12/08 Links Pt2: Unapologetic American Jewry Is the Future; F grades handed to 14 colleges in antisemitism ‘report card’ as Jewish students forced to hide identities

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Unapologetic American Jewry Is the Future

So what’s the dog that didn’t bark? That would be the legion of personalities connected to the UJA who ignored the haters and celebrated the gala and refused to consider a groveling apology in the days after the event. No apology was necessary or even appropriate, of course. But it is crucial that the organized Jewish community recognizes this.

Meanwhile Isaac Herzog, Israel’s president and a scion of the Labor left, was in New York last night and delivered an equally unapologetic speech to Yeshiva University.

In New York City, Herzog said, “We see the rise of a new mayor-elect who makes no effort to conceal his contempt for the Jewish democratic state of Israel, the only nation state of the Jewish people.”

Notice the word “Jewish” twice in that one sentence. The attempts by anti-Zionist groups to shame Jews into severing their history and heritage from their modern identity must fail.

Herzog slammed Mamdani’s justification for an anti-Semitic mob that descended on a Manhattan synagogue that was hosting an event about making aliyah. The incoming mayor had suggested the shul was facilitating the violation of international law by talking to prospective emigrants to a sovereign state. Herzog pulled no punches:

“Delegitimizing the Jewish people’s right to their ancient homeland and their age-old dream of Jerusalem legitimizes violence and undermines freedom of religion. This is both anti-Jewish and anti-American.”

Well said. Mamdani, let’s remember, is still vowing to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which would be a truly lawless act. Herzog and Netanyahu were once political rivals, but that could not possibly matter less at the moment. Herzog’s message to American Jewry was to be steadfast, unapologetic, and to be able to recognize those who seek its harm. That message is, thankfully, catching on.

Who You Gonna Call?

Amit Segal is having a moment. A longtime TV reporter for Israel’s Channel 12 and print journalist for Yediot Ahronot, the country’s most widely circulated newspaper, Segal burst into the English-speaking spotlight courtesy of multiple post–October 7 appearances on Dan Senor’s Call Me Back podcast, numerous op-eds in the Free Press, the Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere, and a popular Substack aimed at a foreign audience. He presents a cogent, witty, and likeable center-right perspective, often in friendly contrast to center-left sparring partners like Yediot’s Nadav Eyal, and he comes across as a happy warrior, a smiling avatar of mainstream, security-minded Israelis.

His latest book follows this blueprint, cheerfully but critically examining the history of leadership (and, at times, lack thereof) in the Israeli prime ministerial class. A Call at 4 AM is about some of the consequential choices of Israel’s premiers during the country’s eight-decade-long existence. “My aim,” Segal writes, “is to describe the political decisions that they made,” like the ones that helped create Israel’s byzantine electoral system under the guidance of its first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion. In seating the 120 members of their Knesset, Israelis elect by party, not geography, a method used by Slovakia and the Netherlands and no other land on earth. And so, in Israel, Segal contends, “the movement is more important than the man; the party more important than the individual.”

Segal calculates that Israel, in its first 72 years, wasted more than 11 years on elections and coalition negotiations. The opportunity costs are no less steep. Had the 1969 elections been held on a regional basis, Ben-Gurion’s party would have won an astounding 103 seats. In 2020, Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party would have secured 92 mandates. Equally striking is “the massive gulf between public opinion on matters of religion and state,” the result of the perpetual horse-trading created by Ben-Gurion.

Still, security questions dominate Israeli politics and have for half a century. The question that means the most to voters is this: “When the red telephone rings at 4:00 a.m., who should answer?” That notion, which provided Segal with his title, arguably originated with an actual 4:00 a.m. call on October 6, 1973, when Prime Minister Golda Meir belatedly came to realize a war was brewing. Her failure to act resulted in military and political disaster.

The prime beneficiary of Golda’s disaster was Menachem Begin, the long-suffering leader of Israel’s national camp, who overcame decades of electoral failure and finally secured the premiership in 1977. He cobbled together disparate center-right parties and appealed to the neglected Sephardi community, skillfully navigating what Segal calls the “multiple identities” possessed by all Israelis. Begin recognized that “internal contradictions do not always impede the creation of victorious political alliances; sometimes they are even a hallmark of them.”

David Collier: The Vermont Hate Crime Fantasy Sweeping the Nation

Who in the world wishes for a hate crime in their community? Apparently, Vermont elected officials do.

With no hate crime charge, no law enforcement or judicial finding of deliberate targeting, and no evidence establishing motive, Vermont U.S Senators Bernie Sanders and Peter Welch, and Representative Becca Balint used the two-year anniversary of the tragic shooting of three Palestinian students to tell Vermonters a divisive fiction – a story crafted to satisfy sectarian political appetites rather than to reflect the truth.

It is not a new pattern. In another era, during the Dreyfus Affair, French elites clung to a narrative too emotionally gratifying to question. The parallel is not the substance of the case but the psychology: when a story feels right, it becomes a story that must be true, no matter what the evidence says. The Shootings and the Race to Interpretation

On November 25, 2023, three college students were shot on a residential street in Burlington, VT – the largest city in America’s second-smallest state. The three, Hisham Awartani (Brown University), Kinnan Abdalhamid (Haverford College) and Tahseen Ali Ahmad (Trinity College) were visiting during their Thanksgiving breaks.

Two are U.S citizens and one a legal resident. All three are of Palestinian heritage. Two of the victims were wearing keffiyeh (the headdress associated with Arab Palestinian nationalism since it was adopted during the Arab Revolt in the 1930s). All three were wounded; Awartani was the worst-injured – according to his family, a bullet lodged in his spine left him paralyzed from the chest down.

Local CBS affiliate WCAX-TV was the first to report that the victims of this tragic shooting were Palestinian – a detail initially unsupported and unattributed, but later confirmed by police.

The anti-Israel movement weaponised the tragedy instantly. Neighbours targeted local Jews online, joking that their whereabouts at the time of the shooting should be investigated.

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12/08 Links Pt1: ‘International Law’ Isn’t Real; Israel must refuse phase two of Trump’s Gaza plan until Hamas is fully disarmed; Gaza Fatality Analysis: The Truth Behind the 70,000 Number

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Israel must refuse phase two of Trump’s Gaza plan until Hamas is fully disarmed

The problems, of course, are that Hamas is refusing to disarm, the PA has indeed not reformed from its path (particularly its pay-for-slay policy of financing the families of terrorists), and, as pointed out last week, Hamas is still holding onto the body of slain policeman Ran Gvili.

Trump is banking on all of the parties being on board, including the immediate surrounding countries, the states making up the ISF, and, of course, Israel.

The pressure on Israel is already beginning to mount. Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani agreed that there really is no ceasefire in Gaza, and put the onus on Israel.

“A ceasefire cannot be completed unless there is a full withdrawal of the Israeli forces; [until] there is stability back in Gaza, people can go in and out, which is not the case today,” he said on Saturday at the Doha Forum.

Saudi minister Manal Radwan said at the same forum that it’s not the PA but Israel that needs reform.

“We have an Israeli government that opposes the two-state solution. We have an Israeli government that has officials continuously inciting against Palestinians, against Arabs, and against Muslims,” said Radwan. “We don’t see that we have a partner for peace, not even a partner for a sustainable ceasefire. So that is the actual and important reform that we are hoping to see.”

The question now is whether Trump will stick to the 20-point plan and insist on the disarmament of Hamas, or if he will join the ISF partners, like Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, who told the forum that disarming Hamas only needs to take place once there is a governance body set up in Gaza.

That’s why Israel must be more vigilant than ever and demand that Hamas be disarmed at the outset of Phase 2 of the ceasefire. The pressure from the Arab partners on the deal is one thing, but with Trump intent on seeing his deal work, he’s likely to join in the pressure on Israel to compromise.

That’s something we cannot do. Others may see the rebuilding of Gaza and the “peace” trophy in the Middle East as the most urgent items on the agenda. For Israel, however, the safeguarding of its borders and removing the Hamas threat, once and for all, is the overarching goal.

Regardless of the pressure, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must defy his closest ally in Washington and insist that the second phase commences with Hamas disarming and no longer posing a threat to Israel.

Gaza Fatality Analysis: The Truth Behind the 70,000 Number

Conclusion
This analysis points to a grounded estimate of 61,125 war-related deaths due to IDF action: approximately 25,000 combatants and 36,125 civilians (plus the 4,000 deaths caused by Hamas and internal actors). Civilian casualties are tragic, and the large number of minors killed cannot be dismissed; however, they overwhelmingly result from Hamas’s human-shield strategy, in which military assets are deliberately embedded where civilians are present, and in which civilian deaths are viewed by Hamas leadership as beneficial to its aims.

A civilian-to-combatant ratio of 1.45 to 1 is remarkably low by the standards of modern urban warfare in Iraq or Afghanistan, and it demonstrates that the IDF conducted a highly targeted campaign against Hamas under extraordinarily difficult conditions. Claims that large numbers of civilian deaths remain unreported do not withstand scrutiny: families had over two years to report fatalities, even without a body, and numerous “rubble” deaths are already known to have been added through the MoH’s notification process.

The evidence shows that Hamas’s headline fatality toll is a distortion. The true picture is of a war in which Israel inflicted massive losses on Hamas’ fighters while carrying out one of the most targeted urban campaigns in modern military history.

More People Died in 1 Month in One City in Sudan Than in Entire Gaza War

So what’s different in the coverage?
1. The media reports on it, but doesn’t make it the lead, doesn’t push the story constantly and treats it as something happening ‘over there’ the way it does most foreign wars. This is very different than the coverage of Israel where even the most minor confrontation, like clashes between Jewish farmers and Muslim/leftist activists in which no one is hurt, somehow become major stories.
2. The reporting doesn’t directly clarify the players in a way that’s easily understandable. That’s opposed to the media’s constant denunciations of Israel. Who is the RSF? Most people don’t know or care. Tell them that the RSF is really an Arab Islamic militia known as the ‘Janjaweed’ and that it’s backed by Muslim countries and they might have more clarity. Which is why the media tends to bury that part. Especially the Muslim racism.
3. Leftist activist groups haven’t taken up the cause, so there are no protests, little in the way of social media posts, little conversation. Whatever conversation there isn’t amplified by the media in the same vicious cycle that saw Gaza take over everything in 2024.

Neither Muslims nor the Left are especially interested in discussing the topic. Some genuine human rights activists care, but they’re not going to get any traction.

And that’s why real Islamic genocides get ignored, whether in Sudan or Nigeria, while any self-defense against Islam, such as by Israel, America or India, are falsely labeled as genocide by the actual Muslim genociders.

We know why this happens. And we can see it happening again. It’s not about the genocide, it’s about the propaganda.

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12/07 Links: The Seven Days that Shatter the ‘Nakba’ Myth; Our Man in Amman; Hamas chief rejects key points of Trump peace plan, calls for Israel’s destruction

From Ian:

David Collier: The Seven Days that Shatter the ‘Nakba’ Myth

In anti-Israel circles, the dominant narrative of the Palestinian ‘Nakba’ rests on a single, almost unchallenged assumption: That a passive and defenceless Arab population was suddenly overwhelmed by violent Jewish militias determined to expel them and seize their land. From this foundational myth flow all the modern accusations of ethnic cleansing and genocide, repeated by governments, activists, and even the UN. This is the central pillar upon which the entire pro-Palestinian movement is built

Take this recent post from the UN Palestine account which ties all the different strands together:

But that story collapses the moment you look at what actually happened. Not decades later, not in later stages of the war, but in the very first seven days after the UN partition vote.

Using mostly Arab newspapers of the time, the record is unmistakable: within hours of the UN decision, Arab political factions, militias, and regional actors launched a campaign of violence and mobilisation aimed at preventing the creation of a Jewish state. The civil war that followed – and the refugee crisis it produced – emerged from this aggressive, openly-declared Arab rejectionism, not from a premeditated Jewish plan.

What follows is a look through that history, reconstructed day by day from contemporary Arab and Jewish press.

Day one – November 30 1947
Arab media reacts to partition with mobilisation and incitement.

The morning after the UN vote, neither Ad-Difa nor Al-Wahda reported the partition as a political event. Instead, both papers erupted with outrage and calls for Arab mobilisation across the region. The pages were saturated with threats, anti-Jewish invective, and demands for an ‘Islamic Front’ to rise.

Ad-Difa’s lead built explicitly toward violent resistance. Al-Wahda’s headline declared: “O Arabs, the West has chosen your enemies. Will you remain stunned, or will you prepare?”

There is no ambiguity here. Arab media was calling on the Arab people inside the Mandate area and across the region to mobilise.

Day two – 1 December 1947
Violence erupts across the country. The Palestine Post reported seven Jews murdered in multiple attacks on 30 November.

Arab newspapers themselves documented the killings. Look at Ad-Difa’s own front page on the same date. Ad-Difa was a staunchly Pan-Arab media outlet that was aligned with the Husayni, ‘Holy War’ factions in the mandate area. It eventually promoted open support for the Nazis. At the time, the paper was run by Ibrahim al-Shanti.

Its headline read: “23 Jews killed and wounded in 8 separate incidents in Haifa, Jaffa, Beit Ve-Gan, Sarona, and Jerusalem.”

The article described bus ambushes around Jerusalem, attacks in Lod, Tulkarm, Haifa and Jaffa, and other assaults on Jewish civilians.

The war had begun – and it had begun with Arab-initiated violence.

The scholars fueling the current wave of antisemitism

Former US President Bill Clinton understood this when then-Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat declared that Jerusalem had never been Jewish. Clinton threatened to walk out of the room at the Camp David Summit in July 2000 if Arafat continued uttering such false claims. He recognized the statement for what it was—the purest form of antisemitism.

What Clinton grasped instinctively, these intellectuals refuse to see: that the Jewish people and Israel are inseparable. To delegitimize Israel is to delegitimize Jews. That is why antisemites applaud efforts to weaken IHRA; it leaves them free to proclaim Israel a crime and Zionism a pathology.

Delrio’s initiative represents moral courage at a time when it is desperately needed. The Jewish scholars who oppose him, intentionally or not, provide cover for those who seek to dissolve the line between criticism and hatred, between debate and incitement.

These Jews do not understand that the Jewish people and Israel are the same. The stances expressed by King, Clinton and now Delrio are more Jewish than theirs.

History is watching. And today, as in the past, the refusal to name antisemitism is its most reliable accomplice.

Our Man in Amman

Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown that was invented by the British and then funded by the Americans. Constantly lies the head of state who claims to protect the Palestinians while cooperating with the Mossad. Abdullah II is the fourth king of Jordan, the state that Winston Churchill lopped off the Palestine Mandate in 1921 with, he said, "the stroke of the pen one Sunday afternoon in Cairo." The plan, as proposed by Lawrence of Arabia in 1918, was to install the three sons of Hussein, the Sharif of Mecca, as the Hashemite emirs, Britain's proxies in the states it was carving out of Ottoman territory. Abdullah is the last Hashemite standing. He has a pronounced facial tic.

In 1951, the first Jordanian emir, Abdullah I, was shot to death at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque by a Palestinian terrorist. His son Talal lasted a year before being deposed on grounds of mental illness. But Talal's son Hussein saved his family. He saved Jordan too, notably by massacring Palestinians when they tried to overthrow him in 1970, then cutting them loose when the Palestinians in the West Bank rebelled against Israeli control in 1988. Abdullah II inherited the poisoned chalice after his father's death in 1999.

The Most American King, by the journalist Aaron Magid, is the first biography of Abdullah, who will probably still be king by the time your copy arrives. Deeply researched with plenty of interviews, it is both a groundbreaking primer on our man in Amman and a study in timeless imperial politics. Take away the helicopters and Swiss bank accounts, and the Hashemites' relationship to the United States is no different from that of the ancient Moabite and Edomite satraps to their Hittite, Assyrian, or Neo-Babylonian emperors.

The British invented Jordan, but the Americans took over after the Suez Crisis of 1956. Abdullah's mother was the daughter of a British military adviser; she may have met Hussein on the set of Lawrence of Arabia, where she was a typist and he was catching up on some family history. Abdullah was educated at an English boarding school, Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts for high school, and then Sandhurst for officer training, despite not being a British subject. He then read international relations at the University of Oxford despite, a contemporary tells Magid, having shown no academic aptitude at Deerfield beyond being the "incredibly ripped" captain of the wrestling team. Favorite food: cheeseburger. Language he had trouble learning: Arabic.

Abdullah returned to Jordan in 1983, for the first time in 15 years, short vacations aside, and joined an armored brigade. As Magid reports, he put away much "vodka and beer," wore cowboy boots when he listened to country music, and was never seen praying. He built up an extensive collection of Luger pistols, because you never know. In 1987, when he was studying at Georgetown, he impressed his Israeli tutor with a paper arguing that the Israelis had been right to pursue Palestinian terrorists across the Jordan River and into his father's territory in 1968. In 1993, Abdullah married Rania al-Yassin, a Kuwaiti-born Palestinian whose family had been expelled from Kuwait in 1991 by Saddam Hussein. They honeymooned in the United States, obviously.

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12/06 Links: American Antizionism; Natasha Hausdorff on Israel Eurovision row, new UN Resolutions and Marwan Barghouti; Scarlett Johansson’s ‘Eleanor the Great’ lives up to its name

From Ian:

American Antizionism

A year after the Six Day War, the French scholar Leon Poliakov published the penultimate volume of his magnum opus, a millennia-spanning four-part history of antisemitism. He concluded Volume 3, From Voltaire to Wagner, with the declaration, “Historians are not prophets, and I will refrain, finally, from making any prognosis. Only the future will show if, and to what degree, a hatred of the Jews, justified theologically until the French Revolution and ‘racially’ until the Hitlerite holocaust, will have a third incarnation under a new ‘anti-Zionist’ guise.”

Poliakov did not refrain for long, perhaps because the future showed itself more quickly than he had anticipated. Before turning to the final volume, which carried the history of antisemitism through the rise of Nazism, he rendered his prognosis on the Jewish question of his own day. “[T]he devil painted on the wall has swapped his name from ‘Jewish conspiracy’ to ‘Zionist conspiracy,’” Poliakov wrote in a 1969 monograph. The title of that book, De l’antisionisme à l’antisemitisme, telegraphed the argument. “Under the pretext of a critical attitude toward the Jewish state and its supporters, an ancient passion inspired by hatred continues to make its way.” A meticulous historian, Poliakov then added a nuance that current debates over antizionism routinely ignore: “However, it does so in different ways, depending on the region and the regime.”

Two years after Hamas’s “Al-Aqsa Flood” (we must confront the name for reasons that I will explain below), it is less the horrors perpetrated on October 7 than the traumas of October 8 that have forced an American Jewish reckoning. What does it mean that, of all places, America’s campuses and cities were the most likely to meet Jews in their grief with rationalizations, exhilaration, silence, abandonment, and shunning? Jews in the United States are now discovering how antizionism makes its way here in this region. The experience has caught them intellectually, emotionally, and politically unprepared. I am neither a pastor nor a politician, so I cannot offer much on the latter two. But to those hoping to gain some intellectual footing, I can offer my perspective as a sociologist who has written on social movement activism, a historian who has studied antizionism in the USSR, and a professor who has been navigating academic antizionism in the US since the 1990s. These shape how I understand what American antizionism is, how educational failures enabled it to gain a foothold, how it has become more dangerous (at least for now) than race-based antisemitism, and how Jewish Americans might begin to blaze a path forward.

Nicole Lampert: All the ways Israel is being cancelled

Spain, Ireland and the Netherlands boycotting the Eurovision Song Contest due to Israel’s inclusion in the competition is only the latest attempt to “cancel” the Jewish state over its war against Hamas.

Indeed, only this week, it emerged that Guinness World Records had informed the Matnat Chaim charity that its plans to bring together 2,000 people to donate kidneys couldn’t become an official record because it is an Israeli organisation. The London-based organisation claimed this was fair, as it was also banning submissions from the Palestinian territories unless they were done in co-operation with the UN (an organisation with which Israel now refuses to work due to perceived bias).

Guinness World Records justified its policy on the basis of “just how sensitive this is at the moment”.

“Sensitivity” has become a familiar refrain, as Israel has been cancelled by individuals and organisations in almost every area of public life since Hamas’s attack on the country on Oct 7 2023.

Academia
The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel has been going strong for more than 20 years in academia, led by the University and College Union, which represents lecturers, but it took on a new momentum after the Israel-Gaza war started in 2023.

In general, the attempted boycotts have not worked in the UK, but in Europe, it is a different story. Universities in Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain have increasingly voted to suspend agreements with Israeli institutions.

Emmanuel Nahshon, head of an Association of Israeli Universities task force to combat academic boycotts, told The Times of Israel that his organisation tallied 300 instances of boycotts in the year following the Oct 7 attacks, and a year later, that number had more than doubled to 700. This includes boycotts on individual researchers, as well as restrictions on those working with institutions.

In other cases, known as “shadow boycotts”, universities simply stop working with Israeli researchers or avoid engaging in joint projects without giving any reason.

Senior West Midlands Police chief 'apologises to Jewish community in Birmingham for telling MPs they BACKED ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans for Aston Villa match'

A police chief has apologised after appearing to mislead MPs by telling them that Jewish people in Birmingham had backed a ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans attending an Aston Villa match last month.

West Midlands Police assistant chief constable Mike O'Hara told a select committee last week that concerns were raised by the religious community over supporters of the Israeli football team travelling to the city.

He said this contributed to the decision to bar the fans from their Europa League fixture at Villa Park on November 6, which sparked a huge backlash - with claims officials were caving into Islamist thugs.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer was among those who condemned the ban, declaring: 'We will not tolerate antisemitism on our streets.'

However, the force has now been accused of using the community as a shield to avoid scrutiny after sources within the local community claimed there was no 'meaningful consultation' before the ban was decided.

One source told The Sunday Times that O'Hara's comments were a 'twisted' distortion of the facts and consultation with Birmingham Jews had been minimal.

The senior officer has since written to representatives of the city's Jewish community to apologise, emphasising he had 'no intention' of implying its members 'had explicitly expressed support for the exclusion of Maccabi fans'.

He also accepted it was 'not the case' that members of the Jewish community had expressed support for the ban and will 'ensure this is clearly articulated' to MPs in further written questions.

In a letter seen by The Sunday Times, O'Hara wrote: 'I am aware that there is some consternation within the local Jewish community about what I presented on Monday. There were a number of questions asked, often with several parts and secondary points.

'Please can I apologise and make very clear that it was not my intention to imply that there were members of the Jewish community who had explicitly expressed support for the exclusion of Maccabi fans.

'Having re-watched the footage, I am sorry if my response has created confusion by suggesting members of the Jewish community had expressed support for the ban. From my perspective that is not the case and I will ensure this is clearly articulated when I respond to the further written questions we are anticipating.'

Sweden’s funding scandal empowered antisemitic networks, endangered Jews

In a country that prides itself on democratic and liberal values, social media discourse has become increasingly toxic, fueled by misinformation about Jews, Israel, and the Middle East conflict, often amplified by the very institutions that received public funding.

A central question emerging from the scandal is how a developed state with a robust regulatory framework failed to detect a phenomenon involving $100 million in misallocated funds.

It appears that Sweden’s commitment to a tolerant and open immigration policy created a dangerous blind spot that allowed extremist groups to exploit the system.

Authorities reacted only after the investigation went public. Schools were closed, arrests were made, and assets seized. But for the Jewish community, much of the damage had already been done.

This affair is not merely a story of financial corruption. It illustrates how ideological organizations can infiltrate state mechanisms to advance hatred.

Like much of Europe, Sweden is waking up too late to the reality that antisemitism is not a marginal phenomenon. It is sustained by funding, ideology, and the absence of oversight – and when granted institutional support, it becomes a threat to democratic society as a whole.

The Swedish government is now being called upon to take full responsibility: strengthen security, remove extremist influence from public institutions, and ensure that taxpayer funds serve their intended purposes rather than fueling hatred.

The $100 million scandal is more than an oversight failure. It is evidence that even advanced democracies can fall victim to networks of radical incitement. Antisemitism in Sweden reached new heights because it was allowed to grow unchecked for years – and once it received public funding, it became a tangible threat.

In a country that fails to protect its Jewish community, it is not only Jews who suffer-the entire democratic order is at risk.

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12/05 Links Pt2: Boycotting Fun to Own the Jews; The boycott of Eurovision exposes the racism of the Israel-bashers; Why Hamas Sympathizers Love Ms. Rachel

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Boycotting Fun to Own the Jews

Which brings us back to the ridiculous meetings that took place yesterday among European broadcasters. The gathering voted to adopt a set of contest reforms rather than ban Israel from participation. It’s darkly funny that some of the reforms were aimed at quieting resentment toward Israel for its success—last year, Yuval Raphael finished second overall and won the public vote, leading to protests that the Jews somehow must have cheated. But it mollified enough of the Europeans that Eurovision avoided the nightmare scenario it most feared: having to ban Israel while Austria was hosting the competition.

Still, several countries have announced they will boycott the contest rather than share a stage with the Jewish state: Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland and Slovenia. Perhaps more will join them.

How should we judge the countries who stomped out of Eurovision over Israel’s participation? Harshly. A singing competition is not a diplomatic convention. Would you leave a karaoke bar because there was an Israeli Jew there? Will these folks boycott all establishments that serve Israeli Jews?

Aside from emitting a faint segregationist stink, these Europeans are politicizing every cell in their bodies in an attempt to enforce those same artistic limits on everyone else. If rare apolitical music gatherings are impossible, it has a stunting effect on the industry and on the minds and temperaments of the people participating in their own dumbing down.

And the soccer snobs are also—you just know it—coming for the Olympics at some point. Unhealthy people trying to make the planet an unhealthy world through a totalitarian-political mindset. I’d tell them to get a hobby, but they’d just ruin that too.

Andrew Pessin: Onward, ho!

Meteorological Discourse: How Language Erases Jewish Agency and Conceals Antizionist Actors

When Jews freeze under the antizionist gaze, they begin using a vocabulary of atmosphere rather than agency. Instead of identifying who is targeting Jews and why, they often describe anti-Jewish hate as though it were weather. We hear phrases like:
“It’s getting bad”
“Antisemitism is rising”
“This campus is terrifying.”

These are weather reports, not analyses. They lack actors, motives, structures, ideologies, and systems. And this linguistic pattern continues even in descriptions of violence. In an eerie way, events happen to Jews, yet no one causes them:
“Israeli women were raped”
“Nasrallah was lionized”
“A Jew was beaten in Montreal”
“Jewish businesses were vandalized”
“Jewish students were harassed”
“Sarah Milgrim was shot”

Such formulations render the harm without rendering the perpetrator. They mimic the structure of meteorological statements (“It rained,” “The streets flooded”) in which no actor exists and no intention is named. Violence becomes a condition rather than an action; Jews become a medium through which harm moves, not subjects whose safety is violated by identifiable agents.

Contrast this with what Jews should say—language that restores agency to those who commit, legitimize, or amplify anti-Jewish harm:
“Antizionists raped Israeli women”
“The New York Times lionized Nasrallah”
“Antizionists beat a Jew in Montreal”
“Antizionists vandalized Jewish businesses”
“Antizionists harassed Jewish students”
“Elias Rodriguez shot Sarah Milgrim”

This linguistic shift restores agency to the actors who commit, legitimize, or amplify anti-Jewish harm. It makes the ideology and its adherents visible. It generates accountability. And crucially, it reorients the public gaze away from Jewish victims and toward the structures targeting Jews.

'Antizionism Is a Hate Movement': A Conversation with Adam Louis-Klein

Something happened while I was writing a book about how to fight antisemitism. Forget internal arguments over hyphens or whether to call it “Jew-hate.” A new consensus is beginning to form around using the word “antizionism” instead. I always thought that, whatever you call it, this form of bigotry adapts to the times and, like a parasite, hitches a ride on whatever version of anti-Jewish hatred is socially acceptable. I’m beginning to understand that antizionism is different. It gives antisemites plausible deniability for their hatred, and we need a new set of tools to fight it.

At the forefront of this effort is anthropologist Adam Louis-Klein, who has led a push on social media to change the way we think about antizionism and to name it as a hate movement. He launched an organization, the Movement Against Antizionism to advocate for this shift.

I had many questions, so I interviewed Adam last month. I thought it best to let him speak for himself, so here is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation.

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12/05 Links Pt1: How time ran out on Blinken’s plan for postwar Gaza; Hostages as leverage: Iran's secret demand aimed at crippling Israel's agriculture; Did the Red Cross do all it could for hostages in Gaza?

From Ian:

The day after that never came: How time ran out on Blinken’s plan for postwar Gaza

Had the world not been turned upside down, Antony Blinken would have been in Israel on October 10, 2023. Had Hamas terrorists not shaken the Middle East and pulverized plans for its future, the US secretary of state would have flown from Israel to Saudi Arabia a few days later as part of a multi-stop tour aimed at bridging some of the final gaps between the two countries on long-elusive normalization, a deal that could have been as positively transformative as the Hamas massacre and ensuing war were devastatingly destructive.

For months ahead of the scheduled trip, the US had been hard at work crafting a document with Saudi Arabia, laying out what Israel would need to do in exchange for Riyadh joining the Abraham Accords, namely a series of relatively minor concessions meant to assuage Palestinian aspirations for statehood. Blinken planned to bring that document to Jerusalem for approval, two senior Biden officials told The Times of Israel.

Israel was aware of where things stood and was comfortable enough with the modest steps discussed by Washington and Riyadh for the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem to draft a normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia, according to the two former US officials and a current Israeli official.

Blinken did end up making it to Israel that week, but under very different circumstances, as then-US president Joe Biden’s administration rallied to support the Jewish state following the Hamas-led cross-border attack on October 7 that cut down some 1,200 people and saw 251 more taken hostage into Gaza.

Documents uncovered by the IDF from Gaza during the war revealed that one of the motivations of Hamas’s leaders in launching the attack was scuttling the US effort to broker that brewing normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

To a great extent, the terror group succeeded. The Biden administration’s normalization push was shelved in favor of, first, providing Israel with the military and diplomatic support needed to restore deterrence against Iran and its proxies, and second, working to secure an end to the war through a hostage release deal. Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (L) meets with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Jeddah on June 7, 2023. (Amer Hilabi/Pool/AFP)

Many leading figures in the administration saw freeing the abductees as the key to ending the war and accordingly concentrated their attention on the indirect hostage negotiations between Israel and Hamas, which largely ran through Qatar and Egypt. But Blinken grew to believe that setting up the security and governing bodies to help administer Gaza the “day after” the war was no less critical.

“Israel needed the confidence to know that [its] security would not be threatened by withdrawing from Gaza, and Hamas needed the confidence to know that the war would end if it gave up the remaining hostages,” said a senior Biden aide, who was one of 10 government officials and well-placed regional sources interviewed for this story.

That logic was the basis for a “Transitional Mission” that Blinken worked to establish, which would steer the Strip after the war. The initiative, as laid out in a 14-point plan that would have been part of the ceasefire agreement, was aimed at “support[ing] the provision of governance, security and humanitarian assistance for Gaza” after the war, according to a never-before-reported US government document outlining the plan, which was obtained and verified by The Times of Israel.

The proposed mission was to involve civilian and military personnel, funding and other contributions from a handful of foreign governments, including Saudi Arabia, whose involvement Blinken hoped would provide an opening to revive the stalled normalization negotiations. Displaced Palestinians stand on a road after heavy rain in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip, on November 25, 2025. (Omar Al-Qattaa / AFP)

To ensure strong Arab support, the proposal characterized the initiative as a “first step toward establishing an independent and sovereign Palestinian state.” That made the idea a hard sell to Jerusalem, but Blinken believed the prospect of Saudi normalization could be enough of a carrot to overcome Israel’s likely objections.

The result was a precarious house of cards, but one that Blinken thought could lay the foundation for not just a temporary halt in hostilities, but a durable, lasting peace and a truly transformed region.

The US held months of talks to advance the plan and Saudi normalization, but neither got off the ground by the time Biden left office in January 2025. A ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was brokered during the waning hours of the previous administration, helped by critical pressure from the incoming Trump team. But Israel still wasn’t interested in discussing postwar arrangements of the kind Blinken sought to finalize, and the Trump administration backed Jerusalem’s decision to resume the war in March.

Hostages as leverage: Iran's secret demand aimed at crippling Israel's agriculture - exclusive

Iran offered Thailand help in securing the release of Thai hostages held in Hamas captivity on the condition that Bangkok label Israel an “unsafe country” and instruct its tens of thousands of agricultural workers working there to leave immediately, two sources familiar with the matter told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.

The Iranian message was clear: help us apply economic pressure on Israel, and we’ll help you bring your people home.

In the tense and chaotic weeks following the October 7 attacks, while Israel was still counting its dead and searching for missing civilians, a drama was unfolding thousands of kilometers away in Bangkok.

Thailand’s government, shocked by the scale of the massacre in which 39 Thai citizens were murdered and desperate to protect its citizens, began urgent diplomatic efforts to secure the release of the 31 Thai laborers abducted by Hamas and other terrorist groups.

It was a humanitarian crisis, not a political one; Thailand had no direct conflict with Hamas. But as often happens in the Middle East, even humanitarian crises can become bargaining chips.

Tehran, which maintained influence over Hamas, signaled it might be able to facilitate the release of the Thai hostages; however, the offer was not unconditional. Possible damage to Israel's agriculture sector If Thailand complied, it would deliver a painful blow to Israel’s agricultural sector at the very moment it was struggling to recover from the shock of the attack.

Between 30,000 and 40,000 Thai laborers worked on Israeli farms and in greenhouses – some of them in the western Negev and near the border with Gaza, the area hardest hit on October 7.

Their sudden withdrawal would have crippled Israeli food production and inflicted long-term economic damage.

Joshua Namm: Et Tu America? For Israel, No Ally Is Forever

There has been a lot of serious discussion recently about America’s role in the recent agreement between Israel and Hamas. And while I wrote about that topic last month, this month contains my favorite holiday of the year: Chanukah. I wrote about the incredible importance of that holiday two years ago. This year, those two things are connected.

What’s the connection?

As Chanukah approaches there are two, seemingly different, but related reasons that “make this year different than all other years” (sorry about mixing two Jewish ideas in that way).

According to a story in the Jerusalem Post, the United States, obviously under Donald Trump, is planning to build a large military base in Israel along the Gaza border. The aim is purportedly to aid “stabilization efforts” in Gaza during the current conflict, and (more tellingly) to “serve future international stabilization efforts.”

At the same time, the acceptance of Trump’s plan, and the various ways the U.S. has been involved in shaping Israel’s policy during this war, under Biden and Trump, demonstrates an expansion of America’s influence on Israel, representing an increasing Israeli willingness to relinquish sovereignty – in much the same way it has given up land for a phantom “peace,” for decades.

That isn’t as threatening if we’re talking about the U.S./Israel relationship as it has existed for most of the last 50 years. But Israeli/American relations haven’t always been this friendly, and there is no reason, especially given the events of the last two years, to believe that they will remain so in the future.

It is no longer entirely in the realm of fantasy to believe that at some point America could be a significant opponent to Israel’s interests (and to wider Jewish interests). When I was growing up, I assumed that any conflict in which Israel and America found themselves on different sides, would be an America so different than the one I grew up in, that it would be unrecognizable as America. I also assumed this to be an almost entirely theoretical question, one which, if it did occur, could occur only after many, many generations.

That was naively idealistic.

Again, we aren’t there yet, but now we can easily see how things could get there. The rise of the antisemitic left (most recently embodied in the elections of not one, but two Jew hating socialist mayors in New York AND Seattle, with a newly declared socialist mayoral candidate in Los Angeles announcing on November 15), and the rise of the antisemitic right, embodied in the Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massie, etc., is a wake up call that every Jew should heed.

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12/04 Links Pt2: Israel WILL participate in Eurovision 2026 – Netherlands, Spain and Ireland to boycott; I Want a Democratic Party that Believes Jewish Lives Matter; What the Celebrity Crusade for Barghouti Says about Our "Elites"

From Ian:

Prof. Gerald Steinberg and Anne Herzberg: UK Funding for Hamas-Linked Groups

Since 2007, Hamas has amassed power and resources in no small part by diverting international aid and developing an unprecedented terror infrastructure. Billions of dollars in Western taxpayer funding were funneled into Gaza ostensibly for humanitarian projects via 13 UN agencies and dozens of NGOs.

Internal British and Hamas documents reveal multiple ways in which London was aware of Hamas involvement in its aid pipeline, and in some instances even cooperated with that organization. In May 2025, NGO Monitor published a detailed report, using information and documents obtained through Freedom of Information proceedings, which demonstrated that UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) officials were fully aware of Hamas involvement in certain Gaza cash assistance programs they funded. As of mid-2025, UK and UN databases revealed that this support was still ongoing.

These programs were implemented through UNICEF in coordination with Gaza's Hamas-controlled Ministry of Social Development, which was responsible for providing the lists of aid beneficiaries for cash assistance. Hamas was able to determine just who would receive British taxpayer funds, and NGOs linked to other terrorist groups (such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) would be among those recipients.

In addition, the evidence indicates that Hamas skims exorbitant sums from cash transfers in Gaza. According to Eyal Ofer, an expert on Gaza's economy, "People are getting aid via banking apps, but to turn that into real currency, they must go through brokers. They withdraw funds from these digital wallets and charge outrageous fees - anywhere between 20% and 40%. This is one of the ways Hamas is making a profit."

The events of Oct. 7 and the regional war it precipitated were made possible in large part due to the diversion of billions of dollars in aid by Hamas and its pressure campaign on UN agencies, international NGOs, and foreign diplomats to facilitate the terror organization's activity and control.

The detailed record discussed here demonstrates complicity, if not close cooperation, between the UK FCDO, officials of the NGOs that receive millions in taxpayer funds, and Hamas. It also shows how the humanitarian aid industry knowingly operates outside of and in contradiction to the legal conditions and requirements established by the British Parliament. In November 2021, London fully proscribed Hamas as a terror organization. Funding or supporting it is a crime.

The glaring absence of oversight and due diligence in British funding enabled the potential transfer of millions of pounds to Hamas terror infrastructure and personnel under the guise of humanitarian aid. When presented with concrete evidence, British government officials have thus far chosen to deflect and deny rather than reform the way in which aid pipelines operate, to ensure they help Gazans, not Hamas.

I Want a Democratic Party that Believes Jewish Lives Matter

I was an intern in the Clinton White House. I went on to work in senior positions for the campaigns of Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy, and for President Joe Biden's Super PAC. I helped elect Democrats up and down the ballot, staunchly defending them in public and in private. I attended almost every Democratic National Convention, as a professional and as part of a community of friends who were my political family. In 2020 I proudly served as a delegate for Joe Biden.

For decades I championed women's rights, reproductive choice, civil rights and equality. As a Jew, I was especially drawn to the teachings of Martin Luther King Jr., for whom Zionism - the Jewish longing for self-determination - was inseparable from the universal struggle for human rights. That was the Democratic Party I believed in.

Then came Oct. 7, 2023, and the massacre of Israelis and Jewish Americans. It forced me to confront the reality that members of my own party responded not with grief or solidarity with the victims but with protests that framed the attack as "resistance." It horrified me. There was no denying that under the banner of a "big tent," Democratic leaders were making room to shelter and legitimize extremism. Voices once on the margin suddenly dominated the narrative.

Then came the breaking point. The term "genocide" - reserved for the worst crimes in human history, like the Holocaust - was weaponized as a political slogan and hurled at Israel and Jews with ease. It was suddenly applied to a nation defending itself after an actual genocidal terrorist organization slaughtered families in their beds and hunted down and killed teenagers at a music festival.

Genocide is a ruse, a malicious inversion of reality. Yet few Democrats pushed back. Many embraced it. In November, 20 Democratic lawmakers introduced a measure in the House accusing Israel of genocide. The North Carolina Democratic Party and the Young Democrats of America adopted official positions accusing Israel of genocide. What we're seeing among Democrats is a broad, networked, antisemitic movement with cultural power and political influence.

The Democratic Party has allowed and lately encouraged the normalization of rhetoric that dehumanizes Jews and distorts history. It has become acceptable to be an antisemite who hates Israel. I cannot be affiliated with a party that espouses that message. Democratic leaders must speak clearly: Terrorism is terrorism, Jewish lives matter, moral consistency matters. Only after my community's safety is secure, and the party recognizes it not as a favor but as a fundamental principle, will I consider coming home.

The non-Jewish Israel supporters who have lost friends over Gaza

GEOFF Baker was always rather proud that his dad helped fight against the fascists targeting Jews in the East End of London in the 1930s.

As a journalist, and then PR to Paul McCartney, he also had many Jewish friends. One of his abiding memories of post-Holocaust trauma was when the former Beatle discovered a German venue he was playing in had been a favourite of Hitler: Geoff witnessed the deep discomfort of Paul’s Jewish wife Linda.

And so when October 7 happened, he wrote of his shock on Facebook and put a “I stand with Israel” banner around his photograph.

Two of his friends in particular took objection to this. The online rows became ever more bitter. “I’d write about my horror after reading an article about a woman who was decapitated by Hamas after she tried to fight off being raped and they would be saying things like ‘What about 1948?’ or ‘Did you see what the settlers have done?’” says Geoff, 69. “And I’d argue, ‘If you don’t want Hiroshima, don’t do Pearl Harbor.’

“This went on for weeks, all the rows were happening on my Facebook page. I realised I was inadvertently giving a platform to their views. So I blocked them and we no longer speak. One of them had been my friend since we were at school. I look around and I fear this new normal where it has become acceptable to be antisemitic and I don’t understand why no one is doing anything about it.”

Geoff, an old friend, was one of scores of people to get in touch with me after I put a call out on Facebook asking if any non-Jews had fallen out with friends over the Israel-Hamas conflict. I’d seen it reported in a More in Common poll that around four out of every ten Brits who were either firmly pro-Israel or pro-Palestine would consider dropping a friendship because of the war.

While I barely know a Jew who hasn’t fallen out with at least one person over the war, I was curious about how this issue had become so toxic for people who had no skin in the game – as it were – that they would fall out with friends. This is a conflict that is 2,000 miles away but its impact on our lives, our politics, has taken on a life of its own.

My post attracted 350 comments and was shared dozens of times. The comments read like a confession of pain. Person after person described how they had fallen out with friends, siblings, children and how sometimes the damage might be irreparable.

The direct messages also came in from people too frightened to say how they were feeling publicly. For many, the pain is abiding, yet they are also terrified about being further cancelled in this world of binaries.

In some ways, the messages were a balm: it has felt lonely being a Jew in this increasingly hostile atmosphere. These are people, strangers, who have our backs and have paid the price for their conviction in the most awful of ways. Sometimes that conviction has even involved them arguing with anti-Zionist Jews.

But also, they exposed me to a world of antisemitism that lingers beneath the surface – the way that non-Jews talk to each other when Jews aren’t in the room.

Let’s start with the left.

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12/04 Links Pt1: Why Trump's Gaza Plan is Not a Peace Deal; Trump to announce transition to Phase II of Gaza deal, 'Board of Peace' by Christmas; The World Will Not Help Israel with Hamas;

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: No, Americans Don’t Really Think Israel Is Guilty of Genocide

The key here is that genocide requires intent to destroy not just civilians but the specific population, and to judge something as genocidal requires one to determine that genocide is “the only inference that could reasonably be drawn from the acts in question.”

This is part of why the claim that Israel committed genocide was so unserious: Definitionally, a genocide did not take place. There are plenty of other words that can be used to describe the war, but “genocide” has been indisputably ruled out unless one changes the definition of the word, as some NGOs tried to do. But again, that would also be an admission that Israel was innocent of the charge.

Israel’s civilian-to-combatant fatality rate was unprecedentedly low for urban warfare, and the intent issue becomes absurd when you remember that Israel sent its military into Gaza to rescue hostages that Hamas refused to return.

But back to the poll. Even the response that Israel intentionally harms civilians doesn’t necessarily meet the definition of genocide. So if about 8 in 10 don’t think Israel is intentionally harming civilians, it’s likely that about 9 out of 10 don’t think Israel committed genocide.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t warning signs for Israel and its supporters, even in the IGC poll. Just because respondents don’t believe Israel committed genocide doesn’t mean they approve of Israel’s actions. As one can see, the poll shows plenty of criticism of Israel’s prosecution of the war.

Moreover, in the IGC poll—as in virtually every such survey—the trend is clear: Younger Americans of either party are tougher on Israel than their elders. But there is still a wide partisan gap: The farther left one goes on the spectrum, the more likely are respondents to assume ill intent on Israel’s part.

Another notable aspect of the poll is that there is a ton of uncertainty among respondents, so presumably a fair number are persuadable in one direction or another. Uncertainty regarding Israel’s intent is incompatible with a finding of genocide.

Two lessons. One, by definition the people who accuse Israel of genocide are feigning a certainty they almost surely don’t or can’t possess, at least from afar and during the war. As a rule, beware such people, especially when they are rewarded professionally for their dishonesty.

Two, anti-Israel activists have killed the concept of genocide. They have turned it into just another descriptive term meaning one side lost the war badly. There will continue to be victims of actual genocide in the world, and they will all be harmed by the “genocide” fraud perpetrated by professional anti-Zionists.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Why Trump's Gaza Plan is Not a Peace Deal

In the eyes of Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups, the plan is nothing but another temporary ceasefire, not different than previous ones reached between Israel and Hamas over the past two decades.

Those who think that Hamas, by agreeing to Trump's "peace plan," has abandoned its desire to eliminate Israel or has softened its position toward Israel are unfortunately dead wrong.

Hamas leaders have stressed their opposition to the involvement of any non-Palestinians in the future administration of the Gaza Strip.

Hamas has also made it clear that the role of any international troops should be limited to monitoring the ceasefire and safeguarding the borders of the Gaza Strip, not to disarming the terror groups and their military infrastructure.

Hamas's remarks are a not-so-veiled threat that they intend to launch terrorist attacks against members of any international force that tries to disarm the terror groups in the Gaza Strip.

That is doubtless the major reason most Arabs and Muslims appear reluctant to dispatch soldiers to the Gaza Strip: they do not want a direct confrontation with Hamas and the other terror groups operating there.

To understand the mindset and intentions of Hamas, it is crucial that one pay attention to what the terror group says in Arabic, not what some of its leaders tell US envoys in meetings behind closed doors.

Regrettably, there can be no peace, security, or stability in the area if Hamas and its allies are left standing on their feet and preparing for more massacres against Israel.

Is Gaza Peace Plan on the Verge of Crumbling?

"Everything is stuck," a senior Israeli defense official told me this week. Because diplomats have failed to capitalize on the disarray of Iran and its allies, "all the fronts in the Middle East are still open," he warned.

Most of Gaza's population is still controlled by Hamas, Lebanon hasn't fully regained its sovereignty from Hizbullah, and Iran is rebuilding its battered military.

The Middle East is still waiting for a stable "day after." Other than the release of all living Israeli hostages from Gaza, most of the goals of Trump's peace plan appear stillborn.

Nations that had volunteered to join the international force have been backing away, and donor countries are refusing to begin reconstruction projects until there's security in Gaza.

Prof. Efraim Inbar: The World Will Not Help Israel with Hamas

Hamas is tightening its grip on the half of Gaza that it controls and rebuilding its military infrastructure. It is difficult to imagine Hamas voluntarily disarming or relinquishing control. Israel must be prepared to "do the dirty work" for the civilized world and finish off what remains of Hamas's evil in Gaza. This is not a boxing match that can be won on points. Israel must win by a knockout.

Israel cannot claim victory while Hamas remains in Gaza. Israel must therefore seek American backing to resume fighting in order to implement the Trump plan. Repeated military defeats have not altered the Palestinians' fundamental opposition to the existence of the Jewish state. There is no "day after" if Hamas remains as an armed presence in Gaza.

Every regime that has a peace agreement with Israel - Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco - despises Hamas. All of these states, as well as Saudi Arabia, view the Muslim Brotherhood and its financial patron Qatar as a threat to their regimes and a destabilizing force in the region.

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12/03 Links Pt2: NGO Monitor: Hamas' Coercive Grip on Aid and NGO Operations in Gaza; Dublin City Council Members Blame ‘Zionist Lobby’ and ‘Israeli Intelligence’; Antisemitism ‘scourge’ continues to wreak havoc in Australia

From Ian:

Dublin City Council Members Blame ‘Zionist Lobby’ and ‘Israeli Intelligence’ for Thwarting Proposal To Rename Herzog Park

Dublin City Council members accused Israel of wielding its lobbying power to interfere in Irish politics during a heated debate over postponing a vote to strip an Irish-born Israeli president’s name from a city park.

The Monday night meeting concluded with a 35-to-25 vote to send the renaming proposal back to a planning committee after the council’s chief executive noted a procedural error in the renaming process. Footage from the preceding hour-long discussion, however, is sparking outrage among Ireland’s Jewish community.

“Deranged conspiracy theories were rife at the Dublin City Council meeting last night,” a native Dubliner and doctoral student at Trinity College Dublin, Rachel Moiselle, remarked on X. Ms. Moiselle, an Irish writer of Jewish heritage who has been outspoken in defending Ireland’s Jewish population, has helped lead the effort against renaming Herzog Park.

“The hatred is visceral and frightening,” she continued in a separate post. “There is a real evil here and the people who embody it have positions of political power. We will need international support to fight it.”

Clips from the live-streamed session show council members suggesting that pushback against the proposal reflected a coordinated campaign by “Zionist” or “Israeli” influences.

“This was a full-court press by the Zionist lobby and they think they will win it,” stated councillor Ciarán Ó Meachair. “They will not win this.” Earlier in the session Mr. Meachair accused Herzog of having “raped, murdered and pillaged innocent civilians.” He vowed to continue to push for a renaming, offering instead a British Jewish communist politician, Max Levitas.

Another council member, Pat Dunne, of the United Left party, went even further, claiming that the Israel Defense Forces were somehow involved in the effort. “I’m further convinced that whatever phone calls were made to our CEO and to other officials probably emanated from Israeli intelligence attached to the Israeli Defence Forces because they’re active in every issue in relation to Palestine,” Mr. Dunne said. “Trace it all the way back, Richard, and you’ll find that’s the source.”

Alex Hearn: The comforting myth of Britain as a safe haven for Jews clouds our immigration debate

This notion of Jewish impurity polluting the nation remained, even when it was being popularised in Nazi propaganda a few decades later. In 1933 the conservative MP for Tottenham asked the Home Secretary what measures he was taking to prevent “alien Jews from Germany entering England”.

The 1938 Evian Conference saw Britain refuse to take significant numbers of Jewish refugees. Prioritising Arab sensibilities, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain refused to help 10,000 Jewish children emigrate from Nazi Germany into British mandate Palestine, which became official policy in 1939 with The White Paper. After Kristallnacht the situation became impossible to ignore and children were grudgingly allowed into Britain itself on Kindertransport.

It was largely a private rescue effort by Jewish organisations such as Central British Fund for German Jewry (CBF), while the initiative came from German Jews such as Wilfrid Israel, who saved about 15 times more lives than Oskar Schindler yet his name is largely unknown. Heroic individuals like Trevor Chadwick did agonising selection work because British guarantors often wanted “girls aged seven to 10 and, if possible, fair-haired”. Fuelled by eugenics thinking, the Home Office excluded children with disabilities or sickness.

The British government restricted Kindertransport. They created Jewish orphans by barring parents, and imposed a £50 guarantee per child, limiting the number of children who could be saved. Kindertransport symbolised British hostility to Jewish immigration.

In 1939 when the MS St Louis returned to Europe after being rejected by the US, Canada and Cuba, Britain accepted a minority essentially saving their lives, but most were returned to be murdered by the Nazis.

By 1942 with the full knowledge of Jews being systematically mass-murdered, Labour Home Secretary Herbert Morrison didn't want to grant entry to 350 children from Vichy France, citing fears of provoking “anti-foreign and antisemitic feelings”. In Parliament he was asked about German Jewish refugees who had been stripped of their nationality and facing certain death. His chilling answer was that they were not considered stateless, but were instead viewed as “aliens of enemy nationality”.

Comparisons with Jewish immigration ignore another critical distinction: when Jewish refugees arrived in Britain, the Board of Guardians and other Jewish charities ensured they wouldn't be a drain on the state. No such self-sustaining community network exists for today's asylum seekers — there are professional charities, not community organisations.

The “Britain as sanctuary” narrative obscures historical reality. With the current system — even with Mahmoud's proposed policies — many more Jews would have been saved in the 19th and 20th centuries than Britain actually admitted.

There are legitimate concerns about whether asylum policies are too harsh, and the Jewish community is right to care about the treatment of refugees. But the comparison is fundamentally ahistorical, and the argument of Britain being a safe haven to a thriving Jewish community ignores present realities: record levels of antisemitic incidents and substantial Jewish emigration, with applications for Israeli citizenship spiking dramatically.

If we're going to invoke Jewish history in these debates, we owe it to those who were turned away to get that history right — and to face present realities rather than comforting myths.

British pro-Palestine protesters ‘more at risk of radicalisation than I was,’ claims former jihadi

A former jihadist turned anti-extremism educator has claimed that British pro-Palestinian protesters are at an even greater risk of being radicalised than he was when he joined a terror group in the 1990s.

Speaking exclusively to the JC at an event organised by pro-Israeli campaign group Stop The Hate, Noor Dahri, originally from Pakistan and a former member of Lashkar e Tayyaba (LT), said that he sees an undeniable likeness in his own descent into extremism and the rhetoric of some British activists.

LT, which was proscribed in the UK in 2001, aimed to “liberate” the disputed province of Kashmir from India and annex it to Pakistan, creating a unified Islamic state. It gained wider infamy when it perpetrated a series of 12 coordinated attacks in Mumbai over three days in November 2008, killing 166 people.

But Dahri sees parallels between the group’s espousal of Islamist ultra-nationalism and the propaganda pushed by Hamas.

"[To the protesters], the Palestinians are like heroes," he said. "For Muslims [when he became a jihadist], Kashmiri people were the heroes. We wanted to liberate them. We wanted to be like them."

He explained that he ultimately left the group when he realised the reality of what he was part of, saying he was "hurt" by what he saw and that people were "losing their lives because of the [group's] goals".

"[It is] exactly the same," he went on. "The ideology and grievances which [Hamas] have created are exactly the same as [those LeT created]."

"We were [poorly] educated in [Pakistan] because we had a jihadist surrounding, but in Western countries, especially the UK, the atmosphere isn't jihadist - the state doesn't support it. This is a Western democratic country...

"There are three types of people who are radicalised: those who have absolutely no knowledge, those who have very limited knowledge, and those who have knowledge but who deny the truth.

"People here are more radicalised than in Pakistan because there they don't have options [to see the truth for themselves], here they have options - they have a British passport, they can travel to Israel, they can see a democratic life where Jews and Muslims are living side by side. [They can see] everyone there executing their rights without persecution.

"But [British pro-Palestine protesters] don't want to know. They are [further along in being of being] radicalised because they are able to know something and still [chose not to] and deny it.

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12/03 Links Pt1: The World After Israel’s Longest War; Over 300 rabbis and Jewish leaders call for removal of UN official who denied Oct. 7 rapes; Casket with apparent hostage’s body returned to Israel, as final 2 families await ID

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The World After Israel’s Longest War

The famous story about Lot’s wife being turned into a pillar of salt has a particular lesson, according to the late British Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks. It’s fine to look back—even at Sodom—but not while you’re walking out of it. When entering a better future, keep your eyes forward. It ensures you’ll go in the right direction.

I’ve been thinking about this during my time in Israel this week. For most of the October 7 war, Jews had two stock responses to questions like “How are you?” There was the normal polite response to those in our professional lives and then there was the response when Jews asked each other this question: “Well, you know.”

That second response is starting to go out of style. Since the cease-fire deal returned nearly all hostages or their remains to their loved ones and IDF reservists to their everyday lives, “How are you?” has once again become a legitimate question. That is especially palpable here in Israel, for all the obvious reasons.

Israelis are looking forward, but that doesn’t mean the recent past is forgotten. Quite the opposite: Here former hostages speak to reporters regularly to make clear the whole truth of the war and its toll. Nova festival survivors have banded together to heal as a community and to educate the rest of the country on what they have discovered about themselves in the process. Faces of Hamas’s victims are still visible on walls and windows. The political and military echelons are daily facing calls for accountability, and steps in that direction have begun.

But this is all in the service of looking forward. Israelis are deciding what shape their national future will take, who they will be as they emerge from their longest war. This country is always building, always clearing its own path ahead.

You know who isn’t moving on? Israel’s enemies, specifically those who have made Gaza their personality. And I don’t mean the people of Gaza, who are prevented from rebuilding by Hamas. I mean the Western politicians, activists, donors. and others who have nothing to motivate them to get out of bed in the morning without the hope of a Hamas resurgence and permanent war in Gaza.

The best current example of this is the crackup of the British left. The Labour Party governs the country (for the moment) and yet is in a zombie-like state. Other parties to its left are gaining, and new parties are forming, none more perfectly Gaza-obsessed than former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s party, named Your Party. (The name was a placeholder but is now official. The jokes tell themselves.)

UNRWA in Gaza Has Been Replaced; It’s Time to Shutter the Agency

The UN Relief and Works Agency — or UNRWA — in Gaza has been replaced by over a dozen other aid organizations. UNRWA’s decades-long monopoly on aid and services has finally been broken, presenting a rare opportunity for deradicalization and, eventually, peace.

What’s more, the international community now has a model for how to replace UNRWA everywhere it operates, not just in Gaza.

The UN Security Council approved President Donald Trump’s proposal to build a “Board of Peace” on November 17 that will oversee the deradicalization of Gaza and the dismantlement of Hamas’ terror state. But Trump’s vision will not succeed until UNRWA is shuttered.

UNRWA was created with a temporary mandate after Israel’s 1947-1948 War of Independence to provide aid and services to approximately 750,000 Palestinian Arabs displaced by the war.

Over the past 75 years, UNRWA’s mandate has ballooned. Not only does UNRWA continue to provide a myriad of services in the jurisdictions where Arab refugees from 1948 immigrated, but refugee status has been passed from generation to generation. As a result, what was a relatively small refugee population in 1948 (compared to other 20th century refugee populations) is today a large and growing 21st century refugee population with no end in sight. UNRWA counts 5.9 million Palestinian refugees and has an annual budget of over a billion and half dollars.

UNRWA schools teach the belief that Palestinian refugees and their millions of descendants would all return to the modern state of Israel — an outcome that would immediately erase Israel’s Jewish majority.

The focus on “return,” coupled with the well-documented glorification of terror and incitement — including arithmetic problems involving numbers of Palestinian “martyrs,” antisemitic tropes, and naming schools and soccer fields after suicide bombers — has produced generations of indoctrinated and radicalized Palestinian children.

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12/02 Links Pt2: Ireland should venerate Chaim Herzog; FM Sa’ar to Irish ambassador: ‘You cannot deceive the world’; UK police used fake evidence to justify ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Let Anti-Semites Dig Themselves Out of Trouble

Chaim Herzog was also the father of current Israeli President Isaac Herzog. During the Gaza war, anti-Israel activists spurred on a campaign to get the Dublin city council to rename the park. The undisguised hatefulness of the petition inspired disgust even from Ireland’s prime minister. Amid the Jewish community’s uproar, a social media campaign to quash the name change from Irish Jewish activist Rachel Moiselle took off. Israel weighed in. Dublin backed off, pulling the petition at least for now.

It was a victory for the Jewish community’s determination to make its voice heard even amid the atmosphere of anti-Semitic intimidation prevailing in Ireland.

In other words, this was decidedly not what anti-Jewish activists wanted, in contrast to Aladwan’s case. Yet the reaction was the same. “The optics will appear to show these senior Irish politicians carrying out the instructions of the Israeli lobby, and it’s very hard to argue with a view when we see the actual result,” one council member said, according to JTA. Another added: “This was a full court press by the Zionist lobby, and they think they will win it. They will not win this.” A third: “I’m further convinced that whatever phone calls was made to our CEO and to other officials probably emanated from Israeli intelligence attached to the Israeli Defense Force.”

Should it matter to the Jewish community that pro-Palestinian Dubliners are angry about this result and claiming that it confirms the truth of popular anti-Semitic conspiracy theories?

This is a question American Jews were asking themselves during the uproar over remarks made by Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts: If Roberts was forced to resign, would that make it look like there really was a “venomous coalition” of “globalists” pulling the strings and setting their own rules?

Taken together, the three preceding examples give us the answer. The first and second cases tell us that anti-Semites will respond to any successful assertion of Jewish rights and dignity in identical ways, raising the specter of a powerful Jewish puppeteering cabal. The third case shows us that those inclined to scapegoat Jews or to paint them as disloyal will do so as a first, not as a last, line of defense. And no one who complained of Jewish influence will change their mind when the person under fire—in this case Roberts—suffers no professional consequences.

Anti-Semitism is a matryoshka doll of conspiracy theories, and conspiracy theories are famously resistant to facts that would otherwise undermine their animating assumptions. Jews should stand up for themselves because it’s the right thing to do. Conspiracy theorists deserve no veto power. It is not the Jewish community’s obligation to save anti-Semites from the consequences of their own actions.

Stephen Daisley: Ireland should venerate Chaim Herzog

Ireland is a case study in the futility of trying to distinguish anti-Zionism from anti-Semitism. Discussions about Israel aren’t marked by criticism of the contemptible Netanyahu government nor philosophical dispute with the moral claims of Zionism. It’s unhinged fixation, righteous fury, and an invincible credulity towards even the most dubious accusations, provided the finger is being pointed Zionwards. Some of the discourse wouldn’t be out of place at Friday prayers in Tehran.

It’s wild. They’ve thrown off every yoke of state Catholicism except the keen interest in perfidis Judaeis. Israel is the ultimate malefactor of the Irish imagination, the bogeyman of Dublin politics and Dublin media, and a national myth posits the republic as a modern-day David taking on Goliath, when most Israelis would struggle to locate Ireland on a map and the rest think it’s still part of Britain. Mind you, the tendency of its activists and ideologues to declare themselves ‘Paddystinians’ makes sense. Palestine is the only occupation the Irish left shows an interest in anymore.

The thing is, though, there are about three Jews in all of Ireland. (Okay, two to three thousand.) It’s like being obsessed with the scourge of ninjas, dedicating your life to documenting the crimes of ninjas, convinced that ninjas control the world, organising boycotts of ninja-owned businesses, but you live in Sweden and there are no ninja-owned shops and not enough ninjas to fill a Volvo hatchback, let alone form a local chapter of the international ninja conspiracy.

Should Britain stage an intervention? Take Ireland out for a pint and subtly work anti-Semitism into the conversation? We’re not making any accusations, mate; we’re just wondering if everything’s okay at home. Wife all right? Kids doing well at school? You still handing out those Protocols of the Elders of Zion pamphlets down Grafton Street every Saturday? You know, maybe it’s time to move on because the Jews don’t actually run the world, the Mossad isn’t monitoring you, there’s no genocide in Gaza, and I’m almost certain the profits from Medjool dates don’t go directly to AIPAC.

Oh, and drop the Chaim Herzog thing. People are starting to talk. The fella was an Irish Jew who made history. A park is the least we can do.

JPost Editorial: The Jerusalem Post marks 93 years as a link to Israel and the Jewish world

Ninety-three years after its first issue, The Jerusalem Post is still, at heart, a letter from home for Jews and friends of Israel across the world.

What began in 1932 as The Palestine Post, a modest English-language paper printed in a small Jerusalem office, has grown into something far larger than its founders could have imagined: a global conversation, a daily heartbeat of the Jewish world.

In its early years, the paper served a small community of diplomats, journalists, and new immigrants who needed reliable news in English from Mandatory Palestine.

It reported on the struggles of a people seeking self-determination and on the painful battles that marked Israel’s birth. For those who arrived from London, New York, Johannesburg, or Melbourne, unfolding the paper was a way of understanding their new home.

After 1948, The Palestine Post became The Jerusalem Post, reflecting the transformation of the Yishuv into the sovereign State of Israel. That change of name signaled that the paper saw itself as an institution bound up with the story of the Jewish state.

Today, most of our readers are not in Israel at all. They are Jews and friends of Israel in Los Angeles and London, Paris and Panama, Johannesburg, Sydney, Buenos Aires, and small communities where there is no longer a robust local Jewish press.

For them, The Jerusalem Post has become not only an Israeli newspaper in English but a kind of global town square, a place where the arguments, anxieties, hopes, and achievements of the Jewish people are reported, debated, and preserved.

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12/02 Links Pt1: Hamas is Failing to Rebuild Its Iron Rule; A Response to Ben Rhodes' New York Times Piece on Gaza; Islamic Socialism Takes on the West

From Ian:

Hamas is Failing to Rebuild Its Iron Rule

Why Hamas Can’t Rebuild Its Rule
Frozen funding, escalating extortion, and growing public scorn have pushed the group into a self-defeating spiral
Gaza watchers generally hold that the more time goes by, the more Hamas will be able to retrench and reestablish control in the western half of the Strip, from which Israel withdrew in October. They see a “Tale of Two Gazas,” in which an authoritarian Hamas statelet, west of the so-called yellow line that now divides the Strip, achieves dominance on par with the iron grip that communist East Germany had on its citizens during the Cold War.

This widespread view has frightened foreign governments who are being asked to contribute troops to an International Stabilization Force (ISF) for the territory. Their reluctance to commit soldiers may eventually strengthen calls within Israel to abrogate the October 10 ceasefire and try to finish off Hamas without a multilateral framework. But is the fear well-founded?

The armed group is indeed applying new levels of violence and intimidation in a bid for authority. In just the first days and weeks following the ceasefire, it murdered at least 80 alleged “collaborators” in ISIS-style public executions. It is premature, however, to view Hamas’s retrenchment as a foregone conclusion.

To establish a viable new regime, Hamas needs to achieve what Hezbollah did after the 2006 Second Lebanon War — namely, a massive commitment of assistance from a foreign patron to rebuild its destroyed territory. But the equivalent monies aren’t coming. As a result, Hamas must employ ever-increasing levels of brutality against its own civilians in order to extract funds. The heavy-handed measures it has taken are enraging civilians, most of whom already blame the armed group for triggering the destruction of their territory by launching the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that sparked the war.

The consequence, for Hamas, is a vicious cycle in which the more aggressively it tries to reassert its authority, the more it isolates itself from the population and even some of its own recruits.

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This predicament crystallized for Hamas on October 20, when White House advisor Jared Kushner told reporters that while the U.S. and its allies will be raising money for Gaza’s rehabilitation, “no reconstruction funds will be going into areas that Hamas controls.” Longtime Hamas supporters Qatar and Turkey, which the U.S. considers key players in post-war planning, appear to have fallen in line with Kushner’s position for now.

John Spencer: A Response to Ben Rhodes' New York Times Piece on Gaza

The New York Times Dec. 1 opinion piece, "This Is the Story of How the Democrats Blew It on Gaza," by Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser under President Obama, is appalling for anyone who cares about the truth. This feature-length essay repeats misinformation, inserts falsehoods, and advances a moral narrative that bears no resemblance to the laws of war or the realities of modern conflict. If these arguments are taken seriously inside Washington, they threaten not only Israel's security but America's.

An explicit condition of the rules-based order since 1945 is that sovereign nations may defend themselves after an armed attack. It is the most basic tenet of the UN Charter. Israel did not choose this war. It was launched against Israel on Oct. 7 when Hamas killed more than 1,200 people and kidnapped more than 250. Any democratic state, including the U.S., would have responded with immediate and overwhelming military force to achieve their goals as quickly as possible. That is the standard the author refuses to apply to Israel.

Only the uninformed or the deeply biased believe Israel intentionally targets civilians. These accusations are false, and to pretend the facts are ambiguous is not analysis. It is distortion. The argument that President Biden gave Israel unconditional support is also false. The administration held up key arms shipments. Israeli soldiers were forced to adapt operations in real time because of delayed or restricted U.S. support.

The laws of war do not judge outcomes alone. They judge intent, precautions, proportionality, distinction, and military necessity. Israel has taken more measures to reduce civilian harm than any military in history and often put its own soldiers at greater risk to protect civilians.

The author also invokes the biggest lie of this war, the claim that Israel is committing genocide. There is no genocide in Gaza. Israel has no intent to destroy in whole or in part the civilian population of Gaza. It sought to destroy Hamas as a military and political organization while doing more to feed, house, vaccinate, provide medical care, and prevent harm to the civilian population than any nation in history.

Wanting to destroy your enemy is not genocide. It is war. War is not illegal, and in some cases it is necessary. Every nation, including the U.S., has faced the moral dilemma of civilian deaths in a legitimate war of self-defense. Nations must prioritize their own citizens and their own survival. That is a foundation of the laws of armed conflict. Supporting an ally in a lawful war of self-defense is not a betrayal of our values. It is an expression of them.

Islamic Socialism Takes on the West

When New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani met President Trump at the White House in November, the cordial encounter between the self-described Muslim socialist and the former president puzzled many observers. How should Americans understand Mamdani’s blend of Islamic identity and Democratic Socialist activism? Is he, as Congresswoman Elise Stefanik claimed, a “jihadist,” or as Trump suggested, “rational”?

The answer lies in understanding a century-old ideological tradition that melds Islamic theology with socialist revolutionary theory in ways that produce unpredictable and often dangerous outcomes. This fusion operates according to a logic articulated by neo-Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse, who argued for destroying the liberal democratic order by creating a “new sensibility”—one that would demolish existing social structures to create something unprecedented, unpredictable, and radically different from Western civilization’s foundations.

Islamic socialism is not merely an intellectual curiosity. It represents a systematic challenge to Western democratic values, one that emerged from the Bolshevik Revolution and continues to shape American politics today.

The Origins: Soviet Islamic Communism
Islamic socialism was born in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, when Vladimir Lenin successfully courted Muslim constituents of the Russian empire. Though their alliance may have been a marriage of convenience, both groups saw symmetry between their ideologies. For socialists, philosophy ruled, and the end goal was societal transformation. Muslims saw their faith similarly—as a comprehensive system for remaking society.

The Marxist dialectic promised that contradictions between Islam and socialism would resolve themselves over time through social discourse. Opposing ideas would clash, then synthesize into something new and unpredictable. This was not a bug but a feature of the ideology.

Two foundational theorists exemplified this synthesis: Azerbaijani Misaid Sultan Galiev and Muslim reformist Nariman Narimanov, both Shia Muslims. Narimanov depicted Lenin as a prophet and defender of the oppressed. In Soviet propaganda posters, the Muslim revolutionary communist appeared as an Orientalist hero wielding a sword and straddling a horse, combining spiritual and communist themes under slogans like “Gather in love! Under the light of the Red star!”

This Soviet Islamic communism became foundational for Third World Marxism and postcolonial thought, including the theoretical framework behind the Palestinian cause. Years before Frantz Fanon wrote The Wretched of the Earth, Soviet Muslim socialists were theorizing about the psychology of the oppressed and the necessity of revolutionary violence.

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