From Ian:
Natan Sharansky:
Why I'm Optimistic about the Jewish Future
"Jewish children have to be reminded how much strength the Jewish people have; you will not find anything like the story of the Jewish people," Natan Sharansky, who served 9 years in a Soviet prison, told the Jerusalem Post on Monday.
After the Six-Day War, when Jews in the Soviet Union began to connect to Israel and learn about their identity, "You discover that there is a great history that you want to be a part of. There are great people, there is a great country."
"Then, there suddenly appear values in your life which are bigger than survival, than political career, professional career, and then you have enough strength to say publicly that you want to go to Israel; that you want to be Jewish."
While working as Israel's interior minister, he realized that the "Free World" was not as free as he thought.
"In 2003, I had my trip as a minister of Israel to certain different universities; it was the time of the Second Intifada. I discovered that there are more and more Jews in the best universities in America - at Harvard, in Columbia, in Berkeley - who want very much to express their solidarity with Israel, but they're afraid that it will condemn their careers."
Sharansky then wrote an article published in Maariv called "Traveling to Occupied Territory," referring to the American universities.
This was "the most important battle for the future of the Jewish people, because our survival depends on whether we have a proud, strong Jewish identity."
"I believe that our history, our very tragic history, is very optimistic. You will not find anything like this. Not in terms of survival of a people, not in terms of rebuilding after thousands of years and gathering in exiles and rebuilding the state. So yes, I am optimistic."
Bret Stephens:
We Jews Have the Honor of Being Hated
This article is adapted from the author’s “State of World Jewry Address,” delivered on February 1, 2026, at the 92nd Street Y.
After Édouard Manet caused a firestorm in the late 1860s with his politically provocative paintings The Execution of Maximilian, he got a consoling note from his friend, the poet and critic Charles Baudelaire. “Monsieur,” Baudelaire wrote, “it seems you have the honor of inspiring hatred.”
And that, in a sentence, is also the state of world Jewry in 2026. The Jewish people—Israeli Jews and Diaspora Jews; observant Jews and secular ones; right-wing Jews and left; all of us together; all of us, ultimately, in the same boat, whether we like each other or not—have the honor of being hated.
We should take it as a compliment, just as Baudelaire intended it.
We have the honor of being hated by the people who say “Zio” when what they mean to say is “Jew.” We have the honor of being hated by the campus lemmings chanting anti-Semitic slogans whose meaning most of them aren’t bright enough to understand—though some of them understand it perfectly well. We have the honor of being hated by Ali Khamenei, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and other despots whose loathing of Jews is directly proportionate to their crimes against their own people. We have the honor of being hated by Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens, Alice Walker, Roger Waters, Francesca Albanese, Tucker Carlson—the out-and-out Jew-haters and their sly enablers. We have the honor of being hated by those who think Jesus was a Palestinian. We have the honor of being hated by the so-called feminists who downplayed the rape of Israeli women on and after October 7, and by the so-called progressives who denied it. We have the honor of being hated by virtually every political movement, left or right, that also opposes the idea of personal merit as an organizing social principle. We have the honor of being hated by UN mandarins who would like you to know that the preponderance of human rights violations are committed by one small country: Israel. We have the honor of being hated by “Queers for Palestine,” who have neglected to notice what happens to queers in Palestine. We have the honor of being hated by the Hamas water carriers masquerading as reporters at the BBC and other media. We have the honor of being hated by all the Hollywood celebrities who see nothing amiss with demanding boycotts of Israeli artistic institutions but not of, say, Chinese ones. We have the honor of being hated by our charming new mayor, who thinks that he can endorse the erasure of one state and one state only, the Jewish state, and still acquit himself of the charge of anti-Semitism. We have the honor of being hated by people who parade their so-called Jewishness only when it serves as a tool to defame and endanger half the Jewish people—as if they’ll be spared the furies should, God forbid, Israel someday fall.
In short, we have the honor of being hated by an axis of the perfidious, the despotic, the hypocritical, the cynical, the deranged, and the incurably stupid. What shall we do with all this hatred—other than to take it as a badge of honor and turn it to our advantage?
Melanie Phillips:
The deepening madness against the Jews
In a thoughtful but provocative lecture last week at New York’s 92nd Street Y, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens said that since antisemitism is immune to rational engagement, Diaspora Jews should stop trying to defeat it. Instead, they should concentrate on building and maintaining thriving Jewish communities devoted to instilling Jewish knowledge and culture among their young.
Building up Jewish identity and peoplehood is indeed absolutely critical. However, that’s no reason to abandon the fight against the madness engulfing the West.
First, Jews have a duty to bear witness against such a monstrosity and to stand up for truth and justice. Second, it’s wrong to cast the issue as antisemitism. While anti-Jewish feeling is certainly at its core, it expresses itself through anti-Zionism. And this has gained such traction because it uses claims that purport to be observable facts.
Even though these are wildly distorted and false, they derive from actual events, such as the war in Gaza, which gives these claims a level of plausibility. That has persuaded many who are not antisemites to believe them as true, and therefore to hate Israelis and Zionism.
Those lies can and should be fought. Indeed, anti-Zionism is an evil in itself and should be attacked as such.
It is bizarre and wrong to single out one country for double standards—to demonize it alone by wall-to-wall lies and distortions, to deny to one people alone the right to their own ancestral homeland. Anti-Zionism should be fought as a form of bigotry in itself.
But while there are good reasons for not publicly identifying this onslaught as antisemitism, the fact remains that bigotry against a country doesn’t have the same level of evil as bigotry against a people—and this bigotry only happens with Jews.
We need to face squarely what we’re up against. Jew-hatred isn’t just another kind of prejudice or racism. It’s a unique desire to rid the world of a people because their very existence is felt to be unbearable.
Such haters don’t think Jews are victims because they don’t behave as victims. They are instead conspicuously successful. This inspires resentment and jealousy among Westerners, who therefore think claims of antisemitism and Jewish victimization must be a Jewish scam to sanitize Jewish wrongdoing.
And the really terrible reason that the murderous attacks on Jews incite and inspire such Westerners to double down with calls for more attacks on Jews is that, like the Islamists, they believe they’re now within sight of their goal to get rid of the “Jewish problem” once and for all.
They treat as gospel what’s said by the entire global humanitarian establishment that has framed the demonization of Israel and dehumanization of Zionists as “anti-racism” and has cast Israel and its supporters as pariahs. They hear no push-back whatever from the lily-livered liberals and revolutionary fellow travelers that form the governments of Britain and France, Canada and Australia.
Hypocritically wringing their hands about Bondi, Manchester and Oct. 7—and professing falsely that there’s no place for antisemitism in their own countries while doing nothing to stop it—these governments parrot propaganda that incites hatred of Israel and have given way to Islamist intimidation and cultural creep at home.
So Jew-haters think their time has come. If they now pile in to kick the Jews in the gut when they’re down and vulnerable, they may get rid of them altogether from their heads, their conscience and their world.
In other words, the Jews are facing a cultural war against them. The proper response to such a war is not to give up or deflect it. It is to fight back better.
Seth Mandel:
Define ‘Anti-Zionism’
Recent Jewish intracommunal debates have focused on the lack of a common definition for “Zionism.” But what would be more useful at this point is for the adherents of “anti-Zionism” to define the term by which they self-identify.
A Jewish Federations of North America survey making waves this week contended that only a third of American Jews publicly categorize themselves as Zionists. When you dug into the poll questions, however, you saw quickly that 90 percent of U.S. Jews are Zionists—the gap is between them and the number who self-identify as such. Nine out of 10 respondents believe Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state, and therefore are Zionists whether they are comfortable saying so or not. The rest either have a different definition of Zionism or are intimidated by peers into avoiding the word.
Zionism is a specific term that, at its core, revolves around one concept: Israel’s existence. It can conjure all sorts of other ideas, emotions and affiliations. So for many Jews, belief in Israel’s existence might be the necessary ingredient of Zionism but it isn’t sufficient to describe their own worldview.
As interesting as this discussion is, then, it doesn’t get into a much bigger quandary: Jewish anti-Zionism. Or, rather, Jewish “anti-Zionism.”
Zionism and anti-Zionism are not opposites. Anti-Zionism isn’t Zionism’s evil twin, even if it might be evil. The two terms aren’t even the same species: Zionism is a concept and anti-Zionism is an ideology.
This isn’t unusual. “Anti-Semitism” isn’t the opposite of “Semitism,” which isn’t really a thing outside of esoteric linguistic trivia. But it can be confusing. Any coherent definition of anti-Zionism died in 1948, because it only makes sense if the question of Jewish statehood has not yet been answered.
But it is undeniable that there are many people who call themselves anti-Zionists. So what do they actually believe? This is a lot less clear than what Zionists believe.
In the wake of the Jewish Federations survey cited above, JTA interviewed Robbie Gringras, who co-leads a project with Abi Dauber Sterne in which the two interview self-described Jewish anti-Zionists. “I have a feeling many more of these pieces are now going to come out,” Gringras said. Get ready for this discussion to take a central place in Jewish communal discourse, in other words.
Gringras and others, such as the social researcher Janet Aronson, talked about engagement with anti-Zionists in the context of two opposing sides of an argument. For her part, Araonson doesn’t think that’s likely to work.
“For these highly engaged anti-Zionists who have gone through serious Jewish education and involvement, they actually have already heard all of the arguments that mainstream Judaism has to present,” she said. “I think that’s one of the reasons why they say, ‘We don’t need to hear your side.’ Because they’ll say, ‘We have learned it. You’ve taught it to us and we reject it.’”
But that strikes me as a mistake. I don’t believe many anti-Zionists know what they believe.
From Ian:
Everything You Need to Know About Gaza’s Fatality Numbers
6. Thousands of Child Combatants are Part of the 70,000 Total
There is no doubt that Hamas and other militant groups use child combatants, in some cases children as young as 12. Demographic analysis of the fatality lists already pointed to this reality, with roughly 2,000 excess deaths among male teens. That inference is now confirmed by direct evidence. Numerous martyr posters, funeral notices, and social media posts identify underage fighters killed in combat. Most recently, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) publicly acknowledged that 9% of its announced fighters killed were minors , based on its own fighter death lists cross-referenced with Hamas’ fatality list. This shows that combat participation by minors was neither rare nor incidental. Yet media outlets and NGOs that cite headline death totals remain silent on the use of child combatants. Acknowledging their presence would complicate the simplistic civilian-versus-combatant narrative. Once child combatants are counted as combatants rather than automatically classified as civilians, another pillar of the prevailing fatality narrative collapses.
7. Gaza Fatalities Are Heavily Skewed Towards Adult Males
Hamas’ own data show 34,069 male fatalities aged 18–59 versus 10,976 women of the same age, an excess of more than 23,000 adult males of combat age. When teenagers are included, based on earlier fatality lists that broke deaths down by individual age, the pattern is unchanged: 73% of deaths among teens and adults combined are male, a ratio of roughly three to one. This demographic pattern is decisive. A three-to-one dominance of males among combat-age fatalities is exactly what one would expect from a campaign focused on dismantling an armed group. It also corroborates estimates of 25,000 combatants killed, including child combatants, particularly given evidence that Hamas’ lists omits fighter deaths.
Hamas’ latest figures also show that about 52% of all reported fatalities are now adult males. The long-repeated claim that “most” of those killed in Gaza are women and children is false. These figures still remain distorted by the inclusion of natural deaths, deaths caused by Hamas itself, and child combatants. Even so, the demographic signal is clear: Gaza’s reported fatalities are heavily concentrated among males of fighting age.
8. Civilian-to-Combatant Ratio is Approximately 1.5 to 1
The civilian-to-combatant ratio is the metric most closely tied to claims of indiscriminate warfare, war crimes, and even genocide, and is therefore aggressively contested. Israel’s critics seek to maximize it by falsely inflating total deaths toward 100,000 while simultaneously minimizing combatant losses to as few as 8,900. The evidence supports neither move but the desire to inflate the ratio explains why this type of propaganda persists. Once the Hamas fatality total is properly decomposed, the ratio tightens dramatically to about 1.5 to 1. Natural deaths embedded in Hamas’ lists must be removed. Deaths caused by Hamas itself, through executions, misfired rockets, gang violence, and internal clashes, must be separated. Child combatants cannot be automatically classified as civilians. And combatant deaths that never appeared on Hamas’ lists must be added back. With these corrections, the structure of the fatalities becomes clear. The civilian-to-combatant ratio aligns with what the demographic data in Hamas' own numbers already indicate: a campaign focused on dismantling an armed group embedded within a civilian population.
Conclusion
The evidence shows that Gaza’s fatality figures have been widely misread and repeatedly used as narrative proof rather than analytical data. The headline total reflects real deaths, but its composition has been systematically distorted through the inclusion of natural deaths, Hamas-caused deaths, and child combatants, alongside the omission of significant fighter losses. Claims of large numbers of excess deaths or missing “under the rubble” fatalities ignore the reporting mechanisms and compensation incentives that make large-scale undercounting implausible. When these factors are properly accounted for, the civilian-to-combatant ratio tightens substantially and the demographic pattern points to a campaign aimed at dismantling Hamas and other militant groups, not indiscriminate harm. Once this ratio is recognized, the use of the headline fatality number as evidence of indiscriminate warfare collapses, revealing how the figures have been framed to advance a narrative rather than to describe the war as it was actually fought.
Khaled Abu Toameh:
The Palestinians' Other Big Lie
That such a large number of Muslims are able to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem every week shows that Hamas's claim that the Jews are desecrating the mosque and plotting to control it is another big lie produced by the terror group and its supporters.
It is worth noting that Jews do have a right to visit the Temple Mount, primarily because it is also the holiest site in Judaism, where the First and Second Temples once stood.
[T]he arrangement set up in 1967 allowed non-Muslims to visit the Temple Mount but restricted praying there to Muslims.
Ten days after the Six Day War, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, out of respect for Muslim concerns, forbade Jews to pray on the Temple Mount and proclaimed the Kingdom of Jordan the protector of the holy site.
Non-Muslims, including Jews and Christians, regularly tour outdoors on the grounds of the Temple Mount but, since 2000, have not been allowed to enter inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque or the Dome of the Rock.
Palestinian officials and media outlets regularly and falsely portray the visits as "violent incursions by extremist Jewish settlers." It is worth recalling that to many Palestinians, all Jews in Israel are "settlers" and that, in their eyes, all of Israel is just one big settlement.
It is abhorrent to see the Palestinians and many Muslims use a mosque -- especially falsely -- to justify terrorism and the murder of Jews. It is even more abhorrent to see Hamas and other Palestinians proudly name their dishonorable crimes after a mosque.
The long-familiar Palestinian campaign to destroy Israel continues to this day. Palestinian officials continue to repeat all the same fraudulent accusations. Unless this anti-Israel and anti-Jewish campaign stops, the next October 7-style massacre by Palestinians -- presumably what they would like, distracting from and derailing US President Donald J. Trump's attempts to rebuild Gaza without Palestinian leadership -- is just around the corner.
From Ian:
Brendan O’Neill:
Couldn’t the Israelophobes give it a rest for one day?
It is astonishing, and nauseating, that people howled for more ‘intifada’ as the Israeli president was embracing a woman who lost her husband to the ‘intifada’ at Bondi, to that Jewphobic frenzy carried out by suspected Islamists. And they were calling for intifada not only in the Holy Land but in ‘Gadigal’ too, in Sydney, in the very city that just suffered one of the worst massacres of Jews of modern times. What, 15 dead people aren’t enough for you? You want more?
The events in Sydney shone an unforgiving light on the cult of Palestinianism. The cruelty of this bourgeois mania now stands starkly exposed. Its inhumanity is clear for all to see. These keffiyeh-shrouded agitators pose as anti-war and yet it is apocalyptic violence they dream of. ‘Intifada!’, they wail, knowing well that to president Herzog and the Jews of Australia, that word will conjure memories of the slaughter of Jews in discotheques and pizza parlours by the madmen of Hamas.
It seems there is no ‘pause’ button on Israelophobia. It is wholly unrestrained by morality and basic decency. It is extraordinary that not one organiser in Australia’s ‘pro-Palestine’ lobby thought to say: ‘Let’s give it a rest while they commemorate Bondi. We’ll get back to our Herzog-bashing tomorrow.’ Instead we have been treated to side-by-side footage of Jews weeping at Bondi as leftish hysterics in the city bellowed for more of the very violence that consumed their loved ones. What sickness is this?
Then came the final insult: the mob stole victimhood from the Jews. The New South Wales Police Force cleared protesters off the streets. The protest had been officially banned, so those who gathered were breaking the law. The cops dragged away a group of young Muslim men who were praying to Mecca. And that is literally the only thing Australia’s chattering classes are yapping about today: this supposedly ‘Islamophobic’ assault on pious Muslims.
It’s nonsense, of course. That street-praying was no mere religious act – it was a political provocation carried out as part of the anti-Herzog protests. Being a Muslim does not give one special immunity from the laws of the land. Yet this is where we’ve ended up: with grieving Jews being drowned out and Muslims being held up as the *real* victims. It is brazen narrative theft, with people’s focus being ruthlessly dragged from the racist murder of Jews to the supposedly ‘racist’ dispersal of praying men.
I’m not easily shocked, but the madness that befell Sydney yesterday felt genuinely unnerving. It felt like the salt of Israelophobia rubbed into the wound of Bondi’s anti-Semitism. A shameful day.
Seth Mandel:
The Jew-Trolling Right’s Empty Pageantry
“Whether a student says, ‘I believe there are only two genders,’ or ‘I believe Palestinians are undergoing a genocide,’ they should not be silenced or punished for expressing their beliefs.”
This snack-size bite of Burkean wisdom comes from Sameerah Munshi, who appears to have worked with former Miss California Carrie Prejean Boller to hijack the president’s commission on religious liberty, leading to a bizarre hearing yesterday and Boller’s dismissal from the commission today.
Boller seems to have accepted a position on the esteemed committee because of her heartfelt belief in her own need for more social media followers. Enter Munshi, an anti-Israel activist who serves as an adviser to the same religious liberty commission. Munshi, a booster of the rabid anti-Semite Candace Owens, has been—no doubt out of the goodness of her heart—helping to elevate Boller’s own personal Owens-esque cry for attention. On Munshi’s Instagram, for example, one of the few posts is a shared posting of Boller’s claim that “Gaza was a precursor to the release of the Epstein files.”
According to Boller, the goal of the you-know-whos involved in Gaza and Epstein is to “normalize and justify the torture and killing of innocent children.” The post ends with a call to solve the problem with this one neat trick: “Defund Israel.”
Today the religious liberty commission’s director, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, announced that Boller is being removed from the committee. “No member of the Commission has the right to hijack a hearing for their own personal and political agenda on any issue. This is clearly, without question, what happened Monday in our hearing on antisemitism in America.” No doubt she will start one heck of a podcast now, though.
Boller was booted for turning yesterday’s committee hearing into a circus by raving like a lunatic about Zionism. The recent Catholic convert attempted to do so in the name of Catholicism, but Catholics on the commission patiently explained church doctrine to Boller and corrected her Jew-baiting claims.
It’s worth noting that the Munshi-Boller duo’s first choice to hijack the hearing wasn’t to have Boller be the one to deliver the rant. Via Boller, they tried to feed the commission names of witnesses who would deliver the anti-Zionist lines themselves: Norman Finkelstein topped their list of prospective guests. “All of our suggested witnesses for the hearing on Anti-Semitism were denied,” she complained. “All of our suggested witnesses were also critical of the Israeli government.”
Daniel Finkelstein:
how the world’s antisemites turned on me
The thrust of these messages, hundreds this time rather than thousands, is that it is deeply hypocritical of me to believe that there should be a country for Jews (Israel) but not for English people.
I tried rational argument. I pointed out that I did want a country for English people, that we had one and I live in it. I also said that Israel wasn’t exclusively for Jews and that it wouldn’t need to exist in the first place if there weren’t so many people interested in deporting me. But in the end I found these exchanges as unavailing as it would be to argue with someone who called the Holocaust “the Holly”.
What would my parents have thought of all this? They would definitely have agreed it was right to confront it. That’s what my grandfather had done in Germany in the Twenties and Thirties, after all. They would have been realistic. Because Jews are a small minority in almost every country in which they settle, this kind of antisemitism has lasted for hundreds of years and always been dangerous.
They would also definitely have found it upsetting. Anyone would. Particularly the fact that it comes from young people in the United States, because the young and Americans were people they believed in.
But one of the most important things about both of them is that they had a sense of proportion. They were never complacent. Yet they weren’t going to live their lives as victims, despite what had happened to them. They wouldn’t want me too either. And I won’t.
In the history of civilisation, I don’t think there’s been a better time to be alive or a better place to live than now and here. I think that’s an objectively defensible statement. But it’s also how I feel.
My parents didn’t just survive. They lived. And I am doing that too.
‘Zio’ Is the New ‘N-Word’
What’s most telling—and disheartening—about the entire Odessa A’Zion saga is her use of the word “Zio” to distance herself from Zionism. Fear is clearly the dominant motivation here even if A’Zion cannot fully recognize it. Fear of career damage and professional decline. Of social media attacks or eventual ostracism. Fear of being maligned and misunderstood—but ultimately fear for her safety.
This is where “Zio” and the “N-word” most odiously converge—both are agents of unbridled hate speech doing double duty as a call to arms. Except one is anathema, and the other flows freely without consequence.
Which is why I was so certain, upon receiving my first accusations of being a “Zio,” it was unlikely to be my last. In both the centrist precincts I currently inhabit and the progressive communities that shaped my past, “N-gger” is a word that is simply never spoken. But in both worlds, “Zio” is screamed louder than ever.
To be sure, some who use the term “Zio” think that they can deploy it to disavow the Israeli government without defaming Israel or its people. Seemingly, that’s what Odessa A’Zion had in mind. This is, of course, an impossibility, as it is Zionism that created the State of Israel and all that it contains. But ultimately, most who chant “Zio” want Israel destroyed, and many want its Jews lynched en masse, just like so many African Americans before them.
The fact is that most Jews, across the political spectrum, are probably too fearful to openly compare “Zio” to the “N-word,” lest they be canceled or condemned. But having been the target of both slurs, I can attest that their ideological contiguity could not be any clearer.
“Gaza, Gaza make us proud, put the Zio in the ground,” shouted Oxford student Samuel Williams in London earlier this year at a demonstration by the aggressively anti-Israel Palestine Coalition.
Kind of reminds me of a Klan rally.
From Ian:
James Kirchick:
The Chutzpah of Yoram Hazony
The thrust of Hazony’s argument is that combatting anti-Semitism is as alienating or more alienating to voters than anti-Semitism itself. This reasoning is both morally and tactically wrong. Polls continue to show that a large majority of conservatives support Israel and oppose anti-Semitism. And yet Hazony believes that the 25 percent of the party that is exercised about anti-Semitism should avoid hurting the feelings of the 10 percent who are anti-Semites. Tucker Carlson, Hazony said, is “a very smart, passionate, and very likeable man when you meet him in person.” At the first NatCon conference in Washington, D.C., “he gave one of the best speeches we have ever hosted.” Moreover, “Tucker has been saying—as clear as the day—that he is not an anti-Semite.” Acting like the tough Israeli sabra, Hazony is the cowering Jew of the shtetl, furious at his fellow Jews for provoking anti-Semites.
Hazony’s analysis of American politics and history—epitomized in his laughable claim that Lindsay Graham, Ted Cruz, and Mike Pompeo are the ideological heirs of Nelson Rockefeller and John Lindsay—is as apt as his prognostication skills. In a November interview with Ross Douthat of the New York Times, Hazony said that he was “hoping” Vice President Vance will have “the skill of determining what the boundaries of the coalition are.” The following month, Vance decried “endless, self-defeating purity tests” and righteously affirmed that he would not “bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to deplatform.” Hazony also told Douthat, “I assume that Heritage is going to solve the problem [of anti-Semitism]. I know a little bit about what steps they’re taking, and I think it’s very, very likely that Heritage is going to get on an appropriate and excellent path.” As of this writing, more than 60 senior Heritage staff have left the think tank since Roberts avowed the institution’s unflinching loyalty to Carlson.
While Hazony feigns at playing a moderating force within the movement, what he’s really doing is covering his own tracks, desperately attempting to retain his influence by whitewashing the egregious behavior of his allies and the logical outcomes of his own philosophy. Through his books (The Virtue of Nationalism and Conservatism: A Rediscovery) and conferences, Hazony has been a principal figure in the drive to undermine universalist Enlightenment values as the basis of the American founding. According to Hazony, those who believe such hogwash are “imperialists” who support “the ideal of an international government or regime that imposes its will on subject nations when its officials regard this as necessary.” Proper nationalists, by contrast, believe that “nations should be free to set their own course in the absence of such an international government or regime.” Into the former category Hazony places the Third Reich, the European Union, and the late Charles Krauthammer.
Furthermore, American conservatives have got their history all wrong, a failure for which they must “repent.” The real intellectual fathers of the American Revolution are not John Locke and Thomas Jefferson, whose classical liberalism Hazony conflates with the antinomianism of the 1960s, but rather the 15th-century English jurist John Fortescue and the 17th-century John Selden, whose writings he uses to endorse the concept of America having a state-backed religion (Christianity). If this fake history sounds like a right-wing version of the 1619 Project, that’s because it is.
The rise in anti-Semitism on the right is attributable to a handful of individuals whom Hazony is too cowardly and embarrassed to condemn. Like a vengeful alcoholic at an intervention, he is lashing out and blaming everyone but himself for the wreckage he helped create—the mirror-image of the left-wing Jew who makes excuses for his anti-Semitic comrades. Imagining himself a world-class intellectual, he is, for lack of a better term, a moron. How else could he have thought that forging alliances with European-style blood-and-soil nationalists would be good for the Jews, or America?
Hazony sees himself as a scholar-statesman on the level of a Jabotinsky or Ben-Gurion when he’s really an arriviste. In a reprehensible attempt to protect his access to power, Hazony is willing to gainsay his American co-religionists, who know better than him the threats they face. Watching Hazony’s Jerusalem speech reminded me of no one so much as Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf from Philip Roth’s novel The Plot Against America, in which Charles Lindbergh defeats Franklin Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election and keeps the country out of World War II. The oleaginous Bengelsdorf, who supported Lindbergh, becomes the new president’s court Jew. “I have encountered considerable hostility from members of the Jewish community for allying myself in the 1940 election with the Lindbergh campaign,” Bengelsdorf tells a Jewish family, one of whose sons lost a leg fighting with the Canadian army against the Nazis. “I am pleased to tell you that it took no more than two or three sessions alone with the president to get him to relinquish his misconceptions and to appreciate the manifold nature of Jewish life in America.”
Alas, not even Bengelsdorf’s obsequiousness can outweigh the fact of his Jewishness, and the FBI arrests him for being “among the ringleaders of the Jewish conspiratorial plot against America.” At the end of the book, Bengelsdorf is released and writes a face-saving memoir in which he admits the error of his ways. At this point in his intellectual career, a mea culpa is the least Yoram Hazony can do.
Commentary PodCast:
The Price of Chutzpah
Today we are joined by Commentary's new Washington commentary columnist Jamie Kirchick to discuss his new piece on Yoram Hazony. Plus the positive job report, Trump's deal-making obsession on the backdrop on Netanyahu's visit to Washington, and John once again recommends Natan Sharansky's Fear No Evil.
Human Rights Watch’s Frankenstein moment
Shakir’s tactics were not deviations. They were the logical outcome of habits the institution had long tolerated — even rewarded — when they advanced approved narratives. Over time, small permissions sent a clear signal: toxic behavior was acceptable, limits were flexible, standards negotiable.
I saw those habits take hold firsthand.
In 2019 and 2021, I raised concerns with multiple senior staff members about what I saw as a growing “lack of proportionality, context, and balance” in work. I warned that internal discourse was drifting away from HRW’s stated values and that published work “in structure, content, and tone does not meet basic standards of balance and professionalism.” There was no meaningful response.
By 2022, resistance to internal scrutiny was more explicit. The Israel-Palestine chapter of the World Report — HRW’s global review of abuses that I oversaw — became a battleground.
One exchange involved the trial of Mohammed al-Halabi, a World Vision employee. The draft described the proceedings as a “mockery of due process.” But it did not mention the charges against him — that he was accused of funneling money to Hamas. When I asked Shakir to note the charges, as per normal standards of balance, he declined, saying, “The charges are wild.”
In emails sent over my head, Shakir said my review “smacked of being selective.”
A manager reminded him that I reviewed all chapters, including his, and backed my position: “We should never mention a case without mentioning what the charges are. If we think the charges are not credible, we should explain why.” It was a relief — but rare.
For the most part, managers placated, ignored, and excused. “This has been mostly instructive as to how things appear to work with Omar and who calls the shots,” I wrote to a manager after several bruising rounds with Shakir. “Three of us raised issues, including yourself, and in a call to me, you said various elements that remain are not acceptable. And yet you totally back down.”
Accommodation often reflected ideological alignment. But it also sometimes reflected quiet capitulation by an older guard increasingly overwhelmed by strident activist tactics. Watching them try to restrain the shift was like watching Canute try to hold back the tide. “I’m torn between saying the future is clear and I’m not part of it — and taking a stand,” one told me. “It depends how much energy I have on any given day.”
Whatever energy did exist proved insufficient; an increasingly divisive, outraged, aggressive way of doing business continued to gain ground. Foreshadowing last week’s petition signed by 200 staff, Shakir played a key role in rallying some 120 employees after October 7 to pressure senior managers to include references to Israeli “apartheid” in a press release about hostages.
“Argumentation” and “balance” were giving way to “messaging” and “narrative” — increasingly amplified by a new, under-the-radar partner: celebrities.
In the days after October 7, staff referenced talks with “Disney,” “top-tier celebrities,” and the “Hadid sisters” — American-Palestinian influencers Gigi and Bella Hadid, whose rhetoric since has included very familiar language: Israeli “apartheid,” colonialism, and ethnic cleansing.
Human Rights Watch’s own methodology holds that while individuals commit abuses, responsibility ultimately rests with the institutions that enable, direct, or fail to restrain them.
Its public fallout with Shakir is a lesson for institutions that believe they can harness ideology and activism — even when doing so strains their own standards — without those same forces eventually turning inward and coming for them too.
From Ian:
The case for a three-state solution
In the closing months of his first presidential term, Donald Trump pushed hard for an Israel/Palestine deal. Although well-intentioned, it was widely disparaged – perhaps unfairly – as unworkable, and there remained little opportunity to refine the terms before he left office. But he now has plenty of time to impose a sensible settlement. His rollercoaster approach to international relations may not be to everyone’s taste. Yet flagellation and flattery, bombast and bribery, and hard-cop-soft-cop may be just what is needed here.
The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan would be a key player in any such deal. For almost its whole lifetime, the “Palestine” Mandate included Transjordania, the region east of the River Jordan. The British had initially earmarked the whole territory of the Mandate for the Jewish national homeland, but, to the despair of the Zionists, from the Mandate’s very inception they instead devolved autonomous control of Transjordania to the Hashemite Emir Abdullah. In April 1946, the Emirate was finally severed from the Mandate when the old League of Nations, at its last meeting, recognised the new Kingdom (“Transjordan” until 1949, when it took control of the West Bank).
That was the real partition. Jordan was the Mandate’s Arab legacy state. Britain’s Labour government then washed their hands of the problem of the Mandate’s western remnant and dumped it on the United Nations, which, in Resolution 181 of November 29, 1947, voted to sub-partition it. However, by an ironic twist of fate, Israel nonetheless attained sovereignty over the whole remnant. This was through the default operation of a long-established principle of customary international law known as uti possidetis juris.
The rule was automatically triggered by the failure of the Arab community’s leadership to declare a state of their own in the areas allocated under 181.
They knew that doing so alongside Israel would signal implicit agreement with the resolution, and they wanted the lot. But the decision had consequences. It left a sovereignty vacuum in two-thirds of the Mandate’s remnant territory, and as Israel was the only state which came into being on the critical date of the Mandate’s expiry – May 14, 1948 – its sovereignty automatically filled out the vacuum to absorb the whole remnant.
By the end of the 1948 war, Israel could probably have taken control of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank salient with comparative ease. But it preferred to concede their occupation, respectively, by Egypt and Jordan under the terms of the 1949 Rhodes Armistice, retaining sovereignty in absentia. Although it seized them in 1967, its statesmen have usually been reticent about making express claims of sovereignty for fear of alienating friendly powers. Most recently, Prime Minister Netanyahu vetoed moves in the Knesset to ratify Israel’s sovereignty over substantial areas of the West Bank after Donald Trump and J.D. Vance voiced stern warnings that it would jeopardise the Abraham Accords.
Yet decades ago, U.S. policy had been more indulgent of Israel’s sovereignty rights over at least some of the West Bank. In 1982, echoing the sentiments of Britain’s Lord Caradon at the UN in 1967, President Ronald Reagan movingly declared that he would never ask the bulk of Israel’s population ever again to live in a territory barely ten miles wide at its narrowest point, within artillery range of hostile Arab armies. Then, in the wake of the Oslo Accords, the terms of the Jordan/Israel peace treaty brokered by Bill Clinton in 1994 expressly recognised in Article 3 that the “international boundary between Israel and Jordan”, defined in Annex 1(a) as the River Jordan and the Dead Sea, was “the permanent, secure and recognised international boundary between Israel and Jordan, without prejudice to the status of any territories,” and as such was “inviolable.” The “without prejudice” saving merely reflected the possibility of an eventual negotiated settlement over sovereignty between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, envisaged under Oslo. The treaty could not have enunciated a clearer acknowledgement of Israel’s sovereignty over the West Bank, not merely that it was an occupier.
Arguing over Gaza war death tolls is a fool’s game that hides the real question
Why no one knows who were killed in Gaza. Hamas’s Health Authority, a notoriously untrustworthy source, estimates some 70,000 Gaza deaths, but it does not distinguish fighters from civilians. They would prefer the public to conjure an image of 70,000 dead women and babies, not tens of thousands of ruthless, raping terrorists. But separating bodies of fighters from those of innocents is highly imprecise since Hamas terrorists not only operate among civilians in civilian structures but also dress as them. Likewise, Israeli estimates, which are known for being reliable and made in good faith, suggest that 25,000 fighters were killed, though this number is also imprecise. Thousands of both fighters and innocents are still buried under tons of rubble from collapsed buildings.
Why we don’t know whether a death toll of 70,000 is good or bad. In the Armenian Genocide (1915-1917), some 600,000 to 1.5 million were killed, accounting for 90% of Ottoman Armenians. In the Cambodian Genocide (1975-1979) victims totaled 1.5 million to 3 million, including 99% of Vietnamese Cambodians. More recently, in the U.S.-Iraq war (2003-2011), total deaths are documented at around 460,000. That’s 650% more fatalities than estimated for the Gaza war.
Still, hearing that 70,000 people (of 2.2 million in the Strip) were killed in a war is disturbing, even with the clarifier that “only” 45,000 of them were innocent women, children and seniors. But we certainly can’t assess the magnitude of death without context compared to other modern wars. In perspective, the Gaza war toll, with its far more favorable combatant-to-civilian ratio, was a minor disaster—and certainly, no genocide—compared with Armenia or Cambodia.
Why arguments over blame for Gaza war deaths are nonsense. When a country like Israel is attacked, unprovoked, by its bordering neighbor, as Hamas did on Oct. 7, 2023, there’s little question of responsibility for the conflagration. Hamas was the aggressor. When that aggressor fails to take precautions to protect its citizens in case of war, as Hamas failed to do, responsibility is again clear. Finally, if the aggressor uses a war strategy of human shields—deliberately operating within or around its civilian population, in residences, schools, mosques and hospitals—which is a crime, then that becomes a trifecta of unforgivable barbarism.
In short, civilians who died under these circumstances, no matter the number, are the full responsibility of the aggressor: Hamas. To debate the actual death toll as though it has some inherent moral meaning is irrational. To blame any of the deaths on Israel, which fought strictly according to the rules of war—and, in fact, exceeded what is required in providing humanitarian aid—is irresponsible … and dead wrong.
United Hatzalah Treats Five-Year-Old Boy from Syria with Head Injury
United Hatzalah EMT first responders provided urgent medical care on Tuesday to a five-year-old boy from Syria who sustained serious injuries after falling from a height in the Syrian village of Hader.
The child was transferred across the border into Israel by an Israel Defense Forces ambulance and brought to a soccer pitch in Buq’ata, where United Hatzalah volunteer EMTs were awaiting his arrival.
According to United Hatzalah EMTs Ali Tarbiya and Amin Abu Saleh, the boy arrived in serious condition suffering from traumatic head injuries. Family members reported that he had fallen from a significant height prior to evacuation.
“Our teams immediately initiated emergency medical treatment upon his arrival,” the EMTs said. “Following stabilization efforts at the scene, the child was airlifted by an IDF medical evacuation helicopter to Rambam Health Care Campus for further treatment.”
Two Druze EMTs responded to the incident.
United Hatzalah volunteers provide humanitarian medical assistance regardless of nationality, religion, or background.
The child remains under medical care at Rambam Hospital, where he is undergoing further evaluation and treatment for his injuries.
From Ian:
Hamas’s Boasting Indicts the West
Oct. 7, 2023, displayed something different. Far from hiding its brutality, Hamas advertised it, filming and broadcasting sadistic cruelty. It touted the torture and execution of Israeli women and children as a great moral accomplishment, using the killing as a recruitment tool.
Recall the enthusiastic tone of that young man who called his parents from the phone of an Israeli woman he had just murdered, imploring his mother and father to open up WhatsApp. “Look how many I killed with my own hands. Your son killed Jews!” he told his father. His parents were overjoyed. “My son, God bless you,“ his father said. “I wish I was with you,” his mother added.
Rather than a coverup, this was a media event.
What explains the difference between Hitler and Stalin, who denied their atrocities, and Hamas? Could it be that Hamas knew that many in its Western audience, unlike in Hitler’s and Stalin’s time, would celebrate its crimes as noble resistance? If so, Hamas’s openness indicts our own culture or, at least, its intellectuals.
Within days after Oct. 7, American campuses exploded with anti-Zionist and antisemitic rhetoric. Almost immediately, more than 30 Harvard student groups endorsed Hamas’s actions as justified. University presidents testified that the acceptability of calling for the annihilation of the Jewish people “depends on the context.”
When New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani argues, however implausibly, that the call to “globalize the intifada” is somehow ambiguous, he is at least paying La Rochefoucauld’s tribute to decency. That wasn’t the case at a rally at the Sydney Opera House held two days after the Oct. 7 massacre, when the crowd burned Israeli flags and chanted “Where are the Jews?” On the first night of Hanukkah in 2025, they were at Bondi Beach.
Today’s mass murderers no longer need to hide their crimes from the West’s educated elites, who applaud them. Terrorist boasting testifies to our own moral decline.
Sir Michael Ellis:
Israel Thrives While Its Haters Flounder
The mullahs say they have their "fingers on the trigger" and most regional states are rather nervous. Meanwhile, Israel seems to shake it all off and get on with life. One supposes there is nothing like being attacked multiple times over the decades to build resilience. Despite leading a country only the size of Wales, Prime Minister Netanyahu has pointed out that within a decade, Israel's economy will be worth $1 trillion.
While the Iranian regime has been busy murdering protestors by the thousands, haters of Israel prefer to focus their efforts on trying to introduce a boycott of Israeli avocados. At the same time, the Government under Sir Keir Starmer has indefinitely paused a UK trade deal with Israel, thereby doing itself out of business with one of the world's leading high-tech innovators.
Egypt and Israel have recently signed the biggest natural gas deal in Israel's history, worth $35 billion. The Israeli Leviathan gas field will soon supply a substantial proportion of Egypt's energy needs. The UAE has signed a defense contract with Israel worth $2.3 billion for a new, highly sophisticated defense system to protect its civilian and military aircraft. This follows the German parliament approving a $3.5 billion expansion of the Arrow 3 deal with Israel. In total, the deal was valued at $8 billion.
Israel's military, diplomatic, economic and tech strength is extraordinary. But the nation's true strength rests on the happiness, positivity and industry of its people in the face of those who hate them. Israel is one of the world's players. The future bodes well for them. For the haters - not so much.
Australia must face up to its anti-Semitism crisis
This would be a betrayal of Jewish Australians, who this week were reminded once again what a radically different place their country has become to the one in which their parents and grandparents once sought refuge. On Monday, Israeli president Isaac Herzog arrived in Australia for a four-day visit, having been invited over following the Bondi massacre. He was met with enormous counter-protests. Signs were waved depicting Herzog and New South Wales premier Chris Minns – who, with his public displays of solidarity with Jewish Australians, has been an admirable outlier in the Labor Party – as Nazis. Speaking at the Sydney Town Hall, Grace Tame – an activist and former ‘Australian of the Year’ – said Herzog had ‘signed bombs sent to kill innocent civilians’. Nine protesters have been charged for various violent offences, including one man who is alleged to have bitten an officer.
Australia is now a nation that refuses to tolerate the presence of a leader of the world’s only Jewish state, yet at the same time, publicly mourns the death of Hezbollah chief Ismail Haniyeh – a man who dedicated much of his life to killing Jews. To say Australia has a problem with anti-Semitism would be an understatement. This is a full-blown crisis. The protests offered further proof, if any more were needed, of just how necessary it is to hold a royal commission into anti-Semitism.
McCarthy’s call for the commission to also focus on anti-indigenous hatred was not just a blow for Jewish Australians. Many Australians, regardless of background, would also have found her demands curious. There are, of course, small and odious pockets of Australian society where you’ll find racist attitudes towards indigenous Australians. Yet there is no shortage of attention directed at this form of racism, as any recent visitor to Australia could testify.
Great strides have been made towards indigenous advancement. Every public event begins with a Welcome to Country ceremony. More than half of Australia has been returned to indigenous Australians through native title agreements. As McCarthy’s own ministerial title testifies, there are entire government departments dedicated to ‘closing the gap’ between the living standards of indigenous Australians and white Australians. The wrongs visited on indigenous people, from settler violence to the forced integration of the Stolen Generation, were indisputably terrible. But Australia’s recent attempts to atone for them can hardly be faulted.
The royal commission must explore one issue – and one issue only. It must be laser-focussed on the explosion of anti-Semitism in Australia since 7 October 2023. This horrific development has already cost lives. It is the very least Australia’s Jewish community deserves.
Of course, a royal commission won’t bring back Alexander Kleytman, the Holocaust survivor shot multiple times trying to protect his wife on Bondi beach. It won’t bring back 10-year-old Matilda, the youngest victim of that dreadful pogrom. But it might help to prevent a similar evil from happening again. Albanese and the Australian Labor Party must be given no opportunity to worm their way out of it.
From Ian:
Seth Mandel:
The Truth About American Police Training in Israel
The report itself turns out to be quite interesting, though more for what it says about the state of LA Times reporting and the bad faith of groups like CAIR.
It is true, for example, that Israel is one of the countries to which LA police have traveled. One of 32 countries, to be specific.
So why the focus on Israel? Perhaps Israel is the only Mideast country on the list? No, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are there, too.
Then maybe Israel is the most common destination for LA cops? Again, no. And it’s not even close to some of the competition: The UK gets twice as many trips, Canada three times as many as Israel.
Well then surely Israel is the only country accused of “genocide” on the list? After all, it’s the only country accused of genocide in the article. But no—China, a country carrying out an actual genocide, is there too.
Since we all know where this is going, let’s just get there already. Israel accounts for 7 percent of “total activities” of LAPD personnel going abroad, about the same share as France and far less than some others.
The numbers of LAPD officials participating in such events abroad follows the roughly the same pattern. Trips to France account for about a quarter of all employees who went abroad in the decade under investigation, with Canada close behind and the UK not too far in the rearview. Israel is a small part of the exchange program.
One could easily find some non-Israel details for concern, if that’s truly all one was looking for. Thailand, for example, is rated by Freedom House as “not free,” having transitioned from military rule to a “military-dominated, semi-elect government” known to use “repressive tactics including arbitrary arrests, intimidation, lèse-majesté charges, and harassment” to quell protests. One might look at the IG report and see that the LAPD apparently went to Thailand to “train” the royal police and ask what the story is there. But one would only be tempted to do so if one were actually concerned about any of this rather than trying simply to spread unfounded conspiracy theories about Jews.
If the LAPD is displaying a tendency toward mishandling public order, is it more likely that they learned such behavior from, say, Israeli K-9 training programs and bomb-squad instruction, or from their time spent at the “Austrian Police Academy Public Order and Riot Control Conference”?
Would you look to where they are learning particular skills, in other words, or would you simply draw attention to vague insinuations that the Jews must have taught them to hurt people? With regard to CAIR and the LA Times, we already know the answer. But perhaps others should ask themselves the same question.
Jake Wallis Simons:
Francesca Albanese: the sneering face of international Israelophobia
Albanese sits squarely in the tradition of this Soviet anti-Zionist agitprop. Born near Naples, she grew up in the world of ‘progressive’ academia, with a master’s degree from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, which is dominated by pseudo-radical thought to this day.
Naturally, she went on to join the UN, where she found her calling as its foremost anti-Israel provocateur. She has frequently accused the Jewish state of ‘apartheid’, one of the principal smears invented by Soviet propagandists, seemingly overlooking Israel’s Arab politicians, leaders of industry, soldiers, judges and footballers on the national team. (The Israeli state even recognises and funds Sharia family courts to cater for its Muslim minority.)
Again echoing Soviet disinformation, Albanese has compared Israeli actions with the Nazi Holocaust and in 2014, contended that the US had been ‘subjugated by the Jewish lobby’. After a global backlash, she apologised, but it set the tone for much of her perspective since.
It was 7 October that catapulted her to new heights of provocative extremism. On the day of Hamas’s massacre of Israelis, she posted that ‘today’s violence must be put in context’, but never extended the same dignity to Israel’s military response. This, of course, she wrongly labelled a ‘genocide’, wilfully ignoring the ‘context’ of a just and defensive war.
Bizarrely, Albanese even argued that ‘the victims of 7/10 were not killed because of their Judaism, but in response to Israel’s oppression’, making a defence of Hamas that even the jihadis themselves have, to my knowledge, failed to make.
Last year, US secretary of state Marco Rubio sanctioned Albanese for ‘illegitimate and shameful efforts to prompt International Criminal Court action against US and Israeli officials, companies and executives’. In a resolute post on X, Rubio added: ‘Albanese’s campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel will no longer be tolerated. We will always stand by our partners in their right to self-defence.’
That summed it up. Setting aside China and Russia, in crude terms, the great global power struggle of our age places Israel and the US on the one side, much of the Muslim world on the other, and Britain / Europe pulled hither and thither in the middle.
People like Albanese hold fast to an ideology that causes them to kick against the pillars of our civilisation relentlessly. What they don’t seem to realise is that if they are successful, and the roof comes crashing in, they will end up just as dead as the rest of us.
Yisrael Medad:
Recalling a father of the ‘Zionism is settler-colonialism’ theory
In the mid- to later years of the 1960s, as a young member of the Betar Zionist youth movement that recently suffered an act of bureaucratic, progressivist legalist oppression and discrimination in New York City, I would drop by far-left bookstores and pick up the latest pro-Arab literature. Already then, the name of Fayez Sayegh, a Christian Arab born in Syria, was familiar to me.
His 1965 pamphlet charging Zionism as being “settler-colonialism” was republished, as if received at Sinai, in edited form in 2012. I consider Maxim Rodinson’s analysis more challenging. It, too, preceded the 1967 Six-Day War, and Israel’s subsequent extension of its administration of Judea and Samaria (and, until 2005, over Gaza as well), having been first published in French in July 1967 but written previously.
Still, Sayegh represents a more genuine Arab voice of negation, rejection and desire for Jewish elimination. Whereas Marxists applaud killing “Zionists” in the name of “resistance,” Arabs are those mostly doing it.
In the 1920s and ’30s, the Communist Party platform had been asserting that the Mandate of “Palestine is a colony of British imperialism.” This was based on earlier resolutions, such as the Second International’s Fourth Congress in London in 1896, which condemned colonialism, and at the Sixth Congress in Amsterdam in 1904, which positioned the party as “against the colonial and imperialist policy.”
Moshe Machover, born in pre-state Tel Aviv—a Communist and the author of the 1961 anti-Zionist tract Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, which uses the colonialist paradigm—more recently spins the conflict differently. He writes that he sees it as a collision between “a Hebrew settler nation and a single indigenous Palestinian Arab people.”
A few counterpoints underlining Sayegh’s propositions are in order.
As New York Times columnist Bret Stephens recently remarked, “the fight against antisemitism … is a well-meaning but mostly wasted effort. We should spend … efforts toimprove pro-Israel advocacy, helping raise a generation of young Jews who are conscious of their Jewishness … .”
Highlighting a few basic irrationalities, historical corruptions and misleading “facts” should illustrate to younger Jewish generations that the ideology and anti-Zionist backlash they face are not new. Such misinformation has been disproved decades ago; modern-day misconceptions are just another form of anti-Jewish fulminations.
From Ian:
Israel’s President Herzog visits Australia after Bondi Beach terror attack
Herzog: 'when one Jew is hurt, all Jew
Israeli President Israel Herzog has begun his visit to Australia in the wake of the December terror attack against Jews at Bondi beach, placing a wreath at the site of the attack as well as memorial stones, in the Jewish tradition, which were brought from Jerusalem.
The Israeli President, alongside his wife Michal, placed the stones at the memorial outside Bondi Pavilion, describing how the Jewish tradition of placing stones at gravesites represents “the endurance of memory, the weight of loss and the unbreakable bond between the living and those we have lost”.
The Israeli President went on to say that “these stones … will remain here at Bondi for eternity in sacred memory of the victims and as a reminder that the bonds between good people of all faiths and all nations will continue to hold strong in the face of terror, violence and hatred.”
Herzog went on to meet family members of those killed during the terror attack, with video footage showing him embracing Australian Jews who thanked him for coming.
In a speech given at Bondi Beach, Herzog described the “fifteen innocent souls who gathered to celebrate Chanukah, the festival of light, were massacred in cold blood by two Islamist terrorists.
“The world’s only Jewish state, the State of Israel and the nation of Israel, stood together with the Australian people. We stood with Australian Jews, for we are one big family – and when one Jew is hurt, all Jews feel their pain. That is why I am here today, to embrace and console the bereaved families.”
President headlines moving evening of reflection
“We have come here not simply to tell you we are with you, but to show you that we are with you,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog told a packed ICC Sydney Theatre on Monday night.
As hate-fuelled protests against his visit with calls to “globalise the intifada” raged just blocks away, inside the theatre the mood was one of unity, family, strength in togetherness, and of a yearning for peace.
“There are certain emotions one can only fully convey through action. Only by doing. By showing up. And so, in the wake of the horror at Bondi Beach, we felt we must come to Australia to look you in the eye. To show up for you,” Herzog said.
“We have come to be with you, just as you have always shown up for us.
“Australian Jewry has been with us in our greatest hours of need. This community is inspirational in its connection to Israel, in its proactive Zionism.”
The President said the hatred that triggered the Bondi terrorist attack on the first night of Chanukah last year “is the very same, age-old, plague of antisemitism endured by our parents and grandparents”.
“It began long before October 7, generations before even the State of Israel was born. Yet somehow- the October 7 massacre, the greatest mass murder of Jews since the Shoah, emboldened closeted antisemites, here in Australia and around the world,” he said.
Herzog also paid tribute to all those who helped in the aftermath of the massacre.
“To all the heroes of Bondi, those who lent a hand, those who prayed for their wounded neighbours, those who gave blood, those who brought flowers and wrote letters, those who sent a meal, those who embraced this incredible community—each and every one of you has the deep admiration, the respect and the prayers of the Israeli people—for you are the finest of Australia,” he said.
“And I am here also to re-invigorate the important relations between our two strong democracies. I know that by working together we will find the way to expand collaboration and increase understanding and upgrade our relations. During my visit, I intend to discuss it with your national leadership.”
From Ian:
Hatred of Israel has become a proxy war on the West
The fact that Israel is a Western, technological, liberal, and successful democracy is one reason for the attack against it, but not the only one. Israel is a symbol of Western success, of refusal to surrender, and of steadfast resistance to terror and extremist ideologies.
For radical movements and Western elites that have lost confidence in themselves, Israel is a convenient target. It is easier to attack “Zionism” than to confront the failures of immigration policies and religious radicalization.
Western values are increasingly portrayed as “oppressive.” Thus, hatred of Israel becomes a tool for undermining the very idea of the West.
The gravest problem is not the extremist chants but the silence of the establishment.
Politicians, university presidents, newspaper editors, and opinion leaders prefer “not to get involved.” They condemn late, weakly, or not at all. In doing so, they signal that this new antisemitism, cloaked in moral language, is tolerable.
History, however, teaches a simple truth: Hatred that is not checked in time does not stop on its own.
The struggle over Israel’s image on the international stage is not a narrow public relations battle. It is a struggle over the character and freedom of the free world. Israel is the frontline, not the final target.
The choice is now clear: Take a firm stand on values or continue to surrender in the name of false morality.
This is not only about Israel’s future. It is about the future of the West as a whole.
De-Hamasification of Gaza: Learning from Western and Arab Models of Deradicalization (pdf)
Since Hamas's takeover of Gaza in 2007, its extremist religious-nationalist ideology has been systematically embedded across all spheres of Gaza life - from education and religious institutions to welfare and the media - producing a profound "Hamasification" of public consciousness.
In the wake of the Gaza war, military disarmament and physical rehabilitation alone will not ensure long-term security and stability. A far deeper process of "de-Hamasification" is required: dismantling Hamas's ideological and institutional hegemony and replacing it with a more moderate civic and normative infrastructure.
Instead of Western deradicalization models such as those implemented in Germany and Japan after World War II, we propose adopting operational principles drawn from contemporary Arab models, particularly the model applied in the Gulf states, which combines a firm crackdown on extremist actors with re-education toward religious tolerance and broad-based economic rehabilitation.
Deradicalization in Gaza should be conceived as a comprehensive institutional and cultural reengineering of the entire sphere of life. The scale of destruction vividly demonstrates to the public the costs of the "resistance" project and may generate openness to a more moderate political and ideological alternative - provided that such an alternative is presented credibly, consistently, and with Arab and international support.
Two models from Arab states are relevant to Gaza. The first is a restrictive containment model that relies primarily on security measures (Egypt, Tunisia). The second is an ambitious model of comprehensive social transformation (the UAE and Saudi Arabia). In both, many of the lines of action are similar, albeit implemented with different emphases.
These include the use of security measures of coercion, enforcement, and surveillance; the inculcation of a national narrative that elevates state identity and state law above all other identities and normative frameworks; the promotion of "moderate Islam" as an alternative to extremist Islam, which is framed as a deviation from religious truth; and the engineering of public consciousness across various spheres of social life, with the aim of undermining the extremist narrative and entrenching the preferred narrative.
The Name "West Bank" Erases the Truth
In the Middle East, a place name is never just a name - it is a claim.
For decades, the term "West Bank" has stripped the land of its historical identity.
A mid-20th-century substitution, it replaced the indigenous names Judea and Samaria to sever the Jewish connection to the region.
Now U.S. lawmakers in a dozen states and both houses of Congress are advancing legislation to restore these original names in official U.S. documents.
Judea and Samaria are crucial to Israel's survival. Their ridges tower up to 3,000 feet over the coastal plain where 70% of Israel's population and Ben-Gurion Airport reside.
These highlands are a strategic asset that protects the country from invasion. Without them, Israel would be less than 10 miles wide at its narrowest point and indefensible.
Samaria is a region mentioned more than 100 times in the Bible as the heart of the Northern Kingdom of Israel.
To the south, Judea is the birthplace of the line of King David. Even under the Persian Empire, Judea was the official administrative name for the province.
Christian scriptures treat Judea and Samaria as the actual districts on the Roman map, proving that a millennium after the kings of Israel, the world still used these names.
When the UN drafted the 1947 Partition Plan, it repeatedly referred to Judea and Samaria.
The transition to "West Bank" occurred in 1950, when Jordan annexed the territory and sought to justify a Jordanian presence west of the Jordan River.
Its rule lasted less than two decades, yet it managed to cloud thousands of years of history.
From Ian:
US Jewish orgs are reassessing ‘allies’ after Oct. 7 betrayals, key Jewish leader says
American Jewish organizations are rethinking the value of traditional coalition-building efforts after many long-time allies “punched us in the gut” following the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations William Daroff told The Times of Israel Thursday.
Ahead of the organization’s annual mission to Israel later this month, Daroff, considered one of the most influential figures in American Jewry, said that community leaders are thinking about how to “press reset” after the ceasefire and hostage return that brought Israel’s two-year war in Gaza to a level of closure.
After the shock of the Hamas attack, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 kidnapped, the Jewish world experienced a second shock afterwards, on the proverbial “October 8,” when many saw friends and partners turn against Israel or stay silent, Daroff said.
“The day after the attack, we were punched in the gut a second time when we saw how many of our erstwhile friends and allies, with whom we’d marched and supported, abandoned us,” he said.
For years, mainstream Jewish organizations have invested heavily in community-relations work, building ties with African American, Latino, LGBT groups and labor unions, among others, Daroff said. They joined coalitions on issues such as raising the minimum wage, civil rights and broader social justice agendas. Part of the purpose was basic decency, but there was also a strategic aspect: an expectation that when Jews faced rising antisemitism or when Israel was under attack, those allies would stand with them.
That assumption did not hold after October 7, however, Daroff said.
“The unions that we had stood with abandoned us,” he said bluntly. “Now, in an environment where organizations have limited resources, I think there needs to be a reassessment of how we prioritize engaging with allies.”
Caroline Glick:
The truth about Israel and Middle Eastern Christians
Today it is the Christian communities that are being pushed out of many Middle Eastern countries. As Ambassador George Deek, a proud Israeli Christian Arab has explained
, “The ethnic cleansing of Christians in the Middle East is the greatest crime against humanity of the 21st century. In just two decades, Christians like me have been reduced from 20 percent of the population of the Middle East to a mere four percent today.”
Christian communities are often compelled to keep their religion to themselves. Dan Burumi, a Jordanian convert to Christianity living in forced exile, recalled in a recent essay
on X that last year, Christians in Fuheis, the last Christian majority town in Jordan, installed a statue of Jesus in the town square. “Within two hours, they were forced to remove it because it was deemed provocative to Muslims.”
In recent months, on instruction from Prime Minister Netanyahu, the IDF stepped in to stop the massacre of Druse in Syria. He stated repeatedly that Israel remains committed to defending threatened Christian communities from Syria to Nigeria.
Those presenting false claims of Israeli state persecution of Christians and an equally false portrait of Christian life in the Muslim Arab world are distorting reality. If they are believed, they will make the world less safe for Jews. But as Israel has proven, the Jewish state is capable of defending itself. Those who will be truly harmed by these distortions are the people they claim to care for – the Christians of the Middle East.
The essence of Palestinian identity clashes with Israel’s existence
What is the difference between positive and negative nationalism?
Positive nationalism is a positive concept. It stands for – for the people, the unique culture of the people, the language of the people, an affinity with the historical homeland, and so on.
Negative nationalism, on the other hand, is negative. It is against – against others, their language, their culture, and so on; against various characteristics of the others’ collective-national existence. Hence, negative nationalism does not stand on its own merits but is essentially antagonistic.
Ideological identity is an identity whose organizing axis is a political, economic, social, or cultural ideology. Certainly, the identity of every person is multidimensional. The question, however, is what is the central organizing axis? For a person whose central organizing identity axis is the national identity, belonging to the people and its derivatives are the top priority, whereas for a person whose organizing identity axis is ideological, the specific ideology becomes primary, and through this prism, he also examines the real and desired reality.
This is the place to ask whether Palestinian identity is a national identity. Let’s check:
● An ethos of common family origin at the dawn of history – This ethos is not unique to the Arabs of Judea, Samaria and Gaza specifically, but to the entire Arab region.
● Unique language – There is no Palestinian language, nor is there a uniform Palestinian dialect, but, rather, dialects of the Arabic language common to the entire region.
● Historical homeland – Until the late 1920s, Palestine was never perceived as a separate territorial unit with any special connection to any Arab subgroup. Even today, the symbols of the Palestinian organizations all feature Palestine within the borders of the British Mandate, which are the borders of the colonial division of the Middle East following World War I.
● Unique culture – The culture of the local Arabs is not fundamentally different nor unique in relation to the other Arab groups in the Middle East. There are certainly local nuances, but these belong to specific places or spaces and not to Palestine as a territorial unit.
● Unique history – There has been a unique history in the last hundred years, and it is entirely focused on resistance to the realization of the Zionist enterprise, and the existence of the State of Israel, usually through wars and terrorism.
It seems that Palestinian identity does not meet the characteristics of positive nationalism.
Negative national expressions
A glance at the core documents of the Palestinian movements, alongside their ongoing propaganda, will reveal that they are full of negative nationalist expressions of the denial of the existence of the Jewish people, denial of the historical connection of the Jews to Palestine, and denial of the realization of the right to self-determination for the Jewish people through a sovereign Jewish state in Palestine.
These are aimed at achieving an ideological goal – the nullification of the achievements of the Zionist enterprise and the cessation of the existence of the State of Israel.
This is a radical concept that is the foundation of Arab resistance to Zionism, and it is what makes the idea of a Palestinian state clearly unfeasible, since such a state would devote all its resources to achieving the purpose of its existence – namely, Israel’s destruction.
It is possible that, through a complex process, Palestinianism will undergo a metamorphosis and transform from a negative ideological identity into something else.
It is also possible that the Arabs will choose instead an Arab national identity that has long historical baggage and cultural depth and, most importantly, does not entail anything that requires confrontation with the Jewish people, the Zionist enterprise, and the State of Israel.
The Abraham Accords, as well as courageous figures acting in the Arab region for Arab-Jewish cooperation and friendship, may serve as excellent proof of the feasibility of this.
From Ian:
Melanie Phillips:
The West’s pragmatic fallacy
Pragmatism is fine within the guardrails of normative morality. But if it tears out those guardrails and throws them into the trash, then it goes belly-up.
Pragmatism has corrupted the West and exposed it to grave danger in one particularly graphic example. Qatar, an Islamist Muslim Brotherhood state, works to destabilize and ultimately conquer the West for Islam.
Accordingly, over the decades, it has insinuated itself into America and Britain, turning their universities into Islamic propaganda factories and buying up countless individuals in politics and the media.
As a result, instead of viewing Qatar as an enemy, America has treated it as a valuable ally. It used Qatar—the sponsor of Hamas—as an honest broker in the Israeli hostage negotiations, which is why they dragged on at the cost of countless hostages’ and Israeli soldiers’ lives.
And now, Qatar has pride of place on Trump’s Board of Peace—and is using all its influence to stop Trump from destroying the Iranian regime.
You might say that Qatar is the Jeffrey Epstein of world politics.
Dealing with the devil never ends well. Abandon principle for pragmatism, and everything goes smash. It’s a lesson the West clearly has yet to learn.
Starmer has broken his promise to sanction Hamas officials, British hostage families say
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has been accused by the families of British Gaza hostages of reneging on a pledge to sanction Hamas officials.
In September last year, days before the prime minister announced he would recognise a Palestinian state, he said new sanctions on individuals linked to Hamas would be imposed within weeks.
Nearly five months on, however, no measures have been announced.
Eight families of British hostages seized by Hamas on October 7 have written to Starmer seeking “urgent clarity” on when he will fulfil his commitment.
They claim the prime minister personally assured them at a Downing Street meeting on September 11 that sanctions against Hamas and other groups involved in anti-Jewish terrorism would be “deepened and widened”.
Starmer reiterated the pledge publicly days later in a speech announcing Palestinian statehood.
According to The Times, officials have admitted privately that there is no imminent sign of new penalties being imposed due to concern it could upset ongoing peace discussions.
Since Labour entered government in July 2024, there have not been any sanctions placed on individuals associated with Hamas, according to the Foreign Office website.
There are currently 30 individuals with links to the terror group under sanctions by the UK. The last time sanctions were imposed was in March 2024 under the Conservatives.
Some individuals based in Britain have been sanctioned by allied countries to the UK, such as Zaher Birawi whom the US accused of being a “senior official” in Hamas.
Birawi, who describes himself as a journalist, has organised pro-Palestine marches and assisted Greta Thunberg’s flotilla to Gaza.
PEN America, Advocate for 'Free Expression,' Withdraws Defense of Israeli Comedian Who Refused To Condemn Jewish State
PEN America, a self-described "free expression" advocacy group, withdrew its defense of the free speech rights of an Israeli comedian, Guy Hochman, whose New York City show was canceled after protesters blocked the entrance to the performance venue.
"On January 29, 2026, PEN America issued a statement on the abrupt cancellation of performances in New York and Los Angeles by an Israeli comedian, who has been accused by advocacy organizations of incitement to genocide in Gaza," the free speech group wrote in a Tuesday statement. "On further consideration, PEN America has decided to withdraw this statement. We remain committed to open and respectful dialogue about the divisions that arise in the course of defending free expression."
The organization initially issued a statement on Jan. 29 supporting Hochman, who served in the Israel Defense Forces and whose performances were canceled after anti-Israel agitation. A mob in New York City blocked the entrance and a Los Angeles venue demanded that he issue a statement accusing Israel of "genocide, rape, starvation, and torture of Palestinian civilians."
PEN America claims to advocate for "human rights to protect free expression in the United States and worldwide," and initially called the mob action "a profound violation of free expression to demand artists, writers or comedians agree to ideological litmus tests as a condition to appear on a stage."
The group did not respond to a request for comment on why it backtracked.
PEN America’s board includes prominent writers, reporters, and literary figures, including the Atlantic’s George Packer, novelist Jodi Picoult, Harvard Law professor Jeannie Suk Gersen, Brooklyn Public Library CEO Linda E. Johnson, and Hachette Book Group CEO David Shelley. None of these board members responded to requests for comment.
The organization’s decision to withdraw its support for Hochman's right to perform free from mob interference comes after a long period of time in which it has backed up anti-Israel figures, including members of designated terrorist groups, as the watchdog group HonestReporting has shown. Its "Writers at Risk" list includes Khalida Jarrar, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terror group; PFLP member Rasem Obaidat; and Ahed Tamimi, a Palestinian activist who wrote in a public message to Israelis: "We’ll slaughter you, and you’ll say that what Hitler did to you was a joke. We’ll drink your blood and eat your skulls."
PEN America has not, to this point, issued any withdrawals of its support for those individuals.
From Ian:
EXCLUSIVE: Palestinian Authority To Pay $315 Million to Terrorists and Their Families Across Middle East in 2026, Watchdog Report Reveals
The Palestinian Authority will dole out $315 million in payments this year to 23,500 terrorists and their families, earmarking more than $19 million a month for a terrorism incentive program, known as "pay-to-slay," that PA president Mahmoud Abbas declared dead last year, according to a new analysis by the Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) research institution shared exclusively with the Washington Free Beacon.
The PA has concealed these payments from Western governments by channeling them through alternate budgets controlled by the PA Security Forces (PASF), its civil services sector, and its pension office, PMW determined. More than 10,000 former inmates are receiving monthly stipends of around $1,280 to $3,800 each month, while the PA will provide another $87,000,000 throughout the year to 13,500 "martyrs and injured" in Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria.
The findings come just a week after the State Department formally determined that the PA shifted to a new terror payment system it hoped to hide from Western donors, the Free Beacon reported, and present the clearest evidence to date that Abbas is violating his February 2025 decree that he had ended the pay-to-slay program. International donors had asked the PA to stop paying terrorists and their families as part of a "reform" project, but Abbas's government "is not voluntarily disclosing that 10,000 terror reward recipients are hidden in the civil service, the PASF, and as 50-year-old PA pensioners," according to the PMW report.
An additional 6,000 pay-to-slay recipients are within the PA's pensioners program, obscuring the payments at a time when Abbas's government is maneuvering for a role in postwar Gaza, and that number only stands to increase over time. "As thousands of imprisoned terrorists will be released from prison in the coming years, they will be shuttled into government jobs and early pensions, and the hidden Pay-for-Slay will continue to grow, hidden from international donors," PMW stated.
By transferring terror-related payments to various government agencies, the PA has been able to declare pay-to-slay void and continue receiving millions from the international community, which largely froze its funding due to the pay-to-slay program. But most donor countries continue to award cash directly to the PA's civil service programs, including the security forces and pension offices. Even the U.S. government, which froze most of its aid in 2018, still provides funding to the PA's security forces.
PMW used newly unearthed Telegram chat logs to determine that the PA has rerouted terrorism payments through its pension program.
"The wounded and prisoners—6,000 of them [had their files] transferred to pensions in different offices, and they are now registered there, and they are calling them one by one, asking them for bank account numbers to confirm them as pensioners," one recipient wrote.
Despite Israeli demands, Bank of Palestine refuses to shut down pay-for-slay accounts
The Bank of Palestine has refused a request from Israel’s Finance Ministry to close 3,400 accounts reportedly used to distribute payments to released terrorists, two sources familiar with the matter told The Jerusalem Post on Friday.
The revelation emerged during a meeting of the security cabinet on Thursday. The accounts are linked to the PA’s controversial “pay-for-slay” program, which provides monthly stipends to Palestinians who were imprisoned for carrying out terrorist attacks, as well as to the families of those killed during such acts.
According to the sources, Israeli authorities had previously submitted an explicit demand to shut down the accounts. In contrast to a similar case several months ago, when the bank agreed to close 1,700 accounts in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the bank’s management this time responded that it was “unable to act.” The prevailing assessment is that senior PA officials instructed the bank not to comply.
The Finance Ministry identified the accounts and warned the bank that failure to close them could prompt Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to block Israeli banks from continuing to act as correspondent banks for the Bank of Palestine.
Correspondent banks, such as Israel’s Discount Bank and Bank Hapoalim, provide services that allow the Palestinian banking system to conduct international transactions. Because Palestinian banks lack foreign branches, these Israeli institutions act as intermediaries. The State of Israel indemnifies the Israeli banks in the event that their services facilitate money laundering or the financing of terrorism.
Should the indemnification be revoked and intermediary banking ties severed, financial officials warn that the PA could face severe economic consequences, potentially even a collapse.
Thursday, February 12, 2026
