Monday, February 02, 2026

02/02 Links Pt1: This ayatollah fanclub heaps shame on London; Anti-Israel, former president of Chile nominated to be next UN secretary-general; 6,000 Miles of Context: Why the U.S. Comparison Collapses in Gaza

From Ian:

Brendan O'Neill: This ayatollah fanclub heaps shame on London
We need to grapple with the seriousness of what happened in London on Saturday. Mobs of people sided with Islamist fanaticism. They cosied up to the killers of women. They aligned themselves, publicly and proudly, with the venal ayatollah classes who are content to lay waste to thousands of lives if it will help them to preserve their Koranic power. Rarely has the moral decay of the protesting classes been so starkly on display – a psychotic religious regime massacres thousands and these people either say, ‘But what about Israel?!’ – or worse, ‘Good’.

Saturday’s march was a funeral for moral decency. No one of good conscience, no one of sound moral standing, can be the least bit confused as to what side to take in Iran. This is a theocracy that savagely punishes women for living freely, and which ruthlessly locks up dissenters and apostates, and which has brazenly slain thousands for daring to desire freedom. If you look at this and think to yourself, ‘It’s complicated’, then you have fully vacated the realm of reason. You have made your peace with barbarism.

Some say the Gazaholics of the activist class are being hypocritical. These people weep for the dead of Gaza but shrug their shoulders over the dead of Iran. I disagree. There’s moral consistency here. For in both their anti-Israel fury and their nonchalance over the butchery in Iran, these people are siding with the carnival of bloody reaction that is Islamist fanaticism. Their 7 October apologism and their shameful silence on the Iranian massacres spring from the same dark, warped source – a creepy sympathy for Islamism, a belief that this religious mania represents some kind of resistance to the West, to Israel, to capitalism, to modernity. Their anger over the war in Gaza and their coolness over the mass murder in Iran are both grim proof of the moral rot of identitarianism.

For how much longer will we surrender our streets to the Israel haters and the ayatollah fanclub? To the intifada-cheering middle classes and the mullah-loving Islamists? To those who think the Jewish nation fighting back against its invaders is ‘genocide’ but the mass murder of protesters by tooled-up theocrats is nothing to get worked up about? Mass solidarity with Iranians is what we need right now. The only time I want to see the flag of the Islamic Republic on the streets of London is in the minutes before someone sets it on fire.
Anti-Israel, former president of Chile nominated to be next UN secretary-general
Backed by Mexico and Brazil, Gabriel Boric, Chile’s outgoing president, nominated former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet, a harsh critic of the Jewish state, to be the next secretary-general of the United Nations.

Boric, who is also anti-Israel, made the announcement on Monday. José Antonio Kast, a right-wing politician who is set to assume the Chilean presidency next month, would be unlikely to nominate Bachelet, 74, for the role.

Bachelet, who was Brazil’s president twice—from 2006-10 and 2014-18—was the first head of U.N. Women and served as U.N. high commissioner for human rights.

She was a frequent critic of the Jewish state, which broke ties with her office in 2020 over her decision to implement a U.N. Human Rights Council resolution mandating the publication of a blacklist of companies engaged in business in Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem.

According to U.N. Watch, Bachelet issued 14 comments about Israel, more than any democratic country. She made the same number of statements about Syria and fewer about Iran, according to the watchdog.

Bachelet used her final hours in office to decry Israel over its denial of visas to her staff. She ignored antisemitic comments made by a member of the Human Rights Council’s commission of inquiry on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for which the commissioner later apologized.
New York Times Misleads Readers on Gaza Death Toll
Edward Wong, who covers the State Department for the New York Times, has a news article in the Feb. 2 newspaper that says "the Israeli military has killed about 70,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to statistics from the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants."

That’s more or less standard Times language. It’s problematic in its own right, failing to disclose that the health ministry is part of the Hamas-controlled Gaza government, and using the term "combatants" instead of "Hamas terrorists."

What really caught my eye, though, was the new language in the following paragraph. It says, "A senior Israeli security official told Israeli journalists that was an accurate number."

This is scraping the bottom, even by the Times’s own very low standards—relying on what an anonymous source supposedly told some other journalists. For verification, the online version of the Times article links not to anything written by "Israeli journalists" but rather a piece in the far-left British newspaper the Guardian by a former visiting scholar of Chinese literature at Peking University who "also worked in Cuba for a year," Emma Graham-Harrison. That Guardian article relies largely on the far-left Israeli newspaper Haaretz, whose own published articles on the topic say nothing about "a senior Israeli security official." The Guardian also links to an article from the Times of Israel’s Emanuel Fabian, who mentions an anonymous "senior Israeli military official."

Even the Times’s "senior security official" is a vague term and could apply to a variety of figures, including political rivals of the current Israeli prime minister and disgruntled former military officials who have been ousted.

Meanwhile, the official Israel Defense Forces international spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani, posted on Jan. 30 to debunk the false claim that the IDF has accepted the casualty figures. "The IDF clarifies that the details published do not reflect official IDF data," Shoshani said. "Any publication or report on this matter will be released through official and orderly channels." The Times didn’t share that denial with its readers.


6,000 Miles of Context: Why the U.S. Comparison Collapses in Gaza
Andy Milburn’s (@andymilburn8) article, “Gaza and the Conduct of Urban War: Civilian Harm, Risk, and Responsibility,” published in War on the Rocks (@WarOnTheRocks), argues that Israel’s conduct in Gaza departed sharply from U.S. urban warfare practices, systematically shifting risk from Israeli forces onto civilians and deprioritizing civilian protection. This essay challenges that framework and the assumptions underlying it.

Before taking any long analysis of the Gaza war seriously, there is a basic credibility test: does the author even acknowledge the defining realities of the battlefield? On that test, the argument fails immediately. Across 3,000 words assessing urban warfare in Gaza, the word “tunnel” never appears! There is no reference to Hamas’s tunnel network, the largest and most sophisticated subterranean military system ever constructed beneath civilian infrastructure, estimated at over 500 miles in length and accessed by 5,700 shafts.

This tunnel system is not peripheral to the conflict; it constitutes the core urban military environment in which the war has been fought and represents a challenge without precedent. To exclude it is to remove Hamas’s primary method of warfare from the analysis, fatally distorting any assessment of distinction, proportionality, risk, and precautions in attack.

This stunning erasure is not limited to tunnels. The analysis does not mention hostages, a central feature of the war and a key driver of Israel’s military necessity and operational urgency. October 7 is not referenced even in passing—imagine a 3,000-word essay about the American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 with no mention of 9/11—nor Hamas’s explicit commitment to repeat those atrocities . The word “rocket” is absent, despite more than 13,000 fired from Gaza at Israeli cities and civilians over the past year. By ignoring the mass hostage-taking, the sustained rocket campaign that forced millions of Israelis into bomb shelters, and the ongoing threat of renewed massacres, the author excludes key factors that define military necessity. These are not background details but central drivers of the conflict that render comparisons to U.S. operations in Iraq fundamentally flawed.

Gaza is not merely a dense urban enclave where militants operate among civilians, as in Mosul or Fallujah. It is a civilian landscape deliberately engineered over seventeen years of Hamas rule into a fortified battlespace without modern precedent. Hamas embedded command centers beneath hospitals, rocket launchers in schools, and weapons caches inside homes and mosques. Deep, multi-story tunnel networks run beneath entire neighborhoods, with thousands of access shafts hidden inside family apartments, often literally inside children’s bedrooms. Tens of thousands of IEDs and booby traps were planted throughout the urban terrain (nearly 100,000 according to one report), also left unmentioned. No other fighting force in history has weaponized civilian living space on this scale while openly boasting that civilian sacrifice serves its war aims. The IDF also confronted a combined Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad force numbering over 47,000 in seven cities, dwarfing enemy forces in Mosul and Fallujah.


French judges issue arrest warrants for French-Israeli activists accused of 'genocide' complicity
French judges have issued arrest summons for two French-Israeli activists, accusing them of "complicity in genocide" and "incitement to genocide," after they were involved in protests against the transfer of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, French media outlets reported on Monday.

One of the activists was identified as Nili Kupfer-Naouri, a French-Israeli lawyer and the founder of the charity Israel Is Forever, which states its mission as the "mobilization of French-speaking Zionist force," according to French newspaper Le Monde.

The other was Rachel Tuito, spokesperson for the organization Tzav 9, which campaigns against sending humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.

Allegedly, the two women were involved in blocking aid trucks at the Nitzana and Kerem Shalom border crossings at various points throughout 2024 and 2025. They also encouraged others to join the protests and made public statements that allegedly dehumanized the residents of the Gaza Strip.
German-Israeli IDF sniper sues Guardian, German media after being falsely named as a war criminal
A German-Israeli IDF sniper has taken legal action against The Guardian newspaper and several German papers for falsely identifying him and publishing his photo in an article about war crimes.

In 2025, The Guardian ran an article about an IDF sniper named C., in which he admitted to having carried out, alongside his sniper partner, killings of unarmed civilians in November 2023.

The Guardian worked on the investigation for five-months alongside Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ) and Paper Trail Media, Der Spiegel, and ZDF.

C., however, had never intended for the comments to become public. He had been approached by a Hebrew speaker who claimed he wanted to write about the squad’s experiences and to commemorate fallen soldiers. However, Palestinian journalist and activist Younis Tirawi posted extracts of the interview online, justifying the decision by saying it was in the public interest, given the scale of civilian killings.


Hamas document reveals secret plan to maintain control of Gaza admin. under NCAG's noses
Hamas plans to continue having administrative control of Gaza, contrary to what the ceasefire agreement establishes, according to a leaked document shared by KAN News on Sunday.

The document outlines how officials affiliated with Hamas must act before the establishment of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), including dos and don'ts to avoid raising suspicions with the new government.

The document also states that NCAG members can't be attacked, while activities must continue "as if nothing had changed."

"No personal contact should be made, or information and news should be passed on to the NCAG, outside of the relevant channels," the document stated.

The document shared on Sunday was reportedly a secret memo only to be seen by Hamas officials inside Gaza, KAN explained.
US pick to govern Gaza called Israel ‘colonialist’ implant
Ali Shaath, who has been tasked to head the Gaza administration reconstruction of the Strip, was praised by the White House last month as “a widely respected technocratic leader.” But an Israeli watchdog group said Shaath shares the radical anti-Israel ideology one would expect from a former Palestinian Authority functionary.

“[H]is ideology is taken directly from the Palestinian Authority’s playbook of hate and terror promotion,” said Palestinian Media Watch in a statement on Sunday.

Before U.S. President Donald Trump tapped Shaath to lead the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), Shaath shared his views about Israel and terrorism in an April 2025 podcast, as revealed by PMW.

In the YouTube interview, Shaath declared Israel a Western colonial project. “This colonialist [Israel], who was planted by America and Western Europe … , they planted it [Israel] in Palestine since the Balfour Promise [i.e., Declaration].”

During the interview, he wouldn’t refer to Israel by its name, calling it “the occupation,” effectively denying its right to exist. In the P.A. lexicon, PMW pointed out, all of Israel is an “occupation,” and all Israeli cities are “settlements.”

Itamar Marcus, founder and director of Palestinian Media Watch, told JNS that “the American attempt to create a future for Gazans is completely dependent on the quality of the people who will rule Gaza.

“The Americans must tell the leaders that they have to have the honesty and confidence to tell Palestinians what will be for them a difficult truth: Jews are indigenous to the land with thousands of years of history, and therefore Israel has a right to exist. If the Palestinian leaders can’t even say this, there is no point in wasting time on this experiment,” he said.

“If Ali Shaath was just parroting P.A. ideology when he said these words, now is the time for him to apologize and tell Palestinians the truth. If he actually believes them, Trump must replace him before he even starts,” Marcus said.
New NCAG logo features PA emblem, Israel denies cooperation
The National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) unveiled a new logo in a press release on Monday announcing the official reopening of the Rafah Crossing.

The logo is nearly identical to the emblem previously used by the Palestinian Authority and the PLO: it features an eagle with a shield the colors of the Palestinian flag on its chest, and a banner in its talons. In previous iterations, the banner read "Palestine" in Arabic, but the NCAG version reads "NCAG" instead.

NCAG's previous logo featured a stylized bird in Palestinian flag colors rising from a city skyline.


Israel orders Doctors without Borders out of Gaza after broken pledge
Chikli noted that MSF coordinates with the Gazan Ministry of Health, run by Hamas, and the NGO’s statements are published in tandem with similar statements from Hamas sources in the Strip.

This pattern repeated itself with MSF’s announcement that it would not share its staff lists. COGAT, the Israel Defense Ministry’s Coordinator for Government Activities in the Territories unit, tweeted on Sunday:

“Interestingly, on the same day that MSF announced they will not be sharing the lists of local employees after all, Hamas released a statement calling for organizations to not share local employee information lists. Coincidence?”

Although it defines itself as an “international, independent, medical humanitarian organization,” MSF is highly controversial. Israeli watchdog group NGO Monitor reported that MSF “consistently abuses its status as a humanitarian organization to launch venomous anti-Israel political campaigns.”

In September 2025, two Hamas documents found by Israeli forces in Gaza showed that Doctors without Borders (along with the International Committee of the Red Cross) were aware of the presence of Hamas in the Gaza Strip’s medical facilities despite obfuscating or outright denying it publicly.

At the same time that MSF ignored Hamas’s use of homes, schools and medical facilities for terrorist attacks, the group accused Israel of “genocide,” “collective punishment,” “apartheid,” “indiscriminate bombings” and “wholesale massacres,” NGO Monitor reported.

In December 2023, former MSF Secretary General Alain Destexhe said in a report that MSF’s communications show a “systematic bias in favor of Hamas and hostility to Israel,” as do its employees.

“Despite being subject to the MSF Charter, a significant proportion of its staff seem to share the Hamas point of view and support the terrorist attacks of 7 October,” said Destexhe.

Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor, told JNS: “MSF has gotten away with using its massive annual budget ($2.4 billion) and the influence this buys to promote antisemitic propaganda like [accusing Israel of] genocide, and to avoid accountability for links to Hamas.

“But attempts to use bullying tactics through journalists and European political allies to avoid vital Israeli counterterror registration have failed. Their moral medical facade has been exposed for all to see,” he said.


IDF kills Hezbollah terrorist in Lebanon
The Israel Defense Forces on Monday targeted and killed a Hezbollah terrorist near Ansariyah in southwestern Lebanon “in response to Hezbollah’s repeated violations of the ceasefire understandings,” the military said.

The IDF also on Monday struck several Hezbollah weapons storage facilities in Southern Lebanon “in order to prevent reestablishment attempts of the terrorist organization.” The military noted that one of facilities was located in the heart of a civilian area, calling it “another example of Hezbollah’s cynical use of Lebanese civilians as human shields, and continued operations from within civilian infrastructure.”

On Sunday, the IDF struck in the Harouf area in Southern Lebanon, killing terrorist Ali al-Hadi Mustafa al-Haqqani, a senior officer in Hezbollah’s aerial array who had recently been involved in efforts to rehabilitate “military” infrastructure belonging to the Iranian-backed terrorist organization.

In an additional strike carried out on Monday, the IDF killed a terrorist involved in attempts to rehabilitate Hezbollah “military” infrastructure, again in the Ansariyah area.

Also on Sunday, the IDF struck and killed Ali Dawoud Amich, who served as a division head in Hezbollah’s engineering department, the military said.

Amich was involved in attempts to rehabilitate the Iranian terror proxy’s infrastructure in the Al-Dweir area in Southern Lebanon and advance attacks against Israeli troops, according to the IDF.


Has the West handed Iran's regime its survival?
Now Washington and Tehran are talking. Or ready to talk. Or talking about talking. But diplomatic talks for what exactly? Is this monstrous regime going to step down through negotiations? We all know the answer to that.

And here is the cruel part. Trump did not just fail to deliver on his promise. His inaction may have handed the regime exactly what it needed. The protests have been crushed. The internet shutdowns worked. The regime is consolidating. If there was a textbook on how repressive regimes cement their power, this would be the chapter on how the world handed them exactly what they needed.

Recent reporting indicates IDF officials have been in Washington discussing military options. I sincerely hope this piece is out of date by the time you finish reading it. I am happy to be wrong about how this ends.

But if I am not… Jews owe a 2,500-year debt to Cyrus the Great. And right now, we are not paying it.
Trump must not negotiate with Iran unless the regime first meets strict preconditions
Israel’s position has always been unequivocal: zero uranium enrichment, zero heavy-water reactors capable of producing plutonium, and zero fissile material on Iranian soil. Before the nuclear deal, Iran was required to comply with multiple UN Security Council resolutions mandating the dismantlement of all nuclear facilities, removal of all enriched material, a halt to weapons development disguised as academic research, an end to ballistic missile production, and the termination of support for terrorism ,under intrusive international inspections.

If these demands were once considered the end-state of negotiations, today they must be the entry condition. Talks without prior implementation of these measures would once again hand Iran a strategic victory.

The regime will not accept such conditions unless it is convinced that the military option, prepared by the United States in close coordination with Israel, is real and imminent, and even being partly executed before entering negotiations. The coordination between Israel and the US must deepen. A united front strengthens deterrence, improves operational readiness, and maximizes the chances of success should force be required.

The lesson of 2015 is unmistakable: half-measures fail, bad agreements collapse, and weak demands embolden tyrants. There is no longer any room for appeasement, enrichment, missile expansion, or terror sponsorship.

The only viable path forward is complete dismantlement, up front, maybe even after a military strike. Anything less guarantees failure. If Iran refuses, the alternative must be pursued using full capacity of US power. The Iranian people, suffering under a corrupt and violent regime, deserve nothing less.

Brig. Gen. (res.) Jacob Nagel is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a professor at the Technion. He served as Israel’s National Security Advisor and acting head of the National Security Council
Iran fears US strike could break Islamic regime's grip on power by reigniting protests, sources say
Iran’s leadership is increasingly worried a US strike could break its grip on power by driving an already enraged public back onto the streets, following a bloody crackdown on anti-government protests, according to six current and former officials.

In high-level meetings, officials told Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that public anger over last month's crackdown, the bloodiest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, has reached a point where fear is no longer a deterrent, four current officials briefed on the discussions said.

The officials said Khamenei was told that many Iranians were prepared to confront security forces again and that external pressure, such as a limited US strike, could embolden them and inflict irreparable damage to the political establishment.

One of the officials told Reuters that Iran's enemies were seeking more protests so as to bring the Islamic Republic to an end, and "unfortunately," there would be more violence if an uprising took place.

"An attack combined with demonstrations by angry people could lead to a collapse (of the ruling system). That is the main concern among the top officials, and that is what our enemies want," said the official, who, like the other officials contacted for this story, declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.

The reported remarks are significant because they suggest private misgivings inside the leadership at odds with Tehran’s defiant public stance towards the protesters and the US.

The sources declined to say how Khamenei responded. Iran's Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on this account of the meetings.

Multiple sources told Reuters last week that US President Donald Trump is weighing options against Iran that include targeted strikes on security forces and leaders to inspire protesters, even as Israeli and Arab officials said air power alone would not topple the clerical rulers.
Turkey floats hosting Iran’s enriched uranium in renewed mediation push
Turkey is considering a proposal to host Iran’s enriched uranium as part of renewed efforts to mediate between Tehran and the United States, according to reports citing Turkish officials. A senior Turkish official told Haaretz that Ankara may suggest transferring Iran’s enriched uranium, including roughly 440 kilograms enriched to 60 percent, to Turkey, with a guarantee that the material would not be returned to Iran. The idea is being raised amid discussions over potential new negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program.

Turkey has previously been involved in similar arrangements. In 2010, Turkey, Brazil and Iran signed an agreement under which Iran was to ship 1,200 kilograms of uranium enriched to 3.67 percent to Turkey in exchange for nuclear fuel rods for research purposes. That deal was later scrapped following opposition from leading members of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

In late 2015, as part of the nuclear agreement, Russia took possession of about 11,000 kilograms of low-enriched Iranian uranium. More recently, Moscow has offered to store Iran’s remaining enriched uranium if a new agreement is reached.

According to the Turkish official, Ankara believes it could be seen by Washington as a more reliable custodian than Russia, citing Turkey’s close ties with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and former U.S. President Donald Trump.


Ask Haviv Anything: Episode 86: Alliances and rivalries in a new Middle East, with Dan Schueftan
The inimitable Prof. Dan Schueftan joins Haviv to break down a "profoundly dangerous" turn in the Middle East. With Saudi Arabia shifting away from its alliance with Israel and the Emirates and Turkey consolidating a "puppet state" in Syria, the regional map is being redrawn. Schueftan warns that the "moderate axis" has blinked, leaving Israel to face a sophisticated Turkish adversary that is ideologically rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood and strategically positioned to disrupt Israeli interests from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea.

But despite these threats, Prof. Schueftan offers a powerful and much-needed reality check: Israel has never been stronger. Jews are the only people in the region who don't seem to grasp its power. Israel is currently in its best strategic position in history -- a 21st-century military and technological power that has outlasted every previous attempt at its destruction.

Chapters
00:00 The Current State of Middle Eastern Politics
12:15 The Role of Turkey in Regional Dynamics
39:57 Israel's Strength and Historical Context
48:39 The Strength of Democracy and Society
52:09 The Complexity of Arab Democracy
53:01 Navigating Regional Power Dynamics
58:09 Lessons from Historical Conflicts
01:04:07 Israel's Strategic Positioning
01:11:50 Facing Future Challenges Together


Turkey, Iran, and the difference between President Trump and President Obama

Will Iran strike a deal? Former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. discusses with Hugh

Call Me Back: What's Trump's plan with Iran, and beyond? - with Niall Ferguson
Is there a deeper strategy underlying President Trump’s actions?

Dan is joined by historian, Free Press columnist, CBS contributor, and Senior Fellow at Hoover Institution Sir Niall Ferguson to connect the dots on how President Trump is using leverage, unpredictability, and selective force across Iran, Venezuela, Europe, and beyond. They discuss why a counter revolution in Iran has little chance without foreign intervention, what “regime alteration” means, whether we're still living through Cold War II, and why Europe keeps taking the bait.

In this episode…
Iran strike timing, targets, and endgame
“Regime alteration” vs. regime change
Why Iran’s protests failed and fear works
Turkey’s mediation and Erdoğan’s ambitions
Saudi pressure and regional deterrence logic
Cold War II and the authoritarian axis
Davos, Europe’s weakness, and the Greenland distraction
MAGA tensions, Israel, deterrence, and Taiwan


She Was Blacklisted from Hollywood for Telling the Truth — But She WON'T Back Down
Fresh off a 36-hour journey from Washington DC to Sydney, Erin Molan breaks down what’s really happening behind the scenes as tensions with Iran escalate — and why this moment may be when, not if.

From off-the-record conversations in DC, to the celebrity lies being spewed at the Grammys 2026, to the fan feedback critisizing The Erin Molan Show — this episode pulls no punches.

Then, Erin is joined by Eve Barlow, a former Hollywood pop-culture journalist who was blacklisted for refusing to stay silent. Together, they unpack and expose the moral collapse of Western feminism, media hypocrisy, and why some voices are punished for telling uncomfortable truths.

This is Episode 93 of The Erin Molan Show.

CHAPTERS / TIMESTAMPS
00:00 – Welcome back + 36 hours of travel later
01:52 – Iran is heating up: has Trump made his decision?
04:14 – Iran’s “foreign minister,” IRGC chants & media absurdity
06:33 – The “Gaza doctor” exposed & mainstream media credibility
09:00 – U.S. National Defense Strategy: China, Iran & Israel explained
13:34 – Melania documentary premiere chaos in Washington DC
16:24 – Bad Bunny, the Grammys & the ICE misinformation playbook
19:44 – Eve Barlow interview: Hollywood blacklists & moral cowardice
53:00 – Erin’s near-death awkward encounter with Kid Rock
57:00 – Fan feedback, clickbait accusations & Erin’s response




Legislators, Jewish groups condemn anti-Israel rally in Philly calling for ‘martyrdom’
An anti-Israel demonstration in Philadelphia on Sunday drew swift condemnation from local Jewish organizations and state legislators for what they described as violent extremism and antisemitic rhetoric.

The rally, organized by the Philly Palestine Coalition, took place in Rittenhouse Square in the heart of Center City. It was advertised with the slogan “Abu Obeida lives,” a reference to Hudahaifa Kahlout, the Hamas spokesperson killed by the Israel Defense Forces in August.

According to a joint statement from the Philadelphia chapters of the Jewish Federation, Anti-Defamation League and American Jewish Committee, the rally included chants calling for an “intifada,” speakers calling to “keep the Zionist enemy in fear,” individuals openly displaying Hamas flags and effigies of Israeli soldiers depicted in nooses.

One speaker, according to news reports, stated that “martyrdom is a commitment, a principle. It gives life to the movement and carries it forward … our task is to identify tangible, precise ways to attack the genocidal Zionist enemy and actually f**king attack.”

“This was not a metaphor or abstract political speech,” read the statement from the Jewish agencies. “It was explicit incitement for violence.”

“No matter what one thinks of the war in Gaza, nothing justifies celebrating terrorism, threatening violence or terrorizing communities here at home,” it continued. “When extremist rhetoric and symbols are normalized in public spaces, they embolden hatred and undermine the safety and values of Philadelphia.”




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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.

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