03/30 Links Pt2: No one can deny it now: anti-Zionism is an ideology of hatred; Feminism’s Jewish Problem; The disturbed mind of the anti-Israel activist

From Ian:

Brendan O'Neil: No one can deny it now: anti-Zionism is an ideology of hatred

Actually, it was even worse than that. Over the weekend, Polanski aimed his ire not at those Green activists spouting Jew hate on WhatsApp but at a Jewish journalist who had the temerity to interview members of his family about the Green Party’s possible adoption of a ‘Zionism is racism’ policy. Polanski himself is Jewish and the fine journalist Nicole Lampert found that some of his relatives think he is taking the Greens in a very dark direction. They said it would be devastating for Britain’s Jews if the Greens decreed that ‘Zionism is racism’ – a policy they didn’t get around to discussing in the end at their party conference this weekend. Polanski accused Lampert of ‘parasitic behaviour’ – oof – and she swiftly found herself on the receiving end of a shitshow of hate from all those ‘good guys’.

So, a recap. Green activists referred to Jews as an ‘abomination to this planet’. The Green Party is considering adopting a policy singling out Jewish nationalism as racist. Polanski called a Jewish journalist ‘parasitic’. And, going back further, the Greens’ deputy leader, Mothin Ali, made excuses for the anti-Semitic barbarism of 7 October 2023, as did other Greens. Can we say it now – that the Green Party has a very serious problem with that most ancient of bigotries?

The Israelophobic left loves to say: ‘But Polanski is a Jew! How can you say the Greens have a problem with Jews?’ Here I will merely cite the words of Ms Lampert, who has been fighting the Jews’ corner in British journalism for many years. Polanski uses his Jewish heritage, she wrote in the Telegraph, to ‘kosherise the rampant Jew hatred in the Greens’. It’s a devastating line, and one it is increasingly hard to disagree with: that Polanski’s historic role is to provide the middle-class adherents to the new Socialism of Fools with a get-out-of-jail card. They point to his Jewishness as proof of their righteousness even as they engage in truly hateful behaviour against that ‘abominable’ people.

‘We’re not anti-Semitic, we’re anti-Zionist’, they’ll say. The irritation of Greens for Palestine at having to say Zionist rather than Jew surely explodes that crap once and for all. But more to the point, what do people mean when they say they’re anti-Zionist, not anti-Semitic? All I hear is: ‘I don’t hate Jews, I just want to deprive them of a right enjoyed by every other people and bring about the destruction of their homeland so that they will once again be scattered across the Earth.’

I’m sick of pussyfooting around this: if you dream of the Jewish nation’s destruction, and chant for the death of Jewish soldiers, and demonise Jewish nationalism as uniquely barbarous, then you have a problem with Jews. It might take 10 years, maybe 30, perhaps longer, but I am confident we will one day look back at the people who said, ‘I’m an anti-Zionist’, in the same way we look at those who said, ‘Round up the Jews’.

Is it time to retire the term antisemitism?

Synagogues are not embassies. Chanukah celebrations are not military installations. Museums are not government offices. These are Jews, living their lives, thousands of miles from Israel. Jews murdered in the name of anti-Zionism.

If this is anti-Zionism, then anti-Zionism does not stay in Israel. It does not confine itself to policy debates or territorial disputes. It follows Jews wherever they are. It attaches itself to Jewish identity itself.

At that point, the distinction collapses. Anti-Zionist, in practice, means anti-Jewish. And there is a deeper reason for that, one that goes beyond contemporary politics.

“Zion” is not merely the name of a modern state. The prophet Isaiah records God’s words: “And I say to Zion: You are My people.” Zion is not just a place. Zion is a people. And so, anti-Zionist, according to the Bible, means anti-Jewish. Tragically, it is almost unsurprising when Jews are attacked across the globe in the name of anti-Zionism.

So let us stop pretending. Let us stop arguing over whether anti-Zionism is or is not antisemitism. Let us simply call it what they call it: anti-Zionism.

Let it include every Jew who has been targeted, harassed, attacked or murdered under the banner of opposition to Zion.

Because if anti-Zionism consistently manifests as hostility toward Jews, if it repeatedly finds its targets not in government offices but in Jewish communities, if it aligns itself with violence against Jews across continents, then it has already answered the question.

We were looking for a word that means anti-Jewish. They have given us one.

If changing the label from antisemitism to anti-Zionism helps expose the scope and nature of what is happening, then perhaps it is a worthwhile exercise. Not because it resolves the debate, but because it sharpens it.

In the end, the question is not what we call the hatred. The question is whether we are willing to see it clearly. Words matter, but reality matters more.

Call it antisemitism. Call it anti-Zionism. The victims know no difference. And neither, it seems, do those who target them.

The disturbed mind of the anti-Israel activist

Collings’s turn from Britpop-loving centrist dad to an uncloseted Israelophobe took him into Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, and then straight out again. He was adopted as the parliamentary candidate for South West Norfolk in 2019. Within a day of his selection, he was suspended from the party for having dismissed allegations of anti-Semitism in Labour as a ‘witch-hunt’, and for calling the late chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, a ‘hate-filled racist’. He also shared conspiratorial diagrams on social media, purporting to reveal the ‘influence’ of Jewish businessmen on British politics. That’s right – Collings took things too far, even for the Corbynistas.

The Margate exhibition is laughably titled Drawings Against Genocide. The artworks look childish and this is deliberate. Collings is trying to strip away all artifice to let the unalloyed feelings shine out. The trouble is that, in letting us see directly into his soul, what we see there is repulsive.

Collings would no doubt argue that his ‘art’ is in the tradition of the anti-Vietnam War art of the 1960s radicals, like Michael Sandle’s Mickey Mouse at the Machine Gun (1972) or Leon Golub’s paintings of torture and killing, even though his Margate show is entirely misanthropic and hate-filled.

Some have called for the exhibition to be banned, but that would be a mistake. On the contrary, Matthew Collings has done us a great service by showing us the disturbed mind of the anti-Israel activist. It is good that we all see the depravity that lies at the heart of this movement.

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03/30 Links Pt1: Confronting Jihad's Forever War; The Big Ugandan Bear Hug; Trump considering operation to extract Iran's enriched uranium; Michigan synagogue attack was inspired by Hezbollah

From Ian:

Confronting Jihad's Forever War

The U.S. has confronted seemingly implacable ideological enemies before - and won. The lessons of Hiroshima, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Reagan's Cold War strategy point to a common principle: overwhelming force, credible will, and the imposition of unsustainable costs ultimately prevail.

Iran has not surrendered. Its proxies continue to launch missiles and drones. Its parliament invokes jihad. This is the behavior of a regime that does not process war through the same conceptual framework as does the West. The question policymakers must answer is not why Iran keeps fighting - but what kind of pressure will finally make continued fighting more costly than stopping.

One of the most consequential failures of Western strategic analysis has been treating the Islamic Republic's rhetoric as theater. It is not. Its leadership has articulated - with remarkable consistency across four decades - a vision of global, divinely ordained, open-ended struggle against Western civilization. Since 1979, Iran's Islamic Republic has called for "Death to America" and "Death to Israel."

The Karbala Paradigm functions as the Islamic Republic's operational code for conflict. In 680 CE, Imam Hussein ibn Ali - grandson of the Prophet Muhammad and the third Shiite Imam - rode with 72 followers into the plains of Karbala. He was surrounded by a vastly superior Umayyad army. He was offered a choice: submit to the Caliph Yazid, or die. He chose death. His followers were massacred. For Shiite Islam, this was the foundational moral event of the faith - proof that righteous resistance is sacred even when it leads to annihilation.

Any signal that Washington will negotiate the terms of Iran's nuclear program or proxy network - rather than their elimination - will be read as confirmation that the forever war is working. Yet, America does not want a forever war. Neither do Israel, the Gulf states, or the broader community of nations. The theology of jihad is formidable. The martyrdom culture of Karbala is real. But it is not more formidable than American resolve has proven to be.

The Islamic Republic has built its resistance strategy on the assumption that the West lacks the strategic patience and political will to sustain pressure long enough to defeat the regime. Now there is a narrow window to prosecute a historic change. We need to make clear - through action, not rhetoric - that the forever war will end Iran's revolution before it ends ours. The Islamic Republic's leadership has told us explicitly what they intend. The only remaining question is whether the U.S., Israel, and the West have the moral and strategic will to confront this messianic jihadi phenomenon and to defeat it.

Amb. Michael Oren: The Outcome of the Iran War: A Victory or a Pause before the Next War?

On Tuesday night, as U.S. President Donald Trump declared victory over Iran during a press conference, my family and I took shelter in our safe room. Despite the close partnership between Washington and Jerusalem, and the historic cooperation between the U.S. military and the Israel Defense Forces, America and Israel are living in entirely different realities.

From an American perspective, the near destruction of Iran's military capabilities, damage to its nuclear infrastructure, and the elimination of senior leadership can be framed as a victory. For Israel, the standard is far stricter. Any outcome that allows Iran to rebuild its nuclear and ballistic programs, retain enough enriched uranium for multiple nuclear weapons, and continue supporting terrorist proxies is not a victory. It is a pause before Israel is forced to fight the same war again, possibly alone.

During negotiations, Iran may accept principles in theory, then stall, dilute and avoid implementation in practice. We have seen this pattern before. The 20-point Gaza plan stalled when Hamas refused to disarm. The risk now is that Iran follows the same path, agreeing in principle while preserving its core capabilities. Israel cannot afford that outcome.

Israel must press for clear, enforceable guarantees before any agreement takes shape. Not vague assurances, not frameworks, but concrete commitments that address the core threat. At the same time, Israel must act with urgency, both in Iran and in Lebanon, to shape the strategic environment before diplomacy locks in outcomes it cannot reverse.

In Allied Campaign, Mission to Kill Top Iranians Fell to Israel

As U.S. and Israeli military commanders met to map out war with Iran, they deliberated over how to divide responsibility for an array of targets.

It was clear from the outset that one grim mission would belong to Israel: hunting and killing Iran's leaders.

Israel has pursued this assignment with ruthless efficiency, killing Iran's supreme leader in the opening salvo of the war and more than 250 other "senior Iranian officials" since, according to the Israeli military.

The campaign relies on an apparatus that Israel spent decades building but transformed over the past several years to achieve new levels of lethal proficiency.

Senior Israeli military and intelligence officials cited a proliferation of sources and surveillance capabilities inside Iran - regime insiders recruited to spy for Israel as well as cyber-penetrations of thousands of targets including street cameras and payment platforms.

These and other streams of data are being scoured by a new, classified artificial intelligence platform programmed to extract clues to leaders' lives and movements.

Israel's targeted killing tactics - bombs planted months before being detonated, drones capable of slipping into apartment windows, and supersonic missiles fired from stealth fighter jets - have been honed by years of conflict in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran.

Asked why the mission of targeting Iran's leaders was assigned to Israel, a senior Israeli security official cited its experience and expertise, saying: "There was a need to target them. And we could do it."

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03/29 Links: The War on Civilization: 'Israel Cannot Outsource Its Survival'; Why They Lie About ‘Jewish Terrorists’; No, Trump Is Not Losing His Nerve on Iran

From Ian:

The War on Civilization: 'Israel Cannot Outsource Its Survival'

A Conversation with Pierre Rehov
"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality, today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism." — Zoheir Mohsen, late PLO senior official, Trouw, March 31, 1977.

Hamas did not attack military targets to "end an occupation." It attacked families to affirm an old doctrine: the Jew is not an opponent; the Jew is a problem to be erased.

If you want to understand October 7, forget the comforting story of "desperation turning violent." Pogroms are not born from desperation; they are born from permission — social, religious, political permission to commit the unthinkable and feel righteous doing it.

In the Battle of Jenin, there was never any "confusion in the fog of war." The story that part of a hospital had been destroyed was a total fabrication. It revealed something essential: a good story has priority over reality.

The genius of the system is psychological. Once the image circulates, correction becomes irrelevant. The emotional verdict has already been delivered.

In modern warfare, the camera is no longer documenting the battle. It is part of the battlefield. The objective is not only to accuse Israel. It is to morally disarm the West. If you can persuade democratic societies that defending themselves equals murdering children, you have already won half the war.

They hate Israel for what it is: an infidel state – and in their midst. If Israel were a Christian state, the same problem would exist. Just look at the genocide in Nigeria – with more than 52,000 Christians killed in just 14 years – in a free society, which is a visible rejection of the Islamic totalitarian dream.

The Palestinian project is not a "two-state solution" or "a better border." The project is a world where religious and political absolutism rules, where minorities submit or vanish, where women are controlled, where dissent is crushed. Israel is the laboratory target. If the West rewards October 7 with political gains, it teaches a lesson to every violent movement on earth: massacre pays. So yes — Israel is defending itself, and in doing so, it is also defending the principle that civilization cannot survive if it negotiates with barbarity as if it were a partner who is misunderstood.

"In March 1978 I secretly brought Arafat to Bucharest for final instructions on how to behave in Washington. "You simply have to keep on pretending that you'll break with terrorism and that you'll recognize Israel -- over, and over, and over...." — Ion Mihai Pacepa, a lieutenant general in the Socialist Republic of Romania's Securitate, the secret police, who defected to the West in 1978, Wall Street Journal, September 22, 2003.

If a deal buys time for the "wrong" side, it is not a deal — it is an extension of the threat.

The point is that Israel cannot outsource its survival, and the United States cannot pretend that totalitarian jihadism can be "managed" indefinitely. Either you dismantle the infrastructure of terror, or it regrows.... Israel's enemies... are imposing a war on civilization.

Peace that is built on amnesia is not peace; it is a pause before the next war.

The West will not be defeated by lack of power. It will be defeated — if it is defeated — by the refusal to oppose danger when they see it.

Amir Peretz saw what others missed: Iron Dome reshaped Israel’s defense and future

Because Peretz was an outsider, he could think outside the box. It brings to mind the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Con men convince the king they can weave him elegant invisible clothing. Everyone parrots the praise of the new garments until a little boy in the crowd shouts that the emperor is actually naked.

The Israeli strategy had, in fact, focused on offense and ignored defense, leaving us as exposed as the emperor. It took a defense minister who grew up in beleaguered Sderot to make defense a priority.

In 1983, American president Ronald Reagan planned the grand-scale Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly called Star Wars. Reagan wanted to protect the US from long-range intercontinental nuclear-armed missiles. The program was canceled before it could be realized.

Not that the doubters were idiots. There was adequate reason for skepticism. The idea that a missile could hit another missile with exactitude sounds fantastical. Even after the Iron Dome was showing its worth, you can look back in military history to find claims by so-called experts magnifying its imperfections.

Once Israeli ingenuity was applied to defensive systems, an Amir Peretz priority, additional systems were developed with the confident financial support and technical collaboration of the United States. David’s Sling and Iron Dome are complementary layers of Israel’s multi-tier missile defense. Iron Dome works for four to 70 kilometers, intercepting short-range rockets and mortars, while David’s Sling intercepts up to 300 kilometers and defends against medium- to long-range missiles, cruise missiles, and drones. David’s Sling was jointly developed by Israel’s government-owned Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and US contractor Raytheon. The next level is protected by Arrow 3, jointly developed by the Israel Missile Defense Organization and the US Missile Defense Agency. The primary contractor is Israel Aerospace Industries.

The same Amir Peretz concluded his three-year tenure as chairman of Israel Aerospace Industries in November 2024. He successfully boosted international partnerships and company revenue.

The newest Israeli defense system, Iron Beam, depends on the development of powerful fiber lasers and is designed to destroy drones, rockets, and mortars at the speed of light, at a negligible cost per interception. None of these amazing tools is complete or airtight. The defensive systems are not “hermetic,” as the IDF spokesperson reminds us daily. Even with 90% accuracy, we have experienced enough misses to understand what horror we would face without our made-in-Israel protection. Bigger and richer countries than Israel do not have the defense systems we have.

So thank you, Mr. Peretz, for your foresight and persistence. President Donald Trump wants to name an American defensive system Golden Dome. He just might be calling you.

Why They Lie About ‘Jewish Terrorists’

The curious timing of this “international criticism,” right as the U.S. and Israel operate jointly against Iran, and the IDF pummels the Islamic Republic’s foreign legion in Lebanon, may offer one explanation why the violent settler narrative has picked up momentum once again. It’s noteworthy that this “criticism” is no longer confined to Europeans and the precincts of the Left. Since a faction of the American Right has resolved to make classic antisemitism and Israel-centered conspiracies central to its domestic political organization and identity formation, the Very Violent Settlers™ have come to play a particular role in this faction’s third-world sectarian universe, facilitated by D.C.-based Palestinian operatives and, regrettably, Palestinian Christian clergy in the West Bank. Last year, for example, this constellation of actors featured settlers in an info op targeting U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, and through him, American Evangelicals, who strongly support Israel and President Trump. The op at the time was that the settlers set fire to a church in the village of Taybeh. Only there was no fire in any church—the site was archaeological ruins; the fire, the cause of which was unclear, was in the dry field next to it—and settlers were recorded on video helping to put it out using firefighting equipment.

But the op did succeed in establishing a precedent and an audience on the Right receptive to Arab sectarianism. And so, earlier this week, the same players, including the same clergy from the same village—“the last entirely Christian village in the West Bank”—piled on the “international criticism” against the settlers. Not only does Israel drag Americans to war, this line goes, it also permits violent maniacs to deliberately target the Christians of the Holy Land.

Like the IDF bombing displaced Palestinians at the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza in Oct. 2023, or Israeli snipers deliberately shooting Palestinian children in the head one day and in the testicles the other, “almost as if a game is being played,” or Israel blocking the entry of baby formula into Gaza, it’s all rubbish. By the time Western audiences figure it out—after bad people have been rewarded and good people have been punished—most will move on to the next lie.

That’s because there is a large investment in there being a trend of Jewish Extremist Terrorism. The purveyors of this narrative—the mainstream media, politicians, even well-meaning activists—are all invested in the existence of Jewish villains on par with Muslim ones. Why? Maybe because there have been some 65,000 Islamic terror attacks since 9/11 across more than 70 countries. Maybe because jihadist attacks and plots in the EU in 2024 nearly doubled from the previous year, according to Europol. Maybe because, whatever wave of “Islamophobia” Mamdani imagines is sweeping the nation, Jews remain, by far, the most targeted religious group in the United States. But the good liberals of the West can’t admit any of this. Imagine what it would mean for their precious universalist principles—to say nothing of national policies—if they admitted that some cultures are different from others.

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03/28 Links: Europe’s shameful appeasement of Iran; In Israel, wartime reality doesn’t match what you see on the internet; What secular liberals don’t get about Islam

From Ian:

Tony Blair: Why the West Fails to Stop Antisemitism

These counterarguments need to be made loud and clear by leaders. I don’t know exactly what the response of the people of Britain would be if we woke up one day and between the hours of 6 a.m. and midday, 1,200 of our citizens were murdered, including young people at a music festival, with women raped and others taken hostage (and for Britain, proportionate to the size of population, the figures would be much larger). But I suspect it would be total determination that those responsible were going to be removed as a threat, and nothing would deter us from doing so.

The problem is that, under pressure from party activists and parts of the Muslim community, many progressive politicians who do sincerely reject antisemitism are not making these arguments, and failing to take head-on this literally “unholy alliance” between parts of the left and Islamists in our own societies whose ideology leads inexorably to antisemitism.

Because failure to do so creates the climate in which, even if antisemitism is not explicitly condoned, it flourishes.

One poll during the Gaza war showed that only 24 percent of the British Muslim community believed that October 7 happened in the way it did. Some even believe it was all an elaborate Israeli plot. That is frankly unacceptable.

I know some say that defending the State of Israel is not the way to defeat antisemitism. But there is more at stake than simply defending Israel. It’s about defending reason. Defending facts. Standing up to the noise and intimidation to assert the truth.

None of this means that you cannot support the creation of a Palestinian State or disagree strongly with this or that action of the government of Israel, particularly when that government includes within it figures from the very far right—with whom, it should be said, most members of the Jewish community would disagree.

But it does mean understanding that without a challenge to the ideology that encourages antisemitism, whilst clothing it in indignation at the human cost of war, incidents like the one with the ambulances will continue to the shame of our society.

Europe’s shameful appeasement of Iran

The truth behind the weak response of the leaders of Britain, France, Germany and other countries is far simpler: They refuse to accept that the only way to confront the ayatollahs is with force, plain and simple. The same mindset that produced the 2015 nuclear deal is ascendant now—namely, that military force is always wrong and counterproductive, and that what is needed is a return to soft power and diplomatic initiatives.

Yet such options have been tried and failed repeatedly, testing to destruction the idea that the Islamic Republic is capable of moderation. Years of negotiations on Iran’s nuclear weapons program, followed by punishing sanctions, failed to curb Iran’s appetite for an atomic weapon or a ballistic-missile program. With its long history of concealment, evasion and deception, the regime could never be trusted with agreements that limited its power. That equation has not changed.

The other reason for E.U. passivity may have to do with Ukraine. Many European diplomats are deeply concerned about the diversion of attention and military resources from Kyiv to Tehran. They fear that the war against Iran will be a boon to a Russian president who is desperate for some success after four years of indecisive war.

But this is to mistake short-term benefits for long-term strategic loss. Any weakening of Iranian power (and destruction of the very missiles that have been sent to bombard Ukrainian cities) reduces the threat both to Ukraine and the wider Middle East, ensuring that Russian President Vladimir Putin loses a much-valued client state in the region.

Another Iranian ally watching this war somewhat nervously is China, a major purchaser of cheap Iranian oil. President Xi Jinping will certainly believe that American hegemony in the energy-rich Gulf will not suit its long term interests, especially if he chooses to flex his muscles over Taiwan. He has already lost one important economic ally in Venezuela.

Perhaps a third reason for passivity is domestic in nature. There are substantial Muslim populations in a number of European countries, many members of which remain deeply radicalised by the war in Gaza. While some will side with Iranian Muslims who have borne the brunt of the regime’s savagery, many others will reflexively condemn the United States and Israel for their perceived aggression toward a Muslim country.

There are genuine fears of Iranian proxy attacks on European soil, including in the United Kingdom, where 20 attacks by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have been foiled recently and where two Iranians were charged with spying on the Jewish community. Yet while such fears cause genuine concern, they are no excuse for sitting on the diplomatic fence.

To their credit, Trump and Netanyahu are helping ensure that the Iranian threat is destroyed for a generation, potentially freeing that nation from the tyranny that has enslaved it. To their shame, European leaders remain mired in shameful and self-defeating appeasement.

Keir Starmer is giving Iran's terror cells free rein to operate in Britain says Israeli president Isaac Herzog

Israel's president has accused Keir Starmer of allowing Iran's 'empire of evil' to operate freely in Britain.

Isaac Herzog said the prime minister allowed Iranian terror cells to 'do what they want' in the UK and said the Middle Eastern 'rogue state' should be 'crushed'.

President Herzog made the comments in an interview earlier this week which came after four Jewish charity-owned ambulances were set on fire on Monday in an incident which is being treated as an antisemitic hate crime.

Metropolitan Police officials previously said the investigation into the arson attack was looking at an Islamist group with potential links to Iran after unsubstantiated claims of responsibility by Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya - The Islamic Movement of the People of the Right Hand.

Counter-terrorism police arrested two British nationals, aged 45 and 47, earlier this week and released both on bail.

Speaking to the executive director of pro-Israel campaign group StandWithUs, Mr Herzog said Iran spent 'billions of dollars' and had 'terror cells all over the world'.

He added Iran operated 'directly and through their proxies' and it was 'about time the world stands up to them'.

President Herzog continued: 'How come in Britain, the Prime Minister of Britain says there were about 10 or 20 events only last year linked to Iranian terror? What is this?'

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03/27 Links Pt2: The real reason the left hates Israel; Meet Iran’s 21-Year-Old American Propagandist; For America at 250, Some Jewish Wisdom on How to Last 3,000 Years

From Ian:

Rod Liddle: The real reason the left hates Israel

I had previously been of the generous – and naive – opinion that the white left hates Jews because it hates Israel. That through the inevitable contact with the people who call themselves Palestinian and their Muslim supporters, there was a gradual erosion of the boundaries between loathing Israel and, as so many Muslims do, loathing the people who live there. You end up nodding along when they say the Jews control the media and armaments and capital, and eventually you end up painting virulently anti-Semitic daubs in an art gallery in Margate and thinking how clever and right on you are and down with the Pallys.

But this was wrong, I think. It is the other way about. They hate Israel because they hate Jews. We all need somebody to hate and for the left, Jewish people have come to represent a plethora of things they already hated: capitalism, the West, military competence, industrial competence, education and a hostility to the religion which they come close to worshipping themselves, Islam. In a sense Israel is simply an embodiment of those already-present loathings.

It is true the Overton window had already moved quite sharply over the past ten years or so in tandem with the rapid growth of our Muslim population and its growing political weight. That is in there somewhere – but perhaps only to the extent that this growing section of our community gives licence to the real feelings the white left already had. A white left which can show you racism in a handful of dust – except where the Jews are concerned. Then, it simply doesn’t exist.

So when four ambulances are set on fire, it is easy to spot the anti-Semitic white lefties. They are the ones asking why the Jews have their own ambulances, or the ones suggesting it was a false flag attack by Mossad, or that this wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been for Gaza. These idiots are not only enemies of the Jews – they are enemies of the rest of us too.

The Free Speech of Fools

What remains of the original “heterodox” cause that died on Oct. 7 is the metastatic cancer that consumed it and which now wears the exact face and form of Tucker Carlson. Today it is led by luminaries like Owens, whom Carlson repeatedly welcomes on his show, Megyn Kelly, another great Owens defender, sundry leftists like Glenn Greenwald who make common cause with Carlson and Owens, yellow journalists desperate for page views, like the hosts of the show Breaking Points, podcasters of the “Hitler was a misunderstood empath” genre, comedians whose comedy consists of hectoring political monologues, and assorted social media influencers including the former pimp Andrew Tate, and the mestizo anti-Jewish campaigner Nicholas Fuentes.

What has replaced the loose association of individuals organized around adherence to a common idea is a grossly self-serving social network. Led by Carlson, the network systematically undermined the organizing principle of the anticensorship movement, which was aggressive, open inquiry skeptical of ideological dogma and institutional authority. In its place, members of the Carlson clique obey two imperatives: to shield other members from legitimate criticism and to uphold anti-Jewish ideology as the ultimate principle of free speech.

Sharing and competing for the same audience, members of the network frequently appear for puff interviews on each other’s shows, circulate the same guests, and launder the same propagandistic talking points. While posturing as tough independent journalists taking on the establishment, they operate like a social club. Driven by the worst incentives of social media and insulated from criticism, this self-credentialing blob turned independent journalism into a synonym for in-group cattiness, schlock conspiracy, propaganda, and audience pandering.

Michael Tracey, who was an early debunker of Russiagate and COVID fallacies, has called the Epstein affair “the worst covered story of my lifetime, by far—and with the most destructive consequences.” Tracey is one of the few journalists who has been willing to question the extraordinarily popular Epstein mythology, despite himself being a strident critic of Israel. “Flinging around charges of ‘anti-Semitism’ has of course been cheapened beyond recognition, especially since 10/7/2023, but if you’re unaware that a HUGE portion of online uproar around Epstein is rooted in open, unabashed anti-Semitic ideology, you’re simply deluding yourself,” Tracey recently wrote.

In his coverage, one distinctly senses Tracey arriving at this conclusion—namely, that the Epstein melodrama is fueled by antipathy toward Jews—somewhat reluctantly, and only out fealty to an unavoidable truth. The structural reshaping of the news ecosystem into “independent” voices and outlets, which once held so much promise to cut through entrenched interests and provide audiences with an unvarnished view of the world around them,, instead ended up as a propaganda industry promoting the work of fantasists and open antisemites.

Maybe this was inevitable. Like the transgender activists before them, they seem to imagine themselves as members of a heroic resistance movement. What they fail to see is that being drunk on self-righteous hatred of the Zionist entity has not made them brave martyrs. It has made them aggressively incurious and blind to the reality around them, which has in turn made their audiences less informed and easier to manipulate. Epstein mania is the logical endpoint. It is a story that underscores the spectator’s lack of agency in a world utterly outside their control, while also promising them access to its deepest secrets.

Transforming the American concept of free speech into a euphemism for “asking the Jewish question,” required a large cooperative effort. Many people participated, some directly, others through silent assent. Yet if past historical episodes offer any lessons for the present, some of these people will seek to minimize their contributions and rewrite the past. Indeed some of them are already trying. For the sake of keeping an honest record about a pivotal moment in history, they should all be given credit for their work.

Nathan Livingstone (aka MilkbarTV): Circling Back On Oswald Mosley, The Fascist Tucker Carlson Calls A ‘Patriot’

Last week, Tucker Carlson released a video framed as a shocking piece of history: “Winston Churchill presided over the imprisonment of his opposition party during the entire length of the war.” According to Carlson, their only crime “was being the opposition party and being disloyal and unpatriotic. They weren’t.”

He goes on to build this political prisoner up as a heroic figure: “The opposition was led by a First World War hero who fought not just as a pilot in the sky, but in the trenches — one of the great war heroes, a former Member of Parliament.”

So who exactly is Tucker talking about?

Although he is never named, images of Oswald Mosley flash throughout the video, fists clenched, rallying so-called patriotic Britons. But search his name and you’ll also see images of Mosley and his fellow British Union of Fascists (BUF) members performing Roman salutes in Mussolini-style uniforms, complete with imitation armbands bearing the BUF lightning bolt, drawing heavily from Nazi aesthetics. Mosley wasn’t the leader of a legitimate opposition party. By the time of his arrest, he wasn’t even an MP, and his party, the British Union of Fascists, operated outside Britain’s democratic system. These are hardly minor details, yet are conspicuously absent from Carlson’s video.

What else did Tucker leave out?

Mosley came from an aristocratic family. He served briefly in France during World War I as a cavalry officer, but after being injured in training with the Royal Flying Corps, he spent the rest of the war away from the front. His war record was later exaggerated for propaganda purposes — and apparently still is today.

He then entered Parliament, drifting from the Conservative to the Labour Party. After the Cabinet rejected his plan to tackle unemployment through public works and the nationalization of major industries as too radical, he resigned, turning toward the rising authoritarian movements in Europe.

Mosley visited Mussolini’s Italy in 1932 and, impressed by what he saw, founded the British Union of Fascists.

The BUF would also become closely aligned with Germany’s rising Nazi movement. Mosley was so close to the regime that he married his second wife, Diana Freeman-Mitford, herself a committed fascist, at Joseph Goebbels’ home. Only a handful of guests were present. The guest of honor? Adolf Hitler, naturally.

The early days of the BUF saw rallies drawing tens of thousands: members dressed in Mussolini-inspired blackshirt uniforms, standing in columns and raising Roman salutes as Mosley strode through to deliver impassioned speeches. Membership at one point reached 50,000. Popular British papers like the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror heralded the movement with headlines “Hurrah for the Blackshirts” and “Give the Blackshirts a helping hand.”

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03/27 Links Pt1: Israel is crafting a powerful new anti-Iran axis; Iranian missile strike US airbase in Saudi Arabia, 12 soldiers wounded

From Ian:

‘Experts’ hate Trump’s war on Iran. They’re making seven fatal errors

What is wrong with the West’s expert class? Do they really believe, as they keep telling us, that the war against Iran is a disaster, the end of days, the final humiliation for Donald Trump? Such defeatism, such catastrophism are not warranted. It is far too soon to conclude how this war will end, regardless of what Iranian propagandists and other appeasers would have us believe.

I can count seven principal errors clouding “expert” judgments in the West.

Error 1
The first is the European establishment’s inability to accept the scale of Iran’s defeats since the Oct 7, 2023 pogroms against Israel, one of the greatest military miscalculations in modern history.

The regime’s decades-long plan for regional domination lies in tatters. It has wasted tens of billions of dollars, its proxies have been defanged, its economy plunged into depression, its mainland ravaged with close to 20,000 targets bombed, its navy sunk, its air defences crippled, its missile stock and launchers decimated, its military-industrial complex blown up, its nuclear capacity curtailed – but apart from that, all is well in Tehran. It is a strange kind of victory which has seen Iran fail to shoot down a single US or Israeli manned plane or sink a single ship.

The reality is that Iran has been downgraded from regional superpower to a pirate terror state, able only to shoot a few missiles and drones at civilian targets, to threaten crimes against humanity, and to blackmail the shipping industry.

Yes, this residual power matters greatly: controlling the Strait of Hormuz and threatening Gulf oil and gas facilities is a potent form of asymmetric warfare that is inflicting devastating damage. But it hardly amounts to US defeat, or certainly not yet.

I don’t know how this war will end. Trump’s negotiations may fail. He may botch an invasion, or he may launch a successful airborne raid. What is certain is that he must reopen the Strait and will be judged on the outcome.

Error 2
The second myth is that Trump is somehow struggling because he supposedly failed to plan for the obvious. In fact, many US assumptions were either right or too pessimistic. It proved remarkably easy to kill Ali Khamenei. Iran failed to overwhelm US and Israeli defence systems.

Critics warned that stockpiles of allied interceptors would run out almost immediately; that was false. The Gulf states turned out to be more resilient than anticipated; instead of turning to China or hoisting the white flag, they shot down missiles, and the Saudis and UAE are moving closer to Washington. US combat losses have been smaller than expected.

Not everything has gone better than planned. Trump may have hoped that Iran’s ability to deploy missiles and drones would have diminished further. The low-probability possibility of an immediate implosion of the regime hasn’t materialised. It may well be that the US underpriced the chances of attacks on Qatari energy assets.

But the idea that Iran would move to block the Straits of Hormuz was the best-rehearsed risk in geopolitics. Trump probably accepted it as a necessary trade-off, an inevitable hit. It may well be that Trump didn’t expect Iran to move so fast. It might have been a blunder not to dispatch more demining resources to the Gulf ahead of time. We shall soon find out; the stakes are enormous.

History’s Pro Tips on Iran

Nothing in human experience compares to the wars of the last 120 years. Their scope has grown as the world has shrunk. The international laws governing conduct in war have too often failed. Technology advances, and along with it war’s lethality and devastation. So war is bad. No one wants another war. Or rather, almost no one. More on that shortly. In the meantime, the question before us is whether the current U.S. and Israeli operations against Iran qualify as just. It’s a debatable matter. I believe they are. I understand the opposite view. But I also find it unpersuasive. Here’s why.

The United States and Israel didn’t start the current conflict. It’s merely the latest phase in a war that began in earnest forty-seven years ago; a methodical war of aggression pursued by Iran to erase Israel as a nation and defeat the United States as the world’s “Great Satan.” The Tehran regime now supports a global network of terrorist violence. In the process, since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the same regime has murdered or sponsored the murder of scores of thousands of people, including many of its own citizens, the vast majority innocent of any wrongdoing.

It would be easy but inadequate to excuse today’s Iranian policies as vengeance for the 1953 Mossadegh Affair. In that year, at the height of the Cold War, Britain’s MI6 and the American CIA overthrew Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh. In his place, they secured the pro-Western Reza Shah Pahlavi in power. For Britain, the goal was maintaining its control over Iranian oil. For the United States, the coup sought to prevent any Iranian drift toward the Soviet Union and any internal threat from Iran’s Tudeh (communist) Party. In the end, Mossadegh was imprisoned for three years and then held under house arrest for the remainder of his life. Several hundred pro- and anti-Mossadegh rioters died in the ensuing street violence.

So much for the past. The hatred animating today’s Islamic regime is far more intense, systematic, and expansive than mere revenge for an event more than seventy years ago. Mossadegh died in 1967. The 1979 revolution sidelined and repressed Mossadegh’s secular, nationalist allies, and his memory is treated with deep ambivalence. In practice, Tehran reviles anything non-Muslim. Its “tolerance” for internal, legally recognized minorities, including Catholics and other Christians, is little more than theater. It amounts to a kind of slow strangulation with distrust and oppressive constraints. The regime especially loathes what it sees as a godless West with its arrogance, licentious comforts, and obscene wealth. It has the same brutal zealotry, the same puritanical extremism, the same easy use of deceit, as the homicidal ideologies that preceded it in the last century.

Tehran has repeatedly lied in negotiations about its nuclear program. It continues to pursue nuclear weapons. This, despite years of pleading and pressure from the international community. It ignores both sanctions and financial enticements. It’s built an immense missile and drone capability, putting Europe and eventually the United States within range. It uses cluster weapons—banned by international law—against civilian populations. And if current military efforts against Iran prove anything, it’s the impressive scope and depth of the regime’s war preparations, the dispersal and hardening of key infrastructure, and the survival of many leadership cadres despite massive damage. A reasonable peace assuring mutual security has never been, and is not even now, on Tehran’s agenda. One doesn’t “make a deal,” a deal that’s sincere and lasting, with psychotics. Religious and political fanatics don’t stop. They won’t, because they can’t. Thus, the best one can hope for when dealing with mentally diseased zealots is preventing them from hurting others.

Hamas Confirms: Gaza Airstrikes That Hit Homes & Tents Actually Killed Terrorists — 10 Examples

A common narrative of the Gaza war is that Israel conducted indiscriminate bombing, striking civilian homes, shelters, and tents in humanitarian zones without military justification. Some observers have alleged that AI and automated systems were used to target single junior operatives or persons with no real affiliation to Hamas or other militant groups. Yet no clear, affirmative evidence has been produced showing the IDF deliberately targeted a civilian site absent a military objective.

This narrative nevertheless became central to accusations of war crimes and genocide. It gained traction in part because Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) systematically operate in civilian dress and embed within homes, mosques, hospitals, and humanitarian zones as part of their human shield strategy. Under these conditions, strikes on legitimate military targets can appear indistinguishable from attacks on civilians, especially in initial reporting. Early accounts, often provided by Hamas operatives posing as journalists , were frequently accepted and amplified before additional information emerged.

Even when the IDF identified targets and provided operational details, these explanations were often dismissed. However, that posture is becoming difficult to maintain. Recent disclosures by Hamas and PIJ, through official statements, affiliated Telegram channels, and martyr notices, have identified dozens of their own operatives killed in incidents widely reported as attacks on civilians. PIJ alone has acknowledged more than 140 members of its command structure killed during the war.

When these admissions are cross-referenced with specific strike reports and contemporaneous local reporting that initially presented the individuals as civilians but now confirms them as combatants, a consistent pattern emerges. Many incidents described as unlawful attacks on homes, shelters, or tents in humanitarian zones were in fact strikes targeting embedded fighters. As more of these cases come to light, the narrative of indiscriminate or blind AI directed airstrikes on civilian targets is exposed as false by the accumulating evidence.

The following ten cases, drawn from recent Hamas and PIJ martyr notices, demonstrate the pattern using the groups’ own admissions.

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03/26 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips Issues WAKE UP Call To Jews In The West; Green Party Moves to Declare Jewish Self-Determination “Racist”; Tariq Ramadan sentenced to 18-year jail term for rape

From Ian:

Maureen Lipman: Does the world have any idea of how tired the people of Israel are?

As Blanche du Bois bravely states as she is dragged off to a mental home in the last scene of Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire: “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” The Jewish communities of the world are back on that same streetcar, reliant on the whims of tyrants and the gullibility of their moronic followers. The appalling ambulance arson attack is the result of genuinely sick minds.

David unearthed a 1994 copy of this very paper and honestly, save for the design differences, it could have been today’s edition.

A suicide car bomb had exploded during the Middle East Peace talks, killing eight people and injuring 50 civilians. Even before the bombing, a poll revealed that one-third of Israelis thought that the demands of peace could cause civil war. Thirty-two years of existential battles later, does the world have any idea of how tired the people of Israel are?

The BBC and reporters worldwide do not go into the shelters where children are trained to lie on the floor when the sirens go off. A dear friend told me that his grandchildren have needed to enter their safe room more than 200 times since the current battle began.

Neither do they report on the closure of schools. Most Israeli kids have missed some school every day since Covid. Are the media even aware of the fear of the elderly in Israel? “I am alone,” said one, “I spend the nights scared of the bombings. If anything happens to me will anyone notice?”

In the same 1994 edition, there is a review of a biography of Roald Dahl, citing him as a coming from the Goebbels school of propaganda. In an interview in the Independent, he said of the bombing of Beirut during the first invasion of Lebanon: “It was hushed up in the newspapers because they are primarily Jewish-owned.” This drivel coming from an avowed antisemite and blatant self-publicist, with unhampered access to the media. When the JC phoned him for a quote on his Independent diatribe, he said:

“I’m an old hand at dealing with you buggers. No comment.”

We had form Dahl and I. He once was so insulting to me, as in “You people…” on a chat show, that I was struck dumb. Years later in a Sydney hotel he was in the lift as I got in with my small children. I had always vowed that if I ever met him I would confront him. Except once again my courage failed and I think I mumbled, “Good morning.” I met his wife once on a cruise. She was a beautiful woman and a great actress. Dahl, in fairness, nursed her back to health after a severe stroke. Then he left her for a younger woman to live on higher moral ground.

Page seven of the newspaper is of particular interest with an NUS conference calling for measures to be brought in against militant Muslim students distributing leaflets calling for the death of Jews. Plus ça change… except the NUS may not be quite so philosemitic these days.

David Collier: Green Party Moves to Declare Jewish Self-Determination “Racist”

This weekend, at their spring conference, UK Green Party members are preparing to debate a motion titled simply: “Zionism is Racism.”

Motion A105 does not merely criticise Israeli government policy. It attempts to rewrite Jewish identity and Jewish history in order to deny the Jewish people the same right afforded to every other nation: the right to self determination. At the same time, it undermines the very anti-racist safeguards developed to protect Jewish communities in the Diaspora.

The incoherent, self-contradictory, and ahistorical mess that forms the text of this “anti-Zionist” motion is the resurrection of a discredited ideological campaign whose origins lie in Soviet propaganda – an effort designed to isolate and demonise the Jewish national movement.

Rather than become lost rebutting every distortion and fabrication line by line, it is more useful to focus on the core pillars upon which the motion rests. Examining them exposes the true nature of what the Green Party is proposing.

Denying the Jewish right to self-determination
The motion begins by redefining Zionism itself:
“Zionism is a political ideology which called for the creation… of an ethnonationalist Jewish State… to the exclusion and/or domination of the non-Jewish population.”

This is a false accusation, not a definition of Zionism. Zionism emerged as a national liberation movement of a stateless people. It was the conclusion reached after centuries of failed integration, persecution and expulsion. Israel is a nation built by refugees. Families of people who learned the hard way that their safety could never be entrusted to others. To label that project racist is as absurd as calling a refuge for abused women sexist. Both evolved as a means of protection, not domination.

Zionist is a Jewish label
Zionism is the national movement of the Jewish people, rooted in their history, their vulnerability, and their need for collective security.

One of the frequently repeated defences is to present Zionism as a political ideology, detached from Jewish identity.

Technically, there are non-Jews who identify as Zionists, and there are Jews who do not. But this framing conceals something important.

A non-Jewish person living safely in the West who declares themselves a Zionist is not personally exercising Jewish self-determination. They are expressing support for the right of Jews to exercise theirs.

There is a distinction, and it matters. A Londoner who supports Scottish nationalism is not considered a Scottish nationalist in any meaningful national sense. He remains a Londoner expressing an opinion about another people’s national aspirations.

Zionism is not about its supporters abroad. It is about the national existence of the people who live it, and the aspirations of others who want to join them.

When the Green Party declare Zionism to be racism, they are not condemning a theoretical idea held by distant sympathisers. They are condemning the national legitimacy of millions of Jews whose identity, security, and future are bound up in that state.

Tony Blair (paywalled): Why the West Fails to Stop Antisemitism

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