11/12 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: The absolute necessity of fighting back; The left’s despicable absolution of Hamas; Avi Issacharoff: 'I Went Undercover In Palestinian Territory… And Nearly Died'

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The absolute necessity of fighting back

At this exceptionally alarming time, when bad people in Israel and the West seem to have the wind behind them, two developments have lifted the spirits.

A mob of masked protesters wearing keffiyehs and carrying Palestinian flags staged a “bicycle boycott” ride in Philadelphia to target and intimidate Jewish- and Israeli-owned businesses. They hadn’t expected that thousands of people would turn up to defend the Jews and actually outnumber the mob, forcing some of those louts to abandon the demonstration.

The second development involves 13 Republican-led U.S. states that have threatened trade reprisals and divestment measures against the United Kingdom and the Netherlands over their proposed trade sanctions targeting Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria.

In both instances, civilization has begun fighting back against those running interference for barbarism.

The barbarians have gained the upper hand in the West because the decent majority of them haven’t understood that a war is being waged against them and their society in which they must either muster their courage to fight or lose their way of life.

The situation in Iran shows what happens when people flinch from this. In February, U.S. President Donald Trump didn’t flinch. He bombed Iran—albeit only after Israel had risked its own people to make the skies safe for American warplanes.

But then Trump flinched, refusing to allow Israel to continue to attack and thus further degrade Tehran’s ability to lash out. The result was Iran’s seizing control of the Straits of Hormuz, stepping up attacks on neighboring Arab states, and replenishing its ballistic-missile and other military programs.

The high oil price and spikes in the cost of living resulting from this continuing Iranian aggression helped produce the Republican rout in the midterms.

If Trump really had defeated the regime instead of the patently false victory that he has repeatedly claimed, even America’s anti-war public would have been impressed, his enemies on both sides of the political divide would have been unable to use the war against him, and the oil price would have gone down.

Instead, a re-energized Tehran has been gloating that it has defeated America in both the Straits of Hormuz and in Washington, D.C.

And it’s stepping up its efforts to sow terror around the world.

Bond between Jews and Iranians ‘fundamental,’ says exiled crown prince on Auschwitz visit

Iran's exiled crown prince, Reza Pahlavi, has celebrated the historic relationship between Jews and Persians during a visit to Auschwitz, warning that the Islamic Republic wants to “finish what Hitler has done”.

Pahlavi received the European Jewish Association's (EJA) King Solomon Award at a ceremony in Krakow on Monday evening, before joining an international delegation of politicians, diplomats and Jewish community leaders at Auschwitz-Birkenau on Tuesday.

Addressing the gathering, he reflected on more than 2,500 years of shared history, invoking the legacy of Persian King Cyrus the Great, who liberated the Jews from Babylonian captivity and enabled the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem.

“The bond between Iranians and the Jewish people is not a matter of sentiment and is not a matter of political convenience. It is older,” Pahlavi said.

“It is a fundamental part of Iranian history that we are truly proud of.”

He argued that the relationship between the two peoples should not be defined by the current Iranian government, but by centuries of shared history and the possibility of a different future.

The award recognised his opposition to antisemitism and his support for closer relations between Iran and Israel.

Brendan O'Neill: The left’s despicable absolution of Hamas

They’re all at it. ‘This is not a natural disaster. This is man-made genocide’, says US congresswoman Rashida Tlaib. These ‘apocalyptic conditions’, this ‘abomination’, is all down to Israel, commentators say. It is ‘pure evil’, said actor John Cusack while sharing what appears to be an AI-generated video of neck-high flooding. What’s being argued here is as insane as it is defamatory. They’re not only saying Israel has been neglectful towards post-war Gaza – they’re saying it has intentionally let freezing waters slosh as part of its fiendish crusade to finish off the Palestinians. Apparently even rain becomes a tool of extermination under the rule of this unholiest nation.

This kind of commentary, so commonplace now, doesn’t only slander the Jewish homeland – it also absolves Hamas. By converting every hardship into evidence of Israeli depravity, Western pundits wipe the moral slate clean for the jihadist gang that actually runs Gaza. They wilfully overlook that the suffering of the people in Gaza, including in these floods, is primarily down to the fact that their ruthless Islamist rulers cannibalised their own municipal infrastructure to fuel their cosmic war on the Jews.

There’s a reason Gaza has poor water infrastructure – because Hamas spent years ripping water pipes out of the ground to turn them into rocket fuselages for their holy crusade against the Jewish homeland. This is not an ‘anti-Hamas smear’ – the army of anti-Semites itself has boasted of its subterranean vandalism. It has proudly released footage of its operatives digging up municipal pipelines, sawing through the metal tubing, and fashioning these arteries of water into weapons of death for the Jews. A pro-Hamas documentary on Al-Jazeera showed the militants making rockets from dug-up ‘metal water pipes’ and ‘unexploded Israeli munitions’.

Hamas has even crowed about the fact that it turned EU-funded pipelines into weaponry. As the Telegraph reported three years ago, some of the ‘30 miles of water pipelines’ gifted to Gaza by Brussels were bent into ‘an arsenal of home-made rockets’. As even the BBC said in 2021, the reason Israel banned the importing of ‘dual-use’ goods into Gaza – including pipes, cement and iron – is because there exists footage showing Hamas ‘ma[king] missiles from water pipes’.

A core reason that Gaza is ill-prepared for storms is because its theocratic rulers converted virtually the entire Strip into an engine of fascistic war. For 20 years in Gaza, civic planning has played a poor second to the logistical requirements of anti-Jewish violence. Hamas chose to build not a functioning society but a staging ground for slaughter. Pipes became missiles, hospitals became weapons depots, schools became rocket-launching facilities. And of course, foreign aid was used to build the estimated 350-mile tunnel system in which Hamas hides and plots as its subjects above ground are forced to flee the missiles of the war Hamas started with its mass murder of Jews.

It is a grotesque lie of omission to leave out such brutal truths in the discussion of Gaza’s suffering. We are witnessing the moral absolution of Hamas by a cultural establishment hell-bent on blaming the Jewish State for everything. This has been the modus operandi of the West’s media elites and activist classes since the pogrom of 7 October, and in fact earlier: to monster the Jewish State and infantilise its enemies. To depict Israel as the sole and evil author of every calamity in the Middle East, and Arabs as wide-eyed, child-like victims.

This is the double racism of Israelophobia. The Jewish nation is defamed as a uniquely monstrous entity, while the Arab side is robbed of agency and treated as the helpless infant of history. Even Hamas. Even an avowedly racist army that turned a whole strip of land into a subterranean fortress of death is let off the hook. The Jews are omnipotent, the Arabs pathetic. This is progressive politics now? That’s what the floods discussion reveals: that Israel and Gaza have been flattened into props for a moral psychodrama penned by bigoted Westerners. The flooding of Gaza is terrible. So is the flooding of Western commentary with lies about Israel and apologism for the Islamo-Nazis that want to destroy it.

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11/12 Links Pt1: Israel targets Hamas chief planning attacks from Nasser Hospital; Elliott Abrams: Where Does the U.S.-Israel Relationship Go from Here?; The intellectual fraud and moral vacuity of Benjamin Moser

From Ian:

Gen. (ret.) David H. Petraeus: It Matters How the Iran War Ends

Everyone wants the war with Iran to end. But how it ends is what matters. A settlement that lets Iran restore its revenue and maritime commerce, continue to threaten navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, rebuild its nuclear program and keep its highly enriched uranium wouldn't advance American and allied interests. It would set the conditions for the next crisis.

The U.S. has three essential goals: restore freedom of navigation through the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, account for and neutralize Iran's nearly 1,000 pounds of uranium enriched to 60%, and impose enforceable limits on nuclear enrichment. None of this requires regime change, occupation or indefinite war. These are the minimum requirements for a durable settlement.

Freedom of navigation can't mean temporary permission from Tehran for favored countries, routes Iran can close at will or a pause in attacks conditioned on concessions. Iran's uranium enriched to 60% could be used in a crude nuclear device without further enrichment or enriched to weapons-grade rapidly. The objective shouldn't be merely to dispose of yesterday's material but to prevent Iran from quickly re-creating the same nuclear threat tomorrow.

The U.S. shouldn't lift the blockade, release substantial frozen funds, or permit renewed Iranian oil exports in exchange for a promise that Tehran will reopen the strait and discuss the nuclear questions later. That would trade concrete American leverage for reversible commitments.

Iran should first stop attacking ships and help clear maritime hazards. It should then restore IAEA access, fully account for the enriched uranium and accept enforceable limits on enrichment. The blockade could be lifted, frozen assets released, and the U.S. force posture reduced only after safe passage is in effect, the 60% stockpile has been neutralized, and the nuclear restrictions and inspections are operating.

If You Think War Is Unpopular, Wait Till You See Defeat

Sometimes good politics is bad policy and good policy is bad politics, which brings me to our current fight against Iran. War is unpopular. It always has been. War is expensive, unpredictable and, most important, deadly. It almost always takes longer than planners thought and is deadlier than experts estimated.

Only a few years after World War II, President Truman made the unpopular decision to send American forces to Korea to prevent the people of the peninsula from falling under the yoke of tyranny. Americans didn't want another war. They were tired of overseas combat and wanted to focus on domestic issues.

Truman paid a price in the 1950 midterms, as his opponents made significant gains in Congress and public support for the war deteriorated. But his backbone in prosecuting the war saved half the Korean Peninsula from totalitarianism and solidified the U.S. position against the Soviets in the Cold War.

History often vindicates difficult decisions that were deeply unpopular in their time. Our fight against Iran will prove no different. This isn't a fight for Israel or Saudi Arabia. It is a fight for Western civilization and the security of American families.

The radical Islamist forces that control Iran and their proxy groups seek the destruction of the U.S. and all Western civilization. They have kidnapped, tortured, murdered and maimed thousands of Americans and many more innocent people worldwide.

They will use all weapons at their disposal to blackmail their neighbors, build regional (and eventually global) hegemony, and forge themselves into a world power that can't be confronted. The war is unpopular, but defeat would be far less popular. We owe it to our country and the West to finish the job.

Elliott Abrams: Where Does the U.S.-Israel Relationship Go from Here?

The U.S.-Israel relationship is under assault in both parties. Both the Senate and the House will have dedicated opponents of all aid to Israel, including even the sale of defensive weapons. They will see moves like an end to military assistance as weak half-measures, when much more must be demanded.

These views do not command a majority in the Democratic caucus, nor are they held by Chuck Schumer, the likely majority leader, or Hakeem Jeffries, the likely House speaker. But they now have a firm base in Congress and in the Democratic Party; policies that were considered fringe and extremist a few years ago will now be seriously debated.

It can be predicted that Democratic leaders will look for compromises that can maintain party unity, and every compromise with the new anti-Israel team will weaken U.S.-Israel ties and Israel's defenses. The DSA crew will fight every line in a new memorandum of understanding with Israel on future military and high-tech cooperation.

They will oppose any U.S. or joint efforts against the Iranian nuclear weapons program. They will adopt the widespread European demand for immediate recognition of a Palestinian state. They will seek sanctions against Israeli military and political leaders, and boycotts that separate Israeli companies and banks from the U.S. economy.

Poll: 71 Percent of U.S. Voters Support Israel over Hamas

A Harvard CAPS/ Harris Poll taken on Oct. 24-26, 2026, found that 71% of U.S. voters support Israel over Hamas, while 75% agree that there are terrorist groups on Israel's borders including Hamas and Hizbullah.

72% say Hizbullah should be required to disarm.

77% think Israel has a right to exist as the homeland of the Jewish People, including 62% of those aged 18-24.

52% would be less likely to vote for a politician who called for the complete destruction of Israel, while 22% would be more likely, including 46% of those aged 18-24.

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11/11 Links Pt2: The day the eaters starved the haters; Labour’s cowardice on Israel and Islamism; Gal Gadot to bring Golodryga and Levi’s ‘Don’t Feed the Lion’ to the big screen

From Ian:

The Class of 1984 By Abe Greenwald

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How did we get here? In large part, this is what these kids have been taught. And 61.4 percent said their professors make their political leanings clear in the classroom (34 percent disagreed). And we don’t have to guess what those political leanings are. Aside from having seen all the academic radicals and their enthusiasm for campus protest, multiple polls confirm that progressivism dominates among professors, while the conservative professor is just about an extinct species. What concerns me is the 34 percent of students who, in all likelihood, are being indoctrinated without knowing it.

Okay, I promised some sunnier news. First, we’re winning the trans sports war. Asked about whether trans athletes should be allowed to participate in sports leagues “designated for a gender that is different from their assigned gender at birth,” 33.2 percent said yes, and 53.5 percent said no. Insanity reigns only so long as it goes unopposed.

And then there’s this: Despite the students’ overwhelmingly negative view of Israel, it doesn’t seem to be much of a priority anymore. When asked about what causes they attended rallies or protests in support of over the last year, “pro-Palestine” makes up only 11.7 percent, behind social justice (19.7 percent), LGBTQ rights (17.6 percent), pro-abortion rights (15.7 percent), anti-ICE (21.4 percent), and anti-Trump (17 percent). The only left-wing causes less popular than “pro-Palestine” were climate change (11.2 percent) and opposition to data centers (8.9 percent).

I don’t really take the waning importance of Israel as an indication of what’s in the minds and souls of college students. I read it more as the sign of a cultural trend. We’re moving away, however slowly, from “Free Palestine” and onto the next outrage. American attention is famously transient, and Israel-bashing has gotten slightly stale. And after things go stale, they rot.

Joshua Namm: The Entertainment Industry Hates Us. So why Do We Put Up With It?

On October 31 Michael Che, the host of “Weekend Update” on Saturday Night Live, said that Israelis voted “in record numbers” which was, he said, “great to see, regardless if you’re on the right side, the left side or the genocide.”

Get it?

The audience, of course, happily laughed at the comment (because none of this is about humor anymore: humor is now a public ritual in which laughter serves as a public declaration of absolute obedience to the narrative).

It was so important to Che that the audience get it that he actually pronounced it “gen-o-cide.”

Che also has a history of spreading blood libels against Jews.

Variety made it worse in its reporting, by having a headline that read: “SNL Weekend Update Finally Weighs in on Israel.”

They uncritically repeated the charge without any examination of why Israel went to war in Gaza. All that mattered to them was that SNL step in line and bash the Jews.

That the accusation of genocide is itself a lie, and 100% false, never matters to any of these people.

That made me think about a topic that I’ve been meaning to write about for years: the constant antisemitism of Hollywood, and our passive acceptance of it.

Like so much else, pop culture is a reflection of the society that produces it. The fact that there are multiple movies/TV shows/plays which portray Jews in a myriad of negative ways reflects the status of our culture.

And, I’m not just talking about the ever-present image of Jews as nerdy, bookish, endlessly neurotic wimps, or characters from Fiddler on the Roof.

Today’s culture often goes much further. And today they also hijack, appropriate, and rewrite our history to reinforce those negative perceptions of Jews, or worse, to promote political narratives by stealing our story.

Jaroslawa Lewicka, Israel’s last living Righteous Among the Nations, dies at 91

Jaroslawa Lewicka, the last of the Righteous Among the Nations living in Israel, passed away in Haifa on Tuesday night. She was 91.

Lewicka was born in Poland in 1935 and raised by her mother, Katarzyna, and grandfather, Alexander Levitska.

She began helping them save Jews during the Holocaust at the age of six, delivering food and medicine and serving as their messenger. In 1942, when a sealed ghetto was established in the nearby city of Zolochiv, the family continued its rescue efforts. Because of her young age, she delivered supplies without arousing the Nazis’ suspicions. The family’s home was about two kilometers from the ghetto. Jarosława regularly walked the distance carrying a small schoolbag in which she concealed food for starving Jews.

Along the way, she had to evade German and Ukrainian police officers, but she continued carrying out her mission.

In 1943, her family sheltered two Jews in their home. They provided food to a group of 25 Jews hiding in the basement of a destroyed building about two km. away until the arrival of the Red Army in 1944.

In 1989, Lewicka, her mother, and grandfather were recognized as Righteous Among the Nations. In 1995, she immigrated to Israel, became an Israeli citizen, and settled in Haifa.

Lewicka’s life story was documented in Maya Klinger-Cohen’s book Only Red Candies.

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11/11 Links Pt1: US envoy Mike Waltz blasts UNIFIL as 'human shield for terrorists,' announces Lebanon visit; ‘Vile hatemonger’ Francesca Albanese accused of ‘hijacking’ words of Primo Levi to condemn Israel

From Ian:

Netanyahu's 1996 promise to end US aid to Israel fulfilled after 30 years, PMO claims

The Prime Minister's Office said Benjamin Netanyahu has fulfilled his 1996 promise to gradually end US financial support for Israel in a Wednesday post on X/Twitter.

Netanyahu, the PMO claimed, promised at the time to end the financial support, which then totaled $1.2 billion, compared to the current total of nearly $4 billion.

"He did just that," the post reads.

Israel is "strong enough economically to gradually end military support," 30 years after Netanyahu's initial promise, the PMO wrote, adding that this is because "today, Israel has a strong and stable economy."

"Israel and the US are making the important move from aid to partnership," the PMO said, using similar terminology to a Friday statement, in which the PMO said that it views US President Donald Trump's announcement to stop aid to Israel by the end of the year as a shift from military aid to "partnership," as reported by The Jerusalem Post.

"Today, Israel has a strong and stable economy. The move by PM Netanyahu and President Trump from aid to partnership shows the strength and sophistication of our relationship, and its ability to adapt and stand strong over time," the PMO wrote.

"This joint move by Netanyahu and Trump shows the strength of our relationship and its ability to adapt to changing circumstances," the PMO said.

The statement also used similar language to Netanyahu's May interview with CBS's 60 Minutes, in which he called for reducing US financial support to Israel down to zero, and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio's "affirmation" in Paris earlier this week, citing the US's top diplomat as calling the decision "something the Israelis themselves have offered us."

Rubio says Israel's economy is at a point where Jerusalem no longer needs Washington's financial aid
Rubio recently said that Israel has become sufficiently prosperous to purchase US weapons without relying on financial assistance, the Post reported at the time.

“On the question of financing, I think Israel has clearly graduated beyond that,” Rubio also said.

PMO spokesman Doron Spielman told Fox News that "while the aid has been incredibly important, the prime minister has been working with President Trump to make the correct transition out from aid towards partnership and mutual investment."

Trump claims Netanyahu personally proposed ending US aid to Israel
On November 3, Trump claimed that Netanyahu personally proposed ending the aid during a telephone interview with Fox News' Fox & Friends.

However, the Israeli defense establishment was shocked by Trump's November 3 announcement of his decision to cut off aid, and is unclear on what it implies for immediate budgetary and weapons sales issues, the Post reported on Sunday.

US envoy Mike Waltz blasts UNIFIL as 'human shield for terrorists,' announces Lebanon visit

US Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz delivered a blistering attack on the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) at the gala evening of the second annual Israel Hayom Summit in New York, announcing plans to visit Lebanon next week to push for fundamental changes to the peacekeeping mission in the country's south.

Waltz described the UN force as a "human shield for terrorists" and made clear that the Trump administration was seeking to overhaul its operations. "I'm going there next week to get rid of this human shield known as UNIFIL and change the peacekeeping mission that has been there for 20 years," Waltz declared. "This mission costs half a billion dollars a year, and instead of promoting peace, it has provided a human shield for terrorists," he said, adding that the goal was to turn the UN into an organization that genuinely advances peace in the region.

Turning to Iran and its network of proxies, Waltz portrayed Tehran's influence across the Middle East as significantly diminished. "The Iranian regime is weaker than it has ever been," he said, pointing to the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, the blows dealt to Hezbollah and developments in Lebanon as part of a broader erosion of Iranian influence. "The cancer of the Middle East is being eradicated, step by step, by a president who had the courage not to put off the difficult decisions," he said.

Waltz also highlighted growing security cooperation between Israel and Arab countries, describing military coordination between Israel and Gulf states as one of the most significant developments of recent years. "To see Israeli soldiers fighting alongside Arab soldiers from the United Arab Emirates, and to see Arab countries helping defend the State of Israel when Iran launched its attacks, would have been absolutely unthinkable just six years ago," he said.

He pointed to what he described as a significant shift on the international stage as well, noting that 146 countries had condemned Iranian attacks on civilian targets, including ships, hotels, resorts and airports, at the UN.

A substantial portion of Waltz's speech focused on the Abraham Accords and President Donald Trump's Middle East policy.

Waltz recalled that when Trump first unveiled his vision for normalizing relations between Israel and Arab countries, many experts and diplomats dismissed it as impossible. "They said there could be no broader peace between Israel and the Arab world until the Palestinian issue was resolved. They called Trump's vision a fantasy. But we proved them wrong," he said.

Waltz, who attended the signing ceremony for the Abraham Accords at the White House in 2020, stressed that predictions that successive wars in the region would bring about the agreements' collapse had also proved unfounded. "First they said the Abraham Accords would never happen. Then they said they would never last. On October 7, they said the war would destroy them. Then they said the war in Gaza would destroy them, and now they're saying the war in Iran will destroy them. So what's the answer? Not only have they survived, they're expanding."

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11/10 Links Pt2: The lessons of Kristallnacht and the wake-up call of Bondi; The Schwinntifada Folds; Natan Sharansky on Campus Fear and the Silent Majority; Why Bondi hero would DO IT ALL AGAIN

From Ian:

US midterms exposed frightening new reality for American Jews – time to unite and fight back

The suggestion that Jews should subordinate their own survival to a supposedly greater good carries a disturbing historical echo.

In August 1934, The New York Times reported a declaration by the Association of National German Jews, whose members said they had “always, in war or peace, placed the good of the German people and the German Fatherland above our own good”.

The declaration continued: “Accordingly, we greeted the national uprising of January 1933, although it brought rigours for us, for we saw it as the only means to clear away the damage done in fourteen unhappy years by un-German elements.”

The “national uprising” was Hitler’s accession to power. What those Jews described as “rigours” would be followed by the Nuremberg Laws, Kristallnacht, and, ultimately, the Holocaust.

The circumstances are profoundly different. The warning concerns the reasoning: Jewish safety must never become expendable in pursuit of a supposedly higher political good.

Jewish voters who supported el-Sayed doubtless had various reasons. Some may have shared Nessel’s thinking; others may have dismissed concerns about him or considered Republican control of the Senate the greater danger. For some, an attenuated Jewish identity, expressed chiefly through universal ideals rather than attachment to Jewish peoplehood or Zionism, may also have played a part.

Universal concern is admirable. But when attachment to Jewish particularity becomes a source of discomfort, and Jewish self-preservation is viewed as an obstacle to the greater good, something has gone profoundly wrong.

Nessel’s words raise a question that reaches well beyond Michigan: when did concern for Jewish survival become a form of self-interest that Jews should be prepared to surrender?

There is nothing narrow or shameful about Jews defending their own safety, continuity, and right to exist. And no political party or individual is entitled to ask them to sacrifice any of those things.

A world that cannot make room for roughly 16 million Jews has a profound moral problem. Jewish contributions to ethics, science, medicine, and culture are extraordinary. But Jews should not have to present a catalogue of achievements to justify their existence.

Nor should tiny Israel, roughly one per cent the size of Saudi Arabia, have to prove its usefulness to earn the right to exist. Its manifold contributions to meeting humanity’s challenges deserve recognition. Its people’s right to live in peace and security, however, does not depend on them.

Michigan was not the only warning. After the Republican shellacking, Vice President JD Vance included “change our relationship to Israel” among four priorities he cited for winning back voters who had deserted his party.

The vice president of the United States was making the relationship with the Jewish state part of the explanation for his party’s electoral humiliation. He is also widely expected to seek the presidency in 2028. The pattern is all too familiar: when things go wrong, find a Jewish address for the blame. This time, the address is Israel, the lone Jewish-majority state.

Coming from someone a heartbeat away from the presidency, those words demand far more than a passing expression of concern.

Increasingly, the place of Jews in America is being called into question – a prospect many previously considered unimaginable.

Concerned Jews and Jewish groups must face these realities unflinchingly, show far greater unity of purpose, demonstrate courage and spine, develop innovative strategies, strengthen young Jews’ understanding of their history and identity, and build strong alliances.

If this is not the moment to wake up, then when is?

The Schwinntifada Folds By Abe Greenwald

Via Commentary Newsletter, sign up here. Look, it’s sickening that this happened at all. At the start of the “Free Palestine” craze, protesters wouldn’t have plainly organized an attack on Jewish-owned businesses for being Jewish-owned businesses. But they’ve grown bolder since then, winning media and political sympathy and lifting unapologetic anti-Semites into important political offices.

So if this is a kind of arms race, I’m heartened to see a significant number on our side who are ready to escalate.

I rarely give unbidden advice, and I don’t resent those who choose not to follow my counsel. But I’ve been asked, over and over, by Jews and other concerned Americans, “What can we do about the explosion in anti-Semitism?”

The truth is, it’s hard to know what to say, and my answers often come up short: learn self-defense, obtain a legal weapon, use the law to protect your rights, make a fuss, and vote for the right people—it’s not terribly inspiring. But the events of Sunday are inspiring, and I’ll say this: Look at what the Jews and their allies did in Philadelphia, repeat it, grow it, and don’t stop. Show up everywhere. Outnumber the scum and get in their faces. Above all, be brave. Don’t steer clear of targeted businesses or neighborhoods or shuls. Don’t change your life one bit to accommodate the thugs.

Think of it like this: For three years, Israeli life was upended by a brutal war. Families watched as their young men and women went off to fight the most depraved murderers on the planet. IDF soldiers hunted down their enemies from the skies and in dark tunnels and explosive-rigged buildings, and many courageous Jews have died in the process. We merely have to be brave enough to exercise our God-given rights as citizens in this free country. So, my advice is to go where you want to go, say what you want to say, and don’t back down against the likes of “Philly Bike on Your Left,” or anyone else who expects you to cower.

New Zealand’s antisemitism problem is in New Zealand, not the Middle East

New Zealanders have every right to criticize Israel, advocate Palestinian self-determination and protest peacefully. They are free to criticize any country. Those rights do not extend to threats or nationality-based harassment.

The coalition mentioned above criticized slogans such as “from the river to the sea” and “globalize the intifada,” which many understand as threatening Israel’s existence or encouraging violence.

It highlighted the Free Palestine Party, which it says received $82,000 in public election broadcasting funding, and alleged that its leader, Paul Hopkinson, celebrated Oct. 7 as a victory for Palestinian resistance. It also criticized activist John Minto for reportedly publishing photographs of Israeli visitors and encouraging hostile attention toward them.

These allegations raise questions about enforcement. New Zealand designated Hamas in its entirety as a terrorist entity in 2024 and has laws addressing material support for terrorism, harmful digital communications and harassment. Offensive political speech is not automatically criminal. But have authorities examined the reported incidents, and what conclusions have they reached?

Freedom of speech is fundamental. It does not confer a right to threaten people or facilitate violence. The law must protect Jewish citizens and Israeli visitors as firmly as everyone else.

The coalition also challenged New Zealand’s media, arguing that coverage has too often relied uncritically on Hamas-controlled sources without sufficient balance or context. Journalists must scrutinize claims from all sides, report civilian suffering honestly and distinguish verified facts from propaganda.

Māori, Christian, Jewish and Iranian representatives have united around a principle beyond politics: Jews and Israelis deserve the same safety and dignity as everyone else.

The coalition calls on politicians to act responsibly, journalists to uphold professional standards and police to respond decisively to threats and violence.

New Zealand must reflect urgently on where this hostility could lead. The antisemitic terrorist attack at Australia’s Bondi Beach last December is a stark warning of the devastating consequences of hatred. Geographical isolation offers no immunity. New Zealand must act to prevent a similar tragedy on its own soil.

New Zealand cannot control the Middle East’s geopolitical realities. But it can control how it treats Jews and Israelis within its borders.

Jewish citizens and Israeli visitors must be able to live without fear. If New Zealand cannot meet that basic standard, the problem is not in the Middle East. It is in New Zealand.

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11/10 Links Pt1: Will Trump Change the U.S.-Israel Relationship?; Israel's Problem with Arab Parties Isn't that They're Arab; Polls Find Most Americans Think Conflict with Iran Was Justified

From Ian:

Michael Doran: Will Trump Change the U.S.-Israel Relationship?

The assertion that America is fighting Israel's war rather than its own replaces an assessment of American interests with a theory of foreign manipulation. Yet the assertion explains nothing about how the U.S. would secure its interests once it abandons the policies and partnerships its critics reject.

Can Washington reach an accommodation with the Islamic Republic that reliably prevents it from acquiring nuclear weapons? If not, should it accept a nuclear-armed Iran? What would that outcome mean for the balance of power in the Middle East, and for the larger balance of power with China?

The purpose of American grand strategy is to maintain an international order that makes American freedom possible. That requires preserving the foundations of American power and prosperity: military superiority, economic dynamism, the dollar's central role in international finance, technological leadership, and secure energy supplies for the U.S. and its allies.

In the Middle East, oil is only part of the story. The Gulf monarchies command vast pools of capital increasingly important to artificial intelligence, data centers, and the infrastructure of the digital economy. Their sovereign wealth funds are major investors in global financial markets. They are also among the largest purchasers of American weapons, helping sustain the defense-industrial base on which American military power depends.

President Trump seeks to maintain American primacy without occupying countries or assuming responsibility for their internal political transformation, relying instead on economic coercion, selective military force, diplomacy, and capable regional allies. The objective is maximum American influence with the minimum necessary American military footprint.

That approach requires a regional balance in which Iran cannot dominate its neighbors. Iran has attacked American military installations across the Middle East, damaging aircraft, radar systems, communications equipment, and other infrastructure worth billions of dollars. Its missiles and drones threaten the bases through which the U.S. projects power. The U.S. is therefore confronting a challenge to its own military position and regional influence, quite apart from its obligations to Israel.

Report: U.S. Military Aid to Israel Won't End This Year

A week after President Trump said he and Prime Minister Netanyahu had agreed to end U.S. military aid to Israel by the end of this year, Ynet and Yediot Ahronot have learned that in the emerging security memorandum of understanding with the U.S., American military assistance to Israel will not end immediately.

Instead, the direct military aid will continue for five years after 2028, after which it will end entirely.

At the same time, U.S. funding for joint air and missile defense development is expected to rise from the current $500 million annually due to the increasing threat from drones and missiles.

The goal is to finalize a new agreement by the end of this year, before the new Congress takes office in January. However, Congress will still have to appropriate the aid funding each year.

Negotiations are being conducted by teams from both countries. The money is used to purchase weapons produced by U.S. defense companies.

Some members of Congress oppose reducing assistance to Israel since much of the money is ultimately spent in their own states and supports American defense manufacturers.

Secretary of State Rubio: Iran War Was "the Right Thing to Do"

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday regarding the war in Iran: "The President of the United States identified a very real threat to this country that's existed for a very long period of time, and he addressed it. And he addressed it even though, oftentimes, the right thing to do for the country...isn't necessarily popular but necessary."

"At the end of the day I think we can all agree...there used to be bipartisan acknowledgment that a nuclear Iran would be completely unacceptable and dangerous for the United States - not just Israel, not just the Middle East - the whole world and the United States."

"So I think the President took on something that other presidents have failed to do. And sometimes when you do the right thing - I don't know if it's popular or not, but it's the right thing to do. And presidents are elected to do the hard things - sometimes difficult things, but necessary things."

Polls Find Most Americans Think Conflict with Iran Was Justified

When wars cause major political shifts, they usually involve ground combat leading to thousands of American casualties, not a temporary $1.50-a-gallon increase in the price of gasoline, which costs a typical household about $20 a week. If that's enough to bring about a political sea change, then the electorate has lost all rationality, and presidents will be constrained to wait for an attack on U.S. soil before taking military action to defend America.

The Harvard CAPS/Harris polls asked if the Iranians were negotiating in good faith. 65% of respondents said no. Should the Iranians be allowed to control the Strait of Hormuz? 67% said no, including a majority of both parties. Should Iran be permitted to obtain a nuclear weapon? 85% said no. Was the U.S. justified in using force if the Iranians refuse to yield on these key issues? 63% said yes. The war has dragged on when voters wanted it to be won - and they still do.

Mr. Trump and his administration need to explain to Americans the reason we took on the Iranian regime, which is the world's biggest state sponsor of terrorism and is responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans over the past 47 years.

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11/09 Links Pt2: When Marx met Hamas; Leiter: NYT spread blood libel against Jewish state, fueled false genocide accusations; ‘We’re never really going to be safe,’ Dara Horn says at Kristallnacht commemoration

From Ian:

When Marx met Hamas

The embarrassment of Israel
What is Israel today to Western civilisation’s Marxist-Islamist opponents? It is an embarrassment, a reminder of their failure. Marx and his followers never did “make the Jew impossible”. With its different social classes all proud of faith, flag and family, no land gives the lie to the Marxist worldview quite like Israel. For Islamists, Israel created in two generations what its neighbours could not in fourteen centuries: simply, a decent place to live. Envy always comes out sideways.

The alt-right is now shot through with antisemitism of its own, but when the Green Party equates Zionism with racism as official doctrine and calls for a single Palestinian state, its members should know that this implies annihilating Israel as a Jewish nation. Its activists seek the establishment of a Palestinian state by “all available means”.

As Jake Wallis Simons outlined in his book Never Again: How the West Betrayed the Jews and Itself, the West’s opponents are interlinked and interdependent. Antisemitism, anti-Zionism, Putin apologism, Hitler-revisionism, Tehran-backed terror. They appear to be opposed but are mutually-reinforcing. Aleksandr Dugin, dubbed Putin’s philosophical guru, has praised the “conservative revolutionist” Osama Bin Laden while Russian assistance to the messianic Iranian regime is well known.

Of course, like its western equivalent, Islamic antisemitism flourished centuries before Karl Marx came on the scene. Aside from the enforced second-class dhimmitude of Jews (and Christians) in the traditional Islamic hierarchy, Islam’s colonisation of Spain was followed by ferocious pogroms which saw the slaughter of thousands of Jews. But the postcolonial New Left has blended Marxism with historic regional enmities to create a toxic brew.

After the Palestine Liberation Organisation became a paid-up KGB client (literally: it took $200,000 a month through the 1970s), its job was turning international socialism against the state of Israel — and, inevitably, Jews. As Wallis Simons describes, Yasser Arafat “shamelessly ventriloquised Israelophobic propaganda, railing against imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism and racism, the chief form of which is Zionism.” Arafat (and Moscow’s) eliding Palestinianism with anticolonialism was a “genius […] sleight of hand”. Since its aim was ejecting Jews from their ancient homeland, it was also the opposite of the truth. In his PhD thesis at Moscow’s Patrice Lumumba University, his successor Mahmood Abbas would argue that Zionists engineered the Holocaust as a pretext to establish Israel, exaggerating the number of Jewish dead sixfold. Our Labour Government has just granted him an embassy in London.

By the end of the 1970s, Palestinianism was engaged in a parallel assault on truth in the universities. In Orientalism, Palestinian-American academic Edward Saїd applied the same Marxist hierarchy of oppression to the postcolonial world, again eliding the restored ancient Jewish state with imperialism while bemoaning the failure of the (actually imperialist) Arab armies to destroy Israel in the Six Day War. Combining Islamic grievances and Marxist philosophy, this Third-Worldism has ruined much of the Western academy.

The Modern Age in arms
Faced by the Islamo-Marxists, our era begins to feel like the moment in Evelyn Waugh’s Men At Arms when the English Catholic protagonist Guy Crouchback hears the news of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, that 1939 non-aggression treaty between Stalinism and Nazism:

… everything had become clear. The enemy at last was plain in view, huge and hateful, all disguise cast off. It was the Modern Age in arms. Whatever the outcome, there was a place for him in that battle.

The enemy is in plain view once more. Socialism has returned to its roots, seeking the annihilation of peoples. What is to be done? The treatment must include our education system. Restoring western immunity to such mind-viruses means teaching our shared Judeo-Christian philosophical heritage, whence our sense of self arose. To save the tree, rejuvenate civilisation from the roots.

When tikkun olam comes at the expense of solidarity with Israel

There is no need to abandon tikkun olam to preserve Jewish solidarity. Secular Israelis volunteer in Africa and other remote regions, provide free medical care, assist local farmers, and share professional knowledge. They do so out of humanism and moral responsibility, without renouncing their national identity.

But perhaps American Jews who place tikkun olam at the center of their identity should ask themselves a difficult question: What happens if the assumption that the world will embrace us because of everything we have done to improve it proves wrong?

Vivian Silver, a peace activist from Kibbutz Be’eri, devoted her life to helping Palestinians. She helped patients from Gaza reach Israeli hospitals for treatment and worked tirelessly to promote coexistence.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists murdered her in her home. Her story is a heartbreaking reminder that goodwill and generosity cannot guarantee protection against those who reject the possibility of coexistence.

By all means, continue to practice tikkun olam. Help the disadvantaged, fight discrimination, and contribute to a better world. But don’t abandon your insurance policy along the way.

Israel is the one Jewish state, the national home of the Jewish people, and ultimately the place that provides Jews everywhere with a measure of collective security and refuge.

Its survival should matter just as much to a Jew living in Detroit or Miami as it does to one living in Tel Aviv.

Mamdani’s plan to fight antisemitism omits NYC college campuses, critics claim

Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plan to combat antisemitism glaringly omits tackling rampant, anti-Jewish hatred at local colleges and universities, Jewish faculty and staff at CUNY and NYU said

The Mamdani administration’s “Strategy to Combat Antisemitism,” released in September, makes scant mention of colleges and universities, though City Hall said it met with all with Jewish leaders “from all corners of the community” including parents, students and educators.

“In a city that is home to one of the world’s greatest concentrations of public and private universities and colleges, the near absence of higher education from the Strategy is a significant omission,” the CUNY Alliance for Inclusion and the Faculty and Staff Against Antisemitism at NYU said in a joint statement to The Post.

“Those commitments should extend meaningfully to New York City’s colleges and universities.”

The faculty groups said antisemitism in higher education cannot be understood solely through claims regarding hate crimes and physical insecurity.

Antisemitism can also seep into the structures of academia including departments, faculty governance, academic associations, professional networks, labor unions, graduate-worker organizations, and others that determine “whose scholarship and viewpoints are treated as legitimate topics for discussion and debate.”

The CUNY and NYU groups also warned that bashing of Israel and Zionism can explode into antisemitism.

Mamdani himself is a fierce critic of Israel and his report was previously criticized for not mentioning Zionism once in its 33 pages and for refusing to adopt a formal definition of what constitutes antisemitism.

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