01/06 Links Pt2: The Question of Jewish Armed Self-Defense; The Maccabi Tel Aviv ban was a sop to Islamic sectarians; Ireland proves you don’t need Jews for anti-Semitism to take hold

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The Question of Jewish Armed Self-Defense

A full investigation into the Bondi Beach failure, he said, might tell us which of several potential solutions, including arming the CSG, should be implemented: “It’s one of the reasons why we need a royal commission, to get the information [and] to provide it to government, so that we can make the changes to keep the community safe.”

Minns’s wording here is important. He called for a “royal commission,” which is the highest-level state inquest that Australia can initiate, and the one with the most far-reaching powers to gather evidence.

The very same day that Minns made these comments, a group representing families of 11 Bondi Beach victims released an open letter asking for a royal commission. Such a commission would not just investigate the attack but the overarching issue of Australia’s approach to combating anti-Semitism.

“We demand answers and solutions,” the families wrote. “We need to know why clear warning signs were ignored, how antisemitic hatred and Islamic extremism were allowed to dangerously grow unchecked, and what changes must be made to protect all Australians going forward. Announcements made so far by the federal government in response to the Bondi massacre are not nearly enough.”

Hard to argue with any of that. Unless, of course, you are Anthony Albanese. The prime minister announced that the investigation will be limited to the Australian security agencies and what was known about the suspects in the shootings. Valuable in its own right, surely, but as the Guardian’s chief political correspondent—yes, even the Guardian appeared disappointed in Albanese’s refusal to examine the question of anti-Semitism—wrote: “such a narrow inquiry is not a substitute for a commonwealth royal commission, with the powers it has to compel evidence and, just as crucially, the national public spotlight it commands to ensure accountability.”

This is a very important point. It is not only that there is very good reason for a royal commission here, but also that the very fact of an extended “public spotlight” on the problem would make it much more difficult for Australia’s political establishment to ignore. There is transparency that comes with any inquest conducted publicly into the state and its failings. The process itself would be part—only a minor part, to be sure—of the solution.

Albanese is plainly interested in avoiding full accountability. That, in itself, should answer Chris Minns’s question about arming the main Jewish security group. There are murmurings that Albanese can still be pressured into a royal commission. If he cannot, and if the national government refuses to protect its Jewish citizens, then the next best thing would surely be to enable the Jewish community, in partnership with the regional state government, to at least attempt to protect itself.

Understanding and Defeating the Assault on Jewish Moral Self-Confidence

A false conception based on underestimating and downplaying the enemy's intentions is the natural temptation of a peaceful people. The Jews of Poland, the most peaceable population imaginable, could not have imagined that the Germans intended to wipe them out. Yet Jews do ultimately respond to reality.

When it became too obvious to deny that they were marked for extermination, two Jewish underground organizations formed in the Warsaw ghetto. When the Germans entered the ghetto in 1943 to begin rounding up the remaining Jews and sending them to their deaths, the two organizations fought in an uprising that lasted from April 19 until May 16, the first urban anti-German uprising in Europe. They fought like lions.

The present war against Israel resembles the Nazi one in its aims and methods, and makes us realize how much the fate of the Jews remains subject to the depravity of others. Jews expected coexistence with the people around them. Jews do not aspire to expand territorially through conquest or demographically by evangelizing. But the nations they lived among were constituted very differently.

Coexistence requires reciprocity which cannot be willed into being. Ascribed where it does not exist, it invites escalating aggression of which the Hamas attack of October 7 is but the most recent demonstration. Hamas entrapped Israelis into the war they had done everything to avoid by surrendering Gaza in 2005.

Israel's enemies are the same forces that threaten America. This creates a congruence of loyalties. We are not in the position of American Muslims who may feel torn between the priorities of Mecca and Washington. The Hebraic roots and deepest values of America and Israel are one and the same.

All of America should be behind us, and the best already are. It is now our task to help reorient the rest. To keep being Jews in the world means to overcome our disappointment in the failings of our enemies, the cowardice of some of our friends, and the difficulties of resistance. To mobilize is the best way to overcome despair.

What Jews keep getting wrong about defending themselves

The British Broadcasting Corporation recently asked British Jews whether Israel’s actions in Gaza were responsible for the terrorist attack in Bondi, Australia. The watchdog organization CAMERA rightly criticized this absurd line of questioning. How could random Jews in London possibly bear responsibility for the tactical decisions of a government thousands of miles away, let alone for the heinous actions of a terrorist in yet another country?

Yet in our rush to defend ourselves against this inappropriate premise, the Jewish community often misses a deeper truth that lies at the heart of our identity: Jews around the world are responsible for one another.

This is the paradox that modern media discourse consistently fails to grasp, and one we as Jews sometimes struggle to articulate ourselves. The BBC’s question was wrong because it implicitly blamed Jews for terrorism. But the underlying assumption—that Jews in the United Kingdom are connected to Jews in Israel and Australia, or anywhere else, for that matter—is fundamentally correct, according to our own tradition.

The Talmud teaches us Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh, “All of Israel are responsible for one another.” Jews don’t have the luxury of claiming we can simply wash our hands of each other’s welfare, even if we live in separate communities.

This doesn’t mean that British Jews are responsible for terrorist attacks or Israeli military strategy; it means that we’re called to care deeply about our fellow Jews everywhere, to feel their pain and share their struggles. The distinction matters, though it’s routinely lost in shallow social-media debates and cable-news soundbites.

This confusion extends to another common refrain heard from Jewish communities worldwide—that we just want to be left alone to live in peace and quiet. It’s a reasonable desire, even an understandable one. Yet history keeps proving it’s not an option available to us.

The book of Judges offers a haunting pattern: Whenever the text speaks of Jews living peacefully, “each person sitting under their fig tree or vine,” without unified purpose or centralized leadership, enemies inevitably rise up against us. Amalek first demonstrated this in the desert, attacking the newly freed Israelites not because of anything they had done, but because of who they were called to be.

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01/06 Links Pt1: Iran's Friends Are Vanishing: Why Maduro's Arrest Matters for Israel; Israel, Syria, US agree on security cooperation mechanism; Somaliland is a functioning state. Treat it that way

From Ian:

Iran's Friends Are Vanishing: Why Maduro's Arrest Matters for Israel

The arrest of Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro likely sent a shiver down spines in Tehran.

It also marks the dismantling of yet another supporting pillar in the global network Iran painstakingly constructed to finance, shield, and sustain its war against Israel.

Through Hizbullah, Venezuela became a critical offshore hub that generated cash, laundered funds, moved operatives, and enabled Iran to project power far from the Mideast.

Hizbullah functioned in Venezuela as a crime-terror enterprise intermeshed in the Venezuelan economy and protected by the government.

Hizbullah trafficked cocaine from Venezuela, transferred weapons, and helped the Islamic Republic evade U.S. sanctions.

Revenue generated in South America was sent to Lebanon, where it helped pay for Hizbullah's military buildup.

Venezuela's most prominent opposition figure, Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado, was asked in a November Israel Hayom interview whether a post-Maduro Venezuela would restore relations with Israel.

Machado replied: "Certainly. Venezuela will be Israel's closest ally in Latin America."

Maduro's fall represents another incremental setback in Iran's global posture.

Jonathan Tobin: Venezuela, Trump and the end of the liberal world order

The simple and unavoidable truth is that the only way to defend those values, American interests, as well as the existence of Israel, is to go around or supersede multilateral institutions. Their preservation cannot be allowed to depend on the ideas of a now bygone era. The United States, as Ferguson has also accurately noted, is locked in a new Cold War; only this time, against China and its allies in Moscow, Tehran and Caracas. It should learn from the past, but it won’t win this conflict solely by working with the tools, like NATO, that were invented to cope with the challenges of the last one.

It’s only to be expected that the assertion of American power in South America or elsewhere, such as Iran—where Trump joined the Israeli campaign to destroy its nuclear program and which he has now also threatened should it violently suppress protests—will be opposed by ideologues who think international institutions are more important than national sovereignty. The point being is that if you don’t want rogue regimes to be allowed to export illegal drugs that kill Americans or to be used as bases by Iran or China, the only answer is for Washington to act. Waiting for a global organization to undertake operations that most of its members oppose or the assent of NATO allies is almost always going to lead, as it has on so many fronts, to inaction.

Some administrations, like that of Barack Obama, turned that dependence on multilateralism into something of a fetish. The result was, among other things, the catastrophe in Syria (where Obama walked back his 2013 “red line” threats) and the 2015 Iran deal that set Tehran on a course to have nuclear weapons, with which it could dominate the Middle East and threaten the rest of the world.

The argument that American unilateralism will encourage Beijing to attack Taiwan is nonsense. As Russia showed in Ukraine and Iran proved when it fomented its multifront war against Israel on the watch of a Biden administration that was similarly wedded to multilateral myths, it was U.S. weakness—not tough-minded Trumpian strength wielded unilaterally—that is likely to lead to more wars.

It may well be that Trump’s every utterance and act will continue to send liberals and leftists over the edge, no matter how sound or reasonable his policies (such as his success in halting illegal immigration) may be. It’s equally true that there are no guarantees that American intervention in Venezuela will work. Although by not committing to a full-scale invasion, Trump appears to be heeding his own criticisms of the George W. Bush administration’s blunders in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The most important conclusion to be drawn from this latest instance of Trump’s freelancing while the global establishment clutches its pearls is that it is only by Washington’s willingness to act on its own that the threats to America, the West and the State of Israel can be effectively met. Far from the greatest peril being an erratic Trump let loose on the world stage, the president’s single-minded belief in defending American national interests is the best hope for fending off the machinations of enemies of the West. A mindless belief in the transcendent importance of the solutions that were believed necessary in 1945 to prevent another global war is not going to protect us in 2026 and the years to come.

Stephen Pollard: The loony left’s moral collapse over Maduro

Which brings us full circle back to the specific reason why we Jews should be focused on Maduro. Jason Kenney, the former Canadian defence and immigration minister in the Stephen Harper government – before Canada had a conniption fit and turned to Justin Trudeau – has written this week about how “one of the most fascinating briefings I received as a federal Immigration Minister was from a foreign intelligence agency about the connections between Venezuela and the Iranian terror proxy Hezbollah. And they showed me the receipts.”

It’s worth quoting at length: “I saw in detail how the Venezuelan regime imported raw cocaine from the FARC Marxist terror group in Colombia, and worked with the Al Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps to ship it in ‘dark’ planes to Beirut, where it was then processed in Hezbollah facilities in the Bekaa Valley. The refined product was then shipped to Europe, and the proceeds used to finance Hezbollah operations, including weapons procurement.

“When I asked how a fundamentalist organisation could do this given that narcotics are haram, I was shown fatwas issued by Hezbollah imams indicating that as long as the drugs were sold to kaffirs, and the proceeds used to finance ‘the struggle,’ that it was religiously sanctioned. I was also shown details on how Hezbollah agents were using Canada to launder illicit funds by buying stolen cars with cash from criminals gangs, and then shipping them out of the Port of Montreal for resale in West Africa. All of this was possible because of extremely close coordination between the Iranian and Venezuelan regimes.

“…This was in 2008! All evidence suggests the cooperation between these two abhorrent regimes has only grown since then, with Iran providing Venezuela with arms, helping to sustain its dwindling oil industry, and to market its sanctioned crude. In return, Venezuela has acted as a kind of giant base of operations for Iran in the Western Hemisphere, including the IGRC and Hezbollah's ongoing involvement in drug trafficking and money laundering. And, of course, both regimes have been in lockstep diplomatically, including with their shared enthusiasm for their biggest ally: Putin's Russia.”

So yes, let’s have our debate about the application of international law. But for many of those protesting about the seizure of Maduro, international law is a fig leaf. Their real concern is the very fact that Maduro, who they revere has been deposed. And let’s not forget who Maduro is, what he has done, and who it is who thinks he is a role model.

Leading From the Front Again By Abe Greenwald

Via Commentary Newsletter, sign up here. Joe Biden’s presidency picked up where Obama’s left off. Only this time, the American retreat from the global stage was turbocharged by a more radicalized Democratic Party that sought to appease a newly woke left. Biden pursued a fresh nuclear deal with Iran and wasted the possibility of expanding the Abraham Accords to include Saudi Arabia. In August of 2021, he ordered the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan. And the world, as many of us had predicted, finally spun out of control.

Russia invaded Ukraine with China’s blessing, and Hamas invaded Israel with Iran’s material and monetary support. The Biden administration’s responses to these crises were at turns somewhat helpful, overly cautious, and ultimately feckless. The U.S. had lost the will to shape events beyond (and on) its borders.

Until now. Although the second Trump administration talks ceaselessly about the folly of foreign intervention, the president has reestablished the U.S. as the prime mover of world events. He’s roused NATO to take on a larger role in defending member nations, even as he backed Israel in its multifront war, destroyed Iran’s main nuclear facility, drew up a plan for a postwar Middle East, and now decapitated the outlaw regime in Venezuela.

The administration can say whatever it wants about foreign adventurism, but the world police are back in business.

There’s a lot, of course, that we don’t know. Will Trump finally become as frustrated with Vladimir Putin as he became with Iran and Maduro? If so, will he be as forceful in ending Russia’s assault on Ukraine? What will become of Venezuela over the course of the year? What happens if and when Trump becomes convinced that Hamas simply won’t disarm? How will the Trump administration respond to what seems to be a slowly crumbling Iranian state? And, finally, what happens if—God forbid—China moves on Taiwan? No clue.

But here’s what we do know: The world has once again seen the American will to act. And everyone has been reminded of the U.S. military’s unparalleled ability to change facts on the ground. A year ago, America’s enemies had reason to believe the U.S. had become a paper tiger. Today, they wouldn’t dare make that miscalculation.

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01/05 Links Pt2: Tucker Carlson is an enemy of America; From Wikipedia Fiction To Witch Hunt; Maccabi fans ban: Police consulted mosques that hosted ‘anti-Semitic’ preachers

From Ian:

David Collier: The Lie Beneath the Tree: From Wikipedia Fiction To Witch Hunt

In September 2025, a large delegation of U.S. legislators visited Ofakim – a small town in southern Israel and one of the communities devastated during the Hamas atrocities of October 7, 2023. During their visit, they planted trees – a simple, universal memorial act in honour of the murdered civilians.

That act has since been recast by anti-Israel activists as something sinister. Campaigners immediately claimed the trees were planted atop a “depopulated Palestinian village” – and some have gone further, calling for the legislators involved to be forced to resign.

Through a chain of factual errors, activist myth-making, and the quiet authority of “reference” sources that repeat those errors as fact, a unifying gesture of mourning has been transformed into an accusation of moral wrongdoing.

The fabrication of Ofakim as a “depopulated Palestinian village” was subsequently laundered through a media corps that hounded and interrogated participants – not over facts, but over fictions and libels treated as truths.

The truth is simple and decisive. There was no depopulated village at the site of Ofakim. No erased community beneath the tree. Yet the claim persists because it was never presented as an allegation, but instead stated and repeated as established fact – embedded, cited, and endlessly recycled.

In advancing the false “village” narrative, campaigners are not uncovering a buried injustice. They are erasing the victims of a real one – all in service of a story that never happened.

In the end we are left witnessing a witch hunt for people who visited an ally of the United States and planted a tree in memory of those slaughtered in a terrorist massacre.

MacKenzie Scott Sends Millions to Terror-Tied Nonprofit Network

MacKenzie Scott, the billionaire ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, funneled millions of dollars to a left-wing nonprofit network that supports the nation's most virulent anti-Israel and anti-Semitic organizations, including some that are under congressional investigation for their ties to terrorist groups, a Washington Free Beacon review found. Scott announced the grant in an essay that cites Hopi prophecy, bird flocks, and sex as inspirations for her latest round of giving.

Scott recently disclosed sending at least $5 million to the Solidaire Network, which supports what it calls "the front lines of social justice movements" by offering grants to an array of left-wing groups. That includes Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), the US Palestinian Community Network, and the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM). SJP and AMP face investigations in both the House and Senate for allegedly coordinating with the terror group Hamas to spearhead anti-Israel protests in the United States. Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) pressed the FBI to investigate the "virulently antisemitic" PYM in September after its leader, Aisha Nizar, called on supporters to sabotage the U.S. F-35 supply chain.

Scott disclosed the grants and dozens more last month in an essay, "We are the Ones We've Been Waiting For," the title of a Hopi prophecy "written in the year 2000." The prophecy taught Scott the value of being "active participants in the co-creation of our communities." Scott also offered commentary on the "murmurations" of starling bird flocks "constantly creating their direction together."

"Generosity and kindness engage the same pleasure centers in the brain as sex, food, and receiving gifts," wrote the billionaire divorcee.

Scott's support for the network is part of an onslaught of spending that recently saw her surpass liberal billionaire George Soros's lifetime donation totals. Her approach to that spending is unique—Scott allows her grant recipients to use the money "however they choose" rather than designate it for certain projects or organizations. The Solidaire Network has used that freedom to fund radical anti-Israel organizations in the United States.

In addition to her latest donation, Scott gave the network $10 million in 2021 through her organization Yield Giving. The network went on to spend $2.1 million on a campaign called "Unity & Power" that aims to promote "Palestinian freedom."

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01/05 Links Pt1: An Even Better Trump Solution for Gaza; After Venezuela, is Iran Next?; Inside Mayor Mamdani’s sneaky plan to scrap policies supporting Israel

From Ian:

Michael Doran: Giant Abroad, Midget at Home

To those unfamiliar with the anti-Zionist undercurrents of the New Right, the episode might well have appeared as a simple expression of Catholic devotion, which Vance’s online messaging apparatus made a point of rebranding as “Christian.” Lauren Witzke—a “Christian nationalist” former Delaware Senate candidate now aligned with Fuentes—circulated the clip with the caption: “The Vice President of the United States JD Vance opted out of the wall-kissing ritual in Israel, instead choosing to visit the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.” This framing was enthusiastically adopted by other self-styled Christian nationalist influencers like Steve Bannon, who celebrated the need for “a Christian state of Jerusalem.”

Evangelicals, who form the backbone of Trump’s pro-Israel coalition, were pleased by none of this. Protestants contest the historical location of the crucifixion, with some favoring the Garden Tomb and others rejecting both sites as unproven.

The denigration of Israeli national symbols like the Western Wall entirely misreads how evangelicals—and many Catholics—understand the place. Evangelicals do not see a visit to the Wall as an act of submission to Jews. Jesus taught in the Temple; the Gospels and archaeology both attest to the site, and for evangelical theology the covenant with Israel and the covenant fulfilled in Christ are not competing dispensations but a single unfolding promise. To pray at the Wall is, in their view, to stand where Jesus stood and to honor the continuity of God’s dealings with His people.

And Vance, as a Catholic, had no need to play to sectarian sentiments. There is an unimpeachable Catholic precedent: John Paul II’s 2000 pilgrimage, during which he placed a handwritten prayer in the Wall’s stones—“God of our fathers… we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant.” When Vance’s allies mocked “kissing the wall” as a humiliation ritual imposed by Jewish donors, evangelicals and many Catholics saw not bravado but a gratuitous rupture with a shared sacred history. In the Vance–Carlson alignment, they recognized an effort to redefine that history—and to sever the covenantal bond that has long anchored the pro-Israel core of the conservative coalition.

This recognition triggered discontent among evangelicals, which erupted into open confrontation. On Dec. 2, 2025, prominent Christian Zionist Dr. Michael D. Evans—founder of the Friends of Zion Museum—told a Jerusalem Post reporter: “Right now we are having a movement within the MAGA movement that is anti-Israel. It is very serious because it is led by Tucker Carlson, who is very close to the vice president. He is coming out and saying worse things presently than the Nazi Party said at their platform in 1920.” Days later, at a gala event attended by PM Netanyahu and Sarah, his wife, Evans pledged to train 100,000 Christian ambassadors to combat antisemitism and defend Israel, signaling the deepening rift inside Trump’s grand domestic coalition.

Vance’s political use of his own religious journey is therefore clever, but brittle. The intellectual circle that appears to shape his worldview—Deneen and Vermeule, the Catholic integralists—has major influence online, but almost none in electoral politics or within the Republican Party. Catholics as a voting bloc are smaller than evangelicals. Whereas evangelicals overwhelmingly vote Republican, Catholics, traditionally, have been split nearly evenly between the parties, and in recent decades have been far less churchgoing. Furthermore, most American Catholics are not integralists; they are not seeking to impose a premodern moral architecture on a pluralistic, democratic society. If all the true Catholic integralists in the United States gathered for an annual conference, they could fill a mid-sized bistro in Lower Manhattan.

That wager—that Vance can maintain operational loyalty to Israel while gesturing toward a post-evangelical Republican future shaped by Tucker Carlson—puts at risk the most indispensable component of the MAGA coalition: evangelicals. Their support is structural, not ornamental. Trump’s original political breakthrough—uniting evangelicals, Orthodox Jews, traditionalist Catholics, married women, and portions of Black and Hispanic churchgoers in a governing majority—cannot survive any project that treats evangelical Zionism as expendable. The reason why is simple math: Subtract evangelicals (and Orthodox Jews) and the Trump majority becomes a minority.

The strength of MAGA was never doctrinal purity. It was breadth—a unity of people who could never come together around a shared theology but could agree that the Progressive elite was assaulting their fundamental beliefs and their place in American life. That coalition survives only if its political vocabulary remains wide enough to include them. When the coalition fractures, so does the political foundation for a China strategy that can endure after Trump leaves the stage.

The United States will not lose the 21st century to Beijing on some distant battlefield. It will lose it here at home—in X posts and podcast studios—while the grand American majority assembled to prevent that outcome tears itself apart debating whether the Jews orchestrated 9/11.

An Even Better Trump Solution for Gaza

The Arab and Muslim countries, including Pakistan, will not disarm Hamas.

Pakistan -- which does not recognize Israel and does not regard Hamas as a terrorist organization –- was the first country to recognize Iran's Khomeini regime in 1979, just as, in 1947, Iran was the first country to recognize Pakistan's independence. Since then, not only has Pakistan had far closer relations with Iran than with Israel, but, after the Gaza War in 2023, has repeatedly called for Muslim nations to "unite against Israel."

Meanwhile, it is simply not realistic to assume that the Palestinian terror groups will voluntarily hand over their weapons.

These Arab and Muslim heads of state will only take action against Islamist terrorists when they pose a threat to their regimes, security and stability.

The Gaza Strip does not need peacekeepers and monitors. US President Donald J. Trump himself came up with the solution months ago, as he did this week for Venezuela: "We're going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition. So we don't want to be involved with having somebody else get in, and we have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years."

Developers would rush in to create Trump's original vision of a "Gaza Riviera": "Gaza would be under U.S. trusteeship for around ten years 'until a reformed and deradicalized Palestinian Polity is ready to step in its shoes.'"

Those Palestinians in Gaza who wish to leave would be able to do so without fear of being threatened or shot. The US could make sure that any terrorists who refused completely to disarm would, as Trump warned about "bad hombres" in Mexico be "taken care of." If there are legitimate concerns about US troops being put in harm's way, perhaps Gaza's neighbor to the east might help out.

Above all, Trump the master builder could oversee the successful development of some of the world's most magnificent real estate, as he said about Venezuela: "We are going to have our very large United States oil companies go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure... and start making money for the country."

Change the word "oil" above to "real estate development" for Gaza, and Trump will have delivered the most far-reaching peace ever in history -- twice -- to two separate hemispheres.

Arab and Muslim countries might object: it ruins their chances of attacking Israel more easily after Trump leaves office. That is precisely why a pervasive US or Israeli presence in Gaza is the only way to ensure the success of peace in Gaza, peace in the rest of the Middle East, and a spectacular future for the peaceful Palestinians who remain.

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01/04 Links: Trump’s welcome warpath to peace; Israel Just Exposed The Entire NGO Game; Australian sporting heroes call for antisemitism royal commission

From Ian:

Israel Just Exposed The Entire Game

For two years in this war, and for more than two decades before it, the Gaza narrative machine has operated with ruthless efficiency. Hamas supplied the kinetic trigger. Israel responded militarily. Visuals followed. NGOs translated images into moral urgency. UN bodies amplified. Diplomats echoed. Media synchronized. Each layer fed the next. It felt organic because it was always anchored to something burning.

This time, nothing burned.

Israel did not strike a building. It touched a filing cabinet. It asked who is registered, who is transparent, and who is subject to law. Aid kept flowing. Trucks kept moving. Personnel stayed in place. The only thing interrupted was immunity.

And the system lost its mind.

The reaction was not proportional to reality because it was not reacting to reality. It was reacting to exposure. Without a kinetic event to anchor outrage, the system inflated consequence in advance. Predictive catastrophe replaced evidence. Language about chilling effects and existential threats substituted for facts. The tone was urgent, the claims vague, and the timing instant.

That is what a machine does when it fires without a trigger.

Now that the rules are in force and the predicted disaster has failed to materialize, the hysteria looks almost comical. The organizations that screamed loudest were marginal to begin with. Some delivered virtually no aid. Some delivered none at all during the current and previous ceasefires. Aid volumes are unchanged. Life in Gaza today is no different than it was yesterday.

Oversight is routine everywhere else on earth. The claim that humanitarian life hinged on a handful of unregistered actors evaporated the moment the calendar flipped.

This is the tell.

A neutral humanitarian system would say fine, here is our paperwork. A professional operation would welcome clarity. What we saw instead was panic. Because this was never about logistics. It was about exemption. It was about the quiet assumption that certain actors exist above sovereignty, beyond law, and immune from scrutiny because their narrative utility outweighs their operational relevance.

Hamas understood this arrangement perfectly. Its ground strategy was designed to manufacture content. Dense terrain. Embedded infrastructure. Human shields. Hostages. Every Israeli response produced raw material. The cognitive system harvested the output and converted it into pressure. That partnership required constant shock to remain hidden.

Israel’s regulatory adjustment removed the shock.

By acting non kinetically, Israel denied Hamas visuals and denied the narrative apparatus its fuel. With no rubble to point at and no bodies to display, the system turned inward to protect itself. It screamed before anything happened. It forecasted doom that never arrived. It tried to portray paperwork as persecution. In doing so, it exposed its own wiring.

There is a slight smirk to be had here, not because the issue is trivial, but because the reaction was so naked. The system was not being bombed. It was being asked for ID. The outrage was never proportional to the act. It was proportional to the threat of what would be revealed.

Now that the rules are live and Gaza has not collapsed, the spectacle dissolves. What remains is the uncomfortable truth that much of the international outcry was never about aid. It was about preserving a system designed to perpetuate the crisis it needs to function. A system that has mastered the manufacture of constant emergency, catastrophe, and atrocity to justify its own existence.

And this is where the moment becomes historic.

For years, the Palestinians and their allies fought on two fronts while Israel fought on one. Hamas provoked kinetic responses that activated a ready made diplomatic and narrative machine. Israel won battles and lost framing. Over and over again.

This time, Israel stepped sideways.

It did not rush back into escalation. It enacted a lawfare offensive that normalized scrutiny and exposed corruption. It resisted pressure to provide new images. It refused to feed the machine bodies. It went after the infrastructure that made the reflex possible in the first place.

That is not symbolic legislation. That is adaptation.

Israel finally recognized the non kinetic battlefield and responded with precision. With the stroke of a pen, through a perfectly ordinary regulatory act, it exposed something far larger than any single NGO. It revealed a moral economy built on exemption, opacity, and permanent emergency.

Today it looks like a quiet administrative event. Tomorrow it may be remembered as the moment the Palestinian strategy began to unravel, not because Hamas lost another tunnel or commander, but because the ecosystem that converted its tactics into global leverage was finally exposed and interrupted.

Priti Patel: Starmer’s silence on Iran is shocking

Labour’s neglect of our defence and national security is unacceptable.

As a responsible Opposition, the Conservative Party has a clear and comprehensive plan to tackle the threats posed by Iran. First, we would stand by Britain’s allies to work with them on plans to prepare for all scenarios.

Never again should we be on the sidelines while the USA and Israel defend Western values and interests. We should be working with them, offering UK expertise, capabilities and resources, including the use of our base at Diego Garcia, which we would not be surrendering sovereignty over.

Second, where Iran has failed to adhere to the requirements made of it on its nuclear programme, we would make the autocrats of Tehran and their backers feel the economic pain as a result.

The snapback process needs to be implemented in full and we need to go further with our international partners and unilaterally. We’d also follow the money, the cryptocurrency, and all the other methods Iran is using to circumvent the sanctions and go after those facilitating, supporting and bankrolling this regime.

Third, we’d call out the ongoing cruelty, brutality and repression of the Iranian people. Just as Conservatives backed freedom and democracy for those living under communist tyranny in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, we must speak out and condemn everything the tyrants of Tehran are doing to their own people and give them hope that the torch of freedom will never be extinguished.

And fourth, we’d ensure that our military, intelligence and security services are resourced with the funding and powers to keep us safe and our Sovereign Defence Fund would counter the threats we face, dismantle terrorist plots and bring those responsible to justice.

Maduro, the IRGC, and the Globalization of the Terror Threat to Israel

Venezuela and the Iranian Regime
Iran and Venezuela have maintained a relationship since the 1950s. However, the strength and direction of the relationship increased significantly in 2005. The strategic partnership encompassed the realms of politics, military, and economics. In 2007, then-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez signed a formal “anti-imperialist” alliance, alluding to the U.S.

By 2020, a military company directly tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) established itself in Venezuela. Then, in 2022, amid U.S. oil sanctions, Venezuela and Iran signed a 20-year agreement, whereby Iran transferred oil to Venezuela. The two countries have coordinated the exchange of gasoline and gold, providing both regimes with sanctions-evasion mechanisms and alternative revenue streams. The partnership allowed Iran to establish a growing presence in Venezuela while diverting some of the profits it makes in Venezuela to its terror network in the Middle East.

In the years leading up to the U.S. military operation, Venezuela began developing drones using Iranian-trained experts overseen by the Islamic Republic, reflecting a deepening military collaboration. Beyond that, Venezuela’s state-owned airline, Conviasa Airlines, has been involved in the Iranian regime’s global illicit arms network.

In effect, Venezuela became not merely an economic partner but a strategic outpost for Iran, extending Tehran’s influence closer to U.S. borders while reinforcing its global network of illicit trade and terror financing.

After the U.S. operation, Qatar issued a statement of disapproval, knowing that ultimately, the capture of Maduro would have profound impacts on Qatar as well, which is also linked to Iran’s terror network.

Venezuela and Hezbollah
Iran has exploited this connection with Venezuela to expand its terror and criminal networks across South America. Hezbollah, in particular, has leveraged the region as a hub for narcotics trafficking, money laundering, and illicit finance, with Hezbollah-affiliated operatives based in Venezuela playing a documented role in these schemes. Through drug trafficking corridors, Hezbollah has generated significant revenue used to finance its terrorist activities abroad.

Hezbollah’s vast terror network includes clans based in Venezuela and other South American countries that assist in the movement of funds through different banks in order to finance Hezbollah’s terror activities. One major operation in 2011 exposed the scale of this network, resulting in the arrest of approximately 130 individuals and the seizure of roughly $23 million in illicit funds.

Hezbollah’s involvement in narcotics and organized crime led the U.S. government in 2018 to designate the group as one of the world’s top five transnational criminal organizations, placing it alongside major drug cartels. This designation underscored the critical reality that Hezbollah is not solely a terrorist organization driven by ideology, but a sophisticated hybrid entity that fuses terrorism with large-scale criminal enterprise, exploiting weak states and corrupt regimes like Venezuela to fund and sustain its global operations.

Venezuela has also bypassed U.S. sanctions by using Hezbollah to smuggle gold, whereby the IRGC facilitated the sale of Iranian oil and accepted gold as a form of payment, which was directed toward Hezbollah terrorists.

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01/03 Links: After Caracas, Tehran trembles; Israeli accuses BBC of ignoring Iran protests while ‘obsessing’ over Gaza; Australian sporting heroes call for Bondi Royal Commission

From Ian:

Israeli embassy accuses BBC of ignoring Iran protests while ‘obsessing’ over Gaza

The BBC is embroiled in a row with the Israeli embassy after the broadcaster was accused of obsessing over Gaza while “largely ignoring” the ongoing protests in Iran.

Alex Gandler, the embassy’s official spokesman, said on X that there had been “near-total silence” on BBC news bulletins about the demonstrations against Tehran’s Islamic theocratic leaders.

He questioned the BBC’s impartiality, claiming it continued to devote huge resources to its coverage of events in Gaza.

The corporation criticised Mr Gandler’s claims as “factually incorrect”, but the spat amounts to the latest evidence of a worsening relationship between the Israeli government and Britain’s national broadcaster over its coverage of the Middle East since the Oct 7 attacks.

At least seven people have been killed during clashes between protesters and security forces that have spread across Iran since they first started in the capital on Dec 28.

Mr Gandler took to X to respond to John Simpson, the BBC’s veteran foreign correspondent, who had said it was difficult to get reporters into Iran.

The embassy spokesman said: “This is not a good take. The scale of BBC coverage devoted to Gaza, including over the past few days, vastly exceeds that given to wars and humanitarian crises elsewhere in the world.

“At the same time, the near-total silence on Iran is striking. A broadcaster that claims global impartiality cannot obsess over one theatre of conflict while largely ignoring the regime that destabilises the entire region.”

The logic behind Kazakhstan’s Abraham Accords move

When Kazakhstan announced on Nov. 6, during President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s visit to Washington, that it would join the Abraham Accords, the decision raised a more interesting question than the move itself: Why did Astana take this step before Azerbaijan, despite Baku’s far deeper and longer-standing strategic ties with Israel?

For years, Azerbaijan had been widely viewed as the natural candidate to lead Central Asia and the Turkic world into the Accords framework. Its close cooperation with Israel in energy, defense and intelligence, combined with shared concerns about Iran, made Baku the obvious frontrunner. Yet when the moment arrived, it was Kazakhstan—not Azerbaijan—that moved first.

The explanation lies less in bilateral relations with Israel than in how the Abraham Accords are currently being deployed.

Reactivating and expanding the Abraham Accords has become a priority of the Trump administration. While the Accords formalize normalization between Israel and Muslim states that were never at war with it—and therefore differ fundamentally from classic peace treaties—their current strategic significance extends well beyond Israel.

They function as a framework for advancing American influence in regions contested by Iran, China and Russia. From this perspective, Kazakhstan’s decision was driven not by the state of its relations with Israel, which have long been stable, but by Astana’s broader geopolitical weight and signaling value.

Kazakhstan’s move was therefore not ideological and only marginally symbolic, it was a calculated signal to Washington, one that Astana could afford to send, and Baku could not, as its relations with Moscow remain strained. As a result, it cannot discard Turkey, whose stance on the Abraham Accords remains highly critical.

Hind Rajab Foundation files criminal complaint against IDF soldier in Czech Republic

The Hind Rajab Foundation recently filed a criminal complaint to Czech authorities against an Israeli soldier who is visiting the country, the group announced Friday, accusing the soldier of war crimes allegedly committed in Gaza.

The foundation, a pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel legal group based in Belgium and named for a 6-year-old Gazan girl killed in January 2024, has filed dozens of criminal complaints against Israeli soldiers and officials who are visiting or stationed in European countries over the past two years.

According to the group, the IDF soldier in question is currently a tourist in Prague.

The group’s complaint alleges that the soldier, as a member of the Givati Brigade, took part in “genocide, war crimes, and persecution of civilians committed during Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.”

Givati has been deployed extensively during the war in Gaza, which began when the Hamas terror group attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.

Israel vehemently denies it has committed war crimes or genocide in Gaza, and says it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities, stressing that that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.

Since the soldier is currently in the Czech Republic, the group claims that Prague must prosecute the soldier due to its “obligations under international and domestic law”

“These crimes fall under universal jurisdiction. Where a suspect is present on Czech territory, prosecutors are not merely empowered to act — they are legally obliged to do so,” the complaint alleges.

There was no immediate response from Czech authorities.

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01/02 Links Pt2: The dark comedy of the Islamo-left alliance; Iranians are rising up against their brutal Islamist rulers; Trump vows US action if Iranian regime cracks down on protests

From Ian:

The dark comedy of the Islamo-left alliance

Yet towards the end of 2025, in Britain at least, we have also seen signs that this political coupling might just be starting to come apart. That middle-class ‘progressives’ are slowly discovering they don’t have as much in common with the uber-reactionaries on their Islamic flank as they might have thought. That sharing a demented loathing of the world’s only Jewish State might not be enough to sustain a relationship between the choose-your-own-pronoun crew and ultra-conservative Muslim men.

The first signs of strain between Muslim sectarians and the woke left became apparent during Mothin Ali’s campaign to become a Green Party deputy leader. On 7 October, the day of Hamas’s massacre, he said Palestinians had the right to ‘fight back’. In 2024, he celebrated his election to Leeds City Council with shouts of ‘Allahu Akbar!’, declaring it ‘a win for the people of Gaza’. Ali is certainly keen on the Greens’ anti-Israel zealotry and general anti-Western misanthropy. Yet, as a committed Muslim, he is rather less keen on the Greens’ Pride-filled, trans-rights activism. And so during his deputy-leadership campaign back in August, he refused to sign ‘pledges’ on behalf of the Greens’ various LGBTQIA+ groups – much to those activists’ apparent shock and dismay.

But the tensions in the Green Party were nothing compared with those that have humiliated Your Party in recent weeks and months. Semi-launched last July, amid bickering and squabbling over precisely who Your Party belonged to, this Corbyn 2.0 vehicle was clearly designed to exploit the surge in Islamo-leftist sentiment. Fronted by Jeremy Corbyn himself, sometime ‘friend’ of Hamas and Hezbollah, and onetime Labour MP and permanent sixth-former Zarah Sultana, it also featured four independent, ‘pro-Gaza’ Muslim MPs: Shockat Adam, Adnan Hussain, Ayoub Khan and Iqbal Mohamed.

The ‘pro-Gaza’ Muslim men were certainly on board with Your Party’s anti-Israel zealotry. But it seems they were less keen on Your Party’s support for every hue of gender-identity politics. And so, following criticism from Your Party’s leftist fanboys, fangirls and fantheys, Hussain flounced off in mid-November, citing ‘veiled prejudice’ and ‘generalised accusations and offensive slurs’ towards Muslim men. He was quickly followed by Mohamed, who also complained about ‘false allegations and smears made against me’.

The cultural chasm between let-it-all-hang-out ‘progressivism’ and illiberal Islam was fully exposed at Your Party’s calamitous conference in late November. In between denunciations of Israel, a series of pasty-looking social inadequates stumbled up to the lectern to shout their pronouns and denounce the ‘transphobia’ of their ‘socially conservative’ (ie, Muslim) comrades. The absurdity of the Islamo-woke coupling has been laid bare. Activists who think bearded men can be women marching alongside bearded men who don’t want women to be seen in public. How was this ever going to last?

Another event in Tower Hamlets in late October captured the emerging conflict in starker terms still. The setting was, absurdly enough, a counter-protest against a UKIP march that had already been cancelled and moved elsewhere. It was here that leftist activists, marching under the banner of Stand Up to Racism, coalesced with hundreds of masked Muslim men chanting ‘Zionist scum, off our streets’. Phone footage captured a momentary exchange between one of the left-wing marchers and one of their supposed allies. ‘There’s no need for that’, the leftist activist says in relation to something or other, ‘We’re on the same side, bruv’. The masked Muslim man’s response is sharp: ‘No, we’re not.’

These are portentous words. Leftists might not realise it yet, but as that masked man said, they are really not on the same side as Islamists and Islamic activists on the vast majority of political issues. They have allowed their shared loathing of Israel, animus towards the West and turn against modernity to blind them to this most blatantly obvious of truths. The crumbling of this silly and sinister alliance cannot come soon enough.

Iranians are rising up against their brutal Islamist rulers

It should be said that the Islamic Republic is not about to fall. But these protests show that it is in trouble. Many in Iran were already turning against their repressive Islamic state in the years before its shadow war with Israel broke out into the open in July last year. Since then, the Islamic Republic’s legitimacy has been further undermined. And what happens in Iran won’t stay there. It will have profound ramifications for a region shaped for years by the Islamic Republic’s regional power-plays.

All of which makes the relative lack of interest in the protests on the part Western liberal media and the broader ‘progressive’ class seem even more puzzling. Many news outlets have paid them a cursory notice, with BBC News finally publishing its first bit of coverage of the protests three days in – this despite the presence in the region of its much-vaunted channel, BBC Persian. Elsewhere, the NGO-ocracy, which likes to imagine itself a keen advocate of civil rights, appears to have little interest in Iranian security forces turning guns, tear gas and water cannons on their own people. Indeed, Amnesty International spent the past few days tweeting about fossil fuels, systemic racism and the rights of indigenous reindeer herders – not a mention of Iranians’ brave struggle for more freedom. Middle-class progressives, who have spent the past couple of years obsessing over Israel’s role in the Middle East, barely seem interested in Israel’s principal antagonist.

It would be easy to put the scant attention given to the protests down to the distractions of the so-called holiday season. But that ignores a darker truth. The West’s ‘progressive’ classes struggle intellectually and ideologically with criticising the Islamic Republic of Iran. To support Iranians struggling against the regime’s harsh Islamic strictures, including mandatory hijab-wearing, sits uneasily alongside progressives’ support for Muslim identity politics, and a warped ‘anti-imperialism’ that more often sees Iran as the victim. And so they prefer to look away, and talk about something else, like reindeer herders.

This happened in 2022, when the ‘Women, life, freedom’ protests shook the Islamic Republic to its foundations and cost the lives of hundreds of protesters. In response, Western ‘progressives’ barely managed to murmur some vague words of support for those brave men and women before they got back to championing the hijab as a symbol of liberation and ‘calling out’ Islamophobia.

This time around, the world must not look away. As the Iranians struggle to free themselves from the deathly grip of Islamic theocracy, they deserve our enduring solidarity.

Jewish community files complaint over Catalonia map identifying Jewish, Israeli-linked businesses

According to Enfoque Judío, repeated anti-Israel decisions by the government and the labeling of Israel as a “genocidal state” in the context of the Israel-Hamas War against the terrorist group have contributed to what the outlet described as the normalization and spread of antisemitism in Spain.

“Barcelonaz is not a harmless map: it is an instrument of stigmatization that contributes to this climate of hostility and, directly or indirectly, invites discrimination against Jews and Israeli citizens, the boycott of their businesses, and even violence. We already saw in Australia the process that led to the Sydney attack a few weeks ago,” a source involved in combating antisemitism told Enfoque Judío.

Enfoque Judío reported that Barcelona and Catalonia have, in recent years, become focal points of antisemitism described as being presented under the banner of “anti-Zionism,” including demonstrations, graffiti, boycott campaigns, and government and municipal decisions.

In its presentation, Barcelonaz describes itself as a “collective” project aimed at highlighting “the multiple branches of the Zionist economy in our city,” according to Enfoque Judío. The map includes sectors such as arms manufacturing, technology, tourism, energy, real estate, gastronomy, and education.

The project does not distinguish between Israeli companies, Jewish-owned local businesses, or multinational corporations operating in Israel, Enfoque Judío reported.

Listed entities include arms manufacturers such as Airbus, Indra, and Thales; technology companies including IBM and Microsoft; logistics firms such as Siemens and Volvo; energy companies, insurers, and 39 financial institutions ranging from Deutsche Bank to BBVA. The map also includes real estate and tourism businesses, kosher food establishments, and the Hatikva Jewish school in Barcelona.

According to Enfoque Judío, users are encouraged to expand the list, with selection criteria prioritizing sectors such as arms and cybersecurity, particularly where connections to Zionism are described as less “obvious.”

Members of the Spanish Jewish community have submitted complaints to GoGoCarto, comparing the initiative to historical practices that preceded the boycott of Jewish businesses, Kristallnacht, and the Holocaust, Enfoque Judío reported.

In a letter cited by Enfoque Judío, complainants requested the removal of the site, stating that the project “clearly has an antisemitic and discriminatory character, as it seeks to identify and stigmatize a population on the basis of its religious affiliation, real or supposed.”

The letter further argues that the initiative violates French laws on incitement to hatred and discrimination and calls on GoGoCarto to “adopt the necessary measures to bring this practice to an end,” citing Articles 225-1 and 24 of the July 29, 1881 law on freedom of the press, according to Enfoque Judío.

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01/02 Links Pt1: Australia faces ‘crucial test’ after Bondi attack; Why Somaliland works and the international system pretends it does not; Mamdani’s ‘collectivism’ is dangerous to Jews and everyone else

From Ian:

Why Somaliland works and the international system pretends it does not

Which is where Israel comes in. Somaliland is almost an ideal strategic partner: anti-jihadist, aligned with the Gulf camp, hostile to Iran’s regional axis, and positioned opposite Yemen along one of the most sensitive maritime corridors on earth. Quiet security and commercial relationships already exist. Israeli planners understand its value. In a different legal universe, Somaliland would be a natural candidate for an overt strategic partnership.

Israel recognizes Somaliland exists because it has absorbed Houthi attacks for two years from Yemen. And Israel is not alone in being upset at the Houthis: For much of the past two years, the Houthis have been attacking shipping headed for the Suez Canal, impeding global trade and contributing to a sharp fall in container traffic through the Red Sea, forcing ships to reroute around Africa and adding time, fuel, and operational cost. That disruption is estimated to have affected goods worth roughly US $1 trillion in global commerce and pushed freight and insurance costs sharply higher.

Given its unique position as a victim of the Houthis, Israel would really appreciate a forward base in Small Island, and in particular in the port of Berbera, for intelligence and operations activities so that they can stop the Houthi mayhem. And if they do this, that would actually be a huge favor to their dear friends in Egypt who have lost billions of dollars a year in Suez Canal revenues because of the Houthis. The economic bleeding is real, and everyone in the region knows it, even if they pretend not to.

If the Western alliance wants to prevent this part of the world from blowing up entirely, it needs to quickly get the Saudis, the Emiratis, and probably also the Israelis into one room with padded walls and locked doors – until they agree on a plan.

The result is an inversion that borders on absurdity. Somaliland meets every test the world claims to care about: governance, territorial control, democratic legitimacy, security cooperation. Somalia fails them. And yet Somalia is recognized while Somaliland is denied. This inversion is the price of prioritizing a post-colonial system built on inherited lines.

Recognizing Somaliland would establish three principles the international order is not yet prepared to tolerate: that performance matters, that secession can stabilize rather than shatter, and that colonial borders are not sacred. Those principles would rewrite the logic of statehood itself across entire regions. So Somaliland remains the world’s most functional non-state: stable, democratic, strategically vital, and permanently unrecognized.

The Somaliland Gamble

The day after Netanyahu’s announcement, the Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) issued a statement denouncing the recognition while repeatedly referring to the institutions of the sovereign State of Israel as “occupation authorities.” The communiqué also invoked the need to preserve “stability” in the Horn of Africa—a ridiculous claim since the entire region has known little sustained stability for nearly five decades. Predictably, Qatar declared that it would be preferable for Israel to “recognize the State of Palestine.”

Another statement of condemnation issued by the ministry, this time co-signed by twenty-one Arab and Muslim states, including Algeria and Iran, cast the move as contrary to international law and warned that it “threatens international peace.” It further insinuated that Israel plans to relocate Palestinians to Somaliland from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The claim is patently absurd, yet it has gained traction within Islamist networks, including those maintained by Iran. That this statement—a typo-ridden mess clumsily assembled by a slave-owning petrostate and endorsed by some of the world’s worst abusers of human rights—was conspicuously not signed by any of the signatories to the Abraham Accords, such as Morocco, Bahrain, or the UAE, tells one all that needs to be known about its credibility.

Qatar has its own strategic interests in the Horn of Africa: it sustains pressure on Israel through the Houthis and other Islamist networks in the region. In Somalia, Qataris attempt to influence state policy through generous donations of foreign aid and the support of Muslim Brotherhood elements with Mogadishu’s governing elite.

Since 1996, Qatar has positioned itself as a mediator in a range of Horn of Africa disputes—from the Eritrea–Yemen conflict over the Hanish Islands to the Eritrea–Djibouti standoff at Ras Doumeira. Meanwhile, it has hosted Omar al-Bashir, the former Sudanese leader charged with genocide and crimes against humanity over atrocities in Darfur.

This is why Israel’s recognition of Somaliland poses such a problem for Doha. Somaliland represents a model of bottom-up stability that neither relies on Islamist mobilisation nor requires Qatar’s mediation. Worse still (for Qatar, that is), Israel threatens to help Somaliland defend itself, without Qatari help.

For the first time, an autonomous region long denied international standing has been acknowledged as a sovereign state not by the usual pantheon of Islamist or postcolonial patrons, but by Israel. Crucially, this has occurred in the framework of the Abraham Accords, which Abdullahi has publicly claimed Somaliland will join. The Abraham Accords began as a regional normalisation initiative but have expanded to encompass countries like Kazakhstan and possibly Indonesia.

The example of Somaliland may also inspire other stateless peoples in would-be autonomous regions. One such case is Kabylia, an Amazigh-Berber region in Algeria whose provisional government in exile has recently declared independence. While Kabylia’s circumstances differ markedly from Somaliland’s, the precedent is nonetheless clear. The Somaliland gamble suggests that a new pathway may be opening, in which emerging states that demonstrate internal cohesion, resist extremist domination, and align with a rules-based security order can find sponsors beyond the old gatekeepers. If that is so, then Somaliland is not an anomaly, but a new beginning: one more aligned with Israel’s interests than with Qatar’s.

Statehood hypocrisy: Why it's no for Somaliland, Kurdistan, but yes for Palestine

ISRAEL WAS the only country that supported the 2017 Kurdish independence referendum. A few years earlier, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that “The Kurds have proven a commitment to political moderation, and they are worthy of their own political independence” and that “Israel supports the legitimate efforts of the Kurdish people to achieve their own state.”

No surprises here either: The Palestinians – the people who want the whole world to fight for them so that they can have their own state – categorically rejected the Kurdish independence referendum. Saeb Erekat, a long-time peace negotiator and an adviser to President Mahmoud Abbas, said in an interview with the Al Arabiya Channel that “Kurdish independence would be a poisoned sword against the Arabs.”

Barghouti described Israel as the only country to “recognize the separatist Somaliland,” and Davutoglu’s Israeli recognition of Somaliland is part of a broader strategy to fragment Islamic countries and neutralize key states through encirclement.

The vocabularies of separatism or agents of Israel are outdated and have been deployed for decades to legitimize the massacres in Iran, Turkey, Syria, and Iraq committed against Kurdish civilians over the past decades. Arab, Turkish, and Iranian fascists and Islamists alike have launched vicious campaigns against the Kurds, and always used Israel or The Jews as a scapegoat.

In 1966, then-Iraqi defense minister Abd al-Aziz al-Uqayali blamed the Kurds of Iraq for seeking to establish a “second Israel” in the region. Sixty years later, the term “second Israel” is still perpetuated, claiming Kurdistan is imitating “Yahudistan,” meaning the land of the Jews or Israel.

JUST A couple of weeks ago, Turkish media claimed that the Kurdish-led SDF “is now in Zionist Israel’s lap,” and that it is Israel’s “strategy to divide Syria via the SDF.” Similar rhetoric is now being deployed against the more than six million Somalilanders, using Barghouti’s own words describing them as a bunch of “separatists” and accusing Israel of tearing and dividing, saying that Israel seeks to “destabilize the Horn of Africa.” This is similar to what the late Saeb Erekat said about Kurdish independence as being “a poisoned sword against the Arabs.”

Not long ago, a Turkish newspaper affiliated with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ran a “scoop” claiming that the Israeli government is holding clandestine talks with Kurdish leaders in Erbil (Kurdistan-Iraq) to relocate tens of thousands of Israeli Jewish Kurds to the Kurdish region in Iraq. These kinds of conspiracies are a regular occurrence in Turkish, Iranian and Qatari media to appeal to antisemitic elements in their societies.

The majority of Muslim states, including the so-called “State of Palestine” view both Zionism and Kurdish nationalism as projects of Western colonial imperialism. Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has repeatedly accused the US for seeking to create a “new Israel” in the region due to its support of the Kurdish people.

I salute the Israeli government for becoming the first nation to recognize Somaliland. And I am happy to see so many Israelis and Kurds taking to social media to congratulate Somalilanders on this truly historic moment. To my Somaliland sisters and brothers, I offer massive congratulations!

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01/01 Links Pt2: Netanyahu pledges support for global Christian communities under Islamic threat; Australian business leaders call for Bondi Royal Commission in open letter

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: Alaa Abd el-Fattah and our misplaced priorities

Unfortunately, the government has made such a big homecoming fandango for El-Fattah that a few people have started to look into what our latest arrival actually believes. Of foremost concern is the fact that he seems not much to like the country that has done so much to spring him from Sisi’s jails. In a set of social media posts from 2010, he called the British people ‘dogs and monkeys’. He also described British history as ‘pure BS’, claiming that we ‘enslaved a fifth of humanity’ and ‘massacred millions’. Why exactly someone would want to come to a country filled with so many infidel ‘dogs and monkeys’ is, I suppose, a question for another day. But these are El-Fattah’s views about us and once again we can all agree there is nothing wrong with that and it all just makes him another weave in the rich tapestry of our diverse and multicultural nation.

In a set of other online posts, El-Fattah said he wanted to kill ‘all police’, and – astoundingly enough – he has stern views about Jews and Zionists. The latter should, according to our latest import, all be killed. It is ‘heroic’, he has said, to kill ‘any colonialists and especially Zionists’, adding of Zionists: ‘We need to kill more of them.’

It is worth dwelling on that. After the Manchester synagogue attack in October, Starmer, David Lammy and all the rest of them stressed how we can’t let ‘hate’ into our country, and need to stop people riling up nastiness. But all the time they were making a priority of bringing a man into the UK who hates the British people, wants police officers to be killed and thinks the only good Zionist is a dead Zionist.

At such moments, of course, Starmer’s political opponents realise that there might be some political capital to be made from highlighting this obscenity. Robert Jenrick and others spent the post-Christmas period rampaging across X trying to highlight El-Fattah’s historic views and point at Starmer’s evident present-day numpty-ness.

But, as I can often be found saying, there is always another level to this hell. On this occasion it comes from the following fact.

It is not merely Starmer who has made El-Fattah into the human rights case de nos jours. It turns out that each of our swiftly rotating previous Conservative governments also thought that his case should be a priority for them. Liz Truss’s government thought so, as did Rishi Sunak’s. The Home Office also made the release of this Egyptian a priority by granting him citizenship. The then foreign secretary James Cleverly boasted: ‘We will continue to work tirelessly for his release.’ Again, you and I may have thought that the Home and Foreign Offices might have tried to bring migration down several notches. Instead they ramped migration up to historic highs. And why not, when they were working so ‘tirelessly’ for El-Fattah’s release.

Which party was in power when British citizenship was given to El-Fattah while he was still in jail? Why the gloriously competent Tory government of Boris Johnson, of course.

In any case, put aside for the time being the political game which has resulted from the case and consider the following rather more important question. Does anybody anywhere in government have access to Google? Or any other search engine? Does anybody in the Home Office have the capability to press ‘Control’ and ‘F’ on their keyboard and search for past public comments by a foreign national they are so eager to bring into the UK? There was a time when we might have had some faith that a British official might phone an Egyptian counterpart and ask a few questions about a chap before awarding him citizenship, let alone making a ‘priority’ of getting him on to these shores. But all the government officials, Labour and Conservative MPs, and actresses such as Olivia Colman, who campaigned for El-Fattah’s release seem not to have taken a moment even to Google him.

That is the problem for the UK. Everything that should be a priority is not a priority, and the last things that should be a priority are made a priority by governments of all stripes. Happy new year, by the way.

Human Rights Commissioner demands PM call Royal Commission into Bondi terror attack

Australia’s Human Rights Commissioner Lorraine Finlay has thrown her weight behind calls for a federal Royal Commission into the Bondi terror attack, as pressure mounts on Anthony Albanese to reconsider his refusal.

Ms Finlay publicly endorsed a Royal Commission on Wednesday night, warning that a narrow review into intelligence and law enforcement failures would not go far enough to confront the underlying causes of the massacre.

Her intervention comes after the Prime Minister on Thursday refused to reveal the unnamed "actual experts" who he claimed advised him against establishing a Royal Commission.

The Commissioner said the attack could not be separated from the surge in antisemitism gripping the country and argued the issue demanded the most powerful form of public inquiry.

“The Richardson Review will examine our national security framework. But understanding the deeper causes of violence is critical,” Ms Finlay said in a post to LinkedIn.

“The Bondi terrorist attack was driven by anti-Semitism. Confronting that directly must be a national priority.

“A federal Royal Commission is essential to fully understand what has happened and ensure it never happens again.” Former Army chief accuses government of blocking Bondi enquiry

Scores of Australian business leaders call for Bondi Royal Commission in open letter

More than 100 Australian business leaders from across the country have called for a Commonwealth Royal Commission into the Bondi terror attack in a powerful open letter.

The written statement, signed by the scores of top business leaders, calls for a Commonwealth Royal Commission into antisemitism and the events leading up to the Bondi massacre.

The signatories include former Reserve Bank governors Philip Lowe and Glenn Stevens, and a wide range of current and former chairs and CEOs including Tennis Australia chairman Jane Hrdlica, Woolworths Group chairman Scott Perkins and GrainCorp's Alison Watkins.

In total, 138 businessmen and women have called for the royal commission into the “national crisis”, which they argue requires a “national response”.

Their letter adds to the growing chorus of voices – including Jewish leaders, politicians and Australia’s Human Rights Commissioner – who have called on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to establish a royal commission to investigate the tragedy.

The non-partisan statement noted the families of the victims of the Bondi terror attack have been joined by a “wide cross section of leaders” publicly campaigning for a royal commission.

“As business leaders and proud Australians committed to upholding our values of tolerance and mutual respect, we recognise the need for clear answers as to how the Bondi massacre could occur,” the open letter read.

“We must end the unprecedented harassment, intimidation and violence directed at the Australian Jewish community since October 7, 2023.

“This is a national crisis, which requires a national response.”

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01/01 Links Pt1: The downplaying of momentous events in Iran; The Most Important Moments for the IDF in 2025; The Organizations Israel Banned From Gaza Over Terror Infiltration

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The downplaying of momentous events in Iran

All week, Iranians have been mounting massive and widespread street protests. Triggered by ruinous increases in the cost of living and acute water shortages, they quickly became an insurrection against the Tehran regime, with protesters chanting for the return of the Shah.

These demonstrations have been far more consequential than previous such revolts. They started among the businessmen of the bazaars—the same kind of people who had helped depose the Shah and brought the Islamic revolutionary regime to power in 1979.

Even more remarkably, a number of bases for the fearsome Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Basij militia reportedly fell into the hands of protesters, with one Basij operative killed after demonstrators threw stones in Kuhdasht, a city in western Iran.

At time of writing, this insurrection is still escalating. Although at least four protesters have been killed, the feared bloodbath by security forces hasn’t yet materialized. Instead there have been unconfirmed reports that some have refused to fire on protesters, forcing the regime to call in Arab reinforcements; that other security forces have run away; and even that the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has fled Tehran.

Maybe this revolt will fizzle out under ferocious reprisals, as all previous ones have done. But maybe, this time it will succeed in toppling the regime; it’s the closest the people have ever come to doing so. If they succeed, this would have a seismic impact far beyond Iran. It would transform and reshape global politics immeasurably for the better by removing a malevolent force devoted to the annihilation of Israel, the destruction of America and the conquest of the West.

The protests are therefore of immense significance. Yet astonishingly, the West has been all but silent. There have been no demonstrations in its streets chanting “Free, free Iran!” or “Death, death to the IRGC!”

For most of the week, the mainstream media simply ignored these tumultuous developments. When some reports were finally cranked out, they were minimal and seriously downplayed what was happening.

The Trump administration and Israeli government have expressed support for the protesters. But from the governments of the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, which have consistently sniped at Israel over its battle to neutralize Iran’s genocidal agenda, there’s been a conspicuous silence.

One might think these governments would be desperate to see the back of the world’s most lethal terrorist regime. Israel has taken another step against it by recognizing the independence of Somaliland. This puts the Jewish state into a far better position to deal with the Houthis in Yemen, through whom Iran launders its war against Israel and the West.

Jonathan Tobin: Tehran's Dreams of Hegemony over the Middle East Are Gone

All over the globe, antisemitism is surging. Yet the meetings held in Florida this week between President Trump and other members of his administration with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu are a reason for optimism after the president expressed support for Netanyahu and aimed threats at Hamas and Iran.

The relationship between the two nations remains close and forward-thinking. During the last 12 months, the forces seeking Israel's destruction in the Middle East and elsewhere can definitively be described as the losers. Israel and the Jewish people remain stronger than at any other point in memory.

That's not the tone of most of the coverage of Israel and its ties with its ally. A constant drumbeat of stories has attempted to make the case that Trump and Netanyahu are on a certain collision course about the next steps with respect to conflicts in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iran. But for now, claims that the alliance is about to crack up are wrong.

There is no doubt that Hamas is far weaker now than when it started the war, with no immediate prospect of becoming as dangerous as it was back in October 2023. Iran has suffered defeat after defeat since its leaders set in motion a multifront war against the Jewish state. Israel's 12-day campaign against Iran in June - which the U.S. eventually joined - did enormous damage to its military, in addition to significantly setting back its nuclear program. The assumption that it is a threshold nuclear power no longer holds true.

Iran's Hizbullah auxiliaries in Lebanon suffered a humiliating and catastrophic defeat as a result of Israel's 2024 campaign, which also led to the collapse of the Bashar Assad regime in Syria. The hopes of hegemony over the Middle East that the Tehran government dreamed of are gone. So, too, is the land bridge to the Mediterranean composed of its allies in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon - with which they sought to encircle Israel.

Countless generations of Jews who endured persecution, hardships and even attempts at their genocide have only dreamed of a situation as positive for Jewish life as the one that exists today despite all the sorrow that contemporary Jewry has endured since Oct. 7. This should encourage us to have faith that Israel and the Jewish people will continue to live and thrive. That will require the continued heroism of the Israeli people, bolstered by diaspora Jewry, to have the courage to stand up for their rights and bear witness against hatred and bigotry, wherever it is to be found.

Is This the End for the Islamic Republic of Iran?

The current unrest in Iran is not merely another wave of dissent; it is a direct response to the most catastrophic economic crisis since the 1979 Revolution. By late December 2025, the Iranian rial effectively collapsed. The monthly minimum wage has plummeted to $100, placing Iranian workers at the bottom of the region, just above war-torn Yemen. For the average family, a middle-class standard of living now requires 600 million rials per month, four times the current minimum wage. 60% of the population now lives below the poverty line.

The regime is funneling billions into the IRGC and regional proxies like Hizbullah even as major cities suffer from rolling blackouts and a severe drought that has led to water rationing. The 12-day war with Israel in June drained the last of Iran's liquid reserves.

For the first time, analysts believe the regime is facing a structural failure that cannot be solved by a simple crackdown. Previous uprisings were met by a unified security elite; today, that elite is fracturing. Regular army soldiers, suffering from the same inflation as the civilians they are ordered to suppress, are increasingly showing signs of "passive resistance."

The question is no longer if the regime will face a reckoning, but how it will survive a winter where it can provide neither heat nor hope.

Iran Protests Are about Far More than Cost of Living

Many headlines are reducing what is unfolding in Iran to unrest triggered merely by a plunging currency. But such framing is not only incomplete, but dangerously misleading. The demonstrations now rippling through cities far beyond Tehran are the latest chapter in a decades-long struggle for dignity and freedom.

Yes, the economy is in crisis. But what we are witnessing is the culmination of 46 years of accumulated grievance. Iranians are protesting against a rotten system that has continued to fail them in every way.

They are protesting against the routine use of violence, arbitrary detention and lethal force against citizens who dare to dissent. They are protesting against the persecution of minorities, from Kurds and Baluchis to Baha'is and Lurs, who have borne the brunt of systematic discrimination. They are protesting against the daily war waged against women, whose bodies, hair and choices are policed as instruments of ideology.

They are protesting against corruption so entrenched that even formal resignations at the top, like that of the central bank governor this week, appears less like accountability and more like theater. They are protesting against environmental ruin and water bankruptcy, the result of mismanagement that has left once-fertile regions parched and unlivable.

The people of Iran deserve better than a regime that pours vast sums into foreign terrorist militias while its own citizens struggle to afford bread and medicine. This year alone, a billion dollars was sent to Hizbullah. The people of Iran are not asking to be rescued. They are demanding to be seen.

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12/31 Links Pt2: Resilient and vulnerable: Jewish world in 2025; 2025’s ‘Persons of the Year’: Israeli mothers; The impetus behind widespread protests in Iran

From Ian:

Resilient and vulnerable: Jewish world in 2025

Vulnerable. That’s the word that defines world Jewry as 2025 draws to a close.

In Israel, exuberance follows stunning military victories over Iran and Hezbollah, and the joyful rescue of hostages. The return to normal has reawakened the “anyone but Bibi” camp, hoping again to unseat the prime minister. Yet Israelis remain uneasy. Hamas still lurks, armed and dangerous, in parts of the Gaza Strip; Iran continues its ballistic-missile program with openly hostile intent; and Hezbollah struggles to rebuild.

Many worry about U.S. President Donald Trump’s impulsiveness and whether he might pressure Israel politically, even though, if he were to run for prime minister, he would likely win in a landslide, even against Netanyahu. Despite the optimism, Israel remains deeply traumatized by war. Life in Tel Aviv pulses at full speed again, but beneath the surface is a yearning for quiet—and for a more peaceful normalcy. Israelis dream of vacations now that low-cost airlines like Wizz Air promise to make Ben-Gurion International Airport a global hub.

For Jews in Australia, the “Lucky Country,” that historic sense of security has been shattered. From the arrival of eight Jewish convicts on the First Fleet in 1788, Jews in Australia felt relatively safe—until now. In the past two years, that security has turned to fear. The Australian government’s recognition of a so-called “Palestinian state” was seen by many as a reward to Hamas. Massive rallies filled Sydney’s iconic Harbor Bridge with chants of “Globalize the intifada” and calls to “Kill the Jews” while participants waved Hamas flags. Some officials even joined the protests, while few condemned them. Fueled by a virulently anti-Israel policy, antisemitism erupted—a synagogue firebombed in Melbourne, physical assaults and open threats to a Zionist community.

The horror peaked on Bondi Beach on the first night of Chanukah, when Islamic terrorists murdered 15 men, women and children. But rather than respond with the familiar platitudes—appeals to multiculturalism, tolerance or reminders of Jewish civic virtue—Australian Jewish leaders did something different. They spoke with pride and moral clarity, proclaiming that the Seven Noahide Laws—the universal Jewish values of justice, decency, belief in God and kindness—could enrich the broader Australian society.

Their courage inspired a vigil in Bondi on the last night of Chanukah with as many as 20,000 attendees, many of them non-Jews, broadcast live across the country by network TV instead of the regular prime-time fare. Criss Simms, premier of New South Wales, launched a campaign called “A Million Mitzvot,” declaring that “the rabbis of Sydney are so persuasive; let me tell you what a mitzvah means.” The governor general and other national leaders echoed the call. The Bondi attack is becoming a societal turning point as Australians begin to question whether importing radicals who seek to “globalize the intifada” threatens not only Jews but the very fabric of their nation.

Jews in Canada, the United Kingdom and Europe now ask whether Bondi is a preview of what’s to come. Many of their governments mirror Australia’s troubling tilt toward Hamas sympathies, leaving local Jewish communities uneasy. Jews in Hungary and Poland, however, feel secure under governments that have resisted unrestricted immigration and rising Islamic extremism. In Ukraine, the suffering continues amid an unwinnable, grinding war. Ironically, in Russia itself, despite President Vladimir Putin’s immoral war, Jewish life remains surprisingly protected and even prosperous.

In the United States, Jews also feel vulnerable, though less so than their Australian and European cousins. Still, new threats appear on both right and left. In New York, the incoming anti-Israel mayor, Zohran Mamdani, has prompted many to consider joining the growing exodus to Florida—the “Sunshine State” that now boasts thriving Jewish communities, lower taxes, affordable housing, education vouchers and an even more vibrant Jewish life.

Yet despite mounting pressures, Jewish life in America continues to flourish. American Jewry can take pride in its overwhelming support for Israel since Oct. 7, 2023—sending billions in aid, and filling Birthright and teen Israel trips during the conflict and after it subsided. A recent Jewish Federations of North America study revealed a “surge” in Jewish engagement, with Chabad serving as a primary gateway. According to the report, 82% of those active in Chabad strongly support Israel, compared with just 32% of Reform Jews who say they are Zionist.

2025’s ‘Persons of the Year’: Israeli mothers

In 1927, when editors worried there was nothing exciting to report Christmas week, Time magazine designated Charles Lindbergh, “Man of the Year.” In 1999, it expanded to “Person of the Year.” This year, it’s a group award – AI’s architects. Let’s start an Israeli tradition, honoring Israeli mothers as 2025’s Persons of the Year.

Admittedly, 2025 was tough. Israel’s multi-front wars persisted, despite a Gaza ceasefire. The country remained divided, with leaders left to right competing in their never-ending “who’s the most disappointing politician” contest. Approximately 200 soldiers died in Gaza. Iran’s evil missile strikes slaughtered 28 civilians.

Palestinian terrorists murdered over two-dozen Israelis, including last week’s under-reported Beit She’an ramming and stabbing.

Jew-hatred kept spiking, curdling haters’ souls, Left to Right, while menacing innocents worldwide. And sinister jihadist-generated lies about Israel, Zionism and the Jews, about genocide and starvation, polluted Western discourse.

True, I keep chronicling the many blue-and-white beams of light too. Israel triumphed militarily, humiliating Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran. Israel’s economy roared, as its food-tech, pharma, and AI breakthroughs helped humanity soar. Mocking the worries about Europeans, Canadians, and even some Americans betraying the Jewish state, most Arab neighbors demonstrated growing respect for Israel because it walloped the Islamists and Iranian exterminationists.

Ultimately, Israeli mothers deserve credit for each of these triumphs. Like all mothers, they give life, the most godly act any human can perform. As Israelis, they’ve raised generations of superlative citizens, protecting their country while bettering the world. And today’s epoch-making miracles blazed the way for Israeli mothers’ longer-lasting gift to the future: launching a post-October 7 baby boom, not even waiting for postwar calm.

Israel’s mothers leading the way
Israeli mothers have been crowding maternity wards for years. Israel has long led the OECD in procreating, this key to communal happiness reflecting social strength. That’s why by late November, 2023, 17,629 babies had already been born in the seven weeks since rampaging Palestinians slaughtered 1,200 innocents. By 2024, births jumped 10% over 2023. Israel’s fertility rate of 3.1 children per woman nearly doubled OECD’s 1.59 average.

Israel’s fecundity phenomenon continued in 2025. From Rosh Hashanah 2024 to this Rosh Hashanah, 179,000 babies were born. Israeli Jews’ fertility exceeded Muslims’ rate for the first time, as Israel’s population hit 10.1 million.

Beyond the statistics, Israeli mothers’ everyday poetry and superhuman courage perpetually inspire. Imagine the bravery many needed to fight back tears while sending their children into battle October 7 – and every day since. Or the mettle required to send your 18-year-old into the army, today, after October 7, when our enemies reminded us how brutal they are and how costly our fight to defend ourselves can be.

Or the moxie required to keep working – as 70% of Israeli moms do – with husbands serving hundreds of days in reserves, understandably straining their finances, their relationship, and their children. Or the strength involved in burying a husband, a child, a grandchild, or what it’s like to feel so lucky that your child or life-partner was “only” injured catastrophically, as you pursue some semblance of normalcy while helping your loved one heal and rehabilitate.

2025: The year in which antisemitism became an algorithm of hate

As the late historian Robert Wistrich warned, the key is not asking endlessly why antisemitism exists, but recognizing how it mutates. This year revealed its latest mutation: total normalization. “Genocide” and “war crimes” are now casual labels for Israel, deployed without evidence, stripped of meaning.

The market for hatred is vast. Islamists brand Jews as white supremacists. Parts of the left cast them as colonial fascists. The populist right monetizes resentment through podcasts and platforms.

Qatar amplifies it through Al Jazeera; Iran weaponizes it for Shi’ite supremacy; Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan mirrors it from the Sunni world. China and Russia know that anti-Israel fervor weakens the West—and even undermines U.S. President Donald Trump. A hollow pacifism finds its enemy in Israel alone, absolving Hamas and Hezbollah of responsibility.

The killers at Bondi and the Hamas financiers uncovered in Italy are not aberrations. They exist within our media ecosystems, our festivals, our institutions. They are applauded, excused and rewarded.

And yet—this is the essential difference from the past—there will be no new Shoah. The encirclement has been broken. Jews are strong. They are different. And, most importantly, they have Israel behind them.

That is the paradox of the past dark year: Antisemitism has become louder, cruder, more profitable—and at the same time less capable of finishing what it begins. The hope for a better and more peaceful year ahead lies precisely there.

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