From Ian:
Dave Rich:
The new Holocaust revisionism
It is striking just how much these arguments, on left and right, have in common, even though they are diametrically opposed in so many ways. Mishra, for instance, seems to suggest that Holocaust memory has been used to keep the doors of western power firmly closed to outsiders. Cooper, meanwhile, believes Holocaust commemoration has flung those doors wide open, enabling mass immigration and the dilution of white, western societies. Despite these profound differences, however, both appear to share the belief that, as the international order that has shaped our world since 1945 comes apart, the status of the Holocaust in our moral and cultural imagination is central to the question of what will follow.
While establishment politicians and institutions continue to treat the Holocaust as the pivotal moral event of the 20th century, out in the discursive undergrowth ever-larger audiences increasingly seek alternative explanations for the world, and radical visions of how to remake it. In these circles, the sanctity of Holocaust commemoration is what makes it such an enticing target. “Are we closer”, Mishra writes, “to finding a replacement for the Shoah as a universal symbol of human and moral evil?”
Why this all matters ought to be obvious. The late Yehuda Bauer, one of the great scholars of antisemitism and the Holocaust, warned many years ago that “a reversion back to ’normalcy’ regarding Jews requires the destruction of the Holocaust-caused attitude of sympathy”. It is not difficult to find evidence that this reversion to an antisemitic “normalcy” is occurring. Last year, the massacre of Jews celebrating Hanukkah on Bondi Beach, following the killing of two Jews at Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester on Yom Kippur, and the shooting of two Israeli embassy employees outside the Jewish Museum in Washington DC in May, were just the latest lethal incidents in a global surge of hatred that itself feels like the end of an era. Jews have been shot, stabbed, kidnapped and burnt, and synagogues and schools torched on multiple continents since the 7th October attack. Less visible is the daily grind of racist comments, slurs and exclusions that never make the news but lead Jews to shrink inwards and rethink their futures. Almost a third of all British Jews were directly targeted with antisemitic violence, harassment or abuse in 2024, according to polling from the Institute for Jewish Policy Research.
The rise of antisemitism, conspiracy-driven populism and authoritarian demagoguery makes Holocaust commemoration more essential than ever. But there is an urgent need to rethink how it is done. The long-held fear that it would become harder to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive once the last of the survivors are no longer with us might soon be surpassed by a greater danger: that people stop thinking the Holocaust matters, not because they don’t know what happened, but because they no longer care.
Perhaps “Never Again” was always a forlorn hope. It implies an optimistic assumption of progress, as if we can leave unwanted human behaviours and attitudes in the past, when history—and the current Jewish reality—suggests the opposite is true. Still, whether the existing international order survives this crisis or not, the memory and dignity of the six million who were murdered, and the vital lessons for humanity that we take from that darkest of times, must not be sacrificed in the process.
Gal Hirsch: 'Hamas planned to hold Israeli hostages for 10 years'
Hamas planned to keep Israeli hostages for as long as a decade, Brig.-Gen. (res.) Gal Hirsch said in an in-depth interview, describing what he called the terror group’s long game of using captives, living and dead, as strategic leverage meant to grind down Israel over years.
Hirsch, whom Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appointed on October 8, 2023, as coordinator for the captives and missing, said his own internal assessment early on pointed to a far shorter timeline than Hamas’s, yet still measured in years. “I thought it would take double,” he said. “At least four years.”
In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, he also disclosed that Israel repeatedly prepared covert hostage rescue missions that never took place. Some were canceled because planners doubted they could succeed, he said, and others were shelved out of concern that rescuing one captive could endanger others held nearby. “If there was doubt about success,” Hirsch said, “take them out through negotiations, even if it takes time.”
The interview came days after Israeli forces recovered the remains of police officer Ran Gvili from Gaza, a development that, according to Israeli officials and multiple reports, closed the file on those abducted on October 7, 2023, whose whereabouts remained unresolved. Hirsch recalled calling Netanyahu with the update and telling him, in English, “Mission accomplished.”
Gaza ‘doctor’ who slammed Israel in NY Times op-eds is Hamas colonel, seen in military uniform: watchdog, IDF
A Gaza doctor who slammed Israel in a pair of New York Times op-eds is a colonel with terror group Hamas, according to an Israeli watchdog group and the Israeli Defense Forces.
Hussam Abu Safyia was photographed wearing a Hamas camo military uniform while at a gathering of Hamas elites to celebrate the completion of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in 2016, according to the Jerusalem-based watchdog NGO Monitor.
Safyia’s photo appeared on the Gaza Medical Services‘ Facebook page — a group overseen by the Hamas-run health ministry.
The ceremony was attended by ranking members of the brutal terror group, including Gen. Abu Obaida Al-Jarrah, Director of Military Medical Services Saeed Saoudi and National Security Forces commander Col. Naeem Al-Ghoul, according to the post.
Following Hamas’ massacre of over 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023, which led to the war in Gaza, Safyia penned two screeds in the Times bashing Israel on Oct. 29, 2023, and Dec. 2, 2024.
“We are suffering and paying the price of the genocide that is happening to our people here in the northern Gaza Strip,” Safyia wrote in one op-ed.
Critics decried media giving the alleged Hamas member any ink.
“Those who platformed Abu Safyia must do some serious soul-searching, and figure out how they ended up promoting the propaganda of a literal Hamas terrorist,” NGO Monitor senior researcher Vincent Chebat said.
The Times referred to the colonel as a “pediatrician and the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza” in each op-ed.
An IDF spokesman said Safyia was a ranking member of Hamas, and that the hospital was teeming with hundreds of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists.
Neither NGO Monitor nor the IDF accused Safyia of participating in any specific terrorist acts.
From Ian:
Seth Mandel:
For U.S. Jewish Groups, There’s No Going Back to the Old Ways
No one in their right mind will ever again pay into that racket. It was, in a sense, an expression of organizational decadence, mixed with complacency. Anti-Semitism was at low tide, and instead of remembering that the tide always turns, Jewish groups believed they could afford to chip in and show solidarity with fellow “marginalized communities.”
Regardless of the merits of this thinking before October 7, it is clear now that such a strategy cannot be employed again.
So where should the money go instead? A good place to look for answers remains Jack Wertheimer’s 2024 Mosaic essay on the American Jewish community’s post-October 7 philanthropy, since the overall trends remain the same even if the dollar figures have changed since then.
One area Jewish donors have turned to is groups that do nothing more than seek to combat anti-Semitism in the public square. One of Wertheimer’s sources in the philanthropy world told him: “The eyes of funders are now open in new ways; anti-Zionism is well-funded and pervasive in certain sectors. For the first time, funders realize how much those ideas have captured institutions.”
Indeed, this has only become more apparent since the essay’s publication. Anti-Zionism, it turned out, has been molded into a full-fledged ideology, more prevalent on the left than the right. That ideology has little or nothing to do with what Zionism actually is; instead, it’s a movement that sets itself in opposition to Zionists. That is, rather than participate in a debate over Zionism, anti-Zionism is a mercenary ideology that targets people who identify as Zionists—and, crucially, people the anti-Zionists accuse of harboring Zionism in their hearts.
What that means in practice is classic anti-Jewish discrimination in the professions, in academia, and the media. That’s because most Jews believe that Jews have a right to self-determination. So targeting self-identified “Zionists” is a way of targeting Jews.
Anti-Zionism is preposterously well-funded, because it has become a catchall progressive tag, and so some of the mountains of dark money set aside for progressive activism falls in the lap of any group that claims the anti-Zionist mantle. Which, at the current moment, is most of them.
So that’s one place Jewish communal resources must go toward: The battle against anti-Zionism must be joined in earnest. This also means that Jewish organizations should stop playing footsie with Jewish anti-Zionists. Even a big tent must draw the line at those who want to tear the tent down.
Andrew Fox:
How academic propaganda is made
The intellectual lineage of this project is obvious: it is AirWars all over again. The same methodological sleight of hand. The same overconfidence and lack of access to genuine intelligence. The same collection of social media claims and hearsay, presented as forensic truth. AirWars gained a reputation by counting allegations as facts and treating propaganda as data, and this project repeats those errors nearly exactly. The only difference is that the flaws are now so well-documented that repeating them can only be a deliberate act.
Then there is the plan to publish via AOAV, described as “respectable.” This is simply not true. AOAV’s leadership has openly campaigned against Israel for years, including promoting the genocide hoax in Gaza, and they specialise in the kind of partisan hit jobs that are the trademark of the far left. Whilst presented as a neutral research platform, in reality it is an activist ecosystem. Publishing there does not enhance credibility: it indicates that the author knows their work would not withstand rigorous peer review by neutral military, intelligence, or legal professionals. It is a safe ideological bubble where conclusions are celebrated rather than examined.
Remove the academic jargon, and this project is extremely simple. It starts with the assumption that Israel is intentionally killing civilians. It then develops a method guaranteed to “prove” that conclusion by excluding all evidence that might challenge it. Classified intelligence is disregarded because it is inaccessible. Operational context is ignored. Hamas-controlled information is given priority. Anything that is not visible in open sources is considered non-existent. The final product is presented as objective scholarship.
This is propaganda with footnotes, but it is rare for a researcher to be so pompous and confident in his echo chamber that he explains the sleight of hand before the magic show begins. The most charitable interpretation is that its author genuinely does not understand how wars are fought, how intelligence operates, or how the law is applied in combat situations. The less charitable interpretation is that he understands perfectly well – and is counting on his audience not to. Either way, no serious person should take this work seriously. We can only thank him for revealing his hand in advance.
Europe’s silenced scholars: the forced Gaza genocide ‘consensus’
Anyone who has followed academia over the past two years might be forgiven for concluding that scholars have reached near-unanimous agreement on one claim: that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza.
Not a week passes without another open letter from academics – often amassing hundreds or even thousands of signatures within days – denouncing Israel in the strongest terms. Across Europe, dozens of universities have now severed ties with Israeli institutions, citing alleged complicity in genocide – or at the very least, systematic war crimes.
In August 2025, the International Association of Genocide Scholars adopted a resolution that appeared to settle the question: the Jewish state, it declared, was guilty of the “crime of crimes”.
In reality, the accusation of genocide is as obscene as it is absurd. Netanyahu and his far-right cronies may be guilty of many things, but there’s no evidence whatsoever that Israel intends to exterminate Gazans, and abundant evidence to the contrary. The eagerness of Western intellectuals to nonetheless accuse Israel of genocide is by now depressingly familiar, as is their blindness to Hamas’s cynical war tactics and the extraordinarily difficult conditions under which Israel has had to pursue its legitimate aims of defeating Hamas and freeing the hostages. In my latest book, Het verraad aan de verlichting (The Betrayal of Enlightenment), I trace this reflex to a postcolonial ideology that casts the West as perpetual oppressor and anti-Western forces as inherently virtuous victims.
A contrived consensus
And yet, there are clear indications that this supposed academic consensus was artificially contrived, a product of intense social pressure, ideological hectoring, and a “spiral of silence.” The IAGS resolution, for example, is not grounded in any original research and offers little substantive argumentation.
In Europe, social pressure is even more intense than in the US. A petition opposing the IAGS resolution garnered hundreds of American signatories, but only a handful in Europe – primarily in Germany and around a single London-based centre for antisemitism research.
In the Low Countries, where I live, my stance on Gaza has left me increasingly isolated within the ivory tower. The rector of my alma mater, Ghent University, declared that any academic questioning the genocide in Gaza can no longer rely on the protections of academic freedom: “This is a line that cannot be crossed.” Five professors have called on the previous rector to discipline me for my “Zionist-tinged” views. I’ve also been deplatformed twice at the University of Amsterdam for my view on Israel.
A spiral of silence
And yet, for the past two years, I have been receiving regular emails from academic colleagues that can be summarised as follows: “I completely agree with you and am glad that you’re fighting this battle, but please keep it quiet – I don’t want to get into trouble.” The social pressure to condemn Israel has become so intense that many “dissidents” no longer dare to speak out.
This reluctance to speak up gives rise to what psychologists call pluralistic ignorance: people mistakenly assume that they are alone in holding a dissenting opinion and therefore either remain silent or misrepresent their own views, inadvertently perpetuating the illusion of consensus and raising the social cost of dissent, as Steven Pinker notes in his book When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows.
I wanted to see if there was a way to break the cycle. What if people could speak honestly without risking their careers? I tested this by inviting primarily Dutch-speaking academics to share anonymous views on Israel and Gaza. What arrived was sobering – and chilling.
'Nothing Less Than Holocaust Inversion': Prominent Holocaust Scholars Denounce Israel-Bashing Nonprofit Named After Holocaust Survivor
More than 100 prominent Holocaust and genocide scholars are sounding the alarm on an "extremist" Israel-bashing nonprofit named after a Holocaust survivor who coined the term "genocide," according to a letter obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. Exploiting the survivor's name while accusing the Jewish state of genocide, the letter's leader said, is "nothing less than Holocaust inversion."
The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit named after Holocaust survivor Raphael Lemkin, was established around 2021 without permission from its namesake's family. It has since used the late lawyer and activist's reputation to undermine Israel on the international stage, the scholars wrote ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The institute began accusing Israel of "genocide" just 10 days after Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023, attack, later claiming Hamas did not commit sexual violence against Israeli civilians.
"As scholars who have written about the Holocaust or other genocides, we share your family's concern about extremists exploiting Raphael Lemkin's name to attack Israel," the experts, led by Rafael Medoff, the director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, wrote in a letter to the Lemkin family. "Israel's counter-terror campaign in Gaza is not genocidal, either in intentions or actions. The civilian deaths there are the result of Hamas embedding itself in residential areas and using the population as human shields."
Medoff told the Free Beacon that the institute's "false accusation of genocide in Gaza" amounts to "nothing less than Holocaust inversion," adding that "the fact that extremists are exploiting Lemkin's name to do so adds insult to injury."
The letter is meant to bolster the Lemkin family's months-long bid to pressure the institute to drop Lemkin's name, saying the institute's "policies, positions, activities, and publications are anathema to Mr. Lemkin's belief system." The family, with legal backing from the European Jewish Association, petitioned Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro (D.) and the state's Bureau of Corporations and Charitable Organizations to intervene on their behalf, though the governor and state have not taken yet any action. As Free Beacon senior writer Ira Stoll reported in late 2024, a Lemkin family member said he was "totally outraged" to see his relative's name used for anti-Israel activism.
From Ian:
Jonathan Tobin:
Stop chasing after the Saudis to join the Abraham Accords
That has been a key element of the price tag the Saudis put on their joining the accords. That sounded right to an American foreign-policy establishment that continued to believe that a two-state solution was the only way to end the conflict. Of course, as Palestinians have made clear, over and over again, they have no interest in the idea if it means they’ll have to commit themselves to living in peace with a Jewish state, no matter where its borders are drawn.
After the Second Intifada (2000-2005), and then Oct. 7, the once broad Israeli support for the concept has evaporated. Even most left-wing Israelis know that the Palestinians aren’t interested in peace. Acquiescing to demands for Palestinian statehood would have meant repeating the same catastrophic blunder made by the late Ariel Sharon when he withdrew from the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2005, thus setting in motion the events that allowed Hamas to seize control of the coastal enclave and eventually to be able to commit the atrocities in southern Israel on Oct. 7. Doing so in the far larger and more strategic areas of Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”) would have endangered the very existence of the state.
It’s equally true that the Saudis have no real desire to help create another failed Arab state that would, in all likelihood, be a perfect target to be taken over by Islamists—in this case, Hamas. Yet even before the Palestinians won general Arab and Muslim sympathy by launching a war on Oct. 7 with an orgy of mass murder, rape, torture, kidnapping and wanton destruction, the Saudis were only using the statehood issue to help deflect pressure to join the Abraham Accords.
That should serve as a reminder to Israelis and Americans not to be too disappointed by the Saudis’ decision to attempt to reclaim their status as the leader of Islamist rejectionist forces in the region, a stance that, in recent years, they surrendered to Qatar.
Would it ever have been worthwhile for Israel to have made such a grave sacrifice of its security concerns in exchange for Saudi recognition?
For Israelis, having the Saudis embrace them fully and openly as partners would have signaled the end of the Muslim world’s refusal to accept the Jewish state’s permanent place in the region. But setting up a situation where the Palestinian Authority would likely have been toppled by Hamas would have been suicidal. The scenario in which Hamas assumes control of the territories is a guarantee of nothing but another and even more bloody round of war.
As much as it’s nice to dream of a world where the region could truly be transformed into a “new Middle East,” such as the one that the late Shimon Peres dreamed of when he agreed to the 1993 Oslo Accords, 33 years later, Israelis still don’t live in such a world.
That’s why it is far better to keep such fantasies out of efforts to ensure that the Saudis remain outside of coalitions bent on Israel’s destruction. The Riyadh regime may still hope to develop its economy and needs to modernize its society to achieve that; however, it is never going to be entirely divorced from the Wahabi extremism that put their family in control of the Arabian Peninsula in the first place.
Riyadh can’t change
And so, Americans and Israelis should stop chasing after the vain hope of getting the desert kingdom to behave as if it is anything other than the Islamist regime that it has always been and likely always will be. The Saudis will always act in their own best interests, and if that lines up with a more Israel-friendly policy, then they’ll do that. And being realists and still desirous of friendly relations with the United States, there will be limits on how far they will go in terms of open hostility to Israel. But they can neither be persuaded nor bribed to give up their basic character.
It’s long past time for Washington and Jerusalem to acknowledge this fact and stop trying to pretend that Saudi Arabia is anything other than what it is. It may not be at war with Israel and may even prefer for it to, along with the United States, continue to act to deter Islamist forces that are hostile to Riyadh, even if they are no longer worried about Iran. But it’s never going to be a real friend or ally of a Jewish state.
South Africa declares Israeli chargé d’affaires persona non grata
South Africa on Friday declared Israel’s chargé d’affaires and top diplomat, Ariel Seidman, persona non grata and ordered him to leave the country within 72 hours, according to an official government statement.
South Africa’s foreign ministry, the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO), said it had informed the Israeli government of its decision.
South African officials said the move was based on what they described as “violations of diplomatic norms,” including the alleged use of official Israeli platforms to criticize South African leadership and a failure to notify authorities about visits by senior Israeli officials.
“These violations include the repeated use of official Israeli social media platforms to launch insulting attacks against His Excellency President Cyril Ramaphosa, and a deliberate failure to inform DIRCO of purported visits by senior Israeli officials,” said the statement.
In response, the Israeli Foreign Ministry designated South Africa’s top diplomat in the country, Shaun Edward Byneveldt, persona non grata, saying he must leave Israel within 72 hours, and that “additional steps will be considered in due course.”
Israel responds to South Africa, declares chargé d'affaires persona non grata
Israel has declared South Africa's senior diplomatic representative, Chargé d'affaires Shaun Edward Byneveldt, persona non grata and has been given 72 hours to leave the country, as announced in a statement by the Israeli foreign affairs ministry on Friday.
The action comes in response to South Africa's earlier decision on Friday, in which it declared Israel's chargé d'affaires, Ariel Seidman, persona non grata, according to South Africa's foreign affairs ministry.
Seidman is required to depart from the country within 72 hours, the ministry said in a statement on its website.
It went on to accused Seidman of "unacceptable violations of diplomatic norms and practice which pose a direct challenge to South Africa's sovereignty."
"These violations include the repeated use of official Israeli social media platforms to launch insulting attacks against His Excellency President Cyril Ramaphosa, and a deliberate failure to inform DIRCO (South Africa's foreign affairs ministry) of purported visits by senior Israeli officials," the ministry said.
Israel's diplomatic mission in Pretoria did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Israeli foreign affairs ministry statement referred to South Africa's action against the Israeli diplomat Seidman as "false attacks on Israel in the international arena."
From Ian:
The shallow claim that anti-Zionism isn’t antisemitism
You can tell if they are serious by looking at their anti-racism policies. Organisations cannot pretend to oppose antisemitism unless they define it. Without a definition they cannot discipline members for racist conduct.
If you cannot define it, you cannot oppose it.
Ominously, many want to shut down any attempt to limit Jew hate. They want a world without boundaries, where anything goes, and anti-Jewish racism can never be called by its real name.
Their first target is the widely used International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which has been circulating in various forms since the early 2000s. The global left denounces it because it says that the definition has been used to “wrongly label criticism of Israel as antisemitic”.
Within a day of becoming mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani showed his political priorities by withdrawing the city’s endorsement of the definition.
The precise form of words the IHRA drafters used is that it is antisemitic “to deny the Jewish people their right to self-determination by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour”.
You can argue about that. As I said above, people who want to abolish the world’s only Jewish state need to bend over backwards to prove that they don’t just hate Jews.
Good-hearted left-wing Jewish academics took the complaint seriously, and went out of their way to accommodate Palestinian and leftist concerns.
They produced the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism in 2021. It emphasised that it was not antisemitic “to support arrangements that accord full equality to all inhabitants between the river and the sea, whether in two states, a binational state, unitary democratic state [or] federal state”.
All true opponents of racism need to do was oppose anti-Jewish conspiracy theories and race hatred.
A bare minimum you might say. But even this stripped down, permissive, definition of antisemitism is too much for many on the left to bear.
I hoped that the election of the Jewish Zack Polanski to the leadership of the Green Party would mark a break with the antisemitism that so disfigured the Corbyn movement,
Not if a faction among Green Party members has its way, it won’t.
A motion before the Green Party spring conference calls for the party “to reject the IHRA and JDA [Jerusalem Declaration] definitions which have been weaponised to silence legitimate criticism of the state of Israel”.
When the conference starts in March, we will see whether Polanski has the political courage to fight back, or whether he’s just another empty sloganeer.
Turn to the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, and it is the same story,
It too will not even accept the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism because it is “being used to reinforce the illegitimate policing of speech about Palestine and advocacy for Palestinian rights.”
You search its website in vain for examples of the Jerusalem Declaration silencing legitimate debate – and of course there are none. You search for any definition of antisemitism that would be acceptable to pro-Palestinian activists – and of course there isn’t one.
They have no formal means of condemning The Protocols of the Elders Zion, Mein Kampf or the Hamas Charter.
More pertinently from a modern left-wing point of view, they have no means of condemning Nick Fuentes and the antisemites flourishing in Donald Trump’s America.
The Maga movement is loathed by leftists. But at least some on the left would rather give the far right a free pass than accept the smallest restraint on the loathing of Jews.
Seth Mandel:
Can Elaine Luria Handle the Squad’s Heat?
Luria was once the kind of Democrat that party leaders wanted to recruit: liberal but poised, with a military career on the resume. (Luria spent 20 years in the Navy.)
Military experience tended to go hand-in-hand with support for Israel, just as exposure to reality tends to increase support for Israel. Those with national security experience in the field would be much less vulnerable to the paranoid conspiracism of the Code Pink world and campus activists, the thinking went. An inherent toughness could make it less likely they’d bend or break in the face of progressive pressure.
And all of that was true—except that last part. One by one, “moderate” Democrats fell in line. Elissa Slotkin, now a senator from Michigan, entertained the idea that AIPAC should register as a foreign agent. Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts Marine, folded like a cheap suit in the face of anti-Israel primary pressure this cycle. Accommodating progressive anti-Semitism became the norm, with very few exceptions (Ritchie Torres, John Fetterman).
Luria says she wants to turn back that tide, or at least show it some resistance. The question is how far she is willing to go when locking horns with her party.
During Luria’s time in Congress, she was at the forefront of a group of Democrats criticizing Ilhan Omar’s anti-Semitism, but she opposed removing Omar from her committee assignments, as Republicans had done with Steve King.
Luria’s willingness to call out some of the anti-Semitism from her own party has the potential to shift the debate if she gets back into office. But the extent of her impact will be decided by where Luria places the limits of her posture. Would she go beyond statements? That is, would she support actual consequences for Democrats who engage in rank anti-Semitism?
Most of the time, Luria seems willing to criticize Omar by name. Will she do the same for Rashida Tlaib, who has been headlining a conference tied to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine? How about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the thin-skinned Squad ringleader and blood libel specialist who may run for president in 2028?
As of now, the odds are in Luria’s favor. Virginia Democrats still nominate ostensibly moderate candidates, and the national mood certainly seems to have swung against Republican incumbents. (Republican Rep. Jen Kiggans, who defeated Luria two years ago, holds the seat.)
Is Luria prepared to be a Slotkin/Moulton Democrat, living in fear of the Hamasniks in her party, or can she envision herself as a Torres/Fetterman Democrat, the much more rare breed with a spine strong enough to stand on principle? The fundamentals of the midterm elections mean we’ll probably soon find out.
Iran's Options: Talking or Fighting
President Trump's ultimatum to Iran calls for it to negotiate away its nuclear program or face a possible attack. Either path risks putting the already weakened regime in a more precarious position. Along with insisting that Iran halt domestic enrichment of nuclear fuel and hand over its stockpile of uranium, Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff has indicated Tehran must accept limits on its ballistic-missile arsenal and abandon its support for militias in the region.
A decision to halt enrichment of uranium would be a humiliating public retreat on a core national priority for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Rebuffing the demand is increasingly likely to prompt Trump to order strikes, further exposing the government's vulnerability.
"Their strategy right now is just buying time," said Alan Eyre, a former senior U.S. diplomat who specialized in Iran and is now at the Middle East Institute. "Their whole strategic outlook is when you're in a weak position you don't compromise, because that invites further aggression."
"The supreme leader is able to do compromises, but those compromises cannot touch the basic pillars of the regime, meaning he won't forgo a missile buildup, he won't forgo helping proxies and he won't forgo enrichment," said Danny Citrinowicz, a former Israeli intelligence officer and a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.
Citrinowicz said killing Khamenei or expecting the other members of the regime to turn against him under U.S. pressure is a faint hope, given Iran's unity at the top. Even if Khamenei was somehow removed, the regime would likely coalesce quickly around a new leader, he said. For all the setbacks the regime has suffered, there are few signs it is facing imminent collapse, such as splits within the leadership or defections.
"They still have cohesion. The regime is still functioning," Citrinowicz said. "If they feel this war is aimed at toppling this regime, it won't topple this regime, because to do it will take time, and Trump has no intention to invest that time."
"You could do airstrikes that significantly restrict this regime's ability to control its population and to project power abroad," Eyre said. "But to get from there to a better form of government in Iran? You can't get there from here."
From Ian:
Palestinians Offered Prosperity for Giving Up Dream of Israel's Destruction See It as Humiliating Bribery
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, President Donald Trump's former senior advisor Jared Kushner presented a vision for what Gaza would look like, under the title "Empowering Gazans with Jobs, Training, and Services." This vision is based on real estate deal logic: property improvement, value creation, and bringing prosperity.
Its foundational assumption, held also by Israel before Oct. 7, is that humans are, first and foremost, rational economic creatures. If we just provide Gazans good livelihoods, luxury hotels, a port, and factories, the motivation for terror will decrease until it disappears.
But Middle Eastern reality and Palestinian reality proves again and again that the struggle is not about quality of life. The critical mistake of the Trump-Kushner approach is the attempt to reduce a deep national, religious, and identity conflict to a cash-flow and urban-development problem.
The Palestinian national movement, and especially its extremist branches controlling Gaza, have never placed economic welfare at the top of their priorities. If they had wanted that, Gaza could have become the Singapore of the Middle East a decade ago, with the billions of dollars that flowed to it.
Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are driven by an ideology that sees eliminating Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel as a lofty goal, sanctifying any sacrifice including poverty and hunger of their own people. For them, the land is not real estate waiting for a developer, but waqf land that must be liberated. When offered prosperity in exchange for giving up the dream of Israel's destruction, they see it as humiliating bribery.
The thought that money will buy quiet is an optical illusion. This is a national struggle. The other side is not seeking a business partnership, but historical victory. A discourse about economic development, without first neutralizing the nationalist-religious aspiration to destroy Israel, is a recipe for repeated disaster.
Hamas Intends to Control Gaza from Behind the Scenes
According to the IDF, Hamas will accept the Palestinian technocrat committee - the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) - with the goal of controlling it from behind the scenes, as Hizbullah has done in Lebanon.
Handing over civilian functions to the NCAG makes Hamas's life easier, as they do not need to invest in civilian issues.
The IDF noted that even though the NCAG will not be formally controlled by Hamas, it will still need to rely on local administrators in the field who are under Hamas control.
This would not truly dislodge Hamas from power absent an additional round of military pressure.
Seth Mandel:
Mansour Abbas’s Dilemma and the Israeli Election
One can better understand the phrase “two Jews, three opinions” by looking at Israeli elections, where there is rarely much strength in numbers and where splitting a party can provide more Knesset seats than unifying parties together.
And like everything else in Israel, it doesn’t just apply to Jews. In 2021, the Ra’am party, led by Mansour Abbas, made history by becoming the first Arab party to establish itself as a formal member of a governing coalition. Though Ra’am had won only four seats in the election, those four seats made the difference by giving the “change government,” led by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, a Knesset majority. For first time in a dozen years, Benjamin Netanyahu would not be prime minister.
This time around, Ra’am has agreed to be part of a joint Arab slate, in which the Arab parties all run together. Some polls suggest this Joint List could garner as many as 13 seats. Abbas, however, isn’t thrilled.
Wouldn’t 13 seats—theoretically—be better than four? Not exactly. A joint Arab slate means Ra’am is tying its fortunes to parties that wouldn’t sit in a government. Abbas is pragmatic, the rest of the Arab party leaders much less so. Which means those 13 seats wouldn’t be added to a coalition of Zionist parties that might replace the Likud-led government.
Abbas would rather have four seats and be part of the government than have 13 seats in opposition. Joining a coalition means winning concessions for Abbas’s Arab constituents. Remaining in opposition with more seats would make the Arab coalition louder but mostly irrelevant.
Ra’am has been working to improve its image as a pragmatic party that wants to give Arab voters a stake in the Israeli governing majority, not just its opposition. Abbas has reportedly been seeking a Jewish candidate to join its slate, and a few weeks ago Ra’am announced it was separating from the Shura Council, the religious body of the wider Islamist movement of which Ra’am is part. A technically secular Arab party, perhaps even one with a Jewish candidate, would be another major step toward the normalization of Arab politics on a national level.
But running with the other Arab parties on one giant slate essentially erases all that distinguishes Ra’am ideologically from the other parties. So why would Mansour Abbas agree to the Joint List?
From Ian:
20 Jews murdered, 815 severe antisemitic attacks took place worldwide in 2025
Twenty Jews were murdered worldwide and some 815 severe antisemitic incidents were documented in 2025, according to a report released Tuesday by the Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Ministry.
The total number of attacks was down from 2024, the ministry said without elaborating, while the number of deaths rose significantly from the one confirmed antisemitic murder in 2024, of Chabad Rabbi Zvi Kogan.
The report also recorded approximately 124 million antisemitic posts on X, formerly Twitter, and over 4,000 anti-Israel demonstrations, of which 365 were classified as posing a high or extreme risk to Jewish communities.
Antisemitic activity and rhetoric skyrocketed after Hamas launched its war against Israel on October 7, 2023. The data was presented during the International Conference on Combating Antisemitism, held in Jerusalem on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The highest numbers of incidents were recorded in the United States (273), the United Kingdom (121), Australia (45), France (44), and Canada (37), the ministry said.
The murders included 15 killed in the Hannukah terror attack at Bondi Beach in December, two killed in a Yom Kippur attack in Manchester, two Israeli embassy staff members killed outside the Jewish Museum in Washington, DC, in May, and a woman killed at a pro-Israel vigil in Boulder, Colorado, in June.
Other noteworthy incidents included an Israeli tourist hospitalized in Greece after a pro-Palestinian attacker bit off part of his ear in July; an elderly Jewish woman stabbed in a grocery store in Canada in August; the torching of a Sydney childcare center in January; the beating and attempted kidnapping of an Israeli in Wales in March; and the torching of a Melbourne synagogue with 20 people inside in July.
Belongings of members of the Jewish community are seen at the scene of a terror shooting at Bondi Beach in Sydney on December 15, 2025. (DAVID GRAY / AFP)
The data showed a clear correlation between spikes in violence and incitement and international security developments related to Israel’s war in Gaza, the report said without elaborating.
Brendan O'Neill:
Islamists have been given a veto over public life
The Met imposed severe conditions on the UKIP march. No one, they decreed, is permitted to take part in a UKIP gathering anywhere in Tower Hamlets on 31 January. Their reasoning is truly scandalous. ‘We are not saying that the UKIP protest, in isolation, will be disorderly’, they said. But ‘we reasonably believe’ that ‘groups who are hostile’ will ‘find it provocative’. That means there could be ‘an adverse local reaction’ that might include ‘violence and serious disorder’. Strip away all the euphemistic cop-speak and what is being said here is that a right-wing, pro-Jesus rally is likely to piss off Islamists and thus it is forbidden.
If this doesn’t shock you, I don’t know what to say. The dictionary definition of appeasement is ‘giving in to hostile demands’ in order to maintain some kind of peace. That’s what happened here. The Met cravenly bowed to the belligerence of local bigots. They sacrificed freedom of assembly at the altar of ideological menace.
It matters not one iota what you think of UKIP. To prevent anyone from holding a ‘Walk with Jesus’ because you fear a ‘local adverse reaction’ is to play a dangerously divisive game. What the Met should have done is police those that they suspect will commit violence (local Islamists), not punish those who, by their own admission, are unlikely to be ‘disorderly’ (UKIP). In doing the opposite, the Met have made themselves the footsoldiers of Islamism and the enemies of freedom.
Who will now deny there is an Islamist veto over much of our public life? Courtesy of the moral cowardice of our institutions, Islamists enjoy staggering power over who is allowed to assemble in public, where, for how long, and for what reasons. The Met’s capitulation to Whitechapel extremists comes hot on the heels of the Maccabi Tel Aviv scandal, when West Midlands Police banned Jews from Israel from attending a game at Villa Park because they caught wind of the fact that local elements were planning to arm themselves to attack those Jews. West Midlands Police had earlier banned Birmingham’s 2025 Diwali celebrations, again out of ‘concerns for public safety’.
Anyone who’s thinking of gloating at the fact that a UKIP assembly has been forbidden should think again. For the Islamist veto, this trump card of violent menace, has also led to a prohibition on Jews from Israel and the brute prevention of Brummie Hindus from marking the most joyous festival in their religion. No one is safe from the extra-legal powers that our spineless rulers have gifted to noisy Islamists.
Recent history makes it clear where such kowtowing can lead. For what was England’s rape-gang scandal if not a vile byproduct of the elites’ fear of rocking the ‘multicultural’ boat? That industrial-scale abuse of mostly white working-class girls by men who considered them little more than ‘slags’, as police, councils and politicians looked the other way, was a testament to the horrors that can flow from official cowardice. And how does the Labour government respond to all of this? By obsessing over a new definition of ‘Islamophobia’, which will make it even harder for decent Brits – Muslims and non-Muslims alike – to discuss the Islamist scourge.
Tearing up the Islamist veto, shoving it in the shredding machine of history, is one of the pressing tasks of our time. Everyone who values secularism, liberty and equality should balk at the elevation of Islamist feeling over everyday freedom. This is how you respond when Islamists say a UKIP march, Jewish football fans or a Diwali celebration will cause them offence: So fucking what? Get over it. Stop being a baby.
When hate becomes a business: The monetization of antisemitism
Antisemitism has always adapted to its surroundings. Today, it has adapted to the digital economy.
What once circulated through fringe pamphlets or isolated gatherings now thrives online, in an environment where outrage is rewarded, provocation is amplified and attention can be monetized. Antisemitism is no longer just spreading. In many cases, it is being incentivized.
In the modern attention economy, clicks equal currency. Algorithms are designed to reward engagement, not accuracy or morality. Content that shocks or enrages travels farther and faster, and antisemitic material, unfortunately, performs well in that system. The result is not only broader exposure to hate, but a set of financial incentives that sustain and accelerate it.
We saw this dynamic recently in Miami Beach, where videos circulated online of influencers singing Nazi slogans and performing salutes, first in a limousine and later inside a nightclub. They laughed, played to the cameras, fully aware they were being recorded and without a hint of shame.
The episode spread widely because it was inflammatory. In today’s digital ecosystem, outrage fuels visibility. Visibility drives traffic. Traffic brings revenue. Antisemitism becomes content and content becomes cash.
Extremist figures understand this well. For some, antisemitism is strategic. Provocation drives attention. Attention drives donations, subscriptions, merchandise sales and influence. In these cases, hate is not just ideology. It is a business model.
What once existed on the fringes now operates openly on mainstream platforms, supported by systems that reward engagement without evaluating consequences.
When hate becomes profitable, behavior changes.
Repetition normalizes rhetoric that once would have triggered immediate alarm. Over time, the presence of money dulls moral resistance. If content is rewarded, it can begin to feel acceptable, or at least tolerable.
This is where the danger lies, not only for Jewish communities but for society more broadly. Antisemitism has become embedded in a digital economy that prioritizes virality over responsibility and profit over principle.
From Ian:
JPost Editorial:
Now that all hostages are home, Israel must open inquiry into October 7 massacre
A profound chapter in Israel’s national trauma reached a painful conclusion on Monday: the remains of St.-Sgt. Ran Gvili, the last Israeli held in Gaza after the October 7, 2023 attack, were returned to Israeli soil. After 843 days, the state can say that there are no more Israelis in captivity.
Gvili’s story comprises both courage and heartbreak. A 24-year-old police officer who put on his uniform on that horrific morning while on medical leave, he joined the defense of Kibbutz Alumim and was killed while fighting to protect others. That he ran toward danger and became the last to come home should echo throughout Israeli society.
Gvili’s return is rightly mourned and honored. Families gathered in Hostages Square. The symbolic clock counting the days since October 7 has been turned off. Yet closure brings its own burden: a country that has endured this scale of loss still needs to fathom how and why Israel was so catastrophically unprepared.
Government and military leaders also framed Gvili’s return as a statement of national duty. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he told the family, “We will bring Ran home,” and added, “We will bring them all home.”
IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir said, “We kept our promise to leave no one behind,” calling it a moment the country “is excited about,” because Ran returned “to be buried in Israel.”
Across the political spectrum, voices have called for a state commission of inquiry into the gross failures of October 7. Many of those calls reflect anguish more than politics. Families who lost loved ones, freed hostages, reservists, and civilians want answers about intelligence failures, operational decisions, strategic assumptions, and the broader policy environment that left communities exposed.
At the same time, concerns raised by opponents of a sweeping inquiry deserve a fair hearing. Israel remains in a volatile security environment, and public hearings can affect operational freedom, intelligence sources, and national cohesion. Some also fear that an inquiry will turn into a political battlefield and deepen internal chasms and rifts at a time when unity still carries strategic value.
No retreat: Now that all hostages are back, Israel must finish off Hamas
Why it's time to finish off Hamas
In this war, two critical dimensions are unfolding simultaneously: the present and the future.
The insistence on returning all the hostages held in Gaza embodied the battle over the present – our moral, ethical, and existential duty to save lives here and now. Every moment in which our soldiers and civilians were held captive was an open wound in the heart of the nation, and every effort to bring them home expressed our commitment to the value of life.
At the same time, the insistence from here onward on the decisive defeat of Hamas embodies the battle over the future. A society that cannot defeat its enemies, uproot the threat of terror, and ensure secure borders for generations to come will remain trapped in an endless cycle of bloodshed and uncertainty. The dismantling and disarmament of Hamas is not only a military objective – it is a vision for a future of stability, security, and prosperity in the State of Israel.
The beginning of Phase II is an integral part of the war, and the determination to dismantle Hamas is not only part of the struggle for life, but also – and no less importantly – for the quality of life. Part of this war for life is the moral foundation that obligates us to do everything possible not to leave hostages behind.
The completion of the phase of returning the hostages from Gaza must serve as a lesson – not the first, but one that must be the last – that it is both a security and moral obligation to decisively defeat Hamas. As long as it exists, the threat of rockets, tunnels, and kidnappings will continue to haunt us, and any dream of civilian stability will remain fragile. The defeat of the October 7 perpetrators is therefore a necessary condition not only for survival in the present, but above all to ensure that no Israeli civilian or IDF soldier will again be abducted and held as an asset by Hamas in the future.
The prolonged war in Gaza and along Israel’s other borders – and especially the kidnapping of civilians and soldiers – has tested and continues to test Israeli society. It challenges us to understand that war demands painful prices and enormous economic resources. These reflect our choice to invest in building the tools necessary for our defense, rather than in monuments to our memory.
Andrew Fox:
Why cutting military ties with Israel would cost British soldiers’ lives
Four retired senior British Army officers have reportedly urged the prime minister to impose a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel and to “cut all military collaboration with Israel forthwith”, including links with Israeli defence firms.
In the same political climate, the UK has also taken steps to prevent Israeli students from attending one of Britain’s flagship defence courses. You may agree or disagree with any Israeli policy, and you can hold Israel to any standard you believe is appropriate. However, a blanket attempt to sever military-to-military contact with the Israel Defence Forces is not a serious way to protect British troops. It is, in fact, a notable way to ensure that British soldiers die needlessly in the next war Britain cannot escape.
Here is the uncomfortable truth: when it comes to saving young men and women after they have been torn apart by blast and shrapnel, Israel has been learning, adapting and delivering at a pace and scale that the British Army simply has not had to sustain in recent years.
The IDF’s own combat medicine data from recent conflicts shows a steady decline in the “case fatality rate” (the proportion of casualties who die) across major operations, even as injuries have become more severe. That is what a learning medical system looks like when tested under fire.
Consider the first lesson: blood, not “drips”, saves lives. For decades, armies (and civilian ambulances) often reached for clear IV fluids first. Doctors call these fluids “crystalloids” – essentially sterile saltwater solutions used to increase circulating volume.
They are not useless, but they have a fatal limitation: they do not carry oxygen, and they do not contain the clotting components that stop catastrophic bleeding. In mass trauma, too much crystalloid can dilute the body’s ability to clot, cool the casualty, and worsen shock.
The IDF’s data indicates a significant doctrinal shift away from crystalloids and towards blood-based resuscitation. During the Second Lebanon War, 92.7 per cent of casualties receiving resuscitation fluids were treated with crystalloids. In Protective Edge (2014), that figure was still 83.3 per cent. In the current war (Iron Swords), only 29.8 per cent were treated with crystalloids, reflecting a clear move towards resuscitation centred around blood products, especially whole blood.
“Whole blood” matters because it is what the body actually loses: oxygen-carrying red cells, plasma proteins, and platelets that form clots. The challenge is not the concept; it is creating a system capable of delivering whole blood safely, repeatedly, and at scale. Israel has achieved this.
From Ian:
Ceremonies held worldwide to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day
Candles flickered at dawn Tuesday at the vast Holocaust memorial in Berlin as people across Europe and beyond paused to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day, reflecting on Nazi Germany’s murder of millions of people and its attempt to completely wipe out Jewish life on the continent.
International Holocaust Remembrance Day is observed across the world on January 27, the anniversary of the liberation by Soviet forces of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most notorious of the Nazi German death camps. The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution in 2005 establishing the day as an annual commemoration.
At the memorial site of Auschwitz, in an area that was under German occupation during World War II, former prisoners laid flowers and wreaths at the Execution Wall, where German forces murdered thousands of people, most of them Poles. Later in the day Poland’s President Karol Nawrocki will join survivors for a remembrance ceremony at Birkenau, the vast site nearby where Jews were transported from across Europe to be exterminated in gas chambers.
Nazi German forces murdered some 1.1 million people at Auschwitz, most of them Jews, but also Poles, Roma and others.
Commemorations on the anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation by the Red Army on January 27, 1945, were also taking place across Europe on Tuesday, as well as at the United Nations.
Germany, the nation that inflicted war and genocide on its neighbors, is holding a commemoration in the Bundestag, the parliament, on Wednesday.
Candles burned and white roses were placed at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a field of 2,700 gray concrete slabs near the Brandenburg Gate in the heart of Berlin, which honors the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust. The vast site in the heart of the capital underlines Germany’s remorse.
Herzog: Denying Jewish self-determination is antisemitism
Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Tuesday marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day by warning that antisemitism is once again spreading worldwide, and equated the denial of Jewish self-determination with hatred of Jews.
Speaking at the Second International Conference on Combating Antisemitism in Jerusalem, Herzog said, “To deny the Jewish people—and only the Jewish people—the right to self-determination in their national home is antisemitism, even if you are the mayor of the city with the most Jews outside of Israel,” the latter being a reference to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Herzog linked his remarks to the return on Monday of the body of Israel Border Police Master Sgt. Ran Gvili from Gaza, calling it “a significant turning point.” He said, “For the first time since 2014, not a single Israeli citizen, living or dead, is being held as a human bargaining chip in Gaza.”
Reflecting on the 81st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Herzog said the world is “failing to meet our vow” of “Never Again” as Jewish communities face rising hostility in cities around the world, from London to Sydney.
The conference was hosted by the Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Ministry, led by Minister Amichai Chikli, and attended by Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama and other international figures.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu highlighted the first day of the event on Monday, warning that antisemitism has reemerged as a global threat, and urging governments to confront it as an assault on “our common civilization.”
US envoy warns Jew-hatred ‘rages anew’ during UN Holocaust remembrance
Mike Waltz, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, warned that the global body, created in the aftermath of the Holocaust, “must do far more now to confront this ancient poison” of antisemitism “to fulfill its founding promise and to protect every people, including the Jewish people.”
Waltz spoke at the U.N.’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day observance on Tuesday, recalling the atrocities American soldiers discovered and documented while liberating Nazi concentration camps in World War II.
The vow of “Never Again” must be put into action, the U.S. envoy said.
Waltz added that antisemitism “rages anew,” citing sharply rising levels of Jew-hatred in the United States and around the world.
“This wave of hate has left synagogues under siege. Jewish students, once again, hiding their identity. Whole communities living in fear,” he said. “I mean, what, are we back in 1933? This is absurd, and we have to call it out.”
While commending the United Nations for holding the ceremony, Waltz decried the growing reality of “Holocaust denial, its distortion, its rehabilitation in these historic narratives of Nazi collaborators, its the manipulation of history right here at the U.N. and elsewhere.” He linked that phenomenon to recent acts of violence, including the Bondi Beach Chanukah massacre in Sydney on Dec. 14 and the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
“Elie Wiesel once hoped that antisemitism perished in Auschwitz, and sadly, he lived to see its horrific resurrection,” Waltz said. “We cannot wait for another liberation.”
Waltz emphasized the importance of education and commemoration as critical tools in combating antisemitism, calling for greater efforts to elevate the voices of Holocaust survivors.
“You did not become a lifelong victim. You move forward and educate the next generation so that this can never happen again,” he said, addressing survivors in attendance.
From Ian:
Seth Mandel:
The Hostage Crisis Is Over. So What Has the World Learned?
Much like Hamas’s strategy of operating from civilian homes, hostage-taking is part of what Palestinian terrorists see as Israel’s chief vulnerability: that it cares about the life and dignity of every individual. In other words, the conflict we see today is, zoomed out, a Palestinian war to exploit Israel’s humanity. Why anyone thinks a conflict that is set along these lines can or will be solved by turning artificial borders into official ones is beyond me. No one who kidnaps babies is interested in real estate.
And second: what Avera Mengistu’s story revealed. Apparently grief-stricken over the loss of his brother, and undergoing periodic mental-health treatment, the 28-year-old climbed over a border fence and into Gaza in 2014. He was returned in 2025.
Who holds a grief-stricken, mentally ill person hostage for a decade? Hamas does.
Nor is the danger of such aimless walking limited to Gaza. Here’s a headline from late December: “IDF escorts Israeli woman out of Palestinian West Bank town she entered.” There really wasn’t much more to the story. A military statement read: “After IDF troops scanned the area, the forces located the civilian and extracted her safely out of the village.”
When did headlines about Israelis having to be extracted from Palestinian neighborhoods become so dog-bites-man?
Here’s one from a week earlier: “Mentally ill Israeli extracted safely from Hebron overnight after wandering for hours.” Jews are only permitted in about 20 percent of Hebron. If one enters the other 80 percent, it makes headlines no matter what happens to them.
This one’s from less than two weeks ago: “Israeli and PA forces extract Jewish man seen wandering in West Bank city of Qalqilya.” Sounds dangerous; what happened? “An initial investigation has found that the man entered the city to go to a car repair shop.”
Another from late December: “Troops extract 2 Israelis who entered West Bank’s Area A near Hebron, Nablus.”
The case of Avera Mengistu highlights the fact that still, after all these decades of “peace” negotiations, the Judenrein nature of Palestinian Arab towns is simply accepted to the point where nearly every headline about an Israeli leaving such a town alive contains a version of the word “extraction.”
The October 7 hostage crisis is over. But has the world learned any of the lessons that have been on display since it began?
Jonathan Sacerdoti:
How Israel did the impossible – and brought the hostages home
To outside observers, these goals sound impossible. But bringing back all the hostages was dismissed as impossible, too. Israel did it. These promises may sound arbitrary, idealistic, even performative, but to Israel, nothing is too dramatic. It is a country whose history has read like a thriller from its earliest days, whose survival has defied odds at every turn. A people whose annihilation has been attempted repeatedly by armies larger, better armed, and more numerous, often backed by far broader coalitions.
It is tempting to reach for biblical or spiritual explanations. Perhaps they have their place. Not everyone’s taste runs in that direction. What can be said, without mysticism, is that human beings united by purpose, driven by pain and fury, and threatened by brutality can achieve things that appear impossible from a distance.
Anyone in doubt can look at a map and trace a finger to that narrow sliver of land so many have sought to erase. It is still there. It does not get everything right. It argues, stumbles, fractures. Yet it persists, and it fights to defend its existence. Yesterday, it delivered on one impossible promise. The second now waits.
This is where the American role becomes decisive, and often misunderstood. The US initiative on Gaza should not be read as a naïve development plan or a humanitarian fantasy. Its headline promises of employment, reconstruction and futuristic redevelopment are not about realism. They are about framing.
Washington has placed a maximal, almost utopian offer on the table precisely because it expects it to fail. The point is to force a binary choice. Either Gaza, and Palestinians more generally, move decisively away from armed jihadist governance, towards demilitarisation and external oversight, or they absorb the consequences of continued war and isolation. The message is blunt: everything is being offered. Rejection transfers responsibility.
This strategy buys time. Even a temporary pause delays large-scale fighting, reduces Israeli casualties, and allows further consolidation of the diplomatic case against Hamas. It exposes bad faith. It drains sympathy. It reframes the conflict as one of Palestinian political choice rather than Israeli obstruction. Or so the US may hope.
Governance proposals emerging from Washington reflect this pragmatism. There is no search for a morally pure Palestinian leadership. Any figure with local standing will carry factional history. The aim is a technocratic authority operationally reliant on external backing, financially constrained, and removable if it drifts towards Hamas. Disarmament is the price of reconstruction. According to the agreements signed at least, there is no flexibility on that point. Israel will wish to hold the US to that promise.
Demilitarisation remains the true red line. If Hamas refuses, the strategy should shift. Opening the border with Egypt functions as a pressure valve: population movement reduces Hamas’s ability to embed itself behind civilians. Israel gains greater freedom of action, with fewer civilian entanglements and clearer international justification.
More broadly, Gaza itself is not the central strategic theatre. Iran remains the core concern, with Turkey hovering uneasily on the edge of hostility and opportunism. The American military posture signals as much to Tehran as to Gaza. That many European states have chosen to stand on the sidelines and scoff at President Trump’s plans, even as atrocities unfold elsewhere in the region, only underscores how marginal they have become.
What is clear is this: Israel has delivered on one impossible promise. The second is now being tested, under harsher conditions, with fewer illusions. Whether demilitarisation can be achieved will determine not only Gaza’s future, but the credibility of every promise made since October.
History offers no guarantees. It rarely does. But it does record moments when nations, bound by pain, pressure, and purpose, achieved what seemed implausible. Israel has reached such a moment again. What follows will not be symbolic. It will be decisive.
From Ian:
Seth Mandel:
The Plot Against the Holocaust
Why? Because you cannot have both the “Israeli genocide” and the “Nazi genocide”; they are incompatible and can’t coexist within a single category. So it appears enlightened Westerners are choosing the former and dispensing with the latter.
Accusing Israel of genocide is not merely an attempt to isolate the Jewish state diplomatically; it is part of an effort to erase the Holocaust from history.
Educators who want to continue marking the Holocaust are facing increasingly vicious resistance. Olivia Marks-Woldman, CEO of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, told the Telegraph that some teachers say they feel unprepared for what to do if (increasingly, when) attendees try to make the lesson about Israel’s supposed crimes. “But then there are people with their own agenda who want to use HMD to attack the memory of the Holocaust,” Marks-Woldman said. “We have had people write to us saying they will only commemorate HMD on certain conditions, for example, if we put out a letter condemning Netanyahu.”
Marks-Woldman told the Telegraph that Holocaust education “should not be conditional on anything.” Which is exactly right, of course. Unfortunately, in some sick sense, anti-Zionists agree: They are essentially pushing to retain Holocaust education as long as it is made entirely about Jewish crimes. When someone says “Holocaust,” these sociopaths want people to think Gaza.
It would be naïve to think this isn’t already progressing here in the U.S. as well. First, because it’s the exact same movement running with the exact same propaganda. Second, because according to some reports, it’s already happening.
The Jewish Journal reports that at UC-Irvine, the student government prepared a resolution for Holocaust Memorial Day. Jewish groups joined the others in backing the resolution, which originally said: “the world continues to witness a troubling rise in antisemitism, Holocaust denial, hate speech, and violence, both globally and within local communities, which reinforces the urgent need for education, historical understanding, and active resistance to all forms of discrimination.”
The student government apparently removed the Jewish sponsors and the particularist Jewish details, essentially confiscating the Holocaust from its victims. “What was originally a thoughtfully crafted Holocaust remembrance statement was fundamentally altered by ASUCI senators questioning established history, erasing Jewish authorship, and ignoring Jewish student voices,” one UC junior told the Journal.
Unless this trend is reversed, Holocaust Remembrance Day may soon have nothing to do with the actual Holocaust at all.
Jonathan Tobin:
Don’t mourn the Holocaust while supporting the genocide of living Jews
The cost of universalizing
The universalization of the Holocaust and the way students are taught a slimmed-down summary of this chapter of history—in brief lessons crammed into the school year—has had unforeseen consequences. It has led to something that survivors, whose numbers are fewer and fewer every year, never envisioned when they began the campaign to spread knowledge of their experiences.
The Holocaust has become a metaphor for anything that people dislike. The predilection to treat anyone with whom we strongly disagree as if they were Hitler is not just a product of the hyperpartisan tone of 21st-century politics or the extreme polarization of the Donald Trump era. It is also the result of the way it has been universalized to the point where many, if not most, ordinary people think it was just a bad thing that happened a long time ago—not the specific result of millennia of Jew-hatred and the powerlessness of nearly an entire people.
Equally unfortunate is the way much of the educational establishment has embraced toxic leftist ideas like critical race theory, intersectionality and settler-colonialism. So-called “progressive” teachings have largely captured primary, secondary and higher education to the point where a generation of Americans has been indoctrinated into believing not merely in concepts that exacerbate racial divisions, but ones that promote the idea that Jews and Israelis are “white” oppressors.
This movement produced the pro-Hamas campus mobs that have targeted Jewish students for intimidation, discrimination and violence since Oct. 7 at universities around the world. Participants are shockingly ignorant of the history of the Middle East, even as they chant slogans endorsing Jewish genocide (“From the river to the sea”) and terrorism against Jews everywhere (“Globalize the intifada”). What they have also done is to appropriate the word genocide, which Holocaust survivor and lawyer Raphael Lemkin coined to describe the Nazi effort to exterminate the Jewish people.
Their claim that Israel’s just war of self-defense against Hamas terrorists is “genocide” is a blatant lie. If applied to any other conflict, it would mean that every war that has ever been fought, including the one waged by the Allies against the Nazis, would be considered genocide. That not only drains the word of its actual meaning. It is, like the libelous efforts to smear Jews as Nazis, a classic trope of antisemitism.
Yet many on the political left, which has embraced this lie about Israel, are also prepared to join in mourning the Holocaust. Some, including that small minority of Jews who, for distorted reasons of their own, join in these antisemitic denunciations of Israelis and their supporters, even claim that they are inspired by the history of the Shoah to speak out against Israel now. Some even support efforts to eradicate the Jewish state—a result that could only be accomplished by the sort of genocidal war that Hamas and its allies are waging.
Our answer to them and others who are either silent about the misappropriation of the Holocaust or join in the blood libels against living Jews while lamenting the fate of dead Jews must be unequivocal.
Prioritize the defense of living Jews
We must tell those, like Walz, who misappropriate the memory of the Six Million, or utter such falsehoods about genocide, like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and others on the intersectional left wing of the Democratic Party, that Holocaust commemorations should be off-limits to them.
The same applies to global organizations like the United Nations, which in 2005 voted to establish International Holocaust Remembrance Day on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on Jan. 27, 1945. These agencies that claim to speak for human rights and justice for all countries in the world have become cesspools of antisemitism and engines of the war against the Jewish state.
For too long, too many members of the Jewish community have treated the promotion of Holocaust education or ceremonies honoring the dead as more important than efforts to defend the living.
It’s also true that, as important as teaching young Jews about the Shoah is, it must be linked to learning about the importance of Israel, as well as the life-affirming nature of their heritage and faith.
Above all, we must stop allowing the memory of what happened 80 years ago on Europe’s soil to be used by those who support or are neutral about those seeking to carry on the Nazi project of Jewish genocide. The failure to call an end to this misuse of Jewish history will only contribute to more tragedy.
‘I understand antisemitism because I was born in Russia’
Today Tabarovksy is the world’s leading expert in Soviet anti-Zionism but for a considerable time, in America, where Jews did not expect antisemitism to come from the left, her ideas were not taken as seriously as they should have been.
“I did acquire a following for the endless articles I was pumping out, but many people didn’t really understand how things I was warning about were relevant to them.
“I felt like a Cassandra,” she says, referring to the Greek figure whose prophesies were not believed.
“But the truth is that the antisemitism that has exploded across the world since October 7 is exactly as I predicted. I warned that any time a society is taken over by anti-Zionist ideology, you can be sure that antisemitic outcomes will follow.
“Jews who grew up in the USSR could now tell you this. Once the institutions become anti-Zionist, all Jews become suspect. It doesn’t matter whether you are a Zionist or not. They don’t even understand what Zionists are. When they speak about Zionists they mean Jews.
“We have an exceptionally well-documented history of Soviet Jews being discriminated against under an anti-Zionist regime and that is exactly what is happening to American Jews now. It’s crashing all around them, and it’s devastating to see.”
From Ian:
NYPost Editorial:
What the final Israeli hostage’s return really means
Israel soon responded in a campaign to rescue the captives and ensure Hamas could never do this again, ideally by wiping out the barbarians, root and branch.
Every sane nation should’ve cheered that mission — yet many instead compounded the pain, turning on Israel as antisemitism surged around the globe.
Yet ending Hamas’ existence should still be the guiding principle as Trump and his Board of Peace work to secure a true, long-term end to hostilities in Gaza, and maybe beyond.
At the least, the terrorists must lose their arms and any political or administrative power.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump agreed to give Hamas until March to lay down its weapons, with the prez threatening “hell to pay” if it didn’t.
Yet several of its leaders have vowed never to disarm, and the group has been jockeying for some continued political role in Gaza.
What do you think? Post a comment.
Gvili’s return ends a chapter, but clearly the full story of the Oct. 7 massacre won’t truly be over until, as Bibi has put it, Gaza can never again threaten Israel.
Pray that day comes soon.
David Horovitz:
With Ran Gvili’s return, Israel’s leadership fulfills sacred obligation to the nation it failed on Oct. 7
Formally, the recovery of Gvili’s body completes the first phase of US President Donald Trump’s broader peace plan for Gaza, and ushers in the next phases, under which Hamas is supposed to relinquish its weapons, the Strip is to be demilitarized, the IDF is to gradually withdraw, and a new, non-threatening Gaza is to be eventually constructed.
Most imminently, Ali Shaath, the former Palestinian Authority deputy minister appointed to head the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, announced on Thursday that the Rafah Crossing between Gaza and Egypt would open within days in both directions. And Netanyahu, who is deeply wary that any such concession will be abused by the still potent Hamas, reluctantly went along, to the fury of his far-right coalition partners. His office on Sunday night conditioned reopening the crossing on the completion of the search for Gvili’s body — a condition now successfully met.
Hamas, it should not require stressing, has not wavered from its goal of eliminating Israel. Rather, it evidently concluded that releasing, first, all 20 remaining living hostages and now, finally, the last of the 28 deceased hostages, has paved the best path to avoiding ongoing, potentially intensified US-backed Israeli military pressure. Still controlling almost half of Gaza, it believes it is creating conditions under which it will be able to fudge the issue of what exactly becomes of its arms, rebuild its personnel and resources, continue to benefit from the support of a world full of Israel-haters and fools, await more conducive US leadership, and resume its “resistance” to the Jewish state.
Israel had two clear goals for a war it had no choice but to fight against Gaza’s terrorist government in the terrible aftermath of October 7: destroy Hamas, and get all the hostages back.
The first goal is not completed; the war in its current form is over, but Hamas is not destroyed.
But the second, mercifully, has now been accomplished. Israel’s political and military leadership has cleared a critical hurdle in rebuilding its relationship with the citizenry it so catastrophically failed to protect 843 days ago. The hostages have been returned. To the very last one.
From Ian:
Simon Sebag Montefiore:
How the Shoah’s moral power is weaponised against Jews – and why Western leaders must fight it
This is the text of a speech delivered at the Holocaust Education Trust, warning that the distortion and inversion of the Holocaust is enabling a resurgence of antisemitism, with grave consequences for democratic societies
Much of the damage has already been done by Holocaust inversion to the vocabulary and architecture of international human rights and law – often by the very supranational organisations and "humanitarian” NGOs themselves. How now will we describe the murder of Herero people, the Armenians in the First World War, the Holocaust itself, the Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur genocides? But of course this is not truly about them; it is about the sins of the West itself and the damage to the West is part of the aim of this ideology.
The events of this week in Iran reveal that damage so clearly: only on Thursday did the UN Security Council hold a session at which the dissident Masih Alinejad – whom the Iranian dictator thrice tried to assassinate – reprimanded the disgraceful Secretary-General Guteres: “The United Nations has failed to respond. The Secretary-General himself has not spoken publicly against the massacre unfolding in Iran. Silence at this moment sends a signal. Sends a message to the killers of young protesters. I strongly believe that the regime in Iran heard the clear message from the Secretary-General. I think the members of this body have forgotten the privilege and responsibility of sitting in this room. Secretary-General, why are you afraid of the Islamic Republic? Millions of innocent and unarmed protesters have been silenced with bullets, mass arrest, prison and a total communications blackout!” Later she demanded to know: “Where is the left now? Where are the “pro-Palestinian” and “anti-war” activists when the Islamic Republic is killing innocent Iranians?” The respected Iranian Yale lecturer Arash Azizi – himself a proud Marxist – reflects “you would have thought leftists would understand the killing of Iranians on the streets fighting against a brutal capitalist regime. But unfortunately they don’t. The Western leftist movements hate the West. They hate their own societies.”
The Iranians have exposed the real nature of this movement and its real cynicism and wicked humbug.
Eighty years after the Holocaust, all of this makes the mission of Holocaust education personified by our host Holocaust Education Trust and its admirable chief Karen Pollock urgent, and the requirement to get the teaching right, essential. As our trajectory since 1945 lengthens to today, it is clear now the Holocaust was not the apocalyptic end of anti-Jewishness that we thought but just a colossal spasm in the middle of a continuum which spans the Crusades, the blood libels, Khmelnitsky massacre, the pogroms, the Russian Civil War (we often forget 200,000 Jews were murdered during these two years), the Shoah itself and then today October 7, the Yom Kippur murders in Manchester, the Bondi Beach massacre in Australia – and whatever horrors come next.
The necessity for politicians to speak more clearly is especially important. The use of anti-racist jargon is obligatory and it remains essential but instead of becoming a shield against anti-Jewish racism and hate, it has become a protection, a Get Out of Jail Card for racists and ideologues themselves. It is admirable that our leaders here in Britain stand against antisemitism and racism and seek to protect Jewish community life that is already overshadowed by threat and security measures. It is admirable our security services daily defeat diabolic murderous plots.
But the key is not to allow the adoption of this jargon by malignant actors mask poisonous ideology and excuse intolerant bullying and dangerous hate, not to allow it to work against its underlying values and intentions. Since the words have become with time and overuse and universal declamation, devalued, leaders need to say what antisemitism, what racism they are standing against and part of that is the rejection of egregious and harmful Holocaust inversion.
Be braver in promoting what the words really mean and what their spirit is against. Be braver in retaking the institutions that have been captured by ideologues who are enforcing malign ideas and intolerant conformity. Get back to teaching what the Holocaust was – and what it wasn’t. As the hatred shapeshifts our leaders must shapeshift with it.
Lastly one vital thing: an important part of education is to celebrate Judaism. Jewish history must not only be a chronicle of massacres and struggles. Jewish history is also joyful and remarkable and fascinating in all its richness that embraces Judea, Babylon, Egypt in ancient times to the vibrant communities of Andalusia, Constantinople, Morocco, Baghdad, Jerusalem and Alexandria and the amazing world of European Jewishness, the worlds of Ladino and Yiddish and now those of America and Israel and Europe. There is much to celebrate: Jewish art, culture, humour, films, poetry.
The Holocaust started with words that made it possible to dehumanise people thanks to their religion, race or identity then it moved to witch hunts, laws, boycotts, deportations and finally killing.
The words, the history, the education of the Holocaust are more than ever the mark of a civilised society.
Josh Hammer:
Case against Israel cheapens the word 'genocide'
In reality, South Africa’s ICJ case against Israel is riddled with flaws. It is also pushing to redefine a term that been held sacrosanct since the end of World War II.
The term "genocide" was coined by Raphael Lemkin, a Holocaust survivor who in 1944 strived for its incorporation into modern international law. That occurred in 1948 via the UN Genocide Convention.
The prohibition on genocide is considered a jus cogens norm — that is, a non-derogable rule accepted by all of the first-world community with no exceptions. The definition of "genocide" requires no law degree to understand, and it should never, ever be politicized.
For a genocide to take place under Geneva, there must be acts committed "with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group." The phrase "intent" here is of paramount importance.
South Africa’s pending case before the ICJ alleges Israeli intent to destroy the Palestinian-Arab population of Gaza. Israel, by contrast, (correctly) maintains that its recent actions in Gaza have been a just and proper military response to the war of annihilationist jihad and unspeakable atrocities launched against it by the Hamas terrorist organization on Oct. 7, 2023.
Israel’s "intent" is to free Gaza from Hamas, to return hostages abducted and held by Hamas, and to ensure Hamas has no future role in Gaza and cannot undertake another October 7-style massacre. It repeatedly offered to end the war if Hamas laid down its arms and released all hostages.
Hamas, on the other hand, has shown a complete disregard for human life and has openly stated that its sacrifice of Gazan civilians is a cynical strategic necessity to turn public opinion against Israel. It has for years embedded military infrastructure within Gazan civilian infrastructure — schools, hospitals, UN facilities, mosques, and children’s bedrooms. Israel has waged a defensive campaign in one of the most complex operational environments of any modern war.
Will the Mossad have to operate in the West again?
So, the question is no longer theoretical: If Western states cannot – or will not – protect their Jewish citizens, who will?
The Mossad was born not simply to operate where security collapses or states abdicate their duties but also to carry the sovereign obligation of safeguarding the minority it has sworn to protect – a minority that history has taught cannot outsource its survival.
The West can still confront antisemitism as the civilizational disease it has always been, or continue sacrificing Jews on the altar of moral cowardice. But history is unforgiving to those who mistake appeasement for virtue.
If Western states cannot, or will not, protect their Jewish citizens, who will?
With forces and groups in the West that do not hide their intentions – and states that even share their belligerence against Jews – if the Mossad ever has to operate again in the West, it will be because Europe has abandoned the Jews – once again.
Saturday, January 31, 2026
