Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, December 30, 2025

12/30 Links Pt2: Romi Gonen: Hour-long special; Spielberg Uses Schindler’s List Money to Fund Anti-Israel Protests; Dishonest Reporter of the Year Awards 2025

From Ian:

Stephen Pollard: This was the toughest year in living memory for UK Jews … and there is no sign of things improving in 2026

The deaths of Melvin Cravitz and Adrian Daulby on Yom Kippur, the former killed by Islamist terrorist Jihad Al-Shamie and the latter by a police bullet as they sought to protect congregants at Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester, define not just the year 2025 but the whole period in Anglo-Jewish history since the Hamas massacre of October 7 2023. There is a clear sense in which the atmosphere of open Jew hate since then has been leading us here – and, worryingly, that what we witnessed on Yom Kippur is not its climax but rather the start of new and dangerous era for our community – a sense that has obviously deepened since the murders in Bondi.

Britain has felt different for Jews in the years since Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour Party in 2015. Corbyn’s ascendancy unleashed a torrent of antisemitism both online and in the real world, an onslaught which felt both shocking and unprecedented at the time. But while his defeat in 2019 seemed then to mark some sort of closing of the door, hindsight has shown how misguided that idea was. Far from having reached a nadir in the Corbyn years, the massacre of 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023 led to a surge in Jew-hate the like of which has not been seen since the Shoah.

In the just over two years since, we have had to grow used to the streets of London and other cities being taken over by hate marches, while the police have mainly stood and watched. Across the country, Jew haters have gathered under the guise of protesting against the Gaza war and the authorities have said and done virtually nothing. On one march, in Tower Hamlets in October, participants wore black clothes and facemasks in a seemingly deliberate echo of the Battle of Cable Steet against Mosley’s Blackshirts – only this time the fascists were the Islamist marchers. And the authorities stood and watched.

As the number of demonstrations intensified this year, we repeatedly told the authorities that their refusal to act against these open and proud displays of Jew hate was sending a clear message. Not only was that message emboldening the haters on the streets, on campus and online, we warned that it would at some point lead to violence – and tragedy. The veracity of that prediction – less a prediction than a statement of the obvious – was seen on Yom Kippur at Heaton Park synagogue. There was a similar refusal in Australia, with even more appalling consequences. And the week after 15 people were murdered at a Chanukah celebration by jihadists driven by the same extremist Jew hate that inspired the Manchester atrocity, two men in Preston were convicted of plotting to kill hundreds of Jews in what would have been the bloodiest terrorist slaughter in British history. The pace of events insistently suggests that across the world, the ancient evil of violent, insatiable antisemitism has once more been let loose.

For British Jews, 2025 has been the worst year in living memory. France and the US have endured deadly attacks in recent years. We have not. But that changed on Yom Kippur, and perhaps the worst of it is that no one seriously thinks that it will be a one-off. The issue is not whether there will be more attacks on Jews but how, when and where.

One response to Heaton Park was the regurgitation of the platitude that follows every antisemitic incident – that there is no place for antisemitism on the streets of Britain. It is not so much a platitude as a lie, because there are plainly many places for antisemitism on the streets of Britain, as we saw in Manchester and as is seen every time there is a so-called Free Palestine demonstration, with their cries for the murder of Jews in the guise of “globalise the intifada” and with the police standing by. Now, in the wake of Sydney, the Met and Greater Manchester Police have pledged to clamp down on that particular chant. The marchers are wasting no time in finding other words to express their wish for Jews to die.

But when it comes to the police, the events surrounding the West Midland force’s decision to make the area around Villa Park Judenfrei for the Maccabi Tel Aviv match against Aston Villa in November are something altogether new – and darker. At the very least, it seems clear that the police decided to acquiesce in the idea pushed by “community leaders” that a Jewish or Israeli presence would be inherently provocative. To that end, they pushed a fictitious account of Maccabi fans’ behaviour in Amsterdam to justify a ban on their presence at Villa Park. But this was never about a football match. As Mark Gardner, CEO of the Community Security Trust, put it at the time: “[The] Aston Villa match is about who controls the streets of UK’s second largest city. The football is a very red herring.”

This was a key moment not just in British policing but in the story of Anglo-Jewry’s place in this country, because it marked a move away from the police merely acquiescing in Jew hate on the streets to them doing the bidding of Islamists. The implications are chilling.

Spielberg Uses Schindler’s List Money to Fund Anti-Israel Protests

“Let Gaza live,” a mob of anti-Israel protesters screamed, brandishing signs falsely accusing the Jewish State of “ethnic cleansing”, “starving Gaza” and genocide while illegally blocking traffic outside the Israeli consulate in Midtown Manhattan.

The only thing more disgusting than the ugly spectacle, which had been timed around a Hamas famine propaganda campaign over the summer, was that one of the hate groups behind the anti-Israel protest, which ended in arrests, was funded by proceeds from Schindler’s List.

When Steven Spielberg created the Righteous Persons Foundation with some of the profits from Schindler’s List, he wanted to educate people about the Holocaust and build up Jewish life in America. “I could not accept any money from ‘Schindler’s List’ — if it even made any money. It was blood money, and needed to be put back into the Jewish community.”

“My parents didn’t keep kosher and we mainly observed all the holidays when my grandparents stayed with us,” the filmmaker said at the time. “I knew I was missing a great deal of my natural heritage, and as I became conscious of it, I began racing to catch up.”

The race has long since gone the other way.

The last time the Righteous Persons Foundation, named after the rescuers of Holocaust survivors, funded Holocaust programs was in 2021. Most of its funding now goes to radical social justice groups including anti-Israel organizations like those protesting Israel.

Since 2021, Spielberg’s foundation has provided $650,000 to T’ruah, an anti-Israel hate group which took part in the Manhattan street blocking and whose CEO celebrated the move and gleefully posted photos of attendees falsely accusing Israel of “ethnic cleansing”.

“We have to keep up the pressure,” urged T’ruah CEO Jill Jacobs, who had accused Israeli officials of “incitement to genocide”, and demanded an end to further Israeli attacks on Hamas. Jacobs had blasted American Jews for speaking about “Oct. 7 and the plight of the hostages without once mentioning the unbearable death toll among Palestinians” because of what she claimed was their fear of wealthy Jewish donors.

Jacobs and T’ruah had even falsely accused Israel of “war crimes” by assassinating Hezbollah leaders. “Israel, too, has already committed war crimes in Lebanon, including by exploding the beepers and walkie talkies of hundreds of Hezbollah members,” Jacobs argued.

Within a year, Spielberg had gone from funding Holocaust survivors to funding those accusing Israel of a new Holocaust while enabling Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran to perpetrate a new one.

Leading philanthropist reveals she has withdrawn funding from human rights groups over antisemitic rhetoric

One of the country’s biggest philanthropists has revealed she withdrew funding from organisations that appeared to justify the October 7 Hamas attacks in Israel.

The Sigrid Rausing Trust, led by philanthropist Sigrid Rausing, announced that it has cut grants to several human rights groups after reviewing public statements made in the aftermath of the attacks.

“We have strong clauses in our grant contract requiring grantees to abstain from incendiary language that may promote violence,” Rausing said, referencing Charity Commission guidance in an article published by The Times.

According to the Trust, five out of approximately 400 grantee organisations posted what it described as “disturbing material.”

One group in Tunisia expressed “pride” in the Hamas action.

Another called for “support for the guerrilla Palestinian people in their war against the Zionist entity,” stating that Israel “was shaken due to the action of the Palestinian resistance…invading the occupied lands and Zionist settlements.”

A Lebanese media group characterised the Hamas attacks as “resistance” to “colonisation,” referred to murdered civilians as “settlers,” and dismissed Israeli reports of atrocities as “lies.”

A Canadian group, also funded by the Trust, labeled Israel’s actions “genocidal” and described the country as a “settler colonialist white-supremacist state.”

The Trust said that, in context, this language appeared to condone the attacks.

Rausing commented, “Atrocities against civilians are obviously contrary to human rights and international humanitarian law, and we cancelled our contracts with the groups in question.

12/30 Links Pt1: Somaliland: The mouse is really roaring; Journalists or Terrorists?; IDF reveals 151 soldiers lost their lives in 2025; Israeli MKs pass law to cut UNRWA utilities

From Ian:

The mouse is really roaring

These activities all attest to the strategic centrality that Somaliland enjoys. Somaliland is sitting in the eye of the shipping hurricane that is merely 300 kilometers from Yemen.

But this centrality did not exorcise the world before Israel chose to recognize the republic. So clearly, the hot button is the connection between the two and what it might portend.

And here is where the second significant aspect of the new relationship comes into play: What benefit did Israel see coming from the recognition?

I would suggest that there is diplomatic, as well as military significance, that Israel envisions coming from an enhanced relationship with Somaliland. Israel can be proud to be bestowing recognition on a democracy, one that has spurned an Islamist agenda. Somaliland could very well join the Abraham Accords, especially because it also enjoys a good relationship with the UAE, an Abraham Accords member.

Most likely, it is the military significance that has stirred the fear and loathing of so many countries. The most obvious potential implication is for the ongoing Israeli effort to contain and to defang the Houthis. Israeli planes have had to make 2,000-kilometer flights to engage Houthi targets.

Utilizing Somaliland facilities could be a game-changer. Even the possibility of their availability could have an impact.

Much of the reaction of hostile countries must be seen as an exercise in projection. They are condemning the idea that Israel could have reach and influence, something that China, Russia, Iran and Turkey all live for.

To see little Israel extend its net in this way is galling. It is also proof positive of Israel’s standing as a strong horse—perhaps the strong horse in the region. Israel acted purely on its own, without American approval or cooperation. That, too, is impressive and of concern to those condemning the recognition.

Israel stands guilty, in the eyes of its enemies, of turning Somaliland into a passive proxy. That, of course, is ridiculous, though maybe an ally indeed.

Another possible wrinkle to the new relationship—one of particular interest to the United States—is whether Somaliland might be induced to accept Gazans seeking refuge.

Whatever the actual implications of the new relationship, it shows great promise for both countries. Israel has deftly displayed generosity, high-minded concern for a fellow democracy and a shrewd assessment of the realpolitik possibilities of the new relationship.

Those who reflexively demean the efforts of Israel to assert itself in the world must step back and see how beneficial this step is likely to be.

Journalists or Terrorists?

Allegations that Israel deliberately targets journalists in Gaza have persisted since the October 7 terror attacks in the Gaza envelope (Otef Aza) and the subsequent war against Hamas.

The Government Media Office in the Gaza Strip (المكتب الإعلامي الحكومي) and the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (نقابة الصحفيين الفلسطينيين‎) publish dynamic lists of individuals identified as “journalists” allegedly killed by Israel in Gaza. These names have been widely shared without scrutiny by organizations such as the International Federation of Journalists , the Committee to Protect Journalists, Al Jazeera, BBC Arabic, The Guardian, and even the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

These lists include over 250 names of “journalists and media workers” said to have been killed by Israel since October 7, 2023.

Upon examining the credentials of those listed, primarily using publicly available information from social media, we uncovered something shocking: a significant number of these “journalists” were actually active members of Hamas’s military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades (كتائب عز الدين القسام), as well as the military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the Al-Quds Brigades (سرايا القدس), and other Palestinian terrorist groups.

It’s important to note that terrorist organizations in Gaza run extensive media operations, primarily operated by Hamas and the PIJ, though smaller groups also have affiliated channels. Notable examples include Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV and Al-Aqsa Radio, as well as Paltoday, recognized as the official news outlet for the PIJ. Many individuals labeled as “journalists” or “media personnel” in Gaza also serve as members or operatives of these groups, often holding military roles. Research indicates that many journalists killed in the recent conflict were affiliated with Hamas or the PIJ. This investigation aims to identify those who serve dual roles as “journalists” and military operatives.

We have not yet reviewed all the names on the lists. Among the 80 individuals we examined, approximately 40% have been identified as having roles in armed branches of terrorist groups in Gaza. For those in our database, we have uncovered clear evidence of their involvement as operatives in these organizations’ armed wings. We suspect many more will be classified similarly once our review is complete or as additional information surfaces.

Additionally, we found that lists of “journalists” are inflated with names of individuals who are not actually journalists or media workers. Examples include:
Anas Ibrahim Hussein Abu Shamala (أنس إبراهيم حسين أبو شمالة): Allegedly a member of Hamas’s elite Nukhba unit, he was hailed posthumously as a “heroic martyr” and “lion among the elite Qassam Brigades.” In reality, Abu Shamala operated a currency exchange and money transfer business, yet he is recognized as a journalist by the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate and UNESCO.
Muhammad Fayez Abu Matar (محمد فايز ابو مطر): He reportedly died when a wall of his apartment collapsed after the bombing of the Abu Shamala house in the Yebna neighborhood of Rafah. He has been incorrectly identified as a journalist and photographer. UNESCO’s Director-General, Audrey Azoulay, condemned the killing of Abu Matar while he was allegedly covering the conflict.

It is deeply troubling that global media outlets like the BBC and The Guardian have promoted these claims without any apparent background checks. Even more concerning is that a United Nations agency, established to promote global peace and security, is endorsing individuals affiliated with terrorism as innocent journalists, effectively legitimizing these actions under the guise of defending press freedom.

‘Plainly inadequate’: Labor’s terror review under fire for failing to mention antisemitism

The review into the Bondi Beach terror attack set up by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been heavily criticised for failing to reference antisemitism.

The terms of reference for Mr Albanese’s review failed to specifically mention Jewish Australians, antisemitism, radicalisation or Islamic extremism.

The review, headed by former Defence Department secretary Dennis Richardson, appear only to investigate federal agencies, including ASIO and AFP.

Also, the Richardson Review does not mention the role of government ministers responsible for security or social cohesion.

The review appears to completely exclude the decisions of government related to antisemitism, social cohesion and national security.

It comes as Mr Albanese has flatly rejected calls for a federal Royal Commission into the worst terror attack in the country’s history, instead establishing the departmental review.

His excuses for doing so have included that a national inquiry would be too slow, that it would “re-platform” antisemitism and that “actual experts” advised him against it.

Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Peter Wertheim said the Richardson Review terms were “too narrowly focused on our intelligence and law enforcement agencies”.

“This omits the wider context in which those agencies operate,” Mr Wertheim told Sky News on Wednesday.

“To get to the heart of the matter there needs to be an honest examination of government policies and the conduct and policies of key institutions and figures in major sectors of our society.

“Their contribution to the unprecedented levels of antisemitism in this country over the last two years must be addressed.

“What might emerge could indeed be divisive and ugly but the divisiveness and ugliness is already there.

“Confronting these demons will be cathartic. It’s our only hope of establishing a new national consensus and setting clear standards.”

Australian Jewish Council CEO Robert Gregory also told Sky News that the Richardson Review terms were “plainly inadequate”.

“They make no reference to the Jewish community and exclude critical issues such as antisemitism and Islamic extremism,” he said.

“They also specifically rule out examining the actions and inactions of the Albanese government in the lead-up to the attack, something any serious review would be expected to do.

“The proposed review appears to be an attempt by the government to transfer responsibility for government failures on to Australia's intelligence agencies.”

A crazy Christian harasses some Muslims in Texas. CAIR blames the Jews.

CAIR posted this video of a Christian wearing a crusader costume harassing some Muslims eating in a park in Austin, TX.

CAIR wrote:

This hate is what Greg Abbott, Ken Paxton, John Cornyn and other Israel First politicians have unleashed on Texas to distract the American people and silence critics of Israel, especially American Muslims.

Israel was not mentioned in the video at all. No one said the Muslim group members were "critics of Israel" nor that the Crusader wannabe was a supporter of Israel. (The Crusaders didn't exactly like Jews who lived in the Holy Land.)

When CAIR sees a Christian harassing Muslims, the only way it can conceive of this is through Israel.

That is obsession. And, yes, when you interpret everything negative through the prism of the Jewish state, you are antisemitic.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The Temple Mount mikveh is a threat to the Palestinian narrative - so they MUST call it a lie

Lately I've been discussing the difference between two theories of truth - correspondence theory, which is based on empirical evidence, and coherence theory, which is based on whether facts fit previously held beliefs. I've shown that anti-Israel studies, and in fact most social sciences, adhere to coherence theory - meaning that they dismiss or twist any facts that contradict their theories, which are more akin to dogma than scientific proof.

When you accept that "Israel is evil" as the dominant narrative, there is no limit to what facts you will discard. Coherence theory is, at its basis, unfalsifiable, meaning that there is no evidence that would be accepted that would disprove it.

This means that the "Israel is evil" people are yoked to the most insane anti-Israel theories by Palestinians. This week we were provided with a great example.

This week the Israel Antiquities Authority revealed that they had discovered a Second Temple era mikveh (Jewish ritual bath) underneath the Temple Mount plaza:

A rock-hewn ritual bath from the late Second Temple period, containing ash traces that provide evidence of the Temple's destruction, was uncovered in recent days during excavations conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Western Wall Heritage Foundation beneath the Western Wall plaza.

The ritual bath is rectangular, measuring 3.05 meters (10 feet) in length, 1.35 meters (4.4 feet) in width, and 1.85 meters (6 feet) in height. It was carved into bedrock, and its walls are plastered. In its southern section, four hewn steps that led into it were exposed. The ancient installation was discovered sealed beneath the destruction layer from the Second Temple period, a layer dated to 70 CE. Within this layer, which contains burnt ash providing evidence of the destruction, numerous pottery vessels were found, along with stone vessels characteristic of the Jewish population that lived in the city on the eve of the destruction.

The photo clearly shows a mikveh. Cisterns wouldn't have stairs, Roman bathhouses wouldn't be so tiny, The accompanying archaeological evidence provides proof and dates it precisely.

So the Palestinians must deny it.

From Al Jazeera (Arabic):

The Palestinian Jerusalem Governorate said on Monday that the occupation’s claims about finding a holy basin dating back to Jewish residents in 70 AD are a falsification of archaeological findings and lack any scientific value, stressing that the discovered basins are water systems from the Umayyad era, and were part of the Umayyad palaces adjacent to the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

It explained that those basins and facilities "were part of the Umayyad palaces and service facilities associated with the Al-Aqsa Mosque, in addition to the water basins and water transport networks from Solomon's Pools in Bethlehem to the city of Jerusalem, without any reliable physical evidence or independent scientific documentation linking them to Talmudic rituals."

I've previously noted the irony that the only reason anyone knows about the Umayyad palaces in the vicinity is because Jewish archaeologists discovered them and Israel preserves them, today.

But the point today isn't the constant (and consistent) Palestinian denial of any archaeological evidence of Jewish presence in Jerusalem - something Arabs used to routinely admit. The point is that because the anti-Israel academics must accept their "Israel is evil" theories, they must deal with this sort of historic evidence without looking like idiots to their Western audiences - but, crucially, without alienating their Palestinian comrades who insist that there is no such history.

Usually they simply ignore it. They don't want to be canceled by their fellow activists but they don't want to look like they ignore overwhelming evidence - so easier to pretend the evidence doesn't exist.

One other method is to admit a very limited Jewish presence but downplay any significance. This is the Edward Said model: "for a short period before and shortly after the beginning of the Christian era, there was a Jewish kingdom with its capital in Jerusalem."

The other popular method for western academics is to admit some Jewish presence, but deny that today's Jews have anything to do with their ancestors, claiming they are all European converts. Because so many medieval Christians were clamoring to become Jews, I suppose. This is the Joseph Massad model.

Anti-Israel coherence theorists can always find a way to deny reality. And that is what they do - day in, day out. And they hope you never ask them point blank what they think about the Palestinians assertions that Jews have no history in Jerusalem.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Jewish Voice for Peace (and DSA) reach a new low - still denying October 7 rapes AFTER testimony from a victim

A few days ago, former hostage Romi Gonen went on Israeli TV and described how she was repeatedly raped in captivity by Hamas members.

The entire interview can be seen here.

Immediately afterwards, Jewish Voice for Peace called Romi, and all the others who testified to Hamas sexual violence, liars.

From an email JVP sent out:

For JVP, along with a host of other disgusting anti-Israel groups, anything that might make anyone slightly sympathetic to Jews must be silenced and defamed.

The New York Times article was not debunked. Antisemites and hateful sites like The Intercept found some minor issues and pretended that this disproved the entire story. The NYT stands by it.

Even the UN admits that Hamas raped on October 7. Other testimonies have corroborated the stories.

Besides JVP, the list of contemptible organizations who try to cover up for Hamas' rapes include the Palestinian Youth Movement, Palestinian Feminist Collective, the Adalah Justice Project, Healthcare Workers for Palestine, PAL-Awda Right to Return Coalition, National Students for Justice in Palestine, US Palestinian Community Network, and Writers Against the War on Gaza.

And, yes, the the Democratic Socialists of America are on that list too.

Someone should ask the incoming New York Mayor whether he believes Romi Gonen or thinks she is a liar.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

12/29 Links Pt2: Is Anti-Zionism a New Form of Hatred?; Massive protests rock Iran after currency sinks; Former Israeli hostages engaged to marry

From Ian:

Is Anti-Zionism a New Form of Hatred?

Antizionism is a hate movement that seeks to undermine and erase Jewish sovereignty in Israel and Jewish life around the globe. It perceives the State of Israel as a moral offence, targeting Jewish existence itself.

Antizionism vs. antisemitism
Antizionism can be considered a dangerous form of antisemitism, where the denial of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state is rooted in age-old hostility and hatred toward Jews. In addition, antizionism can be used as a cover for antisemitism.

However, it is important not to collapse antizionism into older categories, but to address it as a hate movement with its own narratives, libels, and mechanisms of violence. If antisemitism is the traditional hostility to or prejudice against Jewish people, antizionism may be considered a contemporary face of Jew-hatred.

Negationist anti-Zionism
Negationist anti-Zionism delegitimizes the Zionist project altogether, calling for the elimination of the State of Israel or any form of Jewish self-determination.

According to Prof. Ethan Katz from the University of California, Berkeley, this common form of anti-Zionism “ignores, downplays, or writes out from history the longstanding Jewish roots in the Land of Israel, the history and ongoing reality of antisemitism, and large parts of the history of Zionism and the State of Israel.”

Anti-Zionism: A new form of hatred?
Is anti-Zionism a new form of hatred? According to Adam Louis-Klein, founder of Movement Against Antizionism, the answer is yes.

Movement Against Antizionism (MAAZ) is a newly formed initiative aiming to confront anti-Zionism as the hate movement it is. Through education, advocacy, and professional training, MAAZ seeks to counter the spread of antizionist narratives, libels, denialism, and dehumanizing rhetoric.

At the same time, MAAZ strives to support Jewish communities at risk around the globe, form new collaborations and alliances, and advance the pursuit of peace based on mutual recognition and responsible dialogue.

The mission is “to critically examine and expose the structural dynamics of anti-Zionism, while affirming the dignity, security, and equal belonging of all communities—Jewish, Israeli, and Palestinian alike.”

Here's how to counter anti-Zionism
This interview with Adam Louis-Klein has been edited for clarity.

PodCast: American Antizionism - With Shaul Kelner

Sociologist and Jewish studies scholar Dr. Shaul Kelner joins Dr. Rachel Fish to examine the rise of antizionism as a distinctly American political and social movement. Kelner argues that contemporary antizionism is less an intellectual critique of Zionism than a political mass movement defined by praxis: the othering and exclusion of Jews through social and institutional action.

Their conversation explores why debates over whether antizionism equals antisemitism often obscure more than they clarify, the distinction between 'anti-Zionism' and 'antizionism', how ambiguity about end goals of the pro-Palestine movement enables broad coalition-building, why higher education became especially fertile ground for this movement, and more.

Further Reading
Shaul Kelner, “American Antizionism,” Sources Journal
Isabella Tabarovsky, "The Cult of 'Antizionism'," Tablet Magazine
Isabella Tabarovsky, "Zombie Anti-Zionism," Tablet Magazine
David Hirsch, "'Anti-Zionism' and 'Antizionism'," Australia/Israel, and Jewish Affairs Council

Guest Bio
Shaul Kelner is a Professor of Jewish Studies and Sociology at Vanderbilt University, specializing in the study of contemporary Jewish life.

His latest book, A Cold War Exodus: How American Activists Mobilized to Free Soviet Jews received grant support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and won a National Jewish Book Award.

Editorial: Albanese has no moral authority – he must call antisemitism royal commission

The belated admissions and half-hearted apologies for not doing more by the prime minister and other senior ministers are not nearly enough. A comprehensive inquiry is also needed to grapple with a broad range of issues that must be honestly confronted after the Bondi atrocity, which includes relevant immigration and multicultural policy settings.

Albanese has justified his intransigence on a royal commission by pointing to the Abbott government not holding one after the Lindt Café siege in Sydney in 2014. This justification appalled the family of Katrina Dawson, one of the two victims killed in that terror incident. The family’s statement issued on Christmas Eve called for “a much-needed royal commission into antisemitism and Islamic extremism” that has the power to get to the truth of these and related issues. The families of the people killed on December 14 have now echoed this call to find the answers and solutions by issuing their own statement urging the prime minister to appoint a royal commission.

Albanese maintains that the priority is acting quickly rather than waiting for the recommendations of a royal commission. Yet, he has spent the past two weeks engaged in political management. The national gun law reforms he has pushed are worthwhile, but do not confront the bigger issue of antisemitism and its manifestation as radical Islamist terrorism.

There is a narrative fostered by Labor that the Bondi tragedy has been politicised, after Opposition Leader Sussan Ley issued proposed terms of reference for a royal commission. Such claims are hypocritical. Labor’s ineffective response to threats to the safety of Jewish people over the past two years is due to playing sectarian politics with antisemitism. This took the form of drawing a false equivalence with Islamophobia and a preference for generalised statements over meaningful action because the government did not want to alienate Muslim voters in outer suburban Sydney and Melbourne electorates over the Gaza war in the lead-up to the 2025 election.

These failures to protect a vulnerable racial and religious minority are underscored by the fact that it has taken the worst loss of Jewish life since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, assault on southern Israel for Albanese to finally launch the crackdown on “hate preaching” recommended by the report of antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal. Having done too little too late to stem the resurgence in Australia of the world’s oldest prejudice, the prime minister has forfeited his moral authority and is unable to convincingly provide the leadership required at this time of crisis.

Both Jewish Australians and the wider public will have no confidence in Labor’s handling of the response to Bondi unless a royal commission provides the independent scrutiny, transparency, and accountability that is needed to help the nation heal.

12/29 Links Pt1: Trump says he would support Israeli strike on Iran; Debunking Eight Gaza Fatality Myths Fueling the Genocide Hoax; U.S. slashes pledge for U.N. humanitarian aid funding, tells U.N agencies to "adapt, shrink or die"

From Ian:

Pierre Rehov: Palestinian Authority 'Help' Is a Trap for Washington: Trump Has the Opportunity to Break a Cycle of Defeat

The Palestinian Authority is not a neutral Muslim-majority entity seeking peace. Its doctrine has, for decades, blended conventional diplomacy with asymmetric warfare — using terrorism as an instrument of policy. In the last decade, this double game has not disappeared. It has merely learned to speak the language of Western guilt. Countries in the West have actually rewarded its terrorism, both by continuing lavishly to fund it and by climbing over one another to recognize a fictitious, nonexistent "Palestinian State."

Palestinians in Gaza might be tired of Hamas, but that does not mean they are ready to live peacefully side-by-side with Israel.

Just imagine the Palestinian Authority inside Gaza's reconstruction ecosystem, with access to donor funds, humanitarian logistics, and institutional channels. Reconstruction money is not neutral. It creates influence, dependency, and leverage. The Palestinian Authority understands this better than anyone.

The Palestinian Authority does not recognize Israel and most likely has no intention whatsoever of dismantling Hamas. For the Palestinian Authority, "reconstruction" offers laundering its legitimacy, access to institutions, long-term influence, and the chance, once President Donald Trump leaves office, of being deliciously positioned to do anything it likes.

For Israel, this scenario is existentially dangerous. Israel would be expected to tolerate a hostile foreign security architecture on its southern border while remaining ultimately responsible for the consequences of its failure. Any future escalation — rocket fire, tunnel reconstruction, arms smuggling — would place Israel in an impossible position: to act militarily and be accused of attacking "the forces for peace " or refrain and absorb the threat. Either choice is unacceptable.

For Washington, the trap is more subtle but equally severe. Once the United States endorses a framework, it becomes politically and financially invested in its survival. Billions of dollars in aid, contracts, and diplomatic capital follow. At that point, acknowledging failure becomes almost impossible. The priority shifts from solving the problem to preserving the framework — even as security deteriorates.

A post-war Gaza that is not fully demilitarized -- and remains that way -- will not stay quiet. Hostility will mutate.... Reconstruction will become camouflage. And the international presence meant to stabilize the situation will end up institutionalizing the very forces it was supposed to eliminate.

That is why this "Palestinian Authority solution" is a terrible idea for Israel — and a strategic trap for Washington: It offers the appearance of control while in fact hollowing out any real security.

Debunking Eight Gaza Fatality Myths Fueling the Genocide Hoax

Few aspects of the Gaza war have been more politically weaponized than fatality statistics. Numbers that would normally be treated with extreme caution during an active conflict have instead been elevated to unquestioned fact, recycled by media outlets, NGOs, and activists to support a predetermined narrative of Israeli wrongdoing, often culminating in accusations of genocide.

This article addresses eight of the most persistent myths surrounding Gaza fatality figures. Each has been repeated so frequently that it now functions as assumed background knowledge. Yet every one collapses under basic scrutiny.

Myth #1: Hamas has been accurate in the past, so its data is reliable now From the outset of the war, UN agencies, NGOs and much of the media treated Hamas's fatality figures as reliable, even though Hamas is a U.S. and EU-designated terrorist organization that live-streamed the murder, rape and kidnapping of nearly 1,200 Israelis on 10/7. Hamas was also actively fighting a war for its survival and therefore had every incentive to manipulate casualty figures for political and legal gain. Yet its numbers were nonetheless elevated as credible, treated as more authoritative than Israel’s and laundered through the official-sounding “Ministry of Health” (MoH).

That credulity rests on selective memory. Hamas’s casualty reporting has a documented history of false claims followed by delayed admissions once the fighting has ended and the narrative damage has already been done. After the 2009 Gaza war, Hamas initially claimed that only 48 fighters were killed out of approximately 1,300 total fatalities, implying a civilian death rate exceeding 95%. Months later, Hamas admitted that between 600 to 700 of the dead were Hamas fighters, closely matching Israel’s figure of 709 combatants. A similar pattern emerged during the 2018 Gaza border riots. Hamas initially described roughly 60 fatalities as civilians killed during “peaceful protests," but after criticism by a Palestinian interviewer, a senior Hamas official acknowledged that 50 of those killed were Hamas members.

Such manipulations are not anomalies; they are recurring features of Hamas’s wartime casualty reporting. The notion that Hamas is not actively stage-managing fatality figures is not a serious analytical position. Acknowledging this record necessarily means accepting that the current 70,000-fatality claim cannot be taken at face value either.

In June, Stanford University Press released a book edited by Lana Tatour and Ronit Lentin titled "Race and the Question of Palestine."

The very title of the book all but announces its conclusion that Israel is racist. The Introduction confirms this impression, not by carefully arguing its case, but by building the conclusion into its premises and then presenting the result as discovery rather than assumption.

From the opening pages, the editors insist that race is not merely one analytic lens among many that might be used to understand the conflict, but the essential framework for interpreting Zionism, Israel, and Palestinian experience. Other explanatory models – citizenship law, nationalism, security doctrine, regional war, even ethnicity itself – are treated not as competing hypotheses to be weighed, but as evasions that obscure the truth.

Once this framing is in place, the logic becomes self-sealing. If Zionism is defined as settler colonialism, and settler colonialism is defined as inherently racial, then Israel must be a racial state. The conclusion is embedded in the premise.

This is where the circularity becomes impossible to ignore. The Introduction does not begin by asking whether race best explains Israeli policies, institutions, and conflicts. It begins by asserting that race does explain them, and then rereads every legal distinction, border regime, and security practice as confirmation of that claim. Evidence no longer tests the theory; the theory filters the evidence. That is coherence masquerading as correspondence – an internally consistent story that never seriously risks being wrong.

The most revealing moment comes when the editors turn their attention to human rights organizations that do not foreground race. B’Tselem, for example, is criticized not because its factual claims are false, but because it frames Israeli domination primarily in terms of ethnicity and citizenship rather than race.

See the circularity here:

Speaking of race in the context of Palestine, readers may ask why use “race” instead of “ethnicity,” “people,” or “nation,” and what analytical and explanatory work “race” does that “ethnicity” or “nationality” does not. ...[T]heir use alone without race analysis, I suggest, not only fails to capture the work of race, racialization, and racism as constitutive of colonial projects, but also conceals it. The apartheid reports, mentioned above, provide an example—one of many—of such concealment through their failure to recognize settler colonialism and race as the defining features of Israeli apartheid or to account for Zionism as the racial ideology that drives Israeli-Zionist colonization.

The circularity is explicit. If race is defined as the only valid explanatory category, then any analysis that does not center race is, by definition, accused of concealment. If you do not begin with race, you cannot arrive at race as the conclusion. The framework does not merely privilege a lens; it morally disqualifies alternatives.

This same structure governs the Introduction’s core claims:

The colonization of Palestine—like other imperial, colonial, and settler-colonial projects—cannot be understood outside the grammar of race. Concepts such as ethnicity and nationality do not capture the history or the political work of race as a project of colonial distinction that rationalizes dispossession and domination....

But if Zionism is understood as a movement of an indigenous people returning to its ancestral homeland – which it is – the argument collapses. That possibility is never seriously entertained, because the framing makes it impermissible from the outset. Alternative explanations are not rebutted; they are ruled out in advance.

A strong theory clarifies what it can and cannot explain. It specifies the conditions under which it might fail. It does not declare rival models ethically suspect simply for existing.

We have discussed many times that Israeli law maps far more cleanly onto distinctions between citizenship and non-citizenship than onto any racial hierarchy between Jews and Arabs. Arab citizens of Israel live on both sides of the Green Line and possess the same civil rights as Jewish citizens there. Arab Israelis and Druze serve at the highest levels of government, the judiciary, medicine, industry and the military. They aren't tokens. Their existence should be fatal to the claim that Israel operates as a racial regime in the sense implied by the book. Instead, they are ignored, leaving the reader unaware that such counterevidence even exists. The framework does not invite comparison; it forecloses it.

None of this is happening on the margins of activism or social media. This is a flagship academic press lending its imprimatur to an argument that relies on premise smuggling rather than demonstration. Stanford University Press is not Jadaliyya, a political blog, or an NGO position paper. It occupies a role that signals to readers, students, and journalists that what follows has passed serious scholarly scrutiny. When a press of this stature publishes a text that substitutes moral intensity and theoretical coherence for falsifiability and causal testing, it sends a signal far beyond this one book.

Once you see the circularity of the argument, you cannot unsee it. The fact that this passed through one of America’s most prestigious academic presses should trouble us far more than the argument itself.

What is at stake here is larger than a single book or a single conflict. When prestigious academic institutions normalize circular reasoning, moralized framing, and premise smuggling, they teach students and readers that conclusions matter more than truth-seeking, and that theory is a substitute for evidence rather than a tool for understanding reality. Once that lesson is absorbed, the damage is not confined to Middle East studies. It spreads outward, hollowing out the intellectual norms that make serious disagreement, genuine pluralism, and honest scholarship possible at all.

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Somaliland is the anti-Palestine

There was an unintentionally revealing tweet from the "State of Palestine" about Israel's recognition of Somaliland:

Why would "Palestine" even care whether Israel recognizes Somaliland?

Maybe because Somaliland is everything "Palestine" can never be.

Michael Rubin writes in the Jerusalem Strategic Tribune:

In 1960, Somaliland won its independence from Britain. Five days later, however, Somaliland’s government chose to unify with the former Italian colony to form what would become Somalia.

It was not a happy marriage, and the former British protectorate split from Somalia in 1991.

Somaliland’s three decades of isolation, in hindsight, may have been a blessing. The international community dumped billions of dollars of aid into Mogadishu, but Somaliland received next to none and had to raise its own budget from customs revenue and taxation. As a result, Somaliland built capacity and a tax base. It is home to major investments—multibillion-dollar communications and mobile money companies, one of the continent’s largest Coca Cola bottling plants, hotels, resorts, and transportation companies. Its deep-water Berbera port now competes with Djibouti and Mombasa. Most businesses that the international community labels as Somali are actually owned by Somalilanders.

Nowhere has Somaliland demonstrated its capacity and accountability more than with elections. Somaliland, unlike Somalia, has held more than eight elections since 1991. One was decided by less than 100 votes of more than one million cast. Each change of power has been peaceful. Somaliland elections are among the world’s most secure, with voter registration certified with biometric iris scans.

What a contrast with "Palestine"!

The PA started not long after Somaliland declared independence, and has had the benefit of billions of dollars in aid from the West as well as from Arab countries. All it has to show for this is a kleptocracy, one of the most corrupt governments on Earth, a dictatorship where one person controls the executive, legislative and judicial branches as well as the organization (the PLO) that the PA officially reports to, and a permanent split with Hamas.

The Palestinian government could not survive a week without international aid. Somaliland has been stable for 33 years without such aid.

Somaliland compares far more with the Zionist government in making from 1922-1948 where diaspora Jews helped financially but it was mostly built with dedication and sweat from the Jews who lived there, creating institutions that were ready as soon as the British left.

International aid cannot help a people who have little interest in self-governance to begin with. The Palestinian national cause, from the start, was always primarily anti-Israel and independence was only a means to help destroy Israel rather than an end in itself.

The world should reward people who actually care about themselves and their future, not those whose entire purpose is to destroy another state.

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An op-ed in Misr Al Balad by Dr. Khaled Fawaz starts off with sympathy for Adolf Hitler's hate for Jews:

Hitler's childhood. He grew up in a humble family, suffering from his father's cruelty, while deeply loving his mother. Her death, particularly at the hands of a Jewish doctor due to medical negligence, profoundly affected him, instilling in him a deep-seated hatred for Jews from a young age.

Before becoming the Nazi leader, Hitler was an artist who painted and sold his works to make ends meet. At that time, Jews controlled the German economy, buying his paintings cheaply and then reselling them at exorbitant prices, which fueled his resentment and bitterness towards them. With Germany's defeat in World War I and the imposition of harsh reparations by the Allies, the economic situation worsened, and Hitler believed that Jews were responsible for this collapse and for spreading moral corruption and decadence within German society.

Poor Hitler! (The doctor story and the reselling paintings story are complete fiction.)

Then Fawaz compared Gazans to Jews in Polish concentration camps::

Later, with the occupation of Poland, Hitler deported Jews to isolated camps and imposed extremely meager food rations, forcing some to dig tunnels to escape and survive—a scene strikingly similar to what is happening today in Gaza.....Thus, it can be said that what Hitler did in the past in terms of persecution and discrimination is being repeated today in another form by Israel...

Then comes Holocaust denial:

Some studies indicate that the number of victims did not reach six million, as Israeli propaganda claims, but was much lower, according to some French historians such as Urry and Jarde Jardin.

Arabs are fed a constant stream of pure antisemitism, every day, and human rights groups don't give a damn.

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12/28 Links: The Global War on the Jews; All eyes on Florida as Trump, Netanyahu face Gaza ceasefire test; How Western ‘charity’ bought Hamas’s rockets; Starmer welcomes ‘extremist’ to Britain

From Ian:

The Global War on the Jews

Jews everywhere are confronting a period of danger and moral testing. Antisemitism no longer hides at the margins. It organizes, radicalizes, and kills. The global surge in antisemitism does not arise organically. States and terrorist organizations deliberately export violence, incitement, and ideology far beyond Israel's borders. The same actors who target Israel actively work to destabilize Jewish life worldwide. What begins in Israel never ends there.

During Israel's campaign against Hamas, calls for a "ceasefire" from anti-Israel activists exposed their true intent. They demanded that Israel should halt its defense. Hamas and its allies, it seemed, could continue attacking Israeli civilians without consequence. That same moral inversion now fuels violence across the Diaspora. Selective outrage and the erasure of Jewish vulnerability have moved from protest rhetoric to physical attack.

Since the truce between Israel and Hamas took effect in early October, violence against Jews worldwide has intensified. When the world delegitimizes Jewish self-defense, Jewish life everywhere becomes more vulnerable.

In Israel, a deeper clarity is evident. Israeli society understands that security cannot be subcontracted, that moral clarity cannot be outsourced, and that Jewish continuity demands courage. The festival of Hanukkah rejects the idea that Jews must justify their existence on terms set by others. Israel embodies that refusal.

Only in Israel do Judaism, Christianity, and Islam coexist freely and openly under the protection of law. That reality stands in sharp contrast to the regions controlled by the forces whose narratives dominate much of today's international discourse.

College Middle Eastern studies departments are broken — shut them down to end campus radicalism

Shut down the Middle Eastern studies departments in our universities. I was a student in one of these programs, and I say it plainly: shut them down.

A majority are corrupted and compromised. Through these departments, dozens of American college students have at best been indoctrinated to despise this country and whitewash the crimes of terrorists, and at worst pushed toward genuine radicalization and extremist plots.

These programs have been the soft underbelly through which universities quietly accept foreign money and, with it, foreign influence that dictates curriculum, hiring, admissions, scholarships and more. They serve as conduits that funnel cash into extracurricular groups, adding an extra layer of protection and plausible deniability while financing the encampments and harassment campaigns that have erupted on campus in recent years.

Anti-Israel protesters demonstrate outside Columbia University on Sept. 3, in New York City. (Yuki Iwamura/AP)

This influence has been seeping into our institutions for more than two decades, but it has become brazen precisely because there have been few, if any, consequences. As someone who has had a front‑row seat to the jihadification of American academia, this is where much of it begins. Shut it down.

The rot is no longer theoretical. It has names, funding streams and institutional addresses. At Columbia University, Mahmood Mamdani, father of New York City’s mayor-elect, has been criticized for presenting Israel as a purely colonial project while downplaying the terrorism of groups such as Hamas, shaping how students in African and Middle Eastern studies understand the region.

At Oberlin College, Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, a former Iranian diplomat, has faced allegations that he helped cover up the Iran regime’s mass executions in the 1980s and has spoken of Hamas "resistance" in ways that minimize its terrorism.

And at Princeton University, Seyed Hossein Mousavian, another former Iran regime official, has been accused of echoing the talking points of Tehran while appearing to legitimize Hamas and Hezbollah in public remarks, all under the banner of Middle East security studies.

When the person shaping course offerings, speakers and graduate funding openly aligns with a brutal authoritarian regime, why should anyone be surprised when students emerge hostile to Israel, sympathetic to designated terror groups and convinced America is the villain of the story?

The money behind this intellectual capture is staggering. Saudi Arabia has poured tens of millions into specific Middle East and Islamic studies hubs, from the King Fahd Center in Arkansas to Alwaleed-bin-Talal–branded programs at Harvard and Georgetown that fund chairs, research and student programming focused on Islam and the Middle East.

According to a 2022 report by the National Association of Scholars, a higher education think tank, Qatar has become one of the largest foreign donors to U.S. higher education since 2001, with several billion dollars routed through branch campuses and partnerships that shape what is taught about the Middle East on both Doha and U.S. soil.

This is not philanthropy in the abstract; it is targeted influence over who gets hired, what gets researched, and which narratives about Israel, Jews and the West are elevated or suppressed.

Book Review: “Be A Refusenik: A Jewish Student’s Survival Guide”

A delightful lithograph hangs in the Berkeley Jewish Art Museum, a block west of the University of California’s rattled flagship campus. It shows its creator, originally a Soviet underground artist, Eugene Abeshous, dressed as a Fiddler on the Roof extra, disembarking at Eretz Yisrael. The work is called Jonah and the Whale in Haifa Port because instead of a cruise liner, its protagonist exits the gaping mouth of a sea monster. Abeshous tells the story that was once on the front pages of American newspapers, but is now nearly forgotten—that of Soviet Jews leaving the belly of the beast.

In her recently released Be A Refusenik: A Jewish Student’s Survival Guide, historian of Soviet Jewry Izabella Tabarovsky used the struggle of the Soviet Jews in the 1970s and 80s as an inspiration for the young Americans facing antisemitism on college campuses. Tabarovsky put the half-century-old experiences of my and her parents’ generation side-by-side with the conflicts defining the lives of our children. Even if we are “separated by decades, borders, and ideologies,” she showed how the mindset of refuseniks can—and does—inspire the students today.

Refuseniks were the Soviet Jewish dissidents who were denied permission to make aliya. My maternal uncle, for instance, applied for his exit visa in 1980, lost his scientist job, had many unfortunate encounters with the sadistic Soviet bureaucracy, and was finally granted passage in 1987, after he made it on the Ronald Reagan list of 100 refuseniks.

My uncle was perhaps luckier than most, but this was a fairly typical refusenik fate. Yet when Tabarovsky tells American students to be refuseniks, she highlights another meaning of the word—the one who refuses to surrender to the forces of evil. Her book teaches how to dive into Jewish history to find the inner strength to resist.

In one key respect, Soviet antisemitism was similar to the contemporary American antisemitism—it sells itself as antizionism. In fact—and this is something Tabarovsky discussed in her Legal Insurrection lecture—our antizionism was invented by the Soviets; it was a product of the virtual freakout over the 1967 defeat of its Arab clients. The Antizionist tropes animating the vocabulary of American college professors are traceable to Brezhnev-era Soviet propaganda.

Antizionism, Tabarovsky shows, was something that Soviet Jews, like their contemporary American counterparts, experienced on a personal level—the hysteria whipped up in the media and echoed in local Communist meetings made Jewish existence unsafe. But the defiant Zionists inverted fear and responded with pride. For instance, when his bosses brought out Nathan Sharansky for a Soviet humiliation ritual before his entire institute and started drilling him about his Jewish ideological leanings, Sharansky responded by giving a brief lecture on modern Israeli history—and found an “intrigued” audience in his co-workers, many of whom, I’m sure, found it liberating to hear Soviet propaganda exposed.

For years, the Iranian regime has insisted that it is not antisemitic, only “anti-Zionist.” This distinction is repeated endlessly in diplomatic forums, academic exchanges, and media appearances. Even their infamous Holocaust cartoon contests are framed as exposing Western hypocrisy towards censorship and not antisemitism. According to Tehran, hostility is directed solely at a political ideology, not at Jews as a people or a religion.

That claim collapses under even minimal scrutiny.

A recent peer-reviewed article published by a journal affiliated with Al-Mustafa International University provides a clear and well-documented example of how the Iranian state sponsors antisemitism under the guise of religious scholarship.

This is not an isolated incident. It is part of a structured, state-linked academic ecosystem that systematically produces and legitimizes anti-Jewish ideology.

In Fall 2023, the Quarterly Journal of Quranic Knowledge Studies, hosted by Al-Mustafa International University (MIU), published an article titled, “Characteristics of Jews in the Quran and Strategies for Confronting Zionism and Global Arrogance with an Emphasis on the Quranic Thoughts of Imam Khamenei.”

The article does several things that, taken together, remove any plausible claim of neutrality. It categorizes Jews as a collective possessing alleged negative traits like deceit, arrogance, covenant-breaking, hostility, and moral corruption. It treats these traits not as historical polemics or contested interpretations, but as enduring characteristics with modern relevance. It explicitly links these religious stereotypes to contemporary political conflict. It advocates “confrontation” strategies that include ideological warfare, mobilization, and military preparation, citing Quran 8:60. And It grounds its interpretive authority in the writings and speeches of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Its antisemitism and dehumanization of Jews is explicit:

Some inhabitants of this world, though outwardly human, are deemed worse than the vilest of creatures, as articulated in the Quran: “… They are like cattle; rather they are more astray. It is they who are the heedless”1 (Quran 7:179). This study aims to investigate the characteristics and behaviors of Jews as portrayed in the Quran, while formulating strategies for confrontation based on the Quranic verses...

This is not metaphorical, historical, or narrowly theological. It is contemporary, collective, and explicitly applied. This is Nazi-level antisemitism being produced and disseminated in Iranian universities today.

Al-Mustafa International University operates under the direct oversight of the Supreme Leader’s office, receives state funding, and has been sanctioned by the United States and Canada for its role in exporting Iran’s ideological agenda abroad.

More importantly, the article’s bibliography reveals that this worldview is not unique to MIU. Many of the cited works that similarly associate Jews—not Zionists—with inherent moral corruption originate from Iranian public universities overseen by the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology; from state-approved academic journals in Quranic and Islamic studies; from dissertations produced at government-funded institutions; and from publications authored or endorsed by Khamenei himself.

In other words, the article is embedded in a network of state-linked scholarship that repeatedly returns to the same themes: Jewish moral degeneracy, Jewish hostility, Jewish conspiratorial power, and the necessity of confrontation.

That is not anti-Zionism. That is antisemitism with footnotes.

There are very few Western scholars who study official, state-sponsored Iranian academic antisemitism. But this is not a small matter.

MIU’s explicit mission is international. It trains clerics, scholars, and educators from over 100 countries. Graduates go on to staff mosques, cultural centers, and academic institutions across the globe. When Western universities host Iranian academics without scrutiny, when journals cite Iranian Quranic scholarship as neutral, when governments engage in “academic dialogue” without examining content, they become unwitting participants in this mainstreaming of antisemitism.

Note that this paper, and several that were cited in it, were written in English, not Farsi. The intended audience is Western.

The Iranian regime’s claim that it opposes Zionism but not Jews is not merely false. It is a strategic lie designed to shield its official antisemitism from accountability.

When a state-funded university publishes peer-reviewed articles that portray Jews as inherently immoral and advocate confrontation grounded in religious obligation, the correct term is not “anti-Zionism.” It is state-sponsored antisemitism.

And, as in Nazi Germany, the universities are not an obstacle to this ideology, but its vanguard.

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My head is spinning from this op-ed in Jordan's Ammon News by Fares Al-Habashneh.

As far as conspiracy theories go, this one is a doozy.

He links Jews to the Mafia, the Mafia to the purchase of Manhattan Island in 1626, Harlem's Cotton Club, the global drug trade and finally Israel.

The global mafia originated in Sicily and migrated to America after the maritime and geographical discoveries of the 17th and 18th centuries.

American Jews forged an early alliance with the mafia from the European continent, and it was in Manhattan specifically that the American mafia was founded and launched.

American imperialism inherited everything from Britain, from the genocidal campaigns against Native Americans to the world of Jewish-owned banks and stock exchanges, and it also inherited the world of the mafia and drugs. In New York, white settlers forced the original inhabitants to sell Manhattan for $20.

This is the biggest and dirtiest deal in the history of capitalism and international organized crime. From that moment, the mafia, through its alliances in American business and financial centers, began to control the economy, trade, decision-making centers, and the stock market.

See? It is all so obvious!

After referring to a couple of obscure books and films the article winds up where it has to:

One of the central objectives of the Israeli project in the Middle East is to flood neighboring countries with drugs and transform them into markets for promotion and consumption, creating drug-related chaos

Habashneh has written quite a lot for Jordanian media outlets.

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

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