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Thursday, November 12, 2026

11/12 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: The absolute necessity of fighting back; The left’s despicable absolution of Hamas; Avi Issacharoff: 'I Went Undercover In Palestinian Territory… And Nearly Died'

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The absolute necessity of fighting back
At this exceptionally alarming time, when bad people in Israel and the West seem to have the wind behind them, two developments have lifted the spirits.

A mob of masked protesters wearing keffiyehs and carrying Palestinian flags staged a “bicycle boycott” ride in Philadelphia to target and intimidate Jewish- and Israeli-owned businesses. They hadn’t expected that thousands of people would turn up to defend the Jews and actually outnumber the mob, forcing some of those louts to abandon the demonstration.

The second development involves 13 Republican-led U.S. states that have threatened trade reprisals and divestment measures against the United Kingdom and the Netherlands over their proposed trade sanctions targeting Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria.

In both instances, civilization has begun fighting back against those running interference for barbarism.

The barbarians have gained the upper hand in the West because the decent majority of them haven’t understood that a war is being waged against them and their society in which they must either muster their courage to fight or lose their way of life.

The situation in Iran shows what happens when people flinch from this. In February, U.S. President Donald Trump didn’t flinch. He bombed Iran—albeit only after Israel had risked its own people to make the skies safe for American warplanes.

But then Trump flinched, refusing to allow Israel to continue to attack and thus further degrade Tehran’s ability to lash out. The result was Iran’s seizing control of the Straits of Hormuz, stepping up attacks on neighboring Arab states, and replenishing its ballistic-missile and other military programs.

The high oil price and spikes in the cost of living resulting from this continuing Iranian aggression helped produce the Republican rout in the midterms.

If Trump really had defeated the regime instead of the patently false victory that he has repeatedly claimed, even America’s anti-war public would have been impressed, his enemies on both sides of the political divide would have been unable to use the war against him, and the oil price would have gone down.

Instead, a re-energized Tehran has been gloating that it has defeated America in both the Straits of Hormuz and in Washington, D.C.

And it’s stepping up its efforts to sow terror around the world.
Bond between Jews and Iranians ‘fundamental,’ says exiled crown prince on Auschwitz visit
Iran's exiled crown prince, Reza Pahlavi, has celebrated the historic relationship between Jews and Persians during a visit to Auschwitz, warning that the Islamic Republic wants to “finish what Hitler has done”.

Pahlavi received the European Jewish Association's (EJA) King Solomon Award at a ceremony in Krakow on Monday evening, before joining an international delegation of politicians, diplomats and Jewish community leaders at Auschwitz-Birkenau on Tuesday.

Addressing the gathering, he reflected on more than 2,500 years of shared history, invoking the legacy of Persian King Cyrus the Great, who liberated the Jews from Babylonian captivity and enabled the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem.

“The bond between Iranians and the Jewish people is not a matter of sentiment and is not a matter of political convenience. It is older,” Pahlavi said.

“It is a fundamental part of Iranian history that we are truly proud of.”

He argued that the relationship between the two peoples should not be defined by the current Iranian government, but by centuries of shared history and the possibility of a different future.

The award recognised his opposition to antisemitism and his support for closer relations between Iran and Israel.
Brendan O'Neill: The left’s despicable absolution of Hamas
They’re all at it. ‘This is not a natural disaster. This is man-made genocide’, says US congresswoman Rashida Tlaib. These ‘apocalyptic conditions’, this ‘abomination’, is all down to Israel, commentators say. It is ‘pure evil’, said actor John Cusack while sharing what appears to be an AI-generated video of neck-high flooding. What’s being argued here is as insane as it is defamatory. They’re not only saying Israel has been neglectful towards post-war Gaza – they’re saying it has intentionally let freezing waters slosh as part of its fiendish crusade to finish off the Palestinians. Apparently even rain becomes a tool of extermination under the rule of this unholiest nation.

This kind of commentary, so commonplace now, doesn’t only slander the Jewish homeland – it also absolves Hamas. By converting every hardship into evidence of Israeli depravity, Western pundits wipe the moral slate clean for the jihadist gang that actually runs Gaza. They wilfully overlook that the suffering of the people in Gaza, including in these floods, is primarily down to the fact that their ruthless Islamist rulers cannibalised their own municipal infrastructure to fuel their cosmic war on the Jews.

There’s a reason Gaza has poor water infrastructure – because Hamas spent years ripping water pipes out of the ground to turn them into rocket fuselages for their holy crusade against the Jewish homeland. This is not an ‘anti-Hamas smear’ – the army of anti-Semites itself has boasted of its subterranean vandalism. It has proudly released footage of its operatives digging up municipal pipelines, sawing through the metal tubing, and fashioning these arteries of water into weapons of death for the Jews. A pro-Hamas documentary on Al-Jazeera showed the militants making rockets from dug-up ‘metal water pipes’ and ‘unexploded Israeli munitions’.

Hamas has even crowed about the fact that it turned EU-funded pipelines into weaponry. As the Telegraph reported three years ago, some of the ‘30 miles of water pipelines’ gifted to Gaza by Brussels were bent into ‘an arsenal of home-made rockets’. As even the BBC said in 2021, the reason Israel banned the importing of ‘dual-use’ goods into Gaza – including pipes, cement and iron – is because there exists footage showing Hamas ‘ma[king] missiles from water pipes’.

A core reason that Gaza is ill-prepared for storms is because its theocratic rulers converted virtually the entire Strip into an engine of fascistic war. For 20 years in Gaza, civic planning has played a poor second to the logistical requirements of anti-Jewish violence. Hamas chose to build not a functioning society but a staging ground for slaughter. Pipes became missiles, hospitals became weapons depots, schools became rocket-launching facilities. And of course, foreign aid was used to build the estimated 350-mile tunnel system in which Hamas hides and plots as its subjects above ground are forced to flee the missiles of the war Hamas started with its mass murder of Jews.

It is a grotesque lie of omission to leave out such brutal truths in the discussion of Gaza’s suffering. We are witnessing the moral absolution of Hamas by a cultural establishment hell-bent on blaming the Jewish State for everything. This has been the modus operandi of the West’s media elites and activist classes since the pogrom of 7 October, and in fact earlier: to monster the Jewish State and infantilise its enemies. To depict Israel as the sole and evil author of every calamity in the Middle East, and Arabs as wide-eyed, child-like victims.

This is the double racism of Israelophobia. The Jewish nation is defamed as a uniquely monstrous entity, while the Arab side is robbed of agency and treated as the helpless infant of history. Even Hamas. Even an avowedly racist army that turned a whole strip of land into a subterranean fortress of death is let off the hook. The Jews are omnipotent, the Arabs pathetic. This is progressive politics now? That’s what the floods discussion reveals: that Israel and Gaza have been flattened into props for a moral psychodrama penned by bigoted Westerners. The flooding of Gaza is terrible. So is the flooding of Western commentary with lies about Israel and apologism for the Islamo-Nazis that want to destroy it.


Dalia Ziada: Americans Need to Worry about Islamist Ideology, Not Muslim Demographics
As candidates with possible ties to the Muslim Brotherhood achieved unprecedented electoral victories in the U.S. midterm elections, some commentators have attributed the threat posed by Islamism to American Muslims as a whole. When critics treat Muslim communities as a monolithic Islamist constituency, they inadvertently reinforce this narrative and further empower Islamists. Thus, differentiating Islam from Islamism is a strategic imperative.

An increase in the Muslim population does not inherently result in a larger Islamist constituency, just as the expansion of Islamist political movements does not necessarily depend on demographic growth among Muslims. Most American Muslims reject terrorism and violent jihad, yet a significant minority holds views incompatible with liberal democracy. However, Muslims cannot be regarded as a homogeneous political constituency with uniform beliefs and aspirations. If anything, American Muslims who oppose political Islam are potential allies.

Islamist ideology poses a real threat to American democracy and there is a need for serious scrutiny of antisemitism within Muslim communities. To address these threats, it is necessary to reckon with the capacity of Islamist movements and their political narratives to gain acceptance among groups with no religious affiliation with Islam.

The relationship between Islamist movements and segments of the Western radical left is particularly significant in this context. Resistance to Western political dominance, American foreign policy, capitalism, and Israel has created opportunities for cooperation among actors whose ideological bases differ significantly.

In the Michigan Senate election, Abdul El-Sayed received 2.5 million votes, while Michigan's Muslim population is estimated at 274,000. Therefore, at least 89% of his electoral support must have come from non-Muslims. In Zohran Mamdani's victory in New York City's 2025 mayoral election, he received nearly 51% of the vote, while Muslims were estimated to constitute 7% of the registered voters. Islamism should be understood as a political ideology rather than a religion. It is possible for individuals to identify as Muslim while rejecting political Islamism, as demonstrated by many in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain (all Arab Muslim-majority countries), where the Muslim Brotherhood has been banned or restricted. Conversely, non-Muslims may support political Islam.

The critical question is: how do political ideas associated with Islamist movements, often focused on undermining Western civilization from within, gain legitimacy and support among non-Muslim Americans, particularly within progressive political circles? Addressing this question, rather than locating the problem with Muslims collectively, may facilitate a more accurate diagnosis of the political threats currently facing the U.S. This should be the starting point for a rigorous examination of the Islamist challenge to American democracy.
The West Faces Two Islams
Within Western diaspora communities, Islam has become intertwined with Third-Worldism and postcolonial theory, both of which see Western imperialism as the great evil of the modern era.

Meantime, much of the Middle East and Asia has turned toward pragmatism, normalization, and acceptance of Western predominance as a geopolitical reality.

After 9/11, American strategy focused on political Islam. Al-Qaeda and its eventual Islamic State offshoot, the Taliban, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hizbullah, and Iran's Islamic Republic shared a revolutionary ambition to overturn the Western-led order.

Today, that Islamist challenge has fragmented. Al-Qaeda has splintered, the Islamic State has lost its caliphate, Egypt has outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Gulf monarchies increasingly treat Islamist movements as threats.

Pragmatic Middle Eastern governments increasingly see cooperation with the U.S. and Israel as a means to strengthen security, attract investment, acquire technology, and accelerate economic growth.
The Brink:'I Went Undercover In Palestinian Territory… And Nearly Died' | Former Israeli Operative On Hamas
In this episode of The Brink, Andrew and Jake are joined in Tel Aviv by Avi Issacharoff, Israeli journalist, former undercover soldier and co-creator of the hit Netflix series Fauda, to explore the reality of Israel's secret war against terrorism and the brutal world of Hamas.

Drawing on his service in the elite Duvdevan unit, Avi recounts the extraordinary story of being shot during an undercover operation in Hebron and reveals how his real-life experiences inspired some of Fauda's most gripping scenes.

Having personally interviewed Hamas leaders, including its founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Avi explains how the organisation became increasingly radicalised, why he failed to anticipate October 7 and whether Hamas can ever be removed from power in Gaza.

The conversation also explores the controversy surrounding Hamas's alleged use of hospitals, Israel's intelligence failures and how Fauda's latest season brings the horrors of October 7 to audiences around the world.

Chapters
00:00 Inside Israel’s Secret War Against Hamas
02:07 The Real-Life Undercover Unit Behind Fauda
04:34 The Terrorist Who Shot Avi Issacharoff
06:02 Inside A Deadly Undercover IDF Operation
13:16 How Israeli Special Forces Infiltrate Palestinian Hospitals
18:00 Hamas, October 7th & The Brutality Of Yahya Sinwar
23:01 Can Hamas Ever Be Defeated In Gaza?
27:45 Why Israeli Intelligence Failed To Predict October 7th
32:07 Face To Face With Hamas Leaders
38:07 How Fauda Brought The Reality Of October 7th To Television




Jeffries calls for ‘dramatic change’ in US military aid to Israel after Democrats' election victory
Nine days after Democrats secured a sweeping victory in the US midterm elections, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries called Thursday for “dramatic change” in America’s approach to Israel, including its military assistance framework, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank.

Speaking at a press briefing in Washington, Jeffries was asked whether he supported an initiative led by Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen and 11 other senators to remove provisions from the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would deepen US-Israel defense and intelligence cooperation.

Jeffries stopped short of endorsing the proposal but made clear that the current approach was unacceptable.

“I haven’t had a conversation with Senator Van Hollen, but what I have said is that things have to dramatically change over in the Middle East,” Jeffries said.

“We need dramatic change in the West Bank, which is why I strongly support the West Bank Violence Protection Act. We need dramatic change in Gaza, and we need dramatic change with respect to the Memorandum of Understanding as it winds down, all of which I’ve previously said publicly.”

Status quo is 'unacceptable,' says Jeffries
The current US-Israel Memorandum of Understanding provides Israel with $38 billion in military assistance over ten years and expires in 2028. Jeffries has previously called for reconsidering the framework governing future American security assistance to Israel.

However, he did not explicitly endorse removing the disputed NDAA provisions or cutting off military aid.

“We’ll work as a caucus to make sure that we can bring about the just and lasting peace that Israelis and Palestinians deserve over in the Middle East,” Jeffries said.

“The status quo is unacceptable,” he added, outlining his vision of “a safe and secure Israel living side by side as a Jewish and democratic state with an independent Palestinian state that provides dignity and self-determination for the Palestinian people.”
Lander appoints self-described communist with anti-Zionist record to senior congressional role
Brad Lander, the Democratic representative-elect for New York’s 10th Congressional District, has tapped Jesse Myerson, a self-described communist with a history of anti-Zionist statements, to serve as his communications director as he prepares to take office in January.

Myerson’s views on national borders and Israel date back more than a decade. In a 2013 article for the socialist publication Jacobin, he argued that the political left should seek to eliminate national borders by uniting workers across the world.

In articles for Salon in 2014 and 2015, he referred to himself as “this communist” and a “publicly self-identified communist.”

In a November 2023 Facebook post, Myerson wrote that “there is no such thing as Israel,” grouping the Jewish state with countries including China, Russia and the United States. He argued that nations are constructs used by ruling classes to divide workers.

In a portion of the post shared on the social media platform Bluesky in 2025, Myerson distinguished between the right of Jews to live safely and Israel’s right to exist as a nation-state. He rejected the latter, arguing that it would preserve Jewish political, military and economic dominance over other inhabitants of the region.

Myerson also defended the phrase “globalize the intifada” in a June 2025 Bluesky post. “Of course I understand why, to many Jewish New Yorkers, ‘Globalize the Intifada’ is a scary slogan,” he wrote. “Imagine how ‘Am Yisrael Chai’ must sound to Palestinian New Yorkers.”

His criticism has extended to Jewish religious traditions. In a 2017 article for Jewish Currents about Hanukkah, Myerson described halachic law as “backward,” criticized the Maccabees for practicing “genital mutilation” and expressed discomfort with celebrating Jewish military victories. He also called the Zionist project “absurd.”
NYC health department wouldn’t let Jews form staff group, retaliated when they mourned antisemitic mass shooting in Sydney, lawsuit alleges
Seven employees of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene sued the city, the department and its equal employment opportunity director for allegedly discriminating against them by refusing to recognize a Jewish employee group and retaliating by probing the group’s leaders after they mourned Jews killed at Bondi Beach in Australia.

The lawsuit, which the National Jewish Advocacy Center filed on Nov. 10 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, accuses department officials of denying the group, HINENU, access to a program that was available to other ethnic groups.

The city health department opened an “unfounded investigation” about statements from eight of the group leaders about Jew-hatred and terrorism, NJAC stated.

City health officials first refused to allow a Jewish employee resource group in July 2025, on the grounds, it said, that employee resource group “identity cannot be based on religious groups,” according to the complaint.

The group sought the same benefits that the department provides to six other ERGs, including an agency email account, internal web page and an annual budget of $5,000.

The department recognized a group for staff of Southwest Asian and North African ancestry, whose charter “encompasses multiple religious identities,” they allege.

The HINENU charter stated that it “will not engage in political advocacy, religious worship or religious instruction” and that it “is not organized to advance, oppose or practice any religion,” according to the complaint.

Alan Scheiner, of the National Jewish Advocacy Center, told JNS that the group is “not asking the agency to fund Jewish religious services.”


Green deputy leader defeated as Leeds council declares ‘Zionism is not racism’
Leeds City Council has overwhelmingly voted in favour of a motion declaring that “Zionism is not racism” in a significant blow for Green Party Deputy Leader Mothin Ali.

The motion came as a direct counter to the controversial “Zionism is racism” policy passed at the party’s conference in October.

Ali, who is also a local councillor in Leeds, spoke against the motion, but his opposition bloc was roundly defeated.

Councillors backed the motion by a margin of 81-11, with two abstentions. The voting breakdown has not yet been released, but there are 11 Green councillors on the council.

During the debate, Councillor Dan Cohen, who is Jewish, argued that it is an “obvious truth” that Zionism is not racism.

“Zionism is a very simple belief: that Jewish people have the right to self-determination in our ancestral homeland. That’s it,” he said.

Cohen, who has been a Leeds councillor for 15 years and was previously Lord Mayor of the city, continued: “According to the Green Party, I am a racist. The majority of Jews in this country, indeed around the world, identify as Zionist.

“The Greens do not get to use a useful few to rewrite my identity, to tell us what it is to be Jewish. I’m afraid not. They don’t get to condemn us for their version of my faith.”

Ali, during his address, claimed it was “an understatement” to say Zionism is a racist ideology.

As passed, the motion condemns the Green Party conference’s resolution declaring Zionism to be racism, opposes any proposal to replace Israel with a single Palestinian state and supports a two-state solution.

It also “expresses concern at the rejection of an amendment by the Green Party protecting individuals from being challenged over their affiliation with synagogues and Jewish Community organisations.”

Meanwhile, a joint Conservative-Labour motion that ‘Zionism is not racism’ was also passed at Westminster council on Wednesday. It was only the second time a joint motion between the two parties has been presented since 2018.


Israel bars entry to French far-left leaders over ‘anti-Israel incitement’
Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar on Thursday barred French hard-left La France Insoumise leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the party’s parliamentary group chair, Mathilde Panot, from entering Israel, accusing them of anti-Israel incitement.

In a statement, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson accused both politicians of spreading “blood libels” against Israel, noting that Mélenchon had also called for French vessels to escort unauthorized flotillas to Gaza.

“Israel will respond firmly to those who seek to harm it,” the ministry said, adding that it would not permit individuals who “incite against” Israeli citizens to enter the country.

The move came in retaliation for France’s recent decision to deny entry to West Bank settler leader Yossi Dagan, according to an official familiar with the decision.

Responding to the ban, Mélenchon said he had never sought to enter Israel.

“I regret that the Israeli government is pursuing me like this,” he told France Info radio.

“The ambassador here in Paris said that he would like anyone other than me elected. Well, so be it,” he said. Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar arrives at the Jerusalem District Court to show his support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his corruption trial, October 11, 2026. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

Mélenchon said he was not “disappointed” by the Israeli order, explaining: “They’re banning me from entering territory I didn’t ask to enter.”

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël blasted the demagogic decision “from a government that has repeatedly violated international law, which plays into the hands of those who… make a living out of exploiting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“France will continue tirelessly to work toward a two-state solution and peaceful coexistence between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples,” he added.

Mélenchon, a candidate in France’s 2027 presidential election, has faced accusations of antisemitism, including invoking antisemitic stereotypes and downplaying the threat of antisemitism.

He has also refused to designate Hamas a terrorist organization, even after its onslaught in southern Israel on October 7, 2023. Israel’s ambassador to France has reportedly kept contacts with other French political parties while excluding LFI.


Follow-up bike rally targeting Jewish businesses in Philadelphia called off
Organizers of a Philadelphia bike ride last weekend that targeted Jewish- and Israeli-owned restaurants canceled a second event planned for Sunday, claiming that last week’s ride had been met with “extremist violence” from Israel supporters — despite the event itself being organized to single out local businesses over their owners’ ties to Israel.

Last week’s ride targeted businesses including Israeli restaurants Dizengoff, Goldie and K’Far Cafe, sandwich shop Huda as well as Schlessinger’s Deli and Mac Mart. The activist groups’ flyer declared that “these Zionist establishments must go,” prompting condemnation from local Jewish organizations and elected officials, which called the campaign an effort to intimidate and exclude Jews from Philadelphia’s economic and civic life. The rally took place on the eve of the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the 1938 Nazi pogrom against Jews that included the looting and destruction of Jewish businesses.

After a show of solidarity from pro-Israel Philadelphia residents and elected officials overshadowed the bicycle protest last weekend, organizers had said they planned to rally again this Sunday.

But in a series of Instagram posts on Thursday, the “Ride of Return” organizers said they were calling it off, attacking the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish National Fund and “pro-Israel media,” claiming without evidence that they spread AI-generated misinformation about the Nov. 8 ride. The posts offer no examples of the content. The groups also claimed that they “received death threats” and that a “right-wing Zionist pro-Israel terror group” was present, without providing evidence.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia welcomed the cancellation but warned that organizers’ boycott campaign would continue.


Pro-Palestinian group seeks ban on Israeli real estate fair in Paris
Pro-Palestinian activists have asked a French court to ban an Israeli real estate fair in Paris, which they say offers a bonus to prospective Jewish settlers in the West Bank, sources told AFP on Thursday.

The Franco-Palestinian NIDAL association filed an emergency motion with a court against the 9th Icube real estate and investment salon, arguing that the fair violates human rights.

The event is set to take place on Sunday at the European Centre for Judaism in the French capital.

Other major cities have seen similar uproars over Israeli real estate fairs accused of marketing houses in the West Bank. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani condemned the 2026 edition of the Great Israeli Real Estate Event in Manhattan for that reason.

NIDAL asked the court to either order the head of the Paris police force to ban the event outright or to ensure that the event does not sell property in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Israeli settlements in the West Bank are considered illegal by much of the international community. Israel disputes that determination.

East Jerusalem is considered a disputed territory under international law, and dozens of countries have recognized it as Palestinian territory and the capital of a future state. However, its status is different than the rest of the West Bank, as Israel formally annexed the area in 1980, 13 years after capturing the territory during the 1967 Six-Day War.

Many of the dozens of Jewish enclaves in East Jerusalem are, in practice, fully integrated neighborhoods of the city.


‘We’re not in a fight about facts’: Scholars analyze post-Oct. 7 pop-up campus protests
During the anti-Israel encampments at Indiana University in 2024, Jewish studies professor Alvin Rosenfeld decided to walk among the tents to see what was driving the protests.

“I saw a lot of students milling around, and lots of very similar tents, probably paid for by a well-financed source,” Rosenfeld recalled in an interview with The Times of Israel. “Students were shouting slogans about the Intifada, so I approached one and asked what he knew about the Intifada, especially the Second Intifada.”

The student drew a blank, Rosenfeld said. He had no idea that the Second Intifada had killed about 1,000 Israeli civilians in bus bombings, restaurant bombings and other attacks between 2000 and 2005.

“Nonetheless, he kept on shouting,” he said.

That encounter illustrated what Rosenfeld sees as a defining feature of the post-October 7 campus protests: a movement driven by ideological mobilization, not knowledge.

“We’re not in a fight about facts,” he said. “The facts can be all wrong. We are in a fight about feelings, and those feelings are very impassioned, very determined, very aggressive.”

A new book Rosenfeld edited, “Toward the Last Encampment: Campus Culture and the Jews Before and After October 7,” examines the explosion of anti-Israel activism and antisemitism at universities in the United States and Europe following the October 7, 2023, Hamas onslaught on Israel.

While several recent books have examined antisemitism on university campuses, Rosenfeld said his collection brings together firsthand accounts and scholarly analyses of the political, cultural and ideological forces behind the post-October 7 hostility.

Rosenfeld has extensive knowledge of the topic. He serves as the director of Indiana University’s Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, one of the longest-established academic centers devoted to the subject in the United States. The institute recently received a $6 million grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the largest award announced by the agency this year, he noted.

“After October 7, Jew hatred is a global phenomenon, particularly on college campuses,” he said. “This book charts the progress of those developments at campuses in America and abroad, with a great deal of detail previously unknown.”
Anti-Zionist academic Judith Butler: Don’t count on the ‘blue wave’ for big changes
Prominent Jewish and anti-Zionist academic Judith Butler said Thursday that the overwhelming Democratic Party victories in last week’s midterms would not end what she characterized as the repression of anti-Zionist ideology.

“You may be risking your education, your job, especially if you are a precarious worker, your professional standing, your mobility, your privacy,” for supporting anti-Zionism, Butler said at a Boston University symposium.

“We cannot begin a discussion of anti-Zionism without a discussion of academic freedom, and in my view, we should not assume that the ‘blue wave,’ which includes a vast number of Zionist centrist Democrats, will quickly alter the situation,” Butler said.

“The blue wave feels good,” Butler added, but “there is reason to think that it can turn its back on electoral results.”

Butler made the comments during a keynote speech at a “Jewish Anti-Zionism” conference and book launch marking the release of “Jewish Anti-Zionism: A Historical Anthology,” a collection edited by Shaul Magid and Zev Mishell.

The Democratic Party has become increasingly hostile toward Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, and several anti-Zionist politicians won elections to Congress last week.

Butler portrayed anti-Zionism as a persecuted ideology, saying the US government had labeled “those who oppose fascism and Zionism” as “domestic terrorists.”


Major media outlets increasingly say ‘occupied West Bank’ in Judea, Samaria coverage, HonestReporting finds
Mainstream media outlets increasingly use the term “occupied West Bank” in their coverage of Judea and Samaria, according to an analysis from the watchdog HonestReporting.

The report, shared exclusively with JNS, analyzed 5,370 articles from 17 major news outlets, including the New York Times, CNN, BBC and Guardian, between May 2025 and last month. The watchdog found that 46.3% of the articles used the term “occupied West Bank” when describing Judea and Samaria, and 62.3% used “broader and related terms” like “occupation” and “occupying.”

“The BBC used it in 71% of its West Bank articles, CNN in 68%, NBC in 64%, the Los Angeles Times in 61%, Reuters in 60% and Fox News in only 12%,” the report stated. “Reuters, the New York Times and CBS often write ‘Israeli-occupied West Bank.’”

The Associated Press, from which many other outlets run wire copy, uses the term “occupied West Bank.” It says in the 57th edition of its stylebook, commonly referred to as the “journalist’s Bible,” not to use the term “Palestine” except “in the context of Palestine’s activities in the international bodies to which it has been admitted,” because “it is not a fully independent, unified state.”

According to the HonestReporting analysis, 38.9% of articles used the term “occupied” to refer to Judea and Samaria between May and October 2025, and 52.2% did so from May to October of this year.

The report sampled 60 articles and found that 50 (83%) used the term “occupied West Bank” in a statement that wasn’t quoting or attributed to a source.

Sharon Levy, an editor at HonestReporting, told JNS that media coverage of Judea and Samaria has increased as has “more extreme language.”

“You see this increase in coverage, and you also see the increase in terms such as ‘occupation,’ which is also coupled with other extreme terms such as ‘apartheid,’ that are being used in conjunction with each other,” she said. “Those are the terms that the public is being exposed to more and more frequently.”


How Hamas shaped Gaza's winter flooding narrative: 'It was written before it rained'
“There was flooding in Gaza, but the narrative and scale of suffering was written by Hamas before it even started raining,” Justin Pozmanter, News Director at HonestReporting, told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.

Pozmanter shared an exclusive report with the Post detailing how the Hamas-government winter campaign and a Hamas-run media office figure traveled from Telegram to the international press between November 1 and 10, 2026.

The story begins on November 1, when the Gaza Winter Emergency Committee, a Hamas-government body, issued its first press statement, posted on the GMO’s Telegram channel.

The committee announced the “2026-2027 Winter Preparedness and Response Plan” and the national campaign “Together Towards a Safe Winter.” The release predicted a harsh, early winter and blamed Israeli restrictions on heavy machinery, spare parts, fuel, and shelter supplies.

It also provided a list of figures: 200,000 worn-out tents and one million tarps needed; 7,800 tents in dangerous locations; 2,000 cracked buildings at risk of collapse; and 70% of municipalities’ basic operating equipment destroyed.

Days later, on November 5, before any storm in the region, Euro-Med Monitor published an article named “Israel weaponizes cold weather against Palestinians in Gaza for fourth year, continues to ban shelter supplies.”

Many of the article’s claims can be traced directly back to the November 1 Hamas press release. For example, the article writes “Israel continues to deprive Palestinians in the Gaza Strip of safe shelter for the fourth consecutive year.” It then lists the same figures that appeared in the Hamas memo: 200,000 tents; one million tarps; 2,000 cracked buildings.

Hamas's Gaza winter claims enter international media coverage, HonestReporting says
As HonestReporting noted, this was a pivot point.

The Hamas-aligned framing, such as “Israel is engineering a winter catastrophe,” was restated in the vocabulary of a human rights NGO, with figures sourced to a committee whose Hamas governance ties go unlabeled.

The first winter storm arrived on November 6, with footage of floods in Gaza circulating on social media.

A day later, on November 7 at 11:15 Israel time, roughly 12 hours after the first rain, the Hamas-run Government Media Office published a new press statement warning that “Within 12 hours: 70,000 tents flooded and $3 million in losses.”

It claimed dozens of walls collapsed, causing injuries, and warned that cracked buildings damaged in the “genocide war” may collapse, and holds Israel “fully responsible” for keeping crossings closed to shelter and reconstruction material. It also called on the international community and UN bodies to intervene.

Within a few hours, Reuters, the BBC, and NBC News began posting the “70,000 tents” figure. Reuters was the only one of the three that explicitly identified the GMO as Hamas-run.

Anti-Israel social media accounts then began amplifying the claims.


Jensen Huang’s dramatic exit clouds Nvidia’s plans to expand its Israel footprint
The resignation on Thursday of Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang has sent ripples through Israel’s tech sector, raising questions about the future commitment of a local R&D powerhouse that became a critical anchor for the chipmaker and the local economy under his leadership.

Led by Huang, a vocal advocate for Israeli tech, Nvidia’s footprint as a key engine of Israeli employment, economic growth and tax revenue had been expected to widen in the coming years as the chipmaker pressed ahead with major plans to expand in the country.

Huang’s departure now puts that expectation in question.

After more than three decades, the Nvidia co-founder stepped down on Thursday as pressure had been mounting in recent days following reports that said the 63-year-old, who is married, had an affair with a Chinese businesswoman whom US authorities suspect of spying for Beijing. Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress has been named as interim CEO as Nvidia searches for a permanent successor.

Huang’s exit plunges the $4 trillion company into uncertainty and threatens to disrupt an AI ecosystem that he helped bankroll by pouring Nvidia’s swelling cash pile back into cloud providers, suppliers and the industry’s biggest labs, including in Israel.

Nvidia’s operations in the Jewish state are the firm’s largest outside of the US. Despite the past three years of war, the chipmaker’s workforce expanded to more than 5,000 employees staffed across seven R&D centers, from Yokne’am in the north through Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Ra’anana in the center of the country to Beersheba in the south.

In December last year, Huang spearheaded ambitious plans for a “multibillion-shekel” R&D campus in the northern town of Kiryat Tivon, bringing some 10,000 jobs to a region outside Haifa with designs for creating a tech hub. Construction on the 160,000-square-meter tech campus was scheduled to begin in 2027 and be completed by 2031, marking Nvidia’s eighth such center in the country.

Israel has viewed the establishment of Nvidia’s R&D center in Kiryat Tivon as a catalyst for more tech jobs outside of the crowded Tel Aviv region, which remains the country’s central high-tech hub.


Houston Astros hire former Team Israel manager Brad Ausmus as next skipper
The Houston Astros hired Brad Ausmus as manager, the team announced Wednesday, making the former Team Israel skipper the lone active Jewish manager in Major League Baseball.

This will be Ausmus’ third managerial stint in MLB. He previously led the Detroit Tigers from 2014-2017 and the Los Angeles Angels in 2019. Ausmus, 57, owns a 386-422 career managerial record. He will be introduced at a press conference at Houston’s Daikin Park on Friday.

Ausmus most recently served as the New York Yankees’ bench coach from 2024-2026 and also previously worked in the front offices of the San Diego Padres and Angels. He had interviewed for the Astros’ managerial opening in 2020 and for their general manager role in 2022.

Ausmus spent 10 of his 18 MLB seasons with the Astros. He finished his playing career with a .251 batting average, .325 on-base percentage and .344 slugging percentage. The New Haven, Connecticut, native managed Team Israel during the qualifiers for the 2013 World Baseball Classic, served on its coaching staff in the 2023 WBC and managed the team in the 2026 tournament.

“Regarding Aus, he is just a perfect big league manager in every way and there are not many people you can say that about,” Nate Fish, the CEO of Israel Baseball Americas and a former Israel player and coach, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “He is smart. He is calm. He has the experience. He is a good fit for any team but a perfect fit in Houston considering he played 10 years there.”

Fish also pointed out that “this is the second time [Ausmus] has been hired to manage in the big leagues following a stint managing Team Israel. Just sayin’. There is a pattern!” Detroit Tigers first-year manager Brad Ausmus, a player for 18 seasons, throwing some batting practice prior to a game against the Baltimore Orioles, May 13, 2014. (Hillel Kuttler/JTA)

Israel won two of its four games in the 2026 tournament, securing a spot in the 2030 competition.



 

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