11/20 Links Pt2: Trump welcomes freed Israeli hostages to White House; Terrorists & tiaras Miss Palestine’s connection to convicted terrorist leader; The trouble with the Nuremberg Trials, 80 years on

From Ian:

Antizionism: The Reinvention of a Racist Hate Movement

“Tell me what you accuse the Jews of — I’ll tell you what you’re guilty of.”

This 1959 observation by novelist Vasily Grossman, often quoted by writer Douglas Murray, was vividly illustrated at UCLA last week. An ignominious band of university departments including its School of Law sponsored a talk by Rutgers professor Noura Erakat — an activist posing as a scholar — who teaches the gullible that Israel is a settler colonial project. Erakat’s faux lecture, “Revisiting Zionism as a Form of Racism and Racial Discrimination,” was timed to honor the fiftieth anniversary of U.N. General Assembly Resolution 3379 — the since-rescinded-but-never-dead screed that declared Zionism a form of racism.

Judea Pearl, UCLA professor, Turing Prize winner and proud Israel-born Zionist, had had enough. When he learned of the “Zionism is racism” lecture, he issued a call for a countervailing event on campus the same night, Nov. 13. UCLA’s Jewish Faculty Resilience Group swung into gear, and in little over a week about a hundred people gathered at UCLA’s School of Law for a panel discussion called “Is Antizionism Racism?” Peter Savodnik of The Free Press was a thoughtful moderator, and Michael Berenbaum, Yael Lerman and Hindi Stohl Posy gave sobering, alarming, or stirring presentations. Presumably due to the imposing police presence (thank you, UCPD), antizionist protesters mostly stayed away. At least one professor in the audience felt secure enough from the keffiyeh brigade to pull out her knitting.

As Professor Pearl reported the next day on X, the event was a major success. “Two concrete outcomes became immediately evident,” he wrote. “(1) Zionist faculty and students at UCLA will now be asserting their right to a name, a voice and institutional representation on campus. (2) Antizionist faculty and students will now be facing a new, no-nonsense environment in which their rhetoric and ideology are exposed — and named — for what they are: racist.”

Because what else can you call a movement that exists solely to deny the right of self-determination to one nation — the Jewish one? That screams to isolate, boycott or attack Jews, camouflaged as “Zionists”? That champions an organization, Hamas, whose founding charter calls to kill Jews? That celebrates as “resistance” the largest one-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust?

Jew-haters invariably ascribe to Jews whatever they find most abhorrent. For the Nazis who obsessed about race purity, Jews were polluters of the Aryan race. Medieval Christians hated Jews as the supposed killers of Christ. For communists, Jews were capitalists; and for reactionaries, Jews were communists. Today, when society overwhelmingly rejects racism, progressives who consider it the worst of all crimes scream “Racist!” at Jews who support the existence of a Jewish state. Meanwhile they support the elimination of that same state, making their claim the epitome of projection.

Nicole Lampert: When Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word

Over the last few years, we have increasingly seen the non-apology apology - same concept - especially when it comes to antisemitism. The latest example came yesterday courtesy of Bristol club Strange Brew, which exactly six months earlier cancelled a performance by Oi Va Voi and its Israeli guest singer, Zahara.

The club had come under pressure from the Bristol Palestine Alliance to ban the performance. It knew that it couldn’t simply ban Jews. And that it wasn’t meant to ban Israelis either. Religion, race, ethnicity, and nationality are all protected characteristics under the 2010 Equality Act. (This doesn’t cover Russians who are subject to sanctions from the British state which takes priority).

Instead, the ban was ostensibly because Zohara, a left-wing Israeli with a Palestinian boyfriend, had an album cover featuring her naked at a watermelon farm. ‘We were of the view it could be interpreted as politically offensive, given the ongoing and worsening situation in Gaza and it had already been interpreted as such by the groups who contacted us,’ the club wrote following the cancellation in May. Their statement added that while the band had explained that the album cover was a comment on femininity and nature, ‘We concluded that, regardless of the intended meaning, the use of politically loaded symbolism in this way – by anyone of any background – is ambigious and could therefore come across as politically insensitive and/or offensive to the people of Palestine and by our audiences.’

An ‘ambiguous’ album cover used politically by malign forces does not, it appears, protect anyone from what the Equality Act says. Despite this, a second venue in Brighton also cancelled the band, and for a brief while, it seemed they were musical kryptonite. Dropped. Ironically, one place where they remained hugely popular was Turkey, where they continued to play to some of their biggest audiences.

All of this was at the same time when musical acts were signing mass petitions for Northern Irish band Kneecap – named after an IRA punishment beating – for alleged support of Hamas and Hezbollah. These acts claimed they were for free speech in music. Not one of them came out to support Oi Va Voi. Not one.

As Oi Va Voi said yesterday: ‘The intimidation of the activist groups who wanted Strange Brew to cancel our gig would never be tolerated against any other minority, either in the music industry or elsewhere. Anti-Jewish racism is racism, and racism is injustice, wherever it comes from.

Poll: Majority of British adults are Zionists – but don’t seem to know it

A staggering lack of awareness about the meaning of the word ‘Zionism’ is laid bare by a new poll published today, with five times as many British adults claiming to support the right of Jews to self-determination as identified with the ‘Z’ word.

According to new polling from More in Common, while just 9 per cent of the wider UK population said they were Zionists, 53 per cent said they “support the right of Jewish people to have a nation in Israel”.

Similarly, while 22 per cent identified themselves as having a negative view of Zionists, only 9 per cent specifically had a negative view of “people who support the right of Jewish people to have a nation in Israel”.

In a summary provided by the organisation, which has consistently polled the British public’s attitude towards the conflict over the last two years, “all of this suggests that the public’s perceptions of Zionism have become detached from its literal meaning”.

“People who brand themselves as ‘Zionists’ might mean to be communicating that they simply support the principle of Jewish self-determination, but this is far from what other people may hear when they say this.”

“This disconnect makes it easy for conversations to become heated or accusatory very quickly, because people are often responding to what they think the label implies rather than to the person’s actual position. As a result, the term itself can introduce misunderstanding and tension into discussions that might otherwise reveal more shared ground than disagreement.”

Among those described as “progressive activists”, the numbers are more extreme. More than half – 54 per cent – have a negative view of “Zionists”, with close to a quarter – 23 per cent – having a negative view of “people who support the right of Jewish people to have a nation in Israel”.

General concerns in British society about antisemitism also rose over the last 18 months. In April 2024, about one third of respondents (34 per cent) felt the UK was a mostly or very unsafe place for Jews. That number rose sharply from the summer of 2025, culminating in almost half of respondents (48 per cent) feeling that way in the aftermath of the Heaton Park synagogue terror attack.

Terrorists & tiaras Miss Palestine’s connection to convicted terrorist leader revealed ahead of Miss Universe pageant

The first-ever Miss Palestine contestant in the Miss Universe pageant married the son of Hamas’ most-wanted prisoner, Marwan Barghouti, and even named a child after him, The Post has learned.

Nadeen Ayoub — who claims to be a 27-year-old US and Canadian citizen living in Dubai — is competing this week to represent Palestine, a territory the US and Israel don’t even recognize as a sovereign state.

Strutting through preliminary rounds ahead of the pending pageant, Ayoub has kept most of her personal life under wraps — until now.

Years-old screenshots and social media posts obtained by The Post show she took pains to hide that she was once married to Sharaf Barghouti — son of the infamous Fatah leader serving five life sentences in Israel for orchestrating terror attacks that killed five people in 2001 and 2002.

The convicted murderer’s name resurfaced last month when Hamas demanded his release in hostage-exchange negotiations with Israel — a request the Jewish state flatly refused, citing his participation in the first intifada, leadership in the second, convictions in five terror-related murders and founding of the West Bank’s al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.

A secret life
Social media posts show Ayoub tied the knot with Sharaf Barghouti in 2016, later welcoming a son named Marwan three years later — seemingly in tribute to the convicted killer.

However, it is unclear if the pair remains married. A family member reached for comment confirmed to The Post that the two had been married, but denied knowledge of their current status.

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11/20 Links Pt1: Resolution 2803: A restatement of international law; ‘We need to make them scared’: NYC synagogue protest crosses new red lines; Confessions of a Former Pro-Palestine Activist

From Ian:

Resolution 2803: A restatement of international law

The resolution effectively negates any recognition of a Palestinian state at present or otherwise outside of the terms of the resolution. This includes the misguided efforts to recognize the P.A. as a state by the United Kingdom and France, as well as other U.N. members, such as Canada and Australia, all of whom are bound by the resolution. Interestingly, there is no explicit legal obligation to create a Palestinian state under this resolution; it merely recites the threshold conditions that must be satisfied to have a pathway for self-determination and statehood.

The resolution also does not recognize that there is or ever was any so-called “occupation,” “right of return,” “genocide,” “starvation,” “apartheid” or “justifiable resistance.” Hamas and its cohorts are the wrongdoers and the resolution is directed against them and in support of Israel’s just defensive war. Indeed, the resolution explicitly notes that Gaza threatens the security of neighboring states. It can well be asserted that all the libels against Israel relating to Gaza and the Palestinians have effectively been debunked as a matter of international law by the resolution. The Resolution is effectively a restatement of international law that exonerates Israel and casts Hamas and its cohorts as the wrongdoers.

Hamas has been defeated militarily and politically. The board and ISF have the clean-up job, with Israel there on-site until the job is fully completed. Thereafter, Israel is entitled to remain with a security perimeter presence until Gaza is properly secure from any resurgent terror threat.

Israel fought a just, defensive war against belligerent, vicious, murderous and terrorist Hamas and its cohorts. The UNSC and those supporting the plan recognize this and, by virtue thereof, the resolution is designed to eliminate Hamas and its cohorts—as the wrongdoers—from having any role in the governance of Gaza, as well as to destroy their capacity to do any more harm to Israel and the neighboring countries.

May the blessings of peace prevail.

Jake Wallis Simons: President Trump has made a mockery of Europe's Gaza posturing

That is not all. Resolution 2803 also included language that exposed the UN’s claim of “genocide” in Gaza as unfounded and absurd. The International Stabilisation Force, it said, shall enforce security by “ensuring the process of demilitarising the Gaza Strip, including the destruction and prevention of rebuilding of the military, terror, and offensive infrastructure… until Gaza is properly secure from any resurgent terror threat.”

Shamefully, here was the first official recognition from the Security Council that Israel’s campaign in the Strip did not aim to destroy the Palestinian people but to vanquish those jihadi armies who had spent decades turning their territory into a network of subterranean garrisons protected by more than two million human shields.

This statement – passed with 13 votes in favour, including those of Britain and France, and abstentions from China and Russia – directly contradicted the official ruling by the United Nations commission of inquiry that Israel had conducted a “genocide” in Gaza, released in September as part of the lamentable international drive to force an Israeli defeat. What a difference three months make, eh?

Of course, anybody of sound mind who had bothered to read September’s “genocide” report was bound to conclude that it was a deplorable piece of Israelophobic propaganda in the first place. It brazenly airbrushed Hamas from the conflict almost entirely, showcasing the tragic destruction as evidence of a campaign targeting civilians rather than the jihadis hiding behind them. It was like a biased account of the Second World War in which the Nazis had been conveniently forgotten.

All of which is to say: thank God for President Trump! In many ways, not least his attitude towards Vladimir Putin, I’m no fan of the man. But without his intervention at the UN, which has so rudely jolted the West – and the world – out of its inexplicable infatuation with the jihadi agenda, the collapse of liberal democracy would have been all but assured.

But Trump cannot forever be relied upon to save Britain from itself. Israel may be the first domino, but Ukraine is the second. Sooner or later, we must learn to defend ourselves.

Hamas’ Rejection of Peace and the Media’s Convenient Silence

On Monday, November 17, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 2803, approving the implementation of the 20-point Peace Plan proposed by U.S. President Donald Trump. The resolution outlines how the two parties can advance to the next phase of the ceasefire and begin shifting the focus toward rebuilding the Gaza Strip.

A “Board of Peace,” led by President Trump and authorized by an International Stabilization Force (ISF), would be implemented to disarm terrorist organizations in Gaza and assist in delivering humanitarian aid, among other responsibilities.

Thirteen votes were cast in favor, zero against, and China and Russia both abstained. The Palestinian Authority and Hamas’ patrons Qatar and Turkey also welcomed the resolution.

Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad reacted to the vote with a statement vowing to treat any international force as a “party to the conflict,” meaning more violence. But Hamas’ opposition is hardly surprising given their insistence on portraying themselves as the victors of the war. The dissonance that the media cannot seem to reconcile is that Hamas claims to be the group that represents and governs over the people the plan is meant to help.

Less surprisingly, but certainly more disappointingly, is the international media’s failure to delve into the details of Hamas’ rejection and what it means more broadly for the future of the peace plan.

The New York Times, for instance, spent an entire article discussing the countries – including several Muslim and Arab nations – that welcomed the adoption of the resolution and its implications in the broader context of peace.

But similar to how Hamas stood alone in rejecting the agreement, The New York Times also chose to gloss over that critical fact. While it’s encouraging that the international community wants to see an end to the war, shouldn’t it be headline news that the party actually waging the war has no real interest in ending it? Shouldn’t Hamas’ absolute rejection of any form of peace deserve, at the bare minimum, one paragraph?

After years of Hamas openly declaring its goals, the media continues to conceal this reality, seeking to portray the terrorist organization instead as peacemakers while shifting the blame for the continued conflict onto Israel. But as the saying goes, when someone – or in this case, a terrorist organization – shows you who they are, believe them.

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11/19 Links Pt2: Fighting the Post-Oct. 7 Battles; CAIR and the Campus Hamasniks; Hatred of Israel Caused Iran's Water Crisis; The Roots of a Replacement Fantasy

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Fighting the Post-Oct. 7 Battles

Two recent stories demonstrate how this realization is settling in across the broader Jewish community. One is the recent account of Rahm Emanuel, the former Democratic congressman and Chicago mayor who is contemplating running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028, speaking to the Jewish Federations general assembly. Emanuel made the case for adapting to the new political narrative around Israel: “For the generation under 30, the last two years will be as seminal a definition as what the Six-Day War was for those six days for a generation. We have our work cut out for us.” It was an attempt to warn the Jewish American audience that 2028 is going to be, especially on the Democratic side, a parade of anti-Israel rhetoric. But it was also an acknowledgement that we aren’t the naive fools our pursuers think we are.

Another story is in the Times of Israel, and it’s about that erstwhile Diasporic golden land of Canada: “According to a report published by B’nai Brith Canada in April, Canadians experienced 6,219 antisemitic incidents in 2024, or an average of about 17 incidents of harassment, vandalism and violence per day. That was 125% higher than in 2022, and about 7% higher than in 2023, when hatred exploded after October 7.”

Says Noah Shack, the CEO of Canada’s umbrella organization for Jewish federations: “Now, we’re seeing synagogues firebombed, shootings at schools, people assaulted, and discrimination and hate in schools, universities and in the workplace. This isn’t just about our community, it’s about the threat that this extremism poses to the Canadian way of life.”

Solutions are harder to come by than realizations, but the realizations are the essential first steps. As expected, the post-Oct. 7 world is a different place, and navigating that new world requires every Jewish leader and organization to acknowledge what has changed.

We see one example of this playing out right now. The Anti-Defamation League has taken steps to refocus on anti-Semitism after years of sacrificing its founding mission for a chance to be part of the progressive political coalition. ADL launched a “Mamdani Monitor” which consists of an anti-Semitism tipline for New Yorkers and a pledge to scrutinize the Mamdani administration’s actions and appointments. It’s an entirely reasonable, moderate approach, and it could be useful so long as the ADL follows through. The emerging Jewish consensus that bad actors must be held to account is healthy.

But it has inspired anger from, for example, the Nexus Project, a liberal critic of attempts to fight anti-Semitism and, though young, a relic of the pre-Oct. 7 status quo. Jill Jacobs, an activist with another progressive Jewish group, called the ADL “Islamophobic.”

Still, these attempts to conjure the naive and dangerous fantasies that were shattered on Oct. 7 haven’t had much effect; reality is reality, and the Jewish community has been clear-eyed. As Emanuel said, “[I]f we don’t understand the depth of where we are, we’re never going to fix the problem.” The new normal isn’t pretty, but we don’t have to let it become permanent.

Seth Mandel: CAIR and the Campus Hamasniks

CAIR doing its best Nick Fuentes impression is as good an example of the “horseshoe effect” as one will find.

But the real icing on the cake came just a few hours later. According to the New York Post, a new report by the Network Contagion Research Institute and the Intelligent Advocacy Network, two anti-extremism groups, reveals that CAIR has been subsidizing pro-Hamas violence on campus. As the Post reports:

“In California, the largest arm of the CAIR web of nonprofits, affiliates in San Francisco and Los Angeles raised more than $100,000 in donations for campus radicals, while the main group solicited $64,000 in donations, records show.

“The money was then offered as interest free loans in grants of $1,000 to students who lost ‘scholarships, housing or other support because of their advocacy,’ according to CAIR’s website.

“In October 2024, CAIR-CA awarded $20,000 in loans and scholarships to 20 student protestors from the ‘Champions of Justice Fund.’”

Such punishments were so rare, of course, that to qualify for CAIR’s apparent subsidies, one would have had to be among the students causing real harm to those around them.

Anti-Semitism alone has rarely been enough to cost groups like CAIR their political influence. Perhaps now they have finally crossed too many lines.

Watchdog Groups Release Findings of CAIR-California Misuse of $26 Million in Taxpayer Funds

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, California (CAIR-CA) systematically misused millions of dollars in government grants while concealing extensive lobbying activities, according to findings released by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) and the Intelligent Advocacy Network (IAN).

The organization has received over $26 million in state and federal funding since 2022, even as it now faces investigations by both the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review and the California Fair Political Practices Commission.

Circular Funding Scheme and Accounting Failures
The investigation uncovered what researchers describe as a circular funding scheme: CAIR-CA redirected over $3.7 million back to two of its own offices in Los Angeles and San Diego through subgrants, despite requirements mandating at least $5 million go to independent providers. Public records show these offices are not separate legal entities but operate under the same tax identification number as CAIR-CA, making the transfers effectively self-payments.

Independent auditors conducting CAIR-CA’s 2023 Single Audit identified significant deficiencies that prevented verification of how federal funds were spent. The findings indicate CAIR-CA failed to record grant expenditures in its accounting system and did not retain required reports on service delivery or proof of submission to regulators.

Undisclosed Lobbying Activities
Between 2013 and 2023, CAIR-CA spent over $3.8 million on lobbying expenses while reporting only $672,537 to the IRS—leaving $3.13 million undisclosed, according to the report. The largest spike in undisclosed lobbying coincided with increased federal funding in 2023. Federal law prohibits using federal funds for lobbying activities.

Beginning in late 2023, CAIR-CA’s advocacy became increasingly dominated by anti-Israel political mobilization. The organization’s 2023 annual report prominently featured a “STOP THE GENOCIDE” banner, marking a shift from previous years. Recent lobbying efforts in 2025 include campaigns to influence California legislation on redistricting and school discrimination protections—all conducted while receiving federal funds.

Despite receiving millions in government grants, the findings show CAIR-CA did not properly report them on IRS Form 990 filings, instead obscuring them under general contributions. The organization also failed to disclose subgrants to regional chapters and omitted required related-party transaction disclosures.

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11/19 Links Pt1: There's Only One Path to Peace: Eliminating Hamas; PA nearly doubled payments to terrorists in 2025; Kafkaesque smears against Maccabi fans cannot be allowed to rest

From Ian:

Aviva Klompas: Along the Israel-Gaza Border, There's Only One Path to Peace: Eliminating Hamas

When the UN Security Council approved a U.S.-backed resolution Monday to deploy an International Stabilization Force in Gaza, it acknowledged a core truth: The security vacuum that enabled Oct. 7 cannot be allowed to return. Two realities must remain immovable as the world designs Gaza's future: Hamas cannot retain any foothold, and Israel cannot be expected to outsource its security to external actors.

Last week I traveled to Kibbutz Nir Oz, where 117 of its 415 residents were murdered or kidnapped on Oct. 7. I walked around with Irit Lahav, who hid in her home with her daughter for 12 hours as Hamas terrorists tried five separate times to break down her door. She jammed a boat oar beneath the handle and prayed it would hold.

Before the attack, Irit believed deeply in coexistence. She was one of the many Gaza-border Israelis who advocated for Palestinians and regularly drove sick Gazans to Israeli hospitals. "I thought the Palestinians were good people like me who want peace," Irit told me. "Now I understand they really, really hate us - and they think that rape, murder, and kidnapping are legitimate."

Two days later, I stood in Sajaiya in Gaza, a former Hamas stronghold. From Sajaiya, I could see the homes of Nahal Oz, another Israeli border community a five-minute drive away. The distance between a Hamas command complex and the homes of Israeli families is measured in minutes.

What happened in Nir Oz and the other border communities was the predictable result of leaving a heavily armed, ideologically-driven movement embedded minutes from Israeli homes. Two years later, the threat remains. Tunnels still run beneath Gaza, weapons caches remain, and Hamas's ideology is wholly intact. No international plan can succeed while this reality persists.

Military Intelligence: "The Plan to Annihilate Israel Remains Alive and Operational"

Donald Trump once confessed he was "drawn almost pathologically to complex deals, partly because they tend to be more interesting." This approach succeeded spectacularly in securing the release of hostages from Gaza, both living and deceased.

Yet Phase 2 of the Gaza ceasefire agreement has emerged so far as an illusion. Hamas, just like Hizbullah, harbors no dreams of disarmament. It shows absolutely no interest, and its leaders discuss this candidly. Hamas is reconstructing command and control systems, having already redeployed 7,500 operatives across the Gaza territory remaining under its authority.

It has resumed street patrols, salary payments, and tax collection. Its members break arms and legs of anyone questioning their continued rule, restore tunnels, manufacture weapons anew, and settle accounts with armed clans that assisted Israel before the ceasefire.

Gaza isn't simply a minor irritant, it constitutes the core issue because from there was launched October 7's "gospel" and Israel's destruction blueprint, coordinated with Iran and its proxies. A senior military intelligence official recently informed cabinet ministers that "the plan to annihilate Israel remains alive and operational, with October 7 continuing to inspire all Israel's regional enemies."

Trump's America presumes that economic enticements provide the key, and that every problem features a deal awaiting signature once proper incentives materialize. But business principles don't govern everything. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict encompasses identity, religion, security, and national aspiration dimensions, and that Gaza residents and Hamas are essentially identical.

The hatred culture centered on Israel's destruction cannot be eliminated through financial means. Israel and its military possess genuine motivation and capability - now with no living hostages remaining in Gaza - to complete the mission there and strip Hamas of weaponry. Trump's peace vision might potentially materialize only after Hamas's Gaza elimination.

Sa’ar: PA nearly doubled payments to terrorists in 2025

The Palestinian Authority nearly doubled the payments it issued in 2025 to convicted terrorists and to the families of those killed while carrying out attacks, despite its repeated claims to have halted the practice, Israel’s Foreign Ministry revealed Wednesday.

Last year, Ramallah disbursed $144 million in payments rewarding attacks against Israelis. In 2025, it has already committed $214 million, “and the year isn’t even over,” Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar tweeted.

“I call on Europe and the world to hold the P.A. accountable for funding terrorism. Stop Pay-for-Slay NOW!” Jerusalem’s top diplomat added.

Last week, Sa’ar accused Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas of attempting to “fool the world” by firing his finance minister, reportedly over “unauthorized payments” to Arab terrorists and their families.

Ramallah’s official Wafa news agency reported that P.A. Minister of Planning and International Cooperation Istifan Salameh would replace Omar Bitar, though it gave no reason for Bitar’s dismissal.

According to local reports, Bitar had transferred funds to terrorists in Israeli prisons through a mechanism Ramallah had ostensibly reformed under pressure from the United States and Europe.

The revamped mechanism Bitar allegedly bypassed rebrands the stipends as “welfare support,” shifting the system from an official ministry to an “independent” foundation controlled by the P.A.

Sa’ar told reporters in Budapest on Oct. 27 that “contrary to the P.A.’s promises in English, they are continuing their pay-for-slay policy.

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11/18 Links Pt2: Fighting the Post-Oct. 7 Battles; If Hillel Is Not for Jews, Who Will Be?; Study: PA newspaper antisemitic, rejects peace with Israel; Beinart gets liberally bumped

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Fighting the Post-Oct. 7 Battles

Solutions are harder to come by than realizations, but the realizations are the essential first steps. As expected, the post-Oct. 7 world is a different place, and navigating that new world requires every Jewish leader and organization to acknowledge what has changed.

We see one example of this playing out right now. The Anti-Defamation League has taken steps to refocus on anti-Semitism after years of sacrificing its founding mission for a chance to be part of the progressive political coalition. ADL launched a “Mamdani Monitor” which consists of an anti-Semitism tipline for New Yorkers and a pledge to scrutinize the Mamdani administration’s actions and appointments. It’s an entirely reasonable, moderate approach, and it could be useful so long as the ADL follows through. The emerging Jewish consensus that bad actors must be held to account is healthy.

But it has inspired anger from, for example, the Nexus Project, a liberal critic of attempts to fight anti-Semitism and, though young, a relic of the pre-Oct. 7 status quo. Jill Jacobs, an activist with another progressive Jewish group, called the ADL “Islamophobic.”

Still, these attempts to conjure the naïve and dangerous fantasies that were shattered on Oct. 7 haven’t had much effect; reality is reality, and the Jewish community has been clear-eyed. As Emanuel said, “[I]f we don’t understand the depth of where we are, we’re never going to fix the problem.” The new normal isn’t pretty, but we don’t have to let it become permanent.

Seth Mandel: A Tale of Two Film Festivals

Late last month, Variety broke the story that IDFA was joining the boycott-and-blacklist trend aimed at the Jewish state. DocAviv, the main documentary film festival and organization in Israel, gets some public funding, as is common in the industry. So DocAviv, along with Kan and CoPro, were banned from IDFA. According to DocAviv artistic director Michal Weits, the groups received a letter from IDFA saying “that they are not going to provide us accreditation since we are complicit with the genocide, which is obviously not true.”

The Israeli government has no say in what DocAviv does or does not screen. Indeed, the dark irony in all this is that, if art is as powerful as we are told by the pompous anti-Israel industry figures, then the blacklists undoubtedly harm the Palestinian “cause” and do nothing to help it.

That’s not to say that there won’t be plenty of anti-Zionist agitprop at the festival. There will be. If you’ve made a documentary with the word Gaza in the title, as long as you’re not an Israeli Jew you’ll get your piece shown like everybody else.

But the festival will not have Israeli projects intended to drum up empathy for Gaza or make the case for coexistence because that would acknowledge the fact that Israelis are people. The flat-minded artistic activists at IDFA need Israelis to be a concept—faceless and devoid of humanity, no matter the subject. “Culture and films are the only way to communicate with each other,” Weits says. “But the boycott wants us to be isolated and disappear, and yet I think our voice is important.”

But it isn’t—not to the art world, anyway. The entire focus of anti-Zionist activism is the erasure of the Jewish state. If it’s any consolation, there will continue to be plenty of Chinese films to see.

If Hillel Is Not for Jews, Who Will Be?

What keeps me up at night is not the campus hordes. As I have tried to explain, I worry mostly about Hillel’s reaction to them. That is, I worry about the internal slackening of the Jewish attitude toward survival.

The New York Times columnist Ross Douthat observes that humankind is passing through a civilizational bottleneck. AI, social media, and accelerating digitization, alongside the deleterious social consequences of these phenomena, put all of what has passed for human culture at risk. The digital age “is killing us softly,” he writes, “by drawing people out of the real and into the virtual, distracting us from the activities that sustain ordinary life, and finally making existence at a human scale seem obsolete.”

What if we looked at the rise of campus anti-Semitism not as a threat but as a measure of internal strength in the fight for human culture? On the surface there are plenty of successes, in large part thanks to the efforts of the current administration to hold universities accountable. Internally it’s a different story.

The equation of Judaism with social justice is a key spiritual failing of Hillel. It has the unforgivable consequence of tying Judaism’s significance to Jews’ adherence to ever-changing moral litmus tests du jour, up to and including hatred of Jews. But Judaism as a civilizational project has survived in large part because of the steadfastness of its moral vision, often despite being in opposition to mainstream cultural mores. Its enduring teachings, including the gifts of hospitality and charity and profound respect for one’s parents, are not modeled after what is normal or popular at any given moment.

In 1924, the year after Hillel was founded, Congress passed the Johnson-Reed Act, limiting immigration. The number of legal Jewish immigrants dropped from 119,000, in the year before the bill’s passage, to 10,000 the following year. The gates were closed. Instead of the status quo of mass immigration, which for 40 years led American Jewry to believe that its native-born population would be continually renewed and replenished from abroad, now the existing population was all that Jews could practically rely on. American Jewry would have to renew itself.

Hillel, then, didn’t just provide young Jews with social and spiritual community in an era of incipient assimilation; it gave American Jewry a tool to fashion new generations to lead and sustain the community. In those years, Hillel believed in the future. Today, still, Hillel is uniquely constituted to lead American Jewish youth, the rising generation.

But to do so, Hillel must embrace the gifts of the past, and recognize that civilizations can die; history is littered with the corpses. The Jews are a small people, vulnerable to destruction along with their ideas. That is not to say that extinction is their fate—but, to borrow a line from Charles Krauthammer, “only that it can be.”

Hillel has a decision to make. Whether to face not only Lasch’s question, but Hillel the Elder’s—If I am not for myself, who will be for me?—as well as the choice Moses put before the People of Israel long ago, as recorded in Deuteronomy: “I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day: I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life—if you and your offspring would live.”

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11/18 Links Pt1: Trump Says Saudi Arabia Have ‘Reached an Agreement’ for To Join Abraham Accords; Palestinian terrorists kill one, wound three in ramming attack; CAIR paying $1,000 to anti-Israel agitators who spread chaos at colleges

From Ian:

Trump Says He and Saudi Crown Prince Have ‘Reached an Agreement’ for Country To Join Abraham Accords

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he and Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman have "reached an agreement" for Saudi Arabia to join the Abraham Accords, bringing the region’s central power broker closer to normalizing relations with Israel.

Tuesday marked the first time both leaders confirmed that Saudi Arabia seeks to join the Abraham Accords, which initially included Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco. Kazakhstan became the latest Muslim-majority country to join the pact earlier this month.

"We want to be part of the Abraham Accords," bin Salman said during a joint press conference with Trump at the White House. "But we want to be sure we secure a clear path towards a two-state solution. We had a good discussion about moving forward."

"We want peace for Israelis," he added. "We want peace for Palestinians. We want peace for the region."

The Saudi crown prince’s statement came on the heels of his country’s decision to support the U.N. Security Council resolution endorsing Trump’s plan for post-war Gaza. It also follows Trump’s announcement that he plans to sell Saudi Arabia F-35 fighter jets, advanced planes the United States has only sold to Israel.

While the Israel Defense Forces opposed the Saudi F-35 deal, arguing it has the potential to erode the Jewish state’s air superiority in the region, Trump hinted that Israel will be happy with the eventual terms of the deal.

"Israel’s aware, and they’re going to be very happy," he told reporters in the Oval Office.

Trump did not elaborate on the terms of the tentative deal, but it is expected to couple the F-35 sale with Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords, and may also involve a path toward a Palestinian state.

Lee Smith: Farewell to the Abraham Accords

Even assuming the Saudis have the best of intentions—that is, they’re not simply using the White House to get a leg up on their Gulf rival—the problem is that the Palestinian file can’t be wrested from regional troublemakers since it was designed by bad actors to be used for bad purposes. The Saudis understand this in part: For instance, they don’t want Gazan refugees because the Palestinians have brought chaos and violence to every state they’ve inhabited (Jordan, Lebanon, and Kuwait, as well as Gaza and the West Bank), and a Palestinian presence in Saudi Arabia would therefore destabilize the kingdom and spell the end of the reform program of the 40-year-old crown prince. But Riyadh seems not to have gamed out other imminent risks.

Let’s say, for instance, that the Israelis did accommodate Saudi Arabia’s demands, even though there’s no good practical reason for Netanyahu to pursue a normalization agreement with the Saudis; the prospects of him winning a Nobel Peace Prize are slim, whereas detonating his own domestic political coalition in the effort is a certainty. But suppose that, for sentimental reasons, Jerusalem wanted to pocket Riyadh’s promises to use its wealth and global influence to nurture a more moderate Islam and embrace the Jews as part of the Abrahamic covenant. Some Israelis might like the sound of that, however meaningless those pledges might be in reality. Still, those empty phrases would immediately supply the pretext for the next Qatari-Muslim Brotherhood information operation targeting the Saudi kingdom and the crown prince who, in Qatar’s telling, betrayed the Palestinians to the Zionists.

For Israel, a normalization deal with Saudi is worth little more than the paper it’s written on. For Saudi Arabia, especially if it gets Israel to agree to a two-state framework, a normalization agreement could cause large and unforeseeable dangers. The Palestinian file has proven itself to be a curse to those who wield it, like the Soviet Union, Nasser’s Egypt, the Assads’ Syria, and Saddam’s Iraq, all of which have faded from history even as the Islamic Republic of Iran now teeters on the abyss.

As for Trump, he’s already had his big Middle East victory—a win much more significant and durable than a normalization agreement. Not only did he, in partnership with Netanyahu, eliminate the Iranian threat, but also he revived the U.S.-led regional order that is crucial to American peace and prosperity. Israel is America’s regional enforcer, and a good destination for tech investors. The Saudis pump cheap oil to stabilize global energy markets, buy U.S. arms systems, and invest in U.S. industry. That’s a regional order that works well for everyone—starting with the United States. Now it’s time to get the Middle East and the black hole in the middle of it, the Palestinians, off the front page and turn to the bigger issue on which Trump’s historical legacy will rest: China.

The "Beetlejuice" Peace

Here’s the brutal truth everyone knows but pretends not to: Hamas will not disarm. The countries supposedly contributing to the ISF? They have no intention of disarming Hamas. That leaves one actor capable of removing Hamas—and the only actor who can bring about the “peace” everyone claims already exists: Israel.

You cannot have peace with Hamas in power. And removing Hamas will not be peaceful.

These are not opinions. They are facts. Mutually exclusive realities. No amount of wish-casting, press releases, or glossy declarations can change that.

A “peace plan” that leaves Hamas in charge is not a plan. A “peace agreement” that forces Israel to tolerate a genocidal militia on its border is not an agreement. It is political fantasy, being marketed as reality.

If the world wants peace, it must start with an adult premise: obstacles must be removed. The obstacle here is clear. The only one capable of removing it? The IDF. The only one willing to do so? Also the IDF.

So go ahead: say “peace” three times into a mirror. Wave your glossy resolutions. Print your headlines. Hope really hard. But unlike Beetlejuice, peace will not appear until reality does—and reality does not negotiate with Hamas.

Until that truth is faced, talk of “agreements,” “plans,” or “historic deals” is just theater. An expensive and dangerously misleading theater.

* Note Twitter embedding is broken today.

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11/17 Links Pt2: Hating Jews for Fun and Profit; Neither American nor Conservative; Wikipedia’s Antisemitism; Oxford Students Deploy Lynch Mob Symbolism at Protest of Ehud Olmert

From Ian:

Christine Rosen: Hating Jews for Fun and Profit

How did anti-Semitism become mainstream so quickly, especially among younger Americans? Perhaps because it has become a form of mass entertainment.

In the wake of the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and the significant increase in attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions in the U.S., this is an urgent question. A squad of prominent public figures, elected officials, and cultural arbiters has emerged to promote ideas many thought permanently relegated to the unsavory fringes of American life—and they are gaining an increasingly enthusiastic hearing.

Case in point: Tucker Carlson’s fawning reception of self-proclaimed white nationalist and leader of the so-called groyper movement, Nick Fuentes. As a guest on Carlson’s show, Fuentes, a fan of both Hitler and Stalin, obligingly performed his predictable routine, complaining about “organized Jewry” and the Jews “controlling the media apparatus.” Smiling and nodding along, Carlson did remind Fuentes that “going on about the Jews helps the neocons” but otherwise agreed with him, noting that Christians who supported Israel have been “seized by this brain virus.” An internal conservative battle erupted soon after, when Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, one of the conservative movement’s major institutions, produced a video defending Carlson and calling him a friend.

Water finds its own level, and Roberts’s unwillingness to denounce Carlson’s endorsement of anti-Semi-tic conspiracy theorizing places him and, by association, his institution in the most polluted part of the conservative movement’s pond. That this happened was entirely by design. As Fuentes himself gleefully noted on his show after the Heritage debacle unfolded, “We are thoroughly in the groyper war, the civil war for the GOP.”

In previous eras, anti-Semitism spread in the form of propaganda published in largely fringe newsletters, a few newspapers (like Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent) and books, and notoriously, on radio broadcasts like those of the Canadian-American priest Charles E. Coughlin. Political organizers such as America First Party founder Gerald L.K. Smith (who, like Carlson, was fond of theories about UFOs and demons) also tried strenuously to mainstream anti-Semitism, but the effort never achieved widespread acceptance.

Today, by contrast, anti-Semitism lives and thrives on the entertainment platforms of the young and very online. YouTube, streaming sites like Rumble, and social media platforms have vastly expanded their reach and scope while presenting no barriers to entry and providing anonymity to millions of people who crave communities of the like-minded—often with little regard to what they are endorsing with their time and attention. Popular streamers like Fuentes and Carlson are the arbiters of an online culture that now permeates real-world politics daily. Fuentes boasts more than 1 million followers on X and hundreds of thousands of viewers of his America First streaming show on Rumble, where he regularly, proudly, and unashamedly makes racist, misogynistic, anti-Semitic, and anti-American claims. Carlson is among the most popular public-affairs podcasters on platforms such as Spotify and Apple, where he muses about “globohomo” conspiracies and “the Antichrist’s newest manifestation.”

Motivated toxic actors like Fuentes and Carlson and Candace Owens, combined with streaming platforms and DIY media, have created a massive amount of content that can be consumed by millions almost hourly. And unlike the anti-Semitic propaganda of old, this new form allows for active, rather than merely passive, consumption. Viewers post comments, swap memes, and form fan chat groups. They feel connected to peers while enjoying the posture of being skeptical renegades “just asking questions” about how the Jews control everything. The Two Minutes Hate is available 24 hours a day.

John Podhoretz: Kevin Mamdani and Zohran Roberts

Roberts cannot be saved from himself, though perhaps his Lord can save him; my Lord doesn’t work that way. For us, “repentance, prayer, and charity avert the evil decree,” as we say on Yom Kippur. Salvation is not on the menu; we must be mindful of our evil inclinations and understand that it is our duty as decent people to fight against them every moment of every day. It is through the knowledge that we have led decent and meaningful lives that we are saved by the posterity we make possible.

So Kevin Roberts, hear me. Since you are friends with a Nazi, or are friends with someone who gives a microphone to a Nazi and chitters like a cicada as that Nazi spews his Satanic bile, you, too, should and must be anathematized—simply to create the condition in this country under which there can be a public square at all.

I am under no illusions here. I do not have the power to anathematize anyone, only to counsel it. I am part of a small people, 2 percent of the American population, whose position and standing in this country and around the world are growing more parlous by the day. But especially because of that, this is no time to accept disingenuous apologies. This is no time to find common ground with those who seek to kill us. And this is no time to sue for peace, even though we are so gravely outnumbered.

Israel is outnumbered, too, and it has demonstrated over the past two years that it will not lie down and die to give the Zohran Mamdanis of the world the satisfaction of having subdued a nation that is their superior in purpose, virtue, and meaning. And here at home, Kevin Roberts and his ilk will not guide the right into the arms of the Nazis and the America-haters without being stood up against.

Two months into the war, I wrote a piece called “They’re Out to Get Us.” I followed it up with a piece about how they’re trying to drive us underground. They’re still trying to get us. They’re still trying to drive us underground. The Passover Haggadah says, “In every generation they rise up against us to destroy us.” But as is true of everything in this century, time is speeding up. “Every generation” is now “every week,” or “every day.” It’s from the left. And it’s from the right.

But at least we can be comforted by this: Jews have survived worse than this self-righteous twerp from Uganda and Morningside Heights, and America has survived worse than the Nazi catamite brought to you courtesy of the Tucker Carlson charnel house.

Tucker Carlson has millions of listeners and viewers, and so does Nick Fuentes. And they have friends, like Kevin Roberts. Just as nuts have aflatoxin. Their continued common presence will send the right into anaphylactic shock.

We are the EpiPen.

The Desecration of Our Heritage

What Roberts calls “the vile ideas of the left” have become the lingua franca of this new “right.” The conspiracy has changed its costume, but not its creed. The radicals who shout loudest about treason to the nation have themselves become mouthpieces for its enemies. The dialectic of grievance, the politics of victimhood, the scapegoating of Jews and “globalists”—all were spoken long ago on the campuses that the podcast right claims to despise.

Founded to preserve the principles that won the Cold War and rebuilt the free world, the Heritage Foundation now labors to unmake them. Roberts speaks the language of patriotism but rejects its substance—advancing ideas and would-be leaders who would make America weaker, lonelier, and more vulnerable to the forces that openly despise her. When America forgets that her strength lies in fidelity to the values that made her great, she does not find safety in retreat. She invites defeat. Its leaders preach “America First,” yet the policies they advance would leave America last—abandoned by allies, emboldening enemies, and unmoored from the moral purpose that once bound liberty to restraint.

If America owes allegiance only to herself, then every sacrifice made in Europe and Asia and in the long vigilance of the Cold War was a mistake. Walk the cliffs of Normandy, and you will see the covenant written in marble and grass—the white crosses and Stars of David standing in their thousands, row upon row, facing the sea they crossed to free. The same order stretches across the Ardennes, across Anzio and Manila—fields of faith and duty where the living made a vow to the dead. Those who fell there did not die for profit or power. They died for a moral order carved into stone and sanctified in blood—the order that made the West worth defending. This is the moral inheritance of the Judeo-Christian tradition. It forged liberal democracy not as an abstraction, but as a way of life: a covenant between faith and freedom, duty and mercy. If America forgets this, the West will follow—and if the West forgets, freedom itself will fade from the earth. And when that happens, it will not be because the wolves were strong, but because the shepherds lost their faith.

This is not a quarrel within conservatism. It is a quarrel between those who still believe in civilization and those who would sell it for applause. The battle now is the oldest of all: between memory and amnesia. The Heritage Foundation was once built to defend the first against the second. Under Roberts, it is threatening to embody the reversal.

James Kirchick: Neither American nor Conservative

Last August, the American Conservative magazine heralded a scoop on its website: Republican Congressman Riley Moore of West Virginia had sent a letter to President Donald Trump urging him to award Patrick J. Buchanan—author and television pundit, former aide to Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, and himself a candidate for the presidency in 1992, 1996, and 2000—the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

That Moore chose the American Conservative to announce his nomination of Buchanan for the nation’s highest civilian honor was fitting. Along with the journalist Scott McConnell and the Greek aristocrat Taki Theodoracopulos, Buchanan founded the magazine in 2002 as a populist and paleoconservative rejoinder to the free trade, free market, and hawkish foreign policy ideas then regnant in the Republican Party. “Not all conservatives do agree that the United States should engage—for reasons that hardly touch America’s own vital interests—in an open-ended war against much of the Arab and Muslim world,” the trio declared in the magazine’s first editorial. The mission of the American Conservative would be “to reignite the conversation that conservatives ought to have engaged in since the end of the Cold War, but didn’t.”

The following week, Moore co-authored an article for the magazine with Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts elaborating on why Buchanan deserves the honor. Decrying “neoconservative gatekeepers” who “dismissed him as a nativist, a protectionist, and an antisemitic isolationist,” Moore and Roberts wrote that “looking back now, his speeches read like prophecy.” They pointed to Buchanan’s address to the 1992 Republican National Convention, which he delivered after waging a bruising yet ultimately unsuccessful challenge to George H.W. Bush for the party’s presidential nomination. “There is a religious war going on in this country,” Buchanan declared, an unnerving assertion that would do more to help Bill Clinton than Bush. “It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we shall be as was the Cold War itself, for this war is for the soul of America.” Moore and Roberts also called attention to a clause in Buchanan’s speech accepting the presidential nomination of the Reform Party eight years later in which he implored, “There has to be one party willing to drive the money changers out of the temples of our civilization.”

It was innuendo like this that had prompted William F. Buckley Jr. to publish, nearly a decade earlier, a 40,000-word essay in National Review ruefully concluding that Buchanan, his longtime friend and political ally, was guilty of espousing anti-Semitism. But to Moore and Roberts, it wasn’t Pitchfork Pat who was at fault in this exchange but rather the father of the American conservative movement, who had pushed a “spurious accusation of antisemitism” against a noble patriot whom “history has vindicated.”1

Moore’s proposal to give the Medal of Freedom to Buchanan, which the Heritage Foundation touted in a short hagiographic video titled “Pat Buchanan Was Right About Everything,” won the support of MAGA-aligned think tanks such as the America First Policy Institute and the Center for Renewing America (the latter founded by Russ Vought, the past and present director of the Office of Management and Budget). The leader of American Moment, an influential nonprofit for conservative youth, recently told Politico that “Buchanan has been revered by the under-30 crowd basically the entire time that I’ve been working in professional politics.” When Moore pitched his idea at the National Conservatism Conference, an annual gathering of the populist right, it was one of the weekend’s biggest applause lines.

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11/17 Links Pt1: UN Security Council unanimously approves Trump Gaza plan; Belgian Nonprofit Files More Than 1,000 ICC Cases Against Israeli Soldiers Has Ties to Hezbollah

From Ian:

Israeli gov’t to form independent panel to probe Oct. 7, rejects state inquiry

The Israeli government decided on Sunday to appoint an independent commission of inquiry to probe the failures that precipitated the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre, nixing a formal state commission of inquiry.

According to the government decision, a ministerial panel appointed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be determining the members and mandate of the Oct. 7 commission, as well as the probe’s scope.

Since the Gaza ceasefire, “fighting has shifted into a sort of interim state, and the government seeks to use this to advance the establishment of a commission that will be independent, have full investigative powers, and gain as broad public consensus as possible,” the decision stated.

The government said it will seek commission members who have “as broad public approval as possible,” according to Sunday’s resolution.

The ministerial panel was given 45 days to submit its recommendations to the government, ahead of a 60-day deadline Jerusalem was given by the Supreme Court, sitting as the High Court of Justice, to respond to a petition demanding that it announce a state commission of inquiry.

Netanyahu’s government has resisted launching a state commission of inquiry—which has the power to compel testimony and demand files, including classified documents—saying it would harm the war effort.

In response to petitions filed with the Supreme Court demanding a state commission, the government has argued that the president of the High Court of Justice cannot be trusted to appoint an unbiased committee per the State Commissions of Inquiry Law, 1968, and that the panel’s conclusions would not be acceptable to large swaths of the public.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Why Most Arab Countries Do Not Want Palestinians

[C]ountries such as Jordan and Lebanon had extremely negative experiences with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and other Palestinian armed groups who were trying to overthrow or destabilize their governments (Black September in Jordan in 1970 and the Lebanese Civil War 1975-1990).

Arab leaders often make strong statements, issue condemnations of Israeli actions, and attend high-profile summits that express solidarity with the Palestinians. Their gestures, however -- apart from Iran and Qatar -- are often not matched by decisive steps...

The refusal of the Arab countries to absorb Palestinians (including the ex-prisoners) is... proof why it would be a mistake to rely on the Arab countries to help rebuild and demilitarize the Gaza Strip.

US President Donald J. Trump, who seems to be pinning his hopes on the Arabs to assist in funding and establishing a new government as well as deploying an international force in the Gaza Strip, needs to bear in mind that most of the Arab heads of state and regimes actually do not care about the Palestinians.

By now, most Arab heads of state see Palestinians as having caused immeasurable harm wherever they have gone and as having rewarded with treachery whoever stretched out a hand to them.

For the Arab leaders, the Palestinian issue is just another tool to advance their own political objectives, shore up their own popular support at home, or unite various factions against a common enemy.

Most Arab leaders, in short, will continue to pretend that they are eager to help the US administration with its efforts to implement Trump's 20-point plan for peace in the Gaza Strip. In reality, the Arabs will continue to do their utmost to stay away from the Palestinians -- apart from helping them to regroup in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas bus bomber who killed Briton is now among 15 terrorists freed in Turkey - and is happily wandering the streets

A Hamas terrorist who murdered a British woman is among more than a dozen dangerous extremists living freely in Turkey after being released from Israeli jails.

Security experts have warned of 'a serious concern' for the four million British tourists who visit each year.

Ishaq Taher Salah Arafah, 39, murdered Scottish-born Bible translator Mary Jane Gardner, 59, in a 2011 bomb attack in Israel.

The Daily Mail can reveal he is now at large in Istanbul. Social media posts show him meeting his family in a hotel and walking the streets as well as conducting interviews with friendly media.

In July he told Al Jazeera that 'God willing' the city of Jerusalem would be destroyed.

Last month the Daily Mail told how 154 convicted terrorists serving life were being put up in a five-star hotel in Cairo, Egypt.

Israel was forced to release them in exchange for hostages held by Hamas and allied Palestinian groups in the first stage of Donald Trump's peace deal.

Today we can reveal that 15 Hamas and Palestinian extremists previously serving life but who were released as part of the previous January's ceasefire deal are now living in Turkey.

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11/16 Links: Hamas member's diary published, reveals exploitation of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure; Israeli football fans banned over ‘entirely fictitious’ information

From Ian:

Hamas member's diary published, reveals exploitation of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure

IDF soldiers seized the personal journal of a Hamas commander from Beit Hanun in Gaza, N12 News reported on Sunday.

Terrorist Khaled Abu Akram’s diary entries prove how Hamas exploits civilian infrastructure in Gaza. For example, in one entry from May 2024, Akram writes about how he went to set up an ambush at a school after tunnels in the area were bombed.

"I went with Abu Saleh (a unit commander in a different company in the area) to set up a new ambush at the Al-Naim school after the tunnels in the area were bombed, and the previous ambush was destroyed,” he wrote.

Akram also described how Hamas used UN infrastructure in the Gaza Strip to its advantage.

"Additionally, we took the batteries from the UNRWA clinic, removed the solar panels, and prepared the water well," Abu Akram wrote in his diary.

The Continuing Threats to Israel from Syria

As part of my army reserve service, I belong to a unit that is holding a sector opposite Syria, defending Israel on the northern border.

Syria continues to host terrorist organizations hostile to Israel and intent on harming it.

The fall of Assad's regime did not bring peace. Instead, it created a strategic vacuum that was quickly filled by radical Sunni militias.

When Syrian opposition forces took control of Damascus on Dec. 8, 2024, in response, the IDF moved into the demilitarized zone between Israel and Syria established by the 1974 ceasefire agreement and set up several forward posts.

Today, the IDF holds these positions as strategic depth to defend the nearby towns and villages of the Golan Heights from various hostile actors.

Iranian-backed Shi'ite forces are still operating in southwest Syria and are trying to rebuild their capabilities.

An operational arm of Lebanese Hizbullah is attempting to rebuild its capabilities on the Syrian front, with funding from Iran.

ISIS is also facing us in southern Syria, in addition to many small terrorist groups seeking to harm Israel, including organizations affiliated with Hamas abroad.

The flat terrain in the center of the Golan Heights could allow vehicles from Syria quick access to Israeli civilian communities in a very short time.

In the southern Golan, a landscape of deep wadis can enable covert infiltration by terror cells.

The constant presence of the IDF in this challenging terrain allows it to preempt the build-up of hostile forces - a task that would have been impossible had the IDF remained behind the buffer zone fence.

The Israeli presence in the buffer zone is essential to prevent a repeat of an Oct. 7-type surprise attack in the Golan.

Israeli football fans banned over ‘entirely fictitious’ information

Israeli football fans were banned from Villa Park on the back of “entirely fictitious” information, a former attorney general has claimed.

A group of sitting and former parliamentarians including Sir Michael Ellis, a former attorney general, Lord Austin of Dudley, a former Labour MP, and Nick Timothy, a Tory MP, has written to the chief constable of West Midlands Police to express “deep concern about the propriety and processes surrounding the ban”.

Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were barred from attending the Europa League clash against Aston Villa on Nov 6 after the West Midlands force raised safety concerns about hooliganism with Birmingham city council.

The force’s stance provoked an outcry, with Sir Keir Starmer calling it “the wrong decision” and the Israeli government condemning it. Maccabi said they would turn down any ticket allocation even if the decision was reversed.

In the parliamentarians’ letter, seen by The Telegraph, the ban was criticised as “bizarre” and “draconian”.

The group warned that the force risked being accused of “two-tier policing” against Jewish people, and called on Craig Guildford, the chief constable, to explain how the decision was made.

The politicians also said they were “deeply concerned” about the force’s portrayal of violent disorder in Amsterdam in November last year, when Maccabi played Ajax in the Europa League.

Pointing to a police commander’s remarks that the violence in Amsterdam “wasn’t all one way”, the group wrote: “This gives rise to a concern about whether West Midlands Police was operating ‘two-tier policing’ when it comes to Israel, because your force has taken draconian steps against an entire Israeli fanbase for a limited number of reported infractions.

“Suggestions that Maccabi fans provoked the Amsterdam attacks have been previously dismissed as ‘entirely fictitious’ by the UK Government’s independent adviser on anti-Semitism after he met the chief of police in Amsterdam and was given access to their reports.

“West Midlands Police have seemingly discarded this overwhelming evidence. Could you please outline how West Midlands Police have reached such a starkly different conclusion about the roots of the disorder in Amsterdam to the Dutch authorities? In the absence of an explanation, there are many who may conclude that the actions of West Midlands Police are akin to victim-blaming.”

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11/15 Links: 50 years since UN resolution, the world proves anti-Zionism is actually racism; The settler-colonial lie, debunked; Zohran Mamdani and the ugly rebirth of the socialism of fools

From Ian:

Michal Cotler-Wunsh: 50 years since UN resolution, the world proves anti-Zionism is actually racism

Anti-Zionism, as clearly articulated in the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism after a long democratic process, is denying Israel’s right to exist as a state and denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination. It is discriminating against Israelis and turning the Jew among nations into all that is evil, a pariah responsible for all that is bad in the world.

Fifty years later, and as the past two years since the October 7 Kristallnacht-moment of our times have made abundantly clear, it is anti-Zionism – denying Jewish identity, memory, heritage, peoplehood, and ancestry – that is racism.

It is racism that has again been normalized and legitimized in the name of “liberation,” “justice,” and “progress,” this time by hijacking, redefining, inverting, and weaponizing foundational principles upon which the UN was founded, betraying all it was entrusted to uphold, promote, and protect. It is racism that not only endangers Israel, but all who believe in its right to exist, and the rights of Jews around the world. To paraphrase the late Rabbi Sacks, what begins with the Jews never ends with us.

“There will be time enough to contemplate the harm this act will have done the United Nations.” Fifty years later, Moynihan’s words have become a devastating reality. The institution entrusted to ensure that “Never Again,” by anyone to anyone, seats the most egregious violators of human rights around the Human Rights Council table. It hosts tyrannical regime leaders who invoke the language of rights, even as they torture, execute, and trample the rights of their people. In what has become a modern-day Tower of Babel, it collapses every foundational principle upon which it was constructed.

In a social-media age guided by a polarizing, fragmentizing business model, in which history has little resonance, what happens at the UN and the human rights industry created to support it does not remain there. Academic institutions, no longer pursuing truth in what has been dubbed a post-truth era, have seemingly replaced the mission of teaching how to think with agendas that indoctrinate generations on what to think. Bot-generated hashtags and buzzwords make their way around the world in TikTok videos, in Instagram reels, and in X/Twitter posts, before the (post)truth “straps its boots on.” Fifty years after the UN declared that Zionism is racism, leaders across spaces and places openly declare that they are not antisemitic, only anti–Zionist, generating popular support and little challenge.

Fifty years later, if we are to learn anything from history that repeats in rhyme, it is not enough to teach what happened. It is vital to understand how it happened, and can happen again, with the same mechanism of demonization, delegitimization, and double standards. It is imperative to insist that the law be applied equally and consistently by the institutions mandated to protect foundational principles. For “Never Again” to mean anything, it is vital to not only remember the past but also recognize present iterations of evil to prevent future recurrence of atrocities.

We must remember, reclaim, and renew the Jewish story, universal principles of human rights, and the commitment to uphold and protect foundational principles. In a raging war of barbarism openly declaring the intent to destroy our shared civilization, it is also a vital step toward protecting humanity and freedom.

The Palestinian Fantasy State

The idea of a Palestinian state exists only in the European imagination; even the Arabs do not truly believe in it.

While Israel recognized the national identity of the Palestinians, they have never recognized the Jews as a people entitled to national self-determination.

Before Israel captured Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem in 1967, those territories were controlled by Jordan and Egypt. Why, then, was no Palestinian state established at that time?

The answer is that the Palestinians never wanted a state of their own alongside Israel. They only wanted a state instead of Israel.

Had the Jews lost the 1948 War of Independence, the Arabs of the region would have slaughtered them as they did on Oct. 7, and then divided the land among themselves - southern Syria, northern Egypt and western Jordan.

Lyn Julius: The settler-colonial lie, debunked

In fact, Israel is the only decolonization project in the Middle East, an indigenous people that has managed to throw off the yoke of Arab and Ottoman dominance. And yet many people assume that political rights only belong to Arab Muslims.

Indeed, there were high hopes at the end of World War I, with the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire, that indigenous Christian and other minorities would be given enclaves affording them special protection. The Assyrians and Kurds both expected to have autonomy, if not a homeland of their own. But only the Balfour Declaration of 1917, with its commitment for a home for the Jews, was endorsed at the 1920 San Remo conference and written into the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne.

For Khalidi, the settler colonial lie is “not just hypocrisy; it’s historical amnesia. If we truly want justice, we have to stop gaslighting our neighbors and start acknowledging that their story is Middle Eastern, too. Our liberation won’t come from denying theirs.”

Why is it that so few Arab voices of moderation are out there, while Western far-leftists, in alliance with Islamists, almost all espouse extremist positions or traffic lies about Israel or Jews?

The smear that Israel is a white colonial-settler state relies on two false premises: It severs Jews from their Middle Eastern ethno-religious roots and denies that Jews are a people distinct from the Diaspora, in which they spent 2,000 years. Israelophobes brand Judaism a matter of faith, like Christianity or Islam. They refuse to believe that Jews are distinct genetically, culturally, linguistically and historically from the many populations they lived among.

In order to depict Zionism as a European imposter, the anti-Zionists date the rise of modern Zionism to 1882 and the arrival of the Russian Jews of the first aliyah. In truth, Jews never left. Through the centuries, they returned, albeit in small numbers, to Eretz Israel.

To keep the memory of the 850,000 Jews forced to leave Arab countries and Iran in the 20th century alive, organizations such as JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa) and HARIF (the Association of Jews from the MENA), along with synagogues and community groups around the world, will observe “Mizrachi Heritage Month” throughout November.

The Israeli Knesset designated an official “Mizrachi Heritage Day” in the calendar on Nov. 30, the day after the U.N. Partition Plan for Palestine was passed in 1947, which triggered riots across Arab countries.

History matters. We must not let the truth be drowned out by crude and dishonest sloganeering. We must keep repeating the facts. And any help from Arab members of society is welcome.

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— 🚀aunch The Crypto Dog 📈 (@CryptoDogLaunch) November 15, 2025

This might be the single stupidest person in progressive media.

She thinks the UN should run an experiment in 1-state, enforced ‘multiculturalism’ combining Israel and Palestinian territories which would of course devolve instantaneously into chaos, civil war, death, and… https://t.co/pTF5f8xZGg

— Coddled Affluent Professional (@feelsdesperate) November 15, 2025

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11/14 Links Pt2: The year Jews stopped believing in a safe West; British universities have failed Jews; Oxford Union ‘labels Israel greater threat to regional stability’ than Iran

From Ian:

The year Jews stopped believing in a safe West

The risk is no longer theoretical: in late 2024, France’s domestic spy agency warned that Hamas and Hezbollah “sleeper” operatives might seek to strike Jews in Europe to send a message.

The safe West, it turns out, is seen by jihadists. This situation is viewed as just another front in their war, possibly an easier one, because Jews in Paris or Manchester are generally less guarded than those in Jerusalem or Sderot.

This reality has prompted a grim recalibration among Diaspora Jews. Synagogues across Western capitals are fortifying like embassies. Jewish schools conduct active-shooter drills and hire armed guards.

In places like Malmö, Sweden, or Toulouse, France, where Jewish populations have shrunk after repeated attacks, the few remaining families must decide if they, too, will leave.

As one Jewish security expert in London remarked, “We’ve had to accept that what happens in Israel doesn’t stay in Israel. If Hamas had the opportunity, they would carry out similar attacks here as they did on October 7 [in Israel].”

In 2025, Europe’s Jews know that no amount of Western liberal values or policing can entirely shield them from the reach of those who wish them harm.

There is no doubt that the mindset of the Diaspora is changing.

As one Israeli columnist wrote to anxious Jews abroad: “Our grandparents in Europe asked, ‘Will it really get worse?’ and lived to regret the answer. Today, we must ask, ‘What if it gets worse?’ and live accordingly.”

For a growing number of Jews in the West, 2025 was the year that the question could no longer be avoided.

The answers they arrive at will shape the future of Jewish life on both sides of the ocean. Once again, the packed suitcases, whether literal or metaphorical, play a part in shaping that future.

Baroness Ruth Deech: Universities must rein in scourge of hate they left unchecked for so long

The cloak of so-called ‘anti-Zionism’ has led them towards the oldest hatred. So blinded by their detestation of the State of Israel, it is now perfectly unremarkable for students to demand ‘resistance’ – naturally appearing alongside Hamas-associated imagery – as well as the genocidal call for the destruction of Israel. The Prime Minister was absolutely right to recently declare “From the River” as antisemitic but it has had zero impact on the actions of university leaders.

And so, left unchecked by British authorities (from the Government and police through to universities and wider society), the anti-Zionists have radicalised. The disgusting - and utterly unchallenged - utilisation of an ancient Jewish blood libel by Dr Maqusi at UCL this week shows that a new line has been crossed. The speaker's reported decision to matter-of-factly cite the 1840 Damascus Affair and the long-repudiated lie that Jews used the blood of non-Jews for religious rituals is grotesque.

Patently baseless centuries-old anti-Jewish hatred is now being revived and repurposed to brainwash the next generation of leaders. Anyone acquainted with Jewish history will know full well that blood libels such as this have been the source of hundreds of years of violence, persecution, and massacres against Jewish communities across the world. The university authorities are complicit in this terrible danger.

StandWithUs UK has documented dozens of harrowing testimonies from students at universities all around the country. They have empowered Jewish students to proactively stand up against this onslaught and they have movingly retold their stories to parliamentarians and the international media. These are the true anti-racist heroes who deserve our full admiration and support.

The problem is clear and many of the tools to tackle it already exist but much like the obstinate leaders at the BBC, it requires university officials to take note of what is being taught on their campuses, accept responsibility and their own failings, and root out this poisonous ideology.

UCL’s immediate and unequivocal response to this shocking incident is welcome and offers a blueprint which I hope other universities will follow. If they continue to fall short, however, the Office for Students must forcefully act, and university leaders should be summoned to Parliament to account for the shameful discriminatory and menacing environment for Jews that they have allowed to take root.

Soros Bankrolling Anti-Israel Drop Site News

The left-wing philanthropy funded by George Soros, Open Society Foundations, gave $250,000 to establish a Middle East desk at Drop Site News, an anti-Israel news startup that touts itself as a "reader-supported" purveyor of "completely independent" journalism.

Open Society Foundations said the grant, awarded last year, would help "bridge a crucial information gap in independent journalism" in the Middle East, according to its spending database.

Drop Site, founded by veteran left-wing journalists Ryan Grim and Jeremy Scahill in July 2024, has filled that purported gap with a steady stream of anti-Israel coverage of the Israel-Hamas war. Its first major story was a series of interviews that Scahill conducted with Hamas leaders aimed at providing the "public deeper insight into [Hamas's] decision to launch the October 7 attacks in Israel."

"The past nine months of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza have spurred an unprecedented global awakening to the plight of the Palestinian people," reads the opening line of Scahill's story.

Drop Site has not disclosed funding from the Open Society Foundations, of which Soros’s son Alex took control in 2022. In its fundraising pitches, Drop Site requests donations through Social Security Works Education Fund, an obscure nonprofit that aims to "educate the general public, media, and policy-makers about the benefits of protecting social security benefits." The organization serves as the "fiscal sponsor" for Drop Site, allowing donors to make tax-deductible contributions to the outlet, which does not have tax-exempt status from the IRS.

The Open Society Foundations funneled its contribution to Drop Site through the Social Security Works Education Fund, earmarked "to support establishing a Drop Site News MENA desk to to [sic] bridge a critical information gap in independent journalism."

Drop Site has provided little coverage of Social Security, or any other domestic entitlement programs. Instead, its bread-and-butter has been coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, from a decidedly anti-Israel viewpoint.

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11/14 Links Pt1: UN made ‘Rosetta Stone’ for Jew-hatred in 1975; The Future of the U.S.-Israel Defense Alliance; John Spencer: Hamas can be demilitarized. Here's how

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The Future of the U.S.-Israel Defense Alliance

How soon? Well, Bibi said, he was scheduled to have a meeting that very day about planning for the next five years of Israel’s future and beyond.

Five is less than 10, which is less than 20. Again, Netanyahu is conscious of how all this talk might play with the pro-retrenchment crowd.

Where is all this going? As I wrote last year, the Biden presidency marked a turning point for Israel. Biden himself mostly held the line on military aid, but it was clear that he was the last Democratic president willing to take that level of heat from his own party for defending our alliance with Israel.

The real shock was that the more vulnerable Israel seemed to be, the more intense were the calls to cut off the Jewish state from anything it might need to defend itself now or in the future. In the past, U.S. presidents took the position that Israel cannot be allowed to be put in mortal danger by the two countries’ shared enemies. That would be morally repugnant but also strategically reckless. But now, a loud-enough progressive chorus—a minority in the Democratic Party, but an influential one and a growing one—comes right out and declares Israel’s destruction to be a worthy goal.

This changes the calculus. If, in the future, there is going to be an American administration that won’t let Israel break the glass even in case of emergency, then Israel must be prepared for such a moment well in advance. And a domestic weapons production line does not appear overnight. Israel’s survival has long been ensured by a defense establishment constantly peering over the next horizon, and this appears to be no exception.

Jonathan Tobin: Begin reducing US aid to Israel, not extending it

The ideal ‘America First’ ally
That ought to make it, as Vice President JD Vance pointed out in a 2024 speech, the ideal “America First” ally since it doesn’t want Americans to fight for them and also can contribute to U.S. security interests in a variety of ways. A strong Israel that isn’t so dependent on the United States could enable the Americans to pivot to using more of its resources to deal with the pre-eminent 21st-century threat to their security: China.

There is no scenario in which Israel could be completely cut off from the United States. It’s just too small a country, and for all of the benefits of its First World “Start-Up Nation” economy, it isn’t rich enough to be on its own.

Nor would it be in its interests to do so since having a superpower friend—and there is no possible desirable alternative to the U.S. alliance—is essential to maintaining its security in a world where so many nations and people want to kill Jews and destroy their state. Yet reducing that dependence to the extent that it is possible is vital for maintaining that alliance in the long run.

Netanyahu knows this as well as anyone.

In 1996, during his first term as prime minister, he told a joint session of the U.S. Congress that he wanted to reduce American aid and eliminate the economic element—as opposed to the military portion—of the assistance. To his credit, he was able to do just that.

His next challenge is to reduce the U.S. aid package, rather than to enlarge and extend it.

That goes against every instinct of the Israeli military establishment, which is dependent on all those American arms and ammunition. It’s equally true that the Americans, even the Obama staffers who negotiated the last long-term aid deal, like to keep the Israelis on a short leash. Going back to the first Bush administration in the 1980s, the Americans have been less than enthusiastic about the Israelis manufacturing arms that could also be made in the United States.

If Israel is to remain secure and maintain a healthy relationship with the United States, then this must change in the long term. The United States needs a partner in the Middle East, not a vassal or a protectorate. The more independent the Jewish state can be, the more solid its alliance with America will become.

Danny Danon: Israel's envoy to UN Danny Danon: Israel's alliance with US protects both nations

The US-Israel alliance delivers tangible, measurable benefits to American security. Israeli intelligence has repeatedly provided early warnings that have saved American lives.

One pertinent example was former Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil. He had a $7 million bounty on his head by the US government for playing a key role in the bombings of the US embassy in Beirut in April 1983, which killed 63 people, as well as the attack on the US Marine barracks in October 1983, which killed 241 American personnel.

Last year, Israeli forces eliminated Aqil, who had American blood on his hands, because he was a threat not just to Israel and the United States but to Western civilization.

This is what partnership looks like: a democratic ally doing what must be done when others cannot or will not. It is in America’s direct interest that groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad face the kind of consequences that only Israel has the resolve to deliver.

When fringe parts of the American political spectrum – left or right – begin to waver on that basic truth, adversaries notice. The Islamic Republic of Iran notices. Hezbollah notices. So do the forces of extremism and authoritarianism that watch for any sign of Western fragmentation.

When some conservatives dismiss Israel as a burden, or when some progressives tolerate antisemitic rhetoric in their ranks, they are not simply debating policy. They are weakening America’s deterrent posture and emboldening its enemies.

The problem is not just political but cultural. On the Right, some have confused moral clarity with moral indifference, treating alliances as outdated relics rather than as instruments of power. On the Left, outrage has replaced empathy, and solidarity has been warped into tribalism. In both cases, the result is the same: a retreat from responsibility. When America retreats, chaos fills the void.

If this downward spiral is to be reversed, leaders in both parties must act with moral courage and follow in the example of true friends like President Trump. We are eternally grateful for his strong leadership in recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, brokering the historic Abraham Accords, and pushing through a hostage release agreement that has seen all our surviving hostages return home.

Other Republicans should also make clear that antisemitism, whether dressed up as nationalism or nihilism, has no home in their movement. Democrats must confront the radicals in their midst who conflate criticism of Israeli policy with the delegitimization of Israel itself. Neither side can afford to repeat the other’s mistakes. Silence is complicity, and equivocation is surrender.

The United States and Israel share more than intelligence. They share values that are intrinsic to each society: democracy, resilience, and a belief that freedom is worth defending. These principles are under attack from forces that despise both nations equally. To abandon Israel now, or to allow antisemitism to metastasize in American politics, would be to forget the lessons of history at a perilous time.

The stakes are clear. If America truly intends to put itself first, it must remember that strength begins with solidarity. Standing with Israel is not selfless charity. It is strategy. It is the recognition that the enemies of the Jewish state are also enemies of the United States. And it is a reminder that sustained peace is built not on retreat but on the shared strength and resolve of allies who stand together.

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