Friday, October 09, 2026

10/08 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: The Jewish fifth columnist; David Collier: The BBC’s Spiteful Hamas Propaganda; NY Jews deposit hostage tags into new art installation on Oct. 7

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The Jewish fifth columnists
This movement has made a fetish of these Jewish fifth columnists. They include politicians like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.); talking heads like journalist Peter Beinart; political operatives like former Obama administration foreign-policy adviser Ben Rhodes and J Street founder Jeremy Ben-Ami; left-wing activist groups like IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace; nongovernmental organization stalwarts like Human Rights Watch’s former executive director Kenneth Roth; and others.

Kerstein calls such people, who enjoy high social, economic, cultural or political status, “Jews of Privilege.” Such Jews, he writes, have always strongly disliked and often hated Zionism, feared its potential impact on their chances of assimilation and the preservation of their privilege, and have felt little or no solidarity with other Jews.

Kerstein gratifyingly skewers such people. He quotes journalist Ezra Klein sanitizing the Muslim fanatic Mamdani as being “thoroughly if banally liberal.”

Klein, writes Kerstein, has endorsed the ultimate conviction of the “Jews of Privilege” that only minority status is moral, only powerlessness is redemption, and that multi-ethnic democracy guarantees the safety of Diaspora Jewry.

But, of course, the past three years in Klein’s Western multi-ethnic nirvana have been a nightmare for Diaspora Jews. As Kerstein witheringly writes, the “Jews of Privilege” are facing demographic collapse while the Jews of Zionism are burgeoning in a state that has proved itself “remarkably resilient and successful.”

Kerstein’s account is all the more powerful because he himself originally shared these anti-Zionist views. Although he didn’t come from a privileged background, he was alienated from his Jewish identity and, as a teenager, believed that Israel had no right to exist. Much of his book is an account of how his personal voyage of the soul led him to move to Israel, discover the complexity of the Middle East—and find himself as a Jew.

Indeed, the nature of Jewishness is perhaps the most significant and least understood element in anti-Zionism. Anti-Zionist Jews want to detach Zionism from Judaism to uphold what they refer to as “Jewish values.”

What they’re actually doing is swinging a wrecking ball at those values.

For Judaism consists of a fusion of three elements: the religion, the people and the land. Judaism holds that the Jewish people were given a divine mission to establish a particular society in “Zion,” the land of Israel.

While Jews don’t need to prove their Jewishness through religious observance, living in Israel or even just supporting it, detaching the land from Judaism is to dismember it. Anti-Zionism is an attack on Judaism itself.

Anti-Zionist Jews want to reframe Jewish values—the most particularist set of principles on earth—as universalist. This inevitably privileges the values and interests of non-Jews over those of the Jews.

This is because, writes Kerstein, anti-Zionist Jews have decided that it’s impossible for the “vast and kind” non-Jewish world to be wrong and the Jews to be right. And the outcome of that attitude is the belief that Israel must be dismantled and the Palestinian Arabs granted domination over everyone else.

Kerstein has performed a vital service in holding such people to account. Jewish community leaders refuse to do so because they are terrified of disunity and of washing dirty linen in public.

Undesirable though that is, there’s worse. We are living through an unprecedented cultural emergency for Jews and for the West in which they live.

While it’s vital not to lose focus on the battle against those who are out to destroy the Jewish people, it’s suicidally reckless to turn a blind eye to those Jews who, in their abysmal ignorance and pathological confusion or worse over their Jewish identity, are assisting them in their infernal aim.
Inside NAZA’s Activist Network and Its Calls to “End Zionism”
NAZA, the documentary film that won Venice’s Special Jury Prize in September, grew from a reporting network whose editors and writers have publicly advocated ending Zionism and rejecting Israel’s nature as a Jewish state, according to a new Jewish Onliner investigation.

The documentary portrays Israeli military operations in Gaza as a system of “calculated mass killing.” Produced by The Guardian and JW Films, it draws on reporting published by +972 Magazine, Local Call and The Guardian between 2023 and 2025. These institutional connections place the film within an openly activist media network, parts of which pursue political goals extending far beyond the documentary’s stated focus on Israel’s military conduct in Gaza.

A Local Call Editor Explicitly Demanded an End to Zionism
One of the clearest statements came from Orly Noy, an editor at Local Call, the Hebrew-language publication whose reporting helped underpin NAZA. In a September 2025 essay published by +972, Noy wrote:
“Zionism, in all its forms, cannot be cleansed of the stain of this crime. It must be brought to an end.”

She demanded a process of “denazification” across Israeli society and rejected the country’s combined Jewish and democratic identity. Her position explicitly targeted Zionism itself, not simply the government in power.

The Guardian Published Calls for the “End of Zionism”
In an August 5, 2011 column, David Hearst, then a Guardian foreign editorial writer, envisioned “The end of Zionism, no less.”

An April 24, 2024 essay by Guardian US columnist Naomi Klein called Zionism a “false idol” and declared: “So tonight we say: it ends here.”

In July 2024, the newspaper published Ahmed Moor’s essay calling for the “end of Zionism.”

The newspaper’s involvement in NAZA went beyond commentary: it produced the film, drawing on reporting by The Guardian, +972 and Local Call.
David Harsanyi: America owes Mahmoud Khalil nothing
Pro-terrorist activist Mahmoud Khalil was asked by CNN the other day if he would condemn Hamas. He, of course, would not, calling the question “silly” and “disingenuous.” It is not “black and white,” he whined.

Even if you oppose Israel’s reaction to the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, the answer is still black and white for any person with a conscience. Certainly, it should be for any person who wants to become a naturalized citizen of the United States. After all, Hamas is designated by the State Department as a terrorist organization for, among other things, murdering Americans. Stay informed.Stay ahead.

But the fact that Khalil can’t condemn Hamas — and anyone paying attention understands that he supports the terrorist army — not only tells us that he deserves to be deported but also that it’s imperative we deport him.

During the 1960s and 1970s, immigration officials grilled newcomers to the U.S. and elsewhere about their affiliations with communist parties. Why would we import people who want to destroy our system? Newcomers were, and still are, compelled to disavow associations with illiberal movements, violent groups, and ideologies. They were also required to promise not to engage in any subversive or revolutionary activity.

Well, Khalil’s entire job as an “activist” is to engage in subversive or revolutionary activity.

Khalil is an Algerian, incidentally, not a Palestinian, though he is a champion of Palestinianism, one of the most nihilistic, bigoted, violent, anti-Western ideologies of the age. There’s no anti-American or Marxist protest or riot anywhere in the world these days where Palestinian flags are not prominent.

The French, of course, don’t need much impetus to riot. But protests that began over a lack of school funding a few weeks ago have now escalated into increasingly destructive and violent riots across France, clearly fueled in part by Marxist pro-Palestinian elements. The red-green alliance between Islamists and communists isn’t new — it’s just more popular than ever. France has over 5 million Muslims.

What you see happening on the streets of Paris is exactly what Khalil hopes to see in the U.S. We saw as much when he was the lead “negotiator” for Columbia University Apartheid Divest, which rioted at the school in 2025. The group’s goal is to fight for the “total eradication of Western civilization,” “global intifada,” and the “armed resistance” of Hamas. That doesn’t sound very American.

Khalil’s friend, Mohsen Mahdawi, another leader of CUAD fighting against deportation, reportedly has a propensity to make Hamas-like statements, such as “I like to kill Jews,” “soon, very soon, we will annihilate the Jews,” and that “servants of the Jews or the Americans” will have their heads “cut off.” Would we give citizenship to a foreigner who said, “I like to kill blacks” or “I like to kill Christians”? I hope not.

Khalil is being deported for lying on his application, though he was initially picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers for threatening U.S. foreign policy. These deportations should not be treated as a matter of botched paperwork but as a matter of national security.


David Collier: The BBC’s Spiteful Hamas Propaganda
This is written in anger – as I believe it should be – and I will keep it brief. Yesterday, the BBC ran a live page carrying several updates about October 7 memorials. Today, just one day later, it published a piece about daily deaths in Gaza.

Think about that timing. A report like this takes preparation; its publication was an editorial choice. It reads as a spiteful attempt to “reset the balance” immediately after the October 7 anniversary. How twisted is that?

Empty Propaganda
The latest piece appeared on the BBC News front page early this morning. It offers no new information, and no Israeli account corroborating the circumstances of the deaths it describes. We are told that 31-year-old Fida al-Toutah was shot dead while preparing her children for school. Her family attributes the shooting to Israeli forces; the IDF says it has no record of the incident.

So in the real world, we have no idea who fired the fatal shot. The BBC reporting does not play out that way.

The accompanying two-minute clip moves from accusations about civilians being harmed to images of babies in incubators. It feels like a tick-box exercise in demonisation.

So I wondered whether the BBC had done sufficient due diligence – or whether, in its rush to condemn Israel, it had presented claims that could serve Hamas’s propaganda without adequately testing them.

Sketchy Details
The BBC report has the mum shot in the tent while helping her kids get ready for school. A perfect propaganda scenario for the BBC. But Al-Bayan’s reporting, citing Al-Awda Hospital, says she was shot while walking along Salah al-Din Road – a materially different description. What complicates the BBC story further is that family reporting at the time suggests her brother – Ahmed – was also injured during the incident. Maybe he was also inside the tent helping get the kids ready for school.

I then turned to the image of the family the BBC presented. A perfect image of a poor civilian family who have had the matriarch brutally stolen from them by the evil IDF:

BBC Propaganda
As I always do, I went looking for the family online – and while I did not find the account of the father, I did stumble on a strange image of him – and one that appears to suggest that his eldest girl had been seriously wounded in a previous attack:

The girl appears to have survived – and thankfully, despite the severe-looking facial injury – does not appear to have suffered any permanent damage at all. No scarring at all, in fact.

Hamas, Hamas, Hamas
And then I found the mother’s Facebook account. Much of it is hidden, but there is a photo of what seems to be the eldest daughter from 2019, which leaves little room for discussion:

The caption reads “Hamas girl.” I cannot know what did or did not happen to the mother on September 21, 2026. Where she was shot, why, or who she was with at the time. But I do know that if the victim was posting “I love Hamas” images of her children in Hamas headgear – the BBC has no right at all to present them as an innocent family.

It does not even end there. I went looking for the nurse who is interviewed in the clip – only to find her Facebook profile was created just a few weeks ago.

Who knows who she really is? What exactly did the BBC do to verify her background?

I am so tired of this. I am just one guy working away to establish the truth. How is it that the BBC never seem able to find any of this themselves?

This one is unforgivable. They posted a deliberately demonising article on October 8 – just one day after the anniversary. In the end they may as well have let Hamas write it for them.


Chosen People Problems: Don’t rely on the Houthis to cure cancer - with Douglas Murray
The one and only Douglas Murray is with us today, to talk Israel, poetry, and…true crime? We start off by accidentally insulting him, but don’t worry, he still likes Jews!

Also:
Why do Israelis sound like that?
Douglas refuses to tell us who the stupidest person on the internet is
Is Israel winning?
Why does the media suck
Free Palestine means more bike lanes
Douglas will not tolerate any slander of British food
The point of poetry
Guilty pleasures
Don’t rely on the Houthis for cancer research
No Douglas, playing the piano does not count as procrastination
How does aging even happen?


At Edan Alexander Way, Gottheimer announces bills marking Oct. 7, withholding US aid until UN designates Hamas, Hezbollah
Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) announced two new, bipartisan pieces of legislation on Oct. 7 on Edan Alexander Way, the Tenafly, N.J., street named for the last living American hostage liberated from Hamas captivity.

One would hold up U.S. aid to the United Nations until the global body designates Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations, as Washington has long done.

The other bill commemorates the third anniversary of Oct. 7, condemning the attacks, honoring hostages and their families, supporting Israel’s right to defend itself and calling for the Gaza framework that provides aid while disarming Hamas.

“We remember,” Gottheimer said at the ceremony.

“We honor those we lost. We thank the heroes, and we recommit ourselves to the work ahead,” the Jewish congressman said. “We speak the truth about Oct. 7. We stand up to hate, wherever it rears its ugly head.”

“And we never stop fighting for a day when Hamas has laid down its arms for good, and Israelis and Palestinians alike can live together in peace,” he said.

Edan Alexander’s parents, Adi Alexander and Yael Alexander, attended the event, as did local officials, rabbis and communal leaders.

“We are here today to remember, to honor and to never forget,” Yael Alexander told attendees.


'Both of Them Have Proven Dangerous in Their Own Way': Abdul El-Sayed Says Iran and Israel Are Equal Threats to United States
Left-wing Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed said Israel and Iran pose equal threats to the United States. Both the U.S. ally and the Islamic regime "have proven dangerous in their own way," El-Sayed said.

The remarks came during a Thursday night debate against El-Sayed's Republican opponent, former congressman Mike Rogers. After the moderator pressed El-Sayed to answer a question he had sidestepped before the debate—whether he agreed with a supporter who had argued that Israel is a greater threat to the United States than Iran—El-Sayed first declined to do so, calling it "a ridiculous hypothetical." Asked the same question again, El-Sayed said he believes Israel and Iran, the latter of which has killed and kidnapped more than 1,000 Americans since 1979, pose equal but different threats to America.

"I think both of them have proven dangerous in their own way," he said. "One at risk of attacking us. One getting us into wars we have no business fighting."

The answer marks the latest example of El-Sayed, who has struggled with historically Democratic Jewish voters in Michigan, downplaying Islamic terrorism.

Earlier this year, when a Lebanese American man drove a car packed with explosives into the Temple Israel synagogue in Michigan after his brother, a commander in the Iranian-backed terror outfit Hezbollah, died in an Israeli airstrike, El-Sayed said "it's just critical for us to understand that hurt people do hurt people." He also told staffers on a private campaign strategy call in March that he wanted to avoid making a public statement about the death of Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei because "there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad," the Washington Free Beacon reported.

The Iranian regime is the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism and has launched violent attacks on Americans since its inception in 1979, when it took 66 Americans hostage for 444 days. Since then, Iran and its terror proxies have carried out attacks around the world, including the 1983 Marine barracks bombing, which killed 241 U.S. military service members.

During the Iraq War, more than 600 American soldiers were killed by Iranian-backed militias. The regime has continued to fund suicide bombings and other attacks on U.S. service members and has repeatedly attempted to assassinate President Donald Trump.
Abdul El-Sayed Says Iran and Israel Are Equal Threats to United States



Rogers honors Oct. 7 anniversary and bashes El-Sayed, as El-Sayed remains silent
Former Rep. Mike Rogers, the Michigan Republican nominee for Senate, issued a statement Wednesday commemorating the third anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel and bashing his Democratic opponent, Abdul El-Sayed, while El-Sayed remained silent.

El-Sayed’s rhetoric and stances on Israel and other issues of concern to the Jewish community have been heavily scrutinized, and he is facing significant skepticism from traditional Jewish Democrats in Michigan, as some community leaders and elected officials say they plan to sit out the Senate race or support Rogers.

El-Sayed’s campaign did not respond to multiple inquiries from JI about whether he planned to issue a statement on the Oct. 7 anniversary, and has not shared any such statement publicly.

“Three years ago today, the world witnessed in horror the worst massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust,” Rogers said. “This dark day is a sad reminder that evil exists all around us. And how we respond to evil determines how much it grows.”

Rogers went on accuse El-Sayed of stoking hate and violence, pointing to a fundraising message his campaign sent on the second anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks criticizing Israel (his campaign has said it was sent in error); criticizing El-Sayed for campaigning with Hasan Piker, who has been dismissive of the attacks; and issuing a widely criticized statement following the terrorist attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Mich.

“Hate like that has no home in Michigan,” Rogers continued. “You have my work, I will always stand proudly alongside Michigan’s Jewish community, against terrorism, and for Israel’s right to defend itself. We must root out antisemitic hate in all forms — because when we say ‘never again,’ we must mean it.”
Abdul El-Sayed Rakes in Thousands From Muslim Brotherhood-Linked Donors, Records Show
Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed has raked in thousands of dollars in campaign donations from individuals linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, the radical Islamist and terrorist movement, campaign finance records reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon show.

El-Sayed's donors include the former spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood's official political party in Egypt as well as individuals named in a directory of Muslim Brotherhood leaders that federal investigators submitted as part of a landmark terror financing trial.

The news comes as El-Sayed faces questions over his history of support for the Muslim Brotherhood, particularly in Egypt, where El-Sayed's parents were born and where he claimed to hold citizenship as recently as 2016. In a recent Fox News interview, El-Sayed declined to say whether he supports U.S. terror designations for Muslim Brotherhood chapters, including the Egyptian branch, for supporting Hamas. "I will support a terrorist designation for any organization that is engaged in or committed to political violence," El-Sayed said, without noting whether he considers the Muslim Brotherhood to fit that definition.

Several of El-Sayed's previously unreported donations came from board members of Life for Relief and Development, a charity with close familial ties to the Senate candidate. El-Sayed's father, Mohamed El-Sayed, and his father-in-law, Tayeb Jukaku, have recently served on the group's board.
Indiana AG Seeks Details of CAIR’s Muslim Brotherhood Ties. Jewish Onliner Documents Years of Meetings
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita opened investigations into National Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) on October 7, 2026, demanding documents to determine whether the organizations qualify as affiliates of foreign terrorist organizations under Indiana law. The announcement came on the third anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 massacre.

In the parallel SJP inquiry, Rokita’s demand requires the group to describe its relationships with U.S.-sanctioned groups Samidoun and Masar Badil, and turn over related records.

The CAIR investigation, first reported on by Daily Signal reporter Tyler O’Neil, asks CAIR to “identify and describe all instances in which CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad has met with members or agents of members of the Muslim Brotherhood.” For each meeting, the attorney general seeks its location and date, the identities of those Awad met, the Muslim Brotherhood chapter or branch with which each person was affiliated, and the purpose of the meeting.

It also asks CAIR to identify any person or entity designated by the U.S. government as a foreign terrorist organization with whom a CAIR employee or agent communicated, directly or indirectly, on behalf of CAIR.

Records reviewed by Jewish Onliner document repeated meetings between Awad and figures linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, and a 2008 visit to Islamic Jihad financier Sami al-Arian.

Years of Meetings With IUMS Figures
Awad’s documented contacts with figures associated with the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) span nearly a decade.

In testimony submitted to an August 5, 2026 Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on the Muslim Brotherhood, Arielle Klepach, senior litigation counsel at the National Jewish Advocacy Center, described IUMS as the Muslim Brotherhood’s “transnational scholarly authority” and said it maintains a close relationship with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

The U.S. Treasury Department designated the Egyptian branch as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity on January 13, 2026.

In December 2012, Awad appeared at a news conference in Qatar promoting Al-Noor Holding’s proposed film series about Muhammad. A report credited to Kuwait’s Al-Nahar identifies Awad, Yusuf al-Qaradawi and Tariq al-Suwaidan as speakers.

Qaradawi was then president of IUMS and was widely described as a spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. Suwaidan headed Al-Noor’s advisory team. In 2013, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal dismissed Suwaidan from Al-Resalah television after saying Suwaidan had publicly identified himself as a Brotherhood leader.


As UK consulate closes, FM Sa'ar vows Israel will enact consequences on hostile countries
“The time of containment in the face of hostile [acts] against the State of Israel is over,” Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said Thursday, warning that Britain’s Labour government risks losing its influence in the region as Jerusalem responds to a series of sanctions and diplomatic measures.

Speaking in an interview with The Jerusalem Post at the newspaper’s Diplomatic Conference in Jerusalem, Sa’ar defended his decision to shut down the British Consulate in Jerusalem on Thursday – the deadline for closure – saying, “Every state that works and acts against the State of Israel must understand that we will take our revenge.”

The decision to close the consulate is the latest in a series of retaliatory measures following the British government’s imposition of sanctions on Israel on September 8.

In addition to closing the British Consulate in Jerusalem, Israel has removed British representatives from the International Gaza Support Center in Kiryat Gat, terminated British training activities for Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces in the West Bank, and barred 12 British elected officials from entering the country, along with other British citizens accused by Israel of antisemitic or anti-Israel activity.

The closure also means the departure of approximately 20 British diplomats, including the consul general, from the Jerusalem mission.

British consulate in east Jerusalem downgraded to limited diplomatic mission
Sa’ar authorized the British government to operate a task force of only seven diplomats in the mission building with a limited scope of activity.

He told the Post that Israel had deliberately targeted areas in which the United Kingdom previously maintained a diplomatic or security presence, including Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza.

“Any country that pursues a one-sided and unbalanced policy against Israel will lose its influence and relevance in our region, including in Gaza and Jerusalem.”

“We didn't choose this path. It was the Labour government that chose that. But we had to react,” he said.


Tony Blair: Britain's Fastest-Growing Party Has an Anti-Jewish Problem
The Green Party of England and Wales crossed a dangerous line, one that it is unacceptable to cross. It passed a resolution which effectively denounced the State of Israel's right to exist. The party passed a motion entitled "Zionism Is Racism," which commits the party to a single Palestinian state covering all of historic Palestine - which is to say, to a world in which Israel, the state which contains the largest population of Jews on Earth, does not exist. Since at least 2/3 of British Jews call themselves Zionists, the party has, in effect, branded the majority of the country's Jews racists.

Today, the Green Party is a significant force in British politics. It has moved itself, and many of its supporters and sympathizers, from condemnation of Israel's conduct in the Gaza war to a full-on denial of the State of Israel's right to exist.

Zionism was never a movement started in support of Jewish supremacy. It started because Jewish people found that the original preferred strategy of assimilation was impossible. Throughout the centuries, Jews in Europe and elsewhere were subject to persecution. Sometimes treated less badly than at other times, but never treated equally. So in the late 19th century, the movement began for a Jewish homeland. The terrors of the Holocaust gave it unstoppable force. But it was never, and has never been, incompatible with self-determination for the Palestinians.

Those of us working, through the Board of Peace, to ensure that the bloodshed of Oct. 7 is never repeated, and that Gaza has a different and better future, understand very well the legitimate global concern about Gaza.

We have a plan - the only viable plan on offer - whose framework is designed to create a new Gaza in which Israel's security is protected and the Palestinians in Gaza have the chance of a different and better future. We know that only by freeing Gaza from the control of Hamas, so long as it remains committed to the destruction of Israel by violence, can the Palestinians of Gaza have a chance at freedom.

When misguided or malevolently guided activists in Western countries campaign for Zionism to be delegitimized, they harm the Palestinian cause. Palestinians know Israel will continue to exist. They know that if there were a one-state solution how unlikely it would be that such a state would be Palestinian.

This vote - overt anti-Jewish discrimination from what is now a mainstream British party - is a warning sign. It reveals something rotten. It is the duty of all of us to put it right.
I grew up in the Soviet Union. I never expected to see ‘Zionism is Racism’ pushed here
I always felt like I was a little out of place. I was born in Russia, but was different because my mom is Jewish. Now I am here, but sometimes still feel like a foreigner in the UK. Not quite Jewish because I wasn’t raised to keep the traditions, and not quite in the right part of London because I lived south of the river. In the last 3 years – I’ve also at time felt like I was not quite the right kind of environmentalist – the overriding sentiment in certain circles being that if you’re Jewish you should be anti-Israel, support specific causes and proudly express all that on LinkedIn in a “As a Jew…” post.

The most recent test – whether to support the “Zionism is racism” policy passed by the Green party, that officially legitimised Jew-hatred.

Well, I quite like to be out of place.

“Zionism is racism” is something that was first coined in the Soviet Union. This exact narrative, with its slogans and campaign of hate, was engineered in the 1960s and 70s. It was state sponsored at first and picked up by people second, then subsequently exported globally. It has now been reinvigorated in the UK and many European countries, as well as the USA and Australia. It doesn’t even matter what people think they mean by Zionism when they redefine it – the playbook works in a very specific way and it is effective. We have seen this movie before and know how it ends.

This is how I know that none of what is going on now is about humanitarian issues or even just not knowing the facts: not a single person has ever asked me to feel personal accountability for what Russia is doing in Ukraine. I have not seen a single debate on the rights of Russians to travel, have a country, or need to state their political position on my social media feed or climate events I attended.

As a Soviet-born Jew, a lot of what we are experiencing now is almost normal to me – either through family stories or own memory. The coded language, that if something goes wrong and the powers don’t want to deal with it then “the Jews are behind it”, the knowledge that you cannot become too successful if you have the wrong name. I was always taught to not highlight my identity in unfamiliar settings – why draw attention to something that may put you in danger? It is a sort of a “if you know – you know” situation.

I never expected to experience this in the UK and definitely not in the climate community. Somehow the conversations and attention have shifted away from the “green” matters to a populist narrative. Nobody would dream of defining any other minority’s beliefs, interests or acceptable opinions for them. With Jews, everyone’s suddenly fluent.

Antisemitism never led to anything good for anyone, including antisemites themselves. What does it actually achieve? Regardless of their political views, when the only party that seemingly advocated for environmental protections chooses division and age-old hatred as their core platform, they are basically saying that they can’t win votes otherwise. This tells those who are yet to be convinced – the people climate action actually needs – that this is a movement run on tribal feeling, not evidence. If the Greens don’t believe that their own policies can bring people on board, what hope does anyone else have? This puts the climate movement back decades and makes it look unserious and less trustworthy.
Senior CST official warns Green Party will launch ‘witch hunt’ against Jewish members
The Green Party will see a “witch hunt” against Jewish members following its decision to declare Zionism racism, a leading antisemitism expert has warned.

Dr Dave Rich, head of policy at the Community Security Trust (CST), said activists behind the controversial motion would not stop at changing party policy but would seek to target Jewish members who disagreed with them.

Speaking at the launch of his new book, From Be’eri to Bondi: Global Antisemitism After October 7, at JW3 in London on Tuesday evening, Rich accused the Greens of ignoring warnings about extremists joining the party.

“The activists who have pushed this motion through absolutely intend to use it that way,” he told journalist Nicole Lampert during their discussion.

“They will want to put this into action. They will want to, they will lead a witch hunt against any Jews in the party who are not sufficiently pure enough for them.”

The warning follows the Green Party’s decision at its annual conference in Brighton to adopt a motion declaring Zionism a form of racism.

Rich said the consequences could extend beyond the party, pointing to the 1970s, when similar policies were used by some student unions to exclude Jewish societies.

“Whenever that becomes embedded in any organisation, it leads to persecution of Jews,” he said.

He argued that describing Zionism as racist was not simply criticism of Israeli government policy but an attack on Jewish identity and history. Cover of Dave Rich’s new book, From Be’eri to Bondi: Global Antisemitism After October 7. Photo Credit: Routledge / London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism.

“To delegitimise Zionism in its entirety and brand it as racism effectively denies our history and our culture in a really demeaning and, I think, dangerous way.”

Rich also questioned the position of Green Party leader Zack Polanski and Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband, arguing that prominent Jewish politicians risked placing additional pressure on the wider community when invoking their Jewish identities to defend political positions on Israel.

He suggested that Jewish people in Britain were increasingly being judged according to whether they agreed with those positions.
Church of England interfaith advisers warn of rising antisemitism following Green Party vote
A group of interfaith officials from the Church of England have issued a statement expressing grave concern about the recent Green Party vote on Zionism, calling on the Church to act as a “bulwark” against a “drift” towards antisemitism.

The vote taken at the Green Party conference on Sunday 4 October, with the motion – backed by members with 1,022 votes in favour to 813 against – declares the Greens to be an “anti-Zionist party”. It also sets into its political policy that Zionism, the movement to develop and protect a Jewish state in Israel, will be “treated as any other form of racism”.

Writing on 7 October, the third anniversary of the Hamas atrocities in Israel, three bishops and eleven Church of England interfaith advisers warned that the vote has deepened the sense of vulnerability felt by many Jewish communities in England and risks damaging relationships of trust built over many years.

Wednesday’s Church of England statement was endorsed by the Rt Revd David Walker, Bishop of Manchester, the Rt Revd Dr Michael Volland, Bishop of Birmingham and Rt Revd Esther Prior, Bishop of Aston. It was also endorsed by Diocesan interfaith advisers serving in London, Manchester, Birmingham, St Albans, Bristol, Lichfield, Hereford, Oxford, Southwark, Winchester and Ely.

The advisers cite recent incidents, including the minimisation of the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October 2023; rhetoric experienced by many Jewish people as erasing their history and identity; controversy surrounding the Kairos II debate at the Church of England’s General Synod; demonstrations that have left Jewish Londoners feeling unsafe; and attacks and alleged plots directed at Jewish communities in Manchester and London, as “part of a wider deeply concerning drift towards an increasingly antisemitic culture in our country.”

Their statement supports the condemnations issued by the Movement for Progressive Judaism and jointly by the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council.

It argues that treating Zionism as inherently racist dismisses the varied ways in which Zionism is understood within Jewish communities and disregards its place in Jewish history, prayer, ritual and communal life.

Signatories also “affirm Palestinian dignity, legitimacy and self-determination alongside Jewish safety, self-identity and flourishing” and commend “sustained Israeli–Palestinian civil-society dialogue, grassroots peace-building and proposals for an International Fund for Israeli–Palestinian Peace.” Statement issued from the Church of England Interfaith Advisors, raising acute concerns about antisemitism in the UK, October 2026

Elizabeth Harris Sawczenko, vice President, Council of Christians and Jews and on the Ambassadors Council for the Alliance for Middle East Peace told Jewish News it was “encouraging” to see the statement “and the reflection and care taken by Christian Church of England clergy and friends in drafting it, especially at this time.”
Polanski defeated in Holborn and St Pancras by-election
Zack Polanski has failed in his bid to win the Holborn and St Pancras by-election just days after his party passed a divisive motion branding Zionism as racism. In a result that raised further questions about his future as Green Party leader, Polanski finished second to Labour’s candidate, Sagal Abdi-Wali, in the by-election to replace Sir Keir Starmer as MP in the north London seat.

Abdi-Wali received 12, 292 votes, while Polanski got 8. 928, giving her a majority of 3, 364.

Polanski skipped last Sunday’s Green Party conference, where members voted in favour of a Zionism Is Racism motion, to continue his campaign in Holborn and St Pancras.

Speaking to Sky News shortly before the result was declared, Polanski said he had no intention of quitting, and insisted he did not regret standing in the seat.

He said it was “an opportunity to present Green Party values.”

But a former Green leader suggested Polanski could face a threat to his leadership if he lost.

Caroline Lucas, the three-time former Green Party leader who was its first MP, said people should “see what happens in the coming days and weeks” when asked about his future on BBC Newsnight.

The turnout of 38.76% in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election is lower than in some recent ones, including 47.62% at Gorton and Denton in February, which Hannah Spencer won for the Greens, taking the seat from Labour.

Once again, the Green campaign attempted to weaponise anger over the Gaza conflict. Campaign leaflets featured anti-Israel messaging.

In an ugly development, graffiti appeared across the borough branding the Labour candidate a supporter of “genocide”, attempting to exploit her support previously for ex-PM Starmer.


Anti-Israel groups urge boycott of Andrea Bocelli’s Jordan concert; he played Tel Aviv in 2022
Pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel groups called on Wednesday for a boycott of Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli’s concert next month in the ancient Jordanian city of Petra over his public support of Israel.

Bocelli, who has been blind since age 12, performed in 2022 at a stadium in Tel Aviv before an audience that included Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with the tenor ignoring pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel activists’ longstanding calls for a boycott of Israel.

Bocelli, 68, also sang in Los Angeles at a fundraiser for a group supporting the Israeli military in 2010. In recent years, Bocelli has also been a rare internationally known musician to perform for US President Donald Trump.

“We call on you to boycott Andrea Bocelli’s concert because of his long-standing public support for the Israeli enemy… Do not buy tickets! Demand… the cancellation of the concert,” said the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement in Jordan, one of the joint signatories.

“It is unacceptable for Petra — one of the most iconic sites in Jordan and the Arab world — to become a platform for someone who has raised funds for the occupation army,” BDS Jordan added.

The November 27 concert is part of Bocelli’s “Romanza” world tour celebrating his 30-year career.
UC Berkeley Palestinian Studies Manager Liked Post Hailing Sinwar as “Mastermind” of October 7
Fadi Kafeety, the program manager of UC Berkeley’s Palestinian and Arab Studies Program, liked an Instagram post glorifying Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre, praising Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif as the “masterminds” of a historic Palestinian victory, Jewish Onliner has discovered. The caption accompanying the Instagram post explicitly celebrated the Hamas-led attack:

Screenshots reviewed by Jewish Onliner show Kafeety’s Instagram account, @fadikafeety, among those who liked the post, published to commemorate the third anniversary of the Hamas-led attack that killed approximately 1,200 people and saw 251 others taken hostage.

His Instagram account separately shared a photograph of Palestinians standing atop an Israeli tank during the October 7 attack, accompanied by Arabic text which appeared to celebrate the “Palestinian resistance”.

The post, published collaboratively by Palaver Collective, Commie Central and Vox Ummah Media, explicitly celebrated the October 7 massacre as a Palestinian achievement.

Its caption called October 7 a “day of resistance” and a “day of Glory for Palestine.”

The opening slide identified Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif as the “masterminds” behind what it characterized as the greatest strategic reclamation of Palestinian land in more than a century. It credited the two men and other senior Hamas officials with planning a coordinated ground and aerial attack.

Another slide appeared to celebrate the attackers’ temporary seizure of more than 20 Israeli communities and 11 military sites, portraying the operation as a successful Palestinian uprising rather than acknowledging the killing, kidnapping and abuse of civilians.

The carousel further praised Iran, Hezbollah and the Houthis, suggesting that their subsequent attacks against Israel represented one of the greatest achievements of Hamas’s October 7th attack.

The final slide presented a lengthy text as Yahya Sinwar’s “last will,” describing the attack as a collective Palestinian achievement. The purported testament depicted participation in the operation as a duty, celebrated “martyrdom” and framed the massacre as a new chapter in Palestinian liberation.

Kafeety’s Public Instagram Account
Kafeety’s Instagram biography explicitly identifies the profile as the “Public account of Fadi Kafeety” and lists his position as “Program Manager @PalStudiesUCB,” directly linking the account that liked the post to his official role at UC Berkeley. His biography also identifies him as a PhD researcher at the University of Houston.

Separately, Kafeety’s Instagram story displayed an October 7 photograph of Palestinians celebrating atop an Israeli tank near the Gaza border.

The accompanying Arabic statement translated to “History will tell how the Palestinian Resistance, despite its isolation, siege and betrayal, was able to destroy and dismantle the occupier’s dominance and prevent it.”


Wisconsin House candidate arrested after hate-filled rant at Israeli dad with anti-Hamas bumper sticker
A Wisconsin congressional candidate has been arrested on hate crime charges after he went on a vulgar caught-on-camera rant against an Israeli dad with his young son in the car — after he was triggered by an anti-Hamas bumper sticker.

Matthew Arndt, 54, allegedly cut off the 41-year-old father on a road in the Milwaukee suburb of Mequon Thursday morning, flipping him the bird and cursing at him before pulling into a gas station, where the dad followed him and began filming the explosive encounter.

“Do you want to tell me something?” the father asked.

“Yeah, you’re a f–king piece of s–t! You’re a f–king traitor!” Arndt erupted, pointing an accusatory finger at the stunned motorist.

“Why do you say this?” the dad asked.

“You’re a f–king Israel f–king traitor! F–k you! F–k Israel! Go f–k yourself!” Arndt raged.

By Thursday evening, Arndt had been arrested on a disorderly conduct charge with a hate crime enhancer, police said.

During the confrontation, Arndt dared the father to share the footage.

“You know what? Go post it on social media. I’m running for Congress in the 6th District, and f–k Israel! Go f–k yourself!” he shouted.

“Really? You’re running for Congress?” the incredulous dad asked.

“F–k the Israel lobby! F–k the neocons!” Arndt fired back.

Asked his name, the candidate declared, “Free Palestine! Matthew Arndt.”

“You’re a great guy. I’m definitely going to vote for you,” the father shot back sarcastically.

The Israeli immigrant, who has lived in the US for about 12 years, told The Post the bizarre confrontation began while he was driving his young son to school.

“I was driving my son to school this morning. Someone was driving behind me. I have an Israeli flag sticker with ‘F–k Hamas,’ which, as far as I understand, is a terror organization that was declared so by the US,” he said.

“And I guess that really pissed off the guy behind me, and when he got the chance, he just got next to me and opened the window and started cursing and giving me the finger, almost trying to push me off the lane.”


Jewish man says he was beaten after confronting anti-Israel vandals in London
A Jewish man said Wednesday that he was beaten during a confrontation with activists who were spraying anti-Israel graffiti in London.

Dan Levene, 52, told British media outlets that he intervened on Tuesday evening when he saw the two spraying a slogan calling Labour’s candidate in the local election, Sagal Abdi-Wali, a “puppet of genocidal Israel.”

According to Levene’s account, the pair were using a stencil for the graffiti, which he kicked away.

The incident took place in the Holborn and St. Pancras constituency, where voters went to the polls Thursday as Green Party leader Zack Polanski tried to win the seat vacated by former UK prime minister Keir Starmer. Polanski, who is Jewish, is one of the most vocal critics of Israel in British politics, and his party recently passed a motion declaring Zionism to be racism and calling for Israel to be replaced with a State of Palestine.

“I said, ‘No, you’re not doing that,’ at which point this guy got up and [it] transpired he was quite a lot larger than me. I told him what he was writing was neo-Nazi [propaganda],” Levene told The Times. “All this stuff about genocide and Israelis exerting puppetry control over people. This is the message of the Nazis that Jewish people escaped in the middle of the last century.”

“He started shouting at me and started punching me. I stood my ground and then he started kicking me in the side of my legs quite hard for about 20 seconds, clearly trying to get me down on the floor,” Levene said.

Levene told the outlet that he was then kicked to the floor, before he was punched and kicked in the head and ribs.

The altercation ended when two bystanders who witnessed the attack intervened, prompting the attackers to flee, Levene told the Jewish News.

The outlet reported that London police were treating the incident as an antisemitic hate crime.

Levene said he believes that the graffiti was linked to the Green Party’s “Zionism is racism” motion.

“It’s exactly the type of anti-Zionist message that the Greens have adopted as policy. There have been other instances of Green activists using this or similar stenciled messages during the by-election campaign,” he told the Jewish News.
French Holocaust survivor wins 2026 Nobel Prize for Chemistry
A Holocaust survivor whose family escaped the Nazis by hiding in a French village under assumed names has been announced as one of two winners of the 2026 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

Henri B. Kagan, who was born in France in 1930, was chosen as a Nobel Laureate alongside Kenso Soai, for their groundbreaking work in the field of pharmaceutical engineering. Conducted in the 1980s and 1990s, their respective research helped solve the problem of how to create a single molecular mirror image.

A press release from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which is responsible for choosing the Nobel Laureates, described how “Life’s chemistry is what chemists call homochiral, after the Greek words for ‘same’ and ‘hand’. Like hands, all amino acids exist as two mirrored variants, but only one of them is found in the proteins in your cells. The other is rarely found in nature.

“For a long time, chemists wondered how homochirality can emerge. When they began to experiment with chemical reactions that can form two mirrored molecules, they always obtained equal proportions of both in their test tubes. However, chemists strived to produce only one of these mirror images, because in the development of molecules that will interact with living beings – such as in pharmaceuticals – only one mirror image will have the desired effect.”

Heiner Linke, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said that “Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai have provided a solution to a chemical mystery that is over a century old: how homochirality can emerge spontaneously. The chemical reactions they have developed are spectacular.”

After the war, Kagan went on to receive a PhD from the Collège de France, and then went on to become a professor at what was then Université Paris-Sud, France.

Kagan, 95, shared Israel’s 2001 Wolf Prize in Chemistry with Ryoji Noyori and K. Barry Sharpless – however, while Noyori and Sharpless won that year’s Chemistry Nobel alongside a third man, William S Knowles, Kagan did not share it.
Boy George announces second concert in Israel dedicated to Nova music festival survivors
International pop icon Boy George has announced a second concert in Israel titled “We Will Dance Again,” with the entire evening dedicated to the survivors and families of the Nova music festival.

The announcement for the November 7 concert comes on the heels of a rapid sell-out of his first scheduled performance on November 4.

The British singer-songwriter, who skyrocketed to global fame in the 1980s as the frontman of Culture Club, is expanding his upcoming visit to double down on his public solidarity with the victims of the October 7 tragedy.

The performance is a live extension of a tribute Boy George initiated earlier this year. In July, he released a moving single also titled “We Will Dance Again.”

The track’s official music video prominently featured footage celebrating the lives of the young people who were killed at the festival.

Boy George aims to transform venue to place of healing for Nova community
By naming the second concert after the song, George aims to transform the venue into a space of remembrance, resilience, and healing for the Nova community.

Known for timeless chart-toppers like “Karma Chameleon” and “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me,” the singer’s back-to-back shows are expected to draw massive crowds.


‘Sense of closure’: NY Jews deposit hostage tags into new art installation on Oct. 7
When Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, the Israeli street artists Dede Bandaid and Nitzan Mintz, in New York City for an art residency, decided to put their skills to use by designing posters showing the hostages taken into Gaza.

The posters became a global phenomenon as activists printed out the fliers and pasted them onto city streets in New York, across the US and in other countries.

On Wednesday, the third anniversary of the attack, Mintz and Bandaid unveiled a sculpture in New York meant to commemorate the fight for the hostages’ release, ending a journey that began at the start of the war.

The plight of the hostages was a central focus of the New York Jewish community until their release last year.

“People should feel very proud that they contributed and did everything they could,” Mintz told The Times of Israel. “They should feel that they are powerful. The battle isn’t over but people deserve a moment of gratitude after such a long battle.”

The sculpture was unveiled at an October 7 memorial event at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, a Holocaust education center, in lower Manhattan.

New York leaders, including Governor Kathy Hochul and City Council Speaker Julie Menin, attended the event, a solemn commemoration led by the Jewish community as anti-Zionist protests raged elsewhere in the city.

The UJA-Federation of New York, a leading Jewish group in the city and the event organizer, commissioned Mintz and Bandaid to design the sculpture.

The six-foot-tall acrylic tree-trunk structure, titled, “Rooted: A Testament to Jewish Resilience,” has a hollow center filled with the dog tags and yellow pins that were worn by hostage advocates.

Mintz and Bandaid said they were inspired to design a container that would serve as a portable memorial for Jews to deposit the items they had worn for over two years, until the hostages’ release. The tree symbolizes unity and the efforts of the Jewish community coming together to bring the hostages home, they said.

At the unveiling, guests perused the installation and dropped their hostage tags and pins into the center of the clear tree trunk.

New York City resident Lynn Wolitzer said the installation was an important commemoration to the challenges the Jewish community faced after October 7.

“It gives a very sad time that has passed a living, breathing future,” Wolitzer said.

Another attendee, Andrea Resnick, said that the physical act of removing her tags and pins after two years had been difficult, as the items had become a part of her.

“It felt like a connection point to our brothers and sisters in Israel,” Resnick said. “Also relief. It feels like a sense of closure.”





 




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