05/01 Links Pt2: Israel’s first lady: British Jews have always supported Israel. Now, they need us; How Wokeness Came for the Jews; Mahmoud Khalil wants your sympathy

From Ian:

Israel’s first lady: British Jews have always supported Israel. Now, they need us

Israel has fought many battles to survive over the decades, with Jewish communities across the world raising billions of pounds for critical services and providing tens of thousands of volunteers in times of crisis.

Thousands of people, from London to Sydney and New York, went over to help after the Oct 7 massacre by Hamas, many of them caring for traumatised survivors, while funds raised by Jews abroad helped rebuild the Israeli communities most affected by the attacks.

But, as an extraordinary wave of anti-Semitism has hit the Jewish diaspora, there has been a subtle change in who is looking after whom. Which is why Israel’s first lady Michal Herzog, wife of its president Isaac Herzog, happened to be paying a visit to Britain this week, when two Jewish men were stabbed in a terror attack in Golders Green.

Herzog describes Wednesday’s attack as “very disturbing”. But, tragically, it wasn’t a surprise. In fact, it was a desire to support Britain’s Jewish population in the face of shocking levels of anti-Semitism that compelled her to arrange her visit in the first place, with the intended focal point being Manchester’s Heaton Park Synagogue, where an anti-Semitic attack resulted in the death of two men seven months ago.

“The diaspora communities were always so wonderful to us,” she says. “They came to volunteer and help, not to mention the philanthropy. But it is a two-way street and that has become more apparent since October 7. We help each other in every possible way.”

In February, the Herzogs travelled to Australia to meet the families of the victims of last December’s Bondi Beach massacre. They were warmly welcomed by the Australian Jewish community and the Australian government, but the couple also faced ugly protests by Palestinian supporters, who hounded them, even when they were talking to survivors of the attack.

For the first lady, an instinctive feminist, one of the most disturbing aspects of the Western anti-Israel hatred has been the denial of horrific sexual assaults carried out by Hamas terrorists on Oct 7.

“One UN rapporteur, Pramila Patten, did come and do a report about the sexual violence and she was attacked for it,” says Herzog. “For months afterwards, whatever war she was talking about, people in the crowd would scream at her about Israel. The fact that women won’t defend just one group of women – Israelis – can only be anti-Semitism.”

Witnessing such behaviour convinced her and her husband to do more to engage with Jewish communities around the world. “Seeing the demonstrations, some of them fierce, some violent, just made us realise how important that mission is,” she says. “I think people realise that whatever begins with the Jews never ends with them.”

Herzog, 63, a former top lawyer and the daughter of a celebrated military hero, was born on a kibbutz in Israel, but spent part of her childhood in Brazil and Argentina, where her father was a military attaché. It means she has an idea of life as a diaspora Jew and the anti-Semitism that can accompany it – something many of her fellow Israelis are only just beginning to grasp.

Jake Wallis Simons: Jews have Israel. It’s the future of Britain that I fear for

Jews are also deeply patriotic. My Jewish grandfather, who was hugely proud of serving for the RAF in the War, was typical. It has been some years since I attended a Sabbath service, which invariably takes place against the hum of gossip (and the occasional SSSSH!), but once you have passed through security and sat through the Torah reading, there is always a prayer for the Royal family, the only part that is recited in English.

These are the people who have been betrayed by Britain. The awful truth is that successive governments have preferred to placate the country’s most bigoted minorities rather than protect its most patriotic ones. Can nobody draw a line between the jihadis of Hamas and those who blew up the Manchester Arena and the Tube, or who stabbed people on London Bridge? Does nobody draw the obvious conclusion when the statue of Winston Churchill is defaced by Gaza thugs, or when they attack RAF Brize Norton? Did the Prime Minister, who expended far more energy criticising Israel during the war than condemning Hamas, not understand that he was emboldening the enemy?

Truly, Britain has been fanning the flames with one hand and funding more fire extinguishers with the other. In addition to Israeli-style security measures, we need a counter-propaganda campaign to overcome incitement in universities and schools, the NHS, the media and the arts, the Civil Service and even Parliament. We need to suppress the hate marches, starting with a moratorium, as Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of terror legislation, has argued.

We need systemic reform – a dedicated anti-Semitism unit for the CPS, for instance, as former attorney general Michael Ellis has proposed – and we need no-questions-asked deportations of foreign nationals who offend. We need an end to uncontrolled immigration, both legal and illegal, a robust programme of assimilation, and careful measures to suppress extremist entryism. We need to crack down on dodgy charities. We need to ban the Muslim Brotherhood, the Revolutionary Guards and other terror groups, and a revolution in education that restores our sense of national pride.

But now I’m doing Starmer’s job for him. Don’t get me wrong: it isn’t the Jews who need all this. They may be first in the firing line, but there is a reason they have survived for thousands of years. We’ve got Israel. It is the future of Britain and the West that is the worry.

How Wokeness Came for the Jews By Abe Greenwald

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If you’re looking to stir up mob hatred of a designated enemy, you can’t do better than the Jews. Three years of whiny anti-whiteness made woke into a punchline, but anti-Semitism is serious business. The committed Jew-hater enters an ancient tradition with a long instructional literature and counter-history. There are mentors and potential sympathizers around the globe. Just follow the playbook: Accuse the Jews of blood libel, hidden influence, and ill-begotten gains. Establish them as the motive force behind everything that’s wrong, and don’t let up. You’ll even find fellow travelers on the right.

When the woke replaced whites with the Jews, they were back in business. “White privilege” became “Jewish supremacy”; “white fragility” was dropped for the supposed Jewish hypervigilance over anti-Semitism and intolerance for criticism of Israel.

Jews, unlike whites, are associated with an ideology and political movement of their own: Zionism. That makes things a lot easier for the woke. They can attack Zionism—already mischaracterized and demonized for ages—as one of history’s great evils. And they can, when they even bother, hide behind anti-Zionism to disguise their Jew-hatred.

This all began way before Israel launched its ground invasion into Gaza. But once that happened, the anti-Jewish campaign exploded. Now there were images (fake or out of context) and reports (false or slanted) to bolster the grisly accusations. On campuses, at rallies, and on social media, the woke jihad produced leaders and spokespeople. The Biden administration and the Democrats began to pay them heed.

Eventually, the woke jihad threw up political contenders. New York’s sitting mayor was the first to reach office. Now there’s Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed running for the Senate and Graham Platner (complete with a giant Nazi tattoo) doing the same in Maine.

And just as the liberal Democrats once took up the woke cause of anti-whiteness, they’ve now fully accommodated the left’s naked anti-Semitism. The Democratic establishment, along with the liberal commentariat, has come around to endorsing every leftist anti-Semitic candidate or influencer that comes their way.

The war in Gaza has been stalled for months, and the left barely mentions it anymore. But they don’t have to because this was never about Palestinians or liberation. It was about siccing the mob on the Jews, once again, and turning Jew-hatred into political power. You don’t need Gaza when you can talk about the dark hand of AIPAC, the immorality of U.S. aid to Israel, and Benjamin Netanyahu dragging us into war. The new woke and their establishment enablers have an array of anti-Jewish lies to choose from. Believing the wind at their backs, they’re going with all of them at once.

ABC panel discusses Bondi massacre without any mention of Jewish community or radical Islam

Michael Gawenda Outs Australia’s left-liberal media quartet
There was a time when The Age in Melbourne and the Sydney Morning Herald were fine newspapers of record. This was especially the case after the arrival of The Australian as a national newspaper in 1964 – since it put pressure on the (then) broadsheets in Melbourne and Sydney to improve. Both became strong performers in the 1970s and 1980s. But not anymore. Now in tabloid size [Nine Newspapers calls it “compact”, I believe. – MWD Editor] they are essentially expressions of the left (or “liberal” in the North American sense of the term) political point of view.

This was demonstrated in the article on 29 April in The Australian by James Dowling and Stephen Rice titled “Age legend to air left-wing media’s failure on anti-Semitism at Royal Commission”. The reference was to Michael Gawenda.

Michael Gawenda was a man of the moderate left – until anti-Semitism became an increasing reality in Australia. A former contributor to leftist The Digger magazine, he became, in time, editor of the left-of-centre Melbourne Age.

As The Australian revealed last Wednesday, Michael Gawenda has provided a submission to the Royal Commission on Anti-Semitism and Social Cohesion. In it he has identified Australia’s influential left-liberal media quartet. Namely, in alphabetical order, the ABC, The Age, The Guardian Australia and the Sydney Morning Herald.

Reflecting on the fact that the anti-Semitism spike in Australia occurred after Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, Gawenda had this to say:
I think the left liberal media – the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC, the Guardian – have basically not done the sort of job that I would expect mainstream media organisations to do. They have minimised in their commentary the effect on Jews of what is clearly an increase in antisemitism. They have favoured minority Jewish organisations and used them as if they represent some sort of mainstream Jewish opinion. That media was shocking in its treatment of the antisemitism envoy’s [Jillian Segal] report. So I think they’ve done a ­terrible job. I think it’s got to do with the fact that journalists see themselves now, not as reporters, but as social activists wanting to change the world rather than report the world.

And so, it has come to pass that Michael Gawenda, a one-time successful Age editor, cannot get published in the newspaper he once edited on account of his support for Israel’s right to exist within secure borders and outspoken opposition to anti-Semitism in Australia. Can You Bear It?

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05/01 Links Pt1: Trump ‘not satisfied’ with latest Iranian proposal to end war; The Gaza Numbers Debate: Who Was Right?; The World's Shameful Silence on Hamas

From Ian:

Trump ‘not satisfied’ with latest Iranian proposal to end war

U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House on Friday that he is “not satisfied” with Iran’s latest proposal to end the ongoing conflict.

“They want to make a deal, but I don’t. I’m not satisfied with it, so we’ll see what happens,” Trump said. “Iran wants to make a deal, because they have no military left.”

“They’re asking for things that I can’t agree to,” he added.

Iran sent the proposal through mediators on Thursday, though details remain unclear. “They want to make a deal so badly, but they’re not there yet,” Trump told reporters. “In my opinion, they’re not there.”

“Do you want to go blast the hell out of ’em and finish them forever, or do we want to try and make a deal?” he said.

The president added that he’d prefer not to continue military strikes. “On a human basis, I’d prefer not, but that’s the option,” he told reporters.

Asked if he was considering new strikes on Iran, Trump said, “Why would I tell you that?

“Right now, we have negotiations going on,” the president said. “They’re not getting there. They are very disjointed. They’re extremely disjointed. They’re not able to get along with each other as leaders. They don’t know who the leader is.”

Trump noted that this puts the United States “in a bad position,” because separate groups in Iranian leadership want different deals.

The president dismissed the need for congressional authorization for further U.S. military action against Iran, arguing that other presidents have considered the War Powers Resolution “unconstitutional” and “exceeded” the law’s 60-day limit. Trump added that the current ceasefire reset the timeline.

US pulling 5,000 troops from Germany amid spat with Trump over Iran war

The United States is withdrawing 5,000 troops from NATO ally Germany, the Pentagon announced on Friday, as a rift over the Iran war widens between US President Donald Trump and Europe.

Trump had threatened a drawdown in forces earlier this week after sparring with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who said on Monday the Iranians were humiliating the US in talks to end the two-month-old war and that he did not see what exit strategy Washington was pursuing.

A senior Pentagon official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said recent German rhetoric had been “inappropriate and unhelpful.”

“The president is rightly reacting to these counterproductive remarks,” the official said.

The Pentagon said the withdrawal was expected to be completed over the next six to 12 months. Germany is home to some 35,000 active-duty US military personnel, more than anywhere else in Europe.

The official said the drawdown would bring US troop levels in Europe back to roughly pre-2022 levels, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered a buildup by then-president Joe Biden.

The official also cast the decision in terms of the Trump administration’s push for Europe to become the main security provider on the continent. But it is nonetheless another potent reminder of Trump’s willingness to respond to perceived disloyalty by allies.

IDF official says Iran war will be ‘one big failure’ if enriched uranium not removed

A senior Israeli military official said on Friday that if Iran’s stockpile of more than 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium is not removed from the country in the wake of the recent war, the campaign could be considered “one big failure.”

Israeli officials have said that this stockpile is sufficient for 11 nuclear bombs if enriched further. Iran has long maintained that its program is peaceful, despite enriching uranium at near-weapons-grade levels.

Israel launched its campaign against Iran on February 28, alongside the United States, to degrade the Iranian regime’s military capabilities, distance threats posed by Iran — including its nuclear and ballistic missile programs — and “create the conditions” for the Iranian people to topple the regime, the military and other Israeli leaders have said.

The senior officer said that if, under the ongoing negotiations between the US and Iran, no agreement is reached to remove the uranium stockpile and halt enrichment in the country, the achievements of the 40 days of fighting will have been for nothing.

“If the nuclear objective is not achieved, then everything we did in Iran will be one big failure. The evil Iranian regime can pounce on the nuclear program,” the official said during a briefing for reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The officer added that “if the uranium is removed from Iran through diplomatic means, we have done our part.” However, if that does not happen, Israel would need to launch another operation in Iran to achieve the objective.

Periodic reminder the JCPOA was designed to protect Iran from pressure for a decade and flood it with cash so it could build up its economy and military, and then at the end it legalized an unlimited Iranian enrichment program so the regime could build a nuclear arsenal at will. https://t.co/MQQwjviD4v

— Omri Ceren (@omriceren) May 1, 2026

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04/30 Links Pt2: Anti-Zionism is a menace to every Jew on Earth; Being Jewish in Britain means living in a security ghetto; NYTs platforms professor who imagined joining terrorists on Oct. 7

From Ian:

Brendan O'Neill:Anti-Zionism is a menace to every Jew on Earth

It is staggering the extent to which anti-Zionists refuse to be bound by the linguistic rules they enforce on everyone else. These are people who think JK Rowling is responsible for anti-trans violence because she says men aren’t women, and who will accuse you of playing with ‘Islamophobic’ fire if you comment on the rape gangs. And yet apparently their cruel, ceaseless, voluble and entirely disproportionate loathing for the world’s only Jewish nation – and for everyone who supports it, which includes most British Jews – has no impact whatsoever. It magically exists above the grubby fray of cause and effect that the lowly speech of us riff-raff is compelled to inhabit.

Apparently, our measured opinions cause violence, whereas their meticulously constructed and ruthlessly enforced culture of burning animus for the Jewish nation causes nothing. And woe betide the Jew who says it does. He shall be found guilty of ‘weaponising anti-Semitism’ to silence ‘critics of Israel’. See how cynical the Jews are? They will even marshall and monetise their own historic suffering – the Holocaust, 7 October, recent atrocities in Britain – to the end of protecting their precious genocidal homeland from the decent-hearted critique of pacifist Brits. They lie, and they do so for slippery reasons of dual loyalty – that’s what anti-Zionists are saying when they tar Jews as ‘weaponisers’ simply for saying something they themselves say every day: that words have consequences.

Can we cut the crap? Our moral emergency is too pressing. This is the truth: the industry of hatred for the Jewish nation is endangering Jewish people everywhere. It is not merely opinion – it is a vast system of moral instruction enforced through the institutions of education and culture which singles out Zionism as the most repulsive ideology of our time, and Zionists as enablers of apartheid, settler-colonialism and genocide. Golders Green is full of Zionists. I know some of them. They are good people. Yet according to the ideological superstructure of anti-Zionism, they are agents of chaos, facilitators of crime and simps for a regime whose crimes are so uniquely barbarous that even just reflecting on them can feel like ‘opening a door to the darkest recesses of Hell’. It is utterly untenable to say anti-Zionism is not the cause of anti-Jewish violence.

‘It is morally consistent to oppose both anti-Semitism and Israel’s genocide’, said armies of leftists after Golders Green. Actually, it isn’t. For it is the latter – the ceaseless defamation of ‘the Zionist entity’ as a genocidal machine that lusts after the blood of innocents – that inflames the former. There is a determined effort to draw a moral distinction between ‘real anti-Semitism’, like that in Golders Green, and anti-Zionism. No, no, no. Anti-Zionism is the foul soil in which violent Jew hate has taken root. It is the most menacing hate movement of our time. It has power and clout. It is the ideology of the new ruling class. It is ruthlessly communicated through the digital highways and popular culture. And it is hanging a target sign around the necks of Jews everywhere on Earth. It must be defeated, urgently.

Being Jewish in Britain means living in a security ghetto

Don’t you just hate it when your kids need a security briefing to go to primary school? Isn’t it annoying to have airport-style security at your place of worship so that congregants aren’t murdered?

If you’re Jewish in Britain, this is the reality. We don’t live our lives like normal British citizens any more. We live in a security ghetto – one where tolerant Britain is fading away.

This week – before two Jewish men were stabbed in Golders Green, north London, in an attack police declared a terrorist incident – my better half and I were due to attend a documentary screening by a Jewish-Israeli journalist. We worked out that, given the risk, only one of us should go, so our child would still have a parent if something happened. These are the kind of calculations British Jews now make.

The security services have advised friends’ children to hide their school uniforms when travelling to and from their fortified Jewish schools. Children are asked to conceal what they are in case it upsets racists.

I don’t hide my Star of David on public transport – I don’t mind the glares. The exception is medical appointments. Almost every Jew I know does the same. It is hard not to, when doctors feel free to post Nazi-grade racism under their own names on social media (I’ve been shown a private Facebook group of nearly 17,000 GPs, where anti-Jewish hatred was expressed openly and seldom challenged). And we’re to trust these people to treat us when we are at our most vulnerable?

Soon, it will be my turn again. My turn to put on a stab-proof vest, stand alongside a paid security guard, and guard the gates of my own synagogue. Everyone in the community who can will take a turn. Every synagogue in Britain that I know of runs the same rota. Metal gates. CCTV. Volunteers in body armour. This is what worship looks like now.

Incidents happen when you least expect them. The day before my son’s bar mitzvah, I went to the synagogue to drop off wine. As I left and the gate shut behind me, I turned and saw a man I didn’t know inside the grounds. Scruffy, well-built, tattooed, wearing a vest. He had scaled the perimeter fence as I was leaving and was heading for the door.

I went back in and confronted him. I barely had time to register the backpack.

He was looking around, taking in the layout. I took his picture and shepherded him out. On the pavement, he dropped into the Islamic prayer position. The rest of my day was spent with the police and the Community Security Trust, the Jewish security charity.

DOJ’s Harmeet Dhillon compares contemporary antisemitism of ‘educated elites’ to 1930s Germany

In a speech at a federal government commemoration of the Holocaust on Thursday, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon argued that the post-Oct. 7 wave of antisemitism in the U.S. resembles 1930s Germany and warned that modern bigotry is often perpetrated by “educated elites” under the cover of intellectual language.

Dhillon, drawing on a speech that the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia gave at a Holocaust remembrance event nearly three decades ago, said that Germany’s reputation as an intellectual and scientific hub in the 1920s and 1930s is closely connected to the development of the Holocaust.

“The road to Auschwitz was incremental and methodical. It began with excluding Jews through the legal, political, economic and social life of everyday society,” Dhillon said. “Many perpetrators of the Holocaust were often the most educated intelligentsia in Germany.”

She was speaking at the 33rd annual Federal Interagency Holocaust Remembrance Program, an event organized by and for federal government employees. It took place in the Justice Department’s Great Hall, and as attendees arrived, they walked up a staircase lined with portraits of historic legal experts, like the Babylonian king Hammurabi. One showed Moses, pictured with the twin tablets of the Ten Commandments.

The fact that the perpetrators of the Holocaust often had advanced degrees and impressive credentials is relevant for our understanding of contemporary antisemitism, Dhillon said.

“Today we are experiencing a rise in antisemitism in the world, including right here at home. As in the past, it often begins with social exclusion. On some university campuses, Jews have been blocked by mobs from entering certain spaces,” said Dhillon. “As in 1930s Germany, these actions are often perpetrated by the educated elites of our nation, framed in intellectual language, giving them a veneer of legitimacy.”

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04/30 Links Pt1: US finds evidence tying four more UN staffers to Oct. 7; The Party With the Nazi Tattoo; MSF Abandoned Neutrality, Employed Staff with Hamas Ties

From Ian:

What Thomas Jefferson Would Do about Iran's Barbary Pirates

The Western approach to diplomacy is to attempt to reconcile legitimate but conflicting interests. Iran's rulers, by contrast, regard compromise as capitulation. And they have no interests that we should recognize as legitimate. For 47 years, they have vowed "Death to Israel!" and "Death to America" - unambiguous declarations of war.

American presidents in the past have responded: Maybe the theocrats don't really mean it! Maybe they'll liberalize over time! Maybe we can identify moderates among them! One president sympathized with their "grievances," accommodated their ambitions, and sent them palettes of cash. They were not appeased.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) still has hundreds of small, fast-attack boats in the Strait of Hormuz. Those who use boats to harass or attempt to seize commercial vessels should be designated as pirates. And Americans long ago learned how to deal with pirates.

In 1786, while serving as U.S. Minister to France, Thomas Jefferson questioned an envoy from Tripoli - one of the North African Barbary states - about his government's habit of seizing American and European ships and cargo, and enslaving sailors. The envoy said he was doing his religious duty, enforcing Islamic law as he understood it. From then on, Jefferson opposed paying ransom or tribute to the Barbary Pirates and deemed negotiations futile. As president in 1801, he took a kinetic approach: the First Barbary War (1801-1805).

Iran's rulers, whatever their internal disagreements, all call themselves "Islamic revolutionaries." Their revolution, we should understand, is against America. If Iran's rulers are praying for martyrdom, that may be a matter on which we can find agreement.

Explaining the Iran-U.S. Value Asymmetry

The Western approach to diplomacy is to attempt to reconcile legitimate but conflicting interests. Iran's rulers, by contrast, regard compromise as capitulation. And they have no interests that we should recognize as legitimate. For 47 years, they have vowed "Death to Israel!" and "Death to America" - unambiguous declarations of war.

American presidents in the past have responded: Maybe the theocrats don't really mean it! Maybe they'll liberalize over time! Maybe we can identify moderates among them! One president sympathized with their "grievances," accommodated their ambitions, and sent them palettes of cash. They were not appeased.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) still has hundreds of small, fast-attack boats in the Strait of Hormuz. Those who use boats to harass or attempt to seize commercial vessels should be designated as pirates. And Americans long ago learned how to deal with pirates.

In 1786, while serving as U.S. Minister to France, Thomas Jefferson questioned an envoy from Tripoli - one of the North African Barbary states - about his government's habit of seizing American and European ships and cargo, and enslaving sailors. The envoy said he was doing his religious duty, enforcing Islamic law as he understood it. From then on, Jefferson opposed paying ransom or tribute to the Barbary Pirates and deemed negotiations futile. As president in 1801, he took a kinetic approach: the First Barbary War (1801-1805).

Iran's rulers, whatever their internal disagreements, all call themselves "Islamic revolutionaries." Their revolution, we should understand, is against America. If Iran's rulers are praying for martyrdom, that may be a matter on which we can find agreement.

Monitored phone calls and fear of arrest: What life looks like for Iran’s Jews now

Amid the war in Iran, one Iranian Jewish woman who lives in the United States, but whose family remains in Iran, has been wracked with fear. Before the ceasefire, she spoke with her parents once a week for exactly one minute — both because of the exorbitant cost, about $50 per minute, and because of the fear of surveillance.

During one call a few days into the war, she said, something felt off.

“I could see that something is so wrong. It’s as if someone was there,” the woman, who moved to the U.S. in 2008, said in an interview with the Forward. “It seemed like my mom was actually reading from a note.”

She later learned that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had come to her parents’ home, questioning why they frequently called an American number. They instructed her parents to download Bale, an Iranian messaging app widely believed to be monitored by authorities, before making any further calls.

“It’s a spy app, and everyone knows that,” the woman said with a wry laugh. Her parents refused. Instead, they were told to call their daughter and read from a script while IRGC members watched.

“Basically, they said to prove that you are with us and not with Israel, read this when you call her,” the woman said. “After that day, they didn’t call for a long time.”

Eventually, she learned that her parents had fled to a safer part of the country to escape bombardment.

Her family are among the estimated 10,000 Jews who still live in Iran, in the largest Jewish community in the Middle East outside of Israel. Once numbering around 120,000, the community has dwindled significantly since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, when life for religious minorities fundamentally changed. Today, Jews who remain in Iran must carefully navigate life under the regime, publicly expressing loyalty to avoid being falsely accused of Zionist espionage.

Amid Iran’s war with the U.S. and Israel, that pressure has intensified.

With an ongoing internet blackout, communication is limited and closely monitored. To understand what life is like for Iranian Jews today, I spoke with several people in the U.S. who remain in sporadic contact with family members inside Iran. Everyone interviewed requested that they not be identified, fearing repercussions for either themselves or their families.

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04/29 Links Pt2: Israel's Legitimacy Isn't Debatable under International Law; How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Feed the Jews to the Mob; Spain’s Jewish Question

From Ian:

America’s Real ‘Special Relationship’ When the Pageantry Is Stripped Away

King Charles came to Washington this week to renew an old claim: that Britain remains America’s closest friend, joined by history, language, culture, and long alliance. There is truth in that. The ties are real. Yet the visit also exposed a tension no amount of ceremony could quite conceal. Beneath the pageantry, the handshakes, and the polished invocations of shared destiny, the old “special relationship” seemed less like a settled fact than a British hope. For today, America’s most “special” ally is surely Israel. Who says so? Britain’s own ambassador to the United States, caught in a leaked recording only weeks before the king arrived.

The royal visit was intended to mark 250 years of American independence, an anniversary born from rupture, and was tasked with displaying friendship between two nations whose elected leaders plainly have little warmth for one another.

For decades, the phrase “special relationship” has been used as a kind of Anglo-American incense, waved over every disagreement until the room smelled less of conflict. US President Donald Trump has battered British Prime Minister Keir Starmer for months, leaving the relationship between Washington and London looking bruised, transactional, even contemptuous. The royal visit was supposed to place something older and grander above that. And it nearly worked.

But Britain’s ambassador to Washington, Christian Turner, said the quiet part aloud.

The Financial Times obtained a leaked recording of Turner speaking to British students, in which he called the phrase “special relationship” nostalgic and backward-looking. But there was, he said, one country that could probably claim such a relationship with the United States: Israel. The Foreign Office insisted his remarks were informal and did not represent official policy, but the damage was done.

Turner’s point was awkward because it was true. The United States still values Britain. The historic and cultural ties remain deep. But a special relationship requires more than shared history and flags in matching colors. It requires instinctive trust in moments of danger. Under Starmer, that trust has more than frayed — it is in shreds.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Feed the Jews to the Mob

The leadership of the Democratic Party has decided to feed Israel to its left. This is no longer a matter of speculation or of reading tea leaves in polling data. Every plausible aspirant to the 2028 presidential nomination, Khanna, Van Hollen, Newsom, Pritzker, Booker, Gallego, Warnock, Emanuel, has moved, is moving, or is preparing to move toward some version of the anti-Israel position, whether by calling for an end to military aid, by denouncing AIPAC, by using the word genocide, or by maintaining the tactical silence that, in the current environment, functions as a form of the same concession.

Rahm Emanuel, a man who spent his career as the embodiment of pro-Israel Democratic centrism, now argues that the Israelis should pay for the Iron Dome themselves. The New York Times is chasing Hasan Piker. Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist and child of the Third Worldism whose views on Israel require no explanation, sits in the mayor’s office in the largest city in the country, and the establishment figures who initially tried to hold him at arm’s length, from Schumer, to Jeffries, Gillibrand, have been drawn, with the aid of Obama, one by one, into the gravitational pull of the Third Worldist hatefest.

The establishment’s reasoning is basic strategic calculation: the left will not relent on Israel; a civil war inside the party over the Jewish state would destroy the coalition; therefore, the rational move is to concede this issue, preserve party unity, and proceed with the moderate agenda on everything else: affordability, climate, migration, AI, etc. Feed this one thing to the beast, and the beast will be satisfied. It is an intelligent calculation, a genius one, really, but it is also a catastrophic one, because it rests on a complete misapprehension of what is being conceded and to whom.

The first error is the assumption that anti-Zionism is a position, a policy preference, a discrete item on a list of demands that can be granted in exchange for quiet on the remaining items. No, no, no. This is a major category error. Anti-Zionism is not a position. It is a worldview, and a worldview does not function the way individual policy preferences do. A policy preference can be traded: you give me this, I give you that, and we both go home. A worldview is the structure within which all positions are generated, the logic that determines which sentences can be spoken and which cannot, and when you concede the worldview, you have not bought peace on the other questions. You have conceded the very logic by which all the other questions will be decided.

Anti-Zionism is the keystone of the decolonial mentalité, the foundation of Third Worldist resentment, the case study around which the entire system of colonizer and colonized, settler and indigene, white and nonwhite, oppressor and oppressed, achieves its most concentrated political force. It is where the theoretical rubber meets the real road, where the theory meets an actual state, an actual conflict, an actual set of policy levers, and becomes, in the world of its grandfather, world. Conceding it does not quiet the theory. It does not quiet anything but validates the movement, and the movement then proceeds to apply itself, with the momentum of a successful campaign of destruction, to the next question and the next, and the next, and the next. Nothing will be spared. NY Times facing backlash for calling Hasan Piker "progressive in a MAGA body" : r/popculturechat The Democrats’ new Charlie Kirk

The second error is that the liberal establishment treats the decolonial left as though it were a moral movement; a coalition of idealists whose passion on this one subject must be accommodated because the passion is about something real and the moral claim has traction. This is the view from the outside, from the surface, and it is wrong. What is at work inside the American left on the Israel question is not, or not primarily, some moral awakening. It is an inter-elite ruthless competition for institutional position, and anti-Zionism is the instrument through which that war of position is being waged.

Spain’s Jewish Question

On March 10, 2026, Spain’s Council of Ministers officially terminated the appointment of its ambassador to Israel, Ana María Salomón Pérez, formalizing a diplomatic standoff that had been building for months. Pérez had first been recalled for consultations on Sep. 9, 2025, hours after Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar accused the Sánchez government of antisemitism, and had never returned. The permanent recall is the culmination of a steady deterioration since Oct. 7, 2023, during which Sánchez recognized Palestinian statehood, imposed a military embargo, and banned weapons-carrying vessels headed to Israel from Spanish ports. The most recent trigger was Spain’s vocal opposition to the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, leading Israel to expel Spain from the Civil-Military Coordination Center in Kiryat Gat, which oversees the cease-fire in the Gaza Strip. Sánchez has only doubled down. At a recent rally in Andalucia, where his party is trailing, he said he would push for the European Union to break its commercial ties with Israel: “A government that violates international law or the principles of the EU cannot be its partner.”

Sánchez’s anti-Israel posture is not just foreign policy. Rather, its calculation is mostly domestic. As corruption scandals engulf his party, Sánchez’s approval rating has cratered to 25.7%, with 69.6% disapproval. The anti-Israel turn plays well at home regardless: Since November 2023, Spanish sympathy toward Palestinians has grown by 16.5 points, nearly 57% of Spaniards consider what is happening in Gaza a genocide, and a Pew poll found 75% have unfavorable views of Israel.

One could frame Sánchez’s anti-Israel posture as part of a broader European left turn catering to Muslim voters, as expressed in parties such as France’s La France Insoumise and their equivalents in Belgium and the United Kingdom. I find this explanation reductionist. More importantly, it doesn’t apply to Spain. Unlike France and the United Kingdom, where Muslim voters number in the millions, only an estimated 800,000 Muslims have the right to vote in Spain, about 2% of the electorate. Muslim migration to Spain is a relatively recent phenomenon, accelerating in the late 1990s and early 2000s, compared to France’s and the United Kingdom’s postwar guest-worker programs that brought migrants half a century earlier. Spain itself was an exporter of labor through most of the second half of the 20th century. As a result, over half of Spain’s Muslim population does not yet have citizenship. Sánchez did recently regularize half a million immigrants—but they cannot vote yet, and most come from Latin America, not Muslim-majority countries.

There is simply no need to invoke Muslim electoral pressure to explain anti-Israel sentiment in Spain, because Sánchez’s position is rooted in something older and more specifically Spanish: a particular brand of antisemitism, anti-Americanism, and anti-Israeli sentiment with its own deep history.

After the Civil War and during Francisco Franco’s 40-year rule, Spain’s history was insulated from the rest of Europe. Although Franco was more aligned with the Nazis, Spain did not suffer or participate directly in World War II. Ironically, the country served as a conduit both for Jews escaping Nazism and for Nazis escaping prosecution afterward. This is also a reason Spain, unlike Austria or Germany, never faced the pressure of dealing publicly or institutionally with its inherent antisemitism.

Spain was the last country in Western Europe (aside from Vatican City) to formally recognize Israel, doing so only in 1986 as a condition of joining the European Economic Community—after decades during which Franco promoted a mythical Jewish-Masonic conspiracy as a foundational threat to Spain. As with many of Franco’s legacies, the country was quick to turn the page; there was no historic accountability for four decades of institutionalized instrumentalization of antisemitism. Those unexamined attitudes have proven durable: The ADL’s Global 100 survey places Spain as the Western European country with the highest level of antisemitic attitudes, at 26%—ahead of Belgium (24%), France (17%), Germany (12%), and the United Kingdom (10%).

Swiss National Council votes against recognizing Palestinian state

Switzerland's National Council voted 116-66 against recognizing Palestine as a state, with 11 abstentions, on Tuesday.

The proposal was put forward by the Geneva Canton, which requested that Switzerland recognize the state of Palestine and “make every possible effort to establish a just and lasting peace between Israel and Palestine, notably inspired by the Geneva Initiative.”

The Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council, which considered the proposal, said that while it "condemns the massacres taking place in the Middle East," a majority concluded that conditions are not yet in place to recognize a Palestinian state.

It cited international law, which requires three main conditions to be met before recognizing a state: a permanent population, a defined territory, and an independent and functioning government.

The committee found the third condition to be lacking, as there is no functioning organization to govern Palestine.

The Palestinian Authority does not exercise unified and effective state authority over the entire territory
“Recognizing Palestine in the current situation would send a problematic signal,” said Erich Vontobel of the Swiss People’s Party, Zurich. “Gaza remains under Hamas control. Hamas opposes peace, openly seeks Israel’s destruction, and is classified by Switzerland as a terrorist organization.

“Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority does not exercise unified and effective state authority over the entire territory.”

Furthermore, the majority of the committee also believes recognition now would “run counter to Swiss neutrality and jeopardize Switzerland’s role as mediator in seeking peace.”

It therefore concluded that it is currently too early for Switzerland to recognize Palestine, but that this does not call into question support for a two-state system in the longer term.

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04/29 Links Pt1: Two Jews stabbed in Golders Green; These blood libels are endangering Jews; Navy begins intercepting Gaza flotilla; Iran’s Hormuz toll plan falters as Gulf nations side with US

From Ian:

The Golders Green attack was sickeningly predictable

It was only last month that four ambulances, operated by the Jewish Hatzola charity, were set ablaze in Golders Green. One of the more slyly heartbreaking details to emerge from the horror in Golders Green this morning is that Hatzola volunteers treated the stabbing victims at the scene. One of their surviving ambulances spirited one of the bloodied men to hospital. You could not find a grimmer metaphor for the threat to life and limb that is now faced by Britain’s tiny, embattled Jewish community.

It is now impossible to ignore. Back in 2024, were it not for a successful operation by undercover officers from Greater Manchester Police, British Jews would have suffered a massacre on the scale of Bondi Beach. In February this year, two foreign-born ISIS fanatics were locked up for plotting to gun down Jews in Manchester. Porous borders, homegrown Islamic extremism, and leftist useful idiocy have put a target on Jews’ backs.

While the Labour government has offered little more than a tepid bath of thoughts and prayers, the leaders of the ‘anti-racist’ left have basically told Jews to relax. Last week, Green Party leader Zack Polanski, having been asked about the spate of anti-Semitic attacks, said ‘there’s a conversation to be had about whether it’s a perception of unsafety or whether it’s actual unsafety’. Meanwhile, Green local-election candidates continue to be outed as pond-scum Jew haters, calling the recent firebombings ‘false flags’ and openly saying things like, ‘it takes serious effort not to be a tiny bit anti-Semitic’.

How long are Jews supposed to put up with this? Long before October 7, and the carnivals of anti-Semitism posing as ‘pro-Palestine’ demos, they suffered a level of menace no other community would be expected to tolerate. Long before Hamas’s butchers and rapists ploughed into Israel, and Islamists and leftists took to our city centres to celebrate, British Jews made up 0.5 per cent of the population and a quarter of the victims of religious hate crimes. They sent their kids to schools behind high fences, with security guards and routine police patrols. Their elders were suckerpunched in the streets. Their cemeteries were routinely desecrated.

Now the sewers have well and truly burst. This is a national emergency. It requires action, not mere words. If we do not stand with British Jews now, then we can no longer claim to be a civilised nation. Certainly, we cannot claim to be surprised when the next attack rolls around.

Brendan O'Neill: These blood libels are endangering Jews

Truth is not the intention here – demonisation is. You can tell this from the frenzied podcast Jones made to accompany his batshit article. Reading and writing about the ‘indescribably horrific’ crime of Israeli dog-rape was like ‘opening a door to the darkest recesses of Hell’, he says. ‘You will rightly ask yourself’, he says to listeners waiting with lolling tongues for yet further confirmation of Israel’s wickedness, ‘how any human being could possibly imagine these crimes, let alone actually perpetrate them’.

This isn’t journalism. It’s certainly not anti-imperialism. It is nothing I would recognise as ‘progressive’ commentary. It is a medieval morality play, where the mob is invited to marvel and gag over the fathomless depravity of the Jewish State. It is of a piece with Jones’s religious mania over Israel, a nation he says is ‘uniquely murderous’ and in the grip of a ‘genocidal mania’. As for its ‘cheerleaders’, who have succumbed to ‘depravity’, he hopes they will be ‘haunted by the souls of the slaughtered Palestinians… until the end of time’. These are the ramblings of a mind rendered unstable by obsessive, one-eyed loathing for Israel.

The dog-rape tale leaves no doubt – ancient blood libels are being rehashed in the phoney langage of ‘criticism of Israel’. The Jewish people were once accused of lusting after the blood of Christian children – now the Jewish State is accused of intentionally murdering Palestinian children. The Jews were once said to be the secret puppetmasters of politics – now the Jewish nation is said to have the mighty West eating from the palm of its hand. Jews were once branded as agents of Satan, doing his diabolical work on Earth – now they are said to deploy dogs in their genocidal crimes and in the process are ‘opening a door to the darkest recesses of Hell’. Are we seriously expected to believe it is wholly coincidental that all the dangerous shit that was once said about Jews is now said about the Jewish State? Yeah, I’m not buying it. To me, it feels like medieval calumnies are being reanimated on the altar of a deranged loathing for the world’s only Jewish nation.

That Francesca Albanese is spreading the dog-rape story takes the blood-libel crisis to a whole new level. This is a UN official. These are dangerous times. There was a stabbing in Golders Green just today. History tells us that blood libels beget violence. Burnings and pogroms followed the medieval myths about Jews being child-killers and well-poisoners. In the past year, we’ve seen Jews in England be violently attacked and stabbed by people calling them baby-killers. How long before the knife is wielded by monsters calling them rapist dogs, too?

Seth Mandel: Anti-Jewish Anarchy in London

This is merely Iranian opportunism, however. The UK’s longstanding problem with anti-Semitism was waiting to be exploited. The cell seems to be having no trouble finding all these single-use recruits. At their best, the police are simply not up to the task of policing. At their worst—as happened in Birmingham last year—they have essentially colluded with the anti-Semites and fabricated anti-Jewish talking points.

Which is to say that the atmosphere of Jew-hunting in London and Manchester is the fault of those who govern London and Manchester. The ruling Labour Party has demonized the Jewish state and stood with its hands in its pockets as the natural results of that vilification—violence against Jewish Britons—commenced and increased. The Green Party has managed to come back from the electoral fringe by repositioning itself solely as a refuge for the “Gaza left,” a riotously anti-Semitic group of political lowlifes gaining ground in local and municipal elections at an alarming clip thanks to its focus on Jew-baiting.

Iran didn’t make Jew-hatred popular in London and Manchester; it took advantage of it, making it even deadlier. Such anti-Semitism has been on broad display since October 7, and the government of Keir Starmer and David Lammy did nothing but throw occasional fuel on the fire.

Speaking of which: Today’s attacks come while King Charles III is visiting the U.S. The king gave a rousing speech to Congress yesterday and his visit was carefully crafted to buck up the transatlantic alliance. And while the Crown’s diplomatic competence was reassuring to watch, it also highlighted the fact that the United Kingdom has no real head of government. Starmer is prime minister, but he is an unpopular fool with no gravitas and no talent for governing and spectacularly poor judgment. The term “lame duck” does insufficient justice to the contempt Sir Keir’s peers have for him, a contempt Starmer has earned.

The longer Starmer stays in office, the more London and its environs descend into anarchic Jew-purging. His mere presence at 10 Downing is a disgrace, but his exit would be only the beginning of a long process to fix what’s broken.

As for right now: Protect the Jews of Britain, for God’s sake, or enable them to protect themselves.

Seth Mandel: An Apology Would Be Nice, But It Isn’t Enough

When Australian authorities announced they would restrict the routes that pro-Palestinian marches were allowed to follow two months ago, it was because of the impending visit of Israel’s head of state. When UK officials suggested today that they support heavily restricting pro-Palestinian marches, it was because they don’t know how to get “anti-Zionists” to stop constantly trying to murder Jews.

The explanations were slightly different, but the underlying problem was exactly the same: not one of these so-called protests is free of foaming-at-the-mouth pogromniks. Their slogans unambiguously call for violence against Jews anywhere in the world, and violence against Jews almost inevitably follows.

In America, where even anti-Semitic lunatics have free-speech rights, the institutions of democracy—universities, political bodies, etc.—had a responsibility to counter the Hamasniks’ bad speech with good speech. Instead, they ceded the field to Beijing-backed terrorism supporters. Joe Biden said the demonstrators “have a point.” University administrators invited lawlessness, and their faculties went on teaching anti-Jewish conspiracy theories.

The result was that commencement ceremonies had to be canceled or live student speeches had to be removed from the programs, restrictions that will continue at many of this year’s ceremonies. That is, school administrators reached the same conclusion that institutional authorities reached in Britain and in Australia: Every single time so-called anti-Zionist activists are given the floor, they will whip up anti-Jewish bloodlust.

Jonathan Hall, a UK government adviser on anti-Semitism policy, reportedly told Times Radio today after the stabbings in Golders Green: “It pains me to say this, but I think we may have reached a point where we need to have a moratorium on the sorts of marches that have been happening. It’s clearly impossible at the moment for any of these pro-Palestine marches not to incubate within them some sort of anti-Semitic or demonizing language.”

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04/28 Links Pt2: Three Years After October 7, Anti-Semitic Violence Is Still Rising; Oslo's Collapse - and the Cost Israel Kept Paying; Israel rebukes Norwegian Holocaust Center’s Nakba-Holocaust events

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Three Years After October 7, Anti-Semitic Violence Is Still Rising

Underlying our public debate about anti-Semitism is the belief that we’re dealing with a kind of punctuated equilibrium: periods of mostly stable levels of anti-Semitism followed by occasional bursts that give us a new normal.

But what if that’s wrong? What if there aren’t periods of stability anymore?

Post-October 7 anti-Semitism seemed primed to follow the usual pattern, in which certain metrics of anti-Semitism will improve after the surge and others will level off at the crest of the surge. So all the metrics are considered in light of the assumption that the surge will fade as the Hamas attacks get further in the rearview mirror.

But the surge is acting funny.

When Tel Aviv University released its annual report on worldwide anti-Semitism for the year 2025, the main headline was that more Jews had been killed in anti-Semitic incidents (20) than in any year in over three decades. It was no consolation to say that this was because there was a massacre in Australia that pushed the numbers so high and that such massacres are blessedly rare—after all, attempted anti-Jewish massacres continue to take place. If the recent attack on a Reform shul in Michigan had succeeded, God forbid, 2026 would far surpass 2025 on this metric just a few months into the year. To be Jewish in some parts of the world now is to feel more like a target than ever.

Delving into the report far beyond that headline statistic reveals why that feeling is so widely shared: Three years after October 7, violent anti-Semitism is still rising across parts of the West.

Oslo's Collapse - and the Cost Israel Kept Paying

As part of the Oslo Accords, Israel agreed to pursue peace and coexistence with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The PLO promised to end terrorism and "armed struggle" against Israel, prevent incitement to violence, actively combat terrorism, and avoid unilateral actions. The core concept was mutual commitment: the PLO-PA would deliver peace and coexistence, while Israel would provide financial support.

The PLO and the PA never fulfilled their commitments. The PLO, dominated by Fatah, the party of Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, never truly abandoned terror. Fatah leaders have repeatedly stressed this. The PA education system has been consistently criticized for radicalization, antisemitism, and the promotion of violence against Israel and Israelis. Instead of combating terror, the Palestinian leadership refers to the genocidal terrorists of Hamas, who planned and executed the October 7, 2023, massacre, as legitimate "Palestinian factions."

Incitement to violence, terror, and murder, as well as the glorification of terrorist murderers, led by the PA, remain commonplace. The PLO-PA also developed and implemented a multi-million dollar "Pay-for-Slay" terror reward policy. In the international arena, the PLO-PA repeatedly acted unilaterally, requesting that the UN recognize the "State of Palestine."

While the PLO-PA did not fulfill most Oslo commitments, Israel continued to collect and transfer taxes which accounted for 65-70% of the PA's total budget. By continuing to transfer these funds to the PA, Israel was bankrolling its own potential demise. In June 2025, Israel ceased transferring the taxes to the PLO-PA.

Since the PLO-PA has fundamentally breached every provision of the Oslo Accords, Israel is fully within its rights to refuse to continue transferring the funds. If the PLO-PA does not fulfill its commitments, there is no reason whatsoever why Israel should be expected to continue funding Palestinian terror, whether the physical murder of Jews or the diplomatic terror in international forums.

U.S. Politics Broke Bipartisan Support for Israel

In his essay on the "sorting" of American politics and its implications for Israel advocacy, Uriel Zehavi argues that Israel lost Democratic support not because of any one war or settlement announcement, but rather that Israel became trapped inside the broader "great sort" of American politics, the decades-long process by which nearly every politically salient issue gets absorbed into partisan identity. Once that happened, a bipartisan consensus on Israel became structurally unstable.

In an earlier era, both parties contained ideological diversity. Liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats created overlapping coalitions. But modern American politics no longer functions that way. Party identity now acts as a master category through which voters interpret almost every issue.

Once progressive activists increasingly coded Israel as aligned with nationalism, militarism, and American conservatism, many Democratic voters followed elite cues from their own ideological ecosystem. At the same time, evangelical Christians and conservatives embraced Israel even more strongly, making support for Israel increasingly identified with Republican identity. The result was a widening partisan gap that could not have been avoided regardless of Israeli policy choices.

Organizations built for a consensus era are trying to defend ground that no longer exists. Instead of one message aimed at a unified political center, Israel advocates may need entirely different arguments, messengers, and vocabularies for Republican and Democratic audiences.

Nevertheless, there remains overwhelming revulsion among mainstream Americans, including most Democrats, toward terrorism and overt antisemitism. After Oct. 7, many Americans were horrified not only by the massacre itself but by celebrations of the attacks on elite campuses and social media. The more that radical anti-Israel movements fuse themselves with excuses for terrorism, harassment of Jewish students, or conspiracy-laden rhetoric about Jews and power, the more they may repel most Americans who still distinguish between criticizing Israeli policy and celebrating mass murder.

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