05/13 Links Pt2: The New Normal for Antisemitism; Jewish group warned police gunman before Bondi massacre; Abe Foxman and the quest for Jewish security

From Ian:

The New Normal for Antisemitism

Ayear before October 7, 2023, reshaped the political landscape, we founded a nonprofit organization called Antisemitism Watch. The decision followed decades of reporting on the Holocaust and its aftermath, and years of chronicling daily antisemitic incidents. What became unmistakable over time was not simply persistence, but normalization—antisemitism embedding itself across wide swaths of society with diminishing resistance.

In a Newsweek op-ed in which we announced the launch, we wrote that “few contest that antisemitism—history’s oldest hatred of a religious and ethnic group—has had an unmatched post-Holocaust resurgence.”1 The data confirmed record numbers of anti-Jewish attacks across the United States, Canada, and Europe, while social media accelerated newer conspiracies blaming Jews for everything from the slave trade to COVID-19.2, 3

Even then, our concern was not only the scale of antisemitism, but the way it was being confronted. The most prominent institutions tasked with addressing it were doing so selectively, not consistently. The Anti-Defamation League had diluted its core mission by repositioning itself as a more generic anti-hate organization and, in practice, mostly focused on right-wing antisemitism while giving a free pass to anti-Jewish hostility from the political left.

In the months following the October 7 attack, antisemitism shed its inhibitions.

What distinguishes this moment is the collapse of stigma. Expressions that would have ended careers a decade ago now generate applause, clicks, and campaign donations. Language that would trigger immediate condemnation if directed at other minorities is routinely excused, contextualized, or ignored when directed at Jews. Hostility that once hid at the margins has migrated inward—into campuses, political platforms, cultural institutions, and digital ecosystems. The result is an old hatred on steroids—newly unmoored from consequence.

This normalization is not diffuse, but has taken shape through two distinct but mutually reinforcing channels. The progressive left frames Israel as fundamentally illegitimate, a country of inherent injustice. That creates an atmosphere in which hostility toward Israel is cast as an ethical obligation. And for many on the left—and their Muslim activist allies—the distinction between Jews and Israelis frequently collapses.

On parts of the populist right, antisemitism has reemerged through the architecture of conspiracy theory. Jews are cast not as oppressors, but as puppet masters—orchestrators of migration, finance, media narratives, and foreign entanglements. The vocabulary differs from that on the left, but the structural function is identical: Jews are assigned exceptional and malign agency.

Prince Harry issues stark warning over Britain’s antisemitism crisis

Prince Harry has weighed into Britain’s antisemitism crisis for the first time, warning that Jews are being made to feel “unsafe” in their own homes as hatred spreads across the country.

Writing in the New Statesman, the Duke of Sussex said Britain was facing a “deeply troubling rise in antisemitism” and warned that “silence is not neutrality” when extremism is allowed to flourish.

In one of the strongest interventions yet by a senior royal on the issue, Harry wrote: “Jewish communities – families, children, ordinary people – are being made to feel unsafe in the very places they call home.”

He added: “Because hatred directed at people for who they are, or what they believe, is not protest. It is prejudice.”

The prince said recent “lethal violence” in London and Manchester had brought the crisis “into sharp and deeply troubling focus”, as he urged Britons not to confuse legitimate criticism of events in the Middle East with hostility towards Jews.

Kenton United Synagogue in Harrow, north-west London, where an attempted arson attack caused minor smoke damage to an internal room but no injuries or significant structural damage.

Harry warned that anger over Gaza risked spilling into anti-Jewish hatred on British streets, saying: “Nothing, whether criticism of a government or the reality of violence and destruction, can ever justify hostility toward an entire people or faith.”

The Duke also appeared to reference his own past controversies, including wearing a Nazi uniform to a fancy dress party in 2005, admitting he was “acutely aware” of his “past mistakes”.

He writes: “I am acutely aware of my own past mistakes – thoughtless actions for which I have apologised, taken responsibility and learned from.”

The prince insisted antisemitism and other racisms all “draw from the same well of division” and must be confronted with “the same resolve”.

Giant to be shown in cinemas this autumn

John Lithgow has said he is “thrilled” that the Olivier Award-winning play Giant, in which he portrays British author Roald Dahl, will screen in cinemas around the world.

The Mark Rosenblatt debut play premiered in London’s West End in 2024 and went on to collect three Olivier Awards – including best new play and best actor for Lithgow’s portrayal of the children’s author as he grapples with whether to make a public apology.

The play will screen in more than 900 cinemas across 18 countries, including the UK, US, Canada and Australia, from November 2026.

Lithgow said: “In my 53-year, 25-show career on Broadway, I’ve rarely experienced the kind of audience response that we feel night after night with Giant.

“Mark Rosenblatt has written a play of extraordinary intelligence and humanity, and with every performance I can sense the audience wrestling with its questions in real time.

“This is the unique power of theatre at its best. I’m thrilled that our production will now reach movie theatres around the world, allowing even more people to experience the urgency, impact and emotional force of this story.”

Filmed live at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London, the cinema release features the original West End cast comprised of Lithgow as Dahl and Elliot Levey as British publisher Tom Maschler – a role which won him the best supporting actor Olivier Award.

Aya Cash also stars as publisher Jessie Stone alongside Rachael Stirling who plays Dahl’s wife, Felicity Dahl, Tessa Bonham Jones as housekeeper Hallie and Richard Hope as handyman Wally.

The play was transferred to New York City’s Broadway for a 16-week run from March through to the end of June.

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05/13 Links Pt1: The Anti-Zionist Affliction; America’s Conspiratorial Consensus; Saudi anchor vs. UAE engine: Why the Abu Dhabi-Israel alliance is transcending the Arab League

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The Anti-Zionist Affliction

Anti-Zionism is many things, including humorless and anhedonic. I often watch news coverage of anti-Israel activism and hear the voice of Carol Burnett’s mean old Miss Hannigan in Annie: “Do I hear happiness in here?”

There is almost nothing in the world quite as campy as the Eurovision song contest, but instead of getting into character and enjoying the shtick, Europeans are whining year-round about the participation of Israelis. This year, the contest even tried changing the rules to prevent Israel’s entrant, Noam Bettan, from matching the Jewish state’s past competitiveness.

Even that didn’t work as planned, since Bettan has now at least qualified for the finals. Four idiots got themselves tossed out of the audience for protesting Bettan’s existence on this earth yesterday during his performance. The Irish public broadcaster not only boycotted this year’s contest but is refusing to even air it on TV.

After all, if you allow people to watch Jews sing, who knows—it could lead to mixed dancing. Before you know it, impressionable children may be using offensive language, like “Israeli couscous.”

And so, no singing. No dancing. No watching, singing, or dancing. It’s like Footloose with keffiyehs.

What about art? If we can’t have music because the Jews have music too, can we look at pictures? Here I will refer you to the New York Times’ subheadline on an article about the Venice Biennale, the prestigious art expo: “The hottest exhibitions at the world’s major art exhibition were shuttered on Friday as part of a pro-Palestinian demonstration.”

Is that not the tagline of our times? More from the Times:

“When the final preview day opened at 10 a.m., dozens of visitors flocked to Austria’s pavilion, where Florentina Holzinger’s performance ‘Seaworld Venice’ which includes numerous naked performers, had drawn hourslong lines all week. They found the pavilion closed, with a sign outside saying that ‘some team members have decided to participate in the strike.’

“Some of the other buzziest exhibitions at this year’s event, including those by artists representing Belgium, Egypt, Japan, the Netherlands and South Korea, were also shut. Signs outside some of those pavilions read, ‘We stand with Palestine.’”

No dancing, no singing, no art, no immodest mer-people. All “for Palestine.” If only they would do something for the Palestinians instead of doing nothing “for Palestine.”

Seth Mandel: Putting October 7 on Trial

Yesterday, Israel showed remarkable parliamentary unity: A bill was sponsored by members of the governing coalition and of the opposition, and it received zero “no” votes as it passed easily.

What was this magic bill? It was a piece of legislation to approve the establishment of a special court to handle trials against participants in the October 7 slaughter. And, crucially, the trials will be public and televised.

The bill, applauded Justice Minister Yariv Levin, represents “one of the most important moments of the current Knesset. One can feel that we are doing the right thing by finding a way to unite at this moment, even though we are on the eve of elections and despite all the disagreements that exist.”

Indeed it was an opportune time to come together. This morning’s report on Hamas’s campaign of sexual violence was the result of a painstaking, yearslong investigative process. And now the terrorists captured alive on that day will have their day in court for the whole world to see.

The world needs to see it because, especially in the West, its key institutions rallied to the side of the slaughterers. They need to see what they support. But more important, the world needs to be shown what our enlightened professors, elite student bodies, progressive government officials and activists, and the rest cheered.

It will take place in a courtroom, where evidence can prevail. It will be in stark contrast to the fake international courts infamous for their corruption and lawlessness. And it will put to shame the way Westerners have tried to conduct their own trials through op-ed pages and manosphere podcasts.

According to the Times of Israel, only judges who are qualified to sit on the supreme court or are distinguished international jurists of similar qualifications will be on the 15-judge panel. Each case, meanwhile, “would be heard by three judges — one of whom would be a retired district court judge — while a five-judge panel would hear proceedings involving multiple defendants. Appeals would be heard by all 15 judges.”

America’s Conspiratorial Consensus

Ironically, this fixation is being eagerly reinforced by contemporary Russian propaganda, whose messages are echoed across America’s emerging red-brown, anti-Israel conspiracist consensus. These include old Soviet tropes equating Zionists with Nazis; the now-familiar claims that Israel controls Washington and pushed the United States into war with Iran; allegations that Israel is persecuting Christians; and the use of Epstein-related code words for Jews, such as the “Epstein coalition,” as documented by Israeli scholar Nati Cantorovich.

When progressive California Rep. Ro Khanna found common ground with former Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene over opposition to the “Epstein class,” champagne corks likely popped in Kremlin propaganda offices. A democracy that chooses to believe that a country the size of New Jersey controls its political system has already lost confidence in its own institutions. Center-left British journalist Lewis Goodall exemplified this mindset recently when he remarked, “Israel is in the driver’s seat, and we—Britain, Europe, the United States—are powerless to determine our fate.”

It’s easy to dismiss such comments as ridiculous, but they carry real consequences. They are demoralizing and disempowering: Why even bother voting if Bibi Netanyahu controls everything? They are also corrosive. Demonization of Israel has long served dysfunctional and tyrannical regimes as a tool to divert attention from their own failures. By importing these ideas into their own democracies, Western elites are helping dismantle them from within. With American elites circulating such brain-rot under the guise of political analysis, America’s adversaries score easy victories in an ongoing campaign of psychological warfare they never stop waging.

Yet anti-Zionist vigilance inevitably turned against the Kremlin leadership itself. One group of Soviet “patriots” warned that Brezhnev’s government was under Zionist occupation and that its anti-Zionist campaign was merely a cover. Why else, they asked, would the country continue to slide into economic decline, moral rot, and alcoholism? The explanation was predictable: The Jewish wives of senior officials were enabling Zionist manipulation from within.

Some of the leading Zionologists themselves succumbed to the logic they had helped institutionalize. Convinced that Zionists were plotting revenge against him for exposing their machinations, Valery Yemelyanov—author of the infamous tract Dezionization, first published in Arabic in 1979 in the Syrian newspaper Al-Ba’ath on Hafez al-Assad’s orders—came to see his wife as the weak link. He murdered and dismembered her with an ax, then burned her body at a nearby construction site. He spent six years in a psychiatric hospital. At his trial in absentia, his supporters claimed he had been framed by Zionists—the real perpetrators of the murder.

It should be clear by now that what is taking shape in American public discourse is in no way a conventional political disagreement over the rightness or real-world effectiveness or this or that Israeli policy. It is the normalization of a way of thinking that flattens reality into a single, self-confirming narrative that has always led to the same place: the mental and political unraveling of the societies that embrace it.

What makes this moment particularly dangerous is that it no longer belongs to the fringes. It has moved fully into mainstream and, having crossed the aisle from left to right, creates the impression of a shared, bipartisan consensus around a modern American version of “the Jewish question.”

Societies that have gone down this path—the USSR, Arab states, Iran—do not emerge stronger, more confident, or more just. They become more paranoid, more dysfunctional, and more prone to turning against themselves. America has not been such a society until now. The question is whether it still has the power to stop.

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05/12 Links Pt2: The Gulf Countries Are Building a Middle East that Iran Cannot Tolerate; France arrests Tunisian for terror plot on Jews; Israel advances to Eurovision final

From Ian:

Dr. Yuval Steinitz: Technological Superiority Led to Israeli Victory in Iran War

Dr. Yuval Steinitz, chairman of Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, told a Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs briefing on Monday that "40,000 rockets and missiles were launched at Israel from Lebanon and Gaza alone. Iron Dome intercepted the overwhelming majority of them with a success rate close to 99%."

Without Iron Dome, Israel's major cities would have faced massive civilian casualties, economic paralysis, and severe disruption to daily life and military operations. "There is no parallel technology in the world," Steinitz said, describing Iron Dome as the only system capable of intercepting short- and medium-range rockets, mortar shells, and artillery fire at this scale.

Steinitz described the phases of Israel's Iran campaign, beginning with the elimination of senior Iranian military leadership. Nearly 40 top commanders from the Revolutionary Guards and the regular Iranian army were killed "in less than 10 seconds." "The speed was critical. If it had taken 10 minutes instead of 10 seconds, commanders would have escaped to bunkers and the achievement would have been impossible."

The second phase focused on achieving air superiority over Iran within 36 hours, allowing the Israeli Air Force to operate freely against nuclear and missile infrastructure while defending Israel against ballistic missile attacks.

"For the first time in history, two countries fought each other directly from distances of 1,000 to 3,000 km....The main factor was scientific and technological superiority," he said, noting that while Iran rapidly adapted and improved its systems during the war, "we ran even faster, and the end result is very clear....I don't know a better example of a crystal-clear victory in the modern world than the war between Israel and Iran....The regime was dramatically weakened."

Regarding the impact of strikes against Iran's nuclear program, Steinitz said: "We destroyed most of the enrichment sites and almost all of the weaponization infrastructure." While Iran still possesses enriched uranium stockpiles and the scientific knowledge to enrich further, key components of the nuclear weapons program were severely damaged, including testing facilities, conversion infrastructure, and personnel involved in weaponization.

In his assessment, before the war Iran could have reached a nuclear weapon within months. "Now, it will take them between two to four years to rebuild everything and produce a real nuclear weapon."

Jason Greenblatt: The Gulf Countries Are Building a Middle East that Iran Cannot Tolerate

For decades, Iran's leadership has opposed the direction much of the Gulf has taken politically, economically and diplomatically. Today, that opposition is increasingly being expressed through direct attacks on the states' infrastructure and way of life. Since Feb. 28, the Iranian regime has launched 549 ballistic missiles, 29 cruise missiles and 2,260 drones at the UAE.

The Iranian regime presents its model as the only legitimate form of Islamic governance. Yet, Gulf states have demonstrated that economic growth, global engagement, and religious life can develop together without the same degree of state control.

The UAE also made a decision to establish formal relations with Israel, altering a long-standing regional dynamic and showing that countries in the Middle East can pursue different paths, grounded in national interest and the pursuit of long-term stability and prosperity. It also introduced a precedent that runs directly against Iran's effort to organize the region around confrontation and war.

Iran's conflict with the Gulf extends beyond military confrontation. The UAE stands in direct opposition to Iran's broader ambitions. A country that represents economic openness, stability and independent decision-making challenges the narrative that the Iranian regime promotes about how the Middle East must function. What Iran is trying to damage has not broken under sustained attack, and I do not believe it ever will.

Trump says stopping Iran's nuclear program outweighs Americans' economic pain

US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that Americans’ financial struggles are not a factor in his decision-making as he seeks to negotiate an end to the Iran war, saying that preventing Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon is his top priority.

Asked by a reporter to what extent Americans’ financial situations were motivating him to strike a deal, Trump said: “Not even a little bit.”

"The only thing that matters, when I’m talking about Iran, they can’t have a nuclear weapon," Trump said before departing the White House for a trip to China. "I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all. That's the only thing that motivates me."

Trump's remarks are likely to draw scrutiny from critics who argue the administration should balance geopolitical objectives with the economic impact on Americans, particularly as cost-of-living concerns remain a top issue for voters ahead of the November midterm elections.

Asked to elaborate on the president's comments, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said that Trump's "ultimate responsibility is the safety and security of Americans. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, and if action wasn’t taken, they’d have one, which threatens all Americans."

Trump is under growing pressure from fellow Republicans who fear economic pain caused by the war could spark a backlash against the party and cost it control of the House of Representatives and possibly the Senate in November.

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05/12 Links Pt1: Two-Year Investigation Concludes Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence; Melanie Phillips: ‘Zack Polanski is an enemy of Jews’; Kristof’s grotesque journalistic malpractice

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The End of Our Illusions

We try to avoid imagining that our ideological opponents are morally inferior. But it can be just as dangerous to convince ourselves that our declared antagonists want the same things we want and hold to values that approximate our own.

That is part of the reason for the pained reaction to Nick Kristof’s opinion column yesterday, in which he claimed (without evidence, obviously) that Israel has instituted a state policy of militaristized bestiality.

Today, a meticulous, harrowing report was released on Hamas’s systematic rape and sexual violence toward Israelis on and after October 7. The commission that undertook this investigation “has examined over 10,000 photographs and videos of the attack totaling more than 1,800 hours of visual analysis.”

We want to believe that Nick Kristof and all the people who defended and shared his article are just like us—believers in honesty, men and women of integrity, a community of truth-seekers with a baseline sense of human decency. We want to believe this in part because of that very sense of human decency.

But we are making a massive error. Kristof’s named sources not only provided no evidence for his lurid bestiality fantasies but themselves were also people with massive credibility deficits.

Conversely, the documentation of sexual violence by Palestinians who invaded Israel on October 7, 2023—the total number of infiltrators was several thousand that day—took years, even though we all watched videos of Palestinians dragging the unclothed bodies of Israeli women through the streets of Gaza, and even though Hamas documented many of their crimes, and even though Hamas members admitted to raping women that day. All of that is what is known as evidence—apologies to Kristof and his readers for using such technical, obscure SAT words—and evidence needs to be compiled, examined, analyzed, and used as the jumping-off point for additional investigation.

That is what Israeli officials did, and that is what those who support the Jewish state’s existence did, and what they called for others to do, because that is what is done when the goal is to obtain the truth. To the anti-Zionist collective, the truth is to be avoided like the plague, and therefore what is rewarded is not evidence but creativity and imagination.

And that is what was on display in the New York Times. We want Kristof and his defenders to be like us. But they are not like us—and they punish us for our good faith.

Israel Is the Weapon By Abe Greenwald

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There’s increasing overlap between the left and right dupes on all these issues. The point is that anti-Semites merely used Israel to turn them into their anti-Jewish foot soldiers. They’ve been recruited to dehumanize Jews online, disrupt Jewish events, and attack Jews around the world. Not Israel—Jews.

Because the aim of the information war is not merely to turn public opinion against Israel—although it’s certainly done that. The idea is to alchemize anti-Zionism into kinetic Jew-hatred in the real world, to instigate a war against the Jews of the Diaspora parallel to the one that Hamas launched against the Jews of Israel.

Many American Jews say that Israel should do a better job fighting the information war—without understanding that war was declared against them. Israel has done an astounding job of fighting its war. We are the ones who’ve been under attack from anti-Israel propaganda this whole time.

We still are, and it’s getting ever worse. No longer do the propagandists bother to sprinkle meager crumbs of credibility over their work. There’s no incentive for them to cover their tracks and every incentive to prevaricate. Photographs of the Gaza famine that never happened earn Pulitzer Prizes. The New York Times now publishes horror stories about Israel that are not only impossible to verify but impossible period—literally impossible. When Nicolas Kristof writes a story about IDF-trained rape-dogs, he’s sending the mob after all of us—including those liberal American Jews who then denounce Israel. What they don’t realize is that accusing Jews of committing impossible crimes is the oldest, most primitive category of anti-Semitic propaganda. It takes us out of the realm of the human, no matter where we are on this planet.

It would be hard for a famous journalist simply to assert that Jews, as a people, have dark powers that defy the laws of nature. But when Israel is your weapon, you never hold your fire.

Honest Reporting: Why They Deny The Crimes of October 7

When Jewish Suffering Becomes Inconvenient
For many people invested in a worldview in which Israel represents absolute evil and Palestinians represent absolute victimhood, acknowledging the sexual crimes of October 7 creates tension. Jewish women cannot be permitted to exist as victims because their reality complicates the narrative. Israeli suffering becomes ideologically intolerable. And so it must be doubted, obscured, minimized, or erased altogether. This is why so much October 7 denialism focuses specifically on the sexual crimes.

Sexual violence carries a specific moral weight in contemporary society. To acknowledge that Hamas terrorists and their collaborators committed widespread and systematic acts of rape, mutilation, and sexual torture would require many activists to confront a reality: that individuals and movements they have celebrated, romanticized, excused, or sanitized committed acts of extraordinary brutality.

We should also recognize the profoundly anti-Jewish nature of this phenomenon. Jews are uniquely subjected to suspicion toward their suffering in ways that have become normalized across political and cultural life. The distrust of Jewish testimony has become so deeply embedded that many people no longer even recognize it as prejudice.

The Crime Continued Through Erasure
The tragedy is not only the crimes themselves, but what their denial reveals about the world Jews inhabit. After the Holocaust, many believed humanity had learned something: that there existed a moral obligation to listen to victims, document atrocities honestly, and ensure genocidal violence could never again be erased through propaganda and denial. Yet within hours of October 7, that promise began collapsing in real time.

The lesson of Holocaust denial should have taught us that evidence alone is never enough against ideologically motivated hatred. There will never be enough footage, enough testimony, enough witnesses, enough forensic evidence, or enough reports for those who have already decided that Jewish suffering does not count.

That is the real connection between Holocaust denial and the denial of October 7. Both ultimately rest upon the same underlying premise: that Jews are uniquely unworthy of belief, uniquely suspect in their suffering, and uniquely undeserving of moral sympathy.

Ultimately, when these crimes are denied, minimized, relativized, or erased, the victims are violated a second time. The murdered are stripped not only of their lives, but of the truth of what was done to them. The raped are stripped not only of bodily autonomy, but of the dignity of having their suffering acknowledged. Denial is never neutral. It is the continuation of the crime through erasure.

That is why speaking clearly about October 7, including the systematic sexual crimes perpetrated against women and girls, matters so profoundly. We cannot bring back those who were murdered. We cannot undo the horrors inflicted upon the victims. But we can refuse to abandon them to silence, distortion, and denial. We can bear witness. We can speak plainly. And we can ensure that those who suffered are not erased by a world that too often finds Jewish suffering uniquely difficult to acknowledge.

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05/11 Links Pt2: Journalism Succumbs To Its Wounds; I’m a Democrat. My Party Has a Double Standard on Antisemitism; I Walked TEL AVIV to JERUSALEM. The Real Israel No One Shows You.

From Ian:

John Podhoretz: Abe Foxman, 1940-2026

The “Jews who care” were the ones Abe Foxman, the most important and probably the most beloved American Jewish communal leader of his day, spoke for. He knew the difference between the Jews who care and others in his kishkes, based on his own extraordinary life story of the century. Born to Polish Jews in Belarus, his parents left him as a baby in the care of his nanny while they were sent to a ghetto.

He was given a false name and baptized as a Catholic. Miraculously, his mother escaped, returned to Vilnius, and herself posed as a local Catholic so she could provide money for Abe’s care. Then his father was liberated and came back after the war—at which point the nanny would not give him up, believing that she had saved his soul through his baptism and that he should remain in her care as a Catholic. Custody battles ensued, which the Foxmans finally won before making it to America in 1950. Abe was 10. He went to City College and then got a law degree before beginning to work as a Jewish activist. Abe made reference in many speeches to “the day I took off the cross.” And yet he and his parents remained grateful to the nanny and helped her until her passing. As they remained grateful to be Jews, in spite of having been targeted for death for being so. They raised Abe Orthodox, sent him to yeshiva, and while he attained a law degree and could have assimilated into the larger American melting pot to put the trauma of his first 10 years behind him, an Orthodox Jew he remained until his passing on Sunday at the age of 86.

The point here is that he saw his mission and obligation in the defense of Jews against the scourge of anti-Semitism. If that anti-Semitism came from the right, he attacked it. If it came from the left, he attacked it. If it came from white people, he attacked it. If it came from black people, he attacked it. If it was hidden inside anti-Zionism, he attacked it. If it was hidden in conversations about rapacious capitalists, he attacked it. He was utterly consistent. His mission was his mission and he pursued it unfailingly.

Which is why, in one of the more shameful moments in communal Jewish organizational history, he was coup’ed out of the ADL—simply because he wasn’t helpful enough to the cause of Jewish liberalism. His replacement, Jonathan Greenblatt, spent years muddying the institution’s mission and letting leftists off the hook by prioritizing liberal apologia until October 7 woke even Greenblatt up to the undeniable fact that the predominant threat is from the left. Had Abe been there, the clarity would not have been that hard to achieve.

I’m a Democrat. My Party Has a Double Standard on Antisemitism.

In 2017, Democratic leaders denounced the white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us.” In 2022, Democrats took Donald Trump to task for having dinner with Nick Fuentes, an antisemite and a white supremacist. Across the Democratic Party’s ideological spectrum, right-wing hate is consistently condemned.

But today, too many Democrats are noticeably and shamefully silent when antisemitism comes from the far left — at a moment when the Anti-Defamation League is reporting a surge of antisemitic incidents in the past three years.

It’s a glaring double standard.

Consider the response to — really, the embrace of — Hasan Piker, a prominent left-wing commentator with millions of online followers. He referred to Orthodox Jews as “inbred” and said “America deserved 9/11,” both statements he halfheartedly walked back. He said that Hamas — a designated terrorist organization that has killed Americans and taken Americans hostage — is “a thousand times better” than Israel, America’s ally, which he called a “fascist settler colonial apartheid state” — a statement he stands by. None of this should be waved away as mere edgy commentary. Mr. Piker traffics in antisemitic and anti-American extremism that has been met by silence from many on the Democratic left.

Sadly, we’ve seen several prominent Democrats appear on his show and even campaign with him, granting his views legitimacy.

I’ve spoken to congressional colleagues who have privately told me that many things Mr. Piker has said are disgusting. Yet they’ll say nothing about it in public, even as they rightly rush to condemn President Trump for his unending barrage of offensive comments and social media posts. I understand that speaking up isn’t easy — if you do, there are many on the left who will heckle you in public and troll you online. But whether we’re elected officials, candidates, organizers or activists, we should remember that our constituents don’t expect us to take the easy path. It takes far more courage to stand up to those who have long claimed to be in your corner than to oppose your political opponents. That’s what principled leadership is all about. But we’re not always seeing it.

At their recent party convention, Michigan Democrats nominated a candidate to run for a seat on the University of Michigan’s Board of Regents who had shared a social media post praising the former leader of Hezbollah as a martyr and another post that invoked age-old antisemitic tropes by referring to Israelis as “demons” who “lie, steal, cheat, murder and blackmail.”

Last month, most Senate Democrats voted for two measures that would have blocked sales of military equipment to Israel, with some arguing that among the reasons for their votes was their assessment of Israel’s human rights record. Is this turnabout a legitimate departure from decades of American foreign policy? Or — more likely — is it a politically convenient stance that coincides with a small but vocal and growing segment of the political left making opposition to support for Israel a new litmus test?

Seth Mandel: Journalism Succumbs To Its Wounds

The famous saying attributed to Jean-Paul Sartre holds that “the anti-Semite doesn’t accuse the Jew of stealing because he actually believes he stole. He accuses the Jew of stealing because he enjoys watching the Jew empty his pockets to prove his innocence.”

That is no doubt as true today as ever, regardless of the quote’s origins. And it immediately comes to mind when watching, in real time, the evolution in the latest in a long line of accusations about the nefarious trained militarism of Zionist animals. Whereas many of these rumors—my favorite being the griffin vulture that Arab governments claimed had been trained as a Mossad spy—had an air of levity about them, the new one most certainly does not. And that is the idea that Zionist dogs are trained to rape Arabs.

The anti-Zionist activists who started or popularized the rumors have made clear that there is no evidence in their favor. That didn’t stop the sick-minded anti-Israel protesters from adopting the talking point, as demonstrators did in London. From there, however, it has moved to the pages of the New York Times, where Nicholas Kristof repeats it.

I watched other sensational “reports” of Israeli perfidy circulate among people who treated them as fact recently and thought about how the question of whether Western journalism will ever recover from its alliance with the machinery of Hamas propaganda appears to have been answered. No.

I saw a video of a woman wearing a “PRESS” vest in Southern Lebanon, (though her bio lists no affiliation) and proceed to read a list of talking points off of a card and then say “I just received a heartbreaking report”—please note the wording—of an Israeli drone following a girl riding a scooter and shooting at her until she was mortally wounded.

Usually the reporter reports. But when it comes to Israel, activists costumed as journalists “receive” reports and then continue the game of telephone. “Somebody told me” is not reporting, but you can report out what somebody told you. Reporters know the difference, or should.

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05/11 Links Pt1: Trump: Iranian response ‘totally unacceptable’; Dear BBC News – Just When Will You Stop Shilling For Terrorists?; NYC anti-Israel activists protest at synagogue against Israel real estate event

From Ian:

David Collier: Dear BBC News – Just When Will You Stop Shilling For Terrorists?

The journalist behind this particular mess is Nawal Al-Maghafi. Her timeline is full of clear anti-Israel bias, non-factual commentary, Hamas propaganda presented as news, and retweets of Gaza-based activists whom no respectable journalist should be seen amplifying.

In this latest case, either she did not bother to dig for the truth of the Hezbollah affiliation at all, or chose to turn a blind eye to it.

Why is it that these Arabic journalists are given carte blanche to piggyback on the BBC’s name and spend money from the British licence fee promoting such a blatant anti-Israel agenda?

The truth is this: Hezbollah is a proscribed jihadist terror group that seeks to wipe Israel off the map. Funded, armed, and often directed by the Iranian regime, it has exported its violence to arenas such as the Syrian civil war. Hezbollah chose to attack Israel on 8 October 2023, and again at the start of the latest round of violence. Israel has no territorial dispute with Lebanon – and without Hezbollah’s religious fundamentalism in the south, there would be no conflict. All of Lebanon’s woes stem from the refusal of the Shia in the south to abandon their jihadist aims.

So why is there not a single BBC article that lays out this context clearly for its audience? Those who support Hezbollah – including this man’s own community – have brought devastation to both Lebanon and Israel.

Isn’t it about time that the BBC took away the pen from those journalists who clearly hate Israel and defunded its anti-Israel agenda? More importantly, when will the BBC stop shilling for terrorists?

Khaled Abu Toameh: Erdogan's Turkey: The NATO Member That Sponsors Terrorism

New revelations emerging from Israeli security investigations have shattered any illusion that Turkey's relationship with Hamas is limited to "political support" or "diplomatic engagement." The evidence increasingly points to a situation far more alarming: Turkey has become a primary operational, logistical, and financial hub for Hamas's global terror infrastructure.

Countries that enable terrorism cannot at the same time be treated as indispensable partners in the fight against terrorism.

By allowing Hamas members to develop drone capabilities on Turkish soil, Ankara is deliberately grooming terrorists for future wars against Israel.

Turkey, rather than simply hosting Hamas officials, is willfully cultivating the next generation of Hamas terrorists and making sure that the geographical reach of Iran's jihadist axis continues to expand.

Turkey's pivotal financial role is especially significant because it provides Hamas with access to the international financial system through the territory of a NATO member state. That reality should deeply alarm both Washington and European capitals.

Ideologically -- as well as militarily and financially -- Erdogan has openly embraced Hamas leaders. He has repeatedly refused to designate the group as a terrorist organization... and characterized its members as "resistance fighters" and "liberation group" warriors fighting to protect Palestinian lands.

Erdogan's alignment with Hamas seems rooted in his broader ideological affinity with the Muslim Brotherhood movement and other Islamist groups. His government has consistently supported radical Islamist groups in Egypt, Libya, Syria, and other countries.

For years, Western governments have clung to the fiction that countries such as Turkey and Qatar can serve as neutral mediators between Hamas and Israel. That assumption has always been deeply flawed.

Qatar, meanwhile, continues to try to undermine the United States by donating, over decades, many billions of dollars to influence education from K-12 through graduate schools throughout America. Cornell University has received $10 billion over the years; Carnegie Mellon "just under $2 billion"; Texas A&M University "over $1 billion" (which gave Qatar full ownership of more than 500 research projects in fields such as nuclear science, artificial intelligence, biotech, robotics and weapons development); and Georgetown University $971 million. Why do Qatar and Turkey continue embracing Hamas while demanding the trust of the US and the West? Why does the West keep accepting this duplicity?

The Trump administration faces a crucial test. If Washington is genuinely serious about dismantling the infrastructure of Hamas and confronting the Iranian regime, it cannot continue overlooking Turkey's commitment to doing the exact opposite: safeguarding and supporting Hamas.

A NATO member state, Turkey, is facilitating the activities of an Iranian-backed terrorist group responsible for the mass murder of civilians, including many Americans.

European sanctions on Israelis won’t succeed in pressuring Jewish state, Sa’ar says

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said on Monday that the European Union’s attempt to impose political views on Jerusalem through sanctions on Jews living in Judea and Samaria “is unacceptable and will not succeed.”

Israel “firmly rejects” the E.U. decision, describing it as “arbitrary” and “political,” Sa’ar said.

The Israeli official decried the “outrageous” comparison between Israeli citizens and Hamas terrorists. “This is a completely distorted moral equivalence,” he stated.

The E.U. foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas stated earlier that her organization “just gave the go-ahead to sanction Israeli settlers over violence against Palestinians.” She added that it had “also agreed new sanctions on leading Hamas figures.”

“It was high time we move from deadlock to delivery,” Kallas said. “Extremisms and violence carry consequences.”

“Israel has stood, stands and will continue to stand for the right of Jews to settle in the heart of our homeland,” Sa’ar responded. “No other people in the world has such a documented and longstanding right to its land as the Jewish people have to the Land of Israel.”

“This is a moral and historical right that has also been recognized by the law of nations, and no actor can take it away from the Jewish people,” he stated.

Earlier on Monday, Ireland’s national public service broadcaster reported that according to E.U. officials, “seven settlers or settler organizations” were set to be blacklisted, and that the bloc was also preparing sanctions against representatives of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.

Israel Gantz, head of the Binyamin Regional Council and chairman of the Yesha Council, also strongly condemned the E.U.’s decision to impose sanctions on organizations and residents in Judea and Samaria, calling it a “shameful decision” and “the height of hypocrisy and double standards.”

Placing sanctions on Israeli citizens in the same framework as measures against Hamas terrorists represents “an unprecedented moral low,” he said.

The E.U. is unfairly targeting Israelis who are “on the frontlines of the struggle against Palestinian Authority terrorism,” while ignoring the P.A.’s role in rewarding violence, Gantz said.

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05/10 Links: Former ADL director and Holocaust survivor Abe Foxman dies at 86; Where are the voices defending Europe’s Jews?; The Saudi 'No'; Why Is It Only in Ireland that I Worry about Being Jewish?

From Ian:

Where are the voices defending Europe’s Jews?

There would have been no Europe had it not been built upon the need to turn the page after the Shoah. Europe claimed to be “new,” as Konrad Adenauer declared. It swore to become “different,” as Simone Veil assured us, in the name of overcoming the antisemitism that murdered 6 million Jews.

And so the celebration of Europe Day on Saturday was deeply paradoxical.

Antisemitism has once again become omnipresent—a stain spreading across the continent just as it did in the Europe of the 1930s, a Europe dazzling in beauty, culture and tradition before the plague of Nazism and fascism consumed it.

Today’s Europe, confused by a mixture of distorted human-rights ideology and Third Worldist progressivism, applies an obvious double standard. It condemns Donald Trump while treating Iran gently. It attacks Israel while forgetting Hamas and Hezbollah.

All this while Europe claims to be forging a stronger identity, capable of competing strategically and politically with the United States.

But antisemitism remains the structural weakness of European thought—its recurring condemnation.

Walter Hallstein, one of the first presidents of the European Commission, once said: “Anyone who lived through National Socialism knows that Europe was born so that such persecution could never happen again.”

Yet when European Parliament President Roberta Metsola spoke this week of the “many challenges” facing Europe, she did not mention antisemitism.

French President Emmanuel Macron spoke of a “treasure forged by courage.” Yet why is that courage not used to pressure Lebanon to stop Hezbollah and pursue genuine peace, instead of endlessly blaming Jerusalem?

Former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi dedicated a “White Rose,” the symbol of his political movement, to Sophie Scholl, the young German student executed for resisting Nazism. Rightly so. That is the Europe we should honor.

But in the hands of a political camp that, in the name of peace, condemns only Israel, that rose appears withered.

Where are the voices defending Europe’s Jews?

Why Is It Only in Ireland that I Worry about Being Jewish?

As one of the 2,000 Jews in Ireland, I worry every time I attend a Jewish community event that this will be the time someone gets through the many layers of security to attack us. I worry that my partner, who is publicly visible as a Holocaust education activist and a Jewish business owner, will be targeted. I worry that when I bring my six-year-old son to places where other Jews are present, I'm putting him in danger.

Attacks against diaspora Jews are happening within a context of relentless protest against Israel and a boycott movement that is trying to isolate the country from the community of nations. The attackers seem to believe that hurting Jews in Sydney, London or Manchester is striking a blow against Israel. The implication is that Jews everywhere share responsibility for the conduct of Jews anywhere. It reduces all Jews to avatars of Israeli policy, creating a permission structure for violence against Jews in general.

Sometimes Irish Jews end up as collateral damage, as happened with the Sinn Fein party's appalling campaign on the Dublin city council to rename Herzog Park in Rathgar, one the city's most Jewish areas, on the pretext that it honored a Zionist. Before he was president of Israel, Chaim Herzog was an Irish Jew, the son of Isaac Herzog, who was Ireland's first chief rabbi and later chief rabbi of Mandatory Palestine and the State of Israel. The Herzogs are essentially the Kennedys of Israel; Isaac's grandson and namesake is president of Israel today.

The overall message is that the recognition of Jewish humanity is somehow conditional, qualified, contingent on what the Israeli government does or doesn't do. In my experience, this logic is very common in Ireland. I've encountered it personally. It's all over social media. It pops up in mainstream media too. It's even promoted by several political parties.

Pierre Rehov: The Saudi 'No'

The Abraham Accords, once touted as a breakthrough, have quietly moved, in Saudi political conversation, into the deep freeze.

In September 1967, the Arab League, at its summit in Khartoum, delivered the famous three "no's": no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel. Notably, the declaration made no mention of a Palestinian state, which the late senior PLO official Zuheir Mohsen significantly pointed out in 1977, had not yet been invented:

"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality, today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism." — Zuheir Mohsen, Trouw, March 31, 1977.

Once US President Donald J. Trump, without Saudi Arabia lifting a finger, relieved the kingdom of its foremost adversary, Iran, and removed the major threat to the kingdom, what would Saudi Arabia need Israel for anyway? To the Saudis, the Abraham Accords doubtless look like an agreement signed by others, but never embraced by the one Arab power that truly mattered.

The Arab League's Khartoum resolution was never truly about borders. It expressed a fundamental rejection of Jewish sovereignty on land the Arab world, guided by religious doctrine, considered permanently to be held in trust (waqf, endowment) for Allah.

The late Abba Eban, serving as Israel's foreign minister, had called the pre-1967 "border" -- merely an armistice line where the fighting had stopped in 1949 -- "the Auschwitz lines." Riyadh appears to understand this perfectly, which is precisely why its condition was framed as it was.

The Arab League's response to the 1948 UN partition plan was a genocidal invasion of the newly born Jewish state by the armies of five Arab states. Khartoum repeated this rejection in 1967. Saudi Arabia continues the same refusal today in language carefully tailored for Western chancelleries.

Qatar, meanwhile, plays an even more institutionalized double game: hosting America's largest regional military base while protecting Hamas commanders, financing Muslim Brotherhood networks, and deploying Al Jazeera TV network as the ideological megaphone for the entire project.

Israeli security cannot rest any hope on a recognition that will not come. It will depend instead on the determined elimination of the Iranian regime and its terrorist proxies when the opportunity arises, and the fight for power that might well define the Sunni world once the Shia threat no longer binds it together.

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