05/11 Links Pt2: Journalism Succumbs To Its Wounds; I’m a Democrat. My Party Has a Double Standard on Antisemitism; I Walked TEL AVIV to JERUSALEM. The Real Israel No One Shows You.

From Ian:

John Podhoretz: Abe Foxman, 1940-2026

The “Jews who care” were the ones Abe Foxman, the most important and probably the most beloved American Jewish communal leader of his day, spoke for. He knew the difference between the Jews who care and others in his kishkes, based on his own extraordinary life story of the century. Born to Polish Jews in Belarus, his parents left him as a baby in the care of his nanny while they were sent to a ghetto.

He was given a false name and baptized as a Catholic. Miraculously, his mother escaped, returned to Vilnius, and herself posed as a local Catholic so she could provide money for Abe’s care. Then his father was liberated and came back after the war—at which point the nanny would not give him up, believing that she had saved his soul through his baptism and that he should remain in her care as a Catholic. Custody battles ensued, which the Foxmans finally won before making it to America in 1950. Abe was 10. He went to City College and then got a law degree before beginning to work as a Jewish activist. Abe made reference in many speeches to “the day I took off the cross.” And yet he and his parents remained grateful to the nanny and helped her until her passing. As they remained grateful to be Jews, in spite of having been targeted for death for being so. They raised Abe Orthodox, sent him to yeshiva, and while he attained a law degree and could have assimilated into the larger American melting pot to put the trauma of his first 10 years behind him, an Orthodox Jew he remained until his passing on Sunday at the age of 86.

The point here is that he saw his mission and obligation in the defense of Jews against the scourge of anti-Semitism. If that anti-Semitism came from the right, he attacked it. If it came from the left, he attacked it. If it came from white people, he attacked it. If it came from black people, he attacked it. If it was hidden inside anti-Zionism, he attacked it. If it was hidden in conversations about rapacious capitalists, he attacked it. He was utterly consistent. His mission was his mission and he pursued it unfailingly.

Which is why, in one of the more shameful moments in communal Jewish organizational history, he was coup’ed out of the ADL—simply because he wasn’t helpful enough to the cause of Jewish liberalism. His replacement, Jonathan Greenblatt, spent years muddying the institution’s mission and letting leftists off the hook by prioritizing liberal apologia until October 7 woke even Greenblatt up to the undeniable fact that the predominant threat is from the left. Had Abe been there, the clarity would not have been that hard to achieve.

I’m a Democrat. My Party Has a Double Standard on Antisemitism.

In 2017, Democratic leaders denounced the white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us.” In 2022, Democrats took Donald Trump to task for having dinner with Nick Fuentes, an antisemite and a white supremacist. Across the Democratic Party’s ideological spectrum, right-wing hate is consistently condemned.

But today, too many Democrats are noticeably and shamefully silent when antisemitism comes from the far left — at a moment when the Anti-Defamation League is reporting a surge of antisemitic incidents in the past three years.

It’s a glaring double standard.

Consider the response to — really, the embrace of — Hasan Piker, a prominent left-wing commentator with millions of online followers. He referred to Orthodox Jews as “inbred” and said “America deserved 9/11,” both statements he halfheartedly walked back. He said that Hamas — a designated terrorist organization that has killed Americans and taken Americans hostage — is “a thousand times better” than Israel, America’s ally, which he called a “fascist settler colonial apartheid state” — a statement he stands by. None of this should be waved away as mere edgy commentary. Mr. Piker traffics in antisemitic and anti-American extremism that has been met by silence from many on the Democratic left.

Sadly, we’ve seen several prominent Democrats appear on his show and even campaign with him, granting his views legitimacy.

I’ve spoken to congressional colleagues who have privately told me that many things Mr. Piker has said are disgusting. Yet they’ll say nothing about it in public, even as they rightly rush to condemn President Trump for his unending barrage of offensive comments and social media posts. I understand that speaking up isn’t easy — if you do, there are many on the left who will heckle you in public and troll you online. But whether we’re elected officials, candidates, organizers or activists, we should remember that our constituents don’t expect us to take the easy path. It takes far more courage to stand up to those who have long claimed to be in your corner than to oppose your political opponents. That’s what principled leadership is all about. But we’re not always seeing it.

At their recent party convention, Michigan Democrats nominated a candidate to run for a seat on the University of Michigan’s Board of Regents who had shared a social media post praising the former leader of Hezbollah as a martyr and another post that invoked age-old antisemitic tropes by referring to Israelis as “demons” who “lie, steal, cheat, murder and blackmail.”

Last month, most Senate Democrats voted for two measures that would have blocked sales of military equipment to Israel, with some arguing that among the reasons for their votes was their assessment of Israel’s human rights record. Is this turnabout a legitimate departure from decades of American foreign policy? Or — more likely — is it a politically convenient stance that coincides with a small but vocal and growing segment of the political left making opposition to support for Israel a new litmus test?

Seth Mandel: Journalism Succumbs To Its Wounds

The famous saying attributed to Jean-Paul Sartre holds that “the anti-Semite doesn’t accuse the Jew of stealing because he actually believes he stole. He accuses the Jew of stealing because he enjoys watching the Jew empty his pockets to prove his innocence.”

That is no doubt as true today as ever, regardless of the quote’s origins. And it immediately comes to mind when watching, in real time, the evolution in the latest in a long line of accusations about the nefarious trained militarism of Zionist animals. Whereas many of these rumors—my favorite being the griffin vulture that Arab governments claimed had been trained as a Mossad spy—had an air of levity about them, the new one most certainly does not. And that is the idea that Zionist dogs are trained to rape Arabs.

The anti-Zionist activists who started or popularized the rumors have made clear that there is no evidence in their favor. That didn’t stop the sick-minded anti-Israel protesters from adopting the talking point, as demonstrators did in London. From there, however, it has moved to the pages of the New York Times, where Nicholas Kristof repeats it.

I watched other sensational “reports” of Israeli perfidy circulate among people who treated them as fact recently and thought about how the question of whether Western journalism will ever recover from its alliance with the machinery of Hamas propaganda appears to have been answered. No.

I saw a video of a woman wearing a “PRESS” vest in Southern Lebanon, (though her bio lists no affiliation) and proceed to read a list of talking points off of a card and then say “I just received a heartbreaking report”—please note the wording—of an Israeli drone following a girl riding a scooter and shooting at her until she was mortally wounded.

Usually the reporter reports. But when it comes to Israel, activists costumed as journalists “receive” reports and then continue the game of telephone. “Somebody told me” is not reporting, but you can report out what somebody told you. Reporters know the difference, or should.

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05/11 Links Pt1: Trump: Iranian response ‘totally unacceptable’; Dear BBC News – Just When Will You Stop Shilling For Terrorists?; NYC anti-Israel activists protest at synagogue against Israel real estate event

From Ian:

David Collier: Dear BBC News – Just When Will You Stop Shilling For Terrorists?

The journalist behind this particular mess is Nawal Al-Maghafi. Her timeline is full of clear anti-Israel bias, non-factual commentary, Hamas propaganda presented as news, and retweets of Gaza-based activists whom no respectable journalist should be seen amplifying.

In this latest case, either she did not bother to dig for the truth of the Hezbollah affiliation at all, or chose to turn a blind eye to it.

Why is it that these Arabic journalists are given carte blanche to piggyback on the BBC’s name and spend money from the British licence fee promoting such a blatant anti-Israel agenda?

The truth is this: Hezbollah is a proscribed jihadist terror group that seeks to wipe Israel off the map. Funded, armed, and often directed by the Iranian regime, it has exported its violence to arenas such as the Syrian civil war. Hezbollah chose to attack Israel on 8 October 2023, and again at the start of the latest round of violence. Israel has no territorial dispute with Lebanon – and without Hezbollah’s religious fundamentalism in the south, there would be no conflict. All of Lebanon’s woes stem from the refusal of the Shia in the south to abandon their jihadist aims.

So why is there not a single BBC article that lays out this context clearly for its audience? Those who support Hezbollah – including this man’s own community – have brought devastation to both Lebanon and Israel.

Isn’t it about time that the BBC took away the pen from those journalists who clearly hate Israel and defunded its anti-Israel agenda? More importantly, when will the BBC stop shilling for terrorists?

Khaled Abu Toameh: Erdogan's Turkey: The NATO Member That Sponsors Terrorism

New revelations emerging from Israeli security investigations have shattered any illusion that Turkey's relationship with Hamas is limited to "political support" or "diplomatic engagement." The evidence increasingly points to a situation far more alarming: Turkey has become a primary operational, logistical, and financial hub for Hamas's global terror infrastructure.

Countries that enable terrorism cannot at the same time be treated as indispensable partners in the fight against terrorism.

By allowing Hamas members to develop drone capabilities on Turkish soil, Ankara is deliberately grooming terrorists for future wars against Israel.

Turkey, rather than simply hosting Hamas officials, is willfully cultivating the next generation of Hamas terrorists and making sure that the geographical reach of Iran's jihadist axis continues to expand.

Turkey's pivotal financial role is especially significant because it provides Hamas with access to the international financial system through the territory of a NATO member state. That reality should deeply alarm both Washington and European capitals.

Ideologically -- as well as militarily and financially -- Erdogan has openly embraced Hamas leaders. He has repeatedly refused to designate the group as a terrorist organization... and characterized its members as "resistance fighters" and "liberation group" warriors fighting to protect Palestinian lands.

Erdogan's alignment with Hamas seems rooted in his broader ideological affinity with the Muslim Brotherhood movement and other Islamist groups. His government has consistently supported radical Islamist groups in Egypt, Libya, Syria, and other countries.

For years, Western governments have clung to the fiction that countries such as Turkey and Qatar can serve as neutral mediators between Hamas and Israel. That assumption has always been deeply flawed.

Qatar, meanwhile, continues to try to undermine the United States by donating, over decades, many billions of dollars to influence education from K-12 through graduate schools throughout America. Cornell University has received $10 billion over the years; Carnegie Mellon "just under $2 billion"; Texas A&M University "over $1 billion" (which gave Qatar full ownership of more than 500 research projects in fields such as nuclear science, artificial intelligence, biotech, robotics and weapons development); and Georgetown University $971 million. Why do Qatar and Turkey continue embracing Hamas while demanding the trust of the US and the West? Why does the West keep accepting this duplicity?

The Trump administration faces a crucial test. If Washington is genuinely serious about dismantling the infrastructure of Hamas and confronting the Iranian regime, it cannot continue overlooking Turkey's commitment to doing the exact opposite: safeguarding and supporting Hamas.

A NATO member state, Turkey, is facilitating the activities of an Iranian-backed terrorist group responsible for the mass murder of civilians, including many Americans.

European sanctions on Israelis won’t succeed in pressuring Jewish state, Sa’ar says

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said on Monday that the European Union’s attempt to impose political views on Jerusalem through sanctions on Jews living in Judea and Samaria “is unacceptable and will not succeed.”

Israel “firmly rejects” the E.U. decision, describing it as “arbitrary” and “political,” Sa’ar said.

The Israeli official decried the “outrageous” comparison between Israeli citizens and Hamas terrorists. “This is a completely distorted moral equivalence,” he stated.

The E.U. foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas stated earlier that her organization “just gave the go-ahead to sanction Israeli settlers over violence against Palestinians.” She added that it had “also agreed new sanctions on leading Hamas figures.”

“It was high time we move from deadlock to delivery,” Kallas said. “Extremisms and violence carry consequences.”

“Israel has stood, stands and will continue to stand for the right of Jews to settle in the heart of our homeland,” Sa’ar responded. “No other people in the world has such a documented and longstanding right to its land as the Jewish people have to the Land of Israel.”

“This is a moral and historical right that has also been recognized by the law of nations, and no actor can take it away from the Jewish people,” he stated.

Earlier on Monday, Ireland’s national public service broadcaster reported that according to E.U. officials, “seven settlers or settler organizations” were set to be blacklisted, and that the bloc was also preparing sanctions against representatives of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.

Israel Gantz, head of the Binyamin Regional Council and chairman of the Yesha Council, also strongly condemned the E.U.’s decision to impose sanctions on organizations and residents in Judea and Samaria, calling it a “shameful decision” and “the height of hypocrisy and double standards.”

Placing sanctions on Israeli citizens in the same framework as measures against Hamas terrorists represents “an unprecedented moral low,” he said.

The E.U. is unfairly targeting Israelis who are “on the frontlines of the struggle against Palestinian Authority terrorism,” while ignoring the P.A.’s role in rewarding violence, Gantz said.

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05/10 Links: Former ADL director and Holocaust survivor Abe Foxman dies at 86; Where are the voices defending Europe’s Jews?; The Saudi 'No'; Why Is It Only in Ireland that I Worry about Being Jewish?

From Ian:

Where are the voices defending Europe’s Jews?

There would have been no Europe had it not been built upon the need to turn the page after the Shoah. Europe claimed to be “new,” as Konrad Adenauer declared. It swore to become “different,” as Simone Veil assured us, in the name of overcoming the antisemitism that murdered 6 million Jews.

And so the celebration of Europe Day on Saturday was deeply paradoxical.

Antisemitism has once again become omnipresent—a stain spreading across the continent just as it did in the Europe of the 1930s, a Europe dazzling in beauty, culture and tradition before the plague of Nazism and fascism consumed it.

Today’s Europe, confused by a mixture of distorted human-rights ideology and Third Worldist progressivism, applies an obvious double standard. It condemns Donald Trump while treating Iran gently. It attacks Israel while forgetting Hamas and Hezbollah.

All this while Europe claims to be forging a stronger identity, capable of competing strategically and politically with the United States.

But antisemitism remains the structural weakness of European thought—its recurring condemnation.

Walter Hallstein, one of the first presidents of the European Commission, once said: “Anyone who lived through National Socialism knows that Europe was born so that such persecution could never happen again.”

Yet when European Parliament President Roberta Metsola spoke this week of the “many challenges” facing Europe, she did not mention antisemitism.

French President Emmanuel Macron spoke of a “treasure forged by courage.” Yet why is that courage not used to pressure Lebanon to stop Hezbollah and pursue genuine peace, instead of endlessly blaming Jerusalem?

Former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi dedicated a “White Rose,” the symbol of his political movement, to Sophie Scholl, the young German student executed for resisting Nazism. Rightly so. That is the Europe we should honor.

But in the hands of a political camp that, in the name of peace, condemns only Israel, that rose appears withered.

Where are the voices defending Europe’s Jews?

Why Is It Only in Ireland that I Worry about Being Jewish?

As one of the 2,000 Jews in Ireland, I worry every time I attend a Jewish community event that this will be the time someone gets through the many layers of security to attack us. I worry that my partner, who is publicly visible as a Holocaust education activist and a Jewish business owner, will be targeted. I worry that when I bring my six-year-old son to places where other Jews are present, I'm putting him in danger.

Attacks against diaspora Jews are happening within a context of relentless protest against Israel and a boycott movement that is trying to isolate the country from the community of nations. The attackers seem to believe that hurting Jews in Sydney, London or Manchester is striking a blow against Israel. The implication is that Jews everywhere share responsibility for the conduct of Jews anywhere. It reduces all Jews to avatars of Israeli policy, creating a permission structure for violence against Jews in general.

Sometimes Irish Jews end up as collateral damage, as happened with the Sinn Fein party's appalling campaign on the Dublin city council to rename Herzog Park in Rathgar, one the city's most Jewish areas, on the pretext that it honored a Zionist. Before he was president of Israel, Chaim Herzog was an Irish Jew, the son of Isaac Herzog, who was Ireland's first chief rabbi and later chief rabbi of Mandatory Palestine and the State of Israel. The Herzogs are essentially the Kennedys of Israel; Isaac's grandson and namesake is president of Israel today.

The overall message is that the recognition of Jewish humanity is somehow conditional, qualified, contingent on what the Israeli government does or doesn't do. In my experience, this logic is very common in Ireland. I've encountered it personally. It's all over social media. It pops up in mainstream media too. It's even promoted by several political parties.

Pierre Rehov: The Saudi 'No'

The Abraham Accords, once touted as a breakthrough, have quietly moved, in Saudi political conversation, into the deep freeze.

In September 1967, the Arab League, at its summit in Khartoum, delivered the famous three "no's": no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel. Notably, the declaration made no mention of a Palestinian state, which the late senior PLO official Zuheir Mohsen significantly pointed out in 1977, had not yet been invented:

"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality, today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism." — Zuheir Mohsen, Trouw, March 31, 1977.

Once US President Donald J. Trump, without Saudi Arabia lifting a finger, relieved the kingdom of its foremost adversary, Iran, and removed the major threat to the kingdom, what would Saudi Arabia need Israel for anyway? To the Saudis, the Abraham Accords doubtless look like an agreement signed by others, but never embraced by the one Arab power that truly mattered.

The Arab League's Khartoum resolution was never truly about borders. It expressed a fundamental rejection of Jewish sovereignty on land the Arab world, guided by religious doctrine, considered permanently to be held in trust (waqf, endowment) for Allah.

The late Abba Eban, serving as Israel's foreign minister, had called the pre-1967 "border" -- merely an armistice line where the fighting had stopped in 1949 -- "the Auschwitz lines." Riyadh appears to understand this perfectly, which is precisely why its condition was framed as it was.

The Arab League's response to the 1948 UN partition plan was a genocidal invasion of the newly born Jewish state by the armies of five Arab states. Khartoum repeated this rejection in 1967. Saudi Arabia continues the same refusal today in language carefully tailored for Western chancelleries.

Qatar, meanwhile, plays an even more institutionalized double game: hosting America's largest regional military base while protecting Hamas commanders, financing Muslim Brotherhood networks, and deploying Al Jazeera TV network as the ideological megaphone for the entire project.

Israeli security cannot rest any hope on a recognition that will not come. It will depend instead on the determined elimination of the Iranian regime and its terrorist proxies when the opportunity arises, and the fight for power that might well define the Sunni world once the Shia threat no longer binds it together.

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05/09 Links: The International Criminal Court Is In Bed With Our Enemies; How Hating Israel Became a Career Move; Israel built secret base in Iraqi desert to support Iran air campaign

From Ian:

Eugene Kontorovich: The International Criminal Court Is In Bed With Our Enemies And It’s Time We Clean House

The only action that the ICC has taken so far is disciplinary proceedings against Khan himself. The most that can happen is that he loses his job. His accuser never turned to the Dutch police because she said his official immunity would protect him. However, under the ICC’s rules, the judges could waive that immunity if they wished. The Court’s refusal to allow a criminal investigation of Khan, even as the scope of the scandal expands, demonstrates the institution’s political nature.

At the same time, the Court seems fully intent on proceeding with the Netanyahu prosecution. Such serious prosecutorial misconduct could, at least in the United States, lead to the dismissal of even factually substantiated criminal charges. Here, the evidence does not even show that the alleged crime (purposeful starvation of civilians) even occurred, let alone was committed by the accused. As the dust settles in Gaza, the lack of mass starvation becomes ever more evident.

An American prosecutor would be loath to try a case with such manifest prosecutorial misconduct (notably, senior court officials knew about the allegations against Khan at the time the indictments were made but kept it quiet for six months, when it leaked to the press). But Netanyahu is not facing a jury of his peers, but rather a panel of international judges who likely share the Court’s institutional culture.

Qatar’s involvement shows the ICC to be even more dangerous than its critics thought. The rap against the tribunal has long been that it acts like a global independent counsel – an unaccountable prosecutor with no democratic restraints. But even worse, it now appears that hostile states can coopt it as a political weapon in an ongoing conflict.

This illustrates the need for the Trump administration to take decisive action against the organization. The sanctions the Treasury Department has imposed on individual court officers have inconvenienced them but appear to have done little to fundamentally weaken the organization or change its trajectory. A body politically motivated enough to maintain the Israel warrants in the wake of the growing Khan fiasco will certainly retaliate against Trump and his top officials once they are out of office.

The administration should impose institution-wide sanctions on the tribunal and vigorously enforce them. The ICC recently got some good news as Peter Magyar, Hungary’s prime minister-elect, vowed to rejoin after it had become the first EU country to quit. Magyar prioritized the issue because he is seeking EU funding, and Brussels ties its financial support to adhering to its foreign policy. America must adopt the same tough approach, insisting that countries receiving benefits quit the Court. For Europe, pushing countries to join the ICC is a matter of ideology. For America, pushing back should be seen as a question of national security.

How Hating Israel Became a Career Move

When a Western celebrity’s career stalls, the most reliable career-fixer available right now is loud, extreme hostility to Israel. The path back does not run through coexistence groups, or hostage families, or Israeli and Palestinian peace activists building shared institutions in Jaffa or Haifa. It runs through extremism. Death chants. Concentration camp comparisons broad enough to include everyone except the people who were actually being held in tunnels under Gaza.

This is why people who genuinely want peace get drowned out, and people who want destruction get profiled in Variety. The algorithm is not neutral. It rewards heat. The hotter the take, the bigger the bookings. Bobby Vylan admitted as much on Louis Theroux’s podcast. He told Theroux he would lead the chant again “tomorrow, twice on Sundays.”

Piers Morgan figured out the demand side of this market. He does not bring nuanced voices on his show because nuanced voices do not generate clips that travel. He books the loudest combatants he can find and harvests the engagement. Bob Vylan and Melissa Barrera have figured out the supply side. Different positions in the same marketplace, same business model.

Notice what this kind of activism costs the activist. Nothing. You do not have to fund a hospital. You do not have to learn Arabic or Hebrew. You do not have to sit with a bereaved family or visit a checkpoint or lose a single friend. You post. You wear the keffiyeh on the red carpet. You sign the open letter. The signaling is luxury-tier. The sacrifice is zero.

This is champagne activism. Same shape as champagne socialism. The people who perform it the loudest are the ones who pay nothing for it. Bob Vylan’s chant cost him a UTA contract and bought him an international audience. Kneecap’s visa fight cost them a US tour and bought them a feature film. Barrera’s Instagram posts cost her Scream 7 and bought her Broadway, a production company, and a sympathetic Variety profile. The math is in the bookings.

Real activism is expensive. It is slow. It does not photograph well. The Parents Circle families look at each other’s grief every week and have done for thirty years. Maoz Inon’s parents were murdered in their home on October 7. He has spent every month since standing on stages with his Palestinian friend Aziz Abu Sarah, whose brother was killed by Israeli soldiers, calling for a shared future. They got in a van together last year and drove across checkpoints for eight days to write a book almost nobody outside the peace community will read. That is what it actually costs to do this work. Variety has not profiled them.

We owe those people more attention than we are giving them. They are the ones doing the actual work. Lift them up. Book them. The career algorithm will not change on its own. The least we can do is stop feeding it.

Andrew Fox: “Rape is just part of war”: what happened when I spoke in Amsterdam

The critical point is that the sexual violence on 7 October was no ordinary “feature” of war. It was an orgy of sadism. It went far beyond anything that had occurred in this conflict before. So I responded by describing what I had seen. I made the point that I was not dehumanising Hamas. Hamas dehumanised itself on 7 October, and when Yoav Gallant described Hamas as Israel fighting human animals, he was absolutely correct.

The room then descended into a shouting match. One of the activists at the back was warned by security that he would be removed if he continued. He immediately tried to recast the warning as a threat of violence against him. The performance was instant: provocation first, victimhood second.

To his credit, the moderator did an excellent job of calming the room. Without him, the situation could easily have deteriorated further. Unfortunately, there was also a journalist from a newspaper hostile to our position in the room (he was not invited by the organisers, so draw your own conclusions about how he came to be there, and why). The article that followed was predictable. We were blamed. The activists were cast as victims. The same pattern repeated itself: disrupt, provoke, invert, accuse.

For me, the morning was a lesson. I am primarily a writer, but I have also given speeches. I am a qualified university lecturer and a Fellow of the Higher Education Authority. However, I have never previously experienced an incident in which pro-Palestinian activists turn up determined to create a scene.

What struck me most was not just the hostility: it was the epistemic closure. These people operate within a sealed universe of alternative facts. There is no argument to be had because there is no shared evidentiary standard. I know what I have seen with my own eyes in Gaza itself during the war. They, on the other hand, have absorbed two and a half years of propaganda via social media, activist networks, campus politics, and the Hamas narrative laundered through supposedly respectable institutions. Those two evidentiary bars are not the same.

That is the truly dangerous part. When two sides disagree about policy, there can still be debate. When two sides disagree about interpretation, there can still be debate. However, when one side insists on living in a manufactured reality, conversation becomes almost impossible.

That is what I saw in Amsterdam; neither serious engagement nor moral seriousness. Not even real anger, in the sense of an emotion tied to facts. What I saw was a political identity built from keffiyehs, flags, slogans, and inverted victimhood. It was a glimpse into how toxic this movement has become. Not because it advocates for Palestinians (there is nothing inherently wrong with advocating for Palestinians), but because so much of the Western pro-Palestinian movement has now fused with denial, propaganda, theatrical intimidation, and the moral laundering of Hamas.

That is the world we are dealing with, and after what I saw in Amsterdam this week, I am more convinced than ever that the fight is not only about Israel, Gaza, or international law. It is about reality itself.

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05/08 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: The anti-Zionist contagion; The ugly truth about the cult of Palestinianism; The success of the Greens is another kick in the teeth for Britain’s Jews

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The anti-Zionist contagion

British Jews are under increasingly aggressive siege from abuse, intimidation, discrimination, arson attacks on their institutions, street violence and terrorism that left two Jews dead in a synagogue on Yom Kippur.

The Golders Green stabbings last week provoked a huge outpouring of revulsion and concern. There was a fusillade of bromides about “no place for antisemitism in Britain” from the prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, and other Labour Party politicians.

The media suddenly started publishing accounts by deeply distressed British Jews about the state of fear in which they were being forced to live. Commentators produced outraged and horrified diatribes against a society that was forcing its Jews to consider emigrating.

Yet some of those voices had previously produced outraged and horrified diatribes against the State of Israel, recycling defamatory falsehoods about the behavior of the Israel Defense Forces in the Gaza Strip.

This discrepancy alone should have sounded a warning that, for all the public breast-beating, the real point was still being lost.

This is because attacks on Jews are still deemed to be in a separate category from attacks on Israel or Zionism. The assumption is that attacks on Jews are very bad indeed because they are against people, but attacks on Israel or Zionism are absolutely fine because they are merely against a country or an ideology.

The distinction is false, and itself helps fuel the hatred of both Israel and Jews.

The point was illustrated this week in Manhattan. At Park East Synagogue on New York City’s Upper East Side, where an event marketing Israeli real estate was taking place, hundreds of masked Islamists and their supporters chanted from behind a police barricade: “We don’t want two states. We want ’48!”

The mob, which flew a Hezbollah flag, was spearheaded by a branch of Al-Awda, which is linked to Samidoun, a U.S.-designated terror organization.

The police thankfully prevented a repeat of what happened last November at Park East, when anti-Israel demonstrators blocked people from entering and exiting the synagogue. That intimidation helped motivate city legislators to tell the police to establish a protest-free “buffer zone” around houses of worship.

The city’s Islamist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, is ruthlessly exploiting the false distinction between attacking Israel and attacking Jews.

“There is no tolerance for hatred of Jewish New Yorkers,” he said about the Park East demonstration. Yet at the same time, he registered his opposition to the synagogue event that was promoting the sale of land “in occupied West Bank in settlements that are a violation of international law.”

Condemning Jew-hatred while simultaneously inciting it through incendiary distortions is the mind-twisting stock in trade of the anti-Israel left.

In Britain, Starmer’s government is now talking about banning the “hate marches” that have taken place almost every week since the Hamas-led atrocities in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The belated realization is beginning to dawn that the chanting on these marches for the murder of Jews may help cause actual attacks on Jews.

Despite this, Starmer and many others are still failing to join the necessary dots. The rampant Jew-hatred that has so shocked them is the result of something that they won’t acknowledge.

Brendan O'Neill: The ugly truth about the cult of Palestinianism

That’s what this case has really revealed – the lethal narcissism of the keffiyeh classes. This is a class of people so drunk on moral vanity, so convinced of their own saintedness, that they seem to think anything is justified in the name of ‘the cause’. That cause being to advertise to the world their bloated vision of themselves as holy crusaders against the wickedest state in existence. Indeed, one of the activists told the jury, ‘with absolute certainty’, that breaking into the Elbit base ‘is the best thing I have ever done’. You sad bastard. ‘There is a good chance’, they said, that ‘innocent lives were saved’ as a result of ‘our actions that night’. This is a level of self-delusion that borders on the pathological. Lost in a cocoon of sanctimonious fantasy, they really believe that breaking a computer in Bristol will save a life in Gaza.

This is the modus operandi of Palestine Action – it executes dumb stunts not to impact world affairs but to assert the cultural supremacy of the credentialled haters of Israel here at home. It is moral hubris and class arrogance masquerading as ‘anti-war’. Sometimes it crosses the line into something darker, like when Palestine Action smashed up a Jewish-owned business in Stamford Hill in London. This feels ‘very, very scary now’, said local Jews amid the shattered glass of that woke mini-Kristallnacht. Who could have guessed that the bourgeois left’s division of the world into ‘the anointed’ who righteously hate the Jewish State, and ‘the demonic’ who support it, would prove so catastrophic for the liberty and dignity of Britain’s Jews? All of us. That’s who.

It feels like this has been a mask-slipping week for the cult of Palestinianism. More people can surely see the sectarian malice that lurks behind that veil of pacifism. A keffiyeh mob smashing a woman’s back. Rancid anti-Semites who call Jews ‘cockroaches’ stinking up the Green Party of England and Wales. Another gaggle of sanctimonious sea-farers setting off for Gaza, even though there’s no famine there, while in South Sudan nearly eight million face ‘acute hunger’. The stabbing of two Jews in Golders Green glossed over by supposed ‘anti-fascists’, who seem more interested in their own right to chant ‘Globalise the intifada’ than in Jews’ right to live in peace. Just think about that: mere days after violence against Jews, they were demanding the right to agitate for more violence against Jews.

Some of us have known for some time that Palestinianism is bigotry in a keffiyeh, the mask Jew hatred wears in the 21st century. We’ve seen this bourgeois army and its Islamist chums engage in the most vile demonisation of the world’s only Jewish nation, and of all who support it, which includes most of the world’s Jews. Are others now clocking this truth? No, anti-Zionism and the winds of hate it has unleashed are not going away. They are far too entrenched in the cultural establishment. But a reckoning might be brewing. Let us hope so.

Seth Mandel: Anti-Zionists Are Canceling R.F. Kuang for Writing the Word ‘Israel’

Writers are taught the value of clarity, so the novelist R.F. Kuang should already know precisely how to extricate herself and her fans from the awkward situation in which they find themselves.

Kuang, the author of the celebrated novel Yellowface and others, has a new book in the works. A page of it was leaked, and now Kuang faces a serious allegation: that she is giving credence to the idea that Israeli people exist.

Kuang’s novel, set for a September release, includes a page with an Israeli character, reports the Times of Israel: “The musician, a successful pianist whose performance ignites a near-religious fervor for a character in the story, is not named, and the text identifies him as ‘a dour-faced man who did not so much as crack a smile as we applauded.’”

Ah, so maybe he’s a bad Israeli! Kuang’s fans are taking this theory under consideration. Perhaps, it has been suggested online, Kuang is offering a sly critique of colonialists by suggesting that all Israelis are bad people. Obviously not Arab-Israelis. Just the you-know-whos.

But this, too, must be rejected. As the article notes, the negative portrayal of Jewish Israelis is still a woke infraction: “Casey McQuiston, the author of the 2019 romance novel ‘Red, White, and Royal Blue,’ initially included a scene where the U.S. president jokes that an ambassador ‘said something idiotic about Israel, and now I have to call Netanyahu and personally apologize.’ In 2021, McQuiston said they would remove the reference to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in future printings of the book.”

It is at times hard to believe these people are real. But there are enough of them for an author to bowdlerize her own book because it referenced an Israeli person engaged in the crime of existing.

Not everyone thinks Kuang deserves banishment from the cloud kingdom of BookTok. The piece quotes a Threads user who wrote: “The people canceling a preorder over [a] single mention of an Israeli pianist being booked at a concert hall in R.F. Kuang’s new book lack so much f–king nuance. There’s literally no mention of Zionism yet y’all can’t seem to differentiate.”

Now that you mention it, I have noticed a distinct lack of nuance when it comes to differentiating between Zionists and the “good Jews.” As protesters wave Hezbollah flags, yell “we support Hamas,” and call Jews at a synagogue “pedophiles,” I worry about the lack of nuance, too.

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05/08 Links Pt1: Saudi Arabia’s War; Princelings of Persia; IDF kills Hamas terrorist linked to Mia Schem abduction; PA policeman one of three terrorists arrested

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Saudi Arabia’s War

It’s worth noting, for posterity, that the great under-covered theme in this war has been the influence exerted by the Saudis. That story has been under-covered because Western mass media tends toward herd behavior and relies on preconceived narratives. The prevailing narrative is that if any state exerts a controversial level of influence over American warmaking, that state must be Israel. It is the only country subject to this type of coverage.

And yet, the Saudis were urging Trump to launch the war and then loudly protested when Trump signaled that he was looking for an off-ramp. Israel wants to be able to continue its own missions in Lebanon, but it can deal with a U.S.-Iran cease-fire just fine as long as its own hands aren’t tied elsewhere. That’s not true of the Gulf Arab states, which have stuck their necks out to join a U.S. war alliance that includes the IDF.

The Saudis were not quiet about pushing Trump to finish off the Iranian regime. That makes them an immediate target if the regime gets back on its feet. The United Arab Emirates has left OPEC in order to boost American voters’ flagging patience with the war, which puts them on the outs with Riyadh and Tehran simultaneously. If the administration doesn’t have the attention span to stick it out and make sure these Arab states have the security they need after going out on a limb for the U.S., American credibility will fall even faster than gas prices rise.

Israel, however, can afford to be more deferential to Trump. The Israelis have worked to protect the UAE from Iranian retaliation, so it’s not as though they want the war to end here. But it isn’t the Israelis who have publicly tied Trump’s hands and forced him to make the U.S. military defend them or else be made to look a fool over false promises.

It’s tempting to end by merely emphasizing that those who have been claiming that Israel controls U.S. foreign policy, or that American soldiers are risking their lives “for Israel,” have now managed to make themselves look more clownish than ever. But there’s another takeaway here: The public should rethink the reporting and the prognostications made by anyone who has bought or sold the prepackaged narrative about Israeli manipulation. What else about the war have you been misled to believe by mainstream narratives or podcast-bro grifting? Now’s a good time for a reality check.

Princelings of Persia

I used to dismiss what I thought was an urban myth that, to help sell Tehran on the nuke deal, President Barack Obama granted thousands of Iranian spies a backdoor path to residence and ultimately citizenship in the United States. After all, visas and green cards are not like the letters of transit in Casablanca, where you fill in your name and hop on the plane to Lisbon. U.S. consular rules would block such individuals from getting here anyway. Yet in the years after the Iran deal (known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA), this story got traction, even as Obama’s spokesmen naturally denied it.

But this year, this supposed myth was given new credibility with the arrest in Los Angeles of Shamim Mafi, an Iranian arms trafficker who came to California in 2013 and was given permanent residency under the Obama administration three years later. And it turns out Mafi is small potatoes compared to what a recent wave of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests and deportations has exposed: that upper Iranian terrorist nobility has been prospering all over the United States.

“They have eyes and ears everywhere,” Iranian American author and human-rights activist Elham Yaghoubian told me about the regime. “It peaked under Obama.”

For a prime example, look first to the $2 million five-bedroom, five-bath modern gray-and-white clapboard house in suburban Los Angeles that has been causing firestorms all over Iranian social media. Its most recent occupants have posted a two-and-a-half-minute video online showing off the grand front, the sprawling interior, and the adjoining elm-shaded McMansions. The camera loiters over the kitchen and dining room surfaces laden with an acre of holiday goodies, a great room of flat-screen TVs and speakers blaring performances nearly drowned out by clapping, while breakfronts full of bric-a-brac reflect, through their glass backing, glimpses of the LA woman documenting the vastness of her lavish residence.

The hostess with the iPhone camera is not Britney Spears, but one Maryam Tahmasebi, sneering at the neighbors’ American flag in contrast to the Shia Imam Hussein banner flying on her own house. And those flat-screen TVs are lit up with screeching mullahs, with a clapping mob cheering them in response. She is the daughter-in-law of Masoumeh Ebtekar, the unhinged “Screaming Mary” spokesperson of the student group that occupied the U.S. Embassy for 444 days in 1979, now an ICE detainee.

The online haters are the outraged Persians around the globe who are fuming at the latest sign of corrupt aghazadeh, or “princeling decadence,” the effrontery of the Islamic Republic’s elite Gen Zers living it up overseas while Iranians go hungry and get shot dead by the thousand at home. The aghazadeh in question is Ebtekar’s son, Eissa Hashemi. Incredibly enough, this scion of two embassy hostage takers “entered the United States in 2014 in visas issued by the Obama administration,” according to a statement by Secretary of State Marco Rubio on April 11. Even more incredibly, according to the same statement, “in June 2016 – just months after the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] seized two U.S. Navy vessels and captured 10 American sailors – the Obama Administration granted all three Iranian nationals lawful permanent resident (LPR) status via the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program.” That would be the same time frame when Mafi, the arms trafficker in Woodland Hills, got her green card. Hashemi is in ICE detention as well, along with the couple’s son.

Americans of a certain age have to pause here to savor the thought of hostage taker Masoumeh, née Nilufar, Ebtekar (the hard-liner Water Lily renamed herself Sinless), watching her revolutionary family members being seized, cuffed, shackled, and hustled into custody for an uncertain but inevitably humiliating fate.

Though Hashemi was Iranian revolutionary aristocracy, he often pleaded to his haters—fellow Iranians—that he was not a fanatic and was not even born when his parents took the American hostages and his mother gloated over her desire to murder them. Not so with Hamideh Soleimani-Afshar, reportedly the niece of Qassem Soleimani, the deceased IRGC-Quds Force chief. Afshar had celebrated attacks on U.S. soldiers and military facilities, praised Iran’s supreme leader, called America the “Great Satan,” and voiced support for the IRGC, a designated terror organization, according to the New York Post, citing the State Department. She and her daughter, Sarinasadat Hosseiny, were detained by ICE, leaving behind a black Tesla—in which the Post glimpsed Hermès cushions, a Miss Dior bag, and a Sephora bag—in front of their home on Plainview Avenue in Tujunga, on the opposite side of the San Fernando Valley from Agoura Hills.

'We should never have let them in': Labor's 'complete failure' revealed after ISIS brides charged with slavery, terrorism offences

The Albanese government’s decision to allow the return of four ISIS brides and their nine children has been branded a “complete failure” after three of the women were arrested on arrival.

Two women were arrested after touching down at Melbourne Airport on Thursday evening, with a third arrested on arrival in Sydney.

The two Melbourne women, aged 53 and 31, have both since been charged with multiple slavery-related offences, while the 32-year-old Sydney woman has been charged with lesser terrorism-related offences.

The Albanese government has maintained that no assistance was provided to the cohort, but questions have been raised about why the individuals were granted passports and not subjected to temporary exclusion orders.

Shadow home affairs minister Jonathan Duniam said the seriousness of the charges showed why “we should never have let them in”.

“The fact that we are arresting people on their arrival means we shouldn't have allowed them to come to Australia,” he told Sky News.

“We're talking about terror-related offences here and under the Passport Act there is a power for the Foreign Minister to not issue passports to people on grounds of national security.

“I would argue that terror-related offences are a good enough reason not to give someone a passport.

“We're not talking about small misdemeanours… We're talking about some of the worst crimes here.”

The shadow home affairs minister said since they have arrived, the group were now Australia’s problem, with the cost of monitoring them estimated at $2 million per year, per person.

“For the government to allow this to happen is a complete failure of this government's commitment to our national security and protection of the people here," he said.

“We should never have let them in."

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05/07 Links Pt2: Boulder firebomber sentenced to life plus 2,128 years for murder; Israel’s Creation: The Ultimate ‘Decolonisation’ Project; From ‘Punch a Nazi’ to nominate one

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: The obvious truth about anti-Semitism

It is the same with the Prime Minister and MPs who have spent the past week saying that we need to tackle ‘hate’ and ‘extremism’. But what hate? And what extremism? Might the government ban the various Iranian proxies which seem to be behind this recent spate of attacks in Britain? Or are we to tackle all hate? And after we have tackled all hate what shall we move on to next? Gluttony? Avarice?

Ask people to get specific on these questions and almost everybody in any position of power melts away. Last week a member of the audience on the BBC’s Question Time asked the Green party’s deputy leader Rachel Millward to specify where the ‘hatred’ she mentioned is coming from. Millward assumed that look people assume when they know the truth but cannot speak it. She pretended to find the question imponderable before finally saying that the two men who were attacked in Golders Green were the victims of our ‘cost-of-living crisis’, ‘rip-off Britain’ and more. Which is strange, because our ancestors went through far worse economic times and I do not remember stabbing religiously identifiable Jews being one inevitable consequence.

Perhaps Millward, like her party’s leader, Zack Polanski, is hampered by a certain voting demographic and by people in the party? After all, the Greens’ other deputy leader is Mothin Ali, who appeared to celebrate the attacks of 7 October. On the day that Israeli citizens were raped, murdered and abducted from their homes, he tweeted: ‘White supremacist European settler colonialism must end!’ He also seemed to defend the slaughter of men, women and children by Hamas as being the right of ‘indigenous people to fight back’. On winning the subsequent local elections in Leeds he dedicated his win to ‘the people of Gaza’ and finished his victory speech with the trad-itional electoral cry of ‘Allahu Akbar’.

It is easy enough to point to Polanski’s Green party as being a special hotbed of anti-Semitism. Two of their candidates were actually arrested by the police for alleged anti-Semitism in the week of the Golders Green attack. But the problem isn’t with the Greens. It is with Britain as a whole.

I have said for too many years now that Britain is pursuing several things that make no sense. One is the pretence that turning a pretty homogenous society into a ‘multicultural society’ has no downsides: that it is a blessing and that – all together now – ‘diversity is our strength’. Whereas the fact is that if you import a lot of people who bring a backwards worldview into your country then at some stage diversity actually becomes your greatest weakness – especially if you go on pretending that even identifying the sources of contemporary anti-Semitism constitutes a different form of ‘hate’, ‘bigotry’ or even ‘racism’. Several British Muslims have admitted in recent years that anti-Semitism in Britain’s Muslim communities is ‘rife and commonplace’. We know that only a quarter of British Muslims believe Hamas carried out any rapes or murders on 7 October.

There are some very simple answers to all this. And we don’t need another ‘conversation’ in order to arrive at them.

Seth Mandel: A Tale of Two Commencement Addresses

Whenever I see a headline claiming that so-and-so was criticized or canceled for their “pro-Palestinian advocacy,” I usually try to find out what was actually said. In media terms, “pro-Palestinian advocacy” doesn’t mean that the person said “the Palestinians should have self-determination.” Rather, “pro-Palestinian advocacy” inevitably ends up meaning the person said something psychotic about Jews.

And of course, that’s what happened this week.

Rutgers University disinvited its engineering school’s commencement speaker, Rami Elghandour, who is the producer of a revisionist passion play about the Gaza war. I can understand Rami and his fans being disappointed at the cancellation, but you’d be hard-pressed to find them accurately characterizing Rami’s own conduct. Elghandour himself, for example, whined about being canceled for his “advocacy for Palestine.”

What he actually said was: Israel is “running dungeons where they train dogs to sexually assault prisoners.”

In other words, he’s a bit of a lunatic conspiracy theorist who wanted to take his blood libel tour to a college campus. No doubt his speech would have been highly entertaining, as he told a taxpayer-funded university all about “Jewish rape dogs” or whatever he might have said.

The accusations of Jewish sexual deviancy aren’t new, of course—the Hamasniks trying to storm synagogues in New York have taken to emphasizing their belief that Jews are pedophiles. Elghandour fits right in with the activist left and, one imagines, with many in his intended audience. That’s probably part of the reason for Rutgers’s skittishness here: How would it look when a commencement speaker told graduating college students about the importance of destroying the Jewish nation before the Jewish nation gets your kids—and having the crowd applaud in delirious ecstasy?

At the same time, what exactly did Rutgers expect when it invited him? He was on their radar because he’s famous for producing war propaganda. Aren’t they getting precisely what they asked for? You want to invite the sun with no light or heat? You invite the guy who’s famous for calling Jews child-murderers but want him to talk about engineering?

Boulder firebomber sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole, 2,128 years for murder and 100 others charges for antisemitic attack

Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 46, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole and 2,128 years, the maximum available sentence, after pleading guilty on Thursday to first-degree murder and 100 other charges for throwing Molotov cocktails at people rallying, on behalf of Hamas-held hostages, in Boulder, Colo., on June 1, 2025.

Karen Diamond, 82, died from injuries sustained in the attack. Soliman also injured 28 people and yelled “free Palestine” during the assault and expressed intent to kill Zionists.

Michael Dougherty, Boulder County district attorney, said at a press conference on Thursday that “this was an attack on the Jewish community and an act of terror.”

“Today we’ve seen the defendant held fully accountable and fully responsible for the horrific hate crime that he committed and the act of antisemitism he committed after planning it out and taking methodical and intentional steps to harm as many people in the Jewish community as he possibly could here in Boulder,” Dougherty said.

“The defendant is now going to spend the rest of his life in state prison, or federal prison, knowing he destroyed the lives of innocent, wonderful people,” the district attorney said. “And he killed Karen Diamond.”

“As much as this act was brutal and monstrous and horrific, it was also—and hear me loud and clear—cowardly, because you want to come to Boulder County, you want to go to any community and set innocent people on fire, you are truly a coward,” he added. “And we saw that reflected in the statements he made in court today, too.”

Stephen Redfearn, chief of the Boulder Police Department, said at the press conference that he is “very thankful” for the verdict.

“That verdict sent a message, not only to the offender but also to anybody who thinks they can come and harm our community,” he said. “This targeted attack against our Jewish community was unacceptable, and this verdict here today provides some sense of justice.”

“I’ve seen a lot in my career, and this was not my first response to an incident of mass violence,” he said. “But this was one of the most heinous and cowardly crimes that I have ever seen.”

Boulder County gov working with local Jews to commemorate anniversary of fatal attack on pro-Israel rally

The government of Boulder County, in Colorado, is working with representatives of the city’s Jewish community to find ways to mark the one-year anniversary of the June 21 attack against pro-Israel participants in Boulder Run for Their Lives.

The county government is doing so “mark this upcoming anniversary and ensure this tragedy is not forgotten,” it stated.

“Almost a year ago, on June 1, 2025, there was a heinous antisemitic attack on 29 members of the Boulder community during a peaceful gathering in front of the Boulder County Courthouse,” the county government said. “The community members were gathered for the weekly Boulder Run for Their Lives walk, and tragically, Karen Diamond died from her injuries.”

It invited members of the community who want to honor survivors and remember Diamond to come to the Boulder Jewish Festival on June 7.

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05/07 Links Pt1: US hits Iranian launch sites, after IRGC fires on American destroyers in Strait; Hamas operatives are being trained in Turkey to launch attacks against Israel; Four more UNRWA staff found to have kidnapped Israelis on Oct. 7

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Israel's ability to defend itself must not be infringed upon, even if US, Iran reach a deal

Despite the pummeling Iran took during the March war, however, changing its stripes and agreeing to cast aside its nuclear aspirations aimed at leveling the Jewish state is a dubious prospect at best.

An Iranian official said the proposal was “more of a wish list than a reality.” On Wednesday, the semi-official Tasnim News Agency said the text contained “unacceptable clauses” and was propaganda “aimed at justifying Trump’s retreat from his recent hostile action.”

While Israel certainly wants an end to the war with an Iran that no longer poses a threat to its existence, what’s alarming about this process is that the government in Jerusalem seems to have no say in the process and is totally relying on Trump’s negotiating team, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, to represent its interests.

Although Israeli officials said they were unsurprised by the developments, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is likely understandably concerned over the deal at hand. He worries about the likelihood that Iran will not honor the agreement, along with the implications for Israel’s ongoing efforts to remove the Hezbollah threat from its northern border.

Whether it was a coincidence or a message that Israel is not going to let its hands be tied in Lebanon, the IDF attacked Hezbollah’s Radwan special forces in Beirut on Wednesday. This was the first attack in Lebanon’s capital in weeks, following the ceasefires with Iran on April 7 and with Hezbollah on April 17.

On Thursday, the IDF confirmed the killing of Hezbollah’s Radwan commander in Beirut, Ahmed Ghaleb Balout, who had directed dozens of attacks against Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon during the war, including anti-tank missile fire and explosive-device attacks.

Balout was also working to rebuild Radwan’s capabilities, including Hezbollah’s long-planned “Conquer the Galilee” invasion plan, the IDF said, adding that it would continue acting against threats to Israeli civilians and troops.

That’s the crux of the matter. An agreement between the US and Iran could theoretically weaken Tehran’s proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah. But it’s far from a foregone conclusion.

That’s why, along with the impression that the Lebanese government appears unwilling or unable to do anything about Hezbollah, Israel must maintain the freedom to act to safeguard the North – even if it results in a diplomatic conflict with Trump and the US.

WSJ Editorial: U.S. Red Lines in the Deal with the Iranian Regime

In nuclear talks, the Iranians are reviewing a U.S. framework which, if accepted, would lead to 30-day negotiations on a detailed agreement. From our discussions with senior officials, here's where U.S. red lines stand in the talks:
The U.S. says it needs Iran's attestation that it doesn't seek nuclear weapons; the dismantlement of the Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan facilities; a ban on underground nuclear work; and on-demand inspections with penalties for violations. The U.S. seeks a 20-year moratorium on Iranian nuclear enrichment and demands the handover of all enriched nuclear material.

Iran would have to reopen Hormuz - gradually, as the U.S. relaxes its blockade, and then fully with the final deal. Most U.S. sanctions relief would be tied to Iran's performance of the deal, not merely its signing, though some assets could be unfrozen to begin.

Dismantlement is more important than any "moratorium" on enrichment, which the U.S. and Israel have already stopped by force. Iran can't enrich now, and while that should be banned permanently, with this regime it's essential to remove facilities and capabilities.

Iran would love to focus solely on its 440 kg. of 60%-enriched uranium. The regime's 20% stockpile may sound less dangerous, but reaching that level is already 90% of the way to weapons-grade. It, too, has to go. The regime has thousands of kg. of uranium enriched to 5% and lower, a solid basis to restart a nuclear program if left in Iran.

Clifford D. May: For Iran's True Believers, a Serious Peace Deal Is Out of the Question

During a Senate hearing, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand told Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth why she is so vehemently opposed to the use of military force to address the threat posed by Tehran: "We did not have any evidence that Iran intended to imminently attack this country in any way, shape, or form!"

How odd of her not to reckon with the fact that by the time we had such evidence, it might well have been too late to do anything about it. Or maybe no evidence would come to light, and the attack would emerge from a clear blue sky as happened on Sept. 11, 2001.

Since 1979, "Death to America!" has been the openly stated - and regularly chanted - policy of Iran's self-proclaimed "Islamic revolutionaries" and their terrorist proxies. Prior to the June 2025 air campaign against Iran's nuclear sites, Iran's rulers "could have built a nuclear weapon with near certainty in less than six months," according to David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security. Is that not imminent enough?

When someone says he intends to kill you, it's essential to take him seriously. Former Iranian President Rafsanjani threatened that "the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything." Iran's rulers see themselves as jihadis fighting a holy war against the enemies of Allah. They can contemplate temporary ceasefires, periods of calm that allow them to rearm for the next battle. But a serious "peace deal" would be out of the question.

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05/06 Links Pt2: Antizionism is a totalitarian conspiracy theory rotting the West from within; Michael Oren: The End of the Diaspora?; Zack Polanski is a joke that isn’t funny anymore

From Ian:

Allister Heath: Antizionism is a totalitarian conspiracy theory rotting the West from within

Antizionism is a psychosis dressed up as a theory of justice, the ultimate pathological, nihilistic, anti-Western brew, a disgusting concoction of Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, Third Worldism and critical theory, fused together with aspects of Nazism, Christian anti-Semitism, Islamism and Cold War Soviet nostrums.

The genocide libel justifies doing to Israel what the allies did to the Nazis. It trivialises the Holocaust, absolving Europeans of residual guilt. It banalises the actual genocidal behaviour of Islamist countries. It redefines normal military practices as illegitimate, making self-defence impossible. It rewards Hamas’s monstrous human shield strategy. It rationalises intifada terrorism as freedom-fighting.

Antizionists support a neo-Inquisition that identifies and cancels Zionists. They want to force British Jews to denounce Israel, to renounce friends and family, to pass a purity test. Modelled on the Cultural Revolution’s struggle sessions and the “taking of the knee” ritual, antizionists celebrate “good Jews”, in politics or the arts, who have turned against Israel, who have proved their loyalty, who “converted”, who humiliated themselves.

The antizionists have blood on their hands. Their lies have worked. They have radicalised white Lefties, and emboldened recently arrived extremists. The hatred is atavistic, and follows the pattern of a social contagion. Each time Israel is attacked, UK anti-Semitic violence instantly surges. Anti-Jewish pogroms trigger more Jew-hatred, especially when Israelis are raped and butchered.

Psychologists call this arousal transfer: one violent act heightens other people’s aggression level. Like sharks smelling blood in the water, violence against Jews triggers a quasi-ecstatic reaction in sick minds, and a collective bloodlust ensues. Maniacs detect weaknesses, and go in for the kill. Many suffer deindividuation: they lose their sense of self, and join in the mob.

Is that who we have become? Is the Leftist-Islamist alliance here to stay? Is anti-Semitism the New Normal? I refuse to accept it. This is not Britain. This is not us.

Exclusive: Labour’s Middle East policy let antisemites use antizionism as a cover, claims Badenoch

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has told the JC she believes Sir Keir Starmer’s Middle East policy has been picked up as a “signal” by “people who use antizionism as a cover for antisemitism”.

The leader of the opposition accused the prime minister of being “too preoccupied with his own problems” to consider the consequences of actions taken to “appease his backbenchers”, including recognising the state of Palestine.

In a wide-ranging interview, in Barnet, north London, on the final day of campaigning before tomorrow’s local elections, Badenoch also called for the Nakba Day protest scheduled for May 16 in the capital to be banned.

In critical comments the day after Starmer held a crisis summit on antisemitism at No10, Badenoch suggested his own government’s foreign policy had been at least in part responsible for the situation.

Looking back to the increasingly anti-Israel line Labour took after coming to power in 2024, she claimed that Starmer “had trouble with his backbenchers, his MPs weren’t supporting [him], and so he did things like recognising Palestine while there were still hostages held by Hamas.

“That sort of action, which he did to appease his backbenchers, sent a signal to a lot of people who have been using antizionism as a cover for antisemitism.

“I don’t think he realised the repercussions of those sorts of actions.”

The JC joined Badenoch on a campaign visit to Barnet the day before local elections, as she toured seven London boroughs in a Conservative-branded black cab.

She criticised some Labour MPs, as well as Green and pro-Gaza independent politicians, for extreme anti-Israel rhetoric and antisemitism.

‘Woefully inadequate’ plea deal, with just a year in jail, for man who killed elderly Jew in LA, Jewish groups say

The plea deal, under which Loay Abdel Fattah Alnaji, who admitted to charges related to the 2023 death of a 69-year-old Jewish man near Los Angeles, gets probation and a year in jail, is “woefully inadequate,” according to Joshua Burt, a regional director of the Anti-Defamation League.

It also “emboldens others to act in anger against the Jewish community,” Burt told JNS.

Alnaji, 52, pleaded guilty to all charges, including felony involuntary manslaughter and felony battery causing serious bodily injury, on Tuesday after initially pleading not guilty. Paul Kessler died from injuries sustained in an altercation with Alnaji on Nov. 5, 2023.

The attack occurred in Thousand Oaks, near Los Angeles, amid competing pro- and anti-Israel rallies. Alnaji struck Kessler with a megaphone, and the sexagenarian fell and hit his head on the pavement.

The Ventura County Superior Court has suggested it will place Alnaji on probation, with up to a year in jail, according to the county district attorney’s office. Erik Nasarenko, the district attorney, stated that “Alnaji should be sentenced to prison for his violent behavior, and our office strongly objects to any lesser sentence.”

Under state law, Alnaji could spend four years in jail.

Tom Dunlevy, supervising senior deputy district attorney for Ventura County, told JNS that “the judge offered probation if Alnaji pled guilty, but with a custodial sanction of up to 365 days in jail as a term of probation.”

“If the court places the defendant on probation, they then set the terms of probation,” he said. “One of those terms could be an amount of jail time up to a year in jail.”

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05/06 Links Pt1: The ‘Palestinian Land’ Myth; Asymmetric warfare and the ayatollahs; Why Is the UAE ‘All-In’ on Its Relationship With Israel?

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The ‘Palestinian Land’ Myth

The idea behind this is as follows: Jews were massacred and their property stolen by Arabs, therefore Arab Palestinians have a right to it in perpetuity. They believe this is true of Jewish property in Jerusalem and Hebron as well, for example. This is a cornerstone of anti-Zionism, that Jews have no right to life or property.

Yet there’s another point to be made here besides the fact that the mayor of New York and a legion of progressive-aligned anti-Semites revealed their unique combination of ignorance and bad faith. There are a couple of problems with the whole concept of “Palestinian land.”

The first is that “Palestinian” here is used to mean “Arab.” The protest mob reportedly even chanted “From water to water, Palestine is Arab.” When they use the phrase “Palestinian land” they are declaring it Judenrein.

Second: If a Palestinian Arab personally owns a piece of land, that land is a Palestinian’s land, which is not the same thing as Palestinian national territory. From the perspective of national claims and sovereignty, it is, at most, disputed land. There have been two sovereign claimants to land on what is known as the West Bank: Israel and Jordan. Jordan relinquished its claims on the land decades ago. Israel has not annexed it. There is no Palestinian national claim to sovereignty, even if one believes that eventually turning it into Palestinian sovereign national territory is the only just resolution to the conflict.

Thus the Palestinian claim to disputed territory that was once occupied by the state of Jordan can best be described as “land the Palestinians want.” That’s fine! They are more than entitled to make demands in a negotiation process. And they should aspire to precisely the kind of statehood that Israelis—both Jews and Arabs—have built with its capital in Jerusalem. The state of Israel is a worthy model, and though successive Palestinian governments have rejected offers of statehood, perhaps they are reconsidering.

Israel did not invade a place called “Palestine” and take its land. It fought a defensive war against Jordan and won. “Palestinian land” is a concept of the future—if the Palestinians want it.

Trump and the Imaginary Iran Box By Abe Greenwald

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Critics of the war in Iran like to say that Donald Trump has “put himself in a box.” I doubt that’s true. But whether or not it is, Trump is acting as if his critics are correct.

The president’s frustrating unreadability served a tactical purpose at the start of the war. He didn’t want to telegraph any moves to the Iranians or indicate where his thinking was in terms of a timeline or endgame. But after more than two months, the endless vacillations and goalpost shifts, the stop-and-start rhythm of the U.S. operation, and its ever-changing characterization are starting to broadcast a sense of distress over the war.

It could very well be that Trump is still focused and resolute about Iran’s surrendering its fissile material. His decision yesterday to pause U.S. escorts through the Strait of Hormuz and work on a new peace proposal might be yet another expression of his noble but doomed hope that Iran will finally accede to American demands. He’s always been inclined to give peace a chance.

It could also be a head fake, allowing the U.S. to catch the regime off guard with some new kinetic initiative. That’s another Trump favorite.

Relatedly, this could all be an attempt to calm energy markets in advance of more fighting or an extension of the blockade.

But to Americans and Iranians alike, Trump is signaling U.S. weakness.

Not military weakness, there are no grounds for concern on that front. Perhaps, rather, a faltering of will. That’s been the undoing of American victory for decades.

Ruthie Blum: Asymmetric warfare and the ayatollahs

In an interview on May 3, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps spokesman Brig. Gen. Hossein Mohabi pointed out something that the West has trouble grasping about asymmetric warfare. “In the unequal battle we are facing, Iran’s armed forces will be the final victors,” he told the Islamic Republic of Iran News Network. “They fight with the culture of Ashura and consider surrender a disgrace for themselves.”

For Shi’ite Muslims, Ashura is a memorial marking the anniversary of the death of Husayn ibn Ali, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. Though he was killed during the Battle of Karbala in 680 C.E., Husayn is still held up as a hero who didn’t surrender to the massive army of the caliph, Yazid.

“Our model in today’s wars is [that] of Ashura—steadfastness in an unequal battle,” Mohabi said, describing Tehran’s current predicament.

Referring to the United State and Israel, he went on, “Our enemies are specifically one country and one regime with enormous equipment. America brought its latest defensive and offensive equipment to the battlefield. Our equipment and the number of our forces are very unequal compared to theirs.”

However, he said, “our spiritual power enabled us to stand against them.”

To clarify, he added, “In this arena, our fighter either wins or is martyred. Martyrdom is happiness for him. In such a situation, our forces do not falter.”

This wasn’t rhetorical bravado. It’s the essence of radical Islamism and the reason that the phenomenon has been nearly impossible to combat, let alone eradicate.

Mohabi admitted that Iran’s forces are outmatched in conventional terms, with fewer resources and an inferior arsenal. He didn’t mention his regime’s goal of obtaining nuclear weapons, of course. Not only has the Islamic Republic insisted that its nuclear program was always for “peaceful purposes,” but the enriched uranium in its possession was and is President Donald Trump’s casus belli.

So Mohabi steered away from that particular topic. He focused instead on the main weapon that compensates for the deficiencies he acknowledged: the willingness, even desire, to die as martyrs for the cause of regional and worldwide hegemony.

Herein lies the weakness of liberal democracies in the face of barbarism. Such societies sanctify life and human rights, and their militaries operate under legal, ethical and psychological restraints.

In the United States and Israel, for example, soldiers are trained to minimize civilian casualties and the governments that send them into battle and are held accountable by courts and public opinion. Jihadist states and organizations scoff at these practices, viewing them as the enemies’ Achilles’ heel.

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05/05 Links Pt2: Jews Now Live in a World Where Right and Wrong Have Been Reversed; Jordanian pleads guilty to lesser charge in murder of pro-Israel protester Paul Kessler

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Jews Now Live in a World Where Right and Wrong Have Been Reversed

The Palestinian cause and the fictitious Palestinian identity that underpins it are devoted to the destruction of Israel and the theft of the Jews' own ancestral history in the land. Far from being moral, it's an evil cause. The stock in trade of the Palestinian Arabs is to project their own crimes onto the Jews and to accuse the Jews in turn of committing atrocities of which they have, in fact, been the victims. Everyone who has perpetrated these lies is an accessory to murderous violence against Jews.

Horrifyingly, anti-Zionism and antisemitism have become so deeply ingrained in the West as an unchallenged narrative presenting Israel as the fount of all evil that they've developed into a belief system that defines an individual's moral identity.

The shocking outcome, therefore, is that the West has framed antisemitism and anti-Zionism as conscience itself. Small wonder that Jews and all decent people feel as if they're now inhabiting a looking-glass world where truth and lies, right and wrong, victim and aggressor have all been reversed.

Seth Mandel: Progressive Radicals Face No Resistance

Yesterday, Axios reported that longtime anti-Israel campaigner Maher Bitar, a former Biden administration intelligence official, will essentially be running the Democratic Party foreign-policy group founded by Jake Sullivan and Ben Rhodes. While Rhodes is held in low regard in the foreign-policy world, Sullivan is not. But the former national security adviser appears to be handing the torch to a veteran of the anti-Semitic BDS campaign against the Jewish state.

The key takeaway here is that there is almost no resistance within the party structure to the ascendant anti-Zionist contingent. There won’t be a fight for the party; there will simply be a process in which the old hand the reins to the new.

The Philadelphia Inquirer also reported that Chris Rabb, a state lawmaker running for Congress, shared a social media post that blamed the Bondi Beach massacre on “Zionists,” pushing a conspiracy theory that the whole attack was a Jewish false flag.

Rabb blamed a staffer and said he condemned the sentiment. But while Rabb’s post was grotesque, it wasn’t necessarily shocking. Last week, he campaigned with prominent progressive anti-Semitic influencer Hasan Piker, who backs Hamas over Israel and has used various slurs to refer to Jews.

As Jewish Insider notes, Rabb is in a competitive primary contest, but he has received the backing of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the leader of the anti-Israel congressional bloc and possible 2028 presidential candidate. He was also endorsed by Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen and Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.

And today the Washington Free Beacon reports a rather unsettling detail about one of the Democrats running for the party’s nomination for a New Jersey congressional seat. Adam Hamawy “was an associate of terrorist mastermind Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman—the ‘Blind Sheikh’—and served as a defense witness at the trial that ultimately saw the cleric put away for life, court records show.” The Beacon piece contains a number of interesting details about the friendship between Hamawy and the man connected to the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993.

Jonathan Tobin: Anti-Zionists who condemn antisemitic crimes are gaslighting us

Last week’s stabbing attack against two Jews in London’s Golders Green neighborhood was just the latest instance of what even local police agreed was an “epidemic” of antisemitic crimes. It was just one of many such incidents in the United Kingdom, the United States, continental Europe and Australia over the course of the last 31 months in which Jews were subjected to violence merely for being conspicuously Jewish.

Since the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab attacks on Israeli communities on Oct. 7, 2023, such incidents have become commonplace. The connection between the two is not a coincidence. That’s because the Oct. 7 attacks were the spark for a global surge of Jew-hatred. It’s rooted in the idea that the war to destroy Israel—for which the atrocities of Oct. 7 were just a trailer for what would happen to the rest of the Jewish state should Hamas and its allies triumph—was a righteous cause that enlightened progressives should support.

And in the name of this supposedly righteous cause of ending the one state on the planet that is Jewish, where half of the world’s Jews just happen to live, a lot of harm is being done to Jews elsewhere.

They don’t want to be called ‘antisemites’
The curious thing about the people who support these awful ideas is that they don’t wish to be considered antisemitic.

Listen to those like leftist podcaster Hasan Piker and former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan, who openly support Hamas, and they’ll tell you that while they support the destruction of Israel, they want to assure Jews in the Diaspora that they have nothing to fear from them. Or, at least, not as long as they don’t support Israel.

They are adamant in asserting that anti-Zionism—a movement that denies rights to Jews that no one would think to deny to any other group or people—is not the same thing as antisemitism. Indeed, like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, they are proud of their public advocacy against the Jewish state and their nonstop floating of lies about it committing horrible fictional crimes while denying or rationalizing the actual crimes committed against it and its people.

At the same time, they deny that this has anything to do with the unprecedented worldwide increase in acts of Jew-hatred. Piker was at pains to make this argument in, of all places, JTA, which was once the respected primary source of news about the Jewish world. He claims that he’s trying to fight antisemitism while leading the charge in favor of demonizing the Jews of Israel and their supporters abroad.

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05/05 Links Pt1: Alan Dershowitz: Why Are Some in Our Media Cheering for Iran?; Trump pauses Strait of Hormuz operation; What We Learned From Today’s ‘Palestine Action’ Verdict

From Ian:

Alan Dershowitz: Why Are Some in Our Media Cheering for Iran?

It is shocking how many people with major media platforms would rather see Iran win its battle to preserve its nuclear program.

Both the U.S. and Israel are taking proper military action against a tyrannical and unlawful regime that might well use a nuclear arsenal against its enemies, were it be allowed to develop one.

Preventive wars against threatened nuclear attacks are justified both morally, legally, and under any theory of just war.

No decent person should be on Iran's side or remain ambivalent about the need to defeat Iran's genocidal ambitions.

No decent person should support Iran's repression and murder of tens of thousands of its own citizens just this year.

There can be little dispute about these democracies being on the right side in their conflict with a tyrannical regime sworn to their destruction.

The First Amendment gives Americans the right to cheer for Iran if they want, just as it gave them the right to cheer for Nazi Germany. But that doesn't mean that others don't also have the right to point out that they are wrong on the merits.

Palestinian activist says UK ‘betrays democracy’ by continuing to back Mahmoud Abbas

A Palestinian political activist has accused Britain and other Western governments of “betraying Palestinian democracy” by continuing to treat Mahmoud Abbas as the legitimate leader of the Palestinian people.

Samir Sinijlawi, an East Jerusalem-born activist and former Fatah youth figure, made the comments at an event at JW3 in north-west London, where he warned that the lack of democratic renewal in Palestinian politics was “dangerous for Palestinians and for Israelis”.

Speaking at Emerging Partners: Perspectives of a Palestinian Insider, Sinijlawi said: “Each leader of yours, when he hosts Abbas and receives him as a legitimate leader of the Palestinian, he is betraying the Palestinian democracy. He’s betraying everything that I am fighting for.”

He added: “We deserve democracy. You cannot tell us that democracy is good for you… and it’s not good for us.”

The event, for which Jewish News was a media partner, brought together organisations including We Democracy, UJS, Progressive Judaism, Yachad and the New Israel Fund, and was chaired by Sunday Times journalist Josh Glancy.

Aizenberg: Hamas Confirms: October 2023 IDF Strikes on Homes Targeted its Commanders

In October 2023, Israel’s opening air campaign in Gaza was often characterized as indiscriminate, with family homes struck and incidents catalogued as “civilian-only.” That conclusion rested on a faulty assumption: absent proof of combatant status, the dead were treated as civilians. In Gaza’s operating environment, where Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) dress in civilian clothing for combat, use private homes for weapon storage, as their leaders admit, as well as for command centers and tunnel shafts, that assumption was always going to misclassify outcomes.

Airwars is an NGO that catalogues fatalities in conflict and connects them to specific airstrikes. Its methodology in Gaza also defaulted to treating all those killed as civilians. Since Hamas hides its losses as a matter of policy, and Gazan residents also avoid disclosing combatant deaths, it follows that Airwars would classify the large majority of attacks as civilian-only. This produced the absurd claim that 96% of 606 assessed IDF airstrikes in October 2023 killed only civilians, which in turn fed the broader allegation that the IDF was deliberately targeting civilians and reinforced genocide claims.

That record is now changing. As Hamas and PIJ release martyr notices, often identifying commanders, many October strikes can now be reexamined in light of new disclosures. Incidents once cited as evidence of indiscriminate bombing are now being shown to have killed commanders located in residential structures. Civilian casualties remain and must be accounted for, along with the fact that Hamas and PIJ, by strategy, do not operate from traditional military bases. But the emerging evidence directly challenges the claim that these strikes lacked legitimate military targets and calls into question a methodology that defaulted to “civilian-only” in a context where combatant status was systematically concealed.

The following examples focus on strikes on family homes that were originally labeled “civilian-only” but are now shown to have killed commanders. They represent just a small sample of what has since been disclosed.

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