04/19 Links: The West is losing its moral compass; Arson attempt hits London synagogue; Iran-linked group claims attack; Israel marks 83 years since Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

From Ian:

Jake Wallis Simons: The West is losing its moral compass

Then there was October 7. If anything, the morality should have been even clearer, given that the jihadis of Hamas were of a piece with those who had attacked concert halls, Tube trains and cafés in Britain and across the West. Yet rather than seeing Israeli flags flying from every lamppost, we endured the disgraceful spectacle of people celebrating the pogrom in London less than 24 hours afterwards.

There followed a vicious propaganda campaign, driven by our enemies and embraced by international organisations and the media, which sexed up the war until it was inaccurately labelled a “genocide”. Millions of gullible people were swept up. Supporters of Israel – a democracy fighting for its life – became a dying breed. Once Trump entered the White House, however, there was little doubt which side he was on.

The moral certainty that deserted the president over Ukraine was suddenly there in spades. While European powers concluded it was best to reward Hamas by recognising a Palestinian state, Trump remained stalwart: jihadism was the enemy. Through the sheer force of his conviction, the hostages were freed and the war ended.

Which brings us to Iran. Although this is a regime that is believed to have butchered more than 30,000 people in two days, sows terror around the globe, lusts after nuclear weapons and is driven by apocalyptic theological fantasies, its fans have marched in our cities. Commentators, meanwhile, pay lip service to condemning Tehran while their true passions only gush forth when it comes to willing the downfall of Trump.

What is going on? Well, it’s all about the culture war. No crisis, it seems, is too grave to be bastardised by moral weaklings for petty politics. While Putin becomes some anti-woke folk hero, at the other end of the spectrum, the Ayatollah is given a glow-up as an icon of progressivism.

The problem is, one day we’ll need that ethical instinct we’re frittering away. Look to those with their lives on the line. Ask Ukrainians what they think of Israel. Ask Israelis what they think of Ukraine. Ask the Iranian people what they think of both countries, and ask them all what they think of the regime. Any questions?

Alan Dershowitz: Imminence Is No Longer the Criterion for Military Preventive Action

Extremists have accused President Trump of "war crimes" for his attack on Iran. Trump reasonably and understandably believed Iran was close to developing a nuclear arsenal, which the mullahs might have deployed against Israel in the near term, and perhaps eventually against the U.S.

Regardless of whether the potential timing of this threat fits the traditional definition of "imminent" - right on the verge of happening - it was real and would have been catastrophic if carried out. Accordingly, both the U.S. and Israel had the right - indeed, the obligation - to regard the threat that Iran would soon develop and deploy a nuclear arsenal as sufficiently dangerous to warrant preventive military action. Had either country waited until this nuclear threat was truly imminent, it might have been too late to stop it.

We can say this from experience. We waited too long with regard to North Korea, and that rogue nation managed to develop a nuclear arsenal under our noses. As a consequence, the Hermit Kingdom has been constantly threatening the world, and we can do nothing about it. Iran, the world's top state exporter of terrorism, would pose a far more serious near-term threat than North Korea.

Former Foreign Minister of Australia Gareth Evans wrote in a 2004 UN report that, "The classic non-threat imminent situation is early-stage acquisition of weapons of mass destruction by a state presumed to be hostile." Israel used such a justification to preemptively destroy both Iraq's and Syria's nuclear weapons programs before their threats became imminent.

An even stronger case can be made regarding Iran's nuclear arsenal program, since Iran has threatened to use it against Israel - which its leaders have called "a one-bomb state." Once Iran obtains a nuclear arsenal, it will already be too late for prevention or preemption.

IDF reservist killed, 9 wounded by Hezbollah IED in Southern Lebanon

Israel Defense Forces Sergeant First Class (res.) Lidor Porat, 31, from Ashdod, fell in Lebanon on Saturday, according to the Israeli military.

Nine other soldiers were wounded in the same incident, one severely, four moderately and four lightly, according to an IDF statement. The wounded were evacuated by helicopter and their families have been notified.

According to the IDF, a D-9 bulldozer operated by a force from the 769th Brigade in Southern Lebanon hit an IED planted by Hezbollah near Kfar Kila.

Kfar Kila was destroyed in the previous round of fighting against Hezbollah at the end of 2024. The army is investigating whether the explosive dated from that period or was recently placed there, Israel’s Channel 14 reported.

“My wife and I, together with all the citizens of Israel, share in the heavy grief and extend our deepest condolences to the family of Sgt. First Class (res.) Lidor Porat, of blessed memory, who fell in battle in Southern Lebanon,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday.

“I wish a swift and full recovery to our soldiers who were wounded in the difficult incident. Together with his comrades, Lidor fought bravely to defend our communities and our citizens—and this is how we will continue to act,” he added.

The development follows the death on Friday of Warrant Officer (res.) Barak Kalfon, from Adi in northern Israel. Kalfon was an employee of Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. Married and the father of two, he would have turned 49 next month.

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04/18 Links: He dreamed of regime change; Endgame in Sight; Israel is not at war with Lebanon; Fetterman blasts his party for tolerating antisemitism; Melanie Phillips: An unholy silence

From Ian:

Martin Kramer: He dreamed of regime change

The Iran war has entered a new phase, a “double-sided ceasefire.” Eventually, we will learn the backstory, and it won’t look like anything we were led to believe while it was unfolding. Much of what seems true today will turn out to be false, and vice versa. If it weren’t always so, the world wouldn’t need historians like me.

In the meantime, I seek insights in the wisdom of mentors now gone. Bernard Lewis was one; I wrote about Lewis and Iran the other week. This time, I’ll consider Uri Lubrani (1926-2018), an Israeli diplomat and defense official.

Lubrani, who served the state from its founding, had the unusual distinction of being posted, time and again, to the epicenters of crisis. From 1967 to 1971, he served as ambassador to Ethiopia, which positioned him to play a crucial role in the emergency emigration of 14,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel in 1991 (Operation Solomon). It was his greatest achievement.

But he was also known for serving as head of the Israeli mission to Iran (with ambassadorial rank) from 1973 to 1978. His claim to fame: he anticipated the rise of religious extremism and the Shah’s fall before anyone else did.

As early as 1975, he warned a US senator visiting Tehran that “the most serious problem that the Shah had domestically was from the religious elements who were hostile and very difficult for him to deal with.” The US diplomat who accompanied the senator later recalled: “I never heard anyone say that in the American embassy. I never heard any journalists say it or any Iranians say it. This was the first time that I heard that analysis.”

Lubrani remained ahead of the curve. In a June 1978 dispatch, he reported to Jerusalem that the Shah’s position was undergoing an “accelerated process of destabilization… a process from which there is no return and which will ultimately lead to his downfall and a drastic change in the form of government in Iran.” Again, he was alone. The State Department at the time estimated that the Shah had “an excellent chance to rule for a dozen or more years,” and the CIA held that “Iran is not in a revolutionary or even a pre-revolutionary situation.” Lubrani emerged from the Iranian revolution as an acclaimed oracle.

I got to know him in the mid-1980s, when he ran an office for Lebanese affairs at the defense ministry. Israel was occupying much of South Lebanon and rubbing up against Hezbollah, Iran’s Shi‘ite proxy. I was beginning to work on Hezbollah myself, and we had much to discuss. Lubrani was also an old friend of Lewis, and I often found myself at dinner with both of them. I wish I’d taken notes.

Melanie Phillips: An unholy silence

Britain’s prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, has adopted a particularly odious attitude. Having said the Iran conflict was “not our war” and “not in our national interest,” he then tried to cast himself as a peacemaker by flying to Saudi Arabia purportedly to negotiate a ceasefire.

While the United States is bringing Iran economically to its knees by interdicting Iranian maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, thus brilliantly turning the regime’s ostensible trump card against it, Starmer is sending out invitations to a risible summit to “break” Iran’s control of the Strait.

Top of their deliberations will doubtless be what gifts to put into the party bags they’ll give the Iranians to take home with them.

Shockingly, Starmer thinks that Israel has no right to defend itself against Hezbollah in Lebanon. He told the House of Commons this week: “Israel’s strikes are wrong. They’re having devastating humanitarian consequences and pushing Lebanon into a crisis. The bombing should stop now.”

He thus presented Israel totally falsely as a wanton aggressor, ignoring the thousands of rockets that Hezbollah has been firing at Israeli civilians—with all the death and destruction they’ve caused--and that show no sign of stopping.

Starmer thinks diplomacy brings peace. But more than four decades of diplomacy with Iran have resulted in thousands of Jews, Americans and others around the world being murdered, killed and wounded; a terrorized and butchered Iranian people; and the world’s most lethal terrorist state coming to the very brink of arming itself with the nuclear bomb.

Like the pope, Starmer and his fellow European fainthearts make pious incantations of peace while leaving the targets of genocidal war to swing in the wind.

This culture of appeasement reflects the dismal fact that Britain and these European nations are now on a trajectory of cultural collapse, as their countries become steadily Islamized while they refuse to defend a historic identity they no longer respect or even recognize.

Accordingly, the pope’s position should cause the utmost dismay to all who understand the need to prevent Western civilization from disintegrating.

Since religion is the moral scaffolding of a culture, it’s essential for the church to assert itself if the West is to be defended. For decades, the Church of England has tragically been instead at the forefront of civilizational decline. Now the Pope is sanctifying Europe’s surrender to Islam.

Trump’s crude and sometimes preposterous pronouncements dismay many. People’s real concern, however, should be for the survival of the civilization that only America’s president and the State of Israel are trying desperately to defend.

Endgame in Sight By Abe Greenwald

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Here's what I think is happening. The U.S. and Israel won the opening military phase of this war. The U.S. is now winning the economic phase. What’s left of the Iranian regime is cracking under the massive economic stress of the blockade. With the U.S. Navy still interdicting Iranian shipping, the regime may yet break altogether.

Iranian leaders are trying simultaneously to get some economic breathing room and save face by linking their actions to the Israel–Lebanon cease-fire. Trump, irked by the anti-Jewish right’s claims that he’s Benjamin Netanyahu’s puppet, is trying to shut them up with a little social media bluster. It would be wise to take the actual words of the cease-fire as the operative framework here. Trump hasn’t traveled this far, with Israel by the U.S.’s side in a successful war against Iran, just to tie the Jewish state’s hands against Iran’s proxy in Lebanon.

Neither the Iranian regime nor Trump wants to resume the fighting. The regime can’t afford to absorb more damage. For another president, that might mean it’s time to start dropping bombs again. But no other president, despite talking about it, has taken this fight nearly so far. He’s the only one that made the bold decision to wage this war, and he’s done so on his terms. Trump always wanted a short war, and, after a month and a half, he can just about taste victory.

I have my doubts about the details and projected timelines, but, hard as it is to imagine, I believe the president when he says the U.S. will get Iran to hand over its enriched uranium (everything that’s transpired since Operation Midnight Hammer in June was once hard to imagine). And that really would be the whole shebang—the clearest, most incontrovertible victory the U.S. has seen in decades.

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04/17 Links Pt2: Jabotinsky Was Right About Everything; What do the Democrats want from Israel?; How the Greens chose Gaza over the environment; Billy Corgan interviews David Draiman

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Jabotinsky Was Right About Everything (So Cheer Up!)

Jabotinsky believed the future State of Israel—he didn’t live to see it, but he knew it would come—had to produce more than Jaffa oranges; it had to build things the world needed. He was right: He presaged the emergence of “the start-up nation” by many decades.

His influential writings on Ukrainian nationalism and Russian imperialism were eerily predictive of our current moment. His belief in the importance of persuading the general American public, and not just the government, of the justice of the Zionists’ cause has been likewise vindicated.

And these are just a few of the examples. There are more, because Jabotinsky was right about it all.

And that is one reason to feel less pessimistic about the still-very-concerning rise of Jewish anti-Zionism in our current post-October 7 moment. Jewish history leaves no doubt as to who will be vindicated and who will not: In the future, no one is going to say, “if only I’d listened to Peter Beinart.”

And so the self-humiliation ritual that Ezra Klein put himself through at the New York Times over the past week—in which he defended anti-American anti-Semite Hasan Piker’s inclusion in Democratic Party politics, only to have Piker reaffirm his Jew-hatred and his fanatical worship of those who murder American civilians—evinces outrage that melts into pity. We’ll send you a postcard from the future, Ezra.

Judaism is indestructible, which is why the destruction of the holy temple, at a time when it was the center and anchor of the religious aspect of Jewish peoplehood, still has millions of Jews around to mourn it. The best future anti-Zionists can hope for is to be a memory, to have been something that we vaguely recall.

Where do the Jews who aren’t anti-Zionist but who are easily cowed by anti-Zionists fall in this equation? They are ripe for an education. The Jews did not keep their status as the eternal people by voting against bulldozers for Israel, as several Jewish Democratic senators did this week. They seem to have forgotten that, just as they themselves will soon be forgotten.

When Jabotinsky was demobilized after the war, he recounted telling his fellow Jewish Legionnaires the following:

“Far away, in your home, you will one day read glorious news, of a free Jewish life in a free Jewish country—of factories and universities, of farms and theaters, perhaps of MPs and ministers. … Then you shall stand up, walk to the mirror, and look yourself proudly in the face … and salute yourself—for ’tis you who have made it.”

That was in 1918, 30 years before the rebirth of the State of Israel. Some people have an easier time seeing the future than others. It’s usually those who have a better grasp on the past.

Jonathan Tobin: What do the Democrats want from Israel?

Indeed, liberal writer Jonathan Chait was not far off the mark when he wrote in The Atlantic of the fear that Democratic officeholders have of a party base that has fallen under the spell of anti-Israel hatemongers like podcaster Hasan Piker.

Republicans may have their own problem with a similar antisemitic set, including Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Alex Jones and enablers like Megyn Kelly. But Democrats who don’t wish to bend the knee to their intersectional left-wing base are in a very different position than the GOP. The leader of the Republicans—Trump—had no problem kicking them out of the party and his MAGA movement for the offense of opposing the war on Iran and alliance with Israel. He did so not only because he isn’t the type to take orders from someone like Carlson, who is more of a Mar-a-Lago court jester than a policy adviser. He could do so with impunity, secure in the knowledge that whatever inroads the Israel-bashers and Jew-haters have made among young voters, the overwhelming majority of his supporters approve of his stances.

Senate Democrats, most of whom came into office pledging their undying support for the Jewish state, don’t have that luxury. Indeed, as Chait writes, they are on the verge of losing their party to the likes of Piker, as well as the academic, pop-culture and media elites who, as we’ve learned from their pushback against calls to isolate someone who hates America as well as Israel and the Jews, largely agree with him.

Chait’s proposed solution to the problem is to follow the path of the 40 Senate Democrats who are now on record backing a proposal that would disarm Israel in the middle of a war. He says they have choices. One is to abandon Israel and hold onto office. The other is to stick to the principles that got most of them elected in the first place—and be defeated in a future primary by an Israel-hating and antisemitic Democratic Socialist who will steer the party toward the hard left. It also means a Democratic Party in which members of the left-wing congressional “Squad” that includes Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), along with fellow Marxist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, are no longer on the margins but in control.

They know he’s right because, as he put it, they can all read polls. And so, they are shifting their principles to accommodate the new ideological alignment toward people for whom one Jewish state on the planet is one too many. And if that means leaving Israel without the weapons and means to defend itself against its genocidal regional foes, that’s just too bad.

Were the Democrats who changed their votes in the last year to get in sync with the new fashionable antisemitic wing of their party—such as Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Ruben Gallego (D-N.J.), Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.)—to admit to this, it would be disgraceful enough. But what’s truly awful about their stand is the disingenuous defenses of their position. They claim that they still support Israel, but think its democratically elected government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has engaged in reckless and needlessly brutal behavior by waging war on Iran, in addition to its terrorist allies in Gaza and Lebanon.

Missing from their hypocritical speeches is any mention of what they really expect from an Israeli government. Even Chait, who also claims to be a “liberal Zionist” disenchanted with Netanyahu but not Israel itself, had to acknowledge that the Jewish state has no current peace partner. At some point, even those who are willfully ignorant about events in the Middle East have to take notice of the fact that Palestinian Arabs don’t want a two-state solution, which liberal Americans still seem to think is the only answer to the conflict. Unlike them, the overwhelming majority of Israelis have decided to accept that Palestinians are saying “no” to any outcome other than the destruction of the Jewish state and the genocide of its people.

The atrocities in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, helped cement that viewpoint.

Jewish Democratic disillusionment deepens over party’s direction

The Democratic shift on Israel policy was on full, dramatic display on the Senate floor on Wednesday night as 40 of 47 Senate Democrats voted for at least one of two resolutions to block U.S. shipments of bulldozers and bombs to Israel.

The votes left many pro-Israel Democrats shocked and disillusioned — exemplified in the muted statements, if any, on the vote from key pro-Israel groups — and is being seen by some as the marker of a new era of Democratic policy on Israel, in which critics of Israel are firmly in the party mainstream.

“It’s yet another data point that the bipartisan consensus [in support of Israel] is, at least at the moment, no longer,” a former Biden administration official told Jewish Insider on Thursday. “Democrats think it’s politically advantageous to take these votes that would have been completely out-of-bounds just two-and-a-half years ago. … It’s deeply concerning if you care about the relationship, if you care about the security of [Israel]. But that’s the state of play at the moment, I think until or unless there’s an event that changes the trajectory.”

Abe Foxman, the former head of the Anti-Defamation League, said the vote highlights the “progressive socialist wing” of the Democratic Party’s increasing takeover. “This is a calamity for the Democratic Party, if it will not be contained and stopped,” Foxman told JI. “What’s also disturbing to me is that this litmus test is being first administered to every Jewish candidate.”

He added that the votes send a terrible message to U.S. allies beyond Israel that the U.S. can’t be relied upon.

Pro-Israel Democrats who spoke to JI said the votes came about as a combination of several factors: They served as a proxy for the war in Iran that nearly all Democrats oppose, but also were a signal of opposition to Israel’s operations in Lebanon, settler attacks and settlement expansion in the West Bank, the war in Gaza and — to a substantial degree — the Democratic enmity that has been growing for years toward Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his government and his alignment with President Donald Trump and Republicans.

And lawmakers are also responding to the growing progressive pressure, fueled by two years of imagery from the war in Gaza, amplified by social media platforms that boosted antisemitic content, that has changed the politics around Israel in a “really dramatic way” in the Democratic Party, the former Biden administration official said.

“Those [resolutions], at this moment in time, were just a proxy for real discomfort with the direction of the Trump-Netanyahu relationship in this war, which is not the right reason to vote for these,” another former Biden administration official told JI. “I understand the [vote to block] bulldozers at this moment in time. [Withholding] the munitions — I think it’s really, really troubling.”

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04/17 Links Pt1: Trump says Iran agreed to stop funding Terrorists, will hand over uranium; Trump’s goals in Iran have always been clear; The Lebanon Cease-fire and the Long Game

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The Lebanon Cease-fire and the Long Game

The cease-fire went into effect this evening and will have an initial time period of 10 days. According to the State Department, “This initial period may be extended by mutual agreement between Lebanon and Israel if progress is demonstrated in the negotiations and as Lebanon effectively demonstrates its ability to assert its sovereignty.”

In other words, Lebanon has to make tangible progress in disarming Hezbollah in order to earn the renewal of the cease-fire after 10 days. Then there’s this: “Israel shall preserve its right to take all necessary measures in self-defense, at any time, against planned, imminent, or ongoing attacks. This shall not be impeded by the cessation of hostilities.”

Israel has a fair amount of freedom of action, then, during the 10-day period. While that is something of a concession from Beirut, in truth it mostly means that Israel will be available to help Lebanon move the needle against Hezbollah, which would then enable the extension of the cease-fire, which is what Lebanon wants anyway.

Finally, the statement says this: “Israel and Lebanon request that the United States facilitate further direct negotiations between the two countries with the objective of resolving all remaining issues, including demarcation of the international land boundary.”

That’s another way of saying Israel’s interests in South Lebanon are legitimate and—in contrast to Hezbollah—the IDF should not be considered a hostile occupier but rather an ally engaged in constructive efforts to restore Lebanese sovereignty.

For Israel, these terms offset much of the risk of pausing attacks on Hezbollah for 10 days. For the Lebanese, the text is an announcement that the existing government is capable of getting Israel to halt its attacks through the diplomatic process, undercutting Hezbollah’s claim that it must stay armed to protect Lebanon from Israel. For Netanyahu specifically, it virtually guarantees that, by election time, Israel will be in a stronger position against Hezbollah than it is now.

Douglas Murray: Trump’s goals in Iran have always been clear

Each time Trump ran for the presidency, a large part of his platform was that he would stop America getting involved in ‘stupid’ wars in the Middle East. Just as Obama had upped America’s drone programme, so Trump developed his own doctrine. The killing of the Iranian terror chief Qasem Soleimani in 2020 was perhaps the first time that Trump showed he could effectively take out an enemy of the United States and deter his opponent from any significant retaliatory strikes. Then earlier this year the US military on his orders carried out the daring raid on Caracas which brought the corrupt Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro to face justice in New York. Trump’s critics complain that the success of that mission has led him to the hubris of Iran.

But if you listen to what the President, his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and others have said since the start of this mission, the confusion is on the part of his listeners, not of the administration. From the beginning Trump has made a number of justifications for the action. But the one non-negotiable has been that Iran must not be allowed nuclear weapons. Given that the Iranian side actually boasted to the US negotiating team that they were weeks away from nuclear breakout, it isn’t hard to understand why the US chose this moment to strike. The fact that the Iranians learned from Osirak and spread out their nuclear sites is why this intervention has taken longer than two minutes.

Nevertheless there is chaff being thrown in the air from all sides. Yes at the start Trump suggested to the Iranian people that they rise up and overthrow the regime of the mullahs if they could. But the killing of tens of thousands of people by the religious militias in January has obviously had an effect. ‘Ha ha,’ say Trump’s critics. ‘You see – you tried regime change and failed. Now you will have to – once again – “put boots on the ground”.’ But the President is committed to doing no such thing.

Doubtless he would have liked to have seen the regime receive more opposition internally. But the hope that the Islamic Revolutionary government falls is the maximalist policy. The minimalist one is simply to ensure that for the foreseeable future Iran does not have any capacity to develop nuclear weapons.

I’m slightly surprised by some of the obfuscation and pretence of befuddlement that many national and international observers seem to be displaying in the face of this objective. ‘He hasn’t made it clear,’ they say again and again. But he has. The aim of Trump’s war in Iran is indeed to replay the Iraq intervention. But it is the intervention of 1981, not 2003.

Richard Kemp: Even Iran’s European appeasers now can’t deny the ayatollahs are losing

The regime has been brought to this point only by Trump’s blockade of Iranian ports, which has hit them with economic pressure to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a day. This is unsustainable for an already devastated economy. And Trump has made clear that, despite opening the Strait, the blockade will not be lifted until Tehran accepts his other demands.

This has left the European appeasers even further behind the curve than they were before. At the very moment Iran announced its decision, Starmer, Macron and other leaders were meeting in Paris to find a diplomatic solution to opening the Strait. They and their like have repeatedly argued that diplomacy is the only way to resolve the problem of Iran and yet again they have been proved completely wrong.

Those who are not blinded by an allergy to the use of military force to prevent threats have always known that. Decades of diplomacy with the ayatollahs have only ever resulted in them running rings round those who tried it. The threat has only increased, predictably.

Characteristically, the regime has tried to show some kind of defiance in the face of defeat, pretending that the opening of the Strait was their response to a temporary ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Trump has made it clear that the two actions are unconnected.

He also said today: “Iran has agreed to never close the Strait of Hormuz again. It will no longer be used as a weapon against the World!” Here he is being unduly optimistic. Whatever they may or may not have said to him, this regime will always need a heavy stick raised against it, with the clear political will to use it.

That will only work while the occupant of the White House maintains such a will, and we don’t know what we will see from his successor. That is why it is essential that, irrespective of any forthcoming agreement, work continues to remove the regime in Tehran during his term.

The prospects of that happening – at some point – just increased with Tehran displaying further weakness by today’s tacit acceptance of American hegemony.

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04/16 Links Pt2: The Holocaust began with words and then ordinary people normalising hate – the same pattern we see today; Israel Memorial Day 2026: 170 soldiers killed, 79 victims of terror

From Ian:

Lord Pickles: The Holocaust began with words and then ordinary people normalising hate – the same pattern we see today

This is the full text of a speech delivered by Lord Eric Pickles at Northwood and Ruislip Synagogue on Yom Hashoah, April 14, 2026

We gather this evening with solemnity and gravity, conscious that the Holocaust occupies a unique and terrible place in human history. On Yom HaShoah, you come together as a Jewish community – and with friends of the community – to honour the six million Jewish people murdered in the Shoah: lives extinguished not by chance, not as an accidental by‑product of war, but as the deliberate outcome of hatred, ideology, and systematic dehumanisation.

Six million can dull rather than sharpen understanding. Our task tonight is to resist that temptation – to remember that the Holocaust did not happen to a statistic, but to individual human beings: each with a name, a family, a profession, relationships, ambitions, and a future that was violently taken from them.

Yom HaShoah holds a particular moral weight because it is anchored not only in catastrophe, but in resistance. It falls on the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, when Jews – starved, besieged, abandoned by the world – chose dignity over submission and moral courage over silence. The day’s full name: the Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust and of Heroism – reminds us that Jewish history in this period cannot be reduced to victimhood alone.

This day exists because memory matters. Memory hosts truth.

But memory on its own is not enough.

Yom HaShoah was never intended to be comfortable. It exists not to console us, but to confront us. It demands reflection not only on what happened, but on how it could happen; not only on the dead, but on the living; not only on history, but on ourselves.

Because the Holocaust did not begin with gas chambers. It did not begin with death camps or mass murder. It began earlier, and far more quietly. It began with language that reframed human beings as problems to be managed. It began with laws and institutions that made exclusion appear reasonable, even necessary. And it began when ordinary people – people not unlike ourselves – chose not to stand up while standing up still seemed possible.

History rarely announces catastrophe.

History whispers long before it screams.

One of the greatest dangers facing Holocaust remembrance today is ritual without responsibility.

Ritual has its place. Ceremony can bind communities together in shared memory and collective mourning. When remembrance becomes routine, it risks losing its capacity to disturb, to challenge, and to warn.

The central lesson of the Holocaust is not simply that evil exists. Humanity has always known that. The deeper and more uncomfortable lesson is that evil flourishes when good people fail to act – when silence is reframed as prudence, caution mistaken for wisdom, and delay justified as restraint.

The Holocaust did not require universal hatred. It required acquiescence. It required millions of small decisions to comply, to adapt, to adjust expectations, and to wait for clarity that never came.

Jonathan Tobin: Neutrality in the fight against genocidal terror isn’t moral

Wars do solve some things
Still, that’s not the same thing as the pontiff actually being in the right on the underlying issue.

It is all well and good for Pope Leo to say he’s against all suffering, but in point of fact, he’s wrong about wars not solving anything. They may cause incalculable pain and are truly horrible. But wars have solved some problems. To take but one example from history in which the Vatican’s professed neutrality about conflicts didn’t cover it in glory, the defeat of Germany and its allies in the Second World War was the only way to defeat Nazism and end the Holocaust.

Not to put too fine a point on it, if a second Holocaust—the goal of Iran’s Islamist regime, as well as its Hamas and Hezbollah allies in Gaza and Lebanon, with respect to the state of Israel and its population—is to be avoided, it’s going to require more than papal sermons on the evil of wars.

And that is the focal point of the debate about the current Iran conflict, just as it was in the war against Hamas.

A just war
Calling for a permanent ceasefire may put a temporary end to the suffering caused by the conflict. And blasting warlike rhetoric from the combatants always makes those denouncing them seem morally superior. But if it means allowing Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah in their strongholds to rebuild and rearm—and to allow Tehran to resume its nuclear project, missile building and spreading terrorism around the globe—it is neither merciful nor just. Appeals to end the fighting while leaving jihadists in power—and capable of continuing their war on the West and non-Islamist civilization—are as inappropriate as they would have been for a ceasefire before the unconditional surrender of the Nazis in 1945.

The responsibility of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to prevent the mullahs in Tehran from persisting in their genocidal plotting and weapons building, which led directly to the horrors of Oct. 7. To merely denounce what happened on Oct. 7, as the pope did, is fine. But to oppose efforts to ensure that the murderers would be stopped from making good on their pledges to repeat those crimes over and over again, as he insinuated, isn’t an example of a higher morality. Treating murderers and those whose task it is to stop them as morally equivalent—and that’s what the pope and many other world leaders, especially in Western Europe, have done with respect to Hamas and Iran—is wrong, even if the motivation for such statements is rooted in an entirely laudable abhorrence of suffering.

Wars are awful and should be avoided if possible. But the battle against the Islamist terrorists running Iran, and their Hamas and Hezbollah minions whose Oct. 7 atrocities were just a trailer for what they wish to do to all Israelis, is a just one.

It is also impossible to separate the preaching against such just wars from the global surge of antisemitism that has spread since Oct. 7.

Vivian Bercovici: In Carney’s Canada, the law protects antisemites, not Jews

We cannot and should not be told by our government to build ever higher walls around our community centres, homes, schools, and synagogues. It is absurd, obscene and reminiscent of an era I would prefer not to invoke.

Canada’s organised Jewish community has always preferred a quiet approach to dealing with authorities. Even after the synagogue shootings, mainstream organisations were counselling cautious trust as we move forward. Perhaps this time, they said, the authorities and leadership will step up.

Days after the most recent attacks, Prime Minister Carney chose to spend time at an Iftar dinner in Ottawa, having a jolly old time working the room. He quite noticeably (and, one assumes, intentionally) has not met with any Jewish leaders since the shootings. He certainly has not been photographed glad-handing in rooms full of Canadian Jews. That omission is not an oversight.

Since being elected PM with a strong minority government on April 28, 2025 (as a result of a spate of “floor crossings” in the House and recent by-elections he now commands a parliamentary majority), Carney has not spoken with his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu. He has, however, been a reliably harsh and frequent critic of Israeli policy and Netanyahu himself. Among his more notable remarks was one made during an interview with Bloomberg News in October, 2025. When asked if he would honour the more than dubious ICC warrant issued for Netanyahu’s arrest (should he set foot on Canadian soil), Carney unhesitatingly responded in the affirmative.

And he went further, gratuitously criticising Netanyahu, claiming that “the actions of Netanyahu’s government were explicitly designed to end any possibility of a Palestinian state in violation of the UN Charter and going against Canadian government policy of any political stripe since 1947.”

Carney could have easily ducked or finessed his response. Instead, he chose – deliberately – to lash out. He is, of course, entitled to criticise Israeli policy. What he appears not to grasp is that doing so with such zeal stokes and legitimises violent antisemitism in Canada.

The message to Canada’s Jews is not subtle – and nor are its implications.

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04/16 Links Pt1: What Victory Looks Like When Your Foe Won’t Surrender; Israel, Lebanon agree to 10-day truce; Outlawing Israeli Self-Defense; The Return of the Echo Chamber

From Ian:

Jonathan Schanzer: What Victory Looks Like When Your Foe Won’t Surrender

Trump’s problems in fighting Iran are tangible: a naval blockade, drone swarms, and missile attacks on allies. But the struggle can be distilled to one word: ideology. The wars at the beginning of this century were waged to defeat that ideology. We called it the “War on Terror.” And it was a war worthy of waging, even though the word “terror” was a politically correct euphemism for the true enemy, Islamic radicalism. But we gave up for lack of progress. From 2001 to 2021, the United States spent more than $8 trillion. We had the edge against our enemies in terms of firepower. However, we could not credibly declare victory no matter how many battles we won. And we could not win because the other side refused to lose.

Adherents to jihadism (who make up fewer than 20 percent of the world’s Muslim population) believe that their faith commands them to fight and that victory is inevitable, even if it takes decades. Indeed, they believe they are destined to win, or die trying. As the late, great Middle East scholar Bernard Lewis wrote back in 2006, “For people with this mindset, [Mutually Assured Destruction] is not a constraint; it is an inducement.”

This is the worldview of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. It is the worldview of Iran’s proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, not to mention the Houthis in Yemen. Adherents to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s 1979 Islamic Revolution view the world this way, too.

When your enemy is the infidel, and your victory is ordained by Allah, your obligation is to keep fighting, even in defeat. Surrender is not an option. The Islamic Republic not only embraces this mindset; it portrays every challenge as a test of will that it must endure. Military losses or economic pain are spun as proof of martyrdom and sacrifice, to be answered with even greater confidence in the revolution.

But just because someone refuses to admit defeat doesn’t mean he is immune to it. The relentless Israeli–American assault on the assets of the regime is undeniably taking its toll. There is still a chance that the regime will collapse amid the demise of its top leaders, the destruction of its key military assets, and the voiding of its cash-generating businesses. If the regime survives all of that, it will still be contending with a population that is not soon to forget the slaughter of more than 30,000 patriots who were murdered for the crime of protesting against their oppressive regime. The Iranian rank and file will likely be aided by the Mossad, the CIA, and other intelligence agencies from countries that sustained attacks by the Islamic Republic over the course of this war. These countries have deep pockets and a grudge. The combined ability of these parties to provide weapons, cash, secure communications, and intelligence to the Iranian people could ultimately tip the scales and topple the regime.

The problem for Donald Trump is that such things take time. And, as we’ve seen, he fears that time will sink him deeper into this war, just as it has sunk America into almost every war it has fought since World War II.

One possible missed opportunity for Trump was to take a page out of the George H.W. Bush handbook. When the United States expelled Iraq from Kuwait in 1991, Saddam Hussein’s regime was defeated militarily in just six weeks. However, the Iraqi government remained in place, and it was not forced to surrender unconditionally. The liberation of Kuwait was the aim, so Operation Desert Storm was deemed a success. What followed was a long-standing effort to isolate the Iraqi regime through a combination of diplomatic and economic pressure, along with UN measures to ensure disarmament and the enforcement of no-fly zones to protect the Iraqi population.

Such a scenario might have been thinkable at the outset of Operation Epic Fury. But the window for that closed when the regime began to wage its asymmetric war in the Persian Gulf. There was no way to leave and save face.

An unequivocal victory is still feasible, but that may be possible only by waging total war. Which is what Trump implied when he warned the regime that a failure to reach an equitable deal through diplomacy would result in Iran getting bombed “back to the stone age.” His words immediately elicited howls of disapproval from the international community, not to mention Trump’s political opponents, who declared such rhetoric out of bounds. But threats such as “a whole civilization will die” violate not a single law of war. Angry rhetoric does not constitute a crime. And in any event, due to the unlikely diplomatic intervention of Pakistan, a window for dialogue was opened.

The cease-fire that followed only 12 hours later was dramatic, but mostly because it was bound to fail. The Iranian regime sent emissaries to Islamabad to deliver one message: It will not capitulate. After 21 hours of fruitless talks, Trump and his chief negotiator, Vice President JD Vance, sensibly took no for an answer.

The next phase of Operation Epic Fury will be a hybrid campaign. The conventional strikes will continue as necessary when targets present themselves—although we have already been told that we may have reached a point of diminishing returns in this regard.

Concurrently, the U.S. will likely continue to wage the economic campaign during which the United States Navy is blocking Iranian tankers and those paying Iran bribes for its tankers to transit the Strait of Hormuz. The Air Force may knock out additional economic assets to deprive the regime of the ability to pay its loyalists. The handbook for sanctions and other financial tools honed since the George W. Bush administration is likely to be deployed, too. This will be a reprise of Trump’s “Maximum Pressure” campaign on steroids.

For Trump, this is now all about legacy and history. If waged wisely, Operation Epic Fury could bring down America’s most determined Middle Eastern foe. It can also help redefine military victory in the modern era. There will be no white flags, no papers signed on a battleship, no suicides in a bunker. We will have to content ourselves with knowing we set the world on a new course—even as, in the wake of a victory, there will almost certainly be an entire class of experts and political opponents who will continue to insist that the whole thing was a dead loss.

Why Iran's Rulers Are Not "Rational Actors"

If Iran's rulers were "rational actors," they wouldn't have wanted to repeat the experience of the 12-day war in June 2025.

Yet they're not. They are not peace-loving. They don't prefer compromise over conflict. Iran's rulers believe - literally - that they are on a mission from God.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's title was "Supreme Leader," implying that he was the divinely ordained guardian of Iran.

For nearly half a century, every American president pledged that Iran's theocrats would be prevented from acquiring the nuclear capabilities that could lead to the fulfillment of their grand ambition: "Death to America!" Yet no serious actions were ever taken.

If Mr. Trump had not struck when he did, then Tehran might have acquired nukes while continuing to build up an enormous arsenal of drones and missiles, leading to a war that future presidents could not win, or could win only at an exorbitant cost in blood and treasure.

This conflict was about degrading an American enemy's capabilities, not its intentions.

Their hatred of America, Israel and the West has not abated. They continue to believe it is their duty to wage jihad.

Saudi Arabia, the Abraham Accords, and Operation Roaring Lion

Saudi policy toward Israel will depend largely on how the war with Iran ends. Four main scenarios stand out, each affecting in different ways the likelihood that Saudi Arabia will join the Abraham Accords.

In a prolonged war with no clear outcome but continued regional erosion, Saudi Arabia is likely to remain cautious. Quiet coordination with the United States and Israel would still carry strategic value, but the public and regional costs of open normalization would stay high. Riyadh would likely deepen its hedging—expanding quiet security cooperation, investing more in regional alternatives, and holding back from a formal agreement.

In a stable ceasefire without a decisive outcome, the chances of gradual warming are likely highest. Riyadh could present the outcome as inconclusive while arguing that it opens a window to reshape the regional order. If this is coupled with some form of arrangement in Gaza and on the Palestinian track, phased normalization could again become a realistic option. This scenario comes closest to more optimistic assessments, which hold that the prospect of an agreement has not disappeared but now depends on effective mediation and the management of a new regional order. (Rothem, 2025; Ross, 2025).

If the conflict settles into a pattern of recurring rounds of fighting, Saudi policy is likely to remain deeply ambivalent. Strategically, the case for a regional alignment would continue to strengthen; politically, however, each new round would heighten public and Arab sensitivities and push back any move from quiet cooperation to open normalization. In this scenario, there would be growing strategic need for an alliance alongside limited political room to act.

In a scenario in which the Iranian regime is replaced, or at least significantly weakened, the picture would be more complex. On one hand, the immediate Iranian threat would recede, potentially easing the sense of urgency that has driven part of the logic for normalization. On the other, such a shift could open a window for a new regional order in which Saudi Arabia would seek to consolidate its gains, reinforce its position, and anchor itself in a U.S.-backed regional architecture. Thus, in this scenario, normalization would not necessarily accelerate immediately, but if a less threatening regional order takes shape, it could become politically easier for Riyadh, even if less strategically urgent.

The war therefore will not shape the Saudi approach to normalization in a single direction. Some scenarios increase the strategic case for normalization, others reduce its urgency, and still others widen the gap between strategic interest and political feasibility.

Conclusion
Before the war, the prospects for Saudi–Israeli normalization were improving even as the path toward it grew longer, however the war has changed the way the Saudis view the issue. Riyadh no longer sees normalization as a bilateral deal with Israel, but as part of a broader question: what regional order will emerge after the war, what will Saudi Arabia’s place be within the new order, and what alternative regional options will it have. As long as the outcome of the war remains uncertain, Saudi policy will stay gradual, cautious, and hedged. If, however, conditions begin to take shape for some form of regional settlement with a Palestinian track, and there is a clearer picture of the Iranian threat, the overall likelihood of Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords may not only hold but increase. The prospects have improved; the path has lengthened; and the meaning of normalization has changed.Top of Form

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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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