Saturday, May 30, 2026

05/29 Links Pt2: The Joy of Hating Jews; The CliffsNotes Guide to Anti-Zionist Brainwashing; Mamdani endorses former Columbia encampment organizer for Congress

From Ian:

The Joy of Hating Jews
Nazi Germany understood this with terrifying sophistication. Some of the most disturbing footage from the period is disturbing precisely because people appear cheerful. Crowds smiled during boycotts of Jewish stores and later acts of public humiliation and degradation. Book burnings resembled university festivals. Torchlit parades became raucous public celebrations. Looting, gathering, and watching flames together transformed hatred into public theater in which ordinary people could participate.

Today’s digital culture has monetized these pleasures. Online platforms are engineered to maximize engagement by maximizing emotional reward. Antisemitism is extraordinarily well suited to such systems. Platforms amplify the thrill of forbidden knowledge, insider language, memes, and collective outrage while making them instantly accessible and endlessly repeatable. The digital dogpile—coordinated mass attack on a single Jewish target—is the mob made digital. Like the analogue mobs that preceded them, these too are often gleeful and public. But unlike earlier forms, participation no longer requires gathering in the street or much physical effort at all. The mob no longer needs to gather, it simply needs to log on.

Flooding Jewish journalists’ social media feeds with Holocaust jokes and “oven” memes; defacing synagogues, menorahs, or Jewish community centers with swastikas—often timed to holidays; filming antisemitic taunts of visibly Jewish people and posting them online for laughs; turning classic antisemitic tropes into viral “ironic” content or remix videos—none of these are coherent responses to a supposedly sophisticated international cabal controlling the world’s economy, politics, media, migration, and satellites. They are rituals of humiliation. The point is not resistance. The point is pleasure.

Revelation, belonging, and moral framing explain much of antisemitism’s appeal and durability. They are pleasures that can disguise themselves as insight, solidarity, and justice. Each has a cover story. Together, they remove the ordinary societal restraints on cruelty. Once hatred feels righteous and collective, Jewish suffering itself becomes the pleasure. The sadism—pleasure in Jewish pain, fear, and humiliation for its own sake—has no disguise. The suffering itself is the reward.

One of the most difficult realities confronting Jews about antisemitism is that their outrage is part of the reward structure. It is part of the fun.

Antisemitism is rarely content merely to express itself. It seeks reaction. The shock, anger, fear, and public anguish it provokes are psychologically and socially rewarding to the antisemite. It heightens the drama. This helps explain why even wildly implausible accusations persist despite their absurdity. The accusations are not simply designed to persuade—they are meant to scandalize, provoke, and energize. Their very absurdity is part of the thrill. Jews have been accused of using Christian children’s blood to make matzo, of controlling the weather, of harvesting organs from Palestinian children, of training and deploying dogs as instruments of sexual assault, of operating secret space lasers. The accusations need not be coherent. They need only be energetic. The more absurd the allegation, the more satisfying the reaction it provokes.

This creates a peculiar bind. Antisemitism cannot be ignored. History punishes indifference again and again. But public Jewish distress feeds the very reward system sustaining it. Condemnation does not deter, it deliver the pleasure the antisemite wants.

If Jews protest loudly, it will be cast as Jews having something to hide. If Jewish organizations demand collective condemnation, it will be cast as Jews having the power to suppress criticism. If Jews stay silent, it will be cast as indifference, arrogance, or worse—tacit agreement. Confront the accusation publicly and Jews feed the spectacle. Ignore it and normalization spreads. Explain it carefully and with nuance and lose ground faster. Complexity will always be outrun by emotional simplicity and the vocabulary of moral crusade. In short, Jews become unwilling performers in someone else’s theater. The antisemite wins either way.

This is part of the exhaustion Jewish communities experience in the wake of antisemitic waves that followed Oct. 7 and have not abated. It is not only fear. It is the demoralizing recognition that every available response is both necessary and compromised.

Antisemitism is not a burden its adherents bear—it is a pleasure they seek. Antisemitic narratives are not the cause of antisemitism—they are its cover stories. Spectacle is not a byproduct of antisemitism—it is often the product. Sadism is not a side effect—it is what revelation, belonging, and moral righteousness make possible. Jewish outrage is not a deterrent—it is a reward. And all of this is because, while the antisemite often claims to be outraged by Jews, history shows he is—far more often than not—thrilled by them.
Seth Mandel: The CliffsNotes Guide to Anti-Zionist Brainwashing
The story of Taryn Thomas’s recovery from the intellectual isolation of pro-Palestinian activism provides a handy guide for anyone interested. Her quotes in her Telegraph profile are perfect as a CliffsNotes-style outline of the anti-Zionist movement in the West:

“People I know, whether it was activists or people I look up to, were already posting their thoughts.” This is Thomas reflecting on her social circle at Stanford after the massacres of October 7 but before Israel’s ground incursion in response. She didn’t know much about the conflict, but those around her had talking points ready to go to defend Hamas and indict Israel as soon as the attack happened. This is key to anti-Zionist activism: It isn’t grassroots or organic; it is pre-packaged and distributed to an army of propagandists.

“I never really understood why, but we were told that in order for us to be free, Palestine has to be free.” Thomas, who is black, was introduced to the pro-Palestinian cause at Black Lives Matter events. This is classic anti-Zionist media strategy: Co-opt someone else’s oppression and tell them that they are the victim of the Jews. Immediately making it about someone other than the Palestinians also frees one from the burden of the Palestinian share of blame for the state of the conflict.

“It seemed like everyone was a lot more educated than me and very certain and sure of themselves that this is a genocide. The only safe position was the more radical one in the encampment.” Once inside the activist wing of the mission, one quickly finds that the lazy river flows only in one direction. If you float along, you drift into increasingly more extreme territory; it is staying in one place or exploring moderate positions that require effort.
Seth Mandel: Heed This Rabbi’s Words
Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, the senior rabbi at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York, gave a speech yesterday at a Reform Judaism conference that I predict will be studied, remembered, and referenced for the foreseeable future by his fellow rabbis.

The address should be watched, because Hirsch knows how to deliver a speech. And because often when there’s something you really need to hear, you need to literally hear it. The speech was a rousing call for Reform Judaism to wear its Zionism on its sleeve, to proudly embrace Jewish particularism, and to hold firmer than ever to its belief in Jewish peoplehood.

Because it is no surprise that I support Hirsch’s unapologetic love of Zion, I will comment on one specific aspect of the speech that I believe made it so profound. In organized American Jewry, just as in politics, an idea has taken hold: Because young people are wishy-washy on Zionism and Israel, institutions must either adapt to welcome their ideas or watch their membership crumble.

I won’t mince words: This is weaselly behavior. Which is why I’m not shocked to see it in politics, even as I find the self-debasement cringeworthy. But I have no patience at all for it in Judaism for one reason: Our clergy are our teachers.

Teaching, leadership, education—these are what saved Judaism after the destruction of the Second Temple and the ensuing exile. We argue endlessly about what our rabbis say and do and mean, but it is largely thanks to this system that we have something to argue about at all.

So if young people are straying from Jewish peoplehood, is it our responsibility to join them? Or to teach them?

One of the repeated explanations one hears from liberal Jews is that so many young people have never known a not-right-wing Israeli government. In political circles, this can make Israel advocacy difficult for Democratic officials.

Hirsch also shares this sentiment. He has many disagreements with the current Israeli government, and he does not shy from saying so. But he does not use this as an excuse:

“Given the growing hostility to Israel, especially in our circles, liberal and progressive spaces, it is not enough for us to proclaim our Zionist bona fides every now and again, often expressed defensively, and with so many qualifications, stipulations, and modifications that our enthusiasm for Zionism is buried under an avalanche of provisos. It is not enough to issue occasional press releases, or tweets, that we are a Zionist movement. We are the leaders. We must lead.”


May 1964: The day the myth of the ‘occupation’ was born
Today, 62 years ago, on May 28, 1964, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was established.

For many around the world, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is still presented as a conflict that was born as a result of the Six Day War in 1967. According to this view, had Israel withdrawn from the territories captured in the war, the conflict could have been resolved and peace achieved.

History, however, tells a different story.

The PLO was established three years before the Six Day War. Three years before Israel controlled Judea and Samaria. Three years before it controlled Gaza. Three years before there was an Israeli presence in eastern Jerusalem.

In other words, when the organization intended to lead the Palestinian national struggle was founded, the “occupation” of 1967 did not yet exist.

So what exactly was the PLO seeking to liberate?

The answer lies in the PLO’s own founding documents. The original Palestinian National Charter did not deal with an Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria or Gaza, since these territories were not under Israeli control when it was written. Moreover, the charter denied the national rights of most Jews living in the State of Israel and presented Zionism as a project that must be eliminated.

In other words, the debate was not about where the border should pass, but whether Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel had any legitimacy at all. If the conflict had been only about the territories captured in 1967, there would have been no need to establish the PLO in 1964.

The very existence of the organization before the Six Day War demonstrates that the cities considered “occupied” by its leaders were not Nablus and Hebron, but Haifa, Jaffa, and Tel Aviv.

Therefore, for decades, the Palestinian struggle was directed not only against a particular Israeli policy, but against the very legitimacy of the Jewish state.
Melanie Phillips: War against Israel targets the British Museum
Fury has exploded among prominent British Jews and others over the decision by the British Museum in London to postpone a lecture that was scheduled to be given this week.

Paul Collins, the museum’s keeper of the Department of the Middle East, was due to give a lunchtime talk on “Ancient Israel and Judah” as part of Jewish Culture Month, launched by the Board of Deputies to celebrate the Jewish contribution to British life.

The day before the event, however, this was postponed because of “security concerns.” The museum said it had been informed that “a significant proportion” of those registered to attend intended to “deliberately disrupt the event,” which it now intended to reschedule to a later date.

The postponement has fueled bitter criticism of the museum for “pathetic” cowardice and bowing to mob rule.

It’s also increased alarm among British Jews that Jewish life is rapidly being squeezed out of the country, as the political and cultural establishment seeks to appease Islamist and left-wing pressure to turn Israel and Zionism into pariahs and refuses to take the measures necessary to protect Jews from attack.

Valid as these charges undoubtedly are, there’s another aspect to this postponed talk of even greater significance.

Collins was due to do something that would have exploded the foundational lie at the core of the anti-Israel belief system that has Britain and the West in its lethal grip.

Advertising his talk before it was postponed, the museum said that “the histories of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah can be illuminated by the archaeology and art of the wider ancient Middle East.”

Some of the most significant of these objects were preserved in the British Museum, shedding light on the political, cultural and imperial forces that shaped the region between approximately 900 and 50 BCE.

Such archaeological evidence, it said, documents key historical moments, including the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem, the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid dynasty and the Hellenistic influence in Judea, and the rise of the Hasmonean kingdom through which the Jews ruled Judea from about 141 to 37 BCE.

In other words, it demonstrates the existence of the ancient kingdom of the Jewish people. This is explosive because it proves a truth whose denial lies at the very core of the war against Israel.
The hounding of Helen Mirren reveals the hatefulness of ‘anti-Zionism’
Mirren isn’t Jewish, but she supports the existence of the Jewish State. She also played former Israeli prime minister Golda Meir in a 2023 biopic, and has spoken out against the boycotts of the Jewish State that so many in her industry have shamefully supported. In the mind of the ‘anti-Zionist’, this makes her a legitimate target for harassment.

It goes without saying that no normal person screams at an elderly couple who are harmlessly enjoying an evening in each other’s company. The hounding of Helen Mirren is yet further proof of what a twisted and deranged ideology anti-Zionism can be. To these ‘critics of Israel’, the presence of seven million Jews in their ancestral homeland – and their success in repelling the attacks of those determined to deny them this right – is intolerable. ‘Anti-Zionists’ have become so warped by their hatred that they really think that yelling at an elderly woman and her husband is a noble action. So much so that the abuser in this instance felt moved to video the altercation himself.

We can call this ‘anti-Zionism’ if we must, but when being an ally to the Jewish people can lead to you being hounded in the street, we are in a very dark place indeed.
Police reviewing antisemitic abuse of Dame Helen Mirren as possible hate crime
The Metropolitan Police are ‘reviewing footage’ that shows Dame Helen Mirren being called a “evil Zionist bitch” by a man in the street.

This week footage started circulating on social media showing the British actress walking along a street in Tower Hill in London with her husband, American film director Taylor Hackford.

The video, which was filmed last year, then showed the 80-year-old smiling and greeting the man filming and asking if he was OK.

However, he can then be heard swearing at her over her support for Israel.

In the footage, the man said: “And there is Helen Mirren the avowed Zionist. You said Israel should last forever because of the Holocaust. And she was very happy the Palestinians’ houses were gone.

“You are an evil Zionist bitch. And you (Hackford) as well, f*** you as well.”

Dame Helen’s husband then stepped in and told the man to “f*** off” and leave them alone several times.

The clip was first posted by an anonymous account called Anti-Fascist Action UK.

The Met have now said they are trying to get in contact with the actress to see if she wants to report the incident formally.
Police Sacked Hate Crime Adviser Who Warned Force Favoured Muslims Over Jews
The chair of a police scrutiny panel has been sacked after accusing officers, at a meeting on last October’s antisemitic attack on a synagogue in Manchester, of dodging the “elephant in the room” – Islamist extremism – and appeasing Muslims. The Telegraph has the story:
She was told she was being removed as chairman of the Bradford Hate Crime Scrutiny Panel because of her “divisive and inflammatory” comments, which had prompted complaints from Muslim police officers taking part in the meeting. …

The woman, a retired academic in her 60s, told the Telegraph that the letter informing her of her removal from the security panel “sounded like a threat” because the senior officer who wrote it implied that complainants had been demanding her personal details and that consideration had been given to whether she had committed a hate crime.

She suggested the letter had been written “for the Muslim men who complained to get him to shut me up – and he did as they asked”. …

The former panel chairman, who has asked not to be named, is now seeking a formal apology from Sir John Robins, the West Yorkshire Police Chief Constable.

She is being helped by the Free Speech Union and its founder, Lord Young, who suggested the force was “more concerned with protecting the feelings of Muslim community leaders than protecting Jews from terrorist attacks”.
Why Worshipping the Bund Is Bullshit
What is it, then, that today’s neo-Bundists, devoid of any contextual historical understanding, are trying to accomplish? A reversal of this reality? And what, in practice, would that look like? Do seven million Israelis pack their bags and ship off to Poland, Germany, Iraq, Russia, Yemen, and the like? What would happen to them there? Does Israel turn into Palestine, and its Jewish citizens forsake their aboriginal rights, and the thriving society they have built, and cross their fingers and hope for the best, amid a population that openly sees their very presence in what they deem Islamic land as an affront to God? What form of justice would any of these insane gestures achieve?

I suppose that for people who live in a world of ideological abstraction, protected by their own wealth and privilege, the logistics of someone else’s life don’t really matter, as long as the inconvenience is removed. And listen, I get it. When your political understanding of your Jewish identity is rooted on such flimsy historical ground, you’ll hang onto whatever straws you can grasp.

“One of the many things that [Zionists] have done is they’ve tried to colonize all of Jewish history,” Crabapple stated in an interview with the New Internationalist, which just about sums it up the illustrator’s own childish and blinkered understanding of history. As the neo-Bundist argument goes, the Jewish community turned to Zionism, not out of lived experience, but out of trauma. In other words, the Holocaust so traumatized worldwide Jewry that it clouded our collective moral judgment, and turned us into oppressors, Nazis, settler-colonizers, génocidaires, and whatever other libel is in vogue at any given moment. This is, of course, an example of Holocaust inversion, which is itself a form of soft Holocaust denial.

What the neo-Bundists fail to grasp is that the post-World War II universal Jewish embrace of Zionism did not come from a Holocaust-induced moral lapse—if anyone is to contemplate moral lapses, it’s the Shoah’s perpetrators, rather than its victims—but from bitter conclusions drawn from lived realities. That is not to suggest, in any form, that the Bund bears responsibility for the Holocaust. That lies with the Nazis and their accomplices alone. But whatever the Bund had thought—about political organizing, about working-class solidarity, about doykeit—was proven false, on the largest and most consequential scale imaginable. Working-class solidarity only works when it is reciprocal, and it wasn’t. Hereness only holds real weight when Jews can find a place among neighbors, and they didn’t.

As for my great uncles, all six of them became partisans, most belonging to Zionist youth movements, though rumor has it one had been a Bundist. By the war’s end, five of them had been murdered all the same, their remains having long rotted into the earth in the forests of Poland, Zionist and Bundist alike. Only my great-uncle Szulim lived to tell the tale. By the time he reunited with my grandfather, who was only a child at the time, he was an ardent Zionist, braving Red Army checkpoints, the Austrian alps, and a DP camp in Italy for the slim shot that he might make a home in the Promised Land. He never did, but he remained a Zionist to his dying day.

Who are we to challenge his wisdom? Even today, anti-Zionist Holocaust survivors are an outlier, tokenized by Jew-haters to the high heavens. I hold no animosity toward the Bund, which did what it could, what it thought best, with the information that it had. Anybody could be forgiven for thinking that the Bund’s ideology would succeed in the 1920s, 1930s, and even into the early 1940s. But to continue to argue in its favor 80 years later, with the enormous privilege of hindsight, which the original Bundists didn’t have, and with the living achievement of a Jewish state in which the majority of the world’s Jews now live, is beyond historically ignorant and practically absurd. It’s indefensible.
Reckless recognition – Canada’s Palestinian statehood mistake
The failure of political “hyperbole,” a word I used months ago when the winds of official Palestinian state recognition first began to gather, has already shown its limits and its consequences. I argued then that exaggeration could not serve the Palestinian people, and the long passage since October 7, followed now by recognition itself, has turned that warning into history. Serious decision-making demands resolve, especially as the political temperature rises. Carney’s hasty decision to recognize a Palestinian state was undoubtedly influenced by the constant pressure of mass pro-Palestinian protests and diaspora politics. As I noted previously, and not alone, the Carney government should have calibrated the contours of its posture vis-à-vis Washington, the only international actor with real sway over events on the ground. That path, sadly, found no listeners.

Indeed, the United States can take much credit for the ceasefire in Gaza and the return of hostages to Israel. It also backed the creation of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) aid initiative in the early months of 2025. Despite Hamas threatening Palestinians who accepted food from it, the GHF delivered 187 million free meals to Gaza by last November without falling into terrorist hands. This significantly crushed Hamas’s ability to turn humanitarian aid into a currency of power, and also reduced the role of UNRWA, whose Hamas infiltration is no longer a matter of speculation. Meanwhile, the UN Security Council began formally considering demilitarization following a US proposal, with removing Hamas from control of Gaza as the only serious option on the table. This is what happens when politics governed by proportion meets capacity. It is a world that has no use for slogan-therapy or theatrical staging, a lesson Canada still struggles with on multiple fronts.

Canada must realize that the future of a Palestinian state will be shaped by the decisive actors of the region. It will emerge from the political work of those, and only those, who carry the weight of security, reconstruction, demilitarization, and regional order. The Carney government’s premature recognition of a Palestinian state contributed nothing positive or impactful on the ground.

Ironically, Carney’s own statement ends by cautioning that recognition is no panacea. By definition, a “panacea” is a remedy for all diseases or difficulties. In this case, it’s a poison pill – one that simply can’t be swallowed by those who value and desire a truly lasting peace in the region.

In the end, the Liberal government acted passionately, but not responsibly or in the proportion Max Weber believed politics demands. And in so doing, Canada has sidelined its credibility and ensured its irrelevance in shaping the future of the region.
Arsen Ostrovsky: Australia’s commission on antisemitism reveals the normalisation of a growing evil
Indeed, perhaps the clearest evidence of why this Royal Commission matters has emerged not only from the testimony itself, but from the reaction to those courageous enough to testify.

In recent days, Australia has learned that witnesses appearing before the Commission have been subjected to a shocking torrent of unadulterated online hatred and intimidation, with over 1,000 abusive posts and comments reported by the Dor Foundation, with material collated also by the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), from our own digital channels covering the Commission.

The abuse included Holocaust denial, calls for executions, dehumanising slurs, antisemitic caricatures and AI-generated images depicting Jewish witnesses as animals. One Bondi victim was labelled “subhuman.” Female witnesses were targeted with misogynistic abuse. Even a Jewish child who testified anonymously became the target of online mockery and hatred.

Some of the posts have now even been referred to the Australian Federal Police.

Most extraordinary of all was the intervention by Commissioner Virginia Bell herself. Royal Commissions in Australia are typically measured, restrained affairs. Yet Commissioner Bell felt compelled to publicly condemn the “dramatic increase in online hate messages” directed at witnesses and described the abuse as an “undiluted level of hatred and bigotry.”

That should alarm every decent Australian, regardless of political persuasion or views on the Middle East.

The online mobs targeting Jewish witnesses may believe they are undermining the legitimacy of the Commission. In truth, they are doing precisely the opposite. Every threat, every slur and every attempt to silence Jewish Australians only reinforces the central finding already emerging from this inquiry: antisemitism in Australia is real, growing and has been increasingly normalised.

The Bondi terror attack was the most horrifying manifestation of where hatred, if left unchecked, will lead. But as the Royal Commission is making painfully clear, the problem did not begin there – and unless confronted honestly, will not end there either.
Government confirms bid to hide counter-terror details from royal commission
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s department has sought to block royal commissioner Virginia Bell from considering whether the government directed intelligence agencies to reduce counter-terrorism resources in the lead-up to the Bondi massacre, a senior minister has confirmed.

ASIO officials told a Senate estimates hearing on Thursday night that they had not sought to prevent the royal commission from accessing the relevant material, backing up a written statement by ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess to the royal commission. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and ASIO director general Mike Burgess in December.Alex Ellinghausen

Burgess said in his statement that the Commonwealth had made several public interest immunity (PII) claims to block public release of documents, including a cabinet memorandum.

Asked about the matter on Thursday night, Environment Minister Murray Watt said the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet had made a public interest immunity claim regarding

‘Critical gap’: The 2020 warning to police before Bondi terrorist bought guns

“All I can say is that the PII claim was made by the Commonwealth on advice from Prime Minister and Cabinet Department to protect cabinet process, but of course the royal commissioner makes the final decision on all PII claims,” he told Liberal senator Jonno Duniam.

“Indeed, and as you would know, cabinet confidentiality is not exactly a new concept.”

Asked whether ASIO had sought a public interest immunity claim relating to the cabinet deliberations, senior ASIO official Lisa Alonso Love said: “No, I’m not aware that ASIO has asked for that.”


Bondi victim Rabbi Eli Schlanger’s final conversations become lasting legacy
NSW Premier Chris Minns has told the launch of the book co-authored by Rabbi Eli Schlanger that his murder in the Bondi Beach terror attack was “an unforgivable crime” but would not be allowed to define his life.

The book grew out of an unlikely meeting in hospital after Nikki Goldstein became gravely ill with an infection doctors feared could not be contained.

Rabbi Schlanger was called to her bedside when she was in a coma and believed to have little time left. He prayed for her and her family, blew the shofar, and, within 48 hours, Goldstein was conscious and breathing on her own.

Days later, after she had left intensive care, Rabbi Schlanger pulled up a chair beside her hospital bed and told her it had long been his dream to write a book. Goldstein said she first dismissed the idea, but Rabbi Schlanger’s persistence, faith and humanity gradually turned the encounter into a collaboration.

“Conversations with My Rabbi: Timeless teachings for a fractured world” co-authored by Schlanger and Goldstein, is the result of that collaboration.

Rabbi Schlanger was in the final stages of completing the book when he was killed on 14 December 2025 in the Bondi Beach terrorist attack, one of the deadliest mass-casualty shootings in Australian history.

The launch was held at Chabad of Bondi, the community most affected by the shooting, before Rabbi Schlanger’s family, friends, rabbis, community leaders, Minns and NSW Opposition Leader Kellie Sloane.

Minns said he had never met Rabbi Schlanger but had come to understand him through the book and the memories of those who knew him.

“In the months before Rabbi Eli Schlanger was killed, he was in the process of launching Project Noah, a program to inspire young people by reminding them that every single one of us is a child of Noah, charged with building a better world,” Minns said.

“I never had a chance to meet Rabbi Eli, but from what I’ve learned about his life, he was the kind of man powered by optimism, with a good deed on the go and a project that he was working on.”


Hugh Hewitt: Dems have an enormous anti-Semitism problem. Will anyone in legacy media ask any candidate about it?

Hugh Hewitt: Matt Continetti joined Hugh to review the news of the week and the Democrats’ Jewish problem

travelingisrael.com: The 4 Palestinian Lies They Want You to Believe
The shadow-bans and drops in views are real, but with your help, we can make sure the truth isn’t silenced. Here is how you can become an active part of this mission and keep this channel going:




‘It’s Important To Get the Facts Straight’: Graham Platner Questioned the Armenian Genocide in Now-Deleted Post, Called Mass Slaughter an ‘Incident’
Left-wing Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner—who’s repeatedly accused Israel of genocide—publicly questioned the Armenian genocide in a now-deleted internet post, the Washington Free Beacon can reveal.

In a June 2016 posting to Reddit, Platner responded to a thread about Germany formally recognizing the Armenian genocide, suggesting the widely accepted mass slaughter of Armenians during World War I was more complicated.

"The problem with your statement is that Turkey fully admits the Incident happened, the issue is whether it was in fact genocide or if it was mass killing/displacement," Platner opined.

"I’m no fan of Turkey, but it’s important to get the facts straight."

In a later post on the same topic, Platner tried to wiggle out of his past comment by clarifying that "I do in fact believe it should be termed a genocide." But then he dug himself deeper into a hole by claiming that "while I'm no fan of the Turks, to say the actions of the Ottomans in relation to the Armenian population is the same [as Nazi Germany] is downright incorrect ... To say Turks need to bury themselves in the national shame as the Germans have is just emotional pandering."

The Armenians, who for years have been locked in a bitter diplomatic battle with Turkey over Turkey's longtime refusal to take responsibility for the slaughter, might disagree with Platner that the Turks don't need to feel shame.

Up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed in the genocide in 1915 and 1916, when the Ottoman Empire carried out systematic mass murder and deportation of the Armenian people. In recent decades, the Turkish government has furiously denied the genocide and used diplomatic pressure in attempts to rewrite history and keep other countries from acknowledging the atrocities.

Platner's post prompted criticism from an Armenian human rights activist in Maine, Anna Astvatsaturian Turcotte, who called Platner "anti-Armenian" and said his stance on the genocide would hurt him with Armenian-Americans in the state.
US Anti-Terror Agency Froze Funds of Ilhan Omar's Husband During Biden Administration, Partner Says: Biden DOJ Would Later Probe Omar's 'Foreign Ties'
A U.S. national security agency that metes out sanctions against foreign terrorists and rogue regimes placed a hold in 2022 on investment funds raised by "Squad" member Ilhan Omar's (D., Minn.) husband and his business partner, the partner claimed in emails later cited in legal filings. The claim of a mysterious hold came while Omar sat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and two years before she was reportedly investigated by the Biden Justice Department for her "interactions with a foreign citizen."

The alleged freeze by the Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, came to light during a legal dispute involving a failed marijuana venture run by Tim Mynett—Omar's third and current husband—and his longtime business partner, Will Hailer. Mynett and Hailer, both former Democratic operatives, have been behind a string of business flops and have been accused in multiple lawsuits of lying to investors and not paying their bills.

In August 2022, when angry investors sued Hailer demanding the return of millions of dollars he'd raised from them for Badlands Ventures—a trio of business entities cofounded by Hailer and Mynett that sought to invest in South Dakota marijuana businesses—he said he could not return the money because it had been frozen by OFAC.

The investors argued that Hailer and Badlands "moved at least some—and perhaps all—of Plaintiffs' $1.683 million out of Badlands Ventures' bank account for purposes other than Badlands Ventures' business" and that the money had been "misappropriated and/or stolen." They added, "Hailer promised to wire hundreds of thousands of dollars … but claimed that the Office of Foreign Assets Control ('OFAC'), which enforces economic sanctions in the financial system, had placed a hold on the funds."

The plaintiffs were confused. "This explanation makes no sense, as all of Badlands Ventures' funds came from Plaintiffs who reside domestically," they said in a lawsuit alleging Hailer and Mynett formed Badlands "with the present intention of stealing and/or misappropriating" their money.

Middle East Forum policy analysis director Michael Rubin said an OFAC hold is not a matter to be taken lightly. OFAC, part of the Treasury Department's Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, administers trade sanctions against foreign terrorists and regimes that pose a threat to U.S. national security.

"OFAC is a technocratic agency; they don't defer to political spin," Rubin told the Washington Free Beacon. "So for a hold to be put on the funds suggests the scheme involved diversion of money to some very, very bad people."
Mamdani endorses anti-Israel candidate for Congress
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani endorsed former Columbia encampment organizer Darializa Avila Chevalier for Congress on Thursday evening.

The mayor’s endorsement comes as a major boost to Avila Chevalier, a democratic socialist and staunch Israel critic who is running against five-term incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat in the 13th District that covers upper Manhattan and parts of the Bronx.

“I look forward to fighting for our shared vision of a more affordable New York, one where we invest in our communities, not in bombs abroad, in Congress,” Avila Chevalier wrote on X/Twitter, thanking Mamdani for his endorsement.

Avila Chevalier vocal in anti-Israel activism
Avila Chevalier has been vocal throughout her campaign about opposing US support for Israel. She outlines her foreign policy vision on her campaign website.

“We must end the genocide and occupation in Palestine, divest from Israeli apartheid, stop all funding to the Israeli government, and reinvest in us,” the website reads.

She says she would vote in favor of the Block the Bombs Act, which prohibits the sale of certain US-made offensive weapons to Israel, and says she was arrested in April while protesting outside the offices of Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, calling for them to vote against weapons sales to Israel.

Avila Chevalier’s campaign priorities also include abolishing ICE, adding affordable housing, and securing federal funds to repair the city’s public housing.

She has been involved in pro-Palestinian activism since before she graduated from Columbia University in 2016, when she was part of the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine group, and in the 2016 formation of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, which is aligned with the larger Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions movement against Israel. She later helped organize Columbia’s Gaza encampment as an alumna in 2024.
Mamdani marching in Israel parade would be like KKK wizard taking part in black celebration, Catholic League head says
Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, said on Friday that Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York City, who has said he won’t march in the upcoming Israel Day on Fifth parade, essentially “told Jewish New Yorkers to take a hike.”

“For 61 straight years, every mayor of New York City has marched in the annual Israel Day Parade,” Donohue stated.

The Catholic League head noted that Mamdani said at a press conference at New York City Police Department headquarters on Thursday that “my lack of attendance should not be mistaken for a refusal to provide security or the necessary permits for its safety.”

“How magnanimous of him,” Donohue stated. “Had he tried to deny a permit, he would have gotten a licking in court. Ditto had he tried to prohibit a police presence.”

Donohue said he was proud to speak at an anti-Mamdani rally earlier in the week outside Gracie Mansion.

“As for safety concerns, it is ironic that this same man who fought a law providing a buffer zone around houses of worship—he yielded only when the vote was veto-proof—and vetoed a similar law for schools, made sure that on Tuesday the streets near his mansion had a huge buffer zone,” he said. “The police had barricades all over, keeping anti-Mamdani protesters away.”

“Quite frankly, the sight of Mamdani marching in a Jewish parade is on a par with the imperial wizard of the KKK marching in an African American parade,” Donohue stated. “The mind boggles.”

“Mamdani is a particularly lousy fit to march in this year’s Israel Day Parade. Why?” he added. “Because the theme is ‘Proud Americans, Proud Zionists.’ He’s made it abundantly clear that he is not a proud American, and his hatred of Zionists is undeniable.”


Activists protest Jerusalem real estate event in Manhattan with terrorist memorabilia
Anti-Israel activists protested against a Jerusalem municipality real estate investment event led by Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion in Manhattan on Thursday, with activists rejecting Israeli control of the holy city and claiming it as Palestinian land.

The protest outside the Hilton Midtown against the “Jerusalem. Your Home. Your Future.” event saw protesters affiliated with the Palestinian Assembly for Liberation Al-Awda in New York City and New Jersey (PAL-Awda NY/NJ) waving a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist flag. According to videos and photos shared online by PAL-Awda, one activist wore a hat emblazoned with the martyr poster for a deceased Palestinian Islamic Jihad gunman.

'Palestine is Arab'

"From the water to the water, Palestine is Arab," protesters chanted. "Brick by brick, wall by wall, Zionism will fall."

Protesters wrestled with police officers over security barriers that had been erected around the Jerusalem municipality, Israeli Building Center, and Jerusalem Development Authority event.

“The Zionist mayor, the genocidal war criminal of Jerusalem, is inside right now, he has orchestrated this entire illegal land sale.” activists said in a PAL-Awda video. “Settlers, settlers, go back home, Palestine is out alone!”

A PAL-Awda spokesperson said that the sale of real estate in Jerusalem was illegal, characterizing it as Palestinian land, and that Lion was seeking to recruit "settlers."

The expo was expected to attract about 1,000 participants, with organizers emphasizing Jerusalem's importance to the Jewish people and rising antisemitism. Developers presented projects at pre-sale prices and housing units currently under construction.


Park Slope Coop’s Israel boycott actually ripped Arab products from the shelves: business owner
Park Slope Food Coop’s contested vote to boycott Israeli products earlier this week has actually removed Arab-founded products from the shelves, according to one of the business owners impacted.

Rachel Simons, the founder and CEO of tahini brand Seed + Mill — one of the products impacted by the boycott — told The Post that the ban also included fellow tahini rival Al Arz, formerly owned by Julia Zaher, an Israeli-Arab.

“This is an Arab-Israeli woman who’s just grown and built a successful business and sold it for $50 million,” Simons said.

“And now you’re going to punish her brand, her legacy, that business, because of your desire to dismantle something that, in my opinion, doesn’t exist.”

Another product, Equal Exchange Olive Oil — also ripped from the shelves — is actually made by a non-profit organization led by a team of Arab and Jewish women.
Education Secretary calls on university leaders to ‘expel antisemitic abuse from campuses’
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has told university leaders they must “expel antisemitic abuse from campuses,” in a speech at a high-level conference.

She also made clear her position that “antisemitic abuse is not free speech” as she addressed over 80 senior leaders from universities and student unions at the inaugural Union of Jewish Students Vice Chancellors’ Conference.

Phillipson stressed the critical role educational chiefs now play in efforts to combat anti-Jewish hatred among young people. Addressing senior university leaders, the Secretary of State claimed that “in education we have a responsibility to lead,” and that “education can be a lasting cure to antisemitic hatred.”

She described stories of harassment and assault of Jewish students as “a drumbeat of hatred directed at bright young students,” calling them “heartbreaking, just as it was chilling.”

Phillipson added: “These students are right to feel frustrated, they are right to feel angry: that still in 2026, here in the UK, on the campuses of our universities, they are made to feel unsafe for no other reason than their Jewish identity.”

She repeated her earlier call for universities to “do everything in their power to drive out antisemitism,” which the cabinet minister said “has no place in our campuses.”

Over 80 senior leaders from universities and student unions were brought to JW3 in North London by UJS for a high-level conference focused on tackling antisemitism in higher education.

The Education Secretary also endorsed UJS’s new best practice guidance for higher education institutions, saying that universities “owe it” to Jewish students to “see it through.”
Oxford Union partners with Palestinian group associated with alleged ‘Hamas operative’
The Oxford Union has partnered with a controversial Palestinian organisation led by a man previously accused in Parliament of being a “Hamas operative”.

As reported by The Telegraph, the prestigious debating society, decided on an Arabian theme for its annual May Ball – “Al-Andalus after dark”. At least one flyer advertising the event included the logo of the Palestinian Forum in Britain, with the group reportedly offering a “dabke” Palestinian dance session.

Zaher Birawi, previously described as the chair of the PFB, was sanctioned by the US government earlier this year over alleged ties to Hamas. Birawi is also a senior official of the Popular Conference for Palestinian Abroad, which was described by the US government as a Hamas front. Israel designated Birawi as a Hamas member back in 2013.

In 2023, Christian Wakeford, MP for Bury South, used Parliamentary privilege to name Birawi as one of four senior “Hamas operatives” in the UK. Birawi denied the claim and said he was looking at “all available legal recourse” in response to the MP’s comments.

Birawi and the PFB have been closely involved with a number of pro-Palestinian marches which have taken place in the UK over the last few years; Birawi himself was also involved in the creation of the Gaza flotilla in which the former environmental campaigner Greta Thunberg participated.

As reported by The Times last year, another individual named by Wakeford in Parliament as a “Hamas operative” was Ziad El Aloul, a past chair of the PFB, who was its sole named director when the organisation was registered with Companies House just over a decade ago.

The current chair of the Oxford Union is Arwa Elrayess, understood to be the first Palestinian chair of the 202 year old debating society.

A source within the Union told The Telegraph, “Arwa Elrayess campaigned on expanding engagement with Palestinian perspectives, which is entirely legitimate within a debating society. Yet, lobbying for pro-Palestine narratives in the chamber is one thing.


‘New York Times’ shareholder demands probe of Kristof column
The National Center for Public Policy Research, a beneficial shareholder of the New York Times Company, is demanding that the publication turn over documents tied to its publication of a New York Times opinion piece by Nicholas Kristof that accused Israeli authorities of training dogs to sexually assault Palestinians in Israeli prisons.

Mark Goldfeder, director of the National Jewish Advocacy Center, which sent a letter to the company on behalf of the Times shareholder, said that the demand is meant to investigate whether the Times bypassed its corporate governance and risk oversight policies when it published Kristof’s May 11 column and a May 21 follow-up column.

The letter, which JNS viewed, states that the stockholder’s demand is in line with state law, which allows shareholders to inspect “certain books and records under the company’s control.”

The shareholder wants to know “whether the Times’ board and senior management are properly overseeing legal, reputational and financial risks tied to the company’s publication practices,” Goldfeder told JNS.

“The demand is not about second-guessing ordinary editorial judgment or seeking reporter notes, drafts, confidential sources or internal editorial deliberations,” he said. “It is focused on corporate governance and risk oversight: what systems the company has for verification, corrections, defamation-risk review, escalation of disputed reporting and preventing distorted or biased coverage.”

“The request specifically asks whether those policies were followed, triggered, waived or bypassed in connection with Nicholas Kristof’s column, ‘The Silence that Meets the Rape of Palestinians,’ and whether senior management or the board reviewed any legal, reputational, source-reliability, correction or standards issues arising from that publication,” Goldfeder told JNS.

The Times tells investors that “its brand, reputation, journalistic reliability and public trust are central business assets and that perceptions of bias or unreliability can affect subscribers, advertisers, employees, litigation risk and shareholder value,” he said.
Second teen charged in March shootings outside Toronto area synagogues
A second suspect has been charged in connection with two March shootings that targeted synagogues in the Toronto area, the Toronto Police Service and York Regional Police said on Friday.

A 17-year-old man from Waterloo, who was arrested on Wednesday, faces two counts each of reckless discharge of a gun, conspiracy to commit an indictable offense and weapons trafficking, police said.

Investigators allege that the suspect and another teen, who was charged earlier in the month, fired shots at Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto, a Modern Orthodox synagogue in a suburb of the city, shortly before midnight on March 6. Two people were inside at the time, but no injuries were reported, police said.

Shortly after midnight on March 7, the suspects allegedly fired at Shaarei Shomayim, a Modern Orthodox synagogue in Toronto.

Police said both buildings sustained damage to their entrances consistent with gunfire.

A hate crimes unit was involved in the investigation, per the police departments. JNS asked the Toronto Police Service why hate crime charges weren’t brought against the suspect.

The UJA Federation of Greater Toronto and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, the advocacy group of Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA, stated that “these investigations are complex, and the coordination between forces reflects the seriousness with which these attacks are being treated.”

“The nature of the charges laid in this case, including conspiracy and weapons trafficking offenses, underscores the gravity of what occurred. These were not acts of vandalism or mischief. They were targeted acts of violence directed at Jewish houses of worship,” the Jewish groups said.
Arizona school board member faces calls to resign after performing Nazi salute in meeting
A board member of the Deer Valley Unified School District in Arizona is facing calls to resign after she performed a Nazi salute at a board meeting on Tuesday night.

State and local education associations and fellow board members are telling Kimberly Fisher to step down, after she appeared to give the salute at the end of a discussion about the date and time of an upcoming meeting.

“Heil, heil,” she appeared to say.

Fisher also posted a video to her personal Facebook page. “We have been living or operating under virtually a dictatorship for a long time and a manipulation,” she says in the video. She also calls the board president “some little dictator” and compares him to Cambodian dictator Pol Pot.

“All I could think of tonight was Hitler, so I said ‘heil’ or whatever,” she says in the video.

The Deer Valley Education Association demanded that Fisher, who has served on the district board since 2021, resign “before she does more harm to our students and the community at large.” It called her “unfit for public service.”

“Delivering a Nazi salute is an unacceptable endorsement of an ideology responsible for millions of deaths,” the Arizona Education Association stated. It too told Fisher to step down and apologize.
Israeli AI tool helps rescue workers navigate collapsed buildings
When Iranian missiles hit Israeli cities in March, rescue teams often arrived at the scene of destroyed buildings knowing nothing about the structural plans or the location of safe rooms. They typically had to wait an hour for a municipal worker to print out the building permit from an archive and send over a physical copy.

But researchers from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and the University of Haifa set out to eliminate that gap and save lives.

At least roughly 10,000-12,000 buildings, homes or structures in Israel sustained damage in 2026 from attacks by Iran and its allies. The barrages killed 28 civilians and wounded more than 8,600.

Professor Yael Allweil from the Technion’s Housing Lab research group and Professor Moshe Lavee from the Elijah Lab at the University of Haifa have developed an AI tool that locates the relevant building permits within municipal archives, rapidly analyzes them, and delivers actionable, real-time information to rescue teams’ mobile devices.

“Based on an app we had developed as a research tool, we connected it to the ability to automatically extract building permits from building files,” Allweil told the Press Service of Israel.

The idea for the project came after receiving a query from a local municipality, she said.

“Using a series of AI tools, the app can read the parts of the information, text and diagrams, analyze the information, and answer questions that need to be known in the field—for example, on which floor is apartment 4, is there a safe room, how can a drone be inserted into the building from a certain point?” Allweil said.

The team is beta-testing the system with the municipality of Nahariya, a city in northern Israel often targeted by Hezbollah. Rescue workers and engineers are helping validate the accuracy of the app’s output.

Tal Haimi, Nahariya’s city engineer, told TPS-IL the initiative can save lives.

“We have experienced many crises here in recent years, and our biggest problem is managing information during an emergency,” he explained. “The application helps us organize all the information, work online and maintain functional continuity. It will definitely save lives during an emergency.”





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

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