From Ian:
Ruthie Blum:
Bill Maher deserves praise, not gratitude, for telling the truth about Israel
For a full eight minutes, he let the hypocrites have it, highlighting the fact that “no one blinks” when an editor from the progressive magazine The American Prospect calls Israel a “brainwashed psychopathic death cult that might need to be nuked to save the human race.”
He then pointed out that Jew-bashing is the one thing that the left and right have in common these days, mentioning Tucker Carlson, on the one hand, and The New York Times, on the other. Though he failed to bring up the Gray Lady’s latest blood libel—penned by Pulitzer Prize-winner Nicholas Kristof, who printed the lunatic lie that Israel trains dogs to sodomize Palestinian prisoners—he did stress that ignoramuses on both sides of the spectrum see Israel as “the only country in the world doing anything bad.”
Yes, he said, taking a dig at the condition of education in the United States, “I see why the meathead manosphere and the Code Pink people are on the same page, because they both went to high school in America and they don’t know anything.”
Unfortunately, according to Maher, “Jew-hatred isn’t just acceptable now; it’s cool. Celebrities love it and make it trendy.”
Ditto concerning cowardly politicians, whom he chastised for “indulging, rather than correcting, their brainwashed-by-TikTok constituents who now have an unfavorable view of Israel,” and for “not telling their woke idiots that Israel isn’t a colonizer or an apartheid state or committing genocide.” Oh, and for not admonishing the younger generation, “If you brats had to spend a week anywhere in the Middle East other than Israel, you would understand what liberalism is not.”
The above are snippets of his lengthy rant, the rest of which was equally unflinching. Given the political, sociological and cultural climate he was describing so accurately, it’s not surprising that the clip exploded—shared widely on social media by pro-Israel influencers and broadcast on Israeli TV channels.
As worthy of praise as Maher might be for his wise and witty words, however, something is disturbing about the elation they elicited. It’s one thing to give credit to those brave enough to tell the truth about Israel and antisemitism. It’s quite another to be grateful for it.
Indeed, Jews shouldn’t need to treat intellectual honesty as heroism. Nor does it behoove us to grab any morsel of sympathy with the hunger of a hostage.
It’s the height of irony that we can fight fearlessly against enemies on the battlefield, yet recoil in the face of defamation and delegitimization—and bow at the feet of defenders like Maher.
László Nemes Says an “Orgy of Antisemitism” Is “Overtaking the West”
Legendary Hungarian filmmaker László Nemes has spoken plainly about “an orgy of antisemitism overtaking the West.”
In a new interview with The Guardian published on Monday, the acclaimed director discusses bringing his latest World War II venture — a biopic on the French resistance hero Jean Moulin — to the Cannes Film Festival, but much of the piece centers on what Nemes describes as a “puritan, moralising, self-righteousness” looming over Hollywood.
Nemes, who won an Oscar in 2016 for Son of Saul, begins by considering reaction to the award-winning film, as well as 2025’s Orphan. The former follows a day-and-a-half in the life of an Auschwitz concentration camp prisoner, while the latter is about a young Jewish boy’s search for his missing father, as he instead unveils the truth of his mother’s survival of the Holocaust.
Nemes tells the U.K. publication about Son of Saul‘s award success: “I don’t even think it would make the [Oscar] shortlist today. Because of the politicisation of cinema, because anything that’s Jewish is now considered… Nobody would touch it with a 10ft pole.”
Orphan, which he says was “ignored” at last year’s Venice Film Festival, failed to nab an Academy Award nod for best international feature, and has so far not landed a U.S. distribution deal: “You should be able to talk about these things without being ostracized,” he continues, saying he feels “a little bit” ostracized by the industry: “Even some response [to Orphan] from the media smells of an ideological standpoint.”
On widespread boycotts of Israeli film institutions — a pledge last year objecting to the war in Gaza featured names such as Olivia Colman, Ayo Edebiri, Mark Ruffalo, Yorgos Lanthimos, Emma Stone and 1,300 others — Nemes tells The Guardian that he believes it to be “anti-humanist regression.”
He adds: “Because it’s not identified as this, I think it’s very effective at spreading. And one of its very potent vectors has been antisemitism… The Jew has always been [cast as] the sort of internal enemy, and I think now [the idea of] the Jew as the internal enemy of the West has reached the dimensions of European antisemitism before the takeover by the National Socialist [Nazi] party.” When asked by journalist Jonathan Freedland if he thinks antisemitism is now at its worst since Nazi Germany, Nemes responds: “I think it’s getting there.”
He describes it as an “obsession with Jews” and says, referring to Orphan‘s struggle to find a distributor, “People [would] ask me about Gaza, instead of, you know, asking about the movie. [They ask] if I signed this or that petition.”
New York Times Blames Jews For Antisemitism—In Obituary of ADL Chief Abe Foxman
The New York Times used its obituary of the longtime national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, to promote the false narrative that Israel’s own actions in Gaza have worsened antisemitism.
The Times claims that "bigoted attitudes worldwide only mushroomed as a result of Israel’s response to a Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023, that killed more than 1,200 Israeli civilians and soldiers."
It went on, "The Palestinian death toll of more than 60,000 and videos broadcast worldwide of the destruction of Gaza’s buildings and of starving children set off a shift in American public opinion, with more Americans siding with the Palestinians. There was also an upsurge in antisemitic incidents."
Blaming Jewish behavior, rather than antisemites, for antisemitic incidents and attitudes is textbook antisemitism. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism includes among its possible examples of antisemitism, "Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible … even for acts committed by non-Jews." The Times passage meets at least two elements of former Soviet refusenik and former Israeli deputy prime minister Natan Sharansky’s "three Ds" definition of antisemitism—demonization and double standards, if not delegitimization.
In addition, it’s not even accurate that the Israeli self-defense actions, which involved killing Hamas terrorists and imposing pressure that ultimately led to the release of hundreds of live and dead hostages being held by Hamas, created the antisemitism or even any public opinion shift against Israel. The "shift in American public opinion," overstated though it has been, to the extent that it exists at all, has been driven not by Israeli actions but global trends of secularization, a rise in militant Islam, and by an intense international social media and propaganda campaign by outlets and platforms of foreign governments, individuals, and organizations—Qatar, Turkey, China, Iran. The timing predated Israel’s post-October 7 actions in Gaza, as evidenced by a former editor of The New Republic, Peter Beinart, publicly abandoning Zionism in July of 2020, by the Harvard Crimson in 2022 editorially endorsing a boycott of Israel, by the Harvard student organizations that came out with their letter on October 7, 2023, stating, "We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence" and "the apartheid regime is the only one to blame."
From Ian:
Meir Y. Soloveichik:
The Unknown Messenger
‘The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” These words conclude George Eliot’s novel Middlemarch and are considered by many to comprise one of the finest conclusions to any work of literature. Eliot’s point is that while many dream of being linked to important achievements (as do the characters in Middlemarch), it is often the good deed done out of duty that truly lends moral significance to one’s life.
With this in mind, we may examine one story of an unhistoric act of kindness. Indeed, one might say that this act is so unhistoric, we do not know to this day the name of the person who performed it. Yet that act is also, in a sense, profoundly linked to a newsworthy event of the last month.
In the 1940s, George Deek, a member of a large Christian Arab family, worked at an electricity company in Jaffa, where his family had lived for generations. He was friendly with his Jewish co-workers and even learned how to speak Yiddish from them. Then, in 1948, as the Jewish state came into being, he was informed by Arab leaders that his family should flee. He was told that if they remained, they would be massacred by the Jews, and that only several days would be needed to crush the nascent state. George and many of his siblings fled to Lebanon, and from there throughout the world. Today, there are descendants of George’s siblings who are still considered refugees by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and who, like other Palestinians, are denied the rights of citizenship in Arab countries in which they have been living for generations.
In 2014, a young Israeli diplomat, speaking in Norway, where he was posted, delivered a speech in accented but eloquent English about how Palestinians were persecuted—in Arab countries. Whereas the descendants of refugees in any Western country would long ago have acquired citizenship, “in the Arab world, the Palestinian refugees—including their children, their grandchildren, and their great-grandchildren—are still not settled.” They are “aggressively discriminated against, and in most cases denied citizenship and basic human rights…. The collaborators in this crime are no other than the international community and the United Nations.” In contrast to the way other refugees were treated, he argued, Palestinians were clearly being forced to suffer in these Arab countries in order to weaponize their situation against Israel:
Rather than doing its job and help the refugees build a life, the international community is feeding the narrative of the victimhood. While there is one U.N. agency in charge of all refugees in the world—the UNHCR, another agency was established to deal only with the Palestinian ones—UNRWA. This is no coincidence—while the goal of the UNHCR is to help refugees establish a new home, establish a future and end their status as refugees, the goal of UNRWA is opposite: to preserve their status as refugees, and prevent them from being able to start new lives.… In fact, Israel was one of the few countries that automatically gave full citizenship and equality for all Palestinians in it after ’48. And we see the results: despite all the challenges, the Arab citizens of Israel built a future. Israeli Arabs are the most educated Arabs in the world, with the best living standards and opportunities in the region.
This speech is posted to YouTube under the title “The best speech an Israeli diplomat ever held” and has hundreds of thousands of views. The name of the ambassador who delivered it is…George Deek, grandson of the aforementioned George Deek, who has made a career as an Israeli diplomat and recently served as Israel’s ambassador to Azerbaijan, the first Arab Christian to hold such a position.
The Perversion of Martyrdom
Modern Islamist movements have learned to operate inside this framework. They present themselves as the powerless while pursuing a theology entirely about power: the establishment of the ummah, the recovery of historic Islamic sovereignty. They engage in martial martyrdom while being coded by the Western host as passive victims. The host’s immune system extends its protection to a force that does not believe in weakness as a permanent condition, only as a temporary embarrassment on the road to victory.
This is why so many on the Western left find themselves sympathizing with Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Iranian regime. By any progressive criterion—women’s rights, pluralism, freedom of conscience—these movements are reactionary to the marrow. But they are the victims of Western power. And in the secularized Christian martyrology that now dominates elite culture, that is sufficient.
Yehuda Halevi would have named this instantly. In the Kuzari, he distinguishes between suffering that purifies and suffering that merely accumulates bitterness—resentment without refinement. A truth claim that depends entirely on who is suffering, with no reference to what is being suffered for, is not a theology. It is resentment in vestments.
The early Christian martyrs died rather than worship the Roman emperor. They died for the proposition that there is an authority above Caesar. That proposition is the theological root of every liberal freedom the West currently enjoys. Now the secular heirs of this tradition are carrying placards for movements that execute people for apostasy—movements that would reinstate the very condition against which the martyrs died. The formal structure of the martyrology survives. The content has been discarded. When you remove the content from a martyrology, you do not get neutrality. You get a form available for any content. And the content that has filled it is not liberation. It is the oldest thing in the world: the strong man who claims to speak for the weak.
Pikuach nefesh—the near-absolute sanctity of human life—means that the Talmud suspends virtually every commandment to save a life. The martyrdom principle is the exception, not the rule. The Jew is not supposed to want to die. He is supposed to want to live: ve-chai bahem—and you shall live by them, not die by them.
When death becomes necessary, the martyr does not kill others, does not romanticize his death, and does not expect to win. Maimonides is explicit: One who could have found a legal workaround and chose martyrdom instead is not praiseworthy but irresponsible.
Perpetua walked into the arena in 203 C.E. She did not take anyone with her. The structure of her death—the vertical death, the death that preserved something rather than destroyed something, the death between herself and God—is still legible.
The Islamic martyr dies to conquer.
The Western campus radical taking the form of Christian submissiveness without the content performs his suffering to accumulate moral capital.
The Jewish martyr dies to preserve the integrity of a law he believes is worth more than his life, while refusing, structurally and legally, to impose that cost on anyone else.
Alan Baker:
‘Settler violence’: A buzzword used to single out Israel
Violence by hooligan groups, religious factions, political mobs, or any other group is illegal, cannot be excused, and must be condemned and punished under the law. That is a basic norm of any civilized society. It applies whether the perpetrators are politically motivated youth, religious extremists, sports hooligans, or demonstrators.
Yet when violence is linked to Israel, there is a troubling tendency to generalize isolated incidents and recast them as proof of an official, state-sanctioned policy. In that context, the phrase “settler violence” has gained currency. It is often used not simply to describe criminal acts by individuals but to suggest that Israel as a state encourages or condones violence against Palestinians. That is a misleading claim.
There is no Israeli policy that authorizes or promotes violence against Arabs. Such conduct is illegal in Israel, just as it is elsewhere, and law-enforcement authorities are expected to act against it. If enforcement is weak or inconsistent, that may justify criticism of the authorities. But lax enforcement is not the same thing as an official policy of sanctioning violence. To use the term “settler violence” as though it describes an Israeli government practice is therefore inaccurate and unfair.
Discussing violence in Israel
A wider problem is the readiness to attach loaded buzzwords to Israel in ways that amplify hostility and misrepresent facts. Terms such as “genocide,” “apartheid,” “colonialism,” “illegal occupation,” “mass starvation,” and “indiscriminate violence” are often repeated as if they were settled descriptions, even when the legal and factual basis is contested. Such language can be effective rhetorically, but it also distorts public understanding by imposing inflammatory labels on complex realities.
This pattern is especially visible when comparing how violence is discussed in relation to Israel versus other societies. Around the world, football hooliganism causes assault, property damage, riots, injuries, and deaths. It has occurred in countries across Europe, South America, North America, Africa, and elsewhere.
Major political demonstrations and marches in Western capitals also sometimes turn violent, with attacks on police, damage to public property, and assaults on symbols or institutions. Yet these incidents are not typically used to brand entire countries as officially sponsoring “sports violence” or “demonstration violence.”
That contrast matters. The problem is not that violence elsewhere is ignored; it is condemned, as it should be. The problem is the double standard applied to Israel, where sporadic criminal acts by fringe groups are presented as though they reflect a national doctrine. That framing is not only misleading; it also suggests a selective moral outrage that is directed at Israel in a way not applied to others.
From Ian:
John Spencer:
Absurd Claims of Dog Rape and Genocide
I see a correlation between those who believe absurd claims like dogs were trained to rape Palestinians and those who insist Israel committed genocide in Gaza.
Both claims collapse under scrutiny and under mountains of contrary evidence. One ignores biology and basic science, including the reality that dogs cannot rape humans in the way being alleged. The other disregards the legal definition of genocide, which requires demonstrable intent to destroy a people as such. That accusation runs directly against repeated public statements by Israeli political and military leaders after October 7 that the war was against Hamas, not the people of Gaza. It also requires evidence of actions taken to fulfill genocidal intent. Instead, the easily obtained facts show Israel facilitating historic aid deliveries, establishing evacuation corridors, warning civilians before operations, moving populations from combat zones, numerous other civilian harm mitigation measures, and even vaccinating Gaza’s population during active combat under conditions no military has ever faced.
The accusation also collides with another uncomfortable reality. Even critics of Israel’s military campaign have acknowledged civilian-to-combatant casualty ratios that are historically low for dense urban warfare against an entrenched enemy operating from within civilian areas. Using even Hamas-led Gaza Health Ministry figures, the available numbers suggest ratios somewhere between roughly 1.5:1 and 1:1 depending on the methodology used. Those figures compare favorably to many major urban battles and wars, including Manila, Seoul, Mosul, the Iraq War, and the Korean War just to name a few of many.
None of this removes the tragedy of civilian death. War remains brutal even when fought within the law. Yet casualty figures of this kind directly undermine the assertion that Israel’s campaign reflects an organized effort to destroy the Palestinian people.
Public debate around war increasingly turns statistics into instruments of persuasion rather than tools of understanding. Numbers are pushed into headlines before definitions are clarified. Casualty counts circulate globally detached from methodology, sourcing, combatant status, age distributions, or the conditions under which the data was collected. Large numbers create emotional reactions on their own. Most audiences have little ability to independently evaluate how those figures were generated or whether the institutions producing them have political incentives embedded within the process.
Sociologists who study statistics have long recognized that numbers are social products shaped by the organizations and people who produce them. Activists use statistics to elevate causes. Governments use them to defend policy. Media institutions amplify the figures that generate the strongest emotional response and reinforce existing narratives. In wartime, numbers often become ammunition. Selective statistics gain power through repetition long before they survive rigorous scrutiny. Figures themselves do not lie, but people routinely use figures dishonestly. As the old saying goes, “Figures don’t lie, but liars figure.”
The genocide accusation survives largely because many people begin with the conclusion and work backward from it. Evidence that contradicts the accusation is ignored, minimized, or reframed. Actions that would normally weigh against genocidal intent are treated as irrelevant. Legal definitions become elastic only in Israel’s case. Standards applied to every other military confronting enemies that openly disregard the laws of armed conflict, deliberately embed within civilian populations, and treat civilian suffering as a strategic asset often disappear when Israel is involved.
That dynamic resembles what Natan Sharansky describes as the “3Ds” that distinguish legitimate criticism of Israel from antisemitism: Demonization, Double Standards, and Delegitimization.
One of the major double standards applied to Israel is the way the laws of armed conflict are removed from their actual legal framework and replaced with emotional accounting built almost entirely around casualty numbers. Civilian deaths are presented without operational context, without discussion of the target, the enemy’s tactics, the precautions taken, or what commanders reasonably understood when the action or strike was approved or taken. The numbers themselves become treated as proof of illegality.
The law of armed conflict does not function that way. Military decisions are judged based on what commanders reasonably knew before an operation or action occurred, not through hindsight after the outcome is already known. Legal analysis examines whether the target was a lawful military objective, whether commanders conducted a proportionality assessment to determine that the anticipated civilian harm would not be excessive compared to the concrete and direct military advantage expected from the attack, and whether feasible precautions were taken to mitigate civilian harm under the circumstances at the time.
Much of the public discussion surrounding Gaza reverses that process entirely. Casualty figures are frequently treated as the beginning and end of legal judgment. Civilian deaths become automatic evidence of criminality regardless of the military objective, warnings issued, evacuation measures attempted, intelligence available at the time, the reliability of assessments distinguishing civilians from those actively participating in hostilities, or the enemy’s deliberate integration into civilian infrastructure. Hamas’s use of homes, schools, mosques, hospitals, tunnel systems, and dense residential areas for military purposes is often pushed to the margins of the discussion even though it shaped nearly every operational decision Israel faced.
Jonathan Turley:
Why Israel’s lawsuit against Times over ‘blood libel’ has a chance
Does the “Gray Lady” have a “longstanding Jewish problem“?
That question may soon be answered in a Manhattan courtroom as the New York Times stands accused of an alleged attack piece on Israel. This week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he would sue the paper and columnist Nicholas Kristof for defamation over the publication of what he called a “blood libel.”
The latest controversy emerged after the Times ran a Kristof column alleging widespread sexual abuse and torture of Palestinians, including the use of dogs to rape prisoners. The government denounced the column as “one of the most hideous and distorted lies ever published against the State of Israel in the modern press.”
The Israelis allege that the column was intentionally posted ahead of the release of an independent Israeli report that found Hamas had systematically used sexual violence in the onslaught of October 7, 2023.
It is unclear whether the lawsuit will be filed on behalf of individuals, groups, or the nation as a whole. Regardless of the framing, the defamation action could allow Israel to delve into the paper’s journalistic practices and alleged bias.
Under the higher “actual malice standard,” Israeli counsel would likely need to prove that Kristof and the Times acted with knowledge of the allegation’s falsity or in reckless disregard of the truth.
The Times has been accused of such malice for years. A newspaper with an overwhelmingly Democratic and liberal readership, critics have accused the paper of pandering to its increasingly anti-Israeli base.
According to recent polls, two-thirds of Democrats (67%) now support Palestinians over Israel (17%).
The newspaper has been repeatedly called out for slanted and sometimes false reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts. For example, after Israel attacked Gaza in response to the October 7th massacre, the Times reported on an alleged Israeli strike that destroyed part of the Al-Ahli hospital. The Times seemed to rush to get the allegation into print, with little supporting evidence.
The story was based on sources associated with the terrorist group Hamas, which is notorious for disseminating propaganda and false stories. It took a week before the Times retracted the claim. (It turned out to be a misfired Palestinian rocket that hit a parking lot).
The Times has been forced to make a series of retractions and apologies for such coverage. After the newspaper ran a column that it later admitted was antisemitic, Times columnist Bret Stephens wrote that “The Times has a longstanding Jewish problem … continuing into the present day in the form of intensely adversarial coverage of Israel.”
In May 2021, a front-page story contained multiple factual errors and biased elements, including the portrayal of a Hamas militant as a civilian child. It also used a stock image of a girl to claim that she was a dead Palestinian child.
New Report Warns WHO Health-Attack Data Is Being Weaponized Against Israel
A May 2026 policy paper by the Center for Medical Integrity argues that the World Health Organization’s Surveillance System for Attacks on Health Care is being used in international forums in ways that turn a public-health monitoring tool into a political instrument against Israel. The report says SSA collapses analytically distinct categories of incidents under the single label “attacks on health care,” allowing obstruction, intimidation, and direct violence to be cited together without the legal context needed to assess culpability.
The issue matters now because Gaza hospital cases remain central to diplomatic, legal, and media narratives about the war, while evidence and intelligence assessments regarding Hamas and PIJ exploitation of medical infrastructure are often treated as secondary or omitted altogether.
A Broad Database With a Loaded Label
The report explains that WHO defines an attack on health care as “any act” of verbal or physical violence, obstruction, or threat that interferes with health services during emergencies. Its own examples include heavy-weapons violence, psychological intimidation, obstruction to care, armed searches, denial of services, and “militarization of health care facility.”
That breadth may make sense for emergency monitoring. But CMI argues the word “attack” gives operational data the appearance of a legal finding. WHO has also acknowledged that both high-impact events, such as bombings, and lower-impact incidents, such as verbal threats, are included in the same framework.
The concern, CMI argues, is not merely semantic. Under WHO’s SSA methodology, certainty levels indicate confidence that an incident occurred, but they do not resolve disputed questions about perpetrator identity, legal culpability, intent, proportionality, or whether a facility had previously been used for military purposes. WHO separately says it does not collect or verify perpetrator information and that its objective is to raise awareness of attacks on health care, not to pursue accountability.
How Counts Become Accusations
The sharpest allegation in the report concerns the way WHO-linked data travels through international institutions. According to CMI, at WHO’s 158th Executive Board session in February 2026, WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean regional office cited SSA data to claim that “almost 1,000 people” had been killed in documented attacks by Israel, with nearly half that figure deriving from the disputed October 2023 Al-Ahli Hospital explosion.
CMI’s broader concern is that WHO-linked health data can omit battlefield context relevant to legal assessment. U.S. officials said in November 2023 that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad used Al-Shifa Hospital and tunnels beneath it to support military operations and hold hostages. A later declassified U.S. assessment, reported by AP, said American intelligence was confident the groups used the Al-Shifa complex to house command infrastructure, exercise command-and-control activity, store some weapons, and hold at least a few hostages.
Human Rights Watch later found that the Al-Ahli blast resulted from an apparent rocket-propelled munition of a type used by Palestinian terror groups, while saying a full investigation was still needed. HRW also said it could not corroborate the Gaza Health Ministry’s reported death toll of 471, calling it significantly higher than other estimates and out of proportion with visible damage.
The case illustrates the report’s central warning: an early battlefield claim can enter a health database, continue circulating with institutional authority, and later be folded into diplomatic accusations against Israel even after key facts are contested.
Israel itself told WHO’s Executive Board that the body was in “dire need of reform” and accused the session of fueling “yet another politicized discussion” while ignoring facts on the ground.
From Ian:
Why does Jerusalem belongs to the Jews? Because history says so
Facts do not cease to exist simply because anti-Israel ideologues seek to erase them.
Nor should anyone forget what happened when Jerusalem was divided between 1948 and 1967 under Jordanian rule.
During those 19 years, Jews were completely barred from accessing the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, despite explicit guarantees in the 1949 armistice agreements. Fifty-eight synagogues in the Jewish Quarter were destroyed or damaged by the Jordanians. Ancient gravestones on the Mount of Olives, some dating back centuries, were desecrated and used for roads, military camps, and even latrines.
The city’s reunification in 1967 ended 19 years of Jordanian control of eastern Jerusalem, with the Hashemite Kingdom’s annexation having been recognized by only two countries.
Yet, somehow it is Israel that now stands accused of restricting religious freedom.
The truth is precisely the opposite.
Since reunifying Jerusalem in June 1967, after Jordan joined the Six Day War, Israel has safeguarded access to holy sites for all faiths. Muslims pray freely at al-Aqsa Mosque. Christians maintain churches and institutions throughout the city. Jerusalem, under Israeli sovereignty, has become one of the few cities in the Middle East where Jews, Christians, and Muslims all have genuine religious freedom protected by law.
The city itself reflects that vitality.
Today, Jerusalem is home to nearly one million residents, making it Israel’s largest city. It boasts well over 1,000 synagogues, hundreds of churches, and dozens of mosques. It is the seat of Israel’s parliament, Supreme Court, and national institutions. It is a living, thriving capital, not a relic of ancient memory.
And that is ultimately what Jerusalem Day represents.
It is not merely the anniversary of a military victory. It is the celebration of an ancient people returning to its historic heart after centuries of dispersion and longing.
When Israeli paratroopers reached the Western Wall in June 1967, commander Motta Gur famously declared, “The Temple Mount is in our hands.” At that moment, Jewish history came full circle.
Jerusalem was not conquered in 1967. It was liberated and reclaimed.
At a time when lies about Israel spread with alarming speed across campuses, social media, and international forums, it is more important than ever to stand unapologetically for truth.
Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people because history says so. Archaeology says so. Demography says so. And 3,000 years of uninterrupted Jewish memory say so.
The facts are there for anyone willing to see them.
The Covenant and the Wooden Box
Jews in Britain are not a peripheral concern of that threat. They are a primary one. Jewish faith schools in north London closed their doors in October 2023, citing security fears. The phrase “Globalize the intifada” is chanted openly at marches through the capital, month after month, without prosecution. After two men were killed at the Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester in October 2025, the prime minister told the House of Commons that anti-Semitism was not a new hatred, that Jewish buildings, Jewish lives, and Jewish children required extra protection, and that he would do everything in his power to guarantee their safety. Then he did next to nothing. The IRGC remained unproscribed. The marches continued. The files stayed closed.
On April 29, 2026, as Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, sat in Madrid discussing Gaza with the Spanish prime minister, a man ran along Golders Green Road armed with a knife, hunting Jews. He stabbed two—a man of 34 and a man of 76. He had been referred to Prevent—the government’s counterterrorism program designed to identify and steer individuals away from radicalization—in 2020. His file was closed the same year. The prime minister visited Golders Green the day following the attack and was met with chants of “Keir Starmer Jew Harmer.”
“Anti-Semitism is an old, old hatred,” Starmer said. “History shows that if you turn away, it grows back.” He was right. Perhaps this time the words will be followed by action, but the word “perhaps” is doing a lot of work here. The record does not encourage hope. And the record matters because of what it confirms: This was not managed ignorance—the filed report, the averted gaze, the truth quietly administered out of existence. It showed something much worse: explicit knowledge, explicit condemnation, explicit promise—and then nothing.
This is the strategic cost—the final destination of the managerial habit that brought about the auction listing for Nelson Street and the conduct of council offices of Rotherham, that wound through the corridors of Broadcasting House, arrived at the gilded antechambers of Buckingham Palace, and came, finally, to the streets of Golders Green. Writing in The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt argues that the decline of the nation-state and the loss of political self-knowledge were not merely cultural tragedies but the preconditions for totalitarian penetration. A society that cannot know itself cannot defend even its most vulnerable children. Britain has not produced totalitarianism. But it has produced, with patient institutional thoroughness, exactly the condition Arendt identified as its precursor: a governing class that has lost the will to know what it is, what it values, and what it owes to those in its care. The Chinese Communist Party understands this with the clarity of a predator that has studied its prey. It targets the gap between what British institutions know and what they have decided, for reasons of procedural calm, to pretend they do not know. That gap—patiently widened over decades by a managerial class that chose comfort over conscience—is now a strategic aperture through which a hostile foreign power has walked into the heart of the British establishment.
Americans reading this would be wise to resist the comfortable assumption that what is described here is a foreign pathology—a peculiarly British failure of nerve from which the New World is naturally immune. It is not. The pipeline that rewards ideological conformity with credentials and institutional authority operates on both sides of the Atlantic. The universities that incubated the assumptions that made Rotherham possible sent their graduates into British newsrooms, council offices, and police commands; their American counterparts sent theirs into the FBI, the Department of Justice, the prestige press, and the administrative apparatus of every major American city. The same spirit of iconoclasm that came for Churchill’s statue came for Washington’s and Jefferson’s, too—pulled down by crowds in Portland in 2020 while city administrators placed them in storage and commissioned reports on whether they deserved to stand at all. A committee reporting to the mayor of Washington, D.C., formally recommended removing or relocating the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial.
The same willingness to brand truth-tellers as extremists—which destroyed Sarah Champion’s career for stating the obvious about Rotherham—was visible in the treatment of every American official, journalist, or academic who raised questions that the managerial consensus had decided were impermissible. Britain did not fail because it was uniquely weak. It failed because its governing class lost the will to know itself—and the consequences of that loss, once set in motion, proved impossible to contain. America’s governing class is further along that same road than it yet knows. The wooden box, in America, has not yet been built. But the administrators who would build it, if asked, are already at their post. The question is not whether it is being constructed. It is whether enough people—in Britain and in America—will recognize the lumber being assembled before all the nails go in.
In the summer of 1940, when every counsel of prudence pointed toward negotiation, one man looked into the abyss and refused to blink. He had spent decades preparing for that moment, honoring a covenant older than the war itself: declaring his support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, fighting the White Paper that would have closed Palestine’s gates to Jews fleeing extermination, prosecuting at the cost of everything the war against the regime whose explicit purpose was to end Jewish life in Europe. He understood that the Lord deals with the nations as the nations deal with the Jews—that England’s fate and the fate of the Jewish people were bound together in a moral order that transcended any government or generation. That conviction did not make him perfect. It made him, at the moment of maximum cost, faithful. He turned down a dukedom.
Those who have inherited stewardship of the covenant—the politicians, police, and civil servants—are failing it right now, if not betraying it outright, in the streets of Golders Green, in the halls of Parliament, in the lecture halls and council offices and police commands where the custodians made the same choice—managed truth over honest reckoning. What remains of that moral order, in the hands of those now charged with keeping it, is not easy to say. It endures—but not in the institutions, which have failed it, or in the bronze, which has been spray-painted, or for much longer in the synagogue, which has all but been sold. It endures in Leon Silver, who could not bear to let go of a building half a mile from where he was born.
It endures in Henry Glanz, who blew the shofar every year for the children who never reached England. It endures in Sarah Champion, who said the plain thing and paid the price for it. “The outside is very plain,” Leon Silver said of the building constructed from its first brick to be a synagogue but that’s now being stolen away to become a symbol of Islam’s triumph over Britain’s Jewry. “But people say the inside is beautiful, which I think so too.” The moral truth Silver might not even have known he was echoing with his words—“the inside is beautiful”—endures in everyone who has named what the governing class could not bring itself to name and everyone who refused to look away from what the governing class chose not to see. The moral truth endures—because covenants of that depth do not dissolve when institutions fail them. They wait.
Nicole Lampert:
Why doesn’t Starmer make a video warning about far-Left hate marches?
On Friday night, Sir Keir Starmer took time out of being knifed by his Labour colleagues to warn of an impending threat in a statement posted on social media. He couldn’t have looked more serious; the sinews of his neck were taut. He used his hands in his best headmaster mode to drum home his points.
Soft music, with just a hint of menace, played in the background.
There was going to be a march in London, he warned, organised by people who were “peddling hatred and division, plain and simple”. The march, he added, was “a reminder of what we are up against in a battle of our values”.
Writing on X Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy, also emphasised the danger of this march, warning, “if protest turns violent, we will act swiftly, with extra court capacity in place.”
Hallelujah! Could it really be that our political leaders had, after the stabbings in Golders Green, the arson on synagogues and Jewish ambulances, the deadly attack in Manchester, finally woken up to the horror of the “pro-Palestine” hate marches and the anti-Semitic, violent, pro-terrorist, genocidal rhetoric they endorsed?
Of course not.
They were talking about the march with the Union flags, not the ones with flags of Palestine and the Islamic Republic of Iran. If you want to know just how upside down our world has become, we need to look at today: which march was deemed hateful and which one they tried to ignore.
From Ian:
Victor Davis Hanson:
The Four Horsemen of the New Antisemitism
Few predicted that blaming Israel and the Jews who support it would flare up in the early 21st century—and in America of all places, where there are nearly as many Jews as there are in Israel.
After all, Israel is the only consensual society in the Middle East. It holds regular elections and maintains tripartite judicial, executive, and legislative checks and balances.
Free speech is found in the Middle East only in Israel, where religious apostasy, criticism of one’s own country, gender equity, and tolerance of gays are guaranteed in marked contrast to all its neighbors.
It was once common knowledge that Israel had survived the huge numbers of its enemies because its tiny population was better educated, freer, more adept at Western technology, more tolerant of dissent—and because it enjoyed the goodwill and bipartisan support of the United States.
True, the recent affluence of the Gulf States has presented a thin veneer of Westernism that has fooled many in the new anti-Israel media. But just because Qatar did not censor a celebrity newsman’s broadcast from Doha does not mean Qatar is a free society. After all, no Western journalist would dare schedule a broadcast from Qatar with a Qatari who had condemned the regime for its intolerance or announced his religious apostasy from Islam.
So why and how did millions of Americans begin to express hatred for Israel and, albeit more subtly, the Jews who support it?
There are four converging fronts in this perfect storm.
Seth Mandel:
Can Jewish Democrats Still Save Their Party?
It’s something. But it might be both too little and too late. The time it has taken Democratic Jewish figures to come around to the need to fight anti-Semitism within their own tent has left them forever playing catchup. Worse, it has enabled the rise of the very candidates Soifer now claims to be concerned about.
Additionally, Republicans have on occasion urged voters to back the Democrat in general-election races if the Republican nominee is truly unacceptable. There is no sign any Democrats of influence would follow the same path. Staying neutral is the most backbone they’ll show at this point.
And the party isn’t at all swayed by JDCA finally showing a bit of hesitation about a Democrat. Platner’s name was raised at the conference by Simon Rosenberg, a Jewish Democratic strategist. His position on Platner: “The Maine party is excited, ready to go, and we’re all going to be along the Platner train in a few weeks.”
According to JTA, the “big tent” argument seems to be the main excuse being deployed to convince Democratic Jews to go along to get along: “Ami Fields-Meyer, a former Biden White House adviser who spoke more critically of Israel than most of the summit’s speakers, did not weigh in on Platner specifically. But he echoed Rosenberg’s call for building coalitions that include ‘people we don’t agree with,’ and advocated for the Democratic Party and Jewish community to embrace a wider range of viewpoints on Israel.”
It should go without saying that if Jewish Democrats aren’t going to resist having extremist anti-Semites representing their party, then virtually no one will. If that’s the case, the battle has already been lost.
Karol Markowicz:
Face it, Jewish liberals: You have no friends on the left
Where is the outcry from liberal Jews, saying they’ll never read that slop again?
Or from their absent friends, saying they won’t allow vicious lies like that to be spread?
This is not a both-sides issue.
Only one half of our political divide is standing in silence.
On the right this week, non-Jewish influencers, podcasters and politicians have been pushing back on the lies and the violence targeting Jews.
CNN commentator Scott Jennings called the Times piece “a journalistic atrocity that I actually feel stupid reading out loud” and said everyone involved should be fired.
Radio host Buck Sexton, after reading the Civil Commission’s report: “Given the demonic realities of Oct. 7, Israel acted with considerable restraint in its Gaza campaign, and should be commended for it.”
Harmeet Dhillon of the US Department of Justice tweeted video from the Brooklyn riot and promised to “collect evidence and analyze potential charges.”
And sure, there are antisemites nominally on the political right, Tucker Carlson infamously among them.
But so many non-Jews in the conservative world — President Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), commentator Victor Davis Hanson and a host of others — have lined up against Carlson’s foul suggestions that his influence on that side of the aisle is sinking like a stone.
That’s just a tiny sample of voices on the right speaking up for Jews, regularly and often.
Who on the left is doing the same?
This week’s silence should be humiliating.
It should be clarifying.
It should, at last, wake up those Jews on the left who care at all about self-preservation — or that of their children.
It’s long past time to leave this one-sided alliance behind.
From Ian:
Jason Greenblatt:
After the Ayatollah
What exists now in Tehran is a set of overlapping factions: Mojtaba at the apex on paper, the IRGC running operations, the Supreme National Security Council coordinating, the Foreign Ministry providing the diplomatic interface. The wartime succession has made the fragmentation deeper and not legible from the outside, or from within Iran itself. There is also a possibility worth naming directly: Mojtaba was elevated precisely because he could preserve continuity while remaining beholden to, possibly controlled by, possibly entirely subservient to, the security establishment that installed him. There is a harder possibility still that cannot be ruled out: Whether he is alive and functioning at all remains genuinely uncertain.
When Iran’s foreign minister signs an agreement, the question is not only whether he intends or has the power to honor it. It is also whether that signature binds the IRGC commander who controls the nuclear facilities. Whether it binds the Quds Force officer managing proxy networks. Whether it binds the engineers at the enrichment sites who may answer to a chain of command that runs through the Guards, not through the Foreign Ministry. The JCPOA, negotiated when Iran had a functioning and consolidated supreme leader, was still contested inside the IRGC from day one. The hard-liners who opposed it moved to dismantle its constraints the moment political cover appeared. That was the counterparty problem with a strong leader in place. The counterparty problem now is structurally more severe.
Trump did not inherit this negotiating position. He built it through sustained military and economic pressure that degraded Iranian capabilities to a degree no previous administration achieved. Israel’s military operations were indispensable to that result. He arrives at the table with more leverage than any American president has held on this issue since the revolution.
The problem is that leverage is only as durable as the pressure sustaining it, and a deal is only as durable as the authority of the party committing to it. Whether Iran currently has a supreme leader who can make the system honor a commitment, or whether what exists is a set of competing factions that could fracture the moment pressure lifts or internal power dynamics shift, is genuinely unclear.
That is not a reason to walk away from negotiations. It is a reason to build any agreement on the assumption that the counterparty may not hold. Verification cannot depend on good faith. Enforcement cannot require a trip to the U.N. Security Council, where some have historically shielded Tehran from consequences. Europe cannot be a decision-maker here. Its track record on Iran enforcement is a history of deference dressed as diplomacy, and it has spent two decades prioritizing engagement over accountability. Consequences for breach need to be automatic, pre-agreed, and executable by the United States. If Iran breaks a deal, the response cannot hinge on whether those with a Security Council vote are having a cooperative month.
The best hand in a generation is worth playing. But you need a table and cards and players across from you who can cover their bets. Right now, at least one of those conditions remains genuinely in doubt.
US arrests Iraqi Kataib Hezbollah commander wanted for plots against Jews, US interests
The US has arrested Iraqi national and senior member of the Kataib Hezbollah terrorist organization, Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi, on Friday. He was charged with providing material support for Iranian-backed terrorist organizations and accused of directing attacks targeting US citizens and interests
On May 15, the US Justice Department announced “the arrest of Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi, an Iraqi national and senior member of Kataib Hezbollah,” the department said. “In recent months, Al-Saadi has also allegedly directed and urged others to attack US and Israeli interests, including by killing Americans and Jews, to further the terrorist goals of Kataib Hezbollah and the IRGC.”
The case is the latest in US attempts to go after Iranian-backed militias in Iraq. The Justice Department posted a photo of Saadi with the late IRGC Quds force commander Qasem Soleimani. The US killed Soleimani in a 2020 drone strike in Iraq, also killing Kataib Hezbollah commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in the same strike.
In recent months, the US has put out at least four rewards of $10 million each for information on various Iraqi militia leaders.
The Saadi charges appear important and illustrate that the US long arm of justice can reach out and find these perpetrators.
“Al-Saadi was charged by complaint with six counts of terrorism-related offenses for his activities as an operative of Kataib Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including his involvement in nearly 20 attacks and attempted attacks throughout Europe and the United States,” the US stated. Saadi is 32 years old, the report says.
He was transferred to the US from overseas, although the US did not specify where he was arrested.
“Al-Saadi was presented earlier today before US Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn in Manhattan federal court and ordered detained pending trial,” according to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.
Blanche added that “thanks to the dedication and vigilance of law enforcement, this alleged terrorist commander is now in US custody… As alleged in the complaint, Al-Saadi directed and urged others to attack US and Israeli interests and to kill Americans and Jews in the US and abroad, and in doing so advance the terrorist goals of Kataib Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.”
IDF soldier KIA by Hezbollah mortar fire in Southern Lebanon
Staff Sgt. Negev Dagan, 20, from Moshav Dekel in the northwestern Negev, was killed by Hezbollah mortar fire in Southern Lebanon, the Israel Defense Forces announced on Friday.
Dagan, a soldier in the Golani Infantry Brigade’s 12th Battalion, was operating near the Litani River on Thursday night when Hezbollah terrorists fired mortar shells at Israeli forces in the area, the military said.
One of the shells exploded near Dagan, mortally wounding him. Combat medics attempted to treat him at the scene but were forced to pronounce him dead.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated on Friday, ahead of the soldier’s funeral, that he and his wife shared in the “heavy loss” and conveyed their deepest condolences to his family.
“We all embrace his family and dear ones at this hour of grief, and salute the heroism and courage with which Negev, of blessed memory, has fought to defend our country,” Netanyahu said. “May his memory be blessed and cherished forever.”
Residents of Dekel remembered Dagan as “the salt of the earth” with “an amazing soul” who was deeply committed to serving in the military.
“We lost a diamond,” a family friend from the moshav told Army Radio on Friday. “He gave all of himself and it was important to him to serve in the army.”
From Ian:
A Day in the Life of a New York City Jew
After the massive protests in Jewish neighborhoods across New York City over the past few days, I think a lot of people genuinely do not understand what something like that actually feels like for the people living there, so I want to try to walk you through it.
You wake up in the morning and see a message in the community WhatsApp chat. Maybe it’s from the local Jewish council. Maybe it’s from your congresswoman. It’s a warning that there’s going to be a protest in your neighborhood that night.
You open the flyer and see men in keffiyehs holding rifles, militant imagery plastered across something the media will later describe as a “demonstration.” The address is around the corner from your house. The flyer never explicitly calls for violence, but you’ve seen the videos from the last one and the one before that, and you already know there is a very real chance this is going to turn ugly.
Your first thought is your family.
A few months ago, you bought a firearm and locked it in a safe in your bedroom, away from the children. You know that if the day ever comes where you actually need to use it to defend your family, then something has already gone catastrophically wrong, and even if you survive that encounter, there is a very good chance the legal system in a city like New York will spend years trying to destroy your life afterward.
There is not much you can do, so you put your phone away and go to work, spending the entire day trying to keep your mind off what is waiting for you back home.
On the drive home, traffic suddenly stops. Streets are blocked off and police cars are everywhere. Sirens are flashing on every corner. And you remember that your neighborhood is about to be flooded with hundreds of people screaming about intifada and resistance while politicians and reporters insist this is all perfectly normal political expression.
You get home before the kids.
One by one they walk through the door while you keep checking the window to make sure they made it back safely. Your oldest tells you the principal made an announcement warning students not to walk or bike through a certain area after school, but refused to explain why, probably because nobody wants to be to explain to a group of Jewish children that there will be a mob outside their neighborhood later that night chanting slogans that openly glorify violence against Jews.
Report: German Intelligence Agency Documents Secular Pro-Palestinian Extremism
Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), released new background material in May 2026 documenting secular pro-Palestinian extremism across Germany, a heterogeneous movement comprising decades-old organizations and groups formed after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack, united by their denial of Israel’s right to exist and anti-Jewish agitation disguised as political criticism.
The intelligence service identifies key actors, symbols, and protest patterns, warning that secular pro-Palestinian extremists use Israel-hatred and antisemitism as a bridge between Islamists, German and Turkish left-wing extremists, and Turkish right-wing extremists.
The BfV documents how extremist actors in the scene have appeared in protest activity that has included anti-Israel and antisemitic content, riots, and attacks on police, journalists, and counter-protesters, especially in Berlin
Key Extremist Organizations
The BfV material describes terror-linked and extremist networks, including people from the PFLP milieu and former Samidoun actors, as continuing to influence Germany’s pro-Palestinian extremist scene.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)
According to the BfV, people from the milieu of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, an EU-designated terrorist organization since 2002 whose members helped hijack Lufthansa Flight 181 “Landshut” in 1977, have regularly helped organize anti-Israel rallies, particularly in Berlin.
The Marxist-Leninist organization openly advocates armed struggle to establish a Palestinian state “within the borders of historical Palestine,” meaning Israel’s complete elimination through what it calls ending “Zionist occupation.”
Samidoun – Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network
Germany banned Samidoun, on November 2, 2023, after the group celebrated the Hamas massacre as “resistance.” Founded in 2011 by PFLP members abroad, Samidoun demands release of Palestinians imprisoned for terrorism links and provides propaganda support to the PFLP, Hamas, and the Turkish terrorist group DHKP-C.
Before its prohibition, the network was documented to have exploited pro-Palestinian demonstrations and social media for recruitment, fundraising, and spreading disinformation.
BDS and Affiliated Groups
The BfV says BDS-linked groups in Germany have used antisemitic narratives, participated in anti-Israel demonstrations after October 7, and, in some cases, are now assessed as confirmed extremist endeavors. The agency interprets the BDS call to end occupation of ‘all Arab lands’ as a demand for ‘all of Palestine’ and, therefore, the end of Israel’s state existence
The report notes that extremist individuals without formal organizational membership have become key mobilization drivers through extensive social media reach, repeatedly disseminating hate messages and violence calls that fuel radicalization and willingness to use force.
Britain can’t fight antisemitism without confronting its main driver: hatred of Israel
Britain is experiencing a surge in antisemitism, yet much of the public discussion about how to respond to it avoids the central issue driving it. Today’s antisemitism is overwhelmingly rooted in hostility towards Zionism, sustained by false claims about Israel and the war in Gaza. This hostility only makes sense, it only inflames the imagination, because it is everything that has sustained Jew-hatred for millennia, culminating in the Holocaust. It’s effectively the same thing with the same target, even if it has a different new fancy name. Until this reality is openly acknowledged and confronted, declarations of opposition to Jew hatred will continue to fall short.
The sharp rise in antisemitic incidents is not occurring in a vacuum. Nor is it driven simply by ignorance or longstanding prejudice. It is being fuelled by a sustained campaign of disinformation about Israel, Gaza, the IDF and Hamas, and by the moral licence that these narratives grant to those who believe “Zionists” are legitimate targets.
Public figures and institutions frequently express opposition to antisemitism, often sincerely. But these declarations increasingly ring hollow because they fail to engage with how antisemitism actually manifests in Britain today. Statements of concern alone achieve little if there is no willingness to address what is motivating the hostility.
That motivation is frequently explicit. When the extremist group Ashab Al Yamin claimed responsibility for the arson attack on Kenton United Synagogue, it justified the attack by describing the shul as “one of the centres of Zionist influence in the British capital”. Its supposed crimes included hosting a “Kenton for Israel” group, holding events such as “Shabbat for Israel”, and singing Hatikvah. A typical synagogue in suburban London was attacked because it was considered too Zionist. If Kenton United is too Zionist then all of us are and therein lies the point.
Kenton was not an isolated case. Finchley Reform Synagogue and Hatzola have both been targeted for similar reasons. In one particularly stark example, a former synagogue that is in the process of being converted into a mosque was also subjected to an attempted arson attack. A local man interviewed by the BBC expressed confusion: “That synagogue has been turned into a mosque, so I don’t know why someone would petrol bomb it.” The answer lies in the way “Zionism” is now treated not as a political belief but as an inherent moral stain, one that clings to places and institutions even after Jews themselves have gone.
This obsession with “Zionist influence” is viral. Punk artist Bobby Vylan, best known for chants of “death to the IDF” at Glastonbury last year recently took to YouTube to claim that the British Department for Education had been “captured by Israeli forces”. He went on to ask what hope there was of resisting “growing Zionist influence” if even the education system was not free of it. The language is familiar to anyone who understands antisemitism: claims of capture, control and hidden power, updated for a modern audience.
Outside Parliament, activists now regularly gather during Prime Minister’s Questions to distribute fake banknotes headed “Bank of Zionism”. They hold placards depicting senior UK politicians branded with the same slogan and unfurl banners calling to “End Zionism control of UK Politics”. At larger demonstrations against Israel, chants such as “Palestine is Arab” and demands for “Intifada revolution” are common. These are not calls for peace or coexistence. They are declarations that deny Jewish self‑determination entirely and frame violence as justified or even necessary.
The same assumptions are increasingly tested in the courts. Palestine Action, a group that has attacked British defence firms, banks, insurance companies and even a law firm, argues that such actions are justified because these institutions are allegedly complicit in Israeli “genocide”. Whether or not the group is ultimately proscribed, the underlying premise often goes unchallenged: that extraordinary action against “Zionist” entities is morally virtuous.
This brings us to the question many remain unwilling to confront. The claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza is false. It does not meet the legal definition of genocide, it is not supported by the facts on the ground, and it is contradicted by serious analysis of Israeli military intent. Yet it is repeated endlessly with absolute moral certainty. That matters, because genocide is not just another accusation. It is the ultimate crime, and once it is accepted as fact, almost anything becomes permissible in response.
Streeting would effectively tackle sectarian politics and rising antisemitism as PM, say allies
Wes Streeting is convinced he can directly challenge and confront the rise of sectarian politics, increased division, and rising antisemitism in the UK as Prime Minister, allies have said.
Streeting resigned as Health Secretary in a move aimed at pressuring Keir Starmer to accept that his time as Prime Minister should come to an end.
Aides said they believe the Ilford North MP would prove to be a more effective communicator if given the chance to lead.
In his resignation letter, Streeting criticised the “drift” at the top of government and told the Prime Minister it is “clear” he will not lead Labour into the next election.
While he praised Starmer’s “many great strengths” and “courage and statesmanship on the world stage,” Streeting continued: “Where we need vision, we have a vacuum. Where we need direction, we have drift.”
Jewish News understands that last week’s election results in Redbridge—where Labour held on to the council, beating back the challenge posed by the Jeremy Corbyn-backed pro-Gaza independents—convinced Streeting of the need to attempt a move to replace the PM.
Although Labour suffered significant losses to the Greens and Reform UK elsewhere, Streeting became convinced that effective communication was key to tackling the advance of extremist politics in the country.
Colleagues in Redbridge confirm that Streeting played a “very active” role in the local elections, attending meetings on campaign messaging and taking part in regular door-knocking to listen to local voters for months leading up to the May 7 poll.
Streeting also featured in a couple of online videos urging locals not to vote for the pro-Gaza independents.
In one video, he told residents to remember that they were participating in a vote about Redbridge, “not the UN Security Council.”
Tuesday, May 19, 2026
