British MP Ayoub Khan's Rat Smelling Ability

British MP Ayoub Khan thinks there is something suspicious about the attempted destruction of the Flydubai flight to Israel this week.

Khan isn't some random X account. He is the independent MP for Birmingham Perry Barr and a barrister. He was elected in 2024 as one of a group of explicitly pro-Gaza independents after leaving the Liberal Democrats, saying he had been pressured to remain silent about Gaza. He subsequently joined the parliamentary alliance with Jeremy Corbyn and other pro-Gaza MPs.

After reports emerged that the co-pilot of Flydubai Flight 1073 had attacked the captain and apparently tried to crash the Tel Aviv-bound aircraft, Khan tweeted:

“I am genuinely shocked as to the speed of this enquiry by the Israeli spokespeople!!! Normally it takes them months if not years. I think i smell a rat!”

He followed that up by boasting:

“And that’s why I believe the most powerful MP in parliament is not the PM but the one that can speak without fear or favour!!!!!!!”

So I asked the fearless MP a pretty simple question: if he “smells a rat,” what exactly does he think happened?

To Khan's credit, he answered me directly:

“Since you have asked in a non-disparaging manner I will answer your question.

The answer is: I don’t know.

Any reasonable person would wait for the black box recording; testimony of those in the cockpit! not going to simply accept what the lying Bibi butcher of Gaza says.”

But that isn't really an answer. “I don't know” is perfectly reasonable when the evidence is genuinely ambiguous. It is not what Khan originally said. “I smell a rat” means that the story we are being told is suspicious. It implies that something does not add up.

So what doesn't add up?

There is already substantial evidence about the basic events aboard that airplane, and most of it has nothing to do with accepting Benjamin Netanyahu's word.

The aircraft's flight data showed an extraordinary plunge. According to the Associated Press, the plane descended from roughly 34,000 feet to 16,600 feet and transmitted both the standard 7700 general emergency code and then the 7500 code indicating unlawful interference or hijacking. Multiple passengers described a violent struggle in the cockpit. The injured captain himself has now publicly described what happened, saying that after being attacked he managed to open the cockpit door so passengers and crew could subdue the co-pilot. Reuters reports that the captain remains hospitalized after being stabbed.

Of course there are still questions. Investigators need to establish motive, determine what happened immediately before the attack, how a weapon could get onto the plane, reconstruct precisely what happened inside the cockpit and find out whether anyone else was involved. The UAE, Saudi Arabia and Israel are investigating, and Flydubai has quite reasonably warned against reaching premature conclusions about motive.

But that is completely different from pretending that we know nothing until somebody downloads the black box.

Nobody applies that standard to aviation disasters or other catastrophes. Newspapers immediately analyze radar data, eyewitness testimony, photographs, videos, communications and whatever other evidence is available. Officials issue preliminary assessments. Experts discuss likely explanations. Those assessments are explicitly preliminary and can change when additional evidence appears.

That is normal investigation.

Khan instead takes the existence of unanswered questions and uses them to cast suspicion on the evidence that already exists.

And once you do that, the obvious question is: what would have to be false for Khan's “rat” to exist?

Are all the passengers lying about what happened in the cockpit and colluding to say the same story? Is the wounded captain lying? Were the flight-tracking records somehow manipulated? Were the emergency codes fabricated? Was the airplane's enormous plunge coincidentally unrelated to the reported cockpit struggle?

If Khan has an alternative hypothesis that explains those facts better, he should tell us what it is. That would at least be an argument.

But “I smell a rat” followed by “I don't know” isn't an alternative hypothesis. It is a conspiracy insinuation carefully constructed so that the person making it never has to specify the conspiracy.

This is the methodology of 9/11 "truthers" and Holocaust deniers. It is not one an elected official should publicly boast.

Ayoub Khan is a barrister. He presumably understands the difference between evidence and insinuation. He is also a Member of Parliament who built much of his political profile around Gaza and Israel. If this had been virtually any other aviation emergency, would he insist that no one draw even preliminary conclusions from flight data, emergency signals, videos and multiple eyewitnesses until the black box had been analyzed, weeks later?

Or does this extraordinary standard of skepticism suddenly appear because the people reporting what happened are Israelis and the Israeli prime minister repeated the preliminary findings?

Khan says the most powerful MP is the one who can speak “without fear or favour.”

Fine. Then tell us all, exactly, what exactly is rat he smelling?

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10/01 Links Pt2: IDF: 170 Hamas, PIJ terrorists killed in Gaza were misrepresented as 'innocent journalists'; IDF rejects ‘NAZA’ claims of deliberate targeting of Gaza civilians

From Ian:

Andrew Fox: Why does the BBC refer to dead terrorists as ‘journalists’?

By its dodgy reporting, the BBC implicitly bolsters one of the most pernicious myths about Israel: that it deliberately kills journalists to silence their reporting. But the fact that a fighter has a camera does not erase his military role, and nor does a journalist’s death alongside a military target establish that his journalism made him a target. By presenting men engaged in war as independent witnesses, the BBC has helped turn their deaths into evidence for an accusation that those deaths cannot, by themselves, sustain. Hamas could hardly ask for a more useful service than what the BBC provides for it.

The overlap extends beyond proven combat roles. A December 2025 study by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Centre identified terrorist affiliations in 157 of 266 reported journalist and media-worker deaths, roughly 59 per cent. Its definition included employment by factional media, so not all 157 were fighters, but this should have given editors ample reason to investigate whose version of the Gaza war they were publishing.

Hamas has a vested interest in demonising the Jewish State, yet the BBC consistently treats the word of this proscribed terrorist organisation as the truth. The BBC owes viewers an explanation of how it checked its contributors and what relevant affiliations it failed to disclose. Any competent editor should examine their source’s independence, particularly in a conflict as polarising as this one. Instead, the BBC has allowed Hamas propaganda to be smuggled into Western homes with the stamp of a trusted broadcaster.

Since 7 October 2023, the BBC has happily shown footage of a devastated Gaza Strip – but there has been comparatively less interest in explaining the broader security threat that Hamas poses to Israel, or any of the measures taken by the Jewish State to minimise civilian casualties.

The BBC’s record on the Gaza war makes a mockery of its claims to accuracy and impartiality. The BBC documentary, Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, used a child narrator whose father was a deputy agriculture minister in the Hamas-run administration. Ofcom found that omitting this fact materially misled audiences. The BBC later claimed that it wasn’t aware of the connection. But, as with the dead ‘journalists’, this isn’t good enough. The BBC broadcast an emotive and highly biased piece of propaganda without knowing the full picture.

Earlier failures were just as grotesque. After the October 2023 Al-Ahli hospital explosion, Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s international editor, claimed an Israeli airstrike was responsible. In fact, it was a misfired rocket from Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The following month, the BBC was forced to apologise for falsely claiming that Israeli troops were ‘targeting’ medical teams at Al-Shifa Hospital.

The BBC’s repeated professions of editorial rigour are contemptible when set against that record. A broadcaster that lectures the public about misinformation has repeatedly failed the elementary checks its own authority depends on.

Senior editors must now account publicly for the sources they trusted and the reports that need correcting, across BBC Arabic and English-language output. Failures this serious should cost careers. Licence-fee payers deserve a broadcaster that is capable of questioning Hamas’s propaganda. The public should not have to investigate the BBC itself to discover what it left out.

More Than Half the Names on Committee to Protect Journalists List of Slain Gaza Journalists Are Still Linked to Terror Outfits Despite Group’s Self-Policing ‘Audit’

More than half the names on the embattled Committee to Protect Journalists' revised list of "journalists" slain in Gaza "have connections to terrorist groups," even after the New York-based advocacy organization conducted a months-long review meant to identify and remove confirmed combatants from its widely cited database, according to a leading media watchdog.

CPJ first announced in June that it was undertaking a wholesale review of its list of "Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza War" following a series of Washington Free Beacon reports questioning the integrity of its influential list and revealing that numerous confirmed terrorists were included in the death toll. CPJ has been in turmoil for months—driven by infighting and the public defenestration of a pharmaceutical heiress—over allegations of myopic anti-Israel bias that's clouded its historic mission of protecting journalists worldwide.

While CPJ initially said its internal review would be completed in July, the organization did not publicly disclose its findings until late last week. CPJ ultimately removed 19 terrorists and 3 other fake journalists from the list, but reinstated 4 others who had previously been nixed for engaging in terrorism against Israel. That leaves a total of 191 supposed Gazan journalists on the CPJ's rejiggered database—102 of whom still have demonstrable "connections to terrorist groups," according to an independent review of the CPJ audit performed by the Israeli media watchdog group HonestReporting.

"Although the CPJ review removed almost two dozen individuals who participated in combat during the war that began on October 7, 2023, 53 percent of those still listed have terrorist ties, with CPJ failing to remove identified terrorists and even reinstating some to the database," HonestReporting concluded in a comprehensive 138-page review. "CPJ continues to include members of the non-military wings of terrorist groups on its list, and has failed to issue an apology for spreading disinformation."

Thursday afternoon, the CPJ doubled down, making the claim on X that "Israel has been targeting and killing journalists in connection with their reporting for decades, and this deadly pattern must end," something the Israelis strongly dispute, presenting, case by case, documentary proof such as "martyr posters," photos, and Hamas payroll and membership records.

The CPJ was first thrust into the spotlight in May, when it served as a critical source for an outlandish column by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof alleging that Israeli soldiers raped two Palestinian "journalists" with a carrot and a dog.

Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups operating in Gaza have a well-documented practice of installing their operatives as journalists—often as cameramen in TV crews—so they can take advantage of longstanding conventions to avoid killing journalists during war. When Israel identifies and targets these militants, it faces international opprobrium, especially if CPJ claims there were indeed journalists.

HonestReporting further determined that CPJ's updated list fails to meet the organization's own "criteria for inclusion as a journalist, while broader methodological issues remain." CPJ's board voted 17-1 in July to affirm that "organizations affiliated with militant groups" meet the criteria of a legitimate journalistic outlet "provided they are not engaging in combat or inciting violence in a manner likely to have imminent effect." That contentious definition, opposed only by the Fox News board representative, essentially allowed CPJ to continue considering known terrorists for inclusion on its list.

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10/01 Links Pt1: Melanie Phillips: Those amazing and heroic Israelis; How Fiction Will Remember October 7 - with Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff; Does U.N. stand for "unknown"?

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Those amazing and heroic Israelis

The British government is blind to the risks posed by the Palestinian Arabs because, to the morally bankrupt left, the Palestinian cause is synonymous with morality.

The spittle-flecked fanaticism of Miliband’s speech to this week’s Labour Party conference took many people aback.

Having paid lip service to standing against antisemitism and for Israel’s right to defend itself, this scion of a Jewish family decimated by the Holocaust denounced Netanyahu’s responsibility for Palestinian “suffering” in Gaza and the West Bank as a “stain on the conscience of the world.”

Having falsely accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing” by the “settler terrorists of the West Bank,” “war crimes in Gaza” and the “illegal occupation of Palestine,” Miliband declared: “To the millions in Britain and elsewhere who have been moved and outraged by the plight of the Palestinian people, we hear you. You were right.”

Precisely what does Miliband think those people were “right” about? Their claim that Israel is committing “genocide”? That Palestine must be Arab “from the river to the sea”? Their demand to “globalize the intifada”?

Miliband, who came across as an unhinged demagogue, is a stain on the memory of his slaughtered family.

The suicidal imbecility of Britain’s hostility to Israel was demonstrated by the incident at RAF Fairford, the base in southwest England from where U.S. bombers have taken off for Iran.

Last Sunday, five men were arrested on suspicion of being about to attack the base. Although much about this incident remains murky, Britain’s Prime Minister Andy Burnham has now said there are “strong indications” that Iran was involved.

But as Netanyahu has revealed, it was Israel that gave the Brits the intelligence warning of such an Iranian attack—and pretty much the next day, he said, the United Kingdom announced sanctions against the Israeli “settlements.”

Where Britain leads, the rest of the West follows. There is acute concern that these sanctions are intended to broaden out into a global financial strangulation of Israel, especially if the Democrats win the post-Trump presidency.

There’s anxiety that American support for Israel is crumbling. Some reports suggest that, apart from CENTCOM, even the U.S. defense establishment has become hostile to the Jewish state.

This is fundamentally because the West is undergoing a rapidly progressive erosion of its core values, including the destruction of morality, truth and reason itself.

Even today, diminished as it is, the United Kingdom sets the Western cultural pace. That’s why the British government’s defamation and delegitimization of Israel are so important.

Britain is leading the West into the heart of darkness—the abandonment of civilization for the embrace of barbarism. And the people upon whose backs Miliband et al have accordingly stuck a bullseye are the Jews.

But another narrative is emerging to counter this obscenity. Flydubai is a United Arab Emirates airline. The terrorist co-pilot was Omani. Oman is an ally of Iran. The UAE has become a close ally of Israel fighting Iran. The Emirati crew helped Israelis on the plane to avert catastrophe. And the plane was allowed to land in Saudi Arabia.

A new order is being born in which Arabs and Jews are fighting together against the forces of barbarism in the Islamic world.

On their way home to Israel, survivors of the hijacking sang the words written by the 18th- century Chassidic rabbi Nachman of Breslov: “The whole entire world is a very narrow bridge, and the main thing is to have no fear at all.”

Britain and much of Europe—and even America if it allows the Democratic Party to gain power—are now hurtling downward towards a catastrophic crash. But Israel will live because it has seized the cockpit controls.

JPost Editorial: The flydubai passengers have returned home safely, and that is all that matters for now

Serious questions will have to be answered about how the terrorist came to be piloting an Israel-bound aircraft and whether every security requirement governing flights to Israel was properly followed. Those questions are legitimate, and they should be investigated thoroughly.

But this incident is not an indictment of the UAE.

One terrorist does not represent a country. The UAE has maintained its relationship with Israel through years of regional upheaval, including war, and Wednesday’s attack should not be allowed to undermine a relationship that has become an important part of the region since the Abraham Accords.

Another country also deserves Israel’s gratitude: Saudi Arabia.

Israel and Saudi Arabia still do not have formal diplomatic relations. Yet when an aircraft carrying 166 Israelis needed somewhere to land after a terror attack in the cockpit, Saudi Arabia opened its doors.

The Saudis did more than provide a runway.

Passengers received food and medical care after landing in Tabuk; the wounded were treated, and frightened children and families were looked after. One Israeli passenger described the Saudi treatment as “very nice” and “very understanding.”

At a moment of extraordinary fear, Saudi authorities responded with humanity and professionalism. Israelis should recognize that and say thank you.

There will, of course, be time for questions, and there should be.

The investigation must determine exactly how this attack was possible, whether security procedures failed, whether warning signs were missed, and what changes are needed to ensure nothing like it happens again.

A political argument is already developing around the attack.

Netanyahu warned on Tuesday that Israel’s enemies could try to attack ahead of the election. Opposition leader Yair Lapid, who received a security briefing from Netanyahu that evening, said afterward that nothing resembling the flydubai incident had been presented to him and accused government figures of trying to use the attack for political purposes.

The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) responded that Netanyahu had been briefed about a significant increase in terrorist activity around the world.

Those competing accounts will need to be examined. Israelis deserve to know what intelligence existed, what the government knew, and whether the statements now being made accurately reflect the information available beforehand.

But that reckoning does not have to overshadow what happened on Wednesday.

For now, think of the passengers who ran toward danger. Think of the pilots who regained control of a plunging aircraft. Think of the dentist who treated a wounded pilot in midair. Think of the Saudis who received Israelis in Tabuk and cared for them.

And think of 174 families who could so easily have received a very different call.

A terrorist tried to hijack an aircraft carrying 166 Israelis.

He failed.

They are alive and safe.

For now, that is more than enough.

Khaled Abu Toameh: 'October 7 Will Return': Hamas, Like Iran, Will Not Voluntarily Give Up the Fight

The chants matter because they reveal what speeches about peace and reconstruction conceal.

These slogans raise a fundamental question for anyone discussing the future of the Gaza Strip: What exactly has changed?

The answer is particularly important because the international framework for the Gaza Strip explicitly calls for something very different.

US President Donald J. Trump's 20-point peace plan states that Gaza is to become a "deradicalized terror-free zone" that poses no threat to its neighbors. The plan calls for the decommissioning of weapons, demilitarization and the establishment of an International Stabilization Force. It also envisages a process intended to change Gazan mindsets and narratives by emphasizing tolerance and peaceful coexistence.

On paper, the objective is peaceful coexistence. Public gatherings are proclaiming that Gaza belongs to Hamas and rejecting international forces.

This is the main problem facing any attempt to transform the Gaza Strip.

Reconstruction can rebuild buildings. It cannot dismantle an ideology.

The answer will determine whether Gaza's reconstruction becomes part of a genuine transition toward stability, or whether reconstruction takes place alongside the reorganization of the same forces that brought the Hamas terrorists to power in the Gaza Strip and the region into war.

Has the ideological and military foundation for another October 7 massacre actually been removed?

On the eve of the October 7 anniversary, the world should pay close attention when people in the Gaza Strip say they want the October 7 massacre to happen again.

It is crucial to remember what senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad said shortly after the October 7 massacre: "The Al-Aqsa Flood [what Hamas calls the October 7 massacre] is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth, because we have the determination, the resolve, and the capabilities to fight."

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TIL That Taking Unprecedented Measures To Protect Noncombatants Is The Same As Genocide (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook  and  Substack pages.

TIL That Taking Unprecedented Measures To Protect Noncombatants Is The Same As Genocide

By Jessica Montross, Student, International Law

New York, October 1 - Are you telling me... are you telling me that everything I'd always thought I'd known about the Laws of Armed Conflict, International Humanitarian Law, all of that, is incorrect, and that moving civilians out of harm's way, as required by those laws, in fact violates those laws in the most egregious possible way?

Well, you live and learn, I guess.

Okay, it is not quite that simple: for most militaries, in most armed conflict situations, my original understanding holds. Where it differs: when Israel is involved. Then, according to experts in International Law, we must invoke whatever principle makes Israel look the worst.

Thus, in the example we mentioned at the outset, whereas evacuation of noncombatants from a combat zone forms an unremarkable step we expect any military to take before initiating hostilities in that area, once we discover that the party conducting or encouraging those evacuations is the IDF, that evacuation, even its merest attempt, constitutes genocidal ethnic cleansing.

I have been taking notes. The notes are embarrassing, because they look like the syllabus.

Warning before an attack: normally a precaution. Article 57. Feasible advance warning. I highlighted it in green. Green meant “this is how you stay inside the law.” When the warning is an Israeli phone call, a leaflet, a roof-knock, the highlight changes color. The warning becomes proof that the civilian population was identified as a population and then operated upon. Identification, which I had understood as the beginning of distinction, is refiled as the beginning of intent, a key element of determining that genocide has occurred.

"Distinction" itself changes. Elsewhere, a combatant embedded in a school is a problem the defender created and the attacker must still try to solve. The involvement if Jews somehow converts every nearby civilian into evidence against the attacker. The attacker’s effort to separate them is not credited as separation. It is credited as "sorting."

But again, only if we're talking about Israel.

Proportionality works the same way. I was taught to weigh concrete and direct military advantage against expected incidental harm. Tedious work. Lawyers pretend it is math so they can sleep. When the actor is not Israel, a bad ratio is a tragedy, a scandal, maybe, in rare cases, a war crime. When the actor is Israel, the ratio is not weighed. The existence of the civilian is the whole case. The military object is treated as a story the perpetrator tells in order to stand near the civilian.

I used to think “as such” in the Genocide Convention did some work. National, ethnical, racial or religious group as such. The phrase was there to stop people from renaming every ugly war. I wrote a whole outline on specific intent. I can still recite it. Recitation is now a form of denial. Intent, in the special file, is inferred from the fact that Israel knew there were Palestinians in Gaza and fought a war there anyway. Knowledge of geography becomes mens rea. And Israel has maps! Maps are inculpatory.

Aid is also reversible. A state that facilitates food, medicine, vaccination, and fuel is, in ordinary doctrine, not inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction. When it comes to Israel, facilitation is calibration: you keep enough people alive to prove you had them in your power. Restriction is the same crime at a different setting. There is no compliant setting.

I asked a professor whether the rule was simply lex specialis Israel. She said of course not, and then walked me through a chain of inferences that only fires when the defendant is the Jewish state. Siege law for everyone else. Collective punishment if the name on the brief is Israel. Human shields as a legal problem if the defender is a state we recognize as a state; human shields as a moral reproach to the attacker if the defender is Hamas.

I wrote “see also: whatever principle” in the margin. It is not a term of art yet. It will be.

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09/30 Links Pt2: 85 years later: Babyn Yar and the fight against deliberate erasure; Jeremy Boreing: They're Trying To Eradicate the Jews; Melanie Phillips on how Britain sides with Islamist evil

From Ian:

85 years later: Babyn Yar and the fight against deliberate erasure

In 1961, Yevgeny Yevtushenko wrote about the absence of a monument at Babyn Yar. His poem became a protest against the silencing of memory and against antisemitism.

In 1991, a menorah-shaped memorial to the Jewish victims was erected at the site, but the road to establishing a comprehensive memorial center was long. Memorials now stand there, yet the war has halted the momentum of construction and development.

Research continues, even under fire.

In September 2025, the center reported that 1,031 previously unidentified victims’ names had been added to its database since the outbreak of the war. Birth certificates, adoption applications, and court testimony are restoring identities once thought lost.

In the face of erasure, each name restores a person to memory.

A line connects Soviet erasure to Russian propaganda today. Once again, history is subordinated to the needs of the state.

The Kremlin justifies its invasion of Ukraine with the false claim that the country must be “denazified,” exploiting the memory of the victory over Nazism.

A study by Ruslan Kavatsiuk, Oleksiy Makukhin, and Violetta Seleznova, published this month in Eastern European Holocaust Studies, analyzes 4,263 Russian television broadcasts from 2012 to 2024.

The researchers show how “Nazism” became a label used to delegitimize Ukraine and justify military action against it. This, too, is a form of erasure: blurring the historical meaning of Nazism, pushing its victims to the margins, and replacing their story with a narrative that serves the state.

Then, the victims’ Jewish identity was suppressed; today, the memory of their murderers is exploited to justify aggression.

Through my work in Holocaust education and remembrance with March of the Living, I have learned the power of encountering the places themselves. Visiting a town, a synagogue, or a killing site connects historical knowledge to human lives.

To understand what was lost, we must know what existed: families, culture, spiritual life, and daily routines. This is how we counter erasure beyond commemorative ceremonies: by learning about communities, reading testimonies, and remembering names.

Babyn Yar should be a gateway to understanding Eastern European Jewry and its world, while also bearing witness to its destruction.

Ukraine’s efforts to confront this chapter of its past deserve recognition, as does its perseverance in the work of remembrance after more than four years of a devastating war.

On the 85th anniversary of the massacre, our responsibility is to protect memory against erasure, distortion, and manipulation.

That means returning to the facts, supporting research, opening archives, and making their findings accessible; teaching the Holocaust by bullets and learning about the communities that lived before they were murdered.

Behind the name Babyn Yar are tens of thousands of human beings, and beyond it are millions whose stories were buried in the soil of Eastern Europe.

Our duty is to remember their names, their lives, and their Jewish identity, and to ensure that no regime succeeds in bending their story to its own purposes.

The Palestinian Inquisition

Hasan Piker interviews politicians and other public figures and helps establish which answers are acceptable. Having likened liberal Zionists to 'liberal Nazis', he plays at being the grand inquisitor, the arbiter of correct beliefs. If any attachment to Israel puts you in the heretical category, what room is left for disagreement?

You don’t even have to be Jewish to find yourself before this tribunal. Ask Ed Sheeran. His crisis began when Macklemore was removed from Sheeran’s tour following pressure from venue owners over the rapper’s anti-Israel statements and history of anti-Semitic imagery.

Soon Sheeran’s own beliefs were on trial. A picture of him meeting a former Israeli hostage was enough to ‘prove’ he was irredeemable. And when he condemned the October 7 terrorist attacks while also calling the situation in Gaza catastrophic, this too was evidence against him. For some critics, acknowledging suffering on both sides was offensive. British MP Zarah Sultana accused him of ‘both-sidesing genocide’. Apparently, the problem with his compassion was extending it to all humans.

Saturday Night Live UK then turned his reluctance to take sides into a recurring joke. In one sketch, a fictional Sheeran remained unwilling to choose even during a conflict between humans and robots. The joke depended on the audience accepting that his neutrality was cowardice. When comedy writers can’t conceive of there legitimately being two sides to a two-sided conflict, that’s troublesome.

Sometimes you don’t even have to give any answer to become a victim of the inquisition. You just have to sit next to someone who gave the ‘wrong’ one. Pop singer Pink faced an immense backlash after criticising Macklemore’s concert remarks. Then Elizabeth Banks and Amy Adams were photographed sitting with her at the US Open. People began questioning them, too. In a Reddit discussion of the photographs, commenters condemned their friendliness toward Pink and flooded their Instagram accounts with hateful comments. Watching tennis with someone deemed ‘impure’ was enough to start the examination. The warning extends beyond what you’re allowed to say to who you’re allowed to be seen with.

You don’t even have to help anyone to pass the test. A person can donate to Palestinians privately and still fail if they don’t use the required language. Another person can make the proper declaration and be celebrated without being asked to do anything more. The words become the whole point.

The celebrity inquisition doesn’t need everyone to believe what they say. It only needs everyone to know what happens if they don’t say the right words.

‘Put me down for not getting burnt at the stake.’

Adam Brody blasted as ‘ignorant Jew’ over Palestine stance by former ‘Nobody Wants This’ Rabbi consultant

Adam Brody has been lambasted by former “Nobody Wants This” technical consultant, Rabbi Steve Leder, who called the actor an “ignorant Jew” over his comments on Palestine.

“Hi Adam, you might not remember me. My name is Rabbi Steve Leder, and I was the technical advisor for Season 1 of ‘Nobody Wants This,’” he began in a social media video, responding to Brody’s recently published comments to GQ — in which he referred to Israel’s attack on Gaza as a genocide.

“My job was to make sure that your character was authentic and that everything in Season 1 about Judaism was authentic,” he went on.

“Your pronouncement the other day about a genocide in Gaza was truly shocking, not only because of your misuse and mischaracterization of the word ‘genocide.’ There is no genocide in Gaza. There are genocides in other countries happening, but you failed to mention any of them.”

“You, by your own admission, are a relatively ignorant Jew, and your ignorance really showed the other day,” Leder said.

“If you’re gonna use a word like ‘genocide,’ you oughta know what it means, he continued, calling the way Brody referred to the term as “so flippant” and “disgusting,” while likening it to “asking for a table for two at Craig’s.”

“Here’s some more technical advice: If you know nothing about something, you should say nothing about it.”

Brody previously told GQ when asked about his stance on the Isreal-Gaza conflict, “Put me down as thinking it’s a genocide. Put me down as wanting a free Palestine.”

He added that he’s “hopeful that another administration can really do some good and correct some of these policies that are helping that situation be as awful as it is.”

In Netflix’s hit series, Brody plays Rabbi Noah Roklov, who begins an unlikely romance with a non-Jewish podcaster Joanne Williams, who is played by Kristen Bell.

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09/30 Links Pt1: Heroic Israelis avert a tragedy in the sky; A Nation Like a Lion’—Israeli Airline Passenger Heroics Avert Jihadist Terrorist Attack

From Ian:

‘A Nation Like a Lion’—Israeli Airline Passenger Heroics Avert Jihadist Terrorist Attack

In early 2024 the band Hatikva 6 released a song that captured the spirit of Israel as it responded to the October 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attack. "Everyone looks so ordinary but … We're a nation of superheroes. In each and every one hides a soldier ready to save the world," it says.

The Hebrew version on YouTube has 15 million views; a version with English subtitles, which I recommend you take a break and watch now, has fewer views.

Just in time for the third anniversary of the October 7 attack—and just past the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on America—came an episode whose details reminded me of the song.

As Israeli government officials and flight passengers recounted it, a Boeing 737 FlyDubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv with about 174 people aboard started rapidly losing altitude, and lights suddenly went out inside the cabin. Flight data indicate the plane plunged about 14,000 feet in about 30 seconds.

"It became drastic," one passenger on the flight, Adam Polo, told Fox News. "After a couple of seconds, people started to shout, people that were sitting in the first couple of rows and in the business class that were close to the pilots' room … that there was a stabbing, and that there was blood everywhere, and then they asked that everyone who can help, please join and come immediately. And then we were really really really lucky that I think like 10 guys just jumped to help. Three or four of them actually entered into the pilots' room and succeeded, after a couple of minutes, succeeded to control the situation."

"I ran toward the cockpit," a passenger on the plane, Yaniv Hayun, told The Free Press. "We physically fought with the co-pilot; he was going wild. I put him in a choke hold, took control of him, and dragged him out of the cockpit. … Then I called for other Israelis to help restrain him." They did so using headphone cords and zip ties, according to the Free Press account.

One passenger, Itzhak Liber, was pictured on video saying in Hebrew, "there was an attacker with a knife who stabbed one of the pilots. We simply jumped and removed him from the cockpit."

The prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces an election on October 27, 2026, that polls indicate is close, met with Hayun at Ben Gurion International Airport, where the passengers eventually arrived after a stop in Saudi Arabia. Netanyahu released video clips and images of his meeting with Hayun, whose shirt and socks were soaked with blood. Hayun, as his wife and two daughters looked on, explained to Netanyahu how he subdued the terrorist copilot. Hayun then recounted how he had pulled back on the yoke of the aircraft based on what he'd seen watching a television show, Air Crash Investigation, also known as Mayday.

Israel's defense minister, Israel Katz, was quoted by the Times of Israel that the event "was a jihadist terrorist attack attempt, which was thwarted only thanks to the bravery of several Israeli passengers who broke into the cockpit, overpowered the terrorist and, with their own hands, restored control of the plane to another flight crew who was present there."

Netanyahu also credited "Indian pilot Captain Smit Machchhar for his extraordinary bravery. Despite being stabbed and seriously injured, he fought back, resisted, opened the cockpit door, and enabled passengers and crew to overpower the attacker — preventing a catastrophic mid-air disaster."

The mid-air heroics by passengers are reminiscent of those aboard the planes that were hijacked as part of the September 11 terrorist attack. Daniel Lewin, a passenger aboard a plane from Boston that was eventually flown into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, appears to have battled the terrorists, according to his family members and accounts by others aboard the plane who got word out before it crashed. And Todd Beamer was heard saying "let's roll" as he led the effort that apparently caused United Flight 93 to crash near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, rather than the terrorist target in Washington.

President Trump called it "the most amazing story" and said the key Israeli passenger was a professional plumber. "A plumber. Never flew a plane. Strong guy," the president said.

Dr Brian L Cox: World Central Kitchen convoy attack is a tragedy, not a crime

There is no doubt that the attack on the World Central Kitchen convoy in Gaza last April was a tragedy. The question that has been circulating in the court of public opinion since then is whether it was also a crime.

According to a recent statement published by Israel’s Military Advocate General’s Corps, the answer is no. The decision not to initiate criminal prosecution was later denounced in a joint statement from the governments of Australia, Canada, and the UK as “shameful.”

The World Central Kitchen attack,” laments the statement, “is one of countless incidents in Gaza where there has been no accountability.”

In reality, it is the double standard expected of Israel created by narratives such as that reflected in this joint statement that is “shameful.”

Rhetoric demanding accountability based on the perceived outcome of attacks during the conduct of armed hostilities has become standard practice for human rights NGOs and other advocates with no responsibility for implementing in practice international law as it exists in doctrine. After all, many NGOs and similar special interests “typically exist for purely humanitarian purposes,” which means their perspective on the application of international law “is far from neutral.”

The popular effects-based approach to applying the law of armed conflict often adopted by humanitarian activists is misguided because it doesn’t align with how foundational rules such as distinction and proportionality function in practice. For governments to espouse this approach in public messaging is absolutely inexcusable.

Yet, this is precisely what the joint statement from Australia, Canada, and the UK does.

The message claims, “Israel must comply with its obligations under international humanitarian law,” yet it fails to explain how these governments believe Israel failed to do so. Although the joint statement correctly notes that an inquiry by Israel characterised the “incident as a serious mistake and failure,” the “serious failure” occurred “due to a mistaken identification, errors in decision-making, and an attack contrary to the Standard Operating Procedures.”

Failures involving compliance with relevant use of force policy do not necessarily involve violations of international law, nor are they inherently criminal.

Indeed, the Fact-Finding and Assessment Mechanism carried out by the Israel Defense Force considered the “totality of the operational circumstances” and determined that “notwithstanding serious failures in the process that led to the assessment that Hamas operatives were travelling in the vehicles, the decisions of the commanders did not raise reasonable suspicion of criminal misconduct.”

This conclusion was reached by evaluating the process that led to the attack, rather than the perceived outcome based on information that came to light after the incident.

That is how the law of armed conflict is actually applied in practice.

The joint statement, by contrast, declares that the “victims of this incident and their families deserve justice and accountability.” This represents a demand to hold personnel accountable —by initiating criminal prosecution for an incident that does not constitute a crime — based on the effects of the attack.

By this logic, it was shameful for the United States not to prosecute anyone responsible for the 2015 attack on the Médecins Sans Frontières trauma centre in Kunduz, Afghanistan, even though the official inquiry determined, correctly, that the incident was not criminal in nature despite the “human error” that contributed to the incident. The same can be said for the decision by the German government not to pursue criminal prosecution following a separate 2009 civilian casualty incident in Kunduz, or by the Netherlands following the tragic 2015 airstrike in Hawija, Iraq.

According to the precedent set by the Australia/Canada/UK joint statement, it is now shameful for any government not to prosecute troops responsible for civilian casualty incidents when human error is involved, including the governments responsible for this statement, even if an official inquiry determines relevant personnel did not violate applicable law.

Foreign minister Penny Wong went a step further by declaring “Australia is outraged by the Israeli Government’s decision to not pursue any criminal proceedings against those responsible for” the attack.

Yet despite all the indignant geopolitical rhetoric, none of the governments behind the joint statement have explained what provision of the law, whether international or domestic, they believe was violated.

This effects-based construct completely contradicts how international law actually functions in practice.

Israelis rescued from northern Ethiopia after days trapped by rebel advance

Some 20 Israeli citizens who were stuck in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region amid a rebel advance in the area have been rescued after three days of “intensive efforts,” the Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.

The ministry said it worked in coordination with the Israeli embassy in Addis Ababa and other relevant authorities to extract the stranded Israelis from the area.

“The group of Israelis who had become stranded in Lalibela in northern Ethiopia amid the security escalation in the area were evacuated yesterday and today by helicopter,” the ministry said in a statement.

“Helicopters transported the group to a safe area, from which they will continue on to Addis Ababa,” the ministry continued.

It said representatives would continue to accompany and assist the group until they arrive safely in Addis Ababa.

The Israelis became trapped in the Tigray region as a result of heavy clashes that erupted last week between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and the federal government.

The fighting has raised fears of a return to the full-blown civil war of 2020-2022, in which an estimated 600,000 people died. People walk in Mekelle, the capital of Ethiopia’s Tigray region, as fighting escalates with the central government, September 24, 2026. (AP Photo)

The Israelis were stuck in the city of Lalibela, where airports are reportedly closed and road travel is dangerous.

The stranded Israelis wrote to the Foreign Ministry to request help, the Ynet news site reported earlier this week.

The letter reportedly informed the ministry that “flights have been canceled indefinitely, and this is no longer just a delay of a few days” and that “the city’s fuel, food and cash stocks are extremely limited.”

Dozens of civilians, including children, have been killed in the renewed fighting as Ethiopian government forces bombard towns in Tigray and push north towards the rebel-held capital, health workers and locals told AFP on Tuesday.

Fighting is ongoing along several fronts, but government forces appear to be pushing north into Tigray, towards the regional capital of Mekelle.

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Maine Senate candidate demonstrates the current epistemic antisemitic environment perfectly

I have been writing about how the current epistemic environment has been twisting facts into anti-Zionism. The Democratic candidate for the senate in Maine just illustrated it as perfectly as possible, and extended it to classic antisemitism as well.

Maine Democratic Senate candidate Troy Jackson , while discussing Jewish Mainers who reject the claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, said said it was “unfortunate” that there are people in Maine who do not like to use that term “only because they’re Jewish and what that means to them, with the Holocaust.” He then reaffirmed his own conclusion: what Israel is doing “fits that description” and “is a genocide.”

Notice the evidence he brings for "genocide."  He doesn't. He takes a word that has been misused and extended beyond its own legal definition and treats it as undeniable. 

Therefore, the Jews who disagree (again, because he doesn't know what genocide is) cannot possibly legitimate reasons for their position. No, it must be because they are unfortunately Jewish. 

Their Jewish identity is the problem, not their logic.

He doesn't consider that perhaps they disagree on the definition of the term. They cannot possibly believe the evidence does not establish specific genocidal intent, think competing explanations fit the evidence better, or simply remain uncertain. A normal epistemic process leaves those possibilities open and engages the arguments themselves.

Jackson instead attributes their disagreement to their identity. 

They reject his conclusion “only because they’re Jewish” and because of what the Holocaust means to them. Their objection therefore ceases to function as possible counterevidence and becomes evidence of their supposed bias. The conclusion remains fixed; the only question becomes why Jews cannot see what Jackson regards as obvious.

That is exactly how a self-protecting epistemic environment works. Once “Israel is committing genocide” has become background knowledge rather than a proposition still requiring demonstration, dissent no longer has to be answered on its merits. The dissenter can instead be psychologically or socially explained: Jewish, Zionist, emotionally invested, unable to see clearly because of historical trauma. Evidence turns into armchair psychology. 

This is antisemitism. Jackson doesn't consider Jews who disagree with the genocide conclusion as having a valid point that must be answered. Their Jewishness is itself the only evidence he needs to discount their opinions.

 Jewish testimony about an accusation against the Jewish state receives a credibility discount because the speakers are Jewish. 

There is also a striking asymmetry in Jackson’s explanation. He assumes that Jewish identity explains why Jews might reject the genocide label, but does not ask whether political identity might help explain why he accepts it to begin with. It sure isn't evidence-based.

Jackson presumably meant to explain Jewish sensitivity to the word “genocide.” What he ended up illustrating is something more revealing: once the conclusion is treated as settled, identity can be used to explain away the people who refuse to accept it. 

And while he was at it he also demonstrated that for many on the progressive Left, there is no line between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. 

What a perfect candidate to replace the guy with the Nazi tattoo.

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09/29 Links Pt2: How jihad learned to speak the West’s language; Mamdani announces campaign against antisemitism, doesn’t mention connection to anti-Zionism; Florida designates CAIR as domestic terror group

From Ian:

How jihad learned to speak the West’s language

In 1991, an internal memorandum of the Muslim Brotherhood in North America, later entered as evidence in a US federal trial, described the movement’s work on the continent as “a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within.”

Not a bomb. Not a rifle. Jihad, waged from within, through the institutions of the very society it targets.

Almost nobody in the West has heard that sentence. What the West hears are other words: freedom, justice, liberation, resistance, human rights. Words it knows, loves, and has built its moral identity around. The question it rarely asks is who supplied those words, and to what end.

A mind does not check where a word came from. It checks whether the word fits.

Consider a young man marching on an American campus, or through London, Paris, or Berlin, calling for the liberation of Palestine. He does not believe that he is calling for jihad. He is thinking about oppression, colonialism, and his duty to stand with the weak. He is running his own value system.

Scrutiny is triggered by foreign content, not by familiar content. A phrase that matches what a person already believes is absorbed without inspection. The most efficient way to transmit foreign content is therefore to wrap it in the familiar.

No need to say jihad. Resistance will do. No need to speak of victory. Liberation will do. No need to explain the day after. Decolonization will do.

An effective slogan does not transmit a message. It produces commitment without requiring comprehension.

Ask him which river and which sea, and very often he cannot answer – not because he is concealing anything, but because he genuinely does not know. He fills the gap with the concepts he does believe in: freedom, equality, an end to oppression.

That moment exposes the mechanism. A man who chants a sentence whose content he does not truly understand has not adopted a position. He has acquired belonging. Once he fills it with his own meaning, the sentence becomes his, and he will defend it as though he had written it.

Anyone confronting him with facts is no longer arguing with whoever drafted the line. He is colliding with the values of the man shouting it.

Florida designates CAIR as domestic terror group

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, and the Florida Cabinet voted to designate the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Muslim Brotherhood and more than 90 other organizations as terror groups on Tuesday.

In a more-than-400-page agenda document for the vote, the state alleged that “there is substantial evidence that CAIR is engaging in terrorist activity” and accused the group of having connections to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, including as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2008 Holyland Foundation terrorism financing trial.

In the same vote, Florida applied foreign terrorist designations to groups already listed by the State Department as terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda, the Houthis and the Continuity Irish Republican Army.

CAIR bills itself as “America’s largest Muslim civil liberties organization” and notes on its website that it has never been charged with a crime.DeSantis signed an executive order in December designating CAIR as a foreign terrorist organization, which a federal judge blocked in March.

In July, DeSantis signed a bill granting him and the state Cabinet new powers to designate groups as terrorist organizations and recommended that CAIR, the Muslim Brotherhood and the other groups designated on Tuesday be the first to be so sanctioned.

The bill, which DeSantis has described as an “anti-Sharia law” measure, allows the state to legally dissolve groups designated as terrorists and creates criminal penalties for those that fail to do so. It also allows for the expulsion of any students in the Florida university system who promote the groups and bars the groups from certain other state funding, including contracts.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which represented CAIR in its lawsuit against DeSantis’s executive order, is also suing the state to stop the implementation of the terrorism designation law.

“Gov. DeSantis’s use of Florida’s dangerous new ‘terrorism’ designation regime against CAIR and its Florida chapter is baseless and unconstitutional,” Hina Shamsi, director of ACLU’s national security project, stated on Tuesday.

“There are simply no legitimate grounds to brand our clients with a reviled label, impose crippling criminal penalties and force them to shut their doors in Florida,” Shamsi said.

Why ‘Washington Post’ columnist Shadi Hamid excuses Hamas, demonizes Israel, Jews

When Gaza-born activist Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib penned a devastating op-ed in The New York Times on September 4 decrying Hamas’s destructive role in the Gaza Strip, Washington Post columnist Shadi Hamid was incensed (“For Gaza to Recover, Hamas Must Be Expelled”).

Hamid invented on X/Twitter that “pro-Israel hardliners” support Alkhatib because he “justifies the killing of Palestinians as unfortunate fact or a necessary evil.” Hamid’s assault against Alkhatib is a gross distortion of Alkhatib’s vision for a bright future for the people of Gaza.

“A Palestinian miracle on the Mediterranean is within reach if Gaza rejects Islamism, Jihadism, Hamas, and stale nationalist notions, all of which have left it devastated,” Alkhatib wrote, laying out the path forward for the fruitful development of the coastal territory.

But a thriving future in which the Gaza residents can pursue peaceful lives free from the ruinous rule of Hamas is apparently not Hamid’s shared vision. Since the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre, Hamid’s columns and social media posts have rationalized Hamas, demonized Israel, and marginalized Jews politically.

On October 31, 2023, Hamid published a column in The Washington Post explaining that Hamas isn’t evil. The essay – written three weeks after Hamas launched a cross-border raid and murdered 1,200 people and abducted 250 others – exonerated murder, abduction, and rape carried out in the name of Palestinian “resistance.”

Noting that Palestinians had become convinced “that nonviolence doesn’t work,” Hamid argued that Hamas’s violence was a legitimate expression of Palestinian frustration.

But in what world does frustration justify mass murder?

Moreover, in his essay, Hamid ignored the inconvenient history of Palestinian leaders Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas rejecting peace deals. He left out Hamas’s ideology, codified in the organization’s charter, which advocates killing Jews.

He was silent on the inculcation of hate in Palestinian schools. And he also ignored Hamas’s hijacking of international aid to raise an army, dig tunnels, and build a rocket arsenal.

By ignoring the threat that Hamas posed to Israel, Hamid was free to accuse Israel of using excessive violence and committing war crimes in its war against Hamas. Over the course of a year and a half, Hamid argued his case, often using discredited information that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.

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09/29 Links Pt1: What Bibi knew; A Two-State Solution Was a Casualty of October 7 for This Generation; Oslo Was Never Owned by the Palestinian Public

From Ian:

A Two-State Solution Was a Casualty of October 7 for This Generation

The possibility of a two-state solution for this generation was a casualty of Oct. 7. It is hard for me to understand how anyone can honestly say that they would not protect themselves if their neighbor had already killed one of their children and threatened to do it again as soon as they had the opportunity. It is sad that self-preservation has become something Israel, and increasingly Jews, seem to have to argue for.

When Oct. 7 came, the people of Israel rose up and came to the aid of their county. They searched for hostages, killed terrorist before they were able to rape, kill and maim even more people, and collected the blood and remains of so many dead so they could be buried and their families could have graves to visit and mourn.

Once you've seen the videos taken on GoPros by the terrorists on Oct. 7 or hear the glee in the recorded conversations where they tell family about what they are doing. Once you've seen the horrific scenes and participated in the cleanup of massacres like the Nova festival, can you support allowing a border state to Israel that would be governed by the group that planned and committed this atrocity?

Even hearing about the work that was done from people whose eyes are haunted and dead is enough for most people to know that so many were killed on Oct. 7 and the two-state solution was also a casualty. This generation will never support such an approach.

For so many years, Israelis in bordering towns both north and south lived with rockets raining down on them constantly. They raised their children with an uncertainty borne of constantly needing to run to a bomb shelter. But this seemed to be the price to pay - the necessary reality of having neighbors who wanted us killed and world opinion who wanted Israel to exercise never-ending restraint. This, too, broke after Oct. 7. Many woke up to see that accepting such a life was impossible going forward. That protecting its citizens was the most important consideration. It feels like Israel and this generation is done hoping and conceding.

Oslo Was Never Owned by the Palestinian Public

On Sept. 13, 1993, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization signed the Oslo Accords' Declaration of Principles at the White House. Days before the ceremony, Israel and the PLO exchanged letters of mutual recognition. The PLO recognized Israel's right to exist in peace and security and renounced terrorism. The killing was supposed to stop. It did not.

On that day, Jordanian television aired a prerecorded Arabic address by PLO chief Yasser Arafat. He reminded his listeners that the Palestine National Council had resolved in 1974 to establish a national authority over any part of the land that Israel vacated in a phased plan to eventually take over the rest. Oslo, in his telling, was a stage in the struggle, not a substitute for it.

Palestinians are scheduled to vote in November under rules requiring candidates to accept the PLO's commitments in Oslo. In a poll published Aug. 12 by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, 2/3 of Palestinians opposed requiring election candidates to accept the PLO's commitments, including its agreements with Israel.

The frameworks now being assembled for Gaza rest on similar architecture. Yet agreements built on the Western model, in which a document creates obligations that outlast political changes, require something the Middle East has rarely supplied: A party able to carry out a commitment after the leader who made it is gone.

The practical conclusion for Jerusalem and Washington is that the next agreement should be judged by what the public demonstrably accepts, and its security terms should be enforceable by Israel without depending on anyone's goodwill.

Pools, marble and mansions: Inside 100 Palestinian luxury homes in West Bank A photography book published by Regavim showcases 100 privately owned Palestinian villas and estates across the West Bank, seeking to challenge what the organization describes as a selective international portrayal of Palestinian life.

Titled Real Estate Under Occupation, the book features swimming pools, fountains, marble staircases and landscaped grounds. Regavim, an Israeli NGO that campaigns on land use and construction enforcement, said its field coordinators photographed all the featured properties in a single day.

In Shuqba, a Palestinian village northwest of Ramallah, the team documented an estate that Regavim described as covering 4,800 square meters, with a central swimming pool, landscaped lawns, shaded entertaining areas and a large courtyard.

In Nahalin, southwest of Bethlehem, the book features a neoclassical property listed at 1,120 square meters, with seven balconies, a turret, a fountain and an ornamental pool.

In Khirbet Zif, in the Hebron Hills, the organization documented gated compounds with swimming pools, gardens, guest accommodations, saunas, security cameras and private access roads. Other properties featured stone columns, electric gates, orchards and private parking.

The measurements are those supplied by Regavim; they should not all be read as interior living-space figures.

The introduction uses sarcasm to place terms such as “oppression,” “severe deprivation” and “daily hardship” alongside photographs of luxury homes. Regavim said it aimed to show how selective imagery could influence public opinion and foreign policy, while acknowledging that poverty existed.

The photographs document individual examples of wealth. They do not establish how common such wealth is across the Palestinian population. In its May 2026 economic update, the World Bank reported that economic activity in the West Bank remained substantially below its pre-October 2023 level, despite modest growth in 2025.
Report PDF

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A Word So Casual It Is Used Without Thought

The New York Times publishes yet another truly slanderous op-ed, this one by M. Gessen:

Do you even need to ask what that word is? Gesen describes the thoroughly discredited NAZA movie as if it is real journalism:

More than halfway through the film, Yuval Abraham, who conducted the interviews and co-directed the movie with Rachel Szor, asks one of the subjects if he realized that he was taking part in a genocide. This interviewee has already said that he found the work to be fun, because staying up late with your buddies, working toward a common goal, is fun. Now he agrees calmly, indeed casually, that yes, he has been taking part in a genocide.

The word doesn’t appear in the movie again.

This is all the evidence Gessen needs. After comparing this film to a new  dark comedy (again, not a documentary) about a mistaken Mossad hit, he concludes:

The difference between the practice depicted in “Checkout,” the comedy, and the unrelenting, unbearable horror described in “NAZA” is scale. Now, it’s industrial. That’s what makes it a genocide. It really is that unequivocal, and perhaps this is why the makers of “NAZA” didn’t need to use the word more than once.

"Genocide," to NYT columnists, is defined by vibes. And that's all you need. It isn't a serious word; it is something that is more like pornography; you know it when you see it. It is a term that can be casually tossed around without evidence, without even a clear definition. It is whatever you decide it is.

But that isn't what genocide is. And using it as casually by the headline of an op-ed is the opposite of seriousness.

A new academic paper from Indiana University actually does take the word seriously, along with other terms used casually about Israel, apartheid and settler colonialism.

The genocide accusation is governed by a treaty definition requiring enumerated acts and the specific intent to destroy a protected group, in whole or in substantial part, as such. The record establishes killing within the meaning of Article II(a) and serious bodily and mental harm within the meaning of Article II(b) together with the civilian and combatant death and deprivation described above. It does not establish that conditions of life were imposed for the purpose of physical destruction under Article II(c), that measures were imposed with the intent required by Article II(d), or that Israel intended to destroy Palestinians as such rather than defeat Hamas, the armed organization governing Gaza and embedded within the civilian population. Military and genocidal aims can coexist as a matter of law, but genocidal intent must still be established from the totality of the evidence. Genocidal intent cannot be inferred from the consequences of a military campaign alone; where plausible competing explanations remain, it is not the only reasonable inference. The genocide accusation is therefore not established under the Convention.

This isn't as catchy as viewing a popular film and deciding that it must be accurate. But it does take the term "genocide" with the seriousness it deserves. The word isn't powerful because it is tossed around as a side comment: it is powerful because it has a specific definition meant exactly to stop it from being used casually, the way it is used by New York Times columnists.

This NYT piece will be read by hundreds of thousands of people,  if not millions. The serious academic paper that methodically takes apart the actual accusation of genocide will only be read by dozens. 

The word can be used as propaganda or it can be used with seriousness. The average person only hears the former version. And that is the only version the Newspaper of Record decides is worth employing.

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09/28 Links Pt2: The Quiet Islamic Colonization of America; Bondi survivor takes his warning to the UN’s doorstep; Germany’s academic centre for the denial of antisemitism

From Ian:

Pierre Rehov: The Quiet Islamic Colonization of America

For 25 years, American counterterrorism policy has been organized around the image of September 11: a terror cell, an aircraft, an explosion. Billions went into intelligence, airport screening and wars abroad. Across those same years, a slower project advanced through channels that no security agency was built to monitor: one moving through universities, lobbying organizations, municipal, state and national politics, and the vocabulary of civil rights. It required nothing more explosive than money, patience and a working knowledge of how an open society such as the United States functions.

The Muslim Brotherhood grasped the possibilities long before Washington did.

Millions of Muslims have no interest in seeing political Islam govern anyone, and many may have even crossed an ocean to escape it. The organizations that claim to speak in their name are another matter, and their central achievement has been to make the two indistinguishable, so that a political network registers as a whole population.

The progressives think that the Islamists will boost them to power, and the Islamists think the progressives will boost them to power.

While countries in the West are always nonchalantly accused of imperialism and colonization, how come no one ever mentions the Islamic imperialism and colonization of Christian Byzantium – now Turkey – let alone the entire Ottoman Empire? How come no one ever mentions the Islamic colonization of the Coptic Christian country of Egypt, or of northern Cyprus in 1974? Or the formerly Buddhist countries of southeast Asia, such as the Maldives, Malaysia or Indonesia?

The Islamic colonization now underway in Europe and the United States carries no racial or demographic content.... The territory being taken is ideological: it changes hands whenever a political movement discovers that open institutions can be used more profitably than if they were attacked, or whenever foreign money purchases standing inside institutions that form the next generation of American elites, or whenever two movements with incompatible values find they can trade access for votes.

Americans may not notice it right away, or now, but one day, unless actions are taken as soon as possible to prevent it, they may wake up one morning to find themselves under Islamic rule.

The process is arithmetic: small concessions, each too minor to be worth a fight, accumulating across institutions, phrases and political territory until reversing the situation would demand a confrontation no one wishes to have. Europe crossed this threshold without even noticing it. America has not.

The interval, however, in which recognizing the problem still costs less than reversing it is not indefinite.

I’m from Gaza – peace will only come if we rid our mosques and schools of radicalism

Dismantling the infrastructure of radicalism and countering ideological mobilisation in mosques and schools is no less vital than disarmament. In fact, it is the fundamental prerequisite for ensuring that violence does not reignite the moment the rubble is cleared. Rebuilding mosques without altering the rhetoric that prevailed prior to October 7 means recycling the very same concepts, giving rise to a new generation that reproduces the crisis – an outcome directly opposed to the interests of Gaza, its residents, and regional stability. The Strip requires a permanent end to conflict and the attainment of its rights through diplomatic and legitimate avenues.

Achieving this demands an end to the monopoly over the pulpit and the classroom. For decades, the educational and religious systems were exploited to steer collective consciousness exclusively toward armed conflict, with pulpits utilised for factional mobilisation and attacks on dissenters. Thus, an urgent need has emerged to restore the mosque's original role as a place of worship and a hub for enlightened thought, promoting values of tolerance and coexistence – drawing inspiration from successful, developing regional models such as the United Arab Emirates.

Stripping ideological control from the pulpits requires institutional oversight and independent bodies to ensure they are not converted into tools for factional mobilisation that tear the social fabric apart. Similarly, the educational environment must be reformed and protected. This goes beyond purging curricula of incitement to prohibiting paramilitary activities within schools and insulating educational facilities from partisan exploitation, thereby safeguarding children from early radicalisation.

Nevertheless, banning extreme ideas alone is insufficient, as human consciousness cannot remain a vacuum. The success of these endeavours hinges on presenting a civil, intellectual, and cultural alternative grounded in citizenship and the rule of law. Replacing narrow ideological affiliations with full citizenship guarantees equal rights and duties under judicial and institutional frameworks, reinforcing the view of a young person as an independent individual possessed of dignity, ambition, and the capacity to contribute to society.

Disarming Hamas without ridding educational and religious institutions of their radical ideas will keep the door to conflict wide open. Gaza's future will be determined inside classrooms and atop pulpits, where a consciousness is forged that will either repeat past mistakes or lay the foundation for a generation committed to peace, development, and investment in the future.

David Collier: Simon & Schuster Run From Social Responsibility

The issue is not whether Simon & Schuster agrees with Susan Abulhawa. The issue is why the company apparently believes its social responsibility extends far enough to cancel some authors over their conduct, but feels justified in helping to bring Abulhawa to a wider audience.

These aren’t forgotten books sitting passively on a backlist.

These are new editions. A fresh commercial decision has been made. Covers are produced, publicity generated, books marketed and the reputation and resources of one of the world’s largest publishers placed behind them.

And Abulhawa herself is making the political purpose of the republications explicit.

In August, she urged supporters to pre-order the Simon & Schuster editions, announcing that her pre-order royalties would go to the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM).

That deserves scrutiny. PYM has a documented history of organising and campaigning alongside Samidoun, which the U.S. government designated in 2024 as a “sham charity” serving as an international fundraiser for the PFLP, a U.S. and EU designated terrorist organisation.

This makes the publisher’s attempt to distance itself increasingly difficult to swallow. Simon & Schuster is actively republishing and promoting the books; Abulhawa is explicitly directing the resulting royalties towards politically extremist causes. If any of that money crosses over into support for terrorist networks, it opens up an entirely different discussion.

Abulhawa has openly supported terrorism. Why on earth would Simon & Schuster want to be anywhere near this?

Someone at Simon & Schuster approved that decision.

Was that person aware of what Abulhawa posted on October 7?

Did they know about her explicit embrace of armed violence?

Did they know about the “parasites,” “demons,” “cockroaches” and “ghouls?”

If they didn’t, Simon & Schuster has a serious due-diligence problem.

If they did, there is a far more uncomfortable question to answer.

Where exactly is its line?

Would Simon & Schuster commission new editions from an author who repeatedly described Muslims as parasites, demons and cockroaches, celebrated someone who massacred Muslim civilians and openly expressed support for those carrying out terrorist violence against Muslims?

If not, what principle distinguishes that hypothetical case from this one?

This isn’t about banning Susan Abulhawa. She is free to write. Publishers are free to publish her. Readers are free to buy her books.

But Simon & Schuster is equally accountable for the choices it makes.

Corporations cannot plaster their websites with promises about diversity, inclusion, safe environments and social responsibility, invoke those principles when deciding one author is beyond the pale, and then retreat behind “her views are her own” when confronted with another.

The question is no longer what Susan Abulhawa believes; she has made that abundantly clear.

The question is what Simon & Schuster believes, and whether its loudly proclaimed principles mean anything when the people targeted by dehumanizing rhetoric happen to be Jews.

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