150 years ago: A study on why Jews live longer than other peoples

Many newspapers in May 1876 published an article with the headline "The Vitality of the Jews"

It went through a number of statistics: 

The Jews are the healthiest and longest lived people on the face of the earth. Their immunity from diseases of all forms is remarkable. Even the great epidemics pass them by with the infliction of much lighter scourge than falls upon other races. It is declared that the cholera never chose one of them for its victims, and, in fact, the deaths from this malady have been so few as almost to bear out the assertion. Suicide is seldom practiced among them. It has been computed, from statistics returned in certain provinces of Austria and Germany, that in a population of 1,000,000 the proportion of suicides between the Jews and the mixed white races was as one to four.

From data carefully studied Hoffman found that between the years 1823 and 1840 the number of stillborn among the Jews in Germany was as one in thirty-nine, and among other races as one in forty. Mayer ascertained that in Fürth the proportion of Jewish children who die between the ages of 1 and 5 years is 10 per cent., and of Christian children of same age it is 14 per cent. M. Neuville, calculating from the statistics of Frankfort, shows even a greater disparity existing among the children of the Jews. He also finds from his data that the average duration of the life of a Jew is 36 years and 9 months, while of the Christian it is 36 years and 11 months. “In the total of all ages half of the Jews born reach the age of 58 years and 1 month, while half of the Christians born attain the age of 36 years only.” One fourth of the Jewish population live beyond 71 years, but the same proportion of the Christian population live no beyond 59 years and 10 months. The official returns of Prussia give the Jews a mortality of 1.61 per cent. and the whole kingdom 2.62 per cent. While the Jews double their numbers in forty-one and one half years others require a period of fifty-one years.

In 1849 there was in Prussia one death for every 3140 Jews and one death for every thirty-two of the remaining population.

A Dr. Richardson writing in Diseases of Modern Life  "ascribes the high vitality of the Jews to their sober way of living."

"The Jew drinks less than his ‘even Christian;’ he takes, as a rule, better food; he marries earlier; he rears the children he has brought into the world with greater personal solicitude; he tends the needy more thoughtfully; he takes better care of his poor; and he takes good care of himself. He does not boast to-morrow, but he provides for it, and he holds tenaciously to all he gets. To our Saxon eyes and Celtic eyes he carries these virtues too far; but thereby he wins, becomes powerful, and, scorning boisterous mirth and passion, is comparatively happy.”

---

Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! Reclaiming the Covenant on America's 250th (May 2026) "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

Read More

05/17 Links: Holocaust survivors: Australia is no longer safe for Jews; Eurovision 2026 Highlights Europe’s Israel Divide; Simon Sebag Montefiore on the History — and Future — of British Jews

From Ian:

John Spencer: Absurd Claims of Dog Rape and Genocide

I see a correlation between those who believe absurd claims like dogs were trained to rape Palestinians and those who insist Israel committed genocide in Gaza. Both claims collapse under scrutiny and under mountains of contrary evidence. One ignores biology and basic science, including the reality that dogs cannot rape humans in the way being alleged. The other disregards the legal definition of genocide, which requires demonstrable intent to destroy a people as such. That accusation runs directly against repeated public statements by Israeli political and military leaders after October 7 that the war was against Hamas, not the people of Gaza. It also requires evidence of actions taken to fulfill genocidal intent. Instead, the easily obtained facts show Israel facilitating historic aid deliveries, establishing evacuation corridors, warning civilians before operations, moving populations from combat zones, numerous other civilian harm mitigation measures, and even vaccinating Gaza’s population during active combat under conditions no military has ever faced.

The accusation also collides with another uncomfortable reality. Even critics of Israel’s military campaign have acknowledged civilian-to-combatant casualty ratios that are historically low for dense urban warfare against an entrenched enemy operating from within civilian areas. Using even Hamas-led Gaza Health Ministry figures, the available numbers suggest ratios somewhere between roughly 1.5:1 and 1:1 depending on the methodology used. Those figures compare favorably to many major urban battles and wars, including Manila, Seoul, Mosul, the Iraq War, and the Korean War just to name a few of many.

None of this removes the tragedy of civilian death. War remains brutal even when fought within the law. Yet casualty figures of this kind directly undermine the assertion that Israel’s campaign reflects an organized effort to destroy the Palestinian people.

Public debate around war increasingly turns statistics into instruments of persuasion rather than tools of understanding. Numbers are pushed into headlines before definitions are clarified. Casualty counts circulate globally detached from methodology, sourcing, combatant status, age distributions, or the conditions under which the data was collected. Large numbers create emotional reactions on their own. Most audiences have little ability to independently evaluate how those figures were generated or whether the institutions producing them have political incentives embedded within the process.

Sociologists who study statistics have long recognized that numbers are social products shaped by the organizations and people who produce them. Activists use statistics to elevate causes. Governments use them to defend policy. Media institutions amplify the figures that generate the strongest emotional response and reinforce existing narratives. In wartime, numbers often become ammunition. Selective statistics gain power through repetition long before they survive rigorous scrutiny. Figures themselves do not lie, but people routinely use figures dishonestly. As the old saying goes, “Figures don’t lie, but liars figure.”

The genocide accusation survives largely because many people begin with the conclusion and work backward from it. Evidence that contradicts the accusation is ignored, minimized, or reframed. Actions that would normally weigh against genocidal intent are treated as irrelevant. Legal definitions become elastic only in Israel’s case. Standards applied to every other military confronting enemies that openly disregard the laws of armed conflict, deliberately embed within civilian populations, and treat civilian suffering as a strategic asset often disappear when Israel is involved.

That dynamic resembles what Natan Sharansky describes as the “3Ds” that distinguish legitimate criticism of Israel from antisemitism: Demonization, Double Standards, and Delegitimization.

One of the major double standards applied to Israel is the way the laws of armed conflict are removed from their actual legal framework and replaced with emotional accounting built almost entirely around casualty numbers. Civilian deaths are presented without operational context, without discussion of the target, the enemy’s tactics, the precautions taken, or what commanders reasonably understood when the action or strike was approved or taken. The numbers themselves become treated as proof of illegality.

The law of armed conflict does not function that way. Military decisions are judged based on what commanders reasonably knew before an operation or action occurred, not through hindsight after the outcome is already known. Legal analysis examines whether the target was a lawful military objective, whether commanders conducted a proportionality assessment to determine that the anticipated civilian harm would not be excessive compared to the concrete and direct military advantage expected from the attack, and whether feasible precautions were taken to mitigate civilian harm under the circumstances at the time.

Much of the public discussion surrounding Gaza reverses that process entirely. Casualty figures are frequently treated as the beginning and end of legal judgment. Civilian deaths become automatic evidence of criminality regardless of the military objective, warnings issued, evacuation measures attempted, intelligence available at the time, the reliability of assessments distinguishing civilians from those actively participating in hostilities, or the enemy’s deliberate integration into civilian infrastructure. Hamas’s use of homes, schools, mosques, hospitals, tunnel systems, and dense residential areas for military purposes is often pushed to the margins of the discussion even though it shaped nearly every operational decision Israel faced.

Jonathan Turley: Why Israel’s lawsuit against Times over ‘blood libel’ has a chance

Does the “Gray Lady” have a “longstanding Jewish problem“?

That question may soon be answered in a Manhattan courtroom as the New York Times stands accused of an alleged attack piece on Israel. This week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he would sue the paper and columnist Nicholas Kristof for defamation over the publication of what he called a “blood libel.”

The latest controversy emerged after the Times ran a Kristof column alleging widespread sexual abuse and torture of Palestinians, including the use of dogs to rape prisoners. The government denounced the column as “one of the most hideous and distorted lies ever published against the State of Israel in the modern press.”

The Israelis allege that the column was intentionally posted ahead of the release of an independent Israeli report that found Hamas had systematically used sexual violence in the onslaught of October 7, 2023.

It is unclear whether the lawsuit will be filed on behalf of individuals, groups, or the nation as a whole. Regardless of the framing, the defamation action could allow Israel to delve into the paper’s journalistic practices and alleged bias.

Under the higher “actual malice standard,” Israeli counsel would likely need to prove that Kristof and the Times acted with knowledge of the allegation’s falsity or in reckless disregard of the truth.

The Times has been accused of such malice for years. A newspaper with an overwhelmingly Democratic and liberal readership, critics have accused the paper of pandering to its increasingly anti-Israeli base.

According to recent polls, two-thirds of Democrats (67%) now support Palestinians over Israel (17%).

The newspaper has been repeatedly called out for slanted and sometimes false reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts. For example, after Israel attacked Gaza in response to the October 7th massacre, the Times reported on an alleged Israeli strike that destroyed part of the Al-Ahli hospital. The Times seemed to rush to get the allegation into print, with little supporting evidence.

The story was based on sources associated with the terrorist group Hamas, which is notorious for disseminating propaganda and false stories. It took a week before the Times retracted the claim. (It turned out to be a misfired Palestinian rocket that hit a parking lot).

The Times has been forced to make a series of retractions and apologies for such coverage. After the newspaper ran a column that it later admitted was antisemitic, Times columnist Bret Stephens wrote that “The Times has a longstanding Jewish problem … continuing into the present day in the form of intensely adversarial coverage of Israel.”

In May 2021, a front-page story contained multiple factual errors and biased elements, including the portrayal of a Hamas militant as a civilian child. It also used a stock image of a girl to claim that she was a dead Palestinian child.

New Report Warns WHO Health-Attack Data Is Being Weaponized Against Israel

A May 2026 policy paper by the Center for Medical Integrity argues that the World Health Organization’s Surveillance System for Attacks on Health Care is being used in international forums in ways that turn a public-health monitoring tool into a political instrument against Israel. The report says SSA collapses analytically distinct categories of incidents under the single label “attacks on health care,” allowing obstruction, intimidation, and direct violence to be cited together without the legal context needed to assess culpability.

The issue matters now because Gaza hospital cases remain central to diplomatic, legal, and media narratives about the war, while evidence and intelligence assessments regarding Hamas and PIJ exploitation of medical infrastructure are often treated as secondary or omitted altogether.

A Broad Database With a Loaded Label
The report explains that WHO defines an attack on health care as “any act” of verbal or physical violence, obstruction, or threat that interferes with health services during emergencies. Its own examples include heavy-weapons violence, psychological intimidation, obstruction to care, armed searches, denial of services, and “militarization of health care facility.”

That breadth may make sense for emergency monitoring. But CMI argues the word “attack” gives operational data the appearance of a legal finding. WHO has also acknowledged that both high-impact events, such as bombings, and lower-impact incidents, such as verbal threats, are included in the same framework.

The concern, CMI argues, is not merely semantic. Under WHO’s SSA methodology, certainty levels indicate confidence that an incident occurred, but they do not resolve disputed questions about perpetrator identity, legal culpability, intent, proportionality, or whether a facility had previously been used for military purposes. WHO separately says it does not collect or verify perpetrator information and that its objective is to raise awareness of attacks on health care, not to pursue accountability.

How Counts Become Accusations
The sharpest allegation in the report concerns the way WHO-linked data travels through international institutions. According to CMI, at WHO’s 158th Executive Board session in February 2026, WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean regional office cited SSA data to claim that “almost 1,000 people” had been killed in documented attacks by Israel, with nearly half that figure deriving from the disputed October 2023 Al-Ahli Hospital explosion.

CMI’s broader concern is that WHO-linked health data can omit battlefield context relevant to legal assessment. U.S. officials said in November 2023 that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad used Al-Shifa Hospital and tunnels beneath it to support military operations and hold hostages. A later declassified U.S. assessment, reported by AP, said American intelligence was confident the groups used the Al-Shifa complex to house command infrastructure, exercise command-and-control activity, store some weapons, and hold at least a few hostages.

Human Rights Watch later found that the Al-Ahli blast resulted from an apparent rocket-propelled munition of a type used by Palestinian terror groups, while saying a full investigation was still needed. HRW also said it could not corroborate the Gaza Health Ministry’s reported death toll of 471, calling it significantly higher than other estimates and out of proportion with visible damage.

The case illustrates the report’s central warning: an early battlefield claim can enter a health database, continue circulating with institutional authority, and later be folded into diplomatic accusations against Israel even after key facts are contested.

Israel itself told WHO’s Executive Board that the body was in “dire need of reform” and accused the session of fueling “yet another politicized discussion” while ignoring facts on the ground.

Read More

Amnesty proves it is antisemitic,again

Amnesty UK tweeted this:

Here’s another picture of Mr. Kapos laughing as he equates the Holocaust to the “Nakba.”

Amnesty-UK is publicizing a child Holocaust survivor who marches in anti-Israel demonstrations, calling the Gaza War a “genocide.” The only reason they want to promote him is to make the point that as a Holocaust survivor, Kapos knows what genocide is and has a particular moral authority to be able to describe Israel’s actions as the most heinous war crimes.

But if Holocaust survivors have a unique perspective on genocide - and they do, having survived the paradigm of all genocides - then what about the 99.9% of living Holocaust survivors who support Israel, and who recognize Hamas and October 7 as being the closest modern equivalent to Nazis? If Holocaust survivors have an important perspective on the matter, why is Amnesty ignoring the feelings of nearly all of them and promoting a fringe figure among them?

Clearly Amnesty doesn’t consider most Holocaust survivors’ opinions to be important.

This means two things:

1. Since Amnesty says that those who support Israel and its war against Hamas to be advocating genocide, that means that Amnesty is calling the people who escaped the gas chambers, and whose parents and siblings were murdered in a real genocide, to now be supporting genocide themselves. They found a “good” Holocaust survivor, but all the rest are the genocidal Zionists who love to see civilians killed, in Amnesty’s interpretation of a war on a terror group. To accuse Holocaust survivors of supporting genocide is as antisemitic as possible., but there is no other way to explain Amnesty’s position.

2. Their choice to elevate this one survivor as a paradigm of virtue while ignoring or disparaging the vast majority reveals that they don’t actually respect Stephen Kapos.. They are using him as a prop, not as someone that should be seriously listened to. If they cared what Holocaust survivors really thought, they would be quoting their opinion of Hamas, of Iran, of Hezbollah, of the Houthis, and of all the modern terrorists who want to finish Hitler’s job.

All Holocaust survivors remember when the word “Palestinians” meant “Jews.” When they were growing up, there was next to no Palestinian nationalism - there was Arab nationalism. Syria and Jordan were competing to be the leaders of the Levant Arabs in the years after 1948; no one was interested in a Palestinian state - not even the Arabs who lived under the Palestinian mandate themselves.

Holocaust survivors experienced a world before the myth of an ancient Arab Palestine took hold. They know the truth. This is why Amnesty disrespects them - they know too much.

To Amnesty, the Holocaust is not a lesson for them to learn from. It is only a lesson for its victims and their descendants. It wasn’t a genocide, exactly, but a giant classroom for Jews to learn to behave themselves and not act like Nazis. The rest of the world, the world that let the Holocaust happen, are now the judges that determine whether Jews fighting for their lives are crossing the line or need to be taught Remedial Holocaust 102. To Amnesty, the Holocaust is a prop meant to be trotted out when it is convenient for them to hurl the most hateful accusations against Jews and then use fringe, mentally ill Jews as a cover to protect themselves from being accused of antisemitism.

No one else can be compared to the Nazis but Jews, in Amnesty’s universe.

This tweet, alone, exposes the cynicism and hypocrisy of this supposedly “human rights” organization. And, yes, the implications of this tweet are pure Jew-hatred.

---

Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! Reclaiming the Covenant on America's 250th (May 2026) "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

Read More

Mamdani's tweet includes a deliberate lie

On Friday, New York  Mayor Mamdani tweeted out a video for "Nakba Day."

Here is a screenshot of his tweet and a frame from the video:

Notice the difference in wording?

Mamdani quoted from this screen of the video, but erased the words "and displacement."  The video was careful to include it because Palestinians know very well that most of them left their homes expecting to return; they wanted to avoid the war but they were not expelled. 

Mamdani made this decision to change the text to make it sound like the Zionists had ethically cleansed 700,000 Palestinians. In reality the number that left was closer to 600,000 and the vast majority never saw a soldier. 

If the mayor of New York is deliberately even less honest than Palestinian propaganda, how much can anyone trust him for anything?

---

Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! Reclaiming the Covenant on America's 250th (May 2026) "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

Read More

05/16 Links: IDF infantry platoon commander killed by Hezbollah drone; Israel’s Noam Bettan finishes second at Eurovision; Bill Maher : New Rule: No Jews, No News

From Ian:

Why does Jerusalem belongs to the Jews? Because history says so

Facts do not cease to exist simply because anti-Israel ideologues seek to erase them.

Nor should anyone forget what happened when Jerusalem was divided between 1948 and 1967 under Jordanian rule.

During those 19 years, Jews were completely barred from accessing the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, despite explicit guarantees in the 1949 armistice agreements. Fifty-eight synagogues in the Jewish Quarter were destroyed or damaged by the Jordanians. Ancient gravestones on the Mount of Olives, some dating back centuries, were desecrated and used for roads, military camps, and even latrines.

The city’s reunification in 1967 ended 19 years of Jordanian control of eastern Jerusalem, with the Hashemite Kingdom’s annexation having been recognized by only two countries.

Yet, somehow it is Israel that now stands accused of restricting religious freedom.

The truth is precisely the opposite.

Since reunifying Jerusalem in June 1967, after Jordan joined the Six Day War, Israel has safeguarded access to holy sites for all faiths. Muslims pray freely at al-Aqsa Mosque. Christians maintain churches and institutions throughout the city. Jerusalem, under Israeli sovereignty, has become one of the few cities in the Middle East where Jews, Christians, and Muslims all have genuine religious freedom protected by law.

The city itself reflects that vitality.

Today, Jerusalem is home to nearly one million residents, making it Israel’s largest city. It boasts well over 1,000 synagogues, hundreds of churches, and dozens of mosques. It is the seat of Israel’s parliament, Supreme Court, and national institutions. It is a living, thriving capital, not a relic of ancient memory.

And that is ultimately what Jerusalem Day represents.

It is not merely the anniversary of a military victory. It is the celebration of an ancient people returning to its historic heart after centuries of dispersion and longing.

When Israeli paratroopers reached the Western Wall in June 1967, commander Motta Gur famously declared, “The Temple Mount is in our hands.” At that moment, Jewish history came full circle.

Jerusalem was not conquered in 1967. It was liberated and reclaimed.

At a time when lies about Israel spread with alarming speed across campuses, social media, and international forums, it is more important than ever to stand unapologetically for truth.

Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people because history says so. Archaeology says so. Demography says so. And 3,000 years of uninterrupted Jewish memory say so.

The facts are there for anyone willing to see them.

The Covenant and the Wooden Box

Jews in Britain are not a peripheral concern of that threat. They are a primary one. Jewish faith schools in north London closed their doors in October 2023, citing security fears. The phrase “Globalize the intifada” is chanted openly at marches through the capital, month after month, without prosecution. After two men were killed at the Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester in October 2025, the prime minister told the House of Commons that anti-Semitism was not a new hatred, that Jewish buildings, Jewish lives, and Jewish children required extra protection, and that he would do everything in his power to guarantee their safety. Then he did next to nothing. The IRGC remained unproscribed. The marches continued. The files stayed closed.

On April 29, 2026, as Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, sat in Madrid discussing Gaza with the Spanish prime minister, a man ran along Golders Green Road armed with a knife, hunting Jews. He stabbed two—a man of 34 and a man of 76. He had been referred to Prevent—the government’s counterterrorism program designed to identify and steer individuals away from radicalization—in 2020. His file was closed the same year. The prime minister visited Golders Green the day following the attack and was met with chants of “Keir Starmer Jew Harmer.”

“Anti-Semitism is an old, old hatred,” Starmer said. “History shows that if you turn away, it grows back.” He was right. Perhaps this time the words will be followed by action, but the word “perhaps” is doing a lot of work here. The record does not encourage hope. And the record matters because of what it confirms: This was not managed ignorance—the filed report, the averted gaze, the truth quietly administered out of existence. It showed something much worse: explicit knowledge, explicit condemnation, explicit promise—and then nothing.

This is the strategic cost—the final destination of the managerial habit that brought about the auction listing for Nelson Street and the conduct of council offices of Rotherham, that wound through the corridors of Broadcasting House, arrived at the gilded antechambers of Buckingham Palace, and came, finally, to the streets of Golders Green. Writing in The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt argues that the decline of the nation-state and the loss of political self-knowledge were not merely cultural tragedies but the preconditions for totalitarian penetration. A society that cannot know itself cannot defend even its most vulnerable children. Britain has not produced totalitarianism. But it has produced, with patient institutional thoroughness, exactly the condition Arendt identified as its precursor: a governing class that has lost the will to know what it is, what it values, and what it owes to those in its care. The Chinese Communist Party understands this with the clarity of a predator that has studied its prey. It targets the gap between what British institutions know and what they have decided, for reasons of procedural calm, to pretend they do not know. That gap—patiently widened over decades by a managerial class that chose comfort over conscience—is now a strategic aperture through which a hostile foreign power has walked into the heart of the British establishment.

Americans reading this would be wise to resist the comfortable assumption that what is described here is a foreign pathology—a peculiarly British failure of nerve from which the New World is naturally immune. It is not. The pipeline that rewards ideological conformity with credentials and institutional authority operates on both sides of the Atlantic. The universities that incubated the assumptions that made Rotherham possible sent their graduates into British newsrooms, council offices, and police commands; their American counterparts sent theirs into the FBI, the Department of Justice, the prestige press, and the administrative apparatus of every major American city. The same spirit of iconoclasm that came for Churchill’s statue came for Washington’s and Jefferson’s, too—pulled down by crowds in Portland in 2020 while city administrators placed them in storage and commissioned reports on whether they deserved to stand at all. A committee reporting to the mayor of Washington, D.C., formally recommended removing or relocating the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial.

The same willingness to brand truth-tellers as extremists—which destroyed Sarah Champion’s career for stating the obvious about Rotherham—was visible in the treatment of every American official, journalist, or academic who raised questions that the managerial consensus had decided were impermissible. Britain did not fail because it was uniquely weak. It failed because its governing class lost the will to know itself—and the consequences of that loss, once set in motion, proved impossible to contain. America’s governing class is further along that same road than it yet knows. The wooden box, in America, has not yet been built. But the administrators who would build it, if asked, are already at their post. The question is not whether it is being constructed. It is whether enough people—in Britain and in America—will recognize the lumber being assembled before all the nails go in.

In the summer of 1940, when every counsel of prudence pointed toward negotiation, one man looked into the abyss and refused to blink. He had spent decades preparing for that moment, honoring a covenant older than the war itself: declaring his support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, fighting the White Paper that would have closed Palestine’s gates to Jews fleeing extermination, prosecuting at the cost of everything the war against the regime whose explicit purpose was to end Jewish life in Europe. He understood that the Lord deals with the nations as the nations deal with the Jews—that England’s fate and the fate of the Jewish people were bound together in a moral order that transcended any government or generation. That conviction did not make him perfect. It made him, at the moment of maximum cost, faithful. He turned down a dukedom.

Those who have inherited stewardship of the covenant—the politicians, police, and civil servants—are failing it right now, if not betraying it outright, in the streets of Golders Green, in the halls of Parliament, in the lecture halls and council offices and police commands where the custodians made the same choice—managed truth over honest reckoning. What remains of that moral order, in the hands of those now charged with keeping it, is not easy to say. It endures—but not in the institutions, which have failed it, or in the bronze, which has been spray-painted, or for much longer in the synagogue, which has all but been sold. It endures in Leon Silver, who could not bear to let go of a building half a mile from where he was born.

It endures in Henry Glanz, who blew the shofar every year for the children who never reached England. It endures in Sarah Champion, who said the plain thing and paid the price for it. “The outside is very plain,” Leon Silver said of the building constructed from its first brick to be a synagogue but that’s now being stolen away to become a symbol of Islam’s triumph over Britain’s Jewry. “But people say the inside is beautiful, which I think so too.” The moral truth Silver might not even have known he was echoing with his words—“the inside is beautiful”—endures in everyone who has named what the governing class could not bring itself to name and everyone who refused to look away from what the governing class chose not to see. The moral truth endures—because covenants of that depth do not dissolve when institutions fail them. They wait.

Nicole Lampert: Why doesn’t Starmer make a video warning about far-Left hate marches?

On Friday night, Sir Keir Starmer took time out of being knifed by his Labour colleagues to warn of an impending threat in a statement posted on social media. He couldn’t have looked more serious; the sinews of his neck were taut. He used his hands in his best headmaster mode to drum home his points.

Soft music, with just a hint of menace, played in the background.

There was going to be a march in London, he warned, organised by people who were “peddling hatred and division, plain and simple”. The march, he added, was “a reminder of what we are up against in a battle of our values”.

Writing on X Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy, also emphasised the danger of this march, warning, “if protest turns violent, we will act swiftly, with extra court capacity in place.”

Hallelujah! Could it really be that our political leaders had, after the stabbings in Golders Green, the arson on synagogues and Jewish ambulances, the deadly attack in Manchester, finally woken up to the horror of the “pro-Palestine” hate marches and the anti-Semitic, violent, pro-terrorist, genocidal rhetoric they endorsed?

Of course not.

They were talking about the march with the Union flags, not the ones with flags of Palestine and the Islamic Republic of Iran. If you want to know just how upside down our world has become, we need to look at today: which march was deemed hateful and which one they tried to ignore.

Read More

05/15 Links Pt2: VDH: The Four Horsemen of the New Antisemitism; Face it, Jewish liberals: You have no friends on the left; Jews targeted worldwide as well-funded leftist, Islamist groups join for ‘Nakba 78’ protests

From Ian:

Victor Davis Hanson: The Four Horsemen of the New Antisemitism

Few predicted that blaming Israel and the Jews who support it would flare up in the early 21st century—and in America of all places, where there are nearly as many Jews as there are in Israel.

After all, Israel is the only consensual society in the Middle East. It holds regular elections and maintains tripartite judicial, executive, and legislative checks and balances.

Free speech is found in the Middle East only in Israel, where religious apostasy, criticism of one’s own country, gender equity, and tolerance of gays are guaranteed in marked contrast to all its neighbors.

It was once common knowledge that Israel had survived the huge numbers of its enemies because its tiny population was better educated, freer, more adept at Western technology, more tolerant of dissent—and because it enjoyed the goodwill and bipartisan support of the United States.

True, the recent affluence of the Gulf States has presented a thin veneer of Westernism that has fooled many in the new anti-Israel media. But just because Qatar did not censor a celebrity newsman’s broadcast from Doha does not mean Qatar is a free society. After all, no Western journalist would dare schedule a broadcast from Qatar with a Qatari who had condemned the regime for its intolerance or announced his religious apostasy from Islam.

So why and how did millions of Americans begin to express hatred for Israel and, albeit more subtly, the Jews who support it?

There are four converging fronts in this perfect storm.

Seth Mandel: Can Jewish Democrats Still Save Their Party?

It’s something. But it might be both too little and too late. The time it has taken Democratic Jewish figures to come around to the need to fight anti-Semitism within their own tent has left them forever playing catchup. Worse, it has enabled the rise of the very candidates Soifer now claims to be concerned about.

Additionally, Republicans have on occasion urged voters to back the Democrat in general-election races if the Republican nominee is truly unacceptable. There is no sign any Democrats of influence would follow the same path. Staying neutral is the most backbone they’ll show at this point.

And the party isn’t at all swayed by JDCA finally showing a bit of hesitation about a Democrat. Platner’s name was raised at the conference by Simon Rosenberg, a Jewish Democratic strategist. His position on Platner: “The Maine party is excited, ready to go, and we’re all going to be along the Platner train in a few weeks.”

According to JTA, the “big tent” argument seems to be the main excuse being deployed to convince Democratic Jews to go along to get along: “Ami Fields-Meyer, a former Biden White House adviser who spoke more critically of Israel than most of the summit’s speakers, did not weigh in on Platner specifically. But he echoed Rosenberg’s call for building coalitions that include ‘people we don’t agree with,’ and advocated for the Democratic Party and Jewish community to embrace a wider range of viewpoints on Israel.”

It should go without saying that if Jewish Democrats aren’t going to resist having extremist anti-Semites representing their party, then virtually no one will. If that’s the case, the battle has already been lost.

Karol Markowicz: Face it, Jewish liberals: You have no friends on the left

Where is the outcry from liberal Jews, saying they’ll never read that slop again?

Or from their absent friends, saying they won’t allow vicious lies like that to be spread?

This is not a both-sides issue.

Only one half of our political divide is standing in silence.

On the right this week, non-Jewish influencers, podcasters and politicians have been pushing back on the lies and the violence targeting Jews.

CNN commentator Scott Jennings called the Times piece “a journalistic atrocity that I actually feel stupid reading out loud” and said everyone involved should be fired.

Radio host Buck Sexton, after reading the Civil Commission’s report: “Given the demonic realities of Oct. 7, Israel acted with considerable restraint in its Gaza campaign, and should be commended for it.”

Harmeet Dhillon of the US Department of Justice tweeted video from the Brooklyn riot and promised to “collect evidence and analyze potential charges.”

And sure, there are antisemites nominally on the political right, Tucker Carlson infamously among them.

But so many non-Jews in the conservative world — President Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), commentator Victor Davis Hanson and a host of others — have lined up against Carlson’s foul suggestions that his influence on that side of the aisle is sinking like a stone.

That’s just a tiny sample of voices on the right speaking up for Jews, regularly and often.

Who on the left is doing the same?

This week’s silence should be humiliating.

It should be clarifying.

It should, at last, wake up those Jews on the left who care at all about self-preservation — or that of their children.

It’s long past time to leave this one-sided alliance behind.

Read More

05/15 Links Pt1: After the Ayatollah; Justice Dept seeks death penalty in murder of Israeli Embassy staffers; The anti-Jewish fever dream of NYTs

From Ian:

Jason Greenblatt: After the Ayatollah

What exists now in Tehran is a set of overlapping factions: Mojtaba at the apex on paper, the IRGC running operations, the Supreme National Security Council coordinating, the Foreign Ministry providing the diplomatic interface. The wartime succession has made the fragmentation deeper and not legible from the outside, or from within Iran itself. There is also a possibility worth naming directly: Mojtaba was elevated precisely because he could preserve continuity while remaining beholden to, possibly controlled by, possibly entirely subservient to, the security establishment that installed him. There is a harder possibility still that cannot be ruled out: Whether he is alive and functioning at all remains genuinely uncertain.

When Iran’s foreign minister signs an agreement, the question is not only whether he intends or has the power to honor it. It is also whether that signature binds the IRGC commander who controls the nuclear facilities. Whether it binds the Quds Force officer managing proxy networks. Whether it binds the engineers at the enrichment sites who may answer to a chain of command that runs through the Guards, not through the Foreign Ministry. The JCPOA, negotiated when Iran had a functioning and consolidated supreme leader, was still contested inside the IRGC from day one. The hard-liners who opposed it moved to dismantle its constraints the moment political cover appeared. That was the counterparty problem with a strong leader in place. The counterparty problem now is structurally more severe.

Trump did not inherit this negotiating position. He built it through sustained military and economic pressure that degraded Iranian capabilities to a degree no previous administration achieved. Israel’s military operations were indispensable to that result. He arrives at the table with more leverage than any American president has held on this issue since the revolution.

The problem is that leverage is only as durable as the pressure sustaining it, and a deal is only as durable as the authority of the party committing to it. Whether Iran currently has a supreme leader who can make the system honor a commitment, or whether what exists is a set of competing factions that could fracture the moment pressure lifts or internal power dynamics shift, is genuinely unclear.

That is not a reason to walk away from negotiations. It is a reason to build any agreement on the assumption that the counterparty may not hold. Verification cannot depend on good faith. Enforcement cannot require a trip to the U.N. Security Council, where some have historically shielded Tehran from consequences. Europe cannot be a decision-maker here. Its track record on Iran enforcement is a history of deference dressed as diplomacy, and it has spent two decades prioritizing engagement over accountability. Consequences for breach need to be automatic, pre-agreed, and executable by the United States. If Iran breaks a deal, the response cannot hinge on whether those with a Security Council vote are having a cooperative month.

The best hand in a generation is worth playing. But you need a table and cards and players across from you who can cover their bets. Right now, at least one of those conditions remains genuinely in doubt.

US arrests Iraqi Kataib Hezbollah commander wanted for plots against Jews, US interests

The US has arrested Iraqi national and senior member of the Kataib Hezbollah terrorist organization, Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi, on Friday. He was charged with providing material support for Iranian-backed terrorist organizations and accused of directing attacks targeting US citizens and interests

On May 15, the US Justice Department announced “the arrest of Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi, an Iraqi national and senior member of Kataib Hezbollah,” the department said. “In recent months, Al-Saadi has also allegedly directed and urged others to attack US and Israeli interests, including by killing Americans and Jews, to further the terrorist goals of Kataib Hezbollah and the IRGC.”

The case is the latest in US attempts to go after Iranian-backed militias in Iraq. The Justice Department posted a photo of Saadi with the late IRGC Quds force commander Qasem Soleimani. The US killed Soleimani in a 2020 drone strike in Iraq, also killing Kataib Hezbollah commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in the same strike.

In recent months, the US has put out at least four rewards of $10 million each for information on various Iraqi militia leaders.

The Saadi charges appear important and illustrate that the US long arm of justice can reach out and find these perpetrators.

“Al-Saadi was charged by complaint with six counts of terrorism-related offenses for his activities as an operative of Kataib Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including his involvement in nearly 20 attacks and attempted attacks throughout Europe and the United States,” the US stated. Saadi is 32 years old, the report says.

He was transferred to the US from overseas, although the US did not specify where he was arrested.

“Al-Saadi was presented earlier today before US Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn in Manhattan federal court and ordered detained pending trial,” according to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

Blanche added that “thanks to the dedication and vigilance of law enforcement, this alleged terrorist commander is now in US custody… As alleged in the complaint, Al-Saadi directed and urged others to attack US and Israeli interests and to kill Americans and Jews in the US and abroad, and in doing so advance the terrorist goals of Kataib Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.”

IDF soldier KIA by Hezbollah mortar fire in Southern Lebanon

Staff Sgt. Negev Dagan, 20, from Moshav Dekel in the northwestern Negev, was killed by Hezbollah mortar fire in Southern Lebanon, the Israel Defense Forces announced on Friday.

Dagan, a soldier in the Golani Infantry Brigade’s 12th Battalion, was operating near the Litani River on Thursday night when Hezbollah terrorists fired mortar shells at Israeli forces in the area, the military said.

One of the shells exploded near Dagan, mortally wounding him. Combat medics attempted to treat him at the scene but were forced to pronounce him dead.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated on Friday, ahead of the soldier’s funeral, that he and his wife shared in the “heavy loss” and conveyed their deepest condolences to his family.

“We all embrace his family and dear ones at this hour of grief, and salute the heroism and courage with which Negev, of blessed memory, has fought to defend our country,” Netanyahu said. “May his memory be blessed and cherished forever.”

Residents of Dekel remembered Dagan as “the salt of the earth” with “an amazing soul” who was deeply committed to serving in the military.

“We lost a diamond,” a family friend from the moshav told Army Radio on Friday. “He gave all of himself and it was important to him to serve in the army.”

Read More

The world did not complain when Jordan annexed Jerusalem. They condemned when Israel reunited it.

My last post described how UPI reported on Israel's defeating Jordan in the battle for Jerusalem in 1967. But the joy felt by Jews and many others was not reflected in the international community.

Here's a news story from later that month, when Israel officially declared Jerusalem to be one city. The United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, the Vatican and much of the UN scrambled to denounce the move.

For nineteen years, Jordan controlled the holy places. A Muslim nation had full control over Christian and Jewish  holy sites. Jordan explicitly denied Jews from entering the city even though the armistice agreement specifically demanded open access to holy spots.

For those nineteen years, the  international community was largely silent.  The Vatican didn't condemn  Jordan's annexation. The UN never called for the open access agreement to be enforced despite numerous complaints by Israel. 

But when Jews took over control - and actually implemented free access to all holy spots by all (except for Jews to visit their own holiest site on the Temple Mount) - suddenly the world warned Israel that this was terrible, that a Jewish state could not possibly act responsibly when the Muslim state had already shown it had no interest in keeping Jerusalem open. 

The hypocrisy was blatant, including from the State Department. And the hypocrisy persists today, every time anyone demands that Jerusalem goes back to the "status quo," by which they mean the anomalous 19 years when the world's Jews were banned from the city. 

---

Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! Reclaiming the Covenant on America's 250th (May 2026) "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

Read More