Friday, May 22, 2026

05/21 Links Pt2: Hatred of Israel and the Degradation of the West; The Doom Loop of UK Anti-Semitism; The Tiki Torch Has Been Passed; Mamdani Paid Multiple Visits to Holocaust-Denying Sheikh

From Ian:

Bret Stephens: Hatred of Israel and the Degradation of the West
Good-faith criticism of Israeli leaders and policy has for years been giving way to something darker. It's a conviction that Israel, alone among the nations, was a mistake to begin with and has no right to exist now. The fashionable frenzy that is today's loathing of Israel is a sign of the degradation of the West.

Societies that value critical thinking and reasoned moral judgment do not make a fetish of demonizing one small country and its people while imagining that peace, justice and freedom would somehow be achieved if only the country and its people were made to disappear.

Israel has been living under the endless drizzle of orchestrated propaganda and media hostility over the course of its 78 years, while still managing to transform itself into a military, technological and economic powerhouse - as well as one of the happiest countries in the world.

Moral judgments should be made about Israel according to the same standards by which we judge other countries faced with similar circumstances. It's when Israel is demanded to be a saint - and then, as it invariably falls short, is damned as the worst sinner - that we lose our sense of perspective and proportion.
The Tiki Torch Has Been Passed By Abe Greenwald
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The Dems are now the party of the forgotten Jew-hater. Leading Democrats today, unlike Trump, praise neo-Nazis and anti-Semites round the clock. How could they not? The anti-Semites are their supporters, candidates, and elected officials. There’s Mamdani, Platner, El-Sayed, and other colorful figures.

For example, there’s Texas Democratic congressional candidate Maureen Galindo, who pledged on social media last week to “turn Karnes ICE Detention Center into a prison for American Zionists and former ICE officers for human trafficking.” She added: “It will also be a castration processing center for pedophiles which will probably be most of the Zionists.”

If there’s still a quiet part that Dems are not supposed to say out loud, Galindo seems to have said it. Major Democrats have summoned herculean courage to condemn her remarks about imprisoning Jews and castrating them for pedophilia.

But everything else goes. So-called moderate party leaders and potential presidential candidates are denouncing AIPAC, Israel, “the Epstein class,” etc.

They’re also going out of their way to praise Jew-haters across the aisle. Yesterday, the career anti-Semite Thomas Massie lost a Republican congressional primary election in Kentucky. Just a week ago, Massie posed for a picture with a supporter who was wearing an “American Reich” sweatshirt complete with a Reichsadler-esque logo. Last night, after his defeat, Massie’s first public comment was “I would have come out sooner, but I had to call my opponent and concede, and it took a while to find Ed Gallrein in Tel Aviv.”

Democrat Ro Khanna, a 2028 presidential hopeful, couldn’t bear to see such a fine man go down. “My good friend @RepThomasMassie lost tonight,” he wrote on X. “He lost because he had the guts to stand up to the Epstein class and against the war.” Nor could Khanna miss the opportunity to hoover up Massie’s anti-Semitic base. “I say to this voters who feel rejected by Trump,” he went on. “We welcome you. Join our coalition to take on a rotten system and stand for the working class over the Epstein class.”

An hour later, perhaps realizing he forgot to mention AIPAC, Khanna posted: “The message is clear: if you take a stand against war, AIPAC, & the Epstein class, you have no place in the Trump coalition. But the future of the Democratic Party that is done with the establishment is yours to shape.”

The message is clear, alright: There are only good people on one side—on the other, there are Jews. When you blame an election loss on a rigged system, it’s a threat to our democracy. When you blame it on a system rigged by the Jews, it’s “guts.” And if you blame the pesky Jews for everything, you’ll find a home in the Democratic Party.

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the tiki torch has been passed to a new generation of Democrats.
Seth Mandel: The Doom Loop of UK Anti-Semitism
Today’s Telegraph continues on this theme with an extraordinary column by George Chesterton, whose wife and children are Jewish. (Memo to Keir Starmer: You should probably read the Telegraph, you might learn something.) Chesterton’s older daughter was bat mitzvahed in 2023; his younger daughter is currently taking lessons for her own upcoming celebration. In between the two events, Britain has changed for the worse—but the signs, Chesterton says, were there even before the Hamas attacks in October 2023.

That first bat mitzvah took place earlier in 2023, and when Chesterton’s daughter started talking about it, the Nazi taunts from her classmates immediately followed.

“Hearing that my daughter was having a bat mitzvah was the trigger—until then most of her school year had not even known she was Jewish,” he writes. “It’s a measure of how far our society has allowed hatred of Jews to spread that abuse in early 2023 seems almost innocent compared to today.”

We should pause a moment on that first line: “Hearing that my daughter was having a bat mitzvah was the trigger.” Anti-Semites like to claim that Jews are to blame for their own discrimination. This argument has been extremely common after October 7, when bigots and their apologists portray anti-Semitism as “just anti-Zionism” and a reaction to Israel’s own policies. Chesterton’s article is a reminder that such triggers are always a pretext: Are the Hitler taunts his daughter’s fault for having a bat mitzvah? Anything Jewish, whether related to Israel or not, is a trigger for anti-Semites. Western societies just happen to be at a place now where there’s always someone triggered by Jews being Jews.

Chesterton’s other daughter wasn’t spared either:

“Around the same time, my younger daughter, then aged 10 and in primary school, had been compelled to declare which ‘side’ she was on by fellow pupils, the clear implication being that the children asking her were on the side of Palestinians. As with her big sister, this was because they knew she was Jewish. It was a primary-school purity test. She came home one day and explained someone had scratched Israel out of the school atlases.”

Totally healthy society, where 10-year-olds are subject to anti-Jewish purity tests in school.

The adults experienced it too, of course. Chesterton talks about his and his wife’s friends being quick to signal their virtuous anger at Israel when the war started so that they would pass the same purity test. But the family’s experiences were never limited to conversations about Israel:

“One Sunday afternoon in the summer of 2024, my wife, who is a photographer, was trying to book a taxi to the Bevis Marks Synagogue in the City of London, where she was due to be taking pictures at an event. Eight times, a different driver picked up the fare then mysteriously dropped the job once they realized what the destination was. In the end, I drove her to work because nobody else would.”
George Orwell’s ‘Antisemitism in Britain’ has sadly aged very well
Afew weeks ago, as I looked at footage of a pro-Palestine demonstration – I forget which one, they’re all blurring into one – and noted the prevalence of the nice, genteel, middle-class protesters, a phrase popped unbidden into my head: “The stupid, suburban prejudice of antisemitism.”

The words were Ezra Pound’s, in conversation with Allen Ginsberg in 1967. During the war Pound had broadcast, from Italy, the vilest antisemitic propaganda; this was his way of apologising for it. Leaving aside the question of whether his contrition was genuine or not, the choice of the adjective “suburban” was telling. It suggests something tamed, polite even; not the wildness of the countryside or the jostle and bustle of the city, but something tree-lined, respectable.

I also thought of this when a friend sent me a link to George Orwell’s 1945 essay Antisemitism in Britain. For an 81-year-old, this essay is looking surprisingly youthful. (One surprise: it begins by saying that “There are about 400,000 known Jews in Britain”; the current figure is some 277,000.) A quote from it has been doing the rounds on social media lately: “One of the marks of antisemitism is an ability to believe stories that could not possibly be true.”

This is usually cited in opposition to the recent opinion piece in the New York Times about dogs being trained to rape; but it has, and will continue to have, other applications.

Orwell’s essay, though, also makes much of the respectability of those who make antisemitic comments: “Naturally the antisemite thinks of himself as a reasonable being. Whenever I have touched on this subject in a newspaper article, I have always had a considerable ‘come-back’, and invariably some of the letters are from well-balanced, middling people – doctors, for example – with no apparent economic grievance.”

I can believe it. There has always been this strain in British antisemitism, something of middle-class virtue; and I think of Dulwich, the suburb itself, as leafy as can possibly be imagined; and the famous school, the college, that sits within it, like a country house; and its (currently) most famous alumnus, Nigel Farage, who, it has been often alleged, spent much of his time there making hissing noises at fellow Jewish pupils, and racially abusing anyone with darker skin than him.

“A Jewish boy at a public school almost invariably had a bad time,” writes Orwell in the same essay.

“He could, of course, live down his Jewishness if he was exceptionally charming or athletic, but it was an initial disability comparable to a stammer or a birthmark.”

And I think of my own public school, Westminster, where two of the school’s intellectual elite, the Queen’s Scholars, asked me if I was Jewish, and when I said I wasn’t, replied: “Then you won’t mind saying, ‘Jews are the scum of the earth, and up with Adolf Hitler.’ They’re only words, go on, say them.” I demurred.


AJC marks one year since two Israeli embassy staffers were killed in DC
Exactly one year after Israeli embassy staffers Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky were killed outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., the American Jewish Committee said that it is working to combat dangerous rhetoric and conspiracies that lead to anti-Jewish violence.

The pair, who planned to get engaged, was killed on May 21, 2025, after they attended an American Jewish Committee young diplomats reception focused on humanitarian diplomacy and Israeli-Palestinian cooperation at the museum, located about a mile from the White House.

The Justice Department recently said that it was seeking the death penalty against Elias Rodriguez, who faces federal hate-crime and murder charges for the attack.

“We are grateful for the severity with which the Justice Department is handling this case,” an AJC spokesman told JNS. “Ultimately, when it comes to sentencing and punishment, we support the wishes of Sarah’s and Yaron’s families.”

In a statement marking one year since the staffers were killed, the AJC pointed to growing violent Jew-hatred nationwide, which followed “a constant stream of protests that demonized Jews and Israelis in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack.”

The AJC told JNS that it is taking a “multifaceted approach” to dangerous rhetoric, including “engaging directly with major technology and social media companies to provide clear recommendations and urgent steps to address anti-Jewish hate and conspiracies spreading online.”

It added that it is “working directly with leaders across society, from government and partner communities to education and the private sector, to help them to better understand, prevent and respond to antisemitism.”
‘Could happen to any of us,’ says head of new Annapolis Federation, a year after murder of Israeli embassy staffers in DC
The creation of a new Jewish Federation in the Maryland state capital was inspired, in part, by the death of Sarah Milgrim, who was murdered along with her boyfriend Yaron Lischinsky a year ago Thursday, when the two Israeli embassy staffers left an American Jewish Committee event about a mile from the White House.

“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of her and mourn her loss, while also recognizing that it could happen to any Jew at any time anywhere at this point,” Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, co-founder of the Jewish Federation of Annapolis and Chesapeake, told JNS.

“There is not a day that goes by that I’m not working on fighting antisemitism and creating more security for Jews in my community,” she said. “Every single day, I am working on security for Jews, because I know that what happened to Sarah could happen to any of us anywhere at this time.”

The American Jewish community remembered the two Israeli embassy staffers on Thursday.

Milgrim and Lischinsky, who planned to get engaged, had left a Jewish young professionals event at the Capital Jewish Museum on May 21, 2025, when a gunman, who shouted “free Palestine,” killed the two.

Elias Rodriguez faces federal hate-crime and murder charges in connection with the shooting, and the U.S. Justice Department said that it is seeking the death penalty.

“It’s hard to believe that it’s a year ago, because it feels like yesterday,” Ron Halber, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, told JNS. “We think about Yaron and Sarah every day.”

“It was a killing of two young, beautiful people, because they were Jewish and the irony is that this couple, who worked at the embassy, were working on coexistence efforts and modeling what they hoped would be a brighter future for the Jews and the Palestinians,” Halber said.


When anti-Zionism becomes the respectable language of antisemitism
The Bondi Beach terror attack on Jewish people celebrating Hanukkah in December 2025 shocked the community in Australia, New Zealand, and around the world. For New Zealand Jews, the incident felt very close to home, as strong familial ties bind the two communities.

The Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion (the Bondi Commission) is currently holding public hearings on the mass shooting, which claimed fifteen innocent lives and injured more than forty others. It has been described as Australia’s worst such incident since the 1996 Port Arthur Massacre and the deadliest terrorist incident in the country’s history.

The Commission’s interim report, released at the end of April and containing fourteen recommendations, was met with cautious approval from the Jewish Australian community. The fact that antisemitism is being treated as a national security and social cohesion issue is welcome. Jewish leaders, however, are insistent that the report must lead to lasting institutional and political change rather than simply platitudes and temporary attention.

As the scourge of antisemitism surges globally, the findings of the commission will have significance for Jewish communities everywhere. One of the issues to emerge from the hearing is when anti-Zionism becomes antisemitism. When we have politicians and public figures donning keffiyah and chanting "from the river to the sea" and yet able to declare with a straight face, "I’m not antisemitic, I am anti-Zionist", the pertinence of this question becomes clear.

One of the testimonies at the Bondi Commission was delivered by Jewish Studies Teacher Sharonne Blum, who described the bewilderment of her students at the fact that when neo-Nazis demonstrated at the Victorian Parliament House, they faced legal consequences and the force of law, and yet when Palestinian protesters hurled hateful slurs and libels at Jews at the Sydney Opera House, they were given a free pass.

This example highlights the need to understand why antisemitism is treated differently from anti-Israel animosity.

Blum articulated the lessons she taught her students to assist them in navigating the anti-Jewish hate they face on a daily basis. Echoing the work of a new group of anti-anti-Zionist scholars and academics, Naya Lekht, Andrew Pessin, Adam Louis-Klein, and Joshua Dabelstein, amongst others, she explained the "long arc of history of anti-Jewish vilification."
Australia’s Antisemitism Inquiry: Will It Have The Courage To Say What We Already Know?
There is another uncomfortable reality at the center of this conversation that Western societies increasingly refuse to confront honestly. Every time antisemitism explodes, institutions immediately rush to create a symmetrical narrative in which the primary threat is framed as equally emerging from “both sides.”

And yes, far right antisemitism absolutely exists. It is vile. It is dangerous. It should be crushed wherever it appears. But the far right was never culturally dominant in modern Western society. Neo Nazis were not running universities. White nationalists were not shaping newsroom language. Skinheads were not driving NGO agendas. Fringe fascists were not controlling activist discourse or elite cultural institutions. They were marginalized extremists, broadly condemned and socially illegitimate. What we are witnessing now is different. The current explosion of antisemitism is being amplified and normalized by movements with vastly greater institutional legitimacy, cultural influence, and numerical scale:
radical activist networks, Islamic ideological movements, university structures, NGOs, large parts of the media, and political factions that increasingly treat anti Jewish extremism as morally acceptable so long as it is framed through the language of “anti colonialism,” “resistance,” or “social justice.”

That distinction matters enormously. A fringe movement screaming hatred from the margins is dangerous. A mass ideological coalition legitimizing hatred from inside mainstream institutions is civilizationally destabilizing. And this is precisely where many Western governments, media outlets, and commissions lose credibility.

The modern antisemitic threat is not primarily isolated men waving swastikas from the fringe. It is hatred legitimized by people wearing university lanyards, NGO credentials, press badges, and activist slogans.

Meanwhile Jewish students are being harassed on elite campuses.

Hamas sympathies are openly displayed at mass demonstrations.

Calls for “intifada” are sanitized as activism. And institutions that would instantly crush any other form of ethnic hatred suddenly become hesitant, evasive, and morally confused. Australia’s inquiry will likely condemn antisemitism. That part is easy. The real test is whether it will admit that the dominant modern form of antisemitism is no longer hiding in obscure fringe movements. It is pouring into our countries unchecked and unassimilated, it is propped up by elite institutions, wrapped in the language of activism, protected by political cowardice, and cheered on by people who still believe themselves to be morally enlightened.

The West’s greatest danger is no longer hatred alone. It is the loss of the moral confidence required to confront it.


Bondi hero Ahmed Al Ahmed's brothers charged for threatening him
Two of Bondi Beach Massacre hero Ahmed Al Ahmed's brothers were charged with threatening communications, according to the New South Wales Police, with local media reporting that they sought to extort him for money.

The 33-year-old and 35-year-old men were arrested last Monday and charged for using a carriage service to menace/harass/offend, said NSW police, and appeared at the Bankstown Local Court on Wednesday.

9News reported that Hozifa and Sameh Al Ahmed tried to extort $200,000 from their brother, who was wounded after disarming one of the terrorists during the December attack on a Hanukkah event that claimed the lives of 15 people.

'Give us $100,000 each'
"I will put your head under my boot, break your other arm, and smash your face. We will only leave if you give us $100,000 each," Hozifa allegedly said on May 7, according to 9News.

A GoFundMe fundraiser for the 44-year-old raised over AUD $2.6 million dollars to support him after he was hospitalized.
Gerald M. Steinberg: What Is the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor?
Nicholas Kristof’s 11 May New York Times column (“The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians”) and its accompanying video demonstrate the halo effect that protects many non-governmental organisations from the scrutiny they deserve. In addition to the testimony provided by security prisoners (suspected or convicted terrorists) released from Israeli prisons, Kristof’s essay relies upon quotes from unverifiable NGO reports or statements, and from a United Nations committee that recycles the accusations those statements and reports contain.

The NGO at the centre of Kristof’s essay calls itself the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor (Euro-Med or EMHRM), which Kristof blandly describes as “often critical of Israel.” Registered in Switzerland in 2015, this Palestinian NGO has a mailing address in Geneva and an unknown number of staffers paid with funds from undisclosed donors. The publication of a 69-page Euro-Med report on 12 April was the source of Kristof’s accusation that Israel “employs systematic sexual violence” that is “widely practiced as part of an organized state policy.” The report was accompanied by an extensive public-relations campaign, which included promotion in Turkish-government-controlled news platform TRT, Qatar-linked propaganda platform Middle East Eye, and many other outlets that routinely promote invented or tendentious stories about Israel.

The April Euro-Med report was also the source of the most sensational allegation in Kristof’s essay—that Israel trains police dogs to “rape prisoners and detainees.” Anti-Zionist influencers and officials seized on this charge and were already energetically circulating it before Kristof’s essay appeared last week. During an 18 April interview with Indian national newspaper The Hindu, the UN’s special rapporteur for Palestine, Francesca Albanese—a serial repeater of antisemitic statements who has been sanctioned by the US government—declared that Palestinian detainees had been “raped ... including with trained dogs.” On X, DropSiteNews, Guardian columnist Owen Jones, and Israeli ex-pat Shaiel Ben-Ephraim repeated this claim and were rewarded with thousands of likes, shares, and hundreds of thousands of impressions.

Ben-Ephraim’s tweet has been viewed over two million times alone, and his status as a former Israeli and repentant Zionist provided Euro-Med’s accusations with a veneer of pseudo-authority. He was duly invited to repeat them on Piers Morgan’s show. His X post was included in Kristof’s May 2026 video and hyperlinked from his Times essay.

Links to Kristof’s column and related allegations began to appear in a number of Wikipedia entries almost at once (possibly placed by graduates of Euro-Med’s “WikiRights” project, which trains anti-Israel propagandists to become anonymous Wikipedia editors). With these successes, Euro-Med achieved its fundamental objectives of demonising Israel and marginalising discussion of the atrocities committed by Hamas in October 2023, extensive details of which were published in the Israeli Civil Commission report the day after Kristof’s essay appeared.
Ashley Rindsberg: I Spent Years Studying NYT Propaganda Failures. Its Latest Blood Libel Fits the Pattern
Much more importantly, the institutional impulses of the Sulzberger family—the unseen engine that drives New York Times coverage—has not changed.

Look, then, at the family business this week. American policy on Iran is being made inside two parallel realities. In one, the regime that just shot thousands of its own protesters from rooftops, that has been militarily humiliated by Israel and the United States, that cannot stabilize its currency or feed its citizens, lurches between collapse and elite fracture. In the other — the one narrated by Times coverage and analysis — Iran has weathered the war, recovered its leverage, and stands as the steady regional player whose proposals deserve relay through its “semi-official” outlets.

New York Times reporting on the January killings — the live fire from rooftops, the children executed, the internet blackout designed to hide the body count from the world — does, technically, exist. But it pales in comparison to the steady cadence of daily Israel coverage by the Times in which the Jewish state is the only actor with significant agency; all others are passive victims. It lacks the bottomless well of gut-churning imagery, the ceaseless personal-interest stories of victims, and the extreme journalistic risk-taking exemplified by running extraordinary claims about uncorroborated barbarities committed by a liberal democracy in an opinion column—and then merchandising that as reporting.

Take another story from just last week, “Deadly Israeli Strikes Erode Ceasefire in Lebanon,” whose very headline reveals the slanted epistemic playing field. The details are just as significant: of the two photos, both show damage from strikes in Lebanon. The only quote is from a Lebanese man, saying, “So many people are getting killed for no reason.” In case there was any question about what that reason actually is, the quote begins with the man saying that the Israelis “are hitting a lot today.” Gone is nearly three years of Hezbollah bombardment that began days after October 7, which resulted in a years-long evacuation of villages and towns in Israel’s north. Absent is an account of an Islamist fundamentalist movement that has strangled its host country, once a haven for the region’s Christians, at the behest of a group of messianic zealots thousands of miles away.

This is the form propaganda takes in asymmetric warfare. The weaker actors — Goebbels’ Reich in 1939, Tehran and its Lebanese and Palestinian proxies in 2026 — cannot win on the battlefield, so they win on the page. To succeed, this form of information warfare requires intermediaries trusted enough to make its claims durable in the country whose policy it is trying to shape.

In 1939 that intermediary was the New York Times. In 2026 it still is.
Casual anti-Semitism is poisoning public life
Until recently, anti-Semitism masqueraded as anti-Zionism. Gaza served to justify the demonisation of and attacks on Jews on the streets of Western towns and cities. While some still hide behind Gaza to explain away – and implicitly justify – instances of explicit anti-Jewish violence, a growing number of anti-Semitic activists no longer pretend that their hatred for Jews has anything to do with the Middle East.

Take the intense wave of anti-Jewish hate that greeted a Sesame Street post on X marking Jewish American Heritage Month. Social-media users accused the show of promoting ‘Jewish supremacy’ and ‘propaganda’. One poster complained: ‘Great, a whole month just for Jews… like we don’t hear about their victimhood every day of every month.’

The now regularly heard anti-Semitic complaint – that ‘we’ have heard too much about Jews’ victimhood – is particularly significant. It serves to undermine and even negate the moral significance of the Holocaust. In doing so, it removes the main reason it has been difficult to be publicly and explicitly anti-Jewish over the past 80 years – namely, the memory of Jews’ victimisation in the Nazis’ death camps.

This is arguably the most distinct and important accomplishment of contemporary anti-Semitism. Its advocates have won a degree of public acceptance for the claim that a Jew can never be a victim. Whether this claim is justified because ‘you had it coming because of Gaza’, or because ‘you are the illegitimate beneficiary of Golders Greed’, does not matter. The erasure of Jewish suffering is one of the most vicious achievements of the anti-Semitic Zeitgeist.
The BBC can no longer deny the heinous bias warping its news coverage
Readers of this publication may know that I have been particularly concerned by anti-Israel bias at BBC News, which has contributed to an atmosphere in Britain in which Jewish people are less safe. Ms Unsworth does not make reference to Israel in her interview and I am not seeking to suggest that she does.

But I would ask this question: if Ms Unsworth experienced this level of activist bullying on the trans issue, could this really be the only subject on which progressive group-think has impacted the BBC’s journalistic standards? What about reporting on immigration, welfare and Brexit? What about Israel? Is this not evidence from the very top that a progressive mindset – and a bullying approach to dissenting views – has seeped into the culture of the BBC newsroom and undermined its impartiality?

The release of this interview is well-timed, with the BBC’s new director-general Matt Brittin taking up his post this week.

Mr Brittin should not ignore what Ms Unsworth has said. Instead, he should see it as an opportunity to ask difficult questions of the leaders of BBC News and demand that standards of impartiality are substantially improved. This will require direct, transparent conversations about what needs to change, with BBC executives shifting their emphasis from defending the BBC’s reputation at all costs to actually solving its problems on impartiality. It will need brave leadership and consistent oversight.

A new culture which demands that individual political and social views are left at home by BBC journalists is essential if the corporation is to deserve its place as one of our great national institutions. Trustworthy journalism has never been more important. The BBC must not waste this opportunity for honest self-appraisal and change.
Jonathan Turley Drops A Brutal Warning About America’s Future
The problem for democracies throughout the ages has always been the rage and impatience of mobs with any limits on their power to act on their impulses. According to JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin, such movements have become a major factor driving not just divisive politics and threats to liberty but also antisemitism.

He’s joined in this week’s episode of Think Twice by law professor, Fox News legal analyst Jonathan Turley, author of the new book, Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution. Turley traces the history of this potent threat to freedom by discussing both the American and French revolutions and how they differed. His hero is Thomas Paine, the author of pamphlets and books that inspired both world events but who has been shunted to the side by many historians.

The problem that undermines all attempts at government by consent of the governed is when crowds of people, inflamed by the passions of the moment, seek direct democracy without limits. As history teaches us, Turley explains, that usually leads to violence and the end of freedom. The one example where that was avoided was the American experiment because of the adoption of a Constitution that created checks and balances that spoke to the founders fears of mob rule. That didn’t happen in France and that’s why their revolution failed.

Yet while the American system has worked well for 250 years, the threats to its survival are real. Chief among them, Turley says, are what he calls the new Jacobins, the politicians, professors and journalists who want to “reform” or trash the Constitution in order to allow them to enact radical change that is antithetical to freedom. The same factors, he says, are behind the current surge in antisemitism.

Such rage is, Turley asserts, corruptive, addictive and contagious. Revolutions, like the mythical story of Saturn, eat their children. Antisemitism is one of those forms of rage. It has that sort of release for some people. It leads inevitably to violence such as the attacks on Jews as well as the murder of Charlie Kirk and the assassination attempts on President Donald Trump.


Tikvah: The Meaning of Conversion After October 7 | Kassy Akiva | Tikvah Podcast
What does it take to leave everything you were born into and choose a new people — not at their moment of triumph, but in the middle of their darkest hour?

Kassy Akiva grew up in a secular household in Chicopee, MA, without having ever met a Jew growing up. She was first introduced to Judaism through anti-Semitism, having seen it online and in-person as a campus political activist. She converted to Orthodox Judaism in April 2023, and in October 2024 published an essay titled "Anti-Semitism Helped Make Me a Jew" in Commentary magazine — written in the aftermath of a visit to the Gaza border.

Two years on, as we approach the holiday of Shavuot, where we read of the convert Ruth, Jonathan Silver sits down with Akiva to discuss her journey to Judaism and revisit her essay and its argument. Was anti-Semitism the engine of her Jewish life, or merely the sign that pointed her toward it? What does ordinary Jewish life look like now that the adrenaline of that first year has faded? And what can the convert's vantage point teach lifelong Jews about how to handle anti-Semitism?

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
04:46 Growing up in Working-Class Massachusetts
10:06 College and Political Awakening
15:10 The Trip to Israel that Changed Everything
20:42 The Power of a Shabbat Dinner
30:20 Exploring Religion
33:32 A Journey of Belief and Learning
37:40 Career and Identity in Conservative Media
38:57 Facing Anti-Semitism
45:15 Navigating Relationships and Conversion
48:31 The Role of Community
52:30 Reflections on Anti-Semitism and Identity
59:22 The Importance of Raising Proud Jewish Children


Tikvah Podcast: Ayaan Hirsi Ali on Religion, the Defense of Western Civilization, and the Assault on the Jews
Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in Somalia, grew up in Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, and Kenya, fled to the Netherlands in 1992 to escape an arranged marriage, became a member of the Dutch parliament, and collaborated with the filmmaker Theo van Gogh on a short film about the treatment of women under Islam. Ever since Van Gogh was murdered by a Dutch Islamist on an Amsterdam street in 2004, with a death threat addressed to her pinned to his chest with a knife, she has lived under security protection.

She is the author of several books, among them Infidel, her memoir, and Heretic, in which she argued that Islam requires a reformation from within if it is to be compatible with liberal democratic civilization. For twenty years she was among the world's most prominent atheists—not merely in her personal convictions but in her public arguments, which held that reason and individual freedom were incompatible with religious submission of any kind.

In November of 2023, she announced that she had become a Christian.

That announcement, and the essay she wrote explaining it, raised one of the most searching questions in contemporary intellectual life: what does a civilization require in order to defend itself, and can secular liberalism supply it?

This week, Ayaan Hirsi Ali joins the Tikvah Podcast to discuss her diagnosis of what political Islam is doing to Europe and to America—a diagnosis that has only sharpened since October 7—and her argument that the assault on Jews and Jewish life is not merely a Jewish problem but a leading indicator of a broader civilizational vulnerability.
The Brink: Inside the new Muslim state that proudly supports Israel: The brink in Somaliland with Rageh Omaar
In this episode of The Brink, Andrew and Jake are joined by journalist and broadcaster Rageh Omaar for a conversation from Hargeisa on the extraordinary story of Somaliland and why this unrecognised state is suddenly becoming one of the world’s most important geopolitical flashpoints.

We explore Somaliland’s history as a former British protectorate, its brutal war for independence from Somalia, and how it rebuilt itself into a relatively stable and democratic country despite receiving almost no international recognition. Rageh explains why Somaliland sees itself as a nation that has been unfairly locked out of the international system, even while functioning more effectively than many recognised states.

The conversation then turns to the historic decision by Israel to formally recognise Somaliland in December 2025. Rageh discusses why the move transformed Somaliland’s international profile overnight and why relations between Somaliland and Israel have developed so warmly despite Somaliland being a deeply conservative Muslim society.

We also examine the wider geopolitical battle unfolding across the Horn of Africa. From China and Turkey’s growing influence in Somalia and Djibouti to the strategic importance of the Bab el-Mandeb shipping route, we discuss why global powers are increasingly focusing on Somaliland and whether Britain is making a major strategic mistake by failing to recognise it.

Finally, we discuss Somalia’s ongoing instability, the threat posed by Al Shabaab, the role of the Somaliland diaspora in rebuilding the country, and why Somaliland could become one of the West’s most important allies in Africa in the years ahead.

Chapters
0:00 Introduction
4:47 Historical Context and Geographic Setting of Somaliland
7:26 Somaliland's Struggle for Independence and International Recognition
13:24 Israel's Recognition of Somaliland and Its Implications
18:58 Strategic Interests and Diplomatic Challenges
27:56 Somaliland's Relationship with Other Countries and International Recognition
35:19 Britain's Role and the Future of Somaliland's Recognition
43:53 The Impact of Recognition on Somaliland's Future
45:32 The Future of Somaliland's Relationship with Israel and Other Countries


travelingisrael.com: Europe Is Dying. The Math Is Simple. (Official Data)
Europe Is Dying. The Math Is Simple.

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Lesson from 2024 shouldn’t be that Kamala Harris’s pro-Israel stance lost her the presidential election, DMFI says
Former Vice President Kamala Harris did not lose the U.S. presidential election in 2024 because she supported the Jewish state, according to Brian Romick, CEO and president of Democratic Majority for Israel.

Romick spoke with JNS after the Democratic National Committee released a 192-page “autopsy” report of the 2024 presidential election, which doesn’t address Israel or Gaza, or even the Middle East more generally.

The report concludes, in part, that the “national campaign did not effectively drive Trump’s negatives, and the White House did not effectively support Vice President Harris over three-and-a-half years to improve her standing before the candidate switch.”

“Harris wrote off rural America, assuming urban-suburban margins would compensate,” it adds.

“We need to learn the lessons of 2024, so we can be successful in 2026, 2028 and beyond,” Romick told JNS.

“What is clear, autopsy or not, is that a majority of Americans, including Democrats, support the U.S.-Israel relationship,” he said. “That support was not the reason Vice President Harris lost the election.”

“We will continue to support pro-Israel Democrats and help us form a durable coalition that can govern,” he added.

Ken Martin, who chairs the Democratic National Committee, stated that the report didn’t meet his standards and that he cannot “put the DNC’s stamp of approval on it.” He stated that it needed to be released anyway to be transparent.


Zohran Mamdani Paid Multiple Visits to Holocaust-Denying Sheikh Who Claimed Jewish Death Toll 'Was Exaggerated' and 'Done By Zionists,' Called for More 'Study'
New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani (D.) has developed a close relationship with an influential Muslim sheikh in Queens with a history of Holocaust denial, the Washington Free Beacon can reveal.

Mamdani has met with Sheikh Fadhel Al-Sahlani, imam of the Al-Khoei Islamic Center in Jamaica, Queens, on at least three occasions since January 2025—despite the cleric's past statements casting doubt on the Jewish death toll from the Holocaust and on the Holocaust being reasonable cause for establishing the state of Israel.

"It feels like returning home to be here," Mamdani said during his most recent known visit to the sheikh's mosque during Ramadan celebrations in February.

Photos from the event show Mamdani with a broad smile, warmly shaking Al-Sahlani's hand.

The sheikh, a native of Iraq, has wielded influence from his perch in Queens for decades and has participated in events with previous New York City mayors, including Eric Adams and Michael Bloomberg.

But in January 2006, during an interview with the New York Sun, Al-Sahlani told the paper that the figure of six million Jews killed in the Holocaust "has been exaggerated."

"The numbers which have been mentioned are too much," Al-Sahlani told Sun reporter Russell Berman. "The numbers, the reasons, we have to study more."

The sheikh had been asked about the Holocaust following similar statements from Iran's fiery then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who called the Holocaust a "myth" contrived to justify the establishment of Israel, which he said should be "wiped off the map."


Brad Lander recites Quran chapter at mosque, whose sheikh denied Holocaust, promoted Hamas
Former New York City comptroller Brad Lander, who is running for Congress, visited a Queens mosque, which has a history of Holocaust denial and promoting Hamas, to accuse Israel of genocide and recite a verse of the Quran about the Islamic doctrine of divine unity.

The Middle East Media Research Institute published a video on Thursday of Lander, who is Jewish, attending Friday prayers at the Al-Khoei Islamic Center on May 15.

“I believe, as a proud Jewish New Yorker, that Israel’s genocide in Gaza is a desecreation, is a violation of the understanding that everyone is created in God’s image,” Lander said.

He added that he believes that the Israeli “occupation” of Lebanon is “on its way potentially to being a genocide as well.”

Lander, who is running in New York’s 10th Congressional District, then recited, in Arabic, the Quran’s Surat al-Ikhlas, which includes verses that God is “begetteth not nor was begotten, and there is none comparable unto Him.”

David Frum, the former Bush administration speech writer and writer for the Atlantic, who is Jewish, said that those verses are a sectarian rejoinder to Christians.

“The verse Lander recited was an Arabic-language denunciation of the Christian doctrine of the divinity of Jesus Christ,” Frum wrote. “Jewish candidates for office normally show more respect for the majority faith in this country.”

In the video clip of Lander speaking at the mosque, which has gone viral on social media, the prayer leader of the mosque can be heard reciting the Shia Ziarat of Imam Mahdi, which prays for the Mahdi, a messianic figure in Shia Islam, to bring about “the killing of the infidels with your sword.”


Labour MSP reportedly called for Israel’s ‘crushing defeat’ after 7 October attacks
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar has defended a newly elected MSP after reports emerged that he called for Israel to suffer a “crushing defeat” during a speech delivered months after the 7 October Hamas attacks.

Irshad Ahmed, who represents the Edinburgh and Lothians East region in the Scottish Parliament, made the remarks during an Urdu-language speech at a Pakistani cultural centre on 7 January, 2024.

According to a translation published by the Daily Telegraph, Ahmed told the audience: “Friends, there are a few things linked to the year 2023 that has passed which we need to remember, especially those matters which have taken place in Palestine, we all condemn it as Muslims.

“And since 2024 has come, I ask all of you to pray that Allah gives freedom to Palestine and may Allah free the Muslims of Palestine who are victims of oppression, and may Israel get a crushing defeat.”

The speech was delivered around three months after Hamas terrorists killed around 1,200 people in southern Israel and abducted hundreds more during the 7 October attacks.

Timothy Lovat, chairman of the Jewish Council of Scotland, told The Telegraph: “This is entirely unacceptable from anyone, but from someone purporting to be in a position of power is inexcusable”.
‘Zionism is pure evil’ Green now responsible for ‘communities and inclusion’ in London council
A Green councillor in Lewisham who shared posts that equated Zionism with Nazism has been appointed as a cabinet member responsible for “communities, sanctuary and inclusion” in the south London borough.

Hau-Yu Tam’s portfolio includes “anti-racist policymaking”, “community and resident engagement”, “community development”, “LGBTQ+ inclusion” and “refugee resettlement and migrant support”.

However, Tam, the Green Party’s deputy leader in Lewisham, originally a Labour councillor who defected to Zack Polanski’s party in 2024, has come under significant scrutiny for her social media activity.

Last year, the JC revealed that she shared a post that said: “Zionism is pure evil and must be abolished” and another that said it was “undoubtedly, unquestionably the Nazism of our time”.

Tam also expressed support for one of the barristers leading the legal campaign to end Hamas’ designation as a terrorist organisation.

In another post, she used the word “coconut” – widely considered to be a racially offensive term meaning ‘brown on the outside but white on the inside’ – to refer to David Lammy and Dame Priti Patel.

During the election campaign ahead of the local elections earlier this month, the Labour Party seized on her comments and accused her of being a racist in a post on X.

She was defended by her party’s deputy leader Mothin Ali, who was in turn criticised by Conservative MP Ben Obese-Jecty.


Demand soars for Israel’s weapons tech, even among countries claiming to boycott Jewish state
When Israeli defense officials approached Massivit last year about using its unique 3D printers to make military drone parts, CEO Yossi Azarzar jumped at the chance.

Although the Israeli company had been producing large set pieces and other designs for the likes of Disney, DreamWorks and Netflix, the opportunity to instead quickly churn out large drone parts for the military was too good to ignore.

“I stopped thinking about Hollywood sets,” Azarzar said. “The entertainment industry is a nice customer — defense is a necessity.”

Business has been booming for the country’s arms sector, despite widespread condemnation of the country’s campaigns in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran in the years since the Hamas terror group’s October 7, 2023, attack on the Jewish state triggered a regional war.

Countries that have vowed to shun Israeli weapons makers are nonetheless quietly placing orders, according to industry officials. And manufacturers, including some like Massivit with no previous military know-how, can show that their innovations are being continually combat-tested and improved.

According to the Defense Ministry, Israeli weapons sales have more than doubled over the past five years, with a record high of nearly $15 billion in 2024. While the ministry hasn’t released overall 2025 figures, leading Israeli weapons makers, including Elbit and Israel Aerospace Industries, both reported double-digit sales growth last year.
Brandeis Center urges Brooklyn coop to cancel ‘inappropriate’ Israel boycott vote or make confidential
The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law is urging a Brooklyn food cooperative to cancel a vote on a proposed boycott of Israeli products or conduct it through a confidential referendum process, citing what it described as an atmosphere of intimidation and antisemitic hostility targeting Jewish members.

The Brandeis Center sent the letter to the board of the Park Slope Food Coop ahead of a scheduled May 26 vote on a proposal to ban Israeli products tied to the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. The coop, founded in 1973, has about 16,000 members and has debated Israel-related boycott measures for more than a decade.

The organization demanded protection for Jewish members and urged the coop to cancel the vote, calling it “inappropriate” in light of escalating tensions surrounding the debate. It said discussions over the boycott proposal—and a related effort to lower the coop’s current 75% supermajority requirement for boycott measures—“have been rife with antisemitic tropes and rhetoric with escalating hostility.”

Tensions intensified after remarks at an April coop meeting, which drew applause from some attendees, that “Jewish supremacism is a problem in this country.” The comments sparked outrage among some Jewish members.

In late 2024, Jewish coop members filed a discrimination complaint with the New York State Division of Human Rights, alleging antisemitic and anti-Israel harassment by some coop members, with reports of shoppers being accosted and accused of bearing responsibility for the Israel-Hamas war.

If the vote proceeds, the Brandeis Center says “fundamental fairness requires that the voting process protect Jewish members from intimidation, retaliation, social targeting or coercive pressure based on their national origin, religion, ethnicity or identity.”


Khaled Abu Toameh: The Palestinian Authority's 'Reform' Fraud
As usual... there was no timetable, no enforcement mechanism, and no concrete political roadmap. Once again, reform appeared to function more as a slogan aimed at reassuring Western governments than as a serious political process.

Would elections solve the problem? Many Western officials continue insisting that elections are the answer to the Palestinian crisis. Recent Palestinian history, however, suggests otherwise. The last parliamentary elections, held in 2006, brought Hamas to power. One year later, Hamas violently seized control of the Gaza Strip after executing opponents, throwing Fatah rivals off rooftops, and establishing an Islamist dictatorship that remains in place to this day.

In several polls, Hamas leaders have enjoyed greater popularity than Abbas and Fatah.

[T]he Palestinian national movement historically presented itself as a collective "liberation struggle" rather than a family-based political enterprise. The rise of Yasser Abbas, therefore, symbolizes for many Palestinians not renewal, but the deepening personal entrenchment of power.

The Palestinian Authority continues every year to pay hundreds of millions of dollars, now disguised as "social welfare," to Palestinians and their families involved in terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians.

The Fatah election of Barghouti and Zubeidi sends a dangerous message: that inside Fatah, terrorism and "armed struggle" continue to confer political legitimacy.

The Palestinian movement, rather than distancing itself from violence, continues to celebrate and glorify individuals associated with attacks against Israeli civilians. It is a reality that should finally put a stop to all idiotic Western claims that Fatah represents a "moderate" alternative to Hamas.

The latest elections inside Fatah, in fact, suggest that the ideological differences between Hamas and Fatah are largely tactical rather than fundamental. Hamas openly calls for Israel's destruction through jihad and terrorism. Fatah, meanwhile, speaks to Western audiences about diplomacy and peace while internally glorifying terrorists, honoring "martyrs," rewarding militants, and continuing to promote the concepts of "resistance" and "armed struggle" as legitimate tools. The difference between the two movements often concerns strategy and international presentation, not the ultimate goal.

The resulting structure combines aging political veterans, security officials, Abbas loyalists, wealthy insiders, and figures associated with militancy. This is not reform. It is carefully controlled continuity. Some Palestinians had hoped the conference would introduce young leaders, new political ideas, and genuine institutional restructuring. Instead, results reflect the survival goals of a political system determined to preserve itself.

Regrettably, the latest Fatah conference demonstrated the exact opposite of meaningful reform.

For the US and Europe, which continue to discuss plans to "revitalize" the Palestinian Authority, the latest developments should serve as another harsh prod out of a deep sleep – or more likely a secret long-term wish in much of Europe to have the Arabs "exterminate" Israel so that they will not have to. Europe would then have Israel out of the way without getting its own hands dirty.

A leadership that recycles aging elites, promotes family influence, rewards extremism and corruption, and suppresses democratic renewal is clearly not preparing its people for reform, accountability, democracy or peace.

The latest Fatah elections did not mark the beginning of a new political era. They only exposed the deepening decay at the heart of the Palestinian leadership and a continuation of the grinding, punishing life for the Palestinian people held hostage there.


Last remaining survivor of 1929 Hebron massacre passes away at 100
Yitzhak Ben Hebron, the last survivor of the 1929 Hebron massacre, passed away on Thursday.

Yitzhak, who was a child at the outbreak of the riots that led to the massacre, left behind a large family and a legacy connected to the Jewish community in Hebron. He was born into a family that had lived in Hebron for a long time.

In August 1929, when he was about four years old, his life changed beyond recognition.

At the height of the bloody events, Arab rioters launched a planned massacre against the Jewish community in the city. During the attack, 67 of the 800 residents of the city's Jewish community were murdered, and dozens more were injured.

Yitzhak and his family, during the attack, Yitzhak and his family found an escape route through the window of the Avraham Avinu Synagogue, and thus managed to escape the rioters who were raiding the neighborhood and escape death.

Among the survivors were many who had been protected and hidden by Arab residents. The survivors were evacuated from the city, which led to the interruption of Jewish continuity in Hebron.





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Elder of Ziyon - حـكـيـم صـهـيـون



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

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