02/17 Links Pt2: The West's Suicidal Empathy; Emmanuel Macron: France Needs Jews in Order to Remain Itself; Trial of man accused of killing Paul Kessler in 2023 to begin

From Ian:

The West's Suicidal Empathy

Professor Gad Saad, 61, born in Lebanon to a Jewish family that fled during the civil war, is the author of The Parasitic Mind - How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense. In it, he uses the imagery of viruses and parasites to describe how harmful cultural ideas can hijack public discourse, academia, and social institutions, damaging freedom of expression, critical thinking, and basic logic of ostensibly rational human beings.

"Those who want to control us try to control both our cognitive system and our emotional system," Prof. Saad explained. "In my new book, Suicidal Empathy,...I focus on the way they try to manipulate our emotions."

"Empathy is a wonderful thing that every social creature needs. But like everything else in life, empathy must be applied in the right amount, in the right situation, and toward the right objects. When it's applied incorrectly, it harms the person possessing it to the point of threatening their existence. In my book, I examine a long series of domestic and foreign policy issues where the West adopts approaches that endanger its existence, and I show how they all stem from suicidal empathy."

Suicidal empathy works overtime when it comes to Israel. "If you go to study in Middle Eastern studies programs at any institution of higher learning in the West, they teach you that Israelis are white colonialists, devoid of any ancestral rights to the land they conquered, that they're evil exploiters oppressing the noble and peaceful Palestinians, who opened the door to white Jews from Austria and Russia, and the Jews exploited the opportunity to steal the land from its owners."

"Islamist groups don't hide that they intend to conquer the West through three methods - the womb, immigration, and exploiting the West's freedoms against it. Why does the West refuse to see this clearly?...The West tries to be understanding, compassionate, considerate, and generous toward other cultures, assuming they'll reciprocate in kind, while other cultures interpret the West's behavior as a sign of weakness....Blind Westerners mistakenly think that the values embedded in their culture are also dear to other cultures' hearts - and nothing could be further from the truth."

Two years ago, Prof. Saad was pushed out of Concordia University, which had been his academic home for many years. His presence on campus became too dangerous, literally. The same Jew-hatred he knew in Lebanon caught up with him even in distant Canada. Now he teaches at the University of Mississippi.

Emmanuel Macron: France Needs Jews in Order to Remain Itself

Too often, sentences handed down for antisemitic offenses and crimes seem derisory. Too often, the antisemitic nature of such acts struggles to be recognized. We will strengthen training for magistrates in this area. And to ensure transparency and truth, I want precise monitoring of sentences and sanctions to be established. On this basis, the Government and Parliament will work to strengthen penalties for antisemitic and racist acts.

Our elected officials are the sentinels of the Republic and must remain so. Justice has been seized regarding statements made by some of them, and the judiciary is doing its work independently. For the future, I wish to see the establishment of mandatory ineligibility penalties for antisemitic, racist, and discriminatory acts or statements.

School, justice, elected officials—the mobilization must be general: that of the State, the Government, all public services, and everyone in the Republic. Ladies and gentlemen, there have been too many words; there have been too many deaths. The time has come for action and for an uncompromising patriotic and republican mobilization.

The mobilization that follows in the footsteps of Zola, Jaurès, Clemenceau, and Picquart, who defended Dreyfus. And on July 12 next year, for the first time, we will hold a national day of commemoration for Alfred Dreyfus.

The mobilization that honors Robert Badinter, his humanism, and his love of freedom.

That honors Marc Bloch—who will be inducted into the Panthéon on June 23—who liked to say that he claimed to be Jewish only in the face of an antisemite.

That recognizes itself in de Gaulle, who carried the Republic with him, far from the state antisemitism of Vichy, Pétain, and Laval.

The mobilization of all our contemporary struggles, from which we will yield nothing.

Ilan Halimi had his whole life ahead of him. The oak tree we plant here at the Élysée will not restore the years taken nor fill the void left behind. But through it, Ilan’s memory will live in the hearts and minds of all who pass through these halls—as a reminder and as a demand.

What does this tree tell us above all—ilan, meaning “tree” in Hebrew? That the place of this fight against antisemitism is here, because this fight is existential for France and for the Republic. For as Abbé Grégoire proclaimed when he affirmed the entry of Jews into French citizenship, “France without Jews is a tree without branches.”

And the Republic is unrootable, just like Ilan’s memory now rooted here. They may try to uproot them all; they will never exhaust the republican sap or the French spirit. In the end, there will always be one left—and one is enough. And let every French woman and every French man say it to themselves: They are that last person who carries the honor of all and must take up every fight.

To Ilan Halimi, to his family, to all victims of antisemitism, to all of you—I swear that in this struggle, the Republic will prevail. Because the Republic is you. It is us. It is, at every second, the person who fights for the dignity of another.

Yes—we will prevail.

Long live the Republic. Long live France.

Trial of man accused of killing 69-year-old Jew in LA area in 2023 to begin

Loay Abdel Fattah Alnaji, who is accused of killing a 69-year-old Jewish man at nearby pro-Israel and anti-Israel rallies on Nov. 5, 2023, is scheduled to go on trial on Feb. 18 in Ventura County Superior Court in California.

Alnaji, 52, allegedly killed Paul Kessler less than a month after the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7. He has pleaded not guilty to multiple felonies, including involuntary manslaughter by an unlawful act, per the court docket. He was released on $50,000 bail.

The district attorney’s office alleges that an altercation between Alnaji, a computer science professor at Moorpark College, and Kessler resulted in the latter’s death. Alnaji was among the anti-Israel protesters, and Kessler was part of a smaller contingent of pro-Israel protesters that day in Thousand Oaks, Calif., near Los Angeles.

Alnaji allegedly hit Kessler with a megaphone. The county medical examiner’s office determined that he died from blunt force trauma from the megaphone and then hitting his head on the pavement.

Ron Bamieh, Alnaji’s attorney, said on Oct. 16, 2025, that Kessler “put his cell phone in my client’s face and said, ‘Baby killer. Baby killer. Baby killer.’”

“My client, with his left hand, swiped at the cell phone to knock it out of his face; the bullhorn hit Mr. Kessler on the face and the head, and Mr. Kessler turned, stood for two to three seconds, and then collapsed to the ground,” he said.

A few months before that, Bamieh said that Kessler, whom he called an “Israel advocate,” had a brain tumor that caused him to have balance issues, so “we’re saying it’s just as reasonable that he fell because of the tumor.”

The lawyer also said it is “reasonable” for someone to attempt to swipe away a cell phone put in their face and that Alnaji hit Kessler in the face accidentally.

The district attorney’s office stated on May 15, 2024, that “while antisemitic hate speech was heard at the Nov. 5, 2023 rally, there is no evidence those words were said by Alnaji.”

Alnaji faces up to four years if convicted on all charges, the office said.

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02/17 Links Pt1: The End of the Palestinian Authority; BHL: Francesca Albanese Must Go; Melanie Phillips: The Unholy Alliance - Why the Left Loves Jihad; The Child Soldiers of Gaza

From Ian:

Netanyahu: "Gaza Will Not Pose a Threat Ever Again to the State of Israel"

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in Jerusalem on Sunday:
In his recent meeting with President Trump, "I expressed my skepticism of any deal with Iran, because, frankly, Iran is reliable on one thing, they lie and they cheat. But I said that if a deal is to be reached, it should have several components that we believe are important."

"The first is that all enriched material has to leave Iran. The second is that there shall be no enrichment capability - not stopping the enrichment process, but dismantling the equipment and the infrastructure that allows you to enrich in the first place. And the third is to deal also with the questions of ballistic missiles....The fourth is, dismantle the axis of terror that Iran has built....The last thing is...distrust and always verify. So there has to be real inspections, substantive inspections."

"We also spoke about Gaza....Hamas must first be disarmed and then Gaza must be demilitarized. Disarmed means that it must give up weapons....They did the worst massacre of the Jewish people since the Holocaust with AK-47 [assault rifles], 60,000 of them. They have to go....Gaza will not pose a threat ever again to the State of Israel."

"The first requirement to defeat antisemitism is to fight antisemitism. It's the only way. There's no other way....In front of these vilifications, do not cower. Do not bend. Do not bow your head. Fight back, because people respect those who respect themselves....Silence will not help. Looking askance will not help, fight back."

Seth Mandel: The End of the Palestinian Authority

Every so often, Israel takes actions that the Palestinians object to on specious grounds. Recently, for example, Israel repealed a Jordanian regulation that prohibited Jews from buying private land in Judea and Samaria, and proposed an extension of Jerusalem-adjacent construction. These, we are told, endanger the possibility of a contiguous Palestinian state. But since the Palestinians have repeatedly rejected an offer of sovereignty over that land, we know that objection is a lie meant for public consumption.

Whatever the Palestinian leadership is after, it sure isn’t statehood on the West Bank. And that is why Bandar wanted to cry. That is why Clinton never forgave Arafat and never wavered from the truth of Camp David, despite the fact that his party became so hostile to hearing it.

What the spurned leaders realized at Camp David was not that the Palestinian leadership drives a hard bargain, but that the Palestinian leadership isn’t bargaining. It isn’t negotiating at all. It’s for show.

Looking back, among the most ridiculous excuses for Arafat’s rejection of the deal is that the deal itself was lacking. It wasn’t, but once Israel signed on, Arafat would’ve been in the driver’s seat until his dying day anyway. The world would consider Israel to be locked in, and there is no way the deal would be allowed to collapse over a square kilometer here or there. Not single person on earth believes otherwise.

The reason the Palestinian leadership turned down the offer was not because the offer was worth turning down statehood for. It was because the Palestinians would not sign a permanent record that said they had agreed to end the conflict and live in peace with Israel.

The Palestinian leadership doesn’t want a little more land here and there. It wants to be in a state of perpetual conflict in which Israel’s erasure remains on the table. Which means not only that, yes, Oslo is dead. It also means the Palestinian Authority exists in name only.

NYPost: Trump’s Board of Peace and Hamas cannot co-exist

One huge question hangs over Thursday’s meeting of President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace: What’s the plan to de-Hamas-ify Gaza?

The president tells The Post the gathering will focus on how to direct the $5 billion that board members have so far committed to spend to rebuild the war-torn strip, with the full bill estimated to hit $70 billion.

Gaza is just the first test; Trump hopes the Board of Peace can play a role in resolving all manner of global crises where the United Nations simply flounders.

But first it’ll have to succeed in moving the prez’s Gaza peace plan to its next stage.

Nickolay Mladenov, the board’s director-general, cites three priorities: effective government, weapons decommissioned and Israeli withdrawal.

None of that’s possible if armed and organized terrorists remain; all Hamas’ fighters (and those of smaller terror groups) must disarm in exchange for amnesty, or accept exile.

Right now, they’re not just sticking around, they’re controlling the half of Gaza that Israel has pulled out of, and regularly attacking the IDF across the yellow line.

If they’re not defanged, the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza will be a thin fiction, unable to stop the terrorists from continuing to call the shots.

And diverting much, maybe most, “rebuilding” money to re-arming for a larger assault on Israelis, as ever with a preference for raping, killing and otherwise terrorizing civilians.

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02/16 Links Pt2: Sen. Graham: Trump, Netanyahu are of one mind on Iran; Where is the fury over the plot to massacre Manchester Jews?; Green Party activists say Zionism is a form of racism

From Ian:

Brendan O'Neill: Where is the fury over the plot to massacre Manchester Jews?

Then there’s the left. ‘Fascist!’, these people cry at everyone from the mums in pink tracksuits who protest outside migrant hotels to those northern communities that are planning to vote for Reform UK. Yet when two men are jailed for an advanced plot to carry out the bloodiest of pogroms, they go schtum. For the first time ever the word ‘fascist’ clogs in their throats. We need a franker verison of that Martin Niemöller poem to describe such rank cowardice and snivelling silence in the face of true racism: ‘When they came for the Jews, I said fuck all.’

We need a reckoning with this culture of chilling indifference to Islamo-fascism. With the failure of our self-styled moral leaders to speak clearly about the surging poison of anti-Semitism. Last year there were 3,700 anti-Semitic hate incidents in the UK, the second-highest annual total ever. Sickeningly, 80 of those incidents were recorded in the 48 hours after the terrorist assault on the Heaton Park Synagogue, also in Manchester, on Yom Kippur in October, when two Jews were killed. Some of those incidents involved ‘face-to-face taunting’ of Jews and ‘celebration’ of the Heaton Park attack. It’s the 21st century and people are responding to the murder of Jews by jeering at Jews. Where are the anti-racists? Their silence indicts them in ways they cannot fathom.

To watch the clip of Amar Hussein in his police interview coldly saying ‘Yes’ when asked if he supports ISIS is to look into the face of evil. His arms crossed, his demeanour arrogant, he announces with nauseating pride his allegiance to the sworn enemies of Western civilisation. The questions pile up. Hussein is from Kuwait and Saadaoui is from Tunisia – what were they doing here? Were they emboldened in their Jew hate by the Israelophobic mania that swept Britain after 7 October 2023? It is undeniable now: our broken immigration system, our failure to tame the anti-Semitism of the post-7 October moment and officialdom’s dread of calling out Islamism for fear of being called ‘Islamophobic’ – these craven trends have mingled to create fertile territory for the violent rebirth of the world’s oldest racism.

There are 40,000 suspected jihadists on Britain’s terror watchlist. Hundreds of young men from anti-Semitic cultures arrive illegally on our shores every week. Venomous hatred for the world’s only Jewish nation has become the moral glue of the chattering classes. Anti-Semitic attacks are spiking. Jews are being murdered, or mercifully saved from murder. What signal does it send to Jew-haters when we fail as a society to speak out about these horrors? The elites’ yellow-bellied nonchalance on the Islamist threat doesn’t only betray Britain’s Jews – it also emboldens those who loathe them.

David Collier: ChatGPT is protecting the mythical status of Palestinian identity

Some stories take months to uncover. Others are stumbled across by accident. This is one of the latter. But it is no less important for it.

Artificial Intelligence engines (LLMs) such as ChatGPT are not neutral observers of reality. They are policing the boundaries of Palestinian identity, shielding it from scrutiny and elevating it to a sacred moral construct.

That should concern everyone.

Wikipedia was once the world’s primary reference point. It evolved, in many areas, into a partisan battleground where anti-Jewish narratives could be shaped and manipulated in plain sight. But at least Wikipedia’s distortions were visible. Its edit history could be examined. Its biases could be traced.

AI is different.

It is now rapidly replacing Wikipedia as the dominant interpreter of truth. Yet it operates as a black box. There is no edit trail and no transparency.

If these systems are quietly protecting a mythologised version of Palestinian identity – treating it as a moral token that must be defended – then we are not simply drifting into a post-truth world – we are engineering it.

The Palestinian from Aleppo
While recently researching an anti-Israel propagandist, I encountered a familiar piece of Nakba revisionism. Wafic Faour presents himself as a Palestinian, and his family history follows a well-worn script: innocent civilians violently uprooted when their Arab-Palestinian village was attacked in 1948 by Zionist militias. He claims his family was expelled to Lebanon and eventually made their way to the United States. Today, he serves as the local “Palestinian” face in Vermont, leading protests that demonise and ostracise Israel.

For him, Palestinian identity is his key credential.

On examination, however, his claims quickly began to unravel. Archival records show that his village had been openly violent. Its inhabitants fled only after their military position collapsed. This is how his family ended up in Lebanon.

More significantly, a local history written by the villagers themselves records that the activist’s family originated in Aleppo, Syria, and had migrated into the Mandate area, probably in the late 19th or early 20th century.

The story, as presented publicly, could not withstand scrutiny. The family’s documented origins lay in Aleppo, Syria. The activist himself was born in Lebanon and later built a life in the United States. There was no evidence of deeper ancestral roots in Palestine. The identity he projects is a political construct built on omission.

I incorporated these findings into a wider investigation documenting his distortions and propaganda.

As part of my normal publication process, I ran the final draft through ChatGPT to check for grammatical errors.

What happened next was unexpected.

ChatGPT did not focus on spelling or grammar.

It challenged my description of him.

Shany Mor: Many on my feed are understandably outraged by this essay, which they feel is a cynical misuse of the memory of the Holocaust, deployed in a contemporary political debate for which it is entirely unsuited.

Many on my feed are understandably outraged by this essay, which they feel is a cynical misuse of the memory of the Holocaust, deployed in a contemporary political debate for which it is entirely unsuited.

I don't think they're seeing the whole picture.

Let's start by looking at this gem, also from the NYRB, from 2023 that ostensibly argues AGAINST the use of the memory of the Holocaust as a way of making sense of a current event.

It's signed by all the "genocide scholars" that would become rockstars in the ensuing months, and at first glance, it would appear that the two articles contradict each other (which is allowed) and show a cynical preferece for Holocaust analogies only when convenient.

But a closer read shows something else. These articles are not arguing opposite things at all, and are in fact entirely consistent with one another.

What unites both pieces is an unbridled resentment at Jews for the "luxury" of the Holocaust and its memory.

Both essays are centered around claims that powerful Jewish figures are gatekeeping the trauma of the Shoah in order to exploit it. And both go to great lengths to imply, not with much subtlety, that today's Jews are the real Nazis anyway.

Both pieces make some incredibly weak arguments about current events: The 2023 piece gives a potted history of the conflict, and flips its own argument on its head in just four paragraphs at the end in order to slip in the Israelis-as-Nazis meme. The 2026 piece can't seem to distinguish immigration policy from extermination. But skip the weak arguments. Both pieces can't conceive of Jewish memory of the Shoah as anything but a feint. This is deep ontology of "genocide studies" and much progressive thought on race and social justice.

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02/16 Links Pt1: The UN Doesn’t Deserve to Be Free of Francesca Albanese; Waltz calls UN a 'cesspool for antisemitism'; Hamas is inching toward another war; The Tucker Carlson effect

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The UN Doesn’t Deserve to Be Free of Francesca Albanese

The current controversy is over Albanese’s remarks at a recent Al Jazeera conference which Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal also addressed. Albanese referred to Israel as the “common enemy of humanity.” Albanese’s defenders deny that she was referring to the Jewish state as the “common enemy,” and that she was only talking about those who “control vast amounts of financial capital, algorithms, or weapons.”

To reiterate: that is the defense of Albanese. That the enemy of humanity is merely a global cabal of financiers who support Israel.

My sense is that the hilariously weak “defense” of Albanese is evidence of Albanese’s own likely belief that her comments don’t require a defense or an explanation at all, because she does see Israel as the common enemy of humanity. Albanese has never been subtle about this. Her long history of anti-Semitism exists in the public record precisely because she does not want there to be any confusion about her bigotry.

So it’s encouraging to see the French foreign minister say enough is enough: “[Albanese] presents herself as a UN independent expert, yet she is neither an expert nor independent — she is a political activist who stirs up hate.”

Austria and Germany have joined France’s declaration of no confidence in Albanese. Longtime UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric distanced Secretary General Antonio Guterres from Albanese’s comments and, in general, “much of what she says.” Next week, at a UN meeting, France will publicly call for her resignation. Britain may even join the club.

But what would the UN do without Albanese? What would it be? It would certainly be less honest, for starters. People should think of Albanese when they think of the UN. She is an indefatigable agent of misery, a publicist for totalitarian death squads, and a figure of unity in the vast interconnected movement of Jew-haters worldwide.

We deserve a better UN. And until we get it, the UN and Francesca Albanese deserve each other.

Jonathan Sacerdoti: Hamas is inching toward another war

The question is how long this equilibrium can endure. Israel is keen to demonstrate patience: it has no more hostages in the strip, dead or alive. It is comfortable letting America negotiate and threaten Hamas into demilitarisation, as agreed. Israel has surrounded Hamas on every side so that it cannot re-arm or rebuild in any real sense. The Palestinians in Gaza pose little to no real threat to Israel in this current situation. If and when the US efforts to demilitarise Hamas fail, Israel will have the opportunity to go in and take care of it themselves. They are in no rush.

Israel will use repeated violations like yesterday’s to build publicly the case for their renewed military action, banking it for when that time comes. They are keen to show Hamas is testing their restraint daily. But that only works if they do carry through, if they aren’t complacent about their strength.

There is a wider lesson here. Societies adapt to chronic threats. In Israel, the Iron Dome allowed daily life to continue under intermittent rocket fire. In the United Kingdom, repeated jihadist plots and attacks have been met with more monitoring of suspects and vigils affirming our love for ‘diversity’. Synagogue attacks (foiled and successful) are met with more funding for more security. More CCTV is put up. Doors are reinforced. More concrete flowerbeds are planted. Over time, abnormal conditions become administratively manageable. Physically, it might make us safer, but it is also dangerous.

Extremist movements operate through increments. A rocket here. A tunnel there. A balloon drifting across a fence. A breach under rubble. Each act tests tolerance. Each restrained reply informs the next move.

Israel now stands at a delicate point. It seeks to uphold the ceasefire and avoid immediate escalation, giving the US time to pursue its carrot and stick approach with the Palestinians in Gaza. It also carries the memory of what accumulated restraint produced in October 2023. So the Yellow Line still stands, and the ceasefire technically holds.

But eventually, the equation must and will be altered permanently by real, decisive, visible victory. We in the West must also learn from that Israeli resolve and determination for victory. Anything else recreates the conditions that lead to violent collapse.

Behind the Humanitarian Halo: MSF, Oxfam, and World Vision Publicly Exposed

The lack of neutrality is not limited to Oxfam but rather part of a larger problem at global institutions. Former senior editor at Human Rights Watch (HRW), Danielle Haas, likewise recently noted that the organization “rewarded divisive, aggressive tactics — especially when aimed at Israel.” When Haas brought up the “lack of balance” in the organization, the concerns were dismissed. In one instance, while editing a report involving Mohammed El-Halabi, Haas requested that the document include the specific charges against him to provide necessary context. Her request was rejected on the basis that the charges were “wild.”

The existence of deeply entrenched antisemitism and politicized framing within such organizations raises serious questions concerning their moral authority and global credibility. Because when it comes to Israel, they are clearly not interested in maintaining the neutrality they claim.

The cases of MSF, World Vision, and Oxfam reveal how humanitarian organizations can be co-opted to shield terrorist actors while undermining the credibility of their own missions. These organizations have helped preserve a narrative that shields Hamas from accountability while undermining the credibility of the very humanitarian principles they claim to uphold.

This is just the beginning. More and more information is likely to be exposed in the coming months, including vindication of the Israeli narrative that has been so often either ignored or attacked by a media that prefers to take Hamas claims as fact.

But will the media even cover the stories, let alone retract when the evidence is incontrovertible?

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02/15 Links: Human rights activists and organizations legitimize antisemitism; Bondi Beach terrorist, charged with 15 counts of murder; India agrees arms deals with Israel worth $8.6b

From Ian:

Jason D. Greenblatt (Arab News-Saudi Arabia): Negotiation, Trump Style

No one knows what is in President Donald Trump's head, and that is by design. Revealing his strategy would forfeit leverage, eliminate surprise, and weaken negotiations before they even begin. Strategic ambiguity is not confusion. It is strength.

Many predicted he would strike Iran quickly. I did not. Weeks ago, I wrote that he would first test whether diplomacy could work - real diplomacy, aimed at real results. Not another paper promise that looks good in headlines and collapses in practice. The last deal [in 2015] merely kicked the nuclear threat down the road and gave the Iranian regime space to cheat.

Trump wants an agreement that eliminates the nuclear threat - one that is verifiable, enforceable and immediate. One that addresses Iran's growing missile capabilities and regional aggression. Trump understands that the first victims of the Iranian regime are the Iranian people themselves. They live under crushing sanctions imposed because of their leaders' warmongering, repression and extremism. They suffer for ambitions they did not choose. At the same time, the threat to Israel and to America's Arab allies remains real and, if left unchecked, will only grow far more dangerous.

Trump seeks peace and prosperity. That is what drives him. He is, at heart, a dealmaker. Leaders across the region share a clear-eyed understanding of Iran's threat. Trump has rebuilt American strength and is unafraid to use it. He negotiates from power, not apology. Over 23 years, I watched him close deals so-called experts dismissed as fantasy. He does not accept conventional limits.

No one should fault him for exhausting every peaceful option before choosing the hard path. Trying to prevent war does not make him weak or naive or indecisive. It means he is doing his job. If there is a responsible way to avoid war, a president must pursue it. That does not mean Trump is being played. He recognizes deception. He senses bad faith. If negotiations become a charade, he will know. Quickly.

If he ultimately concludes that force is necessary - or that supporting Israel in war is unavoidable - he will do so knowing he explored every alternative.

Bernard-Henri Levy (WSJ)Is Help Still on the Way for Iranian Protesters?

Should there even be a deal with Iran? Is it reasonable to "deal" with men who killed 30,000 of their own compatriots in two days and who threaten, should demonstrations resume, to kill tens of thousands more?

Can one settle for sanctions, pressure, and concessions wrung out and immediately circumvented, when one knows that Russia has long since found ways to flood Tehran and its proxies with the resources they need to continue their enterprise of destruction?

Is any compromise possible with fanatics who proclaim that they prefer the apocalypse to defeat?

I hope the American administration understands this. I hope it has grasped that the era of containment is over, that deterrence doesn't work against a state that has made internal terror, regional destabilization, and the end of the world both a mode of governance and a program.

The time for regime change has come.

Ben-Dror Yemini: Human rights activists and organizations legitimize antisemitism

It is curious to speak at an Al Jazeera conference—the flagship channel of Qatar—about “we, who do not control large amounts of financial capital.” Who exactly is “we”? According to one investigation after another, most recently by the Free Press, Qatar has invested “nearly $100 billion to buy influence in Congress, colleges, research institutes and corporations.” The channel itself is funded almost entirely by Qatar, with an annual budget of about $1 billion. But in Albanese’s formulation, this becomes “we, who do not control large amounts of financial capital.” And no, this is not satire.

Last Thursday, Caroline Yadan, a member of France’s right-wing National Assembly party, submitted a parliamentary question to Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot regarding the continuation of Albanese’s tenure in her senior UN post. Barrot responded immediately, announcing that, at the opening of the next session of the Human Rights Council on February 23, France intends to present a demand for the dismissal of the racist who rose to that senior position. Additional European countries have announced they are joining the request.

Yadan was met with a wave of responses, including from the French newspaper Le Monde, with the peculiar claim that this is not what Albanese said and that it was not a racist statement. Amnesty International issued a statement asserting that “European states must retract their outrageous attacks against Albanese.”

One does not need a comprehension test to understand what Albanese said. She published the full text herself. She did not speak about any other country. Only about Israel. Moreover, the phrase “a common enemy of humanity” is well known from the antisemitic lexicon. Once it was said about Jews. Now it is said about the Jewish state.

Yadan responded with a long list of Albanese’s racist statements, before and after October 7. She previously published an anti-Israel cartoon depicting spider webs spread across the world with banknotes and gold coins, spoke about the “Jewish lobby,” justified the October 7 massacre, cast doubt on allegations of rape by Hamas terrorists and much, much more. UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer has published extensive investigations into Albanese’s conduct, including activities funded by Hamas supporters.

There have already been attempts to remove Albanese. Nevertheless, in April 2025, her mandate was extended by three years. The New York Times printed a sympathetic profile of her. And the world’s largest human rights organization, Human Rights Watch, condemned the United States for imposing sanctions on her.

The tragedy is that racism reigns not only in the automatic majority of dark regimes within UN bodies. It is a cancer spreading through a camp that imagines itself enlightened. And the gap between human rights and human rights organizations and activists has never been greater.

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02/14 Links: MSF admits presence of gunmen in Gaza hospitals; Fetterman eviscerates anti-Israel ‘rot’ in Dem party; Francesca Albanese represents UN inability to acknowledge truth and morality

From Ian:

When antisemitism becomes normal, what comes next?

Antisemitism has risen to such high levels around the world that William Daroff says he does not know if there will ever be a moment when Jews can declare victory. The best they can hope for, he told the ILTV Podcast, is to reach a point where Jews can say “that people feel a little safer.”

Daroff, the CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, is in Israel for the group’s annual event, which kicks off on February 15. He visited the ILTV studio to discuss the state of world Jewry in the aftermath of October 7, pointing to the “metastasizing of antisemitism and Jew hatred to a point where it is normalized in a way that also wouldn’t have been fathomable 10 years ago.”

He described the situation as “incredibly troubling” and warned that the “biggest danger” for Jews is when any level of antisemitism becomes acceptable, especially when there is a belief that as long as it stays at a low simmer, it can be managed.

“I think what we’ve learned since October 7 is that there is no baseline that’s acceptable,” Daroff told ILTV.

According to Daroff, antisemitism has increasingly shifted to focus on Israel. While openly attacking Jews is no longer socially acceptable in many spaces, attacking Israelis often is. He said antisemites now hide behind what they call “legitimate criticism” of Israel, but stressed that it is not legitimate.

Since October 7, Daroff said many progressive Jews in the United States have become politically homeless, feeling alienated both from the Democratic Party and from more conservative figures like President Donald Trump.

“I think there are moderates in both parties who are looking to try to engage and bring a bigger audience towards them,” Daroff said. “I think in the mainstream in both parties there are leadership roles that [Jews] can take and are taking. I think that it is incumbent upon all of us, but particularly those who are involved in both parties, to say that this antisemitic, anti-Israel filth on the far left of the Democratic Party and the far right of the Republican Party are totally unacceptable.”

At the same time, Daroff noted reports suggesting that as many as one-third of Jewish voters in New York supported Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who is openly anti-Israel and, some argue, antisemitic. Daroff said he believes the figure is somewhat lower, but said the result highlights a deeper political failure.

“You cannot beat someone with no one,” he said.

Francesca Albanese represents UN inability to acknowledge truth and morality

Her over-the-top antisemitic views seem to be an offshoot of her desire to please her Jew-hating supporters and benefactors – to the point where she even compared Israel to Nazi Germany.

Her personal view that the October 7 massacre was merely a “response to oppression” renders her incapable of being a fair arbiter of what is considered just, honorable, and righteous in the eyes of rational and reasonable human beings.

Her sick contention that “Palestinians have a right to resist oppression” makes her incapable of all objectivity, given that cold-blooded murder of innocent civilians can in no way be justified as a legitimate form of resistance – especially since any oppression suffered by them has come from their own corrupt and evil leaders.

But there have been grave consequences for her controversial positions – one of which was the revocation of her visa, barring her from the US, meaning she cannot even set foot in the UN – which she ironically represents. Additionally, her US assets have been frozen, and she was blacklisted as if she “were a terrorist or drug trafficker.”

“Consequently, all of her transactions involve cash. She cannot receive transfers or donations, collect her salary, or even buy a plane ticket online. She cannot open a bank account anywhere in the world or have a credit card, because she has been placed on the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) list of the US Treasury Department, which targets money laundering and terrorism.”

Although Albanese requested intervention by her home country, given that its leader, Giorgia Melonia – who is a close Trump ally – no assistance has been granted.

Albanese has made herself a pariah, and is responsible for her own undoing. But for someone who longs for the privileges of which she has been stripped, she cannot think that characterizing Palestine, as a moral compass, will be helpful to her cause.

In the end, this is the sad story of a woman who lacks the capacity to judge with any rational or reasoned acumen. Devoid of discernment, or just jaded as a result of unbridled ambition, Albanese is, indeed, paying the price for the folly of provocateur status.

Apparently, resigned to being an outcast, she is the willing abrasive mouthpiece for terror organizations and governments who would like to see a swift end to the Jewish homeland. In that respect, Albanese is a proxy flame thrower, doing the dirty work that others have been too cowardly to take on.

When you think about it, she is nothing more than a useful tool, much in the style of Hezbollah and the Houthis who do the bidding for Iran.

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02/13 Links Pt2: Think of it as 251 Nancys; The Fall of Europe; Three men jailed in UK over Islamic State-inspired plot to kill hundreds of Jews; James Van Der Beek, dead at 48, had longstanding ties to Israel

From Ian:

Think of it as 251 Nancys

Continuous reporting has filled television airways and made headlines in the United States about the kidnapping in Tucson, Ariz., of Nancy Guthrie, the mother of NBC News anchor Savannah Guthrie. Practically every news outlet has devoted time to each twist and turn of this story, which began on Feb. 1. It is a full-throated whodunit garnering viewers’ attention, and seemingly all have been caught up these past two weeks in worry and concern for this 84-year-old woman.

A little more than two years ago, on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel was invaded by thousands of Palestinian terrorists from the Gaza Strip, led by Hamas. They invaded the southern border and proceeded to murder 1,200 people, injure some 2,000 others, and kidnap 251 men, women and children, dragging them into Gaza. The vicious perpetrators provided ample evidence of their ghoulish actions with their own GoPro cameras.

Think of it as 251 Nancys.

Israel went to war for the next two years—not just with Hamas in Gaza, but with Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and Iran itself. On Oct. 13, 2025, the last of the living hostages returned to Israel. On Jan. 26, the last hostage body of Ron Gvili, 24, was brought home.

In Hostages Square in Tel Aviv and throughout the Jewish Diaspora, the fate of the kidnapped became a gut-wrenching campaign. They were Israel’s 251 Nancys. Jews worldwide wore yellow ribbons and dog tags to show their solidarity. When visitors arrived at Ben-Gurion International Airport, photos of the captives stared back, their beautiful faces pleading for help. These same images were displayed in every corner across the country. The countdown to their return was tracked down to the second.

Those rescued alive were celebrated as heroes, and for families whose relatives were buried, thousands attended funerals to grieve along with them.

These same images of the hostages were desecrated on streets across the globe by the same keffiyeh-wearing mobs that rioted in support of the terrorists and against Israelis and Jews everywhere. At least, in the case of Nancy Guthrie, nobody is screaming for her people’s destruction and accusing her family of genocide.

Yes, some of the hostages were Nancy Guthrie’s age. And there were many more young people. There were babies even—the redheaded Ariel and Kfir Bibas babies, who at 10 months and 4 years were just beginning their lives. The victims were light-skinned and dark-skinned. Some weren’t even Jewish, but Arab, Bedouin, Druze. Some weren’t Israeli, but guests and workers from abroad. Some had helped Palestinians in distress for years, some employed Gazans in their homes and fields, and some had been at a music festival, dancing and having a good time.

The Fall of Europe

From Paris to Brussels to Amsterdam and elsewhere it is happening across all the West, but still: What explains this bizarre mental mass resignation, so to speak, that affects a country known since the blitz for its tough spirit of resistance? On Oct. 2, when a 35-year-old Syrian-born British citizen, called Jihad al-Shamie attacked the worshippers of the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation in Manchester killing two and injuring three before being shot by police, the whole country seemed briefly shocked, but nothing ensued, either. Meanwhile, in December 2024, one of the most influential medical journals worldwide, The BMJ, published an essay signed by 25 academics arguing that banning female genital mutilation—an illegal practice in the U.K. since 1985—is harmful and stigmatizing toward migrant communities.

Meanwhile, the city of London and the Labour Party, have already both adopted a definition of Islamophobia that is now being discussed in an all-party parliamentary group, and according to which, if passed, even mentioning the grooming gangs will be considered offensive and therefore fall under the law restricting free speech. This law, called the “noncrime hate incidents law,” specifies that police can knock at your door for any statement you may have made, deemed “offensive” or threatening by a self-designated “victim.” It is under this law that the comedian Graham Linehan was arrested last September at Heathrow for inciting violence after a social media post about trans. Even worse, last October, the Telegraph posted a video showing two policemen after they had arrested a man whose Magen David had “antagonized” pro-Palestinian protesters. And in November, six police officers rang at the home of Rosalind Levine, 47, to ask her about emails she had sent her daughter’s school in which she offered to help arrange for Holocaust survivors to address pupils—an interaction with the school presented as “harassment.”

Great Britain is also the only Western country to tolerate no less than 85 active Sharia courts on its soil, an investigation by The Times found last summer. Also named councils, these courts rule over civil matters such as marriages (100,000 marriages are believed to have been performed by them, a quarter of which involve polygamy) and attract an increasing number of Muslims from across Europe and North America. Birmingham alone, whose population is roughly 30% Muslim (four-and-a-half times the national average), counts three of them.

Whatever the endemic reasons may be for that state of things, like elsewhere, Oct. 7 has worsened it. And here again, Birmingham serves as an accurate template for the rest of the country: In July 2024, in the city where the median gross annual pay is just £33,952 (against a national average of £37,617), where the majority of jobs are in social care, wholesale and retail trade, and where employment stands at just 66%, compared to the English average of 76%, voters have sent to Parliament two of the five MPs that English media call the “independent Gaza MPs” because Gaza was their sole electoral platform and program. One of those MPs is Ayoub Khan, the man who launched the first petition in Birmingham against the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans coming to town.

“Probably for the first time in England, certainly for generations, you have people elected with a specific religious slant,” Paul Stott, head of security and extremism at the London-based think tank Policy Exchange told me. “Previously, Muslims had voted heavily for the Labour Party, for a range of other parties as well, but predominantly Labour. Here the Muslim candidates have been able to run against Labour and indeed win quite comfortably, if you look at some of the results. It’s a challenge to our liberal democracy.”

To my knowledge, there are no specific studies so far on the role played in those elections by the Sharia courts. But Emma Schubart, who is data and insights manager at the Adam Smith Institute, confirmed to me that the win for these five Islamic MPs “is not just a demographic matter. What happens is that they are just mobilizing the Muslim population very, very well. They have a community where women can’t go to the polls unaccompanied, for instance, and they make use of that. They also have a lot of multifamily homes and they send in a package of mail-in ballots and lots of votes from just one address. The decisive factor is concentrated mobilization, not sheer population head count. The risk that it happens on a larger scale next May in cities like London, Bradford or Birmingham is absolutely real.”

And this is where the Villa Park game story takes its full, national significance. Earlier this month The Telegraph revealed that, among the eight mosques that WMP officials said they spoke to in order to assess the risks represented by the Israeli fans, included were the Al-Habib mosque, the Jami mosque, and above all, the Green Lane mosque, which also houses a Sharia court. In the first mosque, days after Oct. 7 a preacher delivered a sermon titled “Knowing the Facts” in which he claimed Jews were planning to “become sole rulers of the world” and recommended the reading of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion; in the second mosque, in November 2023 another preacher delivered a prayer in Arabic to call for the death of the Jews; and in the Green Lane mosque, fittingly enough, a third preacher spoke about the World Cup, arguing that Jews “keep the people busy with sports and games” and “that’s why all those people make all that money.” Any of those could have passed along the Game Over Israel document. (On Jan. 6, senior police officers from the WMP facing the Home Affairs Committee admitted that their decision to ban the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans was partly based on intelligence that Muslim vigilante groups were arming and planning to attack the Israelis; instead of acting upon the potential attackers, they choose to focus on alleged threats posed by the potential victims.)

In July 2024, newly elected Birmingham MP Iqbal Mohamed said during his victory speech: “We must take over the whole of Birmingham. The whole of West Midlands. The whole of the U.K. We will not be taken for granted, and we will win.”

Since then, he and his four colleagues have helped resurrect former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and, together, they have created a new formation called Your Party, plagued ever since by personal rivalries and hopeless ideological chasms. Does it mean that Iqbal Mohamed was wrong? A grim future will soon tell.

It doesn’t matter whether Americans call themselves ‘Zionists’

Politics over faith
It is a basic truth of 21st-century American life that politics now plays the role that religion used to have in their lives. So, it is unsurprising that a not insignificant percentage of the majority of Jews who are neither religious nor politically conservative would be greatly influenced by the way the base of the Democratic Party has embraced the toxic doctrines of critical race theory, intersectionality and settler-colonialism. They demonize Israel and falsely label Jews as “white oppressors.”

Indeed, Israel’s critics have always pointed to the fact that the vast majority of Jews have been political liberals who generally opposed sectarian causes in favor of universalist ones and also voted for Democrats, who were often critical of the Israeli government. At the same time, the majority of Israelis are Jews of color who came from North Africa and other parts of the Middle East, not exactly the epitome of white Europeans.

What that narrative of the study left out is the fact that poll after poll proves that huge majorities of Jews still consider Israel to be very important to them. They may not have thought well of Israel’s leaders, and neither knew nor understood much about why the majority of the Jewish state’s voters had long since discarded any backing for a “two-state solution” that the U.S. foreign-policy establishment long asserted was the only answer to the conflict. But most of these Jews still support Israel’s struggle for survival against hostile Arab and Muslim forces determined to destroy the one Jewish state on the planet.

A boost in affiliation
The good news about the JFNA survey is that it validates the widespread perception that the shock of the atrocities committed by Palestinian Arabs on Oct. 7, and the way they incited a wave of antisemitism around the globe, has influenced many Jews to come back to Jewish life. The results show that nearly half of all Jews, including many who don’t label themselves Zionists, are part of a parallel swell of greater engagement in Jewish life since the atrocities of Oct. 7. That includes an increase in affiliation, synagogue and event attendance, and a greater connection with and an interest in Israel.

That shouldn’t lessen worries about assimilation. Nor should the pro-Israel community be complacent about the way that a biased media—and a combination of woke left-wing and alt-right antisemitism—has worked to erode support for the Jewish state. This fact alone has served to increase the number of those who identify with or are willing to believe the lies spread by its genocidal foes, even among those who call themselves Jews.

But the idea that anti-Zionists, whose views seek to strip Jews of rights that no one would think of denying to any other people and thus are indistinguishable from antisemitism, now represent the majority of American Jews is absolutely not true. The organized Jewish world may be largely obsolete, and led by organizations and leaders who have failed to respond adequately to the challenges of the moment. And the labels that were once meaningful in determining the views of most people are just as out of date. But the trauma of Oct. 7, and subsequent increase in global hatred and even violence, has not convinced most Jews to abandon the Jewish state. American Jewry may be in demographic decline, yet the overwhelming majority of those who choose to remain part of the Jewish people still stand with Israel.

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