Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, April 05, 2026

04/05 Links: A War of Psychological Attrition; Iran Has Miscalculated Disastrously; The North Korea Lesson for Iran; Why Islamists and progressives have so much in common

From Ian:

A War of Psychological Attrition

In physical terms, the damage Iran is inflicting on the Americans, the Gulf states or Israel is minimal.

By contrast, Iran is sustaining extremely heavy blows. Its economy was already shattered before the campaign began. Its military capabilities are being stripped away hour by hour.

That means the pace at which it is harming Israel and other countries in the region is negligible compared with what it had planned.

Unlike Iran, those countries are, by and large, continuing to function, while the disruption to daily life caused by missiles and drones remains relatively limited.

Iran is trying to create the impression that the cost of the war is unbearable.

But what is worse: gasoline at $4 a gallon, or Iran with an arsenal of intercontinental nuclear missiles?

What poses a greater threat to the world: a short-term recession, or a deranged regime operating an ocean of drones in the Strait of Hormuz, terrorist cells across the planet, and seeking to impose Shiite belief on humanity by force?

Iran knows the West's weak points, its short-sightedness, short patience, and short-time horizon.

In Tehran they know that in the West, people will talk about one American aircraft being shot down a thousand times more than they will about dozens of Iranian aircraft destroyed, hundreds of missiles intercepted and thousands of drones thwarted.

That is the asymmetric psychological war they are hoping to win.

Col. (ret.) Richard Kemp: Iran Has Miscalculated Disastrously

The ayatollahs never expected to find themselves in a sustained, direct, high-intensity war with the U.S. and Israel. Their thinking had been based on gaining ascendancy in the Middle East by proxy groups and ultimately by nuclear weapons.

The rulers of Iran spent billions of dollars building a series of terrorist networks that would do their dirty work for them. Yet Hizbullah, Hamas, and the Houthis have been very severely handled by Israel (and in the case of the Houthis, the U.S.) since Oct. 7, 2023, and their combined contribution to the defense of Iran over the last few weeks has consequently been strategically negligible.

In the minds of the ayatollahs, attacking their Arab neighbors would lead the Gulf states to pressure Trump to call off the war. It had the opposite effect. Behind the scenes, both Saudi Arabia and the UAE have reportedly urged the president to keep attacking until the job is done. Iran's strategy has instead consolidated opposition to Tehran.

Another strategic miscalculation has been the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. As a global economic attack, it reinforces the narrative that Iran is a worldwide threat. Both China and India have been significantly impacted, despite Tehran's selective permission for some ships and cargoes to pass through the strait.

Additionally, the regime is probably inflicting greater harm on its own economy. It depends on the strait for the import of food and other essentials, and for its own oil exports.

WSJ Editorial: The North Korea Lesson for Iran

President Trump decided to use military force to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon after diplomacy failed. This was a risky choice. But the U.S. experience with North Korea suggests the alternatives were even riskier. That history shows the limits of nuclear diplomacy with a determined foe, as well as what happens when the U.S. puts conflict-avoidance above all else.

During the Clinton Administration, North Korea denied International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors access to camouflaged nuclear sites and announced it would withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Clinton threatened sanctions. The U.S. military drew up plans for strikes on nuclear installations, and Defense Secretary Bill Perry presented a plan for a large military buildup in the region. Clinton deployed Patriot missile-defense systems to South Korea.

Former President Jimmy Carter informed the Clinton Administration that he intended to visit North Korea and try to defuse the situation. Clinton decided to let Carter proceed as a private citizen. Carter feared conflict above all and even opposed sanctions. He went beyond what he had been authorized by Clinton to discuss and announced a tentative agreement on CNN. The press and foreign-policy establishment hailed nuclear peace in our time.

Military options came off the table and Clinton embraced the deal, which became the 1994 Agreed Framework. For a time the deal seemed to work. Yet weaponization research continued on the sly. The regime's intent to build a bomb never changed. In 2002, North Korea reneged on the Agreed Framework and expelled inspectors. The George W. Bush Administration employed threats, sanctions and diplomacy but ultimately ruled out the use of force. In 2006, North Korea conducted its first nuclear test.

After that, U.S. military options became riskier. North Korea is now believed to possess 50 warheads, and it tests ICBMs that will one day be able to reach the continental U.S. The lesson is that U.S. presidents waited too long to stop North Korea. The risks of war were always said to be too high, it was never a good time, and there was always another diplomatic option to exhaust. North Korea is now a nuclear power.

Iran's radical regime will not have a nuclear program when the current Iran conflict ends. This has made the world a safer place.

The lies behind the concept of "anti-Palestinian racism"

A new legal and rhetorical strategy is migrating from Canada into American institutions. Its proponents call it "anti-Palestinian racism," or APR.

They present it as a civil rights framework analogous to existing definitions of antisemitism — a tool for identifying and penalizing discrimination against a vulnerable group.

It is nothing of the kind.

APR is a framework designed to immunize Palestinian terrorism - indeed, any Palestinian actions - from moral judgment. Its architects have already demonstrated that it classifies condemnations of the October 7 massacre as acts of racism.

The concept was first formally defined in a 2022 report by the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association. The ACLA describes APR as racism that "silences, excludes, erases, stereotypes, defames or dehumanizes Palestinians or their narratives," and explicitly declines to offer a precise definition, preferring a "fluid, contextual, and adaptable" framework. That vagueness is deliberate: a framework that cannot be pinned down cannot be debunked. And a framework that can mean anything can be deployed against everything.

The targets of that everything become clear once you apply APR's language to historically mainstream positions.

For example, APR prohibits speech that "denies Palestinian historical experiences" or "fails to recognize Palestinians as an Indigenous people with exclusive collective rights." Applied consistently: the documented fact that many Palestinians sold land to Jewish buyers voluntarily before 1948 becomes a denial of Palestinian experience. Pointing out that Palestinians themselves proudly trace their ancestry back to Arabia or Yemen or other lands far away cannot be mentioned. The serious historical debate over how many Palestinians fled versus were expelled in 1948 becomes an erasure of Palestinian dignity. The Jewish religious and historical connection to Jerusalem — which Yasser Arafat notoriously denied to Bill Clinton's face at Camp David — becomes a failure to recognize Palestinian indigeneity. The statement that Jews have an ancestral right to live in the land of Israel becomes racism.

Under APR, the entire evidentiary record of the conflict is a minefield in which accurate description is indistinguishable from hate speech. That is the mechanism by which APR converts historical honesty into a thought crime.

APR's proponents present this as the natural counterpart to the IHRA definition of antisemitism. The comparison is fraudulent. IHRA contains an explicit carve-out: criticism of Israel's government, policies, and military conduct is protected speech. The architecture is honest — it presupposes a world in which Israel can be wrong and in which the distinction between criticizing a state and targeting a people is real and worth preserving.

APR contains no such carve-out. Nowhere in the ACLA framework or its American derivatives is there any provision protecting criticism of Palestinian conduct, leadership, or violence.

What APR does not guard against is demonstrated most clearly by October 7, 2023. The mechanism is built into the definitions in two places. First, APR classifies as racist any speech "defaming Palestinians and their allies with slander such as being inherently antisemitic, a terrorist threat/sympathizer, or opposed to democratic values." Hamas is Palestinian. Calling its members terrorists — the predicate of any condemnation of October 7 — therefore defames Palestinians as terrorist threats.

Second, APR defines "justifying violence against Palestinians" to include "blaming the oppressed for the actions of the oppressor." Palestinians are the oppressed party by definition; Israel is the oppressor by definition; Hamas inherits oppressed status categorically. Condemning October 7 means blaming the oppressed for the actions of the oppressor, which APR names as racism.

Neither of these is a strained reading. Both are the direct output of the framework's own language.

APR's architects did this intentionally The ACLA's co-founder and primary author of the APR definition, Dania Majid, signed a letter in November 2023 rejecting the idea that "contextualizing" Hamas's actions constitutes antisemitism, and characterizing the fight against antisemitism as "a new McCarthyism." The people who built APR do not regard October 7 as an atrocity requiring condemnation. They regard its condemnation as discrimination — and designed the framework accordingly.

The Toronto District School Board found this out directly. When the TDSB condemned the October 7 attacks, it faced formal APR complaints — not because its statements were poorly worded, but because it had condemned Hamas at all. The complaint succeeded: the TDSB was pressed into incorporating APR into its Combatting Hate and Racism Strategy. So now the fictional APR is enshrined as policy along with policies against antisemitism.

When APR advocates do not invoke the definitional clauses directly, they fall back on the original-sin argument: Palestinian terrorism is always Israel's fault, the inevitable product of occupation, and condemning it without condemning its root cause is moral evasion — itself APR. This reveals what the framework ultimately is: a structure in which Palestinian violence is permanently exempt from independent moral judgment because it is permanently pre-explained by Israeli culpability. No atrocity can break through it. Every massacre arrives pre-laundered.

The asymmetry with IHRA could not be starker. IHRA protects the right to criticize a state while drawing a boundary around ethnic targeting. APR protects a terrorist organization from criticism by encoding its ideology — Palestinians as categorical victims, Israel as categorical oppressor — into the definition of racism, then deliberately leaves that definition vague enough to expand against whatever argument needs silencing next.

Every charge leveled against the IHRA definition of antisemitism — that it criminalizes legitimate criticism, that it is too vague, that it conflates real bigotry with political opinion — applies directly and accurately to APR. The difference is that in IHRA's case the charges are false. In APR's case they are the design spec.

APR's foundational premise is unfalsifiable by design. Any evidence that challenges it gets reclassified as APR. The massacre of 1,200 people did not falsify the axiom. It was metabolized — recast as confirmation of the oppressor's nature, with condemnation of the massacre recast as confirmation of the racism that enables it. A framework that converts its most devastating counterevidence into further proof of its own conclusions is not a civil rights tool. It is an ideology with a legal enforcement mechanism. There is no act Palestinians can do to Jews that does not trigger APR claiming that is justified.

IHRA tried to protect Jews from discrimination while leaving the political argument open. APR closes the political argument by making one side of it illegal — and keeps the definition loose enough to close a little more of it whenever necessary. And that is the entire point.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Boston area Coptic church spreading the blood libel

There is a Coptic Orthodox priest serving in the Boston area who is publishing material in a major Egyptian newspaper that promotes classic antisemitic conspiracy theories – not in passing, but as part of a sustained, multi-part series.

The priest is Fr. Angelos Guirgis, currently listed as serving at St. Mark Coptic Orthodox Church in Natick, MA. At the same time, he writes a recurring column in Al-Ahram, one of the most prominent media outlets in the Arab world.

In that column, particularly in a recent series on Jerusalem, he spreads Elders of Zion style conspiracy theories about Jewish world domination. In fact, his latest column is titled, "How did the Jews gain control of the world?"

He claims that since the Crusades, Jews developed a long-term strategic plan to dominate the world through what he describes as three coordinated forces – finance, religion, and media.

A Jewish movement emerged that had existed before the Middle Ages... This movement, persecuted and despised by Christian nations and hated by Western peoples, resorted to a long-term plan to control the world. They skillfully employed the three pillars of power: money, religion, and media (or ideology), and unfortunately, they succeeded. On the financial level, as we shall see, they seized control of the global economy, starting with usury and lending to individuals and governments, and culminating in the establishment of banks, the initiation of massive projects, and their subsequent control over arms, pharmaceutical, and mining companies.

On the religious level, they found that the Jewish idea alone was unacceptable to the Western Christian world, so they began spreading the ideology of Christian Zionism. ...On the intellectual level, we will see that Jewish Freemasonry began buying off thinkers and philosophers during the Renaissance, and later established large media entities, such as Hollywood, to shape public opinion and make these ideas acceptable. They even gained control over the United Nations itself.

More details are promised in later articles.

It get worse.

On the St. Marks YouTube channel he states that the Jews murdered Christian children as a religious ritual and used their blood for matzah - the classic blood libel.

This is not a personal opinion from an antisemitic priest. This is the St Mark Church official position.

Clergy, like anyone else, can express offensive views. There is nothing illegal about it. But similarly, there is nothing illegal about asking St. Mark Coptic Church why they employ someone with such noxious views that have been used as incitement to murder Jews over the centuries - and why they promote antisemitic conspiracies in their official social media.

The church must answer these questions. If it supports Father Guirgis and the blood libel, it should say so; if it finds his views noxious it must remove any connection to him on their sites and take down the antisemitic videos he has made under their name.

Because right now it looks like a church in Natick, MA promotes hate speech.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

04/04 Links: Trump: Tehran has 48 hours to open the Strait of Hormuz; USAF rescue missing F-15E crew member; Francesca Albanese and the Perversion of Academia; ICC votes to discipline Karim Khan

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: World leaders should be grateful the US is doing what’s necessary in Iran

This is their war even more than it is the United States’ war. Iranian missiles threaten British interests even more than they threaten the US. And Iran’s terrorist proxies are even more active in Europe and the UK than they have been in America.

It’s just that the UK, Europeans and others don’t have the military power or the political will to do anything against that threat. They hoped that one day the US would take this problem off their hands. Because otherwise they’d have sat on those same hands as the ayatollah got ever-closer to the bomb.

Critics of President Trump at home point to the rising price of gas. And that is certainly a concern. But the price will come down as America’s objectives are achieved. And while a month of high gas prices is a concern it is much less of a concern than the price of gas if the Revolutionary Islamic Government in Iran started throwing nuclear weapons around.

Consider how they lashed out at every single one of their Arab neighbors after America’s first strikes on Tehran. This is how they behaved with missiles and drones. Imagine how they would react if they were nuclear.

Meantime some critics of American policy have pointed out how North Korea was allowed to develop nuclear weapons. But that program is a signal lesson to the civilized world as much as it is to dictators. North Korea was able to develop its nuclear program because they were constantly threatening South Korea with an attack by conventional weapons if their unconventional capability was attacked. So they got away with it.

The Iranians hoped they could pull off the same trick. But after the destruction of their armies in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria there was a window — this past month — to stop similar blackmail from Iran.

Of course the Iranian regime has lashed out — aiming missiles at Qatari energy facilities and Saudi airports. They have also — interestingly for an “Islamic” regime — sent missiles that have nearly hit the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. It would be quite an epitaph for the radical Mullahs if they struck that.

Yet the region has managed to suffer through this. All in the knowledge that American and Israeli pilots are stopping a much greater threat ever emanating from Iran.

And that will be the end of the war.

This war does not need to end up with anyone being bogged down. It doesn’t need the dreaded “boots on the ground” that Western powers seem to have become so fearful of.

Another couple of weeks and the Iranian regime will not be able to threaten anyone again for the foreseeable future. Perhaps a little further along the road the regime itself will fall. That will be in the hands of the Iranian people.

But for the time being the pilots of the US Air Force are doing noble work on behalf of the whole world. And not just for this generation but for the generations to come. We should be proud of them.

John Spencer: What Would Sun Tzu Say About War with Iran?

Throughout the war, Sun Tzu would have returned to a simple measure of success, not only what was destroyed, but what was achieved. If the enemy’s decisions change, the strategy has worked. If they do not, then tactical success may prove insufficient.

That is why The Art of War endures. It is not a guide to battle. It is a framework for thinking about war as a contest of wills, shaped by political purpose, constrained by cost, and decided not by destruction, but by decisions.

Sun Tzu would also have recognized the political constraints that shape the use of force and the importance of perception beyond the battlefield. He warned that “there is no instance of a nation benefiting from prolonged warfare” and that the use of the military must remain tied to the interests of the state, not drift into objectives that expand beyond what was originally intended. He placed extraordinary importance on information, writing that foreknowledge must be obtained and used to shape outcomes, a principle that today extends to the information domain and the perceptions of both enemy leadership and the population.

Sun Tzu also understood the role of threat, not as a matter of rhetoric, but as a function of perception and pressure. “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting,” and that requires shaping the enemy’s understanding of what continued fighting will bring. But he also warned against excess. “When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard.” The purpose of pressure is not to eliminate all options, but to shape them, and to shape how they are understood. In this context, that means applying enough force to influence decision-making while preserving a path toward a political outcome aligned with stated objectives.

That matters in this context. If the regime were to collapse as a result of the war, the outcomes associated with regime change could occur, but that would be distinct from making regime change the stated political objective. If the objective shifts, or is perceived to shift, from forcing a change in behavior to regime change requiring large-scale ground forces, it risks repeating patterns seen in past wars, where limited objectives expanded into nation building and protracted counterinsurgency campaigns against enemies able to adapt, disperse, and find sanctuary. Those conditions favor the defender, extend time, and erode political cohesion.

Sun Tzu’s warning is clear. Strategy must remain aligned to political purpose, and that purpose must remain disciplined, or the advantages gained early in a campaign can be lost over time.

IDF commando KIA in Southern Lebanon, another critically wounded

An Israel Defense Forces soldier was killed overnight Friday in southeastern Lebanon, the Israeli military said.

He was named as Sgt. Maj. Guy Ludar, 21, a member of the Maglan reconnaissance unit of the IDF Commando Brigade, from Yuvalim in the Lower Galilee.

Another commando from the Maglan unit was critically wounded, the IDF said.

Their families were notified.

According to Ynet, Ludar was killed by “friendly” fire during a nighttime operation to arrest a Hezbollah helper in the village of Shebaa, north of Mount Hermon.

An IDF soldier from another force believed he detected two terrorists and opened fire.

The report noted that the building where the suspect was believed to be was not detonated in advance because Shebaa is predominantly a Sunni village, whose residents are not typically affiliated with the Iranian-backed Shi’ite terrorist group.

The IDF opened a probe into the incident.

04/01 Links Pt2: Do not look away from the rising fires of Jew hatred; Three arrested inc. Pakistani teenager over Golders Green firebomb attack; Herzog: ‘Spirit of our people’ has always prevailed

From Ian:

Do not look away from the rising fires of Jew hatred

Can we all agree this is madness? How can it be that, as a child here, it almost never crossed my mind not to be openly and fearlessly Jewish, and yet I now wait in trepidation for the day one of my young children returns home from school or an outing, asking me to explain Jew hatred?

In just the past few weeks, a branch of Gail’s bakery in Archway was vandalised because it was founded by an Israeli Jew (who is no longer involved in the business), and then the incident was belittled in the Guardian. A report into campus anti-Semitism revealed that one in five students would refuse to live with a Jewish peer. An inquiry had to be launched into anti-Semitism in schools. Meanwhile, down in Margate, an art exhibition titled ‘Drawings Against Genocide’ depicts Israelis and Israel Defence Forces soldiers as demons, murderers and baby-eaters. Artist Matthew Collings claims the work is not anti-Semitic, merely ‘anti-Zionist’. Thank goodness he cleared that up!

This is what we’re up against. Anti-Semitism has had a rebrand and, honestly, activists have done a fantastic PR job. Say whatever you like about the Jews and carry out as many petty acts of anti-Semitism as you please – as long as you take care to use today’s euphemisms of ‘anti-Zionism’ or ‘Israel criticism’, you’ll get away with it.

Despite all of this, I still believe that the vast majority of Britons are not anti-Semites, and that growing numbers are sickened by what they see. Unfortunately, too many of our non-Jewish neighbours are looking away when they should be staring into the flames, as we are forced to do.

The Jewish community does not have the privilege of looking away. While I can shield myself from terrifying video footage of anti-Semitic murder and destruction, I cannot avoid reckoning with the daily reality of life for Jews in Britain today.

This week, Jews celebrate the festival of Passover, when we recall how Moses led us to freedom from slavery in Egypt. It is one of our most important festivals. It celebrates the privilege of not just freedom itself, but also the ability to live freely as Jews. It is a message that has always resonated strongly with me. But this year I find myself asking: when does living with unease become living in fear? In the past, I always believed myself to be truly free, as a person, as a Jew. Today, I’m not so sure.

Seth Mandel: How the Jewish Community Can Fight Tokenism Without Self-Destructing

Since October 7, anti-Zionist politicians and political institutions have relied more than ever on a specific tactic to deflect accusations of anti-Semitism: putting liberal and leftist Jews front and center and using them, essentially, as human shields.

This puts the global Jewish community in a bind. How do we call out this rank tokenism without allowing the debate to descend into an intra-Jewish fight that leaves the politicians unscathed but the Jews further fragmented?

The answer is to focus most of our ire on those responsible for pitting the Jews against each other. Obviously, Jews who allow themselves to be used in this manner are not without agency and therefore their actions can and should be criticized—just without losing sight of the way political systems historically take advantage of Jewish infighting.

Sometimes, the institutions that deserve to come under withering rhetorical fire aren’t political in the classic sense. Take the media. A couple of months ago, I noticed something reading the stories about Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s trip to Australia after the Bondi Beach Hanukkah massacre.

The Guardian headlined its story: “Isaac Herzog’s four days in Australia left him ‘energised’. For the Jewish community, some saw solidarity while others felt ‘serious angst’.”

The article claimed the trip brought “significant disquiet within Australia’s Jewish community.”

Commenting in favor of Herzog’s visit were the Executive Council of Australian Jewry and the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies. The ECAJ is the umbrella organization of Australian Jewry that represents over 200 Jewish organizations. The NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, which is listed as a territorial body of the ECAJ, oversees 55 such Jewish organizations.

The quotes from officers of these two organizations, therefore, can be reasonably said to represent Australian Jewry.

On the other side, being quoted against Herzog’s visit was… something called Jewish Voices of Inner Sydney. The leftist organization does not have much of a footprint and appears to have launched in 2024. Judging by its occasional forays into the public discourse, I can say with some confidence that it has a membership of at least 25 people. As of this writing, it has a whopping 126 followers on Facebook. It is a complete nonentity.

To say that it was unethical of the Guardian to frame its story this way based on some As-a-Jew garage band is to understate the point. The one person from this group the Guardian quotes hardly seems worth spending much time and energy on. The Guardian, on the other hand, is an influential tool of anti-Zionist agitation and ought to be subjected to heaps of scrutiny before anything it writes about Jews and Judaism are to be treated with a grain of seriousness or credibility.

The Guardian uses liberal Jews as human shields, and until it can prove that this has changed, it should be branded as such. Make the paper the primary target.

NYPost Editorial: This is a Democratic Party push to expel Jews from public life

The Democratic Party’s growing antisemitic wing is out to blacklist support for Israel, or at least the nation’s main pro-Israel lobbying and political action group, AIPAC.

Never mind that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee spends far less than other interest groups: Climate-obsessed California billionaire Tom Steyer, a prime AIPAC-denouncer, has spent much more on campaign donations all by himself these last few years.

But such is the power of Democrats’ hard left that delegates to the Democratic National Committee’s April meeting will debate a resolution that first condemns “the growing influence of dark money and corporate-backed independent expenditures in Democratic elections” but then singles out only AIPAC as “undermining public trust in democratic institutions.”

But AIPAC isn’t “corporate-backed” or “dark money”: its SuperPAC donors, all successful American individuals, are completely open about who they are and what they support.

The same cannot be said about the real dark money spent on American politics, most of which — about $1.2 billion — supported Democrat candidates and issues in the last election cycle.

04/01 Links Pt1: Trump claims Iran 'no longer a threat' in update on Operation Epic Fury; Iran's Danger Must Be Judged by "Unacceptable Risk," Not "Imminent Threat";

From Ian:

Bret Stephens: Yes, This Is Your War, Too

But whatever the administration decides to do, what isn’t viable is for Americans and our allies to pretend that they can be indifferent to the outcome of the war. When someone like Boris Pistorius, the German defense minister, says, “This is not our war,” the appropriate response is: Are you serious?

In June, Pistorius’s boss, Chancellor Friedrich Merz, acknowledged that Israel’s attack that month on Iran’s military and nuclear sites was “dirty work that Israel is doing for all of us.” Has something changed in his government’s strategic calculus about the threat Iran poses, other than its overriding opposition to the Trump administration?

In January, the United Arab Emirates announced in no uncertain terms that it would not allow its airspace, territory or ports to be used for an attack on Iran. The declaration was a transparent effort to insulate the Emirates from Iranian reprisals. For its pains, Iran has since hit Abu Dhabi, Dubai and other Emirati targets, military and civilian, with at least 433 ballistic missiles, 19 cruise missiles and 1,977 drones.

Now the governments of Spain and Italy are replicating the Emirates’ strategy, barring the U.S. from using bases (and, in Madrid’s case, its airspace) for attacks on Iran. Do those governments think they’ll be spared Tehran’s furies should they one day come into range of Tehran’s missiles? For that matter — given Trump’s ambivalence about the war in Ukraine — do Europeans think the administration is more likely to support NATO in the event of a Russian attack when NATO has been so hostile to American efforts to defang Iran?

For Americans, especially those who often oppose the administration, the question is whether our distaste for this president should get the better of our strategic judgments about the threats Iran poses. In The Wall Street Journal recently, the lawyer David Boies, a prominent Democrat, noted that if Trump had failed to act, “his successor would have been left with an even more dangerous choice than his predecessors left him. Three or four years from now, the Iranian missiles now hitting Iran’s neighbors could be hitting Berlin or London, perhaps even New York or Washington.”

If Democrats can’t bring themselves to support Trump, they can at least support policies that will make the strategic choices for the next Democratic president easier rather than harder.

“You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you” is a line widely attributed to Leon Trotsky. If that’s the case — and history tells us it is — shouldn’t you be interested in winning it, too?

Iran's Danger Must Be Judged by "Unacceptable Risk," Not "Imminent Threat"

Did Iran pose an imminent threat to the U.S.? "Imminence" is not a precise or objective term that presidents should employ only if intelligence experts endorse it. In national security affairs, it is almost always debatable. Besides, "imminence" is not the right concept for deciding whether and how to respond to a grave threat from abroad.

To grasp why it is not right, ask yourself: When did the Sep. 11 attack become imminent? When did the attack on Pearl Harbor? When did Russia's invasion of Ukraine? When did the Holocaust? When did the threat of British tyranny that justified the American Revolution? The concept of "imminence" offers no useful guidance for confronting complex threats of this kind.

Is a threat imminent when the enemy becomes hostile? Only after they perfect the means to attack us, or only after the enemy puts them in motion as part of an attack? Does it matter if the enemy appears unstable or ideologically fanatical? Does it matter if the enemy's means of attack are apocalyptic - nuclear weapons on long-range missiles, for example?

The relevant concept is unacceptable risk, not imminent threat. Presidents have the duty to decide whether a foreign threat poses risks that require a U.S. response. They have the responsibility to decide whether a threat is grave enough - and no means short of war can reduce the risk to an acceptable level - to make war necessary.

As a rule, only an imminent threat justifies police officers' use of deadly force. But is it sensible to import that concept into national security affairs today, when a country like Iran calls over decades for "Death to America," commits numerous murderous aggressions, and devotes enormous resources to developing terrorist proxy networks, nuclear weapons, and long-range missiles?

You can still download two EoZ Haggadot to print before the Seder!

My brand new philosophical/analytic Haggadah, At Ptach Lo, recently reviewed at Times of Israel:

At Ptach Lo is a bold and intellectually demanding work that reimagines the Passover Haggadah as a sophisticated philosophical system. It challenges readers to rethink familiar rituals, confront difficult truths, and see themselves as active participants in an ongoing historical and moral narrative.

Full English and Hebrew with 45 essays showing a side of Jewish thought you may not be aware of, built into the Haggadah. $20 for the PDF.

My original Zionist Haggadah, Hayinu K'Cholmim, has also been revamped and updated.

It includes many commentaries from major rabbis of religious Zionism, relating the Exodus with the rebirth of Israel. Full English and Hebrew. $12 for PDF.

Chag kosher v'sameach!

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Last week in Sydney, Candy Berger arrived at her brand-new bagel shop in Paddington to remove the brown paper covering the freshly renovated windows. She had been excited to finally share the new space with the public. Then she saw the swastika.

Investigators determined that the symbol had been etched into the glass on March 21 — while the windows were still papered over, weeks before Lox in a Box was scheduled to open.

It turns out there is a wave of attacks on....bagel shops.

In London last February, Gail's Bakery in Archway had its windows smashed and its facade spray-painted with "reject corporate Zionism" and "boycott." In December 2024, the iconic Brick Lane Beigel Bakery in London — a local landmark operating for decades — was targeted with a swastika on the mural next to its facade. In Miami in June 2024, Holy Bagels & Pizzeria was spray-painted with "Free Palestine" and "Stop Genocide" — the fourth time the owner's kosher bagel shops had been hit since October 7. In Berkeley in March 2024, "Israel baby killer" was stenciled in the spot where customers line up outside Boichik Bagels — despite the business having made no political statement of any kind. In Queens in November 2024, a man entered Bagels and Company, demanded employees remove Israeli flags, and threatened to burn the building down. In Detroit in August 2024, the entire staff of the Detroit Institute of Bagels walked out to protest the owner's Jewishness and his supposedly "Zionist political leanings." And in Paris in 2019 — years before October 7, before anyone had heard of "decolonization" as a rationale for spray paint — "Juden" was painted on the window of a Bagelstein shop in the old Jewish quarter. The French League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism displayed that photo alongside an image of a Berlin shop marked identically in 1938.

Why are so many bagel shops the target of vandalism? What can they possibly have in common that upsets so many people?

Clearly, bagels are a colonialist food.

Or consider the alternative explanation, which happens to be true: the bagel is arguably the most successfully assimilated Jewish food in the Western world. It completed the full journey — from the pushcarts of the Lower East Side and the ovens of Krakow to every supermarket, every airport kiosk, every brunch menu on earth. It shed its ethnicity somewhere around 1985. The everything bagel with lox and cream cheese is now as generically American as the hot dog, and Gail's — the London chain with the Israeli co-founder — has 170 locations across Britain selling to people who think of it as simply a nice place to get coffee and a pastry.

The bagel stopped being Jewish. It became just food.

Antisemites are putting the Jewish back on it.

This is te deliberate re-Judaization of a food that had been successfully integrated into the broader culture. Bagels represent Jewish success in the West, and that is what makes them arrestable targets antisemites who pretend to be "anti-Zionist."

Every owner in every case above told the same story. None had taken a political position. Boichik's Emily Winston said, "It feels very bullying here — if you don't wave the Palestinian flag, it's not okay and you're a bad Jew. But if you wave a Palestinian flag, then it's okay, because it's not that we dislike you because you're Jewish, but because you're not pro-Palestine."

Jews who dare own bagel shops must pass a purity test to determine if they will or will not be targeted. It is essentially mob-style tactics but instead of shaking down the shop-owners for money they are demanded to turn against their own people - or else.

The historical template is not subtle. Federal Judge Roy Altman, who came to the Miami shop to help scrub off the graffiti, said it plainly: "My grandparents went through the 1940s in Europe, and this is how it started — spray painting Jewish businesses."

The 1938 Berlin shop had "Juden" painted on its window not because its owner had done anything. Jews were collectively responsible for whatever Jews were accused of in that moment.

The specific accusation changes. The targeting logic does not.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

03/31 Links Pt2: Israel’s sniveling classes are in the minority; The Sham of 'Disarming' Hamas; UN Sends Billions to Islamic Terrorists Who Kidnap its Staff

From Ian:

Ruthie Blum: Israel’s sniveling classes are in the minority

In other words, outside the curated echo chamber of the likes of Seroussi, Israelis are doing what we always do: debate, grumble and persevere—raising families at the highest rate in the Western world, and managing, against all odds, to sustain an upbeat mood under the constant strain of having to defend against enemies bent on wiping us off the map.

Seroussi’s woe-is-me theatrics aside, Israel ranks eighth on the latest World Happiness Report. Evidently, the citizens polled neglected to align their answers about their overall well-being with the gloom and doom emanating from left-wing Hebrew-language TV studios.

Not only that. Surveys indicate that an overwhelming majority of Israelis back the war against Iran and its proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon—despite having spent the past month running to bomb shelters throughout the day and wee hours of the night.

Seroussi and her fellow moaners are free to view things differently. They’re also at liberty to depart for what they imagine to be greener pastures abroad.

Such prerogatives are among the many options taken for granted by the sniveling classes. You know, the people who tend to omit a certain inconvenient phenomenon for Jews, regardless of their political persuasion: the explosion of antisemitism in New York, London, Paris and just about everywhere else.

It’s open Jew-hatred that would have seemed unfathomable not long ago, though probably not to Seroussi’s grandparents.

Jonathan Tobin: Gavin Newsom and the Democrats’ Israel problem

Simply put, there is a broad consensus within Israel that stretches from left to right on these issues. That consensus views a Palestinian state, such as the one that existed in Gaza prior to Oct. 7 in all but name, as an invitation to future slaughter and perpetual war. It also understands that the only option available to them with respect to Iran, as long as it is governed by fanatical Islamist theocrats, is a fight to the finish.

Seen from that perspective, it makes even those Democrats who claim to be supporters of Israel, though bitterly opposed to its government, like Newsom or even Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, as not merely out of touch with the realities of Israeli politics but also with their own voters. Such candidates may try to finesse the issue, as Newsom and Shapiro are trying to do, by declaring their support for Israel while avowing perpetual opposition to Netanyahu and Trump. But even if you take Netanyahu out of the equation, there is no conceivable government that could emerge from the next Israeli election that would have policies on two states or Iran that any almost any Democrat outside of an outlier like Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa) could support. And as far as the left-wing base of the Democratic Party is concerned, all Israelis and their American supporters—be they Jewish or Christian evangelicals—are backers of the mythical “genocide” and “apartheid.”

And that is why Israel is a land mine that Democratic presidential contenders understand can blow up their ability to reach their party’s activists who are the key to winning primaries and the nomination.

The two parties move in different directions
It’s true that there is also a vocal anti-Israel and increasingly antisemitic faction on the right that is unhappy with Trump’s pro-Israel policies. But it is clearly a minority with most Republicans, including the MAGA base. Most are enthusiastic supporters of Israel and of Trump’s stands, including the current war on Iran. And that has also placed Vice President JD Vance, the putative champion of the Tucker Carlson anti-Israel wing of the party, in a very uncomfortable position. He and his staff are reduced to leaking their unhappiness with Netanyahu, as well as their hopes about brokering a deal with Iran, to left-wing publications like Axios.

The anti-Israel right may think that it can reverse the GOP’s pro-Israel stance if Vance wins the presidency in 2028. But their problem is that unlike the situation on the other side of the aisle, the Veep’s coolness to Israel and the conflict with Iran is making that prospect far less of an inevitable occurrence than it seemed just a few months ago.

But for Democrats, the trend is moving in the opposite direction.

The best that supporters of Israel can hope for from a Democratic presidential candidate going forward is exactly the sort of dodge Newsom has just demonstrated—by talking out of both sides of his mouth. He signaled acquiescence to the “apartheid” and “genocide” blood libels while saying he supports a mythical Israel that has, like the few remaining liberal Zionists, learned nothing from Oslo, the events of Oct. 7, or Iran’s role in fomenting terror and war. Some “moderate” Democrats may think that trying to thread the needle in this way will allow them to be acceptable to both left-wingers and Jewish donors. That’s a sham that increasingly fewer opponents or supporters of Israel will accept.

Yisrael Medad: ‘The Three Cs’ and company

The person on the other side of that conversation was Robert Emmet Patrick Barron, a theologian who serves as bishop of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester. In a follow-up post on X, he was more explicit in his opinion about Boller.

He wrote on March 20: “Boller … has called out myself and other Catholic members of the commission for not defending her. This is absurd. Mrs. Prejean Boller was not dismissed for her religious convictions but rather for her behavior at a gathering of the commission last month: browbeating witnesses, aggressively asserting her point of view, hijacking the meeting for her own political purposes.”

He also clarified the Catholic position on matters of “Zionism.” For Barron, the State of Israel has a right to exist, though the modern nation of Israel does not represent the fulfillment of biblical prophecies and hence does not stand beyond criticism. He ended, writing: “To paint herself as a victim of anti-Catholic prejudice or to claim that her religious liberty has been denied is simply preposterous.”

These people, righteously raging their Christianity, may be suffering from a form of persecutory delusion. That mental and psychological framework has led them willingly to be accused of irrationality as an element of modern-day martyrdom. They feel, for some strange reason (unless it’s all about the greenbacks), that being in a minority—one that is ridiculed—is actually “proof” of the truth of their convictions. They are pig-pen delighted to exist in their unique in-group status as champions of an outlier view of Jews.

Owens, and specifically, Boller, display the obvious new convert fervor that forces them to be so overtly extroverted in their disgust of fellow Christians and hate for Israel and Judaism.

Social psychology researchers have found that people can form self-preferencing in-groups, even if they are in a significant minority position. In doing so, while experiencing feelings of exclusion, they nevertheless achieve a higher awareness of their identity. In the case of “The Three Cs,” this perception excites them and provides a form of self-justification. They resist the obvious evidence of their irrationality and reject sensible, contrary logical arguments that disprove their beliefs.

And why do we not hear what Carlson, Boller and Owens have to say about the actions of Arab terror groups and Islamist countries against Israelis and Jews? Or about the persecution of Christians in Muslim lands? Why the dichotomy? Why sound the one note?

The danger is that their lack of any real success—beyond temporary media fame and, possibly, fortune—is that their anger only increases. While all they are doing is talking, the true evil is emboldening all those others who hate, channeled through computers and online instruments.

03/31 Links Pt1: Hegseth: Iranian Missile Strikes Fall to Lowest Level, ‘Widespread Desertions’ Squeeze Regime’s Fighting Force; Israel ends all defense deals with France

From Ian:

Lessons from the Iran War

The centers of gravity on both sides of the Iran war are holding up under military pressure: Iran's command and control, its domination of a still-cowed population, ability to block shipments out of the Gulf, and its missile and drone stocks; the U.S., Israel, and Arab states' internal cohesion, weapons stocks, and despite considerable oil and gas price increases.

Neither side is displaying a decisive collapse of will, with Gulf Arab states so far demonstrating both resilience and defiance of Iran. There will not be a collapse of will by the Israeli government and population. For Israel, this conflict, correctly, is existential and the costs so far are easily bearable. Under such conditions, the conflict likely will shift to negotiations with or without a ceasefire.

Iran is a cause more than a state, although it presents as both. Its attacks on civilian targets in neighboring states seeking to remain neutral, and targeting of international oil supplies, have revealed the regime's nature. The region will never be really at peace unless either the very nature of the regime changes into that of a normal state, or it is stripped of all capability, in perpetuity, to project power through nuclear weapons, drones and missiles, terrorists and proxies.

Iran is able to prioritize its ideological mission of regional domination and religious orthodoxy over its own population, economy, and even military losses in a way most normal modern states cannot. It's hard to break the iron will of ideological states at almost any pain level.

Israel's extraordinary military success both offensive and defensive, the Israeli people's resilience, and its intelligence capabilities in this conflict give it dramatic dominance in the region, building on its previous success with the help of others decimating the Iranian proxy network. But it does not have the strategically mobile ground forces to decisively defeat Iran or other distant foes.

Iran's current strategy is simply to keep shooting with whatever is left of its not inexhaustible but very large weapons stocks until the pain on Gulf states and the American public, diminishing American and regional partners' own weapons stocks, and events elsewhere force the U.S. and Israel to end operations, with or without a face-saving formal understanding with Iran.

John Spencer: What Are Iran’s Centers of Gravity and How Are They Being Attacked?

The United States and Israel are not simply working through a list of targets in an effort to destroy Iran’s military piece by piece. They are applying pressure across multiple parts of the same system at once. Production, command, naval capability, sensing networks, infrastructure, and support networks are all being hit in ways that reinforce each other.

That is what a center of gravity approach looks like in practice. Not a single decisive strike, but a series of actions that collectively make it harder for the system to function, adapt, and recover.

Clausewitz’s warning about dispersion still applies. Effort should be concentrated. But concentration does not always mean a single point. It can mean sustained pressure against the elements that give the enemy its strength.

There is also a dimension of modern war that Clausewitz could not have fully imagined. The ability to strike not just the system, but the individuals who animate it, at scale and with precision. Today, the United States and Israel are not only degrading infrastructure and capabilities. They are systematically targeting the leadership that commands them. Political leaders, military commanders, and those responsible for missile forces, naval operations, nuclear development, and proxy networks. This is not incidental. It follows the same logic. If the center of gravity is the regime’s integrated ability to generate and sustain coercive power, then removing the leadership that directs and coordinates that system directly attacks its function and its will. It introduces paralysis, disrupts continuity, and signals that no part of the system is protected.

And even then, the outcome is not automatic. War is a contest of will. Striking a center of gravity is not about destruction alone. It is about compelling the enemy to do your will through the use, or threat of use, of force, including military action, sanctions, and the removal of critical capabilities the regime sees as vital to its survival.

If the campaign is successful, Iran’s critical capabilities are degraded or destroyed, and there is a real possibility the effects of the war will be visible in decisions, not just damage. That could include Iran handing over its nuclear material, accepting intrusive inspections, ending the program in a way that cannot be easily reversed, halting missile development at scale, reducing or ending support to proxy forces, and abandoning the use of the Strait of Hormuz as a tool of coercion.

Those outcomes are the measure. Anything short of that may represent significant damage. It may even look decisive in the short term. But Clausewitz would caution against confusing damage with success.

IRGC Opposes Negotiations with U.S.

Contacts between Iran and the U.S. are intensifying, Israel Hayom has learned.

In Washington, officials believe that Iran's economic and military distress will push Tehran to accept the 15-point American proposal within a matter of weeks.

Negotiations are currently being conducted by a handful of senior Iranian leaders still in place, alongside President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

The main obstacle remains the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The U.S. has demanded guarantees that the entire leadership, including the Guards, accept the terms.

At this stage, the Iranians have been unable to provide such guarantees because of the fierce opposition of Mohammad Vahidi, the Guards' current commander, to the very existence of negotiations. In the United Arab Emirates, Iranian financial assets have been frozen, with the intention of using them as compensation for the damage caused by Iranian attacks.

The media refuses to acknowledge Muslim antisemitic attacks

At 2 a.m. on September 27, 2024, a University of Pittsburgh student was walking through Oakland when a group of men spotted something around his neck: a Star of David necklace. That was enough. They called out slurs. They argued for four minutes. Then one of them punched the student in the face.

The university's campus safety alert described the suspects as males, ages 20 to 24, between 170 and 200 pounds, two of them over six feet tall. The mainstream press described the perpetrators as "a group of men."

A rabbi in close contact with the victim said they shouted "Free Palestine" and "F— Jews," details that surfaced in the Jewish press but not in most coverage.

I found one news story at the time that gave more information that may reveal exactly what kind of attackers they are:

Suspect #1 – Male, aged 20-24, about 6 feet tall and 170 pounds, brown complexion, dark hair and a beard, wearing a white t-shirt and a gold chain.
Suspect #2 – Male, aged 20-24, about 5 feet 8 inches tall and 170 pounds, brown complexion, dark hair and a beard, wearing an orange shirt.
Suspect #3 – Male, aged 20-24, over 6 feet tall and about 200 pounds, brown complexion, dark hair and a beard, wearing a dark-colored zippered hooded sweatshirt.

Then came eighteen months of silence.

Last week a federal indictment was unsealed. Six men are now charged:

Their names are Muhammed Koc, Omar Alshmari, Abraham Choudhry, Emirhan Arslan, Ali Alkhaleel, and Adeel Piracha.

They don't sound like white supremacists.

Every outlet runs the names — the indictment forces that much — then moves directly to the legal charges, a generic ADL statement, a generic Jewish Federation quote, without a word about who these men are or what tradition of thought produces young men who cannot let a Star of David pass without confrontation.

The names are printed. The question the names raise goes unasked.

The indictment fills in what the press would not. The defendants said things like "I hate Jews, and I hate Israel." Afterward, in a Snapchat group called "No Saving for the Love of God," one asked: "was it the white boy who had the Israel chain?" When the FBI came calling, a defendant asked Snapchat's AI chatbot what the charge for lying in court is. The chatbot answered: perjury. He lied anyway. When a witness asked Koc directly whether he attacked the victim for talking back or for being Jewish — "Please do not say bc he was Jewish" — Koc didn't deny it. He responded: "An FBI investigation over a busted lip."

Everyone understands, at some level, that Muslim antisemitism exists. Iran targets Jewish institutions across multiple continents. The Arab world has embedded antisemitism in state media and school curricula for decades. Surveys show over 90% antisemitic attitudes in many Muslim majority countries. Hamas's founding charter is an antisemitic manifesto with a military budget. At the macro level, Islamic antisemitism is fully acknowledged.

It just never seems to apply to specific cases or specific attackers.

The double standard has two sources, operating in opposite directions.

From the Left, the problem is ideological. The progressive framework for antisemitism is built on whiteness and power — prejudice flowing downward from the privileged to the oppressed. A Muslim attacker breaks that model. He belongs to a designated victim class. So the hatred gets reframed: he was angry about Gaza, reacting to occupation, expressing solidarity in an unacceptable way. The attacker becomes a victim of context. The Jewish student becomes collateral damage in someone else's narrative.

From the Right, the silence is more cynical. Anti-Muslim sentiment runs strong on the far Right, but it's generic — immigration, terrorism, cultural threat. Calling out Islamic antisemitism specifically would require treating Jews as genuine allies against a common enemy, and that is not the coalition the far Right wants to build. There is also a deeper discomfort: the antisemitism of the Pittsburgh attackers and the antisemitism lurking in corners of the far Right share more ideological DNA than either would care to admit.

The victim is abandoned from both directions.

What community would produce people who say "I hate Jews, and I hate Israel"? Nobody will ask.

The answers matter, because antisemitism is not a single undifferentiated hatred that generic condemnation can reach. Far-Right antisemitism, progressive antisemitism, strands of Black nationalism, Louis Farrakhan-style hate, and Islamic antisemitism all emerge from completely different, often mutually contradictory assumptions about Jews. The white supremacist sees Jews as a racially alien force corrupting Western civilization. The far-Left activist sees Jews as the vanguard of colonial oppression. Islamic antisemitism draws on a theological and cultural tradition that predates Israel by centuries and has nothing to do with settlements or occupation, whatever its current political packaging.

Each requires a different diagnosis and a different response. Lumping them under "hate has no place here" does not counter antisemitism: it performs concern while avoiding the work. A response calibrated to white supremacy will miss Islamic antisemitism entirely. A response designed to placate progressive sensibilities will explain it away before it can be named. And Holocaust education doesn't make most Muslim youth more sympathetic towards Jews but instead prompts them to hate Jews more.

The worst part of ignoring specific Islamic antisemitism in attacks in the West is that it signals permission. When six men attack a Jewish student, shout that they hate Jews, coordinate a cover-up, and are met with coverage carefully constructed to ask no questions about their background — what is communicated to the next group of young men who see a Star of David at 2 a.m.? Not that the world is watching. Not that their community will be held accountable. The systemic antisemitism that led to that point will not be the subject of anguished op-eds or soul-searching in the Muslim community.

CAIR-Pittsburgh, which claims to oppose antisemitism, sure didn't issue any statement about this - but it condemned another attack against a Jewish Pitt student earlier in September 2024 when the attacker was clearly not a Muslim.

That is not accountability. It is the architecture of impunity.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)