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Saturday, December 13, 2025

12/13 Links: IDF slays top Hamas commander who helped plan Oct. 7 massacre; Dr. Einat Wilf: 'We lied to ourselves about the Palestinians'; 2 US troops, civilian interpreter killed in attack by member of Syrian security forces

From Ian:

Dr. Einat Wilf: 'We lied to ourselves about the Palestinians'
Dr. Einat Wilf, a former Labor MK who says she underwent a political awakening, explains in a recent interview with Maariv why she views Mahmoud Abbas as an adversary and why she is forming a new party, Oz, to advance a program that ties peace to Arab and Palestinian acceptance of Zionism.

Wilf says her focus is to confront the “right of return” and UNRWA’s role in perpetuating conflict, arguing that state services should prioritize those who serve the state.

Wilf frames her platform around three points: peace based on Arab and Palestinian acceptance of Zionism, state services for those who serve the state, and a shift from a diasporic mindset to sovereign governance.

‘After October 7, these issues are at the core’
About a year ago, Wilf was invited to a filmed interview about Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinians. The former Labor MK and left-wing figure, who experienced a political awakening, tried to explain why she sees Mahmoud Abbas as an enemy.

“I spoke about his commitment to the Palestinian ethos that believes in the right of return and fights against the existence of a Jewish state for the Jewish people,” she recalls. “It was a long interview, and when I finished, studio staff, from the lighting tech to the director, came up to me and said, this is what we want to vote for. Why is there no one in Israeli politics who represents your ideas?”
Playing the dangerous boycott game
As Commentary’s Seth Mandel wrote: “How should we judge the countries that 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.”

As many have noted, it’s not just the Eurovision Song Contest. There are ongoing boycotts of Israel in sports, academia, the literary world, and cultural events (ostensibly more cultured than Eurovision.)

Guinness World Records could hold its own world record in being tone-deaf. As a spokesperson confirmed in a statement to The Jerusalem Post’s Mathilda Heller last week: “We truly do believe in record-breaking for everyone, everywhere, but unfortunately, in the current climate, we are not generally processing record applications from the Palestinian Territories or Israel, or where either is given as the attempt location, with the exception of those done in cooperation with a UN humanitarian aid relief agency.”

In case you were in any doubt, the UN relief agency clause means that Palestinians can still participate. It’s only the Jews – well, Israelis of any religion–who have been canceled.

The gaslighting of the Jewish state was revealed when the non-profit organization Matnat Chaim (The Gift of Life), which encourages altruistic kidney donations, contacted Guinness World Records regarding its planned record-breaking event scheduled to bring 2,000 Israeli kidney donors together next month for a photo in Jerusalem. Of all things to boycott!

A look at the GWR site shows some of the strange feats it has recognized, including, for example, this “brilliantly bonkers food record”: “Largest serving of chicken wings... To celebrate their 50th anniversary, Big Green Egg didn’t just throw a party – they grilled up a record! They cooked a mouth-watering 297.5 kg. (655 lb. 12.8 oz.) of chicken wings. That’s as heavy as 3 baby elephants!”

I find the comparison of thousands of devoured chicken wings to baby elephants more bizarre than bonkers, but that’s besides the point. As a vegetarian, I find the whole event in poor taste, but that’s not my beef. What do you think is healthier, educational, and life-affirming: grossly overeating chicken wings or encouraging people to donate a kidney to someone they don’t know?

As it happens, Israel is considered by some to be the highest global consumer of poultry per capita, but I’ll save my pride for the fact that Israelis, thanks largely to Matnat Chaim, lead the way in altruistic kidney donations.

Notably, Guinness World Records began its ban on Israel in November 2023, not after the October 7 Hamas invasion and mega-atrocity in which 1,200 were murdered and 251 abducted; it blocked Israel when the Jewish state began to fight back.

One thing is clear from the UN plenum, the Eurovision stage, and Guinness World Records: Israel is constantly being judged by a different standard. It’s a win for antisemitism and hatred, and a massive loss for the world.
The patheticness of Nick Fuentes
What we need is a reckoning with identity politics. Fuentes hardly speaks for a whole generation of disaffected young men, but he has been lent some fertile ground at the edges. Generation Z were force-fed woke grievance politics, and chastised if they dissented. They were told group identity is great, with the exception of white group identity. Young men were told men weren’t shit. The hysterical overuse of ‘far right’ and ‘racist’, in turn, insulated a portion of young people from these forms of censure. No wonder some grifting upstarts have managed to make hay out of this.

We also need to go on the offensive against this particular faction of right identitarians. That means pushing back on their racial essentialism and BS statistics. (Piers, bless him, didn’t make the best fist of the latter, leading to a painful digression about per-capita crime rates.) But it also means pointing out how pathetic – as well as bigoted – all of it is. Just as the wokesters blame all of their problems on white supremacy, and the Jews, the new racist right blames all of their problems on anti-whiteness, and the Jews. It’s a dumb racialisation of deeper material and cultural problems, and an embrace of babyish victimhood to boot.

As for the misogyny, I for one am shocked that someone who has never so much as touched a woman seems to hate them so much. The best part of the interview was when Morgan straight up asked Fuentes if he is a virgin. (Reader, he is.) Personally, I’d have been tempted to open with that. We can and should talk about how #MeToo or victim feminism or the explosion of online pornography has poisoned relations between the sexes. But the self-pitying rage of the sexless young man is a story as old as time.

Perhaps the barmiest claim made about Fuentes is that he is the next stage of the populist revolt – a take that serves to both flatter his ego and vindicate the fever dreams of the anti-populist set. Apparently, when a multiracial coalition rebelled against the undemocratic elites at the ballot box, when parents showed up at school boards to stop critical race theory and gender ideology being preached to their children, when ordinary Americans expressed their horror at Big Tech firms silencing speech at the behest of the government, what they were really hankering for was to be ruled by a ‘Catholic Taliban’, to use Fuentes’s phrase – for someone in power to tell them what to do, put women back in their box and divide up society by race, only in a more vintage, reactionary fashion. Democracy, freedom of speech, genuine equality – these are the popular causes of our time. Nick Fuentes is only a clownish mirror image of everything that Americans have been rebelling against.


Israel joins US-led ‘Pax Silica’ initiative to cooperate on securing AI supply chains
Israel on Friday joined the US’s Pax Silica Initiative to cooperate on supply chains for artificial intelligence at an international conference in Washington.

The pact will include Israel alongside the United States, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates and Australia.

The summit is “the beginning of a new golden era of cooperation on AI and supply chain security,” said the White House, bringing together the countries with the “most cutting-edge AI supply chain ecosystems.”

Israel was represented by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s economic adviser Avi Simhon, Finance Ministry chief economist Shmuel Abramzon and National AI Directorate head Erez Askal, said the Prime Minister’s Office.

“The initiative aims to build a secure, resilient and innovative technological ecosystem across the entire value chain — from the extraction of critical minerals and energy, through advanced manufacturing and semiconductors, to AI infrastructure, data centers and logistics,” said the PMO, echoing language from an American press statement.

“Its goal is to shape a new, sustainable economic order for the age of artificial intelligence and to ensure shared prosperity for the participating countries.”

“Israel’s accession to the US-led Pax Silica Initiative is a mark of distinction for Israel and for Israel’s high-tech industry,” said Simhon in a statement, “which is regarded as a global leader in innovation and artificial intelligence.”

The US said other countries would join the pact, adding that countries would work together to ensure a timely supply chain, though it was vague on the practicalities.

“We believe that this gathering and grouping matters because the global system is shifting from ‘just in time’ to strategically aligned,” said Jacob Helberg, the State Department’s undersecretary for economic affairs.

“Pax Silica ultimately ensures that these countries have reliable access to the inputs and infrastructure that determine AI competitiveness,” he told reporters ahead of the signing.

Other countries participating in the meetings in Washington on supply chains, without formally joining the Pax Silica, were the United Arab Emirates, Canada and the Netherlands, as well as the European Union as an institution.
25 nations to meet in Qatar to discuss Stabilization Force for Gaza
The U.S. Central Command will host a conference in Doha on Dec. 16 with partner Arab and Muslim nations to plan the International Stabilization Force for Gaza, expected to deploy as early as next month.

More than 25 countries are expected to send representatives to the summit, Reuters cited two U.S. officials as saying on Friday.

The conference will involve sessions on the command structure and other issues, added the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

However, it remains unclear how the International Stabilization Force will compel Hamas to disarm without fighting the terrorist organization, the report said.

U.S. officials are working out the size, composition, housing, training and rules of engagement of the ISF, according to Reuters.

An American major general whose name has been so-far withheld is being considered for leadership of the ISF, but a decision has not yet been made, the two officials said.

On Thursday, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told reporters that “there is a lot of quiet planning that’s going on behind the scenes right now for phase two of the peace deal. We want to ensure an enduring and lasting peace.”

Indonesia has said it is prepared to deploy up to 20,000 troops to assume health- and construction-related tasks in Gaza, according to Reuters.

The Israel Defense Forces hold some 53% of the Gaza Strip, deployed along the so-called Yellow Line that runs from the Strip’s north to its south.

Under the ceasefire, which went into effect on Oct. 10 following two years of war, after completing its first phase with the return of all living and deceased hostages, talks would begin on the second phase, which is to see Hamas disarmed.

The ISF is supposed to be stationed in the area that the IDF currently holds, with the latter gradually withdrawing in tandem with Hamas’s demilitarization process.

U.N. Security Council Resolution 2803, adopted on Nov. 17, authorized a Board of Peace, led by U.S. President Donald Trump, to establish the ISF.
ISF will not fight Hamas, say US officials, who still seek to deploy force next month
International troops could be deployed in the Gaza Strip as early as next month to form a UN-authorized stabilization force, two US officials told Reuters, but it remains unclear how the Palestinian terror group Hamas will be disarmed.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the International Stabilization Force (ISF) would not fight Hamas. They claimed lots of countries have expressed interest in contributing and US officials are currently working out the size of the ISF, composition, housing, training and rules of engagement.

The US Central Command will host a conference in Doha on December 16 with partner nations to plan the International Stabilization Force for Gaza, the officials said.

More than 25 countries are expected to send representatives to the conference, which will include sessions on the command structure and other issues related to the Gaza force, they said.

An American two-star general is being considered to lead the ISF, but no decisions have been made, the officials said.

The goal of deploying the ISF in January is not new, and The Times of Israel has reported for nearly two months that US officials have been talking about that aim. But the timeframe is appearing increasingly unlikely, as even the countries that were thought to be interested in contributing troops, such as Azerbaijan and Indonesia, have yet to formally announce decisions to do so.

Deployment of the force is a key part of the next phase of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan. Under the first phase, a fragile ceasefire in the two-year war began on October 10, with Hamas releasing hostages and Israel freeing detained Palestinians.

“There is a lot of quiet planning that’s going on behind the scenes right now for phase two of the peace deal,” White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Thursday. “We want to ensure an enduring and lasting peace.”


IDF slays top Hamas commander who helped plan Oct. 7 massacre
The Israel Defense Forces on Saturday killed “one of the last remaining veteran senior terrorists in the Gaza Strip,” the IDF and Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) said in a joint statement.

“Ra’ad Sa’ad was a leading figure in the leadership of Hamas’s military wing in recent months and was directly responsible for violations of the ceasefire agreement by the Hamas terrorist organization,” the statement continued.

He was one of the architects of the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, invasion and massacre in the northwestern Negev, the IDF and Shin Bet added.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a joint statement that they instructed the security forces to kill Sa’ad following the activation of a Hamas explosive device that wounded two IDF reserve soldiers in the southern Gaza Strip earlier on Saturday.

The Hamas commander was engaged in carrying out attacks against Israel, as well as rebuilding Hamas’s offensive capabilities, while “blatantly violating” the terms of the ceasefire, the Israeli leaders said.

“Instead of advancing demilitarization, he was working to rearm for acts of terror. Anyone who raises a hand against Israel and harms IDF soldiers—his hand will be cut off in Gaza and anywhere else,” Netanyahu and Katz said.


2 US troops, civilian interpreter killed in attack by member of Syrian security forces
Two US troops and an American civilian interpreter were killed in central Syria on Saturday after an extremist member of Syrian security forces opened fire on a joint US-Syrian patrol, officials said.

US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced the deaths on X after Syria’s state media earlier reported that an attack in the city of Palmyra had wounded American and Syrian troops.

“An ambush by a lone ISIS gunman” resulted in the deaths and injuries to three additional troops, said CENTCOM, which oversees the US military in the Middle East.

“The gunman was engaged and killed,” it said.

Three local officials later told Reuters that the attacker was a member of Syrian security forces. A Syrian interior ministry spokesperson told Syrian TV that the attacker did not have a leadership role in the security forces. He did not say whether the man was a junior member.

“On December 10, an evaluation was issued indicating that this attacker might hold extremist ideas, and a decision regarding him was due to be issued tomorrow, on Sunday,” the spokesperson, Noureddine el-Baba, told Syrian television channel Al-Ikhbariya.

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the attack occurred as the soldiers “were conducting a key leader engagement” in support of counter-terrorism operations, while US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack said the ambush targeted “a joint US–Syrian government patrol.”

US President Donald Trump said that America mourned “the loss of three Great American Patriots in Syria,” and vowed to retaliate.

“This was an ISIS attack against the US, and Syria, in a very dangerous part of Syria, that is not fully controlled by them,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

Trump asserted “The President of Syria, Ahmed al-Sharaa, is extremely angry and disturbed by this attack. There will be very serious retaliation.”


How Gaza became the Italian left’s alibi
What Francesco Boezi’s research, published in the Italian newspaper Il Giornale, reveals is not merely a political shift but a historic collapse. Italy’s Young Democrats no longer function as a party youth wing. They have become, as Boezi accurately describes, a single-issue militant community. That issue has a name: the Palestinian cause.

Adherence to it now operates as a credential. Approval is earned either through ritualized ideological posturing—echoing the old left of Massimo D’Alema—or through organizational activism aligned with Elly Schlein. In both cases, Gaza has replaced politics.

This is not renewal. It is self-consumption. The Italian left has chosen Gaza as its sacrificial altar, competing eagerly for primacy in the international antisemitism league. Trade unions call general strikes “for Gaza.”

Restaurants and universities exclude Israelis. Schools invite United Nations Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese to instruct students in the myth of a Palestinian state “colonized” by Jews—one that never existed.

This drift is fueled by vulnerability and ignorance. The moral framework imposed on young activists is deceptively simple: the West exploits, capitalism oppresses, and Jews—above all—are racists, fascists, colonizers, rapists, murderers and even genocidal Nazis. Lacking a coherent political struggle, the left redirects its war onto Jews.

The late Soviet Jewish writer Vasily Grossman once observed that accusations leveled at Jews often reveal more about the accusers than the accused. His insight applies precisely here.

Italian youth are not inherently violent. But in this ideological vacuum, jihadist networks attach themselves to identity-confused young people and offer a radically different value system: women subordinated, dissidents eliminated, homosexuals executed and Western society despised. The “gurus” now celebrated on the radical left do not merely oppose Israel; they reject Judeo-Christian civilization itself. They thrive on disinformation—the raw material of chaos.

A fictional Israel is constructed, alongside imaginary Jews and a mythical global fascism that supports them. Within this invented moral universe, anything becomes permissible.


University of Arkansas prof. canned over alleged support for Iranian regime, anti-Israel stance
A political science professor at the University of Arkansas stands accused of praising Iran’s Supreme Leader using the school’s letterhead and attacking Israel, The Post has learned.

Shirin Saeidi, head of the school’s Middle East Studies program, also allegedly supported a convicted Iranian regime war criminal, evidence shows.

Now, lawmakers and a group of Iranian dissidents are demanding administrators at the university further discipline Saeidi, who was removed from her position as director of the Middle Eastern Studies department Friday, although she has retained her position as a professor at the school, according to a spokesman.

Saeidi used the school’s letterhead to appeal for the release of Hamid Nouri, who was convicted by a Swedish court in 2022 of ordering the execution of thousands of political prisoners at Gohardasht Prison in 1988, according to the US-based Alliance Against Islamic Regime of Iran Apologists (AAIRIA), which provided a copy to The Post.

Nouri served as the assistant deputy prosecutor at the Karaj prison, outside of Tehran. He was released in a prisoner swap between Iran and Sweden last year.

In posts shared on X in November Saeidi praised ayatollah Ali Khamenei, offering prayers for his protection and noting that he is “the leader who kept Iran intact during the Israeli attack, May god protect you,” referencing the attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 by Hamas terrorists.

She has called Israel a “terrorist state” and a “genocidal state” on X. Saeidi did not respond to a request for comment from The Post.

On Friday, Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, denounced Saeidi’s “hate-filled antisemitic venom” in an email to The Post.

“Whether Shirin Saeidi should be fired is a decision for the administration and the UA board. But praising the Iranian leader — who calls not only for the slaughter of Jews but also calls for the destruction of America — makes me think this deranged professor would probably be better suited to being given a one-way ticket to Tehran and taking a job of teaching in their hate-infested schools,” he said.

A spokesman for the university told The Post Friday Saeidi is no longer at the Middle East Studies department and the school is investigating her apparent use of the letterhead “in accordance with university policies.”


Rights groups condemn reported re-arrest of Nobel laureate Mohammadi in Iran
International human rights groups on Saturday condemned the reported re-arrest of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi in Iran, with the Nobel committee calling on Iranian authorities to immediately clarify her whereabouts.

Mohammadi’s French lawyer Chirine Ardakani said on X that the human rights activist was arrested on Friday after denouncing the suspicious death of lawyer Khosrow Alikordi at his memorial ceremony in the northeastern city of Mashhad.

Iranian authorities have not yet confirmed her arrest. Mashhad’s city governor Hasan Hosseini told Iranian state television on Friday that prosecutors had ordered the temporary detention of several participants at Alikordi’s ceremony, but did not name Mohammadi.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee called on Iranian authorities “to immediately clarify Mohammadi’s whereabouts, ensure her safety and integrity, and to release her without conditions.”

The European Union also demanded that Mohammadi be freed, describing her arrest as “deeply concerning.”

“The EU urges Iranian authorities to release Ms. Mohammadi, taking also into account her fragile health condition, as well as all those unjustly arrested in the exercise of their freedom of expression,” said Anouar El Anouni, a spokesman for the bloc’s diplomatic service.

The spokesman added that “Mohammadi, who already had to endure years in prison because of her advocacy, bravely continues to use her voice to defend human dignity and the fundamental rights of Iranians, including freedom of expression, which must be respected at all times.”
Inside the Jewish Brigade’s untold Holocaust survivor rescue operations
The Jewish Brigade was instrumental in helping the war effort for the Allied forces in World War II and later helped track down Holocaust survivors and bring them to the Land of Israel. But while there is much information in Hebrew about this critical part of Israel’s creation as an independent state, there is little such data in English or any other language.

That has now been rectified with the publication of a new book titled Dance of the Fire: The Jewish Brigade in WW2: Facts, Myths, Appraisal. It is based largely on the personal memoirs of Shlomo Shamir, who served in the brigade as a British officer but, more importantly, as its covert commander on behalf of the Jewish Institutions in Palestine. The Magazine spoke with Yael Driver, Shamir’s daughter and the book’s editor.

Driver took her father’s memoirs, which had been set down in writing before he passed away in 2009, and conducted additional and confirmatory research in archives and newspapers in England, Germany, Israel, and elsewhere to corroborate facts and dates about the Jewish Brigade’s activities.

In 2014, she privately published the Hebrew version of the book, which, translated, is titled Three Miracles and a Jewish Flag in the British Army. This autumn, following further research, an updated and expanded commercially available English version of the book was released, with new references, footnotes, and historical photographs.

Part of Driver’s more recent research related to a ceramic clay relief that had hung on the wall of her family’s home since her childhood. The memento had been carved in 1941 by an Italian prisoner of war, one of some 10,000 POWs interned in the Latrun detention camp, a significant British Mandate-era prison in Israel where Jewish resistance fighters were held. The relief was inscribed with a dedication to her father.

“This Italian prisoner gave my father a ceramic relief, which he made on site in conditions unimaginable, as a token of appreciation,” Driver explained. As part of her research for the English version of the book, she located the son of the POW and learned more of the backstory. The two families have remained in touch as a result.
‘Rehabilitated’ postwar West Germany’s government was riddled with Nazis, study reveals
The diplomat at the West German Embassy in Washington who wrote the 1965 memo blaming “the type of Jewish liberal who has great influence in the modern communications industry” for a plethora of World War II television shows and films portraying Wehrmacht soldiers as “bad guys” most likely did not fear any repercussions for his antisemitic remarks.

With good reason: Bonn’s envoy to the United States at the time, Georg von Lilienfeld, was a former Nazi member who had worked in the Foreign Office censoring radio programs and devising propaganda aimed at America.

But, German academics have revealed, Von Lilienfeld was hardly unique in the upper echelons of the postwar West German civil service.

Earlier this year, the Institute of Contemporary History Munich-Berlin and the Leibniz Center for Contemporary History Potsdam completed a six-year study of the personnel files of the Chancellery — one of the most powerful and important institutions in Germany.

Their findings, published this summer in “The Chancellery: West German Democracy and the Nazi Past,” show that, during the first decade of the new federal republic, two-thirds of those hired to work for Chancellor Konrad Adenauer had previously belonged to the Nazi party.

Among the bureaucrats working for the chancellor, who was elected in West Germany’s first postwar elections in 1949, were lawyers who had played a pivotal part in the implementation of the Nuremberg Laws, administrators who had overseen the theft of property owned by Jews murdered in the Holocaust, and journalists and filmmakers who had worked in Josef Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry.

Reflecting the German chancellor’s central role in the country’s politics, the Federal Chancellery of Germany is comparable to the White House and No.10 Downing Street.

Gunnar Take of the University of Stuttgart, one of the four academics to conduct the research, analyzed the backgrounds of 107 senior staff in the Chancellery. Of the 73 people hired up to the year 1958, 66 percent had belonged to the Nazi party, and 20 had also belonged to party bodies such as the SS, SA or organizations such as the NSKK, or National Socialist Motor Corps, and the NSV, or National Socialist People’s Welfare.
Nashville Jewish community center sues Goyim Defense League over alleged intimidation campaign
A Jewish community center in Nashville has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the neo-Nazi group Goyim Defense League and several of its leaders and affiliates, accusing them of orchestrating a campaign of antisemitic intimidation, harassment and trespass aimed at terrorizing the city’s Jewish community.

The lawsuit was filed Tuesday by the Southern Poverty Law Center on behalf of the Gordon Jewish Community Center, a 120-year-old nonprofit that serves as a major hub for Jewish life in Nashville. The complaint names the Goyim Defense League, its founder and leader Jon Minadeo II, extremist streamer Paul Miller, who is also known as GypsyCrusader, and several associates.

At the center of the case is a January 2025 incident in which Travis Garland, a Tennessee man affiliated with the Goyim Defense League, allegedly disguised himself as an Orthodox Jewish man and infiltrated the Jewish center’s secured campus. According to the lawsuit, Garland livestreamed the intrusion, mocked Jewish customs and the Holocaust, and refused repeated requests to leave before being forcibly escorted off the property by a security guard.

Garland was later arrested and pleaded guilty in state court to trespassing at the Jewish center, receiving a sentence of nearly a year in jail, according to Nashville television station WTVF.

The complaint alleges Garland acted as part of a coordinated effort, receiving guidance and encouragement from Miller and others who followed the incident in real time via video chat and later promoted it online as a “stunt.”

“Using fear and harassment to threaten and intimidate groups is a despicable act that cannot be tolerated in a multicultural society,” Scott McCoy, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s deputy legal director, said in a statement. “This is the second lawsuit the SPLC has brought against the Goyim Defense League for their actions targeting Nashville’s Black and Jewish communities.”
Taylor Swift condemned over mention of Israel in new documentary series
Taylor Swift will definitely be humming “Shake It Off,” as she faces a sudden, irrational wave of hate from social media users over her recently released documentary series, Taylor Swift: The End of an Era (streaming in Israel on Disney+), because fans shown in the first episode waiting to go through security for a concert at Wembley Stadium in England mention they chatted with concertgoers from Israel.

Social media users are breaking the internet in a rush to condemn the 36-year-old Grammy-winning singer-songwriter, accusing her of being a "Zionist."

Swift has refrained from any mention of Israel and the war in Gaza for the past two years and has limited her political views to speaking out for LGBTQ+ rights and stating that she would not be voting for Donald Trump. She did not respond to a #SwiftiesforPalestine campaign, although she did once attend a fundraiser for humanitarian aid to Gaza alongside Selena Gomez in 2023, but many in the pro-Palestinian crowd did not deem this as sufficient.

An X/Twitter user @Brookie816 tweeted on Friday: “Taylor Swift specifically planting Jewish ppl in her documentary & mentioning Israel more than once, in an effort to humanize baby killers & genociders. We now know WHY Tay doesn’t speak up against genocide, #TaylorSwiftisaZionist.”

Also on X, @jamirostan wrote: “I know I have a lot of Taylor Swift fans as followers, but I'm sorry, I can't stand her after that doc….she CHOSE to include mentions of Israel. If you view Israel as a real country, you’re a Zionist, period. And if you’re a zionist, you’re a piece of shit. (plus, you know the necklace).” The necklace refers to one that is part of her Life of a Showgirl merchandise, showing lightning bolts that reference the “Opalite” song that some have said resembled the symbol of the elite SS Nazi unit, which has since been removed from her online store.

@ierofiilm wrote: “If u defend Taylor Swift then unfollow me lmao I don't want zionist bitches on my page.” Another user, @chiefsAlpha, said, “A Zionist bully, a capitalist, no moral compass, zero authenticity, sell, sell, sell some more.”

While some who previously admired Swift may now be humming her hit, “Everything Has Changed,” others insist there is no “Bad Blood” here, earnestly trying to defend her by saying that there is no evidence she is a Zionist.
UK courts Israeli tech with new fast-track scaleup program
The British Embassy in Israel has launched a new initiative aimed at accelerating the expansion of Israeli tech companies into the United Kingdom, aligning with Britain's revamped industrial strategy and efforts to position itself as a global leader in innovation.

The program, known as ScaIL UK, was announced by the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) at the British Embassy and is specifically designed for Israeli scaleups—high-growth companies looking to establish or expand operations in the UK.

The initiative targets companies operating in eight strategic sectors outlined in the UK’s ten-year industrial strategy, unveiled in June: clean energy, advanced manufacturing, defense, creative industries, financial services, business and professional services, digital and technology and life sciences. These are all areas where Israeli innovation is internationally recognized.

ScaIL UK will include six intensive sessions in Tel Aviv, providing participants with insights into market entry strategies, legal and regulatory frameworks and connections to key UK stakeholders. The program will culminate in a UK roadshow featuring industry roundtables and meetings with business leaders. “We’re connecting Israeli scaleups to a $1.2 trillion tech economy, Europe’s largest and third in the world, with world-class infrastructure, rule of law and a clear industrial strategy designed to boost investment and make the UK the best place to do business,” said Ceri Morgan, His Majesty’s Trade Commissioner for Europe and Israel. “This is where ambition meets opportunity.”

British Ambassador to Israel Simon Walters added that the UK’s skilled workforce, connectivity and competitive tax environment make it a prime destination for Israeli companies. “Through ScaIL UK, we are giving companies the tools and confidence to make long-term investment decisions, leveraging benefits such as the G7’s lowest corporation tax, generous R&D incentives and a global outlook from day one,” he said.

“This program strengthens the already deep economic ties between UK and Israeli companies and opens new horizons for innovation and collaboration.”




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