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Tuesday, February 10, 2026

02/10 Links Pt1: Australia must face up to its anti-Semitism crisis; Hamas’s Boasting Indicts the West; Mamdani and the collapse of ‘liberal Zionism’; What Did You Expect, Starmer?

From Ian:

Hamas’s Boasting Indicts the West
Oct. 7, 2023, displayed something different. Far from hiding its brutality, Hamas advertised it, filming and broadcasting sadistic cruelty. It touted the torture and execution of Israeli women and children as a great moral accomplishment, using the killing as a recruitment tool.

Recall the enthusiastic tone of that young man who called his parents from the phone of an Israeli woman he had just murdered, imploring his mother and father to open up WhatsApp. “Look how many I killed with my own hands. Your son killed Jews!” he told his father. His parents were overjoyed. “My son, God bless you,“ his father said. “I wish I was with you,” his mother added.

Rather than a coverup, this was a media event.

What explains the difference between Hitler and Stalin, who denied their atrocities, and Hamas? Could it be that Hamas knew that many in its Western audience, unlike in Hitler’s and Stalin’s time, would celebrate its crimes as noble resistance? If so, Hamas’s openness indicts our own culture or, at least, its intellectuals.

Within days after Oct. 7, American campuses exploded with anti-Zionist and antisemitic rhetoric. Almost immediately, more than 30 Harvard student groups endorsed Hamas’s actions as justified. University presidents testified that the acceptability of calling for the annihilation of the Jewish people “depends on the context.”

When New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani argues, however implausibly, that the call to “globalize the intifada” is somehow ambiguous, he is at least paying La Rochefoucauld’s tribute to decency. That wasn’t the case at a rally at the Sydney Opera House held two days after the Oct. 7 massacre, when the crowd burned Israeli flags and chanted “Where are the Jews?” On the first night of Hanukkah in 2025, they were at Bondi Beach.

Today’s mass murderers no longer need to hide their crimes from the West’s educated elites, who applaud them. Terrorist boasting testifies to our own moral decline.
Sir Michael Ellis: Israel Thrives While Its Haters Flounder
The mullahs say they have their "fingers on the trigger" and most regional states are rather nervous. Meanwhile, Israel seems to shake it all off and get on with life. One supposes there is nothing like being attacked multiple times over the decades to build resilience. Despite leading a country only the size of Wales, Prime Minister Netanyahu has pointed out that within a decade, Israel's economy will be worth $1 trillion.

While the Iranian regime has been busy murdering protestors by the thousands, haters of Israel prefer to focus their efforts on trying to introduce a boycott of Israeli avocados. At the same time, the Government under Sir Keir Starmer has indefinitely paused a UK trade deal with Israel, thereby doing itself out of business with one of the world's leading high-tech innovators.

Egypt and Israel have recently signed the biggest natural gas deal in Israel's history, worth $35 billion. The Israeli Leviathan gas field will soon supply a substantial proportion of Egypt's energy needs. The UAE has signed a defense contract with Israel worth $2.3 billion for a new, highly sophisticated defense system to protect its civilian and military aircraft. This follows the German parliament approving a $3.5 billion expansion of the Arrow 3 deal with Israel. In total, the deal was valued at $8 billion.

Israel's military, diplomatic, economic and tech strength is extraordinary. But the nation's true strength rests on the happiness, positivity and industry of its people in the face of those who hate them. Israel is one of the world's players. The future bodes well for them. For the haters - not so much.
Australia must face up to its anti-Semitism crisis
This would be a betrayal of Jewish Australians, who this week were reminded once again what a radically different place their country has become to the one in which their parents and grandparents once sought refuge. On Monday, Israeli president Isaac Herzog arrived in Australia for a four-day visit, having been invited over following the Bondi massacre. He was met with enormous counter-protests. Signs were waved depicting Herzog and New South Wales premier Chris Minns – who, with his public displays of solidarity with Jewish Australians, has been an admirable outlier in the Labor Party – as Nazis. Speaking at the Sydney Town Hall, Grace Tame – an activist and former ‘Australian of the Year’ – said Herzog had ‘signed bombs sent to kill innocent civilians’. Nine protesters have been charged for various violent offences, including one man who is alleged to have bitten an officer.

Australia is now a nation that refuses to tolerate the presence of a leader of the world’s only Jewish state, yet at the same time, publicly mourns the death of Hezbollah chief Ismail Haniyeh – a man who dedicated much of his life to killing Jews. To say Australia has a problem with anti-Semitism would be an understatement. This is a full-blown crisis. The protests offered further proof, if any more were needed, of just how necessary it is to hold a royal commission into anti-Semitism.

McCarthy’s call for the commission to also focus on anti-indigenous hatred was not just a blow for Jewish Australians. Many Australians, regardless of background, would also have found her demands curious. There are, of course, small and odious pockets of Australian society where you’ll find racist attitudes towards indigenous Australians. Yet there is no shortage of attention directed at this form of racism, as any recent visitor to Australia could testify.

Great strides have been made towards indigenous advancement. Every public event begins with a Welcome to Country ceremony. More than half of Australia has been returned to indigenous Australians through native title agreements. As McCarthy’s own ministerial title testifies, there are entire government departments dedicated to ‘closing the gap’ between the living standards of indigenous Australians and white Australians. The wrongs visited on indigenous people, from settler violence to the forced integration of the Stolen Generation, were indisputably terrible. But Australia’s recent attempts to atone for them can hardly be faulted.

The royal commission must explore one issue – and one issue only. It must be laser-focussed on the explosion of anti-Semitism in Australia since 7 October 2023. This horrific development has already cost lives. It is the very least Australia’s Jewish community deserves.

Of course, a royal commission won’t bring back Alexander Kleytman, the Holocaust survivor shot multiple times trying to protect his wife on Bondi beach. It won’t bring back 10-year-old Matilda, the youngest victim of that dreadful pogrom. But it might help to prevent a similar evil from happening again. Albanese and the Australian Labor Party must be given no opportunity to worm their way out of it.


Herzog attends Bondi memorial ceremony with Australia’s Albanese, who doesn’t give speech
President Isaac Herzog on Tuesday declared that antisemitism has no place in Australia as he attended a memorial service for the victims of the Bondi Beach terror attack targeting a Jewish event in December.

He attended the event at the Chabad of Bondi alongside Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who did not give a speech.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Albanese only read aloud the names of the victims of the Hanukkah massacre, in which Islamic terrorists killed 15. The newspaper said that the prime minister met privately with the families of the victims afterward.

“What we saw in Bondi, the blood-curdling act of blind hatred, hatred of Jews, hatred of Australian values, simply has no place in this country, or anywhere for that matter,” Herzog said in remarks at the event, according to the president’s office.

As the event was ongoing, a large pro-Palestinian protest was held in central Sydney. Albanese has defended his invitation to Herzog to visit, despite opposition from anti-Israel activists, and has called for calm at the protests.

Albanese came under heavy criticism from Australian Jewry following the attack for not doing enough to fight antisemitism in the country. There has been speculation that the prime minister did not give an address because he was concerned about the reception he might have received in the Chabad center.

Herzog called Albanese “an important world leader,” adding that combating antisemitism “requires broad, serious measures,” and thanked him for “the legislation and initiatives” passed in Australia since the attack, which focused on tighter gun control measures and stronger powers to combat hate speech and extremist groups. An empty chair for Reuven Morrison, who was murdered during the Bondi terror attack, at a memorial service for victims at the Chabad of Bondi, Sydney, Australia, February 10, 2026. (GPO/Maayan Toaf)

“The test will be in their full implementation and in the outcome,” Herzog said.


Anti-Zionist JCA hit by credibility questions after stunt
There is much that can be said about the so-called Jewish Council of Australia (JCA). There is also much that can not be said.

Maybe that’s because - so we hear - any time anyone says anything that the JCA and its leadership doesn’t like, defamation notices fly thick and fast at $10-15k a pop. It’s possible that the JCA has a special rate like the organization’s close friend Randa Abdel-Fattah who celebrated the Oct 7 massacre of Jews but was not so celebratory when she was uninvited to the Adelaide Writers Festival. In fact, she sent out a slew of legal notices at a hefty retail value. To be fair, for all we know she paid wholesale. Or not at all.

The JCA’s reported penchant for gagging others - if true - would be ironic given the positions of JCA’s prominent members - such as Josh Bornstein - on the issue of free speech, at least when it comes to claiming that implementing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism (IHRA) would stifle their free speech to say bad things about Jews who think that a Jewish state should exist.

What we can say is that for an organization that claimed just $122,394 in revenue last year, the JCA sure have a knack at getting a big bang for its buck.

One has to marvel at how $123,000 funded international travel for Sarah Schwartz to an anti-Israel pow-wow in Argentina, trips to London to launch JCA leader Aviva Tuffield’s spin-off org RWAG, trips to Sydney/Melbourne/Canberra by JCA leaders, a designer website and logo, several events at Melbourne’s Wheeler Center’s paid auditorium, social media ads that ordinarily cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Not to mention paying for full page advertisements in The Sydney Morning Herald/The Age at around $60,000 an ad (unless they are getting a Nine newspapers’ mates rates discount - see the Person X substack for more on this issue).

The mind just boggles - BOGGLES - at how the JCA manages to cover all its costs with its measly $122,394 in income.

Perhaps it should set up a “bargain hunter” side-hustle on Instagram called “How to get two million dollars in value from just $122,394”? Without a generous benefactor defraying business expenses, that sort of revenue would barely make a dent in the costs that appear to be racked up by the organization which was set up a few months after the October 7 massacre.

In a late night Instagram rant about the JCA, Elsa Tuet-Rosenberg expressed her own qualms for entirely different reasons. She claimed to be among those “who were part of the original idea” of the JCA and suggested that her ideas had been excluded by the JCA leadership despite her lived experience as a person of color.

For those who don’t know, Elsa made a name for herself as an arch-doxxer of the Jewish creatives WhatsApp members in 2024. Interestingly, that was around about the time that the JCA was set up with its first social media posts coming out in early February 2024. Elsa was also a Loud Jew Collective member along with the JCA’s Sarah Schwartz, Max Kaiser and Aviva Tuffield among other JCA members. The Loud Jew Collective was the antecedent organization to the JCA.

Perhaps Elsa’s most extraordinary comments were that her ideas for the JCA were rejected by the JCA leadership who told her that their ideas “were strategic and correct and essential, that APAN (Australian Palestine Advocacy Network) okay’d it so they’re fine”.

Let’s pause for a moment: Did Elsa say that “APAN okayed it”?

Okay’d what exactly?

Could she possibly have meant that the Australian Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN) run by Nasser Mashni - who praised October 7 and hung out with JCA head/founder Sarah Schwartz in London as well as shared the stage or podcast microphones with her and other JCA leaders such as Max Kaiser more times then can be counted on all our fingers and toes combined - is somehow giving orders to the JCA about how it operates?
Jewish group admits fake names published in anti-Herzog ad
The names of David Slade, managing director of Slade Pharmacies and president of United Israel Appeal Victoria, and his wife Tammie, were both falsely included in the advertisement.

Slade said he was alerted to their names being included in the open letter when an acquaintance sent him a photo of the ad on WhatsApp.

He said the couple did not endorse or authorise their names to be included on the list, and they supported Herzog’s visit to Australia.

“Fabricating support isn’t activism, it is deception,” Slade said.

“It damages trust and damages community cohesion. We are very unhappy about this.” Police have charged nine protesters following the Town Hall demonstration on Monday night.Kate Geraghty

Slade described the inclusion of fake names as a “gross ethical failure” by the Jewish Council of Australia and the newspapers that published the advertisement.

“Spreading falsehoods and lies isn’t the way to go about public discourse,” he said.

“If they (the JCA) had real support they wouldn’t use fake names.”

He questioned how such a mistake could have occurred, describing it as “very distressing” for Jewish Australians.

“If people are putting out an open online petition, targeting an issue causing immense social unrest, they knew full well what they were putting out and its intended purpose and therefore there should have been a system of checks.”
Jewish couple ‘mortified’ after their names featured in anti-Israel propaganda
Slade Pharmacies Managing Director David Slade and his wife were mortified after their names were published on a list condemning Israeli President Herzog’s visit to Australia.

“We woke up to a flurry of messages and phone calls saying that our names had been published in two national newspapers, saying that we were against President Herzog’s visit,” Mr Slade told Sky News host Chris Kenny.

“We were immediately appalled.

“We were mortified, we were horrified, this is a gross ethical failure.”




‘Elitists’ controlling the pro-Palestine narrative
Deputy National Party Leader Kevin Hogan says a lot of the people leading pro-Palestine protests are “elitists”.

Mr Hogan told Sky News Australia that people have to be “very careful” who they decide to align themselves with.

“Some people view this world through simply the oppressed and the oppressors,” he said. Transcript


People ‘sick and tired’ of pro-Palestine protesters occupying Australians streets
NSW Opposition Leader Kellie Sloane says the pro-Palestine protests have “occupied” Sydney streets every week.

Mr Sloane told Sky News Australia that people are “sick and tired” of the protests.

Protesters clashed with NSW police in Sydney CBD after Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s visit.


Sydney pro-Palestine protests were ‘shocking for the Jewish community’
Australian Jewish Association President Robert Gregory joins Sky News host Steve Price to go over the protest clash with police in Sydney.

“We already saw Australia’s own intifada at Bondi Beach and the Jewish community is reeling,” Mr Gregory told Sky News host Mr Price.

“To see those scenes we saw … this is a regime that’s just carried out the massacre of tens of thousands of people, so you can’t say these protesters were protesting for peace, they certainly weren’t peaceful.”


Police sources say protester was ‘trying to bite the officer’ in Herzog rally clash
Sky News Political Editor Andrew Clennell discusses the footage of last night's Sydney protests, which is sparking debate over excessive police force.

“I’ve had several police email me, since I commented on this last hour,” Mr Clennell told Sky News Australia.

“They’re saying to me, ‘Look, he’s trying to bite the leg of the officer’.

“That footage doesn’t look great, and I think there can be debate around excessive force.”




NYPost Editorial: Echoing Hitler, Francesca Albanese exposes UN’s Jew-hating agenda once again
The United Nations is using Francesca Albanese to thumb its nose at the civilized world and advance its Jew-hating agenda.

“We can engage in blatant antisemitism,” it’s basically saying, “and no one can stop us.”

What else can explain why it freely lets its “special rapporteur” for the Palestinian territories side with terrorists and dictators, spread vicious lies and enflame hatred against Jews? Is the United Nations antisemitic?

That’s just what Albanese did (again) Saturday at a forum sponsored by Al Jazeera, the mouthpiece for Mideast terror groups.

Joining her were Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, who backed the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of innocent Israelis, and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, whose government just slaughtered tens of thousands of its own protesting citizens.

Vile tripe from Mashaal and Araghchi is expected; they openly hate Israel, Jews and the West — and openly support terror and deadly brutality.

But the United Nations, and especially its special rapporteur, are supposed to at least maintain a pretense of neutrality.

Albanese didn’t even try: “Humanity” has “a common enemy,” she insisted, in a sick slam of Israel that was anything but neutral.

Her language, by the way, should sound familiar: Jews are the “true enemy” of our world, “the true cause of all suffering,” wrote Adolf Hitler in “Mein Kampf.”

The UN rep has also echoed classic tropes about Jewish control of the world: “The global community” has seen “the challenges that we all face, we who do not control large amounts of financial [capital], algorithms and weapons.”

She ludicrously accused the Israel Defense Force of committing “kidnap, torture, and rape.”

Pure projection: That’s what her co-panelist’s group, Hamas, did to Israelis.


The Lessons of Bondi Beach: Terrorism, Hatred and the Law
Jonathan Hall KC, Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation and Independent Reviewer of State Threats Legislation

The speech will be followed by a Q&A with the audience.




UKLFI: The Abraham Accords - Current Status and Future Prospects (webinar)
This is a recording of a UKLFI Charitable Trust webinar with Fleur Hassan-Nahoum and Natasha Hausdorff held on 10 February 2026.

Hamas documents indicate that a major objective of its attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 was to derail negotiations for Saudi Arabia to join the Abraham Accords between Israel and moderate Muslim states. Hamas leaders feared that these negotiations were about to reach a successful conclusion, that other Muslim states would follow the Saudis, and that the Palestinian cause would then be sidelined.

The ensuing war appears to have halted progress in the negotiations with Saudi Arabia, but agreements with the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco have remained in force, while Kazakhstan and Somaliland have recently agreed to join the Accords.

In this webinar Fleur Hassan-Nahoum and Natasha Hausdorff discuss the current state and future prospects of the Abraham Accords.

Fleur Hassan-Nahoum currently serves as Israel’s Special Envoy for Trade and Innovation. She is a Senior Fellow of the Misgav Institute for National Security and hosts “The Quad” current affairs programme on JNS TV.

She co-founded the UAE-Israel Business Council in 2020 and organised the inaugural meeting of the Gulf-Israel Women’s Forum. She was a Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem between 2018 and 2024.

Fleur grew up in Gibraltar, read law at Kings College London and qualified as a barrister in England and Wales. She also holds an MA from the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, in Conflict Research Management and Resolution.

Natasha Hausdorff is a barrister at 6 Pump Court Chambers and a frequent speaker on International Law. She has a law degree from Oxford University, qualified as a solicitor at Skadden, and subsequently gained an LLM from Tel Aviv University, focussing on public international law and the law of armed conflict. She clerked for Miriam Naor, President of Israel's Supreme Court, and was a fellow at Columbia Law School's National Security programme. Natasha is legal director of UKLFI Charitable Trust.

Natasha’s work explaining legal issues relating to Israel has been recognised by the American Jewish Committee’s award for moral courage and by the honour of lighting one of the torches on Har Herzl to mark Israel’s Independence Day.


Call me Back Podcast: ISRAEL VOTES: The Political Landscape - with Nadav Eyal and Amit Segal
What will Israelis really be voting on in the first election since October 7?

Today we are launching Israel Votes, a new Call me Back and Ark Media series that will be your hub for unpacking the Israeli election. Ark Media contributors Amit Segal and Nadav Eyal join Dan to set the stage, exploring how October 7, the war, coalition politics, deep social divides, and the Netanyahu brand will all play a role in the upcoming vote, which many Israelis feel may determine the character and future of the Jewish state.

In this episode:
06:45 - Why this election feels different from every Israeli election before it
08:55 - Netanyahu’s coalition problem and the ultra-Orthodox question
11:55 - How October 7 changed the political map and voter psychology
16:40 - Is this election a referendum on the past or a vote about the future?
21:00 - What Israel’s demographic and political trends mean for the outcome
26:45 - The opposition’s strategy and the Bennett factor


Erin Molan: Australian Jews Are Preparing to Leave — That Should Terrify Everyone
In this special episode of The Erin Molan Show, Erin delivers a powerful deep dive into the explosion of antisemitism in Australia, the fallout from the Bondi terrorist attack, and the disturbing reality that many Jewish Australians are now preparing exit plans — or at least a “Plan B.”

Following the visit of Israeli President Isaac Herzog and the protests that erupted in response, Erin examines what these moments reveal about leadership, social cohesion, radical extremism, and whether Australia is running out of time to turn back.

Joining Erin is Marnie Perlstein, a leading Australian advocate against antisemitism, who issues a stark warning: when Jews start packing their bags, history is already repeating itself.

This conversation is essential viewing not just for Australians — but for Americans, Brits, Canadians, and anyone watching similar patterns unfold across the West.

CHAPTERS
0:00 AustraliaGot worse After Bondi
5:00 Grace Tame and the “Globalize the Intifada” Chant
7:07 Isaac Herzog’s Visit and the Protests in Sydney
13:00 Marnie Perlstein on Antisemitism in Australia
31:50 “Everyone Has a Plan B” — Are Jews Leaving Australia?
36:20 Viewer Feedback and Community Reactions


Liberal Senator grills ABC Editorial Director over Adelaide Writers’ Week boycott
Liberal Senator Sarah Henderson has grilled ABC Editorial Director Gavin Fang over why various journalists boycotted the Adelaide Writers’ Week in support of pro-Palestine author Randa Abdel-Fattah.




Tucker is lying. Again
Here’s the “evidence” Tucker presents to prove Israel persecutes Christians:
A small number of recycled clips from Jerusalem showing isolated individuals, some of whom appear mentally unstable, attempting to spit at Christian clergy on public streets, behavior that involves no injuries or deaths and is widely condemned across Israeli society, with no connection to state policy or law.

Here’s the evidence Tucker deliberately ignores so he can keep selling you the lie that Islamic countries and Islamist movements are safe places for Christians:

December 24–25, 2023, Plateau State, Nigeria.
Islamist militias carried out coordinated Christmas Eve attacks on more than a dozen Christian villages, killing at least 140 Christians, burning homes and churches, and hunting fleeing civilians in surrounding fields.

April 2024, Bokkos area, Plateau State, Nigeria.
Armed Islamist groups attacked Christian farming communities in a series of raids, killing more than 50 Christians and destroying churches and homes.


White House takes down Vance post calling WWI massacre of Armenians ‘genocide’
The White House on Tuesday deleted a post from US Vice President JD Vance’s account that commemorated massacres of Armenians as a “genocide,” saying the message, likely to irk US-allied Turkey, was posted in error.

Vance, who was on a two-day trip to Armenia, visited the Tsitsernakaberd Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan during the first-ever visit by a US vice president to the South Caucasus republic.

There, he and his wife, Usha Vance, participated in a ceremonial laying of a wreath of carnations, chrysanthemums, and roses at the site, which honors the 1.5 million Armenians who lost their lives in the final years of the Turkish-led Ottoman Empire.

Vance’s official account on X later described the visit as designed “to honor the victims of the 1915 Armenian genocide.”

After that post was deleted, a Vance aide who declined to be named said the message was posted in error by staff who were not part of the traveling delegation.

“This is an account managed by staff that primarily exists to share photos and videos of the Vice President’s activities,” said a spokesperson for Vance, referring to the vice president’s own comments, which did not include the phrase “genocide.”


Mamdani and the collapse of ‘liberal Zionism’
Supporting blood libels
Still, it is just as important to look at Wisdom’s stands and ponder whether they are in any way compatible with a traditional definition of liberal Zionism.

A glance through Wisdom’s social-media posts, a litany of her political stands or those of the New York Jewish Agenda (NYJA) group that she has led since July 2023, reveals someone who is most interested in bashing Israel, in addition to providing aid and comfort to those who seek to take it down. Indeed, the main point of that group is to provide a platform for the “as a Jew” version of modern Jewish life. That is an all-too-common trend. It is a means to comment about Israel by using one’s Jewish identity to legitimize arguments seeking to treat virtually any effort to defend it as illegitimate or a crime.

The position of NYJA is indistinguishable from that of J Street, which started out claiming to be both “pro-Israel and pro-peace.” In practice, the group became a mouthpiece for those who were determined to impose suicidal concessions to the Palestinians that had been repeatedly rejected by the Israeli people. In the wake of Oct. 7, J Street and NYJA ultimately found themselves mainly acting to support the efforts of those who sought to prevent Israel from attacking Hamas and Iran, and thus to ensure the victory of the terrorists.

Worse than that, they were guilty of lending credibility to the blood libels about Israeli conduct that have been fueling antisemitism. In particular, Wisdom and NYJA repeatedly weighed in to support the false claims that Israel was deliberately causing starvation in Gaza, and in doing so, claimed that the Jewish state was morally equivalent to Hamas. That she did so while claiming to uphold Jewish values is no defense for this immoral and destructive stance.

In this context, her assertion that she supports Israel’s “right to exist” (something that only among all the nations in the world is considered controversial when applied to the Jewish state) is merely a way to justify opposing anything done to defend it from those who are waging a genocidal war to destroy it.

Equally helpful to understanding just how little her positions have to do with liberalism or Zionism is her consistent opposition to the Trump administration’s efforts to combat bigotry against students on college campuses. Wisdom opposed the federal government’s attempts to hold institutions like Columbia University on Manhattan’s Upper West Side accountable for their toleration and encouragement of Jew-hatred, which clearly violates the 1964 U.S. Civil Rights Act. Beyond that, she took up the cause to defend Mahmoud Khalil, a foreign student who was one of the chief organizers of the pro-Hamas demonstrations that targeted Jews at the Ivy League school for intimidation and violence, when the administration sought to deport him for violating the terms of his visa.

Like Mamdani, Khalil isn’t merely “pro-Palestinian.” He is an active supporter of the campaign to destroy Israel and has a long record of working for anti-Israel groups like the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA. But to Wisdom, his antisemitic record and actions were not as important as the imperative to oppose Trump and back his anti-Israeli opponents.

While Wisdom and others on the left claim that this position is a defense of individuals against a repressive state authority, it puts them in the position of bolstering illiberal figures like Khalil, who support the most reactionary and repressive Islamist groups. In this manner, too many contemporary liberals have allowed themselves to be convinced to support racialist theories that undermine the defense of Western civilization and help bolster the war against Jews that Islamists seek to spread.
Mamdani Hires Slew of Anti-Israel Activists, Including Brooklyn Borough Director Who Praised 'Heroes' Ripping Down Israeli Hostage Posters and Adviser Who Led College Divestment Movement
New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani (D.) has stocked a variety of operational roles in his administration with a cadre of anti-Israel extremists, including a man who called people who ripped down flyers of Israeli hostages "heroes" and a woman who led a college divestment movement, among other radicals.

Mamdani soon after taking office appointed Alvaro Lopez, the former electoral coordinator of the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, as his Brooklyn borough director, a source familiar with staffing at City Hall told the Washington Free Beacon. Lopez had served as a member of Mamdani's inaugural committee, during which a since-deleted post on X in which he called people who ripped down flyers of Israeli hostages "heroes" raised eyebrows.

Lopez was also an architect of what he called "a socialist strategy for Palestinian solidarity" in an October 2024 memo he wrote aimed at translating "increasing radicalization due to ongoing genocide" into a mass movement through arguing that U.S. aid to Israel causes "declining living standards."

"Working with our socialist electeds will be key in advancing the Palestinian cause and giving our movement voices in the halls where power resides," the memo reads. "A socialist strategy for Palestinian solidarity also lowers the bar of entry into our movement and takes seriously our work with broader coalitions, which will be crucial in convincing millions that arming Israel has a direct correlation to our declining living standards. It also creates a political program that emphasizes a diversity of tactics to pursue an arms embargo, divestment, and an anti-Zionist future."

Also on Mamdani's staff is Drashti Brahmbhatt, an adviser to the mayor for "100 Day Planning and Implementation." A member of the Democratic Socialists of America since at least 2021, Brahmbhatt has a history of demonizing Israel since her time in college. While a student at Brown University, Brahmbhatt was a leader on campus calling for the university to divest from companies that do business within the Jewish state. In a since-deleted X post from May 2021, she wrote, "Palestine is one of the greatest moral issues of our time," adding that "Israel is an apartheid state."

On the same thread, she wrote that she supported Mamdani as a state assemblyman for "centering Palestine in his organizing and as an elected official."


Seth Mandel: What Did You Expect, Starmer?
The British political establishment is shocked, shocked, that Palestine Action activists would be acquitted by a jury on the grounds that although they admitted to breaking into an Israeli company’s factory and destroying property while injuring police, their cause was righteous.

As I wrote last week, six Gaza leftists were apparently found not guilty under the principle of “jury equity,” in which Brits were told that jurors may acquit the accused because of the virtue of their intentions. It was a remarkable moment, one that overnight put the British legal system in disarray. Hating Jews was now a legitimate legal defense even for violence—one Palestine activist smashed a cop’s spine with a sledgehammer. Because it was a jury trial, the problem cannot be fixed institutionally: courts can give jurors direction but they cannot guarantee it will be followed. A populist outpouring of Jew-hatred threatens to undo generations of liberal democracy.

Prosecutors are reportedly seeking a retrial, though the “precise basis” is unclear. There will be a hearing on the matter February 18.

The British establishment is without doubt correct that this trial is a catastrophe for the legitimacy of the country’s legal system. I don’t blame them for trying, within legal bounds of course, to find a way to put this rancid toothpaste back in the tube.

But I have to ask: What did they expect?

You can yell “Criticism of Israel isn’t anti-Semitism” until you are blue in the face, but if you force on your population the lie that the Jewish state is guilty of exceptional evils, they are going to see a green light for exceptional resistance.

Though Israel not only never had a policy of starvation in Gaza but also never caused the oft-predicted “famines,” Hamas’s own policies made food scarcity in the enclave a regular concern. Hamas hoarded food supplies, stole from civilians, killed civilians trying to get food, and hijacked aid convoys. Nonetheless, Prime Minister Keir Starmer blamed Israel. “The suffering and starvation unfolding in Gaza is unspeakable and indefensible,” he’d said, adding that his government was searching for ways to get Israel to “change course.”

It was much the same when Starmer would seek to be evenhanded. In one statement, he made clear which side is responsible for which outrages: “The appalling scenes in Gaza are unrelenting. The continued captivity of hostages, the starvation and denial of humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people, the increasing violence from extremist settler groups, and Israel’s disproportionate military escalation in Gaza are all indefensible.”

Unrelenting and appalling—and aside from the hostages, all Israel’s fault in Starmer’s mind.




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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

    
 

 

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