Australian judges have found a loophole in antisemitism: Just call the Jews “Zionists”

An Australian court has come up with a remarkably convenient rule for deciding whether something is antisemitic. If someone says that Jews control the media and politicians, that can be antisemitic. But if he says Zionists control the media and Israel controls politicians, apparently that is just criticism of a political ideology.

That distinction appears in a recent New South Wales judgment, Farhat v Commissioner of Police, where Justice Fagan devoted a surprising amount of space to defining antisemitism and explaining why hostility toward Israel and Zionism should generally be regarded as something categorically different from hostility toward Jews. There are plenty of issues with his analysis, but perhaps the most revealing one comes from an earlier Australian case that he relies upon, Wertheim v Haddad. And the example he quotes from that case practically demonstrates why his theory doesn't work.

In Wertheim, a Muslim preacher had talked about media outlets owned by “Zionist entities,” referred to “Zionist backed media agencies,” and said that right-wing politicians supported Israel because “Israel holds their leash.” These are among the oldest and most recognizable structures of antisemitic conspiracy theory. The only significant difference is that the word “Jew” has been replaced by “Zionist” or “Israel.”

Yet Justice Stewart, deciding Wertheim, drew a sharp distinction. According to the passage quoted approvingly by Fagan, the statements concerned “Israel, the IDF and Zionists,” rather than Jews, and he explained that “disparagement of Zionism constitutes disparagement of a philosophy or ideology and not a race or ethnic group.” That sounds clean until you look at what was actually said. “Jews control the media” is an antisemitic trope, but “Zionists control the media” becomes criticism of an ideology. “Jews control politicians” is an antisemitic trope, but “Israel holds politicians on a leash” becomes criticism of a foreign government. Apparently antisemitism can be disinfected with a thesaurus.

Worse, the preacher had said explicitly antisemitic things earlier that very same day. Stewart found Haddad to have conveyed that Jews are conspiratorial, treacherous and scheming; that Jews love money; that Jews control banks; and other classic antisemitic ideas. The court ultimately characterized those lectures as “fundamentally racist and antisemitic.” But it separated them from the "Zionist" lecture by bizarrely claiming it was to a different audience. Yes, an antisemite can and would change his language to different audiences, that doesn't cleanse the statements. 

Yet Australian judges think so.

The problem is that antisemitism has never been defined simply by whether the noun Jew appears in the sentence. Antisemitic ideas have structures, stereotypes and recurring conspiracy claims: secret Jewish power, Jewish control of governments, Jewish manipulation of the media, Jewish financial domination and Jews operating through hidden networks. A speaker can express those exact ideas while substituting another word for “Jew.”

That is how dog whistles work, and to claim dog whistles aren't bigoted because of a simple word substitution is bizarre, to say the least.

Fagan then takes Stewart's distinction and turns it into something approaching a general theory of antisemitism. In Farhat, he argues that Israel and the Jewish people are “in every material respect different things” and therefore hostility toward Israel cannot simply be equated with hostility toward Jews. He repeatedly invokes anti-Zionist Jews and Jewish organizations as evidence that hostility toward Zionism cannot inherently constitute hostility toward Jews.

The first proposition is trivial: Israel is obviously not identical to every Jew in the world. But the conclusion does not follow. A synagogue is not identical to the Jewish people either. Neither is a Jewish school, a Jewish cemetery, Hebrew, the Star of David or a kosher supermarket. Attacks on any of them can nevertheless be antisemitic because antisemitism can target Jewish collective institutions, symbols and identities, not merely individual human beings carrying a label saying JEW.

Israel presents the same analytical problem on a much larger scale. It describes itself as the Jewish state, was created as an expression of Jewish national self-determination and is understood by both its supporters and its enemies as a Jewish collective entity. That does not mean criticism of Israel is antisemitic; of course it isn't. It means the question cannot be answered simply by saying Israel isn't Jews.

Nor does the existence of anti-Zionist Jews settle anything. Fagan repeatedly relies on the fact that some Jews oppose Zionism or harshly condemn Israel, as though this proves that anti-Zionism occupies an entirely separate conceptual category from antisemitism. But members of a group can endorse prejudicial ideas about their own group, and no characteristic needs to be shared by 100 percent of Jews before hostility toward that characteristic can be relevant to antisemitism. Most Jews do not observe Shabbat; that would hardly prove that attacking Jews for observing Shabbat has nothing to do with antisemitism.

This is precisely why the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism, which Fagan criticizes, emphasizes context. IHRA explicitly says that ordinary criticism of Israel is not antisemitic, but it also says that antisemitism can include targeting Israel when it is “conceived as a Jewish collectivity,” and gives as an example the use of “symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism” to characterize Israel or Israelis. It separately identifies conspiracy claims about Jewish control of “the media, economy, government or other societal institutions” as classic antisemitic allegations.

The Wertheim quotation used by Fagan is almost a perfect illustration of why those provisions exist. If someone says that Zionists secretly control media outlets and that Israel keeps politicians “on a leash,” the relevant question is not simply whether Zionist and Jew are dictionary synonyms. They aren't. The relevant question is whether an old antisemitic conception of Jewish power has been transferred onto “Zionists” and Israel.

This is the central intellectual failure in both judgments. They treat antisemitism as though it inheres principally in the explicit word Jew, rather than in ideas, stereotypes and conspiracy structures about Jews. That is not how antisemitism works, and historically it has never been how antisemitism works.

Antisemites have always adapted their vocabulary to the political environment around them. “Hebrews,” “Semites,” “cosmopolitans,” “Rothschilds,” “globalists” and now “Zionists” can function in different contexts as direct references, euphemisms, dog whistles or perfectly legitimate descriptive terms. You determine which one is being used by looking at the claim being made, not merely at the label attached to its subject.

The very word “antisemitism” illustrates the absurdity of this approach. Wilhelm Marr popularized the term in the nineteenth century precisely as part of an effort to recast Jew-hatred in supposedly racial and scientific language rather than as a crude religious attack on Jews. “Semite” was itself a substitute label for Jews.

By these judges’ logic, we would have trouble recognizing even antisemitism as antisemitic because the word itself does not say “Jew.” That is exactly the problem: Jew-hatred has always adapted its vocabulary. The relevant question is not which noun the antisemite chooses, but what ideas and stereotypes he is expressing.

Courts ordinarily understand this principle perfectly well. Racism and prejudice are routinely inferred from context, coded language, patterns of conduct and the targeting of particular institutions or communities. Nobody seriously believes that prejudice disappears whenever the speaker avoids saying the protected group's formal name. Yet that is remarkably close to the framework these judgments are constructing for antisemitism.

Once courts establish the rule that antisemitic tropes stop being antisemitic when the word “Jew” is replaced by “Zionist,” they haven't clarified the definition of antisemitism. They have written its easiest evasion manual.

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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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08/27 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: Britain’s moral depravity; The Nexus of the Ruffalo Problem; Bondi Beach unveils mural in memory of Chanukah terrorist attack victims

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Britain’s moral depravity

Israel is entitled, in law and in any moral universe, to determine its own borders against an enemy that’s determined to destroy it.

It’s outrageous to single out Israel alone for this kind of imperious and punitive treatment. No such campaign is waged against, say, Turkey for having invaded Cyprus and divided the island from the Greeks by Turkish occupation.

It’s even more outrageous since the United Kingdom is principally responsible for the whole rotten history of the never-ending Middle East conflict.

That’s because, when it was the Mandatory power in pre-Israel Palestine, Britain tore up international law. It went back on its binding undertaking to settle the Jews alone in the land of Israel and instead tried to divide the land by offering much or most of it to the Arabs.

This was an early “two-state solution,” minted by perfidious Britain as a reward to the Arabs for their genocidal aggression in attempting to exterminate the legitimate homeland of the Jewish people. Rewarding terror merely incentivizes yet more of it; and Britain has been pursuing that very same strategy ever since then, repeated now yet again by the Burnham government.

Britain is behaving as if it’s still the colonial master, treating Israel with utter contempt by instructing it to shred its lawful inheritance and expose its people to genocidal assault—and then punishing it for refusing to bow the knee.

British officials have warned, however, that since settlement goods would be almost impossible to distinguish from other Israeli goods, this would inevitably morph into a full-blown boycott of Israel.

Since Burnham and Miliband are playing into a hysterical left-wing narrative of demonic Israel that has consumed not only much of their party but most of progressive opinion, that’s unlikely to trouble them.

Nonetheless, they’re making a very grave mistake because they have overlooked a crucial point.

Britain is highly dependent on Israel for its own security. The United Kingdom has emasculated itself so that it no longer possesses armed forces that can defend the country. From Israel, it gets both priceless intelligence—vital for defending its people against Islamist attack—and cutting-edge military technology.

Yet it is proposing to boycott its key military and security ally at a time when the moth-eaten British lion is facing unprecedented, mounting and immediate threats from Russia and Iran.

Israel might now suggest politely that since the United Kingdom apparently hates the Jewish state so much, it surely won’t want to benefit any further from Israeli intelligence or arms supplies, which will accordingly be drastically curtailed.

What Israel should also say is that Britain’s precious “two-state solution” is profoundly immoral. People who wage a 100-year campaign of mass murder to prevent and then exterminate a legitimate country, while turning down repeated offers of a state of their own because they want to murder yet more of those people and destroy that country, and who indoctrinate their own children to do so in perpetuity, deserve absolutely nothing.

Those like the British government, who have spent the past century rewarding such a program and are now punishing its intended victims, can be described in two words: morally depraved.

Masar Badil was sanctioned for Terrorist Ties — Here Are the Branches Operating in The US

The Masar Badil Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path, a branch of the terrorist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was sanctioned on Wednesday by the US Treasury for terrorism ties, but he organization still maintains a web of smaller groups within the United States.

The US Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Masar Badil and executive committee members Zaid Abdulnasser and Rawa Alsagheer due to the organization’s inextricable links with Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network. Samidoun was jointly sanctioned by Canada and the US in October 2024 for being “owned, controlled, or directed” by the Foreign Terrorist Organization PFLP.

“The organizations share fundraising mechanisms as well as senior leaders and members of their respective Executive Committees,” read the US Treasury statement. Masar Badil and Samidoun Overlapping Leadership

In addition to being executives of Masar Badil, Abdulnasser was the Samidoun Germany coordinator and Alsagheer the Samidoun Brazil coordinator. They joined other Samidoun and Masar Badil officers already being sanctioned by OFAC. Samidoun Europe and Masar Badil executive Mohammad Khatib and Samidoun Madrid coordinator, Masar Badil executive, and Alkarama Palestinian Women’s Mobilization co-founder Jaldia Abubakra had been sanctioned on May 19. It had been noted in the May Treasury press release that Abubakra had “played a key role in establishing a Samidoun partner organization in 2021,” perhaps already hinting then that OFAC was reviewing Masar Badil.

Khatib had in the past been described by Palestinian news outlets as a PFLP operative and spokesman. The PFLP and Palestinian outlets similarly described a chief officer of the Samidoun network, Khaled Barakat, as a leader of the Marxist-Leninist terrorist group. Barakat once publicly represented Samidoun as its leader in statements and petitions, but since the founding of Masar Badil was presented only as that newer group’s head, creating some degree of ambiguity about the relationship between the two groups. His wife, Charlotte Kates, serves as the Samidoun international coordinator. According to a July 19 Institute for the Critical Study of the Society lecture, Kates is also a co-founder of Samidoun and deputy secretary-general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. The Canadian citizen reportedly relocated to Lebanon — She faced legal challenges in the wake of her calls of “long live October 7” and support for terrorism in April 2024.

Unlike other major Samidoun network officers, Kates is not sanctioned. Masar Badil is also not the limit of the Samidoun network, but rather the handle for an umbrella of organizations that continue to operate in North America.

In a deleted July Instagram post in preparation for a November conference in Toronto, the organization confirmed that Tariq El-Tahrir Youth and Student Network, Nidal, Students United for Palestinian Equality and Return at the University of Washington (SUPER UW), Al-Ahrar Palestinian Prisoner Support, and Basel Al Araj Committee were part of Masar Badil North America.

CAIR Removes 9/11 Curriculum Listing Bin Laden’s Manifesto, Following Jewish Onliner Exposé

The Council on American-Islamic Relations quietly revised the September 11th section of its national 2026-2027 back-to-school guide one day after Jewish Onliner published an investigation into the organization’s recommended classroom materials.

The original guide directed educators, administrators and school boards to a CAIR-New Jersey curriculum that listed Osama bin Laden’s “Letter to America” among its high school resources. By August 26, CAIR had removed its endorsement of and link to the curriculum and added a note claiming that an earlier version “did not go through proper vetting.” Yet CAIR National had promoted the same curriculum in its 2025–26 back-to-school guide.

CAIR did not publicly announce the change, identify who failed to vet the material or say whether Jewish Onliner’s reporting prompted the revision. The recommended curriculum, as featured in CAIR’s 2025-2026 national back to school guide. Credit: CAIR

CAIR Quietly Removes Its Endorsement of 9/11 Curriculum
Jewish Onliner published its investigation on August 25 after reviewing CAIR’s newly released nationwide guide and the materials to which it directed American schools.

The original 9/11 section told readers that CAIR-New Jersey and Teaching While Muslim had developed a “comprehensive” curriculum for elementary, middle and high school classrooms. It said the resource included recommended texts, videos, discussion questions and teaching strategies.

The section concluded:
“Access the curriculum at cair-nj.org/911curriculum and share this resource with educators, administrators, and local school boards.”

This was more than a passing reference. CAIR National explicitly instructed readers to access the curriculum and circulate it among educators, administrators and local school boards.

By August 26, the paragraph and hyperlink had been removed from the online guide. The revised version retains the heading “25th Anniversary of 9/11 and Tools for Classrooms,” but no longer names CAIR-New Jersey, Teaching While Muslim or their curriculum.

The replacement text states:
“Comprehensive lesson plans would address the 9/11 attack itself, the victims and families impacted, and the aftermath of the attack, such as the war in Afghanistan, changes in national security, and the rise in hate crimes and discrimination against American Muslim and perceived-Muslim communities.”

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08/27 Links Pt1: Who Is Really Running Iran?; Why Did Israel Take Over an UNRWA School in Jerusalem?; IDF kill Sinwar bodyguard who took part in Oct. 7 attack

From Ian:

Who Is Really Running Iran?

In late July, Iran's president, Masoud Pezeshkian, was finally granted an audience with the country's elusive new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei. According to Iran International, citing sources inside the president's office and others, Pezeshkian was driven to an undisclosed location, transferred into a commercial vehicle with tinted windows, and placed beside a man he was told was the supreme leader.

The car was kept in darkness. No handshake was permitted. The encounter was reportedly brief and conducted entirely by voice. Pezeshkian allegedly left wondering whether he had met Mojtaba Khamenei at all.

Iran has a supreme leader whom almost nobody sees, a president who cannot reliably reach him, and a military establishment that increasingly makes decisions in his name. In Iran, where the leader's image is part of the machinery of authority, invisibility creates a vacuum.

The most important leader is Ahmad Vahidi, commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. He has served as defense minister, interior minister, and commander of the Quds Force, Iran's principal instrument of foreign covert action.

Argentina accuses Vahidi of involvement in planning the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people. This allegation places Iran's most powerful military institution under a man associated with terrorism, proxies and covert action as ordinary instruments of statecraft.

Around Vahidi stands a small fraternity of veteran Guards commanders and intelligence officials whose careers stretch back to the revolution and the Iran-Iraq War. Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, shapes strategy. Mohammad-Bagher Zolghadr connects the institutions. Hossein Taeb, the former chief of IRGC Intelligence who now heads the Basij paramilitary organization, watches the streets. Together, they are the operating system of the Islamic Republic.

Iran's security establishment captured the decisive institutions of the state. The Guards did not abolish the clerical state; they climbed inside it. They kept its constitution, rituals and religious vocabulary while concentrating practical power in the hands of men with military and intelligence backgrounds. They do not need Iran to win today. They need the West to lose patience tomorrow.

The Best Outcome for Core U.S. Interests Is the Collapse of the Iranian Regime

Twenty years of experience as an American diplomat has made me realize that no amount of diplomatic ingenuity can contain Iran. President Donald Trump is right to resort to an intensive economic pressure campaign, backed by the implicit threat of renewed kinetic action. The U.S. should keep pushing until it gets the best outcome for American interests, the region and the Iranian people: the shattering of the illegitimate regime in Tehran.

I was sent to Kuwait for my first State Department assignment, arriving in 2007 at the peak of Iraq's bloody civil war. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps drove much of the violence, building death squads and militias and arming them with IEDs that killed and injured hundreds of U.S. service members.

My subsequent tour in Bahrain coincided with the onset of the Arab Spring protests in 2010. Popular grievances fueled the demonstrations, but Iran exploited the situation, pouring fuel on sectarian tensions. Gulf rulers seized on fears of Iranian interference to justify the Saudi-led intervention that put an end to the protests.

From 2011 to 2013, I coordinated State Department policy for Lebanon - a country hollowed out by decades of Iranian meddling and hostage to Tehran's shadow war against Israel. Billions of dollars of IRGC backing meant Hizbullah outgunned Lebanon's national army and possessed an arsenal of 60,000 rockets and missiles aimed at Israeli towns and cities. Iran in 2013 dispatched Hizbullah to shore up the Assad regime in Syria during the civil war, fueling a conflict that led to over half a million deaths.

The mullahs might not have orchestrated Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, but IRGC know-how and hundreds of millions of dollars of funding over two decades enabled the rampage into Israel that killed more than 1,200 people, including 46 Americans.

The regime in Tehran bears overwhelming responsibility for the mayhem and misery in the Middle East since 1979, and its hold on power is a dire threat to regional stability. The current showdown is an inevitable result of the Iranian regime's efforts to dominate the region through bullying, blackmail and terror. The best outcome for the region - and for core U.S. interests - is the regime's collapse.

How Tehran Survives U.S. Sanctions

Iran has spent years setting up a complex system of oil sales and clandestine shadow banking that it hopes will sustain its economy and military long enough to outlast the latest U.S. economic assault.

The U.S. naval blockade of Iran's ports has reduced Iranian oil exports to near zero. But Tehran still has 80 million barrels of oil stored offshore in oil tankers, mainly in the waters off Malaysia.

Relying on a ship-to-ship transfer system, sanctioned tankers unload crude onto other tankers in international waters to mask the fuel's origin, then ship the cargo to China.

U.S. sanctions generally aim to cut off targets from the U.S. financial system. But sanctions become less effective if U.S. enemies avoid the U.S. financial system entirely.

Iran's transactions with China are increasingly settled in Chinese yuan, outside U.S. oversight. Iran also uses cryptocurrencies to avoid U.S. oversight.

Moreover, Tehran operates a network of shell companies in hubs including Hong Kong and Dubai that are controlled by Iranian exchange houses. These move Iranian oil proceeds into other currencies.

As Washington sanctions one front company, Tehran simply spins up another.

Iranian Cyber Sabotage Is Targeting U.S. Water Systems

The Iranian regime recently executed a series of targeted digital intrusions against water infrastructure in the U.S. This aggressive campaign focused on the operational technology networks of municipal drinking water and wastewater treatment facilities across 7-12 states.

The primary mechanism of the attacks is the scanning of the public internet for exposed programmable logic controllers, which are specialized industrial mini-computers responsible for managing physical machinery, water flow, and chemical treatment cycles.

A pivotal potential vulnerability exposed during this campaign was the indirect threat to the chemical treatment and safety of the supply of drinking water. If water flow drops significantly at a particular location while automated chemical injectors continue to pump in the disinfectant chlorine at pre-set levels, the concentration of chlorine in that section of the facility can rapidly skyrocket to toxic, highly corrosive levels.

Irrespective of its actual impact, this sabotage event borders on the threshold of biochemical warfare insofar as it was a deliberate attempt to inflict a toxicant on an adversary population. The sabotage was designed to prove that a foreign adversary can silently compromise the safety of both U.S. industry structures and individual Americans' household tap water from thousands of miles away.

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Committee To Protect Journalists: Israel Targets Journalists Launching Incendiary Kites From Gaza (PreOccupied Territor

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook  and  Substack pages.

New York, August 27 — The Committee to Protect Journalists issued a stern condemnation today of what it called Israel’s “systematic campaign to silence the press” after Israeli forces intercepted and neutralized several individuals along the Gaza border who were documented launching flaming kites and helium balloons toward Israeli communities.

According to CPJ’s latest statement, the targeted individuals were “clearly identifiable journalists engaged in vital fieldwork.” The organization noted that many of the kite operators wore reflective vests or carried cameras, which, in the group’s view, conferred protected status under international law regardless of the payload attached to the airborne devices.

“These were not militants,” insisted CPJ Middle East director Sara Qudah in a press release. “They were storytellers using innovative, low-tech methods to convey the urgency of the Palestinian narrative. When Israel shoots down a kite carrying a burning rag soaked in flammable liquid, it is shooting down journalism itself.”

The incidents occurred during a period of heightened activity near the Yellow Line. In years past, hundreds of such devices have started fires in Israeli fields, nature reserves, and communities. CPJ’s preliminary investigation determined that at least four of the operators had previously contributed footage or still images to various outlets. One had posted a selfie holding a kite labeled “Press” shortly before release.

The IDF insisted on its right to defend Israel, a claim that human rights activists dismiss as irrelevant, calling it “classic deflection.” CPJ pointed to its longstanding methodology, which classifies anyone who has ever held a camera or submitted material as a journalist, irrespective of concurrent activities. “Contextualizing their work as ‘incendiary’ is a dangerous smear,” Qudah added. “It manufactures consent for violence against the media.”

The statement further accused Israel of “the deadliest and most deliberate effort to kill and silence journalists that CPJ has ever documented,” updating its running tally to include the kite operators among those whose professional activities were allegedly interrupted by force. RSF and the International Federation of Journalists quickly echoed the concern, calling for an independent investigation into the “targeting of airborne press assets.”

Supporters of the CPJ position argued that any restriction on kite launches constitutes prior restraint on free expression. No foreign journalists were granted access to the kite-launch sites to verify the operators’ press credentials independently, but numerous videos have emerged from Gaza with little children reading fabricated accounts of suffering, conferring, according to the CPJ, the status of "journalist" on the script writers.

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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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Iran extorting from its Jews to bankroll the war

Al Hurra (Arabic) has an article on how minorities are being mistreated in Iran since the fighting started. It describes how a church has been confiscated and Bahai's accused of espionage.

For Jews, however, Iran seems to have resurrected a medieval method: arrest Jews and extort them for cash.

According to activists and Iranian citizens who spoke to Al-Hurra from inside Iran, many Jews in Tehran, Isfahan and Shiraz were recently arrested by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

Some were released from custody - in exchange for large sums of money. For some, their families were forced to give up their property in order to release their fathers or sons from jail.

This is happening at the same time that Jewish community leaders are making public statements against Israel and the US, including Rabbi Dr. Hakham Hamami Lalehzar saying in Parliament that “The murderers of Supreme Leader Khamenei must be killed.”

It is even more clear now that when Jewish Iranian leaders say statements like this, they are coerced. And now we know how the coercion works: threats of arrests or worse. 

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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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Academic paper complains that Zionist schools teach Zionism

A recently published Master's thesis by Laurie Baker at the University of Toronto says this in its abstract:

This thesis argues that Israel education (re)produces Zionist hegemony in Jewish-Canadian communities, exemplified in Toronto Jewish day schools. Israel education is practiced in a variety of settings and aims to instill an affective relationship – a feeling of love – for Zionism and Israel in young Jews. Zionist hegemony, as the term is used in this thesis, refers to the way devotion to Zionism functions as a metric for inclusion in many Jewish Canadian communities. An analysis of publicly available documents from seven Jewish day schools in the Greater Toronto Area demonstrates that through Israel education, Zionism is framed as a shared community value, and students are discouraged from thinking critically about the ideology. Augmenting this research is an autoethnography based on my personal experiences as an anti- Zionist Jew who grew up in a Jewish Zionist community, and as a graduate of a Toronto Jewish day school. I reflect on the emotional and social impact of Israel education and Zionist hegemony from within a Jewish Canadian community.

I looked at the websites of the seven schools, and every one of them stated that they were Zionist or supportive of Israel. Baker makes it sound like this is hidden from parents, and it certainly is not. Instilling love of Israel is as much a part of these schools as instilling love of studying Torah. It would be just as inappropriate to teach anti-Zionism as it would be to teach the Documentary Hypothesis. If parents want that, they should find another school.

In fact, Baker admits in the thesis that she refused to have a bat mitzvah since she didn't believe in God. So why doesn't she complain that her Jewish day school, presumably, didn't teach atheism along with Judaism? Isn't it the same thing?

That is not to say that the schools do not allow critical thinking on either Zionism or Judaism. In fact, many of them say this explicitly in their online materials. Robbins Hebrew Academy says that it engages Israel in a “critical and meaningful way,” that students see Israel through “many lenses,” and that they study its political, social, religious and historical contexts.

Baker claims that the Leo Baeck Day Schools position towards Israel means it is“at best unnecessary and at worst forbidden” to think critically about it. Yet its materials say "We are a Zionist institution with a core responsibility to preserve Israel and encourage a democratic state. Our ability to engage meaningfully, yet not unquestioningly, on Israeli governmental policies is an example of the importance of teaching multiple perspectives and what students need to understand the complexity of modern Israel. Our students learn that they can both hug and wrestle as part of a positive relationship with Israel."

It appears that unless these explicitly Zionist  schools teach students that Israel may not have the right to exist as a Jewish state, then they are violating some imaginary code of ethics that exists only in her head. 

Speaking of, she writes about the hateful reactions she received from her Instagram post less than a week after October 7, 2023. But she then quotes her own stupid and callous comment:

for people who say israel is the only thing standing between jews and genocide, consider where antisemitism stems from. white supremacy. antisemitism is a form of white supremacy. like myself, many jews are now considered white and have access to the power and privilege that comes with that. whiteness is malleable and shifts and changes to benefit itself. That being said, Israel is now weaponizing white supremacy (the very system it essentially says it stands against) to systemically oppress Palestinians in their own land. white supremacy is the common thread. for white jews to grasp at the power our conditional whiteness lends us through supporting the state of israel is to turn our backs on collective liberation from the claws of white supremacy that ultimately harms us all. it is a betrayal of jewish values and it stops us from seeing the bigger system at play. we cannot fight for the end of antisemitism without fighting from the end of white supremacy. and we cannot fight to end white supremacy while we are actively perpetuating it and holding on to the tenuous power it is lending us. 

So she essentially blamed October 7 on Israel, and then whined that people insulted her afterwards. Boo hoo. 

Baker's grasp of reality is tenuous at best, but that doesn't stop her thesis adviser to approve her writing which is essentially demanding that Jewish schools cannot choose how to teach about Israel.

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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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08/26 Links Pt2: Ex-hostage who dug his own grave describes cruelty of Hamas captivity; US declares Palestine Action as terrorist group; UK police officers probed for banning Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer fans

From Ian:

Gottheimer asks House leaders to sign onto bipartisan measure decrying Jew-hatred in both parties

After antisemitic streamer Hasan Piker tried to blame Jewish supporters of Israel for worsening antisemitism, Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) called on House Republican leaders on Tuesday to allow a vote on his bipartisan resolution condemning such voices in both parties.

“Hatred is hatred. Period,” stated Gottheimer, who is Jewish. “Let’s bring the vote to the floor.”

The resolution, introduced with Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), takes aim at both Piker on the Democratic side and Candace Owens on the Republican side for their attacks on Jewish Americans.

Piker has been welcomed by Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Dr. Abdul El-Sayed and others from the party’s left wing. He recently warned that Jewish Americans who support a Jewish state were stirring up antisemitism themselves.

“If Jews in America keep putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel, eventually someone is going to come around and take action, not against the State of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews,” he said on a Twitch stream.

Owens “actively amplifies antisemitic figures on her shows,” including guests who praised Hitler, trivialized the Holocaust or promoted “Jewish mafia” narratives, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

She was named “Antisemite of the Year” in 2024 by StopAntisemitism.

“Telling millions of followers that Jewish Americans are bringing violence on themselves is blatantly antisemitic and one of the oldest tropes in the book,” Gottheimer stated.

“This is exactly why we introduced this resolution, and there’s no excuse left for Republican leadership to keep sitting on it,” he said. “Anyone still supporting or campaigning with these personalities is complicit.”

The American Jewish Committee joined the criticism of Piker. “Blaming Jews for the antisemitism directed at them is itself antisemitism,” it said.

The ADL has estimated that Owens has 35 million followers and Piker about 11.5 million.

Study: Genocide claims on US campuses largely grew out of preexisting BDS activism

Claims of genocide against Israel that became prominent on US college campuses after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack were largely concentrated among academics and speakers who had already supported the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, according to a Wednesday report.

The report argues that academics had granted legitimacy to the BDS movement’s aim of stigmatizing Israel.

The report, by the AMCHA Initiative, a nonprofit that documents antisemitism and combats anti-Israel activism on US campuses, analyzed 278 recordings of events sponsored by academic units at US schools. Academic units included departments, centers, programs, institutes and schools.

The events took place on 51 US campuses during the 2024-2025 academic year. The study, called “When Political Advocacy Acquires Academic Authority: BDS and the Genocide Accusation on US Campuses,” selected colleges and universities that Hillel International identified as being popular with Jewish students.

Of those events, 93 featured speakers who had promoted BDS before the October 2023 Hamas invasion of Israel. Support for BDS included signing onto petitions, published writing backing BDS, social media posts and participating in boycotts.

The analysis found that events with BDS supporters were 40 times more likely to include genocide accusations — 85% of those events accused Israel of genocide, compared to 2% of events that did not involve boycott activists.

The strong correlation between prior BDS support and genocide accusations suggested that the charge was “not simply a broadly shared feature of academic discussion about Israel and Gaza,” the report said.

“Rather, its use was overwhelmingly concentrated among speakers who entered the post-October 7 period with a preexisting commitment to taking action against Israel,” the study said.

Historian’s book on Nazi World War II propaganda targeting Arab world to be republished

A prominent historian’s book about Nazi propaganda targeting the Arab world during World War II will be reissued in the spring after going out of print, the author, Jeffrey Herf, said on Monday.

Herf, an emeritus professor of history at the University of Maryland, said it was important to reissue the book, “Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World,” to better understand the current moment and to dispel misconceptions about Hamas’s ideology, which he says echoes the Nazis’

“Hamas should be understood as a fusion of Nazi ideology and Islamist ideology,” Herf told The Times of Israel. “One of the most important falsehoods about Hamas is that it is a progressive movement.”

Yale University Press first published the book in 2009.

Herf said Yale University Press had later taken the book out of print.

“It’s been very frustrating with Yale and I do not understand why they’re taking this position,” Herf said. “They’ve made ready availability of the book more difficult.”

Herf said he did not know why the university’s press had let the book lapse.

The title remains available as an e-book on the Yale University Press website, but physical copies are hard to come by. The 335-page paperback costs more than $400 on Amazon.

Yale University Press told The Times of Israel, “It was a business decision to not reissue a title from 2009, and to return the rights to Professor Herf.”

“We wish him the best of luck with his book in its newest incarnation and with his new publisher,” a spokesperson said.

Herf said he had reacquired the rights to the book himself and that ibidem Press, an academic publishing house in Germany, will republish the print version.

The publishing house confirmed the company will republish the book as a paperback, with a new foreword by Herf, in the spring of 2027.

The book will be distributed in North America by Columbia University Press and will be featured in the Spring 2027 Columbia University Press Catalog, ibidem Press told The Times of Israel.

“Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World” examines the Nazi regime’s massive outreach to Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa from 1939-1945.

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08/26 Links Pt1: Durban helped turn anti-Zionism into a global movement; Guterres: UN special rapporteurs are 'totally out of control,'; Yair Netanyahu was target of Iranian assassination

From Ian:

Gil Troy: Durban helped turn anti-Zionism into a global movement

Before commemorating the 25th anniversary of September 11, it’s worth remembering another event the 9/11 horrors essentially upstaged: the UN World Conference against Racism held in Durban, South Africa, from August 31 through September 7, 2001.

That hate-fest revived the UN’s “Zionism is racism” resolution, fueling today’s anti-racist anti-Zionism.

This irrational fury against Israel, Zionism, and the Jewish people masquerades behind the noble fight to eradicate race-based bigotry.

Remembering that conference, which negated years of Israeli attempts to compromise with Palestinians, provides a moral clarity about the conflict sadly lacking today.

It’s confusing. Sincere democratic critics offer thoughtful, patriotic reproaches of Israeli actions or leaders. But there are also satanic critics, violent evil enemies who wish to destroy the Jewish state. Durban became a Jew-hating jubilee that was so effective, it’s inspired millions of pathetic critics – driven by pathos, emotion – to hop along the legitimate anti-racist bandwagon, then vilify Israel, Zionism, and the Jews, unfairly.

Back then, most Americans mocked the absurd notion that Zionism, meaning Jewish nationalism, was racist. How tragic that today, this big Red-Green lie, uniting far-left radicals with Islamist jihadists, has seduced so many Americans.

Many pretend to be democratic critics, claiming it’s about what Israel does. But the hostility to the fact that Israel is, the obsessive Zio-trashing, and the distortions required to frame the nationalist clash between Israelis and Palestinians as a race-based conflict are downright devilish.

In 2001, the totalitarian anti-Zionism most Americans had long opposed, subordinating all other goals to the anti-Israel impulse, sabotaged yet another UN conference. 'An anti-American, anti-Israeli circus'

“Durban became the tipping point for the coalescence of a new, virulent, globalizing anti-Jewishness,” the Canadian parliamentarian and human rights activist Irwin Cotler lamented. The rhetoric there fused anti-Zionism with anti-Americanism, “laundered” through opposition to racism, Cotler noted.

The legendary Democratic congressman Tom Lantos called Durban “an anti-American, anti-Israeli circus,” often expressed in antisemitic terms – the trashing trifecta.

A Hungarian Holocaust refugee who became Congress’s human rights conscience, Lantos called Durban “the most sickening and unabashed display of hate for Jews I have seen since the Nazi period.”

Some delegates distributed a booklet caricaturing Jews with hook noses and fangs dripping blood. Seventeen thousand anti-Zionist protesters rallied, with some waving the banner “Hitler Was Right!” Other posters wished Hitler had “finished the job.”

Amid waves of Palestinian suicide bombings that destroyed the Oslo peace process and triggered Israeli army crackdowns, the conference showcased the Red-Green alliance’s global reach and anti-Zionist mania.

“Green” Islamist power hijacked the main UN conference, steering discussions away from the widespread problem of white-versus-black racism to denounce “the racist practices of Zionism” as “a new kind of apartheid.”

Although the official Durban Declaration ignored Zionism while condemning antisemitism and Islamophobia, the anti-Zionist rhetoric poisoning many speeches – backed by antisemitic hooliganism on the street – reinvigorated the “Zionism is racism” libel.

The parallel NGO forum celebrated “Red” – far-left – values, with leftist human rights organizations condemning racism, colonialism, and imperialism selectively. They found these afflictions only in the West, especially in Israel, the world’s favorite whipping boy.

The final NGO declaration launched the forum’s “Durban Strategy”: to reinstate the “Zionism is racism” resolution, boycott “Israel as an apartheid state,” and accuse the “Israeli racist system” of “acts of genocide” – in 2001.

The Palestinian firebrand Hanan Ashrawi inflamed these third-world leftist passions. Casting the Palestinians as virtuous victims facing violent victimizers, Ashrawi avowed: “in the struggle against oppression, injustice, racism, intolerance, colonialism, and exclusion, there can be no neutrality.”

The Zionism-racism charge and other categorical demonizations of Israel are accelerants. They infuriate, polarizing both sides. Which Palestinians would want to make peace with a supposedly racist, genocidal, settler-colonialist oppressor? And which Israelis would want to make peace with enemies who libel them so hysterically, while attacking them so violently?

Israel now has the power to respond to action against it with diplomatic consequences

Israel has the strength, ability to respond to action taken against it
The next test may be Britain. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband recently called Israel’s publication of tenders for construction in E1 “an unacceptable and destructive act,” demanded that Israel halt the project, and warned that the UK would not “stand back and accept the destruction of the two-state solution.”

Sa’ar rejected both the substance of Miliband’s statement and “the patronizing tone of his words.” That description was spot on. Britain is entitled to oppose Israeli policy. It isn’t entitled to lecture Israel as though addressing a misbehaving colonial ward whose role is to listen and obey.

Sa’ar also correctly called Miliband’s statement entirely one-sided. He then laid down the principle that should guide Israel’s response: “The UK government’s decision to damage the relationship between our countries is deeply unfortunate. But Israel will not be a passive victim of this policy. Israel will defend its rights, its interests, and its people.”

Israel need not answer every criticism, nor should every response be maximal. But when criticism hardens into policy intended to damage the relationship, Jerusalem should determine which elements of that relationship Britain can no longer take for granted.

That may mean a diplomatic downgrade, exclusion from a particular forum, or a reassessment of specific forms of cooperation. The response should fit the offense and protect Israel’s interests – not merely vent anger.

But this is not your grandmother’s Israel. It is stronger, richer, larger, and less dependent on the goodwill of governments that demand much from it while asking little of its enemies. Its diplomacy should reflect that reality.

Netanyahu at Judea and Samaria event: This land ‘will remain ours’

Speaking at the Binyamin Regional Council’s annual flagship event highlighting the past year’s achievements in Judea and Samaria, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared on Tuesday night that the Land of Israel “will remain ours.”

“Today, many of our brothers and sisters around the world understand: This is our land and it will remain ours,” Netanyahu told Judea and Samaria leaders at the event, which he attended with his wife, Sara.

In remarks translated from Hebrew, he added, “And when I say our land, every Jewish man and every Jewish woman, the door is open. We are waiting for you. In the State of Israel, in the heart of the Land of Israel.”

Those attending the event, Netanyahu said, were “preparing the ground for a very large aliyah [immigration wave] that will come.”

The Binyamin Regional Council governs 47 Israeli communities in an area stretching from north of Jerusalem in Samaria to the Jerusalem Mountains in Judea.

The outgoing government has established and regularized 104 communities and 160 farms, Netanyahu said, adding that more were on the way.

Part of the work was carried out under the Biden administration and part under the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, he said.

“It isn’t easy, it’s never easy. The Land of Israel is acquired through suffering,” Netanyahu said. “Sometimes also through smiles, sometimes also through arguments, but it is being acquired by us. We are not giving up, we have a vision, this is our land, and it will remain ours.”

Some wish to uproot Israelis not only from Judea and Samaria but “altogether from the State of Israel,” Israel’s longest-serving prime minister continued.

This campaign “has gained considerable momentum and exposure during the three years of the War of Revival,” he said, referring to the ongoing multifront war that began when thousands of Palestinian terrorists from Gaza invaded southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

“The axis [led by Iran] that we broke has not yet disappeared,” Netanyahu said. “But we are determined to ensure that there will be no threat—not from the Gaza Strip, and we have done a great deal on that front; not from Lebanon, and we have done a great deal there; not from Syria—we have security zones today inside those countries.

Netanyahu praised the Trump administration for tightening economic sanctions against those assisting the Iranian regime, describing the move as “very important.”

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Muslim-born Liberal Swedish politician writes why she wore a Star of David

Last week I wrote about Simona Mohammson, thw Swedish Labor Party minister who wore a Star of David during a televied debate.

She wrote an op-ed about why in Expressen: To see a liberal politician, let alone one who grew up Muslim, not only support Jews but call out the Left for tolerating antisemitism, is close to astonishing. But the astonishment really belongs to the many on the Left who pretend to be against antisemitism but remain silent when it comes from their side. 

Why doesn’t the left confront antisemitism?

CULTURAL DEBATE. Antisemitism is growing again in Europe. Parents hide or remove the Star of David from their children when it is time to leave for school. Pupils hear antisemitic remarks from classmates. Students are harassed on their way to university.

In a survey by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights, 96 percent say they have been subjected to antisemitism in some form in recent years. Reports from the Living History Forum indicate that antisemitic attitudes in Sweden increased between 2020 and 2025. According to the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (Brå), Jewish organisations report a rise in antisemitism. Children and young people are described as a particularly vulnerable group.

Since 7 October 2023, we have also seen demonstrators cross new boundaries for what is decent and acceptable in a democratic society. There have been protests outside synagogues and at commemorations for the victims of the Holocaust — to draw attention to issues that have nothing to do with Sweden’s Jewish minority.

Swedish society cannot allow this to pass. And we elected politicians have a particular responsibility to keep the public sphere free of antisemitic currents.

For more than 100 years, my party has combined the struggle for democracy with the protection of minorities’ security. Liberals have done so with the firm conviction that a society cannot call itself free as long as its smallest minority lives in unfreedom.

That is why I chose to wear the Star of David at Expressen’s party leaders’ debate. To raise my voice for those who are subjected to antisemitic threats and hatred in our country — every day. To take a stand against the forces that want to normalise hatred.

After the debate I have been asked what I think about the war in Gaza, about other vulnerable groups in Sweden, or about statements by Sweden Democrat politicians. I believe that reaction is part of the problem — why can we never talk about antisemitism in Sweden? Why does the conversation immediately shift focus to other conflicts or social problems? Why can a politician, after a wave of antisemitism, not wear a Star of David without receiving insinuating questions about also wearing a Sámi kolt? I believe this is a relativisation that we as politicians should not accept.

Where is the broad commitment to protect vulnerable Jews in Sweden?

And to raise a warning finger — if we do not stop the antisemitism that is flourishing here and now, Sweden will remain an unsafe country for the Jewish minority.

The Liberals and I do not intend to let Sweden go down that path. In government we have made important efforts to strengthen Jewish life and combat antisemitism. We have strengthened support for security-enhancing measures for Jewish congregations and for more remembrance trips. The Living History Forum and the Segerstedt Institute have been given assignments to strengthen the schools’ work against antisemitism. The Swedish National Council of Adult Education has received funding to increase knowledge about Jewish life and Jewish languages. We have introduced state grants to enable Jewish studies in more schools.

But of course more must be done. The Liberals want to give security classification to synagogues and Jewish schools. Double the support for remembrance trips. Carry out new educational initiatives in schools with democratic outdoor days. Introduce exclusion lists to keep foreign hate preachers out of Sweden.

Historically, Social Democrats have joined forces with Liberals to strengthen Jewish life in Sweden and combat hatred against Jews. During his time in power, Göran Persson carried out important educational efforts to strengthen public knowledge of the Holocaust and society’s resilience against antisemitism. Social Democrats have played an important role in keeping antisemitic attitudes and tendencies within the Swedish left-wing movement in check.

But where is this engagement today? Where is the broad commitment to protect vulnerable Jews in Sweden?

But where is the courage and backbone within S and V?

Instead of a categorical rejection, the Swedish left has shown itself incapable of handling the new antisemitism that has grown in Sweden. This applies both to the inability to distance itself from aggressive demonstrators and from coalition partners with representatives who praise pogroms against Jews.

Developments in several European countries show what the Swedish left’s strategists fear. A split between the traditional left and Islamist-friendly socialists is emerging as an electoral threat. But where is the courage and backbone within S and V? Should the fear of new radical parties prevent you from acting forcefully for the security of Jewish children?

I therefore once again urge all politicians — regardless of colour — to stand up for Jews’ security in Sweden. This should not be a party-political issue — it is about fundamental rights. To Sweden’s Jews I therefore want to say: You should feel safe and free in your country. That is a promise I will not back down from.

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By Simona Mohamsson

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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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08/25 Links Pt2: WFP board member's $100M anti-Israel election ‘war chest’; Cambridge’s Farah Ahmed: study engineering ‘to produce weaponry for Jihad’

From Ian:

UN charity once chaired by Hunter Biden stands by Texas money man after Post reveals DHS probe into $100M anti-Israel ‘war chest’

A UN-backed charity once chaired by Hunter Biden is standing by a Texas money man even as federal investigators probe his group’s possible ties to sanctioned Palestinian organizations, The Post has learned.

The World Food Program USA wiped its entire leadership roster from its website just days after this newspaper revealed the federal inquiry into PFF and its backers, including Basil Qunibi and a group of well-heeled Palestinian donors.

But despite the mounting controversy, the nonprofit insists the founder of Austin-based Atom Investors isn’t going anywhere and blamed the bizarrely timed disappearance of his profile on a routine IT issue.

“Both our staff and board pages are down for maintenance,” a WFP USA spokesperson told The Post. “Basil Qunibi is a member of our Board of Directors.”

They added that the IT work “will conclude by next week.” The rest of the organization’s website, including its donation portals, mission pages, and press releases, remained fully operational on Tuesday afternoon.

The Washington-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit raises money for the United Nations’ food assistance agency. Hunter Biden chaired the organization from 2011 to 2015, which overlapped with some of his controversial business dealings while Joe Biden served as vice-president under Barack Obama.

The website change followed The Post’s story detailing a Department of Homeland Security investigation into PFF and its backers.

It revealed the involvement of Qunibi, Australian billionaire and racecar driver Yasser Shahin, and Bassema Yousef, a Democratic fundraiser who is close to Mayor Zohran Mamdani, in the pro-Palestinian group.

Sources said federal investigators are scrutinizing the trio’s involvement in PFF, an alleged $100 million UK-based political ‘war chest’ that helps fund anti-Israel messaging and provides support to Palestinian activists.

The feds are tracking the entity’s cross-border financial flows tied to anti-Israel advocacy and possible links to sanctioned organizations.

Authorities have not charged any of the trio with wrongdoing. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.

But Qunibi’s representatives have since retreated from initial claims made to The Post that he did not finance PFF.

Maureen Lipman slams ‘sanctimonious’ actors who ‘forced’ Boy George out of West End role over pro-Israel song

Dame Maureen Lipman has defended Boy George in an op-ed in the Spectator discussing her own 13-week experience performing Allegra amidst the palpable burden of pro-Palestine protests.

In May, the Jewish actor and JC contributor found herself the target of the anti-Israel mob when due to perform the musical in Aberdeen.

The Scottish city’s branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) shared a graphic of Lipman with horns and holding a pitchfork, claiming on its Instagram that she had “openly voiced extremist Islamophobic, anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab views”, and urging supporters to sign a petition against her performance.

The group further labelled her “an open supporter of the settler-colonial, apartheid state of Israel, which continues to commit genocide, and is ethnically cleansing the West Bank”.

On finishing her most recent West End stint, she wrote in her op-ed: “The gang of protestors who tried to boycott me from theatres in Aberdeen, Glasgow and Bath for believing in the state of Israel’s right to exist went underground in London.

“They were replaced by an altruistic band of brethren of all faiths called Mensch, who turned up to protest against the protestors. God bless them.”

She went on to talk about Boy George, who has, in recent weeks, also become the target of anti-Israel protesters after defending Israel most notably in his new song We Will Dance Again.

Lipman wrote that while her West End experience went off without any protest, “A group of sanctimonious actors forced Boy George out of his contract to play King Herod in Jesus Christ Superstar.

“They allegedly pressured producer Michael Harrison into sacking Boy George because he has, in a brave song called We Will Dance Again, defended Israel’s right to defend itself after the Hamas pogrom.

“In other words, Boy George has a different political stance from some of the cast. Powerful people. The show itself concerns a nice Jewish rabbi fighting prejudice from angry mobs in his ancestral home of Israel.”

Lauded Australian director Kosky decries anti-Semitism

The main character of The Trial is arrested and finds himself trapped in an absurdly complicated legal system, trying desperately to find out what he has done wrong.

Readers of the novel never discover the answer, but in Kosky's version the trial is an examination of the author's Judaism, an attribute which is sometimes forgotten in discussion of his work.

Oh, and there's singing and dancing - including a tap dancing Rabbi.

The production is in German, Hebrew, and Yiddish, with surtitles translated from Kafka's stories - so for English-speaking audiences that haven't read Kafka, they will be reading him during the show.

In previous years Kosky has brought operatic productions to Adelaide, and in 2024 The Threepenny Opera, also with the Berliner Ensemble.

AAP spoke to the director just before the final block of public hearings for Australia's anti-Semitism royal commission, called in response to the terrorist attack at Bondi beach which saw 15 people killed and another 40 wounded.

Melbourne-born Kosky, 59, hasn't lived in Australia for 26 years, but laments the nation's public discourse, which he says has morphed from legitimate political criticism into discussion so polarised it has become terrifying and dangerous.

"We have crossed over into 'should the state of Israel exist?' which has never happened in any other country ... (It) leads us into rampant 21st century anti-Semitism, of a type that we have not seen for decades," he said.

He's vehemently opposed to the Israeli government, but cautions that Jewish people from both Israel and the diaspora are being forced to take reductive positions on complex issues, in response to a performative moral outrage from non-Jews.

"You can be a good Jew if you basically disown Israel, disown Zionism, disown Jewish culture, and say absolutely free Palestine," he said.

K has absolutely nothing to do with anti-Semitism, Gaza, Israel or the Holocaust, said Kosky - it's fundamentally a show about Jewish spirituality and culture.

Perhaps that's timely, as he perceives Jewish people again becoming a scapegoat for the world's evils.

"It's a perfect storm and I don't know how we get out of it, because this is the time you want dialogue, compassion, empathy - most of the yelling offers no solutions."

K is at Her Majesty's Theatre from March 4-7.

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08/25 Links Pt1: The Undisputed Answer to Israel's Legitimacy; A Realistic National Strategy for Israel; PA Schools Glorify Oct 7 in Disturbing New Footage; Israel evacuates UNRWA compound in Jerusalem

From Ian:

The Undisputed Answer to Israel's Legitimacy

I am an Arab Muslim and have spent years advocating for peace and reconciliation between Muslims and Jews. I have never understood why acknowledging the ancient Jewish connection to this land should be considered threatening to Muslims. The Dead Sea Scrolls are one example that demolishes the claim that Jewish attachment to the land is a recent political invention created by Europeans in the 19th or 20th centuries.

The ancient manuscripts found in caves near the Dead Sea were written by Jews living in this region more than 2,000 years ago. I do not see something that belongs to a civilization completely foreign to me. I see part of the religious and historical landscape from which Christianity emerged and which Islam itself repeatedly acknowledges. This is why I believe Muslims should be among the last people to deny ancient Jewish history.

The Quran is filled with the history of the Children of Israel. Moses is mentioned more frequently in the Quran than any other prophet. The Quran speaks of King David, Solomon, Aaron, Joseph and the tribes of Israel. It acknowledges the Torah and repeatedly places its own religious message in conversation with earlier Jewish and Christian traditions. There is therefore something deeply strange, in my view, about some Muslims feeling that we must erase Jewish history in order to defend Arab or Palestinian rights.

Peace will never be built by creating historical amnesia. For decades, political arguments surrounding Israel have frequently attempted to deny Jewish history altogether, pretending that a nation did not exist on its ancestral homeland. The Dead Sea Scrolls tell us that Jewish communities lived in this land, developed religious institutions in this land, and debated the meaning of their faith in this land centuries before Islam appeared and centuries before modern European nationalism existed.

History cannot become something we recognize only when it supports our political position. If archaeology proves something uncomfortable, we should not destroy the archaeology. We should adjust our understanding. For Muslims in particular, recognizing the Jewish people's ancient connection to this land should not frighten us. It does not diminish Islam. It simply requires intellectual honesty.

Prof. Efraim Inbar: A Realistic National Strategy for Israel

Israel remains small in both territory and population compared to most of its Middle Eastern rivals, and despite its economic prosperity, its resources remain limited. Its long-term survival cannot be taken for granted. Israel must therefore maintain constant readiness for armed conflict and for the battle over its legitimacy.

Any state must align its goals with the resources at its disposal and avoid overreach. Unlike a great power, a small state cannot set the rules of the international system or significantly shape its regional environment. David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, understood that military power alone could not compel Israel's neighbors to make peace. Israel could build an "iron wall" (a concept coined by his political rival Ze'ev Jabotinsky) that would thwart its neighbors' plans to destroy it, in the hope that over time, the states of the region would come to accept it.

The military achievements against Hamas in Gaza and Hizbullah in Lebanon, the establishment of security zones in Syria and in Lebanon, and the attacks on Iran's nuclear and missile infrastructure in 2025 and 2026 have undoubtedly improved Israel's security situation and regional standing. Israel demonstrated exceptional military and intelligence capabilities and exacted a heavy price from its enemies.

Yet military victories are time-bound in their political effects, and the motivation to challenge Israel's existence has remained persistently high. There is limited basis for assuming that even severe military defeat necessarily erodes an adversary's willingness to pursue long-term strategic objectives.

The main assumption behind Israel's national strategy should remain, regrettably, that the Middle East does not change quickly. The region remains a source of religious extremism, terrorism, and nuclear proliferation. Israel continues to lack legitimacy in much of the Arab and Muslim worlds. Israel's improved regional standing resulted from recognition of Israeli military power rather than from a fundamental shift in public attitudes.

Israel cannot subdue Iran, a nation of 90 million people led by an Islamic clerical elite that is relatively insensitive to the costs of sustained confrontation. Israel can, however, significantly degrade Iran's capacity to inflict harm upon it. Hamas and Hizbullah also cannot be decisively defeated so long as they retain substantial popular support and continue to receive state backing for military development and funding.

Israel has not succeeded in disarming Hamas in Judea and Samaria, where it has maintained military control since 1967. These organizations can be weakened, and their operational capabilities significantly reduced, but they cannot be fully eliminated as long as they retain mass domestic support and receive substantial external assistance.

When no attainable political solution is in sight, the most realistic goal becomes the denial of enemy capabilities and objectives. Israeli military operations are designed precisely to prevent the other side from achieving its strategic aims.

Amb. Alan Baker: The Penchant for Blaming Israel and Jews for Everything

There is something deeply troubling about the manner in which Israel and the Jewish people have once again become the focus of an extraordinary campaign of political condemnation, public vilification, and international hostility. Public figures feel able to malign Israel and Jews in sweeping, inflammatory and often baseless terms - and to do so with the apparent confidence that social media will provide them with millions of receptive followers. Hostility toward Israel and Jews has become socially acceptable, politically advantageous, and increasingly immune from serious scrutiny.

In Europe, when governments and political leaders in Ireland, Spain, Canada, Australia, and Britain appear willing to embrace, or lend credence to, false allegations of genocide and deliberate starvation against Israel and its leaders without the factual and legal basis for such allegations, one must ask whether European governments have become incapable, or unwilling, to resist politically motivated campaigns against Israel.

Many Western governments have historically sponsored, financed, and supported the Oslo process and subsequent Israeli-Palestinian agreements. Those agreements created reciprocal obligations and were intended to provide the legal and political framework for resolving outstanding issues through negotiation. Yet when states that helped create and endorse that framework subsequently support initiatives that bypass, weaken, or undermine its fundamental commitments, the credibility of their own diplomatic guarantees is inevitably called into question.

One must therefore ask: what confidence can Israel, or any state, place in international assurances concerning future agreements if the states providing those assurances are themselves prepared to disregard or circumvent the commitments embodied in existing agreements? The issue is whether fundamental principles of international relations and treaty commitments are to be respected.

Israel appears repeatedly to be treated as an exceptional case: subjected to an extraordinary level of international scrutiny, condemnation and political pressure. Legitimate criticism is an essential component of democratic discourse. But criticism becomes something entirely different when it is selective, disproportionate, detached from facts, or based upon standards that are not applied consistently to other states and peoples.

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