Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, February 12, 2026

Cesspool Offended At Comparison To Knesset (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Moshav Keshet, February 12 - A collection pond for raw sewage voiced its displeasure today upon discovering that some writers and pundits have such a low opinion of its function that they wish to associate it with something as repulsive as Israel's parliament.

The pond, known locally by the euphemism "the pool," after decades of faithful service to the moshav's septic system, issued a rare public statement through a spokesperson who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid further contamination of its reputation. “We process what enters us with quiet dignity,” the spokesperson declared. “We settle solids, digest organics, and release clarified effluent in a manner consistent with environmental regulations—most of the time. To compare that steady, unglamorous labor to the Knesset insults not only our integrity but the very concept of functional governance.”

The offense traces to a viral social-media thread last week in which a prominent commentator described a particularly fractious plenary session as “a cesspool of egos and horse-trading.” The phrase ricocheted across Hebrew X, Telegram channels, and at least one op-ed in Haaretz, prompting the pond to retain legal counsel. “We tolerate metaphor,” the spokesperson continued, “but this crosses into defamation. A cesspool performs an essential public service: it contains chaos, neutralizes pathogens, and prevents overflow into the surrounding environment. The Knesset, by contrast, appears designed to generate toxic overflow on a daily basis.”

A slide circulated among local agricultural WhatsApp groups—titled “Comparative Utility Metrics: Cesspool vs. Knesset (2020–2025)”—illustrated the disparity. The pond scored consistently high on “predictable output” (effluent quality within 85–92% of standards) and “minimal public scandal” (zero coalition or structural integrity collapses). The Knesset chart showed volatile spikes in “procedural filibusters,” “no-confidence motions,” and “ministerial resignations due to corruption probes,” with a flatline in “legislative productivity per session.” A small footnote noted that both entities produce methane, though only one receives subsidies for it.

When reached for comment, a veteran MK from the opposition shrugged off the pond's complaint. “Every system has its critics,” the lawmaker said. “We debate, we posture, we occasionally pass a budget after midnight. The pond just sits there and ferments. If it wants respect, perhaps it should try holding a filibuster or leaking classified documents to the press.” The pond's spokesperson retorted that it has never leaked anything unintentionally, a record unmatched in either branch of government.

A Moshav Keshet dairy farmer who relies on the pond's output for irrigation defended its honor. “It does what it promises,” he said. “Unlike certain coalition agreements that evaporate the morning after signing.” He added that the pond has never demanded a state-funded pension or immunity from prosecution, and its integrity and reliability score far higher than any political entity.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Magda Teter, a historian at Fordham University and author of Christian Supremacy and the National Jewish Book Award-winning Blood Libel, was just named the inaugural Scholar-in-Residence at the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism. Her first public lecture, titled "On Jewish Suffering, Empathy, and the Need to Rethink Antisemitism," took place this week.

Based on what we know from the Yale Daily News and Yale's own announcement, Teter wants to move the field beyond the exhausting definitional debates — IHRA vs. Jerusalem Declaration, is criticism of Israel antisemitism, and so on — and toward something more fundamental.

Based on her earlier lectures and her book Christian Supremacy, we can see what she has in mind.

Teter draws a sharp contrast between how antisemitism and racism are studied academically:

Antisemitism studies tends to focus on perpetrators — their texts, ideologies, conspiracy theories, and emotional hatred. It analyzes the haters.

Racism studies tends to focus on the harmed — legal exclusion, economic disparity, incarceration rates, structural consequences. It analyzes systemic impact on victims.

Each field, in other words, is doing only half the job.

If antisemitism studies focuses on perpetrators without examining how hatred restructured Jewish lives, it is studying the disease without examining what it does to the patient.

And if racism studies focuses on structural harm without examining the theological and philosophical architecture that made racial hierarchy morally coherent in the first place, it is studying symptoms without understanding the underlying logic.

A complete analysis of any form of bigotry needs both: the intellectual architecture that made it coherent and the lived impact on the people targeted.

Her work on how theology became law, combined with her observation that antisemitism studies focuses on haters while racism studies focuses on the harmed, points to something neither field has fully modeled: there is a feedback loop that operated for centuries in Christian Europe.

It worked roughly like this:

Theology → Law → Economic Adaptation → Stereotype → Renewed Hostility → Law

Christian theology cast Jews as subordinate — "the elder shall serve the younger." That theological idea was codified into law: Jews were prohibited from holding authority over Christians, from owning land, from joining guilds, from holding public office.

Those legal restrictions forced Jews into specific economic roles — finance, trade, moneylending. Those adaptations then fed back into stereotypes: "Jews control money." "Jews are parasitic." The stereotypes reinforced hostility, which produced new restrictive laws. And the cycle continued.

Antisemitism wasn't just hatred floating in the air. It was an architecture — theology became law, law shaped lives, and shaped lives reinforced the theology.

We can then push this framework into more modern territory.

The historical feedback loop depended heavily on law — formal legal restrictions that structured Jewish (and Black) vulnerability. In modern liberal democracies, those explicit laws are gone. The 1964 Civil Rights Act, Jewish emancipation in Europe, constitutional equality guarantees — these dismantled the formal legal architecture of bigotry.

So if the feedback loop requires a legal component to be durable, where is it now?

I cannot answer that for racism studies, although I imagine there are still plenty of laws and regulations that are still racist in effect. This is not my field.

Yet for daily, personal antisemitism — harassment, vandalism, campus hostility — the law piece is largely absent. There is no legal structure forcing Jews into particular economic roles or restricting their citizenship. There are university policies and how they are selectively enforced, and while those are important, it is not the same role as state law has been in the past. Daily antisemitism is still real and harmful, but national laws protect Jews at least as much as they are used to attack Jews. Law doesn't have the structural durability that the old loop produced.

For Israel, however, the picture is very different.

The legal arena hasn't disappeared. It has scaled upward — from domestic law to international law and from antisemitism to antizionism.

The structural parallel is compelling. In medieval Europe, church law prohibited Jews from holding authority over Christians. Today, international legal frameworks are used to contest the legitimacy of Jewish sovereignty itself.

The legal categories being deployed — "apartheid," "genocide," "illegal occupation," "colonialism" — are not just political accusations. They are formal legal terms that trigger institutional consequences: UN resolutions, ICC investigations, sanctions campaigns, academic boycotts, corporate divestment.

And just as the old legal restrictions produced a feedback loop, so does the new one:

Legal accusation → Institutional action → Political isolation → Behavioral adaptation → Reinforced accusation

When Israel is framed in international law as an apartheid state or a genocidal regime, that framing doesn't just sit in a legal brief. It shapes UN voting patterns, campus culture, media framing, and diplomatic relations.

Israel adapts to the pressure. It adds layers of policies for how to wage wars it never wanted. Israel's enemies take advantage of those controls to exploit them. Israel tries to come up with creative ways to protect the lives of its people - and this often leads to the next round of accusations or even new international laws and novel interpretations created just for Israel. The loop sustains itself.

This is structurally parallel to what Teter documents historically, but at a different scale. Where Jews were once restricted by municipal and church law, Jewish sovereignty is now contested in global legal forums. The arena has changed. The structural mechanics haven't.

If Teter is right that antisemitism studies needs to examine the impact on Jews — not just the ideology of the haters — then it also needs to examine how international law functions as the contemporary legal architecture of delegitimization under the guise of "anti-Zionism."

That means antisemitism studies can't just treat the Israel question as a definitional debate ("is criticism of Israel antisemitic?"). It needs to ask a structural question: How does the selective application of international legal categories function as a mechanism of legitimacy contestation against Jewish sovereignty?

When legal categories are applied asymmetrically — when "apartheid" is invoked against the one Jewish state but not against states with far worse records — something beyond ordinary legal analysis is operating. But it is using law as a weapon against Jews, in startlingly similar ways to medieval antisemitic laws, and that is a pattern that has been understudied.

Teter has given antisemitism studies a powerful framework. The feedback loop — from ideas to law to lived experience and back again — is the right model. But if we take that model seriously, we have to follow it where it leads.

The law didn't disappear from the antisemitism equation with Western emancipation and enlightenment,

It scaled up.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

"Anti-Zionist" groups silent on anti-Zionist vandalism at Maryland synagogue

On Tuesday night, the Shaare Tefila synagogue in Olney, MD was defaced with anti-Zionist graffiti.

The acronym "AZAB," short for "All Zionists Are Bastards," was painted on the synagogue's main sign, and a sign that is anti-hate as well as a sign supporting Israel. The main sign also had a swastika, and the pro-Israel sign said "Genocide."

Suddenly, all the "progressive" voices who claim to be against antisemitism are struck mute when the attack on a synagogue is done by one of their own.

Neither JVP, SJP nor IfNotNow condemned the vandalism, even their campus or local branches.

The one interesting exception is CAIR-Maryland. Even though the vandalism is clearly anti-Israel, it chose to pretend that it was "Neo-Nazi Vandalism."

AZAB is a variation of the progressive, anarchist "ACAB" - All Cops Are Bastards. It is not used by right wing antisemites at all. CIAR knows this - it linked to one of the news stories that did not mention the acronym at all.

One other prominent person commented - to complain about Jews "weaponizing" antisemitism when they are the victims of a hate crime. Imani B., a social media influencer with hundreds of thousands of followers, posted on Threads that it was "probably an inside job" that had nothing to do with "Isntreal."

Anyone who denies that anti-Zionism is a form of antisemitism 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)

02/11 Links Pt2: Couldn’t the Israelophobes give it a rest for one day?; The Jew-Trolling Right’s Empty Pageantry; ‘Zio’ Is the New ‘N-Word’; The Arab Who Taught Us Zionism

From Ian:

Brendan O’Neill: Couldn’t the Israelophobes give it a rest for one day?

It is astonishing, and nauseating, that people howled for more ‘intifada’ as the Israeli president was embracing a woman who lost her husband to the ‘intifada’ at Bondi, to that Jewphobic frenzy carried out by suspected Islamists. And they were calling for intifada not only in the Holy Land but in ‘Gadigal’ too, in Sydney, in the very city that just suffered one of the worst massacres of Jews of modern times. What, 15 dead people aren’t enough for you? You want more?

The events in Sydney shone an unforgiving light on the cult of Palestinianism. The cruelty of this bourgeois mania now stands starkly exposed. Its inhumanity is clear for all to see. These keffiyeh-shrouded agitators pose as anti-war and yet it is apocalyptic violence they dream of. ‘Intifada!’, they wail, knowing well that to president Herzog and the Jews of Australia, that word will conjure memories of the slaughter of Jews in discotheques and pizza parlours by the madmen of Hamas.

It seems there is no ‘pause’ button on Israelophobia. It is wholly unrestrained by morality and basic decency. It is extraordinary that not one organiser in Australia’s ‘pro-Palestine’ lobby thought to say: ‘Let’s give it a rest while they commemorate Bondi. We’ll get back to our Herzog-bashing tomorrow.’ Instead we have been treated to side-by-side footage of Jews weeping at Bondi as leftish hysterics in the city bellowed for more of the very violence that consumed their loved ones. What sickness is this?

Then came the final insult: the mob stole victimhood from the Jews. The New South Wales Police Force cleared protesters off the streets. The protest had been officially banned, so those who gathered were breaking the law. The cops dragged away a group of young Muslim men who were praying to Mecca. And that is literally the only thing Australia’s chattering classes are yapping about today: this supposedly ‘Islamophobic’ assault on pious Muslims.

It’s nonsense, of course. That street-praying was no mere religious act – it was a political provocation carried out as part of the anti-Herzog protests. Being a Muslim does not give one special immunity from the laws of the land. Yet this is where we’ve ended up: with grieving Jews being drowned out and Muslims being held up as the *real* victims. It is brazen narrative theft, with people’s focus being ruthlessly dragged from the racist murder of Jews to the supposedly ‘racist’ dispersal of praying men.

I’m not easily shocked, but the madness that befell Sydney yesterday felt genuinely unnerving. It felt like the salt of Israelophobia rubbed into the wound of Bondi’s anti-Semitism. A shameful day.

Seth Mandel: The Jew-Trolling Right’s Empty Pageantry

“Whether a student says, ‘I believe there are only two genders,’ or ‘I believe Palestinians are undergoing a genocide,’ they should not be silenced or punished for expressing their beliefs.”

This snack-size bite of Burkean wisdom comes from Sameerah Munshi, who appears to have worked with former Miss California Carrie Prejean Boller to hijack the president’s commission on religious liberty, leading to a bizarre hearing yesterday and Boller’s dismissal from the commission today.

Boller seems to have accepted a position on the esteemed committee because of her heartfelt belief in her own need for more social media followers. Enter Munshi, an anti-Israel activist who serves as an adviser to the same religious liberty commission. Munshi, a booster of the rabid anti-Semite Candace Owens, has been—no doubt out of the goodness of her heart—helping to elevate Boller’s own personal Owens-esque cry for attention. On Munshi’s Instagram, for example, one of the few posts is a shared posting of Boller’s claim that “Gaza was a precursor to the release of the Epstein files.”

According to Boller, the goal of the you-know-whos involved in Gaza and Epstein is to “normalize and justify the torture and killing of innocent children.” The post ends with a call to solve the problem with this one neat trick: “Defund Israel.”

Today the religious liberty commission’s director, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, announced that Boller is being removed from the committee. “No member of the Commission has the right to hijack a hearing for their own personal and political agenda on any issue. This is clearly, without question, what happened Monday in our hearing on antisemitism in America.” No doubt she will start one heck of a podcast now, though.

Boller was booted for turning yesterday’s committee hearing into a circus by raving like a lunatic about Zionism. The recent Catholic convert attempted to do so in the name of Catholicism, but Catholics on the commission patiently explained church doctrine to Boller and corrected her Jew-baiting claims.

It’s worth noting that the Munshi-Boller duo’s first choice to hijack the hearing wasn’t to have Boller be the one to deliver the rant. Via Boller, they tried to feed the commission names of witnesses who would deliver the anti-Zionist lines themselves: Norman Finkelstein topped their list of prospective guests. “All of our suggested witnesses for the hearing on Anti-Semitism were denied,” she complained. “All of our suggested witnesses were also critical of the Israeli government.”

Daniel Finkelstein: how the world’s antisemites turned on me

The thrust of these messages, hundreds this time rather than thousands, is that it is deeply hypocritical of me to believe that there should be a country for Jews (Israel) but not for English people.

I tried rational argument. I pointed out that I did want a country for English people, that we had one and I live in it. I also said that Israel wasn’t exclusively for Jews and that it wouldn’t need to exist in the first place if there weren’t so many people interested in deporting me. But in the end I found these exchanges as unavailing as it would be to argue with someone who called the Holocaust “the Holly”.

What would my parents have thought of all this? They would definitely have agreed it was right to confront it. That’s what my grandfather had done in Germany in the Twenties and Thirties, after all. They would have been realistic. Because Jews are a small minority in almost every country in which they settle, this kind of antisemitism has lasted for hundreds of years and always been dangerous. They would also definitely have found it upsetting. Anyone would. Particularly the fact that it comes from young people in the United States, because the young and Americans were people they believed in.

But one of the most important things about both of them is that they had a sense of proportion. They were never complacent. Yet they weren’t going to live their lives as victims, despite what had happened to them. They wouldn’t want me too either. And I won’t.

In the history of civilisation, I don’t think there’s been a better time to be alive or a better place to live than now and here. I think that’s an objectively defensible statement. But it’s also how I feel.

My parents didn’t just survive. They lived. And I am doing that too.

‘Zio’ Is the New ‘N-Word’

What’s most telling—and disheartening—about the entire Odessa A’Zion saga is her use of the word “Zio” to distance herself from Zionism. Fear is clearly the dominant motivation here even if A’Zion cannot fully recognize it. Fear of career damage and professional decline. Of social media attacks or eventual ostracism. Fear of being maligned and misunderstood—but ultimately fear for her safety.

This is where “Zio” and the “N-word” most odiously converge—both are agents of unbridled hate speech doing double duty as a call to arms. Except one is anathema, and the other flows freely without consequence.

Which is why I was so certain, upon receiving my first accusations of being a “Zio,” it was unlikely to be my last. In both the centrist precincts I currently inhabit and the progressive communities that shaped my past, “N-gger” is a word that is simply never spoken. But in both worlds, “Zio” is screamed louder than ever.

To be sure, some who use the term “Zio” think that they can deploy it to disavow the Israeli government without defaming Israel or its people. Seemingly, that’s what Odessa A’Zion had in mind. This is, of course, an impossibility, as it is Zionism that created the State of Israel and all that it contains. But ultimately, most who chant “Zio” want Israel destroyed, and many want its Jews lynched en masse, just like so many African Americans before them.

The fact is that most Jews, across the political spectrum, are probably too fearful to openly compare “Zio” to the “N-word,” lest they be canceled or condemned. But having been the target of both slurs, I can attest that their ideological contiguity could not be any clearer.

“Gaza, Gaza make us proud, put the Zio in the ground,” shouted Oxford student Samuel Williams in London earlier this year at a demonstration by the aggressively anti-Israel Palestine Coalition.

Kind of reminds me of a Klan rally.

02/11 Links Pt1: Hamas’ World Vision Operative and the Campaign to Obstruct His Trial; Guterres faces backlash for congratulating Iranian regime; France calls on UN rapporteur Albanese to resign

From Ian:

James Kirchick: The Chutzpah of Yoram Hazony

The thrust of Hazony’s argument is that combatting anti-Semitism is as alienating or more alienating to voters than anti-Semitism itself. This reasoning is both morally and tactically wrong. Polls continue to show that a large majority of conservatives support Israel and oppose anti-Semitism. And yet Hazony believes that the 25 percent of the party that is exercised about anti-Semitism should avoid hurting the feelings of the 10 percent who are anti-Semites. Tucker Carlson, Hazony said, is “a very smart, passionate, and very likeable man when you meet him in person.” At the first NatCon conference in Washington, D.C., “he gave one of the best speeches we have ever hosted.” Moreover, “Tucker has been saying—as clear as the day—that he is not an anti-Semite.” Acting like the tough Israeli sabra, Hazony is the cowering Jew of the shtetl, furious at his fellow Jews for provoking anti-Semites.

Hazony’s analysis of American politics and history—epitomized in his laughable claim that Lindsay Graham, Ted Cruz, and Mike Pompeo are the ideological heirs of Nelson Rockefeller and John Lindsay—is as apt as his prognostication skills. In a November interview with Ross Douthat of the New York Times, Hazony said that he was “hoping” Vice President Vance will have “the skill of determining what the boundaries of the coalition are.” The following month, Vance decried “endless, self-defeating purity tests” and righteously affirmed that he would not “bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to deplatform.” Hazony also told Douthat, “I assume that Heritage is going to solve the problem [of anti-Semitism]. I know a little bit about what steps they’re taking, and I think it’s very, very likely that Heritage is going to get on an appropriate and excellent path.” As of this writing, more than 60 senior Heritage staff have left the think tank since Roberts avowed the institution’s unflinching loyalty to Carlson.

While Hazony feigns at playing a moderating force within the movement, what he’s really doing is covering his own tracks, desperately attempting to retain his influence by whitewashing the egregious behavior of his allies and the logical outcomes of his own philosophy. Through his books (The Virtue of Nationalism and Conservatism: A Rediscovery) and conferences, Hazony has been a principal figure in the drive to undermine universalist Enlightenment values as the basis of the American founding. According to Hazony, those who believe such hogwash are “imperialists” who support “the ideal of an international government or regime that imposes its will on subject nations when its officials regard this as necessary.” Proper nationalists, by contrast, believe that “nations should be free to set their own course in the absence of such an international government or regime.” Into the former category Hazony places the Third Reich, the European Union, and the late Charles Krauthammer.

Furthermore, American conservatives have got their history all wrong, a failure for which they must “repent.” The real intellectual fathers of the American Revolution are not John Locke and Thomas Jefferson, whose classical liberalism Hazony conflates with the antinomianism of the 1960s, but rather the 15th-century English jurist John Fortescue and the 17th-century John Selden, whose writings he uses to endorse the concept of America having a state-backed religion (Christianity). If this fake history sounds like a right-wing version of the 1619 Project, that’s because it is.

The rise in anti-Semitism on the right is attributable to a handful of individuals whom Hazony is too cowardly and embarrassed to condemn. Like a vengeful alcoholic at an intervention, he is lashing out and blaming everyone but himself for the wreckage he helped create—the mirror-image of the left-wing Jew who makes excuses for his anti-Semitic comrades. Imagining himself a world-class intellectual, he is, for lack of a better term, a moron. How else could he have thought that forging alliances with European-style blood-and-soil nationalists would be good for the Jews, or America?

Hazony sees himself as a scholar-statesman on the level of a Jabotinsky or Ben-Gurion when he’s really an arriviste. In a reprehensible attempt to protect his access to power, Hazony is willing to gainsay his American co-religionists, who know better than him the threats they face. Watching Hazony’s Jerusalem speech reminded me of no one so much as Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf from Philip Roth’s novel The Plot Against America, in which Charles Lindbergh defeats Franklin Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election and keeps the country out of World War II. The oleaginous Bengelsdorf, who supported Lindbergh, becomes the new president’s court Jew. “I have encountered considerable hostility from members of the Jewish community for allying myself in the 1940 election with the Lindbergh campaign,” Bengelsdorf tells a Jewish family, one of whose sons lost a leg fighting with the Canadian army against the Nazis. “I am pleased to tell you that it took no more than two or three sessions alone with the president to get him to relinquish his misconceptions and to appreciate the manifold nature of Jewish life in America.”

Alas, not even Bengelsdorf’s obsequiousness can outweigh the fact of his Jewishness, and the FBI arrests him for being “among the ringleaders of the Jewish conspiratorial plot against America.” At the end of the book, Bengelsdorf is released and writes a face-saving memoir in which he admits the error of his ways. At this point in his intellectual career, a mea culpa is the least Yoram Hazony can do.

Commentary PodCast: The Price of Chutzpah

Today we are joined by Commentary's new Washington commentary columnist Jamie Kirchick to discuss his new piece on Yoram Hazony. Plus the positive job report, Trump's deal-making obsession on the backdrop on Netanyahu's visit to Washington, and John once again recommends Natan Sharansky's Fear No Evil.

Human Rights Watch’s Frankenstein moment

Shakir’s tactics were not deviations. They were the logical outcome of habits the institution had long tolerated — even rewarded — when they advanced approved narratives. Over time, small permissions sent a clear signal: toxic behavior was acceptable, limits were flexible, standards negotiable.

I saw those habits take hold firsthand.

In 2019 and 2021, I raised concerns with multiple senior staff members about what I saw as a growing “lack of proportionality, context, and balance” in work. I warned that internal discourse was drifting away from HRW’s stated values and that published work “in structure, content, and tone does not meet basic standards of balance and professionalism.” There was no meaningful response.

By 2022, resistance to internal scrutiny was more explicit. The Israel-Palestine chapter of the World Report — HRW’s global review of abuses that I oversaw — became a battleground.

One exchange involved the trial of Mohammed al-Halabi, a World Vision employee. The draft described the proceedings as a “mockery of due process.” But it did not mention the charges against him — that he was accused of funneling money to Hamas. When I asked Shakir to note the charges, as per normal standards of balance, he declined, saying, “The charges are wild.”

In emails sent over my head, Shakir said my review “smacked of being selective.”

A manager reminded him that I reviewed all chapters, including his, and backed my position: “We should never mention a case without mentioning what the charges are. If we think the charges are not credible, we should explain why.” It was a relief — but rare.

For the most part, managers placated, ignored, and excused. “This has been mostly instructive as to how things appear to work with Omar and who calls the shots,” I wrote to a manager after several bruising rounds with Shakir. “Three of us raised issues, including yourself, and in a call to me, you said various elements that remain are not acceptable. And yet you totally back down.”

Accommodation often reflected ideological alignment. But it also sometimes reflected quiet capitulation by an older guard increasingly overwhelmed by strident activist tactics. Watching them try to restrain the shift was like watching Canute try to hold back the tide. “I’m torn between saying the future is clear and I’m not part of it — and taking a stand,” one told me. “It depends how much energy I have on any given day.”

Whatever energy did exist proved insufficient; an increasingly divisive, outraged, aggressive way of doing business continued to gain ground. Foreshadowing last week’s petition signed by 200 staff, Shakir played a key role in rallying some 120 employees after October 7 to pressure senior managers to include references to Israeli “apartheid” in a press release about hostages.

“Argumentation” and “balance” were giving way to “messaging” and “narrative” — increasingly amplified by a new, under-the-radar partner: celebrities.

In the days after October 7, staff referenced talks with “Disney,” “top-tier celebrities,” and the “Hadid sisters” — American-Palestinian influencers Gigi and Bella Hadid, whose rhetoric since has included very familiar language: Israeli “apartheid,” colonialism, and ethnic cleansing.

Human Rights Watch’s own methodology holds that while individuals commit abuses, responsibility ultimately rests with the institutions that enable, direct, or fail to restrain them.

Its public fallout with Shakir is a lesson for institutions that believe they can harness ideology and activism — even when doing so strains their own standards — without those same forces eventually turning inward and coming for them too.

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are the sole responsibility of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

“We’re not experts in Islamic law — but we’re pretty sure scamming the American people for a living violates every religion,” declared Republican National Committee Press Secretary Kiersten Pels.

She said it with that familiar Western confidence—the kind that assumes every faith, deep down, plays by roughly the same moral rules we do. In this case, the remark came as people were asking hard questions about Rep. Ilhan Omar’s husband, Tim Mynett, whose wine venture eStCru allegedly defrauded an investor out of $300,000 (settled in court), stiffed winemakers, and limped to its grave with just $650 left in the bank. Mynett converted to Islam to marry Omar. Yet he built a business selling bottles named “The Devil’s Lie” and “Blockchain.” Alcohol. Straight-up haram. Forbidden.

Somehow these details get hand-waved away while the financial sleight-of-hand is the thing that raises eyebrows.

And this is the crux of the problem.

Too many in the West look at something like Omar and Mynett’s improprieties and think, Dishonesty is wrong in every religion, right? As if Islam were just Christianity or Judaism with different holidays. As if the moral grammar is identical.

It’s nothing new. We’ve heard the soothing bromides about Islam coming out of Westerners’ mouths since forever.

George W. Bush, for example, called Islam a faith that inspires “honesty, and justice, and compassion,” insisting that we all share the same beliefs regarding God’s justice and human responsibility. Barack Obama stood in Cairo and spoke of justice, compassion, and tolerance, as if these were universal values—as if Muslims see these things the same way as Jews or Christians.

Some bigwigs, notably Pope Benedict XVI and Kofi Annan spoke of the overlapping commitments of the three major religions, to dignity, charity, and basic human goodness. Assumptions that are demonstrably untrue and that lull Westerners into complacency, dangerously unprepared for the wall they keep slamming into. Repeatedly. Without learning anything about Islam in the process.

American policymakers consistently misread Middle Eastern dynamics shaped by Islamic history, tribal loyalties, honor culture, grievance narratives, and religious doctrine. Western negotiators prioritize signed agreements, institutional trust, and reciprocal transparency. Regional actors often prioritize long-term positioning, tactical ambiguity, and fluid alliances built on immediate interests rather than enduring value alignment. Sunni Hamas cooperates with Shi’ite Iran despite doctrinal hostility. Iranian negotiations repeatedly coincide with continued proxy warfare and nuclear advancement. Statements frequently serve strategic positioning rather than candid moral declaration.

The negotiations with Hamas are illustrative of the West’s misunderstanding of the Islamic mindset. Donald Trump has been pushing hard on his 20-point peace plan for Gaza that began with a ceasefire that isn’t. There are daily Hamas breaches targeting IDF soldiers. Yet Trump continues to express total confidence that Hamas will disarm in Phase 2.

In Davos last month, Trump warned that Hamas must hand over weapons and hostage remains “within weeks” or be “blown away very quickly.” His team, including Jared Kushner, assured us that “Hamas signed a deal to demilitarize; that is what we are going to enforce.” Trump even floated a two-month ultimatum, seeing disarmament as the “linchpin” for peace—assuming compliance based on initial agreements and mediator optimism—an assumption that was wildly overoptimistic.

Just this week, in fact, senior Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal rejected Trump’s demand for disarmament outright. Mashaal called disarmament “an attempt to turn our people into victims, to make their elimination easier and to facilitate their destruction at the hands of the Israeli side.”

Mashaal framed the concept of disarmament as victimization. “Questions about the resistance’s weapons are being raised forcefully. Some want to place it in the context that whoever carried out Oct. 7 must be cornered and made to pay the price... As those who participated in the resistance, we must not accept this.”

And he tied it all to deeper roots: “Protecting the resistance project and its weapons is the right of our people to defend themselves. The resistance and its weapons are the ummah’s [Islamic nation’s] honor and pride.” Senior Hamas official Musa Abu Marzouk jumped on the bandwagon, saying “Not for a single moment did we talk about surrendering weapons”—insisting the issue was never even raised in negotiations.

That flat-out denial exposes the gap between the West and the Middle East: Trump’s banking on an “agreement” that Hamas leaders say doesn’t exist, leaving the president chasing a fantasy of compliance that would never be realized.

The divide runs deeper still. Sharia law is built on a historical memory of expansion as glory, a division of the world into realms of Islam and realms of war, and—in certain contexts—religious justifications for violence against those outside the fold. In many Muslim-majority countries, large numbers say they want Sharia as the law of the land. Integration challenges, no-go zones, blasphemy riots, persecution of Christians and other minorities are not poverty or political grievances—they’re more closely related to religious ideas the West has trained itself not to name.

Even when the West gets a glimmer of the truth, it chooses appeasement over censure. In January, for example, President Trump designated key chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon as terrorist organizations. This is because the Muslim Brotherhood is a political-Islam network with ties to Hamas and an agenda of gradual supremacy. Europe, however, keeps inviting them to conferences, funding their organizations, treating their violent proclamations as just another voice in the world community.

The West needs to stop imagining that Middle Eastern moral and strategic frameworks line up neatly with its own, to stop assuming that “every religion” rejects dishonesty or violence in the same way. Else, we all pay a terrible price: botched policies, eroded security, societies overtaken by immigrants who do not share their values. And of course, cruelty and horrific violence, such as we saw on October 7. Such as we see now with Iran’s treatment of those who protest against Khamenei’s “vision” of what an Islamic republic should be.

The West needs to stop leaning on comforting platitudes about shared Abrahamic values. Instead of assuming that all people, everywhere, are the same, the West needs the courage to look straight at where Islam diverges from Judaism and Christianity—on alcohol, on “resistance,” on diplomacy and deception, on supremacy, on the status of non-Muslims—and deal with reality as it is, not as it wishes it were.

Western values are rooted in goodness. Take Americans—they’re nice. They want to be kind and open-minded about Islam, while in reality they are only being naïve and reckless at their own peril. The cost of Western blindness to Islamic values continues to climb as Western leaders rack up missed warnings and policy failures—as they fail to make peace while claiming they already did, and taking credit for something that never happened. The future looks grim, because misunderstanding Islam, tends to lead to violent reprisals.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Al Jazeera "investigates" Israel supposedly vaporizing thousands of Gazans. An examination of their lies.

Al Jazeera reports:

According to the Al Jazeera Arabic investigation, The Rest of the Story, Civil Defence teams in Gaza have documented 2,842 Palestinians who have “evaporated” since the war began in October 2023, leaving behind no remains other than blood spray or small fragments of flesh.

Experts and witnesses attributed this phenomenon to Israel’s systematic use of internationally prohibited thermal and thermobaric weapons, often referred to as vacuum or aerosol bombs, capable of generating temperatures exceeding 3,500 degrees Celsius [6,332 degrees Fahrenheit].

Does the article give any proof that Israel used thermobaric weapons in civilian areas (not aiming at tunnels, for example)? Not at all.

But let's first look at how the very specific number "2,842" was calculated.

The figure of 2,842 is not an estimate, but the result of grim forensic accounting by Gaza’s Civil Defence.

Spokesperson Mahmoud Basal explained to Al Jazeera that teams use a “method of elimination” at strike sites. “We enter a targeted home and cross-reference the known number of occupants with the bodies recovered,” Basal said.

“If a family tells us there were five people inside, and we only recover three intact bodies, we treat the remaining two as ‘evaporated’ only after an exhaustive search yields nothing but biological traces—blood spray on walls or small fragments like scalps,” he added.

What are the chances with any explosion that there will be three intact bodies and two completely incinerated? With conventional explosives it is almost impossible to have full incineration - there is a very high temperature but it lasts for a very short time which isn't enough to make bodies disappear. And for thermobaric explosions, it is extremely unlikely that three bodies would be intact and two evaporated in an enclosed area.

What are the chances the family is lying to claim "martyr" money, or covering up for a Hamas member who was killed separately? Very high.

The article then quotes a Russian military expert:

Vasily Fatigarov, a Russian military expert, explained that thermobaric weapons do not just kill; they obliterate matter. Unlike conventional explosives, these weapons disperse a cloud of fuel that ignites to create an enormous fireball and a vacuum effect.
“To prolong the burning time, powders of aluminium, magnesium and titanium are added to the chemical mixture,” Fatigarov said. “This raises the temperature of the explosion to between 2,500 and 3,000 degrees Celsius [4,532F to 5,432F].”
According to the investigation, the intense heat is often generated by tritonal, a mixture of TNT and aluminium powder used in United States-made bombs like the MK-84.

The first two paragraphs are about thermobaric weapons. Then Al Jazeera switches to conventional weapons like the MK-84 - which has nothing to do with what the expert stated. In fact, the article lists several specific bomb types it identified in Gaza, and not one of them are thermobaric.

The investigation identified specific US-manufactured munitions used in Gaza that are linked to these disappearances:

MK-84 ‘Hammer’: This 900kg [2,000lb] unguided bomb packed with tritonal generates heat up to 3,500C [6,332F].
BLU-109 bunker buster: Used in an attack on al-Mawasi, an area Israel had declared a “safe zone” for forcibly displaced Palestinians in September 2024, this bomb evaporated 22 people. It has a steel casing and a delayed fuse, burying itself before detonating a PBXN-109 explosive mix. This creates a large fireball inside enclosed spaces, incinerating everything within reach.
GBU-39: This precision glide bomb was used in the al-Tabin school attack. It uses the AFX-757 explosive. “The GBU-39 is designed to keep the building structure relatively intact while destroying everything inside,” Fatigarov noted. “It kills via a pressure wave that ruptures lungs and a thermal wave that incinerates soft tissue.”

Why can't they name the thermobaric bomb type that they are accusing Israel of using? Why are they using evidence of conventional bombs to support their thesis of thermal weapons?

If Israel used thermobaric weapons on urban areas, the blast crater would be distinctive. It would be very shallow and show burn marks around the perimeter. None of the many media examinations of craters in Gaza mention anything like that.

The next section shows how unserious this analysis is:

Dr Munir al-Bursh, director general of the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, explained the biological impact of such extreme heat on the human body, which is composed of roughly 80 percent water.

“The boiling point of water is 100 degrees Celsius [212F],” al-Bursh said. “When a body is exposed to energy exceeding 3,000 degrees combined with massive pressure and oxidation, the fluids boil instantly. The tissues vaporise and turn to ash. It is chemically inevitable.”

This is not true. It takes time for water to boil. A conventional weapon hits 3,000 degrees for microseconds; a thermobaric weapon for much longer, milliseconds. But actual vaporization of bodies requires enough time to heat up all the fluids to boiling point. This is unlikely even if Israel was using thermobaric weapons - which Al Jazeera could not show at all.

There is also an underlying assumption here that is pure antisemitism. There is no military advantage for Israel to target civilians in this or any other way. The entire article rests on the reader believing that Israel is evil enough to divert military goals to kill Gazans. And if they only managed to kill less than 3,000 Gazans by thermobaric weapons in two years, that is a pretty inefficient use of the most powerful non-nuclear weapons in existence.

I would be most interested in seeing the list of 2,842 supposed victims. If they were really vaporized by thermobaric weapons they should be mostly women and children. I would bet that this list shows mostly adult males - Hamas members who were buried in tunnels, or perhaps they really were incinerated by localized thermobaric explosions that Israel used to destroy tunnel networks.

This is a propaganda piece, pretending to be a scientific investigation. And the same Dr. Munir al Barsh also accused Israel of leaving booby trapped toys in Gaza. He is a Hamas employee and a major part of Hamas' information war who first made the "vaporization" accusation in 2024 , not an objective observer.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Insane Jew-hatred still routine in Turkish media

It's been a while since I looked at Turkish media for antisemitism, and things are at least as bad as they have ever been.

Here are some recent published articles:

Açıksöz, a respected regional newspaper in northern Turkey, has an article "Why are Jews powerful?" where it includes such gems as:

Investigate those who spread usury, exploitation, banking, oppression, immorality, and all kinds of corruption, and you'll find Jews behind it. That's why the Jews are guilty. The Jews have inflicted the scourge of usury, which pits the poor against the rich, upon the world. To take revenge on nations, the Jews have invented all kinds of corrupting organizations (capitalism, communism, materialism, Zionism, positivism) and anarchy (terrorism).

Yeniakit is promoting a popular Turkish paranoid fantasy that crypto-Jews are controlling the nation:

The behind-the-scenes details of the dirty games being played against Turkey continue to be revealed. Associate Professor Dr. Ahmet Kavlak, in a program he participated in, drew attention to the existence of "Crypto-Jews" who have infiltrated the most critical points of the state since the founding of the Republic of Turkey, and who present themselves as Muslims. Kavlak emphasized that this structure has severed the nation's vital artery, bringing shocking truths to light.

Turkish media is loving the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, using it as proof of Jewish evil.

An email between Epstein and a Rutgers professor Robert Trivers about using drugs to help people transition genders is headlined "Jews are behind the LGBT movement!"

Ahaber compares Epstein's abuse of children with a blood libel that never happened. It claims that in the 17th century, Jews lived in Trabzon until Sultan Selim's era, when two children went missing. After a prolonged search, signs in the market (painted leather hides with hidden writings) led to the discovery of the children in an underground cave beneath tanneries, and the sultan then expelled the Jews from Trabzon. There is no historic record of any of this happening, but Turkish media is claiming that this proves that Jews abuse non-Jewish kids.

Habervakti makes a similar accusation with the same fictional blood libel case, and also compares it to the tunnels under Chabad episode that was so popular with antisemitic conspiracy theorists.

Sabah says that the Mossad used Victoria's Secret models employed by Epstein for espionage.

It is almost refreshing, though, to see pure antisemitism that doesn't masquerade as "anti-Zionism" or fake "concern for Palestinians."

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

02/10 Links Pt2: The case for a three-state solution; IDF brings Syrian child across border into Israel for emergency medical care; EU okays Google’s $32 billion Wiz deal

From Ian:

The case for a three-state solution

In the closing months of his first presidential term, Donald Trump pushed hard for an Israel/Palestine deal. Although well-intentioned, it was widely disparaged – perhaps unfairly – as unworkable, and there remained little opportunity to refine the terms before he left office. But he now has plenty of time to impose a sensible settlement. His rollercoaster approach to international relations may not be to everyone’s taste. Yet flagellation and flattery, bombast and bribery, and hard-cop-soft-cop may be just what is needed here.

The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan would be a key player in any such deal. For almost its whole lifetime, the “Palestine” Mandate included Transjordania, the region east of the River Jordan. The British had initially earmarked the whole territory of the Mandate for the Jewish national homeland, but, to the despair of the Zionists, from the Mandate’s very inception they instead devolved autonomous control of Transjordania to the Hashemite Emir Abdullah. In April 1946, the Emirate was finally severed from the Mandate when the old League of Nations, at its last meeting, recognised the new Kingdom (“Transjordan” until 1949, when it took control of the West Bank).

That was the real partition. Jordan was the Mandate’s Arab legacy state. Britain’s Labour government then washed their hands of the problem of the Mandate’s western remnant and dumped it on the United Nations, which, in Resolution 181 of November 29, 1947, voted to sub-partition it. However, by an ironic twist of fate, Israel nonetheless attained sovereignty over the whole remnant. This was through the default operation of a long-established principle of customary international law known as uti possidetis juris.

The rule was automatically triggered by the failure of the Arab community’s leadership to declare a state of their own in the areas allocated under 181.

They knew that doing so alongside Israel would signal implicit agreement with the resolution, and they wanted the lot. But the decision had consequences. It left a sovereignty vacuum in two-thirds of the Mandate’s remnant territory, and as Israel was the only state which came into being on the critical date of the Mandate’s expiry – May 14, 1948 – its sovereignty automatically filled out the vacuum to absorb the whole remnant.

By the end of the 1948 war, Israel could probably have taken control of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank salient with comparative ease. But it preferred to concede their occupation, respectively, by Egypt and Jordan under the terms of the 1949 Rhodes Armistice, retaining sovereignty in absentia. Although it seized them in 1967, its statesmen have usually been reticent about making express claims of sovereignty for fear of alienating friendly powers. Most recently, Prime Minister Netanyahu vetoed moves in the Knesset to ratify Israel’s sovereignty over substantial areas of the West Bank after Donald Trump and J.D. Vance voiced stern warnings that it would jeopardise the Abraham Accords.

Yet decades ago, U.S. policy had been more indulgent of Israel’s sovereignty rights over at least some of the West Bank. In 1982, echoing the sentiments of Britain’s Lord Caradon at the UN in 1967, President Ronald Reagan movingly declared that he would never ask the bulk of Israel’s population ever again to live in a territory barely ten miles wide at its narrowest point, within artillery range of hostile Arab armies. Then, in the wake of the Oslo Accords, the terms of the Jordan/Israel peace treaty brokered by Bill Clinton in 1994 expressly recognised in Article 3 that the “international boundary between Israel and Jordan”, defined in Annex 1(a) as the River Jordan and the Dead Sea, was “the permanent, secure and recognised international boundary between Israel and Jordan, without prejudice to the status of any territories,” and as such was “inviolable.” The “without prejudice” saving merely reflected the possibility of an eventual negotiated settlement over sovereignty between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, envisaged under Oslo. The treaty could not have enunciated a clearer acknowledgement of Israel’s sovereignty over the West Bank, not merely that it was an occupier.

Arguing over Gaza war death tolls is a fool’s game that hides the real question

Why no one knows who were killed in Gaza. Hamas’s Health Authority, a notoriously untrustworthy source, estimates some 70,000 Gaza deaths, but it does not distinguish fighters from civilians. They would prefer the public to conjure an image of 70,000 dead women and babies, not tens of thousands of ruthless, raping terrorists. But separating bodies of fighters from those of innocents is highly imprecise since Hamas terrorists not only operate among civilians in civilian structures but also dress as them. Likewise, Israeli estimates, which are known for being reliable and made in good faith, suggest that 25,000 fighters were killed, though this number is also imprecise. Thousands of both fighters and innocents are still buried under tons of rubble from collapsed buildings.

Why we don’t know whether a death toll of 70,000 is good or bad. In the Armenian Genocide (1915-1917), some 600,000 to 1.5 million were killed, accounting for 90% of Ottoman Armenians. In the Cambodian Genocide (1975-1979) victims totaled 1.5 million to 3 million, including 99% of Vietnamese Cambodians. More recently, in the U.S.-Iraq war (2003-2011), total deaths are documented at around 460,000. That’s 650% more fatalities than estimated for the Gaza war.

Still, hearing that 70,000 people (of 2.2 million in the Strip) were killed in a war is disturbing, even with the clarifier that “only” 45,000 of them were innocent women, children and seniors. But we certainly can’t assess the magnitude of death without context compared to other modern wars. In perspective, the Gaza war toll, with its far more favorable combatant-to-civilian ratio, was a minor disaster—and certainly, no genocide—compared with Armenia or Cambodia.

Why arguments over blame for Gaza war deaths are nonsense. When a country like Israel is attacked, unprovoked, by its bordering neighbor, as Hamas did on Oct. 7, 2023, there’s little question of responsibility for the conflagration. Hamas was the aggressor. When that aggressor fails to take precautions to protect its citizens in case of war, as Hamas failed to do, responsibility is again clear. Finally, if the aggressor uses a war strategy of human shields—deliberately operating within or around its civilian population, in residences, schools, mosques and hospitals—which is a crime, then that becomes a trifecta of unforgivable barbarism.

In short, civilians who died under these circumstances, no matter the number, are the full responsibility of the aggressor: Hamas. To debate the actual death toll as though it has some inherent moral meaning is irrational. To blame any of the deaths on Israel, which fought strictly according to the rules of war—and, in fact, exceeded what is required in providing humanitarian aid—is irresponsible … and dead wrong.

United Hatzalah Treats Five-Year-Old Boy from Syria with Head Injury

United Hatzalah EMT first responders provided urgent medical care on Tuesday to a five-year-old boy from Syria who sustained serious injuries after falling from a height in the Syrian village of Hader.

The child was transferred across the border into Israel by an Israel Defense Forces ambulance and brought to a soccer pitch in Buq’ata, where United Hatzalah volunteer EMTs were awaiting his arrival.

According to United Hatzalah EMTs Ali Tarbiya and Amin Abu Saleh, the boy arrived in serious condition suffering from traumatic head injuries. Family members reported that he had fallen from a significant height prior to evacuation.

“Our teams immediately initiated emergency medical treatment upon his arrival,” the EMTs said. “Following stabilization efforts at the scene, the child was airlifted by an IDF medical evacuation helicopter to Rambam Health Care Campus for further treatment.”

Two Druze EMTs responded to the incident.

United Hatzalah volunteers provide humanitarian medical assistance regardless of nationality, religion, or background.

The child remains under medical care at Rambam Hospital, where he is undergoing further evaluation and treatment for his injuries.

02/10 Links Pt1: Australia must face up to its anti-Semitism crisis; Hamas’s Boasting Indicts the West; Mamdani and the collapse of ‘liberal Zionism’; What Did You Expect, Starmer?

From Ian:

Hamas’s Boasting Indicts the West

Oct. 7, 2023, displayed something different. Far from hiding its brutality, Hamas advertised it, filming and broadcasting sadistic cruelty. It touted the torture and execution of Israeli women and children as a great moral accomplishment, using the killing as a recruitment tool.

Recall the enthusiastic tone of that young man who called his parents from the phone of an Israeli woman he had just murdered, imploring his mother and father to open up WhatsApp. “Look how many I killed with my own hands. Your son killed Jews!” he told his father. His parents were overjoyed. “My son, God bless you,“ his father said. “I wish I was with you,” his mother added.

Rather than a coverup, this was a media event.

What explains the difference between Hitler and Stalin, who denied their atrocities, and Hamas? Could it be that Hamas knew that many in its Western audience, unlike in Hitler’s and Stalin’s time, would celebrate its crimes as noble resistance? If so, Hamas’s openness indicts our own culture or, at least, its intellectuals.

Within days after Oct. 7, American campuses exploded with anti-Zionist and antisemitic rhetoric. Almost immediately, more than 30 Harvard student groups endorsed Hamas’s actions as justified. University presidents testified that the acceptability of calling for the annihilation of the Jewish people “depends on the context.”

When New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani argues, however implausibly, that the call to “globalize the intifada” is somehow ambiguous, he is at least paying La Rochefoucauld’s tribute to decency. That wasn’t the case at a rally at the Sydney Opera House held two days after the Oct. 7 massacre, when the crowd burned Israeli flags and chanted “Where are the Jews?” On the first night of Hanukkah in 2025, they were at Bondi Beach.

Today’s mass murderers no longer need to hide their crimes from the West’s educated elites, who applaud them. Terrorist boasting testifies to our own moral decline.

Sir Michael Ellis: Israel Thrives While Its Haters Flounder

The mullahs say they have their "fingers on the trigger" and most regional states are rather nervous. Meanwhile, Israel seems to shake it all off and get on with life. One supposes there is nothing like being attacked multiple times over the decades to build resilience. Despite leading a country only the size of Wales, Prime Minister Netanyahu has pointed out that within a decade, Israel's economy will be worth $1 trillion.

While the Iranian regime has been busy murdering protestors by the thousands, haters of Israel prefer to focus their efforts on trying to introduce a boycott of Israeli avocados. At the same time, the Government under Sir Keir Starmer has indefinitely paused a UK trade deal with Israel, thereby doing itself out of business with one of the world's leading high-tech innovators.

Egypt and Israel have recently signed the biggest natural gas deal in Israel's history, worth $35 billion. The Israeli Leviathan gas field will soon supply a substantial proportion of Egypt's energy needs. The UAE has signed a defense contract with Israel worth $2.3 billion for a new, highly sophisticated defense system to protect its civilian and military aircraft. This follows the German parliament approving a $3.5 billion expansion of the Arrow 3 deal with Israel. In total, the deal was valued at $8 billion.

Israel's military, diplomatic, economic and tech strength is extraordinary. But the nation's true strength rests on the happiness, positivity and industry of its people in the face of those who hate them. Israel is one of the world's players. The future bodes well for them. For the haters - not so much.

Australia must face up to its anti-Semitism crisis

This would be a betrayal of Jewish Australians, who this week were reminded once again what a radically different place their country has become to the one in which their parents and grandparents once sought refuge. On Monday, Israeli president Isaac Herzog arrived in Australia for a four-day visit, having been invited over following the Bondi massacre. He was met with enormous counter-protests. Signs were waved depicting Herzog and New South Wales premier Chris Minns – who, with his public displays of solidarity with Jewish Australians, has been an admirable outlier in the Labor Party – as Nazis. Speaking at the Sydney Town Hall, Grace Tame – an activist and former ‘Australian of the Year’ – said Herzog had ‘signed bombs sent to kill innocent civilians’. Nine protesters have been charged for various violent offences, including one man who is alleged to have bitten an officer.

Australia is now a nation that refuses to tolerate the presence of a leader of the world’s only Jewish state, yet at the same time, publicly mourns the death of Hezbollah chief Ismail Haniyeh – a man who dedicated much of his life to killing Jews. To say Australia has a problem with anti-Semitism would be an understatement. This is a full-blown crisis. The protests offered further proof, if any more were needed, of just how necessary it is to hold a royal commission into anti-Semitism.

McCarthy’s call for the commission to also focus on anti-indigenous hatred was not just a blow for Jewish Australians. Many Australians, regardless of background, would also have found her demands curious. There are, of course, small and odious pockets of Australian society where you’ll find racist attitudes towards indigenous Australians. Yet there is no shortage of attention directed at this form of racism, as any recent visitor to Australia could testify.

Great strides have been made towards indigenous advancement. Every public event begins with a Welcome to Country ceremony. More than half of Australia has been returned to indigenous Australians through native title agreements. As McCarthy’s own ministerial title testifies, there are entire government departments dedicated to ‘closing the gap’ between the living standards of indigenous Australians and white Australians. The wrongs visited on indigenous people, from settler violence to the forced integration of the Stolen Generation, were indisputably terrible. But Australia’s recent attempts to atone for them can hardly be faulted.

The royal commission must explore one issue – and one issue only. It must be laser-focussed on the explosion of anti-Semitism in Australia since 7 October 2023. This horrific development has already cost lives. It is the very least Australia’s Jewish community deserves.

Of course, a royal commission won’t bring back Alexander Kleytman, the Holocaust survivor shot multiple times trying to protect his wife on Bondi beach. It won’t bring back 10-year-old Matilda, the youngest victim of that dreadful pogrom. But it might help to prevent a similar evil from happening again. Albanese and the Australian Labor Party must be given no opportunity to worm their way out of it.