Friday, September 25, 2026

09/24 Links Pt1: How the UN Forges Anti-Israel Bias; While the World Is on Fire, the Media Are Still Obsessed with Israel; Was there a famine in Gaza? The top expert answers; Paging Hezbollah - Trailer

From Ian:

How the UN Forges Anti-Israel Bias
Every annual UN Week comes with the certainty of abuse for Israel. The hatefest is already in full swing. Tuesday saw accusations of genocide, the lie du jour. Then, in criticizing Israel, France's Emmanuel Macron said, "Hamas was never forceful in the West Bank." On Sunday, a Hamas terrorist there murdered an Israeli father of six. Were Israel to exit the West Bank, Hamas would quickly take over.

Since 2015, the General Assembly has adopted 187 condemnatory resolutions against Israel, per UN Watch data, "more than twice the number adopted against Russia, China, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Myanmar, Qatar, Pakistan, Cuba, and Venezuela combined." The votes become building blocks of a permanent bureaucracy that supplies anti-Israel findings to be echoed by UN humanitarian and other agencies. The findings are then used by governments and courts to blacklist and sanction Israel.

Only Israel is subject by rule to a Human Rights Council agenda item at every regular session, plus an "open-ended Commission of Inquiry and a uniquely indefinite Special Rapporteur mandate." That's on top of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, Division for Palestinian Rights, Information System on the Question of Palestine, and UNRWA, the forever refugee agency for Palestinians.

The question is why the U.S. and other democracies finance this discrimination, which undermines the ability of all to fight terrorism.
"The Cost of Not Doing Something about Iran Is Substantially Higher" than Doing Something
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday: "The southern lane of the [Hormuz] straits is open. Every day more and more barrels of oil are flowing through there. And they're open, thanks to the efforts of the United States military that's both defending shipping and has removed mines....I'm happy to see that the Saudis were able to restart the East-West pipeline again, which is critical for their economy and also critical for the global economy."

If the Iranians "continue to insist on the desire for a nuclear weapon, their support for proxies in the region - they're the world's leading sponsor of terrorism - then we're going to have big problems with them."

"I think the Iranians misread our system. I think the Iranians are under this illusion that Democrats are going to win in November, and the President will no longer be able to do things against them....The legislative branch is a very important branch of government. I served in it for 14 years, so I understand its powers, but also understand its limitations."

"When it comes to the national security of our country, when it comes to the imposition of both sanctions and the use of military force, the President has extraordinary powers. Every president does."

"The Iranian issue is not a political issue. It is the fact that for generations now - for almost 50 years - every American president...agrees that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. But ultimately, no one ever does anything about it...and he's doing something about it. And it comes at a price and at a cost...but the cost of not doing something about it is substantially higher, especially for future generations."
While the World Is on Fire, the Media Are Still Obsessed with Israel
Jeremy Musighi, an independent researcher, recently released a study analyzing 14.7 million news articles published across 65 languages over the last decade.

He found that, in 2024, news outlets published "more than twice as many stories about Israel as about all 48 countries of sub-Saharan Africa combined."

"On American cable news, Israel was the most-mentioned country - ahead of Iran, Russia, Ukraine, China. On the BBC's news channel, 1 in every 17 broadcast minutes mentioned Israel."

In 2019, long before the war in Gaza, "1 of every 112 news articles on Earth - from all the world's outlets minus Israel's - was primarily about Israel. 1.8 million international articles mentioned it."


Netanyahu Unleashes on ‘Antisemitic’ Mamdani in Fiery UN Speech: ‘You Praise Criminals Convicted of Supporting Hamas’
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly unloaded on "antisemitic" New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani in an unprecedented speech Thursday before the United Nations, saying the Arab mayor’s pro-Hamas activism has transformed Manhattan into an antisemitic cesspool where, he said, Jews are brazenly attacked in the streets by Mamdani’s supporters.

"To all those spreading these lies about my country, and about our brave soldiers, whether they sit in this hall or in the office of the antisemitic mayor of New York, I say this: Shame on you, shame on you for distorting the facts, shame on you for inverting victim and aggressor, shame on you for spitting in the face of truth," Netanyahu said in a strongly worded speech largely boycotted by Arab nations and other anti-Israel countries.

"Since you were elected mayor of this city," Netanyahu continued, "many Jews no longer feel safe in New York. They talk to me. They tell me this isn't the city we remember. It changed so quickly." The Israeli leader accused Mamdani of intentionally stoking Jew-hatred by hobnobbing with prominent antisemites like Hasan Piker and praising "criminals convicted of supporting Hamas."

"The lies you and other antisemites spread about the Jews, and the Jewish state, have real consequences. In New York, Jews are threatened on the way to synagogue. Jews have been stabbed in the streets. Jews are demonized. They're targeted simply for being Jews," Netanyahu said. "You praise criminals convicted of supporting Hamas. You count as friends people like Hasan Piker, who said America deserved 9/11. Some friends you have."

In the feud between leaders, Mamdani may have thrown the first stone. After campaigning on a promise to arrest Netanyahu when he came to New York—citing his indictment for war crimes by the International Criminal Court, whose judges and prosecutors are under formal U.S. sanctions—Mamdani in July gave an extraordinary, Gracie Mansion version of an Oval Office address, telling New Yorkers that his lawyers said he can’t arrest Netanyahu after all. He added that Netanyahu was not welcome in New York.

Even considering Mamdani’s remarks, Netanyahu’s focus on the first-term mayor is an unprecedented departure for a prominent foreign leader speaking before the United Nations, where speeches typically center around pressing diplomatic issues and foreign conflicts. Publicly berating the host city’s mayor signals that Netanyahu views Mamdani as the preeminent American antisemite.

"You invite into your home a Palestinian journalist who filmed Hamas terrorists beating and torturing Israeli hostages, and later admitted that he refused to publish the videos in order to protect, you guessed it, the terrorists," Netanyahu said, referring to Gaza journalist Motaz Azaiza’s recent admission that he withheld footage from Oct. 7 showing Hamas abusing Israelis.

"Your wife liked a post praising the October 7 massacre. She liked another post saying Tel Aviv shouldn't exist," Netanyahu noted, citing exclusive reporting from the Washington Free Beacon’s own Jon Levine. "You refused to condemn any of that. You falsely, repeatedly accuse Israel of genocide. Mr. Mamdani, you tried to stop me from coming here. You tried to silence me. Well, you can't silence me. You can't silence the truth."
Full text: Netanyahu’s address at the U.N. General Assembly IN FULL: Netanyahu calls out the ‘moral cowards’ of the UN during fiery address
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a powerful address to the United Nations General Assembly.


‘Churchillian, meaningful’ Netanyahu United Nations speech, Jewish leaders say
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opened his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday with a message for the diplomats walking out of the hall.

“If there are any other moral cowards who haven’t yet left this hall, please do so now,” he said. “Thank you very much.”

Dozens of delegates departed, as others who remained in the room sang “Am Yisrael chai,” the people of Israel live.

Netanyahu defended Israel’s participation in strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, calling it one of the easiest decisions he had made as prime minister.

“In defending itself, Israel is also defending many of the countries whose delegates just left this hall,” he told attendees of the general debate of the 81st U.N. General Assembly.

Jason Brodsky, policy director at United Against Nuclear Iran, told JNS that the address carried messages to “the international community, antisemites abroad, state threats against Israel and most especially the Iranian people.”

“It was unfortunate many U.N. delegates walked out for his speech but stayed for Masoud Pezeshkian’s address after the Iranian regime killed tens of thousands of its own people in January,” Brodsky told JNS.

Netanyahu rejected accusations that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. “Israel didn’t commit genocide. Israel prevented genocide,” he said.

The Israeli premier also accused Qatar and Turkey of spreading antisemitic claims about the Jewish state.

Brig. Gen. (res.) Erez Winner, chairman of the Israel Defense and Security Forum, told JNS that Netanyahu’s defense of Israel “is not going to change any one of our enemy’s attitude” but that it offers support to Jews abroad.

“Raise your heads,” Winner said. “Be proud of what you are.”

Winner called the speech “meaningful” and said that the Israeli prime minister was answering to “false accusations” thrown at the Jewish state.

“He was giving a deterrence speech,” he told JNS. “Don’t think you can think about attacking us. Look what happened to all of those who tried.”


Commentary Podcast: Genocide Hustle
Today we discuss Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to the UNGA after the son of Israel's ambassador to the US was seriously injured in a terrorist attack, news that the Israeli film NAZA will be released for free online, the fight over the word genocide, and Israel's "damned if you do, damned if you don't" trap. Plus, new polling data in key senatorial races, and John recommends season 6 of Slow Horses.
Call me Back: Is Israel’s Global Standing on The (Israeli) Ballot? - with Amit Segal and Nadav Eyal
Is Israel’s growing isolation abroad becoming a political problem at home?

As Benjamin Netanyahu heads to New York for a brief UN visit just weeks before Israel’s election, Israel’s standing in the United States is deteriorating, even as Netanyahu’s political position at home has improved. Dan is joined by Nadav Eyal and Amit Segal to ask whether Israeli voters see the country’s growing international isolation with the same urgency as diaspora Jews, and how that divide is shaping an increasingly complicated election.

In this episode:
05:48 Netanyahu’s UN speech is really aimed at Israeli voters
10:00 Why American support for Israel is eroding
17:00 Is Israel’s problem bigger than Netanyahu?
20:00 Do Israelis see a threat to Israel’s global standing?
24:00 Could a different government change Israel’s trajectory?
27:00 Why Israel’s electoral map may be shifting toward Netanyahu
34:00 Can Eisenkot win by simply being “not Netanyahu”?
38:00 What happens if neither side in Israel can form a government?


Katz slams Turkish leader over ‘antisemitic and incendiary’ UN address
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz on Thursday accused Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of delivering an “antisemitic and incendiary” U.N. General Assembly speech and warned him against “meddling” in Jerusalem’s affairs.

The Israeli delegation walked out of Erdoğan’s address in New York on Tuesday, in which he called Gaza “the most inhumane and shameful concentration camp of our time.”

In an X post, Katz said that Erdoğan supports the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas while failing to respond to Iranian missiles launched toward Turkish territory or help Saudi Arabia against Houthi attacks despite signing a mutual defense pact, calling him a “paper sultan.”

Katz also accused Erdoğan of abusing Kurds in Turkey.

Israeli U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon separately pointed to comments by Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides during his U.N. speech on Wednesday, saying the Cypriot leader had exposed Erdoğan’s “hypocrisy” over Turkish calls for respect for territorial integrity while Turkish forces remain in northern Cyprus and Syria.


PA’s Abbas at UN: Israel trying to force Palestinians out with ‘genocidal war,’ ‘settler terrorism’
In a pre-recorded address played before the UN General Assembly on Thursday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas knocked US President Donald Trump’s administration for preventing him from attending the forum in person for the second year in a row.

Last week, the US announced that it was extending last year’s ban on Palestinian officials, arguing that Ramallah had violated US legislation that penalizes the PA if it targets Israel in international organizations, advances the unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state, pays stipends to terrorists or glorifies violence.

“We reject these unlawful punitive measures, and we reject the accusations and justifications on which they were based,” Abbas said. “We affirm that we have fulfilled our obligations, carried out a comprehensive national reform program, and upheld our commitment to international law, to shunning violence and terrorism,” the PA leader argued.

In his roughly 22-minute speech, Abbas bitterly criticized Israel for its policies against the Palestinians, insisting that Ramallah has completed the reforms demanded by the international community and recommitted to a two-state solution with a demilitarized Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Taking issue with the US visa ban, Abbas said the PA shouldn’t be punished for backing efforts to target Israel at the UN, the International Court of Justice, and the International Criminal Court, calling the strategy a “peaceful choice.”

He said the Trump administration’s ban violated US obligations as UN host country. Washington argues that it is allowed to restrict visas on national security grounds, but it decided to allow top officials from Iran, despite the ongoing conflict against the Islamic Republic.

‘Genocidal war’
After the brief opening section lamenting the US policy against the PA, Abbas spent most of the rest of his speech criticizing Israel.

He accused it of launching a “genocidal war” against Palestinians in Gaza.

While Abbas has previously condemned Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught that sparked the war three years ago, he made no mention of the Palestinian terror group in his speech at the UN General Assembly.

He also called out Israeli settlement expansion and “settler terrorism [that] is escalating under the protection of the occupation forces.”

Abbas then warned that “Jerusalem is being isolated and Judaized” — an accusation he has made in the past, which Israel argues is a demonstration of his refusal to recognize Jewish ties to the Holy Land.


Gulf nations keep oil flowing despite Iranian attacks, but workarounds are costly
When Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz at the start of the war, choking off sea passage for some 15 million barrels of oil a day, many feared that prices would skyrocket, cratering the world economy.

Instead, nearly seven months on, oil is expensive but not exorbitant, and analysts say the supply is pretty much sufficient to meet current global needs, even as the higher prices cause political problems for US President Donald Trump and others.

That’s because Saudi Arabia and other Gulf producers quickly found alternative routes and reached for unused pipeline capacity. When Iran and its militant allies targeted those, the oil exporters and the US military found others — workarounds for the workarounds — in an often clandestine game of whack-a-mole.

With oil now at around $100 a barrel — higher than before the war but not as bad as feared — Iran has diminished leverage, while a US naval blockade and tightened sanctions smother its own economy.

But the workarounds are expensive and may not be sustainable. The drawing down of existing commercial oil stocks — especially by China — has also helped keep prices in check, but cannot continue indefinitely. And Iran could yet gain an edge with continued attacks on key oil facilities.
Trucks jammed at Turkey-Iran border as US blockade pushes trade overland
Hundreds of trucks idle along the road into Iran from Turkey’s mountainous eastern border. Bustling even in normal times, the countries’ largest crossing is now a make-or-break economic lifeline for Tehran as the US Navy blockades its ports.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has pressed to accelerate overland trade as the blockade limits the vast majority of imports while cutting off the oil and gas sales that largely keep the economy alive.

It’s the latest test of Iran’s endurance. Frustrated Iranian truck drivers spoke to The Associated Press at the Turkey border crossing, where lines now stretch for miles.

“I’ve been driving through this border gate for 15 years. I’ve never had to wait as long as now,” said Muhammed Rıza Shiri, 55, who had waited four days to carry his load of rubber into Iran. “We had to wait at the end of a seven-kilometer (4.3-mile) line. We used to wait, maximum, for three days here. Because of the war, the waiting times exceed five days.” Iran accuses the US of trying to weaken the country.

“They are trying to create difficulties wherever they can, and they are holding nothing back. They are closing off routes, shutting down air routes, blocking land routes and trying to fuel internal divisions,” President Masoud Pezeshkian said Tuesday.

Iran insists the pressure will not change its stance in negotiations with Washington. Tehran wants the US blockade to end before it allows commercial shipping to flow again through the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran’s grip has shaken global markets and oil prices.


'Paging Hezbollah' Takes Viewers Inside the Historic 2024 Operation Against the Terrorist Group
Around 3:30 p.m. local time on September 17, 2024, thousands of pagers used by members of Hezbollah received a message that looked like it came from Hezbollah leadership. Then there was a short beep, and those pagers all exploded almost simultaneously across Lebanon and parts of Syria. The next day, a second wave targeted walkie-talkies in a similar simultaneous explosion.

The terrorist organization had switched to pagers and other low-tech devices for communication after leader Hassan Nasrallah warned members that cell phones could be tracked. The pagers that exploded were part of a new batch ordered from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo, and officials said a small amount of explosives was inserted into the devices before they reached Lebanon.

Dozens of Hezbollah members were killed, and thousands more were wounded, with many injuries to the hands, faces, and eyes. One of the injured was Iran's ambassador to Hezbollah.

But this was not an operation conceived and executed overnight. Instead, it was a multi-year infiltration of Hezbollah supply chains that was meant to strike at the heart of a terrorist organization that had targeted Israel for years.

Israel knew that Hezbollah lived, worked, and operated among ordinary citizens and that a conventional military attack could harm countless innocents, so the plan had a simple mandate: hit the terrorists, not civilians. Even with that directive, the task was still daunting. There were thousands of terrorists and a plan that could have been exposed at any moment. Despite the enormity of the mission, Israel knew it could exploit Hezbollah's weakness — its trust of pagers and walkie-talkies — and turn that into a modern-day Trojan Horse.

Now, in a brand new just announced film, director Justin Folk has turned the remarkable, daring story of how Israel struck at the heart of Hezbollah into a thrilling, intriguing documentary: "Paging Hezbollah."

"Paging Hezbollah" reveals the gripping story of how the operation infiltrated Hezbollah's networks, including the engineering of devices and the supply chain, to the work that deceived Hezbollah into adopting older technologies it thought were secure. It features firsthand interviews and accounts from high-ranking individuals connected to the operation, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, General David Petraeus, former Director of Mossad David Barnea, former member of the Israel Defense Forces Intelligence Corps Sarit Zehavi, and others.

It was an operation 15 years in the making, and one made all the more urgent by the October 7, 2023 terror attacks.

I was privileged to get an exclusive sneak peek of the film, and I found it absolutely riveting. Folk took a complex geopolitical story with a long history and turned it into a tight, 93-minute mix of archival and news footage, dramatic reenactments, and interviews with those aforementioned officials as well as survivors of the October 7 terror attacks and the sister of a victim of the deadly July 27, 2024 Hezbollah missile attack on Majdal Shams, the Druze town in Golan Heights. Near the end of the film, Prime Minister Netanyahu reminds us all what's at stake in this conflict: "The test of Western civilization is now, in Israel," he said. "Because Israel is fighting the forces that will destroy Western civilization and Western freedom."
Paging Hezbollah | Official Teaser HD
Don't miss the Teaser Trailer for Paging Hezbollah, a new documentary film by Justin Folk. Out OCTOBER 30th.


JPost Editorial: Pray for Leiter: The importance of supporting soldiers who protect Israeli life and their families
Israel's reservists carry an enormous weight for their country
Read the whole account, and its honesty becomes clear. A person can believe in his duty and feel the strain of carrying it.

He can disagree with those making the decisions and still answer the call. No country should mistake that resolve for an inexhaustible supply of time, health, or courage.

Israel has needed its reservists across multiple fronts since the October 7 massacre. Their families have lived with repeated departures, interrupted work, and the fear that accompanies every call.

The Leiter family’s name is known because Yechiel represents Israel in Washington. Countless families whose names never reach a newspaper have carried comparable burdens. They, too, deserve to be seen while they are serving and long after they return.

'Choosing life' means caring for the soldiers who protect it
Yechiel wrote after the attack that he believes prayer and national unity can bring miracles. “Neria needs a miracle,” he said, adding: “They choose death – we choose life.”

A father whose son is fighting for his life is entitled to speak with that force. For the rest of us, choosing life must also mean tending to those who protect it: giving wounded service members and their families sustained care, making repeated reserve service bearable, examining attacks seriously, and sharing the demands of defense as fairly as possible.

That requires support for families and employers long after the headlines have moved on. Officials must hear reservists who voice criticism, even when those same reservists continue to serve.

At Shaare Zedek, Yechiel’s daughter gave birth after visiting her brother. A new life began in one part of the hospital while doctors worked to save Neria in another. Nothing about that proximity tells us how Neria’s story will end. For now, the only ending to seek is his recovery.

The family has asked us to pray. We join that prayer. We should also listen to what Neria wrote when he was well enough to explain why he kept going – and make sure Israel lives up to the people who do.


IDF issues rare contradiction of police after claim tunnel route found in West Bank
The military accused the police on Thursday of publishing “irresponsible statements,” a day after the police claimed it had found a tunnel route in the West Bank city of Qalqilya, near the central Israeli city of Kfar Saba.

On Wednesday, the Israel Police announced that it had located a 25-meter-deep (82-foot-deep) tunnel in Qalqilya, with weapons inside, along with “the start of an excavation of another tunnel.”

During the operation, four suspects were detained, police said, without mentioning any involvement of the Israel Defense Forces in the raid.

The IDF said that “contrary to official and irresponsible statements that emerged on the matter, following an examination of the shafts, the presence of a tunnel route was ruled out.”

The military said the two shafts were approximately 12 meters (39 feet) deep, not 25, and that “it was also determined that the shafts were not located in proximity to the area of the security barrier” near the West Bank border.

A shaft is dug vertically into the ground, which can be used to hide or store people or things, but, unlike a tunnel, does not allow for passage between multiple locations. Two shafts are seen in Qalqilya, in the West Bank, September 2026. (Israel Police)

According to the IDF, the weapons found in Qalqilya were located “near the shafts,” not in them. The army said the weapons included “an M16, a hunter’s rifle, a handgun and ammunition, which were confiscated by forces.”

According to the initial police statement, the equipment included a sniper rifle and material to produce explosives, which police later specified was potassium fertilizer. The army did not explicitly challenge the police’s account of the weaponry, and the statements did not necessarily contradict each other.

According to the police, the shafts also included some sort of closed-circuit security camera system.


Committee to Protect Journalists removes 22, including 20 who engaged in combat, from list of deaths in Israel, Gaza
The Committee to Protect Journalists said that it removed 22 more people from its list of journalists killed in Israel, Gaza and Judea and Samaria—the latter which it calls “occupied”—after Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad obituaries identified some of those listed as combatants.

The review, released on Thursday, found that 20 of the 22 engaged in combat. The committee said that the other three did not qualify as journalists or media workers. It also added six, whom it had dropped from the list, and reclassified 12 others.

The New York-based group still maintained that Israel remains responsible for “by far the majority of killings of journalists and media workers worldwide since 2023.”

The committee had removed 20 people from its database, including eight whom it said fought for Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

A spokesman for HonestReporting, a media watchdog, told JNS that “Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are no longer even bothering to hide how their operatives have posed as journalists.”

“Why would they when the CPJ has been such a willing participant in the charade?” the spokesman said. “Gaza’s media ecosystem has been contaminated by proximity to Hamas and its allies. This is something CPJ simply refuses to admit despite being shown, repeatedly, to be complicit in helping the system to perpetuate while placing the blame on Israel.”

Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of the Committee to Protect Journalists, stated that “the accuracy and credibility of CPJ’s research are fundamental to our mission and to efforts to seek accountability and justice for journalists and media workers around the world.”

The committee bases the “determinations we make solely on whether individuals meet our definitions of who we consider to be a journalist, not an individual’s affiliation or views, nor in response to pressure or intimidation from any government or interest group,” she stated. “Our review and a subsequent audit of our work show that CPJ has done just that.”

Ginsberg has previously said that “Israel has a long history of smearing Palestinian journalists as terrorists without providing credible evidence, and with deadly consequences.”

The committee said that it reviewed 229 deaths recorded between October 2023 and August 2026.

Among the six who were reinstated was Assaad Shamlakh, whom the committee previously determined was not a journalist or media worker. In August, Airwars, a nonprofit London-based airstrike monitoring group, reclassified Shamlakh as a militant after a Palestinian Islamic Jihad-affiliated Telegram account identified him as a “fighter.”


What Israel’s Military Knows About Success That Most People Don’t
The secret to the success of the Israel Defense Forces involves many factors but according to JNS Israel military correspondent Yaakov Lappin, it involves creating a culture as much as the courage of its soldiers, air crews and sailors and their effective use of cutting-edge technology. Lappin, who has written about this in his recently published book, Blue Team Dynamics: Three Proven Leadership Principles Inspired by IDF Sources for Business and Life, joins JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin on this week’s episode of Think Twice to discuss how this works.

The book is based on years of research and interviews dating back to 2018. According to Lappin, the three principles that are the foundation of IDF culture involve the importance of after-action review of everything they do, cultivating the ability to switch from the routine to an emergency mode and encouraging the need to recognize how to manage long-term change inside an organization. As he notes, the same ideas can help individuals or non-military organizations and businesses also succeed.

Lappin concedes that many of these lessons were forgotten by Israel’s military and intelligence establishment as well as their political masters prior to the catastrophe of Oct. 7, 2023, which occurred almost exactly 50 years after the IDF suffered another disaster that was also rooted in organizational failure. With respect to Oct. 7, Lappin says the mistake came from a basic human failing in which, “the human mind adopts and falls in love with a narrative” that is very difficult to break out of. This overrode the culture that should have prevented the complacency that led to the Hamas and Palestinian terrorists being able to carry out the worst mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.

Prioritizing after-action detailed post-training and combat analysis started inside the Israeli Air Force but it has spread to the other branches of the military now too. That involves creating a culture where admitting mistakes of any kind is not only permitted but lauded as necessary, especially where it concerns commanders.

The necessity of knowing when to switch to emergency mode was actually highlighted by the way many in the IDF responded to Oct. 7. Those efforts ensured that the grievous damage inflicted by Hamas was limited and then allowed the Israelis to defeat the terrorists. Nevertheless, it’s still true that the IDF failed to anticipate this “black swan” event and that the procedures which should have prevented that mistake which involve looking for “black feathers,” rather than the swan itself, didn’t happen.

According to Lappin, the “Blue Team” approach, which refers to the creation of two groups dedicated to both planning IDF actions and those that seek to examine and defeat those plans as an enemy would, must also be credited for the amazing triumphs Israel achieved after Oct. 7 in Lebanon and against Iran. And as he notes, the very same ideas have also been applied by IDF veterans in their post-military careers in business and technology.




Was there a famine in Gaza? The top expert answers ┃Alex de Waal
Did Israel starve Gaza, and why don't many Israelis believe the experts who say it did? Noam sits down with Alex de Waal, the world's leading famine scholar (World Peace Foundation, Tufts), for a tough but good-faith debate. De Waal's case: "If Benjamin Netanyahu wanted every child in Gaza to have breakfast tomorrow, he could do it." Noam's case is about why skeptics stopped taking the experts at their word. De Waal himself once described pre-war Gaza as "very well nourished," after years of open-air prison headlines. He wrote an essay on how human rights advocates, himself included, have run ahead of the evidence. He warned in March 2024 of "thousands, if not tens of thousands" of deaths. Then there's the doctors' letter claiming 62,413 starvation deaths, and whether the experts pushed back hard enough. De Waal answers all of it. They get into Mike Spagat's mortality survey and the age pattern that didn't look like famine, the 2025 blockade and the IPC famine declaration, flour prices, Hamas and aid, and whether it's still famine if people aren't dying. Both of them give ground. Periel closes on the hostages, and de Waal ends with a plea about Sudan.

0:00 "Very well nourished": why Israelis doubt the famine experts
11:48 "The mud sticks": de Waal's own confession
25:03 "Thousands, if not tens of thousands" vs. Spagat's death count
40:11 Feroze Sidhwa's 62,413 and "all errors are equal"
47:34 The 2025 blockade and the famine declaration
59:27 Flour prices, Hamas hoarding and Israel's "calibration"
1:06:50 Counting the dead: is it famine if people aren't dying?
1:18:31 The hostages, and Sudan


Improving Israel's Public Diplomacy Will Not Be Enough
The 25 minutes of applause for "NAZA" (collateral damage) at the Venice Film Festival reflects the depth of the antisemitic sickness taking root across the Western world. Official and unofficial spokespeople have been marshaling facts, data, their experience from military service and other evidence to refute this blood libel and repair the serious damage it has caused. But it is equally important to recognize the underlying psychological landscape from which this phenomenon emerges.

The classic historical blood libel was never a matter of facts, explanations or evidence. It reflected a permanent state of mind, an identity narrative, and a deep-seated consciousness. That is why blood libels persisted, lying dormant until the next outbreak. The current antisemitic film is another link in the chain of blood libels. The Jews have been replaced by the State of Israel, which is now blamed for almost every evil in our world.

Antisemitism toward Israel is reflected in the unique demands placed upon it to meet standards that no other country is required to meet. That is why accusations of genocide and demonstrations against Israel began the day after the Oct. 7 massacre, before Israel had undertaken any military action.
Brig.-Gen. (res.) Jacob Nagel: The IDF Does Not Use AI to Replace Human Judgment in Battlefield Decisions
A film that won an award at the Venice Film Festival claims that the IDF uses artificial intelligence (AI) to direct fire and indiscriminately harm innocent people.

It is therefore important to explain the actual role of artificial intelligence in military intelligence systems and to clarify why the claims presented in such a biased manner do not reflect the way these systems are actually operated.

Artificial intelligence is an extremely important tool that can accelerate the process of identifying an enemy and developing potential targets.

However, it is important to understand that the only entity that makes a decision concerning life and death is a human being.

Military orders and procedures explicitly prohibit relying exclusively on AI applications in situations involving human life without human involvement.

The system is providing recommendations, not making the decision.

The identification of a target must be supported by at least two separate indicators from independent sources, and the final decision must be made by a human authority.
Controversial Gaza documentary ‘NAZA’ to stream online for free in November
“NAZA” co-director Yuval Abraham on Thursday said the controversial film about the killing of civilians in Gaza would be published online for free in November “because of the public interest and significance.”

The documentary, based on Abraham’s investigative journalistic pieces in far-left Israeli outlets +972 and Local Call, features interviews with 24 digitally masked Israeli soldiers, mainly intelligence officers, and alleges the Israel Defense Forces used AI to systematically target Gazan civilians, which the military denies.

According to The Guardian, which produced the film, it is slated for cinematic release on September 28 in 56 countries and territories, but not Israel, the West Bank or Gaza.

“The film has been offered to a number of distributors and cinemas in Israel. The Guardian will also be exploring other ways to enable the film to be seen in the occupied Palestinian territories,” the newspaper said.

In his first post on X since controversy erupted around “NAZA” in Israel, Abraham said the film had been offered to cinemas in the country free of charge.

“Screening it would be a brave decision in the face of great violence that seeks to bury it,” Abraham said in the Hebrew-language post.

The film, whose name is the Hebrew acronym for “collateral damage,” premiered to record applause at the Venice Film Festival on September 10, and went on to win the festival’s special jury prize. It hasn’t been released publicly yet.

Among the film’s allegations is one, featured in a promotional video of the documentary, that the IDF planned a strike during the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip in which 500 civilian deaths had been anticipated. The IDF has denied that claim as “completely false.”


Kristof Humiliates Himself and Harvard With Israel Dog-Rape Libel
A columnist for the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof, who is married to the vice chair of Harvard Board of Overseers, Sheryl WuDunn, publicly humiliated himself Friday afternoon on a Harvard Kennedy School stage for what was billed as the Malcolm H. Wiener Lecture in International Political Economy. It turned out to be not a lecture but a pathetic, apparently unprepared question-and-answer style performance by Kristof, who doubled down on his unverified fantasy that Israel is using a trained dog to rape Palestinian prisoners. Kristof said this had happened to "numerous" prisoners, though he also said he couldn’t say how many. He claimed he knew this based on reports from human rights groups that he said didn’t talk to each other but that he then conceded under questioning did talk to each other.

Kristof’s honorarium for the appearance was undisclosed. A Harvard Kennedy School spokesman didn’t respond to my query about it. But Harvard’s English and history departments paid a previous anti-Israel guest lecturer, Ta-Nehisi Coates, a $35,000 honorarium and $7,500 in travel expenses "for a 5 star hotel" to appear on campus on September 24, 2025, the second day of Rosh Hashanah. Kristof’s non-lecture "lecture" was Friday afternoon on the weekend of Yom Kippur.

I can’t quite do justice in text to the performance, characterized as it was by Kristof’s self-contradictions, mispronunciations, nervous laughter, and likening of Israel to the Nazis, an instance of Holocaust inversion that violates the definition of antisemitism that Harvard adopted as part of its settlement with Jewish students that a federal court said Harvard had failed. I encourage you to watch the brief video highlights embedded here. They are entertaining, though not so entertaining as to justify an honorarium anywhere on the Coates level, and less entertaining if you consider the effect they have in stoking Jew-hate. The editor of the Times, Joe Kahn, has distanced himself from the story, though in an Orwellian twist the Times publicity department later distanced itself from its own editor’s remarks, insisting that Kahn’s distancing from the story reflected merely the news department’s distancing itself from opinion-column-style coverage generally, not any specific weakness of the underlying dog-rape account, which Kristof attributed largely to anonymous or Hamas-linked sources.

The Kristof dog-rape allegation figures prominently in a shareholder lawsuit filed this week against the New York Times Company by lawyers including the attorney general of Florida and the National Jewish Advocacy Center. That suit includes an account by a "whistleblower" who worked at the Times from 2016 to 2026. Among the allegations in the suit is that when the whistleblower "complained of the widespread culture of anti-Israel bias," a Times human resources representative responded, "If you don’t like our values here, maybe you should go find a place whose values align with yours."







 




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Elder of Ziyon - حـكـيـم صـهـيـون



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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