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.
From Ian:
Jason D. Greenblatt:
The Revolutionary Guards Are Executing the Clerics' Vision
The New York Times published a detailed account last week of Iran's new leadership structure. It states that power has shifted to "an entrenched, hard-line military" and that "the broad influence of the clerics is waning." The implication is that this represents a radicalization of what came before. It does not.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the cleric who led Iran for 35 years, advanced Iran's nuclear program to the edge of weaponization, built the ballistic missile program, the drone program, and the network of proxies including Hizbullah, Hamas, the Houthis and the Shia militias in Iraq that threatened Israel, the Gulf states, and American forces across the region for decades.
He crushed the Green Movement in 2009. His regime executed protesters in the crackdown that followed the 2022 uprising. He directed the IRGC's Quds Force under Qassem Soleimani, whose operations killed and maimed American soldiers for years. The IRGC was not a force that the clerics restrained. It was the instrument through which the clerical vision was executed.
A claim repeated in media commentary and on Capitol Hill held that the U.S. was not already at war with Iran before the February strikes. That claim has always been a fiction. Iran had been waging war on the U.S. and its allies for decades, through terror proxies, attacks on American troops, and a nuclear program designed to hold the region hostage.
Pretending otherwise did not make Americans or our allies in the Gulf and Israel safer. It made the eventual reckoning easier to mischaracterize as aggression rather than a long-overdue response to a severe threat that had been growing for 45 years.
The clerics built this. The IRGC executed it. They are not in tension. They are in partnership. The only thing that has changed is that sustained military pressure has left them with fewer options than they have ever had.
Walter Russell Mead:
It's Way Too Early to Declare U.S. Defeat in Iran
The establishment consensus is that President Trump's war with Iran is a disaster. Time will tell, but it would be a mistake to assume that Mr. Trump is desperately looking for the exits.
Viewed from the Oval Office, the war may seem less costly than critics charge, and the likelihood of a favorable outcome may appear significantly greater than a horrified foreign-policy establishment can bring itself to believe.
True, the war has gone on longer than originally hoped and is taking a toll on the president's popularity. But he may feel less trapped than critics think he should.
In the Gulf, American naval forces have, without taking casualties, consolidated a crushing blockade of Iran that Tehran seems unable to counter.
And support in the Gulf for a decisive effort against Iran is stronger now than at the outbreak of hostilities.
For now, the president can afford to wait and see how mounting pressure affects the Iranian side.
U.S. Cannot Accept Iran Retaining Control of Hormuz, Rubio Says
Asked about the main roadblock to an agreement with the Iranian government, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Fox News on Monday: "The country's run by radical Shia clerics; that's a pretty big impediment....People talk about moderates and hardliners. They're all hardliners in Iran. But there are hardliners who understand they have to run a country and an economy, and there are hardliners that are completely motivated by theology....Unfortunately, the hardliners with an apocalyptic vision of the future have the ultimate power in that country."
"If what they mean by opening the straits [of Hormuz] is, 'Yes, the straits are open as long as you coordinate with Iran, get our permission or we'll blow you up, and you pay us,' that's not opening the straits. Those are international waterways. They cannot normalize, nor can we tolerate them trying to normalize, a system in which the Iranians decide who gets to use an international waterway and how much you have to pay them to use it."
"The nuclear question is the reason why we're in this in the first place....They seek to dominate the region. And imagine that with a nuclear weapon. Look what they've done with the straits - great example. The straits is basically the equivalent of an economic nuclear weapon that they're trying to use against the world, and they're bragging about it. They're putting up billboards in Tehran bragging about how they can hold 20% of the world's energy hostage. Imagine if those same people had access to a nuclear weapon. They would hold the whole region hostage."
"I think they're serious about figuring out how can they buy themselves more time. We can't let them get away with it....They're very experienced negotiators, and we have to ensure that any deal that is made, any agreement that is made, is one that definitively prevents them from sprinting towards a nuclear weapon at any point."
From Ian:
Behind the scenes with Met Police hunting synagogue arsonists
A Jewish primary school is not the site of a typical crime scene.
But it is where the two industrious Metropolitan Police officers – Pc Zachary Stimson and Sgt Simon Vandepeer – are investigating a report of “hostile reconnaissance” on Friday afternoon, hours before the Sabbath.
They were called by the school’s security guard, who saw a young man pacing up and down in front of the school gates.
He appeared to be taking pictures and videos of the building on a quiet residential road in north London.
When confronted, the suspect had shouted: “I don’t give a f--- about Jews”, before fleeing, according to the guard.
The unsettling incident comes amid a backdrop of skyrocketing anti-Semitism including an arson attack that destroyed four Hatzola ambulances in north-west London.
On Friday, three men and a 17-year-old boy appeared at the Old Bailey, charged with criminal damage after allegedly attacking the vehicles. Police are investigating whether Iran is hiring locals to carry out the targeted attacks on their behalf.
Seconds after the confrontation, the two police officers and I charged down the North Circular towards the scene with sirens on and blue lights flashing.
Though a report like this would always be concerning, it is taken especially seriously in light of the recent anti-Semitism and a Jewish community living in fear.
Jewish community living in fear.
The officers responding to this phone-in are part of a large, multi-pronged campaign called Operation Compertum, from the Latin comperire, meaning “to find out or discover”.
Launched a week ago, the aim of the initiative is threefold: arrest would-be arsonists, deter anyone tempted to commit a crime with a visible police presence and reassure the Jewish, and wider, community they are safe and that the state cares about their security.
So far, police have had enormous success arresting 25 people linked to the arson attacks and an additional 41 people for anti-Semitic and Islamophobic hate crimes as well as interviewing a further six people under caution.
This unprecedented undertaking by the Metropolitan Police, counter-terror officials and British intelligence services came in response to the firebombing of four fully-stocked Hatzola ambulances costing around £1m in damages and striking fear into the heart of the British Jewish community.
A group calling itself Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia [HAYI], meaning Islamic Movement for the People of the Right Hand, claimed responsibility for the strike.
They used Telegram, an encrypted communications app, to distribute propaganda videos of the assaults on pro-Iran networks.
But sadly, Hatzola was only the beginning.
26th suspect arrested in connection with antisemitic attacks in London
Another suspect was arrested in the United Kingdom on Sunday in connection to the series of recent antisemitic attacks against Jewish-affiliated sites in London, according to the Metropolitan Police.
The 37-year-old man was detained near Barnstaple, Devon by officers from the Counter Terrorism Policing unit.
“He was arrested on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts and has been taken to a London police station for questioning,” according to the Met, which did not disclose the man’s name.
Since the setting ablaze of four ambulances belonging to the Hatzola Jewish group in Golders Green, London, on March 23, a total of 26 suspects have been apprehended by British authorities.
Eight people have been charged with arson-related offenses and one person has been convicted of arson, the Met Police said.
Last week, police arrested a 25-year-old man in nearby Stevenage and three others, a 26-year-old man and two women aged 50 and 59, near Birmingham. On April 21, police arrested a 39-year-old man in Ealing in connection with an “investigation following the discovery of jars of a non-hazardous substance in Kensington Gardens,” according to a police statement.
“But Zionism!” Isn’t an Argument Anymore
The sophisticated antizionist will say he is making a political argument about the character of the state. A binational arrangement. Consider what that actually means. Seven million Hebrew-speaking Jews give up majority status, give up the political sovereignty their grandparents built, give up the only country on Earth where Jewish life has demographic and military weight, and trust that a binational entity including Hamas voters and West Bank militants will treat them fairly. They are to return, voluntarily, to the Diaspora condition they left, with its known downside of periodic mass murder, the desire for which is enshrined in founding documents.
This is where the distinction between antizionism and antisemitism becomes, in practice, an academic curiosity. Bari Weiss wrote in How to Fight Anti-Semitism that it’s one thing to consider whether to have children before you get pregnant, but it’s another thing entirely to consider parenthood after your kid is born. Maybe the distinction between antizionism and antisemitism matters in a Jewish Studies seminar. For the Israeli seventeen-year-old in Haifa however, it’s meaningless. What the antizionists are demanding of her is that she dissolve the basic conditions of her existence. Whether your motive is classical Jew-hatred or high-minded political theory is immaterial to the demand itself.
It is also not racism, at least not in the Nazi sense. Nazi racial antisemitism offered Jews no escape: you are what you are biologically, and no renunciation could save you. Antizionism does offer an escape: Renounce your people’s sovereignty, disavow Zionism, adopt the vocabulary of your accusers, and you will be welcomed. This is the sophisticated antizionist’s position. In that structural sense, antizionism resembles not racial antisemitism but the old Christian antisemitism, which promised to receive Jews warmly if only they would convert.
That is why the honest word for it is not racism. A movement that seeks to erase a national and ethnic identity through propaganda, persecution, and sometimes violence is not a legitimate political position. It is a hate group. That broad political circles in the West now grant this hate group intellectual respectability is a problem of its own, and not different in kind from the fact that racial doctrines once enjoyed wide acceptance, or that Christian Jew-hatred was once the bedrock assumption of educated European life. Popularity has never been evidence of legitimacy.
What Israelis are
Israelis don’t owe anyone an argument for their existence. They don’t need to win the debate about whether Zionism was the right idea in 1897. They don’t need to persuade Ezra Klein or Hasan Piker or the student encampments that their country’s creation in 1948 was just. The debate is over, not because one side won, but because the thing itself came into being. They are a people. They speak a language. They live on a piece of land and have mortgages. That is what peoples do. The Greeks do it. The Poles do it. The Québécois do it. The arguments about whether they should are, at this point, a leisure activity for people who live elsewhere.
The core goal of Zionism, the one all its strands shared, was to make the Jewish people a nation like other nations: speaking its own language, exercising sovereignty in its own homeland. Different Zionisms added different ingredients. Some are incomplete. Some never will be. But the core was achieved. To be a Hebrew-speaking Jew in the Land of Israel is now as unremarkable as being a Frenchman in France. Zionism as an ideology has produced something that no longer needs ideology: a national, ethnic, and cultural identity with a life of its own.
For a long time, Jews have been expected to justify their existence to every new generation of critics, in every new language, using the vocabulary the critics themselves handed us. Zionism and the Israeli project, at its deepest level, is the project of not having to. Of simply being. Of the dignity of waking up somewhere, ordering a latte (“cafe-hafuch”) and croissant in Hebrew (OK, the Hebrew for croissant is croissant, a French word, but still), and speaking a language and raising a family and going to work. Antizionism is a demand that Jews return to the mode of being in which they have to justify all of that. Israelis, for the most part, are not interested. And they shouldn’t be.
From Ian:
Israel and US won in Iran, and the critics refuse to admit it
The moment the first Israeli and American jets hit their targets in Iran, two different realities emerged: one unfolding on the battlefield, and another constructed in news studios and political circles.
Understanding the gap between these two realities is essential to understanding what has actually been achieved by the United States and Israel.
Let’s start with the objective facts, because the critics won’t.
A country of 92 million people spent decades preparing for this confrontation – to no avail. Iran couldn’t mount a real response. Israel and the US moved through Iranian airspace like they owned it. They hit what they wanted, when they wanted. The enemy talked big for years, but when the moment of truth came, they were totally vulnerable.
Minimal damage for Israel
For Israel, the casualty figures also tell the real story. Every pundit who predicted a massacre looks foolish now. Israeli losses were less than a tiny fraction of the lowest estimates. Not one Israeli plane went down.
The damage on Israel’s home front was minimal, and far below the doomsday numbers the experts kept repeating. Every single dark prediction was wrong.
By any honest measure, this is the most successful military campaign Israel has ever conducted. In fact, it may be the most successful campaign of its kind in modern history. But if you listen to the noise, you would think it was a disaster.
The criticism directed at the Israeli government and against the Trump administration – both in Israel and in the United States – contains not an ounce of objectivity. It is politics, top to bottom.
These critics aren’t trying to help the war effort; they’re trying to sink the people in charge. They can’t admit it’s a win because that would mean their rivals, US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, succeeded.
It’s a cold trade. A win for the nation is a loss for their party, so they refuse to see or acknowledge it.
Seth Mandel:
Iran’s Imperial Jenga Tower Is Collapsing
The real friends of the Arab states, that is, are the U.S. and Israel.
Iran is far less insulated than it thought it was. The Islamic Republic built a “ring of fire” to surround Israel, but it finds itself on the way to being surrounded at home.
Meanwhile, how’s that ring of fire doing?
Amit Segal reports that top Hamas man Khalil al-Hayya “left his five-star exile in Qatar for what was intended to be a quick diplomatic trip to Cairo. After summarily rejecting a U.S.-backed disarmament proposal that offered a staged Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, he received a text message notifying him that he had been evicted from his luxury lodgings and was officially barred from re-entering the country. It is every vacationer’s worst nightmare.”
Hopefully he has an Airbnb account or a friend with a couch. As Segal notes, Qatar didn’t take such a massive step toward cutting ties with Hamas after October 7. It’s doing so now because the U.S.-led alliance against Iran is expanding and forcing the region’s players to choose sides. America has a base in Qatar, and its relationship with Washington is its gateway to legitimacy on the world stage—legitimacy it arguably never earned and doesn’t deserve, and therefore such legitimacy would be difficult to regain should it be lost.
Qatar is a key source of funding and diplomatic and logistical support for Hamas, which is an Iranian proxy. Cutting ties with Hamas would mean choosing sides against Iran while at the same time greatly weakening Hamas’s ability to rebuild and recruit in the wake of the pummeling it received at Israel’s hands.
Then there’s Hezbollah, once Iran’s strongest and most dangerous proxy, which the IDF has put on the backfoot in Lebanon. It was hard to ignore this quote that Fouad Makhzoumi, a Lebanese member of parliament, gave to the Washington Institute’s David Makovsky, who asked Makhzoumi what should happen to Lebanese Armed Forces Commander Rodolphe Haykal if he fails to disarm Hezbollah: “At the end of the day, we are asking them to deliver. If he doesn’t, yes, he has to be removed.”
Disarm Iran’s key proxy or step aside: an ultimatum that won’t magically achieve Hezbollah’s disarmament but represents another on-the-record testimony of Lebanon’s clear alignment with the U.S. alliance.
As the clock ticks, Iran is becoming more isolated by the day. And that isolation will persist and shape the Middle East that emerges on the other side of this conflict.
NYPost Editorial:
Iran’s peace offer tries to play President Trump for a fool
Iran’s latest “peace” offer — which President Donald Trump would be nuts to consider — continues the Islamic Republic’s history of playing from a posture of strength when the regime is actually in a state of near-collapse.
Now the mullahs say they will agree to open the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for an end to the hostilities.
Yet the nuclear question will remain off the table for now … future talks TBD.
What chutzpah! The whole war was started to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear weapons, so why would the United States — which paused its hell-storm to give the Iranians a chance to get their minds right — give up a key demand, as though we were the ones on our heels?
Iran’s foreign-policy strategy seems to be “fake it ’til you make it.” Its leaders — whoever they are at the moment — think that if they pretend to be a major world power, and demand to be treated as such, eventually Washington will partake in the fantasy.
But Iran has no leverage in this game of chicken. While they threaten to harass commercial shipping through the Persian Gulf, the US has blocked all Iranian shipping.
Not only does that prevent Iran from selling its oil, it means that the Iranians have to store millions of barrels of oil that are being pumped every day.
But their storage capacity is quickly running out.
Pumping oil isn’t a matter of turning a spigot on and off. Shutting down productive wells means risking their usability forever, because the oil flow will effectively destroy the wellhead.
From Ian:
Jake Wallis Simons:
Israel is no longer a European villa in the desert
Picture the scene. At a happy press conference in Luxembourg, Israel’s foreign minister and European officials announce they will “upgrade the relations between Israel and the EU” and “usher in a new era in Israeli-European relations”.
Ties, they add, will be strengthened in the economy, scientific research, trade, environmental technology, culture, academia and higher education, as well as youth exchange schemes.
Is that a pie floating past that window? This week, Spain – whose leader recently regretted not having nuclear weapons to “stop” Israel – led demands for Europe to cast Israel out completely. Even Italy has ended its defence and scientific cooperation, and Germany is growing increasingly critical.
But that happy press conference did indeed take place, in June 2008, when the world was saner. What went wrong? Demographics form part of the explanation with the growth of more Israelophobic domestic populations carrying mounting political strength.
Universities and schools have been radicalised, social media has provided a powerful forum for disinformation, and October 7 unleashed forces of propaganda that would have made Stalin or Goebbels doff their hats.
In Israel, too, things have changed. In September 2008, prime minister Ehud Olmert tabled a peace offer that satisfied all Ramallah’s main demands, including 94 per cent of the West Bank (plus 6 per cent of Israeli land), the return of some Palestinian refugees, an international Old City and a shared Jerusalem.
Mahmoud Abbas turned it down. That December saw Operation Cast Lead against Hamas in Gaza, from where Israel had withdrawn three years before. In 2009, Benjamin Netanyahu returned to office. As Hamas gained strength, further wars erupted in 2012 and 2014, and a disillusioned Israeli public moved decisively to the Right.
Europe couldn’t cope. Then came October 7, and today we see a depraved race to eject Jews from polite society. Tensions over next month’s Eurovision are symbolic; Israel has gone from being an outpost of Western culture in the Middle East – a “villa in the jungle”, as former prime minister Ehud Barak provocatively put it – to a despised Caliban.
Germans face five years in jail for denying Israel’s right to exist
A German state wants to criminalise denying Israel’s “right to exist”, with pro-Palestinian slogans or even maps with Israel removed punishable by up to five years in prison.
The state of Hesse has announced an initiative to change the law on May 8, the anniversary of the Nazi surrender on VE Day, citing a rise in anti-Semitism since Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct 7, 2023.
The draft law would criminalise slogans such as “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, and its Arabic equivalent, as well as “there is only one state, Palestine ’48”. Any representations of Israel being a Palestinian state or even crossing out an Israel flag or putting it in a bin would be illegal.
Boris Rhein, the state leader, said: “The protection of Jewish life is more than just a declaration; it is Germany’s Staatsräson,” referring to the idea that Germany is responsible for Israel’s security because of its Nazi history, during which six million Jews were killed.
The Staatsräson, or “reason of state”, was popularised by Angela Merkel, the former chancellor, in the first speech to the Israeli parliament by a German leader in 2008. Though not mentioned in Germany’s constitution, it is seen by many politicians as a guiding political principle and a way to atone for the past.
Mr Rhein invoked this history, seemingly linking the pro-Palestine movement to the Nazis, saying: “It is unbearable that slogans are being shouted that we never thought would ever be uttered on German streets again.”
IDF soldier killed, six wounded in Hezbollah drone strike in Southern Lebanon
An Israel Defense Forces soldier was killed and six others were wounded in a Hezbollah explosive drone strike in Southern Lebanon on Sunday, the military said.
The fallen soldier was identified as Sgt. Idan Fooks, 19, of the 7th Armored Brigade’s 77th Battalion, from Petach Tikvah.
In the same incident, an officer and three soldiers were seriously wounded, one soldier sustained moderate injuries and another was lightly hurt, the IDF said, adding that the wounded were evacuated to the hospital for treatment, and their families had been informed.
Fooks is the third Israeli soldier to be killed in Southern Lebanon since a ceasefire came into effect on April 17, and the first to be killed in a direct Hezbollah attack during the truce, according to the IDF.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement Sunday evening mourning the fallen soldier.
“Our hearts grieve over fallen soldier, Sergeant Idan Fooks, of blessed memory, in battle in Southern Lebanon,” Netanyahu said. “My wife and I, along with all citizens of Israel, send our deepest heartfelt condolences to Idan’s family and share in their heavy loss. We wish a speedy and full recovery to our soldiers who were wounded in this difficult incident.
“Idan fought with bravery and courage alongside his comrades to restore security to the residents of the North, and this is what we shall continue to do. May his memory be blessed and cherished forever.”
Netanyahu accused Hezbollah of repeatedly violating the fragile truce, while the Iran-backed terrorist organization denied responsibility and blamed Israel for ceasefire breaches.
From Ian:
Trump evacuated from White House Correspondents’ Dinner amid security threat
US President Donald Trump and other top leaders of the United States have been evacuated from an annual dinner of White House correspondents on Saturday night after an unspecified threat. There do not immediately appear to be any injuries.
The Secret Service and other authorities swarmed the banquet hall as guests ducked under tables by the hundreds. “Out of the way, sir!” someone yelled. Others yelled to duck.
Reports say shots were fired in the vicinity of the dinner.
Gunman at White House Correspondents’ Dinner identified as California teacher
The gunman who opened fire at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday night has been identified as Cole Allen of Torrance, Calif. — with President Trump calling him a likely “lone wolf whack job” who “looked pretty evil.”
The 31-year-old, whom a federal law enforcement source confirmed is a teacher, was arrested after allegedly entering the Washington Hilton hotel and charging toward the ballroom where Trump and roughly 2,500 guests had assembled.
The gunfire broke out near the event’s indoor security screening area just after 8:30 p.m. — as salad was being served. The Secret Service rushed Trump out of the room as members of his cabinet ducked under tables before they too were evacuated.
Allen’s neighbor, who gave the name Jeff Smith, told The Post that “maybe he could be on the spectrum.”
Follow The Post’s live updates on the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner
Dramatic video posted on social media by Trump shows Allen opening fire and rushing toward the ballroom. A law enforcement officer was shot, with the bullet hitting his bulletproof vest.
“He was armed with a shotgun, a handgun and multiple knives as he ran into that checkpoint,” DC police chief Jeffrey Carroll said.
“At this point it does appear he is a lone actor, a lone gunman,” Carroll said. “There does not appear to be any sort of danger to the public.”
Trump hosted a press conference at the White House shortly after the incident, joined by first lady Melania Trump, who appeared on the verge of tears when her husband mentioned prior assassination attempts.
“There was a tremendous amount of love and coming together I watched,” the president said. “I was very, very impressed by that.”
From Ian:
March of the Living: our generation will soon be the last to hear these stories directly from Holocaust survivors
That same tension appeared in Krakow. We stood by part of what used to be the ghetto wall. Right next to it was a playground. Children were running around, playing, completely unaware of what that wall had once meant. It was such a normal scene, and that is what made it feel strange. Unlike Treblinka, this was not a place that had been erased. The wall was still there, but it had become part of everyday life. People walked past it, children played beside it, and unless you knew what it was, you could easily miss it. Standing there, it felt like two completely different realities existing in the same place. One grounded in history that feels almost impossible to comprehend, the other in normal life carrying on. Of course life continues, but there was something about that contrast that stuck with me. It made me think about how easily something so significant can fade into the background.
That idea followed through into the march itself. On Tuesday, we walked between Auschwitz and Birkenau as part of March of the Living. Thousands of people from all over the world, walking together along a route that once meant something completely different. It is described as a march of remembrance, which it is, but it also feels like something else. You are not seeing what happened there. You are walking in a place where something happened, knowing that most of it is no longer visible. What you see instead is what remains. Survivors walking with us. People singing. A sense of life in a place that was meant to be defined by death. At one point, we were walking with Martin, one of the survivors, and had to speed up to keep up with him. It was a small moment, but it stayed with me because of what it represented.
I was fortunate enough to be on the same trip as my mum, although we were on different buses, which meant we experienced it quite differently. On my bus, there was a real mix of perspectives. Some people had been before, some had never been. Some came with strong personal connections, others with what they had learned in school. Some people cried, some did not, and no one reacted in exactly the same way. What mattered was that we were able to talk about it. To sit with those differences and try to understand them. There was no right way to respond, and I think that is important.
What stayed with me most is more than what I saw. It’s what I have now heard and carry with me. Our generation will soon be the last to hear these stories directly from survivors. That means for future generations it is our responsibility; meaning now we have to listen. It sits in the conversations we had, the testimonies we listened to, and the way we choose to remember them. At some point, these stories will no longer be told first-hand. When that happens, it will be up to us to make sure they are still understood, still told properly, and still felt in the way they deserve to be. That is what this experience left me with.
March of the Living is more than a memorial of the past. It is about seeing survivors walk alongside us, still telling their stories, still living their lives and understanding what that means for my future.
Seth Mandel:
Can U.S. Universities Hold Commencements Free of Anti-Semitism?
Gothamist reports on the heartbroken students in New York who are being denied their Gaza-given right to speak at graduation.
“Commencement ceremonies at several local universities have undergone a post-Oct. 7 overhaul,” we’re told, “and some students say their free speech rights are being suppressed.”
For example, there will be no live student speech at the “school-specific ceremonies” (the ones that aren’t university-wide) at the New York University and City University of New York commencements. The law schools appear especially broken up about the new rule.
I’m also not speaking at any New York-area sub-commencement ceremonies, and so perhaps I should join the “First Amendment” lawsuit that anti-Zionists are filing against CUNY.
You see, CUNY in particular has a problem. It has a fervently anti-Semitic campus culture that the administration has failed to constructively address, so the university has difficulty producing public events that don’t deteriorate into Soviet anti-Zionist rallies.
Columbia University will forgo live student speeches at its main university-wide commencement. NYU plans to have pre-recorded student remarks at school-specific ceremonies.
The reasons behind these decisions vary by university—but only slightly.
At NYU, last year’s student commencement speaker added unapproved remarks to his speech, in violation of school policy, just so he could spread modern blood libels.
Columbia canceled its 2024 commencement entirely because its campus had devolved into a psychotic circus in which students were taking members of staff hostage, assaulting them, spray-painting Nazi graffiti and taunting the building workers as Jew-lovers. Last year, it brought back the commencement just so that students could drown it in boos.
Jonathan Tobin:
Unraveling the lies we were told about hate in America
For most Jews and many other people, the “Unite the Right” neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Va., in August 2017 was among the most shocking and disturbing moments in recent American history. As much as anything, it was the imagery of the torch-lit procession of hate-mongers at night that brought to mind the Nazi Nuremberg rallies of the 1930s that scared the Jewish community far and wide.
The events both on and near the campus of the University of Virginia itself were fairly small-scale and involved only a few hundred persons. Still, those haunting memories, coupled with the fact that one of the counter-protesters was killed by the mob of racists, convinced so many Americans that the country was in the middle of a crisis brought on by the election of Donald Trump.
But what if it turned out that among the funders of those involved was a group that not only hyped the threat from the far right, but also profited from it with a huge surge of fundraising? If that were true, then perhaps so much of what had shaped American public opinion about not only the alleged threat from such extremists and Trump, now in his second term as U.S. president, would have to be rethought.
A false narrative
As it turns out, that’s the truth about Charlottesville.
The indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center on charges of fraud ought to put in perspective much of the hysteria and alarmism about Trump supposedly empowering racists and engendering an epidemic of racism, xenophobia, antisemitism and Islamophobia.
The SPLC is charged with pouring millions of dollars raised from gullible liberal donors to far-right operatives. In its defense, the group claims that it was operating a vast undercover operation, obtaining intelligence about extremists that it could then use to better inform the nation about the threats it faced from dangerous organizations. But its funders didn’t know that’s where their money was going.
More to the point, a deep dive into the indictment makes it clear that what it was doing wasn’t so much investigating extremism as helping to produce it.
In point of fact, the SPLC funded one of the organizers of the Charlottesville rally, paying him $270,000 to post racist comments online and transport fellow extremists to central Virginia.
The principal myth about Charlottesville was that Trump had called the neo-Nazis and white supremacists that SPLC had helped gather were “very fine people.” That lie was debunked long ago—the president was referring to those upset by the removal of various statues in the South, not the neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members—but many Democrats and others on the left persist in spreading the accusation to bolster their narrative that Trump has encouraged and enabled racism, as well as antisemitism.
Wednesday, April 29, 2026
