report depicts an adjacent multi-story tower with a gaping hole at its center, far more consistent with being the real target of IDF fire. The claim that the clinic suffered the most damage is plainly false. The photos reveal active combat in the area and evidence of a possible threat from the adjacent building. There is no proof the clinic was struck by Israeli fire; it could just as easily have been hit by a Hamas RPG or misfired rocket. Even if it was an IDF shell, nothing shows the clinic was the target. Furthermore, the idea of a “precision strike” on nitrogen tanks inside a largely intact structure is implausible.

This fog of uncertainty would matter less if the Al-Basma case were incidental. But it is central to the genocide charge, the key example offered in the UN report to show Israel imposed on Gazans “measures to prevent births,” a particularly depraved act if true. By exposing this claim as baseless, the report is revealed for what it is: a political document built on omissions and deliberate distortions intended to demonize Israel.

This is why Al-Basma matters. If the UN can manufacture a genocide charge out of limited damage at a clinic based on an unverified media report four months after the fact, admit that they were not certain whether it was an Israeli shell, and suppress evidence of greater destruction in the adjacent building that was more likely the target, the entire exercise becomes propaganda rather than fact-finding.

The charge of genocide carries unique gravity and demands the highest standard of proof. To invoke it without verified evidence is reckless and malicious. The truth about the Al-Basma IVF clinic is far less dramatic than the UN’s narrative. Only two facts are known: the clinic was damaged in combat, and embryos were tragically lost. Beyond that, everything else is unknown and speculative. There is no verified date, no confirmed ordnance, no known witnesses, and no evidence of intent. To turn this into proof of a genocidal campaign to harm the very future of the Palestinian people is a distortion so severe it exposes the fabrication of the UN report. Shame on the politicians and others who repeat these falsehoods.


Jake Wallis Simons: Armchair historians offer nothing useful on Israel-Palestine
What is the difference between history and deep history? I only ask because yesterday, after Keir Starmer had aligned British foreign policy with Hamas, the elfin liberal opinionator Lewis Goodall appeared to draw such a distinction.

“So much of the commentary on Palestine today without much sense of the deep history”, he lamented on social media with a virtual toss of his floppy locks. “You can say this is a debt which has long been owed. The Palestinians expected a state a century ago when the British took on the mandate.”

Helpfully, Goodall then posted a link to the source of his “deep history”: a page on the Imperial War Museum website featuring a handful of sentences seemingly written for children and a 15-minute YouTube video.

Deep. Very deep. But in Goodall’s rendering, glaringly incomplete. The part that he appeared to overlook was when the Palestinian Arabs, led by the fanatical Nazi collaborator Amin al-Husseini, rejected the offer of a country of their own and instead launched a genocidal war upon the nascent Israel.

That marked the first time the Palestinians turned down the two-state solution in favour of bloodshed, a pattern they have sadly repeated many times since.

Deep history, it seems, is just a version of events that aligns with comfortable liberal prejudices rather than the facts. Shallow history, in other words.

You’ve got to feel for the Left. If only the real world matched their assumptions, they wouldn’t have to resort to slight of hand.

Wouldn’t life be easier if the Palestinians hadn’t sided with the Nazis during the war; if they hadn’t rejected a state of their own in favour of war with Israel in 1948; if they hadn’t blown up the Oslo Accords in the Nineties; if they hadn’t walked away from the Clinton deal at Camp David in 2000; if they hadn’t snubbed the Ehud Olmert plan, which accommodated their demands, in 2008; if they hadn’t turned Gaza into a terror enclave after Israel pulled out in 2005; if they hadn’t embarked upon an orgy of butchery, rape, mutilation and kidnap on October 7?
Stephan Pollard: Yvette Cooper’s ahistorical assertions expose the fatuity behind recognising Palestine
Britain did indeed recognise the State of Israel, but there was nothing proud about how and why – and it only did so grudgingly, two years after independence, on 28 April 1950, when antisemitic foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, had no real choice other than to recognise Israel.

As for the second part of Cooper’s assertion – “For decades, my country supported a two-state solution but only recognised one state” – I wonder why that might have been. Might it, do you think, have anything, just possibly, perhaps, on reflection, who knows, have anything to do with the fact that the Arabs (as they were then known) refused the UN offer of a state via partition? Or that they then launched a war to annihilate the nascent State of Israel and destroy it at birth?

Or that at the end of that war, the areas Cooper and Starmer say should now form part of a Palestinian state were occupied by Egypt and Jordan, neither of which had any intention of using them to constitute a Palestinian state (Jordan occupied Jerusalem and annexed the West Bank).

Or that at every point subsequent to that, when Israel has been engaged in serious negotiations and offered to accept a state, the Arabs/Palestinians have rejected everything?

If Cooper wants to avoid further distortions over the basics of the history of a putative Palestinian state, she might consider what President Clinton says about it. Talking recently about Camp David in 2000, he said the Palestinians rejected a “once in a lifetime” peace opportunity. “You can’t complain 25 years later when the doors weren’t all still open, and all the possibilities weren’t still there…All [young people in America] know that a lot more Palestinians have been killed than Israelis. And I tell them what Arafat walked away from, and they, like, can’t believe it”.

That deal offered by Israel would have meant a capital in East Jerusalem, 96 per cent of the West Bank and 4 per cent of Israel to make up for the 4 per cent of the West Bank to be annexed for Israeli settlements. “I go through all the stuff that was in the deal, and they, like – it’s not on their radar screen, they can’t even imagine that happened,” Clinton said.

But it’s not just young Americans who are unaware of history.

Cooper is 56 years old and British.

The Foreign Secretary’s deeply misleading UN speech was not, however, the only issue this week for anyone concerned with what is happening to British policy. With typical sensitivity, on Rosh Hashanah the British Consulate General in Jerusalem decided to erase the capital of Israel, changing the consulate’s address on its website from simply East Jerusalem to "Jerusalem, Palestine". And it added a “location” section, also listing it as Palestine.

After an almighty fuss online – and, one imagines, from the US – the entire address was removed from the site. The implication of this, rather than merely correcting it as if it had been the work of one over-eager website manager, is that a discussion is now under way in the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office as to how the address should be styled. How Jerusalem, in fact, should be styled.

Whether, in other words, the UK government lives in the real world, in which Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, or in its own fantasy world, in which Jerusalem is the capital of a state, Palestine, which does not exist. Given the past year of Labour policy towards Israel, I have little doubt as to which it will be.
The six times Palestinian leaders rejected a state
The Palestinian leaders’ consistent rejection of peace initiatives over the past 88 years not only calls into question their commitment to coexistence with Israel but to the welfare and safety of their people.

Taking into account all the initiatives proposed to end the conflict, we must consider the possibility that the Palestinians – or at least their leaders – do not want to establish their own state.

Their sights are currently set on the big prize — the entire state of Israel — and they are playing for time. In the mean time, they plan to continue to subsist on funds donated by the Arabs and the Europeans.

Many of the Arab states have grown disenchanted with this enterprise, however, and assistance – particularly from the Saudis – has been discontinued in recent years.

President Donald Trump has also reduced the flow of US support. Only the Europeans remain committed to the implacable Palestinian narrative.


Sharon Osbourne and Debra Messing among 1,200 stars rejecting boycott of Israeli film industry
Sharon Osbourne and Debra Messing are among more than 1,200 entertainment leaders to sign an open letter rejecting calls to boycott Israel’s film and television industry, denouncing the pledge as “discriminatory and antisemitic.”

The statement organised by Creative Community for Peace (CCFP) and grassroots group the Brigade was released in Los Angeles on Thursday. It comes in response to a pledge by “Film Workers for Palestine” urging colleagues to sever ties with Israeli film companies, festivals and cultural institutions.

Hollywood and global figures including Liev Schreiber, Mayim Bialik, Gene Simmons, Greg Berlanti, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Lisa Edelstein, Anthony Edwards, Rebecca De Mornay and Haim Saban are among the signatories.

CCFP said the boycott attempt amounts to cultural erasure at a time of rising antisemitism worldwide.

Haim Saban, chairman and CEO of Saban Entertainment, said: “Excluding Israeli filmmakers because of their identity betrays the mission of storytelling and undermines peace. True progress comes when we listen to one another, Israelis and Palestinians alike, and allow art to open doors that politics too often close.”

The letter follows controversy at this month’s Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), where Barry Avrich’s The Road Between Us – about retired general Noam Tibon’s mission to rescue his family on 7 October – was briefly dropped under boycott pressure before being reinstated. It went on to win TIFF’s People’s Choice Documentary Award.

Debra Messing said: “When artists boycott fellow artists based solely on their country of origin, it is blatant discrimination and a betrayal of our role as storytellers. History shows boycotts against Jews have long been a tool of authoritarian regimes.”

Mayim Bialik added: “This boycott pledge does nothing to end the war in Gaza, bring the hostages home, or curb antisemitism globally. It only fuels division.”

The statement highlights that Israel’s film sector includes productions critical of government policy and collaborations with Palestinian filmmakers. Last week, The Sea – about a Palestinian boy visiting Tel Aviv for the first time – won Israel’s top film prize, despite its backers being singled out in the boycott.

Rebecca De Mornay said: “Israel alone is singled out and condemned. This is a hypocritical double standard and an unjust punishment of Israeli artists and films.”
Addressing Home Affairs’ troubling policy of blocking Israeli visas
“When people stop talking, that’s when you get violence, that’s when civil war happens…” – Per the late Charlie Kirk.

October 7, 2023 marked a turning point for Australian Jewry. However, what many could not anticipate is the increasing suppression of free speech by government members such as Tony Burke.

Presenting a perspective on Israel that opposes Tony Burke’s views will almost certainly now mean he will shut you out of the country.

Three times in the past year he has cancelled the visas that had been duly granted to prominent Israelis who had been invited to Australia by significant Jewish organisations; and on each occasion the cancellation was at the last minute – just as the person was about to leave Israel for Australia; and on each occasion the cancellation was on the grounds that the person would or might be, a risk to the health, safety or good order of the Australian community or a segment of the Australian community.

At the same time, radical Islamists calling for the destruction of Israel and Jews generally have been waived in with ease.

Mr Burke, quick to assure the Australian Press (Nine Newspapers) he “really doesn’t care about receiving criticisms on freedom of speech. Like [sic] do not care”, proudly touted that his government was “blocking visas for potentially divisive visitors at an unprecedented rate”.

The first example was former Interior and Justice Minister, Ayelet Shaked, whose entry to Australia was denied in November 2024, although she had visited in early 2023.

Then Israeli-American tech entrepreneur and pro-Israel influencer, Hillel Fuld had his previously approved visa cancelled in June 2025. Fuld was scheduled to speak at Magen David Adom fundraising events to raise money for humanitarian purposes: the very essence of “social cohesion”.

The final straw was when Israeli MK Simcha Rothman was granted a visa on August 8, 2025 to enter Australia on a speaking tour organised by the Australian Jewish Association (AJA). On August 18, 2025, the day of departure, he was notified his visa was revoked – on the grounds that his presence in Australia would or might be a risk to the health, safety or good order of the Islamic community.

But that ground is not only entirely ill-founded – it is absurd, irrational and false; it is unsupported by any cogent or relevant evidence; it is based upon the notion that it is inflammatory to call for the elimination of Hamas, or to assert that Israel has a right to sovereignty over its ancestral homeland, or to deny that Israel is committing atrocities against Palestinians and Gaza during the current conflict.

Enough is enough. The Minister is impermissibly seeking to burden the implied freedom of political communication contrary to the Australian Constitution; and he is doing so in a manner that is discriminatory and inconsistent with the principle of equality.
The Evil Roots of Jew-Hating Social Influencers
In the last year, especially the last few months, we have seen many social influencers who claim to be “devout Christians” attacking Israel specifically and all Jews generally. From Tucker Carlson to Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes to Jake Shields, pundit after pundit has been attacking Judaism to lesser and greater degrees. Denying the Holocaust, praising Adolf Hitler, accusing different scoundrels like Jeffrey Epstein of actually being Mossad agents, accusing Judaism of being a religion of pedophilia and Israel a nation that welcomes sexual abusers, and even accusing Israel of assassinating JFK...the list of their vile lies seems endless.

Many of these Jew-hating pundits, especially Fuentes and Owens (and their followers), justify their hate by “revealing” what they say are quotes from the Talmud (a sacred Jewish text and commentary assembled between the third and sixth centuries). They justify their antisemitism through a litany of clearly horrific “quotes”: “A Jew may have sex with a child under 9 years old,” “Gentiles prefer sex with cows,” “ Even the best of Gentiles should be killed,” and more. These ignorant influencers claim that the Talmud has all sorts of anti-Christian quotes about Jesus: that he is “a fool and insane,” “a bastard conceived in menstruation,” “Christ is evil and was Esau himself,” “a seducer,” and “is buried in hell.” And more...

Owens claims to have “done her research” and that this is hidden Jewish theology. Except, without exception, the quotes that are being used are either entirely fabricated or conscious mistranslations. So how is it that these antisemitic pundits are referencing anything about the Talmud?

Almost without exception, these mistranslations and made-up quotes are coming from a book called The Talmud Unmasked, written in 1892 by a Jew-hating criminal priest named Justinas Pranaitis (some of which he took from Motiejus Valancius, a bishop from a generation earlier). Pranaitis was a convicted blackmailer, forced to flee St. Petersburg because of his crimes, and an avowed hater of Jews. When called in as an “expert witness” for the blood libel trial of Menahem Bellis in 1912, his testimony demonstrated such an extreme lack of knowledge about Judaism and the Talmud that “many in the audience occasionally laughed out loud when he clearly became confused and couldn’t even intelligibly answer some of the questions asked by [Bellis’s] lawyer.” (Bellis was acquitted.)

But in 1892, he wrote this book, which the Jew-haters like Fuentes, Owens, et al. are quoting from, which is subtitled “The Secret Rabbinical Teachings Concerning Christians.” In it, he purports to quote from the Talmud teachings about Jesus, Christians, Freemasonry, secret Jewish rituals, Jewish conspiracy movements, etc. This book has been universally rejected by scholars and academics as a work of antisemitism couched as a piece of academia, but that doesn’t stop the Jew-hating social influencers from quoting it repeatedly.

The saddest thing is that these pundits could simply check any of the quotes that they are actually citing. The Talmud is easily available online in both English and Hebrew at Sefaria or through the Jewish Virtual Library, and each of Pranaitis’s supposed references can be double-checked. Even a brief scan of the actual text shows the fabrications that compose Pranaitis’s book. Without exception, ALL of the hate-filled concepts listed above from Pranaitis that these anti-Semitic commentators are quoting do not exist in the Talmud, and have never been part of Jewish theology.


BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit: Bob Vylan Glastonbury set WAS antisemitic
The BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit has partially upheld a complaint with regard to the corporation’s livestreaming of a Glastonbury Set by Bob Vylan, agreeing that “the content of this act, taken in the round, can fairly be characterised as antisemitic.”

In a judgement released today, the organisation’s ECU confirmed that it had received “four complaints about the livestreaming of a performance by the duo Bob Vylan, characterising it variously as containing incitement to violence, terrorism or ethnic cleansing, hate speech and expressions of antisemitism…one complaint argued that the performance also breached the BBC’s standards of impartiality.”

The unit described how, during the show held in June, Pascal Robinson-Foster, the band’s front man, “led the Glastonbury audience in chanting ‘Death, death to the IDF’ (as well as reciting the slogans ‘From the river to the sea’ and ‘Free, free Palestine’) and an earlier segment in which the same member referred to the boss of a record company he once worked for who ‘would talk about his support for Israel’ and whom he went on to describe in the most abusive terms, using the most offensive language, also referring to ‘f…ing Zionists’.

The primary weight of the ECU’s condemnation fell on Robinson-Foster’s diatribe against the record company boss.

“References to ‘Free Palestine’ and ‘From the river to the sea’, while viewed by some as implying the disappearance of the state of Israel, can also be regarded as no more than expressions of support for aspirations to a Palestinian state and do not of themselves threaten violent action”, they said, going on to state that “’Death, death to the IDF’ is clearly more problematic, but it is directed at an institution rather than individuals, and one which is not defined by ethnic or religious composition.

“However, it occurred in a context coloured by the earlier comments about the record company boss, which seemed to the ECU to have the effect (whether intended or not) of evoking a certain stereotype of Jewish influence in the entertainment industry. Although Bob Vylan referred to ‘Zionists’ rather than ‘Jews’, that appeared to the ECU to be a distinction with very little difference in this instance. The ECU therefore shares the view that the content of this act, taken in the round, can fairly be characterised as antisemitic.”

The ECU found that overall, the performance breached the BBC’s editorial standards with regards to guidelines on harm and offence dealing with “unduly intimidating, humiliating, intrusive, aggressive or derogatory remarks aimed at real people”. However it said that it did not consider the performance to have fallen foul of the guidelines on material likely to encourage or incite crime, saying that “in the context of a performance at a music festival, the chanting of slogans can be regarded as primarily an invitation to endorse a particular attitude.”
Two charged with hate crime of throwing pork into Syracuse Jewish frat house on Rosh Hashanah
Two Syracuse University students have been charged with a hate crime for allegedly throwing a bag of pork into a Jewish fraternity house during Rosh Hashanah, one of the most sacred days on the Jewish calendar.

An official at the upstate New York school stated that the incident occurred on Tuesday at approximately 6 p.m. at the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity house during an ongoing student celebration marking the Jewish New Year.

One of the suspects is accused of entering the fraternity house and throwing a plastic bag of pork against a wall, spilling its contents on the floor, per university police.

The suspect then fled into a vehicle, which the second suspect drove.

Both 18-year-olds were caught soon thereafter and charged with burglary as a hate crime and criminal nuisance.

The hate crime charge materialized due to the incident taking place on a Jewish holiday, according to William Fitzpatrick, district attorney of Onondaga County.

“This incident is not a foolish college prank and will not be treated as such,” Fitzpatrick stated. “It will be treated for what it is: a crime directed against a group of Jewish students enjoying a celebratory dinner and seemingly secure in their residence.”


'Reliable' Al Jazeera Is Top Source for OpenAI and Google-Powered AI News Summaries on Israel and Gaza: Hamas-Tied Qatar’s News Outlet Dominates AI Search Results
Al Jazeera, the virulently anti-Israel news outlet controlled by Qatar, is one of the two top sources used by leading artificial intelligence chatbots—OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Perplexity AI—to answer questions and write news summaries about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a Washington Free Beacon analysis has found.

ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity—as well as X’s Grok—list Al Jazeera as one of their most reliable sources on the topic. In response to queries from the Free Beacon, the chatbots praised Al Jazeera for its reliability, "on-the-ground detail," "academic credibility," and "global visibility."

Indeed, ChatGPT, the world’s leading AI chatbot, said that in the past month it cited Al Jazeera more frequently on the topic than almost any other news source, including the New York Times and the Associated Press. Gemini, for one, says it specifically does not use pro-Israel news sources, because they engage in "hasbara," the Hebrew word for public relations and advocacy, "rather than journalism." Perplexity, which reportedly boasts 22 million users, says its top sources for news on the Middle East are "respected outlets with strong regional reporting and editorial standards." The first is Al Jazeera.

The ubiquity of Al Jazeera as a primary source for AI-generated news searches raises questions about the capacity (or willingness) of American AI giants to deliver accurate news about Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. This comes as AI-generated summaries are increasingly replacing traditional news publications as a primary source for news.

Since the early to mid-2000s, when it was al Qaeda’s go-to destination for taped messages from the world’s most wanted terrorists, as well as for hostage and beheading videos, Al Jazeera has earned bipartisan criticism for being a "state-controlled propaganda arm" that Qatar has used to "incite violence, glorify terrorist killers as ‘martyrs,’ and broadcast hateful, extremist content."

The reliance of the AI tools on Al Jazeera is already raising eyebrows on Capitol Hill. "Al Jazeera is not a news organization, it is a mouthpiece for terrorists like Hamas," Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.), who had a recent run-in with an Al Jazeera correspondent, told the Free Beacon. "American AI companies should not rely on terrorist-sympathizing networks for anything, much less news about the Middle East."

The chatbots, though, currently list Al Jazeera as one of the most reliable news sources on Middle East issues.


Satellite images show Iran restarting missile production sites
The Iranian regime has begun rebuilding missile-production sites struck by Israel during the 12-day war in June, though the facilities still appear to lack the large mixers needed to produce solid fuel for the weapons, satellite images analyzed by the Associated Press show.

The images were captured this month by Planet Labs PBC and analyzed by the news agency, which published its findings on Wednesday. The images show construction at the Parchin and Shahroud solid-fuel missile manufacturing facilities. The Islamic Republic has another site at Khojir. All three of the bases came under Israeli attack in October 2024 (“Operation Days of Repentance”) and during the June war (“Operation Rising Lion”).

Missile experts told AP that the regime in Tehran wants to obtain the mixers, particularly as it prepares for the possibility that U.N. “snapback sanctions will be reimposed. The measures would include punishment for any development of the regime’s missile program.

The mixers are critical for high-volume, efficient missile production. Iran has previously sourced planetary mixers from China, although it is unclear if they have done so since the June war.

Before the war, Iran was capable of producing more than 200 solid-fuel missiles per month, and had an estimated arsenal of about 2,500 missiles. Over a third of its arsenal was fired at Israel during and prior to the conflict.


ANOTHER “Jewish supremacy” rant doctor let off by Medical Practitioner Tribunal Service
A doctor who regularly posts diatribes about “Jewish supremacy” on social media and has called for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Israel has been allowed by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) to continue practicing medicine while the General Medical Council investigates her conduct.

Dr Rahmeh Aladwan, who was also a member of Palestine Action before its proscription as a terrorist organisation, is now infamous within the British Jewish community for such claims as “the UK is occupied and controlled by Jewish supremacy – in fact, most Christian majority countries are”, and that the Royal Free Hospital in London, which has a large number of Jewish patients given its location, is a “Jewish Supremacy Cesspit”.

On Thursday, the Medical Practitioner Tribunals Service (MPTS) ruled that Aladwan, who has parroted extreme far right talking points like the idea that “Rabbis need to reject the Amalek commandment and the notion that non-jews are lesser than goyim”, is fit to practice medicine while the GMC investigation into her continues.

Further comments by Aladwan include the statement that “I don’t condemn Hamas. I don’t condemn October 7. I don’t condemn armed resistance to Occupation. I condemn ‘Israel’.” She has also targeted Jewish schools with her invective, tweeting that ““The total number of anti-supremacist (anti-Zionist) Jewish schools in the UK is ZERO. There are 136 Jewish schools in Britain, many of which are funded by our taxes, where 36,064 British Jewish children are taught that they are superior to non-Jews, that they have the right to colonise Palestine and are groomed through birthright trips to become colonisers, upholders of apartheid, and genocidal IOF terrorists. This has to stop.”

Aladwan has also previously posted on Twitter that she was “not trying to be unreasonable, but every f***ing settler will leave Palestine. It’s not for liberal Jewish supremacists (Zionists) or their enablers to decide that Palestinians must live with their land thieves, murderers and rapists. Algeria did it. So will Palestine.”

In the aftermath of the Algerian War of Independence, all but a small number of the country’s 140,000 Jews left the country, most going to France, although some left for Israel. According to the United States Commission report on International religious freedom, the Nationality Code passed in 1963 deprived non-Muslims of Algerian citizenship.

In August the GMC told Jewish News that “antisemitism and all forms of prejudice and discrimination have no place in healthcare. We make clear what we expect from doctors, and our guidance, good medical practice and fitness to practice processes help to reinforce these expectations. We do this so patients’ trust in the professions we regulate is maintained, and they receive good safe care.

“Doctors and patients should have confidence that if a concern is raised with the GMC it will be dealt with appropriately. We are prepared to take cases we investigate to the tribunals service who make independent decisions based on the merits of each case, and any relevant legislation.”
German pizza store bans all Israelis until they ‘open their eyes’ to Gaza
A pizza store in Fürth, Germany, has caused outrage by banning all Israeli customers in protest against the war in the Gaza Strip, local media reported Wednesday.

The local Jewish community in the southeastern state of Bavaria denounced the move as a throwback to the antisemitism of Nazi Germany, while the Israeli Embassy in Berlin also said it showed a return to the 1930s.

The owner of the store, identified by Israel’s Ynet outlet as Pizza Zulu, confirmed to the media that he had put up a poster banning Israelis, but insisted it was not intended to be antisemitic.

An image of the poster, which was displayed in the entrance to the store, was circulated on social media.

“We believe that the children of this world should not be harmed under any circumstances,” it read. “We are part of civil society and will therefore not stand idly by like the rest of the world. That is why we have decided to protest. Our protest has no political, let alone racist, character.”

“Israeli citizens are not welcome in this establishment,” it continued. “Of course, they will be welcome again as soon as they decide to open their eyes, ears, and hearts.”

“Such exclusion is simply shameful and horrific,” the chairwoman of the Jewish Community of Fürth, Julia Tschekalina, told the dpa news agency.

She said it was antisemitism reminiscent of Nazi Germany in 1933.


Two men behind anti-Semitic graffiti and arson attacks unmasked
Two men have admitted to their role in an arson and vandalism spree in Sydney’s eastern suburbs in which cars, buildings and celebrity chef Matt Moran’s restaurant were defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti.

Mohommed Farhat on Thursday pleaded guilty to his role in the attack in which one car was set alight and 10 vehicles, three properties and a fire station were vandalised at Woollahra in November last year.

Thomas Stojanovski also admitted to taking part, with court documents revealing he carried a torch and acted as a lookout while Farhat defaced the cars.

Both appeared inside Sydney’s Downing Centre Local Court at John Maddison Tower where they pleaded guilty to a string of charges over the late-night rampage in the neighbourhood, which has a large Jewish population.

The attack caused more than $100,000 worth of damage, including to Mr Moran’s Chiswick restaurant, which was spraypainted with “F**k Israel” and “PKK coming” on a table and its glass windows.

The same slogans were painted across the other buildings, cars and on the side of the Woollahra Fire Station.
Dearborn Man, Who Had Illegal Guns, Threatened Jewish Preschoolers, Sentenced to 34 Months
Hassan Chokr's "sickening antisemitic threats and his apparent attempt to make good on them with guns are part of an alarming pattern of violence against believers," per the U.S. Justice Department.

(JNS) Hassan Chokr of Dearborn, Mich., who pleaded guilty in May to illegally possessing guns in a store as a felon and who made antisemitic and anti-Israel threats outside a Jewish preschool, was sentenced to 34 months in prison on Wednesday, the U.S. Justice Department said.

Chokr had faced up to 15 years.

“Chokr’s sickening antisemitic threats and his apparent attempt to make good on them with guns are part of an alarming pattern of violence against believers,” stated Jerome Gorgon Jr., interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan.

“We will do everything in our power to fight against this hatred and to protect the American family and their right to worship God without fear,” Gordon added.


14th-century ‘machzor’ book at Israel’s National Library reveals lost Yom Kippur prayers
A newly-acquired 14th-century machzor (prayer book for the Jewish holidays) includes previously unknown liturgical poems for the festival of Yom Kippur, the National Library of Israel announced on Thursday.

The discovery marks a rare occurrence, according to Dr. Chaim Neria, curator of NLI’s Haim and Hanna Solomon Judaica Collection, that gives a glimpse into a time before the prayers were largely standardized by the invention of the printing press.

The manuscript reflects the Kaffa rite (“nusach Kaffa”), a liturgical tradition that emerged in the Black Sea port city of Kaffa on the Crimean Peninsula. In that era, the region was a vibrant crossroads of Jewish life, home to diverse communities including Krimchaks (“Crimeans”), Karaites, Khazarians, Genoese, Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews.

The Kaffa rite shows notable affinities with the Judeo-Greek Romaniote tradition, practiced by Romaniote Jews who lived across much of the Greek mainland and islands.

“We were already familiar with the Kaffa rite, but this machzor seems to have been written down prior to when the tradition was codified,” Neria told The Times of Israel over the phone.

“What truly surprised us is that the machzor contains several piyyutim [liturgical poems] completely unknown from any other source, along with others previously attested only in documents recovered from the Cairo Genizah,” he added, referring to a treasure trove of Jewish communal documents stored in an ancient synagogue in the Egyptian capital over centuries.

According to tradition, on Yom Kippur, which in 2025 falls on October 1-2 — Jews fast from sunset to sunset, devoting the day to prayer and atonement.

Piyyutim form a central element of the prayers recited throughout the holy day.

The machzor was recently acquired from private collector Avigdor Klagsbald. Though not currently on public display, it has been fully digitized and is accessible online.
Holocaust survivor Aron Bell of Palm Beach dies at age 98, last surviving Bielski Brother
Holocaust survivor Aron Bell, who helped his older brothers save more than 1,200 Jews from the Nazis during the Holocaust, died Sept. 22 in Palm Beach. He was 98.

Born Aron Bielski, Mr. Bell was a decades-long resident of Palm Beach. His efforts, and those of his siblings, in the forests of what is now Belarus during World War II inspired books including "The Bielski Brothers" by Peter Duffy, and the movie "Defiance" starring Daniel Craig. The actor George MacKay portrayed Mr. Bell.

"With heavy hearts, we announce the passing of Aron, one of the forest partisans and the last of the brothers to survive," his wife, Henryka Bell, said in a statement posted on social media.

"His strength, resilience, and love will remain forever in our hearts," she said. "We are grateful for your thoughts and prayers during this difficult time."

Mr. Bell's survivors include his wife, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, she wrote.

A chapel service will be from 1:30 to 2 p.m. Sept. 25 at the Star of David Memorial Chapel at 7701 Bailey Road, North Lauderdale. A burial will follow at 2 p.m. in the Garden of Solomon at the same location.

Mr. Bell was born on July 21, 1927, on a farm in Poland, according to his obituary and a recounting of his life from the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation.

Mr. Bell's parents and two brothers were killed by the Germans in 1941 during World War II. Over the next three years, Mr. Bell helped his older brothers, Tuvia, Zus and Asael, rescue Jews by hiding them in the forest near their village in Belarus. Because Mr. Bell was so much younger than his brothers, he often worked either as a scout or courier for the group of Jewish partisans that was known as the Bielski Brigade.




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