11/11 Links Pt2: Elie Wiesel: Zionism and racism; Western Institutional Collapse and the BBC; The Warped Collapse of Modern Feminism; Gal Gadot wins 2026 Genesis Prize

From Ian:

Why Israel Is Thriving Despite Years of War and International Attacks

Well, besides economic measures, other indicators also defy expectations. For example, it was also recently reported that life expectancy in Israel increased by one full year, a significant jump, to 83.8 years, between 2023 and 2024. Life expectancy in Israel is now the fourth highest in the 37 member OECD, exceeded only by Switzerland, Japan, and Spain.

Israel also ranks near the top for measures such as low infant mortality and success in disease prevention. Israel is among the countries with the lowest mortality rate from heart disease. And this high level of care is delivered efficiently at relatively low cost. OECD-member states typically devote 11 to 12 % of GDP to health care. The value for Israel is only 7.6 %. (Health care expenditure in the US is about 17% of GDP.)

Then there is the “Global Flourishing Study,” a new study that asks the question “What makes people flourish?” Published In April 2025 in the journal Nature Mental Health, the study, headed by Tyler J. Vanderweele of Harvard University, is a multi-year survey of 200,000 people, across 22 culturally and geographically diverse countries, including Israel, the US, Japan, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

The domains measured included: happiness and life satisfaction, physical and mental health (how healthy people feel, in body and mind), meaning and purpose (whether people feel their lives are significant), character and virtue (how people act to promote good), social relationships (both friendships and family ties), and financial and material stability.

Israel ranked number two (of 22 nations), behind Indonesia when financial indicators are included, and number four (after Indonesia, Mexico, and Philippines) when financial indicators are excluded. The primary finding of the study so far (the study will be completed in 2027) is that high income countries are not necessarily flourishing countries. Israel is the outlier.

The 2025 World Happiness Index also shows Israel is still high up the list of 147 countries, at number 8.

If you ask Google AI why Israel continues to thrive in conditions not normally conducive to success, you get a prosaic answer: Israel’s ability to thrive, in spite of regional challenges and limited natural resources, is due to the combination of an emphasis on higher education and research, a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship, significant foreign support and investment, defense needs, and a democratic institutional framework that protects property rights and promotes a market economy.

But to Alistair Heath Israel doesn’t make sense unless you believe in something beyond the math. “There is no historical precedent for surviving the Babylonians, the Romans, the Crusaders, the Inquisition, the pogroms, and the Holocaust, and still showing up to work on Monday in Tel Aviv,” he wrote. Perhaps the secret to understanding Israel’s success is not any different from appreciating the resilience displayed by the Jewish people through the ages. Or, as expressed by a quotation attributed to the noted Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, “I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”

Seth Mandel: Western Institutional Collapse and the BBC

The culture at the top of the BBC, then, is not one of carelessness but of total disregard for the facts. From politics to sports to war, the rot appears to have infected the whole range of BBC coverage.

Yet the targets of all this very fair and substantial criticism have a different theory of the case. “I do hear everyone when we have to be very clear and stand up for our journalism,” Davie told the BBC staff on his way out. “We are in a unique and precious organization. I see the free press under pressure. I see the weaponization. I think we’ve got to fight for our journalism. I’m really proud of our work.”

Proud of… what, exactly? Davie chalked up the criticism of the BBC’s massive and widespread apparent violation of journalistic ethics to “our enemies,” as if a documented investigation is some kind of tabloid smear campaign. Despite calls for reform, Davie said: “We are the very best of what I think we should be as a society and that will never change.”

That really is the problem, isn’t it? Averaging two corrections a week in its coverage of the world’s top story for two years is “the very best” they can be? To Davie, the answer is yes. Because Western journalism has been consumed with rooting out objective reporting for years now, and this is the result. What matters to these figures isn’t what’s true but what helps the “right” side “win.”

Meanwhile one would be crazy to put one’s trust in any institution that behaves this way. The problem is that so many of them behave this way. Western leaders love to convince themselves that society is being dragged down by the populist hordes rising from the streets. But the fish rots from the head. So, too, does Western Civilization.

Seth Mandel: What They Want From Josh Shapiro

That is one way Democrats might try to avoid the issue—just ignore it. Another possibility, and a more likely one, came from a tweet that got effectively piled-on until it was deleted. But more interesting to me than the wording was what it said about where things go from here. It was from a progressive who noted, in response to the article on Shapiro, that he and his friend “agreed that Shapiro would be the dream candidate for Democrats in 2028 if not for his pro-Israel baggage.” His solution? “I hope he can credibly and visibly commit to ending military aid to Israel before the primary.”

Much of the response to the tweet was aimed at the euphemistic first sentence. But the second sentence is what’s important going forward. It would be much more satisfying for the progressive left to get Shapiro to renounce his people than to ignore him altogether. And so the strategy is simple: Offer him a place in the party elite in return for a public apology for his Jewishness.

Shapiro isn’t going to take that offer. But the subtler version of it will buzz like a fly around him for the foreseeable future. Democrats will want Shapiro to play down the stuff he likes about Israel—Jews being alive, good food—and to chime in only when he has something negative to say—Bibi this, Bibi that.

We can call this the Schumer Model. It’s not that they’ll need him to be anti-Zionist; they just want him to keep mum unless he has an anti-Zionist-ish thing to say.

And further, this applies no matter what Shapiro’s personal ambitions are. The governor of Pennsylvania won’t be ignored by the media. So his party will lay on the guilt, urging him not to unnecessarily divide the left. To be a team player. To, perhaps, know his place.

It’ll be up to Shapiro to resist this quiet capitulation. In politics, we learned a long time ago that emancipation isn’t always a synonym for freedom.

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11/11 Links Pt1: Israel's Demands for the Demilitarization of Gaza; Francesca Albanese’s campaign against Zionism; UN Report Shows ‘Palestinians’ Fatter Than Israelis

From Ian:

Israel's Demands for the Demilitarization of Gaza

Demilitarizing Gaza is one of the central components of the Trump framework. An International Stabilization Force (ISF) is to stabilize security in Gaza "including through the demilitarization of non-state armed groups and the permanent decommissioning of weapons." However, significant gaps exist between Israel's position and those of Hamas, the PA, and the moderate Arab states regarding the role of the stabilization force.

Hamas opposes any international force with enforcement powers aimed at disarming the armed organizations. The Palestinian Authority demands that internal security be entrusted to its security forces. The moderate Arab states prefer a "peacekeeping" model limited to monitoring, without powers to enforce disarmament.

Israel views the disarmament of Hamas and the other factions and the prevention of their rearmament as central objectives and demands that Gaza's reconstruction be closely linked to its demilitarization. However, Israel fears that the ISF's deployment could impose constraints on the IDF's freedom of action in Gaza.

In any event, Israel insists on retaining overriding security responsibility in order to counter threats and prevent the reestablishment of terrorist infrastructure in Gaza if the Palestinian police and the ISF face difficulties in disarming Hamas and in preventing its rebuilding.

The anticipated challenges in demilitarizing Gaza include Hamas's refusal to cooperate, as well as continued public support for Hamas and opposition to its disarmament. Accordingly, Israel must hold dialogue with American representatives in order to prepare for these scenarios in advance.

Simultaneously, Israel must formulate a backup plan that includes "defensive belts" before reaching a point of breakdown and returning to confrontation with Hamas. This framework includes conditioning reconstruction on effective disarmament processes.

The gap between the strategic objective - a demilitarized Gaza, responsibly governed by a moderate Palestinian actor - and the operational challenges involved in achieving this objective indicates that the success of the framework will require coercive and sustained American involvement, close coordination with Israel, and U.S. persuasion of moderate Arab states to mobilize for active intervention in the demilitarization of Gaza.

Something is not right with Egypt

Something just isn’t right with Egypt. The situation is starting to smell bad. Like that one piece of leftover fish from Friday night that’s been sitting in the fridge until Wednesday—something’s off.

Israel entered U.S. President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan with Egypt as its most significant partner, given their shared border with Gaza. But weeks later, there are troubling signs that something has shifted. To understand this, I decided to take a more biblical view of what may be unfolding.

According to our sages, Egypt betrays its peace pact with Israel at the end of days, forming a coordinated attack on her borders. The Talmud (Sotah) states that God will allow Egypt’s actions of betrayal to play out fully before exacting judgment.

The text even uses the term “Sassah,” referring to the Egyptian leader—eerily reminiscent of today’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. It says he will launch one final attack on Israel, the third in a series dating back to Pharaoh 3,330 years ago—and that Israel will ultimately emerge victorious.

If this refers to our times, when might it happen? The Talmud indicates it will occur toward the end of the ruler’s reign in Egypt. Sisi’s presidency began in 2014 and was meant to end years ago, yet he changed the law to remain in power until 2030. While signing new energy and infrastructure deals with Israel, Sisi has simultaneously been building up his army.

This buildup—coupled with Egypt’s participation in the proposed international stabilization force meant to occupy Gaza for at least two years—is cause for concern. Reports indicate Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet was not even informed of the U.S.-backed U.N. Security Council resolution outlining such a deployment. If approved, it would mean Egyptian boots on the ground in Gaza.

Sisi, a former general, appears frustrated by the military restrictions imposed by the 1979 Camp David Accords. Forty-six years later, Egypt’s army on Israel’s southern border is stronger than ever. Over 200 kilometers of the border have reportedly been declared a restricted military no-fly zone for the first time since the Yom Kippur War—ostensibly to stop drones, but possibly for other reasons.

Francesca Albanese’s campaign against Zionism

When a public intellectual arms herself with a lexicon of genocide, apartheid and ethnic cleansing and broadcasts those terms as incontrovertible facts, culture and history die a little.

The recent interview of Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur for Palestinian rights, published in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, contained more than misinformation; it was a manifesto for the erasure of the Jewish state.

I have long refused to dignify Albanese with a formal debate—not out of timidity, but out of principle. To breathe the same air as someone who repeatedly traffics in demonstrable falsehoods is to concede a moral equivalence that does not exist.

Her latest claim—that Zionism itself is “the problem” because it created the State of Israel, which she sees as an apartheid state occupying a land once called Palestine—collapses decades of history into a single, dishonest sentence.

It is worth reminding readers of the simple facts that Albanese elides. For much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Jews called themselves Palestinians; former Israeli prime minister Golda Meir was one of them.

The modern Arab populations in the British Mandate era were not static indigenous blocs but peoples on the move from neighboring regions. The British Mandate, sanctioned by the international community after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, provided the legal framework for Jewish return to the Land of Israel.

Partition and subsequent wars created the borders and complexities we live with today. The modern Palestinian national movement emerged later—in the 1960s and ’70s—nurtured by geopolitical forces and ideologies abroad. To erase that chronology is to erase causality itself.

Albanese’s rhetorical sleight of hand is not an innocent error of interpretation. It serves an objective: the dismantling of the State of Israel’s legitimacy.

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11/10 Links Pt2: Isaac Herzog: The truth about Zionism; How the BBC became the propaganda arm of Hamas; Elie Tahari Fashion Show in Miami Honoring Female IDF Soldiers

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: What Happened to Jewish Patients At a Brooklyn Hospital in 1927?

There’s a particular story of Jewish fear in the modern era that has stuck with me ever since I read about it. After the post-October 7 revelations of the mistreatment of Jewish patients in British hospitals, this account of an Israeli mother-to-be’s anxiety over giving birth in London cannot be dismissed. Neither can it be resolved—there is no way to ensure that what has happened won’t continue happening, and for this expectant mother that means putting her child’s life in the hands of people she cannot trust.

In some ways, Jewish medical fears are mundane, as she writes: “I worry if I should disclose my ethnicity when I arrive at hospital, and will I be free to speak in Hebrew? I feel comfortable talking English, but in situations where I’m not in control and am in pain, my default is my mother tongue… No woman should have to go through the labor with these thoughts in her head.”

And in other ways, those fears are impossible to fully disentangle from the 20th century’s horrors, which included unspeakably grotesque medical persecution.

But either way, those fears aren’t new. Even the more mundane questions of basic care and treatment in a hospital have been around, in the West, for a century.

Right here in America, in fact.

As I was reading professor Pamela Nadell’s new book, Antisemitism, An American Tradition, over the weekend, I stumbled on one line: “Jewish doctors were not the only ones targeted. Brooklyn’s Rabbi Louis Gross knew that Jewish patients encountered prejudice, discrimination, and ill-treatment when they sought medical care there.”

The “there” was Kings County Hospital about a hundred years ago. Nadell’s book, a worthy and timely addition to the literature on American anti-Semitism, is an overview of the country’s history and so the concentration in each era is on representative examples.

History will judge Ireland for extending hand to terror, granting Hamas moral legitimacy

IRELAND, A small country once symbolizing the struggle for freedom and independence, has in many ways become a state unable to recognize Israel’s right to those same values. Instead of condemning terror, it echoes the Palestinian victim narrative and strengthens the diplomatic mechanisms seeking to undermine Israel’s legitimacy in the international arena.

The Jewish pain, the shock of the massacre, and the abduction of children and infants simply do not register in the Irish consciousness. The left-leaning media, politically involved churches, and biased human rights organizations together create a mindset in which Israel is always perceived as the aggressor. Ireland no longer looks at facts but at images shaped by ideology.

The irony is that Ireland, which preaches morality and peace to the world, shows tolerance toward an organization that commits massacres, rape, and executions. A country that sanctifies human rights ignores the rape of Jewish women, the destruction of entire communities, and the abduction of the elderly. Irish history should have taught it a lesson about the justification of the struggle for life and freedom, but it chooses to side with those who destroy them.

Ireland conducts a two-faced policy toward Israel. In the past, it fought against the British Empire; now, it tries to atone for its historical trauma through crude distortion, transferring the blame for “imperialism” to a small state in the Middle East. This is the politics of guilt, not of justice.

Indeed, there are other voices in Ireland – journalists, public figures, and academics who understand that October 7 changed reality and that Hamas is not a liberation movement but an arm of Iran. These voices are pushed aside, silenced publicly, and attacked on social media. This atmosphere of fear weakens any substantive debate and turns Irish discourse into black and white, where Israel is always guilty and Palestinians are always victims.

Israel does not seek anyone’s mercy, but it is entitled to justice and integrity. When a Western country like Ireland joins the political and legal offensive against Israel, it strengthens Hamas and encourages continued violence. This is not only a betrayal of Western values; it is a direct blow to the global fight against terror.

Instead of standing with the victims, Ireland stands with the perpetrators of murder. Instead of demanding the release of hostages, it demands the conviction of the victims. Instead of defending the only democracy in the Middle East, it prefers the warm embrace of Islamist dictatorships.

History will judge Ireland – a country that chooses to turn a blind eye to the massacre of Jews, remain silent in the face of rape and murder, and grant legitimacy to terrorists in the name of human rights. Ireland has lost its moral right to preach about justice. Israel will continue to defend its citizens, act according to international law, and bring its sons home from captivity.

Ireland can choose whether to stand on the right side of history or remain a nation that prefers comfort and hypocrisy over truth and justice. Its choice will define not only its relationship with Israel but also its conscience as a Western country that claims to be moral.

Ireland’s soccer governing body overwhelmingly backs call for UEFA to ban Israel

Members of Irish soccer’s governing body voted overwhelmingly on Saturday for its board to request that UEFA immediately suspend Israel from European competitions, the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) said.

A resolution passed by the FAI members cited alleged violations by Israel’s Football Association of two provisions of UEFA statutes: its failure to implement and enforce an effective anti-racism policy and the playing by Israeli clubs in Palestinian territories without the consent of the Palestinian Football Association.

The resolution was backed by 74 votes, with seven opposed and two abstentions, the FAI said in a statement.

A spokesperson for UEFA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

UEFA considered holding a vote early last month on whether to suspend Israel from European competitions over the war in Gaza, a source told Reuters at the time. That did not happen after a US-brokered ceasefire took effect on October 10.

The Irish resolution follows calls in September from the heads of the Turkish and Norwegian soccer governing bodies for Israel to be suspended from international competition.

Jake Wallis Simons: How the BBC became the propaganda arm of Hamas

Funny how it was the Trump thing that cost BBC director-general Tim Davie and his head of news, Deborah Turness, their jobs. Of course, doctoring footage of The Donald’s ‘January 6’ speech, to make it appear as if he had explicitly incited the Capitol riot, was remarkably egregious and brazen, a prime example of the BBC deciding not to bother with the mask for once. But what about its relentless bias – also exposed by that recent internal memo leaked to the Telegraph – against Jews and Israel?

In a way, that is the more serious problem. All over the world, antipathy towards the Jewish minority and their national home is simply the tip of a spear of hostility towards the West and everything it stands for.

When activists in London, New York, Toronto, Barcelona, Paris and everywhere else march to ‘globalise the intifada’, what they are saying is that they wish to overturn the democracies they live in. In fact, sometimes they say it out loud: in July, for example, a young woman with a cut-glass accent demonstrating in London for Palestine Action finished her video message with, ‘As always, I cannot wait for the West to fall’.

In its relentless bias against Israel, the BBC has been effectively lending its corporate heft to that same message. With every misleading piece of reporting sent out into the world, public opinion is hardened against the Jews. As has been the case for thousands of years, anti-Semitism is based on lies. The modern loathing of Israel is no exception.

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11/10 Links Pt1: Freed hostage Matan Zangauker recounts Hamas brutality; The victims of 7 October the world chose to ignore; 'Moral depravity': Norwegian PM slammed for attending anti-Israel Kristallnacht event

From Ian:

External panel appointed by IDF chief finds most of army’s Oct. 7 probes inadequate

Most of the Israel Defense Force’s top-tier investigations into its failures on and ahead of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, terror onslaught are inadequate, with some considered to be unacceptable, a panel of former senior military officers has determined.

Meanwhile, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said on Monday that while the military was fully responsible for the failures on October 7, to reach full conclusions, an “external” commission of inquiry must be established, something that the government has resisted forming for over two years. Zamir notably avoided calling for a state commission of inquiry, which the government opposes, despite surveys consistently showing an overwhelming majority of the public supports it.

Zamir also said that he would make “personal decisions” regarding senior officers based on the findings of the external panel of experts, including potential dismissal from the military.

The findings of the panel of experts were presented on Monday to the IDF’s top brass, a day after Defense Minister Israel Katz was also shown the conclusions. Reporters were also shown the findings on Monday.

The IDF’s October 7 investigations were led by former chief of staff Herzi Halevi. In one of his first decisions upon entering the role in March, Zamir appointed the external panel to further examine those probes.

The panel was tasked with evaluating the IDF’s top-level investigations, overseeing implementation of findings, and recommending repeat investigations or additions to probes if necessary.

Maj. Gen. (res.) Sami Turgeman, a former head of the Southern Command, headed the panel, which included ex-Navy chief Vice Adm. (res.) Eli Sharvit, ex-IAF chief Maj. Gen. (res.) Amikam Norkin, and other retired senior officers.

The IDF’s investigations at the General Staff level, the top command of the military, included four main subjects: the development of the IDF’s perception of Gaza over the past decade; the IDF’s intelligence assessments of Hamas from 2014 until the outbreak of the war; the intelligence and decision-making process on the eve of October 7; and the command and control and orders given during battles between October 7 and 10.

These probes were released for publication by the military in February. In addition, the IDF investigated 41 separate battles and major incidents that took place during the October 7 attack, most of which have since been released for publication.

In total, the panel reviewed 24 General Staff-level investigations, along with one tactical investigation — the attack on the Nova music festival, due to its massive scope and context for the top-tier probes.

Additionally, the team examined all of the investigations together “from a systemic and integrative perspective,” the military said, something that had not been done until now.

Knesset passes first reading of death penalty for terrorists bill

A bill to impose the death penalty on convicted terrorists, who committed murder, passed its first reading in the Knesset plenum on Monday night by a vote of 39 to 16. It must pass three readings to become law.

“A terrorist who is convicted of murder out of motives of racism” and “under circumstances, in which the act was carried out with the intention of harming the State of Israel,” per the bill, “shall be sentenced to death.”

Terrorists would face a mandatory death sentence with no room for judicial discretion under the proposed law.

Knesset member Limor Son Har-Melech, whose husband was killed in a terrorist attack in 2003 in which she was hurt seriously, proposed the bill.

“A dead terrorist won’t return to the cycle of bloodshed,” the Otzma Yehudit Party lawmaker said during the vote. “He will not return to terrorism, and he will certainly not be released in a deal.”

“In the Shalit deal, the terrorist who murdered my husband was released,” she added.

Har-Melech noted that a terrorist from the cell said in court that “the punishment you give me has no meaning. I know I’ll be released.”

“He was indeed released and was in the cell that murdered Malachi Rosenfeld,” she said, of the student killed in June 2015 when Hamas gunmen opened fire on his vehicle.

Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backed the bill.

Tenders for record number of West Bank settlement housing units published in 2025

The number of housing units in West Bank settlements for which tenders have been published this year has reached an all-time yearly high, with tenders for 5,667 units issued so far in 2025.

The previous record was set in 2018 when tenders were published for the construction of 3,808 housing units.

According to the Peace Now settlement watchdog, the planned housing units will accommodate approximately 25,000 residents once built.

Tenders are published for construction companies to bid on contracts for the construction of housing units and other projects in the West Bank after the planning and approval has been completed.

This means that barring some form of political intervention, the construction has already been approved and will go ahead once the tenders are awarded, which can typically take one to two years.

The large majority of tenders approved in 2025 were for construction in two West Bank settlement cities: Maale Adumim, east of Jerusalem, and Ariel in the northern West Bank. Construction equipment and caravan houses are seen at the new illegal outpost of Hamor near the West Bank settlement of Maale Levona on June 22, 2023, following a deadly terror attack at a nearby gas station two days before. (Courtesy)

In August, the highly controversial E1 project for Maale Adumim was finally approved in the planning process, and the same month tenders were published for the construction of some 3,400 units in the project which are slated to be built on land to the west of the West Bank city.

Tenders for another 730 housing units were announced, also in August, for a new neighborhood of Ariel.

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11/09 Links: Israel receives remains of Hadar Goldin after 11 years; The UN’s “Gaza Peace” Trap; Triggernometry: Ben Shapiro; BBC chiefs resign after criticism over bias; Kristallnacht survivors: World is once again dangerous for Jews

From Ian:

Pierre Rehov: The Mirage of 'Humanitarian Reconstruction': Billions for Gaza — But Who Will Prevent the Next Jihad?

The UNDP's own auditors uncovered more than 100 investigations into fraud, bribery, and "ghost projects." If corruption could flourish under nominal Iraqi government control, imagine the diversion potential in Gaza — where much of the terror regime remains intact.

Earlier UN experiments, such as the Oil-for-Food scandal, showed how -- when oversight is weak and politics trumps accountability -- "humanitarian" programs become self-enriching rackets.

For years, Hamas forces have been filmed confiscating relief shipments directly from UN trucks and warehouses. It is not chaos; it is a business model.

These are not isolated abuses — they form a structural pattern in which humanitarian efforts in fact bankroll jihad.

After Hamas's October 7, 2023 invasion of Israel, investigations confirmed that many UNRWA employees participated in or facilitated the Hamas attacks, leading more than 20 donor countries — including the U.S., Canada, and Germany — to suspend funding. Some countries, however, under political pressure, resumed payments months later, even as fresh evidence emerged of UNRWA staff ties to Hamas's military wing.

The U.S. administration... continues to push for a "political process" aimed at reviving a desired "peace framework" partially disconnected from the region's realities. Washington may view reconstruction as a path to normalization, but for Israel — the country whose citizens were massacred and whose borders remain under threat — security comes before expediency, and survival before consent.

Cynical Publius: "America First" and Israel

"Are you America First or Israel First?" is a false dilemma. It is precisely because I am "America First" that I wholly support current U.S. policies regarding Israel. Support for Israel is solidly in America's best interests.

I lived for extended periods in the Middle East and in other Islamic nations both in military and civilian capacities and I know the ideas and policies that define the region. The entire history of Islam, literally since its inception, is a history of conquering other lands to force their inhabitants to become Muslims.

In Muslim Arab countries, it is possible to become friends with highly educated, highly rational people who are some of the smartest humans you will ever meet. Yet, sadly, when the subject of Israel and/or Judaism comes up, they suddenly lapse into astonishingly irrational beings, asserting wildly antisemitic tropes straight out of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Islamic nations have views on personal liberty that are completely and utterly opposed to Western civilization. Every nation but one in the Middle East offers only totalitarian, tyrannical governance. Israel is the only nation in the region that shares Western values of democracy, self-governance, the rule of law, and guaranteed personal liberties.

Israel is a tremendous military ally to the U.S., sharing military intelligence and technology. The only intelligence service that rivals the CIA and the UK's MI6 is Mossad, and the intelligence we share with each other is greatly beneficial to both nations.

Since its inception in its modern form, Israel has been surrounded by Muslim states with a singular purpose of destroying Israel and all of its Jewish inhabitants. Yet the citizens of Israel made the desert bloom and built an economic and military powerhouse out of nothing. We Americans who understand our own pioneering history can see the similarity to our own nation and cannot help but admire it.

Israel has a technology industry that is second only to Silicon Valley, and when it comes to cybersecurity, arguably better. The U.S. and world economies depend greatly on the innovation and products of the Israeli people. Right now, if you are reading this, the only reason you can do so safely without divulging your bank account and other deeply personal information is thanks to Israel.

"Gaza genocide" is a nonsense myth. Israel had for decades offered peace and compromises, and Hamas and Gaza's citizens rejected all of that in favor of death and destruction. Israel's response in Gaza was EXACTLY what the U.S. would have done when faced with a similar situation. To a certain extent, Israel has fought jihad so you and I do not have to. Israel's continued existence benefits America in every way imaginable. So please don't pretend that support for Israel is anti-American.

Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser: If Hamas Refuses to Disarm, Israel Will Finish the Job with American Backing

The Trump Plan outlines a path for far-reaching change in Gaza, which is to become a de-radicalized, terror-free zone that does not pose a threat to its neighbors. For this vision to have any chance of success, the Palestinian narrative must change from one that denies the Jewish people's right to a state in the Land of Israel and glorifies the struggle to destroy it, to one prepared to build peaceful relations with the Jewish state.

That change must begin with an internal reckoning - an acknowledgment that the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack was a grievous mistake, and that Israel cannot be defeated, certainly not by force. So far, Hamas remains defiant, reflecting not only a refusal to surrender power but also an awareness that disarmament would symbolize an admission of error and guilt.

During the events marking the attack's second anniversary, Arab media criticism did not challenge the "heroism" of Hamas's attackers or the supposed legitimacy of using violence to drive Israel out. Rather, it focused on Hamas's failure to anticipate Israel's response - that exacted a devastating price in lives and property. Even media close to Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood expressed criticism, noting the heavy price the Iranian axis had paid for Hamas's short-sightedness.

What forced Hamas to yield on the hostages? Israel's determination to press ahead on the capture of Gaza City - despite intense international pressure, the wave of Western recognition of a Palestinian state, and the potential costs, together with the massive destruction inflicted on Gaza's infrastructure that included collapsing high-rise buildings - created severe distress within Hamas's ranks.

Although Hamas's propaganda campaigns about "starvation" and "genocide" were highly effective, they failed to stop Israel's offensive. Now the U.S. and Israel must assess whether additional measures can shape how Oct. 7 is ultimately remembered in the Palestinian national consciousness.

Israel and the U.S. must reiterate a credible military threat: if Hamas refuses to disarm, Israel - with full American backing - will resume combat and finish the job. President Trump continues to signal this. Washington and Jerusalem should condition the next stages of the plan - opening the Rafah crossing, expanding humanitarian aid, and launching reconstruction - on Hamas's disarmament.

The mediators must be pressed to use their leverage. They should be made to understand that failure to achieve Hamas's disarmament will not only lead to its forcible removal but will also affect their own relations with the U.S.

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11/08 Links: Hamas claims to recover body of Hadar Goldin, IDF soldier killed in 2014 war; Why Britain’s Jews no longer feel at home; The Overton Window and Zohran Mamdani: How Antisemitism Became Respectable Again

From Ian:

Why Britain’s Jews no longer feel at home

There are now streets we must avoid at the weekend, football matches it is no longer safe to attend. Pupils at Jewish schools are now told to hide the school’s emblem on their uniforms to avoid harassment. The often celebrity-led campaigns to exclude Israelis from academia, culture and sport have picked up pace. Even in the National Health Service, there are growing concerns over anti-Semitism among medical staff.

In the media, our own national broadcaster, the BBC, still won’t call Hamas ‘terrorists’ and happily broadcast the threat to kill Jews, ‘Death, death to the IDF’, during its coverage of the Glastonbury festival. Just last month, renowned interviewer Louis Theroux put out his latest podcast, a lovely cosy chat with the creator of the ‘Death to the IDF’ chant, punk-rapper Bobby Vylan. During the podcast, Theroux and Vylan revealed they both essentially equate Zionism with white supremacy. As Theroux put it, ‘Jewish identity in the Jewish community, as expressed in Israel, has become almost like an acceptable, quote, unquote, way of understanding ethno-nationalism’.

Hearing someone as mainstream as Theroux not only nod along, but also seemingly agree with such an obnoxious idea is a powerful reminder of just how far the constant demonisation of Israel has gone.

The hatred among our cultural and political elites towards the Jewish State, the determination to prioritise the war in Gaza over all other conflicts, has unsurprisingly – albeit, in some cases, unintentionally – led to the demonisation of Jewish people. The line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism has all but disappeared. That is why the British Jewish community was not surprised by the Manchester synagogue attack, carried out in the name of the Islamic State. We knew something like that was inevitable.

We Jews now live with the constant hum of anti-Semitism as the background noise to our lives – something I would have considered unthinkable when I was growing up, rarely fearful of being Jewish. We can still go about our day-to-day business, and nowhere is expressly verboten, but something has changed. It may be imperceptible to our non-Jewish friends, but we now change our behaviour in myriad, tiny ways. The internal Alvy Singer voice is always piping up, and now we are listening. My husband and I moved to our new house two years ago, but it remains without a mezuzah (a religious parchment in a small ornamental case hung on a door post) – because we worry about indicating that Jews live there. The cheder (Sunday religion school) where I bring my children runs armed-attacker drills, and after Yom Kippur our rabbi had to explain to children as young as four that there had been an attack on a synagogue.

Then there is the constant internal monologue: ‘I’m wearing my Star of David today – did I bring a scarf, lest I inadvertently “antagonise” someone? Which of my friends can I speak honestly and openly to about Israel? How long will it be before my son encounters anti-Semitism at school?’

And where can we go to be free of this constant attempt to break our spirit and undermine our Jewishness? Well, we thought we could take shelter at our communal centres – but even that comfort has been denied to us since the Manchester synagogue attack.

Such is the success of this relentless campaign of anti-Semitism, that a community once so confident and well-integrated is now being ‘Othered’ once again. We question ourselves, we look over our shoulders, and we wonder how long it will be before the rest of the country realises that this is no Woody Allen-esque neurosis: anti-Semitism has become our lived reality.

BBC ignored second memo on Gaza war bias

The BBC has been accused of ignoring a second memo alleging bias in its reporting of Israel’s war in Gaza.

Sir Vernon Bogdanor, the author of the memo and a constitutional expert, has called on Tim Davie to resign with “immediate effect” as director-general of the BBC.

The eminent academic, a former professor of government at the University of Oxford, said the broadcaster had “ignored internal reports” that had made allegations of distortion and bias in its journalism.

Mr Davie has faced growing criticism in the wake of a leak to The Telegraph of an 8,000-word letter sent to members of the BBC board by Michael Prescott, a former standards adviser to the corporation.

The letter detailed bias in its reporting of the Gaza war as well as the doctoring of a speech by Donald Trump.

The emergence of Sir Vernon’s memo will fuel the crisis at the corporation and comes after Mr Trump’s official spokeswoman branded it “100 per cent fake news”.

Karoline Leavitt condemned the doctoring of the president’s speech and said British taxpayers were being “forced to foot the bill for a leftist propaganda machine”.

Ms Leavitt told The Telegraph: “Every time I travel to the United Kingdom with President Trump and am forced to watch the BBC in our hotel rooms, it ruins my day listening to their blatant propaganda and lies about the president of the United States and all that he’s doing to make America better and the world a safer place.”

Boris Johnson, the former prime minister, has also suggested Mr Davie quit his post.

Mr Johnson said on Friday that he would no longer be paying the licence fee and suggested that reporters should camp outside the BBC boss’s home.

“A few days of that and Davie should eventually emerge from his foxhole, and when he does, he should either give a convincing explanation for the Left-wing bias at the BBC, or else resign in favour of someone who will stop the rot,” he said.

“Unless he does so I am simply going to stop paying my licence fee and suggest you do the same.”

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11/07 Links Pt2: Norway's anti-racism center turns Kristallnacht memorial into Gaza protest; Nancy Spielberg: ”Can’t let them silence our stories”; ‘Nuremberg’ and the failure of international law

From Ian:

David Reaboi: Naming the Jew

By hosting Fuentes, Carlson offered his audience two flavors of antisemitism: explicit and denied. Fuentes names the Jew; Carlson insists he has nothing against Jews at all. But the coordinates are identical, and preferring one or the other is simply a matter of taste. They coexist comfortably because both point to the same destination. Antisemitism is not dangerous because it’s mean or offensive to the feelings or sensibilities of Jews; it is dangerous because it creates and circulates lethal fictions. It produces a weaponized alternate reality, one that leads inexorably to Jews being harmed or killed.

Carlson—not to mention Fuentes and countless others—argues nightly that this country is being controlled by nefarious Israelis. If that “hummus-eating” enemy is willing to commit a genocide in Gaza; deliberately manipulate American leaders into wars; assassinate critics; destroy churches; and oppress and slaughter Christians with impunity, then the problem is no longer political but civilizational. It becomes, in their telling, a battle against a uniquely devious and implacable foe—one that cannot be resolved by elections or arguments, but only by confrontation. The logic points beyond persuasion to elimination.

Fuentes is open about this. In declaring his admiration for Hitler, he merely follows his critique of “organized Jewry” to its natural conclusion. Carlson is far more careful and coy, but the trajectory is the same. His foray last year into World War II revisionism—an extended conversation with podcaster and revisionist historian of National Socialism Darryl Cooper—was not an eccentric detour but an attempt to rehabilitate Nazi Germany and its leader, largely by discrediting Churchill and the Allied cause. Even if these gestures are performative, the tens of millions who watch and listen are not in on the act.

What unites these audiences isn’t ideology so much as a way of seeing. In this world, nothing happens by accident; every war, election, or scandal confirms the existence of an unseen hand. The more elaborate the theory, the more convincing it feels. Carlson and Fuentes didn’t invent this pattern; they inherited and updated it into a modern vernacular of globalist plots, unipolar elites, and “foreign lobbies.” The content changes, but the structure never does.

What Carlson and Fuentes broadcast isn’t “hate”; it’s a cognitive map built entirely on lies. Yet most people, including many Jews, still describe antisemitism as “anti-Jewish racism.” That mistake is fatal. Racism begins with emotion; antisemitism begins with explanation. Its logic is counterfeit, but it poses as reason all the same.

This confusion has deep roots. After the civil-rights era, “hate” became the moral grammar through which all prejudice was understood. Jewish institutions, eager to speak that language, adopted it wholesale. Once antisemitism was redefined as an emotional or linguistic offense, its conspiracy core was buried under “tropes.” In that bucket, the falsehoods that launched pogroms and genocides—blood libel, world-Jewish control—were lumped together with trivial stereotypes.

The result was a flattening of meaning. Even the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s official definition, adopted by governments and many Jewish groups, reflects this collapse. Its warning against “mendacious, dehumanizing, or demonizing allegations about Jews” treats antisemitism as a moral failure rather than an epistemic one.

The problem isn’t cruelty; it’s falsity, and the fact that for two millennia, people have acted on those lies.

Spare Us the Friendship Defense By Abe Greenwald Via Commentary Newsletter, sign up here.

“I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend,” said Thomas Jefferson. A good maxim, if you ask me. Most politically involved Americans these days don’t live by it, which is a shame.

But there’s a perverse version of Jefferson’s credo echoing on the right at the moment, and it should be called out. The claim of friendship is being offered up as a defense of indifference to depravity. Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts has talked about his or Heritage’s friendship with Tucker Carlson in every statement he’s made about the latter’s sugary interview of Nick Fuentes. He called him a “close friend” of Heritage in his initial defense of Carlson and has not stopped referencing his personal friendship with him even as he tries to clean up the mess. Megyn Kelly, too, likes to go on about her friendship with Carlson and the importance of standing by friends. There’s a whole circle of pundits and influencers who excuse or dismiss hateful people with the friendship defense.

People can disagree with me all they like, but here goes: If you remain close friends with someone who promotes racist or anti-Semitic ideas to pursue evil ends, you’re a bad person. This isn’t about politics because bigotry isn’t fundamentally about politics. It’s about what’s in someone’s heart, which should be the deciding factor in choosing friends.

And it’s not guilt by association. Those who use the friendship defense love to note that their friendship doesn’t require them to agree with everything that their friend believes. The problem isn’t that the friendship automatically means you also have malevolent intentions (although you might). It’s that you even could stay friends with someone who spreads evil. That says everything one needs to know about you.

Starving for Headlines

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF): Unfairly Maligned Alternative
The Reuters USAID article above was published at a time when Israel and the US were defending their decision to terminate cooperation with UNRWA in favor of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an American nonprofit created to deliver aid directly to the people of Gaza. The Foundation bypassed Hamas interference by using secure distribution sites, and made large-scale theft harder by packaging and distributing individual meals rather than bulk items like flour and sugar. GHF spokesperson Chapin Fay recently told Quillette that his organisation delivered over 170 million meals directly into the hands of needy civilians in less than four months with “zero diversion” of aid.

Because the GHF coordinated their operations with Israel, they came under intense scrutiny. The UN categorically rejected cooperation with them—even after over 200 faith-based and Israel advocacy organisations published an open letter urging them to do so in August 2025. Rather than reporting on the UN’s obstinate refusal to work alongside this efficient means of aid delivery, media outlets overwhelmingly blamed Israel for the resulting shortfall in aid. UNRWA’s refusal to deliver aid to areas of Gaza outside the GHF’s reach forced Gaza residents to travel long, dangerous routes to obtain food. The UN claims that hundreds of Gazans were killed “in the vicinity of GHF sites”—attributing the deaths to the Israeli military. Israel strongly denies the accusations and has released testimonials from Gazan aid-seekers explaining how Hamas tries to disrupt the aid system through violence and manipulation. “This is how Hamas operates—they deliberately fire at people and want it to appear as though the army is the one shooting,” reported one Gaza resident. GHF workers are also at risk. Chapin Fay reports of a particularly shocking incident in mid-June 2025, when Hamas hijacked a bus transporting GHF workers and murdered nine of them. The wounded survivors of the attack were taken to Nasser Hospital (where Doctors Without Borders were operating) but were “refused treatment and left to die in the parking lot.” Uncovering the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s Controversial Tactics

While the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) was operating, Hamas ran into severe financial difficulties, which the Washington Post reported without linking that fact to the GHF. As Chapin Fay told Quillette, “The Washington Post didn't connect the dots, but I will. It’s not a coincidence that you can't steal GHF aid, and the UN wasn’t delivering theirs, and Hamas was having trouble with its finances.” Hamas demanded that “clear-cut language” be added to the terms of the ceasefire stating that GHF would be terminated. The GHF ceased operations on 10 October 2025 as a requirement of the ceasefire.

We All Deserve Better
The patterns documented here reflect a deterioration in journalistic standards, whereby ideological preferences override impartiality. But Gaza coverage makes these failures consequential in uniquely destructive ways. Every news story emphasising Israeli responsibility while erasing Hamas culpability perpetuates the cycle of Palestinian suffering. Our trusted news outlets have enabled this by abdicating their responsibility to ask hard questions, verify facts, and seek the truth—the core principles of journalism.

Arab Zionist to Arutz Sheva: October 7 exposed deep antisemitism in Arab world

Rawan Osman, a Syrian-born German political activist and a self-described Arab Zionist, spoke with Arutz Sheva-Israel National News at the European Jewish Association (EJA) conference in Poland about antisemitism in the Arab world.

Osman says that “antisemitism has always been rampant in the Arab world. However, even I, who lived in four different Arab countries, had never imagined how bad the situation was until October 7th. In fact, October 7 unmasked a much bigger problem not only in the Arab world but globally. We do have data for antisemitism around the world except in Arab countries because they do not acknowledge, recognize, or admit that antisemitism is an issue. And when Arabs deny that antisemitism is a problem, we ask them, 'Where are your Jews today?'”

She continued: “More than 800,000 Jews have left the Arab world since Israel became a country. What needs to be done first and foremost is to invite them to recognize, admit that it is an issue for them to understand that antisemitism has caused, above all, problems in the Arab world. And if they want to address their issues and problems, they need to reconcile with the existence of a Jewish state in the so-called Middle East.”

Osman stated that “October 7th helped us recognize how bad antisemitism in the Arab world is, but it definitely also contributed to a sharp rise in Jew hatred and anti-Zionist sentiments across the Arab world. Even those who considered accepting Israel in the region passionately rejected it after seeing the horrific video footage emerging from Gaza. What needs to be done is for political leaders to explain that Israel did not start the war. We need to get rid of Hamas. We need to expose them as liars, and we need to speak about the elephant in the room.”

“The Palestinian culture glorifies violence and martyrdom. And we will not get rid of recurring wars in our region unless we stop infantilizing the Palestinians and we hold them accountable for their actions, especially for incitement against the Jews, the Zionists, and the Israelis.”

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11/07 Links Pt1: Hamas hands over body of hostage to Israel; Hamas Committed Genocide; Iran planned to kill Israeli envoy to Mexico; Half of Israelis would avoid NYC after Mamdani victory

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Accusations Against Israel Once Again Revealed to Be Pure Projection

Khan reportedly tried to guilt his accuser into keeping quiet about the allegations, telling her that going public would hurt Gazans because it could derail his case against Netanyahu. His accuser took it to heart, requesting a transfer instead of an investigation into Khan. “I held on for as long as I could because I didn’t want to f*** up the Palestinian arrest warrants,” she testified.

Although some extremist figures, such as incoming New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, still back the arrest warrant, the case against Netanyahu at the court is obviously and entirely illegitimate. Even worse, it was issued apparently in an attempt to let the prosecutor get away with rape. Khan took a leave of absence from the case, but the ICC requires thorough reform or disbanding.

As if all that wasn’t bad enough, now we’ve got the reported Qatari involvement—a story broken by the ICC’s staunch ally against Israel, the UK Guardian, which reports:

“The private intelligence operation that has targeted the woman at the centre of the UN inquiry is said to have commenced earlier this year, when Highgate was commissioned by Qataris.

“A small group of senior Highgate employees was made aware the ultimate client for the project was the Qatari unit, according to evidence reviewed by the Guardian. The funding was regarded as highly sensitive. Executives involved in the project were careful to refer to its client as the ‘client country’ or ‘Q country’.

“A document seen by the Guardian suggests that at one stage during the operation Highgate sought information that would link the alleged victim and her family members with Israel or its intelligence agencies.”

According to the Journal, Khan had suggested his accuser might be part of a plot to bring down the ICC. This was a way to casually plant the idea that his victim was actually an Israeli agent. The Guardian notes that he actually then met with the intelligence team assigned to tar his accuser. The intelligence firm followed this line of investigation, but to no avail: As is usually the case, Israel haters were lying.

The intelligence firm apparently went so far as to hack into her private communications, but still found nothing. No amount of Qatari money can change the fact that Khan, his ICC enablers, the countries and politicians supporting his actions—and of course Qatar itself—are the bad guys here. The public should keep in mind for the future that extraordinary accusations against Israel are often themselves admissions of guilt.

Bassem Eid: Hamas Committed Genocide

Captured Hamas records prove that Hamas originally collaborated with Iran and the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah to commit similar massacres in Northern Israel, with the intent of provoking the collapse of the state of Israel. Although it never launched a full-scale invasion, Hezbollah did launch a missile barrage into Israel that slaughtered children.

Perhaps nothing shows intent so clearly as Hamas’s civilian hostage taking. 251 innocent people were dragged into Gaza, including 30 children under 18 years of age, and 16 under 10. Two babies, Kfir and Ariel Bibas, were murdered in captivity. Hostages were starved, filmed emaciated, and forced to dig their own graves in the tunnels. Some were raped repeatedly. Teenage hostages were forced to commit sex acts on each other. Others were executed.

Hamas has weaponized genocide denial, engaging in a strategy of reverse accusations, smearing Israel as a way of deflecting attention from their crime. In so doing, Hamas is weakening the precedent for identifying and prosecuting genocide around the world. They hope to villainize Western powers that go out of their way in wartime to protect innocents and distract from their own barbarism.

Israel is acting based on military need and prioritizing civilian survival, fighting under unthinkable circumstances engineered by Hamas to turn civilian infrastructure into military sites. Hamas apologists misquote Israeli politicians to claim intent, and grow silent when confronted by tens of millions of warning messages, thousands of tons of aid, and guarded humanitarian corridors provided by the IDF. The legitimacy of genocide charges themselves is compromised when accredited international institutions have committed clear errors in the rush to judgment of Israel, the victim power, instead of identifying the actual aggressor, Hamas.

Meanwhile, real genocides are being ignored by the rest of the world. According to the United Nations, more than 740,000 people are killed each year in armed conflict and criminality. The slaughter of tens of thousands in Sudan has left pools of blood in the sand visible from space. Hamas’ false accusation does an injustice to the actual victims of genocide who lost their lives on the basis of their shared heritage. It leaves tens of thousands massacred around the world without the chance of getting justice for their murders.

As a Palestinian, it is vital that I speak the truth. Hamas committed genocide on October 7th. Every attempt to aggravate their denial by smearing Israel only dishonors the victims, weakens the legitimacy of real genocide charges, and protects the perpetrators. Justice must be done, and history must never forget the crimes that were committed on October 7, 2023 – and by whom.

Aizenberg: Tunnel Denialism: The Erasure Beneath the Rubble

Media reports similarly erase the presence of tunnels. An October 2025 report in The Guardian on "The ruin of Gaza" never writes the word "tunnel." This silence extends even to media outlets that have themselves documented the tunnels. The New York Times published two major investigations, one in November 2023 and another in February 2024 , confirming extensive tunnel systems beneath much of Gaza including the Al-Shifa Hospital. Yet many recent articles and op-eds in the same paper lamenting the destruction in Gaza fail to mention the tunnel network. This is the essence of Tunnel Denialism.

The contrast with the reality of Gaza and the war could not be starker. An account by hostage Aviva Siegel describing her captivity in Gaza sums up the Hamas tunnel network. She explained how her first stop was a civilian home with a tunnel shaft inside the living room. She recalled seeing “somebody underneath the hole, in the hole underneath the ground, that’s waiting with a smile.” Siegel was moved thirteen times, through tunnels and militants’ homes. This single testimony captures what much of the world prefers not to acknowledge: the tunnels are not separate from civilian Gaza. They are underneath it, literally and conceptually intertwined with daily life. Hamas built its war machine beneath families and children, hospitals and schools, ensuring that any military confrontation would destroy both. Israel's only choice was to grant Hamas permanent immunity, or attack Hamas knowing that great destruction was unavoidable.

One of the war’s defining images (see below) shows a bombed-out children’s bedroom, its walls painted with Mickey Mouse and Snow White, the floor blown open to reveal a gaping tunnel shaft beneath. In this tunnel, Hamas executed six Israeli hostages because the terrorists feared their rescue by nearby IDF soldiers. It encapsulates Hamas’s strategy: hide within civilian life, then weaponize the resulting destruction for propaganda. And yet, when Gaza’s devastation is lamented in global media, such images rarely appear. When they do, the hole in the ground is left unexplained.

Why this erasure? Because acknowledging the tunnels forces a confrontation with Hamas’s moral depravity and the impossibility of a clean, casualty-free war. It exposes the grotesque calculus at the core of Hamas’s strategy: embedding its military infrastructure beneath its own civilians to ensure civilian deaths that can be weaponized politically. Ignoring that fact allows critics to blame Israel for consequences engineered by Hamas. To analyze the tunnels seriously is to see Hamas as a movement that sacrifices its own population for global sympathy—a recognition that would collapse the “Israel = aggressor / Gaza = victim” binary on which so much Western discourse depends.

Even the postwar debates about Gaza’s future proceed with Tunnel Denialism, as if this subterranean state never existed. But the “day after” cannot be separated from the seventeen years before—from Hamas’s decision to turn Gaza into an armed fortress dug beneath its own people. Any plan for reconstruction that ignores that reality will only rebuild atop future ruins.

The first step toward ending Gaza’s tragedy is intellectual honesty: to speak the word tunnel and understand what it signifies. Until the world confronts that underground reality, every discussion of Gaza’s ruins will remain a half-truth, and every plan for its “day after” will merely prepare the ground for the next war.

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11/06 Links Pt2: Maccabi Tel Aviv Protests: ‘Its Very Obvious They Hate Jews’; Don’t let Tucker Carlson’s defenders gaslight you about free speech

From Ian:

BBC Arabic promotes terrorist’s new book called The Holocaust Custodian – written by killer of a Holocaust survivor

BBC Arabic is facing further questions about its conduct after the channel showed viewers the latest book by a released Palestinian terrorist called The Holocaust Custodian – without mentioning that one of the people he was imprisoned for his role in murdering was herself a Holocaust survivor.

Last month, the Arabic-language BBC channel, which is partially funded by the Foreign Office, as well as the British taxpayer, interviewed two convicted terrorists, Basem Khandaqji and Nader Sadqa, who were among the hundreds of Palestinian prisoners released by Israel in return for Hamas releasing the remaining Israeli captives it took on 7 October. Both Khandaqji and Sadqa are senior members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) who were imprisoned for their roles in separate terror attacks which killed Israeli civilians. They were not permitted to return to the West Bank, but instead were released into Egypt.

Khandaqji, who wrote books in prison, won an International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2024. In his BBC interview he claimed that he told his Israeli prison guards that “my words will cause your colonialism pain”.

Khandaqji’s latest book is called The Holocaust Custodian; while the BBC interview does not directly ask him about it, it features video footage of him signing copies. The BBC did not see fit to question him about the fact that Leah Levine, one of the victims of the 2004 bombing which Khandaqji helped perpetrate, was herself a Holocaust survivor. Khandaqji’s latest book, “The Holocaust Custodian”, as shown on BBC Arabic

The November 2004 bombing in Tel Aviv’s Carmel Market injured 50 people and killed three – Shmuel Levy, 65, Tatiana Ackerman, 32, and Leah Levine, 64.

A child survivor of the Holocaust, Levine had been featured on Israeli television four years previously after meeting her brother, who had been living in Russia, for the first time since her childhood – at which time she learned her exact birth date.

Amer al-Fahr, a 16-year old from near Nablus, had carried out the suicide bombing. A BBC article from the time cited the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz quoting al-Fahr’s mother, saying “It’s immoral to send someone so young. They should have sent an adult who understands the meaning of his deeds.”

BBC Middle East editor sues Owen Jones for libel at High Court over Gaza article

An article by journalist Owen Jones about the BBC’s coverage of the conflict in Gaza has caused the corporation’s Middle East editor to receive death threats, documents in a High Court libel claim allege.

Raffi Berg, who joined the BBC in 2001 and has been Middle East editor for its news website for 12 years, is suing Jones over an article titled The BBC’s Civil War Over Gaza published on the Drop Site website in December last year.

The claims in the article, which Berg denies, include that BBC staff told Jones that Berg “plays a key role in a wider BBC culture of ‘systematic Israeli propaganda’”.

It also said that staff had told Jones that Berg “reshapes everything from headlines, to story text, to images” and “repeatedly seeks to foreground the Israeli military perspective while stripping away Palestinian humanity”.

In court documents seen by the PA news agency, John Stables, for Berg, said the claims in the article “strike at the claimant’s professional reputation as a journalist and editor”, and had caused Berg to suffer “an onslaught of hatred, intimidation and threats”, including death threats.

Jones said he looked forward to “vigorously defending my reporting”.

The article said that the corporation was facing an “internal revolt over its reporting” of the conflict.

It continued that journalists had claimed that Berg “sets the tone for the BBC’s digital output on Israel and Palestine”, and that complaints from staff about the corporation’s coverage had been “repeatedly brushed aside”.

Jones’ piece also claimed that “facts unfavourable to Israel have been stripped out of Berg’s reports” and that he played a “crucial role” in “conduct that imperils the integrity of the BBC”.

Mr Stables said that following the article’s publication, an online petition was launched calling on the BBC to suspend Berg, who was targeted by protesters at the corporation’s premises in January this year.

Lawsuit Alleging Gavin Newsom 'Facilitated' Anti-Semitic Campaign Against National Guard Commander Headed to Trial, Judge Rules

A former commander of the California National Guard who says Gov. Gavin Newsom (D.) "facilitated" an anti-Semitic campaign that resulted in his wrongful termination will have his day in court, a judge ruled Friday. The move could cause a major headache for Newsom ahead of his expected 2028 presidential campaign.

Former brigadier general Jeffrey Magram is suing the state of California and Adjutant General Matthew Beevers, a Newsom appointee who has faced allegations of denigrating a Jewish subordinate as a "kike" lawyer. Magram alleges that Newsom "facilitated and ratified" a Beevers-driven campaign of anti-Semitic discrimination, harassment, and retaliation against him that started after Magram defended a fellow Jew from Beevers's anti-Semitic rants and ended with Newsom's office signing an order to dismiss Magram in November 2022.

Sacramento Superior Court judge Richard K. Sueyoshi rejected the Newsom administration's efforts to quash Magram's lawsuit in an Oct. 31 ruling authorizing six of its eight counts to proceed toward a trial. The ruling will force the Newsom administration to comply with document discovery and deposition requests that Magram says have been ignored since he filed his lawsuit in January 2024.

The discovery process could provide a window into how Newsom's administration handles accusations of anti-Semitism and risks becoming a political liability for the Democratic governor ahead of a 2028 presidential campaign.

"Beevers and the California Military Department have disregarded complying with public laws and multiple legal requests for documents," Magram told the Washington Free Beacon. "We are very much looking forward to the facts coming out in this case and for the truth to be heard by all."

Those records include documents that may shed light on Newsom's response to several letters Magram wrote to the governor's office warning that Beevers was engaged in a personal vendetta against him driven by his "bigoted beliefs" against Jewish people. Magram alleges in his lawsuit that Newsom "chose to ignore this information and directly ratify the anti-Semitic acts of Beevers" when his office signed off on his termination in November 2022.

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11/06 Links Pt1: Why October 7 Strengthened Israel; Kazakhstan joining Abraham Accords; To Secure Long-Term Peace, Fix Gaza's Schools; Tanzanian hostage Joshua Mollel’s body returned to Israel

From Ian:

Why October 7 Strengthened Israel

Israel is suffering from deep PTSD. Almost one thousand soldiers were killed, forever altering the lives of their families and friends. Thousands of wounded face years of rehabilitation.

Yet there is another side to the story. Some say Oct. 7 proved that Israel's founding purpose was breached, that Jews were once again slaughtered mercilessly.

I contend the reverse: Israel's reason for being was reaffirmed. In the past, when attacked in pogroms and massacres, Jews lacked the means to fight back. Now we did.

Reservists donned their uniforms again, some returning from abroad, putting their lives and limbs on the line.

Israelis fought like lions and lionesses - with courage and with a moral compass unmatched in the history of war - proving to the world, and to ourselves, that Jewish blood would never again be cheap.

There remained a deep sense that we are not only a nation but a family.

Walking through the streets of Jerusalem these days, one senses a weight lifted from the nation's shoulders. We can finally breathe again: the living hostages are home.

Security Experts: Hamas Disarmament Unlikely but Gaza Rehabilitation Depends on It

Avi Dichter, former head of the Israel Security Agency
"I don't think Hamas will volunteer to put aside its weapons; without weapons, there is no Hamas," MK Avi Dichter, former head of the Israel Security Agency, said Wednesday during the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs conference on the future of Israel and Gaza. Therefore, it is more likely that Israel will be forced to disarm the group through military means. "In this region, what doesn't go with force, goes with extra force."

Nevertheless, Dichter predicted that "Gaza will not be dominated by the Palestinian Authority, and Gaza will not be dominated by Hamas." Moreover, Gazans will not see the inside of the State of Israel for "two generations at least, only in photos."

The rebuilding of Gaza depends on the rehabilitation of the people of Gaza, he argued. He recalled how, on Oct. 7, 2023, the third wave of people to enter Israel were "so-called uninvolved Gazan civilians, something which in normal culture we can't even imagine. They applauded when the Israeli hostages were kidnapped to Gaza," saying that the radical ideology and desire for jihad in Gaza remain strong.

"The main message of our region is if you are weak, you will disappear. If you are small and weak, you will disappear much faster. We are small, but we don't want to be weak. We don't have the option of losing."

Oded Ailam, former head of the Mossad Counterterror Division
Oded Ailam, former head of the Mossad Counterterror Division, said, "People say that to change Gaza you must change beliefs," but such statements are "useless." "Beliefs are like tattoos. You cannot erase them with speeches. You have to change the incentive environment that causes those beliefs to prevail. And if we have some lessons from the real world, it's that ideas don't kill, but capacity kills, which means the first and the only thing that we have to do is to somehow dismantle the capacity of the Palestinians in Gaza to kill."

Ailam said there were hardly any examples in the modern era of Islamic terrorist groups that were willing to disarm. More common is the situation with the Houthis in Yemen and Hizbullah in Lebanon, where agreements are reached but the terror groups keep their weapons. However, such an agreement cannot be allowed in Gaza. Otherwise, there's no chance for any entity in Gaza to replace Hamas.

Regarding disarmament, Ailam said: "I don't see any way that external forces from America, from Egypt, from the Emirates will do it....So I'm pretty much skeptical of the next phase of the Trump agreement. It's not an agreement, it's a letter of intent."

"If Israel and the United States allow Turkey and Qatar to have a major force within Gaza, you can be sure that Hamas would not be dismantled. We have a major problem right now because this American administration wants [Turkey and Qatar in Gaza] because of their important part in achieving the deal. But the payment will be paid by Israel."

"Gaza is the only place on earth where the Muslim Brotherhood has managed to take governance of a real state. However, Gaza is not their goal, it's not their aspiration. They want to be everywhere - in Madrid, Dearborn, Paris....Gaza is just their start-up."

IDF reveals Hamas ties to Iran, UNRWA, Al Jazeera, stolen aid in collection of documents

The IDF published a collection of various intelligence documents on Monday containing evidence of Hamas’s connection to Iran, to UNWRA, and Al Jazeera, as well as the terror organization’s actions at the deliberate “deepening [of] civilian suffering.”

UNRWA Hamas cooperation
The IDF released documents with details of Hamas operatives employed by UNRWA alongside documents detailing Hamas's use of UNRWA facilities.

The IDF uncovered lists of UNRWA employees shown beside a list of Hamas operatives, where the same individuals were present with both civilian and military IDs.

The list included teachers, principals, counselors, and medical staff who all had positions in Hamas's Izzadin al-Qassam Brigades, the terror organization's so-called military wing. Some were listed on Hamas paperwork as drawing pay from UNRWA.

The IDF also shared an excerpt from a document entitled "Basics of Military Engineering Level Three - Obstacles." The excerpt provides al-Qassam fighters with instructions to use civilian buildings, as they are considered "the best obstacle to defend the resistance." The document highlighted the importance of keeping the fight among the people.

UNRWA schools were listed specifically as a meeting place for Hamas in the supply plan of the South Khan Yunis Battalion in 2020.

The director of UNRWA operations in Gaza, Ashraf Mahd, was featured in several photos in which the site described him as "educating his children and indoctrinating the younger generation to follow Hamas' inhumane ideology, glorifying his war crimes."

Al Jazeera Hamas collaboration
The IDF additionally revealed detailed proof of the affiliation between the Qatari state-run Al Jazeera news organization and the Hamas and the Islamic Jihad terrorist organizations. Documents, including personnel lists of terrorist training courses, phone directories, and salary documents for terrorists, were all uncovered by the IDF.

Fifteen different Al Jazeera journalists were listed alongside their roles within the terror organizations. Ismail Al-Ghoul, a Nukhba terrorist who took part in the October 7 massacre, was listed among the journalists.

Hamas also allegedly held power over what Al Jazeera reported. In 2022, Hamas gave clear instructions on how to cover up a failed Islamic Jihad rocket launch in Jabaliya, which resulted in the death of several citizens. Al Jazeera was forbidden to criticize Hamas and was told which words to avoid.

Later that year, another document contained further instructions on avoiding any criticism of failed rocket launches. Instead, Al Jazeera was to support the "resistance" in Gaza.

A 2023 document displayed another direct connection between Hamas and Al Jazeera. According to the materials, Hamas established an "Al Jazeera Phone," a secure line that would allow the organization to communicate with the channel.

To Secure Long-Term Peace, Fix Gaza's Schools

For decades, billions have been poured into Gaza. The biggest scandal is what's been taught in Gaza's schools - in large part funded through Western largesse. Every generation in Gaza grows up memorizing the language of martyrdom. Schools, summer camps, mosques and media channels work in concert to instill an uncompromising worldview: violence is virtuous, compromise is weakness, and the annihilation of Israel is a sacred duty.

Few parents in London, Paris or Washington would tolerate their child being taught that violence is noble or that neighbors are subhuman. Yet the international community has subsidized precisely that curriculum for Palestinian children - and then has acted shocked when violence perpetuates itself.

To ensure that hate does not take root again, reconstruction aid must come with nonnegotiable conditions: independent curriculum oversight by external auditors with direct access to materials and classrooms, teacher vetting for extremist affiliations and full donor transparency.

When Western taxpayers fund schools, they have every right to insist those schools don't teach children to become terrorists. Indeed, they have every obligation to do so. We now know what failure looks like. The proper test in rebuilding a decent society for Palestinians is whether we enforce the standards we would insist upon for our own children. Gaza's children deserve schools that prepare them for life, not death.

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11/05 Links Pt2: Zohran Mamdani’s Ivy League intifada; The BBC’s Threat to British Democracy; BDS fail: UK-Israel trade GREW; Hollywood A-listers face 'antisemitism' blacklist

From Ian:

Brendan O'Neill: Zohran Mamdani’s Ivy League intifada

Mamdani was swept into the political limelight on a wave of privileged resentment. The depthless self-pity of downwardly mobile millennials meshed with the hipster intifada triggered by the events of 7 October 2023, creating the perfect conditions for the rise of this anti-Zio, woe-is-me rich kid. Look, I agree there is a housing crisis, and that it is awful that so many twenty- and thirtysomethings look destined to rent forever. I just find it hard to sympathise with the section of that generation that has promoted climate alarmism and sneered at working-class Americans, thus making it less likely that mass house-building will take place while pissing off the men who would be called upon to do it.

The most galling thing about the Mamdani phenomenon is its claim to be a working-class uprising. Mamdani himself says he’ll fight for the working classes, though surely he’ll have to meet some of them first. The global left is gushing over his win as if it were New York’s equivalent of the Paris Commune. What we have here is the staggeringly dishonest co-option of class politics by an over-credentialled emergent elite who will in truth be pursuing their own Bushwick bullshit, not the improvement of the lot of New York’s workers. They cosplay as class warriors because that’s sexier than the reality – that they’re privileged members of an activist class that will cancel you if you say lesbians don’t have penises but love you if you say ‘Destroy Israel’.

Mamdani’s campaign has exposed how the faux-socialists of the burgeoning young elite really view the working classes – as the saps of history; as agency-lacking victims who require smart cookies from Brooklyn with two degrees in political studies to rescue them from the moral doldrums. Hence, Mamdani’s ‘working-class uprising’ involves talk of free bus travel and city-run grocery stores. It’s charity masquerading as revolution. To the Uber-taking arts crowd of the downtown Mamdani set, ‘working class’ means tragic little people who can’t afford the bus and who crave an apple from the government. Please stop calling paternalism ‘socialism’.

Across the Anglo-American world, a new class of overeducated, high-status influencers is cribbing from the language of socialism to push a politics that is anything but. Here in the UK you’ll see Oxbridge girls in ‘I’m Literally A Communist’ earrings who say ‘Up the working classes!’ and then faint when the oiks vote Reform. We have Your Party, the Jeremy Corbyn / Zarah Sultana outfit that poses as a class revolt when everyone knows their membership is 99 per cent angry graphic designers who can’t believe their Dalston rent went up again. And now we have Mamdani, mayor of a city with such a great history of working-class rebellion, who dons the mask of class to disguise his crusade of culture. I trust New York’s frank, free-speaking workers will soon see through this charade.

Seth Mandel: Your Friends and Neighbors in the Mamdani Era

It will be great if Mamdani is prevented from carrying out his Jews-on-the-brain agenda. It will be greater still if that happens because of the stiffened spines of American Jewish organizations. But what Mamdani’s election says about what is acceptable to New Yorkers will be much harder to undo. The future can be stymied, but the past cannot.

A good example of this is Mamdani’s campaign plank regarding BDS. The boycott-Israel movement has far more failures than successes, at least in America, but that’s because here it isn’t actually about trade policy. BDSniks in the U.S. don’t expect to destroy Israel’s trade position. BDS in the U.S. is first and foremost about making American Jews feel unwelcome and multiplying the number of environments that are explicitly hostile to them.

On Election Day, Mamdani reiterated his support for BDS on MSNBC. It is through that lens that he sees, for example, an opening to end economic partnerships with Israeli institutions, the most prominent of which is the Technion collaboration with Cornell University. That partnership was opened initially in 2012 by the Michael Bloomberg administration and permanently sited in 2017 under Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Aside from the educational benefits, the partnership has produced over 100 start-ups, 84 percent of which are based in New York, according to the Technion.

Mamdani also wants to end the New York City-Israel Economic Council and divest the city’s pension funds from Israel.

The point here is that although he has leveled even more wild-eyed threats—he vows to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for example—Israel and the Jews are the only subjects he talks about when he talks about populations he’d like New York to freeze out. Mamdani is not a “human rights activist,” he’s an anti-Israel extremist who uses the language of human rights to crusade against the one Jewish state. This single-minded obsession made even some of his allies in the legislature uncomfortable.

When Mamdani tried repeatedly to push a bill that would outlaw certain Jewish charities, for example, he failed to garner enough support because of how clearly targeted the legislation was. State Sen. Alex Bores, who backed Mamdani but not that particular bill, told the New York Times: “I view with suspicion bills that are written to target one specific country when they could easily be written broadly to apply to a problem.”

That is the sum total of Mamdani’s campaign—it’s about one country, one people. That creepy obsession made it impossible to argue that Mamdani is merely concerned about human rights or conflict prevention or anything else. That Mamdani ran on this obsession with Israel and won is going to make it difficult for Jews to see New York as the city they once knew.

Mamdani’s win shows how Jewish groups failed Jews by dismissing antisemitism on the left

For New York’s Jews, these are the worst of times and the best of times.

The worst part is obvious: it’s not just that 1 million of our neighbors sauntered to the ballot box and cast their votes for an anti-Semite who missed no opportunity to stand with terrorist sympathizers and Jew-haters; it’s also that our very own communal organizations, groups founded specifically to prevent a movement like Mamdani’s from rising, failed miserably.

The city with the largest Jewish population anywhere outside of Israel should’ve seen Mamdani coming. And its Jewish leaders should’ve done much better to stop him.

Instead, with few exceptions, these leaders equivocated. The Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, for example, embraced a string of virulently anti-Israel Democrats, including Mamdani’s pal, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; President Trump wasn’t so lucky, receiving the group’s sharp criticism for his efforts to deport illegal migrants and keep our borders safe.

The Anti-Defamation League did even worse. The group, previously one of the most revered Jewish organizations nationwide, spent the last few years turning itself into a full-blown arm of the Democrat Party, releasing reports, for example, that argue that anti-Semitism is a problem exclusively on the right and not, say, on radically progressive college campuses.

And as one researcher reported in Tablet Magazine last week, even the group’s attempts to educate Americans about anti-Semitism are a disaster: people who completed the ADL’s anti-anti-Semitism curriculum were 15 times more, not less, likely to express anti-Jewish sentiments.

None of this is hard to understand. For years, America’s organized Jewish community sang the tunes of the left, focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion even as their so-called allies informed them in no uncertain terms that Jews no longer have a place in the gorgeous mosaic of aggrieved minorities orchestrated by the Democrats.

For Mamdani’s victory to have any meaning, then, these organizations and the individuals that lead them must face a very serious reckoning.

In the days after the October 7, 2023 massacre, Israelis spoke of the Konseptsiya, or the thwarted, idealistic worldview that led so many of them to fail to see Hamas’s preparations for the attack.

New York’s Jews now have a Konseptsiya of their own to grapple with, a wrestling that should lead them to hold their leaders accountable. If done right, this process could lead to new and better organizations skeptical of partisan affiliations and dedicated to finding new and faithful partners outside of the traditional political coalitions convened long ago by the left.

So much for the worst of times.

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