07/04 Links Pt2: Despite the surge of antisemitism, America is worth fighting for; Murray: Will NYC fall for the selfie-entitled Zohran Mamdani?; The Case of Dr. Benjamin Bross

From Ian:

Jonathan S. Tobin: Despite the surge of antisemitism, America is worth fighting for

President Donald Trump’s campaign to punish the universities that have tolerated and even encouraged antisemitism since Oct. 7 is evidence that Jews have powerful allies, even if some in the Jewish community are so immersed in the hyper-partisan spirit of the times that they refuse to recognize it. Indeed, in much of the country outside of the deep blue coastal enclaves where most Jews continue to live, the reaction to the uptick of hated and rise of radicals like Mamdani is the sort of disgust and outrage that should reassure the Jewish community that talk of giving up on America is as wrongheaded as it is counterproductive.

If nothing else, the U.S. and Israeli military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities that posed an existential threat of another Holocaust are evidence that America is not a lost cause.

So, as much as it may seem tempting or even rational to talk of abandoning America, that would be a terrible mistake. Though Israel and Zionism still represent the Jewish future in a way that America cannot, Jews cannot give up on this country and certainly shouldn’t even think of doing so without a fight.

We must do so not merely out of a desire to defend our lives here but because a strong America that has not abandoned the best of Western civilization and values is essential to the worldwide struggle against the forces of tyranny—both Marxist and Islamist—that threaten Israel and Jews everywhere.

If Jewish life is unsafe in America, then it will be unsafe everywhere. That’s why it is essential that, rather than giving up or giving in to hysterical talk about the end of liberty and even the end of Jewry in the States, we must recommit to the fight to roll back the woke tide and defeat it.

This may be a generational struggle in much the same way that leftist efforts to impose these false beliefs on America were. Yet it is a battle that is necessary not just to save American Jewry, but to save the canon of Western civilization on which our freedoms rest.

The quintessential American response
A year from now, this nation will attempt to celebrate the 250th anniversary of its independence, and the battle over how to commemorate it has already begun. The contempt for traditional patriotism and belief in the truth that the American republic, flawed though it might be, is a force for good in the world has already been made clear by left-wing elites. As discouraging as this discourse may be, it is a reminder that the stigmatizing and targeting of Jews is part and parcel of the same struggle other citizens are engaging in. The American republic is and has always been exceptional. But it will only remain that way so long as a broad cross-section of Americans—Jews and non-Jews, liberals and conservatives, Democrats as well as Republicans—are willing to stand up against the woke forces seeking to traduce its founding values.

The appropriate answer to attacks on Jews is not flight or a call to shelter in place. The appropriate response is for Jews to speak up and not abandon the streets to antisemites and woke mobs. The rejoinder to anti-Jewish violence is for Jews to act in the most quintessential American way possible: to arm themselves (verbally, legally and literally) and make it clear that they will not be intimidated or silenced.

Those who hate the founding principles of the United States are wrong about the end of American greatness or the need to transform it into some pale reflection of Marxist or Islamist concepts. And so, on this Independence Day, rather than writing off America, we should be embracing it all the more enthusiastically—and pledging to defend it against those who wish to tear it down.

Cary Nelson and Richard Ross: The Case of Dr. Benjamin Bross

Ever since some faculty members exulted over Hamas’s October 7, 2023, murder spree in Israel and then campus encampments began chanting for Zionists to be cast out of the community, we have worried that we would also soon see a quiet, determined campaign to deny tenure to qualified Zionist faculty. The encampments were notable for their noise. The determined assault on pro-Israel faculty would be barely audible, carried out by confidential committees and cloaked in self-righteous if deeply compromised professionalism. We have faced exactly that in our own community, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

As members of the executive committee of Faculty for Academic Freedom and Against Antisemitism, we offer this essay as a warning that it will spread worldwide.

The problem arises when radical anti-Zionists serve on tenure committees that are reviewing expressly Zionist candidates for tenure. When the faculty in both categories are known to hold those opposing beliefs, there is an obvious suggestion of bias and a clear appearance of a conflict of interest. It doesn’t matter how fair and impartial the compromised committee members may be. In the principle that governs both legal and academic professions, among others, the appearance of a conflict of interest must be “managed” by recusal. There is no accusation involved, just the recognizable fact—the appearance of a conflict. There may of course be serious conflicts of interest involved, but managing them by dealing with the appearance of conflicts solves the problem without triggering investigations and hostile confrontations.

At the core of the issue is the academy’s most intractable antisemitic problem: academic disciplines and their local departments that have embraced radical anti-Zionism as part of their core identity. Radical anti-Zionism is an ideology devoted to eliminating the Jewish state. Not to reforming it, not to changing Israeli policies, but rather to erasing Israel as the nation-state and homeland of the Jewish people through violence, boycott, and political implosion, or dissolution into a “one-state solution.” Faculty hopes of harming Zionist Jews have manifested themselves not only through teaching propaganda in the classroom, but also through discriminatory hiring and promotion decisions.

In 2021, some academic departments steeped in the belief that Israel is an unethical state—the only state in the world that does not deserve to exist—began adopting official position statements embodying that conviction. In the wake of 10/7, a still more severe conviction became the norm on the left: that Israel is unreformable, irredeemable, born in original sin. And this belief coalesced around the claim that something evil in Zionism was manifest in the very founding of the Jewish state. The key date for decades had been 1967, when Israel won authority over the West Bank and Gaza from the Jordanian and Egyptian dictators who had ruled there ever since they blocked the local Arabs from their own UN-designated sovereignty. Now the date called out in chants and scrawled on banners was 1948. One could reverse 1967 by making the occupied territories into a Palestinian state. You could only reverse 1948 by eliminating Israel.

Andrew Fox: We’ve seen this before

There are moments in history when the shadows of the past cast such a long menace over the present that they become impossible to ignore. We are experiencing such a moment now. The rise in antisemitism since October 2023 is not a collection of isolated incidents. It is a direct reflection of a darker era.

I gave a talk to Holocaust survivors last month. More than one told me that the mood in the UK for Jews now resembles Germany in the 1930s. The difference between them and others claiming this is that they remember it from the first time around.

They are right. This is no longer hyperbole; it is fact.

The Holocaust didn’t start with gas chambers. It started with graffiti, slurs, and whispers. It began with people asking Jews to account for themselves. Are you loyal? Are you one of us?

In 2025, that looks like: are you a Zionist?

I heard exactly that question last night over a pint with a friend who had attended a Jewish cultural event. The barman (in the Three Crowns in St James, if you're interested) demanded of my friend, "Are you a Zionist?" The implication was clear that support for the Jewish state now carries a moral price tag. It is a litmus test for belonging, for acceptability. That is not political disagreement; it is a modern shibboleth meant to mark Jews for social exile.

We are witnessing a global rise in antisemitism at a scale not seen for generations. Some of it is overt. It is violent, chilling, and reminiscent of the pogroms Europe once vowed never to repeat. In Amsterdam last year, what was initially dismissed as football hooliganism was later revealed, through text messages and court transcripts, to be a lynching of Jews driven by pure racial hatred. Not “anti-Zionism”; pure Judenhass.

At Glastonbury, the "singer" of British act Bob Vylan, repeating popular blood libels against the Jewish state, stood before tens of thousands and chanted for the death of every soldier in the Israel Defence Forces. Again, I’m not being hyperbolic; it was his literal demand. A call for the wholesale killing of Jewish soldiers, which in practice means calling for the deaths of the sons and daughters of almost every Israeli family. That’s not resistance. That’s incitement. When crowds cheer that on, we are no longer in the realm of protest. We are in something else entirely.

What begins as words (“Zionist,” “settler,” “coloniser”) becomes real-world violence in short order. The language matters. Words shape permission structures. They signal what is tolerated and what is forbidden. When an artist calls for the death of every IDF soldier, and the crowd cheers, it gives a green light to every unhinged antisemite listening.

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07/04 Links Pt1: Melbourne: Attempted synagogue arson, Israeli-owned restaurant attacked; Hamas hands 'positive' ceasefire response to Qatar; UN Official calls for Israel to be “Dismantled"

From Ian:

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: The Anti-American Academic Who Helped Build the Caliphate

Few voices carry as much weight in international relations as John Mearsheimer. But weight shouldn’t be confused with wisdom. The University of Chicago professor recently claimed that President Trump’s support for Israel’s strikes on Iran had shattered U.S. credibility. Mearsheimer couldn’t be more wrong. His analysis is shaped by the same fixed assumptions that have guided his thinking for years: a reflexive distrust of American power and a persistent failure to understand how adversaries think, act, and escalate.

At the heart of this failure is Mearsheimer’s so-called “offensive realism”, a theory that presents itself as hard-nosed and analytical, but consistently fails to align with how the world actually works. It reduces global conflict to raw power, ignoring beliefs, values, and human nature. Worse still, I suggest it has shaped a worldview so bleak, so disturbingly vacant, that it has warped U.S. foreign policy. It has emboldened adversaries and left allies unsure whether America stands for anything at all.

Mearsheimer’s framework appears compelling at first glance. States exist in anarchy. To survive, they must maximize power. Cooperation is fleeting. Conflict is inevitable. Rising powers seek regional dominance; established powers must crush them to survive. Everything revolves around a single variable: material power. Culture is brushed aside. Domestic politics are treated as noise. Leadership and ideology are irrelevant. The scholar reduces nations to lifeless units in a power equation. This is the danger of spending an entire life in an academic tower. The view from above loses sight of the ground below.

Offensive realism can’t explain why some rising powers integrate peacefully while others lash out violently. It can’t distinguish between real security threats and imagined ones. Most fatally, it assumes every great power is hardwired for domination, an assumption that excuses the aggressor and blames the victim.

Academic theories should be judged by their predictive power. By that standard, offensive realism is among the most spectacular failures in modern foreign-policy thinking.

His most infamous misjudgment came at the close of the Cold War. As the Soviet Union fell and the old bipolar order faded, Mearsheimer predicted Europe would descend into chaos. Germany would re-arm. Nuclear weapons would proliferate. Old rivalries — French-German, Slavic-Germanic — would flare back to life in the absence of American power. He was wrong.

What followed was not chaos but integration. Germany didn’t march; it demilitarized. Eastern and Central Europe didn’t reach for nukes; they reached for NATO and the European Union. The alliance expanded not out of naive idealism, but because former Soviet satellites knew the danger of a world without American power.

Offensive realism isn’t a flexible framework. It’s more like a dogma, shut off from evidence, resistant to contradiction, and endlessly self-justifying. When its predictions fail, it doesn’t change. It just doubles down. Nowhere has this been more damaging than in the Middle East. For decades, Mearsheimer argued that the U.S. should adopt a strategy of “offshore balancing”: withdraw troops, cut military commitments, and trust local powers to stabilize the region themselves. Sunni states, we were told, would contain Iran. Order would develop naturally.

After the success in Iran, here’s how to end the Gaza war strategically

When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets President Donald Trump at the White House next week, it should mark a critical inflection point: the adoption of a roadmap for ending the Israel-Hamas War as part of a major realignment of the Middle East.

Netanyahu is a divisive leader whose actions are often met with extraordinary skepticism, but right now he deserves a share of the credit for defanging Iran and proxies. That creates political and diplomatic capital that can yield results – and can rehabilitate.

The Gaza war has gone on too long, and should end quickly and not with another complex phase structure – with the blood-curdling “selection” of which hostages are freed. Moreover, even if what comes is a 60-day ceasefire, as reported, it should lead to a permanent one. There is a way to do this that’s both strategic and humane.

From the beginning, Israel could have recovered the hostages at the cost of leaving Hamas intact and in power. However cruel it was, most Israelis were willing to risk hostages’ safety to avoid that outcome. But such a posture was never going to survive six months, a year, or more. It is now approaching 21 months, and it flipped long ago.

Now, significant swaths of Gaza lie in ruins, with most structures believed to have been destroyed or damaged. Hamas has seen most of its leaders and battalions eliminated, yet it can still deploy an armed mafia capable of controlling the territory upon which it brought such destruction. So there remains at least minority support in Israel for the argument that the job is not done.

But this is, in truth, not the only reason for the continuation of the war. The far Right flank of the coalition – which can in theory bring it down – wants permanent occupation, if possible depopulation, and renewed Jewish settlement. That’s unpopular, so it’s muted.

This debate cannot go on forever. Ending the war is not only an imperative in its own right, but also opens the door to possible normalization deals with other countries – not only Saudi Arabia but also Lebanon and Syria. Here too, the government and military deserve credit: The thrashing of Hezbollah last year not only freed Israel to act against Iran without fear of rockets from the Lebanese militia but also rescued its two neighbors to the north.

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07/03 Links Pt2: The Settler Violence Myth; The need to acknowledge Muslim antisemitism; What "Globalize the Intifada" Really Means

From Ian:

Gadi Taub: The Settler Violence Myth

Perhaps most notable was a 14,000-word piece in The New York Times Magazine by Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman and Times investigative journalist Mark Mazzetti, published on May 16. The piece turned reality on its head: What most threatens Israel, it suggested, is not Palestinian terrorism, but rather the “long history of crime” by violent settlers, which has gone “without punishment.” This piece had a particular role in the info op, as International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan referenced it in a CNN interview while he justified his application for arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

By December, the White House-driven narrative shift from Oct. 7 to the supposed victimization of the Palestinians had long been complete. Right before Christmas, CBS ran a story marking the turn: “Since October 7th last year, the U.N. figures there have been more than 1,400 attacks by extremist settlers against Palestinians or their property.”

The Regavim report also debunks the charge that Israel under the Netanyahu government fails to enforce the law on wild settlers or, worse, encourages their violence. In fact, it shows that Israel treats cases of Jewish nationalist violence very seriously; if anything, it hyper-enforces the law. Moreover, contrary to the settler-violence campaign messaging, the evidence shows that enforcement is effective. This is not just because Israeli authorities are proactive but also because settler violence is documented more than any other type of crime.

The conviction rate in Israel for nationalist violence is 56 percent for Arabs and 36 percent for Jews. It is lower for Jews in Judea and Samaria, at 31 percent. The lower rate of convictions for Judea and Samaria Jews may seem at first to point to lax enforcement. But, as the report points out, the “indictment rate against Jewish Israelis for nationalist violence offenses throughout Israel is three times higher than the indictment rate against Arab Israelis for the same types of offenses.” What explains this discrepancy is that authorities are quick to investigate settlers and quick to indict them, sending to court many cases that then get dismissed. The report adds, “The overwhelming majority of complaints received by police against Jewish violence in Judea and Samaria turn out to be false, submitted by left-wing movements and anarchist elements whose aim is to inflame the area.”

Recently leaked recordings of a conversation between the head of the Jewish Division of the Shin Bet—identified in the media by his first initial, “Aleph”—and the former chief of police in Judea and Samaria, Deputy Commissioner Avishai Muallem, support this conclusion. Aleph demanded that Muallem step up arrests of settlers: “We always want to arrest them for interrogation, as much as possible,” he said. “Look at how the Shin Bet interrogations are conducted with them. We arrest these ‘schmucks’ even without evidence for a few days.” When Muallem raised concerns about such questionable methods, Aleph reassured him: “It’s being handled by the Shin Bet Director’s Office with the defense minister. Break them. Put them in detention cells with rats,” he advised. And, if need be, “create the appearance of an investigation.”

It’s common knowledge in Israel that settlers are often subjected to administrative detention, sometimes for months, with no clear investigative premise or evidence of planned violence. It is therefore hard to tell whether Shin Bet is taken by the settler violence canard or whether it’s been helping construct it, especially as frequent administrative detentions give the impression of a serious threat that in turn justifies the policy. Seen in this light, it’s perhaps not surprising that Ronen Bar, the controversial Shin Bet chief who authorized these administrative detentions, was cited as the conscientious voice by the peddlers of the “settler violence” narrative. Nor is it surprising that Israel’s deep state is furiously trying to block Netanyahu’s pick to replace Bar, especially as he apparently envisions a different way forward in the relationship with the settlers.

In addition to Shin Bet, the policy of the IDF public relations office contributes to the “settler violence” campaign. Early last year, with the war in Gaza still at its peak, the former head of the IDF Central Command (which includes Judea and Samaria), Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fox, conducted a division-wide military exercise that simulated settlers taking a Palestinian hostage following a terror attack that killed a Jewish baby. The soldiers playing the settlers wore red vests labeled with what can be roughly translated as “Red Team-Enemy.” This purely imaginary scenario was especially jarring while Israel was, and still is, convulsing over the real hostages held by Hamas. The timing of the exercise, four months after Oct. 7, was also notable because it coincided with the Biden administration’s February 2024 executive order targeting settlers. Maj. Gen. Fox promoted the “violent settler” campaign on his last day in office. At his farewell ceremony in July 2024, as the Biden administration was imposing new tranches of sanctions against Jews in Judea and Samaria, he launched a tirade against the settlers, accusing them of “adopting the ways of the enemy.” This week’s clash between some settler youths and the IDF is best understood against this background.

A central point of the anti-settler campaign is to invert reality and create a false equivalence between “extremists on both sides,” who are the impediment to peace, which can be achieved only if we curb the settler zealots. But at its core, the op was always about toppling the right-wing government of Israel, using whatever domestic lever available, without regard to the damage. What’s worse for its advocates is that, after four years of the most intense pressure campaign imaginable, they still came up short. A lie may travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. But reality is a stubborn thing.

Melanie Phillips: The need to acknowledge Muslim antisemitism

The Palestinian cause is a Trojan horse for radical Islam, laundering the Islamists’ death cult through using the language of humanitarianism and anti-colonialism by falsely painting Israel as the oppressor of the Palestinian Arabs.

This false narrative, every part of which is untrue, is now the default position of the West’s progressive classes. Its premise that Israel is the cause of conflict in the region rests upon gross ignorance of the Middle East—that the Jews are the indigenous people of the land and that Zionism is the ultimate anti-colonialist movement.

It also rests upon ignorance that the driver of Islamic hatred of Israel is Muslim antisemitism. All opinion polling shows that antisemitism is vastly higher in the Muslim world than in other communities. Yet this is never talked about in Western nations. It’s the elephant in the room. Diaspora Jews never talk about it, even though they are the victims of it. The wider community is silent about it through the intimidation produced by claims of “Islamophobia.”

Now, however, the situation has become so dangerous that this taboo is being broken. A report by Britain’s Counter Extremism Group think tank, titled “Islamist Antisemitism: A Neglected Hate,” is a rare attempt to address the issue. It rightly states: “The issue of inter-minority prejudice is often regarded as too sensitive to address.”

It acknowledges that the Muslim conflict with Jews is founded in Islamic religious texts, and in a scholarly account, it records that historically, periods of tolerance and security for Jews in Muslim lands were accompanied by periods of bitter oppression and pogroms.

It acknowledges the historic links between the Palestinian Arabs and the Nazis, which first gave rise to the murderous falsehood of “a Jewish genocide of Palestinian Arabs.” And it identifies the way Islamic extremists have made use of and exaggerated the Palestinian cause to foment hatred of the Jews.

However, by identifying antisemitism with “Islamists”—jihadi groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood—even this report shies away from stating the true and horrifying extent of Jew-hatred among grass-roots Muslims who may be opposed to Islamist jihadi extremism.

The failure by Israel and its supporters to properly call out the libels about Israel has helped the lie to grow that the Jews are uniquely violent and murderous, and so the Jewish state is the same, while obscuring the truth that the Islamic world is uniquely violent and murderous toward Jews.

The refusal to call out the nature and extent of Muslim antisemitism has obscured the implacable and murderous danger posed not just by political extremists but by the entire Muslim world.

The result is not just that Britain may indeed be lost, but so, too, may America unless they both start properly facing up to and tackling the evil forces that threaten the free world.

To defeat antisemitism, we must first define it

This concept should not be controversial. It certainly isn’t partisan. Both Republican and Democratic administrations have embraced the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition. A supermajority of U.S. states have already adopted it. So have dozens of countries around the world. And for good reason: It’s the only definition that has a demonstrable track record of helping communities identify and push back against antisemitism — especially the kind that hides behind politics.

Zion is not an idea; Zion is a hill, in Jerusalem, Israel, where the Jews are from. Zionism, the belief that Jewish people have a right to their homeland, is the quintessential national origin movement. Telling Jews they can’t be Zionists and simultaneously remain full participants in society isn’t social critique; it’s discrimination. And criminal actions based on that hatred should be punishable as such.

That is all the Define to Defeat Act is about: equipping law enforcement, prosecutors, and civil rights enforcers with the ability to name and respond to antisemitic actions- including violence- especially when that violence comes wrapped in politically convenient excuses. It extends the same common-sense framework that Rep. Mike Lawler’s (R-N.Y.) Antisemitism Awareness Act applies to Title VI education cases into other federal civil rights contexts — like employment and housing — and helps close the gap between intent and enforcement. And while it is absolutely important to use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism in the context of Title VI, when it comes to protecting civil rights, Moore’s bill does more.

Opponents of the definition have tried to manufacture a debate over whether the definition is too broad, too nuanced, or too controversial. It isn’t. It explicitly states that criticism of Israel comparable to criticism of any other country is not antisemitic. It even includes safeguards that stress context. The reason the specific examples about Israel are provided is explicitly not because all criticism of Israel is antisemitic, as the definition takes pains to point out twice, but because there are those who falsely claim that no criticism of Israel can ever cross the line, and use their anti-Zionism as an excuse to target Jewish people or institutions.

The act does not protect Israel; it protects Jewish people in America who are unlawfully discriminated against because of their real or perceived connection to Israel.

Right now, the FBI reports that the majority of religiously motivated hate crimes in the U.S. are committed against Jews, who make up only 2 percent of the population. That’s not just alarming. It’s a national crisis. And we cannot defeat a problem we are too afraid to define. The Define to Defeat Act is a good-faith, narrowly tailored, bipartisan tool to help do just that, and all Members of both parties should support it.

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07/03 Links Pt1: When Israeli civilians die, human rights norms disappear; How the West Got the Israel-Iran War So Wrong; GHF Suing AP Over ‘Categorically False’ Story

From Ian:

When Israeli civilians die, human rights norms disappear

No human rights organisation, no professor of international law, no outraged cultural figure signing tendentious statements for publication in this or that Review of Books thought that the arguments about consequence or hypocrisy had any bearing on their principles when it came to Gazans.

Not only was it irrelevant that the war was launched by Gazans on October 7 or that the Palestinian public overwhelmingly supported the massacre (no protests were registered anywhere in the Palestinian Territories or, for that matter, anywhere in the Arab World as a whole), but the lack of consequentialist thinking held for the duration of the war. None of the humanitarians who vociferously oppose the Israeli blockade demand, say, the immediate and unconditional release of the Israeli hostages as a way of ending it. And no western “international law expert” wags their finger at Palestinians suffering in Gaza and says, “Oh now you don’t like civilian casualties? You felt otherwise on the Seventh.”

The hospital version of this argument shows just how problematic the whole claim is. The IDF operated around (and under) hospitals where Hamas militants were hiding, holding hostages, storing weapons, and directing offensive operations. The Iranian missile that fell on Soroka hospital fell on a building treating patients. No matter. The Israelis have no moral standing to be upset about an attack on their hospital when they have attacked Palestinian hospitals.

There’s just one problem with this argument – that is, one problem beside the overall moral obscenity of it. The first hospital to be attacked in the October 7 War was attacked on October 7, and it was not in Gaza, but rather the Barzilai hospital in Ashkelon, which was hit by a rocket during the initial assault that started the whole war. And among the first targets to be hit in the kibbutzim that were invaded that deadly morning were the ambulances that otherwise would have evacuated some of the wounded.

These facts never factored into the condemnations of Israeli military action around Gaza hospitals. Which is entirely understandable as, unlike Hamas’ use of those hospitals for military ends, it has no bearing on the justice or injustice of any IDF operation. On the contrary. It is safe to assume that the self-appointed arbiters of human rights would be appalled if one of their own mocked pictures of a damaged hospital in Gaza with a reference to the Barzilai rocket attacks and a tweet about how “finally Gazans found a hospital bombing they oppose,” though versions of this were the basis for numerous clever posts and a punchline on Radio 4’s Friday Night Comedy.

A moral economy that allots all the outrage for the Israelis who were the targets of a murderous attack and leaves none leftover for those, whether Iranian, Palestinian, or Lebanese, who attacked them, cannot be the basis for global norms in war or in peace.

Iran Begins New Long Game of Nuclear Hide-and-Seek

On Wednesday, Iran's president signed a new law suspending all cooperation with UN nuclear inspectors. A new chapter in the quarter-century saga of Iran's nuclear aspirations may now be starting, one in which the country's main objective is to keep the world guessing about how fast it can recover from a devastating setback - and whether it has the uranium, the hidden technological capability, and the will to race for a bomb.

No regional war broke out, as past presidents who considered similar military action always feared. Even skeptics acknowledge that the 18,000 centrifuges that were producing near-bomb-grade uranium at a record pace are now inoperable.

President Trump has hinted about new negotiations that could lead to the lifting of sanctions - presumably only in return for Iran's commitment to dismantle whatever is left of its nuclear program and let inspectors verify that work. But that does not seem to match the mood in Tehran right now. Trump has also said he is "absolutely" willing to strike again if there are signs that Iran is trying to rebuild its capabilities.

After the strike, Iran will keep shuffling its nuclear assets around, as the Mossad, American intelligence agencies and UN inspectors will constantly be looking for human intelligence or satellite evidence of the tunnels and caves where the projects might be hidden. With Iran's leaders portraying the end of the conflict with Israel as a victory, and downplaying the damage done by the U.S. strikes, experts see little hope of an accord that would satisfy both sides.

How the West Got the Israel-Iran War So Wrong

In the early days of this round of the ongoing Israel-Iran combat, pundits lined up to claim that the Middle East was on the brink of a full-blown regional war. Tehran would unleash waves of asymmetric revenge through a web of proxies from Beirut to Sanaa. Some predicted a war lasting years.

Yet 12 days later, no Arab nation has joined the fray. Oil markets remain remarkably steady. Tehran has neither launched a regional war nor exacted the cataclysmic reprisals so confidently predicted. There was one small attack on one U.S. base. In fact, the response from Iran - a heavily telegraphed barrage largely intercepted by air defenses - resembled a performance: a bruised regime saving face.

The collective miscalculation was built on the assumption that Israel's resolve would provoke uncontrollable chaos. That Iran's threats were not bluff but gospel. But in this case, Iran's nuclear infrastructure was targeted, its prestige was wounded, yet it responded with a gesture, not a war, because it was outmatched and cornered.

In certain strategic environments, force, credibly and appropriately projected, is more stabilizing than endless rounds of negotiation that allow nuclear weapons to be created. Western prediction models are broken. They are reactive, pessimistic and addicted to narratives of collapse. They interpret every act of strength as provocation and every moment of calm as fleeting illusion. But sometimes, bold action, especially when it is disciplined, proportionate and backed by capability, resets the game.

The Western delusion is that process is always preferable to power, that negotiation is morally superior to preemption. But when executed with precision, intelligence and legitimacy, preemption prevents greater wars. It reinstates deterrence. And it spares civilians, infrastructure and economies the toll of prolonged conflict. Restrained power can be more humane than endless diplomacy, especially when that diplomacy serves only to delay the inevitable, embolden aggressors and paralyze allies.

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07/02 Links Pt2: Karen Diamond: killed by ‘anti-Zionism’; When endorsement becomes complicity; Claire Shipman’s Political Faceplant; Australia cancels Kanye West’s visa

From Ian:

Brendan O'Neill: Karen Diamond: killed by ‘anti-Zionism’

Soliman is reported to have yelled ‘Free Palestine’ as he set the Jews and their allies on fire. He said his desire was nothing less than to ‘kill all Zionist people’. It would appear that in his mind, the great crime of those who gathered in Boulder was to sympathise with the Jewish State. He seemed to view their weekly vigil for the Jews still held by Hamas as a Zionist outrage. These elderly folk had exposed themselves as ‘Zionist people’ and thus they had it coming. They deserved death. They deserved to feel the fire of his furious moral judgement.

Here’s the thing, the truly chilling thing: Soliman is not alone in viewing ‘Zionist people’ as the lowest form of human life. His suspected actions in Boulder may have been extreme, but his literally burning contempt for ‘Zionists’ is entirely mainstream. It chimes with the fanatical loathing for the ‘Zionist entity’ that seethes and courses in influencer circles. It echoes the zealous and myopic hatred for the Jewish nation that is rampant among the woke. He gave murderous expression to the key belief of polite society: that Zionism is the great cancer of our times and we all have a duty to cut it out.

Liberal commentators damn Zionists as ‘depraved monsters’. They brand the ‘Zionist entity’ a ‘uniquely murderous’ nation. They call for Zionism to be dismantled, destroyed, so that humankind might finally be free of its noxious, bloodletting ways. ‘Zionism is a cancer to this planet’, their placards say. ‘Death to Zionism’, they chant. ‘End Zionism’, said scrawled, makeshift banners on those deranged Zio-hating protests that swept Ivy League campuses last year.

Zionism must be excised from the Middle East – ‘from the river to the sea’ – and its army must be destroyed, they cry, violently if necessary. Indeed, how striking that in the same week we learn that an elderly lady perished upon the flames of a man’s frothing hatred for Zionism, the left in the UK are defending that sick chant that rang out at Glastonbury: ‘Death, death to the IDF.’ They won’t say the name Karen Diamond because they’re too busy saying the name Bob Vylan, the punk-rap duo that whipped up that anti-Zionist mania at Glasto. Just think about this: they ignore a Jew who fell victim to the fascistic loathing for Israel because they’re too busy engaging in such fascistic loathing themselves.

This is not about blaming anyone other than Soliman for what happened in Boulder four weeks ago. It’s about examining, with frankness, the consequences of the latest elite hysteria. When you call Zionism ‘evil’ and its supporters ‘monsters’, when you depict Zionism as the wickedest ideology of all time, you have no right whatsoever to feign alarm when Zionists – Jews – are subjected to violent retribution. You found them guilty of evil, so why should others not pass sentence on them?

A huge majority of the world’s Jews identify with Israel. They are Zionists. So when the influencer classes demonise Zionists, and rob them of their humanity, and damn their nation as a cesspit of sin, and chant for the death of their soldiers, and dream of the coming violent erasure of their homeland, they are hanging a target sign on the neck of Jews. They are inviting, wittingly or otherwise, racial hatred and even worse for the people most likely to be Zionists: the Jewish people. There’s no more avoiding it: the elite derangement of ‘anti-Zionism’ is fostering a mob loathing for our Jewish compatriots. And challenging it is the great anti-racist cause of our time.

How Anti-Zionism Became a Western Rite

The scapegoating of Jews in the West is part and parcel of a rebarbarized culture, one that endorses political violence. A recent Rutgers University poll found that “55 percent of all self-identifying ‘liberals’ believe killing is a justifiable means of pursuing their political goals”—and endows it with theological significance. If George Floyd’s death and subsequent canonization as a secular martyr justified the urban riots during which 2,000 police officers were injured, thousands of businesses and properties were looted and vandalized, and 17 people were killed, the sanctification of cold-blooded murder soon followed. After Luigi Mangione allegedly gunned down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in 2024, images appeared of Mangione with a halo, in a green mantle with a red sacred heart, under the title “Saint Luigi, Patron Saint of Healthcare Access for All.”

These developments underscore the global convergence of militant political and religious movements. Islamists have learned to speak the language of social justice activists, while far-left radicals have learned to frame ideological struggle as a holy war. Human life holds little value for either of them. The journey from self-immolation for Palestine to so-called self-martyrdom bombings is a short stop or two on a train that long ago left the station of peaceful politics.

The ultimate aim of those who have married Islamism and Marxism, as Columbia University Apartheid Divest (a group of more than 100 anti-Israel organizations) admitted, is “the total eradication of Western civilization.” That would mean a world without political and economic liberty, freedom of speech and opinion, equal rights for women and minorities, technological advancement, philosophy, science, art, literature, music, and the blessings of the Jewish and Christian traditions.

The hatred of Israel and the Jews is at bottom a nihilistic loathing of the free and flourishing life that the West has secured for billions of people. Israel epitomizes not only the abundant fruits of Western civilization but also the conditions for their existence: strong borders, national pride, and free markets; thick social bonds and vigorous common purpose. These conditions are much maligned (particularly in the case of the Jewish state) because they impede any sort of political or religious globalization, be it of socialism, Islamism, or elite technocratic rule. While there’s no changing the minds of hard-core antisemites, Westerners who subject Israel and its people to withering criticism because they are inclined to support one or more of these causes would do well to ponder this biblical instruction: “Life and death I set before you, the blessing and the curse, and you shall choose life so that you may live, you and your seed” (Deuteronomy 30:19).

Gideon Falter: I am alive because my ancestors realised Jews were in danger. Britain is nearly there

The reason that I am alive today is that, for my ancestors, there was a moment that they realised that their country was falling apart and becoming unsafe for Jews. For me, that moment came as I saw the footage from Glastonbury.

As Chief Executive of Campaign Against Antisemitism, I have had a front row seat as this country that sheltered my grandparents during the Second World War has become increasingly unrecognisable through hatred and extremism.

But Glastonbury was a pivotal moment for me, when some kind of ancestral sense was activated.

Tens of thousands of young humanitarians at the country’s premier music festival were chanting for “death”, in scenes reminiscent of mass rallies in Tehran or Sanaa, beamed into the homes of millions by the national broadcaster.

None of this should have come as a surprise. Bob Vylan has apparently engaged in this kind of behaviour before, and Glastonbury was already taking place under a cloud of controversy that it had courted by inviting soon-to-be-proscribed-as-terrorists Palestine Action to address the crowds and Kneecap to headline.

The Prime Minister had warned that the Kneecapper on trial for allegedly supporting terrorists “shouldn’t” be allowed to play, and the BBC – which had to pull a documentary after it emerged that a senior Hamas member’s family had been paid for assistance in its production – said it “probably” would not broadcast Kneecap’s performance.

But none of this prevented Bob Vylan’s rant about having to “work for Zionists”, chants for “death” and the obliteration of the entire Jewish state “from the River to the Sea” from appearing on screens in living rooms across the country, courtesy of the supposedly genteel and tolerant BBC.

Now of course, everyone is taken aback. Glastonbury’s managing dynasty, fronted by Emily Eavis, is “appalled” that the acts they chose so carefully behaved in this manner. The BBC says that the whole thing was “utterly unacceptable” and Ofcom is “very concerned”. Just another set of rapped knuckles and feigned surprise, but this is far bigger than that.

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07/02 Links Pt1: Netanyahu: ‘There will be no more Hamas’; While Iran Speaks with Missiles, NGOs Blame Israel; Vote passes to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation

From Ian:

Netanyahu: ‘There will be no more Hamas’

On a visit to the southern city of Ashkelon on Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that the Hamas terror group would be eliminated from the Gaza Strip.

“There will be no more Hamas. It’s over. We will free all of our hostages, and we will eliminate Hamas down to its very foundations,” he said.

While noting that some may say the objectives sound contradictory—destroying Hamas and releasing the hostages—Netanyahu said they fit together.

The prime minister’s remarks focused mainly on the energy sector while he was visiting the Eilat Ashkelon Pipeline Company (EAPC) facilities. EAPC is an Israeli pipeline transporting oil from Eilat on the Red Sea to Ashkelon on the Mediterranean.

Netanyahu said Israel would connect the energy resources of Asia, the entire Middle East and the Arabian Peninsula.

“Expected revenues from gas in the coming decade will be almost 300 billion shekels [$89 billion],” he said.

“We are going to increase and strengthen Israel’s energy capability. We have a very considerable capability,” he said, noting that Israel is also building other energy installations.

“Our opportunities are enormous. We are not going to miss them or lose them,” he said. “There is a huge opportunity here, both to defeat our enemies and ensure our economic, national, international and energy future.”

While Iran Speaks with Missiles, NGOs Blame Israel

A new report from NGO Monitor shows how global NGOs, especially those funded by European governments to “uphold human rights and international law,” didn’t just stay quiet. They blamed the victim. Again. When Israel struck Iranian nuclear and military targets—targets linked to a regime that funds Hamas, Hezbollah, sponsors global terror, and openly threatens genocide—Western NGOs condemned it as “aggression.”

Let’s be clear: Iran is not just a state actor. It is a state sponsor of terror, a violator of international law, and the core funder of a global proxy war spanning Gaza, Judea and Samaria, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen, Latin America, Europe, the US, Canada and beyond. Chanting “Death to Israel” daily and building an nuclear bomb. But to read the NGO statements released in June 2025, you'd think Israel bombed Tehran for sport.

- Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International condemned Israel, while ignoring the Iranian regime’s violations of nuclear nonproliferation agreements and war crimes.

- AFSC, CODEPINK, and DAWN not only justified Iran’s missile attacks, but blamed U.S. support for Israel as the “real crime.”

- FIDH, Al-Shabaka, and the European Council on Foreign Relations reframed Iran’s aggression as a “response” and cast Israel as the regional aggressor—despite Iran’s repeated promises to erase it from the map.

- Masar Badil, a Palestinian revolutionary group aligned with the Iranian axis, outright called for the expulsion of U.S. military forces from the region—and endorsed total war against Israel.

- Some groups, like Zochrot and B’Tselem, accused Israel of “fabricating the war” as a “media distraction” from “genocide” in Gaza—a claim as cynical as it is detached from regional reality.

What They Said—And What They Didn’t
Across these statements, three trends dominate:
Israel as Perpetual Aggressor
Every act of self-defense is “genocide.” Every strike is “colonialism.” Every war, regardless of context, is framed as Israeli-instigated. No nuance, no complexity—just blame.

Iran as the Victim—or the Avenger
Despite launching missiles at civilian targets, Iran is portrayed as justified, restrained, even noble. Its role as a state sponsor of terrorism? Completely ignored.

The West as Enabler
The United States, Europe, and NATO countries are all lumped together as Israel’s willing accomplices. Their crime? Supporting an ally under attack.

But as always, what’s missing is always more revealing. Not one of these groups issued a condemnation of Iran’s attack. Not one acknowledged its own side’s violations. And almost none offered even token calls for de-escalation or dialogue. There is none. Because for these NGOs, “international law” is not a framework. It’s a club to beat only one country: Israel.

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07/01 Links Pt2: Why those Glasto chants felt so personal to British Jews; Virginia School Hit with Civil Rights Complaint over Environment 'Hostile to Jews'

From Ian:

Why those Glasto chants felt so personal to British Jews

I’m just a middle-aged mum, so it should be no shock that I’d never heard of Bob Vylan until the Glastonbury controversy. In all honesty, I don’t care about frontman Pascal Robinson-Foster’s views on Israel or Jews. He’s just another celeb with a microphone and a weird obsession with the world’s only Jewish state. It was the response of the audience that was far more disturbing. Thanks to the good ol’ Beeb’s livestreamed hate, you could hear a Glastonbury crowd only too happy to chant along. Given the middle-aged make-up of that crowd, there were likely many parents there, too, happily calling for the death of teenage IDF soldiers.

How do they square these chants with their no doubt virtuous self-image? What kinds of valuable moral lessons do they think they will be able to offer their offspring when they get their kicks wishing death on a whole nation, while they take selfies and drink overpriced cider in a field? v They will claim that they were just attacking Israel’s military, not the Israeli nation itself. But they’re not fooling anyone. Without the IDF there is no Israel. If you bray and cheer for the death of those standing between Israel and those who want to annihilate it, then we know what that means – you want Israel to cease to exist.

In its ‘diversity statement’, Glastonbury claims to stand against ‘discrimination of any sort’, and states that it was ‘established to celebrate music, culture and togetherness’. That was not what was being celebrated on Saturday. A performer and a large crowd were celebrating the death of Jews.

Those chill Glasto hippies, the ‘cool’ mums and dads and the keffiyeh set might want to think about another music festival that took place less than two years ago, on 7 October. That was the occasion for another group to celebrate the death of Jews, in the form of a real-life massacre. Hamas terrorists raped and killed their way through the Nova music festival, murdering 378 Israelis and taking 44 hostage.

No doubt Glasto’s Israel haters will claim their chanting was a political protest for a progressive cause. But it wasn’t. Whether they realise it or not, they were wishing death on the families and friends of their fellow Brits. Shame on each and every one of them.

David Collier: The NUJ is hostile to Jewish journalists

For several years I had a press card to provide a layer of security while covering hostile street protests. My recent experience with the National Union of Journalists shows how behind the scenes, British Jews are being ‘othered’ by hostile actors and excluded from society. This is a personal journey of abuse and discrimination.

The need to be protected
Those who have been following my work for a long time are aware that I frequently take to the streets to report on anti-Israel demonstrations taking place. This is an important part of what I do. Just to give one example – it was only because I was on the streets reporting from the al-Quds demonstration in 2017, that I captured footage of the IHRC’s Nazim Ali publicly blaming Zionists for the Grenfell disaster. This led to the Pharmaceutical Council’s fitness-to-practise hearings that were to find some of his statements antisemitic. If we are not there – antisemitic ideologies become free to develop and spread unchallenged.

Over the years my identity became known, and with publications such as Electronic Intifada targeting me in several articles, a risk factor entered the frame. Not only was I receiving threats online on a daily basis, but many of the key anti-Israel agitators on the streets knew who I was. At a protest outside SOAS, one of a group who had made online threats to ‘bash my head in with a baseball bat’, made ‘cut throat’ signs when he spotted me. This is the atmosphere I work in and it does not always stop with gestures. I have been physically assaulted on the street twice and my car has been vandalised outside of my home.

As a way of helping to protect myself it became important for me to carry a press card.

The National Union of Journalists
The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) is the most common press card issuer in the UK, issuing ‘more than half of the cards in circulation’. So back in about 2016 – I joined and received a press card. I was clearly a news gatherer who needed protection – and the NUJ supplied it.

The NUJ are quite clear about the dangers of being a journalist in the rising toxic atmosphere on our streets and has recently launched a new online reporting mechanism to help build up a picture of ‘the intimidation, threats and violence they (journalists) are facing simply for doing their jobs’.

But over time my research had evolved, and the need for me to cover anti-Israel demonstrations on the streets dwindled. As a result I let my last press card expire without renewal. The expiry date? October 2023.

The need for a new application
Everything changed following October 7.

As Jews across the world were still reeling from the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, 100,000s of people took to UK streets waving Palestinian flags. Amongst them were people calling for Jihad, holding up signs of support for Hezbollah, or defending the actions of Hamas.

I went back to the streets. But one evening, as the police tried to control a tense situation – they told me I needed to go and stand with the protestors – forcing me to stand alongside the anti-Israel activists who often threaten me. I did try to explain, but their position was clear. If I did not have a press card to produce, I could either join the protestors or leave. I chose to leave.

It was time for me to reapply. I had done it twice before, so did not give it much thought. I made the application in April 2024 expecting a swift turnaround. This time however, things were going to go very differently.

Hard Rock Singer Makes Bold Political Statement Following Controversial Festival Performance

Hard rock band Disturbed may be best known to some fans for their brooding version of the Simon & Garfunkel classic “The Sound of Silence,” but singer David Draiman is being anything but silent in response to some politically charged statements made from the stage over the weekend at the U.K.’s Glastonbury Festival.

Although he doesn’t mention the artist by name, Draiman is likely referring to rap punk duo Bob Vylan, which led the crowd in chants calling for “death” to the Israeli military during their set.

“ I just wanted to speak my mind a little bit about the events of this past weekend,” Draiman says in a video shared to Instagram. “No one should ever use any stage at any festival anywhere in the world to incite hatred and violence against anyone. I think it's disgusting. I think it's irresponsible and contrary to the whole reason people get together at these festivals to begin with.”

Draiman went on to question the motives of Bob Vylan.

“More importantly, just from a human perspective, what exactly do you really think you're going to achieve here? You know, death to the IDF. Every citizen of the state of Israel has to serve. Every citizen. So you're saying that the majority of world Jews should die, should be killed? That's what you're saying. Good luck with that. Iran saw how easy that wasn't so I'm not sure what you want, what you're trying to achieve other than virtue signaling and instant fame that this selling of Jew hatred has seen to gift everyone with these days.”

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07/01 Links Pt1: Trump claims Israel agreed to conditions for 60-day Gaza ceasefire; Trump Ends the Folly of De-escalation; The myth of Israel’s ‘killing fields’

From Ian:

Seth Frantzman: Israel: Now the Dominant Military Power in the Middle East?

Israel today sits astride the Middle East because of the air power of the Israel Air Force. Israel’s air defense systems are almost among the most integrated and capable in the world. In terms of ground forces, Israel may not appear to be as large as the Egyptian army on paper. However, the reality is that Egypt has not exerted significant power in the region for decades. It focuses more internally or on dealing with its chaotic neighbors, Libya and Sudan.

The Gulf countries together possess impressive armaments, and many of them have spent lavishly on their defense procurement in recent years. The UAE and Bahrain are peace partners with Israel. Saudi Arabia is expected to be a peace partner one day. This leaves the Jewish state with very few adversaries in the region.

In many ways, Israel’s success in building an impressive defense machine is due to the close partnership with the US and the collaboration between US and Israeli defense companies. Israel’s defense exports, for instance, continue to break new records.

The question for policymakers and Israel’s friends and allies is whether regional hegemony will be good for Israel. A more assertive Israel has still become bogged down in a long war in Gaza. Long wars against insurgents are not beneficial for powerful countries; they tend to erode the country’s strength. The US learned this in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The Soviet Union learned this lesson in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and Napoleon learned it in Spain.

A new sense of regional power could also lead the country not to be as flexible regarding peace talks with Syria or Lebanon. It could lead to a decision to clamp down on the Palestinians rather than work toward two states and peace with Riyadh. This is the choice Israel will face as it feels the future is up for grabs. In addition, nature always abhors a vacuum. Other countries and their influences will pour into the Middle East.

For instance, Turkey is a NATO member and has often been among the harshest critics of Israel’s policies. Ankara is also very close with the Trump administration. Doha helped with the Iranian ceasefire and hosts Hamas. It will also want a say in what comes next in the region.

These are potential challenges for the Jewish state as it weighs its newfound power.

Trump Ends the Folly of De-escalation

Donald Trump’s decision to have American B-2s strike Iranian nuclear facilities wasn’t the beginning of a war. Rather, it was a continuation of what H.R. McMaster describes as a “‘twilight war’ that the Islamic Republic of Iran has waged against the United States, Israel, and its Arab neighbors” since it first took 52 Americans hostage in 1979. McMaster explains that, for too long, the U.S. strategy in this war has been marked by an obsession with de-escalation:
Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden tended to view each of [Iran’s] attacks in isolation, rather than episodes in a long-term campaign of aggression grounded in the Islamic Republic’s foundational anti-American and anti-Israeli ideology. Iranian leaders reinforced U.S. presidents’ reluctance to confront Iranian aggression with false narratives about “moderates” within the government who could counterbalance the hostility of the “revolutionaries” if only U.S. leaders would open the door to conciliation. But these so-called “moderates” were no such thing.

Trump’s decision to strike Iranian nuclear facilities earlier this month was incredibly consequential, degrading and delaying a hostile regime’s path to the most destructive weapon on earth, as well as the missiles designed to deliver it. Those strikes—and Israel’s campaign that preceded them—also decapitated leaders who had blood on their hands from Iran’s proxy wars.

But even more importantly, the Israeli and U.S. military operations directly against the Islamic Republic and its warmaking apparatus reminded officials in Tehran that they cannot antagonize their adversaries in the region with impunity—and reminded officials in Washington that Iran’s theocratic dictatorship cannot be conciliated. “De-escalation” was never a path to peace—it was an approach that perpetuated war on the Iranians’ terms.

Andrew Fox: The myth of Israel’s ‘killing fields’

The report is also suspicious by virtue of what it ignores. Gaza remains the scene of an asymmetrical urban war. It is also a war in which IDF soldiers are confronted by an enemy – Hamas – that is known to use civilians as fodder for its aims. Infamously, it uses hospitals and humanitarian centres as military bases. Yet the Haaretz report, like much of the Western media reporting, treats the IDF as if it is policing a football match in Manchester, rather than navigating the frontline of a war in which soldiers’ lives are constantly at risk.

As someone with firsthand experience of operating firearms and firing warning shots in high-pressure environments, I can tell you what ‘firing toward’ looks like. It is shooting in the air, or far short of a crowd, or well off to the side. It is done to send a warning, not to take a life. Put bluntly, it is crowd control by intimidation. It is not an ideal tactic, and it would not be used if there were better options available. It also has plenty of scope for tragic error. Could a soldier mess it up? Yes, and when this happens, it should be investigated – as the IDF is now doing. That is not the same thing as an order to ‘open fire on civilians’.

What we have here, then, appears to be another one-sided and simplistic report. It has erased all context and difficult but critical details. It is written as though Hamas – the terror group that murdered, raped and kidnapped 1,200 innocent citizens just 20 months ago – does not exist. Nothing, it seems, is allowed to interfere, or complicate, the established narrative that Israel is the source of all evil and suffering in Gaza.

Haaretz is not speaking truth to power. It’s using lazy journalism to land cheap blows against an army doing an incredibly difficult job. It appears to be misleading the public rather than trying to inform it.

Truth is always the first casualty of war. On this front, Israel appears to be facing yet another heavy defeat.

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06/30 Links Pt2: This is an anti-fascist; the Book That Saw October 7 Coming; How Palestine Became the Left’s Omnicause; Europe slams Israel, then buys its weapons

From Ian:

How Israel was turned into the fount of all evil

The conviction that Israel is evil, then, is sustained by several, prominent overlapping arguments: that it is perpetrating a holocaust, that Jews are the bearers of white privilege, and that Israel is no more than an expression of white colonial domination.

These arguments have been germinating in universities and other elite educational institutions for a while. Ideas such as white privilege and Israel being a colonial-settler state have long been taught under the rubric of critical race theory and post-colonial studies. So when students organise anti-Israel protests at universities, they are not ‘rebelling’, as they seem to imagine – they are conforming to what their professors have taught them.

What happens in the university clearly does not stay in the university. Over the past two decades or so, a cadre of graduates has joined our political and cultural elites. They have taken up roles in government, non-governmental organisations, the media and the broader culture industry. Many are all too happy to promote the idea of the Jewish State as exemplifying a malevolent spirit.

That Israel is evil has become the ‘right’ thing to think. Celebrities have been desperate to get in on the act, and proclaim their virtue in opposition to Israel. Superstar environmentalist Greta Thunberg is a prime example. Too old to continue posing as a schoolgirl campaigner against climate change, she can now be found on assorted anti-Israel protests and ventures, including this month’s so-called aid ship to Gaza. Last October she appeared at an anti-Israel rally in Milan, where she proclaimed: ‘If you, as a climate activist, don’t also fight for a free Palestine and an end to colonialism and oppression all over the world, then you should not be able to call yourself a climate activist.’ Obviously she wore a keffiyeh, an Arab headscarf, as an ostentatious symbol of her virtue.

It seems that hatred towards Israel has become a cornerstone of the woke elites’ worldview. No doubt they believe that it is the virtuous pose to strike. That they are on the right side of history. But they’re not. By casting the Jewish State as the epitome of evil, they are perpetuating racial animosity towards Jews in a 21st-century form.

Andrew Pessin: Zohran Mamdani and the Book That Saw October 7 Coming From a Mile Away

The Book That Saw October 7 Coming From a Mile Away: Richard Landes, Can “The Whole World” Be Wrong? Lethal Journalism, Antisemitism, and Global Jihad (Academic Studies Press, 2022) (November, 2023)

When it’s all over, when Israel is gone, the Jews are gone, the world as we thought we knew it is gone, this is the book people will read in order to understand what happened. Landes is a medieval historian, an expert on millennial apocalyptic movements, which gives him a unique perspective on current affairs. This book attempts to bring you into that perspective and, to the degree that it is successful, suddenly everything might look different to you, like the gestalt switch in perceiving the ambiguous image, the beautiful young woman suddenly yielding to the crone. Once seen, however, you can’t unsee it, and you will now see so many current events through its lens.

And it will terrify you.

Or at least that’s its aim.

The book is too deep and wide-ranging to do it justice in a short review, so I will just a highlight a few points, noting only that Landes supports everything with extensive documentation and argument. In short, it aims to turn everything you think you understand about the Jews, Islam, and the West upside-down—because it exposes how "lethal [activist] journalism" inverts reality in the ways it portrays these issues and conflicts, which in turn informs the left-leaning, progressive mindset largely in charge of Western policy-making. In so doing the book argues that we have been profoundly and dangerously misled by the Western mainstream media, which turns out, in the end, to be working in service to a globalist Islamist movement that in fact seeks to destroy the West, including those same media.

So, can “the whole world be wrong”—about Islam and its relation to the West in general, and about the Arab-Israeli conflict in particular that is at the heart of this book (or as I prefer to call it, to highlight its complexity, the Israeli-Palestinian-Jewish-Arab-Muslim Conflict)?

Landes writes:
As a result of a confluence of intellectual trends (postmodernism, postcolonialism, anti-Orientalism …) the role of honor-shame motivations in key [Arab] decision-making in this conflict since the Oslo Accords has been systematically ignored. Indeed the entire ‘Peace Process’ was predicated on the rational, positive-sum assumption that, offered the right deal, the Palestinians will say yes. As a result, scholars and policy makers alike have ignored abundant evidence of a limbic captivity to honor concerns among Arab patriarchal elites ... (191-2)

Brendan O'Neill: This is an anti-fascist

The name we should remember from this weekend is not Bob Vylan. Or Pascal Robinson-Foster, to give the Israelophobic punk who caused such a stink at Glastonbury his real name. No, it’s Yisrael Natan Rosenfeld. For as Bob Vylan was whipping the smug mob of Glasto into a frenzy of violent loathing for the IDF, this young IDF soldier, himself a Brit, was laying down his life for the Jewish people. He was killed in Gaza on Sunday as he did battle with that army of anti-Semites, Hamas. Now that’s anti-fascism.

Natan – as he was known – was 20 years old. He was born in London and moved to Israel 11 years ago. He was a sergeant in the 601st Combat Engineering Battalion of the IDF. He was killed by an explosive device in northern Gaza. His sister’s boyfriend, also an IDF soldier, died in combat during Hamas’s pogrom of 7 October 2023. Natan’s father paid tribute to him this morning. He was fighting ‘for his parents, his family, his people’, he said. ‘I feel he has a place in history.’

This is the Briton we should be talking about – not the sozzled, moneyed brats of Glastonbury who got a sick thrill from chanting ‘Death, death to the IDF’, but this fresh-faced warrior against Islamofascism. Not that Bob Vylan faux-punk who hollered for the death of the Jewish State’s soldiers, but this soldier of the Jewish State, this British Jew just out of his teens, who ventured into enemy territory to fight the Islamists who butchered so many of his people. Not the fake anti-fascists of Britain’s wet, vain left, but this real anti-fascist who put his life on the line for the Jewish homeland.

That Natan died just hours after thousands of his one-time compatriots chanted ‘Death, death to the IDF’ is chilling in the extreme. One can only hope that in his final few hours he did not see any clips of these privileged, hateful Gentiles in the country of his birth dreaming of the death of Jews like him. How betrayed he would have felt. To look from Natan’s smiling face to the malicious gurning of that Glasto mob is to behold the Two Britains: one brave, optimistic and willing to fight for what it believes in, the other indolent, self-regarding and only able to derive meaning through its hatred of others.

Here’s what horrifies me. Two groups of people were thinking ‘Death to the IDF’ on Saturday – the keffiyeh classes at Glastonbury and the barbarous militants who planted the device that ended Natan’s precious life. Britain’s middle classes were saying out loud what that neo-fascist militia was thinking as it laid its deadly trap for the soldiers of the Jewish nation. There was a meeting of minds, a most sickening meeting of minds, between the fashionably Israelophobic of the West and the murderously Israelophobic of Hamas. ‘Death, death to the IDF’, roared affluent Britons; ‘Okay’, replied Hamas.

‘We have to be united’: Father’s plea at funeral for UK-born IDF soldier killed in Gaza

IDF soldier Sgt. Yisrael Natan Rosenfeld, 20, who was killed during fighting in northern Gaza, was laid to rest at the Ra’anana cemetery on Monday.

According to an initial IDF probe, Rosenfeld, who was known as Natan, a member of the 601st Combat Engineering Battalion, was killed by an explosive device during operations in the Kafr Jabalia area.

Thousands of people joined the funeral procession, holding Israeli flags and paying their respects to Rosenfeld before he was buried.

In a teary eulogy, Rosenfeld’s father, Avi, said: “It’s so hard to stand here, but I am proud of you. You’re a hero.”

“Natan said we have to stay together,” he said. “He said that he is fighting in Gaza because we have hostages that must return home,” he added.

Avi delivered a message of unity to the country, declaring that “it’s not the time to argue.”

“It’s not the time to have arguments in the Knesset or on the streets. Think of our soldiers: they fight every day, they give their lives every second. Be together, give them the respect, the support. We have to be together, united,” he said.

“We suffered the Holocaust, the 7th of October, all the families of the soldiers who have fallen, and all the hostages who are now dead or are still there; the suffering is beyond belief. Hashem, it’s enough! The people of Israel are good people. Hashem save us, because it’s only You,” Avi stated.

“As far as Sam and I are concerned, our boy is still with us,” he added.

In her eulogy, his mother, Samantha, said: “Natan, we hope you are the last sacrifice anyone should have to pay for the price of our land and our freedom. There is no religious, secular, or Haredi person in the army; we are all one people, with one heart. We need to come together and put aside our differences. You shall not die in vain.”

“I can’t actually quite believe that I’m standing here at your funeral. It’s really quite unbelievable in your 20 years, how much you’ve been able to achieve,” she said.

Athalia, his younger sister, said she was “so proud” when Rosenfeld joined the army.

“I always envied you for everything. You were happy and surrounded by my friends. Since you enlisted, I sent you messages every day telling you to take care of yourself. One day, I stopped because I realized you would be OK. I didn’t think it was possible that you wouldn’t be OK,” she said, adding she wished she could have done something to stop him from returning to his service.

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06/30 Links Pt1: Karen Diamond dies of injuries from Boulder firebombing; A Twelve-Day War’s Twelve Surprises; The poisonous identitarianism of Zohran Mamdani

From Ian:

David Horovitz: Israel was facing destruction at the hands of Iran. This is how close it came, and how it saved itself

Knowing when to stop
The military and political leadership agreed ahead of time to set achievable goals for the war — which were defined as “Creating conditions to prevent Iran’s nuclearization over time, and improving Israel’s strategic balance.” Twelve days in, the IDF reported that those goals had been attained, and that Israel’s position would weaken, and Iran’s strengthen, if the war continued.

The IDF had assessed that several of its planes could go down and pilots could be captured. That didn’t happen. It had estimated that 400 people would be killed on the home front if the war went to 30 days. The death toll was rising.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — whom the IDF deeply credits with creating the conditions for the US to join the attack — agreed that a war of attrition had to be avoided, and that Iran should not be given time to alter the balance of the conflict. With US President Donald Trump very publicly brokering a ceasefire, the war was brought to an end.

Unlike in Gaza, where the war goes on because the goals of eliminating the Hamas threat and returning all the hostages have not been met, in Iran the specified job was done. The IDF was prepared to put uniformed and civilian lives at risk to face down an existential threat, but not when that threat had been eliminated for at least the near future, and when there was a high probability that further incremental gains would be offset by greater losses.

Israel would like to see a “good deal” finalized by the US with Iran, and would hope to provide input on such an agreement’s necessary provisions. But it does not doubt that Iran will do whatever it can to evade even the most stringent barriers to reviving its bomb-making program. If the IDF has to strike again, it believes it can do so within a matter of days.

No surrender
A new painting has been erected in Valiasr Square in recent days. Rather than a scene, depicted from behind, of the march to Jerusalem, this installation shows Iranians from various walks of life — slain recognizable military chiefs, but also soccer stars, engineers, women — looking out into the streets of Tehran.

This is not a portrait of surrender. The depicted Iranians, civilians and military men, are saluting. Rockets are leaving smoke trails behind them. The accompanying slogan proclaims, “We are all soldiers of Iran.”

But this time, only Iranian flags are shown. And the backdrop is not Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock but Iran’s highest peak, Mount Damavand. This is the regime attempting to convey a message of national unity and, perhaps, even domestic focus.

And yet, it is more than possible that Iran spirited away some, maybe even most, of its 60% enriched uranium far from the major sites targeted in this war, and plenty of centrifuges too. Iran is about 75 times larger than Israel — plenty of room to construct smaller nuclear sites, and enrich and weaponize there, while trying to avoid attention. New scientists will replace the departed. It is not impossible that Pakistan or North Korea could be tempted to try to provide Iran with nuclear weapons.

Fresh, quite possibly more radical, leaders will replace the old for so long as the regime can retain power. And that regime, humiliated over 12 days in June, may be more motivated than ever to either scramble for the bomb or, more akin to its approach thus far, to lick its wounds and patiently rebuild the entire program.

On Saturday, IAEA chief Rafael Grossi predicted that Iran could resume uranium enrichment “in a matter of months.” Israel expects the regime to try to start resurrecting its program far more quickly than that.

‘If we hadn’t acted now…’
Israel has had a narrow escape.

It was only in a position to save itself, moreover, because Yahya Sinwar, fearing leaks, chose not to coordinate Hamas’s October 7, 2023, with Iran and its other proxies, incorrectly gauging that the rest of the axis would pile in when recognizing his “success,” and join the triumphal, Israel-eliminating march to Al-Aqsa. (Israel is not certain, to this day, why Iran held back.)

Defense Minister Israel Katz claimed last week that the Air Force had struck the “Destruction of Israel” clock in Tehran’s Palestine Square, counting down to Israel’s predicted demise in 2040. It’s not clear that the clock was smashed. If it was, Iran will doubtless fix it. And, we know full well, it was aiming to achieve the goal of rubbing out Israel a lot earlier than 2040.

Was. And is.

Netanyahu on Tuesday accurately described the war as a “historic” victory, and has said it opens the door to potential new normalization agreements. He also asserted that it would abide for generations and that Israel had sent the Iranian nuclear program “down the drain” — assessments that the security establishment would not, should not, dare not, complacently endorse.

The prime minister also declared that Israel would have faced destruction in the near future “if we hadn’t acted now.” On that, there is no disagreement.

Nikki Haley: A safe and secure Israel helps us have a safe and secure America

It's important because Israel is such an important partner for us in the Middle East. A safe and secure Israel helps us have a safe and secure America. None of the other countries in the region were saying anything against it. They knew that there was a likelihood that the US could attack, and they didn't say anything. Why? Because Iran is not just a threat to Israel, Iran's not just a threat to the US, Iran has been a threat to their neighbors for a long time. It's telling that they didn't step up, that they didn't say anything, because they've dealt with the threat of Iran's terrorist proxies for a long time

Those in America that worry about why these strikes took place should understand that those strikes were a move to keep Americans safer. That was a move to take out one of the threats that Iran has used against Americans for years. It's naive to say, "Oh, they were never going to use it," because you have to believe terrorists when they tell you something. When Iran continued to say, "Death to America," they meant it. And President Trump acted to make sure they could never follow through with it. The UN came out and condemned the US for strikes. I'm still waiting for the UN to condemn Iran for their use of ballistic missiles; I'm still waiting for the UN to condemn Iran for not complying with the nuclear inspections. I'm still waiting for the UN to say something to Iran about transferring weapons, which is a violation of the arms embargo.

If Trump would have continued to try and take the diplomatic route with Iran, he would have seen the same thing we've seen for years: Iran continues to delay, delay, delay. They always say they want to talk, but the action doesn't match what they want to do. Trump was right that while you could kick this can down the road if you wanted, the threat would only get bigger.

For us to think that more talks would have changed that is naive. We said, "We're done talking, we gave you the opportunity, you didn't take it, now it's time for us to take action on our own to protect Americans and protect Israelis." That was the right thing to do. Trump only had one choice, because if he had not followed up with these strikes, we would be dealing with Iran and their nuclear threats for years to come.

This is not a time where Israel or America needs to let their guard down. We need to now be very vigilant. Americans need to be vigilant of our military bases in the region. we need to be vigilant of cyber attacks that could come our way through Iran. Iran is not done.

82-Year-Old Jewish Woman Dies From Injuries Suffered in Anti-Semitic Colorado Terror Attack

An 82-year-old Jewish woman who suffered severe injuries during an anti-Semitic firebombing attack early June in Boulder, Colo., has died, prompting prosecutors to file first-degree murder and more hate crime charges on Monday against suspect Mohamed Soliman.

Karen Diamond died after Soliman, a 45-year-old illegal immigrant from Egypt, attacked her and 28 other peaceful pro-Israel demonstrators on June 1 using Molotov cocktails and a makeshift flamethrower, the Boulder County District Attorney's Office said in a statement, according to the Colorado Sun.

Colorado prosecutors in the statement announced two new first-degree murder charges against Soliman, who is facing more than 100 other state charges, including 52 counts of attempted first-degree murder, 8 counts of first-degree assault, and 16 counts of attempted use of an incendiary device. Soliman is also facing 12 federal charges, to which he pleaded not guilty during a hearing on Friday.

If convicted of first-degree murder, Soliman will serve a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Each attempted murder charge carries a penalty of 16 to 48 years in prison, according to 9News.

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06/29 Links: Nuremberg at Glastonbury; The 28 victims killed by Iranian missiles; Shin Bet busts major Hamas cell in Hebron; Saudi king rewards 1,000 Palestinian terrorists’ relatives

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Nuremberg at Glastonbury

So what happened at Glastonbury was that thousands of young people — the coolest, hippest young people who are into peace and love and the brotherhood of man — were chanting for the murder of Jews, beneath a forest of flags that transmit a similar message to the Nazi swastika.

That’s because the cause of “Palestine” is founded entirely upon the aim of annihilating Israel, murdering Jews and stealing from them their own history in the land of Israel. It is no exaggeration to hear in the delirious chanting at Glastonbury the chilling echoes of the rallies at Nuremberg.

For it is only Jews, and the Jewish state, who are singled out for such murderous frenzy. The Glastonbury crowds aren’t chanting “Death to the Chinese Communist Party” or “Death to Russian forces” in protest at the persecution of the Uighurs or the onslaught against Ukraine. They chant for the murder only of those who have been defending their people against genocidal annihilation for the past 20 months.

In any moral universe, Bob Vylan would be arrested and charged with incitement to murder. The police say they are looking into this. Take your time, officers! What bit of “Death to the IDF” don’t they understand? The same bit, probably that they haven’t understood of “Death to the Jews” or “Globalise the intifada” that’s been chanted on pro-Hamas demonstrations these past 20 months.

Glastonbury’s organisers say they are appalled and that the act crossed a line. Yet they have sat by while a series of other performers swelled the hysteria of which the Bob Vylan incitement to murder was the inevitable outcome.

Glastonbury and the BBC must answer for platforming anti-Israel hate

The BBC has played no small role in this moral decay. It has frequently failed to uphold even basic journalistic standards in its Israel coverage and has employed staff who openly support Hamas or have made antisemitic remarks.

That institutional failure continued at Glastonbury. The slogan calling for the death of the Israel Defence Forces was broadcast live by the BBC as part of its festival coverage. This was no accident. Editors knew exactly what was being said. They issued a mealy-mouthed trigger warning – describing chants for death as merely “discriminatory” and containing “strong language,” as though the problem were the duo’s expletives – and then carried on broadcasting the spectacle, all funded by mandatory licence fees.

This is the fog of moral confusion we now inhabit: when “Death to the IDF” and “From the river to the sea” – slogans calling for the annihilation of Israel – are not treated as incitement but aired as entertainment.

To complete this spectacle, Palestine Action – a group expected soon to be proscribed under UK terrorism legislation – was also given a platform at the festival. Glastonbury claims to be a festival of love. It has become a stage for hate.

Ofcom must initiate an urgent review into how the BBC allowed violent messaging to be aired under the guise of cultural coverage. BBC management must be held accountable. Festivals or venues giving airtime to groups like Palestine Action or Bob Vylan should lose public funding and sponsorship.

A government spokesperson confirmed that Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy had raised the matter with the BBC, saying: “We strongly condemn the threatening comments made by Bob Vylan at Glastonbury.

"The Culture Secretary has spoken to the BBC Director General to seek an urgent explanation about what due diligence was carried out ahead of the performance, and welcomes the decision not to re-broadcast it on BBC iPlayer.”

Not everyone in government, however, seems to grasp the gravity of the situation. Health Secretary Wes Streeting offered a masterclass in moral obfuscation. Yes, he condemned the chants as "appalling" and criticised both the BBC and Glastonbury.

But he then pivoted to what he claimed we really should be talking about this week in the context of Israel and Gaza – namely, a set of accusations against Israel, which he proceeded to list.

Irrespective of the accuracy of his accusations, this was not the moment. He went on to lash out at the Israeli Embassy, which had quite reasonably issued a statement condemning the incident, scolding it to “get your own house in order”.

Bob Vylan, Glastonbury and the banality of Jew hatred

If you can’t see it now, you never will. The sight of tens of thousands of people at Glastonbury yesterday joining in a spirited chant of ‘Death, death to the IDF’ was the sight of us officially becoming a very different country, I fear. One in which anti-Israel hysteria has so flawlessly rehabilitated Jew hatred that it has become unthinking, conformist, almost mundane. Something that Home Counties idiots can jive to before adjusting their hot pants and heading off to catch Charli XCX. Something that is broadcast by the BBC into millions of homes. The banality of the new anti-Semitism.

Let’s not muck about here. When punk-rap duo Bob Vylan called for the killing of Israeli soldiers yesterday – as they warmed up the crowd at the West Holts Stage for every Israelophobe’s new favourite Irish rap trio, Kneecap – they weren’t opposing war. They were calling for war, and on the one army on Earth charged with protecting Jews from genocide. The army now at war with a jihadist cult that murdered, raped and kidnapped its way through an Israeli festival not unlike Glastonbury on 7 October 2023. The army that almost all Israelis are expected to serve in. Indeed, those making excuses for that sickening call-and-response yesterday hopefully don’t know that Hamas justifies killing Israeli civilians on the grounds that they are basically all tainted by national service. That they are all enemy combatants. Death, death to that IDF?

Whether we got here by ignorance or conscious hatred is pretty much moot. The end result is British Jews – at Glasto or at home – watching thousands whoop as Jew-killing slogans are recited. Frontman Bobby Vylan also treated the crowd to a deranged rant about the indignities he suffered working for a ‘Zionist’ at a record label, because he had to listen to his boss talk favourably about Israel. I wonder if he knows that the vast majority of British Jews are Zionists. I wonder if he cares. ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’, Vylan chanted at another point in his fetid little set. Surely he knows what this means? Surely he recalls the tiny, 10million-strong nation that lies between the River Jordan and the Med, 74 per cent of which is Jewish? Surely he knows that when the Islamofascists currently menacing Israel chant it they are explicitly calling for the genocide of Jews? Bob?

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