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Friday, December 05, 2025

12/05 Links Pt2: Boycotting Fun to Own the Jews; The boycott of Eurovision exposes the racism of the Israel-bashers; Why Hamas Sympathizers Love Ms. Rachel

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Boycotting Fun to Own the Jews
Which brings us back to the ridiculous meetings that took place yesterday among European broadcasters. The gathering voted to adopt a set of contest reforms rather than ban Israel from participation. It’s darkly funny that some of the reforms were aimed at quieting resentment toward Israel for its success—last year, Yuval Raphael finished second overall and won the public vote, leading to protests that the Jews somehow must have cheated. But it mollified enough of the Europeans that Eurovision avoided the nightmare scenario it most feared: having to ban Israel while Austria was hosting the competition.

Still, several countries have announced they will boycott the contest rather than share a stage with the Jewish state: Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland and Slovenia. Perhaps more will join them.

How should we judge the countries who stomped out of Eurovision over Israel’s participation? Harshly. A singing competition is not a diplomatic convention. Would you leave a karaoke bar because there was an Israeli Jew there? Will these folks boycott all establishments that serve Israeli Jews?

Aside from emitting a faint segregationist stink, these Europeans are politicizing every cell in their bodies in an attempt to enforce those same artistic limits on everyone else. If rare apolitical music gatherings are impossible, it has a stunting effect on the industry and on the minds and temperaments of the people participating in their own dumbing down.

And the soccer snobs are also—you just know it—coming for the Olympics at some point. Unhealthy people trying to make the planet an unhealthy world through a totalitarian-political mindset. I’d tell them to get a hobby, but they’d just ruin that too.
Andrew Pessin: Onward, ho!
Meteorological Discourse: How Language Erases Jewish Agency and Conceals Antizionist Actors

When Jews freeze under the antizionist gaze, they begin using a vocabulary of atmosphere rather than agency. Instead of identifying who is targeting Jews and why, they often describe anti-Jewish hate as though it were weather. We hear phrases like:
“It’s getting bad”
“Antisemitism is rising”
“This campus is terrifying.”

These are weather reports, not analyses. They lack actors, motives, structures, ideologies, and systems. And this linguistic pattern continues even in descriptions of violence. In an eerie way, events happen to Jews, yet no one causes them:
“Israeli women were raped”
“Nasrallah was lionized”
“A Jew was beaten in Montreal”
“Jewish businesses were vandalized”
“Jewish students were harassed”
“Sarah Milgrim was shot”

Such formulations render the harm without rendering the perpetrator. They mimic the structure of meteorological statements (“It rained,” “The streets flooded”) in which no actor exists and no intention is named. Violence becomes a condition rather than an action; Jews become a medium through which harm moves, not subjects whose safety is violated by identifiable agents.

Contrast this with what Jews should say—language that restores agency to those who commit, legitimize, or amplify anti-Jewish harm:
“Antizionists raped Israeli women”
“The New York Times lionized Nasrallah”
“Antizionists beat a Jew in Montreal”
“Antizionists vandalized Jewish businesses”
“Antizionists harassed Jewish students”
“Elias Rodriguez shot Sarah Milgrim”

This linguistic shift restores agency to the actors who commit, legitimize, or amplify anti-Jewish harm. It makes the ideology and its adherents visible. It generates accountability. And crucially, it reorients the public gaze away from Jewish victims and toward the structures targeting Jews.
'Antizionism Is a Hate Movement': A Conversation with Adam Louis-Klein
Something happened while I was writing a book about how to fight antisemitism. Forget internal arguments over hyphens or whether to call it “Jew-hate.” A new consensus is beginning to form around using the word “antizionism” instead. I always thought that, whatever you call it, this form of bigotry adapts to the times and, like a parasite, hitches a ride on whatever version of anti-Jewish hatred is socially acceptable. I’m beginning to understand that antizionism is different. It gives antisemites plausible deniability for their hatred, and we need a new set of tools to fight it.

At the forefront of this effort is anthropologist Adam Louis-Klein, who has led a push on social media to change the way we think about antizionism and to name it as a hate movement. He launched an organization, the Movement Against Antizionism to advocate for this shift.

I had many questions, so I interviewed Adam last month. I thought it best to let him speak for himself, so here is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation.


Why Hamas Sympathizers Love Ms. Rachel
The Jewish-American scholar Saul Lieberman once quipped that “nonsense is nonsense, but the history of nonsense is scholarship.” Lieberman was referring to Kabbalistic mysticism, but the principle is true more broadly. A squealing children’s television icon is nonsense; her effort to manipulate the American people’s views on the Middle East deserves careful analysis.

Rachel Griffin-Accurso, known primarily by her stage name “Ms. Rachel,” has gained wealth and influence through her low-budget children’s show, a favorite of millions of “littles.”

Like so much of this decade’s cultural content, the show is slop—annoying but hardly indoctrinating. But beyond the confines of her show, Ms. Rachel has emerged as an authoritative voice on every subject that even tangentially relates to children, including Israel’s war on Hamas.

Ms. Rachel admits to being a neophyte when it comes to the world’s most volatile region. In an interview with left-wing journalist Mehdi Hasan, she acknowledged that she “didn’t know much” about the Middle East before Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attacks.

Still, that has not stopped her from using her various platforms to construct a simplistic narrative of the conflict. Her Instagram, followed by more than 4 million accounts, reads like the product of an anti-Israel activist who happens to wear bright colors and overalls.

There is nothing wrong with advocating for children suffering during wartime. It’s the content of her advocacy that raises questions.

First, despite telling Hasan that she was “horrified by October 7,” Ms. Rachel had little to say that day about the harms to Israeli children. Her only Instagram post from October 7—long after Hamas’s live broadcast of its rampage of murder, torture, and kidnapping—is a hairdo tutorial. That silence continued for weeks even as the extent of Hamas’s atrocities became clear.

Ms. Rachel has no obligation to weigh in on all the world’s suffering children, a policy she continues to honor when it comes to China, Africa, and Ukraine. But she eventually broke that silence. After Israel launched its war to defeat the barbarians who had wiped out entire families (including babies pummeled to death in Gaza), Ms. Rachel began her campaign with a song about peace for “all children.”

The second giveaway that Ms. Rachel is not merely engaged in children’s advocacy is her repeated, selective use of blame. Though she started with vague hopes for peace that did not mention Israel or Hamas by name, Ms. Rachel has gradually begun including “analysis” in her Instagram posts. She informed her followers that Israel is committing “genocide,” accusing it of “murder[ing] 4 year olds!” and blaming the world for dehumanizing Palestinians to excuse Israel’s conduct.

The surest sign that something is amiss in Ms. Rachel’s advocacy is that while she has regularly called on Israel to stop its just war, she has never once (as far as I can find) called on Hamas to lay down its arms. (She has “condemn[ed] HAMAS” in the same post as she “condemn[ed] the Israeli government.”) Indeed, she has recently dropped the pretense of hating Israel on behalf of the suffering children of Gaza and now regularly posts anti-Israel messages unrelated to children’s welfare.


Film prompts cathedral to remove 'blood libel' leaflet
A cathedral has removed a leaflet recounting an antisemitic medieval myth in a move prompted by a new film.

Norwich Cathedral took the action after taking part in the short documentary The Innocents, made for the UK Jewish Film Festival 2025.

The leaflet contained the Norwich blood libel - a false accusation made in the 12th Century stating Jews had ritually murdered a local boy called William - a story that spread across the globe.

In the film, the Norwich Jewish community expressed discomfort about the leaflet being placed in the cathedral's Holy Innocents chapel, named after the biblical story about the massacre of infants by King Herod.

In response to the removal of the leaflet, Dr Marian Prinsley, president of Norwich Hebrew Congregation, said: "Symbolically it's very important for all Jewish people in this country and wider.

"You can't have the story of King Herod and the story of William of Norwich being conflated and the Jews being blamed for the killing of babies."

In the film, Dr Prinsley said presenting the two stories together was "an issue that has been festering within the Jewish community".

"Saint William was the boy that was supposed to have been killed in Norwich and there's certainly no evidence that the Jews killed him," she said.

She believed the lie was fabricated in order to bring pilgrims to the cathedral which helped it to raise money, but that the widespread ramifications of that were very serious for Jewish people.

Dean of Norwich Cathedral, the Very Revd Dr Andrew Braddock, said: "We've got to be honest about our history as a cathedral.

"This is one of the places where that blood libel myth starts to be propagated and shared, and the terrible, terrible damage and suffering that's caused."

He added that the Norwich blood libel "has played a tragic part in the long and dark history of antisemitism".
Green Party leader rebuked for claiming Chief Rabbi doesn’t represent UK Jews on Israel
The Manchester-born party leader went on to criticise Jewish communal organisations as being unrepresentative of the wider community – a point he made in an interview with the JC last year.

However, on this occasion, Polanski singled out Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis for criticism.

He told Stewart and Campbell: “We have a Chief Rabbi who I think has more than overstepped the mark”, adding that there were “many times where he's not speaking for the British Jewish community. He's certainly not speaking for me, but I don't think he's speaking for the wider community. He is clearly speaking in the interests of defending the Israeli government.”

“Now, as a personal view, he's totally entitled to do that, and I'm totally entitled to disagree with him, but as someone with the role of Chief Rabbi to politicise what's happening in Israel as a defence of the Jewish community in Britain, I think is deeply damaging in the same way as so many things within our politics. Where politics and people's ideas and personalities get mixed, we end up in a dangerous place where institutions crumble.”

Stewart responded by saying that he was “at risk of violently agreeing” with the points Polanski made.

The Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council, however, criticised Polanski’s comments.

“Zack Polanski's attack on the Chief Rabbi is outrageous and completely unjustified. The Chief Rabbi's commitment to Israel and its welfare reflects the feelings of the overwhelming majority of the community he serves,” a Board of Deputies spokesperson said.

The Jewish Leadership Council also condemned the remarks, saying:
“Many within the Jewish community feel deeply uncomfortable and often threatened when they see the world’s only Jewish state singled out or held to different standards. We have seen the real and violent consequences that follow when individuals seek to amp up extreme rhetoric towards Israel. The Chief Rabbi is absolutely right to call out this behaviour in defence of our community’s interests”, a spokesperson for the organisation said.

They added: “In stark contrast, Zack Polanski has gone far beyond criticism of the government of Israel and has actively defended his Deputy Leader, who described Hamas terrorists as ‘indigenous people’ fighting back.”

Mothin Ali, now the Green Party’s deputy leader, made those comments after October 7, 2023 but later argued that he had not been referencing the Hamas attack on Israeli civilians.

He also said in a post on X on October 7, 2023 that “White supremacist European settler colonialism must end” and was criticised for inciting division against a Leeds University rabbi who returned to Israel for reserve duties after the start of the war.


There are only 3,000 Jews in Ireland. Now anti-Israel hatred risks driving them out
And while the park row may have been defused for now, the emotional damage lingers. “You cannot limit which Jews are deemed ‘worthy’ based on whether they are connected to Israel,” says Wieder. “That strikes at the very legitimacy of our identity.”

Nathan Barrett, the principal of Stratford College, believes that the campaign has also sent a jarring message to his 200 pupils, who currently feel wary of speaking Hebrew or wearing a kippah outside the school.

“For the council to consider renaming a park that is part of Ireland’s Jewish heritage shows a lack of empathy,” he says. “We try to teach the young about diversity and inclusion, yet these values seem absent in this process.”

Dublin’s Jewish leaders are also aware that in a community this small – including many, like Stafford Spier, who are elderly – it would only take a few serious incidents to spark an exodus, heralding its long-term demise.

The chief rabbi downplays that scenario, stressing that, despite growing concerns, anti-Semitism has not yet become “a day-to-day issue”. To that end, he still wears his kippah on the streets – and has some inspirational words for those who still want to be proud Dublin Jews.

“I have had people, yes, shouting ‘Zionist’ or ‘Free Gaza’ at me, but they generally do so from across the street, whereas those who are supportive of the Jewish community come up and say so in person. There is the abuse, yes – but there’s also the reminder that for most people, we’re still welcome.”


Brendan O'Neill: The boycott of Eurovision exposes the racism of the Israel-bashers
What’s really ‘unconscionable’ is the flagrant double standards by which the world’s only Jewish nation is so harshly judged and savagely damned. We can safely ignore the historical illiterates of the bourgeois left who are saying: ‘Russia was barred from Eurovision in 2022, so why is Israel still in it?!’ Russia invaded its neighbour. Israel was invaded by its neighbour – by a 6,000-strong army of Islamists who arrived by air, sea and land to slaughter more Jews in one day than anyone else had since the Nazis. If you can’t tell the difference between those two things then I have some bad news for you: you’re either stupid or anti-Semitic.

No, what the Eurovision boycott really reveals is the deep well of bigotry from which the poison of Israelophobia froths and flows. Time and again, the Jewish nation is judged by a different standard to every other nation on Earth. Its academics are boycotted, whereas America’s are not, despite America’s far more destructive wars. Its artists are raged against and banned, where China’s and Iran’s are not. Its wars are marched against week in, week out, where Sudan’s are not. Its future destruction is openly dreamt of – from the river to the sea – where no other nation’s is. And its Eurovision singers are smeared, screamed at, witch-hunted, whereas Britain’s aren’t, or France’s, or Turkey’s. Indeed, Turkey won Eurovision in 2003, and no one gave a fuck that just two months earlier it had invaded Iraqi Kurdistan.

If you call this anti-Semitic, they will attack you. Okay, what is it, then? How do we explain the unique and disproportionate fury with the Jewish State? Why is it more boycotted, loathed, demonised and damned than any other nation? Why is it the only state whose violent demise is openly campaigned for on the streets of the West? Why do so many seek to ringfence their lives from its wares, its artists, its books, its people? I’m sick of pretending this is ‘politics’. It isn’t – it’s racism. Past efforts to make Europe ‘Judenfrei’ have been replaced by a new crusade to make it ‘Israelfrei’. That’s what the campaign to drive Israel from Eurovision really represents – the latest bigoted effort to cleanse our continent of the disease of the Jewish nation. Plus ça change…

This year’s Israeli entry to Eurovision was Yuval Raphael, a 24-year-old singer who survived Hamas’s fascist slaughter at the Nova music festival by playing dead under a pile of bodies. Yet when she arrived in Switzerland for Eurovision she was confronted by jeering mobs. A man made a throat-slitting gesture. She required 24/7 security. A survivor of Nazi-style barbarism being taunted and threatened? Now that’s unconscionable. And it was a direct product of the top-down racial hatred that has the gall to doll itself up as ‘opposition to Israel’. Shame on every lowlife boycotter of Eurovision.


Dana International says Israel paying price for ‘never-ending war’ amid Eurovision drama
Eurovision winner Dana International spoke out Thursday against the withdrawal of four European countries from the song contest over Israel’s continued participation, but in a Hebrew language message, blamed the government for harming Israel’s global reputation.

In two Instagram posts — one in Hebrew, the other in English — the pop star expressed shock at the decision of Ireland, Spain, Slovenia and the Netherlands to quit Eurovision, after European Broadcasting Union members voted against holding a referendum on Israel’s participation, angering critics.

“Explain to me how and why you have turned against us and announced your withdrawal?” she wrote in English, addressing the four non-participating countries. “You no longer want us singing with you? Do you understand how violent and insulting that decision is? How much it adds only hatred and harm?”

She stressed Israel’s open and liberal qualities, hailing it as the most liberal country in the Middle East. She added that many Israelis want to oust the current hardline right-wing government. “You don’t punish an entire country because you disagree politically with its government,” she said.

She lent some credence to critics of the two-year war against Hamas in Gaza, but said that Israel is nevertheless trying to balance “security challenges with sanity and liberal values, things that are not well accepted in the region we live in.”

“Hamas executes people for being gay. Almost every Eurovision winner would have been hanged in the town square in Gaza,” she wrote.


‘Rat Hunting’ Harvard Law Professor Agrees to Self-Deport After Firing Pellet Gun Near Synagogue During Yom Kippur
Harvard Law School visiting professor Carlos Portugal Gouvea—who told authorities he fired a pellet rifle outside a synagogue on the eve of Yom Kippur "to hunt rats"—agreed to self-deport after ICE arrested him Wednesday.

Gouvea—who founded a Brazilian think tank that "led the largest anti-violence campaign in the country, resulting in the enactment of the federal Gun Control Act of 2003," according to Harvard—was first arrested on Oct. 2 by the Brookline Police Department immediately following the shooting. Harvard placed Gouvea on administrative leave days later, and on Nov. 13 he pleaded guilty to illegally using the air rifle.

The incident prompted the State Department to revoke his temporary non-immigrant visa on Oct. 16, leading to the ICE arrest. He volunteered to leave the United States rather than risk deportation, ending his stretch of serving at elite American institutions like Yale Law School and the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.

"There is no room in the United States for brazen, violent acts of anti-Semitism like this," DHS assistant secretary for public affairs Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement Thursday. "We are under zero obligation to admit foreigners who commit these inexplicably reprehensible acts or to let them stay here."

Gouvea—who came to Harvard from the Law School of the University of São Paulo, where he leads the Diversity and Inclusion Committee—fired his pellet gun on the eve of the holiest holiday of the Jewish year outside of Temple Beth Zion in Brookline, Mass., a short drive from Harvard's Cambridge campus. More than a dozen police officers descended upon the area and arrested Gouvea, but only after he escaped to his home near the synagogue following a "brief physical struggle."

Gouvea was handcuffed on the sidewalk outside of his home and told police he was "using the pellet rifle to hunt rats in the area." Law enforcement officials later found a car with a window shattered from a pellet nearby. They determined that Gouvea was not targeting the temple.


NPR Sanitizes Unrepentant Terrorist and Child Killer Because He Won a Book Prize
Khandaqji was awarded the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2024 for a novel he wrote while serving out his three life sentences in an Israeli prison, “A Mask the Color of the Sky.”

Khandaqji’s role in the Carmel Market terrorist attack was as driver to the suicide bomber, then 16-year old Amer al-Fahr. Khandaqji allegedly used a journalist identification card he procured while a student at A-Najah University in Nablus, enabling him to gain entry into Israel from the West Bank and bring al-Fahr with him so that he could enable a child to kill himself while murdering Israelis. While The New York Times previously reported Khandaqji denied the charges, NPR reported that Khandaqji “acknowledge[d] he was the one who dispatched the bomber to Tel Aviv” and despite having sent a Palestinian child to kill and die, he “did not feel regret for his actions.”

Not content to knowingly profile a terrorist and child murderer, NPR took it upon itself set the stage and justify Khandaqji’s terror activities at the time when it narrated, “It was during the second intifada, a Palestinian uprising that lasted from 2000 to 2005 in protest of Israel’s continuing occupation despite years of peace talks. During that time, Palestinian militant groups killed more than 1,000 Israelis, and the Israeli military killed several thousand Palestinians.”

Blaming the second intifada on “Israel’s continuing occupation despite years of peace talks” leads NPR’s listeners singularly to blame Israel for the hundreds of terrorist attacks perpetrated by Palestinian terrorists, particularly given NPR’s failure to provide the context that Yasser Arafat refused the proposed Palestinian state and peace deal at Camp David in 2000.

NPR decided to depict an unrepentant child killer and terrorist as merely a reformed “militant” and “prized novelist” not once, but twice. Even when given a redo, NPR cannot help itself but glorify Palestinian terrorism.
NBC’s Sickening ‘Both-Sides’ Rape Coverage
Moral Equivalence by Construction
This segment requires little dissection beyond identifying its core sleight of hand: NBC constructed moral equivalence between documented mass rape by terrorists and unsubstantiated accusations made by anti-Israel NGOs.

Even if NBC wished to cover claims against Israeli detention facilities, the editorial decision to stitch those claims into a segment featuring hostage testimonies was a conscious act of narrative laundering. Rather than reporting facts as facts and allegations as allegations—each with appropriate scrutiny—NBC chose to merge them, flattening the distinction between evidence and advocacy.

Why embed unproven claims alongside Israeli victims describing their abuse unless the goal is to dull the impact of their testimony?

The effect is calculated: viewers leave not knowing what happened, but believing that “everyone did it” – that atrocities on October 7 were simply part of a morally indistinct conflict where truth is unknowable and justice arbitrary.

What NBC Actually Achieved
NBC did not illuminate crimes against humanity – it obscured them.

It transformed rape testimony into a pretext for political balancing. It elevated activist claims to parity with firsthand survivor evidence. And it perpetuated a grotesque fiction: that Hamas sexual violence is merely one datapoint in a symmetrical story rather than the deliberate war crime it indisputably represents.

Israeli victims spoke. NBC drowned them out.


Report links Hezbollah to global ransomware group
A new joint report by DOS-OP and the Alma Research and Education Center describes the BQT.Lock (BaqiyatLock) ransomware group as an offensive cyber arm of the Hezbollah terrorist group, not a purely criminal outfit.

The authors say the group shows a direct and systematic affiliation with Hezbollah and the Iranian cyber apparatus.

According to the Nov. 23 report, BQT.Lock is operated by Karim Fayad, whom the report’s authors identify as a Lebanese computer engineering student who leads the group while maintaining a “double life.” They say he is active in civilian academic and professional roles while simultaneously running cyber operations for the Iranian terror proxy.

The report characterizes BQT.Lock as a ransomware-as-a-service operation that has attacked multiple targets worldwide and stolen sensitive data. Its main targets include Israel, the United States, Saudi Arabia, India, the United Arab Emirates and Lebanon.

Alma links the operation ideologically to Hezbollah, noting that the name “Baqiyat/BaqiyatLock” is derived from a Shi’ite religious concept associated with Hezbollah and Iranian narratives.


Arsenal hosts landmark summit as football leaders unite to confront antisemitism
Senior figures from English football came together at Arsenal FC on Thursday for a national symposium on tackling antisemitism in sport, as the game faces growing pressure to strengthen protections for Jewish players, staff and supporters.

The event – delivered in partnership by Maccabi GB and HM Government’s Independent Adviser on Antisemitism, Lord Mann – brought more than 100 representatives from clubs, leagues, county FAs, governing bodies and fan networks to the Emirates Stadium for a full-day programme focused on practical action.

Held on the 90th anniversary of the notorious 1935 England-Germany match at White Hart Lane, where the visiting team performed the Nazi salute, organisers said the date served as a stark reminder of football’s historic encounters with antisemitism and the consequences of failing to challenge it.

Attendees examined the current picture of anti-Jewish hate across British sport, the experiences of Jewish professionals and fans, and gaps in clubs’ existing EDI structures. Sessions focused on strengthening reporting routes, embedding antisemitism awareness into organisational frameworks, improving internal communications and ensuring Jewish supporters feel safe and represented inside stadiums.

The conference is part of a national Tackling Antisemitism in Sport programme launched in 2023, which has already trained more than 4,000 professionals across the football pyramid – including all Premier League clubs, 60 EFL sides and 46 county FAs.

Lord Mann said sport had a “unique ability to bring people together” but warned it could also expose prejudices that too often go unchecked. “We are equipping clubs, leagues and governing bodies with the knowledge and confidence they need to identify antisemitism early and tackle it decisively,” he said. “The willingness of football leaders to engage so openly today is not just encouraging – it is essential.”
Man charged with terror offenses over links to Manchester synagogue attacker
A man investigated for suspected links to the deadly Manchester synagogue attack was charged Thursday with four terrorism offenses not “directly” related to the atrocity, British prosecutors announced.

Mohammad Bashir, 31, arrested a week ago at Manchester Airport, will not face charges over the October 2 car ramming and knife assault, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said.

However, he will be prosecuted for having allegedly driven the perpetrator Jihad al-Shamie to a British “defense location” to conduct “hostile reconnaissance.”

He will also be prosecuted for having allegedly shared material online intending to encourage terrorism, the CPS added.

They said they had concluded there was “sufficient evidence” to charge Bashir with one offense of preparing terrorist acts and three counts of sharing terrorist publications with al-Shamie and others.

He is due in Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Friday for a first hearing.

Assistant Chief Constable Rob Potts said the charges were not “directly linked” to their ongoing investigation into the attack on the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation synagogue.

Two men died in the attack by Syrian-born UK citizen Shamie, which came as worshipers gathered for Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.
Ofcom investigating social media removal of antisemitic content after Manchester synagogue attack
Ofcom has announced an investigation into how major social media platforms handle the removal of illegal hate content in the wake of a surge in online Jew-hate following the terrorist attack on the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation in Manchester.

The UK communications regulator stated: “Since the terrorist attack on the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation synagogue, we have kicked off a new compliance programme to determine whether the biggest social media companies have adequate systems and processes for assessing and swiftly removing illegal hate and terror material that has been reported to them.”

“By April 2026, Ofcom plans to complete a review of at least one major platform’s processes for removing illegal hate and terror content—including antisemitic and anti-Muslim material—and will consider formal enforcement action if significant compliance concerns are found.”

Dame Melanie Dawes, Ofcom’s chief executive, said: “If any significant compliance concerns are found, formal enforcement action could be taken against firms and would be made public.”

The investigation follows a letter from Joani Reid, Labour MP and Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) Against Antisemitism, who called on Ofcom last month to probe whether Elon Musk’s X platform is failing to comply with its obligations under the Online Safety Act.


Israel Has Been Mired In Controversy During Its War With Hamas. Big Tech Investment Tells A Different Story.
After Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel struck back with war on Gaza, Israel and its economy were seriously tested. A public divestment and boycott movement targeted the country. Activists condemned any financial involvement in Israel and companies based there.

But you wouldn't know it from the performance of Israel's stock market. Big Tech companies and U.S. investors remain largely undeterred by the divestment and boycott movements. Money continues to pour into Israeli businesses, many playing a key role in the AI boom.

The TA-35 Index tracks the 35 Israeli stocks with the highest market capitalizations that are listed on the Tel Aviv Exchange. It has climbed 90% since just before the Oct. 7 attack. The TA-90, which tracks Tel Aviv's 90 largest stocks in market cap that are not on the TA-35, has gained 82%. During that same period, the S&P 500 gained 60%.

Outlooks during regional conflicts can be difficult to discern. But with a delicate truce raising some hope in the region, the coming year's market trends appear encouraging.

"It will be challenging for Israeli stocks to repeat their 2025 gain of more than 30% YTD (as measured by ISRA's BlueStar Israel Global Index)," said Steven Schoenfeld, CEO of MarketVector Indexes. However, "Israeli tech stocks remain relatively undervalued, especially compared to U.S. and Asian large- and midcap tech names, and therefore have substantial room to appreciate in 2026."

Tracking U.S.-Israel Stocks
On the U.S. stock market, Israel has the fourth-largest number of companies listed on the Nasdaq, just behind the U.S., China and Canada. Those companies represent less than 1% of the Nasdaq's total market capitalization. But for a country with only slightly more people than live in New York City, Israel punches far above its weight on financial markets.

Shares of the VanEck Israel ETF (ISRA), which tracks the performance of the BlueStar Israel index, have soared 74% since the end of September 2023, advancing around 36% in the 2025 stock market alone. Meanwhile, the iShares MSCI Israel ETF (EIS) has surged 100% since the end of October 2023 and has gained 40% this year.

In comparison, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust has climbed 60% since October 2023 and is up just over 17% this year.
Media mogul Shari Redstone’s new venture seeks to tell authentic stories about Israel
Shari Redstone’s exit from the media world was decidedly brief.

Within a month of the sale of the family’s stake in Paramount Global, Redstone in September was named chair of the Israeli entertainment company Sipur, whose projects match the media mogul’s passion for telling stories that authentically portray Israel.

“There is a side of Israel people don’t know,” Redstone said at the Reuters NEXT conference in New York on Wednesday. “My dad always said, ‘Content is king.’ I always say content creates conversation that leads to change.”

Redstone’s father, billionaire media mogul Sumner Redstone, died at age 97 in 2020.

Shari Redstone said the studio initially approached her as its “last stop” in an effort to fund the documentary “We Will Dance Again,” about the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on the Nova Music Festival in southern Israel.

Thousands of young people were partying in the dawn hours of October 7, 2023, when armed Hamas terrorists swept in and shot, bludgeoned, or burned to death 360 people, while sexually assaulting some. The attack, part of the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, triggered the Gaza war as Israel fought to wipe out Hamas. A US-brokered ceasefire largely halted the fighting in October this year.

The film won the Outstanding Current Affairs Documentary at the 46th Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards in June this year.

Through her involvement with the film project, Redstone came to recognize the studio’s storytelling as aligned with the philanthropic efforts of the Redstone Family Foundation, which works to combat racism and antisemitism through education.
'I stand with the Jews and Israel': Tennis legend condemns antisemitism in Australia
Australian tennis great Margaret Court said she “stands with the Jews and with Israel” and urged Australians to show unequivocal solidarity with the Jewish state on Thursday, in comments reported by Australian media. Court, 83, cited her Christian faith as the basis for her position and warned there is “a price to pay” for failing to back Israel.

Court, who holds a record 24 Grand Slam singles titles, said she was “shocked” by how little Holocaust history Australian students learn and arranged a testimony event at her Perth church featuring a descendant of a survivor. “We need to stand with the Jewish people and with that small nation,” she said, adding, “I will not apologize for my views.”

Criticism of Canberra’s stance
Court voiced disappointment with Australia’s recent approach to the Israel–Hamas war, saying the government has not shown sufficiently clear support for Israel during a period of relentless attacks on Jews worldwide.

Her remarks came amid reports that antisemitic incidents in Australia have reached record levels this year, including physical assaults, vandalism, graffiti, and harassment, according to community data summarized this week.

Court said the lack of robust Holocaust education in Australian schools motivated her to host a learning event at her Pentecostal church in Perth, aiming to expose her community to survivor testimony and the history of the Shoah.
Hen Mazzig: Michael Solomonov Reveals the Real Story Behind Israeli Food in America | And They’re Jewish “And They’re Jewish" is streaming exclusively on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday. New faces. New stories. Same incredible heritage. 💫

James Beard–winning chef Michael Solomonov joins Hen to cook and talk about the origins of Israeli food, reclaiming identity through recipes, and how sharing food builds bridges across cultures.

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Holocaust survivor and Windermere Boy Ike Alterman BEM dies aged 97
Tributes from across the UK have been paid to Holocaust survivor, author and community educator Ike (Itzick) Alterman BEM, who died on Thursday aged 97.

Alterman, one of the Windermere Boys brought to Britain in 1945 after the liberation of the camps, became one of the most recognisable survivor voices in the country. For decades, he spoke to schools, synagogues, youth groups and public institutions, ensuring that the horrors he witnessed were understood by generations who would never meet a survivor again. He was widely admired for the clarity, warmth and unflinching honesty with which he communicated his experiences.

Born in Ożarów and raised in Ostrowiec, he survived the ghetto, forced labour in Bliżyn, deportation to Auschwitz, the forced march to Birkenau, a death march, and imprisonment in both Buchenwald and Theresienstadt. His mother, sister, and younger brother were taken away by Nazi guards; he never saw them again. He was the only member of his immediate family to survive.

In August 1945, he arrived in the Lake District with nothing but the clothes he was wearing, beginning a new life among the young refugees who became known as the Windermere Boys. Settling eventually in Manchester, he built a successful career as a jeweller and diamond mounter, raised a family, and became a prominent figure in communal life.

The Holocaust Educational Trust said it was “saddened” to learn of his passing, paying tribute to his “honesty and dedication” in sharing his story and emphasising the crucial role he played in national Holocaust education.

The Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester and Region described Alterman’s contribution to Jewish life, Holocaust remembrance and wider British society as “immense”, noting that his testimony “profoundly affected everyone who had the honour to meet with him”.

The council recalled the powerful address he delivered at its March Against Antisemitism, an appearance that left an unforgettable impression on “thousands of people”. It said the community had been “blessed” by his courage, resilience and willingness to relive painful memories so that others might learn from them.




Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

    
 

 

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