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Thursday, August 06, 2026

08/05 Links Pt2: Benny Morris: ‘The Palestinians were offered peace – they rejected it’; The Democrats are a menace to America’s Jews; UC Berkeley teacher: ‘ethnic studies means free Palestine’

From Ian:

Dara Horn’s shocking new title hides a serious argument about fighting antisemitism
If you thought People Love Dead Jews — Dara Horn’s 2021 essay collection examining society’s reverence for remembering deceased Jews while failing to support the living ones — was an awkward book to read in public, just wait until you get your hands on Horn’s newest title: The Final Solution to the Jewish Question.

Horn, a celebrated novelist who has become the bard of contemporary antisemitism since Dead Jews was published five years ago, is in on the joke; she likes to say that both titles make great beach reads because no one will dare sit within several feet of you. (Her dad even made a custom People Love Dead Jews beach towel for her to test out the theory.)

But despite borrowing its title from the name of the Nazis’ infamous plan to rid Europe of its 11 million Jews during World War II, Horn’s latest book, which will be published on Sept. 1, is not a Nazi manifesto.

Instead, the title of Horn’s new book serves as an eye-catching, subversive dog whistle that is meant to pique the interest of antisemites — while also serving as a cheeky summary of Horn’s goal of actually trying to come up with a solution to the wave of antisemitism that has swept the world in recent years.

She just can’t believe that she is the one coming up with those solutions.

“I saw People Love Dead Jews as just a detour from my real work, which I see as writing novels,” Horn told Jewish Insider in an interview last week.

The genesis for Horn’s latest book came in the aftermath of Dead Jews. She spoke at public events often in 2021 and 2022, and she recalls becoming “the receptacle for everyone’s horror stories.” People would go up to Horn after she discussed the book and tell her about their own experiences of antisemitism. They often chalked up these incidents to jokes or misunderstandings or annoyances, such as a couple being ghosted by a longtime friend after the friend attended their son’s bar mitzvah or an actor turned down for roles in Hollywood because they looked “too Jewish.” But when taken together, they present a picture of a society that has learned to accept ambient anti-Jewish hate.

“This is going to sound really ridiculous,” Horn reflected on her previous book, “but I didn’t even really think it was a book about antisemitism. I saw it as a book about this weird historical phenomenon about the way we commemorate the past and how that affects the present.”

Many Horn acolytes felt that her thesis was borne out during the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks in Israel, the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust, as they watched sympathy for Jewish victims turn to anger at Israel’s military response and even praise for Hamas’ actions.

“I’m not happy to have been right about this,” she said.
25 years after suicide bomber killed Malki Roth at Sbarro in Jerusalem, her grieving parents feel alone, wonder when she’ll get justice
After a quarter century of seeking justice for their daughter Malka Chana “Malki” Roth, who was 15 when she was murdered in a suicide bombing at Sbarro in Jerusalem on Aug. 9, 2001, Arnold and Frimet Roth feel abandoned—by their American government and by many whom they expected to keep fighting with them.

“We’re alone in every meaningful sense, fighting powerful people who never, ever, at any stage, say what they actually mean or what they intend to do,” Arnold Roth told JNS. “Quite the opposite. They say things that are superficial and that are calculated to keep us in the dark and never lead to where we want to go.”

Ahlam Tamimi, a Hamas terrorist who lives freely in Jordan, brags openly on television about helping plan the pizzeria bombing, in which Judith Shoshana Greenbaum and Chana Nachenberg, both American citizens like Roth, and 13 other civilians were killed. Some 130 were injured in the attack.

In 2013, the United States charged Tamimi with participating in the attack. She is listed on the “Most Wanted” FBI terrorist list, and the U.S. State Department’s Rewards for Justice program has offered up to $5 million for information leading to her arrest.

Jordan, which has an extradition agreement with the United States dating back to 1995, has refused to comply in Tamimi’s case, and successive U.S. administrations seem to have been unable to enforce the treaty.

Jordan has said that handing Tamimi over would lead to riots in the streets, but those involved with the case have told JNS repeatedly that Jordan’s claim is a convenient excuse for Washington, which is loath to rock the U.S.-Jordan relationship.

Roth has visited Jordan several times and had business relations there before his daughter was murdered.

He told JNS that he can’t fathom how extraditing Tamimi would suddenly harm the U.S.-Jordan relationship, given already high levels of Jew-hatred in the Hashemite Kingdom and Israel’s measures to shore up its defense of the border with Jordan.

Stuck in a perpetual state of mourning for his daughter, Arnold Roth’s pain and quiet anger are palpable in his voice.
Nick Winton: My father saved Jewish children because he refused to be a bystander – a lesson we urgently need today
Iwant to start with a letter.

It was written on May 4, 1939, on the headed notepaper of the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia, Children's Section, Room 217, Bloomsbury House, London. The original is now held at Yad Vashem. My father wrote it a fortnight before his 30th birthday to drum up support for what became the Kindertransport – the operation that brought 669 children, most of them Jewish, to safety in Britain before the war began.

I have been reading it for years. It has never felt more urgent.

He opens by describing the public mood of his time: "Tales of violence and war, treaties made and broken, concentration camps and social ostracism have become so commonplace in the daily papers that the average person has completely lost his normal moral standard... They are content to consider themselves as individuals without responsibility for what is going on in the world today. They hope it will all come right in the end but, in the meantime, they can do nothing."

It feels shocking to read those words 87 years later and to realise the similarities with today.

My father then draws a distinction that has stayed with me ever since. He writes of the difference between passive goodness and active goodness. Passive goodness, resolving to do no wrong, is not enough. Active goodness, he writes, is "the giving of one's time and energy in the alleviation of pain and suffering. It entails going out, finding and helping those in suffering and danger and not merely leading an exemplary life..."

He wrote that passage while organising the rescue of children whose families were being stripped of their livelihoods, their homes, and their futures. He describes them in the letter: "doctors, teachers, journalists, civil servants, whose only crime has been their outspoken defence of democracy."

Read that sentence again. Those words were written in 1939. They could have been written this morning.


spiked: ‘The Palestinians were offered peace – they rejected it’ | Israeli historian Benny Morris
Esteemed Israeli historian Benny Morris joins spiked’s Tom Slater to bust the myths about the Israel-Palestine conflict, from the claims Israel is a ‘settler-colonial’ project to the notion that the Jewish State has perpetrated a genocide in Gaza. They also discuss the role radical Islam plays in the Palestinian cause and why Iran should never get its hands on nuclear weapons.

0:00 – Why Israel is misunderstood as a "vast power"
1:29 – Does Israel have a right to exist?
4:03 – What actually happened in 1948?
6:44 – Israel vs. America/Australia: does the founding compare?
8:56 – Is Israel a "settler colonial" state?
12:51 – Is Israel an apartheid state?
15:47 – The history of two-state solution proposals
15:57 – Why a two-state solution keeps failing
20:01 – Western denial of October 7th atrocities
22:24 – Is Israel's Gaza campaign genocide?
26:20 – Trump's peace plan
27:55 – The role of religion and jihad in the conflict
32:04 – On debating Norman Finkelstein
33:29 – Iran, the ceasefire, and the nuclear threat


Shana Meyerson: Defeating Antizionism ✡️ MELANIE PHILLIPS
🇮🇱 In 2025, Melanie Phillips wrote the eloquent treatise, The Builder’s Stone: How Jews And Christians Built The West--And Why Only They Can Save It. Consider her newest book, Fighting The Hate: A Handbook For Jews Under Siege the “how” to that “why.” In it, Melanie discusses the disturbing rise in antizionism, the many forms that it takes, and strategies to practically defeat it. 🇮🇱

On this episode of the Unapologetically Jewish podcast, Melanie Phillips and Shana Meyerson discuss the mind virus of antizionism and how to fight the hate.

Melanie Phillips (‪@melaniephillips5876‬ ) is a British journalist, broadcaster, and bestselling author. A longtime columnist for The Times of London, she also writes for the Jewish News Syndicate and appears regularly on television, radio, and international speaking platforms. For more than 35 years, she has written on politics, antisemitism, Western civilization, Israel, and the moral challenges facing democratic societies.

Her most recent book, Fighting the Hate: A Handbook for Jews Under Siege (2026), offers practical strategies for confronting the surge of antisemitism in the wake of Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel. Her previous book, The Builder's Stone: How Jews and Christians Built the West—And Why Only They Can Save It (2025), examines the civilizational crisis exposed by October 7 and argues that Judeo-Christian values are essential to preserving the West.


Boundless Insights: The US-Israel Relationship After Trump – with Eli Lake
For decades, the U.S.-Israel relationship has been one of the defining features of American foreign policy. But as both political parties undergo change, many of the assumptions that have sustained the alliance for generations are being tested.

Host Aviva Klompas is joined by journalist and political commentator Eli Lake to examine the future of the U.S.-Israel relationship in an era of political realignment.

They discuss whether support for Israel is undergoing a temporary backlash or a more fundamental transformation, the forces driving changing attitudes toward Israel within the Democratic Party, and whether a return to bipartisan consensus is still possible. They also explore the rise of the America First movement, the implications of a potential J.D. Vance presidency, generational shifts in foreign policy thinking, and what the next decade could mean for one of America's most important alliances.


Jewish leader’s ‘cruel’ grilling sparks fury at antisemitism royal commission
News24 host Sharri Markson highlights criticism after Jewish leader David Ossip was questioned by pro-Palestinian groups over Israel’s actions during the antisemitism royal commission.

“There are calls for Commissioner Virginia Bell to apologise after she allowed pro-Palestinian groups to interrogate a Jewish leader at the antisemitism royal commission,” Ms Markson said.

“Today, she launched an extraordinary defence of her decision to give Palestinian groups leave to cross-examine David Ossip, for an hour, about the actions of Israel.

“These were some of those outrageous questions that Ossip was forced to sit there and field.

“So how could Virginia Bell possibly defend this when the NSW Premier could see it was wrong, when James Paterson could see it was wrong, when anyone with commonsense could see it was cruel to ask Ossip, an Australian, to account for alleged actions of Israel.”


Pro-Palestine extremist group boasts about arson attack after leaving a trail of destruction in Melbourne
A pro-Palestine extremist group is believed to be behind an arson attack on a suburban defence manufacturer.

Lovitt Technologies, a defence manufacturer based in Greensborough, north-east of Melbourne, was targeted shortly before 4am on July 5, 2025.

An unnamed extremist group has allegedly claimed responsibility for the attack, which saw multiple vehicles set alight and the business vandalised, in an online video, the Victorian Joint Counter Terrorism Team alleges.

The unit, which includes Victoria Police, Australian Federal Police and ASIO, is investigating whether the group were 'far-left extremists' motivated by anarchist and revolutionary ideologies.

Investigators have not released the video, but images appear to depict a masked individual setting something alight while standing at a podium.

The offenders appear to be standing before a Palestinian flag and are alleged to have outlined a number of grievances in support of the Middle Eastern country.

Police said they may have been motivated by the belief the business was part of the Australian Defence Force's supply chain.

They allegedly gave advice on how to create incendiary devices similar to one suspected of creating the fire that damaged vehicles at the manufacturing business.

Following the incident, police said the offenders left by a back fence and travelled on e-bikes southwest along Plenty River.

If caught and convicted, they could face life in prison for federal criminal offences related to the commissioning and preparation of a terrorist act.


The Democrats are a menace to America’s Jews
Abdul El-Sayed’s narrow victory in the Michigan Democratic primary sends a powerful message to Jewish America. Your time is up, and you better get used to it.

El-Sayed’s victory stemmed from three factors – decades of mounting Muslim immigration, the ‘progressive’ left’s obsession with Israel and the notable economic struggles of younger Americans. He is no moderate, and sports close ties to hardline Islamic groups affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, a century-old organisation that has been crucial to the growth of Hamas, al-Qaeda and ISIS.

This is a man who expressed concern about offending people who were ‘sad’ about the death of Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, a religious fanatic who, besides hating both America and Israel, recently executed over 30,000 of his own people. El-Sayed also claims the only reason Democrats support Israel is money, but he has his own ties to Qatar, whose influence operations and massive investment in universities in America far exceed those of Israel.

Today, American Jews are experiencing something that has already happened to Jews in Europe, where their population has shrunk by almost two-thirds since the Holocaust. In both the UK and the rest of the continent, being Jewish – particularly Israeli – has become a ticket to marginalisation and exclusion. Even before the war in Gaza, it was reported that barely half of Europeans think Israel has a right to exist.

In America, the once-potent Jewish establishment no longer provides an adequate shield. It was unable to prevent New York, arguably the most Jewish-dominated global city in history, from electing as mayor Zohran Mamdani, an outspoken anti-Zionist with little empathy for Jews, who has surrounded himself with people, including his wife, who traffic in anti-Israel memes.

Remarkably, a defeated far-left candidate in Texas still won 36 per cent of the primary vote with a platform that suggested setting up concentration camps for ‘American Zionists’. In New Jersey, the Democrats have nominated Adam Hamawy, someone with links to an alleged al-Qaeda front, in a safe blue seat. Another New Jersey district followed a similarly anti-Israel course. This is in addition to three more Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) clones elected as congressional candidates for New York.

More worrying still, we are seeing mob violence reminiscent of the Brownshirts in 1920s Germany. DSA-affiliated radicals go to Democratic conventions, like the one in Michigan, heckling those deemed not sufficiently anti-Zionist. The state’s attorney general, who is Jewish, refused to attend, to avoid being ‘chased around’, ‘harassed’, ‘yelled and screamed at’ and ‘booed off stage’. Washington State’s party gathering was little better, where Israel was denounced for its supposed ‘apartheid’ and ‘genocide’, and the rise in anti-Semitism was blamed – you guessed it – on the Jews.

Anti-Semitism is now being normalised. More Americans, notably young Democrats, are more favourable to the Hamas interpretation of the 7 October pogrom than that of Israel. The media, long seen as ‘controlled’ by the Jews, routinely follows Hamas and Iranian talking points.
Jonathan Sacerdoti: The Green party tried to get me arrested
Sitting in the GB News greenroom on Sunday evening, I watched the two guests on air before me – one from Reform, one from the Greens – debate whether Nigel Farage should have reported Zack Polanski to the police for potentially inciting violence against him. Was it a challenge to free speech?

The timing was almost too neat. Only last week, I learned the outcome of the Green Party’s own attempt to silence me, after police were sent to my home and I was threatened with arrest for opposing the party’s antisemitism.

Everything was set for my first interview of the day – lights on, cameras ready, my guest a professor of architecture – when the doorbell rang. A petite blonde woman said, with theatrical concern, that she was a police officer, and perhaps should come inside in case the neighbours saw. She wasn’t in uniform. She had come alone. She wore no body camera. Yet I knew immediately what was happening.

As a writer and broadcaster in 2020s Britain, one almost expects the police eventually to arrive and allege some sort of thought crime, particularly if one writes about anti-Jewish racism and violence, free speech, the Middle East, Islam or trans issues. I write about all of them.

I recognised the moment for what it was. A rite of passage, and an attempt to place a boundary around my speech. Informing her as I did so, I reached for my phone and began recording, as much for posterity as for evidence.

The police rarely visit my house – not when someone smashed my car window (“It’s not life or death,” a bored operator told me), not when shoplifters threatened to strike a local shop worker with a stolen bottle of wine. But one balmy day in June, they found time for me.

The officer said she’d come to ‘invite’ me to the station for a ‘voluntary interview’, so I could give my ‘account’. The allegation: harassment. The complainant, a Green canvasser, had come to my home in April – after I’d already told a previous Green canvasser in no uncertain terms that I didn’t want the party returning.

As the son of a Holocaust survivor, I’d watched the Greens’ trajectory with alarm: a party accommodating a politics around Israel, Zionism and Islamist activism I regard as hostile to Jews. Then, as I was tending to my wisteria, a canvasser arrived with a keffiyeh – inseparable, to me, from arch terrorist Yasser Arafat and the infamous PFLP plane hijacker Leila Khaled who had made the garment internationally famous as a symbol of Palestinian terrorism. If an Englishman’s home is his castle, it felt reasonable for me to defend mine from someone carrying that offensive item. I told her I didn’t want Green canvassers at my house, then told her what I thought of her party’s handling of anti-Jewish racism, and asked whether she, like her leader, thought Jews were worried about the ‘perception’ of danger rather than the real thing – after firebombed ambulances and synagogues, and Jews killed on Yom Kippur in Manchester.
SCOOP: Jewish Federations of North America dismisses comms adviser after JNS reports he said to avoid using term ‘Zionism’
The Jewish Federations of North America ended its relationship on Wednesday with a communications consultant, who told attendees at one of its conferences to avoid using the word “Zionism” to message effectively about Israel.

After JNS reported exclusively on how Matthew Berger, executive director of the Federation’s “Project Halo,” made the recommendation at an invite-only Federation event on Tuesday, the Federation told JNS that it was ending its work with him and his communications company.

“The presentation at our National Young Leadership Cabinet Retreat was not prepared by Jewish Federations of North America, but by a Project Halo consultant, and does not represent our approach to Zionism,” Niv Elis, the Federation’s associate vice president for external communications, told JNS.

“Project Halo was created to equip the Jewish community with research-based messaging and communications tools to combat antisemitism and strengthen support for Israel,” Elis said.

“At this time, we will be ending our engagement with that consultant and thank them for their work helping launch Project Halo,” the group said. “Jewish Federations of North America remain fully committed to Project Halo and to providing our communities with the strongest possible resources to advocate proudly and effectively for Israel and the Jewish people.”

Berger was executive director of the project and is also the president and CEO of Mashber Strategies, a communications firm that counts some of the largest American Jewish groups as current and former clients.

An attendee at the conference told JNS that “my jaw kind of hit the floor for a second” when Berger told the audience at the Federation’s youth retreat that it should “avoid ‘Zionism’” in a slide presentation about how to communicate about Israel.
Jewish Colorado AG targeted with campaign poster depicting him with devil horns
A campaign poster circulating among Colorado Republicans depicts Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, who is Jewish and whose family members are Holocaust survivors, with devil horns, which critics say invokes a classic antisemitic trope.

Weiser is the Democratic nominee for governor of Colorado.

The poster promotes, but was not created by, Victor Marx, the GOP gubernatorial nominee, who has a bizarre and extremist history, including claiming to have killed and exorcised several people. It describes Weiser, depicted in front of a menacing background, as “the next threat to Colorado” and “radical,” “extreme” and “dangerous.”

Montrose County Commissioner Sean Pond, who created the image, told KUSA-TV’s Kyle Clark, who first reported on it, that he did not know Weiser is Jewish, that the poster did not have any religious message and “Weiser does not receive immunity from political satire because of a personal fact I did not even know.”

In promoting Marx, one version of the poster makes multiple references to Marx’s “faith,” including depicting him alongside an icon of a cross. Marx is the founder of a Christian humanitarian organization.

Marx responded supportively to an X post by Pond calling for unity among Colorado Republicans, which included a version of the devil horns image.

“We get one shot[,] one. If Republicans spend the next few months attacking each other instead of presenting a united front against Phil Weiser, we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves if we lose,” Marx said in his comment. “We don’t have to agree on every issue or every decision, but we do have to remember what’s at stake. Colorado can’t afford more division. It’s time to unite, stay focused, and win.”

Many Republicans in the state have kept Marx at arm’s length since his primary win, owing to his strange and controversial history, declining to endorse his campaign. During the GOP primary, his Republican rivals said they would not support him if he became the nominee.

“Depicting Jews with horns is a centuries-old antisemitic trope. Victor Marx and Colorado Republicans should reject and condemn this graphic and call it what it is — antisemitism,” Weiser said in a statement to Jewish Insider. “These images have no place in our state. Hate against any group must be treated as hate against all of us. Coloradans deserve a governor who will always fight back against bigotry and for the rights and freedoms of all.”

Marx’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.


Rights group rep resigns after Hezbollah-symbol controversy
Anti-Israel activist Aziz Ghali resigned in July from the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), which was founded in Paris in 1922, in protest of his removal as its spokesperson following a speech he allegedly delivered while wearing Hezbollah symbols.

“I announce my resignation from this institution, not as an escape or a withdrawal, but as a moral and political stance against turning solidarity into a crime, against double standards, and against reducing human rights to a neutral language sometimes used to justify silence in the face of injustice,” Ghali, who is a citizen of Morocco, wrote in his resignation letter, which he published on the Al-Binaa website.

FIDH in June announced that it would probe Ghali for “failure to adhere to the established code of conduct,” the Moroccan television channel Express TV reported. The announcement followed the surfacing of images of him circulated online while speaking, apparently at a panel, against the background of Hezbollah’s flag and while wearing an armband emblazoned with the terrorist group’s symbol.

Ghali, who took part in the Sumud flotilla to the Gaza Strip in 2025, was detained in Israel for several days and later released.

Olga Deutsch, the vice president of the NGO Monitor group, which monitors the work of anti-Israel organizations and their ties to foreign governments, called Ghali’s resignation “a welcome step for accountability.”

Ghali’s “statements and publications include calling Hezbollah terrorist and convicted murderer Samir Kuntar his ‘comrade and friend’,” Deutsch said on Monday.

According to NGO Monitor, on Aug. 14, 2020, Ghali posted on Facebook an image with the text, “Death to the Jews who killed the kids.”


Virginia Foxx takes on Stony Brook University over anti-Israel professor
Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) blasted Stony Brook University over its failure to take action against a professor who has been involved in anti-Israel activism, including reportedly harassing and accosting patrons at a Long Island restaurant.

“University administrators who turn a blind eye to caustic antisemitism and harassment within the ranks of their institutions have spines made of gelatin. They cave to the political mob at every turn and tacitly endorse those who carry the water for this abhorrent ideology,” Foxx said in a statement to Jewish Insider. “It’s disgusting, shameful behavior. Our Republican majorities and this administration remain resolute in our mandate to snuff out antisemitism no matter where it may rear its ugly head.”

The statement from Foxx, who previously chaired the House Education & Workforce Committee and now leads the Rules Committee, came in response to a recent incident in which Stony Brook professor Joshua Dubnau allegedly engaged in a demonstration inside a restaurant In Sag Harbor, N.Y., accusing patrons and the owner of profiting from genocide in Gaza.

Dubnau was previously arrested, but not charged, for involvement in an anti-Israel encampment at Stony Brook.
SCOOP: Ethnic studies workshop at UC Berkeley to feature teacher, who said ‘ethnic studies means free Palestine’
The University of California, Berkeley’s history-social science project, a regional site of the public school system’s California Subject Matter Project, said that it is partnering with Joemy Ito-Gates, an ethnic studies teacher who has said that “ethnic studies means free Palestine,” in an Aug. 22 workshop.

The public school’s project said that the event will be a “professional development session” for Bay Area elementary educators.

“You’ll explore practical ways to weave an ethnic studies lens into your existing curriculum through ready-to-use lessons, sample units and classroom strategies you can implement right away,” it stated.

In May, Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa, a nonprofit, and the consultancy Education Policy Project called on the House Education and Workforce Committee and the U.S. Departments of Education, Labor and Justice to investigate and suspend federal funding to the California Subject Matter Project over alleged bias against Israel.

The two groups called on California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, in June to veto a provision in the Budget Act of 2026 that included a $3.41 million appropriation to the project from a federal grant. They also asked him to suspend funding. (Newsom signed the bill into law).

The California Subject Matter Project operates at more than 90 regional sites and provides instructional materials and training to some 40,000 K-12 teachers in 1,000 school districts, according to the two groups.


Former neo-Nazi quit as Tory candidate after JN raised concerns over Home Office police training claim
Joshua Bonehill-Paine quit as a Tory council candidate hours after Jewish News pressed the Conservative Party over Kemi Badenoch’s claim he had been Home Office accredited to train police officers on antisemitism.

Amid mounting anger over the convicted neo-Nazi’s selection, the Tory leader had attempted to defend the decision, telling reporters: “Josh has actually been certified by the Home Office to train police officers on antisemitism and countering extremism.”

She added that he had shown remorse and was now working to address the harm he once caused: “He’s travelling around the country training people, and the Conservative Party believes in second chances.”

But multiple sources told Jewish News that no such certification was ever granted.

Jewish News had approached the Tory Party and the Home Office for comment on their claims early on Wednesday.
Israeli envoy slams German ruling on Nazism comparison
Israel’s Ambassador to Germany, Ron Prosor, on Tuesday condemned a local court’s ruling last week that said that displaying a swastika to equate Israel with Nazis did not violate German laws against glorifying the ideology.

“Another German court ruling that allows antisemitic incitement to go unchecked under the guise of freedom of speech,” Prosor wrote on X. “Unbelievable and shameful: The equation of the Star of David with the swastika has been declared permissible.”

Prosor was referencing a ruling by the Higher Regional Court of Zweibrücken in southwestern Germany, which on July 31 overturned a woman’s conviction for displaying Nazi symbols. She had posted online a distortion of the Israeli flag in which the Star of David was replaced by a swastika.

“In a time when antisemitic crimes are reaching record highs, this is a chink in the armor. Germany must not get used to the fact that antisemitism is repeatedly downplayed in court. The IHRA working definition must also serve as a standard for the German judiciary in assessing antisemitic crimes,” Prosor said.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) is an intergovernmental commemoration committee with 35 member states, including 25 E.U. member states, among them Germany, and the United Kingdom. IHRA adopted the definition in 2016.

Among the examples of demonization of Israel and singling it out for criticism as potentially antisemitic is “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”
Neo-Nazis surround Bulgarian hotel, threaten Jewish teens with salutes and 'Sieg Heil' chants
A neo-Nazi group surrounded a hotel in Bulgaria’s resort town of Bansko where dozens of Jewish teenagers were staying, shouting Nazi slogans, giving Nazi salutes and threatening participants in an international youth training program.

The group, dressed in black shirts featuring skull symbols, gathered outside the hotel on Sunday while members of Jewish youth delegations from Italy and Israel were staying there as part of an international program for youth movement instructors.

The demonstrators blocked the hotel entrances, hurled insults at the teenagers, raised their arms in Nazi salutes and shouted the Nazi slogan “Sieg Heil.”

Police were called to the scene and removed the group from the area. However, according to reports, the neo-Nazis returned shortly afterward once officers left and continued threatening and verbally harassing the participants.

Victor Fadlon, president of Rome’s Jewish community, condemned the incident and called on Bulgarian authorities to investigate and prosecute those responsible.

“Our children are not free to travel across Europe without being exposed to violence and verbal harassment from antisemites,” Fadlon said.

He described a tense situation in which the group returned after police intervention, again blocking entrances and threatening the teenagers.


Herzl grandparents' return to Mount Herzl reveals Zionism's roots through generations
As one walks among the burial plots of Zionist leaders on Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl, one finds remarkably few rabbis. The mountain is populated instead by presidents, prime ministers, military commanders and political leaders whose decisions transformed the Zionist movement from aspiration into reality.

Wednesday’s reburial of Theodor Herzl’s grandparents, Shimon Leib and Rivka Herzl, beside their grandson enriches that history.

Their arrival in Jerusalem reminds us that while the institutions of the Jewish state were largely built by secular political leadership, many of the ideas that sustained Zionism were cultivated much earlier, within Jewish homes, communities and places of worship.

History often remembers the individual who stands at the center of great events, but is less generous to those who shaped the environment in which those individuals were formed.

Shimon Leib Herzl occupied no prominent political office nor addressed the First Zionist Congress. He did not negotiate with emperors or draft political programs. He was the gabbai of the synagogue in Zemun (then part of the Habsburg Empire, now in Serbia) where Rabbi Yehuda Alkalai, one of the earliest advocates of Jewish national restoration, served as rabbi.

The roots of political Zionism
Decades before political Zionism emerged as an organized movement, Alkalai was arguing that the Jewish return to the Land of Israel should become an active national endeavor rather than remain solely the subject of prayer and messianic hope.

No historian can state with certainty how much influence those ideas exerted on the young Theodor Herzl. Intellectual history is rarely so straightforward. Yet it is equally difficult to dismiss the importance of family and upbringing, along with the transmission of values across generations.

Ideas seldom appear fully formed. They are discussed at home, reinforced by example and passed, often almost imperceptibly, from grandparents to parents and from parents to children.

President Isaac Herzog captured that thought with particular eloquence during yesterday’s ceremony. “Dreams are not passed down through written inheritance,” he observed. “They are passed around the Shabbat table... in the stories a grandfather tells his grandson.”





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)

    

 

 

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