02/23 Links Pt2: What’s wrong with Zionism, Hugh Laurie?; Media Fall Silent on Palestinian Draft Constitution; Former Hamas hostage turns ordeal into music

From Ian:

Jonathan Sacerdoti: What’s wrong with Zionism, Hugh Laurie?

If Zionism is defined minimally as support for the existence of Israel as a Jewish state, then opposition to Zionism entails opposition to that principle. Israel is home to roughly eight million Jewish citizens. To advocate dismantling the state as a Jewish polity is to propose a fundamental restructuring of sovereignty in a region where minority protection has always ended badly for us Jews.

Judea Pearl, the Israeli-American computer scientist and philosopher and father of the murdered journalist Daniel Pearl, has argued that one should ‘shock the anti-Zionist out of his pompous self-righteousness’. He is right.

His challenge is uncomfortable. If anti-Zionism involves dissolving Jewish self-determination in the only state where it currently exists, what becomes of its population? Are they to entrust their security to political arrangements that have yet to demonstrate durability? Are they to accept permanent exposure as the price of ideological consistency?

Those who identify as anti-Zionist often insist that their position targets a political ideology rather than a people. They frame it as opposition to nationalism, or to specific Israeli policies. Criticism of a government is ordinary political speech. Advocacy for the eradication of a state’s defining national character carries different consequences.

Laurie has not articulated a doctrine. He mourned a colleague and resisted being labelled. Others supplied the ideological frame around his words. But he took the bait and seemed at least to imply his rejection of Zionism by pointedly responding to critics that he had never said he supports it.

When celebrities feel compelled to signal distance from Zionism, even defensively, clarity becomes essential. If the objection concerns government policy, say so. If it concerns the legitimacy of Jewish nationhood in Israel, confront the implications directly and own the full genocidal implications of your beliefs.

Dana Eden’s tragic death remains under investigation. The argument that followed reveals how quickly grief is conscripted into ideological struggle. A tribute became a test of political identity. Before adopting or repudiating a word as freighted as Zionism, one ought to ask what world that choice implies. And whether one is prepared to defend it.

Report: Inside Hamas's Sophisticated Media Empire Waging Psychological Warfare

A recent report by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC), based on Hamas documents seized by the IDF in Gaza, argues that Hamas maintains centralized managerial, financial, and strategic control over a broad media ecosystem, including outlets presented publicly as “independent.”

The report, published on February 22, 2026, draws from documents captured during military operations in Gaza and provides an unprecedented window into how the Palestinian terrorist organization coordinates its information warfare against Israel and the broader international community.

The Hybrid Media Model
At the heart of Hamas’s strategy lies what Israeli analysts term a “hybrid” media ecosystem—a deliberately constructed system designed to create the appearance of press diversity while maintaining absolute editorial control. According to the report, Hamas operates both official outlets like the Al-Resala media institution, the Al-Aqsa television network, and the Palestine newspaper, alongside news agencies Shehab and SAFA that publicly present themselves as independent journalistic organizations.

“This hybrid media system is not accidental,” the report states. “It is designed to allow Hamas to appear to advocate for media pluralism, while in fact it fully controls the media discourse.” This arrangement also provides the organization with diplomatic and operational flexibility, including the ability to circumvent sanctions and deny association with extreme content by attributing it to “independent” outlets.

The information department, led by Ali Al-Amoudi, maintains oversight of the entire ecosystem through regular inspections and coordination meetings designed to ensure all media activity aligns with Hamas’s broader strategic messaging and tactical objectives.

"The new acting head of Hamas’ political bureau in Gaza."
*released as part of the Gilad Shalit "prisoner deal" in 2011 - was among those very close to Sinwar during their imprisonment and after their release, accompanying him frequently to meetings and events. v The report adds that unofficial reports in late 2025 claimed al-Amoudi was appointed acting head of Hamas’s political bureau in Gaza and was being discussed as a potential successor to Yahya Sinwar.

It traces his proximity to Sinwar back to their time in Israeli prison: al-Amoudi was arrested in 2004, released in the 2011 Gilad Shalit exchange, and, according to the report, developed a close relationship with Sinwar while incarcerated. The report says al-Amoudi later served as Sinwar’s office manager during Sinwar’s first term leading Hamas’s political bureau in Gaza (2017–2021).

CAIR-Ohio Director Invokes Blood Libel at Ohio Senate Antisemitism Hearing

Khalid Turaani, Executive Director of the Ohio branch of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), appeared before the Ohio Senate Judiciary Committee on February 18, 2026 to testify against Senate Bill 87, which would codify the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism into Ohio state law.

During his testimony, Turaani alleged that Israel operates the world's largest human skin bank and that the skin is harvested from the bodies of dead Palestinians. CAIR’s lobbying arm, CAIR Action, and a coalition of other anti-Israel Ohio-based organizations also testified in opposition to SB 87 at the same hearing.

A Modern Blood Libel Before a State Legislature
The Anti-Defamation League has explicitly catalogued claims of this type — that Israel systematically harvests body parts from Palestinians — as a modern iteration of the medieval blood libel: the centuries-old antisemitic conspiracy theory alleging that Jews murder non-Jews to harvest their bodily matter. The ADL notes that in the current Israeli-Palestinian context, organs and tissue are substituted for blood, and that in some cases activists have gone further, alleging Israel deliberately kills Palestinians in order to harvest their remains. The ADL has found no credible evidentiary basis for these claims.

The specific “skin bank” framing Turaani deployed before Ohio state senators has circulated in anti-Israel activist circles since at least late 2023, traceable to social media accounts and pro-Palestinian advocacy networks. The ADL has directly addressed these claims, finding that they lack documented factual support and function as vehicles for antisemitic conspiracy narratives rather than substantiated reporting.

The context in which Turaani made this claim adds a significant dimension. SB 87, which he was testifying to defeat, would codify the IHRA definition of antisemitism into Ohio law. The IHRA definition, which has been used by the U.S. State Department and endorsed by over 40 countries, explicitly lists as an illustrative example of antisemitism: “Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.”

Turaani’s testimony did not remain confined to the hearing room. Ramy Abdu, the founder and chairman of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor (EuroMed), amplified the clip on X, stating: “Israel is skinning dead bodies of Palestinians.”

Abdu’s promotion of the claim is notable given EuroMed’s documented record and his own background. Abdu, along with EuroMed’s former chairman Dr. Mazen Kahel, were both named in a 2013 list released by the Israeli government identifying Hamas operatives and affiliated institutions in Europe. The watchdog group HonestReporting has described EuroMed as a “Hamas front org.”

EuroMed’s track record of unverified atrocity claims extends well beyond the Turaani clip. The organization has previously accused the Israeli army of organ theft from Palestinians and of “systematically” using police dogs to “brutally attack, rape Palestinian civilians” — claims that HonestReporting has characterized as part of a pattern of fake news, conspiracy theories, and blood libels the group has championed since the October 7, 2023 attacks.

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02/23 Links Pt1: The End of Anarchy; Where did it go so wrong for the International Criminal Court?; Keffiyeh-clad anti-Zionists to protest outside Buchenwald Nazi concentration camp

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The End of Anarchy

October 7 and the war that followed seem to have broken the spell. The Temple Mount status quo, for example, has thankfully been eroded. Jews had been prohibited from praying at their own holy site, over which the state of Israel has sovereignty, so as not to provoke Palestinian violence. This overt religious discrimination against Jews was indefensible. Now the “terrorist’s veto” has been withdrawn.

Also frozen in 1967 were land registrations in Judea and Samaria, in expectation of an eventual resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The result was that Israel is met with global opprobrium any time it seeks to enforce land-use regulations against Palestinian scofflaws. (There is no such disapproval expressed when illegally built Jewish housing is removed.) So Israel is planning to slowly resume registration to curb an anarchic state of affairs beyond the green line.

Most important, Israel and the U.S. are making the new “no reset” policy clear to Iran. President Trump has positioned U.S. assets in the region such that pretty much every option for an attack on Iran would be on the table. Trump has come closer to embracing full regime change over the past few months. Clearly, he does not want Iran to be able to revert to its prewar state.

Along those lines, he has been arguably even more hawkish than Benjamin Netanyahu’s government regarding Hezbollah. Iran’s Lebanese proxy has been brought to its knees by the IDF, and both Trump and Netanyahu want it to stay there. Iran doesn’t get to be its old self again. Now, apparently, we live in the age of consequences.

Same goes for Gaza. It would appear the days of unilateral Israeli disengagement are over. In the past, once a round of hostilities ceased, Israel would go back to its corner and wait for the next round. But the recent war ended with a deal, not a one-way Israeli concession. And that deal requires Hamas to disarm if the IDF is to retreat. Trump occasionally seems to waver on the definition of “disarm,” but he isn’t telling Israel to move off an inch of Gaza.

The old status quo, in which Israel’s antagonists were permitted to hit the reset button if they lost a war of their own making, meant Israel was essentially penalized for winning a defensive war. This set up a perverse incentive structure. It also created an atmosphere of anarchy in which the rules could be ignored at will.

The American-led world order lacked order. That is being remedied, and not a moment too soon.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Who Will Become the Biggest Beneficiary of the Billions of Dollars About To Be Invested in the Gaza Strip? The Terrorist Group Hamas

Although Hamas has expressed its willingness to hand over its government institutions to the NCAG [Palestinian National Committee for the Administration of Gaza], there are indications that the terror group seeks to control the new committee and turn it into a Hamas puppet.

The NCAG is already under pressure from the terror group to incorporate thousands of Hamas terrorists into a newly established Palestinian police force in the Gaza Strip. Hamas, in addition, is seeking to ensure that its civil servants be placed on the payroll of the NCAG.

"There is a prevailing sense within the committee and other parties that Hamas is determined, by all means, to keep its members within the new administrative framework overseeing the Gaza Strip." — Asharq al-Awsat, quoting "sources close to" NCAG, February 14, 2026.

What we are currently witnessing are direct and indirect efforts by Hamas to continue governing the Gaza Strip even after the establishment of Trump's "Board of Peace" and the NCAG.

Hamas... sees itself as an essential part of the post-war arrangements in the Gaza Strip. In the viewpoint of Hamas, the role of bodies such as the "Board of Peace" and NCAG should be limited only to paying salaries, funding reconstruction and ensuring the entry of aid supplies into the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, the terror group will focus its efforts on rearming, regrouping, rebuilding its terror infrastructure, and planning more attacks on Israel.

Anyone who believes that the NCAG will be able to operate as an independent governing body in the Gaza Strip is abysmally uninformed. Its members will undoubtedly be at the mercy of Hamas and its masked thugs.

"The image promoted by some international parties that the committee is a means to remove Hamas from power seems far removed from reality. The facts on the ground indicate that Hamas still maintains military, organizational, and ideological control within Gaza, and that any new administrative body cannot operate independently of its will or outside its sphere of influence. Real power remains in the hands of those who possess weapons, organizational networks, and the capacity for sustained popular mobilization." — Mahdi Mubarak, Arab political analyst, rumonline.net, February 16, 2026

Hamas should have been asked to end its rule over the Gaza Strip and hand over all its weapons before, and not after, the formation of the NCAG. Since that has not happened, Hamas will become the largest beneficiary of the billions of dollars that are about to be invested in the Gaza Strip.

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02/22 Links: Trump's Board of Peace Must Deradicalize Gaza; Bondi hero: ‘I just ran to stop him killing innocent people’; Mike Huckabee handles Tucker Carlson’s ‘Gish Gallop’ with grace

From Ian:

Trump's Board of Peace Must Deradicalize Gaza

President Trump convened his Board of Peace on Thursday, announcing new commitments to fund Gaza's reconstruction and provide troops for a Gaza stabilization force. But so far, everyone's avoided an essential question: How will future generations of Palestinian children be raised and educated - and will they again be indoctrinated with radical hatred of Jews and Israel? If so, then the president's vision of Gaza as a "deradicalized, terror-free zone that does not pose a threat to its neighbors" will remain a pipe dream.

Many of the Hamas terrorists who stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, were raised on a steady diet of hatred. As children, they watched a Hamas-produced TV show hosted by a Mickey Mouse knockoff named Farfour, who preached jihad and urged the killing of Jews. Surrounded by smiling children, Farfour vowed to "liberate Jerusalem from the criminal Zionists," repeatedly exhorting: "Kill! Kill! Kill!" A talking bee named Nahoul ranted about "the filth of the criminal Jews." That reality helps explain why hundreds of Gaza civilians joined the rampage on Oct. 7, and many more celebrated in the streets.

The urgent question now is whether the machinery of radicalization that produced Hamas will finally be dismantled. If it is not, a return to war is inevitable. As long as Hamas remains embedded in Gaza's institutions, Palestinian children will continue to be indoctrinated to hate and kill Jews - in schools, on screens and at home. If Trump wants peace in Gaza to endure, he should establish a Deradicalization Commission through the Board of Peace, charged with dismantling the entire infrastructure of hate.

Pierre Rehov: Erdogan's Sunni Noose: Turkey's Bid to Encircle Israel

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has launched an ambitious diplomatic offensive aimed at unifying the Sunni world under Ankara's leadership. The objective is not merely reconciliation with former rivals. It is the construction of a Sunni diplomatic and strategic "wall," or "noose," around Israel, replacing the Iranian "Shi'ite crescent" with a new configuration of Sunni power.

The Turkish-Saudi reconciliation is particularly significant. Following years of tension after the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul, Ankara and Riyadh have now moved decisively toward strategic cooperation.

Turkish and Saudi officials increasingly frame Israel as a destabilizing actor in these theaters. The emerging partnership is not merely economic; it reflects coordinated positioning against perceived external threats, with Israel explicitly cited.

Turkey and Egypt have now signed a $350 million military framework agreement covering joint weapons production, intelligence sharing, and military exercises. Turkish air defense systems and munitions are slated for delivery, and bilateral trade is projected to reach $15 billion.

As the guardian of the Suez Canal and a dominant actor in North Africa, Egypt provides logistical leverage capable of influencing maritime routes critical to Israel's economy.

On February 9, 2026, the foreign ministers of Turkey, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates issued a joint communiqué condemning what they called "Israeli expansionist policies in occupied territories" and calling for Islamic unity.

Some analysts describe an emerging "Sunni axis," or noose, influenced by Muslim Brotherhood ideology; backed by Turkish military power, financed by Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and designed, by expanding into Gaza, to encircle and finish off Israel.

The UAE, under the impressive leadership of Sheikh Mohamed ben Zayed al Nahyan, pursues a technocratic, anti-political Islam agenda that diverges sharply from Erdogan's ideological sympathies.... Still, the coalition's ultimate aim, apart from the UAE, unmistakably seems to be "containing" Israel.

Recently, Saudi media have featured openly anti-Israel and antisemitic headlines not seen in years. The kingdom appears to be totally aligning itself with anti-Israel countries such as Qatar and Turkey, while "tensions with the UAE explode."

Egypt, Israel's chilly peace partner since 1979, has reportedly expanded military infrastructure in the Sinai Peninsula in ways that should, under the supposed peace treaty, raise serious questions.

Turkish and Egyptian intelligence services are reportedly coordinating efforts to counter rival influences and restrict Israel's strategic access.

Israeli analysts increasingly describe it as the replacement of Iran's Shiite axis with a Sunni bloc influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood.

The coalition presents itself as promoting regional peace. Yet "peace" may translate into the vaporization of Israel, especially should a future Israeli government prove more pliable.

Erdogan's participation in "stabilization" efforts would significantly expand Turkish influence within the emerging Sunni crescent. Ankara's well-documented support for Muslim Brotherhood networks — which are Hamas's patrons, ideologically and financially – should raise obvious concerns.

Netanyahu's insistence that Israel determine which international actors, if any, operate in Gaza, serves multiple strategic purposes. It prevents Turkish entrenchment in Gaza, maintains Israeli control over post-war arrangements, and signals to Washington that Israel views Turkish expansionism as a long-term threat transcending personal or political relationships.

Whatever the obstacles, Erdogan's direction seems clear: a militarily and economically anchored Sunni alignment to constrict Israel's strategic space.

Ruthie Blum: Mike Huckabee handles Tucker Carlson’s ‘Gish Gallop’ with grace

By anchoring the exchange in Islamist conduct, Huckabee stripped the argument to its essentials. For instance, asked by Carlson what it cost the United States to “move the fleet off Iran into the Persian Gulf,” the ambassador replied, “A lot less than it would to bury a lot of Americans if [the ayatollahs] ever got a long-range ballistic missile. A lot less.”

He also pointed out that if Carlson cares so much about America, he should be concerned that Iran’s proxies are already “deeply embedded” in the Western Hemisphere.

This back-and-forth was among many fronts in the rhetorical battlefield of Carlson’s crazed conspiracy-theory arena, however. It might even have been the sanest section of the Q&A.

The looniest was his casting of aspersions on the authenticity of Netanyahu’s Jewish roots, since the prime minister’s family hails from Eastern Europe, and his sneering suggestion that Israelis might need DNA tests to prove their biblical connection to the land.

Other jibes were just as jaw-dropping, beginning with his impugning of a brief meeting Huckabee had with Jonathan Pollard after the death of the latter’s wife; declaring that Jeffrey Epstein was known to be connected with the Mossad (adding a lie about Israeli President Isaac Herzog having been a guest on the pedophile’s island—for which he later apologized but may still be sued); citing fabricated statistics about Israel’s persecution of Christians; and besmirching Israel Defense Forces behavior in Gaza. Oh, and insisting that Israel provide free abortions courtesy of U.S. aid.

It’s no wonder, then, that Carlson, who’s built a following among Israel-bashing antisemites, remains a groyper favorite.

It has to be said, though, that Huckabee knew what he was in for with Carlson. The pair had been sparring publicly on social media, which led to Huckabee’s challenging his former Fox News colleague to “come talk to me, instead of about me.”

Because of Huckabee’s naturally cheerful demeanor and impeccable manners, the interview concluded on a cordial note, with his extending an invitation to Carlson to return to Israel and attend his church. It was a magnanimous gesture, to be sure.

But the rest of us would prefer that Tucker Carlson never darken our doorstep—or VIP lounge—again.

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02/21 Links: Emerging Sunni coalition is a strategic threat to Israel; Huckabee calmly, brilliantly confronts Carlson’s barrage of anti-Israel, anti-Christian lies; Jeremy Bowen’s bias is visible from space

From Ian:

Far Left protest planned against Buchenwald Memorial on Liberation Day

A planned far-left protest against the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial on the anniversary of its liberation has sparked outrage across Germany, with officials denouncing the move as an affront to the memory of Holocaust victims.

According to a report in the German Bild, citing Switzerland's Neue Zürcher Zeitung, radical organizations are calling for demonstrations on April 11, the day the camp was liberated in 1945. The groups accuse the memorial's management of "spreading Israeli propaganda" and of not being "hostile enough toward Israel."

The protest is being organized under the slogan "Keffiyehs in Buchenwald." Among those involved are the student wing of Germany's Left Party (Die Linke), the anti-Israel group Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East and the German Communist Party (DKP).

In statements published by the organizers, the Buchenwald memorial site is accused of promoting "historical revisionism and genocide denial" and of serving as a vehicle for advancing an alleged "Israeli narrative."

The controversy follows an incident last year in which a woman seeking to stage a protest at the site while wearing a keffiyeh, a scarf widely associated with Palestinian nationalism, was denied entry. A German court later upheld the decision. The protest organizers claim the memorial's management is effectively criminalizing pro-Palestinian activists.

According to the report, one of the leading activists behind the campaign belongs to a communist organization that previously expressed public support for the October 7 massacre carried out by Hamas. In a statement issued after the attack, the group described it as a "legitimate uprising by all means necessary."

The remarks triggered widespread public anger in Germany, particularly given Buchenwald's central place in the country's culture of remembrance. Tens of thousands of Jews were murdered at the camp during the Holocaust, making it one of the most significant symbols of Nazi atrocities.

Felix Klein, the German government's commissioner for combating antisemitism, sharply condemned the initiative, calling it "a new low in the reversal of roles between victim and perpetrator." He described the planned demonstration as "a frontal assault on the dignity of commemoration and on the memory of the victims of the Holocaust."

Daniel Finkelstein: Britain is still our country as well – and we will not be driven out

I understand those people who wish to make aliyah. I respect that decision and understand the emotional pull. But as a move to enhance family safety? I don’t think so.

Until the last five years I might have answered “America” if considering a safe refuge for Jews. But now? I note only that the worst antisemitic abuse I receive originates in that country. And that every extreme trend is worse and more violent there. It seems like a society constantly on the edge.

And nowhere else in Europe is it tempting, either. Or the Middle East. Or Africa for that matter. Jews are a small minority in almost every country we live in and that is inevitably perilous. But I don’t think we are finished here unless someone has a better idea, and I don’t think someone does have a better idea.

But I do have a more positive reason for believing in the future for Jews in Britain. It has become harder for Jews everywhere, we all feel less safe, but a sense of proportion is required. This remains one of the greatest times to be alive as a Jew, and Britain is one of the greatest places.

When I read the story of both sets of my grandparents before they were engulfed by the disasters of the 1930s and 1940s, I could see the warning signs. Absolutely I could. The growth of open antisemitism, the slow rise of violence, the breakdown of taboos. All the things we worry about now did indeed precede the catastrophe.

Yet the difference in extent is as striking as the similarly in nature. The extent of violence and hatred was of an entirely different scale. And Germany, in particular, was a much more unstable country. British democracy and rule of law certainly has its challenges but remains, by comparison, vastly stronger.

When I wrote recently in The Times about my experience of antisemitic abuse I was flooded with kind messages from readers. We certainly have enemies but we also have many allies. There are millions of decent people in Britain who realise that their own safety and liberty is bound up in ours.

Besides, over hundreds of years we have built our own culture and community in this country. It’s not something to give up lightly. I don’t think complacency is warranted. Sadly, it is not warranted at all. But a little defiance is. This is certainly still the place for me.

Jeremy Bowen’s bias is visible from space

It will be of little surprise that Bowen has consistently misrepresented, downplayed or even tried to excuse, Hamas’s use of Palestinian civilians as human shields. Against Israel, Hamas has little choice but ‘to leverage the things that they can leverage in terms of trying to get an edge’, Bowen said in a 2023 podcast episode. In 2014, he claimed to have seen ‘no evidence during my week in Gaza of Israel’s accusation that Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields’. This is despite extensively documented evidence to the contrary, showing that Hamas launches rockets from civilian areas and commandeers civilian infrastructure for military ends, including hospitals and schools.

In fact, you can find examples of Bowen’s bias as far back as 2009, when the BBC Trust found him in breach of impartiality guidelines for a 2007 BBC News article on the 40th anniversary of the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War.

According to monitoring by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), Bowen has spent decades perfecting a narrative of Israeli aggression while airbrushing the extent of the threats Israel faces. He has repeatedly platformed voices that dehumanise Israelis while failing to challenge the anti-Semitic ideology that drives Hamas. That isn’t journalism: it’s a curated perspective that treats Jewish security concerns with a shrug of indifference.

The BBC is the most popular news source in the UK, reaching a staggering 94 per cent of adults. When its most senior editors trade in skewed narratives, they shape political discourse, social attitudes and the temperature of national debate. And the price of this is borne by British Jews.

Since 7 October 2023, the UK has endured record levels of anti-Semitic incidents. This has included a lethal terror attack and several foiled terror plots. When coverage of serious conflicts consistently falls short, it exacerbates real-world harms for a minority community already under pressure. The BBC’s tendency to amplify unverified Hamas claims – such as wrongly blaming the infamous al-Ahli hospital blast on Israel without evidence, or quoting Hamas casualty figures without qualification – has fuelled hostility towards Jewish communities.

Perhaps most breathtaking is the arrogance with which Bowen continues to showcase his bias with total impunity. The BBC’s internal accountability mechanisms are essentially a closed loop. The broadcaster is, quite literally, marking its own homework. Apologies and corrections are only issued long after the damage has been done and without significant consequences for repeated breaches.

This brings us to the government’s BBC Charter Review, which is exploring the BBC’s governance, public obligations and funding before a new 10-year charter is granted. The way the BBC works now, where senior figures like Bowen are immune to external scrutiny, is a betrayal of public trust. We need a fundamental reset of the BBC’s culture, including tying the renewal of the charter to demonstrable improvements in impartiality and accuracy.

We ought to remember that the BBC belongs to the public – not to the egos of its editors and correspondents.

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02/20 Links Pt2: Reduced to one word – Jew; The Man Setting Fire to the GOP; Israelis called occupiers and ‘human fragments’ on BBC; A pro-Israel bookshelf

From Ian:

Alex Hearn: Reduced to one word – Jew

Comedian. Radio host. Actor. Presenter. Jew.

Only the last one mattered to Thomas Abdullah Bourne. He erased the individual identity and achievements of Matt Lucas until all he saw was a Jew. And Bourne decided that a Jew needed to be publicly humiliated.

There are no exceptions for racists. In the Soviet era, even leading Jewish communists were executed on charges of Zionism after show trials.

Bourne proudly uploaded his video of a Jewish man being harassed for no other reason than his Jewishness. After the backlash, he deleted it along with his account, but the damage was done. Targeting a popular public figure in this way had shown the hateful face of antizionism to the public.

Matt Lucas wasn’t alone. Last week, a Holocaust survivor and other visitors were called “child killers” and harassed by people in Madrid’s Reina Sofía museum because they were visibly Jewish. Instead of receiving assistance, a senior official instructed staff to remove them, saying others were “disturbed” by their presence. The Reina Sofía is considered one of the world’s leading cultural institutions.

Across the west in 2026 Jews are being excluded from museums, harassed on public transport and confronted on the street. And now, incredibly, antizionists could be coming to your home.

In cities including Brighton, Bristol, London and Sheffield, people are going door to door checking whether residents accept their “truth” about Israel – like racist Jehovah’s witnesses. They want people to sign pledges boycotting the world’s only Jewish state. The door-knockers compile lists of those who don’t pass their purity test. What will they do with this information?

Footage from Sheffield appears to show one door-knocker physically attacking a woman who confronted him. When an ideology becomes part of your identity, criticism feels like a personal attack. The door-knockers in Brighton were filmed having a rally by Sky News, with one speaker revealing what appears to be the campaigners’ ultimate goal: to harm Israel “until it shrivels and dies”.

This is the aim of antizionism – the destruction of Israel and the Jews who live there. Some hide behind the fantasy that Israel would be replaced by another democracy, but the Middle East isn’t known for democracy, particularly when it comes to Palestinian leaders. We know what would happen to half the world's Jews in this scenario. October 7, 2023 showed us, when Hamas attempted to implement it.

NGO Monitor: A Growing Threat in Sweden: Samidoun’s Network and Terror Affiliations

Samidoun, a terror-linked and terror-supporting NGO, is active and expanding its presence in Sweden, raising the spectre of incitement, public unrest, and violence.

Designated as a terrorist entity by Israel in 2021, by Germany in 2023, and jointly by the US and Canada in 2024, Samidoun is closely linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) – an EU-designated terrorist organization. Samidoun also promotes other EU-designated groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah and openly advocates for Palestinians’ “natural right to armed resistance,” underscoring the NGO’s ideological commitment to violence.

Terror Designations
In February 2021, Israel designated the NGO, identifying it as “play[ing] a leading and significant role in the PFLP’s anti-Israel propaganda efforts, fundraising, and recruiting activists,” and serving as a “front for the PFLP abroad.”
In 2020, Germany expelled Samidoun head Khaled Barakat, and imposed a four-year entry ban; his appeal was rejected, citing PFLP links and “support for a terrorist organization.” As a result of the ban, Barakat was denied entry into the EU in 2022.
In November 2023, Germany banned Samidoun for violating its Basic Law (Article 9(2)) and its Associations Act; namely, it “impairs and endangers the peaceful coexistence of Germans and foreigners,” “advocates and calls for the use of violence as a means of enforcing political interests,” and “supports associations that initiate, advocate and threaten attacks against people or property.”
In October 2024, the US and Canada issued joint statements listing Samidoun as a terrorist entity. The US described it as a “sham charity that serves as an international fundraiser for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization” and designated Samidoun head Khaled Barakat, “a member of the PFLP’s leadership” who played a “critical role[] in external fundraising for the PFLP.”
The Dutch Parliament passed a resolution in the same month calling on the government to designate Samidoun as a terror organization.

Samidoun’s Operational Presence in Sweden
Samidoun maintains chapters in Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö, which organize and participate in demonstrations and protests across Sweden, including events in Stockholm (Sergels Torg), Gothenburg (Brunnsparken, Centralstation, Gazaplatsen, Gustaf Adolfs Torg), Eskilstuna (Smortorget, Cityhustorget), Ostersund (Badhusparkens scen), and Vasteras (Stora Torget, Sigmatorget).

Support for Terrorist Organizations and Violence
On November 23, 2025, Samidoun Gothenburg co-organized a demonstration in “support of the resistance,” using promotional materials that featured members of terrorist organizations, including Hamas and the PFLP. The demonstration was followed by a joint event commemorating Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, the Muslim Brotherhood figure who is the namesake of Hamas’s military wing. The gathering honored “the legacy of his resistance.”

Promotional image for the November 23, 2025, Samidoun Gothenburg demonstration
On October 12, 2025, following the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, a Samidoun Gothenburg member gave a speech at a demonstration, stating, “The united armed resistance, led by the al-Qassam Brigades [Hamas’ military wing] and backed by a determined people, has stood strong through all this and forced the occupation to an agreement. The ceasefire is a statement of strength for the Palestinian resistance, and it is worth rejoicing over!”
On July 6, 2025, as Iran launched daily ballistic missile attacks on Israeli cities, a Samidoun Gothenburg member gave a speech at a demonstration stating, “I feel hope as the rockets fall over Tel Aviv.” He concluded his speech by calling out, “Death to Israel! Death to the USA! Glory to the martyrs! Long live the resistance! Long live Palestine!”
On November 29, 2024, a Samidoun Gothenburg member participated in a “cultural evening for Palestine” arranged by the cultural association Solens Port, claiming “PFLP, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, the organizations that are building the armed resistance are not terrorists, they are our comrades, they are our heroes.”

PEN America gets captured: organization accepts Palestine as a member and rejects Israel; Jewish chief executive resigns after accusations of being a “Zionist” and not signing on to Israel’s “genocide”

Every day, it seems, another group gets ideologically captured, valorizing Palestine (or Hamas) and demonizing Israel. This is dispiriting for Jews, but the latest such capture—of the free-expression literary group PEN America—is especially depressing.

The decline of PEN American was first evidenced to me when, in 2015, it decided to give a “freedom of expression” award to the magazine Charlie Hebdo, many of whose writers (and a few others) were killed in an attack by al-Qaeda, presumably for making fun of Islam and Muhammad. The award was formally called the “PEN/Toni and James C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award”, and was to be conferred with other awards at a literary gala banquet.

But six PEN members refused to be “table hosts” at the banquet, and then 139 other members (now 242) signed a letter taking issue with the award. Why? Because although Charlie Hebdo is well known to be an “equal opportunity offender,” whose metier is mocking everyone, including politicians and religions, those PEN members said that it was a no-no to mock Islam because its adherents were “already marginalized, embattled, and victimized.”

South Africa pulls out of Venice Biennale after minister pans artist’s focus on Gaza

South Africa will not participate in this year’s Venice Biennale following a dispute between its culture ministry and the artist it had selected, whose planned installation focused on Gaza.

Gabrielle Goliath, a South African artist selected to represent the country at the international culture exhibition, had planned to showcase a performance piece titled “Elegy” that would include a memorial for the Palestinian poet Hiba Abu Nada, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in 2023.

Goliath’s selection to represent South Africa at the biennale by Art Periodic, a nonprofit that was running the pavilion on behalf of the country, quickly drew the scorn of Gayton McKenzie, the South African culture minister, who called her work “highly divisive.”

While South Africa has long been among the most vocal critics of Israel, and diplomatic ties between the countries have frayed over the course of the war in Gaza, McKenzie has stood out for his staunch support of the Jewish state.

In January, McKenzie terminated the agreement with Art Periodic, writing in a letter that he would instead feature art in Venice that gave “a positive message” about South Africa, according to the New York Times.

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02/20 Links Pt1: Media’s Belated Truth-Telling on Gaza; Why Israel Does Not Want America’s Military Aid Money Anymore; Inside Al Jazeera’s Style Guide; Guterres and the gutless United Nations

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Media’s Belated Truth-Telling on Gaza

From the Now It Can Be Told files come a couple more revelations about Gaza worthy of attention.

The BBC reports what has been true for over two years: Hamas is bleeding Gazans dry while violently cracking down on, as one Gazan described it, “people with opinions.”

The BBC has recently been embroiled in numerous ethics scandals around its reporting on the conflict. This report is an indication of what it might have looked like had the Beeb reported honestly and ethically for a single day during the war.

“At markets across Gaza,” BBC reports, “stallholders describe regular police patrols—and a renewed iron grip on official fees and taxes.” The market sellers can’t really afford what Hamas is demanding. “Should I pay them, or feed my children?” one asks.

As the piece explains, “food and some other basic goods are flowing into Gaza more freely. The few key traders with a license to bring them in from Israel say Hamas have reimposed strict control over taxing the imports. One trader, who agreed to share details anonymously, told us force was used against those who refused to pay.”

Same old story—Israel is letting in goods and food, and Hamas is taking it out of the mouths and pocketbooks of Gazan civilians and disappearing those who put up any resistance. The preceding sentence has never not been true since Hamas took control of the enclave close to two decades ago. If you want Gazans to be able to eat and earn a livelihood, you’ve got to remove Hamas. Because its policies are the same whether it’s peacetime or wartime: there is no such thing, in fact, as peacetime Hamas.

Interestingly, one trader told the BBC “that traders used a code-word for Hamas when discussing tax payments, so that Israel wouldn’t learn that money was being siphoned off to the group.”

Even Hamas’s victims have been helping the terror group cover up its crimes. What that means is simple: Hamas has, all along, been siphoning off a much larger share of goods and food and money than anyone claimed. If anything, the Israelis understated the extent of the problem.

In fact, it’s going to be difficult for anyone on the outside to get the full picture: “Hamas now has a database of all the traders who import goods into the Gaza Strip,” activist Mohammed Diab told the Beeb. “The trader pays in cash, not through bank transfers, so that the flow of funds cannot be traced. It is gradually restoring the system that was in place in the past, but away from the spotlight so it can’t be monitored.”

The longer it takes to disarm Hamas, the longer Palestinians will be immiserated and oppressed. It’s really that simple. And there’s nothing Israel can do to change that unless the world asks it to go in and disarm Hamas itself.

Inside Al Jazeera’s Style Guide, Which Forbids Reporters From Calling ISIS a ‘Terrorist’ Organization

Al Jazeera prohibits its staff from referring to al Qaeda, ISIS, and Boko Haram as "terrorist," "Islamist," or "extremist" groups, instead requiring reporters to use "neutral terms" like "fighters" and "armed groups," according to a copy of the outlet’s style guide obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The guide was labeled "2023-2024 Edition" but appears to have been updated to reference more recent events like President Donald Trump's renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America (the outlet tells reporters to use the former). The guide’s treatment of terrorist organizations is one example of how the Qatari state media outlet, which did not respond to a request for comment, presents radical Islam to the world.

"There is nothing stylish or factual about this unholy text, which has a higher spin rate than any Major League power pitcher," said one media insider who has seen the document. "It simply confirms what many right-thinking people have always known: Al Jazeera exists only to parrot narratives that have been carefully crafted by the Hamas propaganda machine."

Below is a compilation of exact quotes from the guide followed by examples of its rules being used in Al Jazeera articles.

TERRORISM/TERRORISTS
We do not use these terms unless attributed.

ISRAEL
It is the state of Israel, not the Jewish state. However, we can refer to the Jewish state when the subject is the religious composition of Israel. Do not use Jewish state as a synonym for Israel. Do not use ‘Jerusalem’ as a synonym for the government of Israel, as one might use ‘Washington’ to imply the U.S. government. With regard to whether we use pro-Israel or pro-Israeli government…care needs to be taken to use the longer but more accurate phrase: ‘pro-Israeli government’. Israeli peace activists will tell you they are ‘pro-Israel’, but ‘anti-Israeli government’. When Israeli politicians address the public, make an effort to find out who they are addressing and report it as is.

EAST JERUSALEM
The term ‘occupied’ should be used wherever it’s necessary.

"Israel to advance plans for 9,000 units in occupied East Jerusalem," Dec. 17, 2025: "Israeli authorities are expected to advance plans to build 9,000 new housing units in an illegal settlement on the site of the abandoned Qalandiya airport in occupied East Jerusalem, in another attempt to cut off Palestinian lands from each other and block any possibility of a contiguous Palestinian state ever emerging."

WEST JERUSALEM
Do not say ‘occupied’. And never refer to it as the capital of Israel.

"Netanyahu finally announces October 7 inquiry: Why are Israelis furious?" Dec. 20, 2025: "The ministerial team tasked with determining the scope of the inquiry is to meet in West Jerusalem on Monday, coincidentally the same day that Netanyahu is scheduled to give testimony in his long-running corruption trial in Tel Aviv."

INCURSION
This is the word we use when Israeli settlers, politicians, religious figures or nationalist groups go into Al Aqsa Mosque compound. Don’t call it a ‘visit’.

"UN says Israel is stoking ‘ethnic cleansing’ fears in Gaza, West Bank," Feb. 19, 2026: "In Jerusalem, Ramadan has brought further restrictions at Al-Aqsa Mosque. The mosque’s imam, Sheikh Akrama Sabri, said Israeli authorities are ‘imposing a reality by force’ by limiting worshippers while allowing extremist Jewish incursions into the compound."

ISRAELI SETTLEMENTS
Should be called illegal on first reference. Settlements are residential areas built by Israelis in the occupied territories. They are illegal under international law: this is the UN Security Council’s position - although Israel rejects this. All settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are considered illegal under international law. There are no ‘legal’ settlements.

"Israeli minister approves gun licences for 18 illegal West Bank settlements," Jan. 22, 2026: "Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has approved the issuance of gun licences to Israelis in 18 additional illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, as the right-wing government headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushes to expand illegal outposts that undermine prospects for a two-state solution."

ISRAELI ARMY
Do not call it Israeli Defence Forces or IDF. Also avoid ‘security forces’.

"Israeli army sniper in Chile accused of Gaza war crimes could face justice," Feb. 18, 2026: "A Chilean court is considering a criminal complaint against a former Israeli army sniper who served in Gaza during Israel’s more than two-year-long genocide on the coastal enclave and the Palestinian people."

ISRAEL MILITARY DEATHS
We take a robust approach to censorship of our reporting by the Israeli military. Each case should be considered individually, but our first instinct should be to report the facts. The deaths in combat of Israeli soldiers are of high news value. If we are confident of the facts we should report them, even if the Israeli Army has asked us to wait for its permission. The Israeli Army says it routinely asks us to delay reporting deaths so it can first inform victims’ relatives. This is not a good enough reason for us to withhold news from our audience – provided we do not name the victim. This policy may provoke a reaction from the Israeli side. If it does, we will reassess it.

Josh Hammer: The Saudi Mask Slips

What the heck is going on here—and most important, what does it all mean for the United States and our very real interests in the Middle East?

First, the much-desired goal of Riyadh joining Abu Dhabi and Manama in the Abraham Accords circle of peace with Jerusalem is, at least for the time being, totally unachievable. A friend of mine who had been involved in the first Trump administration’s Abraham Accords diplomacy efforts once told me that, by the end of the first Trump term, a deal to bring Riyadh into the accords was “on the five-yard line.” This same official believed that, if Trump had been re-elected for a second term beginning in January 2021, Saudi Arabia would have joined the accords within a few months. Now, five years later, the notion of Israel normalizing relations with the state custodian of Islam’s holy sites is, sadly, a pipe dream.

Second, it seems that Riyadh’s recent shift in posturing is motivated less by a sincere ideological cottoning to Islamism—the Brotherhood remains officially banned throughout the kingdom, for example—and motivated more by MBS’s unseemly personal petulance and immaturity. It’s worth remembering that MBS, a nepo baby if there ever were one, has behaved like a spoiled child before. He initiated a high-profile mass arrest of prominent Saudi elites at the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton in November 2017. In October 2018, Islamist “journalist” Jamal Khashoggi was butchered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul; a CIA report the following month concluded that MBS had ordered the hit. Whatever one might say (and I have nothing nice to say about Khashoggi), these incidents were unnecessarily provocative—perhaps even gratuitous.

It seems that MBS is now up to his old tricks. By all accounts, MBS has come to loathe Mohamed bin Zayed, rule of Abu Dhabi and president of the UAE. I’ve heard speculation that MBS now harbors an even deeper hatred of MBZ, and by extension the entire UAE, than he held for Qatar and its ruling House of Thani during the 2017-2021 GCC crisis. Given that the UAE under MBZ has been perhaps the most moderate of all the oil-rich Sunni Gulf states in its general approach to Islam and the most publicly embracing of Israel of all the Abraham Accords’ Arab signees, there is no clear reason why MBS has adopted such a hostile posture—given his years of anti-Islamist crackdowns and purges—other than pure pettiness and jealousy.

It’s juvenile—blatantly, insanely, and disgustingly so. But as Riyadh cozies up to Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s strongman Islamist regime in Ankara, Ahmed al-Sharaa’s al Qaeda-lite regime in Damascus, and sides against Israel and the UAE on Somaliland’s push for national autonomy, MBS’s spoiled outbursts nonetheless have real consequences for the region.

pic.twitter.com/EwpF9q046R
Unbelievably evil: The notorious Hamas propaganda agent in Australia's parliament supported banning Israeli Jews who fought Hamas from entering Australia, but wants to welcome ISIS jihadists who enslaved non-Muslim girls and committed genocide against…

— Liza Rosen (@LizaRosen0000) February 19, 2026

Islamists firebombed a synagogue in Melbourne.

ABC News calls the firebombed synagogue a “mosque”pic.twitter.com/wxQfDRJmWA

— Drew Pavlou 🇦🇺🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 (@DrewPavlou) February 20, 2026

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02/19 Links Pt2: Tucker Carlson's detention claim shattered by viral video; Bari Weiss’ Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture canceled; Why I acquired the whiteprint of the Auschwitz-Birkenau crematoria

From Ian:

Noah Rothman: The Revolt of the Revolting

Review of 'The Revolutionists' by Jason Burke
Ilich Ramírez Sánchez was jubilant upon his return to London in 1971. When the Venezuelan national’s parents had last seen their son, he and his brother had just secured positions to study at Moscow’s Patrice Lumumba Peoples’ Friendship University—the front from which so much Soviet-sponsored radicalism and militancy was cultivated, refined, and exported. But that had been years earlier. On arrival, Ramírez was chided by a family friend for failing to tell his worried family where he’d been, but the reason for his prolonged absence was simple. “I’ve been in the Middle East,” he confessed, “learning how to kill Jews.”

That certainly explained the low profile. Ramírez embarked on that project under an assumed name, “Carlos,” to which the appellation “the Jackal” would soon be indelibly appended. Although he was perhaps the most famous revolutionary left-wing terrorist and assassin of his generation, Carlos actually had serious competition for the title. He would, however, make an outsize contribution to the bloodshed that bathed the decade to follow.

Although they talked a good game about proletarian solidarity and compassionate self-sacrifice, the violence that the Jackal and his terrorist allies dispensed was more often an outgrowth of narcissistic self-reverence that masqueraded as altruism. The Revolutionists: The Story of the Extremists Who Hijacked the 1970s, by the British author and journalist Jason Burke, tells Carlos’s story and those of many others like him.

Burke’s rich narrative distills a violent decade to its intellectual concentrate. He chronicles the international Marxist left’s turn from socialist ardor toward nationalism and Islamism. It was a transformation that occurred in tandem with Israel’s progression from a fledgling state into a regional power. The Communist East and its fellow travelers turned on Israel as it evolved from an incipient socialist experiment into a Western-oriented capitalist democracy—one that had had the temerity twice to defeat the coalition of Arab nations in whose success Moscow had ill-advisedly invested substantial sums. The international left’s bitterness did not die when the Warsaw Pact pivoted late in the Cold War from confrontation to accommodation with the West, leading the global Marxist vanguard to throw their chips in with the Islamist radicals still in the fight.

It’s only proper, then, that Burke’s story begins not with the rash of civilian-aircraft hijackings that closed out the turbulent 1960s and set the stage for the violence to come, but in 1948, with the Jewish state’s founding. The birth of Israel was accompanied by the rise of a particular radicalism in the region influenced by “Marxist ideology,” one of the earliest expressions of which was George Habash’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, founded in 1967.

Seth Mandel: The Problem With ‘Epstein Class’

Back in 2017, during the heady days of the Trump-Russia “collusion” accusations, the release of the Steele Dossier supercharged the story. A former British spy had been very clearly duped by the Russians into putting together a file of colorful and compromising tales about Trump. The main effect this had was to turn the American political discourse into a conspiracist circus.

And when that happens, it’s only a matter of time before the sleuthing public finds a way to make it about the Jews.

Sure enough, in April 2017 Politico ran one of the wackiest articles about Jews to appear in a mainstream publication in years. Under the headline “The Happy-Go-Lucky Jewish Group That Connects Trump and Putin,” the article intimated that Chabad-Lubavitch institutions were the link between Trump and Putin’s oligarchs. The piece never establishes this, of course, because it’s nonsense. But it conjured a false picture that many people, eager to get Trump on collusion, bought into.

It is an iron rule that conspiracy theories find their ways to Jews if left to fester in the public’s imagination. So while the dossier’s intent had nothing to do with Jews, the irresponsible collation of rumors inevitably ended up there.

So it is with the Jeffrey Epstein files. Led by the bipartisan duo of Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie, Congress forced open the files relating to the well-connected financier who was convicted of sex offenses. Epstein has been the subject of endless but groundless speculation by conspiracy theorists that he was working for Israel.

The Times of London provided a perfect example of the type of conspiracy mongering enabled by the mass release of the Epstein files. “Was Epstein a Mossad agent? New files deepen mystery over Israel links,” the headline promised. Several paragraphs into the story we get this: “An FBI report from the Los Angeles field office written in October 2020 said the bureau’s source had become ‘convinced that Epstein was a co-opted Mossad agent.’”

So now the reader has imbibed this rumor along with terms like “FBI report” and descriptions of certain messages as Department of Justice documents. Which they are—technically. But the “source” is a Holocaust denier and all-around disgraced kook—the report protects his identity, but it is not a secret. Still, the Times gets to play games by painting them as official documents coming from the feds.

Nicole Lampert: The pro-Gaza luvvies are engaged in their nastiest purity spiral yet

Towards the end of China’s Cultural Revolution, those who had dared to indulge in wrongthink were forced to wear signs around their necks detailing their alleged crimes and dragged into public stadiums. They were tortured and some of them were even the victims of ritualistic cannibalism.

Though not as extreme as the gruesomely violent aspects of the Cultural Revolution, some of the intolerance that characterised that movement can now be found in response to Israel. This week, 80 actors and directors, including Javier Bardem (a keffiyeh-clad poppinjay), Tilda Swinton, Brian Cox and Mike Leigh, denounced the Berlin Film Festival in Variety magazine because its organisers dared to say that not everyone has to express an opinion on Gaza.

They are furious that the Berlinale’s mild-mannered German jury president, Wim Wenders, voiced his belief that filmmakers should stay out of politics. “We have to do the work of people and not the work of politicians,” he said when asked repeatedly about Gaza. In 2026, this counts as bravery.

But the furore was immediate, with Indian novelist Arundhati Roy storming out of the festival, which was due to present a 1989 film she wrote. She described Wenders’ comments as “unconscionable”.

Then came the letter, which had the frankly breathtaking audacity to compare the Berlinale’s stance with that of Germany in the 1930s, because the previous year it had tried to stem the anti-Semitic impulses of too many righteously insane filmmakers who wanted to denounce the Israeli state for daring to defend itself.

What is more, the letter did not just have the usual lie that the war in Gaza is a “genocide”, but the kind of claim that only people who spend too much time in the land of make-believe could come up with – that Palestinians had been “evaporated” by the IDF.

These puffed-up self-righteous celebrities, who have forgotten we only want to see them crying on film and wearing nice clothes on the red carpet, are becoming dangerous with their anti-Zionist conspiracies.

While we may not be quite at cannibalism in this new attempted cultural revolution, in which everyone should bow down to the victimhood of the Palestinians, I fear we are getting ever closer.

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02/19 Links Pt1: Trump announces $10 billion U.S. investment in Gaza, 10-day timeline for Iran; Hamas Debunks the ‘Genocide’ Narrative; The Lancet’s dubious Gaza casualty figures

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Hamas Debunks the ‘Genocide’ Narrative

Hamas has wrapped up its latest revision of casualty data in the Gaza war, and it makes clear why Israel’s critics have been flailing since the end of the war.

The list has enough information to cite 68,800 deaths. Hamas has lost 25,000 fighters, which leaves 44,000 war deaths to account for. Included in that 44,000 are about 10,000 natural deaths. The remaining 34,000 would include civilians killed by Israel and those killed by Hamas and associated militant groups—either by execution, rocket misfires, turf wars, and the like.

The result is that even when using Hamas’s numbers, Israel’s civilian-to-combatant death rate is close to 1:1, an unheard-of accomplishment in an urban war setting, let alone one in which much of the territory has been turned into Hamas human shields. Given that Hamas started the war, refused to surrender, and fired at Israel from civilian homes, the terrible tragedy of Gazan lives lost is laid at Hamas’s feet.

It feels pretty silly at this point to even consider the “genocide” accusation, but this is another opportunity to note that Hamas goaded its defenders out on that limb and then personally cut it off under their feet. While plenty of bad-faith actors have been accusing Israel of genocide since the war started, and are therefore immune to facts, I’m sure there are a number of decent folks who fell into the “genocide” trap because they followed a trend in the name of “human rights.” I do not envy the humiliation they are experiencing now, but neither do I find such people particularly sympathetic. They ought to feel bad about what they’ve said and done, and I hope they do.

The reason people were willing to believe it is twofold. First, it is the quintessential example of the Big Lie. Hitler’s belief was that the bigness of the lie not only lends it credibility but serves as an emotional, rather than rational, appeal. As we watch Israeli companies flood Gaza with sweets and drinks for Ramadan, we cannot maintain any rational, conscious interpretation other than Israel won a defensive war while protecting civilians to an extent never seen before. But those who shape their beliefs based on subconscious appeals to emotion? Who knows what contradictions they can maintain.

The other reason is, yes, anti-Semitism. The public’s willingness to believe the worst about Jews is not new, and it’s not an accident. Those who have participated in the “genocide” Big Lie have not made an honest mistake. A mistake, perhaps—but not an honest one.

Colonel Mike Kelly: Debunking the Gaza Genocide Myth Overview
Dr Mike Kelly AM examines why a finding of genocide against Israel by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is highly unlikely under international law.

Drawing extensively on the 1948 Genocide Convention and relevant ICJ jurisprudence, he argues that genocide requires proof of a specific intent to destroy a protected group in whole or in part, and that this must be the only reasonable inference from the evidence.

Kelly analyses the ICJ’s current proceedings, prior genocide cases, and the Convention’s drafting history to demonstrate the high legal threshold required.

He contrasts the definition of genocide with the realities of urban warfare, reviewing casualty claims, humanitarian aid flows, medical operations, IDF precautions in attack, and internal investigative mechanisms.

He further critiques reliance on unverified casualty data and partisan UN reports, arguing that they fail to establish the specific intent required under the Convention.

The article concludes that, whatever criticisms may be made of particular incidents or conduct in the war, the legal standard for genocide has not been met, and that expanding the Convention beyond its original scope would require a formal international renegotiation of its terms. Download PDF Trump announces $10 billion U.S. investment in Gaza, 10-day timeline for Iran

President Donald Trump used the occasion of the first meeting of the Board of Peace in Washington on Thursday to announce significant monetary and troop commitments from the U.S. and other countries to stabilize Gaza, as well as lay out a timeline for military action against Iran.

“I want to let you know that the United States is going to make a contribution of $10 billion to the Board of Peace,” Trump said at the United States Institute of Peace, where several foreign leaders gathered for the meeting.

The president also named, for the first time, which countries have agreed to make additional financial contributions to the reconstruction of Gaza: Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan and Kuwait “have all contributed more than $7 billion toward the relief package,” Trump said.

The meeting comes as the administration works to address several issues in the Middle East, including rising tensions with Iran. The U.S. has amassed a large collection of military assets in the region in preparation for a potential strike, as the two sides attempt to negotiate a nuclear deal.

Trump said in his remarks, “Now we may have to take it a step further or we may not. Maybe we are going to make a deal [with Iran]. You are going to be finding out over the next probably 10 days.” Last June, Trump said he would decide whether to take action against Iran within two weeks, and carried out strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities two days later.

Trump also called on Iran to “join” the board “on a path that will complete what we’re doing.”

“If they [Iran] join us, that will be great. If they don’t join us, that will be great too, but it will be a very different path,” the president said. “They cannot continue to threaten the stability of the entire region, and they must make a deal. Or if that doesn’t happen, I maybe can understand if it doesn’t happen, but bad things will happen.”

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02/18 Links Pt2: US likely to attack Iran, but Trump has not yet decided to do so; Jesse Jackson and the betrayal of the civil-rights movement; Eli Sharabi’s ‘Hostage’ memoir named Jewish book of the year

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Two Cases Demonstrate How Anti-Zionist Propaganda Undermines Liberal Democracy

The significance of the Palestine Action case, in fact, threatens to obscure the importance of the fight over the hostage posters. But the hostage posters arguably represent the problem at the root of all this activism.

The Palestine Action non-convictions were made possible by a campaign for what activists called “jury equity.” The defendants’ own lawyer argued that they should be treated like suffragettes, not criminals. But how does a society—in a democratic country, with a free press—come to embrace that idea widely enough to nullify the law? And to apply it only when the motivating factor is Jew-hatred?

To answer that, we only have to listen to the people who tear down hostage posters. In the case cited above, here’s how the defendant, Fiona Monro, explained her destructive actions:

“The board was clearly there to justify the genocide that was happening. A large laminated board with a photograph of a hostage was highly inflammatory to many people in that community clearly found it very upsetting to have that constantly thrust in our face daily.”

This is genuinely insane. The central claim of hers is that “a photograph of a hostage was highly inflammatory” and that people understandably “found it very upsetting.”

It is a picture of a Jewish person who was kidnapped during a pogrom and then murdered by his kidnappers.

You cannot get to the Palestine Action acquittals until your society produces enough people like Fiona Monro and those she claims to represent.

The people who tear down hostage posters represent a genuine threat to the functioning of a free society. They are an indication that the virus of anti-Semitism has metastasized to the point at which self-government becomes imperiled. As Britain is the first to belatedly realize.

NGO Monitor: Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

Introduction
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor’s current and former Board Chairs appear on a 2013 list, published by Israel, of Hamas’ “main operatives and institutions” in Europe.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor appears in the European Union’s transparency register, a “database listing ‘interest representatives’ (organisations, associations, groups and self-employed individuals) who carry out activities to influence the EU policy and decision-making process.”

In their own words “youth-led independent, nonprofit organization that advocates for the human rights of all persons across Europe and the MENA region, particularly those who live under occupation, in the throes of war or political unrest and/ or have been displaced due to persecution or armed conflict.”

Funding
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor does not publish any financial date on its website, reflecting a complete lack of transparency and accountability.

According to its website, “Since the establishment of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, we have completely refused all offers of funding, sponsorship or support from government and faction bodies to protect our vision and narrative, to ensure an unbiased perspective and to resist external influences and pressures. We, however, rely on individual donations, project funding by independent international organizations, as well as crowdfunding campaigns, which are launched by our crowdfunding team several times a year.”

Euro-Med Monitor’s program “We are not Numbers,” which provides “training to developing storyteller–journalists in Palestine,” is fiscally sponsored by Nonviolence International.
Nonviolence International co-founder Jonathan Kuttab is also co-founder of Palestinian NGO Al-Haq. On October 22, 2021, the Israeli Ministry of Defense declared Al-Haq a “terror organization” because it is part of “a network of organizations” that operates “on behalf of the ‘Popular Front’.”

Ties to Terror
Ramy Abdu, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor Founder and Chairman
In November 2020, Israel Minister of Defense Benjamin Gantz signed an administrative seizure order against Ramy Abdu under Israel’s anti-terrorism law. The order was issued “in relation to his work with the [Israeli]-designated terrorist organization ‘IPalestine- International Platform of NGOs Working for Palestine…that belongs to and acts on behalf of…Hamas” Abdu served as a Board member.
The order was in effect until August 1, 2022.


Ramy Abdu appeared on a 2013 list, published by Israel, of Hamas’ “main operatives and institutions” in Europe. The institutions included The European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza (ECESG), European NGOs Empowerment Services (ENES), and the Council for European Palestinian Relations (CEPR).
A 2011 publication by Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center described Ramy Abdu as ECESG’s coordinator.

In 2013, Council for European Palestinian Relations (CEPR) and PALThink organized an event, “Hamas Movement within the International Context,” featuring Hamas leader Osama Hamdan. At the event, Ramy Abdu, then CEPR’s Palestine Office Manager in Gaza, sat next to Hamdan and was a keynote speaker.

Mazen Awni Issa Kahel (Mazen Kahel), Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor chair 2015–2019 Mazen Kahel appeared on a 2013 list, published by Israel, of Hamas’ “main operatives and institutions” in Europe. The institutions included The European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza (ECESG), European NGOs Empowerment Services (ENES), and the Council for European Palestinian Relations (CEPR).

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02/18 Links Pt1: Israeli soldier killed by friendly fire in Gaza; Israel, US envoy reject Tucker Carlson’s claim he was detained and interrogated at airport; Spike Lee’s ‘Upper Class Habits’

From Ian:

Pierre Rehov: The 'Other Side' Turns Against the Jews

This chill is often dressed up as "just asking questions" or "anti-globalism". How come there never seem to be similar "questions" about Qatar, China, Turkey, Nigeria or Pakistan?

The problem is not about failing to tolerate "free speech." The problem is about failing to examine what is said with follow-up questions. The great Edward R. Murrow invited Senator Joseph McCarthy on CBS television's See It Now not to give him the run of the corral but to challenge his remarks. The problem is a pattern of tolerating an intolerance that would not be accepted if it were aimed at any ethnic group other than Jews.

There is a gulf between arguing to cut foreign aid and amplifying blood-libel smears.

Criticism is not censorship, decency is not "consensus" and the Jewish people are not "clicks."

Contrast the fringe to actual governance. Under President Donald J. Trump, the U.S. moved its Embassy to Jerusalem (2018), recognized Israeli sovereignty on the Golan Heights (2019), and brokered the Abraham Accords — historic normalization agreements reshaping the strategic map. These facts remain the gold standard for a pro-ally foreign policy grounded in U.S. interests.

Whenever Washington projected resolve rather than courting applause in European salons, anti-terror alignment, economic growth and Western values have advanced.

The newly vocal antisemitic "Right" seems to represent regress masquerading as rebellion. They do not actually speak for the "Right;" they speak for themselves and for the social media algorithms that reward outrage and sounding outrageous.

Many – maybe most -- prominent members of the "Right" — from Trump to Pastor John Hagee, Thomas Sowell and Marco Rubio — stand with Israel because they stand with the West, with victims of jihad, and with a commitment to preserve the values of individual freedom, economic opportunity, quality education, freedom of expression and equal justice under the law. The "Right" would do well say so — clearly, repeatedly, and without apology — and should quarantine the grifters who would trade civilization for "clicks."

Melanie Phillips: The plot against the British mind

The British government is determined to introduce a measure outlawing “Islamophobia”. Since this nonsensical neologism was coined by the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood to suppress any criticism of Islam or the Muslim world, this is causing justifiable alarm in many quarters.

Last week, three Muslims were jailed for a planned terrorist attack that would have killed hundreds of Jews in Manchester in what would have been one of the worst ever such atrocities on British soil.

Despite the potential enormity of this attack and its chilling implications about the nature and extent of Islamist extremism in Britain, it’s given rise to virtually no anxious analysis or impassioned commentary in the mainstream media following the ending of the trial last December. That relative silence would be muted even further by the proposed outlawing of “Islamophobia”.

Prejudice against any group is to be condemned. But the informal use of “Islamophobia” as a smear inflicting reputational damage has long acted as an effective tool to stifle essential public discourse.

Defining it and formalising it as a form of banned speech would censor vital information and comment about political jihadi Islam — the attempt by Islamists to conquer the west by terrorism, an expanding birthrate and cultural encroachment through weaponising the democratic process. It would also silence all-too necessary discussion about the Jew-hatred that’s a staple of the Islamic world.

In February last year, the Labour government set up a working group to deliver a definition of “anti-Muslim hatred/Islamophobia”. As the Free Speech Union (FSU) has noted, the group is believed to have reached a conclusion in October, although its report hasn’t seen the light of day.

Leaks confirmed by one group member suggest that, instead of using the term “Islamophobia,” it’s trying to deflect the hostility against that word by defining instead “anti-Muslim hostility”. Since that would capture in the same trap much if not most of the necessary discourse about the Islamic world, it would scarcely represent any improvement.

Alarm is also being generated by the attempt to use the definition to invest Muslims with the status of a people in order to provide them with even more impunity, even though Islam is merely a religion and not an ethnicity or a nation.

New York Times Columnist Tom Friedman Plays His Readers for Fools—Again

"Netanyahu Plays Trump and American Jews for Fools—Again" is the headline over Thomas Friedman's latest column in the New York Times. I read the "again" part as an admission by Friedman that he's been writing the same column for decades. It's been consistently wrong, so the real "fools" are any remaining readers who take what he says seriously.

A decade or so ago, when Friedman was less washed-up than he is now, someone built a computer program that would auto-generate a Tom Friedman column. This latest one reads like Friedman had his news assistant train an artificial intelligence model on a bunch of old Tom Friedman columns, then fed in the latest Times front-page headlines and Harvard-PLO-Al Jazeera-Rockefeller Brothers press releases to generate a new column so that Friedman could spend his time golfing or giving honorarium-generating speeches.

Friedman begins the column by saying, "I cannot put it any more succinctly than Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli prime minister, did." That could have been a good signal to Friedman's editors to spike the Friedman column and ask for a piece from Olmert instead. Or to tell Friedman, "Hey, you already quoted Olmert in a Nov. 13, 2024, column, in a May 27, 2025, column, and mentioned him, describing him as one of 'two friends of mine,' in a Sept. 24, 2025, column. Maybe give Olmert a rest?" The May 27, 2025, Friedman column includes a correction: "A correction was made on June 12, 2025: An earlier version of this article misquoted an opinion essay by Ehud Olmert in Haaretz. It reads, 'What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians,' not 'What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of extermination.'"

In not a single one of the columns reliant on Olmert does Friedman mention that his source spent 16 months in prison after being convicted in a bribery and corruption scandal in which he pocketed cash to promote a Jerusalem construction project. Olmert's cash-strapped brother got in on the bonanza too. Tom Friedman is serving as a one-man prisoner-reentry rehabilitation program for Ehud Olmert, and the Times is all-in, or at least reluctant to exercise any editorial control over Friedman that would involve asking him to disclose to readers that Friedman's "friend" is a discredited figure in Israel.

The column proceeds to another hoary Friedman move, the comparison of Israel and apartheid-era South Africa. He warns that Israel's government will "make today's Israel permanently indistinguishable from apartheid South Africa," writing of "an apartheidlike Israel" and asserting, "Israel is becoming an apartheid state."

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02/17 Links Pt2: The West's Suicidal Empathy; Emmanuel Macron: France Needs Jews in Order to Remain Itself; Trial of man accused of killing Paul Kessler in 2023 to begin

From Ian:

The West's Suicidal Empathy

Professor Gad Saad, 61, born in Lebanon to a Jewish family that fled during the civil war, is the author of The Parasitic Mind - How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense. In it, he uses the imagery of viruses and parasites to describe how harmful cultural ideas can hijack public discourse, academia, and social institutions, damaging freedom of expression, critical thinking, and basic logic of ostensibly rational human beings.

"Those who want to control us try to control both our cognitive system and our emotional system," Prof. Saad explained. "In my new book, Suicidal Empathy,...I focus on the way they try to manipulate our emotions."

"Empathy is a wonderful thing that every social creature needs. But like everything else in life, empathy must be applied in the right amount, in the right situation, and toward the right objects. When it's applied incorrectly, it harms the person possessing it to the point of threatening their existence. In my book, I examine a long series of domestic and foreign policy issues where the West adopts approaches that endanger its existence, and I show how they all stem from suicidal empathy."

Suicidal empathy works overtime when it comes to Israel. "If you go to study in Middle Eastern studies programs at any institution of higher learning in the West, they teach you that Israelis are white colonialists, devoid of any ancestral rights to the land they conquered, that they're evil exploiters oppressing the noble and peaceful Palestinians, who opened the door to white Jews from Austria and Russia, and the Jews exploited the opportunity to steal the land from its owners."

"Islamist groups don't hide that they intend to conquer the West through three methods - the womb, immigration, and exploiting the West's freedoms against it. Why does the West refuse to see this clearly?...The West tries to be understanding, compassionate, considerate, and generous toward other cultures, assuming they'll reciprocate in kind, while other cultures interpret the West's behavior as a sign of weakness....Blind Westerners mistakenly think that the values embedded in their culture are also dear to other cultures' hearts - and nothing could be further from the truth."

Two years ago, Prof. Saad was pushed out of Concordia University, which had been his academic home for many years. His presence on campus became too dangerous, literally. The same Jew-hatred he knew in Lebanon caught up with him even in distant Canada. Now he teaches at the University of Mississippi.

Emmanuel Macron: France Needs Jews in Order to Remain Itself

Too often, sentences handed down for antisemitic offenses and crimes seem derisory. Too often, the antisemitic nature of such acts struggles to be recognized. We will strengthen training for magistrates in this area. And to ensure transparency and truth, I want precise monitoring of sentences and sanctions to be established. On this basis, the Government and Parliament will work to strengthen penalties for antisemitic and racist acts.

Our elected officials are the sentinels of the Republic and must remain so. Justice has been seized regarding statements made by some of them, and the judiciary is doing its work independently. For the future, I wish to see the establishment of mandatory ineligibility penalties for antisemitic, racist, and discriminatory acts or statements.

School, justice, elected officials—the mobilization must be general: that of the State, the Government, all public services, and everyone in the Republic. Ladies and gentlemen, there have been too many words; there have been too many deaths. The time has come for action and for an uncompromising patriotic and republican mobilization.

The mobilization that follows in the footsteps of Zola, Jaurès, Clemenceau, and Picquart, who defended Dreyfus. And on July 12 next year, for the first time, we will hold a national day of commemoration for Alfred Dreyfus.

The mobilization that honors Robert Badinter, his humanism, and his love of freedom.

That honors Marc Bloch—who will be inducted into the Panthéon on June 23—who liked to say that he claimed to be Jewish only in the face of an antisemite.

That recognizes itself in de Gaulle, who carried the Republic with him, far from the state antisemitism of Vichy, Pétain, and Laval.

The mobilization of all our contemporary struggles, from which we will yield nothing.

Ilan Halimi had his whole life ahead of him. The oak tree we plant here at the Élysée will not restore the years taken nor fill the void left behind. But through it, Ilan’s memory will live in the hearts and minds of all who pass through these halls—as a reminder and as a demand.

What does this tree tell us above all—ilan, meaning “tree” in Hebrew? That the place of this fight against antisemitism is here, because this fight is existential for France and for the Republic. For as Abbé Grégoire proclaimed when he affirmed the entry of Jews into French citizenship, “France without Jews is a tree without branches.”

And the Republic is unrootable, just like Ilan’s memory now rooted here. They may try to uproot them all; they will never exhaust the republican sap or the French spirit. In the end, there will always be one left—and one is enough. And let every French woman and every French man say it to themselves: They are that last person who carries the honor of all and must take up every fight.

To Ilan Halimi, to his family, to all victims of antisemitism, to all of you—I swear that in this struggle, the Republic will prevail. Because the Republic is you. It is us. It is, at every second, the person who fights for the dignity of another.

Yes—we will prevail.

Long live the Republic. Long live France.

Trial of man accused of killing 69-year-old Jew in LA area in 2023 to begin

Loay Abdel Fattah Alnaji, who is accused of killing a 69-year-old Jewish man at nearby pro-Israel and anti-Israel rallies on Nov. 5, 2023, is scheduled to go on trial on Feb. 18 in Ventura County Superior Court in California.

Alnaji, 52, allegedly killed Paul Kessler less than a month after the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7. He has pleaded not guilty to multiple felonies, including involuntary manslaughter by an unlawful act, per the court docket. He was released on $50,000 bail.

The district attorney’s office alleges that an altercation between Alnaji, a computer science professor at Moorpark College, and Kessler resulted in the latter’s death. Alnaji was among the anti-Israel protesters, and Kessler was part of a smaller contingent of pro-Israel protesters that day in Thousand Oaks, Calif., near Los Angeles.

Alnaji allegedly hit Kessler with a megaphone. The county medical examiner’s office determined that he died from blunt force trauma from the megaphone and then hitting his head on the pavement.

Ron Bamieh, Alnaji’s attorney, said on Oct. 16, 2025, that Kessler “put his cell phone in my client’s face and said, ‘Baby killer. Baby killer. Baby killer.’”

“My client, with his left hand, swiped at the cell phone to knock it out of his face; the bullhorn hit Mr. Kessler on the face and the head, and Mr. Kessler turned, stood for two to three seconds, and then collapsed to the ground,” he said.

A few months before that, Bamieh said that Kessler, whom he called an “Israel advocate,” had a brain tumor that caused him to have balance issues, so “we’re saying it’s just as reasonable that he fell because of the tumor.”

The lawyer also said it is “reasonable” for someone to attempt to swipe away a cell phone put in their face and that Alnaji hit Kessler in the face accidentally.

The district attorney’s office stated on May 15, 2024, that “while antisemitic hate speech was heard at the Nov. 5, 2023 rally, there is no evidence those words were said by Alnaji.”

Alnaji faces up to four years if convicted on all charges, the office said.

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