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Friday, November 28, 2025

11/28 Links Pt2: The Islamists’ Trojan horse; This Cambridge Union debate was a foregone conclusion. But my words needed saying; Sally Rooney is not a victim of censorship

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The Islamists’ Trojan horse
The Palestinian cause has had an even deeper effect. It has simply corrupted discourse and morality in the West. By adopting Palestinianism as their badge of moral worth, people have signed up to an agenda of lies that they assume is incontrovertible truth.

Convinced that the Palestinians are the wretched of the earth, Western liberals refuse to see that they are actually supporting a genocidal agenda. By internalizing Palestinian Jew-hatred, they now see nothing wrong in themselves spewing out vicious antisemitic tropes.

Demonizing Israel in the name of anti-racism, they have turned morality inside out, reversing victim and aggressor. That’s why, after the terror attacks on Oct. 7, so many of them denied Israeli victimization and instead grotesquely blamed Israel for abuses such as war crimes or genocide, of which Israel was innocent but of which the Palestinians were guilty.

This pathological projection by aggressors of their own evil deeds onto their victims is hardwired into the Palestinian cause and indeed the Islamist world.

The Islamists do this because they believe that Islam is perfection, and everything beyond it is the province of the devil. Islamist aggression against the West is therefore falsely framed as a defense against Western attacks on Islam.

This was why British Muslims in Birmingham justified their exclusion of the Maccabi Tel Aviv away-fans from the club’s match against Aston Villa in October by claiming that the Israeli fans had a record of violence.

They based this on the utterly false assertion that a violent, pre-planned Arab “Jew-hunt” against Maccabi fans at a match in Amsterdam last year, in which the Israelis were chased through the city, beaten and one of them forced into a canal, was in fact a major attack by Israeli “hooligans” against local Muslims.

By allowing the Palestinian cause to subvert their ability to distinguish truth from lies and right from wrong, Western progressives have damaged something rather closer to home than the truth about the Israel-Arab impasse. It meant that they can’t see how their own society is being Islamized.

That’s why the knee-jerk response after any Islamist atrocities in the West is to worry about attacks on Muslims. It’s why in Britain, any criticism of the police delivering “two-tier justice” by treating Muslims less harshly than others, or concern about attempts to Islamize the curriculum of some state-run schools, or speaking about the overwhelmingly Muslim identity of the rape and grooming gangs is all denounced as “Islamophobia” and silenced.

Palestinianism is the Trojan horse for the Islamization of the West.

Mamdani is motivated, above all, by his passion for the Palestinian cause and his hatred of Israel.

It’s clear from his transition team—a nightmarish collection of Israel-haters, nihilists and ultra-leftists—that he intends to drive a wedge down the middle of the Jewish community by using anti-Zionist Jews as human shields to protect him from charges of antisemitism as he pursues his vendetta against Israel.

New York Jews who denounce Israel will receive protection and favors; Jews who are assumed to support Israel will be thrown to the wolves.

And it will all be done in the language of human rights, justice and international law.
UN Solidarity Day ignores Jewish refugees expelled from Arab countries
This isn’t just a perversion of history. It’s perverted, period.

Tomorrow, the United Nations marks “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.” The date, November 29, was not chosen by chance. On November 29, 1947, the UN accepted the Partition Plan that would lead to the establishment of the State of Israel. The Arab world rejected the partition and declared war on the nascent Jewish state, hoping to swiftly eradicate it. This is the origin of the “Nakba,” the Palestinian “catastrophe.”

Choosing to commemorate one side of the conflict – the side that launched the war – and on that particular date, is more than cynical. It’s manipulative; a reframing of the narrative. It also deliberately ignores the other half of the story. Hence on November 30, Israel commemorates the expulsion of more than 800,000 Jews from Arab and Muslim lands who came to Israel. These are the Middle East’s most overlooked refugees.

Two years after the Hamas-led invasion and mega-atrocity on October 7, 2023, to mark International Solidarity with the Palestinians, while ignoring what has been inflicted on Israel and the Jewish world, is particularly jarring.

Thanks to the UN granting the Palestinians “perpetual refugee status,” the number of Palestinian refugees has risen in the past 70-plus years from some 750,000 to more than five million. So much for the charges of “genocide” by Israel.

But what happened to the Jews?
The Jews who once lived in the Muslim world have all but disappeared. In places like Algeria and Libya, once the homes of vibrant Jewish communities, not one Jew is left. In Yemen, the Jewish population dropped from more than 55,000 in 1948 to less than a handful today – and that includes poor Levi Salem Musa Marhabi, who has been languishing in a Houthi prison since 2016 for helping to smuggle a Torah scroll out to Israel.

Apart from launching a war on the newborn Jewish state in 1948, the Arab world also took revenge on the Jews living among them with devastating riots and anti-Jewish measures. According to Israeli Foreign Ministry statistics, “[Since 1948]: In the North African region, 259,000 Jews fled from Morocco, 140,000 from Algeria, 100,000 from Tunisia, 75,000 from Egypt, and another 38,000 from Libya. In the Middle East, 135,000 Jews were exiled from Iraq, 55,000 from Yemen, 34,000 from Turkey, 20,000 from Lebanon, and 18,000 from Syria. Iran forced out 25,000 Jews.”

In other words, the Jews have been the victims of ethnic cleansing. And when the Jews disappeared, thousands of years of Jewish heritage, history, and culture were wiped out with them.
Father of Ran Gvili, one of two remaining hostages, to speak at possible final Tel Aviv rally
Itzik Gvili, the father of Master Sgt. Ran Gvili, one of the two remaining slain hostages in Gaza, will speak Saturday night at what may be the final rally in Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square.

Gvili and Thai worker Sudthisak Rinthalak are the two slain captives still held in Gaza, after the body of Kibbutz Be’eri’s Dror Or was released earlier this week.

Gvili was killed battling Hamas terrorists in Kibbutz Alumim on October 7, 2023, and his body was abducted to Gaza. Rinthalak was killed by Hamas terrorists the same day in Kibbutz Be’eri, where he was employed as an agricultural worker.

The other speakers at Saturday night’s Tel Aviv rally are Jon Polin, the father of murdered hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin; Ayelet Goldin, sister of slain soldier Lt. Hadar Goldin; Nira Sharabi, wife of Yossi Sharabi, a hostage slain in Hamas captivity; and Eyal Eshel, father of surveillance soldier Roni Eshel, who was killed on October 7 at the Nahal Oz base.

Alongside the Tel Aviv rally, additional protests will be held at Shaar HaNegev Junction and Carmei Gat, the Kiryat Gat neighborhood home to the evacuated Kibbutz Nir Oz community.

Jerusalem’s Safeguarding Our Shared Home protest group said that it will hold a farewell event on Saturday evening for the Hostages’ Tent at the corner of Aza Road and Balfour, erected since the start of the struggle for the release of the hostages.

A spokesperson for the Hostages Families Forum said Friday that it hasn’t yet been announced whether there will be future rallies.

The forum said earlier this week that Saturday’s rally may be the last as the organization will greatly narrow its activities now that there are only two families left to support.

The Forum recommended stopping the rallies by the end of November, given the cost of around NIS 200,000 ($61,000) each week to erect a stage with video and sound systems, adding that the events don’t serve the current situation of terror groups apparently searching for and locating the remaining bodies in Gaza.

The Gvili family has said it understands the Forum’s decision.

Rinthalak’s family is located in Thailand, and while the Forum is in touch with the Thai Embassy, it has not been involved in rallies. Security forces pay their respects as a convoy carrying the body of a hostage arrives at the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute in Tel Aviv, November 25, 2025. (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)

Itzik Gvili said Thursday that he feared his son would never be returned.

“We pray, of course, that he will not be another Ron Arad or [Hadar] Goldin,” Itzik Gvili told Kan news. “That we don’t drag it out for many more years.”


Shared Hatred Drives Antisemitism Across the Political Spectrum
There has long been a concerted effort to cloak the hatred of Jews as a righteous movement. The belief that the world would be a better place if the Jewish people just blended in a little bit more, gave up key aspects of their identity, and essentially altogether stopped being Jewish, has roots dating back centuries.

This paradigm continues to exist today. The Jewish people worldwide are held to standards that no other people are held to. They are told that their identity and their connection to their land – if they are even granted the acknowledgement of their inherent connection to Israel in the first place – is the source of malignancy. If the Jewish people could only give this up, as the claim goes, society would be fixed.

Just as this prejudice has existed throughout time, it also knows no political boundaries. Both extreme left and right-wing activists and influencers online have indulged in this specific form of Jew hatred.

Jewish Supremacy and Political Conspiracies
The belief that Jews exercise some form of control over the West, and particularly American politics, existed long before the terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023. After the attacks, however, blaming the Jewish people as the perpetrators of not only the war but also other societal issues globally became more visible.

On the right, this has become a persistent topic in podcasts. On The Joe Rogan Show, Ian Caroll, an anti-Israel conspiracy theorist – who has previously claimed the U.S. is controlled by a “Zionist mafia” – was interviewed in March 2025. During the conversation, Rogan provided Caroll with a platform for unadulterated antisemitic rhetoric, including the claim that Israel was tied to a “Jewish mob.” Rogan at one point acknowledged, “What’s interesting is you can talk about this now, post-Oct. 7, post-Gaza.”

Similarly, on Piers Morgan Uncensored, Dan Bilzerian, yet another anti-Israel right-wing conspiracy theorist, claimed that “Jewish supremacy is the greatest threat to the world today.”

It is no surprise that Jewish supremacy comments are coming from extreme right-wing spaces. In 2024, 75% of white supremacist propaganda in the U.S. had anti-Israel or anti-Zionist messaging on it. Of all incidents reported, Israel-related antisemitic incidents accounted for more than fifty percent. Still, the vast majority of American Jews describe themselves as connected to Israel.

Yet, the comments about Jewish supremacy are not confined to the far right. Left-wing pro-Palestinian activists, such as Mohammad El-Kurd, express the same belief.
Hen Mazzig: This Cambridge Union debate was a foregone conclusion. But my words needed saying
On 27 November, Hen Mazzig took part in a debate at the Cambridge Union - 'This House believes the International Community has failed Palestine'. This is his full speech

Mr. President, Honourable Members. When I told my Iraqi grandmother I was coming to Cambridge to debate the Middle East conflict, she said it’s good I get so much practice at our Shabbat dinners.

Then she asked what we will be eating and I had to tell her there’s no food, just the arguing.

She seemed a bit less impressed.

But tonight isn’t just an argument; it is a confrontation with a tragedy. And let us be unequivocal from the very first breath: Palestinians have been failed. They have been failed catastrophically.

But if you walk through the ‘Aye’ door tonight, you are endorsing a dangerous lie about who failed them and how.

The Proposition wants you to believe the International Community failed because it didn’t give the Palestinian leadership enough money, enough impunity, or enough land.

They want you to believe that Palestine, is a helpless victim of Western neglect.

My argument is the opposite.

The International Community failed the Palestinian people not by abandoning them, but by indulging a political fantasy at the expense of human reality.

They failed because, for decades, they treated Palestinians not as a population to be uplifted, but as a geopolitical weapon to be sharpened against the state of Israel.

This motion collapses two things that we must tear apart:

Palestinians as human beings deserving of dignity, and “Palestine” as a political project run by factions who have spent decades holding their own people hostage.

If we truly care about the former, we must ruthlessly expose the failure of the latter.
WJC chief on antisemitism: 'We're up against a trillion dollars of propaganda'
Sylvan Adams, president of the World Jewish Congress Israel and Middle East region and one of Israel's most prominent philanthropists, will speak at the Israel Hayom summit in Manhattan on December 2. The son of Holocaust survivors – whose father fought in Israel's War of Independence – Adams made aliyah nearly a decade ago from Montreal and calls himself "Israel's ambassador at large," bringing international icons like Lionel Messi and Madonna to Israel and organizing the Giro d'Italia bicycle race, which attracted an estimated 1.3 billion viewers worldwide.

In an interview with Israel Hayom, Adams discussed how October 7 shifted his work, the surge in global antisemitism, and Israel's failures in the information war. "I was not in Israel on October 7," he said, and described his reaction upon learning the news as "horror and shock."

Q: Do you donate differently prior to and post October 7?

"I'm not one of those October 8 Jews" who found their reawakening after the attacks. Adams said his commitment to Jewish causes never wavered. "The lion's share has always been to give Jewishly, because if we don't look after ourselves, nobody else is going to look after us. So that didn't change at all."

What did change was where he directed his efforts. Before October 7, Adams organized large-scale international events that attracted hundreds of millions of viewers. But "during a time of war, of course, you can't be doing events to show the good name of Israel abroad."

Instead, Adams pivoted to supporting Israel's south. In 2024, he donated $100 million to Ben-Gurion University to help rebuild the southern cities of Israel after the October 7 Hamas-led attack. He wanted to show evacuated residents "that they have a future in the south" and demonstrate to the world "that we are here to stay."

In 2025, he donated $100 million to Soroka Medical Center to help rebuild the hospital damaged by Iranian missiles. His goal is to create "the most complete, most modern hospital in the entire country and one of the most in the entire region."
Ireland’s new president is a troubling ally of Hamas and a danger for Israel
The election of Catherine Connolly as president of Ireland is not good news for Israel. She stands out even among Irish anti-Israeli politicians.

Connolly, a veteran lawmaker on the far left of the Irish political spectrum, is an outspoken supporter of Palestine and frequently speaks about the "genocide" in Gaza and criticizes "atrocities" committed by Israel. During her campaign she even told BBC News that Hamas was "part of the fabric of Palestinian people" legitimately elected to lead Gaza.

Even Ireland's Prime Minister Micheál Martin criticized those comments and attacked her for being reluctant to condemn Hamas’s actions in the Octover 7, 2023, attack on Israel that ignited the two-year Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

Connolly later admitted that she “utterly condemned” Hamas’s actions and that its October 7, 2023, onslaught against Israel, which started the war, was “absolutely unacceptable.” However, referring to the lower house of the Irish legislature, she stated that “If we in this Dáil can’t recognize that Israel is a terrorist state, then we’re in serious trouble,” She even went on to criticize Israel’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear program.


Julie Burchill: Sally Rooney is not a victim of censorship
It’s no surprise that adults living in great ease and comfort should want to experience the thrill of being a wannabe freedom fighter, just as they want to experience fake tattoos as children. But the serious question concerns why the state is aiding and abetting her. This silly cultural sideshow highlights how counterproductive the Palestine Action ban has been, allowing as it does Rooney to pose as a martyr to censorship.

In this piece of performative virtue-signalling, it’s like the British legal system is her cornerman in one of those old boxing melodramas, giving her a bit of orange to suck on and urging: “Go on champ, you can do it! Knock the running dogs of capitalism out for the count!” In order to deny her royalties, a court would surely have to prove that she wasn’t receiving money from anywhere else and that she was spending literally all her money on Palestine Action. This is unlikely to be the case, considering that Rooney has a net worth around £10 million, a good deal of this arising from the fact that her books are massive sellers in that bastion of human freedom and dignity, China.

It’s understandable that a soppy writer should feel inferior to those who took on the genuine fascists. But all the posturing in the world will not make her a warrior, nor any more than a lugubrious laundress with dubious attitudes towards the world’s only Jewish state. We should let Rooney show her true colours, rather than helping drape her in the robes of fake liberation and urging her out into the ring once more. Unless, of course, we decide to go along with her greatly inflated view of herself, smite our collective brow with our collective fist, and realise that a life without Sally Rooney book signings is no life at all.
More than 100 lawyers sign letter in support of solicitor trying to force Hamas deproscription
More than 100 lawyers have signed letter expressing support for the solicitor attempting to force the Home Office to deproscribe Hamas, sent to Justice Secretary David Lammy on Tuesday.

Attorney-General Lord Hermer and Law Society President Mark Evans were also listed as recipients of the letter, which requests a public proclamation of defence for Fahad Ansari.

Among the 118 signatories of the open letter are seven of the nation’s roughly 2,000 KCs.

The letter states that Ansari “has suffered significant adverse consequences as a result of having provided exactly such advice and assistance to such a group”.

It cites his identification by various politicians and negative media reports as reasons that “his offices were inundated with threats of violence and death”.

Additionally, the letter claims Ansari was “targeted, stopped, detained, [and] questioned” by the North Wales Police in August, and expresses concern that the police “have refused to provide any reason for their actions”.

However, it later states that “counsel for the North Wales Police submitted… that there was a distinction between a solicitor and a solicitor acting for proscribed organisations, with it being reasonable to explore the legitimate political beliefs of the latter”.

Ansari has raised over £33,000 from donations in order to cover legal costs of “challenging the police seizure of my work phone”.

The letter goes on to say that “any exercise of the right to apply for deproscription – and appeal any refusal of such an application – will inherently involve groups who, at least according to the Secretary of State, were ‘concerned in terrorism’.”


Qatar's Campus Conquest: Importing Muslim Brotherhood Policies in a War for the Future of the West
According to a shocking new report by the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), as well as Jihad in America: The Grand Deception, a 2012 film by the Investigative Project on Terrorism, the Muslim Brotherhood, along with its major patron, Qatar, has a dangerous ideological agenda aimed at undermining the West from within.

ISGAP's latest report highlights a crucial and overlooked fact: the ruling family of Qatar has pledged Bay'ah -- a spiritual oath of loyalty -- to the Muslim Brotherhood, the intellectual parent of modern political Islam. This ideological commitment drives Qatar's global influence operations and informs the direction of its foreign funding.

Qatar's influence does not end with funding. ISGAP identifies the Muslim Students Association (MSA) -- founded by Muslim Brotherhood activists -- as the primary vehicle for campus-level ideological entryism. Operating on 600+ US campuses, the MSA works closely with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). Since the Hamas atrocities of October 7, 2023, these groups have mobilized some of the most aggressive anti-Israel activism, including disruptions, protests and dissemination of pro-Hamas messaging.

According to ISGAP's Executive Director, Charles Small, the Muslim Brotherhood aims to isolate Israel and weaken US-Israel ties, fragment US society through antisemitism and campus radicalization, and challenge democratic norms and replace them with Islamist ideological frameworks.

Qatar's campaign is not confined to the United States. A credible security source, cited in a report by the Usanas Foundation, a "geopolitics and security affairs organization" based in India, indicates that Doha is funding Islamist-aligned academia, media, and campus activism across India, the United Kingdom, and EU nations.

Money is flowing to journalists, professors, and influencers in India who promote political Islam under the guise of "Palestinian activism".

Unless democracies take decisive action -- through transparency laws, foreign-funding oversight, campus reform, and ideological vigilance -- Qatar's anti-democratic ideological offensive will continue hollowing out the foundations of free societies throughout the world.
Former Seattle principal, named in Jew-hatred lawsuit, to lead Jewish ‘listening session’
The man who is slated to facilitate a Dec. 11 “listening session” for Jewish and Israeli families in the Bellevue School District in Washington state is accused in a federal lawsuit of having failed, in his previous job, to shield a Jewish student from escalating antisemitic harassment.

On Nov. 29, 2023, Seattle Public Schools lauded William Jackson, then principal of Nathan Hale High School, for being named the state’s principal of the year, and the Seattle district superintendent said Jackson “has a clear vision of how to systemically build climate for equity, justice and academic outcomes.”

Per Jackson’s LinkedIn page, he left that job in June 2024. In the interim, he has run an education consultancy and has taught as an adjunct instructor at the University of Washington, per his LinkedIn, and in July 2024, he began as teaching and learning director at the Bellevue district.

As of July 2025, he has been promoted to executive director of teaching and learning at the Bellevue district, according to his LinkedIn.

In June 2025, the parents of a Jewish student at Nathan Hale High filed a lawsuit in the Superior Court of Washington for King County alleging that Jackson and Seattle Public Schools were aware of months of threats, slurs, Swastika graffiti and direct warnings about the safety of the student, identified as M.K.L.

Jackson and the district failed to investigate or discipline the alleged offenders or follow mandatory response protocols, the suit claimed.

The family withdrew the suit, which JNS viewed, at some point and refiled it in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington on Nov. 20.

According to the complaint, M.K.L. was “a member of the Jewish Student Union,” wore a Star of David necklace and spoke openly about her identity. Other students told her “they hated Jews” and “expressed their regret that Hitler had not finished the job,” per the complaint.

The lawsuit alleges that Jackson allowed students, who took part in a “free Palestine” walkout in November 2023, to display flyers on student grounds and that classmates threatened to “jump” M.K.L. “if she wore any clothing associated with Judaism on the day of the walkout.” Her parents kept her home that day, per the suit.
Cornell graduate union says Palestinians have right to resist ‘by any means necessary’
Cornell Graduate Student Workers United, the union affiliate of United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America on the Cornell University campus, said on Wednesday that its members voted to endorse a boycott of Israel.

“Standing with the strength of Palestinians resisting a genocide, and their unequivocal human right to resist oppression by any means necessary, workers around the world are building power through the belief that we free Palestine, and Palestine frees us,” the union stated.

Some 72.2% of the union members who cast a vote were in favor of the measure, and 27.8% were opposed, according to an email to union members that JNS viewed.

The union told its members in an email, obtained by JNS, that 72.22% of its members voted for the referendum and 27.77% voted against it. (JNS sought comment from the union.)

The measure both accuses Cornell of being “implicated in the Israeli genocide of Palestinians through research, recruitment and financial ties with the weapons industry and endowment investments.

The resolution “explicitly echoes Hamas’s rhetoric used to justify the atrocities of Oct. 7” and “fosters a hostile environment for Jewish and Israeli students,” David Rubinstein, a doctoral student at Cornell who testified on the subject before the House Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions in September, told JNS.

It is “beyond time” for the university to hold the union “accountable and stop ignoring its calls for violence,” he told JNS. “If the university abdicates responsibility for its civil rights obligations, it must face consequences.”
UKLFI: Academic boycott at UEA challenged
UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) has written to the Vice-Chancellor of the University of East Anglia (UEA) calling for an urgent investigation after a senior academic refused to consider a research application because it was from a scholar at an Israeli university.

A professor of social science at UEA had declined to consider a request by an Arab Israeli postdoctoral researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI) to undertake a research visit to UEA. The UEA professor explained that this decision was taken “primarily as Palestinian colleagues have asked us not to work with Israeli universities at this time,” while noting that this was “a personal position rather than that of my University”.

UKLFI’s letter to the Vice Chancellor pointed out that such conduct is likely to breach the Equality Act 2010, which prohibits discrimination based on protected characteristics including nationality, and exposes both the professor and the university to legal liability.

UKLFI further emphasised that “such boycotts are contrary to fundamental academic values, recognised by international instruments as well as UEA’s own policies”.

UKLFI’s letter highlighted that such boycotts conflict with UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Status of Higher-Education Personnel, UEA’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Policy, and also its adoption of the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism, noting that academic boycotts targeting Israel disproportionately impact Jewish academics.

UKLFI commented: “A refusal to consider an applicant because of her Israeli affiliation directly undermines the principles of fairness, equality, and dignity that the University professes to uphold.”


Engineered Sympathy: How Gaza Flood Imagery Is Constructed to Shape Global Perception
Key Takeaways:
The photographer behind Gaza “flood” images, Abed Rahim Khatib, was documented inside Israel with Hamas on October 7, raising serious questions about the credibility and intent of his widely circulated photos.
Each image selectively frames shallow puddles as “flooding,” using children, tight angles, and deliberate cropping to create an emotional narrative that contradicts the clearly dry surroundings.
Across eight cases, captions and imagery systematically exaggerate hardship while omitting key facts—warm weather, dry ground, and Hamas-built tunnel infrastructure—revealing a coordinated effort to manufacture a global sympathy narrative rather than document reality.

In mid-November, Israel and the Gaza Strip experienced the first rains of the season as the region was hit by a torrential downpour. This type of weather is not unusual for the time of year, and both Israeli and Palestinian cities suffer from flooding as drainage systems struggle to cope.

Unsurprisingly, the flooding in Gaza became an international story weaponized to blame Israel.

Let’s take a look at the photography behind this year’s Gaza flood through the lens of one photographer to demonstrate how images are manipulated to produce an emotional reaction that the reality doesn’t always mirror.

Context: The Photographer Behind the Lens
Understanding the identity and history of the photographer is essential for interpreting the flood images.

Abed Rahim Khatib whose work is distributed by Anadolu, AP, and Getty, is documented photographing inside Israel on the morning of October 7, 2023, at the breached border fence near destroyed IDF positions. These images confirm that he entered Israel alongside Hamas attackers in the first wave of the massacre and was present at active abduction and murder sites.

This is not a small detail. It establishes that the same individual who photographed morgue scenes, hospital scenes, hostage transfer events, rubble, and now rainstorm puddles was physically part of the invasion footprint inside Israel.

It is also relevant that Khatib works for Anadolu. Anadolu is a Turkish state-run news agency that operates with a consistent anti-Israel narrative and is a central distributor of Gaza-sourced imagery to international outlets. This institutional context matters.


Helmut Kohl’s politician grandson is ‘ashamed’ of Germany’s response to antisemitism
Johannes Volkmann, an up-and-coming young conservative German lawmaker with a prominent political pedigree, says he is embarrassed by what he calls many Germans’ acceptance of surging antisemitism since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which has led his country’s Jews to “exist only in fear.”

Volkmann, 28, is one of the youngest lawmakers in the Christian Democratic Union, the party once led by his grandfather, former longtime German Chancellor and pro-Israel stalwart Helmut Kohl.

“I’m ashamed of how willingly large parts of our society, especially supposedly progressive circles, have tolerated this development,” Volkmann told The Times of Israel last week.

“Eighty years after the Shoah, we have learned that what should be self-evident in Germany is not, that Jewish life in our cities must be possible without fear,” he said. Instead, “it has become normalized that visible Jewish life in many places can exist only in fear or under police protection.”

The remarks come amid a dramatic spike in antisemitic incidents in Germany. The Research and Information Center on Antisemitism, an independent watchdog known by the acronym RIAS, documented 8,627 incidents in 2024, a 77 percent rise from the previous year, including eight instances of extreme antisemitic violence, such as attacks resulting in physical injury, and another 186 physical assaults.

Between 2022 and 2023, according to police data, the number of antisemitic crimes doubled, with a spike following the Hamas-led October 7 attack. Between 2023 and last year, the number rose by another 20%, with a total of 6,236 cases recorded in 2024.

Volkmann is calling for a far more forceful government response. That includes tighter immigration policies and residency rules, enhanced disciplinary powers for universities, and laws against providing arts funding to antisemitic endeavors.

“We have a duty to confront antisemitism in our cultural landscape, at universities, and particularly in some migrant communities,” he said.

Volkmann, one of the youngest lawmakers in the CDU, has quickly risen within the party once led by his grandfather, which has governed Germany for most of its postwar history. He became active in the Christian Democrats while still in school and joined the party’s federal board in 2024 at age 27, making him its youngest member.
Greta Thunberg, Francesca Albanese attend transport-disrupting Israel protests in Italy
Strikes and protests in Italy against Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's support for Israel caused the cancellation of dozens of flights and disrupted train services around the country.

Hundreds of protesters marched in Turin, many waving Palestinian flags, and another pro-Gaza march in Genoa was attended by United Nations Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, activist Greta Thunberg, and former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis.

In Venice, activists blocked access to the offices of Italian defence group Leonardo before they were dispersed by police using water cannon.

The USB has organised another national day of protest on Saturday against what it calls Meloni's "war budget", saying the 2026 financial bill favours military spending over investment in health, education, and welfare.

Prime Minister Meloni, in power since 2022, has called the budget "serious, balanced and responsible," pointing to its income tax cuts for middle-earners, which she says can help Italy's sluggish economy.

The hardline USB union and smaller worker organisations called the one-day action against the government's plans to raise military spending and its support for Israel.

Recent years have seen the emergence of the USB as an aggressive grass-roots union which is challenging the traditional dominance of the three main confederations, the left-wing CGIL and the centrist CISL, and UIL.

The more mainstream CGIL, Italy's largest union, has announced a nationwide strike of its own members over the budget on December 12.


Dan Tolkowsky, former air force commander and Israeli tech pioneer, dies at 104
Tel Aviv-born Royal Air Force vet stayed in Britain to help Haganah obtain first planes for budding air force, which he led between 1953-1958; went on to found Israel’s 1st VC fund

Maj. Gen. (ret.) Dan Tolkowsky, the fifth commander of the Israeli Air Force and later a key figure in the development of Israel’s high-tech and venture capital sectors, died overnight Friday in his home in Tel Aviv at the age of 104.

Tolkowsky, who led the IAF from 1953 to 1958, was born to a venerable Zionist family in Tel Aviv in 1921. His father, Shmuel, was a pioneering Zionist agriculturalist, and his maternal grandfather, Isaac Leib Goldberg, helped found some of the earliest Zionist communes in Ottoman Palestine.

Tolkowsky joined the Haganah — the IDF’s paramilitary forerunner — when he was 15. He moved to London in 1938 to study mechanical engineering and volunteered for Britain’s Royal Air Force in 1942, during the Second World War. After training in Africa, he served as a Spitfire pilot in Italy, southern France, and Greece.

Tolkowsky continued to work as an engineer in Britain after the war and helped the Haganah acquire the aircraft that formed Israel’s air force. He joined the Israeli Air Force after it was established following Israel’s declaration of independence on May 14, 1948. That same year, he also married his wife Miriam.

During the War of Independence, Tolkowsky carried out IAF bombing campaigns on the Egyptian front.

He held several top roles in the force after the war, including head of its training division between 1948 and 1951, and later chief of staff — a role akin to a deputy to then-air force chief Haim Laskov — between 1951 and 1953.

He became the head of the IAF in 1953, at the age of 32.




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