Thursday, April 23, 2026

The Jewish Witness - Part 3 of Reclaiming the Covenant

Here is an excerpt of Part 3 of my upcoming book, Reclaiming the Covenant.

Paid subscribers to my Substack can read each entire chapter s they get published, twice a week. If you pay EoZ monthly by any other means and want access, let me know.

The Jewish Witness

Part 3 of my series on America at 250, Reclaiming the Covenant

Every argument has a tell.

In Jewish legal tradition, machloket l’shem shamayim — argument for the sake of heaven — describes a dispute conducted in genuine pursuit of truth, where the other side is still recognized as a legitimate participant in a shared enterprise. Its polar opposite is sinat chinam: baseless hatred, the condition in which the opponent is no longer someone you are arguing with but someone whose presence is itself the offense. The Talmud distinguishes these not by the content of the disagreement but by what each side does with the other’s existence. Hillel and Shammai disagreed about nearly everything for decades; their schools preserved each other’s opinions and their children intermarried. That is machloket l’shem shamayim. The factionalism that the rabbis blamed for the Second Temple’s destruction — groups so consumed by contempt for each other that the legal architecture for covenantal repair became unusable — is sinat chinam. The disagreement in both cases was real. What differed was whether the parties retained enough basic regard for each other to remain in the same covenant.

A covenantal society needs a way to know which condition it is in, because the two look similar from the inside — passionate disagreement always feels righteous to those conducting it — and the consequences of misreading them are severe. Part 2 established that the covenant’s renewal mechanism requires, as its operating condition, the willingness to grant your opponent the benefit of the doubt. But how do you know when that condition is being met and when it has already failed? How do you detect sinat chinam before it has progressed far enough to make the repair mechanism unavailable?

There is a diagnostic. It is not a survey or a political index. It is a pattern so consistent across three thousand years of history that it functions less like a coincidence and more like a structural law: the societies that are losing the basic regard between their members — that are converting policy disagreement into existential enmity, that are beginning to treat some of their members as outside the covenant’s protection — often show the same symptom first. They turn on their Jews.

The Jews are almost always the first target because they are the perennial test case for the covenant’s membership principle — a group identifiable as separate, whose full membership was most recently contested, most explicitly established by legal or founding act, and therefore most available to be re-contested when the covenant’s universalism begins to erode. A society willing to strip one group of its inherent dignity has already decided that dignity is conditional — available to be stripped from any group once the right justification is constructed. The Jews come first not because the hatred is primarily about Jews but because the logic that makes them first makes everyone else potentially next. Watching what a society does with its Jews tells you whether the argument inside it is machloket l’shem shamayim — legitimate disagreement within a shared covenant — or something that has tipped into sinat chinam, the contempt that makes covenantal repair impossible.

Consider the sequence. Spain expelled its Jews in 1492, the same year Columbus sailed — the beginning of a golden age that turned out to be followed by centuries of relative decline as the intellectual and commercial energy that Spanish Jews had contributed was permanently exported to the Ottoman Empire, the Netherlands, and eventually America. The Weimar Republic’s Jews were among the most assimilated, educated, and patriotic citizens in Europe — their persecution was the clearest possible signal that something had gone catastrophically wrong in Germany’s civic architecture long before the world understood what that something was. The Soviet Union’s antisemitism tracked its internal decay with uncomfortable precision. Poland’s postwar antisemitic episodes — most notoriously the Kielce pogrom of 1946, when Poles murdered Jewish Holocaust survivors who had returned home — revealed a civic sickness that would take decades to begin healing.

The inverse is equally striking. The Dutch Republic in the seventeenth century offered Jews something genuinely unusual for its era: stable residence, property rights, relative freedom of worship, and meaningful participation in commercial life. The correlation with Dutch commercial and intellectual dynamism is not coincidental. Britain’s nineteenth century trajectory moved further along the same arc: the gradual extension of actual civic membership to Jews — Parliament in 1858, Oxford and Cambridge following — tracked the development of the most robust parliamentary democracy of the era. The closer a society moved toward Washington’s formulation, the more it flourished. The societies that went all the way — that built inherent membership into their founding architecture rather than extending it as a concession — produced something different in kind, not merely in degree.

The mechanism is structural. Once a society decides that dignity is conditional — that membership can be revoked, that the dignity floor is negotiable for one group — the question becomes only which group is next and what justification will be constructed for their exclusion. The attack on Jewish dignity is always, simultaneously, an attack on the covenant architecture that protects everyone’s dignity. The diagnostic works because what it detects is not specifically anti-Jewish sentiment but the deeper condition: the conversion of machloket l’shem shamayim into sinat chinam, the moment when a member of the covenant stops being someone you argue with in good faith and becomes someone whose existence is the problem.

Jews are, in this sense, canaries in the coal mine. Our historical position has given us a sensitivity to specific kinds of danger that people who have never occupied that position are slower to develop. We notice the early signals. We recognize the patterns before they become undeniable. We have seen where certain kinds of rhetoric lead, where certain kinds of institutional erosion lead, where certain kinds of redefinition of membership lead — because we have been the people those processes were turned against, repeatedly, across civilizations that each believed they were different from the ones that had come before.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Lakome (Morocco) reports:

The local front for supporting Palestine and opposing normalization in Marrakesh announced that it will organize a protest today, Wednesday, at 7 pm near the Bab Doukkala wall, to denounce what it described as “provocative and normalization practices,” and in defense of the Palestinian cause.

This protest comes after the widespread circulation of photos and videos documenting dozens of people in Jewish religious attire (whose nationalities are unknown) performing rituals near the Bab Doukkala wall in the old city of Marrakech, in a scene mimicking prayer in front of the “Western Wall” (Wailing Wall) in occupied Jerusalem.

...This has renewed accusations of opening the door to “forms of Zionist infiltration” under the guise of religious tourism.

The head of the Moroccan Jewish community, Jacky Kadoch, explained that they were tourists and they realized they needed to pray in an appropriate time. It was an ad-hoc minyan of which one can see happening every day in sports stadiums, airports and trade shows. The Jews realized that they could not reach a synagogue in time.

To their credit, most Moroccan media are supportive of the Jews' rights to pray in public. One pointed out the hypocrisy of Muslims being allowed to worship in public but Jews being treated suspiciously:

Throughout the world, Muslims perform their prayers in public spaces. We see them in the streets, airports, universities, parks, and squares. We see them individually and in groups. And sometimes in the heart of major European cities, and in New York and Washington. When this happens, many consider the scene normal, or at least understandable within its religious and human context.

Indeed, many voices rightfully defend the right of Muslims to practice their rituals wherever they are found, as long as this is done in respect of the law and public order.

So what changes when those performing the prayer this time are Moroccan Jews? Has the public space changed? Or the meaning of prayer? Have the rules of freedom changed? Or is the real problem for some that the person standing to pray is not a Muslim?

If the standard is respect for public order, then it should apply to everyone. And if the standard is refusing to pray in open spaces, then it should also apply to everyone. But for the same act to be considered normal for one group and provocative for another is not a defense of principle. It is blatant selectivity.

This double standard doesn't merely reveal a passing tension; it exposes a deeper flaw in the understanding of religious freedom itself. The right to worship does not lose its legitimacy with a change of religion. Those who defend the right of Muslims to pray wherever they are, yet reverse the same principle when it comes to Jews, are not defending freedom. They are defending an exclusive privilege they seek to monopolize for a single identity.

Freedom is not a selective right. It cannot be used when it serves our identity and then rejected when others benefit from it. Those who do so are not protecting the public sphere; they are merely reshaping it to fit their own biases.

Another blamed the criticism on Algerian media always trying to make Morocco look bad.

No other Arab country is as openly supportive of Jews in their media as Morocco is.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

04/22 Links Pt2: Asking the wrong questions about antisemitism; The ‘anti-extremism’ movement has always been a con; SPLC indicted for ‘manufacturing’ extremism

From Ian:

Jonathan Tobin: Asking the wrong questions about antisemitism

Dahl was also living proof that once you remove the thin veneer of justifiable concern about any misdeed that Israelis are supposed to have committed, the gap between anti-Zionism and antisemitism is revealed to be a distinction without a difference. And that is why so much of the commentary about this play and antisemitism in general is still asking the wrong questions about the subject.

Some 78 years after the birth of the modern-day State of Israel, we should no longer be trying to draw distinctions that will allow Israel-bashers to avoid being tagged as what they really are: antisemites. Instead, we should be noticing the painfully obvious similarities that unite all anti-Zionists, whether they are as uncivil as Dahl or not.

Those who cheer for or rationalize attacks and violence, including the largest mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust that took place on Oct. 7, as well as deny Israelis the right to defend themselves against those who pledge its repeat, are on the same level as Dahl.

Are students or college professors who chant for Jewish genocide (“From the river to the sea”) or terrorism against Jews wherever they live (“Globalize the intifada”) really idealists who should be accorded the respect that sophisticated theater-goers are forced to retrospectively deny to a nasty old man who thinks the Jews deserved the Holocaust?

Is the contemporary journalist or politician who traffics in blood libels about Israelis committing a mythical “genocide” someone to agree to disagree with? Is that akin to how we are expected to react to an open neo-Nazi who does so in a less dignified manner?

The real lesson to be drawn from “Giant” isn’t the answer to the age-old debate about what to think about good art created by bad people. Nor is it a guide about how to behave when a favorite childhood author turns out to be a rotten bigot.

It is this: Those who embrace the cause of Israel’s destruction and the genocide of half of the world’s Jewish population that goes with that belief don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt when it comes to evaluating their character. Some may act in a less repugnant manner than Dahl and pretend to oppose antisemitism even as they support it, as is the case with the mayor of New York. Others are less civil or arguably even crazier, as might be said of some anti-Israel podcasters. But they are all part of the same evil cause. And they all deserve the same opprobrium a decent society should accord to antisemites like Roald Dahl.

Brendan O'Neill: The ‘anti-extremism’ movement has always been a con

The SPLC denies the charges. It says it will ‘not be intimidated’ by the Trump administration. It’s worth noting that there’s little love lost between Trumpists and the SPLC. The centre started life as a civil-rights law practice in 1971 before morphing into a huge outfit that keeps tabs on extremism across America. Some on the right accuse it of targeting not only genuine loons but also normal groups, like Turning Point USA. It is ‘liberal’ intolerance made flesh, they say, with its tendency to treat everyone to the right of David French as an Adolf-in-waiting. It’s a ‘partisan smear machine’, says FBI director Kash Patel.

Hopefully the truth will out as the fraud case progresses. But I’m interested in what this simmering scandal tells us about bourgeois activism right now. The possibility that the SPLC is Jussie Smollett on steroids requires analysis. He’s the actor who falsely claimed to have been roughed up by a pair of racists yelling ‘This is MAGA country!’. Is the SPLC the institutional version of such vain self-delusion, blowing up the threat of extremism in order to fatten both its bank balance and its sense of virtue?

If it’s true the SPLC ‘funded extremism’, that would only be a monetary expression of what has for a long time been its core mission – namely, threat inflation. For years now, the centre has promiscuously expanded the definition of extremism, lumping in normies with Nazis. It maintains a ‘hate map’, showing all the nutters in America, which apparently includes not only Sieg Heiling ‘Aryan’ freaks but also Christians who aren’t fond of gay marriage.

Just four months before Charlie Kirk was assassinated in September last year, the SPLC branded him and Turning Point USA as ‘hard-right’ promoters of ‘hate’. It has also designated the Alliance Defending Freedom a ‘hate group’. Anyone who has ever met those Christian folk will know how ludicrous this is. Even Moms for Liberty, which doesn’t want schoolkids to be taught ‘critical race theory’ or that there are 72 genders, has found itself on the SPLC’s map of hate. If it’s extremist to oppose telling seven-year-olds that people with dicks are women and people with white skin are privileged, I guess I’m an extremist.

The aim of such extremism-mongering is transparent. It’s about criminalising moral opinions that the credentialled classes find offensive. And it’s about keeping groups like the SPLC flushed with cash and busy with cases. It’s a job-creation scheme for the do-gooding classes. If the SPLC ‘funnelled millions’ into extremist groups, that would perversely be in keeping with its demented mission to keep the ‘hate’ bandwagon rolling.

Groups like the SPLC don’t only inflate the far-right threat. They also deflect from one of the true extremist scourges of our time – Islamism. The SPLC has long had a blind spot on Islamist extremism. Worse, it has branded those who oppose Islamism as ‘extremists’. A few years ago it drew up a ‘Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists’, which included the mighty Ayaan Hirsi Ali. This is a black immigrant woman who has stirringly made the case for liberal values against the despotism and misogyny of Islamism, and who has been threatened with death for doing so. Yet in the Kafkaesque hellscape that passes for ‘activism’, it is she who is a ‘propagandist’ whose ‘damaging misinformation’ is a menace to public life. This is moral inversion at its most despicable.

We have the same problem in the UK: ‘anti-extremists’ who are wilfully blind to Islamist extremism. On Saturday, as yet another Jew-hater was prepping a petrol bomb to hurl at a London synagogue, the Guardian published a long-read on the ‘return of fascism’ illustrated with white working-class men waving England flags. Islamists are firebombing synagogues. They killed Jews in Manchester on Yom Kippur. They’ve massacred children at a pop concert. They’re on our streets calling for more violence against the Jewish State. And yet ‘the virtuous’ myopically fret over the white far right. From the Guardian to the SPLC, the preening activist classes inflate fantasy threats and downplay real ones, to ensure that nothing as pesky as the truth will meddle with their narcissistic crusading. Now that’s dangerous.

Europe's Jew-Hate with a Vengeance

[M]any in the West who sympathize with Islamic terrorists were, within hours, trying to justify Hamas's atrocities by blaming Israel. The allegations against Israel were that it was denying supposed rights of an invented Palestinian people that "does not exist," as admitted by senior PLO official Zoheir Mohsen in 1977 in the Dutch daily newspaper Trouw. They nevertheless repeat spurious claims to the Jews' ancestral land, on which Jews have lived continuously for nearly 4,000 years, explicitly named "Judea," and to the failure by Israel to implement what -- according to the Palestinians themselves -- would be a "two-state solution" dedicated to taking whatever land they can get and using it as a base from which to conquer the rest.

There is invariably a grim consequence to constant vilification of minorities; the current slandering of Jews is no exception.

Israel may stand pretty much alone against the haters of this world. Depending on the political climate at the time, it can be expected that international leaders will remain absent, even silent, for the most part when Israel's enemies once again attack it – as they surely will. As historic events reveal, Israel and Jewry at large cannot fully rely for protection on the West.

"Many things will be forgiven," observed Israel's Prime Minister Golda Meir in 1973. "but one thing will not—weakness. The moment we are marked as weak—it is over."

Lawmakers from 15 Latin American nations unite to combat antisemitism

The First Congress of Latin American Legislators Against Antisemitism was held in Montevideo, Uruguay, last week, to develop a coordinated strategy to combat rising Jew-hatred across the continent.

The three-day forum culminated in a joint declaration formulated by the 35 participants from 15 countries, the association that organized the event, the Combat Antisemitism Movement, said in a statement on Sunday.

The declaration included a call to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism, show “solidarity with the State of Israel and firmly back its right to self-defense against the Iranian regime and its regional proxies,” demand “that Iran be held accountable for its global terrorist activities, both past and present, including in Latin America, reject “all attempts to isolate and boycott the State of Israel,” and the “bolstering of bilateral ties between Latin American countries and Israel in every relevant realm,” the statement read.

“From parliaments, and in coordination with the executive branches, we seek to build common public policies to confront this scourge [of antisemitism] with a regional and coordinated vision,” said Uruguayan Rep. Conrado Rodríguez, president of the regional legislators coalition.

Shay Salamon, the Combat Antisemitism Movement’s executive director of Latin American Affairs, described the gathering as a turning point in regional efforts.

“The Congress marks a decisive step toward the consolidation of a firm and coordinated regional commitment. The active participation of legislators from Latin America demonstrates that there is a real willingness to confront antisemitism by strengthening legal frameworks, promoting education and defending the democratic values that sustain our societies,” Salamon said.

In addition to policy discussions, participants took part in Uruguay’s national Yom Hashoah ceremony, commemorating the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust.

04/22 Links Pt1: The Birth of a Great American Ally; Britain’s Jews are quietly preparing to leave the country; A warning from Britain’s Iranian diaspora

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The Birth of a Great American Ally

In March, the New York Times reported that “U.S. and Israeli military officials are talking as often as 4,000 to 5,000 times a day, divvying up targets across Iran.” Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine spoke of his regular contact with his Israeli counterpart, and one source told the Times that the majority of military briefings were being held in English, not Hebrew, because of how closely the forces were cooperating.

But being a good junior partner isn’t just about the fighting. Israel has also been willing to stop at a moment’s notice when President Trump wants to switch gears to the diplomatic track. Last week, this meant agreeing to a cease-fire in Lebanon that Israeli voters didn’t like and that became a cudgel used by the political opposition against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Still, Israel complied. It was reminiscent of the point during last year’s U.S.-Israel joint bombing missions when Trump decided enough had been accomplished and ordered Israeli jets to turn around and go back home mid-flight.

European allies claim they agree with the necessity of stopping Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and diminishing the Islamic Republic’s ability to bomb European bases and territory, but when Trump asked them to put their money where their mouths were, they balked. When the Iranians threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz to international shipping, the Europeans got together and came up with a plan—to be carried out only once the war was over and such a plan was no longer needed.

The structure of U.S. “aid” to Israel also follows this pattern, because it requires Israel to purchase from American manufacturers. Thus U.S. companies get a boost, the manufacturing base has steady income and occasional growth spurts, and the U.S. still gets all the intel once those weapons are battle tested—and without having to deploy the systems themselves or send U.S. troops into harm’s way to carry out real-world trials.

The aid is becoming a political football, and opposition to it has been made a progressive litmus test, so the aid structure will almost certainly be reworked. Doing so will harm American workers and the domestic economy far more than it would punish Israel.

Trump is loving the returns America gets by putting the alliance to fuller use. The Israelis, Trump said, “have proven to be a GREAT Ally of the United States of America. They are Courageous, Bold, Loyal, and Smart, and, unlike others that have shown their true colors in a moment of conflict and stress, Israel fights hard and knows how to WIN!”

That statement began with the words “whether people like Israel or not.” Because the truth is that Israel is a superb ally, and reality is impervious to partisan narratives that suggest otherwise.

IDF chief: Years of war have reshaped Israel’s security

Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said “prolonged years of fighting have reshaped Israel’s security and fortified our existence,” speaking at the President’s Outstanding Soldiers Ceremony for Israel’s 78th Independence Day.

The ceremony at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem, recorded earlier this week and broadcast on Wednesday, honored 120 outstanding soldiers and officers from across the IDF.

President Isaac Herzog presented certificates and pins to the honorees, recognizing excellence, dedication, professionalism and responsibility.

The event was attended by Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Israel Katz, senior military leadership and the families of the recipients.

This marked the third consecutive year the ceremony has taken place during ongoing fighting, with all of the honorees having served in operational roles during the war.

Of the 120 recipients, 69 are men and 51 are women, including 18 officers. Sixty-seven serve in combat roles, two in combat support positions and 51 in rear-echelon roles.

The Association for the Wellbeing of Israel’s Soldiers awarded academic scholarships to the honorees, including financial grants and iPads to assist with studies following their discharge.

Aviva Klompas: The unseen victories of the Iran war

NATO allies have often been described, sometimes fairly, as hesitant and divided.

In contrast, Israel has demonstrated its exceptional ability to meaningfully contribute to shared strategic objectives.

Israeli intelligence penetrated deeply into Iranian systems. Its pilots carried out complex, high-risk missions. Its forces even assisted in recovering a downed American airman.

This is not the profile of a dependent ally; it is the profile of a partner that expands American capacity.

That distinction is not lost on Washington. Nor is it lost on the Middle East.

Iran’s actions during the war have had an unintended effect: pushing its neighbors closer to the United States and Israel. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and others, cautious about actions that could upend regional stability, quietly signaled support for continued pressure on Tehran.

They have allowed American and Israeli aircraft to traverse their airspace. They have encouraged a more sustained campaign.

This is a significant shift.

For decades, Iran has sought to position itself as a regional power capable of intimidating its neighbors and reshaping the balance of power. Instead, its aggression has accelerated the very alignment it sought to prevent.

Another audience is watching closely: the Iranian people.

The regime has long projected strength, both internally and externally, but this war has exposed its vulnerabilities. Strikes deep within Iran, disruptions to critical infrastructure and visible failures in defense have undermined the image of control.

In some cases, the regime has resorted to extraordinary measures, such as urging citizens to form human chains around key facilities. It is a striking image: a government relying on its own people not out of loyalty but out of necessity.

That too is a shift.

None of this suggests that Iran is no longer a threat. It has demonstrated its ability to disrupt global commerce, particularly through mines and drones in the Strait of Hormuz.

Something’s Gotta Go—But Maybe Not This (Judean Rose)

It’s an odd feeling to sit down and write a column about stepping back from writing this column.
Judean Rose has been part of my week for more than a decade. In some ways, writing this column has felt like a marriage: for better or worse, in sickness and in health, in war and more war. I’m not someone who walks away from commitments lightly. If I say I’m going to do something, I do it. Even in weeks when alerts and sirens are going off, I write this column. Week in, week out.

Don’t get me wrong—it’s a commitment I’ve undertaken with joy. I love being part of the blogosphere.

It’s exciting to say what I think and have people read it—and respond. Especially when I’ve worked my kishkes off on a piece I’m not even sure is coherent.

Only the next day, with a bit of distance, do I read it again. Then I can step back and see it more clearly—sometimes wondering if I could have chosen a better word here or there, and sometimes surprised that it reads so well.

Because the day before, I’m often agonizing over every word: can I say this? Can I really say this?

I love when people come up to me at the supermarket or the doctor’s office to tell me a column resonated with them. Fan mail is nice, too—it keeps me writing and saying what I think.

But perhaps the best moment is when I’m introduced to someone for the first time, and I can see them trying to place my name. Then it clicks—and I’m suddenly getting more enthusiasm than I probably deserve.

(Not quite the Beatles—but I’ll take it.)

I’ve tried to make a difference. In some ways I’ve been disappointed. I wasn’t always able to persuade people, even when I knew I was right. I’m not all-powerful, but I tried. I kept writing, even when it broke my heart.

I wrote about the origins of antisemitism—how to spell it, and why that matters. I interviewed some famous people, and some ordinary Israelis who are anything but ordinary, living here despite the difficulties.

Perhaps, like me, they pinch themselves every morning as they discover the miracle anew:
“I am really here. I live here, in Israel, in the Holy Land!”

There was the ongoing heartache of October 7. I had to write about it—to bear witness—but doing so brought enormous pain. As a writer, my imagination works overtime. I imagine scenes no one should have to imagine at all. It still hurts.

The pain of October 7, I believe, brought on my cardiac arrest. I shared that experience with my readers. But even there, Judean Rose brought me comfort and happiness. Two faithful overseas readers arranged to have get-well flowers and a gift delivered to me. I can’t begin to describe how that touched my heart—and went a long way toward healing it.

Still, age is taking a toll. I get tired. I move slower. It’s a struggle to keep up with things that have been part of my life for what feels like eons. I find myself cutting back whenever I think, “Something’s gotta go.”

But I haven’t been able to give up this precious column—the readers who mean so much to me, and the honor of being a regular voice in this space. I have so much gratitude for all of it, and to Elder of Ziyon for giving me a home here.

Elder of Ziyon has a large following on X, which is one of the reasons I asked for the column. But he’s also a wonderful person who always defends me from haters and never censors me, something that has not always been the case in my writing career. I’ve felt very good about posting here, because EOZ is so respected, yet somehow remains humble and kind.

I can’t say I’m quitting for good. That would hurt too much. So rather than call it quits, I’m going to step back a bit. Maybe one less commitment is what I need, but giving up this column isn’t the right one to give up. Who knows?

I certainly won’t. Until I take a breather and see how it feels. Thank you to all my faithful readers who stick by me, even when they don’t agree with me. I see and appreciate you! You can’t possibly know how much.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Lebanon's Casualty Numbers Tell a Story the Media Won't

When the NYT covered mass funerals in southern Lebanon this week, it buried the lede, literally.

The headline "Lebanese Bury Their Dead Amid a Lull in Fighting." Sounds like they are all civilians, doesn't it?

Subhead: "Mass funerals for Hezbollah fighters and civilians were happening across southern Lebanon." Oh, I suppose some of the dead are Hezbollah.

Article: "In Qlaileh, a village about nine miles from the Lebanese-Israeli border, hundreds of families gathered for the funeral of 16 Hezbollah fighters and four civilians on Tuesday afternoon."

16 fighters and four civilians? Isn't that a fairly astonishing ratio of militants to civilians in civilian areas?

That observation is not noted. But that is the real story.

Lebanon's own Ministry of Public Health has published the data to make that story unavoidable. Its April 17 infographic shows 1,834 adult male deaths against 274 female and 177 children — 80% adult male, across a conflict whose primary combatant force is overwhelmingly adult males. The demographics of Lebanon is about 37% adult male.

The ministry does not distinguish combatants from civilians. It does not need to. The demography does the work.

That figure holds at the village level. In Kfar Sir, approximately 29 Hezbollah fighters were buried with no civilians mentioned in the official announcement. In Qlaileh, AFP and Arab News reported 15 fighters and one civilian before the NYT's on-the-ground count added a few more of each. These are not outliers — they are what 80% looks like when you zoom in.

In Beirut, the percentages were probably somewhat lower. In dense residential neighborhoods where Hezbollah embedded command infrastructure into apartment buildings and weapons caches into residential areas, the ratios almost certainly skew less favorable. Urban environments are harder even when targeting is precise, and Hezbollah made that choice for its own reasons. The fact that fighters operate in civilian clothes — jeans and jackets rather than anything identifiable as a uniform — compounds the difficulty further.

What the 80% figure suggests is a degree of targeting precision that is genuinely difficult to explain away. Israel has the kind of intelligence that allows it to call a Hezbollah operative directly, tell him it knows exactly where he is, and give him the choice of whether his family is present when the strike comes. In one documented case from February, operative Ahmad Hussein Termos received exactly that call while visiting relatives, asked them to leave, walked to his car, and was killed there — alone. A Lebanese journalist covering the story framed it as the terrorist's heroism. The more obvious frame is Israel's: it knew who it was killing and went to extraordinary lengths to kill only him. A separate account describes Israel calling a civilian driving behind a targeted vehicle and warning him to turn off the road before the strike. These are not the operational signatures of an army indifferent to civilian casualties.

The ministry's infographic also records 100 health worker deaths, 116 vehicles destroyed, and 129 attacks on medical and EMS facilities — numbers that circulate regularly as evidence of Israeli targeting of Lebanese medical infrastructure. What that framing omits is that Hezbollah runs its own parallel medical system through the Islamic Health Organization, a network of ambulances, clinics, and facilities that serves as the group's logistics arm in the territory it controls. The IDF released bodycam footage from a raid on a hospital in Bint Jbeil showing fighters firing from windows and a weapons cache inside — the clearest available public evidence of what "medical infrastructure" can mean in this conflict. When Lebanon's ministry counts attacks on EMS facilities, the category is carrying more weight than it appears.

The media's preferred frame is "Lebanese deaths" — a formulation that collapses Hezbollah fighters and Lebanese civilians into a single category available for political deployment. AP, Al Jazeera, and most wire coverage of the April 21 funerals described processions of "fighters, civilians, and paramedics" without pausing on the proportions. The emotional footage of coffins draped in Hezbollah flags made every broadcast. The arithmetic did not.

Lebanon's own health ministry, in its own infographic, using its own preferred word "martyrs," has published numbers indicating that Israel has been hitting what it's been aiming at. That finding, from Lebanese official sources, would seem to meet anyone's evidentiary bar for a news story. Yet somehow, no media outlet has seemed to feel that this extraordinary proof of Israeli precision is worth mentioning.

No reason to wonder why. We know the answer.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

How to debunk the "Netanyahu controls Trump" theory - and every other conspiracy theory

I have been working on a better way to counter antisemitic and anti-Israel conspiracy theories. The standard approach is to attack them with facts: here is the evidence that contradicts your claim, here is the source you misread, here is what actually happened. The problem is that facts don't work against a well-constructed conspiracy theory. They can't, almost by design. Any fact that contradicts the theory gets absorbed as further proof of the cover-up; any source that disputes it becomes a compromised source. The theory is sealed against falsification, which means arguing facts inside it is arguing on its terms.

I've been using a different approach. Instead of attacking the content of a conspiratorial claim, attack its structure. Every such theory rests on hidden assumptions — conditions that must be true for the claim to hold. If you can expose those assumptions and show that they are structurally impossible, the claim collapses regardless of what the evidence says, because the architecture required to support it cannot exist. The conspiracy theorist cannot brush this away with "that source is compromised" or "that's what they want you to think." You are not arguing about evidence; you are arguing about the conditions under which the evidence could ever mean what they say it means.

I have been applying this framework to antisemitism and anti-Israel rhetoric for some time, and it consistently produces a more decisive result than factual rebuttal. So I decided to test it on a theory that has been circulating with particular confidence since the U.S.-Iran conflict escalated: that Benjamin Netanyahu is controlling Donald Trump, directing American Iran policy from Jerusalem while Washington's institutions provide the scenery.

This theory has many variants, but they share a common core. Trump, who demonstrably ignores advisors, overrides generals, dismisses intelligence assessments he dislikes, and has made a public identity out of being unbossed — this same Trump is somehow a puppet for a foreign prime minister. The assertion is made with great confidence by people who would immediately recognize its absurdity if the foreign leader in question were anyone other than a Jewish Israeli. One version from George Galloway says that Trump is afraid of Israel assassinating him and also of Israel exposing some damning Epstein dirt on him because Epstein was Jewish and therefore Jews, Israel, hand-waving, presto!

Let's examine what the claim actually requires in all cases. If we can show that the entire theory is impossible, there is need to debunk whether Israel has secret Epstein files they use as blackmail.

For a foreign government to direct U.S. policy, it must override all of the internal processes designed specifically to prevent that from happening. The CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the NSA, the FBI's counterintelligence division, the NSC staff, the Joint Chiefs, and Congress's own oversight apparatus all exist, in part, to detect and resist exactly this: foreign penetration of American decision-making. Congressional committees — including members with no particular affection for Israel — hold classified briefings, demand justifications, and possess the power to expose, defund, or block policy they believe serves a foreign principal rather than American interests.

The Netanyahu-control thesis requires every one of these layers to fail, simultaneously and silently, on a decision for the US to go to war against its own interests. That's not a theory of foreign influence; it's a theory of total institutional collapse. And institutional collapse of that scale tends to leave evidence — leaks, resignations, whistleblowers, congressional revolts. We have seen none of that. What we have seen instead is the ordinary friction of alliance management: public disagreements between Washington and Jerusalem, U.S. diplomatic tracks Netanyahu has opposed, and operational constraints Israel has publicly resented - like stopping attacking Hezbollah targets.

The claim's proponents might respond that the institutions have been captured, that the oversight bodies are themselves compromised. This is a meta-conspiracy theory. But even if that somehow happened, there are dissenters within the government — very public anti-war advocates on both the Right and the Left — who at the very least would be leaking to the media about this incredible control Israel has.

In short, it is as close to impossible as can be imagined.

Now, to be sure, the US and Israel are aligned on many policies. They are both dead-set against Iranian nuclear weapons. That was the official position of Obama and Biden as well. Correlation does not mean causation, and certainly not causation from the weaker player to the stronger one.

Netanyahu does influence U.S. policy — more than most foreign leaders, and the reasons are structural: a deep alliance with genuine intelligence integration, significant domestic political salience in American electoral dynamics, Israel's earned respect on its own intelligence and deep knowledge of the Middle East, and a shared strategic file on Iran where Israeli assessments carry real weight. Israel has often shaped the terms of debate, provided intelligence framing that affected American perceptions, and timed his public interventions to exploit windows of receptivity. All of that is worth analyzing seriously. Israel's desire to influence American policy is not nefarious — it is consistent with what every foreign country does. Even enemies of the US like Russia, China and Iran itself use indirect methods like social media to try to influence the world's biggest superpower. There is nothing different about Israel.

What matters analytically is what happens when you shift from a factual rebuttal to a structural one. In a factual argument, every disproof becomes further proof, the burden of proof falls entirely on the debunker, and there is no limit to the supplementary fantasies available to shore up the original claim. In a structural argument, the burden returns to the theorist — and the questions become concrete and unanswerable. If your theory is true, exactly how does it work? Walk us through the mechanism. Show your working knowledge of how military commands, intelligence agencies, oversight committees, and newsrooms actually function. Because organizations are not moody teenagers who reverse course on a whim; they have processes, procedures, legal constraints, and institutional cultures that resist change even when ordered from above. They generate paper trails: meeting minutes, legal findings, inspector general reports, congressional notifications, classified cables that get read by hundreds of people. Changing the operational culture of the NSA or CIA takes years and meets fierce internal resistance — the agencies have their own lawyers, their own inspector generals, their own career officers who did not get where they are by becoming instruments of a foreign government. The theory has to survive water cooler gossip, internal Slack channels, agency attorneys pushing back on tasking, whistleblower statutes, and a press corps that has broken far more tightly held secrets than this one. Controlling one person in secret is difficult but imaginable. Controlling thousands of intelligence officers, congressional staffers, generals, and journalists — simultaneously, without a single credible leak — is not a hypothesis. It is a demand that we believe institutions work in a way that no institution in the history of democratic governance has ever actually worked.

The theory doesn't only fail because the facts are against it, though they are. It fails because the conditions required for it to be true are structurally impossible — and no amount of selectively curated evidence and can build a house on a foundation that cannot bear the weight.

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