From Ian:
Michael Oren:
America's Founders Fought a Middle East War Centuries Ago. We Could Learn a Lot from Them
George Washington believed it "the highest disgrace" that Americans paid monetary "tribute" to the Barbary pirates of North Africa who preyed on American merchant ships in the Mediterranean, enslaving their crews and endangering the nascent republic's economy. The practice sparked a visceral debate between John Adams, who favored giving in to extortion over using force, and Thomas Jefferson, who preferred to "raise ships and men to fight the pirates into reason [rather] than money to bribe them."
Today, the U.S. is grappling with many of the same questions. To what degree should Americans defend the freedom of navigation through a vital international waterway? Should they stand up to or pay off a Middle East power threatening it? The ayatollahs' worldview is almost identical to the pirates'. In a 1786 meeting with Jefferson and Adams in London, Tripoli's ambassador Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja insisted that Barbary was sovereign in the Mediterranean and that no nation could traverse it without paying a massive toll.
He further explained "that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their [the Muslims'] right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners." Any Muslim killed in battle "was sure to go to Paradise."
Jefferson concluded that peace with Barbary was only attainable "through the medium of war," but the newly independent America lacked a navy. After adopting the Constitution in 1789, which enabled a single federal government to raise taxes to build a navy, the U.S. authorized the construction of six frigates especially designed to fight close to Barbary's shallow shores. What ensued was America's first foreign war, lasting until 1815. Only then was Barbary decisively defeated, and American merchantmen guaranteed safe passage through the Mediterranean.
The victory was a source of immense national pride. The country erected its first war monument, to the triumphant Barbary War, on the campus of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. 17 American cities were named for the hero of that campaign, Commodore Stephen Decatur. And the Marines still sing of their landing "on the shores of Tripoli."
These testaments serve to remind Americans of the ways in which the Founders faced the threats to free navigation posed by an extremist Middle Eastern regime.
Netanyahu: ‘No room’ for Palestinian state between Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday that there is “no room for two states” between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, arguing the war created broad public consensus against creating a Palestinian state.
“Before the war, the public was divided: although in my opinion most of the public was against it, a significant portion was in favor. I think that has changed,” Netanyahu told reporters, answering a question at a press conference in Jerusalem on Saturday night.
“That is a basis for agreement,” added the premier. “In my opinion, there is much more unity among the public than you see in the Knesset.”
Netanyahu was responding to a question from Israel Hayom about the principles on which he would seek to form his next government if he wins another term in the general election this fall.
Before the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre that sparked the current multi-front war, 69% of Israelis opposed the establishment of another Palestinian state beyond the one in Gaza. This opposition surged to 79% in the aftermath of the attacks, according to polling data published by the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs in May.
Israeli government votes to recognize Armenian Genocide
The Israeli Cabinet on Sunday voted to recognize the genocide carried out against the Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks by Ottoman Turkey in the early 20th century.
“The government of Israel unanimously approved Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar’s proposal to recognize the Armenian Genocide,” Sa’ar’s office announced following the weekly Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem.
“It is never too late to do the right thing,” he said in the statement.
Sa’ar announced on Thursday night that he would submit the resolution to the Cabinet, tweeting: “Recognizing the genocide perpetrated against the Armenian people in the final years of the Ottoman Empire is both a moral and historical duty.
“We must also firmly condemn any denial, minimization or distortion of the historical truth,” he added. “The resolution will subsequently be brought before the Knesset for a vote.”
To date, 34 countries, including the United States and Greece, have recognized the Armenian Genocide. Israel would be the 35th.
In August 2025, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the first time publicly recognized the Armenian Genocide.
Asked by American podcaster Patrick Bet-David why Jerusalem has yet to recognize the genocide, Netanyahu said, “In fact, I think we have. I think the Knesset passed a resolution to that effect.”
From Ian:
Lyn Julius:
There is no distinction between Jews and Zionists - ask Jews from Arab countries
It has been six months since 15 people were gunned down on Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, prompting the establishment by a shocked government of a Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.
The Commission has received over 16,000 submissions, and a block of hearings is slated to begin at the end of June.
My organization Harif – the UK Association of Jews from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) – was asked to make a submission on behalf of the 10 to 20% of Australian Jews who are Sephardi or Mizrahi (easterners), i.e., hailing from the Middle East and North Africa.
They may be a minority within the Jewish minority, but their experience of living in Arab and Muslim countries and fleeing from these lands can bring an essential perspective to understanding the causes of antisemitism sweeping through the West today.
The Commission might be able to learn useful insights from them, the first being that almost a million Jews were ethnically cleansed from the MENA, even though they had no part to play in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Almost no Jews live in the Arab world today because Arab governments conflated Jews with Zionists. Jews were victimized as potential spies for Israel.
Whatever their political leanings and however spurious the pretext, Jews could be arrested, tried, and even executed for the crime of Zionism.
The second insight is that one cannot perceive a distinction between Jews and Zionists in Western antisemitism. Today, supporters of the Palestinian cause say they are against Zionism, not Jews.
When 'Zionism' becomes the cover
They point to the small number of Jews who join their protests.
However, it doesn’t take much to see that “legitimate criticism of the Israeli government” takes the form of verbal and physical abuse of Jews, firebombings, arson, and shootings at Jewish schools and synagogues, and ultimately, the murder of Jews simply for being Jews.
Left-wing Jews attempt to deflect by claiming that antisemitism is a problem for the Right. They claim that curbs on incitement proposed by the Commission are in reality limitations on free speech.
But the two gunmen who slaughtered Jews celebrating Hanukkah on Bondi Beach never asked what their victims’ views on Israel were.
Mizrahi Jews who are now resettled in the West are experiencing a sense of déjà vu, reliving the trauma they experienced in their birth countries. The bullying and harassment they thought they had escaped are back with a vengeance.
The slogans chanted in every anti-Jewish riot in Arab countries never did distinguish between Jews and Zionists.
Between Jakarta and Jerusalem
Conclusion: The dawn of functional normalisation
Ultimately, Indonesia’s calculated steps toward the Gaza post-war architecture reveal a sophisticated paradox. President Prabowo’s conciliatory rhetoric and his willingness to engage with the Board of Peace demonstrate a level of pragmatic goodwill that would have been unthinkable under previous administrations. The strategic benefits of the move – currying favour with Washington, positioning Indonesia as a responsible global middle power and securing a seat at the table in Middle Eastern affairs – are simply too lucrative for Jakarta to ignore.
However, Western observers must avoid the illusion of an imminent, warm normalisation. The path to formal diplomatic ties remains firmly blocked by the domestic Palestinian veto and is entirely contingent upon a prior breakthrough between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
What we are witnessing instead is the birth of “Functional Normalisation”. The massive logistical realities of a potential Indonesian deployment, combined with daily operational coordination within the Board of Peace, will force Israeli and Indonesian defence, intelligence and diplomatic officials into unprecedented direct contact.
A stark preview of this reality occurred recently with the interception of the Global Sumud Flotilla, where the detention of Indonesian activists forced Foreign Minister Sugiono to utilise the Board of Peace as a direct de-escalation channel with Jerusalem. This crisis proved that while institutional ambiguity can be “quicksand”, the operational imperatives of crisis management create an unavoidable, functional dialogue.
For Israel, securing the active involvement of the world’s largest Muslim nation in securing its post-war periphery is an extraordinary geopolitical achievement. For Indonesia, it is a high-risk domestic tightrope walk. Therefore, functional, quiet and deeply cautious coordination is the maximum the current geopolitical architecture can bear, and even that is only feasible if the ISF mandate remains strictly defined and a Saudi catalyst remains on the horizon.
From Ian:
We owe the Jews of the 1930s an apology
For most of my life, I looked back at the Jews of the 1930s with a question I could never quite answer: Why didn’t they see it?
Why didn’t they recognize what was unfolding around them? Why did so many continue believing that reason would ultimately prevail, that institutions would protect them, that the political rhetoric wasn’t meant literally or that the hatred would eventually burn itself out?
Those questions become harder to ask with confidence when we look honestly at the world today.
Perhaps we owe the Jews of the 1930s an apology.
Perhaps they saw far more than we ever gave them credit for. Perhaps they understood exactly what was happening but found themselves trapped by institutions they trusted, political coalitions they had spent generations building and a natural human reluctance to believe that civilized societies could unravel as quickly as they eventually did.
That possibility should make every Jew stop and think.
History rarely repeats itself exactly, but it often rhymes with unsettling precision. The slogans change. The technology changes. The politics change. But human nature changes very little. Every generation convinces itself that it is more enlightened than the one before it; yet every generation eventually discovers that prejudice has an extraordinary ability to reinvent itself while insisting it is something entirely different.
Today’s antisemitism rarely introduces itself honestly. It often disguises itself as activism, social justice, anti-colonialism, academic theory or political purity. It changes vocabulary without changing intent. Hatred has always been remarkably adaptable. It learns the language of the moment because it makes it easier to recruit people who would never knowingly associate themselves with antisemitism.
That is what makes this moment so dangerous.
There are candidates seeking public office who have been trafficking in antisemitic rhetoric or repeatedly associating themselves with those who do. There are elected officials who cannot bring themselves to condemn antisemitism with the same clarity they demand on virtually every other form of hatred. There are universities where Jewish students increasingly question whether they can openly express their identity without becoming targets. There are institutions that seem more comfortable explaining antisemitism than confronting it.
None of this should feel normal.
In new book, former AJC chief David Harris traces antisemitism’s past — and warns about its present
David Harris spent more than three decades leading the American Jewish Committee, where he navigated crises facing the Jewish community and built bipartisan coalitions to advance the group’s mission of supporting Israel and Diaspora Jewry.
His book, Antisemitism: What Everyone Needs to Know, published by Oxford University Press last year, is Harris’ attempt to reach beyond the Jewish community — churches, classrooms and the “average New York Times reader.” His goal, he said, is to turn the “silent majority” into the “loud majority.”
Written in the shadow of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks in Israel, the book arrived at a moment of surging antisemitism in the U.S. and around the world. It traces antisemitism from its ancient roots through the Holocaust, the Soviet era and its recent resurgence — the explosion on college campuses and beyond after Oct. 7 and the ensuing war in Gaza.
Harris, who quipped that he retired “for about 30 seconds” after serving as AJC’s CEO from 1990–2022, sat down with Jewish Insider on Thursday to discuss the book at a moment in which he said he has “never been more worried” about antisemitism — yet also remains optimistic about the Jewish future.
Thank you, Mayor Zohran Mamdani: Your hate might just be a blessing in disguise
Mamdani, the newly elected Mayor of New York City, has chosen to lead the charge as an overt anti-Zionist, deploying rhetoric that positions himself squarely against the Jewish state and the mainstream Jewish community. From his policy decisions to his endorsement of congressional candidates aimed at reshaping the American legislature, his positions are stark.
Mamdani is performing a vital service: he is alerting us before it is too late. By abandoning the polite euphemisms that long characterized progressive anti-Israel rhetoric, he is letting us know exactly where we stand. When he openly mocks the traditional Israel Day Parade in NYC while happily attending other cultural parades, he is showing us that the water is bubbling.
Consider his recent public declaration regarding the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Mamdani openly branded the mainstream pro-Israel lobby as “monsters” who move millions in “dark money.” Speaking from City Hall, he argued that they weaponize capital to “preserve their power so that they can turn us against one another.” He declared: “In the wealthiest city, in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, we need not live in fear of monsters any longer.”
The mayor governing the city with the largest Jewish population in the world outside of Israel is not just looking to have a local impact, but a national and global one. Utilizing the laundering of classic, ancient conspiratorial accusations from the highest municipal podium in America. When an elected official swaps out traditional diplomatic expressions for terms like “monsters” and a hidden hand, “turning us against one another,” he normalizes a dangerous propaganda pattern characterized by three distinct realities:
• The Creation of Moral Binaries: reducing a multi-layered, existential regional conflict into a simplistic fairy tale of pure oppressors and pure oppressed.
• Emotionally Charged Outrage: mobilizing a political base by framing ideological opponents not as mistaken, but as morally illegitimate and subhuman, literal “monsters.”
• The Deployment of Scapegoating: suggesting that a powerful, Jewish-associated organization is the clandestine architect of broader domestic societal suffering.
Mamdani operates within a democratic framework subject to courts and elections; the danger lies in his techniques. History teaches us that when you systematically dehumanize a group and simplify complex realities, you create a social atmosphere where raw prejudice becomes acceptable, normalized, and eventually weaponized.
From Ian:
US-Israel-Lebanon sign trilateral framework agreement aimed at dismantling Hezbollah
The United States, Israel, and Lebanon signed a trilateral framework agreement aimed at combating Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah on Friday, after days of US-mediated talks in Washington.
According to a US State Department statement, the agreement outlines a structured process for disarming Hezbollah, dismantling terrorist infrastructure, and enabling the IDF to withdraw from Lebanon once the threat posed by Hezbollah is removed.
The agreement also established a US-facilitated trilateral Military Coordination Group for Lebanon (MCG4L) to ensure the implementation of the framework.
The US, according to the statement, will also take steps to improve the capabilities of the Lebanese Armed Forces and support Lebanese military efforts against Hezbollah.
In addition, the US pledged to contribute $100 million for humanitarian assistance to be coordinated with the United Nations.
A first step towards peace, prosperity, and mutual coexistence
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio commended Israeli and Lebanese leadership and delegations for their participation in the talks and for signing the agreement.
While Rubio noted that there is still much work ahead, he highlighted the importance of the framework and stated that the US is “honored to have played a part in bringing this together.”
“Today is the first step. This first step sometimes is the hardest one, but it’s an important one and the one we’ve taken together,” Rubio stated, adding that he hopes the agreement will bring about “a future of peace, a future of prosperity, a future of mutual coexistence.”
During the signing of the agreements, Israeli Ambassador to the US Yechiel Leiter praised the trilateral cooperation as a “historical” move towards peace between Israel and Lebanon.
“In my opening remarks four days ago, I expressed concern that this train was running off the tracks, that Iran and its proxies wanted a trainwreck,” Leiter recounted.
Full text of Israel-Lebanon ‘framework’ deal that includes slight IDF pullback
Ron Arad remains talks spark skepticism, ex Mossad official says negotiations could help search
Following a Lebanese report that contacts are underway to bring back the remains of Israeli navigator Ron Arad, who was captured in Lebanon in 1986, his friend Ronen Meir told 103FM on Wednesday that listeners should keep the matter in perspective: "We are overwhelmed with attempts and disappointments."
Meir, a friend of Arad who graduated with him from the flight course during their time in the IDF, spoke on 103FM with Prof. Aryeh Eldad and Ron Kaufman about the report.
In light of the report from Al Jadeed, according to which the political negotiations between Lebanon and Israel are expected to include the possibility of a deal in which Arad's remains would be exchanged for Lebanese prisoners, Meir dampened expectations.
"That sounds to me somewhat absurd, if not delusional," he said. "We are saturated with previous attempts of this kind. From my familiarity with our enemies and neighbors, this tune always plays, and we are saturated with disappointments on this matter."
"Let's assume that the Lebanese do indeed have information about Ron and want to bargain with it. The best and simplest thing they could do is send a sample so we can see whether there is someone to talk to. To refute it through a journalist does not seem to me like a serious channel for anyone who wants to deal with such a complicated issue."
Meir referred to Israel's past and present efforts: "It is worth noting that only a few weeks ago, the Israeli government sent a commando force with four Yas'ur helicopters into Lebanon in an attempt to recover Ron's body, and we almost left a great many dead there. With all the pain and my personal desire to solve the mystery of my friend, we need to be careful about fantasies and fleeing into unrealistic areas."
"The ethos of not abandoning a soldier should not go back to Ron. One can look two and a half years back and see what happened to that ethos when we had living civilians and soldiers in captivity, and some of them returned in body bags. The question is what price we are prepared to pay for that ethos. It is legitimate to use judgment," he continued.
To conclude, Meir recalled the family's position over the years: "In Ron's case, his mother Batia Arad gave her testament while she was still alive and said she did not want any soldier to risk his life if it is known that Ron is no longer alive."
"Tami Arad, my friend, said immediately that same night of the commando operation that 'we said from the outset that for Ron's body, not even one soldier should be put at risk.' If there were really anything to the reports, the first thing they would do is give a sample. How many samples have we already received that we have discovered were donkey bones? It simply does not seem serious to me."
From Ian:
Melanie Phillips:
NYC’s black-red alliance of Islamism and ultra-leftism wants us to hate Israel and America
Red-black extremists are now threatening establishment candidates in Colorado, Michigan and Wisconsin, while another radical leftist is poised to become mayor of Washington DC.
This process will metastasize even further very fast. Galvanized by the October 7 attacks and the way western elites subsequently turned against Israel, the Islamists believe they’re on the cusp of victory over America and its allies.
While their motivation has gone through the roof, their useful idiots in the West’s liberal establishment are refusing to see what’s staring them in the face. Instead, they’re obsessively sticking pins into effigies of Donald Trump, while acting as an echo chamber for the Islamists’ lies painting Israel as a demonic force in the world.
Although New York’s voters may nod along to these lies, most of them hardly rank Israel as of greater concern than things like the cost of living.
But Israel stands proxy for something else: a state that the public believe is grinding the faces of the poor and disadvantaged. Just like them. So a vote for those who hate “oppressive” Israel appears to them as a vote for the “oppressed” everywhere.
The Democrats imagine that they’re using the Islamists to promote left-wing policies. The truth is that the Islamists are using the Democratic party to turn the US into Ameristan.
People don’t take this seriously because they can’t believe it could ever happen to mighty America.
Look at Britain and believe it. This is how the western frog is being boiled slowly in the pot.
Alex Hearn:
Rooney’s antizionism isn’t political comment but a creed: Israel is evil, its defeat salvation
None of this began on October 7, 2023. The atrocities of that day gave permission to people who were already converted. Rooney joined the boycott of Israel in 2021, refusing to let an Israeli publisher translate her novel into Hebrew while it stayed on sale in Chinese and Russian. That same year, academics went viral copying and pasting a single paragraph that declared opposition to the world's only Jewish state “integral” to their scholarship and “moral worldview”. They then instructed one another to evangelise others and “pass it on”. An entire worldview, copied and pasted, about a state thousands of miles away.
And the permission has had consequences. Attacks on Jews spiked the moment Hamas broadcast its atrocities, and they have not fallen back to where they were. The ideas surface now where they once stayed hidden – in workplaces, in the arts, and on the street. In Stockholm a few months ago they staged a piece of medieval theatre: a man dressed as the caricature of a Jew wearing a blood-soaked apron, holding a champagne flute of blood. He mimed the slaughter of a Palestinian woman while the crowd chanted “crush Zionism”.
It is an old habit. During the Dreyfus Affair, Frenchmen used the figure of the Jew to settle what kind of country France was. A victim of an antisemitic conspiracy, Captain Alfred Dreyfus was wrongfully accused and convicted of being a spy for Germany and imprisoned on Devil's Island in French Guiana. He was later cleared but the question behind his case – whether Jews truly belonged – was not. The philosopher Hannah Arendt described the Affair as a dress rehearsal for a performance staged decades later. In 1944 Dreyfus’s granddaughter, Madeleine Lévy, was murdered in Auschwitz. Her name was carved into his gravestone because she had no grave of her own.
The case against Dreyfus only broadened, from one man to a people. The question moved with the times: from “can a Jew be a citizen?” to “can Jews have a state?” Antizionist where once it was anti-Dreyfusard – only the right in dispute has changed. Back then, the French parliament had a debate about “Jewish infiltration”. Now in 2026, the British parliament just had a debate about “Israeli” infiltration. Same shtick, different century.
Rooney cannot be waved away as a masked figure at a march. She is one of the most gifted novelists of her generation, read by millions, and she has taken the oldest accusation in Europe and given it the vocabulary of the age. In her telling, to stand against the Jewish state is not merely permitted. It is the measure of whether you are a good person at all.
When religion receded it left a space – the need to feel good, and to belong. What looks like politics is really a faith, and what looks like a faith is really the search for a self. People build an identity out of their stance on what Jews represent, then call Jews the rootless ones. But the emptiness is their own.
Rising antisemitism ‘the biggest disgrace of our times’, says incoming Telegraph owner
The chief executive of The Telegraph’s incoming owners has described the resurgence of antisemitism among young people as “the biggest disgrace of our times”.
Speaking in London on Wednesday, Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Axel Springer, warned that hatred of Jews had become a “global export” in the aftermath of Hamas’s October 7 atrocities, with alarming levels of support among younger generations.
“The thing that worries me most is that antisemitism is now a global export, originating largely from Germany and Austria, and is particularly popular among very young audiences,” Döpfner told delegates at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference.
“That is for me the biggest disgrace of our times. I simply cannot believe it.”
Döpfner, who is also the controlling shareholder of the German media giant, reflected on the failure of the international response to the attacks.
Despite what he described as the clear distinction between perpetrators and victims on October 7, he said the aftermath had produced not a surge of solidarity with Jews, but a wave of hostility.
“After October 7, where the question of who started it, who was the perpetrator and who was the victim, was so obvious, that did not create a global wave of solidarity, but a wave of new antisemitism,” he said.
“That goes way beyond Jewish life. It affects us all. Jews are the first victims in an open society model.”
His comments drew rapturous applause from the several hundred audience members attending the conference at the vast Olympia venue in Hammersmith.
Axel Springer has one of the most explicit pro-Jewish and pro-Zionist policies of any major Western media company. Its corporate constitution, known as the Essentials, includes a formal commitment to “support the right of existence of the State of Israel and oppose all forms of antisemitism”.
Is The Media Turning a Blind Eye to Montreal Shooter’s Antisemitism?
Is the media fully explaining the ideological drive behind the actions of Seth Scott Hatfield, whose shooting rampage in the heart of Montreal on June 22 led to the deaths of a police officer and a Jewish civilian?
Based on a manifesto that was made public following the attack, both the Canadian media and international outlets (such as CNN, The Guardian, and Le Monde) have compiled an ideological profile of Hatfield, focusing on his stated hatred for feminism, liberalism, capitalism, pornography, “favored males,” and immigrants.
The manifesto reads as though it is inspired by a mixture of revolutionary Marxism and incel (involuntary celibate) culture and is being presented as such by the mainstream media.
However, one aspect of Hatfield’s hate-filled screed that has received little to no mention by the media is his abhorrence of the Jewish people.
Either his antisemitism is mentioned in passing several paragraphs into an article or it is not mentioned altogether.
Despite this lack of media attention, Hatfield’s hatred for the Jews is not an insignificant part of his violent ideology.
From Ian:
Who’s Afraid of the Good War?
To help answer this question, we turn again to Obama. In May 2016, almost exactly 10 years ago, he gave a little-remembered speech in Japan.
“Why do we come to this place, to Hiroshima?” Obama posed this question to the world at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, seemingly conscious of making history as the first sitting U.S. president to visit the city—one of only two ever targeted by U.S. atomic bombs. Obama had already embarked on a much lambasted multiyear “apology tour” to foreign countries, including a 2009 talk before Turkey’s parliament in which he lamented America’s “darker periods” and the ongoing “legacies of slavery and segregation.”
His Hiroshima audience might have expected an address on nuclear nonproliferation, and Obama did deplore the “capacity for unmatched destruction” that nuclear weapons make possible. He also praised the hibakusha—survivors of the 1945 strike—citing a “woman who forgave a pilot who flew the plane that dropped the atomic bomb, because she recognized that what she really hated was war itself.” He offered no corresponding tribute to the American pilots who risked their lives for their country, nor any defense of the American decision to attack Japan; rather, he lamented the human tendency “to justify violence in the name of some higher cause.” He enjoined his listeners “to look directly into the eye of history and ask what we must do differently to curb such suffering.” He came to Hiroshima, he explained, to be reminded of the “ordinary people” who “do not want more war.” He never once sought to legitimate the cause in question or the notion that war is at times justified.
None of this is especially surprising given Obama’s famous insistence on “change.” Around midway through the speech, however, he offered something distinctive. After portraying World War II as having grown out of “the same base instinct for domination or conquest that had caused conflicts among the simplest tribes,” he sketched his view of Hiroshima’s significance:
There are many sites around the world that chronicle this war—memorials that tell stories of courage and heroism; graves and empty camps that echo of unspeakable depravity. Yet in the image of a mushroom cloud that rose into these skies, we are most starkly reminded of humanity’s core contradiction; how the very spark that marks us as a species—our thoughts, our imagination, our language, our tool-making, our ability to set ourselves apart from nature and bend it to our will—those very things also give us the capacity for unmatched destruction.
Here, Obama was engaging in a tentative attempt at mythmaking. The defining image of World War II, in this telling, was not that of soldiers storming the beaches of Normandy or the “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign above Auschwitz. No: It was an image that, in Obama’s words, represented a sinister “material advancement,” employed by America “to oppress and dehumanize those who are different.” American capitalism and American racism thus seem to undergird Obama’s understanding of World War II. He neatly placed the American decision to use the atomic bomb alongside the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany; all of it, he suggests, reminds us of mankind’s aptitude for evil. In this moment, he drew no moral distinctions in his condemnation of the horrors of war. In subtly conflating Nazi evils and the American response, Obama created a permission structure for his ideological partners to do the same thing.
Revisionists on the right, in part by taking refuge within Obama’s permission structure, have furthered this de-mythification project. Instead of castigating America for being racist, however, the right-revisionists rebuke their country as an antireligious tyranny, run by global elites. In this telling, American leadership became drawn into World War II by globalist interests while ignoring the plight of their own countrymen. Other, more extreme voices cast Hitler and Mussolini as heroic for wanting to strengthen their own nations and sense of national identity.
The loudest advocate for this New Right ethos, as of this writing, remains Tucker Carlson, who seeks not merely to keep America out of war or restore American manufacturing, but to remake American mythology.
Israel Is Not Just Another Ally
In a dangerous region, words from Washington are not simply opinions. They become strategic signals. America must lead without losing the trust of its allies. Israel is not a temporary partner or a tactical convenience. The relationship between America and Israel is strategic, democratic, cultural, moral, scientific, military, and historical. It is woven into the American story, just as America is woven into Israel's story.
Israel, for generations, has stood as a democratic ally in a region where democracy is rare, danger is permanent, and the cost of miscalculation can be existential. The countries on the front line with Iran - Israel, the UAE, Bahrain, and Kuwait - do not experience Iran as an abstraction. They experience it through missiles, drones, proxy networks, air-defense alerts, threats to shipping lanes, and the permanent pressure of a regime that has made destabilization a method of statecraft.
These countries have the right to ask questions. They have the right to demand clarity before being asked to live with the consequences of an agreement negotiated above their heads. If the U.S. wants regional partners to choose moderation over extremism, normalization over rejection, and modernization over ideological darkness, then Washington must show that such choices are rewarded with respect, consultation, and protection.
For Israel, the Memorandum of Understanding with Iran Is an Existential Question of Survival
Israelis were told that the war with Iran was over last week, yet the shooting continued into the weekend and at least five Israeli soldiers were killed by the Islamic Republic's Hizbullah proxy in Lebanon. For us, Washington and Tehran's "memorandum of understanding" isn't a policy debate; it's an existential question of survival, deterrence and the balance of power in the Middle East.
Israelis know that our interests are aligned with but not identical to those of our friends in America. We also know that the current disagreement doesn't diminish Donald Trump's historic support for the Jewish state. We've never had a stronger ally in the White House.
The Islamic Republic isn't a normal state. It is a revolutionary, imperialist dictatorship bent on exerting its will around the globe. For 47 years, the Iranian regime has systematically lied to the international community, armed terrorist proxies, called for Israel's destruction, and brutally oppressed its own people.
An alarming development is the Islamist coalition, led by Turkey, that helped bring about this moment. Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdogan has become one of the most destabilizing powers in the region, fueled by a poisonous blend of Islamist ideology and neo-Ottoman imperialism.
Israel learned on Oct. 7, 2023, what happens when you refuse to take your enemies at their word. We now listen carefully to the jihadist slogans of al-Sharaa's forces in Syria, the imperial and antisemitic declarations of Turkey's leadership, and the Iranian regime's contempt for the U.S.
Stability can't be gained by empowering those who reject the foundations of the Free World. Peace can't be bought by rewarding regimes and movements that treat diplomacy as a tactical break between rounds of aggression. And the goal of Israel's destruction can't be treated as a legitimate grievance.
The Middle East punishes wishful thinking without mercy. It will do so again if the West continues to mistake Islamism for pragmatism, appeasement for diplomacy, and silence for stability.
From Ian:
The Church of England’s problem with antisemitism
In the photos posted on social media, Sarah Mullally is seen in their living room, and prominent on the wall is a painting of a man; when they are standing and praying, Sarah is standing right in front of him.
This man is Layan’s great uncle, the brother of her paternal grandfather, Kamal Nasser. Nasser was born in 1924, and became a celebrated political leader, writer, and poet. In 1967, he joined the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), led by Yasser Arafat, who has invented the term ‘Palestinian’ to refer to those who wanted to destroy Israel and return to their land (prior to that, ‘Palestinian’ has been a regional term that described modern Israel, Jordan, and Syria). Nasser was also a ‘Palestinian Christian’—and this is the point where we need to recognise that, in this context, the term ‘Christian’ really functions as a tribal and ethnic identifier, more than the sense of someone who has made a personal commitment to Jesus as we might use it.
Nasser had joined the PLO just at the point where it made the Khartoum Resolution, in response to the defeat of the Arab armies by Israel in the Six-Day War of 1967. This was known for its three ‘Nos’: no peace agreement; no negotiation; no recognition of the State of Israel. This led inevitably into more warfare, culminating in the Yom Kippur War of 1973.
Part of the violence of the PLO, which (with Russian help) developed into the foremost global terror organisation, was the 1972 Munich massacre, when Palestinian terrorists infiltrated the Olympic village, killed two Israeli athletes, took nine more hostage, and eventually killed them during a failed rescue attempt. Nasser was one of the people who masterminded this operation.
For anyone outside the situation, it is hard to understand how ‘Palestinian Christians’ could be involved with anti-Israeli and antisemitic terror. But in fact the links between the two are longstanding and well developed. Nasser’s father was Reverend Butrus Nasir, who was a leader within Palestine’s Arab Protestant community from Bir Zeit. The founder of the PFLP, a radical Marxist terror organisation, was George Habash, a ‘Palestinian Christian’.
And the Greek Orthodox Church has had long links with the PLO going back to the 1960s. Many ordinary Palestinian Orthodox Christians and clergy of Palestinian descent are sympathetic to or actively involved in Palestinian nationalist politics — many Palestinian officials across ministries, the PLC, the PNA, and the PLO are Christians. There’s also a documented history of crossover between Greek leftists and the PLO more broadly: during the late 1960s and early 1970s, many Greeks belonging to the anti-dictatorship socialist movement trained in PLO camps in Lebanon, and when the PLO was forced to leave Lebanon, Greece—under PM Andreas Papandreou, who had close ties with Arafat—became its first destination.
That is why we can see a picture of Yasser Arafat on the wall of the office of Archbishop Benedictus, as he is meeting Sarah Mullally. Our archbishop has managed to be photographed in front of, not one, but two notorious terrorist leaders within the space of a couple of days—quite an achievement! And you can see the intertwining of terrorist resistance with Christian devotion in the painting of Nasser: in the background of the canvas, there is a traditional iconographic depiction of the Virgin Mary holding the infant Christ.
It is worth reflecting how both Israelis and British Jews will be made to feel by seeing these images.
Liberal Jews must stop appeasing the socialist radicals who hate them
The old saying goes that an appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile hoping it will eat him last.
When it comes to progressive Jews and the DSA, the well-fed crocodiles are just about ready for dessert.
I’ve been watching this strategy of inclusion of hateful actors by Jewish groups and politicians play out since I came to the US almost 20 years ago from Israel.
As someone who always believed in freedom, peace and equality, I imagined I’d find a home on the American left.
Imagine my confusion when I learned that in many circles, being a liberal in good standing meant denouncing the only democracy in the Middle East, staying quiet in the face of racism and violence directed at my community from other minority groups, and all but a pledge to agree that, sure, synagogues are being fire-bombed and Jews threatened every day, but don’t let the statistics confuse you — it’s only real antisemitism if it comes from the MAGA-hat region.
I have yet to encounter a club where turning my back to the truth was worth the price of admission.
So my confusion turned to rage over the years as I saw fellow Jews align themselves with people who openly and proudly spread hateful propaganda and support violence against the Jewish community.
Many cloaked these partnerships in the language of “allyship,” patting themselves on the back for being open-minded enough to have conversations with those who disagree with them.
But at what point do you close the flaps of the “big tent” of Jewish thought to those who are trying to destroy it from within?
Brad Lander, who less than a year ago still considered himself a Zionist, was happy to trade in his dignity for Instagram likes, embracing the lie of a genocide in Gaza, and posing happily in campaign ads alongside Darializa Avila Chevalier, who chose to celebrate the massacre of Oct. 7 in Times Square as Israeli mothers were still frantically searching for their missing and murdered children, among them several Americans and New Yorkers.
They may not see eye to eye on political issues like whether Lander’s friends in Israel deserve to live or not, but hey — we can agree to disagree, right?
Other politicians and activists practically trip over themselves to virtue-signal their standing as “Good Jews.”
Yehuda Teitelbaum:
No, New York Didn't Vote on Gaza
I'm already seeing people trying to turn the election results into some grand lesson about Israel and Gaza.
Sorry, but no.
If anti-Israel politics were really driving these races, Ritchie Torres would have been in trouble. Instead, he just won nearly 72% of the vote in one of the poorest and most heavily minority districts in the country.
Whatever else yesterday showed, it certainly didn't show that Democratic voters are punishing politicians for being pro-Israel.
The candidates who won have spent an extraordinary amount of time and energy spreading horrific blood libels about Israel, accusing Jews and Zionists of all sorts of crimes, praising convicted terrorist Rasmea Odeh, marching with people celebrating Hamas on October 8 while Jews were still being slaughtered, defending Mahmoud Khalil, and treating a conflict 6,000 miles away as though it were one of the central issues facing New York.
And yet I don't think any of those things are what put them over the top.
The average voter is not lying awake at night thinking about Gaza. The average voter is worried about paying the rent and buying groceries, and progressive politicians have figured out that they don't actually need to explain anything in order to capitalize on that anxiety. They don't need to explain where the money is coming from. They don't need to explain how any of it works. They just need to promise lower costs, free healthcare, free childcare, free college, debt forgiveness, more benefits, and some version of economic salvation.
Once people become convinced that there's a pot of gold sitting in front of them, almost everything else becomes irrelevant.
That's not an excuse for the voters, and frankly, I find it astonishing that someone can spread grotesque lies about Israel, praise actual terrorists, mock American symbols, and still get elected. Not very long ago, pulling just one of these stunts would have ended an entire political career.
But that's where we are, and confusing what voters tolerated with what they actually voted for is a serious mistake.
Monday, June 29, 2026
