From Ian:
700 Days Since Oct. 7: Resilience Amid Conflict, From Gideon to Gaza
Three thousand years ago, 300 resourceful Israelite soldiers under the leadership of Gideon defeated 100,000 Midianites. Celebrated for bravery, strategy, and integrity, the legendary victory is also a story of large-scale violence that raises questions about proportionality, accountability and the limits of even divinely guided action.
Rigid ideology can cloud judgment, and miraculous triumphs can breed overconfidence or misread moral authority. Courage alone is not enough; wisdom, restraint, and discernment are essential. Military and political leaders alike must weigh consequences carefully, balancing the survival of their people with the legitimacy of their actions.
Israel’s now nearly two-year war with Hamas is a stark reminder of these lessons.
Civilians huddle under a relentless rain of rockets, including cluster munitions aimed at Jewish communities. Homes, schools, and hospitals tremble under constant threat. Recent attacks, like the murder of six Israelis at a Jerusalem bus stop, underscore that every citizen lives in danger while national leaders confront impossible choices. These are not abstract calculations — they are matters of life and death, of protecting communities while upholding the ethical framework that gives Israel’s actions moral and legal weight.
Fighting terror while preserving legitimacy demands deliberate, disciplined action: measured responses, protection of civilians, and principled leadership. Every strike, blockade, or intervention carries consequences that ripple beyond the battlefield. Just as Israel’s political and military leaders must navigate these realities, leaders in the Diaspora must resist judgments that oversimplify the complexity on the ground.
Policy and public rhetoric must balance urgency with restraint, ensuring that responses remain ethical even in a volatile reality. Understanding this complexity is not weakness — it is the foundation of enduring strength.
History offers repeated warnings of what happens when moral clarity fades or collective punishment replaces justice. Pogroms, massacres, and decades of conflict show that indiscriminate retaliation only fuels cycles of violence and suffering. When Israel defends itself, civilians in Gaza may be harmed; yet failing to defend Israel allows terror to traumatize communities. Facing this dilemma, leaders must act decisively while resisting the impulse to scapegoat. Precision and discipline are essential to maintain legitimacy both internationally and within Israel’s own conscience.
Andrew Fox:
Israel Derangement Syndrome
What we are seeing is not “criticism of Israel”. It is a new, globalised antisemitism.
When Israeli athletes are shunned, when Jewish students are harassed on campus, when faeces are smeared on London synagogues, when kosher restaurants are vandalised in Paris, Berlin, New York — it is not about Gaza. It is about Jews.
BDS was always about this. Its founders admitted openly that their goal was not two states but the erasure of Israel altogether. Now, through lawfare, media manipulation, and social media swarming, they have normalised antisemitism as progressive chic.
This is why the language of “genocide” is so dangerous. It is not simply inaccurate; it is incitement. It primes populations to view Israel (and by extension Jews everywhere) as perpetrators of the greatest crime imaginable. That narrative does not just delegitimise Israel; it endangers Jewish communities worldwide.
The only thing being genocided in this conflict is the truth itself.
The fact that Israel did not initiate this war. Hamas did, with the most brutal massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. The fact that Israel has gone to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties in a conflict that Hamas deliberately embeds within civilian populations. The fact that the international system, from The Hague to the UN, has been weaponised to persecute one state, and one state only, because it is Jewish.
Israel is not perfect. No state at war is. However, to pretend that it is guilty of genocide while Hamas openly proclaims its genocidal intent is to invert reality itself. This inversion is the sickness of our age. It is Israel Derangement Syndrome, and it is spreading fast.
Some might say: so what if Europeans complain about Eurovision? So what if campus radicals shout about genocide? Israel remains strong, armed, and resilient.
My reply is that history shows us to take such disturbances seriously. Demonisation always comes before violence. Look at the USA, where political violence is becoming normalised. Lies always lead to persecution, and when Israel loses bipartisan support in the United States, when antisemitism becomes mainstreamed in global institutions, when Jewish life is once again made fragile in Europe and America, the consequences will not be minor.
This is not about Gaza. It is about the future of the Jewish people.
We are living through the largest propaganda assault in modern history. Hamas’s 7th October massacre was designed not only to kill Israelis but to unleash a narrative war that would isolate Israel, fracture its alliances, and inflame antisemitism worldwide. It has succeeded far beyond Hamas’s wildest dreams.
The danger extends beyond Israel. It threatens the very integrity of truth. If lies can be weaponised to label the most targeted, scrutinised, and restrained military campaign in modern warfare as “genocide,” then words mean nothing, facts mean nothing, and law itself becomes a pogrom.
That is the world Hamas wants. That is the world antisemitism demands. Unless the sickness of Israel Derangement Syndrome is confronted head-on, that is the world we will all be forced to live in.
The tyranny of the crybully
We’ve heard much talk of flags this year, but the emergence and proliferation of this particular icon is perhaps the most significant. This was brought home by its over-abundance at Glastonbury festival this summer, where the meaning of the Palestinian flag became palpable: it now serves to demonstrate that you support victims against oppressors, the weak against the strong, good against evil. That’s why the assembled multitudes saw nothing wrong with chanting Jew-killing slogans, such as ‘Death, death to the IDF’. They were on the side of the angels against the perpetrators of ‘genocide’. The Palestinian flag is now the global symbol of the victim.
Victimhood is much sought-after for good reasons. Nothing can gainsay the righteous fury of the victim who suffers – the victim who has right on his side and whose every response and deed can therefore be permitted. The victim feels wronged by an unjust and cruel world and we must feel his pain. Those who question the motives of the victim can be angrily dismissed as cruel, heartless or accomplices of the oppressors themselves.
Nothing can satiate the thirst for vengeance the victim gleefully seeks. Armed with self-righteousness, the victim can behave as he pleases, harassing and threatening others while protesting it is he who is under attack. The victimhood activist today is personified in the figure of the crybully – a term coined by Julie Burchill.
It’s a seductive mindset and unbeatable formula, which is why we’ve seen it in all its gruesomeness in recent years. The dubious #MeToo movement of the past decade was allowed to gain traction because no one dared oppose or doubt the claimants seeking recompense against their transgressors. The belligerent self-righteousness of the Black Lives Matter movement was of a similar ilk and was indulged for the same reasons. Radical trans activists, as Graham Linehan knows only too well, made great political advances by portraying themselves as persecuted martyrs who just wanted to ‘be nice’ and stop kids from killing themselves.
And it’s going on right now in Britain in its most egregious and cunning form, with attempts to define and encode ‘Islamophobia’, a term that seeks to shield any criticism of Islam or Muslims by ringfencing each under the category ‘persecuted and oppressed’.
The identitarian right also drinks deep from this well of self-pity and resentment.
None of this is particularly new. Much of the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche centred on the self-righteousness of the persecuted and the psychology of resentment. Writing in 1888 of the desire for ‘justice’ (that is, vengeance) then preached by many Christians and socialists, he concluded: ‘What is common to both, and unworthy in both, is that someone has to be to blame for the fact that one suffers – in short, that the sufferer prescribes for himself the honey of revenge as a medicine for his suffering… this thirst for revenge as a thirst for pleasure.’
From Ian:
From Munich to Tehran to Doha: Israel’s unbroken doctrine of justice
Critics call these killings vengeance. That is a fundamental misunderstanding. Israel’s targeted operations are not revenge; they are justice, deterrence and self-preservation.
Justice, because the blood of murdered Jews cannot be brushed aside with a U.N. resolution or a “peace process” that drags on indefinitely. Deterrence, because future terrorists must learn that planning atrocities against Jews means that they will spend the rest of their lives looking over their shoulder. And self-preservation, because allowing terror leaders to live freely and plot the next massacre is to invite repetition of Oct. 7.
The world often prefers Israel to “move on.” After Munich, the International Olympic Committee didn’t even pause the Games for long. Today, the international community demands ceasefires and concessions, as if Hamas were a legitimate negotiating partner rather than the butchers of men, women, children and babies. In both eras, Israel answered with action, not platitudes.
It is also worth remembering who these terror leaders are. The Munich plotters were not impoverished freedom fighters; they were operatives of a well-funded, politically connected terror machine. Likewise, those Hamas leaders who reside in Tehran and Doha are not struggling refugees; they live in opulence while ordinary Gazans languish under their misrule. Their deaths do not deprive their people of leadership; they liberate them from tyrants who profit from endless war.
The principle behind Israel’s campaign is both ancient and modern. The Bible teaches, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do justice?” Israel has taken that imperative into its national security doctrine. The long arm of justice, whether carried out by Mossad agents in the 1970s or Israeli operatives today, tells the world that Jewish lives are not cheap, Jewish dignity is not expendable, and Jewish sovereignty has meaning.
When the Munich terrorists struck in 1972, they aimed to humiliate Israel on the world stage. Instead, they birthed a doctrine of deterrence that outlived them all. When Hamas struck on Oct. 7, they sought to terrorize Israelis into paralysis. Instead, they reawakened Israel’s determination to ensure that Jewish blood is never spilled without consequence.
From Munich to Tehran, from 1972 to today, Israel has demonstrated that the Jewish people will not rely on others to secure justice. If the international community cannot—or will not—prevent the murder of Jews, then Israel will act alone. That is not vengeance. It is the meaning of sovereignty.
The names change—Munich, Black September, Hamas, Tehran, Doha—but the principle remains constant: If you slaughter Jews, your day of reckoning will come.
NYPost Editorial:
Hamas in Qatar was fair game — and Israel’s strike there can hasten an end to the Gaza war
Israel took a big step toward ending the war in Gaza with Tuesday’s strike on Hamas leadership in Qatar.
It wasn’t immediately clear if any top terror bosses met their maker, but the strike left no doubt for any who survived: Israel is coming for them.
If the hostages in Gaza aren’t returned and Hamas fighters don’t disarm, the terror kingpins’ days are numbered. No matter where they hide.
Early reports suggested Israel took out a leader or three, but Hamas denied any were among five people it said died.
Either way, the attack had huge value: Hamas’ chiefs thought they had safe refuge in Qatar — far from the fighting and squalor in Gaza.
They lived lives of luxury in five-star hotels, reportedly sitting on an $11 billion stash, even as Gaza civilians suffered.
They could turn down cease-fire deals with no fear of personal consequences, especially since Qatar is a US ally.
Now any who survived must know that fear.
“The days when the heads of terror enjoyed immunity anywhere are over,” warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Hear, hear.
Family of Raphael Lemkin, who coined term ‘genocide,’ fights to have his name removed from ‘anti-Israel’ institute
Raphael Lemkin served as a columnist for the Zionist World journal. He decried the forsaking of Hebrew as a “sin we have committed against our linguistic patrimony.” And Lemkin declared in 1927 that the “task of the Jewish people is … [to become] a permanent national majority in its own national home.”
And yet despite Lemkin’s Zionist bona fides, 10 days after the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, on Oct. 17, 2023, the institute named for the Polish-born Jewish lawyer accused the State of Israel of carrying out a “genocide” against Palestinians — the very term that Lemkin coined in 1943 and helped draft into law with the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
Though it initially said that the Hamas atrocities had “genocidal dimensions,” the organization has since walked back this designation, referring to the massacres as an “unprecedented military operation” and denouncing those who say that Israel’s war against Hamas is a justified response to the Oct. 7 attacks.
Now, members of Lemkin’s family, with assistance from the European Jewish Association, are trying to get the Pennsylvania-based Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention to stop using his name, calling it deceptive and disparaging.
“The Lemkin Institute, through its very name, as well as its marketing and other materials, represents itself as an embodiment of Mr. Lemkin’s ideology. In reality, the Lemkin Institute’s policies, positions, activities and publications are anathema to Mr. Lemkin’s belief system,” the EJA legal team wrote in a letter to Gov. Josh Shapiro and the Pennsylvania Bureau of Corporations and Charitable Organizations.
“The Lemkin Institute is not authorized by Raphael Lemkin’s family, his estate, or any custodian of his legacy to rely upon his name for any purpose. The European Jewish Association and Mr. Lemkin’s family are outraged by the Lemkin Institute’s use of Mr. Lemkin’s name, especially in the context of the Lemkin Institute’s anti-Israel agenda,” the attorneys wrote.
From Ian:
Stop funding the fight against antisemitism and build Israel instead
There is also a symbolic dimension. Campaigning against antisemitism can inadvertently reinforce an image of Jews and Israel as perpetually embattled, defined by their enemies rather than their achievements. This defensive posture echoes post-Holocaust narratives of victimhood, which critics argue can undermine confidence and agency.
By contrast, Israel’s story is one of extraordinary strength. The global military analysis site Global Firepower ranks Israel as the 15th most powerful military in the world, backed by a $30.5 billion defense budget. Beyond raw strength, Israel has become a global hub of innovation.
European Security & Defence notes it is among the world’s top ten defense exporters, while the OECD records Israel as the leading nation in research and development spending as a share of GDP. Its startup ecosystem is valued at more than $250 billion, ranking it fourth globally, according to Strategy International.
This narrative of resilience and ingenuity is often overshadowed by reactive battles against hostile rhetoric.
If boycotts and international criticism pose real challenges, they also highlight a different strategic choice: to invest inward rather than outward. By channeling resources into infrastructure, research, and education, Israel can strengthen its long-term position regardless of external hostility.
Israel is already a world leader in science, medicine, military technology, cybersecurity and many other areas. Investing in growing Israel’s strength can convince the world that boycotts are self-destructive and alliances are mutually beneficial. Success on the ground—economic, cultural, and technological—may ultimately do more to shape global perceptions than any anti-hate campaign.
In the short run, ignoring antisemitism will not be easy. Hostile rhetoric may continue, and some communities may feel abandoned without dedicated advocacy. Yet over time, resilience may be better demonstrated by thriving despite hostility, rather than by fighting to silence it.
Perhaps the most powerful response to hatred is not defense but success. By focusing on building a future of strength, innovation and resilience, Israel and its supporters can tell a story not of victimhood but of vitality. In the long run, that may prove to be the most convincing rebuttal of all.
Seth Frantzman:
The legacy of September 11: The danger of terrorist groups undermining US strength
Today we look back in memory, but for many of us, the memories are of what came after. The US invaded Afghanistan and stayed for twenty years. By the end, an American born on 9/11 could have been serving in that war.
The Biden administration’s withdrawal from Kabul was reminiscent of the withdrawal from South Vietnam - chaotic and humiliating. The Taliban, hosted for years by US ally Qatar, quickly retook Afghanistan. The US-backed government collapsed overnight. Billions of dollars and two decades of work evaporated.
Questions remain: Where did all the money go? What was the point of all the death and sacrifice? Why was a US ally hosting the Taliban, who were fighting the US? And why was Bin Laden found hiding in Pakistan, a US partner, in 2011, living next to Pakistan’s version of West Point?
The US invasion of Iraq brought similar questions. Iraq soon became an Iranian sphere of influence, with militias targeting American forces. By June 2014, two Iraqi divisions collapsed in Mosul as ISIS advanced, and the entire Iraqi army disintegrated. American-trained units disappeared, leaving thousands of US-made vehicles for ISIS - just as the Taliban would do in 2021.
In the end, ISIS was defeated by a US-led coalition, but the cost was high. The Middle East now balances ties with Washington by also courting China, Russia, and other powers. Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel was, in part, predicated on its belief that the US-led world order was collapsing. It killed more than 1,000 people, including Americans, and assumed Washington would not respond forcefully.
Indeed, little was done by the Biden administration to secure the release of Americans held in Gaza. It took until January 2025 for the Trump administration to declare that enough was enough.
Even now, the Gaza war continues. The shadow of 9/11 still looms, and there is still no clarity about what comes next.
Phyllis Chesler:
It's 9/11 Again
I will never forget 9/11. It is seared into my memory. I am still always "back there." How could I forget so many civilian murders, so many victims of Ground Zero-related cancers, so many bereft families, so much ash, such a distinctive smell, how many police officers and firemen were lost as they attempted their heroic rescues. How empty my skyline was!
Most Americans were so shocked. But why? Islamist terrorist Jihadists had attempted to bomb the World Trade Center before. Why were our memories so imperfect? Why didn't we understand that this was a Jihad attack on both America and Israel. Bin Laden himself said so.
To remind us, once more, about what happened on 9/11, I am republishing the beginning of my 2003 book, The New Antisemitism.
On September 11, 2001, at about 11 a.m., I walked over to my computer and typed the sentence: “Now we are all Israelis.” Always, it begins with the Jews. Afterwards, Osama bin Laden called the assault on America “‘blessed attacks’ against the infidel…the new Christian-Jewish crusade.” He explained that the Twin Towers had fallen because of American support for Israel.
War and a new kind of antisemitism had been declared. I had no choice but to write this book: The New Anti-Semitism.
From Ian:
John Spencer:
A Siege on Gaza City Is Not a War Crime
Israel has called for the mass evacuation of civilians from Gaza City, signaling that the final battle for the city is inevitable. As the disinformation campaign intensifies, accusations that sieges are illegal or immoral will surge. They are not.
A siege, properly defined, is the surrounding and isolation of an enemy force to cut off supplies, reinforcement and maneuver, usually to compel surrender. It remains permitted under the laws of armed conflict when directed against combatants and undertaken with precautions to minimize harm to civilians. Indeed, it can be the best way to reduce civilian casualties.
In almost every major urban operation of the last generation, the U.S. and its partners have surrounded a city, urged civilians to leave - and then began a well-planned attack. Given Israel's record thus far, its attack on Gaza City will be lawful, moral and necessary. The IDF will proceed like any modern military facing an entrenched enemy in dense cities.
No government can allow a terrorist army to maintain a safe haven in a dense city while holding hostages and firing rockets. If Hamas refuses to release captives and surrender its grip on Gaza City, Israel is justified in completing its siege and assault until Hamas is defeated.
Hamas Fights for Power Built on a Mountain of Corpses
Anyone who examines the rhetoric of Hamas will quickly discover it is a project of organized death. It is a system that turns blood into political currency and suicide into a collective identity. Hamas was built on the lethal formula: "If you kill, you are a hero; if you are killed, you are a martyr in heaven." This equation leaves no room for an ordinary person to choose their own life, dignity, or future. In their world, a hero is one who blows himself up among others because he is guaranteed a direct path to heaven.
The true tragedy of this dark and regressive ideology is that death is an absolute obligation. Followers must either kill or be killed. Every tragedy is turned into publicity. A grieving mother is not left to mourn; she is forced to stand heroically before the cameras, shouting that her sons are all potential martyrs. A widow is turned into a symbol of piety and endurance.
As for the children, their fate is predetermined. They are the "cubs of the cause," and their next step is not toward school but down the path to another death. In essence, Hamas operates death factories, producing the dead while preparing the living to be their ready replacements.
Hamas invests in the business of death, which it sells to the gullible and the deluded. The more corpses pile up, the higher Hamas's political stock rises. For Hamas, victory is not peace. It is the rising death toll. This perverse logic desecrates the sanctity of human life. Hamas is fighting for power built on a mountain of corpses. It is not liberating a people; it is bleeding them dry.
Why Israel's Strike Against Hamas Was Both Justified and Overdue
The Israeli attack on Hamas in Qatar marked a restoration of moral clarity.
For nearly two years since the Oct. 7 massacres, Hamas's leadership had orchestrated genocide from the comfort of Qatari luxury hotels, protected by the fiction of diplomatic immunity and the shield of a supposed American ally.
Those who plan mass murder cannot claim sanctuary anywhere on earth. This attack should have happened years ago.
Qatar provided an extraterritorial sanctuary where its leadership could direct operations, manage finances, and plan attacks while remaining physically removed from consequences.
This arrangement represents a perversion of both warfare and diplomacy that no civilized nation should tolerate. When Qatar transformed itself into a command center for terrorism, it challenged the fundamental architecture of international order.
When those who order atrocities remain immune from their consequences, this incentivizes maximum violence with minimum personal risk. Israel's strike restored the principle that those who choose war must share its dangers.
By demonstrating that Hamas leaders were vulnerable even in the heart of a wealthy Gulf capital, Israel restored the element of personal risk that constrains extremist behavior.
The message was: choose terror, and you choose to live as a target, regardless of which government provides your refuge.
From Ian:
Jerry Seinfeld compares 'Free Palestine' movement to Ku Klux Klan in surprise university speech
Comedian and actor Jerry Seinfeld compared the "Free Palestine" movement to the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), likening the former's rhetoric to the white supremacist organization based on their antisemitism.
Seinfeld made these claims, which The Hollywood Reporter described as "inflammatory," during a surprise appearance at an event at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.
“Free Palestine is, to me, just — you’re free to say you don’t like Jews. Just say you don’t like Jews,” the university's student newspaper, The Duke Chronicle, quoted him as saying.
“By saying Free Palestine, you’re not admitting what you really think," he continued. "So it’s actually — compared to the Ku Klux Klan, I’m actually thinking the Klan is actually a little better here because they can come right out and say, ‘We don’t like Blacks, we don’t like Jews.’ Okay, that’s honest.”
The student newspaper cited an email sent by the university spokesperson that Duke doesn't preview the remarks of speakers and that the institution doesn't endorse the remarks of those invited to speak. The spokesperson added that the university's Chabad organized Seinfeld's arrival at the event, alongside other student groups and the university.
The president of the student Chabad group, Mason Herman, told NBC News that "the event was highlighting the fact that there are more than 40 hostages still in Gaza. To one, raise awareness of that fact, and two, to share their plight while in captivity. And to share Omer's story."
Seinfeld at university to introduce Shem Tov and his spiritual journey
The famed comedian made the speech before introducing former Israeli hostage Omer Shem Tov, who was held in Gaza for 505 days. The event was only open to students and faculty of Duke, and Shem Tov was invited to share his spiritual journey while in Hamas captivity, according to the spokesperson. Seinfeld also asked that his appearance not be announced beforehand.
Seinfeld had already given a speech at Duke last year while receiving an honorary degree, where dozens of students walked out due to the comedian's support of Israel, with some chanting "Free Palestine."
Yair Lapid:
The UN is a stage for hypocrisy: It’s time for democracies to exit
In 2021, while I was serving as Israel’s foreign minister, the U.N. General Assembly passed a series of resolutions against Israel. A year later, in 2022, when I was prime minister, the General Assembly passed yet another series of resolutions against Israel.
Nobody cared. No one burst into my office waving a piece of paper in panic. We didn’t huddle in front of the television, holding sweaty hands and waiting for the vote. Israel’s U.N. ambassador didn’t call me, choking back tears, to confess he felt like a failure. The fact that the U.N. meets and votes against Israel is like rain in London: that’s just what it does. They gather, deliver the same speech as last year, vote the same way as last year, and then head to dinner at Wolfgang’s on Park Avenue.
The idea for the United Nations was born out of a desire by democratic nations to promote liberal values and human rights. Its foundation is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 21 declares that the organization will advance democracy around the world, so that everywhere there will be "periodic and genuine elections… guaranteeing the free expression of the will of the people." It only lacks five words: Or you won’t be admitted.
A mix of post-colonial guilt and ideological laziness led the U.N. to admit more and more non-democratic states. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, of the U.N.’s 193 member states, only 25 are "full democracies," with another 46 "flawed democracies." In other words, in every vote, on every budget, in every resolution, non-democracies hold an automatic majority. And they use it without the slightest qualm.
That’s how Iran sat on the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women in 2022, as Mahsa Amini was murdered. Syria chaired the Conference on Disarmament in 2018 while gassing its own citizens. North Korea presided over that very same disarmament conference in 2022 while openly brandishing nuclear weapons and firing ballistic missiles at Japan. China currently serves on the Human Rights Council — apparently because it cares so deeply about human rights.
And all this before we even touch the U.N.’s obsessive bias — sorry, there’s no better word — against Israel. I am the last person to claim Israel is perfect or mistake-free. I disagree with most of what the current government does, especially in Gaza (I supported the strike in Iran and the operation against Hezbollah in Lebanon). Still, the U.N.’s treatment of Israel is the diplomatic equivalent of a psychotic episode. Israel makes up 0.1% of the world’s population, yet accounts for more than 60% of the U.N.’s condemnatory resolutions in the past decade.
US Jewish leaders refuse to meet Macron in New York
Emmanuel Macron sought to set up a meeting with U.S. Jewish leaders on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly later this month in New York City, but the only available times for the French president were during Rosh Hashanah.
It won’t take place for that reason, although the leaders wouldn’t have met with Macron anyway, a source invited to the meeting told JNS.
“I think the organizations, for the most part, would not have participated,” the source said. “The guy has a 15% popularity rating in France. It’s not our job to help him out.”
Macron has said that France will recognize a Palestinian state this month. The source, who told JNS that AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee would have likely been among those invited to meet with the French president, said Jewish leaders would have balked at the meeting for broader reasons than Paris opting to recognize a Palestinian state and rising Jew-hatred in France.
It’s more “the climate” that would let the president say, “‘Look, the American Jews met with me,’ regardless of the content,” the source said. (JNS sought comment from the French embassy in Washington and from Macron’s office.)
If American Jewish leaders had met with Macron, they would have taken a hard line with the French president, including his “statements on Israel, the failure to respond to antisemitism,” his decision to recognize a Palestinian state and to try to convince others to do so, per the source.
Israeli ambassador pushes back on ‘ethnic cleansing’ charge from Democrats
Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, rejected charges by two Senate Democrats that Israel is engaged in “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians, ahead of a major Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip and increasing violence between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank.
Leiter, in a statement to The Hill on Tuesday, took exception with the conclusion reached by Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Oreg.), who described their impressions of Israel’s war against Hamas as aimed at forcing the flight of Palestinians from Gaza, and policies in the West Bank as squeezing Palestinians into enclaves or being forced out of the territory.
“The charge of ‘ethnic cleansing’ against Israel is false and dangerous. It is not a legal definition but a political label, used to inflame tensions, spread hate, and fuel antisemitism,” Leiter said in a statement.
“Israel does not deport Palestinians because of their identity. Israel has, rather, temporarily removed non-combatant populations from war-zones in order to guarantee their safety.”
Ethnic cleansing is not a crime formally defined under international law, but its practice – namely a policy of forced or coerced displacement of a certain group of people – can constitute crimes against humanity and be part of a larger legal determination of genocide, according to the United Nations.
Van Hollen and Merkley, speaking to reporters last week, said they were granted limited views of the Gaza Strip but looked into the city of Rafah from the border with Egypt. They said what once was a vibrant city had been reduced to rubble, the city razed to the ground, serving as one example of what they said was a large-scale campaign to influence the “voluntary emptying of Gaza its population, in other words, pushing people out of Gaza.”
Leiter said the use of terms like “ethnic cleansing” was creating a false narrative that “incites rather than informs.”
“This war is against Hamas, the group that carried out the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust,” he said, referring to Hamas’s terrorist attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed approximately 1,200 people, took more than 250 hostage and triggered the wider war.
“It is not a war against the people of Gaza. The goal is to defend Israel’s borders and restore security for our people.”
From Ian:
Brendan O'Neill:
The pathological chutzpah of Israel’s critics
Israel’s strike on the Hamas leaders holed up in Doha really has exposed the pathological chutzpah, the cavernous gall, of its preening critics in the West. No sooner had it fired its missiles at the assembled militants than a chorus of condemnation was ringing out in the West’s corridors of power and our haughty media. This was a ‘flagrant violation of Qatar’s sovereignty’, yelped useless Keir Starmer. Oh, so Mr Second Referendum, that implacable old foe of Brexit, suddenly gives a shit about sovereignty? Good to know.
To be clear, Israel’s whack on Doha is a striking development. This is the first time Israel has fired at a Western-backed Gulf state. Qatar had long considered itself immune to the Middle East’s waves of violence, not least because it is close to mighty America and home to Al Udeid, the largest US airbase in the Middle East. It seems Britain had no advance warning of Israel’s attack but America did, and apparently America is not best pleased. Trump reportedly feels ‘very badly’ about it. And it’s unclear if the strike was a success: Hamas says five of its members were killed but its leaders survived.
So this is a comment-worthy event, for sure. It hints at strains in the US-Israel alliance, though my feeling is that this is overstated. It speaks to a renewed military bravado – muppets on X call it ‘recklessness’ – within the Jewish State. It is possible, says Jake Wallis Simons, that Israel is indicating to the world that it has fully embraced the policy of deterrence and rejected that ‘nexus of cowardice, confusion and complacency’ that the lost West stews in. So let’s talk about Doha. Let’s have some analysis. But having centrist dullards and grey-faced PMs and Israelophobic loons on X damn Israel’s actions as mad and criminal? Nope. That reeks to the high heavens of cant and even bigotry.
The depiction of Qatar as a poor little victim of the Zionist monster is preposterous beyond description. Qatar hosts the leaders of the army of anti-Semites that savagely attacked Israel on 7 October 2023. It’s been hosting Hamas for 10 years. That is an innately hostile act. There are untold instances in history of nations going to war with those who harbour their enemies, from Cromwell’s invasion of Ireland for hosting his Royalist opponents in the English Civil War to America’s own invasion of Afghanistan for providing sanctuary to al-Qaeda. For Israel to fire missiles at the nation in which its murderous foes live it up in five-star luxury is not a war crime – it’s war; perfectly normal war.
Let’s get real: Qatar has given haven to the architects and justifiers of the worst mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. This includes Khalil al-Hayya, the de facto leader of Hamas who crowed that 7 October was ‘a great day’. It has also included Ghazi Hamad, who chillingly said of 7 October: ‘We will do this again… there will be a second, a third, a fourth.’ What’s ‘criminal’ is not Israel’s firing of missiles at Qatar but Qatar’s provision of luxuriant refuge to men promising further massacres of Jews. The question is not how Israel can attack a Western ally – it’s why the West is allied in the first place with a state that happily harbours a racist militia founded with the express intention of annihilating the Jewish State.
The fallout from the Doha strike shines a light on the great moral divide that lurks within the Israel Question. On one side, sheepish Westerners who think nothing is worth a war; on the other, Jewish soldiers determined to finish the war against their anti-Semitic tormentors once and for all. Over here, privileged windbags who’ve never faced an existential threat essentially saying ‘Lay down your arms, Israel’ – over there, Israel essentially saying ‘Screw you’. That’s what Doha speaks to: that Israel now cares as little for the opinion of its pompous haters in the West as it does for the lives of the terrorists who want to destroy it. Though who knows, maybe it will change its mind when it hears that emergency podcast.
'Evidence of Complicity is Blatant': Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders Operated Alongside Terrorists in Gazan Hospitals, Internal Hamas Messages Show
Newly released internal Hamas communications show how the terror group allowed several humanitarian organizations, including the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Doctors Without Borders, to set up shop in the same medical facilities Hamas fighters used as command centers. Those groups have condemned Israeli operations on Gazan hospitals without acknowledging that Hamas terrorists operate within them.
The ICRC "has chosen [to operate] in a wing inside Al-Shifa Hospital that is adjacent to the movement’s offices," Hamas’ Ministry of Interior and National Security disclosed in highly sensitive internal communications in 2020. Doctors Without Borders, meanwhile, "chose the only room in Abu Yousef El-Najar Hospital that has a [safe] communication landline," Hamas leaders wrote in Arabic-language documents recently declassified by Israel and published in English for the first time on Wednesday by the NGO Monitor watchdog group.
Doctors Without Borders’ French affiliate used a hospital facility belonging to "the positive’s activity," Hamas noted in a reference to its Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. The communications identify at least 17 other international NGOs—including the World Health Organization, several Doctors Without Borders affiliates, and the Norwegian Aid Committee—as working in various Gaza medical installations under Hamas’s authority.
While supporters of Israel have long known that Hamas-run hospitals are, for all intents and purposes, terrorist command centers, the ICRC and Doctors Without Borders have refused to admit that is the case, even as they work within those very buildings.
The ICRC, for instance, has written that strikes on hospitals "cause death and destruction and jeopardize vital lifelines for patients who have few sanctuaries left," adding in several statements that medical facilities in combat zones "must be respected and protected," without noting that those medical facilities also serve as terrorist headquarters.
Doctors Without Borders, for its part, issued a report accusing Israel of "dismantling" Gaza’s health care infrastructure and condemning the Jewish state over its "violent incursions in health facilities." Much like the ICRC, Doctors Without Borders did not acknowledge why Israel might want to conduct military operations in Hamas-controlled buildings.
For NGO Monitor president Gerald Steinberg, it is difficult to believe the nonprofit groups were unaware of Hamas’s use of medical facilities, even as many of them publicly criticized Israel for targeting the very civilian outposts in which the terror group embeds itself. Hamas makes clear in the documents that it exerts near-total control over Gaza’s humanitarian infrastructure and can choose who it allows to operate in the region.
"The evidence of complicity is blatant," Steinberg said in a statement. "This document exposes the hypocrisy of supposedly humanitarian international organizations like the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, and the Norwegian Aid Committee (NORWAC). While repeatedly echoing Hamas allegations and condemning Israel’s operations to end the exploitation of hospitals for terror, these groups clearly knew that Hamas exploited these facilities, and chose to remain silent."
NGO Monitor:
In Their Own Words: Hamas Turns Hospitals into Military Assets with NGO Compliance
Summary
For years, claims that Hamas used hospitals to shield its leadership and fighters have been met by skepticism and disregarded by the international community and media. Newly-revealed internal Hamas documents prove that the terror group’s exploitation of medical facilities in Gaza has been systematic.
Hamas ministry documents, dated February and March 2020, detail Hamas’ strategy of embedding its military infrastructure, fighters, and leadership within hospitals and medical facilities in Gaza, blatantly violating international law and endangering civilian lives. As with all such installations and services in Gaza, Hamas cynically exploits the healthcare system to provide cover for and expand its terror operations.
Hamas explicitly states that health facilities in Gaza are not neutral spaces, but instead play a critical role in Hamas’ terror network. Hamas officials expressed alarm at the prospect of “hostile parties” gathering intelligence on medical facilities, since these “serve as places that the wounded” – who “hold sensitive positions in the resistance” (emphasis added) – “are gathered in during times of escalation.” In addition, they described medical facilities as places of “gathering for many commanders of the movement [i.e. Hamas] and the government in times of escalation”.
Hamas also deliberately maintains a physical presence within hospital buildings. For example, Hamas officials note that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) “has chosen [to operate] in a wing inside Al-Shifa Hospital that is adjacent to the [Hamas] movement’s offices”.
Despite being aware of Hamas’ control and exploitation of medical spaces, NGOs and UN agencies with a medical and humanitarian focus continued to operate under Hamas-imposed restrictions. They accepted Hamas’s surveillance, movement limitations, vetting of their teams, and were exposed to pressures and directives from Hamas security personnel.
The NGOs also refuse to publicly admit their knowledge of Hamas’ use of medical spaces for military purposes, while simultaneously and hypocritically condemning Israeli attacks on terror targets in the vicinity of hospitals and medical centers. This selective reporting distorts reality, prevents the international community from obtaining reliable information from the field, encourages terror groups to continue exploiting areas that ought to be neutral, undermines humanitarian efforts in Gaza, and contributes to the demonization of Israel.
From Ian:
Dalia Ziada:
If ‘Palestine’ is born in blood, the world will reap the whirlwind
Every day seems to bring a new, deluded world leader pushing a flawed framework on the Middle East, a region they do not understand. These leaders endorse recognition of a Palestinian state without any peace negotiations with Israel, which is effectively a reward for Hamas carrying out the atrocities of Oct. 7.
Countries worldwide, even unexpected ones like Japan, Canada and Australia, continue to say they may conditionally recognize such a state in the near future. But do they realize what they are endorsing?
Recently, Germany reversed its pledge to recognize a Palestinian state in the immediate future, as it came to realize what a dangerous precedent was being enacted.
Almost two years ago, I was forced to flee my homeland of Egypt at the hands of the radical Islamists, the same chauvinist fanatics who once vowed to “sabotage Western civilization from within.” As a liberal Muslim scholar of the Middle East, who cherishes the values of classical liberal democracy, and who owes the United States my education, my professional growth, and, most recently, my very life, I feel an obligation to sound the alarm against the Muslim Brotherhood and its most dangerous offshoot: Hamas.
Hamas, the Palestinian faction of the Muslim Brotherhood—designated by the U.S. as a Foreign Terrorist Organization—has run Gaza with an iron fist after it violently seized control from the rival Fatah party in June 2007 following a series of armed clashes. It was the mastermind behind and key perpetrator of the barbaric Oct. 7 massacre in Israel in 2023.
Hamas leaders purposefully exposed innocent civilians in Gaza to war so they could use their blood to gain legitimacy for their acts of terrorism, as well as win the sympathy and approval of the international community.
These facts are crucial to recall as several world leaders, under the deception of the Gaza war narrative cleverly crafted by Hamas’s propaganda machine in Qatar, seek to reward terrorism with the premature recognition of a Palestinian state.
Such a move will not bring the peace we all wish for. It will only serve to entrench Hamas, empower the Islamic Republic of Iran, deepen the region’s most chronic geopolitical conflicts and strip the Palestinians of the only real hope they deserve: a future free from Hamas’s tyranny.
Born in blood, this offer will give rise to more blood. The particular rotten proposal being offered would end the prospects for any final settlement short of violence because it essentially demands that Israel sign its own death warrant.
Western nations push for ‘Palestine’ at UN, Israeli experts urge strong response
A coalition of countries led by France—including the United Kingdom, Canada, Belgium, Australia and Portugal—are preparing to formally recognize a Palestinian state at the 80th United Nations General Assembly (Sept. 9–23) in New York.
Israeli legal experts warn the move will intensify political tensions surrounding the already fraught Israel-Palestinian conflict. They recommend Israel act decisively, urging it to make clear to its allies that any attempt to impose “foreign diktats” will come at a price.
Arsen Ostrovsky, a leading human rights attorney, CEO of the International Legal Forum and senior fellow at the Misgav Institute for National Security, and Anne Herzberg, legal adviser at NGO Monitor, spoke with JNS about the implications of the planned recognitions.
Both agreed that Israel cannot afford to remain passive in the face of what they view as unilateral and destructive moves.
“Israel must make clear to other countries, as they have already, that they will not sit idly by in the face of unilateral recognitions of a Palestinian state,” said Ostrovsky, noting that Israel did well to reject French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent request to visit Israel, and to revoke visas for Australian representatives in Ramallah.
“These countries cannot expect it to be ‘business as usual’ as long as they conduct such actions,” Ostrovsky told JNS, adding that the Palestinian Authority, “which has been spearheading these initiatives,” must also be the subject of “punitive measures.”
He suggested holding its tax revenue and ceasing security collaboration. “You will also likely see some elements of the Israeli government calling for application of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria as a response,” he said.
J Street declares war on Israel
J Street’s portrayal of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government as “messianic extremists” is not just inflammatory—it’s anti-democratic. Israel is a vibrant democracy, and its citizens choose its leaders. To vilify an elected government and call for punitive measures against it is to reject the legitimacy of Israeli democracy itself.
J Street’s rhetoric drives a wedge between American Jews and Israelis, sowing division at a time when unity is most needed. Ben-Ami’s organization seeks to rip apart the longstanding bipartisan support for Israel in Congress and shepherd the Democratic Party into the anti-Israel radical camp.
J Street claims to be guided by Jewish ethics, invoking the principle “do not treat others as we would not want to be treated ourselves.” Yet it fails to apply this principle to Hamas, a terrorist organization that targets civilians, uses human shields, and openly calls for Israel’s destruction. By focusing its ire almost exclusively on Israel, J Street creates a false moral equivalence between a democratic state defending itself and a terrorist regime bent on annihilation.
J Street’s vision of peace—one that hinges on pressuring Israel into concessions while ignoring Palestinian murder, incitement, corruption, and rejectionism—is a fantasy, one rejected by Israel’s citizens. Real peace requires mutual recognition, security guarantees, and an end to terrorism. By calling for restrictions on Israel’s ability to defend itself, J Street empowers those who seek to destroy it. That is not peace advocacy; it is sabotage.
Ben-Ami may claim J Street supports Israel, but its actions tell a different story. By lobbying to cut off military aid, demonizing Israel’s leadership, and promoting a one-sided narrative, it has positioned itself not as a partner for peace but as an adversary. In doing so, J Street has declared war—not on violence or extremism, but on Israel itself.
From Ian:
Israel shatters Hamas’s Doha sanctuary
In one dramatic strike, Israel has upended the rules of the game. Hours after Hamas proudly claimed responsibility for the bus bombing that killed six Israelis in Jerusalem on Sunday, Israeli Air Force F-15s and F-35s delivered justice not in Gaza, not in Lebanon, but in the capital of Qatar, Doha, the gilded refuge of Hamas’s leadership.
For years, Qatar has bankrolled Hamas, sending suitcases stuffed with cash to fund the terror tunnels of Gaza and offering sanctuary to its commanders. While Hamas paraded its hatred of Jews openly, Qatar perfected the art of taqiyya—the calculated deception of pretending to mediate peace while hosting, protecting, and enabling jihad.
Its state-funded propaganda arm, Al Jazeera, has done more than any Arab army to delegitimize Israel, promoting the libel of “genocide” and building an entire front of psychological warfare against the Jewish state.
That sanctuary is now rubble. Reports indicate that much of Hamas’s top brass—Khalil al-Hayya, Zaher Jabarin, Musa Abu Marzouk, Husam Badran, Muhammad Ismail Darwish and perhaps even Khaled Mashaal—were killed in the strike. These were not minor figures. They were Yahya Sinwar’s heirs, masterminds of Oct. 7, 2023, and the men who used the hostages as human bargaining chips.
The consequences are enormous. The hostage deal Hamas’s Doha-based leaders sought to manipulate may be dead, but so is their leverage. Israel has again demonstrated its doctrine: what happened once will not be allowed to happen again.
Just as it confronted Gaza’s warlords, Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah and Iran’s nuclear adventurism, Jerusalem has shown it will strike wherever necessary, even at the heart of an oil-rich emirate that fancied itself untouchable.
The United States, which controls the skies over Qatar thanks to its massive airbase there, is reported to have coordinated closely with Israel.
If so, this marks a profound shift. Washington may finally be tiring of Qatar’s duplicity—its role as Hamas’s patron, its alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood and its obstruction of peace initiatives, including U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to conclude the war before the midterms. The Saudis, who loathe Qatar, will see this as an opening to push forward a regional realignment under the Abraham Accords.
A message to Western leaders: Palestinians don't want peace, they want dead Jews - comment
Two weeks ago, official PA TV urged its citizens to "Kill Jews one by one." On Monday, two people did just that.
As The Jerusalem Post's editorial rightly stated last night, this is the same Palestinian Authority, which seeks international recognition as the legitimate government of a future Palestinian state but which has consistently failed to unequivocally condemn terror attacks. The same PA, which cannot even govern the West Bank effectively without Israeli security coordination, now demands control over Gaza as well.
Palestinian statehood
And yet the international community - Canada, France, the UK, to name a few - have all announced their plans to recognize a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly this month.
"As blood is spilled on Jerusalem’s streets, the international community rushes toward a predetermined outcome that ignores these harsh realities," the editorial added.
Anyone who thinks the Palestinians deserve a state, or that such a state would miraculously be 'peace-loving and neighborly,’ is either living in la la land, or is masking their desire for dead Jews behind an obsequious façade of diplomatic intent.
As Zionist Organization of America President Morton Klein said on Monday, “Not only has Abbas refused to specifically condemn these murderers, his intact Fatah charter still calls for the ‘armed struggle’ against Israeli Jews and the Jewish ‘demolition’ of the Jewish State.”
In Starmer's July 29 speech about his intent to recognize a Palestinian state, he said that such a state "is not in the gift of any neighbour and is also essential to the long-term security of Israel."
On what planet would such a state have any conceivable benefit to Israel's security?
Following their meeting on Monday, Starmer praised Abbas's "commitment to reform of the Palestinian Authority." Having served 20 years of his four-year term, Abbas has had ample opportunity to reform the Palestinian Authority. Has he? No.
And yet he successfully swanned into the UK - the once paragon of democracy - and convinced the country's feckless leader of his desire for peace, reform, and rainbows.
But over here in Israel, the irony is spectacularly unfunny; six Israelis were murdered in cold blood while commuting.
Yaakov Pinto, 25; Rabbi Levi Yitzhak Pash; Rabbi Israel Matzner, 28; Rabbi Yosef David, 43; Sarah Mendelson, 60; and Rabbi Mordechai Steintzag, 79.
Whole words. Whole lives. Loved ones, families, dreams, and hopes.
The gifting of a state to violent, jihadist people who glorify terror against Jews is the greatest form of gaslighting. It's saying, 'kill Jews and we will grant you legitimacy.' It is saying 'dead Jews don't matter.'
The world has sacrificed Jewish lives in the pursuit of the 'greater good.'
But it is clear to me at least that no 'good' will come from giving Palestinians a state while they still view martyrdom-through-murder as their greatest achievement.
Israel must be forceful in taking out Hamas, ex-soldier says
Richard Kemp is a retired soldier, but he still talks like one in active service.
Speaking to a crowd of attentive listeners at the Toronto home of former Canadian Senator Linda Frum this week, Kemp foretold Israel’s precision strikes in Qatar, just hours before they happened.
“One pressure point is Qatar,” said Kemp, who knows a thing or two about war, having served in many for the United Kingdom. “Qatar hasn’t been exploited yet — to undermine Hamas.”
Qatar is the puny oil-rich Arab nation that, among other things, hosts and funds Hamas. Directly or indirectly, Qatar has funded al-Qaida, Syria’s al-Nusra Front, ISIS, and their philosophical nexus, the Muslim Brotherhood. It has supplied Hamas, in particular, with tens of millions to fund its terror war against Israel and the West.
(Oh, and Qatar is sponsoring and funding seven films at the Toronto International Film Festival, which recently attracted some negative headlines for its hastily recanted decision to cancel a documentary about an Israeli family on the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre. That was produced by, you know, a Jew. But we digress.)
While Kemp does not explicitly advocate for Israel to take out Hamas targets in Qatar — as they attempted to do on Monday night — he says that Israel must take forceful steps if it is to win its war against Hamas. “It’s all simply a question of destroying Hamas,” he says. Something that he says is inevitable, in the near or long term.
“And,” he adds,” please don’t think I don’t have sympathy for the Palestinian people. I don’t want to see the suffering of innocent children or women or the elderly. But I believe Israel must defeat Hamas.”
From Ian:
Our house is on fire, and the cavalry isn’t coming
The failure of the Jewish establishment—the Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee, Jewish Community Relations Councils and Jewish Federations—to protect and defend the Jewish community against the decades-long build-up and the current surge of hatred in the United States has become a subject of public concern and analysis. The organizations that have claimed to speak for us and guard us against antisemitism have proven unwilling or unable to meet the challenge.
The Jewish Leadership Project, along with others across the country, for years has sought to persuade, pressure, and, when necessary, shame establishment leaders into prioritizing the defense of our community. We believed that if they could be made to see the growing danger with clarity, they would recalibrate and lead. But they have not, even after the explosion of antisemitism following the atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023, and even as their supposed progressive allies turned on us.
Our leaders have refused to pivot. I believe that they will not and cannot.
Many resist this conclusion. It is far easier to cling to the hope that our old structures still work—that the powerful organizations of the past can still deliver security and stability. Abandoning that means accepting that the responsibility to protect our families and future now rests on us all. And the sooner we face this truth, the better.
But first, the community needs to understand why the Jewish establishment won’t change. Effective leadership of any enterprise requires a sober recognition of errors and a concerted effort to analyze why the leadership’s assumptions failed and the courage to chart a new course. It is human nature to resist acknowledging catastrophic mistakes, especially when you have raised hundreds of millions of dollars promoting yourselves as the most competent to do the work. Jewish leaders fear that when the enormity of their errors becomes broadly known, their community support might collapse, their (often) lucrative jobs will be at risk, and they will feel public shame.
Leadership is about knowing the territory so you can develop effective paths forward. Jewish leaders, however, have failed to grasp the obvious tectonic shifts in the American political culture. They assumed—and then placed all our bets on—the notion that classical liberalism, which had for so long protected Jews, would endure.
But classical liberalism—with its respect for pluralism, civil rights and the rule of law—has been eclipsed by a radical progressivism that paints Jews as privileged “white oppressors” and portrays Israel as the world’s villain. Even as it gained ascendancy, Jewish organizations deluded themselves by assuming that woke ideology was an exuberance of youth when it was, in fact, brilliantly organized, paid for and operated by nations like Russia, China and Qatar, and wealthy antisemites; and supported by the social justice-NGO complex. It’s not going to fade.
Brendan O'Neill:
The slow death of the genocide lie
Most damning of all is the actual content of the resolution. It is about as far from judicious analysis as you can get. The opening paragraph says Israel ‘has killed more than 59,000 adults and children’ in Gaza. It is a flagrant abandonment of a scholar’s prime duty – to pursue truth – to talk about the dead in Gaza without mentioning that a very significant percentage of them are Hamas fighters. The resolution accuses Israel of carrying out ‘deliberate attacks’ on ‘hospitals, homes, commercial buildings’. Again, Hamas is invisibilised – no mention is made of the hard-proven fact that Hamas operates in such buildings. It is a profound inversion of truth to accuse Israel of turning civilian infrastructure into warzones when it was Hamas that did that.
Perhaps ‘the experts’ neglected to mention that many of the dead are Hamas militants because to do so would be to admit this is war. Not a new holocaust, but war. War between an army of anti-Semites and the democratic state they so savagely attacked on 7 October 2023. It is a lie of omission to erase the Jew-hating militia from the tragic story of Gaza. When inconvenient facts are buried to stitch someone up in a court of law, we call it a miscarriage of justice. So what should we call this travesty of a resolution?
Also last week, the alternative experts at the Scholars for Truth About Genocide made a highly convincing case that what’s happening in Gaza is war. The IAGS, they said, failed to mention one simple fact: that this tragedy would end ‘if Hamas were to release all the hostages… and lay down their weapons’. To leave out such info is an outrage, they said, because it wilfully obscures the truth that Israel’s intention in Gaza is not to destroy the Palestinian people but to secure the return of its own people and fortify its territory against further attacks from the neo-fascists of Hamas. These are war aims, not plans for extermination, and so they are casually, cynically redacted by the ‘genocide’ obsessives.
Two alternative experts, writing in the Jerusalem Post, have reminded us of another truth overlooked by the IAGS – that Israel has ‘facilitated a large volume of humanitarian assistance’ for Gaza. It has ‘helped [to] vaccinate children in Gaza’ as well as delivering medical equipment and fuel for hospitals. People can debate, if they like, whether Israel has done this stuff well or not. But the idea that a ‘genocidal’ state would try to attend to the food and health needs of the people it is genociding is so absurd that it deserves nothing but the most savage ridicule.
The events of last week confirmed that misinformation is the rotten soil in which the genocide lie has taken root. Will it die off now? Not right away. Too many people now accrue their thin sense of virtue through propagating this nonsense so that they might pose as warriors ‘on the right side of history’. Indeed, falsely accusing the Jewish nation of genocide is fast becoming the most conformist cry of the cultural establishment, so much so that they will unceremoniously cast you out as a ‘denier’ if you dare to demur from their ideological loathing for the Jewish nation that they have the gall to doll up as ‘scholarship’ or ‘activism’. But the lie has certainly taken a beating. The truth is crying out for a fair hearing. Let’s listen.
UK Foreign Office: Israel not committing genocide in Gaza
David Lammy has said an assessment carried out by the Foreign Office has concluded Israel’s actions in Gaza did not constitute “genocide.”
The former Foreign Secretary wrote to the chair of the International Development Committee last week when he was still in the post.
He said:”“As per the Genocide Convention, the crime of genocide occurs only where there is specific ‘intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group’. The government has not concluded that Israel is acting with that intent.”
Committee chair Sarah Champion had written to Lammy repeating claims that the UK’s policy of continuing to supply parts for F-35 fighter jets that have indirectly been sent to Israel was aiding genocide in Gaza.
The Times reports that Lammy said the government had “carefully considered” the question of genocide.
While it could not conclude Israel was guilty of this, he described the war in Gaza as “utterly appalling” and added far too many women and children had been killed.
From Ian:
At least six murdered in Jerusalem terror shooting, 21 wounded
At least six people were murdered and dozens were wounded after terrorists opened fire on civilians at Ramot Junction in the Israeli capital of Jerusalem on Monday morning.
Yaakov Pinto, 25, Rabbi Levi Yitzhak Pash, Israel Mentzer, 28, and Yosef David, 43, were identified as four of those killed in the attack.
Pinto immigrated from Spain and was recently married. Pash taught at a Jerusalem yeshiva. Mentzer and David were residents of the Ramot neighborhood.
Two additional wounded people were later declared dead, including Sarah Mendelson, 60, and Rabbi Mordechai Steinsteg, 79, who had been brought to Shaare Zedek Medical Center.
At least 21 were wounded at the scene and were transported to three different medical centers, including Shaare Zedek and Hadassah-University Medical Centers at Ein Kerem and Mount Scopus. Upwards of 26 individuals at the scene were treated for anxiety.
The terrorists boarded the Line 62 bus in Jerusalem, which operates across the city, and began shooting at passengers.
In response to the attack, a soldier and several civilians at the bus stop engaged the attackers and returned fire. The terrorists were killed at the scene. The terrorists were in their twenties, from towns on the outskirts of Ramallah, El-Kubeiba, and Katanna. Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas praised the attack.
Additionally, the Shin Bet arrested an east Jerusalem resident on suspicion of driving the terrorists to the bus station.
Security forces have encircled several villages outside of Ramallah to reinforce defensive efforts along the West Bank border. They are conducting interrogations and searches in the area.
The IDF dispatched four companies to the scene and to the Ramallah area as part of the manhunt for accomplices.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu conducted a situation assessment with the heads of the security establishment following the attack and arrived at the scene, along with National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
The West’s Bloody Bargain: Paying Abbas to Kill Jews
October 7: Terror Live-Streamed
Let’s not whitewash who they’re dealing with. Hamas isn’t a misunderstood resistance group. These are the men who butchered 1,200 Israelis and foreigners on October 7, raping, burning, and looting their way through southern Israel while shouting “Allahu Akbar” like they were playing a championship match. They phoned their parents to brag about body counts, live-streamed murders on their victims’ own accounts, and turned mass rape into a TikTok highlight reel. For Palestinians, they became instant gods. For the rest of us, they are the devil with Wi-Fi.
And yet Western governments, so refined, so civilized, so endlessly smug about “human rights”, are preparing to reward this death cult. Let’s be clear: Hamas isn’t only sworn to exterminate Jews. Their founding charter, drafted under the Muslim Brotherhood, openly calls for the annihilation of Christians, secular Muslims, and anyone who refuses submission to Islam, globally, not just in the Middle East. That’s who Europe, Canada, and Australia want to crown with legitimacy.
Demographics Don’t Lie
And maybe that’s the point. Look at the demographic math. Europe’s native birthrates are plummeting, while Islamist communities in London, Paris, and Berlin are out-breeding their hosts at a rate of four to one. Gulf states like the UAE and Saudi Arabia, the literal cradle of Islam, wouldn’t touch these Islamist migrants, but Europe rolled out the red carpet.
Afghan radicals, Pakistani Islamists, men steeped in values utterly incompatible with the Judeo-Christian principles that once built the West, these are the populations Western leaders import by the millions. At this rate, Sharia law in Europe isn’t a paranoid fantasy; it’s a pending policy shift. Why wait until the Muslim majority arrives? Macron and Starmer seem content to start rehearsals now.
The Hypocrisy of Western Leaders
Not one of these leaders, Starmer, Macron, Carney, Albanese, has had the decency to mention Palestinian terrorism in their declarations of support for Abbas’s would-be state. Apparently, “human rights” now includes the right to incentivize murder.
And here’s the irony: by handing Abbas the prestige of statehood, these leaders aren’t just endangering Israel. They’re setting fire to their own backyards. Every Islamist radical in London, Paris, Sydney, or Toronto will see this for what it is: Western approval of murder as political currency. If it’s legitimate in Jerusalem, why not in Birmingham, Marseille, or Montreal? After all, if the Palestinian Authority can pay terrorists in Gaza, what’s to stop them from paying “martyrs” abroad once the cash starts flowing from UN-approved aid pipelines?
Already Funding Murder
Western taxpayers are already underwriting this blood money. Billions in aid to the PA vanish into Swiss accounts, Hamas tunnels, and yes, Pay-to-Slay salaries. Recognition of a Palestinian state simply formalizes the arrangement: you kill Jews, we’ll pay your family. Europe cuts the check, Abbas hands it out. Congratulations, Western liberal democracies, your foreign policy has officially become a terror-financing operation.
The Coming Farce
Nothing anyone writes, not me, not you, not a thousand editorials, will stop what’s coming at the UN General Assembly later this month. The world is about to rubber-stamp the creation of a “state” that is defined by its obsession with killing Jews. Let’s drop the diplomatic niceties. This is not about peace, not about two states, not about justice.
It is about the West giving formal approval to a political culture that treats Jewish blood as currency.
Call it what it is: a diplomatic endorsement of murder. Or, to put it in terms even Abbas would understand, a promotion in the Pay-to-Slay program.
Ruthie Blum:
To jihadists, ‘never again’ means ‘again and again and again’
When Hamas invaded southern Israel and committed the worst atrocities against Jews since the Holocaust, one might have expected a transnational realization that this was a manifestation of the same jihadism responsible for 9/11—and that different, often rival, Islamist groups, have a shared goal. Since the perpetrators of all such assaults are open about this aim, it shouldn’t be difficult to grasp.
Alas, 10/7—proportionately 12 times the toll of 9/11—had the opposite effect. Instead of constituting a wakeup call to the West, it unleashed the kind of antisemitism not witnessed since the rise of the Third Reich.
Worse, it opened the floodgates of Jew-hatred in the United States, of all places—from the halls of Harvard to the pages of mainstream publications and beyond. The phenomenon isn’t merely disgusting; it’s self-defeating.
As the late British historian Paul Johnson wrote in Commentary magazine in 2005, “[Antisemitism] is an intellectual disease, a disease of the mind, extremely infectious and massively destructive.”
Furthermore, he stated, “In the whole of history, it is hard to point to a single occasion when a wave of antisemitism was provoked by a real Jewish threat (as opposed to an imaginary one).”
Nor, he added, is it “confined to weak, feeble or commonplace intellects; … its carriers have included men and women of otherwise powerful and subtle thoughts. Like all mental diseases, it is damaging to reason and sometimes fatal.”
Well, it’s certainly fatal for Jews—though in the process, it eats away at societies that succumb to it. The same goes for jihadism. Once it takes hold in the countries that its adherents seek to subjugate, it metastasizes.
This is particularly true in the West, where there is a dangerously low birthrate—other than among immigrants—as well as vociferous fellow travelers whose influence far outweighs their numbers. These are the useful idiots whose progressive politics and behavior are antithetical to the jihadist ideology they abet, whether out of ignorance or malice.
The latest excuse for ganging up on Israel and the Jews is the war against Hamas and subsequent/simultaneous battles with additional Iranian proxies, as well as with the Islamic Republic itself. The moral vertigo on the part of people who will be next in line if the jihadists have their way is astounding.
If not for the current administration in Washington, the only real relevant player in the international arena, Israel would be forced to face its mortal enemies, and counter the gaslighting by its ostensible friends, on its own.
Thankfully, U.S. President Donald Trump understands that the Jewish state, the “small Satan,” is on the front lines not only of the war against the “great Satan,” America, but against all the Judeo-Christian values that both hold dear. It’s precisely why he’s urging Israel to get on with the business of winning it already.
Ahead of this pair of interconnected anniversaries, it behooves us to stop bemoaning the hollowness of the post-Holocaust slogan “never again,” and remember Hamas’s vow, endorsed by jihadists everywhere, to repeat the abominations of Oct. 7 “again and again and again.”
From Ian:
Anne Bayefsky:
With friends like these pushing to dismantle Trump's Middle East peace deal, who needs enemies?
America’s so-called allies – Britain, France, Canada, Australia and others – are about to stab President Donald Trump in the back. The goal is to lay waste to the president’s signature foreign policy success – the Abraham Accords.
The Abraham Accords denied violent Palestinian rejectionists a veto over the normalization of relations between Arab states and Israel. Now Palestinians and their band of useful idiots have launched a coup. The scheme opens by overthrowing the fundamental principle of a negotiated settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict. United Arab Emirates officials have speciously started blaming Israel for the Accords’ demise.
The staging ground for this "Et tu, Brute?" moment is the United Nations. French President Emmanuel Macron announced on Sept. 3, 2025, that he, and his Saudi counterpart, have called upon world leaders to assemble at the United Nations in New York City on Sept. 22 and endorse this agenda. Formally, the substance has been committed to paper in what they are outlandishly calling "The New York Declaration."
Trump and Macron
This means that by the time President Trump addresses the General Assembly on the following day, he will have been reduced to the guy with the broom bringing up the rear. His hopes and plans for peace in the Middle East will have already been rejected by virtually every head of state or government in attendance.
The New York Declaration first appeared at the conclusion of a confab, chaired by the French and the Saudis, at the U.N. in July of this year. The United States and Israel stayed away. The vast majority of states ignored State Department pleas to do the same.
The document weighs in at 30 pages of anti-Israel venom and attacks on American foreign affairs. It twists the horrors of Oct. 7, 2023 – when more than 1,400 Jews (and others in Israel) were murdered, raped, tortured and kidnapped – into a political win for Palestinians.
US vetoes anti-Israel UN Security Council resolution Video
Here are just some of the Declaration’s extraordinarily dangerous demands:
A "State of Palestine" before "mutual recognition" of the Jewish state.
A Palestinian "right of return" that would flood Israel with millions of Palestinians from the river to the sea – thus ending the Jewish state.
A fully armed Palestinian state (called a "one state, one gun policy") and an indefensible Jewish state.
An arms embargo on Israel ("ceasing the provision or transfer of Arms") cutting off the country’s ability to defend itself.
A global pogrom to arrest and prosecute Israelis in national and international courts the world over.
Abandoning the hostages and rewarding the kidnappers by conditioning their release on Israel freeing convicted Palestinian criminals and fully withdrawing from Gaza.
And here is what the Declaration does not mention: Jews. Judaism. The Jewish state. Antisemitism – the actual driver of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Even Jerusalem is only discussed in terms of Islamic and Christian rights. Jewish history is nowhere.
The Declaration represents multilateral bullying at its worst. But the United States is not powerless.
US-backed Gaza aid group slams Doctors Without Borders, accuses it of spreading 'false' claims
Following unrelenting criticism from the United Nations, the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) is once again being targeted by NGOs, even as it delivered its 155 millionth meal to Gazans on Saturday.
Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, has launched ads criticizing GHF. Meta’s Ad Library shows that in August it ran several Facebook ads targeting the foundation. One ad read, "This is not aid. This is orchestrated killing." Another said, "In MSF’s 54 years, rarely have we seen such levels of systemized violence."
Both allegations are taken from an Aug. 6 article on MSF’s website in which General Director Raquel Ayora describes accounts received from patients reportedly injured around GHF sites. Ayora says aid seekers claimed to have witnessed "children shot in the chest while reaching for food. People crushed or suffocated in stampedes. Entire crowds gunned down at distribution points."
GHF spokesperson Chapin Fay called MSF's accusations, "false and disgraceful," saying that it is "amplifying a disinformation campaign orchestrated by the Hamas-linked Gaza Health Ministry. They know better. By repeating these lies, they’re not aiding civilians, they’re aiding Hamas."
"No civilians have ever been shot at any of our distribution sites," Fay told Fox News Digital.
Fay said, "Nearly every day, Nasser Hospital issues false reports to the media of civilians killed near our sites, based solely on testimony from others. Not a single MSF doctor has ever witnessed an incident near our sites. Any conflict between Israel and Hamas, sometimes several kilometers away, the Gaza Health Ministry falsely links to GHF."
In response to questions about whether MSF employees have witnessed injuries or deaths at GHF sites firsthand, a spokesperson told Fox News Digital that, "MSF has documented the impacts of violence and chaos at GHF sites in Gaza, based on firsthand accounts of our personnel and patients at two clinical sites, as well as a body of medical data."
MSF declined to respond to questions about how much money it has spent on ads targeting GHF, or whether it has advocated for medical care for Israeli hostages taken by Hamas.
The MSF spokesperson added, "For the past 22 months, humanitarian organizations working in Gaza and the West Bank have consistently faced baseless and inaccurate smear campaigns."
Though there is growing outcry about purported violence near GHF sites, reporting from the United Nations indicates that there were twice as many deaths surrounding humanitarian aid convoys (576) as there were deaths around GHF sites (259) between July 21 and Aug. 18.
Ben-Dror Yemini:
As Pro-Palestinian Flotilla Heads to Gaza, Israel Should Counter by Sending Survivors, Hostage Families and Border Residents
Greetings to all those sailing on the flotilla to Gaza. We are convinced that if you truly knew the reality, the honest among you would join protests against the Islamo-Nazism that threatens you just as much as it threatens us. Hamas broadcasts have aired explicit calls "to kill all Jews and Christians to the last one."
On Hamas's children's television programs, they repeatedly teach - sometimes through a Mickey Mouse lookalike - that their ultimate vision is "the extermination of all Jews." Israel is not committing genocide; Israel is trying to prevent the genocide Hamas openly declares.
Fathi Hammad, a senior Hamas leader, admitted: "We use women and children as human shields." Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas's former leader, said: "We need the blood of women, children and the elderly." These are Hamas's stated policies. Israel regrets deeply that civilians are harmed - but they are harmed because of Hamas, not Israel.
Hamas and other jihadist groups represent Islamist imperialism that murders primarily Muslims who refuse to submit to its rule. Their vision is to impose strict sharia-based laws, which allow the total erasure of basic human rights. They themselves say, "raise the flag of Islam over the Vatican" while destroying Christianity and Christians worldwide. Is that truly the cause you want to help?
Survivors of the Nova music festival massacre, residents from Gaza border communities, families of hostages, and freed hostages should board Israeli boats to meet the flotilla, armed with their personal stories.
From Ian:
Eve Barlow:
22 Minutes
It has taken until 700 days for Israel to get permissions from families and friends to freely distribute 22 minutes of the 47 minutes of footage that was initially shown to journalists in private screenings following the October 7 massacre. I was one of those journalists. I endured the entire 47 minute screening. I averted my eyes a few times, and just listened to sounds. For the most part, I kept my eyes open, no matter how horrifying, because I needed to bear witness to the atrocities to know that I understand October 7 and that I know why the IDF is in Gaza. I needed to see it all to strengthen my resolve in the face of a two-year-long media onslaught that has since taken place to frame Israel as the aggressor “genocidal” force, when in fact it was Gaza who intended to commit a genocide on that black Shabbat, 700 days ago.
It must be noted that there is vastly more than 22 - or even 47 - minutes of bodycam and CCTV and cellphone footage. This is a snapshot of what Israel had to face on the day that would never end. On the day that still has yet to end. For us, it is still October 7, 700 days later. We are yet to wake up from the nightmare. If you’re still here reading, thank you. You are one person yet to cave to public pressure, yet to be so gaslit by the narrative that you no longer can see right from wrong and good from evil, yet to vote with your feet and leave the Jews in the darkness alone once more.
700 days. The last 700 days has shown us the truth of the world both outward and inward. A gargantuan test. We are still standing and we keep fighting for the truth and for the 48 hostages - dead and alive - who remain in captivity.
Our adversaries have stopped at nothing, aiding Hamas’s strategy to seduce the world and usher in a feverish call to banish the Jews from public life. The other week I was at coffee with a friend. He said that he heard a one word definition of antisemitism. Impossible, I thought. “Libel”, he said. Wow. That’s it. The world has bathed in it for almost two years following the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust. Bathed in it like it was a vintage bottle of Dom Perignon. Champagne socialists have turned the word Zionist into a slur and made Jew hatred the socially acceptable form of racism among every class. They have picked their own self-hating Jews to speak to their agenda, turning our own brothers and sisters against us. They have made Israel stand trial for defending her right to exist in the face of a regime that would wipe her off the map and replace her with yet another Arab colonized state: Palestine.
Andrew Fox:
The insanity of 7th October denial
There is a direct line from this video of Hamas atrocities to the hysteria and denial of the pro-Palestine mob. Their need to scream at the top of their voice at the slightest supposed evidence of Israeli “genocide” is a pathetic compensation for the cognitive dissonance 7th October causes them, and their inability to process its sheer scale and horror.
Hamas has to bombard us with some real, some fake, some heavily manipulated snuff clips from Gaza until we go mad. If they didn’t, people would look 7th October and never forgive them. All those screeching hordes would be silenced if they had to watch that video and be honest about it. Hamas’s media campaign from Gaza gives them a get-out-of-jail-free card to carry on, untroubled by the mass rape and the slaughter of Israeli civilians.
The world has to drown out 7th October by heaping opprobrium on Israel as a behemoth of evil. If it didn’t, these people would have to face what happened on 7th October. Even worse, they would have to face their own complicity. Of course the UN is colluding and lying about Gaza, because through UNRWA and other agencies, it helped 7th October happen by at least turning a blind eye, at worst actively enabling it.
Owen Jones is the template; this phenomenon in microcosm. Something in him broke when he saw that video: not just his prejudice about Israel and Palestine but his own belief in humanity. He came out having looked at the Medusa and not having an answer. He has spent nearly two years deflecting 7th October with a mirror of confected outrage, because that video challenged every belief he held about “Palestine”. Accepting the truth would have turned his foolishly-held conviction to stone. Now he spends his days trolling from oCcUpPieD pALesTiNe.
Since witnessing the video, Owen has since invested everything in ignoring and disregarding the atrocity of 7th October, throwing himself into pretending that everything that has come since is far worse, so that he can hide from his own shock, fear and confusion. This is reflected in the madness of the pro-Palestinian mob: they cannot accept that Israelis were ever victims, and so they ignore and deny not only Hamas’s actions on 7th October, but also Hamas’s actions in sacrificing the people of Gaza.
Here is the video in the first reply. I challenge you to make it through more than five minutes.
Friday, September 12, 2025
