07/10 Links Pt2: Howard Jacobson: “Had we been living in Berlin, what would we have done?; The trillion-dollar campaign to conquer the West; Andy Burnham’s shameful pandering to anti-Israel bigots

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The trillion-dollar campaign to conquer the West

More and more information is surfacing to reveal that the Islamic holy war against the West isn’t just being waged on the battleground of the Middle East.

Even more significantly, it’s also being waged through a trillion-dollar influence campaign to colonize and subvert the Western mind, organized by extremists from the Islamic world.

These have tunneled into the West through a vast civic infrastructure whose real purpose and sources of funding have been as well concealed, and in their own way are just as deadly as the subterranean genocide factories in Gaza and Lebanon.

To those with eyes to see, it was obvious from the start that the hate marches springing into existence after Oct. 7, 2023—even while the Hamas-led atrocities were still going on—weren’t spontaneous protests against Israel.

They were instead a globally coordinated campaign to turn gullible Westerners into the unwitting army of Islamic jihad through support for the Palestinian cause.

An important new report by NGO Monitor shows that this post-Oct. 7 protest infrastructure in Britain has used the signature liberal causes of humanitarianism and human rights to launder the Islamic jihad against the West.

The report found that, through a series of concentric circles, just six groups have been involved in more than 80% of the major protests.

In the innermost circle sit the states hostile to the West: Iran, China, Russia and Qatar; terrorist organizations, such as Hamas, Hezbollah and Al-Qaeda; and extremist religious-political movements like the Muslim Brotherhood.

Lapping around them are charities, campaign groups, protest movements and advocacy organizations that provide legitimacy for these hostile forces, amplify their propaganda and transmit extremism to society.

Out of 40 organizations mapped in the report, at least 11 have links to extremist groups or officials who have cooperated with Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Muslim Brotherhood.

New Ted Cruz-aligned organization takes aim at right-wing antisemitism

Allies of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) are launching a new political organization aimed at countering antisemitism within the Republican Party, Jewish Insider has learned, led by Arielle F. Klepach, a former assistant U.S. attorney and senior counsel for the National Jewish Advocacy Center.

The Front Line (TFL) will operate as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, meaning the group will not have to disclose its donors and can spend unlimited sums toward political activity, provided campaign finance is not its primary purpose and it does not contribute directly to campaigns.

A source familiar with the matter told JI that those behind the organization, which Cruz is not directly involved with, raised several million dollars to fund the operation. Klepach will run the operation as executive director.

In a statement on her hiring, Klepach said she was enthusiastic to join an effort focused on preventing Republicans from mimicking what she described as Democrats’ embrace of anti-Israel sentiment.

“There has been a surge of antisemitism across America, which first engulfed the left and is now threatening the moral integrity and political unity of the conservative movement and the Republican Party,” Klepach said. “I am excited to lead The Front Line’s efforts to defeat right-wing antisemitism before it takes conservatives down the same path of anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and pro-Sharia advocacy that has taken the left.”

TFL’s mission statement describes the group as “an issue advocacy organization aligned with the positions of Ted Cruz dedicated to countering right-wing antisemitism, by making antisemitism disqualifying in the Republican Party and conservative movement, through activities across political, policy, and digital spaces.”

Sanders compares Israel with Sudan and Russia

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has long accused Israel of “genocide,” compared the Jewish state with Sudan and Russia in a statement on Thursday.

“One might have hoped that, after thousands of years of war, humanity could have come up with a better way to resolve conflicts than killing and mass destruction,” the Jewish senator said. “Unfortunately, that is not the case. There is now more war and bloodshed raging across the world than at almost any point in decades.”

In a statement ostensibly about “civil war and genocide in Sudan,” Sanders noted Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine “without provocation” and what he said is “genocide” in Gaza.

“In October 2023, Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 innocent people and taking 251 hostages,” he said. “In response, Netanyahu and the Israeli military did not simply wage war against Hamas. They waged war against the entire population of Gaza.”

He accused the Jewish state of destroying “virtually the entire physical infrastructure of Gaza.”

Hamas is known to embed deliberately among the civilian population and to use it as human shields.

Five paragraphs into the statement about genocide in Sudan, Sanders finally mentioned Sudan, before pivoting to U.S. President Donald Trump.

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07/10 Links Pt1: US House probe targets New Israel Fund over anti-Netanyahu meddling; Pro-Israel UK MP Ann Widdecombe, murdered; CPJ Staff Packed With Anti-Israel Agitators

From Ian:

Brian Cox: Hamas announced it is stepping down in Gaza. It’s time for Canada to step up

The Board of Peace that is tasked with managing the transition of authority in Gaza welcomed Monday’s announcement that Hamas has dissolved its government, yet the Board nonetheless insisted that its assessment will be “guided by actions, not promises, to meet the critical needs of the people of Gaza.”

If Hamas does not voluntarily disarm and refrain from a governing role in Gaza, these non-negotiable objectives may yet require overwhelming military force to achieve. This means the prospect of intense—even deadly—combat operations remains.

Despite the dangers on the horizon, the potential for this plan to finally achieve durable peace in Palestinian territories is worth the risk.

But doing so will require commitment, resolve, and skilled military capabilities. This is why the Canadian Armed Forces are especially well suited to the task.

One potential roadblock is the current strain in relations between Canada and the United States. Despite current tensions, the government still maintains that “Canada has had no closer friend and ally than the United States” for over 150 years.

And although the peace plan is an American-led initiative for which Trump is appointed chair of the fledgling Board of Peace, the United Nations Security Council has welcomed the board and authorized establishment of an International Stabilization Force (ISF).

This provides international legitimacy to the peace plan, which is a point the government can emphasize to the domestic constituency in light of current diplomatic tensions with America.

Last fall, the Carney government along with Australia, France, and the UK recognized the State of Palestine even though it doesn’t currently qualify for traditional criteria of statehood. Committing robust military capabilities to the ISF in Gaza represents an opportunity to pursue a credible two-state solution.

The Carney government insists that “Canada is a strong supporter of the Middle East Peace Process” and that its approach to the conflict “is guided by its historic and unwavering commitment to a two-state solution, with Israelis and Palestinians living side-by-side in peace and security.”

If Canada is genuinely committed to long-term peace while also supporting “free and fair elections in Palestine in which Hamas must play no role,” political rhetoric, humanitarian aid, and capacity building simply will not be enough.

The consequences of failure are predictable: perpetual conflict, resurgence of Hamas and other Iran-backed regional proxy militias, and eventually a repeat of the October 7 atrocities followed by catastrophic large-scale hostilities.

A coalition of the willing must seize this moment by demonstrating the resolve needed to convert wishes to results.

The time is now for Canada to step up, join in, and take on a decisive role to foster genuine peace in Gaza and beyond.

US House probe targets New Israel Fund over anti-Netanyahu meddling

Two influential US congressional panels have launched a major inquiry into the New Israel Fund (NIF), JNS reported on Friday.

According to the report, the House Judiciary and Ways and Means committees are examining allegations that the American-based leftist organization potentially violated federal tax laws by funneling non-profit capital into partisan political operations aimed at toppling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In an official warning obtained by JNS, Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO) detailed how NIF may have breached its 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status “by providing millions of dollars in funding to groups that engaged in political campaign activities in the 2019 Israeli elections."

US internal revenue laws strictly forbid public charities from intervening in foreign or domestic political races either directly or indirectly.

According to congressional investigators, the NIF covertly backed radical anti-Netanyahu networks.

“NIF provided approximately $356,000 to Zazim, an Israeli organization that ‘operated a transportation system that brought thousands of Bedouin voters’ to the polls that were part of the opposition party to Prime Minister Netanyahu," the lawmakers noted. They also revealed that the organization “also provided approximately $95,000 to Adalah, a group that ‘provided legal representation to the Joint Arab List,’ an alliance of Arab parties that centered their campaign around ousting Prime Minister Netanyahu in favor of his opponent, Benny Gantz."

Further compliance failures were flagged regarding a 2019 court filing indicating that the NIF actively interfered in the sovereign electoral map by securing signatures for a legal petition to block a right-wing legislative candidate. “When the Israeli Supreme Court banned the candidate, ‘NIF called it a victory for democracy,’" the chairmen noted.

The leftist organization has historically presented itself as an entity dedicated to bolstering civil equity, asserting that it has disbursed over $300 million to various left-wing frameworks since 1979. However, the prominent visual on their web portal showcases Arab MK Ayman Odeh, leader of the radical anti-Zionist Hadash-Ta'al faction.

Odeh, despite being an elected member of the Knesset, has made countless anti-Israel statements, including comparisons between Israeli hostages and Hamas terrorists.

Rep. Jim Jordan indicated to JNS that the evidence points to blatant meddling. “The law is the law. You’re not supposed to be using this for electioneering activity," he stressed. “It looks like they were.

Downstream of the Lie By Abe Greenwald

Via Commentary Newsletter, sign up here.
I’m not talking about the dupes who believe anti-Israel propaganda. I mean, rather, those Israel supporters who blame the shift in public opinion on Israel’s failed communications strategy over the past three years.

They act as if anyone else is doing a better job of getting populations to distinguish between lies and truth. Falsehoods and loony theories have come to proliferate everywhere at all times. Look at recent history: Most of the country believed that Donald Trump colluded with Vladimir Putin to win the 2016 election. Most bought into the story that Covid came from a wet market. The 2020 election showed that Americans generally thought Joe Biden was cognitively fit for office. As recently as 2024, Gallup found that a majority of Americans were opposed to banning “gender-affirming” care for minors. And most still think the government is lying to us about aliens.

In such cases of broadly shared misinformation, we tend to blame those peddling the lies, not those who just didn’t scream the truth loud enough. In fact, truthful protestations are repurposed by the liars as further proof of a cover-up.

Look, I don’t really think Israel lost the information war to begin with. As I’ve argued before, the information Israel needed to get across was that it’s not going anywhere and will do whatever is necessary to ensure its survival.

But what’s more important is that the psyop against Israel isn’t ultimately about Israel. It’s a disinformation nuke aimed at the heart of America. Just look at what it’s already done to our social cohesion. Same goes for the Charlie Kirk conspiracy theory, which is itself an anti-Semitic spinoff of the op against Israel. History shows that the promulgation of anti-Semitism can be a death sentence for free societies.

To save our country, I suggest we start looking abroad at who would stand to gain from this kind of crack-up. Never mind the incentive structure of clicks and views. That’s all downstream of the problem’s source. It’s the U.S. that’s losing the information war. And the way to win it is to take the fight straight to our enemies.

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07/09 Links Pt2: Rahm Emanuel and the persistent delusion of failed policies; Jerusalem voted the seventh-best city in the world; Elie Wiesel’s hidden world of letters, loss and friendship

From Ian:

Jonathan Tobin: Rahm Emanuel and the persistent delusion of failed policies

Say this for Rahm Emanuel. He may have about as much chance of being nominated for the presidency in 2028 by the Democratic Party as he does of being elected pope. But he knows how to retain the attention of the national media by manipulating contacts inside the Beltway.

That’s the only way to explain why someone who is not even being included in way-too-early polls about presidential preferences could get the kind of massive coverage he got for a speech given this week in Israel, when those far ahead of him in the contest struggle to be noticed.

On July 7, The Washington Post devoted three full articles to previewing Emanuel’s July 8 talk at Tel Aviv University. The Post, The New York Times, CNN and the rest of the corporate press then followed up with even more coverage of the speech after the fact. Those articles not only depicted it as deeply relevant to the current debate about the U.S.-Israel relationship going on in his party, but also to the reality on the ground in the Middle East.

A rerun of failed ideas
But what made this public relations coup even more remarkable is the fact that the much-ballyhooed address consisted of little more than a recycling of the conventional wisdom of his long-past political heyday. Emanuel’s speech was more or less a rerun of what passed for foreign-policy establishment canon in 1995 and 2015, put forward as a formula for peace in the second quarter of the 21st century.

Once you strip away Emanuel’s attempts to claim both the credibility and credentials to demand that Israelis discard everything their lying eyes and ears have been telling them about their nation’s struggle to survive a multifront war launched by Iran and its terrorist auxiliaries, all you’ve got is what we might term a piece of political nostalgia.

Emanuel calls his big idea the “23-state solution” because it is based on the notion that the Arab and Muslim world can cajole the Palestinian Arabs to make peace. But that’s just window dressing for what is the same two-state solution that his former bosses, Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, foolishly expended so much political capital trying to force into being. Contrary to liberal myth, that formula was thwarted not by Israeli intransigence but by the stubborn refusal of the Palestinians—enabled by much of the Muslim and Arab worlds, in addition to Western leftists—to countenance any future but one in which Israel is erased.

The context here is the fact that the former U.S. ambassador to Japan (2022-2025), mayor of Chicago (2011-2019), White House chief of staff to President Barack Obama (2009-2010), U.S. congressman from Illinois (2003-2009), investment banker (1999-2002) and senior adviser to Clinton (1993-1998) believes that his already impressive résumé ought to be rounded out by a stint as commander-in-chief. The man renowned as a serious policy wonk, albeit one with a predilection for profanity and a notorious temper, may have much to say about a lot of different topics. Yet when it comes to Israel—a subject he claims intimate knowledge of—Rahm is nothing but a blast from the discredited past.

That’s why the truly significant aspect of the speech and the massive coverage it generated isn’t what it says about the 2028 race, efforts to prevent the Democratic Party from becoming the anti-Israel party or even the one that is comfortable with antisemitism. Rather, it points toward the fact that while Israelis have absorbed the lessons of the last 33 years of history, including the Oslo Accords disaster, the Second Intifada, the fruits of the withdrawal from Gaza and the horrors of Oct. 7, 2023, supposedly smart people, including those like Emanuel who know a thing or two about Israel, have learned nothing.

Adam Louis-Klein: Rahm Emanuel’s shocking speech to fracture the bond between Israel and the diaspora

Emanuel does not share a fate with Israelis, and certainly not with the "Zionists" whose forced exodus from social networks, whose professional discrimination in the academy and elsewhere, he frames as a the natural consequence of Israel itself. He speaks from a thousand miles above, insulated from the antizionist abuse that is raging across the West.

His open attribution of collective guilt toward Jews – discriminatory in its very essence – is hardly surprising. It's increasingly treated as the common sense of liberal politics. “Netanyahu is harming Jews” is a common refrain, even though it lacks all logical sense. Netanyahu could be Hitler – as antizionists daily imagine him to be, as they mouth old Soviet slogans – yet targeting ordinary Jews as “genocidal” would still be unacceptable, and blame would lie with those who did so.

The casual rhetoric of blame reflect a deeper problem: the systematic concealment of antizionism, of Israel-hate, as something that could actually be the structural cause not only for changes in Israel's “reputation,” and not only for the violence against diaspora Jews, but for the crises in the Middle East themselves. Why, exactly, is Israel in a permanent state of war, which includes occupation and ongoing reciprocal violence? Why, exactly, does the question of whether the United States should be entangled in these wars come up in the first place? Violence against Israelis here is taken as natural and given.

While Emanuel claims to want Arab states to recognise Israel's right to exist, to integrate Israel into the region, he seems uninterested in the moral stakes of anyone seeking to annihilate a state in the first place. He seems oblivious to the social media accounts with millions of followers screaming with joy at the sight of Iranian missiles falling on Israeli civilians. Somehow none of that causes any moral outrage, since he has saved it all up for “Netanyahu” – the villain of his decadent fantasies.

The absence of any actual engagement with global antizionism is not merely a lacuna in the discourse: it is one that serves to reproduce that violence itself. By refusing to name the cause, and refusing to hold its principal actors accountable, ongoing wars are continually given justification, while blame is displaced onto Israel. This ongoing habit of evasion and non-accountability around antizionism – including refusing to say its name – causes harm to Israelis, Jews, and Palestinians alike.

Emanuel's politics does not seek peace; it seeks moral legitimacy and it exploits Israel as a tool to achieve it. His tone of superiority is not incidental. Like the old German Jews who looked down upon the traditional Eastern “Ostjuden” with contempt in the early 20th century, the liberal American Jew, insulated from antizionist abuse on the ground, now proclaims their civilisational superiority to the primitive Israeli.

I doubt that such a relationship is meant to lead to a memorandum of understanding.

Chief Rabbi urges Church of England to reject ‘genocide’ report ahead of Synod vote

The Chief Rabbi has urged the Church of England’s governing body to reject a controversial report accusing Israel of genocide, warning it threatens decades of Jewish-Christian relationship-building.

Sir Ephraim Mirvis spoke out before next week’s General Synod debate on whether the Church should formally engage with A Moment of Truth: Faith in a Time of Genocide, also known as Kairos II, as part of its efforts to better understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The report, produced by Palestinian Christian organisation Kairos Palestine, describes Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as a “genocidal war” and claims the Jewish state is a “colonial enterprise built on racism”. It also accuses Israel of apartheid and settler colonialism.

In a statement published on X following reporting by The Times, the Chief Rabbi said: “The content of Kairos II is deeply concerning, and I would hope the Synod will see it for what it is. While it is important to recognise the suffering of Palestinian Christians, this document does so in a way which can only harm the cause of peace.”

He added: “It presents a one-sided account of a complex conflict, downplays the historical experiences and legitimate concerns of Jewish people, and offers little more than political activism dressed up as theology.”

Mirvis continued: “It is truly shocking that a document which purports to speak in the name of truth contains so much falsehood – using extreme rhetoric to challenge the very concept of a Jewish state, and to oppose existing peace agreements in the region.”

He warned that “at a time when Christian-Jewish relations require nuance, trust and a willingness to engage with complexity, Kairos II risks undermining decades of careful relationship-building.”

The Chief Rabbi concluded: “Meaningful progress begins when the dignity, aspirations and suffering of all peoples are acknowledged. Kairos II takes us further away from that goal, not closer to it.”

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07/09 Links Pt1: BHL: Post-Oct. 7 isolation of Israel a ‘historic moral failure’; Israel’s ‘medical malpractice’; Australia’s Treatment of Jews Is a Warning to the World

From Ian:

Bernard-Henri Lévy calls post-Oct. 7 isolation of Israel a ‘historic moral failure’

The diplomatic isolation of Israel during the war in Gaza following the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre will go down in history as a moral failure and a defeat of humanity, French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy said on Thursday.

“The absence of support for Israel will be considered by future historians as a moment of huge disgrace for the West,” Lévy told JNS in an interview in Tel Aviv. “It is a defeat of humanity and a moral defeat. It is the loss of any moral compass.”

Lévy, who lives in Paris, rushed to Israel the day after the Oct. 7 attacks and the following year penned Israel Alone, a book about the lack of diplomatic support for the Jewish state in the West.

“I was beyond shocked,” he said.

He was back in Israel on Thursday to deliver the keynote address at the annual conference on contemporary antisemitism hosted by the Comper Center for the Study of Antisemitism and Racism at the University of Haifa. The gathering is the largest annual academic conference on modern-day antisemitism, drawing an estimated 550 participants, including 250 in-person presenters, with others joining virtually from abroad.

The 77-year-old French intellectual, commonly known as BHL, decried the surge in antisemitism, which he called “unprecedented in my lifetime,” noting that he rarely gives lectures in France for security reasons and that the only safe place for him to speak in the United Kingdom is a synagogue.

“Even if I come to speak about philosophy or non-Jewish issues, the only safe place for me in the U.K. is a synagogue,” he said.

Lévy noted that he has lived under police protection in Paris for more than two decades, since the publication of his book about the 2002 murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan.

Mindful of the growing exodus of Jews from Western European cities, Lévy said he is determined to fight back.

“Europe would have no future if Jews stepped back,” he said, blaming a toxic mix of “stupid, illiterate, and barbaric anti-Semites” and a French leadership whose stance on Israel often adds fuel to the fire.

“The situation gives me the will to resist, to fight, and to win,” he said.

Amb. Michael Oren: Israel Is Not Isolated, Not Bloodthirsty

I was asked if Vice President JD Vance was right in saying that, apart from the U.S., Israel has no friends in the world. I answered "no," and listed the many friends Israel has in South America, Africa, the Arab Gulf, and India, a country with a population four times that of the U.S.

If I was asked "is JD Vance right when he said that Israel 'can't just kill (its) way out of solving every single national security problem that [it has]?'" - the answer is even more adamantly: "No!"

The charge that Israel uses brute force to resolve all its security problems is firstly and historically false. This is the country which, in 1949, signed armistice agreements with four Arab countries that only a year before had tried to destroy us. In 1967, that same country offered to return almost all of the sizable territories we captured in the Six-Day War in return for peace with the Arab leaders who once again sought to annihilate it.

This is the country, Israel, which returned the Sinai peninsula, an area more than three times its size, in return for peace with Egypt. We are the nation that signed a peace agreement with the arch terrorist Arafat who for decades specialized in murdering Israelis. He soon went back to murdering Israelis and still we sought peace with him.

Israel is the country which, arguably more than any other in the world, has done more to avoid having to kill our way out of our security problems. Still, there are some problems that Israel has no choice but to address with force. As Vice President Vance knows full well, there is no diplomatic solution for Israel's problems with Hamas, Hizbullah, and Iran - enemies sworn to wipe us off the map.

Though we must never cease striving to preserve our crucial alliance with the U.S., we must respectfully but forcefully correct American leaders when they spread falsehoods about Israel, defame our national character, and distort our history. Israel defends itself when it must but makes peace whenever it can.

Ruthie Blum: Israel’s ‘medical malpractice’

Israel ought to have its head examined. Its bleeding heart could use a check-up, too. Because something is clearly wrong with a country that repeatedly deploys its extraordinary medical expertise to preserve the lives of people who later dedicate themselves to harming it.

The latest diagnosis comes courtesy of an astonishing revelation this week by Avi Shushan, former spokesman for Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center-Ichilov Hospital, on the Channel 14 program “Sheva” with co-hosts Yehuda Schlesinger and Yaakov Bardugo.

According to Shushan, about seven years ago, when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was gravely ill, the Mossad requested that an Ichilov specialist be dispatched to Ankara to treat him. The physician, Shushan said, did not travel as a private citizen offering personal assistance. He went, rather, “on behalf of the State of Israel.”

If true, the story is remarkable enough on its own. Israel, a country Erdoğan has repeatedly vilified, extended a helping hand when he needed one.

The gratitude wasn’t exactly forthcoming.

Turkey and Israel aren’t officially enemy states. They maintain diplomatic ties, even if relations have deteriorated dramatically. But Erdoğan’s words and deeds have long placed the neo-Ottoman-emperor wannabe firmly in the camp of Israel’s adversaries.

He has transformed Turkey into a political home for Hamas leaders. He has hosted members of the terrorist organization’s senior ranks and defended them as “freedom fighters.” He has backed flotillas aimed at breaching Israel’s blockade of Gaza. He has accused the Jewish state of crimes against humanity while embracing some of the most vicious antisemitic rhetoric in the international arena.

After the Oct. 7 massacre, when Hamas terrorists murdered, raped, burned and kidnapped innocent men, women and children, Erdoğan did not condemn the perpetrators. Instead, he portrayed Hamas as a legitimate resistance movement and attacked Israel for defending itself.

The man who, according to Shushan, was kept alive by an Israeli doctor, repaid Israel with hostility.

But Erdoğan isn’t an anomaly; he’s merely the latest patient in a long-running Israeli medical drama: a country that keeps curing those infected with a lethal hatred of the Jewish state.

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07/08 Links Pt2: Foreign donors ‘funding hate on Britain’s streets’; Platner suspends campaign; The Democrats’ Real Red Line; Israel extends Venezuela aid mission after request from interim president

From Ian:

Top New York Times Editor Joe Kahn Distances Newsroom From Kristof Dog-Rape Column—‘Wouldn’t Have’ Run It

The highest-ranking news editor at the New York Times, executive editor Joe Kahn, is publicly distancing himself and the paper’s 2,200-person newsroom from a May 11 Times opinion column that accused Israel of using dogs and carrots to rape Palestinian prisoners.

The article, by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, whose father served on the Nazi side during World War II, was denounced by the Israeli foreign ministry as "Hamas propaganda," "fabricated," and a "baseless blood libel." It also generated a legal threat from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a formal condemnation from the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. The piece relied largely on anonymous or Hamas-affiliated sources.

"It wasn’t edited by the newsroom," Kahn said in a podcast interview with the media and technology journalist Peter Kafka released Wednesday, July 8. Asked whether he would have published the article in the news pages, Kahn first replied, "we probably wouldn’t have." Then he provided a more definitive answer: "No, we wouldn’t have done that exact piece."

Kahn’s statement seems to put him publicly at odds with—and certainly struck a different tone from—Times opinion editor Kathleen Kingsbury, who, in a May question-and-answer-format column, defended the article. Asked, "Given the volume of the critical response, do you stand by this column?" she answered, "Yes. … Before publication, Nick’s reporting underwent a rigorous vetting process by Opinion’s fact-checking department to ensure that every testimony and anecdote he personally reported was supported by independent sources, as is the case with all sensitive pieces. The Times’s standards and legal teams also reviewed the column and offered feedback. After publication, we reviewed the factual challenges that readers and others raised, as is standard practice with any published piece. Editors found no errors."

Kingsbury did also make the point that "The Times’s news staff in the Middle East played no role in Nick’s column."

Federal judge rejects CAIR bid to block Florida terror designation

A federal judge declined on Monday to block Florida’s planned designation of the Council on American-Islamic Relations as a domestic terrorist organization.

CAIR and its Florida chapter sued last week after Gov. Ron DeSantis announced plans to designate the organization under the statute, arguing the law violates the First Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The plaintiffs also sought a temporary restraining order to prevent enforcement pending the outcome of the case.

U.S. District Judge Mark E. Walker denied the request, writing that he was “not persuaded that relief must be afforded before defendants are heard.”

On Tuesday, CAIR and CAIR-Florida asked Walker to reconsider, arguing the designation could take effect as early as July 8 and would force the organizations to “shut down their operations in Florida and will substantially impair CAIR’s ability to pursue its mission nationwide.”

CAIR is represented by attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation and the Southern Poverty Law Center, which was recently indicted on charges including wire fraud, false statements to a bank and conspiracy to commit money laundering over its alleged use of donor funds to pay informants embedded in extremist groups.

UK group hosts speakers who celebrated October 7 attacks

The UK’s largest Palestinian cultural centre hosted two speakers who have openly celebrated the October 7th terror attacks, Metro can reveal.

Palestine House in central London platformed Latifa Abouchakra and Batool Subeiti at a ‘Lessons of Resistance’ panel event last week.

The controversial activists have both praised the deadly October 7th attacks on Israel by Hamas in 2023, calling it a ‘moment of triumph’ and ‘unprecedented revenge’.

Subeiti, a pro-Iranian political commentator, was also given a central role in Palestine House’s educational programme for children on ‘resistance’ and history.

During the event last Thursday, panellists appeared to defend a Palestine Action activist convicted of criminal damage, while Subeiti spoke about ‘martrydom’ as a form of ‘victory’.

The Community Security Trust (CST) called Abouchakra and Subeiti’s role in the evening ‘deeply troubling’ while a representative of October 7th victims said it was ‘heartbreaking’ they were given a platform.

Palestine House is a six-storey building in Holborn, central London, which opened in 2025 as a ‘cultural embassy’ and ‘gathering hub’ for Palestinian identity.

The centre regularly speaks out on political issues, with founder Osama Qashoo erecting a ‘Stop the Genocide’ flag at the building earlier this year.

Last Thursday, Palestine House and Shia student society Absoc for Justice held an event exploring how the death of Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Imam Hussain, in 680CE ‘continue[s] to inspire resistance to injustice today, including in the context of Palestine’.

However the decision to invite Abouchakra and Subeiti to the event has sparked outrage from antisemitism campaigners because of their history of support for October 7th.

On that day in 2023, Hamas killed 1,200 people in Israel and took more than 250 hostage, sparking years of conflict in the Middle east.

To get the latest news from the capital, visit Metro's London news hub.

Abouchakra, a presenter at the banned Iran-backed channel PressTV, told viewers on the day of the attacks that the violence was ‘the homecoming of at least 1,000 Palestinians from the resistance factions into the fragile Zionist entity’.

In an Instagram post on the same day, she said: ‘Nothing will ever be able to take back this moment, this moment of triumph, this moment of resistance, this moment of surprise, this moment of humiliation on behalf of the Zionist entity.’

ITV News was forced to apologise later that month after they platformed Abouchakr as British Palestinian concerned about prejudice without explaining her background.

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07/08 Links Pt1: US strikes 90 Iranian military targets, hours after Trump says ceasefire a ‘waste of time’; Rahm Emanuel’s anti-Israel bash won’t win over the jew-hating Dems

-From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Trump must not abandon his promise to people of Iran as collapse of Tehran deal looms

Trump is right that dealing with this regime is a waste of time. He is also right that a regime that shoots protesters in the street cannot be trusted to reform itself through polite diplomacy.

The conclusion, though, cannot be to abandon the Iranian people until the next round of negotiations collapses or the next oil shock alarms global markets.

The conclusion must be that regime change in Iran is not the only strategic and moral horizon that fits the reality before us. Such change cannot be imposed by outsiders; it must be Iranian-led.

It must respect Iran’s people, history, culture, and future but must be supported by the free world with sanctions on killers, technology to break censorship, documentation for accountability, diplomatic isolation of regime officials, and refusal to reward Tehran for surviving crises of its own making.

A free Iran would not solve every problem in the Middle East, but it could transform the region in ways no memorandum with the Islamic Republic ever will.

It could weaken Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and militias sustained by Tehran’s money and ideology. It could allow one of the region’s great civilizations to rebuild.

This is not something that can be done by one power alone; it requires collaboration, and must remain the clear goal of every actor involved.

In January, the Iranian people were told help was coming; six months later, they deserve more than silence, bargaining, and regret.

JO Investigation: Massive Gaza Archive Targeting Israelis is Being Run by "American" in Saudi Arabia

Key Findings:
An anonymous operator claiming to be American but based in Saudi Arabia runs one of the largest Gaza “war crimes” archives—82,000+ videos and images—whose authenticity and chain of custody remain unverified.
The operator feeds purported evidence to the Belgium-based Hind Rajab Foundation, which has been linked to the Hezbollah terrorist organization.
Despite claiming American identity, the operator calls Americans “complicit in genocide,” urges U.S. soldiers to disobey orders, and demands U.S. officials stand trial at The Hague.
The operation runs from Saudi Arabia—a kingdom that has received extensive U.S. and Israeli security assistance, including protection during the 2026 Iran conflict.
The archive’s sophisticated infrastructure—dual websites, 2.4 terabytes of torrents, encrypted submissions, Icelandic privacy protection—suggests resources beyond typical grassroots activism.
The operator’s language shifted from singular “I” to plural “we,” raising questions about who is actually running the operation and whether it represents a coordinated network.

Seth Mandel: Karim Khan and the Perils of Anti-Israel Obsession

Khan’s case against Israel was a sham—he canceled important fact-finding trips in order to file the warrants before he could be outed as an office pest. The ICC report establishes “the accuser’s credibility,” which puts all past testimony and reporting in an even more damning light. The internal investigation also found Khan’s belated denials to be “devoid of credibility.”

From the Times, which obtained the internal report:
“First, she said, there was overfamiliarity during a work trip to London, then incidents in his office in which ‘he would grab and paw at her breasts, try to access her pelvic area, and suck on her ear or neck,’ according to a summary of the U.N. investigation’s findings obtained by The Times.

“Eventually, she said, the advances progressed to unwanted sexual activity. She told investigators that ‘the power dynamic between them meant that she could not say no.’”

Now, why would someone with access to this report want to ensure that such details saw the light of day before the ICC made its final decision on Khan’s job?

Most likely, the answer is: because there is reason to worry that court members’ anti-Israel fervor is such that they may still try to protect him. But now the public knows what the ICC believes Khan did, and it would destroy the court to leave him as chief prosecutor.

It is yet another example of the dangers of the world’s obsession with Israel. the UN’s refugee agency has been coopted by Hamas. The Committee to Protect Journalists is facing an internal revolt over the possibility that the organization might stop referring to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists as “journalists.” The International Committee of the Red Cross’s callous disregard of Israeli hostages and its participation in Hamas’s own public mistreatment of those hostages has disgraced its work.

Unfortunately, I could go on. But the point should be clear. Allowing anti-Zionist radicals to hijack human-rights groups has left genuine humanitarianism and genuine justice hobbled. This is the destruction left in the wake of an industry that destroyed itself because it was solely focused on destroying Israel.

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07/07 Links Pt2: Anti-Zionism Is Repackaged Antisemitism; How the NYT's Boosted Graham Platner; Mamdani’s wife co-hosting pricey pro-Palestine retreat in Corsica — after skipping July 4

From Ian:

Anti-Zionism Is Repackaged Antisemitism

Yes, anti-Zionism is antisemitism. Unless one believes, in the spirit of John Lennon's "Imagine," in a world without any nation states, denying the Jewish people the right to a state - where more than 10 million live today and which is roughly the size of Wales - goes far beyond political disagreement. It signals deep-seated prejudice.

There are 193 UN member states. Only one - Israel, the lone Jewish-majority nation - has its legitimacy routinely questioned. That is ironic, since very few states can match the longevity of the Jewish people's ancestral link to a specific territory, stretching back more than three millennia.

The Hebrew Bible is replete with place names that existed in ancient times and endure today, beginning with Zion - a hill in King David's Jerusalem - and Jerusalem, the ancient and modern center of Jewish national life and capital of Israel. The Christian Bible builds on the Hebrew Bible, and its geography is inseparable from Jesus, the Judean Jew. The seventh-century Qur'an contains more than 40 references to the "Children of Israel."

Wars imposed on Israel since its rebirth in 1948 by those who rejected any Jewish national presence led to conflict. But Zionism's core purposes are to ensure Jews are no longer dependent on the goodwill of others for their survival; to provide a safe haven after centuries of persecution; to serve as a "light unto the nations"; and to establish a state at peace and in coexistence with its neighbors.

Israel rests on multiple layers of international recognition of a Jewish national home in the land. Compare that to the "legitimacy" of other states. What precisely are the foundations of legitimacy for the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand? In historical terms, they rest on conquest and subjugation of indigenous populations.

Most states derive legitimacy from the simple fact of their existence: they exist, therefore they are. Only Israel is persistently required to relitigate its right to exist in the face of persistent anti-Zionism - even 78 years after its rebirth and 77 years after joining the UN.

Palestinian Culture of Anti-Normalization Is a Central Obstacle to Peace

Were all Palestinians supporters of Hamas, or were there Palestinians who opposed the massacre and longed for a different future? My search for the answer led me to Moataz Al-Mansi in Gaza. "The future of Palestine is not built on hatred or on the dreams of cancelling the other," he wrote. "I dream of a relationship based on good neighbors, shared interests, and mutual respect."

I invited him to appear on my podcast, "Conversations at the Peace Table." Moataz told me he had lost both of his businesses during the war. His children had not attended school in years. Yet he refused to abandon his belief that Israelis and Palestinians must one day live as neighbors rather than enemies.

My friend Inbal, who worked closely with Palestinians in the West Bank for years, often told me that many Palestinians quietly desired coexistence but were afraid to say so publicly. Those who engaged with Israelis risked being labeled collaborators or traitors. Again and again, I heard the same story: Palestinians who sought dialogue often faced pressure from their own society, while Israelis who sought partnership struggled to find counterparts who could safely engage.

This helped me understand a central obstacle to peace: the culture of anti-normalization. Anti-normalization discourages dialogue, joint initiatives, business partnerships, cultural exchanges, and even personal friendships with Israelis or Jews. A Palestinian who speaks publicly about cooperation can be accused of betrayal. The result is that peace becomes socially dangerous and the public square becomes dominated by those who reject coexistence.

Two days ago, Moataz contacted me again. An article had appeared in a Gaza newspaper calling him a traitor. He believed the danger to his life had become immediate. He asked me to tell his story. "If something happens to me, it is because I chose peace."

Peace must first become socially acceptable among ordinary people. That requires protecting those courageous enough to see humanity in the other side. The ideology that condemns Moataz for reaching across the divide is the obstacle to peace. Until Palestinians who seek coexistence are free to do so without fear, and until activists stop treating anti-normalization as a moral virtue, those yearning for peace will continue to pay the highest price.

Solomon’s Pools: How the Palestinian Authority Neglected a Historical Treasure

To the north of the Israeli town of Efrat, and to the south of Bethlehem, lie Solomon’s Pools. The pools were part of an extensive water infrastructure originating in the Judean hills that supplied water to the Jewish Temples in Jerusalem. Whether the pools are those referred to by King Solomon in the Book of Ecclesiastes (2.6), who wrote, “I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees,” remains a subject of debate.

In the Oslo Accords, Judea and Samaria were divided into three areas, which can generally be defined as follows: Area A – mostly under the complete jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority, subject to overriding Israeli jurisdiction to combat terror; Area B – joint control with the PA holding jurisdiction for civilian affairs and Israel holding security jurisdiction; Area C – full Israeli jurisdiction.

Each area in which Israel transferred jurisdiction to the PA – i.e., every area that would become part of areas A and B – was carefully delineated on agreed maps, with area C being the remainder.

The Oslo Accords never envisaged a situation in which Areas A and B would be off limits to Israelis. Rather, the accords included specific provisions regarding both the treatment of Israelis present in those areas and the manner in which the PA treated Jewish historical sites that were included therein.

The Israeli participants in the talks with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Israeli authors of the accords certainly did not anticipate a situation in which this area would become dominated by hostile PA forces and other Palestinian terrorist organizations, and that almost every entry of a Jew into those areas would potentially be accompanied by mortal danger.

Here, it should be stressed that the danger posed in areas A and B is only to Israeli Jews. Israeli Arabs – i.e., the millions of Arabs Israeli citizens – are free to enter, study, and even live in areas A and B.

Since the classification of an area as Area A, B, or C was not meant to be a hindrance to access, the Oslo negotiating sides saw no obstacle to including Solomon’s Pools within Area A. The inclusion of this specific site within area A, did, however, present a unique challenge to the PA.

According to the PA narrative, Jews are modern-day European colonizers of “Palestine,” a state that never actually existed. Jews, according to the PA, have no history or connection to the area. For the PA, the statement in the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, in which “recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country,” was simply wrong and baseless. The PA narrative is so dogmatic that it even outrageously denies any Jewish connection to the Temple Mount.

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07/07 Links Pt1: A Richer Iranian Regime Means a More Violent One; US launches ‘powerful strikes’ against Iran in response to Iran firing on ships in Hormuz

From Ian:

Tom Tugendhat: A Richer Iranian Regime Means a More Violent One

Supporters of the U.S.-Iran MoU in Tehran consider it an ideological victory, a deal that confirms the regime's claims to dominate the Strait of Hormuz and project power in the Middle East. Yet, skeptical observers want to know: How much extra security spending will be necessary if Iranian terror groups receive the biggest injection of funds in a generation?

A decade ago, once the Obama administration eased sanctions as part of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Iranian regime spent billions on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' support for the Assad regime in Syria and on Hizbullah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and the Houthis in Yemen.

Some in Europe have viewed Iran as a regional problem, but in October 2025, the director general of MI5, Britain's domestic security agency, said the country had tracked more than 20 potentially lethal Iran-backed plots in the past year alone. Tehran's influence campaigns have evidently moved online too. Pro-Scottish independence accounts recently went silent when the internet was shut off in Iran.

Since the death of the last supreme leader, the IRGC has largely taken over the state. They aren't interested in serving their fellow citizens but in killing ours. Whatever any treaty says, once new money is in the country, it will allow funds once spent on essentials to be used to spread hate. No deal will tie the hands of the IRGC.

History suggests, then, that this deal is more expensive than the fine print lets on. A richer Iranian regime will be a more violent regime, costing lives in the region and threatening others around the world. That means national security services will face more hostile state activity and a new urgency in detecting and disrupting threats. They will need more resources for that fight.

Jake Wallis Simons: The three-word chant that demolishes the case for peace with Iran

The Iranians want peace, apparently. At least, that’s what Donald Trump has been claiming since he exchanged his determination to defeat the Islamic Regime for an insatiable desire to appease it.

Sure, the US president has sometimes oscillated back towards childish threats of death and destruction. Last month, he vowed to “finish the job” and “resume a bombing campaign” if Iran did not “behave”.

But his actions – cancelling the most effective parts of his campaign before signing a deal that vowed to end US hostility, lift all sanctions, fund a rebuilding effort, tie Israel’s hands in Lebanon and kick the nuclear can down the road – have already shown the world which of his Janus faces should be taken more seriously.

Well, one can only imagine how he feels watching the dreadful scenes at the funeral of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which was so provocatively timed to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the birth of America.

A cowed and broken regime might have been expected to tone down the usual “death to America” and “death to Israel” content, for fear of further aggravating the world’s only superpower. We’d better give it a rest, they might have muttered. For now, at least.

Instead, the rhetoric was gratuitous. Along with the standard “death to America” cries, they shouted, “our word is one! revenge! revenge!” amid the sight of Khamenei’s coffin. In the mob at Grand Mosalla, a banner displayed the slogan: “#KillTrump”.

Hamas Rakes in Millions, Prepares for War

Israeli security officials say Hamas is continuing to grow stronger and rebuild itself for a confrontation with Israel, both through money reaching it from outside Gaza and thanks to the "humanitarian" aid that continues to enter Gaza unchecked, about 600 trucks a day, while the real need is only about 200-250 trucks a day.

Hamas directly taxes the incoming trucks, collecting a tax of 15-30% from merchants. Hamas also forces merchants to sell their goods to traders operating under its auspices at a "supervised" price, so it can take a cut of the profits. In addition, Hamas manages to smuggle banned products into Gaza, such as cigarettes, which are sold at high prices and taxed at a higher rate.

There is evidence that Hamas sells electricity produced by hospital generators to residents living near the hospitals, using fuel that enters Gaza for humanitarian needs. It also charges rent for local merchants operating markets and stalls, and imposes fees for renewing business licenses. All this enables Hamas to efficiently fund its military arrays.

Sources in the defense establishment said, "The money Hamas receives from outside Gaza, along with the strengthening it achieves through the aid entering the Strip, enables it to rehabilitate military infrastructure and recruit new and young operatives who cannot find other work in Gaza. The money Hamas offers is their solution."

"We cannot repeat the statements we made before Oct. 7, according to which Hamas was deterred and would not attack. We cannot once again ignore what the other side is doing."

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07/06 Links Pt2: From Historian to Polemicist: What Went Wrong with Omer Bartov; Are the Democrats to become America’s anti-Israel party?; GOP Voters Remain Deeply Supportive of Israel

From Ian:

Jeffrey Herf: From Historian to Polemicist: What Went Wrong with Omer Bartov

Bartov’s betrayal of the craft of history is apparent in a deficiency of evidence and causal reasoning. He refers to the “genocidal intentions openly expressed by Israel politicians and senior military officials” as if this was a proven fact. Nowhere in this book is there a discussion of the details of Israeli military operations, of the battle for specific towns or areas in Gaza, or of how various Israeli units conducted themselves. Yet Bartov claims that “the pattern of operations by the IDF” in Gaza, which he has not examined, leads him to conclude “that these [genocidal] intentions were put into practice.” Attacks on civilian infrastructure, hospitals, schools, water supplies, and electricity grids “went far beyond military necessity … . All of this was not accidental, but part of a strategy to destroy Gaza as a livable space for Palestinians. Even if there was no formal order for genocide, military logic show that genocide was the consequence.” It was “no longer a coincidence” but was “a deliberately pursued policy” (pp. 193-194).

Bartov fails both to establish that a genocide occurred and, even on that assumption, to provide evidence or a causal account of it as a “deliberately pursued policy.” This is a shocking conclusion for an historian of Nazi Germany to advance. As readers familiar with the works of Yehuda Bauer, Richard Breitman, Christopher Browning, Lucy Dawidowicz, Raul Hilberg, Saul Friedländer, Ian Kershaw, Peter Longerich, and many others know very well, the effort to establish the causal connections between Hitler’s ideology and the decision-making that led to the Final Solution has consumed thousands of pages, tens of thousands of footnotes, years of research in archives, careful examination of the dates and sequence of statements, meetings and orders to the Einsatzgruppen, and the construction and operation of the death camps. Yet Bartov, without access to Israeli archives and having made no serious examination of the public record of Israeli decision-making confidently asserts the existence of a “deliberately pursued policy.” There is no reason to take this conclusion seriously. Here again, Bartov has abandoned the historian’s craft in favor of polemics.

Bartov the polemicist concludes with an accusation of collective guilt against Israelis. “How,” he asks, “How do we come to terms with the obliteration of Gaza? Will Israel ever face justice for its genocidal actions?” (p. 201). The long-term consequence of “this travesty may, however, be that the genocide in Gaza will finally liberate Israel of its status as a unique state rooted in a unique Holocaust.” The “license that Israel, the land of the victim, has long enjoyed and abused may be expiring. The sons and daughters of the next generation will be free to rethink their own lives and their future, beyond the memory of the Holocaust; they will also have to pay for the sins of their parents and bear the burden of the genocide perpetrated in their name” (p. 203).

So having written a book of unsubstantiated accusations, Bartov plays judge and jury declaring the accused guilty. Israel will “not be viable,” will become a “pariah state … isolated from its allies and the Jewish diaspora,” and eventually “Israeli apartheid will implode, as happened in South Africa under the pressure of mass protests, violence an arms embargo and economic sanctions by the international community” (206). An alternative to that is the replacement of the existing state of Israel with some form of confederation of Israelis and Palestinians that replaces the Zionist project.

Bartov has written a book that combines a paucity of evidence and a compelling causal argument with a writing style that is likely to appeal to journalists and political activists and even academics eager to read an Israeli-born historian of the Holocaust who eloquently reinforces their increasingly antagonistic views not only of the State of Israel but also of the Israelis as people. The question is not whether Bartov is an antisemite, though it is clear that he thoroughly rejects Zionism. The issue is whether, in Israel: What Went Wrong, he advances arguments that are true or false—and, if false, whether the book recycles and skillfully refurbishes the oldest and most enduring accusation at the core of antisemitic ideology: namely, that the Jews, since the time of the Crucifixion, through the Koranic stories of Jews killing the prophets, to the blood libels and modern conspiracy theories blaming them for wars, are a people uniquely inclined by habit, tradition, and character toward the murder of the innocent. This calumny lay at the heart of centuries of anti-Jewish persecution and culminated in the Holocaust, when the Nazis propagated the idea of international Jewry bent on the “extermination” of the German people.

The charge of genocide against the State of Israel should be understood within this long history of antisemitic libels. Like the calumnies that preceded it, it transmutes claims supported by little or no evidence into articles of faith and passionately held convictions. The problem with Bartov’s argument is not that it is wrong because it is antisemitic; it is wrong because it is false. Yet the repeated circulation of such falsehoods against the Jews—and now against Israel—inevitably fuels antisemitism, intensifying hatred of Jews around the world, and deepening the growing hostility toward Israel.

Bartov’s tome is likely to contribute to the ongoing effort to make hatred of Israel respectable in the faculty lounge, the editorial office, the think tank, and in many political parties. I hope that in this case, the strategy of prestige transfer fails and that more discerning readers will ponder the question “What went wrong with Omer Bartov?” The book does not represent the standards expected from professional historians nor from what we should expect from a distinguished publisher such as Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Nevertheless, initial responses indicate that it may be a successful polemic and a commercial success. Its lack of scholarly distinction will not diminish its contribution to the global campaign to undermine the legitimacy of the state of Israel. If so, it will not be the first time that a very bad book has an outsized impact on public and published opinion.

Jonathan Tobin: Are the Democrats to become America’s anti-Israel party?

Is it possible for the pendulum among Democrats to swing back to the center over the course of the next two years? Possibly. If leftist candidates, like Michigan’s pro-Islamist Abdul El-Sayeed, are defeated by Republicans in November (Maine’s Nazi-tattooed Israel-bashing Graham Platner may be crashing and burning due to allegations of sexual assault that may destroy his candidacy long before the voters render their verdict), it could convince many Democrats to change course. The far left’s dominance in primaries has given Trump an issue that could lead to the disappointment of the Democrats’ expectations for a midterm blue wave in the same manner that sunk the GOP’s hopes for a red wave in 2022.

Such a scenario could be ideal for Shapiro. But in a party that seems convinced that it lost the White House and Congress in 2024 because their leaders were insufficiently anti-Israel, rather than because of their embrace of far-left ideas like gender ideology and critical race theory, that sort of sensible thinking seems unlikely.

And it’s unclear if Fetterman, whose health issues have dogged him for the past four years, will even try to hold onto his seat in 2028. Though he has a respectable amount of money on hand in his campaign treasury, his fundraising efforts have stalled in the last couple of years. Were he to cross the aisle and become a Republican, that might be an easier path to another six-year term, though that seems unlikely. And while independents have won Senate races in other states, that is viewed as less likely in Pennsylvania, due to both the partisan spirit of the times and the way the commonwealth’s election system is skewed toward enforcing party dominance. The smart money is now on him simply not running for re-election. If so, he will be missed because of his rather unique style, both in terms of his centrism and his sartorial choices.

A haunting precedent
The problem for someone like Shapiro, who tries but usually fails to conceal his unquenchable ambition for higher office, is that the shift to the left among Democrats may have already gone too far to accommodate someone with his views, particularly on Israel.

Indeed, his hopes for a return of the Democratic Party of 1992 should worry rather than encourage him. In that time, the dominant politician in Pennsylvania was one of his predecessors in Harrisburg, Gov. Bob Casey Sr. (father to his namesake, who represented Pennsylvania in the Senate from 2007 to 2025). The popular Casey was a throwback to an earlier era of American politics in many ways, not least because he is usually referred to as the last of the pro-life Democrats. The Clinton camp denied him a speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention largely because they felt that it was no longer possible to give that sort of prominence to someone who was so out of touch with the rest of the party on an issue on which so many felt so strongly.

That precedent should haunt Shapiro. Because just as anti-abortion Democrats are now extinct, it’s entirely possible that if current trends hold, by 2028 or soon thereafter, pro-Israel Democrats might be put in the same position. Indeed, right now, I’d say the odds of Shapiro being denied a speaking slot at the 2028 DNC are slightly higher than his rather minimal chances of being nominated for president at that gathering.

Even if you don’t share Shapiro’s high opinion of his capabilities, that’s tragic. If, as recent primaries and the polls indicate, opposition to Israel is a requirement to get the votes of most Democrats, the party is on the verge of becoming as anti-Israel as it is pro-abortion. While the rise of antisemitism on the right is creating genuine concerns about the future of the Republican Party, the far more serious situation on the left is now creating the possibility that the national Democratic Party will soon not be so much divided on Israel but will have become a space where politicians like Shapiro, let alone Fetterman, will have no place in it.

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07/06 Links Pt1: Why Entebbe Wouldn’t be Celebrated Today; Hamas move to dissolve Gaza governance ‘means nothing,’; Sa’ar says Turkish FM’s remarks a ‘clear call for genocide’

From Ian:

Why Entebbe Wouldn’t be Celebrated Today

Zionism, once understood by many as the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, had become, in much of Western discourse, synonymous with colonialism, racism and oppression. The Jewish homeland became the Jewish oppressor, while Jewish self-defence became uniquely suspect.

After the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, many Jews found themselves accused not because they celebrated murder, but because they celebrated rescue.

Think about that for a moment.

More Jews were murdered on 7 October than on any day since the Holocaust, hundreds more were kidnapped, families watched parents, children and grandparents dragged into Gaza to face torture, sexual violence and captivity.

Yet the expectation placed upon Israel by much of the international community was unlike that demanded of almost any other democracy. If rescuing your own citizens risks too many civilian casualties because terrorists have embedded themselves among civilians, then perhaps your citizens should remain where they are.

That expectation would have been unimaginable in 1976.

The Jewish state was created because Jewish history had demonstrated, catastrophically, what happens when Jews lack both sovereignty and the means to defend themselves. After the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, many seemed to believe that lesson should be forgotten.

Entebbe taught the world that Jews would never again be abandoned. Nuseirat revealed how many people now believed they should have been.

This is not an argument against criticising Israel. Criticise governments, criticise military strategy, criticise political leaders. Every democracy should expect that scrutiny. It is, however, an argument against changing the moral principles by which democracies are judged.

Because if we conclude that the rescue of hostages becomes illegitimate simply because terrorists have made the rescue sufficiently costly, then we hand every terrorist organisation in the world a blueprint.

Hide behind civilians, kidnap innocents, raise the price of rescue. Wait for democracies to decide that saving their own people is no longer worth the condemnation.

Fifty years ago, the world looked at Entebbe and saw a democracy refusing to abandon its citizens. Almost fifty years later, much of the world looked at Nuseirat and asked whether those citizens should have been rescued at all.

Fifty years ago, Israel was admired because it refused to abandon Jews. Today, it is too often condemned for refusing to abandon them.

The operation changed remarkably little. It was the world that changed.

Israel urges WHO to condemn Hamas over press conference at Gaza hospital

Israel’s mission in Geneva on Monday called on the World Health Organization to denounce Hamas after the terrorist group held a press conference outside a hospital in the Gaza Strip.

“Hamas held a press conference today at Shuhada al-Aqsa Hospital in Gaza,” the mission wrote on X, using the Arabic name for the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza.

“Any silence on Hamas’ exploitation of the hospital for propaganda will be a choice,” it continued, tagging the WHO and its director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

“Al-Shifa, Nasser, and Kamal Adwan Hospitals, all have been abused by Hamas to hide terrorists and weapons, cynically and brazenly. They used them as terror hubs to hide and torture hostages. And now they use a hospital as a stage for propaganda,” the post added. “With each step, WHO’s silence is so much more deafening.”

The press conference was held outside the emergency department of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital on Monday afternoon by Ismail Thawabta, head of Hamas’s “government” media office, and Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem.

Thawabta and Qassem announced that Hamas was dissolving one of the key “civilian” bodies through which it administers Gaza, while saying employees would remain in their posts, in what appeared to be a largely symbolic move.

An Israeli official told Kan News public broadcaster that the purported resignation of the Hamas government, while all of its members remain in office, was “a spin that means absolutely nothing.”

A Turning Point in a Parking Lot

A single nighttime photo from October 17, 2023 exposed the Hamas playbook and Al Jazeera’s role in laundering it through global media and human rights organizations. It was the first consequential press event for Palestinians since October 7 and was a turning point in the war.

The photo is the choreographed scene broadcast live from Al-Shifa hospital in the immediate aftermath of an explosion at the nearby Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital. The Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health claimed that 500 Palestinians were killed in a “targeted” Israeli airstrike of the 80-bed hospital in Gaza City just two hours before.

It was a lie.

An errant rocket fired by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) landed among a dense crowd of Palestinian civilians seeking shelter in the hospital parking lot. The bodies from Al-Ahli Baptist were rushed to a press conference at Gaza’s largest hospital, where they knew international media were already stationed and ready.

The shrouded bodies are presumably real. But note the unidentified young man in front of the podium posing with a dead infant still in its bloodied clothing. Note the second young man holding the corpse of a young girl.

This was not merely a press conference. It was macabre theatre for a global audience that was in denial about the mass atrocities Hamas perpetrated only ten days prior.

It was an attempt to stop the war while Hamas still held 240 hostages and before Israeli ground forces could enter the Strip to rescue them and stop the incessant rocket fire.

While it failed to halt Israel's offensive, this is the event that crystallized the "Israel bombs hospitals" narrative and that primed audiences for the rapid spread of the genocide libel.

At the press conference, Dr. Abu-Sittah said:
“Every western politician who has declared unconditional support for Israel’s war effort on the Palestinian people has the blood of these children on their hands. That unconditional support is what led us to this massacre… no other country feels free to target hospitals and get away with it. What happened today is a war crime.”

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07/05 Links: How Israeli Society Reacted to Oct. 7; When Medical Journals Sell Hate Propaganda; Natasha Hausdorff: How the West's own laws are being used to destroy it

From Ian:

How Israeli Society Reacted to Oct. 7

Micha Popper, 78, professor emeritus in psychology at the University of Haifa, said, after the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, "We were going crazy, thinking: What can we do? So we drove down to [Kibbutz] Kfar Azza [a few days later]."

"This was during the early days. Everything was in ruins, they had just removed the bodies. We started to clean the refrigerators in the dining hall, to work in the fields - we helped physically with whatever we could, and we were in contact with the army personnel who were in charge of the work there. We decided to go anywhere where help was needed."

"I saw that there are masses of people here who simply couldn't stand by. That wherever there is a problem, they are there. It floored me."

"Everything worked excellently, without the need for meetings, through spontaneous activity that was carried out by talented, take-charge people who came up with ideas of their own."

"And they did it masterfully, with the aid of other skillful individuals: locating missing people; establishing schools and daycare for the people evacuated from their homes; farming; providing psychological assistance to and employment for the evacuees; helping businesses."

"Israelis are problem solvers. Give them a problem and they'll know how to handle it. And then there is the ability to improvise, implement and be creative. That has to do with our history, with survivability."

"And then there is familyhood, which is part of the willingness to step in and carry the burden together."

"There was a woman who understood algorithms, data, and she suggested an idea to locate missing persons with the aid of photographs taken by the [Hamas] terrorists, who filmed everything with their body cameras. To look for all sorts of signs - like a stain on a shirt."

"She brought in a high-tech person and a few other people, and together they created things that don't exist anywhere in the world. After three days it was already up and running. The Israel Security Agency called; they wanted what the group had invented."

"There were plenty of initiatives like that, of people with vision, creativity and knowhow in their fields. No one waited for anyone."

"I saw people coming in private cars to transport equipment to wherever it was needed. I saw CEOs, well-known people who had already retired, companies that donated money. It was like they were all on steroids; people didn't sleep."

"Having so many go-getters is something you don't see anywhere in the world."

Gerald Steinberg: When Medical Journals Sell Hate Propaganda: The Lancet Crosses the Line (Again)

The ramifications of The Lancet’s role in this campaign should disturb anyone who takes science, medical ethics, and professional accountability seriously. It is also, more broadly, another step toward the normalization of silencing among doctors and health providers — actions that have become distressingly common among academics, including medical schools. The central involvement of once respected humanitarian NGOs such as Doctors Without Borders highlights the processes by which these structures have been hijacked by small groups of anti-Israel activists.

Horton has a long history of abusing his position and The Lancet to publish pseudo-scientific articles filled with false accusations against Israel, including an “An Open Letter for the People of Gaza,” a heinously propagandistic screed. Two co-authors had sent emails to other medical professionals under the subject line “CNN Goldman Sachs & the Zio Matrix” that promoted a video featuring white supremacist leader David Duke and other antisemitic materials.

In 2014, following many calls for Horton’s removal, he suddenly appeared before an audience of Israeli doctors and expressed contrition, declaring he was hurt by the accusations of antisemitism and of abusing his position as editor of the medical publication.

But now, Horton and The Lancet have reverted to earlier form, joining in a campaign led by fringe NGOs that singles out Israel for opprobrium and vicious demonization. Once again, the abuse and lack of accountability is blatant.

In response, Horton repeats his standard claim that professional journals should not be “neutral” or hide their “moral outrage,” in this case, triggered by Israeli actions in Gaza following the October 7 atrocities. But this argument collapses in the absence of any criteria or review processes for the ostensibly moral claims and the evidence ostensibly behind them. Instead, moral outrage is simply an excuse for abandonment of scientific principles — and systematic discrimination and bias targeting Israel in general, and medical professionals in particular.

Neither The Lancet nor the NGOs pushing this campaign have called for boycotts of medical associations in the many countries involved in actual — as distinct from invented — ethical violations, for example, Russia, Iran, Sudan, and China.

The credibility of scientific publishing depends precisely on the ability to distinguish between evidence-based claims and ideological advocacy. By erasing that distinction, this once respected journal is transformed into another platform for orchestrated discrimination and demonization.

The responsibility for ending such abuse rests first and foremost with the publisher, Elsevier, and its corporate framework, which has already allowed Horton to control this platform for far too long. The lack of oversight and accountability, and the stain resulting from the trashing of medical ethics has spread throughout Elsevier’s network of publications and other activities. The time to pull the plug on this farce is long overdue.

Doctors Without Borders plagued by deep-rooted antisemitism, anti-Zionism, NGO Monitor says

Antisemitism, anti-Zionism, and other expressions of hostility are “deeply rooted” within Doctors Without Borders (MSF), claimed NGO Monitor in its new report “Documenting the Antisemitic Organizational Culture of Doctors Without Borders.”

The report documents MSF’s internal staff conversations and culture regarding Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the personal experiences of Jewish staff members within the organization.

Based on these many testimonials by MSF insiders, NGO Monitor says it is “clear that antisemitism and anti-Israel bias are widespread in MSF’s organizational culture and are expressed by both top officials and lower-level staff.”

One testimony is from former MSF Secretary-General Richard Rossin, who, on July 13, 2024, told Canada’s National Post that the ideological bias against Israel “was perceptible around the beginning of the 80’s.”

“Antisemitism within MSF began under the cover of anti-Zionism. It [the ideological shift] cannot be fixed. How can you fix antisemitism, which is not an opinion but a mental disease?” Rossin said.

MSF Holland contingent refused to interact with a fellow Israeli medical NGO team
The National Post wrote, “Rossin recalled his experience in 2010 on a mission to Uganda when an MSF Holland contingent refused to interact with a fellow Israeli medical NGO team dispatched to help. Rossin remembered it as an episode of ‘one-way empathy,’ where prejudice had poisoned the MSF team’s ability to cooperate with Israel in their shared goal of helping civilians. He feels these same issues continue to plague MSF’s mission in Gaza today.”

NGO Monitor also draws on the words of Alain Destexhe, a doctor with MSF in the 1980s and its Secretary-General in the 1990s. In an October 2025 interview, Destexhe stated: “I think now MSF in Gaza is really taking the side [of] Hamas and against Israel. Americans need to know that Doctors Without Borders is not anymore the organization that it was 15 or 20 years ago. It has become a biased, partial and militant organization.”

“MSF is lying, MSF is partial, MSF is biased, and MSF is an accomplice of Hamas.”

MICHAEL GOLDFARB, who is Jewish, spent 15 years at Doctors without Borders US. He told The Jewish Chronicle of London in March 2026 that “European colleagues freely told me, knowing I am Jewish, that Israel doesn’t have a right to exist.”

“You see extreme ideological fervour – Israel as a Nazi state, Jews as the oppressive, colonial, white supremacists, Zionism as Nazism,” Goldfarb said. “Nothing meaningful has been done to address antisemitism, to show solidarity with Jewish staff, or call out this hate. That creates a permissive environment in which it flourishes.”

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07/04 Links: America at 250: Why Washington’s promise to US Jews still matters; 1,000 days after Oct. 7, the Jewish people stand proud; 'Hijacked his name': US genocide institute faces probe amid Israel attacks

From Ian:

250 years of America: The alliance that safeguards the free world

Not just interests
Some believe that the closeness between Israel and the United States stems solely from geopolitical considerations. There is no doubt that shared interests matter, but they do not explain the depth of the relationship. The deeper reason is that Israel and America are perceived, by their friends and enemies alike, as representing a similar idea: human liberty, moral responsibility and the belief that man is created in the image of God.

It is no coincidence that regimes and movements that hate the Jewish nation also tend to hate America. And with almost the same consistency with which hatred of Jews has served as a moral test for societies, hatred of America has also become a moral test of nations, regimes and individuals. Despite all its flaws, America alone stands between democracy and the rise of tyranny around the world, and so it is no surprise that among tyrannical regimes and their defenders, America and Israel are so often identified as one and the same enemy.

This is not only because the United States stands alone behind Israel; the United States has also given generously to various Arab states, and at several critical moments even supported Arab regimes (such as Nasser’s Egypt in 1956) against Israel itself. This hostility stems largely from the fact that America and Israel continue to strive toward a moral ideal higher than themselves: the belief that liberty is not only a right but also a moral responsibility granted by God, and that a nation’s strength is measured not only by its power but also by its values. This is also why the two non-Muslim countries that have suffered the most casualties from Islamic suicide bombings are the United States and Israel.

An alliance that must never be taken for granted
For precisely these reasons, neither Israelis nor Americans can afford to take their alliance for granted. The special relationship between Israel and the United States is founded on far more than defense agreements, military assistance or intelligence cooperation. Above all, it rests on cultural, moral and spiritual foundations that have been built over more than four centuries, from the voyages of the Mayflower and the Arabella to the New World, through Independence Hall in Philadelphia, and into today’s Oval Office.

This is why the relationship between the United States and Israel has endured crises, changes of administration, and political disagreements for nearly eight decades. It is also why it has the strength to withstand the challenges of the future.

As America marks a quarter millennium of independence, and Israel continues to fight for its security and its right to exist, we should remember that the alliance between Jerusalem and Washington did not begin in 1967, nor even in 1948. Its roots run far deeper.

They are anchored in an ancient book given in the wilderness of Sinai thousands of years ago, a book that found a home at the very heart of the American story. That is why this alliance is greater than any administration, deeper than any disagreement, and longer-lasting than any political cycle. As long as both nations remain faithful to those values, they will not only secure their own futures, but also strengthen the very foundations of the free world.

Happy Independence Day, America. And thank you.

America at 250: Why Washington’s promise to US Jews still matters

As America celebrates Independence Day and the 250th year of our Republic, it is worth recalling one of the founding promises that has distinguished our nation from the beginning.

In 1790, president George Washington wrote to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, assuring a small community of Sephardi Jews that the Government of the United States “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”

Those words were no mere courtesy. They were revolutionary.

The Jews who received Washington’s letter were descendants of families expelled from Spain and Portugal, driven from one refuge to another across Europe, the Caribbean, and the New World. They knew what it meant to live only on sufferance, forever dependent upon the whims of princes and magistrates.

Washington offered something radically different: not toleration bestowed by a sovereign, but equal citizenship secured by law.

Americans of every faith, he declared, would stand not as guests but as equal members of one republic. Each would “sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

America at 250: The triangular relationship between US, Israel, and Jews is at risk

The weakening relationship with the US, Israel, and American Jews

But strength does not last forever. A sober look at this triangular relationship shows that each of its sides has weakened in recent years.

On the Washington-Jerusalem axis, American public support for Israel has declined significantly and worryingly.

Significant parts of the Democratic Party now voice sharply critical positions toward Israel, while even among younger Republicans, the once-instinctive warmth toward Israel can no longer be assumed.

On the Washington-American Jewry axis, changes are also evident. Waves of antisemitism from the fringes of both the American right and left have raised the fear that the golden age of American Jewry may be coming to an end.

Finally, on the Jerusalem-American Jewry axis, cracks are visible as Israeli governments have failed to invest sufficiently in cultivating the vital ties between the two branches of the family.

The gaps between an American Jewish public that tends toward liberalism and an Israeli society that tends toward conservatism are growing wider. The unfortunate facts are clear: Israel’s position as a central anchor of identity for North American Jewry is no longer what it once was.

The government formed after the elections will need to think anew about how to strengthen each side of this triangle.

This will require renewed investment in bipartisan support in Washington, serious engagement with younger Americans across the political spectrum, and a deliberate rebuilding of trust between Israel and Diaspora Jewry.

The resilience of “we, the Jewish people” depends on the success of this effort.

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