09/19 Links: Andrew Fox: The Anti-Israel Film That Undermines Its Own Genocide Claim; Saudi Arabia discovers the value of a strong Israel

From Ian:

Saudi Arabia discovers the value of a strong Israel

The lesson for Mohammed bin Salman should be clear: Alliances matter most when allies are prepared to confront a common enemy.

Only last month, Saudi Arabia signed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement with Turkey and Pakistan. The pact provides that an armed attack against one of the three countries will be considered an attack against them all.

It sounded impressive. Reality has proved more complicated.

Turkey has no desire to be drawn into a confrontation with Iran, while Pakistan has sent mixed signals about what the agreement actually requires. Islamabad initially indicated that continued Houthi aggression could activate the pact, but later said that no military response had been discussed. And Pakistan is far away.

The stakes extend far beyond Saudi Arabia. Through its proxies, Iran has now extended its reach to another of the world’s strategic maritime choke points. Bab el-Mandeb is the gateway to the Red Sea and, ultimately, the Suez Canal—a vital artery of trade between Europe and Asia. Houthi control of the strait therefore threatens not only Riyadh but Egypt, Europe and global commerce.

That also helps explain Mohammed bin Salman’s turn to Egypt. Cairo has an enormous economic interest in keeping the Red Sea route open and traffic flowing through the Suez Canal. The Saudi crown prince traveled there this week seeking support from Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as the Houthi attacks intensified.

Saudi Arabia has also sought assistance from other allies as its missile-defense resources come under pressure. The United States continues to provide intelligence cooperation while stopping short of direct military intervention.

And then there is Israel.

Israel does not disappear when circumstances become difficult. It is not going anywhere. And Saudi Arabia and Israel face the same enemies: Iran and the Houthis.

Reports now suggest that Riyadh has sought Israeli intelligence assistance through U.S. Central Command as it confronts the growing Houthi threat.

That is significant.

Mohammed bin Salman has spent years dangling the possibility of relations with Israel, always conditionally and often ambiguously. But reality is stronger than diplomatic games.

On one side are Iran and its proxies. On the other are countries with a common interest in stopping them.

The Houthis have advanced along Yemen’s Red Sea coast and threatened the Bab el-Mandeb, one of the world’s most important maritime chokepoints. Saudi Arabia said this week that it intercepted a Houthi drone near Mecca, although the Houthis denied targeting the holy city.

They have demonstrated that there are few limits to their ambitions.

Mecca and Medina are threatened. The Red Sea is threatened. International shipping is threatened. And Jerusalem has long been in the sights of Iran and its proxies.

Mohammed bin Salman is discovering something that should have been obvious all along: Geography, common interests and common enemies are ultimately more powerful than diplomatic maneuvering.

When Iran and the Houthis threaten the region and its stability, Saudi Arabia must decide whom it can actually count on.

Riyadh is drawing closer to Israel again because, in a dangerous region, strength commands respect—and Israel has shown that it’s willing to use it against its enemies.

Brendan O'Neill: Ireland’s insane witch-hunting of Ed Sheeran

The infantile decree that to be Irish is to be a keffiyeh-wearing ponce who moans morning, noon and night about Israel’s ‘settler colonialism’ is gospel in Ireland’s cultural establishment. Aaron Rowe, the Irish crooner who withdrew from Sheeran’s tour, titillated both the Irish and British bourgeois left with his statement about how the Irish are all too familiar with ‘genocide, forced famine and violent occupation’. Oh change the record. No one in the Republic of Ireland has been famished or occupied for more than a hundred years.

It’s the Irish elite’s depthless capacity for self-pity that gets me. The Famine jabber in particular is appropriation of the most nauseating kind. They plunder the horrors of history and pull on the rags of the starved to try to coat themselves in the holy shroud of victimhood. If these moral bloviators knew the first thing about history, they’d know the Irish have far more in common with Israel than with Hamas-ruled Gaza. Two tiny, plucky countries with huge diasporas who won their freedom through force of arms against the British. And yet the Trinity grads of the keffiyeh mob identify more with a death cult that rapes Jews for sport.

What arrogance to say that Sheeran is no longer welcome in Ireland. And coming from the same people who say the Eritrean fella who arrived five minutes ago and who now aggressively panhandles outside the GPO is welcome and you’re racist if you say otherwise. We are witnessing the Kneecapification of Irish culture. Ireland is overrun by ridiculous fake rebels who hate the Brits but bow down to the EU, who bemoan Ireland’s sexist history yet insist women throw open their spaces to cocks in frocks, and who pose as anti-fascists while being curiously, hysterically and tirelessly obsessed with the Jewish homeland. ‘Jewish billionaires who control America’ – that’s who Kneecap’s manager blamed the Macklemore scandal on. I guarantee you he will face no consequences whatsoever for this.

So there you have it: you can wang on about the Jews who control America but you can’t say there’s suffering on both sides in the Holy Land. You can fret over ‘ZioNazis’ but you can’t choose to be apolitical about the Middle East. The Sheeran scandal really has exposed what a one-eyed, hateful and authoritarian cult Palestinianism has become. And Ireland has been conquered by it.

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09/18 Links Pt2: Why did the archbishop honour a cleric who called bin Laden ‘mujahid’? She worships at the shrine of Palestine; Widow of Bondi Hanukkah photographer reveals she is converting to Judaism

From Ian:

LA Review of Books spikes interview with pro-Israel professor Shai Davidai: ‘Double standard’

The Los Angeles Review of Books spiked an interview it commissioned with Shai Davidai — the Israel-born professor who called out antisemitism on Columbia University’s campus — with an editor calling the outspoken academic “a toxic figure,” The Post has learned.

Senior editor Rob Latham pulled the rug out from under freelancer Melissa Uchiyama after hiring her to interview Davidai ahead of his new book, “American Intellectual Antisemitism: The Anti-Jewish Movement Tearing Through Our Universities,” emails showed.

He had a stunning change of heart after reading the 2,000-word piece, telling Uchiyama in an email that Davidai is “a toxic figure who pretends to want respectful exchange.”

The prof is a “controversial figure” whose views “need to be probed more rigorously” than a standard interview allows, Latham wrote Uchiyama in emails seen by The Post.

Latham “should never have green lit the piece at all,” he added.

When Uchiyama offered to rework the article to salvage publication, the LA Review — which recently ran a fawning piece on controversial anti-Israel agitator Mahmoud Khalil – told her, no dice.

Latham wrote the dismayed scribe that her “best bet is to try and find a sympathetic venue” and offered her a $100 kill fee, which she declined.

“There was simply no way to have a quiet chat with him, and if you had challenged him forcefully, I expect it would’ve gotten ugly very fast,” Latham wrote.

Davidai said the spiking of the article looked like bitter proof of the kind of censorship he’s been fighting.

“Ironically, part of the book concerns these exact distortions and erasures in the media,” he told The Post.

“What’s most shocking is that they’re saying the quiet parts out loud,” he added, blasting “the double standard” at work.

French TV channel apologises after documentary shows French nuclear missile hitting Tel Aviv

The clip ran in Rafale, drones et canons : la révolution des armes françaises, a documentary on modern French weaponry first broadcast on September 1.

It was meant to illustrate the ASN4G, the fourth-generation air-to-surface nuclear missile planned for the Rafale F5 fighter jet.

The animation showed a mushroom cloud over a recognisable Israeli coastal skyline.

Héloïse Fayet, a researcher on nuclear weapons and the Middle East at the Institut français des relations internationales (IFRI), asked the channel on September 17 why France was firing a nuclear missile at Tel Aviv and noted that the blast yield on screen was far smaller than the ASN4G is supposed to carry.

By then the sequence had been circulating on social media as an illustration of French strike power. The clip was soon removed.

On September 18 the channel posted a communiqué on X, not on its website. It offered “sincere apologies” for using an image of Tel Aviv.

The shot, it said, came from a professional stock library that had “incorrectly identified and catalogued” it.

As soon as RMC Découverte was told, it pulled the film from its platforms and stopped further broadcasts. A cut without that sequence would follow.

The channel said it reserved the right to take legal action against whoever had mislabelled the city.

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09/18 Links Pt1: NAZA doc accusing Israel of war crimes actually proves the opposite; Britain’s Israel sanctions clash with US anti-boycott laws

From Ian:

NYPost Editorial: The left lobs yet another ‘Big Lie’ on Israel — and the fallout keeps getting worse

The left’s Big Lies about Israel keep growing bigger — as do the ugly consequences.

The latest: Rep. Gregory Meeks’ bid to place a “hold” on a $2.8 billion sale of US bombs to the Jewish state.

“The Trump administration’s proposed sale of 40,000 2,000-pound bombs . . . raises grave, unresolved concerns about how these munitions could be used in densely populated areas of Gaza and Lebanon,” huffed Meeks; it’s empty virtue-signaling, since he can’t actually stop the sale.

How bad have the lies about Israel gotten?
These are weapons needed to destroy underground tunnels and bunkers; withholding them helps sustain Hamas and Hezbollah, though Meeks claims he backs Israel’s right to defend itself from the terrorists.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) likewise opposed the sale, claiming preposterously that “US weapons are being used to perpetrate a genocide.”

It’s all nonsense: Israel has never — never — used bombs indiscriminately or where it believed major civilian casualties were likely, let alone to “perpetrate a genocide.”

And there’s no legitimate fear it ever would.

These charges fit with a slew of whoppers in a new film, “NAZA” (an acronym for the Hebrew words for “collateral damage”), that the Israel Defense Forces used AI to identify targets in Gaza and carried out strikes knowing they’d mostly kill civilians.

Contrary to the vicious smears, the IDF never leaves targeting decisions to AI, nor would it proceed with a strike if it expected a high civilian-casualty rate.

What makes these lies especially heinous is that the precise opposite is true: Israel goes to lengths to avoid civilian casualties.

Even as Hamas tries to maximize them by using them as human shields.

Urban warfare expert John Spencer, who’s studied the war in Gaza, reports that Jerusalem has “implemented more civilian harm mitigation measures than any military in history.”

Eugene Kontorovich: Britain’s Israel sanctions clash with US anti-boycott laws

All these boycott measures are, at least in part, incompatible with U.S. federal anti-boycott laws. Measures were originally adopted in the 1970s in response to the Arab League Boycott to bar Americans from “comply[ing] with, further[ing], or support[ing] any boycott fostered or imposed by any foreign country, against a country which is friendly to the United States.” Laws prohibiting investments, financing, construction, or property ownership in Israel fall squarely within that prohibition.

Moreover, because companies want to do business, and because boycotts create a victimless crime, boycotting countries have always had to engage in extensive enforcement efforts. The U.S. anti-boycott law prohibits participating in the enforcement process, even for companies that are not engaged in a boycott. For example, to enforce its boycott, the U.K. will have to ask anyone importing goods from Israel whether they’re from what it considers a prohibited location.

Simply “furnishing information” needed to enforce boycott measures is forbidden by U.S. anti-boycott law, even if the company is not itself engaged in a boycott. Indeed, most recent enforcement actions by the Department of Commerce are for furnishing information, rather than actual boycott activity.

America’s anti-boycott laws are not designed to protect Israel. They are designed to protect American companies from economic coercion by foreign countries in the service of restrictive and discriminatory trade policies that America does not share. These countries are not trying to convince companies to boycott Israel. They are forcing them to boycott Israel. U.S. anti-boycott laws seek to disable such coercion by making those laws unenforceable.

And it works. The measures are widely credited with helping end the Arab League boycott and ultimately setting the stage for the Abraham Accords.

It doesn’t matter that the boycotts are said to apply to “settlements,” as this literally includes Jerusalem, where the U.S. recognizes Israeli sovereignty, and the American Embassy resides.

The Trump administration must make clear that the new boycott measures will raise significant compliance problems for U.S. business, as even the Biden administration did when Turkey announced a boycott during the Gaza war. Moreover, federal law requires the Treasury Department to maintain a “list of countries which require or may require participation in or cooperation with an international boycott.” The U.K. (along with Spain and Ireland, which also recently adopted narrower boycott measures) should be put on that list, which currently only contains the bitter enders of the Arab League.

Israel has responded by saying it will close the U.K.’s unaccredited consulate in Jerusalem, a reasonable move that might have even more impact if done in response to the U.K.’s recognition of a Palestinian state. Israel could go further by denying visas to hostile British nongovernmental organizations such as Amnesty and Oxfam. Part of the U.K.’s boycott includes a partial ban on arms sales. Israel would be within its rights to scale back export licenses for its crucial defense technologies, which are in high demand around the world.

Future right-leaning governments will hopefully abandon the boycott, as Slovenia’s has. And if a sufficient example is made of the U.K., its fellow travelers may choose to change course. But this won’t happen unless both Jerusalem and Washington go beyond mere expressions of displeasure.

Gil Troy: To bland Mr. Miliband living in la-la land: Your antics aren’t bold. They’re bovine

Miliband pulled a Mary Poppins, adding spoonfuls of sugar so his poison could go down and fool liberals. He blue-and-whitewashed his lies, broadcasting his Jewish identity, then playing the Holocaust card. Blowing more smoke, he condemned Hamas’s October 7 massacre and the crude antisemitism threatening British Jews.

Apparently, even British Labourites can still reject these horrors.

But Miliband quickly started working his con, which has bamboozled millions. His 2,600-word speech omitted Hamas’s continued abuse of Gazans and ongoing attacks against Israel, treating October 7 as a one-time explosion. You’d think Hamas then stopped fighting.

Similarly, Miliband’s litany of Israel and “settler” sins never acknowledged Palestinian violence, provocations, or imperfections – beyond vaguely requesting “effective Palestinian governance.”

We learn: Hamas was “bad,” but “the Palestinians,” Jesus-like, suffer from the oppressive Jews. Israel is the only obstacle to peace and to Miliband’s Holy Grail, the “two-state solution.”

He ignored thousands of Palestinian terrorists who threatened Israelis before and after October 7, in Gaza and the territories – with 6,828 Palestinian terror incidents outside Gaza in 2024 alone.

He overlooked what Col. (ret.) Miri Eisin, senior fellow at the International Institute for Counterterrorism, calls “tens of thousands of weapons,” hidden in “almost every single house” in Judea and Samaria in order to kill Israelis – or seize land where Israelis farm.

He discounted the smuggling of “heavy-duty weapons” from Iran via Jordan, increasingly, by hard-to-track drones. He obscured the “pay-to-slay” policies of the saintly Palestinian Authority, forgetting that this supposedly moderate PA sabotaged the Oslo peace process years before Hamas blew any chance of peace by making Gaza “Hamasistan” – destroying many Israelis’ faith in the two-state solution.

Miliband’s cockeyed narrative echoed and legitimized anti-Zionists’ ongoing character assassination of Israel as fundamentally flawed, blaming Israel first, last, and always.

Escalating, Miliband accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing” in Judea and Samaria. Ethnic cleansing echoes a Serbo-Croatian phrase Serbian militias used as they brutally expelled one million Bosnian Muslims and Croats in the early 1990s, killing over 100,000, 80% of them Muslim.

In 1993, UN experts defined the term as “rendering an area ethnically homogeneous by using force or intimidation to remove persons of given groups from the area.” Ethnic cleansing in Rwanda involved Hutus murdering over 800,000 Tutsi in 100 days.

In Darfur, it described Arab Janjaweed forces expelling over 2.7 million non-Arab, African ethnic groups, leaving over 300,000 dead. UK foreign secretary accuses Israel of ethnic cleansing

By contrast, Miliband reported: “since 2023... over 4,000 Palestinians” were “evicted from their homes due to settler violence and state actions” – while 3.4 million Palestinians still live in the West Bank.

As with the “genocide” libel, accusing Israel of “ethnic cleansing” pushes what academics delicately call “concept creep” to grotesque extremes. It’s concept free-fall, exposing the accusers as ridiculous – or malevolent. To indict Israel, the worst crimes in international law keep being drained of their meaning, with once-clear thresholds obliterated.

At what point can we fairly call out this disproportionate stampede toward injustice as unfair, hysterical, and depressingly familiar to those who recognize antisemitism, even when perfumed with human rights talk?

Diplomatic wilding against Israel risks becoming a new Olympic sport. These assaults thrill anti-Zionist haters. They bypass all the Miliband weasel words. They simply welcome Britain, Canada, Norway, and these other countries now threatening to imprison their own citizens for selling flowers or wine imported from the “bad Jews” as allies in their jihadist crusade to destroy the Jewish state and the Jewish people.

It’s curious. No Palestinians are boycotted, not even convicted terrorists cashing their latest PA check for murdering innocents.

This latest affront – coming 49 days before the Israeli elections – is counterproductive. It emboldens the marginal Israeli minority cheering violent settlers.

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09/17 Links Pt2: Dara Horn: What Nobody Understands About Antisemitism; The Mackle-morons are not supporting justice, but hatred; 2,000-year-old Jewish ritual bath uncovered intact in southern Israel

From Ian:

Brendan O'Neill: Ed Sheeran, Macklemore and the tyranny of the Israel-haters

So that's it: you're not even allowed two hours off from Israel-hate. You can't even go to an Ed Sheeran concert without being lectured about what a barbarous state Israel is. It's not enough that our streets have fallen to zombie armies of Gazaholics and that our social-media feeds froth with anti-Israel invective. Now even Ed Sheeran must come with a side order of Jew State bashing.

People are alarmed that American rapper Macklemore has been ditched as the opening act on Sheeran's U.S. tour, after he barked "Free Palestine" and wanged on about Israel's "genocide" to 90,000 Sheeran fans at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. Is nowhere safe from the marauding moralism of our insufferable cultural elites?

Then Sheeran's other support acts walked out in solidarity with Macklemore. His backing band walked, too. It will just be Sheeran and his guitar at this rate, which, to be fair, he's done before. If the whole tour falls apart, it would be a fitting if grim tribute to the joy-sucking dogmatism of Israelophobia. Music burnt at the altar of ideology. How very Hamas.

Isn't there something creepy, even a little authoritarian, about turning a middle-of-the-road pop gig into a neo-Nuremberg rally against the Jewish State? Israelophobes have a Tourette's-like urge to blab their puffed-up virtue to every poor soul they meet. I'd be fuming if I got dressed up for a night of harmless pop, only to find myself being harangued by a nerd about the murderous lunacy of the Jewish nation.

Palestinianism has become a neo-religion, seeking to conquer every nook and cranny of public life. If you don't go along, you'll be branded a genocide denier, even as "complicit" in the crime of the century. Like all cults, the Gaza cult splits us into the enlightened and the damned. Sheeran is being damned all over X as a genocide apologist. And all because he failed to meekly, compliantly bow down to the truthless commandments of the Gaza cult.

Good Riddance to Macklemore

The rapper Macklemore has now been booted as Ed Sheeran's opening act. At New Jersey's MetLife Stadium, Macklemore devoted most of his set to prattling about Gaza, ululating about Palestine, and praising the terrorist sympathizers on American college campuses. It's tempting to laugh off the whole kerfuffle as yet another case of a very minor artist suffering from very major delusions of self-importance. But l'affaire Macklemore teaches us important lessons.

Macklemore has spent the last several years repeatedly and shrilly calling on artists to boycott Israel. He even wrote a song dedicated to championing the BDS movement, which promotes sanctions against the Jewish state. Now that he's received a taste of his own medicine, he's crying foul and claiming to be a victim. He's anything but. If the culture you help create calls for canceling those whose opinions you don't like, don't be surprised if you too are canceled one day.

Once upon a time, the performers we hailed were the ones who could actually do something: sing, dance, act and move us with their art. Like other preening pro-Palestine provocateurs, Macklemore's true art is stirring up cheap controversy by trying to cower others into submission.

It's a very good strategy for mediocre entertainers, who can get famous quick by pretending to be great moral crusaders and plugging into hot-button political issues they barely understand. But it's terrible for everyone else because it hijacks truth and beauty and turns every aspect of life into an ugly, muddy political battlefield.

Nicole Lampert: The Mackle-morons are not supporting justice, but hatred

Their historical illiteracy and ignorance were summed up by Irish singer Aaron Rowe, who said: “As Irish people we know all too well about genocide, forced famine and violent occupation. I cannot stand by and allow billionaires to use their position of power to silence the rightful voices of those who speak up against Israeli genocide and who highlight the savage murder of children.”

It is worth mentioning that not a single cry of Free Palestine has ever helped the Palestinians. In fact, by perpetuating what Palestinian intellectual Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib calls the “resistance narrative” – the idea that if the Palestinians keep trying to kill Israelis, they will somehow get their state – it has only made life more difficult for them.

And their demand for freedom of speech is highly selective. None of these musicians, as far as I know, spoke up when British band Oi Va Voi was cancelled from UK venues because their singer is Israeli, when Radiohead star Jonny Greenwood had to cancel gigs because of security threats to his Israeli partner, when Boy George was forced out of a musical for singing “I stand with the Jews”, or when Róisín Murphy dared to speak up against the medicalisation of trans kids.

They pose as free speech martyrs, but like Irish band Kneecap and English rappers Bob Vylan, who found fame thanks to their anti-Zionism, Macklemore may find the pro-Palestine grift is lucrative. He has already gained more than one million followers on Instagram since the fuss started.

Kneecap’s manager Daniel Lambert, meanwhile, exposed the obsessive hatred that gives the Free Palestine movement rocket fuel, in a statement oozing with the kind of tropes that a neo-Nazi would be proud of: “As Jewish billionaires who control America and fund the IDF decide who can and who can’t perform despite breaking no laws…The IDF is still murdering kids.”

This is also the thing about being Jewish when someone begins a “Free Palestine” chant. Either you suck it up, or perhaps silently leave, knowing they will do the same to others tomorrow. Or you try and stop it and get accused of having too much control, of too much power. Heads you lose, tails they win.

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09/17 Links Pt1: The malignancy of the left; Ed Miliband ignored MI6’s warnings over Israel sanctions; Pierre Rehov: The Shadows of War

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The malignancy of the left

Sometimes, a curtain draped across a mirror is torn aside, and a horrified public suddenly glimpses what it has become.

Two things happened this week which briefly interrupted the smooth acceleration of pathological Jew-hate in the West.

A film called “NAZA” won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival. It was directed by journalist-filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, radical anti-Israel activists with a long history of delegitimizing Israel through defamatory falsehoods, in conjunction with Britain’s Guardian newspaper, a byword for malevolent misreporting of the Jewish state.

“NAZA” is a Hebrew acronym for collateral damage or unintended civilian casualties. In war, such casualties are sadly inevitable. In the Gaza war, Israel reportedly achieved the lowest ratio of civilians to combatant deaths anywhere in the world because of the unprecedented measures it took to save civilian life wherever possible.

Yet the film claims that the Israel Defense Forces willfully caused widespread civilian deaths. Under the laws of war, armies must assess likely civilian casualties before striking military targets. The film misrepresents the IDF’s fulfilment of that duty as evidence that it intentionally subjected civilians to indiscriminate bombing.

Its shock value lay in its reliance upon voices it said belonged to members of the IDF’s crack intelligence division, Unit 8200. But these were anonymous voices, with no corroboration of who they were or even evidence of what they were claiming.

The second event was a horrifying report compiled by Britain’s Campaign Against Antisemitism revealing the systemic intimidation, threat and menace now confronting Jews who seek treatment from the National Health Service.

A Jewish cancer patient said that while removing a growth from his forehead, his surgeon told him that Jews shoot children “in the head or the legs” for “their own amusement.” A nurse said that a colleague made a Nazi salute shortly after finding out she was Jewish. A senior Jewish medical professor had received antisemitic death threats. A Jewish emergency worker was physically attacked by a colleague.

The CAA said that Jewish patients were terrified of their surgeons, and Jewish nurses and doctors were being pushed out of the hospitals to which they had devoted their lives.

These two things crossed a line.

In Israel, there’s been a seismic reaction against the film, with Abraham and Szor coming under pressure even from their comrades on the left.

That’s unprecedented. Israel has been profoundly changed by the enduring trauma of the Hamas-led atrocities on Oct. 7, 2023 and the war that followed. Israelis are painfully aware of the heroism of the IDF troops, so many of whom have lost their lives, limbs or mental stability in the desperate fight against a fanatical genocidal enemy—and who have now been trashed in this film, allegedly by their own brothers in arms.

Even in anti-Israel Britain, there’s been widespread shock over the discovery that British Jews are too frightened to go to the doctor or hospital because they fear they may be attacked or even killed under the surgeon’s knife or general anesthetic.

Both developments show that the West is in the grip of a pathology created by the alliance between left-wingers and Islamists. And some Israelis are themselves contaminated by this deadly sickness.

Monsters Welcome By Abe Greenwald

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Here’s something to think about: While European countries are slapping sanctions on Israel, they’re ramping up engagement (including on trade) with the Taliban. After the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, of course, the Taliban reimposed all sorts of horrors, including the legalization of violence against females and the vicious punishment of religious heretics.

But Europe is too upset with the democratic State of Israel to care about any of that.

I wrote about this very issue a year ago. Since then, Europe’s outreach to the Taliban has increased considerably. In June, Taliban officials met with EU leaders in Brussels for talks about sending Afghan asylum-seekers back home. This was the first time a formal EU delegation met with Afghanistan’s leaders since 2021. The Taliban came out of it boasting that normal consular relations with the EU are coming next.

Officials from the UK and other individual Western countries now routinely fly to Qatar to meet with Taliban representatives. The Afghan Consulate General in Bonn, Germany, is under Taliban control. And an official appointed by the Taliban serves as the first secretary at the Afghan Embassy in Oslo.

The trend toward normalizing relations with the Taliban stretches well beyond Europe. India recently waived sanctions on the Taliban foreign minister so he could travel to New Delhi for talks, and the country is reassessing sanctions on Afghanistan altogether.

Less surprising, China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and others haven’t hesitated to engage with the brutal regime. It’s not at all uncharacteristic of Iran to have sent its foreign minister to Afghanistan last year. Nor is it shocking that Russia is the only country in the world to officially recognize the Taliban.

Revealed: New Bank of England director referred to slain Hamas terrorists as ‘unarmed demonstrators’

The new non-executive director of the Bank of England, Paul Nowak, accused Israel of killing “unarmed demonstrators” in Gaza, one week after Hamas announced the vast majority of those shot were its members, the JC has found.

Nowak, who has been the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress since 2022, was given the top role at the central bank earlier this month by Chancellor John Healey.

The incident Nowak was apparently referring to in his tweet occurred on May 14, 2018, during protests in the Strip which were dubbed the “Great March of Return”.

A total of 62 Palestinians are reported to have been killed, which initially prompted controversy as they were unarmed.

However, on May 16, Hamas had stated in interviews that 50 of those killed were its members. Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) similarly claimed three of the deceased.

Hamas official Salah Bardawil said during an interview on Palestinian television: “In the last rounds of confrontations, if 62 people were martyred, 50 of the martyrs were Hamas and 12 from the people.

“I am giving you an official figure. 50 of the martyrs in the recent battle were from Hamas...

The announcement was widely reported by Israeli media, while a Hamas spokesman told CNN on May 18 that, while the exact numbers could not be confirmed, “the protests are peaceful and include all political and military factions”.

Nonetheless, on May 23 Nowak authored a tweet criticising then-Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, in which he referenced the incident without mentioning the terrorist affiliations of those involved.

“Government in Brexit chaos. Unarmed demonstrators shot dead in Gaza. Iran nuclear deal undermined. Trade wars loom as a result of economic nationalism,” he wrote.

“Our Foreign Secretary’s priority? A personal jet. Oh and to be specific, one that isn’t painted grey.”

Nowak has also continued to post about the conflict in the years since.

On September 21 last year, the day the UK recognised a Palestinian state, Nowak tweeted: “Recognition of Palestine is a welcome and crucial step on the path to peace with a two-state solution at its heart.

“The UK government must now do all it can to ensure the Israeli government ends its assault on Gaza. Solidarity to our sister unions in Palestine."

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Some links for 9/16. Not as good as usual, sorry.

I will try to put a few links here in no particular order as Ian is not feeling well. 

Algemeiner: Vance Says US Policy Toward Middle East Can’t Be ‘Subservient’ to Israel

Alma Center: 

The creators of the recent documentary dealing with the topic of "Naza" (a Hebrew military acronym for Nezek Agavi - collateral damage) did not have to work too hard to discover the truth. 

They could have simply interviewed me.

Israel News Pulse:  NAZA Fact Checked: The Explosive Claims the Documentary Cannot Prove

Jonathan Tobin: The AI apocalypse and the ‘NAZA’ blood libels against Israel

The JC: Labour MP calls for UK ‘military action’ against Israel

Globes: Morocco mulls procuring Israel Aerospace missiles - report

JCFA: Israel Can Rescue MBS From the Iranian Trap

Middle East Forum: Israel Is Fighting Tomorrow’s War with Yesterday’s Tools

Nachum Kaplan: Why Israel keeps winning wars and losing explanations

Macklemore:

Eve Barlow on Macklemore: You Have A Voice. You Lost A Venue

Free Press: Robert Kraft Made Macklemore a Martyr

New Zionist Times: Robert Kraft Did Not Make Macklemore a Martyr

Seth Mandel: The Stiffening Spines of American Jews

New York Post: Bill Maher rips Macklemore’s Gaza stance, says celebrity ‘moral confusion’ is fueling antisemitism

Lawfare: "A growing number of convicted terrorists are soon to be released from prison. There’s no plan to address potential recidivism."

Washington Examiner: Queen Esther saved her people. Michigan’s attorney general just threw them under the bus

Algemeiner: Rabbi Attacked, Israeli Tourist Berated in Italy as Antisemitism Continues to Surge

Jewish Review of Books: How to “Other” an Israeli

PMW: “Massive Palestinian intifada” promoted by official Palestinian Authority daily

Global Disconnect: How Propaganda Uses Emotion to Teach You What Not to See

JNS: Sept. 11, antisemitism and Oberlin’s politics of omission

Phyllis Chesler: Anti-American, Anti-Israel, and Pro-Palestinian Cinema

Melissa Brodsky: Nazis Were Organizing in New York. So Were the Jews.

Sign up for my Zoom talk with Andrew Pessin! 

This month's Commentary cover:

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! Reclaiming the Covenant on America's 250th (May 2026) "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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09/16 Links: No links today I'm sick.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! Reclaiming the Covenant on America's 250th (May 2026) "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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09/15 Links Pt2: El-Sayed's Imam Delivered 'Absentee Funeral Prayer' Hailing Ismail Haniyeh as 'Heroic Martyr'; Ed Sheeran’s tour in trouble as opening acts quit

From Ian:

‘Never Again’ means ‘now,’ Florida Jewish Dem says in new ad

In a new campaign ad, Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) focuses on fighting Jew-hatred and says that “‘Never Again’ is now.”

The Jewish congressman is running a newly drawn district against Scott Singer, a Republican and mayor of Boca Raton.

“My grandmother escaped the Nazis as part of the Kindertransport out of Berlin as a child,” Moskowitz told JNS. “My grandfather escaped the pogroms. Most of their family members were killed.”

Moskowitz currently represents Florida’s 23rd Congressional District. He is running in the 25th Congressional District, where an estimated 25% of residents are Jewish. He beat democratic socialist Oliver Larkin in the primary.

“Jews in this district and around the country see the significant rise of antisemitism and are worried that their kids and grandkids will not grow up in the same America that we did,” Moskowitz told JNS. “Now is the time for action.”

In the 30-second ad, Moskowitz quotes from the Passover Hagaddah: “In every generation, they rise against us.” He also talks about his great-grandparents, who were murdered at Auschwitz.

The Democratic congressman points to contemporary Jew-hatred, including a school shooter who carved Nazi swastikas into a gun.

“That’s why I’ve fought antisemitism, leading bipartisan laws to increase security at synagogues and Jewish nonprofits and expanding education so we can stop hate crimes before they happen,” he says in the ad. “Because ‘Never Again’ is now.”

Jonathan Sacerdoti: The firework attack on my Maida Vale synagogue is horrifying but not surprising

So: am I surprised? Why would I be? How could I be? Surprise needs a first time, and we are long past ours. We stopped being surprised somewhere between the marches and the ambulances and the Green party and Tucker Carlson and Zohran Mamdani and the people hiding who they are in NHS hospitals. What replaced it is sense: the thing you feel in the stomach before you let it into the head, because the head has been trained to say: don’t exaggerate.

And that is the loop in every one of our minds. Are we exaggerating? Jumping to conclusions? Safe, or in danger? A firework, or a warning? Each nudge pushes us to the next dot, the next quiet conversation about what we should do, and when. Wouldn’t we be stupid not to?

Because something got out on 7 October, and it has not gone back in. The murderers filmed themselves, and a part of the world watched and felt not revulsion but appetite. Jews had been made to look weak again: people who could be slaughtered in their beds. And weakness, in a certain kind of mind, is not pitiable. It is exciting. It suggests the job might be finishable. That excitement reaches a hooded teenager in Maida Vale as surely as it reached a man with a knife in Crumpsall. It is the oldest trap we know: look weak and you whet the appetite; look strong and you are punished for spoiling it. Israel is being punished this month for strength. My synagogue was attacked for looking weak. If I must be, I know which I would rather be punished for.

Edward Miliband stood up in the Commons this month, as a ‘proud British Jew’, to announce £250 million for Jewish security, as if that would distract us from the ‘reset’ he instigated on our country’s relations with the Jewish nation. The money had already been announced in July, and it felt even more useless the second time it was thrust at us as a deflection from our very real concerns for our safety. Imagine paying for more fire hoses as you throw accelerant on the flames, feigning bafflement or blindness as the heat keeps rising. Perhaps Miliband was the Jew his friend had once thought of when he said we don’t understand British irony.

Jew-hatred has always been useful: it lets a country avoid looking at itself too hard. A government with a by-election to lose finds it far easier to talk about far-off settlements than about a growing climate of furious conspiracy and aggression aimed at its own Jewish citizens. Or about immigrants from places where they hate us lot, and hate Britain, too. This is one climate change Miliband and Burnham don’t care to try to halt. If we Jews feel things getting hotter, they’ll just promise us more fans.

How did I come to be away this year, I wondered? Who knows. Consciously, I had travelled to be with my in-laws, and for work. But I couldn’t help but notice that unconsciously I had chosen to be in a place designed for my safety, even if it cannot always guarantee it. Maybe Israel’s founders hoped a state would make the hatred fade. It changed its clothes instead. But the state changed something else: what Jews can do about it. Nobody there has to ask a minister, politely, to care.

In an email trying to keep itself calm, my community told us there was no reason to change our plans. We will be back in the pews this Shabbat, and again on Yom Kippur. We have sensed exactly what is going on, but will be there anyway.

Real human evaluation comes in our actions and behaviour, not our thoughts and hopes. That goes for governments too. We feel it. We sense it. Then we act: some by staying, some by going, all of us by no longer pretending. Joining the dots and looking behind us to trace the picture is not hysteria. It is the minimum intelligence required to stay alive.

Two fireworks launched at London synagogue by gang of youths on Rosh Hashanah

A gang of hooded youths launched fireworks at a west London synagogue on Sunday, the second day of Rosh Hashanah, according to the local Jewish community.

Five teens waited outside the Lauderdale Road Synagogue in Maida Vale before two of them launched two fireworks toward the building at 3:23 p.m., startling a family walking by, according to a statement by the community and security footage cited by The Telegraph.

The Spanish and Portuguese Sephardi Community, which runs the synagogue, informed members of the incident and said the building was empty and no injuries or damage were caused by the “rocket fireworks.”

The incident was reported to Police and the Community Security Trust, the UK Jewish community’s security organization.

“Jewish families should be able to come together to celebrate Rosh Hashanah safely, openly and without fear,” said Rabbi Amir Ellituv, of the synagogue, which was built in 1896, vowing not to allow such incidents to “deter us from coming together as a community.”

A CST spokesman told The Telegraph that it was “aware of the incident,” saying despite the absence of injuries or damage, it was “nonetheless a serious incident that will undoubtedly cause concern.” Police officers patrol the high street after two people were stabbed in Golders Green neighborhood, that has a large Jewish community, in London, April 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

“CST attended the scene and is in contact with the synagogue, and is working closely with the police to establish the full circumstances,” the spokesman added.

Antisemitic incidents in the UK have risen sharply since the war against Hamas in Gaza began in 2023, with the Community Security Trust, a Jewish community watchdog, saying in August that such incidents rose 21 percent in the first six months of 2026 compared to the same period last year, reaching the second-highest total on record for the first half of a year.

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09/15 Links Pt1: The ICJ's Pernicious Plan to Redefine Genocide; You Cannot Occupy Your Own History; Psychological Warfare 101: The Real Target of NAZA

From Ian:

The ICJ's Pernicious Plan to Redefine Genocide

The Trump administration is working to dismantle the International Criminal Court. But a different tribunal, the International Court of Justice, could become a greater threat to the security of the U.S. and its allies. The ICJ is deciding a case, Gambia vs. Myanmar, that could drastically lower the legal threshold for genocide. This would pave the way for a genocide finding in South Africa's pending case against Israel. The lower threshold would also unleash genocide claims against the U.S.

The Genocide Convention requires proof of "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such." The ICJ is being urged to replace that clear, high standard with a vague, politically malleable one: a range of "facts and circumstances" assessed "comprehensively and holistically." Adopting a standard inconsistent with the Genocide Convention would transform the ICJ into a legislative body rewriting the treaty.

Lowering the threshold is unnecessary to find Myanmar committed genocide. Myanmar's forces reportedly perpetrated repeated mass executions of Rohingya civilians, including dozens of children, lining them up and shooting or hacking them to death. In this case, genocidal intent is the only reasonable inference.

This differs factually and legally from civilian deaths incidentally caused by Israeli strikes targeting Hamas fighters, particularly given Israel's precautions and Hamas's documented use of human shields.

WSJ Editorial: If the International Court of Justice Lowers the Threshold for Genocide to Smear Israel, It Will Backfire

While the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutes individuals, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) adjudicates disputes between states. For each court, the temptation has been to expand its authority to pile on Israel. The ICJ is looking to use the case of Myanmar's attacks on the Rohingya minority to redefine genocide in preparation for South Africa v. Israel.

In Gaza, where Hamas built 400 miles of tunnels beneath cities, taxed and stole aid, and did everything to endanger its own civilians, genocide is far from the only reasonable inference from the war's casualties. The more reasonable inference is that Israel fought a defensive war against Hamas in the most difficult urban conditions ever seen, a war it stopped when Hamas released the hostages.

"Lowering the genocide threshold would transform genocide from a narrowly defined legal crime into an expansive vehicle for litigating the conduct of states at war," said Andres Munoz-Mosquera, chief legal adviser to the NATO Supreme Allied Commander, 2014-25. "A new and malleable standard could become a precedent through which virtually any military campaign involving substantial civilian casualties is recast as a genocide claim." He sees it being used by dictatorships and rogue states to handcuff Western democracies.

Holocaust Studies Professor Rips Apart Genocide Charge

There are too many excellent points to note in University of Florida Professor of Holocaust Studies Norman JW Goda’s masterful essay in The Telegraph, “How ‘genocide’ lost all its meaning.” But the central arguments are:

“Genocide” has been stripped of its precise legal meaning in the Gaza debate. Historically, genocide requires proof of specific intent to destroy a protected group, not simply mass casualties, destruction or even serious violations of the laws of war.

He says the genocide charge against Israel has become a political tool rather than a rigorously proven legal conclusion. He accuses activists, NGOs and some scholars of cherry-picking evidence, redefining genocide through ideological frameworks and using the accusation to delegitimize Israel and invert the historical legacy of the Holocaust.

Here are some excerpts:
Yet there is a new and notable self-assurance with which Israel is accused today of genocide, and has been since 2023. It comes from ceaseless allegations – at teach-ins, on talk shows and social media – which echo the carefully constructed illusion of authority that “genocide experts”, many of whom are not experts at all, are in consensus on the matter. In fact, the “consensus”, though noisy, never existed. The intensity also comes from a misrepresentation of Israeli military operations together with a deliberate untethering of genocide from its legal definition to one created by the academic obsession with settler colonial theory – a social-justice-driven understanding of European settlement that ostensibly creates a long-term, white-supremacist genocidal structure which steadily eliminates indigenous peoples. As Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories and the troubadour of genocide accusations against Israel, puts it: “The current genocide is part of a century-long project of eliminatory settler-colonialism in Palestine.”

Albanese’s harangues show that anyone can allege anything. Indeed, one of the chief advantages of endlessly repeating accusations while leaning on the slender reeds of settler-colonial theory is that facts can be displaced by righteous rhetoric. In Israel’s case, allegations of Western settler colonialism erase Jewish indigeneity to the region, ignore that the descendants of Middle Eastern Jewish people who fled Arab countries after 1948 comprise up to half of Israel’s population, and delete that Zionist leaders accepted the 1947 UN partition resolution (and other peace initiatives) while Arab leaders rejected them.

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It is possible to cobble together a more legalistic genocide accusation in similar bad faith. One can ignore that Hamas fights among the Palestinian civilian population and that it uses mosques, schools, and hospitals for everything from arms depots to headquarters. One can dismiss Israeli efforts at civilian harm mitigation. One can imagine, as a reenactment of medieval blood libels, that Israel targets children (and even embryos) rather than armed fighters. One can maintain that the destruction of buildings in Gaza has nothing to do with the fortified tunnels beneath them or the booby-traps within them. One can insist that Israel somehow intended to cause a famine by allowing 2,174,489 tons of aid into Gaza between October 2023 and today. And one can imagine that Israeli efforts to spare civilians are all part of a vast scheme called “humanitarian camouflage”, by which Israel commits genocide beneath a faux canopy of lawfulness. Or one can simply pretend that Gaza is the Warsaw Ghetto.

The problem with all this is that genocide is defined not by proclamation, but by international statute and that ultimately, proof is required to render accusations into adjudicated crimes. The text of the 1948 UN Genocide Convention took two years to write. It received a unanimous affirmative vote in the UN General Assembly, and it has been ratified by 154 states, all of whom presumably read the text before signing. Briefly put, genocide is defined by one or more of five defined acts, headed by killing, “committed with intent to destroy” an ethnic, national, or religious group in whole or in part. The criterion is physical and biological destruction. UN debates between 1946 and 1948 reveal awareness that the definition was imperfect. There were concerns, legitimate as it turned out, that a looser definition could open the door to politically inspired accusations.

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09/14 Links Pt2: Macklemore dropped from Ed Sheeran’s U.S. tour; Court Holds North Korea Liable for Terror Support Behind October 7 Attack; The ‘anti-Semitic rot’ at the heart of the NHS

From Ian: Federal Court Holds North Korea Liable for Terror Support Behind October 7 Attack

On September 8, a federal court held Iran and North Korea jointly and severally liable to American plaintiffs over seven terrorist attacks, including Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s October 7, 2023 assault on Israel, in a ruling that details a largely overlooked North Korean role involving training, weapons and underground-warfare assistance.

In a memorandum opinion, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema granted default judgment on liability in a case brought by 47 U.S. nationals, including people killed or injured in seven terrorist attacks between 2019 and 2023 and immediate family members of the victims. The court concluded that the plaintiffs had established Iran and North Korea’s liability under the terrorism exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.

The October 7 portion of the ruling is particularly striking. Brinkema wrote that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad jointly carried out the attack that severely wounded American plaintiffs Bernadette and Nir Brauner. According to the court, Iran provided funds, weapons, recruitment assistance and incentive payments to operatives involved in the attack. North Korea, the opinion states, provided training to Hezbollah, Hamas and PIJ operatives involved in the attack, as well as weapons or weapon components and “tunnel-building assistance.”

The underlying complaint is even more explicit. It alleges that North Korea aided the October 7 attack by providing training to operatives from Hezbollah, Hamas and PIJ, supplying weapons including rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and providing assistance related to tunnel construction. Because Iran and North Korea did not answer the lawsuit, those allegations were uncontested. The court nevertheless found that the plaintiffs had presented an adequate legal and factual basis to establish liability and held the two governments jointly and severally liable for the plaintiffs’ injuries and deaths.

A Decades-Old North Korean Pipeline
North Korea’s ties to Middle Eastern militant movements predate Hamas itself, while its military relationship with Iran stretches back to the early 1980s.

The complaint, summarized by Brinkema, describes Pyongyang as Iran’s “most powerful nation-state partner” and traces decades of cooperation involving missile development, weapons, military training and assistance to Iran, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah.

The opinion recounts allegations that North Korean military personnel were dispatched to southern Lebanon in the early 2000s, where they used Pyongyang’s expertise to help develop underground military installations and an extensive network of tunnels. It also describes North Korean training provided to the IRGC and Hezbollah that allegedly flowed through Iran’s broader network of proxies.

That history has previously reached American courts. In a 2014 federal decision involving Hezbollah’s 2006 war against Israel, a U.S. district court found by “clear and convincing evidence” that North Korea had materially supported Hezbollah. The court identified weapons, military training and assistance constructing underground military infrastructure among the support supplied by Pyongyang.

A Congressional Research Service report similarly documented reports that North Korean trainers were sent to southern Lebanon to instruct Hezbollah personnel in constructing underground military facilities. The report also detailed longstanding North Korean weapons relationships with Iran and Syria and reported on the movement of North Korean arms believed to be destined for Hezbollah and Hamas.

Eugene Kontorovich: Houses of Worship Deserve Protection from Disruption

Many conservatives have a bad taste in their mouths from any mention of “buffer zone” laws because of their widespread use in restricting protests and counseling activities outside of abortion clinics. But buffer zone laws are uncontroversially in force to protect the sanctity of places like cemeteries and funerals.

Congress has, in fact, protected houses of worship since 1994, but only as a secondary provision of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, a statute to address a different problem and built around that problem’s assumptions. FACE reaches only force, threats of force, and physical obstruction — but not other kinds of conduct that can in practice disrupt or seriously interfere with religious services.

The free exercise of religion is a core First Amendment right. Thus, it is important to protect churches and synagogues with a free-standing statute. Because the Right to Worship Act protects against interference in religious exercise by private parties, it does not protect the constitutional right per se, which addresses governmental interference. But constitutional protection for worship does demonstrate its safeguarding to be a compelling government interest.

At the same time, it does not sweep nearly as far as abortion clinic access laws, some of which the Supreme Court has struck down on First Amendment grounds. For example, McCullen v. Coakley (2014) struck down a law that in effect barred any kind of speech, including one-on-one conversations within the buffer zone around a clinic. The Court found that while the state had a valid interest in “preventing harassment and intimidation,” a de facto no–speech zone swept too far. But that is exactly what the Right to Worship Act doesn’t do.

The federal bill only restricts particularly disruptive activities, which falls well within the constitutional allowance for time, place, and manner restrictions and is in line with McCullen. One person’s exercise of their rights cannot come at the expense of another — and thus the statute only “buffers” “conduct that meaningfully interferes with the ability of people to participate” in a scheduled religious service, or that “unreasonably hinders or deters” entrance.

It is also quite clear that many local authorities — like New York City’s mayor, who has cheered on synagogue demonstrations — will never enforce available local nuisance laws that could be used against such disturbances.

We recognize that disturbances around houses of worship are, in a sense, matters of local law and order which under a well-functioning system of federalism should not be within the purview of the federal government.

Yet 100 years of expansive Commerce Clause jurisprudence means that as a matter of current constitutional doctrine, it clearly is within federal power. The FACE Act, for example, lacks any statutory requirement connecting the conduct to interstate commerce, a gap the Supreme Court has yet to address.

The Right to Worship bill, by contrast, makes a “substantial effect on interstate commerce” an element of the offense — which means it can only be used in cases that truly do cross state lines. This language was borrowed from the Church Arson Prevention Act of 1996, not widely thought of as massive government overreach.

Thus, the Right to Worship Act doesn’t change the federalism landscape. Moreover, there is no need for conservatives to deny themselves, and themselves alone, the protections of existing constitutional law, while working to change it based on conservative principles.

At a time when religious values are under attack, it is more important than ever to safeguard the sanctuary itself. The Right to Worship Act is modest, bipartisan, and well within what the Constitution allows, at least as currently interpreted by the Supreme Court.

Man arrested for allegedly making Jew-hatred threats against Ben Shapiro

Korby Aaren Strube, 29, of Horton, Kan., was arrested in Florida for allegedly posting threats to kill political commentator Ben Shapiro, referencing the Daily Wire co-founder’s Jewish faith.

Strube was arrested on Sept. 12 and faces 23 counts related to written or electronic threats to kill or cause bodily harm, as well as two counts related to using a two-way communications device to facilitate a felony, according to court records and the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office.

According to an affidavit obtained by JNS from the Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller of Palm Beach County, Strube allegedly made threats against Shapiro in social media posts on July 31, Aug. 1 and Aug. 2. The posts said he would be “giving the world a boost by killing Ben Shapiro for being Jewish” and that he was “killing this stupid Jew,” according to the affidavit.

“He invoked antisemitic conspiratorial themes as justification for the intended killing, attributing violence to ‘semites,’ to ‘Tel Aviv’ and to ‘a foreign government,’” the affidavit stated.

The Aug. 1 and Aug. 2 posts also included countdowns of 52 and 51 days, respectively, to the intended killing. The countdown pointed to Sept. 21-22, the dates of Yom Kippur this year, according to the affidavit.

The investigation began Aug. 4 after a private security firm providing protection for Shapiro alerted authorities to the posts, according to the sheriff’s office. Investigators subsequently determined that Strube was behind the social media account from which the threats were posted. Shapiro told investigators that he believed the threats were motivated by his Jewish faith and wanted to pursue charges.

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09/14 Links Pt1: Former hostages condemn 'NAZA' filmmakers; UNRWA Claims Reform While Terrorism and Incitement Persist; The Palestinians' Dead-End Choice: Fatah or Hamas

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: This year, Israel must move from its October 7 reckoning to national repair

The multitude of Israeli security challenges
What is the strategy for Gaza? How will Israel prevent another October 7 rather than merely promise that it will? How will it confront Iran and its proxies without allowing conflict to substitute for policy? How will it rebuild communities, care for the wounded, and support those who have carried the burden of military service?

The same test applies at home. A government cannot demand sacrifice from reservists and their families while indefinitely avoiding a fair arrangement for military and national service. It cannot claim to defend democracy abroad while treating independent institutions as domestic enemies. Nor can it restore public trust while accountability remains something demanded only of political opponents.

Israel’s international standing must also form part of this reckoning.

This week, British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband accused extremist settlers of carrying out ethnic cleansing in parts of the West Bank and announced measures against settlement trade. Israel has every right to challenge accusations it considers false, selective or inflammatory. It should continue to expose the double standards, historical distortions and antisemitism that too often accompany international criticism.

But indignation is not a foreign policy. This newspaper warned in 2024 that Israel could not afford to become a pariah state and that the belief that it could simply fight alone was dangerous.

That warning has only grown more urgent. Israel cannot control the prejudices of its enemies, but it can control its own policies, the conduct of its officials, and whether extremist violence is confronted or tolerated.

When allies believe Israel will not restrain lawlessness in the West Bank, they begin making distinctions and imposing consequences. Condemning their response does not remove the underlying danger. Israel must enforce the law, protect Palestinians from violence and prevent ideological extremists from determining the country’s diplomatic future.

Hope does not rely on one camp alone
There is reason for hope in the new year, but it does not rest solely on the victory of one camp or the defeat of another. It rests on Israel’s continuing ability to correct course through democratic means.

Voters should demand concrete answers: an independent October 7 inquiry, a fair sharing of national obligations, clear political objectives for Israel’s military power, protection of democratic institutions and a serious plan to repair relations with allies and Jewish communities abroad.

The shofar is not a sound of self-congratulation. It calls us to wake up from slumber.

Israel’s strength has never depended on pretending that it makes no mistakes. It depends on recognizing danger, adapting to it, and refusing to lose the moral and democratic purpose for which the country exists.

This year must be the year in which reckoning finally becomes repair.

Aviva Klompas: Palestinians deserve the dignity of accountability

If Palestinians are entitled to sovereignty, as the Carney government believes they are, then Palestinian leaders should be responsible for building the institutions that make sovereignty viable.

They should be responsible for whether their people vote, whether public money rewards violence, whether schools prepare children for co-existence and whether their political culture treats negotiation and compromise as diplomacy or betrayal.

None of this absolves Israel of responsibility for its actions. It is held accountable for the decisions of its elected government because that is what it means to treat a nation as a sovereign political actor. Palestinians deserve the same standard.

Successful states are built on institutions, accountability, the rule of law and political leadership capable and willing to make difficult choices. Foreign governments cannot manufacture a viable Palestinian state by removing the expectations placed on the people who would govern it.

This is what makes Canada’s decision so baffling. Ottawa granted one of the Palestinians’ most important diplomatic objectives before the reforms it deemed essential to statehood had been adopted. The message was that Palestinian leaders could receive the benefits of statehood before demonstrating their willingness or ability to assume its responsibilities.

The international community speaks about Palestinian dignity and self-determination. But dignity is inseparable from agency. Treating Palestinians with dignity means recognizing they are not victims of forces beyond their control, but a people whose leaders make choices about war and peace, democracy and authoritarianism, education and incitement, corruption and good governance.

The refusal to hold those leaders accountable has real consequences. A Palestinian born when Mahmoud Abbas was elected president could now be old enough to have children without ever having voted in a presidential election. That is not an Israeli policy. It is a Palestinian political failure.

Nor should Hamas’s continued armed presence in Gaza be treated as an unfortunate fact that everyone else must accommodate. Its leaders made choices, its members committed atrocities and its continued brutality carries consequences for the society in which it operates.

A serious commitment to Palestinian statehood requires more accountability, not less.

Canada says it wants Palestinians to exercise the right of self-determination. Then it should treat them as a people capable of exercising it, with all the responsibilities that entails. Palestinians do not need the international community to expect less of them. They need it to take their aspirations seriously enough to expect more.

Bassam Tawil: The Palestinians' Dead-End Choice: Fatah or Hamas

Both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority [PA] owe the Palestinian people – as well as Israelis and other victims – countless apologies. They owe apologies for corruption and mismanagement. They owe apologies for failing to build transparent and accountable institutions. They owe apologies for suppressing dissent and freedom of expression and for persecuting political opponents, journalists, human rights activists, and critics. They owe apologies for repeatedly rejecting compromises and peace initiatives and for policies that have contributed to decades of Israeli and Palestinian bloodshed. They owe apologies for failing to use international assistance to build a functioning economy and institutions that serve ordinary Palestinians. They owe their people an honest explanation for why Palestinians remain divided between two rival governments and without a functioning democratic political system.

The timing of this latest dispute is particularly significant.

Hamas has decided to participate [in the upcoming PA elections on November 28]... if true, such an arrangement would allow Hamas to re-enter Palestinian politics through the back door.

So, instead of changing its goals – brutally ruling Gaza and destroying Israel – Hamas will simply change its "name, structure and framework"?

Changing the label does not change the organization. A Hamas-affiliated candidate does not cease to be affiliated with Hamas simply because the word "Hamas" does not appear next to his name on the ballot.

Such a maneuver would turn the election into a political fiction: Hamas would be permitted to obtain parliamentary representation while avoiding the political consequences of openly running as Hamas. Allowing Hamas— in disguise or not – to run in the election would also legitimize the terrorist group without requiring it fundamentally to change.

That would be a serious mistake. The Palestinians have already seen what happens when Hamas acquires political power.

Hamas is bad, but who said that the PA is any better?

Palestinians have experienced corruption, political repression, and an absence of meaningful political renewal.

The problem is: What if one of the negotiating parties decides never to come to the table? Is the other party just supposed to hold everything in abeyance – unsettled forever – in case one day the other party might change its mind?

The Palestinians need a genuine third way – not merely another faction with a different name. They need leaders who are prepared to challenge the entrenched political culture of Fatah and Hamas. They need leaders who believe that the Palestinian national interest is more important than factional interests. They need leaders willing to confront corruption, reject authoritarianism, protect freedom of expression, build functioning institutions, and end the glorification of violence.

Above all, Palestinians need leaders courageous enough to tell their people an uncomfortable truth: there can be no genuine progress so long as the political choice remains confined to Fatah and Hamas, and that the primary objective of both groups remains the obliteration of Israel.

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09/13 Links: The lie of ‘Naza’ and the truth of ‘Fauda’; UK urged to ban Doctors Without Borders over ‘terror links’; Bin Laden wanted to attack UK and Israel years before 9/11

From Ian:

The Gaza casualty figures the West was too frightened to question

It is particularly revealing that Hamas and PIJ have now begun publishing names of their own dead fighters. Those obituaries provide information which was largely unavailable during the war. In several cases, they have effectively contradicted the original classification of the dead by international media and monitoring organisations.

The response should not be to conclude that every dead Palestinian journalist was a terrorist, or that every Palestinian doctor was secretly a militant. That would be very wrong. The proper conclusion is that every casualty database requires scrutiny.

There is another uncomfortable possibility that Western commentators have been reluctant to contemplate: Hamas and PIJ may have understood perfectly well the extraordinary political and emotional power of civilian status in the Western information environment.

A dead journalist generates headlines, as does a dead doctor. A dead paramedic produces photographs of ambulances, uniforms and bloodied medical equipment. A dead Hamas fighter produces none of these things.

If militant organisations deliberately blurred those categories, they were exploiting precisely the protections that democratic societies have painstakingly established for civilians and humanitarian workers, and that would be a particularly cynical form of information warfare.

But there is an equally important warning for Israel. The discovery of genuine Hamas or PIJ members among journalists and medical personnel does not give the Israeli military a licence to regard every journalist, doctor or paramedic as a terrorist. Nor does it eliminate Israel’s obligation to establish, before an attack where feasible, that a legitimate military target actually exists.

Indeed, recent events demonstrate why that distinction matters. An investigation published this week into the 2024 killing of World Central Kitchen workers has raised serious questions about Israeli targeting practices and the use of guilt by association.

Similarly, the Israeli military has recently opened criminal investigations into the deaths of five-year-old Hind Rajab and 15 Palestinian paramedics, after previously denying or disputing aspects of what happened.

So there are two truths which ought to be capable of existing simultaneously. Hamas and PIJ may have exploited civilian professions for military and propaganda purposes, and Israel can still be responsible for unlawful or reckless attacks against genuine civilians.

The refusal to acknowledge the first truth because it complicates the second is propaganda. The refusal to acknowledge the second because it complicates the first is propaganda too. What is most troubling is the intellectual laziness of the Western debate.

For years, journalists and politicians have demanded that Israel substantiate allegations about Hamas operating from civilian infrastructure. That demand is legitimate, but the same standard should now be applied in the opposite direction.

When an individual appears in hospital photographs wearing medical clothing and subsequently appears in militant imagery carrying a weapon, journalists should investigate, and when the evidence does not stand up, that should be reported too.

That is what journalism is supposed to mean.

The greatest danger is not discovering that Hamas sometimes lied about its dead, it is in discovering that Western media organisations were so invested in a particular leftist narrative that they stopped asking whether it was true.

Gaza has produced enough suffering without adding another casualty to the list: the credibility of journalism itself.

New York Times’ Gaza war coverage was clearly biased against Israel, damning study reveals

The New York Times’ coverage of the first months of the war in Gaza displayed a clear bias against Israel by downplaying the country’s casualties while minimizing Hamas’ role in sustaining the conflict, a new study found.

A review of the Times’ 1,559 articles published between Oct. 7, 2023, and June 7, 2024, showed that the Times often omitted deaths sustained by the Jewish military while looking the other way on ongoing Palestinian violence once the war began after Hamas terrorists’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

Edieal Pinker of the Yale School of Management, who published his findings in the Studies in Conflict & Terrorism academic journal, said the Times’ coverage was clearly skewed against Israel.

“Drawing on a corpus of 1,559 news articles I document a dominant narrative consistent with a framing that assigns near-exclusive agency and responsibility to Israel while diminishing Hamas’s role in sustaining the conflict,” Pinker wrote.

“It describes Hamas’s October 7 attack followed by Israeli military violence and mounting Palestinian casualties, while largely omitting Israeli casualties post-October 7, Hamas fighter casualties, and post-October 7 Palestinian violence.

“Personal accounts of Palestinian suffering appear two out of every three days, while comparable accounts of Israeli suffering rarely appear,” he said.

A total of 437 Israeli soldiers have been killed since the Jewish state began its offensive in Gaza, with dozens of police officers and civilians also killed and injured in terror attacks throughout the war, according to Israeli officials.

Pinker argued that the Times’ coverage ultimately portrayed Israel as the “sole aggressor” in the conflict while Palestinians were depicted as “passive victims.”

Mahmood urged to ban Doctors Without Borders over ‘terror links’

Shabana Mahmood is being urged to proscribe Doctors Without Borders (MSF) over its staff’s alleged links to terrorist groups.

UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) has written to the Home Office, Charity Commission and Fundraising Regulator demanding that it investigate alleged ties between Doctors Without Borders and Palestinian terror groups.

The pro-Israel lobbying group is calling on Ms Mahmood, the Home Secretary, to ban the charity in a manner akin to Labour’s proscription of Palestine Action.

Palestine Action was banned by the Government last year after officials claimed that serious criminal damage it had inflicted met the threshold for proscription under the Terrorism Act. The move made membership of, or support for, the group a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

A report produced by UKLFI, seen by The Telegraph, describes the alleged connections between MSF employees and terrorists, including the late Fadi Jihad Mohammed al-Wadiya, a Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ) militant.

Wadiya, a physiotherapist who was employed by MSF between 2018-22 and then again from Oct 7, 2023, was killed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza City on June 25, 2024, in an attack condemned by the charity.

Doctors Without Borders initially denied Wadiya’s involvement with the terrorist group, but on Feb 24 this year the PIJ published a poster naming him as a “martyr commander” and identifying him as “deputy head of its military manufacturing unit”.

Only then did Doctors Without Borders, who still have Wadiya listed as an employee on their website, edit their post about him to say: “On 24 February 2026, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) publicly stated that Fadi Al Wadiya had been a member of the group.

“MSF had no indication that Fadi Al Wadiya might have been involved in military activity of any kind prior to his killing by the Israeli Forces.

“If the Israeli authorities had any reliable information about Fadi’s involvement in military activity, they never shared it with MSF either prior to his killing or when we reached out immediately after he was killed to ask for clarifications around the circumstances of his death.

“We would never knowingly employ people engaging in military activity. Any employee who engages in military activity would pose a danger to our staff and patients.”

The report also raises concerns about Nasser Hamdi Abdelatif Al Shalfouh, an MSF driver who is accused by Israel of being a sniper for the Hamas Jabaliya battalion.

Doctors Without Borders has never addressed allegations of Mr Shalfouh’s involvement with the proscribed organisation.

In 2023, MSF UK raised £11.3m, and ring-fenced around £1m for projects in the Palestinian territories. In 2024, this amount was increased to £2.7m, according to research by UKLFI.

UKLFI claims that despite these sizeable donations, appropriate safeguarding measures are not in place to minimise the risk that money raised by Britons could be used to benefit people associated with proscribed groups.

A UKLFI spokesman said: “British donors giving money to MSF are entitled to expect the highest possible standards of vetting and due diligence, particularly where substantial sums are being transferred into territory controlled by Hamas.

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