From Ian:
Anti-Zionism Is Repackaged Antisemitism
Yes, anti-Zionism is antisemitism. Unless one believes, in the spirit of John Lennon's "Imagine," in a world without any nation states, denying the Jewish people the right to a state - where more than 10 million live today and which is roughly the size of Wales - goes far beyond political disagreement. It signals deep-seated prejudice.
There are 193 UN member states. Only one - Israel, the lone Jewish-majority nation - has its legitimacy routinely questioned. That is ironic, since very few states can match the longevity of the Jewish people's ancestral link to a specific territory, stretching back more than three millennia.
The Hebrew Bible is replete with place names that existed in ancient times and endure today, beginning with Zion - a hill in King David's Jerusalem - and Jerusalem, the ancient and modern center of Jewish national life and capital of Israel. The Christian Bible builds on the Hebrew Bible, and its geography is inseparable from Jesus, the Judean Jew. The seventh-century Qur'an contains more than 40 references to the "Children of Israel."
Wars imposed on Israel since its rebirth in 1948 by those who rejected any Jewish national presence led to conflict. But Zionism's core purposes are to ensure Jews are no longer dependent on the goodwill of others for their survival; to provide a safe haven after centuries of persecution; to serve as a "light unto the nations"; and to establish a state at peace and in coexistence with its neighbors.
Israel rests on multiple layers of international recognition of a Jewish national home in the land. Compare that to the "legitimacy" of other states. What precisely are the foundations of legitimacy for the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand? In historical terms, they rest on conquest and subjugation of indigenous populations.
Most states derive legitimacy from the simple fact of their existence: they exist, therefore they are. Only Israel is persistently required to relitigate its right to exist in the face of persistent anti-Zionism - even 78 years after its rebirth and 77 years after joining the UN.
Palestinian Culture of Anti-Normalization Is a Central Obstacle to Peace
Were all Palestinians supporters of Hamas, or were there Palestinians who opposed the massacre and longed for a different future? My search for the answer led me to Moataz Al-Mansi in Gaza. "The future of Palestine is not built on hatred or on the dreams of cancelling the other," he wrote. "I dream of a relationship based on good neighbors, shared interests, and mutual respect."
I invited him to appear on my podcast, "Conversations at the Peace Table." Moataz told me he had lost both of his businesses during the war. His children had not attended school in years. Yet he refused to abandon his belief that Israelis and Palestinians must one day live as neighbors rather than enemies.
My friend Inbal, who worked closely with Palestinians in the West Bank for years, often told me that many Palestinians quietly desired coexistence but were afraid to say so publicly. Those who engaged with Israelis risked being labeled collaborators or traitors. Again and again, I heard the same story: Palestinians who sought dialogue often faced pressure from their own society, while Israelis who sought partnership struggled to find counterparts who could safely engage.
This helped me understand a central obstacle to peace: the culture of anti-normalization. Anti-normalization discourages dialogue, joint initiatives, business partnerships, cultural exchanges, and even personal friendships with Israelis or Jews. A Palestinian who speaks publicly about cooperation can be accused of betrayal. The result is that peace becomes socially dangerous and the public square becomes dominated by those who reject coexistence.
Two days ago, Moataz contacted me again. An article had appeared in a Gaza newspaper calling him a traitor. He believed the danger to his life had become immediate. He asked me to tell his story. "If something happens to me, it is because I chose peace."
Peace must first become socially acceptable among ordinary people. That requires protecting those courageous enough to see humanity in the other side. The ideology that condemns Moataz for reaching across the divide is the obstacle to peace. Until Palestinians who seek coexistence are free to do so without fear, and until activists stop treating anti-normalization as a moral virtue, those yearning for peace will continue to pay the highest price.
Solomon’s Pools: How the Palestinian Authority Neglected a Historical Treasure
To the north of the Israeli town of Efrat, and to the south of Bethlehem, lie Solomon’s Pools. The pools were part of an extensive water infrastructure originating in the Judean hills that supplied water to the Jewish Temples in Jerusalem. Whether the pools are those referred to by King Solomon in the Book of Ecclesiastes (2.6), who wrote, “I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees,” remains a subject of debate.
In the Oslo Accords, Judea and Samaria were divided into three areas, which can generally be defined as follows: Area A – mostly under the complete jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority, subject to overriding Israeli jurisdiction to combat terror; Area B – joint control with the PA holding jurisdiction for civilian affairs and Israel holding security jurisdiction; Area C – full Israeli jurisdiction.
Each area in which Israel transferred jurisdiction to the PA – i.e., every area that would become part of areas A and B – was carefully delineated on agreed maps, with area C being the remainder.
The Oslo Accords never envisaged a situation in which Areas A and B would be off limits to Israelis. Rather, the accords included specific provisions regarding both the treatment of Israelis present in those areas and the manner in which the PA treated Jewish historical sites that were included therein.
The Israeli participants in the talks with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Israeli authors of the accords certainly did not anticipate a situation in which this area would become dominated by hostile PA forces and other Palestinian terrorist organizations, and that almost every entry of a Jew into those areas would potentially be accompanied by mortal danger.
Here, it should be stressed that the danger posed in areas A and B is only to Israeli Jews. Israeli Arabs – i.e., the millions of Arabs Israeli citizens – are free to enter, study, and even live in areas A and B.
Since the classification of an area as Area A, B, or C was not meant to be a hindrance to access, the Oslo negotiating sides saw no obstacle to including Solomon’s Pools within Area A. The inclusion of this specific site within area A, did, however, present a unique challenge to the PA.
According to the PA narrative, Jews are modern-day European colonizers of “Palestine,” a state that never actually existed. Jews, according to the PA, have no history or connection to the area. For the PA, the statement in the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, in which “recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country,” was simply wrong and baseless. The PA narrative is so dogmatic that it even outrageously denies any Jewish connection to the Temple Mount.
From Ian:
Tom Tugendhat:
A Richer Iranian Regime Means a More Violent One
Supporters of the U.S.-Iran MoU in Tehran consider it an ideological victory, a deal that confirms the regime's claims to dominate the Strait of Hormuz and project power in the Middle East. Yet, skeptical observers want to know: How much extra security spending will be necessary if Iranian terror groups receive the biggest injection of funds in a generation?
A decade ago, once the Obama administration eased sanctions as part of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Iranian regime spent billions on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' support for the Assad regime in Syria and on Hizbullah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and the Houthis in Yemen.
Some in Europe have viewed Iran as a regional problem, but in October 2025, the director general of MI5, Britain's domestic security agency, said the country had tracked more than 20 potentially lethal Iran-backed plots in the past year alone. Tehran's influence campaigns have evidently moved online too. Pro-Scottish independence accounts recently went silent when the internet was shut off in Iran.
Since the death of the last supreme leader, the IRGC has largely taken over the state. They aren't interested in serving their fellow citizens but in killing ours. Whatever any treaty says, once new money is in the country, it will allow funds once spent on essentials to be used to spread hate. No deal will tie the hands of the IRGC.
History suggests, then, that this deal is more expensive than the fine print lets on. A richer Iranian regime will be a more violent regime, costing lives in the region and threatening others around the world. That means national security services will face more hostile state activity and a new urgency in detecting and disrupting threats. They will need more resources for that fight.
Jake Wallis Simons:
The three-word chant that demolishes the case for peace with Iran
The Iranians want peace, apparently. At least, that’s what Donald Trump has been claiming since he exchanged his determination to defeat the Islamic Regime for an insatiable desire to appease it.
Sure, the US president has sometimes oscillated back towards childish threats of death and destruction. Last month, he vowed to “finish the job” and “resume a bombing campaign” if Iran did not “behave”.
But his actions – cancelling the most effective parts of his campaign before signing a deal that vowed to end US hostility, lift all sanctions, fund a rebuilding effort, tie Israel’s hands in Lebanon and kick the nuclear can down the road – have already shown the world which of his Janus faces should be taken more seriously.
Well, one can only imagine how he feels watching the dreadful scenes at the funeral of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which was so provocatively timed to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the birth of America.
A cowed and broken regime might have been expected to tone down the usual “death to America” and “death to Israel” content, for fear of further aggravating the world’s only superpower. We’d better give it a rest, they might have muttered. For now, at least.
Instead, the rhetoric was gratuitous. Along with the standard “death to America” cries, they shouted, “our word is one! revenge! revenge!” amid the sight of Khamenei’s coffin. In the mob at Grand Mosalla, a banner displayed the slogan: “#KillTrump”.
Hamas Rakes in Millions, Prepares for War
Israeli security officials say Hamas is continuing to grow stronger and rebuild itself for a confrontation with Israel, both through money reaching it from outside Gaza and thanks to the "humanitarian" aid that continues to enter Gaza unchecked, about 600 trucks a day, while the real need is only about 200-250 trucks a day.
Hamas directly taxes the incoming trucks, collecting a tax of 15-30% from merchants. Hamas also forces merchants to sell their goods to traders operating under its auspices at a "supervised" price, so it can take a cut of the profits. In addition, Hamas manages to smuggle banned products into Gaza, such as cigarettes, which are sold at high prices and taxed at a higher rate.
There is evidence that Hamas sells electricity produced by hospital generators to residents living near the hospitals, using fuel that enters Gaza for humanitarian needs. It also charges rent for local merchants operating markets and stalls, and imposes fees for renewing business licenses. All this enables Hamas to efficiently fund its military arrays.
Sources in the defense establishment said, "The money Hamas receives from outside Gaza, along with the strengthening it achieves through the aid entering the Strip, enables it to rehabilitate military infrastructure and recruit new and young operatives who cannot find other work in Gaza. The money Hamas offers is their solution."
"We cannot repeat the statements we made before Oct. 7, according to which Hamas was deterred and would not attack. We cannot once again ignore what the other side is doing."
From Ian:
Jeffrey Herf:
From Historian to Polemicist: What Went Wrong with Omer Bartov
Bartov’s betrayal of the craft of history is apparent in a deficiency of evidence and causal reasoning. He refers to the “genocidal intentions openly expressed by Israel politicians and senior military officials” as if this was a proven fact. Nowhere in this book is there a discussion of the details of Israeli military operations, of the battle for specific towns or areas in Gaza, or of how various Israeli units conducted themselves. Yet Bartov claims that “the pattern of operations by the IDF” in Gaza, which he has not examined, leads him to conclude “that these [genocidal] intentions were put into practice.” Attacks on civilian infrastructure, hospitals, schools, water supplies, and electricity grids “went far beyond military necessity … . All of this was not accidental, but part of a strategy to destroy Gaza as a livable space for Palestinians. Even if there was no formal order for genocide, military logic show that genocide was the consequence.” It was “no longer a coincidence” but was “a deliberately pursued policy” (pp. 193-194).
Bartov fails both to establish that a genocide occurred and, even on that assumption, to provide evidence or a causal account of it as a “deliberately pursued policy.” This is a shocking conclusion for an historian of Nazi Germany to advance. As readers familiar with the works of Yehuda Bauer, Richard Breitman, Christopher Browning, Lucy Dawidowicz, Raul Hilberg, Saul Friedländer, Ian Kershaw, Peter Longerich, and many others know very well, the effort to establish the causal connections between Hitler’s ideology and the decision-making that led to the Final Solution has consumed thousands of pages, tens of thousands of footnotes, years of research in archives, careful examination of the dates and sequence of statements, meetings and orders to the Einsatzgruppen, and the construction and operation of the death camps. Yet Bartov, without access to Israeli archives and having made no serious examination of the public record of Israeli decision-making confidently asserts the existence of a “deliberately pursued policy.” There is no reason to take this conclusion seriously. Here again, Bartov has abandoned the historian’s craft in favor of polemics.
Bartov the polemicist concludes with an accusation of collective guilt against Israelis. “How,” he asks, “How do we come to terms with the obliteration of Gaza? Will Israel ever face justice for its genocidal actions?” (p. 201). The long-term consequence of “this travesty may, however, be that the genocide in Gaza will finally liberate Israel of its status as a unique state rooted in a unique Holocaust.” The “license that Israel, the land of the victim, has long enjoyed and abused may be expiring. The sons and daughters of the next generation will be free to rethink their own lives and their future, beyond the memory of the Holocaust; they will also have to pay for the sins of their parents and bear the burden of the genocide perpetrated in their name” (p. 203).
So having written a book of unsubstantiated accusations, Bartov plays judge and jury declaring the accused guilty. Israel will “not be viable,” will become a “pariah state … isolated from its allies and the Jewish diaspora,” and eventually “Israeli apartheid will implode, as happened in South Africa under the pressure of mass protests, violence an arms embargo and economic sanctions by the international community” (206). An alternative to that is the replacement of the existing state of Israel with some form of confederation of Israelis and Palestinians that replaces the Zionist project.
Bartov has written a book that combines a paucity of evidence and a compelling causal argument with a writing style that is likely to appeal to journalists and political activists and even academics eager to read an Israeli-born historian of the Holocaust who eloquently reinforces their increasingly antagonistic views not only of the State of Israel but also of the Israelis as people. The question is not whether Bartov is an antisemite, though it is clear that he thoroughly rejects Zionism. The issue is whether, in Israel: What Went Wrong, he advances arguments that are true or false—and, if false, whether the book recycles and skillfully refurbishes the oldest and most enduring accusation at the core of antisemitic ideology: namely, that the Jews, since the time of the Crucifixion, through the Koranic stories of Jews killing the prophets, to the blood libels and modern conspiracy theories blaming them for wars, are a people uniquely inclined by habit, tradition, and character toward the murder of the innocent. This calumny lay at the heart of centuries of anti-Jewish persecution and culminated in the Holocaust, when the Nazis propagated the idea of international Jewry bent on the “extermination” of the German people.
The charge of genocide against the State of Israel should be understood within this long history of antisemitic libels. Like the calumnies that preceded it, it transmutes claims supported by little or no evidence into articles of faith and passionately held convictions. The problem with Bartov’s argument is not that it is wrong because it is antisemitic; it is wrong because it is false. Yet the repeated circulation of such falsehoods against the Jews—and now against Israel—inevitably fuels antisemitism, intensifying hatred of Jews around the world, and deepening the growing hostility toward Israel.
Bartov’s tome is likely to contribute to the ongoing effort to make hatred of Israel respectable in the faculty lounge, the editorial office, the think tank, and in many political parties. I hope that in this case, the strategy of prestige transfer fails and that more discerning readers will ponder the question “What went wrong with Omer Bartov?” The book does not represent the standards expected from professional historians nor from what we should expect from a distinguished publisher such as Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Nevertheless, initial responses indicate that it may be a successful polemic and a commercial success. Its lack of scholarly distinction will not diminish its contribution to the global campaign to undermine the legitimacy of the state of Israel. If so, it will not be the first time that a very bad book has an outsized impact on public and published opinion.
Jonathan Tobin:
Are the Democrats to become America’s anti-Israel party?
Is it possible for the pendulum among Democrats to swing back to the center over the course of the next two years? Possibly. If leftist candidates, like Michigan’s pro-Islamist Abdul El-Sayeed, are defeated by Republicans in November (Maine’s Nazi-tattooed Israel-bashing Graham Platner may be crashing and burning due to allegations of sexual assault that may destroy his candidacy long before the voters render their verdict), it could convince many Democrats to change course. The far left’s dominance in primaries has given Trump an issue that could lead to the disappointment of the Democrats’ expectations for a midterm blue wave in the same manner that sunk the GOP’s hopes for a red wave in 2022.
Such a scenario could be ideal for Shapiro. But in a party that seems convinced that it lost the White House and Congress in 2024 because their leaders were insufficiently anti-Israel, rather than because of their embrace of far-left ideas like gender ideology and critical race theory, that sort of sensible thinking seems unlikely.
And it’s unclear if Fetterman, whose health issues have dogged him for the past four years, will even try to hold onto his seat in 2028. Though he has a respectable amount of money on hand in his campaign treasury, his fundraising efforts have stalled in the last couple of years. Were he to cross the aisle and become a Republican, that might be an easier path to another six-year term, though that seems unlikely. And while independents have won Senate races in other states, that is viewed as less likely in Pennsylvania, due to both the partisan spirit of the times and the way the commonwealth’s election system is skewed toward enforcing party dominance. The smart money is now on him simply not running for re-election. If so, he will be missed because of his rather unique style, both in terms of his centrism and his sartorial choices.
A haunting precedent
The problem for someone like Shapiro, who tries but usually fails to conceal his unquenchable ambition for higher office, is that the shift to the left among Democrats may have already gone too far to accommodate someone with his views, particularly on Israel.
Indeed, his hopes for a return of the Democratic Party of 1992 should worry rather than encourage him. In that time, the dominant politician in Pennsylvania was one of his predecessors in Harrisburg, Gov. Bob Casey Sr. (father to his namesake, who represented Pennsylvania in the Senate from 2007 to 2025). The popular Casey was a throwback to an earlier era of American politics in many ways, not least because he is usually referred to as the last of the pro-life Democrats. The Clinton camp denied him a speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention largely because they felt that it was no longer possible to give that sort of prominence to someone who was so out of touch with the rest of the party on an issue on which so many felt so strongly.
That precedent should haunt Shapiro. Because just as anti-abortion Democrats are now extinct, it’s entirely possible that if current trends hold, by 2028 or soon thereafter, pro-Israel Democrats might be put in the same position. Indeed, right now, I’d say the odds of Shapiro being denied a speaking slot at the 2028 DNC are slightly higher than his rather minimal chances of being nominated for president at that gathering.
Even if you don’t share Shapiro’s high opinion of his capabilities, that’s tragic. If, as recent primaries and the polls indicate, opposition to Israel is a requirement to get the votes of most Democrats, the party is on the verge of becoming as anti-Israel as it is pro-abortion. While the rise of antisemitism on the right is creating genuine concerns about the future of the Republican Party, the far more serious situation on the left is now creating the possibility that the national Democratic Party will soon not be so much divided on Israel but will have become a space where politicians like Shapiro, let alone Fetterman, will have no place in it.
From Ian:
Why Entebbe Wouldn’t be Celebrated Today
Zionism, once understood by many as the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, had become, in much of Western discourse, synonymous with colonialism, racism and oppression. The Jewish homeland became the Jewish oppressor, while Jewish self-defence became uniquely suspect.
After the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, many Jews found themselves accused not because they celebrated murder, but because they celebrated rescue.
Think about that for a moment.
More Jews were murdered on 7 October than on any day since the Holocaust, hundreds more were kidnapped, families watched parents, children and grandparents dragged into Gaza to face torture, sexual violence and captivity.
Yet the expectation placed upon Israel by much of the international community was unlike that demanded of almost any other democracy. If rescuing your own citizens risks too many civilian casualties because terrorists have embedded themselves among civilians, then perhaps your citizens should remain where they are.
That expectation would have been unimaginable in 1976.
The Jewish state was created because Jewish history had demonstrated, catastrophically, what happens when Jews lack both sovereignty and the means to defend themselves. After the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, many seemed to believe that lesson should be forgotten.
Entebbe taught the world that Jews would never again be abandoned. Nuseirat revealed how many people now believed they should have been.
This is not an argument against criticising Israel. Criticise governments, criticise military strategy, criticise political leaders. Every democracy should expect that scrutiny. It is, however, an argument against changing the moral principles by which democracies are judged.
Because if we conclude that the rescue of hostages becomes illegitimate simply because terrorists have made the rescue sufficiently costly, then we hand every terrorist organisation in the world a blueprint.
Hide behind civilians, kidnap innocents, raise the price of rescue. Wait for democracies to decide that saving their own people is no longer worth the condemnation.
Fifty years ago, the world looked at Entebbe and saw a democracy refusing to abandon its citizens. Almost fifty years later, much of the world looked at Nuseirat and asked whether those citizens should have been rescued at all.
Fifty years ago, Israel was admired because it refused to abandon Jews. Today, it is too often condemned for refusing to abandon them.
The operation changed remarkably little. It was the world that changed.
Israel urges WHO to condemn Hamas over press conference at Gaza hospital
Israel’s mission in Geneva on Monday called on the World Health Organization to denounce Hamas after the terrorist group held a press conference outside a hospital in the Gaza Strip.
“Hamas held a press conference today at Shuhada al-Aqsa Hospital in Gaza,” the mission wrote on X, using the Arabic name for the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza.
“Any silence on Hamas’ exploitation of the hospital for propaganda will be a choice,” it continued, tagging the WHO and its director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“Al-Shifa, Nasser, and Kamal Adwan Hospitals, all have been abused by Hamas to hide terrorists and weapons, cynically and brazenly. They used them as terror hubs to hide and torture hostages. And now they use a hospital as a stage for propaganda,” the post added. “With each step, WHO’s silence is so much more deafening.”
The press conference was held outside the emergency department of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital on Monday afternoon by Ismail Thawabta, head of Hamas’s “government” media office, and Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem.
Thawabta and Qassem announced that Hamas was dissolving one of the key “civilian” bodies through which it administers Gaza, while saying employees would remain in their posts, in what appeared to be a largely symbolic move.
An Israeli official told Kan News public broadcaster that the purported resignation of the Hamas government, while all of its members remain in office, was “a spin that means absolutely nothing.”
A Turning Point in a Parking Lot
A single nighttime photo from October 17, 2023 exposed the Hamas playbook and Al Jazeera’s role in laundering it through global media and human rights organizations. It was the first consequential press event for Palestinians since October 7 and was a turning point in the war.
The photo is the choreographed scene broadcast live from Al-Shifa hospital in the immediate aftermath of an explosion at the nearby Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital. The Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health claimed that 500 Palestinians were killed in a “targeted” Israeli airstrike of the 80-bed hospital in Gaza City just two hours before.
It was a lie.
An errant rocket fired by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) landed among a dense crowd of Palestinian civilians seeking shelter in the hospital parking lot. The bodies from Al-Ahli Baptist were rushed to a press conference at Gaza’s largest hospital, where they knew international media were already stationed and ready.
The shrouded bodies are presumably real. But note the unidentified young man in front of the podium posing with a dead infant still in its bloodied clothing. Note the second young man holding the corpse of a young girl.
This was not merely a press conference. It was macabre theatre for a global audience that was in denial about the mass atrocities Hamas perpetrated only ten days prior.
It was an attempt to stop the war while Hamas still held 240 hostages and before Israeli ground forces could enter the Strip to rescue them and stop the incessant rocket fire.
While it failed to halt Israel's offensive, this is the event that crystallized the "Israel bombs hospitals" narrative and that primed audiences for the rapid spread of the genocide libel.
At the press conference, Dr. Abu-Sittah said:
“Every western politician who has declared unconditional support for Israel’s war effort on the Palestinian people has the blood of these children on their hands. That unconditional support is what led us to this massacre… no other country feels free to target hospitals and get away with it. What happened today is a war crime.”
From Ian:
How Israeli Society Reacted to Oct. 7
Micha Popper, 78, professor emeritus in psychology at the University of Haifa, said, after the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, "We were going crazy, thinking: What can we do? So we drove down to [Kibbutz] Kfar Azza [a few days later]."
"This was during the early days. Everything was in ruins, they had just removed the bodies. We started to clean the refrigerators in the dining hall, to work in the fields - we helped physically with whatever we could, and we were in contact with the army personnel who were in charge of the work there. We decided to go anywhere where help was needed."
"I saw that there are masses of people here who simply couldn't stand by. That wherever there is a problem, they are there. It floored me."
"Everything worked excellently, without the need for meetings, through spontaneous activity that was carried out by talented, take-charge people who came up with ideas of their own."
"And they did it masterfully, with the aid of other skillful individuals: locating missing people; establishing schools and daycare for the people evacuated from their homes; farming; providing psychological assistance to and employment for the evacuees; helping businesses."
"Israelis are problem solvers. Give them a problem and they'll know how to handle it. And then there is the ability to improvise, implement and be creative. That has to do with our history, with survivability."
"And then there is familyhood, which is part of the willingness to step in and carry the burden together."
"There was a woman who understood algorithms, data, and she suggested an idea to locate missing persons with the aid of photographs taken by the [Hamas] terrorists, who filmed everything with their body cameras. To look for all sorts of signs - like a stain on a shirt."
"She brought in a high-tech person and a few other people, and together they created things that don't exist anywhere in the world. After three days it was already up and running. The Israel Security Agency called; they wanted what the group had invented."
"There were plenty of initiatives like that, of people with vision, creativity and knowhow in their fields. No one waited for anyone."
"I saw people coming in private cars to transport equipment to wherever it was needed. I saw CEOs, well-known people who had already retired, companies that donated money. It was like they were all on steroids; people didn't sleep."
"Having so many go-getters is something you don't see anywhere in the world."
Gerald Steinberg:
When Medical Journals Sell Hate Propaganda: The Lancet Crosses the Line (Again)
The ramifications of The Lancet’s role in this campaign should disturb anyone who takes science, medical ethics, and professional accountability seriously. It is also, more broadly, another step toward the normalization of silencing among doctors and health providers — actions that have become distressingly common among academics, including medical schools. The central involvement of once respected humanitarian NGOs such as Doctors Without Borders highlights the processes by which these structures have been hijacked by small groups of anti-Israel activists.
Horton has a long history of abusing his position and The Lancet to publish pseudo-scientific articles filled with false accusations against Israel, including an “An Open Letter for the People of Gaza,” a heinously propagandistic screed. Two co-authors had sent emails to other medical professionals under the subject line “CNN Goldman Sachs & the Zio Matrix” that promoted a video featuring white supremacist leader David Duke and other antisemitic materials.
In 2014, following many calls for Horton’s removal, he suddenly appeared before an audience of Israeli doctors and expressed contrition, declaring he was hurt by the accusations of antisemitism and of abusing his position as editor of the medical publication.
But now, Horton and The Lancet have reverted to earlier form, joining in a campaign led by fringe NGOs that singles out Israel for opprobrium and vicious demonization. Once again, the abuse and lack of accountability is blatant.
In response, Horton repeats his standard claim that professional journals should not be “neutral” or hide their “moral outrage,” in this case, triggered by Israeli actions in Gaza following the October 7 atrocities. But this argument collapses in the absence of any criteria or review processes for the ostensibly moral claims and the evidence ostensibly behind them. Instead, moral outrage is simply an excuse for abandonment of scientific principles — and systematic discrimination and bias targeting Israel in general, and medical professionals in particular.
Neither The Lancet nor the NGOs pushing this campaign have called for boycotts of medical associations in the many countries involved in actual — as distinct from invented — ethical violations, for example, Russia, Iran, Sudan, and China.
The credibility of scientific publishing depends precisely on the ability to distinguish between evidence-based claims and ideological advocacy. By erasing that distinction, this once respected journal is transformed into another platform for orchestrated discrimination and demonization.
The responsibility for ending such abuse rests first and foremost with the publisher, Elsevier, and its corporate framework, which has already allowed Horton to control this platform for far too long. The lack of oversight and accountability, and the stain resulting from the trashing of medical ethics has spread throughout Elsevier’s network of publications and other activities. The time to pull the plug on this farce is long overdue.
Doctors Without Borders plagued by deep-rooted antisemitism, anti-Zionism, NGO Monitor says
Antisemitism, anti-Zionism, and other expressions of hostility are “deeply rooted” within Doctors Without Borders (MSF), claimed NGO Monitor in its new report “Documenting the Antisemitic Organizational Culture of Doctors Without Borders.”
The report documents MSF’s internal staff conversations and culture regarding Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the personal experiences of Jewish staff members within the organization.
Based on these many testimonials by MSF insiders, NGO Monitor says it is “clear that antisemitism and anti-Israel bias are widespread in MSF’s organizational culture and are expressed by both top officials and lower-level staff.”
One testimony is from former MSF Secretary-General Richard Rossin, who, on July 13, 2024, told Canada’s National Post that the ideological bias against Israel “was perceptible around the beginning of the 80’s.”
“Antisemitism within MSF began under the cover of anti-Zionism. It [the ideological shift] cannot be fixed. How can you fix antisemitism, which is not an opinion but a mental disease?” Rossin said.
MSF Holland contingent refused to interact with a fellow Israeli medical NGO team
The National Post wrote, “Rossin recalled his experience in 2010 on a mission to Uganda when an MSF Holland contingent refused to interact with a fellow Israeli medical NGO team dispatched to help. Rossin remembered it as an episode of ‘one-way empathy,’ where prejudice had poisoned the MSF team’s ability to cooperate with Israel in their shared goal of helping civilians. He feels these same issues continue to plague MSF’s mission in Gaza today.”
NGO Monitor also draws on the words of Alain Destexhe, a doctor with MSF in the 1980s and its Secretary-General in the 1990s. In an October 2025 interview, Destexhe stated: “I think now MSF in Gaza is really taking the side [of] Hamas and against Israel. Americans need to know that Doctors Without Borders is not anymore the organization that it was 15 or 20 years ago. It has become a biased, partial and militant organization.”
“MSF is lying, MSF is partial, MSF is biased, and MSF is an accomplice of Hamas.”
MICHAEL GOLDFARB, who is Jewish, spent 15 years at Doctors without Borders US. He told The Jewish Chronicle of London in March 2026 that “European colleagues freely told me, knowing I am Jewish, that Israel doesn’t have a right to exist.”
“You see extreme ideological fervour – Israel as a Nazi state, Jews as the oppressive, colonial, white supremacists, Zionism as Nazism,” Goldfarb said. “Nothing meaningful has been done to address antisemitism, to show solidarity with Jewish staff, or call out this hate. That creates a permissive environment in which it flourishes.”
From Ian:
250 years of America: The alliance that safeguards the free world
Not just interests
Some believe that the closeness between Israel and the United States stems solely from geopolitical considerations. There is no doubt that shared interests matter, but they do not explain the depth of the relationship. The deeper reason is that Israel and America are perceived, by their friends and enemies alike, as representing a similar idea: human liberty, moral responsibility and the belief that man is created in the image of God.
It is no coincidence that regimes and movements that hate the Jewish nation also tend to hate America. And with almost the same consistency with which hatred of Jews has served as a moral test for societies, hatred of America has also become a moral test of nations, regimes and individuals. Despite all its flaws, America alone stands between democracy and the rise of tyranny around the world, and so it is no surprise that among tyrannical regimes and their defenders, America and Israel are so often identified as one and the same enemy.
This is not only because the United States stands alone behind Israel; the United States has also given generously to various Arab states, and at several critical moments even supported Arab regimes (such as Nasser’s Egypt in 1956) against Israel itself. This hostility stems largely from the fact that America and Israel continue to strive toward a moral ideal higher than themselves: the belief that liberty is not only a right but also a moral responsibility granted by God, and that a nation’s strength is measured not only by its power but also by its values. This is also why the two non-Muslim countries that have suffered the most casualties from Islamic suicide bombings are the United States and Israel.
An alliance that must never be taken for granted
For precisely these reasons, neither Israelis nor Americans can afford to take their alliance for granted. The special relationship between Israel and the United States is founded on far more than defense agreements, military assistance or intelligence cooperation. Above all, it rests on cultural, moral and spiritual foundations that have been built over more than four centuries, from the voyages of the Mayflower and the Arabella to the New World, through Independence Hall in Philadelphia, and into today’s Oval Office.
This is why the relationship between the United States and Israel has endured crises, changes of administration, and political disagreements for nearly eight decades. It is also why it has the strength to withstand the challenges of the future.
As America marks a quarter millennium of independence, and Israel continues to fight for its security and its right to exist, we should remember that the alliance between Jerusalem and Washington did not begin in 1967, nor even in 1948. Its roots run far deeper.
They are anchored in an ancient book given in the wilderness of Sinai thousands of years ago, a book that found a home at the very heart of the American story. That is why this alliance is greater than any administration, deeper than any disagreement, and longer-lasting than any political cycle. As long as both nations remain faithful to those values, they will not only secure their own futures, but also strengthen the very foundations of the free world.
Happy Independence Day, America. And thank you.
America at 250: Why Washington’s promise to US Jews still matters
As America celebrates Independence Day and the 250th year of our Republic, it is worth recalling one of the founding promises that has distinguished our nation from the beginning.
In 1790, president George Washington wrote to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, assuring a small community of Sephardi Jews that the Government of the United States “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”
Those words were no mere courtesy. They were revolutionary.
The Jews who received Washington’s letter were descendants of families expelled from Spain and Portugal, driven from one refuge to another across Europe, the Caribbean, and the New World. They knew what it meant to live only on sufferance, forever dependent upon the whims of princes and magistrates.
Washington offered something radically different: not toleration bestowed by a sovereign, but equal citizenship secured by law.
Americans of every faith, he declared, would stand not as guests but as equal members of one republic. Each would “sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”
America at 250: The triangular relationship between US, Israel, and Jews is at risk
The weakening relationship with the US, Israel, and American Jews
But strength does not last forever. A sober look at this triangular relationship shows that each of its sides has weakened in recent years.
On the Washington-Jerusalem axis, American public support for Israel has declined significantly and worryingly.
Significant parts of the Democratic Party now voice sharply critical positions toward Israel, while even among younger Republicans, the once-instinctive warmth toward Israel can no longer be assumed.
On the Washington-American Jewry axis, changes are also evident. Waves of antisemitism from the fringes of both the American right and left have raised the fear that the golden age of American Jewry may be coming to an end.
Finally, on the Jerusalem-American Jewry axis, cracks are visible as Israeli governments have failed to invest sufficiently in cultivating the vital ties between the two branches of the family.
The gaps between an American Jewish public that tends toward liberalism and an Israeli society that tends toward conservatism are growing wider. The unfortunate facts are clear: Israel’s position as a central anchor of identity for North American Jewry is no longer what it once was.
The government formed after the elections will need to think anew about how to strengthen each side of this triangle.
This will require renewed investment in bipartisan support in Washington, serious engagement with younger Americans across the political spectrum, and a deliberate rebuilding of trust between Israel and Diaspora Jewry.
The resilience of “we, the Jewish people” depends on the success of this effort.
From Ian:
Jonathan Tobin:
On its 250th birthday, Jews mustn’t abandon the fight for America
If Jewish life is unsafe in America, it will be unsafe everywhere. And that will impact Israel as well. That’s why it is essential that, rather than giving up or giving in to hysterical talk about the end of American liberty and even the end of American Jewry, we must recommit to the fight to roll back the woke tide on the left and its antisemitic echo on the right—and to defeat it.
This may be a generational struggle in much the same way that leftist efforts to impose these false beliefs on the United States were one. But it is a battle that is necessary to fight—not just to save American Jewry, but to save the canon of Western civilization on which our freedoms rest.
The contempt for traditional patriotism and belief in the truth that the American republic—flawed though it might be—is a force for good in the world has already been made clear by left-wing elites. But as discouraging as this discourse may be, it is a reminder that the stigmatizing and targeting of Jews is part and parcel of the same struggle that other Americans are engaging in. America is and always has been exceptional. But it will only remain that way so long as a broad cross-section of its citizens—Jews and non-Jews, liberals and conservatives, Democrats as well as Republicans—are willing to stand up against the woke forces seeking to traduce its founding values.
The appropriate answer to attacks on Jews is not flight or a call to shelter in place. Jews must speak up and not abandon the streets or the public square to the antisemites and woke mobs. The rejoinder to anti-Jewish violence and intimidation is for Jews to act in the most quintessential American way possible: to arm themselves and make it clear that they will not be intimidated or silenced.
Those who hate the founding principles of the United States, in addition to its Jewish residents, may seem to be on the ascent, as election results in various Democratic Party primaries have shown. But they are wrong about the end of American greatness or the need to transform it into some pale reflection of Marxist or Islamist concepts. And as dire as the situation may seem at the moment, these enemies of liberty may be sealing their own fate with their attempt to foist antisemitic extremists on a country that is inherently moderate and where Jew-hatred of this type has always been confined to outliers rather than the mainstream.
Faith in the good sense and decency of the American people may seem like a forlorn hope when you witness the ability of figures like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to affect the future of American democracy. But those who bet against America have always been shortsighted suckers. Right now is no time to doubt that this will continue to be the case.
On this 250th Independence Day, rather than writing off America, we should be embracing it all the more enthusiastically and pledging to defend it against those who wish to tear it down. The alternative is not merely unthinkable; it’s an abandonment of Western civilization, and all that decent people hold dear.
Happy birthday, America! Even on your worst day, we still believe in you, and we know you’re worth fighting for.
Melanie Phillips:
The fateful question for Diaspora Jews
More profoundly, Zionism is not a political cause. The religion of Judaism is itself inseparable from the land of Israel. Judaism consists of the belief by the Jewish people that they were given a Divine command to create a particular kind of society in the land that was promised to them.
Jewish religious liturgy is studded with countless references to Zion, the ancient Hebrew name for the land. Zionism, which emerged as a discrete political movement in the 19th century, is thus intrinsic to Judaism.
Of course, Jews who aren’t religiously observant are still Jews, just as are Jews who are anti-Zionist. But in Judaism, the people, the faith and the land are inextricably connected. Trying to pluck Zionism out of Judaism is to destroy it by plucking out its heart.
So, attacking the Jewish world is to attack the West; attacking Israel and Zionism is to attack Judaism.
Many Diaspora Jews won’t acknowledge this because the implications are too devastating. Especially in America, where the majority of Jews have signed up to anti-Jewish liberal ideologies, many of them will therefore dump Israel.
Observant Jews will remain loyal, and more of them will move to Israel. A number of progressive Jews, meanwhile, are agonized. Finding that their erstwhile comrades have now turned viciously against them over their support for Israel’s existence, they feel like politically homeless Jewish orphans.
It’s now more than 1,000 days since the terrible events of Oct. 7. During that traumatic period, which is still far from over, Israel has changed. It has returned to the biblical ideal of the heroic Jewish warrior nation.
This isn’t just because of its astounding military and intelligence prowess, or the awesome bravery of its fighting forces.
It’s also about its moral courage. It’s about the way it surmounted the devastating shattering of its security; the trauma of seeing so many of its precious and beautiful children fall in battle; the nightmarish return of the unspeakable shadow of the Holocaust, from whose ashes it had somehow emerged.
It’s about how it stared down disaster, demoralization and death, determined instead to fight for life—the life of its people in their ancient home.
Israelis fight to live because they passionately love what they are. They aren’t conditional Jews or Jews with trembling knees or confused Jews with hyphenated identities.
They are Jews who are made whole and complete by the land of Israel. They triumphantly reaffirm every single day what Judaism is: the faith and culture of a people created through a sacred covenant in their own land.
Oct. 7 and its aftermath forged the Israeli spirit anew in iron. Oct. 7 and its aftermath left Diaspora Jews terrified and uncertain about what they are.
The Israelis are fighting for the life of the Jewish people. Can Diaspora Jews say the same?
Why two Jews left London for the Jewish State
"A terrorist just tried to stab Jews at my work" - This was the text Joseph received in January 2024, moments after a Muslim terrorist walked into his local Kosher supermarket in London and tried to stab Jewish shoppers. The only reason no one was killed was because a heroic worker held the terrorist off with a shopping cart until his arrest.
The attack itself was terrifying, but what followed was worse. The perpetrator, Gabriel Abdullah, was arrested, charged, and convicted - but didn’t serve a day in prison. To Jews, the message was clear: Britain tolerates violent antisemitism.
A few months later, Joseph experienced this ‘tolerance’ firsthand when an antisemitic mob surrounded and threatened him, as seen in the video below. The police were present, but instead of intervening, they just watched.
For Alex, the turning point came during the 2014 Gaza war. That year, Alex and Joseph began filming Palestinian protests together, and he quickly realized the antisemitism they were witnessing wasn't an aberration; it was the tip of the iceberg.
While the spike in antisemitic incidents in the UK was alarming, it was what Alex saw in France that truly disturbed him. During the 2014 Sarcelles riots, a synagogue was besieged, and Jewish-owned businesses were targeted in scenes reminiscent of a darker era, signaling a complete collapse of public order for the Jewish community. Witnessing the speed at which this hatred manifested in France, he concluded that it was a contagion: the turmoil he saw in Paris would inevitably reach Britain, and the patterns established in London would eventually reach America and Canada.
The Ratchet Effect
After the conflict ended, Alex identified a recurring pattern he termed the ‘ratchet effect.’ During the conflict, antisemitic incidents surged, but with the toxic combination of social media and changing demographics, the baseline of hatred never retreated to previous levels after the conflict ended - it just ratcheted up. He realized then that this was a cycle without a ceiling. From Gaza and Lebanon to the catastrophe of October 7, each flare-up has made these incidents increasingly violent and uninhibited.
As the number of attacks on Jews increased, the British authorities consistently failed to protect Jewish citizens. The failure reached a nadir during the May 2021 Gaza war; on the same day that Islamic extremists were hunting Jews on streets with a police escort, a convoy of cars drove through Jewish neighborhoods with a megaphone, calling to rape Jewish women. No one was jailed for these offenses.
From Ian:
Why the Lancet study suggesting a far higher Gaza death toll is deeply flawed
Dramatic outliers like this are a clear red flag, and according to the survey's own design, catching this kind of problems was supposed to happen during fieldwork. In our critique, we pointed out that it didn't: neither Gaza9 nor Gaza3 was flagged as an outlier during the data collection.
In response to our critique, the authors dispute this and claim that these anomalies "were visible from early in the survey and actively discussed." However, the paper itself contains no indication that the anomalous data were flagged to field workers or supervisors as they emerged. Instead, the discussion of the Gaza9 anomalies appears only during the analysis phase, when the authors calculated violent death estimates, after all survey data had already been collected.
As part of that analysis, they also estimated the effect of excluding Gaza9, noting that doing so "does substantially lower our estimate for the size of the MoH undercount." Only then do the authors report looking into the reason for the outlier, writing: "So, we investigated further and found that three PSUs [survey sampling areas] covered by this team were in shelters that give special preference to families that have lost members during the fighting…"
And that after-the-fact analysis covered only Gaza9's mortality numbers. Nowhere in the paper are Gaza9 or Gaza3 identified as having unusual demographic profiles – smaller households and far fewer children – which should have also been flagged as anomalies. The paper does discuss demographics, but only to show that the data set as a whole doesn’t match what's known about Gaza's population overall. That is a different claim entirely: it says nothing about whether any specific team's results were completely out of line, which is exactly the question Gaza9 and Gaza3 raise.
Rather than address that gap, the authors try to downplay the importance of these imbalances by pointing to their use of statistical weighting – a procedure meant to adjust the results, so the full data set matches the population's known characteristics. However, while weighting can correct some small deviations, it cannot repair a situation where a handful of teams produced vastly different results. It's a bit like putting a band-aid on a structural crack: it may make the surface look more even, but it does not repair the underlying problem and doesn't clarify why the problem wasn't addressed early on.
The authors further suggest that the Gaza9 results may reflect a "genuine spatial concentration of violence". However, the data show that Gaza9 consistently reported higher mortality than other teams operating in the same areas. In at least one particularly clear case, Gaza9 reported deaths in 10 out of 20 households, while another team working just a few buildings away reported none. Such a discrepancy is difficult to reconcile with any claim of a “genuine spatial concentration of violence”.
Differences of that magnitude cannot plausibly be explained by local variation. If location were the primary factor, teams operating side by side would be expected to report broadly similar results. Instead, the discrepancies appear to track the teams, not the locations – pointing to a problem with how the data were collected rather than where they were collected.
The bottom line
The survey's headline claim – that the Ministry of Health undercounted deaths by roughly 35 per cent – rests on the assumption that the sample represents the population. The study’s own data say it doesn't. Fieldwork repeatedly seems to have departed from the sampling plan, a small number of teams drove a disproportionate share of the results, and those same teams produced demographic profiles unlike the wider population. Remove their data, and the gap largely disappears within the survey's own margin of error.
This isn't some technical nitpicking for its own sake. What's at stake here is a dramatic claim that got treated as settled fact – cited, repeated, and stretched to cover deaths it never actually measured – when, in fact, the sample behind it was just too broken to support it.
UN COI Report Discredits Itself With Claims About IDF Quadcopter Attacks On Minors
The June 18 Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory (COI) report, alleging that the Israeli military deliberately targeted Palestinian children as part of a strategy to commit genocide during the October 7 War, is based heavily on fantastical beliefs, presumptions, and speculation about Israeli military technologies and tactics that severely discredit the document’s conclusions. In the first in a series of articles on the claims, the COI’s allegations about fleets of firearm-equipped quadcopters demonstrates the unreliability of the report.
COI Commissioner Srinivasan Muralidhar explained to CNN in a Saturday video interview that the “strongest evidence” that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) was deliberately targeting children was “a combination of quadcopters, sniper rifles, and drones.”
Yet the arguments regarding these quadcopters are also the elements that most cast doubt on the veracity of the report.
Many of the alleged incidents highlighted as evidence in the COI report involved the ostensible use of quadcopters equipped with rifles and sniper rifles to target children, claiming that of 168 minors reported to the COI killed or wounded by gunshots between November 2023 and July 2025, 70 were supposedly shot by quadcopters. Anonymous doctors reportedly told the COI that there was a consistent pattern of children seeking treatment from quadcopter gunshots. One doctor reportedly estimated that, within two weeks of her tenure in a hospital, she supposedly saw around five children shot by quadcopters.
Firearm Quadcopters are Uncommon
The chief problem with the underlying claim that serves as the basis of much of the COI report is that firearm-equipped quadcopters are simply not in service to the extent that would match the supposed widespread pattern. Prototypes for firearm-equipped quadcopters exist, but there is no evidence for widespread deployment in Gaza. To the contrary, the use of firearm-equipped quadcopters is rare enough that Gaza deployment veteran IDF soldiers consulted with by HonestReporting had never seen or were unfamiliar with such a platform. Military analyst Andrew Fox also wrote in 2024 that his sources within the IDF indicate that the weapons were not in widespread use by the Israeli military.
Cube-Shaped Bullets
Perhaps the most implausible claim about the armed quadcopters is that they shoot cube-shaped pellets. Muralidhar told CNN that cube-shaped pellets were used by armed quadcopters in at least one instance. The report asserted that the supposed ammunition was designed to cause superfluous injury and unnecessary suffering. The quadcopter models mentioned in the report are equipped with standard firearms adapted for the drones. These firearms operate in a manner unlikely to facilitate cubed projectiles. This, along with the ballistic aerodynamic issues for such a projectile, make them unlikely to exist.
From Ian:
Ben Cohen:
The UN’s crusade against Israel is fueling the pro-Hamas left
A smirk laid bare the United Nations’ unremitting hostility toward the state of Israel and its people.
Last week UN Special Rapporteur Reem Alsalem sat stone-faced and silent as she reluctantly listened to wrenching testimony from Ilana Gritzewsky, a young Israeli woman abducted and viciously raped by Hamas during its Oct. 7 atrocities.
“Even now, the feeling of being violated and powerless still lingers,” Gritzewsky said, her voice breaking.
The Jordanian diplomat — whose mandate is to prevent “violence against women and girls” — let out an exasperated sigh in response.
Moments later, Gritzewsky pleaded with her: “Will you look at me?”
And Alsalem finally did so, a smirk playing on her lips.
Her chilling cruelty can be interpreted in only two ways.
Either she believes Gritzewsky was lying, in keeping with the rapporteur’s claim last November that “no independent investigation found that rape took place on the 7th of October.”
Or she believes that Gritzewsky and the other Israeli women subjected to grotesque sexual violence and mutilation by those Hamas terrorists got what they deserved.
Whatever the answer, Alsalem’s callous demeanor encapsulated the loathing with which UN appointees regard Israel, and their embrace of the wildest assertions made by Palestinian propagandists.
Because the problem isn’t Alsalem’s alone: It is institutional and structural.
And its impact is not limited to the UN, as the current surge of far-left anti-Zionists in US domestic politics demonstrates.
In the last month, the UN’s human rights bureaucracy has stepped up its crusade to convict Israel of the crime of genocide.
On June 16 Vanessa Frazier, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, placed the Israel Defense Forces on a blacklist of armed forces that abuse children.
That list also includes the Russian Army and ISIS — but not Turkey, despite the horrors inflicted on the Kurds, including children, by its armed forces.
Tellingly, none of the other state armed forces on that list were ever compelled, as the IDF was after Oct. 7, to engage in a war sparked by a massacre of their own civilians.
But such nuances never trouble the UN when it comes to Israel.
Indeed, when Danny Danon, Israel’s UN ambassador, voiced his objection to Israel’s inclusion on the list, Frazier dispensed with diplomatic protocol and attempted to shout him down.
The Military Danger of the Congressional Anti-Israel Obsession
An effort by Rep. Ro Khanna (D., Calif.) to strip a provision on U.S.-Israel cooperation from the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act was ruled out of order on Monday.
The provision isn't about the West Bank. It would expand U.S.-Israel cooperation in missile and drone defense, anti-tunneling, cyber warfare and AI.
"We need to compete with China," says Bradley Bowman of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
"That requires learning from beleaguered democracies like Ukraine, Taiwan and also Israel, which is the best in the world in some areas of defense tech."
Israel excels at going from concept to fully funded combat capability - a U.S. weakness. Bowman rues the seven years the Pentagon took to adopt Israel's Trophy system to defend U.S. tanks.
The rising anti-Israel obsession is a gift to U.S. adversaries.
Two mayors, one hatred
Karl Lueger, mayor of Vienna from 1897 to 1910, used antisemitism to win popularity, making detestation of Jews a key plank of Austria’s Christian Social Party. Adolf Hitler lived in Lueger’s Vienna and would praise him in Mein Kampf, although, for the most part, the mayor did not back up his anti-Jewish rhetoric with policies.
Jew-haters and those who, like Lueger, used Jew-hatred for political purposes, coined the term “antisemitism” in 1870s Germany to make their bigotry sound modern and scientific rather than ancient and religious. Today, those obsessed with Jews and the State of Israel as ultimate sources of evil do the same with “Zionism.” It makes antisemitism sound “progressive.”
Zionism is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people. Pogroms in the 19th century and the Holocaust in the 20th century taught Jews the inherent vulnerability of living at the sufferance of others. Zionists understood that only a sovereign Jewish state could ensure Jewish equality.
Today, resurgent antisemitism uses anti-Zionism as a gateway drug. The abuse took root in 1975, when the U.N. General Assembly passed the infamous Soviet-inspired, Arab League-promoted “Zionism-is-racism” resolution. The resolution was Moscow’s revenge for Israel’s defeat of its Egyptian and Syrian clients in the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s new mayor, belongs to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). The party’s economic and social views mark it as neo-Marxist. Two of the three successful Democratic Party insurgents Mamdani endorsed in the city’s June 23 congressional primaries are also DSA members. The third is a former member. All three followed the mayor in accusing Israel of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip.
They do so because the “racist Israel” libel has not quite done the trick. Not when Israeli Arabs are the freest Arabs in the Middle East, and Israel rescued tens of thousands of endangered black Ethiopian Jews.
“Genocide” has replaced “racist” as the ultimate anti-Israel malediction. But the indictment is false. In Israel’s war in Gaza against Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other perpetrators of the Oct. 7, 2023 pogrom, the ratio of noncombatant-to-combatant deaths among Gazans has been lower than in Iraq and Afghanistan when U.S. and British troops battled Islamic fanatics.
From Ian:
Military Victory Is Not Enough
Israel has demonstrated extraordinary military capability in confronting the Iranian-led axis. Together with the U.S., it has significantly degraded Iran's ballistic missile and nuclear infrastructure while weakening Tehran's network of terrorist proxies. Yet the decisive contest increasingly centers on influence, legitimacy, and public perception. It is a war fought through political warfare, psychological operations, legal campaigns, media narratives, and disinformation.
The Oct. 7 massacre demonstrated that terrorism today operates simultaneously on the informational battlefield. While Hamas carried out unprecedented acts of mass murder, the accompanying global narrative rapidly shifted from documenting the atrocities to portraying Israel as the primary aggressor. International institutions, human rights organizations, university campuses, and social media platforms became arenas where Israel's legitimacy itself was placed on trial.
The objective extends beyond criticism of Israeli policy. It seeks to isolate Israel diplomatically, weaken its alliance with the U.S., divide Israel from Jewish communities abroad, and erode Western public support for its security. Recent polling illustrates the challenge. Fewer than half of Americans identify Iran as an enemy of the U.S., while substantial portions of the public fail to recognize the ideological connection between radical political Islam and attacks such as Sept. 11. Such knowledge gaps create fertile ground for hostile disinformation campaigns and ideological manipulation.
The expectation that terrorist organizations could be fundamentally moderated through political processes proved misplaced. Rather than abandoning their long-term objectives, organizations such as Hamas continued pursuing Israel's destruction while simultaneously benefiting from enhanced international legitimacy.
The military campaign against Iran and its proxies has demonstrated Israel's operational superiority. Whether those achievements translate into lasting strategic gains will depend increasingly on success beyond the battlefield. The struggle over legitimacy has become Israel's eighth front.
Military victories cannot by themselves prevent the erosion of political support, diplomatic standing, or international credibility. Information warfare is one of the principal theaters in this conflict. Israel must become as effective at defending the truth as it has proven at defending its borders.
What "Defensible Borders" Means for Israel after the War
True security comes from anticipating threats before they emerge and sustaining the moral and material strength needed to deter aggression and protect the nation's survival. The phrase "defensible borders" has been used in Israel for many years to explain why Israel could not accept the 1967 lines as defensible, mainly with regard to Jordan and Syria.
Israel remains a small country with a population of 8 million Jews compared with 400 million people in the Arab League countries. At the UN, Israel faces 21 Arab states and 57 Muslim-majority states. The broad asymmetry facing Israel means it cannot remake the region into liberal democracies or significantly reduce hatred of Israel, no matter how many wars Israel wins. Therefore, after every war, however successful, Israel must begin preparing for the next one.
Israel's survival is not guaranteed by diplomatic agreements, but rather by objective strength and how that strength is perceived by enemies and rivals. National-security decisions must not rest on assuming deterrence exists. Whether it has been achieved is unknowable.
One of the main lessons of the war concerns Israel's ability to defend its borders in future defensive battles. It is crucial to prevent the formation of a large threat close to the borders even in periods of quiet. Israel must adopt an active worldview that regards preemptive operations aimed at preventing the construction of a significant threat as an essential tool of defense. The importance lies in preventing the adversary's ability to create a border threat in the first place.
An American Commander's Case for Israeli Strategic Depth after Oct. 7
Hamas's massacre in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, settled an old strategic argument. Israel, about the size of Maryland, is bordered almost entirely by adversaries intent on its destruction. Defending Israel requires strategic depth. The country lacked buffers in Gaza, southern Lebanon, and on the Syrian Golan front.
A familiar argument says precision rockets, cruise missiles, and one-way attack drones make terrain obsolete. But while rockets and drones are lethal, they are not war-winning. Hizbullah, Hamas, and the Iranian regime do not aim to harass Israel - they seek its elimination. That requires a ground invasion like Hamas executed. Buffer zones, demilitarized areas, and topographical control prevent such invasions.
The recent record of American military operations reinforces the same conclusion. The Taliban were defeated in five weeks in 2001; Saddam Hussein's regular forces collapsed in three in 2003. The American error in both theaters was the assumption that follow-on political reconstruction could remake those societies in a Western democratic image. It could not. The applicable lesson for Israel is: defeat the adversary's capability to threaten and to invade, do not attempt to remake his worldview, and return to dismantle the capability whenever it begins to reconstitute.
Oct. 7 showed what happens when geography is left undefended and threats are allowed to grow. Defensible borders are the minimum required for a small state's survival in a hostile neighborhood, and the precondition for any lasting peace.
From Ian:
Argentina’s Milei urges Latin American countries to join Isaac Accords
Argentinian President Javier Milei on Monday urged Latin American countries to strengthen continental ties with Israel as envisioned in the Isaac Accords, saying it was an existential fight between good and evil.
The public exhortation comes amid a historic shift across Latin America, where a right-wing wave is reshaping alliances with the United States and Israel, and the political left is on the retreat.
“From my first day as president, I made the firm decision to place Argentina on the right side of history,” said Milei during an address to Latin American legislators affiliated with the Israel Allies Foundation. “What this region decides in the coming years will determine which side of history we end up on,” he continued.
The Isaac Accords, launched by Milei and Israeli leaders in Jerusalem earlier this year, are a diplomatic initiative aimed at improving relations between Israel and Latin American countries, modeled on the 2020 Abraham Accords brokered by the United States between Israel and four Arab nations.
He called the accords “a moral, diplomatic and cultural coalition” against antisemitism, terrorism and drug trafficking.
In a forceful and impassioned keynote address to the pro-Israel lawmakers from over a dozen countries, the Argentine leader argued that evil can only be defeated by organized good.
“Words without actions are just words, and the region already had too many speeches and too much inaction,” he said in a characteristically unsubtle rebuke of decades of anti-Israel policies on the continent by predominantly left-wing governments. “We have prayed, lit candles and held hands, and all the while terrorism continued.”
The unabashed philo-semite broke with decades of Argentinian foreign policy by both left-wing and right-wing Argentinian governments since entering office in December 2023 by forming an unprecedented alliance with both the United States and Israel, emerging as one of the most outspoken wartime supporters of the Jewish state.
The Argentine leader became the first non-Jewish head of state to receive the Genesis Prize last year in recognition of his staunch support for Israel. The Genesis Prize Foundation established American Friends of Isaac Accords to operationalize the vision of the Accords through public and private diplomacy.
‘Latin America can take a clear stand,” he said. “Neutrality is not an option just as it never has been in existential struggles.”
Abdul-Hussain: My journey from anti-Israel to pro-Israel is a model for the Arab world
At a launch event for his book, The Arab Case for Israel, on Tuesday, writer and researcher Hussain Abdul-Hussain argued that the path to peace in the Middle East begins with Arabs reexamining long-held assumptions about Israel, drawing on his own transformation from believing anti-Israel propaganda to an advocate for the Jewish state.
Speaking days after Israel and Lebanon signed a U.S.-brokered framework agreement, Abdul-Hussain said the Lebanese people can follow in his footsteps, as the country remains divided between a faction that promotes the Iranian narrative that Israel “only understands the language of war and force,” and those seeking to reclaim the country’s sovereignty.
“The Lebanese have had their share of sacrifices for big powers. This started back in the 1960s. The Lebanese will stand up for sovereignty and independence. They’ve been thrown under the bus time and time again and this makes them always wary and they try not to stick their neck out… this is what’s keeping them back,” Abdul-Hussain said.
The invitation-only event for the book, published in February, was hosted by Antoun Sehnaoui, businessman and philanthropist, and Morgan Ortagus, former deputy U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, at the Mark Hotel on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
Abdul-Hussain, a Shia Muslim raised in Iraq and Lebanon where he said he was taught to hate Israel and the West, is now a Washington-based research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. The Arab Case for Israel chronicles his unusual journey away from holding anti-Israel views, detailing his argument for why all Arabs should do the same.
“My story is the story of an average person who was told something and when he dug up the story it turned out to be something else,” Abdul-Hussain told some 50 attendees — a mix of Jews, Christians and Muslims — at the event. “I was taught, like every other kid was taught, that Israel must disappear. And I believed it.”
“Over the course of my life, events pushed me to try to learn about Israel.” The biggest turning point, he recalled, was in 2000 while he was working as a reporter in Lebanon. “We covered the Israeli military pulling out of the south and that day I drove my car to the border, which at the time was just a flimsy wire so I could see Israelis,” said Abdul-Hussain. “I became really curious. At the time, I could get on the FM radio of the Israeli channels. If you were in Lebanon at the time, your sources on Israel were [staunch Israel critics] Edward Said, [Noam] Chomsky and [Norman] Finkelstein.”
After learning Hebrew, Abdul-Hussain said he “discovered everything they taught us about Jews — that they were scheming to kill every Arab Lebanese kid — was not true.
Boy George brands Roger Waters a ‘sanctimonious t***’ after Pink Floyd founder’s anti-Israel remarks
Boy George has called Roger Waters a “sanctimonious t***” after the Pink Floyd co-founder predicted that the state of Israel will soon cease to exist.
In a pre-recorded video address to an ‘antizionist’ event in Ireland this week, Waters said: “I think the awful experiment that is the state of Israel is coming to an end,” prompting cheers from the audience.
He added: “And there will be equal rights, civil, human, every kind of right for all our brothers and sisters living between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea.”
A clip of the remarks was shared online.
In the replies, Culture Club singer Boy George responded to another video of Waters appearing on Piers Morgan Uncensored, writing: “Sanctimonious t***” Not you Piers!”
On Monday, Boy George responded to a July 2024 clip of Waters on Uncensored in which the singer-songwriter, who left the band in 1985, denied there was evidence that rapes had occurred during the October 7 attacks.
Boy George wrote: “Go to the Nova Exhibition you t***!”
From Ian:
My cousin gave the world the word ‘genocide’ – don’t let anyone profit from it
My family’s name was never meant to become a marketing asset. Yet that is what it has become, and the only people who can stop it are reading this with the power to act and, so far, the patience to wait.
Raphael Lemkin was my cousin. He was a Polish Jewish lawyer who watched the Nazis murder dozens of our relatives and, instead of surrendering to despair, sat down and invented a word for the crime he could not otherwise name. He called it genocide. He spent the rest of his short life, often alone and often broke, persuading the world to turn that word into law.
The 1948 Genocide Convention exists because one man refused to let the slaughter of his people pass without a name. He died in 1959 with almost nothing to his own name except the one he had given to history.
That name now appears on the letterhead of an organization my family never authorized: the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention. We did not consent. We were not asked. And for years we have watched it raise money, build a public profile, and borrow the moral authority of a man it never knew, using a name that belongs to his family and to his victims.
I am a lawyer. I do not make accusations lightly, and I am not asking anyone to take my word for what the law requires. I am asking the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to enforce its own.
This week, together with the European Jewish Association, my family sent 100 letters to the officials who can act. We wrote to Governor Josh Shapiro. We wrote to Attorney-General Dave Sunday, whose Charitable Trusts and Organizations Section has plain authority to investigate a charity that solicits donations under a name it has no right to use.
We wrote to the leaders of the General Assembly, to Pennsylvania’s congressional delegation, to the Justice Department’s task force on antisemitism, and to the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt organizations. Every letter was verified. Every recipient was named. We did the work so that no one could claim the case was too complicated to understand.
It is not complicated. Pennsylvania law protects donors from charities that mislead them. It protects names from commercial exploitation. A complaint is already pending before the Department of State (Case 26-98-001879). A statement signed by 112 scholars is on file.
Jake Wallis Simons:
Israel has outfoxed Iran (and Donald Trump)
Two weeks ago, it looked like Iran had placed the American-Israeli alliance in checkmate. With a flourish of a felt-tip pen, Donald Trump signed a “memorandum of understanding” that freed Tehran from American hostilities, promised it hundreds of billions of dollars, and allowed the nuclear can to be kicked down the road.
As if that was not enough, Israel was obliged to cease operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon, tying its own hands while the jihadist group rained rockets and drones upon its northern towns.
This remarkable Iranian military and diplomatic coup, aided greatly by the Islamist regimes in Doha and Ankara, drove a wedge between Washington and Jerusalem, making Trump look like a weakling and a fool.
The beauty of the deal – from the Iranian point of view – was that the more the president criticised his ally Benjamin Netanyahu, berating him as “f---ing crazy” and having “no f---ing judgment”, the weaker and more foolish he looked.
Well, Trump may still look weak and foolish, but the same cannot be said of Netanyahu. With an election approaching in September or October, he is not just fighting for the lives of his people but his political life, too; that is just the sort of thing that has always focused his mind. Israel has responded with a military and diplomatic coup of its own, in the form of a deal with Lebanon.
For the first time in 44 years, Jerusalem and Beirut have agreed to a framework that recognises each other’s sovereignty and commits to dismantling Hezbollah along Israel’s northern border.
Reportedly, the process begins with the establishment of two pilot zones in which the Lebanese army will relieve Israeli troops and take over the repression of the jihadists. Importantly, the IDF is permitted to remain in Lebanon for as long as it takes to neutralise the Hezbollah threat.
The proof of the falafel, of course, is in the hummus. As difficult as this pact was to confirm, its implementation will be immeasurably more so. Hezbollah has long been the most glittering jewel in Iran’s poisonous crown; Tehran will not allow it to go down without a dreadful fight.
NY woman arrested for funding PIJ, wished 'every day was October 7'
A 37-year-old New York woman named Catherine Beth Washburn was arrested and charged with attempting to provide funding to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the US Justice Department stated on Tuesday.
According to the criminal complaint, Washburn is a leader of the Direct Action Movement for Palestinian Liberation (DAMPL), an extremist organization founded after the October 7 massacre. DAMPL has committed acts of sabotage and property destruction in support of Palestine and against entities that it associates with Israel, rejecting the idea of peaceful protest.
Washburn herself celebrated acts of terror against Israel and praised the bravery of PIJ terrorists. In messages recovered by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) in February and March, Washburn and an individual who identified himself as a PIJ member and who claimed to have engaged in PIJ attacks against Israel discussed purported PIJ attacks on Israel, weapons, and ammunition.
An image shared by the DOJ also appears to show Washburn posing with grenades and a Hamas flag in the background.
Washburn also told the individual that she hated Jews “very much” and that she wished Israel “would disappear.”
“I wish every day were October 7th,” Washburn stated in one message.
“I feel excited every time I see news of the killing of an occupation soldier,” read another.
Washburn sends money to terror organizations
According to the DOJ, Washburn made approximately 80 cryptocurrency transfers totaling about $30,116 to an account used by the alleged PIJ member.
“As alleged in the complaint, this defendant, fueled by her self-described hate of Israel and Jewish people, went to great lengths to attempt to provide financial support to terrorist organizations that use violence to further their agendas, including the Palestine Islamic Jihad,” said US Attorney Michael DiGiacomo for the Western District of New York.
Wednesday, July 08, 2026
