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Monday, December 22, 2025

12/22 Links Pt2: Lion-Eater of Judah; Inventing a Nonexistent Famine Should Be a Credibility Killer; Cheers for Ben Shapiro; Vance’s Friends Without Benefits; The Problem Is Mamdani

From Ian:

Lion-Eater of Judah
“Never since the days of Judas Maccabaeus had such sights and sounds been seen and heard in a military camp,” wrote Colonel John Patterson in his 1916 memoir With the Zionists in Gallipoli. If Judas had visited this “great camp with the tents of the Children of Israel,” Patterson went on:
He would have heard the Hebrew tongue spoken on all sides, and seen a host of Sons of Judah drilling to the same words of command he used to those gallant soldiers who fought the Romans: he would have heard the plaintive soul-stirring music of the Maccabean hymn chanted by the men as they marched through the camps. Although it was only a mule corps, yet it was (potentially) a fighting unit and of this the men were all very proud.

As Natan Slifkin recounts in his recently published The Lions of Zion, the Irish-born British soldier was, like the Maccabees he so admired, a fighter of both animals and men. More importantly, as commander of the Zion Mule Corps in World War I and later the 38th battalion of the Royal Fusiliers, which came to be known as the Jewish Legion, he, like those hearty Hasmoneans, helped revive the Jewish national project.

Patterson’s early-career adventures earned him not one but four Hollywood adaptations. In 1898, he killed two man-eating lions that had been chomping their way through a railway construction project in British East Africa. As he would recall years later:
I have never experienced anything more nerve-shaking than to hear the deep roars of these dreadful monsters growing nearer and nearer, and to know that some one or other of us was doomed to be their victim before morning dawned. . . . Shouts would then pass from camp to camp “Beware, brothers, the devil is coming,” but the warning cries would prove of no avail; and sooner or later agonizing shrieks would break the silence, and another man would be missing from roll call next morning.

Hollywood couldn’t resist. Bwana Devil, a 1952 United Artists production, was the first color film made in 3D. Four decades later, in the late 90’s, there was the Man-eaters of Tsavo, a documentary based on Patterson’s memoir by the same name. In a fictionalized version released around the same time, Val Kilmer played the adventurer in Paramount’s Ghost and the Darkness. More recently, the Yellowstone prequel series 1923 featured a character, Spencer Dutton, inspired by the courageous colonel.
Seth Mandel: Inventing a Nonexistent Famine Should Be a Credibility Killer
It’s obviously great news that there was no famine in Gaza. It is terrible news that the organizations responsible for informing the world of such conditions knew the whole time that there was no famine and manipulated data in order to spread false accusations against Israel. The “famine” narrative materially affected the war by convincing supposed members of the democratic alliance to withhold supplies from Israel and force Israel to resupply Hamas, thereby prolonging the war and costing additional Israeli and Palestinian lives. The wider “child killer” narrative, meanwhile, has been part of a global campaign of ever-escalating violence against Jews around the world.

If the objectively false “Israel is deliberately starving babies” narrative never takes hold, the war ends sooner and the Global Intifada is starved of some of its oxygen. It’s a no-brainer, then, that anyone who contributed to the spread of that narrative should be considered outside the bounds of respectable opinion. They can be free to post deranged material to social media just like anybody else, but they should be given no legitimacy by governments and academics and the media.

That last one might be too much to hope for, of course. The Associated Press “report” on the IPC’s acknowledgement of improved conditions in Gaza begins this way: “The spread of famine has been averted in the Gaza Strip, but the situation remains critical with the entire Palestinian territory still facing starvation, the world’s leading authority on food crises said Friday.”

Let’s just be clear: “famine has been averted” is thankfully true of most places in the world today. And if famine was averted, why the passive phrasing? Doesn’t that mean someone was getting food to Gazans even while their own government was hoarding it from them? And wouldn’t that someone be… the State of Israel?

Yes, it would. So here’s what happened: Hamas tried to bring a famine upon the people of Gaza, and Israel (at great risk) made sure to deliver enough food and supplies to stop that from happening even while Gaza’s armed forces remained at war with Israel. In their disappointment that there was no famine, Hamas’s allies in the NGO world pretended there was famine anyway, so that they could also lie about Israel’s efforts to supply Gaza. And a major global news wire rewarded them by telling readers they are the “world’s leading authority on food crises” despite the fact that the lesson of the article is that the IPC cannot be trusted.

The very least politicians can do is ensure that untrustworthy sources have no role in policymaking ever again.
National Review Editorial: Cheers for Ben Shapiro
Well, that will leave a mark.

Ben Shapiro did the conservative movement a service last week by giving two speeches that were deliberate acts of provocation.

First, at the Heritage Foundation, he argued that a political movement, like a nation, needs borders. He illustrated the point with reference to the Heritage Foundation mission statement, which supports free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.

He then compared those principles with the beliefs of Tucker Carlson, with whom Heritage President Kevin Roberts has been in ideological sympathy, up to and including initially defending Carlson’s interview with Nick Fuentes (before backpedaling). Shapiro persuasively argued that by Heritage’s own standards Carlson — who expresses routine contempt for markets, who launders Russian propaganda, who sees the advantages of sharia law, and who gives sympathetic interviews to white nationalists, Churchill-hating World War II revisionists, and proud misogynists accused of rape — is no longer a conservative.

We assume that Roberts won’t be inviting Shapiro back any time soon, but his talk was received warmly by the audience at the Heritage Foundation.

A couple of days later, Shapiro spoke at TPUSA’s AmFest conference. He addressed the rank pandering to audience, widespread conspiracy-theorizing, and cowardly unwillingness to call out lunacy on the right that has infected the right-wing influencer space. Here, Shapiro focused on the absolutely cracked theories promoted by Candace Owens about the Charlie Kirk assassination; these rancid, obsessive musings, which would set off alarms bells for any psychiatrist if spouted by a patient, have significantly shaped the debate on the right about Kirk’s assassination.
Daniel B. Shapiro: Democrats Sound Like They’re in Doha
The end of the U.S.-Israel security partnership would have three immediate effects. First, it would make Israel appear vulnerable, leading Iran and its allies to accelerate their efforts, already under way, to rearm and prepare for another, perhaps decisive, war. Far from advancing the cause of peace, such a move would likely intensify the region’s conflicts.

Second, it would undermine bipartisan efforts to build an integrated coalition of U.S. partners—Israel and moderate Arab states—that assist one another and allow the United States to play a supporting, but not always leading, role in maintaining regional stability. Arab states are deepening their relationship with Israel in large part because they believe that it will bring them closer to the United States. When we are seen as a less reliable partner for our closest regional ally, they will draw obvious conclusions. Cutting off Israel would thus lead to a less stable, more conflict-ridden region. And it would actually set back Palestinian aspirations by undermining the Saudi-Israeli normalization deal that might advance them.

Third, the end of security assistance to Israel would soon mean the same for Jordan and Egypt, whose assistance programs derive from their peace treaties with Israel. Jordan’s stability could be placed at immediate risk, with spillover dangers in Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the West Bank. Egypt would not stop arming itself; it would simply buy weapons from Russia and China. Gulf states, boxed out from purchasing U.S. equipment by ongoing U.S. legal requirements to sustain Israel’s qualitative military edge, would do the same. There is no better or faster way to open the door to our competitors’ planting their flag in a strategic and volatile region than by cutting off Israel.

The net result of these trends will be a dramatic decline in U.S. influence in the Middle East. For those embracing the impulse to look inward, that may seem fine. Early in the cycle of isolationism, as in the 1930s or after the Cold War, it always does. But eventually, a shock or crisis—World War II, 9/11, or one that we can’t yet name but that will surely come—will draw us back into the region, but under far worse conditions and at a much higher cost.

Sustaining a functional relationship with Israel, with all of its flaws, is manifestly more beneficial to U.S. interests than the alternative. And we need to keep perspective. Netanyahu will not govern forever. The Israeli public has moved rightward, but there are reasonable leaders from the center right and the center left to cultivate. A Palestinian state will not be on the agenda in the Israeli election campaign of 2026, but as the war recedes, there will be various ways to engage the Israeli public—an imperative that Israel’s critics utterly ignore but that is crucial for obtaining the outcomes we want in a democracy—to incentivize them to vote in a more moderate direction. Bidding them good riddance and telling them that they are on their own would do the opposite. Ignoring the responsibility of other actors—such as Palestinian Authority leaders who must embrace reform and demonstrate the capacity to govern and defeat extremists—would do the same.

If Israel wants to see Democrats pursue engagement, then it must help. Expressing conceptual openness to Palestinian statehood as part of a regionally integrated framework—even if it takes longer than Palestinians might hope and assumes a form that looks different from previous efforts—will be important. Keeping extremists out of the Israeli government, and cracking down on extremist violence, is crucial. And recognizing that legitimate security operations must include maximum efforts to protect civilians is essential. Although Israel Defense Forces commanders were always clear that their intent was to target Hamas, not civilians, their tolerance of civilian casualties in pursuit of legitimate military targets was far too high. An intense military-to-military dialogue could help persuade them to adjust that calculation. As in any war, specific charges that soldiers committed war crimes must be investigated and adjudicated in a credible military-justice system—something the United States military has done, albeit imperfectly.

Democrats, and all Americans, face a choice in upcoming elections. We can make the moral, political, and strategic error of trying to wash our hands of a relationship with a democratic partner under stress that has made many mistakes as it has fought to defend itself. Or we can commit to working with that partner and its current, flawed leadership while we wait for new leaders to emerge. We can choose to sustain crucial aspects of a relationship that serves our moral and strategic interests, while insisting on changes that conform with U.S. values. The latter course is clearly the better choice.


Israel, Greece and Cyprus to advance energy deal after trilateral summit in Jerusalem
Israel, Greece and Cyprus will work to advance a long-touted landmark energy deal, pledging to deepen post-war security and defense cooperation in a volatile region, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday.

“The Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean are being tested by aggression, terrorism and instability,” Netanyahu said after a trilateral summit with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides in Jerusalem. “Our partnership provides strength, clarity and cooperation that will prevail over chaos.”

Holding their 10th such summit, the three eastern Mediterranean allies share a strategic partnership focused on energy, defense and economic ties.

The much-discussed deal to link the three countries’ electrical grids—referred to as an “energy highway”—is to be carried out via the world’s longest and deepest underwater electricity cable, crossing the Mediterranean seabed and bridging Asia and Europe.

The countries have also been mulling cooperation on an offshore natural-gas deal that could establish an energy corridor to Europe and beyond, including Arab countries in the region.

Netanyahu said he would discuss the project during his meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump, which is expected to take place next week in Florida.


Sister of last remaining hostage: Don’t yet move to Phase 2 of Gaza plan
The American Jewish and pro-Israel community continues to say it won’t forget about the last remaining deceased hostage in Gaza.

Shira Gvili says she’s in the United States to make sure of it.

Gvili, 24, is the younger sister of Master Sgt. Ran Gvili, 24, who Israeli authorities say lost his life from wounds suffered battling terrorists at the entrance to Kibbutz Alumim during the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

The last image of him alive shows him on a motorbike driven off by terrorists, with Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City in the background.

After partying with Shira and friends the night of Oct. 6, Gvili was due to undergo surgery on a broken shoulder on the morning of Hamas’s massacre. Affectionately known to family and friends as “Rani,” he instead insisted on joining his fellow officers in the Israel Defense Forces on the frontlines.

He texted his friends late that morning that he had been shot in the leg. It was his last communication.

The 20 remaining living hostages were freed on Oct. 13, and the bodies of deceased hostages have been sporadically returned since that date. Gvili has yet to come home.

Shira has spent the past few days meeting withpolitical, diplomatic and religious officials to remind them that they said they wouldn’t rest until all the hostages were brought home.

“I showed them that we need to close our circle, and it’s important to us, to our family, to know what happened to Ran on Oct. 7,” she told JNS, still expressing doubts about her brother’s fate in the absence of conclusive evidence of his death.

“We don’t know anything, and we are afraid that they’re going to move to the second phase without Ran,” she said, alluding to phase two of U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace plan for the Gaza Strip. Phase one is only set to complete with the return of all hostages, living and dead.

“And for Am Yisrael, we need him to come home,” she added.
Visiting Gaza, region’s top Catholic official says there’s no hunger anymore, urges pressure on Hamas
There is no hunger currently in Gaza, says the top Catholic official in the region, adding that pressure should be applied on Hamas to agree to US President Donald Trump’s 20-point vision for the future of the Strip.

“The food is there, at least,” says Latin Patriarch Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa after visiting the only Catholic church in Gaza over the weekend. “We have to say that there’s not anymore famine or hunger. Things are entering. Not everything, but it’s a totally different situation compared to six months ago.”

Bishop William Shomali, patriarchal vicar for Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, concurs with Pizzaballa’s assessment in their press conference at the Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem: “There is in the market something to eat, even fruits, even vegetables, but it is to be paid by money or by PayPal. Not everyone has cash. So the problem remains. There’s fruit, but many people, like in the West Bank, they can find everything, but they need money to buy it finally.”

“There’s poverty, extreme poverty, especially that many people, most of them, don’t work, so they don’t have revenue,” Shomali continues. “They don’t receive anything. And they live from the help given by the UN agencies. Also, I am proud to say that Catholic associations are very active.”

There is a lack of antibiotics in the Strip as well, says Shomali. “Antibiotics became like a hard currency,” he laments.

Gazans he met with want “to return to life,” says Pizzaballa. “We want to talk about the future. Our community, they wanted to celebrate Christmas joyfully.”

Pizzaballa says that he hopes that Trump’s 20-point plan for Gaza “will be completed.”

“We know that it’s not that simple as people think, but it is the only roadmap we have, so we have to continue this,” the patriarch continues.

“I think the other countries and those who are in relations with Hamas should work a lot in order to convince them about this,” says Pizzaballa. “We are convinced that Gaza needs to turn the page and to have a completely different future.”
Three Gazans who entered Israel on Oct. 7 arrested; account disputed
Police said on Sunday that officers arrested three Gaza residents in the Negev Bedouin city of Rahat who had entered Israel during Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion, although security sources cited by Hebrew-language media disputed the official narrative.

The suspects were found in possession of dozens of stolen rounds of military ammunition, police said. The arrests were carried out by detectives from the Negev Police District’s Central Unit and Southern Region Border Police officers.



Security sources disputed the police version of events, saying the Gazans entered Israel before Oct. 7 and remained in the country after authorities barred Gazan laborers amid the war with Hamas.

The three men were taken to the Sde Teiman military detention facility for questioning.

JNS contacted the Israel Police for comment.

Thousands of Gazans crossed into Israel amid the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, many of whom were later arrested or killed by Israeli forces.
Israel strikes Hezbollah terrorists in Sidon area
The Israel Defense Forces said on Monday afternoon that it attacked several Hezbollah terrorists in the Sidon area on Lebanon’s southern coast.

Earlier on Monday, the IDF said that one of the two Hezbollah terrorists killed in Sunday’s Israeli strikes in Southern Lebanon was involved in efforts by the Iranian proxy to rebuild its “military” infrastructure.

The Islamist group’s actions in the Yater area “constituted a violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon,” the army said, referring to the U.S.-brokered ceasefire reached in November.

IDF troops operating under the 91st “Galilee” Division killed four terrorists in Southern Lebanon over the past week, the military added.

“The IDF will continue to operate to remove any threat against the State of Israel,” the update concluded.


Seth Mandel: The Problem Is Mamdani
As I argued in August, association with the DSA should be disqualifying. That certainly includes Mamdani, since it “formed the backbone of Mr. Mamdani’s canvassing operation and played an essential role in pushing the nation’s largest city to embrace an unwavering progressive campaign agenda,” as the Times described it. The DSA rallied in celebration of the October 7 attacks and has since been a key cog in the pro-Hamas propaganda machine.

But there was no reason to expect that a post-election Mamdani would be much different from the pre-election Mamdani, who spent his time with anti-Semitic congress members, Jew-baiting progressive podcasters, founts of Qatari propaganda, Moscow mouthpieces, and other categories of fine upstanding citizens.

Even though Mamdani has continued to vow to arrest the Israeli prime minister and offered other insane expressions of his obsession with Jews, he didn’t truly hit his low point until recently, when he justified a raging anti-Semitic mob’s descent upon a synagogue in New York. The lesson from that was, I think, that he still has not hit bottom.

And that is certainly the direction events had been heading until l’affaire Da Costa. Now we see an acknowledgement of something the Jews of New York and beyond had long known: Left to his own devices, Mamdani would just keep surrounding himself with anti-Semites. If you want a non-anti-Semitic mayoral administration, you have to go outside Mamdani. That was the conceit behind the campaigns of his election opponents, of course, and they were right—even Mamdani knows it.

Now, an outside contractor will be given oversight of the mayor’s vetting process. But for how long? And what about the actual mayoral administration once it gets off and running? Who will babysit Mamdani? Because in the end, he’s still the guy making the decisions. And he is personally incapable of putting together a team that isn’t a threat to the well-being of New Yorkers, and not just Jewish New Yorkers. Because as we know, anti-Semitism is a marker of wider decline and an uncontainable civic poison.

So: What now?
At least 20% of Mamdani appointees have ties to anti-Zionist groups, ADL says
At least 20 percent of New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s administrative appointees are connected to anti-Zionist US activist groups, such as Students for Justice in Palestine, the Anti-Defamation League said in a Monday report.

The ADL released the report after surveying Mamdani’s more than 400 Transition Committee appointees.

Some of the appointees are connected to other anti-Zionist groups, such as Jewish Voice for Peace and Within Our Lifetime, a leading hardline activist group in New York City, the report said.

Two of the appointees posted support for Palestinian “resistance” against Israel, including one who wrote that resistance was “justified” a day after the October 7, 2023, Hamas invasion and onslaught, the report said.

At least four of the appointees have ties to Louis Farrakhan, the antisemitic head of the Nation of Islam, such as posting support for Farrakhan online.

The report said at least a dozen of the appointees backed anti-Israel protest encampments on college campuses, and at least five attended the protests.

One appointee to the Committee on Youth and Education joined a CUNY encampment and posted photos of herself standing in front of a banner with an inverted red triangle, a Hamas symbol, and the phrase “Long live the resistance.”

At least 20% of the appointees have posted anti-Zionist or anti-Israel statements online, such as a Committee on Legal Affairs nominee who wrote that “Zionism is racism” and a Committee on Criminal Legal System appointee who was involved in a statement that called Zionism a “genocidal ideology.”
“Your Organisation Is In TATTERS!” | Peter Cardwell GRILLS UNRWA Spokesperson
Filmmakers have announced a new documentary called UNraveling UNRWA, promising a hard-hitting look at the UN agency UNRWA and why it’s now in the firing line after October 7.

The film claims to expose what it says is the agency’s real impact since 1949, using interviews with Palestinian refugees, ex-UNRWA staff, and voices from across the region.

It’s due out in early 2026, as UNRWA faces fresh pressure over its future and funding.

Peter Cardwell speaks with the documentary maker, Duki Dror and spokesperson for UNRWA, Jonathan Fowler.




Vance’s Friends Without Benefits By Abe Greenwald
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The only one still grasping onto the crumbling façade of a “coalition” is, naturally, a politician. JD Vance closed out the conference with a speech decrying “purity tests” and said, "I didn't bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to de-platform." But he brought plenty of praise for the Tucker-led faction. And TPUSA CEO Erika Kirk endorsed Vance for president in 2028.

The anti-American side is now nakedly hypocritical in its attacks on non-nativists, Zionists, and Jews. Kelly said she’s no longer friends with Shapiro, while also praising herself for not turning on friends over politics. And all the neo-leftists tried to make the case that Shapiro has no place on the right because he dared to assert that America-hating anti-Semites have no place on the right.

This camp has also settled on an overarching lie to defend the inclusion of anti-American Jew-haters in their tent. Vance aired the lie in an interview with Sohrab Ahmari published yesterday at UnHerd. It goes like this: Those raising the alarm about rising anti-Semitism on the right are trying to distract you from the necessary conversation we need to have about the U.S.-Israel-relationship.

The problem for Vance here is that the right’s anti-Semites are rejecting the cover story he’s crafted for them. Candace Owens spent the weekend promoting the 1871 libelous, anti-Semitic tract The Talmudic Jew and telling black people to recognize once and for all that the Jews are their real enemy. Since the cease-fire in Gaza, Tucker Carlson has had to shift his focus from alleged Israeli war crimes to the supposed hidden hand of Jews such as Bill Ackman and Bari Weiss. Kelly has spent far more time claiming Zionist suppression of Israel’s critics than she has criticizing Israel. And Nick Fuentes, as is well known, recommended the extermination of American Jews long ago.

Jews and other Zionists aren’t exaggerating the rise of right-wing anti-Semitism, and they’re not trying to avoid a debate about U.S.-Israel policy. The real sleight of hand here is intended to work in the other direction. Those on the right who see Jew-haters as allies and political supporters are downplaying their significance by trying to draw your attention to a supposedly forbidden policy discussion.

In the end, the only ones avoiding serious discussion are on or near the grifter right. Carlson refused to discuss Fuentes’s love of Joseph Stalin; Kelly refused to discuss Owens’s paranoid anti-Semitic assertions; and our vice president, citing the dangers of litmus tests and de-platforming, refuses to discuss the obvious and growing anti-American, anti-Jewish propaganda efforts of his most avid supporters. I suppose there are worse ways for a Republican to unofficially kick off a presidential run, but it’s hard to imagine them.


Vance claims antisemitism in US a ‘real backlash’ to American foreign policy
US Vice President JD Vance claims that only a small percentage of Americans are antisemitic, and that their views are a “real backlash” to American foreign policy, with a need for debate over Israel.

“Because 99% of Republicans, and I think probably 97% of Democrats, do not hate Jewish people for being Jewish,” Vance says in an interview with Unherd. It is unclear which polling, if any, he is referring to.

“What is actually happening is that there is a real backlash to a consensus view in American foreign policy. I think we already had that conversation and not try to shut it down. Most Americans aren’t antisemitic. They’re never going to be antisemitic, and I think we should focus on the real debate,” he says.

“Now, I happen to believe that Israel is an important ally, that there are certain things that we’re certainly going to work together on,” he says.

“But we’re also going to have very substantive disagreements with Israel, and that’s OK. And we should be able to say, ‘We agree with Israel on that issue, and we disagree with Israel on this other issue,’” Vance says.

“Having that conversation is, I think, much less comfortable for a lot of people, because they want to focus on Nick Fuentes instead of on: why is Nick Fuentes gaining popularity or gaining notoriety?” says Vance, referring to the antisemitic podcaster.

Vance says that judging people “whether they’re Jewish or white or anything else” is “disgusting.”

“I think that Nick Fuentes, his influence within Donald Trump’s administration, and within a whole host of institutions on the Right, is vastly overstated — and frankly, it’s overstated by people who want to avoid having a foreign-policy conversation about America’s relationship with Israel,” he says.


Brendan O'Neill: The anti-Semitic delusions of Candace Owens
In a way, I’m glad Candace Owens held up a copy of the notoriously anti-Semitic screed, The Talmudic Jew, during her latest digital rant. For it confirms what she is. More importantly, it lays down a gauntlet to the right. To the left too, in fact. It demands of them the following: are you going to turn a blind eye to this propagation of bloodcurdling lies about the Jews, or are you going to do something about it?

It’s an extraordinary image – Ms Owens, once a darling of America’s online right, sporting a demented grin as she holds aloft one of the most scurrilous and libellous texts about the Jews. She was venting about Ben Shapiro after he dissed her in his speech at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest conference last week. Shapiro called the likes of Owens ‘frauds’ and ‘grifters’ for spreading conspiracy theories about the murder of Charlie Kirk.

‘Ben Shapiro, fuck you’, said Owens in her wild-eyed video response. You’re nothing more than a ‘Talmudic Jew’, she spat, with extraordinary venom. ‘I encourage other people at home to learn what is in that Talmud’, she said, holding up a copy of The Talmudic Jew by August Rohling, published in 1871.

And there it was, one of the digital right’s best-known figures, a woman with more than five million YouTube subscribers, hawking a book full of anti-Semitic lies. Rohling was a German Catholic theologian. He was an infamous Jew-hater. The Talmudic Jew depicts the Talmud as a ‘repository of anti-Christian hatred’ and a ‘manual for swindling Gentiles’, says Hussein Aboubakr Mansour. And of course it’s fraudulent, Mansour writes. It relies on ‘medieval anti-Jewish polemics and out-of-context quotations’.

Rohling later wrote a hateful pamphlet on the ‘human sacrifices’ carried out by rabbis. The Jews do indeed engage in the ritual murder of Christian children, he wrote. It was a pseudo-academic revival of the medieval blood libel. And it helped to whip up Jewphobic animus across Germany and beyond. That a 21st-century right-winger is citing this Jew-hater – worse, actively promoting his work – is extraordinary.

Owens has been falling down the helter skelter of anti-Semitism for some time. She has feverishly promoted the libel that Jews were behind the transatlantic slave trade. She whispers darkly of the ‘secret Jewish gangs ’ that do ‘horrific things’ in Hollywood. And of course she is consumed by a frothing abhorrence for the Jewish State. A ‘cult nation’, she calls it. We have watched in real time as a once sensible woman has been devoured by the crankery that festers in the internet’s dark, sweaty corners.


From Books to Bias: How the London Review of Books Lost Balance on Israel
For decades, the London Review of Books cultivated a reputation as one of the world’s most serious literary journals: a place for long-form criticism, intellectual debate, and rigorous engagement with history and ideas that dictate international discourse. But when it comes to Israel, the LRB has increasingly ceased to function as a book review at all. Instead, it has become a political platform that consistently amplifies one side of a highly contested conflict while marginalizing, or ignoring, the other.

The pattern is not subtle. It is visible in whom the LRB chooses to publish, its editorial line, what kinds of pieces it prioritizes, and what it leaves out.

Before the Gaza ceasefire, the magazine published “Gaza under siege” — an essay by Tareq Baconi, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group and a prominent voice in pro-Palestinian advocacy. Baconi’s essays consistently frame Israel as a colonial aggressor and cast Palestinian violence primarily as resistance. Readers are rarely offered competing analytical frameworks or scholars who challenge that narrative.

The issue is not that Baconi is published. It is that voices like his consistently reappear, while alternative perspectives are largely absent. That imbalance is reinforced by the magazine’s own editorial leadership. Adam Shatz, the U.S. editor of the London Review of Books, is another prominent example.

Shatz has used his platform to frame Israel in starkly delegitimizing terms. In his June 2024 LRB essay “Israel’s Descent,” Shatz wrote that Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza served “to enable Israel’s air force to bomb Gaza at will,” and described Israel’s treatment of Palestinians as involving “plunder, denial of the franchise, ghettoisation, ethnic cleansing and racist dehumanization.”

In a subsequent LRB essay published in July 2025, “The World Since 7 October,” Shatz wrote that Israel’s war with Iran was aimed at making itself “the master of the region,” and added that Israel “appears to be pursuing a long-range plan to weaken, if not to render defenceless, the other states in the region, so that none is in a position to challenge it.”

With such an editorial line, the London Review of Books no longer merely reviews books or publishes essays on the region, but actively advances a singular political narrative.


Shiri Bibas’s sister lights Chanukah menorah in Rafah
Israeli forces held a Chanukah candle-lighting ceremony in Rafah, the southern Gaza Strip, on Sunday, led by Golani Brigade commander Col. Adi Ganon and Sgt. (res.) Dana Silverman Seton, the sister of murdered Hamas hostage Shiri Bibas.

The menorah lit for the eighth and final night of the festival belonged to the home of Bibas and Seton’s parents and was partially burned during the terrorist attack on Kibbutz Nir Oz during the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

“We are standing now before this burned menorah, a menorah that is among the few items that survived the fire in my parents’ home—so that all those who hate us will see it and know that this light cannot be extinguished,” Seton said.

“At one of the formations I conducted before entering a mission, I got into a tank whose sight had the familiar image of Shiri Bibas,” said Ganon. “The troops told me that in difficult moments, this is what reminds them why they are here. I say this with emotion and with great responsibility as a commander in the IDF: If there is one thing we all need to remember, it is the well-known image of Shiri embracing her children. Being together and embracing one another—that is our strength.”

Bibas, a 32-year-old from Nir Oz, was kidnapped to Gaza with her infant and toddler sons on Oct. 7 and later killed while held hostage, with her remains returned to Israel in February 2025.




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