12/31 Links: Why the full extent of Hamas’s sex crimes may never be known; Hamas is succeeding at playing the West for fools; Israel wants UNRWA out of Gaza

From Ian:

‘Nothing prepares you for it’

“We’d walk into a room full of blood and see no sign of shooting or bombing. There, Hamas terrorists didn’t use a gun to kill their victims, they used an axe to chop them into pieces,” said Simcha Greiniman, a 47-year-old veteran ZAKA.

Since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre of 1,200 people in Israel, 800 ZAKA volunteers have worked around the clock to recover the remains of the dead.

“I am there every day from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. to make sure that these families get the closure they need to properly mourn their loved ones,” Greiniman told JNS.

Founded in 1995, ZAKA deals with instances of unnatural death, and works in close cooperation with emergency services and security forces.

Over 3,000 ZAKA volunteers are currently deployed cross the country, on call 24/7, to respond to terror attacks, accidents or natural disasters. ZAKA With Destroyed Cars, Oct. 7 AttacksZAKA personnel work at a field with destroyed cars from the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks, Dec. 12, 2023. Photo by Chaim Goldberg/Flash90.

Greiniman has been volunteering for ZAKA for the past 32 years and oversees groups in charge of conducting Chesed Shel Emes, honoring the dead by bringing bodies to burial, which is considered one of the greatest mitzvot [commandments] in Judaism.

“In the Bible, there is a special need to make sure bodies get a proper burial and that no part, not even blood samples or small bones, are left behind,” explained Greiniman. ZAKA personnel clean blood off the ground at the scene of a suspected terror attack near the entrance to Jerusalem, on Nov. 22, 2022. Two explosions at two bus stops left one person killed and at least another 13 injured. Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90.

As part of ZAKA International, Greiniman has volunteered both in Israel and overseas in scenarios ranging from natural disasters to accidents and terror attacks. In recent years, ZAKA International flew to Haiti, India, Turkey and Morocco.

Why the full extent of Hamas’s sex crimes may never be known
Free link

There was little time for investigation, and little expertise to formally identify the crimes Hamas had committed.

But forensic reviews of video footage of the aftermath of the attacks, and dozens of interviews clearly points to a pattern of gender-based violence on Oct 7.

There are believed to be at least seven locations where Israeli women and girls appear to have been sexually assaulted, or mutilated.

Dozens of bodies of women and girls with signs of sexual abuse were found, medics told The New York Times.

Videos of the aftermath are said to show soldiers shot in the vagina, and kibbutz residents with nails driven into their thighs and groin.

The scenes at the rave are some of the most graphic, with reports of Hamas terrorists with hammers gang raping party-goers, and cutting off breasts to throw to each other as they laughed.

Both Mr Otmazgin and Ms Mendes admitted that they were overwhelmed on the day of the attacks and their work was focused on finding survivors or preparing bodies.

Ms Mendes said everyone was in a hurry at the morgue to release the bodies to the families for burial instead of looking for clues about exactly what had happened to them.

“Our main concern, especially in the initial days, was identification so that family members could be notified and only then preparation for burial,” Ms Mendes told the UN earlier this month.

Meanwhile, the means by which bodies were collected from the scene of the atrocities may have hampered evidence records.

Mr Otmazgin recalls how he raced to the festival site on the morning of the terror attacks only to be stopped in the road by an Orthodox Jewish man trying to help recover the scores of dead.

When the man opened the boot of his white Skoda, Mr Otmazgin saw the bodies of two young women, in short shorts and trainers lying next to each other.

Mr Otmazgin swore at the man, and then placed the bodies in the ambulance and drove on south.

He came across some soldiers blocking the way while fighting was still raging.

Overwhelmed, they had rushed to remove some bodies from the party that needed to be collected.

Mr Otmazgin works for Zaka, a volunteer group of ultra-Orthodox men who deploy to mass-casualty events simply to collect bodies as fast as they can. They are not there to investigate.

While evidence of pervasive sexual violence became known among therapy providers, gynaecologists and first responders, the details were not initially widely publicised.

Israel building biggest case against Hamas since Eichmann trial

Israel is preparing for the country’s most significant trial since the 1961 court case against Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.

Investigators and prosecutors are compiling a massive amount of evidence for an indictment against the captured Hamas terrorists who participated in the Oct. 7 massacre of some 1,200 persons in the northwestern Negev. Thousands more were wounded and at least 240 kidnapped back to Gaza. Terrorists committed acts of rape, sexual abuse, torture, burning and desecration of corpses.

Some 200 Hamas terrorists were captured in Israel during the Oct. 7 invasion, and additional terrorists are being taken prisoner as the Israel Defense Forces continues its ground offensive against the terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli parliament voted in early December to form a subcommittee that will create a legal framework for the prosecution of Hamas terrorists who participated in the Islamist group’s Oct. 7 massacre.

“The state of Israel has never before dealt with crimes and an investigation on this scale,” Roi Sheindorf, former deputy Israeli attorney general, told the Journal. “This will be one of the most important trials to take place in Israel.”

I’m a former hostage. What I thought when I saw Hamas release captives

Ana Diamond works with the Oxford Disinformation and Extremism Lab and the Red Team Network at OpenAI. She is also the co-founder of the Alliance Against State Hostage-taking, having endured over 200 days in solitary confinement as a hostage in Iran between 2016 and 2018.

As 105 hostages were slowly released during the pause in fighting over the end of November, a particularly unsettling phenomenon caught my eye as I perused social media: the crude denialism, even erasure, of Hamas’ atrocities toward their hostages in Gaza. It involved the active online participation of what could best be described as pro-Hamas publicity by sharing footage of Israeli hostages who appeared to be smiling, exchanging high-fives, waving and, at times, even expressing gratitude to their captors.

These images, the Hamas sympathizers insisted, were proof that the hostages had been treated decently and liked their Hamas guards. One user on X (formerly Twitter) wrote, “[Hostages] were having the time of their lives”; another one commented on how “they were treated well.” I find this very difficult to believe, especially since there have been instances where the hostages have taken the risk to attempt an escape from their captors – only to be tragically killed by the Israel Defense Forces by mistake. Furthermore, harrowing details shared by relatives of released hostages speak to beatings, hunger and lack of proper medical care.

As a former hostage of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps of Iran (IRGC), I was distraught to see the misleading viral narratives disseminated about the Israeli hostages on social media. Iran is the country that set the blueprint for rogue hostage-taking when Islamist students held more than 50 US Embassy staff hostage following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and unsurprisingly it is now funding Hamas.

It is true that hostage takers have good reason to keep their prisoners alive — they can extract a higher price for their release. While it is dangerous to idealize Hamas’ actions as humane, the fact that the hostages’ value lies in their well-being does mean their external conditions can appear relatively adequate. But even if there aren’t explicit signs of physical abuse, the psychological repercussions of terror and shock can take years for hostages to overcome. Leading psychiatrists have remarked on the necessity of extensive treatment for the trauma experienced by the hostages released from captivity in Gaza.

But it is wildly problematic to read any meaning into one orchestrated moment of release when hostages were still under Hamas control. In these politically precarious times, our social media landscapes have transformed into virtual war zones. It’s imperative to acknowledge that every hostage release serves as a carefully curated photo opportunity for Hamas, and for us to understand what the accurate experience of hostages in these circumstances is.

Happy October 86th

For the families of the hostages being held, for the families of the soldiers risking their lives day in and day out in Gaza, for the more than 1,400 families who have lost a loved one, for those cradling one of the many thousands of wounded in battle and for the country at large which experiencing the worst trauma in its history, it doesn’t matter that 2023 has made way for 2024.

Only in the hope that this calendar year doesn’t contain the heartache and grief of its predecessor (a very low bar, indeed), are we able to mark a differentiation between 2023 and 2024.

As long as our boys are dying in battle, our collective family is being held in inhumane conditions in Gaza, and Hamas is still clinging to a semblance of control, there is no room in our hearts – and no time in our lives – to celebrate.

The best we can do is raise a toast in the hope that October 86th will soon make way for a date in January or February to be determined. And that come next December 31st, Israel will have a blowout to match any New Year’s Eve celebration. And we won’t call it Sylvester.

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12/12 Links Pt1: Hamas Has No Place in the Civilized World; Article 51 and Israel’s inherent right to self-defence; Why the images of Hamas prisoners sparked outrage

From Ian:

Scott Walker: Hamas Has No Place in the Civilized World

Oct. 7 was the people of Israel's Pearl Harbor day. They must continue to fight back until the existential threat from Hamas no longer exists. They must eliminate this terrorist organization. Period.

Israelis have every right to do as President Roosevelt said after Dec. 7, 1941, and defend themselves to "the uttermost" and "make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us."

The U.S. was never involved in a ceasefire after the attacks. Our military did not stop until the total defeat of our collective enemies was realized. Israel should now do the same.

Those who believe that the innocent people of Israel had it coming are fundamentally wrong.

The evil thugs of Hamas are coldblooded killers who violated every sense of decency with their actions.

We must never appease evildoers. There can be no stopping until this evil is eradicated from the earth. Hamas has no place in the civilized world.

Article 51 and Israel’s inherent right to self-defence

Occupation
There is no precise definition of “occupation” under IHL, and thus no way to definitively state whether an occupation has begun or ended. However, no reasonable definition would apply to Israel’s relationship with Gaza.

Israel forcibly removed its citizens and withdrew all military personnel from Gaza in 2005. The designated genocidal terrorist organisation Hamas has ruled over Gaza since 2007 after violently wresting control of it from the Palestinian Authority, after which Israel rightfully declared it “hostile territory”. The idea that nearly 20 years later, Israel is still occupying Gaza is, on its face, nonsense.

To make the argument that Gaza is still occupied by Israel, the UN abuses the vague concept of “effective control” – an undefined notion not found in treaty law but still used as the basis for defining “occupation” – warping it beyond any legal or factual basis.

Those who baselessly argue, based on blatant misrepresentation of the concept, that Israel has “effective control” of Gaza for the purposes of IHL would have to explain how the actual governing authority of Gaza, Hamas, managed to plan and launch a full-scale invasion involving thousands of combatants and a massive bombardment of Israel from that territory without Israel’s knowledge. Whatever control Israel is alleged to have, it clearly is not “effective” by any possible legal definition of the term.

A moot point
IHL has evolved since the 19th century not to create reality, but to manage it. The reality is that there are just wars, and that these wars require rules to protect civilians to the greatest extent possible. The “inherent right” codified under Article 51 is a long-standing principle of self-preservation without caveats beyond other IHL rules under customary international law. To remain fit for purpose, IHL and the interpretation of Article 51 would by definition have to cover any “armed attack”, including terrorism, regardless of its source. Otherwise, as noted by Sir Greenwood above, it would and should be considered mad. No relevant version of international law would allow terrorist groups to attack states while prohibiting those states from defending themselves.

Israel completely withdrew from Gaza in 2005, ending the occupation and rendering the already questionable 2004 Advisory Opinion irrelevant to the current situation. Even Hamas admits Gaza is no longer occupied.

Even more importantly, In 2015, the non-existent “state of Palestine” – which includes Gaza – was farcically allowed by the UN to ratify the Geneva Conventions and other international agreements. It thus became a state-like entity under IHL, which renders this entire argument moot.

Johnathan Tobin: Why the images of Hamas prisoners sparked outrage

That so many people who cared nothing about the slaughter of Jews by Hamas two months ago, and ignored the widely distributed photo and video evidence (largely compiled by the terrorists themselves on GoPro cameras to publicize the humiliation of their victims) of those crimes, remains deeply shocking to Jews. So, too, is the hypocrisy of feminist leaders and organizations that seemed uninterested in the Palestinians’ deliberate use of rape—against women, children, and, as new reports come out, even men—as a weapon of war.

These crimes against Jews were ignored or quickly forgotten in the rush to deprive Israel of the right to defend itself. It soon became clear even to many Jews who had always been critical of Israeli policies or who sympathized with the suffering of Palestinians that the protests showed that something deeply troubling was behind the outrage about the fighting in Gaza.

Those chanting for a “free Palestine” from “the river to the sea” weren’t advocating for peace or a two-state solution. Their position was that Israeli suffering was unimportant because the Jewish state had no right to exist and should be “decolonized.” If that meant more Oct. 7-style atrocities, then so much the worse for Jews, who were supposedly guilty of possessing “white privilege” and oppressing “people of color.” The fact that this conflict has nothing to do with race—and that the Jews are the indigenous people of Israel and that the majority are “people of color” who immigrated from other parts of the Middle East and North Africa—counts for little among those who buy into intersectional myths and think the Jewish state should be erased and its people subjected to genocide.

Jews are no longer‘dhimmi’
But the pictures of Palestinian prisoners do touch a nerve throughout the world, and the reason for that goes far to explain why Palestinian Arabs—with the support of much of the Islamic world—persist in their century-old war against Zionism.

It is hardly surprising that images of Jewish suffering do not move the not-insubstantial percentage of the world’s population that thinks the Jews are not entitled to sovereignty or the right of self-defense in their ancient homeland. But what they really can’t stand is the idea that Jews are no longer homeless or at the mercy of a hostile world, as they were before the establishment of modern-day Israel in 1948. The notion that a despised minority, against whom the virus of antisemitism continues to incite unthinking hatred and demonization, are now powerful enough to defeat their foes is difficult for them to swallow.

This goes beyond sympathy for the Palestinians. They are trapped in an irredentist mindset that not only prevents them from accepting the multiple offers of statehood and peace Israel has made over the years but causes them to see a refusal to accept the Jewish state’s legitimacy and permanence as inextricably linked with their national identity.

The photos of Hamas prisoners are, by the standards of war photography, nothing particularly unusual or outrageous, and certainly not evidence of abuse. The documentation of their detention is certainly preferable to the silence that Hamas continues to adhere to about the fate of the hostages they have not yet released of whom no proof of life in any form has been forthcoming.

Yet the photos do seem outrageous to those who, whether Muslims or not, see Jews as what the Islamic world traditionally referred to as dhimmi. In Islamic societies, the dhimmi were “protected” residents of a country but treated as inferior to Muslims. Indeed, the photos provoke anger because they show that Hamas, which rightly anticipated that their atrocities would spark a surge in antisemitism rather than a backlash against them, is losing the war they started against the Jews. Their humiliation is evidence that their understanding of the world has been turned upside-down with the Jews no longer relegated to the status of a despised and powerless minority.

The anger about the images of Palestinian prisoners is not a reaction to evidence of Israeli crimes. Instead, it is more proof that the anti-Israel protests that have proliferated in the United States and elsewhere are motivated largely by antisemitic motives, whether rooted in modern leftist theories or historic religious hatred. Rather than a sidebar to the debate about the war, the anger about the photos shows us just how deep intolerance for Israel and Jews runs.

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12/25 Links: The UN’s Disgraceful Response to Hamas Massacre Can’t Go Unchallenged; The failure of Holocaust education; Red Cross refused medicine for Gaza hostages

From Ian:

The UN’s Disgraceful Response to Hamas Massacre Can’t Go Unchallenged

Just two days after the October 7 massacre, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHCR) demonstrated exactly why it is one of the UN’s most notorious and hypocritical organizations. The Pakistani representative, Zaman Mehdi, called for and received a minute’s silence to remember the victims in the “occupied Palestinian territories” and elsewhere, saying it was a result of more than “seven decades of foreign occupation, aggression and disrespect for international law.” He didn’t mention Israel, and he also failed to mention Hamas — the perpetrators of the massacre. By referring to “seven decades,” he made it very clear that he attributed all blame to Israel’s very existence since 1948.

Also disturbingly, despite the overwhelming forensic evidence of sexual assault against Jewish women, including videos, these rapes were completely ignored by the United Nations, including by groups whose entire purpose is to protect women. Only after two months and an international campaign to call attention to the UN’s complete failure to even acknowledge the sick sexual violence, did the UN Women organization finally issue a weak condemnation.

Then there is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, known as UNRWA, whose staff, officials and teachers have long been exposed for involvement in terrorist violence in the past. Despite its supposed pretext of helping Palestinian refugees, it is one of the major impediments to any kind of peaceful coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians.

The majority of UNRWA’s $1.6 billion budget, of which Australia contributes $20 million, promotes policies that support the “right of return” for Palestinians into Israel — meaning ending the existence of the State of Israel.

During the current conflict, it was revealed that UNRWA staff celebrated the massacre, and weapons caches have been discovered in UNRWA facilities. It was also revealed that a UNRWA teacher held a hostage captive in their attic. UNRWA denies all this, saying they are being defamed.

Finally, there is the most powerful person in the UN hierarchy, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who had the nerve, even as Hamas terrorists were still running wild and massacring civilians throughout towns and villages of southern Israel, to call for “maximum restraint” from Israel. He cemented his continued descent into the moral abyss by encouraging “understanding” of the attacks by Hamas, saying they “did not happen in a vacuum,” and were a result of the “occupation.”

What happened on October 7 in southern Israel was pure unadulterated evil. The UN had a chance to choose to stand on the side of good against that evil, but as it’s so often done in the past, it made the wrong choice, adding to its ever-growing shame.

Melanie Phillips: The failure of Holocaust education

Since the Hamas pogrom of October 7 in southern Israel, a tsunami of hatred against the Jews has surged across the west. Decent people everywhere are aghast and astonished that this should be the response by so many to the greatest single act of mass murder against Jews since the Holocaust.

They are even more perplexed that a recurring characteristic of such attacks is to tear down the posters of the Israeli hostages that have been pasted up in public areas in a forlorn attempt to keep their fate alive in the public mind so that they may be returned home.

The reason for such driven and unhinged behaviour against posters stuck on walls is as obvious as it is appalling. Certain people simply cannot tolerate the fact of Jewish victimhood. So intolerable do they find this, they have to literally tear down the evidence with their own hands. No less significant is the way they do so, with both verbal and facial expressions of the most intense disgust. They find the idea of Jewish victims disgusting. And that’s because they find the very idea of Jews disgusting. What they are doing to those posters is what they would like to do to Israeli Jews.

For evidence of that, watch this video by Avi Horowitz who went to San Francisco State university to “raise money to kill Jews”. He found 28 out of 35 people with whom he engaged supported this aim, and 17 out of 35 actually offered him money “to kill Jews”.

How is such abhorrent behaviour to be explained? A major reason is that many if not most of these Jew-haters subscribe to the doctrine of “intersectional” identity politics and victim culture, which holds that some groups of people are oppressed and others are oppressors. The “oppressed” can never be held responsible for bad things they may do; the “oppressors” can never be victims of the “oppressed” or of anyone else. The haters believe that the Jews are all-powerful, that they drive capitalism and thus control the levers of world power which they manipulate in their own interests and against those of everyone else.

Why do they believe that? Because “intersectional” identity politics is the product of an education system which has long been captured by Marxist ideology, at the root of which lies an exterminatory hatred of the Jewish people. In other words, those who subscribe to identity politics are motivated at root by Jew-hatred.

And that also motivates those who are indifferent to identity politics but who believe — because historic Christian culture embedded in the west tells them so — that the Jews are motivated by vengeance and blood-lust. So they have eagerly swallowed the demonisation and defamatory lies of the Palestinian narrative, parroted day in, day out by the Hamas Broadcasting Corporation, Sky News and certain posh newspapers which spread the libel that the Israelis are wanton child-killers.

The fact that more than 1200 Israelis were slaughtered on October 7 by the supposedly “oppressed” Palestinians and more than 230 taken hostage, with an unknown number subsequently tortured, raped and murdered by those “oppressed” Palestinians while more than 100 remain captive in the hell-holes of Hamas, gets in the way of that narrative.

‘Tis the season for United Nations to see Jewish holidays as less equal

Leading with a tree emoji, the official United Nations account on X posted on Sunday to its 16.4 million followers: “Merry Christmas to all who are celebrating!”

A JNS review of prior holiday messages on the United Nations account revealed a single instance where the international body—which has long been accused of antisemitism and of unfairly targeting the Jewish state—appeared to celebrate a Jewish holiday.

That lone instance, from last April, came when the United Nations managed to lump a Jewish holiday together with several others.

“‘Peace is needed today more than ever.’ During a special interfaith ‘Prayer for Peace’ moment, António Guterres,” the U.N. secretary-general, “says that even the calendar is sending a message of unity, as Ramadan, Easter, Passover and the Sikh festival of Vaisakhi coincide this month,” the United Nations posted on April 14.

The United Nations shared something similar again on April 14 and on April 6. Those appear to be the only times that the United Nations has posted about a Jewish holiday.

A search of all the handle’s posts on X yielded no other results for “Passover,” and no results for “Pesach,” “Hanukkah,” “Chanukah,” “Shavuot,” “Shavuos,” “Sukkot,” “Sukkos,” “Purim,” “Yom Kippur,” “Rosh Hashanah” nor “High Holidays.” “Jewish holiday” and “Jewish holidays” also returned no results.

“Festival of lights,” returned four results, but none related to the Jewish festival of lights. “During Diwali, the festival of lights—celebrated in India and by followers of many faiths across the world—clay lamps are lit to signify the victory of good over evil,” the United Nations posted on Nov. 11. The U.N. account also mentioned “festival of lights” and wished a happy Diwali in 2022, 2020, 2019 and 2018. (It also wished a happy Diwali in 2021, and two more times in 2020, without mentioning “festival of lights.”)

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12/25 Link: Israel: A protector of minorities in the Middle East; Treating Anti-Semitism as a Preexisting Condition; Erin Molan interview

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: We need to find the crack in the darkness

The most recent repercussion of the Hamas massacre of October 7 was the death on Tuesday of Kibbutz Nir Oz member Hannah Katzir, 76, who was released along with 50 other hostages held by Hamas in a deal in November 2023Katzir was kidnapped to the Gaza Strip from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7. Her husband, Rami, was murdered during the massacre. Her son Eldad, taken captive the same day, was later murdered in Gaza.Katzir’s daughter, Carmit, had written in December last year that her mother returned from captivity “both heartbroken and with serious cardiological issues, including broken heart syndrome.”

The Katzirs’ story is just one of many unfathomable tragedies that have befallen thousands of families in Israel on October 7 and since - those who fell then, those who have fallen in battle, and all of those who have not returned home, as the country gathers to celebrate one of the most family-oriented holidays in the Jewish calendar.

Yet, celebrate we will, as the people of Israel continue to choose life over death and light over darkness.

As Rabbi Stewart Weiss states in a column that will appear in this Friday’s Post magazine, “Hanukkah, at its core, is the celebration of miracles - both then and now. Yet exactly which miracles are being referred to is the subject of much debate.”

One way to look at it is that the lights of the hanukkiah have illuminated our path through the interminable darkness and continue to light our way toward redemption, writes Weiss.

So, when we light the first Hanukkah candle tonight, let’s rejoice at what the Jewish people have and what we’ve accomplished – and the existence and durability of the Jewish homeland, of the state of Israel.

But let’s also think about the Jews suffering from persecution and antisemitism, who are too afraid to display the hanukkiah in their windows and will light in secrecy inside, reminiscent of the dark periods of Jewish history.

And let’s think about the hostages, some languishing below ground with their mental and physical health deteriorating on a daily basis. If anyone deserves a Hanukkah miracle, it’s them and their families.

May the lights from our hanukkiah illuminate a path that reaches them and sends them a message of hope amid their darkness.

As the great Jewish poet Leonard Cohen wrote, “There is a crack, a crack in everything… That's how the light gets in.”

This year, the miracle of Hanukkah will be to find those cracks and shine the light through.

Yisrael Medad: Needed: A little more ‘Three Wise Men’ wisdom

While wise not to reveal to Herod the location, they were even wiser to know that the child was Jewish; he was born in Judea and that area was the land of Judah, a son of Jacob. While not specified, I am fairly certain that they knew the country was not Palestine and as such, that the child was not an Arab Palestinian (even if, earlier this month, the current pope gazed upon a Nativity display of a manger scene that had the representative doll resting on a keffiyeh).

Pope Francis attended the unveiling of the exhibition at the Paul VI Hall on Dec. 7. It was designed by artists Johny Andonia and Faten Nastas Mitwasi from Bethlehem’s Dar al-Kalima University.

“The keffiyeh was added at the last minute during the installation phase,” said Faten Nastas Mitwasi, one of the two artists, students at Dar al-Kalima University in Bethlehem overseeing the project, along with Johny Andonia.

In a Dec. 12 interview with the Religious News Service, she said that while it was not their initial intention to turn the display into a political statement, they welcomed the final addition of the keffiyeh as a symbol of national identity. She added, “This is a gift from the Palestinian people. So, it’s holding and carrying the Palestinian identity.”

Minister for Diaspora Affair Amichai Chikli quickly wrote to the pope that the decision to portray the scene as such was “a deliberate adoption of the Palestinian narrative.” Within days, the keffiyeh was removed.

A few years ago, in response to the propaganda campaign comparing Jesus, Mary and Joseph with present-day Arabs being held up a roadblock put up by the Israel Defense Forces, there was need of a concerted effort to point out that roadblocks are due to Arab terror operations and not to Jews seeking to be cruel. Moreover, as Matthew 2:19 records, Mary and Joseph, following Herod’s death, returned from a short exile from Egypt and the country to which they came back is recorded, at 2:20-21, as “Israel.” Again, no “Palestine.”

Anyone who searches the Christian Bible will find dozens and dozens of references to Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. And a Jewish Temple, too, which was also an object of PLO chief Yasser Arafat’s erasure efforts. “Palestine” and “West Bank” are not to be found, nor, as the case is, in the Quran. Not even Jerusalem. However, at Sura 5:21 the Children of Israel are charged to live in the Holy Land (al-Ard al-Muqaddas).

The verse refers to the words spoken by Moses to the descendants of Isaac: “Remember Moses said … O my people! Enter The Holy Land which God hath written for you, and turn not back.”

Imam Abu al-Qasim Mahmud al-Zamakshari, in his 11th-century commentary al-Kashaf, explained that the borders of “the Holy Land” are from Mount Hermon and part the Golan, whereas others say it extends from the territory of the Philistines (Gaza) until Damascus.

It would be wise to inject more objective, fact-based, ecumenical and genuine knowledge into the regional equation, which would achieve much for religiously motivated supporters—and opponents—of Zionism.

Israel: A protector of minorities in the Middle East

Given the Jewish people’s two millenniums of wandering without access to their homeland, it’s only natural for Israelis to empathize with the Kurdish people and their desire for a state of their own. In past conflicts between Turkey and the Kurds, such as in the fall of 2019, Jerusalem declared its support of the Kurdish people. As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Facebook that October, “Israel strongly condemns the Turkish invasion of the Kurdish areas in Syria and warns against the ethnic cleansing of the Kurds by Turkey and its proxies. Israel is prepared to extend humanitarian assistance to the gallant Kurdish people.”

Just last month, the newly installed Israeli foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, emphasized the importance of forging a “natural alliance” with the Kurdish nation.

The Turks, Iranians and the Arab regimes in Iraq and Syria share little in common, except a unifying desire to prevent the creation of a Kurdish state. Turkey and Iran, in particular, have been aggressively persecuting their Kurdish population. The major ambition of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is to impede any manifestation of Kurdish independence or autonomous status in Syria.

Erdoğan has trained and financed the rebel groups that ended the Bashar Assad regime’s control of Syria. While the jihadist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group focused on capturing Aleppo, Hama, Homs and Damascus, Erdoğan’s proxy—the National Syrian Army—focused on killing Kurds and conquering Kurdish majority communities in northern Syria.

Israel has a security and strategic stake in an alliance with the Kurds in Iraq and Syria, as well as supporting the Kurds in Iran and the Druze community in Syria. Strong alliances with these minorities would create a barrier against any future attempts by Iran and its Shi’ite Iraqi proxies to infiltrate Syria and link up with Hezbollah.

A prominent Syrian-Kurdish leader told me that while words of support from Israeli government officials are nice, the Kurds need action. The Kurds want an alliance with Israel and they want military assistance. I responded by noting that while it has been difficult for Israel to aid the Kurds militarily given the close military relations Israel had with the Turkish army and intelligence apparatus, Erdoğan’s openly hostile declarations indicate him to be a declared enemy of Israel. As a result, this has changed the calculations in Jerusalem and, Israel may now be prepared to render military assistance to the Kurds.

An alliance with the Druze is much easier given the proximity of the Golan Heights to the Druze villages in southern Syria. As seen in a widely circulated video on social media, some Druze leaders have expressed a desire to become part of Israel to prevent assaults by “radical Islamists.”

These Druze villagers remained loyal to the Assad regime until the end. As a minority, they were always watching their backs, and now they fear retribution from the Sunni jihadist rebels who have taken over Syria. In terms of the bigger picture for the Druze, they would like to be granted an autonomous status in southwestern Syria, realizing that right now, an independent Druze state is unrealistic. Given the weight of the Israeli Druze community, coupled with the prestige and affection with which they are held by the Jewish majority, Syrian Druze feel compelled to choose sides. Their fear of jihadist rule and the prospect of joining with their fellow Druze in Israel under the protection of the Israeli Defense Forces’ umbrella, makes for an easy choice.

A Christian-Lebanese friend of mine recently told me that “Israel must become the protector of the minorities in the Middle East.” He had in mind not only the Kurds and the Druze but the Christians in Lebanon and Syria. Although it is a tribute to Israel’s recent military victories, which have projected Israel as the “strong horse” in the region, those objectives, however, might be far beyond Israel’s resources. Still, an alliance with the Kurds and the Druze in Syria has considerable merit.

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12/27 Links: Anti-Zionism is Anti-Jewish, Anti-West, Anti-America and Anti-Joy; Australian Jews no longer feel safe to live freely and openly; Italian police charge nine with funding Hamas; What does Israel stand to gain from recognizing Somaliland?

From Ian:

Anti-Zionism is Anti-Jewish, Anti-West, Anti-America and Anti-Joy

So far, we’ve been telling the world that antisemitism and antizionism are bad for the Jews and for Israel, but with Israel becoming a pariah state, much of the world has shrugged and said: who cares?

With our backs against the wall, we have no choice but to aim high. To win the long game, we must raise the stakes and start focusing on what is good and bad for the world. Antizionism may be a singular sin and a uniquely evil expression of Jew-hatred that targets Jews as Zionists, but it’s a lot worse than that.

It’s also anti-West, anti-America, anti-truth, anti-justice, anti-joy and anti-world. Antizionism, just like anti-Judaism and antisemitism, is a movement against the common good. It has become a hater’s paradise where all haters and liars are welcome. We must invest more resources in making that case.

If antizionism is bad for the world, the corollary, as I argued recently, is also true: Zionism is great for the world. As Joshua Hoffman writes on his Substack: “The West is losing something essential that Israelis do best. While many people in the West feel embarrassed by their own countries, Israelis carry deep-seated pride rooted in history, responsibility, and a clear-eyed understanding of reality.”

Just as antizionism is rooted in Jew-hatred, Zionism is rooted in Judaism. The two are inseparable. If there is joy in Judaism, there is joy in Zionism. If there is courage in Zionism, there is courage in Judaism. By keeping these two pillars of Jewish identity tightly bonded, we can craft a winning and unapologetic Jewish message for the next century: Zionism and Judaism are great for the world.

In short, to have any chance of combatting the global evil of antizionism, we must put our best two feet forward: Jewish and Zionist.

We owe it to those decimated Jewish souls I saw in “Nuremberg.”

Palestinians must renounce culture of deception for real peace with Israel

Yet here, too, the familiar pattern emerges. This is not ideological transformation but tactical adaptation. Not abandonment of doctrine, but message management.

The phased approach has not vanished; it has simply adopted a modern suit. As fears of sanctions grow and as renewed threats loom – including the possibility of a future US administration designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization – rhetoric softens and declarations become more measured.

This does not indicate a change in essence. Political Islam, across its various branches, operates in stages: first “da’wah” – social, educational, and religious influence through nonviolent means – and only later confrontation. Those who fail to recognize this risk mistaking conciliatory statements for ideological surrender.

Israeli experience teaches that actions, not words, must be examined. Arafat spoke of peace while preparing for war. Abbas speaks of civic integration, yet has not truly disavowed the ideological foundations from which he emerged.

Formal disengagement from a Shura body or institution does not erase ideology; it is a technical adjustment designed to reassure, obscure, and delay confrontation.

The problem is not only political but also cultural – a culture in which deception is not an exception but a tool. One message is crafted for Western audiences, another for internal consumption. Peace is treated not as an objective, but as an instrument.

The Oslo Accords taught Israel a painful lesson: peace is not secured through documents alone. It is measured through sincerity, education, and genuine shifts in worldview.

As long as the Palestinian political spectrum, in its various forms, remains committed to the phased doctrine, every conciliatory declaration must be approached with skepticism.

Italian police charge nine with funding Hamas

Seven people were arrested in Italy on suspicion of raising some $8 million for the Gaza-ruling terrorist group of Hamas, police said on Saturday.

International arrest warrants were issued in connection with the case for two additional individuals located outside the country, AFP reported.

Mohammad Hannoun, president of the Palestinian Association in Italy, was among those arrested, local media reported, according to AFP.

The nine suspects are charged with financing “associations based in Gaza, the Palestinian territories, or Israel, owned, controlled or linked to Hamas,” under the guise of “humanitarian purposes for the Palestinian people,” the report continued.

More than 71% of the $8 million was directed to financing Hamas or entities affiliated with the Islamist dictatorship, the Italian police was cited as saying.

Some of the money went to “family members implicated in terrorist attacks,” the statement further read.

Italy’s ruling party, Brothers of Italy, spearheaded by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, said on X that the left should “humbly apologize” given the arrests.

The Italian government has denounced “for a long time” local associations with ties to terrorism, “but the left attacked us along with its media circus,” the party tweeted in Italian following the police’s statement.

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12/28 Links: The Global War on the Jews; All eyes on Florida as Trump, Netanyahu face Gaza ceasefire test; How Western ‘charity’ bought Hamas’s rockets; Starmer welcomes ‘extremist’ to Britain

From Ian:

The Global War on the Jews

Jews everywhere are confronting a period of danger and moral testing. Antisemitism no longer hides at the margins. It organizes, radicalizes, and kills. The global surge in antisemitism does not arise organically. States and terrorist organizations deliberately export violence, incitement, and ideology far beyond Israel's borders. The same actors who target Israel actively work to destabilize Jewish life worldwide. What begins in Israel never ends there.

During Israel's campaign against Hamas, calls for a "ceasefire" from anti-Israel activists exposed their true intent. They demanded that Israel should halt its defense. Hamas and its allies, it seemed, could continue attacking Israeli civilians without consequence. That same moral inversion now fuels violence across the Diaspora. Selective outrage and the erasure of Jewish vulnerability have moved from protest rhetoric to physical attack.

Since the truce between Israel and Hamas took effect in early October, violence against Jews worldwide has intensified. When the world delegitimizes Jewish self-defense, Jewish life everywhere becomes more vulnerable.

In Israel, a deeper clarity is evident. Israeli society understands that security cannot be subcontracted, that moral clarity cannot be outsourced, and that Jewish continuity demands courage. The festival of Hanukkah rejects the idea that Jews must justify their existence on terms set by others. Israel embodies that refusal.

Only in Israel do Judaism, Christianity, and Islam coexist freely and openly under the protection of law. That reality stands in sharp contrast to the regions controlled by the forces whose narratives dominate much of today's international discourse.

College Middle Eastern studies departments are broken — shut them down to end campus radicalism

Shut down the Middle Eastern studies departments in our universities. I was a student in one of these programs, and I say it plainly: shut them down.

A majority are corrupted and compromised. Through these departments, dozens of American college students have at best been indoctrinated to despise this country and whitewash the crimes of terrorists, and at worst pushed toward genuine radicalization and extremist plots.

These programs have been the soft underbelly through which universities quietly accept foreign money and, with it, foreign influence that dictates curriculum, hiring, admissions, scholarships and more. They serve as conduits that funnel cash into extracurricular groups, adding an extra layer of protection and plausible deniability while financing the encampments and harassment campaigns that have erupted on campus in recent years.

Anti-Israel protesters demonstrate outside Columbia University on Sept. 3, in New York City. (Yuki Iwamura/AP)

This influence has been seeping into our institutions for more than two decades, but it has become brazen precisely because there have been few, if any, consequences. As someone who has had a front‑row seat to the jihadification of American academia, this is where much of it begins. Shut it down.

The rot is no longer theoretical. It has names, funding streams and institutional addresses. At Columbia University, Mahmood Mamdani, father of New York City’s mayor-elect, has been criticized for presenting Israel as a purely colonial project while downplaying the terrorism of groups such as Hamas, shaping how students in African and Middle Eastern studies understand the region.

At Oberlin College, Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, a former Iranian diplomat, has faced allegations that he helped cover up the Iran regime’s mass executions in the 1980s and has spoken of Hamas "resistance" in ways that minimize its terrorism.

And at Princeton University, Seyed Hossein Mousavian, another former Iran regime official, has been accused of echoing the talking points of Tehran while appearing to legitimize Hamas and Hezbollah in public remarks, all under the banner of Middle East security studies.

When the person shaping course offerings, speakers and graduate funding openly aligns with a brutal authoritarian regime, why should anyone be surprised when students emerge hostile to Israel, sympathetic to designated terror groups and convinced America is the villain of the story?

The money behind this intellectual capture is staggering. Saudi Arabia has poured tens of millions into specific Middle East and Islamic studies hubs, from the King Fahd Center in Arkansas to Alwaleed-bin-Talal–branded programs at Harvard and Georgetown that fund chairs, research and student programming focused on Islam and the Middle East.

According to a 2022 report by the National Association of Scholars, a higher education think tank, Qatar has become one of the largest foreign donors to U.S. higher education since 2001, with several billion dollars routed through branch campuses and partnerships that shape what is taught about the Middle East on both Doha and U.S. soil.

This is not philanthropy in the abstract; it is targeted influence over who gets hired, what gets researched, and which narratives about Israel, Jews and the West are elevated or suppressed.

Book Review: “Be A Refusenik: A Jewish Student’s Survival Guide”

A delightful lithograph hangs in the Berkeley Jewish Art Museum, a block west of the University of California’s rattled flagship campus. It shows its creator, originally a Soviet underground artist, Eugene Abeshous, dressed as a Fiddler on the Roof extra, disembarking at Eretz Yisrael. The work is called Jonah and the Whale in Haifa Port because instead of a cruise liner, its protagonist exits the gaping mouth of a sea monster. Abeshous tells the story that was once on the front pages of American newspapers, but is now nearly forgotten—that of Soviet Jews leaving the belly of the beast.

In her recently released Be A Refusenik: A Jewish Student’s Survival Guide, historian of Soviet Jewry Izabella Tabarovsky used the struggle of the Soviet Jews in the 1970s and 80s as an inspiration for the young Americans facing antisemitism on college campuses. Tabarovsky put the half-century-old experiences of my and her parents’ generation side-by-side with the conflicts defining the lives of our children. Even if we are “separated by decades, borders, and ideologies,” she showed how the mindset of refuseniks can—and does—inspire the students today.

Refuseniks were the Soviet Jewish dissidents who were denied permission to make aliya. My maternal uncle, for instance, applied for his exit visa in 1980, lost his scientist job, had many unfortunate encounters with the sadistic Soviet bureaucracy, and was finally granted passage in 1987, after he made it on the Ronald Reagan list of 100 refuseniks.

My uncle was perhaps luckier than most, but this was a fairly typical refusenik fate. Yet when Tabarovsky tells American students to be refuseniks, she highlights another meaning of the word—the one who refuses to surrender to the forces of evil. Her book teaches how to dive into Jewish history to find the inner strength to resist.

In one key respect, Soviet antisemitism was similar to the contemporary American antisemitism—it sells itself as antizionism. In fact—and this is something Tabarovsky discussed in her Legal Insurrection lecture—our antizionism was invented by the Soviets; it was a product of the virtual freakout over the 1967 defeat of its Arab clients. The Antizionist tropes animating the vocabulary of American college professors are traceable to Brezhnev-era Soviet propaganda.

Antizionism, Tabarovsky shows, was something that Soviet Jews, like their contemporary American counterparts, experienced on a personal level—the hysteria whipped up in the media and echoed in local Communist meetings made Jewish existence unsafe. But the defiant Zionists inverted fear and responded with pride. For instance, when his bosses brought out Nathan Sharansky for a Soviet humiliation ritual before his entire institute and started drilling him about his Jewish ideological leanings, Sharansky responded by giving a brief lecture on modern Israeli history—and found an “intrigued” audience in his co-workers, many of whom, I’m sure, found it liberating to hear Soviet propaganda exposed.

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12/09 Links Pt2: The Rise of Lifestyle Anti-Zionism; Oct. 7 communities: Still mourning but beginning to rebuild; Ireland Is a Wounded Tiger

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The Rise of Lifestyle Anti-Zionism

Zionism is at its core a simple belief in Jewish rights in Israel. Much of the time when pro-Palestinian activists in the West use the word Zionist, they mean “Jew.” But when they attack “Zionism” as a concept, they are making a political and ideological statement about coexistence. Anti-Zionists believe that rights are zero-sum, that Arabs in the historical Land of Israel cannot be free unless the Jews there are unfree.

Similarly, they believe that the safety and security of Palestinians must come at the expense of the safety and security of Jews. Outside of Israel, this includes Zionists—people who support or advocate for equal rights for Jews in their homeland. Anti-Zionism has become a totalizing worldview, an ideology of far greater expanse and application than Zionism itself ever was.

Anti-Zionism is an all-encompassing ideology now. It requires no association with the land of Zion. Anti-Zionism, like ISIS’s infamous “jihad in place” strategy, is about hating Jews and punishing their supporters wherever you happen to be. Think global, act local.

This is why we are seeing the founding of explicitly anti-Zionist political parties in Western Europe, of all places. And it’s why anti-Zionism has swallowed anti-colonialism as a discipline on campus. It’s why we’re even seeing the advent of anti-Zionist coffee shops. Opposition to equal rights for Jews is becoming a lifestyle for a growing number of Westerners. Now there is really no limit to what you can blame on the Jews.

Anti-Israel Celebrities Accept Major Saudi Payday To Attend Jeddah Film Festival

Some of Hollywood’s most ardent anti-Israel activists are flocking to Saudi Arabia this week for a government-sponsored film festival—and the kingdom is compensating them well for their time.

The Red Sea International Film Festival, which has been held annually in Jeddah since 2021 under the authority of the Saudi Ministry of Culture, has drawn a star-studded guest list including actors like Riz Ahmed, Juliette Binoche, Michael Caine, Kirsten Dunst, and Idris Elba—all of whom have accused Israel of committing atrocities in response to Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack and none of whom have spoken about Saudi Arabia’s human rights record.

The festival has been known to pay large sums to celebrity guests. Filmmaker Spike Lee received between $2.5 million and $3 million for presiding over the festival’s jury last year, Puck reported, though it is unclear how much this year’s jury president, Oscar-winning director Sean Baker, has received. A source familiar with the festival confirmed Saudi Arabia has compensated actors and filmmakers for attending, and NBC reported that "many [attendees are] set to receive checks." The festival said in a statement to NBC that it will "on occasion engage with talent on a contractual basis for work we ask them to do at the festival which includes labs, in conversations, mentorship sessions with emerging regional talent." Though representatives for the festival did not disclose the names of actors and filmmakers it is paying, Ahmed is a member of the jury, Dunst participated in a conversation on Thursday, and Elba will do so on Wednesday.

The film festival—and appearances from actors who frequently condemn Israel—comes after a group of U.S. comedians faced scrutiny for performing at the Riyadh Comedy Festival in September in the face of Saudi Arabia’s policing of speech and widespread human rights abuses. Comedian Shane Gillis, who turned down a "significant" payout, said he declined the offer because most of the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia.

"I’m not doing it," he said. "Then they doubled the bag. It was a significant bag. But I’d already said no. I took a principled stand. You don’t 9/11 your friends."

Dave Chappelle, meanwhile, used his performance at the festival to bash the United States—after signing a gag order shielding Saudi royals from criticism—because it was "easier to talk here than it is in America."

The Annual ‘Jesus Was a Palestinian’ Christmas Lie Is Back — and It’s Antisemitic

Each December, as holiday decorations go up and familiar music fills the air, another relatively new holiday ritual returns with equal predictability — social media fills with declarations that “Jesus was a Palestinian,” often joined by the equally fictional assertion that he was a “Palestinian refugee.”

These claims appear every Christmas season as reliably as ornaments and carols, as though the propagandists believe that repeating the lies might someday transform fiction into fact.

But this isn’t just a harmless anachronism — like depicting Moses checking Google Maps while wandering in the Sinai. It is part of a longstanding effort to erase Jews from their own history, an effort that has resurfaced in recent years precisely because it is politically useful.

The Truth Has Never Been in Dispute
Jesus lived and died as a Jew from Judea. He was born into a Jewish family, observed Jewish law, taught in synagogues, quoted Jewish scripture, and was addressed as “Rabbi” by his followers. Christian scripture traces his lineage directly to the kings of Judah.

No credible historian debates this. There is not a single academic school, anywhere, that regards Jesus as anything other than a Jew living in the Jewish homeland.

Denying the Jewishness of Jesus is not a new mistake. It is part of a familiar form of appropriation — including supersessionism (replacement theology) — that has targeted Jews for centuries.

The Colonialist Name Activists Pretend Was Ancient
The assertion that Jesus was “Palestinian” collapses instantly under the simplest timeline. During the first century CE, the land was known as Judea, Samaria, the Galilee, or the Land of Israel. At that time, there was no place or nation called “Palestine,” no “Palestinians,” and no political or cultural identity by that name. No person during Jesus’s lifetime ever referred to himself as a “Palestinian.” Claiming otherwise is like insisting that a Pilgrim stepping off the Mayflower in 1620 called himself an “American.”

Notably, the first political or national entity in history to use the word “Palestine” emerged nearly 2,000 years after Jesus, in 1920, when the British Empire established the “British Mandate for Palestine.”

And the Roman Empire only introduced the geographic term “Syria Palaestina” in 135 CE — a century after Jesus’ death — to punish Jews for the Bar Kokhba revolt and to try to break their connection to their own land.

Today, anti-Israel activists echo that Roman attempt at erasure and call it solidarity.

Dave Rich: We will fight tooth and nail for a better way of thinking

“What is anti-Zionism for, exactly?” The question was posed by Dr Dave Rich in his trenchant Robert Fine Memorial lecture to supporters of the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism.

And Rich, director of policy at the Community Security Trust, in a complex and detailed analysis of the thinking behind present-day anti-Zionism and antisemitism, had a simple and chilling answer.

“If we strip away the political sloganeering and academic ambiguities, it is a plot to kill a nation. That’s it. Anti-Zionism is a campaign, across decades and continents, to kill the nation of Israel, erase its name and its national identity from history, and replace it with something non-Jewish…Anti-Zionism is utterly unique, and fundamentally anti-democratic.”

In his searing lecture, Rich broke down the levers of anti-Zionism and antisemitism, using references ranging from the Star Wars Death Star to even more prosaic examples of everyday Jewish hatred. His audience laughed and shivered at much the same time.

He cited Loose Women’s Nadia Sawalha, who “took to social media to defend Louis Theroux, after his interview with Bobby Vylan, from what she called the ‘group of people’ who ‘live by their pound of flesh rule…So many of us are sick and tired of being bullied…the threat that has hung over our heads for years and years that we may be antisemitic — you’ve worn it out.” Rich commented: “There’s a brashness, a daring sense of freedom in finally saying what needs to be said about the Jews”.

Dave Rich: The Robert Fine Memorial Lecture: where are we now? (text)

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12/24 Links Pt2: David Mamet: Jews Face Horrors With Humor; Concert of former captive Alon Ohel sells out in hours; Abbas: Marwan Barghouti’s release a top priority

From Ian:

David Mamet: Jews Face Horrors With Humor

That the sun revolves around the Earth explains dawn but renders astronomy impossible. Similarly, of antisemitism, we are the victim of an error in logic: mistaking the effect for the cause.

It is a heartbreaking but understandable Jewish fantasy that antisemitism can be addressed by changing others’ opinions or our own behavior. Which is to say, by becoming more understanding of our oppressor’s need to be placated.

Jew-hatred exploded after the Oct. 7 massacre in response to Israeli “forgetfulness” of our historic status as beggars—existing only on the gracious sufferance of others. (Note that even the supposedly humane term “tolerance” means the ability to abide the noxious.)

Current antisemitic savagery echoes the South’s fear of and responses to slave revolts. The enslaved asserted the truth the oppressors feared above all: that they were actual human beings. The worried insistence on the contrary was found not only in law but, even more revealingly, in humor, where the punchline of any “joke” could be a dehumanization of blacks, demanding the complicity of laughter. One can’t take back a laugh.

Antisemitism has nothing to do with Jews. It is equivalent to child sacrifice: the offering to pagan gods of the lives of the unprotected. It emerges, historically, when a sufficient mass of the populace has become terrified into unreason and ceded control into the hands of the evil but assured. Pagan societies fearing the wrath of unknowable gods fed them innocent lives. The fearful of our age, unsettled by unassimilable change, seek security in mass thought and relief in violence. That’s all.

How can we know that one thing is truer than another? If it is sadder. I conclude not with a joke but with a proverb at the essence of most Jewish jokes: What is as whole as a Jew with a broken heart?

Slain journalist Daniel Pearl’s father charts recent ‘Zionophobia’ rise in new book

In 2002, Judea Pearl’s son, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, was kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan while reporting on religious extremist groups in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. A video showed the captive journalist making coerced statements before he was killed. In one, Daniel Pearl said that he was Jewish, as were his parents.

Judea Pearl has not stopped thinking about that message. With his late wife Ruth Pearl and their two daughters, he established the Daniel Pearl Foundation to honor his son, including through a dialogue program with Muslim journalists. More recently, the Israeli-American scholar has also been contemplating what it means to be Jewish in the post-October 7, 2023, landscape.

A professor of computer science at the University of California, Los Angeles and a frequent op-ed contributor to Jewish media outlets, Pearl has had a front-row seat to witness changing attitudes toward Israel among American university students, especially after the bloody October 7 Hamas onslaught on Israel that killed 1,200 and kidnapped 251, and Israel’s subsequent war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Now Pearl has compiled some of his columns into a book, titled “Coexistence and Other Fighting Words: Selected Writings of Judea Pearl 2002-2025.”

Released on December 10, the book shows Pearl is as creative a thinker on the op-ed page as he is in the science lab. He coins multiple terms and phrases — notably “Zionophobia,” which he distinguishes from antisemitism.

“In one breath, it’s the denial of the Jewish people’s right to self-determination anywhere in the Middle East,” Pearl told The Times of Israel regarding Zionophobia. “It’s a simple definition.”

And, he argues, it’s what university administrators should be focusing on instead of antisemitism.

“We have been constantly speaking against antisemitism, not against anti-Zionism,” Pearl said. “The minute you mention antisemitism, you lose the game. Because someone will rush to appoint a task force, the task force will invite philosophers, the philosophers will climb Mt. Olympus, and you’ve lost 10 years of philosophical discussion in which nothing is being done. Antisemitism thus becomes a license for inaction — if not worse.”

Throughout the book, Pearl is unafraid to make similarly counterintuitive claims.

He mines primary sources for evidence that early Zionists such as Chaim Weizmann, Vladimir Jabotinsky and David Ben-Gurion sought a measure of accommodation with the native Arab population of Palestine. In defending Jewish ties to the land of Israel, he contends that indigeneity doesn’t have to stem from physical connection to a place — it can also derive from cultural attachment, such as the many mentions of Zion in the birkat hamazon prayer after eating bread, or the Jewish pilgrimage holiday of Sukkot. He compares today’s anti-Zionist Jews to coreligionists of the past who rebelled against mainstream thinking and were eventually forgotten by history — such as the Karaites, or the Sabateans.

Readers of the book will also learn about Pearl’s family background, which contains a significant amount of tragedy. In addition to the loss of his son in 2002, the author’s grandfather was murdered at Auschwitz during the Holocaust.

Yet, Pearl added, “I know that his last thoughts were about his grandson [me] growing up free in Israel.”

Pearl criticizes Holocaust museums, which he says do not include Israel in their narrative: “You see death and suffering, you don’t see Jewish revival. It’s a shame.”

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12/10 Links Pt2: The West is sleepwalking into a Jewish exodus; ‘One Ring’ of pro-Palestine propaganda shaping the war on Zionism; Columbia Report Details 'Disturbing' Anti-Semitism From Instructors at Ivy League School

From Ian:

‘After what happened to my generation, I hoped we’d moved past anti-Jewish racism’

Nine centenarian Holocaust survivors share stories from the past – and fears for the future – at the German embassy

If you had told a 13-year-old Alice Hubbers in 1938 – as she witnessed the wanton brutality of Kristallnacht – that she would one day be taking tea in the residence of Germany’s ambassador to London, she would have questioned your sanity.

Yet here she is, 87 years later, tucking into doughnuts and English scones beneath enormous chandeliers in Belgravia, celebrating the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.

Hubbers, now 100, was one of nine centenarians invited by the ambassador on Dec 8 to a unique gathering for some of the last Holocaust survivors. They have all led lives blighted by Nazi persecution, which saw the murder of many of their parents and wider family.

Susanne Baumann, the German ambassador to London, addressed her guests as “my dear centenarians”, telling them she wanted to take the chance to honour not only their longevity, but “to take this opportunity to thank you all from the bottom of my heart for your inspirational and generous commitment to sharing your moving personal accounts with us over the years and for your courage in reaching out to the younger generation in the UK and Germany, who are thankfully able to grow up in freedom and in safety”.

She also wanted to treat them to a celebration ahead of both Christmas and Hanukkah. “It might not be quite as exciting as a birthday message from the King,” she conceded, “but please allow me to officially congratulate you all again today.”

Marion Koppel, who is “101 and a half”, says: “I think it’s quite impressive, if I may say so.”

The West is sleepwalking into a Jewish exodus.

There is also a growing political calculation that Jews are demographically irrelevant, especially compared with Muslim voters, with the U.S. being the only partial exception. Islamists and Far-Left activists are larger and louder blocs, so leaders choose numbers over decency.

Given all this, it is unsurprising that Jews across the West are asking: Do we have a future here? Should we encourage our children to stay? Is Europe safe? Is North America safe? Is Australia safe? Is South Africa safe? Should we move assets abroad? Should we obtain an Israeli passport as insurance? These are not hypothetical questions. Jewish emigration from France, Belgium, Sweden, and the UK has already accelerated. The U.S. is behind Europe, but rising too.

The West will not lose its Jews in one dramatic moment. It will lose them through a slow drip of insult, a steady rise in fear, and a growing sense of no longer belonging. A key question is whether today’s Diaspora Jews will repeat the mistake of their forefathers and wait for catastrophe before acting. The tremors before the earthquake rumble louder each day.

If Western nations lose their Jewish communities, they will forfeit things they never realized Jews had given them: parts of their moral compass, their historical memory of totalitarianism, a large portion of their intellectual class, and history’s finest early-warning system of civilizational decline.

Throughout history, how a society treats its Jews predicts its future with unerring accuracy. Antisemitism is a symptom of broader decay that putrefies its way into a society’s core. Western civilization will not fall because its enemies are strong, but because it is abandoning the people who held the line when others looked away.

Jews will not turn on the West; they will quietly leave, taking with them their culture, innovation, generosity, reverence for law, belief in democracy, and their disproportionate contributions to science, medicine, the arts, finance, technology, journalism, literature, and public life.

They will leave because a civilization that will not defend its Jews will defend next to nothing. The West — much of it confused, cowardly, morally exhausted, and presently self-absorbed — may not even notice the loss until it is far too late.

Yisrael Medad: ‘One Ring’ of pro-Palestine propaganda shaping the war on Zionism

The results of an intriguing study on anti-Israel and anti-Zionist language usage were published on December 2. Veteran blogger Elder of Ziyon displayed a detailed table with results of a study that reviewed the terminology employed in academic papers going back from 2005 through 2024. His findings are that antisemitic and activist anti-Zionist language is used in thousands of academic papers, thus reinforcing a negative subjective narrative.

The phrases and terms used in these papers included “Jewish supremacism,” “Talmudic rituals,” “Israeli Occupation Forces,” Gaza as an “open air prison,” and “Judaization,” among others. Such language seeps from the academic world into mainstream media op-eds, and then back again. Students and university colleagues are regularized to express themselves by using the exclusionary language of castigation and of animosity regarding Jewish nationalism and Middle East politics.

What is at work here results not in detached independent scientific research, but rather, it eventually locks the public into an ideological entrenchment primed and positioned to disallow any refutation. Moreover, there is no possible defense by those targeted as “colonialists.” Even more dangerous, it is a rhetoric of volatility.

The articulation may seem to be lofty academic verbiage, but it is just a repeat of medieval theological cancellation as when Jews were forced to engage in demeaning, unfair disputations. Today’s anti-Zionist hordes – safe in their self-constructed castles of words that reinforce the visceral animosity they already have in place – always have the advantage.

Raef Zreik, an Israeli Arab who is a senior lecturer of Jurisprudence at Ono Academic College and a senior research fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, wrote a 2023 article titled “Zionism and Political Theology.” It purports to “identify what is unique about the political theology of Zionism” and “explores what the consequences of this uniqueness might be.”

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12/10 Links: Eighty years since Tunisian Jews were rounded up by the Nazis; Vigil honors victims of 2019 antisemitic shooting in Jersey City

From Ian:

Eighty years since Tunisian Jews were rounded up by the Nazis

December 9 1942 marked a turning point in the fortunes of the Jews of Tunisia. The Germans occupied the country the previous month, and 5,000 Jewish males were marched off to forced labour camps. There was little that the Jewish community could do to resist this colossal force. France 24 commemorates 80 years since the first round-up:

Moncef Bey: signed every antisemitic decree
On December 9, 1942, when Tunisia had been occupied for a month by the Germans, 3,000 Jewish men over the age of 18 were ordered to do forced labour, but only 120 men showed up. The occupier then ordered a round-up. Nearly 5,000 Jews were sent to forced labor in camps where they suffered ill-treatment.

“While the chief of SS rants, I mentally take stock of the situation, ” recalled community leader Paul Ghez.” We feel very small before the colossal force which has been unleashed. I look to my right at the pitiful group of gloomy and silent prisoners. I can make out the beard of the rabbi, I see a child shivering with fear.” On December 9, 1942, Paul Guez, head of the Jewish community in Tunis, turned out to be quite powerless. While the German occupier conducted the round-up in the Tunisian capital, the Jews could not put up any resistance. Nearly 5,000 Jews were sent to forced labor camps.

This date marks a turning point. Until then, the Jews of Tunisia, about 90,000 people, had not suffered such persecution. Since the establishment of the Vichy regime, however, they were the object of anti-Semitic measures, according to the Statut des juifs promulgated in France in October 1940. “In this statute, article 9 stipulates that it is applicable in the countries of the protectorate”, explains the historian Claude Nataf, president of the Society for the History of the Jews of Tunisia (SHJT). “But for a draft law to be applicable in Tunisia, it must have the seal of the bey (the Tunisian sovereign)”, he says.

At the time, Ahmed II Bey ruled the country. “He is an old man who will die two years later. He is more concerned about his legacy and what he will bequeath to his children. He does not want to come into conflict with the Resident General of France, especially on the Jewish question”, says Claude Nataf. The statute was therefore introduced on November 30, 1940 and excluded Jews in public service and in the press, radio, theater and cinema. However, it turned out to be “more moderate” than in mainland France, according to the historian, since a second statue exempting certain professions was promulgated in June 1941.

The Adas Affair

The life and death of the richest Jew in Iraq

A woman makes a frantic journey from the southern city of Basra to the Royal Palace in Baghdad. Her name is Aliza (Alice) Adas. She is Shafiq Adas’s wife and will soon be his widow. Waiting for her inside the palace is the Hashemite prince Emir ‘Abd al-Ilah, the head of the Iraqi Royal Family. She genuflects before him, falling to the ground and kissing his feet. Little does she know in this moment that hanging in the balance is not only her husband’s life, but also the fate of the whole Jewish community.

It was September 1948. Together with her husband Shafiq, 40-year-old Aliza had brought into the world three sons (Zaki, Victor, and Sabah) and three daughters (Dolly, Vicky, and Stella). In this couple, Aliza was the local one, the daughter of a wealthy family engaged in the tea and sugar trades. Shafiq was born in Aleppo, Syria, and had followed his eldest brother Avraham to Iraq to try his luck in business after the First World War, in which Iraq was conquered by the empire on which the sun had not yet set. Iraq was a whole new world for them, a place of boundless business opportunities. Aliza had a broad face and sharp features, and her posture hinted at her hands-on disposition. Despite having been born and raised in Baghdad and speaking flawless Arabic, she was entirely illiterate in the language. Nevertheless, she had a masterful grasp of English and French, as expected among the Jewish elite in Iraq in that era.

The Emir, for his part, was much weaker than he appeared. Perhaps the most eccentric figure in the Iraqi Royal Family, ‘Abd al-Ilah knew that the opportunities facing him were extremely limited. Ever since his brother-in-law, King Ghazi, had been killed in a gruesome car accident at the entrance of the Royal Palace in Bagdad nine years earlier—a telegraph pole had fallen on his race car and sliced his head in two—the Emir had served as the formal head of the Iraqi state, since the legal heir, Ghazi’s son Faisal, was only four years old. As Queen Aliya’s brother, living with her in the palace, ‘Abd al-Ilah also became the interim head of the royal household, with the title of regent.

This regent had never managed to endear himself to the Iraqi people, most of whom saw him as a pro-British collaborator. He was a gazelle-like figure, wrote a British diplomat, with large eyes, a prominent forehead, and an oval face. His choice to fill his guestroom with photographs of the British Royal Family, and the fact that his main hobby was horseback riding, added nothing to his popularity. He once questioned how Arab he truly was at all. The rumors about his suspected homosexual tendencies did little to help him, either.

Vigil honors victims of 2019 antisemitic shooting in Jersey City

A vigil was held in Jersey City Thursday night to remember the victims of a 2019 antisemitic shooting.

At the vigil commemorating the three years since the deadly shooting at a local kosher grocery store, NJ First Lady Tammy Murphy said, "Detective Joseph Seals, Mindy Ferentz, Moshe Deutsh, Douglas Miguel Rodriguez, and Michael Rumberger. They were spouses, parents, children, neighbors and friends."

Investigators say two gunmen, 47-year-old David Anderson and 50-year-old Francine Graham, killed 13-year veteran Detective Joseph Seals.

They then targeted the Jewish deli and killed three people inside the store including 24-year-old Moshe Deutsch, 49-year-old Douglas Miguel Rodriguez, and 31-year-old Mindy Ferencz.

Later, investigators determined the pair had killed a fifth victim, who was their Uber driver, Michael Rumberger.

Police shot and killed both of the suspects.

Everyone who saw the scene that night or that next day will never forget how much worse it could have been.

As horrifying as the attack was three years ago, it was far from an isolated event. In fact, the experts say it was just a drop from of their hatred.

In early 2020, officials said there was evidence that the suspects had been planning the attack for months.

The gunman allegedly checked out the JC Kosher Market on Martin Luther King Drive on at least two occasions and entered the store during one of them, even driving by the business twice on the day of the shootings.

In the years since these lives were lost, antisemitism has been on the rise.

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12/30 Links Pt2: Romi Gonen: Hour-long special; Spielberg Uses Schindler’s List Money to Fund Anti-Israel Protests; Dishonest Reporter of the Year Awards 2025

From Ian:

Stephen Pollard: This was the toughest year in living memory for UK Jews … and there is no sign of things improving in 2026

The deaths of Melvin Cravitz and Adrian Daulby on Yom Kippur, the former killed by Islamist terrorist Jihad Al-Shamie and the latter by a police bullet as they sought to protect congregants at Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester, define not just the year 2025 but the whole period in Anglo-Jewish history since the Hamas massacre of October 7 2023. There is a clear sense in which the atmosphere of open Jew hate since then has been leading us here – and, worryingly, that what we witnessed on Yom Kippur is not its climax but rather the start of new and dangerous era for our community – a sense that has obviously deepened since the murders in Bondi.

Britain has felt different for Jews in the years since Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour Party in 2015. Corbyn’s ascendancy unleashed a torrent of antisemitism both online and in the real world, an onslaught which felt both shocking and unprecedented at the time. But while his defeat in 2019 seemed then to mark some sort of closing of the door, hindsight has shown how misguided that idea was. Far from having reached a nadir in the Corbyn years, the massacre of 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023 led to a surge in Jew-hate the like of which has not been seen since the Shoah.

In the just over two years since, we have had to grow used to the streets of London and other cities being taken over by hate marches, while the police have mainly stood and watched. Across the country, Jew haters have gathered under the guise of protesting against the Gaza war and the authorities have said and done virtually nothing. On one march, in Tower Hamlets in October, participants wore black clothes and facemasks in a seemingly deliberate echo of the Battle of Cable Steet against Mosley’s Blackshirts – only this time the fascists were the Islamist marchers. And the authorities stood and watched.

As the number of demonstrations intensified this year, we repeatedly told the authorities that their refusal to act against these open and proud displays of Jew hate was sending a clear message. Not only was that message emboldening the haters on the streets, on campus and online, we warned that it would at some point lead to violence – and tragedy. The veracity of that prediction – less a prediction than a statement of the obvious – was seen on Yom Kippur at Heaton Park synagogue. There was a similar refusal in Australia, with even more appalling consequences. And the week after 15 people were murdered at a Chanukah celebration by jihadists driven by the same extremist Jew hate that inspired the Manchester atrocity, two men in Preston were convicted of plotting to kill hundreds of Jews in what would have been the bloodiest terrorist slaughter in British history. The pace of events insistently suggests that across the world, the ancient evil of violent, insatiable antisemitism has once more been let loose.

For British Jews, 2025 has been the worst year in living memory. France and the US have endured deadly attacks in recent years. We have not. But that changed on Yom Kippur, and perhaps the worst of it is that no one seriously thinks that it will be a one-off. The issue is not whether there will be more attacks on Jews but how, when and where.

One response to Heaton Park was the regurgitation of the platitude that follows every antisemitic incident – that there is no place for antisemitism on the streets of Britain. It is not so much a platitude as a lie, because there are plainly many places for antisemitism on the streets of Britain, as we saw in Manchester and as is seen every time there is a so-called Free Palestine demonstration, with their cries for the murder of Jews in the guise of “globalise the intifada” and with the police standing by. Now, in the wake of Sydney, the Met and Greater Manchester Police have pledged to clamp down on that particular chant. The marchers are wasting no time in finding other words to express their wish for Jews to die.

But when it comes to the police, the events surrounding the West Midland force’s decision to make the area around Villa Park Judenfrei for the Maccabi Tel Aviv match against Aston Villa in November are something altogether new – and darker. At the very least, it seems clear that the police decided to acquiesce in the idea pushed by “community leaders” that a Jewish or Israeli presence would be inherently provocative. To that end, they pushed a fictitious account of Maccabi fans’ behaviour in Amsterdam to justify a ban on their presence at Villa Park. But this was never about a football match. As Mark Gardner, CEO of the Community Security Trust, put it at the time: “[The] Aston Villa match is about who controls the streets of UK’s second largest city. The football is a very red herring.”

This was a key moment not just in British policing but in the story of Anglo-Jewry’s place in this country, because it marked a move away from the police merely acquiescing in Jew hate on the streets to them doing the bidding of Islamists. The implications are chilling.

Spielberg Uses Schindler’s List Money to Fund Anti-Israel Protests

“Let Gaza live,” a mob of anti-Israel protesters screamed, brandishing signs falsely accusing the Jewish State of “ethnic cleansing”, “starving Gaza” and genocide while illegally blocking traffic outside the Israeli consulate in Midtown Manhattan.

The only thing more disgusting than the ugly spectacle, which had been timed around a Hamas famine propaganda campaign over the summer, was that one of the hate groups behind the anti-Israel protest, which ended in arrests, was funded by proceeds from Schindler’s List.

When Steven Spielberg created the Righteous Persons Foundation with some of the profits from Schindler’s List, he wanted to educate people about the Holocaust and build up Jewish life in America. “I could not accept any money from ‘Schindler’s List’ — if it even made any money. It was blood money, and needed to be put back into the Jewish community.”

“My parents didn’t keep kosher and we mainly observed all the holidays when my grandparents stayed with us,” the filmmaker said at the time. “I knew I was missing a great deal of my natural heritage, and as I became conscious of it, I began racing to catch up.”

The race has long since gone the other way.

The last time the Righteous Persons Foundation, named after the rescuers of Holocaust survivors, funded Holocaust programs was in 2021. Most of its funding now goes to radical social justice groups including anti-Israel organizations like those protesting Israel.

Since 2021, Spielberg’s foundation has provided $650,000 to T’ruah, an anti-Israel hate group which took part in the Manhattan street blocking and whose CEO celebrated the move and gleefully posted photos of attendees falsely accusing Israel of “ethnic cleansing”.

“We have to keep up the pressure,” urged T’ruah CEO Jill Jacobs, who had accused Israeli officials of “incitement to genocide”, and demanded an end to further Israeli attacks on Hamas. Jacobs had blasted American Jews for speaking about “Oct. 7 and the plight of the hostages without once mentioning the unbearable death toll among Palestinians” because of what she claimed was their fear of wealthy Jewish donors.

Jacobs and T’ruah had even falsely accused Israel of “war crimes” by assassinating Hezbollah leaders. “Israel, too, has already committed war crimes in Lebanon, including by exploding the beepers and walkie talkies of hundreds of Hezbollah members,” Jacobs argued.

Within a year, Spielberg had gone from funding Holocaust survivors to funding those accusing Israel of a new Holocaust while enabling Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran to perpetrate a new one.

Leading philanthropist reveals she has withdrawn funding from human rights groups over antisemitic rhetoric

One of the country’s biggest philanthropists has revealed she withdrew funding from organisations that appeared to justify the October 7 Hamas attacks in Israel.

The Sigrid Rausing Trust, led by philanthropist Sigrid Rausing, announced that it has cut grants to several human rights groups after reviewing public statements made in the aftermath of the attacks.

“We have strong clauses in our grant contract requiring grantees to abstain from incendiary language that may promote violence,” Rausing said, referencing Charity Commission guidance in an article published by The Times.

According to the Trust, five out of approximately 400 grantee organisations posted what it described as “disturbing material.”

One group in Tunisia expressed “pride” in the Hamas action.

Another called for “support for the guerrilla Palestinian people in their war against the Zionist entity,” stating that Israel “was shaken due to the action of the Palestinian resistance…invading the occupied lands and Zionist settlements.”

A Lebanese media group characterised the Hamas attacks as “resistance” to “colonisation,” referred to murdered civilians as “settlers,” and dismissed Israeli reports of atrocities as “lies.”

A Canadian group, also funded by the Trust, labeled Israel’s actions “genocidal” and described the country as a “settler colonialist white-supremacist state.”

The Trust said that, in context, this language appeared to condone the attacks.

Rausing commented, “Atrocities against civilians are obviously contrary to human rights and international humanitarian law, and we cancelled our contracts with the groups in question.

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