Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, June 14, 2026

06/14 Links: Trump says peace deal with Iran completed; The Case Against Another Iran Deal; Operation Rising Lion: One year later; Somaliland president on first visit to Israel

From Ian:

We Are Told that Israel Has Lost the World

Since Oct. 7, we are told that Israel has lost the world. It has squandered international goodwill. It has alienated its allies. It has isolated itself through its conduct in Gaza. Israel was attacked in the most brutal massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, responded by fighting a just war against the organization that carried out that massacre, and somehow emerged as the primary culprit in the eyes of much of the international community.

There is only one problem with this theory. It assumes Israel enjoyed remarkable support before Oct. 7. When exactly was this golden age? Was it when student groups were calling for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against the Jewish state? Was it when anti-Israel activism became a permanent feature of university life? Or was it at the UN, where Israel has long occupied a unique category of international obsession?

From 2015 through 2024, the UN General Assembly adopted more than twice as many resolutions against Israel as it did against all other countries combined. At the UN Human Rights Council, democratic Israel has routinely attracted more condemnation than regimes run by dictators, warlords, and revolutionary clerics. Apparently, the world's most pressing human rights crisis is not Syria, Iran, North Korea, or Russia.

We are told Gaza transformed Israel into an international outcast. Curiously, many international institutions seem to have reached that conclusion years before Gaza. The idea that Oct. 7 destroyed decades of goodwill would be more persuasive if anyone could point to the decades of goodwill.

Before Israeli forces had entered Gaza in significant numbers, before casualty figures dominated headlines, before military operations had fully unfolded, many people had already decided who the villain was. A remarkable amount of outrage appeared before Israel had done much of anything in Gaza at all. Israel is subjected to demands rarely made of any other country. It is expected to defeat enemies without defeating them and eliminate threats without using force.

If support disappears the moment it is tested, was it ever support at all? An ally who vanishes during a war was never much of an ally. And support that exists only during periods of calm is not support in any meaningful sense of the word.

The Case Against Another Iran Deal

Iran has treated international commitments as instruments of convenience, complying when under acute pressure and accelerating forbidden activities when that pressure eases. Verification has always been the Achilles' heel. Iran's territory, history of undeclared facilities, and demonstrated ability to delay or obstruct inspectors make robust, real-time monitoring extraordinarily difficult.

Even the 2015 JCPOA's relatively intrusive provisions proved insufficient once political will in key capitals wavered. Enforcement mechanisms, whether snapback sanctions or military consequences, have depended on sustained U.S. and allied commitment - something that has proven elusive across administrations.

Military pressure alone has not transformed the regime's ideology or behavior. The Islamic Republic's core opposition to U.S. influence and support for regional proxies has survived leadership losses and battlefield setbacks. Long-term strategy against Iran has repeatedly foundered on domestic political shifts.

Iran's leadership has learned to play for time, calculating that U.S. policy coherence rarely survives a single presidential term. Any agreement that depends on consistent enforcement across future administrations asks for something the American political system has not delivered on Iran policy in decades.

The current posture - sustained but episodic pressure combined with openness to a possible new deal - assumes that a verifiable and enforceable agreement is achievable with a leadership whose ideology prioritizes resistance and whose external patrons have incentives to help it evade constraints.

A decisive and overt regime change campaign represents the alternative that confronts these realities directly. It does not rely on persuading Iran's current leadership to abandon core strategic assets or on maintaining perfect verification against a determined cheater. Instead, it targets the source of the problem. We must weigh the risks of action against the mounting, compounding perils of inaction.

Jake Wallis Simons: The Iranian ayatollahs don’t want a deal. They want apocalypse

Over the past few days, Iran has shot down an American helicopter, attacked Kuwait's international airport, menaced Hormuz with drones, and launched missiles at Israel. This is not the behavior of an adversary that is desperate for peace.

Meanwhile, Iran has been secretly sealing off its subterranean cache of highly enriched uranium. This will make securing the material, America's main objective, immeasurably more difficult, even if an agreement is signed.

The regime has always had the same beliefs. Apocalyptic war against the West will cause a Messianic figure to emerge from invisibility and lead the Shia faithful to global domination in the endtimes. That remains its reality. You can't do a deal with that.

Melissa Brodsky notes on Substack that a road was recently "adopted" in West Bloomfield, MI by a group called "Voices for Palestinians" to be responsible for cleaning it up.

A sign was placed on the road at taxpayer expense to mark the portion adopted.

When people or organizations adopt a road in Oakland County, they get to choose from all available roads. So churches will typically adopt a road near their facilities, or people will adopt one in memory of a loved one who might have died in a traffic accident on that road.

Out of all the roads available in Oakland County, "Voices for Palestinians" chose Orchard Lake Road between West Maple Road and Walnut Lake Road - the epicenter of the Jewish community of West Bloomfield. There are at least 8 synagogues and at least three Jewish schools plus Jewish community centers and other Jewish organizations near that mile of road.

Including Temple Israel, which was attacked last March by an Islamist terrorist. For Palestine.

There are no mosques that I can find in that immediate area.

Who is "Voices for Palestinians?" I can find no mention of this group anywhere. There are plenty of pro-Palestinian groups in the Detroit metro area but this one seems to have no website, no social media presence. No one ever heard of them before this sign was put up.

This is the only major road that hadn't already been adopted in the Jewish neighborhood. The sign is northbound right at the entrance of the Jewish community.

It is hard to escape the idea that this organization was created just to get the county to put up the sign, with the primary purpose to intimidate the Jewish community of West Bloomfield. It costs nothing, except volunteering twice a year. (And if they don't show up, the sign is still there for a year, so it does its job.)

This is legal Jew-baiting.

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)

At the far Left site Countercurrents, Dr. Ghassan Shahrour writes "Why Palestinianism Is Misread as Hostility, and Why That Misreading Must End."

This should be fun.

First of all, what exactly is "Palestinianism?" Shahrour gives us a definition. Actually, his short article gives us about eight definitions.

Palestinianism is a dignity-centered framework grounded in humanitarian practice.
Palestinianism examines how systems of protection operate, why they fail, and how they might become more equitable.
The purpose of Palestinianism is not to elevate one people above another. It is to use a prolonged encounter with exclusion to illuminate how protection systems function across contexts.
Palestinianism critiques structures, not identities.
Palestinianism is grounded in humanitarian practice, not ideology.
Palestinianism reveals how protection mechanisms can be selectively applied, withheld, or manipulated.
Palestinianism brings suppressed memory into analytical view.
Palestinianism offers something constructive: a universal lens for analyzing exclusion and a human-centered ethic that applies to all peoples. It helps identify structural failures in protection systems and offers pathways toward more equitable responses. It is grounded in decades of humanitarian practice and in the lived experience of communities whose dignity has been repeatedly denied.

Do you understand now?

No one does. It is defined by whatever word salad comes into his head. It sounds roughly like a field of social science, or maybe psychology, or perhaps politics. But from what we can see, it has nothing to do with...Palestinians.

Which is really the point. If it was about Palestinians, then Palestinianism would be critiquing Lebanon or Jordan or Egypt for how they mistreat Palestinians today, or Gulf and other Arab countries for refusing to give Palestinians citizenship even after four generations of living there. But Palestinianism is really anti-Israelism dressed up as a positive movement for a people who are, at best, pawns in the entire framework.

But let's take the article seriously for a minute. It quotes Jewish thinkers to defend Palestinianism: "Jewish philosopher Judith Butler." "Jewish historian Alon Confino." "Jewish physician and trauma expert Dr. Gabor Maté, who lost family members in the Holocaust." Richard Falk is introduced as "one of the most respected Jewish public intellectuals of our time." Ilan Pappe is also quoted, and Eyal Weizman is mentioned. All of them are anti-Zionist Jews.

Since only Jewish experts are quoted, most of them explicitly as Jews, then Shahrour must believe that Jews have a special insight into Palestinianism and support its goals. But 90% of Jews support Israel. I would venture that, say, Bernard-Henri Lévy is a bit more prestigious than Richard Falk as a public intellectual. If Jews are the ones to listen to about Palestinianism and Israel, then by Shahrour's own standards, he should be a Zionist.

In this light, Shahrour's use of Judith Butler is richly ironic. He says that she charged that Zionists “instrumentalize Jewish identity to shield power from accountability.” Which is exactly what he does by citing seven Jews and not one non-Jew.

Let's go deeper.

Sharour says that a protection system is a mechanism that shields a favored party and can be "selectively applied, withheld, or manipulated," under which "accusations become tools of narrative control rather than genuine ethical concerns."

He just perfectly described his entire essay. Palestinianism shields a favored party — Palestinian nationalism — and it withholds that shielding from every critic by defining them out of the picture. It manipulates the incoming accusation, converting bias, antisemitism, and hidden-agenda charges alike into evidence for the position they were meant to test. Each objection is reclassified, on contact, as a "tool of narrative control." Shahrour has built, in the act of denouncing protection systems, a flawless specimen of one, and it fails in exactly the manner his definition specifies. if Sharour would point his own framework at Palestinianism itself as a protection system, by his own metrics, it fails.

This is a ridiculous essay dressed up in pseudo-academic garb. Maybe readers of Countercurrents think it is brilliant, but if you actually try to figure out his arguments, there aren't any - just his own assertions framed in such a way that there is little to attack since he keeps his subject so nebulous. But since he claims that it is a structural analysis, any structural analysis of his system shows that it damns itself.

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)

06/13 Links: Any deal with Tehran is a deadly farce; Mike Pence: The Case for Israel; Why Israel should close every UN office in the country

From Ian:

Mike Pence: The Case for Israel

As anti-Israel and even antisemitic sentiment has taken hold on the progressive left, many right-wing populists have become isolationists who criticize U.S. support for Israel and even indulge in age-old conspiracies grounded in antisemitism. Chief among those voices is Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host who was fired following the $787 million settlement of a defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems following the 2020 election. Carlson has condemned U.S. support for Israel and in 2024 he platformed a Holocaust denier who called Winston Churchill the "chief villain of the Second World War." During an interview with the avowed antisemite Nick Fuentes on his show in 2025, Carlson actually denounced American conservatives who support Israel, saying that Christian Zionism is a "heresy" and that non-Jewish Republicans who support Israel are "seized by this brain virus."

He and other populists have also questioned U.S. military support for Israel. Carlson even predicted that Trump's strike on Iranian nuclear facilities would "end his presidency." His fellow right-wing populist, podcaster Steve Bannon, warned that a U.S. strike on Iran would start "the Third World War." The result was quite the opposite: Israel and America demonstrated strength and won the peace. Trump's decision to bomb was a bold move that made the world safer and eased tensions throughout the Middle East. It diminished Iran's ability to threaten its neighbors. The action even helped secure the release of Israelis whom Hamas had held hostage for two years. Carlson and Bannon were wrong and allowed their anti-Israel and isolationist views to cloud their judgment. Fortunately, in that instance, Trump ignored them. Conservatives should recognize open hostility to U.S. support for Israel for what it is and reject these voices in shaping our movement or our party.

In addition to rejecting anti-Israel sentiment, conservatives must reject antisemitism of any form in our nation. Sadly, many right-wing populists are not simply wrong about geopolitics. Many also traffic in antisemitism. Fringe figures such as Fuentes and Candace Owens have attracted followings for their podcasts and social media posts by spewing filth. These and other so-called influencers on the right deliver diatribes full of hateful dog whistles, spin conspiracy theories about Jewish influence, and interview guests who question the reality and enormity of the Holocaust. They often hide behind the claim that they are merely "asking questions." They are in fact utterly incurious, always seeming to know in advance the answers they want to hear and amplify. Just as National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr. expelled antisemites from the conservative movement in the 1960s, today's conservatives must reject the new voices of antisemitism today. There is no room in the conservative movement for opponents of U.S. support for Israel, and there is no place in America for antisemitic rhetoric and bigotry.

The United States must remain engaged with Israel and never compromise its safety and security. Radical Islamic terrorism knows no borders as it targets America, Israel, and other nations. It respects no creed as it steals the lives of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. And it understands no reality other than brute force.

America must continue to provide Israel with the means to defend itself and its people. Peace in the Middle East begins with Israeli strength. When Israel is strong, old enemies can start over and become partners. Familiar foes can find new ground for cooperation. And the descendants of Isaac and Ishmael can come together as never before. While at times it may be hard to see, Jews and Muslims have more that unites them than divides them—not only in common threats, but in the common hope for a future of prosperity and peace, and in the common ancestry of a monotheistic belief that runs throughout these lands. Through engagement with Israel and its neighbors, the United States must seek to restore the rich splendor of religious diversity across the Middle East, so that all faiths may once again flourish in the lands where they were born.

Nearly four thousand years ago, a man left his home in Ur of the Chaldeans and traveled to Israel. He ruled no empire, wore no crown, commanded no army, performed no miracles, and delivered no prophecies. Yet to him was promised "descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky." Today, Jews, Christians, and Muslims—more than half the population of the earth, and nearly all the people of the Middle East—claim Abraham as their forefather in faith. In the Old City of Jerusalem, we see the followers of these three great religions living out their beliefs. At the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Christian children receive the gift of grace, in baptism. At the Western Wall, Jewish boys celebrate their bar mitzvahs. And at the Haram al-Sharif, young Muslims bow their heads in prayer. All who hope for freedom and a brighter future should cast their eyes to Jerusalem and marvel at what they behold.

Throughout the history of our nation, generations of Americans have claimed God's promise in Genesis to the people of Israel and all who cherish her: "I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse." For the sake of our cherished ally and the future blessing of the United States, if the world knows nothing else, let the world know this: America stands with Israel.

Christian leaders hold emergency summit in Jerusalem to confront global rise in antisemitism

The International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ) convened an emergency summit this week amid growing concern over the global rise in antisemitism following the Hamas-led Oct. 7 massacre in 2023.

The three-day conference in the Israeli capital comes at a time when social media influencers are consistently pushing antisemitic hate to their millions of followers.

"Attacking the Jews means attacking the very roots of one’s own faith. It means fighting against the people who gave us the Bible. Jesus was Jewish," ICEJ President Jürgen Bühler told Fox News Digital.

"If you don’t fight antisemitism, you are sawing off the branch you sit on. For the church to survive, we need to connect to our roots, (and) fighting antisemitism needs to be at the forefront of every pastor and every leader around the world," he added.

One of the central themes of the conference is replacement theology, a doctrine that holds the church has replaced the Jewish people in God’s plan.

"The Bible is full of God’s eternal plan, which includes the Jewish people. Paul’s statement in Romans 11 that ‘the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable' relates to Israel. This is a doctrine that goes contrary to what the New and Old Testament are teaching and that’s why we need to have this conference," Bühler said.

"One cannot deny the Jewishness of the Bible. The most frequent word in the Bible is the name of God, and the second most used name is Israel. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, he died in Jerusalem, resurrected in Jerusalem, rose to heaven from Jerusalem, and he is coming back to Jerusalem. If you read the Bible, it is so easy to see the connection to Israel," he added.

Israel’s newly appointed special envoy to the Christian world, George Deek, addressed the meeting on Wednesday, while Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee are scheduled to attend the summit’s closing event Thursday at the foreign ministry as keynote speakers.

In a recorded message broadcast at the summit, Israeli President Isaac Herzog thanked Christian leaders for mobilizing against antisemitism.

"We are witnessing a very disturbing surge of antisemitism all over the world. This is a major challenge for humanity. This is the age-old, perhaps the oldest plague in humanity, and we have to stand up together — thought leaders and religious leaders — and say, ‘No more' and teach people about the sources of this evil and how to counter antisemitism," Herzog said.

"I believe that countering antisemitism requires a combination of three major elements: law enforcement, adjudication and education.

"You, dear leaders, have a huge capability of fighting back, and I bless you. Truly, I bless you as the president of Israel for coming here and fighting back, for coming here and discussing how to fight back," Herzog concluded.

Zionism as Decolonization — How I Went From Anti-Zionist to Zionist

As a former anti-zionist, I often get asked what changed my views on this very heavy, complex, and emotive subject.

Ironically, it was the same question that got me out of anti-zionism that got me into it — what relationship do Jews have to the land?

The lens through which we view this question colours the entire conflict — the history, events, and dynamics involved, what they are, and to what extent they are moral or immoral.

For a number of years, I opposed the existence of Israel and everything to do with it. A matter of principle. Like most other anti-zionists, it was seemingly obvious that Jews are foreign to the land, that they are just white settler-colonizers from Europe who were using the Jewish religion as a racist excuse to steal the land of a vulnerable brown indigenous population. Anyone with a moral conscience would be opposed, no?

Because of this pretext, this mindset presupposes that everything else Israel does must therefore be in service of settler-colonialism. Hence why it launches attacks on Palestinians, displaces civilians, puts up walls, checkpoints, and blockades, bans DNA tests, builds settlements, and the like. Israel must be committing apartheid. Israel must be committing genocide. Everything Israel does (exist, defend itself, maintain national security) is unjustifiable, because the premise of Israel is unjustifiable. And conversely, everything the Palestinians do is justifiable, because they are innocent native people resisting the evils of colonization. The Jews are foreigners who took the land from the natives, just like here in North America, right? Right!?

Wrong. As someone with an academic background in Anthropology and Indigenous studies, who also spent many years as a decolonial advocate focused on indigenous rights, I was inclined to agree. However, when I started seeing the argumentation for Jews being Indigenous (from Ryan Bellerose, Rudy Rochman, Thomas Gallezot, StandWithUS, among others), I was skeptical yet curious, and sought to investigate further. If my beliefs were true, they would hold up to scrutiny, I thought.

Upon actually reading about Jewish history, linguistics, archaeology, and genetics, and also Arab history, and the history of the conflict, it turns out, my opinions were very much rooted in ignorance. Everything clicked into place and my worldviews came crashing down (although accepting it was a gradual process).

Jews are not just white people with a Jewish religion, they are a displaced Levantine people. Arabs are not just innocent natives, they are the descendants of Caliphates that colonized the entire MENA region. Israel is not acting in service of settler-colonialism, it is acting in service of decolonization. There was so much more that I was never told, and so never considered. I was lied to.

06/12 Links Pt2: Civilization and Barbarism in the Biblical Heartland; Melanie Phillips; Islam and Jihad in the UK; Four Palestine Action activists jailed for Elbit factory raid

From Ian:

Josh Hammer: Civilization and Barbarism in the Biblical Heartland

I’ve just returned from my seventh trip to Israel. I spent a good amount of time in Judea and Samaria. I visited some of the major Jewish “settlements”—tendentious nomenclature aside, better thought of simply as flourishing suburbs—such as Ariel and Efrat. I visited a brand-new hilltop settlement outside Efrat, called Eitam, where the founder offered a tour of the local Herodian ruins and explained why he first pitched a tent without so much as electricity or running water. Further out in the Judean Desert, at the stunning Arugot Farm, the founders quoted biblical passages that harmonized their project with the vision of the prophets. The Israeli government is not advertising the extension of sovereignty on a mass scale, but there is a lot of new building happening on a micro level on the ground.

In a sensible world, this would be celebrated. But it’s not. Humorously, in virtually every other geopolitical hot spot, it is the Chinese- and Russian-funded anti-civilizational Left that clamors for “indigenous rights” at every opportunity. Yet in Judea and Samaria, the leftist Soros/NGO script flips on its head entirely. The actual indigenous population, acting in furtherance of the miraculous fulfilment of the biblical prophecy of the ingathering of the exiles, is instead deemed cruel, oppressive, “colonialist,” or even “genocidal.” Curious, that. Even worse: In our morally confused and biblically illiterate age, far too many on the “Right” accept the prevailing narrative and clap along.

Even holding aside the terror-supporting, Hamas-loving nature (as confirmed by myriad polling) of the radicalized local Arab population, it is difficult to describe the extraordinary impracticability of any kind of divided political resolution to the question of Judea and Samaria. The Western mind often thinks of the “settlements” as comprising a few gruff hilltop cranks—and some surely do exist. But there are now well over a half-million Jews living in the biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria—from the tony suburbs of Gush Etzion to the far-flung outposts near the Jordan River or the Dead Sea. Simply put, the Jews of Judea are not going anywhere. And on the ground, Jewish towns are interspersed all throughout with Arab towns. There are no clean borders to be drawn here.

To attempt to neatly divide this on a map is an exercise in logistical and cartographic futility. Give the freaks of “Students for Justice in Palestine” credit for one thing: The geopolitical unity inherent in the cry of “from the (Jordan) River to the (Mediterranean) Sea” makes a heck of a lot more sense than continuing to indulge the Oslo Accords-era delusion of a workable carving out of a new Palestine Liberation Organization/Hamas terror entity in the core of the biblical heartland—even if, per leading Oslo proponent Yitzhak Rabin himself, the entity would be “less than a (full) state.” The land is going to be controlled by either Jews or, after 90-year-old Ramallah-based PLO kleptocrat-in-chief Mahmoud Abbas croaks, Hamas.

It’s pretty much that simple.

As in so much else in our politics, then, the relevant question in Judea and Samaria is not the procedural question of whether there will be one or two (or more) states, but the substantive question of who will rule in the entirety of the biblical heartland. The Left knows its answer: Hamas and the broader Muslim Brotherhood of which it is a part. But again: Why doesn’t most of the Right, which is at least ostensibly committed to the defense of Western civilization, have its own competing answer in response to the Red-Green Alliance narrative?

The answer to this specific geopolitical question dovetails with the broader explanation for the rise of the “Retard Right” phenomenon, in the first place: increased lack of civilizational or national self-confidence, diminished understanding of America as founded upon the ecumenical biblical inheritance and committed to upholding it for our progeny, the successful injection of debilitating information operations from wily foes such as Russia and Qatar, and a broader rotting of the American people’s minds that has led to a chronic inability to distinguish fact from fiction and right from wrong.

But the Trump administration, though not immune to infiltration by some prominent individuals (Joe Kent, anyone?) who are card-carrying members of the “Retard Right,” has generally acted in a way to diminish the influence of the most cancerous pro-Russia, pro-China, Islamophilic, and anti-American voices within the Right’s midst. Furthermore, the current U.S. ambassador to Israel is evangelical Mike Huckabee, a lifelong proponent of Jewish rights in Judea and Samaria and a deep skeptic of the Palestinian-Arab narrative.

Even if rudimentary morality is off the table in our confused time, the Trump administration can and should make an even more straightforward argument about the American national interest when it comes to the future of the biblical heartland.

To be “America First” is to ask, in each and every geopolitical hot spot around the world, what course of action best advances the American national interest. In Judea and Samaria, the answer—especially in the aftermath of the regional Israeli-Arab rapprochement that was the 2020 Abraham Accords pacts—should be obvious: Greater Israeli autonomy is preferable to greater Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood autonomy. This is true for national security reasons. This is true for Iranian regime containment regions. This is true for China great power competition reasons. This true for Christian holy site protection reasons. Indeed, this is true for virtually every reason conceivable. Even the Arab states know it, despite their meek protestations to the contrary—and they especially know it in light of Operation Epic Fury, which has fully exposed Iran’s threat to the region.

If Western civilization is going to be saved, then America must do the saving. If America is going to be saved, then the Right must do the saving. But that can only if the Right actually understands what it is fighting to preserve: the intellectual and tangible fruits of the ecumenical biblical inheritance. After my most recent trip to the Holy Land, I’ve never felt firmer in my conviction that such an effort must encompass a robust defense of the biblical heartland itself. Judea and Samara must forever remain part of Team Civilization, not Team Barbarism. And “America First” should understand that.

Man in the mirror: Norman Finkelstein and his own Holocaust industry

I owe Norman Finkelstein something. He was my professor at New York University in the mid-1990s, and for a young Jewish kid from Queens, N.Y., he was an electric disruption. He challenged everything I thought I knew, introduced me to Noam Chomsky and wrote the recommendation that got me into graduate school. I read his work for more than 30 years. This essay is not written in contempt. It is written in disappointment, with the same demand for consistency he spent his career imposing on others.

Norman Finkelstein built his reputation on a single devastating argument: that suffering can be exploited, historical trauma can be weaponized and moral authority can become currency. His 2000 book The Holocaust Industry accused Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel of turning tragedy into a brand, commanding speaking fees upward of $25,000 while claiming the Holocaust was “noncommunicable.”

He accused attorney Alan Dershowitz, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, of fraud. He accused Jewish organizations of running “an outright extortion racket.” His standards were ferocious and he insisted they apply to everyone.

It is time to hold Finkelstein to his own standard.

Today, his public identity revolves around Gaza and his identity as the son of Holocaust survivors. His mother survived Majdanek. His father survived Auschwitz. Both survived the Warsaw Ghetto. Their suffering is not incidental to his public persona. It is the credential that accompanies him into every interview, every introduction, every podcast appearance.

He has built two books totaling more than 900 pages on Gaza alone, to be sold as a matched box set modeled on Vasily Grossman and Ilya Ehrenburg’s documentation of Nazi atrocities. He promotes his new volume, Gaza’s Gravediggers, across every available platform.

The man who accused others of transforming historical suffering into moral authority now relies on his own inherited suffering as his primary credential. The man who condemned what he called an industry has built one himself. The subject matter changed. The mechanism did not.

Earlier this year, I reached out to Finkelstein directly, as a former student who had read his work for 30 years. I asked about antisemitism that predates Israel by centuries. I asked about the institutional silences that followed the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, before any Israeli military response began. I asked about the future of Jewish life in the Diaspora.

Not one question was engaged. Instead came dismissal, sarcasm and the declaration that “those who want to know, know.”

He told me Gaza was “about as complex as an Auschwitz gas chamber.” That comparison, deployed casually in a personal letter to the son and grandson of survivors of Bergen-Belsen and Terezín, reveals something important. The man who once demanded that arguments be answered rather than dismissed now pronounces verdicts and calls it scholarship.

On Oct. 7, Finkelstein posted that it “warms every fiber of my soul” to see Gaza’s “Jewish supremacist oppressors” humbled. He invoked the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising—the very one his own parents survived—as a parallel to Hamas’s assault on a music festival and kibbutz families.

Insurance giant Allianz given green light to sue Palestine activists

A British court has allowed German insurance giant Allianz to pursue a civil lawsuit against six pro-Palestine activists accused of vandalising its offices in London and Guildford, Surrey.

The defendants, who conducted separate protests at the site in 2024 and 2025, are facing criminal damage charges after targeting the company as the then-insurer of Elbit Systems, an Israeli-based defence firm.

Known as the Allianz6, the activists occupied the office building and sprayed it with red paint, which the firm said caused £79,000 in damage.

In its filings to Central London County Court, Allianz requested permission to seek up to £300,000 in damages, £200,000 of which it claimed were incurred through “reputational damage and commercial embarrassment”.

The activists represented themselves last month in the early stages of their criminal trial and say they cannot afford legal representation to contest the civil case.

They argued that the suit should be held until the conclusion of the criminal proceedings, scheduled separately for October this year and January 2028, to safeguard their right to a fair trial.

However, Judge Alan Johns rejected this request, ruling on Monday that the suit could proceed concurrently with the criminal cases.

One of the defendants, Seren John-Wood, told Middle East Eye: “We took action and are prepared to face legal consequences in a criminal court as we believe we are not guilty.

"But this attempt to move the case away from the criminal courts, where we are not able to access financial support for legal representation and have our cases heard by juries, is as appalling as it is unprecedented.”

06/12 Links Pt1: US-Iran deal to include dismantling of Iranian nuclear program; UNRWA fires 70 staffers over terrorist ties; Pal football chief denied US visa

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Trump’s civilizational moment

This lethal blindness is not just endangering the West in foreign wars, but is doing so at home in the refusal to face the reality of Islamization.

Britain refuses to ban the Muslim Brotherhood, jail or deport jihadi preachers, ban sharia courts or stop immigration from countries posing an Islamist threat.

In America, although Trump has taken measures against extremism, an Islamist beachhead has been created in New York with its sectarian Muslim mayor, Zohran Mamdani, and with sharia enclaves expanding in Texas and elsewhere.

The reason all of this has been allowed to grow is wider and deeper than the promotion of multiculturalism and the intersectional dogma that holds the West is innately bad because it is white. At the core of these secular ideologies is a loss of belief in the biblical norms that underpin Western culture, and the replacement of what is held to be irrational Christian and Jewish mumbo-jumbo by the superior power of the Western mind.

The West has told itself that it is the acme of reason—by which it means that its core principle is the pursuit of individual happiness, prosperity and self-realization.

Accordingly, war is always totally dumb because people get killed; ranking different cultures in any kind of hierarchy is a form of bigotry that is not only evil but proof of imbecility; and everyone in the world is assumed only to want to have a nice life.

Believing that only universal values are moral and rational, such Westerners can’t see the catastrophic results of failing to fight for their own. They refuse to acknowledge that there is no brotherhood of man; there are instead people who believe in civilization, and other people who intend to destroy it.

The paradox is that in making a fetish of reason and self-interest, the West repudiates reason by inventing its own reality.

Meanwhile, the Islamists have grasped all this. They understand that without a religious scaffolding, a society eventually collapses. They have watched the West steadily destroying that religious core and, in the vacuum that’s been created, giving them the opportunity to strike.

This is why Britain, which has led the retreat from Christianity in the West, is ground zero for the Islamist onslaught. Islamization has penetrated throughout Britain’s political and civic architecture, with British leaders absolutely refusing to push back.

Now there’s a rapidly rising sectarian Islamic bloc, aided by the left, increasingly focusing British politics on the jihadi agenda of destroying Israel and the Jews as an essential precursor to conquering the West.

We are currently, and rightly, transfixed by Iran. If America doesn’t neutralize the Islamic revolutionary regime and instead allows it to regenerate, this will be catastrophic for America and the West.

It all depends on one mercurial and imperfect man in the White House. But whether he succeeds or fails, he is leading a free world, much of which no longer understands what it needs to do to survive.

Ruthie Blum: Translating Trump in Tehran

Listening to U.S. President Donald Trump’s June 3 Oval Office press conference, one couldn’t help worrying about how his words sounded in Farsi—not only to the mullahs and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, but to the masses who believed that “help was on the way.”

Now it’s true that every statement made by Trump, whether in response to journalists’ questions or as a post on Truth Social, is aimed at multiple audiences at home and abroad. The trouble is that he often makes off-the-cuff remarks that lately have been music to the ears of the powers-that-be in Tehran.

Though he’s said about Iran that “it’s never won a war, but never lost a negotiation,” Trump has been behaving as if the joint American-Israeli military victories against the now-fractured regime were simply a precursor to engaging in dialogue with it.

On one hand, he seems to be aware that the ayatollahs and their henchmen have spent nearly half a century perfecting the art of exploiting Western assumptions about war and peace. On the other, he continues to view talks with regime representatives—mediated by Pakistan, no less—through the transactional lens of a real-estate developer.

The Islamic Republic, in contrast, sees everything through a revolutionary religious prism. The result is a clash of perceptions that’s not beneficial to the United States.

Take Trump’s explanation for Iran’s latest violations of the so-called “ceasefire,” for example. Asked by a reporter about Tehran’s attacks in the Gulf, the president replied, “Some people would say they were slightly provoked,” since the United States had struck first, and hard, the previous night.

This wasn’t merely a false depiction of what’s been going on; it was rightly interpreted by Tehran to provide an explanation, if not an excuse, to Iranian belligerence. You don’t have to be a Mideast expert to figure that out.

Nor do you require a degree in international relations to grasp that when Washington rationalizes Iranian aggression, rather than treating it as an immediate casus belli—in this case, the imperative to resume the unfinished war—Tehran concludes that its actions are paying off.

Ditto in relation to Trump’s saying, “I hear the negotiation itself is going very well, actually. Very well.”

The Last Superpower Test By Abe Greenwald

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If the U.S. wins, we will live in a safer world. Bad actors will be made to understand that American power remains the ultimate block on their ambitions. If the U.S. loses, extremist and predatory regimes will be free to do as they please. They all know that America is the only guarantor of sovereignty for the countries of the free world. No other power can underwrite the stability of the global order.

At this moment, that stability hangs in the balance. If the U.S. reaches a deal with Iran’s leaders that leaves the regime intact and fundamentally unchanged, it will be rightly regarded as an American instrument of surrender. The U.S. will have bombarded the regime from the skies, killed multiple tiers of leadership, destroyed its nuclear program, and degraded its missile stocks only to accept defeat. World leaders will understand this as America’s last, failed attempt to project military power on a large scale. For decades, Donald Trump has insisted that Iran must be stopped. If he decides that the job is too big to finish, no future president will try again.

My hope is that Trump’s seeming eagerness for a deal isn’t the spectacle of desperation that it appears to be. This isn’t unfounded. Although the president has been lured into negotiating with Iran again and again, he has never failed to reject the regime’s dangerous demands. He even did so this morning. It could be that Trump simply hasn’t yet grasped that this regime is incapable of making peace on terms that are acceptable to the U.S. Perhaps this is becoming clearer to him with every scrapped diplomatic “framework.” And maybe he will come to understand that there’s only one path to American victory—and it’s not negotiation.

This war will decide more than the future of Iran or the Middle East. It will define America’s ongoing role in the world that it shaped, and it will either set free or rein in those who wish to tear that world down.

The ups and downs that really matter: Why Israel, the US are not fighting the same war

This striking, grimly satirical political cartoon expresses what is being said in diplomatic circles this week, capturing the strategic vertigo gripping both Jerusalem and Washington. It depicts an elevator labeled “Lobby of Hell.”

The newest Iranian cleric and his partner, the Hezbollah operative, stand hand-in-hand, staring out as an elevator car descends into an abyss watched over by a welcoming devil. On either side of the shaft stand US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, their fingers pressed firmly on the elevator call buttons.

Above Trump, floating in an idealized cloud, is Uncle Sam; above Netanyahu floats Theodor Herzl. Both leaders look grimly determined, convinced their fingers are guided from above by foundational visions of American greatness and a safe, iron-clad Jewish state. Netanyahu, wanting to guarantee the future of the Jewish state, and Trump, who is out of options looking for an agreement and a way out of the quagmire, keep pushing the hold call button.

But look closer at the cartoon, and the unsettling truth reveals itself: we are all staring intently at the elevator buttons, but we have completely lost track of the shaft itself. We are trapped in a dangerous collective delusion, focusing on political theater while completely missing the structural architecture of the war we are supposedly fighting.

The shaft symbolizes that the Iranians are happy to pull us all down to hell with them in a jihad-like suicidal moment. Worse still, it is no longer clear whether Uncle Sam or Theodor Herzl possess the same binding relevance or moral authority in modern America or contemporary Israel that they once did.

We are executing policies based on outdated paradigms, and in doing so, we run the risk of fulfilling the grim punchline of the old medical joke: the operation was a spectacular success, but the patient died on the table.

Uncle Sam was created for the American public and reinforced by political cartoonists who wanted a symbol that represented the strength, authority, and government of the nation itself, rather than just its abstract ideals. The lack of American support for the war with Iran is evident in that the American people are not looking at Uncle Sam in the same way as they did before.

A Vermont newspaper, the National Standard, published this on June 13, 1826 — two hundred years ago this month:

A late London paper says: The society for the conversion of the Jews annually spend about $14,000. Many knowing Israelites, however, contrive to turn the pious zeal of the society to good account, by obtaining sums of money for their expenses whilst under a course of conversion, which having gained they relapse into their former heresies.

The Jews—The conversion of a Jew costs the society in London an average sum of about one thousand pounds; and about one half of the converted return to the "error of their ways" as soon as converting-money is no longer to be had. The makeing of a half Christian out of a full Jew would render twenty poor and honest Christian families comfortable for a whole year. How is it that persons can thus abuse the charities of society by so wasting money which the merciful contribute?

The two figures contradict each other — $14,000 a year in one item, a thousand pounds per convert in the next — because these were polemical numbers passed from paper to paper rather than anything audited. The arithmetic behind the mockery, however, was sound, as the society's own published reports would confirm over the following decades.

Throughout the 19th century there was a concerted effort by many Christians to "save" the Jews. The most famous example was the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews, founded in 1809 with backing from evangelical luminaries including William Wilberforce. Its driving force was Joseph Frey, a Jewish convert from Germany who tirelessly tried to find other Jews to join him.

The Jewish community fought against these efforts fiercely and ostracized any converts, which meant that conversion carried enormous real costs — expulsion from family, community and livelihood. The London Society's answer was financial: it offered converts stipends, housing and training to overcome community pressure. The predictable result was a class of professional converts, who pretended to convert for the money, left when the money ran dry, and in some cases traveled to other cities in Europe to repeat the process with the next missionary society. The society was paying Jews to become Christians, and some Jews concluded that Christian charity of that sort was a business opportunity. By 1826 the relapse rate was a standing joke in the London press, and the joke crossed the Atlantic through the exchange papers into venues as remote as Middlebury, Vermont.

Frey crossed the Atlantic too. He arrived in New York in 1816, after a scandal pushed him out of London, and set about building an American version of the enterprise. The result was the American Society for Meliorating the Condition of the Jews, chartered in 1820 — the founders wanted to call it a society for evangelizing the Jews, but the New York legislature balked at incorporating an openly proselytizing body, so the name was softened to "meliorating." Its first president was Elias Boudinot, the former president of the Continental Congress, and its donor rolls drew on the Protestant establishment of the entire eastern seaboard. Frey must have been very charismatic to raise such large sums of money both sides of the ocean but that charisma never translated to his intended Jewish audience.

The American incentive structure was different from London's: instead of stipends, they tried land. The ASMCJ bought a large tract in Westchester County, New York, to serve as a farm colony for converted European Jews who had been expelled from their communities. The farm was a spectacular failure — it consumed enormous sums while attracting almost nobody, and the few converted Jews placed on it refused to follow the society's regulations and soon abandoned it. And it was reported in the media in the same month of June 1826, in the same newspaper.

On June 6, 1826, the National Standard reprinted a New York account of the ASMCJ's fourth anniversary meeting, and the report reads like a corporate collapse in miniature. The society had spent "seven or eight thousand dollars" in a single year on what its own annual report called a "Utopian scheme of colonization"; the few Jews placed on the farm "refused to conform to the regulations, and soon abandoned it." A member rose to declare the annual report "a spurious document." A faction had exploited a constitutional loophole — pay five dollars, become a voting director — to pack the meeting, and after hours of parliamentary warfare the society rejected its own annual report and elected a board "decidedly hostile to the colonizing project." The suspicion in the room was that money was being misused, and this time the suspects were members of the society rather than the Jews.

So within a single week in June 1826, American newspaper readers learned that the cash-incentive model in London produced mercenaries and that the land-incentive model in New York produced an empty farm and an internal revolt. Both versions of the scheme, built by the same man, were public jokes simultaneously — which might lead a reasonable observer to expect the donors to stop donating.

They did the opposite. The London Society remained lavishly funded for the rest of the century; newspaper accounts of its meetings, anniversaries and appeals appear continuously through the 1800s. By 1900 its annual income was £46,338 — roughly thirty times the budget the 1826 satirists found scandalous — supporting 199 workers at 52 mission stations around the world, including clergy, physicians, teachers and apothecaries. Against that century of expenditure, the society's own cumulative count stood at about 5,000 baptisms, about 50 a year, of whom an unknown number were Jews taking advantage of the system. The donors had read the same mockery we see in the Vermont newspaper, kept giving for another seventy-five years, and the conversion arithmetic never improved.

It never stopped, either. The London Society survives today as the Church's Ministry Among Jewish People (CMJ), one of the Church of England's official mission agencies, with branches in England, the United States and Israel — where it owns Christ Church inside Jerusalem's Old City and runs a school in its former mission hospital. The organization's entry in the UK Charity Commission register, number 1153457, still lists "The London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews" as its previous name, and still records its charitable object in language Frey would recognize: "the advancement of Christianity amongst Jewish people."

The "knowing Israelites" of 1826 took the blame for gaming an incentive they had no part in designing, and the societies that designed it took two more centuries of donations. The merciful, as the National Standard termed them, are still contributing to the goal of converting Jews.

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)

06/11 Links Pt2: The Paris Conference, the peace industry, and the illusion of representation; Alan Baker: The OSLO ACCORDS Were NEVER About a Two-State Solution!?; When America First Meets Iran

From Ian:

David Collier: Baghdad to London: An Antisemitic Conspiracy Theory Implodes

Terrorist stabbings, firebombings, threats against synagogues, guards at school gates, and conversations in Jewish homes about whether it is still wise to wear visible Jewish symbols in public.

British Jews are living under growing pressure in an increasingly hostile environment.

And yet there is no stampede at Heathrow.

Communities rarely uproot themselves quickly. People adapt. History shows Jewish communities often fail to recognise the precise moment danger becomes irreversible.

And that matters, because what is unfolding in Britain today offers a living example of how Jewish communities historically responded to mounting hostility – and helps expose the conspiracy theory surrounding the exodus of Jews from Arab lands.

A Million Refugees
During the 20th century, around a million Jews were expelled or driven out of more than a dozen Muslim-majority countries. Communities that had existed for thousands of years were uprooted within a single generation.

Antisemitic violence – often rooted in historical systems of Islamic supremacy and discrimination – spread throughout the region. It was fuelled by the rise of Arab nationalism, and when the dust settled, almost every ancient Jewish community across the Arab world had been destroyed or emptied.

Nearly a million Jews became refugees, most of whom found refuge in the newly established Jewish state.

The Anti-Zionist Narrative Problem
The destruction of Jewish communities across the Arab world created a major problem for anti-Zionist narratives. Europe’s antisemitism was undeniable after the Holocaust, so a counter-story emerged: while Christian Europe persecuted Jews, the Muslim world supposedly sheltered them in tolerance and coexistence.

But there was an obvious problem. The Jewish communities of the Arab world had collapsed.

Explaining away that disappearance became essential.

What followed was large-scale historical revisionism.

Centuries of discrimination, periodic massacres, forced conversions, expulsions, and legal systems that relegated Jews to subordinate status were softened, minimised, or erased altogether. The dhimmi system was recast as benign protection rather than institutional inequality. Violence against Jews was blamed not on Islamic supremacy, but on Zionism, or the creation of Israel itself:

Why hasn’t the New York Times corrected its ‘dog rape’ lie?

‘Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.’

This saying, popularised by American astronomer Carl Sagan, was clearly unknown to the New York Times and journalist Nicholas Kristof when they recently accused Israel of a systemic policy of sexual violence against Palestinian prisoners. In a 3,750-word piece, published last month, Kristof alleges that a ‘Gaza journalist’ was raped by a dog that had been ‘coached’ for that purpose. He writes that a dog was summoned and, with encouragement from a handler, ‘mounted’ a prisoner. The prisoner ‘tried to dislodge the dog… but it penetrated him, while guards laughed and took photographs’.

This is the journalistic equivalent of a five-alarm fire – and all the alarm bells should have sounded for the New York Times’ editors. This is where extraordinary evidence is required – yet not a shred was provided.

For a claim to merit publication, extraordinary evidence has to meet two thresholds. First, is the claim plausible? Second, is the claim provable? If the claim is not plausible, it is not automatically untrue, but it should only be published if accompanied by absolute proof. No one would believe the moon is made of green cheese, and that should end the question – unless someone brings back an indisputable sample of green cheese from the moon’s surface. That’s proof of the implausible. But the case of the ‘rape dogs’ goes beyond even the ‘green cheese’ standard.

There is no evidence that dogs can be trained to rape men and no credible, documentable accounts exist of dogs being trained this way. Alan Howe of the Australian asked a dog expert of 34 years, who explained that it failed the plausibility test. ‘Canine erection is a reflexive neuroendocrine response to female reproductive pheromones – it is not a voluntary behaviour and cannot be trained or reliably triggered on command’, the expert said. ‘The specific act alleged is not biologically plausible.’

Did no one at the New York Times wonder about this? This should be the first question any editor would ask – and who knows how many editors Kristof’s column passed through. We do know that, in a separate statement, the editors, still offering no evidence, doubled down on their support for the column – essentially stating that including the alleged rape dogs in the piece was neither an oversight nor a mistake on their part. Was this incurious behaviour deliberate? We have to ask, because for now neither Kristof nor his editors have tried to establish that dogs can be taught this unnatural behaviour.

After flunking the plausibility test, the opinion piece failed the probability test as well. Badly, in fact: no names, dates, locations, photographs or any tangible evidence that dog-rape ever happened. The only accounts are hearsay from anonymous prisoners – who have an obvious agenda – and no response from Israeli prison authorities, former guards or others who might offer conflicting views. Kristof’s only independent corroboration was a nebulous quote from former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, who said pointedly after publication, ‘I did not validate these claims’. There are also subtle errors, including a claim that after the abuse, Israel Defence Forces (IDF) guards took cigarette breaks – even though smoking is strictly forbidden in these compounds.

Slovenia lifts ban on arms trade with Israel; Sa’ar lauds ‘just decision’ by new PM

Slovenia’s new conservative-led government on Thursday lifted an arms embargo on Israel and entry bans on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and two of his ministers.

Last year, Slovenia, then under liberal prime minister Robert Golob, imposed a series of measures against Israel over the war with Hamas in Gaza.

Several other EU members have done the same.

But the government of Prime Minister Janez Jansa, which took office last week, overturned the bans against Netanyahu and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

“This will restore the conditions for a normal political dialogue with Israel,” it said in a statement, adding the move would help “strengthen the role of the Republic of Slovenia in the efforts to achieve a lasting peace in the Middle East.”

The country is also letting the arms embargo expire, considering the decree “unnecessary” given existing national defense laws and EU arms export criteria, it said.

The government of Jansa — an admirer of US President Donald Trump — also lifted a ban on imports from Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar welcomed Jansa’s “swift and just decision to lift the distorted anti-Israeli measures taken by Slovenia’s previous government,” calling him a “bold leader and a true friend of Israel.”

Last week, Israel announced it would open an embassy in Slovenia, marking what it hopes will be a new chapter in relations with the European country. The country’s embassy in the Austrian capital Vienna has previously covered Israeli diplomatic interests in neighboring Slovenia. Screen capture from video of the Palestinian flag flying over the Slovenian Presidential Palace, June 5, 2026. (Nataša Pirc Musar/X)

Since taking office, Jansa’s government has also removed a Palestinian flag symbolically displayed on the government building since Slovenia recognized Palestinian statehood in 2024.

06/11 Links Pt1: Trump says agreement with Iran approved by all parties; What Does America Get for $3.8 Billion in Israel? And the Way Ahead; 300 Nova festival massacre survivors remain in a ‘very bad condition’

From Ian:

John Spencer: What Does America Get for $3.8 Billion in Israel? And the Way Ahead

The value of the relationship becomes even clearer when compared with other recipients of American military assistance. Egypt contributes to regional stability and maintains peace with Israel. Jordan remains an important security partner and counterterrorism ally. Both relationships advance legitimate American interests. Neither generates the same intelligence cooperation, defense technology innovation, industrial integration, or battlefield lessons that flow from the U.S.-Israel partnership. The United States does not gain access to hundreds of defense technology startups through Egypt. It does not field combat-proven active protection systems developed through Jordan. It does not receive the same volume of battlefield lessons on missile defense, drones, tunnels, artificial intelligence, and urban warfare from either country. Israel's value derives not only from its location but from the capabilities it continually produces.

There is also a political dimension to the alliance. The United States and Israel are democracies. Neither is perfect. Both experience fierce political disagreements, contentious elections, and intense public debate. Both operate under the rule of law and maintain independent institutions. Shared values alone do not determine foreign policy, but alliances tend to endure when interests and political traditions reinforce one another. That reality has helped sustain the relationship across administrations of both parties.

Reasonable people can debate aid levels. They can debate specific policies pursued by either government. They can argue about how the relationship should evolve over time. Those are legitimate discussions. What is far more difficult to sustain is the argument that America receives little in return. The United States gains access to intelligence that helps prevent attacks against Americans and American interests. It gains military technologies refined through combat experience. It gains battlefield lessons that would otherwise cost billions to acquire independently. It gains access to one of the most dynamic defense innovation ecosystems on the planet. It gains a capable ally operating in a strategically important region against many of the same adversaries confronting the United States.

The future of the relationship may itself demonstrate the success of the investment. In recent interviews, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has suggested that Israel should gradually reduce its reliance on American military financing as its economy and defense industry continue to expand. He has spoken about eventually transitioning from traditional assistance toward deeper cooperation in areas such as cyber capabilities, artificial intelligence, missile defense, directed energy, and other emerging technologies.

Whether that transition occurs in the next Memorandum of Understanding or further in the future remains uncertain. Israel continues to face significant security threats and remains engaged in multiple conflicts. The broader point is that the relationship has evolved. American assistance helped support Israel during periods when its economy was smaller, its defense industry less developed, and its security challenges no less severe. Today Israel possesses one of the world's most advanced defense sectors, a thriving technology economy, and military capabilities that generate value not only for its own security but for the United States as well.

If future agreements place less emphasis on direct financing and greater emphasis on joint research, co-development, and technological collaboration, that would not signal a weakening partnership. It would reflect a mature partnership built on decades of successful investment. American assistance helped Israel build capabilities that now generate value for both countries. If Israel eventually requires less direct assistance while contributing more technology, innovation, intelligence, and operational expertise, that would not represent the failure of the partnership. It would represent one measure of its success.

So the next time someone asks what the United States gets for $3.8 billion in Israel, the answer is straightforward:
Jobs: American jobs and manufacturing supported through purchases of U.S.-made military equipment.
Industry: A stronger U.S. defense industrial base through joint production, co-development, and missile defense cooperation.
Intelligence: Intelligence that helps prevent attacks against Americans, American forces, and American interests.
Technology: Military technologies refined in combat, from active protection systems and missile defense to counter-drone capabilities and artificial intelligence.
Laboratory: Access to one of the world's most active laboratories for modern warfare, generating operational data, experimentation, innovation, and combat experience that would be difficult, expensive, and in some cases impossible to reproduce independently.
Lessons: Battlefield lessons in urban warfare, tunnel warfare, missile defense, drones, and modern combat without having to learn them first through American casualties, American mistakes, or American wars.
Innovation: A defense innovation ecosystem producing technologies and ideas that benefit both countries.
Ally: A capable ally helping deter common adversaries and maintain stability in one of the world's most strategically important regions and, if necessary, willing and able to fight alongside the United States.
Strategy: Greater freedom for the United States to focus military and economic resources on long-term competition with China in the Indo-Pacific while helping preserve a favorable balance of power in the Middle East.

That is what America gets in return.

Iran’s fanatical regime would rather embrace death than peace

Trump’s belief that he could pull off a ground-breaking agreement, one that guarantees freedom of passage through the Strait of Hormuz and neutralises Iran’s nuclear programme, led in recent weeks to tensions with Israel, with the American president highly critical of Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu and his military strikes against Iran and Hezbollah terrorists in southern Lebanon.

The real threat, though, to Trump’s hopes of achieving a breakthrough never came from Israeli aggression, or the maintenance of Washington’s naval blockade in the Gulf. It has come from the hardline clique that controls Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), an organisation whose sole raison d’être is to defend and propagate the uncompromising ideology that underpins the pillars of Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution.

While Washington may feel comfortable engaging with the smooth-talking sophisticates of Iran’s foreign policy establishment, the real challenge is to engage directly with the hard men of the IRGC, whose authority derives directly from the country’s divinely appointed Supreme Leader.

The IRGC – which the Starmer Government still has not proscribed as a terrorist entity – is the Islamic Republic’s Praetorian Guard, and is meant to take orders directly from the Supreme Leader.

Apart from his divinely appointed status, the Supreme Leader’s authority over all the instruments of the Iranian state originates from an obscure Islamic concept, the velayat-e faqih (roughly translated as the Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist), which gives the ruling Shia clergy absolute control over the Iranian people and their destiny.

Losing Hizbullah Is a Major Source of Stress for Iran

Dr. Menahem Merhavy, an expert on Iran at the Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said the latest Iranian missile attack on Israel "appears to be an attempt to save face....Iran has been unsuccessful in leveraging what it believes was victory over the U.S. and Israel."

"Iran is on the verge of catastrophe, and losing Hizbullah is a major source of stress for it. The 'ring of fire' [surrounding Israel] is currently stuttering, but Iran won't give up the idea and will not abandon Hizbullah." Yet, "Iran's latest attack, and its quick signal that it finished retaliating, signals its unwillingness to enter another prolonged conflict because they cannot afford it."

"Hizbullah can be pounded all over Lebanon, but Beirut and Iran can do absolutely nothing about it. Israel has been able to act freely in Lebanon for months....There is a lot of frustration with both Hizbullah and Iran among the Shiite community in Lebanon. Iran has yet to provide funds to rebuild homes that were destroyed by the Israeli military in the past two years. Hizbullah terrorists are also unable to move freely in Lebanon for constant fear of being targeted by Israel."

Amatzia Baram, professor emeritus at the University of Haifa and an expert in Middle Eastern politics, said, "Hizbullah has been weakened to about half of its previous abilities, but still, they have significant ability to fight. Hizbullah is busy rebuilding itself," and Iran "is still helping Hizbullah - financially, militarily, and strategically - by positioning itself as its defender and savior."

"Israel didn't attack Hizbullah between 2006 to 2023 for one reason - it was afraid that the massive missile and rocket arsenal would cause major damage to Israel. Now, Israel isn't afraid of attacking Hizbullah because of its potential to cause damage, but rather Israel is concerned that Iran will get involved and the U.S. will not support Israel if it chooses to respond."

"Attacks against Hizbullah targets in southern Lebanon are small, tactical, and have little significance to Hizbullah's standing in Lebanon. Attacks against command headquarters, weapons depots, and assembly factories in Beirut and north of Beirut are at an almost strategic level that can weaken Hizbullah, and that needs to be Israel's target for the future." Hizbullah, once the centerpiece of Tehran's regional deterrence strategy, is increasingly busy preserving its own survival.

Is Shi'ite Support for Hizbullah Weakening?

On May 31, a Hizbullah-affiliated group called on supporters to gather in downtown Beirut to protest the Lebanese government's support for diplomacy with Israel. Only a few dozen people showed up, a striking contrast to past years when Hizbullah could mobilize tens of thousands with ease. Days later, residents of Bayssarieh clashed with Hizbullah members who were reportedly moving military equipment into the southern Lebanese town. Meanwhile, activists in Nabatieh and Tyre are increasingly voicing demands for stronger state authority in the southern towns, long dominated by Hizbullah, reflecting growing unease among the Shia over conditions in southern Lebanon. However, any effort to loosen Hizbullah's grip on the Shia community will depend on a broader realization among its constituents that supporting Hizbullah is a losing strategy.

Lebanese political writer Mona Fayad said that while more Shia appear willing to criticize Hizbullah, this should not be mistaken for a structured opposition capable of competing for power, which would need to overcome the social and psychological legacy of Hizbullah's decades-long dominance. "We are talking about forty years of conditioning and entrenchment," she said.

"The biggest indicator that Hizbullah lost the narrative of resistance is the military defeat happening in the south," Fayad said. "Hizbullah's supporters are today displaced, and many of them are living in the streets because of Hizbullah. Today, many are in shock or denial."

Man Replaces Trash Bag In Support Of Global Zionist Agenda (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Ashdod, June 11 - A resident of this coastal city put a new liner in his kitchen garbage can this morning, witnesses report, thus furthering the interests of the international Jewish cabal that seeks to control the world.

Avi Shmuelov, 44, removed a full trash bag from the receptable under the sink and placed it by the door for later transfer to the dumpster in front of his family's apartment, according to observers, and then took out a new bag from the same cabinet to replace the previous one - in the process effecting the incremental progress of Jewish supremacy over billions of innocents.

Experts noted that the removal of the previous, full bag as well, contributed to the advancement of the Zionist global agenda, in more subtle fashion.

"It looks harmless enough," warned Zionist-watcher Taqauta Mayanus. "But it's supposed to look harmless. That's how they get you. You won't see how sinister it is until it's too late and you're enslaved to the Jews. Every properly lined garbage can is one less obstacle in their path to total domination."

Mayanus declined to elaborate on the mechanism by which replacing the trash bag, Mr. Shmuelov - a father of 5 who works in human resource management for an import-export company - brought Zionist control of the world closer to fruition. "You're stupid if you don't understand - it's obvious to anyone with a brain," he insisted. "More likely, you're pretending not to understand because you're being paid. Or blackmailed. The Jews have dirt on you, I'd bet."

Neighbors confirmed that Shmuelov performed the task while humming an Israeli pop tune, pausing only to scold one of his children for leaving crumbs on the counter. "He even wiped the inside of the bin with a paper towel before inserting the new liner," said activist Nurit al-Khalidi, based on human rights NGO reports. "That's not normal household maintenance. That's preparation — for the smooth, frictionless control they plan to exert over global resources, economies, and media institutions."

According to Mayanus, the new bag's crisp blue color and reinforced seams represent yet another layer in the conspiracy. "Plastic waste management is Zionist-coded," he explained. "True solidarity with Palestinians means living in squalor and neglecting basic hygiene. Certainly the university campus activists in the west have grasped that."

Shmuelov himself appeared unaware of the geopolitical weight of his actions. After depositing the full bag in the building's dumpster, he returned upstairs, washed his hands for exactly twenty seconds, and resumed preparing tomorrow's school lunches for his family. Sources close to the household say he later complained only about the price of trash bags at the local supermarket, calling it "another week of inflation." Analysts predict Shmuelov will repeat the ritual in three to four days, further tightening the Zionist grip unless concerned citizens intervene through boycotts of anything that seems Israeli.

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)