From Ian:
When Marx met Hamas
The embarrassment of Israel
What is Israel today to Western civilisation’s Marxist-Islamist opponents? It is an embarrassment, a reminder of their failure. Marx and his followers never did “make the Jew impossible”. With its different social classes all proud of faith, flag and family, no land gives the lie to the Marxist worldview quite like Israel. For Islamists, Israel created in two generations what its neighbours could not in fourteen centuries: simply, a decent place to live. Envy always comes out sideways.
The alt-right is now shot through with antisemitism of its own, but when the Green Party equates Zionism with racism as official doctrine and calls for a single Palestinian state, its members should know that this implies annihilating Israel as a Jewish nation. Its activists seek the establishment of a Palestinian state by “all available means”.
As Jake Wallis Simons outlined in his book Never Again: How the West Betrayed the Jews and Itself, the West’s opponents are interlinked and interdependent. Antisemitism, anti-Zionism, Putin apologism, Hitler-revisionism, Tehran-backed terror. They appear to be opposed but are mutually-reinforcing. Aleksandr Dugin, dubbed Putin’s philosophical guru, has praised the “conservative revolutionist” Osama Bin Laden while Russian assistance to the messianic Iranian regime is well known.
Of course, like its western equivalent, Islamic antisemitism flourished centuries before Karl Marx came on the scene. Aside from the enforced second-class dhimmitude of Jews (and Christians) in the traditional Islamic hierarchy, Islam’s colonisation of Spain was followed by ferocious pogroms which saw the slaughter of thousands of Jews. But the postcolonial New Left has blended Marxism with historic regional enmities to create a toxic brew.
After the Palestine Liberation Organisation became a paid-up KGB client (literally: it took $200,000 a month through the 1970s), its job was turning international socialism against the state of Israel — and, inevitably, Jews. As Wallis Simons describes, Yasser Arafat “shamelessly ventriloquised Israelophobic propaganda, railing against imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism and racism, the chief form of which is Zionism.” Arafat (and Moscow’s) eliding Palestinianism with anticolonialism was a “genius […] sleight of hand”. Since its aim was ejecting Jews from their ancient homeland, it was also the opposite of the truth. In his PhD thesis at Moscow’s Patrice Lumumba University, his successor Mahmood Abbas would argue that Zionists engineered the Holocaust as a pretext to establish Israel, exaggerating the number of Jewish dead sixfold. Our Labour Government has just granted him an embassy in London.
By the end of the 1970s, Palestinianism was engaged in a parallel assault on truth in the universities. In Orientalism, Palestinian-American academic Edward Saїd applied the same Marxist hierarchy of oppression to the postcolonial world, again eliding the restored ancient Jewish state with imperialism while bemoaning the failure of the (actually imperialist) Arab armies to destroy Israel in the Six Day War. Combining Islamic grievances and Marxist philosophy, this Third-Worldism has ruined much of the Western academy.
The Modern Age in arms
Faced by the Islamo-Marxists, our era begins to feel like the moment in Evelyn Waugh’s Men At Arms when the English Catholic protagonist Guy Crouchback hears the news of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, that 1939 non-aggression treaty between Stalinism and Nazism:
… everything had become clear. The enemy at last was plain in view, huge and hateful, all disguise cast off. It was the Modern Age in arms. Whatever the outcome, there was a place for him in that battle.
The enemy is in plain view once more. Socialism has returned to its roots, seeking the annihilation of peoples. What is to be done? The treatment must include our education system. Restoring western immunity to such mind-viruses means teaching our shared Judeo-Christian philosophical heritage, whence our sense of self arose. To save the tree, rejuvenate civilisation from the roots.
When tikkun olam comes at the expense of solidarity with Israel
There is no need to abandon tikkun olam to preserve Jewish solidarity. Secular Israelis volunteer in Africa and other remote regions, provide free medical care, assist local farmers, and share professional knowledge. They do so out of humanism and moral responsibility, without renouncing their national identity.
But perhaps American Jews who place tikkun olam at the center of their identity should ask themselves a difficult question: What happens if the assumption that the world will embrace us because of everything we have done to improve it proves wrong?
Vivian Silver, a peace activist from Kibbutz Be’eri, devoted her life to helping Palestinians. She helped patients from Gaza reach Israeli hospitals for treatment and worked tirelessly to promote coexistence.
On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists murdered her in her home. Her story is a heartbreaking reminder that goodwill and generosity cannot guarantee protection against those who reject the possibility of coexistence.
By all means, continue to practice tikkun olam. Help the disadvantaged, fight discrimination, and contribute to a better world. But don’t abandon your insurance policy along the way.
Israel is the one Jewish state, the national home of the Jewish people, and ultimately the place that provides Jews everywhere with a measure of collective security and refuge.
Its survival should matter just as much to a Jew living in Detroit or Miami as it does to one living in Tel Aviv.
Mamdani’s plan to fight antisemitism omits NYC college campuses, critics claim
Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plan to combat antisemitism glaringly omits tackling rampant, anti-Jewish hatred at local colleges and universities, Jewish faculty and staff at CUNY and NYU said
The Mamdani administration’s “Strategy to Combat Antisemitism,” released in September, makes scant mention of colleges and universities, though City Hall said it met with all with Jewish leaders “from all corners of the community” including parents, students and educators.
“In a city that is home to one of the world’s greatest concentrations of public and private universities and colleges, the near absence of higher education from the Strategy is a significant omission,” the CUNY Alliance for Inclusion and the Faculty and Staff Against Antisemitism at NYU said in a joint statement to The Post.
“Those commitments should extend meaningfully to New York City’s colleges and universities.”
The faculty groups said antisemitism in higher education cannot be understood solely through claims regarding hate crimes and physical insecurity.
Antisemitism can also seep into the structures of academia including departments, faculty governance, academic associations, professional networks, labor unions, graduate-worker organizations, and others that determine “whose scholarship and viewpoints are treated as legitimate topics for discussion and debate.”
The CUNY and NYU groups also warned that bashing of Israel and Zionism can explode into antisemitism.
Mamdani himself is a fierce critic of Israel and his report was previously criticized for not mentioning Zionism once in its 33 pages and for refusing to adopt a formal definition of what constitutes antisemitism.
From Ian:
Fauda's Triumph: Confronting the Reality and Brutality of October 7
The events of the worst day in Israel's history come back to Doron in flashbacks while he pursues a Hamas team in Marseille. Again, the plot tracks reality: In 2025, German, Austrian, and British intelligence, working on Mossad tip-offs, intercepted a Hamas plan to mark the second anniversary of October 7 by massacring Jews in Germany and Austria. If Fauda has retained its knack for trendspotting in terrorism, we should note that in season five, Hamas recruits and trains French leftists as terrorists, much as the PLO did with German leftists in the 1970s.
Fauda offers a real-time reflection of realities that are violently reshaping the Middle East. For Israelis, the fifth season attempts to incorporate a trauma that is still ongoing. The war with Iran is not over. The political reckoning has yet to come; Israel did not hold its first post-October 7 elections until Oct. 27, 2026. Fauda also opens a well-crafted window into the core of a society that Arabs widely despise, distrust, and fear, even as security collaboration is quietly maintained behind the scenes and public ties thaw at the state level. This is important for two reasons.
The Jews of the Mista'aravim can pretend to be Arabs because they are Arabs, culturally speaking, just as European Jews are culturally European and many American Jews, as Frederick Seidel wrote in Sunrise, can pass as "just another/Greek nose in street clothes in/Harvard Yard." More than half of Israeli Jews are descended from Arabic-, Turkish-, Kurdish-, and Persian-speaking communities that never left the Middle East. The official discourse of Arab states denied this for decades and presented Zionism as a European invasion and Israelis as ginger interlopers. American universities, much of American media, and even some Democratic Party candidates still push this line even after the Abraham Accords.
Second, Fauda is candid in ways that Arab shows are not allowed to be candid. The heart of the Israeli state is its legendary security apparatus. Fauda shows a heart riven by human weakness and, especially in the fifth season, broken by strategic failure. It shows Jews as human beings. It shows the reality, obvious to anyone who visits, that the lives of Israelis and Palestinians are intertwined in a small and crowded space, and that they are closest to each other when it comes to the issues on which they are also furthest apart, religion and security.
The motor of the fifth season is the compatibility of the Arab tribal concept of tha'r, blood revenge, with the Jewish tribal concept of nekmat dam. One of the first scenes shows Eli, who has become a religious settler after losing his wife and children on October 7, and his Bedouin friend Salem (Bian Anteer), whose son died with Eli's family, praying in parallel. This is presented in the matter-of-fact way that these things occur in Israel. We do not have to be either happy or clappy when we see them praying. The series is a hard watch, and there is no happy ending; every season of Fauda ends with a small victory that defers the tide of chaos at great personal cost. But it is good to see things as they are, and surprising that a TV series, of all things, should capture so much reality.
The episodes in which we see Hamas murdering Jewish civilians came with a trigger warning. In truth, the fictional representation pulls every punch; you can compare it with the real footage that circulates online. Raz and Issacharoff chose to lessen the impact of the atrocities and show only as much as was needed to justify the response. In this, and not for the first time, Fauda shows that the difference between civilization and barbarism is not a plotline or character conceit.
Khaled Abu Toameh:
What Really Lost the US Mid-Term Election? President Trump's Failure to Win Iran's 47-Year War
Iran's participation in discussions about "regional peace" does not, in the slightest, indicate that the Iranian regime is prepared to abandon the policies that have helped it comfortably to destabilize the Middle East for decades.
Had Saudi Arabia joined the Abraham Accords, it might have benefited from a really powerful security partnership – with Israel and the United States. Israel possesses extensive experience in intercepting missiles and drones, sophisticated intelligence capabilities and advanced military technology. Combined with American military power, these capabilities could have offered Saudi Arabia a level of protection and security cooperation that Turkey and Pakistan are unlikely to match. Riyadh's refusal to take that step has left the kingdom pursuing alternative security arrangements whose effectiveness seems hapless at best.
If Saudi Arabia cannot count on its partners to demonstrate military solidarity when it is attacked, what exactly is the purpose of the [Mecca Joint Defense Agreement]?
Rather than demonstrating that attacks against Saudi Arabia carry consequences for Iran and its proxies, the three countries appeared to be asking -- if not begging -- Iran for permission, or at least appealing to its goodwill, to stop the attacks. The Iranian regime doubtless -- and understandably -- interprets such diplomatic efforts not as evidence of regional strength, but as a sign that its neighbors are scared and reluctant to confront it.
For a regime such as Iran's that has repeatedly used military threats and proxy warfare to advance its interests, an approach based primarily on appeals and negotiations only reinforces that intimidation and terrorism work.
The international community should not confuse the eagerness of Iranian officials to host diplomatic meetings with any meaningful change in the regime's dangerous regional policies.
There can be no lasting regional security of any kind while the current Iranian regime, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, retains the ability to threaten its neighbors through armed proxies, maintain its program to acquire nuclear weapons, and brutalize its own people.
US President Donald J. Trump, unless he truly finishes the war that Iran started 47 years ago instead of just saying he did -- and eliminates Iran's bloodthirsty regime -- will sadly go down in history as a failure rather than as one of the great leaders of all time. This can happen only if he eliminates not just Iran's nuclear threat but also eliminates Iran's current regime. Otherwise we will all be here in ten minutes to deal with Iran's new nuclear program again.
Trump's party did not lose the midterm elections because of the war; they lost it because he actually chose not to win it. He evidently allowed himself to be persuaded by Vice President JD Vance and other isolationists that diplomacy with terrorists can be a viable plan. As Trump himself might say, "That is not how it works." Iran already proved as much with the fatal delay caused by the catastrophic Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding that Vance negotiated and that did not make it to sun-up.
Trump and other international leaders in Europe and the Middle East need to stop treating the Iranian regime as a potential partner in "regional stability" and start treating it as the principal source of instability that they must finish confronting -- not accommodating.
From Ian:
Israel’s politicians must put national unity before personal ambition
A 79-seat government would strip away those excuses. No small faction could dictate national policy or threaten the government's survival whenever its demands were rejected. More importantly, neither bloc would be able to unilaterally force policy on the other bloc.
Most importantly, such a coalition could finally address key issues threatening Israel's future.
With Shas participating, a unity government can negotiate a realistic, enforceable framework for haredi military and national service that respects legitimate religious concerns while ensuring a fairer sharing of the national burden.
Instead of unilateral judicial reform legislation and mass protests, a unity government can pursue meaningful reform through broad consensus, safeguarding judicial independence while clarifying the proper balance between the courts, Knesset, and government.
Israel needs a comprehensive program to create affordable housing. Such a program needs to address land availability, planning delays, infrastructure, construction costs, and housing supply. Young families should not have to choose between financial security and owning a home.
The country needs a coherent national policy regarding Judea and Samaria, balancing historical and security interests with demographic and diplomatic realities. Decisions of such consequence cannot depend on the survival needs of a narrow coalition.
Israel must rebuild and modernize its education system, strengthening mathematics, science, technology, engineering, English, and civic education. Every Israeli child, regardless of background, deserves the skills necessary to participate in a modern economy.
These challenges require long-term thinking, difficult decisions, and the parliamentary strength to withstand pressure from special interests.
A broad unity government offers that foundation.
The "just not Bibi" obsession of the change bloc has contributed to political paralysis and divided the nation. Israel has endured two successive governments that left approximately half the population feeling excluded. The Bennett-Lapid government alienated much of the Right, while the most recent Netanyahu government alienated much of the opposition.
Israelis with opposing political views fought together in Gaza and Lebanon, suffered tragedies together, and demanded unity following the October 7 massacre. On October 8, we promised ourselves that Israel would never return to business as usual. We understood that political division, institutional complacency, and failures of leadership had exacted an unbearable price.
Netanyahu, Eisenkot, Bennett, Lapid, Liberman, Smotrich, and Deri must decide whether their personal ambitions and grievances matter more than the country's future. They do not need to agree on everything. They must agree that Israel's security, prosperity, and social cohesion transcend their disagreements.
A unity government will require painful compromises, but compromise is not weakness. It is the essence of responsible democratic leadership.
The arithmetic is there: 79 seats. The national challenges are undeniable. What remains to be seen is whether our political leaders have the courage to put the country and national responsibility before personal ambition and ego.
Israel has voted. It is time to stop campaigning and start governing.
As Kalman Liebskind remarked in Makor Rishon, Israel faces a historic opportunity to end its internal political warfare. Failure to seize it now might have consequences for generations.
When “End the Aid” Isn’t Enough: The Rising Political Movement to End Israel Itself
A quick look at a social media post from the newly-elected Democratic Rep.-elect Dariavila Aliza Chevalier is all it takes to understand what awaits Israel in the wake of Tuesday’s Democratic swing in America’s Midterm elections. Mere minutes after Pres. Donald Trump announced an end to American foreign aid to Israel, Chevalier posted on X: “Military aid is not enough. We need to end U.S. taxpayer funding for Israel’s war crimes, a full arms embargo, and the Palestinian right of return.”
Huh?
While there is nothing new about cutting American economic assistance, demanding an arms embargo, and weaponizing the term “war crimes,” Chevalier’s insertion of the phrase “Palestinian right of return” is a new form of escalation. Because while the majority of newly-elected Democrats may actually be centrists like Jon Ossoff of Georgia and Texan James Tallerico, Chevalier’s words still managed to lay bare the dramatic shift of antisemitism and antizionism across American culture and politics.
New Demands
What’s so telling about Chevalier’s rhetoric is both the timing and intent. Her message is chilling: Nothing but the coordinated dismantling of Zionism — in this case a “return” of Palestinians to their former homes presumably occupied by Jews — will satisfy incoming Democrats. Particularly those, like Chevalier, who are part of the party’s Israel-obsessed far-left fringe. Indeed, fellow Congressional newcomer Colorado Rep.-elect Melat Kiros spoke nearly the exact same words during an appearance on PBS this summer — she advocated for a “one-state” solution, an end to Israel as a Jewish “ethnostate” and that right of return for Palestinians. She even went one step further, provocatively suggesting Palestinians be awarded “reparations as a result of the [Israeli] genocide.”
Three months on, Chevalier was particularly clever to tether these “right of return” demands to Trump’s aid announcement. While the media was busy framing Trump’s move as a watershed moment in U.S.-Israeli history, Chevalier turned the ending of one era into the demand for a new one. It’s an era filled with anti-Zionist totems such as “war crimes,” a “one-state solution” and — most chillingly — an end to Israel’s Jewish majority. As she turns political performance into protest, Chevalier makes clear that nothing will ever satisfy protesters like herself except Zionism’s uncontested defeat.
Yes, extremists such as Kiros and Chevalier are still Democratic party outliers. But like so much of woke culture and identity politics, these extremists exert outsized power and influence by ensuring they’re the loudest voices in the room.
Jake Wallis Simons:
Why the UN should pick a Palestinian over a Jew to be its next chief
Nusseibeh, formerly the United Arab Emirates’ ambassador to the UN, understands the dangers of tyranny: the UAE was the most heavily targeted Gulf state during the Iran war. Surprisingly, she also understands Jews, having studied Israeli and diaspora studies at university in London. She speaks Hebrew, as well as Arabic, French and English.
Unlike most of the UN, she was unequivocal in her condemnation of October 7. In addition, she has backed the Abraham Accords peace agreements, and consistently called for the Jewish state’s full integration into the Middle East. “There is an outstretched hand, despite all of this misery, in the region to Israel,” she insisted in September last year, as war raged.
This openness is something of a family tradition. Her grandfather (who opposed Nazism) and uncle (who opposed suicide bombing) were both prominent Palestinian figures who maintained close relationships with their Israeli counterparts. Her father, an adviser to the Emirati ruling family, has an extensive private library that includes a rich section on Jewish history.
Sure, she isn’t perfect. At times, Nusseibeh has been deeply unfair, calling Israel’s campaign in Gaza “inhumane” as early as November 2023, and – bizarrely – condemning the “cruel” evacuation orders issued by Israeli troops to protect Palestinian civilians from the fighting.
Moreover, human rights groups have denounced her because of the UAE’s alleged support for Sudanese rebels, who are battling the Muslim Brotherhood-aligned regime in a bloody war that has been described as genocide (the UAE denies this).
Yet international diplomacy is about shades of grey. In the absence of clean options, this unlikely candidate may prove the best hope of sanity in the madhouse.
From Ian:
The Upside of Aiding Israel
Israel's American critics fundamentally fail to understand their own country's interests. Since Franklin D. Roosevelt met Saudi monarch Abdulaziz Ibn Saud in 1945, the United States has sought to prevent any other power from dominating or destabilizing the Middle East's energy reserves. This has been a core U.S. interest whether we were exporting oil or needed imports, because stable oil markets are critical for a functional global economy that benefits Americans. For its part, Israel does not want to be dominated by any of its neighbors, so it too opposes aspiring regional hegemons. The two have worked closely together for decades because of this confluence of geopolitical interests, more than anything else.
Washington did this not because of Holocaust guilt or scheming Shylocks, but because of Israel's strength. The strategic partnership only took root after Israel became too powerful to ignore. During the Cold War, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger realized they could use Israel as a lever to pry the Soviets out of the Middle East. Nixon prized allies who could handle smaller adversaries on their own, and the Jewish state proved more than capable of doing that. But Israel was socialist and therefore poor, so at first it needed significant amounts of aid for the partnership to achieve its full potential.
The alliance has been helpful ever since. Without Israel's strike on Saddam Hussein's Osirak reactor in 1981, the United States might have faced a nuclear Iraq 10 years later. The 2007 strike in Syria prevented the nation's civil war from turning into a nuclear nightmare. Israelis and Americans have fought all kinds of Islamist terrorism side by side.
Some Americans on both sides of the aisle want to blame Israel for the floundering campaign against Iran. But as Trump made clear on Wednesday, his concern about the "death to America" crowd acquiring nuclear weapons has to do with preventing an attack on Washington, not Tel Aviv. Israelis rightly fear a nuclear Iran too, which is why the IDF was a capable partner during the fighting.
Ironically, Israel is exactly the kind of ally the America First crowd claims to want. It has the same enemies as the United States, sustains a military that complements American power, and tries to take care of as much of its own affairs as possible without involving U.S. forces. Many Americans who are not sympathetic to Trump’s views also want to reduce our involvement in the Middle East, which is not feasible without relying more heavily on the Jewish state.
Israel is important for other American interests too. The competition with China for global technological leadership is fierce, and Israel is a world leader in a variety of fields, including cybersecurity and biotechnology. When U.S. policymakers gather allies and partners to stay ahead of America's enemies, the Israelis are at the table.
The relationship has taken different forms while still benefiting both countries. Transitioning from aid to joint partnerships could be appropriate. Earlier this year, Benjamin Netanyahu stated that American aid to Israel should eventually come to an end as Israel grew wealthier.
But there is a difference between helping a friend grow more self-reliant and abruptly cutting off 20 percent of an ally's defense budget in the middle of a war. One choice is prudent. The other? Madness.
From France to America, hatred of Israel is eroding the West
The defamation of Israel and delegitimization of Jews/Zionists is boomeranging on the Western world.
Let’s begin with France, which is being consumed by a toxic brew that blends Marxism, Islamism, Palestinianism, and antisemitism into a potent assault on the state and on French culture and civilization.
The ideological depravities that undergird the deepening chaos have long and deep roots in French society and politics, particularly in France’s perverted policies toward Jews and Israel.
This is the elephant in the room that French President Emmanuel Macron and his predecessors will never admit to: that their ideological elevation of the Palestinian cause into a monster master political storyline has willy-nilly birthed a narrative of nihilism, a swell of anti-civilizational contempt wearing a keffiyeh that goes far beyond Israel.
The moral inversions that excuse October 7 as “resistance” and heroize calls to “globalize the intifada” now excuse the torching and looting of iconic French buildings and boulevards. The diplomatic grandstanding at Israel’s expense (“Palestinian statehood now!”) and the indulgence of Islamo-fascist and leftist mobs who hail Hamas have started aeonian fires of self-immolation and devastation.
My late father, Prof. Henry H. (Zvi Meir) Weinberg, was a scholar of French literature and a keen observer of socio-cultural trends in France. He passed away in Jerusalem almost 20 years ago (after serving as an MK in the Knesset for Natan Sharansky’s immigrant party).
Psychological warfare against the Jewish state
Forty years ago, he wrote a book called The Myth of the Jew in France 1967-1982 in which he dissected the techniques by which highbrow publications such as Le Monde and the upper echelons of French literary society pursued a long campaign of psychological warfare against the Jewish state.
Under the mask of high-minded objectivity and fealty to human rights, they adopted narratives fiercely hostile to Israel, inevitably sliding into the murky waters of anti-Jewish prejudice.
My father chronicled the lifting of taboos on public expression of antisemitism in France – beginning with the writer and philosopher Voltaire and the Encylopaedists of the 18th century; to the French laboratories for “scientific” racism and national socialism of the 19th century; leading to French collaboration with the Nazis under the Vichy regime and subsequent far-right French preoccupation with Holocaust denial.
Other notable markers on the way: president De Gaulle’s notorious “Sermon to the Hebrews” in 1967; French policies of appeasement toward Palestinian terrorism under presidents Georges Pompidou and Valéry Giscard d’Estaing in the 1970s and 1980s; the vehemence and consistency of French attacks on Israeli policy ever since the First Lebanon War (1982); and the malicious depredation wrought by fashionable antagonism to everything Israeli peddled by French intellectuals.
Since then, the “myth,” or defamation, of the Jew and the Zionist in France and other high-minded democracies has only darkened.
From Ian:
What Boy George taught me about being Jewish
Four decades later, the rules of conformity have changed, but the pressure to conform hasn’t. Look at almost any gathering of celebrities and you’ll see the same familiar symbols: red-hand pins, kaffiyehs, and carefully rehearsed declarations about Gaza. Artists who spent their careers celebrating individual expression suddenly seem reluctant to express an individual opinion. For many, the easiest option is to follow the crowd or remain silent.
Boy George chose neither. He watched in horror as Hamas massacred young people dancing at the Nova music festival on October 7. He released a song, “We Will Dance Again,” in which he sings, “If you’re ever confused, I stand with the Jews.” He refused calls to boycott Israel, and endured condemnation from former friends and colleagues. And then he got on a plane and came to Tel Aviv.
The man once considered a radical for challenging society’s conventions about gender is now considered a radical for standing with the Jews. But there’s no contradiction. He is doing precisely what he did 40 years ago: refusing to let the dominant culture tell him what to think.
The eyeliner hasn’t changed. Neither has the courage.
As Dara Horn observes, the essence of Jewish survival has never been the ability to fit in. It has been the determination to stand apart when standing apart is the right thing to do. To question the powerful, challenge conventional wisdom, and refuse to trade truth for acceptance.
Boy George isn’t Jewish, but he has spoken about his deep kinship with the Jewish people. Perhaps he recognizes something of himself in our story.
Last night, as he stood before thousands of Israelis — religious and secular, left and right, gay and straight — I thought about what a remarkable lesson this was for my daughter. Not just about standing up for Israel. Not even about standing up against antisemitism. But simply about standing up. About having the courage to be different, the confidence to think for yourself, and the moral clarity to say what you believe even when everyone around you insists that you’re wrong.
We Jews have been doing that for thousands of years. And it has never been particularly fashionable.
Last night, a 65-year-old man in a sequin hat reminded us why it matters. And he made it look fabulous.
How China Weaponizes Jew-Hate
Using both its profitable blockbuster social media app TikTok and the nonprofit networks of Shanghai-based American citizen Neville Roy Singham and his wife Jodie Evans (founder of Code Pink), China has been able to foment Jew-hatred and unrest on the streets not only of the United States but also the United Kingdom.
Notably, the Chinese-funded People's Forum is out to end not only Israel but also America. At the 2024 People's Conference for Palestine, the organization's Forum executive director Manolo De Los Santos, who advocates for Cuba, also called for the complete destruction of the United States: "We have to bring down this empire with one million cuts, and those one million cuts have to come from every sector of struggle in this room."
According to the US House Ways and Means Committee: "Evidence suggests that The People's Forum and Code Pink have been funded and influenced by Mr. [Neville Roy] Singham and the communist Chinese government, both of which are foreign principals."
Historian Dara Horn suggests that tyrants and totalitarian regimes, to maintain or gain further power, promote the "Big Lie" of Hitler's Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels that the Jews are "evil." Evil in what way? Just fill in the blank with whatever you like, like a Rorschach test.
It probably helps to select a target that would rather just be left alone under its fig tree, a target disinclined to retaliate – as China already succeeded in doing by oppressing the peaceful Tibetans and enslaving and torturing the Uyghurs.
Now China has lit upon the Jews, who do not even live there, but who, as author and documentary filmmaker Pierre Rehov pointed out, are politically useful.
"These lies are all part of the foundational Big Lie: that antisemitism itself is righteous. If the Jews are collectively evil and have no right to exist, resistance against them is not only moral, it is good!... The only thing that varies is what you value the most. Say you're a religious Christian, then you are lied to that Jews are destroying Christianity, or that they killed Christ. Say you're a human rights activist, then Israel's the world's worst violator of human rights, and it doesn't matter that you're being told this by the Islamic Republic of Iran." — Dara Horn, interview, Times of Israel, September 3, 2026.
The Maccabi Tel Aviv scandal: when Islamic sectarians took over
The role of West Midlands Police is the hinge on which events swing from the bleak yet familiar tale of Islamic sectarianism into one of almost unimaginable incompetence and deceit. West Midlands Police’s justification was found in a ‘confidential report’ that it claimed had been made with the help of Dutch police, based on a match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Ajax Amsterdam the previous November. The report claimed that, after the match, Maccabi supporters had thrown ‘innocent members of the public into the river’ and had ‘intentionally targeted Muslim communities’. It alleged that police in Amsterdam had been forced to muster 5,000 officers to deal with the supposedly rabid threat.
More than a few eyebrows were raised when this report was leaked to the press, in late November last year. The scenes in Amsterdam had indeed made international headlines – but for a very different reason. Maccabi supporters were subjected to what members of Amsterdam’s local Arab population called a ‘Jew hunt’ on WhatsApp. It was Maccabi fans – not Amsterdam residents – who were thrown into the river, and it was Maccabi fans who were violently assaulted, in what Amsterdam’s own mayor referred to as an anti-Semitic attack.
The ‘confidential report’, it transpired, was the product of West Midlands Police’s own imagination. Its contents, unsurprisingly, were refuted by Dutch police as soon as it came to light. In January, it was revealed that the police force had consulted eight Muslim organisations in Birmingham prior to banning Maccabi supporters – three of which were mosques that had a history of promoting anti-Semitism. In the same month, West Midlands Police chief Craig Guildford admitted that the force had used AI in compiling its dossier against Maccabi supporters. This had led to a non-existent fixture against West Ham United being offered as ‘proof’ of the supposed violence of the Israeli fans. Guildford ‘retired’ from the force soon after (however, he is currently the subject of a gross-misconduct investigation by the police watchdog). More recently, in October, Conservative MP and shadow justice secretary Nick Timothy claimed that West Midlands Police suppressed intelligence that local Islamists had planned to arm themselves in preparation for Maccabi supporters.
Timothy himself was the subject of one of the most remarkable events of the whole grim affair. An Aston Villa supporter who grew up in Birmingham, he visited Villa Park on the night of the match. A large crowd of Muslim men had gathered outside the stadium. ‘Officer, take this dog away’, one of the men said to a police officer, gesturing at Timothy. The policewoman duly interrogated Timothy before leading him away. It was a chilling sight.
The ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters was a toxic synthesis of the various forces that many people feel are tearing the country apart: the breakdown of policing, an increasingly hostile and powerful Islamic sectarianism, and the official appeasement of anti-Semitism. Britain has never quite been the same since.
From Ian:
The fashionable one-state ruse to destroy the only Jewish state
After the Green Party adopted its policy that “Zionism is racism”, Prime Minister Andy Burnham correctly, if belatedly, labelled this “antisemitic”, telling Labour councillors to end power-sharing agreements with Green colleagues who do not reject it. With his customary courage in leadership, the Greens’ Zack Polanski attempted to duck the issue entirely, dodging his own conference to lose the contest for Sir Keir Starmer’s former parliamentary seat, then saying he would have voted against the “imperfect” motion. One is reminded of Brave Sir Robin, from the film Monty Python And The Holy Grail – he who nearly fought the fierce dragon of Angnor, and almost stood up to the vicious chicken of Bristol: “When danger reared its ugly head/He bravely turned his tail and fled”.
Identifying as an anti-racist sits at the core of any Good Person™’s self-image. So too, lately, does a monomaniacal, existential loathing of Israel. This creates an irreconcilable dichotomy, because as every Good Person™ knows, antisemitism is bad – in theory. One must be seen to oppose it, or at least make generic noises to that effect, while avoiding any awkward specifics. But how, then, to advocate for the destruction of the world’s only Jewish majority state?
Enter the fashionable ruse, deployed in the Green motion, of the one-state solution. Simply place the Jews and Palestinians together, in one big, happy democracy. Why, it’s so obvious, it’s a wonder they’ve wasted all these decades attempting anything else. Surely the only thing that has been prolonging the conflict is not furious rejection on the Palestinian side of any continuing Jewish presence in the region, including that the majority of Israeli Jews descended from families ethnically cleansed from the Arab and Muslim world since the Second World War. Nor the poisonous Islamist adoption of Nazi-brand antisemitism. Nor the reciprocal hostility that has undeniably arisen in Israel, feeding the ultra-nationalist Right. No, it’s just that the silly things haven’t tried living in Kumbaya-flavoured unity.
One wonders whether the One-State Solutionists would be so keen on the idea if (a) Jews in this putative federation would likely outnumber Palestinians, rather than vice-versa; and (b) Israel was actually, not purportedly, genocidal towards its antagonists – rather than vice-versa. And when I say one wonders, I mean one does not wonder at all.
Israel exists precisely because Jews can’t trust a non-Jewish majority to protect them, and as evidenced by Hamas’s 2023 pogrom, the only reason a real genocide isn’t happening right now is that Israel has borders and a military.
The one-state solution is a classic example of the abstract utopianism long indulged in by a certain type of leftist, without skin in the game and safely shielded from the consequences, eager to risk catastrophe for others to gratify their own particular ideological fetishes. Call it the Lord Farquaad phenomenon, after the preening princeling from Shrek: “Some of you may die, but it’s a sacrifice I am willing to make.”
Curiously, no prominent One-Stater has proposed the same remedy for the long and lethal quarrels of the Indian subcontinent. Then again, there are no Jews involved. True, some of the loopiest also seem to think a one-state solution is the answer to Russia’s war on Ukraine, but most would be rightly appalled by the notion.
The number of countries in which Arabs constitute the majority or largest plurality – not including Palestine, whose national status remains unresolved – is 18. The number of countries in which the same is true of Muslims is 50. The number of Jewish majority countries: one.
Rowan Dean:
Australia’s shameful era of progressive antisemitism
Hallelujah! I opened my newspaper on Friday to read, in black and white, the two words I never thought I would hear any Australian academic or Labor appointee ever dare utter. Two words I have spent the last 15 years of my life writing about, warning about, raging against, and shaking my head in despair about. Two words that have poisoned this country, two words that have torn this country asunder, and two words which have been ignored, mocked and denied.
Progressive antisemitism.
In June 2014, I published an article in The Spectator Australia called Dinner Party Antisemitism in which I warned, quote, how ‘even otherwise intelligent and normal people will often reveal their hatred over a few glasses of wine’.
Dinner party anti-Semitism
I went on to define ‘dinner party antisemitism’ and how to spot it. I wrote: ‘Dinner party antisemitism crosses all political boundaries, age groups, geographical and socio-economic divides, and is just as likely to occur in a trendy inner-city restaurant, at a Western suburbs barbeque or within the elegant confines of a plush North Shore dining room.’
In other words, progressive antisemitism. That was over 12 years ago. And I have often spoken at many functions, on TV shows, in print, at conferences, and, yes, at dinner parties, about how the so-called left-wing progressives – I actually think regressive is a far more accurate description – but those of the so-called intellectual left – there’s another oxymoron for you – the luvvies, the lefties, with their moral posturing and self-assured sanctimony and eagerness to tolerate Islamist and third world antisemitism posed a terrifying threat to this country. Frequently I was laughed at, more often simply ignored, especially when I was on the ABC.
But this morning – finally – Jillian Segal, the antisemitism envoy, has belled the cat, with an updated and damning report into Australian antisemitism, in which she says…
‘Modern, progressive antisemitism is the most pervasive manifestation of antisemitism facing Australia today. It serves to justify and legitimise antisemitism, providing it with intellectual and cultural credibility and, ultimately, making it fashionable. It does this by effectively laundering far-left antisemitism and Islamic extremism through a progressive lens, such as social justice and human rights, together with traditional antisemitic tropes, giving fundamentally extremist ideologies an apparently acceptable face.’
Finally. There you have it folks, from the official Labor-appointed antisemitism envoy. As the Australian newspaper continues…
‘“Progressive antisemitism” has been identified as the most corrosive form of anti-Jewish hate in Australia, under special envoy Jillian Segal’s sweeping new agenda to drive discrimination and bias against Jews out of universities, the health sector, media, and the arts.’
The Australian prime minister wants to turn down the temperature
For all the talk of lowering the temperature, one word is missing: consequence.
If an Islamist preacher incites violence, the law should respond. If a Marxist activist unlawfully threatens someone, the law should respond. If a far-right agitator does the same, the standard must be identical.
There must be no ideological indulgences or special treatment for fashionable causes.
Australians need confidence that police, prosecutors and governments enforce the law impartially, rather than allowing political pressure to determine which conduct attracts scrutiny. Even the perception of selective enforcement damages trust. Distrust breeds the resentment that political leaders claim they want to reduce.
The horror of the antisemitic Bondi massacre, threats against elected representatives and allegations of attacks on MPs should not be conflated or assigned a common motive. They do, however, underline the importance of protecting citizens and public officials alike.
How many more tragedies or threats will it take before the government demonstrates that public safety matters more than the sensitivities of political movements?
To those who believed the hatred and intimidation of the past three years were merely a Jewish problem, history offers a warning: it never ends with the Jews. Antisemitism is not simply an isolated prejudice. It can be a warning sign that the social rules protecting everyone are weakening.
What a society tolerates risks becoming normalized. What becomes normalized can enter the mainstream. Each outrage makes the next less shocking until behavior once considered unthinkable begins to seem ordinary.
Jewish Australians have warned about the danger of antisemitism masquerading as political activism. Those warnings deserve to be taken seriously not only because Jewish Australians are entitled to safety, but because the principles at stake protect every citizen.
When intimidation is excused as righteous protest, it does not remain confined to one community. A democracy that makes exceptions for hatred undermines the very freedoms it claims to defend.
Albanese is right that Australia needs to turn down the temperature. But temperatures do not fall because a prime minister repeats a phrase at a press conference.
They fall when leaders hold allies and opponents to the same standards, when unlawful threats attract consequences and when Australians can trust the law will be enforced without fear or favor.
If Albanese wants to lead, he could begin by acknowledging that his own political side is not immune from inflammatory rhetoric. He could challenge extremism in movements he sympathizes with, rather than leaving the impression that civility is principally a duty for his opponents.
The prime minister does not need another speech about turning down the temperature. He needs to demonstrate that there are consequences for those who deliberately turn it up. And perhaps, for once, he could lead by example.
From Ian:
Laundering Libel
The false characterization of Zionism as settler colonialism did not begin as neutral scholarship. It took shape as a Soviet-led campaign against Israel’s existence driven by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and was later propagated by activist academics who gave it scholarly veneer. In 1965, Fayez Sayegh, the founding director of the PLO’s Palestine Research Center in Beirut, published Zionist Colonialism in Palestine, mapping the political vocabulary of 20th-century decolonization onto Zionism. Sayegh, then a member of Kuwait’s delegation to the United Nations, was the principal author of the 1975 U.N. resolution declaring that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.” The General Assembly revoked that resolution in 1991, but by then the idea had found a home in academia, where it has flourished ever since.
Maxime Rodinson’s essay “Israël, fait colonial?” (“Israel, a colonial fact?”) appeared in 1967 as the lead piece in a special issue of Les Temps Modernes, the influential journal founded and edited by Jean-Paul Sartre, France’s most celebrated philosopher at the time. The issue, running to hundreds of pages, focused on a single question: Was Israel a colonial state? Sartre’s journal lent that question the prestige of the European intellectual left. Its contributors divided on the answer, but Rodinson’s essay, later published in English as “Israel: A Colonial-Settler State?,” proved influential and helped carry the framework into Western academic discourse.
Its timing was telling. The journal issue appeared before the Six-Day War in June 1967, when Israel did not yet control the West Bank or Gaza. In other words, the colonial charge did not begin as a criticism of the occupation. It was aimed at Israel’s very existence—which is why South Africa traces Israel’s “colonization” back to 1948. Most of the writing from the communist world and the Global South that cast Israel as a colonial state came after the war. Over the following decades, versions of the claim spread through universities, activist groups, NGOs, and international institutions, and each repetition gave it another layer of apparent authority.
But repetition is not proof. The settler-colonial characterization depends on substantial historical erasures. Jews are a people whose national identity originated in the land of Israel and who maintained both a presence and a connection there through centuries of exile and persecution. Zionism had no imperial mother country directing Jewish migration for its own economic or strategic benefit. No metropole extracted colonial wealth. Jews arrived from numerous countries—often fleeing persecution in those very countries. For many Jews, Zionism represented refuge, national restoration, and self-determination in their ancestral homeland.
“Colonizer” and “colonized” cannot simply be assigned as self-proving identities and then substituted for historical analysis. Yet that is the framework South Africa brought to the International Court of Justice. Once again, a false narrative about Jews, developed outside of law, had entered an official legal proceeding.
South Africa did not ask the ICJ to examine the Gaza war solely as a conflict following Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre. Its application asked the judges to view the allegations within a much longer history. At the January 2024 hearing, South Africa’s ambassador invoked an “ongoing Nakba” produced through “Israel’s colonization since 1948.”
Why 1948, when the relevant narrative should begin on Oct. 7, 2023? The settler-colonial framework is designed to perform substantial legal work before one even reaches the alleged elements of genocide. It attempts to fix the parties’ identities as colonizer and colonized and to stretch the timeline back to Israel’s establishment in 1948. It also attempts to thread a revisionist continuity through the Jewish national project from the establishment of Israel, to subsequent wars, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the present war.
The point of the imposed narrative through-line is to supply an asserted criminal motive that is integral to Israel’s very existence: Israel’s military conduct can be understood not primarily as conduct in a war initiated by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, but as the latest stage of an allegedly eliminatory colonial enterprise.
Settler colonialism, however, is not a crime under the Genocide Convention. Nor is it an element of genocide. Its importance to South Africa’s argument is subtler. It is the narrative through which South Africa asks the ICJ to interpret the evidence of genocide.
That is particularly consequential because genocide requires specific intent: the intent to destroy a protected national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, in whole or in part, as such.
The ICJ has imposed a demanding standard when genocidal intent is inferred from a pattern of conduct. In Croatia v. Serbia, the ICJ held that the inference of genocidal intent must be the only reasonable inference available from the conduct alleged. Alternative explanations therefore matter. Israel has maintained that its military objectives included defeating Hamas, preventing another Oct. 7, dismantling Hamas’ military infrastructure, and recovering the hostages Hamas had taken. These objectives matter enormously to a legal inquiry asking whether genocidal intent is the only reasonable inference from Israel’s conduct.
The settler-colonial narrative short-circuits that inquiry. Once Israel is defined as an eliminatory project since 1948, there is no need to weigh why Israel acted as it did after Oct. 7; the premise has already supplied the answer. Conduct that the war itself could explain is instead read as evidence of an eliminatory purpose supposedly built into Zionism since 1948. The false narrative ends up doing the work that proof of specific intent is supposed to do.
Then comes the second stage of laundering. The accusation acquires a case name, a docket number, written pleadings from sovereign states, hearings broadcast live from the Peace Palace, judicial orders, and a permanent place in the international legal record. None of those things proves the accusation. But each institutional layer increases the distance between the narrative, along with its ideological origins, and evidentiary defects.
The provisional-measures stage marked a particularly significant transformation. In January 2024, the ICJ was not deciding whether Israel had committed genocide. It was deciding whether interim measures were warranted as the litigation proceeded.
Among other requirements, the ICJ considered whether it had prima facie jurisdiction, whether at least some of the rights asserted under the Genocide Convention were plausible, whether those rights were linked to the requested measures, and whether there was a real and imminent risk of irreparable prejudice.
The ICJ found plausible the right of Palestinians in Gaza to be protected from acts of genocide and related prohibited acts, and South Africa’s right to seek Israel’s compliance with the Genocide Convention. That was not a finding that genocide had occurred. It was not a finding that genocidal intent had been proved. And it was not a ruling on, much less an acceptance of, the settler-colonial narrative through which South Africa had framed its case.
But outside the courtroom, South Africa called the order a “decisive victory” and said it established that Israel’s actions were “plausibly genocidal.” Plausible rights became a plausible case, a plausible case became plausible genocide, and plausible genocide became apparent judicial confirmation. The legal proceeding added another layer. And then came integration. The provisional order began to be invoked in arguments that third states were now “on notice” of a danger of genocide and therefore faced obligations concerning their relationships with Israel.
The ICJ proceedings became part of disputes over arms transfers and military assistance. Civil-society organizations invoked the litigation in challenges to arms exports.
The ICJ was not necessarily the cause of each subsequent governmental decision, lawsuit, boycott, divestment demand, or diplomatic condemnation. But the mere existence of the proceeding supplied a powerful new source of institutional authority. The result is a loop: The narrative enters a legal proceeding; the proceeding generates consequences; and those consequences are then invoked to authenticate the narrative. That is the recursive structure of juridical narrative laundering, and it explains why the process does not require a final judgment.
Money laundering succeeds when dirty money can circulate as legitimate wealth. Juridical narrative laundering succeeds when an unproved accusation can circulate as legally validated fact. By that measure, the merits judgment may come almost too late. The accusation can accomplish much of its diplomatic, legal, economic, and reputational work years before a court decides whether it is true.
Melanie Phillips:
Not waving but drowning
For Muslims, hatred of Israel is the obsession that drives out all other concerns. Now this unhinged tunnel vision is being promoted by Vance too.
Unforgivably, he has now undermined the war against Iran by all but urging immediate surrender.
But the reason Iran was a losing electoral issue was that Trump had not won the war. Instead, he abandoned it at a crucial juncture, declaring victory when Iran remained undefeated and able to push up the price of oil as a weapon of its war against America.
And a major force behind America’s policy of preemptive surrender was reportedly Vance.
Now Vance blames voter anger against Israel for the Republican rout. He fails to observe that this anger was fueled by the lies and distortions about Israel and the war that have been allowed to spread unchecked—not least by him.
The scene is now set for a titanic struggle on both sides of the American political divide. In the Democratic Party, centrists will struggle with anti-West, anti-Israel Muslims and leftists. In the Republican Party, conservatives will struggle with radical Jew-haters, white supremacists and conspiracy nuts.
The momentum is with the hard-left, the Jew-haters and the Islamists because the centrists on both sides of the aisle lack a moral and intellectual spine.
The outlook for America’s alliance with Israel is therefore ominous. That’s the real menace in the sudden ending of America’s $4 billion in military aid to Israel.
This is not in itself the blow that many have taken it to be. The suggestion came from Israel itself and is absolutely the right decision. That’s because, by transitioning to joint U.S.-Israel military projects, it transforms the Jewish state from being viewed as a demeaning supplicant into a partner.
This will free Israel, which is now urgently developing its own huge arms industry, from the stranglehold of dependency by which successive U.S. administrations have lethally curtailed Israel’s ability to defend itself.
The reason Israel wanted this was that it saw the catastrophic erosion of support for it among the American public. And that’s the ominous point.
The red-green alliance is destroying Britain and Europe because there’s now a critical mass of their public that has been left ignorant and unable to think because of an education system that’s gone Marxist and nihilist.
America has been afflicted by the same instruments of chaos for years. Now those forces have conquered the citadel.
Most people don’t like extremes. That’s why Trump was elected: to defeat the lunatics of the intersectional left.
The best argument for Trump was that the alternative was unconscionable. Now the unconscionable have captured Congress and much of America’s governing class.
Blue wave? America isn’t waving but drowning.
NYPost Editorial:
Philly’s Nazi-laden boycott proves it was never actually about Palestine — just the Jews
A despicable Nov. 8 protest against Jewish-owned restaurants in Philadelphia proves that the alleged bright line between antizionism and antisemitism is a dirty lie.
Philly bicycle activism group On Your Left is launching a bike-by protest in support of Boycott CookNSolo drive to shut down six restaurants in the tony Rittenhouse Square neighborhood, all owned by Jews.
“These Zionist establishments must go! Not in our city!” On Your Left demands.
These eateries, it says, must “die,” along with the “political ideology of Zionism.”
Zionists? Of the four restaurant owners called out by name for death or expulsion, one is Israeli-American; the other three are American Jews, but that’s all boycotters need to know.
One target, Marti Lieberman, who runs a popular mac’n’cheese spot, explains that her business has nothing to do with Jews, Israel or Zionism — except that she sometimes wears a Star of David necklace.
So, for the boycotters, simply being Jews is enough to make these people “disgusting humans” who should be driven out of business.
More damning still: The protest date, Nov. 8, coincides closely with the 88th anniversary of Kristallnacht — the “Night of Broken Glass,” when Nazi thugs burned more than 1,400 synagogues and destroyed thousands of Jewish businesses.
The organizers admit they knew this, but excuse themselves their event is the day before Kristallnacht.
From Ian:
Amb. Danny Danon:
Do Not Mistake Israeli Democracy for Weakness
The turnout in the Israeli Knesset election on Oct. 27 was 77.7% of eligible voters, the highest in Israel's history.
Most importantly, the election results should daunt our enemies. Since Oct. 7, Israel has fought valiantly against the threats that surround us: Hamas in Gaza, Hizbullah in Lebanon, and the Iranian regime itself.
All the major Israeli parties share the same philosophy: that Israel must address these threats and ensure they can never attack Israel again.
Israeli citizens have proven that in a region of extremism, our democracy remains a beacon of hope to the rest of the world, and that we will fight to protect it.
Eight months after devastating joint U.S.-Israeli strikes, Iran is rebuilding its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
An IRGC spokesperson this month threatened to turn Israel into "scorched earth," and displace our residents to the Sinai Desert. So long as Iran can deliver on these threats, we take them seriously.
Hizbullah itself admitted that it is preparing for confrontation with Israel. Iranian weapons and funds continue to arm radical extremists that seek Israel's destruction.
In the first election since Oct. 7, Israelis demonstrated that a secure and prosperous Middle East remains a top priority, and that we will defend our country from those who threaten to destroy it.
Our message to the Iranian regime is clear. We will not stand by as Iran doubles down on its radical agenda. We will protect our people.
After the U.S. Midterm Elections
Years ago, a Palestinian journalist argued to me that without America, Israel would have lost every war. I reminded him of the War of Independence and the Six-Day War, in which we won almost entirely on our own. It would be harder, I told him, but we would win every military campaign.
After the U.S. midterm elections, one pro-Israel stronghold remains, the White House, and it too will probably fall in the next election or the one after. Quite a few pro-Israel senators and House members remain. But what was once the lunatic fringe of Congress has become the mainstream.
The cause was a years-long, dollar-rich campaign, antisemitic in essence. It held that Israel is to blame for nearly every trouble Americans have, has no right to exist, and is a state of European colonialists that stole the land of the poor Palestinians.
President Trump's hasty declaration on Election Day about a full halt of aid to Israel only seemed to prove the claim that American aid does come at the expense of budgets meant for the American citizen. And try explaining to them that the $3.8 billion a year brought several times that amount into America every year, in jobs, arms sales, and joint developments.
Congress is expected to complicate the war effort in Iran. It will not truly be able to halt the moves, at least not for several months, but it will try, despite the complete contradiction to American interests and to those of every U.S.-friendly state in the region.
A new era is beginning. Israel will have to reach independent military capabilities sooner than expected and, at the same time, reposition itself diplomatically against a hostile Europe and a confused America.
Ending U.S. Military Aid to Israel
On Tuesday, President Trump announced that the U.S. would stop providing nearly $4 billion in annual military aid to Israel by the end of 2026. President Trump just did Israel an enormous favor with an important step toward completing the promise of Israeli independence. For nearly 80 years, the Jewish state has been building toward a moment when it could finally say something that Jews, for most of their history, were rarely in a position to say to anyone: Thank you. We can take care of ourselves.
The foreign military financing is overwhelmingly directed toward purchasing American-made military equipment. It supports American manufacturers, American workers, American military production, and American technological capabilities. Yet, Israel finds itself portrayed as a helpless foreign dependent draining the American treasury. That perception is not only misleading. It has become strategically and politically damaging.
Israelis should be asking: What exactly are we sacrificing in exchange for that money? A country that has developed some of the most sophisticated military technology on Earth has been operating under a system that increasingly directs its military purchasing power toward foreign manufacturers rather than its own. Military assistance gives Washington considerable leverage over Israeli decision-making that may involve a delayed shipment, a threatened restriction, or a disagreement over how Israel conducts a military operation.
There is an enormous difference between listening to a friend and being dependent on that friend's approval. A country responsible for the survival of its own people cannot afford to confuse the two. The lesson of Jewish history is that a people who cannot ultimately provide for their own security are always vulnerable to the decisions of others.
Ending military aid should not be confused with abandoning the American-Israeli alliance. The U.S. has compelling reasons to maintain that alliance. Israel provides intelligence, technological innovation, military expertise, and a capable regional partner in one of the most strategically important parts of the world. Replacing military assistance with a more conventional commercial and strategic partnership could make the relationship healthier.
America has been an extraordinary friend to Israel, and American military support has contributed meaningfully to Israel's security. Gratitude, however, is not the same as permanent dependence. The greatest compliment Israel can pay the U.S. is to demonstrate that decades of partnership helped create a country strong enough to stand increasingly on its own.
From Ian:
Study Finds Americans More Ambivalent About Violence Against Pro-Israel Jews
A new study published in PNAS Nexus found that Americans shown attacks against Jews through victims’ support for Israel were significantly less likely to oppose the violence than those shown attacks through victims’ Jewish religious identity. In a preregistered, nationally representative survey of 2,000 U.S. adults, opposition fell by 8.5 percentage points when victims were described through expressions of Zionism rather than religious faith. The shift did not significantly increase support for the attacks. Instead, more respondents moved into an ambivalent position.
The study, by Princeton University researchers Rafaela Dancygier and Jonathan Mummolo and Dartmouth College professor Sean Westwood, also examined news coverage of U.S. anti-Jewish hate crimes after October 7, 2023. The researchers found that more than one in five headlines in their sample introduced Israel, Palestine, Gaza or another nationalist or geopolitical dimension.
Opposition Fell When Support for Israel Was Emphasized
The researchers conducted two experiments testing whether descriptions of an attack changed public reaction. In the religious condition, respondents were told about Jews attacked while entering a synagogue or because they wore a kippah. In the nationalist condition, they were told about Jews attacked for carrying an Israeli flag or saying Israel should exist as a homeland for the Jewish people.
The first experiment, conducted in December 2024 with 2,507 respondents, found an 8.17-point difference in opposition between the two treatments. Opposition stood at 86.1% under the religious condition and 77.9% under the nationalist condition, while ambivalence increased from 11.1% to 18.8%. Support remained essentially unchanged. After a multiple-comparisons correction, however, the first study’s results fell just short of conventional statistical significance.
The researchers then replicated the experiment in March 2025 with a preregistered YouGov survey of 2,000 U.S. adults. Opposition to attacks on Jews stood at 91.8% under the religious treatment and 83.3% under the nationalist treatment, an 8.5-point difference. Ambivalence rose from 5.3% to 16.4%, while the difference in outright support was not statistically significant.
One in Five Headlines Used a Nationalist Frame
The researchers separately analyzed news coverage of religious hate crimes reported between October 7, 2023 and the end of 2024. FBI data included in the study recorded 2,888 anti-Jewish incidents during that period, compared with 348 anti-Muslim incidents and 32 anti-Hindu incidents. Anti-Jewish incidents accounted for 71.9% of the single-bias religious hate crimes in the dataset.
Their media sample contained 2,048 articles covering 628 distinct anti-Jewish incidents. Among headlines about those attacks, 63.3% used only a religious frame, 10.7% used only a nationalist frame and another 11.2% combined both.
The researchers used OpenAI’s GPT-5.4 to classify headlines into nationalist, religious, both or neither categories, with human validation of the classifications. The study does not claim journalists deliberately used nationalist framing to minimize antisemitism. Its media analysis documents how attacks were presented, while the randomized experiments tested how those presentations can affect public attitudes.
Capital Jewish Museum Killings Illustrate the Divide
The study used the May 2025 killings of Israeli Embassy employees Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington as a case study. According to a Justice Department superseding indictment, alleged gunman Elias Rodriguez called out “Free Palestine” during the shooting. Prosecutors allege that after entering the museum he said, “I did it for Palestine. I did it for Gaza.”
Crucially, the researchers emphasized that there was no evidence Rodriguez knew Milgrim and Lischinsky worked for the Israeli Embassy or had selected them because of that affiliation. The paper states that he therefore could simply have been seeking to harm people he believed were Jewish. Milgrim was Jewish, while Lischinsky was not.
That distinction is central to the study’s framing analysis. The victims’ Israeli government employment gave news outlets a factual basis to describe them through an Israeli or geopolitical lens, even though the researchers found no evidence that their Embassy affiliation was known to the attacker when he targeted them.
Rise Of Antisemitism Since October 7: An Exclusive Interview with Eitan Chitayat
Eitan Chitayat is the founder of the international Natie Branding Agency, a branding and storytelling agency based in Tel Aviv. With nearly three decades of experience, he has worked with leading global brands, nonprofits, and cultural organizations, including Google, Apple, Facebook, and YouTube. He is also the creator of I’m That Jew, a Jewish storytelling and advocacy project whose content on Jewish identity, Israel, and antisemitism has reached around 400 million views across social media since October 7.
What motivated you to create I’m That Jew, and what did you hope to achieve through the project?
I’ve told the story before, but it’s particularly timely because of what’s going on in France right now. Back in the day, if you remember the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo, Islamists and jihadi terrorists stormed the satirical magazine. They murdered French satirical journalists and staff. They also killed a few Jewish shoppers at a kosher supermarket in Paris. For people who remember, it was very, very shocking. It was a massacre.
Immediately afterwards, I reached out to a good friend of mine to see how she was doing. She’s Jewish; she was living in Paris, France. And she told me her now father-in-law and brother-in-law had visited that kosher supermarket just that morning. The conversation evolved into how scared she was of saying that she was Jewish. In fact, at the time, and this is not the case anymore, she hadn’t told anyone she was Jewish or that she had been to Israel.
So, as I expressed in my TEDx talk a few years later, that night I sat down and I wrote I’m That Jew. It started off being kind of like a letter to her. But it wasn’t specifically to her, I realized; rather, it was a response to what she had told me. It then very quickly became something that I was saying to myself, and then something I was saying to all of the Jewish people, reminding us who we are.
A lot of people have said the message of I’m That Jew is about antisemitism, or fighting antisemitism. And I think one of the best ways to fight antisemitism, which is foundational, is to not just be proud to be Jewish, but to be openly proud.
The message is that we need to be who we are, and being who we are means literally being who we are ‘openly’. Which is not easy, I know. But that was the inspiration. It was actually a letter to strengthen our identity and to remind us that we know who we are. We’re misunderstood, so we need to just keep being who we are and showing ourselves and the world who we actually are.
It’s so many different individual traits that make up the collective. We’re not a stereotype of one, two, or three things; we’re billions of things. And that’s what I wanted to say. We certainly don’t need to be afraid because the world’s messed up. I’m That Jew.
That was tremendously moving. How would you describe the landscape of antisemitism in America since October 7, 2023?
It’s allowed. I think that’s the big change.
People who have been following me know I’ve been a public Jewish advocate for around 20 years; I have my own small business, but I advocate for myself and my family and us all because I think it’s really important. I’ve been in this space observing what’s being written and said for a very long time. When I wrote I’m That Jew, for example, it was in response to a world event that affected the personal.
But there were other things that I’d expressed beforehand. Before October 7th, antisemitism wasn’t exactly underground, but it wasn’t as common, because there were some guardrails. And what we’ve seen since October 7th is that the guardrails have completely come off, and it’s allowed. You can’t say anything racist about Black people, and rightly so. You shouldn’t be misogynist. You shouldn’t be hating on gay people, or trans people, or Asian people.
But there’s an exception with the Jews, and there always has been.
Sbarro bombing terrorist Ahlam Tamimi served with US lawsuit via X
Ahlam Tamimi, the terrorist responsible for the Sbarro bombing in Jerusalem in 2001, was served with legal papers on X/Twitter on Tuesday in a case brought by the National Jewish Advocacy Center on behalf of the estate of Malka “Malki” Roth, according to the organization’s Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder.
The US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that Arnold and Frimet Roth, the parents of 15-year-old Malka Roth, could serve Tamimi with legal papers through social media on X/Twitter, because Tamimi continues to reside in Jordan at an unknown address.
Arnold Roth, speaking for the Roth family, said: “This lawsuit places Tamimi under legal pressure in an American court for the first time. We hope the case will also draw public attention to the fact that the US criminal prosecution has remained stalled for more than a decade.
“It’s incomprehensible and deeply troubling to us that in all these years, no US official has explained to us, as Malki’s family or to the public, how it is that Tamimi continues to enjoy a free life in Jordan, a US partner country. Justice for Malki and the other Sbarro victims, already thwarted for years, demands answers and accountability. We hope this lawsuit is only the beginning.”
After efforts to locate Tamimi’s address proved unsuccessful, the plaintiffs were instructed to contact Jordan-based media outlet Etar, where she works as a columnist, email Jordanian attorney Mustafa Nasrallah, who represented Tamimi in her fight against extradition, and publish the summons online.
The court determined that these combined steps could be “reasonably calculated” to ensure Tamimi received notice of the summons.
Tamimi is wanted for her role as an accomplice in the August 9, 2001, suicide bombing at the Sbarro restaurant in downtown Jerusalem, which killed 15 people, including seven children and a pregnant woman.
Tamimi, who was then a university student and part-time journalist, scouted the location and escorted the bomber to the restaurant before leaving the scene.
From Ian:
Jonathan Tobin:
A Democratic-run Congress will target Israel as well as Trump
Mainstreaming antisemitism
What Trump and whoever winds up leading the next Israeli government need to realize is that the anti-Israel progressives are not really focused so much on ending aid or criticizing Netanyahu so much as they are interested in severing the relationship altogether.
For one thing, that will likely mean efforts to stop the transition from aid to partnership. But the impact of congressional majorities that are overwhelmingly hostile to Israel will transcend the ongoing debate about the aid package.
It’s been clear for years that the Democrats have not only rejected any idea of a bipartisan consensus about the alliance but have been transitioning to being an anti-Israel party. But the 2026 results have produced more than just majorities that don’t want to aid Israel’s efforts to defend itself.
With the victories of figures like El-Sayed and others who were willing to spread blood libels about Israel committing “genocide” in Gaza and who sought to anathematize the pro-Israel AIPAC lobby, we’ve gone well beyond arguments about military assistance.
A public square in which the sort of antisemitism that they spout is normalized is one that can fundamentally change the way that Jews interact with society. El-Sayed’s focus on AIPAC, which was echoed in other campaigns around the country, employed classic tropes of Jew-hatred. This will make it even harder for the dwindling numbers of pro-Israel Democrats to be heard or influence policy.
But it will also impact Republicans.
The majority of Republicans remain supportive of Israel and opposed to the left’s antisemitism that is driven by their acceptance of the toxic doctrines of the left about race such as critical race theory, intersectionality and settler-colonialism.
It won’t only be the antisemitic extremists of the far right who are influenced by podcasters like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens who will be speaking of the conflict with Iran as being the primary reason for the GOP defeat. There were other causes for the Republican catastrophe including Trump’s failure to adequately explain his decision to the American people, choosing terrible candidates in several states, tarrifs that hurt consumers, corruption scandals and general disillusionment with the administration.
But rather than just blaming Trump for his correct decision to go to war against an Islamist regime that is a threat to America, some will likely blame it on Israel.
That will likely undermine Republican resistance to the Democrats’ push to target the Jewish state. It will also make it more difficult for them to join in efforts to push back against a tsunami of antisemitism that is making itself felt in every sector of society including academia, popular culture and the arts, as Trump has attempted to do.
The pendulum swings
Nothing is permanent in politics and the Democrats celebrating now should remember that. In the 21st century, the two parties have exchanged control of both Capitol Hill and the White House with increasing frequency. There is no telling now which side will be in a better position to win in 2028. The more the currently triumphant Democrats overplay their hand with their harassment of Trump and even their measures against Israel, the less likely it will be that they will win the presidency, especially if they nominate one of the increasingly dominant progressives who will be running.
The one thing that is certain is that the pendulum of American politics is always swinging.
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Some Jewish liberals who appear deaf, dumb and blind to the way they are being marginalized along with the rest of the community may try to deny this or focus solely on their hatred for Trump. But there can be no disguising the fact that the midterms have delivered a devastating blow to supporters of Israel and a victory to those who wish to eradicate the Jewish state. That will make it all the more necessary for decent persons, whether Republican or Democrat, Jewish or non-Jewish, to redouble their efforts to fight back against the growing volume of antisemitic invective that has insinuated itself into so much of public discourse.
Stephan Pollard:
After the massive win for the Democrats, Israel and US Jews face a rough ride ahead
Whatever one thinks of Trump or the Democrats, one thing is clear from the midterms: the US Constitution is working exactly as it should. Voters decided that they had had enough of the Donald Trump Show, and decided to send a very loud message to that effect.
It would be ridiculous not to take these results at face value as a massive win for the Democrats. From moderates such as James Talarico, becoming the first from his party to be elected as a senator in Texas since 1988, and Chris Pappas in New Hampshire through to the Democratic Socialists of America wing, they were rampant. Before the vote commentators suggested they would struggle to win the Senate, needing four new seats to do so. As I write they have already won seven.
But it would be equally ridiculous to take the results as a full-on embrace of the Democrats. In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. Once voters decided to give Trump a kicking they had nowhere else to place their x. And the very fact that those Democrats elected veer so wildly in their views – it’s almost ridiculous that the new Senator for Michigan, Abdul el-Sayed, is in the same party as Talarico and Pappas – shows that it is wrong to see the results as some kind of swing to the left. It’s a swing against Trump.
As for what this means for Israel and the Jews…not the least worrisome aspect is that the likes of el-Sayed now has a national platform from which to spew his venom.
His campaign – in which he was joined by Hasan Piker – was dogged by alleged association with the Muslim Brotherhood. He first denied any connection to the Brotherhood, which he maintains. Then he unambiguously denied that any of his family had any connection, despite the emergence of a series of tweets which suggest that a number of family members, including his mother, have been active in the Islamist group.
In a 2012 post, for example, his half-sister Eman Abdelhadi, a professor at The University of Chicago, wrote: “Had an amazing talk with my mom about her activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during the early 70s while she was in college #respect.” In another 2012 post she wrote: “My family has long been MB, but I’ve always felt that it has navigated the political sphere poorly/destructively.” And in a post the following year, she wrote: “Praying for all my family that supports the #MB in #Egypt. Lie low, stay safe.”
A group supporting el-Sayed put out the single most antisemitic ad in US history, blaming Israel for grocery prices and almost every ill in the US. el-Sayed pointedly refused to condemn it.
The DSA wing of the Democrats may be a minority, but among younger activists it is the lifeblood of the party. And its anti-Israel obsession has taken hold of the Democrat centre. Trump is now going to be tied up in investigations and rows with Congress, and the traditional route for a President battling Congress is to turn to foreign affairs. But Trump has already done that – indeed the Iran war is one of the reasons voters have tired of Trump. A further problem is that anything that Congress can block, it will do.
Imagine, for example, that the man who wants to leave peace making as his legacy (hence his fixation on the Nobel Prize) manages to lure the Saudis into the Abraham Accords. On any reading that would be a seismic achievement, and is perfectly possible. But it would likely need various financial packages. The chances of the Democrats approving such a deal are close to zero.
Some commentators have argued that this would change if Benjamin Netanyahu was removed from the equation. Such a view wholly misunderstands the nature of DSA loathing of Israel, in which the moderates acquiesce. It would make no difference if Israel was led by Gadi Eisenkot, Gal Gadot or a hologram of Topol.
Welcome to the Madhouse
To put the results in historical context, the GOP's midterm performance was roughly as calamitous as that of the Arab armies in the Six-Day War.
On a related note, Abdul El-Sayed was projected to win the Senate race in Michigan. A left-wing radical with extensive antisemitic affiliations, El-Sayed will become one of the shortest men to serve in the U.S. Senate since Israel's founding in 1948. Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University activist who said Hamas "couldn't avoid" the Oct. 7 massacre, was in Detroit to help him celebrate.
El-Sayed's victory is sure to embolden the Democrat extremists eager to shape the party's ideological trajectory heading into the 2028 primary. He was the only swing-state Senate candidate endorsed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), a likely presidential candidate who preemptively touted her influence in a memo to allies.
"The Congresswoman has emerged as one of the most powerful endorsements in the United States," the memo reads. "Over the course of the past two years, she has proven herself to be one of the most effective voices in the country for America's working class."
El-Sayed was also the only Democratic Senate candidate to campaign with Hasan Piker, the anti-American influencer who has praised Hamas, Mao Zedong, and Luigi Mangione. On his livestream Tuesday, Piker urged El-Sayed and other radical Democrats to "get back to work" and "immediately hard pivot [left] once the elections are over."
As expected, several House candidates who campaigned with Piker easily won seats in deep-blue districts after defeating establishment-backed opponents in the primary. They will join a Democratic caucus projected to hold more than 250 seats—the largest House majority for either party since 1990.
Among them: New York's Darializa Avila Chevalier, a Columbia graduate student who attended a pro-Hamas rally the day after the Oct. 7 terrorist attack, and New Jersey's Adam Hamawy, a Brazilian butt lift specialist who testified for the defense in the trial of the Muslim cleric who inspired the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
To the extent that American political parties can be said to win elections, rather than stand by as their opponents lose them, it was a great night for Democrats. Trump's conciliatory overtures notwithstanding, their willingness to work with his administration is unlikely to extend beyond congressional subpoenas. They are just as unlikely to draw any useful lessons from their victory, which was largely driven by the same cost-of-living concerns that fueled Trump's reelection two years earlier.
Monday, November 09, 2026
