2025 ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Tuesday, December 23, 2025

12/23 Links Pt2: How the ICC Invented a Non-Existent State to Persecute Israel; When the Blood Libel Came to America; UN yearly spends $100 million target Israel

From Ian:

On October 7, Approximately 46% of those reached were killed, kidnapped, or injured.

Public discussion of October 7 almost always begins with an immediate and rehearsed response: “But Gaza.” The implication is that comparing it settles moral and analytical questions — that a higher death toll retroactively shrinks the meaning of what came before it. It is a comparison that quietly neutralizes the event before it is examined: “1,200 Israelis killed versus tens of thousands of Palestinians dead in Gaza.” Framed this way, the attack is made to appear numerically small, even marginal, especially when set against the war that followed.

The number sounds small only when the denominator is inflated to include millions of people who were never attacked. It sounds small only when a one-day mass assault is compared to casualties accumulated over months of war, stripped of context, intent, and time scale. And it sounds small only when the participation of multiple armed groups and civilians who crossed the border to loot, burn, abduct, and kill is quietly erased.

But Palestinian terror groups did not attack Israel as an abstract whole. They invaded Israel, were eventually stopped, and were only able to attack the places they physically reached. Any serious attempt to understand the scale of October 7 has to measure it against the population that was actually exposed to the violence — not against an entire country that was never breached.

October 7 was not limited by restraint. It was limited by geography — by fences, distance, and time. Where attackers succeeded in entering civilian spaces, the result was devastating and systematic.

In one morning, Hamas and accompanying other Palestinian terror groups and civilian attackers:

Killed or abducted roughly 1 in 10 of the people they physically reached

And when the injured are included, destroyed the lives of nearly half of everyone they reached — through killing, kidnapping, or injury.

In some communities, such as Nir Oz, the impact was far more extreme, with close to one in four residents killed or taken hostage, before the injured are even counted.

This was not collateral damage.
This was not urban warfare.
It was population-level annihilation wherever access existed, limited only by geography and time.

When the Blood Libel Came to America

In recent weeks, notable figures on the right have tried to either mainstream anti-Semitism or look away. Many conservatives and Christians find themselves put to the test, no longer able to ignore the problem metastasizing before them. Nearly a century ago, in a small upstate New York factory town, Americans faced a similar test—and passed. That story is worth revisiting today.

On Saturday, September 22, 1928, four-year-old Barbara Griffiths disappeared in Massena, New York, a rural factory town along the St. Lawrence River, which divides America and Canada. Frantic search parties of police, firefighters, and townspeople scoured the woods, fields, and streets, peering through storefront windows looking for Barbara.

As day gave way to night, fear gave way to speculation and scapegoating when one Massena resident told law enforcement that Jews were rumored to kidnap and ritually sacrifice children in the region that the resident had immigrated from. The blood libel, an ancient pagan and Christian pretext for violence against Jews, had come to America.

The blood libel, the charge that Jews kidnap, kill, and eat non-Jews, was first documented in the first century. The charge of ritual cannibalism was also made against early Christians. The blood libel resurfaced in the Middle Ages and has since been used as a pretext for Jewish persecution. The week Barbara disappeared, a New York Times headline noted “Anti-Jewish Agitation” in Europe over “Ritual Murder Rumors.”

Jonathan Sacerdoti: Iran’s has a ceaseless obsession with Israel

Iran’s conduct strips away any illusion about priorities. Even amid water shortages, electricity failures and economic contraction, the regime has channelled vast resources into instruments of attack. Mohammad Javad Zarif’s recent acknowledgement on Al Jazeera that roughly $500 billion was spent on the nuclear programme was striking precisely because it carried no regret. The expenditure was framed as ideological defiance. The moral judgement, drawn by others, contrasts that figure with empty reservoirs and decaying infrastructure. The choice was deliberate.

In Tehran’s Palestine Square, a digital clock counts down to the envisioned destruction of the State of Israel. The symbol is grotesque, yet clarifying. While Israel has invested relentlessly in shelters, early warning systems and civilian resilience, Iran has provided its population with little protection from the wars it seeks. Iranian friends of mine abroad speak quietly of families without shelters, without warning systems, without any sense of personal safety.

Israel harbours no reciprocal obsession. During the war, it possessed the capacity to push further, to pursue regime change directly. It chose restraint. Its focus remains survival and protection rather than ideological conquest. Even under fire, its economy functioned. Its society absorbed shock without collapse. That resilience frustrates Tehran, which speaks openly of breaking morale and dismantling prosperity. The effort has failed, so far.

The wider world should observe this regime with the same clarity Israel is forced to apply. Iran’s leadership is so consumed by the project of destroying Israel that it accepts, even embraces, the sacrifice of its own people as collateral. Chronic water shortages, failing infrastructure, economic exhaustion and the absence of basic civilian protection are not unintended consequences but tolerated costs. The clock in Palestine Square, counting down to 2040, makes this plain. It is not a threat of imminence but a declaration of endurance, a statement that the campaign is generational rather than tactical.

That obsession does not stop at Israel’s borders. Across Europe, including in the United Kingdom, Iranian regime institutions, networks and operatives continue to function openly or semi-openly, engaged in intimidation, subversion and preparation. From European capitals to Latin America, including Venezuela, the Islamic Republic has built a lattice of influence dedicated to disruption, coercion and violence abroad. Israel stands on the front line of this project, but it is not its final destination.

The clock continues to tick. One can only hope that the regime which built its future around such a promise is gone long before it reaches zero.

12/23 Links Pt1: Deport the Hate Preachers. Now.; Trio convicted in UK for terror plot to kill hundreds of Jews; The warrior Jews who terrified Rome

From Ian:

Tony Abbott: Deport the Hate Preachers. Now.

For years, the leftist mindset has seen Jews as possessors of “white privilege” and Israel as an exemplar of “settler colonialism” and therefore as “oppressors” – hence the absurdity of “Queers for Palestine” and the insistence, even from ministers in the Albanese government, that October 7 should be seen “in context”.

What else can explain the government’s increasingly harsh denunciations of Israel, its alacrity in issuing visas to largely unvetted people from Gaza, its secret repatriation of “ISIS brides”, and its recognition of Palestine in a massive concession to the “river to the sea” protesters?

The basic problem with the Albanese government is the leftist instincts that constantly distort its moral lens.

Hence the government’s inability to have an envoy against anti-Semitism without also appointing one against an almost non-existent Islamophobia; the PM’s apparent greater comfort in Beijing than in Washington; and the government’s inability to open its mouth without acknowledging “country”, or the neurotic flying of three flags as some kind of atonement for the original settlement of Australia.

Maybe the Bondi massacre will turn out to have been a “road to Damascus” moment, with Anthony Albanese and his ministers henceforth ruthless and relentless in monitoring hate preachers and closing them down if they utter so much as a word from the Koran urging the killing of Jews; in comprehensively vetting visa applicants to ensure that their beliefs and their social media history really are consistent with the democratic instincts Australians should be able to rely on; and in forever putting behind them any ambivalence about our country and its symbols, such as the flag, Australia Day and Anzac Day.

Never again, let’s hope, will we get from this government vacuous slogans about “our diversity is our strength”, as if there’s something embarrassing about our Anglo-Celtic core culture and our fundamental Judaeo-Christian ethos.

Yet the PM’s inability to apologise for the government’s failures, and inability to say definitely Islamist hate slogans will be as banned as nazi salutes, does not augur well.

Australia’s immigration program need not discriminate on the basis of race or religion, but it should discriminate on the basis of values if we are to last as a free and fair society.

As the citizenship pledge goes, all of us must be absolutely committed “to Australia and its people, whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect, and whose laws I will uphold and obey”.

It’s a modern version of Ruth’s biblical declaration that “your people will be my people and your God my God”. People who can’t say it, mean it, and live it, should not be here.

Did the Iranian Regime Play a Role in Australia's Hanukkah Massacre?

Hours before the Bondi Beach attack, Ahmad Ghadiri Abyaneh - the son of Mohammad-Hassan Ghadiri Abyaneh, a former Iranian ambassador to Australia - posted a cryptic message on X condemning Jewish Hanukkah celebrations as a "satanic ritual."

His post framed Jewish religious observance as a threat requiring "societal defense," citing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's doctrine of "mobilized civil resistance" against perceived enemies of Islam.

This echoed the Iranian regime's systematic use of religious language to legitimize violence against Jewish and Western targets.

The cumulative evidence surrounding the Bondi Beach massacre strongly suggests a conducive environment shaped by Iranian ideology.

The attack should be understood as part of a global campaign of intimidation linked to state-sponsored extremist doctrine.

From JTA:

A Pennsylvania elementary school principal is facing termination by his school district after he accidentally recorded himself making antisemitic remarks in a voicemail to a Jewish parent.

Philip Leddy, the principal of the Lower Gwynedd Elementary School in Montgomery County, confirmed to the Wissahickon School District that he had made the antisemitic remarks heard on the voicemail message Friday morning after he believed he had disconnected the call , according to an email sent to the district’s parents.

In the recording, Leddy made a reference to “Jew camp,” and told another staff member at the school that the parent has “Jew money” and claimed that “they control the banks,” according to the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia. Later, when asked whether the parent was a lawyer, Leddy responded, “the odds are probably good.”

Garden variety antisemitism, straight out of the Protocols. Pennsylvania? Probably a right-wing lunatic, right?

Um, no:

Leddy was hired as the principal for the Lower Gwynedd Elementary School in 2023 after previously serving as committee chair of the district’s Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee, according to a since-deleted profile for him on the school’s website.

It is time to retire the fiction that anti-racism programs reduce antisemitism. The truth is the opposite: when you falsely divide the world into oppressor and oppressed, the Jews are slotted into the place that gives people permission to hate them.

The anti-Zionism of the Left is not separate from antisemitism - it is the only way their antisemitism can be expressed in public. But as Philip Leddy shows, progressive bigotry against Jews is independent of Israel. It is just felt and spoken when it is believed that no one is listening.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The Manufactured Crisis: How Falsifiability Can Save American Politics from Its Extremes

In the 1930s, the United States faced a real, system-level crisis. The Great Depression produced mass unemployment, widespread poverty, and genuine fear that the existing order could no longer provide stability or dignity. When people lose trust in a system because it has visibly failed them, they naturally search for alternatives. Often, those alternatives are extreme.

At the time, the most radical options gaining traction were Communist and fascist movements. Both promised certainty, moral clarity, and decisive action. Given what was known then, and how desperate circumstances were, many Americans found elements of those arguments disturbingly plausible. The language these movements used was not obviously monstrous. It sounded moral, patriotic, humanitarian, and urgent.

Only in hindsight is the danger unmistakable.

Today, we are seeing similar extremes gain traction within both major political parties. On the left, radical movements frame politics almost entirely through appeals to social justice, power hierarchies, and moral urgency. On the right, radical movements frame politics through appeals to nationalism, civilizational decline, and suspicion of institutions. The emotional structure of the arguments is familiar.

But there is a decisive difference between the 1930s and today: we are not living through a depression-scale crisis.

America today has serious problems, but they are not existential. There is no mass starvation. There is no systemic unemployment. Elections are held. Courts function. The stock market has controls to minimize the risk of a catastrophic crash. Deposits at banks are insured. Information is widely available. By nearly every objective measure, Americans are as prosperous, safe, and empowered as any population in history. That does not mean the system is perfect or just. But the system is functioning fairly well.

So why are the extremes growing?

Because this time, the crisis is not the cause. It is the product.

Modern extremism depends on manufacturing a sense of catastrophe in order to justify radical solutions. Ordinary political disagreement is reframed as civilizational collapse. Institutional friction is labeled oppression. Incremental reform is dismissed as complicity. Everything is urgent. Everything is existential. And everything demands suspension of normal constraints.

America is not uniquely terrible - on the contrary, it remains, today, the greatest country on Earth. But extreme ideologies cannot survive without the perception of imminent disaster. So they use their platforms to convince the American people that things are on the verge of collapse and they are the only solution.

This is fundamentally anti-American,.

The American system is built on a civic covenant. It assumes equal opportunity under the law, no religious establishment, the dignity of work, and the belief that individuals can improve their lives through effort within a shared framework. This vision was never perfect, and it was partly aspirational. But it was true enough to encourage responsibility, honesty, innovation, and unity across differences.

The extremes reject this American covenant.

On the far right, liberty is hollowed out into loyalty, institutions are treated as legitimate only when aligned, and minorities or dissenters are framed as threats. On the far left, justice is transformed into moral absolutism, disagreement becomes harm, and power is justified by outcomes rather than consent. In different ways, both sides abandon the American idea that legitimacy flows from process, pluralism, and correction over time. The idea of "We the People" does not exist on the extremes - on both sides, the people are pawns to be endlessly manipulated with propaganda and scare tactics.

The choice is not right vs. left. It is whether America will be governed by reality or by falsehood.

Historically, extremist ideologies succeed not because they are persuasive on the merits, but because they share a common structural flaw: They are unfalsifiable. This means that no amount of evidence can disprove the ideologies - every shred of evidence is twisted into proof. Think about how climate change was used to explain both extreme heat and extreme cold: facts were twisted to fit the ideology, not the other way around. And the same applies to QAnon style conspiracy theories; no actual events can ever disprove the theory.

When an ideology cannot be meaningfully tested, corrected, or challenged from within, it ceases to be a political philosophy and becomes a closed system. Evidence against it is reinterpreted as proof of conspiracy. Dissent becomes betrayal. Institutions are delegitimized rather than improved. At that point, persuasion is replaced by enforcement.

This is where my Derechology falsification audit becomes useful. This identifies load bearing assumptions of the ideologies; if they are false the ideologies themselves are false.

On the far-Left, the load bearing assumption is that everyone is either oppressor or oppressed. For some it is boss/worker, for others it is white people/people of color, and for yet others it is colonizer/colonized. This binary is never true and without that assumption the entire edifice collapses.

On the far-Right, the load bearing assumptions is that America was meant to be a Christian country, or that the only workable moral system is Christianity. Neither of those are true.

In both cases, the ideology becomes immune to correction. That is the danger.

Every major political party faces the same dilemma: how to remain inclusive without being captured by extremists. The usual approaches fail. Either the tent is so wide that it admits corrosive ideas, or boundaries are enforced arbitrarily and politically.

The falsification audit offers a third option.

Political winds shift - the definition of conservatism or liberalism has changed over the decades. A Reagan Republican is not the same as a Bush Republican or a Trump Republican. I strongly disagree that America should abandon Israel, but the opinion itself (if it is based on legitimate assumptions) does not fail this audit for the Right, at least in theory.

Here are some rules that can be offered for both parties to reject opinions that are based on falsehoods.

If an opinion cannot be challenged without moral condemnation, cannot be disproven by evidence, treats disagreement as illegitimate and requires a permanent crisis to justify itself, then that opinion is not to be considered. This allows and encourages debate among the valid positions within a party. It allows good faith debates between the Right and the Left.

Foreign adversaries understand how damaging extreme partisanship is. They do not need to persuade Americans of alternative ideologies. They only need to amplify crisis narratives, erode trust in correction mechanisms, and reward the loudest extremes. That strategy works only when internal guardrails fail.

The solution is not moderation for its own sake, which cannot be clearly defined. It is epistemic discipline.

Ideas that cannot be tested cannot build. Movements that reject correction cannot endure. And political parties that cannot distinguish legitimate opinion from propaganda will eventually collapse under their own contradictions. The particular ideologies are not nearly as important as the structure behind them - can they adapt to reality, are they corrigible, can they be defended on their own merits.

The future of America is at stake.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The interesting history of the word "Jewry"

I saw this in the 1775 edition of The New and Complete Dictionary of the English Language by John ash:

Jewry: The country of the Jews, a place where Jews are permitted to reside.

That is certainly not what the word means today.

It turns out that in the word "Jewry" originally was a synonym for Judea. The King James Bible translates Daniel 5:13: "Then was Daniel brought in before the king. And the king spake and said unto Daniel, Art thou that Daniel, which art of the children of the captivity of Judah, whom the king my father brought out of Jewry?"

This 1683 edition of Josephus shows this clearly:

Later on, it became the name of Jewish quarters or ghettoes of European cities. London had an "Old Jewry" section where Jews had lived before their expulsion.

By the late 19th century, the word started changing meanings again towards today's usage. This is described in "Jewish Ideals And Other Essays" by Joseph Jacobs, 1896:

The name Jewry may perhaps legitimately detain us a moment. It is a French collective term, and reminds us that the London "Jewry" is a daughter of the Rouen "Juifverie." It is sometimes spelt Giwerie, Latinised variously as "Judearia" and "Judaismus," whence we find a Cambridge parish "in the Judeism," and a purely English collective is sometimes used, "Juhede." It does not necessarily imply a place at all, but merely a community of persons who were all responsible for each, as the Jews actually were under old English law.

Even an innocuous sounding word as "Jewry" reminds us of centuries of persecution and "othering" of Jews, who were forced to live in separate parts of towns.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

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.

12/22 Links Pt1: The Maccabees of Bondi Beach; Hating Zionists, killing Jews; Conditional Condolences; Hamas Front Group Runs Wikipedia Editing Course

From Ian:

Dave Rich: Hating Zionists, killing Jews

If this is how things work, then we are entitled to ask: what was the demonising, stereotyping and stigmatising, the increasing hostility and outpourings of hatred, that led terrorists in Australia, Britain and the United States to not only murder Jews, but to all justify it by reference to “Zionists” and child killers?

It’s impossible to separate this from the tidal wave of hatred directed towards “Zionists” from the anti-Israel movement on our streets and online. The cries of “Death to all Zionists”, the calls for Zionists to be driven from our campuses, and the chants of “Zionist scum, off our streets”. The claims that “Zionists” control the UK government and are genocidal baby killers. The comparisons of Zionism to Nazism. The repeated slogans of “Death to the IDF”, “Intifada” and “Resistance”. All of this hatred and dehumanisation, combined with calls for radical action, reached a pitch long ago where terrorism against Jews became entirely predictable.

When people point this out, they are accused of weaponising antisemitism (a particularly revolting phrase, given how often antisemites now use weapons to kill Jews); or distracting people to enable the slaughter of Palestinians; or being part of a coordinated PR campaign to protect Israel; or - most ridiculously - that nobody ever chants “globalise the Intifada” anyway. Ironically, this often comes from the same people who are quickest to point the finger at wider right wing rhetoric when trying to explain far right violence. It’s gaslighting, plain and simple.

Nor does it matter that this incitement is directed at “Zionists”, because we see now - if we ever doubted it - that hatred of Zionists lands on Jews. This operates on a spectrum, from the most murderous to the most fleeting. Last night I went to my local menorah lighting for the eighth night of Chanukah. It was dark and rainy, but a bigger crowd than usual, a sign of solidarity and togetherness after the awfulness of Bondi. The Chabad rabbi tried to inject some joy, as they always do. And a middle-aged woman, walking past, repeatedly shouted “Free Palestine” at the crowd, looking pleased with herself as she did so. I don’t think she is a potential killer. But in her sentiment, her irrepressible urge to harass Jews celebrating Chanukah, she was expressing the same underlying hatred as the Akrams, just in less violent form.

In theory, it should be possible to have a non-extremist movement that campaigns for Palestinian rights. In reality, though, the anti-Israel movement we actually have has provided a welcoming environment for extremists and antisemites. It wouldn’t be the first time that a legitimate cause had been distorted in this way: the far right do the same, hijacking legitimate concerns about immigration to incite hatred of foreigners. A similar thing has clearly happened here too: the Palestinian cause has been co-opted by extremists who use its language and slogans to incite, and act out, hatred of Jews.

It is true that even extremists have a right to protest, but the presence of hateful, violent rhetoric on anti-Israel marches is too visible to deny, and now that this same language is being used to justify the killing of Jews, the consequences are too lethal to ignore. In an ideal world the protest organisers would be proactively trying to help, but that seems unlikely. Instead, it must mean that these demonstrations are policed differently, and it is good to see that this is starting to happen. It should also trouble the MPs, trade unions and NGOs that back the marches or speak at them, that they are associated with this hatred. One way or another, things have to change. Bondi, Manchester, Boulder and Washington D.C.: the most dangerous form of anti-Jewish terrorism today looks, and sounds, like violent anti-Zionism.

Sami Shah: Conditional Condolences

When Christchurch happened in 2019, when Muslims were slaughtered in a mosque, I don’t remember the Left going, “Our hearts go out and we condemn Islamophobia, and also we condemn antisemitism, transphobia, and anti-black racism.” I don’t remember the Instagram posts being like:

“Point 1: It is evil to massacre civilians for being Muslim.
Point 2: Obviously Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, Syria’s atrocities against its own civilians, and Pakistan’s persecution of Ahmadis must continue to be opposed.”

No one did that. Because it would have been psychotic.

Because everyone instinctively understood: this is a moment for the victims. This is a moment to name the people targeted. This is a moment to say “Muslims,” out loud, without flinching like it’s a swear word.

But when it’s Jews? Suddenly it’s “Yes, tragic… anyway, here is my Gaza position.”

Why?

Why does Jewish grief come with terms and conditions?

Why is “All Lives Matter” cringe when it’s used to dilute Black suffering… but completely acceptable when it’s used to dilute Jewish suffering?

Because that’s what this is. “We condemn antisemitism and also anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia and everything else…” It’s the grief version of someone hijacking a birthday speech to announce they’ve started a podcast.

And I saw so many posts—from people who proudly describe themselves as leftists and progressives—reacting to Bondi without even saying the word “Jew.” They said “community.” They said “innocent people.” They said “tragedy.” They said everything except the thing that was actually targeted. Like the victims were killed by a vague weather event; a cloud of bullets drifting in on a sea breeze.

It’s like they were afraid that if they said “Jewish” their phone would vibrate and a committee would appear behind them like, “Just checking: do you also condemn Israel?”

And this is what really makes me feral: this attack was against Jews. A Jewish festival. A Jewish community event. The whole point of terrorism is targeting identity—to make the identity feel unsafe anywhere. And some people’s first instinct is: “Yes, but…”

But what?

But Gaza?

But Israel?

But Netanyahu?

But Zionism?

No.

Stop it.

You can oppose Israeli policy. You can call out Israeli war crimes. You can scream about Gaza until your throat falls out. But if you cannot mourn murdered Jews in Australia without immediately pivoting to Israel, then you are not doing solidarity. You are doing a performance. And the people you’re stepping on to reach the stage are dead.

The Maccabees of Bondi Beach

On the first night of Hanukkah, the Jewish community was thrust into another nightmare, when at least 15 people were killed and more than 40 wounded in a mass shooting by a father-son duo at a Chabad event in Bondi Beach. Those killed in the attack included a 10-year-old named Matilda Bee Britvan, whose family moved to Australia to escape the war in Ukraine, and Alex Kleytman, a Holocaust survivor killed while trying to shield his wife. Australian authorities later confirmed that the gathering had been deliberately targeted and meticulously planned, marking one of the deadliest antisemitic attacks in the country’s history.

In the hours and days that followed, one story quickly rose above the rest. Footage circulating online showed a heroic bystander, later identified as Ahmed al-Ahmed, rushing toward one of the attackers and wrestling a gun out of the terrorist’s hands.

As the footage spread rapidly across social media and news broadcasts, it soon came to dominate the public conversation, increasingly framing the attack as a story of Muslim-Jewish reconciliation rather than an act of antisemitic violence, with Ahmed al-Ahmed becoming the central figure through which the massacre was understood. This reframing allows Australia to look away from its deeper failures that made the attack possible. It also obscures another critical fact: that there were many Jews at the event who also behaved with unbelievable heroism and bravery, whose names have been largely absent from the narrative.

The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR)has issued a report about demands for reform in the Palestinian Authority.

It correctly notes that there are three separate demands for reform:

- The US and Israel want to see an end to paying terrorists and their families while making the PA responsible for preventing attacks from its territory to murder Jews.

- Europe and Gulf states don't disagree but they want to prioritize an end to PA corruption, an independent judiciary, and fiscal transparency run by a technocratic government.

- Palestinians themselves have completely different demands: they want unity between Hamas and Fatah, and elections where they can choose their leaders.

Then we read this:

A series of interviews with five prominent Palestinian figures reveals a powerful consensus on the nature of reform, highlighting the deep chasm between externally imposed dictates and genuine internal needs. ....
There is a unified rejection of key external demands, which are seen as Israeli-led initiatives adopted by the international community to undermine the Palestinian national project. The call to halt payments to prisoners and martyrs is uniformly condemned as an attempt to criminalize the national struggle. The demand to revise the educational curriculum is viewed as a direct assault on Palestinian identity and historical narrative. ...
Furthermore, the idea of imposing political conditions on parties participating in future elections—such as demanding they accept prior agreements like Oslo—is categorically rejected.

The basic prerequisites for any sort of peace with Israel are dismissed out of hand by Palestinian consensus.

Which goes to prove that any attempt to impose a Palestinian state in the wake of the Gaza war is not only foolhardy, and not only destined to fail, but it is a guarantee for more violence, not less. After all, Hamas controlled Gaza politically; it didn't stop them from attacking.

And Hamas (or other terrorists) would win any election today as well as for the foreseeable future.

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"Progressive" Australian media justifies Bondi massacre as reasonable "blowback" to Gaza and "Jewish supremacism"

Two recent articles in Independent Australia shows how antisemitism is now respected, mainstream opinion among the progressive community.

One is an article by Michael Cohen, representing the "as-a-Jew" contingent. Clearly written by AI, the article ends up claiming that Bondi happened because, he says, Chabad is a child-abusing Jewish supremacist cult:

Extremist movements recognise absolutism wherever it appears. They feed on certainty, purity and submission. Groups such as Islamic State operate on that logic.

When Jewish life is publicly flattened into a similar absolutist form, it becomes legible — and therefore targetable. That shift carries real risks.

For Sydney Jewry to survive, it needs to rethink its relationship with the supremacist cult — Chabad. In fact, all of Jewry should take this as a warning.

Funny, because Chabad is more welcoming, more diverse, more tolerant of different opinions and less likely to "cancel" people who disagree than any "progressive" voice I've ever seen.

This article effectively blames Chabad for Bondi, not Islamic terrorists. How dare they do publicly Jewish things which makes them "targetable"?

This is really all you need to know about how thoroughly deranged progressive thought is nowadays.

If that was only one insane op-ed, that could be dismissed as a fringe opinion. Bu a much more prominent voice is also interviewed in the same site, and he dismisses the Bondi massacre as justified anger at Jews.

Chris Hedges, a former New York Times reporter and inveterate Israel hater, is interviewed by IA, and here is how he responds to the first muddled question about Bondi - a question that already assumes that it obviously is connected to Gaza:

MP: I thought we might go firstly to the horrific Bondi massacre, where 16 people are now dead and 40 injured. And I believe that you know, in terms of the war in Gaza at the moment, of course, this is a very significant issue. A lot of people are, I guess, chiming in and speaking up about this and its significance on anti-semitism and all of those things. What are your thoughts on that?
CH: Well, it's blowback. I mean, so you've had over two years of genocide.

That's the entire analysis of the attack. Murdering 15 Jews at a Chanukah lighting party is reasonable "blowback" to what is being misreported in Gaza. This Pulitzer-prize winning reporter has just justified 2,000 years of Jew hatred as a normal response to how Jews act. Hedges, who is also a Presbyterian minister, has opinions that are functionally identical to medieval Christian antisemitism.

And the so-called progressive community not only tolerates such blatant Jew hatred, but celebrates it as intellectual and brave.

If there are progressive voices who are horrified at the idea that Jews are getting what they deserve, we sure aren't hearing from any of them. The YouTube comments are uniformly supportive of this sickening antisemitism. This is entirely because there is more fear of being branded a heretic by the progressive cult than there is from any organized religion.

(h/t Jill)

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Iran uses antisemitic attack to stoke more antisemitism

From Iran's PressTV:

The Chief of Staff of Iran’s Armed Forces has warned that the Israeli regime is staging “self-harm” false-flag operations against Jewish communities abroad to stoke fears of anti-Semitism.

“They (Zionists) have assassinated the Jewish community and their affiliates in other countries to prevent reverse migration, escape internal turmoil, and instill anti-Semitism,” Major General Abdolrahim Mousavi said on Sunday.

Referring to a deadly attack at a Jewish event in Sydney, Australia, last week, he said it is not the first time that Jews have been targeted in an attempt to portray Israel as a victim. He asserted that the regime has repeatedly committed such crimes in the past.

Antisemites use antisemitism to promote more antisemitic conspiracy theories.

In the real world. Iran has been implicated in deadly attacks on Jewish communities (AMIA bombing, Israeli embassy bombing in Argentina) and foiled attempts (Cyprus, Germany, UK, Thailand, India, Africa, the US and, yes, Australia.)

Meanwhile, Iran has been threatening Jews in Iran. And its media is regularly filled with blatantly antisemitic articles.

Iran is beneath contempt.

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12/21 Links: Arsen Ostrovsky: My Family Survived Bondi Beach; The Real War Is Islamism's Infiltration of Western Democracies; Tucker Carlson named ‘Antisemite of the Year’

From Ian:

Arsen Ostrovsky: My Family Survived Bondi Beach

Three weeks after my family had relocated from Israel to Australia, we were in the crossfire on Bondi Beach. One of the gunmen's bullets hit my head. I fell to the ground and bled profusely. To my right, an elderly man crouched, covering his wife. He was also hit, not moving. To my left, a few feet away, I saw body parts strewn on the ground. Another man ripped off his shirt and lent it to me to help stop the blood gushing from my head. My wife had managed to escape unharmed and found refuge with our children. Doctors later told me it was millimeters between life and death, "a miracle" I survived.

Over the past two years, the Jewish community has warned time and again that when hatred is allowed to fester, when it is excused, normalized or mainstreamed, it inevitably leads to violence. Australia doesn't need another inquiry, strategy document or press release expressing sorrow. We need urgent, decisive action. Our laws must be enforced. Incitement must have consequences. Intelligence must be acted on and radical Islamic extremism must be confronted, not managed.

Bondi Was Not a Surprise

I am angry at the government for ignoring antisemitic violence and intimidation, at the media for whitewashing it, at the academics who provided it with intellectual legitimacy, and at everyone who marched and chanted and who justified or minimized antisemitism in Australia because of their feelings about a conflict on the other side of the globe.

I am angry at every official who failed to do their due diligence: in neglecting to vet immigrants from countries where vicious antisemitism is endemic; in allowing a man whose son was suspected of involvement with ISIS to legally own multiple firearms; in never taking a clear stand against Jew-hatred in this country. I am angry at the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, who has blamed the tragedy primarily on firearms and who seems unable to name the cause clearly. I can name it: the poisonous hatred of Jews.

I believe that a silent majority of Aussies are heartily sick of the attacks on our harmony, our culture, and our Jews. At Quillette, we stand with Jews in Australia, in Israel, and throughout the world. RIP: Boris Tetleroyd, Boris Gurman, Sofia Gurman, Reuven Morrison, Edith Brutman, Marika Pogany, Dan Elkayam, Eli Schlanger, Yaakov Levitan, Peter Meagher, Alex Kleytman, Tibor Weitzen, Adam Smyth, Tania Tretiak, and ten-year-old Matilda. May their memories be a blessing.

Jonathan Conricus: The Real War Is Islamism's Infiltration of Western Democracies

The global civilizational conflict between the Free World and the forces of Islamism - a movement that seeks not coexistence, but domination - has only begun. Islamism's most violent expression erupts in the bloodlust of Hamas, ISIS, or al-Qaeda. Yet its more patient, insidious face belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates - groups that have mastered the art of slow infiltration, cultural manipulation, and institutional takeover. Their ambition is the same: the imposition of Sharia and the submission of free societies.

I was raised in Malmo, Sweden, where I watched firsthand the quiet surrender of a liberal Western city to Islamist intimidation. Today, similar scenes unfold in London, Paris, Toronto, Sydney, and New York, where since Oct. 7, 2023, Islamists have marched openly through Western capitals, waving the flags of terror movements and calling for "global intifada."

The response from many Western governments has been paralysis: fear of being called "Islamophobic" outweighs the courage to name the threat. Listen carefully to what Islamists say in their own rallies and mosques. They boast of taking over Western institutions. They preach that democracy is a tool to be exploited until the day it can be replaced. They view liberal tolerance not as a virtue but as a weakness to be exploited.

The same ideology that sent Hamas terrorists across Israel's border on Oct. 7 now works methodically to seize student unions, civil-society groups, and local councils across Europe and North America. In Britain, dozens of municipalities are now governed by officials who declare loyalty not to the United Kingdom but to the global Islamic nation. In the process, this ideology has fueled a resurgence of antisemitism and social fragmentation in the West.

This war is not over. It will only end when Islamism - violent and non-violent alike - is defeated intellectually, financially, and politically. Education must be our front line. That begins with dismantling UNRWA, whose curriculum perpetuates hate and martyrdom in Gaza's classrooms. A generation taught that killing Jews is holy cannot build peace.

Governments should outlaw Islamist organizations where evidence ties them to terror networks. The Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates should be designated terrorist entities. Qatar and Turkey - state sponsors of this ideology - must face consequences, not indulgence. Political correctness is a luxury we can no longer afford. This war will decide the fate of the entire Free World.

In the wake of Egypt's $35 billion deal to buy natural gas from Israel, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese tweeted:

Egypt can say what it wants but purchasing $35bn of gas from Israel violates int'l law, including the ICJ advisory opinion of 2024, and is, honestly, an incredible sign of support to Israel during the genocide of the Palestinians.
States must stop placing profits above humanity.

The ICJ case she is referring to is an advisory opinion which means it is not binding international law, and she knows it.

But even if it were, it doesn't say what she claims it says.

Paragraph 279 of the opinion, which she is basing her statement on, says:

[T]he Court considers that, in view of the character and importance of the rights and obligations involved, all States are under an obligation not to recognize as legal the situation arising from the unlawful presence of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. They are also under an obligation not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by Israel’s illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Every normal international lawyer interprets this as not supporting settlement activity or other Israeli activities in the territories. In no way does this opinion say that any trade with Israel is illegal - but Albanese does.

In fact, and she has said this, she believes that the ruling says that all states must cease all diplomatic relations with Israel. Outside of crazed BDS pseudo-lawyers, she is the only person who believes that this is what the opinion calls for.

In fact, the ICJ explicitly says in the previous paragraph that it insists on states "distinguishing dealings with Israel between its own territory and the Occupied Palestinian Territory." This means that dealings with Israel, and certainly with Israeli gas in the Mediterranean that have nothing to do with any claimed Palestinian territory, are perfectly legal.

Albanese is trying to pretend the UN just made state-level and UN-level BDS international law. No serious legal scholar agrees with her.

It is simply a manifestation of her antisemitism.

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Tricks of the Anti-Zionist Trade

Anti-Zionist propaganda operates through a constellation of rhetorical, epistemic, and narrative tactics designed not simply to criticize Israeli policy, but to delegitimize Israel's very existence and moral standing. These techniques appear across media, academia, activism, and social discourse. The following diagnostic list reveals how these "tricks of the trade" structure anti-Israel narratives for ideological effect.

There are two layers to this list. One is the list of tricks themselves; the easily recognized methods that we see all the time. Yet more importantly is Layer 2: the meta-rules that act as firewalls to protect the tricks themselves from contradiction or fact checking.

Specific Methods:

1. Premise Smuggling
This is perhaps the most popular one: treating ideologically charged claims (e.g., "genocide," "settler-colonial state") as factual baselines without evidence, bypassing the burden of proof. This is done deliberately: by treating these frameworks as settled fact, they bypass most people's natural skepticism or ability to compare arguments. There are literally hundreds of academic papers that define Israel as a "settler colonial state" or "apartheid regime" in the abstract without presenting any argument but instead using them as building blocks for further accusations.

2. Selective Framing / Weaponized Omission
Articles will often cherry-pick facts depicting Israeli actions in isolation - ignoring prior attacks, ceasefire violations, or provocations - thereby framing Israel as the initiator of violence. For example, the 2008-2009 Gaza conflict started days before Israel's response with Hamas declaring "Operation Oil Stain" with the largest rocket barrage Israel had ever experienced up to that time, yet virtually every history of the war begins with Israel's response.

3. Circular Citation Networks / Idea Laundering
Anti-Israel academic papers often use echo-chambered sources that cite each other to fabricate the illusion of scholarly or journalistic consensus. But more often they will cite the same small number of sources as if they are unimpeachable and ignore any that say the opposite.

4. Root Cause Absolutism
Asserting that one historical factor - often the founding of Israel or “Zionism” - is the sole root of all current conflict, dismissing the impact of later developments, regional politics, or internal dynamics. So anti-Israel voices blame all present-day Palestinian suffering on the "nakba," ignoring wars, peace offers, Hamas rule, and Palestinian Authority corruption,

5. Framing-Dependent Critique
This is criticism that seems neutral but is entirely contingent on emotionally or ideologically charged framing. for example, stating as fact that the IDF is “targeting civilians” without knowing what the actual targets were, based on sources that define any Palestinian killed in a conflict zone as a civilian unless proven otherwise.

6. Terminology Abuse / Trope Injection
This is similar but not the same as #1 Premise Smuggling - it is the deliberate deployment of charged labels like “apartheid,” “genocide,” or colonialist analogies to provoke outrage and mask analytical weakness. One example is comparing Zionism to European colonialism while ignoring Jewish indigeneity and historical continuity in the land.

7. Undisclosed Substitution
We often see articles quietly redefining key legal, historical, or moral terms, then using those altered definitions to indict Israel. Apartheid does not apply to non-citizens but NGOs will gloss over that; the UN defines Palestine "refugees" using a different definition of "refugee" that the Refugee Convention uses to automatically include descendants in perpetuity, inflating numbers and legal claims.

8. Numerator Abuse
Often, articles will cite raw numbers (e.g., protest participants, open letter signatories) without context - such as ideological composition or denominator - to imply mass legitimacy. So when hundreds of Google or Amazon employees write a letter protesting their employers' Israel policy, it makes then news without mentioning that this was a tiny fraction of the total employees - a true fringe. Same with "rabbis and cantors" signing anti-Israel letters.

9. Red Team Clause Violation/Double Standards
This is using tactics or framings that would be condemned if employed by Zionists or Israeli supporters, revealing asymmetrical ethical standards. Israeli self-defense is labeled "aggression." Rhetoric by Israeli politicians is twisted to make them sound bigoted while blatant antisemitism by Palestinian leaders is not reported or downplayed.

10. Implied Violation Assertion
We sometimes see calls for Israel to follow international law or respect human rights - which implies that it doesn't do that. It sounds neutral but it is an accusation. Another example is calling for Israel responses to terror attacks to be "proportionate," which has a specific legal definition: Israel is always careful to adhere to international law of proportionality but the demand implies the opposite.

11. Moral Role Reversal
The anti-Israel crowd will invariably present Israel's defensive actions as aggression, while treating Palestinian militant attacks as legitimate “resistance.” Not only that, but they will claim Israel doesn't even have the legal right to self-defense, painting anything Israel does as illegal aggression from the outset.

12. The Maps That Lie
The Israel haters love using deceptive graphics (e.g., “shrinking Palestine” maps) that misrepresent reality, ignore historical governance, legal agreements, and context. They also present the borders of British Mandate Palestine as "historic Palestine," implying that those borders are hundreds of years old when they were actually drawn by wester imperial powers.

13. Pallywood / Visual Priming Assertion
We have seen an avalanche of AI created images showing "Palestinian suffering" lately, but false images are decades old - recycling images of injured children from other conflicts and adding a caption claiming they are Palestinians, or repurposing street theatre as reality. Not to mention cases of actual staging of events and scenes by photographers and videographers, directing the "actors" where to stand and what facial expression to use, like the "child with doll in the rubble" meme.

14. Counterposition Suppression
Panel discussions, online forums, or entire academic departments will either dismiss or structurally exclude pro-Israel views under the guise of neutrality. They will choose anti-Israel Jews or far-Left Israelis for "balance." You will rarely find an actual Jewish resident of Judea and Samaria being allowed to give their legal or emotional arguments, for example.

15. Narrative Causality Projection
Constructing moral or political blame by aligning events into a coherent story arc that ignores the truth, contingency, complexity, or alternate explanations. This includes claims that Israel caused the exodus of Mizrahi Jews from Arab countries, or other "false flag" accusations where Israel is blamed even for attacks on Jews.

16. Unquestionable Authority Claim
The media will often trust one side based solely on identity (e.g., Palestinian voices) and rejecting scrutiny, dissent, or factual counterpoints. There is little skepticism for Palestinian claims but a great deal of fact checking for Israeli claims. Of anyone criticizing the anti-Israel position of politicians of color is framed as racist.

17. Moral Posture Integrity Collapse
Articles will show selective outrage over alleged Israeli actions while ignoring greater global abuses - like Uyghur camps, Syrian barrel bombs, or Yemeni starvation - revealing political convenience rather than ethical consistency. Companies that support tourism in the West Bank are castigated more than actual genocides by NGOs like Amnesty.

18. Selective Experts/Selective Bystanders
Newspapers will often show bias by choosing "experts" to quote that are known to be biased, or even members of anti-Israel organizations, and no similar space is given to experts who might disagree. Similarly, members of anti-Zionist groups are quoted in news articles without mentioning their membership, so they are only identified as "Jewish" as if they represent the entire Jewish community.

19. Mind Reading
Declaring that Israel intentionally targeted civilians, or intended to destroy Palestinian cultural treasures, or educational institutions, or reporters, without even asking Israel what the intended target really was (or disbelieving Israeli explanations.)

20. Statistics Laundering
UN agencies will use terrorist-affiliated statistics, and then others will quote them without mentioning the original source, saying that the UN itself made those claims directly; eventually it appears like these terrorist-sourced data was independently arrived at by independent agencies.

21. David vs. Goliath and the victim narrative
This is framing Palestinians as the underdog and therefore righteous, ignoring widespread historic Arab support for Palestinians or Palestinian terrorism.

22. Conflating pro-Palestinian causes with other progressive causes
Claiming that one cannot be Zionist and feminist, or care about climate change, or animal welfare, or any other progressive cause. This is especially bizarre because Palestinian society itself violates virtually every progressive ideal from anti-gay laws, anti-women laws, and polluting the environment.

23. X-Washing Accusations
This has become popular in the past decade: accusing Israel of "pinkwashing" or “greenwashing” or "vegan-washing" for highlighting its progressive record, framing it as cynical PR, not progress. This is a conspiracy theory where Israel doing what would be applauded when done by anyone else is twisted into a crime itself.

24. Creating new categories of crimes for Israel
Accusing Israel of "genocide" is not enough; new "-ocides" must be invented just for Israel, bypassing any critical thought. So it is accused of "scholasticide," "urbicide," "mediacide" and many others - to imply that these are deliberate policies to destroy every vestige of Palestinian existence.

25. False Categorization
When it is convenient, Israeli policies are framed as anti-Arab, when in fact essentially none of them distinguish between Arab and Jew. Israeli Jewish citizens who live across the Green line are called "settlers" but Israeli Arabs never are. Yet at the same time, it is the anti-Israel side that distinguishes between Jewish and Arab citizens, boycotting only Jewish-owned businesses in Israel or in industrial parks in the territories, or calling even Israeli citizens inside the Green Line "occupiers" - but only if they are Jewish.

Layer 2 Meta-Rules

These rules are used to protect the specific tricks themselves from contradiction or fact-checking.

Non-Falsifiability Cloaking
Many anti-Israel claims are structured so that no action Israel takes - military withdrawal, peace agreements, humanitarian efforts - can disprove the accusation. Any evidence to the contrary is dismissed as manipulation, PR, or distraction. This creates a closed-loop narrative that is immune to falsification and self-correcting logic.

Conspiratorial Closure Attribution
When Israel provides evidence or receives support, it is framed as corrupting the institution that supports it. Courts are accused of bias, NGOs of capture, and international allies of Zionist control. This allows critics to maintain their narrative by invalidating any neutral or exonerating institution.

Whataboutism Shield
This rhetorical defense automatically dismisses any comparison or counterexample as irrelevant “whataboutism,” even when the point is to expose double standards or selective outrage. By using this label, critics can shut down discussions that would contextualize or challenge their moral framing. It functions as a one-way filter: only Israel’s actions are judged, while worse abuses by others are considered off-topic or distracting.

This shield prevents comparative reasoning, protects moral posture from scrutiny, and disables discussions of proportionality. In effect, it declares: “Only this narrative matters. You’re not allowed to notice contradictions.”

Redefining Terms to Eliminate Rebuttal
This is a higher-order maneuver that allows all subsequent arguments to flow from distorted definitions. It enables premise smuggling, terminology abuse, and normative hijack by structurally preempting counter-arguments. Terms like "genocide," "apartheid" and "occupation" are consistently given expanded definitions only in context of Israel; Legal concepts like the right to return to one's country of birth are expanded only for Palestinians. Amnesty has done this consistently.

Not only that, but terms like "antisemitism" are redefined as well to shield the double standards applied only to Jews in Israel from being considered a new version of a very old bigotry. Even the word "Jews" itself is redefined as only a religion (from the Left) or only a race (from the Right), denying the inherent nationhood of Jews as a group that has been recognized through two thousand years of diaspora.

Demonization via Concept Inversion

This technique escalates from argument control to moral annihilation. It ensures that even if a pro-Israel argument is logical, legal, or humanitarian, it is dismissed as uniquely evil due to its association with “Zionism" or "Israel." Arguments are no longer even needed; the term itself is considered damning enough. It blends moral role reversal, terminology weaponization, and reputational sabotage into a single moral deplatforming strategy.

Emotional Priority Override

“If it feels unjust, it must be unjust.” Replacing argument with appeals to emotion and personal narrative; someone's pain must make everything they say accurate. Emotional or moral intensity is used to override logic, legal nuance, or factual disputes. Empathy for one side becomes a substitute for evidentiary standards. Emotional testimony or imagery is framed as unimpeachable and are nto fact-checked. But only the Palestinian side is allowed to use emotions to justify their actions - Palestinian terrorism against Jews is framed as a sad but inevitable byproduct of decades of Israeli policy but Israeli settlers who attack Palestinians are never given the excuse that they are upset. Only one side is allowed to appeal to emotion. The slightest accusation against Israel is treated as gospel, while even rapes against Israelis are treated skeptically.

This his hardly a comprehensive list. These techniques do not merely reflect bias - they constitute a structured epistemic and moral assault. Their function is to collapse Israel’s legitimacy by sealing the narrative against facts, law, complexity, or counterpoint. Recognizing these rhetorical systems is the first step toward dismantling them. Funders, scholars, journalists, and policy stakeholders can inoculate themselves and their audiences against ideological manipulation disguised as analysis.

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

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