11/05 Links Pt2: Zohran Mamdani’s Ivy League intifada; The BBC’s Threat to British Democracy; BDS fail: UK-Israel trade GREW; Hollywood A-listers face 'antisemitism' blacklist

From Ian:

Brendan O'Neill: Zohran Mamdani’s Ivy League intifada

Mamdani was swept into the political limelight on a wave of privileged resentment. The depthless self-pity of downwardly mobile millennials meshed with the hipster intifada triggered by the events of 7 October 2023, creating the perfect conditions for the rise of this anti-Zio, woe-is-me rich kid. Look, I agree there is a housing crisis, and that it is awful that so many twenty- and thirtysomethings look destined to rent forever. I just find it hard to sympathise with the section of that generation that has promoted climate alarmism and sneered at working-class Americans, thus making it less likely that mass house-building will take place while pissing off the men who would be called upon to do it.

The most galling thing about the Mamdani phenomenon is its claim to be a working-class uprising. Mamdani himself says he’ll fight for the working classes, though surely he’ll have to meet some of them first. The global left is gushing over his win as if it were New York’s equivalent of the Paris Commune. What we have here is the staggeringly dishonest co-option of class politics by an over-credentialled emergent elite who will in truth be pursuing their own Bushwick bullshit, not the improvement of the lot of New York’s workers. They cosplay as class warriors because that’s sexier than the reality – that they’re privileged members of an activist class that will cancel you if you say lesbians don’t have penises but love you if you say ‘Destroy Israel’.

Mamdani’s campaign has exposed how the faux-socialists of the burgeoning young elite really view the working classes – as the saps of history; as agency-lacking victims who require smart cookies from Brooklyn with two degrees in political studies to rescue them from the moral doldrums. Hence, Mamdani’s ‘working-class uprising’ involves talk of free bus travel and city-run grocery stores. It’s charity masquerading as revolution. To the Uber-taking arts crowd of the downtown Mamdani set, ‘working class’ means tragic little people who can’t afford the bus and who crave an apple from the government. Please stop calling paternalism ‘socialism’.

Across the Anglo-American world, a new class of overeducated, high-status influencers is cribbing from the language of socialism to push a politics that is anything but. Here in the UK you’ll see Oxbridge girls in ‘I’m Literally A Communist’ earrings who say ‘Up the working classes!’ and then faint when the oiks vote Reform. We have Your Party, the Jeremy Corbyn / Zarah Sultana outfit that poses as a class revolt when everyone knows their membership is 99 per cent angry graphic designers who can’t believe their Dalston rent went up again. And now we have Mamdani, mayor of a city with such a great history of working-class rebellion, who dons the mask of class to disguise his crusade of culture. I trust New York’s frank, free-speaking workers will soon see through this charade.

Seth Mandel: Your Friends and Neighbors in the Mamdani Era

It will be great if Mamdani is prevented from carrying out his Jews-on-the-brain agenda. It will be greater still if that happens because of the stiffened spines of American Jewish organizations. But what Mamdani’s election says about what is acceptable to New Yorkers will be much harder to undo. The future can be stymied, but the past cannot.

A good example of this is Mamdani’s campaign plank regarding BDS. The boycott-Israel movement has far more failures than successes, at least in America, but that’s because here it isn’t actually about trade policy. BDSniks in the U.S. don’t expect to destroy Israel’s trade position. BDS in the U.S. is first and foremost about making American Jews feel unwelcome and multiplying the number of environments that are explicitly hostile to them.

On Election Day, Mamdani reiterated his support for BDS on MSNBC. It is through that lens that he sees, for example, an opening to end economic partnerships with Israeli institutions, the most prominent of which is the Technion collaboration with Cornell University. That partnership was opened initially in 2012 by the Michael Bloomberg administration and permanently sited in 2017 under Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Aside from the educational benefits, the partnership has produced over 100 start-ups, 84 percent of which are based in New York, according to the Technion.

Mamdani also wants to end the New York City-Israel Economic Council and divest the city’s pension funds from Israel.

The point here is that although he has leveled even more wild-eyed threats—he vows to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for example—Israel and the Jews are the only subjects he talks about when he talks about populations he’d like New York to freeze out. Mamdani is not a “human rights activist,” he’s an anti-Israel extremist who uses the language of human rights to crusade against the one Jewish state. This single-minded obsession made even some of his allies in the legislature uncomfortable.

When Mamdani tried repeatedly to push a bill that would outlaw certain Jewish charities, for example, he failed to garner enough support because of how clearly targeted the legislation was. State Sen. Alex Bores, who backed Mamdani but not that particular bill, told the New York Times: “I view with suspicion bills that are written to target one specific country when they could easily be written broadly to apply to a problem.”

That is the sum total of Mamdani’s campaign—it’s about one country, one people. That creepy obsession made it impossible to argue that Mamdani is merely concerned about human rights or conflict prevention or anything else. That Mamdani ran on this obsession with Israel and won is going to make it difficult for Jews to see New York as the city they once knew.

Mamdani’s win shows how Jewish groups failed Jews by dismissing antisemitism on the left

For New York’s Jews, these are the worst of times and the best of times.

The worst part is obvious: it’s not just that 1 million of our neighbors sauntered to the ballot box and cast their votes for an anti-Semite who missed no opportunity to stand with terrorist sympathizers and Jew-haters; it’s also that our very own communal organizations, groups founded specifically to prevent a movement like Mamdani’s from rising, failed miserably.

The city with the largest Jewish population anywhere outside of Israel should’ve seen Mamdani coming. And its Jewish leaders should’ve done much better to stop him.

Instead, with few exceptions, these leaders equivocated. The Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, for example, embraced a string of virulently anti-Israel Democrats, including Mamdani’s pal, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; President Trump wasn’t so lucky, receiving the group’s sharp criticism for his efforts to deport illegal migrants and keep our borders safe.

The Anti-Defamation League did even worse. The group, previously one of the most revered Jewish organizations nationwide, spent the last few years turning itself into a full-blown arm of the Democrat Party, releasing reports, for example, that argue that anti-Semitism is a problem exclusively on the right and not, say, on radically progressive college campuses.

And as one researcher reported in Tablet Magazine last week, even the group’s attempts to educate Americans about anti-Semitism are a disaster: people who completed the ADL’s anti-anti-Semitism curriculum were 15 times more, not less, likely to express anti-Jewish sentiments.

None of this is hard to understand. For years, America’s organized Jewish community sang the tunes of the left, focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion even as their so-called allies informed them in no uncertain terms that Jews no longer have a place in the gorgeous mosaic of aggrieved minorities orchestrated by the Democrats.

For Mamdani’s victory to have any meaning, then, these organizations and the individuals that lead them must face a very serious reckoning.

In the days after the October 7, 2023 massacre, Israelis spoke of the Konseptsiya, or the thwarted, idealistic worldview that led so many of them to fail to see Hamas’s preparations for the attack.

New York’s Jews now have a Konseptsiya of their own to grapple with, a wrestling that should lead them to hold their leaders accountable. If done right, this process could lead to new and better organizations skeptical of partisan affiliations and dedicated to finding new and faithful partners outside of the traditional political coalitions convened long ago by the left.

So much for the worst of times.

Read More

11/05 Links Pt1: Boris Johnson: 'Strange to see intellectuals supporting Hamas'; Douglas Murray: "If there's an American flag at an anti-Israel protest, it's only there to be burnt"

From Ian:

Eugene Kontorovich: Israel: A Model Ally, a Model Society

President Trump’s historic Gaza Peace Plan, which stopped the war by making Hamas release the living hostages it held, is a good time to reflect on the broad sweep of the war in Gaza, both in the field and in the arena of public opinion. In the past two years, a country of ten million people, attacked literally from all sides, defied expectations by not only beating back its attackers, but also fundamentally reordering the Middle East. This triumph showed a level of social cohesion and patriotic dedication long unseen elsewhere in the West. At the same time, the country found itself a target of bogus accusations aimed ultimately at delegitimizing any free country’s resistance to a barbarian onslaught.

The Course of the War
Let us start not in Gaza, but with what was Israel’s more formidable foe to the north. Hezbollah’s arsenal of hundreds of thousands of missiles, amassed in southern Lebanon over two decades under the indifferent eyes of UN peacekeepers, was a Damocles’ sword over Israel’s head. Pre-war scenarios envisioned thousands of Israeli fatalities in a confrontation with Iran’s leading proxy force. Yet none of these scenarios came to fruition. Now Hezbollah is in tatters, the feckless peacekeepers are on their way out, and Lebanon’s president is publicly talking about peace with the Jewish state. In the process, Israel eliminated numerous senior terrorists who had been wanted for decades by the U.S. for their role in the mass murder of Americans. Despite the large bounties the U.S. put on their heads, no one could touch them: until Israel did. No other ally in recent memory has avenged attacks on Americans in such a manner.

Now, let’s turn east. Before the war, Iran was on the final lap of its decades-long race toward nuclear weapons, which would put it in a position to extort not just Israel, but the whole world. For decades, international affairs and security experts confidently opined that Israel lacked a serious military option against Iran’s nuclear program and that attacking Iran would unleash what even many on the right predicted would be “World War III.” Instead, Israel broke the illusion of Iranian invulnerability and set the weapons program back by years. In the process, it did not suffer a single military casualty.

The attack on Iran’s nuclear sites forged a historic new military partnership between Israel and the United States. In previous conflicts, the U.S. got bogged down with cumbersome and ineffective “coalitions of the willing.” With Israel, America had a one-state “coalition of the able,” which did most of the heavy lifting against the Islamic Republic (and its Houthi partners). This let the U.S. administer the final blow without putting a single soldier on the ground.

In the year leading up to Oct. 7, 2023, Israel faced a serious internal challenge as proposals for judicial reform led to divisive protests, funded in part by the Biden administration. Some air force pilots dramatically, but it turns out not sincerely, threatened not to defend the country. Social critics (and perhaps Hamas) read too much into this spectacle, which was really a melodramatic family quarrel. Israeli society came together with an unbelievable cohesion from the first day of the war to the last. Responses to call-up for reserve duty ran to 150 percent in the first days of the war. Even two years later, with hundreds of thousands of soldiers with jobs and families called up for hundreds of days, morale and participation remained extremely high.

Israel called up 360,000 reservists at the peak of the war. Yet there has been no large-scale draft evasion and shockingly little grumbling. The heroism, dedication, maturity, and sensitivity of nineteen and twenty-year old recruits stunned even old-timers who have seen their share of wars. The public weathered regular rocket barrages from Gaza and Lebanon, and more terrifying missile attacks from Iran and Yemen, with sangfroid.

What’s even more stunning is that throughout this two-year period, Israel’s fertility rate didn’t waver—in fact, there was a baby boom. Israel has the highest fertility rate in the West, with an average of 2.5 children per woman (more than three if counting only religious women), higher than any other OECD country.

There is a lesson here. Israel serves as an ideal ally for the United States and a role model to America’s treaty alliance partners. Israel mobilized more troops for active duty in this war than the combined mobilization potential of the United Kingdom, France, and a number of other NATO allies. America has spent untold billions on the conflict in Ukraine, which still has not introduced general conscription for eighteen-year-olds (though older cohorts are drafted), afraid the public would not bear it. America has troops deployed to Europe and Asia for countries that may not be willing to fight for themselves. On the other hand, Israel has taken on dedicated enemies of America, like Hezbollah and Iran, singlehandedly.

Israel fought for two years because it realized after October 7th that it could no longer survive surrounded by heavily armed Iranian proxies. It has now destroyed Iran’s so-called “Axis of Resistance” and instead is in peace negotiations with the former Iranian satrapies of Syria and Lebanon. This is the reason President Trump recently called Netanyahu “one of the greatest wartime leaders.”

'Strange to see intellectuals supporting Hamas': Boris Johnson speaks on Palestinian recognition

In a direct attack on the BBC and Britain's recognition of Palestine, former British prime minister Boris Johnson said it was "strange to see intellectuals supporting Hamas."

During a European Jewish Association conference (EJA) in Krakow, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson sharply criticized the lack of political leadership in the West, condemned the BBC’s coverage, and called the Labour Party's decision to recognize a Palestinian state "a mistake driven by internal pressure."

The discussion opened on a somber note by EJA chairman Rabbi Menachem Margolin, who declared that "this is the worst time for Jews since World War II." Rabbi Margolin noted that recent surveys show that about 20% of Europeans blame Jews for the war in Gaza. "Jews are afraid to live in Europe," he said.

Rabbi Margolin emphasized that all strategic programs, definitions (such as the IHRA definition), and the appointment of envoys to combat antisemitism have resulted in "zero impact" due to the lack of implemenation.

Johnson, who joined the discussion, agreed with the severity of the situation. "It's very sad to see this rising," he said. "Politicians must show leadership... it's not just a matter of enforcement against people who are violent toward Jews."

Criticism of the left and the BBC
Johnson expressed astonishment at what he called a "strange paradox" in Western politics. "It is sad and surprising to see a large number of middle-class intellectuals wearing keffiyehs, marching in the streets of London, and calling for Israel to be wiped off the map," he said.

His finger was also pointed at the media, particularly the BBC. When one of the participants asked about bias in the British broadcasting corporation, Johnson replied that "they made a corporate decision to cover the Gaza conflict in a certain way. I think it was very sad, and I think it caused huge damage."

Johnson urged political leaders "to tell the truth" about the difference between Israel and Hamas, "an organization that still holds to its charter calling for the destruction of Israel."

Read More

11/04 Links Pt2: The horseshoe politics of America is coming for the Jews; Melanie Phillips: New York's fateful choice; BBC’s bias ‘pushed Hamas lies around the world’

From Ian:

The "Jews" Are a Proxy for a Bigger Political Fight over the American Future

Since Oct. 7, 2023, American Jews have found themselves squarely in the crosshairs of the political left and the political right, between progressive internationalists and extreme isolationists.

On the left, antisemitism takes the form of anti-Zionism. Universities that style themselves champions of diversity now host chants for Israel's eradication. Encampments celebrating Hamas set the moral tone. When mobs target Jewish students, administrators avert their eyes and invoke "free speech." Yet the same administrators spring into action when non-Jewish groups suffer even a "microaggression."

On the right, Tucker Carlson has updated the Protocols of the Elders of Zion for the 21st century. He elevated the podcaster Darryl Cooper to "the best and most honest popular historian in the U.S." Cooper trivializes the Holocaust as a bureaucratic mishap and depicts Winston Churchill as the agent of rich Jews. World War II becomes the first in a series of misguided American interventions abroad - engineered, ultimately, by Jews.

Israel has always carried a special symbolic weight in America. From the beginning, Americans cast their self-understanding in Israel's image. The Puritans saw themselves as Israelites crossing the Red Sea. When Americans talk about Israel, they are often talking about themselves. Evangelicals still see in Israel a covenantal twin.

Progressives give more attention to Israel than to any other foreign nation, casting Israelis as "white colonizers" and Palestinians as "oppressed people." Yet Israel is not a "white" society. Its Jewish population includes, among others, Yemenite and Ethiopian communities - unmistakably people of color. Their very presence highlights the absurdity of the racial binary on which the progressive coalition depends.

Israel is the archetypal nation-state: God, people, land. Covenant and borders. Israel's miraculous rebirth, and its power and flourishing - despite the destruction of European Jewry, and its multiple wars for survival - stir American nationalism. The very existence of the Jewish state and the excitement it provokes in America shatters the dream of a post-national, multicultural world run by a global managerial elite.

Carlson and progressives are firing at the same target: the bond between America and Israel. To sever it is to rewrite the American story. Arguments about Israel are, at bottom, arguments about America. To be for or against Israel is to choose among competing visions of the American future. When Trump embraces Netanyahu while waving off Carlson, he is not just setting Middle East policy - he is declaring who America is.

Melanie Phillips: New York's fateful choice

I left New York last night as the city braced itself for a fateful decision. Today it votes for a new mayor, and the front runner is Zohran Mamdani.

Mamdani is an individual who believes Israel shouldn’t exist as a Jewish state and who doesn’t see anything wrong with chanting to “globalise the intifada”.

He has claimed that the Israelis are behind acts of violence committed by the New York Police Department — a riff on the ancient antisemitic trope that the Jews are responsible for problems that have nothing to do with them.

His pledge to shut down the NYPD’s strategic response group, which broke up the violent anti-Israel protests at Columbia university, suggests that he won’t protect New York’s Jews against the tsunami of antisemitism to which they are being subjected.

Less than three weeks after the Hamas-led atrocities in Israel on October 7 2023, he was rabble-rousing on New York streets inciting the mob against Israel’s “genocide”.

Stephen Daisley: The horseshoe politics of America is coming for the Jews

Alighting on the Jews as the cause of the world’s iniquities is nothing new, but it is significant that both American leftists and rightists draw on antisemitic and anti-Zionist frames for their scorched-earth approach to contemporary politics. Rejecting the gradual reform of liberalism or conservatism, the progressives and the nationalists are as one in their conviction that the reigning order must be toppled. The systemic flaws or injustices that led them to this conclusion no longer matter as much as the zealous pursuit of political destruction.

This year-zero temperament is bound to put its ideologues, whether leftist or reactionary, on a collision course with Jews. Jewish observance and Jewish culture are bound up with ideas of creation and repair, and in the Torah as in Jewish history, destruction is almost always a source of great sadness and loss.

The Tanakh is a story of building, of establishing a people, forging kingdoms, erecting a temple, and instituting laws and customs. The defeat of the kingdoms and destruction of the temple are not cause for abandoning the commandments but the consequence of not hewing to them.

Burning everything to the ground is a punishment, not a plan of action. Destruction is reserved to God, which is why the Aleinu prays for the Lord to obliterate idols and remove false Gods, while it reserves to mankind the duty of tikkun olam — perfecting the world. But the prayer doesn’t stop there. It adds ‘be-malchut Shaddai’, rendering the full phrase as ‘perfecting the world under the sovereignty [or kingdom] of the Almighty’.

That’s the rub. Jewish text and tradition teach an obligation to repair this earthly realm so that it conforms to the designs of the Almighty, not the passing preferences of man. Obligation is exactly what the revolutionaries of left and right are furiously trying to shake off. Obligation constrains and they want to be free to remake the world in their own image and according to their ideological impulses.

There is an angry messianism spreading across American politics, and perhaps our own soon, too. On left and right, among those of all faiths and the fiercely faithless, a zeal to cleanse, purge, smash and bring down — to destroy to save — is taking hold. The world is too defiled to be conserved or reformed. The only salvation lies in smouldering ruins. The tables of the temple must be overturned, and many a self-appointed saviour is only too keen to volunteer.

For those who yearn to destroy, the people of the book and of the laws are a constant reminder of men’s obligations to creation and its perfection. However strong the will to power, there are limits temporal and divine. Those who demolish in spite will be left with only spite for building blocks.

Seth Mandel: Why the Two Parties Have Diverged on Fighting Anti-Semitism

The reason this reaction is important is because the fight against anti-Semitism is a long one. (It’s not called “the world’s oldest hatred” for nothing.) The Labour Party learned the hard way that it could rid itself of Jeremy Corbyn but that would not cure its Corbynism—and it now has no serious internal mechanism to do so.

The Democrats risk falling into a similar trap. The RJC is part of the Republican Party’s immune system. But the Democratic Party was for so long able to take Jewish support for granted that its own partisan Jewish infrastructure atrophied. It had completely let down its guard. Republicans, meanwhile, are benefiting from the fact that they had to build something—arguably beginning in the 1980s—that would be a specifically Jewish part of the party’s organizational world and could withstand resistance from existing groups. Once it had a foothold, it would have the energy of a start-up not a legacy institution.

Start-ups, of course, have their own weaknesses. But at the moment, that start-up energy enables the wider conservative world to multitask. And it’s why those who claim that fighting anti-Semitism is a “distraction” are, for the moment, losing that argument.

Read More

11/04 Links Pt1: Israel identifies remains of Israeli-American Itay Chen; The Strategic Fruits of Israel's Military Victory; How the ICJ works as Hamas’s partner in crime

From Ian:

The Strategic Fruits of Israel's Military Victory

The fact that for the first time the Arab Middle East and Turkey have come together to force Israel's enemy to lay down its arms is a sign of a major sea change. It may not be a sign that everyone loves Israel, but it is a sign of respect that Israel has earned through its two-year war with Hamas. Rather than turning the Jewish state into a global pariah, the war has reaffirmed its international standing. Israel had finished its greatest comeback from pain, adversity, and existential danger since the Yom Kippur War.

Israel not only recovered its strength and spirit, but brought the war directly to its enemies with a finality that had been lacking in previous conflicts. In less than two years, Israel managed to break the backs of both Hamas and Hizbullah, and quieted the West Bank. It broke the grip these terrorist regimes had held over both Lebanon and Syria, ending the encirclement by hostile neighbors Israel had faced since 1948. Most importantly, Israel shattered the power of the terrorist groups' main supporter, Iran.

Once again, Israel proved that the IDF is a fighting force without equal. The men and women of the IDF displayed unquestionable skill and professionalism in battle, as well as humanity in dealing with a fanatical enemy. All this, while defying the overwhelming weight of contrary world opinion, even from the U.S. and the Biden administration. The story of how Israel transformed the Middle East after Oct. 7 also contains a valuable lesson for the rest of the West, on how to confront its critics and enemies.

There Will Be No Phase B of Ceasefire Plan in Gaza

The fighting in Gaza has subsided, but the war has not ended. The implementation of Phase B of the ceasefire agreement depends on three miracles: the disarmament of Hamas, the establishment of a non-Hamas Palestinian government to administer Gaza, and the deployment of an international force to maintain order.

But who exactly is supposed to disarm Hamas? The Lebanese precedent teaches us that contrary to the hopes and illusions underpinning the ceasefire agreement signed in Nov. 2024, Hizbullah has shown no willingness to even consider disarmament. Lebanon's government and army are neither willing nor able to compel it to do so. In Gaza, Hamas has declared that it will not disarm. After all, Hamas did not fight for two years only to simply surrender and vanish.

It is now evident that Phase B of the agreement will not materialize, that Hamas will refuse to disarm, and that no international force will enter Gaza to confront it.

The Fall of Hamas in Gaza Begins

On Sep. 15, 2025, ordinary Gazans refused to obey Hamas. Instead, they listened to the IDF's evacuation instructions. Around 800,000 residents of northern Gaza gathered their belongings and walked south as instructed. Hamas tried to stop them with threats and violence, but failed.

Since that day, Hamas has ceased to function as a unified military or governing force. What remains is a collection of scattered, semi-independent cells clinging to the remnants of a once-organized army. The IDF has systematically eliminated most of Hamas's senior and mid-level commanders, leaving the group without strategic leadership or coordination. The mass public executions of alleged collaborators in October 2025 was a show of desperation disguised as strength.

As Hamas's power structure erodes, a political shift is emerging. Ten major clans across Gaza are cautiously but increasingly challenging Hamas's authority. None of these clans possess the military strength to overthrow Hamas on their own. Yet their existence as armed, organized communities with their own interests and leadership represents a serious crack in the system of fear and blind obedience that Hamas built over the years.

The ceasefire violations are isolated acts by local commanders trying to prove that they still have power and relevance. There is no longer a unified military council or strategic command. What remains is inertia, a chaotic pattern of violence driven by habit rather than strategy.

Hamas is at its weakest point since its creation. Its leadership has been eliminated or forced into hiding. Its military power is exhausted, its finances depleted, and its civilian support fading fast. Now is the time to dismantle what remains of its terror network, to remove Turkey and Qatar from the equation, and to secure American backing to prevent Hamas from ever rebuilding. Waiting for the usual cycle of diplomatic negotiations would mean wasting this opportunity and returning to a state of perpetual threat.

Taking Hostages Turned Out to Be Hamas's Undoing

On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas dragged 251 hostages into Gaza. The terrorists apparently believed that the taking of hostages and accompanying psychological warfare would force Israel to capitulate, leaving Hamas victorious. Yet the hostage-taking transformed the moral landscape in ways Hamas failed to anticipate.

While hostages remained in Gaza, it was no longer reasonable for international leaders to demand that Israel stop military operations. How could the world ask a nation to abandon its citizens to captivity while letting Hamas hostage-takers and torturers continue to hold them?

True, a politicized battery of UN organizations engineered a massive disinformation campaign, demonizing Israel as it waged a just war by just means. And weak leaders in the UK, France, Australia and Canada succumbed to local and international propaganda, demanding that Israel stop defending itself and rewarding Palestinian terrorism by recognizing a Palestinian state. That appeasement prevented an earlier hostage release deal and prolonged the war.

The hostage-taking prevented the conflict from dissolving into the traditional false narratives about "occupation," "resistance" and "apartheid." Many saw the truth - innocent people being held hostage by a genocidal terrorist organization committed to murdering Jews. The hostage-taking provided a broadly recognized imperative that eventually overcame the propaganda.

The hostage-taking ironically gave Israel the time and space it needed to degrade the terrorist organization drastically. The job isn't finished, but Israel stands stronger than ever.

Read More

11/03 Links Pt2: Ben Shapiro: Tucker Carlson Sabotages America; The Right’s Immune System Has Kicked In; Yad Vashem has compiled 5 million names of Jews murdered in Holocaust

From Ian:

The Right’s Immune System Has Kicked In by Abe Greenwald

Via Commentary Newsletter, sign up here. The backlash was fast and furious. Roberts’s initial statement, in which he labeled Carlson’s critics a “venomous coalition” that is “sowing division,” dropped on Thursday afternoon. By Friday, he was out with a mealymouthed cleanup clip in which he denounced Fuentes. On the same day, he was interviewed by Dana Loesch, whose straightforward questions about right and wrong had him all but malfunctioning in response. On Friday evening, Roberts announced that his chief of staff, Ryan Neuhaus, would be moving to another position. Today, news broke that Neuhaus is gone from Heritage altogether. Not bad for a few days’ work. Let’s see where this goes next.

It goes without saying that Jewish Zionists will do all they can to excise the rot of Jew-hatred from the right. But it’s the majority of the non-Jewish right that has me so uncharacteristically hopeful about that effort. Carlson told Fuentes that Christian Zionists suffer from a “brain virus” and that he dislikes them “more than anybody.” Well, this country’s Christian Zionists weren’t about to take that slander of their faith lying down. And they’re fighting back with the most glorious array of weapons: their shining decency, their overpowering goodwill toward the Jews, and their love for both Israel and the United States.

This weekend, I’ve pored over dozens of social media posts, articles, and speeches from non-Jewish supporters of Israel. In opposing the right’s institutional acceptance of Jew-hatred, they unfailingly articulate the multiple threats posed by Kevin Roberts’s misguided stratagem. They know that right-wing anti-Semitism is a threat not only to the Jewish people and Israel, but to Christians of faith, to a political right worth saving, and to the future of this country. And without a United States guided by its Founding principle of liberty for all, the world would return to a moral dark age.

And in this moment, in an uncertain political climate, their defense of the good is not without risk. Unlike liberals, who’ve spent years ceding ground to their own Jew-hating mob, pro-Israel conservatives are not only full of goodness but courage, as well.

COMMENTARY receives more “thank you” emails from Christian readers and podcast listeners than you’d ever imagine. Too much for us to respond to adequately. And this won’t be quite adequate either, but there is no better time for me to express my thanks to them. So, to the virtual armies out there who take up the cause of the Jews, Israel, and the United States, thank you! It means the world. It literally means the world.

Seth Mandel: Let’s Put This ‘Legitimate Criticism of Israel’ Claim Under Scrutiny

All right. So we have part of our desire for specifics accommodated here. We do not hear who, specifically, accused Roberts and Heritage of anti-Semitism for asking Israel to “please get to the bottom of” what happened when a shell hit a church in Gaza. Roberts says he asked the question publicly and privately, so we don’t know exactly how he phrased it each time. It’s possible he said “Can we please get to the bottom of this?”

It’s doubtful such phrasing invited much of a backlash, obviously. But even if we suspend disbelief and give him the full benefit of the doubt, the reaction he claims he received from an unnamed “handful of people in Washington, DC” was surely disproportionate to his response, which was to call them a “venomous coalition” comprising “the globalist class” and “their mouthpieces in Washington.”

How do I know this? Because when the church in Gaza was struck, President Trump also registered his disapproval—and he did so in more pointed terms than “can we please get to the bottom of this?”

On July 17, a reporter asked Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt what Trump’s reaction was. She responded: “It was not a positive reaction. He called Prime Minister Netanyahu this morning to address the strikes on that church in Gaza, and I understand the prime minister agreed to put out a statement. It was a mistake by the Israelis to hit that Catholic Church. That’s what the prime minister relayed to the president — and you should look at the prime minister’s statement that will be coming out.”

Indeed, Netanyahu expressed regret for the mistake publicly and even in a phone call to the pope.

State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce was asked about it the same day at the department’s press briefing. Bruce said that “President Trump also spoke to the prime minister, and I think it’s an understatement to say that he was not happy.” Bruce said the administration has “asked that Israel investigate the strike.” She added: “Obviously, everyone is appalled.”

Earlier in July, false accusations flew that Israelis had set fire to an ancient church not far from Jerusalem. U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee called it “an act of sacrilege” and “an act of terror” for which Israel must ensure there are “harsh consequences.”

Perhaps I missed it, but I don’t remember Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio or Mike Huckabee getting “canceled” by mysterious pro-Israel forces in Washington. All three men are regarded by the Jewish community here and in Israel as monumental friends of the Jewish nation.

One more point to make. I reject the idea that being falsely accused of something should make that person choose to become what they’ve been falsely accused of. I fully understand that tempers flare in the heat of the moment, but that is different from embracing ideas one recoiled from the day before. Put simply, I don’t believe someone turns into Pat Buchanan overnight.

If you think Tucker Carlson is being criticized for embracing a guy who praises Hitler because there’s a foreign-aligned cabal of manipulative Jews in Washington, you have stumbled upon the problem—and it isn’t other people.

Read More

11/03 Links Pt1: Remains of Omer Neutra, Oz Daniel and Asaf Hamami returned to Israel; How the UN Tossed Out Israeli Intel To Downplay UNRWA’s Ties to Hamas; Zohran Mamdani, Third-Worldism, and the Algerian Revolution

From Ian:

How the UN Tossed Out Israeli Intel To Downplay UNRWA’s Ties to Hamas

The United Nations initiated its investigation in January 2024, after the Israeli government published bombshell evidence detailing the involvement of at least 12 UNRWA staffers in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack and after Western governments began pulling financial support from the U.N. body. UNRWA fired those 12 and another 9 after further probes, but 10 others Israel flagged did not meet the international organization’s standards.

"In one case," the United Nations noted in an August 2024 public summary, "no evidence was obtained by OIOS to support the allegations of the staff member’s involvement [in Oct. 7]. That staff member has rejoined the Agency. In nine other cases, the evidence obtained by OIOS was insufficient to support the staff members’ involvement and the OIOS investigation of them is now closed."

Though U.N. investigators acknowledged the evidence often "provide[d] a factual basis to indicate that the subject UNRWA staff member may have engaged in misconduct," they stated the evidence was "not suitable for the usual human resources review and decision on disciplinary process or other measures."

Sources briefed on the confidential investigation believe these results came from the United Nations' abnormal methodology and self-imposed limitations on its investigation. By choosing to consider only what it describes as "clear and convincing evidence" of misconduct, the international organization set an "impossibly high legal standard for a simple administrative action to be taken, let alone criminal prosecution," a former senior U.S. legal official familiar with U.N. operations told the Free Beacon. "It’s exceptionally frustrating that the U.N.’s standards constrain it from firing an employee where the evidence shows that, more likely than not, he was involved in terrorist activities."

The U.S. Agency for International Development Office of Inspector General (USAID OIG)—a statutory law enforcement agency that continues to operate independently of USAID—has launched its own investigation into UNRWA’s ties to Hamas, sources confirmed to the Free Beacon. This investigation will permit State Department officials to place Hamas-linked UNRWA staff on a publicly available exclusion list, preventing them from recirculating to other U.S.-funded aid organizations, including those seeking to operate in Gaza.

"The USAID IG’s independent investigation is welcomed and warranted," a senior U.S. official responsible for humanitarian assistance in Gaza told the Free Beacon. "The U.N. clearly is unable to investigate itself properly, and the IG’s investigation will protect American taxpayer dollars from funding the salaries of Hamas terrorists shape-shifting as aid workers going forward."

A Western diplomat briefed on the matter told the Free Beacon that shortcomings in the U.N. investigation mean Hamas-tied UNRWA staffers still with the agency could migrate to other U.N. agencies.

"Other U.N. officials have expressed privately that there is no guarantee that UNRWA staff implicated in either the October 7 attacks or members of Hamas will be flagged for hiring officials at subsequent U.N. agencies," the diplomat said. "Nobody wants to become the next UNRWA and onboard individuals linked to Hamas as aid workers, but there are not the systems to protect against such risks."

U.S. government officials are aware of the risk. The USAID inspector general alerted the Biden administration and Congress in June 2024 that U.N. agencies seeking taxpayer assistance are exempt from U.S. vetting procedures.

"It is baffling that the U.N. received a free pass in terms of vetting," a diplomatic official briefed on the USAID OIG's ongoing investigative work told the Free Beacon. "In order to receive one dime of taxpayer-funded aid, any organization, U.N. or otherwise, should be required to undergo extensive vetting of all staff operating in the region."

Khaled Abu Toameh: How Hamas Is Exploiting the Trump Plan to Maintain Control of Gaza

For Hamas, US President Donald J. Trump's peace plan, announced in early October, is evidently nothing but a temporary ceasefire, or hudna, that should be exploited to ensure that the terror group, with the help of Qatar and Turkey, expands its political and military control over the Gaza Strip.

The terror group, however, has not been facing any difficulty in hunting down Palestinians suspected of "collaboration" with Israel or those who dared to criticize Hamas during the war. Hamas, in addition, is not in a hurry because it has a serious problem with phase two of the Trump plan, which requires the terror group to lay down and decommission its weapons.

What we are witnessing is a calculated delay that aims to buy time and exhaust the US administration until Trump abandons the numerous ultimatums he has issued to the terror group. The foot-dragging aims to allow Hamas to reassert control over the Gaza Strip. According to some reports, Hamas has recruited up to 7,000 new fighters....

Hamas's actions and media interviews given by its officials since the beginning of the ceasefire show that the terror group has no intention of disarming or relinquishing security control over the Gaza Strip.

Further evidence of Hamas's total disregard for the Trump plan and ongoing effort to reassert control over the Gaza Strip was provided on November 1 by the US Central Command (CENTCOM): " On Oct. 31, the U.S.-led Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC) observed suspected Hamas operatives looting an aid truck traveling as part of a humanitarian convoy delivering needed assistance from international partners to Gazans in northern Khan Younis. The coordination center was alerted through video surveillance from a U.S. MQ-9 aerial drone flying overhead to monitor implementation of the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel. Operatives attacked the driver and stole the aid and truck... The driver's current status is unknown."

"There is no lasting stability or peace until Hamas is removed from Gaza, a step that will require the use of force against this fascist militia." — Ahmed Alkhatib, former Gaza native and respected political analyst, X.com, November 1, 2025.

Even if we reach phase two of the Trump plan, Hamas will undoubtedly try to hoodwink everyone, including the Trump administration. Hamas, for instance, might hand over some of its assault rifles to a third party, but keep most of its tunnels and arsenal of weapons, including rockets and explosive devices. It is also possible that Hamas might try to incorporate its members into a new security force that would be deployed in the Gaza Strip, under the pretext that they are not affiliated with the terror group.

It is time for the Trump administration and the international community to realize that what we are currently witnessing is an attempt to rebrand and reproduce Hamas to ensure its continued control of the Gaza Strip. Hamas should not only be removed from power, but from the entire political, economic, social and military arena.

Australian military companies face new Israel ban as Department of Defence quietly tightens trade restrictions

The Nightly has asked the Department of Defence for details of any new restrictions coming into effect this week, but a spokesperson responded saying: “Defence cannot comment on individual permits (and conditions) due to national security and commercial in confidence reasons”.

Last month Defence told Parliament that 22 permits with Israeli end users have been issued since October 2023, five of which have “expired”, while the remaining 17 are “solely for the purpose of Australian Defence Force and Commonwealth capabilities”.

Prior to the October 7 Hamas attacks, 66 permits were issued by Defence and according to the department, a review ordered by the government of all export items has concluded, with 37 of them requiring no further action.

“Australian law stipulates that the defence minister or their delegate must grant an export permit to anything that we would regard to be a defence item,” Defence Deputy Secretary Hugh Jeffery told a Senate estimates hearing on October 9.

“We distinguish between those items that are lethal, non-lethal or dual use. These items are registered on what we called the Defence and Strategic Goods List,” he explained.

During this year’s election Prime Minister Anthony Albanese again insisted “we do not sell arms to Israel” following revelations the country’s military had completed trials of an advanced remote weapons system made by a Canberra-based defence supplier.

In 2024 Israeli company Elbit Systems was awarded a $917 million contract to provide “advanced protection, fighting capabilities and sensors” for the Army’s new Infantry Fighting Vehicles being built in Victoria by Korean-owned company Hanwha.

Read More

11/02 Links: Omer Neutra confirmed as one of three slain Gaza hostages returned to Israel on Sunday; The Arab World Rejects Hamas While New York City Glorifies It

From Ian:

When Truth Splits in Two: The Arab World Rejects Hamas While New York City Glorifies It

The Great Moral Reversal
In the Middle East, proximity to Hamas’s rule has produced clarity. People who live under or near Islamist militias know the cost of their fanaticism. They have seen the beheadings, the executions, the corruption, and the cruelty. They know that Hamas, like the Houthis or Hezbollah, does not liberate, it enslaves.

In the West, by contrast, ideological distance paired with obsession of the oppressor vs oppressed narrative breeds delusion. The further one stands from Hamas’s victims, the easier it is to romanticize its violence. Western activists, many of whom would never tolerate a prayer led by a homophobic priest or a law that could affect a woman's right to control her own medical decisions, suspend all judgment when those same forces wrap themselves in Palestinian flags.

It is an irony only modern politics could produce. Arab liberals call for Hamas’s elimination, while American progressives dance beneath its banners.

Why This Matters
The implications reach beyond moral outrage. When American cities normalize pro terror rhetoric, they erode the social immune system that protects against radicalization. When politicians legitimize extremists in the name of diversity, they invite violence and antisemitism into civic life.

One world is waking up. The other is descending into moral sleep. In Riyadh, Cairo, and Manama, journalists write that Hamas’s “role has ended.” In Brooklyn, protesters shout that “resistance is glorious.”

The former seeks peace. The latter seeks purpose. The former has seen war’s reality. The latter plays at revolution from the safety of American democracy.

The lesson is painfully clear: moral clarity still exists, but you will find more of it today in the Arab world than on the streets of New York City, a city now poised to dive even deeper into fanaticism and moral inversion.

The Qatar Problem

Knowledge Production and Narrative Control
Tensions between Saudis, Iranians, and Qataris had simmered for years, and I could still feel the heat at a security forum in Europe in late August 2023. After I led a teach-in on the Middle East, the Qatari ambassador to Canada, Dr Khalid bin Rashid Al Mansouri, approached me to ask if I needed funding for my initiatives. I declined. Mid-sentence, a Gazan social-media activist cut in: “Will you keep financially supporting our people in Gaza even now that Saudi is normalising with Israel?” The ambassador turned, took his hands, and answered, “We will never ever stop supporting our Palestinian brothers.”

That was not a humanitarian promise, it was policy. Qatar has bankrolled Hamas since 2007, when the group seized Gaza after a bloody rampage that overthrew the Palestinian Authority. In 2012, Qatar’s then-Emir made a red-carpet visit to Gaza and pledged US$400 million for projects, a watershed moment that signalled Doha’s unabashed embrace of Hamas’s rule. Patronage matured into a routinised cash flow, and by 2021, about US$30 million per month was entering Gaza, framed as “humanitarian” transfers that sustained Hamas-run salaries and government operations.

At the same time, Qatar was investing heavily in Western knowledge production and narrative control. Since 2001, US colleges and universities have reported an estimated US$6.25 billion in Qatari funding, making Qatar one of the five largest foreign donors in American higher education. Think tanks and policymakers were folded in, too. Qatar gave upward of US$9.1 million to US think tanks between 2019 and 2023. The Brookings Doha Center and related initiatives received US$14.8 million in a single three-year pledge, part of a broader, longer-running relationship that raised persistent questions and prompted FBI investigations about policy manipulation and censorship across the Beltway ecosystem.

Lobbying followed the same template. In a single recent year, Qatar retained 33 FARA-registered PR and lobbying firms, spending around US$18 million to create surge capacity for bookings, op-eds, and Hill and press engagement. To give you a picture of the scale of Qatari reach in DC, I spent several months after 7 October trying to publish a piece titled, “Qatar Is a Leading Saboteur of Regional Integration.” I sent it to everyone I know in media and policy, including Ambassador Dennis Ross who promised, when I begged him at a Washington Institute event in November 2023, to get it published. I had hit multiple walls, including at a think tank of which I am a member.

A friend at one of these publications told me: “I think they [the editorial team] have an issue with the fact that they have an upcoming partnership in December with Qatar. One of the directors flagged it as problematic and might put them in a delicate situation and prefer to go with another piece they had commissioned with a lighter touch on the subject. Sorry for that.” I asked if there was somewhere I could send it where there would not be a conflict of interest. “It is hard in DC,” my friend replied. “Everyone has interests with the Qataris.”

Even public grief was asked to stand down in deference to Doha’s leverage. After 7 October, several planned protests by hostage families in front of the Qatari embassy were quietly shut down. A source close to the Hostage Families Forum in DC told me they were explicitly warned not to “endanger” diplomatic talks with the only mediators deemed capable of securing releases. I do not fault the families for yielding, especially when even Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff continue to celebrate Qatar’s role as the indispensable mediator for peace.

WAPO: Palestinian Talks on Gaza's Future Could See Hamas Help Shape Its Rule

Palestinian political factions are holding closed-door discussions that could see Hamas play a role in shaping a postwar administration in Gaza.

The eight Palestinian factions and armed groups involved - including Fatah, which leads the Palestinian Authority based in the West Bank, and Hamas - are working to reach a consensus over key elements of an interim administration.

To avoid a protracted postwar insurgency, Hamas must be included in any political settlement, say Palestinian political factions and mediators from Arab countries.

A pivotal question is whether Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu or President Trump would object to a Gazan government born out of talks between Hamas and Fatah.

For Israel, nearly every aspect of the inter-Palestinian talks is unpalatable.

"The fear for Israel is that Hamas will open the gates of Gaza and say to the PA, 'You're the boss here. Just bring money to Gaza and you can declare yourself the minister of agriculture or education. Just don't touch weapons, and we'll be the dominant player,'" said Michael Milshtein, a former Israeli military intelligence analyst.

Daniel Shapiro, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, said, "There is a risk that the end state that emerges will be what we wanted to avoid....Hamas is battered and bruised but hanging on to power, preparing for the next round."

WSJ: Hizbullah Is Rearming, Putting Ceasefire at Risk

Hizbullah in Lebanon is rebuilding its armaments and battered ranks, defying the terms of a ceasefire agreement, and raising the prospect of renewed conflict with Israel, according to Israeli and Arab intelligence.

The intelligence shows Iranian-backed Hizbullah is restocking rockets, antitank missiles and artillery. Some weapons are coming in via seaports and still functional smuggling routes through Syria. Hizbullah is also manufacturing new weapons itself.

Under the agreement that ended a two-month Israeli campaign against the group a year ago, Lebanon is required to start disarming Hizbullah in parts of Lebanon, before continuing to the entire country as per a previous agreement.

Israel is losing patience after new intelligence findings highlighted Hizbullah's rearmament. "Should Beirut continue to hesitate, Israel may act unilaterally - and the consequences would be grave," Tom Barrack, U.S. ambassador to Turkey and a key American envoy for Lebanon and Syria, said in October.

The standoff highlights the difficulty of quashing an established militia with a base of support among the population even when it has been badly beaten. The difficulties are also evident in Gaza, where Hamas is resisting demands that it disarm and relinquish power.

Read More

11/01 Links: The illusion of Palestinian peace; Hamas again hands over remains that don’t belong to hostages; CENTCOM posts footage of Hamas terrorists looting aid truck

From Ian:

The Balfour Declaration is a monument to humanity in this dark age of anti-Semitism

The revival of anti-Semitism has shown in a way no Zionist arguments ever could, the need for a state with a Jewish majority where Jews can live without fear.

The Balfour Declaration contained an important proviso – “that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”. It did not mention the national rights of Arabs, since at that time many believed that such rights were reserved for those of European origin.

All the same, “the civil and religious rights” of Arabs are better protected in Israel than in the murderous regimes and failed states which constitute much of the rest of today’s Middle East.

The early Zionists hoped for Arab acceptance. But a brief period of amity soon gave rise, inevitably no doubt, to a persistent and often violent conflict between two national claims, each backed by religion.

Balfour would not have been surprised. As chief secretary for Ireland in the 1880s, he had been accused of being unjust to Irish nationalists. “Justice” he mused, “there is not enough to go round”. And indeed in the Middle East there isn’t.

Nevertheless, Israel has become an insurance mechanism for Jews against anti-Semitism; and sadly no one can predict when or where that mechanism will be needed.

And that is why, as the diplomatic historian, Tom Otte, has argued, the Balfour Declaration stands as “one of the few monuments to humanity in the 20th century”.

The illusion of Palestinian peace

The “ecstasy” of jihad was visible on Oct. 7, in videos of young men calling their parents to boast about killing Jews with their own hands, and in the mobs cheering as kidnapped Israeli girls were paraded through Gaza’s streets.

Even academics in the West, such as Cornell’s Russell Rickford, revealed the same moral sickness when he called the massacre “exhilarating.”

Arab–Palestinian wars have always followed this script: an initial eruption of homicidal and suicidal ecstasy, followed by crushing defeat—the War of Independence (1948), the Six Day War (1967), the Intifadas, and now the war of Oct. 7. Yet from each failure, what remains in memory is the thrill of violence, not the price of it.

This mindset—rooted in the dream of expanding Dar al-Islam (the land of Islam) by erasing Dar al-Harb (the land of war)—turns every peace proposal into betrayal, and every act of terror into redemption.

Meanwhile, international institutions like the United Nations invert morality by cloaking this death cult in the language of “human rights.” The result is what the Arab intellectual Fouad Ajami called “a palace of dreams” turned into a trap of death.

The much-discussed “deradicalization” needed for a peace process is nowhere in sight. As this survey makes clear, the obstacle is not Israel’s settlements or borders—it is the culture of hatred itself.

Until that changes, peace will remain a Western illusion.

Hamas again hands over remains that don’t belong to hostages

Hamas transferred to Israel the remains of three individuals that do not belong to any of the 11 slain hostages still held by terrorist in Gaza, Israel’s broadcaster Channel 13 reported on Saturday.

The remains, which Red Cross intermediaries handed over to Israel overnight Friday, were examined by the National Institute of Forensic Medicine in Tel Aviv’s Abu Kabir neighborhood.

The Israel Defense Forces says that at least two bodies of deceased captives can be recovered immediately by the terrorist organization, while Hamas may truly not know the whereabouts of three to five others.

“We ruled out the possibility that the remains returned last night are linked to any Israeli hostage,” an Israeli official told Ynet on Saturday.

“Specifically, this incident does not constitute a violation, since from the outset we assessed with low probability that the remains belonged to hostages. We prefer that Hamas hand over findings so we can verify them. That said, Hamas continues its fundamental violation—the failure to return the bodies of the fallen,” the official added.

According to the ceasefire terms, in cases of uncertainty, remains should be transferred to Israel for verification.

However, Jerusalem believes that Hamas is deliberately slow-walking the return of the deceased hostages to avoid its disarmament, which is set to take place in the second phase of the ceasefire deal with a deployment of an international force in the Gaza Strip.

Instead, the Islamist group is buying time to reassert its control over territory from which the IDF has withdrawn, so it will have greater bargaining power in future talks regarding Gaza’s reconstruction.

Read More

10/31 Links Pt2: A season of bipartisan betrayal on antisemitism; When Conservative Leaders Lose Their Way; The Question JD Vance Needs to Answer

From Ian:

Jonathan Tobin: A season of bipartisan betrayal on antisemitism

Heritage embraces Tucker
He reached a new low this week when he welcomed neo-Nazi Holocaust denier and vicious Jew-hater Nick Fuentes onto his podcast. That raised the question as to whether Carlson was going to be able to mainstream antisemitism on the political right in much the same way that woke progressives have done to the left.

We didn’t have long to find out the answer to that question. And it came from a surprising source—the Heritage Foundation Washington think tank that has been one of the intellectual hubs of conservative thought and activism. In a video posted on X, Kevin Roberts, a historian and president of Heritage, made it clear that not only was he refusing to distance himself and his organization from Carlson, but that he was doubling down on this stand.

In a brief speech, Roberts denounced those who have criticized Carlson’s platforming of antisemitism and his vicious attacks on Israel and Christian Zionists, whom the podcaster described as heretics who had a “brain virus.” Roberts said Heritage didn’t believe in “canceling our own people or policing the consciences of Christians” and depicted those appalled by Carlson as a “venomous coalition” who engage in “slander” that “serves someone else’s agenda.”

Roberts said Heritage supported cooperation with Israel when it served U.S. interests—something no one disputes. But the Heritage president seemed to echo some of the dark rhetoric of the far left and far right when he spoke of those who “reflexively support” the Jewish state as “loud” sinister, globalist” forces who are somehow harming America, and that must be resisted.

He made clear that he would stick with Carlson, no matter what he did, and his only interest was in attacking the left. He said that he “disagreed with and even abhorred things that Fuentes had said,” but wouldn’t cancel him either. He treated his hatred of Jews as merely an idea that should be debated.

He did some damage control on that aspect of his statement a day later by detailing on X his profound disagreement with Fuentes’s vile bigotry. Still, he stopped short of drawing the obvious conclusion that those who normalize and seek to mainstream neo-Nazi beliefs need to be held responsible for doing that.

The point being, it doesn’t matter if you are appalled by Fuentes if you treat those who promote him and treat him as legitimate as allies, and smear those who oppose such abhorrent behavior as somehow unpatriotic or guilty of dual loyalty.

This is a startling turnabout for an organization with not only an honorable record of support for Israel but whose “Esther Project” to combat antisemitism has served as a blueprint for the Trump administration’s efforts to root out left-wing ideologies that are enabling Jew-hatred on college campuses. Roberts’ seeming neutrality about his friend’s prejudiced behavior directly contradicts what his organization has been trying to do in academia.

It’s especially discouraging since the real “globalist” forces in the international community are the ones whose arguments are echoed by Carlson and Fuentes, in which they promote blood libels against Israel, and seek to isolate and destroy it. Supporters of the Jewish state are Heritage’s natural allies and are to be found among its staff and donors because they support the same vision of national conservatism—both in the United States and Israel— that Roberts has championed.

JD Vance mimics Kamala Harris
Roberts’s profession of loyalty to Carlson came in the same week as a troubling response of Vice President JD Vance to questions from an Israel-hating student at a Turning Point USA event at the University of Mississippi. When given an opportunity to slap down anti-Israel conspiracy theories, he let them go unanswered. He responded with what could only be described as an equivocal statement about the U.S.-Israel relationship in which he boasted of pressuring Jerusalem during the recent ceasefire negotiations and professed his Christian faith.

While Trump and Vance have strong pro-Israel records, Vance’s answer was little different from the way Harris responded to smears of Israel from left-wing activists when campaigning last year, when she was primarily interested in signaling her sympathy for them. Like her, Vance seemed to be signaling that he, too, was more concerned with demonstrating his solidarity with extremists on his end of the spectrum than in distancing himself from them. When you consider that Vance is the likely frontrunner to succeed Trump, it calls into question whether Trump’s historic pro-Israel policies will be maintained if he wins in 2028.

Both battles must be fought
Taken together, all these events present an ugly picture of the current state of political debate in the United States.

There is no doubt that most of those who are supporting the U.S.-Israel alliance and fighting antisemitism can be found among Republicans and on the political right, while all the energy and most of the young stars in the Democratic Party are to be found among its anti-Israel and antisemitic left-wing. And unlike the crickets to be heard among most prominent Democrats about Mamdani, the pushback against Heritage and Carlson from prominent Republicans like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee is a sign that the conservative base of the GOP is still firmly pro-Israel and ready to fight Jew-hatred wherever it is to be found.

But what we heard from the Heritage Foundation and Vance this week indicates that the antisemites have not only gotten a foothold within the conservative mainstream. Some of the most important players in it would prefer to embrace them rather than to drive them back to the fever swamps where they belong.

This is a sobering revelation for those who have long taken comfort from the way that the two major American political parties had more or less exchanged identities in the last half-century when it came to Israel and opposition to antisemitism. This shouldn’t diminish the effort to call the political left to account for its role in normalizing hatred for Israel. But it is a discouraging reminder that the same battle must now also be fought on the political right.

When Conservative Leaders Lose Their Way

The Stakes for Conservatism
Roberts is free to debate Israel policy, question foreign aid, or advocate for a more transactional foreign policy. These are legitimate positions worthy of serious discussion. But when he uses his platform as Heritage’s president to defend the mainstreaming of neo-Nazis, he damages not just his own reputation but the credibility of the entire conservative movement.

He gives the left ammunition to paint all conservatives as tolerant of fascism. He alienates Jewish conservatives who have been vital to building our movement. He signals to young conservatives that Holocaust denial is just another viewpoint in the marketplace of ideas.

This is particularly tragic because Heritage has so many brilliant scholars doing crucial work on everything from regulatory reform to national security. They deserve leadership that can distinguish between legitimate policy disagreements and the mainstreaming of genocidal hatred.

A Call for Moral Clarity
The Heritage Foundation is bigger than any one president. Its legacy of principled conservatism stretches back to Edwin Feulner, who built it into a powerhouse, and forward to the scholars who continue producing vital research today. The institution itself remains essential to the conservative movement.

But Kevin Roberts has failed a basic test of leadership. By defending the platforming of Nick Fuentes, he’s chosen online populism over moral principle. He’s decided that maintaining Tucker Carlson’s friendship matters more than maintaining the standards that separate conservatism from its worst fringes.

Roberts owes the conservative movement—and The Heritage Foundation itself—a clear retraction and apology. Not for his views on Israel or foreign policy, which are legitimate subjects for debate, but for defending those who mainstream Holocaust denial and white nationalism.

Until he provides that clarity, he’s damaged not just his own credibility but cast a shadow over an institution that deserves better leadership. Heritage’s board, scholars, and supporters should demand better. The conservative movement certainly does.

There are many hills worth dying on in politics. Defending the mainstreaming of Holocaust deniers isn’t one of them. Kevin Roberts should know the difference. The fact that he doesn’t is a tragedy for him and a challenge for an institution that has given so much to the conservative cause.

Seth Mandel: The Question JD Vance Needs to Answer

Last night, Vice President JD Vance made remarks at a Turning Point USA event in Mississippi and then took questions from the crowd. It was inevitable that one of those questions would be a provocative statement about nefarious Jewish influence masked as an innocent question about American foreign policy.

“I’m just confused,” the stammering MAGA-hatted student repeated a couple of times. What was this poor chap confused about? “I’m a Christian man, and I’m just, uh, confused why—that there’s this notion that we, uh, might have or, uh, owe Israel something or that they’re our greatest ally or that we have to support this multi-hundred billion dollar, um, foreign aid package to Israel…. I’m just confused why this idea has come around, considering the fact that not only does their religion not agree with ours but also openly supports the prosecution of ours.”

Now, there are a few possible ways to answer this type of “question.” Vance could have been combative and rejected the premise forcefully, deterring any other clowns from trying to hijack the vice president’s event. That would have been a show of strength. He also could have ignored the sniping about Judaism to appear diplomatic while trying to show that he won’t take such bait. In that case, he could’ve just answered the policy part of the question by correcting the kid’s warped description.

The third option would be the weakest: accept the premise of both parts of the question and try to convince the young man that the White House knows what it’s doing.

As you can probably guess, the vice president chose the third option:
“First of all, when the president of the United States says America First that means that he pursues the interests of Americans first. That is our entire foreign policy. And that doesn’t mean that you’re not going to have alliances, that you’re not going to work with other countries from time to time…. In this example, the most recent Gaza peace plan that all of us have been working on very hard for the past few weeks, the president of the United States could only get that peace deal done by actually being willing to apply leverage to the State of Israel. So when people say that Israel is somehow manipulating or controlling the president of the United States, they’re not controlling this president of the United States.”

A good follow-up question might have asked Vance which specific presidents he had in mind when he suggested that other presidents have been controlled by Israel.

Vance then treated the other part of the question as equally legitimate:

“Now you ask about, you know, sort of Jews disagreeing with Christians on certain religious ideas. Yeah, absolutely. It’s one of the realities is that Jews do not believe that Jesus Christ is the messiah. Obviously, Christians do believe that. There are some significant theological disagreements between Christians and Jews. My attitude is: Let’s have those conversations. Let’s have those disagreements when we have them. But if there are shared areas of interest, we ought to be willing to do that, too.”

Vance said he was fine with, for example, working with Israel to maintain open access to Christian holy sites. Then he concluded: “What I’m not OK with is any country coming before the interests of American citizens.”

Vance was plainly unprepared for this question, even though he should have known it was coming. In the end, he came off as a guy who really wants the vote of a college-age groyper who came to troll him that night.

Read More

10/31 Links Pt1: IDF to recieve three slain hostages to return tonight; Paddystine’s new president; FBI Thwarts Jihadist Terrorist Attack in Dearborn, Michigan

From Ian:

Andrew Fox: The Numbers Game

Here is my one regret from the last two years of commentary on the 7th October War: we let ourselves get sucked into arguing the running death toll coming out of Hamas’s Health Ministry in Gaza.

In some ways, it was inevitable. Global outlets put those figures in every headline and chyron, so someone had to meet them on the field. Nevertheless, it was still a strategic mistake. We allowed Hamas’s daily ticker to become the global yardstick for morality in this conflict.

Start with a simple truth about war reporting: immediate casualty numbers after explosions are guaranteed to be wrong. These are not fog-of-war errors from Hamas; they are straight-up lies. The Al‑Ahli explosion is a case study. Within minutes, the “500 dead” claim circled the world. Subsequent assessments from Western intelligence agencies put the likely death toll in the low hundreds, yet the first number did its work; it framed the narrative for days. We have seen this ruse time and again, and we fall for it each time it happens.

I am not saying the numbers do not matter at all; every innocent death matters infinitely to the people who loved them. But the “numbers game”, the breathless, running tally, turns a legal and moral analysis into a horse race graphic. It incentivises speed over verification, from a single unverified source with a clear propaganda motive, and it collapses complex questions into a single, unreliable metric. Even organisations and reporters who regard Gaza Health Ministry figures as broadly useful acknowledge the limits of instant counts and the likelihood of later revisions when conditions improve or bodies are recovered from rubble.

Here is the broader point. If the tally is 40,000, 68,000, or 100,000, the fundamental question remains unchanged. In no other conflict do we treat a running counter as the dispositive test of conduct. Afghanistan’s war killed roughly 176,000 people through direct violence by 2021: civilians, Afghan forces, insurgents, and others, according to Brown University’s Costs of War project. Iraq’s direct-war deaths from 2003 to 2021 total 275,000–306,000, including 185,000–209,000 civilians. Those wars are debated on strategy, aims, and legality, not by a daily, decontextualised ticker. Nobody alleges those wars were genocides.

Look around the world right now. Amidst the ongoing slaughter of innocents in Sudan, famine has been formally identified, with the UN-backed IPC system projecting expansion absent major relief. In the worst-case scenario, up to one million people could die in Sudan through war, famine, and pestilence. There are no mass marches in Western capitals keyed to that potential number and no live tickers on cable news.

FBI Thwarts Jihadist Terrorist Attack in Dearborn, Michigan, Planned for Halloween Weekend

The FBI on Friday foiled a jihadist terrorist plot in Dearborn, Mich., arresting multiple suspects for plotting an ISIS-inspired attack over Halloween weekend.

Authorities "thwarted a Jihadist terror plot stemming from Dearborn earlier this morning—reportedly timed to coincide with children trick-or-treating later tonight," journalist Eitan Fischberger wrote in an X post. FBI director Kash Patel confirmed in a statement on X that officials "thwarted a potential terrorist attack and arrested multiple subjects in Michigan who were allegedly plotting a violent attack over Halloween weekend."

"The plot was inspired by ISIS," CNN reported, citing two law enforcement officials familiar with the investigation.

The suspects discussed the plot in online chatrooms where an undercover FBI agent was present, the officials told CNN. Authorities have arrested two of the participants and are questioning three others.

This is far from the only ISIS-linked terrorist plot on U.S. soil this year. In June, an Afghan national who had pledged allegiance to ISIS pleaded guilty to two terrorism-related offenses. In January, U.S. citizen Shamsud-Din Jabbar killed 15 people and injured dozens more when he drove a pickup truck into a crowd in New Orleans. Jabbar, who died in a shootout with police, had an ISIS flag in his vehicle and pledged allegiance to the group in Facebook videos posted just hours before the attack.

Paddystine’s new president

Describing Hamas as “part of the fabric of the Palestinian people,” she is not averse to issuing her own “Paddystinian” statements. “I come from Ireland, which has a history of colonization,” she told the BBC earlier this year. “I would be very wary of telling a sovereign people how to run their country.”

One of the core doctrines of Palestinianism is that “Palestine” is the only issue that matters and that other international crises—from Ukraine to Kurdistan to Sudan—are either politically suspect or simply irrelevant. As Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur for the Palestinians, expressed it at an Oct. 30 briefing organized by the U.N.’s Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, “Palestine today is the stage to prove whether or not we will live in a truly decolonized world.” The message sent to the residents of the city of El-Fasher in Sudan, who last week were driven from their homes amid bestial atrocities committed by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), as well as to the thousands of Ukrainian children illegally abducted by the Russian invaders, is that they don’t count.

In fact, Russian imperialism is not just exempted. In Connolly’s case, it receives a full-throated endorsement. An uncompromising backer of Irish neutrality that was famously on display during World War II, she opposes greater Irish contributions to the defense of Europe. She has additionally criticized NATO’s eastward expansion, accusing the alliance of playing “a despicable role in moving forward to the border and engaging in war-mongering,” believing that the greatest threat posed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine is the “militarization” of Europe.

As Rachelle Moiselle, a keen observer of the Irish scene, has observed, Connolly also has a nasty habit of referring to Ukraine as “the Ukraine,” as if the country is a geographical feature rather than an independent state allied with the West. So much, then, for not telling “a sovereign people how to run their country,” unless you believe, as Connolly clearly does, that Ukraine is a province of a Greater Russia.

Perhaps Connolly’s greatest offense was her homage to the now-deposed Syrian President Bashar Assad in 2018. Standing in the rubble of Aleppo, relentlessly bombed by the Russian forces supporting Assad during the civil war, she offered her solidarity to this exemplar of Arab dictators, despite Assad reducing the Palestinian neighborhood of Yarmouk on the outskirts of Damascus from—as one Palestinian witness memorably put it—“a thriving neighborhood of hundreds of thousands of people into a desperate population of 18,000 waiting to die.”

Connolly is unlikely to stick to the traditional role of the Irish president as a figurehead, opting instead for the activist profile adopted by Higgins and first pioneered during the 1990s by Mary Robinson. While the current crop of Western leaders is unlikely to heed her warnings and complaints, she is set to be a major component of the global movement to isolate and weaken the State of Israel.

She will not be alone. Pedro Sánchez, the Spanish Prime Minister, sits in her camp, as will—assuming he wins New York City’s mayoral election—the Hamas shill Zohran Mamdani, to name just two of her erstwhile comrades.

As Israel’s main ally on the world stage, the United States needs to tighten political and economic pressure on Ireland, which, in the estimation of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, “runs a trade surplus at our expense.” As for the American Jewish community, they should steer clear of vacations in Ireland and refrain from buying Irish products. For one thing, it’s not safe to be a Jew there. For another, with Ireland pushing a boycott of Israel, we should have no qualms about urging a boycott of Ireland in response.

Read More

10/30 Links Pt2: Tokenism and Anti-Zionism After October 7; Why I’m going to stop using the term ‘antisemitism’; New York holds its breath

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Tokenism and Anti-Zionism After October 7

She certainly might be right about what lies ahead. But she is stacking the odds against it. How does one celebrate Jewish holidays without mentioning the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel? Where do you tell your kids the Israelites were going when they escaped Pharaoh’s clutches, Portland? Where were the temple sacrifices made, Katz’s Deli? Jewish history happened where it happened, and there isn’t much you can do about that.

As her mother says to her in that interview: “But how do you square that with the ancient history that I’ve been taught—that Jews were from Israel, that all those years we wandered in the desert and then finally came back to Israel. Is all of that false?”

To which her daughter responds: “That was many, many years ago!”

Yeah, that’s kind of the point. Full commitment to Diasporist anti-Zionism requires the jettisoning of everything that happened before this moment.

But the larger obstacle to the future envisioned here is that this young lady will no doubt be spending her time with peer groups hostile to Jewish tradition and practice and history. Forget the Muslim Student Union; the Times story discusses her conversations with canvassers from Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, a progressive political group designed to reinforce her priors.

This is the problem that Rabbi Blumofe appears to put his finger on. It’s not that liberal Jews can’t or don’t exist. It’s that the structure of American politics is such that if one aligns with anti-Zionism, one is unlikely to encounter anything else. Indeed, the progressive gate-keeping has become so intense that anti-Zionism is now a litmus test for activists on any issue. It’s why climate prophetess of doom Greta Thunberg spends her time on boats challenging the Israeli navy.

The Diasporism advocated in these groups is a closed circle. As Vladimir Jabotinsky said when confronted with the argument that Jews ought to be a light unto the nations from within those nations but without a nation of their own: “England… has enriched the world with a valuable social idea: self-rule of free citizens, that is, the parliamentary government. However, how did the English nation teach other peoples to understand and run such a government? Certainly not by being scattered among the nations and convincing them; just the opposite.”

The same goes for being in groups whose entire reason for being is to critique the Jews. Embracing tokenism is a form of extreme self-exile and self-negation. The proliferation of political spaces that use anti-Zionism as their litmus test is one of the great challenges facing American Jewry. And the first step to overcoming that challenge is to acknowledge it.

David Harsanyi: Why I’m going to stop using the term ‘antisemitism’

There was no longer a need to invent blood libels tied to the Jewish faith, though doing so would never really go completely out of style. Indeed, Marr and other socialists like Eugen Dühring would blame Jews for the rise of unfettered capitalism, and national socialists and other xenophobic factions blamed them for spreading worldwide communism. But no matter how secularized or German or patriotic or apolitical a Jew might become, they still could never escape their “race.”

Later, some of the Nazis, devotees of the racialist outlook, objected to the use of “antisemitism” because they sought “Semitic” allies like the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who would join them in egging on the murder of Jews in Bosnia and elsewhere. Not all “Semites” were the same.

And the “Semitic” designation is ridiculous. Coined by German historians in the late 1700s, it bunches together wildly divergent groups of ancient people by similarities in language. An “anti-Semite,” then, technically speaking, is a person who is hostile to Hebrew or Aramaic or Phoenician. Over the years, Jewish organizations have prodded people to remove the hyphen to create a more generic term for a prejudice against Jews. Now, I’m sure “Semitic” is useful for linguists or historians trying to make sense of the movements and relationships in the ancient world, but in contemporary usage, it’s about as valuable as calling Hungarian or Finn haters “anti-Uralics.”

“Antisemitism” is reminiscent of another vaguely scientific-sounding word meant to mislead, “Islamophobia.” Defining Jews as “Semites” strips them of religious, cultural, or intellectual traditions and reimagines them as a race. “Islamophobia” treats criticism of the cultural and intellectual traditions of Islam as if it were tantamount to irrational racism. Islam isn’t a race; it’s a theology with numerous strands. Jews aren’t a race, either. They are, because of their ancient origins, an ethnicity and a faith.

Orwell warned that language decays when our thoughts become foolish — and that corrupted language, in turn, makes foolish thinking easier. Words have meaning, and using them precisely matters. A person who despises others for unchangeable traits such as skin color is a racist. One who rejects Catholic beliefs with hostility is anti-Catholic. Someone who instinctively dislikes all Dutch people is a bigot. Hatred of women is sexism. An irrational fear or hatred of men is androphobia. When we distort or dilute such words, we don’t make the world kinder — we simply make our thinking less clear.

If you believe Jews control space lasers for Israel and are behind every nefarious plot you’ve conjured up in your fetid imagination, “anti-Semite” doesn’t really do you justice. You’re probably just a “Jew-hater.” There’s really no reason for anyone to soften the blow by adopting Wilhelm Marr’s preposterous verbiage.

Melanie Phillips: New York holds its breath

The fear that the wider community might turn against Jews has meant that—even now that it has indeed done so at an unprecedented level—these cowed Jews don’t blame the haters, but instead blame Israel for allegedly turning the community against them. As Levin states, even some Jews genuinely concerned with Israel’s well-being are thus sickeningly blaming Jewish victimization on other Jews.

For similar reasons, there’s a fixed belief among Jewish leaders that the principal threat to diaspora Jews comes from the extreme right, despite the fact that most of this threat emanates from the progressive radicals of race, gender and climate politics.

This helps explain why there has been no concerted opposition to Mamdani from America’s Jewish community leadership. Many of these leaders believe not that people like Mamdani have incited the current explosion of antisemitism but that Israel has tarred their own standing in society, particularly among the intelligentsia, media and other cultural icons with whom they identify.

Levin calls out a range of U.S. communal bodies and leaders, including the Anti-Defamation League, the New Israel Fund, J Street and Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the leader of Reform Judaism, for effectively siding with the mortal enemies of Israel and the Jewish people or failing to do enough to counter them.

Rather than call out the demagogic black community leader Al Sharpton, who has spewed anti-Jewish invective and has been involved in anti-Jewish violence that goes back to the Crown Heights riots in 1991 in Brooklyn, N.Y., Levin notes that Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League, effectively embraced him as an ally against the right.

Along with the campus-based Hillel organization, says Levin, the ADL has also failed to take adequate action to counter the threats to Jewish students on campus, and no other legacy Jewish organization has stepped up to fill this void.

And none of them has called out the rampant antisemitism that is standard fare throughout the Muslim world. Instead, these organizations parrot the leftist denunciation of anyone critical of Muslims as a bigot.

There’s another reason that Jewish community leaders don’t call out these enemies within. The Jewish world tells itself that the greatest threat it faces is disunity, which has brought disaster upon the Jewish people in the past because it has fatally weakened its defense against its enemies.

While it is undeniable that disunity is disastrous, an even greater catastrophe is surely threatened by Jews turning against their own. This provides both lethal weaponry and a protective shield for the mortal enemies of the Jewish people.

These anti-Jewish Jews have, in effect, joined forces with those who are intent upon the extermination of the Jewish state. They sanitize and incentivize these enemies while gaslighting Jews who support Israel and whom they demonize as nationalist bigots.

The damage that’s been done by Jews who have a pathological impulse to damage their own people, and who hurl against Israel and Zionism the same malevolent lies deployed by those who want Israel and the Jews removed from the world, is unconscionable.

The willful refusal by the Jewish community leadership to address this amounts to a betrayal of a Jewish community that’s under siege. If Mamdani is elected, they will have much more to answer for.

Read More