Thursday, September 03, 2026

09/02 Links Pt2: ‘Jewish values’ are not a suicide pact that empowers antisemites; Hollywood’s paranoid hatred of Israel; Nothing Spontaneous About Anti-Israel Protests

From Ian:

Dara Horn tackles enduring antisemitic lies head-on with optimistic ‘Final Solution’
For centuries, argues author Dara Horn, people have tried to gain or maintain power by employing the lie that Jews are responsible for destroying whatever a society, government, or institution values most.

Tyrants, totalitarian regimes on both the right and left, and conformist societies in particular, have employed this lie, Horn says, because they are threatened by Jews — and by Judaism’s long history as an anti-tyrannical, countercultural tradition.

It is the central argument of Horn’s new book, “The Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” which was released September 1. The title is every bit as provocative as that of her 2021 bestseller, “People Love Dead Jews” — and its cover is sure to draw attention in bookstores and on social media.

With its direct reference to the Nazis’ nearly successful extermination of Europe’s Jews during World War II, this collection of related essays is, unsurprisingly, about antisemitism. But its subtitle, “A Love Letter to the Living,” hints from the outset that things are not all doom and gloom.

Writing after the bloody October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacres in Israel, Horn could hardly avoid addressing what she sees as a dangerous escalation of Jew-hatred in the United States and around the world. But she is also hopeful about the possibility of turning the situation around, especially through the right kind of education.

“I absolutely think that this is winnable,” Horn told The Times of Israel in a recent interview.

“The through line of antisemitism for thousands of years has been the denial of truth and the promotion of lies. These lies range in scope from conspiracy theories to Holocaust denial to the blood libel to the currently popular claims that Zionism is racism, that Jews are settler colonialists, and that Jewish civilization isn’t native to the land of Israel. These lies are all part of the foundational Big Lie: that antisemitism itself is a righteous act of resistance against evil, because Jews are collectively evil and have no right to exist. Today, the Big Lie is winning,” Horn wrote.

One only needs to look at various eras throughout history to grasp how consistent the Big Lie has been.

“It’s in every era, every social circle. The only thing that varies is what you value the most. Say you’re a religious Christian, then you are lied to that Jews are destroying Christianity, or that they killed Christ. Say you’re a human rights activist, then Israel’s the world’s worst violator of human rights, and it doesn’t matter that you’re being told this by the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Horn said.

This new book resulted from countless people reaching out to Horn after reading “People Love Dead Jews,” attending her lectures, or hearing her on a podcast. They emailed and messaged her, and they approached her at speaking engagements.
Jonahan Tobin: ‘Jewish values’ are not a suicide pact that empowers antisemites
Taking it one step further, Nessel had the chutzpah to invoke the lessons of Purim and the heroism of Queen Esther to back up her assertion that Jews must sacrifice their security to advance the Democratic Party.

“It is perhaps up to us now to follow in her path,” she said, “and sacrifice the comfort, safety and security and even the very future of our own people in exchange for the opportunity to save the rest of humanity.”

In point of fact, in a demonstration of her utter ignorance of Judaism and Jewish tradition, Esther did nothing of the kind. Her goal wasn’t the abstract saving of humanity. She risked her own life to save the Jewish people in the Persian Empire, who were under an immediate threat of genocide from the henchman Haman. What Nessel wants Jews to do is the opposite of Esther’s successful effort to rescue Jewish existence.

No matter what one thinks about Trump, global warming, illegal immigration or the right of biological males to play sports against females, the idea that Jews should, as Nessel urges, sacrifice not just their interests but their collective existence for these notions isn’t, contrary to her vile claim, an expression of “Jewish values.” It’s insane and deeply immoral.

If there is any lesson to be learned from Jewish history, it is that those who seek the destruction of the Jews—as those in the alliance of Marxists and Islamists El-Sayed represents wish to do—aren’t doing so to right a wrong or as a result of alleged Jewish misbehavior. It’s a function of their lust for power and a desire to use the scapegoating of Jews to achieve it. And when societies allow Jews to be targeted in this manner, the objective isn’t a better world but a far worse one, in which other groups, sooner or later, will meet a similar fate.

Let’s be clear: Jews have no obligation to sacrifice themselves for liberal myths about any issue. Real Jewish values are not a suicide pact whose purpose is to empower antisemites.

Anyone who urges them to do so isn’t advancing a higher cause. Rather, those individuals are aiding and abetting the oldest hatred in the world and taking the side of genocidal Islamists against a democratic Jewish state. To support El-Sayed because you share his intolerance and hatred for the rights of the Jewish people is awful. But to do so merely because you have drunk the partisan Kool-Aid and think the Democratic Party is the “ultimate good” and the Republicans are the “ultimate bad” is indefensible.

In staking her political career on this proposition, it’s doubtful that Nessel can save herself from the same treatment accorded other liberal Jewish Democrats rejected by a party that is drunk on woke ideology. But she has ensured one thing: She will always be remembered for betraying her own people.
Pro-Israel Dem. Haley Stevens says anti-Zionism has become a hate movement in America -interview
Just weeks after a grueling primary battle and a recent engagement, Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) is not a woman who sounds defeated.

Although she recently lost her Democratic primary race in Michigan, Stevens arrived in Israel with a message that was as sharp as it was unequivocal: The movement to delegitimize Israel is not simply a policy debate – it is an infection.

“I believe that anti-Zionism is a hate movement that has taken over in America and throughout parts of the West,” Stevens said in an interview with The Jerusalem Post.

For her, the rhetoric used by the far Left of her party has moved far beyond legitimate criticism of Israeli government policy.

“I think that Israel is more than just a punching bag for some of the challenges that America is facing,” she said, pointing to what she sees as a growing trend in which domestic American frustrations are projected onto the Middle East’s only democracy.

“There is this bizarre obsession that has reached pitch level with calling out one country, one tiny country in the Middle East,” she said, her voice rising with a mix of frustration and disbelief.

Stevens, who describes herself as a “traditional and classical liberal Democrat,” has long been a supporter of the US-Israel relationship.

Haley Stevens: I was demonized by Democrats because I supported Israel
But in the current political climate, that support has come with a heavy personal and professional price.

“I was demonized for that,” Stevens recalled, reflecting on her recent years in office. “I was booed off my convention stage. I was chased out of a labor event in Detroit.”

The hostility was not limited to political rallies.

Stevens described an environment in which “heightened bullying” became the norm.




Brendan O'Neill: Hollywood’s paranoid hatred of Israel
The way the letter talks about the Israel-Hamas War is unhinged. It describes Gaza as an ‘open-air laboratory for AI-driven killing and control technologies’, as essentially a blood-spattered testing ground for the ‘Orwellian’ tools that will one day be turned on us in the West. It’s hard to decide what’s worse: the insanity or the vanity. The insanity of seeing a war between the Jewish nation and the army of anti-Semites that invaded it as a dystopic ruse for sharpening murderous AI tools, or the vanity of watching the Jewish State defend itself from Islamofascists and thinking: ‘Oh no, what if this limits what I can stream on my 98-inch TV in my airport hangar of a home in the Hollywood Hills?’

It’s the obsessive drawing of links between the Jewish State and the parlous state of the Western world that feels most chilling. There is a ‘connection’, the letter froths, between ‘the criminal impunities that have led the US and Israel into unending disaster [in Gaza]’ and the ‘oligarchic powerplays’ of the super-rich men who are ‘working to dismantle our democracy’. Gaza, it says, has become a cauldron of ‘war, oligarchy and, now, AI domination’. ‘The assault on the Palestinian people and the assault on our liberties at home are deeply interconnected’, it says.

That’s it, the core commandment of the morally deracinated left – that the oppression of Palestine is the oppression of us all. That none will be free until Gaza is free. That Israel, darling of the oligarchs, bloody laboratory of the plutocrats, isn’t only physically shackling Palestinians – it is metaphorically shackling all of us. As Sally Rooney says, ‘the liberation of Palestine really does represent the liberation of the world’. Somehow, perhaps by demonic osmosis, Israel is keeping all of humanity subdued. And only her defeat can secure our freedom.

I’m sick of tiptoeing around this. You don’t need a PhD in either medieval hysteria or 1930s Europe to clock how dangerous it is – not to mention disgusting – to depict the Jewish nation as having its boot on the neck of the world. And to view that tiny state as the source of global tyranny. And to accuse it of building the ‘road’ towards the ‘Orwellian’ and ‘oligarchical’ deprivations us Gentiles will shortly endure. Pointing out the ‘crucial connections’ between what Israel is doing and what the West is experiencing is the ‘opposite of anti-Semitism’, says the pro-Ruffalo letter. Oh stop it. Insisting on a dark, twisted link between some Jewish entity and the suffering of humankind is the OG anti-Semitism.

This letter provides unwitting proof of the bigotry of anti-Zionism. All the things that hysterics and scum once said about the Jews, people now say about the Jewish State. They once said Jews sacrifice children, lust after blood and puppeteer the world with their long fingers and ‘Jewish finance’. Now they say the same – virtually word for word – about the Jewish nation. The idea that Israel is the melting pot for oligarchical ideas about global control and the industrialisation of murder is naked hatred masquerading as virtue. The actress Ellen Barkin gave it away in her defence of Ruffalo. ‘Anti-Semitism is a hatred of Jews. Anti-Zionism is a hatred of Israel’, she tweeted. And there it is. We don’t hate Jews, just the country that’s full of them. We see you.
Mark Ruffalo tried to recruit ADL CEO to help him apologize for ‘antisemitic’ Paramount rant — but was snubbed
Call it a Hollywood mea culpa that wound up in turnaround.

Sources tell Page Six Hollywood that Mark Ruffalo was looking to apologize for a pair of recent social media posts that cast Larry Ellison as a Lex Luthor-esque billionaire oppressing Gazans and drew the condemnation of a broad swath of Jewish groups including the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Anti-Defamation League.

Over the past week, States United Democracy Center co-founder Norm Eisen was working closely with the Marvel star on how to thread the needle of signaling contrition about offending Jews, while remaining firm in his opposition to the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger and (separately) Israel’s military response in Gaza.

Insider say Ruffalo asked Eisen to enlist ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, who had called Ruffalo’s two posts “cynical and sickening.” (Eisen and Greenblatt had both worked in the Obama administration and are said to be friends.)

One source says Greenblatt rebuffed his old pal Eisen because he wasn’t “interested in laundering Mark Ruffalo‘s reputation.”

Another source says the ADL chief “couldn’t help” the four-time Oscar nominee, prompting Eisen to pivot to an open letter defending Ruffalo that hit Tuesday.


Jewish Hollywood creatives defend Mark Ruffalo after accusations of antisemitism
More than 170 Jewish artists, writers and cultural figures rallied behind Hollywood actor Mark Ruffalo on Tuesday after Paramount and prominent Jewish members of the entertainment industry accused him of using antisemitic tropes while campaigning against the studio’s proposed takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery.

The letter denounced what its signatories called an “outrageous smear campaign” against Ruffalo and rejected the contention that his criticism of Israel, the Oracle software company’s work with the Israeli military, and the Ellison family’s expanding media interests was inherently antisemitic.

Paramount CEO David Ellison is the son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, who is personally guaranteeing the equity needed for the acquisition; the Ellison family would control the combined company if the deal goes through, according to the LA Times.

Among the most prominent signatories was “Hacks” star Hannah Einbinder, who had previously defended the 58-year-old Marvel actor against the antisemitism allegations.

Other signatories included filmmakers and performers Joel Coen, Tony Kushner, Ilana Glazer, Lisa Cholodenko and Todd Haynes.

The signatories also turned their attention to Paramount Skydance’s proposed $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, a deal Ruffalo has been a prominent opponent of.

The letter characterized the merger as “tech-driven domination” involving Larry Ellison and his business interests, while arguing that links between developments in Hollywood and the war in Gaza were legitimate subjects for criticism.

The letter described the proposed deal as “part of a larger project of tech-driven domination, a project Larry Ellison and his partners have never been shy about trumpeting — and one they themselves have explicitly linked to their support for the ongoing depredations being visited on the people of Palestine and their silencing of critics of those horrors.”


‘Green Street Hooligans’ director cheers murder of mom stabbed in Times Square with Luigi Mangione meme
A Palestinian-American filmmaker who directed cult classic “Green Street Hooligans” celebrated the death of young executive and new mom Erin Piacenti by posting a meme about alleged CEO-killer Luigi Mangione.

Lexi Alexander, who was also nominated for an Academy Award in 2003 for a short film she directed, posted an image on social media Tuesday of Batman staring up at a bat signal replaced with Mangione’s face.

The sick meme was shared in response to another post that identified Piacenti, who was killed by a mentally ill woman in Times Square, as a vice president at Bank of America.

Alexander, who is also a world champion martial artist, also claimed in a comment on her own post that Israeli “bots” were “out in full swing just like the first time we asked people to boycott BofA.”

The filmmaker shared a link to a January Haaretz article about the company’s recommendation to invest in Israeli banks.

“Israel doesn’t care about the woman who got killed, they care about the positive rating BofA gave them in the middle of a genocide. There is huge money at stake,” she said in a post later Wednesday.


HonestReporting: Nobody Posts a Swastika Anymore: Dr. Matthias Becker on the Jew-Hatred Hiding in Plain Sight
Ask most people to picture antisemitism online and they'll picture a swastika, a slur, someone anonymous in a dark room. Dr. Matthias Becker will tell you that's the part that barely matters.

He's a linguist, and for more than a decade he has been reading the comment section under the BBC, The Guardian, and other major European media outlets. His project, Decoding Antisemitism, has now been through more than 300,000 comments across Britain, France and Germany. What it found is that roughly 80% of the antisemitism in those mainstream spaces never uses a slur at all.

It hides in a joke. In a rhetorical question. In a name dropped like a password. Below an article about George Soros, someone writes: someone should give George Soros a shower. No slur, no threat, nothing a keyword filter will ever catch — and everyone who needs to understand it, does.

Which means, as Becker puts it, that nearly every statistic you have read about online hate is built on sand.

Ben Chertoff talks with him about what actually changed on October 7 — the shift from demonizing Israel to openly celebrating the murder of Israelis, and an overlap with misogyny he says he had never seen before. They get into his event studies: Charlie Kirk, the Capital Jewish Museum, the White House Correspondents' Dinner attack, and Dan Bilzerian's run for Congress, where the one video that pushed back on him drew the most antisemitism of any in the set — over 50%. They get into why he thinks surveys can't measure any of this and comment sections can. And they get into what he now tells the AI companies, whose guardrails he is trying to help build.

After ten years in the worst of it, he is not a cynic. His argument is that the same technology that lets one person manufacture a wave of propaganda is also the first tool we've had powerful enough to read the flood back.

Dr. Matthias J. Becker is an AddressHate Research Scholar at the NYU Center for the Study of Antisemitism, editor-in-chief of Digital Hate Review, and the lead of the Decoding Antisemitism project.

00:00 Cold Open & Introducing Dr. Matthias Becker
02:08 How a linguist ended up decoding antisemitism
08:14 What coded antisemitism actually looks like
11:29 Why the statistics on online antisemitism are wrong
16:34 Community Notes, trusted flaggers, and the retreat from moderation
20:03 Before and after October 7
24:31 The overlap nobody expected: antisemitism and misogyny
36:10 The manosphere, and Dan Bilzerian's run for Congress
40:20 The host's responsibility: Lex Fridman, Sam Harris, Kanye West
49:27 Why conspiracy theories are more dangerous than stereotypes
56:54 The AI companies, and their guardrails
1:04:15 "Antisemitism is not about Jews. It's about the antisemites."
1:13:58 Closing thoughts




Former aide to Bernie Sanders warns of growing Jew-hatred on the left
A longtime progressive Democratic activist and former Jewish outreach director for the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) warned that his party is at “a crisis moment.”

Joel Rubin, a former deputy assistant U.S. secretary of state, said that progressive Democrats are imposing a litmus test on Jewish Americans: “Oppose Israel, and you’re in. Support Israel, and you’re out.”

“They are being told that to be a full participant as a Jewish person, you must drop your support for Israel,” Rubin told JNS. “They are being told that Israel is a foreign country, and that Jews should just drop it if they want to still participate.”

“That is inherently antisemitic,” he said.

Rubin told JNS that Sanders, who is Jewish, and his allies have “shaped a political environment that’s deeply hostile to any Jewish person who cares about the State of Israel.”

“He’s going where the wind blows, and the progressive base wants to go a certain direction,” Rubin said. “Because of his background, he can add a layer of legitimacy. His critique of Israel that is pretty special for the movement and the hard Jewish left is, in many ways, completely intolerant of criticism of the left on antisemitism.”

“They do not want to hear it,” he told JNS. “And he is the leader of that community.”

Rubin sounded the alarm in an article in the Free Press, the website founded by current CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss. He wrote that far-left party activists aligned with Sanders have imposed a litmus test restricted to Jews—oppose Israel or you’re not welcome.

“If we believe the Democratic Party is worth preserving as a broad, tolerant political home—and it is—then we must fight for that party ourselves,” Rubin wrote in the article.

“If Democrats allow the Sanders-aligned movement to determine who is sufficiently pure to belong, then the party will become smaller. A smaller Democratic Party does not protect abortion rights, voting rights or workers, nor does it appoint judges or defend democratic institutions,” he added. “It loses elections. Remember: No political party is healthy when it kicks out the Jews. A very great deal is at stake.”
Rahm Emanuel donation for Palestinian doctors triggers fury from Israeli lawmaker
Rozana USA, an international NGO engaged in “health diplomacy,” announced on Monday that Rahm Emanuel and his brothers, Ezekiel and Ari, have donated $550,000 to fund the training of 11 pediatric doctors and 36 pediatric nurses from An-Najah National University Hospital in Nablus (biblical Shechem) at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center (Ichilov).

The $550,000 contribution by Rahm, a potential U.S. presidential contender, and his brothers, will honor their parents, Benjamin and Marsha Emanuel. Their late father was a pediatrician and their mother was a radiology technician and therapist.

“This contribution will ultimately provide much needed, improved care for Palestinian children while leveraging the field of healthcare to build constructive, trusting relations between Israeli and Palestinian medical professionals, bridging the divide,” they said.

Otzma Yehudit Knesset Member Limor Son Har-Melech responded angrily, saying she would prevent the training of Palestinian doctors and nurses in Israel.

“As chair of the Knesset Health Committee, I was the first to bring to the agenda the outrageous phenomenon of training doctors from the P.A. [Palestinian Authority] in Israeli hospitals,” she posted to X on Monday.

“Israeli hospitals, residency beds, senior staff, and the professional expertise of the Israeli health system are not a training factory for the enemy.”

She said she would turn to the Israeli Health Minister and Ichilov hospital’s CEO demanding that they stop the program.


Hugh Hewitt: Can John Podhoretz translate El-Sayed? He gave it his best shot on Hugh’s program today

Granddaughter of Holocaust survivors slams Mamdani over rise of antisemitism at NYC Judaica shop
An American Israeli heckler accused Mayor Zohran Mamdani of ignoring rising antisemitism in the city while he visited a Jewish store in Brooklyn on Wednesday.

Stephanie Benshimol, a self-described “Boss Momma American Israeli Zionist” and the founder of United Zionists, berated Hizzoner for visiting Eichler’s, a Judaica store in Borough Park, before the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah next week.

“Hey, it’s me, Stefanie Benshimol. You remember me? Remember last year when Trump freed the hostages?” she yelled at Mamdani while filming inside the shop. “It’s all because of you we have so much antisemitism.”

Benshimol, a granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, shamed Mamdani for appearing in the neighborhood given the rise in anti-Jewish hate crimes across the city.

“Shame on you for coming to Borough Park where my Bubbie came after the Holocaust!” she roared.

“My Bubbie and Zaidy came to Borough Park! You have such chutzpah coming here! Shame on you!” Benshimol yelled, using the Yiddish words for grandmother and grandfather respectively.

As the Zionist activist grew increasingly emphatic, staff shooed her out of the store, prompting her to call one of the workers a “kapo” — a term for a concentration camp prisoner forced by the Nazis to supervise fellow captives.

“Are you a kapo? Are you supporting him? Do you support Israel? Do you support Israel? Do you?”

Her vitriol then turned toward the Eichler’s store, whose owners she accused of wanting to “kiss ass to the hater of all Jewish people!”

“Shame on you Eichler’s, shame on you for allowing Zohran Mamdani to come to the heart of the Jewish neighborhood in Borough Park,” Benshimol said.


Abdul El-Sayed To Join Panel With 9/11 Conspiracy Theorists at Islamic Convention Days Before 9/11 Anniversary
Democratic Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed is scheduled to speak at an Islamic convention this weekend—six days before the 25th anniversary of 9/11—on a panel alongside a "9/11 truther" and a Muslim cleric conspiracy theorist who has called for an "examination" of the official narrative surrounding the terrorist attacks.

El-Sayed is headlining the Islamic Society of North America's annual convention in Detroit on Saturday. There, El-Sayed will speak on a panel to examine a "turmoiled America" alongside left-wing pundit Cenk Uygur and Zaid Shakir, an outspoken New Jersey-based cleric, according to a convention itinerary.

Both men have promoted conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11, in which al Qaeda operatives killed 2,977 Americans.

"I no longer believe [sic] official 9/11 story," Uygur declared in a social media rant in February. Uygur, who hosts the Young Turks YouTube show, is now pushing debunked claims about Israeli involvement in the attacks, including the "dancing Israelis" myth, an antisemitic conspiracy theory that posits that five Israeli spies filmed and celebrated the terrorist attack. "I didn't know we arrested Israeli spies who were here to 'document the event,'" wrote Uygur, who is the uncle of Hasan Piker, a close El-Sayed ally who has said that "America deserved 9/11."

Uygur was widely mocked for, as one outlet described it, "going full 9/11 truther."

Shakir has similarly called for an "examination" of what he described as "glaring weaknesses and inconsistencies" in the official 9/11 narrative. He has argued that the U.S. government used the attacks to "launch a war on Islam," and he directed followers to the writings of David Ray Griffin, a leading 9/11 conspiracy theorist who has argued that the United States orchestrated the attacks.

El-Sayed's appearance alongside the conspiracy theorists comes as his own record of seeking to minimize the horror of 9/11, and to draw equivalence between 9/11 victims and casualties of the war on terror, is under scrutiny.

CBS News reported on Monday that El-Sayed deleted two COVID-era social media posts in which he compared the 9/11 death toll to COVID deaths and said the latter deserved the same outraged response. In posts on the 20th anniversary of 9/11, El-Sayed drew an equivalence between the attacks and the ensuing war on terror, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

El-Sayed has also faced withering scrutiny over his close ties to Piker, a popular left-wing influencer who has campaigned with El-Sayed. El-Sayed has repeatedly refused to fully disavow Piker's remarks about 9/11, saying that they have been "taken out of context" and that Piker is a victim of "cancel culture."


Brendan O’Neill: The war on Maureen Lipman
There’s a horribly authoritarian streak in the passive-aggressive shaming of Dame Maureen. As Lipman herself points out, how fitting that one of her scorners is called McCarthy. A bloke named McCarthy pointing a bony finger at a thespian over her supposedly unpardonable beliefs? What decade is this? Perhaps all board-treaders will in future be asked: “Are you now or have you ever been a supporter of the Jewish state?”

For that is all that Dame Maureen believes: that Israel has the right to exist and the right to fend off the armies of Islamofascists that raped its women, murdered its men and who continue to plot its genocidal annihilation. We overlook at our peril how insane it is that such a decent, moral and righteous belief, one shared by many of us non-Jews too, has become a sin of cancellable proportions. A hill I’d happily die on: wanting the Jews to defeat their Nazi-like tormentors is good actually.

I’ve seen some on the digital left – not McCarthy or Hesketh – say Lipman is racist. What slanderous drivel. She was a lifelong socialist until the British left decided to devote itself to obsessive libellous frothing over the world’s only Jewish nation. Not content with rebranding the belief in women’s liberty as “transphobia”, now the left frames support for Jewish security as “Arabophobia”. Everywhere we are surrounded by Kafkaesque linguistic traps, laid to ensnare those of us who cling for dear life to the belief that women and Jews are human beings too.

You want to see racism? Actual racism? Then look at the broader campaign against Dame Maureen. When she was performing in the brilliant play Allegra in Aberdeen earlier this year, a “Palestine solidarity” group put out a leaflet depicting her with devil’s horns. The Jew as demon? How medieval. Outside almost every theatre she’s performed in this past year, there’s been a whiffy rabble of keffiyeh-smothered Israelophobes barking about “genocide”.

Let’s speak plainly. An 80-year-old Jewish woman is being demonised and harassed simply for believing in Jewish self-determination in the Jews’ ancestral homeland of Israel. It’s obscene. Where are her fellow actors? Where’s Equity? Where’s the Labour party, which Lipman supported for decades before the Corbynites took over? Their silence over this lo-fi persecution of a Jewish dame is as shameful as the persecution itself.
‘Talk to me’: Lipman hits back at ‘coward’ actor who quit play over her involvement
Dame Maureen Lipman has branded an actor a “coward” after he pulled out of a London theatre production because of her involvement.

Gerard McCarthy withdrew from Right Before I Go after the veteran Jewish actress joined the cast, saying he was uncomfortable promoting someone whose political views were at odds with his own.

Lipman, 80, has now hit back at his decision, challenging the Northern Irish actor to speak to her directly and accusing him of “virtue-signalling”.

“I am asking for him to have the courage to face me and tell me what he thinks it is I should do, or think, or say,” she told The Times.

“I would like to reassure him that I will not be arriving with a star of David on my forehead, nor am I trying to argue him out of his point of view.

“He has to wake up and smell the grass. I have worked with actors for 60 years who often don’t share my politics. I don’t ask them, and they don’t ask me.”

Lipman said McCarthy was entitled to decide he did not want to work with her, but added: “But if he won’t meet with me, then he’s a coward.

“And if he doesn’t grow up, then he’s going to limit himself to working with just Mark Ruffalo and Javier Bardem for the rest of his career.”
TV actor who quit Maureen Lipman show over her pro-Israel views revealed to have ‘liked’ vile ‘Zio hag’ slur
The BBC actor who quit a London theatre show following the casting of Dame Maureen Lipman has endorsed a torrent of online abuse directed at the veteran Jewish performer, including the slur: “Lipman the zio hag can get in the bin.”

Gerard McCarthy, known for his roles in BBC dramas The Fall and Call The Midwife, had been due to appear with Dame Maureen, 80, in Right Before I Go at London’s Soho Theatre.

But he withdrew after she joined the show, which opens on Saturday, citing views she had publicly and repeatedly expressed regarding Israel and Palestine.

The Daily Mail reports that McCarthy, 45, subsequently liked a string of abusive comments posted beneath his announcement on Instagram.

Among them was one which read: “Lipman the zio hag can get in the bin.”

Another, which praised him as “a man of absolute principle,” also warned: “Zionists will soon have nowhere to hide.”

McCarthy, who was a regular on Channel 4’s Hollyoaks, also liked a message that read: “That woman is an odious ghoul. You saved yourself a tiring battle with your conscience every time you would have stepped into the room with her.”

Other comments he endorsed included: “I would cross the street if I saw her. Vile bigot,” and described Dame Maureen as “a horrid f****** witch,” adding: “It speaks volumes about the morally bankrupt scumbags behind this decision that they’re willing to work with her.”

“Zio,” an abbreviation of Zionist, is widely recognised by Jewish organisations as an anti-Semitic slur.

When approached by the Daily Mail, McCarthy said he regretted having “inadvertently” endorsed “antisemitic language or personal abuse directed at Dame Maureen Lipman.”

He said: “I do not endorse antisemitic language or personal abuse directed at Dame Maureen Lipman, and regret having inadvertently appeared to do so by liking a number of comments among the hundreds posted beneath my statement.”


Sister of Qatar’s emir promotes Venice exhibit depicting ‘bullets in children’ in Gaza
Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad Al Thani, the sister of Qatar’s emir, promoted a divisive exhibition at the Venice Biennale called “Gaza — No Words — See the Exhibit,” which highlights allegations that Israel deliberately targeted children in Gaza among other actions that the exhibit portrays as constituting genocide.

The Qatari royal, who chairs several of the Gulf state’s leading cultural organizations such as the Doha Film Institute and Qatar Museums, on Saturday hailed the display in an Instagram post as “a powerful exhibition, one not to miss” at Venice’s biannual international art show, which opened to the public in May and runs until Nov. 22.

The exhibition features a textile collection of 100 hand-stitched panels made by Palestinian women called the “Gaza Genocide Tapestry,” documenting what the Biennale website describes in a summary as “the ongoing destruction of Gaza” since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel.

The “cross-stitched testimony,” according to the description, “refuses to let the world forget what is being done and to whom, binding the world to what has been unfolding and to those living through it.”

In an Instagram post over the weekend, Sheikha Al Mayassa said the exhibition “powerfully captures the human atrocity,” praising the work as “cross-stitched testimonial” that conveys “the everyday struggles and stories of the people of Gaza.”

Among the tapestries highlighted by Sheikha Al Mayassa was a textile work called “Bullets in Children,” which uses an X-ray image featured in a controversial and intensely scrutinized New York Times opinion essay, published in October 2024, featuring testimony from doctors, nurses and paramedics who claimed to have seen “multiple cases of preteen children who had been shot in the head or chest in Gaza.”

The sheikha’s rhetoric underscores ongoing tensions between Qatar and Israel, which do not formally have diplomatic relations even as the Gulf state served as a key intermediary amid negotiations with Hamas after the Oct. 7 terror attacks that sparked the war in Gaza.

The Biennale display was organized by the Palestine Museum US in Connecticut, which says it is the first Palestinian art museum in North and South America. The museum was established in 2018 by Faisal Saleh, a curator of the exhibition who has faced controversy for labeling Israel a “terrorist” state whose treatment of Palestinians was “1,000 times” worse than Hamas’ atrocities on Oct. 7.
I Worked For Qatari Media For A Decade…Until They Fired Me Over Israel | Suzan Quitaz

Nothing Spontaneous About Anti-Israel Protests
"Today's anti-Western influence networks are global, coordinated, top-down, well-funded and sanitised. Viewed graphically, they resemble a series of concentric circles. At their centre sit hostile state actors (Iran, China, Russia, Qatar), terrorist organisations (Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda), and extremist religious-political movements (Muslim Brotherhood). Around them operate charities, campaign groups, protest movements and advocacy organisations that can provide legitimacy, amplify propaganda and serve as vectors of transmission for extremist agendas to society more broadly. Some of these groups are directly funded by hostile actors, or in turn, divert publicly raised donations back to them." — From the NGO Monitor report "Imported Influence," July 8, 2026.

In the UK, the same six organizations – Stop the War Coalition, Friends of Al-Aqsa, the Muslim Association of Britain, the Palestinian Forum in Britain, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament – were involved in 32 out of the 40 protests mapped by NGO Monitor.

"Many of these groups are overtly linked to Hamas and other terrorist actors. It is time to see these demonstrations as a significant destabilizing threat and for governments to investigate these networks." — Anne Herzberg, legal advisor to NGO Monitor, speaking at the UK House of Lords, July 8, 2026.

"[T]he response too often appears to be more security funding, barriers and police protection, rather than addressing the root causes of this hate and violence." — From the NGO Monitor report "Imported Influence," July 8, 2026.

Why is the British government arresting more than 30 British citizens on average each day, including mothers and pensioners, for mostly harmless social media posts, while activists with links to terrorist groups working against those very societies are left free to unleash their worst?


New Gaza flotilla due to set sail in October in bid to break Israeli blockade
A new flotilla is expected to depart Europe next month and set sail on the Mediterranean in the latest bid by anti-Israel activists to break the Israeli naval blockade of the Gaza Strip, according to reports Wednesday.

Citing the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), news outlets including Israel’s Kan public broadcaster reported that the new flotilla departing in October will make calls at ports in Spain, Portugal and Italy before heading toward Gaza.

It will be the first attempt that the pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel organization has made to reach Gaza since Israel arrested 430 of its activists across 50 ships in international waters in May.

The arrests sparked international backlash at the time, after several activists alleged experiencing abuse and sexual assault, including rape, while being held in Israeli detention.

Israel denied these accounts, but National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir prompted further scrutiny and outrage by posting a video of him mocking bound, kneeling activists in a detention center.

Since then, FFC activists have been sailing around Europe to gather support and raise funds for their cause ahead of October’s sailing.

One ship, the Handala II, called at ports in Norway, Sweden and Denmark last month, while another, The Kate, sailed from Bristol, England, to Kinsale, in the Republic of Ireland, on Saturday.

The Kate will stop at additional ports in Ireland, Germany and France over the next few weeks before joining up with the rest of the ships in the flotilla.

One of the activists aboard The Kate is Fiacc Ó Brolcháin, a 74-year-old sailor who was arrested and deported by Israel in May, according to local Irish outlet The Southern Star.

The FFC did not give an exact departure date for the flotilla, and didn’t provide details on how many ships and activists were expected to take part, or how much aid it would be attempting to bring into Gaza.
Brussels Airlines workers threaten strike over flights to Israel, union cites ethical objections
A Belgian union has threatened to strike against Brussels Airlines for compelling staff to work on flights to Israel, saying that anyone with “safety or conscientious objections” should be able to refuse.

ACV Puls, Belgium’s largest trade union, said on Tuesday that the company was breaking previous agreements to rely on volunteers for flights to Tel Aviv. The airline resumed flights to Tel Aviv on August 3, following a five-month pause because of the US-Israeli war in Iran, and its first flights were operated with volunteers.

“Serious concerns exist among the staff regarding both physical safety and the mental and ethical impact of these flights,” ACV Puls spokesperson Jolinde Defieuw said in a statement. She added that making staffing mandatory was “particularly serious in the context of the ongoing war and the genocide in Gaza.”

The notice launched by cabin crew representatives said that a strike could follow if Brussels Airlines does not reverse its decision to resume regular staffing.

They argued that flying to Israel could not be deemed sufficiently safe, citing Belgium’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which advises against “all non-essential travel to Israel and Jerusalem.”


Judge denies ex-Georgetown employee’s bid for judgment against Canary Mission
A federal judge denied a former Georgetown University employee’s request for a default judgment against Canary Mission, ruling on Monday that she failed to show that the pro-Israel watchdog group was properly served with her lawsuit.

Aneesa Johnson, who identifies as black, Muslim and “of Palestinian origin,” sued Georgetown and several others after she was fired over social media posts expressing her hatred for Zionists.

Canary Mission maintained a profile on Johnson and published information about her social media posts made before she was employed by Georgetown. That included, “I have a deep seeded hate for Zio b**ches” and “I call them Zio b**ches, because they’re dogs,” and a “photograph of a scowling Orthodox Jewish man with the caption, ‘When the whole world hates you because you (are) a thief and grow up looking like a shaytan,’” with a tag that said “growing up Israeli.”

Johnson sought a default judgment against Canary Mission and claimed that she served the organization by mailing the complaint to the Central Fund of Israel, which she described as Canary Mission’s financial intermediary and “alter ego.”

U.S. district court judge Christopher Cooper ruled on Aug. 31 that Johnson had not established that the organizations were “so closely intertwined as to constitute essentially the same organization,” though Canary Mission and the Central Fund of Israel “appear, on first blush, to have at least some institutional link.”

The judge stated that even if Johnson had properly served Canary Mission, her claims would likely fail on their merits. The court previously concluded that Johnson had not established underlying discrimination by Georgetown and found no plausible agreement between Canary Mission and the university to violate her civil rights.
Nearly 80% of Canadian Jewish professors changed behavior to stay safe after Oct. 7, study suggests
Canadian Jewish professors reported a “sharp erosion of both physical and emotional safety across campuses,” according to an article published this month in the Canadian Journal of Higher Education.

Lilach Marom and Leor Elizur, of Simon Fraser University, and Cary Kogan, of the University of Ottawa, drew on data from 120 Jewish professors in the country, 51 of whom were willing to sit for interviews.

“Only 40% of participants reported feeling ‘somewhat’ or ‘very’ physically safe on campus” after Oct. 7, the scholars write. “Furthermore, 79.2% indicated that they had changed their behavior, such as avoiding certain areas of campus, compared to 35% before Oct. 7.”

There was an even more pronounced decline in emotional safety, per the paper.

“Only 14.2% reported feeling ‘somewhat’ or ‘very’ emotionally safe on campus, and 87.5% said they had experienced distress on campus post-Oct. 7,” the scholars wrote, “up from 40.8% before Oct. 7.”

In 2025, Jews, who make up 1% of Canadians, were targets of 16.7% of all hate crimes and 70.7% of religion-based hate crimes, according to official Canadian data.

‘Unsafe work environment’

The professors who are part of the study aren’t named. One told the researchers that “we had an event on campus where we had a string of graffiti with the upside-down red triangle,” a Hamas symbol, “plastered and a sniper rifle painted on our windows, saying ‘you’re the target.’”

“I declared an unsafe work environment,” that scholar said. “I stayed off campus for two months.”

Another professor said that “during the encampment and even afterwards,” he “saw several instances of the upside-down red triangle symbol of Hamas.”

“I see it not as advocacy for Palestinian human rights but as a process of fear and intimidation towards the Jewish community,” that professor said.
Jews safer in Mississippi than Canada, says Jewish prof who left Montreal for Ole Miss
Gad Saad moved recently from Montreal, where he has long taught marketing at Concordia University, to Mississippi in part because “Jew-hatred was going crazy,” the Lebanese-born Jewish scholar told JNS.

“It started probably about 25 years ago, and it’s just been exponentially growing,” he said. “I didn’t really see that our future was in Montreal anymore.”

Author of the 2026 book Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind, Saad spoke at the Jewish American Summit in Los Angeles on Aug. 30. After his speech, he told JNS that he thinks Mississippi is safer for Jews than Canada.

“All of the deputies—the sheriff, the police—are all fans of my work,” he said. “They said that they all will protect me. You could carry guns in Mississippi.”

Saad is now associated with the Declaration of Independence Center for the Study of American Freedom at the University of Mississippi, or Ole Miss. His website also lists him as a current Concordia marketing professor.

“When I’m threatened in person in Montreal while walking with my then 9-year-old son, I was told by police, ‘Well, maybe you should stop saying things that upset people,’” Saad told JNS. “I said, ‘Oh, that’s your solution?’”

He said that he asked Montreal police officers if he could carry a gun, knife or pepper spray to protect himself. Officers told him he couldn’t and that he should call 911 instead, he said.

“In Mississippi, I’m going shooting soon, because it’s the land of the free. Because I have the dignity to be able to defend myself,” he told JNS. “In Canada, my right to survive has been subcontracted to the government.”


Palestinian textbooks continue to glorify terror, promote violence, Israeli watchdog says
More than 834,000 Palestinian students in Judea and Samaria are beginning a new school year with textbooks that an Israeli education watchdog says continue to glorify terrorists and promote violence, including in subjects such as mathematics, science and language.

Arik Agasi, COO and researcher at the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se), told The Press Service of Israel that Palestinian school textbooks contain extensive references to violence, antisemitism and jihad.

One example is Dalal Mughrabi, who participated in the 1978 Coastal Road massacre, the deadliest terrorist attack against Israelis before the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas massacre. Terrorists hijacked a bus and took passengers hostage, killing 38 Israeli civilians, including 13 children. Mughrabi and eight other terrorists were also killed in a gun battle.

“The textbook describes the bus massacre and what she did, and presents it in a glorified way,” Agasi told TPS-IL. Mughrabi is featured in fifth-grade reading comprehension and language lessons.

Another eighth-grade story, he said, glorifies suicide bombers who wore explosive belts and killed Israelis. The material appears in reading comprehension and grammar lessons.

Agasi said violence is incorporated into seemingly neutral academic subjects. Students learn addition and subtraction by counting “martyrs,” while Newton’s law of gravity is illustrated with a slingshot aimed at Israeli soldiers.

In biology, he said, students study an image of Muhammad al-Dura, a Palestinian boy whose death in Gaza in September 2000 became the subject of a long-running dispute over whether Israeli forces were responsible. The textbook uses the image to illustrate the body’s response to being shot, including changes in heart rate and the nervous and urinary systems.

IMPACT-se studies school textbooks worldwide against international standards for acceptance of the other, peace and tolerance, based on UNESCO standards and international education conventions. Agasi said IMPACT-se has repeatedly reviewed the books and found a “very serious deterioration” in the newer editions.

“We saw the removal of all attempts to promote peace with Israel that had previously appeared in the textbooks,” Agasi said. “Anything positive—and there wasn’t much of it—was removed.”


Israeli-founded Wonderful hits $5bn valuation less than two years after launch
Israeli-founded artificial intelligence company Wonderful has raised $550 million in one of the year’s largest technology funding rounds, lifting its valuation to $5 billion.

The Series C investment comes just six months after Wonderful was valued at $2 billion, meaning the young company has more than doubled in value since March.

Founded in Tel Aviv by Israeli entrepreneurs Bar Winkler and Roey Lalazar in 2025, Wonderful has secured more than $800 million from investors in less than two years.

The latest round was led by New York-based Insight Partners, with Salesforce joining as a new investor. Existing backers Index Ventures, IVP, Vine Ventures, 9Yards Capital and Bessemer Venture Partners also participated.

Wonderful initially developed AI-powered customer service agents capable of communicating across voice, chat and email while adapting to different languages and local cultures.

It has since expanded its technology into what it describes as an AI operating system for businesses. Its platform can be used to automate entire workflows, develop AI applications and coordinate different AI agents across customer service, employee operations and back-office functions.

The company operates in more than 35 markets and employs around 650 people worldwide, compared with just 65 a year ago. It reportedly plans to increase its workforce to more than 1,000 by the end of 2026.

Customers include major organisations across banking, telecommunications and healthcare. In Israel, it has worked with Bank Hapoalim, Discount Bank, Maccabi Health Services, Bezeq and insurer Menora Mivtachim.
Teva drug meets endpoints in celiac disease trial
The antibody TEV ‘408 (anti-IL 15) was also tested as a treatment for the skin disease vitiligo, and there it also presented encouraging findings.

Teva Pharmaceuticals reported initial positive results in a Phase IIa trial in its antibody for treating celiac disease. The antibody TEV ‘408 (anti-IL 15) was also tested as a treatment for the skin disease vitiligo, and there it also presented encouraging findings. Teva previously reported that the antibody’s sales potential as a treatment for celiac disease, if and when it reaches the market, could reach $1.5-2 billion.

According to the Israeli company’s announcement today, the trial was in adults with celiac disease, and it met its primary endpoint and demonstrated statistically significant and clinically meaningful prevention of intestinal damage caused by gluten exposure, compared with placebo, after eight weeks of treatment. TEV ‘408 was tolerable and no safety signals have been identified so far.

Teva notes the potential of the TEV ‘408 antibody to become a "pipeline-in-a-product," meaning for the treatment of several diseases with a common inflammatory-immune mechanism. Teva SVP global head of R&D and chief medical officer said, "Until now, a gluten-free diet has been the only option for people living with celiac disease, but even patients who followed it often continued to suffer from symptoms, intestinal damage and a major impact on their daily lives. These results highlight the potential to move beyond addressing gluten exposure and treat the disease at its biological source. They also strengthen our confidence in targeting the IL-15 pathway as an approach to reducing immune-mediated intestinal damage."
Israeli drone company XTEND to begin trading on the NYSE
Israeli drone company XTEND will begin trading on Nasdaq this Friday at a valuation of $1.5 billion after a share merger with New York-listed JFB Construction Holdings.

The combined company will then be renamed XTEND AI Robotics Inc and the stock will begin trading under the symbol XTND on September 4. The company’s senior executives will participate in ringing the opening bell on the New York Stock Exchange on September 8.

XTEND was founded in 2018 by brothers Aviv and Matteo Shapira, Rubi Liani, and Adir Tubi.

Strategic investors in the merger signed in February between XTEND and JFB include Eric Trump, Protego Ventures, Unusual Machines, American Ventures, Tel Aviv University’s venture fund TAU Ventures, Aliya Capital, and Agostinelli Group. Trump acts as an adviser to drone-maker Unusual Machines.

“This is an exciting and defining moment for XTEND and especially for the people who built it and believed in our path from the very beginning,” Aviv Shapira, the co-founder and CEO of XTEND, said. “Becoming a publicly traded company is a significant milestone in a journey that began less than a decade ago in Israel. It enables us to accelerate growth, continue to push the boundaries of technology, and bring our systems to more people, organizations, and missions around the world.”
INS Drakon, sixth sub in Israel’s fleet, sets sail from Germany
Israel’s sixth submarine, INS Drakon, held its send-off ceremony this week at the TKMS shipyard in Kiel, Germany. The Israeli flag was hoisted above the submarine, officially marking the beginning of its voyage to Israel.

The ceremony marked the conclusion of Israel and Germany’s joint planning and construction phase, as well as the beginning of the submarine’s voyage to Israel, the Israel Defense Forces said on Tuesday.

INS Drakon is the last of three submarines in the Dolphin-class AIP series purchased by Israel’s Ministry of Defense for its navy.

“The submarine incorporates innovative and advanced technologies that place Israel at the forefront of global military technology and will enhance the Israeli Navy’s operational flexibility for years to come,” said the IDF.

Vice Adm. Eyal Harel, commander in chief of the Israeli Navy, said at the ceremony: “We stand here witnessing the moment when the future submarine of the Israeli Navy, the IDF, and the State of Israel begins its journey home. INS Drakon, together with the three Dakar-class submarines that will join the Israeli Navy, will form a major part of the future of the submarine flotilla, the Israeli Navy, and the IDF.”

Zeev Landau, deputy director general and head of the Israeli Defense Ministry’s Defense Procurement Directorate, described the submarine as “a masterpiece of German industry, developed in close cooperation with the Israeli Navy.”
German Navy tests Israeli ballistic missile, will move forward with procurement
The German Navy said on Wednesday that it had successfully tested an Israeli ballistic missile system the previous night and would now begin to advance plans to procure the projectiles.

The Long-Range Artillery Weapon System, known by the acronym LORA, has a range of 400 kilometers and is accurate to within 10 meters, according to its manufacturer, Israel Aerospace Industries. It is classified as a short-range ballistic missile.

Citing a German Navy spokesman, news agency DPA reported that two German frigates were deployed to waters between Ireland and Iceland for the “secret” test of the Israeli-made LORA on Tuesday night.

“With the successful launch of a ballistic missile last night in the North Atlantic, we made naval history. I am extremely satisfied with this achievement,” said Vice Adm. Jan Christian Kaack, chief of the German Navy, in a post on Instagram.

Kaack said the LORA “can be successfully deployed from our units, and the potential range exceeds anything we have known before.”

“For the protection of Germany and our allies, this test marks a new chapter in deterrence and defense readiness at sea,” he added.

Alongside the remarks from Kaack, the German Navy published footage showing the test of the LORA.

DPA reported that Germany now plans to advance the procurement of the LORA, which would be part of efforts to deter Russia following its invasion of Ukraine.

IAI, in a press release, said during Germany’s test, “the missile was launched to its trajectory, navigated its course to the target, and hit it with utmost precision.”

“Both the weapon system and the missile successfully met all the trial’s objectives,” the Israeli defense firm said.





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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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