08/15 Links: Moderates vs. Hard-Liners; Jon Ossoff broke faith with Israel - and lost his Jewish supporters in Georgia; Man arrested for assault after disrupting NYC synagogue service

From Ian:

Moderates vs. Hard-Liners

Right from the beginning of Operation Epic Fury, after it had killed Khamenei, the Trump administration was already laying out scenarios for how to deal with the regime, including a so-called Venezuela option, which meant dealing with an IRGC regime minus those who have been eliminated. Early on, IRGC veteran and Parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf was floated as the Iranian version of Venezuela’s Delcy Rodriguez: the regime insider who would cut a deal with the Americans in exchange for regime continuity. Soon the administration began negotiating with the Iranians, led by Ghalibaf, and it immediately settled into its version of the “moderates vs. hard-liners” classification as it pursued talks over the next four months.

Echoing Obama’s aforementioned use of the Rouhani election as cover, Trump labeled the Iranians with whom he was talking as “new” and “reasonable,” contrasting them with a previous tier that was eliminated in strikes. Secretary of State Marco Rubio echoed this assessment in late March but refrained from disclosing the identities of the Iranian negotiators “because it probably would get them in trouble with some other groups of people inside of Iran,” suggesting an internal struggle with a more radical “hard-liner” faction. Although, Rubio added, it wasn’t clear which of the two factions was the one running the show. “At the end of the day, we have to see if these people”—that is, the “reasonable” moderates—“end up being the ones in charge, seeing if they’re the ones that have the power to deliver.”

Vice President JD Vance, meanwhile, struck a more optimistic tone, including about the so-called hard-liners, claiming a breakthrough that had supposedly eluded every previous American administration for 47 years. In June, he told CNN that “the coolest thing about the progress we’ve made of the last few weeks is that you see people within the Iranian system—senior leadership, even IRGC officials—say, ‘You know what, we may have some animosity, we may have some mistrust, but we recognize the way that we’ve done business with the United States for 47 years is a mistake; let’s try something else.’ We’re gonna verify that, of course, but we’re certainly willing to try something else if they comply.”

Of course, none of that was real. The regime’s behavior did not change, and talks broke down. So, in July, Vance pivoted from his assessment of the new and cool IRGC and reverted to a variant of the “hard-liners” as spoilers. Only in Vance’s telling, the hard-liners were going through growing pains in their evergreen struggle with the “pragmatists.” In an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, Vance offered his theory for why the deal he negotiated had unraveled: Iranian hard-liners, alarmed at how much leverage they had surrendered once the Strait of Hormuz reopened and oil began flowing again, panicked and started shooting at ships. “There was this kind of freak-out in their system. So they shot at a couple of ships,” Vance offered. “The hard-liners have really, really reacted strongly to all the oil that’s coming out of the Strait of Hormuz. … Now the pragmatists in their system are saying this was a mistake. Let’s keep on talking.”

Trump and Vance had now introduced a variant of Obama’s innovation with the “moderates vs. hard-liners,” projecting that dichotomy onto the IRGC/hard-liners themselves. In a June 12 briefing, for example, a senior administration official—likely Vance himself—offered the following assessment: “The Iranian hard-liners, some of them want to kill the deal, but I think most of them actually want the deal.”

But since nothing in Iran’s behavior had changed, with the regime continuously attacking U.S. bases, regional allies, and targeting international shipping while ignoring Trump’s threats and occasional retaliatory strikes, the U.S. president has oscillated between contradictory characterizations of the Iranians. The people he had earlier described as reasonable became lunatics and sick scum. But, now fully invested in his deal with them, Trump also leaned on one of the established functions of the “moderates vs. hard-liners” device, attributing bad behavior to the “hard-liners” and thereby justifying continued talks with the imaginary “moderates.” After a thwarted missile strike against U.S. positions in Jordan in late July, Trump attributed the action not to the reasonable, moderate pragmatists, but rather to those pesky radical hard-liners. “It was a different group than we’re dealing with,” he insisted. “They’ve already apologized.”

Similarly, and using essentially the same language as the Obama administration more than a decade ago, Vance told Fox News in early August that the Iranians “have a fractured system. So there are people within their system who want the war to be over. There are also people in their system who are crazy radicals who want the war to continue.”

In other words, as things stand, Trump has adopted entirely the framework, categories, and rhetorical devices of his predecessors, whom he had described as losers who didn’t know how to deal with the mendacious Iranian regime. And he has done so for the same reason: to justify continued talks with, and concessions to, the hard men of the IRGC.

What’s more, the administration—specifically Vance—has adopted Obama’s other malignant innovation: blaming Israel and accusing domestic critics of being warmongering agents of influence on its behalf. As the vice president told Rogan last month, he knew “beyond a shadow of a doubt” that the Israeli government was trying to keep the war with Iran going indefinitely and that it was Israeli interference that sabotaged the cease-fire he and special envoy Steve Witkoff had negotiated. Moreover, Vance added, “certain elements within the Israeli government” had funded a campaign “to try to derail the negotiation and try to derail the deal.”

Further echoing Obama’s language, in a June 15 briefing, a senior U.S. official—again, likely Vance himself—employed, verbatim, Obama’s characterization of domestic critics as a mirror of Iran’s hard-liners. “What you’re seeing now is hard-liners on both sides. In the Iranian system, they’re protesting [against the deal]. And we have certain people in the American system who say there’s no deal you could ever do with Iran ever, who are obviously making a lot of noise.”

After five decades of dealing with the regime, to observe that the theory of an Iranian moderate faction opposed to the hard-line security establishment misreads the nature of the regime is to state the obvious. The fact is, going back at the very least to Obama—that is, two of those five decades—the U.S. government has perfectly understood what the Islamic Republic is.

Israeli officials have argued publicly and consistently, since well before the JCPOA was signed, that a deal with the regime is futile not because they are uniquely hostile to diplomacy, but because they, too, have spent decades watching the IRGC’s behavior up close. But the Israelis, and American critics, are also missing the point. The function of the “moderate vs. hard-liners” instrument is not epistemological, a faulty understanding of the nature of the regime. The Americans know well what that regime is. Donald Trump certainly has known it since the 1980s. Rather, “moderates vs. hard-liners” has long ceased to be a genuine misreading of a nascent regime and is now firmly established as a rhetorical device the function of which is to justify an accommodation with the IRGC and paint domestic critics as treasonous warmongers working on behalf of the Jewish state.

Jake Wallis Simons: Israel isn’t an enemy of Christianity. It’s a sinister distortion to suggest otherwise

Don’t take my word for it; consider a remark by Abdul Azim Wadi, the mayor of Qusra, a Palestinian village between Ramallah and Nablus, where Jewish “terrorists”, as American ambassador Mike Huckabee has called them, have been laying siege to an Arab family for days.

Speaking to the Telegraph last week as troops struggled to tame the fanatics, Mayor Wadi said: “There are good soldiers sometimes, and there are bad ones.”

There you have it. To you or me, this might seem obvious; to those in the West who have appropriated Palestine as a personal totem, however, there can be no such thing as a “good” Israeli soldier on the grounds of ideology.

“Death, death to the IDF.” Remember that? Try suggesting to Western progressives that some Israeli troops are “good”. The Nazi-grade radicalism, which broke into the mainstream when the deplorable rapper Bob Vylan led the chant at Glastonbury last summer, goes way beyond the venom even of many Palestinians who live cheek-by-jowl with Israelis.

According to one poll, 50 per cent of Britons (and 67 per cent of Labour voters) now believe the lie that Israel committed “genocide” in Gaza. And what about British Christians? Perhaps the most substantial polling of that group comes from December 2024. It found that 47 per cent of believers had already swallowed the “genocide” libel.

Dig into the study and it gets worse. A quarter of believers said it was “probably true” that Jews “don’t care what happens to anyone but their own kind”; a third thought Jews talk “too much about” the Holocaust; and one-in-six claimed that Jews were “responsible for most of the world’s wars”. This is anti-Semitism and it creates fertile soil for propaganda.

I mention the Church because, judging by the responses to a story last week about the Israeli military “surrounding” a Christian town on the West Bank, many readers were imagining a Jewish version of the Siege of Constantinople, with artillery fire and waves of troops mounting an assault against the valiant soldiers of Christ.

But listen to Father Bashar Fawadleh, the priest at Christ the Redeemer Church in Taybeh, northeast of Ramallah: “A closed military zone for non-resident Israelis may be a positive step.” Turns out the army was trying to protect the Palestinians, not rout them.

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08/14 Links Pt2: At the site of a Nazi massacre, the Jews are forgotten; The Clueless Hate Preachers in Liverpool; French ministers condemn ‘Hitler’ death threat against Jewish tourists

From Ian:

At the site of a Nazi massacre, the Jews are forgotten

Former Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte’s speech at Sant’Anna di Stazzema shows how the Palestinian cause is becoming a political and moral rallying point for parts of the European left.

Conte is an especially interesting case in the antisemitic tsunami now engulfing much of the world. The former prime minister and current leader of the left-wing populist Five Star Movement is a key ally of Democratic Party leader Elly Schlein and a potential candidate to lead Italy again. Italian media are already portraying his political moves with an eye toward a future contest for leadership of the left-wing coalition.

Increasingly, Conte appears to be using the Palestinian cause as a moral glue for the electorate he hopes to assemble, much as New York politician Zohran Mamdani has done in the United States.

That is what made his appearance this week at Sant’Anna di Stazzema so significant.

Sant’Anna is not simply another Italian village with a tragic wartime history. It is one of the most powerful symbols of Nazi-Fascist barbarism in Italy.

On Aug. 12, 1944, soldiers of the 16th SS Panzergrenadier Division “Reichsführer-SS,” aided by Italian Fascist collaborators, descended on the Tuscan village and surrounding hamlets and massacred hundreds of civilians. The official commemoration on Wednesday marked the 82nd anniversary of the slaughter, in which 560 people were killed, including more than 100 children.

Women, old people and children were slaughtered. The youngest victim, Anna Pardini, was just 20 days old. What was ostensibly an operation against partisans became a bloodbath of defenseless civilians.

Italian writer Adriano Sofri has compared the massacre to Srebrenica. The comparison is understandable.

But there is another massacre, far closer to us in time, that should have been impossible to ignore at Sant’Anna: Oct. 7, 2023.

On that day, Hamas terrorists invaded southern Israel and carried out a mass slaughter of Jews in kibbutzim, towns and at a music festival, murdering some 1,200 people and abducting 251 to the Gaza Strip.

Why should Oct. 7 have been remembered at Sant’Anna?

Because the defining ideological crime of Nazism was the persecution and extermination of the Jewish people. The SS did not merely terrorize Europe. It was a central instrument in the machinery that murdered 6 million Jews.

On Oct. 7, an ancient ideological hatred appeared once again in its most bloodthirsty form: the mass murder of innocent Jews, accompanied by an explicit determination to destroy their state.

Yet Conte, who delivered the official commemorative address at Sant’Anna on Wednesday, did not make that connection.

David Collier: The Clueless Hate Preachers in Liverpool

Foreigners, and Israel in the Strait of Hormuz
And incredibly, it got even worse.

My attention turned to the people living there. I was told Israelis are just “foreigners” who arrived, sent by imperial powers that wanted influence in the region.

There is something particularly absurd about this inversion of history. The modern Middle East was shaped by successive imperial conquests. Arab-Muslim armies conquered the region in the seventh century. The Ottoman Empire that ruled it for centuries was itself an Islamic empire. British rule followed as part of the largest empire the world has ever seen.

Yet somehow, when a tiny and historically persecuted minority rebuilt its national home in its ancestral homeland, that became the great act of imperialism.

Turning the Jewish story of return and national liberation into a twisted narrative of foreign global power requires both an extraordinary rewriting of history and the recycling of some very old antisemitic tropes.

I pressed the issue.

“It is nothing to do with religion,” she said.

By this point I was toying with her. Islamic identity, supremacy and religious rhetoric have run through major strands of the Palestinian national movement from its earliest decades and remain central to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad today. She is certainly not alone in mistakenly reducing the entire conflict to an argument over land, but she was proving more clueless than most.

I pushed back lightly on the subject of a Jewish homeland.

And then came the killer blow.

As she reaffirmed that this was all about Western power rather than religion, she explained to me why Israel had been created where it was.

Israel, she told me, was built in the Strait of Hormuz because the West wanted control of it.

I had to check that I had heard her properly.

So I questioned it.

She doubled down.

This woman really believed that Israel was in the Strait of Hormuz:

At this point it became clear that she was mixing up the various fragments of TikTok geopolitics that had apparently built her education, so I played along for a while, asking her to explain more about Israel’s geopolitical position in the Strait of Hormuz.

Eventually she gave up.

Instead, she began pushing me towards the literature on the table.

That, she assured me, “would help answer my questions.”

Justifying October 7
I was presented with the latest copy of the Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! newspaper. Pointing to the headline, she began telling me about how the activist Sarah Cotte had been arrested simply for saying that “Palestinians had rights.”

These were just more lies. Cotte has been charged with terrorism offences over alleged support for Hamas. The “unconditional” solidarity was expressed at a public rally in London on October 9, just two days after the October 7 atrocities.

I wanted to push this further. She did not budge. According to her, simply supporting Palestine could “put you in jail”.

All that was left for me to do was ask about October 7.

“They have a right to resist,” she responded.

She then spent the next few minutes conflating Gaza with both real and imagined events in Judea and Samaria, droning on about occupation and the daily killing of children, all supposedly leaving these poor Gazans with no alternative.

“What option do they have?” she asked.

The reality crossed my mind. When Israel left Gaza in 2005, dismantling every settlement and dragging its own civilians out, Palestinians were presented with an opportunity to begin building towards statehood. Gazans had lots of options. Instead of peace and investment in the future, Hamas and other armed groups spent the following years building tunnels, accumulating rockets and preparing for war.

October 7 was not the only option at all. It was the one Hamas chose.

And then the absurdity of the conversation struck me.

Just two minutes earlier she had tried to convince me that simply supporting Palestinians was an arrestable crime. Yet here she was, standing perfectly freely in the middle of a major Liverpool shopping district, offering her own thinly veiled justification for the terrorist atrocities of October 7.

It was time to leave.

The problem here is a simple one. A false narrative is being spread openly on our streets – one that generates hatred, radicalises weak-minded and vulnerable people, and ultimately places British Jews at risk. And those spreading these lies have not even taken the time to learn the basics about the subject they speak about with such certainty.

They stand on British streets campaigning for the destruction of the world’s only Jewish state while repeating a historical narrative they have never seriously examined. When confronted with the murder, rape and kidnapping of Israeli civilians, even that can be absorbed into the same ideological framework: they had no choice; they had a right to resist.

These are not harmless mistakes about distant history. This is political extremism being sold to passing members of the British public.

When will we stop pretending that someone standing on our streets spreading hatred, historical falsehoods and justifications for terrorist violence is merely an “activist”?

Why not call it what it is – hate preaching?

For 2028’s Jewish hopefuls, Israel is the test that decides who’s the ‘right’ kind of Jew

A quarter century ago, when the late Sen. Joe Lieberman was tapped by Al Gore, the Democratic nominee for president, to be his running mate on the 2000 ticket, the question around many a Shabbat table was, “Is he too Jewish to be in the White House?”

There’s a different question being asked, largely in Democratic circles, of today’s Jewish presidential candidates: “Is he the ‘right’ kind of Jewish candidate to be president?” — a question that is almost entirely centered around a candidate’s position on Israel and how openly he identifies with his religious faith.

A long list of Jewish candidates are considering a presidential campaign or are being touted as credible contenders, ranging from moderates like Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to progressives like Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and those who straddle the ideological divide, like Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA).

In both 2026 and 2028, the debate over Israel is on the ballot: Congressional primaries are pitting pro-Israel candidates against those who don’t acknowledge Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, and already a clear divide is emerging in the prospective 2028 presidential field over the issues of the U.S.-Israel relationship and dealing with rising antisemitism.

Even in races where Israel policy is not front-and-center, invoking AIPAC has become something of a catch-all slur for progressives attacking the role of outside money in Democratic primaries. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a likely 2028 hopeful, proudly proclaimed in February that he’d never taken AIPAC money — which of course he hasn’t, given that AIPAC and its affiliated super PAC historically focus on federal, not state, races.

Since soft-launching his presidential campaign last month (in Tel Aviv, no less), former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has made the Jewish state — and its relationship with the U.S. — one of his top issues in speeches and interviews. Even when his views are well within the mainstream, his signaling that he’s talking tough against Israel is a sign he recognizes his long-standing pro-Israel record is a vulnerability in a Democratic presidential primary.

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08/14 Links Pt1: Shame on the "genocide scholars"; Stop living in la-la land: Only the IDF can curb Israel’s enemies; UN Leaders Lit an Eternal Flame for a Hamas Commander

From Ian:

Andrew Fox: Shame on the "genocide scholars"

None of these academics sits on the ICJ, although it must be noted that some of their fellow Israel-haters do. Their public biographies reveal no qualification to adjudicate international criminal law or the law of armed conflict, no understanding of targeting, and no expertise in Hamas and its tactics. They may, of course, offer historical parallels or sociological theories within the very narrow bounds of their expertise. However, they have instead issued verdicts, wrapped those verdicts in academic prestige and watched journalists cite the prestige as proof. Shaw’s latest book is called The New Age of Genocide: Intellectual and Political Challenges after Gaza. The accusation produces headlines and speaking invitations. It also sells books. The blood libel has acquired peer review and a publicity department.

That description is earned. The modern version of the mediaeval libel says that the Jewish state deliberately kills Palestinians as a people, with dead children serving as its most potent imagery. Once repeated as settled fact by decorated academics, the charge escapes Gaza and attaches itself to Jews everywhere. The consequences have names. Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim were murdered outside Washington’s Capital Jewish Museum. The accused gunman allegedly said, “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza”. Weeks earlier, an attacker shouting “Free Palestine” threw Molotov cocktails at a Jewish hostage walk in Boulder. Karen Diamond died from her injuries. Bondi, Manchester, the list of Jews murdered over the Gaza blood libel goes on.

These academics did not commit those attacks. They have positioned themselves, however, as part of the international anti-Israel machine. Along with activists posing as journalists, maniacal Israel-haters posing as UN officials, and a whole industry of fellow travellers, they helped dignify the mythology in which Jews anywhere can be treated as accessories to an imaginary extermination campaign. Professors who lend their authority to that mythology cannot retreat into innocent scholarship when its slogans arrive outside Jewish museums with guns, or at Jewish gatherings with petrol bombs. Bartov, Mordechai, Shaw, Mehdi Hassan, Owen Jones, DropSite, Max Blumenthal, and all the rest: they all have blood on their hands as much as any of the IDF soldiers they accuse so viciously.

The evidential problem remains untouched. Under Croatia v Serbia, group destruction must be the only reasonable inference when intent is deduced from conduct. My earlier pieces have covered Gaza’s wartime births and Israel’s facilitation of mass polio vaccination, facts the genocide campaign simply wishes away. A brutal war against Hamas remains an obvious alternative explanation.

The genocide allegation survives only by declaring every piece of exculpatory evidence meaningless. Births supposedly tell us nothing. Vaccinations tell us nothing. Food deliveries tell us nothing. Humanitarian pauses tell us nothing. Failed famine predictions tell us nothing. The absence of measured famine mortality tells us nothing.

These academics have strayed wildly beyond their lanes and converted moral vanity into counterfeit legal authority. They profit in attention and publication from a blood libel whose human cost is paid by Jews they will never meet. Shame on them. They are shameless.

UN study debunks Gaza malnutrition claim, but Labour presses on

British Jews are scared; they’re right to be. Since October 7 they have seen murderous violence against their persons, vandalism against their synagogues, and arson against their property. Jewish-owned ambulances have been fire-bombed. Ambulances. It’s not enough that Jews be stabbed and bloodied and cowed into hiding their religious symbols; they must be deprived of the means to save themselves.

Most British Jews are Zionists, albeit the intensity of the attachment to Israel differs from person to person, as do the feelings stirred up. Some are happy warriors for Zionism; others are concerned by the impact of Jewish sovereignty on Jewish ethics; others still are the dissenting critics who imagine themselves to be the voice of Jewish conscience.

Zionism, like Judaism, encompasses the complexities of the Jewish experience: “Bless the sting and bless the honey/Bless the bitter and the sweet.”

Instead of acting to calm tensions, this government prefers to inflame them. If the political chatter is true, we can expect yet more inflaming in the coming months as Andy Burnham attempts to reset his party’s relationship with Muslim voters. Ministers will slug away at the Israel punching bag in the vain hope that it will sate the electors who have abandoned them.

New foreign secretary Ed Miliband used his “frank and constructive” first conversation with Israeli counterpart Gideon Sa’ar to lash out at Israel on settlements, Palestinian statehood, and, inevitably, the transfer of aid to Gaza. The anti-Israel lobby is itching to get its NGOs back into Gaza where they can return to business-as-usual, turning a blind eye to Hamas’s crimes, and denouncing Israel at every opportunity.

There is no silver lining in this for Jews. Labour increasingly sees British politics in terms of interest blocs, whether those interests be economic, political, or ethnic, and the harsh truth is that Jews are a much smaller bloc. It is worth noting, in passing, how insulting it is to treat all British Muslims as an unintegrated, ethno-religious bloc. Make no mistake, those Muslims exist, and in far greater numbers than we should be comfortable with, but plenty of British Muslims want to be addressed as the individuals they are.

Regardless, the voters who ditched Labour over Gaza are, by and large, not coming back. They want representatives who share and are willing to give voice to their extremist, antizionist prejudices. The 2024 election has shown them that Labour can be beaten in its heartlands by populist Muslim, Palestine-centric, sectarian campaigns.

While Labour MPs have grown accustomed to pandering to this electorate over the years, they could never go far enough. Now these voters don’t need Labour, and where they have the numbers they will put one of their own in Parliament.

Labour isn’t prepared to accept this yet, so expect the anti-Israel politicking to be stepped up again and again. Even though it won’t redraw the electoral map in Labour’s favour, it will contribute to the noxious fug of antisemitism that lingers in Britain’s major cities, university towns, and in progressive spaces like education, trade unionism, the public sector, and the arts.

It would be better all round if Labour just admitted what it was up to, that it doesn’t care whether the data it bases policy decisions on are reliable, that certain Muslim votes matter more than the Jewish community. Lessons should be learnt, but won’t, about the credence given to UN statistics on Israel. When you want to be misled enough, and to mislead others, you will believe anything.

Was Oct. 7 ‘inevitable’?

Asked what the DSA wants for Israelis and Palestinians, Romer described a “free Palestine” with a capital in Jerusalem, volunteering that this could safely be read as a one-state solution. She said nothing about what becomes of the roughly 10 million people currently living in Israel. Not a word. In this framework, the question does not arise.

Asked whether the DSA would have supported the terms discussed at Camp David in 2000, the closest the parties have ever come to a two-state agreement, she said it was a good question and that she would have to look at the specifics.

She didn’t know then and doesn’t now. She holds a maximalist position on the outcome and hasn’t read the history that produced it. That is not a policy. That is a slogan wearing a policy’s clothes.

The pattern held everywhere. She said the DSA believes in taxing the hell out of millionaires. Remnick asked what that means in practice. She had no answer, and when he observed that a co-chair might be expected to have one, she offered that it is a democracy and that we have to look at what we need to spend. On open borders, she described reforming the current system while rethinking it, building a new one and eventually “flipping a switch.”

And when the backlash came, Romer didn’t revisit any of it. She went on X the next day and called Remnick a “debate bro” trying to make her look and feel stupid.

He asked her questions. That was his job. The questions were never the problem. It was the lack of answers.

Democrats should understand exactly what is at stake because life is not a podcast. DSA members have won congressional primaries in New York, Colorado and Michigan, unseating sitting House incumbents in the above first two states. By January, there will almost certainly be seven of them in Congress.

This is no longer a caucus writing manifestos in a rented room. It is an organization with a functioning electoral machine, a farm system and a demonstrated ability to end 30-year careers.

To be exact, because exactness is the point: Romer’s words are hers. Mamdani did not say them, and no one should pretend that he did.

But Romer is not a member having a bad afternoon. She is the co-chair—the person whose formal job is to articulate what the organization believes. When the person elected to speak for a movement calls Oct. 7 inevitable, cannot answer a question about Camp David or explain her own tax position, then that is a description of the movement’s intellectual center of gravity.

It’s not a gaffe. It is a readout.

So put one question to every candidate seeking your vote, your check or your endorsement. Not whether they criticize Israeli policy. Not whether they grieve Palestinian suffering (because decent people do).

Was Oct. 7 inevitable? Yes or no.

The ones who can answer in a single syllable belong in public life. The ones who need a paragraph have already told you what they think.

Nothing about this was inevitable. Not then. Not now.

Pay-for-slay: Could the Palestinian Authority be held legally liable for October 7?

Can the Palestinian Authority (PA) be held civilly responsible for the October 7 massacre even if the plaintiffs cannot produce records showing that it directly paid the Hamas terrorists who planned and carried it out?

That question sits at the center of litigation brought by more than 8,000 plaintiffs now moving through the Jerusalem District Court, where they are seeking to hold the PA responsible for deaths, injuries, and other harm caused by the massacre and the war that followed.

Lt.-Col. (res.) Maurice Hirsch, a former director of the IDF Military Prosecution in the West Bank whose recent study examines the PA and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) prisoner-payment system and its possible connection to October 7, does not expect the litigation to uncover a neat paper trail linking individual Hamas leaders to PA payments.

“I don’t think we’re going to see individual links to the PA,” Hirsch told The Jerusalem Post in a Monday interview. “I think it’s going to be very, very difficult to find that type of evidence.”

That evidentiary gap is central to the cases. Hirsch argued that the question is broader than whether a particular October 7 terrorist received a particular payment. The question is whether the PA’s long-standing system of paying, supporting, and employing prisoners and released prisoners can itself provide a sufficient connection to people who later returned to terrorism.

“What will most likely happen is that most of the discussion will be about the prima facie [initial] responsibility of the PA, if that can even be shown,” Hirsch said. “It will very much depend on whether the judge accepts this argument that the PA is responsible because of the payment of the salaries.”

The court has not decided that question.

In a July 1 decision, Jerusalem District Court Judge Eran Shilo set a common procedure for the thousands of lawsuits, separating the shared question of the PA’s potential responsibility from the individual circumstances and damages claimed by each plaintiff. The plaintiffs’ law firms were initially ordered to submit short written arguments, while the PA is due to file a single response by October 18.

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Amnesty's "genocide" accusation keeps falling apart - thanks to Hamas and Islamic Jihad publishing their "martyrs"

One of the pillars of Amnesty International's accusation that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza is that Israel sometimes bombs civilians for no military reason at all. 

This is critical to Amnesty's argument. A war in which civilians die while Israel is attacking Hamas is a war, however horrible the civilian toll may be. Amnesty needs something more to transform it into genocide. It needs evidence that killing Palestinians is itself the objective.

So Amnesty devoted an entire section of its "genocide" report to fifteen Israeli airstrikes that it says had no military justification.

"On the basis of its investigations, Amnesty International concluded that, in all 15 cases, the locations struck were civilian objects and that Israel had launched the air strikes."

Amnesty says it investigated whether the targets contained fighters or military objectives and found none. It says it interviewed survivors and witnesses, examined satellite imagery, reviewed videos and photographs and consulted weapons experts. The conclusion is categorical: Amnesty "did not find any evidence of a military objective at the locations struck."

That is about as strong a claim as an organization can make. And it is falling apart.

Salo Aizenberg has been going through Amnesty's fifteen showcase cases and comparing them with information that has since became available about the people killed in those strikes. Again and again, the supposedly inexplicable attacks on purely civilian locations turn out to have killed Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad or other armed-group personnel.

In one case, Amnesty described an Israeli strike near Jabalia's refugee-camp market that killed sixteen civilians and said it had found no military objective. Aizenberg found that five of the dead were subsequently identified by Palestinian sources as militants, including a child soldier.

There was a human rights violation here: five militants deliberately gathered in a civilian area to use Gazans as human shields. But the human rights of Gazans don't matter to Amnesty when it is Islamic Jihad who are responsible for their deaths.

In another, Amnesty investigated the destruction of the al-Dos family home and again said it could find no military objective. A PIJ unit later identified one of its commanders among the dead.

Amnesty described a strike on the al-Najjar family home the same way. Palestinian Islamic Jihad subsequently identified one of the men killed there as a battalion commander.

Another strike Amnesty treated as an apparently purposeless attack on civilians killed Mohammed Shahada, whom Aizenberg identifies through Palestinian sources as a PIJ officer.

Another of Amnesty's examples involved the al-Ayadi family home. The Mujahideen Brigades itself reportedly acknowledged that Rami Allal, one of its commanders, was killed in the strike.

A December strike on the Harb family home yielded the same pattern: Amnesty said it found no military objective, while a PIJ commander was later confirmed among the dead.

Aizenberg has since found yet another militant in another one of Amnesty's cases.

These were not fifteen incidents selected at random from tens of thousands of Israeli strikes. These were Amnesty's curated cases.

Amnesty spent weeks investigating them. It interviewed witnesses. It gathered photographs. It analyzed fragments. It examined satellite images. It went looking specifically for attacks that could demonstrate that Israel bombed civilians without a military objective. 

In other words, Amnesty had every incentive to choose the cleanest examples it could find. We do not know how many airstrikes Amnesty decided to pass on because they wouldn't fit their predetermined "genocide' narrative. It wouldn't publish cases that are ambiguous or obviously targeting Hamas. 

And it still got them wrong.

The supposed existence of civilian-only attacks is one of the mechanisms Amnesty uses to bridge the enormous gap between "Israel conducted a war in which many civilians were killed" and "Israel intended to destroy Palestinians as a group."

Amnesty knows that civilian deaths by themselves do not establish genocide. Every urban war produces civilian deaths. The genocide accusation therefore requires evidence that the civilians were killed because they were Palestinians, rather than because Israel was trying to kill Hamas and other fighters who embedded themselves among civilians.

These fifteen attacks were supposed to provide exactly that evidence.

Instead, they reveal something very different: Amnesty simply did not know what Israel was targeting.

That should have been obvious from the beginning. Amnesty does not have access to Israeli targeting intelligence. It does not know what Israeli surveillance showed before an attack. It does not hear the communications being intercepted. It does not know which commanders Israeli intelligence believed were inside a building at a given moment. 

Amnesty interviewed people on the ground after the bombs fell. It did not even consider that most Gazans would never identify known terrorists to Amnesty out of fear of their own lives.  Yet Amnesty treated its inability to identify a military target as evidence that no military target existed. Israel, as always, is guilty until proven innocent beyond any possible doubt. 

There is an even larger problem with Amnesty's theory. Israel has spent an enormous amount of intelligence, manpower, aircraft time and expensive precision weaponry trying to locate and kill individual Hamas and PIJ commanders hiding among civilians. Amnesty itself has spent years complaining about how Israel weighs the military value of those targets against the expected civilian casualties.

If Israel's objective is to kill Palestinians as Palestinians, why bother identifying the Hamas commander in the building?

Why spend intelligence resources locating him? Why calculate the expected civilian casualties around him? Why decide whether his military value justifies a strike? Why use expensive precision weapons to hit the building where he is located?

You can simply bomb the civilians.

Amnesty could argue that Israel's proportionality calculations are too permissive. Indeed, critics have made exactly that argument, and I have explained why the claim that Israel simply abandoned the laws of proportionality does not withstand scrutiny.

But the proportionality argument disproves the genocide argument - because it concedes that there was a legitimate target. 

Amnesty's methodological failure is now impossible to ignore. Amnesty's investigators spent weeks examining individual strikes and confidently announced that there had been no military objective. Outside researchers, using information Amnesty either missed or never bothered to look for, are now finding the military targets one after another, freely admitted by the militant groups themselves.

A serious human-rights organization would be reopening those cases immediately. it would be horrified that it reported on these cases wrong. It would contact the sources. It would investigate the militant identifications. It would publish corrections where necessary. It would reconsider every conclusion downstream that depended upon those cases.

When an organization publishes an accusation as grave as genocide, the minimum requirement should be a willingness to correct the evidence they base the accusation on when it points the other way.

Amnesty will never do any of those things. They never correct their wrong conclusions about Israel and civilians. I know because I've identified militants in previous wars that amnesty called civilian, Amnesty was aware of my research, and it said, explicitly, that it did not consider me credible even though I was quoting militant sources themselves and even when my findings were mirrored by Israeli thinktanks and others. 

A real human rights organization would correct its mistakes. An antisemitic advocacy organization never will. And we have more proof of which one Amnesty is. 

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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)

 

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08/13 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: Gaslighting on steroids; James Murdoch Throws DEI Spin at Israel Controversy; Marco Rubio Is Right—the ICC Is Dangerously Flawed

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Gaslighting on steroids

Since Zionism is framed as racist, destructive and positively demonic, all Jews are now held to be positively demonic. The result is Jews across Europe and elsewhere in the West being abused, insulted, screamed at, spat at, threatened with murder and physically attacked.

This gaslighting on steroids has produced an alarming response among some American Jews. Instead of fighting back, they are deliberately avoiding any reference to Zionism.

A poll taken last February by the Jewish Federations of North America found that only 37% of American Jews describe themselves as Zionists, even though 88% said Israel had the right to exist as a Jewish, democratic state. The study said respondents were either unclear about what Zionism was or else they thought it implied blanket support for Israeli government policies and actions with which they disagreed.

Some badly gaslighted American Jews are now even saying that the words “Zionism” and “Zionists” should no longer be used. The existence of Israel, they say, means these terms are outdated; and since they’re now associated with racism and killing, they should be junked.

This is a catastrophically wrong conclusion. Words matter. They shape the way people see the world. When the United Nations passed its infamous 1995 resolution declaring “Zionism is racism,” it lit the fires of Jew-hatred across the world. Language has been hijacked to turn words into weapons to destroy Israel and the Jews.

Zionism has been cast as an evil doctrine to detach Israel from Judaism. But the land of Israel is an essential part of Judaism. That’s why anti-Zionism is an existential attack on Judaism itself.

“Genocide” is another word that’s been hijacked as a weapon for Israel’s destruction. To deal with the patent absurdity of describing as a “genocide” Israel’s totally justified war of self-defense, in which it has gone to unprecedented lengths to avoid killing civilians as far as possible, Israel’s foes have changed the meaning of the word.

According to them, genocide now means merely killing any Palestinian Arabs, or—even more imbecilically—just destroying Gaza’s buildings.

Jews should absolutely not be aiding the intended dismemberment of Judaism by helping remove “Zionism” from the lexicon and from the world.

Jews should be asserting that the land of Israel is inseparable from Judaism, that the Palestinian Arabs are ethnic cleansers and that Zionism was the greatest anti-colonialist liberation movement of the 20th century.

The proper response to a malevolent narrative of lies is not to shuffle away for cover. It is to get up off your knees and fight back with pride.

James Murdoch Throws DEI Spin at Israel Controversy

Days after an eruption of condemnations over an issue of New York magazine that repeatedly and falsely accused Israel of genocide and that describes the Jewish state as "the land mass currently called Israel," the magazine’s leadership has finally offered up a wan response.

It’s not exactly an apology, and it’s not exactly "we stand by our story," either.

Instead, the statement from New York magazine's editorial leadership—no names, please—to the Washington Free Beacon dodges the journalistic accuracy and integrity issues involved, along with the antisemitism. Instead, it serves up a salad of lefty buzzwords.

"Our latest cover story is an exploration of a New York subculture that is making its presence felt, both culturally and politically, in new ways over the last few years. As with other communities forged by common experiences of conflict, there is an irreducible political dimension to any coverage of this subject," the statement says. "We have endeavored to capture the tensions and live debates that exist within these communities, including how they relate to Israel. We are aware of the wide range of responses to the piece, including critiques from some in the Jewish community. We take these comments seriously, and, as always, we welcome and acknowledge good faith discussion and criticism about our journalism."

The reference to the "cover story" and "the piece" obscures the fact that it was not just a single article that is fueling outrage, but two articles. One is by Zaina Arafat, an adjunct assistant professor at Barnard College and a featured faculty member at the unaccredited, for-profit "School" of the New York Times. A second article, focused on food, is by Madeline Leung Coleman, whose social media indicates support for the unlawful Gaza encampment at Columbia, which culminated in the storming and occupation of a campus building, and its demand for divestment from Israel. That article matter-of-factly accuses Israel of genocide.

James Murdoch’s Lupa Systems company took control of New York on July 8, and New York’s "Habibi City" cover is being interpreted as a signal of his plans for what the press release announcing the transaction described as "the beginning of a new chapter." Murdoch is not pushing back on that idea.

Vox, which was also part of the James Murdoch deal, on August 10 published an article calling for a U.S. embargo on arms to Israel. "The Democratic Party’s burgeoning support for restricting aid and arms transfers to Israel is well-founded," the article said. "Supplying Israel with money and weapons is contrary to both America’s moral obligations and security interests. It is wrong to subsidize or provision any foreign military’s assaults on human rights. And doing so undermines global respect for both the United States and the concept of international law." The article didn’t explain how it would be in the U.S. "moral" or "security" interest to allow its ally to be overrun by Islamist terrorists, rapists, and murderers, or to turn to alternative arms suppliers such as China or Russia instead of the U.S.

The New York magazine statement that it welcomes "good faith discussion and criticism" also is a not-so-subtle attempt to shift the question from the accuracy and integrity of the magazine’s journalism—which the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, called "a blatant, disgusting double standard"—to the intentions of the magazine’s critics.

For the assignment to cover Middle Eastern food in New York City, James Murdoch hired a reporter, Coleman, who signed an October 26, 2023 "Statement of Solidarity with the Palestinian People" that claimed "Israel’s war against Gaza is an attempt to conduct genocide against the Palestinian people." The statement said, "We come together as writers, journalists, academics, artists, and other culture workers to express our solidarity with the people of Palestine. We stand with their anticolonial struggle for freedom and for self-determination, and with their right to resist occupation." Never mind the "good faith" of the critics, where is the good faith of an editor or an owner who makes such an assignment or publishes the false accusations of genocide it produces?

Simon & Schuster Doubles Down on Notorious Writer Who Calls Jews 'Ghouls,' Will Publish Her New Novel: Writer Taunts Angry 'Zionists' Who Oppose Her Deal

Simon & Schuster's partnership with a notorious antisemite who regularly calls Jews "roaches," "demons," and "ghouls" is deeper than previously reported.

Susan Abulhawa—who has projected the medieval bile for years on her X account—announced in a defiant video that the publishing giant would put out her new forthcoming novel. Simon & Schuster has already faced significant controversy and been condemned by the Anti-Defamation League for its decision to reprint two of Abulhawa's past novels through its Atria imprint.

"The Zionists have missed or don't know, but Simon & Schuster will also be publishing my new novel," Abulhawa said.

"My upcoming novel, The Sun Still Kisses Me, is not yet listed, because its release isn't until next year, but I'll post more about it soon," the author promised.

In a brief video announcing the project, Abulhawa also took aim at Jewish writers and editors who have spoken out against the collaboration—including Washington Free Beacon editor in chief Eliana Johnson and Commentary editor and Free Beacon contributor John Podhoretz—laying digitally altered video of them over foreboding music.

"Zionists are really mad," Abulhawa deadpanned.

Abulhawa promised in the video to donate all funds from the preorders of her books to the Palestinian Youth Movement. The movement "organizes events with the U.S. designated terrorist entity Samidoun" and, according to the Israeli government, has "close ties" with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, also a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization, Sen. Tom Cotton's (R., Ark.) office reported.

Abulhawa's track record of attacking Jews ("Jews" specifically, not just "Zionists") stretches back years and is in plain sight.

"We live in the time of jewish supremacist demons," Abulhawa said in a September 2025 post on X, adding that Jews were a "cultureless, rootless human aberration."

That same month, she blasted another critic as a "lying Jewish supremacist cockroach" and attacked "dual loyalty zionists," citing former Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis as an example.

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08/13 Links Pt1: Ex-Mossad Chief: MI5 Praised Us for Foiling Terror Plots in UK; Netanyahu Isn't Blocking Peace in Gaza; Hamas's Secret Weapon to Continue Ruling Gaza

From Ian:

Stephen Pollard: Netanyahu Isn't Blocking Peace in Gaza

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Israeli cabinet: "The IDF will not carry out any withdrawal [in Gaza] until Hamas is disarmed. And when I say the disarming of Hamas, it means heavy weaponry, lighter weaponry, all weaponry." He is far from alone in his response. For what should surely be obvious reasons, Israelis do not trust Hamas.

The idea that Israel should take the word of the organization behind the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust that it will now disarm should be self-evidently preposterous. There is no possibility in the real world of any deal progressing, let alone succeeding, which requires Israel to trust Hamas. Israeli opposition leaders Gadi Eisenkot, Naftali Bennett and Avigdor Lieberman have said more or less exactly the same thing as Netanyahu. Netanyahu is not an outlier on this in Israel.

The merit of the proposed plan is precisely that it does not involve trust. It is based on verification - as outlined in an interview on Channel 12 in Israel with Nickolay Mladenov, the former UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process who now leads the Board of Peace. The proposal does not require Israel to withdraw a single troop from anywhere in Gaza until the first stage of weapons decommissioning has been verified by a U.S.-led body. If Hamas does not meet its obligation to disarm, Israel remains where it is now. Netanyahu said nothing which prevents the Board of Peace plan from being implemented.

Fact Checking NBC: Did Hamas Ever Say it Would Disarm

NBC’s coverage of negotiations over a plan to ultimately rid Hamas of its weapons continues to be problematic. In at least two instances now, the outlet has presented Hamas’ agreement on disarmament as an unqualified factual description of the group’s own stated position. This comes despite a CAMERA correction request.

The first example is from August 3, when Yuliya Talmazan and Yarden Segev’s piece, “Israel conveys concerns to the U.S. about Hamas disarmament deal.” They state that Hamas has “indicated that while it agreed to disarm, this was conditional on Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza and complete cessation of ‘all forms of aggression.’”

Hamas itself disputes the characterization. The use of the word “indicated” grants Talmazan and Segev some leeway with the phrasing, but Hamas senior official and spokesman Ghazi Hamad told the Wall Street Journal on July 30 that the group “didn’t say disarmament, didn’t say handing over the weapons, and didn’t agree on any Israeli involvement.” Instead, Hamad clarifies that Hamas has agreed to “place its weapons in storage,” in control of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), Gaza’s proposed transitional, technocratic government. According to Neomi Neumann of The Washington Institute, “Israel insists on the physical removal” of weapons from Gaza’s territory, while Hamas will interpret the storage of weapons inside Gaza as meeting the deal’s requirements. The latest 15-point roadmap also does not define which weapons would be prohibited in the future Gaza managed by the NCAG.

The Journal report adds that Egyptian mediators did not “explicitly mention that Hamas agreed to disarm in an official statement, noting instead ‘their agreement to the road map’ and a future meeting in Cairo ‘to discuss implementation mechanisms and reaffirm the commitment of all parties to the terms of the agreement.’” Translated from bureaucratic speech, Hamas – infamously patient and determined to drag negotiations out – simply agreed to another lengthy process to continue talking about disarmament.

Coming four days later, Talmazan and Segev’s report should have mentioned these crucial details.

But NBC reporters erred in the same manner when covering Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s August 9 statement that the Israel Defense Forces would not withdraw until Hamas was completely disarmed. It’s to be noted that the original 20-Point Plan calls for the IDF to withdraw from the Yellow Line only after Hamas has been disarmed, a fact reiterated on August 3 by the Board, of Peace.

In the article, “Israel rejects Trump’s 15-point plan for Gaza, Netanyahu says,” Mithil Aggarwal reported that “Hamas had last month said that it would disarm, but only after Israel withdraws completely and stops all hostilities. The group also said that laying down its heavy weapons would come later in the process, conditional on the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

Even within the paragraph, there are major conditional qualifiers to Hamas’ purported statement. Once again, NBC confidently presents the word “disarm,” even after the terrorist organization’s own spokesperson disclosed that it was not currently an option.

Washington remains more optimistic. U.S. President Donald Trump stated on July 30 that negotiators had “reached a historic agreement for the complete disarmament of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza.”

NBC reported the news as if Hamas had published an official statement agreeing to the disarmament process, but without any official Hamas statement confirming that it had agreed to disarm.

Family of American Murdered in Jerusalem Sbarro Bombing Sues Female Hamas Mastermind 25 Years After Massacre

The family of a 15-year-old American girl who was killed in one of the most high-profile terrorist attacks in Israel's history is suing the Hamas operative who planned the operation in an American court for the first time, hoping to secure justice 25 years after the horrific bombing claimed their daughter's life, according to a copy of the lawsuit obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Arnold and Frimet Roth, on behalf of their daughter Malki, filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against Ahlam Aref Ahmad al-Tamimi, the female terrorist who helped plan and execute the 2001 bombing on a Sbarro restaurant in downtown Jerusalem that killed 15 people and wounded approximately 122 more, including seven children. The attack, carried out during the Second Intifada, or uprising, against Israel, sent shockwaves through the country that reverberated internationally. Al-Tamimi was sentenced in 2003 to serve 16 life terms by Israel, but was ultimately released from prison in 2011 during a prisoner release deal that granted her citizenship in Jordan.

Since that time, al-Tamimi has "publicly described her role in the Sbarro attack," "celebrated its lethality," and "expressed no remorse" for the terror bombing, the lawsuit states. Al-Tamimi even became a revered media figure while in Jordan, "hosting a weekly television program on the Hamas-affiliated Al-Quds satellite channel" from 2012 to 2016. Al-Tamimi remains on the FBI's Most Wanted list, and there is an outstanding U.S. warrant for her arrest in Jordan, which will not extradite her to face federal criminal charges originally filed in 2013.

The Roth family’s civil case—filed under the Anti-Terrorism Act in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia—offers a new pathway to hold al-Tamimi directly responsible for her crimes in an American court 25 years after their daughter was murdered. There is already legal precedent for holding foreign terrorists accountable in American civil courts, where they can be tried without the extradition necessary for a criminal trial.

"Jordan can block an extradition but it cannot block a judgment," said Mark Goldfeder, CEO and director of the National Jewish Advocacy Center (NJAC), which is handling the case alongside the Schoen Law Firm. "For twenty-five years, Ahlam Tamimi has lived free in Jordan while the Roth family lived with an empty chair at their table. Congress opened the doors of American courts to American victims of terror, and after twenty-five years, the Roths are walking through them."

Al-Tamimi remains one of the most brazen faces of terrorism living free in Jordan, where she is protected from the FBI and other federal authorities seeking her extradition. The State Department has a $5 million bounty on al-Tamimi's head and, in 2017, the Department of Justice unsealed its criminal complaint and arrest warrant.

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Lebanon About Ready To Drive Palestinian ‘Refugees’ Into Sea (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook  and  Substack pages.

Beirut, August 13 - After more than seven decades of hosting what were supposed to be temporary guests, Lebanese officials are signaling they may finally resolve the Palestinian refugee issue the traditional Middle Eastern way: by doing to their "guests" what the guests hoped would happen to the Jews when the guests moved out of the way to enable seven invading Arab forces plus local irregulars to wipe out those Jews.

Senior sources in the caretaker government confirmed this week that quiet discussions are underway to relocate the country’s remaining Palestinian camps — home to several hundred thousand people who still cannot obtain Lebanese citizenship, still maintain their own armed factions, and still treat large parts of Lebanon as staging grounds — onto barges and push them a few kilometers offshore.

“We’ve tried everything else,” one frustrated cabinet advisor told journalists. “We’ve given them land, ignored their weapons, let them veto our politics, and watched them start wars that destroy our cities. The Mediterranean is right there. It’s deep. It’s wet. And it’s not Lebanese territory. Perfect.”

The proposal, circulating in back channels between the army, certain Christian parties, and increasingly fed-up Shiite and Sunni politicians, would involve a phased “maritime transfer.” Camps in the south and Beirut’s outskirts would be loaded onto floating platforms and towed beyond the 12-mile limit, where the residents could continue their proud national project without the inconvenience of Lebanese sovereignty, electricity blackouts, or occasional attempts at actual governance.

Palestinian leaders in the camps reacted with predictable outrage, calling the plan “a second Nakba” and insisting that any solution short of full political control over Lebanon, the right of return to Haifa, and preferably a veto over Israeli existence remains non-negotiable. “We didn’t come here to leave,” one Popular Front official declared. “We came here to stay until the Zionist entity is gone. The sea is for the Jews.”

Lebanese public opinion, however, appears to be shifting. After years of economic collapse and Hezbollah’s wars with Israeli "occupation" as a pretext, many ordinary Lebanese have grown tired of the permanent temporary arrangement. Social media is already filled with dark jokes about “final status negotiations” involving life jackets and strong currents.

United Nations officials expressed deep concern, warning that such a move would violate international law, human rights norms, and decades of carefully-maintained Palestine Refugee industry funding - as distinct from ordinary refugees, who cannot pass that status down through the generations. One UNRWA spokesperson insisted the only acceptable solution remains the complete dismantling of Israel so the refugees can “return” to homes their grandparents fled in 1948. Lebanon’s response has been notably terse: “Your turn to host them.”

As one Lebanese general put it privately: “They keep saying they want to liberate Palestine from the river to the sea. Fine. We’ll help them start with the sea part.”

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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)

 

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Amnesty Canada has not said anything about skyrocketing antisemitism in Canada

Amnesty Canada tweeted this yesterday, twice:

How prevalent are anti-Black crimes in Canada compared to antisemitic crimes?

Since 2023, the number of anti-Jewish hate crimes in Canada has outnumbered the anti-Black hate crimes.

There are roughly four times as many Blacks in Canada as Jews, so the per capita rate of crimes against Jews dwarf those of Blacks. 

And the same is true if you only count violent hate crimes. Per capita, antisemitic hate crimes far outnumber violent anti-Black hate crimes. A Jew is between 2-3 times more likely to be the victim of a violent hate crime in Canada than a Black person.

There is plenty of news coverage of the dramatic rise of antisemitism in Canada.

But Amnesty Canada has not written a word about antisemitism. Amnesty has issued no comparable statement about Jews being attacked in Canada. It has published no research report on Canadian antisemitism and launched no campaign demanding protection for Canadian Jews, even though Jews suffer hate crimes at vastly higher rates per capita than Black Canadians.

OK, that's not quite true. I did find one word in a quote from Ketty Nivyabandi, Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada’s English-speaking section, in an article about the first 100 days of the Canadian government.

It blames Canadian antisemitism on Israel. 

“Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and as a long-time ally of Israel, Canada has an imperative duty to stop it,” Nivyabandi said. “Across the country, Canadians are horrified by the devastation Israel is inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza and are desperately calling for the government to act, while Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian racism and antisemitism rise to alarming levels at home.”

That is it. Amnesty Canada's only mention of the dramatic rise in antisemitism against Canadian Jews appears in a section about Israel's alleged genocide in Gaza, and says that rising antisemitism is a result of Israeli actions. 

Amnesty's only acknowledgment of antisemitism in Canada in recent years comes with its explanation already attached.

Israel did it.

This goes beyond neglect. Amnesty Canada clearly knows that antisemitism is rising; its own secretary general says so. It simply has no apparent interest in protecting Canadian Jews.

Jews become relevant when Amnesty can place their suffering inside its case against Israel. Canadian Jews aren't victims to Amnesty: they are props.

Amnesty Canada spends considerable energy telling Canadians whose lives matter. Its own record tells us where Jewish lives rank.

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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)

 

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08/12 Links Pt2: 9/11: The Lesson We Forgot; An endorsement ends any ‘shomer’ myth; 66% of Jewish New Yorkers oppose Mamdani, 75% against DSA; New York Magazine Erased My Family from the Middle East

From Ian:

A Discussion of Rachmil Bryks, May God Avenge Their Blood: A Holocaust Memoir Triptych

If there were justice in the literary world, this moment would be noticed by many: a new translation of Rachmil Bryks’ works had appeared. Instead of celebrating a major literary event, one confronts a question: “Who is Rachmil Bryks?”

Sadly, one has to educate an English-language readership. I hadn’t heard of him either. He was a famous Yiddish writer who wrote a great deal about the Holocaust in Poland. He grew up in Skarżysko-Kamienna, Poland, among Hasidim, and moved to Łódż, where ultimately he survived the ghetto. In 1946, he went to Sweden and from there to the United States. He lived nearly two decades in New York City until his untimely death in 1978. His many books in Yiddish can be acquired free of charge (download) from the National Yiddish Book Center.

History and Horowitz: Jewish and Russian Cultures is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Admittedly, there are many great writers of the Holocaust, so what makes Bryks a stand-out? For me, it is his range, he has pieces that pay compliments to Shalom Aleichem (“Those Who Didn’t Survive”), and other pieces that share traits from Ahron Appelfeld. However, many of his works, such as the Holocaust Triptych, resemble Tadeusz Borowski. In my opinion, Borowski was the finest of all. His enigmatic, condensed, and sparing style hinted at depths that readers were asked to imagine, to fill in the silence left by the author. Borowski told what he saw in flashes and narrow slices, but with great precision and intricate detail. But by leaving out his analysis, he forced the reader to sort out the horrors and draw his/her own conclusions. Thus readers became contributors to the text. It was an effective system.

Bryks is a bit like that. He is a writer, not a philosopher, theologian, moralist, or historian. His material is always local, visits to family, descriptions of relatives, neighbors, or strangers encountered in the here and now. The material in this book is all autobiographical, in the “Triptych” he describes his journeys during the first days of war, his arrest by the Nazis and experience in a work camp. Later he will describe his deportation to Auschwitz. Because this is real literary craft, it is useless to paraphrase. As Tolstoy said in answer to a question of what War and Peace was about, “To answer, I’d have to write the book again from beginning to end.”

To give a sense of his style, I quote from the third part, “From Agony to Life,” when he is in Auschwitz. The chapter is entitled, “The Wild Beast,” and in it Bryks describes a German overseer of the kitchen, Hermann, who takes a young boy, Pinek, to bed nightly and beats a different prisoner with a metal pipe daily. The anecdotal story reflects bare description without analysis.

9/11: The Lesson We Forgot

This is where the political horseshoe closes. On one side, a conspiratorial far right sees hidden Jewish power behind governments, wars and history. On another, a radical anti-Zionist left can arrive at strikingly similar conclusions through different language.

One calls it Jewish power, another calls it Zionism. One says Mossad knew about 9/11, another says the IDF committed 7 October.

The vocabulary changes, the conspiracy survives.

And now comes the warning, one we should all recognise. Consider the cultural distance travelled from “Never Forget” to Hasan Piker saying “America deserved 9/11”.

Increasingly, the question after an atrocity becomes not simply why someone committed it, but what the victim did to provoke it. Context becomes mitigation, explanation begins to resemble justification, and the ideological agency of the perpetrator disappears beneath an examination of the victim’s supposed culpability.

We saw it after 7 October, and this is one aspect of why Israel and the Jews matter to the 25th anniversary of September 11th.

Jews are sometimes described as the canary in the coal mine. What I mean by that is simple, historically, we have an uncomfortable habit of finding ourselves early in the queue.

Israel is not the only target of Islamist extremism and Jews are not its only victims. Al-Qaeda’s principal enemy was America, ISIS murdered Muslims, Christians, Yazidis and Jews, Islamist terrorists have struck London, Paris, Madrid, Manchester, Brussels, Mumbai, Bali and countless cities across the Muslim world.

The West keeps hearing “Israel” and assuming the argument ends at Israel, history suggests otherwise.

Israel is not the final destination, Jews are not the final target, Palestine is not necessarily the limit of the cause. 9/11 should have taught us that.

In a month’s time, the names will be read again, nearly 3,000 of them. I will think about sitting in my car in Sunderland, listening to those names and finally crying for something I had witnessed twelve months earlier but had somehow been unable to process.

For millions alive today, September 11th is history; for me, it never will be. I remember where I stood, I remember the confusion and the fear, I remember the towers coming down and the sensation that the world was changing around me before any of us understood what the new world would look like.

Perhaps that is why our collective amnesia troubles me so much. I was there the last time the West discovered, in the most horrific way imaginable, that an ideology incubated thousands of miles away did not intend to remain there. I watched the towers fall.

Twenty-five years later, we still remember the planes and the buildings, those who jumped and the firefighters who ran in, above all, we remember the names.

What we appear to have forgotten is the warning.

That is why I am writing this now, a month before September 11th. I don’t want to argue, I want to remember. The dead deserve that much. But remembrance without learning eventually becomes ritual.

“Never Forget” was supposed to be both a promise to those we lost and a warning to those who remained.

Twenty-five years later, we haven’t forgotten 9/11.

We have forgotten what “Never Forget” was supposed to mean.

Amb. George Deek: The Christian Israel you are not being shown

If you genuinely want to know whether Christians are flourishing in a country, there are better measures than the behavior of its worst citizens.

Start with the most basic question:

Are Christians disappearing?

In Israel, they are not.

In 1950, Israel was home to roughly 34,000 Christians. Today there are about 184,000, and the community continues to grow.

Then look at what Christians actually do here.

Consider one image that tells you more about Christian integration than a hundred government brochures.

Justice Salim Joubran was an Arab Christian justice of Israel's Supreme Court. He sat on the panel that sent former Israeli president Moshe Katsav to prison. Think about that sentence. An Arab Christian judge helped send the Jewish president of the Jewish state to prison.

And nobody in Israel regarded his ethnicity or religion as an issue. He was a Supreme Court justice doing his job. That is the point.

Christians are physicians and hospital directors, academics and businesspeople, mayors, police officers, soldiers and diplomats.

I happen to be one of them.

The boy from the Christian Scouts in Jaffa eventually joined Israel's diplomatic service and became the first Christian appointed to represent Israel as an ambassador.

Today, I serve as Israel's special envoy to the Christian World, a position created specifically to deepen Israel's relationship with Christian communities around the world. Quite an elaborate way for a country supposedly hostile to Christianity to behave.

There are other inconvenient facts. In 2014, Israel formally recognized the Aramean nationality, giving members of ancient Aramaic and Syriac Christian traditions official recognition of an identity rooted in Christianity's earliest history.

Israel is also investing in Christianity's past and future here.

A few days ago, I visited the excavations at Bethsaida on the Sea of Galilee, where archaeologists identified what is likely to have been the hometown of the Apostles Peter and Andrew.

I watched Israeli and American archaeologists, Jews and Christians, literally digging the world of Jesus back out of the earth.

There is something wonderfully inconvenient about that image: The country supposedly erasing Christianity is uncovering the village of the Apostles.

And Israel is already preparing for 2030, when Christians will mark 2,000 years since the baptism of Jesus, an anniversary expected to bring enormous numbers of pilgrims to the Holy Land. Basilica of the Annunciation

Something interesting is happening beyond Israel's borders as well. Recent polling in Lebanon found strong support among its Christian communities for peace with Israel: 77% among Maronites and 72% among Orthodox Christians.

Perhaps Middle Eastern Christians, after watching what has happened to ancient communities in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere, are beginning to ask questions that old political slogans cannot answer.

Perhaps Jews and Christians in this region have more invested in one another's survival than generations of conflict allowed either side to admit.

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