The Eleven Lebanese Jews Hezbollah Killed — And Israel Is Still Trying to Bring Home

The seventh round of Lebanese-Israeli talks wrapped up in Rome this week, and buried inside the file on prisoners and the missing was a phrase most people have never heard: the eleven.

The talks are proceeding under a framework agreement signed in Washington in June, whose thirteenth clause commits both sides to searching for remains and freeing detainees. Lebanese and Israeli negotiators reportedly exchanged lists of the missing and the captured, aiming to establish what happened to them and finding their bodies. Somewhere on those lists are eleven Lebanese Jews who vanished between 1984 and 1987, kidnapped one by one from a community that had already been reduced to a fraction of its former size and that made the mistake of staying anyway.

The group that took them called itself Munazzamat al-Mustad'afin fil-Ard, "the Organization of the Oppressed on Earth." It declared its own affiliation with Hezbollah, and a declassified CIA document from January 1986 goes further: the name, the agency concluded, was simply a cover identity that Hezbollah operatives used in the 1980s, staffed mainly by hardline Shia fighters from the south. The same alias surfaced when Hezbollah members claimed the 1985 TWA hijacking at a press conference, and they threatened retaliation against the United States if Washington struck back. Kidnapping was  one of the major tools Hezbollah used from its beginning.

Beirut's Jewish quarter, Wadi Abu Jamil, had emptied out gradually across earlier waves of emigration; by the 1980s only a few hundred Jews remained in the country, down from a wartime-era Mandate population near five thousand. In February 1984, armed men accompanied by displaced southerners moved into Wadi Abu Jamil and occupied the homes Jews had already abandoned. 

Anyone who claims that Hezbollah is not antisemitic is either ignorant or a liar. Targeting Jews is baked into its origins. In Wadi Abu Jamil, the Maghen Abraham synagogue was ransacked and burned, its walls painted with antisemitic slogans. 

Over the next three years Hezbollah's antisemitic campaign was conducted against the few Lebanese Jews who had already chosen to stay in Lebanon despite the dangers rather than emigrate to Israel or elsewhere. Hezbollah chose the cream of the remaining Lebanese Jewish community.

Raoul Mizrahi was first. An electrical-goods shop owner in his fifties, he was seized from his home in Beirut's Sanayeh district on July 10, 1984, and killed within two weeks; his body turned up on an abandoned beach near the airport.

Selim Mourad Jamous, secretary of the Jewish community, was taken the following month. His fate was never established.

Haim Halak Cohen, an accountant, was abducted in March 1985 and killed that December. His body was found near the Capuchin church at the edge of Wadi Abu Jamil — a return, in death, to the neighborhood the kidnappers had already gutted.

Dr. Elie Hallak was the deputy head of the community and a pediatrician known as "doctor of the poor," treating patients regardless of background and giving free consultations to non-Jewish children. He was taken the same day as Cohen. His wife, Rachel, publicly insisted on his innocence and demanded the kidnappers produce evidence for whatever accusation they were holding him on; other Western hostages later reported crossing paths with him in captivity. He died in February 1986. His body was never returned.

Elie Youssef Sarour, 68, prepared the community's dead for burial under Jewish law. He was abducted alongside Hallak and died in December 1986, his body never recovered.

Isaac Sasson, head of the Jewish community and a pharmaceutical executive, was seized in March 1985 while driving in from the airport after a business trip. He lived in captivity longer than most of the others, until June 1987. His burial site is still unknown.

Isaac Tarrab, a 70-year-old, internationally recognized retired mathematics professor, was taken in April 1985 and killed that winter. He is the only one of the eleven whose body was actually returned to his family.

Yehuda Benesti, a former bank director, and his son Ibrahim were abducted in 1986. The organization branded the father a Mossad agent and claimed to have executed him on that basis — an accusation made and enforced with no evidence. The son's remains came back; the father's did not. A second son, Youssef, a 33-year-old merchant, was taken separately in August 1985 and died the following December, also never recovered.

Henry Mann, 40, closes the list. Even the date of his abduction was never recorded. He died in December 1986, and his body was never found.

None of the eleven were soldiers, agents, or political actors of any kind. A historian quoted in the reporting on this case describes them plainly as peaceful civilians, part of a wider toll that saw roughly two hundred Lebanese Jews killed over the course of the civil war. What set these eleven apart was politics: the organization publicly tied their lives to demands on Israel — a withdrawal from the south, the release of prisoners held at the Khiam detention facility — and when those demands went unmet, it announced their executions one by one, treating each life as a card to be played and then discarded. 

Hezbollah built its power base not on the battlefield but on a synagogue accountant, a pediatrician who treated the poor for free, and a retired math professor.

Lebanese officials at the time reportedly knew some of this while it was happening. A senior Lebanese official told a Jewish news agency in 1985 that six of the hostages were still alive and being held by Hezbollah, information he said had reached the Élysée-adjacent French Jewish leadership through back channels involving Syria and Libya, and that President Amin Gemayel was making direct appeals to Hafez al-Assad on their behalf. It did not save them.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! Reclaiming the Covenant on America's 250th (May 2026) "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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08/06 Links Pt2: The antisemites are converging—and Jews will not be fooled; Abdul El-Sayed Socializes the Intifada; The Judas Statue Lie

From Ian:

The antisemites are converging—and Jews will not be fooled

The anguish of watching our children exposed to such hatred leaves no room for political disguises. It is genuine. The monstrosity of Nazi-style antisemitism—the classic racist variety—now dares to reveal itself openly because it has become part of a broader ecosystem in which movements with very different ideological origins converge on a common target.

That convergence matters.

The various factions are not necessarily coordinating with one another. But they all benefit from the growing legitimacy afforded to hatred of Jews, Judaism, Israel and Zionism. Together, they reinforce an environment in which antisemitism flourishes.

Bulgaria illustrates how these forms of hatred increasingly overlap. Throughout the year—and especially since Oct. 7, 2023—the country has witnessed the public display of neo-Nazi symbols, swastikas and repeated attempts to revive the annual march honoring Hristo Lukov, the leader of Bulgaria’s pro-Nazi Legions.

At the same time, anti-Israel activism has targeted Jewish institutions. In 2025, “Free Palestine” graffiti was sprayed across the Sofia synagogue, covering photographs of those murdered during the Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

On Oct. 9, 2025, Sofia’s Monument of Salvation, dedicated to those who opposed the deportation and persecution of Bulgaria’s Jews during World War II, was vandalized and covered in red paint. The city’s Holocaust memorial was desecrated as well.

These are only a few examples.

The attacks have come from both the right and the left, directed at the same targets: Jews.

This pattern is no longer confined to Bulgaria. Europe is increasingly afflicted by antisemitism from both extremes of the political spectrum. Across the Atlantic, the phenomenon is equally striking. A neo-Nazi such as Nick Fuentes and politicians such as Zohran Mamdani may come from vastly different ideological traditions, yet both participate in portraying “Zionism” as the embodiment of Jewish wrongdoing.

Who, then, still believes that one side merely offers “legitimate criticism of Israel” while the other alone represents antisemitic extremism?

The truly dangerous development is the convergence itself.

Vile are the Nazis. Vile, too, are the red-green antisemites. Vile are those who accuse Jews of orchestrating global conspiracies, and equally vile are those who portray the Jewish state as the source of the world’s evils. Different slogans, different histories—but increasingly the same target.

That convergence is poisoning Europe and spreading far beyond it.

It will eventually be exposed for what it is.

And Jewish children will not remain locked away in fear. They will walk out, calmly and confidently, toward life.

Jake Wallis Simons: The enemy we welcomed

The uncomfortable truth is that by investing so heavily in centrist fundamentalism, the West has set itself up to fail. Amid the radical diversity that our leaders have imposed upon our societies and the consequent loss of shared cultural norms, newcomers with hostile and subversive attitudes are placed under no pressure to adapt. Civic respect has declined and crime rates have increased, making people in certain regions feel that they no longer recognise their country. The child rape scandal that erupted in 2024 in Britain shone a spotlight on the mainly Pakistani gangs who had been subjecting thousands of mostly white girls to the most depraved abuse for decades, while the authorities looked the other way for fear of being accused of ‘Islamophobia.’ In the first nine months of 2024, the most recent available data at the time of writing, almost fourteen per cent of grooming suspects were Pakistani, five times their share of the population. In March 2025, data from the Ministry of Justice revealed that foreigners, who comprise just 9.3 per cent of the population, had committed almost a quarter of sex crimes, as well as large proportions of violence, robbery, fraud and drug offences, between 2021 and 2023. Among the first victims of this social collapse have been the Jews. Rising antisemitism is a potent expression of the wholesale importation of other people’s bigotries to our shores.

The worst part is that this corrosion of our country served no useful purpose. For generations of politicians, loosening the borders was considered an easy solution to the economic conundrum of an aging, shrinking and workshy population. But the magic bullet has proved no solution at all, burdening the taxpayer, straining infrastructure and failing to boost productivity and growth. Meanwhile, the influx came with deep social problems. If it hadn’t been for the ideological myopia of the elites, this would have come as no surprise, given that newcomers from overseas added around seven million to the population of Britain — roughly equivalent to the number of residents of London — in the first two decades of this century, accounting for over four-fifths of total demographic expansion.

They remain unwilling to change course. Despite all the evidence of social and cultural strain, amid the political reluctance to find a better solution to our economic woes, the numbers continue to rise. Net migration into Britain hit a record high of almost a million in 2024; on current trends, it will grow to 72.5 million by 2032, entirely fuelled by a further five million migrants. According to the latest projection, by 2032, fourteen per cent of the population will have arrived in the preceding decade, almost all of them from Pakistan, India, Nigeria and China. At the same time, a quarter of Britain’s workforce is unemployed, with more than three million receiving sickness and disability benefits, a million more than before the Covid years. For a neutered and screen-addicted generation, the problem is only expected to get worse. A recent study revealed that Generation Z — those aged roughly between thirteen and twenty-eight — are giving up on work, with almost four in ten considering leaving their job to claim benefits, largely due to ‘mental health’ complaints. Economic inactivity was on course to rise further, it added, with 4.4 million workers, or a tenth of the workforce, ‘on the brink of leaving the labour market.’ So the demoralisation of Britain’s existing population and the surge in newcomers develop in tandem. None of this needed to happen. If both the numbers and attempts to undermine our values would have been kept in check, and measures taken to strengthen ordinary Britons to boost our economy and our confidence, the country would be a very much happier place today.

As the reaction to October 7 has shown, this betrayal of ourselves enabled the betrayal of the Jews. ‘We, like everyone else, depend upon a shared culture for our security, our prosperity and our freedom to be,’ Sir Roger Scruton wrote more than a decade ago. ‘We don’t require everyone to have the same faith, to lead the same kind of family life or to participate in the same festivals. But we have a shared civil culture, a shared language and a shared public sphere… We can welcome immigrants only if we welcome them into our culture, and not beside or against it.’ Antisemitism has always been present in British life but its latest expression is largely imported. Sadly, as politicians recklessly continue to usher large numbers of migrants into the country, Sir Roger’s sagacity has been lost on the wind.

Nicole Lampert: From Chaplin To Boy George, Fighting Antisemitism Means Facing The Mob

In 1940, at the start of World War II, when America had not yet entered the conflict, it was Charlie Chaplin’s film “The Great Dictator,” which lampooned Hitler and the Nazis and spoke clearly of their dangerous antisemitism and the threat they posed to the world. The clown became the soothsayer, the voice of morality.

Until that point, Hollywood, even with its many Jewish studio heads, had been mainly too frightened to tackle this threat head-on. Just one major film, Warner Bros. “Confessions of a Nazi Spy,” which looked at a German-American Nazi spy ring, had come close.

And the reaction to that film had been immediate; theaters across the U.S. were picketed and vandalized. One cinema was even burned down. It was a warning to beware the anger of the mob. For Hollywood Jews, feeling their place in society so untethered, the message was clear—they needed to pipe down, keep schtum.

Which is why Chaplin’s self-financed and risky move—from a non-Jew who understood antisemitism—was so important. His film told the world he saw the problem. He saw it was wrong. And everyone else should see the danger, too.

Now it's Boy George's turn.

He first found fame in the 1980s with the band Culture Club. He wore makeup and long hair, and was a proud gay man in the AIDS era. Like many pop stars, he’s battled drug addiction. Unlike most of them, in 2008 he ended up in jail for the false imprisonment of a Norwegian escort.

So his career has seen many ups and downs, but last week he did something extraordinary. He wrote and released a reggae song on his social media accounts, “We Will Dance Again,” which has the key lyrics: "But if you’re ever confused/I stand with the Jews/I don’t feel brave/I just need to behave like a human."

It was possibly the most extraordinary thing a non-Jew has done for the Jewish people since the October 7 attack in 2023 created a new and deadly wave of antisemitism. Just as in the 1930s, too many celebrity Jews–apart from a brave few—have maintained a frightened silence and their gentile friends have echoed their anxious muteness. They know what will happen if they dare stand up against today’s antisemitic mob, a contrast to “pro-Palestine” celebrities who often seem to treat the war like a football match, dress up in kaffiyehs and applaud themselves.

No picture today because blogger sux

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08/06 Links Pt1: VDH: The Long View of Iran; Bribing Hamas Will Not Bring Peace – It Will Finance The Next War; New Gaza nutrition data coordinated with UNICEF ‘shows facts prevail over fiction,’

From Ian:

Victor Davis Hanson: The Long View of Iran

One day, the United States seems ready to unleash a Curtis LeMay-style devastating bombing campaign of Iran. The next, it appears trapped in endless haggling with Iranian dissimulators.

Of the roughly 150 days since the first strike, about 90 have passed without major military operations.

Iran believes time is on its side. The Strait of Hormuz remains disrupted, gas prices are too high, and antiwar House Democrats seem poised to win the midterms and bring Trump’s war to a halt.

Trump, by contrast, believes Iran can talk all it wants while sanctions, embargoes, and military pressure steadily weaken the regime.

The war has become so politicized in an election year that several basic realities have gone largely unnoticed by the media.

First, the cycle of bombing, pausing, negotiating, and bombing again may seem endless. But the confusion obscures the continuing effects of the embargoes, sanctions, blockade, and financial isolation imposed on Iran. Together, they are costing the theocracy more than $400 million a day in lost revenue, money that it can ill afford to lose. By haggling, Iran believes it can run out the clock until the midterms, but it may be only prolonging its own miserable situation.

Second, so far the bombing has not descended into a ground war. There are no embedded reporters and few Western journalists in Iran. So the world knows little about the true extent of the damage to the Iranian regime and its military-industrial-nuclear complex.

Nor do we know the mood of the once-restive Iranian street. But whether or not there are future allied military attacks, tensions will only increase as Iran runs out of money and basic goods. Whatever the outcome of negotiations or further combat operations, the Iranian military and economy have already been wrecked and will take years to rebuild.

Third, however the war ends, Iran will remain at a terrible disadvantage for years in dealing with the neighbors it has so gratuitously attacked. The regime currently has no effective combat aircraft or air defenses—and no allies.

In contrast, the Gulf states can field more than 700 combat aircraft, including F-15s, F-16s, F/A-18s, Rafales, Mirages, and Tornados. Israel has another 300, including late-model F-35s, F-16s, and F-15s. U.S. bases in the Middle East are home to some 300 more, including F-22s, F-35s, F-18s, F-16s, and F-15s—not counting carrier-based aircraft.

In sum, the United States and its allies have some 1,300 late-model combat aircraft in the region. They should therefore be able to hit Iran hard for years to come if it resumes drone and missile attacks against its rivals.

Amb. Gordon Sondland: America's aid to Israel isn't charity — it's a bargain for US security

Every few years, Americans ask the same question: Why do we send billions of dollars to Israel?

Given a national debt approaching $40 trillion and an annual defense budget of roughly $1 trillion, it is a fair question. Every dollar spent overseas deserves scrutiny. But the debate almost always focuses on one side of the ledger — what America gives Israel — while largely ignoring the other: what America receives in return.

That is the wrong way to evaluate any investment.

Before making my case, let me disclose my own perspective. I am a cultural Jew, but not a practicing one. I don’t keep kosher. I rarely attend synagogue. I raised a family that is half Jewish and half Christian. I have no financial interests in Israel. My support for Israel has never been based on religion or ethnicity. It rests on a far simpler question: Does this alliance make America stronger?

After serving as a U.S. ambassador and spending a lifetime in business, I believe the answer is unequivocally yes.

The United States has many indispensable allies. Britain provides extraordinary intelligence cooperation through the Five Eyes partnership. Japan anchors our strategy in the Indo-Pacific. South Korea deters aggression on the Korean Peninsula. Australia is an increasingly important military partner as China expands its reach. Poland has become one of NATO’s strongest front-line allies. Every one of those relationships advances American interests.

Yet Israel occupies a category almost by itself.

Few allies combine world-class intelligence, battlefield-tested military innovation, cutting-edge cyber capabilities, missile-defense development, entrepreneurial technology and democratic resilience while sitting at the crossroads of the world’s most volatile region. If Israel did not exist, the United States would spend decades — and likely hundreds of billions of dollars — trying to recreate the strategic advantages it provides.

Obstacles to Implementing the Hamas Disarmament Agreement

Despite the celebratory announcement of an agreement providing for the complete disarmament of Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza, deep gaps remain between the parties, compounded by flawed assumptions on the part of the mediators. Hamas does not view disarmament as a unilateral obligation. In addition, Hamas demands guarantees that it will be integrated into Gaza's governing mechanisms as a condition for relinquishing its weapons.

Israel insists on the full disarmament of Hamas and the demilitarization of Gaza (which includes removing the weapons and not leaving them in the Strip) as a precondition for withdrawal.

The International Stabilization Force faces significant recruitment difficulties, stemming from the refusal of states to deploy troops to areas where Hamas remains armed. The National Committee for the Administration of Gaza is reluctant to enter the Strip in the absence of an effective security mechanism to protect its members.

Hamas sources revealed that it formulated its hardline positions - foremost among them its refusal to disarm before a full Israeli withdrawal - in close coordination with mediators Turkey and Qatar. The mediators' strategic objective is to preserve Hamas as a legitimate political actor. They strongly oppose conditioning Gaza's reconstruction on Hamas's complete disarmament, while seeking to assume a leading role and secure a major share in reconstruction projects in the Strip.

Hamas's apparent willingness to show greater flexibility can reasonably be attributed to the IDF's sustained military pressure, including targeted killing operations and the expansion of Israel's hold over Gazan territory from 53% to 65%. In practice, however, this does not represent a substantive change, but rather a calculated strategy of delay and "tactical flexibility" whose sole purpose is to ensure Hamas's political and military survival.

Hamas has effectively exploited the diversion of regional attention toward Iran to rebuild its military and civilian systems: it has restored its chain of command, resumed weapons production and tunnel construction, and expanded its ranks to 30,000 armed operatives. These are not the actions of an organization preparing or intending to disarm.

There is serious concern that the mediators are playing a dangerous double game. Their apparent objective is to push the U.S. and the Board of Peace into a confrontation with Israel and to place responsibility on Israel for derailing the Trump plan because of its insistence that its withdrawal take place only after the complete disarmament of Hamas. It is even possible that Turkey and Qatar persuaded Hamas to accept the framework on the assumption that Israel would reject it.

No picture today because blogger sux

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Royal Antisemitism Commission Practices Antisemitism

Australia's Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion was created because two gunmen murdered fifteen people at a Bondi Beach Hanukkah gathering last December. Its job is to explain and combat how a country got to that point. 

On August 4, its own hearing room produced a demonstration of the very antisemitism it was created to diagnose.

David Ossip, president of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, appeared before Commissioner Virginia Bell to describe the fear Sydney's Jewish community lived with after October 7 and the protest he called "despicable," which marched from Town Hall to the Sydney Opera House two days later. Lawyers for the Palestine Action Group and the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, granted leave to cross-examine him, questioned  him instead on Israeli airstrike timelines and Gaza casualty figures, alongside Benjamin Netanyahu's public statements.

Ossip is not a representative of the Israeli government.  He is a local Jewish community leader.

Accusing Jews of being responsible for the actions of Israel is antisemitic. Yet this line of questioning went on for nearly an  hour while the Commissioner allowed it.

There is something seriously wrong here.

Ossip, for his part, said he was unequipped to answer, since he runs a Sydney communal organization, not Israel's defense ministry. He protested that these questions were inappropriate. Commissioner Bell responded that she would make that decision.

Her defense rested on narrow grounds. Ossip's written statement had referenced the timing of Israel's response relative to the Opera House rally, so procedural fairness, she reasoned, entitled counsel to test that specific claim, and she rejected the accusation that her ruling had let the inquiry be hijacked. Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-CEO Alex Ryvchin had used sharper language, accusing the advocacy groups of exploiting a hearing on lethal antisemitism to stage a foreign-policy spectacle.

There has been backlash. Premier Chris Minns called it a disappointing turn away from Australian antisemitism and toward foreign-policy litigation of an Australian citizen. Liberal Senator James Paterson said a commission convened to fight antisemitism had instead facilitated it. Labor MP Josh Burns made the structural point: treating a Jewish communal leader as accountable for Israel's government is the same move as treating any Jew as accountable for it, which is the collective-blame pattern the commission exists to study.

One would think that a commission meant to understand antisemitism would, after months of investigation and research and testimony, have an idea of what the word means. To bend over backwards to accommodate those who support a global intifada over the Jews who are under siege in Australia is beyond obscene. It indicates that the entire commission may be worse than useless. 

It is worth watching this angry response to the outrageous episode.

(h/t Jill)

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! Reclaiming the Covenant on America's 250th (May 2026) "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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"Jew Cooties" are here with a vengeance

An icon of the Egyptian tourism industry recently published his autobiography, titled “Elhami El-Zayat.. 50 Years in the World of Tourism.” 

The book was well reviewed, and El Zayat has been promoting it with speeches and seminars.

Until recently.

After he gave a speech to the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate, people objected. The syndicate launched an investigation into how such a person was allowed to speak to the organization. A scandal is erupting over the invitation.

What, exactly, is the problem?

During the investigation, journalist Nour El-Hoda Zaki submitted a memorandum signed by 20 journalists, demanding that the head of the Journalists Syndicate and members of the Syndicate Council investigate what was stated during the seminar and the book, especially what it included in terms of references to Elhami El-Zayat’s upbringing in the Jewish quarter of Bab El-Louq, his participation in Jewish holidays and celebrations, his visits to Israel as a tourism expert, and his reception of Israelis in Egypt, considering that this violates the decisions of the successive general assemblies of the Journalists Syndicate regarding the prohibition of professional and union normalization.

Ah, he did his job by working with Israelis both for Egyptians to visit Israel and vice versa in the previous 50 years, which includes the peace treaty. That's the crime of "normalization."

But notice what else they are complaining about: he grew up in a Jewish neighborhood and treated his neighboring Jews like normal human beings. Egypt invokes its vanished Jewish community as proof of historical tolerance, while its present institutions treat warm memories of that community as evidence against the person remembering it.

Two decades ago, Meryl Yourish popularized the term "Jew Cooties," Jews being treated as a source of contamination. Anyone who shook hands with a Jew was automatically canceled in the Arab world.  Anti-normalization began by treating contact with Israelis as politically contaminating. But the El-Zayat controversy reveals how easily that category expands: Israelis become Zionists, Zionists become Jews who refuse to denounce Israel, and eventually even positive memories of Jewish neighbors become suspect.

It seems laughable when we see it in the Arab world, but Arab antisemitism is prologue to the West. Already Jews are being shut out of publishing houses; and articles about tourism to Israel or Israeli food or culture have all but disappeared in the media. Just as in Egypt, any association with Jews who do not call for Israel's destruction may cause one to be canceled, so anything that normalizes Israelis, Zionists or nearly all Jews is morally suspect and it isn't worth the headache to buck that trend.

There is a real contagious disease here, and it isn't Jew cooties. It is old fashioned hate of Jews. 

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! Reclaiming the Covenant on America's 250th (May 2026) "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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08/05 Links Pt2: Benny Morris: ‘The Palestinians were offered peace – they rejected it’; The Democrats are a menace to America’s Jews; UC Berkeley teacher: ‘ethnic studies means free Palestine’

From Ian:

Dara Horn’s shocking new title hides a serious argument about fighting antisemitism

If you thought People Love Dead Jews — Dara Horn’s 2021 essay collection examining society’s reverence for remembering deceased Jews while failing to support the living ones — was an awkward book to read in public, just wait until you get your hands on Horn’s newest title: The Final Solution to the Jewish Question.

Horn, a celebrated novelist who has become the bard of contemporary antisemitism since Dead Jews was published five years ago, is in on the joke; she likes to say that both titles make great beach reads because no one will dare sit within several feet of you. (Her dad even made a custom People Love Dead Jews beach towel for her to test out the theory.)

But despite borrowing its title from the name of the Nazis’ infamous plan to rid Europe of its 11 million Jews during World War II, Horn’s latest book, which will be published on Sept. 1, is not a Nazi manifesto.

Instead, the title of Horn’s new book serves as an eye-catching, subversive dog whistle that is meant to pique the interest of antisemites — while also serving as a cheeky summary of Horn’s goal of actually trying to come up with a solution to the wave of antisemitism that has swept the world in recent years.

She just can’t believe that she is the one coming up with those solutions.

“I saw People Love Dead Jews as just a detour from my real work, which I see as writing novels,” Horn told Jewish Insider in an interview last week.

The genesis for Horn’s latest book came in the aftermath of Dead Jews. She spoke at public events often in 2021 and 2022, and she recalls becoming “the receptacle for everyone’s horror stories.” People would go up to Horn after she discussed the book and tell her about their own experiences of antisemitism. They often chalked up these incidents to jokes or misunderstandings or annoyances, such as a couple being ghosted by a longtime friend after the friend attended their son’s bar mitzvah or an actor turned down for roles in Hollywood because they looked “too Jewish.” But when taken together, they present a picture of a society that has learned to accept ambient anti-Jewish hate.

“This is going to sound really ridiculous,” Horn reflected on her previous book, “but I didn’t even really think it was a book about antisemitism. I saw it as a book about this weird historical phenomenon about the way we commemorate the past and how that affects the present.”

Many Horn acolytes felt that her thesis was borne out during the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks in Israel, the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust, as they watched sympathy for Jewish victims turn to anger at Israel’s military response and even praise for Hamas’ actions.

“I’m not happy to have been right about this,” she said.

25 years after suicide bomber killed Malki Roth at Sbarro in Jerusalem, her grieving parents feel alone, wonder when she’ll get justice

After a quarter century of seeking justice for their daughter Malka Chana “Malki” Roth, who was 15 when she was murdered in a suicide bombing at Sbarro in Jerusalem on Aug. 9, 2001, Arnold and Frimet Roth feel abandoned—by their American government and by many whom they expected to keep fighting with them.

“We’re alone in every meaningful sense, fighting powerful people who never, ever, at any stage, say what they actually mean or what they intend to do,” Arnold Roth told JNS. “Quite the opposite. They say things that are superficial and that are calculated to keep us in the dark and never lead to where we want to go.”

Ahlam Tamimi, a Hamas terrorist who lives freely in Jordan, brags openly on television about helping plan the pizzeria bombing, in which Judith Shoshana Greenbaum and Chana Nachenberg, both American citizens like Roth, and 13 other civilians were killed. Some 130 were injured in the attack.

In 2013, the United States charged Tamimi with participating in the attack. She is listed on the “Most Wanted” FBI terrorist list, and the U.S. State Department’s Rewards for Justice program has offered up to $5 million for information leading to her arrest.

Jordan, which has an extradition agreement with the United States dating back to 1995, has refused to comply in Tamimi’s case, and successive U.S. administrations seem to have been unable to enforce the treaty.

Jordan has said that handing Tamimi over would lead to riots in the streets, but those involved with the case have told JNS repeatedly that Jordan’s claim is a convenient excuse for Washington, which is loath to rock the U.S.-Jordan relationship.

Roth has visited Jordan several times and had business relations there before his daughter was murdered.

He told JNS that he can’t fathom how extraditing Tamimi would suddenly harm the U.S.-Jordan relationship, given already high levels of Jew-hatred in the Hashemite Kingdom and Israel’s measures to shore up its defense of the border with Jordan.

Stuck in a perpetual state of mourning for his daughter, Arnold Roth’s pain and quiet anger are palpable in his voice.

Nick Winton: My father saved Jewish children because he refused to be a bystander – a lesson we urgently need today

Iwant to start with a letter.

It was written on May 4, 1939, on the headed notepaper of the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia, Children's Section, Room 217, Bloomsbury House, London. The original is now held at Yad Vashem. My father wrote it a fortnight before his 30th birthday to drum up support for what became the Kindertransport – the operation that brought 669 children, most of them Jewish, to safety in Britain before the war began.

I have been reading it for years. It has never felt more urgent.

He opens by describing the public mood of his time: "Tales of violence and war, treaties made and broken, concentration camps and social ostracism have become so commonplace in the daily papers that the average person has completely lost his normal moral standard... They are content to consider themselves as individuals without responsibility for what is going on in the world today. They hope it will all come right in the end but, in the meantime, they can do nothing."

It feels shocking to read those words 87 years later and to realise the similarities with today.

My father then draws a distinction that has stayed with me ever since. He writes of the difference between passive goodness and active goodness. Passive goodness, resolving to do no wrong, is not enough. Active goodness, he writes, is "the giving of one's time and energy in the alleviation of pain and suffering. It entails going out, finding and helping those in suffering and danger and not merely leading an exemplary life..."

He wrote that passage while organising the rescue of children whose families were being stripped of their livelihoods, their homes, and their futures. He describes them in the letter: "doctors, teachers, journalists, civil servants, whose only crime has been their outspoken defence of democracy."

Read that sentence again. Those words were written in 1939. They could have been written this morning.

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08/05 Links Pt1: Two IDF soldiers killed, four seriously injured in southern Lebanon; Gen. Kellogg: Trump should stop negotiating and win against Iran; The Meaning of Haley Stevens’s Defeat

From Ian:

Gen. Keith Kellogg: Trump should stop negotiating and win against Iran

The American way of war from the Revolutionary War to World War II was straightforward. We did not fight to negotiate; we fought to win.

Americans traditionally support winners. There will be those who disagree about how to fight a war, but few can ever argue with winning. Unfortunately, today we are told negotiation is winning. It is not.

Our Founding Fathers put the awesome responsibility of commander in chief in the hands of our elected president in Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution. They presupposed that whoever was elected by the people had the wisdom to act in the best interests of our nation. In today’s world, for better or worse, that is extended by inference to the president’s advisers as well. So, the fundamental question of winning is more relevant than ever before.

I, like many others, am asking: Do we still have the will to prosecute a war to a successful conclusion? This can be simply defined as the ability to bend an enemy to our will while making minimal to no concessions. In short, do we still have what it takes to commit to the American way of war?

By extension, do the president’s advisers, from the vice president down, subscribe to that as well?

Based on the latest developments regarding Iran, I am increasingly concerned about the answer to that question. It seems the American people are being told that negotiations to a satisfactory outcome for both sides are a win-win. That is wrong. If you believe the purpose of war is a means to negotiate, then you have already lost. You wage war to win. Period.

If I were advising a commander in chief in the current conditions, here is what I would recommend.

Bring the American people along in the decision process. History has shown that Americans will sacrifice when they are brought to understand the gravity of the situation. When Americans understand that we are fighting for tomorrow and not for today, they will rally. Americans always believe in an end state that improves the future for our children and grandchildren, namely, a world of increased safety and prosperity. The president needs to explain why the fight in Iran is that fight.

Second, you cannot prosecute a war like a business deal. War is too difficult to leave to chair-bound critics, people who lack an understanding of the principles of conflict or those who contemplate dollar signs rather than strategy. This is especially true of proactive military action, or a war of choice. This is also why this war must be won, not managed. Wars of choice carry a higher threshold. Choosing to go is different from being forced to go or acting in self-defense; this is why winning matters even more. Losing a war of choice erodes deterrence more rapidly and diminishes a nation’s ability to project power.

Next, critics will always object to war and the process of war. They need to be made irrelevant during the decision-making process. Iterative decision-making is important, and sharing diverse perspectives during the national security decision-making process is critical. However, once the decision to go is made, everyone needs to be fully committed and rowing in the same direction. Internal dissent leaked to the press after an operation has begun is dangerous and places the entire operation at risk.

I recall a comment from Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. When asked about the military strategy against the Iraqi army, he said, “Our strategy in going after this army is very, very simple. First, we’re going to cut it off, and then we’re going to kill it.”

I was serving in the Gulf at the time, on the ground with the 82nd Airborne Division, and his comment, as the principal military adviser to the president, gave those of us deployed forward the confidence in our military and our commander in chief that we would fight this war to a successful conclusion. We would win it.

Melanie Phillips: My message to CENTCOM

Dear CENTCOM,
Your entire strategy is totally wrong from start to finish. Your aim is to wear down the regime until it agrees to your terms. This is a foundational error. Your aim should be instead regime change by destroying the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) that wields power in Iran.

I would say this to your Commander-in-Chief, but he hasn’t asked.

This is why America should change its strategy.

Understand that all negotiation with the regime is worse than pointless. Their agenda is non-negotiable. You cannot negotiate with fanatics who believe that producing an apocalypse will bring to earth the Shia messiah. They never, ever negotiate in good faith. They always lie. Negotiation to them is merely an opportunity to delay, to obfuscate and to exploit the weakness of America, which refracts everything through the Western belief in the overriding impulse of self-interest. This is laughable. The Iranian regime believes it has a divine command to destroy the west. America’s attachment to negotiation merely tells the regime it’s on course to achieve America’s defeat.

End the incoherent thinking. President Trump talks of forcing the regime to surrender. But he’s also pushing for a negotiated deal. Surrender is the outcome of defeat. A negotiated deal is the outcome of concessions on both sides. So which is it? It can’t be both.

Stop thinking that the regime has a pain threshold. Trump said last week: “We’ll be hitting them very hard, and you know, at some point, they’re going to say, ‘We just can’t take it anymore.’”

That point will never arrive. The regime can take infinite pain. It’s prepared to sacrifice the Iranian people and see the country’s infrastructure destroyed. As long as the regime survives in some form, it will think it’s won because it can always regroup and continue with its infernal agenda, however long it takes. Which it will do. Bombing even more stuff will therefore have only a limited effect.

Change your war aim to regime change — the only way to neutralise the unconscionable menace those fanatics represent for their people, the region and the world. That means empowering the heroic people of Iran to take their country back. That means in turn preventing the IRGC from being able to continue to jail and torture them, hang them and mow them down in the streets. That means destroying the IRGC.

How? Ask the Israelis.

Bid farewell to Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. They are hopelessly compromised by their financial interests in the region. Their negotiations in both Gaza and Iran have been demonstrably farcical. Many lives have been needlessly lost as a result. They should be removed forthwith from all involvement in the war against Iran and its proxies.

Now persuade the President.

You’re welcome.

Pierre Rehov: What the Gaza Roadmap Actually Says

Everything then turns on a question the announcement left unanswered: Has Hamas agreed to surrender the power and weaponry that have defined it for decades, or only to change the label on them?

[T]he same clause in the roadmap names the custodian: the new Palestinian NCAG [National Committee for the Administration of Gaza], and "no weapons shall be transferred or handed to Israel or non-Palestinian parties." What could possibly go wrong?

When the sequence ends, NCAG alone – the Palestinian one – will be permitted to hold and control arms in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas has spent nearly four decades converting truces into arsenals.

Israel withdrew every soldier and expelled every Jewish resident from the Gaza Strip in 2005, and what grew there since is an Iranian-sponsored war machine: rockets, a vast terrorist tunnel network, weapons factories wedged into crowded neighborhoods, and a school system that teaches children that terrorism is a career.

Billions of dollars of international aid arrived, earmarked for housing, clinics and employment. Instead, the funds were used to produce weaponry and build an underground military comprising at least 350 miles of terror tunnels with 5,700 entry shafts, and command centers in and under hospitals.

[W]hat Hamas has done just during this ceasefire: Israeli military intelligence estimates that Hamas has rehabilitated its forces to roughly 27,000 men under arms, while the movement continues paying monthly salaries to some 49,000 officials, running 13 municipalities and the ministries of economy, education, health and welfare, collecting taxes on commerce, and skimming the international aid funds. It still rules about 40 percent of the Gaza Strip, the part where most of the population lives.

The clans that fought against Hamas are excluded. Hamas itself is merely processed, "vetted," reassigned and kept on salary.

Verification rests on institutions that scarcely function.... Certifying the demilitarization of a territory holding 27,000 trained and heavily armed Hamas terrorists is not a mission for a company-sized pilot project.

Above that force sits a Gaza Executive Board on which Turkey and Qatar hold seats, two governments whose usefulness to Washington derives precisely from their access to Hamas. Qatar, Hamas's patron, has been invited to certify the disarmament of its client.

"Qatar is at the top of funding terrorism worldwide.... Even more than Iran," according to Udi Levy, a former senior official of Israel's Mossad spy agency who dealt with economic warfare against terrorist organizations.

Qatar most likely sees its sole mission in Gaza as making sure that Hamas remains armed and in power to further the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood, of which, largely thanks to funding from Qatar, Hamas is the Palestinian branch.

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UNICEF's one-sided, anti-Israel view

UNICEF used to be a respected organization advocating for children worldwide. But when it comes to Israel, especially since October 7, it has been willing to lie or misrepresent facts in many ways, large and small.

Here is the first paragraph of a press release from last month:

ROME/NEW YORK, 23 July 2026 – New analysis released today shows improvements in food security and child nutrition across the Gaza Strip. However, the United Nations cautioned that the progress, driven largely by expanded access to humanitarian food, nutrition, agricultural and health assistance, remains fragile. While access into Gaza has improved, only one crossing – Kerem Shalom/ Abu Salem – in the south of Gaza remains open, limiting the flow of essential goods that can assist with recovery and leaving the majority of the population dependent on humanitarian aid. The people of Gaza are still struggling to recover their livelihoods, local food systems and essential services.

Guess how many crossings were open to Gaza before the war?

Exactly one, Kerem Shalom. It managed to supply all of Gaza's needs by itself. I've visited there; it is huge. The UN cannot stop itself from blaming Israel for things that are not Israel's fault. Plenty of food is entering Gaza, more than enough for everyone; the only problem is distribution after the fact and Israel has little to do with that. UN agencies have plenty to do with it.

But another small detail shows how anti-Israel the UN is: calling the crossing "Kerem Shalom/ Abu Salem."

First of all, the Arab name is incorrect: it is Karm Abu Salem. 

Secondly, there was never any Arab village or ruin or single tent there with that name. The kibbutz Kerem Shalom was opened in 1967; the Arabic name was created afterwards. Why? Because the idea of a Hebrew name for a Jewish area is so hateful to Arabs that they have to make up their own name.

And even the name they made up has a layer of lies. Kerem Shalom means "vineyard of peace." The Arabic equivalent would be Karm al-Salam. Karm Abu Salem means "the vineyard of Abu Salem," as if that is the name of an indigenous Arab who lived in the area. Of course, there is no such person, but it makes the Arabic name sound like it was there before Jews lived there. 

If the Arabs want to make up their own names, no one can stop them. But when the UN officially adopts a made up arabic name that was created for no other reason but to claim it as theirs - a Jewish neighborhood inside the Green Line - that indicates that the UN is biased against Israel at every level, from the seemingly trivial nomenclature to the idea that even Israeli areas within the Green line are really Palestinian. 

(h/t Irene)

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! Reclaiming the Covenant on America's 250th (May 2026) "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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08/04 Links Pt2: The Weaponization of Human Rights; Ireland’s €53m government jet ‘can’t land in fog’ after Israeli tech boycott; The War on Dialogue; The Demonization of Israel Ignores the Success of Israeli Arabs

From Ian:

The Weaponization of Human Rights

When It Becomes Jew-Hate
In July 2021, antisemitic incidents surged across Britain during that summer’s fighting in Gaza. Jews were harassed in the street. A convoy was filmed driving through London screaming threats of rape against Jewish women. And Kenneth Roth offered his unwanted analysis. “Antisemitism is always wrong,” he wrote, “and it long preceded the creation of Israel, but the surge in UK antisemitic incidents during the recent Gaza conflict gives the lie to those who pretend that the Israeli government’s conduct doesn’t affect antisemitism.”

In the very sentence in which he condemned antisemitism, he placed its cause not with the antisemites but with Israel, the world’s only Jewish state. He told Jews being attacked on the streets of London that the real reason lay in the conduct of a foreign government. Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League called it “plainly false and offensive,” and he was right. Blaming Israel for violence against Jews, rather than the people committing that violence, is not human rights advocacy. It is the oldest move there is, wearing new clothes: whatever happens to the Jews, the Jews brought it on themselves.

This was not a slip. Under Roth, HRW branded Israel an “apartheid” state, reaching for the single most incendiary word available and fixing it to a country whose Arab citizens vote and sit as judges on its own supreme court. The word was not chosen because it was accurate. It was chosen because it was powerful. Like so much of what Roth did, it was a political act wearing the costume of a legal finding.

Which brings us back to Ceuta.
Roth left Human Rights Watch in 2022. He no longer has its budget or its name behind him. And that is precisely why the Ceuta tweet matters so much. For thirty years, his defenders insisted that HRW’s fixation on Israel was simply where the evidence led, that the volume of criticism reflected the volume of abuse, nothing more. The Ceuta tweet destroys that defense from the inside.

Here was a man, stripped of every institutional restraint, handed a story that had nothing whatsoever to do with Israel, and he manufactured an Israeli villain out of thin air, on a map he had not even read correctly. The conclusion came first. The evidence was to be invented afterward. That is not what following the evidence looks like. It is what an obsession looks like. And now we can see that the obsession was never really the organization’s. It was his.

This is one of the oldest features of Jew-hate, and I have spent years writing about it. It does not always arrive in a brown shirt. It adapts. It takes the language a society holds sacred and turns that language against us. Once it borrowed the language of the Church, and Jews were the killers of God. Today it has learned to borrow the language of human rights, and Jews are the killers of children and the enemies of justice. The costume changes. The accusation does not. And Kenneth Roth has been one of its most fluent translators.

Nor does it stay contained. Roth’s theory did not stay in his replies. Analysts documented how the Ceuta crisis was spun into a global antisemitic conspiracy within seventy-two hours, and Roth handed that conspiracy the credibility of a name that Princeton and Yale still invite to lecture on human rights. This is how it works. This is how Jew-hate is laundered: not by thugs in the street, but by respectable men with blue checkmarks and university affiliations, men who would be genuinely offended to be called antisemites even as they write the antisemites’ script for them.

What it Costs
The language of human rights is important. Real people in real dictatorships depend on it: the dissidents and the prisoners, the people in exactly the closed societies Robert Bernstein built his organization to defend. When words like “apartheid” and “genocide” are picked up and swung as weapons in a political fight, they are drained of their meaning, and the world’s genuine tyrants are handed a gift: the ability to wave away every accusation as just more politics. A movement that cries wolf at a democracy while the wolves run free everywhere else does not protect human rights. It discredits them.

And there is a cost closer to home. Every time a figure of Roth’s stature dresses up an old hatred in the language of justice, that hatred is given fresh permission. It is made respectable. Ordinary Jews, in London and Paris and on American campuses, are the ones who then live with the consequences, because the man with the human rights credentials has told the world that when Jews are targeted, Jews are somehow the authors of their own misfortune. That is not the protection of a vulnerable people. It is a license for their persecution.

Ultimately, that is Kenneth Roth’s legacy. Not one tweet about a Spanish enclave, but thirty years of proof that the most powerful institution in human rights could be turned into a weapon: for politics, for money, and above all for a fixation with the Jewish state that has outlived his own career. His defenders will call the Ceuta tweet an aberration. It is not. It is the clearest thing he has ever written. It is who he has always been, said plainly at last, and published while the dead were still being counted on a beach that had nothing to do with the Jews.

The Guardian is in the grip of an antisemitic ideology

The authors go on to argue that Truman, like his predecessors, caved to the powerful Israel lobby and betrayed the U.S. ‘national interest’—an ideal that Israel lobby conspiracists like Clifton and Lustik fancy themselves uniquely equipped to define, while framing Jews and other supporters of Israel as intrinsically ill-equipped to delineate.

Also true to character, the authors frame the lobby as the biggest obstacle to peace between Israel and the Palestinians, erasing decades of Palestinian terrorism and peace rejectionism. It’s also supremely dishonest for two ideologues both hostile to the right of Israel to continue existing as a Jewish state – within any borders – to feign passion for a negotiated solution to the conflict.

Indeed, a review of Clifton’s X timeline during the first few days after the Oct. 7 attacks clearly suggests not only that he had little if any sympathy for murdered, raped and tortured Jews, but that he sympathised with Hamas.

Elsewhere in the Guardian excerpt, the co-authors make use of their faux nationalist authority to take thinly veiled swipes at American Jews, questioning their loyalty and suggesting dual loyalty.

For instance, former US Mid-East peace negotiator Dennis Ross (who’s Jewish) is dismissed in the book as a peace obstructionist due to his record as a “a lobby insider.” This false accusation was first peddled in the widely ridiculed 2006 book on the Israel lobby by Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, the latter of whom later blurbed a book by Gilad Atzmon which was described by CST as one of the most antisemitic books in years.

Indeed, the only characters in the Israeli-Palestinian debate whose motivations and actions are questioned or examined are Jews and others involved in pro-Israel lobbying groups.

True to form, Clifton and Lustik are breezily unconcerned with the decisions, ideologies and loyalties of the diplomatic elite (aka, the peace processors) whose assumptions about the root cause of the conflict has continually been proven false, pro-Palestinian groups, and Arab and Muslim Americans – the latter of whom show a distressing level of support for Hamas.

Indeed, the Guardian’s effective endorsement of the authors’ mono-casual Jewish and Israel-focused explanation for the continuing Mid-East conflict, which has been echoed by the outlet’s own anti-AIPAC reporter Chris McGreal year after year, is a microcosm of their broader coverage of the region, which denies agency to the latter – no matter how destructive, malevolent and inimical to peace their decisions – while assigning all of the blame to the former.

Finally, there’s the authors’ decision to ignore the single most consequential event for anyone purportedly writing about Israeli-Palestinian peace today: Hamas’ barbaric massacre in southern Israel.

As the renowned historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, a supporter of the two-state solution whose new book, titled “The Cauldron: The Making of the Modern Middle East,” comes out in September, recently observed, the terror group’s decision to launch that attack “prevented any creation of a Palestinian state for the foreseeable future,” a timeframe he clarified as meaning “decades.”

Indeed, evidence abounds that Hamas’ only guiding passion is the annihilation of Israel, regardless of the cost to the two plus million Palestinians in Gaza.

The Palestinian-American peace activist Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib documented that Hamas itself acknowledged that, as far back as 2014, Gaza was offered billions of dollars (US) in development, which included an airport, a seaport, new industries, major cash infusions and self-rule. The condition for this path forward for Palestinians was Gaza’s disarmament and demilitarisation, a deal which would have given Hamas an off‑ramp: integrating its employees and former fighters into the civilian police, and shifting toward nation‑building instead of terrorism.

As Alkahatib, one of the Palestinian architects of the Gaza development plan, said, Hamas rejected the plan and, instead, “turned the territory into a fortress of violence, tunnels, rockets, smuggling, and radicalization,” which culminated in Oct. 7, “Gaza’s vast devastation, tens of thousands killed, and billions wasted,” a wanton act of destruction that Jewish lobbyists in Washington had absolutely nothing to do with.

The path forward for Gaza, Alkhatib concludes, requires introspection, accountability, responsibility, and an insistence on Palestinian agency – ideas for peace that the territory’s leadership, Western pro-Palestinian activists, anti-Israel media outlets and antisemitic lobbyologists are loath to consider.

The Demonization of Israel Ignores the Success of Israeli Arabs

Whatever the extremists of Hamas intended to achieve through their attack on Israel, their actions appear to have strengthened the country's core and brought out a collective national spirit that was tangible to me as I traveled through the country.

After attending a conference in Haifa, I was struck by the changing nature of Israeli Arab employment and the growing involvement of Arab citizens in key sectors of the Israeli economy. At the University of Haifa, I was particularly struck by the number of young Israeli Arab women studying on campus. I could hear Arabic being spoken all around me.

Consider Israel's healthcare system. One in four doctors in Israel is Arab. Just over one in four dentists is Arab, as is just over one in four nurses. Almost one in every two pharmacists in Israel is Arab. These are highly specialized professions requiring years of education, training and accreditation. Moreover, Israel has suffered thousands of casualties since the Oct. 7 attack and many of those injured were treated by Arab doctors and nurses.

The blanket term of "apartheid" in Israel against its Arab population simply does not stack up when compared to what happened in South Africa. There are social disparities - but Israeli Arabs are part and parcel of Israel's future. That is patently obvious to any social observer.

Israel's critics overlook the countless interactions that take place between Arab and Jewish citizens every day. They remind us that reality is far more complicated than the slogans through which Israel is so often discussed in Britain.

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08/04 Links Pt1: Iran’s Most Powerful Weapon Is Time—Here’s How To Turn It Against Them; The Not-So-Special Relationship; Piers Morgan to Hamas spokesman: Why kidnap a baby?

From Ian:

Gen. David Deptula: Iran’s Most Powerful Weapon Is Time—Here’s How To Turn It Against Them

Destruction Is Not the Same as Leverage
American airpower can inflict devastating damage on Iran’s military establishment, but that does not constitute a strategy. To be productive, military effects must be connected to a defined political purpose.

If Iran believes it only needs to survive until the American political environment changes, then retaliatory strikes alone can be waited out. To be effective, the U.S. must convince Tehran that waiting will make its position progressively worse—not better.

This requires persistent military pressure against the regime’s ability to attack and regenerate. The United States should continue attacking the production, storage, command-and-control, and launch architecture supporting Iran’s missile, drone, and maritime operations. Electrical-power infrastructure that directly and effectively supports those military capabilities constitute a lawful military objective when targeted in accordance with the principles of distinction, proportionality, and feasible precautions, and provide a highly leveraged means of neutralizing them consistent with the law of armed conflict. Maritime restrictions should be sustained and enforced consistently, with clearly defined humanitarian provisions and consequences for violations.

Most importantly, military pressure must be integrated with a sustained economic campaign directed at the revenue streams that finance the regime and its military reconstruction.

Iran’s petroleum trade remains its central economic lifeline. Tehran depends on front companies, financial intermediaries, foreign refineries, ship-to-ship transfers, and a shadow fleet to disguise the origin and destination of its exports.

The Treasury and State Departments have already taken significant action against these networks. Recent Treasury measures target vessels, companies, financial intermediaries, and procurement networks supporting Iranian petroleum sales, missile production, and unmanned aircraft programs. Those actions provide a strong foundation for a campaign that connects economic pressure directly to military and diplomatic objectives.

Washington should continue systematically inhibiting the banks, insurers, port operators, brokers, refiners, and shipping networks that enable Iranian revenue. This forces foreign companies and governments to choose: access to the American financial system or assist in Iran’s sanctions-evasion economy. It must be clear you cannot do both.

Enforcement matters more than announcements. A sanctioned tanker that continues delivering oil represents unrealized leverage. Closing the gap between designation and enforcement is essential to maximizing pressure and strategic effect.

The Long Game Is the Path to a Durable Win
President Trump has long emphasized speed, deadlines, and measurable results. That approach can create valuable urgency and prevent bureaucratic drift. Iran, however, is attempting to turn that preference for rapid results to its advantage by arguing an agreement must be reached within a narrow political window.

The administration should resist and decouple the midterm election calendar from Iranian negotiations.

A 100-day benchmark can be a useful management and communications milestone, but it is insufficient for compelling a revolutionary regime to turn its back on decades spent absorbing sanctions, suppressing domestic opposition, and waging war through proxies and asymmetric means.

For President Trump to secure a durable victory, the United States must be prepared to play the long game. This does not mean accepting an endless war. It means establishing conditions under which Iran’s choices are steadily reduced while America’s are preserved.

The administration can reinforce its position by making clear that economic and military pressure will continue beyond the midterm elections. It should expand interceptor and counter-drone production on an emergency basis, build regional stockpiles, strengthen partner defenses, and shift the cost-exchange ratio in America’s favor. It should continue degrading Iran’s capacity to manufacture and employ offensive weapons while tightening enforcement against the regime’s oil, shipping, and financial networks.

The objective should not be destruction for its own sake or an agreement that trades substantial economic relief for temporary or unverifiable promises.

The objective should be to change Iran’s strategic calculation.

Iran must come to believe that each additional month of resistance will carry increasing cost, resulting in less revenue, fewer military options, greater isolation, diminished military capability, and a weaker negotiating position. At the same time, the United States should make clear that a verifiable agreement remains available if Iran abandons the behavior that created the crisis.

This combination—relentless pressure and a credible diplomatic solution—offers the best prospect for achieving the administration’s objectives.

The decisive question is not whether the Pentagon has a secret technological breakthrough waiting in the wings. It is whether the United States has the strategic patience, economic discipline, and political determination to ensure that Iran cannot simply outlast it.

If Washington demonstrates that determination, time will cease to be Iran’s most powerful weapon and become America’s. (h/t MtTB)

The Not-So-Special Relationship

Benjamin Netanyahu placed two bets on Israel’s alliance with the United States.
One bet was on Donald Trump. The two leaders’ past feuds and the American’s erratic temperament looked like minor points compared to Trump’s record as the president who recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights and Jerusalem and ordered the airstrike that killed Iran’s terror chief, Qassem Soleimani.

From his first term, Trump broke with many of the dysfunctional norms that had governed U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East for decades. Washington’s bipartisan foreign policy establishment had approached the region’s conflicts as a management problem. Their goal was to lower the intensity of conflict by engineering a rough equilibrium that would prevent any party, including Israel, from getting too strong. Attempts to balance the interests of existential foes were supposed to produce stability. Instead, they ensured the periodic reeruption of war between actors like Israel and Hamas who proved unwilling to adopt the norms of Western bureaucrats.

Trump initially rejected this path by enforcing clearer lines between friends and enemies. His approach was to pick winners and take tributes, rather than to work through State Department offices and NGOs to build complex subdivisions of imperial administration.

Siding with Trump promised Israel not only greater external support, but a freer hand to pursue its own war aims after Oct. 7. In return, Netanyahu offered something that he believed Trump wanted: a powerful ally to project power in the Middle East on behalf of U.S. interests. If Netanyahu’s first bet paid off, Israel stood to be promoted from first among American client states to U.S.-backed regional hegemon in the Middle East.

The problem for Israel was not necessarily that Trump decided to end the war with the Iranian regime still in power. Rather, it was that he was bribing the Iranians by bartering with Israel’s vital security interests.

At the same time as he was drawing closer to Trump, Bibi placed a second bet to make Israel less dependent on Washington. In January, he vowed to wean Israel off U.S. military aid over the next decade (the aid Israel receives comes in the form of credits that it’s required to spend on U.S. weapons companies). Last December, Netanyahu told a graduating class of the Air Force Academy that he had approved an investment equal to $108 billion over the next decade to build up Israel’s domestic munitions industry. “I don’t know if a country can be completely independent but we will strive to ensure our arms are produced as much as possible in Israel,” he told the new pilots. His goal was “to build an independent arms industry for the State of Israel and reduce the dependency on any party, including allies.” When U.S. officials tried to dictate Israel’s war plans, for instance by demanding that the Israeli army not enter the Hamas stronghold of Rafah, Netanyahu proved that he was willing to defy Washington.

When Israel and the U.S. launched their joint war against Iran in February, it looked initially like both wagers were paying off. Israel was demonstrating its independent capabilities while acting in concert with the global superpower to defeat a common enemy. The American and Israeli militaries operated with an unprecedented level of cooperation. Pilots from the two countries flew side by side to strike precoordinated target packages. Intelligence-sharing, planning, and rehearsals took place in joint command centers.

But we know how this story ends. After enduring the devastation of their top leadership and military infrastructure, the Iranians brought the war to a halt by shutting down maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. Fearing the costs of a prolonged closure and unwilling to risk the escalation necessary to reopen the strait by force, Trump offered the Iranians a deal. Effectively, the U.S. would pay Iran a ransom. In return Trump would extricate America from a broadly unpopular war before the midterm elections. By the terms of the deal, hundreds of billions of dollars would be released to Iran. The U.S. made other promises to restore Iran’s military capacity and deterrence, including a pledge to force Israel to call off its operations against Iran’s Lebanese terror proxy, Hezbollah. In return the Iranians would reopen the strait. At a later date, American and Iranian officials would reconvene to negotiate terms of a broader agreement.

Instead of neutralizing the Iranian threat and crowning Israel the dominant power in the Middle East, the first of Netanyahu’s gambles went bust. With Iran on the ropes, Trump’s deal revived the regime’s fortunes. The agreement was loose enough that its terms could easily be nullified or rewritten, but its immediate impact was a win for Tehran. For the Arab leaders who pay careful attention to even subtle power shifts in the region and had endured Iranian missile barrages during the war, the message was clear. American security guarantees were provisional at best. The Iranian regime, whose survival had been in question, was reestablishing its claim to be the region’s dominant actor.

Yet this outcome is less surprising than the furious allegations about Trump’s betrayal suggest. Trump, who once decried the weakness of bribing terror states, calculated that it was now in his interest to do so and simply reversed course, albeit with the implicit understanding that he might abruptly reverse again at some future date. There was a clear precedent for both his personal inconsistency and the substance of his policy. He was reverting to the standard U.S. approach to the region, which aims to manage conflicts within a concert of powers.

The problem for Israel was not necessarily that Trump decided to end the war with the Iranian regime still in power. Rather, it was that he was bribing the Iranians by bartering with Israel’s vital security interests—namely the freedom to aggressively deter Hezbollah.

The point was made clearly when Trump told a reporter at the Financial Times that Netanyahu “won’t have any choice” and would be forced to accept whatever deal Trump made because “I call all the shots.” In other comments, Trump accused the Israeli leader of nearly sinking the deal by carrying out counterattacks inside Lebanon. Bibi, whom Trump had once praised, was now attacked as a bloodthirsty warmonger; an obstacle to peace just as Democrats had always accused him of being.

Simply put: Bibi’s two wagers proved incompatible. Taken as far as it could go—to joint operations aimed at toppling the regime in Iran—the bet on Trump stopped short of Israel’s strategic goals. Moreover, it did so in its final act by threatening Israel’s freedom to act as a sovereign power in defense of vital interests on its own borders.

That leaves the bet on independence as Israel’s path moving forward.

Washington Post Claims Support for Israel Is Dangerous to America

On August 1, 2026, the Washington Post reported that Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, the head of U.S. European Command, had warned the Pentagon that he lacked enough naval forces to keep defending Israel against ballistic missiles.

He said that without another Aegis-equipped destroyer, he might eventually have to choose between defending Israel and defending the American "homeland."

This followed a May Post report titled "U.S. Bears Brunt of Israel's Missile Defense, Pentagon Assessments Show."

It said the U.S. had consumed a substantial share of its most advanced interceptors while defending Israel from Iran - more, he said, than Israel itself had expended.

Omitted from the report was that American missile-defense systems in and around Israel were not protecting only Israeli civilians and military installations.

They were also protecting American aircraft, crews, fuel, munitions, communications nodes, and support personnel operating from or through Israeli bases during the campaign against Iran.

The dozens of KC-46 and KC-135 refueling tankers at Ben-Gurion airport and Uvda and Ramon airbases, together with their crews and fuel infrastructure, enabled American combat aircraft to reach Iranian targets and return.

Any Iranian ballistic-missile attack on the Israeli airfields supporting those operations threatened American combat power directly. The U.S. was defending a joint military operation, including exposed U.S. assets.

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