Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, October 03, 2025

Free Speech Isn't Enough: Universities Need Truth

Vanderbilt Chancellor Daniel Diermeier has emerged as one of the rare university leaders willing to say obvious things out loud. In an era when most college presidents perform elaborate rhetorical gymnastics to avoid offending anyone, Diermeier's message in an interview in City Journal is refreshingly straightforward: Universities aren't political parties. They shouldn't take stances on issues unrelated to their core mission. Civil discourse requires both freedom and structure. When students violate codes of conduct, they face consequences.

This is all correct. And in the current climate, where campus leaders routinely capitulate to activist mobs or parrot fashionable pieties, Diermeier's principled restraint deserves recognition.

But Diemeier does not go far enough.

Diermeier champions three pillars: open forums, institutional neutrality, and civil discourse. These are necessary conditions for a functioning university. But they're not sufficient. Because there's a fourth pillar he doesn't name explicitly, yet which his entire framework depends upon:

Truth.

Harvard University's motto since 1643 is "Veritas" - Latin for "truth." Yale's motto is similar: "Lux et Veritas" - "Light and Truth." In 1940, the American Association of University Professors stated defended academic freedom but it put it in context: "Academic freedom is essential... and applies to both teaching and research. Freedom in research is fundamental to the advancement of truth. "

The goal of the university is not diversity of ideas or unlimited free speech. They are all tools in the true purpose of academia - the pursuit of the truth.

Not "your truth" or "my truth" or "lived experience." Actual truth - the kind that corresponds to reality, can be tested against evidence, and withstands rational scrutiny.

Without that shared commitment to truth, open forums become pointless noise, institutional neutrality becomes moral abdication, and civil discourse is a waste of time when all ideas are considered equally valid.

A registered student organization has every right to invite a flat-earther to campus. A university committed to free inquiry should protect that right.

But does that mean the flat-earth theory deserves equal time in a geology course? Should it be treated as a legitimate alternative hypothesis in the "marketplace of ideas"?

Obviously not. If a flat-earther speaks on campus, the ideas would be properly mocked.

Because the Earth isn't flat. That's not a matter of opinion or perspective. It's not culturally relative or socially constructed.

Some ideas are simply false. That doesn't mean we censor them. But it does mean we treat them accordingly: as discredited theories, failed hypotheses, or historical curiosities — not as worthy contributions deserving respect merely for existing.

Now consider something more sophisticated than flat-earthism but no less problematic: Marxism.

Marxism presents itself as rigorous analysis of history, economics, and justice. It divides society into two fundamental classes - the proletariat (workers) and the bourgeoisie (owners) - locked in inevitable conflict. It demands that the workers revolt, violently, against the owners. Its entire moral framework rests on the claim that upward mobility is either impossible or represents betrayal of one's class.

Yet like flat-earthers, this framework is built on assumptions we know to be empirically false.

First, most people are neither purely proletariat nor bourgeoisie. The modern economy includes a vast middle class of people who are simultaneously workers and owners, employees and investors. Marxism has no meaningful category for them - so it either ignores them or tortures the definitions until they fit.

Second, people can and do move between economic classes. Jews provide a particularly clear example: despite facing systematic barriers throughout history, Jewish communities achieved remarkable upward mobility through education, entrepreneurship, and mutual support. This historical reality doesn't fit Marxist theory, so Marxism either dismisses it as anomalous or reframes success as complicity. (And, I posit, this is a reason for Marx's own antisemitism. )

Third, Marxism treats agency as betrayal. If a poor person becomes successful through their own efforts, the framework doesn't celebrate that achievement - it accuses them of abandoning class solidarity. That's not analysis. That's ideology demanding conformity.

The result is a theory that denies complexity, erases individual human experience, and justifies violence in the name of liberation.

Marxism shouldn't be banned from campus - it absolutely should be studied and engaged with. But it shouldn't be treated as morally or intellectually equivalent to frameworks that actually correspond to observable reality.

This is where many universities go wrong. In their panic to avoid appearing ideological, they have abdicated the pursuit of truth. The result is a kind of neutral-but-empty institutional culture that protects speech without caring whether that speech bears any relationship to reality. And, like Marxism, some of these ideologies are dangerous, justifying violence in the name of philosophies that fall apart under even cursory examination of their core assumptions.

Diermeier is right that universities shouldn't be political parties. But neutrality about partisanship is not the same as neutrality about truth.

Every university policy, department, or initiative should answer: Does it help the institution discover and transmit truth? Or does it prioritize other goals - comfort, inclusion, political messaging, social justice, career advancement - over truth? If the answer is anything other than "yes, it serves truth," then the policy fails the university's core mission, regardless of how noble its stated intentions.

This doesn't mean universities should be cold or callous. Truth-seeking requires treating people with dignity, creating environments where intellectual risk-taking is possible, and supporting those who challenge orthodoxies. But these are instrumental values in service of truth - not in competition with it.

Daniel Diermeier deserves credit for defending open inquiry and institutional restraint at a time when many university leaders lack the courage to do so. His framework provides essential structural protections against ideological capture. But he seems to have forgotten the entire purpose of the academy. And without truth, all the other goals are meaningless.

Diermeier has articulated the tools to protect intellectual freedom in the academy. Now the academy needs to remember what that freedom is for.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

By Daled Amos

Why did Kamala Harris lose the presidential election?

A Free Press article by Kat Rosenfield following Harris's loss notes how Democrats and pundits immediately blamed sexism. According to this view, voters across the country just couldn't bring themselves to vote for a woman who, according to former MSNBC Joy Reid, had conducted "a historic, flawlessly run campaign" (sic). Rosenfield notes the attraction of blaming biased voters:

It’s not hard to see the appeal of this narrative. It displaces blame for Harris’s failure onto everyone but the candidate herself and allows her supporters to claim the moral high ground, in the face of abject defeat...Harris was perfect; it’s America that is wrong. And so she lost, yes, but only because the country itself is so full of losers.

This kind of framing is nothing new.

In July 2024, New York Attorney General Letitia James blamed racism and sexism as the real reasons why Harris lost:

[Republicans are] running very scared. That's what I think. They're running very scared, they have nothing else other than racism and sexism...The reality is that Kamala Harris, Vice President Harris, is qualified, and, you know, oftentimes she's underestimated but she’s an overachiever.

Blaming the critics is not limited to the political arena. When New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones was criticised for her 1619 Project, where she claimed that “one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery,” her allies framed factual criticisms as racist attacks. One person on X responded that "[Washington Post pundit George] Will should’ve just written Hannah-Jones was 'uppity'”. Later, Hannah-Jones belittled criticism of her thesis when she condescendingly wrote

to clarify that this sentence had never been meant to imply that every single colonist shared this motivation, we changed the sentence to read “some of the colonists.”

When a weapon like this is so widespread, you can be sure it will be used against Jews.

So, another area where critics are rebuffed with charges of racism instead of dealing with the merits of their arguments is progressive representatives of American Muslims. In 2018, when the Women's March was criticized over one of its leaders, Tamika Mallory, having a close connection to antisemite Louis Farrakhan, Linda Sarsour apologized to the Jewish women of the group for not addressing the issue fast enough--but not before lashing out the day before:

It’s very clear to me what the underlying issue is — I am a bold, outspoken BDS supporting Palestinian Muslim American woman and the opposition’s worst nightmare...by proxy they began attacking my sister Tamika Mallory — knowing all too well that in this country the most discardable woman is a Black woman.

Here, Sarsour solidified what has become the paradigm of attacking critics instead of dealing with their points.

Indeed, her self-portrayal as a defender of women was something of a stunt, considering that her defense of women was selective:

Further, in a 2017 Nation interview, Sarsour declared that a woman could not be both a Zionist and a feminist.

In September 2016, Michael D. Cohen, Eastern Director for the Wiesenthal Center, attended a New York City Council Public Hearing on that body’s resolution to officially condemn the BDS movement. Sarsour was there too, as those in favor of the resolution were shouted down as “Jewish pigs” and “Zionist filth.”

It was Sarsour who nodded approvingly and congratulated individuals who were kicked out of the hearing room for being out of order, for walking in front of individuals providing testimony in support of the resolution, and for shouting down our supporters with anti-Semitic slurs — all in the name of protecting free speech.

Sarsour will insist that her critics are proof that her claims hit home and reveal the truth of what she says. And if she can toss in that those critics are also racist and misogynistic, so much the better.

Ilhan Omar learned from Sarsour how to accuse critics of Islamophobia. Rashida Tlaib was criticized when she claimed that

There’s always kind of a calming feeling I tell folks when I think of the Holocaust… and the fact that it was my ancestors – Palestinians – who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood... all of it was in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post-Holocaust… and I love the fact that my ancestors provided that in many ways.

In response to backlash from critics, Omar did not address the critics or their concerns in Tlaib's remarks. Instead, she fell back to the accusation that criticisms were "designed to silence, sideline, and sort of almost eliminate [the] public voice of Muslims from the public discourse." Left unanswered were the facts that were whitewashed by Tlaib's comment--historical facts such as:

o  Arab protests against Jewish immigration left many stranded in Nazi Germany,
o  Pe-1948 the Arabs were guilty of massacres of Jews,
o  Palestinian Arab leader Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini collaborated with Hitler
o  Jews created economic opportunities that benefitted the Arabs and their livelihood

We saw another example of this at the beginning of this year, Amnesty International found it expedient to accuse its Israeli chapter of "anti-Palestinian racism." The Israeli chapter is the same one that worked with Palestinians to condemn Israel, and argued that the IDF committed “crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing". But when they criticized Amnesty International's genocide accusation for not proving that Israel had specifically intended to kill Palestinians--as required by the definition of genocide under international law--Amnesty International silenced the group the only way it knew how, regardless of how ridiculous their claim was.

Any attempt by Jews to defend themselves is attacked. We see this in criticisms of the widely respected IHRA definition of antisemitism. According to the IHRA website:

As of February 1, 2025, 1,266 entities worldwide have adopted the definition. Among those, 45 countries have done so—including the United States, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and France. In the U.S., 37 state governments have done so, along with 98 city and county governments.

That has not stopped opponents from claiming the definition is being weaponized to stifle criticism of Israel, but those accusations are more common than actual examples. Ali Abunimah has made this claim. On the Electronic Intifada, he accuses the Jewish community of "baselessly" manipulating the term antisemitism.

We oppose the cynical and baseless use of the term anti-Semitism as a tool for stifling criticism of Israel or opposition to Zionism, as this assumes simply because someone is Jewish, they support Zionism or the colonial and apartheid policies of the state of Israel - a false generalization.

It will not come as a surprise that there is a lengthy article on Wikipedia on the topic: The Weaponization of Antisemitism, but nothing similar on the weaponization of Islamophobia. There is just a very short article on Wikipedia called LetUsTalk, which is

a campaign against silencing criticism of the Islamic law and especially hijab in the West through accusations of Islamophobia. This campaign has started when a letter written by Dr Sherif Emil—a Canadian Children’s surgeon—and published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, in which he criticizes promotion of hijab as a symbol of diversity, was retracted due to the accusations of Islamophobia.

And now going a step further, we have Democratic candidate for mayor of New York City, telling Mehdi Hasan, "There are far better representations of the concerns of Jewish New Yorkers than the ADL and Jonathan Greenblatt”-- this from the same guy who has no problem with aggressive protesters going around chanting "Globalize the Intifada" as they intimidate Jews.

Jews are so blessed to have politicians like Mamdani, who not only can decide what qualifies as antisemitism, but also are ready to tell us which leaders truly represent Jewish interests. Other minorities must be so jealous.

Whether it’s sexism, racism, or antisemitism, the goal is the same—silence dissent, deflect accountability, and emphasize one's own moral righteousness. The result is a double standard: valid criticism is dismissed as prejudice, while others weaponize those very accusations to shield themselves from scrutiny. Until this pattern ends, we will continue to see excuses masquerading as principles, and the moral language of justice—against real sexism, racism, and antisemitism—will be hollowed out.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Antisemites love to attack on Yom Kippur: Dozens of incidents during the fast day

On Yom Kippur, a British citizen born in Syria decide to murder Jews gathered outside a synagogue in Manchester.

There is little doubt that he chose this day specifically for that purpose.

But other antisemites were busy on Yom Kippur as well.

The "Sumud Flotilla" scheduled its arrival in Israeli waters to occur on Yom Kippur.

It was also not a coincidence. One ostensibly Jewish member of the flotilla, David Adler, said this explicitly: "I believe that the timing of our flotilla is not coincidental. On the contrary, I believe it is a blessing that we are approaching interception at the onset of Yom Kippur — our annual day of atonement — which calls on us to reflect on our sins, and what can be done to repair them in the spirit of tikkun olam."

In Manchester, the site of the terror attack, there was a mass demonstration in support of the flotilla. they held a "moment of silence" not for the synagogue victims but for the members of the flotilla who were "kidnapped." But the demonstration was planned ahead of time - meaning that Yom Kippur was always planned to be the day the flotilla arrived along with protests.

There were also planned Yom Kippur demonstrations in Edinburgh and London, as well as pro-flotilla protests in Paris, Berlin, The Hague, Tunis, Brasilia, Buenos Aires, Krakow, New York, Barcelona (windows smashed), and Athens.

In Italy alone:

In Rome, a procession promoted by student collectives marched from the Sapienza University to the Colosseum. In Milan the State University was occupied, in Lecce that of Salento, in the universities of Bologna and Pisa the Rectorates were blocked. In Padua and Venice classes were interrupted. Also in the capital, tension at the Caravillani art school, which has a shared entrance with a Jewish temple. Three students with megaphones chanted slogans for Palestine and some people who were in the temple walked out. A heated argument ensued, culminating in shoving. Dozens were identified, from both groups.

But those were not the only events that antisemites planned for Yom Kippur.

The University of Maryland Student Government Association passed a sweeping BDS resolution on Wednesday night, at the onset of Yom Kippur. They had previously tried to pass the resolution on Rosh Hashanah.

Don't forget Hamas. While Hamas has not been firing too many rockets lately, they chose Yom Kippur to launch five rockets from Gaza toward the Israeli city of Ashdod.

The Jew-haters remember the surprise attack on the Yom Kippur War, and that emboldens them every year to use the Jewish holiday as the best day for them to attack Jews and Israel.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The BBC routinely uses the word "terror" for attacks on UK soil - but not today's Yom Kippur synagogue attack

Since at least 2005, the BBC has had a policy not to use the word "terrorist" when reporting unless it is quoting someone else:

We must report acts of terror quickly, accurately, fully and responsibly. Terrorism is a difficult and emotive subject with significant political overtones and care is required in the use of language that carries value judgements. We try to avoid the use of the term ”terrorist” without attribution. When we do use the term we should strive to do so with consistency in the stories we report across all our services and in a way that does not undermine our reputation for objectivity and accuracy.

The current BBC policy says:

The term 'terrorist' should only be used with attribution, ie when quoting or citing its use by others. Content makers should not adopt other people's language as their own; their responsibility is to remain objective and report in a way that enables audiences to make their own assessments. The BBC should convey to the audience the full consequences of an act by describing the perpetrators as, for example, 'bombers', 'gunmen', 'kidnappers', 'insurgents' and 'militants'. Their actions should only be described as 'terrorist attacks' with attribution.

However, the BBC routinely breaks its own rules, describing terrorist acts on UK soil as "terrorist" without attribution.

It described, and continues to describe, the 2017 London Bridge attacks as terrorism.

It has described the suicide bombing at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester as a "terror attack" numerous times.

Only a week ago, it described the attempted stabbing of prison guards by the brother of the Manchester area attack as "terrorist" without scare quotes.

But today's attack killing two at a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur? No, that word is only in quotations from police and Netanyahu - but never in the BBC's own voice in the roughly eight articles on the incident I've seen so far.

If the BBC was consistent in calling terrorism on UK soil "terrorist", even if it violates its own policies to do so, at least there would be consistency. But when it suddenly decides to adhere to standards it regularly flouts - and it does that when Jews are the target - one wonders if the BBC doesn't really consider Jews to be true British citizens whose deaths deserve the same outrage as "real" British citizens.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

10/02 Links: Jihad Al-Shamie, Terrorist of Syrian Descent, Kills 2 in Car Ramming, Stabbing Attack Outside UK Synagogue on Yom Kippur

From Ian:

Stephen Pollard: Manchester was always coming –authorities let Jew-haters roam free

As I write, we know nothing about the perpetrator of today’s attack in Manchester. But we know lots about the context of the attack, because we Jews have been living and breathing it for some years, with increasing desperation that it would lead to an incident such as today’s.

Last night in London, for example, a “pro-Palestine” mob took over one of the busiest streets, setting of fireworks and chanting for Israel’s destruction. They were left to their own devices, free to do what they wanted when they wanted, and to chant whatever they liked. And it was entirely normal. Because that is where we are now. Mobs of supposed "Free Palestine” protestors are given free rein. The authorities stand and watch.

The other night I was driving along Holborn when a convoy of cyclists with Palestine flags screamed abuse and brought chaos to the area. There were no police anywhere to be seen.

Today’s attack in Manchester was always coming, because the authorities have made it clear to Jew haters that they are effectively free to go about their business. When they chant “Khaybar, Khaybar, Ya Yahud! Jaish Mohammad sawf ya’ud!” on the hate marches, (“Khaybar, Khaybar, O Jews! The Army of Muhammad Will Return!” – a reference to the battle of Khaybar in 628, when Mohamed’s army besieged and destroyed a thriving Jewish community) the police stand and watch. When they call for global intifada – the murder of Jews – no one does a thing.

The message sent by the authorities could hardly be clearer – Jew hate is fine. And the Jew haters take that message and run with it. They run with it when they parade through the streets of our cities. They run with it when they desecrate memorials to those killed on October 7 and tributes to the hostages, as in Brighton. They run with it when they scream abuse at Jews. They run with it on social media, where antisemitism is so open and common that it barely even registers any more. And they run with it when they commit atrocities as in Manchester today.

We have already heard that awful lie today, that there is no place for antisemitism in Britain. It’s a lie because the evidence could not be clearer that there is a very welcome place for antisemitism in Britain, and the more the merrier. Today’s attack will prompt so much more of it. But when hundreds of thousands are allowed to do their worst, and the authorities stand and watch, we know what it means. It means Jew hate. It means attacks. It means Manchester.

Jake Wallis Simons: Jews feel safer facing Hamas in Israel than living in Labour’s Britain

When Jews hear Sir Keir Starmer and David Lammy, who have recently recognised a state of Palestine without first demanding that the hostages be freed, so cloyingly offer thoughts and prayers to the Jews, it is hard not to see them as part of the problem.

This is the party that has begun appropriating the Union flag and the language of patriotism – the very things it has spent decades scorning – for the sake of political expediency.

This is the party that adopted a definition of “Islamophobia” back in 2019, and is pushing to write it into law, caving to pressure from the most dangerous sources.

This is the party that has shamefully parroted every Israelophobic smear to have emerged from the UN, from “famine” to “genocide”, even though they are patently false. To this Government, nothing means anything, least of all words of solidarity for the Jews.

Since October 7, I have had many conversations with Israelis in which I have begun by asking how they are bearing up. The answer is always the same. “We’re fine,” they say. “But how are you?”

Of course, there are more terror attacks in Israel than Britain, for now at least. But there is low crime, strong social solidarity, a booming economy, a soaring birth rate, powerful defence and one of the highest levels of happiness in the world. There are few mental health problems, few deaths of despair. You can live as a family with your head held high.

Israelis know two things well. They know who they are and they know who their enemies are. They can spend the night in a bomb shelter and then go to work, attend a wedding, live, love and laugh. These are things that Britain has forgotten, and the results are all around us, not least on the bloody street outside the Heaton Park synagogue in north Manchester.

My final sentence, which I am about to type, is intended to be read most chillingly through Gentile eyes. To many Jews, life feels safer in Israel than in Britain.

Jake Wallis Simons: Spare me your crocodile tears

Either way, we have reached a point where our leaders more eagerly embrace those who would like to kill us than the people they are supposed to protect. From immigration to Israel, the government invariably picks the wrong side. Our culture is committing slow suicide while self-righteously demanding that Israel commits it more quickly.

Well, Israel won’t. And nor will the Jews. But the effect of all this over the two years since October 7 is that the public has become convinced that Israel is a genocidal, apartheid, Nazi state and Hamas are the courageous “resistance”.

You and I know that the opposite is true. Israel could have destroyed Gaza City with a single bomb, yet it sends its soldiers house-to-house at great risk to themselves. Why? Because it is not genocidal.

Israel could have starved every man, woman and child in Gaza to death within two weeks of October 7. Yet it continues to provide food to the Strip; in the last six weeks, it has provided 40 million meals. Why? Because it does not use famine as a weapon of war.

After the relentless propaganda campaign, however, instigated largely by the United Nations, most people will likely believe the very opposite of the truth. The Manchester killer almost certainly believed that, too.

What we are seeing is nothing less than the successful brainwashing of an entire society to embrace the agenda of the very jihadis who would have the West subverted and everybody who resists dead.

Keir Starmer, David Lammy and their cronies have spent the last two years directing all their condemnation at Israel, the democracy defending itself against jihad, and putting almost no pressure on Hamas, which started this war and would attack us all if it could.

That culminated in the recognition of a Palestinian state, which did not even require the release of the hostages as a condition, and for which Hamas heartily congratulated Britain. In May, the UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher claimed on the BBC that “14,000 babies” would die within “48 hours” in Gaza. This claim was repeated by no fewer than 13 MPs in Parliament. When those babies did not die after all, how many of them apologised? Precious few.

Now these people have the gall to shed crocodile tears about the attack in Manchester today. They have long been part of the problem, making a whole society believe that black is white and the jihadis are the victims. Shame on them.

Britain has abandoned Jews to this savagery

Even before 7 October in Israel – the most deadly assault on Jews since the Holocaust, two years ago this week – British Jews could see what was coming. Even before Hamas sent its killers and rapists into kibbutzim and dance parties, even before Western capitals erupted in jubilation about those apocalyptic incursions, British Jews made up 0.5 per cent of the population and a quarter of the victims of religious hate crimes. Jewish pensioners would be suckerpunched in north London. A Jewish cemetery in Kent was desecrated eight times in 10 years. Security around schools and synagogues became a grim fact of British Jewish life. Meanwhile, we had TV debates about whether it was racist for Boris Johnson to mock the burqa, or Adele to wear her hair in braids and wave a Jamaican flag during Notting Hill Carnival. It shames us.

Then came the pogrom, and the reins came off. Anti-Semitic incidents in Britain hit a 40-year high. Assaults on Jews surged by almost 100 per cent. Islamic activists chanted Arabic war slogans about the murder of Jews on London demonstrations, while Israelophobic leftists pretended not to notice. And this post-7 October 2023 carnival of Jew hatred peaked before the IDF rolled into Gaza, to destroy the jihadists and retrieve Israel’s stolen citizens. This was a bigoted, violent celebration of the murder of Jews. And it isn’t abating, either. The Community Security Trust recorded 1,521 anti-Semitic incidents in the first half of 2025, the second-highest number… since 2024.

We wait to learn more about the killer and his motives. Counter-terror police believe they know his identity, but aren’t letting on just yet. Investigations are ongoing. Two further arrests have been made. But I dare say we need not wait to conclude that Crumpsall is where years – nay, decades – of a growing, ambient Jew hatred leaves us. In which the age-old blood libels have been repackaged for the ‘pro-Palestine’ idiots. In which Israel is cast as the killer of babies and the grand puppeteer of geopolitical affairs. In which British Jews – a tiny, embattled minority smaller in number than British Sikhs – are once again cast as the eternal scapegoat for all of society’s and the world’s ills. As the great, sinister, ‘privileged’ bogeymen of the intersectional pyramid.

After Crumpsall, we must stand in solidarity with our Jewish brothers and sisters. And we must do so much more than that. Any gentile who has ever talked publicly or written about the scourge of anti-Semitism – even just occasionally, as I have – will have had this experience: British Jews offering their heartfelt gratitude, for what we all know should be the bare minimum. And yet far too many struggle even to do that. We have let this happen. It is our cancer to remove. And remove it we must.

10/01 Links Pt2: Eli Sharabi: I Spent 491 Days as a Hostage of Hamas. This Is My Story; John Ondrasik: Hollywood joins history’s shameful betrayals by blacklisting Jewish artists

From Ian:

I Spent 491 Days as a Hostage of Hamas. This Is My Story

Eli Sharabi’s Hostage, the first memoir of captivity in Gaza in the aftermath of Oct. 7, appeared in Israel in May, just four months after his release; the English translation will be published in the U.S. on the second anniversary of the Hamas attack. A taut, immersive chronicle of endurance, the book also serves as a window into the Israeli view of the war.

The author was pulled away from his wife and two daughters in the first hours of the attack. For the next 491 days, with rare exceptions, the only people Sharabi saw were other hostages and Hamas militants—the same parties that have remained front and center in the viewfinder of Jewish Israelis for two solid years, even as most of the world shifted its focus to the Palestinian civilians also confined in Gaza, and dying in the tens of thousands under Israeli fire.

During captivity Sharabi ached for his life in Be’eri—which as a kibbutz, or commune, is the original expression of the interdependence on which Israel functions. Another is the army, which he looked for frantically, and in vain, as he was thrown into a car along with a Thai farmworker.

In the first of the excerpts below, they have just arrived in the Strip. In the next, 51 days have passed. He has been hidden in a family’s home, sometimes bound with rope in excruciating pain. Sharabi, who is terrified of being held in a tunnel, is being moved to one. He travels with a fellow Israeli hostage, one of several who will be his intermittent companions. In January, he’s been moved again, this time to a space where he will remain for eight months. Deliberately underfed, he loses a great deal of weight, but finds a different sustenance in traditions that bind even secular Israeli Jews.

Sharabi also passes hours working to shore up the spirits of fellow prisoners, and to glean something of what’s happening outside from the mood of his jailers ...

October 2023
The vehicle stops. The terrorists pull me and the Thai worker out. The sun is beating down on me. I’m sweating: it was hot in the car, I had a heavy blanket over me, and another person chucked on top of that the whole way. I’m also sweating from fear. The terrorists lead me out of the vehicle, still wrapped in the blanket. There’s a huge commotion around us. I hear a noisy crowd, ecstatic, and suddenly hands start pulling me. Many hands. I’m being dragged into a sea of people who start thumping my head, screaming, trying to rip me limb from limb. They’re fighting over me. Cursing and whistling all around. My heart is pounding, my mouth is dry, I can barely breathe. I’m a goner. The Hamas terrorists try to push the mob back, and after a struggle, they pull me back into their own hands, drag me, and quickly smuggle me into a building.

This is our first stop in the Gaza Strip. It’s a mosque. I realize it because I can see the floor through my blindfold—which isn’t too tight, at this point—and I recognize the colorful prayer rugs. Having just managed to save us from getting lynched, the terrorists slam the doors behind us.

Inside the mosque, it’s quiet for a moment. I can hear my own breathing and the Thai worker sobbing next to me. The terrorists take us into a side room, where they remove our blindfolds and order us to strip. I blink, look around, and see that we’re in what looks like a grand boardroom, with a long table and luxurious chairs, like I’ve just stumbled into a board meeting at an American corporate office, not a mosque. In Gaza. With trembling hands, I remove my shirt and pants and strip down to my boxers in front of the terrorists’ prying eyes. They start interrogating me.

John Ondrasik: Hollywood joins history’s shameful betrayals by blacklisting Jewish artists

Over 3,900 film artists, including some of Hollywood’s most celebrated names, just signed a boycott of Israeli cinema institutions. They claim this is a principled stand. I call it what it is: a cowardly act that feeds antisemitism, punishes Jewish artists, and poisons the very spirit of creativity.

I am not Jewish. I don’t claim that heritage. But I don’t need to be Jewish to see right from wrong. Common sense alone tells us that when you single out the world’s one Jewish state, when you target its filmmakers and artists while ignoring brutal regimes across the globe, you are not standing for justice. You are standing for bigotry dressed up as virtue. You are empowering and legitimizing terrorists.

Art is supposed to transcend politics. It is supposed to give voice to the voiceless, shed light on the human condition, and create empathy across divides. But this boycott does the opposite. It silences. It excludes. It tells Israeli artists, "Your voice doesn’t belong." That is not art. That is discrimination. That is antisemitism. That is despicable.

What’s worse is the deafening silence from Hollywood’s elite, particularly the Jewish elite. Many of you built careers, and fortunes, on stories of courage, identity, and overcoming oppression. Yet when your own people are under attack — when antisemitism is exploding on campuses, in the streets, and now in the arts — too many of you remain on the sidelines, or worse, join the chorus of condemnation. The fact that virtually no non-Jews have the moral clarity to call out their industry’s hatred and blood libels is also a stain that will not be erased by time or contrition.

To paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr., "The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but, the silence over that by the good people." Silence in the face of antisemitism is surrender. And surrender from within is the most dangerous betrayal of all.

Hamas terror attacks
Hollywood has always prided itself on standing up for the marginalized, the persecuted, the oppressed. But today, that standard is being abandoned. Instead, conformity and cowardice rule the day. It’s easier to boycott Israelis than to challenge fashionable lies. It’s easier to parrot slogans than to defend truth.

This is not just about Israel. This is about the soul of art itself. When you turn creativity into a political weapon, when you punish people not for their talent but for their identity, you kill art. You replace courage with cowardice, imagination with ideology, and beauty with blacklists.

Jewish civil-rights group warns ‘Hollywood Blacklist’ of Israeli film institutions illegal

Organizations and professionals within the U.S. film industry would be violating federal and state antidiscrimination laws if they follow through with a boycott of the Israeli film industry, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law stated on Wednesday.

In a letter sent to top studios, distributors, platforms, talent agencies and film festivals, the Brandeis Center warns that participation in the “Hollywood Blacklist,” a boycott circulated in September by Film Workers for Palestine that calls for industry professionals to blacklist Israeli artists, companies and institutions, would “have a devastating impact—marginalizing Israeli and Jewish storytellers and silencing their diverse voices and perspectives.”

The center also explained that such discrimination against Jews and Israelis is a violation of the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1964, as well as state laws in California and New York.

“The Hollywood Blacklist of Jewish Israelis is illegal in more ways than one,” the letter states.

More than 5,000 members of the international film industry have signed the open letter, stating they will not work with Israeli film institutions that are “implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people,” according to the Film Workers for Palestine’s website.

“Boycotting Jews isn’t an original idea, or, thankfully, a legal one in the United States of America,” Rory Lancman, senior counsel at the Brandeis Center, stated. “As we say in our letter, we much prefer to see their work on the screen, and not them in court.”

10/01 Links Pt1: Trump’s Gaza Peace Plan: Path to Peace or New Disaster?; Israel intercepts Gaza flotilla, detains Thunberg and others; Yossi Cohen: How We Got Iran's Nuclear Secrets

From Ian:

Let this week be the beginning of the end of our Hamas nightmare

For leaders like Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, Trump’s plan – and Netanyahu’s acceptance of a formal Palestinian Authority role in postwar Gaza – is seen as a fatal mistake. Yet what they fail to grasp is that the true answer to Hamas and the war is not another settlement on some hilltop. The answer is to demonstrate to Palestinians and to the region that, even after two years of war, the Arab world seeks to normalise ties with Israel.

That is real victory. And it requires vision and leadership. Trump’s plan, at least on paper, seems to lean in this direction. It preserves Israel’s security needs by allowing the IDF to maintain a perimeter along Gaza, including in the strategic Philadelphi Corridor where smuggling tunnels once thrived. At the same time, it provides Palestinians with a credible path to a different future.

But everything hinges on Hamas. The group must accept the plan. Only then can the war truly end, allowing Israelis and Gazans to heal and rebuild.

Here lies a question that will accompany Israelis for some time: did it really need to take this long? For months, the IDF top brass insisted that Hamas was already sufficiently degraded. They warned that the extended operations in Gaza City were unnecessary. They knew that some form of alternative governance was the only way forward.

Instead, precious months were squandered. Leaders rolled out illusions – a Gaza Riviera or annexation schemes – that were never going to happen. These distractions only delayed the inevitable. Had international, Arab and Israeli leaders accepted earlier that there would be no riviera, no annexation, that Israel would remain in parts of Gaza and that the PA would need to play a role, perhaps lives could have been spared – soldiers, hostages, and civilians alike.

We will never know. But we must acknowledge the cost of delay. The war may now be approaching its end in terms of high-intensity combat, yet the road ahead will not be smooth. Israel must rebuild diplomatic ties frayed by two years of war, it will need to learn and implement the lessons of October 7, and it will need to begin the painful process of healing as a society. And just as that process begins, elections are expected, forcing the nation of Israel once again to confront questions of leadership, accountability, and vision.

Israel has won the battle. But whether it can win the war will depend not only on the setbacks to Hamas, Hezbollah, or Iran’s nuclear programme. It will depend on whether Israel’s leaders can rise above politics, embrace the opportunities created by military success, and chart a course toward a new regional architecture.

Why are there no mass protests for Hamas to accept Trump Gaza peace plan?

CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin said on Monday on X/Twitter that the plan was a “demand of surrender” to colonial and imperial powers. WOL leader Nerdeen Kiswani called it a “A complete political surrender of Palestinian resistance."

“The Palestinians must reject this surrender deal,” 5Pillars editor Roshan Muhammed Salih said on social media.

The problem of the peace plan was that it did not allow Hamas a strategic respite, but if implemented as planned would remove the terrorist group's abilities to fight and control the Gaza strip. Most of all, the plan would give up on the dream of Israel's destruction.

Activists rejected the deal's proposal to disarm Hamas, because it removed the option of continued fighting. Electronic Intifada director Ali Abunimah said that disarming Hamas but not Israel revealed the plan to be evil. US model Bella Hadid’s sister, Alana Hadid, said in an Instagram video that demilitarization just means stripping Palestinians of any ability to resist occupation while Israel keeps its full military arsenal."

Ousting of Hamas from political control of its territory to a transitional government would likewise preclude the ability to be able to restore its former strength. Far from seeing the potential groundwork for a free and democratic Palestinian polity, activists see the "resistance" losing ground in a long-term war.

“Trump and [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu call this a peace plan, but it’s nothing more than a blueprint for permanent occupation,” Benjamin said in a video.

Kiswani derided the potential replacement of Hamas with a planned reformed Palestinian Authority, as imposing "Israel’s subcontractor" on Gaza. With no arms or territory to continue a future fight, activists would be denied the dream of a Palestinian state "from the river to the sea" in Israel's stead.

True peace, it was argued by several groups and activists, came from the "justice" of "liberation," which anti-Israel groups detailed in January meant the destruction and replacement of Israel.

Global Sumud Flotilla steering committee member Yasemin Acar said on Instagram that the plan "offered terms of surrender, not terms of justice.”

Acar, calling on pro-Palestinian activists to stand in solidarity with Gazans in their fight for liberation.

“Colonizers don’t get to define peace,” she said. “Justice comes before negotiation. This is a fight for liberation and for our shared humanity.”

Hadid explained in her video that any end to the conflict had to involve justice – the ending of the blockade and “occupation.”

Disarming and decommissioning Hamas would mean the end of the decades long military campaign against Israel. There are no calls of "peace now" on academic campuses because they would be calls for Hamas to "surrender."

With "Peace" meaning "surrender" and "ceasefire" meaning "victory," anti-Israel activists have shown that the fighting isn't the issue, the problem is who is winning.

Why Is the 'Free Palestine' Crowd Trying to Kill the Ceasefire?

The contrast between the emerging consensus among the “pro-Palestine” crowd and the cries of actual Palestinians in Gaza could hardly be starker. And it begs urgent questions about just how deeply the Palestinians’ supposed supporters care about their wellbeing and whether they are simply instrumentalizing — and, at this point, actively trying to perpetuate — their suffering to attack Israel.

Gaza-born Palestinian activist and writer Hamza Howidy may have put it best.

“I opened my feed today to see countless posts by Gazans desperate to see an end to this war by any way possible and the huge disappointment they have after many of those who claimed to stand with them during the past two years [have asked] the Gazans to continue get[ting] killed because they don’t like the Trump proposal to end the war,” he wrote Tuesday morning. “Shame on everyone who used their name and refuses to listen to their needs.”

Inundated by angry responses on the part of many such activists, Howidy later put up a second post.

“Apparently one post about Gazans’ opinions was enough to upset lots of those who worship Hamas and its fantasy of ‘armed resistance,’” he wrote. “Anyway, as my friends in Gaza told me, anyone who wants to lecture them on resistance and what they should and shouldn’t accept should go spend two days in a tent in Gaza amidst relentless bombardment, and then they would listen to them.”

It is notable that the critics of the ceasefire proposal include some of the individuals who first accused Israel of “genocide” and have worked assiduously to popularize the smear over the past two years.

Indeed, it is hard to imagine anyone witnessing an actual genocide and claiming to fight for its victims — say, during the Holocaust — quibbling over the technicalities or optics of a plan to end it and save lives in immediate peril.

That so many “pro-Palestine” activists are openly bashing the U.S. proposal to immediately end the war — and, in some cases, openly calling on Hamas to reject it — raises two possibilities: that they never actually believed it was a genocide at all, or that the suffering of Palestinian civilians in Gaza is secondary to their utility as a cudgel against Israel.

It increasingly seems as though both are true.

The “Free Palestine” crowd would be perfectly content to sacrifice the people on the ground, Palestinians and Israelis alike, on the altar of their forever war against the Jewish state. We must not let them. Now is the time for people of conscience around the world to drown out the hate and elevate the voices of those who live in this narrow strip of land and want nothing more than to leave this nightmare behind them.

When this war ends — and it will end — it will be despite the “Free Palestine” crowd, not because of them. And we will remember.

The Red Team Clause - how to beat the "whataboutism" argument

Every time someone points out a double standard in politics, media, or public debate, especially about how Israel is subject to much different standards than other nations, they get hit with the same accusation: “That’s just whataboutism.”

The term "whataboutism" has become a rhetorical fire extinguisher, sprayed on any attempt to reveal hypocrisy.

Whataboutism can be used to avoid criticism, but it can also be used to expose double standards. Throwing out the accusation of "whataboutism" for the latter is an attempt to stifle debae, not to encourage good debat.

But what if there’s a better way to ask the question—one that doesn’t just swap blame, but tests whether the standard itself is real?

Enter the Red Team Clause. It asks a simple but devastating question:

Would this move be condemned if it came from the ideological opposition?

That’s it. No deflection, no excuse-making. Just a symmetry test.

Whataboutism is reactive. It says, “But what about when they did it?” The objection is that the supposedly guilty party is trying to dodge criticism by shifting attention.

Red Team testing is proactive. It says, “Would you apply the same standard if the sides were reversed?” The point is not to escape scrutiny, but to test whether the standard is principled or partisan.

One derails accountability. The other demands it.

Most rhetorical double standards only work because no one asks what would happen if the roles were flipped. A news outlet condemns rhetoric as “incitement” when one side uses it, but praises it as “resistance” when the other does. A policy framed as “authoritarian” in one administration gets rebranded as “pragmatic” in another.

The Red Team Clause catches these inversions by applying a mirror: if the same tactic, framing, or behavior would provoke outrage when used by the opposition, then the outrage itself is not about the principle: it’s about the tribe.

The beauty of the Red Team Clause is that it doesn’t excuse anything. If a tactic is wrong, it’s wrong no matter who does it. If it’s acceptable, it should be acceptable for everyone. What it exposes is the hidden asymmetry, when the rule itself is selectively applied.

That’s why the Red Team Clause is an essential diagnostic tool for epistemic integrity, not a rhetorical bludgeon. It reveals whether an argument rests on universal principles, or on partisan exemptions that collapse under scrutiny. An Israeli who wants a single Israeli state from the river to the sea is called a "warmonger" or an "ultra-nationalist extremist" or "hawkish" or a "Jewish supremacist." But a Palestinian that demands a single Palestinian state on the same borders never gets those kinds of labels. The Red Team Clause exposes the bias without having to ask "what about...?" Because it isn't only about the past but the present.

Calling out double standards isn’t cheap deflection. Done properly, it’s a test of whether people mean what they say. The Red Team Clause turns whataboutism’s reputation for evasion into a disciplined model of accountability.

In other words: if your standard only works one way, it’s not a standard at all.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Larry Sanger, cofounder of Wikipedia, has just published what he calls his “Hail Mary” set of reforms to rescue the site from ideological capture. He’s blunt: what was designed as a neutral encyclopedia has become an ideologically skewed platform, ruled by insider gatekeepers rather than pluralism.

Sanger’s Nine Theses are sharp and necessary. He highlights the hollowing-out of neutrality into “consensus,” source blacklists that silence whole swaths of public opinion, anonymous elites exercising power without accountability, and the abuse of “Ignore All Rules” as cover for bias. His reforms - competing articles, transparent leadership, a real legislature for governance, a public feedback system - would go a long way toward restoring integrity.

But procedural fixes alone cannot protect an institution from capture. What’s missing is an ethical backbone. Without one, even Sanger’s reforms would eventually be reinterpreted, bypassed, or gamed by whoever holds the keys.

This is where my recent work in philosophy and ethics comes in. I’ve been building an ethical framework (AskHillel/Derechology) designed precisely to protect systems against drift, capture, and self-deception. It combines transparency, humility, structured pluralism, and override logic into a self-correcting architecture.

Sanger has the right instincts, but what his plan lacks is a way to adjudicate value conflicts. For example: should truth always override harm reduction? When do neutrality and justice clash? Without a structured moral framework, these debates collapse back into power struggles.

That is why ethics isn’t a luxury here. It’s the firewall. It’s the system of accountability that keeps the rules from being bent beyond recognition.

Another project I've been working on, TAMAR, complements the ethics component and is ideally suited to keeping Wikipedia resistant to hijacking. TAMAR is my AI-based toolkit for detecting propaganda techniques, framing bias, and narrative manipulation. TAMAR works at the level of edits, not just policy. Every single change can be scanned, tagged, and evaluated for structural bias before it goes live.

Here’s how TAMAR plus Derechology could transform Wikipedia:

Per-Page Derech Declarations
Each article would openly state its interpretive frame (historical-critical, faith-based, political, etc.). That way, readers know what path/perspective (derech) they’re reading, and competing articles can coexist without pretending to represent a single “neutral” voice. True neutrality is impossible, but transparency can mitigate the silent imposing of a single point of view.
Integrity Scores for Edits
Every edit must pass a TAMAR scan that checks for propaganda markers: selective sourcing, premise smuggling, causality distortion, terminological injection. Each edit gets an integrity score. Low scores are flagged for human review.
Red Team Clause
Every controversial entry must withstand an inversion test: can its logic survive if flipped? If not, it’s probably engaging in selective framing. This is a structured way to expose double standards, especially in geopolitics.
Teshuvah Journal
Every major reversion, controversy, or ideological shift is logged as part of Wikipedia’s moral memory. It’s not enough to silently update pages: Wikipedia should admit where it was wrong, and show how it corrected itself.
Public Rating System With Derech Splits
Readers could rate an article’s framing integrity and even request a “derech split” — asking for parallel articles that present different perspectives rather than endless edit wars.
Editorial Overview Board
Not an anonymous cabal, but a pluralistic assembly representing different frameworks (liberal, conservative, religious, academic). Their job: oversee override logic, ensure derech diversity, and maintain moral transparency.

Why does this matter so much? Because Wikipedia is not just a website. It has become one of the most important training inputs for artificial intelligence. The distortions of Wikipedia today become the biases of AI today. And make no mistake - AI is deeply affected by its choice of learning modules.

That’s why I would argue Wikipedia is as consequential as AI itself. Both are knowledge systems that shape how billions of people (and now machines) understand the world. Both face the same challenge: how to preserve integrity in the face of ideological capture. Both require not just rules, but ethical architecture.

This is where philosophy proves its real-world worth. Philosophy only matters if it can protect truth in the real world. That’s what Derechology is designed to do. It’s about creating frameworks that protect institutions from drift, bias, and capture - whether it’s Wikipedia, AI, or any other system that claims authority over truth.

Sanger is right that Wikipedia needs structural reform. But structure without ethics is brittle. What’s needed is a fusion: procedural reforms guided by a transparent moral framework like Derechology, operationalized through tools like TAMAR. That is how you build a knowledge system that is both open and resilient, pluralist and trustworthy.

Truth does not fear plurality. But plurality without integrity is just noise.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

This is an update my Yom Kippur message of previous years.

I unconditionally forgive anyone who may have wronged me during this year, and I ask forgiveness for anyone I may have wronged as well.

Specifically:

-If you sent me email and I didn't reply, or didn't get back to you in a timely fashion -- I apologize.

-If you sent me a story and I decided not to publish it or worse, didn't give you a hat tip for the story -I'm sorry. I'm also sorry if I didn't acknowledge the tip. I cannot publish all the stories I am sent, although I try to place appropriate ones in the linkdumps, or tweet them.

-If you requested help from me and I wasn't able to provide it -- I'm sorry.

-I apologize if I posted without the proper attribution, with the wrong attribution, or without attribution at all, including graphics.

-I'm sorry that I usually don't give hat tips on things I tweet.

-If I didn't thank you for a donation, I'm very, very sorry.

-I'm sorry if I didn't give the proper respect to my co-bloggers Ian, PreOccupied Territory, Varda, Daled Amos and the guest posters. Also to people who send me tons of tips.

-I'm sorry if any of my posts offended you personally.

- Please forgive me if I wrote disparaging things about you.

- I'm sorry if things got published in the comments that violated my comments policy but that I missed. I don't have time to monitor most comments.

This past year I finally published my cartoon book and then embarked on an initiative I had not foreseen at all - philosophy. I firmly believe that this is the most important thing I can work on. In recent years there has been an explosion of excellent commenters on Israel so my blog is not as essential as it was a decade ago; for that reason I have been shifting focus away from debunking the lies and antisemitism and towards trying to fix the root of the problem. To those who rely on my blog for the pro-Israel stuff, and especially to those who send me money, I apologize for this shift, but I honestly think that this is as important a task as anyone can do.

May this be a year of life, peace, prosperity, happiness, security, good health, Jewish unity, and complete victory over our enemies.

I wish all of my readers who observe Yom Kippur an easy and meaningful fast.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Memes to make todays useful idiot anti-Zionists uncomfortable

Yesterday I wrote that the anti-Zionists have a very good grasp of known persuasion techniques that they use effectively to attract and keep followers. Zionists, on the other hand, think that facts alone can win the debate.

One way to fight the methods of the haters is to reveal them so people can know that they are being played. So I made a series of three memes for the anti-Zionists to humorously expose how many of them were manipulated - much like members of cults.

Showing them that they are wrong about Israel almost always backfires with the "true believers." But showing them how they are being used as pawns might make some of them realize that they are not acting as nobly as they might think.