12/05 Links Pt1: How time ran out on Blinken’s plan for postwar Gaza; Hostages as leverage: Iran's secret demand aimed at crippling Israel's agriculture; Did the Red Cross do all it could for hostages in Gaza?

From Ian:

The day after that never came: How time ran out on Blinken’s plan for postwar Gaza

Had the world not been turned upside down, Antony Blinken would have been in Israel on October 10, 2023. Had Hamas terrorists not shaken the Middle East and pulverized plans for its future, the US secretary of state would have flown from Israel to Saudi Arabia a few days later as part of a multi-stop tour aimed at bridging some of the final gaps between the two countries on long-elusive normalization, a deal that could have been as positively transformative as the Hamas massacre and ensuing war were devastatingly destructive.

For months ahead of the scheduled trip, the US had been hard at work crafting a document with Saudi Arabia, laying out what Israel would need to do in exchange for Riyadh joining the Abraham Accords, namely a series of relatively minor concessions meant to assuage Palestinian aspirations for statehood. Blinken planned to bring that document to Jerusalem for approval, two senior Biden officials told The Times of Israel.

Israel was aware of where things stood and was comfortable enough with the modest steps discussed by Washington and Riyadh for the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem to draft a normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia, according to the two former US officials and a current Israeli official.

Blinken did end up making it to Israel that week, but under very different circumstances, as then-US president Joe Biden’s administration rallied to support the Jewish state following the Hamas-led cross-border attack on October 7 that cut down some 1,200 people and saw 251 more taken hostage into Gaza.

Documents uncovered by the IDF from Gaza during the war revealed that one of the motivations of Hamas’s leaders in launching the attack was scuttling the US effort to broker that brewing normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

To a great extent, the terror group succeeded. The Biden administration’s normalization push was shelved in favor of, first, providing Israel with the military and diplomatic support needed to restore deterrence against Iran and its proxies, and second, working to secure an end to the war through a hostage release deal. Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (L) meets with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Jeddah on June 7, 2023. (Amer Hilabi/Pool/AFP)

Many leading figures in the administration saw freeing the abductees as the key to ending the war and accordingly concentrated their attention on the indirect hostage negotiations between Israel and Hamas, which largely ran through Qatar and Egypt. But Blinken grew to believe that setting up the security and governing bodies to help administer Gaza the “day after” the war was no less critical.

“Israel needed the confidence to know that [its] security would not be threatened by withdrawing from Gaza, and Hamas needed the confidence to know that the war would end if it gave up the remaining hostages,” said a senior Biden aide, who was one of 10 government officials and well-placed regional sources interviewed for this story.

That logic was the basis for a “Transitional Mission” that Blinken worked to establish, which would steer the Strip after the war. The initiative, as laid out in a 14-point plan that would have been part of the ceasefire agreement, was aimed at “support[ing] the provision of governance, security and humanitarian assistance for Gaza” after the war, according to a never-before-reported US government document outlining the plan, which was obtained and verified by The Times of Israel.

The proposed mission was to involve civilian and military personnel, funding and other contributions from a handful of foreign governments, including Saudi Arabia, whose involvement Blinken hoped would provide an opening to revive the stalled normalization negotiations. Displaced Palestinians stand on a road after heavy rain in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip, on November 25, 2025. (Omar Al-Qattaa / AFP)

To ensure strong Arab support, the proposal characterized the initiative as a “first step toward establishing an independent and sovereign Palestinian state.” That made the idea a hard sell to Jerusalem, but Blinken believed the prospect of Saudi normalization could be enough of a carrot to overcome Israel’s likely objections.

The result was a precarious house of cards, but one that Blinken thought could lay the foundation for not just a temporary halt in hostilities, but a durable, lasting peace and a truly transformed region.

The US held months of talks to advance the plan and Saudi normalization, but neither got off the ground by the time Biden left office in January 2025. A ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was brokered during the waning hours of the previous administration, helped by critical pressure from the incoming Trump team. But Israel still wasn’t interested in discussing postwar arrangements of the kind Blinken sought to finalize, and the Trump administration backed Jerusalem’s decision to resume the war in March.

Hostages as leverage: Iran's secret demand aimed at crippling Israel's agriculture - exclusive

Iran offered Thailand help in securing the release of Thai hostages held in Hamas captivity on the condition that Bangkok label Israel an “unsafe country” and instruct its tens of thousands of agricultural workers working there to leave immediately, two sources familiar with the matter told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.

The Iranian message was clear: help us apply economic pressure on Israel, and we’ll help you bring your people home.

In the tense and chaotic weeks following the October 7 attacks, while Israel was still counting its dead and searching for missing civilians, a drama was unfolding thousands of kilometers away in Bangkok.

Thailand’s government, shocked by the scale of the massacre in which 39 Thai citizens were murdered and desperate to protect its citizens, began urgent diplomatic efforts to secure the release of the 31 Thai laborers abducted by Hamas and other terrorist groups.

It was a humanitarian crisis, not a political one; Thailand had no direct conflict with Hamas. But as often happens in the Middle East, even humanitarian crises can become bargaining chips.

Tehran, which maintained influence over Hamas, signaled it might be able to facilitate the release of the Thai hostages; however, the offer was not unconditional. Possible damage to Israel's agriculture sector If Thailand complied, it would deliver a painful blow to Israel’s agricultural sector at the very moment it was struggling to recover from the shock of the attack.

Between 30,000 and 40,000 Thai laborers worked on Israeli farms and in greenhouses – some of them in the western Negev and near the border with Gaza, the area hardest hit on October 7.

Their sudden withdrawal would have crippled Israeli food production and inflicted long-term economic damage.

Joshua Namm: Et Tu America? For Israel, No Ally Is Forever

There has been a lot of serious discussion recently about America’s role in the recent agreement between Israel and Hamas. And while I wrote about that topic last month, this month contains my favorite holiday of the year: Chanukah. I wrote about the incredible importance of that holiday two years ago. This year, those two things are connected.

What’s the connection?

As Chanukah approaches there are two, seemingly different, but related reasons that “make this year different than all other years” (sorry about mixing two Jewish ideas in that way).

According to a story in the Jerusalem Post, the United States, obviously under Donald Trump, is planning to build a large military base in Israel along the Gaza border. The aim is purportedly to aid “stabilization efforts” in Gaza during the current conflict, and (more tellingly) to “serve future international stabilization efforts.”

At the same time, the acceptance of Trump’s plan, and the various ways the U.S. has been involved in shaping Israel’s policy during this war, under Biden and Trump, demonstrates an expansion of America’s influence on Israel, representing an increasing Israeli willingness to relinquish sovereignty – in much the same way it has given up land for a phantom “peace,” for decades.

That isn’t as threatening if we’re talking about the U.S./Israel relationship as it has existed for most of the last 50 years. But Israeli/American relations haven’t always been this friendly, and there is no reason, especially given the events of the last two years, to believe that they will remain so in the future.

It is no longer entirely in the realm of fantasy to believe that at some point America could be a significant opponent to Israel’s interests (and to wider Jewish interests). When I was growing up, I assumed that any conflict in which Israel and America found themselves on different sides, would be an America so different than the one I grew up in, that it would be unrecognizable as America. I also assumed this to be an almost entirely theoretical question, one which, if it did occur, could occur only after many, many generations.

That was naively idealistic.

Again, we aren’t there yet, but now we can easily see how things could get there. The rise of the antisemitic left (most recently embodied in the elections of not one, but two Jew hating socialist mayors in New York AND Seattle, with a newly declared socialist mayoral candidate in Los Angeles announcing on November 15), and the rise of the antisemitic right, embodied in the Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massie, etc., is a wake up call that every Jew should heed.

The National Communications Association beclowns itself - and not only by being antisemitic

Times of Israel reports:

American Jewish organizations on Monday slammed a recent report by the National Communication Association’s Task Force on Academic Freedom and Tenure in which Israel is portrayed as a “settler-colonial state” engaged in “genocidal violence,” saying the report peddles “antisemitic conspiracy theories.”

In a joint statement, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), American Jewish Committee (AJC) and Academic Engagement Network (AEN) called the suggestion in the academic organization’s report that ‘Zionists’ are engaging alongside white supremacists in efforts to undermine academic freedom “outrageous.”

The report indeed includes antisemitic tropes, positioning pro-Israel voices as rich and powerful opponents of academic freedom:

The Zionist attack on academic freedom takes the form of powerful donors, trustees, and politicians exerting influence on universities to surveil, target, and discipline academics for their research, teaching, and public scholarship on the settler colonial violence in Palestine carried out by Israel.  

But as bad as that is, the entire report shows more antipathy to Western civilization than to Israel itself. It engages in logical fallacies, culminating in a report on academic freedom that is against academic freedom itself.

The report is filled with insane statements like this one:

 The birth of communication studies in the context of World War II propaganda and the subsequent emergence of the Cold War agenda translates into the hegemonic formations of knowledge within the discipline. These hegemonic formations rooted in the expansive goals of empire reproduce globally the standards of whiteness...

So because a field started in the context of a (supremely moral) war largely fought by white people, the field itself is irredeemably compromised by "whiteness"? If that is true, then the NCA itself must immediately dissolve because it was founded by seventeen white men in 1914.

The report itself changes the definition of academic freedom to be only the freedom to teach a narrow ideological agenda - decolonial, anti-capitalist, anti-Israel. Their proposals include “Disrupt the Whiteness of Tenure,”, “Design frameworks for celebrating practices of transgression”, “Decolonize the hegemonic structures of tenure and promotion”, and “Create research funds for CRT, Palestine, and decolonization.” This isn't academic freedom; it is promoting a single ideology and demoting any other. 

The report says "Decolonizing the definition of academic freedom is fundamental… redefining what counts as knowledge." So it acknowledges that it is creating its own, narrow, political definition of academic freedom that excludes other viewpoints - an oxymoron.

The report proposes to force tenure systems to value “transgressive” scholarship, prioritize activist research, and anchor tenure criteria in indigenous and decolonial epistemologies. The entire purpose of tenure is to protect scholars from ideological interference, but this proposal makes ideological conformity a requirement for tenure, which is the opposite of academic freedom.

Even worse, even though academia is overwhelmingly aligned with progressive and left-wing ideologies, the NCA report consistently characterizes any minority viewpoints as “white supremacist,” “far‑right,” “colonial,” “racist,” or “imperialist.” This is a blatant attempt to impose a single viewpoint on all of academia and to denounce any others. It is profoundly anti-knowledge. 

Yes, the report promotes antisemitic stereotypes and should be condemned just for that. But the entire report's framework shows exactly what is wrong with academia today: the rejection of any opinion not aligned with the decolonial, progressive, Marxist ideologies with insults , labeling any other opinions as "white supremacist" and "racist." 

Based on this report, which the larger NCA Executive Committee approved and praised, the National Communications Association is itself bigoted, closeminded, hypocritical and anti-knowledge. It has proven itself to a model for exactly what an academic association should not be.

(h/t Adam L)

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

The Accuser's Trilemma: A Simple Test that Destroys the Genocide Libel - and Others

There is a way of proving - I mean logically, bulletproof proving - that Israel was not committing genocide in Gaza. And as I came up with that, I realized that the same method can also be used to either debunk or support most similar accusations of systemic, large scale crimes. 

I've written before about the falsifiability audit I've developed for my Derechology philosophy framework. Briefly, it says that if a load-bearing assumption of an argument is false, then the entire argument is false. The assumption can be explicit or, more often, implicit. Identifying those hidden assumptions is not always easy, but to test if it is load bearing is not too hard: if an assumption is taken away, does the entire argument fall apart? If so, it is load bearing.

Recently, I turned this audit toward the "genocide" libel against Israel - and discovered something more powerful than I expected: a simple three-part test that doesn't just debunk the genocide accusation, but provides a universal method for distinguishing real systemic crimes from activist fabrications.

I was thinking about the load-bearing assumptions behind the genocide libel. So have others. The major one they (and I) have concentrated on was that genocide requires intent, and the proofs of intent shown by Amnesty, the UN and South Africa's ICJ filing are all out of context, falsely  framed and/or do not represent Israeli policy. But they then go down other legal issues, like using an ICJ minority opinion as legal jurisprudence. It is a lot of smoke and mirrors all meant to arrive at their pre-determined conclusion. But a causal observer cannot weigh the quality of the arguments, and figures out that "the truth must be in between" - which still damns Israel. 

But I then realized that there was a deeply implicit load-bearing assumption,  a set of prerequisites that are absolutely indispensable for Israel to be committing that crime.

For Israel to be committing genocide in Gaza, at least one of the following three things must be true. There is no fourth option. 

1. Israel's military protocols themselves are illegal

The IDF's Rules of Engagement, its legal review system (the MAG Corps), its procedures for target approval, civilian warnings, proportionality assessments - these protocols themselves violate international humanitarian law. They are designed to enable or require genocidal actions.

2. Israel secretly suspended its legal protocols for this war

Despite having documented procedures that comply with international law, Israel issued hidden directives suspending or bypassing these protections specifically for the Gaza conflict. There exists a covert policy - memos, orders, command decisions - that tells the IDF to ignore its own legal framework. Essentially, the IDF has two sets of ethical books, one it shows the world and one that it actually uses against Palestinians. 

3. Israel's protocols are routinely violated and those violations are systematically tolerated

Even though proper procedures exist on paper, soldiers and commanders regularly and blatantly ignore them in practice, and military leadership knowingly tolerates these violations. There is a pattern of strikes contradicting legal approvals, ignored warnings from legal officers, and no disciplinary action despite known abuses.

That's it. Those are the only three possibilities. There is no fourth branch. No loophole. No 'but what about...' that escapes this framework. I've consulted multiple AI systems and legal frameworks, and no one can identify any other logical possibility.

For the IDF to commit genocide as an army, one of these must be true. I'm not saying there couldn't be individual war crimes, or excessive force, or inadequate controls to stop tragic mistakes, but for the specific charge of genocide, if these are all false, then the charge is false.

Nothing else matters. No matter how much evidence the NGOs bring to show the number of deaths, the scale of destruction, the suffering of civilians, supposedly inflammatory statements by individual officials, the displacement of populations, limits to aid, food shortages or other humanitarian crises - none of them could possibly add up to genocide. There must be another explanation that fits the facts better.

Because for genocide to occur, the system itself must be designed for elimination of a people. 

Did Amnesty (or the UN or South Africa) prove, or even hint, at any of those three statements being true in their lengthy reports?

Branch 1 (Illegal protocols): No. The IDF's Rules of Engagement are documented and publicly available. They require distinction between civilians and combatants, proportionality assessments, legal review of targets, warnings where feasible. These procedures align with international humanitarian law.

Branch 2 (Secret suspension): No. Amnesty provides zero evidence of any directive, memo, or order suspending legal protections. To claim this without evidence borders on conspiracy theory - you're asserting that a massive covert operation exists but somehow left no documentary trace and every member of the IDF is in on the scam - religious, secular, Druze. Yet there is not one whistle blower. 

Branch 3 (Systematic tolerance): No. While individual incidents are under investigation and some officers have been dismissed, there is no evidence of command-level tolerance for violations. The existence of investigations and disciplinary actions directly contradicts the claim of systemic impunity. There have been violations, but not a system-wide breakdown of order in the IDF. The whistle-blowers who occasionally surface in Haaretz are the exceptions to prove the rule - they might discuss what happened in their unit but no one says that mass murder was acceptable to the army. 

Amnesty proved none of the three. Yet they concluded genocide anyway.

As Sherlock Holmes might say, when one eliminates the impossible, whatever is remaining, no matter how improbable to Israel-haters, must be true. There must be an alternative explanation for the damage and death. And Israel has provided one: they are fighting an enemy that deliberately operates from civilian areas, using human shields, storing weapons in homes and mosques, launching attacks from schools and hospitals. In fact, Israel's explanation fits the facts better. It is entirely consistent with:

• High civilian casualties in dense urban combat
• Multiple displacements as the battlefield shifts
• Warnings before airstrikes 
• Evacuations of civilians before heavy military action (ironically, Amnesty frames this life-saving decision as evidence of genocide)
• Investigations of alleged violations
• The IDF admitting mistakes when they occur
• Stated military objectives focused on Hamas
• Allowing in tens of thousands of tons of aid and coordinating with the aid agencies (besides UNRWA)

Without proving one of the three systemic conditions, the most logical explanation is the one Israel provides, not the one Amnesty asserts. And Amnesty's explanations of the facts that don't fit what a genocidal state would do veers into conspiracy theory territory. They position their analysis as fact-based but the counter-evidence that Amnesty explains away shows that it is unfalsifiable. 

Instead, Amnesty wrote a report filled with 280 pages of evidence about outcomes - deaths, destruction, suffering - presented as if the structural prerequisites don't need to be established. They never identify which of the three branches they're claiming, never provide the necessary structural proof, and apparently hope readers will assume "all this death must mean one of them is true."

That's not how logic works. That's not how law works. And it's certainly not how ethical accusation works.

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What I've stumbled upon here isn't just a defense of Israel - it's a universal diagnostic for separating real systemic evil from activist-driven lies.

The same three-branch test applies to any accusation of systemic human rights violations by a nation, military, or large organization. Let’s call this The Accuser’s Trilemma: A three-branch test for any claim of systemic evil. Either the system (1) mandates harm, (2) covertly suspends legality, or (3) tolerates violations. If not, the accusation is structurally false.

Let me show you how:

The Holodomor (Soviet Ukraine, 1932-33): PASSES

• Branch 1 proven: Explicit orders existed to confiscate grain from Ukrainian regions, designed to cause mass starvation of a national group. The protocol itself was eliminationist.

Apartheid South Africa: PASSES

• Branch 1 proven: Laws explicitly mandated racial classification and segregation. The legal framework itself institutionalized racial hierarchy.

Catholic Church child abuse (1980s-2000s): PASSES

• Branch 3 proven: Internal documents show bishops knowingly relocated known abusers rather than reporting them. Pattern of tolerance across multiple dioceses.

Armenian massacre (1915-1917): ALMOST CERTAINLY PASSES

• Branch 1 - Some indications, a lot of documents destroyed, but not proven
• Branch 2 - Strong circumstantial evidence; diplomats and survivors described systematic killings; but full documentation missing.
• Branch 3 - Strongest case: Massive deportations into known death zones (e.g., Syrian desert); evidence of indifference or complicity

Israeli apartheid within the Green Line: FAILS

• No branches proven or indicated. Israeli law (with slight exceptions like the Law of Return) does not distinguish between Arab and Jewish citizens and there is no indication of systemic violation of written laws. Israel does have an independent judicial branch, after all. 

This test does not prove there are no individual violations, or discrimination doesn't exist, or Israel is perfect. But it does show that the accusations against Israel as a government, or as an army, simply cannot be true. Systemic accusations - claims that the structure itself is evil - require systemic proof. You must show that the protocol mandates harm, or was secretly bypassed, or is systematically unenforced.

The test is simple. The logic is airtight. And the implications are devastating for those who traffic in false accusations of systemic evil.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

12/04 Links Pt2: Israel WILL participate in Eurovision 2026 – Netherlands, Spain and Ireland to boycott; I Want a Democratic Party that Believes Jewish Lives Matter; What the Celebrity Crusade for Barghouti Says about Our "Elites"

From Ian:

Prof. Gerald Steinberg and Anne Herzberg: UK Funding for Hamas-Linked Groups

Since 2007, Hamas has amassed power and resources in no small part by diverting international aid and developing an unprecedented terror infrastructure. Billions of dollars in Western taxpayer funding were funneled into Gaza ostensibly for humanitarian projects via 13 UN agencies and dozens of NGOs.

Internal British and Hamas documents reveal multiple ways in which London was aware of Hamas involvement in its aid pipeline, and in some instances even cooperated with that organization. In May 2025, NGO Monitor published a detailed report, using information and documents obtained through Freedom of Information proceedings, which demonstrated that UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) officials were fully aware of Hamas involvement in certain Gaza cash assistance programs they funded. As of mid-2025, UK and UN databases revealed that this support was still ongoing.

These programs were implemented through UNICEF in coordination with Gaza's Hamas-controlled Ministry of Social Development, which was responsible for providing the lists of aid beneficiaries for cash assistance. Hamas was able to determine just who would receive British taxpayer funds, and NGOs linked to other terrorist groups (such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) would be among those recipients.

In addition, the evidence indicates that Hamas skims exorbitant sums from cash transfers in Gaza. According to Eyal Ofer, an expert on Gaza's economy, "People are getting aid via banking apps, but to turn that into real currency, they must go through brokers. They withdraw funds from these digital wallets and charge outrageous fees - anywhere between 20% and 40%. This is one of the ways Hamas is making a profit."

The events of Oct. 7 and the regional war it precipitated were made possible in large part due to the diversion of billions of dollars in aid by Hamas and its pressure campaign on UN agencies, international NGOs, and foreign diplomats to facilitate the terror organization's activity and control.

The detailed record discussed here demonstrates complicity, if not close cooperation, between the UK FCDO, officials of the NGOs that receive millions in taxpayer funds, and Hamas. It also shows how the humanitarian aid industry knowingly operates outside of and in contradiction to the legal conditions and requirements established by the British Parliament. In November 2021, London fully proscribed Hamas as a terror organization. Funding or supporting it is a crime.

The glaring absence of oversight and due diligence in British funding enabled the potential transfer of millions of pounds to Hamas terror infrastructure and personnel under the guise of humanitarian aid. When presented with concrete evidence, British government officials have thus far chosen to deflect and deny rather than reform the way in which aid pipelines operate, to ensure they help Gazans, not Hamas.

I Want a Democratic Party that Believes Jewish Lives Matter

I was an intern in the Clinton White House. I went on to work in senior positions for the campaigns of Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy, and for President Joe Biden's Super PAC. I helped elect Democrats up and down the ballot, staunchly defending them in public and in private. I attended almost every Democratic National Convention, as a professional and as part of a community of friends who were my political family. In 2020 I proudly served as a delegate for Joe Biden.

For decades I championed women's rights, reproductive choice, civil rights and equality. As a Jew, I was especially drawn to the teachings of Martin Luther King Jr., for whom Zionism - the Jewish longing for self-determination - was inseparable from the universal struggle for human rights. That was the Democratic Party I believed in.

Then came Oct. 7, 2023, and the massacre of Israelis and Jewish Americans. It forced me to confront the reality that members of my own party responded not with grief or solidarity with the victims but with protests that framed the attack as "resistance." It horrified me. There was no denying that under the banner of a "big tent," Democratic leaders were making room to shelter and legitimize extremism. Voices once on the margin suddenly dominated the narrative.

Then came the breaking point. The term "genocide" - reserved for the worst crimes in human history, like the Holocaust - was weaponized as a political slogan and hurled at Israel and Jews with ease. It was suddenly applied to a nation defending itself after an actual genocidal terrorist organization slaughtered families in their beds and hunted down and killed teenagers at a music festival.

Genocide is a ruse, a malicious inversion of reality. Yet few Democrats pushed back. Many embraced it. In November, 20 Democratic lawmakers introduced a measure in the House accusing Israel of genocide. The North Carolina Democratic Party and the Young Democrats of America adopted official positions accusing Israel of genocide. What we're seeing among Democrats is a broad, networked, antisemitic movement with cultural power and political influence.

The Democratic Party has allowed and lately encouraged the normalization of rhetoric that dehumanizes Jews and distorts history. It has become acceptable to be an antisemite who hates Israel. I cannot be affiliated with a party that espouses that message. Democratic leaders must speak clearly: Terrorism is terrorism, Jewish lives matter, moral consistency matters. Only after my community's safety is secure, and the party recognizes it not as a favor but as a fundamental principle, will I consider coming home.

The non-Jewish Israel supporters who have lost friends over Gaza

GEOFF Baker was always rather proud that his dad helped fight against the fascists targeting Jews in the East End of London in the 1930s.

As a journalist, and then PR to Paul McCartney, he also had many Jewish friends. One of his abiding memories of post-Holocaust trauma was when the former Beatle discovered a German venue he was playing in had been a favourite of Hitler: Geoff witnessed the deep discomfort of Paul’s Jewish wife Linda.

And so when October 7 happened, he wrote of his shock on Facebook and put a “I stand with Israel” banner around his photograph.

Two of his friends in particular took objection to this. The online rows became ever more bitter. “I’d write about my horror after reading an article about a woman who was decapitated by Hamas after she tried to fight off being raped and they would be saying things like ‘What about 1948?’ or ‘Did you see what the settlers have done?’” says Geoff, 69. “And I’d argue, ‘If you don’t want Hiroshima, don’t do Pearl Harbor.’

“This went on for weeks, all the rows were happening on my Facebook page. I realised I was inadvertently giving a platform to their views. So I blocked them and we no longer speak. One of them had been my friend since we were at school. I look around and I fear this new normal where it has become acceptable to be antisemitic and I don’t understand why no one is doing anything about it.”

Geoff, an old friend, was one of scores of people to get in touch with me after I put a call out on Facebook asking if any non-Jews had fallen out with friends over the Israel-Hamas conflict. I’d seen it reported in a More in Common poll that around four out of every ten Brits who were either firmly pro-Israel or pro-Palestine would consider dropping a friendship because of the war.

While I barely know a Jew who hasn’t fallen out with at least one person over the war, I was curious about how this issue had become so toxic for people who had no skin in the game – as it were – that they would fall out with friends. This is a conflict that is 2,000 miles away but its impact on our lives, our politics, has taken on a life of its own.

My post attracted 350 comments and was shared dozens of times. The comments read like a confession of pain. Person after person described how they had fallen out with friends, siblings, children and how sometimes the damage might be irreparable.

The direct messages also came in from people too frightened to say how they were feeling publicly. For many, the pain is abiding, yet they are also terrified about being further cancelled in this world of binaries.

In some ways, the messages were a balm: it has felt lonely being a Jew in this increasingly hostile atmosphere. These are people, strangers, who have our backs and have paid the price for their conviction in the most awful of ways. Sometimes that conviction has even involved them arguing with anti-Zionist Jews.

But also, they exposed me to a world of antisemitism that lingers beneath the surface – the way that non-Jews talk to each other when Jews aren’t in the room.

Let’s start with the left.

12/04 Links Pt1: Why Trump's Gaza Plan is Not a Peace Deal; Trump to announce transition to Phase II of Gaza deal, 'Board of Peace' by Christmas; The World Will Not Help Israel with Hamas;

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: No, Americans Don’t Really Think Israel Is Guilty of Genocide

The key here is that genocide requires intent to destroy not just civilians but the specific population, and to judge something as genocidal requires one to determine that genocide is “the only inference that could reasonably be drawn from the acts in question.”

This is part of why the claim that Israel committed genocide was so unserious: Definitionally, a genocide did not take place. There are plenty of other words that can be used to describe the war, but “genocide” has been indisputably ruled out unless one changes the definition of the word, as some NGOs tried to do. But again, that would also be an admission that Israel was innocent of the charge.

Israel’s civilian-to-combatant fatality rate was unprecedentedly low for urban warfare, and the intent issue becomes absurd when you remember that Israel sent its military into Gaza to rescue hostages that Hamas refused to return.

But back to the poll. Even the response that Israel intentionally harms civilians doesn’t necessarily meet the definition of genocide. So if about 8 in 10 don’t think Israel is intentionally harming civilians, it’s likely that about 9 out of 10 don’t think Israel committed genocide.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t warning signs for Israel and its supporters, even in the IGC poll. Just because respondents don’t believe Israel committed genocide doesn’t mean they approve of Israel’s actions. As one can see, the poll shows plenty of criticism of Israel’s prosecution of the war.

Moreover, in the IGC poll—as in virtually every such survey—the trend is clear: Younger Americans of either party are tougher on Israel than their elders. But there is still a wide partisan gap: The farther left one goes on the spectrum, the more likely are respondents to assume ill intent on Israel’s part.

Another notable aspect of the poll is that there is a ton of uncertainty among respondents, so presumably a fair number are persuadable in one direction or another. Uncertainty regarding Israel’s intent is incompatible with a finding of genocide.

Two lessons. One, by definition the people who accuse Israel of genocide are feigning a certainty they almost surely don’t or can’t possess, at least from afar and during the war. As a rule, beware such people, especially when they are rewarded professionally for their dishonesty.

Two, anti-Israel activists have killed the concept of genocide. They have turned it into just another descriptive term meaning one side lost the war badly. There will continue to be victims of actual genocide in the world, and they will all be harmed by the “genocide” fraud perpetrated by professional anti-Zionists.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Why Trump's Gaza Plan is Not a Peace Deal

In the eyes of Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups, the plan is nothing but another temporary ceasefire, not different than previous ones reached between Israel and Hamas over the past two decades.

Those who think that Hamas, by agreeing to Trump's "peace plan," has abandoned its desire to eliminate Israel or has softened its position toward Israel are unfortunately dead wrong.

Hamas leaders have stressed their opposition to the involvement of any non-Palestinians in the future administration of the Gaza Strip.

Hamas has also made it clear that the role of any international troops should be limited to monitoring the ceasefire and safeguarding the borders of the Gaza Strip, not to disarming the terror groups and their military infrastructure.

Hamas's remarks are a not-so-veiled threat that they intend to launch terrorist attacks against members of any international force that tries to disarm the terror groups in the Gaza Strip.

That is doubtless the major reason most Arabs and Muslims appear reluctant to dispatch soldiers to the Gaza Strip: they do not want a direct confrontation with Hamas and the other terror groups operating there.

To understand the mindset and intentions of Hamas, it is crucial that one pay attention to what the terror group says in Arabic, not what some of its leaders tell US envoys in meetings behind closed doors.

Regrettably, there can be no peace, security, or stability in the area if Hamas and its allies are left standing on their feet and preparing for more massacres against Israel.

Is Gaza Peace Plan on the Verge of Crumbling?

"Everything is stuck," a senior Israeli defense official told me this week. Because diplomats have failed to capitalize on the disarray of Iran and its allies, "all the fronts in the Middle East are still open," he warned.

Most of Gaza's population is still controlled by Hamas, Lebanon hasn't fully regained its sovereignty from Hizbullah, and Iran is rebuilding its battered military.

The Middle East is still waiting for a stable "day after." Other than the release of all living Israeli hostages from Gaza, most of the goals of Trump's peace plan appear stillborn.

Nations that had volunteered to join the international force have been backing away, and donor countries are refusing to begin reconstruction projects until there's security in Gaza.

Prof. Efraim Inbar: The World Will Not Help Israel with Hamas

Hamas is tightening its grip on the half of Gaza that it controls and rebuilding its military infrastructure. It is difficult to imagine Hamas voluntarily disarming or relinquishing control. Israel must be prepared to "do the dirty work" for the civilized world and finish off what remains of Hamas's evil in Gaza. This is not a boxing match that can be won on points. Israel must win by a knockout.

Israel cannot claim victory while Hamas remains in Gaza. Israel must therefore seek American backing to resume fighting in order to implement the Trump plan. Repeated military defeats have not altered the Palestinians' fundamental opposition to the existence of the Jewish state. There is no "day after" if Hamas remains as an armed presence in Gaza.

Every regime that has a peace agreement with Israel - Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco - despises Hamas. All of these states, as well as Saudi Arabia, view the Muslim Brotherhood and its financial patron Qatar as a threat to their regimes and a destabilizing force in the region.

Mass-Incarceration Proponents Tout Data Showing 75% Cut In Crime If All MKs Jailed (PreOccupied Territory)

 Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Jerusalem, December 4 - Advocates for robust imprisonment policies as a way to reduce unlawful activity pointed today to studies indicating that if Israel locked away all one hundred twenty lawmakers, unlawful behavior would drop by three quarter.

Fans of El Salvador President Nayib-Bukele's implementation of a mass incarceration policy focusing on the small percentage of the population that commits most of his nation's crimes called attention this morning to numbers that demonstrate a promising truth: if all Members of Knesset were imprisoned, crime would drop by just under 75%.

Shmuel Norton, director of the NGO Lock Them Up, addressed reporters outside the Knesset, and presented data from academic studies quantifying the estimated effect of imprisoning all of the parliamentary delegates. "There are six studies from the last four years," he explained. "In each of them, the researchers found that locking up the Members of Knesset will cut crime by no less than sixty-five percent, with the most likely figure closer to eighty percent. Seventy-five percent represents the median figure across the studies."

"The categories of crime that will shrink are not confined to the various types of corruption," he continued, "though of course those are will represented in the data, as you would be correct to expect. But the reduction also includes libel, slander, conspiracy, theft, extortion, and forgery, not to mention immoral activities that do not rise, technically, to the level of 'crime,' such as sexual dalliances by married lawmakers or with married paramours."

Norton added that the figures improve even more if former Members of Knesset are included in the imprisonment, and that the reduction in crime reaches 92% if local government officials are also confined.

The studies also suggested that incarcerating all lawmakers will reduce inflation, since, while in some correctional facility, they will not be able to spend public funds as profligately as is their wont, and will certainly not be able to approve the governmental spending of hundreds of billions of shekels, which accounts for the vast majority of inflation pressure on the economy.

Practical obstacles to the implementation of such a policy will likely prevent its total adoption in the near term, Norton acknowledged, but he expressed the hope that Israel could attempt at least a partial measure. He cited elements of the various studies indicating that even if only the cabinet ministers are locked up and the keys thrown away, crime will wane by forty percent.

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How a @Guardian writer mainstreamed the "open air prison" meme - in 2000

What is the origin of the phrase "Gaza is an open-air prison"? 

The earliest I found the phrase from from a Palestinian terrorist in 1993 quoted in the Los Angeles Times,  December  24, 1993, page 1:

Rayad abu Kamar couldn't take his hands off his AK-47 assault rifle. The young Palestinian fighter cocked it and uncocked it. He popped the ammunition clip in and out a dozen or more times. He stroked the barrel as he explained why he chose war in this bitter, desperate land where there are no signs of a promised peace.

"When I got out of jail, my first thought was, 'Hey, I'm free,'" said Kamar, 21, a fugitive rebel with the Fatah Hawks of Gaza, a group linked to the Palestine Liberation Organization and its chairman, Yasser Arafat.

"The feeling didn't last an hour," Kamar said. "When I got home, suddenly I felt no different than before. I felt as if I had traded my small jail cell for a bigger one. That is Gaza. An open-air prison for nearly 1 million of us Palestinians. So, I decided to fight. And this is the only way I know."

Yes, even in 1993 there were sympathetic articles in mainstream media about Palestinian terrorists. 

The phrase didn't stick though, until 2000. That's when one person popularized it: The Guardian's Israel correspondent Suzanne Goldenberg.

Years before Israel withdrew from Gaza, in three weeks she used the phrase three times.

October  7, 2000:

October 18:

And then, the headline on October 24, Page 1:

That seems to be the spark. After that,. the "open air prison" terminology started spreading throughout media - not only for Gaza but initially for the West Bank as well. 

Reporters love to imitate.

On December 17, 2001, AP reporter Jamie Tabaray used the phrase in a widely-published story about how awful the early days of the Second Intifada was for Palestinians, who cheered the murder of Israelis. 

An Independent writer followed a week later, being perhaps the first to call Gaza "the largest open-air prison in the world" in the media. 

The San Francisco Chronicle followed soon after with a photo essay by a "peace activist" quoting a Gaza woman using that phrase.

Academic papers ran with it. Even though the term is pejorative and was never accurate, use of the term went from 70 times in academia in the 2000s to 503 i the 2010s and - so far - 950 times in the 2020s, according to Google Scholar.

The "prison" terminology is just another way to slander Israel. Remember, at the time the Palestinians had rejected a peace plan that would give them a state and chose a campaign of suicide bombings against Jews instead. Israel had no choice but to respond, and that meant limiting access to Israel. If anyone was in prison it was the Israelis, walling themselves off from their murderous neighbors. Israel was not imprisoning Palestinians - it was protecting its citizens from terrorism.

But the phrase was already primed to be used when Israel withdrew from Gaza. It may have been used by Palestinians themselves first, but the Western media simply couldn't resist painting the beleaguered Israelis are the prison wardens. 

Which is the same kind of inversion we see with Israel all the time. 

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Palestinian newspaper says the Jews control France. (Yes, France.)

Manar.com, an apparently Palestinian news site (not to be confused with Hezbollah's Al Manar) has a claim I've never seen before: the Jews control France.

While they say "Israelis", the examples they give are of Jewish organizations in France:

The influence of the Zionist lobby in France is based on a system of interconnected entities, foremost among them the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions (CRIF) as the most influential channel in political and media debate, alongside which the Union of Jewish Students in France (UEJF) stands out as an influential platform within universities, in addition to more hardline groups such as the Betar Association and the Jewish Defense League. Together, these entities form an effective pressure network that contributes to shaping Paris’s positions on issues related to Israel and the Middle East.

There is no accurate and documented information about the sources of funding for CRIF’s activities and movements. There is a clear lack of transparency, but what is certain is the existence of a multi-source network that represents the financial support for the association, whether at the local or international level, from Jewish and French entities and individuals, and supporters of “Israel” and Zionism around the world.

These sources include direct donations and gifts from French Jewish individuals and associations, allocated to support the Council’s programs or those of its allied associations, as well as support from Jewish economic institutions and companies at the local and international levels, and donations from businessmen who participate in strengthening the Council’s influence. CRIF events, such as the annual dinner, also constitute a major platform for raising funds and are a pivotal event in its annual activity calenda

Wow - Jews donating to Jewish causes. Stop the presses. 

The "proof" of Jews controlling France include top French officials attending CRIF's annual dinner. 

How influential is CRIF in steering France away from Palestinians? Well, their homepage top story is from last June where they urged France not to recognize a Palestinian state.

Of course, France did the opposite. 

Just proof 9,243 that anti-Zionism is just a newer for of antisemitism.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

12/03 Links Pt2: NGO Monitor: Hamas' Coercive Grip on Aid and NGO Operations in Gaza; Dublin City Council Members Blame ‘Zionist Lobby’ and ‘Israeli Intelligence’; Antisemitism ‘scourge’ continues to wreak havoc in Australia

From Ian:

Dublin City Council Members Blame ‘Zionist Lobby’ and ‘Israeli Intelligence’ for Thwarting Proposal To Rename Herzog Park

Dublin City Council members accused Israel of wielding its lobbying power to interfere in Irish politics during a heated debate over postponing a vote to strip an Irish-born Israeli president’s name from a city park.

The Monday night meeting concluded with a 35-to-25 vote to send the renaming proposal back to a planning committee after the council’s chief executive noted a procedural error in the renaming process. Footage from the preceding hour-long discussion, however, is sparking outrage among Ireland’s Jewish community.

“Deranged conspiracy theories were rife at the Dublin City Council meeting last night,” a native Dubliner and doctoral student at Trinity College Dublin, Rachel Moiselle, remarked on X. Ms. Moiselle, an Irish writer of Jewish heritage who has been outspoken in defending Ireland’s Jewish population, has helped lead the effort against renaming Herzog Park.

“The hatred is visceral and frightening,” she continued in a separate post. “There is a real evil here and the people who embody it have positions of political power. We will need international support to fight it.”

Clips from the live-streamed session show council members suggesting that pushback against the proposal reflected a coordinated campaign by “Zionist” or “Israeli” influences.

“This was a full-court press by the Zionist lobby and they think they will win it,” stated councillor Ciarán Ó Meachair. “They will not win this.” Earlier in the session Mr. Meachair accused Herzog of having “raped, murdered and pillaged innocent civilians.” He vowed to continue to push for a renaming, offering instead a British Jewish communist politician, Max Levitas.

Another council member, Pat Dunne, of the United Left party, went even further, claiming that the Israel Defense Forces were somehow involved in the effort. “I’m further convinced that whatever phone calls were made to our CEO and to other officials probably emanated from Israeli intelligence attached to the Israeli Defence Forces because they’re active in every issue in relation to Palestine,” Mr. Dunne said. “Trace it all the way back, Richard, and you’ll find that’s the source.”

Alex Hearn: The comforting myth of Britain as a safe haven for Jews clouds our immigration debate

This notion of Jewish impurity polluting the nation remained, even when it was being popularised in Nazi propaganda a few decades later. In 1933 the conservative MP for Tottenham asked the Home Secretary what measures he was taking to prevent “alien Jews from Germany entering England”.

The 1938 Evian Conference saw Britain refuse to take significant numbers of Jewish refugees. Prioritising Arab sensibilities, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain refused to help 10,000 Jewish children emigrate from Nazi Germany into British mandate Palestine, which became official policy in 1939 with The White Paper. After Kristallnacht the situation became impossible to ignore and children were grudgingly allowed into Britain itself on Kindertransport.

It was largely a private rescue effort by Jewish organisations such as Central British Fund for German Jewry (CBF), while the initiative came from German Jews such as Wilfrid Israel, who saved about 15 times more lives than Oskar Schindler yet his name is largely unknown. Heroic individuals like Trevor Chadwick did agonising selection work because British guarantors often wanted “girls aged seven to 10 and, if possible, fair-haired”. Fuelled by eugenics thinking, the Home Office excluded children with disabilities or sickness.

The British government restricted Kindertransport. They created Jewish orphans by barring parents, and imposed a £50 guarantee per child, limiting the number of children who could be saved. Kindertransport symbolised British hostility to Jewish immigration.

In 1939 when the MS St Louis returned to Europe after being rejected by the US, Canada and Cuba, Britain accepted a minority essentially saving their lives, but most were returned to be murdered by the Nazis.

By 1942 with the full knowledge of Jews being systematically mass-murdered, Labour Home Secretary Herbert Morrison didn't want to grant entry to 350 children from Vichy France, citing fears of provoking “anti-foreign and antisemitic feelings”. In Parliament he was asked about German Jewish refugees who had been stripped of their nationality and facing certain death. His chilling answer was that they were not considered stateless, but were instead viewed as “aliens of enemy nationality”.

Comparisons with Jewish immigration ignore another critical distinction: when Jewish refugees arrived in Britain, the Board of Guardians and other Jewish charities ensured they wouldn't be a drain on the state. No such self-sustaining community network exists for today's asylum seekers — there are professional charities, not community organisations.

The “Britain as sanctuary” narrative obscures historical reality. With the current system — even with Mahmoud's proposed policies — many more Jews would have been saved in the 19th and 20th centuries than Britain actually admitted.

There are legitimate concerns about whether asylum policies are too harsh, and the Jewish community is right to care about the treatment of refugees. But the comparison is fundamentally ahistorical, and the argument of Britain being a safe haven to a thriving Jewish community ignores present realities: record levels of antisemitic incidents and substantial Jewish emigration, with applications for Israeli citizenship spiking dramatically.

If we're going to invoke Jewish history in these debates, we owe it to those who were turned away to get that history right — and to face present realities rather than comforting myths.

British pro-Palestine protesters ‘more at risk of radicalisation than I was,’ claims former jihadi

A former jihadist turned anti-extremism educator has claimed that British pro-Palestinian protesters are at an even greater risk of being radicalised than he was when he joined a terror group in the 1990s.

Speaking exclusively to the JC at an event organised by pro-Israeli campaign group Stop The Hate, Noor Dahri, originally from Pakistan and a former member of Lashkar e Tayyaba (LT), said that he sees an undeniable likeness in his own descent into extremism and the rhetoric of some British activists.

LT, which was proscribed in the UK in 2001, aimed to “liberate” the disputed province of Kashmir from India and annex it to Pakistan, creating a unified Islamic state. It gained wider infamy when it perpetrated a series of 12 coordinated attacks in Mumbai over three days in November 2008, killing 166 people.

But Dahri sees parallels between the group’s espousal of Islamist ultra-nationalism and the propaganda pushed by Hamas.

"[To the protesters], the Palestinians are like heroes," he said. "For Muslims [when he became a jihadist], Kashmiri people were the heroes. We wanted to liberate them. We wanted to be like them."

He explained that he ultimately left the group when he realised the reality of what he was part of, saying he was "hurt" by what he saw and that people were "losing their lives because of the [group's] goals".

"[It is] exactly the same," he went on. "The ideology and grievances which [Hamas] have created are exactly the same as [those LeT created]."

"We were [poorly] educated in [Pakistan] because we had a jihadist surrounding, but in Western countries, especially the UK, the atmosphere isn't jihadist - the state doesn't support it. This is a Western democratic country...

"There are three types of people who are radicalised: those who have absolutely no knowledge, those who have very limited knowledge, and those who have knowledge but who deny the truth.

"People here are more radicalised than in Pakistan because there they don't have options [to see the truth for themselves], here they have options - they have a British passport, they can travel to Israel, they can see a democratic life where Jews and Muslims are living side by side. [They can see] everyone there executing their rights without persecution.

"But [British pro-Palestine protesters] don't want to know. They are [further along in being of being] radicalised because they are able to know something and still [chose not to] and deny it.

12/03 Links Pt1: The World After Israel’s Longest War; Over 300 rabbis and Jewish leaders call for removal of UN official who denied Oct. 7 rapes; Casket with apparent hostage’s body returned to Israel, as final 2 families await ID

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The World After Israel’s Longest War

The famous story about Lot’s wife being turned into a pillar of salt has a particular lesson, according to the late British Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks. It’s fine to look back—even at Sodom—but not while you’re walking out of it. When entering a better future, keep your eyes forward. It ensures you’ll go in the right direction.

I’ve been thinking about this during my time in Israel this week. For most of the October 7 war, Jews had two stock responses to questions like “How are you?” There was the normal polite response to those in our professional lives and then there was the response when Jews asked each other this question: “Well, you know.”

That second response is starting to go out of style. Since the cease-fire deal returned nearly all hostages or their remains to their loved ones and IDF reservists to their everyday lives, “How are you?” has once again become a legitimate question. That is especially palpable here in Israel, for all the obvious reasons.

Israelis are looking forward, but that doesn’t mean the recent past is forgotten. Quite the opposite: Here former hostages speak to reporters regularly to make clear the whole truth of the war and its toll. Nova festival survivors have banded together to heal as a community and to educate the rest of the country on what they have discovered about themselves in the process. Faces of Hamas’s victims are still visible on walls and windows. The political and military echelons are daily facing calls for accountability, and steps in that direction have begun.

But this is all in the service of looking forward. Israelis are deciding what shape their national future will take, who they will be as they emerge from their longest war. This country is always building, always clearing its own path ahead.

You know who isn’t moving on? Israel’s enemies, specifically those who have made Gaza their personality. And I don’t mean the people of Gaza, who are prevented from rebuilding by Hamas. I mean the Western politicians, activists, donors. and others who have nothing to motivate them to get out of bed in the morning without the hope of a Hamas resurgence and permanent war in Gaza.

The best current example of this is the crackup of the British left. The Labour Party governs the country (for the moment) and yet is in a zombie-like state. Other parties to its left are gaining, and new parties are forming, none more perfectly Gaza-obsessed than former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s party, named Your Party. (The name was a placeholder but is now official. The jokes tell themselves.)

UNRWA in Gaza Has Been Replaced; It’s Time to Shutter the Agency

The UN Relief and Works Agency — or UNRWA — in Gaza has been replaced by over a dozen other aid organizations. UNRWA’s decades-long monopoly on aid and services has finally been broken, presenting a rare opportunity for deradicalization and, eventually, peace.

What’s more, the international community now has a model for how to replace UNRWA everywhere it operates, not just in Gaza.

The UN Security Council approved President Donald Trump’s proposal to build a “Board of Peace” on November 17 that will oversee the deradicalization of Gaza and the dismantlement of Hamas’ terror state. But Trump’s vision will not succeed until UNRWA is shuttered.

UNRWA was created with a temporary mandate after Israel’s 1947-1948 War of Independence to provide aid and services to approximately 750,000 Palestinian Arabs displaced by the war.

Over the past 75 years, UNRWA’s mandate has ballooned. Not only does UNRWA continue to provide a myriad of services in the jurisdictions where Arab refugees from 1948 immigrated, but refugee status has been passed from generation to generation. As a result, what was a relatively small refugee population in 1948 (compared to other 20th century refugee populations) is today a large and growing 21st century refugee population with no end in sight. UNRWA counts 5.9 million Palestinian refugees and has an annual budget of over a billion and half dollars.

UNRWA schools teach the belief that Palestinian refugees and their millions of descendants would all return to the modern state of Israel — an outcome that would immediately erase Israel’s Jewish majority.

The focus on “return,” coupled with the well-documented glorification of terror and incitement — including arithmetic problems involving numbers of Palestinian “martyrs,” antisemitic tropes, and naming schools and soccer fields after suicide bombers — has produced generations of indoctrinated and radicalized Palestinian children.

The Kennedy Curse and Its Imaginary Rabbi (Judean Rose)

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

When Tatiana Schlossberg—the granddaughter of John F. Kennedy—revealed her diagnosis of acute myeloid leukemia in a poignant essay published in The New Yorker, it resonated as a deeply personal tragedy. At 35, she's a young mother of two, a journalist, and a woman whose life was just beginning to expand in new ways after the birth of her second child. Her story evoked widespread sympathy—but it also stirred up an old, insidious rumor in the shadows of social media: “The Kennedy curse. Again.”

The truth is, the torrent of bad things that have happened to the Kennedy family does seem more curse than coincidence. So much so that Wikipedia has a page devoted to the subject of the Kennedy Curse. And yet, Wikipedia says nothing of the rumor that has been around since the early 20^th century: that it was a rabbi who was responsible for cursing the Kennedys.

I guess we can thank God that at least in this one case, Wikipedia didn’t blame the Jews. Of course, there’s always that next edit!

Rabbi Aharon Kotler

The myth of a rabbinic curse on the Kennedy family stems from the widespread knowledge that Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. was possessed of a thick, boundless hatred for the Jewish people. Those who believe in the curse say that it was meant as retribution for Joe Kennedy’s refusal to aid Jewish refugees escaping the Holocaust. Some say it was Rabbi Aharon Kotler who cursed the Kennedys, vowing that Joe Kennedy would "never see joy from his descendants" after Kennedy senior declined to lobby President Roosevelt for rescue certificates. Others ascribe the curse to the Lubavitcher Rebbe Rav Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn or the Ponevezher Rav. Still another version of this story claims the origins of the curse hail from a 1937 ocean liner incident where Kennedy complained about noisy Rosh Hashanah prayers by Rabbi Israel Jacobson and yeshiva students, prompting a curse on his male heirs.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt (seated) congratulates Joseph P. Kennedy on becoming the new ambassador to Great Britain, January 1938. Associate Justice Stanley Reed, center, administered Kennedy’s oath. Because of intemperate remarks, Kennedy’s ambassadorship lasted less than three years.

It’s not only non-Jews who keep this story alive. Some Jews repeat the rabbinic-curse rumor with a kind of pride, as if the Kennedys’ misfortunes prove the spiritual power of great rabbis. But this inward-facing bravado has no more evidence behind it than the antisemitic version of the tale. Folklore doesn’t care who repeats it; it survives because the story is irresistible, not because it’s true.

Such stories, popularized in books like Edward Klein's The Kennedy Curse, lack any historical evidence. There are no eyewitness accounts, diaries, or corroboration, leading us to dismiss the idea of a rabbi-invoked Kennedy curse as an urban legend. We know this not just from the absence of any Jewish tradition supporting such curses, but from the response of the late Rabbi Berel Wein, a respected historian and scholar, who weighed in on a question about the rumor in 2002: "The story of the alleged curse is pure legend, fabricated after Kennedy was running for President. In any event, Jews don't put curses on anybody."

Rabbi Berel Wein

While there is no real evidence of a rabbinic Kennedy curse, Joe Kennedy’s Jew-hatred and pro-Nazi sympathies were all too real and very well known.

The Kennedy story is soaked in loss, enough to make even the most rational observers reach for patterns that might make sense of things. Because it really is a lot. Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. was killed in a 1944 plane explosion during WWII. His sister Kathleen died four years later when her plane went down in a storm. Then came the assassinations that shook the world: John F. Kennedy in 1963, Robert F. Kennedy in 1968.

The tragedies didn’t stop there, and the losses continued to mount. Ted Kennedy barely survived a 1964 plane crash, only to face the 1969 Chappaquiddick tragedy and the implications surrounding the death of Mary Jo Kopechne. David Kennedy died of a drug overdose in 1984. Michael Kennedy was killed in a skiing accident in 1997. John F. Kennedy Jr. perished in a 1999 plane crash. Saoirse Kennedy Hill overdosed in 2019. And in 2020, Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean and her young son Gideon drowned in a canoeing accident.

Even before these events, bad things were happening to the Kennedy family. There was, for example, Rosemary Kennedy’s disastrous 1941 lobotomy. It was Joe, her father, who insisted on the lobotomy, which left Rosemary incapacitated for life. The Kennedy tragedies differed in significant ways, yet taken as a whole, it does seem like the Kennedy family has experienced more tragedy than most.

People struggle with randomness. A curse gives shape to chaos, turning a series of tragedies into a story with structure. But this says more about human psychology than about the Kennedys themselves. When faced with repeated misfortune, people often reach instinctively for meaning, even where none exists.

Pinning such misfortunes on a rabbi reinforces the old, durable stereotype of Jews as wielders of dark or vengeful powers. This stereotype, rooted in centuries of hatred, has no basis in reality. But it hasn’t stopped people from repeating the trope.

Jewish tradition stands in stark opposition to curse-casting. Key principles include:

• *Prohibition in the Torah: "Lo tekalel" (Do not curse), emphasizing ethical speech.
• *Halachic guidance: Cursing is viewed as a grave misuse of words, akin to verbal harm.
• *Mystical focus: Judaism is a religion of repentance and prayer, not one of maledictions.
• *Historical context: No credible records exist of rabbis placing curses on non-Jewish families over political or personal slights. As Rabbi Berel Wein noted, ‘Rabbis don’t put curses on people. It’s not part of their job description nor our religion.’”

Rabbi Wein's response is a perfect fit to these tenets. He didn’t need to document or refute any historical precedents for rabbinic curses. All he had to do was dismiss a fabrication. The Kennedy Curse, real or not, didn’t come from any rabbi. That’s just a “grandmother’s tale,” a “bubbe meisa.”

Calling Schlossberg’s diagnosis part of a “Kennedy curse” doesn’t illuminate anything; it only repeats a narrative that has been stitched onto every Kennedy family tragedy for nearly a century. The misfortunes keep coming, and so does the folklore. A new loss appears, and the myth switches on, ready to explain everything at once: assassinations, crashes, overdoses, drownings, even bad decisions made by Joe Kennedy. 

The rumor of a rabbinic curse has survived for the same reason most folklore survives: it’s got drama, offers a villain, and adds a supernatural edge to an already mythical American family. Different versions name different rabbis — from revered Hasidic leaders to Lithuanian sages — none with evidence, each contradicting the other. As Rabbi Berel Wein flatly noted, the whole thing is “pure legend,” because “rabbis don’t put curses on people.” That hasn’t stopped the story from mutating and reappearing every time a new Kennedy headline breaks.

 

Tatiana Schlossberg

And now, with Schlossberg's illness, the myth is back in circulation again — the curse refreshed, the narrative extended. But isn’t it interesting the way Jews get pulled into American mythology even when the facts don’t support it. When the Kennedy tragedies pile higher, someone inevitably dredges up a rabbinic figure as the supposed architect of all their misfortune. It’s a pattern: another Kennedy crisis, another Jewish rumor. The linkage is baseless, but persistent — as Jew-hatred tends to be.

Schlossberg’s news is the latest entry in a long, grim list. The tragedies accumulate, the curse narrative resurrects itself, and the alleged rabbinic source remains as fictional as ever. If this saga has any pattern at all, it’s that the misfortunes and the mythology advance together — and so does the impulse to place Jews at the center of everything.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)