From Ian:
Leading Sephardic & Mizrahi Organizations Challenge New York Magazine’s “Habibi City” Over Erasure of Middle Eastern Jews
What Zionism actually is to us
Our communities lived continuously in the Middle East and North Africa for over 2,500 years, before the emergence of Islam. In the twentieth century, close to one million Jews were driven from the Arab and Muslim world, frequently under laws that criminalized Zionism itself. In countries throughout the Arab world Zionism was made a capital offense, over 3,000 Jews were imprisoned, and Jews were stripped of citizenship and property as “Zionists”; across the region, families were dispossessed, imprisoned, or forced to flee under duress. In the political Zionism of the 20th century, we asserted our own indigeneity after living for millennia as second-class and, finally, exiled citizens of the lands of our birth. The movement your feature files alongside xenophobia and Islamophobia is the reason hundreds of thousands of those refugees had somewhere to go, and the reason their descendants, today the majority of Israel’s Jewish population, exist as communities at all. To renounce Zionism as the condition of belonging to a SWANA community is to demand that Jews disavow our own survival. Being Jewish or Zionist is not in opposition to being from a geographic region. For most of us, the two are how we are still here.
The cuisine your feature celebrates makes the point vividly. Food is one of the truest records a people keeps of where it has been. The dishes in your pages were also carried out of Baghdad, Sana’a, Cairo, and Casablanca by refugees who left with little else and they survive as living traditions rather than museum pieces because those refugees had a country to carry them to. Your food coverage goes further still: it prints, without comment, a featured restaurant’s menu map on which Israel does not appear at all, retitled “Discover Palestine,” and it refers in the magazine’s own editorial voice to “the land mass currently called Israel.” It reports, with evident satisfaction from one interviewee, that Israeli-owned restaurants are now retreating behind the euphemism “Mediterranean” some, by your own account, after vandalism. A feature devoted to the pride of naming oneself openly treats the return of Jews to concealment as a development to be savored. That is the second moral inversion.
The label “Arab Jew”
Your feature applies the label “Arab Jew” without qualification. Most Mizrahi Jews reject it and in current usage it functions largely to sever Jewish identity from Israel. The Tunisian-born sociologist and philosopher Albert Memmi answered the label half a century ago, responding to Muammar Gaddafi’s offer to welcome Jews back as “Arabs like us” after they had been brutally ethnically cleansed. He acknowledged the nostalgia the phrase evokes, then wrote: “We would have liked to be Arab Jews. If we abandon the idea, it is because over the centuries the Moslem Arabs systematically prevented its realization by their contempt and cruelty.” The identity was refused to us when we lived in Arab lands. It is now conferred on us in New York, without our consent, because it is politically convenient: an “Arab Jew” is a Jew whose story can be told without Israel. The great majority of Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews were never asked whether we accept the label. Instead, your writers located the small minority who embrace it, presented them as representative, and left the rest of us to discover that our identity had been defined by others on our behalf. That is not inclusion. It is a curated exception, deployed to suggest the community has been consulted when it has not – erasure presenting itself as representation.
October 7 as a date without victims
In your feature, October 7th appears repeatedly and always as a calendar marker for what came after it, never as an event with victims of its own. It was carried out by Hamas, an organization whose founding charter is openly genocidal, calling for the destruction of Israel and invoking Islamic scripture commanding the killing of Jews, and whose record of violence runs in every direction: against Israelis in massacre and hostage-taking, and against Palestinians themselves, from the executions of political rivals in its 2007 seizure of Gaza to its ongoing torture and killing of dissidents. On October 7th, 2023 some 1,200 Israelis were murdered and 251 taken hostage, communities were burned, and sexual violence was documented – none of it acknowledged, even in passing, in thousands of words that date an entire cultural renaissance to that morning. Your readers might never learn that among the towns invaded that day including Ofakim, Sderot, Netivot are some of the most heavily Mizrahi communities in Israel: descendants of the very refugees from Morocco, Iraq, and Yemen whose food and music fill your pages. The people of the region were both among the murdered and among the murdered’s mourners, and your feature could not spare them a single sentence. A “SWANA community” whose “shared beliefs” in anti-Zionism require total silence about Jewish suffering and about the genocidal intent and movement that inflicted the tragedy of October 7th is not practicing solidarity with Palestinians. It is practicing antisemitism. That is the third moral inversion.
“We are not asking to be tolerated as exceptions to an ideological rule. We are asking to be recognized as what we are: peoples of the region.”
What we ask
We are not asking to be tolerated as exceptions to an ideological rule. We are asking to be recognized as what we are: peoples of the region. We ask that New York Magazine acknowledge that its framing excludes the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa except on ideological terms, and renders the region’s other non-Muslim peoples nearly invisible; that future coverage of SWANA communities include Mizrahi and Sephardic voices as we actually are, which for the great majority of us means Zionist, alongside the other erased non-Muslim indigenous voices of the region; and that your editors meet with representatives of the undersigned organizations to discuss how that happens.
Brendan O'Neill:
The disgusting bigotry of blaming Israel for anti-Semitism
In a suit and tie on one of his hours-long, soul-eating livestreams, Piker said that ‘if Jews in America keep putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel, eventually someone is going to come around and take action, not against the State of Israel mind you, but against American Jews’. There it is. Plainly put. In all its neo-fascist horror. If you’re an American Jew and you’re pro-Israel, you risk attack. Your alignment with that ‘genocidal’ entity is putting your own life and limb at risk. How about being a good Jew and saying ‘Fuck Israel’?
Even for the Dem elites who cosied up to Piker in the demented belief that he would breathe life into their knackered brand, his ‘What do you expect, Jews?’ schtick has proven too much. Hakeem Jeffries, New York Democrat and House Minority leader, didn’t hold back. ‘The malicious claim that American Jews are inviting violence against themselves is dangerous and anti-Semitic’, he said. He continued: ‘There is zero justification for threats against the safety of our Jewish brothers and sisters at a moment of rising hate.’ Even Abdul El-Sayed – the Dem candidate for the US Senate in Michigan who’s been rubbing Piker like a genie’s lamp of stardust and ‘authenticity’ – has distanced himself from Piker’s mad comments.
I have no sympathy with these arse-covering Dems. For if they can hear and read, they would know that the pondscum idea that Jews invite violence upon themselves by backing Israel has been a rancid belief of the Islamo-left for years. Others who are a tad more morally sophisticated – ‘tad’ being the operative word – don’t berate Jews themselves but instead say the Jewish State is the problem. As that most one-eyed basher of Israel – Owen Jones – said in defence of Piker: ‘It is an obvious undeniable fact that Israel’s actions are fuelling anti-Semitism.’ When a middle-class canceller says something is ‘obvious’ and ‘undeniable’, it’s usually neither.
Let’s put this evil bullshit to bed once and for all. First, as already mentioned, the descendants of other nations that have committed far greater crimes than Israel’s are not being attacked day and night – why not? Next, explain this: why did violent Israelophobia – which is just Jew hatred in drag – precede what you call ‘the genocide’ but which most normal people call the Israel-Hamas War? It’s almost as if Jews in Europe and America are being attacked for the goddamn racist hell of it rather than because of the ‘Gaza genocide’. Finally: what happened to the great woke sin of victim-blaming? Why is it victim-blaming to say blacks invite racism upon themselves through their ‘bad behaviour’ but fine to spout the same regressive drivel about Jews? Singling Jews out for a species of moral judgement that is applied to no other race on Earth – if only there was a word for that…
Let’s cut to the chase: it isn’t Israel’s behaviour that is endangering the world’s Jews – it’s the Islamo-left’s lies about Israel’s behaviour. It is their treacharous bastardisation of a war as a ‘genocide’, and their libellous branding of civilian casualties as ‘baby killing’, that has resuscitated the wheezing zombie of Jew hatred. The desecrators of synagogues and destroyer of Jewish lives have all yelled ‘Genocide’ and ‘Child murder’ these past three years. Their violent hatred was fuelled not by Israel’s war against the Islamofascists of Hamas but by the Islamo-left’s viral, fascist-adjacent misinformation about that war.
Let’s put it like this. I support Israel. I call myself a Zionist. I don’t think anything like a genocide has been committed in Gaza. I want Hamas to be destroyed. And yet I have never been racially abused on the streets or seen any of my cultural institutions protested or graffitied. We all know why: I’m not a Jew.
Jonathan Tobin:
El-Sayed’s antisemitism is the issue; not Hasan Piker
Indeed, the trouble goes beyond El-Sayed’s own long record of antisemitic positions and troubling comments about violence against Jews, even while continuing to claim that he wants to protect them.
Over the course of the last year, growing numbers of Democrats and liberal pundits have embraced a raft of blood libels about Israel and the Jews. The big lies that Israel has perpetrated a “genocide” in Gaza, imposed starvation there or is an “apartheid state” rather than the Middle East’s only democracy, have been widely embraced not only by extremist podcasters like Piker, but by vast numbers of Democratic officeholders and many, if not most, liberal pundits at supposedly respectable publications and broadcast networks.
Democrats have accepted the centerpiece argument of El-Sayed’s primary campaign about stopping the pro-Israel AIPAC lobby from “buying” Congress as a legitimate argument. Many, if not most, are no longer willing to accept campaign donations from it even if they remain supporters of the Jewish state.
Democrats may think that Piker’s comments justifying violence against Jews for supporting Israel go too far, which is embarrassing for them because he is linked to one of their main midterm hopefuls. But many, if not most, agree with the podcaster and his friend, El-Sayed, that there is something unwholesome or even wrong for Jews and other like-minded Americans to organize and seek to use the same tools employed by all advocacy groups to persuade voters to support their position.
The fact is that hatred for Israel—and the targeting of mainstream liberals for being insufficiently hostile to the Jewish state—has been a decisive factor in victory after victory in 2026 primaries for candidates affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America or their allies.
Embracing blood libels
Democrats, including their leaders, like Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who are supposedly pro-Israel and concerned about antisemitism, have already demonstrated that they are willing to tolerate it if it comes out the mouth of a fellow Democrat like El-Sayed. Not even his invocation of traditional tropes—singling out Jews for opprobrium by mainstreaming blood libels about Israel, and claims that Jews are using their wealth to manipulate policy against American interests—was enough to get them to disavow his candidacy. Nor did his rationalization of a terror attack on a Michigan synagogue.
Nor should we have expected them to, since such hateful discourse has long since been normalized among political liberals in the post-Oct. 7 world, where Israel is now the main focus of hatred from the left. Anti-Zionism, which seeks to strip Jews of rights that no one thinks to wish to deny any other people, is indistinguishable from antisemitism. But it is now kosher among Democrats, rather than, as it used to and should be, a belief that should be relegated to the fever swamps of the far-left and the far-right.
Seen from that perspective, Piker is not a distraction from the real issues or a red herring being highlighted by Republicans to sabotage a Democratic candidate. He is entirely relevant to a key issue being debated across the country.
The willingness of Democrats to let their party be hijacked by a far-left faction and its allies whose hatred for Israel and the Jews is at the core of their woke belief system is the real issue. In so allowing—whether out of moral cowardice or a conviction that partisan loyalties and opposing Trump and the Republicans is more important than fighting antisemitism—they have created a moral dilemma for themselves.
The only way to salve their consciences is not by criticizing Piker or persuading El-Sayed to distance himself from him. It’s by disavowing El-Sayed and every other antisemitic candidate who camouflages his extremism by playing the part of a loyal Democrat who seeks to defeat Trump and all his works and allies.
If they won’t do that, they should stop pretending they care about opposing Jew-hatred and simply embrace their party’s new identity as the political expression of modern American antisemitism.
From Ian:
Secret, direct channel between Israel and Hamas credited for enabling Jan. 2025 hostage deal
Israeli television on Friday reported further details about this week’s revelation of the direct channel of communication between Israel and Hamas during the recent Gaza war, which a source quoted by the network said played a critical role in securing the release of some hostages.
The channel was established in August 2024, according to Channel 12 news, shortly after Hamas operatives executed six Israeli hostages abducted during the October 2023 massacre that sparked the war, after sensing Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip approaching their tunnel.
There was considerable frustration in the Israeli security establishment after that incident, leading to the conclusion that a direct channel of communication was needed with Hamas and that mediating countries Egypt and Qatar could not be solely relied on.
A channel was set up between a senior Shin Bet official — on behalf of agency chief Ronen Bar — and senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad. The report did not detail how the sides established direct contacts, which were approved by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya, who at the time served as deputy to Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar.
The communication between the senior Shim Bet and Hamas representatives took place strictly over the phone, with dozens of calls taking place between them. Bar would listen in on them in real time.
A source familiar with the channel said it was used to neutralize many “landmines” in the hostage talks.
But they also devolved into shouting matches, with each side arguing over names, and Israel making clear which Palestinian security prisoners it would not release under any circumstance, according to the source.
The source claimed the direct channel run by the Shin Bet was also essential for overcoming obstacles set by Qatar, “which did not supply the goods and became a disruptive element.” The Shin Bet sparred throughout the war with fellow intelligence agency Mossad over who should mediate, with the Shin Bet favoring Egypt while the Mossad preferred Qatar, which has hosted Hamas leaders and is a leading patron of the Gaza-ruling terror group.
The source familiar with the Shin Bet channel credited it for for getting Hamas on board with the deal that was eventually reached in January 2025, during which dozens of both living and slain hostages were freed in small batches in return for boosted humanitarian aid to Gaza and over 1,000 Palestinian security prisoners held in Israeli prisons.
“[Steve] Witkoff got Netanyahu on board. We got Hamas on board,” the source claimed in reference to US President Donald Trump’s special envoy, who was hailed at the time for helping sway the premier after a “tense” meeting in Jerusalem.
As part of the January 2025 deal, the sides also agreed to hold talks on a second and third phase that would include the return of all hostages, end the war, and ensure a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, but the truce collapsed after the first stage. In October that year, another US-backed agreement was reached to end the war that saw Palestinian terrorists release all the remaining captives.
Legal expert defends IDF rejection of World Central Kitchen strike investigation - interview
On April 1, 2024, the IDF mistakenly killed seven international food aid workers working for the World Central Kitchen (WCK).
Last week, the IDF probe admitted that its surveillance officials misidentified the WCK security officials as Hamas members.
While acknowledging the gravity of its error, the chief military prosecutor of the Military Advocate-General (MAG) Corps determined that, notwithstanding serious failures in the process that led to the assessment that Hamas operatives were traveling in the vehicles, the decisions of the commanders did not raise reasonable suspicion of criminal misconduct.
The IDF therefore decided not to open a criminal investigation.
Following this announcement, in a joint statement the foreign ministers of the UK, Australia, and Canada said the decision not to pursue criminal investigations was “shameful.”
“They just say it’s a shame that Israel hasn’t brought criminal charges – they don’t specify what is shameful about it,” Dr. Brian L. Cox told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.
A very thorough assessment, no evidence of war crime
Cox retired from the United States Army in 2018 after 22 years of service, including seven years as a military lawyer. He is now a senior fellow at Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Canada, and he taught international law at Cornell Law School from 2019-26.
Cox told the Post that it makes sense for Israel to not pursue criminal charges because they have done a “very thorough assessment based on all the evidence they can gather, and they’ve reached the conclusion that this wasn’t a war crime.”
From an International Humanitarian Law (IHL) perspective, this case is “really straightforward,” he noted.
“If the personnel involved believed they were attacking Hamas fighters and not WCK humanitarian workers, then it wasn’t a war crime. And that’s just a doctrinal application of the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) distinction rule.”
Cox added that militaries can prosecute for violation of use of force policy, but then it would have to be “really egregious, a wanton disregard” of policy, which was not the case here.
While the IDF chose not to open criminal investigations, it did remove several officers from their positions, and others were formally reprimanded, an outcome that Cox said would have been exactly the same if the incident had involved the Australian, UK, or Canadian military.
Cox pointed out that a “double standard” is being applied to the IDF here.
“Just because there was an allegation that has been leveled against Israel, the expectation is that the IDF will initiate a criminal prosecution. That expectation doesn’t exist for any other military, including the three countries that signed this joint statement.”
When a soccer league honors ‘martyrs,’ the world should stop turning a blind eye
Soccer is a game that connects us all, until it comes to terror
Rarely is it something that we connect with terrorists, hatred, or incitement, unless it comes to the Palestinians.
I have watched the magic of Messi and Ronaldo over the years, and I remember back in 2018 when all of Israel, including me, was super excited to welcome Messi and his team as Argentina came to play Israel in June 2018.
It was their final friendly match before heading to the FIFA World Cup in Russia.
I was seriously trying to get tickets for that match, but something utterly repulsive happened: the game was initially set for Haifa but was moved to Jerusalem because of security concerns and threats against Messi.
This was because a well-known terrorist was so furious about this match that he actually encouraged people to burn pictures and jerseys of Messi, and incited them to violence or to do anything possible to stop that match from happening. Yes, you heard that right.
This terrorist was living the high life, in the fast lane instead of sitting in an Israeli jail where he belongs!
His name is Jibril Rajoub, and believe it or not, he is the head of the Palestinian Authority (PA) soccer federation. Are we really surprised?
He was sentenced to life imprisonment by an Israeli military court for throwing a grenade at an Israeli army truck, and while in prison he learned to speak Hebrew, studied politics, and joined Fatah, eventually becoming a prominent prisoner and leader among his incarcerated comrades and terrorist friends.
He was unfortunately released in the Jibril Agreement prisoner swap and deported by Israel to Lebanon, due to his active role in organizing the First Intifada, where nearly 200 Israelis were murdered.
He lives and breathes hatred for Israel, which is why he went absolutely mad in 2018 when the national team of Argentina was planning to come to Israel.
Thank goodness, FIFA actually suspended him from official activities for one year due to his vile incitement to hatred and violence in calling on soccer fans around the world to burn jerseys and pictures of Messi.
His pathetic appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) to have that suspension removed was rejected.
He has a long record of vile incitement and anti-Semitic statements, which, among others, included saying that the Jewish people deserved the Nazi genocide perpetrated against them. Additionally, he openly declared that if the PA possessed a nuclear weapon, it would use it against Israel.
From Ian:
Melanie Phillips:
Britain’s moral depravity
Israel is entitled, in law and in any moral universe, to determine its own borders against an enemy that’s determined to destroy it.
It’s outrageous to single out Israel alone for this kind of imperious and punitive treatment. No such campaign is waged against, say, Turkey for having invaded Cyprus and divided the island from the Greeks by Turkish occupation.
It’s even more outrageous since the United Kingdom is principally responsible for the whole rotten history of the never-ending Middle East conflict.
That’s because, when it was the Mandatory power in pre-Israel Palestine, Britain tore up international law. It went back on its binding undertaking to settle the Jews alone in the land of Israel and instead tried to divide the land by offering much or most of it to the Arabs.
This was an early “two-state solution,” minted by perfidious Britain as a reward to the Arabs for their genocidal aggression in attempting to exterminate the legitimate homeland of the Jewish people. Rewarding terror merely incentivizes yet more of it; and Britain has been pursuing that very same strategy ever since then, repeated now yet again by the Burnham government.
Britain is behaving as if it’s still the colonial master, treating Israel with utter contempt by instructing it to shred its lawful inheritance and expose its people to genocidal assault—and then punishing it for refusing to bow the knee.
British officials have warned, however, that since settlement goods would be almost impossible to distinguish from other Israeli goods, this would inevitably morph into a full-blown boycott of Israel.
Since Burnham and Miliband are playing into a hysterical left-wing narrative of demonic Israel that has consumed not only much of their party but most of progressive opinion, that’s unlikely to trouble them.
Nonetheless, they’re making a very grave mistake because they have overlooked a crucial point.
Britain is highly dependent on Israel for its own security. The United Kingdom has emasculated itself so that it no longer possesses armed forces that can defend the country. From Israel, it gets both priceless intelligence—vital for defending its people against Islamist attack—and cutting-edge military technology.
Yet it is proposing to boycott its key military and security ally at a time when the moth-eaten British lion is facing unprecedented, mounting and immediate threats from Russia and Iran.
Israel might now suggest politely that since the United Kingdom apparently hates the Jewish state so much, it surely won’t want to benefit any further from Israeli intelligence or arms supplies, which will accordingly be drastically curtailed.
What Israel should also say is that Britain’s precious “two-state solution” is profoundly immoral. People who wage a 100-year campaign of mass murder to prevent and then exterminate a legitimate country, while turning down repeated offers of a state of their own because they want to murder yet more of those people and destroy that country, and who indoctrinate their own children to do so in perpetuity, deserve absolutely nothing.
Those like the British government, who have spent the past century rewarding such a program and are now punishing its intended victims, can be described in two words: morally depraved.
Masar Badil was sanctioned for Terrorist Ties — Here Are the Branches Operating in The US
The Masar Badil Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path, a branch of the terrorist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was sanctioned on Wednesday by the US Treasury for terrorism ties, but he organization still maintains a web of smaller groups within the United States.
The US Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Masar Badil and executive committee members Zaid Abdulnasser and Rawa Alsagheer due to the organization’s inextricable links with Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network. Samidoun was jointly sanctioned by Canada and the US in October 2024 for being “owned, controlled, or directed” by the Foreign Terrorist Organization PFLP.
“The organizations share fundraising mechanisms as well as senior leaders and members of their respective Executive Committees,” read the US Treasury statement.
Masar Badil and Samidoun Overlapping Leadership
In addition to being executives of Masar Badil, Abdulnasser was the Samidoun Germany coordinator and Alsagheer the Samidoun Brazil coordinator. They joined other Samidoun and Masar Badil officers already being sanctioned by OFAC. Samidoun Europe and Masar Badil executive Mohammad Khatib and Samidoun Madrid coordinator, Masar Badil executive, and Alkarama Palestinian Women’s Mobilization co-founder Jaldia Abubakra had been sanctioned on May 19. It had been noted in the May Treasury press release that Abubakra had “played a key role in establishing a Samidoun partner organization in 2021,” perhaps already hinting then that OFAC was reviewing Masar Badil.
Khatib had in the past been described by Palestinian news outlets as a PFLP operative and spokesman. The PFLP and Palestinian outlets similarly described a chief officer of the Samidoun network, Khaled Barakat, as a leader of the Marxist-Leninist terrorist group. Barakat once publicly represented Samidoun as its leader in statements and petitions, but since the founding of Masar Badil was presented only as that newer group’s head, creating some degree of ambiguity about the relationship between the two groups. His wife, Charlotte Kates, serves as the Samidoun international coordinator. According to a July 19 Institute for the Critical Study of the Society lecture, Kates is also a co-founder of Samidoun and deputy secretary-general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. The Canadian citizen reportedly relocated to Lebanon — She faced legal challenges in the wake of her calls of “long live October 7” and support for terrorism in April 2024.
Unlike other major Samidoun network officers, Kates is not sanctioned. Masar Badil is also not the limit of the Samidoun network, but rather the handle for an umbrella of organizations that continue to operate in North America.
In a deleted July Instagram post in preparation for a November conference in Toronto, the organization confirmed that Tariq El-Tahrir Youth and Student Network, Nidal, Students United for Palestinian Equality and Return at the University of Washington (SUPER UW), Al-Ahrar Palestinian Prisoner Support, and Basel Al Araj Committee were part of Masar Badil North America.
CAIR Removes 9/11 Curriculum Listing Bin Laden’s Manifesto, Following Jewish Onliner Exposé
The Council on American-Islamic Relations quietly revised the September 11th section of its national 2026-2027 back-to-school guide one day after Jewish Onliner published an investigation into the organization’s recommended classroom materials.
The original guide directed educators, administrators and school boards to a CAIR-New Jersey curriculum that listed Osama bin Laden’s “Letter to America” among its high school resources. By August 26, CAIR had removed its endorsement of and link to the curriculum and added a note claiming that an earlier version “did not go through proper vetting.” Yet CAIR National had promoted the same curriculum in its 2025–26 back-to-school guide.
CAIR did not publicly announce the change, identify who failed to vet the material or say whether Jewish Onliner’s reporting prompted the revision.
The recommended curriculum, as featured in CAIR’s 2025-2026 national back to school guide. Credit: CAIR
CAIR Quietly Removes Its Endorsement of 9/11 Curriculum
Jewish Onliner published its investigation on August 25 after reviewing CAIR’s newly released nationwide guide and the materials to which it directed American schools.
The original 9/11 section told readers that CAIR-New Jersey and Teaching While Muslim had developed a “comprehensive” curriculum for elementary, middle and high school classrooms. It said the resource included recommended texts, videos, discussion questions and teaching strategies.
The section concluded:
“Access the curriculum at cair-nj.org/911curriculum and share this resource with educators, administrators, and local school boards.”
This was more than a passing reference. CAIR National explicitly instructed readers to access the curriculum and circulate it among educators, administrators and local school boards.
By August 26, the paragraph and hyperlink had been removed from the online guide. The revised version retains the heading “25th Anniversary of 9/11 and Tools for Classrooms,” but no longer names CAIR-New Jersey, Teaching While Muslim or their curriculum.
The replacement text states:
“Comprehensive lesson plans would address the 9/11 attack itself, the victims and families impacted, and the aftermath of the attack, such as the war in Afghanistan, changes in national security, and the rise in hate crimes and discrimination against American Muslim and perceived-Muslim communities.”
From Ian:
Who Is Really Running Iran?
In late July, Iran's president, Masoud Pezeshkian, was finally granted an audience with the country's elusive new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei. According to Iran International, citing sources inside the president's office and others, Pezeshkian was driven to an undisclosed location, transferred into a commercial vehicle with tinted windows, and placed beside a man he was told was the supreme leader.
The car was kept in darkness. No handshake was permitted. The encounter was reportedly brief and conducted entirely by voice. Pezeshkian allegedly left wondering whether he had met Mojtaba Khamenei at all.
Iran has a supreme leader whom almost nobody sees, a president who cannot reliably reach him, and a military establishment that increasingly makes decisions in his name. In Iran, where the leader's image is part of the machinery of authority, invisibility creates a vacuum.
The most important leader is Ahmad Vahidi, commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. He has served as defense minister, interior minister, and commander of the Quds Force, Iran's principal instrument of foreign covert action.
Argentina accuses Vahidi of involvement in planning the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people. This allegation places Iran's most powerful military institution under a man associated with terrorism, proxies and covert action as ordinary instruments of statecraft.
Around Vahidi stands a small fraternity of veteran Guards commanders and intelligence officials whose careers stretch back to the revolution and the Iran-Iraq War. Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, shapes strategy. Mohammad-Bagher Zolghadr connects the institutions. Hossein Taeb, the former chief of IRGC Intelligence who now heads the Basij paramilitary organization, watches the streets. Together, they are the operating system of the Islamic Republic.
Iran's security establishment captured the decisive institutions of the state. The Guards did not abolish the clerical state; they climbed inside it. They kept its constitution, rituals and religious vocabulary while concentrating practical power in the hands of men with military and intelligence backgrounds. They do not need Iran to win today. They need the West to lose patience tomorrow.
The Best Outcome for Core U.S. Interests Is the Collapse of the Iranian Regime
Twenty years of experience as an American diplomat has made me realize that no amount of diplomatic ingenuity can contain Iran. President Donald Trump is right to resort to an intensive economic pressure campaign, backed by the implicit threat of renewed kinetic action. The U.S. should keep pushing until it gets the best outcome for American interests, the region and the Iranian people: the shattering of the illegitimate regime in Tehran.
I was sent to Kuwait for my first State Department assignment, arriving in 2007 at the peak of Iraq's bloody civil war. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps drove much of the violence, building death squads and militias and arming them with IEDs that killed and injured hundreds of U.S. service members.
My subsequent tour in Bahrain coincided with the onset of the Arab Spring protests in 2010. Popular grievances fueled the demonstrations, but Iran exploited the situation, pouring fuel on sectarian tensions. Gulf rulers seized on fears of Iranian interference to justify the Saudi-led intervention that put an end to the protests.
From 2011 to 2013, I coordinated State Department policy for Lebanon - a country hollowed out by decades of Iranian meddling and hostage to Tehran's shadow war against Israel. Billions of dollars of IRGC backing meant Hizbullah outgunned Lebanon's national army and possessed an arsenal of 60,000 rockets and missiles aimed at Israeli towns and cities. Iran in 2013 dispatched Hizbullah to shore up the Assad regime in Syria during the civil war, fueling a conflict that led to over half a million deaths.
The mullahs might not have orchestrated Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, but IRGC know-how and hundreds of millions of dollars of funding over two decades enabled the rampage into Israel that killed more than 1,200 people, including 46 Americans.
The regime in Tehran bears overwhelming responsibility for the mayhem and misery in the Middle East since 1979, and its hold on power is a dire threat to regional stability. The current showdown is an inevitable result of the Iranian regime's efforts to dominate the region through bullying, blackmail and terror. The best outcome for the region - and for core U.S. interests - is the regime's collapse.
How Tehran Survives U.S. Sanctions
Iran has spent years setting up a complex system of oil sales and clandestine shadow banking that it hopes will sustain its economy and military long enough to outlast the latest U.S. economic assault.
The U.S. naval blockade of Iran's ports has reduced Iranian oil exports to near zero. But Tehran still has 80 million barrels of oil stored offshore in oil tankers, mainly in the waters off Malaysia.
Relying on a ship-to-ship transfer system, sanctioned tankers unload crude onto other tankers in international waters to mask the fuel's origin, then ship the cargo to China.
U.S. sanctions generally aim to cut off targets from the U.S. financial system. But sanctions become less effective if U.S. enemies avoid the U.S. financial system entirely.
Iran's transactions with China are increasingly settled in Chinese yuan, outside U.S. oversight. Iran also uses cryptocurrencies to avoid U.S. oversight.
Moreover, Tehran operates a network of shell companies in hubs including Hong Kong and Dubai that are controlled by Iranian exchange houses. These move Iranian oil proceeds into other currencies.
As Washington sanctions one front company, Tehran simply spins up another.
Iranian Cyber Sabotage Is Targeting U.S. Water Systems
The Iranian regime recently executed a series of targeted digital intrusions against water infrastructure in the U.S. This aggressive campaign focused on the operational technology networks of municipal drinking water and wastewater treatment facilities across 7-12 states.
The primary mechanism of the attacks is the scanning of the public internet for exposed programmable logic controllers, which are specialized industrial mini-computers responsible for managing physical machinery, water flow, and chemical treatment cycles.
A pivotal potential vulnerability exposed during this campaign was the indirect threat to the chemical treatment and safety of the supply of drinking water. If water flow drops significantly at a particular location while automated chemical injectors continue to pump in the disinfectant chlorine at pre-set levels, the concentration of chlorine in that section of the facility can rapidly skyrocket to toxic, highly corrosive levels.
Irrespective of its actual impact, this sabotage event borders on the threshold of biochemical warfare insofar as it was a deliberate attempt to inflict a toxicant on an adversary population. The sabotage was designed to prove that a foreign adversary can silently compromise the safety of both U.S. industry structures and individual Americans' household tap water from thousands of miles away.
From Ian:
Gottheimer asks House leaders to sign onto bipartisan measure decrying Jew-hatred in both parties
After antisemitic streamer Hasan Piker tried to blame Jewish supporters of Israel for worsening antisemitism, Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) called on House Republican leaders on Tuesday to allow a vote on his bipartisan resolution condemning such voices in both parties.
“Hatred is hatred. Period,” stated Gottheimer, who is Jewish. “Let’s bring the vote to the floor.”
The resolution, introduced with Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), takes aim at both Piker on the Democratic side and Candace Owens on the Republican side for their attacks on Jewish Americans.
Piker has been welcomed by Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Dr. Abdul El-Sayed and others from the party’s left wing. He recently warned that Jewish Americans who support a Jewish state were stirring up antisemitism themselves.
“If Jews in America keep putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel, eventually someone is going to come around and take action, not against the State of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews,” he said on a Twitch stream.
Owens “actively amplifies antisemitic figures on her shows,” including guests who praised Hitler, trivialized the Holocaust or promoted “Jewish mafia” narratives, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
She was named “Antisemite of the Year” in 2024 by StopAntisemitism.
“Telling millions of followers that Jewish Americans are bringing violence on themselves is blatantly antisemitic and one of the oldest tropes in the book,” Gottheimer stated.
“This is exactly why we introduced this resolution, and there’s no excuse left for Republican leadership to keep sitting on it,” he said. “Anyone still supporting or campaigning with these personalities is complicit.”
The American Jewish Committee joined the criticism of Piker. “Blaming Jews for the antisemitism directed at them is itself antisemitism,” it said.
The ADL has estimated that Owens has 35 million followers and Piker about 11.5 million.
Study: Genocide claims on US campuses largely grew out of preexisting BDS activism
Claims of genocide against Israel that became prominent on US college campuses after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack were largely concentrated among academics and speakers who had already supported the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, according to a Wednesday report.
The report argues that academics had granted legitimacy to the BDS movement’s aim of stigmatizing Israel.
The report, by the AMCHA Initiative, a nonprofit that documents antisemitism and combats anti-Israel activism on US campuses, analyzed 278 recordings of events sponsored by academic units at US schools. Academic units included departments, centers, programs, institutes and schools.
The events took place on 51 US campuses during the 2024-2025 academic year. The study, called “When Political Advocacy Acquires Academic Authority: BDS and the Genocide Accusation on US Campuses,” selected colleges and universities that Hillel International identified as being popular with Jewish students.
Of those events, 93 featured speakers who had promoted BDS before the October 2023 Hamas invasion of Israel. Support for BDS included signing onto petitions, published writing backing BDS, social media posts and participating in boycotts.
The analysis found that events with BDS supporters were 40 times more likely to include genocide accusations — 85% of those events accused Israel of genocide, compared to 2% of events that did not involve boycott activists.
The strong correlation between prior BDS support and genocide accusations suggested that the charge was “not simply a broadly shared feature of academic discussion about Israel and Gaza,” the report said.
“Rather, its use was overwhelmingly concentrated among speakers who entered the post-October 7 period with a preexisting commitment to taking action against Israel,” the study said.
Historian’s book on Nazi World War II propaganda targeting Arab world to be republished
A prominent historian’s book about Nazi propaganda targeting the Arab world during World War II will be reissued in the spring after going out of print, the author, Jeffrey Herf, said on Monday.
Herf, an emeritus professor of history at the University of Maryland, said it was important to reissue the book, “Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World,” to better understand the current moment and to dispel misconceptions about Hamas’s ideology, which he says echoes the Nazis’
“Hamas should be understood as a fusion of Nazi ideology and Islamist ideology,” Herf told The Times of Israel. “One of the most important falsehoods about Hamas is that it is a progressive movement.”
Yale University Press first published the book in 2009.
Herf said Yale University Press had later taken the book out of print.
“It’s been very frustrating with Yale and I do not understand why they’re taking this position,” Herf said. “They’ve made ready availability of the book more difficult.”
Herf said he did not know why the university’s press had let the book lapse.
The title remains available as an e-book on the Yale University Press website, but physical copies are hard to come by. The 335-page paperback costs more than $400 on Amazon.
Yale University Press told The Times of Israel, “It was a business decision to not reissue a title from 2009, and to return the rights to Professor Herf.”
“We wish him the best of luck with his book in its newest incarnation and with his new publisher,” a spokesperson said.
Herf said he had reacquired the rights to the book himself and that ibidem Press, an academic publishing house in Germany, will republish the print version.
The publishing house confirmed the company will republish the book as a paperback, with a new foreword by Herf, in the spring of 2027.
The book will be distributed in North America by Columbia University Press and will be featured in the Spring 2027 Columbia University Press Catalog, ibidem Press told The Times of Israel.
“Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World” examines the Nazi regime’s massive outreach to Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa from 1939-1945.
From Ian:
Gil Troy:
Durban helped turn anti-Zionism into a global movement
Before commemorating the 25th anniversary of September 11, it’s worth remembering another event the 9/11 horrors essentially upstaged: the UN World Conference against Racism held in Durban, South Africa, from August 31 through September 7, 2001.
That hate-fest revived the UN’s “Zionism is racism” resolution, fueling today’s anti-racist anti-Zionism.
This irrational fury against Israel, Zionism, and the Jewish people masquerades behind the noble fight to eradicate race-based bigotry.
Remembering that conference, which negated years of Israeli attempts to compromise with Palestinians, provides a moral clarity about the conflict sadly lacking today.
It’s confusing. Sincere democratic critics offer thoughtful, patriotic reproaches of Israeli actions or leaders. But there are also satanic critics, violent evil enemies who wish to destroy the Jewish state. Durban became a Jew-hating jubilee that was so effective, it’s inspired millions of pathetic critics – driven by pathos, emotion – to hop along the legitimate anti-racist bandwagon, then vilify Israel, Zionism, and the Jews, unfairly.
Back then, most Americans mocked the absurd notion that Zionism, meaning Jewish nationalism, was racist. How tragic that today, this big Red-Green lie, uniting far-left radicals with Islamist jihadists, has seduced so many Americans.
Many pretend to be democratic critics, claiming it’s about what Israel does. But the hostility to the fact that Israel is, the obsessive Zio-trashing, and the distortions required to frame the nationalist clash between Israelis and Palestinians as a race-based conflict are downright devilish.
In 2001, the totalitarian anti-Zionism most Americans had long opposed, subordinating all other goals to the anti-Israel impulse, sabotaged yet another UN conference.
'An anti-American, anti-Israeli circus'
“Durban became the tipping point for the coalescence of a new, virulent, globalizing anti-Jewishness,” the Canadian parliamentarian and human rights activist Irwin Cotler lamented. The rhetoric there fused anti-Zionism with anti-Americanism, “laundered” through opposition to racism, Cotler noted.
The legendary Democratic congressman Tom Lantos called Durban “an anti-American, anti-Israeli circus,” often expressed in antisemitic terms – the trashing trifecta.
A Hungarian Holocaust refugee who became Congress’s human rights conscience, Lantos called Durban “the most sickening and unabashed display of hate for Jews I have seen since the Nazi period.”
Some delegates distributed a booklet caricaturing Jews with hook noses and fangs dripping blood. Seventeen thousand anti-Zionist protesters rallied, with some waving the banner “Hitler Was Right!” Other posters wished Hitler had “finished the job.”
Amid waves of Palestinian suicide bombings that destroyed the Oslo peace process and triggered Israeli army crackdowns, the conference showcased the Red-Green alliance’s global reach and anti-Zionist mania.
“Green” Islamist power hijacked the main UN conference, steering discussions away from the widespread problem of white-versus-black racism to denounce “the racist practices of Zionism” as “a new kind of apartheid.”
Although the official Durban Declaration ignored Zionism while condemning antisemitism and Islamophobia, the anti-Zionist rhetoric poisoning many speeches – backed by antisemitic hooliganism on the street – reinvigorated the “Zionism is racism” libel.
The parallel NGO forum celebrated “Red” – far-left – values, with leftist human rights organizations condemning racism, colonialism, and imperialism selectively. They found these afflictions only in the West, especially in Israel, the world’s favorite whipping boy.
The final NGO declaration launched the forum’s “Durban Strategy”: to reinstate the “Zionism is racism” resolution, boycott “Israel as an apartheid state,” and accuse the “Israeli racist system” of “acts of genocide” – in 2001.
The Palestinian firebrand Hanan Ashrawi inflamed these third-world leftist passions. Casting the Palestinians as virtuous victims facing violent victimizers, Ashrawi avowed: “in the struggle against oppression, injustice, racism, intolerance, colonialism, and exclusion, there can be no neutrality.”
The Zionism-racism charge and other categorical demonizations of Israel are accelerants. They infuriate, polarizing both sides. Which Palestinians would want to make peace with a supposedly racist, genocidal, settler-colonialist oppressor? And which Israelis would want to make peace with enemies who libel them so hysterically, while attacking them so violently?
Israel now has the power to respond to action against it with diplomatic consequences
Israel has the strength, ability to respond to action taken against it
The next test may be Britain. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband recently called Israel’s publication of tenders for construction in E1 “an unacceptable and destructive act,” demanded that Israel halt the project, and warned that the UK would not “stand back and accept the destruction of the two-state solution.”
Sa’ar rejected both the substance of Miliband’s statement and “the patronizing tone of his words.” That description was spot on. Britain is entitled to oppose Israeli policy. It isn’t entitled to lecture Israel as though addressing a misbehaving colonial ward whose role is to listen and obey.
Sa’ar also correctly called Miliband’s statement entirely one-sided. He then laid down the principle that should guide Israel’s response: “The UK government’s decision to damage the relationship between our countries is deeply unfortunate. But Israel will not be a passive victim of this policy. Israel will defend its rights, its interests, and its people.”
Israel need not answer every criticism, nor should every response be maximal. But when criticism hardens into policy intended to damage the relationship, Jerusalem should determine which elements of that relationship Britain can no longer take for granted.
That may mean a diplomatic downgrade, exclusion from a particular forum, or a reassessment of specific forms of cooperation. The response should fit the offense and protect Israel’s interests – not merely vent anger.
But this is not your grandmother’s Israel. It is stronger, richer, larger, and less dependent on the goodwill of governments that demand much from it while asking little of its enemies. Its diplomacy should reflect that reality.
Netanyahu at Judea and Samaria event: This land ‘will remain ours’
Speaking at the Binyamin Regional Council’s annual flagship event highlighting the past year’s achievements in Judea and Samaria, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared on Tuesday night that the Land of Israel “will remain ours.”
“Today, many of our brothers and sisters around the world understand: This is our land and it will remain ours,” Netanyahu told Judea and Samaria leaders at the event, which he attended with his wife, Sara.
In remarks translated from Hebrew, he added, “And when I say our land, every Jewish man and every Jewish woman, the door is open. We are waiting for you. In the State of Israel, in the heart of the Land of Israel.”
Those attending the event, Netanyahu said, were “preparing the ground for a very large aliyah [immigration wave] that will come.”
The Binyamin Regional Council governs 47 Israeli communities in an area stretching from north of Jerusalem in Samaria to the Jerusalem Mountains in Judea.
The outgoing government has established and regularized 104 communities and 160 farms, Netanyahu said, adding that more were on the way.
Part of the work was carried out under the Biden administration and part under the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, he said.
“It isn’t easy, it’s never easy. The Land of Israel is acquired through suffering,” Netanyahu said. “Sometimes also through smiles, sometimes also through arguments, but it is being acquired by us. We are not giving up, we have a vision, this is our land, and it will remain ours.”
Some wish to uproot Israelis not only from Judea and Samaria but “altogether from the State of Israel,” Israel’s longest-serving prime minister continued.
This campaign “has gained considerable momentum and exposure during the three years of the War of Revival,” he said, referring to the ongoing multifront war that began when thousands of Palestinian terrorists from Gaza invaded southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
“The axis [led by Iran] that we broke has not yet disappeared,” Netanyahu said. “But we are determined to ensure that there will be no threat—not from the Gaza Strip, and we have done a great deal on that front; not from Lebanon, and we have done a great deal there; not from Syria—we have security zones today inside those countries.
Netanyahu praised the Trump administration for tightening economic sanctions against those assisting the Iranian regime, describing the move as “very important.”
From Ian:
UN charity once chaired by Hunter Biden stands by Texas money man after Post reveals DHS probe into $100M anti-Israel ‘war chest’
A UN-backed charity once chaired by Hunter Biden is standing by a Texas money man even as federal investigators probe his group’s possible ties to sanctioned Palestinian organizations, The Post has learned.
The World Food Program USA wiped its entire leadership roster from its website just days after this newspaper revealed the federal inquiry into PFF and its backers, including Basil Qunibi and a group of well-heeled Palestinian donors.
But despite the mounting controversy, the nonprofit insists the founder of Austin-based Atom Investors isn’t going anywhere and blamed the bizarrely timed disappearance of his profile on a routine IT issue.
“Both our staff and board pages are down for maintenance,” a WFP USA spokesperson told The Post. “Basil Qunibi is a member of our Board of Directors.”
They added that the IT work “will conclude by next week.” The rest of the organization’s website, including its donation portals, mission pages, and press releases, remained fully operational on Tuesday afternoon.
The Washington-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit raises money for the United Nations’ food assistance agency. Hunter Biden chaired the organization from 2011 to 2015, which overlapped with some of his controversial business dealings while Joe Biden served as vice-president under Barack Obama.
The website change followed The Post’s story detailing a Department of Homeland Security investigation into PFF and its backers.
It revealed the involvement of Qunibi, Australian billionaire and racecar driver Yasser Shahin, and Bassema Yousef, a Democratic fundraiser who is close to Mayor Zohran Mamdani, in the pro-Palestinian group.
Sources said federal investigators are scrutinizing the trio’s involvement in PFF, an alleged $100 million UK-based political ‘war chest’ that helps fund anti-Israel messaging and provides support to Palestinian activists.
The feds are tracking the entity’s cross-border financial flows tied to anti-Israel advocacy and possible links to sanctioned organizations.
Authorities have not charged any of the trio with wrongdoing. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.
But Qunibi’s representatives have since retreated from initial claims made to The Post that he did not finance PFF.
Maureen Lipman slams ‘sanctimonious’ actors who ‘forced’ Boy George out of West End role over pro-Israel song
Dame Maureen Lipman has defended Boy George in an op-ed in the Spectator discussing her own 13-week experience performing Allegra amidst the palpable burden of pro-Palestine protests.
In May, the Jewish actor and JC contributor found herself the target of the anti-Israel mob when due to perform the musical in Aberdeen.
The Scottish city’s branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) shared a graphic of Lipman with horns and holding a pitchfork, claiming on its Instagram that she had “openly voiced extremist Islamophobic, anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab views”, and urging supporters to sign a petition against her performance.
The group further labelled her “an open supporter of the settler-colonial, apartheid state of Israel, which continues to commit genocide, and is ethnically cleansing the West Bank”.
On finishing her most recent West End stint, she wrote in her op-ed: “The gang of protestors who tried to boycott me from theatres in Aberdeen, Glasgow and Bath for believing in the state of Israel’s right to exist went underground in London.
“They were replaced by an altruistic band of brethren of all faiths called Mensch, who turned up to protest against the protestors. God bless them.”
She went on to talk about Boy George, who has, in recent weeks, also become the target of anti-Israel protesters after defending Israel most notably in his new song We Will Dance Again.
Lipman wrote that while her West End experience went off without any protest, “A group of sanctimonious actors forced Boy George out of his contract to play King Herod in Jesus Christ Superstar.
“They allegedly pressured producer Michael Harrison into sacking Boy George because he has, in a brave song called We Will Dance Again, defended Israel’s right to defend itself after the Hamas pogrom.
“In other words, Boy George has a different political stance from some of the cast. Powerful people. The show itself concerns a nice Jewish rabbi fighting prejudice from angry mobs in his ancestral home of Israel.”
Lauded Australian director Kosky decries anti-Semitism
The main character of The Trial is arrested and finds himself trapped in an absurdly complicated legal system, trying desperately to find out what he has done wrong.
Readers of the novel never discover the answer, but in Kosky's version the trial is an examination of the author's Judaism, an attribute which is sometimes forgotten in discussion of his work.
Oh, and there's singing and dancing - including a tap dancing Rabbi.
The production is in German, Hebrew, and Yiddish, with surtitles translated from Kafka's stories - so for English-speaking audiences that haven't read Kafka, they will be reading him during the show.
In previous years Kosky has brought operatic productions to Adelaide, and in 2024 The Threepenny Opera, also with the Berliner Ensemble.
AAP spoke to the director just before the final block of public hearings for Australia's anti-Semitism royal commission, called in response to the terrorist attack at Bondi beach which saw 15 people killed and another 40 wounded.
Melbourne-born Kosky, 59, hasn't lived in Australia for 26 years, but laments the nation's public discourse, which he says has morphed from legitimate political criticism into discussion so polarised it has become terrifying and dangerous.
"We have crossed over into 'should the state of Israel exist?' which has never happened in any other country ... (It) leads us into rampant 21st century anti-Semitism, of a type that we have not seen for decades," he said.
He's vehemently opposed to the Israeli government, but cautions that Jewish people from both Israel and the diaspora are being forced to take reductive positions on complex issues, in response to a performative moral outrage from non-Jews.
"You can be a good Jew if you basically disown Israel, disown Zionism, disown Jewish culture, and say absolutely free Palestine," he said.
K has absolutely nothing to do with anti-Semitism, Gaza, Israel or the Holocaust, said Kosky - it's fundamentally a show about Jewish spirituality and culture.
Perhaps that's timely, as he perceives Jewish people again becoming a scapegoat for the world's evils.
"It's a perfect storm and I don't know how we get out of it, because this is the time you want dialogue, compassion, empathy - most of the yelling offers no solutions."
K is at Her Majesty's Theatre from March 4-7.
From Ian:
The Undisputed Answer to Israel's Legitimacy
I am an Arab Muslim and have spent years advocating for peace and reconciliation between Muslims and Jews. I have never understood why acknowledging the ancient Jewish connection to this land should be considered threatening to Muslims. The Dead Sea Scrolls are one example that demolishes the claim that Jewish attachment to the land is a recent political invention created by Europeans in the 19th or 20th centuries.
The ancient manuscripts found in caves near the Dead Sea were written by Jews living in this region more than 2,000 years ago. I do not see something that belongs to a civilization completely foreign to me. I see part of the religious and historical landscape from which Christianity emerged and which Islam itself repeatedly acknowledges. This is why I believe Muslims should be among the last people to deny ancient Jewish history.
The Quran is filled with the history of the Children of Israel. Moses is mentioned more frequently in the Quran than any other prophet. The Quran speaks of King David, Solomon, Aaron, Joseph and the tribes of Israel. It acknowledges the Torah and repeatedly places its own religious message in conversation with earlier Jewish and Christian traditions. There is therefore something deeply strange, in my view, about some Muslims feeling that we must erase Jewish history in order to defend Arab or Palestinian rights.
Peace will never be built by creating historical amnesia. For decades, political arguments surrounding Israel have frequently attempted to deny Jewish history altogether, pretending that a nation did not exist on its ancestral homeland. The Dead Sea Scrolls tell us that Jewish communities lived in this land, developed religious institutions in this land, and debated the meaning of their faith in this land centuries before Islam appeared and centuries before modern European nationalism existed.
History cannot become something we recognize only when it supports our political position. If archaeology proves something uncomfortable, we should not destroy the archaeology. We should adjust our understanding. For Muslims in particular, recognizing the Jewish people's ancient connection to this land should not frighten us. It does not diminish Islam. It simply requires intellectual honesty.
Prof. Efraim Inbar:
A Realistic National Strategy for Israel
Israel remains small in both territory and population compared to most of its Middle Eastern rivals, and despite its economic prosperity, its resources remain limited. Its long-term survival cannot be taken for granted. Israel must therefore maintain constant readiness for armed conflict and for the battle over its legitimacy.
Any state must align its goals with the resources at its disposal and avoid overreach. Unlike a great power, a small state cannot set the rules of the international system or significantly shape its regional environment. David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, understood that military power alone could not compel Israel's neighbors to make peace. Israel could build an "iron wall" (a concept coined by his political rival Ze'ev Jabotinsky) that would thwart its neighbors' plans to destroy it, in the hope that over time, the states of the region would come to accept it.
The military achievements against Hamas in Gaza and Hizbullah in Lebanon, the establishment of security zones in Syria and in Lebanon, and the attacks on Iran's nuclear and missile infrastructure in 2025 and 2026 have undoubtedly improved Israel's security situation and regional standing. Israel demonstrated exceptional military and intelligence capabilities and exacted a heavy price from its enemies.
Yet military victories are time-bound in their political effects, and the motivation to challenge Israel's existence has remained persistently high. There is limited basis for assuming that even severe military defeat necessarily erodes an adversary's willingness to pursue long-term strategic objectives.
The main assumption behind Israel's national strategy should remain, regrettably, that the Middle East does not change quickly. The region remains a source of religious extremism, terrorism, and nuclear proliferation. Israel continues to lack legitimacy in much of the Arab and Muslim worlds. Israel's improved regional standing resulted from recognition of Israeli military power rather than from a fundamental shift in public attitudes.
Israel cannot subdue Iran, a nation of 90 million people led by an Islamic clerical elite that is relatively insensitive to the costs of sustained confrontation. Israel can, however, significantly degrade Iran's capacity to inflict harm upon it. Hamas and Hizbullah also cannot be decisively defeated so long as they retain substantial popular support and continue to receive state backing for military development and funding.
Israel has not succeeded in disarming Hamas in Judea and Samaria, where it has maintained military control since 1967. These organizations can be weakened, and their operational capabilities significantly reduced, but they cannot be fully eliminated as long as they retain mass domestic support and receive substantial external assistance.
When no attainable political solution is in sight, the most realistic goal becomes the denial of enemy capabilities and objectives. Israeli military operations are designed precisely to prevent the other side from achieving its strategic aims.
Amb. Alan Baker:
The Penchant for Blaming Israel and Jews for Everything
There is something deeply troubling about the manner in which Israel and the Jewish people have once again become the focus of an extraordinary campaign of political condemnation, public vilification, and international hostility. Public figures feel able to malign Israel and Jews in sweeping, inflammatory and often baseless terms - and to do so with the apparent confidence that social media will provide them with millions of receptive followers. Hostility toward Israel and Jews has become socially acceptable, politically advantageous, and increasingly immune from serious scrutiny.
In Europe, when governments and political leaders in Ireland, Spain, Canada, Australia, and Britain appear willing to embrace, or lend credence to, false allegations of genocide and deliberate starvation against Israel and its leaders without the factual and legal basis for such allegations, one must ask whether European governments have become incapable, or unwilling, to resist politically motivated campaigns against Israel.
Many Western governments have historically sponsored, financed, and supported the Oslo process and subsequent Israeli-Palestinian agreements. Those agreements created reciprocal obligations and were intended to provide the legal and political framework for resolving outstanding issues through negotiation. Yet when states that helped create and endorse that framework subsequently support initiatives that bypass, weaken, or undermine its fundamental commitments, the credibility of their own diplomatic guarantees is inevitably called into question.
One must therefore ask: what confidence can Israel, or any state, place in international assurances concerning future agreements if the states providing those assurances are themselves prepared to disregard or circumvent the commitments embodied in existing agreements? The issue is whether fundamental principles of international relations and treaty commitments are to be respected.
Israel appears repeatedly to be treated as an exceptional case: subjected to an extraordinary level of international scrutiny, condemnation and political pressure. Legitimate criticism is an essential component of democratic discourse. But criticism becomes something entirely different when it is selective, disproportionate, detached from facts, or based upon standards that are not applied consistently to other states and peoples.
From Ian:
Brendan O'Neill:
Gazaholics like Gary Lineker are a menace to reason
Are we going to talk about this? About the fact that Gary Lineker, footballer turned podcast impresario, for years one of the highest-paid talking heads at the BBC, is sharing a post from a group that said the Islamist butcher of ISIS had been a ‘kind, gentle’ soul? Worse, a post containing flagrant Holocaust inversion, where the Jewish homeland is grossly reimagined as the moral heir to Nazism? No? We’re just going to let it slide?
It is a testament to the virulence of Israelophobia, to its almost total conquest of the bourgeois mind, that stuff like this barely makes a ripple these days. There was a time when if a well-known public figure had hyped a CAGE post and platformed the noxious idea that the Jewish State is Nazi-like, people would have said: ‘Oh, what’s going on here?’ Not anymore. So thoroughly has polite society been colonised by bug-eyed anti-Israel animus that Lineker’s antics provoke no emotional response at all. Except perhaps haughty nods of approval.
Lineker has form. He parted ways with the BBC last year over what the press rather politely called ‘an anti-Semitism controversy’ – he had reposted a delirious rant about Zionism that was illustrated with a rat. Zionists as vermin? Classy. And then these people have the nerve to call others Nazis, despite their own giddy rehashing or reposting of the Nazi-era notion that Jews are the rodents of humanity.
Equating Zionism to Nazism is not clever political critique – it is raw, unadulterated bigotry. As the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance says in its working definition of anti-Semitism, it is racist to ‘[draw] comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis’. Howard Jacobson said it best. There are untold wars from history that the Israel-Hamas War could be compared with, he said. The reason they compare it with the Holocaust is because their lowlife aim is ‘to wound Jews… to punish them with their own grief’. It’s Jew-shaming masquerading as pacifism.
Lineker sums up the commenting class’s pathological loss of moral proportion. The way these people talk, you’d think Israel’s pursuit of the Islamofascists of Hamas was the worst war of modernity, a ‘crime’ as racist and insane as the Nazis’. Yet Lineker himself is pals with a bloke – Alastair Campbell – whose political fabulism helped to launch a war in Iraq that on every moral metric was worse than what’s happened in the Middle East these past three years. I wonder if Lineker has ever called Al a rat-like killer of kids who’s not dissimilar to Hitler?
Lineker’s descent from dull but knowledgeable sports fella into the Zio-rat guy is proof that Israelophobia turns your mind to mush. The spotty kid who watches hours of Tate has nothing on these Boomers and geriatric millennials who brainlessly lap up every hyper-edited, context-free clip from Gaza as hard proof that Israel is a monstrous entity. This is real online radicalisation: the frying of a million middle-class brains by algorithmic bigotry and the moral pornography of war.
We are witnessing the great cognitive collapse of the Western liberal elite. A media establishment that once prided itself on scepticism and intellectual rigour now acts like an army of mind-wiped converts to a digital cult. Lineker and the rest of the Israel-wary class are not leading a moral awakening – they’re the latest victims of an internet ecosystem that rewards superficial emotionalism and punishes nuance. We need a Gazaholics Anonymous, stat.
Mamdani silent on calls for antisemitic Brooklyn pol’s resignation
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani refused on Monday to answer questions about a Brooklyn Democratic leader who promoted Henry Ford’s The International Jew and blamed a property dispute on “Zionists.”
Following an unrelated event in Queens, the mayor refused to answer on three separate occasions when Jewish Insider pressed him about Carmella Charrington, elected in June to the unpaid but important role of Democratic district leader. As first reported by JI, Charrington shared an Instagram video last fall boosting the notorious pamphlet series by the founder of the Ford Motor Company, a clip that blamed Jewish people for a range of societal maladies from slavery to the proliferation of alcohol and drugs.
Charrington first rose to prominence over a dispute over control of her family home, describing herself as a victim of deed theft, while New York State Attorney General Letitia James’ office found that the battle over her brownstone in Bedford-Stuyvesant was simply a complicated dispute over the estate of her Alzheimer’s-stricken father. Charrington has attacked the Jewish investors involved as “Zionists” and suggested some link between her situation and Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank.
After publication, Mamdani’s team reached out with a statement addressing Charrington’s attacks on the property investors.
“Suggesting that an alleged deed theft in Brooklyn is part of a global conspiracy involving Jewish people is blatant, reprehensible antisemitism,” the statement said. “Trafficking in these dangerous antisemitic tropes is vile and inexcusable.”
However, the administration did not answer a follow-up question about whether the mayor believed Charrington should step aside from her district leader role.
JI’s reporting on Charrington’s antisemitic posts prompted condemnations from James and from New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin, though neither has called for her to step aside from her district leader position.
Meanwhile Democrats aligned with Brooklyn Democratic Party boss Rodneyse Bichotte — whom Charrington and her slate aim to remove — have demanded Charrington’s resignation.
Mamdani Hired Staffer for His Friend's Campaign Who Was Later Arrested for 'Terroristic Threat' Against Teenage 'Lexus-Driving, Israel-Loving Zionists'
Zohran Mamdani hired a campaign staffer who was later arrested for making a "terroristic threat" against Jewish students, the Washington Free Beacon can reveal. Mamdani made the hire in 2018, when he was running the failed State Senate campaign of the now-disgraced journalist and Mamdani hagiographer Ross Barkan.
The staffer hired by Mamdani, Iman Abdul, was arrested in August 2025 after posting a Google Maps screenshot of the location of Leon M. Goldstein High School for the Sciences in Manhattan Beach.
"If anyone needs a public school in NYC to attack for whatever reason … Lexus driving Israhell [sic] loving Zionisits [sic] all attend here," she added in a caption to the now-deleted post.
The public school is in a Brooklyn neighborhood with a large Jewish population. The school is 63 percent students of color, and 66 percent of the student body are "economically disadvantaged," according to city records. There are also multiple Jewish schools in the area that serve high school students.
Abdul, who went on to work as a youth organizer for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), was promptly arrested by the NYPD and charged with making a "terroristic threat," acting in a manner injurious to a child, aggravated harassment, and making a threat of mass harm, the New York Post reported at the time.
She pleaded guilty earlier this month to aggravated harassment as a hate crime, a felony. She was given a sweetheart deal by Brooklyn's far-left district attorney, Eric Gonzalez (D.), which allowed her to avoid jail time. In exchange for completing 20 counseling sessions, the charges would be knocked down to a misdemeanor, Post über-sleuth Susan B. Edelman reported on her Substack.
What quietly went unreported, however, was that Abdul was a paid canvasser for Barkan's unsuccessful 2018 campaign for New York State Senate in Brooklyn—earning $540 between July and August of that year from Team Barkan, state campaign finance records show.
‘Felt like a lynch mob,’ mom of 4-year-old says of NYC-funded festival, in which performer accuses Israel of ‘war crimes’
A Brooklyn Jewish mom expected an entertaining outing when she took her 4-year-old to a recent puppet festival. Instead, she found herself and her son listening to a recitation of Israel’s “war crimes” and keffiyah-clad performers taking part in a Gaza flotilla during a show billed as being about the quirks of living in New York City.
The performances were part of International Puppet Fringe Festival NYC, which is partially funded by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and New York State Council on the Arts, and took place in lower Manhattan from Aug. 12 to 16.
“They started with relatable New York skits, like about the pizza rat,” the mom, who declined to be named “because of the current environment,” told JNS, of a viral video of a rat dragging a discarded slice of pizza in a city subway station.
Another skit was about the perils of parking on New York City streets. “Performers had a cardboard car and showed the parallel parking shuffle,” when street cleaning rules require drivers to move their cars from one side of residential streets to the other, the mom said.
During the city-themed parts, the mom, who came to the United States from the former Soviet Union as a 7-year-old, told JNS that she “and the audience were one.”
“Everyone liked it,” she said.
After about 15 minutes, “a woman came in with a piece of paper and began reading a litany of accusations against Israel, and people began chanting ‘shame, shame,’” she told JNS.
Soon after that, eight performers grouped as a flotilla of ships bound for Gaza, the mother said.
“It felt like a lynch mob,” she told JNS. (JNS sought comment from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.)
“You feel naked, because you realize all these people knew who I was,” she said, since she didn’t join in the chant. “If I was by myself I would have just made an exit, but I was with my family and had a bunch of belongings.”
The experience was “pretty nauseating” for the mom.
“I’m an immigrant from the former Soviet Union, so antisemitism is why I’m here in the first place,” she told JNS. “To see it out in full effect in the daylight is awful.”
From Ian:
'I wanted to die': Husband and wife kidnapped on October 7 reveal hell they endured in Gaza - from seeing girls 'beaten to pieces' and sexually assaulted to being starved and tortured
When Aviva Siegel thinks back to the 51 days she spent as a hostage in Gaza, the spectre of Israeli women returning from sexual assault, bleeding and bruised, crowds her mind.
'I'm a witness of all of the girls who were beaten up into pieces,' she tells the Daily Mail from her home in northern Israel.
When one girl came back after the abuse, 'she was purple; I wanted to die,' Aviva admits. 'That was one of the hardest moments: knowing what was happening to the young girls.'
Women around the 65-year-old were forced by their Hamas captors into wearing tight, barely fitting clothing, and showering naked in front of the terrorists – with one guard entering the bathroom and forcing a girl into performing oral sex.
She sits next to her husband, Keith, who was kidnapped alongside her from their former home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza on October 7, 2023, one of the hardest-hit communities during Hamas' deadly onslaught.
It's almost been three years since that fateful day, yet the duo are still haunted by a mental 'album of pictures' from Gaza. 'Sometimes they run after me, and try to control me, and control my head,' Aviva says.
Keith, 67, who wasn't freed until after 484 days in the enclave, still finds himself obsessively showering, convinced he is somehow still imprinted by the 'dirt, the dust, the smoke' of the underground tunnel network.
'I even think, to this day, that I haven't been able to get rid of some of it. I sometimes have weird thoughts about not being clean,' he says.
Aviva, who was born in South Africa, released a book about the harrowing experience in March named 'The Main Thing is to Wake up to a New Morning,' written following her November 2023 release from captivity.
'Everybody who reads the book will feel what it's like to be a hostage in Gaza, underneath the ground, feeling like it's the end of the world,' she says.
Their story starts off the same as the thousands of other Israeli survivors of the massacre, which saw 1,200 people killed and 250 taken captive by Hamas.
On the morning of October 7, the couple bolted up at 6.30am to the sound of sirens blaring.
At 10.30am, Hamas gunmen stormed their home and broke into the safe room where they were hiding.
'They pulled us violently, brutally, out of the safe room, into our living room, and we were surrounded by between ten and 15 terrorists, screaming at each other and screaming at us,' Keith says.
During the brutal kidnapping, which saw militants ordering the couple to exit their home through the back window, Keith's ribs were broken and the meniscus in Aviva's knee was torn.
On the way to the car, terrorists shot Keith in the arm. Once in the vehicle, the couple sat, petrified, with one militant holding a knife to their faces and the other a gun.
Once in Gaza, Aviva was told to wear a hijab, while Keith was put in a robe.
The couple were kept together, but that brought little solace for Aviva, who was constantly terrified she'd witness her husband's death by asphyxiation in the torturous tunnel network.
In new book, Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib argues Hamas has held Palestinian population hostage for 20 years
Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, who lived in the Gaza Strip from the age of 10-15, describes himself as an advocate for the Palestinian people. Since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led terror attacks in Israel, 33 of Alkhatib’s immediate and extended family members have been killed. But in his latest book, Hamas and Its Two Million Hostages, Alkhatib argues that Hamas — rather than Israel — bears primary responsibility for the suffering and political stagnation of the people of Gaza.
Alkhatib is a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, where he directs Realign for Palestine, a project focused on pragmatic, nonviolent Palestinian advocacy. There, he denounces Hamas and advocates for Palestinian statehood alongside a secure Jewish state.
On Friday, Alkhatib spoke with Jewish Insider about his new book, his experiences growing up in Gaza and his outspoken criticism of Hamas. He also discussed the backlash he has faced from within his own community and why he believes that, ultimately, the terrorist group will have no role in the enclave’s future.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Jewish Insider: What inspired you to write Hamas and Its Two Million Hostages, and what does your book add to public debate on this issue that isn’t already out there?
Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib: I wanted to weave in elements of my personal story with Gaza’s contemporary history, and add a human dimension to what I felt was Hamas’ devastating impact on the Palestinian people, their destructive role in setting back the Palestinian national project and the radicalization of the society.
I felt that there’s a consistent gap in the discourse from a Palestinian self-interested point of view. Even though many Palestinians and Arabs and Muslims will tell you privately how devastating Hamas is, there’s a disconnect in the discourse outside of Gaza versus inside Gaza — where you’ll find a ton more willingness to speak out, not just because of the consequences of Oct. 7, but because of the totality of the last 20 years of their rule.
One of the things that’s really frustrating is how there is this persistent narrative that Gazans are all Hamas, Gazans support Hamas. It’s very difficult for the other side, for the Israelis and the pro-Israel folks, to see the humanity of Palestinians because they so fundamentally believe that Gaza is inseparable from Hamas. Nevertheless, I argue and maintain that directly and indirectly, Hamas has taken Gaza captive and is holding 2 million people as hostages.
Khaled Abu Toameh:
Repurposed Jihadists: Palestinian Terrorist Organizations Reborn as Political Parties
Why should Egypt be searching for a formula that would facilitate Hamas's return to Palestinian politics? Should Egypt and the rest of the international community not instead be demanding that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad surrender their weapons, dismantle their military structures, and disappear from Palestinian political life?
This new Palestinian "unity" alliance being planned would mean that instead of producing new and moderate Palestinian leaders, the election could result in a parliament in which Hamas, PIJ, and other rejectionist groups become major political power brokers and representatives of the Palestinians.
Is this really what Washington and its Western allies want? Are Western governments once again entertaining the fantasy that Islamist terrorist organizations can be transformed into legitimate political parties?
Hamas members can remove their military uniforms and put on suits. PIJ operatives can replace their rifles with election posters. They can talk about democracy, elections, and political partnership. None of that necessarily changes what they plan.
A "Western-driven disaster" could be developing in which accountability for Hamas is replaced by efforts to rescue the organization politically. "Hamas must never again be trusted with Palestinian politics. It should face the kind of post-defeat reckoning that Nazi Germany faced after World War Two or that the Baathist regimes of Iraq and Syria faced after their collapse. Why would a defeated terror organization that inflicted immense damage on its own people, its neighbors, and the entire region be offered an exit strategy or a political off-ramp? What possible campaign promise could Hamas present that makes it worthy of consideration in Palestinian elections? More war and jihad (holy war)? More governance failures? More corruption and theft of aid? Hamas is a spent force, a used and discarded object, a wrecked entity that cannot be repaired or repurposed." — Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Palestinian-American analyst from Gaza, X. August 21, 2026.
"Western governments, elites, and observers continue to display remarkable naivete about the Middle East, Arab political culture, and ideologically driven movements. Democracy is not simply voting at a booth. It is the creation of a democratic tradition, a free society, an open media environment, and a civic ethos that is not driven by ideology, religion, or extremism. The United States, under a Republican administration twenty years ago, made a grave mistake by insisting on elections that included Hamas. Will the Trump administration repeat the same error once again?" — Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, X, August 21, 2026.
The problem with the Western approach then was the assumption that participation in elections would moderate Hamas. Instead, Hamas used elections to gain legitimacy and power while retaining its weapons, ideology, and terrorist infrastructure.
There is no reason to believe that things would be different now. Hamas and PIJ might even accept cleverly-worded conditions to enable them to participate. They might go as far as saying they accept a Palestinian state alongside Israel. They will say whatever is necessary to get through the political door.
The real questions should be simpler: Will Hamas, PIJ and other Palestinian terrorist organizations recognize Israel's right to exist? Will they renounce terrorism? Will they surrender all their weapons? Will they dismantle their military wings? Will they abandon jihad as a means of eliminating Israel?
Unless the answer to all these questions is unequivocally yes, terrorists should have no role in elections, government, or Palestinian decision-making.
After October 7, 2023, the international community should be discussing how to remove Hamas and PIJ from Palestinian political and military life – not how to help them have seats in parliament.
Saturday, August 29, 2026
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