06/11 Links Pt2: The Paris Conference, the peace industry, and the illusion of representation; Alan Baker: The OSLO ACCORDS Were NEVER About a Two-State Solution!?; When America First Meets Iran

From Ian:

David Collier: Baghdad to London: An Antisemitic Conspiracy Theory Implodes

Terrorist stabbings, firebombings, threats against synagogues, guards at school gates, and conversations in Jewish homes about whether it is still wise to wear visible Jewish symbols in public.

British Jews are living under growing pressure in an increasingly hostile environment.

And yet there is no stampede at Heathrow.

Communities rarely uproot themselves quickly. People adapt. History shows Jewish communities often fail to recognise the precise moment danger becomes irreversible.

And that matters, because what is unfolding in Britain today offers a living example of how Jewish communities historically responded to mounting hostility – and helps expose the conspiracy theory surrounding the exodus of Jews from Arab lands.

A Million Refugees
During the 20th century, around a million Jews were expelled or driven out of more than a dozen Muslim-majority countries. Communities that had existed for thousands of years were uprooted within a single generation.

Antisemitic violence – often rooted in historical systems of Islamic supremacy and discrimination – spread throughout the region. It was fuelled by the rise of Arab nationalism, and when the dust settled, almost every ancient Jewish community across the Arab world had been destroyed or emptied.

Nearly a million Jews became refugees, most of whom found refuge in the newly established Jewish state.

The Anti-Zionist Narrative Problem
The destruction of Jewish communities across the Arab world created a major problem for anti-Zionist narratives. Europe’s antisemitism was undeniable after the Holocaust, so a counter-story emerged: while Christian Europe persecuted Jews, the Muslim world supposedly sheltered them in tolerance and coexistence.

But there was an obvious problem. The Jewish communities of the Arab world had collapsed.

Explaining away that disappearance became essential.

What followed was large-scale historical revisionism.

Centuries of discrimination, periodic massacres, forced conversions, expulsions, and legal systems that relegated Jews to subordinate status were softened, minimised, or erased altogether. The dhimmi system was recast as benign protection rather than institutional inequality. Violence against Jews was blamed not on Islamic supremacy, but on Zionism, or the creation of Israel itself:

Why hasn’t the New York Times corrected its ‘dog rape’ lie?

‘Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.’

This saying, popularised by American astronomer Carl Sagan, was clearly unknown to the New York Times and journalist Nicholas Kristof when they recently accused Israel of a systemic policy of sexual violence against Palestinian prisoners. In a 3,750-word piece, published last month, Kristof alleges that a ‘Gaza journalist’ was raped by a dog that had been ‘coached’ for that purpose. He writes that a dog was summoned and, with encouragement from a handler, ‘mounted’ a prisoner. The prisoner ‘tried to dislodge the dog… but it penetrated him, while guards laughed and took photographs’.

This is the journalistic equivalent of a five-alarm fire – and all the alarm bells should have sounded for the New York Times’ editors. This is where extraordinary evidence is required – yet not a shred was provided.

For a claim to merit publication, extraordinary evidence has to meet two thresholds. First, is the claim plausible? Second, is the claim provable? If the claim is not plausible, it is not automatically untrue, but it should only be published if accompanied by absolute proof. No one would believe the moon is made of green cheese, and that should end the question – unless someone brings back an indisputable sample of green cheese from the moon’s surface. That’s proof of the implausible. But the case of the ‘rape dogs’ goes beyond even the ‘green cheese’ standard.

There is no evidence that dogs can be trained to rape men and no credible, documentable accounts exist of dogs being trained this way. Alan Howe of the Australian asked a dog expert of 34 years, who explained that it failed the plausibility test. ‘Canine erection is a reflexive neuroendocrine response to female reproductive pheromones – it is not a voluntary behaviour and cannot be trained or reliably triggered on command’, the expert said. ‘The specific act alleged is not biologically plausible.’

Did no one at the New York Times wonder about this? This should be the first question any editor would ask – and who knows how many editors Kristof’s column passed through. We do know that, in a separate statement, the editors, still offering no evidence, doubled down on their support for the column – essentially stating that including the alleged rape dogs in the piece was neither an oversight nor a mistake on their part. Was this incurious behaviour deliberate? We have to ask, because for now neither Kristof nor his editors have tried to establish that dogs can be taught this unnatural behaviour.

After flunking the plausibility test, the opinion piece failed the probability test as well. Badly, in fact: no names, dates, locations, photographs or any tangible evidence that dog-rape ever happened. The only accounts are hearsay from anonymous prisoners – who have an obvious agenda – and no response from Israeli prison authorities, former guards or others who might offer conflicting views. Kristof’s only independent corroboration was a nebulous quote from former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, who said pointedly after publication, ‘I did not validate these claims’. There are also subtle errors, including a claim that after the abuse, Israel Defence Forces (IDF) guards took cigarette breaks – even though smoking is strictly forbidden in these compounds.

Slovenia lifts ban on arms trade with Israel; Sa’ar lauds ‘just decision’ by new PM

Slovenia’s new conservative-led government on Thursday lifted an arms embargo on Israel and entry bans on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and two of his ministers.

Last year, Slovenia, then under liberal prime minister Robert Golob, imposed a series of measures against Israel over the war with Hamas in Gaza.

Several other EU members have done the same.

But the government of Prime Minister Janez Jansa, which took office last week, overturned the bans against Netanyahu and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

“This will restore the conditions for a normal political dialogue with Israel,” it said in a statement, adding the move would help “strengthen the role of the Republic of Slovenia in the efforts to achieve a lasting peace in the Middle East.”

The country is also letting the arms embargo expire, considering the decree “unnecessary” given existing national defense laws and EU arms export criteria, it said.

The government of Jansa — an admirer of US President Donald Trump — also lifted a ban on imports from Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar welcomed Jansa’s “swift and just decision to lift the distorted anti-Israeli measures taken by Slovenia’s previous government,” calling him a “bold leader and a true friend of Israel.”

Last week, Israel announced it would open an embassy in Slovenia, marking what it hopes will be a new chapter in relations with the European country. The country’s embassy in the Austrian capital Vienna has previously covered Israeli diplomatic interests in neighboring Slovenia. Screen capture from video of the Palestinian flag flying over the Slovenian Presidential Palace, June 5, 2026. (Nataša Pirc Musar/X)

Since taking office, Jansa’s government has also removed a Palestinian flag symbolically displayed on the government building since Slovenia recognized Palestinian statehood in 2024.

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06/11 Links Pt1: Trump says agreement with Iran approved by all parties; What Does America Get for $3.8 Billion in Israel? And the Way Ahead; 300 Nova festival massacre survivors remain in a ‘very bad condition’

From Ian:

John Spencer: What Does America Get for $3.8 Billion in Israel? And the Way Ahead

The value of the relationship becomes even clearer when compared with other recipients of American military assistance. Egypt contributes to regional stability and maintains peace with Israel. Jordan remains an important security partner and counterterrorism ally. Both relationships advance legitimate American interests. Neither generates the same intelligence cooperation, defense technology innovation, industrial integration, or battlefield lessons that flow from the U.S.-Israel partnership. The United States does not gain access to hundreds of defense technology startups through Egypt. It does not field combat-proven active protection systems developed through Jordan. It does not receive the same volume of battlefield lessons on missile defense, drones, tunnels, artificial intelligence, and urban warfare from either country. Israel's value derives not only from its location but from the capabilities it continually produces.

There is also a political dimension to the alliance. The United States and Israel are democracies. Neither is perfect. Both experience fierce political disagreements, contentious elections, and intense public debate. Both operate under the rule of law and maintain independent institutions. Shared values alone do not determine foreign policy, but alliances tend to endure when interests and political traditions reinforce one another. That reality has helped sustain the relationship across administrations of both parties.

Reasonable people can debate aid levels. They can debate specific policies pursued by either government. They can argue about how the relationship should evolve over time. Those are legitimate discussions. What is far more difficult to sustain is the argument that America receives little in return. The United States gains access to intelligence that helps prevent attacks against Americans and American interests. It gains military technologies refined through combat experience. It gains battlefield lessons that would otherwise cost billions to acquire independently. It gains access to one of the most dynamic defense innovation ecosystems on the planet. It gains a capable ally operating in a strategically important region against many of the same adversaries confronting the United States.

The future of the relationship may itself demonstrate the success of the investment. In recent interviews, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has suggested that Israel should gradually reduce its reliance on American military financing as its economy and defense industry continue to expand. He has spoken about eventually transitioning from traditional assistance toward deeper cooperation in areas such as cyber capabilities, artificial intelligence, missile defense, directed energy, and other emerging technologies.

Whether that transition occurs in the next Memorandum of Understanding or further in the future remains uncertain. Israel continues to face significant security threats and remains engaged in multiple conflicts. The broader point is that the relationship has evolved. American assistance helped support Israel during periods when its economy was smaller, its defense industry less developed, and its security challenges no less severe. Today Israel possesses one of the world's most advanced defense sectors, a thriving technology economy, and military capabilities that generate value not only for its own security but for the United States as well.

If future agreements place less emphasis on direct financing and greater emphasis on joint research, co-development, and technological collaboration, that would not signal a weakening partnership. It would reflect a mature partnership built on decades of successful investment. American assistance helped Israel build capabilities that now generate value for both countries. If Israel eventually requires less direct assistance while contributing more technology, innovation, intelligence, and operational expertise, that would not represent the failure of the partnership. It would represent one measure of its success.

So the next time someone asks what the United States gets for $3.8 billion in Israel, the answer is straightforward:
Jobs: American jobs and manufacturing supported through purchases of U.S.-made military equipment.
Industry: A stronger U.S. defense industrial base through joint production, co-development, and missile defense cooperation.
Intelligence: Intelligence that helps prevent attacks against Americans, American forces, and American interests.
Technology: Military technologies refined in combat, from active protection systems and missile defense to counter-drone capabilities and artificial intelligence.
Laboratory: Access to one of the world's most active laboratories for modern warfare, generating operational data, experimentation, innovation, and combat experience that would be difficult, expensive, and in some cases impossible to reproduce independently.
Lessons: Battlefield lessons in urban warfare, tunnel warfare, missile defense, drones, and modern combat without having to learn them first through American casualties, American mistakes, or American wars.
Innovation: A defense innovation ecosystem producing technologies and ideas that benefit both countries.
Ally: A capable ally helping deter common adversaries and maintain stability in one of the world's most strategically important regions and, if necessary, willing and able to fight alongside the United States.
Strategy: Greater freedom for the United States to focus military and economic resources on long-term competition with China in the Indo-Pacific while helping preserve a favorable balance of power in the Middle East.

That is what America gets in return.

Iran’s fanatical regime would rather embrace death than peace

Trump’s belief that he could pull off a ground-breaking agreement, one that guarantees freedom of passage through the Strait of Hormuz and neutralises Iran’s nuclear programme, led in recent weeks to tensions with Israel, with the American president highly critical of Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu and his military strikes against Iran and Hezbollah terrorists in southern Lebanon.

The real threat, though, to Trump’s hopes of achieving a breakthrough never came from Israeli aggression, or the maintenance of Washington’s naval blockade in the Gulf. It has come from the hardline clique that controls Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), an organisation whose sole raison d’être is to defend and propagate the uncompromising ideology that underpins the pillars of Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution.

While Washington may feel comfortable engaging with the smooth-talking sophisticates of Iran’s foreign policy establishment, the real challenge is to engage directly with the hard men of the IRGC, whose authority derives directly from the country’s divinely appointed Supreme Leader.

The IRGC – which the Starmer Government still has not proscribed as a terrorist entity – is the Islamic Republic’s Praetorian Guard, and is meant to take orders directly from the Supreme Leader.

Apart from his divinely appointed status, the Supreme Leader’s authority over all the instruments of the Iranian state originates from an obscure Islamic concept, the velayat-e faqih (roughly translated as the Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist), which gives the ruling Shia clergy absolute control over the Iranian people and their destiny.

Losing Hizbullah Is a Major Source of Stress for Iran

Dr. Menahem Merhavy, an expert on Iran at the Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said the latest Iranian missile attack on Israel "appears to be an attempt to save face....Iran has been unsuccessful in leveraging what it believes was victory over the U.S. and Israel."

"Iran is on the verge of catastrophe, and losing Hizbullah is a major source of stress for it. The 'ring of fire' [surrounding Israel] is currently stuttering, but Iran won't give up the idea and will not abandon Hizbullah." Yet, "Iran's latest attack, and its quick signal that it finished retaliating, signals its unwillingness to enter another prolonged conflict because they cannot afford it."

"Hizbullah can be pounded all over Lebanon, but Beirut and Iran can do absolutely nothing about it. Israel has been able to act freely in Lebanon for months....There is a lot of frustration with both Hizbullah and Iran among the Shiite community in Lebanon. Iran has yet to provide funds to rebuild homes that were destroyed by the Israeli military in the past two years. Hizbullah terrorists are also unable to move freely in Lebanon for constant fear of being targeted by Israel."

Amatzia Baram, professor emeritus at the University of Haifa and an expert in Middle Eastern politics, said, "Hizbullah has been weakened to about half of its previous abilities, but still, they have significant ability to fight. Hizbullah is busy rebuilding itself," and Iran "is still helping Hizbullah - financially, militarily, and strategically - by positioning itself as its defender and savior."

"Israel didn't attack Hizbullah between 2006 to 2023 for one reason - it was afraid that the massive missile and rocket arsenal would cause major damage to Israel. Now, Israel isn't afraid of attacking Hizbullah because of its potential to cause damage, but rather Israel is concerned that Iran will get involved and the U.S. will not support Israel if it chooses to respond."

"Attacks against Hizbullah targets in southern Lebanon are small, tactical, and have little significance to Hizbullah's standing in Lebanon. Attacks against command headquarters, weapons depots, and assembly factories in Beirut and north of Beirut are at an almost strategic level that can weaken Hizbullah, and that needs to be Israel's target for the future." Hizbullah, once the centerpiece of Tehran's regional deterrence strategy, is increasingly busy preserving its own survival.

Is Shi'ite Support for Hizbullah Weakening?

On May 31, a Hizbullah-affiliated group called on supporters to gather in downtown Beirut to protest the Lebanese government's support for diplomacy with Israel. Only a few dozen people showed up, a striking contrast to past years when Hizbullah could mobilize tens of thousands with ease. Days later, residents of Bayssarieh clashed with Hizbullah members who were reportedly moving military equipment into the southern Lebanese town. Meanwhile, activists in Nabatieh and Tyre are increasingly voicing demands for stronger state authority in the southern towns, long dominated by Hizbullah, reflecting growing unease among the Shia over conditions in southern Lebanon. However, any effort to loosen Hizbullah's grip on the Shia community will depend on a broader realization among its constituents that supporting Hizbullah is a losing strategy.

Lebanese political writer Mona Fayad said that while more Shia appear willing to criticize Hizbullah, this should not be mistaken for a structured opposition capable of competing for power, which would need to overcome the social and psychological legacy of Hizbullah's decades-long dominance. "We are talking about forty years of conditioning and entrenchment," she said.

"The biggest indicator that Hizbullah lost the narrative of resistance is the military defeat happening in the south," Fayad said. "Hizbullah's supporters are today displaced, and many of them are living in the streets because of Hizbullah. Today, many are in shock or denial."

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06/10 Links Pt2: Why is Zack Polanski championing a convicted terrorist?; Trump welcomes freed Hamas hostage Rom Braslavski to WH; Gwyneth Paltrow receives online hate for Israel commercial

From Ian:

Jake Wallis Simons: Why is Zack Polanski championing a convicted terrorist?

Defiant to the last, Barghouti twisted the emotional knife by informing the court that he stood for peace and liberty and describing himself as a freedom fighter. The judge sternly pointed out: ‘A soldier does not kill civilians with bombs and kill children.’

To compare the Palestinian killer to Nelson Mandela, in other words, is a grave disservice to the South African leader. Nevertheless, Barghouti is undoubtedly an interesting character. He was never a raving jihadi like the late Yahya Sinwar or Mohammed Deif of Hamas. He is a nationalist rather than an Islamist. He began his political life in the 1990s as a relatively pragmatic Palestinian leader who supported peace in exchange for Israel’s withdrawal from the West Bank.

However, that had changed by the time of the Second Intifada in the early 2000s, when 140 suicide bombs killed more than 1,000 Israelis – some of them schoolchildren on buses. Barghouti was often spotted on street corners in Ramallah during disturbances, issuing orders by phone, earning him the nickname ‘Little Napoleon’. Then came the evidence connecting him to murders.

Barghouti knows how to play a Western audience. Even in 2002, while directing savagery against innocent civilians, he struck a relatively moderate tone in English. In a column for the Washington Post, he wrote: ‘while I, and the Fatah movement to which I belong, strongly oppose attacks and the targeting of civilians inside Israel, our future neighbour, I reserve the right to protect myself… and to fight for my freedom.’

What to make of all this? Here’s my take. Like other performative Palestinian firebrands, Barghouti knows that doe-eyed Western activists and journalists want to believe that he is a saint. So deep-rooted is hatred of Israel that liberals will lap up the most blatant lies and false comparisons, just to confect a Palestinian hero where they are otherwise lacking. Barghouti knows this; I know this; chances are, reader, that you know this. Sadly, the same cannot be said for the gullible left. Which brings us back to Zack Polanski.

Look, I get it. It must be frustrating to support a cause that has nothing to show for itself in terms of democracy, human rights, respect for women and minorities, the protection of homosexuals and the rejection of terror. To take as your tribune a people who spit upon all your values is a tricky position to maintain. But don’t expect the rest of us to join you in your circle jerk. Wishful thinking, in other words, does not a freedom-fighter make.

Harry LaForme: I stood on my ancestral land and said what Carney would not

On June 6, I stood before Toronto’s Jewish community on the treaty lands of my ancestors. Days earlier, Prime Minister Mark Carney had stood at Toronto’s Holy Blossom Temple and acknowledged a painful truth: Canada is failing its Jewish citizens. He recognized that antisemitism has reached levels unseen in generations. He acknowledged that Jewish Canadians are disproportionately targeted by hate. He acknowledged the fear felt by families whose schools, synagogues, businesses and communities have become targets. He named the statistics. He named the suffering. But he did not name the ideology driving it.

So, I will. I stand before you on the land of my ancestors to say what the prime minister should have said: “Anti-Zionism is a libel-driven hate movement that incites violence and the targeting, exclusion, and marginalization of Jews in the diaspora and has as its ultimate goal wiping Israel off the face of Mother Earth and the death of all beings within it.”

There. That is what should have been said, and now it has.

For Indigenous peoples, this moment feels painfully familiar. We know what happens when governments speak of reconciliation while avoiding uncomfortable truths. We know what happens when institutions choose carefully crafted language instead of moral courage.

Canada’s Jewish community does not need another expression of concern. It needs honesty. And honesty begins by confronting the lie at the centre of this moment: the claim that Israel is a colonial project and Zionism is a movement of oppression.

As an Anishinaabe man, a member of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, and someone who spent almost 25 years as a judge interpreting the laws of this country, let me be clear — Canada is a colonial country. Israel is not.

Indigenous peoples know colonialism because we lived it. Colonialism means language suppression. It means forced religious conversion. It means population displacement, foreign governance, economic exploitation, imposed legal hierarchies and cultural erasure. Canada’s Indigenous peoples experienced these things. The Jewish people experienced these things. They do not describe Israel.

For thousands of years, Jewish identity has been tied to the land of Israel through language, culture, law, religion, traditions and collective memory. The Jewish connection to Jerusalem did not begin in 1948. It survived despite conquest, exile, persecution and genocide.

Why pro-Israel educators should teach the Nakba

In the charged classrooms where young Zionists form their understanding of Israel, one question now demands courage: Should we teach the Nakba?

The answer is yes. Not because the Palestinian narrative is true, but precisely because it is not. When we confront the events of 1948 with honesty, acknowledging real pain while refusing to distort the moral record, we strengthen the next generation rather than shield it.

The Nakba, Arabic for “catastrophe,” refers to the displacement of roughly 700,000 Arabs during Israel’s War of Independence. Anti-Israel voices present this as the inevitable result of Zionist aggression: a premeditated ethnic cleansing that stains Israel’s birth. That version is false. The truth is more complex, more human, and far more defensible.

In 1947, the Jewish leadership accepted the UN Partition Plan, despite its painful compromises. Arab leaders rejected it outright and launched a war of annihilation. If there had been no war, there would have been no displacement.

Once the fighting began, Arabs fled for three primary reasons. The majority left out of fear, as battle lines shifted; many departed on the explicit advice or orders of local Arab leaders, who cleared villages so their armies could operate freely; and in a smaller number of cases, Israeli forces expelled populations from strategic areas during active combat.

These were wartime decisions, not a systematic policy of expulsion. Historians who have examined the records closely, including Benny Morris in his early work, confirm that the overwhelming majority of departures occurred before major Israeli offensives, and often preceded them.

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06/10 Links Pt1: Israel reclaims its right to self-defense; Victor Davis Hanson: ‘Democrats are Islamists now’; Fetterman: Outlook for Jews in Democratic Party is ‘bleak’;

From Ian:

Israel reclaims its right to self-defense

Despite what was widely perceived as Trump’s opposition to escalation, Netanyahu ordered Israeli fighter jets to strike targets inside Iran, including missile launchers and petrochemical facilities.

This is where the deeper challenge begins.

Trump has made clear that he wants negotiations with Iran to continue. His message to both sides has essentially been: enough. One side attacked, the other responded; now stop.

Iran agreed—but with a condition that effectively leaves Lebanon hostage to Tehran’s interests.

Israel, Iran declared, must refrain from attacking Hezbollah—conveniently referred to by Tehran as “Lebanon”—or else “far heavier measures than those already undertaken” would follow. In other words, the war would continue.

That is hardly an outcome Trump welcomes.

Yet almost immediately after the Iranian statement was issued, Hezbollah—which had remained conspicuously quiet for some 30 hours during Iran’s operation and rarely acts without guidance from Tehran—resumed firing at Kiryat Shmona, Metula and other northern communities.

Northern Israel was once again under terrorist attack.

Israel, therefore, appears to face a dilemma while Washington watches closely.

But is it really a dilemma?

The relationship between Jerusalem and Washington is too close, too strategic and too deeply integrated for either side to imagine that Hezbollah’s aggression should go unanswered. U.S. Central Command and the various coordination mechanisms linking the two countries operate continuously. There have been no reports of serious disputes or breakdowns in communication.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee strongly condemned Iran’s attacks. Likewise, Israeli officials explaining the operation against Iran emphasized both Israel’s commitment to its alliance with the United States and its determination to retain the freedom to punish those who attack it.

Israel’s ambassador in Washington, Yechiel Leiter, underscored both the necessity of Israel’s actions and Jerusalem’s commitment to maintaining close coordination with Washington. Explaining the operation against Iran, Leiter emphasized that Israel’s objective was not escalation for its own sake, but the defense of its citizens against an existential threat.

His message reflected Israel’s determination to preserve its strategic partnership with the United States while retaining the freedom—and the obligation—to strike those who attack it.

With precision and determination, Israel’s course appears to be the only realistic one in the dangerous region it inhabits.

There is little chance that Netanyahu will allow Iran to posture through Hezbollah’s Lebanese front while Israel absorbs the consequences.

This is the Middle East.

It is also logical that Israel’s decisive response has once again given the Gulf states and the broader Sunni Arab world a reason to revisit the prospect of a useful anti-Iranian alignment—one that could reshape the region.

That is an outcome Trump may well find attractive.

Michael Oren: Israel has no choice but to risk open conflict with Trump

In May 2021, on the eighth day of “Operation Guardian of the Walls” against Hamas, I received a phone call from a senior adviser to U.S. President Joe Biden, who asked me to convey an urgent message to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “Israel must end the operation tonight, or risk losing American support.” Netanyahu was furious. He wanted to keep fighting for at least three more days. But he immediately complied. The operation ended that evening.

The only difference between U.S. President Donald Trump and previous presidents is his tendency to treat us publicly as vassals who must obey his every order. This is humiliating and demoralizing for Israel and, unfortunately, it strengthens our enemies. But that raises the question: Must Israel obey the White House’s demands under all circumstances and at any price?

Historically, the answer has been “no.” U.S. presidents not only ordered Israel to stop fighting; they also opposed its decision to go to war in the first place. That was the case in every war from the establishment of the state until “Operation Rising Lion” last year. Yet Israel’s leaders, despite the risk of a rift with Washington, determined that our basic security was at stake and decided to act.

Ironically, every time Israel defied the White House and went to war—in 1948, for example, in 1967 and in the 1981 strike on Iraq’s nuclear reactor—we earned America’s respect. Every time we surrendered to pressure and showed restraint—in 1973 and in the 1991 Gulf War—we earned America’s contempt.

This record is especially relevant today, when Hezbollah will undoubtedly violate any ceasefire and continue attacking us. Israel needs to defend and save the north, but in doing so, it risks not only war with Iran but also an open confrontation with President Trump. As in the past, Israel will have no choice but to act.

With its eyes wide open to the potential cost, Israel must show that it is neither a U.S. vassal nor its 51st state, but a sovereign country with an unshakable duty to defend its territory and its citizens. In the end, if history is our guide, Trump will respect us for it.

Who Is To Blame for Israel’s Sagging US Poll Numbers? Not Netanyahu or the Gaza War.

The investigative reporting geniuses who were so keen to see the hand of Russia, Russia, Russia in Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory seem remarkably incurious about the roles Turkey, Qatar, Iran, China, and the Palestine Liberation Organization have played in shaping U.S. domestic opinion, notwithstanding a 2024 press release from President Biden’s director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, that "Iranian government actors have sought to opportunistically take advantage of ongoing protests regarding the war in Gaza."

In other words, Netanyahu and the Gaza war aren’t the only variables. America is also a variable. The information environment is a variable. The Iran war is another variable. It is not over yet. If it concludes with a joyously free Iran allied with Israel and America and pumping plentiful and cheap oil and gas that gets paid for in U.S. dollars, Israel’s poll numbers—and Trump’s—will climb. A White House signing ceremony for Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Kuwait, Pakistan, Iran and Lebanon joining the Abraham Accords would also help Israel’s popularity—and Trump’s. That won’t happen so long as a hostile Iranian regime armed with missiles, drones, and proxies and the ability to close the Strait of Hormuz remains in power in Tehran.

The Gallup data are misleading because they omit respondents who say their sympathies are with both Israel and the Palestinians, with neither, or who have no opinion. Gallup itself concedes that the 5-percentage-point difference by which American sympathies are with the Palestinians over Israel in the latest poll "is not statistically significant." As recently as September 2025, Pew found Americans viewed the Israeli government more favorably than Hamas or the Palestinian Authority, and also viewed the Israeli people slightly more favorably than the Palestinian people.

Netanyahu has been prime minister of Israel on and off since 1996. The decline in Americans’ sympathy for Israel predated the Gaza war, as evidenced by a former editor of the The New Republic, Peter Beinart, publicly abandoning Zionism in July of 2020, by the Harvard Crimson in 2022 editorially endorsing a boycott of Israel (while Naftali Bennett was prime minister in a coalition government that included Arab parties and Mansour Abbas as a minister), by the Harvard student organizations that came out with their letter on October 7, 2023, stating, "We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence" and "the apartheid regime is the only one to blame."

My own bet is that the U.S. will eventually get back on track—Trump’s election has already set some of this in motion, including some changes to immigration policy and the forced sale of TikTok, if not yet a thorough cleanup of the feeds emanating from there or other platforms. The eventual end of the wars and of the pandemic will make it easier for young Americans to go to Israel and to see the reality of the situation for themselves. If the travelers so choose, they can fly there via the United Arab Emirates, which sees Israel as a promising partner. The hunger for meaning, purpose, and community may fuel a return to Christianity and Judaism, to churches and synagogues. Eventually people will figure out that the real dictators aren’t Trump and Netanyahu but Erdogan, Xi, and Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani of Qatar. Netanyahu will eventually die or retire or lose an election, and his successors will demonstrate the reality that Netanyahu wasn’t to blame for all the world’s Israel-hate. Until then, treat monocausal explanations—whether they come from former ABC anchor Moran or from the Brookings Institution's Bill Galston—with extreme skepticism.

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06/09 Links Pt2: Graham Platner Makes History As First Vanity Oysterman With Nazi Tattoo To Win US Senate Nomination; Rep. Ritchie Torres’ opponent duped by ‘Rabbi Linda of Gaza’

From Ian:

UN Watch: Legal Analysis of the Pillay Commission’s June 2026 Report to the Human Rights Council

The Human Rights Council’s Pillay Commission on Israel, now headed by Srinivasan Muralidhar of India, just released a new report focusing on violations by “non-State actors,” specifically “settlers” and “Palestinian armed groups” in the West Bank and Gaza. Despite the Commission’s formal reconstitution following the resignation of Navi Pillay, Miloon Kothari, and Chris Sidoti—with Sidoti subsequently re-appointed and Florence Mumba joining the panel—its reporting continues to reflect a persistent bias against Israel.

In an apparent effort to project even-handedness, the report addresses violations by both Israeli and Palestinian non-State actors. Yet the distribution of attention tells a different story. More than half of the report focuses on Israeli violations against Palestinians, while only approximately 9% addresses Palestinian attacks against Israelis. Another 34% examines Hamas abuses against Palestinians in Gaza. Even in those latter sections, however, the Commission repeatedly contextualizes or shifts blame to Israel, attributing lawlessness, repression, and social collapse primarily to Israeli actions rather than Hamas governance, effectively minimizing Hamas’s responsibility for its own crimes. The report also applies markedly different accountability standards to Israel and Palestinian actors.

At the heart of the report is a false moral equivalence between Israeli civilians residing in the West Bank and jihadi terrorist organizations. According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, approximately 482,000 Israelis currently live in communities in Judea and Samaria (also known as the West Bank), home to areas of profound Jewish historical and religious significance, including the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, Rachel’s Tomb near Bethlehem, and Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus. While the overwhelming majority are peaceful civilians, a small minority of Jewish extremists—estimated by Israeli defense officials at roughly 300 individuals, many of whom are not residents of the area—have repeatedly engaged in violence against Palestinians, including property damage, assaults, and, in some cases, killings.

The issue of extremist Israeli violence is real and should be investigated and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Israeli authorities themselves have acknowledged this as a serious problem and have taken actions to curb the phenomenon, ranging from issuing restraining orders to arrest and prosecution, as detailed in Section 3 below. Condemnation of such violence has come from the highest levels of government. As recently as May 21, 2024, Israeli President Isaac Herzog lambasted acts of violence by Jewish extremists, saying that they “defile and violate every basic moral, legal, and Jewish norm.” He noted that “There are elements on the fringes of our society that have normalized violence, and, sadly, some go even further — celebrating it and taking pride in it.”

However, the existence of a small number of violent Jewish extremists does not warrant the collective stigmatization of hundreds of thousands of Israeli civilians. Using the term “settler violence” to characterize all Israeli residents of the West Bank through the actions of a small extremist minority is misleading and irresponsible and risks stigmatizing innocent civilians due to their status as “settlers.” The report then draws a false moral equivalence by placing them in the same analytical category as designated terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad—groups openly committed to Israel’s destruction and the murder of Jews. By the same logic, one could describe Hamas terrorism as “Gazan violence.” Such terminology would be widely rejected because it conflates the actions of violent actors with those of the broader population.

The report’s treatment of Israeli victims illustrates the consequences of this framing. In paragraph 68, the Commission notes that of 42 Israelis killed in terrorist attacks in the West Bank between 2023 and 2025, 36 were “settlers.” By contrast, when discussing Palestinian fatalities, the report does not distinguish between uninvolved civilians, members of armed groups, or Palestinians killed while carrying out terrorist attacks. Instead, it categorizes Palestinian victims only by sex and age. The Commission’s deliberate emphasis on the “settler” status of Israeli victims—while withholding comparable contextual information regarding Palestinian fatalities—creates the unmistakable impression that attacks against these Israelis are somehow more understandable or less morally troubling.

Seth Mandel: What the ‘Israel Day’ Parades Are Ultimately About

The anti-Semitic protesters at Toronto’s Walk with Israel, on the heels of the controversy around who did and didn’t attend the Israel Day parade in New York (Mayor Mamdani boycotted it, some hardline Israeli rightists joined), has reignited the debate over the existence of such events as the primary “Jewish” parade in the West.

Why, some wonder, does the big show of pride in Jewish life and culture have to be a specifically “Israel” event? Why don’t we instead have a Jewish parade?

The always-thoughtful Phoebe Maltz Bovy, the author and opinion editor at the Canadian Jewish News, gives a few of the answers. She points out, correctly, that those seeking the change aren’t interested in inclusivity but exclusivity. That is, they want to exclude all traces of Israel or they will not participate (and might protest the event itself). Bovy: “Anyone who was going to be mad at a gathering of Jews whose purpose was anything other than renouncing Israel is going to have that same sentiment.”

Bovy is entirely correct. And there are other reasons. For example, it is entirely rational for Jews to more readily celebrate the place they built than the places from which they were un-personed and expelled with the shirts on their backs.

But I want to mention one reason that usually goes unspoken and happens to be hugely important: A celebration of the Jewish state is a celebration of Jewish peoplehood.

There’s a reason “Am Yisrael chai” was a rallying cry for Jewish communities in peril well before 1948. The Jews are a people. As scholars like to point out, the Jews have survived for so long that their model of nationhood and religion feels like an anachronism to the modern world.

If you are Jewish, you are part of the Jewish nation. That can get confusing for people in the post-1948 world in which there is a Jewish nation-state. But in the century before that year, debates among major Zionist and non-Zionist thinkers took for granted that the Jews were a nation deserving of some measure of autonomy no matter where they were in the world. Jews were a “national minority” in the Russian Empire much as Ukrainians were, for example. Such particularism was not Moscow’s idea, it was a rebellion against the imperial regime.

No Place but Everywhere By Abe Greenwald

Via Commentary Newsletter, sign up here. I hate the “has no place” nonsense because it’s at once a lie, an irrelevancy, and a dodge. The lie is self-evident. While the speech police were busy monitoring the micro-aggressions of pronoun use, Jew-hatred established a very comfortable home here. It blares from megaphones, it’s advertised on banners and t-shirts, and it manifests in more and more violent attacks.

The line is irrelevant because hatred, or any emotion, isn’t the problem. Hatred is endemic to the species. As Solzhenitsyn said, “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” I don’t care if people hate me. I’m not even sure I care that much if they hate me for being a Jew. In any event, they’re certainly allowed to. But I do care what they do about it. Which means the problem right now is the political organization of anti-Semitism and the actions of anti-Semites that infringe on the rights of Jews. These include the right to not be assaulted.

And the line is a dodge because even someone like Zohran Mamdani, who’s working to give anti-Semitism permanent New York City residency, can be congratulated for declaring that anti-Semitism has no home here and then go back to the business of Jew-baiting. With very few exceptions, America’s most prominent anti-Semites, on the left and right, are always at the ready to publicly denounce hatred in general and even anti-Semitism.

When I see or hear “Hatred has no place in ___,” I take it as a slap in the face, a blatant dismissal of Jewish experience. It is itself a kind of assault—on truth and accountability. Here’s what I’d like to hear an elected official say instead: Since October 7, Jew-hatred has been provided unprecedented political and academic camouflage in this country. It’s been downplayed and excused and allowed to occupy a place of dangerous prominence in the public square. Yes, sadly, hatred has been given a place here. This has inevitably led to unprecedented levels of violence against Jewish Americans. We must not ignore it or deny it. We must, instead, deprive anti-Semites of their recently furnished safe havens and push them back to the outermost edges of civic life.

The anti-Semites would just hate it.

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06/09 Links Pt1: US strikes Iran after Trump vows retaliation for downing of US helicopter; Bombing Iran is the perfect way to celebrate Pride; NJ man charged with planning ISIS attack on synagogue

From Ian:

Ben-Dror Yemini: In a War Against Ideology, Calculations of Military Balance Become Less Relevant

Israel faces a special kind of enemy - an ideology built on destruction and victimhood. When Hizbullah fired its first rockets in the current round on March 2, against the will of most Lebanese, it knew that whatever damage it caused Israel, the damage to Lebanon itself would be 100 times greater. Because of Hizbullah, most villages in southern Lebanon are destroyed and close to a million people have been displaced.

Iran and Hizbullah are one entity with one ideology. In a war against an ideology, calculations about the balance of power become less relevant. Iran's ideology of destruction extends as far as its reach allows. With the power it still has left, Tehran is managing to damage the global economy by closing the Strait of Hormuz. Despite the ceasefire, last week it seriously damaged Kuwait's airport and a nuclear power plant in the UAE.

Iran feels it is on top. Public pressure is lining up in full force alongside Hamas, Hizbullah and Iran. Had World War II been fought the way wars against jihad, Iran and terrorism are fought today, the Allies would have been accused of war crimes and the Nazis would be ruling the world.

Iran and its proxies must be defeated. Israel's war is just. But it is a difficult war. It is not over. Not even close. More is coming. But giving up is not an option. This is a Sisyphean war. Hizbullah can and must be isolated through a diplomatic chokehold, together with Lebanon's leadership and the Lebanese people, who are ready for a peace agreement.

Dennis Ross: The War in Iran May Yet Lead, in Time, to Genuine Change

In the short term, Iran has proven surprisingly deft at using its leverage. But over the long haul, the internal incoherence and deep-rooted failures of the Islamic Republic may yet lead to historic changes for the better in Tehran.

Iran has two powerful levers it did not think to apply before this conflict: disrupting transit through the Strait of Hormuz and attacking its Gulf Arab neighbors' oil facilities. But Iran has also suffered profound losses to its military capabilities and defense industrial base, not to mention to an economy that is near collapse. Much will depend on how much of an economic lifeline Trump provides to Iran. A smart deal would limit sanctions relief as much as possible. Relief would only buy the regime time.

The regime's endemic corruption and massive mismanagement will be compounded by its new leadership's attempts to rebuild its military and defense industrial base. That will require huge resources, which won't be reconcilable with the needs of the civilian economy, the current crisis of mass unemployment, and the regime's chronic inability to deliver water, electricity, and a currency that has any value.

Israel Seeks a Decisive Resolution but Iran Still Remains a Threat

Although Iran has been significantly weakened, it still retains substantial levers of power. Jerusalem Center analysts assess that, despite the recent escalation, the current situation does not necessarily signal the start of a large-scale war.

Dr. Jacques Neriah believes both sides are engaged in a relatively limited round of fighting. He cautions that Iran continues to operate, the Houthis have resumed attacks on Israel, and Hizbullah retains significant military capabilities.

Ella Rosenberg notes that while Iran's overall economy has suffered greatly, the Revolutionary Guards have not only preserved their power but, in some areas, even strengthened it. They continue to benefit from diverse revenue streams, including oil sales, financial networks, and illicit activities.

Yoni Ben Menachem said that the prolonged absence of the Houthis from the fighting was due to an Iranian decision to preserve them for the right moment. The Houthis can disrupt the critical shipping route through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait at any time.

Oded Ailam sees the current moment as a rare opportunity to weaken Hizbullah's grip on Lebanon and empower local actors seeking to reduce Tehran's influence.

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06/08 Links Pt2: ICC's Khan suspended after finding he committed serious sexual misconduct; BDS Was Never About Groceries; How UN ‘human rights experts’ became a tool of dictatorships

From Ian:

Shabbos Kestenbaum: The war on campus Jewry has nothing to do with Gaza

The ceasefire did not stop this. The hostage deal did not stop this. This was never contingent on Israel’s war against Hamas.

University administrators already have the tools they need: codes of conduct, anti-discrimination policies, rules for recognized student organizations and election oversight procedures. What they lack is the will to use them.

I have testified before Congress. I sued the richest university in the world. I know what institutional cowardice looks like up close. I also know what accountability looks like because I forced it. Harvard settled, and a federal judge allowed that case to proceed after rejecting the university’s motion to dismiss. These things happen when people stop accepting excuses and start demanding enforcement.

Student governments were built to represent all students, not to be captured by factions that plan to exclude Jews from democratic participation. Universities were built to be institutions of learning, not battlegrounds where Jewish students must hide their identity to earn social acceptance.

The answer to every pressure to surrender our institutions and redefine our identity on other people’s terms has always been the same: a deeper commitment to our communities, to one another and to our unassailable right to define for ourselves what Jewish life means.

Shai Davidai: BDS Was Never About Groceries

Unlike traditional antisemitism, which openly demonizes Jews, American Intellectual Antisemitism cloaks itself in the language of social justice, decolonization, and human rights. Jews are recast not as a vulnerable minority but as White settler-colonial oppressors, while the world’s only Jewish state is framed as uniquely illegitimate. By framing Israel as uniquely evil, the ideology allows highly educated people to openly express animus toward Jewish collective existence as a moral virtue.

American Intellectual Antisemitism doesn’t criticize Israel’s policies. It treats the existence of a Jewish state itself as a moral crime.

The BDS movement perfectly embodies this ideology. Although its supporters present BDS as a human-rights initiative, its founder, Omar Barghouti, has repeatedly made clear that the movement opposes “a Jewish state in any part of Palestine.” By singling out the world’s only Jewish state for boycott while showing little interest in sanctioning China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea, the movement treats Israel, in effect, as “the Jew among the nations.” That is precisely why college professors spearheaded the fight to boycott Israel long before BDS became mainstream. Beginning in 2013, academic associations across North America voted to boycott Israeli universities and scholars. Not China. Not Russia. Only Israel.

Of course, criticizing Israeli policies is not inherently antisemitic. Israelis themselves criticize their government constantly, as do many non-Israelis who are clearly not antisemitic. A person can oppose settlement expansion, criticize military actions, support Palestinian statehood, and express deep concern for Palestinian civilians without denying the Jewish people’s right to self-determination or supporting the terrorist regimes that seek to annihilate it. It is when criticism of Israel’s policies shifts into opposition to Israel’s existence that antisemitism enters the conversation.

That is what distinguishes American Intellectual Antisemitism from legitimate political criticism. Replacing complexity with ideological absolutism, it sets as its goal the marginalization and eventual destruction of the world’s only Jewish state.

That is why what happened at the Park Slope Food Coop matters. The vote was not an isolated controversy. It was just another step in the normalization of an ideology that views anti-Jewish hostility as virtuous. It was a real-life demonstration of how ideas once confined to seminar rooms now openly shape American civic life.

We can continue playing whack-a-mole, fighting one BDS resolution after another as they emerge in co-ops, unions, schools, nonprofits, and professional organizations. We can continue reacting each time anti-Jewish, anti-Israeli, and anti-American hatred erupts in a different city, campus, or institution. Or we can finally confront the departments, academic associations, and intellectual frameworks that legitimized this ideology long before it reached neighborhood institutions like the Park Slope Food Coop.

If we want to confront the ideology, we must go to the source. And that source lies behind the closed doors of presidents’, provosts’, and deans’ offices at our elite universities.

Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid withdraws from French festival after boycott pressure

The Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid said he would not attend FID Marseille, an international film festival taking place in July, according to a report in Le Monde. Several directors who had planned to participate withdrew their films from the festival to protest the inclusion of Lapid, because they support a cultural boycott of Israel.

Lapid, 51, who has been living in France since 2021, was invited to serve on the festival jury. Tsveta Dobreva, director of the FID, told Le Monde: "We invited Nadav Lapid solely out of respect for his filmmaking. That is the only criterion at FID. Then I started receiving calls demanding that he be disinvited. At first, I didn't respond because I fully accepted our decision. But the pressure continued and intensified."

She said the festival considered alternate plans, such as that Lapid would present his first film, Policeman, at an event that would include a discussion and the launch of a book of interviews with Lapid published in French. But then activists called to boycott FID if Lapid were involved in the festival at all. "Selected filmmakers began withdrawing their films; in the end, about 10 of them did so,” she said.

Lapid told Le Monde he decided to withdraw to save the festival embarrassment. He is one of Israel’s leading filmmakers and is known for his biting criticism of the Netanyahu government, which is the subject of his latest film, Yes, which was released in 2025. His 2019 film, Synonyms, won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival, and his film, Ahed’s Knee, won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2021. Lapid has accepted money from the Israeli government-supported Israel Film Fund for several of his films, including Yes.

While he chose to bow out, he nonetheless criticized the festival’s handling of the controversy, telling the newspaper: "FID didn't realize it was facing such a campaign of threats. Maybe they should have accepted a bit more responsibility in a moment like this… For a year, it was my film Yes that was attacked. And now, suddenly, it was my mere presence that became unacceptable. I asked myself: 'What do they want exactly? That I stop making films? That I leave France? How far will this go?'"

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06/08 Links Pt1: US Probe Finds 101 More Staffers for UNRWA Are Hamas Terrorists From Oct7; Omer Bartov is whitewashing Israel’s enemies

From Ian:

Exclusive: US Probe Finds 101 More Staffers for UNRWA ‘Gaza Relief Organization’ Are Hamas Soldiers From October 7: Schoolteachers, Principals Exposed as Terrorists

The chief oversight body responsible for monitoring American foreign assistance has unearthed evidence that an additional 101 staffers at the embattled United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) participated in the Oct. 7 terror attacks and are affiliated with Hamas’s military wing, according to an investigatory report transmitted to the State Department and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The U.S. Agency for International Development inspector general’s office, a law enforcement entity separate from the largely defunct USAID, determined on Friday that scores of "UNRWA school principals, teachers, security personnel, attendants, psychosocial counselors, and medical professionals" were also members of Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades or other terror factions. The inspector general determined that all 101 current or former UNRWA employees should be added to a government-wide blacklist that will prevent them from participating in all American foreign aid projects for a period of 10 years.

The latest staffers to be flagged at UNRWA—historically the primary major relief organization operating in Gaza—include a "deputy school principal serving as an al-Qassam deputy company commander in the Ain Gallout/5th infantry battalion," as well as a "deputy school principal serving as squad leader for the Khan Younis Brigade/2nd." Another teacher served as a "platoon commander of the Central Brigade/Al Quds 2nd Battalion," while a "math and computer teacher" was found to have "ties to an Al-Qassam intelligence squad." A third UNRWA instructor had "expertise as a sniper for Hamas," and a fourth served as a "Hamas soldier with orders to bring two anti-tank missiles to a prescribed location during the October 7 terror attacks." One other deputy UNRWA school principal served as a "platoon commander in Hamas’ Nuseirat battalion with communications responsibilities on October 7th."

The findings are certain to increase Congressional calls for UNRWA to be dissolved or formally designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the Trump administration. Israel has for the last 20 years claimed that UNRWA—a 76-year-old U.N. arm established solely to provide aid to Palestinian—has been fully infiltrated by Hamas, which maintains an iron grip on aid distribution across the Gaza Strip.

The Free Beacon first reported last week that the USAID inspector general’s investigation will encompass at least 1,500 UNRWA-linked individuals suspected of terror ties. As the U.S. investigation—dubbed Operation Stop the Carousel—proceeds, several U.N. organizations have already attempted to stonewall the USAID inspector general.

The UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon is compromised

An independent international investigation is needed of the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, more commonly known as UNIFIL. It simply cannot be allowed to continue in its role without expert oversight. This is not just a grave concern for Israel, but for Lebanon and Syria as well.

Troubling evidence was recently revealed by representatives of the Israel Defense Forces during a confidential briefing of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. The official military session confirmed that UNIFIL personnel operating in Southern Lebanon have actively collected intelligence on Israeli troops—sensitive, operational data that has flowed directly into the hands of the Hezbollah terrorist organization. The Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee is a permanent committee.

UNIFIL has evolved from a passive, ineffective bystander into an active security liability for Israel and the region. The revelation that a U.N. peacekeeping body is collecting intelligence on a democratic ally of the United States should alarm every friend of Israel, which is acting in Lebanon to defend its sovereign borders. That this information is being funneled to Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed terrorist proxy, proves the organization is deeply flawed.

Through these actions, UNIFIL personnel have directly compromised the lives of IDF soldiers on the ground. The time has come for Washington to come to the proper conclusion: UNIFIL cannot be allowed to continue without total accountability.

The recent disclosures confirm long-standing warnings regarding UNIFIL’s compromised neutrality. Senior Israeli military officials have noted that UNIFIL personnel routinely exceed their authority by documenting IDF troop movements, rather than monitoring violations along the so-called Blue Line. Rather than serving as a stabilizing element, the 13,000-strong armed force is operating as a hostile entity under the guise of international diplomacy.

Seth Mandel: How Iran’s Global War Works: The Case of Mohammad al-Saadi

Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat did not, with great fanfare, sign a cease-fire in 1979. They signed a historic peace treaty. The American Revolutionary War was not ended by the Cease-Fire of Paris, nor do we speak of the Cease-Fire of Versailles.

Yet cease-fires—vague, temporary, and ill-defined periods in which combatants sometimes retreat to their corners and sometimes just keep punching—are the best we can do when it comes to the Middle East today.

There is no great mystery here for anyone but the willfully blind: States that won’t make peace with Israel will nonetheless make cease-fires with Israel because a cease-fire isn’t peace.

These antagonists have one more characteristic in common, and that is their primary motive. We can discern this motive by observing where else, and against whom specifically, they carry on this same war.

Last week, Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi found himself in a Manhattan courtroom on terrorism-related charges that included his alleged role in the stabbing of two Jewish men in Golders Green last month, as well as the firebombing of a synagogue on North Macedonia and plans to carry out similar firebombings in several American cities.

Saadi is, according to the evidence against him, commander of an Iranian proxy group under the aegis of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the state military organization that is likely running the country since the death of the last ayatollah and mysterious condition of the current one.

Three weeks ago, Germany charged two men for allegedly planning to assassinate Jewish communal leaders in Berlin, as well as other identifiably Jewish targets. The leader of the plot was a Danish citizen who, according to Germany, worked for the IRGC.

Two months before that was the Michigan terror attack, in which a man tried to massacre Jewish children at a synagogue. His connections were to Hezbollah, also an Iranian militia.

The Islamic State of Iran is currently waging a global war on Jews. Israel is part of that war, and so is America. But so is every other country with Jews in it. Unless I missed it, no one has yet demanded a cease-fire in this broader war, because the Jews of Golders Green and Berlin and North Macedonia and New York and Arizona and Michigan and Los Angeles are not firing at Iran. They are only being fired at—by Iran. And the campus activists and NGOs and enlightened progressive politicians don’t seem to want that firing to cease.

Omer Bartov is whitewashing Israel’s enemies

‘When someone says to you that he wants to kill you – believe him.’ Israeli novelist Roni Gelbfish was quoting her grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, during a radio interview shortly after Hamas’s pogrom on 7 October 2023. Most people would empathise with Gelbfish’s grandmother in the aftermath of the atrocities of that terrible day. Hamas had once again shown, in the most horrific way imaginable, that it should be believed when it says it wants to slaughter Jews.

But if Omer Bartov feels any empathy with Gelbfish’s grandmother, he hides it well. In his new book, Israel: What Went Wrong, the American-Israeli professor at Brown University cites the quote as an example of Shoatiyut, which he translates from Hebrew as ‘Holocaustism’. This is the tendency, he argues, to interpret and exaggerate the threats facing Israel through the prism of the Holocaust and anti-Semitism more broadly.

Although Bartov offers a cursory criticism of the Hamas pogrom, he is really interested in condemning the Israeli reaction. He claims that framing 7 October as a Nazi-like attack on Jews is little more than an attempt to justify what he calls the ‘genocidal’ assault on Gaza.

Bartov’s argument is of a piece with that of Israel’s enemies in the Middle East and beyond. They view the Jewish State as evil incarnate, a prime representative of a malign West. They claim that Israel cynically weaponises the Holocaust and the charge of anti-Semitism to deflect what they call ‘legitimate criticism’ of its actions – in this case, the ‘genocide’ in Gaza.

To make this argument, Israel’s enemies deny and downplay the very real anti-Semitic threats it faces, from the assorted Islamist groups like Hamas, hell-bent on its destruction, to their nation-state supporters, Iran, Pakistan, Qatar and Turkey. By minimising and erasing these formidable threats, Israel can be portrayed as a singularly malevolent nation, killing for killing’s sake. Anyone who has followed the conflict in Gaza and the broader Middle East – and not just on the Qatar-funded Al-Jazeera but also on the BBC and Sky – should be familiar with this portrayal. Israel appears to be fighting a war for no good reason, rather than what it’s actually doing – defending itself against an all too real, annihilationist threat.

In What Went Wrong, Bartov lends credibility to this anti-Israel case, from the denial of the anti-Semitic threat to the accusation of genocide. After all, he’s a professor of Holocaust studies at an Ivy League university and he served as a company commander in an Israel Defence Forces (IDF) combat unit in the 1970s. His credentials have turned him into a valued guest on anti-Israel media. He’s written articles for the Guardian and the New York Times and has appeared on the virulent anti-Israel podcasts of Owen Jones and Mehdi Hasan.

But What Went Wrong is no dispassionate academic analysis. It is the work of a professor-activist who, at the very least, is willing to omit key facts to make his case.

Despite the implication of its title, What Went Wrong argues that the Zionist movement was, on balance, always wrong and deeply flawed. Zionism began, Bartov argues, as an ethno-nationalist, settler-colonial movement in the 19th century, and has only gone downhill since the establishment of Israel in 1948.

Denying the threat of anti-Semitism is at the centre of Bartov’s argument. Take his much-changed view of Hamas. In a 2004 article for New Republic, he argued correctly that Hamas poses a Nazi-like threat to Israel and the Jews: ‘The charter of the Hamas movement, issued in 1988 as the fundamental document of this Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, must be read to be believed. It contains, among its fundamentalist Islamic preachings, the most blatant anti-Semitic statements made in a publicly available document since Hitler’s own pronouncements.’

Despite occasional claims by anti-Israel activists, Hamas has not rescinded its charter. The Islamist terror group did publish a policy document in 2017, which toned down the anti-Semitic language. But Hamas has made clear the charter still remains in force. Additionally, several Hamas leaders have said they would like to repeat the 7 October pogrom.

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06/07 Links: Iran fires missile barrages at Israel; Two Israeli soldiers KIA in Southern Lebanon; "West Bank" Is a Colonial Imposition; Haaretz: information warfare, not journalism; The Rise of the UnJews

From Ian:

"West Bank" Is a Colonial Imposition

Names matter. Several state legislatures have passed resolutions affirming the use of "Judea and Samaria" and rejecting "West Bank," a modern political term.

After crushing the Bar Kokhba Jewish revolt in the year 135, the Roman Emperor Hadrian renamed Judea and Samaria as the province Syria Palaestina, invoking the Philistines, enemies of Israel, to erase Jewish identification with the land. The name stuck. My Jewish grandfather, born in Palestine, was considered Palestinian. Before 1948, "Palestinian" referred to the Jewish community as well as Arab people. After the Palestine Liberation Organization was established in 1964, "Palestinian" became associated with Arab nationalism.

Rabbi Pinchas Allouche of Scottsdale told the Arizona Legislature: "Language matters, because when you erase names, you erase history; when you erase history, you erase truth; when you erase truth, you delegitimize people; and when you delegitimize people, peace becomes impossible."

In 2024, Toronto adopted indigenous names for new public spaces. Ireland continues to restore traditional Irish names via a 2024 government initiative, the Placenames Committee. Rhodesia became Zimbabwe in 1980, and Swaziland Eswatini in 2018. So, too, should Judea and Samaria be restored. These original names reconnect the land to the history of an indigenous people, including the battle David and Goliath fought in Judea. Erasing Jewish names from Jewish history is a tactic as old as Rome. It didn't work then, and doesn't work now.

The Rise of the UnJews

The long-run future of the diaspora may increasingly replicate the European experience. Before World War II, Europe was home to over half of world Jewry and many of its most creative, dynamic communities; today, it barely contains 10 percent of Jews. At the end of World War II in 1945, there were 3.8 million Jews left on the continent. More than 80 years later, just 1.4 million reside there.

As is the case in the United States, anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism in Europe draw heavily from the educated classes. One study found that 60 percent of German anti-Semitic messages came from well-educated people. As far back as 2018, only a narrow majority (54 percent) of Europeans thought Israel had the right to exist, according to a CNN poll. Public support for Israel in Western Europe has declined rapidly in the years since, with only around one-fifth holding a favorable opinion of the country recently.

Given the wealth and size of the U.S. Jewish community, notably in New York, California, and various urban areas, it may take decades for American Jews to follow the same trajectory as Europe. But as secular, younger Jews rapidly assimilate, French sociologist Georges Friedmann’s half-century-old prophecy of a disappearing diaspora could prove correct. The main exceptions may be the socially self-segregated orthodox. Already, almost two-thirds of Jewish children in New York City are Orthodox.

It’s increasingly likely that, even in New York and Los Angeles--the two main centers of diaspora life--Jewish identity will become essentially Israeli. As early as 2035, according to a report by the U.K.-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research, Israel will become the home to a majority of all Jews, for the first time since early antiquity.

The diminishment of the diaspora—and with it, the extraordinary journey of a dispersed people—could be the lasting legacy of today’s unJews. (h/t KEN J BROWNSHER)

Andrew Fox: Haaretz: information warfare, not journalism

There’s a running joke among Gaza War veterans that people who’ve never been to Gaza read Haaretz to learn what’s going on there; those who’ve been there read Haaretz when they’re in the mood for some escapist fiction. For those of us who’ve fought in Gaza, the pattern of Haaretz war stories has become familiar: the author typically takes a kernel of truth, removes essential details and highlights unimportant ones, painting a fuzzy, incoherent picture whose only coherent thread is that the IDF is barbaric. Haaretz’s latest hit about IDF veterans’ ‘Moral Injuries’ is a case in point.

The very term is controversial. In fact, the article itself admits that the term doesn’t exist in the American Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illness, nor is it recognized by the Israeli Defense Ministry. But the author made sure to bury that inconvenient fact deep in the article and, just to play it safe, he turns that weakness into a strength by quoting an unnamed source who insinuates that the IDF does not recognize the term because that would effectively involve a public admission that the IDF is not nearly as moral as advertised. That’s right. Haaretz published a piece on a mental illness that may or may not exist and used the very dubiousness of that illness’ existence as proof that the IDF is wicked.

The reason the author insists on using that dubious term is that it sounds so bad. The term ‘moral injury’ conjures an image of a guilt-ridden soldier who is crippled by the knowledge of the atrocities he has committed. The article’s opening story reinforces that image by describing a man who is so horrified by his own wickedness he can’t even bear to look himself in the mirror and then goes on to describe an ex-sniper who wet his bed because of nightmares. It carefully avoids delving into the psychology behind that sense of guilt, leaving the reader to assume that those veterans feel evil because they are evil.

However, the reality about guilt is much more complicated, especially in the context of trauma. The broader context is that a sense of guilt is a natural reaction to trauma. It is perfectly natural to rehash terrible events that have happened to us and to think how we could have handled them differently, both to learn and to regain a sense of control – a feeling that “I’ll be ready for it next time.” And once people start focusing on what they could have or should have done, it is easy to feel guilty for not having chosen that supposedly correct course of action in real time. That is one reason sexual abuse survivors often feel guilty about being abused. I felt guilty when a platoon mate of mine got injured in Gaza, even though I knew I had done everything I could for him. A Nova survivor told me he felt a similar sense of guilt about his surviving while so many of his friends did not. In other words, a sense of guilt does not necessarily imply moral guilt. But casual readers don’t make that distinction. And the author weaponizes that.

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06/06 Links: What D-day teaches about Israel, Iran, and unity; Restraining Israel Is Not the Answer; The SPLC’s real scam; Zionism, Jews and the coming inquisition

From Ian:

Coming together again: What D-day teaches about Israel, Iran, and unity

For many, an unanswered question prevails: Why is it that Europe, the United Kingdom, and Canada fail to recognize the similarities between the Germany of World War II and Iran?

There can be little doubt that these countries, by their desire to remain “neutral,” have become party to the projection of a dangerous negativity toward Israel and the Jewish people.

A most disturbing question is why those who came together to confront Hitler fail to see the Iranian leader’s plan to emulate him. It was Hitler’s Germany that barbarically killed six million Jews, and today it is Iran that openly states its desire to eliminate Israel, home to the world’s largest number of Jews.

The ultimate observation is that the Jew was the whipping boy of the past and is the whipping boy of today; the only difference is who holds the whip.

And what of the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, a political and economic alliance embracing Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman, all of which have been attacked by Iran?

While Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has compared Iran’s proxy network and regional expansion in the Middle East to Hitler’s pre-World War II annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland, neither Saudi Arabia nor the others respond militarily to Iran’s assault on their respective countries.

The coming together of Israel and the US in their fight against Iran – which began on February 28 – epitomized the meaning of togetherness. Yet does it follow that this union has the support of America’s man in the street?

Yaakov Katz’s excellent article in last week’s Magazine highlights the increasing lack of support for Israel from the US public, embracing a high proportion of its younger generation, which will be voting for a new president in just over two years. It is the public that ultimately decides the policy of a country; and, observing which way the wind is blowing in the US, it does not look good for Israel.

The increasing possibility that Israel cannot rely indefinitely on support from the US brings us to the question of how we in Israel – possibly alone – will be successful in confronting those who wish to eliminate us.

Restraining Israel Is Not the Answer

Donald Trump is not known for hewing to convention, but this week he seemed to rerun a standard Beltway drama. During a phone call on Monday, the president called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "crazy" and pressured him to rein in the Israeli offensive in Lebanon. Two days later, the State Department announced it had brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon.

The seeming crackup in the Bibi-Trump bromance thrilled Israel’s critics and perturbed the Jewish state’s supporters. Some hope the close working relationship between Trump and Netanyahu is drawing to a close, others fear the entire bond between Washington and Jerusalem to be severed. Israel’s opponents think Trump’s actions to restrain Bibi show that the Jewish state is a strategic liability. But in reality, frictions like this between the two sides are common because of the value Israel provides the United States.

The most recent shouting has been over how to conclude the conflict with Iran. Israel and the United States severely damaged the Islamic regime’s leadership and war machine during their bombing campaign, but since it has not collapsed, their different priorities have emerged. Trump wants the Gulf Arabs’ oil to reach global markets again and to gain control of Iran’s enriched uranium without a return to major combat. Netanyahu wants Hezbollah to stop attacking northern Israel with drones and other long-range weapons. The mullahs claim the fighting in southern Lebanon, which Hezbollah started, is a serious obstacle to further negotiations about an interim agreement, so Trump is trying to find a workable compromise.

This sort of thing happens at the denouement of nearly every war that Israel has had to fight. The American goal in Middle Eastern conflicts usually is for its allies—including Israel—to successfully defend themselves, and then to reestablish peace in the region as quickly as possible. Threats to globally significant infrastructure, such as the Suez Canal or Persian Gulf oil refineries, make Washington nervous. More often than not, after fending off the initial attack, Jerusalem prefers to crush its opponents on the battlefield and destroy their ability to threaten the Jewish state for years or even decades.

This occurs regardless of how warmly the White House regards Israel. After the pan-Arab attempt to destroy Israel in 1948 failed and Israel gained the initiative, Harry Truman halted David Ben-Gurion’s counteroffensive. A decade later during the Suez crisis, Dwight Eisenhower forced Israel and its British and French allies to withdraw from Egypt. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger stopped Israel just short of encircling and annihilating much of the Egyptian Army at the end of the Yom Kippur War. Ronald Reagan forcefully condemned Israel's operations in Lebanon in the 1980s, and George H.W. Bush did everything he could to keep Israel from responding to Saddam Hussein’s unprovoked missile attacks in the first Gulf War.

Both strategies have shown their value at times. Eisenhower thought sparing Gamal Abdel Nasser would win over Third World opinion in the Cold War, but all he did was empower a dictator who cozied up to the Soviet Union and undermined our allies. America would have benefited from a Nasser-less Egypt. Hezbollah rewarded Reagan’s concern for Lebanese civilians by bombing the U.S. embassy and a Marine barracks in Beirut, going on a decades-long spree of international terrorism, repeatedly attacking Israel, and immiserating generations of Lebanese. But if Anwar Sadat had been thoroughly humiliated in 1973 and lost the forces he needed to maintain his grip on power, he could not have spoken in the Knesset in 1977 and then made peace with Israel the next year.

Alan Baker: Can the Oslo Accords model still deliver peace after October 7?

Local realities further complicate any return to the Oslo model. The Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023, fundamentally altered Israel’s security assumptions. The belief that territorial compromises, international guarantees, and external monitoring arrangements could provide sufficient security has been severely weakened. For many Israelis, the events of October 7 demonstrated that ultimate responsibility for national security cannot be delegated to international actors.

At the same time, increasing international pressure for immediate Palestinian statehood bypasses the very negotiating framework established by Oslo. The accords envisaged that permanent-status issues would be resolved through direct agreement between the parties. Efforts by foreign governments and international organizations to recognize Palestinian statehood in advance of negotiations effectively prejudge issues that were expressly reserved for negotiation. Such initiatives undermine the contractual foundations of the peace process and further erode confidence in international guarantees.

This dynamic is closely related to the widespread international promotion of the “two-state solution.” While the concept has become a diplomatic slogan, it was never included in the Oslo Accords. The accords intentionally left all final-status arrangements open for negotiation. Whether the eventual outcome would involve two states, a federation, a confederation, or another arrangement was to be determined exclusively by the parties themselves. The transformation of the two-state formula from a possible negotiated outcome into a predetermined international prescription departs from the original logic of the peace process.

Further complicating matters is the absence of a unified and authoritative Palestinian leadership capable of serving as a reliable negotiating partner. At the same time, Israel faces its own internal political and governance challenges, which affect national cohesion and international perceptions of stability.

Against this backdrop, the Abraham Accords offer an alternative and more encouraging model. Announced in 2020, these agreements demonstrated that Arab states and Israel can establish peaceful, productive, and mutually beneficial relations based on shared interests and direct engagement. The accords emphasize coexistence, mutual understanding, cultural exchange, and regional cooperation. Their success suggests that meaningful progress is achievable when parties choose pragmatic cooperation over confrontation.

The central lesson remains unchanged. International forums, judicial bodies, and unilateral recognition initiatives were never intended to replace direct negotiation. Efforts to impose solutions from outside may satisfy short-term political interests, but they cannot create the trust, legitimacy, and mutual acceptance necessary for durable peace.

As long as international actors continue to bypass rather than encourage negotiation, instability is likely to persist. A viable and lasting peace can emerge only from direct engagement between the parties themselves.

Until conditions exist for such negotiations, Israel will continue to rely primarily on its own capabilities to safeguard its security and national interests.

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06/05 Links Pt2: Sam Harris: Why I Won’t Debate Critics of Israel; Diaspora communities under antisemitic fire ask to immigrate to America; Muslim police assoc: Zionism a ‘manifestation of anti-Muslim hatred’

From Ian:

Ruthie Blum: A welcome effort to douse modern-day blood libels

Yechiel Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, deserves kudos for taking on the Sisyphean task of refuting pernicious falsehoods about the Jewish state. The result of his and his team’s research is a booklet called Manufacturing a Modern Blood Libel: Genocide, Starvation and the Language of Dehumanization, which he introduced in a May 28 video on social media.

Explaining the impetus for the project, he describes the way in which insidious accusations against Israel began to spread around the world in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas-led massacre on Oct. 7, 2023, “while families still searched for their loved-ones on blood-stained streets and before any military ground operation had begun.”

It’s time, he says in the clip, to “set the record straight,” pointing to recent “fictitious claims that Israel trains dogs to rape prisoners,” published in The New York Times opinion section. Such outrageous assertions, he adds, “are no different than [those] of the Middle Ages—that Jews use blood in their food and poison wells.”

He concludes by reminding viewers that “hateful lies spread faster than truth,” urging the public to download and read the free booklet, in order to “understand the facts, restore meaning to words and [restore] dignity to the State of Israel and the Jewish people.”

The timing of the compendium’s release couldn’t be more auspicious, as it coincided with the decision by the United Nations to add Israel, alongside Hamas, to a blacklist of entities guilty of conflict-related sexual violence. This is despite the United Nations having been furnished with ample evidence that while Hamas used sexual assault as a tool of war in Gaza, Israel did no such thing.

Thankfully, the latest report—this one by the Civil Commission on Oct. 7th Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children, titled “Silenced No More; Sexual Terror Unveiled”—is available with the pamphlet offered by Leiter and his embassy staff. But, of course, it’s of no interest to U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres or his antisemitic ilk.

Calling Guterres’s “political” move a “moral disgrace,” Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon declared a freezing of all relations with the secretary-general’s office. Good for Danon.

The question is whether it will make any difference in the larger scheme of things. The same can be asked about Leiter’s important endeavor.

Which brings us to the age-old and tiresome refrain about Israel’s “poor public diplomacy.” Indeed, whenever the world attacks the Jewish state, the response by concerned Israelis and pro-Zionist voices in the Diaspora is to blame a lack of sufficient hasbara. The anti-Israel chorus, at home and abroad, has a different view: that the problem isn’t one of P.R., but rather of evil policies.

Both attitudes are wrong, certainly the latter. The former, at least, contains a plea for us to do better at making our case. The trouble is that the outcry involves finding fault with the government for not conveying a sound, swift message.

Why are they really boycotting AIPAC? Bigotry

The anti-AIPAC push must be seen in the context of the surge in antisemitism since the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Since then, the mainstream media’s embrace of Hamas propaganda about “genocide” has distorted discussions about the Middle East to the point at which the disconnect from the reality of the conflict is so great that liberals and even some on the right accept the lies as unchallenged truth.

In this manner, Israel is falsely accused of what its opponents actually wish to do. And the genocidal war that is actually being waged against it by Iran and its Islamist terror proxies, like Hamas and Hezbollah, is either ignored or rationalized as a just cause.

Democrats are afraid
But there should be no reticence in calling out the rhetoric about AIPAC not merely as deceptive, but as an ancient prejudice dressed up in the clothes of 21st-century progressive intellectual fashion. The vicious narrative about AIPAC’s being a conspiracy to support “genocide” is so pervasive that even many Jewish Democrats won’t denounce it.

Some, like Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro,who claims to support Israel while opposing its government, rightly worries about the blurring of the distinction between AIPAC and money raised by Jewish citizens. But even he dodged questions about whether he would take money from AIPAC supporters in 2028, demonstrating that he fears taking on the anti-Israel prejudices of his party’s intersectional base.

At the same time, a lobby devoted specifically to funding Democrats running for the House who are against Israel got laudatory coverage in The New York Times. And just this week, Democrats nominated a candidate for a New Jersey House seat in a deep- blue district who has a history of volunteering for an Al Qaeda-linked group in the 1990s and was a friendly witness for the defendant in the 1995 trial of the so-called “Blind Sheikh,” Omar Abdel-Rahman, the Egyptian cleric whose followers had bombed the World Trade Center two years earlier.

Adam Hamaway, currently a plastic surgeon who is now set to enter Congress next January, like Chris Rabb in Philadelphia, won his primary against less extreme opponents by being the loudest to cry “genocide” while railing against AIPAC.

The liberal press calls such politicians “progressives.” But the truth is that they and those in the media who are mainstreaming the narrative about AIPAC’s malign influence are bigots whose goal is to drive pro-Israel Jews and Christians out of the public square. Their efforts are depicted as a righteous cause, while the work of millions of Americans to ensure that Israel lives and that an alliance that is in their country’s interest thrives are smeared as puppets whose strings are pulled by a shadowy Jewish plot.

Whatever one may think about AIPAC or what an ideal system for campaign fundraising might look like, the effort to demonize it is just another antisemitic conspiracy theory.

Muslim police association identifies Zionism as ‘manifestation of anti-Muslim hatred’

British Jewish groups have described their intention to raise serious concerns with government and law enforcement, after revelations that a policy paper from the representative body for Muslim police officers in the UK identifies Zionism as “one of the manifestations of anti-Muslim hatred”, refers to the IDF as a “Zionist terrorist group”, and describes “alarming and unverified stories about acts of violence” on 7 October.

As reported by The Spectator, the National Association of Muslim Police (NAMP) published the paper, written by its then-Vice President, Khaldoun Kabbani, last year. The NAMP is reportedly affiliated to more than a dozen police forces around the country, including West Midlands police, West Yorkshire police, Greater Manchester police and Police Scotland.

The policy paper in question also claims that “Zionists” are guilty of “misuse of the Holocaust” when describing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, before going on to misuse it themselves, saying that “the process of dehumanisation by the Nazis towards the Jewish people highlights a broader mechanism of oppression, where dominant groups suppress empathy through propaganda and indoctrination to facilitate cruelty. This mechanism is not confined to the past but is observed in contemporary conflicts, such as the situation between the Israeli Government and Military and Palestinians.”

As The Spectator describes, the NAMP document refers to “Zionist terrorist groups including the IDF” and says that “Zionism represents one of the manifestations of anti-Muslim hatred, stripping Muslims of their humanity.”

The paper claims that “Zionist terrorist groups” committed 16 different “genocides” against Palestinians between 1948 and the present day, while containing no mention of the killings carried out by Palestinians during the same period.

It also maintains that “throughout history, including before, during, and after the Holocaust, a horrific manifestation of European anti-Semitism, Jews sought refuge in the lands of Muslims specifically Palestine. In 1947, as Jewish refugees arrived by ships, they unfolded banners stating, “The Germans destroyed our families and homes – don’t destroy our hope.” The Arab world initially welcomed them with open arms, but these efforts were ultimately undermined by covert Zionist colonial agendas.”

In reality, there was significant antisemitism towards Jews within many Muslim societies over the centuries, with Jews often treated as second class citizens and subjected to murderous assaults. In the wake of the creation of the State of Israel, numerous Muslim countries effectively ethnically cleansed their newly formed states of Jewish communities which had lived there for millennia.

The NAMP paper also describes what it calls “alarming and unverified stories about acts of violence” committed by Hamas on 7 October 2023, “including claims of beheadings and assaults. These reports have significantly contributed to increasing hatred towards Islam.”

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