09/03 Links Pt2: Dame Maureen Lipman: I Won't Be Bullied by Actors over My Views on Israel; What Happened to America’s Teachers?; House passes anti-BDS bill, even as most Democrats voted against it

From Ian:

Dame Maureen Lipman: I Won't Be Bullied by Actors over My Views on Israel

A young actor by the name of Gerard McCarthy has withdrawn from his role in a West End play because...I am in it, and my "views" on Israel are beyond the pale. What prompted this man to now refuse to share a stage with me for one day in "Right Before I Go" - a play meant to generate awareness about suicide and raise money for the cause?

My appearance as Evelyn Plummer in "Corrie" a few times a week does not give me a back channel to Bibi Netanyahu, despite the fact that yes, I am Jewish. So Mr. McCarthy, I challenge you to explain your rejection of the things which make our business viable and comradely. Why are you refusing to work with an 80-year-old, experienced actress (allegedly I'm a national treasure) for the benefit of young people who are struggling to find the strength and courage to go on living?

There are a lot of Jewish actors who won't speak up for Israel. They keep quiet. That is up to them. But I will not countenance juvenile, immature posturing. Why did Mr. McCarthy have to release a lengthy, moralizing statement attacking views I have "publicly and repeatedly" expressed?

I will not be bullied, nor will I allow anybody to tell me what to think. If that affects their ability to work with me, as opposed to convert me to their point of view, then they are lily livered. Mr. McCarthy could change his mind though. Let's behave as actors who believe in free speech and free thought, rather than engage in a new McCarthyism.

Exclusive: BBC Arabic ‘got it very wrong’ over Israel coverage says Lord Grade

The BBC’s former chairman Lord Grade has condemned the Arabic service for its bias against Israel, telling the JC: “They know they got it very wrong and they’ve got to put it right.”

In a frank interview, the broadcasting grandee says it is “shocking” how slow the broadcaster has been to acknowledge the well-documented long-standing problems of antisemitism and anti-Israel bias at BBC Arabic.

Speaking out on a range of contentious topics after stepping down as Ofcom chief in April, the Tory peer who was born into a celebrated Jewish showbiz dynasty has also said:
The BBC should have called the Hamas October 7 attackers terrorists;
The Corporation’s complaints system must be overhauled and was wrong to reject the claim that ‘moneybags Rothschild’ is an antisemitic phrase;
The BBC must urgently take on the findings of bias – including in Middle East coverage – exposed by Michael Prescott’s report last year;
Failures to identify the editorial flaws in a documentary which was revealed to feature the son of a Hamas minister are a “shocking indictment” of the BBC.
While chairman of Ofcom, Grade received Prescott’s report into the BBC’s editorial standards and immediately passed it to Ofcom chief executive Melanie Dawes.

Prescott, a former independent adviser to the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee, catalogued allegations of bias in the news department. Among his findings were concerns about reporting on the Israel-Gaza conflict.

“I’m used to reading rants from all sides of the divide, and I expected another rant,” Grade says. “I read it, and I realised there was real substance to the criticism and the accusations contained in it.”

He wrote to BBC chairman Samir Shah seeking assurance that the board had read the report and was taking its findings seriously.

What particularly concerned him was the history of major BBC scandals being exposed from outside rather than uncovered by the corporation itself.

He points to the Martin Bashir interview with Princess Diana and the documentary Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone, which centred on a young boy who was revealed to be the son of a Hamas minister.

“We the public, the licence fee payers, would never have known about them unless outside journalists had exposed it,” he says.

“It wasn’t the BBC owning up to their mistakes. It had to be exposed by outside people, which is a shocking indictment of an organisation that calls on everybody else to be transparent and accountable and open.”

The longest section of Prescott’s report concerned the World Service’s Arabic-speaking network, BBC Arabic.

Prescott concluded that the service had attempted to “paint Israel as the aggressor” and that allegations against the Jewish state were “raced to air” without adequate editorial checks.

Grade says there had been “clear signals that there were problems in the Arab service” and criticises the BBC for being “very, very slow” to respond. “It was absolutely shocking how slow they were to acknowledge it,” he says.

Liberal leaders who protested Mahdawi’s deportation silent about his antisemitic, pro-terror posts

Both J Street and the ACLU — two groups that have previously defended Mahdawi — did not respond to requests for comment from JI on Thursday, asking if the organizations would update their statements of support in light of the newly unveiled posts. Both groups have previously stated Mahdawi is being unfairly targeted by the Trump administration over his advocacy for Gaza and Palestinian rights.

In 2025, when Mahdawi was arrested, J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami said the group was “outraged by the Trump Administration’s continued anti-democratic crackdown on Palestinian and pro-Palestinian students in the United States, and its cynical exploitation of genuine fears of antisemitism as its pretext for doing so.”

The group encouraged people to sign a petition supporting him in late July.

Beth Jacob Synagogue, a non-denominational congregation in Vermont that co-sponsored a fundraiser last month for Mahdawi’s legal aid, also did not respond to a request for comment from JI on Thursday.

Democratic members of Congress have also rallied in support of Mahdawi, particularly Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT). Balint, who is Jewish, led close to 70 House Democrats on a letter condemning Mahdawi’s arrest, calling it “dystopian” and motivated by “statements that the Trump Administration does not agree with.”

“It is Mr. Mahdawi’s right as a legal resident of the United States to argue for what he believes in,” the letter reads. “This most fundamental of American rights is crucial to the fabric of our country, and one that America was built upon. … We profoundly oppose unlawful abductions and expect a prompt response to our questions.”

Balint, Sanders and other Democrats also held a rally in April 2025 outside the State Department, defending Mahdawi and dismissing past allegations that he had told a gun shop owner that he had made comments about killing Jews and having built weapons for terrorist groups.

Balint, Sanders, Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT), who met with Mahdawi in detention, and other Democrats who have been vocally supportive of Mahdawi did not respond to requests for comment.

The Congressional Progressive Staff Association also hosted a happy hour with Mahdawi earlier this year.

“Mahdawi frequently speaks of justice. It is one of the central themes of the identity he presents to American audiences,” Collier and Feldman wrote in their report. “But justice requires something more fundamental: truth. After almost one hundred pages examining his words, his history and the stories upon which his public identity was built, that is where the problem with Mohsen Mahdawi ultimately lies.”

Although the report exposes dozens of Mahdawi’s most egregious comments, his extreme anti-Israel stance and support for terrorist groups has been public knowledge for years.

Mahdawi has been characterized by the Department of Homeland Security as a “ringleader” in anti-Israel protests at Columbia. It accused him of using “threatening rhetoric and intimidation” against Jewish students before graduating last year. He has not been charged with a crime.

In a “60 Minutes” interview in December 2023, Mahdawi said he could “empathize” with Hamas and its Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. “To empathize is to understand the root cause and to not look at any event or situation in a vacuum. This is for me that path moving forward,” he said.

Meanwhile, Mahdawi is scheduled to speak at a Columbia symposium next week titled The Forever War and the First Amendment. The university did not respond to a request for comment from JI.

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09/03 Links Pt1: The new libel to destroy Israel; Amb. Danon: Why are we determined to remove UNRWA from Jerusalem?; Howard Jacobson: How to Kill Jews Unantisemitically

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The new libel to destroy Israel

The overwhelming majority of attacks in these disputed areas are by Arabs on Jews—thousands of incidents of rock-throwing, stabbings, arson, car-rammings, criminal damage and murder.

In recent days, while politicians and journalists whipped up “settler violence” claims into a feeding frenzy, residents in the Judean hills reported that Arabs from a local village had infiltrated the grazing areas of an Israeli farm and scattered lethal poison hidden inside the herds’ drinking troughs.

Jewish shepherds who arrived to find their dying goats—videos of which were posted on social media—said they were attacked with stones by dozens of Arabs lying in wait nearby.

Jewish residents say farmers’ herds are regularly being stolen and turning up in the Arab casbah. When IDF troops go in to retrieve them, they are set upon by hundreds of Arabs with stones and fireworks.

Israelis’ extremist or revenge attacks on Arabs, their homes or their mosques are happening, and they are shocking and inexcusable—as are their nihilistic attacks on IDF soldiers. But this is a highly complex situation that’s being weaponized to delegitimize and destroy Israel itself.

Western media and politicians never acknowledge attacks on the “settlers,” who have been effectively dehumanized.

The prevailing unwisdom is that they shouldn’t be there in the first place because they are in “illegal occupation of Palestinian land.” So if they are attacked or even murdered, they’re asking for everything they get, and their plight doesn’t even deserve a mention.

Apart from the callous inhumanity of this attitude, it also displays gross ignorance of history and international law.

Unfortunately, a significant number of IDF members and police, who are on the left along with most mainstream Israeli media outlets, also hate the “settlers” and produce a distorted picture on which the venomous West greedily feeds. And Israeli politicians, including the prime minister and president, have merely condemned the Israeli “rioters” and refrained from presenting the other side of the story.

Those who assume that this means the “settler violence” canard is true would do well to remember how in 2000, the Israelis leapt to take responsibility for the apparent shooting and killing of a Palestinian Arab child, Mohammed al-Durah, when a demonstration in the Gaza Strip during the Second Intifada apparently came under IDF fire.

Subsequent evidence revealed that the boy had not been killed and that the whole demonstration was staged.

But the Israelis were less concerned with establishing the truth than with tamping everything down and making the issue go away. The result was a libel against Israel that incited untold numbers of killings, including the murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl.

The same politically craven thinking seems to be operating here. Israel is now under enormous pressure over “settler violence” from both the Trump administration and American Jews, for whom this has become the No. 1 issue because they, too, believe the distorted accounts.

In addition to finally dealing properly with the true miscreants, Israel should not only be responding with the real story behind these “settler attacks,” including the role of foreign provocateurs. It should be telling the world that its citizens have the legal right to live in these disputed territories. It should also be publicly listing every single Arab attack on these Jewish residents.

But as ever, the Israeli government thinks there’s no point trying to persuade the incorrigibly anti-Jewish West of the truth and justice of Israel’s cause.

The result is untold damage being done to the Jewish state, as yet again it fails to engage with the war being waged against it on the battleground of the mind.

Adam Louis-Klein: The New Genocide Libel

Israeli settlers, including those who belong to the specific movement to establish deep outposts in Judea and Samaria, noted that, since the reports were published on Shabbat, they themselves hardly had time to give their own account of the events. For a group of people categorically defined as evil, the expectation that we might hear their side of the story before anyone rushes to extreme conclusions feels like a bridge too far. No one else, certainly not the international media, including NBC, even thought it was relevant.

The Qusra incident took place within a broader narrative that had been building over the past month that settlers were “besieging” a particular house. It turns out the house belongs to the American citizen Loui Abu Rida, who, as he stated in a New York Times op-ed, demands a return to Biden’s sanctions policy. Foreign agitators, such as Andrey X—known for his constant filming of Israeli settlers and attempts to stoke online outrage, and who once described a settler peacefully walking by with his sheep as an incident of settler violence—and Jasper Nathaniel, who proposed to Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., that he enter a protected zone and harass settlers for publicity—have been present at the site. The residents at Tel Talpiot, a nearby settler outpost, claim the house was built recently and it is usually uninhabited. It functions instead as a base from which to launch attacks on Israelis.

That’s what seems to have happened in the Qusra incident. Video released by Channel 18 Israel, a Judea and Samaria-focused media platform founded in 2024 by former U.S. ambassador to Israel David Friedman and Sam Schubert, and shared by Saadia Hershkop, an American tour-guide who lives in the region, show a crowd of masked Arab men, accompanied by foreign journalists, launching the assault around noon of Shabbat day. When the IDF had some delays in arriving at the site, the settlers organized a security patrol and pushed the Arabs back to Rida’s house. The situation then turned into a skirmish in which both sides threw stones at the other. The Qusra attack was, according to Israelis at Tel Talpiot, designed to produce an international media spectacle of Israeli aggression.

If Arabs initiated the incident at Qusra—which no doubt will simply be classed indifferently as a case of “settler violence” —then questions ought to be asked about Jalud and the NBC attack.

The same narrative—of a home under continuous “siege,” by settlers, which, in the Qusra case, had been actually used as a base to launch attacks on Israelis—was also unfolding at the Toubasi household in Jalud. The NBC crew there was accompanied by Khaldoon Eid, a local Palestinian journalist, and Lawahez Jabari, who had collaborated on a documentary, Death Trap: No Safe Place in Gaza, alleging that Israel intentionally targeted journalists in Gaza (a claim that has been falling apart over the last several months, as the Committee to Protect Journalists has been forced to admit that more “journalists” were terrorists wearing the press vest). NBC instantly attributed the attacks to “settlers,” even though masked Arab men were present around the same time due to the confrontation in nearby Qusra.

Notably, the attack on the NBC crew was perpetrated by masked men driving in a car—on Shabbat, a detail that would perhaps suggest the men weren’t religious settlers, who would in any case seem to have little motivation to attack a camera crew aiming to depict them as villains.

After the initial attack at Qusra, the Israelis called in reinforcements from surrounding towns. While Israelis usually use pickup trucks or SUVs for security patrols, the IDF and police later found private passenger cars at Qusra. It is possible that some of the Israelis who were recruited by the Tel Talpiot settlers traveled around the same time to Jalud and committed the attack on the NBC crew. Nevertheless, the timing of the two events is strange, as is the decision of the media crew to be at the Jalud site at precisely that moment. Besides, the fact that the car had Israeli license plates hardly establishes the occupants as Jewish—unless the stereotype of the violent settler is all one is prepared to see.

Danny Danon: Why are we determined to remove UNRWA from Jerusalem?

We could’ve predicted the reactions to the enforcement mission at the former UNRWA compound in Jerusalem.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres issued a statement expressing his outrage over Israel’s actions. The UN spokesperson condemned the operation by Israeli security forces during his press briefing. A number of foreign ministers, most of them from Europe, voiced their disapproval.

It was never a question of if this would happen, but when. Recently, Israeli authorities completed their mission.

This move was not a matter of choice. It was a matter of necessity.

Exposing UNRWA
Over the past few years, we have exposed UNRWA for what it truly is. It has become increasingly clear that the UN agency established to assist Palestinian refugees functioned, in practice, as an active arm of the Hamas terrorist organization.

UNRWA employees participated directly in the October 7 massacre, including acts of murder and kidnapping. Throughout the war, Hamas terrorists operated from UNRWA schools, using the agency’s facilities to store weapons and conduct military activities.

Even deep into the conflict, UNRWA continued employing thousands of individuals who simultaneously held positions within Hamas’s military wings. They taught in classrooms that incited hatred against Israel by day and planned terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians by night.

Even before October 7, UNRWA had become the problem rather than the solution. Instead of helping resolve the Palestinian refugee issue, it perpetuated it and fueled the conflict. Numerous reports documented the incitement and hatred promoted in UNRWA schools, shaping another generation of Palestinians through anti-Israel indoctrination. But after October 7, the agency’s conduct crossed every possible line.

And, yes, Guterres did not condemn the terrorist acts carried out under the auspices of the organization he leads. Nor did we hear any unequivocal statements from the UN spokesperson during the daily press briefing about it.

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09/02 Links Pt2: ‘Jewish values’ are not a suicide pact that empowers antisemites; Hollywood’s paranoid hatred of Israel; Nothing Spontaneous About Anti-Israel Protests

From Ian:

Dara Horn tackles enduring antisemitic lies head-on with optimistic ‘Final Solution’

For centuries, argues author Dara Horn, people have tried to gain or maintain power by employing the lie that Jews are responsible for destroying whatever a society, government, or institution values most.

Tyrants, totalitarian regimes on both the right and left, and conformist societies in particular, have employed this lie, Horn says, because they are threatened by Jews — and by Judaism’s long history as an anti-tyrannical, countercultural tradition.

It is the central argument of Horn’s new book, “The Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” which was released September 1. The title is every bit as provocative as that of her 2021 bestseller, “People Love Dead Jews” — and its cover is sure to draw attention in bookstores and on social media.

With its direct reference to the Nazis’ nearly successful extermination of Europe’s Jews during World War II, this collection of related essays is, unsurprisingly, about antisemitism. But its subtitle, “A Love Letter to the Living,” hints from the outset that things are not all doom and gloom.

Writing after the bloody October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacres in Israel, Horn could hardly avoid addressing what she sees as a dangerous escalation of Jew-hatred in the United States and around the world. But she is also hopeful about the possibility of turning the situation around, especially through the right kind of education.

“I absolutely think that this is winnable,” Horn told The Times of Israel in a recent interview.

“The through line of antisemitism for thousands of years has been the denial of truth and the promotion of lies. These lies range in scope from conspiracy theories to Holocaust denial to the blood libel to the currently popular claims that Zionism is racism, that Jews are settler colonialists, and that Jewish civilization isn’t native to the land of Israel. These lies are all part of the foundational Big Lie: that antisemitism itself is a righteous act of resistance against evil, because Jews are collectively evil and have no right to exist. Today, the Big Lie is winning,” Horn wrote.

One only needs to look at various eras throughout history to grasp how consistent the Big Lie has been.

“It’s in every era, every social circle. The only thing that varies is what you value the most. Say you’re a religious Christian, then you are lied to that Jews are destroying Christianity, or that they killed Christ. Say you’re a human rights activist, then Israel’s the world’s worst violator of human rights, and it doesn’t matter that you’re being told this by the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Horn said.

This new book resulted from countless people reaching out to Horn after reading “People Love Dead Jews,” attending her lectures, or hearing her on a podcast. They emailed and messaged her, and they approached her at speaking engagements.

Jonahan Tobin: ‘Jewish values’ are not a suicide pact that empowers antisemites

Taking it one step further, Nessel had the chutzpah to invoke the lessons of Purim and the heroism of Queen Esther to back up her assertion that Jews must sacrifice their security to advance the Democratic Party.

“It is perhaps up to us now to follow in her path,” she said, “and sacrifice the comfort, safety and security and even the very future of our own people in exchange for the opportunity to save the rest of humanity.”

In point of fact, in a demonstration of her utter ignorance of Judaism and Jewish tradition, Esther did nothing of the kind. Her goal wasn’t the abstract saving of humanity. She risked her own life to save the Jewish people in the Persian Empire, who were under an immediate threat of genocide from the henchman Haman. What Nessel wants Jews to do is the opposite of Esther’s successful effort to rescue Jewish existence.

No matter what one thinks about Trump, global warming, illegal immigration or the right of biological males to play sports against females, the idea that Jews should, as Nessel urges, sacrifice not just their interests but their collective existence for these notions isn’t, contrary to her vile claim, an expression of “Jewish values.” It’s insane and deeply immoral.

If there is any lesson to be learned from Jewish history, it is that those who seek the destruction of the Jews—as those in the alliance of Marxists and Islamists El-Sayed represents wish to do—aren’t doing so to right a wrong or as a result of alleged Jewish misbehavior. It’s a function of their lust for power and a desire to use the scapegoating of Jews to achieve it. And when societies allow Jews to be targeted in this manner, the objective isn’t a better world but a far worse one, in which other groups, sooner or later, will meet a similar fate.

Let’s be clear: Jews have no obligation to sacrifice themselves for liberal myths about any issue. Real Jewish values are not a suicide pact whose purpose is to empower antisemites.

Anyone who urges them to do so isn’t advancing a higher cause. Rather, those individuals are aiding and abetting the oldest hatred in the world and taking the side of genocidal Islamists against a democratic Jewish state. To support El-Sayed because you share his intolerance and hatred for the rights of the Jewish people is awful. But to do so merely because you have drunk the partisan Kool-Aid and think the Democratic Party is the “ultimate good” and the Republicans are the “ultimate bad” is indefensible.

In staking her political career on this proposition, it’s doubtful that Nessel can save herself from the same treatment accorded other liberal Jewish Democrats rejected by a party that is drunk on woke ideology. But she has ensured one thing: She will always be remembered for betraying her own people.

Pro-Israel Dem. Haley Stevens says anti-Zionism has become a hate movement in America -interview

Just weeks after a grueling primary battle and a recent engagement, Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) is not a woman who sounds defeated.

Although she recently lost her Democratic primary race in Michigan, Stevens arrived in Israel with a message that was as sharp as it was unequivocal: The movement to delegitimize Israel is not simply a policy debate – it is an infection.

“I believe that anti-Zionism is a hate movement that has taken over in America and throughout parts of the West,” Stevens said in an interview with The Jerusalem Post.

For her, the rhetoric used by the far Left of her party has moved far beyond legitimate criticism of Israeli government policy.

“I think that Israel is more than just a punching bag for some of the challenges that America is facing,” she said, pointing to what she sees as a growing trend in which domestic American frustrations are projected onto the Middle East’s only democracy.

“There is this bizarre obsession that has reached pitch level with calling out one country, one tiny country in the Middle East,” she said, her voice rising with a mix of frustration and disbelief.

Stevens, who describes herself as a “traditional and classical liberal Democrat,” has long been a supporter of the US-Israel relationship.

Haley Stevens: I was demonized by Democrats because I supported Israel
But in the current political climate, that support has come with a heavy personal and professional price.

“I was demonized for that,” Stevens recalled, reflecting on her recent years in office. “I was booed off my convention stage. I was chased out of a labor event in Detroit.”

The hostility was not limited to political rallies.

Stevens described an environment in which “heightened bullying” became the norm.

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09/02 Links Pt1: Mohsen Mahdawi: A Timeline of Support for Terrorism; Durban’s 25-Year Legacy of Antisemitism; Giving voice to the stories from Bondi; Richard Flanagan’s dangerous fiction about Australian Jews

From Ian:

Jake Wallis Simons: Miliband is proving even more dangerous as our Foreign Secretary

Quite ridiculously, a British trade embargo would be little more than a performative gesture. It would harm ourselves far more than the dastardly Israelis, with their booming economy, world-class tech, superlative security and intelligence services, military prowess and pesky determination to survive.

Bilateral trade stood at £5.9bn last year, with Britain selling Israel £3.5bn of goods and services and buying £2.4bn in return. Goodbye to all those profits, then.

Twenty-two Israeli-linked companies are listed in London with a combined market capitalisation of $11.5bn; many more have set up or expanded their operations in Britain over the last two years, promising British jobs. Goodbye to all that, as well.

What about the capsule camera with which NHS England spares tens of thousands of patients the indignity of a colonoscopy? After all, it was dreamed up by an Israeli missile engineer, who repurposed the imaging technology from a guided warhead. Goodbye to that, too, I guess. Certainly, it will be goodbye to any similar healthcare tech innovations in the future.

Then there’s the Challenger 3 tanks, which will enter service next year. Those hulks are supposed to be protected by Trophy, the advanced Israeli defence system that shoots down incoming anti-tank munitions mid-flight. Will our servicemen have to make do without?

And the intelligence sharing? Countless terror attacks on Britons have been thwarted thanks to tip-offs from the Israelis. Yossi Cohen, the former Mossad chief, has revealed that an MI5 director-general once told him that Israeli spies deserved “an Oscar” for saving “many, many lives on British soil”. But it’s worth losing that for the virtue signalling, amirite?

To make matters even more absurd, the embargo will likely harm Palestinian workers most. Tens of thousands of them work in Israeli businesses, receiving far more pay than they would at home.

For what? Sure, London is appalled by the Jewish extremists on the West Bank. But out of about 530,000 “settlers”, only a few hundred have been involved in nationalist crime, and a tiny number are hardcore criminals.

This madness it is emblematic of a new and myopic British hostility towards our ally – erstwhile ally? – which, for all its flaws, is the only Western-friendly advanced democracy in the region. (It even offers more political freedom to its Muslim citizens than any other Middle Eastern country, for goodness’ sake.)

It hardly comes as a surprise that Miliband is the one wielding the knife. In 2014, as Labour leader, he responded to Operation Protective Edge in Gaza – launched in response to the kidnapping and murder of Israeli teenagers by Hamas, followed by intense jihadi rocket fire – by whipping his MPs to back unilateral Palestinian statehood recognition.

Today, Britain has already extended that recognition, regardless of the fact that the supposed state of Palestine has no defined borders, pays reward money out of public funds to those convicted of terrorism, uses textbooks rife with anti-Semitism, and is half-controlled by jihadis.

It’s the same old shameful story from the Left: everything Israel does to defend itself is condemned. All the Israelis are permitted to do is die. Let’s dismantle capitalism. Let’s win back the Muslim vote from the Greens. Let’s tighten our grip on power.

And if Britain ends up weaker – did you know that at least one in eight packs of medication in Britain is produced by the Israeli pharma company Teva, which employs 1,500 people here? – then that is a small sacrifice to be made for the cause.

Israel again warns of retaliation if UK imposes sanctions over West Bank settlements

Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has again warned his country will retaliate if the UK imposes sanctions against it over the potential expansion of settlements in the West Bank. Jewish News reported yesterday that, addressing Parliament for the first time as foreign secretary, Ed Miliband said he would introduce a “comprehensive reset” of policy on Israel “in the coming weeks”.

He said the government would examine how to stop UK companies “financing, constructing or advertising new settlements” in the occupied West Bank.

Responding, Gideon Sa’ar said: “If Britain acts against Israel, Israel will act against Britain.”

“If they act, I think they will be making a big mistake,” he said.

Asked how concerned he is about the prospect of sanctions, Sa’ar claimed Israel will respond and charged that any British measures would be politically motivated.

“There is a government there that is systematically acting against Israel. It has already harmed defence exports to us and imposed sanctions on ministers.

“What guides it is its domestic politics, and at the end of the month the Labour Party conference is convening,” he said.

Pressed on how Israel would respond, Sa’ar declined to elaborate, saying only: “There are tools. I’m saying this clearly and unequivocally. If they act, I think they will be making a major mistake. It will work the opposite way from how they may be dreaming it will work.”

Pressed further, he said: “Why hint at it? What I’ve said is enough. We are preparing. If they make a mistake, there will be a response.”

Who Pays the Price for the UK’s Potential Settlement Trade Ban?

Beyond the challenges of singling out goods from the West Bank for boycott, it is impossible to ignore who would be negatively impacted by such a trade ban. Prior to October 7, 2023, roughly 165,000 Palestinians worked in Israel and the West Bank. While that number has decreased in the years following, a trade ban would have significant potential negative ramifications on Palestinian workers.

This isn’t purely theoretical. When, in 2014, SodaStream was boycotted for the location of its manufacturing plant in the community of Ma’ale Adumim in the West Bank, the vast majority of those impacted were Palestinian employees. After the production plant was moved to the Negev desert following international pressure, 500 Palestinian workers lost their jobs – jobs which provide higher wages than average in the West Bank alongside employment benefits.

But the potential consequences do not end within the borders of Israel. A settlement trade ban could also have implications for British Jews, particularly if restrictions on settlement goods contribute to a broader environment in which Israeli products, businesses or institutions become increasingly subject to boycotts.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council warned that such a boycott could further damage UK-Israel relations and risk creating an even more hostile environment towards British Jews.

If a ban on trade in Israeli settlements goes through, the consequences will undoubtedly be far-reaching. From impacting the very people that the ban is supposedly meant to help, to hurting Jews outside of Israel, the ban would prove to do more harm than good.

These results are not difficult to foresee, making the decision to pursue it driven by policies of activism and double standards. A policy this disingenuous doesn’t advance peace, but it does advance the warped anti-Israel hatred that has too frequently presented itself as genuine concern for Palestinian rights.

Badenoch: Labour is ‘singling out Israel’ with West Bank trade sanctions

Kemi Badenoch has accused Labour of “singling out Israel for their own internal political reasons” ahead of the government’s expected announcement of tough new sanctions on West Bank settlement trade.

Asked by Jewish News for the Tory leader’s view on Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband’s expected move to target settlement trade, Badenoch’s spokesperson said she believes “there are a lot of countries doing things that this country would feel is not entirely alright.”

Reflecting Badenoch’s stance on UK sanctions, the spokesperson added: “It is interesting that the Labour government always feels the need to single out Israel. And I would suggest that’s for their own internal political reasons.”

On Wednesday, Downing Street said it would not respond to “speculation” regarding Israel’s threat to retaliate against any UK sanctions.

A spokesperson for Andy Burnham told Jewish News: “We have been consistently clear that illegal settlements threaten the viability of a Palestinian state and undermine security for both Israelis and Palestinians.

“We want to see an end to the appalling suffering in Gaza and settler violence in the West Bank, and a resumption of the peace process to deliver a two-state solution.”

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09/01 Links Pt2: Democrats are selling their souls by accepting Abdul El-Sayed; El-Sayed Campaign Seeks 'Jewish Liaison' for Damage Control; El-Sayed scrubbed old tweet trashing America on 9/11

From Ian:

NYPost Editorial: Democrats are selling their souls by accepting Abdul El-Sayed

Mainstream Democrats are failing the Abdul El-Sayed test — badly.

For starters, the establishment seems to be buying the creepy Michigan Senate candidate’s pseudo-apology for his obscene justification back in March for a crazed Islamist’s attempt to slaughter children at a suburban Detroit Jewish day school.

“Hurt people hurt people,” El-Sayed smugly told Michigan Jews twice in his video statement at the time, explaining that the perp, Ayman Ghazali, was upset because his Hezbollah-commander brother had been killed in an Israeli airstrike on a weapons depot.

On Sunday, El-Sayed expressed some regret for those words, admitting that right after the attack was “the wrong time” to be “contextualizing” the perp’s motives.

That is: He still believes his words were correct; the testy Jews just weren’t ready to hear it.

El-Sayed also refuses to disavow his erstwhile BFF and campaign surrogate Hasan Piker, despite his record of toxic anti-Americanism and overt Jew-hatred; the candidate merely writes off the hater as just a “streamer from California” . . . though El-Sayed regularly had Piker stump for him during the primary campaign.

Top national Democrats like Sen. Chuck Schumer sit by as El-Sayed worms out of his ugly record; at least one Michigan Democrat is far worse.

State Attorney General Dana Nessel — a Jewish Dem who says she’s won’t attend the state convention because of nonstop antisemitic harassment — just urged Michigan’s 100,000 Jewish voters to vote for El-Sayed despite his hate . . . to save the world.

Really: “We have a moral imperative,” Nessel insists, “to place the needs of the world above even our own self-interest and, yes, even our own survival.”

Sorry: Empowering a blatant antisemite is the opposite of serving “the needs of the world”; such unhinged hate is a warning sign of even deeper depravity.

Eight Democrats join Republicans in resolution condemning socialism, DSA

The House voted 220-192 on Tuesday to adopt a Republican-led resolution condemning socialism and the Democratic Socialists of America. The vote fell largely along party lines after GOP leaders attached language to the resolution backing President Donald Trump’s priority voting rights legislation.

Introduced by Rep. Jeff Crank (R-CO), the resolution “condemns and denounces socialism in all its forms, including the Democratic Socialists of America, and opposes the implementation of socialist policies in the United States.”

However, the resolution also explicitly “calls for the enactment” of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act — a priority for the president that would mandate proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.

Seeking a clean vote denouncing the DSA without endorsing the election bill, a group of moderate Democrats — including Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), Tom Suozzi (D-NY) and Hillary Scholten (D-MI) — offered an amendment on Monday to strip out the SAVE Act language while preserving the anti-socialism provisions. However, the House Rules Committee declined to take up the amendment, forcing Democrats to vote on the combined GOP package.

Most Democrats opposed the measure due to the SAVE Act rider, though eight moderate lawmakers broke ranks to vote with Republicans in favor: Reps. Don Davis (D-NC), Henry Cuellar (D-TX), Kathy Castor (D-FL), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA), Jared Golden (D-ME), Darren Soto (D-FL), Gabe Vasquez (D-NM) and Vicente Gonzalez (D-TX).

In addition, Reps. Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA) and Maggie Goodlander (D-NH) voted present.

Jew hate is as fashionable as ever — look no further than Anna Wintour’s Met Gala disaster

The collapse of the Met Gala’s outrageous plan to honor antisemitic fashion designer John Galliano marks an important victory in a major battle. But there is no sign that triumph is at hand in the larger war against the explosion of Jew hatred in America and around the world.

On the contrary, the outbreaks are numerous and growing in boldness.

One of the lessons of the Galliano affair is that many of the haters feel safe enough these days to come out of the closet and publicly express their loathing.

Wherever you look, from politics to the media to the United Nations and now the fashion world, the scourge is shockingly bold in its emergence.

A common trait among many of the guilty is the use of Israel as a fig leaf for their sickness. A sure-fire sign is the habit of judging the lone Jewish state by a set of double standards never applied to other nations.

Oppressive regimes are given seats on UN human rights panels, where they are encouraged to demonize Israel without fear they will be called to account for their misdeeds.

And when Israel is attacked by Muslim neighbors that vow to destroy it, the victim is routinely accused of war crimes for daring to defend itself and take the war to the attackers’ turf.

As the Hamas invasion of Oct. 7, 2023, demonstrated, the Holocaust would be repeated if Israel were foolish enough to permanently lower its guard.

Wherever the place and the particulars, the battlefield is encircled by enablers and cheerleaders, giving rise to dark suspicions about their motivations.

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09/01 Links Pt1: The Altalena’s enduring lesson: Israel must choose unity over division; IDF capture Hamas's Head of Internal Security; Swim legend Dawn Fraser speaks out on antisemitism royal commission

From Ian:

The Altalena’s enduring lesson: Israel must choose unity over division

In a week that shook the nation, the rediscovery of the Altalena made headlines across Israel.

Seventy-eight years ago, as the Altalena went up in flames on the Tel Aviv beachfront, the Jewish people stood on the precipice of civil war. In today’s divided times, with another election on the horizon, the echoes of the Altalena serve as a stark reminder of the perils of internal strife and the urgent need for unity.

The Altalena affair marked a tumultuous chapter in the birth of the new nation of Israel. In the early days of the War of Independence, the fledgling state mourned the loss of 1,176 soldiers, while the invading Arab armies also suffered heavy casualties. The UN-brokered truce provided a crucial respite for both sides to regroup and strategize.

On June 20, 1948, amidst the ceasefire, the Altalena, chartered by Menachem Begin’s Irgun, arrived off the shores of Israel, laden with immigrants and arms. The conflicting accounts of the ship’s destruction – Begin’s claim of delivering arms to his fighters and David Ben-Gurion’s accusation of a coup attempt – underscored the deep divisions within the Jewish community.

The tense standoff at Kfar Vitkin escalated into violence, leading to casualties on both sides. As the Altalena made its way to Tel Aviv, the clash of ideologies and loyalties reached a boiling point. Ben-Gurion’s firm stance on maintaining government sovereignty and order set the stage for a tragic confrontation on the Tel Aviv beach.

The intense gunfire and mutual animosity that erupted on the beach reflected the deep-seated divisions and animosities that threatened to tear the young nation apart. The aftermath of the Altalena’s destruction left a scar on the collective memory of Israel, a wound that refused to heal.

JPost Editorial: From critic to ally, Israel and Greece grow closer amid regional shifts

Greece seeks Israeli protection amid growing European divisions
The other is that here is a frontline European power - a vital NATO ally on Europe’s southeastern flank and a key member of the EU - turning to Israel for its defense. The same Israel that other European countries, including Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands, and Belgium - and, come the end of the month, Britain - are spurning and seeking to boycott.

Those boycotts are ostensibly aimed “only” at products from east Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and the Golan Heights. But the fear is that, because of the difficulty in determining exactly where every Israeli product or component originates, they will inevitably open the door to wider boycotts of Israel itself.

The contrast could hardly be sharper.

One part of Europe is looking to Israel for protection; another wants to boycott it. Ireland would not let its new government jet be fitted with an Israeli-made system designed to help it land in fog. Greece is entrusting the protection of its population and critical infrastructure to Israeli-made systems.

But the sale does more than highlight the countervailing trends in Europe, where political hostility toward Israel and strategic dependence on it are moving in opposite directions. It also shines a spotlight on Israel’s remarkable defense prowess.

Greece turns to Israel’s multilayered defense system
Greece is interested in the same type of multilayered system that protects Israel because it has seen how effective that system has been over the last three years in defending the country against missiles, rockets, and drones launched from Iran, Lebanon, Yemen, Gaza, and elsewhere. Greece watched and now wants that same level of protection for itself.

Under the agreement, dubbed Achilles Shield, Israel will provide Greece with an integrated national air-defense network. It will incorporate David’s Sling to intercept ballistic missiles and heavy rockets; SPYDER and BARAK MX systems to defend strategic sites against threats ranging from drones to cruise missiles; sophisticated MMR radars; Drone Dome counter-drone systems; and a national command-and-control network to tie everything together.

This is not merely an arms sale. It is the export of an entire defensive architecture - developed under fire, tested in war, and refined through repeated attacks by enemies using a wide variety of weapons.

Other European countries, feeling increasingly threatened by the cold winds blowing from Russia and the growing shadow of Iranian missile tech, are likely to follow suit. Governments want what works, especially when the lives of their civilians are at stake. Just ask Finland, which quietly extended its defense cooperation framework with Israel for a decade, guaranteeing the smooth, long-term deployment of its newly acquired David’s Sling system despite fierce domestic opposition.

Austrian gov’t begins work on constitutional ban of ‘Political Islam'

Austria’s government is beginning to work on a proposal to constitutionally ban “political Islam,” after Chancellor Christian Stocker called for the legislation and Integration and Europe Minister Claudia Bauer said she would draw up a proposal for the coalition partners.

ORF first reported on August 30 that Bauer is preparing the proposal and intends to send an outline to SPÖ and NEOS. This was then confirmed by Bauer on social media.

Stocker first raised the possible legislation in an interview with Heute on August 28. The chancellor expressed his intention to implement a constitutional law on political Islam, which he called “incompatible with democracy and Western values.”

In a statement, Stocker said, “I do not want our children and grandchildren to grow up in an Islamic state.”

Stocker argued that everyone in Austria is free to believe whatever they want and to have whatever faith they choose, “But where believers and non-believers are treated differently, where men and women do not have equal rights, and where our institutions, authorities, and courts are not respected, that freedom ends.”

Stoker: “It cannot be allowed to happen...that a preacher dictates things rather than Parliament”

He then claimed that there is a relative majority of Muslim students in Viennese schools, but “The crucial question is: Will these students become democrats who accept and abide by our legal system and live alongside our society? Or will they become Islamists and be politically influenced?”

Here, Stocker cited a recent figure that pupils with an Islamic religious affiliation represented 41.2% in Vienna’s primary and middle schools, constituting a relative majority.

“It cannot be allowed to happen in this country that a preacher dictates things rather than Parliament,” Stocker added. “It must not be the case that morality police in schools determine what girls should wear or how they should behave. Nor can we ignore the foundations of an ‘honor killing’ while punishing only the act itself. That is why I am in favor of regulating this at the constitutional level as well.”

Bauer reposted the statement, adding, “We will fight political Islam with all means available.”

This follows an earlier proposal by the Freedom Party (FPÖ) in March 2026. The proposal would prohibit activity in support of political Islam or its objectives, dissolve mosques and organizations deemed part of political Islam, confiscate their assets, and potentially revoke Austrian citizenship from members/supporters.

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08/31 Links Pt2: RNC chair Dem majority a: ‘Direct threat to the Jewish community’; Hollywood celebrities are backing a terrorist murderer; Michigan AG tells Jewish Dems to put ‘needs of world’ ahead of ‘our own survival’

From Ian:

Nitsana Darshan-Leitner: Hollywood celebrities are backing a terrorist murderer — read the facts

These were not fictional villains in a screen-adapted comic book tale — they were real terrorists with real victims.

And one of the victims was an American citizen.

That is the problem with the Marvel campaign. These are limousine liberals at their most comfortable: wealthy, privileged and insulated from the consequences of the causes they champion.

They have spent their careers playing superheroes, but appear to know remarkably little about the history they are now trying to rewrite. They sit comfortably in their movie studio trailers and pronounce moral judgments on a bitter conflict in which they have no personal stake and, judging by this campaign, very little understanding.

They do not have to stand before the widows — the parents and orphans of the five people whose murders resulted in Barghouti’s convictions — and explain why their loved ones’ killer should be released. They simply sign a petition.

And now they have something bigger to answer for, because a candidacy is not a pardon; it’s a promotion.

Barghouti drew the most votes in Fatah’s central committee elections in May.

Everyone involved can do the arithmetic: The plan is to run him from a prison cell, win, and dare the world to say a democratically elected murderer should remain incarcerated.

What do you think? Be the first to comment.

But before the Marvel justice league starts drafting its victory statement, they should do something remarkably simple: Read the documents.

Acknowledge the five people he was convicted of murdering.

Then explain to their millions of followers why those victims should be written out of the story while Barghouti becomes its hero.

Hollywood can manufacture superheroes. It cannot manufacture innocence — nor can any election.

And a man convicted of murdering five innocents cannot be transformed into a statesman because the red-carpet revolutionaries have decided to make him one.

Israel, the DEI exception to 'everyone': How the music industry lost its moral compass

Peace-building musical collabs such as Jonny Greenwood and Dudu Tassa's Arabic show, Jarak Qaribak (“Your Neighborhood is Your Friend”), were canceled as a result of the BDS Movement. The project involved musicians from Syria, Lebanon, Kuwait, and Iraq - the kind of cross-collabs generally praised by the arts & culture.

While peace-building performances become unacceptable, shouting hate speech and antisemitic libels through a mic when accepting an award on stage becomes celebrated as an act of cool resistance; what is being contributed to these foundational DEI values of the music industry? Because where does political accountability end and collective punishment of a people as a whole begin?

By 2025, over 400 musicians had joined a geo-block boycott to make their music unavailable in Israel, calling their campaign ‘No Music for Genocide’. The name itself invites an uncomfortable question. If No Music for Genocide is really a principle rather than a geographical preference, where were the comparable mass geo-blocking campaigns and cultural boycotts as Sudan or Iran descended into mass atrocity?

Challenging their objective, I posted a few very politically correct words on my LinkedIn, the point of which was ‘Boycotting musicians and fans in Israel will not free Palestine’.

Exclusion, hate, and polarization didn’t really seem like the way to go for me as a music executive who believed in dialogue and listening to each other.

I’d lead my own panel for five years at Amsterdam Dance Event on the subject of DEI, so I believed in ‘talking about the hard stuff’. Then followed the wave of hate, antisemitic libels, and threats from industry professionals employed by major labels, publicly traded tech companies, and places of work with codes of conduct specifically prohibiting them from publicly attacking ‘fellow colleagues’.

'I believed... safety, dignity, inclusion applied to everyone'
The proof remained, indeed, in the pudding.

I believed that the principles we spent years building - safety, dignity, and inclusion - applied to everyone.

Radical inclusion, it seemed, had added an exception: it did not apply to people born in a particular country, or to Jews and Israelis. A counterculture that once challenged the boundaries of society was now policing the ideological boundaries of its own. Glorifying terror under the banner of DEI was dubbed ‘resistance’.

DEI's own conviction of righteousness and one-sidedness expanded rapidly, well organized, and well funded. By then, the contradiction became impossible to ignore.

And perhaps Damon Albarn provides the simplest counterexample. Albarn has hardly been silent about Palestinian suffering or his criticism of Israel. Yet after Bob Vylan’s Glastonbury performance, he called the episode a ‘spectacular misfire’ and spoke instead about wanting to work with musicians in both Palestine and Israel.

It really should not be revolutionary to suggest that one can advocate for Palestinians without demanding the cultural exclusion of Israelis. Isn’t this exactly what music was supposed to be for?

What started as an industry-wide commitment to safety had developed into ideological gatekeeping: diversity but under political uniformity. Inclusion, except when the artist was born in Israel.

Freedom of expression, unless the expression comes from Boy George or another ‘wrong person’. And #MeToo, except if you were a girl dancing at 6:29 a.m. at the Nova festival.

To quote a house classic: If music is the answer, the answer cannot be less cultural contact. It has to be more. Because when we try to make music morally pure, we destroy precisely the thing that made it morally valuable: its ability to bring together people who would otherwise never meet.

The Loophole in "Death, Death to the IDF"

That is the element a stadium field and a cordoned riverside protest both managed to avoid, while a shared public highway outside a gig was not. Weeks after disclosing the Kentish Town charge, the Met announced that organisers would, for the first time, be made responsible for speakers’ hate speech at future protests, and that it was reviewing with the CPS “language… previously advised [as not meeting] the threshold”. An acknowledgment, in effect, of the gap it kept running into.

None of this requires bad faith on the Met’s part, or a plan on Robinson-Foster’s. Everything is explainable by a comparison of reach, not culpability. Robinson-Foster is documented saying the words on number occasions, including at Alexandra Palace, Glastonbury, Amsterdam, and the Embankment. Each performed or broadcast to a crowd in the thousands, one to a live, nationally watched BBC stream; the phrase has since acquired its own Wikipedia entry. His own public response to the Glastonbury backlash was to mock “crying” critics rather than dispute what the words meant.

The Kentish Town defendant is alleged to have repeated the same six words, that single night, a number of times, on a small loudhailer. He reached, cumulatively, a demonstration of dozens on one residential street. But the Kentish Town defendant had clearly defined victims, which Robison-Foster did not..

If the harm the law exists to address is the spread of a chant calling for the deaths of people who are, for most Israelis, their children or themselves, it is not obvious that the more repetitive but contained allegation did more of that harm than the far less repeated but internationally amplified fact. That the defendant with the smaller reach is the one facing trial, while the man whose performances actually spread the phrase abroad has been cleared twice and gained rather than lost from it, looks less like a corrupt system than a badly drawn one.

The Public Order Act is highlighted as measuring proximity, not scale: it catches a chant however few times it was said, provided somebody was standing close enough to be frightened by it, and lets the same words through however many times repeated, provided the crowd chanting back is large enough, sympathetic enough, or simply on the right side of a river.

The gap between impact and proximity leaves one wondering if the real problem is a weakness in the law. Chanting for the death of anyone is distinctly uncivilised, an invasive cultural meme that should be resisted rather than absorbed. If not, whose death shall be heralded next, leaving one wondering, when shall it be my own fair turn.

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08/31 Links Pt1: Durban’s legacy: How NGOs helped mainstream anti-Israel hatred; Protesters mark 2 years since recovery of 6 slain Gaza hostages; Egypt's Dangerous Palestinian 'Unity' Project to Legitimize Terrorists

From Ian:

Brett McGurk: No, Iran is not winning: In Act IV of the war, it’s losing its leverage in Hormuz

Tehran may seek to fight its way out of this noose. Its strategy through the first three acts was clear: threaten commerce in the Strait, raise energy prices globally and gasoline prices in the US, increase global economic pressure and ultimately force Trump to back down, particularly with midterm elections approaching.

Iran has also targeted the energy infrastructure of the Gulf states and could do so again. Its proxy force in Yemen, the Houthis, have threatened to shut down commerce through the Red Sea with Iranian missiles and drones.

All that would mean resorting to the same tactics from the early acts of the war. Strategically, it has not worked for Iran. The Gulf states are not happy with the war, but most do not support giving in to Iran’s extortionist demands in the Strait. Iran’s attempts to close the Strait with drones and mines are also now — for the first time — failing.

So, I would not discount the risk of an Iranian escalation as the economic pressure builds. But it may not be enough at this stage to reduce that pressure. Trump appears far more committed than Iranian leaders apparently presumed.

Breaking point
Iranian leaders and many Western analysts project immunity to pressure. Iran will never surrender its nuclear program or the Strait of Hormuz. Or its terrorist proxies around the region.

That’s something we all must accept as a fact of life in the Middle East, according to Tehran.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi argued last week that the blockade and sanctions pressure are “bound to fail” just as all other campaigns, he said, had failed to change Iranian policy.

I used to hear the same thing from experts about ISIS, when I was leading the campaign to defeat the group. And Hamas, when negotiating to free the hostages held in Gaza.

In fact, everyone has a breaking point. Iran thought it had found Trump’s. Trump may yet find theirs. It’s too early to call.

Not the last act
This contest in some form may last through the end of Trump’s presidency and beyond. It’s been ongoing for nearly five decades.

The earlier acts in this war were mired from the US side by shifting and ill-defined objectives, widely careening positions, and inconsistent statements.

But Act Four seems different. The US military has a clear objective as outlined this week by the commander of CENTCOM, Admiral Brad Cooper. It is enforcing the blockade on Iran and facilitating the movement of commercial traffic.

The objective for the US should be similarly well-defined. Iran must abandon claims on the Strait and give up the nuclear enrichment program. Until then, this will be the new status quo.

And that status quo — perhaps for the first time since the war began — now favors Washington, not Tehran.

No Exit, No Trap By Abe Greenwald

Via Commentary Newsletter, sign up here.
When the regime decided to hold up shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, however, the “trap” claim took off. Trump, went the argument, could neither free the strait nor leave it in Iran’s grip. He had been checkmated.

It was around this time that I began to worry, as it became clear that the administration had not gamed out this possibility before the war. And Trump had made it well known that he despised the idea of deploying American ground forces. Even with the strait threatened by Iran, the U.S. could prevail so long as the commander in chief chose to take the steps that were needed to do so.

Soon, instead, Trump decided on negotiations to end the fighting. And that’s when he really did stumble into a trap—because he’d decided that he wanted out. Trump wanted to escape the consequences of the aborted war and his responsibility to win it—and he let the Iranians know.

That was all it took. Through months of off-and-on talks, Iranian negotiators would keep the U.S. trapped by refusing to grant any American conditions that might let Trump walk away from what had become a terrible mess. So long as the U.S. was looking for an exit, we’d remain paralyzed.

If the tide now seems to be turning in the U.S.’s favor, it’s because we started looking for solutions. Currently, the U.S. naval blockade of Iran is in effect to freeze the regime’s maritime and energy exports. At the same time, we’re now only one week into Operation Economic Outcast, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s campaign to “sever every economic lifeline” that the regime has—and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has admitted that it’s already working.

The start-and-stop war has been going on for six months, and the U.S. has stumbled in a number of unforeseen ways. It still can. But there’s one critical mistake that Trump should now know to avoid: prioritizing an American exit over an American victory. In order for the U.S. to prevail, we must keep up the current economic war on the regime. This means enduring the inevitable rise in oil prices and the concerted media campaign focusing on the increased hardships imposed on ordinary Iranians. Both have already begun, but neither of these are traps unless Donald Trump decides they are.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Egypt's Dangerous Palestinian 'Unity' Project to Legitimize Terrorists

The real question, however, is: Unity with whom, and against whom?

Why is Hamas being treated as a legitimate political organization rather than a terrorist group that needs to be disarmed, dismantled, and removed from power?

Egypt, a key ally of the United States, should be asking these questions. Instead, Cairo appears to be doing exactly the opposite.

The Trump Administration and the Board of Peace might make clear to Cairo that Hamas cannot be both a terrorist organization that needs to surrender its weapons and a political partner invited to negotiate the future of the Palestinians. One approach eliminates Hamas. The other rehabilitates it.

Even more alarming are reports of a possible electoral alliance involving former Fatah leader Mohammed Dahlan's Democratic Reform Current, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other factions such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – all terrorist groups that do not recognize Israel's right to exist.

What possible role should these terrorist organizations have in Palestinian elections or a future Palestinian government?

If Egypt welcomes the designation of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, why is it simultaneously trying to give Hamas – which emerged from the same organization – renewed political legitimacy?

The Trump Administration would do itself a great service to tell Cairo that Palestinian reconciliation cannot include organizations that retain weapons, embrace terrorism, and seek the destruction of Israel. There is no need to unify the Palestinian ranks around Hamas. There is a need immediately to remove Hamas from those ranks.

Egypt should be using its considerable influence not to persuade Fatah to reconcile with Hamas, but to pressure Hamas and other terrorist groups to surrender their weapons and permanently leave the Palestinian political arena. A politically rehabilitated Hamas, still armed and still committed to its Islamist ideology, will only strengthen the very ideological current that the Egyptian government has spent more than a decade trying to suppress.

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08/30 Links: The Resurgence of Antisemitism Is a Warning to Every Democracy; The world’s double standard toward Israel is prejudice dressed as principle

From Ian:

The Resurgence of Antisemitism Is a Warning to Every Democracy

One of the most dangerous mistakes Western democracies are making today is to treat antisemitism as a problem that concerns only Jews. It does not. Antisemitism is a symptom of a deeper civic and moral disorder. The resurgence of antisemitism across Europe and North America should be understood as an early warning signal for every democracy.

Today, public debate increasingly rewards emotional certainty over intellectual honesty. In such an environment, antisemitism flourishes wherever complexity is replaced by slogans, wherever individual responsibility gives way to victimhood, and wherever democratic societies lose confidence in the universal principles that once sustained them.

The events of October 7, 2023, revealed how quickly parts of public discourse became unable, or unwilling, to distinguish between the deliberate murder of civilians and the political narratives constructed to justify it. Many public institutions appeared unable to make a basic moral distinction, excusing the deliberate murder of civilians.

Antisemitism has historically provided societies with a ready-made explanation for complexity. It transforms uncertainty into certainty by offering a familiar culprit. The responsibility of democracies is to preserve the moral distinction between criticism and dehumanization.

Criticism examines decisions. Dehumanization questions the legitimacy of an entire people and denies a nation's right to exist. Opposition to specific Israeli policies too often portrays the very existence of the Jewish state as uniquely illegitimate. Once that boundary disappears, antisemitism presents itself as virtue.

The most important question facing democratic societies today is not how much they sympathize with Israel. It is whether they are still capable of making elementary moral distinctions. Can they recognize the deliberate murder of civilians for what it is? Can they condemn terrorism without immediately searching for explanations that diminish personal responsibility?

A society that remains confident in its principles does not hesitate before condemning the massacre of civilians. A society that has lost confidence in its own values begins by asking whether the victims somehow deserved their fate.

The strength of a democracy is measured by its willingness to defend moral principles even when doing so is uncomfortable, unpopular, or politically costly. A society that cannot defend the dignity of its smallest minority will eventually lose the ability to defend the freedom of everyone.

Amb. Alan Baker: The world’s double standard toward Israel is prejudice dressed as principle

There is another disturbing dimension to this phenomenon: the increasingly blurred line between anti-Zionism and antisemitism.

It may be legitimate to criticize Israeli policies, but when Jews throughout the world are held collectively responsible for Israel’s actions; when Jews are physically accosted, Jewish institutions are attacked because of events in the Middle East; when Jewish students are intimidated; or when Jewish communities are told that they must condemn Israel to prove their moral legitimacy, something far more sinister is taking place.

The old accusation from time immemorial that Jews are responsible for society’s problems has simply acquired a modern vocabulary and is now accompanied overtly by violence and intimidation.

The question therefore must be asked: Why Israel? Why the Jews? Why this extraordinary obsession?

Perhaps the answer lies in both political and social convenience. Israel is a small, identifiable and highly visible target. It is easier to mobilize public anger against a democratic state than against authoritarian regimes whose governments control information and suppress dissent. It has always been easier to mobilize anger against Jews, especially in Europe. The fact that history is repeating itself with vengeance is reason for utmost concern

But convenience cannot justify hypocrisy.

Those who genuinely believe in human rights, international law and the protection of civilians should apply those principles universally. They should condemn terrorism regardless of its perpetrators, defend civilian life regardless of nationality, and demand accountability from all states, organizations and societies that violate fundamental norms.

Israel should be judged by the same standards as every other country – not by lower standards, but certainly not by impossibly higher ones.

The alternative is not justice. It is prejudice masquerading as principle.

Israel will continue to face criticism. That is part of being a democratic state. But criticism becomes unacceptable when facts are deliberately distorted, history is erased, responsibility is inverted, and an entire people are demonized.

The time has come to ask the uncomfortable questions – and to insist on honest answers.

For if Israel and the Jews are blamed for everything, sooner or later we must ask whether the problem lies not with Israel or the Jews, but with those who have made blaming them their political reflex.

Greece to sign $3.6b. Israeli air defense deal, creating 'Achilles Shield' against Turkey and Iran

Greece is set to sign a $3.6 billion defense deal with Israel on Monday in Tel Aviv, a major agreement that will provide Athens with a multilayered air defense system against potential threats from Turkey and Iran.

The agreement, negotiated over three years, will become the largest defense export deal in Israel’s history.

A Greek delegation will sign the agreement with Israel’s Defense Ministry to purchase air defense systems valued at $3.6 billion, slightly below earlier estimates. The deal will provide Greece, for the first time, with an integrated, multilayered defense network.

Most of the funds will go to Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, which will supply Greece with David’s Sling systems designed to intercept heavy rockets and ballistic missiles, as well as mobile SPYDER systems designed to counter unmanned aerial vehicles and drones.

Israel Aerospace Industries will provide the Barak MX system, which is designed to defend against aircraft and missiles.

Project 'Achilles Shield'
The agreement also includes a national-level command-and-control center to operate the systems and manage launches, similar to the system used in Israel. The center will incorporate artificial intelligence capabilities.

Greek companies are expected to receive about €700 million of the deal’s total value as subcontractors for Rafael and IAI.

The project is known in Greece as “Achilles Shield” and will include deploying SPYDER batteries on Greek islands, including popular vacation destinations visited by many Israelis.

The largest defense export deal in Israel’s history to date was IAI’s first export sale of the Arrow 3 missile defense system to Germany, worth $3.5 billion, signed in 2023. Greece is already a major Israeli customer

Elbit Systems announced a $2.3 b. deal with a foreign customer this year, according to reports from the Persian Gulf, while Rafael signed a framework agreement with Romania this year to sell SPYDER systems worth $2 b.

Greece has already become a major customer of Israel’s defense industry, purchasing Spike missiles and SPICE precision-guided bombs from Rafael, Rampage missiles from Elbit Systems and IAI, and Heron 2 drones from IAI.

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08/29 Links: How Ireland succumbed to ‘radical chic’; Maher blasts academics for trashing Western civilization – and Israel; Tucker Carlson Keeps Turning Up in Foreign Agents' Paperwork

From Ian:

How Ireland succumbed to ‘radical chic’

his growing alignment of pro-Palestinian activism with Irish republican sentiment does not just affect foreign policy; it damages what the writer and strategist Eoghan Harris calls ‘the decent pluralism of Middle Ireland’. It is helping to revive political beliefs that left thousands dead and were thought to have been laid to rest.

While Sinn Fein is not benefiting electorally from this phenomenon as much as it might wish, its core messages and slogans are increasingly normalised. And as those with real memories of the violence grow older, a younger generation is being encouraged to sentimentalise the past. Everyone is entitled to remember their dead; the danger, though, is that Irish republicans are simultaneously seeking to erase everyone else’s dead from the narrative, whether victims of 7 October or of IRA terror.

In this febrile environment, there are growing demands for an Irish unity poll, despite the destabilising effect this would have in Northern Ireland. Sinn Fein recently pressed the new Northern Ireland Secretary, Chris Bryant, for an ‘orderly transition into a unity referendum and constitutional change’, presenting it as if it were a done deal. The implication was that only the final, finer points of detail remained to be sketched out. Some commentators now even suggest that Sinn Fein should boycott the devolved assembly unless the UK agrees to a border poll. Bryant’s response – ‘I am not starting the poll now, or this week, or this month, or, I will suggest, this year’ – will only encourage Sinn Fein to push the matter further.

As for the other political parties in Ireland, far from standing firm against this radical drift, many are flirting with these new forces to help secure votes. Politicians involved with Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, parties which had historically built hard constitutional bulwarks against republican violence, have also been guilty of peddling anti-Israel rhetoric. It has pushed the centre of gravity further to the left and accelerated the very radicalism these parties once sought to contain. What could possibly go wrong? Everything, if the allegations facing that young woman at the border are any guide.

Simon Sebag Montefiore: How my ancestor dealt with anti-Semitism

I was once guilty of contra-establishmentarianism myself when I told an interviewer my Jewish family who escaped from Russia in 1903 were peasants with straw in their hair. When it was out, my mother phoned. ‘My father,’ she said passionately, ‘was descended from ten generations of scholars.’ ‘But they were poor!’ I insisted. ‘They escaped in a haycart!’ ‘There… was…. no… straw!’ she said. ‘Please correct this!’ I told my next interviewer that even in the shtetls of Lithuania, we were the Establishment.

My mother was always concerned by my over-ambitious projects: ‘Writing Jerusalem is far too stressful for you! You need nourishing food and luxuriant sleep.’ ‘What do you suggest?’ I said. ‘GIVE THE MONEY BACK!’ she said. In her view, my frailties qualified me only for the life of a hothouse valetudinarian. She wouldn’t have approved of my new book, The Cauldron. ‘Montefiore is walking on hot coals,’ confirmed the Times reviewer, ‘in this panoramic history of the Middle East.’ Sadly my mother is dead, but she was right about everything: from now on I am taking her advice.

My ancestor Moses Montefiore, a British magnate, knew everyone from sultans to tsars in the Victorian era. In the 1820s, he befriended Muhammad Ali, Turco-Albanian ruler of Egypt. When Mohammed Ali’s son Said visited London, he stayed with Moses, thanking him with a monumental silver decoration (now in the V&A). Said later built the Suez Canal. Those were interesting times when Islamic rulers could send their sons to stay with Jewish friends. Nowadays, I admire how Moses coped with anti-Semitism. Attending a royal dinner, a bigot denounced him: ‘I just visited Japan which I loved because Japan has no Jews and no pigs!’ ‘Then you and I should go to Japan together,’ answered Montefiore. ‘So they have one of each.’

Why is Hollywood campaigning to free convicted murderer Marwan Barghouti?

With millions facing hunger and displacement in Sudan, dissidents enduring prison and torture in Iran, and thousands of political prisoners languishing in Myanmar’s jails, the world is hardly suffering from a shortage of worthy humanitarian causes.

Yet some of the biggest names in the movie business have decided that what the world really needs is the release of Marwan Barghouti, a Palestinian terrorist and convicted murderer serving five life sentences in an Israeli prison.

More than 20 actors associated with Marvel films have joined the “Free Marwan” campaign demanding his release, including Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Ruffalo, Don Cheadle, and Cate Blanchett.

After years of pretending to save the world while wearing capes, armor, and assorted forms of spandex, these Marvel veterans have settled on a new real-life mission: securing the freedom of a man convicted of directing terrorist attacks that killed innocent people.

The celebrities say they are concerned about Barghouti’s imprisonment and alleged mistreatment, while the campaign they have joined portrays his trial as illegitimate and politically motivated.

Barghouti convicted of five murders
The trouble is that Barghouti is not in prison because Israel objected to his politics.

In 2004, the Tel Aviv District Court convicted him of five murders stemming from three terrorist attacks, as well as attempted murder and membership in a terrorist organization. He was sentenced to five consecutive life terms plus 40 years.

The attempted-murder conviction involved a failed car-bomb attack near Jerusalem’s Malha Mall.

Nor was Barghouti some peripheral political figure who happened to get swept up in the violence of the Second Intifada.

He was one of Fatah’s most powerful leaders in Judea and Samaria, headed its Tanzim terror group, and, the court found, exercised authority over the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which carried out suicide bombings and shooting attacks.

The judges ruled that Barghouti issued orders to kill through the Brigades and found that he supplied terrorist field units with money and weapons through close associates.

The consequences were brutal. A January 2002 shooting near Givat Ze’ev, the judges concluded, was carried out on Barghouti’s instructions. The victim, Yoela Chen, a mother of two, had stopped at a gas station while on her way to a family wedding. Gunmen opened fire on their car, killing Chen and wounding her aunt.

Barghouti was also convicted for his role in the June 2001 murder of Father Georgios Tsibouktzakis, a Greek Orthodox monk from St. George’s Monastery in Wadi Kelt, who was shot while driving on the Jerusalem-Ma’aleh Adumim road.

And Barghouti also authorized the March 2002 terrorist attack at Tel Aviv’s Seafood Market restaurant, where the gunman opened fire on diners. Yosef Habi, 52, of Herzliya, and Eli Dahan, 53, of Lod, were killed, as was Salim Barakat, a 33-year-old Druze police officer from Yarka who confronted the attacker. Thirty-five others were wounded.

Hollywood has long specialized in suspending disbelief. But asking us to suspend it about Barghouti’s five murder convictions may be its most ambitious production yet.

The “Free Marwan” campaign portrays Barghouti as a symbol of Palestinian unity, and some supporters have gone so far as to compare him to Nelson Mandela.

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08/28 Links Pt2: The disgusting bigotry of blaming Israel for anti-Semitism; Four men plead guilty to arson attack on Jewish ambulances in London; Former Gaza hostage Elkana Bohbot welcomes birth of new daughter

From Ian:

Leading Sephardic & Mizrahi Organizations Challenge New York Magazine’s “Habibi City” Over Erasure of Middle Eastern Jews

What Zionism actually is to us
Our communities lived continuously in the Middle East and North Africa for over 2,500 years, before the emergence of Islam. In the twentieth century, close to one million Jews were driven from the Arab and Muslim world, frequently under laws that criminalized Zionism itself. In countries throughout the Arab world Zionism was made a capital offense, over 3,000 Jews were imprisoned, and Jews were stripped of citizenship and property as “Zionists”; across the region, families were dispossessed, imprisoned, or forced to flee under duress. In the political Zionism of the 20th century, we asserted our own indigeneity after living for millennia as second-class and, finally, exiled citizens of the lands of our birth. The movement your feature files alongside xenophobia and Islamophobia is the reason hundreds of thousands of those refugees had somewhere to go, and the reason their descendants, today the majority of Israel’s Jewish population, exist as communities at all. To renounce Zionism as the condition of belonging to a SWANA community is to demand that Jews disavow our own survival. Being Jewish or Zionist is not in opposition to being from a geographic region. For most of us, the two are how we are still here.

The cuisine your feature celebrates makes the point vividly. Food is one of the truest records a people keeps of where it has been. The dishes in your pages were also carried out of Baghdad, Sana’a, Cairo, and Casablanca by refugees who left with little else and they survive as living traditions rather than museum pieces because those refugees had a country to carry them to. Your food coverage goes further still: it prints, without comment, a featured restaurant’s menu map on which Israel does not appear at all, retitled “Discover Palestine,” and it refers in the magazine’s own editorial voice to “the land mass currently called Israel.” It reports, with evident satisfaction from one interviewee, that Israeli-owned restaurants are now retreating behind the euphemism “Mediterranean” some, by your own account, after vandalism. A feature devoted to the pride of naming oneself openly treats the return of Jews to concealment as a development to be savored. That is the second moral inversion.

The label “Arab Jew”
Your feature applies the label “Arab Jew” without qualification. Most Mizrahi Jews reject it and in current usage it functions largely to sever Jewish identity from Israel. The Tunisian-born sociologist and philosopher Albert Memmi answered the label half a century ago, responding to Muammar Gaddafi’s offer to welcome Jews back as “Arabs like us” after they had been brutally ethnically cleansed. He acknowledged the nostalgia the phrase evokes, then wrote: “We would have liked to be Arab Jews. If we abandon the idea, it is because over the centuries the Moslem Arabs systematically prevented its realization by their contempt and cruelty.” The identity was refused to us when we lived in Arab lands. It is now conferred on us in New York, without our consent, because it is politically convenient: an “Arab Jew” is a Jew whose story can be told without Israel. The great majority of Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews were never asked whether we accept the label. Instead, your writers located the small minority who embrace it, presented them as representative, and left the rest of us to discover that our identity had been defined by others on our behalf. That is not inclusion. It is a curated exception, deployed to suggest the community has been consulted when it has not – erasure presenting itself as representation.

October 7 as a date without victims
In your feature, October 7th appears repeatedly and always as a calendar marker for what came after it, never as an event with victims of its own. It was carried out by Hamas, an organization whose founding charter is openly genocidal, calling for the destruction of Israel and invoking Islamic scripture commanding the killing of Jews, and whose record of violence runs in every direction: against Israelis in massacre and hostage-taking, and against Palestinians themselves, from the executions of political rivals in its 2007 seizure of Gaza to its ongoing torture and killing of dissidents. On October 7th, 2023 some 1,200 Israelis were murdered and 251 taken hostage, communities were burned, and sexual violence was documented – none of it acknowledged, even in passing, in thousands of words that date an entire cultural renaissance to that morning. Your readers might never learn that among the towns invaded that day including Ofakim, Sderot, Netivot are some of the most heavily Mizrahi communities in Israel: descendants of the very refugees from Morocco, Iraq, and Yemen whose food and music fill your pages. The people of the region were both among the murdered and among the murdered’s mourners, and your feature could not spare them a single sentence. A “SWANA community” whose “shared beliefs” in anti-Zionism require total silence about Jewish suffering and about the genocidal intent and movement that inflicted the tragedy of October 7th is not practicing solidarity with Palestinians. It is practicing antisemitism. That is the third moral inversion.

“We are not asking to be tolerated as exceptions to an ideological rule. We are asking to be recognized as what we are: peoples of the region.”

What we ask
We are not asking to be tolerated as exceptions to an ideological rule. We are asking to be recognized as what we are: peoples of the region. We ask that New York Magazine acknowledge that its framing excludes the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa except on ideological terms, and renders the region’s other non-Muslim peoples nearly invisible; that future coverage of SWANA communities include Mizrahi and Sephardic voices as we actually are, which for the great majority of us means Zionist, alongside the other erased non-Muslim indigenous voices of the region; and that your editors meet with representatives of the undersigned organizations to discuss how that happens.

Brendan O'Neill: The disgusting bigotry of blaming Israel for anti-Semitism

In a suit and tie on one of his hours-long, soul-eating livestreams, Piker said that ‘if Jews in America keep putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel, eventually someone is going to come around and take action, not against the State of Israel mind you, but against American Jews’. There it is. Plainly put. In all its neo-fascist horror. If you’re an American Jew and you’re pro-Israel, you risk attack. Your alignment with that ‘genocidal’ entity is putting your own life and limb at risk. How about being a good Jew and saying ‘Fuck Israel’?

Even for the Dem elites who cosied up to Piker in the demented belief that he would breathe life into their knackered brand, his ‘What do you expect, Jews?’ schtick has proven too much. Hakeem Jeffries, New York Democrat and House Minority leader, didn’t hold back. ‘The malicious claim that American Jews are inviting violence against themselves is dangerous and anti-Semitic’, he said. He continued: ‘There is zero justification for threats against the safety of our Jewish brothers and sisters at a moment of rising hate.’ Even Abdul El-Sayed – the Dem candidate for the US Senate in Michigan who’s been rubbing Piker like a genie’s lamp of stardust and ‘authenticity’ – has distanced himself from Piker’s mad comments.

I have no sympathy with these arse-covering Dems. For if they can hear and read, they would know that the pondscum idea that Jews invite violence upon themselves by backing Israel has been a rancid belief of the Islamo-left for years. Others who are a tad more morally sophisticated – ‘tad’ being the operative word – don’t berate Jews themselves but instead say the Jewish State is the problem. As that most one-eyed basher of Israel – Owen Jones – said in defence of Piker: ‘It is an obvious undeniable fact that Israel’s actions are fuelling anti-Semitism.’ When a middle-class canceller says something is ‘obvious’ and ‘undeniable’, it’s usually neither.

Let’s put this evil bullshit to bed once and for all. First, as already mentioned, the descendants of other nations that have committed far greater crimes than Israel’s are not being attacked day and night – why not? Next, explain this: why did violent Israelophobia – which is just Jew hatred in drag – precede what you call ‘the genocide’ but which most normal people call the Israel-Hamas War? It’s almost as if Jews in Europe and America are being attacked for the goddamn racist hell of it rather than because of the ‘Gaza genocide’. Finally: what happened to the great woke sin of victim-blaming? Why is it victim-blaming to say blacks invite racism upon themselves through their ‘bad behaviour’ but fine to spout the same regressive drivel about Jews? Singling Jews out for a species of moral judgement that is applied to no other race on Earth – if only there was a word for that…

Let’s cut to the chase: it isn’t Israel’s behaviour that is endangering the world’s Jews – it’s the Islamo-left’s lies about Israel’s behaviour. It is their treacharous bastardisation of a war as a ‘genocide’, and their libellous branding of civilian casualties as ‘baby killing’, that has resuscitated the wheezing zombie of Jew hatred. The desecrators of synagogues and destroyer of Jewish lives have all yelled ‘Genocide’ and ‘Child murder’ these past three years. Their violent hatred was fuelled not by Israel’s war against the Islamofascists of Hamas but by the Islamo-left’s viral, fascist-adjacent misinformation about that war.

Let’s put it like this. I support Israel. I call myself a Zionist. I don’t think anything like a genocide has been committed in Gaza. I want Hamas to be destroyed. And yet I have never been racially abused on the streets or seen any of my cultural institutions protested or graffitied. We all know why: I’m not a Jew.

Jonathan Tobin: El-Sayed’s antisemitism is the issue; not Hasan Piker

Indeed, the trouble goes beyond El-Sayed’s own long record of antisemitic positions and troubling comments about violence against Jews, even while continuing to claim that he wants to protect them.

Over the course of the last year, growing numbers of Democrats and liberal pundits have embraced a raft of blood libels about Israel and the Jews. The big lies that Israel has perpetrated a “genocide” in Gaza, imposed starvation there or is an “apartheid state” rather than the Middle East’s only democracy, have been widely embraced not only by extremist podcasters like Piker, but by vast numbers of Democratic officeholders and many, if not most, liberal pundits at supposedly respectable publications and broadcast networks.

Democrats have accepted the centerpiece argument of El-Sayed’s primary campaign about stopping the pro-Israel AIPAC lobby from “buying” Congress as a legitimate argument. Many, if not most, are no longer willing to accept campaign donations from it even if they remain supporters of the Jewish state.

Democrats may think that Piker’s comments justifying violence against Jews for supporting Israel go too far, which is embarrassing for them because he is linked to one of their main midterm hopefuls. But many, if not most, agree with the podcaster and his friend, El-Sayed, that there is something unwholesome or even wrong for Jews and other like-minded Americans to organize and seek to use the same tools employed by all advocacy groups to persuade voters to support their position.

The fact is that hatred for Israel—and the targeting of mainstream liberals for being insufficiently hostile to the Jewish state—has been a decisive factor in victory after victory in 2026 primaries for candidates affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America or their allies.

Embracing blood libels
Democrats, including their leaders, like Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who are supposedly pro-Israel and concerned about antisemitism, have already demonstrated that they are willing to tolerate it if it comes out the mouth of a fellow Democrat like El-Sayed. Not even his invocation of traditional tropes—singling out Jews for opprobrium by mainstreaming blood libels about Israel, and claims that Jews are using their wealth to manipulate policy against American interests—was enough to get them to disavow his candidacy. Nor did his rationalization of a terror attack on a Michigan synagogue.

Nor should we have expected them to, since such hateful discourse has long since been normalized among political liberals in the post-Oct. 7 world, where Israel is now the main focus of hatred from the left. Anti-Zionism, which seeks to strip Jews of rights that no one thinks to wish to deny any other people, is indistinguishable from antisemitism. But it is now kosher among Democrats, rather than, as it used to and should be, a belief that should be relegated to the fever swamps of the far-left and the far-right.

Seen from that perspective, Piker is not a distraction from the real issues or a red herring being highlighted by Republicans to sabotage a Democratic candidate. He is entirely relevant to a key issue being debated across the country.

The willingness of Democrats to let their party be hijacked by a far-left faction and its allies whose hatred for Israel and the Jews is at the core of their woke belief system is the real issue. In so allowing—whether out of moral cowardice or a conviction that partisan loyalties and opposing Trump and the Republicans is more important than fighting antisemitism—they have created a moral dilemma for themselves.

The only way to salve their consciences is not by criticizing Piker or persuading El-Sayed to distance himself from him. It’s by disavowing El-Sayed and every other antisemitic candidate who camouflages his extremism by playing the part of a loyal Democrat who seeks to defeat Trump and all his works and allies.

If they won’t do that, they should stop pretending they care about opposing Jew-hatred and simply embrace their party’s new identity as the political expression of modern American antisemitism.

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