05/15 Links Pt1: After the Ayatollah; Justice Dept seeks death penalty in murder of Israeli Embassy staffers; The anti-Jewish fever dream of NYTs

From Ian:

Jason Greenblatt: After the Ayatollah

What exists now in Tehran is a set of overlapping factions: Mojtaba at the apex on paper, the IRGC running operations, the Supreme National Security Council coordinating, the Foreign Ministry providing the diplomatic interface. The wartime succession has made the fragmentation deeper and not legible from the outside, or from within Iran itself. There is also a possibility worth naming directly: Mojtaba was elevated precisely because he could preserve continuity while remaining beholden to, possibly controlled by, possibly entirely subservient to, the security establishment that installed him. There is a harder possibility still that cannot be ruled out: Whether he is alive and functioning at all remains genuinely uncertain.

When Iran’s foreign minister signs an agreement, the question is not only whether he intends or has the power to honor it. It is also whether that signature binds the IRGC commander who controls the nuclear facilities. Whether it binds the Quds Force officer managing proxy networks. Whether it binds the engineers at the enrichment sites who may answer to a chain of command that runs through the Guards, not through the Foreign Ministry. The JCPOA, negotiated when Iran had a functioning and consolidated supreme leader, was still contested inside the IRGC from day one. The hard-liners who opposed it moved to dismantle its constraints the moment political cover appeared. That was the counterparty problem with a strong leader in place. The counterparty problem now is structurally more severe.

Trump did not inherit this negotiating position. He built it through sustained military and economic pressure that degraded Iranian capabilities to a degree no previous administration achieved. Israel’s military operations were indispensable to that result. He arrives at the table with more leverage than any American president has held on this issue since the revolution.

The problem is that leverage is only as durable as the pressure sustaining it, and a deal is only as durable as the authority of the party committing to it. Whether Iran currently has a supreme leader who can make the system honor a commitment, or whether what exists is a set of competing factions that could fracture the moment pressure lifts or internal power dynamics shift, is genuinely unclear.

That is not a reason to walk away from negotiations. It is a reason to build any agreement on the assumption that the counterparty may not hold. Verification cannot depend on good faith. Enforcement cannot require a trip to the U.N. Security Council, where some have historically shielded Tehran from consequences. Europe cannot be a decision-maker here. Its track record on Iran enforcement is a history of deference dressed as diplomacy, and it has spent two decades prioritizing engagement over accountability. Consequences for breach need to be automatic, pre-agreed, and executable by the United States. If Iran breaks a deal, the response cannot hinge on whether those with a Security Council vote are having a cooperative month.

The best hand in a generation is worth playing. But you need a table and cards and players across from you who can cover their bets. Right now, at least one of those conditions remains genuinely in doubt.

US arrests Iraqi Kataib Hezbollah commander wanted for plots against Jews, US interests

The US has arrested Iraqi national and senior member of the Kataib Hezbollah terrorist organization, Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi, on Friday. He was charged with providing material support for Iranian-backed terrorist organizations and accused of directing attacks targeting US citizens and interests

On May 15, the US Justice Department announced “the arrest of Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi, an Iraqi national and senior member of Kataib Hezbollah,” the department said. “In recent months, Al-Saadi has also allegedly directed and urged others to attack US and Israeli interests, including by killing Americans and Jews, to further the terrorist goals of Kataib Hezbollah and the IRGC.”

The case is the latest in US attempts to go after Iranian-backed militias in Iraq. The Justice Department posted a photo of Saadi with the late IRGC Quds force commander Qasem Soleimani. The US killed Soleimani in a 2020 drone strike in Iraq, also killing Kataib Hezbollah commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in the same strike.

In recent months, the US has put out at least four rewards of $10 million each for information on various Iraqi militia leaders.

The Saadi charges appear important and illustrate that the US long arm of justice can reach out and find these perpetrators.

“Al-Saadi was charged by complaint with six counts of terrorism-related offenses for his activities as an operative of Kataib Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including his involvement in nearly 20 attacks and attempted attacks throughout Europe and the United States,” the US stated. Saadi is 32 years old, the report says.

He was transferred to the US from overseas, although the US did not specify where he was arrested.

“Al-Saadi was presented earlier today before US Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn in Manhattan federal court and ordered detained pending trial,” according to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

Blanche added that “thanks to the dedication and vigilance of law enforcement, this alleged terrorist commander is now in US custody… As alleged in the complaint, Al-Saadi directed and urged others to attack US and Israeli interests and to kill Americans and Jews in the US and abroad, and in doing so advance the terrorist goals of Kataib Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.”

IDF soldier KIA by Hezbollah mortar fire in Southern Lebanon

Staff Sgt. Negev Dagan, 20, from Moshav Dekel in the northwestern Negev, was killed by Hezbollah mortar fire in Southern Lebanon, the Israel Defense Forces announced on Friday.

Dagan, a soldier in the Golani Infantry Brigade’s 12th Battalion, was operating near the Litani River on Thursday night when Hezbollah terrorists fired mortar shells at Israeli forces in the area, the military said.

One of the shells exploded near Dagan, mortally wounding him. Combat medics attempted to treat him at the scene but were forced to pronounce him dead.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated on Friday, ahead of the soldier’s funeral, that he and his wife shared in the “heavy loss” and conveyed their deepest condolences to his family.

“We all embrace his family and dear ones at this hour of grief, and salute the heroism and courage with which Negev, of blessed memory, has fought to defend our country,” Netanyahu said. “May his memory be blessed and cherished forever.”

Residents of Dekel remembered Dagan as “the salt of the earth” with “an amazing soul” who was deeply committed to serving in the military.

“We lost a diamond,” a family friend from the moshav told Army Radio on Friday. “He gave all of himself and it was important to him to serve in the army.”

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05/14 Links Pt2: A Day in the Life of a New York City Jew; King Charles meets Golders Green stabbing victims; Britain can’t fight antisemitism without confronting its main driver: hatred of Israel

From Ian:

A Day in the Life of a New York City Jew

After the massive protests in Jewish neighborhoods across New York City over the past few days, I think a lot of people genuinely do not understand what something like that actually feels like for the people living there, so I want to try to walk you through it.

You wake up in the morning and see a message in the community WhatsApp chat. Maybe it’s from the local Jewish council. Maybe it’s from your congresswoman. It’s a warning that there’s going to be a protest in your neighborhood that night.

You open the flyer and see men in keffiyehs holding rifles, militant imagery plastered across something the media will later describe as a “demonstration.” The address is around the corner from your house. The flyer never explicitly calls for violence, but you’ve seen the videos from the last one and the one before that, and you already know there is a very real chance this is going to turn ugly.

Your first thought is your family.

A few months ago, you bought a firearm and locked it in a safe in your bedroom, away from the children. You know that if the day ever comes where you actually need to use it to defend your family, then something has already gone catastrophically wrong, and even if you survive that encounter, there is a very good chance the legal system in a city like New York will spend years trying to destroy your life afterward.

There is not much you can do, so you put your phone away and go to work, spending the entire day trying to keep your mind off what is waiting for you back home.

On the drive home, traffic suddenly stops. Streets are blocked off and police cars are everywhere. Sirens are flashing on every corner. And you remember that your neighborhood is about to be flooded with hundreds of people screaming about intifada and resistance while politicians and reporters insist this is all perfectly normal political expression.

You get home before the kids.

One by one they walk through the door while you keep checking the window to make sure they made it back safely. Your oldest tells you the principal made an announcement warning students not to walk or bike through a certain area after school, but refused to explain why, probably because nobody wants to be to explain to a group of Jewish children that there will be a mob outside their neighborhood later that night chanting slogans that openly glorify violence against Jews.

Report: German Intelligence Agency Documents Secular Pro-Palestinian Extremism

Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), released new background material in May 2026 documenting secular pro-Palestinian extremism across Germany, a heterogeneous movement comprising decades-old organizations and groups formed after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack, united by their denial of Israel’s right to exist and anti-Jewish agitation disguised as political criticism.

The intelligence service identifies key actors, symbols, and protest patterns, warning that secular pro-Palestinian extremists use Israel-hatred and antisemitism as a bridge between Islamists, German and Turkish left-wing extremists, and Turkish right-wing extremists.

The BfV documents how extremist actors in the scene have appeared in protest activity that has included anti-Israel and antisemitic content, riots, and attacks on police, journalists, and counter-protesters, especially in Berlin

Key Extremist Organizations
The BfV material describes terror-linked and extremist networks, including people from the PFLP milieu and former Samidoun actors, as continuing to influence Germany’s pro-Palestinian extremist scene.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)
According to the BfV, people from the milieu of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, an EU-designated terrorist organization since 2002 whose members helped hijack Lufthansa Flight 181 “Landshut” in 1977, have regularly helped organize anti-Israel rallies, particularly in Berlin.

The Marxist-Leninist organization openly advocates armed struggle to establish a Palestinian state “within the borders of historical Palestine,” meaning Israel’s complete elimination through what it calls ending “Zionist occupation.”

Samidoun – Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network
Germany banned Samidoun, on November 2, 2023, after the group celebrated the Hamas massacre as “resistance.” Founded in 2011 by PFLP members abroad, Samidoun demands release of Palestinians imprisoned for terrorism links and provides propaganda support to the PFLP, Hamas, and the Turkish terrorist group DHKP-C.

Before its prohibition, the network was documented to have exploited pro-Palestinian demonstrations and social media for recruitment, fundraising, and spreading disinformation. BDS and Affiliated Groups

The BfV says BDS-linked groups in Germany have used antisemitic narratives, participated in anti-Israel demonstrations after October 7, and, in some cases, are now assessed as confirmed extremist endeavors. The agency interprets the BDS call to end occupation of ‘all Arab lands’ as a demand for ‘all of Palestine’ and, therefore, the end of Israel’s state existence

The report notes that extremist individuals without formal organizational membership have become key mobilization drivers through extensive social media reach, repeatedly disseminating hate messages and violence calls that fuel radicalization and willingness to use force.

Britain can’t fight antisemitism without confronting its main driver: hatred of Israel

Britain is experiencing a surge in antisemitism, yet much of the public discussion about how to respond to it avoids the central issue driving it. Today’s antisemitism is overwhelmingly rooted in hostility towards Zionism, sustained by false claims about Israel and the war in Gaza. This hostility only makes sense, it only inflames the imagination, because it is everything that has sustained Jew-hatred for millennia, culminating in the Holocaust. It’s effectively the same thing with the same target, even if it has a different new fancy name. Until this reality is openly acknowledged and confronted, declarations of opposition to Jew hatred will continue to fall short.

The sharp rise in antisemitic incidents is not occurring in a vacuum. Nor is it driven simply by ignorance or longstanding prejudice. It is being fuelled by a sustained campaign of disinformation about Israel, Gaza, the IDF and Hamas, and by the moral licence that these narratives grant to those who believe “Zionists” are legitimate targets.

Public figures and institutions frequently express opposition to antisemitism, often sincerely. But these declarations increasingly ring hollow because they fail to engage with how antisemitism actually manifests in Britain today. Statements of concern alone achieve little if there is no willingness to address what is motivating the hostility.

That motivation is frequently explicit. When the extremist group Ashab Al Yamin claimed responsibility for the arson attack on Kenton United Synagogue, it justified the attack by describing the shul as “one of the centres of Zionist influence in the British capital”. Its supposed crimes included hosting a “Kenton for Israel” group, holding events such as “Shabbat for Israel”, and singing Hatikvah. A typical synagogue in suburban London was attacked because it was considered too Zionist. If Kenton United is too Zionist then all of us are and therein lies the point.

Kenton was not an isolated case. Finchley Reform Synagogue and Hatzola have both been targeted for similar reasons. In one particularly stark example, a former synagogue that is in the process of being converted into a mosque was also subjected to an attempted arson attack. A local man interviewed by the BBC expressed confusion: “That synagogue has been turned into a mosque, so I don’t know why someone would petrol bomb it.” The answer lies in the way “Zionism” is now treated not as a political belief but as an inherent moral stain, one that clings to places and institutions even after Jews themselves have gone.

This obsession with “Zionist influence” is viral. Punk artist Bobby Vylan, best known for chants of “death to the IDF” at Glastonbury last year recently took to YouTube to claim that the British Department for Education had been “captured by Israeli forces”. He went on to ask what hope there was of resisting “growing Zionist influence” if even the education system was not free of it. The language is familiar to anyone who understands antisemitism: claims of capture, control and hidden power, updated for a modern audience.

Outside Parliament, activists now regularly gather during Prime Minister’s Questions to distribute fake banknotes headed “Bank of Zionism”. They hold placards depicting senior UK politicians branded with the same slogan and unfurl banners calling to “End Zionism control of UK Politics”. At larger demonstrations against Israel, chants such as “Palestine is Arab” and demands for “Intifada revolution” are common. These are not calls for peace or coexistence. They are declarations that deny Jewish self‑determination entirely and frame violence as justified or even necessary.

The same assumptions are increasingly tested in the courts. Palestine Action, a group that has attacked British defence firms, banks, insurance companies and even a law firm, argues that such actions are justified because these institutions are allegedly complicit in Israeli “genocide”. Whether or not the group is ultimately proscribed, the underlying premise often goes unchallenged: that extraordinary action against “Zionist” entities is morally virtuous.

This brings us to the question many remain unwilling to confront. The claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza is false. It does not meet the legal definition of genocide, it is not supported by the facts on the ground, and it is contradicted by serious analysis of Israeli military intent. Yet it is repeated endlessly with absolute moral certainty. That matters, because genocide is not just another accusation. It is the ultimate crime, and once it is accepted as fact, almost anything becomes permissible in response.

Streeting would effectively tackle sectarian politics and rising antisemitism as PM, say allies

Wes Streeting is convinced he can directly challenge and confront the rise of sectarian politics, increased division, and rising antisemitism in the UK as Prime Minister, allies have said.

Streeting resigned as Health Secretary in a move aimed at pressuring Keir Starmer to accept that his time as Prime Minister should come to an end.

Aides said they believe the Ilford North MP would prove to be a more effective communicator if given the chance to lead.

In his resignation letter, Streeting criticised the “drift” at the top of government and told the Prime Minister it is “clear” he will not lead Labour into the next election.

While he praised Starmer’s “many great strengths” and “courage and statesmanship on the world stage,” Streeting continued: “Where we need vision, we have a vacuum. Where we need direction, we have drift.”

Jewish News understands that last week’s election results in Redbridge—where Labour held on to the council, beating back the challenge posed by the Jeremy Corbyn-backed pro-Gaza independents—convinced Streeting of the need to attempt a move to replace the PM.

Although Labour suffered significant losses to the Greens and Reform UK elsewhere, Streeting became convinced that effective communication was key to tackling the advance of extremist politics in the country.

Colleagues in Redbridge confirm that Streeting played a “very active” role in the local elections, attending meetings on campaign messaging and taking part in regular door-knocking to listen to local voters for months leading up to the May 7 poll.

Streeting also featured in a couple of online videos urging locals not to vote for the pro-Gaza independents.

In one video, he told residents to remember that they were participating in a vote about Redbridge, “not the UN Security Council.”

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05/14 Links Pt1: The Laughing Monsters; Why did the world look away when Israeli women were raped?; CENTCOM chief says 90% of Iran’s defense industry destroyed

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The Laughing Monsters

As for what had made these many Palestinian perpetrators and spectators so happy—well, it’s a dark document. But the patterns are worth pointing out.

Some of the images studied by medical experts and catalogued with the investigating committee:

“The body of a young man lying on a sidewalk outside a concrete public shelter on Route 232, with severe burn injuries concentrated in the groin area.”

“A young woman with her insides protruding out of the groin area.”

“The body of a female victim with what appears to be a gunshot wound to the groin area.”

“The bottom half of a female body with bleeding in the groin area.”

The report is full of such accounts. The above are from victims who were found at the site of the Nova music festival. The scenes were similar at kibbutzim. One typical example: “On October 13th, first responders discovered two abused bodies in a destroyed home, one of them naked. The rescue efforts are documented in several videos and images that are archived with the Civil Commission. One of the first bodies found was that of a female victim. The body appears to be completely naked. Her ankle had been tied with a thick black chord. According to witnesses who provided testimony to the Civil Commission, the body had several nails driven into her lower abdomen and groin area, as well as a metal or plastic object embedded in the groin area.”

Pages and pages and pages of this stuff. Children shot in the face, victims decapitated and dismembered with hoes and shovels.

One video shows a terrorist yelling “God is great” while standing over the dead body of a woman who is naked from the waste down.

In one disturbing crime scene, a man was found “with his genitals cut off, and next to him, the body of a woman, holding his cut-off genitals, in what appeared to be a staged display to humiliate the victims.”

Again, this report is nearly 300 pages long, and it is full of such documented atrocities.

Jew-hatred strips the humanity from whatever it touches. There is nothing else like it.

Katya Sedgwick: Towards a Palestinian Autonomous Region—or Any Other Meaningful Settlement of The Arab-Israeli Conflict

It’s often said that all Left-Islamic unions inevitably end as 7th century theocracies—the Islamic Revolution in Iran is frequently cited as an example here. Yet Soviet—and Chinese, for that matter—history suggests otherwise. The USSR ruthlessly eradicated Muslim religiosity within its borders—and with it, the terrorist fervor. these days, its former Central Asian “republics” are the most moderate Muslim states—even if they are populated by tribes also found in the neighboring Afghanistan.

The Eurasian behemoth’s post-Soviet experience with Chechnya is far less rosy, of course, but even that relationship is currently stable. When religious violence does take place, the authorities squash it with gusto. Responding to the 2024 terror attack in a Moscow suburb, Russians did not hesitate to adopt every measure at their disposal, including—very publicly—torture. The world shrugged. It’s not just that the Kremlin knows about that Gaza pit bull, Russians are, stereotypically, natural dog trainers.

Russia already quietly resettled over a thousand Gazans, mostly in the Muslim regions of Chechnya and Dagestan. They don’t need to take all two million of them—just a sizable number, proudly and publicly. In doing so, they will set an example to the world. In the aftermath of the Ukraine war, Russia has a reputation to salvage—and I can’t think of a better way to approach it than by aiding Palestinians.

If necessary, Trump can sweeten the deal for Putin in Ukraine. It’s hard to see how American interest would change should the border between Russia and Ukraine move in either direction. America does have interest in Middle East peace and global commerce.

If Ukrainians are forced to shake hands on something not entirely to their liking, they can think of it as a payback for centuries of Cossack genocide. Not to mention that the turn of the century pogroms, mostly perpetrated in what is now Ukraine, prompted the creation of political Zionism. The way Zelensky, likely in coordination with Qatar, recently accused Israel of trading in stolen grain echoes the ugliest stereotypes. Perhaps Ukraine would like to resettle a few thousand Gazans?

A simple majority of Gazans want to leave and a plurality have been wanting to leave even before Israel brought the war home. They prefer comfortable Western countries where their clans have already grown roots, but Russia is almost the West and Muslim communities there are numerous. The way Russians today began thinking of themselves as Eurasionists, presupposes a multi-ethnic imperial dynamic that embraces Islam.

Some would object to the measures I am proposing, even calling it, inaccurately, “ethnic cleansing”. Most of them are the same people—and there are many who share that opinion these days, particularly on the left and among the young—that claim that Jews don’t need Israel because Joseph Stalin founded a homeland approximation for us on China’s border. That would be the so-called “Jewish Autonomous Region” of Birobidzhan. It turns out, they support not just ethnic cleansing—a gulag.

Why not create a Palestinian Autonomous Region in Siberia, right next to the Jewish one? This way the two Semitic nations can live peacefully side by side, under the watchful eye of their Russian brothers. Granted, the Jewish settlement of the Far East never took hold so there is hardly a Yid left in Birobidzhan. And there is no shortage of uninhibited land in Russia regardless. And many Muslims in Russia’s capital.

This of course is a crazy idea. But “crazy” is another way of saying “extraordinary” and the Trump Administration is already thinking in these terms.

Half of Gaza is now living in tents; not even their neighbors on the Strip are willing to shelter them. Considering that most terror tunnels are still usable and Hamas is still around, at some point Israel will have to finish the job. Will anyone think of the humanitarian emergency?

Given the current regional power arrangement it’s highly unlikely that Gazans can can be deployed as proxies against Israel anyway—so why bother maintaining them as such? Russia might want to keep that conflict frozen, but it’s highly unlikely that they will be able to thaw it.

Some kind of resolution to the crisis is two years overdue. Right now, time is not on Russia’s side. They may need to settle the conflict quickly and they will accept American demands. Maybe even rejoin the civilized world.

Confronting the Iranian Regime's Holy War: Will the West Rise to the Challenge?

The U.S.-Israel strikes on the Iranian regime are definitive military responses to 47 years of religiously-fueled terror carried out by the world's foremost radical regime of the modern era. This formidable challenge to the West is compounded by the Free World's hesitation to acknowledge the jihad Iran has waged against Israel and the U.S.-led Western alliance since 1979.

Tehran and Washington are both playing for time in a war of economic and strategic attrition. The Iranian regime aims to buy time to rearm its Islamic resistance forces. The Islamic Republic's approach is underpinned by its apocalyptic and radical brand of Twelver Shi'ism.

Some 500 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters had received training in Iran under direct IRGC Quds Force supervision before Hamas's invasion and massacre in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

In the early days of the war, the IRGC's English-language social media output aimed to dismantle the pro-Israel coalition. The Tel Aviv-based firm Cyabra identified more than 40,000 inauthentic accounts originating largely from Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. Researchers determined that one in four accounts posting about the war were inauthentic, the largest foreign influence operation against U.S. opinion in the digital era.

The strategic effect has been to invert the moral architecture of the conflict. Hamas, its sponsors, and its supporters have framed jihadist violence as legitimate resistance. To judge their impact, at least 20 countries have recognized "Palestine" since April 2024, including the UK, Canada, Australia, France, Belgium, and Portugal.

In August 2025, senior Hamas political bureau member Ghazi Hamad asserted that the Oct. 7 invasion of Israel paved the way for the Western recognition of a "Palestinian state," convincing the world that defeating Israel "is now possible." A Harvard-Harris poll found that 51% of Americans aged 18-24 agreed that Palestinian grievance justified the Oct. 7 killings.

American and Israeli military and counterterrorism gains of the past two years are only partial. The ultimate battle is for the hearts and minds of the Free World. Â The West requires strategic patience, resilience, and determination to overcome jihad's "forever war."

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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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