Pages

▼

Wednesday, August 05, 2026

08/04 Links Pt2: The Weaponization of Human Rights; Ireland’s €53m government jet ‘can’t land in fog’ after Israeli tech boycott; The War on Dialogue; The Demonization of Israel Ignores the Success of Israeli Arabs

From Ian:

The Weaponization of Human Rights
When It Becomes Jew-Hate
In July 2021, antisemitic incidents surged across Britain during that summer’s fighting in Gaza. Jews were harassed in the street. A convoy was filmed driving through London screaming threats of rape against Jewish women. And Kenneth Roth offered his unwanted analysis. “Antisemitism is always wrong,” he wrote, “and it long preceded the creation of Israel, but the surge in UK antisemitic incidents during the recent Gaza conflict gives the lie to those who pretend that the Israeli government’s conduct doesn’t affect antisemitism.”

In the very sentence in which he condemned antisemitism, he placed its cause not with the antisemites but with Israel, the world’s only Jewish state. He told Jews being attacked on the streets of London that the real reason lay in the conduct of a foreign government. Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League called it “plainly false and offensive,” and he was right. Blaming Israel for violence against Jews, rather than the people committing that violence, is not human rights advocacy. It is the oldest move there is, wearing new clothes: whatever happens to the Jews, the Jews brought it on themselves.

This was not a slip. Under Roth, HRW branded Israel an “apartheid” state, reaching for the single most incendiary word available and fixing it to a country whose Arab citizens vote and sit as judges on its own supreme court. The word was not chosen because it was accurate. It was chosen because it was powerful. Like so much of what Roth did, it was a political act wearing the costume of a legal finding.

Which brings us back to Ceuta.
Roth left Human Rights Watch in 2022. He no longer has its budget or its name behind him. And that is precisely why the Ceuta tweet matters so much. For thirty years, his defenders insisted that HRW’s fixation on Israel was simply where the evidence led, that the volume of criticism reflected the volume of abuse, nothing more. The Ceuta tweet destroys that defense from the inside.

Here was a man, stripped of every institutional restraint, handed a story that had nothing whatsoever to do with Israel, and he manufactured an Israeli villain out of thin air, on a map he had not even read correctly. The conclusion came first. The evidence was to be invented afterward. That is not what following the evidence looks like. It is what an obsession looks like. And now we can see that the obsession was never really the organization’s. It was his.

This is one of the oldest features of Jew-hate, and I have spent years writing about it. It does not always arrive in a brown shirt. It adapts. It takes the language a society holds sacred and turns that language against us. Once it borrowed the language of the Church, and Jews were the killers of God. Today it has learned to borrow the language of human rights, and Jews are the killers of children and the enemies of justice. The costume changes. The accusation does not. And Kenneth Roth has been one of its most fluent translators.

Nor does it stay contained. Roth’s theory did not stay in his replies. Analysts documented how the Ceuta crisis was spun into a global antisemitic conspiracy within seventy-two hours, and Roth handed that conspiracy the credibility of a name that Princeton and Yale still invite to lecture on human rights. This is how it works. This is how Jew-hate is laundered: not by thugs in the street, but by respectable men with blue checkmarks and university affiliations, men who would be genuinely offended to be called antisemites even as they write the antisemites’ script for them.

What it Costs
The language of human rights is important. Real people in real dictatorships depend on it: the dissidents and the prisoners, the people in exactly the closed societies Robert Bernstein built his organization to defend. When words like “apartheid” and “genocide” are picked up and swung as weapons in a political fight, they are drained of their meaning, and the world’s genuine tyrants are handed a gift: the ability to wave away every accusation as just more politics. A movement that cries wolf at a democracy while the wolves run free everywhere else does not protect human rights. It discredits them.

And there is a cost closer to home. Every time a figure of Roth’s stature dresses up an old hatred in the language of justice, that hatred is given fresh permission. It is made respectable. Ordinary Jews, in London and Paris and on American campuses, are the ones who then live with the consequences, because the man with the human rights credentials has told the world that when Jews are targeted, Jews are somehow the authors of their own misfortune. That is not the protection of a vulnerable people. It is a license for their persecution.

Ultimately, that is Kenneth Roth’s legacy. Not one tweet about a Spanish enclave, but thirty years of proof that the most powerful institution in human rights could be turned into a weapon: for politics, for money, and above all for a fixation with the Jewish state that has outlived his own career. His defenders will call the Ceuta tweet an aberration. It is not. It is the clearest thing he has ever written. It is who he has always been, said plainly at last, and published while the dead were still being counted on a beach that had nothing to do with the Jews.
The Guardian is in the grip of an antisemitic ideology
The authors go on to argue that Truman, like his predecessors, caved to the powerful Israel lobby and betrayed the U.S. ‘national interest’—an ideal that Israel lobby conspiracists like Clifton and Lustik fancy themselves uniquely equipped to define, while framing Jews and other supporters of Israel as intrinsically ill-equipped to delineate.

Also true to character, the authors frame the lobby as the biggest obstacle to peace between Israel and the Palestinians, erasing decades of Palestinian terrorism and peace rejectionism. It’s also supremely dishonest for two ideologues both hostile to the right of Israel to continue existing as a Jewish state – within any borders – to feign passion for a negotiated solution to the conflict.

Indeed, a review of Clifton’s X timeline during the first few days after the Oct. 7 attacks clearly suggests not only that he had little if any sympathy for murdered, raped and tortured Jews, but that he sympathised with Hamas.

Elsewhere in the Guardian excerpt, the co-authors make use of their faux nationalist authority to take thinly veiled swipes at American Jews, questioning their loyalty and suggesting dual loyalty.

For instance, former US Mid-East peace negotiator Dennis Ross (who’s Jewish) is dismissed in the book as a peace obstructionist due to his record as a “a lobby insider.” This false accusation was first peddled in the widely ridiculed 2006 book on the Israel lobby by Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, the latter of whom later blurbed a book by Gilad Atzmon which was described by CST as one of the most antisemitic books in years.

Indeed, the only characters in the Israeli-Palestinian debate whose motivations and actions are questioned or examined are Jews and others involved in pro-Israel lobbying groups.

True to form, Clifton and Lustik are breezily unconcerned with the decisions, ideologies and loyalties of the diplomatic elite (aka, the peace processors) whose assumptions about the root cause of the conflict has continually been proven false, pro-Palestinian groups, and Arab and Muslim Americans – the latter of whom show a distressing level of support for Hamas.

Indeed, the Guardian’s effective endorsement of the authors’ mono-casual Jewish and Israel-focused explanation for the continuing Mid-East conflict, which has been echoed by the outlet’s own anti-AIPAC reporter Chris McGreal year after year, is a microcosm of their broader coverage of the region, which denies agency to the latter – no matter how destructive, malevolent and inimical to peace their decisions – while assigning all of the blame to the former.

Finally, there’s the authors’ decision to ignore the single most consequential event for anyone purportedly writing about Israeli-Palestinian peace today: Hamas’ barbaric massacre in southern Israel.

As the renowned historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, a supporter of the two-state solution whose new book, titled “The Cauldron: The Making of the Modern Middle East,” comes out in September, recently observed, the terror group’s decision to launch that attack “prevented any creation of a Palestinian state for the foreseeable future,” a timeframe he clarified as meaning “decades.”

Indeed, evidence abounds that Hamas’ only guiding passion is the annihilation of Israel, regardless of the cost to the two plus million Palestinians in Gaza.

The Palestinian-American peace activist Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib documented that Hamas itself acknowledged that, as far back as 2014, Gaza was offered billions of dollars (US) in development, which included an airport, a seaport, new industries, major cash infusions and self-rule. The condition for this path forward for Palestinians was Gaza’s disarmament and demilitarisation, a deal which would have given Hamas an off‑ramp: integrating its employees and former fighters into the civilian police, and shifting toward nation‑building instead of terrorism.

As Alkahatib, one of the Palestinian architects of the Gaza development plan, said, Hamas rejected the plan and, instead, “turned the territory into a fortress of violence, tunnels, rockets, smuggling, and radicalization,” which culminated in Oct. 7, “Gaza’s vast devastation, tens of thousands killed, and billions wasted,” a wanton act of destruction that Jewish lobbyists in Washington had absolutely nothing to do with.

The path forward for Gaza, Alkhatib concludes, requires introspection, accountability, responsibility, and an insistence on Palestinian agency – ideas for peace that the territory’s leadership, Western pro-Palestinian activists, anti-Israel media outlets and antisemitic lobbyologists are loath to consider.
The Demonization of Israel Ignores the Success of Israeli Arabs
Whatever the extremists of Hamas intended to achieve through their attack on Israel, their actions appear to have strengthened the country's core and brought out a collective national spirit that was tangible to me as I traveled through the country.

After attending a conference in Haifa, I was struck by the changing nature of Israeli Arab employment and the growing involvement of Arab citizens in key sectors of the Israeli economy. At the University of Haifa, I was particularly struck by the number of young Israeli Arab women studying on campus. I could hear Arabic being spoken all around me.

Consider Israel's healthcare system. One in four doctors in Israel is Arab. Just over one in four dentists is Arab, as is just over one in four nurses. Almost one in every two pharmacists in Israel is Arab. These are highly specialized professions requiring years of education, training and accreditation. Moreover, Israel has suffered thousands of casualties since the Oct. 7 attack and many of those injured were treated by Arab doctors and nurses.

The blanket term of "apartheid" in Israel against its Arab population simply does not stack up when compared to what happened in South Africa. There are social disparities - but Israeli Arabs are part and parcel of Israel's future. That is patently obvious to any social observer.

Israel's critics overlook the countless interactions that take place between Arab and Jewish citizens every day. They remind us that reality is far more complicated than the slogans through which Israel is so often discussed in Britain.


Ireland's new €53m. jet may struggle in fog as government rejects Israeli-made landing system
Ireland's new government jet, which cost the republic €53m., was purchased without FalconEye, a technology co-developed by Dassault Falcon and Israeli defense giant Elbit Systems, that is essential for the aircraft to land in foggy weather, local media reported on Tuesday.

FalconEye sits on the plane's nose and helps it to land in foggy weather, or in other weather conditions that limit visibility, Irish outlet The Journal noted.

According to Dassault Falcon's official website, it is "an advanced combined vision system (CVS) developed by Dassault Aviation in partnership with Elbit Systems. Designed for executive and military jets, it merges enhanced real-world video (EVS) with database-driven synthetic terrain mapping (SVS) to provide pilots with unprecedented situational awareness in zero-visibility conditions like fog, snow, or darkness."

Dublin's Defense Department denied the issue, saying the new aircraft has “no current limits” on its operational capability.

The jet, a Dassault Falcon 6X, is primarily used to transport the Irish Taoiseach (prime minister), as well as other government ministers and officials, when traveling on official state business.

The new jet was delivered in December 2025, and can carry 14 passengers. It replaced the government’s Learjet, and is operated by the Irish Air Corps (the military's air force).

The FalconEye provides "the ability to land in fog when other aircraft would have to divert to another airport," former IAC pilot Kevin Phipps was cited by The Journal as saying. Irish PM promises not to purchase equipment featuring Israeli technology

Taoiseach Micheal Martin, in 2024 when serving as foreign minister, said that Ireland would not purchase equipment that features Israeli-made products, Irish media cited.

Despite this, The Journal found that four helicopters belonging to the IAC were delivered with flight systems co-developed by Elbit and Airbus, as "the craft cannot be built without them."

Additionally, a maritime patrol craft was delivered with an Israeli-made radar, The Journal added.


Jonathan Sacerdoti: Ireland’s €53m government jet ‘can’t land in fog’ after Israeli tech boycott
Ireland’s new €53 million government jet was reportedly ordered without an Israeli-made enhanced vision system because purchasing it would have required a direct agreement with defence company Elbit Systems.

The FalconEye system helps pilots operate and land in fog and extremely poor visibility. Ireland insists the aircraft remains fully operational, but the controversy has highlighted a wider contradiction: Israeli technology is already embedded in other Irish military aircraft.

The story raises a bigger question about wider attempts to boycott Israeli technology while many European countries continue to rely on Israeli innovation across defence, aviation and healthcare.




Regulator opens probe into UK charities working with illegal West Bank settlements
The Charity Commission has launched a statutory class inquiry after concerns emerged that multiple UK-based charities have donated money to illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Initially, the inquiry will focus on eight charities, among a larger group identified in recent concerns raised with the Commission.

The investigation aims to determine the extent to which charitable funds were used in illegal Israeli settlements, the purposes behind this spending, and whether these actions aligned with the charities’ stated objectives.

The Commission will also assess whether charity assets or beneficiaries are at risk and consider what regulatory action, if any, may be needed to address these issues.

Stephen Roake, Assistant Director for High Risk Compliance at the Charity Commission, stated: “All charities must be able to demonstrate they are delivering on their charitable purposes, wherever and however they operate.
Shai Davidai: The War on Dialogue
Yet perhaps most revealing was the protestors’ treatment of Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Palestinian-American peace advocate and the author of Hamas and Its Two Million Hostages, an indictment of Hamas and its violent ideology. Despite losing more than thirty members of his extended family in the Israel-Hamas war, Alkhatib continued to advocate for a future in which both Israelis and Palestinians could exercise their right to self-determination. For that, activists who had never set foot in Gaza denounced him as a traitor and repeatedly disrupted his lectures on American college campuses. Refusing to abandon dialogue or reject Israeli humanity, his offense was never that he ignored Palestinian suffering. It was that even unimaginable personal loss had failed to radicalize him against Israel’s existence. Within the distorted moral universe of American Intellectual Antisemitism, his refusal to hate was treated as a greater offense than Hamas’s willingness to murder.

Together, these cases revealed something essential about the ideology of American Intellectual Antisemitism. Anyone who challenged the movement’s worldview—even Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims speaking from personal experience—was no longer treated as a partner in dialogue, but an obstacle to be removed. In the war against dialogue, moderation was not collateral damage. It was one of the movement’s primary targets.

This strategy succeeded not only because protestors embraced it, but because university administrators repeatedly rewarded it. By refusing to discipline protestors who disrupted events, administrators taught students that ideological extremism carried greater influence on campus than respectful dialogue. Each canceled event, relocated lecture, or removed speaker—typically justified by vague references to “security concerns”—reinforced the same lesson: disruption works. The university was teaching political effectiveness, not free inquiry. With disruption becoming leverage, intimidation becoming strategy, and censorship becoming the path to ideological victory, too many universities taught students how to suppress, rather than confront, opposing ideas.

Universities often describe themselves as marketplaces of ideas. But markets function only when ideas are free to compete with each other. Just as economic markets use competition to reveal the value of goods, intellectual markets use competition—through criticism, debate, and the constant challenge of competing perspectives—to test the strength of ideas. By exposing weak arguments and refining stronger ones, that process brings us ever closer to the truth. Universities cannot live up to their own professed mottos—from Harvard’s Veritas and Yale’s Lux et Veritas to Northwestern’s Quaecumque sunt vera, Johns Hopkins’ Veritas vos liberabit, and Brandeis’ Emet—unless they permit genuine intellectual competition.

Such competition requires dialogue, and dialogue requires the willingness to hear ideas we reject. Once a university teaches students that preventing a conversation is morally superior to having one, it ceases to function as a university at all. When dialogue is suppressed, truth is not protected. It is prevented from emerging.

It is no accident that American Intellectual Antisemitism chose the university as one of its first battlegrounds. Control what may be discussed in the classroom, and you eventually shape the boundaries of public life beyond it. Every war on dialogue is ultimately a war against truth. And when truth falls, freedom soon follows.


HonestReporting: Why Is the Jew the Enemy? Rawan Osman Describes How Arab Antisemitism Is Built, and How to Break It
She ran out of the grocery store so fast she left her purse in the shopping cart. Rawan Osman was in her twenties, newly arrived in Strasbourg, and she had just seen four Orthodox Jewish men for the first time in her life. Then she went home, sat on her windowsill, and spent weeks watching the neighbors she'd been raised to fear, asking herself a question she had never considered: why is the Jew the enemy?

Rawan grew up in southern Lebanon, an area dominated by Hezbollah, in a secular family that sent her to a French Catholic school. She never met a Jew. That absence, she argues, was the whole architecture: there was nobody present to contradict what school, television, and Al Jazeera told her.

Today she's a researcher at the Jerusalem Center, the founder of the Arabic-language forum Arabs Ask, and a convert to Judaism who has visited Israel roughly twenty-five times since October 7.

In this conversation with HonestReporting she explains:
• Why the departure of 850,000 Jews from the Arab world made the indoctrination possible in the first place
• What her cousin's khaki school uniform in Damascus taught her about human shields
• Why it took seven years of studying before she could walk into a synagogue — and what that says about disarming Hezbollah
• The ten-minute test that shows how Al Jazeera writes one story in Arabic and another in English
• Why she thinks Iraqi Kurdistan is the model for coexistence in the region

This is a conversation about how antisemitism is manufactured, how it is unlearned, and why the second process takes so much longer than the first.

Chapters
00:00 — Cold Open & Introduction
05:23 — How Al Jazeera's launch changed the media landscape
08:45 — What her cousins in Damascus taught her
10:49 — Discovering her fear of Jews
18:11 — Converting to Judaism
20:40 — Syria after Assad
26:51 — Erbil and the Kurdish model
33:47 — The failure of Western imagination
52:30 — Al Jazeera in Arabic vs. English
58:08 — How to scale her transformation across the Arab world


Catholic League head urges Mamdani to skip Sept. 11 ceremony
Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, urged New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to skip next month’s Sept. 11 remembrance ceremony at Ground Zero, arguing that his attendance at the 25th anniversary commemoration would be “divisive.”

The letter came as an online petition launched by a man whose wife was killed in the Sept. 11 attacks, calling for Mamdani to be excluded from the annual commemoration, surpassed 74,000 signatures.

Donohue wrote that Mamdani’s absence from the Veterans Day Parade and Israeli Day Parade, coupled with what he described as the mayor’s reluctance to condemn Islamist extremism, made him an inappropriate figure to attend the ceremony.

“It would be best for everyone involved if you skipped the event,” he wrote. “If you attend, the proceedings will be awkward, to say the least, for the surviving family members of the first responders.”

Donohue added that, while no official statistics exist, he estimates that 85% to 90% of the first responders killed in the Sept. 11 attacks were Catholic.

He also accused Mamdani of being “infinitely more upset about prejudice against Muslims following 9/11 than the deadly events of that day.”
Mamdani pressed over ‘unequal treatment’ of Jews as feds ‘actively’ probe NYC antisemitism
The Trump Justice Department is “actively” investigating crimes fueled by antisemitism in New York City and has sent a letter to Mayor Zohran Mamdani demanding answers about the “unequal treatment” of Jews.

The extraordinary move comes after cops say crazed 51-year-old Raul Morales screamed “Allahu Akbar!” while stabbing a Jewish man and an Asian man in separate harrowing attacks on the Upper West Side last month.

Many Jewish leaders were quick to blame the Muslim mayor — an outspoken critic of Israel who has accused it of committing a “genocide” during the war in Gaza and called for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — for the stabbings.

Hate crimes have overall surged in the Big Apple under Mamdani, with more than half of this year’s incidents to date targeting Jewish New Yorkers, according to unsettling new crime statistics released by the NYPD on Monday.

US Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who heads the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, last week discussed complaints about local hate crimes with Dov Hikind, founder of Americans Against Antisemitism and a former Brooklyn state assemblyman.
Erin Molan: Former Democrat Goes BALLISTIC.. Reveals the Plan to STOP Mamdani
What Dov Hikind told me about his mother, Auschwitz and the true meaning of “Never Again” left me fighting back tears.

Dov Hikind spent 36 years in the New York State Assembly as a Democrat. Now, he is going absolutely ballistic over the direction of the Democratic Party—and specifically the silence of Chuck Schumer and other prominent Jewish leaders as antisemitism escalates.

In this raw and deeply emotional conversation, Dov reveals the concrete action he and former New York Governor David Paterson have taken by asking the Department of Justice to examine what they describe as incitement surrounding Zohran Mamdani’s rhetoric.

He also unloads on Chuck Schumer, Bernie Sanders and Democratic moderates; explains why he believes New York’s Jewish leadership has failed to confront this moment; and reveals his plan to help create a new Jewish defense organization in America.

But the conversation takes an intensely personal turn when Dov recounts how his mother survived Auschwitz while the rest of her family was murdered—and delivers a devastating message to everyone who continues saying “Never Again” without being prepared to act.

Watch until the end, then tell me in the comments: Has “Never Again” become an empty slogan?

CHAPTERS
00:00 The warning that left Erin in tears
00:40 Dov Hikind joins The Erin Molan Show
02:03 Taking concrete action against Mamdani
03:51 “Some of our worst enemies are within”
04:55 Why Jewish leaders embracing Mamdani matters
06:11 Dov’s mother, Auschwitz and October 7
08:47 Erin fights back tears
11:03 “Stop saying ‘Never Again’”
11:23 Dov goes ballistic on Chuck Schumer
13:15 Why the Democrats keep winning
14:01 Bernie Sanders and Jewish Democrats
15:55 Dov’s plan for a Jewish defense group
16:54 Could Bruce Blakeman win New York?
18:02 “You need to deserve the miracle”


Mamdani uses taxpayer funds for film on tenant organizing narrated by anti-Israel ‘Gilded Age’ star
Mayor Zohran Mamdani has taken a page from his filmmaker mom Mira Nair and released a short taxpayer-funded documentary about tenants organizing against their do-nothing landlord.

Mamdani and Cea Waver — the controversial director of the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants who once called private property ownership a “weapon of white supremacy” — are featured prominently in the City Hall-produced film, “The Union of Pinnacle Tenants: A Short History of NYC Housing.”

The New York Post even makes a cameo appearance in the 13-minute work narrated by “The Gilded Age” actor Morgan Spector, who was blasted by one watchdog group as “extremist” over his anti-Israel views.

“The Union of Pinnacle Tenants has shown what becomes possible when neighbors organize,” the democratic socialist mayor said in a press release. “Across nearly 100 buildings, tenants came together and won important victories that made real, material impacts in New Yorkers’ lives.

“I’m proud to stand with them as they continue the fight for affordable, dignified housing across the city,” said Mamdani — whose mother has produced star-studded award-winning movies.

“This film tells the story of that organizing, but I hope it also reminds New York City tenants that the power to change their living conditions begins with one another,” he said. “The most protected tenant is an organized tenant.”

But the watchdog group Common Sense yelled, “Cut!” on the notion that the documentary was needed.

“New Yorkers elected a mayor, not a Hollywood producer,” it said.

“The administration should, of course, communicate with New Yorkers, and transparency and accessibility are essential. But when an undisclosed sum of public dollars is used to create a video narrated by a well-documented extremist in an effort clearly intended to generate viral attention, priorities have become recklessly misplaced.

“Good governance is about delivering real solutions to real problems, not merely generating headlines. As the city grapples with an ever-worsening deficit, City Hall should be vigilant about the appropriate use of taxpayer funds.

“Making short films does not clean the streets or keep New Yorkers safe or even make the buses faster.”


Pro-Israel candidate Wesley Bell defeats Cori Bush in Missouri Democratic primary
Rep. Wesley Bell has defeated former House representative Cori Bush in Missouri’s Democratic primary for the state’s 1st Congressional District.

Bush had emerged as one of Congress’s most outspoken critics of Israel following the October 7 Hamas attack and the subsequent war in Gaza, while Bell campaigned on a more moderate platform and has consistently supported the US-Israel strategic alliance.

The result represents an important victory for the Democratic Party’s pro-Israel wing after AIPAC and its allies invested millions of dollars in the race.

During his victory speech, Bell said of his voters, “There’s folks who chose to have their voices heard when there are forces trying to take those voices away from them. But you chose to show up, show out and let - not just the country - but the world know that we are here and we are not going away.”

Looking ahead to the general election in November, Bell said “the fight is just starting,” and that he will “work with anyone who will work with us."

“We do have a lot of work to do,” he said. “And the only way we do that is if we come together.

Meanwhile, Bush disparaged Bell to her supporters after his victory.

"It pisses me off," she said, "that for the next two years, this community will be represented by someone who didn’t deem you valuable enough to show up to one candidate forum where there were audience comments, even though I showed up to every one.”
Crucial Michigan Senate primary between El-Sayed, Stevens remains too close to call
The 2026 midterms kicked into high gear Tuesday as voters headed to the polls across five states, with Michigan's marquee Democratic Senate primary leading a slate of closely watched contests.

The contest between Rep. Haley Stevens and former public health official Abdul El-Sayed has become the marquee race of the night, drawing millions of dollars in outside spending and attention from top Democratic figures.

The winner will face Republican Mike Rogers in November in one of the country's most competitive Senate races and a contest that could help determine control of the chamber.

The primary has also become a proxy fight over the Democratic Party's direction.

Stevens has been backed by much of the party establishment, while El-Sayed has rallied support from progressives including Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, fueling a broader debate over the message Democrats should carry into the general election.


Badenoch defends selection of former neo-Nazi who targeted Jewish MP as Tory election candidate
Asked why he had now been selected as a candidate in Somerset’s Crewkerne South district, Badenoch told reporters: “I want to be very clear, and I think people can look at me and know that I’m not a person who would be recruiting neo-Nazis.

“Josh is someone who actually has been certified by the Home Office to train police officers on antisemitism and on countering extremism.

“Yes, he is somebody who had been previously convicted, but he is someone who has shown contrition for his crimes, has been rehabilitated and is spending every day working to solve the very problem which he knew he had caused previously.

“He’s going up and down the country training people, and the Conservative Party believes in second chances.”

Badenoch added: “This is not just someone that we’ve picked up who’s a convicted criminal; this is somebody who is actively working to help communities, especially Jewish communities, and this is what I want to see.

“I want second chances for good people, for people who’ve learned their lessons, for people who are showing that they know what they did was wrong.

“What I don’t want to see is early release of people who have no contrition whatsoever, who don’t care, and who are going to be out on the streets actually harming people.”


“Backlash” or Justification? The Hill Makes the Case for Targeting Synagogues
“What is a synagogue when it’s not serving as a place of worship, a house of study, or a community center?” Mark I. Pinsky asks in an opinion piece in The Hill.

The answer should be simple: a synagogue is a safe gathering place for the Jewish community. It serves not only as a place for prayer and study, but also as a venue for a range of community events, including celebrations and broader gatherings that might interest the community.

But this is not the answer Pinsky gives. Instead, he claims that a synagogue is a “shield and an implicit shill” for companies profiting off of land sales in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Yet synagogues have remained connected to the land of Israel, long before any real estate company hosted events in their halls. Hosting events that reinforce that connection isn’t a scheme to “shield” from criticism, but is rather emblematic of what a synagogue has always been to Jews globally.

Pinsky never asks the obvious follow-up: why would Jewish people want to buy property in Israel? If not for the rising antisemitism, including the protests at synagogues, perhaps the answer is as simple as the very fact that Israel is the birthplace and national homeland of the Jewish people. It is not some foreign nation with no connection to any people, and real estate sales at synagogues only further prove this very point.

Yet Pinsky treats synagogues hosting community events as something suspect, ultimately framing the “backlash” they face as an understandable “issue.”

In the past decade, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has noted that there have been 23 physical attacks at synagogues in the U.S. alone, contributing to the more than 80 incidents worldwide. This doesn’t include the countless protests held outside synagogues. Whether the event is for real estate or purely helping Jews make aliyah, synagogues have become focal points for harassing Jews on the basis that it is only “criticism” of Israel. Synagogues are not targeted for what they host, but for what they are: Jewish institutions with a deep connection to Israel.


Spider-Man and the Tangled Web of the Anti-Israel Boycott
Spider-Man has faced some formidable villains over the years. But the latest threat to the web-slinger came from a social media campaign demanding that fans boycott his newest blockbuster outing.

It did not work.

Marvel Studios’ “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” became the second-biggest debut in box-office history this weekend, raking in $355 million in North America, in addition to $573 million internationally. Before the final numbers arrived, analysts were already projecting a domestic opening of between $230 million and $300 million.

The latest target of anti-Israel boycott activism had survived.

The campaign, which began circulating among activists in Lebanon and was amplified by pro-Palestinian accounts, urged audiences not to see the film because of one name in its credits: Avi Arad.

Arad is one of the movie’s four credited producers. He is also Israeli-American, has publicly supported Israel, and wore a yellow ribbon for the Israeli hostages held in Gaza at the Academy Awards.

That was apparently enough to declare the entire film a product of what the campaign graphics called the “occupation.”


More than half of professors teaching on Judaism, Israel at US colleges attack Jewish state publicly, per AI analysis
More than half of the professors who teach about Judaism and Israel at American colleges and universities have signed public statements or petitions that support boycotting the Jewish state or that call it “genocidal” or “apartheid,” according to a new artificial intelligence-aided “audit.”

In the Ivy League, 72.3% of Jewish studies professors have supported anti-Israel ideologies publicly, according to The Olam, a site run by public relations executive Ronn Torossian, which calls its results the “widest audit of its kind ever conducted.”

Torossian’s staff analyzed 2,499 faculty listings at 313 universities and cross-referenced them with documented public petition and statement campaigns and with membership in organizations like Faculty for Justice in Palestine, according to the site. It said that the research was conducted last month and in early August.

The audit found that 1,014 professors (40.5%) teach Jewish, Israel or Holocaust studies or Hebrew, and of those faculty, 401 (39.5%) have signed public, anti-Israel statements. That number rose to 1,298 (51.9% of the 2,499 professors) when faculty were included from adjacent departments, such as religious studies, history, political science and Middle Eastern studies, according to the audit.

Columbia University had the highest number (41) of offenders in the audit, followed by Princeton University (35), Pennsylvania State University (32), New York University (31), Yale University (30), University of Chicago (28), Brown University (27), University of Michigan (26), University of California, Berkeley (25), University of California, Los Angeles (44), Stanford University (24) and University of Washington (24).

University of Pennsylvania (19), Harvard University (18) and Cornell University (13) also had large numbers, according to the audit.

The analysis says that it excludes those who criticized the Israeli government and its policies, and only includes those who have signed on to public anti-Israel statements, like denying the Jewish state’s right to exist.

“As diaspora Jewry exits its ‘golden age,’ the data reveals that the Jewish studies professors are the hostility to Zionism and Israel at the front of the classroom,” Torossian, founder and chair of the New York public relations firm 5WPR, told JNS.

The audit reveals that “the people paid to teach Judaism, Hebrew, Israel and the Holocaust are against the Jewish state itself,” the Israel-based publicist said. “This is not anecdotal. It is the broadest study of its kind ever conducted.”
NYU student accused of raising swastika flag at campus site dedicated to Jewish donor shows face in Manhattan court
Here is the first look at the preppy NYU student from Connecticut accused of raising a flag bearing two swastikas next to a Star of David at a campus building dedicated to a Jewish donor.

Alexander Stepnowsky, 23, wore a baby-blue button-down shirt and tan khakis to his routine preliminary Manhattan court hearing Tuesday in his hate-crimes case stemming from the disturbing May incident.

The pupil hoisted the troubling banner — which also included a New York University logo and was designed to look like one of the prestigious school’s purple-and-white flags — during this year’s graduation festivities, prosecutors claim.

The Fairfield resident admitted to the conduct, claiming he raised the flag because he was upset with how NYU handled political issues around Israel, law-enforcement sources told The Post.

Stepnowsky has pleaded not guilty to charges of burglary and criminal trespass as a hate crime, as well as first-degree aggravated harassment.
Professor wins UK anti-Zionism appeal, but court rejects blanket protection
A UK Employment Appeal Tribunal has upheld a ruling that former University of Bristol professor Dr. David Miller’s anti-Zionist beliefs, as defined in his case, qualified as protected philosophical beliefs under the Equality Act 2010.

Miller was employed as a professor of political sociology at the University of Bristol from September 2018 to October 2021. Miller was dismissed for gross misconduct relating to comments he made on three occasions during February 2021.

These included the following: saying, “the enemy we face here is Zionism and the imperial policies of the Israeli state”; asking that “Zionism is ended”; saying “Zionism is racism”; saying the Israeli state is the cause of antisemitism; arguing that Zionism deliberately fosters Islamophobia; and saying that “Jewish student groups [that support Israel] are a threat to the safety of Arab and Muslim students.”

Since October 7, his comments have included praising or legitimizing October 7, and calling for Zionists to “go home.”

UK tribunal rules professor’s anti-Zionism protected
After his dismissal, Miller brought a complaint in the Employment Tribunal arguing that his beliefs were protected philosophical beliefs, that he was harassed for his beliefs, and that he was wrongfully dismissed.

In Tuesday’s ruling, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) upheld that the specific beliefs advanced by David Miller satisfied the test for a protected philosophical belief under section 10 of the Equality Act.

Those beliefs were defined as: that political Zionism (as Miller defined it) is inherently racist, imperialistic, and colonial; and that political Zionism, therefore, must be opposed.

EAT found those beliefs met the five criteria for protection, including being “worthy of respect in a democratic society” and also accepted Miller’s argument that he was not supportive of violence as a means of opposing Zionism.


Children filmed chanting, ‘We will crush Zionism’ at Peak District summer school
A youth group has posted footage on social media showing scenes from its summer school, where over 100 young attendees were filmed chanting in Arabic: “We will crush Zionism” and “Young people, rise up, our revolution is an Arab revolution.”

The four-day event was held by the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) at the YHA Edale Activity Centre in the Peak District.

Instagram footage shows a woman leading a group of mainly young girls, along with several boys, in the inflammatory chants.

In a separate Instagram post, PYM Britain shared photos from an event in North Kensington, West London — a community football tournament for children, with participation from local schools and community groups.

A photograph from the tournament shows five children from behind, and notably, two are wearing shirts numbered 7 and 10 — a clear reference to the October 7, 2023.


A Third of FIFA coverage about Israel: When the World Cup Became a Political Tool for Al Jazeera and Anadolu
The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup is a major advertising opportunity for companies seeking to promote their brand, using broadcast commercials, tie-in merchandise, and guerrilla marketing to turn the major sporting event into their platform. This also extends to political causes.

Middle Eastern state-run news agencies used the soccer tournament as an editorial vehicle to advance anti-Israel narratives, turning one of the largest shared media experiences on earth into political indoctrination.

A Third of Al Jazeera and Anadolu FIFA Headlines Gaza-Focused
Previous HonestReporting investigations highlighted individual examples of World Cup reporting that shifted from sport to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A wider data analysis of Turkish-state-backed Anadolu Agency and Qatari-state-backed Al Jazeera shows the extent of the phenomenon. Al Jazeera, Anadolu English, and Anadolu Turkish published 326 World Cup articles between June 1 and July 26, 2026. Of those, 104 also incorporated Gaza or Palestinians. In practical terms, roughly one in every three World Cup stories extended beyond soccer into the Middle East conflict.

Six Ways the Tournament Was Reframed
The analysis by HonestReporting.ai Labs found that the World Cup was rarely presented simply as a tournament taking place while a war continued elsewhere. Instead, it repeatedly became the framework through which the conflict itself was discussed.

Some reports focused on FIFA, portraying the governing body as politically compromised or unwilling to act over Israel. Others linked individual deaths directly to the tournament, turning wartime casualties into World Cup stories. A recurring theme contrasted celebrations inside stadiums with hardship in Gaza, while other reports framed fan activism as a global referendum on support for the Palestinians. Following Spain’s victory, the result itself was presented in some coverage as a symbolic geopolitical rebuke to Israel. The report also found that terms such as “genocide” were carried into a significant proportion of these World Cup-related stories rather than remaining confined to hard-news reporting.

Nearly 60 percent of the Al Jazeera and Anadolu World Cup stories that also discussed Gaza placed the tournament directly in the headline, inviting readers into a sports story before leading them toward war, humanitarian conditions or political advocacy. This also greased the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) wheels for Gaza stories that would otherwise not be prioritized amid other world events.


Conspiracy theories blaming Jews for Europe's wildfires are spreading online, Cyberwell warns
Cyberwell has alerted X/Twitter of a new wave of antisemitic conspiracy theories blaming Jews for wildfires across Europe, the NGO announced in a statement on Monday.

The organization, whose goal is to combat online antisemitism, identified “nearly identical narratives” regarding recent wildfires in Norway, France, and Spain, reinforcing what Cyberwell describes as a “recurring pattern of event-driven antisemitism, in which major crises are exploited to spread hate toward Jews.”

Posts in English, French, and Spanish claiming that Jewish people deliberately sparked the fires or orchestrated them for political or financial gain were identified by the organization’s analysts.

Cyberwell found that content on the Norway wildfires surpassed 2 million views on X, “helping transform an isolated conspiracy into a broader wave of antisemitic content,” according to the company.

Meanwhile, content on Spain’s wildfires reached more than 69,100 users, according to Cyberwell’s numbers.


Sorry not sorry? John Galliano exhibit at the Met sparks Jewish debate on repentance
Before the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced that it would honor fashion designer John Galliano with a major Costume Institute exhibition next spring, the museum convened at least two unusual meetings: a face-to-face with Galliano and a number of prominent rabbis, and a larger meeting with Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, museum officials and several prominent Jewish leaders.

The unusual collision of fashion and Judaism, first reported in The New York Times, reflected the challenge facing the Met as it prepares to celebrate one of fashion’s most influential designers who was also the perpetrator of one of its most notorious scandals.

Fifteen years after Galliano was fired as chief designer of Dior for praising Hitler and hurling antisemitic abuse at patrons in a Paris café, the fashion exhibition has become a test of what Judaism means by teshuvah — repentance — and whether genuine accountability can coexist with public redemption.

The Met’s announcement also comes at a time when many Jews see a spike in antisemitism, ostensibly ignited by the war in Gaza sparked by Hamas on October 7, 2023, but fanned by anti-Israel rhetoric that is often indistinguishable from bigotry against Jews.

Accordingly, the debate over Galliano’s return to fashion — he recently signed a multiyear deal with the fashion brand Zara — touches on questions that Jewish tradition has wrestled with for centuries: how to repent, and when to forgive.
Antisemitic assaults in Britain surged by 82% in first six months of 2026 — report
Antisemitic incidents in the United Kingdom rose 21 percent in the first six months of 2026 compared to the same period last year, reaching the second-highest total on record for the first half of a year, according to a new report published Wednesday morning by the Community Security Trust.

The organization recorded 1,926 anti-Jewish hate incidents between January and June, up from 1,598 during the first half of 2025,

The total came out to an average of 321 monthly incidents, nearly double the figure from before the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel.

Physical attacks rose sharply, with 135 recorded antisemitic assaults, an 82% increase year-over-year. Incidents in schools jumped 59% to 178, while synagogue-related incidents surged by 31%, CST reported.

The most serious incidents included the terror stabbing of two visibly Jewish men in Golders Green on April 29, which fueled 71 further anti-Jewish incidents over the next three days, CST said. The period also saw a series of arson attacks targeting London synagogues and Jewish-linked properties, including the burning of Hatzola ambulances and strikes on multiple synagogues that were linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and claimed by an organization later proscribed by the UK government.

The CST noted the antisemitic incidents spiked following the start of the US-Israel war with Iran in late February.

The Jew hatred recorded in the first half of this this year, which also followed a terrorist attack on a synagogue in Manchester, northern England, last October in which two Jewish worshippers were killed, has left many Jews in Britain fearful.


Israeli heart doctor flies 2,500 miles to help save 11-day-old baby in Rwanda
An Israeli heart specialist flew more than 2,500 miles to Rwanda to help save an 11-day-old baby before returning home the same day.

Dr Sagi Assa, a senior paediatric cardiologist at Wolfson Medical Centre, travelled to Kigali after being contacted by Dr Gerard Misago, the first Rwandan interventional paediatric cardiologist trained in Israel through Save a Child’s Heart.

The newborn, Angel, had been born with critical pulmonary valve stenosis, a rare heart defect which was preventing blood from reaching his lungs.

His parents, who live in a remote part of Rwanda, had taken their son through four regional hospitals before reaching King Faisal Hospital in Kigali, where he arrived critically ill.

Misago, who recently returned home after completing a three-year fellowship with the Israeli humanitarian organisation, contacted Assa, his former mentor, because of the risks involved in treating such a small baby.

Assa left Tel Aviv at midnight, travelling via Addis Ababa, and arrived in Kigali at 10am.

“Because it’s a high-risk procedure with high mortality, we felt we should do it together in Rwanda for the first time,” Assa said.

“I took on the challenge and left at midnight from Tel Aviv through Addis Ababa to Kigali, landing at 10am. We performed the procedure together – mainly led by Dr Gerard – and successfully dilated the baby’s pulmonary valve.”
Israeli breakthrough offers hope: Simple blood test could detect lung cancer
Lung cancer claims more lives worldwide than any other type of cancer. But the fight against it does not begin in the treatment room. It begins much earlier, at the moment the disease is detected. Lung cancer treatment has advanced dramatically in recent years, but the chances of success depend largely on when it is diagnosed: The earlier the disease is detected, the greater the likelihood of treating it successfully. Alongside the development of new treatments, an equally important race is underway to find ways of identifying cancer in its earliest stages, before it causes significant symptoms.

Lung cancer is not a single disease but is divided into two main groups: non-small cell lung cancer, or NSCLC, the most common type, and small cell lung cancer, or SCLC, which is considered more aggressive. Smoking is the main risk factor, but the disease can also develop in people who have never smoked, including as a result of exposure to secondhand smoke, air pollution, radon gas or hazardous substances in the workplace and, in some cases, genetic predisposition.

One of the greatest challenges in confronting lung cancer is that it can develop silently in its early stages, without symptoms. When symptoms do appear, they may include a persistent cough, shortness of breath, chest pain, coughing up blood or unexplained weight loss. This is one reason the disease is often discovered only at stages 3 or 4, when treatment is more complex.

Treatment options include surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, targeted therapies, immunotherapy and combinations of these approaches. The choice of treatment depends on the type of tumor, the stage of the disease and the patient’s individual characteristics.
Holy Land battle: Solomon's Pools become flashpoint in fight over Israel's biblical heritage
Built more than 2,000 years ago to supply Jerusalem with water, Solomon's Pools have become the center of a modern political dispute, with officials from the nearby Israeli town of Efrat accusing the Palestinian Authority of allowing the historic site to deteriorate after it was placed under Ramallah's jurisdiction following the 1993 Oslo Accords.

Most archaeologists date the construction of Solomon's Pools, three ancient reservoirs located between Efrat and Bethlehem, south of Israel's capital, to the Hasmonean period in the second century B.C. The reservoirs were built to supply water to Jerusalem during the Second Temple period. Herod the Great (37–4 B.C.) later expanded the system to provide water to his palace-fortress at Herodium.

"Solomon's Pools are not only the history of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel and the source of Jerusalem's living water, but also the future of Efrat in our ability to exercise our sovereignty, preserve Efrat's development space and sustain tourism for all religions in the area between Jerusalem and Hebron," Dovi Shefler, mayor of Efrat, told Fox News Digital.

The three reservoirs collectively hold approximately 288,000 cubic meters of water, or more than 10 million cubic feet. They are fed by the Arrub and el-Biyar aqueducts, which, together with rainwater, historically supplied Jerusalem with water year-round. During the British Mandate, the pools underwent significant renovations and became known as "Jerusalem's beach" until the Oslo Accords.

Under the agreements, the West Bank was divided into Areas A, B and C. Solomon's Pools are located in Area A, which falls under Palestinian civil and security control.

Yonatan Marcus, chief of staff of the Efrat Municipality, told Fox News Digital that during the negotiations, then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin maintained that the pools would remain under Israeli control, alongside other archaeological sites of major Judeo-Christian significance such as Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem.

However, during the mapping process, he said, the words "Solomon's Pools" remained within Area C on zoomed-out maps, while the reservoirs themselves ultimately mistakenly fell inside Area A.
Buried for 70 years, Vilna’s Great Synagogue reveals heart of pre-WWII Jewish community
Decades after one of Eastern Europe’s most important synagogues was destroyed under Nazi and Soviet rule, archaeologists have uncovered the central dais, or bimah, of the Great Synagogue of Vilnius, Lithuania.

Excavators were able to access the site for the first time after a Soviet-era building that stood over it was destroyed about eight months ago, excavation co-director Jon Seligman of the Israel Antiquities Authority told The Times of Israel. The synagogue, which served as the center of the city’s 60,000-strong Jewish community before the Holocaust, was ransacked by the Nazis in 1941 and then destroyed under the Soviet regime in 1957, he said.

“This was the most important synagogue of Lithuanian Jewry for several centuries,” said Seligman. “It’s what represented them as a people and formed a part of their identity. At a time when Jews comprised 40 percent of the city, this was their cathedral.”

The bimah, a raised platform from which the Torah was read, was uncovered during the past month in excavations that also uncovered sections of the main prayer hall, parts of the women’s gallery, colorful terrazzo floors, seating plaques bearing the names of worshipers, and a plaque engraved with the Ten Commandments.

The findings are the most significant since excavations on the city’s central Jewish compound, the Shulhoyf, began in 2011. The current excavation is the sixth at the site, which until now has focused on the courtyard and playground areas around the building.

“My family came from towns around the Vilnius region, so this project has been a homecoming for me in a lot of senses,” Seligman said.

The excavation is being led by the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Lithuanian cultural heritage organization Kultūros Paveldo Išsaugojimo Pajėgos (KPIP), with funding from the Good Will Foundation and in cooperation with the Lithuanian Jewish Community.


Avi Nesher’s Oct. 7 retelling, ‘Our Loves,’ to screen at Toronto Film Festival
Director Avi Nesher’s latest film, “Our Loves,” will be screened at the upcoming Toronto Film Festival, featured in the Centrepiece program that highlights feature films from established directors.

The Toronto film event, known as TIFF, is considered an important landmark in the North American awards season, and Nesher’s inclusion is considered significant with Israeli filmmakers struggling with global cultural boycotts amid the war in Gaza.

During a panel at the recent Jerusalem Film Festival, Nesher called the boycotts “a sad part of life” that has to be dealt with “somehow.”

Nesher and his producers discussed at the panel how they navigated the ongoing boycotts, citing “Our Loves” as an example of a film that was able to secure additional backing from entertainment giants Fox and Access Entertainment at a time when foreign funding has been difficult to come by, and festivals have been unwelcoming to Israeli entries.

“Our Loves” is Nesher’s telling of the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack, following an ensemble of characters whose stories intertwine during the vicious onslaught when rampaging terrorists killed some 1,200 people in southern Israel and abducted 251 people to Gaza.

“Our Loves” is considered a serious contender for the Ophir Award in September, which would then make the movie Israel’s submission for the Academy Awards. The film opens in Israeli theaters on September 3.





Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon!

Reclaiming the Covenant on America's 250th (May 2026)

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

    

 

 

at