From Ian:
How the Revolutionary Left Embraced Radical Islam
In 2006, in a public discussion of Israel’s assault on Lebanon, the feminist scholar Judith Butler characterized Hamas and Hezbollah as “part of the global left.” Butler’s remarks provoked a scandal at the time, but after the October 7 attacks, it became common to hear Western leftist protesters chanting slogans like “long live Hamas!” How did Middle Eastern terrorist groups rooted in radical Islamic ideology come to occupy such a central place in otherwise secular left-wing politics? In The Revolutionists: The Story of the Extremists Who Hijacked the 1970s, journalist Jason Burke takes up this question, exploring the historical roots of the Palestinian national movement and situating its rise within the transition from 1970s left-wing radicalism to the emergence of radical Islamism, which reshaped global politics in the 1980s.
Burke’s account brings to life the central figures of this transnational revolutionary movement: Leila Khaled of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Fusako Shigenobu of the Japanese Red Army, Ulrike Meinhof from the German Red Army Faction, and “Carlos the Jackal,” the nom de guerre of the sociopathic Venezuelan-born gun for hire Ilich Ramírez Sánchez. These leftist militants moved fluidly across borders, traveling from sympathetic regimes in the Middle East to hubs of revolutionary fervor, most notably the PLO’s refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan. They hijacked airplanes and marched with Kalashnikovs in the desert. Inspired by the revolutionary tracts of Frantz Fanon, Régis Debray, Che Guevara, and Mao Zedong, they forged a transnational network of anti-colonial insurgency and solidarity.
These left-wing radicals took Mao’s dictum that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun” to heart and concluded that electoral politics and peaceful protest were insufficient for taking on the global forces of capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism. But this analysis also created its own problems. The enemy these militants fought was not a single politician, national government, or corporation, but a vast, complex global political and economic system, so it was always unclear how a small number of assassinations and kidnappings could defeat it.
This is part of why Israel became their primary target. The radicals of the era viewed the Jewish state as the most egregious manifestation of capitalist decadence and settler colonialism, but also as small and weak enough to be brought down through violent direct action. By doing so, they believed they could hasten the inevitable collapse of a rotten Euro-American imperial system.
The ideological current underpinning this radical global project was internationalism. Building on Marx’s dictum that class conflict had no national boundaries, these radicals traveled the world for training, combat, and refuge. From the street cafes of Paris to the Arab communist enclave of Aden, the revolutionaries searched for hideout spots and friendly governments in far-flung parts of the world. For example, “Carlos the Jackal,” settled in the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen after fleeing authorities in Europe.
Burke offers a compellingly detailed picture of these radicals’ delusions of grandeur and the many comical contradictions that hampered their efforts. For example, a group of British Trotskyists drank alcohol in a PLO training camp and got into a fist fight with British Maoists as well as with the Palestinian guards who tried to confiscate their bottles. The German Red Army Faction mistakenly incorporated a submachine gun used by West German security forces into their logo, instead of the Kalashnikov, the weapon most associated with anti-colonial resistance. German radicals were so repulsed by the dirtiness of a PFLP office in Yemen that they went on a blitzkrieg-style cleaning spree. These militants romanticized the life of the revolutionary and were convinced they were forging a more just world, but they were constantly undermined by their own incompetence, poor planning, bad tempers, and cultural cluelessness.
Seth Mandel:
The Emotional and Intellectual Fragility of Anti-Israel Activists
The few stills from the video presentation that have leaked focus on Islamophobia and something called “anti-Palestinian racism.” One example of anti-Palestinian racism, provided on a slide about “APR in Education,” is: “Being called Antisemitic if they are Pro-Palestinian or speak up about APR.”
This is a neat trick, and it is in line with the wider speech-chilling campaign conducted by pro-Hamas propagandists: It is “racist” to call someone an anti-Semite.
Because this idea is ubiquitous among Gaza Westerners, it tells us a few things about members of this movement.
First, they exhibit a level of emotional and intellectual fragility that is, frankly, pathetic. This training reportedly showed a map of Israel replaced by the Palestinian flag, and yet “teaching students that ‘Israel is a free democratic state’ would render teachers ‘racist’ in the eyes of the board,” Hummel explains. That the “pro-Palestinian” narrative relies on such Stalinism is not unrelated to the fact that much of modern anti-Zionist propaganda was produced by the Soviet Union in the first place. Yet even by the standards of anti-freedom Hamasniks, this scale of reality-aversion in adults is frightening.
Second, the process by which this campaign is being carried out is anti-democratic in the extreme. That means the system will be anti-democratic about everything it does. Israel isn’t the exception but the rule. The ultimate target, then, is the Western system of liberty and self-government, with which strident anti-Zionism is entirely incompatible.
Third, the terminology is an assault on language. “Anti-Palestinian racism” is a ridiculous, self-contradictory phrase that ought to be laughed out of the room. If it were racism, they could just call it racism. Since it isn’t, its proponents have come up with a term that means “pretend ‘Palestinian’ is something it’s not.”
And fourth, absolutely none of the movement’s complaints about “policing anti-Israel rhetoric” are to be taken seriously. These lunatics are arguing that openly calling for genocide against the Jews is not only within the bounds of neutral argumentation but that it is fundamental to the identity of what might be called Palestinianism. But saying “Israel is a democratic state” is so “racist” that educators have to be trained not to say it around children.
As this type of “equity” training colonizes Western academia at every level of schooling, it’s easy to see why these activists want it kept secret. Any self-respecting person would be ashamed to be a part of it.
The Real Reason the “Pro-Pals” Did not speak out on behalf of Iranians
The author seems to think this is perfectly understandable under the circumstances of the Palestinians’ lives imposed on them, not by their own leaders who drag them into incessant conflict, but because of Israel’s terrible treatment of Palestinians [2](also in the West Bank- I guess the Gazans were channeling their brothers and sisters.) In point of fact, Israel had not stepped foot in Gaza since 2005. Only when Hamas was elected to lead and resumed firing rockets at Israeli towns on a near daily basis, did Israel together with Egypt impose a blockade to prevent the Gazans from bringing in more tools of destruction (it didn’t work).
Mr. QJ laments the number of deaths of Palestinians at the hands of Israelis but you know what he never mentions even once? Hamas and a good part of the Palestinian population at large, is dedicated to the destruction of Israel and killing Jews as they have threatened to do repeatedly. And we had a front row seat to how that threat has been and, if given the opportunity, will continue to be carried out, on October 7, 2023. Israel set out to destroy Hamas so that the October 7 atrocities can never be repeated — and all of its actions in Gaza were proportionate to war’s purpose. No one forced Hamas to store munitions in schools and use hospitals as a base for military operations or to shoot from people’s homes making civilian casualties unavoidable.
The author’s point is essentially this: We don’t need to stand up for Iranians because there is substantial agreement in the country that what Iran is doing is wrong. We need only protest Israel’s actions because Israel has the support of its American ally.
So notwithstanding the real genocide in Sudan, no need to support the Sudanese because we all agree that they are oppressed and the United States is not supporting Sudan,
Tell that to the people who spoke out on behalf of the Ukrainians and against the South African apartheid.
What message does silence send to the Iranian people who are risking their lives for freedom? Some suffering is more worthy than others?
In other words, instead of answering the question—why some activists ignore atrocities in Iran—the author takes the opportunity to add to the slanderous vitriol against Israel who are portrayed as uniquely evil and invents a narrative that absolves him of any moral responsibility, Iran as irrelevant, and critical thinking is nowhere in sight.
This was not an article to be taken seriously on its merits and I would not usually pay attention to this kind of drivel but the author has 18,000 followers and lots of support. Fair minded people cannot allow antisemitic voices to continue slandering the State of Israel without raising our hands.
From Ian:
Melanie Phillips:
The crumbling wall of Hamas propaganda
That “genocide” lie has now been revealed as a travesty by Hamas itself. In its latest revision of the number of deaths in Gaza during the war, it says that 68,800 died. As before, it provides no acknowledgement of the number of these casualties who were terrorist combatants, nor the number who were killed by misfired rockets from Gaza or execution by Hamas (of which there have been many), nor indeed the number of natural deaths.
Most of the dead were men aged 18 to 59. According to researcher Gabriel Epstein, who broke the numbers down for Haaretz, the Hamas statistics show a much higher share of adult men and older teenage boys relative to their share of the population and a much lower share of women and children.
This totally refutes the mantra that those killed by Israel were “overwhelmingly” women and children. And, of course, it exposes the claim of genocide as utterly ludicrous.
Among those who have defamed Israel with these lies for the past 28 months, there is no admission of the terrible wrong they have done, even as their narrative collapses around them. Far from acknowledging that an unknown number of its staff have terrorist links, MSF is refusing to share a list of its Palestinian and international staff with Israeli authorities as part of the registration process to work in Gaza and the “West Bank.”
What’s more, its admission about terrorists at Nasser Hospital was buried in a rarely referenced FAQ page on the MSF website, where it was spotted by the eagle-eyed analyst Salo Aizenberg.
There appears to be nothing about this MSF report, the PIJ “dual identity” revelations or the revised Hamas statistical breakdown on the websites of Israel’s chief media demonizers, the BBC and The New York Times.
As for Oxfam, the BBC website reports the industrial tribunal case Begum has brought against the charity by detailing claims against her of bullying and other leadership issues, while failing to mention her explosive charge that Oxfam has a “toxic antisemitic culture.”
Nor is this the first time that MSF’s halo has been tarnished from within. In December 2023, Alain Destexhe, MSF’s former head, published a 47-page report based on tweets and posts by MSF staff on X and on Facebook.
This revealed that a significant proportion of MSF staff in Gaza supported Hamas, including its onslaught on Oct. 7. They never denounced on X the crimes committed by Hamas on that day, the taking of hostages, or the use of hospitals as barracks or human shields.
While MSF spared Hamas, said the report, the NGO accused Israel of “all the crimes,” using terms such as “massacres,” “annihilation,” and “accepted and organized sacrifice.”
“Is it possible,” it asked, “that MSF and its employees knew nothing and saw nothing of the violations of humanitarian law in the hospital by Hamas?”
It’s a good question, which could usefully be repeated about others. Is it possible that the Western media and the rest of the liberal establishment that demonize and defame Israel know nothing and see nothing of the violations of truth and evidence by Hamas?
The answer, incredible as it seems, is yes—and no. Those who see it shut their eyes to it. Others don’t allow themselves to see it at all.
Nothing, including whistleblowing or revised information from within, can be allowed to challenge the Western liberal narrative of heartless Israeli colonizers and wretched displaced Palestinians. Which is why the entire media, humanitarian and human-rights complex, which has poisoned the mind of the West with this exterminatory propaganda, is itself an accomplice to an all-too-real genocidal program.
Former hostage Matan Angrest says he was electrocuted in captivity
Former hostage Matan Angrest says he was tortured and electrocuted during his two-plus years in Hamas captivity.
“For eight hours in a row, I sat and had to tell them things, during which I knew that it wasn’t just about my own well-being but the security of the country at stake. There are things that are in the realm of ‘die and don’t tell,'” Angrest tells Channel 12’s Uvda investigative program, indicating that he was exposed to highly classified intelligence during his service in an elite tank unit.
Angrest recalls opening his eyes for the first time after he was kidnapped from his tank, which was hit by an RPG on the Gaza border.
He says he found himself in a home in Gaza with over half a dozen Palestinians sitting in front of him.
They began asking him questions about where he served and where he was kidnapped from, but the questions were in Arabic and he didn’t understand. His captors then got angry and started beating him while his hands and feet were tied.
He says he couldn’t move his arm because it was burned so badly.
“Someone came to me with two cables and put them on my wound and just turned (a machine) on. I could feel myself being electrocuted. I screamed in a pain that is impossible to describe,” Angrest says.
The Disastrous Legacy of Mahmoud Abbas
Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, who became head of the Palestine Liberation Organization after Yasser Arafat's death, is a Holocaust-denying, terror-supporting, corrupt dictator who was bad for Israel, bad for the Palestinians, and bad for peace, which he undermined more than promoted. His policies promoted, incited, and rewarded terrorism and the systematic indoctrination of generations of Palestinians to hate Israel and Israelis.
He insisted on treating genocidal terrorist organizations such as Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) as legitimate Palestinian factions and continued to reject peace efforts. Abbas bears direct responsibility for the deaths of thousands of Palestinians and Israelis. If the PA is to continue playing any future role, any future Palestinian leader must be the absolute antithesis of Abbas.
While consistently feigning moderation and pragmatism, Abbas consistently rejected peace. In 2008, he rejected an offer by then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to create a Palestinian state. Instead, Abbas chose to pursue virtual statehood, repeatedly requesting that the UN recognize the non-existent "State of Palestine."
Abbas accumulated a substantial personal fortune estimated to be over $100 million. His sons, Tarek and Yasser, run the large Falcon business consortium that controls much of Palestinian commerce. The consortium includes tobacco, electrical and mechanical engineering, media, construction, and investment interests. They, too, have amassed huge personal fortunes.
From Ian:
Adam Louis-Klein:
Defeating Antizionism
So where does antizionism come from?
The foundational text is arguably Fayez Sayegh’s Zionist Colonialism in Palestine (1965), published while he directed the Soviet-sponsored Palestine Research Center in Beirut. Sayegh coined the term settler colonialism specifically to describe Israel, redefining colonialism not as a system of economic exploitation, as in classical Marxist theory, but as the mere existence of Jews as an immigrant enclave. Drawing selectively on Marxism, Sayegh preserved the charge of anti-colonial struggle while stripping it of its content, redirecting it toward Jewish particularity itself. Jewish peoplehood was reframed as a colonial fabrication — a “racist ideology” rooted in “biblical chauvinism” and the idea of the “chosen people.” In this way, Sayegh succeeded in repurposing anti-Judaic polemic against Jewish “exclusivity” into a critique of “settler colonialism.”
Settler colonialism did not enter the academic mainstream until decades later. In 1999, Australian scholar Patrick Wolfe revived the framework in his book Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology. In 2006, his now-canonical essay “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native,” published in the Journal of Genocide Research, explicitly applied this eliminatory logic to Israel — casting Zionism as a project structurally driven to remove the “native” population. This hostile reconstruction marked a critical nexus point: settler-colonial studies fused with the institutional machinery of genocide discourse. Under the editorial influence of Australian scholar Dirk Moses, now at CUNY, the journal became a platform for recasting “Zionism” through Wolfe’s framework.
The Journal of Genocide Research became the institutional hub of this ideological convergence, incubating a cohort of genocide-libel theorists — Martin Shaw, Omer Bartov, Raz Segal, Amos Goldberg, and others — who would rise to prominence after October 7, often citing or collaborating with UN official Francesca Albanese, whose work represents the full application of this logic within the UN’s institutionalized system of antizionism.
Jewish anti-Zionists today continue to ignore this history and genealogy, contending that the antizionist hate movement that stormed campuses and captured the international media, and that has long poisoned human rights organizations, is somehow the same as the rich Jewish political debate that preceded 1948. Simply telling this story should be enough to disabuse anyone of the conflation between the anti-Zionism of the past and the anti-Jewish ideology that is antizionism today. The genealogies are simply distinct. Pre-1948 Jewish debates over Zionism are not the source material for contemporary antizionism, with its three core libels of colonizer, apartheid, and genocide.
Seth Mandel:
The Logical Endpoint of Progressive Paranoia About Jewish Money
Newsom is happy to yuk it up over paranoid fantasies of Jewish power because it’s the price of admission for Democratic officeholders, in the way it is becoming the price of admission for right-wing podcasters. A wild example just this week: A Democratic candidate for a congressional seat in Illinois said he would return a contribution from Michael Sacks, a Democratic donor in the state, because Sacks has donated to AIPAC.
The candidate, Anthony Driver Jr., said he didn’t know Sacks had donated to AIPAC, and why would he? Driver explained how he and Sacks crossed paths: “Michael Sacks has supported community violence intervention work in Chicago for years. I served nearly four years as President of the Chicago Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability, helping advance real public safety reform.”
So Sacks does good and important work, according to the candidate returning Sacks’s donation. It’s just that in Democratic primaries, that’s not enough to accept a contribution; the contribution’s bloodline must be free of impurities.
This is next-level stuff. The fact that Democratic candidates must now hesitate to accept support from someone who has given to prominent Jewish causes—if you think this is just about one organization, you are a fool—is a massive escalation in the paranoid style in American politics.
How do we know where this is going? Because in other respects, we’re already there. Progressive “anti-Zionist” mobs are already going after synagogues. Jewish-owned restaurants are boycotted, vandalized, and shut down regularly. The Boston Mapping Project created an interactive doxxing engine to identify and target the area’s Jewish nonprofits. Hamasniks have whipped up a national campaign against campus Hillels.
The guilt-by-Jewish-association game is up and running. Jewish people support Jewish groups that support Jewish causes that include the Jewish state.
How far removed from Jews does one have to be to have a shot at winning a Democratic Party primary? We’re starting to find out.
“Nothing Has Changed For Jews Since Bondi”
The CEO of the Australian Jewish Association says Australia gets failing grades for not standing with the nation’s Jewish community and responding to the warnings since the Hamas attacks on Israel in October 2023.
Robert Gregory told Vision Radio: “There was a lot of fear since October 7, since we saw some of the ugly riots outside the Opera House, and there was a fear that something like what happened at Bondi would happen.”
“And then when those fears were confirmed I think everyone’s just been very concerned.”
“Some people are reconsidering if they have a future in this country.”
“There’s been a heavy security presence at Jewish buildings, at schools and synagogues, which is a bit of a stressful way to live.”
“If you just want to go to synagogue to pray, you’re passing layers of security.”
“It’s not the Australia a lot of people remember, so it’s been a tough time.”
Robert Gregory lays a lot of the blame at the feet of the nation’s leaders in Canberra.
“I think the government got quite a shock with the Bondi attack, first of all, with the terrible atrocity that was carried out.”
“Maybe they didn’t really believe the warnings that would happen, but also with the response from the Jewish community and the broader community.”
“The prime minister was booed when he came down to Bondi Beach.”
“So I think they realised that there was real anger especially in the Jewish community, and they did shift their words a bit, so their words have certainly been more supportive.”
“I think there’s been fewer attacks on Israel, which we know flames anti-Semitism here.”
“They did accommodate the visit of Israeli President Isaac Herzog, but when it comes to actual policy, I haven’t seen any real changes.”
“We still see a disproportionate number of visas refused for Israeli conservative visitors.”
“We see the government is still taking anti-Israel positions. They’re just doing it a little more quietly.”
From Ian:
The UN’s ‘Never Again’ is becoming ‘Never Mind’
Institutions do not collapse overnight. They erode. They lose authority step by step, each time they tolerate what they were established to prevent.
Meanwhile, antisemitic incidents are rising worldwide, on university campuses, in major cities, and outside synagogues. Jewish communities are on edge. In that climate, a UN official labeling the Jewish state as “humanity’s enemy” is not an abstract flourish. It reinforces a narrative that treats Jewish self-determination as uniquely illegitimate.
Supporters will say this is passionate advocacy. They will argue that it reflects frustration or moral urgency.
But human rights language carries force because it is meant to be principled and universal. Once it becomes a tool for branding one nation as the embodiment of evil, it stops protecting the vulnerable and starts isolating them.
Germany, France, and Italy have spoken. That is a start. But if condemnation is the end of the story, the message is clear. The guardrails are optional. The standards are flexible. The slogan remains, but the substance fades.
“Never Again” was supposed to mean that no people would be placed outside the circle of protection. If the UN cannot recognize the danger in calling the Jewish state “the common enemy of humanity,” then the promise forged in 1945 is being hollowed out from within.
Silence is not neutrality. At some point, condemnation without action becomes complicity.
The question is straightforward. Will the United Nations enforce its own standards, or will it continue to let them dissolve, one incendiary phrase at a time?
Three months after it shuttered, what was the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation?
The first executive director of the foundation, Jake Wood, resigned days later, saying that he agreed with the criticism from the United Nations and international aid groups that “it is not possible to implement this plan while also strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence.”
“The day GHF was launched, the U.N. went after the founding CEO. He resigned,” Moore told JNS. “It’s just the worst, and I don’t judge him after the attacks I received from the U.N. I lived under 24/7 protection for months this summer.” His house was graffitied, he added.
“I don’t judge him for resigning, but when he did resign, I got a call from the State Department asking if I would do it,” Moore said. “I said, ‘Of course, I’ll do it.’ How can I not do it? And so I stepped into the role.”
The foundation named Moore its executive chairman on June 3.
Moore was frequently criticized during his tenure for lacking the experience of executives of incumbent aid groups like the Red Cross and UNRWA, a charge that he denied.
“I’ve done stuff in 100 countries,” Moore said, citing his work as an advocate for persecuted minorities around the world with a focus on Christians in the Middle East.
“I’ve met with all the heads of state in the region on multiple occasions,” he told JNS. “I know my way around the Middle East.”
GHF too was criticized for not having a track record of delivering humanitarian aid and for not “abiding by humanitarian principles,” criticism that Moore said ignored what the foundation was actually doing.
“The whole system was designed by veterans of the humanitarian community,” he said. “The guy who ran it on the ground was a 30-year veteran of USAID and other agencies. The veterans on the ground spent time in every single war zone for the last 25 years. These are incredibly, incredibly experienced people.”
“It was all designed from the ground up to comply with these standards, but these other organizations were the ones that were not neutral,” he said. “They were the ones that were partial, and they were politicizing everything.”
The scale of the problems at the United Nations and at UNRWA, which Israel has accused of employing members of Hamas, was revealed to Moore when U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres refused to condemn Hamas’s killing of Palestinian GHF aid workers in June.
“Where my naïveté crashed was that day early on, when Hamas killed 12 of our local Gazans,” Moore told JNS. “These were Gazan volunteers that were helping us feed their own people, and Hamas killed 12 of them and piled them out of the Nasser Hospital, controlled by the World Health Organization and Doctors Without Borders, and doctors didn’t even try to help them.”
“I wrote a letter to the secretary-general of the United Nations, and I asked the secretary-general if he would condemn Hamas for killing our 12 Gazan aid workers, and the secretary-general of the United Nations refused to do it,” Moore said.
“That was the moment when I realized all of these organizations say they exist for one purpose, but they’re actually politicians under a different name,” he said. “I realized this is something between a mafia and a system corrupt on a scale that was just incomprehensible, and then they tried to shut us down.”
PA paid half a billion shekels to terrorists in pay-for-slay scheme, sources reveal -exclusive
The Palestinian Authority transferred approximately half a billion shekels to terrorists in 2025 under its “pay-for-slay” mechanism, which provides payments to imprisoned terrorists and to the families of attackers, The Jerusalem Post learned on Wednesday.
The information was disclosed during a cabinet meeting convened on Sunday. Of the total amount, NIS 395 million was paid to terrorists currently in prison, while NIS 92 million was transferred to the families of terrorists killed while carrying out attacks.
Ministers were also informed that terrorists released as part of the most recent hostage deals received a “special grant” from the Palestinian Authority.
Since October 7, international criticism has intensified over the Palestinian Authority’s continued payments to terrorists and their families.
PA continues pay-for-slay scheme despite Israeli, US measures to stop it
The Trump administration reportedly threatened last year to impose sanctions on the Chairman of the Palestinian Authority and other senior PA officials if the payments continued.
In an apparent effort to avert such measures, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) dismissed the Palestinian finance minister who had signed off on the transfers. However, it was revealed during the cabinet meeting that the newly appointed finance minister has continued to authorize payments to terrorists.
“All the Palestinian Authority’s theatrics will not help, Abu Mazen himself has said that the Authority will continue paying terrorists’ families down to the last shekel," Minister Avi Dichter said during the meeting.
“Just as Mordechai exposed Haman as a foe and enemy before Ahasuerus, and the great challenge was convincing Ahasuerus, Netanyahu must convince President Trump that Abu Mazen is a foe and enemy," Minister Orit Strock said.
Senior security officials further told ministers that in recent months, salaries of Palestinian Authority employees, including teachers, doctors, and nurses, have been reduced to ensure that payments to terrorists remain unaffected.
From Ian:
The world no longer feels sorry for Jews. Now what?
An overreliance on Holocaust-centered narratives can unintentionally produce what might be called museum Judaism: a Jewish identity organized primarily around remembrance of destruction rather than experience of vitality. A culture defined chiefly by what was lost risks appearing static, even mournful, to younger generations seeking meaning in living traditions.
If Israel is taught primarily as a response to catastrophe, it can come to feel like a historical artifact rather than a living civilizational project. A Judaism organized around death will struggle to compete with cultures organized around life. This does not diminish the centrality of Holocaust memory; it underscores the need to embed that memory within a broader narrative of continuity and renewal.
The Jewish claim to sovereignty does not begin in 1933 and does not depend exclusively on 1945. It stretches back through millennia of continuous identity, attachment to land, liturgy, language, and collective memory.
Zionism was not invented as a reaction to Hitler; it was accelerated by him. To ground Jewish attachment to Israel primarily in 20th-century catastrophe is to truncate a much longer story of peoplehood and purpose. If Israel is understood only as a shelter from persecution, its moral standing appears contingent on Jewish weakness. Yet Zionism at its core is not a plea for safety; it is an assertion of normalcy, of the right of the Jewish People to exercise self-determination in our ancestral homeland. That right does not expire when Jews are strong.
A generation raised to see itself primarily as history’s victim may struggle to see itself as history’s author. When educational frameworks emphasize fragility without agency, they can produce defensive identities oriented toward seeking approval rather than exercising responsibility. The post-Holocaust sympathy world allowed many Jews to assume that understanding Jewish suffering would naturally produce support for Jewish sovereignty.
That assumption no longer holds.
In much of today’s pop culture, perceived power (not history) often determines perceived legitimacy. An Israel that is strong, armed, and assertive will not automatically inherit the moral credit of Jewish victimhood. If Jewish education does not adjust to this reality, it risks preparing students for a world that no longer exists.
This adjustment does not require abandoning Holocaust education; it requires repositioning it within a larger civilizational narrative. The task is to integrate it with meaning. Israel must be taught not only as refuge but as arena: the place where Jewish civilization unfolds in modern form — Hebrew revived as a living language, ancient holidays reborn in public space, ethical traditions translated into the dilemmas of governance, technological and cultural creativity flourishing in a Jewish context. These are not footnotes to catastrophe but expressions of continuity; they represent the positive content of sovereignty.
In a post-sympathy world, Jewish education must mature from a pedagogy of trauma to a pedagogy of covenant and responsibility.
Jewish students must be prepared to engage in self-defense — verbal, social, even physical — rather than shielded from it. They must understand the historical and ethical foundations of Jewish sovereignty without relying solely on the emotional authority of past suffering. They must see themselves not as passive inheritors of tragedy, but as active participants in an ongoing civilizational story. Jewish students must be taught that Jewish particularism is a source of pride, not an apology to make or a permission slip to request from others.
This requires cultivating and renewing civilizational literacy, cultural fluency, and a sense of shared stake in the future of Jewish life.
The post-Holocaust sympathy world represented a rare alignment between global conscience and Jewish necessity. That alignment cannot be assumed in the present or relied upon in the future. As memory recedes and geopolitical perceptions shift, the foundation of Jewish attachment to Israel must rest less on the tears of others and more on the internal coherence of Jewish history and purpose. Sympathy fades. Sovereignty endures.
The challenge for Jewish education now is to ensure that a new generation understands Israel not because the world once pitied the Jews, but because they recognize themselves as heirs to an unbroken national story whose next chapters they are responsible for writing.
With J Street backing, 26 Democrats introduce legislation to impose wide-ranging conditions on aid to Israel
Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL) and 25 Democratic co-sponsors introduced a bill on Monday that would implement wide-ranging new conditions and restrictions on U.S. aid to Israel.
The Ceasefire Compliance Act would require the administration to assess and report to Congress every 90 days on whether Israel is complying with the October 2025 ceasefire agreement in Gaza, including halting military operations and bombing campaigns.
The legislation does not appear to contain exceptions for the strikes Israel has taken in retaliation for Hamas’ own violations of the ceasefire deal, nor mention its targeting of individual Hamas leaders.
Under the terms of the legislation, if Israel does not meet the conditions included in the law, the U.S. would be banned from selling or transferring any U.S. military systems to Israel for use in Gaza or the West Bank, any further transfers would be subject to a specific agreement by Israel that the weapons would not be used in Gaza or the West Bank and the administration would be required to reach an agreement with Israel that U.S.-origin systems already in Israel’s possession would also be banned from use in Gaza or the West Bank.
Those restrictions would remain in effect until Israel is in compliance with all conditions. The legislation establishes an end-use monitoring group within the administration to monitor whether U.S.-provided systems are in use in Gaza or the West Bank.
The legislation includes language guaranteeing that U.S. defensive assistance to and intelligence sharing with Israel, as well as provision of missile-defense systems to Israel, are exempt from the conditions. The bill would sunset after five years.
Nick Cave:
The Red Hand Files
Q: At the International Film Festival in Berlin, jury president Wim Wenders sparked controversy, stating that art and artists are “the counterweight to politics, we are the opposite of politics.” He said, artists “have to do the work of people, not the work of politicians.” Any thoughts on this?
A: Dear Rainer,
I have known Wim for over forty years, and his response to the question at the Berlinale moved me deeply. It reaffirmed my understanding of him as a passionately principled, thoughtful, and courageous man — a person who cares profoundly about film and the state of the creative world. His words were a caring, gentle, and protective gesture, directed not only at the artistic community but at humanity itself, and despite the predictable pile-on, I suspect that many artists, maybe most, will genuinely appreciate his words.
Of course, I can’t speak for Wim, but perhaps, like me, he laments the state of art as it has unfolded into this present moment. Perhaps, as the president of the Berlinale Jury, he despairs over the fate that has befallen other film and literary events. The furore around the Adelaide Writers’ Week was happening while I was on tour in Australia. In an almost cosmic display of stupidity, that entire event was vaporised in a mushroom cloud of cowardice, performative outrage, self-righteous posturing, cancellations, counter-cancellations, mob trots and general narcissistic silliness. ‘Political art’, taken to its extreme, became ‘no art’. No art at all, as Australia’s longest running literary festival collapsed under a mass walkout.
Perhaps Wim is trying to save the Berlinale from succumbing to the fate of those festivals that have become little more than a narrowing of the cultural imagination, where the concept of an arts festival as a space for free-ranging and diverse ideas, a place of vitality and originality that encourages disagreement and good faith debate, is being sucked down the sinkhole of a single monolithic ideology — one voice, one cause, one dissent.
From Ian:
Seth Mandel:
How Anti-Zionists’ Knowledge Deficit Shapes the Gaza Debate
Buried deep within a Haaretz article about the EU’s anti-Semitism coordinator is an implicit threat of moral blackmail that explains much of the anti-Israel discourse today.
The article is a hit piece on Katharina von Schnurbein, the head of the EU’s office of the European Coordinator for Combating Antisemitism and Fostering Jewish Life. Von Schnurbein is the rare EU official who stands again the otherwise nonstop flood of single-minded Israel condemnation from the union’s officials. Haaretz, and the sources who spoke to the paper for the piece, are putting a bureaucratic target on her back in the hopes that she will be reined in.
Von Schnurbein knows that certain criticism of Israel, even when it ostensibly addresses policy, can bleed into anti-Semitic tropes or collective blame. She is therefore a moderating force, but the EU establishment (and Haaretz, apparently) sees her as a threat. Supra-national bodies like the EU and UN thought they had figured out a clever way to lob blood libels at the Jewish state without taking responsibility for them: They would support a network of NGOs and pressure groups who would claim expertise and let those groups, behind a veneer of objectivity, make the harshest accusations.
Von Schnurbein undermines this system of criticism-by-catspaw. And former EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell used the Haaretz article to make that clear:
“In an interview with Haaretz, Borrell warned over ‘inflationary misuse’ of accusations of antisemitism against Israel’s critics.
“The Catalonian former chief EU diplomat added that labeling the institutions mandated to uphold international law — including the UN, the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice — as ‘antisemitic’ implies that, by opposing crimes against humanity, you oppose Jews. ‘That is playing into the hands of Jew-haters,’ he says.”
And that’s the scam underlying the entire narrative of the Gaza war: Jews cannot defend themselves against spurious accusations of blood-lust because then they’ll be confirming for the world that “Jews” and “crimes against humanity” are synonymous. You see, even in trying to bat away claims of anti-Semitism, these officials cannot help but express anti-Semitic tropes.
This is called blackmail. Jews must either accept the libelous denunciations of those who seek their destruction or they will trigger an escalating campaign of libelous denunciations.
New Palestinian constitution slams door on Mideast peace
The Palestinian Authority’s recent draft of a shiny new constitution is meant to mollify Western nations who demand an end to the P.A.’s obsession with killing Jews and destroying the Jewish state. But anyone who’s ever uttered the words “Middle East peace” will surely be disappointed with the make-over.
Apparently, the Palestinians can’t help themselves: Their new constitution simply recommits them to the same old jihad they’ve waged for 78 years against Israel. Indeed, the Palestinians’ new document issues no call for peacemaking with Israel—in fact, it doesn’t mention Jews or Israel at all.
This constitution is more like a declaration of war, reaffirming four belligerent policies that have blocked “two states for two peoples” for decades:
1) Insistence on the fictional “right of return” to Israel of millions of refugee descendants who have never set foot in Israel.
2) Continuation of the Palestinians’ terrorist incentive program—“pay for slay”—that handsomely rewards murderers of innocent Jews;
3) Declaration of Jerusalem as the Palestinians’ eternal capital, though it has never been the capital of a Palestinian nation, nor even a Muslim or Arab capital; and
4) Uninterrupted support for [armed] “resistance” against [Israeli] “occupation” of the Palestinian “homeland,” which mentions no sharing of territory with Israel or the Jewish people.
While the new constitution does make promises about introducing some civil liberties for Palestinians, these sops to liberality are like decorative icing on a rotten cake, nullified by the constitution’s commitment to Islamic supremacy.
If the Palestinians really want acceptance from Israel, the United States and the rest of the Western world, they will need to reform—throwing out and thoroughly condemning the goals and policies that deny every possibility for peace with their Jewish neighbors. This means affirming reality by renouncing the “right of return,” acknowledging 3,000 years of Jewish history and heritage in the land of Israel, accepting the right of the Jewish people to sovereignty in their indigenous homeland and renouncing terrorism.
Unfortunately, given new Middle East poll results showing that 91% of Palestinians oppose recognition of Israel, any constitution that approves peaceful relations with the Jewish state will face tough Arab opposition.
PLO secretary-general says Hamas ‘not a terror organization’, slams US demands to disarm
Azzam al-Ahmad, the secretary-general of Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestine Liberation Organization, on Monday declared that the PLO opposes the disarmament of Hamas, which he said was “not a terror organization.”
In an interview with Egypt’s Al Shorouk newspaper, al-Ahmad slammed U.S. demands that the terrorist organization that led the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre disarm and cede its power in Gaza.
“They don’t want Hamas to have any role in the Strip,” explained the veteran official in Abbas’s Fatah Party, adding: “We completely reject this, because Hamas is part of the Palestinian national movement.”
Though Hamas has “not yet” joined the PLO, the body has held a “continuous national dialogue with them in order to fulfill the requirements for their entry into the organization,” he said.
The PLO, recognized worldwide as the representative of the Palestinian people, sets overall policy through its Executive Committee, headed by al-Ahmad. It also appoints the leadership of the Palestinian Authority, which administers limited self-rule in parts of Judea and Samaria.
Al-Ahmad stressed Monday that the PLO has “always rejected decisions issued by international institutions or governments to classify [Hamas] as a terror organization, as they are part of the Palestinian national fabric.”
“Everything that is said about disarming Hamas and that it is a terrorist group is rejected by us; Hamas is not a terror organization,” he added.
Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre was a “strategic mistake that inflicted immense damage on Gaza, and we paid a heavy price,” he emphasized.
From Ian:
Jonathan Sacerdoti:
What’s wrong with Zionism, Hugh Laurie?
If Zionism is defined minimally as support for the existence of Israel as a Jewish state, then opposition to Zionism entails opposition to that principle. Israel is home to roughly eight million Jewish citizens. To advocate dismantling the state as a Jewish polity is to propose a fundamental restructuring of sovereignty in a region where minority protection has always ended badly for us Jews.
Judea Pearl, the Israeli-American computer scientist and philosopher and father of the murdered journalist Daniel Pearl, has argued that one should ‘shock the anti-Zionist out of his pompous self-righteousness’. He is right.
His challenge is uncomfortable. If anti-Zionism involves dissolving Jewish self-determination in the only state where it currently exists, what becomes of its population? Are they to entrust their security to political arrangements that have yet to demonstrate durability? Are they to accept permanent exposure as the price of ideological consistency?
Those who identify as anti-Zionist often insist that their position targets a political ideology rather than a people. They frame it as opposition to nationalism, or to specific Israeli policies. Criticism of a government is ordinary political speech. Advocacy for the eradication of a state’s defining national character carries different consequences.
Laurie has not articulated a doctrine. He mourned a colleague and resisted being labelled. Others supplied the ideological frame around his words. But he took the bait and seemed at least to imply his rejection of Zionism by pointedly responding to critics that he had never said he supports it.
When celebrities feel compelled to signal distance from Zionism, even defensively, clarity becomes essential. If the objection concerns government policy, say so. If it concerns the legitimacy of Jewish nationhood in Israel, confront the implications directly and own the full genocidal implications of your beliefs.
Dana Eden’s tragic death remains under investigation. The argument that followed reveals how quickly grief is conscripted into ideological struggle. A tribute became a test of political identity. Before adopting or repudiating a word as freighted as Zionism, one ought to ask what world that choice implies. And whether one is prepared to defend it.
Report: Inside Hamas's Sophisticated Media Empire Waging Psychological Warfare
A recent report by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC), based on Hamas documents seized by the IDF in Gaza, argues that Hamas maintains centralized managerial, financial, and strategic control over a broad media ecosystem, including outlets presented publicly as “independent.”
The report, published on February 22, 2026, draws from documents captured during military operations in Gaza and provides an unprecedented window into how the Palestinian terrorist organization coordinates its information warfare against Israel and the broader international community.
The Hybrid Media Model
At the heart of Hamas’s strategy lies what Israeli analysts term a “hybrid” media ecosystem—a deliberately constructed system designed to create the appearance of press diversity while maintaining absolute editorial control. According to the report, Hamas operates both official outlets like the Al-Resala media institution, the Al-Aqsa television network, and the Palestine newspaper, alongside news agencies Shehab and SAFA that publicly present themselves as independent journalistic organizations.
“This hybrid media system is not accidental,” the report states. “It is designed to allow Hamas to appear to advocate for media pluralism, while in fact it fully controls the media discourse.” This arrangement also provides the organization with diplomatic and operational flexibility, including the ability to circumvent sanctions and deny association with extreme content by attributing it to “independent” outlets.
The information department, led by Ali Al-Amoudi, maintains oversight of the entire ecosystem through regular inspections and coordination meetings designed to ensure all media activity aligns with Hamas’s broader strategic messaging and tactical objectives.
"The new acting head of Hamas’ political bureau in Gaza."
*released as part of the Gilad Shalit "prisoner deal" in 2011 - was among those very close to Sinwar during their imprisonment and after their release, accompanying him frequently to meetings and events.
v
The report adds that unofficial reports in late 2025 claimed al-Amoudi was appointed acting head of Hamas’s political bureau in Gaza and was being discussed as a potential successor to Yahya Sinwar.
It traces his proximity to Sinwar back to their time in Israeli prison: al-Amoudi was arrested in 2004, released in the 2011 Gilad Shalit exchange, and, according to the report, developed a close relationship with Sinwar while incarcerated. The report says al-Amoudi later served as Sinwar’s office manager during Sinwar’s first term leading Hamas’s political bureau in Gaza (2017–2021).
CAIR-Ohio Director Invokes Blood Libel at Ohio Senate Antisemitism Hearing
Khalid Turaani, Executive Director of the Ohio branch of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), appeared before the Ohio Senate Judiciary Committee on February 18, 2026 to testify against Senate Bill 87, which would codify the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism into Ohio state law.
During his testimony, Turaani alleged that Israel operates the world's largest human skin bank and that the skin is harvested from the bodies of dead Palestinians. CAIR’s lobbying arm, CAIR Action, and a coalition of other anti-Israel Ohio-based organizations also testified in opposition to SB 87 at the same hearing.
A Modern Blood Libel Before a State Legislature
The Anti-Defamation League has explicitly catalogued claims of this type — that Israel systematically harvests body parts from Palestinians — as a modern iteration of the medieval blood libel: the centuries-old antisemitic conspiracy theory alleging that Jews murder non-Jews to harvest their bodily matter. The ADL notes that in the current Israeli-Palestinian context, organs and tissue are substituted for blood, and that in some cases activists have gone further, alleging Israel deliberately kills Palestinians in order to harvest their remains. The ADL has found no credible evidentiary basis for these claims.
The specific “skin bank” framing Turaani deployed before Ohio state senators has circulated in anti-Israel activist circles since at least late 2023, traceable to social media accounts and pro-Palestinian advocacy networks. The ADL has directly addressed these claims, finding that they lack documented factual support and function as vehicles for antisemitic conspiracy narratives rather than substantiated reporting.
The context in which Turaani made this claim adds a significant dimension. SB 87, which he was testifying to defeat, would codify the IHRA definition of antisemitism into Ohio law. The IHRA definition, which has been used by the U.S. State Department and endorsed by over 40 countries, explicitly lists as an illustrative example of antisemitism: “Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.”
Turaani’s testimony did not remain confined to the hearing room. Ramy Abdu, the founder and chairman of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor (EuroMed), amplified the clip on X, stating: “Israel is skinning dead bodies of Palestinians.”
Abdu’s promotion of the claim is notable given EuroMed’s documented record and his own background. Abdu, along with EuroMed’s former chairman Dr. Mazen Kahel, were both named in a 2013 list released by the Israeli government identifying Hamas operatives and affiliated institutions in Europe. The watchdog group HonestReporting has described EuroMed as a “Hamas front org.”
EuroMed’s track record of unverified atrocity claims extends well beyond the Turaani clip. The organization has previously accused the Israeli army of organ theft from Palestinians and of “systematically” using police dogs to “brutally attack, rape Palestinian civilians” — claims that HonestReporting has characterized as part of a pattern of fake news, conspiracy theories, and blood libels the group has championed since the October 7, 2023 attacks.
Thursday, February 26, 2026
