04/15 Links Pt2: Abbas honors ‘pay-for-slay’ official on Yom Hashoah; Carlson’s antisemitic rhetoric: A dangerous echo of Father Coughlin; Attempted arson attack on Finchley synagogue

From Ian:

My grandfather, the Nazi: A German historian helps families unravel forebears’ crimes

When his grandfather died in 2006, Johannes Spohr began to delve into his wartime past.

The historian’s discoveries were grim. Rudolf Spohr was a member of the Nazi party, applied to join the SS, and, as a Wehrmacht officer, was aware of the gassing of Jews.

But the grandson’s revelations led him on a path to helping others research their families’ roles in the darkest chapter of German history.

Germany’s Erinnerungskultur — or “culture of remembrance” — is well-known. Over the past two decades, the country has sought to collectively confront its past with memorials and monuments, exhibitions, public commemorations, and, perhaps most visibly, the “stolpersteine” embedded in streets to mark the lives of individuals murdered and persecuted by the Third Reich.

Nonetheless, for many Germans, discovering how members of their own families may have been involved in the Holocaust is an altogether more unwelcome prospect and one to be avoided.

An increasing number of Germans, however, take a different view, wanting to know just what their uncles, grandfathers and other ancestors did during the war. Spohr’s “Present Past” workshops help those wanting to research their Nazi-era family history learn how to dig into records held by the country’s archives and institutions, as well as how to interpret their findings. The Berlin-based historian also undertakes bespoke research projects for individual clients.

Spohr, 43, admits that, when it came to his own grandfather, “the suspicion was always there.” A copy of “Mein Kampf” sat on the bookcase at his grandparents’ home, while a Wehrmacht uniform hung in the closet. National Socialism, he tells The Times of Israel, was “somehow present in my childhood,” but he also knew that, by and large, it was not a topic to be openly discussed.

“My grandmother would only say the war was a ‘very cruel time,’” says Spohr, “but she didn’t say for whom it was cruel or what she meant by it.”

Two or three stories about the war — one involving his grandfather accidentally meeting his brother in Italy and enjoying a day together on the beach — were frequently recycled. He later discovered that this use of a small number of oft-repeated anecdotes to fend off further discussion was common among many other families.

When Spohr occasionally pressed the subject, Rudolf would usually portray himself as an opponent of Hitler who had opposed the war and had reluctantly been forced into the Wehrmacht. He told others that his reaction to the unsuccessful attempt on Hitler’s life in July 1944 was to ask: “Did they get the pig?”

After his grandfather’s death, Spohr — spurred by the discovery of documents, photos and Nazi-era artifacts in Rudolf’s home — began his research. He was helped by an internship at a concentration camp memorial, where he learned how to make archival requests and interpret pictures.

Spohr’s investigations turned up his grandfather’s Nazi party membership — Rudolf and his father joined up on the same day soon after Hitler came to power — and an ultimately aborted attempt to join the SS in 1933.

Was Rudolf a true believer? Spohr says it is impossible to tell, but he suspects that he was more of a conservative nationalist who was neither an opponent of the regime nor a fanatical supporter. Instead, he believes, he was “an opportunist” who knew how to get on in society whatever the prevailing political winds.

Abbas honors ‘pay-for-slay’ official on Yom Hashoah

Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas on Monday evening awarded a medal posthumously to the late overseer of the P.A.'s so-called “pay-for-slay” program, through which Ramallah provides stipends to terrorists imprisoned in Israel and to the families of dead terrorists.

Abbas awarded the “Star of Merit of the Order of the State of Palestine” to relatives of the late Qadri Abu Bakr, according to WAFA, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency.

Abu Bakr, who died in a car accident in Samaria in 2023, had been the director of the P.A.-funded PLO Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs, which was part of the system that the Palestinian Authority has used to pay out to terrorists and their families, according to the Israel Defense And Security Forum think tank.

Under international pressure, the Palestinian Authority has instituted several changes to the pay-for-slay system in an attempt to claim it has ended. Ramallah announced a change last year, claiming it meant that Palestinian prisoners would not receive money for their actions but solely based on their socioeconomic status.

Critics of the Palestinian Authority, including the Palestinian Media Watch organization, have presented evidence that the latest change was merely an attempt to mislead Western donors while continuing to funnel many millions of dollars to terrorists and or their families.

As it announced changes it said would end the remuneration of terrorists and their families, the Palestinian Authority has also sought to reassure those families and hardliners that the Palestinian Authority’s support for imprisoned terrorists and the families of dead ones was unwavering.

Holocaust Historian Rafael Medoff, the director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, noted in an op-ed published on Tuesday that the ceremony took place just as Israel began observing Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day. Yom Hashoah is commemorated on 27 of the Hebrew calendar month of Nissan, which this year began at sunset on April 13 and ended 24 hours later.

“Is it just a coincidence that Abbas chose to honor Abu Bakr on Holocaust Remembrance Day? Probably not, given Abbas’s own deep interest in the Holocaust,” wrote Medoff, referring to Abbas’s 1983 Ph.D. dissertation-turned-book, titled “The Other Side: The Secret Relations Between Nazism and the Leadership of the Zionist Movement.”

In it, Abbas asserted that David Ben-Gurion and other Zionist leaders “collaborated with Hitler” and wanted the Nazis to kill Jews, because “having more victims meant greater rights and stronger privilege to join the negotiating table for dividing the spoils of war once it was over.”

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04/15 Links Pt1: America’s Arab Allies Are Making History; Nearly all Senate Democrats vote to block Israel arms sales; GOP Senators Push To Prohibit US Funding for UNRWA

From Ian:

For Iran, Hormuz Is More a Weakness Than a Weapon

On Monday, six weeks into its war with Iran, the United States imposed a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. According to conventional wisdom, the war has made Tehran realize that its control of the strait constitutes powerful leverage. In this story line, the strait turned out to be Iran’s real nuclear weapon, its potent deterrent. Because Tehran could use this chokepoint to threaten global shipping, it was able to resist pressure from the world’s most powerful air force, reject Washington’s peace demands, and ultimately gain leverage over its nemesis. Iranian leaders have repeatedly touted that leverage, while analyses in Reuters, Time, and other outlets have declared the strait a formidable tool in Iran’s arsenal.

But this narrative is wrong. More than any other country on earth, Iran cannot survive a sustained closure of the strait. Before the outbreak of war in late February, 20 percent of the world’s commercial shipping may have transited the Strait of Hormuz, but over 90 percent of Iran’s seaborne trade traversed this 21-mile-wide chokepoint. Even before the U.S. naval blockade, Iran was struggling severely to move shipments vital to its own economy through the passage. A blockade will inhibit Iranian exports of all kinds—oil being the most important, but also petrochemicals—as well as imports of much of the country’s grain.

Within weeks of a blockade, the country could run out of food, as well as space to store unshipped oil, requiring it to decrease or stop production at major oil wells—an act that can damage such infrastructure permanently. By closing the strait, Iran has not established a new, meaningful source of long-term clout. Instead, it has indicated how militaries can decimate the Iranian economy and thus really exert power over the Islamic Republic.

SELF RESTRAINT Framing the Strait of Hormuz as Iran’s trump card—a chokepoint with which Tehran can menace the world economy—gets it backward. The regime’s March closure of the strait had already severed both sides of its economic lifeline. In 2024, according to Central Bank of Iran data and U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates, hydrocarbons represented 65 to 75 percent of Iran’s total export revenue. Virtually all of these exports (approximately 92 percent to 96 percent) must pass through the Strait of Hormuz, loaded almost entirely from a single terminal at Kharg Island.

Unlike Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which possess substantial pipeline bypass capacity, Iran has no meaningful alternative export corridor. In 2021, Iran officially unveiled the Goreh–Jask pipeline, a route from a key inland pumping station to a terminal on the Gulf of Oman with a nominal capacity of 300,000 barrels per day. In practice, however, the route was sharply constrained by unfinished infrastructure. During the summer of 2024, it loaded fewer than 70,000 barrels per day, and starting in October 2024, the terminal went dormant for roughly 17 months. Only one of three planned offshore mooring buoys is installed, and fewer than half of the 20 planned storage tanks are complete. Iran cannot reroute its way out of a Hormuz closure.

Imports are equally exposed. Iran is the largest importer of bulk grain and oilseed in the Middle East. Approximately 14 million of the 30 million tons of grain imported into Gulf markets annually are destined for Iran—all of it seaborne and all of it dependent on passage through the Strait of Hormuz. When the strait shut, grain deliveries to Iran’s primary port, Bandar Imam Khomeini, all but stopped. Iran scrambled to reroute through Chabahar on the Gulf of Oman, but that port can handle less than a fifth of Bandar Imam Khomeini’s throughput. Pharmaceutical and medical supply chains faced similar disruptions.

Iran’s economy could collapse within three months under naval blockade, experts warn

According to Nadimi, the Islamic Republic is attempting to raise the global economic cost of the blockade for the United States, while Washington seeks to achieve its objectives as quickly as possible.

However, he stressed that a naval blockade takes time to be effective. He warned that the rising tensions carry the risk of escalating into a full-scale war in the region, as the regime is likely to exert every effort to ensure that the blockade fails.

Given the foreseeable escalation of tensions in the Strait of Hormuz, and as the Islamic regime claims control over the passage and even the authority to impose tolls on vessels, Israel appears to be preparing for a possible resumption of military strikes against Iranian targets.

In such a scenario, the IRGC - which has effectively taken full control of the government - may fight to preserve what remains of its power, or, as some analysts suggest, attempt to expand a “scorched-earth doctrine” not only within Iran but across the region.

Over the course of 40 days of military operations, the United States and Israel have significantly degraded the Islamic Republic’s military capabilities, eliminating key leaders, commanders, and officials.

However, the IRGC - now dominating the political landscape following the removal of Ali Khamenei and the designation of Mojtaba Khamenei as the nominal leader - continues to maintain control within the country, sidelining clerical and conventional state structures.

It has intensified its crackdown on protesters, detaining hundreds in recent weeks and carrying out executions of several dissidents, while continuing to assert its ability to wage war, launch missiles and drones, and control the Strait of Hormuz.

Pierre Rehov: Is Washington About to Replace One Iranian Tyranny with Another?

The issue is no longer whether the regime in Tehran is under strain — it clearly is — but whether Washington is preparing, consciously or not, to replace a brutal clerical dictatorship with a brutal military one.

The idea that a military structure could serve as a "moderate" transitional governing authority in Iran seems to rest on the fragile assumption that professionalism leads to moderation. Regional history says otherwise. From Egypt to Pakistan, militaries that stepped in to "restore order" entrenched their own authoritarian rule. Iran offers no reason to believe it would be different.

What makes the current moment so dangerous is that, if no credible alternative to the mullahs takes power -- one that is rooted in popular legitimacy -- the vacuum will not remain empty. It will be filled by the most organized, armed actors available — the IRGC and security apparatus -- the same forces that slaughtered more than 30,000 of their own citizens on the streets in just two days.

The faces change, but the repression, torture and hangings stay the same.

The former Shah's army, the Artesh, relegated to patrolling Iran's borders, may lack the theological zeal of the IRGC, but it has shown no commitment to dismantling the structures of repression.

Any kind of real, long-term peace requires the total end of Iran's regime, not its adaptation. The Islamic Republic unfortunately cannot be reformed, any more than could the Afghan Taliban. The regime's legitimacy is rooted in a doctrine built on confrontation — both with the West and with its own population. Preserving any part of this ruling structure, whether through the IRGC or segments of the military, risks perpetuating the same destabilizing brutality.

Preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, while essential, addresses only one dimension of the threat. A non-nuclear authoritarian Iran remains capable of repression at home and destabilization abroad. Removing the threat of nuclear bombs does not create peace; it merely limits the scale of the potential catastrophe.

For Trump to declare victory based on a ceasefire, partial concessions, or the emergence of supposedly "pragmatic" actors would be catastrophically naïve.

Whatever happened to Trump's "Help is on its way"?

To say that economic collapse will make it easier for the Iranians to change their government if they wish might sound good, but it is fantasyland. They have no weapons.

The Iranian people are not asking for a redistribution of brutality. They are asking for a new system entirely.

Will Washington recognize this distinction, or will Trump's legacy, instead of peace, be -- in Syria as well -- that he simply exchanged one tyranny for another?

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04/14 Links Pt2: Who Is Holocaust Education For?; Czech FM: As the West Morally Rots, We Stand with Israel; What the Guardian should have asked Francesca Albanese

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Who Is Holocaust Education For?

Today is Yom Hashoah, which means speeches and conversations and debates about the lessons of the Holocaust. Yet we often pay much more attention to the content of those lessons than to whom the lessons are addressed. Who is listening, and who, specifically, cares? These, too, are questions that should be asked more often.

A couple of recent news stories shows us why these questions are so important in this day and age.

The Times of Israel interviews the leading publisher of Holocaust memoirs in Europe, revealing a disturbing irony of October 7: That day was the deadliest for Jews since the Holocaust, with the attacks themselves closely mimicked Holocaust-era Nazi violence, and yet the anti-Semitism unleashed in their wake has made the world less willing to talk about the Holocaust at all.

It does make a twisted kind of sense. Supporters of October 7 surely see the attacks, at least to some degree, as an extension of the campaign to extinguish world Jewry. In 1948, the failure to achieve that was termed the “nakba.” Now pro-Palestinians have appropriated the word “Holocaust” itself. Why would they recognize its unique connection to Jewry when they are clearly practicing a form of supersessionism that seeks to erase Jews from history?

As the profile of Liesbeth Heenk, the non-Jewish head of Amsterdam Publishing, notes: “Since then, the entire narrative has changed…. Sales are down since the war. Bookshops and cultural venues that once welcomed Holocaust memoir authors are increasingly saying no. Readers, Heenk suspects, are increasingly reluctant to engage with Holocaust material openly under the growing threat of antisemitic backlash.”

Heenk tracks sales and readership numbers well beyond her own company, so she is an authoritative voice on Holocaust-book statistics. Heenk also faces harassment and is under police protection just because she publishes books on the Holocaust. “It’s insane that I’m trying to help people learn from the lessons of history, and now, I’m being told, as a publisher, that I’m on the wrong side of history.”

That’s because, in the modern West, learning the right lessons from history is itself what puts one on the supposed “wrong side of history.” History, to the enemies of the Jews, is incomplete, even a failure. They want a manual, not a memoir.

And so, “People riding public transport or walking the streets do not want to be seen reading a book about the Holocaust. There’s a stigma related to everything about being Jewish, and the Holocaust, as a term, is being abused in a major way.”

So who’s still reading the books that tell us what actually happened, and which has no modern parallel? Jews, obviously, but also Germans: “I publish a lot of books in German, because they read these stories more than in the English-speaking world.”

Now, you might think that if the descendants of the victims and the perpetrators of the same crime are reading the same books about it, they probably know what they’re doing. And that’s true. Which raises the uncomfortable point of fact that Holocaust literature is for people who want to prevent another Holocaust, and such people are a dwindling portion of the marketplace in the enlightened West.

Seth Mandel: The As-A-Jew Writers Guild

The complaint is that the Jewish Book Council is too Jewy.

The whole thing is odd, because these writers are fairly successful. So I’m not sure why they would fear having to compete with Jewish writers who actually like Jews. They’re doing just fine! What these anti-Zionist Jews want is DEI for Israel-haters. They would like their disdain for their fellow Jews to earn them protected-class status. They want to be rewarded materially not for their talent but for their viewpoint, and they want those who share their opinions but lack their talent to be rewarded materially, too.

In one fell swoop, this open letter entirely debunks the notion that one must possess empathy if one is to be a successful novelist. The line about featuring Jewish Israeli writers being insulting to non-Jews in Gaza and Judea and Samaria is exceptionally daft: The organization is called the Jewish Book Council. How much anti-Judaism do you expect them to spotlight?

Complaining that the Jewish Book Council engages with too many Israelis is not the kind of thing that is meant to open a good-faith dialogue about Jewish diversity. Which is why I think at least part of this temper tantrum is geared toward de-Judaizing the culture more broadly.

The Jewish Book Council is a rare lighthouse in the storm for Diaspora Jewish creatives in the post-October 7 world. Israelis are being full-on blacklisted and Jews are being sidelined throughout the arts world, unless they are confessional as-a-Jews who use their voices to denounce their coreligionists. The writers of this open letter want that same discrimination applied to Jews by the Jewish Book Council. I would say you have to at least admire their chutzpah, but I don’t want to offend them by using Jewish terminology.

As the West Morally Rots, We Stand with Israel

Petr Macinka is deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic.
I am in Jerusalem because the Czech Republic still remembers what it means to be surrounded by those who want you erased from the map. When Israel was fighting the war for independence and the rest of the world looked away, we sent weapons. The situation remains the same today. When other countries speak of punishing Israel for defending itself against brutal terrorism, we stand to defend the attacked nation. When other countries stop military shipments to Israel, Czech arms exports to Israel grow.

In a world that is rapidly becoming more dangerous, a true ally is defined by what he delivers. This means we will treat Jerusalem with the dignity it deserves as the beating heart of Israel. We are two nations that refuse to be lectured by those who have never faced a real threat. We do not care about the opinions of those who have lost the ability to distinguish between an aggressor and its target. The Czech Republic stands with Israel because it is the only rational choice for a civilized nation.

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04/14 Links Pt1: Seven Myths About the Iran War; Western European Leaders Betray the West; What If Trump Hadn't Attacked Iran?; Israel, Lebanon agree to negotiations in first direct talks since 1993

From Ian:

Michael Doran: Seven Myths About the Iran War

The media elite refuse to credit President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu with a win. They portray the operation in Iran as aimless adventurism. In doing so, they advance the very arguments that serve America's enemies, undermining the credibility of a successful deterrent action.

Opponents of the Trump administration have repeatedly called this "a war of choice," a conflict the president launched without cause or coherent purpose. The administration has, in fact, made a clear and compelling case. As the president has stated repeatedly for years, "Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. It's very simple."

Moreover, at the outset of the war, Secretary of State Marco Rubio described another factor that drove America to act. "They are producing, by some estimates, over 100 ballistic missiles a month. Compare that to the six or seven interceptors that can be built a month." Iran would soon have enough missiles and drones to overwhelm the defenses of Israel and every American base in the region. America could let Israel attack alone, in which case Iran would attack American forces and cause significant casualties; or work together with Israel to eliminate an intolerable threat to both countries.

During the Biden administration, between Jan. 2021 and Jan. 2025, Iranian-backed forces launched hundreds of attacks on American personnel and assets across the Middle East, including over 170 strikes on U.S. bases in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan, plus dozens of attempts against U.S. Navy vessels in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. In any previous era, a sustained campaign of this magnitude against American bases and naval vessels would have been called open war.

The American-Israeli campaign achieved its core strategic objectives: halting Iran's advance toward nuclear weapons capability and significantly degrading its ballistic missile program, which together had posed a growing existential threat to Israel and the region. Prior to the operation, Iran was rapidly advancing both programs, with much of its critical infrastructure on the verge of being buried too deeply underground for effective strikes. The result was a decisive disruption of Iran's most dangerous capabilities, while leaving Iran economically crippled.

In the end, Israel and the U.S. entered the conflict facing a severe and imminent threat and emerged with that threat meaningfully and verifiably reduced. That is the fundamental measure of victory in war. The window for effective action was closing. Trump acted before it slammed shut.

What If Trump Hadn't Attacked Iran?

By mid-2025 Iran was assessed to have had nearly a thousand pounds of 60%-enriched uranium. This is so close to weapons grade that American intelligence said the Iranians could have fuel for a bomb in under a week. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) thought it could make enough for nine weapons. They were likely days, not years, from the bomb.

Now, picture what would have happened if they had actually crossed that line. A nuclear Iran doesn't just get a weapon. It gets a shield. The IRGC and the Houthis could control the Strait of Hormuz (as well as the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait connecting the Red Sea from the Gulf of Aden) and forever dictate terms to ships with infinitely more certainty than their threats today are armed with.

In addition, Hizbullah operates with nuclear cover. The Gulf states face a simple choice: bow or build their own bombs; Saudi Arabia has already said it would. A nuclear cascade across the most volatile region on Earth would follow. Worst of all, the conflict we have just seen to defang the regime suddenly becomes impossible. This is exactly why the ayatollahs wanted nuclear weapons in the first place.

Tehran executed a brilliant strategy, with extraordinary patience, over two decades. The regime's genius was to make confrontation always seem premature. There was always another round of talks, another sunset clause, another International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection to wait for. A so-called hardliner would be replaced by a so-called moderate.

Each delay bought another year of nuclear enrichment, another generation of drones (used to such devastating effect by Russia in Ukraine), another $1 billion flowing to proxies.

So when we assess the conflict, we must consider the counterfactual of inaction. What would be the effect on our energy security, our trade and investments - and above all the safety of our people - if this intervention had not happened?

Western European Leaders Betray the West

Iran's regime -- not to be confused with its tormented people, many of whom have sacrificing their lives since 1999 trying to oust it -- has, since its installation in 1979, threatened "Death to America" ("the Great Satan") and "Death to Israel" ("the Little Satan").

For 39 years running, Iran has boasted the prestigious label, conferred on it by the US State Department, of the "world's leading state sponsor of terrorism." Iran, along with Qatar, is reportedly a principal financier of international Islamic terrorism as well as a leading agent of global destabilization.

Israel and the United States seem to have concluded, as US President Franklin Roosevelt had regarding the Third Reich in 1941, that, "When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck to crush him."

The Iranian regime's "a week to 10 days" must have sounded sufficiently like an "imminent threat" and a "clear and present danger" to have the Trump Administration decide that it would be preferable to neutralize the regime before the regime neutralized the United States.

[The] "sunset clauses" in Obama's 2015 JCPOA "nuclear deal"... would have enabled Iran legitimately to have as many nuclear weapons as it liked by October 2025. When Trump cancelled the JCPOA in 2018, that was the bullet he skillfully dodged.

Other American politicians have wrongly accused the Trump administration of violating the arguably unconstitutional 1973 War Powers Act.

There was no point in allowing Iran to become another North Korea. "You want to see the stock market go down?" Trump asked on Fox News. "Let a couple of nuclear bombs be dropped on us."

Most of these politicians in Europe never condemned decades of atrocities committed by Iran's regime. On January 9, 2026 — at the very moment Iran's regime was slaughtering more than 30,000 of its unarmed people on the streets — Starmer, Macron and Merz published a joint statement heroically expressing "deep concern." That was it.

The immigration to Western Europe of increasingly large Muslim populations, who never assimilated and seem quite devoted to a hatred for Israel and Jews -- as well as for Christians -- has contributed to a resurgence in antagonism toward Jews among political leaders seeking votes throughout Western Europe.

"Western Europe is profoundly afflicted by a political and sociological death wish," wrote Conrad Black last month. "The United States will not save them from that; only they can."

Israel — which most West European leaders in power seem to hold in contempt — is clearly the most reliable ally of the United States; it is these West European leaders who deserve to be held in contempt. Under their dismal and unprincipled leadership, and their wanton surrender to demanding newcomers, Western Europe as we know it may well be heading toward collapse.

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04/13 Links Pt2: Holocaust Memorial Day has been universalised. Yom HaShoah cannot be; Sayyid Qutb: the godfather of Islamism; The Paranoid Prophet of Loserdom; The Arab Case for Israel

From Ian:

Sayyid Qutb: the godfather of Islamism

Throughout the early 1950s, the deepening of Qutb’s Islamism, the intensification of his cultural opposition to what he called the ‘Western disease’, meshed with his increasingly vocalised anti-Semitism. This was writ large in Our Struggle Against the Jews, a work that conjured up Jewish people as the eternal, cosmic enemy of Muslims everywhere. For Qutb, Israel was the face not just of the Western ‘crusaders’, but of evil.

As Qutb’s Islamist embrace deepened, Egyptian nationalist forces were in the process of putting an end to British occupation and toppling the monarchy. In the initial aftermath of the Free Officers coup d’état in July 1952, Egypt’s new leader, Colonel Gamal Abdel al Nasser, was seemingly keen to keep the Muslim Brotherhood onside. Qutb himself, his status as an Islamic intellectual rising, was also promoted by the new regime. He spoke at Free Officers events and was given a chance to deliver public radio lectures on the importance of Islamic values.

Yet the secular aspirations of Nasserite nationalists – ‘Religion is for God and the nation for all’, as Nasser put it – always sat uneasily alongside the Islamist dreams of the Muslim Brotherhood and now Qutb. In February 1953, Qutb finally joined the Muslim Brotherhood. He proclaimed: ‘No other movement can stand up to the Zionist and the colonialist crusaders.’

In the months that followed, tensions between the Muslim Brotherhood and Egyptians’ nationalist rulers mounted, culminating in the disbanding of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1954 and the arrest and eventual imprisonment of hundreds of members, including Qutb. It was in prison that Qutb – ill, embittered and hardened against Nasser and secular nationalism – produced Milestones, arguably the defining document of Islamism. From the start, Milestones is shot through with revolutionary intent. Cosplaying as a What Is to Be Done? – Lenin’s 1901 political cri de coeur – for Islamists, it begins by offering a diagnosis of the spiritual crisis in which mankind finds itself. This amounts to a recapitulation of Qutb’s long-standing cultural critique of the West, of the way in which the elevation of human reason has disenchanted the world, depriving people of ‘any healthy values for the guidance of mankind’. Only Islam has the answer, he writes. Only Islam has the capacity to re-enchant the world, to suffuse it with the breath of the divine.

The problem, Qutb argues, is that the world is steeped in Jahilyyah (‘age of ignorance’). Previously, this was a term scholars used to refer to the supposed moral turpitude of the pre-Muslim world. But Qutb turns it into something more abstract – a reference to any society under the sway of an authority other than that of Allah. Any society, that is, that elevates human reason to a position of authority, or that places a value on freedom or material progress. That goes for all social forms and political ideologies of Western origin, from the liberal to the Communist to the nationalist. All societies are ‘jahili’, Qutb writes, that have ‘delegated the law-making capacity of God to others’ – that have, in short, usurped the ‘sovereignty’ of Allah. There is, he writes, ‘no authority except God’s, no law except from God, and no authority of one man over another, as the authority in all respects belongs to God’.

‘Sovereignty’ is the key concept in Milestones. Adapted from the work of Indian Islamist, Abdul Maududi (1903-1979), with whom Qutb had been corresponding in prison, ‘sovereignty’ in Qutb’s world ought to belong solely to Allah – an assertion he draws from the Muslim declaration of faith, ‘There is no deity except Allah’ (La ilaha illallah). This sovereignty is not limited to spiritual affairs. There is no room for secularism in the Islamist worldview. Allah’s writ applies to every aspect of human reality. As he put it in In the Shade of the Koran, ‘it is not natural for religion to be separated from [the affairs] of the world’. Qutb’s stated ambition in Milestones is to replace every man-made law, custom and tradition ‘with a new concept of human life, to create a new world on the foundation of submission to the creator’. This, he says, is Islam’s ‘revolutionary message’.

At points, Qutb frames this message in terms of freedom and even ‘autonomy’, stating that Islam ‘is really a universal declaration of the freedom of man’. He argues that jahili societies enslave men to laws made by other men, and – in a pointed allusion to what he perceives as Western freedom – enslave them to their own animal-like desires. Islam, by contrast, will liberate men both from secular authorities and from their own impulses. Not by encouraging them to exercise their own reason, as the actual self-governing promise of ‘autonomy’ has it, but through their submission to their only right and true ruler: Allah. This is Qutb’s vision of freedom, ‘the total submission to God alone’.

It is a singular, brutal vision. It not only recognises no other authority, but also, as Qutb makes clear, no other ties, bonds or commitments. It floats free of family, friends and, importantly, nation. It’s a vision that, in its sheer, inhuman abstraction, transcends all boundaries – a vision global in scope, and horrifying in ambition.

And how is this Islamic society to be realised? Through what Qutb calls a ‘vanguard’ of true believers. Those who, in every aspect of their existence, have freed themselves from jahili society and submitted themselves entirely to Allah. Those who live only according to the laws of God, not man. That is who Milestones is aimed at – the revolutionary cell.

The Paranoid Prophet of Loserdom

With his long beard, resonant voice, outgoing personality, and bellicose, mystical rhetoric, Dugin is regarded by his global fan base and by his enemies alike as a kind of geopolitical genius, the most prominent representative of contemporary Russian political thought, and, most of all, the inspiration behind Russia’s foreign policy—Putin’s personal Rasputin. Like most things in the 21st century, the reality is far more childish, more ridiculous, and, because of that, more frightening.

The puerile grandiosity of his book titles, with their aura of esotericism and science fiction—The Fourth Political Theory, Eurasian Mission: An Introduction to Neo-Eurasianism, Last War of the World-Island—is in line with their content, which is a jumble of nihilistic fantasies, fascist dreams, totalitarian plans, and ridiculous predictions. In a piece written in the aftermath of Oct. 7, Dugin announced that Pakistan, Turkey, and Indonesia were about to rally to the side of the Palestinians, who will launch an uprising in East Jerusalem that will lead to the sealing-off of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and to World War III, during which Russia will “at last” side with the Muslims against the Israelis, the West, and the forces of LGBTQ.

At their even less incoherent, the so-called neo-Eurasian or fourth-political theories that he presents as original are, in fact, largely copied and pasted from more coherent anti-modern, anti-Enlightenment Western theorists and philosophers. The result is a vision of history that can only be called gnostic and that can be summarized in a simple paragraph:

The present geopolitical situation is the latest episode of an ancestral cosmic war. Two types of societies clash: The evil ones, which he calls “thalassocratic,” are essentially treacherous because they’re governed by the mischievous, untrustworthy “Atlanticists” and are engineered by commerce, exchanges, individualism, and egalitarianism. The good ones, the “tellurocratic” societies, are rooted in soil, knighthood, religion, and vertical hierarchy. The thalassocratists (the United States, Western Europe, protestants, atheists, Israel, and the Jews) are liberal children of darkness. The tellurocratists (the Russians, the Orthodox and the Catholics, and Muslims, especially Shiites) are children of light. At stake is the human soul. Should the Russians (or the Iranians) lose, there is no reason that the world should continue: In a recent interview, Dugin declared that Moscow would provide nuclear weapons to anyone dedicated to fighting “the West.”

The Phantom Base

In an Information State, the struggle centers on who can generate and assume control over these bubbles of attention. The aim is to become expert at producing them so that when one bursts, another can take its place. This has become the work of a strange alliance: nominally pro-Trump figures like Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon joining forces with liberal media outlets. Once shunned for their ties to Trump, Carlson and Bannon are now treated as credible and brave sources by publications eager to amplify stories that cast him in a damaging light.

The result: the enduring trope of a “MAGA base in revolt,” which entered the news cycle even as Trump was winning by a historic margin in 2024 and has never left. Notably, in light of factional skirmishing among right-wing elites, coverage of this supposed civil war relies less on field reporting than on breathless accounts built around overt partisan messaging and leaked quotes from anonymous administration officials.

On a single day in mid-June 2025, for instance, Politico ran one story touting “the MAGA split over Israel,” citing Tucker Carlson’s claim that Israel was dragging the United States into war with Iran, and another headlined: “MAGA Warned Trump on Iran. Now He’s in an Impossible Position.” In a lengthy post on X, Carlson warned that “the first week of a war with Iran could easily kill thousands of Americans.” He called a strike a “profound betrayal” that would end Trump’s presidency and predicted that the United States would lose to Iran’s supposedly superior military. Bannon said that military action would “tear the country apart.” His protégé Jack Posobiec asked followers what a new Middle East conflict would do to summer gas prices—after Carlson had already forecast $30-a-gallon fuel and a “collapse” of the U.S. economy.

To point out that these predictions were inaccurate is too generous. They functioned as threats, issued by the Carlson-Bannon faction and echoed by sympathizers within the administration, aimed at asserting a veto over the president’s policy. When Trump nevertheless ordered strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, his base overwhelmingly backed him. According to a CBS News /YouGov poll, 85 percent of Republicans supported the action, including 94 percent of self-identified “MAGA Republicans.”

Trump’s base faced its ultimate stress test this March, when the U.S. and Israel jointly launched a war against Iran. This time, Carlson, Bannon, and others moved past dire predictions into an open conflict with the president and his party. With the war underway, they were joined by former National Counterterrorism Center director Joe Kent, a decorated combat veteran, failed congressional candidate, and member of the Carlson media circle. Kent resigned from his post with a flamboyant open letter in which he blamed Israel for dragging America into the current war; for the death of his first wife, killed in Syria in 2019 by an Islamic State suicide bomber while deployed as a U.S. Naval officer; and for the U.S. decision to invade Iraq in 2003. Within hours of resigning, Kent embarked on a press junket that had clearly been coordinated beforehand. First stop: an interview with Carlson.

If the premonitions of civil war were valid, this was the moment when the simmering discontent on the Right should have erupted into a full-scale rejection of Trumpism. After all, Trump had betrayed his promise to end “stupid wars” in the Middle East. Yet even as a majority of Americans expressed disapproval of the war, the military action received overwhelming support from Republican voters and proved exceptionally popular with self-identified members of the MAGA base. One poll conducted by CBS News and YouGov between March 17 and March 20 found that 92 percent of MAGA Republicans supported the military action against Iran. Of course, pollsters are often wrong—but so are podcasters. If MAGA sentiments shift, a possibility that becomes more likely if ground forces are deployed in a protracted struggle, that would only confirm the truism that unsuccessful wars are unpopular.

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04/13 Links Pt1: How Israel Derangement Syndrome blinds media to basic Mideast facts; The Amalekite Terrorist Iranian Regime: Why deterrence failed in Islamabad

From Ian:

NYPost Editorial: How Israel Derangement Syndrome blinds media to basic Mideast facts

Western media remain utterly incoherent ahead of Tuesday’s Israeli-Lebanese talks in Washington because their Israel Derangement Syndrome renders them unable to acknowledge basic facts.

For starters, the Jewish state is not at war with Lebanon, but with Hezbollah, the terror group that occupies the country’s south and until recently had the government bullied into complete submission.

It’s a war Hezbollah started — most recently, ending a cease-fire by launching missiles at Israel in revenge for Jerusalem’s assaults on Iran in conjunction with Operation Epic Fury.

Israel is in the process of evicting Hezbollah from Lebanon south of the Litani River — as per the accords that ended the 2006 war, though neither the weak government nor the less-than-worthless UN peacekeeping force lifted a finger to make it happen.

Yet most analyses pretend the current Israeli offensive is about something else entirely:

“Did Israel attack Lebanon to spoil Iran war ceasefire?” asked The Guardian last week.

“What is Israel’s war in Lebanon, and why could it shatter the Iran ceasefire?” blared CNN.

Not only was that (obviously) never the point, it was never even a risk: That cease-fire hasn’t even ended as the US Navy blockades the Strait of Hormuz, because Tehran doesn’t dare let the bombing resume.

Plus, the Iran cease-fire deal never included Lebanon, as President Donald Trump made plain last week; Hezbollah and its patrons in Tehran just tried to pretend it did.

Seth Mandel: Which Yemen? Which Lebanon? Which Palestinians?

Israel and Lebanon are engaged in direct talks to resolve the conflict caused by Hezbollah. Iran and the U.S. are negotiating over Iran’s nuclear program and control of the Strait of Hormuz. Iran also, however, wants its talks with the U.S. to include Hezbollah’s fate in Lebanon. And yet no one seems to be struck by the obvious implications: Hezbollah is Iran, and Iran is demanding a degree of sovereignty for its own colony on someone else’s land.

Lebanon has a government. Nobody in the West disputes this. The Lebanese government, therefore, is the only one with a legitimate claim to negotiate over its own affairs of state. And yet somehow, Iran’s insistence that it also speaks for Lebanon because its illegal occupation forces remain on Lebanese territory hasn’t been laughed out of the room.

Iran plays this game of de-sovereignization all around the region, enabled at times by the West. But how to put Humpty Dumpty back together again now that the Islamic Republic has cracked up the Middle East? And does the West even have the desire to do so?

Lebanon is a pretty straightforward case compared to Iran’s other expansionist projects, and yet the West can’t even get this one right. For the past two and a half years, the region has been engulfed in the flames lit by Iran’s Palestinian client, Hamas. European leaders who recognized a “state of Palestine” did so precisely at the moment when Hamas emerged as the only Palestinian governing entity with control over its territory. The IDF has to undertake regular security sweeps in Ramallah, for example, just to ensure that Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas can enter one of the PA’s major West Bank towns.

“Recognition” was done to punish Israel rather than help Palestinians, which is why the only beneficiary was Hamas. Which means that even the countries that officially consider Abbas to be the only legitimate representative of the Palestinian polity have nonetheless boosted Hamas at the expense of the PA. Since Hamas is an extension of Iran, it is the criminal regime in Tehran that is being elevated as a voice of sovereignty on behalf of Palestinians. Iran is cannibalizing the dreamed-of “state of Palestine,” just as it has been doing to the actual, existing (for now) state of Lebanon.

One lesson of this, incidentally, is that any “state of Palestine” created at this moment would be created under Iranian occupation and would be divided from the start. Iran’s expulsion from future Palestinian territory, therefore, is a clear prerequisite for Palestinian self-determination.

Meanwhile: If Palestinian-governed enclaves are two not-yet-states, and Lebanon is in perpetual civil war between its government and Iran’s occupation forces, Yemen is a third kind of Iran-caused disaster. It is practically two states at the moment—though both are hanging by a thread.

No Deal, No Illusions By Abe Greenwald Via Commentary Newsletter, sign up here.

If Iran doesn’t cave to Trump’s maritime jiu-Jitsu—and it might not—it seems more likely than ever that the U.S. will start cratering known dual-use and underground infrastructure sites across Iran. This isn’t even close to a war crime. It’s a legitimate use of military power that we’ve witnessed many times, including in the Allies’ victory over the Axis Powers in World War II. Trump’s been reluctant to do it out of the reasonable hope that the U.S. could win with as little damage and as few Iranian deaths as possible. This hope is commendable, but the remnants of the Iranian regime are bent on extinguishing it.

Meanwhile, over the course of the war, our own anti-Trump politicians and media figures have tied themselves into knot after knot trying to explain the supposed mistakes, crimes, and miscalculations of the U.S. and Israel. They’ve all but bound themselves up in failed and contradictory arguments. We were losing; then the regime was losing but winning by existing. Trump was going to commit war crimes to destroy the regime; then he was chickening out with a cease-fire. Trump had no plan to open the Strait of Hormuz; now his plan to do so is too risky.

Congressman Ro Khanna has long been proffering my favorite brainteaser of the war. He claims simultaneously that the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei forbade the production of nuclear weapons and that Barack Obama’s deal with Iran had successfully prevented the regime from developing the nuclear weapons it sought. It’s no surprise that he’s now calling for Trump’s removal from office.

There’s not much else for the bad-faith critics to say.

Over the weekend, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman just came out and admitted that he was “torn” because, while he wanted to see the Iranian regime defeated, he didn’t want Donald Trump and Bibi Netanyahu to emerge victorious.

He’ll get over it.

The U.S. and Israel are not torn, neither as an alliance nor as individual fighting forces. They’re set on winning, the Iranian regime is cracking, and the antiwar crowd is cracking up.

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04/12 Links: Trump orders blockade of Strait of Hormuz; Defending Israel in an Age of Madness; A Palestinian Constitution of Contradictions: Democracy in Form, Exclusion in Substance

From Ian:

Amb. Michael Oren: Defending Israel in an Age of Madness

For the past 50 years, in capacities both official and voluntary, I have spent most of my time defending the State of Israel.

Standing up for Israel became especially daunting after Oct. 7, 2023, when the victims of a verifiable genocide were baselessly accused of perpetrating one.

Conspiracy theories once considered fringe had become mainstream, and age-old antisemitic tropes had resurfaced in a presumption of Jewish wickedness.

America's national derangement is virtually insurmountable for the defenders of Israel.

Though readily disproven, Israel's guilt for annihilating an entire people is today accepted by more than half of the general public.

Many favor Palestinian anti-American terrorists over America's only dependable, democratic, military ally.

For many decades, advocates for Israel and Zionism wielded the weapon of truth. We produced volumes of "myths and facts" about the conflict. But how should we react when rampant unreason is infused with antisemitism?

In this new, twisted American universe, Oct. 7 was a false flag operation in which Israel massacred and kidnapped its own people as a pretext for occupying Gaza, and ZAKA volunteers staged the rape scenes at the Nova Festival.

Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, the terrorist who drove his car into a Michigan synagogue, was portrayed by NPR as a gentle, otherwise law-abiding citizen with genuine grievances. The New York Times eulogized Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who butchered his own people.

Amid such bedlam, try to advance a logical argument about why Israelis, threatened by a regime sworn to annihilate us and industriously producing the means of doing so, might not want to sit passively until it strikes.

The classic antisemitic canard of the cunning Jew winding the unwitting gentile around his crooked finger has been embraced by most of the American press.

Yet we must continue to battle the madness - even if we can only dent it here and there.

We can reinforce those who remain moored in morality and believe in the need to defeat evil in the world.

Israel Today Faces Far Fewer Threats than It Did Before

After the ceasefire in Iran, Israel today faces far fewer significant threats than it did before. Iran, in turn, is considerably weaker than it was. While not all of the war's aims were achieved, enough was accomplished to significantly improve Israel's strategic position and security. The inability to remove all the enriched uranium or bring a conclusive end to the rule of the clerical regime in Tehran does not mean that the war has not fundamentally changed the regional reality. It has.

The War of Independence did not end with all of Israel's aspirations fulfilled. Before the war, the Jews did not have a state; afterward, they did. Some 6,000 people - out of a Jewish population of roughly 600,000 - were killed. There was no peace, only armistice agreements. The economy was in shambles. Yet the fundamental reality had changed.

Before Oct. 7, Iran was steadily advancing toward nuclear capability, building ballistic missiles at a fast clip, actively preparing and prepping its proxies for Israel's destruction. Today, Hizbullah and Hamas - the tentacles of the Iranian octopus - have been cut back sharply and the head of the octopus is stunned and battered. Is it a complete victory? No. But is it significant? Unquestionably.

Those arguing that nothing was achieved are, in effect, arguing that Iran will rebuild and rearm, resting on the flawed assumption that Israel will simply sit back and allow that to happen. But Israel has changed. The key lesson of Oct. 7 is that it is no longer possible to assume that those who openly declare their intent to destroy you will ultimately be restrained by your power. They will not, because their calculus is often shaped by ideological, religious, even messianic factors that lie outside conventional logic.

As a result, Israel's doctrine has shifted to actively preventing the enemy from building capabilities. Some argue that the war will only intensify Iran's drive for a nuclear program. That may be so. But Israel and the U.S. have a strong incentive to prevent Iran from doing so. Iran can rebuild its nuclear and military capacities only if they allow it. It is reasonable to assume that they will not.

Iran's claim of victory despite its tremendous losses is reminiscent of Egypt's victory claim after the 1973 Yom Kippur War - a war in which, by most objective military measures, Egypt lost.

Nobody in Israel Dreamed the Americans Would Join the Attack on Iran

Aryeh Deri interviewed by Amit Segal (Israel Hayom)

Shas party chairman Aryeh Deri, after Prime Minister Netanyahu, is the most veteran player on the Israeli political field, with experience across cabinets and governments for 38 years. He sat in the Security Cabinet sessions related to the Iran war.

Q: Did we win?

Deri: "Yes."

Q: A decisive victory?

Deri: "I don't understand the phrase 'decisive victory.' Did we go into this campaign facing a grave threat to the Jewish people, and thank God we pushed back that threat in a very significant way? Clearly yes."

"What did we want to stop all these years? Just the nuclear weapons story. We never dreamed we could strike inside Iran. So we started with Operation Rising Lion [June 2025], when our planes flew through Iranian skies and caused enormous damage and halted the race to nuclear weapons. That's true - they didn't eliminate everything, because the nuclear material was deep underground. But we neutralized most of their scientists, struck heavily at the entire weapons industry, and pushed them back months or years."

"They were already at a stage where they were starting to move their missile industry and their weapons industry underground, too. Within a few months, we would not have been able to do anything. Everyone talks about nuclear weapons, but the ballistic threat is no less dangerous - in some ways even greater - because you don't use nuclear weapons quickly, but ballistic missiles? Freely." "The IDF chief of staff and the Mossad director...asked...that the Americans give their consent and provide protection. Nobody dreamed the Americans would join the attack....I never dreamed the Americans would go with us for 38 days and drop close to 20,000 munitions there....I tell you again with full responsibility - Netanyahu did not say to Trump and to the American administration anything that, God forbid, we didn't believe to be true."

"The goal was to create conditions for the regime's fall, and I think we created those conditions. That's actually why I think the ceasefire is a blessing - there's a greater chance the regime will fall from within. Iran begged for a ceasefire."

Q: Aren't you worried about a growing sense in America that we dragged them into a war that wasn't theirs?

Deri: "That has nothing to do with Iran. We have a problem with the Democrats, and somewhat with some Republicans, too. But precisely because of that, this period with Trump in power is a major opportunity for Israel to cement its regional standing. In the end, the Americans - whatever administration - will understand that their real ally is us."

Who is Peter Magyar, the man who ended Orban's reign?

Orban portrayed Magyar as an envoy of the Brussels-based EU establishment and as a Ukrainian agent, to the point that at times it seemed his real rival was Volodymyr Zelenskyy rather than Magyar. Orban and his allies repeatedly claimed that Magyar would drag Hungary into the war in Ukraine, an issue that worries Hungarians in part because of the country's energy dependence on Russia. In the final stretch of the campaign, pro-government media circulated allegations that Magyar used drugs, prompting him to travel to Vienna for tests at an independent laboratory to disprove them. Earlier, in February, Magyar announced that Orbán's associates were planning to publish a secretly filmed sex tape of him.

Magyar's rise changed the face of the opposition. Left-wing and center-left parties withdrew from the race one after another so as not to split the anti-Orban vote and to give Magyar a chance. The election effectively became a contest between right and right. The scale of the victory is critical: a two-thirds majority in parliament would allow Magyar to amend the constitution shaped by Orbán over 16 years in power, while a narrow majority would leave his hands tied against state institutions Orbán has filled with his own loyalists.

Magyar's victory is expected to shift the balance of power in the European Union. Russia will lose one of its main assets on the continent. For years, Orban served as an almost automatic blocker of sanctions on Moscow and aid to Ukraine, and with Magyar's victory that automatic veto is expected to disappear. Magyar has promised pragmatic relations with Moscow, while at the same time reducing Hungary's energy dependence on Russia and aligning with EU positions.

The election is also especially critical for Israel. Under Orban, Hungary was Israel's closest friend in the European Union and repeatedly blocked anti-Israel initiatives in Brussels. Magyar, by contrast, maintained deliberate ambiguity throughout the campaign on anything related to Israel, and in Jerusalem the assumption is that even if he is not hostile, he will not clash with the European Union on Israel's behalf.

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