Tuesday, November 25, 2025

11/25 Links Pt2: Why the Palestinians Are Famous According to Mahmoud Darwish; Nas Daily: I’m determined to show the real Israel; Understanding anti-Jewish immigrant roots behind Mamdani's progressive antisemitism

From Ian:

Gadi Taub: The Viral ‘Prison Rape’ That Never Happened
Many unanswered questions remain: While the court probably did not know it was being lied to, why did it accept arguments that were clearly implausible? Why did AG Baharav-Miara not order the arrest of Tomer-Yerushalmi or the confiscation of her phone and her computer immediately after she tendered her resignation? Did she not realize that Tomer-Yerushalmi, who had already done so much to cover her tracks, could use that time to destroy evidence and potentially coordinate testimonies? Baharav-Miara herself will be at least a witness, if not a suspect, in the case. Yet she still refused to recuse herself from overseeing the investigation into Tomer-Yerushalmi, and snubbed the Knesset’s joint session of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, before which she was summoned to appear.

All this prompted Justice Minister Yariv Levin, author of the now-defunct judicial reform, to announce that Baharav-Miara would be barred from the investigation. Her office retorted that the minister had no authority to bar her. To which Levin responded by appointing a special prosecutor—an institution hitherto unknown in Israel. This was a major vindication for Levin: The entire episode—the cover-up, the lack of transparency, the illicit intimacy between law enforcement and the judiciary (over which Israel has no oversight agencies), and the collective contempt for the normal legal process when these agencies investigate themselves—convincingly showed why his controversial legal reforms were necessary.

But Baharav-Miara was not about to relinquish control of the investigation in which she and her subordinates have been implicated, ever since she defended Tomer-Yerushalmi in court. The matter reached the Supreme Court, which decided to bar Baharav-Miara from overseeing the investigation. The judges were clearly not happy to discover they had been lied to by the people whose good name they were helping to protect. Although it ruled against Levin’s special prosecutor based on a technicality, the court authorized him to appoint another (however, it suspended the new appointment last Thursday, to Levin’s understandable chagrin).

When a prosecutor is finally agreed on, it is not clear whether the investigation will manage to get to the bottom of the affair—especially the involvement of Baharav-Miara and her allies in Israel’s various bureaucracies. Nevertheless, the foundations of Israel’s juristocracy have been shaken. Rifts have opened among the various branches of what the Israeli right calls the “deep state.”

Three other dramatic events also recently transpired: Tomer-Yerushalmi was hospitalized after overdosing on medication while under house arrest, in what appeared to be an attempted suicide. One of the Force 100 soldiers, with a distinguished career in combat service, suffered a heart attack. And the president of the military court has recommended that the IDF prosecution accept the request of the defense to halt all proceedings against the Force 100 accused soldiers—now that the alleged victim is no longer in Israeli custody.

There’s also a cultural aspect without which it is difficult to make sense of all this. Israel’s contemporary elites look at the masses with contempt, viewing them as deplorables. In the eyes of these elites and the mainstream press, the riot in Sde Teiman was an attack on the rule of law, which Tomer-Yerushalmi upheld. Here were the right-wing proto-fascists wielding their pitchforks against the gatekeepers of impartial justice. In this view, the Force 100 soldiers and the rioters belonged to the same crowd of tribal ethno-nationalists who share a common contempt for liberal values and human rights. The right saw it very differently: Unpatriotic globalist progressive elites were weaponizing the law in the middle of a war to show the world they are better than the rest of us. Indeed, Israel’s progressive elites have come to define themselves in opposition to those mostly non-Ashkenazi masses, whom they view as too Jewish, too provincial, and too nationalistic.

Tomer-Yerushalmi may argue that her leak was in the wider public interest: to show international jurists that Israel is willing to use force to apprehend its own soldiers and thereby deny international tribunals a legal reason to intervene. Implausible as it seems to most of us, she may well have believed that throwing Force 100 under the bus was a convincing demonstration of Israel’s high-minded moral standards.

Yet it seems that in this case, as in others, identity trumps ideology. To imagine themselves as members of the enlightened global elite, Israeli progressives must define themselves against the Israel that “right-thinking” people abhor. The beautiful people of Spain or the Netherlands or Berkeley, California, don’t particularly care what the facts of Israel’s conflicts with its neighbors are or whether the Israel they have constructed through sloganeering about “colonialism,” “apartheid,” and “genocide” is real or a malevolent fiction. Expressing their abhorrence of a brutal rape that never happened in Sde Teiman was an opportunity for Israel’s elites to show whose side they were on: their fellow elites or the deplorables. Nothing about their choice should be surprising.
300 pack London launch as UK Israel Alliance debuts with Douglas Murray conversation
Around 300 people attended the launch of the UK Israel Alliance (UKIA) in Central London last week, as the organisation – formerly UK Israel Future Projects – unveiled its new name and mission with a headline conversation featuring author and commentator Douglas Murray.

Interviewed on stage by Daily Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson, Murray reflected on reporting from Israel and Gaza after Hamas’s 7 October atrocities, the regional shifts shaped by the Abraham Accords, and the challenges and opportunities facing pro-Israel advocacy in Britain.

The evening opened with tributes from committee members Bernard Shapero and Sir William Shawcross to the late Martin Green, the 92-year-old founder of UK Israel Future Projects, remembered as a committed Zionist and a pillar of the UK pro-Israel community.

Guests included cross-party parliamentarians from both Houses, diplomats, journalists and long-standing supporters of the group. UKIA says its rebrand signals a renewed commitment to strengthening UK-Israel ties by bringing together activists and thought-leaders “from all political, religious and ethnic backgrounds”.

Chaired by Lord Bew, UKIA’s multi-faith committee includes Sir William Shawcross, Tim Vince, Simon Marks, Bernard Shapero and Dr Efrat Sopher. The organisation plans a rolling series of public events with international speakers addressing key issues affecting both countries.

Lord Bew said the launch demonstrated “the depth of support for Israel outside the Jewish community”, adding: “UKIA’s duty is to proactively reach Brits from all walks of life and proudly celebrate the fact that our two countries are stronger together. Israel has been subjected to an appalling smear campaign, but it is abundantly clear that many Brits cherish the shared values our great countries stand for.”
Nas Daily: I’m determined to show the real Israel
Israeli-Arab influencer Nuseir Yassin has described his mission to “show the Israel I want and like” and insisted he was now more hopeful about the future Middle East than at any time.

Known to 68 million social media followers as Nas Daily for his videos chronicling the lives of people in far-flung corners of the globe, he addressed more than 400 guests at Magen David Adom’s annual dinner last night.

In conversation with broadcaster Rob Rinder, he described how he left a safe job in tech almost a decade ago to create videos showing the “exact opposite” of the stories that tend to dominate discourse around the Middle East. Or, as Rinder put it, to “turn the toxicity of social media into something positive”.

“Twenty percent of Israel is Arab,” he said. “One force says you’re Palestinian and you shouldn’t have anything to do with Israel. Another force says we need to share the land and build up the land together. To escape the first force is hard. To call myself Israeli means I love Israel. It means freedom of speech. It’s the work that organisations like MDA are trying to do. This is what we should all be trying to promote, whatever the cost.”

“The most controversial topic in the world today is Israel and Palestine. Each time you talk about it, you pay a price. But you’ve got to humanise Israelis and Jewish people around the world and humanise Arabs as well. If you get to know someone, it’s very hard to hate them.”

He describes this as the safest time to land in Tel Aviv and paints a picture of a time when you could have lunch in Beirut, dinner in Damascus and then head back to Jerusalem in one taxi ride.

As for the two million Israeli Arabs within Israel, he said, they had a decision to make after the horrors of 7 October. “I think a large proportion have decided – including me – that we belong in Israel,” the former Harvard student told the audience. “That is the shock it takes to be able to see clearly. We don’t want to live under a Palestinian or Jordanian government. Despite the hardships, we are all Israelis.”
Oscar-winning filmmaker moves to Israel and trains his lens on October 7 survivors
Oscar-winning filmmaker Richard Trank has been making documentaries about Israel for decades. Today, he finally lives here.

“I wish I had made this decision earlier,” Trank told The Times of Israel about his aliyah to Israel last month, after a lifetime living and working in Los Angeles. “But I can’t change that.”

One of the first films Trank is working on under his brand-new production company, Sea Point Films and Media, aims to tell the story of Israelis recovering from the October 7 attacks and their rehabilitation journeys.

“I started thinking about really a post-October 7 project, because we all know what happened on October 7. We’ve all heard the stories, and it’s important to tell those stories,” Trank said during a recent video interview from his new home in Herzliya. “But I started thinking about, how do you come out of that? How do you rebuild your life?”

That film, titled “The Road Home,” is part of a fresh start for Trank, who spent more than 40 years at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, spearheading its Moriah Films production branch, helping to create an impressive slate of award-winning documentary films on Jewish and Israeli themes.

Trank left the Wiesenthal Center at the beginning of this year, around a year after its founder, Rabbi Marvin Hier, retired from the helm.

“At the end of 2023, new leadership came in, and they made a decision to move Moriah into a different direction, away from documentaries,” Trank said. “And there really wasn’t a place for me.”

The departure marks a major shift for Trank, who wrote and directed 16 documentary films for Moriah, telling stories of Jewish and Israeli life and working with some of the biggest names in Hollywood. His most recent film, “Never Stop Dreaming: The Life and Legacy of Shimon Peres” – narrated by George Clooney – is currently streaming on Netflix.

Prior to that, he adapted Yehuda Avner’s book “The Prime Ministers” into a series of two films that included Sandra Bullock, Michael Douglas, and Christoph Waltz, in voice acting roles. Trank’s film on Theodor Herzl was narrated by Ben Kingsley, and past documentaries also featured Nicole Kidman, Michael Douglas, Dustin Hoffman, and Morgan Freeman.

The last project he completed before leaving the Wiesenthal Center was a long-in-the-making documentary about David Ben Gurion, narrated by Julianna Margulies, which has yet to be released by Moriah.

“It’s really up to Wiesenthal about what they ultimately do with that film,” said Trank. “But I’m proud of it.”

Trank won the Academy Award for best documentary for co-producing 1997’s “The Long Way Home,” about the journeys of Holocaust survivors in the aftermath of World War II.

In many ways, he said, “The Road Home” — exploring the journey of October 7 survivors — mirrors that film’s exploration of how Holocaust survivors started over and rebuilt their lives in the wake of World War II.


Why the Palestinians Are Famous According to Mahmoud Darwish
In Jean-Luc Godard’s Notre Musique, The Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish offers a better explanation of the Arab-Israeli conflict in just a few short phrases than 99% of the empty, emotional speeches uttered on social media today. In a conversation with a young Israeli woman, Darwish says:

Do you know why we Palestinians are famous? Because you are our enemies. The interest in us stems from interest in the Jewish question. The interest is in you, not in me.

We have the misfortune of having Israel as our enemy because she has strong allies, too many to count, in the world.

And we have the good fortune of having Israel as our enemy because the Jews are the center of the world’s attention.

You defeated us but you brought us fame. You are our public relations. I have no illusions with this.

He is 100% right.

The only reason most people in the West pretend to be interested in the Palestinians is because they’re really interested in the Jews. Had Israel not been a Jewish state but a Muslim state or a Buddhist state, the conflict wouldn’t have been worth more than a single line at the bottom of the homepage. However, since Jews are involved, it never leaves the headlines of all the papers in the world.

Ironically, this also prevents any chance for peace because too many people are happy to fight to the last Arab just to hurt the Jews. Their goal is to hurt Israel so any kind of peace would be a failure for them.

They present themselves as friends to the Arabs but in reality they’re just enemies to the Jews. The Arabs are just something they can exploit and discard.


Elliott Abrams: Teaching Hate in Palestinian Schools
As part of Gaza peace efforts, many governments are pressing hard for the Palestinian Authority (PA) to have a central role in building a new Gaza. Yet, what is being taught today in PA-run schools in the West Bank is hatred of Israel and Jews, and the glorification of violence. A new study by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) found that no reforms are underway to deal with previous findings of textbook content that promotes violence and incites hatred.

According to the report, "antisemitism remains a central feature of the curriculum. Hate and collective accusations specifically directed toward Jewish people appear across grades and subjects....Religiously-motivated violence is promoted and celebrated....Science, mathematics and grammar exercises are politicized to transmit hostility and normalize violence....Maps and language in Palestinian textbooks erase Israel entirely."
Moment Palestine Action activist 'fractures female police officer's spine in sledgehammer attack' during raid on 'Israeli-linked weapons factory'
A male Palestine Action activist attacked a female police sergeant with a sledgehammer and fractured her spine during a raid on an Israel-based defence firm's UK site, a trial has heard.

Six members of the proscribed terror group are accused of carrying out an attack at Elbit Systems in Bristol after breaking into the factory in an old prison van in the early hours of August 6 last year.

Wearing white hard hats and red and black jumpsuits to represent which 'team' they were on during their operation, they allegedly used sledgehammers, whips, fireworks, an axe and a paintball gun as weapons and carried angle grinders.

Charlotte Head, 29, Samuel Corner, 23, Leona Kamio, 30, Fatema Rajwani, 21, Zoe Rogers, 22, and Jordan Devlin, 31, are charged with aggravated burglary, criminal damage and violent disorder in relation to the alleged break-in.

Corner denies a further charge of causing Police Sergeant Kate Evans grievous bodily harm.

Dramatic footage released by Counter Terror police shows members of Palestine Action, from the 'Red Team', inside the Elbit Systems building holding red smoke flares and wielding sledgehammers as they threateningly approached security guard Nigel Shaw.

Mr Shaw is seen to try and fight off the protesters with his umbrella as they menace him with the sledgehammers and shout: 'Get the f**k out.'

One female member shouts 'Over there right now!' at the guard.

Another clip shows the group breaking into the building by using an old prison van to ram through a large roll-up door leading to a loading dock.

When police arrive one officer manages to grab hold of one of the hammers and has a terrifying stand off with another protester who tells him he is going to lose his job in the morning.

When another protester is arrested she repeatedly moans that the officer is hurting her after she had threatened Mr Shaw with the sledgehammer just minutes before.

Members of the group can be seen walking with sledgehammers whilst shouting and swearing before one male overpowered the officer recording with a bodycam and got on top of them.


Gil Troy: Understanding anti-Jewish immigrant roots behind Mamdani's progressive antisemitism
Historians usually emphasize the antisemitism of Populist farmers and demagogues. That reflects historians’ left-wing bias and the post-Holocaust view characterizing Jew-hatred as a right-wing pathology. But from the 1880s through the 1920s – while restricting big business, boosting workers, improving factory conditions, rationalizing American government, and seeking order – urban reformers also championed “Americanization.” These upper-class crusaders feared that immigrants, especially Eastern European Jews, were undermining America’s way of life.

John R. Commons, who founded the American Economic Association, warned in 1907 about “the immigration of races and classes incompetent to share in our democratic opportunities.” Progressives like Commons considered Jews religiously misguided and a problematic “race.”

Proving that antisemitism is the longest and most plastic hatred – moldable, adaptable, and frequently toxic – they considered Jews too radical and too capitalist, too Marxist and too Rothschild. Madison Grant’s 1916 blockbuster, The Passing of the Great Race, called the Jews a “race of the urban type, with high intellectual and legal ability,” yet threatening the Nordic stock.

Then like now, waves of immigration triggered a nativist backlash. From 1871 to 1924, 28 million immigrants arrived, making one of every seven Americans foreign-born. Alarmed, the Immigration Restriction League joined other Brahmin activists in demanding entry quotas favoring immigrants from Protestant countries like England and Germany over predominantly-Catholic countries like Italy, and the main source of Jews, Russia and Poland.

The 1924 Immigration Act shut America’s doors just years before Hitler’s rise. Tragically, the restrictive, quota-laden law blocked a life-saving escape route for millions of European Jews.

The Holocaust shocked the Jew-hatred out of most progressives. Even before most Americans read about the Nazi mass murders, leading progressives like 1940 Republican presidential nominee Wendell Willkie, the journalist Dorothy Thompson, and the liberal Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, supported suspending immigration quotas to save Jewish lives. After 1945, many lobbied the new president, Harry Truman, to support what became the Jewish state of Israel.

Back then, scholars and activists deemed antisemitism a right-wing phenomenon. In 1950, the German-born social psychologist Theodor Adorno insisted in The Authoritarian Personality that “neither ethnocentrism nor antisemitism ever showed a tendency to go with leftist liberal views.” Such pronouncements ignored Soviet Communism’s Jew-hating dictatorship.

Fixing America’s legacy of discrimination
Enthusiastically pro-Israel, presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson regretted America’s legacy of discrimination. In 1965, Johnson signed the Immigration and Nationality Act, lifting ethnically-driven restrictions, at the base of the Statue of Liberty. He condemned the 1924 Act, bolstering the “twin barriers of prejudice and privilege,” as “un-American.”

Unfortunately, the post-1960s zeal for identity politics turned some progressives against American Jews. As Ronald Reagan and William Buckley marginalized antisemitic conservatives, illiberal liberals increasingly defined people solely based on their race, gender, privilege, and alleged role as oppressors. Those prisms undermined the traditional liberal legacy of equality and color blindness advanced by president Lyndon Johnson, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and others.

By 2020, demanding a “racial reckoning,” Black Lives Matter activists somehow linked George Floyd’s racist Minneapolis with Gaza, deciding both were “oppressed” by American and Israeli “oppressors.” They blocked Jews at the intersection, condemned for their “white privilege,” and for supporting Zionism’s “settler-colonialists” in Israel.

Without this ideological derailment, New York wouldn’t have elected progressive Ugandan immigrant Zohran Mamdani, whose anti-Zionism seems antisemitic. Claiming “that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF,” as he did, is Jew-hatred. Blaming an incident of police brutality reflecting America’s racist past on Israeli soldiers 6,000 miles away falls into the “blame Jews for any random evil” trap.

Still, there’s good news embedded in this tale of regressive progressives betraying liberal expansiveness. If their predecessors could grow out of their antisemitic, anti-immigrant positions, they and their right-wing counterparts can, too. Hopefully, returning to decency won’t require a Holocaust-sized reset.
Jewish FDNY commissioner who quit over Zohran Mamdani election breaks silence
Former FDNY Commissioner Robert Tucker, who quit when Zohran Mamdani won the mayoral election, broke his silence on his departure — saying he was turned off by the socialist’s campaign from the start.

Tucker, a Jewish philanthropist and businessman who was reportedly turned off by the mayor-elect’s anti-Israeli ramblings during the campaign, made his first comments over the bombshell decision during an interview with “CBS Mornings” host Tony Dokoupil set to air this week.

“What was the moment when you realized this mayor-elect, if elected, is incompatible with me, myself, my personal beliefs,” Dokoupil asked Tucker during an excerpt of the interview released Wednesday.

“I think the whole campaign really reflected that for me,” the outgoing commissioner replied.

Tucker cited his religion as a factor in his decision, and said Mamdani has some work to do if he hopes to win over the Big Apple’s rank and file first responders, the outlet said.

Tucker submitted his resignation to Mayor Eric Adams just hours after Mamdani, a Muslim state lawmaker from Queens, trounced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the Nov. 4 mayoral election.

The controversial mayor-elect has raised fears in the five boroughs over his democratic socialist agenda and has worried many in the Jewish community over his anti-Israel rhetoric.


Women’s March Leader Tossed Out for Anti-Semitism Lands on Mamdani Transition Team
A former Women’s March leader who was forced out of the organization for anti-Semitism has reemerged as a member of Zohran Mamdani’s transition team.

Tamika Mallory, an inaugural co-chair of the Women’s March protest group that formed in response to President Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory, was among more than 400 people named to various transition committees on Monday. She will serve on the transition team’s Committee on Community Safety.

The Women's March cut ties with Mallory in 2019 after founder Teresa Shook wrote in a Facebook post that Mallory and three other leaders had "allowed anti-Semitism, anti-LBGTQIA sentiment, and hateful, racist rhetoric to become a part of the platform by their refusal to separate themselves from groups that espouse these racist, hateful beliefs." Shook called on the co-chairs to leave the organization, stating that their extremism had "steered the Movement away from its true course."

During the first Women’s March meeting in November 2016, Mallory reportedly "asserted that Jewish people bore a special collective responsibility as exploiters of black and brown people—and even, according to a secondhand source, claimed that Jews were proven to have been leaders of the American slave trade," Tablet reported in 2018.

She also reportedly berated a Jewish co-founder, telling her, "Your people hold all the wealth."

The notion that Jews led the transatlantic slave trade, Tablet noted in its report, has been "popularized by The Secret Relationship between Blacks and Jews, a book published by Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam."

Mallory has a well-documented relationship with Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. She posted a photo with Farrakhan on Instagram in 2017, calling him "the GOAT." She also attended a Nation of Islam event in 2018 where Farrakhan denounced "Satanic Jews" and declared them "the mother and father of apartheid." He added that "the Jews have control over those agencies of government" and accused Jews of using marijuana to induce homosexuality in black men.


Congressional Committee Launches Nationwide Investigation into Antisemitism Across Three School Districts
House Education and Workforce Committee Chairman Tim Walberg (R-MI) launched a sweeping investigation on November 24, 2025, into three major school districts accused of allowing rampant antisemitism in their classrooms. The probe targets Berkeley Unified School District in California, Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia, and the School District of Philadelphia, demanding comprehensive documentation of how each district has handled complaints of antisemitic harassment since the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks against Israel.

The investigation examines whether these districts are violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by failing to maintain safe learning environments for Jewish students. The findings will inform potential legislation specifically addressing antisemitism discrimination in K-12 education.

Philadelphia: Teachers Rationalize Terror, Administrator Denies Jewish Ties to Israel
In the letter to Philadelphia, Walberg and Rep. Ryan Mackenzie (R-PA) detail allegations that numerous educators promote antisemitic content in classrooms. One teacher has allegedly threatened Jewish parents and students online, while multiple educators reportedly use lessons from Teaching Palestine, whose materials rationalize terrorist violence and advocate for Israel’s destruction.

Most alarming is Philadelphia’s director of social studies curriculum, who has been widely condemned by Jewish advocacy groups for his “pattern of denying the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel, refusing to speak about peace or coexistence, and downplaying the lived experiences of Jewish people in the face of violence,” according to an open letter from the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia.

After the murder of two Israeli embassy workers and an antisemitic firebombing in Colorado, the administrator wrote: “The groups who align themselves with American savageness should not be surprised when the savageness is turned on you.”

The district’s August 2025 partnership with the Council on American-Islamic Relations Philadelphia chapter has raised further concerns. CAIR Philadelphia promoted a workshop invoking the antisemitic trope of Jewish “political power,” while CAIR national’s executive director stated he was “happy to see people breaking the siege” on October 7—the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.
George Mason student government decries adoption of IHRA Jew-hatred definition
The Undergraduate Representative Body of George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., passed a resolution on Nov. 20 condemning the public school’s implementation of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism.

It passed by a vote of 14-2 with four abstentions, Zoe Oliver, vice president of marketing and public relations for the student government, told JNS.

The resolution, which JNS obtained, states that IHRA is “a weapon against student and faculty activism” and “is inadequate for combating antisemitism.” It denounces the university’s “rash implementation of IHRA.”

The resolution calls on the university to adopt, in the short term, the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, in addition to IHRA, which is the official definition adopted under state law. That definition states that referring to Israel as an apartheid state and the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions movement are not antisemitic.

In the long term, the student government will advocate for IHRA to be removed from the university and state law altogether, and replaced with the Jerusalem Declaration, per the resolution.

A university spokesman told JNS that “the university has no involvement in expressions or resolutions passed by student leaders, and their votes are regarded as advisory and taken into account with other factors.”

“Virginia state law was the primary factor in George Mason University incorporating the IHRA working definition of antisemitism in university policy,” the spokesman said.


Systemic problems at BBC Arabic go beyond switching out editors, crisis report author tells MPs
BBC Arabic suffers from “systemic issues” that cannot be fixed by changing editorial teams, the author of a leaked memo that prompted the head of BBC News and the corporation’s director general to resign has told MPs.

Michael Prescott, who resigned as an advisor to the BBC’s standards and guidelines committee (EGC) in the summer, appeared before Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Monday. He told a committee hearing that he wrote his memo because he believed problems with bias at the corporation that “were not being tackled properly…and were getting worse”.

The largest section of Prescott’s 19-page dossier focused on BBC Arabic. The corporation has since announced it is looking for a new editor of the service to “try to get a grip on the service”.

Committee chair Caroline Dinenage, a Conservative MP, noted that the Arabic-language service has been forced to apologise for “around two articles a week at this rate”.

Prescott said he “took at good faith” the BBC’s attempts to resolve issues at its Arabic service but added: “My view is just switching out an editor or two is not enough. When you’ve got such a shocking catalogue of errors, there must be more.”

He also criticised what he characterised as the corporation’s habit of offering superficial fixes: “The BBC’s idea of dealing with something was to change the editors, tweak the guidelines.”

“Every single thing we found seemed to be a systemic issue,” he went on. “I would have hoped they would get on top of these problems and start sorting them out in a systemic way.”

Prescott added that he never expected his memo to trigger resignations at the board level, and insisted he was not the source of the leak of the dossier to the Telegraph. “It was a private memo,” he said, “it was meant to be a call to action.”

He hoped the matter would be handled “very quietly" but, seven days after he sent the report to Ofcom and the BBC board, it appeared in the newspapers.

“I was hoping this memo would do good and lead to a better BBC,” he added, though the Telegraph’s involvement “became a barrier to people elsewhere on the political spectrum taking this seriously,” noting that the paper appeals to a certain ideological section of society.
ANALYSIS OF BBC NEWS HEADLINES SHOW SCALE OF ANTI-ISRAEL BIAS
Headlines covering stories by senior BBC journalists also suggest bias in their reporting of the conflict. More than half the headlines to stories written by International Editor Jeremy Bowen about the conflict were critical of Israel. Of the 60 articles he penned, 33 had headlines that held Israel to account while just three took Hamas to task.

Of the 35 stories written under Special Correspondent Fergal Keane’s byline, 29 had headlines that held Israel to account and six were neutral. He wrote no stories headlined in a way that held Hamas to account for its actions.

Almost half the stories written by BBC Middle East correspondent Yolande Knell about the conflict (41 out of a total of 85) had headlines that were critical of Israel, with just 12 that held Hamas to account.

Rushdi Abualouf, the BBC’s Gaza Correspondent, wrote 110 stories, of which 53 had headlines that were critical of Israel, compared to 20 that held Hamas to account.

The most prolific BBC journalist on the BBC News Israel-Gaza page was David Gritten, on the BBC’s Middle East desk. He wrote 253 articles: 139 head headlines which held Israel to account while just 30 were critical of Hamas.


Poll Shows Rising Hamas Support in West Bank, Gaza
Hamas is not merely surviving, it is actually getting stronger because it managed to rebrand the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners and the ceasefire as a "victory."

According to the October 2025 poll published by Dr. Khalil Shikaki at the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, more than half of the Palestinian public (53%) still think the decision to launch the Oct. 7 attack was "the correct decision."

Moreover, 66% in the West Bank and 51% in Gaza were satisfied with Hamas's performance in the war. 87% in the West Bank and 55% in Gaza oppose disarming Hamas.

The story Palestinians are telling themselves after the ceasefire is a story of resistance that succeeded despite the heavy blow it took.


Iran Expected to Delay the Next Conflict in Order to Recover
A senior official told Israel Hayom that Iran, Hizbullah, and the Houthis are not expected to directly respond to the elimination of Hizbullah Chief of Staff Haytham Ali Tabatabai.

Tehran risks a harsh Israeli counterattack and simply cannot absorb more military losses like those sustained during the 12-day war in June.

Though Iran is working to rebuild its air defense capabilities and reportedly received aid from China, Israeli estimates suggest this will not significantly challenge Israel's absolute control of Iranian airspace.

Moreover, Iran is experiencing a particularly dire economic and infrastructural crisis.

Sogand Fakheri, an Iran Desk analyst at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA), said that the "quiet disintegration" of the country is a concept frequently discussed in Iranian domestic media.

"However, it seems the disintegration is not quiet, the government is not functioning," she said.

Sagiv Asulin, a senior researcher at the JCFA and an Iran expert, noted, "The Iranians are the world champions in word games, negotiation, and haggling in the Middle Eastern and global bazaar, so there is a big difference between what they say and what will materialize."

"They are willing to heat up the atmosphere with belligerent statements, but in their current condition, they might play a game to the edge, but nothing beyond that, and therefore the answer to the question of whether they will initiate an actual attack is almost certainly 'no.'"

Both Asulin and the senior official agree that Iran intends to delay the next conflict for as long as possible to allow itself time to recover, and wait for more favorable conditions.


A book about Germans who had status, safety and power; and still chose to defy Hitler
Jonathan Freedland didn’t set out to write a guidebook to resistance. He was researching the story of Rudolf Vrba, the young Jewish escapee from Auschwitz who became the subject of his 2022 book, “The Escape Artist.” Freedland stumbled upon something odd: Heinrich Himmler, in an August 1944 speech, casually referred to a “reactionary cabal … prattling over tea,” now safely in Gestapo custody.

Tea?

In September 1943, a small group that included aristocrats, a diplomat, a pioneering educator, and an intelligence officer gathered in a Berlin drawing room — not to gossip, but to quietly defy the Nazi regime. What they didn’t know: one among them was an informant. Their story, Freedland realized, was less a footnote than a thriller — a drawing-room mystery where the stakes were life and death.

His new book, “The Traitors Circle,” tells that story. Subtitled “The True Story of a Secret Resistance Network in Nazi Germany — and the Spy Who Betrayed Them,” it celebrates an unlikely group of dissenters who, “when their country was in the grip of a terrible darkness … risked everything to break ranks and say no.” But because it arrives at a fraught political moment, it is also about the present, when many — certainly on the left — are asking how to push back when they see democratic norms being broken.

Freedland’s book joins a growing shelf of recent books urging resistance to autocracy. They include Timothy Snyder’s “On Tyranny,” M. Gessen’s “Surviving Autocracy,” Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s “Strongmen,” Timothy Ryback’s “Takeover: Hitler’s Final Rise to Power” and Anne Applebaum’s “Twilight of Democracy.” Most write that the United States is not Germany in 1933 and Trump is no Hitler, but warn about the ways democracies can surrender to or slowly devolve into autocracy. The small concessions. The rationalizing. The insistence that the institutions will hold, or the strongman can’t get away with it, or that his extremism can be co-opted and controlled.

In a public conversation last week sponsored by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Freedland insisted that it would be facile to draw parallels between Nazi Germany and modern America. “It would be an insult to the victims of Adolph Hitler. These things are not the same. But two things do not have to be identical for one to shed useful light on the other,” he told me.
Germany charges 100-year-old with World War II-related war crimes
Prosecutors in Dortmund, Germany, charged a 100-year-old man with war crimes they say he had committed as a guard during World War II and the Holocaust at a prisoner of war camp in Hemer, Germany, the Bild newspaper reported on Saturday.

Prosecutor Andreas Brendel told the paper that the suspect, who was not named in the media, was charged with participating in mass murders between December 1943 and September 1944.

Around 200,000 prisoners of war were imprisoned at the Stalag VI A concentration camp in Hemer. The camp was officially for prisoners of war, mostly from the Soviet Union and Poland.

Some 11,000 prisoners, mostly Soviet, died at Hemer due to disease, hunger and violence. According to some sources, the number of victims was significantly higher.

Red Army soldiers were treated worse than Western prisoners of war. The Soviets were killed en masse and deliberately, often starting with the Jews in their ranks.
Poland summons Israeli ambassador over Yad Vashem post
A “today in history” tweet by Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum highlighting how Jews were forced to wear a yellow badge during World War Two sparked a firestorm in Poland on Monday, with the Israeli ambassador being summoned to the Foreign Ministry in Warsaw.

The incident began when Yad Vashem tweeted on Sunday that “Poland was the first country where Jews were forced to wear a distinctive yellow badge in order to isolate them from the surrounding population,” with a link to an article on the topic.

Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski appealed to Yad Vashem to make it clear in the post that Poland had been “German-occupied” at the time.

Yad Vashem responded to the criticism on social media by resharing the post and specifying that: “As noted by many users and specified explicitly in the linked article, it was done by order of the German authorities,” but without amending the original tweet.

Poland’s top diplomat then tweeted anew that he was summoning the Israeli ambassador “since the misleading post has not been amended,” and tagged U.S. Ambassador to Poland Tom Rose.

The incident quickly snowballed and Yad Vashem was widely condemned across Poland.

The Auschwitz Memorial, which runs the site of the former Nazi death camp in Poland, also criticized the Yad Vashem post.


Sydney man offered $1K for role in anti-Israel vandalism spree
A 21-year-old man offered $1,000 for his role in an anti-Israel vandalism spree in Sydney's east last year that caused $100,000 worth of damage was not motivated by antisemitism, a court has been told.

Police allege Thomas Stojanovski and co-accused Mohammed Farhat were caught by CCTV cameras spray-painting "F*** Israel" along Wellington Street, where a car was also set alight, in Woollahra last November.

Stojanovski was arrested that same month over the anti-Israel graffiti on 10 vehicles and damaging nearby buildings.

Farhat has already been sentenced to 20 months' imprisonment with a non-parole period of 10 months.

Sutherland Local Court on Tuesday heard Stojanovski agreed to be paid $1,000 by his co-accused to carry out a job.

Magistrate Scott Nash said Stojanovski was not aware of what the job was prior to the offending.

The court was told he took part in the vandalism to fund his illicit substance abuse that stemmed from an injury he was dealing with at the time. However, Magistrate Nash said there was still an "underlining intent to cause malicious damage".

"I find that there is a reasonable and rational case in this particular circumstance that Mr Stojanovski was wholly financially motivated," Magistrate Nash told the court.
India’s entire Bnei Menashe community to emigrate to Israel by 2030
he Israeli government has officially decided to aid the emigration of thousands of members of India’s Bnei Menashe community, with tens of millions of shekel set aside for flights, conversion classes, Hebrew language education accommodation and other expenses.

The decision, taken by Israel’s cabinet on Sunday, was reportedly proposed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, supported by Immigration Minister Ofir Sofer. It will see the remaining members of the sect, based in Northeast India and thought to number approximately 6,000, brought to Israel by 2030, with 1,200 to arrive by the end of 2026. It is believed that they will be settled in cities in the country’s north, such as Nof Hagalil.

In a statement, Netanyahu called the move “an important and Zionist decision that will also strengthen the North and the Galilee”, adding that since the early 2000s, around 4,000 members of the Bnei Menashe community have been brought to Israel as part of decisions taken by previous governments.

While members of the Bnei Menashe consider themselves to be members of one of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel (specifically, the tribe of Menashe), they are not considered to be Jewish by rabbinical authorities, and therefore have traditionally been ineligible to apply for Israeli citizenship under the country’s Law of Return. Those who make the decision to emigrate will be required to undergo Orthodox conversions to Judaism on their arrival. Israeli Rabbinate staff will reportedly be sent by the government to India to undertake background checks on those members of the community wishing to emigrate, to confirm their connection to Judaism.


Mark Levin shares the extraordinary story of Tibor Baranski, another Oskar Schindler
Mark Levin shares the extraordinary story of Tibor Baranski, a courageous Catholic who saved thousands of Jews during WWII, and uses his legacy to shine a light on today’s rising hatred from Marxists, Islamists, and extremist ideologies. Mark warns America about modern grifters, false teachers, and the dangerous lies tearing at Judeo-Christian values—and explains why Christians and Jews must stand united in truth.


Scholars transcribe hundreds of thousands of Cairo Geniza fragments, some never read before
A new research project by Israeli and international scholars has digitally transcribed the texts featured in hundreds of thousands of fragments from the celebrated Cairo Geniza, as well as thousands of additional Hebrew manuscripts, the National Library of Israel announced on Monday.

The project, dubbed MiDRASH (which is meant to loosely correspond to Migrations of Textual and Scribal Traditions via Large-Scale Computational Analysis of Medieval Manuscripts in Hebrew Script), was launched in 2023 after securing a €10 million ($11.5 million) grant over six years from the EU’s European Research Council (ERC).

Virtually all the 400,000 fragments from the geniza have been photographed, and their images digitized, in the past. However, less than 15 percent of them have been transcribed, and many have never been properly read, let alone studied.

“Our goal is to reconstruct Jewish medieval literary book culture, and we are starting by transcribing the huge collection of virtual manuscripts that has been assembled at the National Library of Israel,” said Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra, professor of Ancient Hebrew and Aramaic at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (PSL) in Paris, one of the principal academics in the project.

According to Jewish law, it is forbidden to throw away or destroy documents featuring God’s name. For about a millennium, the Jews of Cairo deposited manuscripts, letters, old prayerbooks and more in a room in the city’s Ben Ezra Synagogue, whose original building is believed to have existed since before the 9th century CE.

Preserved by Egypt’s dry climate, the trove of documents — the Cairo Geniza — came to the attention of European scholars in 1896. Most of the artifacts were transferred to England in the following years.

“This material is extremely important because 90% of the Jews [in the Middle Ages] lived in Muslim-ruled areas, not in Europe, and yet most of their manuscripts got lost,” Stökl told The Times of Israel in a phone interview. “After the Cairo Geniza was discovered, we got to know lots of new texts, lots of new versions of texts we already knew, and we learned a huge number of things.”

Having a digital transcription of a document means many things: Words can be searched, genres can be grouped, language can be easily compared, and more.




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