Saturday, May 02, 2026

05/02 Links: With gallows humor, UK author Howard Jacobson takes on post-Oct. 7 ‘bloodlust’ for Jews; Whisper it, but Trump’s blockade is working; Why Anti-Zionism Is Really Just Envy

From Ian:

With gallows humor, UK author Howard Jacobson takes on post-Oct. 7 ‘bloodlust’ for Jews
Jacobson can’t disguise his disdain towards far-left politicians such as the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and the new leader of the Green party, Zack Polanski, a self-proclaimed anti-Zionist Jew. He labels Polanski “a despicable clone of Jeremy Corbyn,” while saying Corbyn at least has the excuse of ignorance. “He really is an ignorant man and doesn’t know what Zionism was and really does think it was a colonial enterprise from the start,” Jacobson says. “Zach Polanski doesn’t have that excuse.”

Jacobson recognizes that “the Zionist heart has hardened,” but believes this was inevitable both because “no grand ideal … can ever stay loyal to its first principles” and because “there’s been so much pressure put on it [by] the enmity it faced once the world decided to turn against Zionism.”

But he maintains his staunch belief in the nobility of the founding Zionist dream, which he terms “the liberation of the Jewish mind, as well as the liberation of the Jewish body.”

If Charmian desperately tries to help her husband cling on to sanity — “it can’t all be catastrophe, Ferdie,” she tells him — his mother has a view of the world shaped by history’s darkest hour. “She never did think humanity had learnt its lesson or ever would,” Ferdie recounts, quoting Agata’s dismal words: “I will not waste my time saying Never Again.”

Do the last two years validate that assessment? In the days after October 7, Jacobson recalls sensing an “exuberance … in some academic circles, on campuses throughout the Western world, [and] on the streets of our great cities.”

After eight decades of supposed restraint in the wake of the Holocaust, he says, “permission” had finally been given to “do to the Jews, and then say about the Jews, all the things we’d been brought up not to.”

Jacobson believes the results are horrifying. “The moral walls erected around Belsen and Auschwitz [are] finally coming down, and that’s terrifying,” he says.

The “raucousness” of the demonstrations in Britain, the manner in which people would “shout and scream” if they were denied their weekly “right” to protest exactly as they wished, didn’t just offend Jacobson’s Jewish sensibilities. “It bothered me as an Englishman too,” he says, adding it felt alien to the “free and easy way that life in London … and England has always been.”

But, Jacobson was recently reminded, the sympathies of England’s silent majority may not be with the strident minority.

As he traveled by cab to do a promotional interview, a London taxi driver asked Jacobson what he was going to be talking about on the radio. The author told him about “Howl.”

The driver asked to pull over for a minute, turned to face Jacobson, and said: “I just want you to know that out there in this country, we’re with you, you know.”

A perplexed Jacobson asked him what he meant.

“We’re not buying it,” the driver replied. “We’re not all buying that horrible [antisemitic] Jewish stuff, we’re not. We’re with you.”
It is no wonder Jews want to leave Britain
I am the one with the big personality around the Friday night dinner table. I have spent my whole life being told to ‘stop it with the dramatics’ as I sip my chicken soup. A day does not go by where my family – proud Jewish Brits – long for me to lower my voice or roll their eyes at my overexaggerating tendencies. So you can only imagine my horror when my friend – one of the most rational people in our social circle – said exactly what I was thinking: that Britain is no longer safe for British Jews. If Green party leader Zack Polanski made it to Number 10, my friend said that he would leave immediately. He told me in candid detail that he would stay in Israel until a visa was accepted for him to go to America. I was startled. Is the situation for the Jewish community really that bad? The latest attack in Golders Green shows that my friend – and many other British Jews – are right to be afraid.

When Jeremy Corbyn was leader of the Labour Party, members of the Jewish community started to explore the idea of leaving the UK. Who could blame them when faced with the realities of living as a Jew in 21st Century Britain? A lot of my non-Jewish friends were somewhat surprised when I told them that it was standard protocol that synagogues are heavily guarded. Being educated in two Church of England schools, I had the luxury of assimilated protection from outside threats in that regard, although I still felt the danger when going to my place of worship. But when I think back to my old school days, memories flash before me of being told to ‘get in the oven’ by ignorant classmates. When meeting another Jew at university who was also educated at a private school, we bonded over similar shared experiences. It’s a reminder that the scourge of antisemitism is always present, but now war in the Middle East has enabled it to float to the surface and into the mainstream.

Childhood memories include skipping the children’s service at my synagogue to chat with my dad as he was on guard duty, only for him to tell me to go back inside for my own safety. Should any place of worship in the UK even be in such need of security? This is a proud country which has freedom of religion. And why do Jewish schools in the UK need prison-like walls? So why do synagogues need to be so heavily guarded? Jewish children in Britain have been forced to hide their blazers in public for fear of putting a target on their backs. These issues aren’t confined to schools, of course; a friend working in the media told me she was scared of even outing herself as Jewish to her colleagues.

The rate of people leaving the UK to emigrate to Israel hit a 40-year high in 2025, with an increase of 20 per cent over the previous year. That was already on top of an increase of over 70 per cent in 2023. This is not necessarily just members of more orthodox denominations, but young adults who are feeling the impact directly on the streets and in the workplace. I spoke to one of my friends in Israel – a 29-year-old living in Tel Aviv, who told me in explicit terms that they feel safer in a warzone than on the streets of the UK. “We moved to Israel with the security of knowing we would feel secure in a war zone rather than in a country who has abandoned its most loyal yet petrified minority group, the Jewish community,” she said.
Jake Wallis Simons: Whisper it, but Trump’s blockade is working
Foreigners who commit evil belong in the depths of the water, apparently. That’s according to Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s new supreme leader, who is badly wounded, living like a rat underground and reduced to handwriting his words of wisdom, or having them handwritten for him.

Did nobody point out that when his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, posted on X that an American warship was less dangerous than “the weapon that can send that warship to the bottom of the sea”, it heralded his death 11 days later?

No sense of irony, these people. Speaking of irony, rumours abound that the new dictator might be dead and the regime is hushing it up. A mural recently unveiled near Qom “mistakenly” included his mugshot in a gallery of martyrs, and the state-run Tasnim News Agency “mistakenly” referred to him as the “martyred leader of the revolution”. Oops!

Yes, the regime isn’t doing particularly well. Factions are squabbling, the leadership – or what is left of it – is in disarray, it can’t decide if its figurehead is alive or dead, while its armed forces, air defences and munitions production capabilities are devastated.

Whisper it, but Economic Fury may be working. For almost 50 years, the regime has weathered Western sanctions by covertly selling oil to China via shadow ships. So far, the US navy has intercepted 44 such vessels, with an estimated value of up to $6billion (£4.8bn).


Dave Rich: What Is To Be Done?
The current wave of anti-Jewish hatred has been described as a national emergency. It is an unprecedented situation for British Jews, and a crisis for wider society. If the answer cannot be found to repeated, random (but targeted) violent attacks on Jews, than modern Britain has failed. I don’t mean it has failed its Jews - that much would be obvious, if this continues without end. I mean that Britain will have failed itself.

This requires a concerted, sustained effort, by the entire country. So what can be done?

Call it for what it is. This is anti-Jewish hatred that has taken root in parts of British society. Platitudes like “there is no place for antisemitism in this country” are unhelpful because they are simply untrue. There clearly is a place for antisemitism in parts of Britain, and tackling it begins by facing up to that fundamental, if depressing, truth. This is not some unfathomable phenomenon with no rhyme or reason that appears from nowhere and then disappears again into the ether: it is a pattern of behaviour shaped by a set of ideas and beliefs, and driven by activists and movements. It is fuelled by extremist ideologies and actors, principally Islamist and left wing extremism, but by right wing extremism as well. There are a well-established set of causes, slogans, narratives and goals that shape antisemitism today, promoted by an activist street movement and excused or justified by vocal, prominent advocates with big audiences.

The consequence is that a combination of hateful extremists and hostile states have created an environment in which British streets have become unsafe, in a very specific, targeted, deliberate way. That makes it a national security issue and the nation should confront it on that basis.

Get the basics right. Protecting the people is the first responsibility of any government. The police have put a huge amount of resource and officers into Jewish community neighbourhoods in recent weeks, and it looks like they need to find even more. If that requires extra funding from the Home Office then I fully expect that funding to be provided. I know that a lot of people in the Jewish community feel let down by police and government. Whatever mistakes have been made in the past, right now they throwing everything they have at this, and are doing more than most in wider society to try to tackle this problem.

However, there is much more that could be done. The legal cases in relation to the recent arsons, and other prosecutions for antisemitic hate crimes, should be expedited through the courts just as they were after the Southport riots. This would send a message to would-be offenders, to the Jewish community, and to the country as a whole, that tackling antisemitism is a national priority. Sentencing should reflect this, and some recent sentences for antisemitic hate crimes have been very weak. Two years ago a man who threatened Jewish people in Golders Green with a knife, just down the road from Wednesday’s attack, was given a suspended sentence. That’s hardly a deterrent.

Additionally - and this has been a bugbear of mine for years - while we know how many antisemitic hate crimes are reported to police each year, we have no way of knowing how many of them result in prosecutions and convictions, because the CPS cannot produce that data. Without that, we can’t accurately measure CPS performance, so we simply don’t know, at the most basic level, whether justice is being done. That can’t continue.
Labour won’t say it, so I will: Islam has an anti-Semitism problem
I have known for years that Islamist campaigners and activists have used support for Palestine as a rallying call to promote a set of repugnant and poisonous views. This has included calls for the Islamic takeover of Israel and the subjugation of Jews.

We are now seeing the decades-long effects of a supine unwillingness to challenge Muslim anti-Semitism for fear of a community backlash, or because of a passive unwillingness to “rock the boat”. With little challenge to these narratives, it was only time before anti-Semitism became a reality on the streets of our country.

Another indicator of the depth of anti-Semitism has been the range of conspiracy theories that have percolated among my co-religionists. One of these conspiracy theories is the idea that Mossad spreads disinformation within Muslim communities to control them.

Or consider the mad idea about 9/11 and 7/7 being the work of “Jews”, and the notion that terror attacks by Muslim perpetrators were conducted by Israel to smear Muslims.

You would have expected that such conspiracies would have fizzled out some decades ago, but in the two decades of working with Muslim communities I have had these ideas whispered to me, as though I was a “fellow brother in the fight against Israel”.

Little did they realise that I thought that such people needed to be locked up.

We have heard Sir Keir Starmer speak about the scourge of anti-Semitism, and the need for communities to stand with Britain’s Jews. I applaud and commend him for these public calls. However, have you ever heard Starmer speak about the other elephant in the room? The giant one that has “Muslim anti-Semitism” written across it?

Given the problems affecting Labour, and the real possibility of a range of independents being elected who see their world through the prism of Palestine, I suspect that Starmer will continue to dodge the obvious.

He can’t say it, but I will. Whilst the vast majority of Muslims are an asset to our country, unless we have a root and branch rejection of Muslim anti-Semitism, calls for commiserations with British Jews are futile. Jews deserve much better than that; they deserve the truth.
Corbyn opponents turn on Starmer over anti-Semitism
Former Labour MPs who opposed Jeremy Corbyn over anti-Semitism have turned on Sir Keir Starmer.

Nearly 80 peers have written to the Prime Minister, warning him that allowing the “demonisation” of Israel had created a “permissive space” for anti-Semitism in Britain.

They said the regularity of attacks on Jewish people in the UK was a “profound failure” of the state.

Among the signatories are senior Labour figures who previously led a revolt against Mr Corbyn, the former party leader, including Baroness Berger, who resigned from Labour in February 2019 after describing the party as “institutionally anti-Semitic”.

Other prominent Labour figures who signed the letter include Baroness Hodge, the former Labour MP who confronted Mr Corbyn when he was Labour leader after the party adopted a controversial new anti-Semitism definition, and Lord Goldsmith, Tony Blair’s attorney general.

Their decision to speak out is significant because Sir Keir has been credited with turning the party around and repairing Labour’s relations with the Jewish community.

The Prime Minister has come under renewed pressure this week to tackle anti-Semitism after two Jewish men were stabbed in Golders Green, north London. Five weeks earlier, four ambulances owned by a Jewish volunteer-led medical organisation were firebombed near the scene of that attack.

Last October, two men were killed when an Islamist terrorist attacked the Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester on Yom Kippur.

Britain’s terrorism threat level was raised to “severe” a day after Wednesday’s stabbings in Golders Green, meaning an attack is highly likely.
Top UK cop: Jews facing greatest ever threat; Starmer mulls banning some anti-Israel protests
The UK’s top police officer said in an interview published Saturday that British Jews are facing their greatest ever threat, with social media fueling an “epidemic” of antisemitism, and called for 300 armed officers to be deployed to protect the Jewish community of north London.

“If you overlay three things now — hate crime, terrorism and hostile state activity — you add all that together, that combined effect with that building of ideology online, that is really dangerous and troubling,” said Mark Rowley, head of London’s Metropolitan Police.

“And Jewish communities feel that and you can see that in how they talk, how it’s making them change their lives. That’s an ­appalling state of affairs,” he said.

He told The Times that British Jews are on the “hate” list of every racist and extremist group.

“Whether you’re extreme left, whether you’re an Islamist terrorist, ­whether you’re a right-wing terrorist, and some hostile states as well, now with some sort of Iranian-related threats. There’s a sort of ghastly Venn diagram that they’re at the middle of,” he says.

Asked if the British Jewish community faces its greatest threat, Rowley responds: “That has to be true.”

The comments came after the police said Friday that it had charged 45-year-old Essa Suleiman with attempted murder following an antisemitic terror attack during which two Jewish men were stabbed on Wednesday.


Renewed US-Iran hostilities likely, Iranian commander says
“A renewed conflict between Iran and the United States is likely,” a senior Iranian military officer said on Saturday in the wake of President Donald Trump’s statement that he was “not satisfied” with Tehran’s latest proposal to end the conflict.

“Evidence has shown that the United States is not committed to any promises or agreements,” AFP quoted IRGC Brig. Gen. Mohammad Jafar Asadi, as saying in an interview published by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-affiliated Fars News Agency.

Asadi is deputy commander of the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, Iran’s highest operational military command, which is responsible for planning, coordinating and controlling joint operations between the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Artesh (regular army).

On Friday, Iran’s judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei said the Islamic Republic had “never shied away from negotiations,” but that it would not accept an “imposition” of peace terms, AFP reported.

Also on Friday, Trump told reporters at the White House that the Iranian regime wants to “make a deal because they have no military left.”

However, Tehran is “asking for things that I can’t agree to,” he added.

The president attributed the stalemate in negotiations to Iran’s “extremely disjointed” leadership, which was effectively decapitated during the joint U.S.-Israeli war on the Islamic Republic launched on Feb. 28.

Speaking at a rally in The Villages, Fla., on Saturday, Trump said that America is “in a war because, I think you would agree, we cannot let lunatics have a nuclear weapon.”

According to Axios, U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff had submitted a counter-proposal to Tehran that includes a section on its nuclear program, demanding no movement of enriched uranium from bombed facilities or resumption of activity there during negotiations.

Iran’s storage capacity problem
In a separate report on Saturday, Axios said that the U.S. military has denied the Islamic Republic close to $5 billion in oil revenue since imposing a blockade on Iranian ports, according to U.S. Defense Department estimates.

Some 53 million barrels of Iranian oil on 31 tankers are currently stranded in the Gulf waters, the report cited Pentagon officials as saying.

This has prompted Iran to use older tankers as floating storage, with some vessels attempting “a costlier and longer route to deliver oil to China for fear of U.S. maritime interdiction,” the officials added.

Gregory Brew, an analyst with the Eurasia Group, told Axios that Iran is “probably several weeks, or perhaps as much as a month, away from running out of storage.” If that happens, it could be forced to shut down its oil wells, which has the potential to permanently destroy the flow of oil from the ground.

A senior Iranian official told Bloomberg on Saturday that the country has begun curbing production of oil as a result.
Ministers set to discuss renewing Gaza war as Hamas refuses to disarm — report
The security cabinet is reportedly scheduled to discuss renewing the war in Gaza on Sunday, as negotiations to disarm Hamas and demilitarize the Strip stall.

“Hamas is not standing by the agreement on disarmament. We are holding discussions with mediators,” an Israeli official told the Kan public broadcaster on Saturday evening.

US President Donald Trump’s ​plan for the Gaza Strip, which was initially embraced by Israel and Hamas, calls for Israeli troops to withdraw from the enclave and reconstruction to ⁠start as Hamas lays down its weapons.

The disarmament of Hamas has been a key sticking point in talks to implement the plan and cement the ceasefire reached in October, which halted two years of full-blown war triggered by Hamas’s October 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel. Violence has continued in Gaza, much of which remains in ruins.

Nickolay Mladenov, leading Trump’s Board of Peace, held talks with Hamas leaders for weeks, and toward the beginning of last month, gave the group until April 11 to accept the Board of Peace’s proposal for it to gradually hand over all of its arms.

The plan, partially leaked to the media, follows an eight-month timeline, beginning with Hamas handing over its heavy weaponry and maps of its tunnel network within 90 days.

But Hamas has largely bucked the demands to give up all of its weapons, two Arab diplomats familiar with the negotiations told The Times of Israel on Saturday.

Instead, the terror group submitted a counter-offer to the Board of Peace, insisting that the issue of its weapons only be addressed as part of a framework culminating in the establishment of a Palestinian state.

While US President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan for ending the Gaza war, on which the Board of Peace is operating, speaks generally of eventual Palestinian self-determination, Hamas in its response demanded more definitive guarantees toward that end before discussing the handover of its weapons, the two Arab diplomats said.
IDF admits damaging Catholic convent in southern Lebanon, denies site demolished
The Israeli military on Saturday acknowledged it caused some damage to a Catholic convent in southern Lebanon while working to destroy Hezbollah infrastructure, but denied it “demolished” the site with bulldozers.

According to the Israel Defense Forces, during operations in the border village of Yaroun, forces caused damage to a structure that “had no external signs indicating it was a religious building.”

“After identifying religious indicators in the complex, the forces acted to prevent further damage,” the military said, publishing photos showing the intact structure.

The IDF said Hezbollah had used the compound to launch rockets “multiple times” during the war, “which is why the forces operated there, with the aim of destroying the organization’s terror infrastructure.”

“The IDF takes care to destroy only terror infrastructure and has no intention of harming religious buildings,” the military added.

Gladys Sabbagh, the superior general of the Basilian Salvatorian Sisters, told the Associated Press that the convent was a small compound housing just two nuns, who left because of the war. It had previously included a school and a clinic.

Sabbagh said they “heard” the convent “was destroyed with bulldozers.”

In its own statement, Israel’s Foreign Ministry said, “claims that a monastery in Yaroun in South Lebanon was ‘demolished’ are false. The site is intact and safe.”

The Catholic Church in Lebanon rejected claims that the compound was used for military purposes.

“We are against all practices against places of worship and churches. These are places to spread peace, love and education,” said Rev. Abdo Abou Kassm, director of the Catholic Center for Information. “These are not military bases.”


Hugh Hewitt: Eli and Hugh stay focused on Iran amid the many stories happening this week

Hugh Hewitt: Will President Trump open the Strait of Hormuz?



Two detained Gaza flotilla leaders brought to Israel for questioning
Two activists who led a flotilla bound for Gaza have arrived in Israel, the Foreign Ministry said Saturday, after several boats were intercepted by Israeli forces in international waters off Crete earlier in the week.

“Saif Abu Keshek, a leading member of the PCPA — an organization designated and sanctioned by the United States as a Hamas front — and Thiago Ávila, who operates with the PCPA and is suspected of illegal activity, have arrived in Israel,” the ministry said in a tweet, without providing evidence.

The ministry was referring to the Popular Conference for Palestinians Abroad, which the US Treasury says “claims to provide medical care to Palestinian civilians but in fact supports the military wing of Hamas.”

The ministry said the two will be taken for questioning by law enforcement authorities and will receive a consular visit from the representatives of their respective countries.

Abu Keshek, a Palestinian-Spanish citizen, and Ávila, a Brazilian citizen, are members of the Global Sumud Flotilla’s steering committee, which is behind the repeated attempts to break Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza.

Some 175 other activists, who had been aboard the flotilla and were detained when Israel intercepted many of the ships, disembarked in Crete.

The latest attempt to reach Gaza comes less than a year after Israeli authorities foiled the previous effort by the group. Participants, including Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, detained on those flotillas were questioned in Israel before later being deported.
Global Sumud Flotilla claim detained activist never meant to go to Gaza, was on 'observer boat'
The Global Sumud Flotilla issued a statement saying that one of the two flotilla activists detained by Israel, Saif Abu Keshek, never intended to go to Gaza on Friday.

Keshek was on “an observer boat which was never intended to go to Gaza,” the statement read, adding that he was “harshly beaten before being removed and isolated from the rest of the participants.”

In another statement released on Saturday, the Global Sumud Flotilla claimed that Keshek was tortured, writing that “participant eyewitnesses provided harrowing testimony of Keshek’s screams echoing throughout the ship as he was subjected to systematic torture, after being separated from others.”

While almost all activists detained aboard the flotilla were taken to Greece, two, Keshek and Thiago Ávila, were brought to Israel for questioning – Keshek due to suspicions of affiliation with a terrorist organization and Ávila due to suspicions of illegal activity.

According to the Foreign Ministry, Keshek is a leading member of the PCPA, an organization that functions as a front for Hamas. Keshek serves as a liaison between Hamas officials and international contacts, as well as assisting in financial transfers to the terror group.

Keshek was previously arrested in Egypt and deported in June 2025, and faced prior detention for questioning in Tunisia in connection with financial crimes.

Keshek and Ávila, who the Foreign Ministry said also work with the PCPA, were brought to Israel to be questioned by law enforcement authorities.


Jake Donnelly: Why Palestinians Refusing to Even Ponder Peace is Another Nakba
Zureiq's Agency Nakba vs. Yasser Arafat's Victimhood Nakba
Just think about the difference between the actual Nakba and what every person online thinks they know about the Nakba. At every college and university, they are told—not taught—the Nakba is the displacement of Palestinians following the Israeli war for Independence in 1948.

That’s not Zureiq’s Nakba; that’s Yasser Arafat’s Nakba.

Is it any wonder why the Arab continues to make disastrous decisions? Instead of listening to a crystal ball using Syrian intellectual, the Arab world continues to double, triple, and quadruple down on following the advice of a known terrorist and murderer who founded the Palestinian Liberation Organization three years before the catastrophic Six-Day-War where the Arabs committed another Nakba. It’s a perfect callback to 1947/1948 where instead of listening to calls for peace, the Arab world decided to heed the advice of Hitler friend, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who orchestrated the 1929 Hebron Riot where 67 Jews were massacred.

The Grand Mufti? Arafat? These are not good voices to listen to if you want to prosper as a people, but the Arab world would rather pretend to play victim instead of recognizing the truth that they have always been the aggressors.

Which is why the Arab world seems intent on committing as many Nakbas as possible. They did so in 1947/1948. Again in 1967. Once more in 1973, and then another obvious Nakba on October 7, 2023.

That’s the legacy of the Arab world:
They were shown the path to peace and prosperity three generations ago, but only a select few Arabs chose a better life. The rest wanted nonstop wars. Nonstop death. And they’re getting it, but they can--and will--never blame themselves.

That’s a catastrophe. That’s a Nakba. But that’s not me saying it, that’s Constantin Zureiq. And who would know better what defines a Nakba--a catastrophe--than the man who coined the term?


Jeremy Boreing: Why Anti-Zionism Is Really Just Envy | Ep. 17 with Alana Newhouse
Anti-Zionism on the left and the right in America today is a kind of envy — envy of a country that still has permission to define itself, defend itself, and have a future. That's the opening claim Alana Newhouse makes to Jeremy Boreing in this two-hour conversation about Zionism, American identity, and the cultural project of believing in tomorrow.

Jeremy sits down with Alana Newhouse — founder and editor-in-chief of Tablet Magazine, author of the breakout essays "Everything Is Broken," "Brokenness," and "Zionism for Everyone" — for a wide-ranging conversation that uses Israel as a lens for diagnosing what's wrong with America.

They get into culture as a "mixing board" (race is loud in Japan, irrelevant in Israel — every culture calibrates differently); America's twin tethers of capitalism and covenant; the four questions Alana says every country has to be able to answer (are your people happy? do they have babies? can they defend themselves? are they future-oriented?); Tucker Carlson's truth-and-lie about Israel and the black pill industrial complex aimed at demoralizing Americans; the Artemis splashdown, the F-15 weapons officer rescue in Iran, and "what are the machines for?"; Alana's four-bucket framework for any institution (conserve, reform, destroy, build new); why she's drawn to leaders like Modi and Milei but skeptical of Orban and "Make America Great Again"; the original meaning of ethnos (it's not bloodline, it's the music a people make together); why anti-Semitism is a symptom and not a cause; and the fertility hiccup, the Gen X reckoning, and the case that creation itself is an act of optimism.

Not a defense of Israeli policy. Not a brief against the contemporary right. A clinical, hopeful argument that the formula that built Israel — particularism plus pragmatism plus idealism — is exportable, and that the future belongs to whoever shows up to build it.

00:00 Anti-Zionism Is Just Envy
05:14 America's Twin Tethers — Capitalism and Covenant
12:22 The "Mixing Board" — Why Cultures Have to Be Different
25:17 The Zionism Formula and the 4 Questions Every Country Must Answer
31:59 What Tucker Carlson Got Wrong About Israel
36:30 The Black Pill Trap and the Lost Faith in the Moon Landing
45:00 Why Alana Built Tablet — Creation as an Act of Optimism
56:35 The Right's Failure on Social Media (and Why AI Is Next)
1:03:22 The 4 Buckets: Conserve, Reform, Destroy, Build New
1:21:39 When Ethnos Goes Wrong — and Why the Nation-State Still Wins
1:28:11 Modi, Milei, Orban — Looking for Joy in World Leaders
1:34:05 The Artemis Diver and the F-15 Rescue: "What Are the Machines For?"
1:46:09 Anti-Semitism Is a Symptom, Not a Cause
1:49:02 Fertility, Gen X, and the Hiccup We Have to Correct




University of Edinburgh slammed for platforming pro-Palestine speaker who likened Zionists to Nazis
The University of Edinburgh is facing mounting criticism after platforming a pro-Palestinian campaigner with a history of inflammatory rhetoric to address students at a campus workshop.

Zaid Jaloudi, who leads the US-based Global Student Palestine Network, delivered a talk on student activism at Old College on April 17.

The speaker was permitted despite having previously likened Zionists to Nazis, and accused them of being "puppet masters" behind a "colonial empire" constructed "off the blood of Palestinians."

The Palestinian-American activist was invited by the university's pro-Palestine society, drawing condemnation from politicians and Jewish student organisations alike.

At a demonstration supporting the pro-Gaza encampment at Columbia University in New York in May 2024, Mr Jaloudi said: "So, I say to the Nazis. I meant Zionists, actually.

"You will be remembered as the Nazis of this day. That ugly blue flag will no longer be an emoji one day."

During the same address, he posed a rhetorical question about who truly wielded power, dismissing figures including New York's then-mayor Eric Adams, President Biden and the International Court of Justice.

"It is the Zionist colonial empire! Built off of the blood of Palestinians!" he proclaimed, employing language that critics have condemned as invoking antisemitic tropes about Jewish control.

Jackson Carlaw, former Scottish Conservative leader, branded the university's decision "reckless and short-sighted", and demanded answers from senior management.

He said: "Bosses at Edinburgh University must urgently come clean on why they made this reckless and short-sighted decision.

"Somebody with such extreme and appalling views should never have been given this platform by one of our oldest institutions."

Mr Carlaw warned that such choices were fuelling fear within Jewish communities, particularly in light of the recent stabbing of two Jewish men in Golders Green, declared an antisemitic terror incdient.

"Decisions like this only add fuel to the fire and are exactly why Jewish communities are living in huge fear on a daily basis about what might happen to them," he added.
NYC’s New School rejects student senate’s vote to defund and cut ties with Hillel
The New School, a private university in New York City, on Saturday rejected a student government vote to defund and cut ties with the campus chapter of Hillel.

The New School’s student senate voted on Friday to strip funding and stop collaboration with the campus chapter of the Jewish student organization, claiming violations of “international law” due to volunteer opportunities it has offered with the Israel Defense Forces, along with other Israel programs and trips.

The vote appeared to be the first time a university’s student government has severed ties with its chapter of Hillel, long seen as the main address for Jewish life on most American campuses.

For years, and especially since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack and start of the Gaza war, pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel students have called on their universities to stop working with Hillel, citing its connections to Israel. Hillel International and other Jewish groups have said that efforts to shut down the premier Jewish student organization are antisemitic.

A statement from the student senate at the New School, which has a historical reputation for radical politics, said the senate’s registered student organization compliance committee designated Hillel “not in good standing,” and that it was ineligible for funding from or collaboration with the senate, in any capacity, effective immediately.

The senate justified the decision by claiming “extensive ties to violations of international law” by Hillel due to its connection to the IDF, citing trips where Hillel members volunteered on Israeli military bases.

A 38-page report from the committee also cited Hillel’s promotion of 10-day Birthright trips and other programs in Israel.


Convicted killer sentenced for beating Jewish chaplain at UK prison
A convicted killer has been sentenced for an antisemitic attack in a British prison in which he broke the jaw of a Jewish chaplain.

Joseph Gynane shouted “Allah Akbar” as he attacked the chaplain at HMP Whitemoor in Cambridgeshire in September.

“Gynane punched the man to the back of the head with such force that he was knocked to the floor and continued punching him,” Cambridgeshire Police say in a statement. “The chaplain told officers he believed the attack was religiously motivated due to him being Jewish and wearing a black skull cap at the time.”

The victim was later found to have a broken jaw and thumb.

According to police, Gynane, jailed in 2019 for murdering his friend and stabbing a 16-year-old boy, had graffitied his cell with “Free Palestine” and “Death to the IDF.”

He was sentenced to 11 years for the antisemitic attack on top of his existing life sentence.

At the hearing, Judge Andrew Hurst noted that Gynane converted to Islam in 2007 and it was clear he held “antisemitic, florid and ideologically disturbing” views.

Hurst said there was a “very high risk of future assaults” from Gynane, who “will seek to harm innocent members of the Jewish community,” police say in a statement.
Toronto police searching for suspect who shot ‘replica’ gun at Jews, injuring them
The Toronto Police Service asked the public’s help on Saturday identifying a blue SUV, which a suspect drove on April 30 while shooting a “replica” gun at Jewish people.

“This investigation is being treated as a suspected hate-motivated offense,” the department stated.

Police described the weapon as a “Orbeez-type gun,” meaning one that shoots gel beads. It said that the victims, who were “visibly identifiable members of the Jewish community,” had “minor injuries.”

Several synagogues and Jewish schools are located within a few blocks of the site of the incident.

“On the streets of Canada’s most diverse city, Canadians are assaulted and shot at for being visibly Jewish,” stated the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, the advocacy arm of Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA.

“Our country is facing a wave of violent extremism and radicalization—one that threatens more than a single community. It endangers the personal safety and democratic values of all Canadians,” CIJA said. “Confronting these forces requires everyone to stand up and demand action before we face the kind of loss of life seen in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.”

On Friday, the Toronto Police Service said that it brought new hate crime and riot charges against some of the six people, whom it arrested on Nov. 5, 2025, after rioters disrupted a private, pro-Israel event. A week ago, the York Regional Police in Ontario said that it was probing what it called a “hate/bias-motivated incident” that day at Sephardic Kehila Centre in Vaughan.

The police department’s 2024 annual report on hate crime data, which it released last May, found that 40% of all hate crimes in Toronto in 2024 and 81% of all such religiously motivated hate crimes targeted Jews, though some 3.6% of Torontonians self-identify as Jews, per official stats.
Syrian-born activist converts to Judaism, plans Israel move: 'The rabbi nearly chocked'
Rawan Osman has just completed another visit to Israel. It was her 20th trip since Oct. 7, 2023 — no small thing for a woman born in Syria, raised for 18 years in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley and now living in Germany. After years of building ties with Israel and Judaism, Osman is preparing for another unexpected step: She plans to convert to Judaism and immigrate to Israel.

In an interview with ynet, Osman, a social activist, said the last time she visited Syria was in 2012, when she went to see relatives. By 2015, she said, all of them had left the country, and she no longer has family there. That, she said, has allowed her to speak out for Israel and against antisemitism around the world.

A wine bar in Damascus
In 2011, Osman had plans to open a wine bar in Damascus’ Old City with a Christian friend from the hospitality industry. At the time, she said, Damascus had an interesting cultural scene, with poetry evenings and gatherings where people discussed social issues. The Assad regime allowed more public meetings then, though intelligence agents were present at such events. “More and more Europeans were attending those events, including diplomats, and we thought the quality of the alcohol was bad. I love wine, so we wanted to open a wine bar,” she said. But when they went to sign the lease, the landlords changed their minds and the deal collapsed. Osman said that saved her from losing all her money.

“They said they had changed their minds, and two weeks later the uprising began, in March 2011. I would have lost everything,” she said.

Still, she did not give up on the idea. She flew to France to study wine sales and waited for the situation in Syria to calm down. Instead, it deteriorated. She decided not to stay in France, moved to Cyprus and still hoped she might return to Syria or Lebanon. About a year and a half later, she moved to Germany, where she has lived since.

The issue of alcohol sales has recently returned to the headlines in Syria. The government of Ahmed al-Sharaa decided in March to ban alcohol service in restaurants and nightclubs in Damascus and limit sales to several Christian neighborhoods. Even there, alcohol may be sold only in sealed containers and by licensed stores. The restrictions sparked public criticism, while the government said they were intended to impose order.

“It’s ridiculous,” Osman said. “Maybe the only good thing about the Assad regime was that it was secular. Everything else was terrible. The current regime is not as monstrous as the Assad regime, but it wants to take Syria back to the seventh century and is contributing to the Islamization of Syria. Syria is going through a dangerous process that must be stopped.

“From my point of view, and I consider myself Israeli today, al-Jolani is very dangerous. He is not good news for us, because we have thousands of jihadists on the border.”

Osman said the average Sunni Syrian who wants a conservative leader sees al-Sharaa positively. Others, she said, are worried. She knows the issue personally: Her father is a Sunni from Damascus’ Salihiyah neighborhood, while her mother is a Shiite from the village of Niha in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.


Israel’s Eurovision delegation arrives in Vienna in high spirits, despite security threats
Israel’s Eurovision delegation arrived in Vienna on Friday in advance of competing in the international song competition, exuding high spirits while coping with security threats.

The 70th Eurovision Song Contest will begin with the first semifinal on May 12, in which Israel will participate. The final will be on May 16.

Noam Bettan, Israel’s contestant, posted photos of himself and his five female back-up dancers singing and dancing their way through Ben-Gurion Airport on the morning of their flight.

They shared a glass of sparkling wine and a slice of a colorful cake at the airport, and he signed autographs for fans.

In a videotaped message released by KAN, Bettan said, “Thanks to all the people of Israel, thank you for your love. Over the past few months, I have felt the most love I’ve ever felt in my life. I feel like I’m setting off with the biggest and strongest support... I am proud to be representing Israel.”

He is set to perform “Michelle” in French, Hebrew, and English – a high-energy song about an elusive woman, which he wrote with Yuval Raphael, last year’s Israeli Eurovision contestant, along with Tzlil Klifi and Nadav Aharoni.

Bettan and his dancers will have their first rehearsal in Austria on Sunday. The crew will also have time to prep the special stage elements, such as the staircase Raphael ascended in her performance, as well as the chandelier.

But behind the scenes, security is as important to the Israeli delegation as stagecraft, and the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) continues to be in charge of protecting Israel’s performers and crew.




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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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