Seth Mandel: The Anti-Zionist Affliction
Anti-Zionism is many things, including humorless and anhedonic. I often watch news coverage of anti-Israel activism and hear the voice of Carol Burnett’s mean old Miss Hannigan in Annie: “Do I hear happiness in here?”Seth Mandel: Putting October 7 on Trial
There is almost nothing in the world quite as campy as the Eurovision song contest, but instead of getting into character and enjoying the shtick, Europeans are whining year-round about the participation of Israelis. This year, the contest even tried changing the rules to prevent Israel’s entrant, Noam Bettan, from matching the Jewish state’s past competitiveness.
Even that didn’t work as planned, since Bettan has now at least qualified for the finals. Four idiots got themselves tossed out of the audience for protesting Bettan’s existence on this earth yesterday during his performance. The Irish public broadcaster not only boycotted this year’s contest but is refusing to even air it on TV.
After all, if you allow people to watch Jews sing, who knows—it could lead to mixed dancing. Before you know it, impressionable children may be using offensive language, like “Israeli couscous.”
And so, no singing. No dancing. No watching, singing, or dancing. It’s like Footloose with keffiyehs.
What about art? If we can’t have music because the Jews have music too, can we look at pictures? Here I will refer you to the New York Times’ subheadline on an article about the Venice Biennale, the prestigious art expo: “The hottest exhibitions at the world’s major art exhibition were shuttered on Friday as part of a pro-Palestinian demonstration.”
Is that not the tagline of our times? More from the Times:
“When the final preview day opened at 10 a.m., dozens of visitors flocked to Austria’s pavilion, where Florentina Holzinger’s performance ‘Seaworld Venice’ which includes numerous naked performers, had drawn hourslong lines all week. They found the pavilion closed, with a sign outside saying that ‘some team members have decided to participate in the strike.’
“Some of the other buzziest exhibitions at this year’s event, including those by artists representing Belgium, Egypt, Japan, the Netherlands and South Korea, were also shut. Signs outside some of those pavilions read, ‘We stand with Palestine.’”
No dancing, no singing, no art, no immodest mer-people. All “for Palestine.” If only they would do something for the Palestinians instead of doing nothing “for Palestine.”
Yesterday, Israel showed remarkable parliamentary unity: A bill was sponsored by members of the governing coalition and of the opposition, and it received zero “no” votes as it passed easily.America’s Conspiratorial Consensus
What was this magic bill? It was a piece of legislation to approve the establishment of a special court to handle trials against participants in the October 7 slaughter. And, crucially, the trials will be public and televised.
The bill, applauded Justice Minister Yariv Levin, represents “one of the most important moments of the current Knesset. One can feel that we are doing the right thing by finding a way to unite at this moment, even though we are on the eve of elections and despite all the disagreements that exist.”
Indeed it was an opportune time to come together. This morning’s report on Hamas’s campaign of sexual violence was the result of a painstaking, yearslong investigative process. And now the terrorists captured alive on that day will have their day in court for the whole world to see.
The world needs to see it because, especially in the West, its key institutions rallied to the side of the slaughterers. They need to see what they support. But more important, the world needs to be shown what our enlightened professors, elite student bodies, progressive government officials and activists, and the rest cheered.
It will take place in a courtroom, where evidence can prevail. It will be in stark contrast to the fake international courts infamous for their corruption and lawlessness. And it will put to shame the way Westerners have tried to conduct their own trials through op-ed pages and manosphere podcasts.
According to the Times of Israel, only judges who are qualified to sit on the supreme court or are distinguished international jurists of similar qualifications will be on the 15-judge panel. Each case, meanwhile, “would be heard by three judges — one of whom would be a retired district court judge — while a five-judge panel would hear proceedings involving multiple defendants. Appeals would be heard by all 15 judges.”
Ironically, this fixation is being eagerly reinforced by contemporary Russian propaganda, whose messages are echoed across America’s emerging red-brown, anti-Israel conspiracist consensus. These include old Soviet tropes equating Zionists with Nazis; the now-familiar claims that Israel controls Washington and pushed the United States into war with Iran; allegations that Israel is persecuting Christians; and the use of Epstein-related code words for Jews, such as the “Epstein coalition,” as documented by Israeli scholar Nati Cantorovich.
When progressive California Rep. Ro Khanna found common ground with former Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene over opposition to the “Epstein class,” champagne corks likely popped in Kremlin propaganda offices. A democracy that chooses to believe that a country the size of New Jersey controls its political system has already lost confidence in its own institutions. Center-left British journalist Lewis Goodall exemplified this mindset recently when he remarked, “Israel is in the driver’s seat, and we—Britain, Europe, the United States—are powerless to determine our fate.”
It’s easy to dismiss such comments as ridiculous, but they carry real consequences. They are demoralizing and disempowering: Why even bother voting if Bibi Netanyahu controls everything? They are also corrosive. Demonization of Israel has long served dysfunctional and tyrannical regimes as a tool to divert attention from their own failures. By importing these ideas into their own democracies, Western elites are helping dismantle them from within. With American elites circulating such brain-rot under the guise of political analysis, America’s adversaries score easy victories in an ongoing campaign of psychological warfare they never stop waging.
Yet anti-Zionist vigilance inevitably turned against the Kremlin leadership itself. One group of Soviet “patriots” warned that Brezhnev’s government was under Zionist occupation and that its anti-Zionist campaign was merely a cover. Why else, they asked, would the country continue to slide into economic decline, moral rot, and alcoholism? The explanation was predictable: The Jewish wives of senior officials were enabling Zionist manipulation from within.
Some of the leading Zionologists themselves succumbed to the logic they had helped institutionalize. Convinced that Zionists were plotting revenge against him for exposing their machinations, Valery Yemelyanov—author of the infamous tract Dezionization, first published in Arabic in 1979 in the Syrian newspaper Al-Ba’ath on Hafez al-Assad’s orders—came to see his wife as the weak link. He murdered and dismembered her with an ax, then burned her body at a nearby construction site. He spent six years in a psychiatric hospital. At his trial in absentia, his supporters claimed he had been framed by Zionists—the real perpetrators of the murder.
It should be clear by now that what is taking shape in American public discourse is in no way a conventional political disagreement over the rightness or real-world effectiveness or this or that Israeli policy. It is the normalization of a way of thinking that flattens reality into a single, self-confirming narrative that has always led to the same place: the mental and political unraveling of the societies that embrace it.
What makes this moment particularly dangerous is that it no longer belongs to the fringes. It has moved fully into mainstream and, having crossed the aisle from left to right, creates the impression of a shared, bipartisan consensus around a modern American version of “the Jewish question.”
Societies that have gone down this path—the USSR, Arab states, Iran—do not emerge stronger, more confident, or more just. They become more paranoid, more dysfunctional, and more prone to turning against themselves. America has not been such a society until now. The question is whether it still has the power to stop.
The Free Press: Coleman Hughes & Haviv Rettig Gur on the New Antisemitism
In the nearly three years since Hamas’s attack on October 7, as the world has changed, I’ve often wondered what future there is for Jewish life in the West.
It doesn’t take much prompting to think about: One scroll on social media and you’re flooded with blood libel conspiracies. When I turn my phone off, in the hopes of touching some grass, I look up to see graffitied swastikas in subway stations or protests in a park calling for the death of America and Israel.
It’s not only Jews who are faced with this question, but everyone who believes the West is exceptional and worth fighting for.
Earlier this month, I spoke with two of the clearest thinkers in this moment: Coleman Hughes and Haviv Rettig Gur. Both are essential voices on this topic, and I’m proud to call them my Free Press colleagues. We were speaking in a Toronto synagogue, at an event hosted by the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center. The backdrop was that Canada, a country where Jews have thrived for centuries, is now a country that has experienced a 670 percent increase in antisemitic incidents since October 7—shootings at Jewish schools, synagogues firebombed, one Toronto synagogue vandalized seven times in a single year.
In our discussion, we covered a lot of ground. We discussed why the Iranian regime won’t fall the way people hope, and why many Americans insist on seeing Israel as a reflection of their own national guilt. We also spoke about growing antisemitism on the right, and why Coleman thinks it’s different from Jew-hate on the left. He spoke about the loss of the black-Jewish alliance, and how we might get it back. And despite all of that, we ended on a high note: the promise––the exception––of the English-speaking world, where, even still, the darkest predictions about Jewish life haven’t yet come true.
Michael Higgins: Report on October 7 sexual atrocities shames the world
A shocking new report that for the first time reveals in full the grotesque and gruesome horrors of October 7 is headlined: Silenced No More. Article content
It is an appalling truth that after October 7, 2023 the world was mostly silent to what happened, indifferent to what happened, denied what happened, or accused Israel of making up what happened.
Canada was not immune from this denialism.
For instance, Susan Kim, a city councillor in Victoria, and Sarah Jama, a member of the Ontario legislature, wrote a letter criticizing then NDP leader Jagmeet Singh for repeating “the unverified accusation that Palestinians were guilty of sexual violence” on October 7. The letter was also signed by Samantha Pearson, at the time the director of the sexual assault centre at the University of Alberta. She was later fired.
What prompted these three women to disavow so quickly and publicly the barbarity that was already established is known only to their consciences.
“Atrocities do not begin with the machinery of killing,” Irwin Cotler, former attorney general of Canada, wrote in a forward to the report. “They begin with a failure to believe victims. In the months following October 7, that failure has repeated itself with alarming speed: the silencing of testimony, the politicization of sexual violence, the grotesque inversion in which perpetrators are valourized and survivors shamed into silence.
“As Elie Wiesel taught us, ‘Silence in the face of evil is complicity with evil itself.’”
Rape as a weapon in war is as old as conflict. But sometimes the scale, deliberateness and depravity of the sexual violence suggests that rape is the primary means of conducting that war, such as the Rape of Nanking by Japanese soldiers or the Rape of Berlin by the Red Army.
Cochav Elkayam-Levy, the chairman and founder of The Civil Commission, an NGO that conducted the investigation into the October 7 attacks and produced the report, wrote, “There are moments in history that rupture the moral order by which societies define themselves. Moments that do more than shatter lives; they unsettle the very boundaries by which human conduct is understood.
“October 7, 2023 was such a moment.”
J Street HAS retweeted, written about, emailed its members, and mobilized to validate the Hamas-sourced Kristof attack against Israel.@jstreetdotorg HAS NOT retweeted, written about, emailed its members, or mobilized about the fact-based report of systematic Hamas rape on 10/7.
— AIPAC 🇺🇸🇮🇱 (@AIPAC) May 13, 2026
Jake Wallis Simons: Israeli rape dogs? The New York Times is barking mad
Euro-Med included the dogs shtick – without forensic evidence or independently verifiable corroboration – in a report in 2024, after which it was picked up by Al Jazeera. In April, it was repeated in a second Euro-Med paper and amplified by that distinguished online outlet, Middle East Eye, before being seized upon by the left-wing agitator Owen Jones, who included it on his Substack. Francesca Albanese, the swivel-eyed Israelophobe employed by the United Nations, repeated it, followed by Kristof at the New York Times. In an illustration of the feedback loop of bullshit, Owen Jones has now posted a Substack article entitled ‘New York Times confirms Israel using dogs to rape’.JPost Editorial: When it comes to Oct. 7, the New York Times prefers baseless claims over actual reports
It is worth recalling that two months after October 7, Jones watched a video of the brutality and concluded that ‘if there was rape and sexual violence committed, we don’t see that on camera’, even though the Israel Defence Forces said that it only included footage that ‘preserved the dignity’ of the victims and their families. The body of a partly burned female corpse with no underwear was ‘not what you would consider conclusive evidence of rape’, Jones insisted. But sex dogs? That he found convincing.
Kristof’s column also included a quotation from former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, appearing to confirm that his reporting was true. That came tumbling down after publication, when Olmert sent a statement to the New York Times protesting that he had been misrepresented. ‘I did not validate these claims’, Olmert told the Free Press. ‘I have no knowledge supporting these claims, as I said to Mr Kristof. Therefore, the positioning of my quote after pages of such allegations misrepresents my views.’
But the man won a Pulitzer Prize, I hear you cry! Well, so did the Gazan photographer, Saher Alghorra, who was awarded the bauble this month. This is the snapper behind the famous image of a Palestinian child, Mohammed al-Mutawaq, who was emaciated due to his cerebral palsy and hypoxemia, being cradled by his mother. The picture was falsely presented as evidence of starvation in Gaza… and printed on the front page of the New York Times in July last year.
Aside from the raw anti-Semitism that is now running riot through all our most venerable institutions, the worst thing about all this is the fact that the mainstream media are throwing away their own credibility. Speaking on my podcast, The Brink, last year, the American journalist Bari Weiss put it perfectly. ‘There is a crisis of trustworthiness’, she said. ‘You should not trust something that’s not worthy of your trust.’ The effect is to drive audiences into the unregulated Wild West of amateur commentators online, to clickbait merchants like Piers Morgan and, finally, to conspiracy theorists.
It’s a kind of horseshoe theory, I suppose. The New York Times – and other outlets like the BBC, which has had its share of similar scandals – has now proven itself to be up there with the likes of Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson. The only difference is pedigree. We’ll miss the truth when it’s gone.
Yet Sari Bashi, an Israeli-American human rights lawyer who is the executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, and who was interviewed for Kristof’s opinion column, points out that there is no “evidence that it has been ordered.” She said she believes, however, that there is “persistent evidence that the authorities know it’s happening and are not stopping it.”When It Comes to Israel, The New York Times Can’t Help Itself
'It's impossible to know how common sexual assaults against Palestinians are'
And even Kristof himself admits that “it’s impossible to know how common sexual assaults against Palestinians are” - though that does not stop him from going on for almost 4,000 words about the total certainty that Israelis “systematically employ rape and sexual torture” to humiliate Palestinian prisoners and that Israel allows, even enables, Israeli settlers to sexually assault Palestinian civilians in the West Bank.
The famed New York Times columnist even goes so far as to call on the US to “condition arms transfers on an end to sexual assault,” arguing that “we could send a moral and practical message that sexual violence is unacceptable no matter the identity of the victim.”
Maybe it would also send a message to other departments of his own newspaper that the Israeli victims of Hamas’s systematic sexual violence and rape on October 7, and afterward, as Israeli hostages languished in Gaza, also deserve to have their stories told?
Kristof’s column was published and promoted prominently on the NYT’s website, even including a separately produced video clip, one day ahead of a monumental Israeli report into Hamas’s systematic sexual crimes on October 7, which over the past two-and-a-half years have been downplayed or outright denied by a multitude of human rights and women’s rights activists, organizations, and officials.
The report by the Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas against Women and Children was distributed to media outlets in Israel, including the NYT, weeks ahead of its publication on Tuesday. It was picked up by many journalists and platforms, but was somehow skipped by The New York Times.
It’s disappointing that the newspaper prefers baseless claims of Israeli rape dogs over actual reports on atrocities.
Any time you claim that something is “state policy,” you enter serious territory.
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof had no qualms claiming that sexual violence is Israel’s “organized state policy.”
Among the explosive accusations that have caused a firestorm among Israel supporters is the sordid claim that Israel uses trained dogs to rape prisoners.
One would think that such extraordinary charges would require extraordinary evidence.
This is especially true at a time when animosity towards Jews and Israel is at record levels, and throwing more fuel into the fire of Jew-hatred can easily trigger more violence against Jews.
So, what is this extraordinary evidence?
It’s less than ordinary, as in not very credible.
Kristof cites a report from the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor that concluded that Israel employs “systematic sexual violence” that is “widely practiced as part of an organized state policy.”
But according to Honest Reporting, an indispensable media watchdog, Euro-Med’s bias is obvious — it has “documented links to Hamas and a long record of extreme, unverified accusations against Israel.”
Some of the takeaways from Honest Reporting:
The New York Times opinion piece alleging sexual abuse against Palestinian prisoners relied on sources with documented pro-terror sympathies and failed to disclose crucial background information that would have helped readers assess their credibility.
Several of the article’s central allegations appear to have evolved significantly over time, with major inconsistencies left unexplained or unchallenged by the paper.
The timing of the story’s publication immediately before a major report on Hamas’ October 7 sexual violence raises serious questions about narrative framing and editorial priorities.
One of the central sources cited in the article is Sami al-Sai. Yet as Honest Reporting notes, “the Times failed to inform readers about al-Sai’s documented history of glorifying terrorists and celebrating armed attacks against Israelis.”
What are we to make of such flimsy evidence behind such incendiary and harmful accusations?
New York
— TheJewishAlly (@TheJewishAlly) May 12, 2026
Thursday May 14th 5pm
Enough is enough
Jewish civil rights groups will lead a protest against the New York Times for its publication of the “dog rape” libel and other racist antizionist conspiracy theories targeting Israel.
The protest will be held Thursday, May… pic.twitter.com/jlUMPUiJIx
Hugh Hewitt: Noah and Hugh discuss the Kristof debacle, the explosion of anti-Semitism, and SCOTUS
Hugh Hewitt: Is Nick Kristof’s blood libel this century’s Dreyfus Affair? Matt joined Hugh to discuss.
Hugh Hewitt: Is Nick Kristof’s blood libel this century’s Dreyfus Affair, part 2: Rich joined Hugh to discuss
"New York Times readers deserved a more thoroughly vetted and more fully reported article. They now deserve to be informed of the problems plaguing Kristof’s piece. The paper should retract Kristof’s outrageous claim that trivializes the rape, murder, and dismemberment of… pic.twitter.com/DvgQaMpA2O
— CAMERA (@CAMERA4Truth) May 13, 2026
Full recognition of the article as libel would involve a few things:
— Adam Louis-Klein (@adam_louis52328) May 13, 2026
1) recognizing that it was not only bad journalism—poorly sourced, etc—but racist defamation. That its intent was to incite hostility against a group of people.
2) recognize that its an example of a whole…
What fresh hell is this? “The accounts of the 14 men and women… were corroborated with… people the victims confided in”???
— Strxwmxn (@strxwmxn) May 14, 2026
Journalism is fucking dead. https://t.co/g73RYSGF4N
The wording!
— David Bernstein (@ProfDBernstein) May 14, 2026
"Rights groups have documented complaints." A complaint is an allegation.
Putting the word "documented" there is meant to suggest for those who don't read *very* closely that the underlying facts of the complaint have been documented, rather than just that someone… https://t.co/b4SWnhYVvm
Why not agree on @ICRC & lawyer visits for Palestinian security detainees? If you knew the first thing about international law, you would be able to answer your own question.
— Dr. Brian L. Cox (@BrianCox_RLTW) May 13, 2026
But since you obviously can't, don't worry. I'm an int'l law prof & I'm here to help.
The answer is… https://t.co/FhPLvXUrBe pic.twitter.com/XpFJW2mLSZ
Kristof believes (without evidence) that Israel trains dogs to rape humans but doesn’t believe the evidence that Marwan Barghouti is a mass murderer. https://t.co/ZUq09XpS2L
— Max 📟 (@MaxNordau) May 13, 2026
Omar Hamad’s family has multiple members in Hamas, PIJ and other orgs. According to Omar’s own words one of his cousins was killed in Israel while participating in the massacre of Jews on October 7 https://t.co/IfbD71iUyS pic.twitter.com/Zp6X3Hz5GP
— Michael Elgort (@just_whatever) May 13, 2026
2/
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) May 13, 2026
Before even finishing the intro, AP frames the issue as though both sides are simply making competing political claims.
As if documented rape and terrorism are a matter of competing narratives. pic.twitter.com/d51qabSue1
4/
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) May 13, 2026
Rather than focusing on the 430 interviews and 10,000 photos documenting Hamas' brutality, AP pivots to allegations against Israeli soldiers. pic.twitter.com/y543kgLMeQ
6/
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) May 13, 2026
Notice the language choices.
Israel “says” Hamas committed atrocities.
Israel “accuses” the international community of ignoring evidence.
Evidence is described as “alleged” or “politicized.”
But accusations against Israel are often presented with far less scrutiny and far…
2/
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) May 13, 2026
Like the time we ripped apart an AP photo essay for turning Hezbollah terrorists into victims.https://t.co/e2iARN36P9
The New York Times relied on allegations pushed by EuroMed, a Hamas front group, for its story accusing the IDF of using dogs to rape Palestinians.
— Yehuda Teitelbaum (@chalavyishmael) May 13, 2026
Euro Med founder Ramy Abdu appeared alongside Mahmood Mamdani, father of Zohran, on the advisory council of the Gaza Tribunal. https://t.co/GC0pqInqeX
Shaiel Ben-Ephraim, a key source for the NY Times rape dogs story — and perhaps the most important source — declared on X a week BEFORE publication that he supported the elimination of Israel.
— Joel Mowbray (@joelmowbray) May 13, 2026
It is a stunning breach of journalistic ethics for the NY Times to rely so heavily on… pic.twitter.com/8QzqxiTsXK
This fucking clown.
— AG (@AGHamilton29) May 13, 2026
Ben-Ephraim is a serial harasser of women who sent inappropriate photos to underage girls. He has no special insight or knowledge into wha happens in Israeli prisons.
You can’t be a “whistleblower” based on something you may have heard from someone else… https://t.co/6ag0LGMgAh
Reminder: Piers Morgan is the literal LAST person you should trust when it comes to reporting and publishing supposed abuses of detainees https://t.co/FUnPnkk08l pic.twitter.com/LTsF4eGbUD
— Jake Donnelly (@RedWhiteBlueJew) May 13, 2026
“The New York Times wouldn’t print it if it weren’t true!” is probably my favorite new genre of social media post.
— T. Becket Adams (@BecketAdams) May 13, 2026
It mixes doe-eyed naivete with a disregard for historical precedent, and adds just a dash raw opportunism. pic.twitter.com/VsJT8dqq0a
Putting these two lines in the same tweet is absolutely bonkers, even for this rag pic.twitter.com/TTejEgPdE0
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) May 13, 2026
It would have been called the New York Times. https://t.co/Bpnuy8WHcB pic.twitter.com/r3FCjNnsQP
— Noam Blum (@neontaster) May 12, 2026
Saudi anchor vs. UAE engine: Why the Abu Dhabi-Israel alliance is transcending the Arab League
Tehran’s calculus has always rested on the assumption that the Abraham Accords states are economically integrated but militarily shallow. A UAE that sails tankers in the dark is defiant. It is not yet dangerous to Iran in the way that a genuinely integrated military architecture would be.Netanyahu’s office says Israeli prime minister ‘secretly visited’ UAE during Iran war, Emirati officials deny claim
What Israel actually requires is not a bilateral axis but a networked security architecture that uses the UAE as its Gulf node while extending in multiple directions simultaneously. To the west, Greece and Cyprus represent an underappreciated anchor. Both have signed defense agreements with Israel; both sit astride critical eastern Mediterranean energy corridors; and both have threat perceptions regarding Turkish revisionism that align naturally with Israeli strategic interests.
The EastMed corridor linking Israeli and Cypriot offshore gas fields to European markets is not merely an energy project. It is the skeleton of a strategic relationship that already involves joint exercises and extends Israeli deterrence into NATO’s southeastern flank without requiring a formal NATO commitment that will never come.
To the east, the I2U2 framework linking India, Israel, the UAE and the United States remains the most underbuilt diplomatic structure in the region. India is the piece that transforms the Israel-UAE bilateral relationship from a regional arrangement into a genuine counterweight to Iranian influence across the Indian Ocean littoral.
New Delhi has its own reasons to resist Iranian pressure in the Gulf and its own appetite for Israeli defense technology that has grown steadily for two decades. An I2U2 that acquires even an informal security dimension through technology transfer and intelligence coordination would give the Israel-UAE axis the strategic mass it currently lacks.
And Saudi Arabia, despite itself, remains structurally important—not as a partner but as a variable. Riyadh’s refusal to join “Project Freedom” is a signal, not a permanent condition. The correct Israeli approach is not to chase Saudi normalization as a diplomatic trophy or to write Riyadh off as irretrievably passive. It is to build the alternative architecture aggressively enough that Saudi Arabia eventually faces a binary choice between relevance inside the new order and irrelevance outside it.
Strategic autonomy is not a slogan. It is a procurement policy, a basing doctrine, a technology export framework and a set of bilateral commitments that must be negotiated and operationalized before American guarantees are reduced rather than after.
The UAE has signaled—through its OPEC exit, its tanker defiance and its reported reconsideration of the Arab League—that it has made a strategic choice. Israel’s task is to meet that choice with architecture rather than rhetoric, dense enough to deter Iran and broad enough that no single partner’s limitations define the whole.
The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office announced on Wednesday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “secretly visited” the United Arab Emirates during the Iran war, where he met with UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed—a claim UAE officials have denied.Iran executes man accused of spying on behalf of Mossad
According to Netanyahu’s office, the meeting took place during “Operation Roaring Lion,” the U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran and “led to a historic breakthrough in relations between Israel and the UAE.”
The UAE normalized relations with Israel under the 2020 Abraham Accords and has since expanded security and economic ties with Jerusalem.
Hours after the statement was published, the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs denied the report, stating that it did not receive Netanyahu or any Israeli military delegation in the country.
“The UAE reaffirms that its relations with Israel are public and conducted within the framework of the well-known and officially declared Abraham Accords, and are not based on non-transparent or unofficial arrangements,” the ministry stated, calling on media outlets “to refrain from circulating unverified information or promoting misleading political narratives.”
Ziv Agmon, Netanyahu’s former chief of staff and spokesman, insisted that the prime minister’s account of the visit is true, writing on Facebook that he “accompanied the prime minister on the historic trip that has been top secret until today.”
“Sheikh bin Zayed, his family members and other dignitaries welcomed us and were happy to see the prime minister of Israel on their soil,” he stated.
The announcement of the alleged visit came a day after U.S. ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said Israel had deployed Iron Dome air-defense systems and personnel to the UAE amid Iranian missile and drone attacks targeting the Gulf state.
Reports this week also said the UAE carried out covert strikes against Iranian targets, including an April attack on a refinery on Iran’s Lavan Island, though Abu Dhabi has not publicly confirmed the operations.
Iran executed a man convicted of spying for Israel’s Mossad intelligence service after the Supreme Court upheld his death sentence, the judiciary’s Mizan news outlet reported on Wednesday.
According to the judiciary, Ehsan Afrashteh, 32, confessed to being recruited by Mossad and working on its behalf.
He received payments of 1,000 euros to carry out tasks such as “documenting target locations,” including Iran’s Intelligence Ministry, and “attending gatherings and taking pictures of various people,” the judiciary claimed.
He operated under the guise of a taxi driver, and was given training by Mossad in Nepal, Mizan said, adding that he was fluent in several languages, including English and Hebrew.
According to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), Afrashteh was arrested in 2024 after returning from a trip to Turkey, and sentenced to death in 2025.
The rights group claimed the death penalty was based on confessions that were fabricated or given under torture.
Four weeks ago, CENTCOM began implementing the blockade against ships entering and exiting Iran’s ports. As of today, American forces have redirected 67 commercial vessels, allowed 15 supporting humanitarian aid to pass, and disabled 4 to ensure compliance.
— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) May 13, 2026
Earlier this week,… pic.twitter.com/Vfkucl0Mci
BREAKING: Lebanon 🇱🇧 has filed a formal complaint to the UN 🇺🇳 accusing Iran 🇮🇷 of violating the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.
— Aleph א (@no_itsmyturn) May 13, 2026
The complaint accuses Iran "direct and blatant interference in the internal affairs of Lebanon" and dragging the country into war.
2/ 🇱🇧: Although the Government of Lebanon condemns the targeting of Iranian diplomats in Lebanese territory, it nonetheless wishes to correct certain inaccuracies that are contained in the letter from the Permanent Representative of Iran (A/80/669-S/2026/153) and to highlight…
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) May 13, 2026
Former Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim: Iran’s Closure of the Strait of Hormuz Is Political Thuggery; Hosting U.S. Military Bases Is Not Shameful – Many Countries in the Region Host Foreign Allies for Protection; Hizbullah Committed Crimes in Syria and Must Decide What Its… pic.twitter.com/4D9cZqbhMU
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) May 13, 2026
Gulf states have uncovered more than 12 Iranian cells in just 27 days, further highlighting the escalation by the Islamic Republic against its Arab neighbors that is reshaping the Gulf security landscape.
— Ariel Oseran أريئل أوسيران (@ariel_oseran) May 13, 2026
The cells were exposed in recent weeks in the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, and… pic.twitter.com/oNffa2QqtI
Huckabee: Israel may have to disarm Hamas on its own
U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said Tuesday that Israel may have to disarm Hamas, amid growing indications the Islamic terror group is reasserting control over parts of Gaza in defiance of a ceasefire agreement that required it to disarm.Palestinian to be indicted over Samaria car-ramming that killed Israeli teen
The remarks by the top American envoy hinted at both a growing dissatisfaction over the unsettled situation with Hamas in Gaza since a U.S.-brokered ceasefire went into effect on Oct. 10, 2025, a perception overshadowed by the war with Iran, and a growing realization that disarming Hamas will likely be left to the Israeli military.
“Who’s going to actually do the disarming? I don’t know,” Huckabee told a Tel Aviv University conference. “It may end up that the only entity willing to do it will be the IDF.”
Hamas currently is in control of less than half of the Gaza Strip, with the Israeli military controlling the other half.
He expressed skepticism that the much-touted International Stabilization Force, which several nations have volunteered to join and is meant to secure and govern Gaza, would be able to disarm Hamas, noting that it was a “monitoring border force” and not a demilitarizing force.
The U.S. Ambassador said that the world should thank Israel if it is the only one willing to disarm Hamas instead of censuring it.
“The world can’t condemn Israel for doing what it didn’t have the courage to do, and that’s taking Hamas down,” he said. “You don’t send someone into the fire to put out the fire and then complain because they come out smelling like smoke.”
Israeli prosecutors plan to indict a Palestinian man accused of carrying out a car-ramming near the Samaria community of Homesh in March that killed 18-year-old Yehuda Shmuel Sherman, authorities said on Wednesday.
Dawas Hassun, a resident of the Palestinian Authority village of Beit Imrin in his 50s, intentionally rammed an ATV carrying three Israelis, killing Sherman and injuring his brother Daniel, the Israel Police and Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) announced.
Muayyad Hassun, a former mayor of Beit Imrin, told Britain’s Channel 4 News last month that the suspect’s family maintains the March 21 incident was an accidental “road collision.”
However, according to investigators, Hassun pursued the Israelis after they entered Beit Imrin as part of a security patrol in the area. “Upon noticing three Israelis traveling through the village, the defendant decided to harm them if they slowed their vehicle,” per the joint statement.
He subsequently hit the ATV with his pickup truck, causing it to overturn into a wadi. The driver, Yehuda Shmuel Sherman, was pronounced dead at the scene.
“Police forces from the Judea and Samaria District, together with forensic investigators and traffic accident investigators, alongside the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet, were dispatched to the scene and began collecting evidence and findings,” the statement said.
Hassun was arrested shortly afterward, and his detention was repeatedly extended by a military court pending the investigation.
A prosecutor’s declaration has now been filed against Hassun ahead of a formal indictment expected to be submitted in the coming days.
The IDF has adopted a Ukrainian battlefield innovation to counter Hezbollah's fiber-optic guided explosive drones: rotating wire fences.
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) May 12, 2026
The system uses barbed wire attached to iron poles with small electric motors that spin continuously. When a drone trailing a fiber-optic… pic.twitter.com/PmtQKgFabQ
🎥WATCH: Footage from the elimination of Hezbollah terrorists and the dismantling of terror infrastructure.
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) May 13, 2026
Since the beginning of the operation, IDF troops have eliminated 400+ terrorists and located 1,000+ weapons used by Hezbollah terrorists. pic.twitter.com/6fLBBwC5VJ
It's like a mosquito biting a buffalo.
— Mandatorysignup (@Mandatorysign1) May 13, 2026
Those tiny FPV drones don't have the explosives to penetrate such an armored vehicle.
This is why they don't show you the aftermath, because it's pathetic.
🔴ELIMINATED: Hamza Sharabasi, a commander in Hamas’ Shejaiya Battalion in northern Gaza.
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) May 13, 2026
Sharabasi infiltrated Israeli territory during the October 7 massacre & took part in the infiltration of the Nahal Oz Outpost, during which IDF soldiers were killed and kidnapped.… pic.twitter.com/ntDuNmRN15
This thread documents 8 other nurses and medical workers who were actually Hamas & PIJ combatants, mostly commanders -- corroborating the strategic use of hospitals as command centers: 2/ https://t.co/0mzzTXC2AI
— Aizenberg (@Aizenberg55) May 13, 2026
Seven months into a ceasefire, Amnesty chief insists “the genocide is ongoing.” For Amnesty and its ecosystem, “genocide” is no longer a claim to be tested against reality. It's become theology — as well as an identity, creed, and career. Too much now depends on never letting go. pic.twitter.com/tcw4JseVHk
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) May 13, 2026
🇳🇴 Norwegian NGO sends delegation to report live from Gaza on the ongoing starvation and hunger all around.
— Josh (@_j0sh_a_) May 13, 2026
When they finish reporting and collecting donations, they treat themselves to fine dining at one of Gaza’s luxury restaurants 😋 https://t.co/iv9i8Ktblp
.@UN_PGA Madam President Annalina Baerbock, why are you set to speak at this one-sided event attacking Israel?
— UN Watch (@UNWatch) May 13, 2026
77 years ago this week, the U.N. admitted Israel as a member state.
Now you want to call it “Nakba Day” to eulogize the failure of the Arab states’ declared Jihad? pic.twitter.com/2dhbepom0y
Commentary Podcast: Is Iran Still Strong?
Today we discuss an intelligence assessment cited by the New York Times claiming Iran's military capabilities were not substantially damaged by the war, Thomas Massie's primary woes, and the risks of a major American party centering its identity on antisemitism. Plus, John remembers Abe Foxman.
🚨 WATCH:
— Mossad Commentary (@MOSSADil) May 14, 2026
US Sen. John Fetterman (D PA) points out the hypocrisy on the selective outrage behind the war in Gaza but show nothing for Iran. In fact, most of the same pro-Pali’s sympathize with the Ayatollah regime that has slaughtered over 40,000 unarmed, peaceful protesters in… pic.twitter.com/TPxnCocors
The regime represented at the Vatican by Ayatollah Mokhtari murdered up to 30,000 of its own people demonstrating against it in January. Too bad none of them are around to receive papal honors for their extraordinary contributions. https://t.co/citcpev6WJ https://t.co/17hzFZj40a
— Rod Dreher (@roddreher) May 12, 2026
Wait so the Norwegians are having a nice summit with the Iranian regime now? Reprehensible. Free Iran! pic.twitter.com/lOZzfC60oh
— Jake Wallis Simons (@JakeWSimons) May 13, 2026
The headlines today: “Norwegian Deputy Foreign Minister Andreas Kravik visits Tehran for talks with Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.” @NorwayMFA & @akravik79 - what are you doing? This is not 1993 when you brokered the Oslo peace accords aiming for a two-state solution… pic.twitter.com/wDOgmnkBPr
— Omid Djalili (@omid9) May 13, 2026
Grain Stolen from Ukraine: “Non-Kosher” for Israel, but “Kosher” for Turkey?
— Chief Rabbi Of Ukraine Moshe Azman (@RabbiUkraine) May 13, 2026
The Panamanian-flagged dry cargo ship Panormis has been at the center of international scandals for the past two months. After leaving a russian port on the Black Sea, the ship delivered tens of… pic.twitter.com/i3jruKdyj9
A University of Arkansas Iranian-American professor fired from her tenured position in late March is now facing investigations in Britain over allegations of academic misconduct tied to her research on Iran.https://t.co/OhQV0ybdXN pic.twitter.com/Od55WI055H
— Iran International English (@IranIntl_En) May 13, 2026
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Reclaiming the Covenant on America's 250th (May 2026) "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022) |
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