12/17 Links Pt2: Norman Podhoretz, American Patriot , 1930-2025; David Collier: The al-Shifa Hospital Hostage Convoy; Trump: ‘I Will Always Be A Friend And A Champion To The Jewish People’

From Ian:

The light answers

In 1931, Rachel Posner placed her family’s chanukiyah on a windowsill in Kiel, Germany. Across the street hung a Nazi flag. She photographed the scene and wrote on the back: “ ‘Death to Judah,’ says the flag. ‘Judah will live forever,’ the light answers.” That menorah now resides at Yad Vashem, returned each year to Posner’s descendants to light anew.

The light answers. It answered in ghettos where Jews fashioned menorahs from scraps. It answered in Soviet gulags where prisoners risked everything for observance. It answers today, when Jewish communities worldwide face the highest levels of antisemitic vitriol and violence in decades.

To every Jew reading this, I plead: Do not dim your flame. Place your chanukiyah in the window. Let it be seen. The entire purpose of pirsumei nisa is to proclaim, publicly and unapologetically, that we are still here. Darkness has tried to extinguish us before. It has failed. It will fail again.

And to our neighbors—Christians, Muslims, those of other faiths or no faith at all—I ask you to consider lighting candles of your own. In 1993, after a brick was thrown through a Jewish child’s window in Billings, Montana, thousands of non-Jewish households placed menorahs in their own windows. The message was unmistakable: An attack on our Jewish neighbors is an attack on us all.

We need that message again. The Lubavitcher Rebbe—Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson—taught that Chanukah carries “a universal message of freedom of the human spirit, freedom from tyranny and oppression, and of the ultimate victory of good over evil.” When Project Menorah encouraged non-Jews to display menorahs after Oct. 7, 2023, rabbis responded with overwhelming support. What matters is the intent. Not appropriation, but alliance. Not mimicry, but moral witness.

As the Rebbe wrote, “a little light dispels a lot of darkness.” The Chanukah menorah is not a mere decoration. It is a statement of resolve—that light persists, that the few can overcome the many, that the sacred endures and that evil is a mere shadow against the light.

Rabbi Eli Schlanger died bringing that light to his community on a beach in Sydney. In Los Angeles, plotters driven by the same hatred were stopped before their bombs could detonate. The light endures while darkness fails.

Tonight, and every night of Chanukah, I will add another flame. The darkness grows no darker, but our light grows stronger. Place your candles where they can be seen. Let the light answer.

Reading Washington’s signals: Redefining Israel’s role in America

The United States is gradually shifting its view of the Middle East from a troubled region to an emerging one. This forming zeitgeist is exactly where Jerusalem must meet Washington. Israel cannot offer luxury planes or other expensive gifts, much less free oil. What it can offer is a realization of America’s vision for the Mideast, a source and destination of investments.

Unlike its neighbors, Israel’s greatest asset is its people and their minds. Israeli innovation has produced an exceptionally high number of companies that are traded on American stock markets. Tel Aviv’s stock exchange is one of the best-performing in the world, especially considering the circumstances of the last half-decade. In the wake of the two-year, seven-front war, the country’s defense exports have reached an all-time high, with its missile-defense systems utilized throughout much of the world.

To an extent, Israel is already offering the United States access to much of this. Many Israeli-origin defense articles are developed and produced jointly with the United States. The two nations work together to engage in research that enables the creation of cutting-edge technologies, ensuring a mutual qualitative edge. Israeli entrepreneurs will try their luck in Silicon Valley or on Wall Street long before they’ll do so in any European or Asian capital. What’s missing is a greater governmental commitment to these efforts.

The message from Washington is clear: America wishes to see Israel elevated to the level of an equal partner and ally.

U.S. diplomats visit the country, see construction booms in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and rightfully conclude that it is capable of this. Israeli governments, whoever might lead them in the future, should step up to this moment and pursue extensive business diplomacy with the United States. Their primary task is to make sure that every emerging American entrepreneur is fully aware of just what it is—and just how much of it—Israel can provide.

Since the “classic” American reasons for maintaining a strong relationship with Israel seem to lose validity with each passing year, it is on Jerusalem to create new ones. To that end, it must showcase its advantages and make certain that they work in America’s favor. While this most recent prescription was jotted by the Trump administration, a proper Israeli response will resonate on both sides of the aisle and can define the relationship between the two countries for decades to come.

The Saudis have mastered the art of manipulation

The message was clear: Saudi Arabia has successfully bought American support while keeping its options open with Washington’s greatest adversary.

Meanwhile, Trump has made clear through his negotiations on Gaza, Lebanon and Iran that he is much more concerned with satisfying Arab interests than Israel’s. In that regard, he, too, is an Arabist.

Israel has traditionally been allied with the United States due to shared values and interests. Trump, however, cares only about interests—financial interests. He is unbothered by the disparate values of dictatorships. The murder and dismemberment of an American journalist doesn’t interest him. The Saudis are also less troublesome than the pesky Zionists, whom he sees as ruining his chance for the Nobel Peace Prize. The Saudis also have more to contribute to both the American and the Trump family coffers than the Israelis.

Trump is not necessarily pro-Israel; he is transactional. Values do not factor into the transaction.

Moreover, the deals with the Saudis benefit America. The pledge of up to $1 trillion in Saudi investment would inject massive capital into the American economy. Nvidia will prosper, and the contractors and subcontractors that make the F-35s and the other weapons Trump is selling will reap the benefits and create jobs. The economic activity will provide Republicans with talking points to showcase economic growth and industrial strength.

Trump is like his predecessors in appeasing the Saudis. The distinction is that the others weren’t interested in Saudi-Israeli peace. Instead, they were more focused on appeasing the Saudis’ supposed fealty to the Palestinian cause. Trump realizes that the Saudis have no love for the Palestinians. Notice that they have not agreed to allow any Gazans refuge in the kingdom or volunteered to pay to reconstruct Gaza. They look down on the Palestinians and support them only to the extent that it serves their interests.

This is why MBS appeared willing to sell out the Palestinians and normalize ties with Israel during talks with the Biden administration. But that became untenable after Oct. 7.

The crown prince fears that if he acts while Israel is killing Palestinians, then he might suffer the same fate as former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who was assassinated by radical Muslims in 1981, several years after making peace with Israel in 1979. Moreover, as long as King Salman remains alive—a man steeped in antisemitism—normalization is unlikely.

Israel will survive Trump’s betrayal. Security compensation will eventually follow. Arms deliveries will be delayed and modified. Quiet intelligence cooperation with Saudi Arabia will continue against Iran. But the damage is real: The status of the Saudis has been elevated while Israel has been downgraded from strategic ally to negotiable asset.

A trillion dollars bought Saudi Arabia U.S. indulgence. Israel got nothing, except the lesson that loyalty, values and history carry less weight than a well-timed check.

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12/17 Links Pt1: Douglas Murray: The Massacre at Bondi Beach Was Inevitable; NGO Monitor: Amnesty International Australia Insists on the Right to Intimidate Jews

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: The Massacre at Bondi Beach Was Inevitable

There will be plenty said in the coming days about why the two perpetrators (father and son) were allowed to own guns, despite their connections with individuals jailed for plotting terror attacks. There will be many questions raised about how their shooting spree could go on for almost ten minutes and why the Australian police were so unprepared for it. There will be questions about why a Jewish event celebrating Hannukah on the beach was not better protected, given the escalating risks against Australian Jews. And there will be official expressions of mourning for the 15 victims counted so far, ranging from a ten-year-old girl to an elderly Holocaust survivor who died sheltering his wife.

But the main question is why the Australian authorities did not take the concerns of Jewish Australians seriously, and why indeed they spent the last two years pandering to the ever-growing contingent of Muslim immigrants and others who have clearly been on the path to radicalization. It will not be enough for them to say that they did not know.

Far from tamping down the problem, the Anthony Albanese government has been viciously maligning Israel since October 7, 2023. It has expressly tried to stop people from correcting those denigrations. It has allowed mass incitement every week on Australian streets and tried to bar those who oppose such incitement.

If anyone thinks that this is an edge case, they do not need to look simply at the blood spilled on Bondi Beach. They merely have to ask a question many of us have asked for the past two years: What other group would expect to be treated like this?

In 2019, there was a terrible attack on a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, by a lone gunman. It was a vicious, appalling attack. Outpourings of sympathy issued from all communities.

But imagine for a moment that there had not been. Imagine that immediately after that attack there had been huge crowds of Australians outside the Sydney opera house calling for Muslims or Arabs to be “gassed.”

Does anyone think that the Australian authorities would have taken this lightly? Does anyone think that if there had been anti-Muslim or anti-Arab demonstrations on the streets every week for the two years following the 2019 attack—expressly celebrating the attack and calling for it to happen again—that the Australian authorities would have stood by, or actually placated the mob? To ask the question is to answer it.

In the meantime, Jews in Australia will be asking the same question that Jews in New York and around the world are asking. And they will be facing the same conundrum that Jews around the world now face. If they are in Israel, they are attacked. If they are outside Israel, they are attacked. And if they are in New York or other cities outside Israel, feeling increasingly unsafe and wondering whether to move to Israel, then—as happened at Park East Synagogue in New York City last month—they will be attacked as well.

The problem has been in plain sight all along. It’s shameful that so many people in positions of power decided to metaphorically shoot the messengers, while all the time clearing a path for the real-life shooters to take aim, and fire.

Gil Troy: Make terrorism backfire: Rescinding recognition of ‘Palestine’

As the world is shocked by the Bondi Beach Hanukkah massacre, and as experts pontificate about fighting abstractions like “hate,” too many ignore the most effective move Australia – and other countries – can make.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese should say: “Palestinian terrorists and their supporters keep trying to advance the Palestinian cause by slaughtering innocents, Jews and non-Jews alike. Today, rather than impotently claiming ‘terrorism doesn’t work,’ we will prove it with one action. Terrorism doesn’t work – it backfires: Australia hereby rescinds its recognition of a Palestinian state.”

Instead, after two antisemitic anti-Zionists murdered 15 innocents and wounded dozens, Albanese guaranteed that the problem won’t end; he claimed that Australia’s recognizing of a fictitious Palestinian state didn’t encourage the Jew-slaughter.

Such head-in-the-sand thinking is like denying the link between Hitler’s Mein Kampf and the Holocaust. Mein Kampf wasn’t just a bestseller, and Australia’s pro-Palestinian stance isn’t just a policy. Since the 1970s, the world has repeatedly rewarded Palestinian terrorism by advancing the Palestinian cause. Since Hamas’s unspeakable barbarism on October 7, it’s become super-trendy to enable terror and greenlight Jew-hatred.

When terrorism is rewarded
Ghazi Hamad, a Qatari-based Hamas leader whom Western useful idiots deemed “pragmatic,” called Australia and other countries recognizing a Palestinian state one of the “fruits of October 7.”

Hamas celebrated the recognition as an “important step” and a “deserved outcome of our people’s struggle.”

Terrorists aren’t stupid. Western leaders claim “terrorism never works,” yet their appeasement and cowardice spur more violence. That’s why since 2000, over 106,000 terrorist attacks worldwide have murdered 249,941 people. Since October 7, 8,670 terrorist attacks – including stone-throwing – occurred in Judea and Samaria.

There’s a fine line between exploiting a tragedy for political reasons and disincentivizing terrorism. But Bondi Beach wasn’t some natural disaster.

NGO Monitor: Amnesty International Australia Insists on the Right to Intimidate Jews

The Hanukkah massacre at Sydney’s Bondi Beach on December 11, 2025 – in which 15 people were murdered and scores injured – marks the worst violence targeting Jews in Australia’s history. It follows a surge in antisemitic incidents – including violent assaults – in recent years.

Despite the blatant rise in antisemitism, Amnesty International Australia, which claims to “challenge injustice wherever it happens,” has consistently vilified and actively opposed measures intended to protect Australian Jews.

In addition, between the Hamas-orchestrated October 7th attacks and the killings at Bondi Beach, Amnesty Australia appears not to have published a single standalone report, article, or statement on antisemitism in the country.1 (A feeble, watered-down January 22, 2025 statement that Amnesty Australia co-signed, referenced “escalating hate crimes on the Jewish community and on the Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian communities in Australia.”)

Surging antisemitism in Australia
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) publishes annual assessments, documenting both the overall number of antisemitic incidents in Australia, as well as categorizing them and describing specific events. Its data demonstrate a sharp increase in both the total number, as well as the severity, of antisemitic incidents in Australia.

ECAJ Report on Anti-Jewish Incidents in Australia 2025, published December 3, 2025

Moreover, according to the New South Wales Police Force, from October 11, 2023 – March 26, 2025, it had recorded 367 antisemitic incidents, alongside 38 classified as Islamophobic. Notably, “In addition to incidents reported to, or investigated by, the NSW Police, the Community Security Group has recorded many hundreds of antisemitic events of which many are not recorded on NSW Police systems.” 2

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12/16 Links Pt2: Cash to Terror: How Humanitarian Aid Funds Extremism; 'Jew hate is brain rot': Erika Kirk vows to confront right-wing antisemitism, Holocaust denial

From Ian:

Lahav Harkov: Fight Larder Review of 'As a Jew' by Sarah Hurwitz

Sarah Hurwitz was treated like a celebrity at the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly in Washington in November, and her remarks connected to her new book, As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us, received enthusiastic applause. But it didn’t take long for hostiles—the same blamers, shamers, and erasers of her subtitle—to focus on one moment from her appearance and use it to vilify her. A speechwriter for President Barack Obama before taking on the same role for First Lady Michelle Obama, Hurwitz has since made a second career out of writing about how she has reconnected to her Judaism.

At the General Assembly, she made the point that young people are getting superficial, image-based information from social media about Israel and Gaza, and when she tries to present arguments based on data, they “are hear[d] through this wall of carnage” and they make her “sound obscene.” In remarks at a conference for young Zionists, she was also tagged for saying that pro-Israel arguments are being heard through “a wall of dead children.”

But it was her criticism of the way young Americans are taught about the Holocaust that really gave her critics their opening. Here was Hurwitz: “Holocaust education is absolutely essential, but I think it may be confusing some of our young people about antisemitism, because they learn about big, strong Nazis hurting weak, emaciated Jews, and they think, ‘Oh, antisemitism is like anti-black racism, right? Powerful white people against powerless black people.’ So when on TikTok, all day long, they see powerful Israelis hurting weak, skinny Palestinians, it’s not surprising that they think, ‘Oh, I know the lesson of the Holocaust is you fight Israel. You fight the big, powerful people hurting the weak people.’”

Professional libelers of Israel, such as the radical journalist Spencer Ackerman, claimed Hurwitz was confessing in these words that “Holocaust education has worked too well,” because the lessons it teaches make it harder for her to “rationalize Israel’s genocide.”

In so doing, Ackerman and others were actually validating one of the central themes of As A Jew. In this, her second book, she continues to tell the story of her own journey, which was the subject of her first, Here All Along (2019). Hurwitz explains here that her former identity, based on “cultural/ethnic/social justice/be a good person/Holocaust remembrance,” provided her little more than a superficial and largely unexamined Jewish persona—a persona that, polling indicates, she shares with most American Jews. Hurwitz ruefully describes her younger self’s lack of curiosity about Jewish history or Jewish observance and her rejection of anything that might have made her seem less cool to the non-Jews surrounding her. In this way, she has come to believe, she was internalizing the anti-Semitism that pervades Western culture.

Andrew Fox: Cash to Terror: How Humanitarian Aid Funds Extremism

Humanitarian aid is intended to save lives. But as Cash and Voucher Assistance (CVA) becomes one of the most widely used forms of relief globally, evidence is mounting that in certain conflict zones it is inadvertently fuelling the very forces it seeks to alleviate.

This report examines how CVA – the practice of giving money or vouchers to crisis-affected civilians in place of in-kind aid – operates in contexts where armed groups like Hamas, the Houthis, and Boko Haram exert significant control over markets, financial networks, and supply chains. By analysing documented case studies from Gaza, Yemen, northeast Nigeria and Sudan, we identify predictable mechanisms through which cash aid slides into extremist-linked economic systems.

Our findings are clear: when a marketplace, banking or money-changing system is under the control or influence of armed groups – even ones not designated as terrorist actors by the UN – cash transfers become predictable sources of revenue for those actors. In Gaza, money-changer “fees” of 20 – 40 per cent are common; in Yemen, at least $161 million in cash aid flowed into Houthi-held territory in 2024, and UN agencies have documented widespread diversion; in Nigeria, militants impose levies on traders and transport networks that capture value from aid transactions.

In response, this report outlines a set of policy recommendations designed to improve transparency, tighten oversight, and better mitigate the risk that humanitarian cash assistance will be co-opted by violent actors, while still preserving the capacity of aid agencies to deliver life-saving support.

READ THE FULL REPORT HERE.(PDF)

Oxfam chief criticised government for arming Ukraine and 'tried to rewrite charity's position on Gaza' before being ousted from £130k-a-year job amid 'bullying' claims

The £130,000-a-year ousted Oxfam boss criticised the Government for arming Ukraine and risked putting charity staff in danger in Gaza, an internal investigation said.

Dr Halima Begum's role as chief executive was declared 'untenable' by Oxfam's board of trustees over the weekend following an 'irretrievable breakdown in its trust and confidence' about her ability to do the job.

It came after 70 members of staff signed a letter calling for an investigation into her conduct which centred around allegations of bullying staff and creating a climate of fear.

But an extraordinary row has broken out at Oxfam over the treatment of its outgoing boss, with allies claiming she has been unfairly kicked out.

Last night, Dr Begum's lawyers confirmed she would be taking legal action against Oxfam for 'defamatory and unfounded criticism of her' that she described as 'hatemongering and stigmatisation'.

The report flagged public comments made by Dr Begum in which she accused the UK of 'taking sides' in the Ukraine war, which allegedly led to complaints and the withdrawal of donations.

During an appearance on BBC Radio 4 show Any Questions in November last year, she criticised the West for supplying Kyiv with long-range missiles and anti-personnel landmines, describing it as a 'retrograde step'.

'It definitely feels like a reincarnation of the Cold War - us taking sides as opposed to thinking what is necessary in order to build a just international security system that all nations could rely on,' she said. 'The stakes are so high not only for Ukrainian civilians dying but also Russian soldiers dying.'

Her remarks sparked a major backlash, with a surge in complaints and donor withdrawals, The Times reports.

The report also alleged that Dr Begum attempted to rewrite Oxfam's politically neutral public messaging on the war in Gaza. Staff claimed she was not careful enough in considering the safety of staff in Gaza when she publicly called for the UK to stop arming Israel, for example.

Staff are said to have complained that her changes exposed them to potential retaliation in an environment which was already volatile amid the Israel-Hamas war.

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12/16 Links Pt1: BHL: The intifada has been globalised; The West’s deflections over Bondi are obscene; Hero couple who died trying to stop Bondi terrorist

From Ian:

Bernard-Henri Lévy: The intifada has been globalised

I know one must arm oneself with prudence before establishing a causal link between words and crimes. And I know the danger of this slope, of this moral butterfly effect, and of the temptation to transform speech into culpability and to equate a call to murder with the act itself. But I also remember Primo Levi’s lesson in The Drowned and the Saved, reminding us that massacres never begin with weapons but with words.

I recall Victor Klemperer, the philologist who analysed the corruption of the German language by Nazism in The Language of the Third Reich, stating that “words can be like tiny doses of arsenic”.

Or quite simply Jean-Paul Sartre, whose famous phrase seems to me rarely as apt: words are “loaded pistols”.

And that is why, in sadness and anger, but without polemical spirit, I invite all those who, two years later, continue to believe that one can play with words of Jew-hatred and pogrom without consequence to an examination of conscience.

For what happened in Sydney is not an accident but a sign. Given that the same causes risk producing the same effects, it could happen tomorrow in New York, London, Rome, Madrid, or Paris. In truth, it could happen in any city in the world where one is still frivolous enough to believe that words are just words, that slogans bind only those who chant them, and that hatred – when draped in the supposed love of an oppressed people – can be absolved of its consequences.

This is not about giving in to panic nor concluding that we face an irresistible wave like those at the most tragic hours of Western history.

But if keeping one’s cool is a virtue, turning away can be a crime – and wisdom demands acknowledging that there are moments when History gives warning.

Sydney is one of them. But one must still hear, see what is being said, and act accordingly.

Brendan O'Neill: The hatred for the Jewish State is endangering the Jewish people

We’re talking about the reanimation of medieval tropes in the drag of ‘anti-Zionism’. We’re talking about the Jewish State being accused of lusting after the blood of innocents, just as the Jews once were. We’re talking about the Jewish nation being branded the puppet-master of world affairs, just as the Jews once were. We’re talking about the Jewish homeland being reimagined as the poison in the well of humanity, just as the Jews once were. Criticising Israel? Go for it. Spending your every waking hour telling the world Israel is a diabolical entity that relishes in the destruction of the sinless? Not on my watch.

As Dave Rich has argued, it shouldn’t surprise us one bit that ‘a protest movement that treats the world’s only Jewish State as a transgressor of all moral and human norms’ is helping to embolden lowlifes who just ‘do not like Jews’. How telling that the faux-progressive elites see ‘incitement’ everywhere except in their own daily hate missives against the Jewish State that have so many echoes of the ancient dread of the Jewish people. Call a ‘transwoman’ a man and they’ll have you up for hate speech. Call for the annihilation of the Jewish State and they’ll hug you.

If this high-status invective for the Jewish State and its allegedly immoral populace had exploded a few years back, it might have been manageable. It would still have required the firmest of pushbacks, but it might not have proven so existentially menacing. Today is different, though. Now the chattering classes’ mandatory abhorrence for the Jewish nation mingles with other catastrophic trends to create a moment of very clear danger for both the Jews and civilisation itself.

There are our porous borders, the flat-out refusal of those who rule over us to police our frontiers against people from profoundly anti-Semitic cultures. There is the emboldening of Islamists. We’ve seen them on those hate marches, walking alongside middle-aged Guardianistas in Vinted pashmimas, hollering for the return of the Army of Muhammad to kill all the Jews. And there is the authoritarian clampdown on open discussion of the Islamist threat. Raise concerns about the violent-minded Jew-haters in Islamist circles and you’ll be branded an ‘Islamophobe’. Our thoughts are policed better than our borders.

It is the crashing together of these two things – the modish loathing for Israel and the swelling of the Islamist menace – that has birthed this lethal moment. To defame Israel as uniquely barbarous would be bad at the best of times. To do it when we know very well there are bellicose Islamists in our midst is reckless in the extreme. Elite Israelophobia is like a red rag to murderous anti-Semitism. The Bondi pogrom is devastating proof of this – two ISIS worshippers carrying out a murderous assault on Jews following 26 months of non-stop Jewish State demonisation in Oz and across the West.

After Bondi, we have to ask – has anti-Semitism now been superseded by anti-Israel sentiment? Is the hatred for Israel not simply the witless inflamer of anti-Semitic thinking but the very form that anti-Semitism now takes? As the Australian’s Yoni Bashan reminded us this week, anti-Semitism ‘never goose-steps into the ball dressed as anti-Semitism. It doesn’t wear a sign. It arrives in the costume of the moment. As nationalism. As anti-capitalism. As social justice.’ And today as ‘criticism of Israel’. As 2025 comes to a close, one question matters above all others: are you on the side of the Jews or are you not? Their safety and our civilisation depend on how we answer.

Seth Mandel: Mass Murderers Don’t Care How Jews Feel

Mostly solid statement but there is no confusion over the “intent” of someone who uses the phrase. Bondi Beach is the intent.

Of course, the candidates who are willing to at least consider the implications of the phrase are handling this better than those who stick their fingers in their ears. Several candidates simply declined to answer the question at all.

As did Zohran Mamdani. The article notes that Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch told the incoming mayor, who pointedly refuses to condemn the call for mass murder, that “anti-Zionist rhetoric” can threaten the safety of Jews in New York. When asked by CBS to respond, Mamdani said: “Rabbi Hirsch is entitled to his opinions.”

It’s just a gentlemen’s disagreement over whether incitement to violence is good or bad, you see.

Anti-Zionism is the defining organizing principle of Mamdani’s adult life, so he knows exactly what the phrase means, perhaps better than most. There is no one in the universe less deserving of the benefit of the doubt on this than Zohran Mamdani.

The focus of the Jewish community going forward must be to stop with the rhetoric about how incitement makes us feel, because the Mamdanis of the world—and they are legion—will exploit any cracks in the consensus. And that only enables the terrorists who, I assure you, aren’t thinking about anybody’s feelings. No more handing excuses to those who openly seek our harm.

Seth Mandel: Jews Are Fed Up

The pattern is a familiar one. A terrible anti-Semitic attack will take place; political leaders will say “this is not who we are” and vow to take action; no one takes any meaningful action; another anti-Semitic attack takes place.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

So in the wake of the Bondi Beach Hanukkah massacre, it would be prudent to make it as difficult as possible for Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to forget about his responsibility to act. And there’s no more powerful way to do that than to amplify the voices of the survivors. This will hopefully have the added effect of reminding Western politicians across the spectrum that they, too, are under the lights.

Here’s Victoria Teplitsky describing her father, who was wounded at Bondi Beach: “He’s 86, he’s a Holocaust survivor, he’s a survivor of anti-Semitism in the ex-Soviet Union. He grew up tough, my dad. And he came to Australia, he brought us here because he didn’t want my brother and I to go through the same experience. And we didn’t for many years. We didn’t for many years. Until October 7, 2023.”

Let’s pause here to note that Australia is home to the highest concentration of Holocaust survivors outside of Israel—and that another of those Holocaust survivors was killed on Bondi Beach while shielding his wife from the haze of bullets. I have to admit I get angry anew every time I hear of another Jew who survived Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union but not the United States or Australia. It is an anger I believe every Jew shares.

Back to the interview. The anchors from Australia’s ABC—this is an important piece of information for later in the interview—asked Teplitsky how she’s feeling about everything. Teplitsky responded with a message for Albanese and the political establishment:

“Is this what you wanted? Is this enough now? Will you listen to us? Albanese, [Labour parliamentary leader Penny] Wong, will you listen to us? Will you actually do something? Will you actually—no, you don’t have to stand up and say anything because we don’t believe you anyway.”

She then looked the ABC anchors in the face and said: “And ABC, I’ve got to say, will you cut out the biased reporting? Will you cut it out, will you actually let us have a voice?” Teplitsky then starts to explain the role of the media in making Jews feel like outsiders but abruptly changes direction, making a moving statement that one increasingly hears among the Jews of the Diaspora. She is not a religious woman, Teplitsky says, but “since October 7, since all the hatred that’s been thrown at us, I started to wear my Magen David because I’m Jewish, and if you have something to say, you can say it to me. And ABC, please stop with the biased reporting.”

On CBS, Tony Dokoupil talked to a couple who were briefly separated from their child at Bondi Beach, Wayne and Vanessa Miller. Vanessa said she questioned whether the event was safe at the outset because of the low police presence. Referring to Albanese, Vanessa said, “He’s got blood on his hands, and he knows it.” Wayne added: “The acts of terrorism have been rewarded by the Australian weak government.”

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12/15 Links Pt2: The Palestine Firsters; How Antisemitism Is Entering Mainstream Culture; Radical Anti-Israel Group Planned To Bomb Los Angeles Buildings

From Ian:

Eli Lake: The Palestine Firsters

What Rhodes and Carlson either fail to understand or deliberately overlook is that the Palestinian national movement itself has not really changed in the past century. Despite the hope generated among some by the Oslo Accords in 1993, PLO chieftain Yasir Arafat responded to the explicit offer of statehood in 2000 with a five-year intifada that brought waves of suicide bombers to Israeli schools, markets, and synagogues. Now the youth wing of the Palestine Firsters who disrupted the comings and goings of Jewish students on campus and are seeking to prevent Jews from entering synagogues in New York and Los Angeles (for a start) want to “globalize the intifada.” Indeed, a few radicals already have, with gruesome consequences, like the murder of two young people outside a Jewish event in Washington, D.C., in May 2025.

The obstacle to Palestinian statehood has always been that Palestinians believe that their state cannot exist unless the Jewish state is negated. How is it in America’s interest to advance that delusion?

What Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have learned is that the rest of the region is no longer willing to allow the failures of Palestinian leaders to hinder the pursuit of their own national interest in normalizing ties with Israel. That was the main takeaway of the Abraham Accords, the 2020 agreements brokered by President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, which forged diplomatic relations between Israel and four Arab states.

For Rhodes, these peace agreements were themselves a failure. “After Mr. Trump abandoned the Oslo consensus and moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, Mr. Netanyahu and AIPAC showered him with adulation,” he writes. “Yet when Mr. Trump rolled out the Abraham Accords normalizing relations between Israel and some autocratic Arab states, many Democrats credulously heralded it as a ‘peace’ agreement even though it didn’t end any wars and it sidelined the Palestinians.”

That rendering of recent history is preposterous. The decision of Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates to recognize Israel came three years after Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moved our embassy there. The Oslo consensus was wrong. America’s Arab allies once held U.S. foreign policy hostage by demanding the creation of a Palestinian state. But the Arab regimes have evolved.

Meanwhile, the Palestine Firsters are actively seeking to shift American policy in the Middle East in the opposite direction. They want to turn America against Israel just at the moment when Arab states have been engaged in an unambiguously positive turn toward the West—which involves bringing to an end the Arab world’s destructive and pointless eight-decade commitment to seek Israel’s destruction. The Palestine Firsters want the United States to pick up that diseased baton and wreck an alliance that has advanced the national interest for decades.

Primed To Lead Israel

REVIEW: ‘A Call at 4 AM: Thirteen Prime Ministers and the Crucial Decisions that Shaped Israeli Politics’ by Amit Segal
"In Israel, in order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles," Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, once quipped.

At some point later in his career, perhaps he muttered to himself, "In order to survive a full term as prime minister, you need way more than the ability to split a sea and have God give you two inscribed tablets on a mountaintop."

We’ll never know.

But as Amit Segal’s A Call at 4 AM: Thirteen Prime Ministers and the Crucial Decisions That Shaped Israeli Politics demonstrates, one seems to need divine intervention to survive years at the head of the world’s only Jewish state and emerge unscathed by public opinion, war, or scandal.

That, ironically, is partially the fault of Ben-Gurion himself. As Segal, one of Israel’s most renowned journalists, documents in his riveting political history, the country since its inception has had to operate by the seat of its sand-swept pants. Besieged by Arab countries seeking its destruction from the day of its birth, and already welcoming Jews from all over the world (including thousands forced to flee from those same Arab countries), the Israeli leader channeled the ancient Jewish habit of free debate, honed over centuries in the beit midrash (house of study). "In the absence of a democratic tradition and under the specter of a deadly national conflict," Segal writes, "there was a genuine fear that any minority who felt unrepresented would try to storm the parliament building with tanks."

Israel’s notoriously complex coalition-based parliament, the Knesset, has proved more stable than originally expected. Its model, despite its seemingly ever-dramatic daily headlines, stands head and shoulders above its neighbors. No doubt millions of viewers in Israel and America chuckled when President Donald Trump got up to deliver his remarks celebrating the successful release of the remaining living hostages taken by Hamas, following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opening address and remarks from the Knesset's speaker, only to have POTUS realize it wasn’t his turn yet because the leader of the opposition to the ruling coalition, Yair Lapid, had his turn to speak first.

"Even on the Knesset's stormiest days," Segal notes with characteristic humor and insight, "it is worth remembering that the opposition leader in Egypt is in jail, the opposition leader in Syria drives around in an armored personnel carrier, the opposition leader in Lebanon lies six feet under, and the opposition leader in Israel meets the prime minister once a month for a friendly conversation over coffee and bagels."

Michal Cotler-Wunsh and Nadav Steinman: How Antisemitism Is Entering Mainstream Culture

For decades, efforts to demonize, delegitimize and apply double standards to Israel, and implicitly justifying violence against Jews, occurred mostly in academic institutions, fringe activist movements and international forums. But lately, these ideas have migrated into mainstream public life in the West - into sports stadiums, concert halls, music festivals, and entertainment platforms. Demonizing and otherwise targeting Jews and the Jewish state, once the realm of UN resolutions or academic debates, have now become commonplace in mainstream forums.

The working definition of antisemitism by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), adopted by more than 40 countries including the U.S., Germany, France and Britain, explicitly identifies as antisemitic the denial of Jewish self-determination and the application of double standards to Israel. Today's virulent anti-Zionism, masquerading as criticism of the Israeli government, has stoked Jew-hatred and helped unleash and normalize it in the public square.

Israel, the Jew among nations, is uniquely targeted for bans from cultural events, Israeli artists and athletes are singled out, Jewish visibility is increasingly framed as provocation, and convicted terrorists are recast as political prisoners. The letter signed by 200 celebrities calling for the release of convicted Palestinian terrorist Marwan Barghouti reflects an environment where violence against Israelis is romanticized, and anti-Zionism is presented as a moral duty, couched in the language of human rights.

The normalization of antisemitism creates the conditions for hate that does not stop with Jews, because it's never about Jews alone. What is being mainstreamed is a thuggish sensibility in which any targeted group can be demonized. The deeper threat from rising antisemitism is the general erosion of fundamental principles of life and liberty. The Barghouti letter shows not just the moral lapse of celebrities. It is a siren warning of a fire that isn't even close to being extinguished.

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12/15 Links Pt1: Holocaust survivors and children among the 15 murdered; The Road to Bondi Beach; Bondi Beach Is What ‘Globalize the Intifada’ Looks Like; Bondi Beach hero told cousin 'I'm going to die'

From Ian:

Bret Stephens: Bondi Beach Is What ‘Globalize the Intifada’ Looks Like

Sadly for Australia, foreign actors alone aren’t the problem. Last year, Jillian Segal, the government’s special envoy to combat antisemitism, warned that “antisemitic behavior is not only present on many campuses, but is an embedded part of the culture.” In the wake of Hamas’s attack of Oct. 7, Greens legislator Jenny Leong went on a rant accusing “the tentacles” of the “Jewish lobby and the Zionist lobby” of “infiltrating into every single aspect of what is ethnic community groups.” Jewish homes, neighborhoods and a day care center have been targeted by vandals and arsonists. At least one of the alleged shooters in Sunday’s attack was known to authorities, “but not in an immediate threat perspective,” according to a top Australian intelligence official.

I heard an earful of alarm from Jewish communal leaders when I last visited Australia in June 2024, but nothing seemed to change. On Sunday, the Australian Jewish Association posted a message to Facebook: “How many times did we warn the government? We never felt once that they listened.”

They are probably listening now. But the problem for the Albanese government, which in September recognized a Palestinian state and has been outspoken in its condemnation of Israeli actions in Gaza, is that the moral line between the routine demonization of Israel and attacks on Jews who are presumed to support Israel isn’t necessarily clear. On Sunday, Albanese said that “the evil that was unleashed at Bondi Beach today is beyond comprehension.” In fact, it’s entirely comprehensible. For fanatics who have been led to believe that the Jewish state is the apotheosis of evil, killing Jews represents a twisted notion of justice. Even when the victims are unarmed civilians. Even when they are celebrating an ancient, joyful holiday.

There’s a larger lesson here that goes far beyond Australia.

Though we’ll probably learn more in the weeks ahead about the mind-set of Sunday’s killers, it’s reasonable to surmise that what they thought they were doing was “globalizing the intifada.” That is, they were taking to heart slogans like “resistance is justified,” and “by any means necessary,” which have become ubiquitous at anti-Israel rallies the world over. For many of those who chant those lines, they may seem like abstractions and metaphors, a political attitude in favor of Palestinian freedom rather than a call to kill their presumptive oppressors.

But there are always literalists — and it’s the literalists who usually believe their ideas should have real-world consequences. On Sunday, those consequences were written in Jewish blood. History tells us that it won’t be the last time.

The People of Forever Are Not Afraid

We’ll mourn the dead, we’ll comfort the afflicted, we’ll carry on. It’s been millennia now; we’ve gotten good at it. And we’ll continue to grow stronger because we draw our courage and our resolve from that ancient covenant that charges us, always and forever, to spread God’s light and love to a benighted, blood-soaked world. Our great prophet Micah captured the mission statement perfectly long ago: “They shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the Lord of Hosts hath spoken it.”

And yet, in each generation, some clearly fail to get the memo, believing instead that it’s possible to make them—us, the Jews, and with us, the entire world—afraid by means of brute force. How does that work out? A brief history lesson tells the story.

Rome, the former empire that showed us no mercy, is now a sweaty, smoggy city depending on tourist dollars to survive.

Spain, birthplace of the Inquisition, has let in some 600,000 migrants a year since 2022 and now faces the highest unemployment rate on the continent.

England, having been the first to expel the Jews in 1290, now arrests people for making true statements on social media while turning a blind eye to the mass rape of its own daughters by gangs of vicious migrants slowly devouring the country.

France, Germany, Canada, Australia—it’s the same story everywhere you look. A West too weak to define, let alone defend, its own values, and hordes of marauders settling in and reshaping the culture in their violent, hateful image.

So don’t worry about us. Worry about Sydney, Toronto, Paris, and the other former capitals of culture and innovation that are now drowned by waves of angry savages cheering on murder and sowing chaos and violence. Worry about the kind folks in Germany who let in hundreds of thousands of Muslims in the name of multicultural benevolence, only to be told that they may no longer enjoy their Christmas markets because their new neighbors may feel inclined to blow them up, shoot them up, or ram them with cars. Worry about the politicians who continue to take suicidal symbolic steps, like recognizing “Palestine” or prattling on about “Islamophobia,” even as they drain their nations of their freedoms and securities.

Almost immediately after the shooting in Sydney, some on social media took to sharing the famous photograph of a menorah in a window in Kiel, Germany, in 1931, with the Nazi flag hanging from the facade of the party’s regional headquarters across the street. The photo is indeed worth a thousand words: Hanukkah has never been a holiday of passive faith. It commemorates a moment when Jews refused to surrender their identity to those who demanded conformity. Hanukkah teaches that Jewish survival is not rooted in denial of danger, but in the courage to affirm who we are anyway.

Nearly a century later, we still light menorahs with joy and conviction, whereas the Nazi flag and those who believed in it are all gone. Nearly a century later, the Jewish state leads the way in everything from innovation to birthrates to happiness, while the birthplace of Goethe and Schiller finds its fertility in free fall, its politics in turmoil, and its future darkened by violent invaders who despise its culture and show it no fealty or gratitude.

Today’s Nazis will soon meet a similarly grim ending, their green-red-white-and-black flag tossed to the same dustbin of history as the swastika. Let the savages ululate their blood libels as they always have. Let them accuse the Jews of whatever they want. The people of forever aren’t afraid.

JPost Editorial: Bondi attack exposes Australia’s failure to confront rising antisemitism

Coordinated, ideologically driven violence
Even more disturbing was what lay behind some of these attacks. Australian intelligence has concluded that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was behind at least two antisemitic arson attacks on Jewish sites in Melbourne and Sydney, prompting Canberra to expel Iranian diplomats, suspend its embassy operations in Tehran, and move toward designating the IRGC as a terrorist organization. This is not spontaneous hatred. It is coordinated, ideologically driven violence.

At the same time, the Mossad warned Australian authorities of the risk of an antisemitic terrorist attack against the Jewish community. A Post staff report, citing Israeli and Australian media, revealed that the Mossad sent messages about possible threats, even as the local police commissioner insisted there had been no specific intelligence before the Bondi Beach massacre.

That gap, if confirmed, points to a devastating breakdown between the warning system and the political and policing response.

The human cost is already visible. We reported that Arsen Ostrovsky, a Post contributor and pro-Israel human-rights lawyer, was among those wounded at Bondi Beach.

Just two weeks earlier, Ostrovsky had warned of “an alarming surge in Jew-hatred since October 7, including the defilement of Australian landmarks being hijacked as platforms for intimidation.” His wounds at a Hanukkah celebration are a brutal illustration of how quickly rhetoric turns into bullets.

Australia’s experience is part of a broader and troubling global pattern. Across Western democracies, antisemitism has surged alongside a wider resurgence of ideological extremism. Jewish communities are often the first targets, but history shows they are never the last.

Lone actors, radicalized networks, and transnational ideologies do not respect borders, and they thrive where political leadership hesitates to name the problem clearly or act decisively.

Australian authorities have taken steps in response: arrests, investigations, new databases, and task forces. Yet the overall response has too often felt reactive, fragmented, and cautious. Security cannot be reduced to policing after the fact. It requires political clarity, legal frameworks that recognize modern threats, and sustained coordination between intelligence services, law enforcement, and vulnerable communities.

Standing with Australia’s Jewish community is not a matter of symbolism or special pleading. It is a test of whether the state can protect a minority when it is under sustained attack, and whether it understands that doing so strengthens democracy for everyone. Jewish Australians should not have to choose between visibility and safety, or between practicing their faith and trusting their government.

If Australia fails to act decisively now, not just for Jews but for all communities, it will not be because the threat was unforeseeable. The Post’s own reporting throughout the past two years has chronicled the warning signs. Those warnings were ignored, and responsibility was deferred. That is a failure no democracy can afford.

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12/14 Links: The Bondi barbarians; The night Australia died; Father-and-son terrorists gunned down Jewish Australians at Bondi beach, young girl among 16 dead

From Ian:

The Bondi barbarians

Australia, like so many other Western nations, has become a cauldron of anti-Semitism since Hamas’s genocidal rampage into Israel on 7 October 2023. The most lethal assault on Jews since the Holocaust sparked not solidarity, but hate marches and a spike in anti-Semitic violence. Melbourne’s Adass Israel synagogue was hit by an arson attack last December. A kosher deli in Bondi was set ablaze in October.

Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese has pointed the finger at Iran for waging this prior campaign of attacks, via a ‘layer cake’ of intermediaries. We wait to learn who was behind the barbarism in Bondi today, and what sick ideology they gunned people down in the name of. Although I dare say we know enough to hazard a guess.

But in Australia, as in Britain, the surge in anti-Semitism cannot be explained away as nefarious actors stirring hatred from afar. The new Jew hatred, expressed through a maniacal hatred of Israel, has exploded under Albanese’s watch – all but encouraged by his (and Starmer’s) decision to ‘recognise’ Palestine, effectively rewarding the 7 October pogromists for their efforts.

Thus, places Jews once fled to no longer feel so safe. The Adass Israel synagogue, torched last year, was built by Holocaust survivors. Arsen Ostrovsky, a human-rights lawyer who survived the 7 October attacks, moved to Australia two weeks ago to fight anti-Semitism in the country. He was injured at Bondi. ‘I never thought I would see this in Australia’, he told Channel 9, his bandaged face smeared with blood. No wonder so many Jews are moving to Israel.

If Jews aren’t safe in Bondi or Manchester, if they cannot attend a Hanukkah celebration or synagogue on Yom Kippur without their mind beginning to turn to the worst, then we can no longer claim to be enlightened nations. Leaders have looked the other way as a sulphurous Jew hatred has bubbled up from below, welcomed in through porous borders, fomented by multiculturalism, propagandised in the streets by Islamists, and enthusiastically embraced by woke useful idiots.

The Bondi pogrom showed us the worst of humanity – barbarians who hate Jews, hate freedom, hate life. But it also showed us the best. The woman who took a bullet for a three-year-old girl she didn’t even know. There’s the mighty Ahmed al Ahmed, the fruitshop owner who snuck up on and disarmed one of the killers. He saved countless lives, before taking two bullets himself. Beautiful, incredible heroism. Sadly, we’re going to need a lot more of it if we are to defeat this evil in our midst.

Brendan O'Neill: Like the heroes of Bondi, we should all be tackling anti-Semites

We live in a ‘walk-on-by’ society. Ours is an era in which the active citizen has been ruthlessly decommissioned by the deathless technocrats who rule over us. They don’t even trust us to raise our kids properly, far less overpower the armed haters of humanity. The end result is that too many people look the other way when tyranny strikes – or worse, stand and film it. One thinks of the crowd that gathered round the Islamist killers of Lee Rigby, faithfully filming their deranged ranting. How much better for humanity it would have been if the crowd had forcefully subdued those hysterics and taken their cleavers.

Bravery finds a way, though. The human instinct to help is not so easily crushed. One thinks of the men who hurled beer glasses and chairs at the three radical Islamists who went on a stabbing spree in London Bridge in 2017. Or Ignacio Echeverría, the Spanish national who used his skateboard to beat one of those London Bridge terrorists (sadly, he was subsequently killed). And now Ahmed al Ahmed, the fortysomething conqueror of a modern-day Nazi.

‘Don’t be a have-a-go hero’, we’re so often told. It’s advice we should resolutely ignore. Having a go is precisely what more of us should be doing. And not only in the heat of an all-out act of Jewphobic barbarism, but in everyday life, too. After all, the violent loathing that shook Sydney today did not emerge in a vacuum. This neo-fascist animus for the Jewish homeland and the Jewish people has been stewing for years. If more of us had ‘had a go’ earlier, perhaps we could have seen off, or at least tamed, this gravest menace in Western society.

Don’t wait until it turns violent. ‘Have a go’ now. If you see someone carrying a placard calling Jews Nazis, get in their face. If you see a keffiyeh mob outside a synagogue, confront them. If you see a frothing Islamist or leftist harassing a Jew in public, put yourself between the scumbag and his victim. Don’t run, hide and tell – stand, fight and tell them to fuck off. Enough is enough. Get out there.

Jeremy Leibler: Bondi Beach Hanukkah shooting is an attack on Australia itself

While the Jewish community gathered in Sydney to mark the first night of Hanukkah, our community was subjected to a horrific act of violence.

This is a day of profound grief. Members of our community have been murdered. Others have been seriously wounded. Families are shattered. A sacred moment of light has been turned into darkness.

We are working urgently with authorities as further details are confirmed. Our focus right now is on the victims, their families, and the safety of the community.

An attack on Australia
Let me be clear. An attack on Jews celebrating their faith is an attack on Australia itself. It is an assault on our values, our social cohesion, and the basic right of people to gather without fear.

This did not occur in a vacuum. For years, antisemitic incitement, vilification, and intimidation have been allowed to grow unchecked. When hatred is normalized, violence follows. Tonight, that warning has become reality.

We mourn those who have lost their lives. We pray for the wounded and for the families waiting in anguish. And we stand united, determined that terror and hatred will not drive Jews from public life in this country.

Australia must respond with moral clarity, decisive leadership, and action. Anything less would be a betrayal of those we lost tonight.

The writer is the president of the Zionist Federation of Australia.

Bondi Beach Hanukkah shooting has shattered Australia's illusion of immunity

The shock from this latest attack has reverberated not only through the Jewish community but across Australian society at large. For years, there was a comforting illusion that Australia was immune to antisemitism. Even now, it remains difficult for the general public – and especially for government leaders – to internalize that this reality has fundamentally changed. In recent months, despite the sharp rise in antisemitic incidents and violence against Jews, the Jewish community has repeatedly been reassured by authorities: “Everything will be fine. You are safe and protected.” And yet, here we are – facing a terror attack of a kind Australia has never seen before, carried out brazenly and without fear.

Lately, many people ask me, "What changed?" How did we get here?

How we got here: What changed with antisemitism in Australia?
For decades, Israel enjoyed broad bipartisan support from Australian governments, support that also extended a protective umbrella over the Jewish community. But in recent elections, a shift occurred. The current government adopted a seemingly “balanced” approach – placing Israel and the Palestinians on the same moral plane and drawing an artificial distinction between Judaism and Zionism. This is not an anti-Jewish government. But the rhetorical and policy shift created a dangerous vacuum – one quickly filled by extremist voices who suddenly felt legitimized to act openly.

Antisemitism in Australia – and globally – is now at levels not seen since before the Holocaust. The Australian government must recognize this reality and respond decisively. If it does not, we will, tragically, face more attacks like the one in Sydney.

Australian leaders must move from words to action. They must fight antisemitism proactively – not merely attempt, and fail, to reactively protect Jewish communities after the damage is done. This fight must take every form necessary: education, legislation, enforcement, public diplomacy, and clear moral leadership. This is the moment for real, courageous action. Without it, Jews will no longer be able to live in safety – not in Australia, and not anywhere that continues to deny the gravity of this threat.

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12/13 Links: IDF slays top Hamas commander who helped plan Oct. 7 massacre; Dr. Einat Wilf: 'We lied to ourselves about the Palestinians'; 2 US troops, civilian interpreter killed in attack by member of Syrian security forces

From Ian:

Dr. Einat Wilf: 'We lied to ourselves about the Palestinians'

Dr. Einat Wilf, a former Labor MK who says she underwent a political awakening, explains in a recent interview with Maariv why she views Mahmoud Abbas as an adversary and why she is forming a new party, Oz, to advance a program that ties peace to Arab and Palestinian acceptance of Zionism.

Wilf says her focus is to confront the “right of return” and UNRWA’s role in perpetuating conflict, arguing that state services should prioritize those who serve the state.

Wilf frames her platform around three points: peace based on Arab and Palestinian acceptance of Zionism, state services for those who serve the state, and a shift from a diasporic mindset to sovereign governance.

‘After October 7, these issues are at the core’
About a year ago, Wilf was invited to a filmed interview about Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinians. The former Labor MK and left-wing figure, who experienced a political awakening, tried to explain why she sees Mahmoud Abbas as an enemy.

“I spoke about his commitment to the Palestinian ethos that believes in the right of return and fights against the existence of a Jewish state for the Jewish people,” she recalls. “It was a long interview, and when I finished, studio staff, from the lighting tech to the director, came up to me and said, this is what we want to vote for. Why is there no one in Israeli politics who represents your ideas?”

Playing the dangerous boycott game

As Commentary’s Seth Mandel wrote: “How should we judge the countries that stomped out of Eurovision over Israel’s participation? Harshly. A singing competition is not a diplomatic convention. Would you leave a karaoke bar because there was an Israeli Jew there? Will these folks boycott all establishments that serve Israeli Jews?

“Aside from emitting a faint segregationist stink, these Europeans are politicizing every cell in their bodies in an attempt to enforce those same artistic limits on everyone else. If rare apolitical music gatherings are impossible, it has a stunting effect on the industry and on the minds and temperaments of the people participating in their own dumbing down.”

As many have noted, it’s not just the Eurovision Song Contest. There are ongoing boycotts of Israel in sports, academia, the literary world, and cultural events (ostensibly more cultured than Eurovision.)

Guinness World Records could hold its own world record in being tone-deaf. As a spokesperson confirmed in a statement to The Jerusalem Post’s Mathilda Heller last week: “We truly do believe in record-breaking for everyone, everywhere, but unfortunately, in the current climate, we are not generally processing record applications from the Palestinian Territories or Israel, or where either is given as the attempt location, with the exception of those done in cooperation with a UN humanitarian aid relief agency.”

In case you were in any doubt, the UN relief agency clause means that Palestinians can still participate. It’s only the Jews – well, Israelis of any religion–who have been canceled.

The gaslighting of the Jewish state was revealed when the non-profit organization Matnat Chaim (The Gift of Life), which encourages altruistic kidney donations, contacted Guinness World Records regarding its planned record-breaking event scheduled to bring 2,000 Israeli kidney donors together next month for a photo in Jerusalem. Of all things to boycott!

A look at the GWR site shows some of the strange feats it has recognized, including, for example, this “brilliantly bonkers food record”: “Largest serving of chicken wings... To celebrate their 50th anniversary, Big Green Egg didn’t just throw a party – they grilled up a record! They cooked a mouth-watering 297.5 kg. (655 lb. 12.8 oz.) of chicken wings. That’s as heavy as 3 baby elephants!”

I find the comparison of thousands of devoured chicken wings to baby elephants more bizarre than bonkers, but that’s besides the point. As a vegetarian, I find the whole event in poor taste, but that’s not my beef. What do you think is healthier, educational, and life-affirming: grossly overeating chicken wings or encouraging people to donate a kidney to someone they don’t know?

As it happens, Israel is considered by some to be the highest global consumer of poultry per capita, but I’ll save my pride for the fact that Israelis, thanks largely to Matnat Chaim, lead the way in altruistic kidney donations.

Notably, Guinness World Records began its ban on Israel in November 2023, not after the October 7 Hamas invasion and mega-atrocity in which 1,200 were murdered and 251 abducted; it blocked Israel when the Jewish state began to fight back.

One thing is clear from the UN plenum, the Eurovision stage, and Guinness World Records: Israel is constantly being judged by a different standard. It’s a win for antisemitism and hatred, and a massive loss for the world.

The patheticness of Nick Fuentes

What we need is a reckoning with identity politics. Fuentes hardly speaks for a whole generation of disaffected young men, but he has been lent some fertile ground at the edges. Generation Z were force-fed woke grievance politics, and chastised if they dissented. They were told group identity is great, with the exception of white group identity. Young men were told men weren’t shit. The hysterical overuse of ‘far right’ and ‘racist’, in turn, insulated a portion of young people from these forms of censure. No wonder some grifting upstarts have managed to make hay out of this.

We also need to go on the offensive against this particular faction of right identitarians. That means pushing back on their racial essentialism and BS statistics. (Piers, bless him, didn’t make the best fist of the latter, leading to a painful digression about per-capita crime rates.) But it also means pointing out how pathetic – as well as bigoted – all of it is. Just as the wokesters blame all of their problems on white supremacy, and the Jews, the new racist right blames all of their problems on anti-whiteness, and the Jews. It’s a dumb racialisation of deeper material and cultural problems, and an embrace of babyish victimhood to boot.

As for the misogyny, I for one am shocked that someone who has never so much as touched a woman seems to hate them so much. The best part of the interview was when Morgan straight up asked Fuentes if he is a virgin. (Reader, he is.) Personally, I’d have been tempted to open with that. We can and should talk about how #MeToo or victim feminism or the explosion of online pornography has poisoned relations between the sexes. But the self-pitying rage of the sexless young man is a story as old as time.

Perhaps the barmiest claim made about Fuentes is that he is the next stage of the populist revolt – a take that serves to both flatter his ego and vindicate the fever dreams of the anti-populist set. Apparently, when a multiracial coalition rebelled against the undemocratic elites at the ballot box, when parents showed up at school boards to stop critical race theory and gender ideology being preached to their children, when ordinary Americans expressed their horror at Big Tech firms silencing speech at the behest of the government, what they were really hankering for was to be ruled by a ‘Catholic Taliban’, to use Fuentes’s phrase – for someone in power to tell them what to do, put women back in their box and divide up society by race, only in a more vintage, reactionary fashion. Democracy, freedom of speech, genuine equality – these are the popular causes of our time. Nick Fuentes is only a clownish mirror image of everything that Americans have been rebelling against.

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12/12 Links Pt2: The humanitarian front against Israel; The Fake “Johns Hopkins Genetic Study” Meme; Call me Back Podcast: Israel's President, Isaac Herzog

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The humanitarian front against Israel

So why has Amnesty, which has done so much to poison the West against Israel with a sustained and malevolent campaign of lies designed to destroy it, suddenly lurched toward at least some acknowledgment of the truth?

Perhaps it feels the hot breath on its neck of the Trump administration, which is now threatening to take condign action against those who have assisted the Palestinian Arab terrorist armies in their war of extermination against Israel.

Officials in the administration have reportedly held advanced discussions on hitting the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine “Refugees” (UNWRA) with terrorism-related sanctions. Both Israel and the Trump administration have accused UNWRA of links with Hamas, allegations the agency has vigorously disputed.

Washington halted funding in January 2024 after Israel accused about a dozen UNRWA staff of taking part in the Oct. 7 attack. Israel has also accused UNRWA of taking and guarding hostages, as well as consistently glorifying terrorism in its schools, and teaching its children to hate and murder Jews.

However, the use of humanitarian institutions to launder the war of extermination against Israel goes much further. An NGO Monitor report that was recently released has revealed—from scores of internal Hamas documents—the astonishing extent of the terrorist group’s infiltration and exploitation of international NGOs’ operations in Gaza.

The organizations involved include Catholic Relief Services, funded by Ireland, the United States and the United Nations; the International Medical Corps funded by the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States and the United Nations; and Medical Aid for Palestinians, whose funders include UNICEF, the World Health Organization and the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

According to the report, the evidence confirms that these NGOs in Gaza do not operate independently or neutrally. They are instead embedded in an institutionalized framework of coercion, intimidation and surveillance that serves Hamas’s terror objectives.

All NGOs operating in Gaza, it says, are required to adhere to strict Hamas security protocols, which include regular engagement with the terror group’s Ministry of Interior and National Security and other ministries.

Local Gazan “guarantors,” approved by Hamas, serve as the point of contact between Hamas and the NGOs. At least 10 such “guarantors” were Hamas members or supporters, or employed by Hamas-affiliated authorities.

‘Expelled From the Community of Which We Were a Part Only Yesterday’ Jean Améry on the Dilemma for Left-Wing Jewish Intellectuals, Sartre’s Freedom of Choice and the Commitment to Israel

What happened on 7 October 2023, and what has been happening since then, have surpassed the Jew-hatred of the 1960s and 70s. Hamas and their supporters invaded Israeli territory, raped, mutilated and slaughtered Israelis and proudly filmed themselves doing so. 1,200 people were murdered in a bestial manner, almost 5,000 were injured in one day alone, and 251 people, mostly Israelis but also foreign nationals whose only ‘crime’ was to be in the Jewish state, were taken hostage into Gaza.

Immediately afterwards, leftist groups throughout the Western world gathered in solidarity not with the victims but with the murderers.[38] Feminist activists either ignored the rapes or treated them as ‘resistance.’[39] The tendency among prominent Holocaust, genocide, and memory scholars to delegitimise Israel by drawing unfounded parallels between the extermination of European Jewry and Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians – already apparent well before 7 October – has intensified over the past two years.[40]

The accusation that Israel is committing genocide is an old classic in the repertoire of anti-Israel protesters. Since 2023, however, this blood libel has made its way into mainstream arts, academia, and politics across the West. It has nothing to do with the facts on the ground, but rather with the own psychological needs of anti-Zionists – we might recall Sartre, Adorno, and Horkheimer. In Germany, the popular chant ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ was supplemented by the rallying call, ‘Palestine will set us free.’ The redemptive dimension of today’s anti-Israel activism could not be sounded more clearly. ‘Palestine’ has become the new saviour or – in leftist terms – the new revolutionary subject after the proletariat and the Third World failed to deliver on the hopes invested in them.

A truly humane future, once the aspiration of the left – certainly the left Améry considered himself a part of – appears to have been abandoned long ago. The future that today’s leftist activists on the barricades are striving for as ‘liberation’ will not bring about actual redemption of mankind, but a whole different kind of suffering compared to today – suffering reminiscent of the worst horrors humanity had descended into in the 20th century.

When the Germans and their auxiliaries sought to purify the world from misery, the logic of self-preservation, the basis of all rational thought, turned into the logic of extermination: murder for the sake of murder. As a result of its enactment, the Holocaust remains unprecedented to this day. And yet, another descent into barbarism is not banished in the future as long as the conditions that enabled it prevail.

The only practical objection to the world after Auschwitz and the possible repetition of antisemitic extermination today is the Jewish state. Not international law, not human rights declarations, and not – as in present-day Germany’s case – a questionable raison d’état. The fact that antisemitism is intertwined with society at large, or in Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s words ‘anti-semitism and totality have always been profoundly connected,’[41] removes everyone, Jews and non-Jews, from freedom of choice when it comes to the necessity of Israel.

However, Jews feel the ‘crushing pressure’[42] already today. When some side with antisemites and rationalise antisemitic attacks, this phenomenon is often described as ‘Jewish self-hate.’ But such a perception falls short. Because it is based on a displacement: It suggests that the reason for this behaviour lies within the Jew, when in fact it originates outside, in the pressure of antisemitic society.[43] Jews who turn against Jewish self-determination embody, paradoxically, both resistance against and identification with their persecutor. Resistance, because they try to avert the hate against them, identification because they take on their enemies’ gaze. In the attempt to gain self-empowerment, they overlook that antisemitism is not related to what its objects actually do or not do. The security promised by this identification is in fact no security at all. Non-Jews do not experience this pressure. They make their decision – and this crucial difference is all too easily missed – without duress.

Améry’s disconcerting insight is that ultimately no one who cares about a future in which freedom of choice is possible has any true choice today. This is the uncomfortable imposition which cannot be dispelled by omitting Améry’s essay from posthumously published books.

The Fake “Johns Hopkins Genetic Study” Meme

The meme is a fabrication, loosely based on a 2012 study by Dr. Eran Elhaik. In this study, he suggests that a significant number of Ashkenazi Jews are descended from the Khazars—a diverse group of Turkic peoples from the Caucasus region who allegedly converted to Judaism.

This theory is known as the Khazarian Hypothesis and has been discredited as junk science by the academic community.

Elhaik’s study was methodologically flawed from the beginning. There is no Khazar DNA to compare with Ashkenazi Jews, as the Khazars have no living descendants. Elhaik’s use of modern Georgian and Armenian populations as proxies for ancient Khazars has been rejected by leading scientists, who have published indisputable evidence in numerous journals, including the prestigious journal Science.

In addition to the lack of genetic links to the Khazars, the theory is further weakened by the absence of linguistic connections. If Ashkenazi Jews were truly descendants of the Khazars, they would have spoken a Turkic language, not Yiddish, which is a Judeo-Germanic language.

The meme takes the erroneous results of Elhaik’s study even further. The paper was published in the Genome Biology and Evolution journal, not at Johns Hopkins, and it only focused on the DNA of European Jews, not Israelis, as confirmed by the author. Additionally, the figure of 97% does not appear anywhere in Elhaik’s research. Numerous studies on Ashkenazi DNA have been conducted, and while none have proven a link to the Khazars, the overwhelming majority of genetic studies have confirmed that Ashkenazi Jews are genetically linked to the Levant.

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12/12 Links Pt1: The Danger Isn’t That the Cease-fire Will Collapse, But That It Will Become Permanent; UNRWA is beyond repair, so it's time to move on

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The Danger Isn’t That the Cease-fire Will Collapse, But That It Will Become Permanent

The collective armies of Gaza understand that they can stretch out this phase of the process by stalling on the return of the final hostage’s body. That is why Israel is considering moving on to the second phase anyway—not because its leaders don’t care about the remains of Ran Gvili but because waiting for Hamas to trigger the second stage will itself incentivize Hamas to hold on to the body in perpetuity.

Refusing to advance to the second stage without the last hostage remains would be a significant strategic error on Israel’s part. For now, Hamas is waiting to see if it can bait Israel into exactly this error.

The pressure should be on Hamas of course, but also on the Arab states that have signed on to back the fulfillment of this deal. And on Europe, too, for that matter. Any time Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron move from pretending to care about Palestinians to actually caring about Palestinians, it will be welcome.

No one, except perhaps Hamas, wants this state of affairs to remain permanent.

At least that’s what they say. Let’s remember that after the Six-Day War, Israel was prepared to trade back the territories but the Arab states said, famously: no peace with Israel, no recognition of it, no negotiations with it.

Why were they so adamant? Because although they had lost the war against Israel, the Arab states received a consolation prize: The Palestinians were someone else’s problem now. Egypt was glad to be rid of Gaza and Jordan gave up its claims on the West Bank in the 1980s. The Palestinian Arabs could once again be used by the Arab world to weaken Israel with a permanent insurgency, unless by some miracle the Palestinians pulled themselves together enough for statehood.

The Arab states—and the wider Muslim world—are not exactly champing at the bit to contribute to the Gaza stabilization force that would be needed if Hamas were to be disarmed and replaced. Do they want Palestinian life rebuilt and the Palestinians given a chance to be free of Hamas’s totalitarian terror? Because from a certain angle, it’s starting to look as if maybe those Arab states would rather Gaza be split into an indefinite Israeli military occupation and a Hamas-controlled enclave. Perhaps the Arab world is not yet ready to contemplate the end of its conflict with Israel.

JPost Editorial: The West refuses to call out Hamas's blatant manipulation of public opinion

The Palestinian refugee crisis? Israel’s fault – never mind that it was Arab leaders who rejected partition and then launched a war to destroy the Jewish state.

Hunger in Gaza? Not because Hamas brutally attacked Israel and triggered a war. Not because it hides infant formula to inflame a crisis. Instead, blame defaults to Israel, the cruel party in a narrative shaped long before this war began.

For centuries, people were conditioned to believe in Jewish cruelty – the grotesque libels of killing children and using their blood for matzot. Old habits die hard. The vocabulary changes, but the instinct remains: Accuse the Jews first, believe the worst about them, and then investigate later, if at all.

Once in a long while, however, someone from within Arab society, such as Alkhatib, who has lost 31 family members in Gaza since the October 7 massacre, dares to speak up.

He exposed a truth many in the West find inconvenient: Hamas manipulates public opinion while showing utter indifference to the suffering of its own people. If that suffering helps advance its ultimate goal of Israel’s disappearance – and if Western “useful idiots” assist along the way – then so be it.

One final point deserves attention. Alkhatib said the hidden baby formula was stored in warehouses belonging to the Gaza Ministry of Health, the same ministry whose casualty figures are treated as indisputable fact by much of the international media. If that ministry conceals life-saving supplies to manufacture famine, why should anyone unquestioningly trust its numbers or its claims?

The answer should be obvious. The tragedy is that, for many, it still isn’t.

UNRWA is beyond repair, so it's time to move on

Moving from axing UNRWA to a constructive post-Gaza-war framework, the “international community” must focus on rebuilding Palestinian society – free from rank corruption, destructive indoctrination, coddling of terrorism, and the overall moral rot that for too long has contaminated international politics relating to Palestinians.

First and foremost, this means elimination of refugee status for all Palestinians living in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria. “Refugee camps” must be transformed into regular neighborhoods or towns, and their residents redefined as, well, local residents – not refugees.

Second is that meaningful curriculum overhauls should be undertaken in Palestinian educational institutions from kindergarten through university, eliminating antisemitic and anti-Israel materials, and the adoption of population-wide deradicalization initiatives.

Third is that action toward total demilitarization of Palestinian areas should be taken (excepting lightly armed police forces), as envisioned and promised in the Oslo Accords 30 years ago – but never pursued seriously.

Alas, Israel has little confidence in the ability of anybody to swiftly rebuild Palestinian society or “reform” Palestinian government, unless the Palestinians themselves wish to do so.

Throwing more aid money at the Palestinians certainly won’t help, just as it has not done the trick over the past thirty years since the Oslo Accords were signed.

Despite tens of billions of dollars and euros invested in the Palestinian Authority by the “international community,” there is no democracy, no rule of law, no transparency, no sustainability, no investment in economic stability, and no peace education in the PA. Not a single refugee has been resettled. Not one hospital has been built in the West Bank: only one sewage treatment plant.

But there is plenty of nepotism and corruption, “pay-for-slay” handouts (meaning the incentivizing and rewarding of terrorism against Israel), violent propagandizing against Israel (including support for Hamas’s October 7 invasion and massacres), and diplomatic assault on Israel in every possible international forum.

As for Western “security assistance” to the PA, this has produced mixed results, at best. The authority does not effectively control key terrorist nodes in the West Bank, and its security personnel have repeatedly participated in or facilitated terror attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers. PA security personnel account for 12% of all Palestinian terrorists held by Israel.

In short, the overall return on Western investment in Palestinian maturity and independence is abysmal. Real reform of Palestinian government and society is going to be a long, arduous process and must involve penalty and penance, not just reward and recognition.

Which is why it is asinine of France, Britain, Canada, and others to resurrect illusions of imminent Palestinian statehood. Regrettably, their gambit is a recipe for devastating disappointment and protracted conflict.

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12/11 Links Pt2: The Islamification of Western Democracies; Surging Socialism and Anti-Semitism Masquerading as Anti-Zionism; Study reveals majority of Gaza war 'journalists' tied to terror groups

From Ian:

The Islamification of Western Democracies

Europe's Muslim population has surged from less than 1% in 1970 to a projected 10-14% by 2050. Sweden potentially reaches 31%, Austria 21%, the UK 19%, and Germany 20%. Western civilization is being replaced - committing demographic suicide through its own democratic processes and ideological paralysis, acute passivity, and naivete. Moreover, Western societies have criminalized any discussion of this takeover.

No conquest is required - only open borders, welfare incentives, family reunification policies, refugee obligations, and a fertility differential guaranteeing Muslim demographic growth while native European populations collapse below replacement level.

Ideological conquest has weaponized social media and digital propaganda. Iran, Qatar, and Turkey invest billions in bot networks, influencer campaigns, and media empires amplifying pro-Islamic and anti-Israel narratives while recruiting Western progressives to accelerate Western ideological dismantling. The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928 to establish a caliphate based on Islamic supremacy, operates through media outlets, NGOs, political parties, mosques, and community organizations.

The Muslim population percentage in Canada increased by 145% from 2000 to 2025, while the U.S. increased by 90% in the same time period. Democratic societies should enable all citizens to seek office regardless of religion. The pattern that merits examination is whether officials elected primarily by Muslim constituencies adopt policies that prioritize narrow community interests over broader societal integration, whether they challenge fundamental Western values, and whether they systematically oppose Israel regardless of circumstance.

The effects of Islamification and the strategic use of social and mainstream media manipulation by jihadist state actors has already caused a significant shift in the way the Western world treats Israel. 17 out of 27 EU member states now recognize Palestine - effectively rewarding terrorism with diplomatic victory. European-funded NGOs systematically file cases against Israeli officials and soldiers in national and international courts.

Will Western civilization implement corrective policies or accept the continuing trajectory toward demographic replacement, political capitulation, and civilizational collapse?

Nikki Haley: America must expose the left's dangerous falsehoods about Israel

The criticism of Israel is a plain attempt to defame and delegitimize the country to promote its extinction. Yet the left’s leaders either repeat this hateful language or allow it to continue unchecked.

A man carries two Israeli flags during a pro-Israel rally outside the Israeli Embassy on October 8, 2023, in Washington, D.C. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

Democrats’ turn toward antisemitism is disturbing enough. But the same evil is now creeping into the right, though it’s not yet as widespread as it is on the left. It’s also heartening that many conservatives are vigorously pushing back. But there’s still an urgent need for every leader on the right to unequivocally state that standing with Israel is in America’s interests.

Israel is a military and intelligence juggernaut in a strategically vital region of the world. When America supports Israel, we are directly investing in the protection of our own citizens. Israel is fighting enemies that seek our destruction too. When we sell weapons to the Israeli military, we spare our own troops from being sent into harm’s way. Speaker Mike Johnson explains importance of US-Israel alliance Video

In the last two years, America hasn’t sent a single solider into battle against Hamas or Hezbollah, though both are committed to America’s destruction. If America abandoned Israel, it wouldn’t be long before we had to send our sons and daughters into battle against the same terrorists and tyrants.

These truths are the best antidote to the lies of antisemitism. History shows where those lies lead: to the actual genocide of the Jewish people. Preventing that tragedy is a moral imperative and a national necessity.

It starts with leaders who have the courage to say — and do — what’s right.

US: Surging Socialism and Anti-Semitism Masquerading as Anti-Zionism

Two decades ago, Islamism was virtually absent from the US political landscape.

Islamic antisemitism has gained ground in recent years, not just in the US but also in Europe. It appears fueled not only by adversaries of the US such as Iran, but also by domestic non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that appear to hide the identities of foreign donors.

Many anti-Israel protesters claim to support the Palestinian cause, but oddly none of them ever calls for the Palestinians' rights from their own leaders for freedom of speech, women's and children's rights, or even for a stop to entrenched corruption, arbitrary arrests, torture, extrajudicial executions, and other crimes against them.

The problem was not, as some have tried to claim, simply that [Tucker] Carlson invited [the neo-Nazi Nick] Fuentes, so much as Carlson's disinclination to question what he said. The veteran journalist Edward R. Murrow invited US Senator Joseph R. McCarthy for an interview but probed his statements. Carlson failed to indicate any disapproval of, or question, Fuentes's antisemitic remarks... What Carlson did was simply to give Fuentes a platform to expand his influence, unchallenged. The interview has been viewed online more than 20 million times.

This new hostility to Western civilization has also acted as a destabilizing force in major US foreign policy alliances. Israel, like it or not, is the United States' principal and most reliable ally in the Middle East.... As Israel is a world leader in technology, American investments there yield far more than they cost. Islamists and other enemies of the United States doubtless hope that if the US abandons Israel, this would lead to both a substantial weakening of America and other democracies, and a strengthening of tyrannies -- notably Islamist tyrannies.

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