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Thursday, December 11, 2025

12/11 Links Pt2: The Islamification of Western Democracies; Surging Socialism and Anti-Semitism Masquerading as Anti-Zionism; Study reveals majority of Gaza war 'journalists' tied to terror groups

From Ian:

The Islamification of Western Democracies
Europe's Muslim population has surged from less than 1% in 1970 to a projected 10-14% by 2050. Sweden potentially reaches 31%, Austria 21%, the UK 19%, and Germany 20%. Western civilization is being replaced - committing demographic suicide through its own democratic processes and ideological paralysis, acute passivity, and naivete. Moreover, Western societies have criminalized any discussion of this takeover.

No conquest is required - only open borders, welfare incentives, family reunification policies, refugee obligations, and a fertility differential guaranteeing Muslim demographic growth while native European populations collapse below replacement level.

Ideological conquest has weaponized social media and digital propaganda. Iran, Qatar, and Turkey invest billions in bot networks, influencer campaigns, and media empires amplifying pro-Islamic and anti-Israel narratives while recruiting Western progressives to accelerate Western ideological dismantling. The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928 to establish a caliphate based on Islamic supremacy, operates through media outlets, NGOs, political parties, mosques, and community organizations.

The Muslim population percentage in Canada increased by 145% from 2000 to 2025, while the U.S. increased by 90% in the same time period. Democratic societies should enable all citizens to seek office regardless of religion. The pattern that merits examination is whether officials elected primarily by Muslim constituencies adopt policies that prioritize narrow community interests over broader societal integration, whether they challenge fundamental Western values, and whether they systematically oppose Israel regardless of circumstance.

The effects of Islamification and the strategic use of social and mainstream media manipulation by jihadist state actors has already caused a significant shift in the way the Western world treats Israel. 17 out of 27 EU member states now recognize Palestine - effectively rewarding terrorism with diplomatic victory. European-funded NGOs systematically file cases against Israeli officials and soldiers in national and international courts.

Will Western civilization implement corrective policies or accept the continuing trajectory toward demographic replacement, political capitulation, and civilizational collapse?
Nikki Haley: America must expose the left's dangerous falsehoods about Israel
The criticism of Israel is a plain attempt to defame and delegitimize the country to promote its extinction. Yet the left’s leaders either repeat this hateful language or allow it to continue unchecked.

A man carries two Israeli flags during a pro-Israel rally outside the Israeli Embassy on October 8, 2023, in Washington, D.C. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

Democrats’ turn toward antisemitism is disturbing enough. But the same evil is now creeping into the right, though it’s not yet as widespread as it is on the left. It’s also heartening that many conservatives are vigorously pushing back. But there’s still an urgent need for every leader on the right to unequivocally state that standing with Israel is in America’s interests.

Israel is a military and intelligence juggernaut in a strategically vital region of the world. When America supports Israel, we are directly investing in the protection of our own citizens. Israel is fighting enemies that seek our destruction too. When we sell weapons to the Israeli military, we spare our own troops from being sent into harm’s way. Speaker Mike Johnson explains importance of US-Israel alliance Video

In the last two years, America hasn’t sent a single solider into battle against Hamas or Hezbollah, though both are committed to America’s destruction. If America abandoned Israel, it wouldn’t be long before we had to send our sons and daughters into battle against the same terrorists and tyrants.

These truths are the best antidote to the lies of antisemitism. History shows where those lies lead: to the actual genocide of the Jewish people. Preventing that tragedy is a moral imperative and a national necessity.

It starts with leaders who have the courage to say — and do — what’s right.
US: Surging Socialism and Anti-Semitism Masquerading as Anti-Zionism
Two decades ago, Islamism was virtually absent from the US political landscape.

Islamic antisemitism has gained ground in recent years, not just in the US but also in Europe. It appears fueled not only by adversaries of the US such as Iran, but also by domestic non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that appear to hide the identities of foreign donors.

Many anti-Israel protesters claim to support the Palestinian cause, but oddly none of them ever calls for the Palestinians' rights from their own leaders for freedom of speech, women's and children's rights, or even for a stop to entrenched corruption, arbitrary arrests, torture, extrajudicial executions, and other crimes against them.

The problem was not, as some have tried to claim, simply that [Tucker] Carlson invited [the neo-Nazi Nick] Fuentes, so much as Carlson's disinclination to question what he said. The veteran journalist Edward R. Murrow invited US Senator Joseph R. McCarthy for an interview but probed his statements. Carlson failed to indicate any disapproval of, or question, Fuentes's antisemitic remarks... What Carlson did was simply to give Fuentes a platform to expand his influence, unchallenged. The interview has been viewed online more than 20 million times.

This new hostility to Western civilization has also acted as a destabilizing force in major US foreign policy alliances. Israel, like it or not, is the United States' principal and most reliable ally in the Middle East.... As Israel is a world leader in technology, American investments there yield far more than they cost. Islamists and other enemies of the United States doubtless hope that if the US abandons Israel, this would lead to both a substantial weakening of America and other democracies, and a strengthening of tyrannies -- notably Islamist tyrannies.


Covert Israeli-Taiwan Meetings Aim To ‘Counter Chinese Axis of Evil’
Israeli lawmakers over the past two weeks covertly held a series of meetings with senior Taiwanese officials, seeking to strengthen bilateral cooperation and counter the growing menace of China.

Ohad Tal, a member of the governing Religious Zionism party and the Knesset’s powerful Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, met in Taipei between Sunday and Wednesday with Taiwan’s vice president, Hsiao Bi-khim; foreign minister, Lin Chia-lung; and other top diplomats. Last Tuesday, Taiwan’s deputy foreign minister, Francois Wu, led a delegation to Jerusalem, where he huddled with Israeli officials.

According to Tal, the talks had U.S. support and focused on "expanding cooperation with Taiwan in terms of security, economics, and all aspects of social resilience." He said the larger goal was to "create a new alliance that will counter the Chinese axis of evil"—China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea—which is "growing its influence and trying to take dominance from America."

"Israel and Taiwan are on the frontline of the same struggle," Tal told the Washington Free Beacon by phone from Taipei on Wednesday. "We’re really fighting and up against the same threats and the same forces."

The meetings are the latest signs of deepening ties between Israel and Taiwan.

Several Knesset delegations made trips to Taipei during Israel's two-plus-year war with Iran and its terrorist affiliates. Taiwanese officials, meanwhile, praised Israel's self-defense against larger forces as a model for their country. Taiwan’s deputy defense minister reportedly secretly visited Jerusalem in September to advance his country’s development of T-Dome, an air defense system modeled on Israel’s Iron Dome.
Netanyahu congratulates Paz on renewal of Israel-Bolivia ties
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday congratulated Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz on the renewal of diplomatic relations between the two countries, according to Netanyahu’s office.

During a telephone conversation, “The two leaders agreed on the need to promote cooperation in various fields, with an emphasis on security, and to restore the vibrant tourism of many Israeli travelers to Bolivia’s natural landscapes and rich cultures,” according to the readout. “The Prime Minister invited the President of Bolivia to visit Israel, and the President said he looks forward to this visit soon and to a strong friendship between the two nations.”

The conversation came a day after Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and his Bolivian counterpart Fernando Aramayo signed a Joint Communiqué on renewing diplomatic relations between the two countries at a ceremony in Washington. Bolivia’s Finance Minister José Gabriel Espinoza also participated in the event.

“I just had a warm and moving meeting with Bolivia’s Foreign Minister, Fernando Aramayo. I’m also glad to welcome Minister of Finance and Economy José Gabriel Espinoza. Thank you for participating. And I also learned a little bit about your planned economic reforms, which will hopefully, and this is our hope too, put Bolivia on the right path,” Sa’ar said in a speech at the signing ceremony, according to Israel’s Foreign Ministry.

“Israel and Bolivia share a longstanding friendship. But since 2009—except for a brief period in 2020—Israel and Bolivia have had no diplomatic relations. Today, we are ending the long, unnecessary chapter of separation between our two nations,” Jerusalem’s top diplomat continued.

“Following the election of President Rodrigo Paz, I am pleased to announce that Israel and Bolivia are renewing diplomatic relations,” he said.
The Cairo paradox: Why Israel must re-evaluate the strategic logic of the Leviathan deal
In the coming days, the Israeli government is expected to ratify the largest export agreement in its history: a $35 billion expansion of natural-gas supplies to Egypt from the Leviathan reservoir. Framed by proponents in Israel and the United States as a masterstroke of regional integration, the deal is predicated on a neoliberal theory of “instrumental interdependence”—the belief that binding Cairo’s economic survival to Israeli resources will purchase stability on the southern border.

However, an analysis of the current geopolitical landscape suggests this policy is decoupled from reality. While the Israeli Ministry of Energy finalizes pipelines, the Ministry of Defense is grappling with a security vacuum in the Sinai that has allowed nearly 900 drone infiltration incidents in just three months. Simultaneously, the diplomatic veneer has cracked, with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi publicly labeling Israel an “enemy” at the recent Doha summit. By rushing to approve this accord without stringent security conditionality, Israel risks subsidizing a regime that is increasingly hostile in rhetoric and ineffective in border governance.

The urgency behind this deal is driven by Egypt’s acute energy crisis, not Israel’s economic necessity. The collapse of Egypt’s Zohr gas field—plagued by water infiltration and mismanagement—has turned a would-be energy hub into a desperate importer, forcing the el-Sisi regime to implement rolling blackouts that threaten domestic stability.

From a risk-assessment perspective, Egypt represents a volatile counterparty. Despite recent credit upgrades, it remains deep in “junk” territory (B rating) and has a history of accumulating billions in arrears to international oil companies. The deal’s structure effectively imports Egypt’s sovereign risk into Israel’s fiscal planning. If Cairo defaults—or if political pressure forces another cutoff, as seen in 2012—Israel will be left with stranded assets and a budget hole, while Egypt will have already secured the energy lifeline needed to stabilize its grid.

The most glaring flaw in the current policy is the compartmentalization of economics and security. While American diplomats and Chevron executives lobby for the deal to counter Chinese influence and stabilize the region, the security architecture of the 1979 peace treaty is fraying.
Study reveals majority of Gaza war 'journalists' tied to terror groups
A new study has found that about 60 percent of the people described as journalists or media workers who were killed during the war in the Gaza Strip were Hamas operatives or members of other terror groups.

The research, published Thursday morning by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, examined the identities of 266 Palestinians who were labeled as journalists or media workers and died in the fighting. At least 157 of them were operatives or individuals affiliated with terror organizations.

The study follows an earlier report released by the center in February last year that reviewed the identities of 131 Palestinians described in Gaza as journalists or media workers. The new research looked at an additional 135 Palestinians who have been killed since then and found that about 60 percent of all the casualties in this category were members of terror groups.

According to the findings, 104 of those described as journalists or media workers were Hamas members, including at least 47 who were part of the terror group or served as military operatives. Another 45 were operatives or affiliated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad, including at least 18 identified as members or military operatives. Two were identified as operatives of Fatah’s military wing, two belonged to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, one to the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and one to the Popular Resistance Committees.

The study also noted two media workers who were described after their deaths as military operatives, although their organizational affiliation was not identified. Among 109 additional fatalities examined, eight were identified with Fatah and seven with the Palestinian Authority. No affiliation was found for the remaining 94.


The staggering hypocrisy of boycotting Eurovision
Is nothing safe anymore? Is there no event, no area of cultural life, no possible moment of joy that won’t be spared the clutches of the various virtue-signalling crusaders determined to turn absolutely everything into a front in their political campaigns? Until recently, the Eurovision Song Contest was about cheesy music, ludicrous outfits, questionable songs, petty voting patterns, catty commentary and a overdramatic results show. Millions of people tuned in for an evening that was supposed to be about music and dance – a night designed to unite a continent that has so often been divided. Now though, for the third year in a row, the contest finds itself at the centre of a political storm, with Israel at its heart.

Within hours of the confirmation that Israel would be allowed to take part in next year’s Eurovision, four other countries had announced that they would therefore be boycotting the event. The Netherlands, the Republic of Ireland, Slovenia and Spain are all refusing to take part, choosing to turn a musical contest into yet another source of political tensions and division (Iceland has since joined them). This was not a decision by those countries’ governments (although it was largely supported by them): Eurovision is organised by broadcasters, and it is the television stations that have decided to stay away next year.

Quite what these TV executives think they are achieving is anybody’s guess. Anyone who seriously thinks that banning Israel from Eurovision, or other nations boycotting the competition, will make a jot of difference to Israeli government policy is living in a bubble of their own self-important delusions. This is a government that has ignored increasingly strident warnings and even sanctions from close allies, waved away UN Security Council resolutions, tried to undermine its country’s own constitution and is accused of flouting international law. But Slovenia refusing to sing a song? That will do it.

So this will achieve precisely zilch. It is an empty act, the epitome of gesture politics. But will that stop these sanctimonious TV bosses from taking their self-righteous stance? Of course it won’t. Rosa Parks refused to move seats on a bus, Gandhi led a march to the sea, the Suffragettes chained themselves to Parliament and these well-paid executives will refuse to send a singer to prance around a stage in Vienna. They no doubt think they are part of the same history. They should get a grip on reality: this isn’t a brave act of protest as much as a petty example of playing to the crowd.

Then there is the issue of the staggering double standards involved. These countries think nothing of taking part in sporting competitions that involve countries like Iran. The very same broadcasters are more than happy to broadcast those contests. Indeed next summer both The Netherlands and Spain, and possible Ireland if they qualify, will take part in the football World Cup alongside Iran. The support for terrorism, the destabilising of the Middle East, the hard-line Islamist ayatollahs and their brutal repression of their own people, the systematic abuse of women and LGBT people and other minorities, the enabling of attacks on international shipping – none of that has prompted these oh-so-principled broadcasters to take a stand and declare that they will not be broadcasting the World Cup if Iran is allowed to participate. Or for the footballing authorities in those nations to announce that they will not be taking part in the competition.
Jake Wallis Simons: Is Britain’s Jewish community on the brink of collapse?
On Saturday, I gave a talk about my new book at a synagogue in central London. A single question preoccupied everybody: is there a future for Jews in this country? Many of Britain’s four million Muslims seem to hate us. One woman was in tears, telling me how she did not want to uproot her life. In despair, some were wondering aloud whether Tommy Robinson was their only hope.

Speak to privileged liberals in the leafy suburbs and they may give you a different account. History is full of such people. As Amos Elon records in his seminal portrait of German Jewry The Pity of It All, even after the Nazi victory of 1933, wealthy Jews left for the usual ski resorts and the writer Arnold Zweig holidayed with his wife at a thermal spa. “An exaggerated faith in Kultur blocked awareness of the danger and produced a highly selective sense of reality,” Elon wrote.

No such delusion afflicted Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the outspoken wartime Zionist leader. At a Warsaw synagogue in 1938, he begged: “My hair has turned white, and I have grown old during all those years, because my heart is bleeding for you, dear brothers and sisters … you are too preoccupied and busy with your daily concerns to see it. Listen to my words at the very last moment. For heaven’s sake, save your lives!” By the end of the war, around 90 per cent of Poland’s 3.3 million Jews had perished.

Today, a growing number are taking Jabotinsky’s words to heart. My mother, who is Orthodox, has seen so many of her friends emigrate to Israel that she now attends her pottery classes alone. In a further indictment of Britain, the young are leaving, too. This week, I spoke to one of these, a 35-year-old entrepreneur who has already made his fortune. His wife is pregnant, he said, and their baby will now be Israeli.

“After Britain’s reaction to October 7, I realised I was being negligent as a Jew by not having a plan B,” he told me. “It made me realise that I’d really underestimated the decline in respect and appreciation for Jews. First, I was angry, then I settled on just feeling betrayed. I’ve contributed so much to this country. I love it and it feels strange to be leaving. But the problems just felt too deep-set.”

A simple question made his mind up: Where would his great-grandchildren be most likely to thrive? The answer was sobering. “We’ve had 40 years of cultural decline in Britain,” he said. “Israelis are very aware of their problems, but what worried me about Britain was the blindness to our own.” After comparing our “self-hating, ahistorical mess of a culture” to the “raw competence of Israel,” as well as demographics, anti-Semitism and the economy, “it just didn’t feel wise to put down roots in Britain any more,” he concluded.

We must be blunt: unlike in America, Britain’s problem with the Jews emanates almost entirely from the Left and a radicalised Muslim minority. As if threats of violence and marginalisation weren’t enough, accusing someone of anti-Semitism has become a tool used by some to further political agendas. Take the scandal around Nigel Farage’s schoolboy past. Are we supposed to believe that after two years of incitement against the Jews, progressives are suddenly concerned about them?

Or take the exclusion of Israeli football fans from Birmingham, which increasingly appears to have been driven by Islamists. It recalled Freud’s “kettle-logic” argument: “Firstly, I’ve never borrowed a kettle from you; secondly, your kettle was already leaking when you lent it to me; and thirdly, it was intact when I gave it back to you.”

To most people, these are lamentable signs of our cultural collapse. To the Jews, they are signs that their time may be up. More than 700 years after the Expulsion, they are once again starting to flee.
Brendan O'Neill: The pernicious lies about Maccabi Tel Aviv
The truth about Amsterdam is this: it was a pogrom. Yes, some Maccabi fans behaved badly, but their behaviour fell squarely within the realm of the moral delinquency sometimes exhibited by football fans. They made offensive chants, they drank too much, they started fights, they tore down a Palestine flag. What followed was of an entirely different order. Something far outside the bounds of footie scraps. Something we had not seen in Europe for some time. A Jew hunt. A literal Jew hunt. And as a Dutch columnist reminds us, ‘The Jew hunt was not a response to provocations by Israeli football fans’ but a mass act of racist violence ‘planned before Maccabi fans tore down a Palestinian flag in the city centre’.

‘Cancer Jews’, they called them. And ‘fucking Jews’. And ‘cowards’. Go outside and ‘hit them hard’, they said. There must be ‘at least one death’, dreamed the Jew haters. As a Dutch newspaper reported earlier this year, following a trial of the Jew hunters, the reams of evidence leave ‘little to the imagination’ – these people ‘incited each other to hunt down Jews’.

There have been two trials of the Jew hunters – one in December 2024 and one in March this year. There have been convictions and jailings for expressions of racial hatred and acts of violent assault, including the kicking of Jews, the grabbing of them by the throat, and the beating of them with belts. The mob poured through the streets demanding that people show them their IDs – if they had a Jewish name they were attacked. The most serious charge was attempted manslaughter. A Palestinian asylum seeker in Amsterdam was captured on film pushing over a Maccabi fan and kicking him in the head over and over. The court rejected the charge of attempted manslaughter, but found the mob member guilty of public disorder and assaulting a foreign national. It sentenced him to six months in jail. There are dozens more Israeli victims waiting for their cases to come to court in Amsterdam.

Let us be clear: anyone who talks about the events in Amsterdam in November 2024 without mentioning any of this, without mentioning the racist uprising against ‘cancer Jews’, is not a serious person. To my mind they are an anti-Semite by default, given they are burying the truth of a pogrom either because they are ignorant of it or because they think the Jews brought it on themselves by being such ‘vile, violent and racist’ people.

The veiling of the barbarism in Amsterdam by leftists, liberals and even British police officers is of a piece with the historic playbook of pogrom denialism. Throughout history, pogroms against Jews have been blamed on Jews. The Jews made us do it, the mob always says. One of history’s best-known pogroms – Kristallnacht in 1938 – was justified as an act of ‘self-defence’ by Germans who felt besieged by Jews. As one historian of the Holocaust says, the Nazi regime ‘cynically claimed that the pogrom was not organised in any way’ but rather that ‘the Jews themselves had provoked the righteous anger of the people’.

Sound familiar? We now hear the exact same about Amsterdam. That it wasn’t organised, it was just a spontaneous angry reaction to the Maccabi fans’ bad behaviour. That the Maccabi fans provoked the ‘righteous anger’ of Amsterdam’s Muslims with their flag desecration and offensive chants. No, the Jew hunt in Amsterdam was not on the scale of Kristallnacht. But the commonalities in the response to Kristallnacht and the response to Amsterdam are truly chilling. In both cases, the chasing, beating and humiliation of Jews by mobs of anti-Semites is sickeningly depicted as ‘resistance’ to the Jews and their wily, disruptive behaviour.

Moral inversion is central to the ideology of anti-Semitism because that ideology is wholly devoted to depicting the Jew as an all-powerful moral toxin, as civilisation’s most lethal strain of poison. The anti-Semite cannot countenance the idea of Jew as victim because that would imperil his entire narrative about the Jew as danger, as destroyer, as polluter. Where the German Jews who suffered that ‘night of broken glass’ were viewed as the cause of Germany’s economic and moral torpor, the Israeli Jews who suffered beatings and belt-whippings in Amsterdam were viewed as the importers of a foreign pox – ‘genocidal racism’. In both cases, the truth – that Jews were victims of violent racial hatred – is turned utterly upside down. The Jew can never be the victim, even when he is being repeatedly kicked in the head by mobs who think of him as a ‘cancer’, as happened in Berlin in 1938 and in Amsterdam in 2024. The Nazi regime held up the Jew as society’s greatest menace, while today’s identitarian regime holds up the Jew as white, privileged, ‘problematic’, genocidal.

Anti-Semitism is the refuge of ‘fools, reactionaries and failures’, wrote Grossman. The anti-Semite looks to ‘the imaginary intrigues of World Jewry for explanations for [his] own failure’, he said. He rages against Jews in a desperate bid to escape his own feelings of ‘inevitable doom’. That’s back now. Whether it’s in the cesspit of the digital right, which openly blames the Jews for the world’s problems, or in the woke mess that is the mainstream left, which prefers to blame the Jewish State, the inversion of the Jew from victim to monster has returned with savage vengeance. The end result is that people can witness a Jew being pushed into a freezing river and then tell the world that the Jew himself did it to a non-Jew. If we fail to challenge this sick inversion of truth, decency and enlightenment, it won’t only be the Jews who will suffer – it will be civilisation itself.
Police ‘lied to parliament’ over Maccabi Tel Aviv fan ban, says Lord Polak
West Midlands Police leaders have been accused of “lying” to Parliament and “yielding to the mob” over the controversial decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from attending a recent Europa League match in Birmingham.

In the House of Lords Conservative peer Lord Polak delivered a scathing critique, accusing police leaders of fabricating evidence and misleading Parliament.

“How is it remotely acceptable for police leaders in the West Midlands to fabricate a report… with a made-up meeting, a made-up match,” Lord Polak asked. “They have lied to a parliamentary select committee. Basically, they have yielded to the mob, shamefully led by Ayoub Khan MP.”

The row erupted after Birmingham’s Safety Advisory Group (SAG) barred supporters of the Israeli team from their fixture against Aston Villa last month, citing security concerns based on police advice.

The move prompted political outrage, with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer reportedly “angered by the decision,” and mounting calls for the chief constable of West Midlands Police to be sacked.

Doubts have grown over the intelligence used by police, including disputes about the accuracy of information and allegations that artificial intelligence (AI) was used to reach conclusions involving a fictitious game.

Further controversy erupted when Assistant Chief Constable Mike O’Hara told a parliamentary select committee that Jewish community members had requested Maccabi fans be excluded—a claim the force later clarified, stating: “It was never the intention of the officer to imply that there were members of the Jewish community who had explicitly expressed support for the exclusion of Maccabi fans.”


When does Ireland’s passionate support for Palestine spill over into anti-semitism?
Former deputy prime minister of Ireland, Senator Michael McDowell, wrote in the Irish Times on Dec. 3: "Ireland has unfortunately a history of antisemitic subculture at social and, at one time, political levels." He pointed to the past record of the Sinn Fein political party.

President of Sinn Fein Mary Lou McDonald delivered orations at the statue to Sean Russell, who in 1940 traveled to Nazi Germany to seek help for the IRA in its campaign of violence in Britain and Northern Ireland. In the same year, the IRA issued a statement hailing the Nazis as "friends and liberators of the Irish people" and the IRA publication, War News, welcomed the "cleansing fire" of the Wehrmacht driving Jews from Europe.

In 1946, the head of the Department of Justice, Thomas Coyne, issued a memorandum arguing against allowing 10 Jewish refugee families (around 40 people) into the country. Later that year, after Chief Rabbi Isaac Herzog had interceded with him, Prime Minister Eamon De Valera allowed 100 orphaned Jewish children, survivors of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, to come to Ireland.
Columbia Antisemitism Task Force Report Finds All Its Middle East Faculty Are Anti-Zionist
The Columbia University task force overseeing efforts to combat antisemitism on campus released its fourth and final report on Tuesday, spotlighting Columbia's lack of full-time Middle East faculty who are not explicitly anti-Zionist.

The task force said it heard from students that classes at the university more often than not treat Zionism as entirely illegitimate.

The report calls on the university to "work quickly to add more intellectual diversity to these offerings" and to "establish new chairs at a senior level in Middle East history, politics, political economy and policy."

The report also cites numerous instances in which the academic freedom of Jewish and Israeli students was not protected in classrooms and suggests remedies.
Harvard Ousts Director of Human Rights Center Targeted By Trump Admin Over Rampant Anti-Semitism
Harvard University ousted Mary T. Bassett as director of the François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights, which has been a prime target in the Trump administration's campaign against anti-Semitism at the Ivy League school.

Bassett confirmed to the Harvard Crimson that School of Public Health dean Andrea A. Baccarelli notified her of her termination Tuesday after seven years as FXB's chief. She will stay at the university as a Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences professor, and Harvard Medical School professor Kari C. Nadeau will serve as interim director.

Under Bassett's leadership, the FXB Center was home to a hotbed of anti-Semitism. Among the list of demands the Trump administration sent to address Jew hate at Harvard was an order to issue an external audit of the FXB Center.

The university refused—but it issued its own anti-Semitism report soon after, which found that the center routinely demonized Israel. The report cited students who complained that the FXB Center's programming created an anti-Israel narrative and criticized several articles by affiliates, including one that argued "academic neutrality is morally, intellectually and disciplinarily incoherent."

The Trump administration's tussle over the FXB Center is just one part of a larger fight with Harvard over campus anti-Semitism, which led the administration to freeze more than $2 billion in federal funding. A federal judge reversed that in September, but the fight remains ongoing, with reported deals failing to materialize.

Before the freeze, Harvard, in anticipation of the funding fight, severed the FXB Center's research partnership with Birzeit University, a West Bank institution known for hosting Hamas military parades. But a Washington Free Beacon review found that half a dozen FXB Center faculty members and affiliates, including Bassett, defended Hamas's Oct. 7 attack and accused Israel of "genocide" and "terrorism."
Pomona settles Trump admin Jew-hatred probe, will recognize ‘Zionist’ is often code for ‘Jew’
Pomona College reached a settlement with the Anti-Defamation League, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and Hillel International on Wednesday, following a complaint the trio filed with the U.S. Department of Education in April 2024.

The three groups alleged in the complaint that the private liberal arts school in southern California allowed “severe discrimination and harassment of Jewish students” to occur on campus. The Education Department said in August that it was probing the matter.

Under the new agreement, the highly-ranked school will recognize that the word “Zionist” tends to be used as a code for “Jew” and will use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of Jew-hatred when investigating alleged antisemitism on campus.

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and national director of the ADL, stated that the agreement is a “critical turning point for Pomona’s Jewish students, faculty and staff.”

“The comprehensive reforms negotiated with Pomona touch nearly every aspect of campus life, and we welcome the college’s significant, multi-faceted commitment to fighting antisemitism on its campus,” he said.

“With the reforms in this agreement, we expect meaningful and urgent strides toward Pomona’s promise of creating a safe and welcoming environment for its Jewish and Israeli students, faculty and staff,” he added.

The college commits to recognize that targeting Zionists can violate the school’s nondiscrimination policies if it’s “on the basis of their actual or perceived Jewish or Israeli shared ancestry” and that “Zionist” is “often used as a code word for ‘Jew,’” per the agreement.
California college staffer egged on antisemitism against Jewish student — as school refused to help: lawsuit
A masked University of California, Santa Barbara staffer allegedly helped turn a mob of anti-Israel protesters against a Jewish student leader, with the school accused of repeatedly ignoring her pleas for help, according to a new lawsuit filed Thursday.

Tessa Veksler, 23, a Manhattan resident who double majored in political science and communications, claimed she was subjected to a vicious, months-long antisemitic campaign against her after she condemned the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack that killed more than 1,200 people in Israel, according to the complaint filed in California federal court.

The hateful campaign reached a boiling point in February 2024 when Veksler, the student body president, confronted a crowd of masked anti-Israel protesters to try and reach an understanding with them, the suit said.

“And she believed she was making progress until a UCSB representative — defendant Doe 1, and also wearing a mask — joined the meeting and began harassing Tessa and purposefully inciting the crowd’s antisemitic animus toward Tessa,” the lawsuit said.

The staffer interrupted Veksler during her talk and goaded the crowd to be aggressive toward the student president, the suit claimed.

The incident was just one of the many forms of antisemitism Veksler claims she faced during the 2023-24 school year, with school officials allegedly doing little to nothing to help her from the constant harassment.

UCSB officials did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Berkeley suspends lecturer for anti-Israel advocacy in classroom
University of California, Berkeley suspended a lecturer after finding that he engaged in anti-Israel advocacy in the classroom.

The Daily Californian, a student newspaper, reported that Peyrin Kao, a computer science lecturer, is to be suspended for the spring 2026 semester.

Benjamin Hermalin, executive vice chancellor and provost of Berkeley, stated in an Oct. 20 letter to the heads of the computer sciences department that Kao violated school policy when he said in one of his classes that he was engaging in a hunger strike and provided a link for students to understand his motivations.

Kao’s hunger strike was “in support of Palestinians in Gaza,” Hermalin wrote.

The lecturer said at the end of a class in April 2024 that “he believed actions in Gaza constituted genocide” and called for “solidarity with educators in Gaza,” the provost said. He recommended that Kao be suspended.

Janet Gilmore, senior director of critical communications at Berkeley, told JNS that the school doesn’t comment on “confidential personnel matters” and that it “will always take a viewpoint-neutral approach when it comes to supporting freedom of expression and actions that align with policy.”

Kao stated that “the timing of my punishment raises serious questions about whether it was a politically motivated decision by the university to appease the Trump administration.” He said he plans to appeal.


Holocaust Memorial Day organiser dismissed over link to grassroots Israeli group accusing state of genocide
The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust (HMDT) has terminated the contract of its Scottish representative, Melanie Goldberg, over her association with a left-wing grassroots organisation that has accused Israel of committing genocide.

Jewish News understands that Goldberg was asked to leave her role at the HMDT with immediate effect this week because her post as a committee member of Scotland Friends of Standing Together (SFoST) was deemed a “clear conflict of interest” with the Trust.

Despite acknowledging Goldberg’s contributions as a freelance Scottish Support Worker, HMDT argued that Standing Together’s statements supporting claims of genocide by Israel in Gaza were incompatible with the Trust’s values.

Her dismissal came as she was organising the official Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) Ceremony for Scotland, scheduled for January at the Scottish Parliament.

Goldberg told Jewish News: “When an impromptu Teams meeting was arranged with senior management on Monday, I thought nothing of it. I was completely shocked when they informed me that I was being fired.

“There was no warning, no prior discussion—just a message that all the Trustees, none of whom I’ve ever even met, had decided over the weekend that terminating my contract was apparently the only option. I was given no opportunity to negotiate or defend myself; the decision was final.”

She added: “I was told that there was nothing I had personally said or done that was antithetical to the Trust’s values, but that any form of connection with Standing Together apparently contravenes the work that HMDT does.”
UKLFI: Anti-Coca Cola Ads removed from tube
Unauthorised and misleading adverts with the message Boycott Coca-Cola will be removed by Transport for London from tube trains following a complaint by UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI).

The adverts, which may (or may not) have appeared across the London Underground network this week, display the message “Boycott Coca Cola” and feature images of either a boot stamping on a can, a hand crushing a can or a hand pouring away a bottle of coke. They also say “It’s canned on stolen land”.

This message is misleading in many ways, and likely to stir up hatred against Jews and Israelis.

Canned on Stolen Land??

UK Coca-Cola is not canned or bottled on stolen land. It is canned or bottled at several large plants operated by Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP), in Wakefield (Europe’s largest soft drink factory), Sidcup, Edmonton, Milton Keynes, Morpeth, and East Kilbride.

If this campaign references a link to Israel, the licensee for Coca‑Cola in Israel is a private Israeli company, The Central Bottling Company (CBC). CBC’s bottling plant and headquarters are at Bnei Brak, which not in disputed territory but just outside Tel Aviv.

Bnei Brak was established in around 1924 by eight Polish Hasidic families led by Rabbi Yitzchok Gerstenkorn. The land was purchased by a Jewish organisation to found a religious agricultural moshav (village).

CBC also has a regional distribution centre and cooling-house in the Atarot Industrial Zone, on the north side of Jerusalem. In 2019 the industrial zone had 160 factories with 4,000 employees, three-quarters of whom were Palestinians.


Bari Weiss names Tony Dokoupil, who defended Israel on-air to top CBS News anchor job
Bari Weiss, the polarizing new editor-in-chief of CBS News, has named the longtime network personality Tony Dokoupil to anchor the evening news chair, in a potential sign of how Weiss’ pro-Israel views may be reshaping the network’s news priorities.

The move came amid a rash of prominent vacancies at the venerable network since new Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison, who is also Jewish and pro-Israel, appointed Weiss as top editor earlier this year.

The elevation of Dokoupil is notable in the aftermath of his debate with bestselling author Ta-Nehisi Coates about Israel in a viral interview last fall that was rebuked by CBS top brass at the time, prior to Ellison’s appointment.

'The person to win back trust'
“We live in a time in which many people have lost trust in the media. Tony Dokoupil is the person to win it back,” Weiss said in a statement announcing the move. “That’s because he believes in old school journalistic values: asking the hard questions, following the facts wherever they lead, and holding power to account. Americans hungry for fairness will see that on display night after night.”

The release touts Dokoupil’s CBS experience with particular emphasis on his Israel coverage, noting that he “reported from Israel on the Oct. 7 terror attack and hostage release deal” and has interviewed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Dokoupil is a convert to Judaism and is married to Jewish MS NOW anchor Katy Tur.

Interviewing Coates about his pro-Palestinian essay book “The Message” in September 2024, Dokoupil accused him of writing passages that “would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist” and asked him whether he objected to “the existence of a Jewish state that is a Jewish safe place.” He concluded the interview by jokingly inviting Coates to High Holiday services.

In the fallout from the Coates interview, Dokoupil faced internal pushback from some CBS News staff who felt his questions betrayed a pro-Israel bias. He also faced a disciplinary meeting with executives who cautioned him about the tone and body language he displayed during the interview.
Wikipedia accused of anti-Israel bias for locking page title referring to Israeli ‘massacre’
Wikipedia drew criticism from Jewish leaders after the site’s editors opted to freeze discussion about the title of a page that refers to Israel committing a “massacre” in June 2024.

The decision means that no one can even discuss changing the title of the page “Nuseirat rescue and massacre” until at least August 2026. The page refers to the Jewish state’s liberation of the four hostages—Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov and Shlomi Ziv—from Gaza.

Citing “Palestinian health officials,” the Wikipedia page claims that “at least” 276 Palestinians were killed during the operation. It also says that the Israeli military recorded fewer than 100 Palestinian deaths. The Israeli media article Wikipedia cites notes that there were terrorists among the Palestinian deaths, but the encyclopedia’s page doesn’t say that.

At least as of Oct. 2, the Wikipedia page calling it a “massacre” stated that it was redirected from a page called “2024 Nuseirat rescue operation,” per an archived version of the page. Wikipedia reportedly had that page and one on “Nuseirat refugee camp massacre” as of June 18, 2024.

After some efforts were made to change the title of the current page, Wikipedia editors proposed a moratorium on changes on July 26 and put the ban in place on Dec. 8, to last until Aug. 3.

“Wikipedia, once again, seems to be misleading its readers,” Daniel S. Mariaschin, CEO of B’nai B’rith International, told JNS.
Wikipedia deletes pages written by brother of slain Israeli hostage
Wikipedia has removed two pages written by the brother of a slain hostage, saying it “doesn’t write entries about soldiers.”

Dan Sherman, the brother of Sgt. Ron Sherman, 19, took to Facebook on Monday to write about his battle to feature the pages on Hebrew-language Wikipedia. Ron Sherman was serving as a coordination and liaison soldier in COGAT on the Gaza border when he was kidnapped by Hamas on October 7. Antisemitism is at a record high. We're keeping our eyes on it >>

He was killed in captivity, and his body was recovered from Gaza by the IDF in December 2023. He is survived by his parents, Alexander and Maayan, and his siblings, Dan and Eden.

Sherman explained that, a year and a half ago, he created a Wikipedia entry for Ron, thinking it would be “a meaningful way to commemorate him.”

“I wrote the entire article with zero prior knowledge [of writing Wikipedia pages], hours upon hours of work, for several days, from morning to night. But I was excited, because I knew that Ron would finally have his own page after everything he went through. And rightly so.”

However, the day after the page went live, it disappeared.

'We don’t write entries about soldiers'
When Sherman reached out to the editors at Wikipedia, he was told, "We cannot discriminate between one person’s blood and another’s,” and “We don’t write entries about soldiers.”

In his Facebook post, Sherman pointed out that this is not true, given there are many Wikipedia pages about soldiers who were kidnapped or killed, not least Tamir Nimrodi, who was abducted alongside Ron.

Following the deletion of his first page, Sherman spent many more hours writing a new entry named “The kidnapping of the three soldiers from the Gaza outpost,” which he was told by Wikipedia would be accepted. The entry was to include details about Ron, Nimrodi, and Nik Beizer.

However, again, within minutes, the article disappeared “as if it never existed.”


MP accused of spreading conspiracy theory about the Bibas family
An MP elected on a pro-Gaza platform has “hit a new low in an already appalling pattern of hostility” toward Israel for falsely claiming the country was responsible for the deaths of the Bibas family.

Mother Shiri Bibas and her young sons Ariel and Kfir instantly became symbolic of the depravity of the October 7 attacks when they were kidnapped during the assault by Palestinian terrorist groups, led by Hamas, on southern Israel on October 7.

Shiri was 32 at the time of her abduction, while Ariel was four and Kfir nine months, making the boys – distinctive also for their bright red hair – the youngest hostages to be snatched. The colour orange became an emblem of sorrow and solidarity in Israel around the world, with monuments illuminated in that shade in tribute to them after their deaths were confirmed.

On Monday, Iqbal Mohamed, who was elected as an Independent MP for Dewsbury and Batley last July, shared a post from another user on social media that claimed the family were killed by “Israeli bombs”, accompanied by an image of Shiri, Ariel and Kfir.

The post read: “After 2 years of insisting that Hamas held the Bibas children (they should never have been taken) and then telling you that one day they were randomly strangled to death for no apparent reason.... Nitzan Alon, head of Israel’s Hostages and Missing Persons team, tells Israeli media that: 1) They were not taken nor held by Hamas. 2) They were not killed by Hamas, but were, in fact, killed by Israeli bombs”.

The MP added his own caption: “Lies. Damn lies. And Israel! There is no limit to Israeli lies, inhumanity, depravity and attrocities (sic)".

Alon, a retired IDF major general who served as head of the IDF’s Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters, gave an interview earlier this week but did not say that the Bibas family were killed by Israel.

In the interview he spoke about some of the operations he oversaw as part of the effort to find the living and deceased hostages.

He told Israeli news site ynet: “Take the Bibas family, for example. We knew who abducted them. We informed Hamas who the kidnappers were so they could locate the bodies and return them.”

Mohamed’s remarks were robustly criticised by the Jewish Leadership Council.

“For Iqbal Mohamed to share false claims that the Bibas brothers were killed by Israel marks a new low in an already appalling pattern of hostility towards the Jewish state. Spreading such disinformation fuels division and makes Israelis and Jews in the UK targets for violence”, a spokesperson for the group told the JC.


‘We keep it, I guess,’ Trump says of sanctioned oil US seizes from Venezuelan tanker
The United States seized an oil tanker off the Venezuelan coast that was used to ship sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran, FBI Director Kash Patel and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Wednesday.

“We’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela—large tanker, very large, largest one ever, actually, and other things are happening,” U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters.

Trump has been pressuring Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to leave office and has threatened military action on Venezuelan soil and increasing strikes at sea.

Patel and Bondi stated that a seizure warrant was carried out on the unnamed tanker.

Vanguard, a British maritime risk management group, said the seized tanker, reportedly carrying 1.1 million barrels of heavy crude, is thought to be one that Washington already sanctioned for involvement in Iranian oil trading before the owners changed the vessel’s name.

Venezuela, which primarily sells oil to China, has been offloading it at a steep discount as it competes with Moscow and Tehran on the black market.

The FBI, U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Coast Guard, backed with U.S. military support, carried out the operation, shown in part in a brief video that Patel and Bondi posted on social media.


The Unsung American Hero of Mauthausen Concentration Camp
In the 2025 film "Nuremberg," the prosecution shows documentary footage from the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp at Mauthausen in Austria. The speaker describing how prisoners were murdered is an American GI who survived the camp.

Lt. Jack Taylor was an experienced agent of the Office of Strategic Services, the wartime precursor to the CIA. In late 1944, he parachuted into Austria to lead a mission intended to gather intelligence on German troop movements. Captured by the Gestapo on Dec. 1, 1944, Taylor spent weeks in solitary confinement before being transferred to Mauthausen, where he saw "half-dead creatures in filthy, ragged stripes."

Taylor was assigned to help build a new crematorium for the gas chamber. The smoke from the smokestacks and the "heavy sickening smell of flesh and hair was blown over our barrack 24 hours a day, and as hungry as we were, we could not always eat." Weakened by dysentery and fever, he lost more than 50 pounds.

Taylor listened to hundreds of eyewitness accounts of atrocities. Prisoners were beaten, drowned, torn apart by dogs, injected with poison, forced over a cliff, driven into the electric fence and frozen to death. Others were subjected to medical experiments or executed for minor deformities or tattoos.

On May 5, 1945, a U.S. reconnaissance unit stumbled upon Mauthausen without knowing what it was. Though gravely ill, Taylor insisted on remaining to help investigators. He located documents and witnesses that would later prove crucial in prosecuting Nazi officers for war crimes.
Israeli Lymphoma Treatment Reaches 100% Survival Rates in Large-Scale Study
Israeli researchers at a blood cancer conference in the US reported a lymphoma treatment that can achieve 100% survival rates. The results, compiled across 15 medical centers, revealed that patients treated with a combined chemo-biologic regimen achieved outcomes that exceeded previous standards of care.

Data from the trial showed that nearly all participants responded to treatment that combines chemotherapy with targeted biological therapy. They reported that 95% of patients experienced complete recovery and 83% saw an almost total disappearance of the illness after two treatment sessions. Only 4% of patients required additional radiation therapy, a much lower rate than with conventional treatments. The one-year survival rate was 100%.

Dr. Zvi Forgas of Soroka Medical Center and Dr. Tzofia Levy of Rambam Health Care Campus led the effort, coordinating contributions from hospitals across the country. Levy, who is presenting the results at ASH, said the initiative marks a turning point in treating the disease. She explained that this approach enabled rapid disease control, often within weeks, and in many cases produced what she described as clear paths to recovery. Levy added that, for the first time, gathering unified national data allowed Israeli teams to highlight their collective experience on a global stage.

Hodgkin lymphoma accounts for roughly a tenth of lymphoma cases. It often affects younger adults, typically presenting with swollen lymph nodes and symptoms such as fever, night sweats, and weight loss. Diagnosis relies on biopsy and PET-CT imaging; treatment usually involves chemotherapy and biological agents, with radiation used selectively. Although the cancer is highly curable, the new results suggest that outcomes may be further improved while reducing treatment burdens for patients.
SMARTSHOOTER secures SMASH 3000 contract in Australia
SMARTSHOOTER, the Israeli developer of advanced fire control systems, has announced that it has secured a contract with the Australian Defence Force to supply its cutting-edge SMASH 3000 Fire Control System as part of the technology evaluation for project LAND 156 LOE 2.

The evaluation will assess the system’s suitability for integration into the ADF’s Dismounted Interim Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems (C-UAS) Ensemble.

The contract represents SMARTSHOOTER's first strategic breakthrough into the Australian defense sector, following extensive appraisal of its SMASH technology by the ADF.

“The recently fulfilled order marks a strategic breakthrough into the Australian market after significant appraisal of SMASH Fire Control by the ADF, with potential for follow-on purchases in other programs,” the director of SMARTSHOOTER’s Australia and New Zealand Territory, Lachlan Mercer, said.

“This further extends SMARTSHOOTER’s established presence in the Asia-Pacific region,” he said.
IsraAID sending team to Sri Lanka to help recovery in wake of Cyclone Ditwah
IsraAID, Israel’s leading nongovernmental humanitarian-aid agency, is deploying an emergency response team to Sri Lanka as communities struggle to rebuild following Cyclone Ditwah.

The team is slated to arrive this weekend, focusing immediately on installing water filters and training communities on how to use them, in order to both provide safe drinking water and reduce vulnerability to water-borne diseases.

At least 639 people were killed, with more than 200 still missing, two weeks after the storm brought heavy rain, flooding and landslides to communities across the country in late November.

IsraAID’s team will focus on urgent relief distributions to meet immediate water, sanitation, hygiene and other public-health needs, including providing emergency household water filters to families without adequate access to safe water.

Up to 100,000 people are currently displaced to temporary shelters, as the onset of monsoon season threatens to exacerbate emergency needs and raise the risks of disease outbreaks and secondary crises. Large-scale damage to infrastructure, including water systems and the country’s railway network, has complicated relief efforts.

The emergency comes in the early stages of the country’s recovery from years of economic crisis, with vulnerable communities still affected.
Hanukkah miracle: Israel discovers evidence of Judah Maccabee’s battlefield near Jerusalem
New archaeological finds in the hills south of Jerusalem may offer the first material evidence from one of Judah Maccabee’s battles, The Press Service of Israel has learned, as the Hanukkah holiday approaches.

The eight-day holiday of Hanukkah, which begins on Sunday night, marks the successful Hasmonean revolt against the Seleucid King Antiochus IV and the subsequent rededication of the Second Temple some 2,100 years ago.

In an exclusive interview with TPS-IL, Dr. Dvir Raviv of Bar-Ilan University said that a survey at Horbat Bet Zecharia, in the Gush Etzion region south of Jerusalem, has uncovered objects that match both the date and the military profile of the famous battle described in the Book of Maccabees in 163 BCE.

The site, on a hill about seven kilometers southwest of Bethlehem, is widely identified with the ancient village of Bet Zecharia, where the Seleucid army and the forces of Judah Maccabee clashed in what is known as the fifth Maccabean battle.

According to First Maccabees and later Jewish historian Josephus, the Seleucid army advanced north along the Jerusalem-Hebron road with war elephants. In the most dramatic scene, Judah’s brother Eleazar ran under the largest elephant, killed it, and was crushed to death beneath its body.
Speaker Johnson ‘The Bible is clear: Judea and Samaria are the Land of Israel’
Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), speaker of the House of Representatives, told visiting Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan in Washington this week that “Judea and Samaria are the Land of Israel,” Dagan’s office stated on Thursday.

“I visited Samaria—both as a member of Congress before becoming speaker, and again last summer as speaker with a small group of colleagues,” Johnson told Dagan, according to a Hebrew readout the Samaria Regional Council provided to JNS on Thursday.

“The Bible is clear: Judea and Samaria are the Land of Israel. I do not understand why we debate this anew every single day,” Johnson said, adding, “The people of Israel know who stands with them in this moment of crisis. They recognize it, and they value it.”

During their meeting, Dagan presented Johnson with copper artwork depicting biblical sites in northern Samaria, including Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus (Shechem), Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal, and ancient pillars of Samaria (Sebastia), the capital of the Kingdom of Israel.

“We are fighting together for justice. Judea and Samaria are justice, and they are security. No nation on earth has a connection to its homeland as deep as the Jewish people have to the Land of Israel—especially to Judea and Samaria, the land of the Bible,” Dagan told the speaker.

“Two thousand years ago, the prophets Jeremiah, Amos and Ezekiel foretold that the people of Israel would return to their land, rebuild the hills of Samaria, plant vineyards and produce wine,” Dagan continued.

“That is exactly what we are doing today,” he said. “There is no greater justice than fulfilling the words of the prophets in the Land of Israel, particularly in the biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria.

“Before, and certainly after Oct. 7, it is clear to all of us that this is not only a matter of justice, but also the protective shield of the State of Israel,” Dagan said, in reference to the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attacks targeting villages on the southern border.

“Therefore, it is also what brings security to the Western world and to the United States,” he said.
Light of faith, courage will always guide us, House speaker says at Capitol menorah-lighting
Chanukah came a few days early to the U.S. Capitol, as leaders of the House and Senate joined Rabbi Levi Shemtov, executive vice president of American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad), in lighting the menorah.

It was the third time that congressional leaders lit the candles, a ritual started following the Hamas-led attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

At the time, “the Jewish community was in need of light and a reminder of what miracles can be,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), as he addressed dozens of Jews filling rows of seats at the ceremony.

He noted that this was the first time since the congressional menorah lighting tradition began that there were no living hostages in Gaza, but lawmakers remain committed to bringing home the body of the last hostage still held by Hamas.

The Hamas war and the corresponding rise in Jew-hatred hovered over the ceremony.

“These past years, of course, have not been easy for our Jewish brothers and sisters,” said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.). “But as the Chanukah story makes clear, the Jewish community for thousands of years has been a resilient one.”

“It has been more than two years since the horrors of Oct. 7 and the beginning of a new period of great challenge for Jews in America, of course, in Israel, and throughout the world,” he said.




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