06/17 Links Pt2: The Squeezing of Jewish Life in Britain; Israeli flag removed at World Cup match as Palestinian flags remain; Tel Aviv remains world’s fourth-largest startup ecosystem despite wartime pressures

From Ian:

It’s Not Biased if It’s Against Jews

To paraphrase Law & Order, in the American legal system, bias-motivated offenses are considered especially reprehensible. Punching someone is bad. Punching them for racist reasons is worse. So various laws, both criminal and civil, prescribe enhanced penalties in those situations. Sometimes the racism is unmistakable. At other times, it’s hidden behind code words or dog whistles—thugs, urban, globalists, etc.—or seemingly neutral markers like hair and dress. No matter; courts, prosecutors, and legislators have become quite adept at sniffing out crafty bigotry.

Yet the invocation of Zionism has, inexplicably, thrown them all for a loop. In the United States and across the globe, participants in purportedly anti-Zionist movements are committing crimes and civil offenses. Sometimes they harm Jews. Sometimes they harm non-Jews. But, in all cases, the people who commit these crimes—as well as their legions of defenders—argue that there is no bias. Any animus, they insist, is not antisemitic or anti-Jewish. It is anti-Zionist. Some of their best friends, these assailants are quick to add, are Jews.

As much as these claims have been dissected, debated and, regularly, debunked in a variety of settings, the courts are just beginning to weigh in. Will they treat the targeting of alleged “Zionists” as purely political—and thus not evidence of racial or religious bias? Or will they see it as integral to the racial and/or religious identity of American Jews?

Earlier this month, a federal district court judge in New York gave us a sneak peek at how the U.S. legal system might resolve what many see as yet another ham-fisted effort to work around long-standing civil rights laws. The results weren’t pretty. The court adopted a number of conclusions that, if accepted by other courts, would substantially weaken the civil rights of those harmed by anti-Zionist campaigns of harassment and violence. That’s bad news for Jews, their allies, and anyone else who happened to get in the anti-Zionists’ way.

If allowed to stand, the ruling could embolden more anti-Jewish agitators, effectively furnishing them with a virtual blueprint to harass without violating the KKK Act.

Mariano Torres and Lester Wilson, the men at the center of the New York case, got in the way. Neither Torres nor Wilson is Jewish. They are janitors employed by Columbia University. And like so many trying to go about their studies or jobs in Morningside Heights or around the country since Oct. 7, 2023, Torres and Wilson found their efforts impeded—and their lives imperiled—by those obsessed with Jews and Israel, the Jewish state.

On April 30, 2024, this obsession turned riotous. Masked militants, armed with hammers, knives, bolt cutters, chains, and zip ties, stormed Hamilton Hall and confronted the two working men. Torres and Wilson each refused to yield, which drew the ire of the rioters who then assaulted the janitors, detained them, sought to bribe them, and slurred them as “Jew lovers,” “Jew workers,” and “Zionists.” Eventually, according to their lawsuit, Torres fled, and Wilson was forced out of the building. The rioters, meanwhile, kept going. They seized the building, broke windows to chain the doors shut, barricaded themselves inside, and unfurled banners declaring an “intifada.”

Torres and Wilson later filed a civil rights lawsuit. With the help of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and the Torridon Law firm, the pair relied on the Civil Rights Act of 1871, also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, to argue that they were victimized by an anti-Jewish riot. A provision of that law prohibits people from conspiring to deprive “any person or class of persons of the equal protection of the laws.” To satisfy that equal protection component, plaintiffs must generally show that the conspiracy was motivated by “some racial or perhaps otherwise class-based, invidiously discriminatory animus.”

According to Torres and Wilson’s complaint, that’s precisely what occurred: The rioters, motivated by anti-Jewish animus, had conspired to deprive equal protection of the laws to people who are or are perceived to be Jews or supporters of Jews.

The clear focus of the lawsuit was illegal conduct, not speech. Torres and Wilson sought damages for alleged assault and battery during an illegal building occupation. They weren’t concerned with the rioters’ opinions on world affairs. They were concerned with the crowbars, rope, chains, and zip ties. They were concerned with their seizure of university property. They were concerned with being detained and threatened.

Torres and Wilson also happened to understand the nature of the riot because, allegedly, the rioters made it clear. Jews and those presumed to side with (or, gasp, love) Jews were the problem.

This is precisely the type of situation Congress anticipated when enacting the KKK Act—that is, the supercharging of ordinary crimes into far more socially corrosive hate crimes based on evidence of discriminatory animus. Yet the court twisted itself, the facts, and the law in knots, rendering an error-filled decision that had the effect of widening what we see as an emerging anti-Zionism exception to civil rights law. So long as you scream about Zionists and not Jews (or, as in this case, even if you interchangeably slur Zionists and Jews as you brandish knives and hammers), the courts will give you a hall pass.

Nearly a third of Canadians believe antisemitism has become more acceptable, survey finds

Nearly one-third of Canadians believe that antisemitism or anti-Jewish attitudes are becoming more acceptable in the country, according to a new poll.

The Leger survey, conducted on behalf of the Association for Canadian Studies, found that 31 per cent held that view, while the highest level of agreement was concentrated among university students (37 per cent), men (38 per cent) and Canadians between the ages of 18 and 34 (35 per cent). English speakers were more than twice (35 per cent) as likely to agree with the statement as opposed to just 16 per cent of Francophones.

Slightly over a fifth (22 per cent) of Canadians agreed that “Israel’s military actions in Gaza justify negative attitudes toward Jewish people in Canada,” as opposed to nearly half (49 per cent) of respondents who disagreed. Canadians aged 18 to 34 (26 per cent) and men (29 per cent) were most likely to agree with the statement.

“The findings suggest that condemnation alone has not been enough. While many leaders have denounced antisemitism since October 7, the survey shows that a significant minority of Canadians still believe that events in the Middle East justify negative attitudes toward Jewish Canadians,” Jack Jedwab, president of the Association for Canadian Studies, told National Post in a written statement.

Roughly one-sixth (17 per cent) of Canadians surveyed agreed that they have become more negative toward Jews since the October 7 terrorist attacks on Israel, while a majority (62 per cent) disagreed with the statement. Women (68 per cent), college students (66 per cent) and Canadians over 55 (69 per cent) were the most likely to disagree with the statement. Those born outside of Canada were more likely to agree (24 per cent) than respondents born in the country (16 per cent).

A similar split was seen on the question of whether “Jews in Canada are responsible for the actions of the Israeli government.” Nine per cent of all respondents and eight per cent of people born in Canada agreed, while nearly twice the number of respondents born outside of the country (15 per cent) agreed. Strong majorities of respondents born in Canada (73 per cent) and outside the country (62 per cent) disagreed with the statement.

“It suggests that public education should not only focus on people who hold openly antisemitic views, but also on the much larger group that may not recognize when criticism about Israel becomes rhetoric that targets Jews and that presents a threat to Jewish Canadians’ sense of safety and belonging,” Jedwab said.

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06/17 Links Pt1: Israel won the war, but the peace is being signed without it; Iran's deal must weaken, not strengthen, Hezbollah in Lebanon; IDF soldier killed, seven others wounded, by IED explosion in southern Lebanon

From Ian:

Did Iran Just Get the Better of Us?

Much of the language in this document is vague, so it is difficult to pin down what each country has actually agreed to, but the plainest meaning of the text indicates a lopsided deal. The United States has committed to immediately easing its economic pressure on Iran, and Iran has only promised to set in motion a process that should eventually open the Strait. The Islamic Republic—which is still attacking shipping in the Strait—can drag its feet, but the United States must leap to comply. Tehran can continue its campaign of international terrorism, rebuild its war machine, and perhaps even extort protection money from Gulf shipping while Washington stands pat.

The rest of the document is unlikely to come to fruition unless Trump also caves on Iran's enriched uranium. The MOU's "minimum methodology" would permit the mullahs to keep a slightly lower-grade blend, which might actually ease their path to a bomb if it enables them to excavate their material that was buried by American B-2s last summer. Iran would receive over $300 billion if it came to an arrangement about its nuclear program that satisfies Trump, but with the pressure off, there is little reason to believe that it will make any further concessions. And CIA director John Ratcliffe reportedly told Trump that his agency collected intelligence indicating Iran's leaders intend to play a double game with these negotiations.

Some commentators have noted, correctly, that there are few yardsticks by which to measure compliance, to say nothing of mechanisms to enforce deviations from the agreement. That is beside the point. Trump signed this document because he escalated the conflict as far as he was willing to go, did not get the results he wanted, and is now trying to put the conflict in the rearview mirror. There will be little enthusiasm in the White House to hold Iran to its obligations and risk provoking it further.

If Trump does not find a way to recover quickly, this MOU could mark the effective end of his presidency. The air campaign inflicted significant damage on Iran's military capabilities and nuclear program, which will buy some time. But the Gulf Arabs, who have been in the crosshairs for months, are unlikely to wait until Tehran has fully rearmed to cut a deal. And since Trump has agreed to restrain Israel, which reportedly was not even allowed to see the text, he cannot use his most capable ally to curb Iran. The ripple effects could extend far beyond the Middle East. The midterms are looking grim, the Iran campaign has split the president's party, congressional Republicans are openly expressing their impatience, and Trump is now in danger of presiding over a regional collapse.

Second-term presidents often run into similar challenges, and many turn to foreign policy, where they have the fewest domestic constraints on action. Trump has a flair for improvisation and is eager to build a lasting legacy, so he is likely to make the same pivot. But to turn the tide against America's fanatical enemies, he also needs to exhibit steadfastness and resolve.

JPost Editorial: Diplomacy is not enough: Iran's deal must weaken, not strengthen, Hezbollah in Lebanon

The new US-Iran framework risks doing the opposite. By placing Lebanon inside the Iran track, it effectively ties Hezbollah’s fate to Tehran’s leverage. Iranian officials and Hezbollah’s political allies are already treating Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon as part of the next stage of US-Iran negotiations.

That is precisely the danger: Israel’s northern border becomes another bargaining chip in a deal whose central parties are not the people who live under Hezbollah’s rockets.

This does not mean Israel should reject every diplomatic initiative. Israel needs the United States, needs working ties with neighboring countries, and should support any serious effort to turn Lebanon into a sovereign state capable of enforcing its own territory. If the Lebanese Armed Forces can genuinely replace Hezbollah south of the Litani, that is an Israeli interest.

But hope is not a security mechanism. A ceasefire that leaves Hezbollah armed, politically emboldened, and protected by Iranian patronage is not a solution; it is quietly purchased on credit, and the bill will come due in the North.

Northern residents have paid too much for temporary quiet. Since October 7, they have endured evacuations, rocket and drone fire, destroyed homes, collapsing local economies, and the humiliation of not knowing when their own state can safely tell them to return. This is not just a military problem – it is a civic failure.

For years, the state underinvested in the North, neglected emergency preparedness, and allowed border communities to live with insecurity that would be intolerable in the center of the country. The result is a slow hollowing-out of the Galilee.

People leave because they cannot build a future on a warning siren, businesses close because uncertainty is not a business model, and communities meant to embody national resilience become evidence of national neglect.

Israel cannot accept less than dismantling Hezbollah
This is not new, but today it receives a different kind of validation. When an international framework appears to prioritize regional calm over dismantling Hezbollah’s threat, residents hear the same old message: wait longer, trust more, accept less.

Israel cannot accept that.

A responsible Israeli position should be firm, not reckless. Any arrangement must include enforceable benchmarks for Hezbollah’s withdrawal and disarmament, a credible Lebanese or international mechanism on the ground, and explicit recognition that Israel retains the right to act against imminent threats. It must not allow Iran to trade Lebanon’s stability for nuclear concessions, or ask Israeli citizens to return home based on diplomatic language that Hezbollah has not implemented.

Israel should welcome diplomacy that makes the North safer – and resist diplomacy that merely makes that danger quieter.

The people of the North do not need another declaration; they need protection, reconstruction, accountability, and a border secure enough to come home to.

Phase Two Never Comes By Abe Greenwald

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What’s wrong with the MOU is pretty much everything. It seeks to protect Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon from Israel. The U.S. will withdraw military forces, lift its naval blockade, end sanctions on the regime, and unfreeze the regime’s frozen assets. The U.S. also pledges that Iran will get $300 billion “for reconstruction” “as part of a final deal within 60 days.” Iran is supposed to let vessels pass freely through the Strait of Hormuz once again and vows not to pursue a nuclear weapon. But any further discussion of Iranian nukes has been pushed off for another 60 days, and that’s the phase-two dead end.

If the regime refused to conduct detailed and credible negotiations about ending its nuclear program today, it’s certainly not going to feel more pressured to do so 60 days into its second life as the country that beat America.

Donald Trump didn’t need a war or an MOU to get the Iranians to pledge that they wouldn’t go nuclear. The regime has been saying for decades that it has no interest in pursuing nuclear weapons, with mullahs citing fatwas that supposedly proscribe nukes on Islamic grounds. The whole time, however, they’ve been enriching uranium to levels that are useful in achieving only one thing: making a nuclear explosive.

The regime will never abandon its nuclear quest and never stop lying about it. So once again, the Trump administration is expecting people to do things that they will never do. Hamas was happy to put off talk of disarming to a later date, and Iran is even happier to kick the nuclear can down the road. Both parties know they will never comply.

But the Iranian regime now enjoys an extra sense of security. Its leaders know that the U.S. is making a mad dash for the exits and plans never to look back. Trump says that he’ll bomb Iran again if it doesn’t comply with the agreement as outlined. The problem is that he’s taught Tehran to read such threats as signs of surrender. And Iran’s leaders are additionally aware that the U.S. has stood idly by and done nothing while the regime dug missiles out of cratered tunnels during the “cease-fire.” All parties’ intentions are now as clear as can be. The U.S. is heading out, and Iran is moving forward.

Trump also claims that if the deal goes bad, he’ll blame Vice President JD Vance, who’s taken the lead on it. But that’s not true. When the deal goes bad, Trump just won’t acknowledge it. It will be another, scarier open-ended phase one.

Jonathan Tobin: Who will stand with Israel against a new Iran deal?

There will be those who will blame this predicament on Netanyahu. His domestic opponents will claim that he depended too heavily on Trump’s friendship for Israel and that of the Republicans. And they will say he alienated Democrats.

This is both untrue and deeply unfair. Whatever one might say about Netanyahu when it comes to navigating the political landscape of his country’s sole superpower ally, the current alignment has little or nothing to do with his unpopularity in the United States or his judgment.

The drift by Democrats away from Israel is the result of the growing influence of toxic left-wing ideologies that falsely label it as a “white” oppressor state. Their willingness to accept and spread blood libels about Israel committing “genocide” in Gaza is not the product of Israeli behavior, but of the hijacking of the Democratic Party by antisemitic progressives. The prime minister had no chance of preserving a pro-Israel Democratic Party; the same would have been true of any Israeli leader.

That means that Israel and its friends are in a position where they have no choice but to rely on pro-Israel Republicans to preserve the alliance. That worked wonderfully so long as Trump was behaving—as he has done during the first five-and-a-half years of his two terms—as the most pro-Israel president since the founding of the modern Jewish state. But with Trump adopting a more equivocal stand in which he may be waving the white flag on Iran and bristling with resentment at Netanyahu’s refusal to stop defending his people, that leaves supporters of Israel isolated in the United States on this issue.

We must hope that it doesn’t come to that—and that Trump isn’t willing to go on deceiving himself and the American people about the dubious prospects for a policy that will preserve the despotic regime in Tehran and ensure that there will be more Middle East wars and bloodshed in the coming years.

But if he is determined to stand by his own Iran deal, it won’t just signal that the aggressive presidency of the past 17 months is about to become a lame-duck administration, even before the outcome of the midterm elections is known. It will also mean that Israel and its friends will largely stand alone when it comes to the debate about this latest appeasement of the Islamist regime of Iran that Trump has given a new lease on life.

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06/16 Links Pt2: How ‘Settler Violence’ Became a Tool for Sanctioning Jews; Foiled plot targeting AIPAC-affiliated politicians at WH UFC fight; Batya Ungar-Sargon: ‘It’s over for Jews in Europe’

From Ian:

Mark Goldfeder and Eugene Kontorovich: How ‘Settler Violence’ Became a Tool for Sanctioning Jews

The Biden administration’s play was designed to open the floodgates of European and other Western sanctions. In turn, the European sanctions, which are even worse, are themselves a dress rehearsal for what we can expect under a future Democratic administration in the United States.

One of the sanctioned organizations, Regavim—also a plaintiff in the Texas case—has been exposing the European Union’s role in promoting violations of the Oslo Accords by sponsoring the ongoing Palestinian land grab in Area C, the area left under full Israeli control by those agreements. Regavim’s research and whistleblowing activity, it turns out, is also considered settler violence.

Regavim’s work forensically documents how the “settler violence” sausage is made, thereby clarifying the function not only of leftist NGOs in Israel, but also of groups like Dawn MENA in the United States. The production cycle goes like this: A deceptive NGO report becomes a settled account, trumpeted by human-rights organizations that are themselves funded by the European Union. Reporters and international bodies cite the NGOs without independent corroboration. Policymakers cite the resulting consensus. The European states that funded the NGOs making the claims then impose sanctions accordingly. What passes for evidence is often nothing more than a chain of ideological citations. And when a handful of these stories were finally forced to address facts, the narrative fell apart.

Take the case of Amana, a company that has built tens of thousands of homes throughout Judea and Samaria for decades. The Biden administration made sure to sanction Amana on its way out, two weeks after it lost the election in November 2024. As justification, it cited Amana providing a loan to Manne, whom it had sanctioned in August of that year. Another justification was that “the settlers and farms that Amana supports play a key role in developing settlements in the West Bank, from which in turn settlers commit violence.”

Following the Biden administration’s lead, last month the European Union sanctioned Amana for “initiating, financing, and facilitating at least 30 violent outposts and settlements.” The word violent in that sentence is doing Herculean work. What makes an outpost “violent”? Amana pours concrete and lays roads. But under the definitions used by the United Nations, anything from exercising self-defense to an individual committing petty theft is classified as violence. This then allows the European Union to state with a straight face that Amana “facilitated violent outposts” without identifying a single act of violence that Amana directed, funded, or encouraged. This is not a legal standard. It is a word game.

Based on spurious accusations and bogus legal reasoning, the Biden administration, and now the European Union, turned the very idea of Jews living in the West Bank into a sanctionable offense and an inherent violation of Palestinian human rights.

Criminal and political violence—typically vandalism and property crime—directed at Palestinians by Israeli Jews (not necessarily settlers) in the West Bank does exist. It is both wrong and rare. Israel’s leaders and rabbis condemn it categorically, in contrast with the Palestinian Authority, which pays pensions to its terrorists. The clearance rate on such incidents is low, but that is also true of property crime in U.S. and European cities.

Our lawsuit alleged that while the sanctions were facially neutral—aimed at any perpetrators of violence in the West Bank—they were applied discriminatorily, exclusively targeting Jews. The settlement agreement states that the government will not “target private organizations and Israeli citizens living in the West Bank,” a hint that this is exactly what Democrats have done and want to do again.

Framing settler violence as a crisis worthy of global concern reinforces a narrative of predatory fundamentalist Jews dispossessing Palestinians. The low level of criminal activity by Jews in Judea and Samaria is a domestic Israeli law enforcement matter and should be treated as such. Thankfully, the Trump administration recognizes this. In the Justice Department’s settlement agreement, the government declares that it “categorically rejects any policy that would infringe upon Israel’s sovereignty.” Using such language to discuss measures relating to the West Bank is, in fact, a quiet but potentially significant policy change that should be celebrated.

A Mostly Violent Protest Movement

The indictments brought in the Eastern District of Michigan last week against eight 20-somethings deeply involved in anti-Israel protests at the University of Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus pull back the curtain on what that movement is really about.

Announcing the indictments, FBI director Kash Patel described a "campaign of violent, criminal acts" in which the Michigan eight engaged in a coordinated campaign of intimidation against university leaders—the president, the provost, the chief investment officer, members of the board of regents, and university police officers, plus "anyone they believed supported" the State of Israel—after the school shut down their illegal "solidarity encampment."

They threw noxious chemicals through the windows of victims’ homes, taped demand letters to their doors, defaced the Jewish Federation of Detroit on the one-year anniversary of Oct. 7, and spray-painted private homes with messages like "Intifada" and "Free Palestine."

Then they tried to intimidate a witness, identified in the indictment only as a University of Michigan student the defendants believed was cooperating with federal authorities. Defendants Paige Feyock, a Wellesley graduate and University of Michigan medical researcher, and Zainab Hakim, a 2024 University of Michigan graduate who was then hired by the university for a full-time job in the Center for South Asian Studies, hatched a plan to confront the witness. In mid-July 2024 Feyock aired her concerns about a "snitch" who was "going to send us to federal prison." In early August, she told her pals she and Hakim planned to get coffee with the witness: "ima strip search [him] ... to see if he is wearing a wire. not taking no chances with him." After the fact, she reported, the victim "knows not to talk."

The alleged criminality on display in Ann Arbor is hardly an isolated incident. At UCLA, so-called protesters set up a "Jew Exclusion Zone" barring Zionists from a portion of the campus. At Columbia, pampered rich kids stormed and occupied a university building and held two janitors hostage. At Harvard, a pair of graduate students accosted a fellow student walking across campus.

We’re picking up what they’re putting down. The nucleus of the "pro-Palestine" protest movement more closely resembles the violent left-wing movements of the past, from the Weather Underground to the Symbionese Liberation Army and Black Lives Matter, that have used terror, violence, and intimidation in an attempt to achieve their political aims.

The Weather Underground didn’t end U.S. imperialism. The SLA didn’t spark an uprising against capitalism. We are still living through the backlash to BLM and the George Floyd protests.

How will the "pro-Palestine" movement fare? The leading candidate for the Democratic Senate nomination in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, had one of the alleged thugs on his payroll and not a whole lot to say about the indictment except that he blames the Trump DOJ for selective prosecution. One of the Democratic Party’s nominees for University of Michigan regent is a Dearborn attorney, Amir Makled, who has represented anti-Israel protesters on campus and is more or less a proxy for the alleged criminals. The party chose Makled in favor of Jordan Acker, the pro-Israel regent whose law firm, home, and car were vandalized by the Michigan eight.

The predictable idiocy of Palestine Action

To put it as simply as possible for the benefit of some remarkably simple minds on the far left of politics, the British government cannot, under any circumstances, afford to be seen as weak on national security. And when a group proudly infiltrates a British military facility and broadcasts it to millions, then the government effectively has little option but to ban it, or else demonstrate its weakness for the entire world to see.

In some ways I believe the RAF incident was inevitable. If a direct action group continues to carry out similar sorts of attacks, but with no significant results, their alternatives are either to up the ante or to see members siphoned off to join groups which are prepared to go even further. To stay relevant in the hysterical arena of pro-Palestinian activism in the UK, Palestine Action had to become more extreme or see itself slide into irrelevance.

But in other ways the latest descriptions of Palestine Action mask the real story, the ever-shifting attempts to market it in a way best designed to grab public sympathy. I don’t believe that a single one of the high profile individuals damning the proscription decision, for example, has referred to the RAF base infiltration in their screeds condemning the ruling. One possible reason is because that designating this as a simple civil liberties fight is far more likely to gain wider public sympathy.

Such efforts have been constant; a moving of the goalposts dependent not on what is actually true, but what works best to score pity points. People may have forgotten, for example, that there were an awful lot of attempted defences of Palestine Action last year prior to its proscription that described it as a “non-violent organisation”.

It is hard to understand how such descriptions had arisen – the group itself never explicitly described itself as non-violent – and the only feasible conclusion is that the people claiming this really wanted it to be true and therefore simply decided to act as if it was true – something of a leitmotif in 21st century activism. Since then, of course, many of Palestine Action’s most doughty defenders have moved on to arguing that that the member who fractured a policewoman’s spine didn’t intend to do it, and that it wasn’t a bad fracture, really.

This fight is unlikely to be over. No doubt Ms Ammori will now try and take this to the Supreme Court, and if that fails, to the European Court of Human Rights. In the meantime, other groups mimicking Palestine Action techniques have begun to spring up – for example, one calling itself “People Against Genocide”, which features the red triangle of Hamas – a group specifically dedicated to genocide – on its banner.

It remains to be seen whether they will be as stupid – and arrogant – as Palestine Action proved itself to be.

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06/16 Links Pt1: The US has emboldened Iran and abandoned Israel; The Iranian People Are Forgotten; Trump Pushes Israeli Restraint on Hizbullah, Iran

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Cyrus no more

The shock and distress in Israel are palpable. President Donald Trump’s apparent volte-face on Iran is being felt as an abandonment.

Israelis are used to the indifference or hostility of American presidents. They managed to survive the malevolent manipulation of the Obama administration and the intimidation and threats of the Bidenites.

But in Trump, here was a president who brought about something no-one had thought would happen — the United States and Israel fighting side by side to defeat one of the greatest evils in the world.

On that terrible day of October 7 2023, when Israel was subjected to a barbaric invasion that exposed its weakness against a seven-front attempt by Iran to exterminate it with hundreds of thousands of missiles pointing straight at it, who would have thought that within a couple of years Iran and Hezbollah would be on their knees with their senior ranks taken out, their missile stocks radically depleted, Iran’s air defences obliterated and its nuclear weapons programme, which had been on the cusp of coming to murderous fruition, set back by years.

It was Trump, to his enduring credit, who made that possible. Accordingly, he was hailed as a new Cyrus, the 6th century BCE Persian king who freed the Jews from captivity and helped rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem.

Yet this week, the same Trump seemed to be pulling defeat from the jaws of victory. By signing an agreement with the very Iranian regime that he should have been continuing to destroy, he has instead thrown Tehran a lifeline; reduced America to a paper tiger; accordingly put a spring in the step of Russia, China and North Korea, as well as emboldening Islamists seeking to destroy the west — and having undermined Israel’s security, aggressively turned on Israel for presuming to defend itself.

The US not only excluded Israel from discussions leading up to the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) but also, while currently keeping its terms secret from the world, has refused even to show them to the Jewish state.

That’s Israel, America’s close ally and indispensable “unsinkable aircraft carrier;” Israel, which Iran is making every effort to wipe off the face of the earth; Israel, whose soldiers have been dying not just to save their own country but in defence of an America that refuses to put its own troops in danger but is all too happy for Israelis to die in defence of itself and the free world.

Contrary to much misreporting, the MOU is not a deal that ends the war. It’s rather a framework for negotiations during a 60-day ceasefire. In a blizzard of claims and counter-claims, we don’t know what its terms are. But what’s undeniable is that Trump has chosen this moment, when the Iranian regime was weakening by the day, to take his knee off its windpipe by lifting the US blockade of Iranian ships. Going into the 60-day negotiation, he has thus chosen to make Iran stronger and the US weaker.

The US has emboldened Iran and abandoned Israel

The Islamic Republic of Iran kills its own people and sponsors terrorism in Israel, Lebanon, Britain and far beyond. The world will be a better place when this brutish regime is destroyed. Unfortunately, the reckless US assault on Iran has made this prospect even less likely than it was – at least in the short to medium term.

From the start of the war to last weekend’s ‘memorandum of understanding’ with Iran, the White House has acted like a child who spies a hornets’ nest, pokes it with a big stick, kills a few of the creatures while stirring up many more, and then runs back home to leave others to deal with the ferocious after-effects. And the Islamic Republic is a thousand times more lethal than the biggest nest of hornets.

Whatever peace deal is eventually agreed between the US and Iran over the following weeks, Israel’s security is the biggest loser from what began as a joint US-Israel operation. Indeed, in recent weeks, the White House has gone silent on two of Israel’s key goals, which it originally backed: destroying Iran’s ballistic-missile capabilities, and severing Tehran’s support to its terrorist proxies in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Yemen. A third objective – disabling Iran’s nuclear capabilities – has been pushed into the future on the crazy assumption that the words of the Islamic Republic can be trusted.

Nearly six weeks of air assaults did weaken the theocracy in some military aspects, though far less than the White House hyperbole claims. But the Iranian regime has also been emboldened by the war. It has shown that it can defy the US, albeit at the expense of the struggling Iranians it rules over.

With the regime left in place, it will soon rearm and refinance itself, maybe even with the help of maritime transit fees from the Strait of Hormuz and some easing of sanctions. Moreover, President Trump’s portrayal of the Islamic Republic as people he can make a deal with has given it an international legitimacy that it previously lacked. And by accepting Tehran’s incorporation of the Lebanese conflict into any peace deal, the White House has bolstered Iran’s aim of being recognised as a regional Middle Eastern power.

It is important now to absorb the lessons of this US-led calamity because it is very unlikely to be the last such rash military venture – especially as the US struggles to manage its decline from its hegemonic, superpower status.

Trump Ended the War on His Terms, Leaving Israel with the Consequences

The understandings reached between the U.S. and Iran are not a historic agreement and certainly not a new nuclear deal. They are mainly an American attempt to stop a war that Trump no longer wanted. The president needed an exit. Now he is presenting it as a victory. But most of the difficult issues have not been resolved.

The nuclear program has not been dismantled. The fate of the enriched uranium remains disputed. Oversight is unclear. The 60-day negotiation window that is now supposed to open does not guarantee a breakthrough. It is more likely to become a mechanism for delay and buying time. Trump, having already declared success, will find it difficult to quickly return to a full-scale war. The more likely scenario is prolonged management of indecision.

Israel emerges from this campaign stronger militarily, but more constrained diplomatically. It proved its ability to strike Iran and operate alongside the U.S., but it also learned that Washington decides when to stop, what counts as victory, and how much Israel will be able to keep operating the day after.

Israel sought a decision. Trump sought a victory image. That gap erupted around the Israeli strike in Dahieh. From Israel's perspective, it was part of the ongoing campaign against Hizbullah. From Trump's perspective, it was almost an act of sabotage against his diplomatic move.

Regional states will not rush to conclude that Iran is out of the game. They saw that the U.S. knows how to apply tremendous military force, but is not built, politically or economically, to conduct a prolonged war until full victory over Iran. Many of them will return to maintaining channels with Tehran, understanding that, even after a severe blow, Iran remains a player that cannot be ignored.

Israel's main concern now is freedom of action. Any Israeli operation against Iranian facilities, senior officials or strategic assets could be seen in Washington as an attempt to torpedo the agreement Trump is presenting as a personal achievement. In Lebanon, Israel may retain greater room to maneuver. But any significant strike in Dahieh or against Hizbullah will be examined through one question: Does it endanger the understandings with Iran?

Elliott Abrams: The Iranian People Are Forgotten

The American agreement with Iran completely abandons the Iranian people. In December and January, Iranians took to the streets in huge numbers in 200 cities. The regime responded with mass murder, shooting unarmed demonstrators and killing between 7,000 and 35,000. On June 13, President Trump posted: "We look forward to working with Iran." When he announced the deal with Iran the next day, Trump said, "I never cared about regime change. This is the third group we've dealt with, and this is the most rational group yet."

This is a strategic error of the greatest importance. It's obvious to Iranians, and should be to us, that the Islamic Republic is unreformable. Iran's rulers are the people who murdered thousands of their fellow citizens in cold blood a few months ago and more recently struck at economic and civilian targets of all their Gulf Arab neighbors as well as Israel.

The only long-run solution to Iran's aggression and repression is popular sovereignty. The new agreement will not change the Middle East because the Islamic Republic will always remain at the heart of the region's violence and instability. Its ruling elites have shown again and again that "Death to America" and "Death to Israel" are central pillars of their belief system.

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06/15 Links Pt2: Coleman Hughes vs. Peter Beinart; Boy George: ‘I would never turn my back on my Jewish friends’; Post-Platner Democrats must ask: ‘Are we the baddies?’

From Ian:

David Collier: From anti-Zionism to Antizionism

One of the most disturbing political developments in the modern West is watching self-described progressive universalists adopt one of the most aggressive nationalist movements on the planet while failing to recognise it as nationalism at all.

That contradiction is the beating heart of antizionism.

Antizionism presents itself as opposition to nationalism while marching beneath a national flag. It speaks the language of universal human rights while denying Jews the very national rights it demands for others. And because the movement refuses to recognise itself for what it is, it increasingly treats opposition not as disagreement, but as complicity with evil.

Spurred on by Islamist rhetoric, fed by decades of Soviet-era propaganda, and radicalised inside social media echo chambers, modern antizionism draws much of its energy from antisemitism – a prejudice far older than the State of Israel itself.

And that is what makes the movement so dangerous: The moral certainty with which it carries itself. The belief that any action, slogan, intimidation, or even violence can become justified once directed against the world’s designated evil: Israel.

And the most unsettling part of all?

They believe they are the good guys.

Stop using the hyphen. Antizionism is a modern hate movement.

Boy George: ‘I would never turn my back on my Jewish friends’

Pop icon Boy George says he would “never turn his back on his Jewish friends”, despite being targeted by pro-Palestinian activists.

The colourful singer who achieved worldwide fame in the 80s with his group Culture Club, lived in Golders Green during the 90s and was in the area on the day on the day two Jewish men were stabbed.

He was interviewed ahead of a charity auction which will see some his most outrageous clothing sold to raise funds for struggling musicians.

George, 65, whose biggest hits include Do You Really Want to Hurt Me and Karma Chameleon, has incorporated the Star of David into some of his clothes.

He said: “Over the years it’s been a really personal thing. It doesn’t mean that I don’t have compassion for Palestinians, it doesn’t mean that I agree with what’s going on in Israel, but I am always going to defend the people that I love.

He added: “I have a lot of Jewish friends and there would never be a situation where I’d turn my back on them.”

He also spoke about Culture Club’s Jewish drummer Jon Moss, and his great friend, club promoter Phillip Sallon.

George told The Sunday Telegraph: “Jon Moss was one of the great loves of my life. He’s Jewish, and I remember when I met Philip Sallon [known as the ‘King of Clubs’ in the 80s] he said: ‘I’m a Jew, I’m a homosexual and I’m f--king proud of it.’”

The auction will feature some of his hats from British milliners Stephen Jones and Philip Treacy, and the striking Hasidic Samet hats that he’s worn throughout his life.

He says he's always worn the hats as a subliminal symbol of support and one coming under the hammer is a felt black hat, given to him by Moss.

In May he hit the headlines after appearing on Patrick Kielty’s Irish talk show.

Having been in Golders Green on the day of the attack, which saw two Jewish men allegedly stabbed by a Somali-born British national, he expressed his support for the Jewish community.

In response, Kielty referenced “the backdrop of that obviously is the horrors of Gaza and this is a complex thing”.

It led to a fierce backlash online, with the charity Holocaust Awareness Ireland condemning the Kielty's response because the show airs on the Irish state broadcaster.

George, who appeared in Eurovision singing alongside San Marino’s entry, was also singled out by pro-Palestinian activists who criticised him for participating, as well as for his statements supporting Israel’s continued participation in the contest.

Brendan O'Neill: How synagogues became fair game for the Israelophobic mob

In fact, the political class helped to whip up the anti-Zionist mob. The day before the Edgware event, London mayor Sadiq Khan tweeted: ‘I condemn any attempt to sell property in the settlements in the West Bank, be that in London or anywhere else in the world.’ Again, the organisers firmly deny that West Bank property was on sale. The mayor’s comment came off like incitement of the mob. He was making it clear that he, too, was morally repulsed by what was due to unfold in Edgware, effectively giving a green light to every wanker who wanted to rage about it. Let’s see if he now tweets: ‘I condemn anyone who tells London’s Jews to “watch their backs”.’ I won’t hold my breath.

There’s one thing the synagogue mob didn’t reckon with – the determination of Edgware’s Jews to defend their place of worship. Huge numbers of Jews and their friends gathered to tell the keffiyeh bigots that ‘They shall not pass’. It was like a mini-Cable Street, only this time ‘the left’ was firmly on the other side – not the side of Jews who only want to live free of harassment, but the side of that twisted Islamo-left nexus that has made a bloodsport of taunting ‘Zionists’. The Jews danced and sang and waved the Israeli flag and the Union flag: a display of genuine anti-fascism against the fake anti-fascists of the Jew-state haters.

The magnitude of these events cannot be overstated. The unthinkable is not just thinkable now – it is doable. In vile mimicry of those 1930s mobs that swarmed synagogues and boycotted Jewish goods, now ‘the righteous’ scream about Zionism at the doors of synagogues and boycott Jewish State goods. In Manhattan, keffiyeh gangs raged outside the Park East Synagogue, also on the pretext that it was hosting an Israeli real estate event. A Jewish girl had her hair violently yanked by a masked bigot. Placards featuring Jeffrey Epstein said: ‘Free America from Isra-hell.’ The synagogue mobs of the 1930s likewise looked upon the Jews as a paedophilic race from which Germany should be ‘freed’. There have also been synagogue protests in New Jersey, LA, Canada and France.

At the New Jersey protest, Jews were called ‘Zionist pigs’ and ‘baby killers’. At the Paris protest, hundreds of Jews were trapped inside their synagogue as stones rained down on the building. And now in Edgware, Jews are told by a frothing mob to ‘watch their backs’. Can we be real? These are not protests – they’re practice pogroms. We are witnessing the sinister resuscitation of the medieval belief that Jews are pigs who kill children and thus their ‘Synagogues of Satan’ are fair game for mob fury. Not content with making life harder for Jews in the West, now the keffiyeh army tells them they are forbidden from escaping to Israel. So where can they go? Don’t answer that.

It is a testament to the battering our civilisational values have taken since 7 October that 1930s-style mobbings have returned and no one in power seems to give a damn. Good on the Jews who stood up to the keffiyeh bigots in Edgware – next time I want to see many more non-Jews standing with them.

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06/15 Links Pt1: Trump’s ‘peace deal’ leaves all the big questions unanswered; Netanyahu: Iran will not have nukes ‘with or without an agreement’

From Ian:

Trump’s ‘peace deal’ leaves all the big questions unanswered

There is as yet no clear answer to any of the key questions that prompted the original military action. No solution to the Islamic Republic’s nuclear plans, its backing of proxy armies, its brutal oppression of the Iranian people, or even its control of the Strait of Hormuz. Indeed, no answer to the problem of the Islamic Republic itself, the Islamist source of so much instability in the Middle East and increasingly beyond.

Replete with potential for seeming concessions and fudges, this ceasefire does not appear to be a victory for the US. It looks and feels like a testament to the Trump administration’s desperate desire to end the war – which the vast majority of Americans now oppose – regardless of the cost to itself and to its chief regional ally, Israel.

Indeed, one of the main casualties of this conflict has been the White House’s relationship with Israel. Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu entered into this war in seeming lockstep in their opposition to the Iranian regime. But the two allies’ geopolitical interests have since diverged. Finding himself under increasing domestic pressure due in part to rising energy costs, Trump has zeroed in on reopening the Strait of Hormuz and therefore making peace with Iran. The Israeli state, meanwhile, has rather more existential concerns and has continued to focus on destroying Iran’s proxy armies, especially Hezbollah in Lebanon. It is understandably rather less interested in making peace with a regime that remains constitutionally hellbent on its destruction.

With Israel’s ongoing war with Iran’s proxies frequently intruding on negotiations between the US and Iran, Trump has even started publicly criticising Netanyahu – a tension that Iran, Hezbollah and the rest have frequently played on. That’s why Hezbollah continues to fire rockets into northern Israel when US-Iran peace negotiations appear to be reaching sensitive points. As Jake Wallis Simons has observed, it’s designed to elicit a response from Israel and further drive a wedge between the two allies. Just last week, Trump called Netanyahu a ‘difficult guy’ who has ‘no fucking judgment’.

So we now have a situation in which negotiations to end the joint US-Israeli war with Iran seem to have sidelined Israel almost entirely. And no wonder. There is little about the mooted deal that Israel would deem worth supporting. Not least the demand that Israel cease operations against Iranian proxies – something that, according to Haaretz, the Israel Defence Forces will not do. The Times of Israel put the matter succinctly a couple of weeks ago:
‘The Iranian regime still exists. It still possesses much of its ballistic missile arsenal and its stockpile of enriched uranium. And it also controls the Strait of Hormuz.’

From Israel’s perspective, the Islamic Republic, armed with the Strait of Hormuz, looks more threatening now than it did a few months ago.

None of this is to suggest that the Islamic Republic, already an economic horror show, is emerging from this conflict unscathed. The military assault of the past few months has devastated Iranian sea and air power, and has wiped out a whole stratum of leadership, including the Ayatollah Khamenei himself. Nevertheless, it has survived in the face of the Great Satan, and that is more than enough for it to feel emboldened.

In the next couple of months, the US and Iran may well reach an agreement that both the White House and Tehran can dress up as a victory. But for as long as the Islamic Republic and its proxies menace what they deride as ‘the Zionist entity’, peace in the Middle East will remain as elusive as ever.

JPost Editorial: Israel cannot applaud an Iran deal that leaves key threats intact

A ceasefire is valuable if it locks in Iranian defeat. It is dangerous if it locks in Iranian survival.

The reported 60-day negotiation period is the most troubling part. Sixty days sounds orderly in Washington. In the Middle East, it is enough time for Iran to move assets, rebuild confidence, reframe the war at home, and test how badly the US wants quiet. Tehran knows how to use delay. Hezbollah knows how to use delay. Israel has paid for those delays before.

Lebanon may be the immediate danger. Any arrangement that restrains Israel while leaving Hezbollah in place is unacceptable. Northern Israel cannot be secured by language in a US-Iran memorandum. Kiryat Shmona, Metula, and the Galilee need Hezbollah to be moved, disarmed, and deterred.

Trump deserves credit for understanding Iran’s danger better than many Western leaders. He left the Obama deal. He imposed pressure. He backed Israel at critical moments.

That record makes this moment more serious. Trump should not attach his name to a weaker version of the mistake he once condemned.

If this agreement removes Iran’s nuclear threat, cuts off its proxies, protects Israel’s freedom of action, and gives the regime no path back to strength, the administration should publish the details and defend them.

If it does less than that, Israel should not applaud.

Neither should Congress.

Andrew Fox: Anatomy of a debacle

This piece has been weeks in the writing, awaiting a conclusion. Now we have it, this long article is an autopsy of the calamity we have watched unfold for the last few months. As with all my writing on the Iran War, I will keep this free. All I ask is that you share and subscribe if you do not already.

Yesterday, Trump announced the deal he had spent weeks insisting he did not need.

The White House has called it a peace deal. At this stage, it is a memorandum of understanding, scheduled for formal signature in Switzerland on Friday. The text remains opaque: we do not yet know the final terms. However, the outline is clear enough to grasp the political meaning. Washington appears to have bought time. Hormuz is to reopen. The naval blockade is to be lifted. Iran receives some combination of oil waivers, asset releases, sanctions relief, or economic breathing space. The nuclear file moves into a 60-day negotiating window. Trump gets a ceasefire and lower oil prices. Tehran gets survival, liquidity, and time.

That is the endpoint of the debacle, at least for now. A war launched with maximalist assumptions has reached an interim understanding that leaves the regime in place, Hezbollah in the field, Iran’s missile architecture as the central fact of regional security, and the nuclear question in the long grass. What forced Washington’s hand was the oil clock. Emergency reserves, rerouting schemes, naval workarounds, tanker insurance, Asian demand destruction, and political patience were all running down at once. Trump rushed to a deal because the alternative was a global oil shock that would hit American gas stations just in time for the domestic political season.

The war was supposed to show that American and Israeli power could reorder the region. Instead, it showed how quickly tactical dominance can become strategic dependence. Washington could destroy targets inside Iran, but it could not force Tehran to surrender its political position. It could not open the Strait of Hormuz by military means at an acceptable cost. It could not push Saudi Arabia into war. It could not impose normalisation with Israel on the Gulf states. It could not get Europe to join the campaign. It could not convince China to pull away from Iran. It could not stop Gulf states from privately seeking understandings with Tehran to keep themselves off Iran’s target list. It could not protect allies from cheaper Iranian missiles without burning through expensive Western interceptors at a rate that made every other theatre nervous.

The global image of American power has been significantly diminished. The United States remains capable of extraordinary destruction. The war has made something else equally clear: destruction is not the same thing as control. The limits of American hard power have been brutally exposed.

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06/14 Links: Trump says peace deal with Iran completed; The Case Against Another Iran Deal; Operation Rising Lion: One year later; Somaliland president on first visit to Israel

From Ian:

We Are Told that Israel Has Lost the World

Since Oct. 7, we are told that Israel has lost the world. It has squandered international goodwill. It has alienated its allies. It has isolated itself through its conduct in Gaza. Israel was attacked in the most brutal massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, responded by fighting a just war against the organization that carried out that massacre, and somehow emerged as the primary culprit in the eyes of much of the international community.

There is only one problem with this theory. It assumes Israel enjoyed remarkable support before Oct. 7. When exactly was this golden age? Was it when student groups were calling for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against the Jewish state? Was it when anti-Israel activism became a permanent feature of university life? Or was it at the UN, where Israel has long occupied a unique category of international obsession?

From 2015 through 2024, the UN General Assembly adopted more than twice as many resolutions against Israel as it did against all other countries combined. At the UN Human Rights Council, democratic Israel has routinely attracted more condemnation than regimes run by dictators, warlords, and revolutionary clerics. Apparently, the world's most pressing human rights crisis is not Syria, Iran, North Korea, or Russia.

We are told Gaza transformed Israel into an international outcast. Curiously, many international institutions seem to have reached that conclusion years before Gaza. The idea that Oct. 7 destroyed decades of goodwill would be more persuasive if anyone could point to the decades of goodwill.

Before Israeli forces had entered Gaza in significant numbers, before casualty figures dominated headlines, before military operations had fully unfolded, many people had already decided who the villain was. A remarkable amount of outrage appeared before Israel had done much of anything in Gaza at all. Israel is subjected to demands rarely made of any other country. It is expected to defeat enemies without defeating them and eliminate threats without using force.

If support disappears the moment it is tested, was it ever support at all? An ally who vanishes during a war was never much of an ally. And support that exists only during periods of calm is not support in any meaningful sense of the word.

The Case Against Another Iran Deal

Iran has treated international commitments as instruments of convenience, complying when under acute pressure and accelerating forbidden activities when that pressure eases. Verification has always been the Achilles' heel. Iran's territory, history of undeclared facilities, and demonstrated ability to delay or obstruct inspectors make robust, real-time monitoring extraordinarily difficult.

Even the 2015 JCPOA's relatively intrusive provisions proved insufficient once political will in key capitals wavered. Enforcement mechanisms, whether snapback sanctions or military consequences, have depended on sustained U.S. and allied commitment - something that has proven elusive across administrations.

Military pressure alone has not transformed the regime's ideology or behavior. The Islamic Republic's core opposition to U.S. influence and support for regional proxies has survived leadership losses and battlefield setbacks. Long-term strategy against Iran has repeatedly foundered on domestic political shifts.

Iran's leadership has learned to play for time, calculating that U.S. policy coherence rarely survives a single presidential term. Any agreement that depends on consistent enforcement across future administrations asks for something the American political system has not delivered on Iran policy in decades.

The current posture - sustained but episodic pressure combined with openness to a possible new deal - assumes that a verifiable and enforceable agreement is achievable with a leadership whose ideology prioritizes resistance and whose external patrons have incentives to help it evade constraints.

A decisive and overt regime change campaign represents the alternative that confronts these realities directly. It does not rely on persuading Iran's current leadership to abandon core strategic assets or on maintaining perfect verification against a determined cheater. Instead, it targets the source of the problem. We must weigh the risks of action against the mounting, compounding perils of inaction.

Jake Wallis Simons: The Iranian ayatollahs don’t want a deal. They want apocalypse

Over the past few days, Iran has shot down an American helicopter, attacked Kuwait's international airport, menaced Hormuz with drones, and launched missiles at Israel. This is not the behavior of an adversary that is desperate for peace.

Meanwhile, Iran has been secretly sealing off its subterranean cache of highly enriched uranium. This will make securing the material, America's main objective, immeasurably more difficult, even if an agreement is signed.

The regime has always had the same beliefs. Apocalyptic war against the West will cause a Messianic figure to emerge from invisibility and lead the Shia faithful to global domination in the endtimes. That remains its reality. You can't do a deal with that.

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06/13 Links: Any deal with Tehran is a deadly farce; Mike Pence: The Case for Israel; Why Israel should close every UN office in the country

From Ian:

Mike Pence: The Case for Israel

As anti-Israel and even antisemitic sentiment has taken hold on the progressive left, many right-wing populists have become isolationists who criticize U.S. support for Israel and even indulge in age-old conspiracies grounded in antisemitism. Chief among those voices is Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host who was fired following the $787 million settlement of a defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems following the 2020 election. Carlson has condemned U.S. support for Israel and in 2024 he platformed a Holocaust denier who called Winston Churchill the "chief villain of the Second World War." During an interview with the avowed antisemite Nick Fuentes on his show in 2025, Carlson actually denounced American conservatives who support Israel, saying that Christian Zionism is a "heresy" and that non-Jewish Republicans who support Israel are "seized by this brain virus."

He and other populists have also questioned U.S. military support for Israel. Carlson even predicted that Trump's strike on Iranian nuclear facilities would "end his presidency." His fellow right-wing populist, podcaster Steve Bannon, warned that a U.S. strike on Iran would start "the Third World War." The result was quite the opposite: Israel and America demonstrated strength and won the peace. Trump's decision to bomb was a bold move that made the world safer and eased tensions throughout the Middle East. It diminished Iran's ability to threaten its neighbors. The action even helped secure the release of Israelis whom Hamas had held hostage for two years. Carlson and Bannon were wrong and allowed their anti-Israel and isolationist views to cloud their judgment. Fortunately, in that instance, Trump ignored them. Conservatives should recognize open hostility to U.S. support for Israel for what it is and reject these voices in shaping our movement or our party.

In addition to rejecting anti-Israel sentiment, conservatives must reject antisemitism of any form in our nation. Sadly, many right-wing populists are not simply wrong about geopolitics. Many also traffic in antisemitism. Fringe figures such as Fuentes and Candace Owens have attracted followings for their podcasts and social media posts by spewing filth. These and other so-called influencers on the right deliver diatribes full of hateful dog whistles, spin conspiracy theories about Jewish influence, and interview guests who question the reality and enormity of the Holocaust. They often hide behind the claim that they are merely "asking questions." They are in fact utterly incurious, always seeming to know in advance the answers they want to hear and amplify. Just as National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr. expelled antisemites from the conservative movement in the 1960s, today's conservatives must reject the new voices of antisemitism today. There is no room in the conservative movement for opponents of U.S. support for Israel, and there is no place in America for antisemitic rhetoric and bigotry.

The United States must remain engaged with Israel and never compromise its safety and security. Radical Islamic terrorism knows no borders as it targets America, Israel, and other nations. It respects no creed as it steals the lives of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. And it understands no reality other than brute force.

America must continue to provide Israel with the means to defend itself and its people. Peace in the Middle East begins with Israeli strength. When Israel is strong, old enemies can start over and become partners. Familiar foes can find new ground for cooperation. And the descendants of Isaac and Ishmael can come together as never before. While at times it may be hard to see, Jews and Muslims have more that unites them than divides them—not only in common threats, but in the common hope for a future of prosperity and peace, and in the common ancestry of a monotheistic belief that runs throughout these lands. Through engagement with Israel and its neighbors, the United States must seek to restore the rich splendor of religious diversity across the Middle East, so that all faiths may once again flourish in the lands where they were born.

Nearly four thousand years ago, a man left his home in Ur of the Chaldeans and traveled to Israel. He ruled no empire, wore no crown, commanded no army, performed no miracles, and delivered no prophecies. Yet to him was promised "descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky." Today, Jews, Christians, and Muslims—more than half the population of the earth, and nearly all the people of the Middle East—claim Abraham as their forefather in faith. In the Old City of Jerusalem, we see the followers of these three great religions living out their beliefs. At the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Christian children receive the gift of grace, in baptism. At the Western Wall, Jewish boys celebrate their bar mitzvahs. And at the Haram al-Sharif, young Muslims bow their heads in prayer. All who hope for freedom and a brighter future should cast their eyes to Jerusalem and marvel at what they behold.

Throughout the history of our nation, generations of Americans have claimed God's promise in Genesis to the people of Israel and all who cherish her: "I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse." For the sake of our cherished ally and the future blessing of the United States, if the world knows nothing else, let the world know this: America stands with Israel.

Christian leaders hold emergency summit in Jerusalem to confront global rise in antisemitism

The International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ) convened an emergency summit this week amid growing concern over the global rise in antisemitism following the Hamas-led Oct. 7 massacre in 2023.

The three-day conference in the Israeli capital comes at a time when social media influencers are consistently pushing antisemitic hate to their millions of followers.

"Attacking the Jews means attacking the very roots of one’s own faith. It means fighting against the people who gave us the Bible. Jesus was Jewish," ICEJ President Jürgen Bühler told Fox News Digital.

"If you don’t fight antisemitism, you are sawing off the branch you sit on. For the church to survive, we need to connect to our roots, (and) fighting antisemitism needs to be at the forefront of every pastor and every leader around the world," he added.

One of the central themes of the conference is replacement theology, a doctrine that holds the church has replaced the Jewish people in God’s plan.

"The Bible is full of God’s eternal plan, which includes the Jewish people. Paul’s statement in Romans 11 that ‘the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable' relates to Israel. This is a doctrine that goes contrary to what the New and Old Testament are teaching and that’s why we need to have this conference," Bühler said.

"One cannot deny the Jewishness of the Bible. The most frequent word in the Bible is the name of God, and the second most used name is Israel. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, he died in Jerusalem, resurrected in Jerusalem, rose to heaven from Jerusalem, and he is coming back to Jerusalem. If you read the Bible, it is so easy to see the connection to Israel," he added.

Israel’s newly appointed special envoy to the Christian world, George Deek, addressed the meeting on Wednesday, while Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee are scheduled to attend the summit’s closing event Thursday at the foreign ministry as keynote speakers.

In a recorded message broadcast at the summit, Israeli President Isaac Herzog thanked Christian leaders for mobilizing against antisemitism.

"We are witnessing a very disturbing surge of antisemitism all over the world. This is a major challenge for humanity. This is the age-old, perhaps the oldest plague in humanity, and we have to stand up together — thought leaders and religious leaders — and say, ‘No more' and teach people about the sources of this evil and how to counter antisemitism," Herzog said.

"I believe that countering antisemitism requires a combination of three major elements: law enforcement, adjudication and education.

"You, dear leaders, have a huge capability of fighting back, and I bless you. Truly, I bless you as the president of Israel for coming here and fighting back, for coming here and discussing how to fight back," Herzog concluded.

Zionism as Decolonization — How I Went From Anti-Zionist to Zionist

As a former anti-zionist, I often get asked what changed my views on this very heavy, complex, and emotive subject.

Ironically, it was the same question that got me out of anti-zionism that got me into it — what relationship do Jews have to the land?

The lens through which we view this question colours the entire conflict — the history, events, and dynamics involved, what they are, and to what extent they are moral or immoral.

For a number of years, I opposed the existence of Israel and everything to do with it. A matter of principle. Like most other anti-zionists, it was seemingly obvious that Jews are foreign to the land, that they are just white settler-colonizers from Europe who were using the Jewish religion as a racist excuse to steal the land of a vulnerable brown indigenous population. Anyone with a moral conscience would be opposed, no?

Because of this pretext, this mindset presupposes that everything else Israel does must therefore be in service of settler-colonialism. Hence why it launches attacks on Palestinians, displaces civilians, puts up walls, checkpoints, and blockades, bans DNA tests, builds settlements, and the like. Israel must be committing apartheid. Israel must be committing genocide. Everything Israel does (exist, defend itself, maintain national security) is unjustifiable, because the premise of Israel is unjustifiable. And conversely, everything the Palestinians do is justifiable, because they are innocent native people resisting the evils of colonization. The Jews are foreigners who took the land from the natives, just like here in North America, right? Right!?

Wrong. As someone with an academic background in Anthropology and Indigenous studies, who also spent many years as a decolonial advocate focused on indigenous rights, I was inclined to agree. However, when I started seeing the argumentation for Jews being Indigenous (from Ryan Bellerose, Rudy Rochman, Thomas Gallezot, StandWithUS, among others), I was skeptical yet curious, and sought to investigate further. If my beliefs were true, they would hold up to scrutiny, I thought.

Upon actually reading about Jewish history, linguistics, archaeology, and genetics, and also Arab history, and the history of the conflict, it turns out, my opinions were very much rooted in ignorance. Everything clicked into place and my worldviews came crashing down (although accepting it was a gradual process).

Jews are not just white people with a Jewish religion, they are a displaced Levantine people. Arabs are not just innocent natives, they are the descendants of Caliphates that colonized the entire MENA region. Israel is not acting in service of settler-colonialism, it is acting in service of decolonization. There was so much more that I was never told, and so never considered. I was lied to.

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06/12 Links Pt2: Civilization and Barbarism in the Biblical Heartland; Melanie Phillips; Islam and Jihad in the UK; Four Palestine Action activists jailed for Elbit factory raid

From Ian:

Josh Hammer: Civilization and Barbarism in the Biblical Heartland

I’ve just returned from my seventh trip to Israel. I spent a good amount of time in Judea and Samaria. I visited some of the major Jewish “settlements”—tendentious nomenclature aside, better thought of simply as flourishing suburbs—such as Ariel and Efrat. I visited a brand-new hilltop settlement outside Efrat, called Eitam, where the founder offered a tour of the local Herodian ruins and explained why he first pitched a tent without so much as electricity or running water. Further out in the Judean Desert, at the stunning Arugot Farm, the founders quoted biblical passages that harmonized their project with the vision of the prophets. The Israeli government is not advertising the extension of sovereignty on a mass scale, but there is a lot of new building happening on a micro level on the ground.

In a sensible world, this would be celebrated. But it’s not. Humorously, in virtually every other geopolitical hot spot, it is the Chinese- and Russian-funded anti-civilizational Left that clamors for “indigenous rights” at every opportunity. Yet in Judea and Samaria, the leftist Soros/NGO script flips on its head entirely. The actual indigenous population, acting in furtherance of the miraculous fulfilment of the biblical prophecy of the ingathering of the exiles, is instead deemed cruel, oppressive, “colonialist,” or even “genocidal.” Curious, that. Even worse: In our morally confused and biblically illiterate age, far too many on the “Right” accept the prevailing narrative and clap along.

Even holding aside the terror-supporting, Hamas-loving nature (as confirmed by myriad polling) of the radicalized local Arab population, it is difficult to describe the extraordinary impracticability of any kind of divided political resolution to the question of Judea and Samaria. The Western mind often thinks of the “settlements” as comprising a few gruff hilltop cranks—and some surely do exist. But there are now well over a half-million Jews living in the biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria—from the tony suburbs of Gush Etzion to the far-flung outposts near the Jordan River or the Dead Sea. Simply put, the Jews of Judea are not going anywhere. And on the ground, Jewish towns are interspersed all throughout with Arab towns. There are no clean borders to be drawn here.

To attempt to neatly divide this on a map is an exercise in logistical and cartographic futility. Give the freaks of “Students for Justice in Palestine” credit for one thing: The geopolitical unity inherent in the cry of “from the (Jordan) River to the (Mediterranean) Sea” makes a heck of a lot more sense than continuing to indulge the Oslo Accords-era delusion of a workable carving out of a new Palestine Liberation Organization/Hamas terror entity in the core of the biblical heartland—even if, per leading Oslo proponent Yitzhak Rabin himself, the entity would be “less than a (full) state.” The land is going to be controlled by either Jews or, after 90-year-old Ramallah-based PLO kleptocrat-in-chief Mahmoud Abbas croaks, Hamas.

It’s pretty much that simple.

As in so much else in our politics, then, the relevant question in Judea and Samaria is not the procedural question of whether there will be one or two (or more) states, but the substantive question of who will rule in the entirety of the biblical heartland. The Left knows its answer: Hamas and the broader Muslim Brotherhood of which it is a part. But again: Why doesn’t most of the Right, which is at least ostensibly committed to the defense of Western civilization, have its own competing answer in response to the Red-Green Alliance narrative?

The answer to this specific geopolitical question dovetails with the broader explanation for the rise of the “Retard Right” phenomenon, in the first place: increased lack of civilizational or national self-confidence, diminished understanding of America as founded upon the ecumenical biblical inheritance and committed to upholding it for our progeny, the successful injection of debilitating information operations from wily foes such as Russia and Qatar, and a broader rotting of the American people’s minds that has led to a chronic inability to distinguish fact from fiction and right from wrong.

But the Trump administration, though not immune to infiltration by some prominent individuals (Joe Kent, anyone?) who are card-carrying members of the “Retard Right,” has generally acted in a way to diminish the influence of the most cancerous pro-Russia, pro-China, Islamophilic, and anti-American voices within the Right’s midst. Furthermore, the current U.S. ambassador to Israel is evangelical Mike Huckabee, a lifelong proponent of Jewish rights in Judea and Samaria and a deep skeptic of the Palestinian-Arab narrative.

Even if rudimentary morality is off the table in our confused time, the Trump administration can and should make an even more straightforward argument about the American national interest when it comes to the future of the biblical heartland.

To be “America First” is to ask, in each and every geopolitical hot spot around the world, what course of action best advances the American national interest. In Judea and Samaria, the answer—especially in the aftermath of the regional Israeli-Arab rapprochement that was the 2020 Abraham Accords pacts—should be obvious: Greater Israeli autonomy is preferable to greater Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood autonomy. This is true for national security reasons. This is true for Iranian regime containment regions. This is true for China great power competition reasons. This true for Christian holy site protection reasons. Indeed, this is true for virtually every reason conceivable. Even the Arab states know it, despite their meek protestations to the contrary—and they especially know it in light of Operation Epic Fury, which has fully exposed Iran’s threat to the region.

If Western civilization is going to be saved, then America must do the saving. If America is going to be saved, then the Right must do the saving. But that can only if the Right actually understands what it is fighting to preserve: the intellectual and tangible fruits of the ecumenical biblical inheritance. After my most recent trip to the Holy Land, I’ve never felt firmer in my conviction that such an effort must encompass a robust defense of the biblical heartland itself. Judea and Samara must forever remain part of Team Civilization, not Team Barbarism. And “America First” should understand that.

Man in the mirror: Norman Finkelstein and his own Holocaust industry

I owe Norman Finkelstein something. He was my professor at New York University in the mid-1990s, and for a young Jewish kid from Queens, N.Y., he was an electric disruption. He challenged everything I thought I knew, introduced me to Noam Chomsky and wrote the recommendation that got me into graduate school. I read his work for more than 30 years. This essay is not written in contempt. It is written in disappointment, with the same demand for consistency he spent his career imposing on others.

Norman Finkelstein built his reputation on a single devastating argument: that suffering can be exploited, historical trauma can be weaponized and moral authority can become currency. His 2000 book The Holocaust Industry accused Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel of turning tragedy into a brand, commanding speaking fees upward of $25,000 while claiming the Holocaust was “noncommunicable.”

He accused attorney Alan Dershowitz, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, of fraud. He accused Jewish organizations of running “an outright extortion racket.” His standards were ferocious and he insisted they apply to everyone.

It is time to hold Finkelstein to his own standard.

Today, his public identity revolves around Gaza and his identity as the son of Holocaust survivors. His mother survived Majdanek. His father survived Auschwitz. Both survived the Warsaw Ghetto. Their suffering is not incidental to his public persona. It is the credential that accompanies him into every interview, every introduction, every podcast appearance.

He has built two books totaling more than 900 pages on Gaza alone, to be sold as a matched box set modeled on Vasily Grossman and Ilya Ehrenburg’s documentation of Nazi atrocities. He promotes his new volume, Gaza’s Gravediggers, across every available platform.

The man who accused others of transforming historical suffering into moral authority now relies on his own inherited suffering as his primary credential. The man who condemned what he called an industry has built one himself. The subject matter changed. The mechanism did not.

Earlier this year, I reached out to Finkelstein directly, as a former student who had read his work for 30 years. I asked about antisemitism that predates Israel by centuries. I asked about the institutional silences that followed the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, before any Israeli military response began. I asked about the future of Jewish life in the Diaspora.

Not one question was engaged. Instead came dismissal, sarcasm and the declaration that “those who want to know, know.”

He told me Gaza was “about as complex as an Auschwitz gas chamber.” That comparison, deployed casually in a personal letter to the son and grandson of survivors of Bergen-Belsen and Terezín, reveals something important. The man who once demanded that arguments be answered rather than dismissed now pronounces verdicts and calls it scholarship.

On Oct. 7, Finkelstein posted that it “warms every fiber of my soul” to see Gaza’s “Jewish supremacist oppressors” humbled. He invoked the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising—the very one his own parents survived—as a parallel to Hamas’s assault on a music festival and kibbutz families.

Insurance giant Allianz given green light to sue Palestine activists

A British court has allowed German insurance giant Allianz to pursue a civil lawsuit against six pro-Palestine activists accused of vandalising its offices in London and Guildford, Surrey.

The defendants, who conducted separate protests at the site in 2024 and 2025, are facing criminal damage charges after targeting the company as the then-insurer of Elbit Systems, an Israeli-based defence firm.

Known as the Allianz6, the activists occupied the office building and sprayed it with red paint, which the firm said caused £79,000 in damage.

In its filings to Central London County Court, Allianz requested permission to seek up to £300,000 in damages, £200,000 of which it claimed were incurred through “reputational damage and commercial embarrassment”.

The activists represented themselves last month in the early stages of their criminal trial and say they cannot afford legal representation to contest the civil case.

They argued that the suit should be held until the conclusion of the criminal proceedings, scheduled separately for October this year and January 2028, to safeguard their right to a fair trial.

However, Judge Alan Johns rejected this request, ruling on Monday that the suit could proceed concurrently with the criminal cases.

One of the defendants, Seren John-Wood, told Middle East Eye: “We took action and are prepared to face legal consequences in a criminal court as we believe we are not guilty.

"But this attempt to move the case away from the criminal courts, where we are not able to access financial support for legal representation and have our cases heard by juries, is as appalling as it is unprecedented.”

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06/12 Links Pt1: US-Iran deal to include dismantling of Iranian nuclear program; UNRWA fires 70 staffers over terrorist ties; Pal football chief denied US visa

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Trump’s civilizational moment

This lethal blindness is not just endangering the West in foreign wars, but is doing so at home in the refusal to face the reality of Islamization.

Britain refuses to ban the Muslim Brotherhood, jail or deport jihadi preachers, ban sharia courts or stop immigration from countries posing an Islamist threat.

In America, although Trump has taken measures against extremism, an Islamist beachhead has been created in New York with its sectarian Muslim mayor, Zohran Mamdani, and with sharia enclaves expanding in Texas and elsewhere.

The reason all of this has been allowed to grow is wider and deeper than the promotion of multiculturalism and the intersectional dogma that holds the West is innately bad because it is white. At the core of these secular ideologies is a loss of belief in the biblical norms that underpin Western culture, and the replacement of what is held to be irrational Christian and Jewish mumbo-jumbo by the superior power of the Western mind.

The West has told itself that it is the acme of reason—by which it means that its core principle is the pursuit of individual happiness, prosperity and self-realization.

Accordingly, war is always totally dumb because people get killed; ranking different cultures in any kind of hierarchy is a form of bigotry that is not only evil but proof of imbecility; and everyone in the world is assumed only to want to have a nice life.

Believing that only universal values are moral and rational, such Westerners can’t see the catastrophic results of failing to fight for their own. They refuse to acknowledge that there is no brotherhood of man; there are instead people who believe in civilization, and other people who intend to destroy it.

The paradox is that in making a fetish of reason and self-interest, the West repudiates reason by inventing its own reality.

Meanwhile, the Islamists have grasped all this. They understand that without a religious scaffolding, a society eventually collapses. They have watched the West steadily destroying that religious core and, in the vacuum that’s been created, giving them the opportunity to strike.

This is why Britain, which has led the retreat from Christianity in the West, is ground zero for the Islamist onslaught. Islamization has penetrated throughout Britain’s political and civic architecture, with British leaders absolutely refusing to push back.

Now there’s a rapidly rising sectarian Islamic bloc, aided by the left, increasingly focusing British politics on the jihadi agenda of destroying Israel and the Jews as an essential precursor to conquering the West.

We are currently, and rightly, transfixed by Iran. If America doesn’t neutralize the Islamic revolutionary regime and instead allows it to regenerate, this will be catastrophic for America and the West.

It all depends on one mercurial and imperfect man in the White House. But whether he succeeds or fails, he is leading a free world, much of which no longer understands what it needs to do to survive.

Ruthie Blum: Translating Trump in Tehran

Listening to U.S. President Donald Trump’s June 3 Oval Office press conference, one couldn’t help worrying about how his words sounded in Farsi—not only to the mullahs and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, but to the masses who believed that “help was on the way.”

Now it’s true that every statement made by Trump, whether in response to journalists’ questions or as a post on Truth Social, is aimed at multiple audiences at home and abroad. The trouble is that he often makes off-the-cuff remarks that lately have been music to the ears of the powers-that-be in Tehran.

Though he’s said about Iran that “it’s never won a war, but never lost a negotiation,” Trump has been behaving as if the joint American-Israeli military victories against the now-fractured regime were simply a precursor to engaging in dialogue with it.

On one hand, he seems to be aware that the ayatollahs and their henchmen have spent nearly half a century perfecting the art of exploiting Western assumptions about war and peace. On the other, he continues to view talks with regime representatives—mediated by Pakistan, no less—through the transactional lens of a real-estate developer.

The Islamic Republic, in contrast, sees everything through a revolutionary religious prism. The result is a clash of perceptions that’s not beneficial to the United States.

Take Trump’s explanation for Iran’s latest violations of the so-called “ceasefire,” for example. Asked by a reporter about Tehran’s attacks in the Gulf, the president replied, “Some people would say they were slightly provoked,” since the United States had struck first, and hard, the previous night.

This wasn’t merely a false depiction of what’s been going on; it was rightly interpreted by Tehran to provide an explanation, if not an excuse, to Iranian belligerence. You don’t have to be a Mideast expert to figure that out.

Nor do you require a degree in international relations to grasp that when Washington rationalizes Iranian aggression, rather than treating it as an immediate casus belli—in this case, the imperative to resume the unfinished war—Tehran concludes that its actions are paying off.

Ditto in relation to Trump’s saying, “I hear the negotiation itself is going very well, actually. Very well.”

The Last Superpower Test By Abe Greenwald

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If the U.S. wins, we will live in a safer world. Bad actors will be made to understand that American power remains the ultimate block on their ambitions. If the U.S. loses, extremist and predatory regimes will be free to do as they please. They all know that America is the only guarantor of sovereignty for the countries of the free world. No other power can underwrite the stability of the global order.

At this moment, that stability hangs in the balance. If the U.S. reaches a deal with Iran’s leaders that leaves the regime intact and fundamentally unchanged, it will be rightly regarded as an American instrument of surrender. The U.S. will have bombarded the regime from the skies, killed multiple tiers of leadership, destroyed its nuclear program, and degraded its missile stocks only to accept defeat. World leaders will understand this as America’s last, failed attempt to project military power on a large scale. For decades, Donald Trump has insisted that Iran must be stopped. If he decides that the job is too big to finish, no future president will try again.

My hope is that Trump’s seeming eagerness for a deal isn’t the spectacle of desperation that it appears to be. This isn’t unfounded. Although the president has been lured into negotiating with Iran again and again, he has never failed to reject the regime’s dangerous demands. He even did so this morning. It could be that Trump simply hasn’t yet grasped that this regime is incapable of making peace on terms that are acceptable to the U.S. Perhaps this is becoming clearer to him with every scrapped diplomatic “framework.” And maybe he will come to understand that there’s only one path to American victory—and it’s not negotiation.

This war will decide more than the future of Iran or the Middle East. It will define America’s ongoing role in the world that it shaped, and it will either set free or rein in those who wish to tear that world down.

The ups and downs that really matter: Why Israel, the US are not fighting the same war

This striking, grimly satirical political cartoon expresses what is being said in diplomatic circles this week, capturing the strategic vertigo gripping both Jerusalem and Washington. It depicts an elevator labeled “Lobby of Hell.”

The newest Iranian cleric and his partner, the Hezbollah operative, stand hand-in-hand, staring out as an elevator car descends into an abyss watched over by a welcoming devil. On either side of the shaft stand US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, their fingers pressed firmly on the elevator call buttons.

Above Trump, floating in an idealized cloud, is Uncle Sam; above Netanyahu floats Theodor Herzl. Both leaders look grimly determined, convinced their fingers are guided from above by foundational visions of American greatness and a safe, iron-clad Jewish state. Netanyahu, wanting to guarantee the future of the Jewish state, and Trump, who is out of options looking for an agreement and a way out of the quagmire, keep pushing the hold call button.

But look closer at the cartoon, and the unsettling truth reveals itself: we are all staring intently at the elevator buttons, but we have completely lost track of the shaft itself. We are trapped in a dangerous collective delusion, focusing on political theater while completely missing the structural architecture of the war we are supposedly fighting.

The shaft symbolizes that the Iranians are happy to pull us all down to hell with them in a jihad-like suicidal moment. Worse still, it is no longer clear whether Uncle Sam or Theodor Herzl possess the same binding relevance or moral authority in modern America or contemporary Israel that they once did.

We are executing policies based on outdated paradigms, and in doing so, we run the risk of fulfilling the grim punchline of the old medical joke: the operation was a spectacular success, but the patient died on the table.

Uncle Sam was created for the American public and reinforced by political cartoonists who wanted a symbol that represented the strength, authority, and government of the nation itself, rather than just its abstract ideals. The lack of American support for the war with Iran is evident in that the American people are not looking at Uncle Sam in the same way as they did before.

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