Tuesday, September 29, 2026

09/28 Links Pt2: The Quiet Islamic Colonization of America; Bondi survivor takes his warning to the UN’s doorstep; Germany’s academic centre for the denial of antisemitism

From Ian:

Pierre Rehov: The Quiet Islamic Colonization of America
For 25 years, American counterterrorism policy has been organized around the image of September 11: a terror cell, an aircraft, an explosion. Billions went into intelligence, airport screening and wars abroad. Across those same years, a slower project advanced through channels that no security agency was built to monitor: one moving through universities, lobbying organizations, municipal, state and national politics, and the vocabulary of civil rights. It required nothing more explosive than money, patience and a working knowledge of how an open society such as the United States functions.

The Muslim Brotherhood grasped the possibilities long before Washington did.

Millions of Muslims have no interest in seeing political Islam govern anyone, and many may have even crossed an ocean to escape it. The organizations that claim to speak in their name are another matter, and their central achievement has been to make the two indistinguishable, so that a political network registers as a whole population.

The progressives think that the Islamists will boost them to power, and the Islamists think the progressives will boost them to power.

While countries in the West are always nonchalantly accused of imperialism and colonization, how come no one ever mentions the Islamic imperialism and colonization of Christian Byzantium – now Turkey – let alone the entire Ottoman Empire? How come no one ever mentions the Islamic colonization of the Coptic Christian country of Egypt, or of northern Cyprus in 1974? Or the formerly Buddhist countries of southeast Asia, such as the Maldives, Malaysia or Indonesia?

The Islamic colonization now underway in Europe and the United States carries no racial or demographic content.... The territory being taken is ideological: it changes hands whenever a political movement discovers that open institutions can be used more profitably than if they were attacked, or whenever foreign money purchases standing inside institutions that form the next generation of American elites, or whenever two movements with incompatible values find they can trade access for votes.

Americans may not notice it right away, or now, but one day, unless actions are taken as soon as possible to prevent it, they may wake up one morning to find themselves under Islamic rule.

The process is arithmetic: small concessions, each too minor to be worth a fight, accumulating across institutions, phrases and political territory until reversing the situation would demand a confrontation no one wishes to have. Europe crossed this threshold without even noticing it. America has not.

The interval, however, in which recognizing the problem still costs less than reversing it is not indefinite.
I’m from Gaza – peace will only come if we rid our mosques and schools of radicalism
Dismantling the infrastructure of radicalism and countering ideological mobilisation in mosques and schools is no less vital than disarmament. In fact, it is the fundamental prerequisite for ensuring that violence does not reignite the moment the rubble is cleared. Rebuilding mosques without altering the rhetoric that prevailed prior to October 7 means recycling the very same concepts, giving rise to a new generation that reproduces the crisis – an outcome directly opposed to the interests of Gaza, its residents, and regional stability. The Strip requires a permanent end to conflict and the attainment of its rights through diplomatic and legitimate avenues.

Achieving this demands an end to the monopoly over the pulpit and the classroom. For decades, the educational and religious systems were exploited to steer collective consciousness exclusively toward armed conflict, with pulpits utilised for factional mobilisation and attacks on dissenters. Thus, an urgent need has emerged to restore the mosque's original role as a place of worship and a hub for enlightened thought, promoting values of tolerance and coexistence – drawing inspiration from successful, developing regional models such as the United Arab Emirates.

Stripping ideological control from the pulpits requires institutional oversight and independent bodies to ensure they are not converted into tools for factional mobilisation that tear the social fabric apart. Similarly, the educational environment must be reformed and protected. This goes beyond purging curricula of incitement to prohibiting paramilitary activities within schools and insulating educational facilities from partisan exploitation, thereby safeguarding children from early radicalisation.

Nevertheless, banning extreme ideas alone is insufficient, as human consciousness cannot remain a vacuum. The success of these endeavours hinges on presenting a civil, intellectual, and cultural alternative grounded in citizenship and the rule of law. Replacing narrow ideological affiliations with full citizenship guarantees equal rights and duties under judicial and institutional frameworks, reinforcing the view of a young person as an independent individual possessed of dignity, ambition, and the capacity to contribute to society.

Disarming Hamas without ridding educational and religious institutions of their radical ideas will keep the door to conflict wide open. Gaza's future will be determined inside classrooms and atop pulpits, where a consciousness is forged that will either repeat past mistakes or lay the foundation for a generation committed to peace, development, and investment in the future.
David Collier: Simon & Schuster Run From Social Responsibility
The issue is not whether Simon & Schuster agrees with Susan Abulhawa. The issue is why the company apparently believes its social responsibility extends far enough to cancel some authors over their conduct, but feels justified in helping to bring Abulhawa to a wider audience.

These aren’t forgotten books sitting passively on a backlist.

These are new editions. A fresh commercial decision has been made. Covers are produced, publicity generated, books marketed and the reputation and resources of one of the world’s largest publishers placed behind them.

And Abulhawa herself is making the political purpose of the republications explicit.

In August, she urged supporters to pre-order the Simon & Schuster editions, announcing that her pre-order royalties would go to the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM).

That deserves scrutiny. PYM has a documented history of organising and campaigning alongside Samidoun, which the U.S. government designated in 2024 as a “sham charity” serving as an international fundraiser for the PFLP, a U.S. and EU designated terrorist organisation.

This makes the publisher’s attempt to distance itself increasingly difficult to swallow. Simon & Schuster is actively republishing and promoting the books; Abulhawa is explicitly directing the resulting royalties towards politically extremist causes. If any of that money crosses over into support for terrorist networks, it opens up an entirely different discussion.

Abulhawa has openly supported terrorism. Why on earth would Simon & Schuster want to be anywhere near this?

Someone at Simon & Schuster approved that decision.

Was that person aware of what Abulhawa posted on October 7?

Did they know about her explicit embrace of armed violence?

Did they know about the “parasites,” “demons,” “cockroaches” and “ghouls?”

If they didn’t, Simon & Schuster has a serious due-diligence problem.

If they did, there is a far more uncomfortable question to answer.

Where exactly is its line?

Would Simon & Schuster commission new editions from an author who repeatedly described Muslims as parasites, demons and cockroaches, celebrated someone who massacred Muslim civilians and openly expressed support for those carrying out terrorist violence against Muslims?

If not, what principle distinguishes that hypothetical case from this one?

This isn’t about banning Susan Abulhawa. She is free to write. Publishers are free to publish her. Readers are free to buy her books.

But Simon & Schuster is equally accountable for the choices it makes.

Corporations cannot plaster their websites with promises about diversity, inclusion, safe environments and social responsibility, invoke those principles when deciding one author is beyond the pale, and then retreat behind “her views are her own” when confronted with another.

The question is no longer what Susan Abulhawa believes; she has made that abundantly clear.

The question is what Simon & Schuster believes, and whether its loudly proclaimed principles mean anything when the people targeted by dehumanizing rhetoric happen to be Jews.


US government sues Ohio hospital over wrongful firing of surgeon for 'being Jewish'
An Ohio hospital is being sued by the US government for firing a surgeon for “being Jewish,” according a lawsuit filed last week.

The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) filed a lawsuit against Mercy Health in Youngstown, claiming a violation of federal law by subjecting a Jewish orthopedic surgeon to unfavorable terms and conditions of employment and “firing him because of his religion and race, shortly after the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel.”

The surgeon – named in other media as Dr. Ian Walton – had a successful practice with Mercy for many years and performed well, “including exceeding Mercy’s productivity goals”, the lawsuit claimed.

However, Mercy reportedly subjected Walton to antisemitic remarks throughout his employment and ultimately fired him in November 2023, advising him that he was “being terminated for a reason other than work performance.”

“After years of antisemitic harassment, shortly after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, the charging party faced a barrage of comments in the workplace blaming ‘the Jews’ for the attack,” said EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas.

EEOC attempted to reach a settlement before filing the lawsuit
Lucas also said Walton was excluded from scheduled meetings and had his surgery time blocks reduced. Shortly thereafter, his contract was terminated.

“The EEOC will not hesitate to bring litigation to protect Jewish workers from unlawful discrimination and ensure they do not face adverse action simply because they are Jewish. Antisemitism has no place in the American workplace,” Lucas added.
Germany’s academic centre for the denial of antisemitism
Yet Wolfgang Benz’s remarks are no aberration. One could be forgiven for thinking that this form of relativising antisemitism has become something of a speciality at the so-called Centre for Research on Antisemitism. Whenever there is a major debate about blatant Jew-hatred from the political left or from within the Muslim community, the Berlin research institute can reliably be counted on to offer an unsettling explanation.

Earlier this week, Stefanie Schüler-Springorum, the current director of the Centre for Research on Antisemitism, spoke out to make clear that she regarded the fierce debate about antisemitism in the Left Party following its election victory in Berlin as inappropriate.

“Antisemitism exists in all parties,” the 64-year-old stressed. “I see this as an exaggerated debate which is obviously also about influencing the formation of a government in Berlin.”

So, in other words, this is supposedly all just a smear campaign by the ruling centre-right Christian Democrats? “Antisemitism exists in all parties” – would Schüler-Springorum say the same about the far-right AfD and dismiss it as a trivial matter?

Who, after all, would dream of calling it a problem when elements of the Left Party fraternises with Hamas supporters, hold party events with PFLP activists, and smears the Jewish state as “genocidal”, reviving the old antisemitic blood-libel myth?

No less revealing, and no less resounding, was the Centre’s public silence after Hamas’s genocidal attacks on October 7, 2023. A few months after the massacres, Remko Leemhuis, the head of AJC Berlin, wrote in a widely noticed opinion piece for this newspaper:
“Since Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, the Centre for Research on Antisemitism at TU Berlin has contributed absolutely nothing of relevance to the public debate. One might have thought that such an institution would be ideally placed to contribute scholarly expertise on the antisemitic mass murder carried out by Islamist death squads.”

He continued:
“Anyone who looks more closely at the institute’s research inevitably discovers that Islamic Jew-hatred has for decades been systematically ignored or relativised in the Centre’s academic work, so it is hardly surprising that it has nothing to say on the subject. Quite the contrary: at the end of last year, Uffa Jensen, deputy director and professor at the institute, responded to a question about the prevalence of antisemitism among Muslims in Germany by saying that this had ‘not yet been researched in detail’.”

The same Uffa Jensen made national headlines shortly afterwards over another issue. First, despite fierce protests from the Jewish community, he was appointed antisemitism commissioner at TU Berlin. As the Central Council of Jews put it: “Professor Jensen has not demonstrated in the past that he understands the situation facing Jews,” citing his opposition to the IHRA definition of antisemitism and his failure “to speak credibly about the dangers of antisemitism emanating from Muslim communities”, particularly after October 7. “This appointment rolls out the red carpet for left-wing extremists and Hamas sympathisers.”

A little later, he effectively gave his boss, Geraldine Rauch, a kosher certificate – the president of TU Berlin, who had liked on social media posts showing Netanyahu with a swastika and accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza.

Why does the Centre for Research on Antisemitism recognise Jew-hatred when it comes from the right, but not when it comes from the left or from within the Muslim community? By the strict logic of scholarship, should not the same standards applied to the AfD also apply to the Left Party? And should not fanatical Arab Jew-haters be judged by the same standards as jackbooted neo-Nazis?

Perhaps the state of Berlin and the university leadership should finally ask themselves whether such a centre still has any justification for existing. The purpose of research is to come as close as possible to the truth – not to obscure it for ideological reasons.

At the very least, in the interests of honesty, the Centre for Research on Antisemitism should give itself a new name. As a working title, “Centre for the Denial of Antisemitism” would certainly not be the worst suggestion.
Netherlands summons Israeli ambassador over ousting of Dutch Ramallah diplomats
The Dutch government on Monday said it had summoned Israel's ambassador in the Netherlands to protest against Israel's decision to revoke the diplomatic status of Dutch diplomats at the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority.

The Netherlands had earlier said it regretted Israel's move, which it called "unnecessary."

Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar on Sunday ordered all of the diplomats to return their documentation to Israel within seven days of the announcement, at which time diplomatic immunities and rights granted by Israel will expire.

“If the Netherlands wishes to continue representing its interests vis-à-vis the Palestinians, it may do so from the territory of the Palestinian Authority and not from the territory of the State of Israel,” Sa’ar stated.

He added that he would not allow moves intended to harm Israel, like the Dutch ban on imports from the West Bank, to go without a response.
Dutch authorities force El Al passengers through customs check for West Bank products
Passengers arriving at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport on an El Al flight from Tel Aviv claim customs officials searched their luggage for products from West Bank settlements.

The claim came one day after a new Dutch law banning the import, sale or purchase of settlement products, with penalties of up to six years in prison, came into effect. The new legislation allows Dutch customs to inspect personal luggage for products made in Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria, which the Netherlands define as “illegal settlements.”

The ban extends to souvenirs, gifts and products carried for personal use and passengers may be required to prove where an item was produced.

Dutch media news site Nieuwrechts reported that passengers were required to put their luggage through an X-ray machine and customs officials asked about wine, dates, olives and other products that could have originated in areas covered by the new restrictions.

Its article on 25 September alleges: “The man operating the screening machine became irritated by the El Al passengers huddled together in the small space by the sign: Nothing to declare. He stood up…..and shouted: ‘Go away, go away, get in line. I can’t see anything on the screen like this. Everyone needs to be checked!’

A man responded: ‘Hey dude, they’re from Israel. They don’t speak Dutch.’ Then the customs officer roared in English: ‘Shut the f*** up, shut the f*** up and wait!!!’ One of the Israelis asked: ‘What is going on? Why do they treat us like this?’

It reports that a mother with young children said: “We are just tourists. We didn’t do anything wrong, we come here for Sukkot, Jewish Holidays.'”

Posters, with a list of prohibited items, have been distributed with a list of prohibited items and airport lightboxes display the sanctions and the penalties that can be imposed.

The product ban prompted Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar to revoke the credentials of Dutch diplomats serving in Ramallah on Sunday 27 September, writing: “In light of the entry into force last week of an order banning the import and trade of products from Judea and Samaria, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, we informed the Dutch Embassy in Israel this evening that Dutch diplomats operating in Ramallah must return within seven days the diplomatic documentation issued to them by Israel.”

He added: “If the Netherlands wishes to continue representing its interests with the Palestinians, it may do so from Palestinian Authority territory, rather than from the territory of the State of Israel.”

Israel’s Foreign Ministry is now warning citizens planning to travel to the Netherlands that they “may encounter difficulties and lengthy, invasive baggage inspections.”

As part of a post on his Twitter/X account, Israeli Opposition Leader Yair Lapid said: “The fact that Israelis are landing in the Netherlands and rummaging through their bags to search for and confiscate products from the settlements is a diplomatic failure unlike anything that has ever happened before.”

US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee commented on social media: “There were some people from Netherlands in our church this morning who are flying back tomorrow & have to check their souvenirs to make sure they aren’t from Judea/Samaria-possible 6 yr prison term. A Nativity set from Bethlehem could put you in prison! Insane!”


Dutch university suspends Palestinian student who claimed involvement in Oct. 7
Maastricht University in the Netherlands has suspended a Palestinian student who posted a video claiming involvement in the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, the university’s Observant Online outlet reported on Sunday.

In the video, which went viral on social media last week, the student watches Qatar’s Al Jazeera outlet airing Hamas propaganda. He then points at the screen, gives a thumbs-up and shouts, “7 October. This is me.”

Maastricht University decided to ban the student from entering university buildings, as well as bar him from attending classes or sitting for exams, Observant Online reported.

A university spokesperson told the outlet it acted out of “concern for the safety of the student himself, fellow students and staff” and said the measure should not be construed as punishing the student.

The university is not investigating the post or the student’s claim, but will talk with him, spokesman Koen Augustijn said.

The student is one of more than 40 Palestinians from Gaza who were invited by the Dutch government to come to the Netherlands this summer to study or work.

Dutch lawmaker Diederik Boomsma of the right-wing JA21 party on Sunday called for the student to be deported and handed over to Israel to stand trial.

“This kid claims involvement in Oct. 7. Was he even screened?” Boomsma wrote on X.

Boomsma, his party’s spokesman on asylum and migration, accused universities of bringing “Gazan terror scum” to the Netherlands. He said some schools had even applied for asylum on their behalf, calling it “next-level malicious stupidity.”

He urged the government to stop issuing provisional residence visas.

A Dutch Holocaust researcher, Amanda Kluveld, told JNS last year she was facing serious threats and intimidation after standing up for Jewish students at Maastricht University.

Kluveld, a longtime critic of on-campus anti-Israel groups, said in an interview that her attempt to film an antisemitic protest outside a classroom led to a concerted effort to push her out.

Since Oct. 7, Kluveld has faced increasing threats to her safety—both on the Maastricht University campus and at home—due to her vocal support of the Jewish state, the Holocaust scholar said.

“I have to take certain safety measures, and at my workplace, certain measures have been taken,” she told JNS. “I’m no longer able to enter my office; nameplates have been removed; I’ve been almost completely removed from the website; my digital existence was almost erased.”

The threats have extended beyond the campus, with dead pigeons—sometimes beheaded and with their hearts removed—left on her vehicle and blood smeared on the car doors, as well as online threats, she said.


Bondi survivor takes his warning to the UN’s doorstep
Survival, Ostrovsky said, carried “a heavy responsibility: a responsibility to remember those taken, to tell the truth and to sound a warning”.

He said the warning applied on the streets of New York as well, where rhetoric singling out Israel and calls to “Globalise the Intifada” were “now given political respectability, or met with clichéd condemnations and empty promises of action”.

“The lesson I bring from Sydney is simple: That hatred directed at Jews, or manifesting against the Jewish state, when ignored, excused or mainstreamed, will lead to violence.”

His message to the leaders meeting nearby was that “you cannot fight racism while tolerating antisemitism” and “you cannot defend human rights while denying them to Jews”.

He called on Jews to respond by living openly and without apology.

“The answer to antisemitism cannot be Jewish silence. It must be Jewish strength.”

While in New York, Ostrovsky met American Jewish leaders to discuss the situation in Australia since Bondi. He also met Nickolay Mladenov, the Board of Peace’s high representative for Gaza, and US officials, including Ambassador Jeff Bartos, the US representative for UN management and reform.

UJA-Federation of New York and the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York hosted the rally at Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza, near UN headquarters, with partners including the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
Australian Muslim preacher calls to take up arms against enemies including Jews, Christians
A Muslim preacher from Melbourne, known as Abu Ahmad and associated with the Al Bayyinah Islamic Centre in Springvale, urged his followers to take up arms against Christians and Jews, according to local reports.

At a sermon in July, Ahmad instructed devotees not to take Jews and Christians for friends and declared that devotion to Allah carries an obligation to oppose and fight enemies.

For the sake of Allah, it includes the obligation to declare enmity for his sake, opposition for the sake of Allah,” Ahmad said in a clip posted to the center’s social media feed. “It is to declare opposition: indeed, to take up arms against his enemies, to shun them, and to stay far from them both in word and deed.”

According to local reports, Ahmad’s extremist rhetoric has drawn national attention due to documented ties linking his Melbourne institution to controversial Sydney networks.

The Al Bayyinah Islamic Centre, established in Springvale in 2024, has received ongoing support from Sydney-based preacher Wissam Haddad, who was previously linked to the Al Madina Dawah Centre in Bankstown, a prayer hall also reportedly attended by alleged Bondi gunman Naveed Akram – which was shut down in January.

Local reports noted that Ahmad visited Haddad’s Sydney centre in early 2025 to deliver a sermon criticizing “infidel” Western powers, and an ABC Four Corners investigation previously uncovered institutional links between Haddad and the Melbourne prayer center.

One Nation leader calls for government to act against Islamic extremism
One Nation leader Sen. Pauline Hanson issued a media release on Monday criticizing federal authorities and calling for immediate, targeted federal powers to confront fundamentalist Islamic extremism.

“Fifteen people were murdered in a terrorist act at Bondi,” Hanson said. “Now Australians are reading reports of an Islamic preacher urging followers to take up arms against Australian Christians and Jews. How much more do Albanese and Burke need to hear?”

Hanson argued that broad laws covering the entire community are insufficient and urged the government to directly target preachers encouraging terrorist violence, recruiters, and support networks.

“We need stronger federal powers to shut down the extremist and fundamentalist mosques and Islamic prayer centers,” Hanson said. “Give ASIO [Australian Security Intelligence Organisation] and the AFP [Australian Federal Police] the resources and targeted powers to dismantle these networks. If current laws are inadequate, change them,” the senator said.

Robert Gregory, president of the Australian Jewish Association (AJA), told The Jerusalem Post that the episode demonstrates deep-seated failures in national security and social cohesion.

“It is hard to believe that this long after the Bondi terrorist attack, Australia has still not seen a major crackdown on radical Islamic preachers and extremist religious centres,” the AJA president said.

“Australians are rightly alarmed by reports of a preacher speaking about an obligation to ‘take up arms’ against enemies and telling followers not to take Jews and Christians as friends. If this sort of hatred is being preached in Australian religious centres, Australia has serious problems with extremism and social cohesion,” he highlighted.
Commentary Podcast: Slouching Towards November
It's Monday, and we're back to discuss Sunkist reversing their decision to cancel the Bar Mitzvah favorite fruit gems, the Hormuz crisis coming to a head, and the foiled terrorist attack in Britain with suspected ties to Iran. Plus, impending doom for Republicans in November's polling numbers over the war, the economy, and data centers, and John recommends True Detective by Max Allan Collins.
Exclusive: Britain widens Israel arms ban to 80 export licences
The government has suspended or refused more than 80 export licences for items that could be used by the Israel Defence Forces in Gaza, nearly three times the number announced when restrictions were introduced in September 2024.

Around 30 licences were suspended at that time but since then more than 50 new applications have been refused, the JC has learnt.

The government continues to approve licences that meet its “Strategic Export Licensing Criteria”, with all licences kept under review.

Middle East Minister Stephen Doughty said further measures introduced on September 8, when the Labour government announced sanctions against the West Bank and classified the occupation as illegal, had tightened restrictions on exports to Israel.

“We have suspended or refused over 80 licences now. The new decisions that we took on September 8 mean there's effectively now a double lock of arms exports.

“They have to be considered both in relation to the existing conditions that we set in relation to international humanitarian law violations but also now we have to consider the unlawfulness of the occupation. So that's a very significant step forward,” the minister went on, stating a more hardline stance on exports to Israel under Andy Burnham’s premiership.

Doughty said he had “personally gone through every single licence” to ensure that licensed exports were not being used in weaponry used in Gaza.

He warned that there was “a lot of misleading information around there about licensing”, noting, during a Labour Party conference session organised by the Council for Arab-British Understanding (CAABU), that some licences covered medication for cystic fibrosis and body armour for journalists and NGOs.

But he said he believed the UK “could be doing more” to restrict exports to the Jewish State.

When the initial suspensions were announced in September 2024, then foreign secretary David Lammy said they covered around 30 of the UK’s 350 arms export licences to Israel.

UK components supplied to the international F-35 fighter jet programme were almost entirely exempted, something that anti-Israel campaigners at the time criticised.
UK’s FM Miliband boasts that sanctions on settlers have spurred global action
British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband on Monday called the suffering imposed on Palestinians by Israel’s government “a stain on the conscience of the world” as he denounced “ethnic cleansing” in the West Bank, and “war crimes in Gaza.”

Received with standing applause at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, Miliband said that the government headed by new Prime Minister Andy Burnham has reset its approach to Israel and the Palestinians.

“We call out ethnic cleansing by the settler terrorists in the West Bank,” he said, referring to violence by extremist settlers against Palestinians in the territory. “We call out the evidence of war crimes in Gaza. We call out Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine.”

His remarks came amid a deterioration in relations between Israel and the UK, after Miliband announced earlier this month that Britain would ban all dealings with West Bank settlements, along with sweeping sanctions and a range of other punitive measures. Canada, France and other nations announced similar measures.

At the conference, Miliband stressed that the UK would ban trade with Israeli settlements: “We will disrupt the supply lines of British finance, British construction and British services for illegal settlements.”

He said that London’s decision to sanction Israelis living over the Green Line “mobilized the international community, country after country.”

Miliband also recalled that his own grandmother was given “shelter and sanctuary by Israel” after World War II, saying the “bonds of solidarity between the British people and those who yearn for peace in Israel and Palestine are too strong to be broken.”


Why British Jews heckled Zack Polanski
Polanski seemed most at ease in the brief time he talked about gas and oil, or nationalising Thames Water, and most agitated when asked by a constituent whether he would promise to enlarge her breasts if she voted for him – a reference to a Sun article in which he hypnotised a journalist to help her breasts grow. His claim of being a ‘mensch’ – a Jewish term for a person of integrity and kindness – was received with loud mockery. A woman behind me muttered ‘let the Kapo speak’ – Kapo being an historical slur used to describe collaborators and traitors in Nazi concentration camps. It was hardly surprising when Polanski made a dash for the exit and into a side room the second the evening was over, escaping a hostile, furious audience and the media.

The event laid bare how Polanski is caught between a rock and a hard place. He is facing hostility from the vast majority of British Jews for rejecting the Jewish right to self-determination and advancing hardline Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions policies against Israel. He has repeated the ‘genocide’ and ‘apartheid’ smears that have fuelled left-wing anti-Semitism and motivated violence and terrorism against Jews. He leads a political party whose members and candidates want to de-proscribe Hamas as a terrorist organisation, who are opposed to banning Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and who have notoriously discussed ‘killing Zionists’.

On the other hand, Polanski is under fire from within his own party for being insufficiently anti-Zionist. Green members have accused him of ‘struggling’ to overcome his ‘Zionist indoctrination’. His hesitancy to support the ‘Zionism is racism’ motion at the party’s upcoming conference – a motion that demands the elimination of the Jewish State – has disgruntled many in his party.

He has even been branded a ‘genocide denier’ by elements within the Greens. This explains why, despite the furious backlash every time he dropped the phrase ‘anti-Zionist’ at the hustings, he kept doing it anyway. He knew he could safely provoke the audience because he was in a room governed by democratic decency, where people use their voice rather than their fists – a stark contrast to the climate of real, physical intimidation faced by Jews in spaces occupied by the kinds of activists Polanski wants to curry favour with. He wasn’t trying to win over the Jewish community in the room in front of him – he was signalling to the hardliners in his own party.

Clearly, Zack Polanski’s career as a hypnotist is behind him. Certainly no one at the hustings was buying into his illusions.
Israel reprimands Madrid over minister’s ‘from the river to the sea’ remarks
Israel’s Foreign Ministry on Monday summoned Spain’s chargé d’affaires, Francisca Pedrós, to protest comments by Spanish Minister of Youth and Children Sira Abed Rego, the ministry said.

The ministry said Rego had declared that the Spanish public supports a Palestinian state “from the river to the sea,” a slogan the ministry said implies the “erasure of the State of Israel.”

The Foreign Ministry accused the government led by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of pursuing a “systematic anti-Israel policy.”

It also criticized Rego for previously declining to condemn the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7, 2023, and noted that she was barred from entering Israel in September 2025.

“The Spanish government has lost its moral compass,” the Foreign Ministry said, accusing Madrid of turning Israel into “a punching bag for its foreign policy.”

The ministry accused Spain of supporting a vision that “entails the destruction of the State of Israel” while criticizing Israel’s right to defend itself against Iran and Hamas.

Last week, Spain’s main Jewish organization circulated a manifesto signed by more than 350 cultural figures opposing the exclusion of an Argentine-Jewish novelist from a literary festival in Granada following her opposition to boycotts of Israel.

The organizers of the CULTUR ALH de Granada festival, who canceled a scheduled Sept. 26 discussion featuring novelist Ariana Harwicz, need to “transparently explain their decision, acknowledge the harm caused and offer Harwicz appropriate public redress, while also recognizing the damage done to public debate,” the manifesto reads.

Harwicz, who gained international recognition with her debut novel, “Mátate, amor” (“Die, My Love”), said her exclusion was antisemitic.


Brendan O'Neill: Free Ireland from ‘Free Palestine’
In the end, the game went ahead. Though the team couldn’t resist a spot of nauseating performative piety. They refused to shake the Israeli players’ hands. They wore black armbands for the victims of Israel’s ‘genocide’. They bowed their heads during Israel’s national anthem. What child-like, unsporting, narcissistic tomfoolery. If you agree to play a game, play by the rules of the game. Also, anyone care to explain why the keffiyeh classes were superbly unbothered when the Irish cricket team played Afghanistan just a few weeks ago – a nation where women are treated like animals, homosexuality is punishable by death and democracy is non-existent? I’m being rhetorical, obviously. Every living organism with a brain knows the answer.

It breaks my Mick heart to watch Ireland bow and scrape to the Palestine cult. It long ago conquered Ireland’s universities, where you can’t swing a cat without hitting 50 arseholes who think Israelis are Nazis. The media elites have such a feverish obsession with Israel that I’m convinced future psychologists will study it. The journalist Laura Perrins analysed the output of four media outlets, including RTÉ, and found they published 3,007 reports about Israel / Palestine between January and May this year. That’s almost 20 a day. When Rosie O’Donnell, the failed US comedian who has decamped to Ireland, spouted the usual regime slop about Israel’s ‘genocide’ on RTÉ’s Late Late Show, RTÉ’s social-media feed chirped: ‘Get Rosie O’Donnell her Irish passport.’ Nothing to see here, just the literal state broadcaster tying Irishness to hatred for Israel.

But that, increasingly, is what makes up Irishness, at least in the eyes of the Dublin, Cork and Galway tosserati. They define the Irish identity by its antipathy to the Jewish nation. Hence the media’s ruthless rescinding of Ed Sheeran’s Irishness when he failed to spit the correct amount of venom at Israel. From Kneecap to Sally Rooney and now the preening, head-bowed football team, every Irish cultural export is madly, loudly, bizarrely anti-Israel. They have no idea how insane they sound to normies the world over.

Politics itself is infected by the mania. This is a country where politicians openly call Israelis ‘the Nazis of the modern world’. Where there are discussions in parliament about the ‘disgusting Zionist regime’. Where the government agitated for a watering down of the term ‘genocide’ in order that Israel might be found guilty of it. Where the then president Michael D Higgins used Holocaust Memorial Day to hold forth on Israel’s actions in Gaza, in comments as morally cheap as they were despicably provocative. And where Israel took the extraordinary decision to shut its embassy because of the ‘extreme anti-Israel policies of the Irish government’.

The sanctimony of it all is suffocating. The Irish puff themselves up as the historic victims of colonialism and famine who now have a holy duty to rage against the nation supposedly committing those crimes today: Israel. It is vanity of the most imperious, grating kind. And of course they never mention that Israel was invaded by 6,000 Islamofascists on 7 October 2023. And that more than a thousand of its citizens were raped and murdered by the Jew-hating brutes of Hamas. And that one of the 250 people Hamas kidnapped was a nine-year-old Irish-Israeli girl called Emily Hand. She was held for 50 days in complete darkness and warned not to talk, only to be released to discover that her stepmother was slain in that murderous pogrom. Why didn’t the Irish football team wear yellow ribbons for Emily? Shameless, absurd people.

Ireland’s descent into the cesspit of Israelophobia reveals far more about its own moral disarray than it does about Israel’s ‘evil’. ‘Free Palestine’ has become a magnet for every freak and tosser in the West. It’s the retirement loony bin for every lost cause, every clapped-out leftist, every gender whackjob, every bored aristocrat, every silver-spoon anti-Semite, every tiresome politician, every low-IQ Islamist. It’s like an army of the damned, all searching for the source of their moral wretchedness. And you won’t believe what it is: the Jews! That Ireland has so enthusiastically joined this depraved crusade is sad beyond belief.


The Handshake Ireland Wouldn’t Give
Players, coaching staff and senior officials had turned the ceremonial opening of a soccer match into a public demonstration against their opponents. I found that collective display despicable. What had Solomon or his teammates done to any of them?

The black armbands came with an explanation that deserves to be quoted accurately. Courell said they recognized “all lives lost in the conflict.” But after scoring Ireland’s third goal, Jack Moylan kissed his black armband. RTÉ’s accompanying photograph caption describes him holding it up toward Israeli supporters.

The FAI’s language was universal: all lives lost. Moylan’s gesture was directed at Israeli supporters after he had scored against their team. In that setting, the armband functioned as a taunt. He had taken a symbol presented as shared grief and made it part of a celebration at his opponents’ expense. The hypocrisy was there in the contrast between the association’s words and the player’s actions.

And what did the bowed heads and withheld handshakes achieve? Are Palestinians free today? Is anyone in Gaza’s life easier because Dara O’Shea would shake the referee’s hand but not Manor Solomon’s?

This was virtue signaling at the expense of fellow sportsmen. Concern for Palestinian civilians does not require the public humiliation of Israeli players. Mourning the dead does not require withholding courtesy from the living.

UEFA should have insisted that basic sporting respect applied to Israel’s players too. An organization that promotes respect ought to have an answer when one national team makes a spectacle of denying it to another.

I spent the early part of my career photographing what makes sport worth watching. Last night, the image that stayed with me was a captain keeping his hands behind his back. He had no difficulty finding them for the officials.


Original Rachel Dolezal wants to have dinner with ‘Palestinian Rachel Dolezal’: ‘Girl, tell me your story’
The original Rachel Dolezal says she wants to dine with the Philadelphia activist dubbed the “Palestinian Rachel Dolezal.”

Hannah Gann’s identity — a white Jewish woman busted this week for pretending to be black and Palestinian — shouldn’t distract from her activism, Dolezal insisted to The Post.

“If she identifies as Palestinian or Jewish or white or blue or green or whatever, is she doing good work? Is she making a difference?” said Dolezal, who now goes by Nkechi Diallo and runs a sex coaching practice. “People in activist causes have all different kinds of personal lives.

“But if somebody says something we don’t agree with, or they say something that’s not my truth, we flatten it into everything they’ve ever done is now not valid,” Diallo said.

Diallo is one of the few people in the world to understand what Gann is going through.

The OnlyFans model and sex coach who was once the head of the Spokane, WA, chapter of the NAACP faced a race-faking scandal of her own when she was exposed in 2015 as being white and growing up in Montana after years of claiming to be black.

Diallo said she would want to meet Gann and hear her out before judging her.

“I would be interested in having a conversation with her, maybe over dinner, I would be the only person who wouldn’t tell anybody about that conversation,” she laughed.

When asked what the two would discuss, Diallo said she’d prefer to just listen to what Gann has to say.

“Girl, tell me your story. Headlines are saying one thing, how did you get to where you are and where do you go from here?”

Gann, 34, a mainstay of the City of Brotherly Love’s radical activist scene who led numerous anti-Israel protests in Philly public schools, was forced to confess Monday that she is a “white woman of significant privilege and wealth” after two local far-left groups questioned her background.

Gann grew up in a $1.8 million home in Falls Church, VA, one of the wealthiest suburbs in the country.

Her father, Hal Gann, is a prominent tax attorney and Yale Law School graduate and her mother, Susan Gann, is a Democratic donor.


LA city Jewish librarian traumatized after hearing she’s named in lawsuit for helping cancel ‘Palestine week’
When a British reporter emailed Tina Lerno, a librarian for the Los Angeles Public Library, on Monday asking if she had a comment about being named in a lawsuit against the city over its cancellation of a “Read Palestine Week” event, that was the first she heard of the suit.

“I started having a panic attack,” she told JNS. “I went on a walk. I didn’t feel much better. I sat down at my desk and started crying.”

Lerno, who chairs the library’s Jewish Affinity Group, shared the query with JNS.

The reporter informed that she’s named in the suit, which JNS could not confirm, that quotes an email that she sent to library administrators in which she said that authors who were invited to the event have “strong terrorist ties” and “virulently antisemitic views.”

In April, the Los Angeles Public Press published an article about the cancellation. The publication didn’t name people, but Lerno told JNS that one of the canceled authors mentioned her by name on social media and blamed her, in part, for the cancellation of the event.

After her name was revealed, people began calling her a “whiny Zionist” online, Lerno told JNS.

She made her Facebook and Instagram accounts private and deleted her Threads account.

“I’m worried that something is going to happen,” she told JNS.

“It’s so stressful, and I just feel like I can’t believe that somebody can do this to me, to the city and there’s no repercussion,” she said.
Pro-Palestine clothing boss said ‘no country wants Jewish people’
The owner of a clothing brand that helps raise funds for a British Palestinian aid charity has been accused of saying that no country wants Jewish people in it.

Abdallah Nofan Ahmad, who owns the US-based firm Warrior Ink Apparel, has been condemned for selling clothes emblazoned with symbols and slogans that appear to support terrorism and equate the actions of Israel in Gaza to those of the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews.

It has also emerged that several allegedly anti-Semitic and pro-Hamas posts were published on his social media account.

British victims of anti-Semitic violence have called for Mr Ahmad’s products to be banned as hate speech and reported his posts to the British police and authorities in the US. One social media post, below, apparently refers to Jews in a disparaging way:


The statement was posted next to a Star of David three months after the Oct 7 2023 attacks on Israel, in which Hamas terrorists killed 1,200 Israelis and took more than 250 hostages. It was the single biggest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust.

In Dec 2023, Mr Ahmad’s account shared a video montage featuring armed Hamas terrorists using paragliders, during which a narrator said: “Our heroes are legitimate, fearless and are super genius. They didn’t wear capes or star in Marvel movies or DC comic book series. But they can fly overseas. They can go deep without submarines. They can build cities underground.”

Another post showed a photo of a Hamas fighter accompanied by the quote: “Freedom fighters are the heroes that history books are made of.”

The Instagram account has since been deleted.

Mr Ahmad, the Florida-based owner of Warrior Ink Apparel, has been reported to police in the UK and Florida, as well as to the FBI in Miami, about the series of historic social media posts in which he appears to support and promote Hamas and its militants.

Warrior Ink Apparel is involved in a fundraising collaboration with Sun of Freedom, a British-based charity, to raise funds to deliver food, shelter and basic supplies to Gaza from the sale of its Mo Hamz Collection of clothes and merchandise.


Rome convicts 3 Egyptian security officers for 2016 murder of Italian student
A Rome court on Monday convicted three Egyptian security officers of the murder of an Italian student a decade ago, in a case that has strained Italy’s diplomatic relations with Cairo.

The officers, who were all convicted in absentia, were each given sentences of 10 years in prison, an AFP reporter who was in the courtroom said.

As the verdict was read out, there was silence from Giulio Regeni’s family and supporters in court who wore yellow T-shirts and badges — the color of their long campaign for justice.

It was the second attempt in Italy to prosecute the national security agents accused of kidnapping and brutally murdering the 28-year-old Regeni, who was in Cairo conducting research for his doctorate when he was abducted in January 2016.

His badly mutilated body was found nine days later, dumped on the outskirts of the Egyptian capital, barely recognizable and bearing extensive signs of torture.

A first trial in 2021 was thrown out by judges because prosecutors had been unable to inform the suspects of the procedures against them.

A ruling by Italy’s Constitutional Court in September 2023 allowed the trial to go ahead against four defendants: General Tariq Sabir, Colonels Athar Kamel and Uhsam Helmi, and Major Magdi Ibrahim Abdelal Sharif.

One of the four, Sabir, was acquitted on Monday.

Defense lawyers had unsuccessfully petitioned for the case to be thrown out, arguing that the charges indiscriminately targeted the group without attributing specific acts to each individual.

Investigators believe Regeni, a University of Cambridge PhD candidate, was abducted and killed after being mistaken for a foreign spy.

Regeni had been researching Egyptian trade unions, one of many subjects deemed sensitive by Egyptian authorities.

When his body was discovered, five of Regeni’s teeth were broken, 15 bones were fractured and letters had been inscribed into his flesh, according to the family’s lawyer.

His mother later said her son had been so badly mutilated that she recognized him only by the “tip of his nose.”

Several months after the first trial against the defendants was thrown out in 2021, an Italian parliamentary commission determined that Egypt’s security agency was to blame for Regeni’s death.
Gazans desperate to leave still struggling to do so, even as Israel claims door is open
Appearing on a screen from his home in Spain, 30-year-old Ezzadeen Shehab looked like any ordinary young European studying for a master’s degree in writing.

Clutching a pen, with a piece of artwork propped next to a cabinet behind him, Shehab appeared ensconced in domestic tranquility. The comfortable scene, though, belied the struggles and suffering of a young man who had spent the last three years on an odyssey to leave the Gaza Strip following Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre and the war that erupted in its wake.

Shehab was born and raised in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip. After finishing school, he left for Egypt to pursue higher education, eventually moving to Isfahan, Iran, to study medicine.

Throughout his nine years of studies in Iran, he did not return to Gaza once. His first trip home, to celebrate completing his studies, came on October 4, 2023. He planned to stay for a few days and then leave for a medical internship in Germany.

Nearly three years later, at the end of July 2026, Shehab finally left Gaza, going to Spain instead of Germany after receiving a scholarship for a master’s degree in writing.

He won the scholarship after his writings on the war, initially published on social media, were turned into a book, “Diary of a Young Doctor: Notes From the Genocide in Gaza,” published earlier this year by Scribe UK.

Israel’s government says it wants Gazans to leave the territory, and many Palestinians are eager to escape the rubble-strewn and poverty-stricken enclave.

But nearly a year after the ceasefire that began in October 2025, Gazans still face immense difficulties when trying to leave the Strip.

The main obstacle is finding a country willing to accept them. But even for those who do have somewhere to go, bureaucratic hurdles stemming from the situation inside Gaza can make the process of leaving lengthy and uncertain.


Florida beauty store owner who wanted to behead Jews charged with funding Hamas
A suspect in Florida was charged with funding the Hamas terrorist group earlier this month, the latest in a series of federal US cases alleging that operatives in the US used fake charities to fundraise for Gaza terrorists.

Raed Yousef, 56, was charged with funneling tens of thousands of dollars to Hamas, misleading US authorities and committing financial crimes.

Investigators said Yousef conspired to fund the terror group with a French organization, a Palestinian Hamas member in Gaza and a US citizen in Louisiana. The co-conspirators were not named.

The scheme began days after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel, around the time the French organization was established with the stated aim of providing aid to the needy in Africa and the Middle East.

The defendants allegedly coordinated over social media and encrypted messaging platforms, including Snapchat, Instagram, Telegram and WhatsApp.

They raised donations and routed them to Hamas using platforms such as PayPal, GoFundMe and cryptocurrency exchanges.

The conspirators instructed each other to use codewords to disguise their activities, referring to Hamas as “green” or “bread,” to delete messages after reading them, and to delete their communication apps when traveling, investigators said.

Yousef sent more than $45,000 to the French organization, knowing that the funds would be channeled to Hamas. The French group sent more than $330,000 in total to cryptocurrency accounts controlled by the terror group, prosecutors said.

The conspirators allegedly misled donors. In January 2024, Yousef told a co-conspirator, “Just tell them these are needy people in Gaza.”

“That would be better, because a lot of people will be afraid when you tell them,” he said. “They don’t want to get in trouble.”

Other messages showed Yousef calling for violence against Jews. He said beheadings should be broadcast on social media “so they can be frightened.”

In April 2024, he said, “Jews are brutal… May God take revenge against them.”

Months later, he said, “They need to be slaughtered, to behead them and display their heads.”

“One would hold their heads, one in this hand and another head in the other hand and display their heads to frighten them so that they leave our land,” he said in messages that were sent in Arabic and translated into English.
Israelis in Austria denied service for being Jews, Israel embassy calls it 'deeply concerning'
An Israeli family was denied service at a restaurant in Bad Hofgastein, a town in Austria located in the Gastein Valley of Salzburg, because they were Jewish, Austrian newspaper Krone reported on Sunday.

According to the statements made by Lidan H. (who didn't share his identity to preserve anonymity), he and his family approached the restaurant in the Austrian town after a day visiting the country's highest mountain.

The owner, who is reportedly Muslim, asked the family where they were from and told them that they would not be able to buy anything from him once they revealed that they were Jews. "Because we are Jewish, that's exactly what he told us," H. told the newspaper.

The report further mentions that H. decided not to confront the seller, and instead complained about the situation to the district administration, which said that it had "initiated administrative penalty proceedings."

The newspaper reached the snack bar vendor, who said that the allegations were "all nonsense," and declined to further comment on the situation.

Elie Rosen, head of the Jewish community in Austria, told Krone that the antisemitism situation in the country was getting worse every day. “There are more and more isolated incidents,” Rosen said.

“I can no longer listen to these platitudes about antisemitism and how terrible it all is. Now we need more than regretful and empty words," he added, complaining about the lack of response by the Austrian government to the situation.





 




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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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