Friday, August 21, 2026

08/20 Links Pt2: VDH: Hating Israel Fatigue; They Survived the Holocaust. 25 Years Later, They Were Burned to Death in Germany; 10 Quotes That Prove Palestinians Never Believed in Palestinians

From Ian:

Victor Davis Hanson: Hating Israel Fatigue
Three recent chapters in the long history of antisemitism remain inexplicable.

First, hatred of Jews and Israel peaked immediately after the greatest single-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust—weeks before Israel entered Gaza, and only after Hamas refused to surrender the masterminds of the slaughter or the 251 hostages. The Jewish crime, apparently, was being so easily murdered by Hamas.

The clearest sign of that Pavlovian hatred was the jubilation on the far Left and among Islamists—and the strange new alliance these seemingly disparate groups were already forming—over the ease with which so many mostly unarmed Jewish civilians had been butchered and the prospect of even more killing to follow.

The ghoulish celebrants were not concerned about mass murder, torture, or mutilation of the women, children, and elderly. Instead, they grew ecstatic at the prospect of still more medievalism and blood to come.

Hamas, the darling of American campuses and Muslim communities, issued Arabic-to-Hebrew phrase books to the invaders with instructions for the rapist-killers on how to say in Hebrew, “Take off your pants,” “Take off your clothes,” “Raise your hands and spread your legs.”

Second, none of the Israel-haters ever offers any alternative course that the Israelis should have taken to retrieve the hostages and punish the murderers.

Much less do they imagine what other nations might have done—the United States, France, or the United Kingdom—had terrorists conducted such a mass slaughter at numbers proportional to their far larger populations.

I doubt any other nation would have petitioned the beloved International Criminal Court to bring the Hamas killers to justice.

Its chief prosecutor, the Israel-hating Karim Khan, refused even to examine Israeli evidence and instead rushed to condemn Prime Minister Netanyahu as an international war criminal.

Perhaps Khan’s hatred of Israel was aimed at hiding the fact that the now-fired Khan was being accused by his own legal team of sexual harassment and sexual misconduct. Who will police the police? Will Mayor Mamdani arrest the ICC predator if he lands at JFK Airport in New York City?

Third, when 6,000 Hamas terrorists and Gazan “civilians” invaded Israel, it was during an agreed-on peace. Indeed, take away October 7, and Israel would never have entered Gaza; indeed, even after the slaughter that took place on that day, Israeli officers dreaded walking into such a subterranean ambush. And prior to the mass murder, it was Israel, not the Muslim nation and adjacent Arab neighbor Egypt, that had supplied almost all of Gaza’s water, electricity, fuels, and telecommunications.

For years Israel had invited 20,000 Gazans to work inside Israel at two to three times the wages available in Gaza. Gaza itself had been “ethnically cleansed” of all Jews in 2005 by the Israeli government under then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who was generally considered a “hawk.” Any valuable infrastructure they left behind was immediately looted and destroyed. After the departure of all the Jews from Gaza, the grifting Hamas government shook down roughly $20 billion of the more than $40 billion in international aid given to the Palestinians in general.

Had Hamas simply sought to create a multiparty democracy, held regular elections, created a bill of rights, and adopted a Western economy, it would have garnered hundreds of billions of dollars more in foreign investment. And its privileged seaside location could have made it the next tourist hub like the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, or Oman.

Instead, the nihilist Hamas preferred to make Gaza an impoverished, violent, and pariah terrorist enclave, to rip off its own people, and to expose Gazan civilians to death on a regular basis to save its fighters’ skins and further its fanatical cause.

Hamas was never dedicated to bettering the daily lives of its own population, developing Gaza’s Mediterranean coastline or putting its enormous foreign aid to productive use. Instead, it had only a single homicidal agenda: to kill as many Jews as possible and to destroy the state of Israel.

Hating Israel while championing Hamas and its thousands of terrorist killers is a referendum not on Israel and its supporters, but a window into the mind of a sick, sick West—and an even sicker Middle East.
Simon Sebag Montefiore’s history of the Middle East is a masterpiece
In the Middle East, history fuses with theology into “an unbreakable rampart of absolutist faith”, and, as Sebag Montefiore puts it, “it is hard to negotiate maps and timetables with people who await the Mahdi or Messiah”.

Sebag Montefiore stresses the strange bedfellows in the region: the Syrian civil war’s tangle of enemies, the Abraham Accords, and Israeli soldiers manning Iron Dome to defend the Emirates against Iranian missiles in 2026. On the other hand, the Middle East is the only region on Earth becoming ever less diverse – Christians down from 20 per cent of the population in 1900 to 4 per cent today, and in Iraq from 14 per cent to 0.4.

The nation-state, Sebag Montefiore asserts, is an imported European idea badly matched to a multi-sectarian patchwork; he notes the irony that Western media, law and academia still promote nationalism for the region having rejected it at home, and calls the pretence that some failed states function “international cosplay”.

But the idea that the region is uniquely ungovernably violent is “a historical illusion”. Its history is filled with dramatic reversals that mock every preconception: “Kingdoms, empires and cities, heroes, monsters and fools fight and reconcile, gamble and deal, rise and fall. The prizes are power, salvation and safety. Survival is everything; no one wins for long; the caravan moves on; the spark wheel spins and spins.”

The book proper begins with what Sebag Montefiore identifies as one of the two key pivots of the past (loosely defined) century – the story of how in 1902 25-year-old Abdulaziz bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud, sometimes referred to as Ibn Saud, restored his fallen family to power in Riyadh. Having taken power, “Abdulaziz moved into the palace of his grandfather – and the modern history of the Middle East began.”

Sebag Montefiore writes that “even Abdulaziz would have been amazed at the success of his dynasty and his realm. He would reign during the fall and rise and fall of empires – Ottoman, French, British – that dominated his region, and through two world wars, into the nuclear-powered years of US-Soviet rivalry, through holy wars, civil wars and the creation and disintegration of new states, secular and Islamist, royal and nationalist, Muslim and Jewish. And as late as 2025, a son of his would still be ruling the Kingdom in the age of the iPhone, drones and X, when a US president, Donald Trump, would fly into this same Riyadh, now a gleaming towered modern metropolis, and call Saudi Arabia ‘the centre of the world’.” As he then writes: “This book is the story of how that happened.”

It’s fitting that The Cauldron ends in 2026 with the death of Ayatollah Khamenei in an air strike, because the other pivot on which The Cauldron hangs is the 1979 Iranian revolution. Sebag Montefiore argues that this was a moment on the scale of 1789 and 1917. Khomeini was a “murderous modern revolutionary and political strategist of the rank of Lenin, Stalin or Mao”. Grasp that and the next 50 years fall into place.

The Cauldron would have been a valuable work had it stopped in 1979 – because there has long been a need for a readable, serious, ambitious history of the past century or so in the Middle East. By taking it to 2026, however – a bold step for a book whose entire point is that it is a work of history – Sebag Montefiore has written something far more important, both invaluable and necessary. Lies started to be spread about October 7, 2023 from October 8, and those lies have taken hold across the world. There are few other historians of Sebag Montefiore’s stature who could have challenged the lies and the myths simply by doing their job and writing calmly and – patently – objectively. It is to Sebag Montefiore’s huge credit that he has stepped up to do this, mainly by allowing the facts to speak for themselves – especially the words of the perpetrators. Hamas’ Ghazi Hamad promises “a second, a third, a fourth” October 7. Its second chairman Khaled Mashal shrugs: “Thirty million Russians died to defeat Germany. In all wars there are civilian casualties. We are not responsible.” Sinwar, warned that 10,000 Gazans might die, retorts: “Let it be 20,000.”

But as Sebag Montefiore argues, Israel may be able to win on the battlefields but it has “totally lost” the narrative war. Hamas controlled the casualty figures, presenting every death as civilian and claiming there was no war with its fighters at all, only massacre.

The Cauldron’s conclusion is salutary and needs to be absorbed: add up every death in every Middle Eastern war from 1900 to today and the total roughly equals a single front of the First World War, or the Congo war of 1996 to 2003. It comes nowhere near the Second World War’s Asian theatre (20 million dead) or its Eastern Front (30 million). Eighty years of Arab-Israeli conflict, the Gaza war included, have killed around 150,000 people. The Partition of India killed a million in a few months. Algeria’s civil war in the 1990s killed 200,000, Iraq half a million, Syria 600,000, and Sudan, “in a tragic class of its own”, two million in its first civil wars, 300,000 in Darfur and more than 150,000 since 2023. The world’s fixation on the Jewish state’s wars is grotesquely out of proportion to their scale.

That notion is nothing new: but Sebag Montefiore’s magnificent work is not merely new. It is a masterpiece that demands to be read.

The Cauldron: The Making of the Modern Middle East 1900–2026, by Simon Sebag Montefiore, is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Uri Kurlianchik: 10 Quotes That Prove Palestinians Never Believed in Palestinians
Until recently, if you called an Arab living in Palestine, “Palestinian,” he’d be confused or offended.

Palestine wasn’t even an administrative unit before the British mandate. “Palestinian” is what you called these pesky Jewish upstarts who had dreams of freedom of statehood on Arab land. The Arabs of Palestine had no more separate national identity than the people of East Texas.

Here are 10 historic quotes that prove it:

“We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic and geographical bonds.”

— First Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations, Jerusalem, 1919
“Palestine is an Arab country and natural part of Syria.”
— Istiqlal Party manifesto, 1931

“There is no such country! ‘Palestine’ is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria.”
— Arab leader Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, to the Peel Commission, 1937

“Palestine is part of the Province of Syria… the Arabs of Palestine were not independent in the sense of forming a separate political entity.”
— Representative of the Arab Higher Committee to the United Nations, 1947

“The union of Arab Palestine and Jordan had been brought about as a result of the will of the people.”
— American diplomat Stuart W. Rockwell, 1950

“It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria.”
— Ahmad Shukeiri, first chairman of the PLO, to the Security Council, 1956

“Between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese there are no differences. We are all part of one people, the Arab nation.”
— Zuheir Mohsen, PLO Executive Committee, 1977

“I don’t think there is such a thing as a “Palestinian nation”, I think it’s a colonial invention, when were there Palestinians? Where is it? I think there is an Arab nation.”
— Arab anti-Zionist activist and politician Azmi Bishra, 1995

"We don’t differentiate between Palestinian, Egyptian and Arab blood.”
— Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, 2010

“Who are the Palestinians? We have many families called Al-Masri, whose roots are Egyptian. Egyptian! They may be from Alexandria, from Cairo, from Dumietta, from the North, from Aswan, from Upper Egypt. We are Egyptians. We are Arabs. We are Muslims. We are a part of you.”
— Hamas Minister of the Interior and National Security, Fathi Hammad, 2012


How the Gaza genocide lie became a license to harass and kill Jews
This is not a misreading of war but a Hamas-generated, globally amplified hate campaign.

America's radicals adopted it from day one. On October 8, 2023, a rally celebrating the "right to resist" filled Times Square, promoted by the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, the Trojan horse in the Democratic Party which I discussed in my previous article.

Demonstrators chanted "700," the number of Israelis then known dead, while making throat-slitting gestures. The DSA's national organization declared the massacre "not unprovoked." Its national co-chair calls the "Gazan genocide" the worst thing she has seen in her adult life, and it is now an expellable offense for DSA-endorsed politicians to say Israel has a right to defend itself.

And this ideology is winning elections. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, a DSA member, was censured by the House after accusing the president of supporting "the genocide of the Palestinian people." Darializa Avila Chevalier, a DSA congressional candidate endorsed by Mamdani, attended the October 8 rally and still defends her attendance. She toppled a veteran congressman in a New York primary, declaring: "We can say what is happening in Gaza is a genocide, and win."

I have argued for a long time that antisemitism is not merely a Jewish problem; it is an American one, and the DSA proves it. The DSA is a domestic outpost of what I call the Red-Green Axis: the marriage of convenience between the radical left and Islamist movements. The "red" brings a decades-old project to dismantle American institutions-capitalism, the family, law enforcement, and the two-party system, using campus and union infrastructure built for this purpose. The "green" brings religious fervor, money, and human resources.

Israel is only their current target; the underlying agenda is American, aimed at hollowing out the country's institutions and civic fabric from within.

This is not a marginal annoyance. The Islamo-Left Alliance is the United States’ number one enemy. Its goal isn't foreign policy; it's domestic transformation: delegitimizing American power, normalizing political violence, and radicalizing a generation against the country's founding principles. The genocide narrative is simply the current vehicle. Whatever the pretext, the target remains the same: the American way of life, American patriotism, and the next generation's loyalty to the country itself.

Jews are the canary in the coal mine. A society that lets a blood libel justify murder will not stop with the Jews. The same Red-Green coalition that cheers "genocide" chants today will find new targets tomorrow, because its real quarrel is with America itself: its alliances, its constitutional order, and its support for democracies under siege.

What must we do? First, arm yourself with the facts at GazaGenoLIE.com and share them, especially with young people drowning in disinformation. Second, demand that leaders of both parties call the genocide charge what it is: a 21st-century blood libel, and name the Islamo-Leftist Alliance behind it for what it is: a threat to America, not just to Israel. Third, move from defense to offense in the media, on campus, and at the ballot box. Make the GenoLIE, and the alliance that spreads it, politically toxic.

For nearly nine centuries, the blood libel has followed the same arc: the lie, the license, the blood. This time, we will not wait for the ending. Fighting the GenoLIE and confronting the Red-Green Axis that fuels it is not only a Jewish fight. Nothing less than the future of America is at stake.


Far-right suspect identified in 1970 Munich arson that killed 7 Holocaust survivors
German investigators said Thursday they had identified a far-right suspect who allegedly carried out a notorious 1970 arson attack on a Jewish center in Munich that killed seven Holocaust survivors.

The suspect — a German national who was 25 at the time of the attack, and died in 2020 — was identified after officials reopened the case last year when a witness came forward with new evidence, police and prosecutors in Munich said.

“The new investigations conducted after the reopening of the case strongly indicate that the suspect was the perpetrator,” they said in a joint statement.

But they added that a conclusive “legal clarification” was not possible as charges cannot be brought against a deceased person under German law.

The suspect belonged to the “right-wing milieu,” and witnesses described him as an antisemite with a “Hitler fixation,” police and prosecutors said.

While they did not name him, Der Spiegel magazine partially identified him as “Bernd V.”

The attack on February 13, 1970, was one of the worst attacks targeting the Jewish community in postwar Germany.

A fire was started using gasoline on the wooden stairwell of the center, which served as a retirement home and guesthouse for the community, and it quickly spread, cutting off the only access to the premises.

Seven Jewish residents died, and 15 people were wounded, four of them seriously.
Yehuda Teitelbaum: They Survived the Holocaust. 25 Years Later, They Were Burned to Death in Germany.
They survived the Holocaust.

25 years later, they were burned to death in Germany.

After 56 years, German investigators say they’ve finally identified the man behind the 1970 arson attack on a Jewish retirement home in Munich that killed 7 Holocaust survivors and injured 15 others.

It was Friday night, February 13, 1970. Shabbat had already begun, and around 50 people were inside the Jewish community building at 27 Reichenbachstrasse, a building that contained community offices, apartments for elderly Jews and, behind it, what was then Bavaria’s largest synagogue.

At around 8:45 p.m., a man entered carrying a container filled with roughly 20 liters of gasoline. He took the elevator to the 4th floor and disabled it, then made his way down through the building pouring the gasoline mixture over the wooden staircase. He ignited it near the bottom.

The design of the building did the rest. The wooden stairwell acted like a chimney, carrying the flames upward within seconds while the fire itself cut off the main escape route. The elevator could no longer be used. Elderly residents on the upper floors were trapped above an inferno.

One survivor, Hermann Weitz, had already spent 8 years in Nazi concentration camps. As he watched another attempt to kill Jews in Germany, he reportedly said, “It’s like it was then. Why do we have to be subjected to this again?”

Seven people didn’t make it out. One of them was David Jakubowicz.

Jakubowicz was born in Częstochowa, Poland, in 1910. Under the German occupation he was subjected to forced labor and later imprisoned at a HASAG armaments camp. His wife Hena and his parents were forced into the Częstochowa ghetto. During its liquidation, around 40,000 Jews were deported to Treblinka and murdered. Jakubowicz’s family is believed to have been among them.

He survived.

Near the end of the war he was deported to Buchenwald, then sent to the Laura subcamp, where prisoners were forced to work in an underground weapons factory known as the “Hell in the Slate Mountain.” When the camp was evacuated in April 1945, Jakubowicz was forced onto a death march. He eventually reached Allach, a subcamp of Dachau outside Munich, where American troops liberated the prisoners 10 days later.

After everything Germany had done to him, Jakubowicz remained there for years, eventually moving into the Jewish community building in Munich and working as a cook for the community.

By February 1970, he had decided to leave.

His sister was living in Israel, and Jakubowicz had packed his belongings to join her. He had originally planned to travel around the time of the attack, but he was observant and did not want to fly on Shabbat. He was also preparing food for a Bar Mitzvah being held by the community.

So he stayed.

When the stairwell erupted in flames that Friday night, Jakubowicz tried to escape but could not get through. His watch was later found stopped at 8:57 p.m.

He was 59 years old.
Jonathan Tobin: Primary lessons: GOP Groypers flop while Dem extremists flourish
As the summer comes to a close, the last primaries have provided observers with some clear conclusions about the current state of America’s two major parties. Polls still show that the Democrats are the favorites to win control of at least one of the two houses of Congress in November. That’s only to be expected since historical trends generally show that the party out of power always gains ground after being routed in the previous presidential election year. And that goes double when the incumbent is as deep underwater as President Donald Trump is in his job approval ratings.

There may be too many variables in play in too many different races to know for sure who will run the House and the Senate in January. Yet regardless of the ultimate outcome of the midterms, we already know something important about both the Republicans and the Democrats that ought to inform both policy decisions next year, as well as the 2028 presidential race that will already be ongoing a year from now. And that is the plain fact that the Democrats are in thrall to their antisemitic and anti-Israel extremists while the Republicans—for all of their problems and shortcomings—have marginalized theirs.

The rise of the DSA
For the past few months, we’ve seen in race after race how far-left candidates, whether they call themselves members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) or not, have triumphed over those who can be labeled mainstream liberal Democrats. In most of these races, Israel is the issue that has been the difference-maker. There are exceptions to this trend; specific circumstances have led to incumbent supporters of the Jewish state surviving primary challenges. But there is no question that anti-Zionists who routinely spout blood libels about Israel committing “genocide” and seek to demonize American Jews for organizing to support the tiny nation’s efforts to defend itself against actual genocidal terrorist foes appear to speak for the bulk of those who identify as Democrats.

The same trend has not applied to what is happening on the other side of the aisle. That was made abundantly clear in Florida, where Republican voters were given a chance to embrace candidates who mimic the antisemitic left while still posing as conservatives. They were routed by unabashed pro-Israel opponents.

In the gubernatorial primary there, only one candidate—investor James Fishback—was clearly identified as anti-Israel. Were Republicans as influenced by the anti-Israel bias that pervades mainstream corporate media as Democrats have shown themselves to be, that might have been smart politics. And if you watch or listen to a number of popular podcasts that are said to appeal to conservatives, such as those hosted by former Fox News personalities Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly—or those who appeal to an even more extreme audience, such as conspiracy theorist Candace Owens or neo-Nazi groyper Nick Fuentes—you might be under the impression that someone like Fishback would have at least a fighting chance to prevail.

Israel-bashing and antisemitism, which increasingly resembles the same sentiments that now prevail on the left, are a predominant theme on these shows, which are often represented as providing platforms for views that are widespread on the right.

Still, while Jew-hatred was no bar to victory in Democratic primaries across the country, it turns out that the same sort of thing isn’t appealing to Republican voters.

In the Florida governor’s race, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) won easily in a multi-candidate contest where he wound up with 47.8% of the vote. Fishback, who mocked the pro-Israel stands of the GOP establishment, flopped badly, getting only 10.5% of ballots cast. The same thing happened in the state’s 6th Congressional District, where incumbent Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.), an outspoken supporter of Israel who has taken to wearing a kippah on the floor of the House of Representatives, defeated antisemitic challenger Dan Bilzerian 56.9% to 18.7%.
Bros Over Foes
At the time of my admission to The New School, the Gaza war had been raging for a year. When I first arrived on campus, I was largely sympathetic to the student movement that had rippled across campus. Critics in op-ed columns had already accused protesters of antisemitism, and Ivy League students had publicly complained of intimidation by activists. Yet I ignored these objections and assumed they were made in bad faith. Before entering The New School, I had witnessed only mild forms of activism at my undergraduate campus, including fundraisers for displaced Gazans, and demonstrators chanting, “Cease-fire now.” My passive observations led me to believe that the student movement mostly consisted of humanitarians and pacifists outraged by the civilian death toll in Gaza and the moral crimes of Israeli occupation. My sympathies for student protesters led me to a secondary conclusion: that allegations of the protesters’ antisemitism were unfounded.

While I was vocally supportive of the student movement, my involvement with activists did not begin out of any particular desire to become an activist. I was dragged into the student movement from an unlikely source: an academic club. Days after the start of classes, an older graduate student named Brant* quickly invited us newcomers to a new club for graduate students in the history program. Like most student clubs, the first meeting began with the standard get-to-know-you pleasantries, conversations about our professional dreams, and smiles at the thought of finding friends among like-minded peers. Surprisingly, the subculture I encountered among student activists at The New School, a small liberal arts school, greatly reminded me of my experiences with Greek life at large state schools. In both spheres, social bonding occurs by embracing shared pride in provocative behavior.

This club, which advertised the apolitical purpose of socializing with fellow historians, quickly devolved into political controversy. I quietly discovered that most club members were card-carrying activists in various leftist organizations, which inspired these activist members to turn the meeting into a forum exclusively for talking politics. Immediately after introductions, students began sharing their hatred of Zionists and their desire to aid the student movement. The conversation then began shifting from one topic to another, each based in an exuberance for radical politics. Some members offered moral defenses of Fidel Castro, Mao Zedong, and Josef Stalin. Other members shared boastful tales of burning U.S. flags at protests and bragged about being harassed by police officers.

Two graduate students, Von* and Bree*, openly derided our progressive professors for not being “revolutionary” enough, because academic expertise on a single topic allegedly prevented them from making sufficiently radical declarations on various topics. Later in the evening, Von confided in the group that he enrolled in graduate school only after the YPG militia in Syria refused to enlist him as a foreign combatant, convincing him that academic work should be his contribution “to the revolution.” At the end of our gathering, Von declared, “We should kill all landlords,” as an end-of-evening toast, then walked off to catch his train home.
Keeping Israelis out: The new antisemitic boycott reaches Italy’s airports
There is a pack of fanatics in Italy that wants to take control of airports for the purpose of excluding Israel from international air routes.

They organize protests so that Israeli men, women and children arriving for an innocent vacation encounter a hostile and aggressive presence designed to frighten them and, ultimately, discourage Israelis from coming to Italy at all.

Israelis? Well, of course, the message goes further. It is meant to discourage Jews in general from traveling—those hated Zionists. Let them stay home. Better yet, let them remain shut inside their homes.

According to the familiar antisemitic narrative that now pursues Jews at school, at university, on vacation and at work, they are all part of a clique of genocidal murderers who carry out ethnic cleansing and shoot children for fun.

One can imagine where the activists get their information: antisemitic social media and television panels that take their news from the Qatar-based television network, Al Jazeera.

A group called Giovedì Bianco (“White Thursday”) has for some time been active at Cagliari Airport, where tourists arriving from Tel Aviv are greeted with shouts of “Free Palestine” and followed by hateful chants as they collect their luggage and make their way through the terminal, while children tremble.

Israelis adore Italy. Yet today, Thursday, Giovedì Bianco is calling for protests at the airports of Verona, Cagliari, Milan Linate, Rome Fiumicino and Venice, targeting Israeli travelers and denouncing the government for insisting on the “maintenance of air routes with Israel.”

The times and descriptions of the planned actions are public. But the objective goes well beyond airports. It is part of the effort to erase Israel from the international arena—from sports, culture, music, medicine and now travel—and, ultimately, to make Israel and Jews disappear from public life.

They are not the first to try.
Shai Davidai: You’re Fighting the Wrong Fight
The real fight is not over the extremists we have already lost, but the people we can still reach. Whether by inoculating them against misinformation, giving them a more truthful frame of reference before hostile labels become their default vocabulary, or helping them understand what is at stake before indifference hardens into complacency, fighting for the middle means reaching contested minds before the opposing ideology does. With the much larger population that has yet to be absorbed into either camp still up for grabs, every person moved toward one side is also one fewer person available for recruitment by the other.

Sometimes the best way to reach those people is to do something deeply uncomfortable: give extremists enough rope to hang themselves with. Ask them questions that allow them to reveal their bigotry. Let them explain what they mean when they call the October 7 Massacre “resistance.” Let them tie themselves into knots when pushed on what should happen to millions of Israeli Jews after the Jewish state is dismantled. Let them explain why dialogue with Israelis is supposedly immoral, or why Jewish self-determination alone among national movements must disappear. Sometimes the most persuasive argument against extremism is simply letting extremists expose the moral and logical bankruptcy of their own beliefs. Sometimes wrestling an extremist to the ground is far less useful than letting the middle watch them fall on their own.

Used strategically, extremists can become evidence. Give them enough room and they may show the people watching exactly where the aggression, intolerance, and hatred are coming from. That does not mean refusing to defend yourself when attacked or allowing hatred to go unanswered. It means remembering why you are engaging in the first place. Because what an extremist deserves and what helps us win are not always the same thing, the fights worth having are those that leave the middle seeing the extremist more clearly—not those that leave them struggling to tell the two sides apart.

Back in that Los Angeles parking lot, the Israeli advocate had every right to defend himself. When faced with imminent danger, we have every right to protect ourselves. Yet winning the brawl and winning minds are two very different things. The moment your punches start landing, your arguments may stop doing so.

The same is true in an ideological war. Confront lies when they must be confronted. Challenge extremists when doing so exposes what they believe. Defend yourself when defense is required. But remember whom the confrontation is for.

Never confuse the person you are fighting with the person you are trying to persuade.

Extremists are the people we fight. The middle is the people we fight for.
‘Deliberately reckless’: Sharri Markson blasts Penny Wong over incorrect claims
News24 host Sharri Markson accuses Foreign Minister Penny Wong of using reckless and inflammatory language after confronting Israel’s ambassador over the decision not to pursue criminal charges over the death of Australian aid worker Zomi Frankom.

“Penny Wong, who today hauled in the Israeli ambassador to berate him over news that Israel wouldn't pursue criminal charges over the tragic but accidental death of Australian aid worker Zomi Frankom in a war zone,” Ms Markson said.

“Now, Penny Wong claimed inaccurately that this was an Israeli Government decision - we know she hates Benjamin Netanyahu.

“The Israeli government can't command the judiciary to charge someone, just like Albanese can't ask our judicial system to imprison someone.

“Penny Wong, of course, would know this, which means her language is deliberately reckless and inflammatory.”




Greens Senator accuses Liberal MP of being ‘captured by Zionist interests’
Liberal Senator James Paterson has called out Greens Senator Nick McKim for accusing him of being “captured by Zionist interests”.




The Brink: From Hating Jews To Defending Them - Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Warning to the West
In this episode of The Brink, Jake is joined by author and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali for a wide-ranging conversation about Islam, antisemitism, Israel, and what she sees as a crisis of confidence across Western civilisation.

Drawing on her own journey from growing up as a Muslim to leaving Islam and more recently converting to Christianity, Ayaan reflects on her changing relationship with Jews and Israel. She argues that the West has misunderstood the ideological challenge posed by Islamism and discusses whether meaningful reform within Islam is possible.

The conversation explores the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, the growth of Islamist movements in Europe and America, and why Ayaan believes Western freedoms have been exploited by organisations seeking to undermine liberal societies. She also sets out the five forces she believes are driving modern antisemitism, from immigration and the internet to the wider political realignment taking place across the West.

Finally, Jake and Ayaan discuss Christianity, the decline of religious confidence in Europe, and why she believes the West must rediscover its Judeo-Christian foundations. Drawing on her recent return to Israel, Ayaan argues that the country's sense of identity and purpose offers lessons for Western societies struggling with their own cultural uncertainty.

A conversation about Islam, Israel, Christianity, antisemitism, and whether the West can rediscover the confidence to defend its own civilisation.

Chapters
00:00 Introduction
03:52 Growing Up With Hatred of Jews
06:13 Is “Radical Islam” Really Radical?
08:57 Muslims, Islam & the Problem of Doctrine
16:53 Can Islam Be Reformed?
17:00 The Origins of Modern Islamism
20:24 Where Modern Antisemitism Comes From
25:00 Moderate Islam & the Muslim World
28:42 The Muslim Brotherhood in the West
33:52 The Five Causes of Modern Antisemitism
38:41 Islamophobia & Silencing Criticism of Islamism
44:58 How the West Lost Confidence in Itself




Ask Haviv Anything: 140: Van Jones returns - The hard questions of Black-Jewish relations
Van Jones came on the podcast a few months ago and said some things that lit up our inbox. A lot of praise, a lot of pushback.

So he came back to answer your questions.

Why did progressives spend twenty years building hierarchies of oppression and leave Jews off the list? Why do Black students on campus struggle to see Jewish vulnerability? What do you do with a community that hears "we're like you, we're Jewish," and thinks: do you want to trade spots?

Van doesn't dodge. He also pushes back on how Jews frame the conversation. It's an honest conversation about campuses, Farrakhan and Black antisemitism, the NAACP voting to disarm Israel, and why the Jewish world "feels like David, but looks like Goliath" to outsiders. Van gives ground where he thinks the critics are right and takes it back where he thinks Jews are getting the Black community badly wrong.

It’s a conversation that doesn't happen enough, and which Van is committed to advancing. That's why he founded the EXODUS Leadership Forum that brings together Jewish, Black and Jewish-Black leaders and activists. You can find out more about their work, including the 70 dinners Van discusses on the podcast, here: https://gather.exodusdinner.org .

Chapters:
00:00:00 Introduction: Van Jones returns for listener questions
00:03:21 Sponsor: Sapir
00:04:55 Why Black-Jewish dialogue matters
00:07:17 Campus conflict, Zionism, and antisemitism
00:20:10 Can the Black community confront antisemitism?
00:29:17 Why both communities feel misunderstood
00:37:36 Stereotypes, Farrakhan, and cultural influence
00:44:37 The Democratic Party’s growing divide
00:56:07 The NAACP, Israel, and competing perspectives
01:02:25 Can the Black-Jewish coalition be rebuilt?
01:08:08 What listeners can do to rebuild trust




AIPAC-backed Democrat loses California House special election to Aisha Wahab
Democrat Aisha Wahab, a member of the California state Senate, was projected on Thursday to win a special election to fill a vacant seat in the US House of Representatives, according to multiple US media outlets.

Wahab defeated Democrat Melissa Hernandez, an official with the San Francisco Bay Area mass transit system.

Once sworn in, Wahab, an Afghan American, will fill the seat that was held by Democratic Representative Eric Swalwell, who resigned in April amid allegations of sexual misconduct, which he denied. That will give Democrats 213 seats in the House, while Republicans will hold 218.

The solidly Democratic district is near San Francisco and San Jose.

Israel-Hamas War focus in some Democratic races
The race drew millions of dollars in outside spending, including from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group whose super PAC had spent nearly $2.5 million since early August to boost Hernandez, according to the Washington Post and other media reports.

The lobbying group has become a focus of attention in some Democratic primary contests this year as the Israel-Hamas War has deepened intra-party tensions.

Wahab and Hernandez will again face each other in November. The winner of that election will hold the congressional seat for a full two-year term.
N.H. House candidate Shaheen attacks Dem opponent over pro-Israel support
Stefany Shaheen, the daughter of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and a candidate for New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District, launched a TV ad this week hitting her opponent for receiving support from pro-Israel donors.

The ad claims Maura Sullivan, a military veteran, has taken $300,000 in donations “bundled from AIPAC donors,” in addition to support from Jeff Bezos and a contractor for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The attacks come even as Sullivan has shifted left on Israel policy issues during the campaign.

“Let’s show them New Hampshire’s not for sale,” the ad declares.

The donations referenced in the ad appear to be from individual donors who have previously contributed to AIPAC, referencing a story in the New Hampshire Union Leader. Despite the claims, AIPAC itself has made no endorsement and has not been directly involved in the race — although the grassroots pro-Israel group NORPAC did hold a fundraiser for Sullivan earlier this year.

“Maura has not received any money from AIPAC and would not accept its endorsement if offered,” Emmett Avery, a spokesperson for Sullivan, told HuffPost. Avery also said that Sullivan wants to see a “full reevaluation of the U.S.-Israel security relationship” and that the U.S. can no longer provide a “blank check for offensive weapons.”

Though Sullivan has outraised Shaheen $3.3 million to $2.2 million, limited public polling of the race had put Shaheen ahead until this week. The most recent poll, from St. Anselm College conducted, had the two at a statistical tie, with Sullivan at 26% and Shaheen at 24%. The survey suggests Sullivan is gaining ground — the same poll put Shaheen seven points ahead, 22-15%, in late June, with nearly 50% of voters remained undecided.

The stance expressed by Sullivan’s spokesperson is a shift from her position in an interview with Jewish Insider in 2025, when Sullivan said she would not support efforts to cut off U.S. aid to Israel, and emphasized the importance of the U.S.-Israel relationship even as she criticized the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
Combat Antisemitism Movement Ousts Abdul El-Sayed Ally: Dismissal of 'Student Minister' Follows Free Beacon Report on His Nation of Islam Ties
The Combat Antisemitism Movement, a coalition of 700 groups that aims to "eradicate antisemitism," has ousted a Michigan mayor with close ties to Abdul El-Sayed and Jocelyn Benson following a Washington Free Beacon report over his position with the Nation of Islam and his support for its antisemitic leader Louis Farrakhan.

Marcus Muhammad, the mayor of Benton Harbor, was appointed last October to the Combat Antisemitism Movement's (CAM) inaugural advisory committee to "provide strategic guidance" for the group's efforts to fight antisemitism. But as the Washington Free Beacon recently reported, Muhammad is also a "student minister" in the Nation of Islam, a group that CAM has accused of spreading blood libel conspiracy theories against Jews.

CAM, in response to questions about Muhammad's role with the Nation of Islam, told the Free Beacon that the mayor is no longer on the advisory board, citing the Nation of Islam's "notorious record of antisemitism."

"CAM was recently made aware of positions and affiliations held by Mayor Muhammad that are inconsistent with CAM's mission. As a result, CAM decided he will no longer serve on the board, and he was notified accordingly," a spokesperson said.

Muhammad's ouster and affiliation with the Nation of Islam create an awkward situation for El-Sayed—who has been battling a series of reports on his ties to antisemites and Islamic extremists, as well as about his own Islamic fundamentalist beliefs—and Benson in Michigan, a moderate state that voted for Donald Trump in 2024.

Muhammad, who was elected mayor in 2015, has posted a number of photos with El-Sayed since his gubernatorial campaign in 2018. Muhammad met with El-Sayed backstage at the Senate candidate's election night party on August 4 and has visited his Detroit campaign headquarters.


Tony Greenstein tells court October 7 was ‘justified’
A pro-Palestine activist charged with inviting support for Hamas described Gaza as a “human prison” and accused the judge of “turning a blind eye to genocide” during his trial on Thursday.

Tony Greenstein, 72, of Brighton, is on trial for one count of inviting support for a proscribed terrorist organisation at Kingston Crown Court.

The charge relates to three posts he made on X from October 7, 2023, the day of a Hamas-led attack on Israel which triggered more than two years of war in Gaza.

On Thursday, Greenstein, who is Jewish and the son of an Orthodox rabbi, told the court in his evidence that he felt those attacks were “justified”, but he did not support Hamas.

He said: “When a colonial power holds another people down, they have the right to resist.”

Greenstein described Gaza as a “human prison” where Palestinians had been “locked up” for 57 years.

“It was a cage in which people lived. Imagine you could not escape 25 miles north of here and five miles wide, and imagine having to live there and not being allowed out,” he said.

On multiple occasions during his evidence, Judge Sarah Plaschkes KC halted proceedings to ask Greenstein to stop talking about the history of Israel and Palestine.

Greenstein said to the judge: “That’s the problem with the ruling class in this country, they turn a blind eye to genocide.”

Judge Plaschkes said: “Mr Greenstein you are on trial for a single count of inviting the support for a proscribed organisation. The jury have been sworn to be judges of that offence; you need to stay focused. This is not a political forum, this is a court of law.”

She later added: “This jury is not concerned with events in the Middle East, you need to stay focused on the count in this indictment.”

In the social media posts, Greenstein wrote the line “please share. Full support for the Gaza ghetto uprising,” the court heard.

Jurors were told the posts had links to a blog, which included the line “the time to fight is now. Whatever criticisms one can make of Hamas, we should congratulate them on this well-planned and audacious attack on the Zionist enemy.”


GDP per capita Israel: $60,337 vs NZ: $49,591

Portugal probes antisemitism at University of Coimbra
Portugal’s government last week asked its prosecutor general to investigate allegations of antisemitic hate speech and intimidation at the University of Coimbra, one of the country’s most prestigious institutes of higher learning and a symbol of resistance to the Inquisition.

The request by the office of Portugal’s secretary of state for higher education, Cláudia Sarrico, to Prosecutor General Amadeu Guerra concerns cases between July 2024 and May 2026 in which posters, stickers and graffiti containing antisemitic material and incitement against Jews, Israelis and Zionists were displayed at the Faculty of Sciences and Technology and other university faculties, including law, medicine and chemistry, the Lusa news agency reported on Aug. 13.

The embassy of Israel in Lisbon welcomed the investigation.

“We are pleased to learn that the Portuguese authorities have decided to open an investigation into antisemitism at the University of Coimbra,” an embassy spokesperson wrote on X.

One of the posters read: “Zionists should carry a certificate to prove they’re human.” Another read: “Beware of Zionists,” JNS has learned. One doctoral student, Bar Harel, who holds U.S., Portuguese and Israeli citizenship, was subjected to death threats and a physical assault for displaying a small Israeli flag on his backpack, according to the report sent to the prosecutors by the state secretary’s office.

The University of Coimbra is among several prestigious universities in Europe and beyond where anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric and intimidation exploded after Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel, unleashing a regional war.


One Philadelphia Inquirer Article, Five Blatant Lies on Israel
Trudy Rubin, a columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer, claims her writing “tries to make sense of the world’s chaos and conflicts.” At this, her latest column, “Violence by extremist Israeli settlers against Palestinian civilians on the West Bank threatens new Mideast flash point,” totally fails. Instead, Rubin either presents a deliberately misleading picture or demonstrates a shockingly superficial understanding of the conflict. Her narrative, of absolute Israeli responsibility and guilt for the ongoing conflict, is undermined by the facts.

Consider five egregiously false claims made in the column.

Lie #1: There is “a potential new Mideast flash point sparked by messianic Israeli settlers on the occupied West Bank.”

This is demonstrably false, both in terms of timeline and attribution of blame.

The West Bank is not a “new” flash point. Violence has sadly been a constant feature in the territory for decades. During the so-called Second Intifada (2000-2005), for example, there were hundreds, if not thousands, of Palestinian attacks, including over 130 suicide bombings.

While settler violence has grown in recent years, the figures still pale in comparison to Palestinian violence toward Israelis. Data from the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, shows that in 2025, there were 845 incidents of settler violence. That same year, there were 4,744 Palestinian attacks on Israelis.

When CAMERA compared Shin Bet data on Palestinian attacks with U.N. data on settler attacks (data which is vastly overinflated) for 2018-2023, the same trends still showed. Even with the U.N.’s overinflated data, Palestinian attacks exceeded settler “attacks” by 2.5 to five times.

It is plainly dishonest to portray the violence as driven by Israelis when Palestinians are carrying out 5.6 times as many attacks.

Rubin’s claim relies on ignoring data and history. In effect, her article functions by ignoring all the violence by Palestinians so she can argue all the violence is by Israelis.
New Guardian claim suggests severe shortage of new anti-Israel libels
More evidence that Guardian readers’ demands for new anti-Israel libels continues to greatly outstrip supply can be found in an article published at the outlet earlier this year accusing Israel of intentionally using a cancer causing chemical in South Lebanon in order to render the area uninhabitable.

The piece (“Israel accused of spraying a cancer-linked herbicide on farms in South Lebanon,” Feb. 5) is co-written by environment correspondent Damien Gayle and their Beirut-based reporter William Christou. The herbicide in question, glyphosate, has been used since the mid-1970s to kill weeds and grasses that compete with crops.

The article cites allegations by Lebanon’s president, Joseph Aoun, that Israel’s use of glyphosate is “an environmental and health crime” and a “violation of Lebanese sovereignty”. The Guardian co-authors then write, in their own voice, that the allegation “bolsters accusations that its military is carrying out a campaign of ecocide with the aim of making southern Lebanon uninhabitable.”

They then write that glyphosate “was in 2015 classified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as probably carcinogenic to humans”.

However, readers aren’t told that a subsequent study the following year, by a joint expert group under the WHO and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), concluded that the herbicide is, in fact, unlikely to pose a carcinogenic risk to humans.

This omission is especially egregious given that the Guardian itself covered that study in a 2016 article, which reported that “glyphosate…has been given a clean bill of health by the UN’s joint meeting on pesticides residues,” and that the “finding flatly contradicts an assessment by the WHO’s cancer agency last year that the herbicide solution was probably carcinogenic to humans.”

Also, and quite tellingly, the Guardian acknowledges, midway through the article, that glyphosate is “one of the world’s most widely used herbicides.” This, in itself, undermines the desired narrative of the piece that Israel’s use of the chemical is unique and malicious.

Moreover, the article doesn’t tell readers that the IDF uses glyphosate for a specific military function – for deforesting areas in southern Lebanon used by Hezbollah to hide troops and weapons.
'Wall Street Journal' Framing Suggests Israel Rejected Peace
In a rare “mask-off moment,” Anat Peled’s Wall Street Journal article “Israel Rejects Next Phase of Trump’s Gaza Peace Plan,” proves how a news outlet adopting a politician’s branding for a policy can completely distort reporting.

In her August 10, 2026, lead sentence, Peled wrote that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “rejected President Trump’s plan to establish permanent peace in Gaza.” By adopting this framing, the WSJ unfairly insinuates that Israel opposes peace itself.

In reality, Israel rejected the plan for two specific reasons, which Netanyahu himself iterated: Trump’s latest plan requires an Israeli withdrawal before Hamas is fully disarmed and, through implementation, sets the stage for a Palestinian state.

Neither of these two outcomes guarantees peace.

The Trump administration and the Board of Peace engineered this new roadmap after the Oct. 10, 2025, 20-point plan stalled at the second phase (the first phase brought an end to fighting and the return of the hostages). The second phase called for Hamas’s disarmament, the establishment of a technocratic governance, the deployment of the International Stabilization Force and further Israeli withdrawal from the Strip.

Disarmament has been the primary sticking point since the earlier 20-point plan stalled. International officials have repeatedly warned that rebuilding Gaza so its residents can recover is impossible while armed militias operate in Gaza, yet Hamas has outright refused to disarm.
Is it Misinformation or Disinformation When NPR Refuses to Fact-Check the UN
And what happened to the media going to original sources for information, instead of relying on a third party for reports? NPR could have gone straight to the source and vigorously cross-checked. Instead, it relied on multiple hearsay: records given by Hamas only to the Lancet study authors, whose flawed study was then cited by UN Women, who did their own adjustment to the data, which was then quoted by NPR. In failing to do so, it violated its own internal guidelines, which state that journalists must independently verify data.

Hamas’ Ministry of Health began reporting in July 2025 that the majority of fatalities in Gaza were men. Most recently, on July 2, 2026, the Hamas media office reported that out of 73,066 people killed during the war, 21,500 were children and 12,500 were women. That’s a total of 34,000 which is: (a) more than 10% fewer casualties than the 38,000 claimed by UN Women, whose number did not include male children and (b) is less than half of the total casualties.

Of course, it also ignores the open secret that both Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) use child soldiers, which means some of those counted as male children were combatants.

Gabriel Epstein of the Israel Policy Forum noted that in recent weeks, PIJ claimed at least 20 child combatants, aged 15 – 17 years old, who held a range of roles from foot soldiers to rocket and manufacturing units. And many child combatants were identified prior to the last few weeks.

Estimates suggest the number of announcements released by Hamas and PIJ has only now surpassed 2,500, which represents only about 10% of the number of terrorists the IDF estimates it killed in Gaza. Presumably, more child combatant casualties will be revealed over time.

NPR’s third-hand regurgitation of false statistics on a broadcast meant that millions of listeners may have accepted them as established facts. Even if NPR were to update its online content later, such belated, quiet retractions never reach the same audience size, allowing false narratives to more easily, and perhaps permanently, shape public (mis)perceptions.

NPR’s failure to check sources and cross-reference claims, instead opting to amplify United Nations’ statements, signals an abandonment of proper news gathering techniques. Instead, NPR acted as an echo chamber. Until it applies rigorous skepticism to any and all organizations – whether international aid groups presumed to be of prestige – or those designated terrorist by the United States government, NPR’s audience will have a compromised understanding of complex geopolitical events.


Bassam Tawil: Palestinians' Preferred Leaders: A Convicted Fatah Terrorist or Hamas
The survey, conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) in the West Bank and Gaza Strip between August 5 and 8, 2026, reveals that... the fundamental political attitudes that have plagued Palestinian society for decades remain largely intact. Hamas remains a major political force; convicted terrorists and Hamas leaders remain popular candidates for the Palestinian Authority (PA) presidency; overwhelming majorities oppose the unconditional disarmament of Hamas; and Iran, Hezbollah, and the Houthis in Yemen continue to enjoy remarkably high approval ratings.

Asked who is most suitable to succeed PA President Mahmoud Abbas, 39% chose imprisoned Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti... An Israeli court convicted him in 2004 of five counts of murder stemming from three terrorist attacks.

Barghouti was sentenced to five consecutive life terms plus 40 years.

Yet this is the man whom a majority of likely Palestinian voters would like to see as their next president.

The second-place candidate is the head of Hamas.

The PA parliamentary elections are scheduled for November 28, 2026, with presidential elections expected in early 2027. The PSR poll offers a warning of what those elections could produce.

Hamas could still win another Palestinian Authority election (as it did in 2006).

An overwhelming 72% say Hamas should not disarm before Israel completely withdraws from the Gaza Strip.

US envoy Jared Kushner recently met Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya and other Hamas officials in Cairo as part of US efforts to advance President Donald J. Trump's Gaza peace plan.

Whatever the administration's intentions, such meetings provide Hamas with something it has sought for years: international legitimacy.

When representatives of the world's leading superpower sit directly with Hamas leaders, Hamas can present the encounter to Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims as evidence that its strategy has succeeded.

The message is that terrorism pays. If you carry out attacks, take hostages, retain your weapons and survive long enough – eventually the Americans will negotiate with you.

These figures are difficult to reconcile with claims that Palestinian society is undergoing a transformation toward moderation.

What exactly are these elections expected to accomplish?

Elections are not automatically synonymous with democracy, moderation, or peace.

The PA held a parliamentary election in 2006. Hamas participated and won. A year later, Hamas violently seized control of the Gaza Strip.

Now the Palestinians may be heading toward another election in which Hamas could again emerge as the largest faction....

Why, then, should the international community rush toward elections that could legitimize extremists and terrorists rather than marginalize them?

Before elections, Palestinians need real political reform. The Palestinian Authority needs accountable institutions, independent courts, freedom of expression, an end to corruption, and, most importantly, a political culture that does not glorify terrorists or treat armed groups as legitimate alternatives to government.


West Ham slams ‘anti-Palestine’ chant directed at Israeli soccer player Manor Solomon
English Championship soccer club West Ham warned fans on Thursday not to sing an “offensive and divisive” chant about Israeli winger Manor Solomon that was heard during their season-opening game against Burnley.

In a statement, West Ham said it was aware that the chant relating to Solomon, which contained an “anti-Palestine message,” was being sung by some of the away supporters at Burnley’s Turf Moor stadium in last Sunday’s 2-2 draw.

Video of the chant shows fans appearing to sing, “Manor Solomon’s on my mind and he hates Palestine.” Fans of one of Solomon’s previous clubs, Leeds United, were filmed singing a similar chant in 2024.

West Ham said in a statement they want to “remind supporters of the responsibility we all hold to represent the club in the right way” and that “each and every supporter is an ambassador.”

Solomon, 27, joined the East London club earlier this month from Tottenham on an initial three-year contract, with the option of a further year, and scored in the draw at Burnley.

Ahead of West Ham’s first home Championship game of the season against Charlton Athletic at the London Stadium on Saturday, the club issued an appeal to their fans.

“Regardless of their background, every supporter within our diverse fanbase should also be free to enjoy watching their team play football without fear, discrimination or abuse,” the West Ham statement added. “And we remain committed to ensuring that everyone feels safe, respected and included.”

The club continued: “We encourage our supporters to sing loud and proud about their football club and the players wearing the claret and blue shirt — but never in a way that creates division or causes offence among fellow fans.”

Solomon, from the central city of Kfar Saba, is a former player in Israel’s top soccer league and has played 49 times for Israel.

He previously played for Shakhtar Donetsk in Ukraine before moving on loan to Fulham, and he was also part of the Leeds team that won the Championship to earn promotion to the Premier League, the top league in England, in the 2024-25 season.

The Israeli fan club of West Ham, known as the Israeli Hammers, said it “fully” supports the team’s position and discourages any hate-filled chants.
As High Holidays approach, Israeli envoy to United Nations in New York City optimistic in dark times
Danny Danon, Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, is no stranger to the hostility that permeates the halls of the global body. But as he serves his second tenure, he remains firm in his belief that the organization is still worth fighting for.

“If you are not here, you allow the enemies to take over,” Danon told JNS in a wide ranging interview in Turtle Bay on Wednesday. “That’s very important. I see it myself. If I do not come to the room, they will continue to promote hate.”

The Israeli envoy spoke to JNS in the East Lounge, also known as the “Qatari Lounge,” less than an hour before he addressed the U.N. Security Council, where he pressed for changes to the process for convening “emergency” meetings.

He told JNS that such meetings have become a political tool that are used disproportionately against the Jewish state.

Despite his criticism of the organization, Danon told JNS that Israel has allies in Turtle Bay and that the Jewish state has to show up if it expects supporters to do the same.

“Our allies—and we have allies—they will not fight for us if we are not fighting for ourselves,” he said. “If they will see that I’m not there and I’m not fighting, they will not do it for us.”

Behind the scenes, the United Nations is different from what many would expect, Danon said.

“People know it’s a hostile place,” he said. “And it is. But it’s important to say that you have a quiet aspect of the U.N., and behind the scenes, despite the hundreds of debates and resolutions against us, I have seen in the last two years a lot of appreciation for what we are doing.”

Danon has heard other diplomats express appreciation for Israel’s “boldness to stand up,” in particular after the September 2024 pager attack targeting Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon.

“They will not be with us publicly,” Danon told JNS. “Usually when they will speak, they will focus on criticizing us on the humanitarian situation in Gaza and call for a ceasefire.”

“But when I have private conversations, like we have here and in the lounge, they appreciate the strength of Israel, appreciate the position we take,” he said. “For me, it’s a good sign.”
IDF marks seven decades of global humanitarian relief efforts
The Israel Defense Forces commemorated World Humanitarian Day on Wednesday by enumerating landmark humanitarian missions it had carried out worldwide over the past seven decades.

The IDF’s first humanitarian relief effort took place in 1953 following 7.2-magnitude earthquakes that shook Greece’s islands.

With no prior experience and despite limited equipment, “IDF Navy and Medical Corps teams improvised and demonstrated great resourcefulness as they provided medical treatment and delivered essential equipment, laying the foundations for Israel’s tradition of humanitarian assistance,” the army wrote.

In 1985, roughly 350 IDF reservists, including medical, search and rescue and engineering teams, were sent to Mexico City in the aftermath of a devastating tremor. Relief efforts marked a “milestone” in the development of Israel’s humanitarian assistance capabilities, the military said.

“The delegation provided medical treatment to the injured, assisted in rescue efforts, and worked alongside local forces in responding to the consequences of the disaster,” according to the IDF.

The Izmit earthquake in 1999 prompted the dispatch of search and rescue and medical teams from the IDF’s Home Front Command to Turkey. The teams located and rescued 12 individuals and provided medical treatment to approximately 1,200 injured people at a field hospital.

The mission to Haiti in 2010 following a devastating earthquake saw Israeli teams establish a field hospital, where they performed 317 surgeries and provided comprehensive medical services to approximately 1,110 people, the military said.

In 2015, Israel sent a large delegation of about 270 personnel from the Home Front Command and Medical Corps to Nepal following another earthquake.

The delegation operated with 95 tons of equipment, treated approximately 1,600 injured people, rescued people trapped under rubble, performed roughly 90 surgeries at a hospital field and assisted with eight births.

Following explosions at a military base in Equatorial Guinea in March 2021, some 60 IDF personnel were sent to the scene in the city of Bata. More than 700 patients were treated and 92 life-saving surgeries were performed by the Israeli medical teams.

In 2023, a large-scale Israeli delegation was deployed to Turkey following an earthquake. The Israeli search and rescue teams located and rescued 19 people and provided medical treatment and essential assistance to approximately 180 people.





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

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