01/08 Links Pt2: Australia must answer this question before it investigates Bondi; Hamas document casts shadow over former EU envoy’s role in Gaza; Georgetown Taps Hamas Apologist Mehdi Hasan as Visiting Fellow

From Ian:

Hamas document casts shadow over former EU envoy’s role in Gaza

In the document, dated 28 September 2021, officials from Gaza’s Hamas-run interior ministry describe Kühn von Burgsdorff as “a professional figure” who “strongly supports and sympathises with the Palestinians”.

“He is demanding [that the EU] open official channels to engage with Hamas, but the public policy of the EU dismisses this,” the document states.

At the same time, Hamas officials acknowledge that the envoy’s stance did not reflect the EU’s institutional position and could change with his departure.

“The positive approach and inclinations of the EU representative to the Palestinian territories and his sympathy with the Palestinian cause are a personal approach, and this might change when the current EU representative changes, since the European position is committed to the red lines of American policies,” the document reads.

Asked about Hamas’ assessment of his conduct, Kühn von Burgsdorff told Euractiv that he acted fully within his mandate.

“I have defended the internationally enshrined right to self-determination of the Palestinian people in full compliance with and implementation of applicable EU policy,” he said.

He added that he consistently represented Brussels’ official position. “At no point have I made public statements that contradicted the EU’s officially adopted policy towards Israel and Palestine,” he said.

Last year, Kühn von Burgsdorff contributed two op-eds to Euractiv on the Gaza conflict, including one under the headline “The EU’s moral collapse”.

‘Jerusalemite martyrs’

The Hamas report also claims that Kühn von Burgsdorff was “hated by both the Israeli occupation and the Palestinian Authority” due to his solidarity with “Jerusalemite martyrs” whose homes were demolished, and his expressions of sympathy following the death in custody of Nizar Banat, a Palestinian activist and critic of the Palestinian Authority.

The document recommends strengthening coordination and communication between the EU and “Palestinian political, governmental and [Hamas] movement parties”.

Olga Deutsch, vice-president of NGO Monitor, said the documents confirm that Kühn von Burgsdorff “actively worked to undermine official EU anti-terror vetting policies”.

“It is deeply troubling to see a senior EU diplomat engage in open, ideological political advocacy, particularly when it serves an EU-designated terror group,” Deutsch told Euractiv. “In Hamas’ own words, he even ‘demanded’ the opening of official EU channels to engage with a proscribed terror organisation – an appalling subversion of EU regulations and a blatant contradiction of the Union’s public policy.”

She added that the EU must significantly strengthen its internal controls and vetting mechanisms. “How can the EU guarantee that its grantees are not engaging in terror glorification if it cannot even vouch for its own diplomats?” she said.

Amnesty International Refuses to Admit That Hamas Wants to Kill All Jews and Annihilate Israel

In its nearly 200-page report on the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, “Targeting Civilians: Murder, Hostage-Taking and Other Violations by Palestinian Armed Groups in Israel and Gaza,” Amnesty International omitted years of statements by Hamas leaders and language from its charter demonstrating genocidal intent against Jews.

This omission renders Amnesty’s account of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack fundamentally flawed — because it disregards strong evidence of Hamas’ genocidal intent and distorts both the nature of the massacre and Israel’s response.

According to the former Deputy Director of Amnesty’s now defunct Israel branch, Yariv Mohar, this report on Hamas’ attack was delayed by eight months. It had already been nearly finalized by the same time the organization released its December 2024 report, titled, “‘You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza.”

The organization, according to Mohar, told Israeli staff that the two reports would be published within weeks of one another.

According to Mohar, Amnesty delayed the Hamas report to keep the focus on Gaza, fearing that highlighting Hamas’ atrocities would undermine efforts to end the war. Mohar added that this was driven by a belief that Western audiences prefer a simplified moral narrative, and also because of Amnesty’s fear of backlash from its ultra-radical activist base.

Notably, the non-profit’s substantially longer Gaza report in 2024 used several out-of-context and debunked quotes by Israeli leaders to portray them as having genocidal intent.

Conversely, Amnesty’s treatment of Hamas sharply downplays the terror group’s own explicit ideology and objectives.

Hamas’ charter calls for the complete destruction of Israel as a condition for the liberation of Palestine, achieved through holy war (jihad). The charter specifically states that Hamas’ “struggle” is “against the Jews.”

Press Emblem Campaign Is the Latest Press Rights Org to Count Terrorists as Journalists

Since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war in 2023, the purportedly high number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces has been a consistent focus of mainstream media, social media pundits, and rights organizations.

At HonestReporting, we have been tracking this trend, noting that studies conducted by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Reporters Without Borders (RSF) on journalists killed in Gaza include a significant number of Palestinians who are affiliated with Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or other Gaza-based terror groups. This affiliation takes the form of serving in a military capacity on behalf of these terror groups, working for media organizations owned and operated by the terror groups, and spreading propaganda on their behalf.

Now we can add another press freedom organization to the ranks of those that whitewash terror-affiliated journalists and diminish the integrity of journalism in the Gaza Strip.

The Press Emblem Campaign (PEC), a Geneva-based organization that “aims at strengthening the legal protection and safety of journalists in zones of conflict and civil unrest or in dangerous missions,” has released its end-of-the-year statistics on journalists killed around the world in 2025.

According to the PEC, almost half the journalists killed in 2025 were killed in the Gaza Strip. However, a closer look at the 60 journalists reportedly killed in Gaza named by the PEC, 23 (roughly 38%) have some form of affiliation with Palestinian terror groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Among these 23 terror-affiliated journalists are nine who are alleged to have been terror operatives active in the Gaza Strip, 13 who worked for terror-affiliated media organizations, and one who served as a terror propagandist.

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01/08 Links Pt1: How international law has been weaponized against Israel; Iran Is on the Edge of Revolution; US to proceed with Gaza phase two despite no Hamas disarmament and missing hostage

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: How international law has been weaponized against Israel

The ICJ case is a glaring example of how international law repudiates justice and truth in concert with its “human rights” enablers.

At the center of this web of hate squats the United Nations. People believe its self-designation as the ultimate custodian of peace and justice in the world. This is because it represents most of the world’s countries, and so plays into the pleasing fantasy of the brotherhood of man.

But most countries are dictatorships, kleptocracies or other human-rights abusers. These dominate the U.N. General Assembly, while the presence of tyrannical Russia and China on the U.N. Security Council makes a mockery of holding the world’s malefactors to account.

Last year, what was the number of times the General Assembly condemned Cuba, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, China, Sudan, Turkey, Hamas, Somalia, Pakistan, Lebanon or Venezuela? Zero. The number of times it condemned Israel? 15.

In its increasingly brutal crackdown against the current insurrection in Iran, the Tehran regime has killed at least 36 protesters. The number of U.N. resolutions or emergency sessions about this? Zero.

International law isn’t the pathway to a fairer and more civilized world. In its ferocious weaponization against Israel, it has been turned into the negation of justice and the legal instrument of evil.

The rules-based order has expired in disgrace. The only “might” it constrained was the ability of the victims of aggression to defend themselves. The only rule that should govern tackling evil is instead to bring about its total defeat.

The UN’s Apartheid Accusation: Political Narrative Over Facts on the Ground

It is now a well-established tactic to accuse Israel of any wrongdoing under the sun with a fancy name. Definitions get twisted deliberately in order to be leveled against the only Jewish state. Facts are either purposefully ignored or intentionally warped to fit a pre-determined narrative that frames Israel as a state continuously convicted of the most horrendous crimes.

The UN, on January 7, did exactly this yet again by accusing Israel of “racial segregation and apartheid” in the West Bank. The report spans several years, but focuses specifically on the period from October 7, 2023, to September 30, 2025.

Although the report has yet to make front page news in the vast majority of outlets – likely because the UN accusations leveled against Israel have unfortunately become commonplace and therefore unnewsworthy – the BBC wasted no time in publishing the story, displaying the outlet’s obsessive desire to push an anti-Israel agenda.

Counterterrorism Efforts in the West Bank
Incredibly, while the focus of the report is on the aftermath of the October 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas, the report merely skims over them. Had it recognized the severity of the attacks, the UN would then also have to acknowledge that Israel’s counterterrorism and security strategy shifted in real time to prevent terrorist attacks before they occurred and counter any perceived threats.

From October 7, the potential opening of a new front in the West Bank was not just some delusional possibility but a high likelihood, as Hamas and other terrorist organizations have established strongholds in several cities. Hamas even called on Palestinians living in the West Bank to carry out armed attacks against Israel in the immediate aftermath of October 7.

Any state that had just experienced a horrific terrorist attack against its civilians would be expected and indeed obliged to take more preventative and preemptive measures to ensure that nothing like that could ever occur again. This requires the IDF to implement new counterterrorism operations in hotbeds of terrorism such as Jenin and Tulkarm. This is not apartheid but counterterrorism and ensuring the safety of Israeli civilians.

The UN attempts to prove its point that the IDF is indiscriminately targeting Palestinians living in the West Bank, with a spike in deaths reported after October 7, using data provided by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Not only is the context of October 7 once again missing, but the UN also conveniently omits that many of these Palestinians were members of terrorist organizations, or operating as lone actors attempting to or committing terrorist attacks against Israelis. When the ongoing terrorist threat is considered alongside the fact that Israeli operations have been concentrated in cities long known as hotbeds of terrorism, the claim of indiscriminate targeting collapses under even minimal scrutiny.

While the UN attempts to draw a connection based on the disparity between Israeli and Palestinian fatalities in the West Bank, the data more accurately reflects the effectiveness of Israel’s counterterrorism operations, resulting in the reduction of Israeli fatalities.

The Palestinian Authority’s long game in Gaza

Western officials speak endlessly about “the day after” in Gaza, as if it were a technical planning exercise rather than a brutal political struggle. For the P.A., the real endgame is the day after the day after.

It seeks to return to Gaza not as one faction among many, but as an internationally installed authority—armed with donor funding, security guarantees and insulation from blame for the war that preceded its return.

This is why it has invested so heavily in cultivating diplomatic respectability while doing almost nothing to improve Palestinian lives anywhere outside the patronage networks of its dictator, Mahmoud Abbas, now 90 years old. It assumes that any multinational transitional authority will either fail or depart—and that the final choice will be between the P.A. and anarchy.

The P.A. is positioning itself accordingly, maneuvering to be included in any transitional governance framework, even if it is just a small role, so that it can gradually assume more control until inevitably it has the job. Long-term thinking is an Islamist strength the West struggles to match.

Gaza’s civilians bear the cost. Hamas sacrifices them on the altar of resistance; the P.A. on the altar of legitimacy. Palestinian suffering in Gaza is not incidental to the P.A.’s strategy; it is instrumental. Each war, each humanitarian collapse, each funeral deepens a claim that only its rule can restore order and international standing. The message is simple: “You may not like us, but look at the alternative.”

This logic has worked for decades. Israel alone has consistently challenged this cynical and destructive formula.

When the P.A. finally moves to reclaim Gaza, it will insist that Hamas and Israel are gone, and that responsibility for the devastation lies elsewhere—with Israel, the global community or history’s arch itself.

What it doesn’t want is continuity. It wants a reset without reckoning. The P.A. doesn’t want to govern Gaza as it is, but Gaza as a symbol: liberated, suffering and returned at last to “legitimate” Palestinian hands.

This type of strategy is not confusion or incompetence; it is patience, weaponized. It is the belief that international guilt will eventually converge to restore its power without demanding reform, compromise or courage.

Until this strategy is named honestly and confronted openly, Gaza’s future will remain bleak. It will continue to be ruled by those willing to destroy it—and claimed by those waiting to inherit the ruins.

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01/07 Links Pt2: Norman Podhoretz Leaves a Legacy of Political Principle; Calvin Coolidge’s “Hebraic Mortar”; Oct. 7 Hostages Reveal the Music That Helped Them Hold On

From Ian:

Norman Podhoretz Leaves a Legacy of Political Principle

Podhoretz’s death comes as the notion of even having political principles has become tenuous. On the left and right, many politicians and pundits refuse to criticize their own side. The principled and courageous perspective that marked Podhoretz’s life and writing, with a willingness to leave former allies, is rare. The few politicians who do it—like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, who broke with their party over January 6—often pay a price for being courageous, and lose their seats.

Today, publications like The Dispatch and The Free Press exist because their founders and many of their writers were unwilling to embrace progressive shibboleths or MAGA elements and thus had to leave institutions where they’d once belonged. Last month, Ben Shapiro, founder of The Daily Wire, demonstrated moral courage at a TPUSA event and may pay a price for it.

As a Christian who believes that human beings are made in the image of God, I resonated with Podhoretz’s perspective. We should we care about democracy and human rights around the world because humans are made in God’s image. Why should we battle Marxist and Islamist dictatorships and hope to see human flourishing expand through free markets, entrepreneurism, and innovation? Because people are made in the image of God. For Podhoretz, religion was not central, but his point of view had deep roots in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Podhoretz also understood the importance of stewardship regarding the Western canon of literature, philosophy, and stories. He was grateful for the gifts our forebearers bequeathed to us, and we should remember how his ideas shaped the understanding of Ronald Reagan, Kirkpatrick, and others who led the global movement to defeat the Soviet Union.

Podhoretz’s body of work reminds us that we don’t need to “make America great again,” because its principles, legal structure, history, and symbols are already great. It’s a treasury to be stewarded, as the Constitution says, to made more perfect rather than deconstructed.

Podhoretz’s legacy of principled stands based on deep moral conviction deserves remembering. As our Jewish friends often say at a moment of loss, may his memory be a blessing to us—a nation in search of its soul—at this fraught moment.

Seth Mandel: It Was Ever Thus

Review of 'Antisemitism, an American Tradition' by Pamela S. Nadell
Indeed, American history is littered with instances of full-blown anti-Jewish violence. When Major-General Ulysses S. Grant expelled all Jews from the territory under his control during the Civil War after accusing them of disloyalty to the Union, he didn’t “merely” cause them economic loss and social disruption. He also opened them up to vigilante attacks from citizens who were riled up by their war leader and took matters into their own hands.

The discrimination discovered in hospitals surely cost some Jewish patients their lives—doctors and relatives of deceased patients later testified as much. In 1902 on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, hundreds of Jews participating in a funeral procession were attacked by factory workers and then the police; some victims compared it to pogroms back in Russia. And then there were the immigration restrictions: Calling it “social anti-Semitism” was of no consolation to the many Jews around the world who were condemned to systematic murder in their home countries because the gates of America were closed to them.

The lesson that jumps off the pages of Nadell’s book is not that some forms of anti-Semitism are harmless but that all forms of anti-Semitism are connected and will, with the reliability of a law of physics, proceed toward violence unless acted upon by an outside force. Responding to the Damascus Affair, Nadell writes, U.S. Jews “honed strategies that they would employ to counter discrimination and persecution in the future. They held public meetings, lobbied the government, appealed to the press, welcomed allies, and stood up individually and collectively against antisemitism wherever and whenever it arose.”

Which is why Nadell’s concluding chapter is so important. She weaves together the post-10/7 wave of discrimination against Jews in major institutions and across party lines. In Nadell’s telling, that very much includes not just the post–October 7 atmosphere on campus but the two decades’ worth of buildup to this moment in colleges throughout the country. “The battle lines over antisemitism, anti-Zionism, and anti-Israelism—the disapproval or demonization of all things Israeli—on campus were drawn,” Nadell writes about such fights in the early years of the new century. “They would widen into deep trenches in the years to come. Jewish students and faculty experienced what they perceived as antisemitism no matter what others called it.”

Nadell should be commended for refusing to adjudicate the debate over terminology. What matters most is what is happening, not what name you give it. The goal of all these anti-Jewish and anti-Israel extremist movements is clear, ambitious, and evil: Exclude Jews from society, and put targets on their backs in the process. And they will ultimately fail so long as American Jews remain vigilant and willing to exercise their rights.

Calvin Coolidge’s “Hebraic Mortar”

In May 1925, President Calvin Coolidge offered a vivid tribute to the “Hebraic mortar … of American democracy.” It should have been a vanilla speech at a prosy Washington event—the dedication of a new Jewish community center. But Coolidge took stock of the moment; a century later, his address is worth revisiting.

Just a couple of years earlier, in 1923, Henry Ford—America’s great industrialist, in many ways the Elon Musk of his time—had dominated multiple presidential polls, trumping the incumbent, Warren G. Harding. Ford never announced his candidacy for the 1924 election, nor had he ever held elected office. But he had captured the American imagination as an avatar for business ingenuity, education reform, and general uplift for the American middle class. It is also undeniable that Ford sought to mainstream anti-Jewish sentiment in the United States. He ultimately endorsed Coolidge for president in December 1923, after Harding’s sudden death from a heart attack. In Coolidge’s 1925 speech to a largely Jewish crowd, he decisively broke with the anti-Jewish element of Ford’s movement.

In November 1920, Ford published the first installment of The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem. A multivolume anthology drawn from Ford’s anti-Jewish weekly, The Dearborn Independent, it was soon translated into sixteen languages—including six editions printed in Germany between 1920 and 1922. By the mid-1920s, the Dearborn Independent had reached a circulation of between 700,000 and 900,000. These numbers were in part due to the paper’s distribution in Ford automotive dealerships, but are nonetheless significant, considering that the New York Times had a circulation of 345,149 in 1925; the Chicago Tribune reached 608,130.

Of course, other forms of bigotry flourished in the teens and twenties. The 1915 silent film Birth of a Nation was banned in cities across the Midwest for its insulting depictions of black people. Despite these widespread restrictions, then–President Woodrow Wilson watched the film upon its release, in the first-ever movie screening held at the White House. Birth of a Nation soon inspired a new iteration of the anti-Catholic, racist, and anti-immigrant Ku Klux Klan. Hugo Black, the Alabama politician and sometime Klan member who eventually became a Supreme Court justice, built his early career attacking Catholicism; he delivered dozens of anti-Catholic speeches at Klan meetings across Alabama during his 1926 Senate campaign.

It was in this troubled atmosphere that Coolidge took the stage at a dedication ceremony for a community center, in 1925, “a year of dedications and rededications.” Hearkening to the start of the American Revolution in 1775, Coolidge attributed the success of the American project to a “common spiritual inspiration” powerful enough to “mold and weld together into a national unity, the many and scattered colonial communities that had been planted along the Atlantic seaboard.” He reminded his audience that tension among the early colonies seemed more organic and far more likely than cooperation. There was no guarantee that the colonies would form a national entity for revolution, and no clear idea of which colonies might agree to join it:

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01/07 Links Pt1: Trump signs order withdrawing US from 66 global bodies, including 31 UN orgs; How Maduro’s Arrest Became Another Anti-Israel Campaign

From Ian:

Trump withdraws US from dozens of international and UN entities

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that the United States would withdraw from dozens of international and U.N. entities, including a key climate treaty and a U.N. body that promotes gender equality and women's empowerment, because they "operate contrary to U.S. national interests."

Among the 35 non-U.N. groups and 31 U.N. entities Trump listed in a memo, opens new tab to senior administration officials is the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change - described by many as the "bedrock" climate treaty which is parent agreement to the 2015 Paris climate deal.

The United States skipped the annual U.N. international climate summit last year for the first time in three decades.

"The United States would be the first country to walk away from the UNFCCC," said Manish Bapna, president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Every other nation is a member, in part because they recognize that even beyond the moral imperative of addressing climate change, having a seat at the table in those negotiations represents an ability to shape massive economic policy and opportunity," said Bapna.

The U.S. will also quit UN Women, which works for gender equality and the empowerment of women, and the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), the international body's agency focused on family planning as well as maternal and child health in more than 150 countries. The U.S. cut its funding for the UNFPA last year.

"For United Nations entities, withdrawal means ceasing participation in or funding to those entities to the extent permitted by law," reads the memo. Trump has already largely slashed voluntary funding to most U.N. agencies.

UN report accuses Israel of ‘systematic’ racial segregation, apartheid

A new report released on Wednesday by the office of Volker Türk, U.N. high commissioner for human rights, claims that “Israel is violating international law requiring states to prohibit and eradicate racial segregation and apartheid.”

The report, titled “Israel’s discriminatory administration of the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem,” argues that unequal treatment and abuses of Palestinians have intensified since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and Jerusalem’s subsequent military response.

“There is a systematic asphyxiation of the rights of Palestinians in the West Bank,” Türk stated, using the international term for the Judea and Samaria region. “Whether accessing water, school, rushing to hospital, visiting family or friends or harvesting olives—every aspect of life for Palestinians in the West Bank is controlled and curtailed by Israel’s discriminatory laws, policies and practices.”

“This is a particularly severe form of racial discrimination and segregation that resembles the kind of apartheid system we have seen before,” Türk added.

The Israeli mission to the U.N. in Geneva condemned the publication of the report, stating that Türk’s office “abuses its position and dire resources to issue yet another unmandated report against Israel” while “other mandates remain nixed on account of budget cuts.”

The Israeli mission said the report itself contains “absurd and distorted accusations of racial discrimination” which ignore “fundamental facts that lie at the basis of the conflict.”

Hamas-Linked Groups in UK Launch Campaign Demanding "Freedom for Palestinian Hostages"

The Palestinian Forum in Britain (PFB) and the Global Sumud Flotilla have launched a joint campaign, “Demanding Freedom for Palestinian Hostages.” The initiative invites supporters to take part in a red ribbon online action by updating their profile pictures and sharing videos or messages that feature the ribbon for “Palestinian hostages.” The campaign begins at 8 p.m. Jerusalem time on January 15th and leads up to coordinated street demonstrations on January 31st.

The campaign has drawn attention for its deliberate use of a red ribbon, a clear appropriation of the yellow ribbon that has become an internationally recognized symbol of solidarity with the 253 Israeli hostages abducted by Hamas during the October 7th terror attack. By adopting similar imagery and language, the campaign seeks to reframe convicted or detained terrorist prisoners as “hostages,” attempting to draw a moral equivalence between civilians kidnapped by Hamas and individuals imprisoned for terrorism related offenses.

The collaboration, promoted on social media in early January 2026, comes as UK Treasury investigators examine whether to impose sanctions on PFB leader and Freedom Flotilla Coalition International Zaher Birawi under counter-terrorism regulations. Both PFB and the Global Sumud Flotilla have documented ties to individuals and entities designated as terrorist organizations and operatives.

Birawi Under Investigation
According to the Telegraph, HM Treasury’s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation confirmed in December 2025 it is investigating Zaher Birawi for potential designation under Counter-Terrorism Sanctions Regulations 2019.

Birawi both chairs PFB and heads the International Committee for Breaking the Siege of Gaza. He has also called himself a “founding member” of the Freedom Flotilla International Coalition aid boat Madleen. He has denied all allegations, describing them as “baseless.” If sanctioned, he would face asset freezes and prohibitions on receiving funds or economic resources.

Labour MP Christian Wakeford named Birawi in Parliament in October 2023 as a “Hamas operative living in London” and asked, “Given the national security implications, can we have an urgent statement in Government time on what the Home Office is doing about Hamas operatives here in Britain?“ Israel designated Birawi as a main Hamas operative in Europe in 2013.

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01/06 Links Pt2: The Question of Jewish Armed Self-Defense; The Maccabi Tel Aviv ban was a sop to Islamic sectarians; Ireland proves you don’t need Jews for anti-Semitism to take hold

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The Question of Jewish Armed Self-Defense

A full investigation into the Bondi Beach failure, he said, might tell us which of several potential solutions, including arming the CSG, should be implemented: “It’s one of the reasons why we need a royal commission, to get the information [and] to provide it to government, so that we can make the changes to keep the community safe.”

Minns’s wording here is important. He called for a “royal commission,” which is the highest-level state inquest that Australia can initiate, and the one with the most far-reaching powers to gather evidence.

The very same day that Minns made these comments, a group representing families of 11 Bondi Beach victims released an open letter asking for a royal commission. Such a commission would not just investigate the attack but the overarching issue of Australia’s approach to combating anti-Semitism.

“We demand answers and solutions,” the families wrote. “We need to know why clear warning signs were ignored, how antisemitic hatred and Islamic extremism were allowed to dangerously grow unchecked, and what changes must be made to protect all Australians going forward. Announcements made so far by the federal government in response to the Bondi massacre are not nearly enough.”

Hard to argue with any of that. Unless, of course, you are Anthony Albanese. The prime minister announced that the investigation will be limited to the Australian security agencies and what was known about the suspects in the shootings. Valuable in its own right, surely, but as the Guardian’s chief political correspondent—yes, even the Guardian appeared disappointed in Albanese’s refusal to examine the question of anti-Semitism—wrote: “such a narrow inquiry is not a substitute for a commonwealth royal commission, with the powers it has to compel evidence and, just as crucially, the national public spotlight it commands to ensure accountability.”

This is a very important point. It is not only that there is very good reason for a royal commission here, but also that the very fact of an extended “public spotlight” on the problem would make it much more difficult for Australia’s political establishment to ignore. There is transparency that comes with any inquest conducted publicly into the state and its failings. The process itself would be part—only a minor part, to be sure—of the solution.

Albanese is plainly interested in avoiding full accountability. That, in itself, should answer Chris Minns’s question about arming the main Jewish security group. There are murmurings that Albanese can still be pressured into a royal commission. If he cannot, and if the national government refuses to protect its Jewish citizens, then the next best thing would surely be to enable the Jewish community, in partnership with the regional state government, to at least attempt to protect itself.

Understanding and Defeating the Assault on Jewish Moral Self-Confidence

A false conception based on underestimating and downplaying the enemy's intentions is the natural temptation of a peaceful people. The Jews of Poland, the most peaceable population imaginable, could not have imagined that the Germans intended to wipe them out. Yet Jews do ultimately respond to reality.

When it became too obvious to deny that they were marked for extermination, two Jewish underground organizations formed in the Warsaw ghetto. When the Germans entered the ghetto in 1943 to begin rounding up the remaining Jews and sending them to their deaths, the two organizations fought in an uprising that lasted from April 19 until May 16, the first urban anti-German uprising in Europe. They fought like lions.

The present war against Israel resembles the Nazi one in its aims and methods, and makes us realize how much the fate of the Jews remains subject to the depravity of others. Jews expected coexistence with the people around them. Jews do not aspire to expand territorially through conquest or demographically by evangelizing. But the nations they lived among were constituted very differently.

Coexistence requires reciprocity which cannot be willed into being. Ascribed where it does not exist, it invites escalating aggression of which the Hamas attack of October 7 is but the most recent demonstration. Hamas entrapped Israelis into the war they had done everything to avoid by surrendering Gaza in 2005.

Israel's enemies are the same forces that threaten America. This creates a congruence of loyalties. We are not in the position of American Muslims who may feel torn between the priorities of Mecca and Washington. The Hebraic roots and deepest values of America and Israel are one and the same.

All of America should be behind us, and the best already are. It is now our task to help reorient the rest. To keep being Jews in the world means to overcome our disappointment in the failings of our enemies, the cowardice of some of our friends, and the difficulties of resistance. To mobilize is the best way to overcome despair.

What Jews keep getting wrong about defending themselves

The British Broadcasting Corporation recently asked British Jews whether Israel’s actions in Gaza were responsible for the terrorist attack in Bondi, Australia. The watchdog organization CAMERA rightly criticized this absurd line of questioning. How could random Jews in London possibly bear responsibility for the tactical decisions of a government thousands of miles away, let alone for the heinous actions of a terrorist in yet another country?

Yet in our rush to defend ourselves against this inappropriate premise, the Jewish community often misses a deeper truth that lies at the heart of our identity: Jews around the world are responsible for one another.

This is the paradox that modern media discourse consistently fails to grasp, and one we as Jews sometimes struggle to articulate ourselves. The BBC’s question was wrong because it implicitly blamed Jews for terrorism. But the underlying assumption—that Jews in the United Kingdom are connected to Jews in Israel and Australia, or anywhere else, for that matter—is fundamentally correct, according to our own tradition.

The Talmud teaches us Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh, “All of Israel are responsible for one another.” Jews don’t have the luxury of claiming we can simply wash our hands of each other’s welfare, even if we live in separate communities.

This doesn’t mean that British Jews are responsible for terrorist attacks or Israeli military strategy; it means that we’re called to care deeply about our fellow Jews everywhere, to feel their pain and share their struggles. The distinction matters, though it’s routinely lost in shallow social-media debates and cable-news soundbites.

This confusion extends to another common refrain heard from Jewish communities worldwide—that we just want to be left alone to live in peace and quiet. It’s a reasonable desire, even an understandable one. Yet history keeps proving it’s not an option available to us.

The book of Judges offers a haunting pattern: Whenever the text speaks of Jews living peacefully, “each person sitting under their fig tree or vine,” without unified purpose or centralized leadership, enemies inevitably rise up against us. Amalek first demonstrated this in the desert, attacking the newly freed Israelites not because of anything they had done, but because of who they were called to be.

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01/06 Links Pt1: Iran's Friends Are Vanishing: Why Maduro's Arrest Matters for Israel; Israel, Syria, US agree on security cooperation mechanism; Somaliland is a functioning state. Treat it that way

From Ian:

Iran's Friends Are Vanishing: Why Maduro's Arrest Matters for Israel

The arrest of Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro likely sent a shiver down spines in Tehran.

It also marks the dismantling of yet another supporting pillar in the global network Iran painstakingly constructed to finance, shield, and sustain its war against Israel.

Through Hizbullah, Venezuela became a critical offshore hub that generated cash, laundered funds, moved operatives, and enabled Iran to project power far from the Mideast.

Hizbullah functioned in Venezuela as a crime-terror enterprise intermeshed in the Venezuelan economy and protected by the government.

Hizbullah trafficked cocaine from Venezuela, transferred weapons, and helped the Islamic Republic evade U.S. sanctions.

Revenue generated in South America was sent to Lebanon, where it helped pay for Hizbullah's military buildup.

Venezuela's most prominent opposition figure, Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado, was asked in a November Israel Hayom interview whether a post-Maduro Venezuela would restore relations with Israel.

Machado replied: "Certainly. Venezuela will be Israel's closest ally in Latin America."

Maduro's fall represents another incremental setback in Iran's global posture.

Jonathan Tobin: Venezuela, Trump and the end of the liberal world order

The simple and unavoidable truth is that the only way to defend those values, American interests, as well as the existence of Israel, is to go around or supersede multilateral institutions. Their preservation cannot be allowed to depend on the ideas of a now bygone era. The United States, as Ferguson has also accurately noted, is locked in a new Cold War; only this time, against China and its allies in Moscow, Tehran and Caracas. It should learn from the past, but it won’t win this conflict solely by working with the tools, like NATO, that were invented to cope with the challenges of the last one.

It’s only to be expected that the assertion of American power in South America or elsewhere, such as Iran—where Trump joined the Israeli campaign to destroy its nuclear program and which he has now also threatened should it violently suppress protests—will be opposed by ideologues who think international institutions are more important than national sovereignty. The point being is that if you don’t want rogue regimes to be allowed to export illegal drugs that kill Americans or to be used as bases by Iran or China, the only answer is for Washington to act. Waiting for a global organization to undertake operations that most of its members oppose or the assent of NATO allies is almost always going to lead, as it has on so many fronts, to inaction.

Some administrations, like that of Barack Obama, turned that dependence on multilateralism into something of a fetish. The result was, among other things, the catastrophe in Syria (where Obama walked back his 2013 “red line” threats) and the 2015 Iran deal that set Tehran on a course to have nuclear weapons, with which it could dominate the Middle East and threaten the rest of the world.

The argument that American unilateralism will encourage Beijing to attack Taiwan is nonsense. As Russia showed in Ukraine and Iran proved when it fomented its multifront war against Israel on the watch of a Biden administration that was similarly wedded to multilateral myths, it was U.S. weakness—not tough-minded Trumpian strength wielded unilaterally—that is likely to lead to more wars.

It may well be that Trump’s every utterance and act will continue to send liberals and leftists over the edge, no matter how sound or reasonable his policies (such as his success in halting illegal immigration) may be. It’s equally true that there are no guarantees that American intervention in Venezuela will work. Although by not committing to a full-scale invasion, Trump appears to be heeding his own criticisms of the George W. Bush administration’s blunders in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The most important conclusion to be drawn from this latest instance of Trump’s freelancing while the global establishment clutches its pearls is that it is only by Washington’s willingness to act on its own that the threats to America, the West and the State of Israel can be effectively met. Far from the greatest peril being an erratic Trump let loose on the world stage, the president’s single-minded belief in defending American national interests is the best hope for fending off the machinations of enemies of the West. A mindless belief in the transcendent importance of the solutions that were believed necessary in 1945 to prevent another global war is not going to protect us in 2026 and the years to come.

Stephen Pollard: The loony left’s moral collapse over Maduro

Which brings us full circle back to the specific reason why we Jews should be focused on Maduro. Jason Kenney, the former Canadian defence and immigration minister in the Stephen Harper government – before Canada had a conniption fit and turned to Justin Trudeau – has written this week about how “one of the most fascinating briefings I received as a federal Immigration Minister was from a foreign intelligence agency about the connections between Venezuela and the Iranian terror proxy Hezbollah. And they showed me the receipts.”

It’s worth quoting at length: “I saw in detail how the Venezuelan regime imported raw cocaine from the FARC Marxist terror group in Colombia, and worked with the Al Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps to ship it in ‘dark’ planes to Beirut, where it was then processed in Hezbollah facilities in the Bekaa Valley. The refined product was then shipped to Europe, and the proceeds used to finance Hezbollah operations, including weapons procurement.

“When I asked how a fundamentalist organisation could do this given that narcotics are haram, I was shown fatwas issued by Hezbollah imams indicating that as long as the drugs were sold to kaffirs, and the proceeds used to finance ‘the struggle,’ that it was religiously sanctioned. I was also shown details on how Hezbollah agents were using Canada to launder illicit funds by buying stolen cars with cash from criminals gangs, and then shipping them out of the Port of Montreal for resale in West Africa. All of this was possible because of extremely close coordination between the Iranian and Venezuelan regimes.

“…This was in 2008! All evidence suggests the cooperation between these two abhorrent regimes has only grown since then, with Iran providing Venezuela with arms, helping to sustain its dwindling oil industry, and to market its sanctioned crude. In return, Venezuela has acted as a kind of giant base of operations for Iran in the Western Hemisphere, including the IGRC and Hezbollah's ongoing involvement in drug trafficking and money laundering. And, of course, both regimes have been in lockstep diplomatically, including with their shared enthusiasm for their biggest ally: Putin's Russia.”

So yes, let’s have our debate about the application of international law. But for many of those protesting about the seizure of Maduro, international law is a fig leaf. Their real concern is the very fact that Maduro, who they revere has been deposed. And let’s not forget who Maduro is, what he has done, and who it is who thinks he is a role model.

Leading From the Front Again By Abe Greenwald

Via Commentary Newsletter, sign up here. Joe Biden’s presidency picked up where Obama’s left off. Only this time, the American retreat from the global stage was turbocharged by a more radicalized Democratic Party that sought to appease a newly woke left. Biden pursued a fresh nuclear deal with Iran and wasted the possibility of expanding the Abraham Accords to include Saudi Arabia. In August of 2021, he ordered the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan. And the world, as many of us had predicted, finally spun out of control.

Russia invaded Ukraine with China’s blessing, and Hamas invaded Israel with Iran’s material and monetary support. The Biden administration’s responses to these crises were at turns somewhat helpful, overly cautious, and ultimately feckless. The U.S. had lost the will to shape events beyond (and on) its borders.

Until now. Although the second Trump administration talks ceaselessly about the folly of foreign intervention, the president has reestablished the U.S. as the prime mover of world events. He’s roused NATO to take on a larger role in defending member nations, even as he backed Israel in its multifront war, destroyed Iran’s main nuclear facility, drew up a plan for a postwar Middle East, and now decapitated the outlaw regime in Venezuela.

The administration can say whatever it wants about foreign adventurism, but the world police are back in business.

There’s a lot, of course, that we don’t know. Will Trump finally become as frustrated with Vladimir Putin as he became with Iran and Maduro? If so, will he be as forceful in ending Russia’s assault on Ukraine? What will become of Venezuela over the course of the year? What happens if and when Trump becomes convinced that Hamas simply won’t disarm? How will the Trump administration respond to what seems to be a slowly crumbling Iranian state? And, finally, what happens if—God forbid—China moves on Taiwan? No clue.

But here’s what we do know: The world has once again seen the American will to act. And everyone has been reminded of the U.S. military’s unparalleled ability to change facts on the ground. A year ago, America’s enemies had reason to believe the U.S. had become a paper tiger. Today, they wouldn’t dare make that miscalculation.

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01/05 Links Pt2: Tucker Carlson is an enemy of America; From Wikipedia Fiction To Witch Hunt; Maccabi fans ban: Police consulted mosques that hosted ‘anti-Semitic’ preachers

From Ian:

David Collier: The Lie Beneath the Tree: From Wikipedia Fiction To Witch Hunt

In September 2025, a large delegation of U.S. legislators visited Ofakim – a small town in southern Israel and one of the communities devastated during the Hamas atrocities of October 7, 2023. During their visit, they planted trees – a simple, universal memorial act in honour of the murdered civilians.

That act has since been recast by anti-Israel activists as something sinister. Campaigners immediately claimed the trees were planted atop a “depopulated Palestinian village” – and some have gone further, calling for the legislators involved to be forced to resign.

Through a chain of factual errors, activist myth-making, and the quiet authority of “reference” sources that repeat those errors as fact, a unifying gesture of mourning has been transformed into an accusation of moral wrongdoing.

The fabrication of Ofakim as a “depopulated Palestinian village” was subsequently laundered through a media corps that hounded and interrogated participants – not over facts, but over fictions and libels treated as truths.

The truth is simple and decisive. There was no depopulated village at the site of Ofakim. No erased community beneath the tree. Yet the claim persists because it was never presented as an allegation, but instead stated and repeated as established fact – embedded, cited, and endlessly recycled.

In advancing the false “village” narrative, campaigners are not uncovering a buried injustice. They are erasing the victims of a real one – all in service of a story that never happened.

In the end we are left witnessing a witch hunt for people who visited an ally of the United States and planted a tree in memory of those slaughtered in a terrorist massacre.

MacKenzie Scott Sends Millions to Terror-Tied Nonprofit Network

MacKenzie Scott, the billionaire ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, funneled millions of dollars to a left-wing nonprofit network that supports the nation's most virulent anti-Israel and anti-Semitic organizations, including some that are under congressional investigation for their ties to terrorist groups, a Washington Free Beacon review found. Scott announced the grant in an essay that cites Hopi prophecy, bird flocks, and sex as inspirations for her latest round of giving.

Scott recently disclosed sending at least $5 million to the Solidaire Network, which supports what it calls "the front lines of social justice movements" by offering grants to an array of left-wing groups. That includes Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), the US Palestinian Community Network, and the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM). SJP and AMP face investigations in both the House and Senate for allegedly coordinating with the terror group Hamas to spearhead anti-Israel protests in the United States. Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) pressed the FBI to investigate the "virulently antisemitic" PYM in September after its leader, Aisha Nizar, called on supporters to sabotage the U.S. F-35 supply chain.

Scott disclosed the grants and dozens more last month in an essay, "We are the Ones We've Been Waiting For," the title of a Hopi prophecy "written in the year 2000." The prophecy taught Scott the value of being "active participants in the co-creation of our communities." Scott also offered commentary on the "murmurations" of starling bird flocks "constantly creating their direction together."

"Generosity and kindness engage the same pleasure centers in the brain as sex, food, and receiving gifts," wrote the billionaire divorcee.

Scott's support for the network is part of an onslaught of spending that recently saw her surpass liberal billionaire George Soros's lifetime donation totals. Her approach to that spending is unique—Scott allows her grant recipients to use the money "however they choose" rather than designate it for certain projects or organizations. The Solidaire Network has used that freedom to fund radical anti-Israel organizations in the United States.

In addition to her latest donation, Scott gave the network $10 million in 2021 through her organization Yield Giving. The network went on to spend $2.1 million on a campaign called "Unity & Power" that aims to promote "Palestinian freedom."

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