What Is the Left For? (Judean Rose)

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are the sole responsibility of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein. Trigger warning for descriptions of violence.

The West’s political left can’t seem to decide what it stands for. Is it for gay rights and “love is love,” or is it for Hamas torturing gays? When leftist activists chant “from the river to the sea,” does this mean they want the entirety of the territory to be ruled by a government that suspends gays by their hands from the ceiling for hours?

It cannot be that this really is the left’s preferred option when the other one is Israel—the only country in the region where gays have full rights and protections by law. But never say this out loud, lest you be accused of “pinkwashing,” a term coined to describe those who would exonerate Israel from all crimes because the Israeli government is “nice” to gays. In fact, having a handy-dandy term like “pinkwashing” is what allows anti-Israel activists to look away from the cruel treatment gays receive at the hands of Hamas even as the LGBTQ crowd continues to demonize the Jewish State.

By the same token, Democrats and leftist activists are horrified by Operations Epic Fury and Roaring Lion, and by the decimation of the fanatic, repressive Iranian regime—even as Iranians take to the streets to celebrate, singing “Bibi Joon” (Bibi Dear) and doing Trump’s YMCA dance.

And it’s not just the men. Iranian women, too, are celebrating their freedom, gifted to them at great cost by Israel and the United States. They openly dance in the streets, burn their hijabs, and mark the end of a tyrannical regime and its ruler, going so far as to light posters of Khamenei on fire with lit cigarettes—the cigarette a symbol of the freedom they had finally gained to do as they wished.

Why, then, do leftist activists and Democrats not celebrate with the people in the streets of Tehran? Why don’t they take pride in the part their country played in granting them freedom from tyranny?

You would think that the socialists, at least, would be for the average Iranian Joe on the street. But no—New York City’s controversial socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, condemned the war and said that the “military strikes on Iran—carried out by the United States and Israel—mark a catastrophic escalation in an illegal war of aggression. Bombing cities. Killing civilians.”

Today’s military strikes on Iran — carried out by the United States and Israel — mark a catastrophic escalation in an illegal war of aggression. Bombing cities. Killing civilians. Opening a new theater of war. Americans do not want this. They do not want another war in pursuit…

— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) February 28, 2026

In actuality, the war of aggression was that of the Iranian regime against its own people.

In other words, Islamist movements like Hamas and the Islamic Republic adhere to a religious code that criminalizes the very people Western activists claim to defend. Which begs the question: if your political identity is built around protecting sexual minorities, why are you marching for a movement that hangs them? If your political identity is all about empowering women, why do you support a regime that rules through repression? Under Khamenei, women were compelled by law to wear the hijab. Anyone who disagreed with the regime—men or women—disappeared into prisons. Protesters were shot in the streets. And worse.

The world saw this repression play out in our own time when Mahsa Amini died in custody after being arrested for allegedly violating Iran’s dress code. Her death ignited nationwide protests. Iranian women burned their hijabs. Crowds filled the streets shouting “Death to the Dictator.”

Yet when pressure mounts against the regime—when Israel and the United States confront Iran with military might—the motley mix of Western progressive groups suddenly mobilizes in defense of the regime’s sovereignty. Coalitions of activist organizations march under banners declaring “Hands Off Iran.”

What is it they mean to say here? Hands off a regime that arrests women who show their hair? Hands off a tyrannical regime that executes dissidents and crushes the very protesters Western activists claim to support?

Why do they turn away from the Iranians who have risked their lives for decades protesting against the regime and telling the world, out loud, that they want freedom? Shouldn’t this matter to any feeling human being? Why does the left look away?

Why did Barack Obama refuse to help the Iranian protesters in 2009? They were begging for the most basic human rights. Yet Obama turned away from them, afraid to make waves. He just let them twist in the wind.

As for the days leading up to this war? Protesters were slaughtered in the tens of thousands—some estimate as many as 30,000 or more. Do the survivors not deserve the same support given to Ukraine by the very same people who now denounce the offing of Khamenei?

Apparently not—at least not according to aficionados of Western progressive groups, who suddenly mobilize in support of Khamenei when the US and Israel take action against him. Or the media, which featured loving obituaries like the one in the Washington Post that spoke of Khamenei’s “bushy white beard and easy smile,” and described him as cutting a “more avuncular figure in public” than his predecessor, Khomeini. They portrayed Khamenei as human. He liked Persian poetry and Les Misérables.

It made me think of Love Story: “What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died? That she was beautiful and brilliant? That she loved Mozart and Bach, the Beatles, and me?”

What will the protesters' banners say one year from now? Who will be deemed favorable or unfavorable in their eyes? Who really decides what causes are acceptable?

Is everything that Trump does bad—even when it involves freeing the Iranian people to take charge of their own destiny?

Is everything the Jewish State of Israel does bad? Even when it comes to preventing Islamic fanatics from offing the Great and Little Satans? This is difficult to understand.

Are they for a peaceful world, safe from nuclear war? Or do they prefer being nuked to appearing grateful to Bibi for his efforts to save them—and the entire free world?

Women’s rights and LGBTQ rights “matter,” unless those who persecute women and gays happen to be associated with a cause that is intersectional with the political left. Then they are abandoned

Sometimes I wonder what an onlooker—someone neutral, perhaps from an alternate world—would say about these seeming hypocrisies. They might see them as immature, even childish.

For myself, I see the left as so many lemmings jumping off a cliff. They espouse whatever cause is popular at the moment because all the cool kids are doing it. But of course they don’t actually believe in anything. Their beliefs are predicated on the moment, neither meaningful, moral, nor firm.

You can sense this truth about their character the minute they parrot their peers. They’d rather be with the in-crowd than have their own thoughts—something that can be achieved only by dint of thinking—a tedious, and inconvenient task. There’s no value in it unless you don’t want to have friends and prefer to be shunned by the class you hope you belong to.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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Tucker, Huckabee, and the Gish Gallop Storm Against the Jews (Judean Rose)

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are the sole responsibility of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

I wasn’t going to watch the full Carlson/Huckabee debate. The few excerpts I watched were enough to know how it went. Carlson was an attack dog, throwing out so many falsehoods so rapidly, that it was impossible for Huckabee to refute them. Huckabee was well-meaning, but Carlson was not. He was using a well-known debate technique, called the “Gish gallop,” which made it impossible for Huckabee to answer him in any meaningful way.

The term “Gish gallop” was coined by anthropologist Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education, who named it after creationist Duane Gish, who used this rhetorical strategy often, during the 1980s and 90s. The Gish gallop involves overwhelming one’s opponent with a rapid-fire, relentless torrent of weak arguments, half-truths, and misrepresentations, making it impossible to adequately refute each point in real-time. Scott described the Gish gallop as an uneven debate, "where the creationist is allowed to run on for 45 minutes or an hour, spewing forth torrents of error that the evolutionist hasn't a prayer of refuting in the format of a debate.”

The main goal of the Gish gallop is to create the appearance of winning by sheer volume of points rather than quality or accuracy. Today, the strategy is used to argue all sorts of things, politics, animal rights, and, in the case of Tucker Carlson, the assertion that Jews are evil creatures who commit genocide and who have no right to their indigenous territory, Israel.

The Gish gallop tactic exploits an asymmetry: Making a claim takes only seconds, but refuting a claim may take several minutes. Practically speaking, if someone throws out 10 questionable assertions in two minutes, it can take 20 minutes or more for their opponent to carefully address them. The imbalance between the two sides creates the appearance that the galloper “won” because many of their points went unanswered.

Carlson repeatedly told Huckabee that he wasn’t answering his questions, though Huckabee did his level best, explaining and explaining the facts over and over again, never losing his patience. Tucker pressed the ambassador to describe the borders of the Land of Israel, which the ambassador did over and over again. Tucker demanded that Huckabee prove that the Jews of today are the Jews of yesterday, falsely asserting that Netanyahu’s father didn’t speak Hebrew. Huckabee answered him, but Tucker kept saying he hadn’t answered him:

Tucker Carlson: [I] have two questions. What are the borders of that? And who are those people in 2025? And you’re not the first person I’ve asked, but you’re the most reasonable, most gentle, most theologically informed. So I’m really hoping for an answer.

The first question was the borders. I can’t get an answer on those borders, so I’m going to give up. But the second question is every bit as pressing — which is, who are the people? Who are the modern descendants? So we know, and I believe, and I agree with you as a Christian, that God promised this land from modern-day Iraq to modern-day Egypt to this people, the Jews — to Abram’s descendants, as it says in Genesis 15. Who are his descendants now? And how do we know who they are?

Mike Huckabee: I think they’re the Jews. And we know who they are because they’ve always been a Jewish people. There has been an unbroken line of Jewish people, and they’ve lived in this land for 3,800 years. Sometimes not very many of them, because they were chased out all over the world. They were hunted down. They were almost annihilated during the Holocaust. They came back. Tucker, they represent — you know how many Jews there are in the whole world —

Tucker Carlson: Please. I understand. First of all, the greatest genocide of Jews that no one ever mentions was by the Romans, where they were literally banned from Jerusalem for 500 years.

Mike Huckabee: Yeah, of course.

Tucker Carlson: And it’s all awful. And I’m opposed to all of that. I’m opposed to mass killing of anybody, period. I mean it.

Mike Huckabee: Yeah.

Tucker Carlson: And I hope you agree on that.

Mike Huckabee: I believe that.

Tucker Carlson: My question is — and it’s not a bumper sticker answer, it’s a sincere question — how do we know? Because what you’re saying is that certain people have a title to a highly contested region. They own it in some deep sense. So I think it’s fair to ask, who are they and how do we know?

The current prime minister’s ancestors weren’t from here within recorded history. He has no deeds. Bibi Netanyahu, on one side, has family from Poland. They’re from Eastern Europe. So how do we know that he has a connection to the people whom God promised the land to — Abram’s descendants? How do we know that?

Mike Huckabee: Well, if you take the genealogies that come not only from the Old but the New Testament, you see that there is a historical connection through the entirety of the Old and the New Testament that details the Jewish connection to this land.

Tucker Carlson: Does that include Bibi’s family? How do we know that if his family scattered? But how do we know it’s the same people? Why is that crazy? If you say to me —

Mike Huckabee: If they speak the same language, if they worship the same God, if they follow the same Bible, if they follow the same cultures and traditions — and they always pray “next year in Jerusalem,” and they pray for the peace of Jerusalem, and they pray facing toward Jerusalem — does that not give you a little bit of a clue as to who they are?

Tucker Carlson: Let’s go through those things, because I would like to have a rational — this is the conversation I’ve wanted.

Mike Huckabee: Bless you.

Tucker Carlson: Thank you for doing this. Let’s just go through those things.

Mike Huckabee: Okay.

Tucker Carlson: So one of the things I admire most about Israel is they resurrected a dead language in 1948. Good for them.

Mike Huckabee: Well, they really didn’t resurrect it — it was existent.

Tucker Carlson: That’s not — but that’s a compliment. I’m not slightly —

Mike Huckabee: No, no, no. But it is the first time in all of human history that a language has survived through this length of time. I would call it — you might not — but I would call it a miracle, one of many. That you can —

Tucker Carlson: I think it’s wonderful. As someone who loves language — Netanyahu’s parents did not speak Hebrew.

Mike Huckabee: Okay.

Tucker Carlson: They didn’t live in this region. The founders of this country were mostly secular. Some of them were avowed atheists. They were not praying for the peace of Jerusalem. They weren’t praying at all because they didn’t believe in God. There’s no genealogy linking their families to the people of this land 3,000 years ago. So how do we know — since they didn’t share a language, they didn’t share a religion, they had no religion whatsoever — how do we know that they had a right to come here from Eastern Europe and —

Mike Huckabee: But they were scattered.

Tucker Carlson: — the land.

Mike Huckabee: They were scattered to — they were scattered all over the world. There were many in Ethiopia. They were in Russia. They were in Poland. They were throughout Asia. Jews were all over the place. But they were still Jews. But they were still Jews.

Mike Huckabee answered him and answered him, but how much information does he have offhand to respond to the torrent of questions and falsehoods. For example, it’s not true that Netanyahu’s father didn’t speak Hebrew. But how would Huckabee know these details? It wasn’t a fair fight, and anyway, Huckabee wasn’t fighting. Only Carlson was fighting, or perhaps more accurately, attacking.

Anyone who has been pulled into debate with internet trolls knows how this goes. The trolls bombard you with questions and so-called facts so that you never get the chance to even try to respond to a single point. Should one manage to get a point across, the troll will respond with a torrent of word vomit—something along the lines of, “But what about this? What about that? I guess you don’t want to answer, because you know I’m right.”

Carlson is the very prototype of the troll. A particularly hateful and combative one. Who loves to spread falsehoods about the Jews, and can spew them a mile a minute. The Gish gallop is how Tucker rolls. Because he is incapable of honest debate.

The Gish gallop is a coward’s form of debate, because the tactic relies more on cognitive overload than on strong argumentation. And as I said, I wasn’t going to watch over two hours of that, but then I saw an article asserting that Tucker’s maniacal laughter is a sign of clinical mental illness. That was enough to make me want to listen to the entire agonizing two hour and 42 minute interview. I was curious—I wanted to see if the theory held water. In the end, I was very aggravated to discover that Tucker didn’t actually engage in his characteristic hyena-like laughter, which means that I basically listened to the whole thing for nothing.

Worse yet, it triggered spam from Carlson inviting me to subscribe. Feh. As if.

There’s one thing one can say about Carlson, and that’s that he has stamina. Which is the key component of the successful use of the Gish gallop. Bless Mike Huckabee for trying to refute him, but you might as well teach a waterfall to go up instead of down.

I wish Huckabee had spoken to Carlson in private—that it hadn’t become performative—a show for Carlson’s audience. But Carlson would never have given Huckabee the opportunity. Because it wouldn’t have served his need to generate clicks and views, and spreading Jew-hate is always a popular sport.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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Schrödinger's Jew: White Today, Other Tomorrow (Judean Rose)

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are the sole responsibility of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

On February 15, 2026, readers of the New York Post encountered a story that captured a peculiar moment in contemporary identity politics: the Coalition of National Racial and Ethnic Psychological Associations (CONREPA) firmly opposed the creation of an Association of Jewish Psychologists as an official Ethnic Psychological Association within the American Psychological Association. Their reasoning was straightforward and revealing. Jews, they argued, are not underrepresented in the field—the majority of Jewish Americans identify as white, and Jewish psychologists of color already have representation in existing ethnic associations. Conflating religion, race, and ethnicity would blur the focus on racism and white supremacy as harms directed at people of color.

Just one day later, on February 16, The Algemeiner published a starkly different account. Beejhy Barhany, the Ethiopian-Israeli owner of Tsion Cafe in Harlem—a restaurant celebrating Ethiopian Jewish cuisine that had recently gone fully kosher and vegan—detailed years of escalating harassment that forced its closure on February 12. Swastikas scrawled on the building, threatening phone calls (“We’re going to come and shoot you all”), and intensified attacks after October 7, 2023, when Barhany embraced her Jewish heritage more openly by making the restaurant kosher. The focus of the hostility was three-fold:  Barhany's Jewish identity, her Israeli background, and the restaurant’s kosher certification; her Ethiopian heritage and the color of her skin offered no insulation—meant absolutely nothing to them. “It became unbearable,” she said, citing safety and mental health concerns after repeated, unaddressed complaints to authorities.

These two stories, separated by a mere 24 hours, form a chilling juxtaposition that exposes the fickle, convenience-driven way Jewish identity is racialized in today's discourse. Call it Schrödinger's Jew—a status that shifts depending on the observer's agenda. On one day, Jews are deemed "white" enough to be excluded from minority protections and coalitions, too privileged and overrepresented to warrant their own space in professional bodies addressing oppression. On the next, a black Jewish woman (Ethiopian-born, Israeli-raised) is marked as unmistakably "other" and Jewish—threatened, vandalized, and driven out of business precisely because of that Jewishness, her choice to make her restaurant kosher, and her cultural expression of heritage.

Jewish identity is fluid in the eyes of others: white and assimilated when it serves to block access or deny solidarity, alien and threatening when it manifests in visible traditions, pride, or connection to Israel. Historical echoes abound—Jews were racialized as non-white outsiders in early 20th-century America (facing discrimination, quotas, and violence like the lynching of Leo Frank), then granted conditional "whiteness" post-World War II through socioeconomic assimilation and suburban integration. That status, however, has always been revocable, especially amid rising antisemitism. Today, in progressive spaces, the label snaps back to "white" to justify exclusion from intersectional frameworks, even as real-world threats ignore skin color or background.

The timing of these articles—published one right after the other—serves as a mirror to this societal volatility. In academia and professional guilds, Jews are too white to be minorities. In the streets of Harlem, or online, or anywhere hatred flares, Jewishness overrides any perceived racial assimilation, rendering even Jews of color targets. Barhany's experience highlights the harm embedded in such shifting perceptions.

As indigenous rights activist Ryan Bellerose, a Métis from the Paddle Prairie Metis settlement in Alberta, Canada, and a Zionist, has long argued, Jews should reject this imposed "whiteness" framework altogether. He frames Jewish peoplehood through an indigenous lens: rooted in ancient ties to the land of Israel, shared history, culture, and continuity—not Western racial categories. Regarding the opposition of CONREPA to the formation of an association for Jewish psychiatrists, Bellerose put it succinctly: "If we accept that only a group has the right to decide who is a member of that group, then you gotta ask yourself if white people ever accepted Jews as white. The answer is clearly no."

Ryan is right (he usually is). By accepting conditional whiteness, Jews remain trapped in a binary that others control, always vulnerable to redefinition and exclusion.

The back-to-back headlines that were striking in their irony and juxtaposition, reveal a pattern where Jewish minority status is granted or revoked based upon convenience—denied when seeking inclusion, weaponized when expressing distinct identity. Until Jews reclaim a narrative beyond these shifting labels—as an indigenous people with a resilient, multifaceted identity—the threats, whether professional gatekeeping or death threats over a plate of injera, are likely to continue unchecked.

The “who is a Jew” question was settled well before those headlines existed, in biblical times, by God. Our Jewish identity is not predicated on the color of our skin and never was. And Jewish identity is not subject to reassignment, either by committee or mob. News cycles change quickly. The headlines will be forgotten, and the Chosen People will endure—as they always have.

The haters are jealous of us. Because they weren’t chosen. But perhaps instead of being green with envy and seething with resentment, they should try to be more like us and less like themselves.

That would certainly go a long way toward making our world a better place.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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From Omar's Wine Scandal to Hamas' Weapons: The West's Blind Spot on Islam (Judean Rose)

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are the sole responsibility of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

“We’re not experts in Islamic law — but we’re pretty sure scamming the American people for a living violates every religion,” declared Republican National Committee Press Secretary Kiersten Pels.

She said it with that familiar Western confidence—the kind that assumes every faith, deep down, plays by roughly the same moral rules we do. In this case, the remark came as people were asking hard questions about Rep. Ilhan Omar’s husband, Tim Mynett, whose wine venture eStCru allegedly defrauded an investor out of $300,000 (settled in court), stiffed winemakers, and limped to its grave with just $650 left in the bank. Mynett converted to Islam to marry Omar. Yet he built a business selling bottles named “The Devil’s Lie” and “Blockchain.” Alcohol. Straight-up haram. Forbidden.

Somehow these details get hand-waved away while the financial sleight-of-hand is the thing that raises eyebrows.

And this is the crux of the problem.

Too many in the West look at something like Omar and Mynett’s improprieties and think, Dishonesty is wrong in every religion, right? As if Islam were just Christianity or Judaism with different holidays. As if the moral grammar is identical.

It’s nothing new. We’ve heard the soothing bromides about Islam coming out of Westerners’ mouths since forever.

George W. Bush, for example, called Islam a faith that inspires “honesty, and justice, and compassion,” insisting that we all share the same beliefs regarding God’s justice and human responsibility. Barack Obama stood in Cairo and spoke of justice, compassion, and tolerance, as if these were universal values—as if Muslims see these things the same way as Jews or Christians.

Some bigwigs, notably Pope Benedict XVI and Kofi Annan spoke of the overlapping commitments of the three major religions, to dignity, charity, and basic human goodness. Assumptions that are demonstrably untrue and that lull Westerners into complacency, dangerously unprepared for the wall they keep slamming into. Repeatedly. Without learning anything about Islam in the process.

American policymakers consistently misread Middle Eastern dynamics shaped by Islamic history, tribal loyalties, honor culture, grievance narratives, and religious doctrine. Western negotiators prioritize signed agreements, institutional trust, and reciprocal transparency. Regional actors often prioritize long-term positioning, tactical ambiguity, and fluid alliances built on immediate interests rather than enduring value alignment. Sunni Hamas cooperates with Shi’ite Iran despite doctrinal hostility. Iranian negotiations repeatedly coincide with continued proxy warfare and nuclear advancement. Statements frequently serve strategic positioning rather than candid moral declaration.

The negotiations with Hamas are illustrative of the West’s misunderstanding of the Islamic mindset. Donald Trump has been pushing hard on his 20-point peace plan for Gaza that began with a ceasefire that isn’t. There are daily Hamas breaches targeting IDF soldiers. Yet Trump continues to express total confidence that Hamas will disarm in Phase 2.

In Davos last month, Trump warned that Hamas must hand over weapons and hostage remains “within weeks” or be “blown away very quickly.” His team, including Jared Kushner, assured us that “Hamas signed a deal to demilitarize; that is what we are going to enforce.” Trump even floated a two-month ultimatum, seeing disarmament as the “linchpin” for peace—assuming compliance based on initial agreements and mediator optimism—an assumption that was wildly overoptimistic.

Just this week, in fact, senior Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal rejected Trump’s demand for disarmament outright. Mashaal called disarmament “an attempt to turn our people into victims, to make their elimination easier and to facilitate their destruction at the hands of the Israeli side.”

Mashaal framed the concept of disarmament as victimization. “Questions about the resistance’s weapons are being raised forcefully. Some want to place it in the context that whoever carried out Oct. 7 must be cornered and made to pay the price... As those who participated in the resistance, we must not accept this.”

And he tied it all to deeper roots: “Protecting the resistance project and its weapons is the right of our people to defend themselves. The resistance and its weapons are the ummah’s [Islamic nation’s] honor and pride.” Senior Hamas official Musa Abu Marzouk jumped on the bandwagon, saying “Not for a single moment did we talk about surrendering weapons”—insisting the issue was never even raised in negotiations.

That flat-out denial exposes the gap between the West and the Middle East: Trump’s banking on an “agreement” that Hamas leaders say doesn’t exist, leaving the president chasing a fantasy of compliance that would never be realized.

The divide runs deeper still. Sharia law is built on a historical memory of expansion as glory, a division of the world into realms of Islam and realms of war, and—in certain contexts—religious justifications for violence against those outside the fold. In many Muslim-majority countries, large numbers say they want Sharia as the law of the land. Integration challenges, no-go zones, blasphemy riots, persecution of Christians and other minorities are not poverty or political grievances—they’re more closely related to religious ideas the West has trained itself not to name.

Even when the West gets a glimmer of the truth, it chooses appeasement over censure. In January, for example, President Trump designated key chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon as terrorist organizations. This is because the Muslim Brotherhood is a political-Islam network with ties to Hamas and an agenda of gradual supremacy. Europe, however, keeps inviting them to conferences, funding their organizations, treating their violent proclamations as just another voice in the world community.

The West needs to stop imagining that Middle Eastern moral and strategic frameworks line up neatly with its own, to stop assuming that “every religion” rejects dishonesty or violence in the same way. Else, we all pay a terrible price: botched policies, eroded security, societies overtaken by immigrants who do not share their values. And of course, cruelty and horrific violence, such as we saw on October 7. Such as we see now with Iran’s treatment of those who protest against Khamenei’s “vision” of what an Islamic republic should be.

The West needs to stop leaning on comforting platitudes about shared Abrahamic values. Instead of assuming that all people, everywhere, are the same, the West needs the courage to look straight at where Islam diverges from Judaism and Christianity—on alcohol, on “resistance,” on diplomacy and deception, on supremacy, on the status of non-Muslims—and deal with reality as it is, not as it wishes it were.

Western values are rooted in goodness. Take Americans—they’re nice. They want to be kind and open-minded about Islam, while in reality they are only being naïve and reckless at their own peril. The cost of Western blindness to Islamic values continues to climb as Western leaders rack up missed warnings and policy failures—as they fail to make peace while claiming they already did, and taking credit for something that never happened. The future looks grim, because misunderstanding Islam, tends to lead to violent reprisals.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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No One Is Illegal—Except When It’s the Jews (Judean Rose)

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are the sole responsibility of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

At the Grammys, Billie Eilish announced that “no one is illegal on stolen land.” Her proclamation was received with applause, reverence, and the familiar assumption that a complicated moral question had just been settled by a pop star wearing a weird, tux-like garment.

💯 https://t.co/vC6hDyGZO3

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 2, 2026

Her “No one is illegal on stolen land” proclamation was offered as a foregone conclusion, requiring no explanation. The line worked precisely because it sounded finished, as though nothing more needed to be said. After all, it was Eilish saying this, and Eilish is famous. That, apparently, was enough to give authority to a statement that makes no sense whatsoever.

Taken seriously, the logic becomes absurd. Imagine a burglar breaking into your home and explaining that nothing illegal has occurred, because the house sits on land once taken from someone else. The theft of the land, under this reasoning, somehow nullifies every theft that follows.

Israel, after all, is routinely described as “stolen land.” Its presence is labeled “illegal occupation.” Jewish communities are not merely contested but criminalized. Entire legal, academic, and activist industries are devoted to arguing that Jewish sovereignty itself is unlawful.

It is a shame the International Court of Justice has spent years laboring over Israel’s supposed crimes. Under the principle that no one is illegal on stolen land, the allegation itself would defeat the charge. A claim of theft would eliminate the possibility of illegality altogether. There could be no crime, no unlawful presence, and no verdict to render.

Jews, of course, reject the premise of illegal occupation entirely. Because it makes no sense. The charge that Israel is “stolen land” collapses under even casual historical scrutiny. The Jewish connection to the land is documented and continuous, embedded in Jewish history, language, and practice.

The Jewish relationship to the land of Israel is one of symbiosis. Jewish prayer tracks its rain, Jewish law depends on its soil, Jewish time follows its seasons. Exile is experienced as dysfunction rather than displacement.

None of this figures into celebrity activism, which treats land as interchangeable scenery—something that can be stolen, reassigned, and morally laundered with a sentence. The idea that a people’s law, language, and obligations might be inseparable from a specific place does not fit neatly on a placard.

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Ironically, the most grounded response to Eilish’s comment came not from pundits or performers, but from the Tongva people, whose ancestral land includes much of present-day Los Angeles.

Rather than attack the celebrity, the Tongva acknowledged their history and thanked Eilish for the visibility. They asked—politely—that the tribe be explicitly named when discussing its ancestral land. They made no accusations and didn’t call for eviction. No one said anything about the moral side of what happened, or what the law had to say. And no one said boo.

In fact, people were really impressed by the way the Tongva handled Eilish’s idiotic land acknowledgement. They asked that we say their name when we talk about their ancestral land. It all makes a sharp contrast to the way Jews are perceived, when they own their history and plainly state that Israel is Jewish land. The world basically explodes with hate whenever we say, “Israel is ours—it belongs to the Jews.” But when Tongva do it, no one concludes that Los Angeles must cease to exist, or that its residents are therefore illegitimate.

That conclusion is reserved almost exclusively for Israel, where historical claims are treated not as context, but as a mandate for reversal.

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Eilish’s comments drew applause from some and ridicule from others, much of it focused on her wealth and lifestyle. That debate, however, never touched the actual claim she made. Once treated as anything more than a momentary expression, it produces conclusions that even its defenders seem unwilling to follow—especially where Israel is concerned.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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Michele Bachmann: Negotiating with “the Number One funder of Terrorism” (Judean Rose)

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are the sole responsibility of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

I used to read antisemitic comments online with a sort of grim detachment. The ugliness was real, but it felt like something I could observe from a distance—how people swallow stupid lies, how hatred hardens into certainty, how mobs form without ever meeting the people they condemn.

Since October 7, that distance has narrowed. Sometimes the hatred is no longer “interesting.” It hurts.

It hurts because Jews were butchered and raped—and the global reaction was not what any reasonable person would expect in relation to such atrocities. Victims became villains. Murderers and rapists were recast as “resistance.” And when the Jews defended themselves, they called it “genocide.” We were even told we were “occupiers,” as if an indigenous people can be said to “occupy” its own land. The moral inversion is sickening to anyone in command of the facts of October 7, and what has since transpired.

But it’s not all bad. When the haters peddle awful lies about the Jews, the rare thing that steadies you is a friend who speaks plainly—someone willing to describe reality without euphemism, and to risk doing so, even at a high cost.

Sometimes that friendship shows itself in a single gesture. Senator John Kennedy posted a brief message acknowledging the suffering of the Israeli hostages and their families, and congratulating Israel on the return of the last hostage from Gaza, Ran Gvili. At the same time, he acknowledged the suffering of the Israeli hostages and their families. The replies were a familiar torrent of moral inversion and cruelty. The contrast said more than the post itself ever could about the overwhelming hatred toward a people that were tortured, murdered, abused, and held captive—a people whose babies were burned alive.

The truth is, aside from my favorite senator, Israel has too few true friends today. One of them is Michele Bachmann. Bachmann served in the U.S. House of Representatives for Minnesota’s 6th District from 2007 to 2015 and was a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. She previously served in the Minnesota Senate and is currently dean of the Robertson School of Government at Regent University.

When I heard an excerpt of Michele Bachmann’s remarks at the Pray Vote Stand Summit, I was touched, filled with gratitude for her honest, plain talk. Bachmann got it when so many do not. She saw everything that was bad about putting terrorists and businessmen with regional interests in charge of negotiations, and she was unafraid to say so.

Dean Bachmann asked the right questions. There was no sign that she cared about the risks of speaking the truth. Just a forthright laying out of the facts—trying, and at times failing—to restrain her passion for the subject of how the negotiations were going.

Keep in mind that the summit was held in October. So much has happened since then. Though some things remain unchanged. We still have two non-cabinet figures—Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner—selling an imaginary peace that threatens Israel’s survival (she didn’t say it in those words—that was all me).

“We have a Secretary of State named Marco Rubio,” Bachmann said. “Why wasn’t he involved in these negotiations?”

She turned to Qatar, explaining something that everyone should know, but too many do not:

NEW @nytimes investigation: Trump’s Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff was the target of a Qatari influence campaign in which Qatar would invest in Witkoff real estate projects in order to gain entree to Trump’s inner circle. https://t.co/ZecRXuvICy

— David Enrich (@davidenrich) September 26, 2025

“Qatar is the number-one funder of terrorism in the world,” Bachmann said, painting a picture of a wealthy engine of political Islam and a patron of Hamas. She warned about the way money and access can shape foreign policy decisions, especially when those decisions concern Israel. That having Qatar shape the atmosphere around the talks could not be a good thing.

Trump’s chosen interlocutors, Witkoff and Kushner, do business with Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Yet they were put in charge of negotiations that come with direct consequences for Israel’s security and the safety of its people.

After watching an excerpt of her remarks, I reached out with some questions. I was honored when Michele Bachmann, graciously consented to answer my questions. It’s obvious that Michele Bachmann is a busy lady—someone with a full plate—yet always ready to take on more. It’s the reason I reached out to her.

Varda Epstein: In your remarks at the Pray Vote Stand Summit, you expressed concern about President Trump’s decision to involve Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in negotiations with Qatar, despite their business ties and Qatar’s role as a major sponsor of Hamas. More recently, Israel’s security cabinet has reportedly blamed Jared Kushner  for the composition of the Executive Board for the proposed Board of Peace, which includes (rabidly anti-Israel) Turkish and Qatari representation and was, according to Prime Minister Netanyahu, "not coordinated with Israel and runs contrary to its policy."

Why do you think the president continues to rely on Witkoff and Kushner? Who stands to gain from this approach, and what risks does it pose for Israel?

Michele Bachmann: The President has full confidence in his envoys, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff. Their diplomatic portfolios have enlarged in the last year since they were dispatched at the President’s direction during his second term.

Neither envoy appears to be employees of the federal government. They are volunteers, according to press accounts.

Concerns have been raised over past and ongoing business relationships between Mr. Witkoff and Qatar, and Mr. Kushner and Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Mr. Witkoff was a former business partner with Qatar. Mr. Kushner’s investment company was in business, and remains in business, with Saudi Arabia and other Arab investors, all while Witkoff and Kushner are currently conducting U.S. foreign policy with these business partners.

The questions of conflicts of interest are obvious and concerning.

One question concerning these relationships, regards the level of Qatari and Saudi influence on American foreign policy decision making, in particular regarding Israel’s security.

Varda Epstein: In recent months, a number of prominent conservatives—including Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts and commentator Megyn Kelly—have publicly defended Tucker Carlson, even after his interview with white nationalist Nick Fuentes. Why do you think this shift is happening, and what does it signal about the direction of the Republican Party?

Michele Bachmann: Tucker Carlson and other high-profile commentators have made controversial statements this year. These statements are vocal, intentional, and are dividing the pro-Israel Republican base. Grounded by pro-Israel evangelicals, the Republican Party historically supported strong support for Israel.

Tragically, the Democratic Party moved from an often pro-Israel party to holding a decidedly anti-Israel posture.

The anti-Israel embrace of the Democratic Party is now attempting to similarly turn, or at least divide pro-Israel support from within the Republican Party.

The Republican Party is pro-Israel and will remain that way unless it is taken over by an anti-Israel Presidential candidate. An event like that would certainly terminate a Republican candidate’s chances for electoral victory.

Varda Epstein: Given J.D. Vance’s isolationist worldview and his close relationship with Tucker Carlson—including employing Carlson’s son as a senior aide—what do you believe a Vance presidency would mean for Israel?

Michele Bachmann: A Republican Presidential candidate who does not value the importance of the U.S.-Israel relationship to vital national security interests, will likely lose a general Presidential election. Pro-Israel support is a foundational value of the Republican Party.

If Israel is not America’s greatest ally, then which nation is? Which nation has served as America’s greatest partner advancing peace in the Middle East?

What other nation has offered more to America by way of intelligence assets? Weapons development? Innovation and technology development? 

What other nation demonstrates similar moral clarity and commitment to advancing civilization and human rights than Israel? No other nation on earth compares to a demonstration of moral clarity more than Israel.

People need to consider where the United States would be without our partnership with Israel. As Prime Minister Netanyahu said, “Israel is what is right with the world.”

Varda Epstein: After watching your Summit address, many of my colleagues and readers remarked how much they miss your voice in government and your staunch support for Israel. How do you see your own role in public or political life going forward?

Michele Bachmann: I use my mind to learn all I can about our world and how humankind benefits from following the truths and precepts of the Bible.

History, Sociology, Economics, Astronomy, Anthropology, Archeology, Biology, Physics, etc., all reflect and demonstrate the truths given to us from the pen of Moses, David, Solomon, and the Prophets.

We, finite humankind, live in a world created by the infinite God. My job is to know Him more, obey Him more, and communicate His love and truth to others.

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In her Summit remarks, Bachmann argued that Israel was nearing decisive victory against Hamas when diplomacy intervened and stopped it cold. Israelis well recognize this pattern. A war Israel did not choose becomes a war Israel is not allowed to win. The hostages are used as leverage. And a terror organization is encouraged to negotiate.

When Israelis speak about friendship, they are not being sentimental. Friendship means clarity under pressure. It means refusing to sanitize those who finance terror because they also broker lucrative deals. It means understanding that Israel cannot outsource its security to assurances offered far from its borders.

That is why Bachmann’s voice is important. She speaks as someone who understands that Israel is an ally. Not a problem to be managed, but an ally whose survival is nonnegotiable.

Israel has too few friends right now. And Michele Bachmann is indeed a friend—one who understands the wider implications of negotiating with terrorists, not just for Israel, but for the entire world. 

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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Whose Dome Is It? Trump Takes Credit for Israel’s Iron Dome (Judean Rose)

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are the sole responsibility of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

President Trump chose an odd venue as the platform for his bout of historical revisionism.
Standing at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he told the assembled global elite that Israel’s Iron Dome was not really Israel’s achievement at all.

“That’s our technology, that’s our stuff,” he said, recounting a conversation in which he claimed to have told Prime Minister Netanyahu to stop taking credit for it.

Trump on the Iron Dome:

“What we did for Israel was amazing…We did it for Israel. And by the way, I told Bibi, ‘Bibi, stop taking credit for the dome. That's our technology, that's our stuff.’ But they had a lot of courage, and they were good fighters, and they did a good job.” pic.twitter.com/tm9G9uHdK5

— Jacob N. Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) January 21, 2026

It was a striking claim—and it was untrue. The Iron Dome was conceived, designed, and engineered by Israeli companies—Rafael, Israel Aerospace Industries, and mPrest—and first deployed at Israeli air bases in southern Israel in response to Israeli civilians being shelled by Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist entities in Gaza and Lebanon. No American president invented it. No American laboratory designed it. No American general figured out how to intercept rockets fired at Jewish homes, schools, and kindergartens.

But here is the part Trump was almost certainly leaning on in making his boastful claim: while the United States did not invent Iron Dome, it did provide a great deal of the funding for it, beginning under President Obama.

That funding was critical. It expanded the number of Iron Dome batteries, ensured a steady supply of interceptors, and later tied production to American contractors. American funding was framed as an act of alliance. The expectations attached to that funding constrained Israel’s ability to respond to attacks.

I was angry at the time—more specifically, angry at President Obama. His administration would fund the Iron Dome, but it would not allow Israel to stop the missiles at their source. Israel could intercept, absorb, and endure—but no more than that.

We were given the umbrella and told to crouch beneath it, intercepting rockets while Arab terrorists were allowed to continue firing at Jews. Terrorists were permitted to keep shooting at Jewish civilians, while Israel was denied the right, as a sovereign nation, to put an end to it. But we did not create a Jewish state so Jews could cower under American protection.

Israel was founded to be a sovereign nation, capable of determining its own responses to threats. It was meant to be a safe haven for Jews in a world that has never needed much encouragement to hate them.

Iron Dome saved lives. That is beyond dispute. But it was never a clean or consequence-free solution. Interceptions send debris and shrapnel raining down, often over populated areas.

A friend’s son learned this the hard way. He was driving on a highway when the missile alert sounded. He did exactly what Israelis are instructed to do: pulled over, got out of the car, lay flat on the road with his hands over his head. An interception occurred overhead. Shrapnel came down. He was hit badly enough to require hospitalization.

This risk is well known, but people don’t much talk about it. Iron Dome has taken on an almost sacred status, making it easier to celebrate the miracle than to confront the cost—especially when that cost is borne quietly by civilians already living under fire.

Which brings us back to Trump.

Trump’s claim in Davos echoed an assumption long embedded in Washington: that Israel exists with American permission, and that its power is something to be supervised. Obama and Trump both like to assume the role of savior. They put on different performances, driven by the same vanity—the belief that Israel lives or dies because they say so, and that they deserve all the credit for Israel’s survival and success.

Israel may be protected. Israel may intercept. But Israel does not fully control the terms under which it ends threats to its citizens.

When Jewish self-defense is treated as something granted rather than owned, it becomes conditional. And once it is conditional, it can be reclaimed, rebranded, or spoken of—as Trump did in Davos—as someone else’s “stuff.”

That should trouble anyone who understands why a Jewish state exists in the first place. 

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

Read More