Monday, January 12, 2026

01/12 Links Pt2: History is Not Whispering; Israel Won the Information War; Trump: No place for Jew-haters in GOP; Suspect admits to arson attack on synagogue in Mississippi due to its ‘Jewish ties’

From Ian:

History is Not Whispering
Anti-Semitism is never the end of the story. It is the warning flare.

It does not appear when societies are strongest, but when they are losing the ability to tolerate complexity, disagreement, and pluralism. Jews are the first test of that collapse—not because they are uniquely fragile, but because they have always stood at the center of pluralistic systems that extremism cannot tolerate.

This pattern is not subtle. It is not ambiguous. And it is not new.

When Jews are told their equality is conditional, that their safety depends on silence, that their collective existence is illegitimate, societies have already crossed a line. When violence against Jews is explained rather than condemned, escalation is no longer a question of if, but when. When elected officials refuse to name and shame anti-Semitism because doing so would alienate part of their base, the base has already been chosen.

The closing of the horseshoe is not a metaphor. It is a diagnosis.

On the left, anti-Zionism reframes Jews as uniquely undeserving of national rights. On the right, post-liberal populism recycles the language of elites, global manipulators, and disloyal insiders. The vocabularies differ. But the structure is identical. Both reject liberal universalism. Both treat Jews as conditional citizens. Both abandon the same guardrails—and arrive at the same destination.

History does not forgive this convergence. It records it.

Those who imagine they can harness anti-Semitism without being consumed by it misunderstand how extremism works. The societies that tolerated it did not stabilize. They radicalized. Jews were never the last target—only the most reliable early prey.

We are not watching this unfold blindly. We have the documents. We have the precedents. We have the bodies.

This time, ignorance is not an excuse. Silence is not neutrality. Euphemism is not moderation.

We know exactly what is happening.

The only question left is whether we choose to stop it—or whether we allow history to resume its course, once again, at full speed.
Israel Won the Information War By Abe Greenwald
Via Commentary Newsletter, sign up here.
Those who fret about the issue believe that Israel needed to continually explain the reasons for its military actions: It should have been more forceful in demonstrating that Hamas hides behind civilians and operates from civilian structures. It should have debunked Hamas casualty figures in real time, proved that there was no famine, explained the unparalleled effort the IDF makes to spare civilian lives, and so on.

But that’s not the story Israel needed to tell. There’s little point in the Jewish state trying to prove that it’s innocent of all the calumnious charges against it. Why? Because if Israel’s devoted critics could be persuaded that it’s a good and just country under continuous assault by barbaric fanatics, they would have been convinced by the decades of evidence—culminating in October 7—showing just that.

The vital information that Israel needed to disseminate, rather, was this: We will not perish. We are fiercer in battle than you could ever imagine, more accomplished in intelligence and operational execution than any nation in history, peerless in the art of war, and unapologetic in our commitment to survival. We don’t bend to public opinion; we stop at nothing to defend our existence.

And that message came across loud and clear.

Too many American Jews, on the other hand, spent two-plus years swallowing Hamas propaganda and publicly agonizing over Israel’s actions to varying degrees. Their story was: We’re just so sorry for all this ugliness.

And while they explained and apologized, they also bent over backwards to give the Jew-haters the benefit of the doubt. Some went so far as to kasher the mob.

We know exactly how that’s worked out. It’s long past time for Diaspora Jews to tell a different story of their own—one of bravery rooted in reverence for the Jewish tradition. But first they must believe it themselves. The Israelis do, and the world found that out.
No place for Jew-haters in GOP, Trump says
U.S. President Donald Trump said there is no room in the Republican Party for those with antisemitic views and that the GOP should condemn those espousing them.

“From my own personal standpoint, absolutely, because I condemn,” Trump told The New York Times in a two-hour interview last week that was published on Monday.

“I have a daughter who’s married to a Jewish person,” he told the newspaper. “My daughter happens to be Jewish, and the beautiful three grandchildren are Jewish. I’m very proud of them.”

The president also touted his support of Israel and his efforts to obtain a ceasefire in the war between Hamas and Israel.

“There has been no better president in the history of the world as we know it that has been stronger or better and less antisemitic, certainly, than Donald Trump,” he said in the interview. “I have been the best president of the United States in the history of this country toward Israel, and that’s, by the way, acknowledged by everybody, including the fact that we have peace in the Middle East, and that’s going to hold.”

Trump’s comments came as several prominent Republicans, including former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, have faced criticism from several prominent party members for providing platforms to antisemites and Holocaust deniers, most notably Nick Fuentes. Carlson, a podcaster, was photographed in official images of a meeting that Trump held at the White House recently with oil executives.

At the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual legislative conference in October, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) and others went after Carlson for his friendly interview with Fuentes.

Speakers at the conference also aimed brickbats at the Heritage Foundation, whose president, Kevin Roberts, defended Carlson and said the pro-Trump conservative research group was not in the business of “canceling our own people.”

The president earlier passed up opportunities to criticize Carlson, who had a prime-time speaking slot at the 2024 Republican National Convention. “You can’t tell him who to interview,” Trump told reporters in November.

But this time, he went after the antisemites in his own party.

“I think we don’t need them. I think we don’t like them,” he told the Times.
British Jewish veterans who fought for Churchill in WWII say the level of antisemitism in modern times feels like 'the whole world is against us'
They proudly fought for Britain to free the world from the clutches of Hitler's fascism.

But 80 years on, three Jewish veterans say they are increasingly alarmed by surging levels of antisemitism in the UK - and fear 'the whole world is against us now'.

Joe Slyper, 106, Don Breslaw, 102 and Solly Ohayon, 99, still remain largely positive about Britain, but believe anti-Jewish hatred today is at levels they themselves did not experience when they were younger.

Their views come in the wake of fellow veteran Alec Penstone, 100, who in November stunned the presenters of ITV's Good Morning Britain by declaring the sacrifice of the lost men of his generation 'wasn't worth' it.

He told Adil Ray and Kate Garraway: 'What we fought for was our freedom, but now it's a darn sight worse than when I fought for it.'

While the trio are not so forceful in their opinion of today's Britain, they acknowledge the Second World War brought an end to Nazism - but not racially motivated hatred.

Don, who was just 19 when he was conscripted into the army, has come to sombrely conclude 'we've always been different - and when people are different, people tend to find cause to dislike us.'

The three spoke to Daily Mail as part of wide-ranging interviews on their wartime experience and how Britain compares today to before 1939.


Thirty days after Bondi Beach, can Australia’s multicultural project survive?
From the 1970s, however, the new multicultural project embraced the diversity of difference. Hundreds of cultural and ethnic groups, who now speak more than 300 languages, created a largely peaceful melting pot that became the envy of the world.

Until December 14 at around 6:45 p.m.

And while Australia’s Jews have long championed the fact that we welcomed some 30,000 Holocaust survivors - the largest survivor community per capita outside of Israel – this statistic avoids an inconvenient truth: The Australian government enforced quotas limiting the numbering of Jews allowed to board ships from Europe after the Holocaust. And to add insult to injury, successive Australian governments, Liberal and Labor, turned a blind eye to the thousands of Nazi war criminals and collaborators who slinked into this country and disappeared into our sunburnt suburbs. Despite a belated attempt, none was ever brought to justice.

Many of those Holocaust survivors who fled as far away from Europe as possible began to rekindle their lives here in Bondi. Back then the beachside suburb was a far cry from today’s sun-kissed Instagram posts - drugs, prostitution and organized crime sullied Bondi’s golden sands. Remarkably, until the early 1960s, bikinis were not tolerated. Official beach inspectors enforced strict modesty rules in what was dubbed the “bikini wars.”

But the Swinging Sixties ushered in a newfound freedom, and Bondi was its HQ.

And since the 1970s, three large waves of Jewish emigres, South Africans, Russians, and Israelis, have helped ensure Bondi remains the epicenter of Jewish life here. Chabad-Lubavitch established itself in multiple Bondi locations, injecting a vibrant religious dimension to Jewish cultural life that was previously centered around the Hakoah Club, a Jewish community and sporting center that was bombed in 1982, mercifully with no casualties.

Bagels, borscht and boerewors; pita, hummus and falafel - Bondi’s diverse Jewish menu was embraced by our non-Jewish neighbors who traveled from across the city and country to taste the bounty of this beach.

That helps explain the heaving sea of flowers that engulfed the unofficial memorial. The stones laid by the Jews were subsumed by the mass of bouquets left by the non-Jews who now, finally it seemed, understood what many Jews have been saying for the last two years: that the inflammatory sermons of the “hate preachers,” the intimidation, cancelling, doxxing, vandalism, assaults, and firebombings would simmer and smolder before erupting like a volcano.

Ignored, disbelieved, and gaslit, Australia’s Jews are still seething with rage. And many are still boiling with contempt for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, albeit slightly tempered after he finally caved into mounting pressure and agreed to call a Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion last week. The report of the inquiry is due on the one-year anniversary of the tragedy.
Australia to hold ‘day of mourning’ on Jan. 22 for Hanukkah terror attack
Australia will hold a national “day of mourning” on January 22 for the 15 people killed in an antisemitic terror shooting at a seaside Hanukkah event at Bondi Beach, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says.

“This will have a theme of: ‘light will win’,” Albanese tells reporters, with flags to fly at half staff across Australia.


Age and SMH apologise for ‘antisemitic’ Cathy Wilcox cartoon
Former Age editor-in-chief Michael Gawenda delivered one of the strongest critiques, describing the Wilcox illustration as “full of terrible ugliness” and “uglier and more hateful than anything Michael Leunig ever drew”.

Writing in The Australian, Gawenda said he felt “shock and subsequent anger” on seeing the cartoon, arguing it portrayed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “master manipulator” orchestrating calls for a royal commission and reduced Australians seeking accountability to “silly-looking people”.

He questioned how any editor could have approved a cartoon published less than a month after the Bondi Beach terrorist massacre, saying, “It has come to this at The Age, the paper where I worked for many decades and which I edited for seven years. The paper I once loved.”

The episode adds to a series of disputes surrounding Wilcox’s work since October 7, 2023. A December 2024 assessment by the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) said some of her Israel-focused cartoons had skirted stereotypes, drawing repeated complaints from Jewish readers.

The apologies come as renewed calls are made for scrutiny under racial discrimination laws, underscoring the ongoing tension between satire and harm as Australia grapples with a sustained rise in antisemitism.


Suspect admits to arson attack on synagogue in Mississippi due to its ‘Jewish ties,’ FBI says
Stephen Spencer Pittman’s father called the FBI after his 19-year-old son admitted to setting fire intentionally to the only synagogue in Jackson, Miss., according to an affidavit that a federal agent filed with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi.

Pittman admitted to the Jan. 10 arson attack on Beth Israel Congregation and the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life “due to the building’s Jewish ties,” according to the FBI agent.

“The fire resulted in extensive damage to a significant portion of the building and rendered it inoperable for an indefinite period of time,” per the affidavit. The agent added that a hooded person was captured on surveillance footage “walking in the interior of the building pouring contents from what appeared to be a gas container.”

The suspect’s father told the FBI that his son, who lives in Madison, Miss., had confessed and shared data from Pittman’s phone and text messages he had sent with federal agents and said he saw “burns on Pittman’s body,” per the affidavit. It added that among the messages Pittman texted his father was “there’s a furnace in the back” alongside a photo of Beth Israel.”

When his father confronted him early on Jan. 10, Pittman “told his father he broke a window of the Beth Israel Congregation/ISJL building, went inside and lit it on fire,” per the affidavit. “Pittman laughed as he told his father what he did and said he finally got them.”

Pittman told the FBI, Jackson Fire Department and Hinds County Sheriff’s Office that he started the fire at what he called “synagogue of Satan.”

If convicted, the suspect faces between five and 20 years in prison, according to the Justice Department.

“This disgusting act of antisemitic violence has no place in our country, and unlike the prior administration, this Department of Justice will not let antisemitism fester and flourish,” stated Pam Bondi, the U.S. attorney general. “I have directed my prosecutors to seek severe penalties for this heinous act and remain deeply committed to protecting Jewish Americans from hatred.”


Met chief defends officers accused of allowing anti-Israel mob to target Jewish restaurant
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has defended the force’s handling of a demonstration outside an Israeli-owned restaurant in Notting Hill.

The Met has been accused of standing by while pro-Palestine protesters targeted the Israeli restaurant. Dozens of protesters, calling themselves the “International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network” gathered outside Miznon restaurant on Friday night.

The Met said officers were deployed to manage the demonstration and ensure both the right to protest and public order, but opponents have accused officers of simply standing by.

Speaking on LBC on Monday morning, Rowley said: “I do take very seriously how Jews in London feel and how the behaviour of protesters influences that. We are taking those issues very, very seriously.”

He also stressed the scale of policing operations. “We are putting more resources into policing protests than ever before,” Rowley told host Nick Ferrari, insisting that officers were balancing the right to lawful protest with protection of the wider community.

Rowley’s comments come after social media footage showed protesters outside the restaurant chanting hate slogans.

The Met said one man was arrested on suspicion of acts intended to stir up religious hatred and that the protest disbanded shortly afterward. Officers were present as part of a plan “to ensure people can exercise their right to protest peacefully, while ensuring that those in the wider community can go about their lives without serious disruption.”


Wikipedia Bans Iskandar323, the Infamous Pro-Hamas Editor Who Weaponized the Platform
In early January, Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) unanimously voted to ban Iskandar323, a prominent member with 49,413 documented edits, of what investigators have termed the "Gang of 40," a coordinated network of editors accused of systematically manipulating content related to the Israel-Palestine conflict

The ban, one of Wikipedia’s most severe punishments, includes an indefinite topic ban barring the editor from any content “related to Israel, Israelis, Jews, Judaism, Antisemitism, Palestine, Palestinians, or anything else that is related to the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.”

According to a new investigation by the outlet NPOV, Iskandar323's editing patterns followed a consistent logic: Jewish historical narratives and instances of antisemitism were systematically challenged and delegitimized through selective editing, while Hamas and other Islamist movements received preferential treatment. The decision marks a rare moment of institutional accountability for Wikipedia, yet critics argue the ban addresses only a symptom of a much larger disease.

Systematic Narrative Manipulation
The editing patterns revealed three primary manipulation strategies:
- Iranian State Violence: Editors systematically downgraded Iranian state atrocities, changing descriptions of the 1988 mass executions from “extrajudicial killings” to actions “carried out by the judiciary,” effectively removing the unlawful characterization of these human rights violations.
- Islamic Terrorism and Hamas: Content was softened to minimize terrorist activities, describing Hamas attacks as “resistance against Israel” and removing references to the group’s 1988 charter containing antisemitic and genocidal language. An entire section documenting the persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt was deleted.
- Jewish Identity and Antisemitism: Historical Jewish claims were undermined through strategic renaming, such as changing “Hellenistic Judea” to “Hellenistic Palestine,” imposing later nomenclature on earlier historical periods. Content about antisemitism in the British Labour Party was diluted by shifting focus to procedural disputes rather than antisemitic conduct itself.

A Coordinated Campaign
The scale of the manipulation has shocked observers. Research by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) identified at least 30 editors who appear to coordinate their activities in violation of Wikipedia’s policies. These editors were twice as active as comparable groups, making over 71,855 edits within an hour of each other on the same pages over the past decade. Their communication patterns were equally suspicious, exchanging messages 168 times more frequently than random Wikipedia editors.

Edit activity spiked among bad-faith editors following October 7, 2023, while other Wikipedia editor groups showed minimal change, revealing a coordinated response to the conflict.

Evidence suggests some coordination occurred off-platform through Discord channels, particularly within a group called “Tech for Palestine.” The time intervals between edits, often mere minutes apart, suggest organized efforts that Wikipedia’s decentralized oversight struggled to detect.
One War, Three Platforms, Three Realities: How Telegram, X, and Reddit Shape Conflict Narratives
More than two years after the October 7th massacre and ensuing Hamas-Israel War, online attention hasn’t faded—it has transformed. A new computational study analyzing over 2.3 million social media posts reveals that conflict discourse doesn’t decay; it reactivates in intense bursts, sustaining emotional engagement long after traditional news cycles move on.

The finding challenges assumptions about “compassion fatigue” and suggests something more fundamental: different platforms don’t just host the same conversation—they create distinct information environments where the same war is experienced, narrated, and emotionally processed in fundamentally different ways.

Researchers Despoina Antonakaki (Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas, Greece) and Sotiris Ioannidis (Technical University of Crete) analyzed 187,033 Telegram messages, 2.1 million Reddit comments, and 2,001 tweets spanning 2023-2025. The study was submitted to arXiv, an open-access preprint repository, and has not yet undergone formal peer review.

Using advanced natural language processing techniques, including BERTopic topic modeling and sentiment analysis, they tracked what people discussed, how conversations evolved, and which emotions dominated discourse. BERTopic automatically groups large text collections into meaningful themes by considering the context and meaning of words rather than just their frequency.

Attention Doesn’t Fade—It Clusters
The study’s starkest finding: roughly 67% of all messages appeared during just 15% of the study period. Rather than steady attention or gradual decline, discourse concentrates in explosive bursts around major events.

This creates what researchers call a “persistence paradox.” Four major spikes—exceeding 200% of baseline activity—corresponded to the October 7 attacks, the Al-Shifa Hospital incident (November 2023), the Rafah invasion (May 2024), and the Al-Nasr Hospital bombing (September 2025). The September 2025 event generated activity comparable to the initial attacks nearly two years earlier.

“Contrary to typical ‘attention decay’ models that predict declining online engagement over time, our data shows sustained and even increasing discourse intensity,” the authors write.

Three Platforms, Three Roles
The study’s central insight concerns platform specialization. Telegram, X (formerly Twitter), and Reddit don’t mirror the same conversation—they perform distinct functions in what researchers call a “digital conflict ecosystem.”

- Telegram functions as the Documentation Hub—an “immediacy-driven eyewitness medium” where minimal moderation and encryption enable raw, graphic, real-time documentation that other platforms prohibit.
- X operates as the Amplification Network—using viral mechanics and algorithms to rapidly disseminate “emotionally charged frames” to global audiences, prioritizing speed and emotional mobilization.
- Reddit serves as the Analysis Engine—where threading and voting systems create “extended analytical discussions that process and contextualize information from other platforms,” hosting more reflective debate. “Telegram is generative, Twitter amplificatory, and Reddit contextualizing,” the researchers conclude.
‘Repugnant’ UC Davis still paying anti-Israel prof who hasn’t taught in two years, rabbi says
University of California, Davis suspended a professor, who posted anti-Israel messages on social media a few days after Oct. 7, “without pay for one academic quarter at the end of 2025,” according to Bill Kisliuk, manager of strategic and critical communications at the public school.

Kisliuk didn’t name the professor—who is widely identified as Jemma DeCristo, assistant professor of American studies—but he responded to JNS queries that included DeCristo’s name without correcting JNS and sharing quotes about the “faculty member.”

“The professor has not taught since spring 2023,” he told JNS. “The period when the professor was suspended is the only period that pay has been withheld.” He added that “the faculty member is not currently teaching” and “remains with the university.”

That appears to mean that the public university has paid DeCristo for two years during which time the professor hasn’t taught. JNS asked the university if that is the case.

The public school responded broadly about faculty roles. “Faculty responsibilities, in addition to teaching, include scholarship and research, as well as work on behalf of departmental and university committees,” Kisliuk said.

Rabbi Ben Herman, senior rabbi of Mosaic Law Congregation, a Conservative synagogue in Sacramento, told JNS that it’s “repugnant” that DeCristo has been paid for the two years and “was only given a slap on the wrist.” (DeCristo earns $116,800 annually, per Los Angeles Times reporting in January 2025.)

“The proof is in the pudding as to why many Jewish students do not feel safe at UC Davis,” he told JNS.

The professor has deleted the social media post, which stated, in part, that “Zionist journalists” should “fear us.”

DeCristo added in the since-deleted October 2023 post that “we have easy access” to “all these Zionist journalists, who spread propaganda and misinformation.” The professor wrote that the journalists have “addresses” and “kids in school” and added, in a post with knife, axe and blood drop emojis, that “they can fear their bosses, but they should fear us more.”


Hadassah Medical Center ranks among world’s leading hospitals for scientific research
The Hadassah Medical Organization has been named Israel’s top hospital for scientific output, according to Nature Index, which also places Hadassah among the top 200 hospitals worldwide.

The Nature Index tracks primary research published in 145 high‑impact natural and health science journals selected by an independent panel of researchers. For the 2024–2025 period, Hadassah outpaced all other Israeli hospitals in scientific publications across a range of fields, including clinical sciences (patient‑centered medicine), oncology and carcinogenesis, microbiology, genetics, cardiovascular medicine and hematology.

Eyal Mishani, PhD, head of Hadassah’s Research and Development Division, explained how the ranking is determined. “Nature ranked the hospitals based on impact factors such as what they’ve published, the number of times an article was cited and how many online visits each received — all academic parameters that facilitate an assessment of a hospital’s scientific work.”

Mishani, who has led the organization’s research efforts for more than 20 years, credited the institution’s success to its researchers, who “focus on the ‘hottest’ areas of research in every sphere of medicine you can think of.”

Yoram Weiss, MD, chief executive of the Hadassah Medical Organization, emphasized the role of the hospital’s parent body, Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America, and its donors. “Without the support of Hadassah and forward‑thinking philanthropists who understand the importance of the work we’re doing, we wouldn’t have been able to achieve what we have or to establish research centers that are changing the face of medicine,” Weiss said.




Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

    
 

 



AddToAny

Printfriendly

EoZTV Podcast

Podcast URL

Subscribe in podnovaSubscribe with FeedlyAdd to netvibes
addtomyyahoo4Subscribe with SubToMe

search eoz

comments

Speaking

Speaking

translate

E-Book

For $18 donation








Sample Text

EoZ's Most Popular Posts in recent years

Search2

Hasbys!

Hasbys!

2019 Nobel Peace Prize nominee

Elder of Ziyon - حـكـيـم صـهـيـون



This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

Donate!

Donate to fight for Israel!

Monthly subscription:
Payment options


One time donation:

Follow EoZ on Twitter!

Interesting Blogs

Show All

Blog Archive

Copyright © Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News | Powered by Blogger
Blogger Templates