Showing posts with label Linkdump. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Linkdump. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 11, 2026

From Ian:

Brendan O’Neill: Couldn’t the Israelophobes give it a rest for one day?
It is astonishing, and nauseating, that people howled for more ‘intifada’ as the Israeli president was embracing a woman who lost her husband to the ‘intifada’ at Bondi, to that Jewphobic frenzy carried out by suspected Islamists. And they were calling for intifada not only in the Holy Land but in ‘Gadigal’ too, in Sydney, in the very city that just suffered one of the worst massacres of Jews of modern times. What, 15 dead people aren’t enough for you? You want more?

The events in Sydney shone an unforgiving light on the cult of Palestinianism. The cruelty of this bourgeois mania now stands starkly exposed. Its inhumanity is clear for all to see. These keffiyeh-shrouded agitators pose as anti-war and yet it is apocalyptic violence they dream of. ‘Intifada!’, they wail, knowing well that to president Herzog and the Jews of Australia, that word will conjure memories of the slaughter of Jews in discotheques and pizza parlours by the madmen of Hamas.

It seems there is no ‘pause’ button on Israelophobia. It is wholly unrestrained by morality and basic decency. It is extraordinary that not one organiser in Australia’s ‘pro-Palestine’ lobby thought to say: ‘Let’s give it a rest while they commemorate Bondi. We’ll get back to our Herzog-bashing tomorrow.’ Instead we have been treated to side-by-side footage of Jews weeping at Bondi as leftish hysterics in the city bellowed for more of the very violence that consumed their loved ones. What sickness is this?

Then came the final insult: the mob stole victimhood from the Jews. The New South Wales Police Force cleared protesters off the streets. The protest had been officially banned, so those who gathered were breaking the law. The cops dragged away a group of young Muslim men who were praying to Mecca. And that is literally the only thing Australia’s chattering classes are yapping about today: this supposedly ‘Islamophobic’ assault on pious Muslims.

It’s nonsense, of course. That street-praying was no mere religious act – it was a political provocation carried out as part of the anti-Herzog protests. Being a Muslim does not give one special immunity from the laws of the land. Yet this is where we’ve ended up: with grieving Jews being drowned out and Muslims being held up as the *real* victims. It is brazen narrative theft, with people’s focus being ruthlessly dragged from the racist murder of Jews to the supposedly ‘racist’ dispersal of praying men.

I’m not easily shocked, but the madness that befell Sydney yesterday felt genuinely unnerving. It felt like the salt of Israelophobia rubbed into the wound of Bondi’s anti-Semitism. A shameful day.
Seth Mandel: The Jew-Trolling Right’s Empty Pageantry
“Whether a student says, ‘I believe there are only two genders,’ or ‘I believe Palestinians are undergoing a genocide,’ they should not be silenced or punished for expressing their beliefs.”

This snack-size bite of Burkean wisdom comes from Sameerah Munshi, who appears to have worked with former Miss California Carrie Prejean Boller to hijack the president’s commission on religious liberty, leading to a bizarre hearing yesterday and Boller’s dismissal from the commission today.

Boller seems to have accepted a position on the esteemed committee because of her heartfelt belief in her own need for more social media followers. Enter Munshi, an anti-Israel activist who serves as an adviser to the same religious liberty commission. Munshi, a booster of the rabid anti-Semite Candace Owens, has been—no doubt out of the goodness of her heart—helping to elevate Boller’s own personal Owens-esque cry for attention. On Munshi’s Instagram, for example, one of the few posts is a shared posting of Boller’s claim that “Gaza was a precursor to the release of the Epstein files.”

According to Boller, the goal of the you-know-whos involved in Gaza and Epstein is to “normalize and justify the torture and killing of innocent children.” The post ends with a call to solve the problem with this one neat trick: “Defund Israel.”

Today the religious liberty commission’s director, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, announced that Boller is being removed from the committee. “No member of the Commission has the right to hijack a hearing for their own personal and political agenda on any issue. This is clearly, without question, what happened Monday in our hearing on antisemitism in America.” No doubt she will start one heck of a podcast now, though.

Boller was booted for turning yesterday’s committee hearing into a circus by raving like a lunatic about Zionism. The recent Catholic convert attempted to do so in the name of Catholicism, but Catholics on the commission patiently explained church doctrine to Boller and corrected her Jew-baiting claims.

It’s worth noting that the Munshi-Boller duo’s first choice to hijack the hearing wasn’t to have Boller be the one to deliver the rant. Via Boller, they tried to feed the commission names of witnesses who would deliver the anti-Zionist lines themselves: Norman Finkelstein topped their list of prospective guests. “All of our suggested witnesses for the hearing on Anti-Semitism were denied,” she complained. “All of our suggested witnesses were also critical of the Israeli government.”
Daniel Finkelstein: how the world’s antisemites turned on me
The thrust of these messages, hundreds this time rather than thousands, is that it is deeply hypocritical of me to believe that there should be a country for Jews (Israel) but not for English people.

I tried rational argument. I pointed out that I did want a country for English people, that we had one and I live in it. I also said that Israel wasn’t exclusively for Jews and that it wouldn’t need to exist in the first place if there weren’t so many people interested in deporting me. But in the end I found these exchanges as unavailing as it would be to argue with someone who called the Holocaust “the Holly”.

What would my parents have thought of all this? They would definitely have agreed it was right to confront it. That’s what my grandfather had done in Germany in the Twenties and Thirties, after all. They would have been realistic. Because Jews are a small minority in almost every country in which they settle, this kind of antisemitism has lasted for hundreds of years and always been dangerous. They would also definitely have found it upsetting. Anyone would. Particularly the fact that it comes from young people in the United States, because the young and Americans were people they believed in.

But one of the most important things about both of them is that they had a sense of proportion. They were never complacent. Yet they weren’t going to live their lives as victims, despite what had happened to them. They wouldn’t want me too either. And I won’t.

In the history of civilisation, I don’t think there’s been a better time to be alive or a better place to live than now and here. I think that’s an objectively defensible statement. But it’s also how I feel.

My parents didn’t just survive. They lived. And I am doing that too.
‘Zio’ Is the New ‘N-Word’
What’s most telling—and disheartening—about the entire Odessa A’Zion saga is her use of the word “Zio” to distance herself from Zionism. Fear is clearly the dominant motivation here even if A’Zion cannot fully recognize it. Fear of career damage and professional decline. Of social media attacks or eventual ostracism. Fear of being maligned and misunderstood—but ultimately fear for her safety.

This is where “Zio” and the “N-word” most odiously converge—both are agents of unbridled hate speech doing double duty as a call to arms. Except one is anathema, and the other flows freely without consequence.

Which is why I was so certain, upon receiving my first accusations of being a “Zio,” it was unlikely to be my last. In both the centrist precincts I currently inhabit and the progressive communities that shaped my past, “N-gger” is a word that is simply never spoken. But in both worlds, “Zio” is screamed louder than ever.

To be sure, some who use the term “Zio” think that they can deploy it to disavow the Israeli government without defaming Israel or its people. Seemingly, that’s what Odessa A’Zion had in mind. This is, of course, an impossibility, as it is Zionism that created the State of Israel and all that it contains. But ultimately, most who chant “Zio” want Israel destroyed, and many want its Jews lynched en masse, just like so many African Americans before them.

The fact is that most Jews, across the political spectrum, are probably too fearful to openly compare “Zio” to the “N-word,” lest they be canceled or condemned. But having been the target of both slurs, I can attest that their ideological contiguity could not be any clearer.

“Gaza, Gaza make us proud, put the Zio in the ground,” shouted Oxford student Samuel Williams in London earlier this year at a demonstration by the aggressively anti-Israel Palestine Coalition.

Kind of reminds me of a Klan rally.
From Ian:

James Kirchick: The Chutzpah of Yoram Hazony
The thrust of Hazony’s argument is that combatting anti-Semitism is as alienating or more alienating to voters than anti-Semitism itself. This reasoning is both morally and tactically wrong. Polls continue to show that a large majority of conservatives support Israel and oppose anti-Semitism. And yet Hazony believes that the 25 percent of the party that is exercised about anti-Semitism should avoid hurting the feelings of the 10 percent who are anti-Semites. Tucker Carlson, Hazony said, is “a very smart, passionate, and very likeable man when you meet him in person.” At the first NatCon conference in Washington, D.C., “he gave one of the best speeches we have ever hosted.” Moreover, “Tucker has been saying—as clear as the day—that he is not an anti-Semite.” Acting like the tough Israeli sabra, Hazony is the cowering Jew of the shtetl, furious at his fellow Jews for provoking anti-Semites.

Hazony’s analysis of American politics and history—epitomized in his laughable claim that Lindsay Graham, Ted Cruz, and Mike Pompeo are the ideological heirs of Nelson Rockefeller and John Lindsay—is as apt as his prognostication skills. In a November interview with Ross Douthat of the New York Times, Hazony said that he was “hoping” Vice President Vance will have “the skill of determining what the boundaries of the coalition are.” The following month, Vance decried “endless, self-defeating purity tests” and righteously affirmed that he would not “bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to deplatform.” Hazony also told Douthat, “I assume that Heritage is going to solve the problem [of anti-Semitism]. I know a little bit about what steps they’re taking, and I think it’s very, very likely that Heritage is going to get on an appropriate and excellent path.” As of this writing, more than 60 senior Heritage staff have left the think tank since Roberts avowed the institution’s unflinching loyalty to Carlson.

While Hazony feigns at playing a moderating force within the movement, what he’s really doing is covering his own tracks, desperately attempting to retain his influence by whitewashing the egregious behavior of his allies and the logical outcomes of his own philosophy. Through his books (The Virtue of Nationalism and Conservatism: A Rediscovery) and conferences, Hazony has been a principal figure in the drive to undermine universalist Enlightenment values as the basis of the American founding. According to Hazony, those who believe such hogwash are “imperialists” who support “the ideal of an international government or regime that imposes its will on subject nations when its officials regard this as necessary.” Proper nationalists, by contrast, believe that “nations should be free to set their own course in the absence of such an international government or regime.” Into the former category Hazony places the Third Reich, the European Union, and the late Charles Krauthammer.

Furthermore, American conservatives have got their history all wrong, a failure for which they must “repent.” The real intellectual fathers of the American Revolution are not John Locke and Thomas Jefferson, whose classical liberalism Hazony conflates with the antinomianism of the 1960s, but rather the 15th-century English jurist John Fortescue and the 17th-century John Selden, whose writings he uses to endorse the concept of America having a state-backed religion (Christianity). If this fake history sounds like a right-wing version of the 1619 Project, that’s because it is.

The rise in anti-Semitism on the right is attributable to a handful of individuals whom Hazony is too cowardly and embarrassed to condemn. Like a vengeful alcoholic at an intervention, he is lashing out and blaming everyone but himself for the wreckage he helped create—the mirror-image of the left-wing Jew who makes excuses for his anti-Semitic comrades. Imagining himself a world-class intellectual, he is, for lack of a better term, a moron. How else could he have thought that forging alliances with European-style blood-and-soil nationalists would be good for the Jews, or America?

Hazony sees himself as a scholar-statesman on the level of a Jabotinsky or Ben-Gurion when he’s really an arriviste. In a reprehensible attempt to protect his access to power, Hazony is willing to gainsay his American co-religionists, who know better than him the threats they face. Watching Hazony’s Jerusalem speech reminded me of no one so much as Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf from Philip Roth’s novel The Plot Against America, in which Charles Lindbergh defeats Franklin Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election and keeps the country out of World War II. The oleaginous Bengelsdorf, who supported Lindbergh, becomes the new president’s court Jew. “I have encountered considerable hostility from members of the Jewish community for allying myself in the 1940 election with the Lindbergh campaign,” Bengelsdorf tells a Jewish family, one of whose sons lost a leg fighting with the Canadian army against the Nazis. “I am pleased to tell you that it took no more than two or three sessions alone with the president to get him to relinquish his misconceptions and to appreciate the manifold nature of Jewish life in America.”

Alas, not even Bengelsdorf’s obsequiousness can outweigh the fact of his Jewishness, and the FBI arrests him for being “among the ringleaders of the Jewish conspiratorial plot against America.” At the end of the book, Bengelsdorf is released and writes a face-saving memoir in which he admits the error of his ways. At this point in his intellectual career, a mea culpa is the least Yoram Hazony can do.
Commentary PodCast: The Price of Chutzpah
Today we are joined by Commentary's new Washington commentary columnist Jamie Kirchick to discuss his new piece on Yoram Hazony. Plus the positive job report, Trump's deal-making obsession on the backdrop on Netanyahu's visit to Washington, and John once again recommends Natan Sharansky's Fear No Evil.
Human Rights Watch’s Frankenstein moment
Shakir’s tactics were not deviations. They were the logical outcome of habits the institution had long tolerated — even rewarded — when they advanced approved narratives. Over time, small permissions sent a clear signal: toxic behavior was acceptable, limits were flexible, standards negotiable.

I saw those habits take hold firsthand.

In 2019 and 2021, I raised concerns with multiple senior staff members about what I saw as a growing “lack of proportionality, context, and balance” in work. I warned that internal discourse was drifting away from HRW’s stated values and that published work “in structure, content, and tone does not meet basic standards of balance and professionalism.” There was no meaningful response.

By 2022, resistance to internal scrutiny was more explicit. The Israel-Palestine chapter of the World Report — HRW’s global review of abuses that I oversaw — became a battleground.

One exchange involved the trial of Mohammed al-Halabi, a World Vision employee. The draft described the proceedings as a “mockery of due process.” But it did not mention the charges against him — that he was accused of funneling money to Hamas. When I asked Shakir to note the charges, as per normal standards of balance, he declined, saying, “The charges are wild.”

In emails sent over my head, Shakir said my review “smacked of being selective.”

A manager reminded him that I reviewed all chapters, including his, and backed my position: “We should never mention a case without mentioning what the charges are. If we think the charges are not credible, we should explain why.” It was a relief — but rare.

For the most part, managers placated, ignored, and excused. “This has been mostly instructive as to how things appear to work with Omar and who calls the shots,” I wrote to a manager after several bruising rounds with Shakir. “Three of us raised issues, including yourself, and in a call to me, you said various elements that remain are not acceptable. And yet you totally back down.”

Accommodation often reflected ideological alignment. But it also sometimes reflected quiet capitulation by an older guard increasingly overwhelmed by strident activist tactics. Watching them try to restrain the shift was like watching Canute try to hold back the tide. “I’m torn between saying the future is clear and I’m not part of it — and taking a stand,” one told me. “It depends how much energy I have on any given day.”

Whatever energy did exist proved insufficient; an increasingly divisive, outraged, aggressive way of doing business continued to gain ground. Foreshadowing last week’s petition signed by 200 staff, Shakir played a key role in rallying some 120 employees after October 7 to pressure senior managers to include references to Israeli “apartheid” in a press release about hostages.

“Argumentation” and “balance” were giving way to “messaging” and “narrative” — increasingly amplified by a new, under-the-radar partner: celebrities.

In the days after October 7, staff referenced talks with “Disney,” “top-tier celebrities,” and the “Hadid sisters” — American-Palestinian influencers Gigi and Bella Hadid, whose rhetoric since has included very familiar language: Israeli “apartheid,” colonialism, and ethnic cleansing.

Human Rights Watch’s own methodology holds that while individuals commit abuses, responsibility ultimately rests with the institutions that enable, direct, or fail to restrain them.

Its public fallout with Shakir is a lesson for institutions that believe they can harness ideology and activism — even when doing so strains their own standards — without those same forces eventually turning inward and coming for them too.

Tuesday, February 10, 2026

From Ian:

The case for a three-state solution
In the closing months of his first presidential term, Donald Trump pushed hard for an Israel/Palestine deal. Although well-intentioned, it was widely disparaged – perhaps unfairly – as unworkable, and there remained little opportunity to refine the terms before he left office. But he now has plenty of time to impose a sensible settlement. His rollercoaster approach to international relations may not be to everyone’s taste. Yet flagellation and flattery, bombast and bribery, and hard-cop-soft-cop may be just what is needed here.

The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan would be a key player in any such deal. For almost its whole lifetime, the “Palestine” Mandate included Transjordania, the region east of the River Jordan. The British had initially earmarked the whole territory of the Mandate for the Jewish national homeland, but, to the despair of the Zionists, from the Mandate’s very inception they instead devolved autonomous control of Transjordania to the Hashemite Emir Abdullah. In April 1946, the Emirate was finally severed from the Mandate when the old League of Nations, at its last meeting, recognised the new Kingdom (“Transjordan” until 1949, when it took control of the West Bank).

That was the real partition. Jordan was the Mandate’s Arab legacy state. Britain’s Labour government then washed their hands of the problem of the Mandate’s western remnant and dumped it on the United Nations, which, in Resolution 181 of November 29, 1947, voted to sub-partition it. However, by an ironic twist of fate, Israel nonetheless attained sovereignty over the whole remnant. This was through the default operation of a long-established principle of customary international law known as uti possidetis juris.

The rule was automatically triggered by the failure of the Arab community’s leadership to declare a state of their own in the areas allocated under 181.

They knew that doing so alongside Israel would signal implicit agreement with the resolution, and they wanted the lot. But the decision had consequences. It left a sovereignty vacuum in two-thirds of the Mandate’s remnant territory, and as Israel was the only state which came into being on the critical date of the Mandate’s expiry – May 14, 1948 – its sovereignty automatically filled out the vacuum to absorb the whole remnant.

By the end of the 1948 war, Israel could probably have taken control of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank salient with comparative ease. But it preferred to concede their occupation, respectively, by Egypt and Jordan under the terms of the 1949 Rhodes Armistice, retaining sovereignty in absentia. Although it seized them in 1967, its statesmen have usually been reticent about making express claims of sovereignty for fear of alienating friendly powers. Most recently, Prime Minister Netanyahu vetoed moves in the Knesset to ratify Israel’s sovereignty over substantial areas of the West Bank after Donald Trump and J.D. Vance voiced stern warnings that it would jeopardise the Abraham Accords.

Yet decades ago, U.S. policy had been more indulgent of Israel’s sovereignty rights over at least some of the West Bank. In 1982, echoing the sentiments of Britain’s Lord Caradon at the UN in 1967, President Ronald Reagan movingly declared that he would never ask the bulk of Israel’s population ever again to live in a territory barely ten miles wide at its narrowest point, within artillery range of hostile Arab armies. Then, in the wake of the Oslo Accords, the terms of the Jordan/Israel peace treaty brokered by Bill Clinton in 1994 expressly recognised in Article 3 that the “international boundary between Israel and Jordan”, defined in Annex 1(a) as the River Jordan and the Dead Sea, was “the permanent, secure and recognised international boundary between Israel and Jordan, without prejudice to the status of any territories,” and as such was “inviolable.” The “without prejudice” saving merely reflected the possibility of an eventual negotiated settlement over sovereignty between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, envisaged under Oslo. The treaty could not have enunciated a clearer acknowledgement of Israel’s sovereignty over the West Bank, not merely that it was an occupier.
Arguing over Gaza war death tolls is a fool’s game that hides the real question
Why no one knows who were killed in Gaza. Hamas’s Health Authority, a notoriously untrustworthy source, estimates some 70,000 Gaza deaths, but it does not distinguish fighters from civilians. They would prefer the public to conjure an image of 70,000 dead women and babies, not tens of thousands of ruthless, raping terrorists. But separating bodies of fighters from those of innocents is highly imprecise since Hamas terrorists not only operate among civilians in civilian structures but also dress as them. Likewise, Israeli estimates, which are known for being reliable and made in good faith, suggest that 25,000 fighters were killed, though this number is also imprecise. Thousands of both fighters and innocents are still buried under tons of rubble from collapsed buildings.

Why we don’t know whether a death toll of 70,000 is good or bad. In the Armenian Genocide (1915-1917), some 600,000 to 1.5 million were killed, accounting for 90% of Ottoman Armenians. In the Cambodian Genocide (1975-1979) victims totaled 1.5 million to 3 million, including 99% of Vietnamese Cambodians. More recently, in the U.S.-Iraq war (2003-2011), total deaths are documented at around 460,000. That’s 650% more fatalities than estimated for the Gaza war.

Still, hearing that 70,000 people (of 2.2 million in the Strip) were killed in a war is disturbing, even with the clarifier that “only” 45,000 of them were innocent women, children and seniors. But we certainly can’t assess the magnitude of death without context compared to other modern wars. In perspective, the Gaza war toll, with its far more favorable combatant-to-civilian ratio, was a minor disaster—and certainly, no genocide—compared with Armenia or Cambodia.

Why arguments over blame for Gaza war deaths are nonsense. When a country like Israel is attacked, unprovoked, by its bordering neighbor, as Hamas did on Oct. 7, 2023, there’s little question of responsibility for the conflagration. Hamas was the aggressor. When that aggressor fails to take precautions to protect its citizens in case of war, as Hamas failed to do, responsibility is again clear. Finally, if the aggressor uses a war strategy of human shields—deliberately operating within or around its civilian population, in residences, schools, mosques and hospitals—which is a crime, then that becomes a trifecta of unforgivable barbarism.

In short, civilians who died under these circumstances, no matter the number, are the full responsibility of the aggressor: Hamas. To debate the actual death toll as though it has some inherent moral meaning is irrational. To blame any of the deaths on Israel, which fought strictly according to the rules of war—and, in fact, exceeded what is required in providing humanitarian aid—is irresponsible … and dead wrong.
United Hatzalah Treats Five-Year-Old Boy from Syria with Head Injury
United Hatzalah EMT first responders provided urgent medical care on Tuesday to a five-year-old boy from Syria who sustained serious injuries after falling from a height in the Syrian village of Hader.

The child was transferred across the border into Israel by an Israel Defense Forces ambulance and brought to a soccer pitch in Buq’ata, where United Hatzalah volunteer EMTs were awaiting his arrival.

According to United Hatzalah EMTs Ali Tarbiya and Amin Abu Saleh, the boy arrived in serious condition suffering from traumatic head injuries. Family members reported that he had fallen from a significant height prior to evacuation.

“Our teams immediately initiated emergency medical treatment upon his arrival,” the EMTs said. “Following stabilization efforts at the scene, the child was airlifted by an IDF medical evacuation helicopter to Rambam Health Care Campus for further treatment.”

Two Druze EMTs responded to the incident.

United Hatzalah volunteers provide humanitarian medical assistance regardless of nationality, religion, or background.

The child remains under medical care at Rambam Hospital, where he is undergoing further evaluation and treatment for his injuries.
From Ian:

Hamas’s Boasting Indicts the West
Oct. 7, 2023, displayed something different. Far from hiding its brutality, Hamas advertised it, filming and broadcasting sadistic cruelty. It touted the torture and execution of Israeli women and children as a great moral accomplishment, using the killing as a recruitment tool.

Recall the enthusiastic tone of that young man who called his parents from the phone of an Israeli woman he had just murdered, imploring his mother and father to open up WhatsApp. “Look how many I killed with my own hands. Your son killed Jews!” he told his father. His parents were overjoyed. “My son, God bless you,“ his father said. “I wish I was with you,” his mother added.

Rather than a coverup, this was a media event.

What explains the difference between Hitler and Stalin, who denied their atrocities, and Hamas? Could it be that Hamas knew that many in its Western audience, unlike in Hitler’s and Stalin’s time, would celebrate its crimes as noble resistance? If so, Hamas’s openness indicts our own culture or, at least, its intellectuals.

Within days after Oct. 7, American campuses exploded with anti-Zionist and antisemitic rhetoric. Almost immediately, more than 30 Harvard student groups endorsed Hamas’s actions as justified. University presidents testified that the acceptability of calling for the annihilation of the Jewish people “depends on the context.”

When New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani argues, however implausibly, that the call to “globalize the intifada” is somehow ambiguous, he is at least paying La Rochefoucauld’s tribute to decency. That wasn’t the case at a rally at the Sydney Opera House held two days after the Oct. 7 massacre, when the crowd burned Israeli flags and chanted “Where are the Jews?” On the first night of Hanukkah in 2025, they were at Bondi Beach.

Today’s mass murderers no longer need to hide their crimes from the West’s educated elites, who applaud them. Terrorist boasting testifies to our own moral decline.
Sir Michael Ellis: Israel Thrives While Its Haters Flounder
The mullahs say they have their "fingers on the trigger" and most regional states are rather nervous. Meanwhile, Israel seems to shake it all off and get on with life. One supposes there is nothing like being attacked multiple times over the decades to build resilience. Despite leading a country only the size of Wales, Prime Minister Netanyahu has pointed out that within a decade, Israel's economy will be worth $1 trillion.

While the Iranian regime has been busy murdering protestors by the thousands, haters of Israel prefer to focus their efforts on trying to introduce a boycott of Israeli avocados. At the same time, the Government under Sir Keir Starmer has indefinitely paused a UK trade deal with Israel, thereby doing itself out of business with one of the world's leading high-tech innovators.

Egypt and Israel have recently signed the biggest natural gas deal in Israel's history, worth $35 billion. The Israeli Leviathan gas field will soon supply a substantial proportion of Egypt's energy needs. The UAE has signed a defense contract with Israel worth $2.3 billion for a new, highly sophisticated defense system to protect its civilian and military aircraft. This follows the German parliament approving a $3.5 billion expansion of the Arrow 3 deal with Israel. In total, the deal was valued at $8 billion.

Israel's military, diplomatic, economic and tech strength is extraordinary. But the nation's true strength rests on the happiness, positivity and industry of its people in the face of those who hate them. Israel is one of the world's players. The future bodes well for them. For the haters - not so much.
Australia must face up to its anti-Semitism crisis
This would be a betrayal of Jewish Australians, who this week were reminded once again what a radically different place their country has become to the one in which their parents and grandparents once sought refuge. On Monday, Israeli president Isaac Herzog arrived in Australia for a four-day visit, having been invited over following the Bondi massacre. He was met with enormous counter-protests. Signs were waved depicting Herzog and New South Wales premier Chris Minns – who, with his public displays of solidarity with Jewish Australians, has been an admirable outlier in the Labor Party – as Nazis. Speaking at the Sydney Town Hall, Grace Tame – an activist and former ‘Australian of the Year’ – said Herzog had ‘signed bombs sent to kill innocent civilians’. Nine protesters have been charged for various violent offences, including one man who is alleged to have bitten an officer.

Australia is now a nation that refuses to tolerate the presence of a leader of the world’s only Jewish state, yet at the same time, publicly mourns the death of Hezbollah chief Ismail Haniyeh – a man who dedicated much of his life to killing Jews. To say Australia has a problem with anti-Semitism would be an understatement. This is a full-blown crisis. The protests offered further proof, if any more were needed, of just how necessary it is to hold a royal commission into anti-Semitism.

McCarthy’s call for the commission to also focus on anti-indigenous hatred was not just a blow for Jewish Australians. Many Australians, regardless of background, would also have found her demands curious. There are, of course, small and odious pockets of Australian society where you’ll find racist attitudes towards indigenous Australians. Yet there is no shortage of attention directed at this form of racism, as any recent visitor to Australia could testify.

Great strides have been made towards indigenous advancement. Every public event begins with a Welcome to Country ceremony. More than half of Australia has been returned to indigenous Australians through native title agreements. As McCarthy’s own ministerial title testifies, there are entire government departments dedicated to ‘closing the gap’ between the living standards of indigenous Australians and white Australians. The wrongs visited on indigenous people, from settler violence to the forced integration of the Stolen Generation, were indisputably terrible. But Australia’s recent attempts to atone for them can hardly be faulted.

The royal commission must explore one issue – and one issue only. It must be laser-focussed on the explosion of anti-Semitism in Australia since 7 October 2023. This horrific development has already cost lives. It is the very least Australia’s Jewish community deserves.

Of course, a royal commission won’t bring back Alexander Kleytman, the Holocaust survivor shot multiple times trying to protect his wife on Bondi beach. It won’t bring back 10-year-old Matilda, the youngest victim of that dreadful pogrom. But it might help to prevent a similar evil from happening again. Albanese and the Australian Labor Party must be given no opportunity to worm their way out of it.

Monday, February 09, 2026

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The Truth About American Police Training in Israel
The report itself turns out to be quite interesting, though more for what it says about the state of LA Times reporting and the bad faith of groups like CAIR.

It is true, for example, that Israel is one of the countries to which LA police have traveled. One of 32 countries, to be specific.

So why the focus on Israel? Perhaps Israel is the only Mideast country on the list? No, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are there, too.

Then maybe Israel is the most common destination for LA cops? Again, no. And it’s not even close to some of the competition: The UK gets twice as many trips, Canada three times as many as Israel.

Well then surely Israel is the only country accused of “genocide” on the list? After all, it’s the only country accused of genocide in the article. But no—China, a country carrying out an actual genocide, is there too.

Since we all know where this is going, let’s just get there already. Israel accounts for 7 percent of “total activities” of LAPD personnel going abroad, about the same share as France and far less than some others.

The numbers of LAPD officials participating in such events abroad follows the roughly the same pattern. Trips to France account for about a quarter of all employees who went abroad in the decade under investigation, with Canada close behind and the UK not too far in the rearview. Israel is a small part of the exchange program.

One could easily find some non-Israel details for concern, if that’s truly all one was looking for. Thailand, for example, is rated by Freedom House as “not free,” having transitioned from military rule to a “military-dominated, semi-elect government” known to use “repressive tactics including arbitrary arrests, intimidation, lèse-majesté charges, and harassment” to quell protests. One might look at the IG report and see that the LAPD apparently went to Thailand to “train” the royal police and ask what the story is there. But one would only be tempted to do so if one were actually concerned about any of this rather than trying simply to spread unfounded conspiracy theories about Jews.

If the LAPD is displaying a tendency toward mishandling public order, is it more likely that they learned such behavior from, say, Israeli K-9 training programs and bomb-squad instruction, or from their time spent at the “Austrian Police Academy Public Order and Riot Control Conference”?

Would you look to where they are learning particular skills, in other words, or would you simply draw attention to vague insinuations that the Jews must have taught them to hurt people? With regard to CAIR and the LA Times, we already know the answer. But perhaps others should ask themselves the same question.
Jake Wallis Simons: Francesca Albanese: the sneering face of international Israelophobia
Albanese sits squarely in the tradition of this Soviet anti-Zionist agitprop. Born near Naples, she grew up in the world of ‘progressive’ academia, with a master’s degree from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, which is dominated by pseudo-radical thought to this day.

Naturally, she went on to join the UN, where she found her calling as its foremost anti-Israel provocateur. She has frequently accused the Jewish state of ‘apartheid’, one of the principal smears invented by Soviet propagandists, seemingly overlooking Israel’s Arab politicians, leaders of industry, soldiers, judges and footballers on the national team. (The Israeli state even recognises and funds Sharia family courts to cater for its Muslim minority.)

Again echoing Soviet disinformation, Albanese has compared Israeli actions with the Nazi Holocaust and in 2014, contended that the US had been ‘subjugated by the Jewish lobby’. After a global backlash, she apologised, but it set the tone for much of her perspective since.

It was 7 October that catapulted her to new heights of provocative extremism. On the day of Hamas’s massacre of Israelis, she posted that ‘today’s violence must be put in context’, but never extended the same dignity to Israel’s military response. This, of course, she wrongly labelled a ‘genocide’, wilfully ignoring the ‘context’ of a just and defensive war.

Bizarrely, Albanese even argued that ‘the victims of 7/10 were not killed because of their Judaism, but in response to Israel’s oppression’, making a defence of Hamas that even the jihadis themselves have, to my knowledge, failed to make.

Last year, US secretary of state Marco Rubio sanctioned Albanese for ‘illegitimate and shameful efforts to prompt International Criminal Court action against US and Israeli officials, companies and executives’. In a resolute post on X, Rubio added: ‘Albanese’s campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel will no longer be tolerated. We will always stand by our partners in their right to self-defence.’

That summed it up. Setting aside China and Russia, in crude terms, the great global power struggle of our age places Israel and the US on the one side, much of the Muslim world on the other, and Britain / Europe pulled hither and thither in the middle.

People like Albanese hold fast to an ideology that causes them to kick against the pillars of our civilisation relentlessly. What they don’t seem to realise is that if they are successful, and the roof comes crashing in, they will end up just as dead as the rest of us.
Yisrael Medad: Recalling a father of the ‘Zionism is settler-colonialism’ theory
In the mid- to later years of the 1960s, as a young member of the Betar Zionist youth movement that recently suffered an act of bureaucratic, progressivist legalist oppression and discrimination in New York City, I would drop by far-left bookstores and pick up the latest pro-Arab literature. Already then, the name of Fayez Sayegh, a Christian Arab born in Syria, was familiar to me.

His 1965 pamphlet charging Zionism as being “settler-colonialism” was republished, as if received at Sinai, in edited form in 2012. I consider Maxim Rodinson’s analysis more challenging. It, too, preceded the 1967 Six-Day War, and Israel’s subsequent extension of its administration of Judea and Samaria (and, until 2005, over Gaza as well), having been first published in French in July 1967 but written previously.

Still, Sayegh represents a more genuine Arab voice of negation, rejection and desire for Jewish elimination. Whereas Marxists applaud killing “Zionists” in the name of “resistance,” Arabs are those mostly doing it.

In the 1920s and ’30s, the Communist Party platform had been asserting that the Mandate of “Palestine is a colony of British imperialism.” This was based on earlier resolutions, such as the Second International’s Fourth Congress in London in 1896, which condemned colonialism, and at the Sixth Congress in Amsterdam in 1904, which positioned the party as “against the colonial and imperialist policy.”

Moshe Machover, born in pre-state Tel Aviv—a Communist and the author of the 1961 anti-Zionist tract Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, which uses the colonialist paradigm—more recently spins the conflict differently. He writes that he sees it as a collision between “a Hebrew settler nation and a single indigenous Palestinian Arab people.”

A few counterpoints underlining Sayegh’s propositions are in order.

As New York Times columnist Bret Stephens recently remarked, “the fight against antisemitism … is a well-meaning but mostly wasted effort. We should spend … efforts toimprove pro-Israel advocacy, helping raise a generation of young Jews who are conscious of their Jewishness … .”

Highlighting a few basic irrationalities, historical corruptions and misleading “facts” should illustrate to younger Jewish generations that the ideology and anti-Zionist backlash they face are not new. Such misinformation has been disproved decades ago; modern-day misconceptions are just another form of anti-Jewish fulminations.
From Ian:

Israel’s President Herzog visits Australia after Bondi Beach terror attack Herzog: 'when one Jew is hurt, all Jew
Israeli President Israel Herzog has begun his visit to Australia in the wake of the December terror attack against Jews at Bondi beach, placing a wreath at the site of the attack as well as memorial stones, in the Jewish tradition, which were brought from Jerusalem.

The Israeli President, alongside his wife Michal, placed the stones at the memorial outside Bondi Pavilion, describing how the Jewish tradition of placing stones at gravesites represents “the endurance of memory, the weight of loss and the unbreakable bond between the living and those we have lost”.

The Israeli President went on to say that “these stones … will remain here at Bondi for eternity in sacred memory of the victims and as a reminder that the bonds between good people of all faiths and all nations will continue to hold strong in the face of terror, violence and hatred.”

Herzog went on to meet family members of those killed during the terror attack, with video footage showing him embracing Australian Jews who thanked him for coming.

In a speech given at Bondi Beach, Herzog described the “fifteen innocent souls who gathered to celebrate Chanukah, the festival of light, were massacred in cold blood by two Islamist terrorists.

“The world’s only Jewish state, the State of Israel and the nation of Israel, stood together with the Australian people. We stood with Australian Jews, for we are one big family – and when one Jew is hurt, all Jews feel their pain. That is why I am here today, to embrace and console the bereaved families.”
President headlines moving evening of reflection
“We have come here not simply to tell you we are with you, but to show you that we are with you,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog told a packed ICC Sydney Theatre on Monday night.

As hate-fuelled protests against his visit with calls to “globalise the intifada” raged just blocks away, inside the theatre the mood was one of unity, family, strength in togetherness, and of a yearning for peace.

“There are certain emotions one can only fully convey through action. Only by doing. By showing up. And so, in the wake of the horror at Bondi Beach, we felt we must come to Australia to look you in the eye. To show up for you,” Herzog said.

“We have come to be with you, just as you have always shown up for us.

“Australian Jewry has been with us in our greatest hours of need. This community is inspirational in its connection to Israel, in its proactive Zionism.”

The President said the hatred that triggered the Bondi terrorist attack on the first night of Chanukah last year “is the very same, age-old, plague of antisemitism endured by our parents and grandparents”.

“It began long before October 7, generations before even the State of Israel was born. Yet somehow- the October 7 massacre, the greatest mass murder of Jews since the Shoah, emboldened closeted antisemites, here in Australia and around the world,” he said.

Herzog also paid tribute to all those who helped in the aftermath of the massacre.

“To all the heroes of Bondi, those who lent a hand, those who prayed for their wounded neighbours, those who gave blood, those who brought flowers and wrote letters, those who sent a meal, those who embraced this incredible community—each and every one of you has the deep admiration, the respect and the prayers of the Israeli people—for you are the finest of Australia,” he said.

“And I am here also to re-invigorate the important relations between our two strong democracies. I know that by working together we will find the way to expand collaboration and increase understanding and upgrade our relations. During my visit, I intend to discuss it with your national leadership.”

Sunday, February 08, 2026

From Ian:

Hatred of Israel has become a proxy war on the West
The fact that Israel is a Western, technological, liberal, and successful democracy is one reason for the attack against it, but not the only one. Israel is a symbol of Western success, of refusal to surrender, and of steadfast resistance to terror and extremist ideologies.

For radical movements and Western elites that have lost confidence in themselves, Israel is a convenient target. It is easier to attack “Zionism” than to confront the failures of immigration policies and religious radicalization.

Western values are increasingly portrayed as “oppressive.” Thus, hatred of Israel becomes a tool for undermining the very idea of the West.

The gravest problem is not the extremist chants but the silence of the establishment.

Politicians, university presidents, newspaper editors, and opinion leaders prefer “not to get involved.” They condemn late, weakly, or not at all. In doing so, they signal that this new antisemitism, cloaked in moral language, is tolerable.

History, however, teaches a simple truth: Hatred that is not checked in time does not stop on its own.

The struggle over Israel’s image on the international stage is not a narrow public relations battle. It is a struggle over the character and freedom of the free world. Israel is the frontline, not the final target.

The choice is now clear: Take a firm stand on values or continue to surrender in the name of false morality.

This is not only about Israel’s future. It is about the future of the West as a whole.
De-Hamasification of Gaza: Learning from Western and Arab Models of Deradicalization (pdf)
Since Hamas's takeover of Gaza in 2007, its extremist religious-nationalist ideology has been systematically embedded across all spheres of Gaza life - from education and religious institutions to welfare and the media - producing a profound "Hamasification" of public consciousness.

In the wake of the Gaza war, military disarmament and physical rehabilitation alone will not ensure long-term security and stability. A far deeper process of "de-Hamasification" is required: dismantling Hamas's ideological and institutional hegemony and replacing it with a more moderate civic and normative infrastructure.

Instead of Western deradicalization models such as those implemented in Germany and Japan after World War II, we propose adopting operational principles drawn from contemporary Arab models, particularly the model applied in the Gulf states, which combines a firm crackdown on extremist actors with re-education toward religious tolerance and broad-based economic rehabilitation.

Deradicalization in Gaza should be conceived as a comprehensive institutional and cultural reengineering of the entire sphere of life. The scale of destruction vividly demonstrates to the public the costs of the "resistance" project and may generate openness to a more moderate political and ideological alternative - provided that such an alternative is presented credibly, consistently, and with Arab and international support.

Two models from Arab states are relevant to Gaza. The first is a restrictive containment model that relies primarily on security measures (Egypt, Tunisia). The second is an ambitious model of comprehensive social transformation (the UAE and Saudi Arabia). In both, many of the lines of action are similar, albeit implemented with different emphases.

These include the use of security measures of coercion, enforcement, and surveillance; the inculcation of a national narrative that elevates state identity and state law above all other identities and normative frameworks; the promotion of "moderate Islam" as an alternative to extremist Islam, which is framed as a deviation from religious truth; and the engineering of public consciousness across various spheres of social life, with the aim of undermining the extremist narrative and entrenching the preferred narrative.
The Name "West Bank" Erases the Truth
In the Middle East, a place name is never just a name - it is a claim.

For decades, the term "West Bank" has stripped the land of its historical identity.

A mid-20th-century substitution, it replaced the indigenous names Judea and Samaria to sever the Jewish connection to the region.

Now U.S. lawmakers in a dozen states and both houses of Congress are advancing legislation to restore these original names in official U.S. documents.

Judea and Samaria are crucial to Israel's survival. Their ridges tower up to 3,000 feet over the coastal plain where 70% of Israel's population and Ben-Gurion Airport reside.

These highlands are a strategic asset that protects the country from invasion. Without them, Israel would be less than 10 miles wide at its narrowest point and indefensible.

Samaria is a region mentioned more than 100 times in the Bible as the heart of the Northern Kingdom of Israel.

To the south, Judea is the birthplace of the line of King David. Even under the Persian Empire, Judea was the official administrative name for the province.

Christian scriptures treat Judea and Samaria as the actual districts on the Roman map, proving that a millennium after the kings of Israel, the world still used these names.

When the UN drafted the 1947 Partition Plan, it repeatedly referred to Judea and Samaria.

The transition to "West Bank" occurred in 1950, when Jordan annexed the territory and sought to justify a Jordanian presence west of the Jordan River.

Its rule lasted less than two decades, yet it managed to cloud thousands of years of history.

Saturday, February 07, 2026

From Ian:

US Jewish orgs are reassessing ‘allies’ after Oct. 7 betrayals, key Jewish leader says
American Jewish organizations are rethinking the value of traditional coalition-building efforts after many long-time allies “punched us in the gut” following the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations William Daroff told The Times of Israel Thursday.

Ahead of the organization’s annual mission to Israel later this month, Daroff, considered one of the most influential figures in American Jewry, said that community leaders are thinking about how to “press reset” after the ceasefire and hostage return that brought Israel’s two-year war in Gaza to a level of closure.

After the shock of the Hamas attack, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 kidnapped, the Jewish world experienced a second shock afterwards, on the proverbial “October 8,” when many saw friends and partners turn against Israel or stay silent, Daroff said.

“The day after the attack, we were punched in the gut a second time when we saw how many of our erstwhile friends and allies, with whom we’d marched and supported, abandoned us,” he said.

For years, mainstream Jewish organizations have invested heavily in community-relations work, building ties with African American, Latino, LGBT groups and labor unions, among others, Daroff said. They joined coalitions on issues such as raising the minimum wage, civil rights and broader social justice agendas. Part of the purpose was basic decency, but there was also a strategic aspect: an expectation that when Jews faced rising antisemitism or when Israel was under attack, those allies would stand with them.

That assumption did not hold after October 7, however, Daroff said.

“The unions that we had stood with abandoned us,” he said bluntly. “Now, in an environment where organizations have limited resources, I think there needs to be a reassessment of how we prioritize engaging with allies.”
Caroline Glick: The truth about Israel and Middle Eastern Christians
Today it is the Christian communities that are being pushed out of many Middle Eastern countries. As Ambassador George Deek, a proud Israeli Christian Arab has explained , “The ethnic cleansing of Christians in the Middle East is the greatest crime against humanity of the 21st century. In just two decades, Christians like me have been reduced from 20 percent of the population of the Middle East to a mere four percent today.”

Christian communities are often compelled to keep their religion to themselves. Dan Burumi, a Jordanian convert to Christianity living in forced exile, recalled in a recent essay on X that last year, Christians in Fuheis, the last Christian majority town in Jordan, installed a statue of Jesus in the town square. “Within two hours, they were forced to remove it because it was deemed provocative to Muslims.”

In recent months, on instruction from Prime Minister Netanyahu, the IDF stepped in to stop the massacre of Druse in Syria. He stated repeatedly that Israel remains committed to defending threatened Christian communities from Syria to Nigeria.

Those presenting false claims of Israeli state persecution of Christians and an equally false portrait of Christian life in the Muslim Arab world are distorting reality. If they are believed, they will make the world less safe for Jews. But as Israel has proven, the Jewish state is capable of defending itself. Those who will be truly harmed by these distortions are the people they claim to care for – the Christians of the Middle East.
The essence of Palestinian identity clashes with Israel’s existence
What is the difference between positive and negative nationalism?
Positive nationalism is a positive concept. It stands for – for the people, the unique culture of the people, the language of the people, an affinity with the historical homeland, and so on.

Negative nationalism, on the other hand, is negative. It is against – against others, their language, their culture, and so on; against various characteristics of the others’ collective-national existence. Hence, negative nationalism does not stand on its own merits but is essentially antagonistic.

Ideological identity is an identity whose organizing axis is a political, economic, social, or cultural ideology. Certainly, the identity of every person is multidimensional. The question, however, is what is the central organizing axis? For a person whose central organizing identity axis is the national identity, belonging to the people and its derivatives are the top priority, whereas for a person whose organizing identity axis is ideological, the specific ideology becomes primary, and through this prism, he also examines the real and desired reality.

This is the place to ask whether Palestinian identity is a national identity. Let’s check:
● An ethos of common family origin at the dawn of history – This ethos is not unique to the Arabs of Judea, Samaria and Gaza specifically, but to the entire Arab region.
● Unique language – There is no Palestinian language, nor is there a uniform Palestinian dialect, but, rather, dialects of the Arabic language common to the entire region.
● Historical homeland – Until the late 1920s, Palestine was never perceived as a separate territorial unit with any special connection to any Arab subgroup. Even today, the symbols of the Palestinian organizations all feature Palestine within the borders of the British Mandate, which are the borders of the colonial division of the Middle East following World War I.
● Unique culture – The culture of the local Arabs is not fundamentally different nor unique in relation to the other Arab groups in the Middle East. There are certainly local nuances, but these belong to specific places or spaces and not to Palestine as a territorial unit.
● Unique history – There has been a unique history in the last hundred years, and it is entirely focused on resistance to the realization of the Zionist enterprise, and the existence of the State of Israel, usually through wars and terrorism.

It seems that Palestinian identity does not meet the characteristics of positive nationalism.

Negative national expressions
A glance at the core documents of the Palestinian movements, alongside their ongoing propaganda, will reveal that they are full of negative nationalist expressions of the denial of the existence of the Jewish people, denial of the historical connection of the Jews to Palestine, and denial of the realization of the right to self-determination for the Jewish people through a sovereign Jewish state in Palestine.

These are aimed at achieving an ideological goal – the nullification of the achievements of the Zionist enterprise and the cessation of the existence of the State of Israel.

This is a radical concept that is the foundation of Arab resistance to Zionism, and it is what makes the idea of ​​a Palestinian state clearly unfeasible, since such a state would devote all its resources to achieving the purpose of its existence – namely, Israel’s destruction.

It is possible that, through a complex process, Palestinianism will undergo a metamorphosis and transform from a negative ideological identity into something else.

It is also possible that the Arabs will choose instead an Arab national identity that has long historical baggage and cultural depth and, most importantly, does not entail anything that requires confrontation with the Jewish people, the Zionist enterprise, and the State of Israel.

The Abraham Accords, as well as courageous figures acting in the Arab region for Arab-Jewish cooperation and friendship, may serve as excellent proof of the feasibility of this.

Friday, February 06, 2026

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The West’s pragmatic fallacy
Pragmatism is fine within the guardrails of normative morality. But if it tears out those guardrails and throws them into the trash, then it goes belly-up.

Pragmatism has corrupted the West and exposed it to grave danger in one particularly graphic example. Qatar, an Islamist Muslim Brotherhood state, works to destabilize and ultimately conquer the West for Islam.

Accordingly, over the decades, it has insinuated itself into America and Britain, turning their universities into Islamic propaganda factories and buying up countless individuals in politics and the media.

As a result, instead of viewing Qatar as an enemy, America has treated it as a valuable ally. It used Qatar—the sponsor of Hamas—as an honest broker in the Israeli hostage negotiations, which is why they dragged on at the cost of countless hostages’ and Israeli soldiers’ lives.

And now, Qatar has pride of place on Trump’s Board of Peace—and is using all its influence to stop Trump from destroying the Iranian regime.

You might say that Qatar is the Jeffrey Epstein of world politics.

Dealing with the devil never ends well. Abandon principle for pragmatism, and everything goes smash. It’s a lesson the West clearly has yet to learn.
Starmer has broken his promise to sanction Hamas officials, British hostage families say
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has been accused by the families of British Gaza hostages of reneging on a pledge to sanction Hamas officials.

In September last year, days before the prime minister announced he would recognise a Palestinian state, he said new sanctions on individuals linked to Hamas would be imposed within weeks.

Nearly five months on, however, no measures have been announced.

Eight families of British hostages seized by Hamas on October 7 have written to Starmer seeking “urgent clarity” on when he will fulfil his commitment.

They claim the prime minister personally assured them at a Downing Street meeting on September 11 that sanctions against Hamas and other groups involved in anti-Jewish terrorism would be “deepened and widened”.

Starmer reiterated the pledge publicly days later in a speech announcing Palestinian statehood.

According to The Times, officials have admitted privately that there is no imminent sign of new penalties being imposed due to concern it could upset ongoing peace discussions.

Since Labour entered government in July 2024, there have not been any sanctions placed on individuals associated with Hamas, according to the Foreign Office website.

There are currently 30 individuals with links to the terror group under sanctions by the UK. The last time sanctions were imposed was in March 2024 under the Conservatives.

Some individuals based in Britain have been sanctioned by allied countries to the UK, such as Zaher Birawi whom the US accused of being a “senior official” in Hamas.

Birawi, who describes himself as a journalist, has organised pro-Palestine marches and assisted Greta Thunberg’s flotilla to Gaza.
PEN America, Advocate for 'Free Expression,' Withdraws Defense of Israeli Comedian Who Refused To Condemn Jewish State
PEN America, a self-described "free expression" advocacy group, withdrew its defense of the free speech rights of an Israeli comedian, Guy Hochman, whose New York City show was canceled after protesters blocked the entrance to the performance venue.

"On January 29, 2026, PEN America issued a statement on the abrupt cancellation of performances in New York and Los Angeles by an Israeli comedian, who has been accused by advocacy organizations of incitement to genocide in Gaza," the free speech group wrote in a Tuesday statement. "On further consideration, PEN America has decided to withdraw this statement. We remain committed to open and respectful dialogue about the divisions that arise in the course of defending free expression."

The organization initially issued a statement on Jan. 29 supporting Hochman, who served in the Israel Defense Forces and whose performances were canceled after anti-Israel agitation. A mob in New York City blocked the entrance and a Los Angeles venue demanded that he issue a statement accusing Israel of "genocide, rape, starvation, and torture of Palestinian civilians."

PEN America claims to advocate for "human rights to protect free expression in the United States and worldwide," and initially called the mob action "a profound violation of free expression to demand artists, writers or comedians agree to ideological litmus tests as a condition to appear on a stage."

The group did not respond to a request for comment on why it backtracked.

PEN America’s board includes prominent writers, reporters, and literary figures, including the Atlantic’s George Packer, novelist Jodi Picoult, Harvard Law professor Jeannie Suk Gersen, Brooklyn Public Library CEO Linda E. Johnson, and Hachette Book Group CEO David Shelley. None of these board members responded to requests for comment.

The organization’s decision to withdraw its support for Hochman's right to perform free from mob interference comes after a long period of time in which it has backed up anti-Israel figures, including members of designated terrorist groups, as the watchdog group HonestReporting has shown. Its "Writers at Risk" list includes Khalida Jarrar, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terror group; PFLP member Rasem Obaidat; and Ahed Tamimi, a Palestinian activist who wrote in a public message to Israelis: "We’ll slaughter you, and you’ll say that what Hitler did to you was a joke. We’ll drink your blood and eat your skulls."

PEN America has not, to this point, issued any withdrawals of its support for those individuals.
From Ian:

EXCLUSIVE: Palestinian Authority To Pay $315 Million to Terrorists and Their Families Across Middle East in 2026, Watchdog Report Reveals
The Palestinian Authority will dole out $315 million in payments this year to 23,500 terrorists and their families, earmarking more than $19 million a month for a terrorism incentive program, known as "pay-to-slay," that PA president Mahmoud Abbas declared dead last year, according to a new analysis by the Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) research institution shared exclusively with the Washington Free Beacon.

The PA has concealed these payments from Western governments by channeling them through alternate budgets controlled by the PA Security Forces (PASF), its civil services sector, and its pension office, PMW determined. More than 10,000 former inmates are receiving monthly stipends of around $1,280 to $3,800 each month, while the PA will provide another $87,000,000 throughout the year to 13,500 "martyrs and injured" in Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria.

The findings come just a week after the State Department formally determined that the PA shifted to a new terror payment system it hoped to hide from Western donors, the Free Beacon reported, and present the clearest evidence to date that Abbas is violating his February 2025 decree that he had ended the pay-to-slay program. International donors had asked the PA to stop paying terrorists and their families as part of a "reform" project, but Abbas's government "is not voluntarily disclosing that 10,000 terror reward recipients are hidden in the civil service, the PASF, and as 50-year-old PA pensioners," according to the PMW report.

An additional 6,000 pay-to-slay recipients are within the PA's pensioners program, obscuring the payments at a time when Abbas's government is maneuvering for a role in postwar Gaza, and that number only stands to increase over time. "As thousands of imprisoned terrorists will be released from prison in the coming years, they will be shuttled into government jobs and early pensions, and the hidden Pay-for-Slay will continue to grow, hidden from international donors," PMW stated.

By transferring terror-related payments to various government agencies, the PA has been able to declare pay-to-slay void and continue receiving millions from the international community, which largely froze its funding due to the pay-to-slay program. But most donor countries continue to award cash directly to the PA's civil service programs, including the security forces and pension offices. Even the U.S. government, which froze most of its aid in 2018, still provides funding to the PA's security forces.

PMW used newly unearthed Telegram chat logs to determine that the PA has rerouted terrorism payments through its pension program.

"The wounded and prisoners—6,000 of them [had their files] transferred to pensions in different offices, and they are now registered there, and they are calling them one by one, asking them for bank account numbers to confirm them as pensioners," one recipient wrote.
Despite Israeli demands, Bank of Palestine refuses to shut down pay-for-slay accounts
The Bank of Palestine has refused a request from Israel’s Finance Ministry to close 3,400 accounts reportedly used to distribute payments to released terrorists, two sources familiar with the matter told The Jerusalem Post on Friday.

The revelation emerged during a meeting of the security cabinet on Thursday. The accounts are linked to the PA’s controversial “pay-for-slay” program, which provides monthly stipends to Palestinians who were imprisoned for carrying out terrorist attacks, as well as to the families of those killed during such acts.

According to the sources, Israeli authorities had previously submitted an explicit demand to shut down the accounts. In contrast to a similar case several months ago, when the bank agreed to close 1,700 accounts in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the bank’s management this time responded that it was “unable to act.” The prevailing assessment is that senior PA officials instructed the bank not to comply.

The Finance Ministry identified the accounts and warned the bank that failure to close them could prompt Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to block Israeli banks from continuing to act as correspondent banks for the Bank of Palestine.

Correspondent banks, such as Israel’s Discount Bank and Bank Hapoalim, provide services that allow the Palestinian banking system to conduct international transactions. Because Palestinian banks lack foreign branches, these Israeli institutions act as intermediaries. The State of Israel indemnifies the Israeli banks in the event that their services facilitate money laundering or the financing of terrorism.

Should the indemnification be revoked and intermediary banking ties severed, financial officials warn that the PA could face severe economic consequences, potentially even a collapse.

Thursday, February 05, 2026

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: You Can Do Anything As Long As You Do It For Palestine
For those seeking at least a hint as to why the court ruled that smashing in the spines of police officers is officially approved behavior in the United Kingdom, one clue comes to us from the Jewish Chronicle:

“While the jury was in retirement, the court heard posters had been put up on bus stops and lampposts near the building which said: ‘The jury decide not the judge,’ ‘Jury equity is when a jury acquits someone on moral grounds,’ and: ‘Jurors can give a not guilty verdict even when they believe a defendant has broken the law.’

“The prosecution said it was aware of the signs being put up in public places during the trial, which set out the principle of ‘jury equity’ — the capacity of a jury to return a verdict according to conscience — and that police had been taking the posters down.”

Translation: You may find the defendants not guilty if you sympathize with the psychotic “anti-Zionism” that motivated their violence.

Again: the British legal system is a joke.

To be fair to the UK, it is not the first state in Europe to enshrine “the Jewish exception” into law. In 2021 in France, Kobili Traoré was deemed not responsible for his actions by the courts, ostensibly because he had smoked marijuana. What were his actions? He beat 65-year-old Sarah Halimi and then threw her out her window to her death. According to his psychiatric evaluation, he was sent into a violent rage by the sight of Halimi’s mezuzah.

Again, to translate: He realized she was a Jew, so he killed her. This was deemed a psychiatric episode not murder. In France, if you hate Jews so much that it makes you act crazy, you are permitted to murder random Jews. In the UK, if your hatred of Jews compels you to go on a violent rampage, you can count on “jury equity” to find you not guilty of the crimes you admitted to in court.

The sick man of Europe is Europe.
Seth Mandel: Israel-Haters Are Murdering ‘Public Health’
Zohran Mamdani pledging to confront anti-Semitism while his own administration staffers engage in taxpayer-funded Jew-baiting is the kind of hypocrisy we will hopefully never get used to.

The New York Post revealed that city Department of Health staffers have created a “Global Oppression and Public Health Working Group” whose entire reason for existence is to lie about Israel. Take it straight from the horse’s mouth: “We really developed in response to the ongoing genocide in Palestine,” one presenter said while, the Post reports, reading from the group’s mission statement at the beginning of its first meeting on Tuesday.

The blood libel club also vowed it will be “supporting colleagues negatively impacted” by the “trauma” of made-up tales of Jewish crimes.

Since this has nothing to do with “global health,” we are compelled to ask what it is about. And there are two answers.

First, as expected, Mamdani’s victory was taken as a green light for anti-Semites to hijack government services—and there’s no indication Mamdani has any objection to it. On the contrary, Mamdani believes New York City should be engaged in the BDS campaign that supports anti-Jewish boycotts, so he has made clear that he wants public money to be spent on his expensive addiction to anti-Zionism.

There’s no middle ground on “globalize the intifada,” much as Mamdani’s spin doctors would want you to believe otherwise. And Mamdani has made his choice. Why wouldn’t his likeminded fellows come out of the woodwork at the first sign that the coast is now clear; Jew-baiters of the world, unite!

Some of this will play out as Mamdani chooses to surround himself with anti-Semites. And some of it will be anti-Semites choosing to coalesce around Mamdani. Very quickly the difference will become immaterial, if it hasn’t already: This will just be a city government that practices and encourages anti-Semitism. How it got that way is less important than the fact that the one guy who can put a stop to it, won’t.
Joshua Namn: Acknowledging Hatred Against Jews Isn't “Complaining” - It's Life Saving
He was referring to poll by the (liberal) Honan Strategy group. It found that 53% of Jewish voters feel threatened by statements by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his allies, while most non-Jews — 55% — say that’s an overreaction fueled by politics.

Unless you actually believe that the statistics lie, and that attacks on Jews haven’t increased dramatically during the last decade, the most terrifying part of that poll is that more than half of New Yorkers think that we are all just “overreacting.”

Jews are also about 10% of New York’s population. They are the targets of 57% of all hate crimes (all, not just religiously motivated crimes).

The only reason any of this is even possible is precisely because complaining is viewed by the mainstream as an inherently Jewish trait.

We have to reject all negative Jewish stereotypes. It isn’t an issue of pride, but of safety. We left the physical ghettos, now it is time to consign the mental ghettos to that same distant past.

So what’s the best defense against Jewish ghetto stereotypes? Be a proud, unapologetic, warrior Jew (in mitzvot and, if necessary, in unapologetic self-defense). That starts with a psychological willingness to embrace being different. Jewish pride isn’t arrogance: it is confidence.

At the beginning of the Book of Joshua it tells us how to behave when we have to deal with adversity: “Did I not command you, be strong and have courage (chazak v’ematz), do not fear and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your G-d is with you wherever you go.”

Chazak v’ematz: Be strong and have courage.

And THAT is how we fight antisemitism.

Never be afraid. Never give up.

Am Yisrael Chai.
Be’eri to Manchester to Bondi: Antisemitism is the canary in the coalmine for extremism
Just like the Jews murdered in Be’eri, the Jews murdered in Manchester and Bondi did not die because of Middle Eastern geopolitics. They died because the modern strain of an ever-mutating, lethal hate has been normalised as legitimate, in the name of progress, justice, and liberation. Because the hatred of Jews has once again been reframed as a moral critique. Because calls for the elimination of Israel, the Jew among nations, from 'from river to sea' are uniquely tolerated as speech, not genocidal intent.

The victims’ biographies matter. Jews fleeing antisemitism. Jews fleeing war. Jews who believed liberal democracies and universal values would protect them. History tells us otherwise.

But the same ideologies that support ‘globalising the intifada’ are not hostile singularly to Israel or Jews. They are openly hostile to the foundations of democracies: rule of law, pluralism, individual rights, and the very idea of national self-determination. Israel is not the cause of this hostility. It is the testing ground. Antisemitism is not just a weapon in this war. It is the proof of concept.

For the past two years, Israel has been on the front lines of this global threat. The war has not been confined to conventional battlefields. The existential threat is raging as a cultural, legal, informational, and moral war. As Jew among nations, Israel is where an axis of evil tests how far it can go, how much terror can be normalised, how much violence can be justified, how many individual and collective ‘Jews’ can be dehumanised, delegitimised, and applied double standards to - before the world objects.

When antisemitism spreads unchecked, it emboldens those who seek to dismantle democratic norms everywhere. When Jews are murdered, it signals that the guardrails are down. This is why antisemitism is the most reliable predictor of democratic collapse. It is the siren that sounds before the raging fire engulfs everyone else.

The lesson of Bondi Beach, like Manchester, Pittsburgh, Paris, Brussels, Mumbai, Washington, Boulder and elsewhere, is not merely that Jews remain vulnerable as canaries in the coalmine. It is those societies that fail to confront antisemitism at its ideological roots that will inevitably embolden the extremism it predicts, fueling broader violence. This is not about Jewish exceptionalism. It is about memory as historical literacy.

The axis of evil no longer hides its intent. It slaughters and tortures the people of Iran, emboldened by impunity. It openly declares its desire to collapse the West and to build a Caliphate on its rubble. It does so by using shape-shifting antisemitism as defined by the IHRA in a long democratic process as both weapon and symptom. The recent UK court decision that chants of ‘death to the IDF’ to which all Israelis must conscript at a music festival aired to millions - “does not meet criminal threshold” should trouble all who cherish life and liberty.

Those who continue to treat antisemitism as a marginal issue, or a subset of prejudice, are willfully ignoring history’s clearest warning sign. The siren is sounding again. The question remains whether we will finally recognise the fire before it consumes us all.
From Ian:

Andrew Fox: Analysis on the rocks: a rebuttal
Throughout his piece, Milburn compares Israeli conduct unfavourably to US operations in places like Mosul, suggesting Israel should have done more to protect civilians. However, as discussed, Gaza posed unique challenges: a fully trapped population, an enemy deeply embedded within civilian infrastructure, and an ongoing threat to Israel’s own civilians (Hamas rockets and the context of a wider regional war). Other Western militaries engaged in similar conflicts (the US in Iraq, NATO in Afghanistan, etc.) often took measures such as establishing safe corridors or pausing operations to facilitate evacuations. Israel did make some attempts at pauses and corridors, but Hamas frequently undermined them (by blocking evacuations or attacking convoys).

Milburn largely overlooks how Hamas drastically increased the difficulty of conducting a “surgical” military campaign. To illustrate: Hamas fighters would fire from within crowds of displaced civilians or move into UN shelters after attacking, effectively daring Israel to respond. This blurred the lines between civilians and combatants in real time. Israeli soldiers on the ground faced an enemy that did not wear uniforms and exploited urban chaos as cover. These are not excuses for any reckless strikes, but they provide essential context. A fair analysis would acknowledge that even the best-trained army would struggle to avoid civilian harm under such conditions. Milburn’s focus, nearly solely on Israeli “choices”, suggests Israel could have attained the same military goals with much less damage if it had chosen differently. He offers little insight beyond generic appeals to restraint. This approach risks echoing armchair generalship that fails to engage with the tactical reality of Gaza.

One must also consider the dangerous precedent that Milburn’s one-sided assignment of blame could set. According to his account, Israel’s overwhelming firepower in Gaza is nearly entirely responsible for civilian deaths, while Hamas’s strategy of using human shields is treated as a minor detail. This framing effectively rewards the use of human shields. If an army knows its enemy will be condemned for any civilian casualties, while it (the defender) faces little blame for hiding behind civilians, the perverse incentive is to continue using this unlawful tactic.

International law explicitly prohibits using civilians to make targets immune (Additional Protocol I, art. 51(7)) for this very reason – it weakens the law’s protections when followed. Milburn’s analysis minimises Hamas’s role to the extent that it may encourage the Hamas strategy: bunker under hospitals, coexist with families, and then hope global outrage restrains Israel. That is a dangerous message to send. To be clear, Israel is not exempt from blame if it caused disproportionate harm, but we cannot ignore that Hamas’s unlawful tactics are relevant to the outcome. Both legally and morally, Hamas bears significant responsibility for endangering Gazan civilians. Ignoring this, as Milburn does, distorts the moral balance and creates a one-dimensional view of the war.

Hamas’s illegality does not absolve Israel. The IDF still faces tough questions. Did every airstrike truly follow the principle of proportionality? Were target validations and intelligence sufficiently rigorous amid the chaos? Did Israel do everything possible to minimise harm (without abandoning its mission)? These are valid questions, and there are grounds for criticising Israel. Indeed, Israeli authorities have at times acknowledged failings or launched investigations into incidents with high casualties.

This rebuttal is not an unfounded defence of all Israeli actions. Instead, it is a plea for analytical balance. Milburn’s broad accusation, essentially claiming that Israel deliberately chose a policy of killing civilians rather than risking harm, is not substantiated by the full record. Proportionality in war is a complex challenge, and reasonable observers can debate specific instances. However, such debate must consider the realities of Hamas’s tactics of human shielding, the unprecedented battlefield conditions, and the inherent uncertainty of war. Once these factors are taken into account, the narrative shifts from a simplistic “Israel behaved recklessly and Gaza’s civilians paid the price” to a more nuanced (and uncomfortable) truth: Hamas created a battlefield where high civilian casualties were almost inevitable, and Israel’s military, while endeavouring to achieve its mission to halt ongoing attacks, made mistakes and caused tragic, unintended consequences, but did not fundamentally deviate from how other professional armies have operated under similar or worse constraints.

Holding Israel to strict IHL standards is justified; expecting zero civilian harm in a scenario deliberately designed by Hamas to maximise civilian casualties is not. A calm analysis understands Hamas’s illegal actions as a significant factor without excusing Israeli mistakes. It also reinterprets proportionality not as a simple casualty measure after conflict, but as a continual obligation of responsible military decision-making amid uncertainty. Milburn’s critique, by largely ignoring the real battlefield limitations, does a disservice to his stated goal of learning how to better protect civilians. A more balanced discussion would recognise that both Hamas’s tactics and Israeli decisions influenced the outcome, and that the real challenge is how democratic armed forces can maintain humanitarian standards when fighting an opponent who intentionally seeks to undermine them. That is the conversation we need, and it begins by correcting the record that Milburn’s biased argument left so vulnerable to critique.
Islamic Warfare and America: Why the West Must Now Confront Jihad at Its Doorstep
The American Constitution enshrined individual rights to freedom of speech, religion, assembly, and thought, regardless of how radical or extreme. Yet these uniquely American liberties have been exploited by its enemies to subvert the U.S. and the West from within. Americans have largely been willfully blind to recognizing that enemy ideologies can eventually undermine U.S. national security and destroy its societal fabric. Why does America continue to struggle to recognize jihadi subversion by Islamist organizations and actors?

America's Islamic enemies have publicly declared their intention for decades. A 1991 Muslim Brotherhood Memorandum discovered by the FBI reveals this strategy in detail. Authored by Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Akram, the blueprint details a "Civilization-Jihadist Process" to destroy Western civilization from within and establish Islamic governance in North America. "The Ikhwan [Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within." These are not metaphors. They are declarations of war.

Dr. Harold Rhode describes the foundational doctrine of Islamic warfare in his book Modern Islamic Warfare, which explains how jihadist movements view their struggle as a cosmic battle that cannot cease "until the world be all for Allah." Among both Sunni jihadists and the messianic variety of Shiite jihadists that dominate the Iranian regime leadership, the West represents an adversary to be subdued, and Israel is merely the first, local hurdle in conquering the world for Islam.

The PLO's original 1964 charter and Hamas's 1988 covenant called for the annihilation of Israel through jihad. Today it is Hamas whose doctrine and political popularity dominate the Palestinian street. The fact that many Americans view the Palestinian cause primarily as rooted in territorial grievance rather than ideological jihad demonstrates the success of their disinformation and deception campaign. Any American policy toward the Palestinians must be conditioned on the explicit and verifiable rejection of jihad, recognition of Israel's permanent right to exist, and adoption of educational curricula free of religious hatred and incitement.

Most importantly, the U.S. must recognize that Israel's fight is also a battle for Western civilization's future survival, safety, and security. Moral clarity and a united front between Israel and the U.S. is necessary to defeat jihadist terror and political subversion.
Rep Rashida Tlaib faces terrorist ties allegations in new report
A comprehensive new briefing document from a prominent nonpartisan research and policy group is sounding the alarm on "serious ethical and national security concerns" related to Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib and her affiliations with individuals and organizations linked to designated foreign terrorist entities.

"The conduct of Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, including her rhetoric, affiliations, campaign infrastructure, and ideological alignment with certain individuals and organizations, raises serious concerns about potential risks to the ethical and institutional integrity of the United States government," the report, released by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy’s advocacy and policy-oriented arm, states.

The report details a "recurring pattern" of behavior that it says suggests an ideological affinity for radical movements, ranging from participation in conferences featuring convicted terrorists to significant campaign payments made to activists linked to Hamas and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-aligned networks.

The briefing covers Tlaib’s financial history and says her campaign apparatus poured large sums of cash to anti-Israel activists, including almost $600,000 between 2020 and 2025 to Unbought Power, a consulting firm headed by Rasha Mubarak.

Mubarak has faced scrutiny for her past affiliations with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2009 Holy Land Foundation terror-financing trial, and the Alliance for Global Justice (AFGJ), which has been investigated for ties to the PFLP-linked group Samidoun.

Tlaib, according to the briefing, has shared the stage with a variety of questionable figures highlighted by a conference alongside Wisam Rafeedie, a convicted PFLP operative, who defended the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack as "resistance."

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