What online Jew-hate taught me about myself (Forest Rain)

By Forest Rain

As someone who studies psychology and influence, I have recognized in myself an interesting progression of reactions to the behavior I am seeing online.

Recently, I have experienced a deluge of hate on my posts unlike anything I had encountered before. In the past, almost all my online interactions were pleasant. Even people who disagreed with me or did not understand me were, for the most part, polite.

At first, I was startled by the amount and intensity of the hate. Why me? Why now? My content is written in the same style and tone it always has been. What changed?

Then I began to feel a little bit afraid.

We know that online interactions influence offline behavior. Incitement on the internet has led to real-world violence. Actual terror attacks. On the other end of hateful words and images, people have died. Others have been maimed for life.

I don’t believe that there is more Jew hate in the world than there was previously. I believe that following October 7^th it has again become socially acceptable to express it publicly. The success of the Gaza invasion awakened the darkness in the hearts of men, reigniting the hope that now, this time, the Jews could be stamped out of existence. Hope ignited the hate - stoked and honed by Qatari and Iranian propaganda that gave words and excuses to justify it.

And woke culture excitedly adopted the hate because destroying the Jews, the source of the ideas on which Western civilization was founded, makes it possible to destroy the West.

The hatred is everywhere, and it is often so intense and extreme that it becomes difficult to see the support, love, admiration, and compassion that also exist. Admittedly, I have pulled back from reading responses to my content because there is so much nastiness that it feels like wading through sewage. Why make myself dirty?

My emotions had progressed from startled to fearful to feeling defiled and disgusted.

It took me some time to decide what I actually thought about the hate I was seeing. My initial response was instinctive and emotional. Feeling rather than thinking.

What should I think about people who do not know me and yet feel entitled to send vile messages simply because I am a Jew, a Zionist, or an Israeli?

After some reflection, I reframed what I was seeing: bullies. Why should I be afraid of keyboard bullies who want to weaken my spirit?

There are actual people who want to kill me because I am Jewish and breathing. Iran. Hezbollah. Hamas. Real people with real weapons, real intent, and real capability.

Those are genuine threats.

Keyboard bullies are just that—bullies. And bullies are, at their core, cowards.

I have always despised bullies. Why should I help these bullies achieve what they want? Who are they to weaken my spirit?

Now I see these people differently.

Many of those expressing hate online strike me as reflections of poor education and poor upbringing. Some appear unable to comprehend the content they are responding to. Their comments bear little relation to what was actually written, like a student answering a completely different question than the one on the test.

Reading comprehension is such a basic skill... Life must be very difficult for those with such poor capabilities...

Others, with great pomposity, spout “facts” proving that, in addition to a poor grasp of the meaning of words (like indigenous), they have an astonishing ignorance of history, geography, religion, culture, or archaeology.

Sometimes the behavior is simply childish. One individual thought it brilliant to post the same curse dozens of times on a single post. I eventually deleted most of the comments, but not before taking a screenshot of some of them.

Many responses are rude and vulgar.

I find myself wondering: would this person's mother be proud of the way they communicate? Is this how they were raised?

I was taught to be polite. I was taught that if I have nothing nice to say, I should say nothing at all.

Why do these people think it’s their business to respond with something nasty, for example, in response to the death of a soldier? On my post, on my feed?

Would they walk into my home and say the same nasty thing to my face? What makes them respond rather than simply keep scrolling to something more to their taste?

I find this behavior bizarre.

Empty-headed people with no manners and no understanding of what shaped the world they live in, where their freedoms came from, or why these things matter.

Pathetic, weak-minded tools in the hands of terrorists much smarter than them…

I feel sorry for them. If they recognized themselves for what they are, could they live with themselves? I couldn’t.

I belong to the greatest love story humanity has ever seen, much bigger than my individual self. Much more important and influential than any one person. My existence in my ancestral homeland is the fulfillment of 2000 years of faith and dedication, dreaming, yearning, striving, teaching, sheer stubbornness, and never ever giving up.

And that is without me actually doing anything.

No wonder so many people hate us for being Jewish and alive. By simply breathing, we have already achieved more than they ever will. 

 

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! Reclaiming the Covenant on America's 250th (May 2026) "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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The Psyops of Palestine (Forest Rain)

The Psyops of Palestine

The war to erase the Jews did not end — and your mind is being used as a weapon of war

By Forest Rain

What do you do if your enemy cannot be vanquished through direct conflict? You change the framework of the battle, moving it from the battlefield to the mind.

Psychological warfare targets the mind, attempting to weaken the enemy from within. Shatter the spirit, and victory can be achieved with minimal waste of lives and ammunition.

This form of warfare is subtle, cumulative, and highly effective precisely because people prefer to believe their ideas are their own, rather than seeds carefully planted by external forces.

Psyops function as a feedback loop: plant an idea, normalize it through repetition, reinforce it through trusted institutions, and eventually the target internalizes the manufactured perception as reality itself. Repeated often enough, circulated through authoritative channels, and fused with fragments of truth, the constructed narrative begins to feel self-evident, becoming socially and psychologically embedded.

That methodology is now being used to replace Israel with “Palestine.”

The children’s story The Emperor’s New Clothes revolves around an emperor who is persuaded that he is wearing magnificent garments when, in reality, he is wearing nothing at all. The deception succeeds because everyone around him participates in maintaining the illusion. The tailor, his assistants, the court, and the crowd all reinforce the same falsehood until the emperor subjugates his own perception of reality to the authority of the masses and changes his behavior accordingly.

We are conditioned to conform to the consensus around us. When enough external signals suggest that reality differs from what we understand it to be, many people will abandon their own logic, memory, and direct observation in order to align with the crowd — especially when those signals come from sources perceived as authoritative, authentic, and unbiased.

This principle lies at the heart of the psyops of Palestine: an attempt to alter reality itself because direct conflict could not achieve the objective of “wiping Israel off the map.”

The first challenge is teaching the public that a country that never existed is real.

Historically, there never was an Arab country called Palestine. The term itself was part of a Roman attempt to sever the connection between the Nation of Israel and the Land of Israel by renaming the country and, in doing so, symbolically wiping Israel off the map. This occurred in the second century CE after the Romans crushed the revolt of Shimon Bar Kokhba in 132 CE, when the Jews attempted to free their ancestral homeland from foreign occupation.

“Palestine” was a name invented and imposed by the Romans to punish the Jews.

It didn’t work.

Changing the name could not change the psychology of a nation whose identity is inseparable from its land. Nor did it erase the understanding of the Western world, whose religion, culture, and morality stand on the foundations of Jewish civilization. For centuries, “Palestine” remained widely understood as a geographic reference to Zion — the Jewish homeland. Even under the British Empire, the official designation reflected this reality: British Mandate Palestine – Eretz Yisrael — the Land of Israel.

The modern era has brought us the psyops of Palestine – the revival of the Roman technique, designed to erase the Jews, applied in a new way.

The idea is clever. As it is nearly impossible to erase something the world knows has existed for thousands of years, do not deny the reality of its ancient existence. Instead, deny ownership, replacing the framework we know as Israel — the Jewish homeland — with a new framework: an Arab state called Palestine.

Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, and other terrorist organizations routinely depict maps in which all of Israel is labelled as Palestine, signalling that the entirety of the Jewish state is Arab — or should become so.

Maps are powerful symbols. So are flags. National colors and emblems create the impression of an established people rooted in a sovereign homeland.

Facts become secondary when symbols evoke emotions strong enough to make something feel unquestionably true.

There is no historic sovereign Arab nation called Palestine. What does exist, however, is a vast network of symbols, institutions, labels, and international recognition mechanisms designed to create the impression that such a nation has always existed.

The psyops of Palestine: building blocks in a war of erasure, designed to eliminate Jewish history in order to destroy the Jewish future.

Conquering the mind, moving it to the new framework, is done by a cumulative effect: participation in the Olympics under the Palestinian flag, representation in international pageants, observer status at the United Nations, international media terminology, and “Made in Palestine” labels on products. Each example may appear insignificant in isolation, but together they form a psychological architecture designed to establish legitimacy through repetition and familiarity.

The strategy is effective precisely because it relies on tangible markers people instinctively associate with nationhood: flags, maps, diplomatic institutions, sporting delegations, even merchandise and packaging.

Each one reinforces the illusion.

I recently found a discarded bottle on a street in Haifa. I have found others like it before — products not officially sold in Israel but bearing the same label: “Made in Palestine.”

This particular bottle originated from a company in Hebron.

Hebron is not a mythical or disputed abstraction. It is a real and ancient city with a documented history stretching back thousands of years. It is the burial place of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs of the Jewish people and is considered second in holiness only to Jerusalem in Jewish tradition. Today, Hebron is divided into sections: approximately 80 percent falls under Palestinian Authority control, while the remainder is under Israeli security control and includes both Jewish and Arab residents.

These are verifiable realities supported by history, archaeology, biblical record, and modern political agreements.

“Palestine,” however, is different. There is no historical or modern sovereign state corresponding to that label.

That is why bottles like this matter.

The label itself functions as a political instrument — a small but deliberate building block in a campaign of psychological warfare. It does not reflect historical truth or political reality, but within effective propaganda, truth is often secondary to repetition.

Repeated exposure conditions people to accept the implication embedded within the label. Familiarity becomes assumption, and assumption gradually hardens into legitimacy.

The true power of propaganda is not that people consciously choose to believe a lie. It is that constant repetition, reinforced by institutions and everyday symbols, slowly teaches them to stop questioning it altogether.

Have you ever thought about how your mind is being used in this war?

The psyops of Palestine are a potent tool in the war against the Jews, and yet, when you learn to recognize the building blocks in this weapon of war, the psyops crumble. 

The psyops of Palestine are effective only so long as the illusion goes unchallenged. Once you recognize the mechanism — the repetition, the symbols, the manufactured familiarity — the illusion bursts.

The emperor has no clothes. We are Zion, home to stay. 

 

 

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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Child or Teen? The Lemmings Will Believe What They’re Told (Judean Rose)

photo: IDF

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are the sole responsibility of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

The Jerusalem Post is one of the one of the most widely read English news sources on Israel, the one English-speakers around the world often turn to first. So when I saw a headline that said “Teen injured after Iran pummels Israel with missiles.” I expected to hear about someone who was at least 13. But when I read the article, I saw that the injured “teen" was only 12:

"We were led to a 12-year-old boy who had been hit by shrapnel and suffered injuries to his limbs. He was in pain and frightened but conscious,” it read, citing an MDA paramedic on the scene.

This child—a boy not yet bar-mitzvahed, was correctly identified as such by Eilat Fire Station Commander Yehuda Kazantini, who told Kan Reshet Bet that "the child [was] crossing a road at a pedestrian crossing when he was hit by missile fragments.

Why did the Jpost headline refer to a 12-year-old as a teen? It was likely a mistake. But mistakes like this often end up being used against Israel by the international media. Which is why accuracy is important.

How might the media misuse this unintentional error? Perhaps they might write or say something like, “So a rocket injured one Israeli teenager. Meanwhile, Israel killed thousands of Gazan.”

If corrected and called on the lie, they can always assert that “A one-year difference is no big deal.”

But it is a big deal. For one thing, journalists are supposed to be precise. No mistake is really small in a news article. Even the way ages are described can influence how suffering is perceived.

By contrast, while one Israeli outlet may inadvertently age up a genuine 12-year-old victim, Gaza casualty reporting works in the opposite direction—on a massive and deliberate scale—through definitions that group older teens together with much younger children. Under widely used international standards, anyone under 18 is classified as a “child.” As a result, casualty figures can include 16- and 17-year-olds in that category, without distinguishing between civilians and those involved in hostilities.

Salo Aizenberg’s X thread “Everything You Need to Know About Gaza’s Fatality Numbers” exposes the truth. The Hamas Ministry of Health (MOH) counts teenage terrorists killed in combat as “children” in its official death toll statistics:

“There is no doubt that Hamas and other militant groups use child combatants, in some cases children as young as 12. Demographic analysis of the fatality lists already pointed to this reality, with roughly 2,000 excess deaths among male teens. That inference is now confirmed by direct evidence. Numerous martyr posters, funeral notices, and social media posts identify underage fighters killed in combat. Most recently, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) publicly acknowledged that 9% of its announced fighters killed were minors, based on its own fighter death lists cross-referenced with Hamas’ fatality list… Once child combatants are counted as combatants rather than automatically classified as civilians, another pillar of the prevailing fatality narrative collapses.”

How does this work in practice? A 19-year-old Hamas operative is counted as a “child” in aggregate statistics. A 17-year-old summer-camp “graduate” killed while firing at Israeli forces is listed as “child.” The Hamas death toll counts show thousands more dead teenage boys than dead teenage girls in the same age range—a skew that points to ‘terrorists,’ rather than random children. Yet there is no doubt that when the media uncritically reports on the raw Hamas MOH stats, the headline will always amplify the lie that when Israel kills young Hamas operatives, it is killing “children.”

Journalists have one core duty: get the facts right. A 12-year-old boy may be only one year away from teenager-hood, but indeed, 12 is the cut-off point, the last year in which a child is not a teen and should not be referred to as such. The 12-year-old boy in Eilat is actually a child. As opposed to the 17-year-old Hamas operative actively involved in attacking Israel and Israelis.

The JPost slip is minor and corrected by the article text itself. But the broader issue—how categories like “child” are applied in conflict reporting—is more consequential. When media outlets repeat casualty figures without clarifying how those categories are defined, readers are left with an incomplete and definitely distorted picture.

 

It is Hamas practice to twist stats as a matter of routine. They know the mainstream media will report the false numbers uncritically to their readers, lemmings who believe what they read. The proof is our world today, a seething cauldron brimming with hate for the Jewish people.

People believe what they read and that is why journalists have a duty to tell them the truth. The average media consumer knows only what he is told or reads on the internet. Today, all of it tells him to hate Israel, and by extension, the Jews.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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Arab Israelis in Israel’s war for survival (Forest Rain)

By Forest Rain

Shia missiles don’t differentiate between Sunni and Jew

Even the best safe room cannot save you from a direct hit by a missile carrying half a ton of explosives.

On the night the Iranian missile changed his life forever, Raja Khatib, a prominent Israeli-Arab attorney, was pulling up to his house.

The air-raid sirens were already blaring as he rushed to get to his family. And then the missile hit.

It feels almost obscene to write about that horrific night now, when Iran is once again launching missiles intended to destroy Israeli lives.

It was June 14^th, 2025, one day into the twelve-day war, when Israel and America severely damaged Iran’s almost-operational nuclear facilities and destroyed a large portion of its ballistic missile capability. But the 12 days of “Operation Rising Lion” did not remove the threat posed by the Iranian regime—to Israel, to the Middle East, or even to its own people.

The war was stopped early in the hope that a diplomatic deal could be reached. Many Israelis understood from experience that stopping too soon would necessitate returning later to finish the job.

Because there is no deal with an entity whose central goal is your destruction. Ideologues do not compromise on their ideology. To do so would be to reject their own identity.

At the time, the battle in Gaza was raging, and hostages still needed to be rescued.

And Iranian missiles did not differentiate between Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs.

What do you say to a man who lost his wife, two of his three daughters, and his home in an instant? A man who built a house like a castle—strong and beautiful—but not strong enough to protect his family. His brother’s wife was killed in the attack as well.

We went to see the missile impact site and pay our respects to the Khatib family. We did not know them personally, but that does not matter. When something awful happens, showing up is the right thing to do.

Jews observe shivah—seven days of mourning after the burial. Muslims traditionally observe three days. Because Raja is so well known, he received visitors for four.

We saw no formal notice about where condolences were being received. The town they live in is large, but we knew it would not be too difficult to find the family.

At first, we were directed to Raja’s parents’ home. Inside, I found the women from his side of the family sitting together. They all turned to stare at me—the only Jew in the room—before pointing me toward his mother.

She hugged me twice. Everyone in the room showed pleasure at my expression of empathy for their sorrow.

One woman asked what they were probably all thinking.

“Why did you come? Did you come because of your position… or…?”

She wanted to understand how to place me—what role I occupied. Was I one of the many politicians coming to demonstrate that Jewish politicians care about Arabs too? A peacenik virtue signaling?

Jews and Arabs live side by side in Israel, and Raja works with many Jewish colleagues. But genuine friendships and deep mutual understanding between the sectors are not common. Our cultures, desires, and goals overlap in some places—but they are not identical.

And there is a significant difference between friendship between individuals and peace between Jews and Arabs as collective groups.

I told her simply that what happened was terrible, and coming was the right thing to do.

She seemed satisfied with that answer. But she appeared to assume I was a Jew dreaming of peace, so she began saying what Arabs often say in these situations:

“We just need to end all the wars. We all just want to live.”

Many Jews respond warmly to statements like this, hearing what they want to hear rather than what is actually being said.

It is not possible to “just end” a war with Hamas or Iran—both of which are openly committed to exterminating the Jews. The only way to “just end the war” would be to surrender. That was not, is not, an acceptable solution.

I smiled and replied: “Iranian missiles—Shia missiles—don’t differentiate between Sunnis and Jews. Israel will win this war and bring safety to all of us. You and me. Then we will be able to live well.”

My response startled her into silence. No one else in the room spoke.

Someone offered me a drink and suggested I sit with them, as is customary. I thanked them but declined, explaining that my husband was waiting outside and that we wanted to go pay our respects to Raja.

They directed us to where the men were receiving visitors, in the municipal building—a common arrangement when large crowds are expected.

We found the gathering easily and were received graciously.

Raja made a point of telling us how many Jews had come to offer condolences—colleagues, politicians, peaceniks, and activists (hoping the Arab population might vote in ways that could bring them political power).

I do not think he realized the full spectrum of motivations behind those visits. But the sheer mass of Jews who came comforted him, and that is a good thing.

Many of the Jewish visitors probably had little awareness of how hostile much of the town’s population is toward the Jewish state, how many residents participated in the riots of May 2021, or knew anything about the almost lynching of a Jewish driver stopped by the bloodthirsty mob. Only the intervention of a respected elder prevented the crowd from tearing him apart.

Did any of those visitors wonder how many Arab Israelis would come to comfort Jewish families torn apart by the war?

Probably not.

Some do, of course, when the victims are colleagues or long-time neighbors. But they do not arrive in large numbers to comfort strangers the way Jews often do.

And they generally do not assume that suffering under the same enemy will naturally produce bonds of peace.

Shared danger does not automatically create shared loyalty.

The divide between Sunni and Shia Islam began as a dispute over who should lead the Muslim world after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 CE. The disagreement hardened into a religious and political rivalry that still shapes the Middle East today.

Nearly 1,400 years is a long time to hold a grudge.

Sunni Muslims form the majority across the Muslim world, including Israel’s Arab population. Iran, however, is overwhelmingly Shia. Iran’s desire to assert dominance over the world by first destroying the Jewish State led it to cultivate a Sunni proxy in Gaza – Hamas.

That does not mean Shia and Sunni have suddenly become allies. It means they have temporarily cooperated to pursue a shared objective: destroying Israel.

Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews now face the same missile threat from Iran and from Iran’s Shia proxy in Lebanon—Hezbollah.

But that does not make Arabs and Jews allies. It simply means we share the same danger.

One of the most dangerous mistakes made about the Middle East is assuming that everyone thinks the same way.

Projecting our own motivations onto others—without taking the time to understand their worldview, goals, and ideology—is naïve at best. Often, it reflects arrogance. Worst of all, it leads to deadly miscalculations.

In Hebrew, there is a saying: “A person is shaped by the landscape of the place he comes from.”

The Middle Eastern mindset was shaped long before Islam, from the experiences of desert tribal life. The Western mindset emerged from the fusion of Jerusalem and Athens: biblical morality, justice, democracy, individual responsibility, and the pursuit of knowledge.

Two very different psychological frameworks.

The sands of the desert shift constantly, and yet the desert itself remains unchanged.

How can those focused on the here and now fully grasp a worldview built around eternity?

The people of the desert outwardly resemble people of the here and now—urban professionals with nice cars, Instagram accounts, and TikTok videos. That surface similarity tempts outsiders to assume that the internal motivations are the same.

They are not.

And today, in societies where many have attempted to replace God with secular ideologies—capitalism, communism, progressivism—the mindset of the desert people doesn’t register.

Without understanding that mindset, it becomes extraordinarily difficult to navigate the region—much less to win a war.

Israeli Jews knew it would be necessary to go back to Iran to finish the job. Israeli Arabs are still talking about their desire to stop the war to attain “quiet”.

But quiet is not victory. In the Middle East, quiet is the time to prepare for the next war.

To survive a conflict, you must understand what the fight is truly about. If you do not understand what your enemy actually believes and desires, you cannot defeat him. And if you try to build peace on comforting assumptions instead of reality, you will only guarantee the next war.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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Last one out turns off the darkness (Forest Rain)

By Forest Rain

“Don’t worry Ma. See, my arm is fine!”

He knew his arm wasn’t fine. She knew it too.

They both knew there was no way he was staying home. Not after the videos he had seen, not after the emergency message he received, the message all policemen in the area received, the message they thought they would never hear: a call to respond to an invasion.

It didn’t matter that he had a broken shoulder and was scheduled for surgery in a few days. He was trained to defend the innocent, and nothing would stop him.

It was October 7th, and his country needed him.

Sgt. First Class Ran Gvili of the Yasam Special Patrol Unit put on his uniform, took his father’s car, and drove to the police station. He met his team, donned battle gear, gathered weapons and ammunition, and drove straight into the eye of the storm: “The Al Aqsa Flood.”

At the Saad junction, they found themselves in battle with the invaders. They helped party-goers escape the Nova massacre and reach safety. Ran was shot in the leg. He fashioned a tourniquet and battled on. At Alumim, he and other warriors managed to prevent the invaders from entering the kibbutz, saving those sheltering there—but at a terrible cost. The attackers had already slaughtered 22 workers from Thailand and Nepal and taken others hostage. Fourteen people fleeing the Nova party were murdered near the kibbutz, and five defenders of Israel were killed.

We think.

Ran’s brother, also a policeman, assumed Ran was home, learning through the news about friends and colleagues who had been killed. After all, Ran was injured and scheduled for surgery.

When Ran’s phone rang, the battle was raging. His brother was shocked to hear him explain where he was and to learn that he had also been shot in the hand: “Don’t tell our parents. I’m shot, but I’m fine.”

Separated from his team, with a broken shoulder and two gunshot wounds, Ran sheltered from the attackers and passed critical information to the relevant security forces, doing everything he could to bring help to the battle. When the invaders discovered his location, he fought them alone.

The bodies of fourteen terrorists were found at the point where he had been sheltering. Ran was gone.

It took more than fourteen to subdue him and take him to Gaza.

Intelligence officials discovered footage of his unconscious body being taken to Gaza. They informed the Gvili family that the injuries Ran sustained are not survivable—unless given emergency intensive care, which he did not receive. None of the liberated hostages saw him during their captivity.

No one knows for certain what happened to Ran. Until his body is returned, his family clings to the faint hope that this powerful warrior—their Rani—could somehow survive.

He was among the first to race toward the battle and is now the last who has yet to return home. His mother says Ran always made sure everyone else was ok before thinking of himself. It is like him to be last, to make sure everyone else goes first.

Hollywood has nothing on us. Our heroes are real.

I never met Ran, but I have met his mother, Talik Gvili, and seen her in action. She is a hero, a warrior of a different kind. It is no surprise that her son is a hero.

Since October 7th, Talik’s heart has ached for her Rani, but she has devoted her mind to defending our people. She has spoken in the Knesset and around the world, advocating for the release of all hostages through strength. Only victory over Hamas will protect us from future invasions. She says, “I am the mother of a hostage. I do not want to be the grandmother of a hostage.”

One of the most extraordinary moments I have witnessed was between Talik Gvili and Einav Zangauker, mother of Matan, who at the time was held hostage in Gaza. I was accompanying families of hostages to the Knesset, where, during committee sessions, families were given the chance to speak to parliament members and other government officials. Each family spoke in turn; all listened respectfully, no matter what was said or how long it took. Some pleaded with the government officials to save their loved ones. Others explained that they expected their loved ones to be saved in a way that didn’t endanger the future of Israel.

Einav Zangauker unleashed her fear and frustration at the committee head, haranguing him with devastating accusations: “The blood of my son will be on your hands. They will bring him back dead, and you will manage the funeral and the shiva.”

There were some seventy people in the room. We all sat in silence. The more she spoke, the more extreme her words became, and the more everyone cringed, devastated, in their seats.

Until Talik spoke.

It was like magic. I don’t remember her exact words, but with grace and dignity, she broke the torrent of Einav’s rage, refocused her, and calmed her to the point where she got up, walked around the table, hugged Talik, and sat down next to her, holding her hand.

Allowing us all to breathe again.

Talik has rightly received awards and praise for her wise and eloquent advocacy. After one event, I approached her and told her I admired her greatly but needed to correct one huge mistake in her speech. Startled, she focused on me. I said, “You claim that you aren’t a hero, but that ignores what heroes are. They aren’t just warriors in battle; heroes are people who go above and beyond what the average person would do in the same situation.” She looked at me, unmoving. I continued, “When this happened, you could have crawled into bed, pulled the covers over your head, and refused to move. It would have been much easier.”

Her eyes softened. She sighed and nodded. “That’s true. Thank you.”

Hero. Mother of a hero. I wish I could give her a fraction of the strength she has given for all of us, for our safety, for our future. Now her Rani, one of the first to race into the inferno, is the last in Gaza.

We say that “the last one out turns off the light.” Perhaps Ran, the last one out, will be the one who turns off the darkness that has taken over Gaza.

Perhaps he won’t come home until we make sure the darkness is extinguished. There is a job that has yet to be completed... We are responsible for making sure that happens.

 

 

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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We Can’t Celebrate Peace When They’re Still Killing Us (Judean Rose)

The day the 20 living hostages were released, the media told us that all Israelis were celebrating. But that wasn’t quite the truth. For many of us, it was more of a collective sigh of relief. The last of the live hostages had made it out. It had not been at all certain they would, or that they had even survived. Thank God they were out.

But this peace deal was nothing to celebrate, because it would not bring peace and would not keep us safe. How could it when in exchange for those 20 living hostages, tortured and starved for 737 days, we released 1,968 Arab terrorists from our jails, 250 of them serving life sentences for murdering or planning the murders of Israeli Jews? Only 200 would be expelled, the rest would be released into the wild.

For our dear 20 hostages, we were releasing murderers back into our cities and towns to ride on our buses and trains, to work and shop freely alongside Israelis. At least this time we were getting more bang for our buck. In 2011, Yahya Sinwar, the eliminated architect of October 7, was released from Israeli custody along with 1,026 of his fellow terrorists, all for a single Jew, Gilad Shalit.

This time we “only” had to set 2,000 more monsters free among us for 20 live Jews and 28 dead.

How could this be right—even celebrated? How many more Sinwars/October 7ths will there be? Why on earth would this bring peace? It is a fact so blatantly obvious: releasing terrorists from Israeli custody never brings peace.

It didn’t this time, either.

Hamas has already broken the truce — attacking Israeli troops and murdering two IDF soldiers. It broke it earlier by not releasing all the hostages all at once. Broke it so many ways, so many times. Playing Hamas terrorist chicken, as always. 

But at the point where they attack and murder Jews, it should have been over. Done.

One would expect an honest US broker at that point, to back Israel to the hilt and call it all off. All the wonderful peace. But no. Instead we get Jared Kushner chiding us, “A lot of people are getting a little hysterical about different incursions. But what we are seeing is that things are going in accordance with the plan. Both sides are transitioning from two years of very intense warfare to a peacetime posture.”

Yeah, Jared. Tell that to the families of Yaniv Kula and Itay Yavetz. Do you think they're being a "little hysterical about different incursions?"

Tell us more, oh Jared Kushner who has business dealings with the Hamas-supporting Qatar. Tell us what you told Lesley Stahl, about how murdering two of your fellow Yidden qualifies as acting in good faith “as far as we’ve seen” (emphasis added):

Lesley Stahl: Now, part of the agreement was that, as you had mentioned, Jared, 28 bodies, Israelis were supposed to come out in phase one by now. Do you think that Hamas is breaking the agreement? Is it bad faith?

Jared Kushner: So this has been a very intense effort on behalf of our joint center with Israel and with the mediators in order to convey whatever information Israel has on the whereabouts of the bodies to the mediators and to Hamas in order to retrieve them.

Lesley Stahl: So you're involved in this part of what's going on right now. Are you trying to reassure the Israelis that Hamas is really looking for the bodies? 

Jared Kushner: We're just trying to convey information and make sure that everyone knows the expectations and push both sides to be proactive in terms of finding a solution instead of blaming each other for breakdowns. 

Lesley Stahl: But are you saying publicly right now that Hamas is acting in good faith, seriously looking for the bodies? 

Jared Kushner: As far as we've seen from what's being conveyed to us from the mediators, they are so far, that could break down at any minute. But right now we have seen them looking to honor their agreement.

The things he said!

It made me want to vomit. Still does. 

How could anyone use the word “honor” anywhere near "Hamas?" And what does honor mean to Jared Kushner—that Hamas can kill a couple of Jews and we’ll look the other way, nudge nudge, wink wink?

Jared Kushner asserts a moral equivalence between monsters and (Jewish) victims, characterizing Israel's reaction to the Hamas attack as no different than the attack. It's just two sides "blaming each other." Yet two more young Jewish men now lie cold in their graves.

How can we speak of peace when they're killing us. How do we celebrate while our hearts are bleeding.

Jared, somewhere inside your bespoke Savile Row suit I know you remember Beeri, what you saw there, when the air was still thick with the smell of what had happened there.

Why have you chosen not to be, after all, a Jewish hero?

When will you give us a reason to celebrate?

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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Confusing Delay with Defeat: Trump’s Surprise Iran-Israel Ceasefire (Judean Rose)

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

They say the war is over. But if it’s over, why do I feel so nervous, like there’s something left undone, unfinished? Why don’t I feel safe?

I just want to feel safe—not only for myself, but for the generations that follow. Do I want my grandchildren to grow up listening for sirens, even if they rarely come? Do I want some future generation to live in fear of an Iran once again enriching uranium to the point of no return?

If Khamenei and his despotic regime remain in power, they’ll pick up right where they left off—with nuclear ambitions and terror by proxy. And when Israel defends itself, will President Trump once again scold her, as he did the other day? Iran launched missiles at Israeli civilians, and Trump called it “a little bit of a violation”—perhaps because this particular strike caused no damage. But just hours earlier, another missile killed innocents in a residential neighborhood in Beersheva.

I don’t feel safe because Donald Trump still believes—against all evidence—that the ayatollahs can be reasoned with, coaxed into peace, talked into laying down their weapons and picking up plowshares. Worse still, he seems to draw a moral equivalence between Iran—a regime that threatens Israel’s annihilation, funds terror proxies, and pursues nuclear weapons—and Israel itself. Unbelievably, he equates the victim with her abuser. He frames the conflict as playground roughhousing, erasing Iran’s aggression and Israel’s right to defend itself from a nuclear holocaust:

“They’ve had a big fight. Like two kids in the schoolyard—you know, they fight like hell, you can’t stop it. Let them fight for two, three minutes, and then it’s easier to stop them.”

If this is how Trump perceives Iran and Israel—if he truly believes Iran can be reasoned with—then he doesn’t understand the Middle East. Worse, he isn’t listening. Iran is telling him, plainly and repeatedly, that it will not stop. It will rebuild its nuclear facilities.

And they’re not even hiding it. Iranian nuclear chief Mohammad Eslami openly admitted as much: “We planned to avoid any interruption in the nuclear industry process. Preparations for the revival of the country’s nuclear program were foreseen in advance, and our plan is to not allow any interruption in the production and service process.”

Meanwhile, Iran’s parliament has announced it is suspending cooperation with the IAEA—the UN’s nuclear watchdog. Does that sound like a regime with nothing to hide? Like a nation ready to embrace a peaceful, nuclear-free future?

Why is Trump letting the Iranians get away with saying these things? And what about his betrayal of the Iranian people—those weary of living under Khamenei’s iron rule? Bibi encouraged them to be brave, reminded them that Israel has no quarrel with them, and wants them to prosper. Are we now meant to abandon them? Just as Obama did in 2009, when they rose up and the world turned its back?

And then there are the conflicting reports. Was Fordow completely destroyed, or wasn’t it? The administration can’t seem to get its story straight. Trump claimed Iran’s three main nuclear enrichment facilities were “completely and totally obliterated.” But later, JD Vance described Iran’s capabilities as merely “substantially set back,” insisting that had always been the goal.

As Vance put it: “That was the objective of the mission: to destroy that Fordow nuclear site and, of course, do some damage to the other sites as well. But we feel very confident that the Fordow nuclear site was substantially set back, and that was our goal.”

If Vance is to be believed, the goal had never been complete obliteration, but only a delay in what Iran will inevitably try to do once more. Which of course means that somewhere down the road, a new generation will have to live with the Damocles sword of a nuclear Iran hanging over their heads. And that is neither fair nor right.

And then there’s how the ceasefire came about. Trump’s surprise announcement apparently caught Israel off guard. It certainly caught me off guard—reading about the so-called truce from a safe room, while cowering from incoming missiles.

Bibi gave a victory speech, declaring that “Iran’s malicious intent to threaten Israel has been eradicated.” But has it? 

Eradicated? Obliterated, or only “significantly set back” as both JD Vance and Rafael Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), have said.

What bothers me most is the unspoken message: shut up and be grateful. And yes, I am grateful. But gratitude doesn’t mean silence, even when America deploys its bunker busters in a precision strike that was nothing short of extraordinary.

But as extraordinary as that military triumph was, it’s not enough. This regime has a singular goal: to destroy the West. Disabling Iran’s nuclear program means little if you leave the regime intact—especially when change for the Iranian people feels so close we can smell it.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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